Therapy is a Function of Love

THE FIRST question:

THERAPY IS BASICALLY A FUNCTION OF LOVE, and love flows only when there is no ego. You can help the other only to the extent that you are non-egoistic. The moment the ego enters, the other becomes defensive. The ego is aggressive; it creates an automatic urge in the other to be defensive. Love is non-aggressive. It helps the other to remain vulnerable, open, non-defensive.

Hence, without love there is no therapy.

Therapy is a function of love. So with ego, you can't help. You may even destroy the other. In the name of help you may hinder his growth. But Western psychology is caught up in a mess.

The first thing Western psychology still thinks in terms of a healthy ego. And ego can never be healthy. It is a contradiction in terms. Ego as such is ill. Ego can never be healthy. Ego is always leading you towards more and more illness. But Western psychology thinks - the whole Western mind has been - that people are suffering from weak egos. People are not suffering from weak egos; people are suffering from too much of egoism.

But if the society is male-mind-oriented, aggression-oriented, if the only desire of the society is how to conquer all, then naturally you have to drop all that is feminine in you. You have to drop half of your being into oblivion - and you have to live with the other half. The other half can never be healthy because health comes through wholeness. The feminine has to be accepted... the feminine is egolessness, the feminine is receptivity, the feminine is love.

A really healthy person is one who is utterly balanced between the male and the female. In fact, he is one whose maleness has been cut, destroyed by his femaleness, who has transcended both, who is neither male nor female - who simply is. You cannot categorize him. This man is whole, and this man is healthy. And to such a man, in the East, we have always looked as the Master.

In the East we have not created anything parallel to the psychotherapist. The East has created the Master, the West has created the psychotherapist. When people are mentally disturbed, they go to the psychiatrist in the West; in the East, they go to a Master. The Master's function is utterly different. He does not help you to attain to a stronger ego. In fact, he makes you feel that the ego that you have is already too much. Drop it! Let it go!

Once the ego is dropped, suddenly you are one and whole and flowing. And there is no block and no hindrance.

In the West also, sooner or later, psychotherapy will have to understand the ultimate psychology - the psychology of the Buddhas. Before I enter into it, I would like to say a few things about the ego - how this mechanism functions, what exactly it is.

A child is born. A child is like an uninflated balloon. The balloon is there, it can be inflated, it can carry much air. But right now there is no air in it. Then, by and by, we inflate the balloon. This balloon is the symbol of the ego. From the first year to the seventh year the child exists almost egolessly. He exists in tune with existence, he has no separation, no clearcut boundaries. He does not know who he is, he does not compare, he does not fight. He lives in utter relaxation - that's the beauty of a child. That's why the eyes of a child are so innocent; no tension floats there, no anguish has arisen, no fear.

Anguish arises only when your boundaries have become very clearcut. With the boundaries you are separate; when you are separate you are in danger. Separation brings danger. When you start feeling that "I am myself and nobody else!" then death starts hovering around you - because this is a false idea. You are not yourself: you are part of the whole. You are not an island. The ego gives the idea that you are an island. You are not an island; you are involved with the whole of existence.

You are not separate, so how can there be death? That's why a child is deathless - he can go and play with a snake. He has no concept of death, he s so utterly innocent. From where does this fearlessness of the child come?

It comes because there is no division yet; he lives an undivided life, a life of unison, unity. That's why later on we go on thinking with nostalgia how beautiful those days, those few years, were. They continue to remain the golden age - the poetry of those days, the dance, the joy, the celebration - that goes on hovering around you for your whole life. As if the best happened first, and since then you have been falling and falling and falling.

Because of this basic mechanism, all the religions carry the parable of 'The Fall'. The Fall presupposes that we were higher first; we were higher and then we became lower. This doesn't seem to be a very good evolution. It is involution! First you were in a golden age - so say the Hindus, so say the Christians, so say all the religions of the world: that the real golden age passed in the past. Now more and more gloomy days are coming - Kaliyuga, the Dark Age - more and more dark it will be. From where does this parable of the Fall come? It comes from the deep experience of every man. It is very fundamental.

The child was really happy. He had known no responsibility, he had known no division, he had known no separation. He was egoless. The balloon was there, potentially ready. You can put hot air into it at any moment. And we start putting hot air in - the moment the child is born we start putting hot air into it. The moment you start putting hot air in, the child starts becoming more and more of an individual.

All small children look alike. Why do they look alike? They don't have many distinctions. Their faces don't yet have characteristics, they don't have any persona. They are almost alike, similar.

That's why all children look beautiful. They have not yet grown a specific character, distinction, a personality. Without this personality they are utterly in existence, one with it. There is a harmony.

But that harmony will be broken sooner or later. We will start preparing them for the world. We will start telling them what their names are. We will start telling them who they are - Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans. We will tell them whether they are boys or girls. We will start enforcing ideas on them and conditioning them and preparing them for the world. We will send them to school and to college and, by and by, we will train them.

Our WHOLE education consists of a subtle training in the ego; that's why the education is so competitive. It depends on ambition create ambition! Tell the child, "You have to come first in the class. You have to top the college; you have to attain to the gold medal in the university. These are the ways you have to learn how to be the first in line. Then your whole life you will have to work it out. First learn the map, and then your whole life work it out. Wherever you are, go on trying to be the first in line."

Great anxiety is created, great anguish is created. Neurosis is created out of it.

From the first to the seventh year the child remains like an uninflated balloon. From the seventh to the fourteenth the adolescent starts gaining air. That's why adolescents are difficult, always ready to say 'no' and always ready to fight and always ready to rebel. Down the ages it has been so, it is nothing new in this age. Down the ages adolescence has been the age of problems. The ego has started functioning. The adolescent says, "I would like my own way, I want to do my thing! Right or wrong is not the question - my thing I want to do!"

We create it: we repress it also. We create it so that the child can fight in the world with others.

But the child starts fighting with the parents too! There is a problem. The parents don't want the child to bring his ego against them, but where is he going to practise? - they are the closest. So there is a contradiction in the mechanism. They want him to be against the whole world: "Go and compete with everybody! Be a warrior and show your mettle and show your spine - show that you are somebody!" But the child starts learning at home. Naturally, everything has to be started at home. He says 'no' to the mother, 'no' to the father. The father says, "Don't smoke!" and he will smoke. And the father says, "Don't go to the movie!" and he will go.

Now we are poisoning. When you poison somebody, you cannot trust that he will throw his poison only at the outside world and he will not throw his poison at you. Adolescence is the most troubled time - because the adolescent hovers between two oppositions, between two polarities. He knows The childhood has just been there and it was so beautiful. He has not yet left it absolutely. He can still penetrate, sometimes he goes into it. Sometimes an adolescent becomes again a child - playing with his toys, running after a butterfly, collecting sea-shells on the beach - he slips back.

Then he is again beautiful. Then he comes back because he has to go to school and he has to learn mathematics and geography and history; and he has to compete and the examination is coming close. He goes on moving between these two territories; hence he becomes very anxious, uncertain of himself.

Up to the seventh year he was very certain, there was no problem. Now the problem is arising: the ego is coming up, the balloon starts taking shape - not very perfect, but the balloon starts taking shape. Now you can see one adolescent becoming different from another.

Adolescents insist on their differences. If you put all the children into one dress, they won't like it - then they lose their separation. They want their own dress. They want everything of their own. They want their own room with a nameplate. They start signing their names on their books - the signature has come into being.

Character appears with adolescence. And almost always, if you watch an adolescent rightly, you can write his whole future. The character starts forming, the fundamentals start surfacing - what the boy is going to become. All possibilities are there, but a few possibilities start becoming actual, and a few possibilities, by and by, shrink and die away. Whether the child will become a musician or a poet or a painter or a politician or a mystic - adolescence is the age when you can judge. Before that it is impossible to judge because the balloon has no shape, the air has not entered yet. And with adolescence a great effort to be free from all patterns, disciplines....

FROM THE FOURTEENTH TO THE TWENTY-EIGHTH year is the third stage of the balloon or the ego - youth inflated to the full. With the fourteenth year a kind of fullness enters into life because one becomes sexually mature. Nothing gives more air to the ego than sex. Without sexual maturity you remain lacking something. Your parents have something - they can produce children, you cannot.

You feel impotent. By the age of fourteen, a boy is no more a boy - at least he does not think that he is a boy. Inside he starts thinking of himself as the man, a grown-up man. And boys start taking more air; more flavour of the ego enters. With sexual maturity ego comes to its full bloom. The balloon is inflated to the full, personality arises clear and loud.

In adolescence you could have looked deeply and found personality, but on the face of youth you need not look deeply - it is written all over the face. With adolescence there was a little rebellious spirit, but with youth there is revolution. He is ready to destroy anything. He becomes destructive, because it is only through destruction that he can show that he is somebody. He is against ALL rules, regulations; he does not want to believe in anything. He does not want to believe in any tradition, in any religion. He wants to say 'no' to father. 'no' to mother. Not only that: he wants to say 'no' to God, 'no' to the church, 'no' to the Bible, 'no' to the Gita. He wants to say 'NO' with his whole heart. The ego has come in a perfect way.

This third stage gives him the feeling "I am me and nobody else!" Ego at its full peak. At this time the youth is always ready to fight, to explode. Aggression, violence, competition, ambition, revolution - all enter into his blood and bones.

The fourth stage is from the twenty-eighth to the fifty-sixth year - middle age - inflated beyond the natural capacity. The balloon is inflated beyond the natural capacity. The natural capacity is attained by the twenty-eighth year; that's how far the balloon can go. Between twenty-eight and fifty-six it starts getting beyond the limit of the balloon. Hypertension arises. These are the most difficult days.

Up to twenty-eight you were taught to inflate the ego more and more, so you go on inflating. It has become a habitual thing. For twenty-eight years you have been practising only one thing - through education, through teaching, through conditioning - inflate the ego. Now it has become a routine:

you go on inflating without thinking at all that there is a limited capacity to the balloon. You go on pushing more and more air in - hypertension arises. So it is somewhere between twenty-eight and fifty-six that you start getting high blood pressure, heart attacks. It is somewhere between these two ages that you have to consult the psychotherapist, that you start becoming shaky, that things don't seem to go the right way, as you had expected them to go, as they were at least appearing to go up to twenty-eight. Now they are no longer going the right way. Everything seems to go wrong.

You are succeeding in life; you have money, you have prestige, respectability, but somehow you are disappearing in it. You are losing your being, your peace, your rest. A restlessness, a great restlessness, a feverishness arises. These are the most difficult days. These are the days when a person becomes physically, mentally ill. Anxiety arises, anguish arises, psychosis and all kinds of neurosis enter into your being. This is the fourth stage.

The fifth stage is from fifty-six to one hundred and twelve, the ultimate expansion. Just on the verge, any moment, of exploding. You are ready, just a puff more and you will explode. No more inflation is possible. This is the time when a person starts hoping that now death should be coming, starts thinking about death. Not only starts thinking, but having a kind of hope that "Death will come and relieve me of all this burden."

Then the sixth stage: the balloon explodes.

Out of the sixth there are two possibilities - the seventh stage has two possibilities - the Eastern and the Western. The Western possibility is: you di, and you are reborn again as an uninflated balloon in some womb. Death is the seventh possibility if Western psychology is allowed its full say.

If there is nothing like religion, then out of the sixth the seventh is born automatically. You die here, you know only one way of being, you are again born in a womb - again an uninflated balloon - and you start the same circle, the same repetition, the same rut.

This is what, in India, we call the samsara - the world. Each death brings you back to life again, and again you start the same game! And the game has been played millions of times! And you go on playing, you go on playing... the same again and again. Those who are perceptive and intelligent, they become alert. They see the whole futility of it. What is the point? Why go on repeating like a wheel? Why this wheel of birth and death?

Then there is another possibility and that is the Eastern possibility: either you die - you explode and you are born; or you don't die - you don't explode. Seeing the whole absurdity of the ego, you yourself relax, you puncture it. That's what I call sannyas - you puncture the balloon. The air goes out of it, the balloon shrinks back; it becomes like it was when you were a child.

This is the second childhood: you have become twice-born. Not in some other womb, not in some other life - herenow. You have dropped out of the wheel. That's why we say the saint is again like a small child. The circle is complete. No womb is needed for him: he has become a womb unto himself. Again he is innocent. Again trees are colourful, again the sun is a joy. Again everything is celebration. God walks on the earth again. He is in paradise. He has not gone anywhere! He has simply dropped that balloon that was creating the whole trouble.

This is the birth of a new consciousness; not of a new body, but of a new soul - the birth of a new being; not of a new mechanism, not of a new house, but the DWELLER has changed. This is transformation.

Now, these two possibilities are there at the ultimate stage. But if you have been brought up continuously in the Western way, in the materialistic way, in the egoistic way, then it will be difficult for the other alternative suddenly to happen.

So in the East we have been doing a very strange paradoxical thing. In the East we do one thing: we go on helping the newcomer to become egoistic, and by the side we go on helping him to remember that ego is not the goal - a good game, but one has to come out of it. We teach the ego, certainly, but simultaneously we also teach egolessness. We give him both the wings, so it remains always possible for him to change the direction whenever he wants. At whatsoever point he wants to change the direction, he can change the direction. Any moment the balloon can be punctured. We teach him the art of puncturing it too.

In the West you have only been taught one thing - how to go on pumping more air into the balloon.

And if sometimes punctures happen automatically, you have been taught how to mend them. Your psychology is nothing but... it is like a garage. The car is not functioning well, you go to the garage, and the garage mechanic maintains it back to its normality. He brings it back to its old functioning order.

The psychotherapist's couch is like a garage for you. When - ever some puncture starts appearing in your life pattern, you immediately rush to the psychotherapist, so that he can cover the puncture and again you can go on pumping air in it.

The Eastern way, the psychology of the Buddhas, is that whenever the puncture happens, feel happy. Help it, it is good! Let this balloon go! But remember, that does not mean that we want nobody to grow into ego. First you have to grow into ego - that's a natural part of growth.

So if you ask me, my suggestion is: up to the age of fifty-six... that is the middle age if we take the life span from one to one hundred and twelve years of age. That's what yogis say the natural age of man is: one hundred and twelve years. Each man is capable of living at least that long if things go right. If life energy moves in the right direction, one hundred and twelve years has been fixed by the yogis down the ages as the natural limit of life. If we die before then something has gone wrong - either in the body or in the mind, or in the food, or in the society, something has gone wrong. We have not completed the natural course. So fifty-six is just the middle line. That's why Hindus say that after fifty you start thinking of sannyas, of renunciation. And by seventy-five, thinking won't do: you take the jump.

But we prepare from the very beginning. We say: Have a strong ego, and also have a different kind of strength which is not of the ego, so that when the ego becomes too much you can drop it too. Let your being also be strong, just as your ego is strong. Strong being is needed to drop the strong ego.

In the West you have been taught only to grow in strength as far as the ego is concerned. Then the ego becomes too strong and you are too impotent and you cannot do anything with it, you cannot drop it.

For example: you have been taught how to think, but you have not been taught how to stop thinking.

So thinking becomes very very skillful, very logical, rational, very focussed. concentrated. Then one day you want to stop it but you cannot stop - your being is very very impotent. You have put your whole energy into thinking and being has remained without energy. Now the slave that you have trained becomes the master. It is as if you have been continuously feeding the slave and starving the master. By and by, the slave comes to know that you are nothing. Why should he allow you on the throne? He throws you off the throne and sits on the throne, and you cannot do anything.

You have watched it many times. In the night you want to go to sleep and the thoughts continue.

And you say to them, "Please, stop!" But they don't stop, they don't hear at all, they don't bother about you. They go on and on and on.

Good to teach thinking, but it is FAR better to teach how not to think too! so that thinking remains a slave and the being remains the master. Good to have an ego, otherwise in life you will not have any spine. You will be crushed by anybody. If you don't have any ego in life, you will remain a non entity, yoU will be exploited, oppressed, tortured. Anybody, any Adolf Hitler will become your shepherd, and you will be a sheep. No, that's not good. You should be taught the ego, but simultaneously, far MORE important and significant is to teach you so that any moment you want to disconnect yourself from the ego you can disconnect. Any moment you want to puncture the ego you can puncture. Any moment you want to put the balloon away, you can put the balloon away.

The outer journey needs the ego, the inner journey needs egolessness. When you are fighting, the ego is needed. The soldier needs the ego, but the saint needs egolessness. And life is not all fight.

If life is all fight, then it is meaningless. There are joyous moments which don't come through fight, which come through relaxation. Ego never allows you to relax; it keeps you continuously tense.

Hence, the stress destroys you - the body, mind, everything is destroyed by the stress and the strain.

You ask me: HOW CAN I WORK AS A THERAPIST IN AN EGOLESS WAY?

In the East our approach is that the therapist has not to work at all. The therapist becomes just a vehicle for God's energy. He has just to be available like a hollow bamboo so God can pass through him. The healer has to become just a passage.

The patient is a man - in Eastern eyes - who has lost his contact with God. He has become too egoistic and he has lost his contact with God. He has created such a China Wall around himself that he no more knows what God is, he no more knows what the totality is. He's utterly disconnected from the roots, from the very source of life. That's why he is ill - mentally, physically or any other way. Illness means that he has lost track of the source. The healer, the therapist in the East, is expected to connect him to the source again. He has lost the source, but you have the connection still.

You hold the hand of the person. He is hidden behind a wall. Let him be hiding behind the wall.

Even if you can hold his hand through a hole in the wall... if he can trust you - he cannot trust a God, he does not know what God means. That word has become meaningless to him. But he can trust the therapist, he can hold the hand of the therapist. The therapist is empty, just in tune with God, and the energy starts flowing. And that energy is so vital, so rejuvenating, that sooner or later it destroys those China Walls around the patient, he has a glimpse of egolessness. That glimpse makes him healthy and whole, nothing else makes him healthy and whole.

So if the therapist himself is an egoist, then it is impossible. Both are prisoners. Their prisons are different, but they cannot be of much help.

My whole approach about therapy is that the therapist has to become instrumental to God. I'm not saying don't know the know-how. Know the know-how! - but make that know-how available to God.

Let Him use it. Learn psychotherapy, learn all kinds of therapies. Know whatsoever is possible to know, but don't cling to it. Put it there, let God be available through you. Let God through all your know-how, let God flow through all your know-how. Let Him be the source of healing and therapy.

That's what love is.

Love relaxes the other. Love gives trust to the other. Love showers on the other, heals his wounds.

The second question is concerned with the first:

No. Only partially is it possible. Man has three planes of his being: the body, the mind and the soul.

The mind is just in between, it is a bridge. Half consists of the body, half consists of the soul. So if you drop the religious dimension completely, the mind can never be whole; it will always be half, something will be missing.

That's what Carl Gustav Jung came to know at the latter stage of his life. He must have treated thousands of patients. In the end he asserted, "This has been my observation: that the age of forty-two seems to be bringing something new in the life of man. Just as at the age of fourteen sex enters, so at the age of forty-two religion has to enter. All people who suffer after forty-two are suffering somehow or other from the lack of the religious dimension." That is Jung's observation.

They need somehow to contact God again. They may not know about it, but their basic problem is there. And it HAS to be there.

Life has two parts: birth and death. When you are young you are too full of birth, you are close to birth. You don't bother about death. When you start moving closer to death, one day you cross the boundary of birth and you enter into the boundary of death. Then you start thinking of death. And there is no other way to solve the fear of death except through religion. And if you cannot solve it, it goes on shaking you, trembling you; it goes on gnawing your heart. It becomes a wound. You can avoid it, you may not look at it. You can remain occupied in a thousand and one things. You may not think about it consciously, but unconsciously the death is coming closer, and your whole life starts losing meaning.

In the middle of life a day comes when suddenly death becomes significant. The moment you recognize that death is significant, you have to recognize the religious dimension. Religion exists because of death.

Materialism would be perfectly okay if there were no death; there would have been no need for religion. If there were only birth and no death, then materialism would have been all, then Charvarka, Epicurus, Karl Marx - these people would have been the Buddhas. Then there is nothing else. If there is only birth, then who bothers? If you are going to live here forever, who bothers about the quality of life, or about something deeper? Then it is enough to go on enjoying! Then "Eat, drink, be merry" is the only sutra. No other Vedas, no other Bible, is needed.

But death comes. And because death comes, Buddha becomes important, Mahavir becomes important, Christ becomes important. They give you a vision that goes beyond death, that surpasses death, that conquers death. Religion is nothing but a door to settle terms with death.

Mind cannot be REALLY healthy without the religious view of the world. It will be a lop-sided view.

You are not only the body, so only to think in material terms will not be satisfying to you. And you are not only the mind, so just psychological health won't do. You have a spirit too, and the spirit is at the center. That is your very core. If that remains suffocated, if that remains starved, somehow or other that suffocation, that starvation, will take effect in the psychology, in the physiology too. It will come from the source, oozing like a poison, and you will go on doing everything, and still you will find something is missing, something of DEEP significance is missing.

That's what Western materialism has come to. Everything is available there, but meaning is lost, significance is lost, glory is lost, dignity is lost. The soul is missing. Jesus says: "And what can you gain even if you gain the whole world and lose your soul?"

The third question:

Why should I? If God Himself is not willing to give any proof, then why should I?

God remains unproved for a certain reason. Everybody has to prove Him by his own experience. If God becomes proved, He will no more be a God. If God is proved just as a stone is proved, then He will not be a God.

God is a potentiality, a possibility. God is a promise. If God can be proved herenow, and I can put God on a table and you can all inspect and dissect and do things with Him, He will not be a God any more. He will become a thing. Anything proved becomes a thing. God is not a thing. God cannot be proved.

But I am not saying that you cannot prove - everybody can prove for his own heart's desire! But nobody can prove for anybody else. You have to go on a pilgrimage on your own. God is proved to me! Only God is for me - you are not, neither are these trees. Only God is. Only the formless is, and you are all forms of it. But that is proved for me. It can become a proved experience for you too.

But it cannot be borrowed, I cannot give it to you. And that will not satisfy.

Each time, each single individual has to prove God again and again. That is the promise. And when you prove on your own, when you come to encounter God on your own, when you have the feel on your own, He is proved. And still He does not become a thing, He does not become objective. He remains your subjectivity, your innermost experience. God remains private, God can never be made public.

Buddha knew, so did Ramakrishna, so did Raman - they could not drag Him to the marketplace.

How many BHAKTAS, how many devotees have known Him?! They could not persuade Him that "One day at least, come to the marketplace and let people see you. That will be good, then they will all become religious." But God has not listened to that. God knows far better. that will be the end of religion. Once god becomes a public phenomenon, that will be the end.

You don't worship any object. You CAN'T worship any object! Object has to be USED, not worshipped. If god is proved like any other object, then you will USE Him! You will put Him to a thousand and one uses. You will say "Now do this! Now do that! Now create petrol out of water!

Make bread out of stones!" You will put Him to use, and you will be very angry and complaining and always shouting at Him and screaming. Strikes and protests and GHERAO and all those things you will do.

God is not a proved thing because God is not a thing. Only things can be proved. I can prove that this is a stone in my hand. How can I prove that there is love in my eyes for you? Love is not a stone, it cannot be proved. Only those who are available to me will know it. Only those who are ready to go with me without any proof, not asking for any proof in the beginning, who are ready to trust - they will know. If you ask, "First, give us the proof, then we are coming," then it is impossible.

I am making available to you the door from where God becomes a proved phenomenon, but God never becomes a public phenomenon. It remains private. You can go inside and you can see, and you can feel, and you can be, but when you come outside, you are again dumb. You will be as dumb as I am. You will not be able to say anything about Him. You can say a thousand and one things, but nothing will be really, exactly about Him. It will be roundabout.

I can talk about the way I reached. I can sing songs about the beautiful way and the trees on the path, and the flowers and the birds that sing there, but that is not talking about God. I can talk about the bliss that has been attained through God, but that too is not talking about God. I can say what joy and what peace has come to me, but that too is talking about something else, not about God.

There is no way to pinpoint Him. He remains elusive. He is very mercurial.

And, moreover, to prove God is utterly useless; because just by proving it, nobody is going to become religious. Religion comes out of trust, not out of proof. Let it be understood as deeply as possible.

Religion comes out of absurd trust, irrational trust. It does not come out of proof. Proof means your reason has been satisfied. When your reason has been satisfied you cannot go beyond reason.

And religion is the effort to go beyond reason, to go beyond mind, to go beyond intellect. So proof is not possible. Then what do these people go on doing - Buddhas and Christs and Mohammeds?

They go on alluring you, they go on seducing you, towards something which is absurd. They go on selling something for which no proof exists. A few courageous people purchase, buy that idea, and take a jump. In that very jump God is proved! But before the jump, there is no way to prove Him.

You will have to taste Him on your own.

I was reading R. H. Blyth. He was a great poet, and even more than that, he had a great understanding about beauty. A very aesthetic soul, and very perceptive, particularly about Zen and Zen poetry - haiku - he was one of the most authoritative persons in the world.

He writes: "I have been asked many questions in my life about poetry, religion, life, and I have given precisely the same number of answers, but I have never, I repeat, never satisfied a single interlocutor." He says, "Thousands of times the questions have been asked and I have answered them as skillfully as possible, but never, I repeat, never was a single questioner satisfied. Why was this?" One thinks, "Why was this?"

"Because all questioning is a way of avoiding the real answer, which, as Zen tells us, is really known already. Every man is enlightened, but he wishes he was not. Every man knows he must love his enemies, and sell all he has and give it to the poor, but he does not wish to know it... so he asks questions."

That I loved. People ask questions because they want to avoid.

God is available very very close by but you ask for the proof. This is a way to avoid. You say, "Unless the proof is given, how can I go into it?" Now you have a perfect reason not to move into it. You have rationalized your fear into a question.

God is... without any proof. God is self-evident. Only God is self-evident. Everything needs proof, God needs no proof. God means the whole! What is the need to prove this whole? Particulars need proofs. This tree needs to be proved, this pillar needs to be proved, this man needs to be proved.

But the whole, the totality, need not be proved. And the totality cannot be proved.

You can prove a floating cloud in the sky; it has particularity, it has a definition, a boundary. But you cannot prove the sky itself. All that exists, exists in the sky, and the sky remains untouched, unknown, unseen. Has anybody ever seen the sky? Has anybody ever encountered the sky?

Clouds, of course, things - of course. But all exist in this space. And that space cannot be proved.

God is the total space - the totality of all time, space, things, people, the past, the present, the future, the actual, the potential - God is the ultimate totality of all. It cannot be proved. It is simply THERE! It is just there!

That's why Jesus says, "Knock and the door shall be opened unto you." But you say, "Before I knock, first prove - is God inside?" You are standing at the door and Jesus says, "Knock and the door shall be opened unto you." And Rabiya goes even one step further. She says, "Why are you waiting here?

Look! The door is open!"

But you say, "How can I look unless it is proved? Why should I look? First give me the proof that God exists, then I will look."

Blyth seems to be right: people ask questions so that they can avoid. They know the answer, but they are afraid to go into it. It will change their whole life. That much they don't want to put at stake.

The fourth question:

ZEN HAS ITS OWN WAYS OF TALKING about the ultimate reality, or God. The original face is what God is. The original face means the face of you when you had no definition, when you had no body, no contours, no localization. The original face means your formless reality, when you were not even born, when not even your father or your father's father was born.

Original face means the source energy, the absolute source energy, the original energy beyond which we cannot go - beyond which there is no way to go. Original face means: drop all the masks, drop all the names and the forms, and just go on looking into yourself and try to find out that one thing that you have not created, that the society has not created, that is not a belief system, that has nothing to do with your mind. Go on looking, go on looking... one day you stumble upon the fact of witnessing - that is the only thing that you have not created, and that is the only thing beyond which you cannot go. Let me repeat it, it is significant. WITNESSING IS THE ONLY THING IN YOU BEYOND WHICH YOU CANNOT GO. You cannot witness the witness.

How can you witness the witness? You can witness the body - it becomes certain that you are not the body. You can close your eyes and you can see your body, the body is there. Your head has a slight headache, your legs have gone numb. So one thing is certain - you are separate from this numbness of the leg, otherwise how will you know? The knower has to be separate from the known.

One thing is certain: that you are not the head or the headache. You are this consciousness that is knowing it.

Then go deeper. The body is not you. Thoughts are floating in the mind - a constant traffic. One thought comes, another thought comes, and they go on rushing in and out. Are you these thoughts?

How can you be? Then who is this watcher? These thoughts are like guests and you are the host.

So another layer has been broken. You are not these thoughts, you cannot be these thoughts. You are this witness who goes on seeing.

A thought arises, anger is coming up. Somebody has insulted you and you feel angry - a thought arises, a smoke of anger arises. Who is this who knows that the anger is coming in? And then it subsides too! One moment it was not there, one moment it was there, again it is gone. Now who is this who is witnessing? This is you! But can you witness this witness? There is no way. If you can witness that witness, then the one that is witnessing will be you - not the witnessed one, but the witnessing one.

This is ultimately irreducible. Now you cannot go beyond it. This is the origin. What Hindus call sakshin, the witness, Zen people call the original face. That's what other religions call God. God is your original face.

Listen to this parable:

A nervous man, addicted to ghost stories, reads a well-written one late at night. He gets the notion that the ghost he has been reading about is in the house. He barricades the door, he trembles with fear, and is in danger of a heart attack. In a way he knows it is all illusion, only something he has been reading about. This is his 'original realization', which is never quite lost. But in practice he accepts the ghost, and this affects him physically. Every creak of the furniture and gust of wind reinforces his belief in the ghost.

From the point of view of original realization, there is nothing which needs to be done, as the ghost has no existence. From the point of view of practical reality, to free himself from the fear which oppresses him, he must adopt a discipline of restraining his mind from thoughts based on acceptance of the ghost's existence, and return to his original realization. But if he should regard this regimen as a sort of spell to kill the ghost, he is again asserting its existence and obscuring original realization.

Even to say that the object of the practice is to free him from the ghost is not to the point - there has never been a ghost. The practice of realization is its own end. The furniture creaks and the wind blows, but the house is ever at peace.

Now this is a beautiful story, and you must have observed it sometime yourself late in the night reading a ghost story or a detective novel or something. And you KNOW, basically you know, fundamentally you know, that this is just fiction. But you have got involved into it. A ghost story, if well-written, can give you so much fear.

You want to go to the bathroom and you cannot go. And you KNOW - it is not that you don't know - you know that this is foolish. But a practical difficulty has arisen. You have always been going to the same bathroom in the middle of the night and there has never been a problem. Now.... And can you say that you don't know? You have been reading the ghost story, and you know that this ghost, who seems to be there in the bathroom, is NOT there!

If you can understand this story, you will have understood the WHOLE standpoint of Zen. The ego is the ghost. It is not there. And you KNOW it! But a practical difficulty is there. You know it and yet... the wind comes and there is noise, dead leaves in the garden are being thrown here and there by the wind, and you feel... or you imagine somebody's footsteps. A rat runs into the bathroom...

something falls... the very shock of it! And you are alone in the house... and the ghost story in your hand... and you are under its impact! And now the bladder is bursting! And you cannot go to the bathroom.

And you know it all the time - that these are dead leaves, that the wind has always been blowing them THIS way. And you know that rat - he sometimes does things in the bathroom. But who knows...? perhaps...? This perhaps gives reality to something which is just a phantom of your imagination.

Now, you can go to a Master, or you can recite a mantra, you can start chanting "Ram, Ram, Ram"

to help you. Now the first ghost is false, the second ghost is also false. Now you are calling God, "Help me!" and reciting a mantra because the bladder is bursting and you have to go. You need some way to get rid of this ghost. You have heard that the name of Ram is very potential. You have heard stories. Now all those stories become credible. You have heard somebody was passing through a cemetery and a ghost started following him, and he said "Ram, Ram, Ram" thrice - and the ghost was gone and he could pass through the cemetery without any trouble.

Now all those stories... now your mind is in a turmoil! You start repeating "Ram, Ram, Ram." You have to go, so you will find some way or other. The bladder is bursting, so you say "Ram, Ram, Ram" - shaking, trembling, half believing, half not-believing. You go into the bathroom. Ram helps.

In fact there is no ghost, so there is no need for Ram to help you. But Ram helps. And you are very very happy that Ram has been helpful to you. So this mantra is potential. NOW one ghost is dropped, another ghost is there. Now you will become attached to this name "Ram". Now whenever you are afraid you will start chanting "Ram".

From one foolishness to another foolishness... from one falsity to another falsity.

This is the approach of Zen: rather than substituting your ghosts, please see the fact that there is no ghost in the first place! Then there is no need to become dependent on any mantra, and no need to become dependent on any God, and no need to become dependent on anybody whatsoever. Just see that the disease that you think is there is NOT there, so the medicine IS NOT needed.

Seeing into the fact that you ARE your originality STILL - right now, this very moment, you are gods and goddesses - seeing this, the ghost story that you have been reading for millions of lives simply disappears leaving no trace behind. This is what Zen people call the original face, or, the original realization.

The fifth question:

DON'T BE IN SUCH A HURRY. Money is great. Impressions come and go - money remains.

Impressions are not so substantial, money is substantial. If you listen to my advice, don't donate - because tomorrow you may repent. My feeling is that you will repent. This is all hypnosis. You got hypnotized. Wait! Give it time, and soon you will understand what I am saying.

Money is not what is needed here. I require your life! Less than that won't do. I require you, your being. Money you can keep - don't keep yourself. Then you have understood some thing.

But the way the question is formulated shows you have not understood me at all. Otherwise, why this hankering to come and give the money directly to me? Do you want to show how - much money you are giving? Then you have not understood. Then you want somehow... as if you are obliging me' You want to be appreciated? You will not get any appreciation from me.

If you want to give out of your love - good. But don't brag about it. No need even to talk about it.

Don't even wait for a thankyou. In fact, if we accept money from you, you should be thankful to me.

We could have rejected. I am not obliged, you are obliged! You should thank us that we helped you to unburden yourself. You have long been carrying this load - a substantial load - and we help you to put it down. Laxmi helps people!

But there is no need to bring your money to me. Bring to me your mind. I am interested in that. And unless mind is dropped, money is not dropped. If you can donate a substantial amount. you must be having thousandfold more.

People have too much, and they just give a little bit and they think they are doing something great.

That is not sharing. That is very tricky and cunning.

Listen to this beautiful anecdote:

Belle de L'Amour was the most beautiful and exotic courtesan in France under the Empire. When the King had finished with her, she set up shop in a fashionable part of Paris, and charged one thousand francs a night.

The cadets of St. Cyr had heard many stories of her voluptuous charms and passionate nature, and the conversations in the barrack rooms often ended on the note of what any one of them would do if he won the national lottery.

"Lottery?" cried a bright recruit. "That gives me an idea." It was there and then agreed among them that every cadet should pay one franc, and as there were a thousand of them that would just be the courtesan's fee. Then they would hold a raffle and the lucky winner should spend a night with the lady.

Thus it was that young Dupont, the son of a noble house appeared before the lady. When she saw a boy of nineteen she went to send him away, hut when she saw the thousand francs she changed her mind.

The following morning, pulling a transparent silk slip over her voluptuous body, she sat up and asked how such a youth came by so much money, and he told her the whole story. Her romantic French heart was deeply moved. "Ah, mon petit cheri, quel sentiment!" she cried, and said in the circumstances she felt she ought to give him his money back.

The idea thrilled the youth, and as he departed he kissed her and held out his hand. She reached for her jewelled purse and gave him a franc!

HIS money!

What do you call substantial? You must be a miser.

In the first place, when misers become impressed they start thinking about giving money. Mm? that is the indication of a miser, because that's all that he thinks is valuable. It is a miser's mind! If you are REALLY interested in what I am saying, you will think of something more significant than money.

Why did you come to think about money? That must be the most precious thing in your life. Naturally, when you become impressed by somebody you think, "I should give him the most precious thing."

But money is not precious!

And, know well, I am not averse to money. It is SO ordinary that there is no need even to be averse to it. Money is a utility. By giving money you will not be giving your heart. It may be a way of saving your heart. Then you can think that "Look, I have given that much money." That may be a trick to befool yourself. Give your heart! And if by giving your heart your money also comes as a shadow, that is another matter. Then it will never be substantial. You may give your whole - all that you have - even then you will not call it substantial.

Only the heart is substantial, nothing else. So if you want to give me anything directly bring your heart. I am ready to take it any moment. But not less than that. Less than that - anything is not worth it. Don't trouble yourself carrying that much of a load to me. You call unload in the office....

The sixth question:

You are plain lazy. Meditate on this:

In the southern part of Arkansas, where the natives take life easy, a man and his wife were one day sitting on the porch when a funeral procession passed the house.

The man was comfortably seated in a chair which was tilted back on its hind legs against the side of the house, and he was engaged in whittling a piece of wood. As the procession proceeded he said, "I reckon ole man Simpson's havin' about the biggest funeral that's ever been held around here, Caroline - would you like to see?"

"A purty good-sized one, is it, Bud?" queried the wife, making no effort to move.

"You betcher," Bud answered.

"I certainly would like to see it," said the woman, "It's a shame I ain't facin' that way."

For three years thinking about being initiated...? For three years thinking about sannyas? For what are you waiting? lust plain lazy, cannot take any decisive attitude. Cannot act! You must be a driftwood, accidental.

Become essential! By remaining accidental, one never arrives anywhere. And when I say "Become non-accidental," I mean take some decisions. And sannyas is one of the great decisions in life, it is a turning-point. It is a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. It will change the very quality of your life, of your being. It will change your whole world. It will never be the same again.

What are you waiting for? If you are happy the way you are, then drop the idea. Be decisive! Then drop the idea! If you are perfectly happy, then why bother? Why think about it at all?

I am not saying to become a sannyasin, remember. I am simply saying "Be decisive." Remaining three yeas in indecisiveness is destructive. Either decide this way or that. If you are feeling good as you are, if you are feeling right as you are, if you are living your life perfectly happily, then why bother about sannyas? Forget all about it!

But you must not be happy. You can't be happy. That's why the idea is arising. The way you have lived up to now has not been the right way. You know it! Then for three yeas just to think about....

You will become more and more dull as the time passes. Three yeas you have been indecisive; four years you will be indecisive, five yeas you will be indecisive. The more you remain indecisive, the more difficult decision will become - because you are learning a process of remaining indecisive.

Either TAKE IT! or forget about it! There is no NEED to remain hanging in limbo.

Three tortoises find a bottle of whiskey in the desert, but they don't have the opener with them. They decide that the youngest one has to go off to the nearest oasis to fetch a corkscrew. "But don't touch the whiskey," he says before taking off. So the two tortoises wait patiently.

Ten years pass, then twenty years, and there is no sign of the friend or the corkscrew. "He probably has lost his way. Let's break the bottle," the two say.

At that moment the young one appears from behind a hill shouting, "If you start cheating, I won't be going at all!"

So how long are you going to be hiding behind your hill? Either go, or simply say you don't want to go.

And this is one of the problems for many people. They simply leave it to circumstances to decide.

And even when you are not deciding, something is being decided. Even not to decide is a kind of decision, remember.

For example, you are suffering from a disease and the doctor says, "Get operated on," and you say, "I am trying to decide whether to get operated on or not. " But while you are not getting operated on, you are deciding not to get operated on. Those days are passing and the disease is increasing. If you decide not to get operated on, don't say, "I am not deciding." If you remain indecisive, it is a kind of decision in favour of the disease, against the operation.

During these three years you have been thinking about sannyas, three years you have been there without sannyas - this was a kind of decision, a negative decision.

Just watch! If being a non-sannyasin feels good, it is perfectly good. With all my blessings, remain a non-sannyasin. I am here only to help you to be more blissful. I am not interested in anything else.

If you can be happy without sannyas, then that is the way to be.

But then don't create this anxiety in your head. You will not be happy, you can't be happy. Hence the idea comes again and again to become a sannyasin, to be initiated. And if the idea is coming, then be man enough - have a little courage! ALWAYS MOVE WITH A POSITIVE DECISION. That is how one grows into integrity. Never remain in the hands of circumstances; otherwise one becomes, by and by, very lousy.

Either you have understood that your way of life, your style of life, has been meaningless, or you have not understood. If you have not understood, then try to understand; there is no question of decision right now. If you have understood, then take the jump.

It happened:

A captain of artillery, a sergeant and a bombardier were arguing about the act of love. The captain declared it was ninety percent pleasure and ten percent work. The sergeant said it was ten percent pleasure and ninety percent work. The bombardier, who was scared of both, said it was fifty percent work, fifty percent pleasure.

They decided to ask the first person who came along, and it happened to be a humble gunner. In answer to the question he said, "Of course, it's a hundred percent pleasure. If it wasn't you lot would make us gunners do it for you!"

Either your life is a pleasant life... even if it is sixty percent pleasure, even if it is fifty-one percent happiness, remain in it. No need to get out of it, because if you get out of something which was fifty-one percent happiness, then the other will be only forty-nine percent. And sooner or later you will start repenting about it; you will have taken a wrong decision.

But I have seen people coming to me and they say, "Ninety percent I have decided to take sannyas, only ten percent the mind is wavering." But do you want to decide for the ten percent? If you don't take it, then you are deciding in favour of the minority. Decide at least in favour of the majority.

I know you cannot be total. How can you be total? Totality will come one day after you have reached to your very innermost core. You will be total in your actions. Then there is no question of minority and majority. Then there is no choice, then there are no alternatives. The obvious is obvious and one does it without any choice. Then there is great freedom - freedom from choosing. Otherwise, choice always creates anxiety.

But right now you cannot be total. So I will suggest that if the major part of your being is ready for sannyas, take the jump. The minor part of the mind can go on rationalizing. The minor part can go on playing tricks and tactics and strategies on you. It can go on arguing - it WILL GO ON arguing to the very end, till you take the jump. As long as the hope is there that you may remain with the minor, the minor will try to persuade you.

But look into its arguments - they are all absurd. You have lived your past, you have not lived your future. This much is certain. Future is open, past is closed. Past you know, future you don't know.

If you remain the same as you have lived up to now you will be simply repeating the past. And past you know! - so what is going to be new by repeating it?

Even if sometimes you go astray, my own suggestion is: be courageous and go astray, but don't repeat the past! At least something new will be possible, some new pasture of being and life will be possible. And if you miss it and you don't get anywhere, you can always come back to the past. The past is always there waiting for you - it is a junkyard. It never grows, it never goes anywhere, it is just sitting there. You can always come back to it. It is a dead thing, it is a corpse - the corpse will not run!

You can always go back to your past, it is always there. But don't destroy your future, and don't decide always according to the past. The past tends to capture your future too. The past becomes dictatorial for the future too. It says, "Just be the same as you have been up to now."

Little Bobby Bratwell, caught in mischief for the tenth time one day, was asked by his mother, "How do you expect to get into heaven?"

The lad thought a minute, then replied, "Well, I'll just run in and out and in and out and keep slamming the door until Saint Peter says, 'For heaven's sake, Bobby, come in or stay out!"

And the last question:

PREOCCUPATION IS PREJUDICE, preoccupation is pride, preoccupation is past. Preoccupation means you come loaded in the moment, you don't see the case that is there. You look through coloured eyes.

For example, if you are hearing me here, and you are hearing through a curtain - you have your beliefs, you have your ideas, you have your conditionings, your teachers, your parents, your society, your religion, your church are all standing there - and you hear me through that clamour, then you are preoccupied and you will not be able to hear me. You will not be able to hear what is being said, you will hear something else. You will create your own thing through your interpretation. You will miss me.

A preoccupied mind is a dull mind. A preoccupied mind is a borrowed mind.

Unoccupied, mind is fresh, intelligent, radiant. Hence, one of the bases of all meditations is to remain unoccupied. When you listen, listen; when you see, just see - and remain in the present. If you can remain in the present, God is not far away. He is around the comer. He has always been there waiting for you. But you are so preoccupied.

Listen to these two stories:

A man in a country hotel, a commercial traveller, rang down to the reception desk and said, "Send up a nice whore."

The proprietor's wife was very angry and told her husband to go up and throw the man out. But he refused because he did not want to lose a good customer, and he said that the request was natural and harmless. the wife said, "If you won't, I will," and off she went upstairs.

There was a fearful racket for about twenty minutes, after which the traveller came down and said, "I suppose that's all you can get in country towns - but she was a tough old bitch! I dam near had to rape her!"

This is preoccupied mind. One is waiting for the whore - now his whole mind has a certain concept.

He will look through that concept.

Or to this story:

A man was travelling to Manchester with his family by train. Since their compartment was a non- smoker, he went next door to smoke a cigar. The only other occupant was a rather dejected young man gazing moodily out of the window. Harry offered him a cigar.

"No, thank you," said the young man, "I don't smoke."

When Harry had finished with his newspaper, he asked the young man whether he would like to read it.

"No, thank you," he replied. "I don't read."

Still hoping to cheer up his travelling companion, Harry offered to buy him a drink.

"No, thank you" came the refrain. "I don't drink."

Refusing to admit defeat, Harry tried again. "Young man, I admire your principles. I'd like you to come and meet my wife and daughter in the next compartment."

"No, thank you. I don't screw either."

This is a preoccupied mind. You have a certain idea of the world, and you go on believing that that idea is the truth about the world. People miss because of their preoccupations.

Once you drop all preoccupations, a great emptiness arises in you. That great emptiness is what meditation is all about. That great emptiness, where no thought flickers, where you are purely available to whatsoever is the case, is satori, is samadhi.

Don't be a Christian, and don't be a Hindu, and don't be a good man, and don't be a bad man - don't carry ideas inside you.

Don't carry scriptures, burn your scriptures. BURN ALL the tapes inside your head! And suddenly you will find the benediction I call God, the blessing I call God, the ecstasy I call God.