At a Time Like This?

The first question

Question 1:

Anand Deepesh,

It depends on the man. If he is wise he becomes a henpecked husband; if he is not so wise, then there is no other way than to be crazy. That's why ninety-nine point nine percent of men decide to be henpecked husbands - just to survive.

Nothing is wrong with the woman; she is not deliberately trying to drive you crazy. Just their minds function in a totally different way. In fact, that is their attraction; their polarities function like a magnetic field. The more different a woman is, the more she will attract you. If she is just like you, thinks the way you think, the attraction will be lost. There will be no tension; the relationship will collapse.

The relationship is like an arch. When you make an arch you put bricks against each other; their very opposition creates the strength, and the arch can support the whole building. But the strength depends on the opposition.

A living relationship between a man and a woman is bound to be a little bit crazy. Man cannot drive the woman crazy because his argument, his way of thinking is logical. The woman's way of thinking

is illogical, but that is her way; that's how she is made. She functions instinctively at the lowest and intuitively at the highest. Man functions intellectually at the lowest and intelligently at the highest.

The way of instinct and intuition is the way of illogic. Logic cannot drive the illogical person crazy; if anything is going to happen it is going to happen to the logical mind.

Craziness is part of the logical mind. Craziness simply means your logic is no more functioning and you are at a loss what to do. You love the woman, you would not like to lose her at any cost. You feel for her, you try in every way to understand her. But whatsoever you do you are also helpless - you can do only logically. And logically she is not comprehensible; that way she is mysterious, very mysterious. You can devote your whole life in studying a single woman and you will not be able to figure out what is what.

She never tries to understand you. The illogical functioning of the psyche is not interested in understanding; it simply reaches to the conclusions without any procedures - it jumps to the conclusions. And the miracle is that the woman is almost always right and you are almost always wrong. That drives you crazy! And you have been functioning so logically, mathematically, step by step; still your conclusion is not right.

One woman won the lottery. When the husband came he was surprised. How she managed, he asked.

She said, "I saw a dream, and in the dream the figure 7 appeared three times. So I figured out that three times seven means twenty-eight."

The husband was aghast. He said, "Then what happened?"

She said, "I purchased the ticket of the number twenty-eight and I won the lottery."

The husband said, "But three times seven is not twenty-eight, it is twenty-one!"

The woman said, "Then you be the mathematician, but I have won the lottery!"

Who cares about mathematics? The real thing is the conclusion. She never tries to understand man - no woman ever tries - she understands already. In fact, they are always puzzled why men go on trying to understand women. For centuries man has been doing that. I think woman must have been the ancient-most subject of his inquiries - naturally; even before God he must have inquired about woman. In fact, it was the woman who got him into the whole trouble, not God. God may have created the world, but there was no trouble.

It was Eve who persuaded him to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, which was forbidden. Man tried to argue that "It is forbidden. God has said not to go near to that tree, never to eat that fruit."

But the woman says, "God is prohibiting because he is afraid that if we eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge we will become as wise as God. He is jealous. Let us go and eat it." And she seduced him.

God may have created the world, but the world we know is created by the woman.

If you watch the functioning of the woman's mind you can see it clearly: it is impossible to understand it. The very effort to understand will drive you crazy.

It is not just accidental that Buddha escaped from his wife, Mahavira escaped from his wife. It was not the world really that was creating the trouble, because you cannot escape from the world.

Where you will escape to? At the most you can escape from the woman who is driving you crazy.

And Buddha must have been really frightened. His wife was one of the most beautiful women who has ever walked on the earth - another Cleopatra. Her name was Yashodhara. She was chosen from thousands of beautiful young women.

And the more beautiful a woman is, the more dangerous. The homely woman cannot drive you so much crazy, because she has not that much appeal either. The more appeal a woman has, the more driving force she has.

Buddha must have remained frightened. Even after his enlightenment he was frightened, because for many years he did not initiate any woman into his commune. Again and again women asked him, saying that "We want to be initiated, we also want to become your sannyasins!" But he refused, he simply refused. One woman has frightened him so much that he became afraid of all womankind.

But finally he had to agree because his stepmother who had brought him up... His own mother died immediately he was born; just after his birth the mother died. Then his stepmother brought him up and he had tremendous respect for her. When she came to ask for initiation he could not refuse - you cannot refuse your own mother. Unwillingly he consented.

But he said that "My religion was going to last for twenty-five hundred years. Now it will last only five hundred years, because the woman has come in." And after his mother's initiation, of course, thousands of women came in. Yashodhara also came in, his wife of whom he has always been afraid. And they came like a flood. Their number became thrice than the men sannyasins and they drowned the whole commune.

I am not afraid of women because I never got married. Had I been married then the same would have been the case: I would have tried my best to prevent women outside the commune. But I am not afraid of them at all. Unless you have had a wife you can't be afraid of women. Then they are beautiful creatures!

Anand Deepesh, you must be in some trouble! Feel consoled that even Buddhas have been in trouble.

Mr. and Mrs. Pontius Pilate were standing on their balcony watching Jesus and the procession following him towards Mount Calvary.

"I really don't care who he is," said Mrs. Pilate. "If he stumbles one more time he is out of the parade!"

Two women meet on the street. "What have you done with your hair?" says one. "It looks like a wig."

"It is a wig," replies the other.

"Hm, well, you would never know it!"

Said the newly-wed English wife to her husband, "I just don't understand you, George. You liked baked beans on Monday, you liked baked beans on Tuesday, you liked baked beans on Wednesday, you liked baked beans on Thursday. And suddenly on Friday you don't like baked beans!"

A black woman and her Jewish Italian friend are discussing religion. The negress says, "You honkies strung Jesus on the cross, eh?"

In response the Jew says, "Yes, but if Jesus had been in Africa, you niggers would have eaten him!"

"Yes," replies the negress. "You see, we have good taste!"

After three months of constant work and hundreds of hours of talking on the part of the client, the woman psychoanalyst was completing her in-depth interpretation of the client's mental and emotional state. Clearing her throat to make her final remarks, she looks up from her notes and says, "And my final analysis lends me to say that in my professional opinion you are just crazy!"

The client, shocked and angry, replies, "Well, I will have to get another opinion."

"Okay," says the woman shrink, "you are ugly too!"

Anand Deepesh, a woman can really drive a man crazy, but still, your cooperation will be needed.

Without your cooperation, no, nobody can drive you crazy. If you stop trying to understand her and enjoying her she cannot drive you crazy. If you try to understand her, naturally you will stop enjoying her, and then she is bound to drive you crazy. Rejoice in her! Rejoice in her differences, rejoice in her different approaches towards life. Rejoice that she is not a man but a woman. She does not think like you; not only is her body different from you, her psyche is also different from you. And once you forget trying to understand her, there is no way for her to drive you crazy.

When you are with your woman, put your mind aside. Become more existential and less intellectual.

Love her, dance with her, sing with her, but don't try to argue with her. As far as argument is concerned, always agree with her and you will never be at a loss. And anyway, even if you argue, finally you will have to agree with her. The more you argue, the more she will insist. And her feminine ways of insistence are such that it is impossible not to listen to her - because she will not argue.

Otherwise you can discuss. You would like...

Every husband wants his wife to sit at the table, calm, cool and collected. "And let us discuss the matter." But she starts throwing things! She knows if she becomes calm and cool you are going to win. She starts slamming the door. She will put more salt in your vegetables and no sugar in your tea! She will make so many illogical efforts and she will cry and she will weep and she will start pulling her hair. She will beat the children, who have nothing to do with the matter.

And seeing all this, for something small, you will have to agree. Maybe it was only a question of going to see a picture to the movie house and you were not agreeing to which picture to go. She will have her way, so why unnecessarily go defeated with her? Why not go victorious? The moment she says..."Right, absolutely right! That's what I was thinking." And that way you will feel happy and you

will go victorious. And your sugar in the tea will be in the right amount and your salt in the vegetables will be right amount, and children will be saved. For some small thing the woman can put the whole house on fire! But it all depends on you.

Be a little more meditative, Deepesh. In fact. meditation has been discovered as a defense. It is not a discovery of women, remember. Many people have asked me, "Why women have not discovered meditation?" Why they should discover? They have no reason to discover it; it is man's discovery.

Surrounded by his meditative energy he is protected. Nobody, not even a woman, can drive him crazy.

So become more meditative. Go a little deeper into zazen, vipassana.

The second question

Question 2:

Deva Christine,

IT IS A LONG, long stupid Christian tradition in the West - of repression, of deep antagonism against life, life energies. That has provoked the label for me; otherwise I have nothing to do with sex. I am not teaching sex to you. If I have to talk once in a while about sex that is because of your Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan repressive traditions. I am not responsible for it, they are responsible for it.

They have made man's life so paralyzed, so crippled and their whole strategy has depended upon repressing the energy called sex.

And remember, you have only one energy; you don't have many energies, only one energy. At the lowest it is called sex energy. You go on refining it, you go on transforming it through meditation, through the alchemy of meditation, and the same energy starts moving upwards. It becomes love, it becomes prayer. It is the same energy, just refined states of it. Sex is crude, raw, just a diamond found from the mines. It has to be cut, polished; much work is needed. Then it will be possible to recognize that it is a diamond.

The Kohinoor - that is the greatest diamond in the world - was lying in a peasant's house for three years. His children were playing with it because he was not aware that it is a diamond; it looked only a beautiful stone. He had given it to his children.

It was only by coincidence that a traveling sannyasin stayed in his hut; he could not believe his eyes.

The sannyasin, before he became a sannyasin, had been a jeweler. He told to the farmer, "Are you mad or something? I have never come across such a diamond in my whole life, and I have seen the greatest diamonds. This is not an ordinary stone."

And the farmer said, "It has been lying down here for three years. One day I had found it in my field; in my field there runs a small stream" - it happened in a small place, Golconda - "and in the sand of that stream I had found this, sol brought it home for my children and they have been playing with it."

Immediately the Nizam of Hyderabad1 the king of that territory, was informed. He was a lover of diamonds; he could not believe his eyes. He rewarded the farmer with millions of rupees.

Now the same Kohinoor is the number one diamond in the whole world. It is part of the crown of the British Queen. Now it is only one third of its original weight. What happened to the two thirds?

Two thirds has been cut in polishing, in refining; two thirds of the diamond has disappeared, only one third has remained. But the more it was polished, the more it was refined, the more valuable it became. It is million times more valuable than it was when it had its original weight.

Sex is raw energy. It has to be transformed, and through transformation there is transcendence.

Rather than transforming it, religions have been repressing it. And if you repress it the natural outcome is a perverted human being. He becomes obsessed with sex.

The people who call me "sex guru" are obsessed with sex. I have not talked about sex more than I have talked about meditation, love, God, prayer, but nobody seems to be interested in God, love, meditation, prayer. If I say anything about sex, immediately they jump upon it.

Out of my three hundred books only one book concerns sex, and that, too, not in its totality.

The name of the book is FROM SEX TO SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS. Just the beginning of it is concerned with sex; as you go deeper in understanding it moves towards superconsciousness, towards samadhi. Now that is the book which has reached to millions of people. It is A strange phenomenon: my other books have not reached to so many people. There is not a single Hindu, Jain saint, mahatma in India who has not read it. It has been discussed criticized, analyzed, commented upon in every possible way. Many books have been written against it - as if that is the only book I have written!

Why so much emphasis? People are obsessed particularly the religious people are obsessed. This label of "sex guru" comes from religious people.

"Were you shocked by the porno film we saw?" a friend asked the Polack Pope.

The Pope said, "I was even more shocked the second time I saw it!"

The way people have been brought up for centuries is life-negative. I affirm life with all that it contains. That does not mean that I don't want you to change - in fact, that is the only way to change. First you have to accept where you are, what you are. First you have to explore your reality, and then only you can find ways to go beyond it. You have to explore into all the possibilities of your existence.

And sex is one of the most important phenomena, in fact the most important phenomenon of your life. But from the very childhood we are being deceived, we are told lies about sex. And the day we start discovering the facts of life, great guilt arises - as if we are doing something criminal. The criminal thing has been done to you by your parents, by your priests, by your politicians, by your pedagogues. They have created such a conditioning in you that you cannot discover the facticity of your life and its implications. They have falsified you, they have betrayed your trust.

That's why no child can really respect his parents; they have all deceived him. And no student can respect the teachers, the professors: they have all betrayed his trust. He trusted in them and

they have been lying. Utter lies! But the lying has gone so deep, it has become such a thick crust around you, that when you start discovering reality you feel afraid. You are doing something wrong, something that should not be done.

A small girl walks into the bathroom while her mother is bathing. "Mummy, what are those things hanging down your front?" she asks.

"These?" replies the embarrassed mother. "They are balloons, dear."

"What are they for?" insists the little girl.

"When you die they blow up and float you off to heaven!"

"Mummy," says the little girl after a moment's thought, "I think our maid is dying. I just heard her say, 'Oh God, I am coming!' and daddy is lying on top of her blowing up her balloons!"

The children are bound to discover the reality. How long can you hide it from them? There is no need to hide anything; everything should be explained. When the child is inquiring it should be explained as it is. There is no need to start a child's mind with lies. Don't stuff their minds with lies, because how long you can go on hiding the facts? They will manifest themselves and then the child will be in a real fix, in a real difficulty. He will be divided, he will be split. His conditioning will say, "This is wrong," and life will say, "Go ahead." His biology will say one thing and his psychology will say another thing. You have created a schizophrenic condition in him.

I am against this crime. I want every child to be made fully aware of all the facts of life as they are; there is no need to create any guilt. But your religions have depended on guilt. They have pulled curtains upon curtains before your eyes. They have made you almost blind; you can see only behind the curtains, through the curtains. And those curtains are false, pseudo, utter lies; they distort everything.

My respect for truth is absolute and I don't care about anything else. You have created a humanity which is ugly. I would like to create a human being which rests in truth, lives in truth, is not split, is not insane but is whole, sane, intelligent, is not obsessed with anything. Your religions create obsession. Your all the scriptures are full of obsession, sexual obsession.

Turiddu, a Sicilian man of forty years, was wasting his life on sex - men, women, children, days, nights, any time, any place. He was going crazy. He could not stop.

Finally, in despair, he went to a top Italian psychoanalyst in Milano, very expensive and very special.

"Can-a you help-a me, doctor?"

"Yes, I think so. We will try some new experiments."

The first day the doctor drew a circle on a piece of paper and showed it to Turiddu. "What do you see?"

"Oh, it's-a easy - it's-a picture of some-a beautiful woman's cunt!"

"What?"

"Oh, it looks like that-a way, with her legs-a apart-a!"

The following day the doctor showed him a drawing of a triangle. "What do you see?"

"Oh, it's-a another view of the same-a beautiful cunt from yesterday-a!"

The third day the doctor decided to make a drawing of something that could never be interpreted as sexual. He drew a rectangle and in the center placed just a point.

"Now, mister, what do you see?"

"Don't-a be funny, doctor. It's-a same picture - you are looking down on a rectangular bed and that point-a is-a the beautiful cunt that you have-a been obsessed with the last-a three days!"

"You are sexually obsessed and perverted!" shouted the doctor.

"ME?" replied Turiddu. "Me? Who is-a doing all-a these pornographic drawing every day-a?"

Religions have created a strange situation. They have created your obsessiveness with sex and then they make you feel responsible for it. They are guilty of creating guilt in people, but they make you feel guilty. But there is a subtle strategy and politics in creating guilt. Once a man starts feeling guilty he becomes weak, he becomes stupid. Once a man starts feeling divided he can be ruled over, he can be exploited. He loses independence. He becomes a slave of some church, some state, of some ideology, some philosophy, some theology. He is no more an individual; he cannot be rebellious. Humanity has been reduced into a mess, into a chaos, and the whole trick lies in poisoning your minds about sex.

Sex is a natural phenomenon; there is nothing to be worried about it. And if I have sometimes to talk about it, it is because of these religions. Once man is freed from religious exploitation and religious conventions, traditions, which are very oppressive, there will be no need to talk about sex. Then we can move into more intricate, scientific ways of how to transform it into higher forms of energy.

Sex is the lowest center of your existence and samadhi your highest, the seventh center. It is a ladder of seven rungs. And sex energy has to be moved rung by rung to the seventh where it opens up like a one-thousand-petaled lotus. One becomes a Buddha only when sex is transformed.

That label is absolutely wrong. Just to condemn me they have been calling me "sex guru", but in fact they are the criminals.

The third question

Question 3:

Prem Sanatana,

I will hit the zen master and kiss his motorbike!

The fourth question

Question 4:

Vishnudas Sethia,

IT IS BETTER TO TELL YOU from the very beginning that I am also a practical man, much more practical than you can ever be. I don't believe in theories, I believe in experiments. I don't say that religion begins in belief, I say religion begins in experience.

But I am a different kind of practical man than you are. You are only halfheartedly practical; maybe you are practical in the outside world. But there is an inner world too which needs as much scientific approach as the outside world does. In fact, it needs more accurate observation, more unprejudiced mind, more existential approach than the outside world.

But I can understand your problem. It happens to all the so-called practical people who think in terms of money, power and prestige, who are basically extroverts, who only look to that which is outside, who have never tried to explore their inner world; that dimension they have not even touched. They have completely forgotten that they have got a within too.

Langley said to his wife, "This bell is used only for emergencies. Now I am going out in the field and if anything like an Indian attack happens, ring the bell."

So the Old West settler went off to plow and a couple of minutes later the bell started ringing.

Langley hurried to the house screaming, "What's the matter?"

"I thought I saw an Indian," said his wife.

He said, "The bell is only for real important things." So he went back out to work.

Suddenly the bell began pealing. He rushed back to the house.

"I made some cookies and I thought you would like some," said Mrs. Langley.

"I told you, don't ring the bell unless something really happens."

Langley went back to the field. Thirty minutes later the bell started ringing again. He ran back to the house and saw that it was on fire and his wife lay dead with an arrow in her back.

"Now this is more like it!" said the settler.

You must be this kind of a practical man. That's why you cannot see that there is any purpose in meditation. In fact, in a totally different sense you are right: it will not serve any purpose if you are interested in money, power, prestige, fame. Meditation will not be of any help; in fact, it will destroy all your desires for money. It will destroy your greed, it will take away your ambitiousness, it will show you the stupidity of all power trips. It will kill the very root of your ambition: the ego. In that sense it will not serve any purpose. But money, power, prestige you can have, still inside you will remain a dark continent, unknown to yourself You will remain unaware of your infinite treasures, and outside treasures cannot fill your inner emptiness. Whatsoever you try is bound to fail; you will feel only frustrated.

You say:

MY MIND CANNOT SEE THAT ANY PURPOSE IS FULFILLED BY MEDITATION.

The mind cannot see, that is true, because mind and meditation cannot coexist. If the mind exists there is no meditation; if meditation happens there is no mind. Mind has never seen meditation; hence, naturally, how the mind can say what purpose it can serve? Mind and meditation are exactly like light and darkness.

I have heard that once darkness approached God and said to him that, "I have never harmed your sun, but the sun rises every morning and starts torturing me, goes on and on chasing me farther and farther away. I have to run the whole day and in the night I cannot even rest - in the morning again the same thing starts. Why, when I have done nothing wrong? You should stop the sun chasing me.

This is unfair!"

And God said, "I can understand. I will call the sun immediately." And the sun was called and told that "Why have you been torturing darkness? What darkness has done to you?"

The sun said, "I have never come across darkness, I don't know darkness. I have not even been introduced to darkness! What do you mean by darkness? Where darkness is? Please let me see her. Bring her in front of me so that I can see about whom you are talking!"

And God has been seeing darkness and the sun, but he has not been yet able to bring them together face to face; it is impossible. And the sun is also right. She says, "Unless you bring the person in front of me who is complaining against me... how can I stop anything of which I am not even aware that I have done ever?"

The same is true about mind and meditation. When the light of meditation arrives, mind disappears like darkness. Hence meditation is incomprehensible to the mind. Mind is very mediocre - all minds are mediocre, even the very talented minds are mediocre. Real intelligence is intrinsic to meditation not to mind. Mind is a fool, mind is an idiot. And we live in the world of the mind, and it goes on and on telling us, "Do this stupidity, now that stupidity." If you are tired of this stupidity, the mind produces another stupidity. It is very inventive, certainly, but not intelligent at all.

All minds are Polack!

The Polack was stationed in Germany. One day his wife telephoned him from Detroit.

"We have a new baby," shouted his wife excitedly, "born thirty minutes ago!"

"Is it a boy or a girl?" asked her husband.

"I don't know," she replied.

"Didn't you look between its legs?"

"Don't be nasty!" said his wife. "Who could think about sex at a time like this!"

At his evening performance, a ventriloquist had told jokes about the Jews, the Africans, the Japanese, and the Americans.

Addressing his audience he then said, "Now it is time for a Polack joke."

At this, a large, stubble-bearded man in a beer-stained tee shin got up and shouted, "I don't want to hear no jokes about the stupidity of us Polacks. We are not as thick as you think!"

"Please sit down, sir, and keep calm," consoled the ventriloquist.

The Polack replied, "Shut up, you! I am talking to the little guy on your lap!"

The mind cannot comprehend what meditation is all about. How it can decide, Vishnudas Sethia, that there is no purpose fulfilled by meditation? The only way to decide is to experience meditation.

No outer purpose is fulfilled, agreed, but there are inner purposes, higher purposes, greater purposes, more intrinsic, more valuable purposes which will make your life significant, meaningful, which will give you something of the eternal, which will make you available tO God and God available to you.

Meditation is the only way to transcend death. Otherwise man lives in fear, lives in trembling, anxiety and anguish. Unless man comes to know that he is not the body nor the mind but something transcendental to both he remains afraid, scared. And if you are surrounded by death, if your life is just like a small island in the ocean of death, what life you can live? In such fear there is no possibility of life. Life happens only to those who know that life is eternal, that it is forever and forever, that you have been always here and you will be always here.

Meditation reveals to you your Buddhahood. It will not make you Alexander the Great, it will not make you a Rockefeller or a Ford or a Morgan, but it will make you a Christ, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu. And these are the people who have really known fulfillment.

When Alexander the Great died, he died like a dog, died like a beggar. And he recognized the fact, he had to recognize it, because twice he was told by two great mystics. One was Diogenes, a Greek mystic who lived like Mahavira, naked, but in utter ecstasy, always in a dance, always in celebration.

When Alexander had gone to see him he felt jealous of him. He said that "You are the first man I am feeling jealous of."

Diogenes said, "That is strange, because I have nothing! I am just a beggar and you are one of the greatest kings. You have almost conquered the whole world; soon you will be the greatest conqueror ever. And I have got nothing, no possessions. How you can be jealous of me?"

Alexander said, "Still I feel jealous of you - because I may have the whole kingdom of the world, but I don't see any joy in my life. My life is barren, empty, like a desert, no greenery. Not even a single flower has opened up within my being, and I can see in you flowers and flowers. Your heart is in a dance, your each breath is a song. If next time God is kind enough to give me another opportunity, I would like to be born not as Alexander but Diogenes."

Diogenes said, "Then why wait for the next time? You can be Diogenes this very moment!"

But Alexander must have been, Vishnudas Sethia, a practical man like you. He said, "Right now it is not possible, it is not practical. I am on the conquest of the world. First I have to finish that, then only can I think about it.'l Diogenes said. "Remember my words: you will not be able to finish it - you will be finished before it. Nobody ever finishes life's work. Life is too short and our ambitions are so big, so many. Our desires are infinite - impossible to fulfill them. And each desire goes on begetting new desires, so don't think that you will be able to fulfill your desires and then you can become a Diogenes. One becomes a Diogenes as a jump; it is a quantum leap."

Thanking him, Alexander went on his conquest. And he has met another mystic in India. His name he remembers in his memoirs as Dandamesh; it must be a Greek form of some Indian name. There are no Indian records about it so we don't know exactly what was the Indian name, but he calls him Dandamesh. He wanted Dandamesh to go with him. Dandamesh laughed and refused.

Alexander became angry. He said, pulling out his sword that "If you don't come with me I will cut your head!"

And Dandamesh said, "Please cut it. In fact, I have cut it long before, and when it will fall on the earth you will see falling it on the earth and I will also see falling it on the earth. You are as separate from my head as I am separate from my head. I am a witness to it."

Again Alexander says, "I felt jealous of this man who is not afraid of death at all."

And he died on the way back home; he did not reach home. Diogenes' prophecy was fulfilled. Just twenty-four hours' journey more and he would have reached. He told to his physicians, "I am ready to give whatsoever you want, but save me for twenty-four hours."

They said, "We cannot save you even for twenty-four seconds. Your life is finished."

He said, "I had promised my mother that I will come back."

The physicians said, "A man who is mortal should not give promises, because tomorrow is never certain."

He died. His last wish was that "My hands should be left hanging out of the coffin."

"Why?" the people asked him. "This is not conventional!"

He said, "Conventional or not conventional, I want everybody to know that I am dying empty-handed."

Vishnudas Sethia, by meditation you will not become an Alexander, but you will become a Buddha.

Your hands will be full; not only the physical hands, your invisible soul will be full. There will be great contentment, bliss, benediction. That is the purpose of meditation. You cannot calculate it in terms of mathematics; you cannot weigh it, measure it. It is immeasurable inestimable. You have to experience it.

And the problem is: a man like you would like first to be convinced that it has some purpose, but that is not possible and that cannot be done. You cannot be convinced that it has purpose because the way you understand purpose it has no purpose at all. But there is a totally different dimension of purpose, a different dimension of meaning and significance, fulfillment and contentment, bliss and benediction, but that language you won't understand. The only way to understand that language is to learn that language.

I am here to help you learn it. And I don't say believe in it: I say just hypothetically experiment. Just few glimpses of your inner being and that will be enough, and that will convince you that all that you have done before was not really practical; it was all impractical because death will take away all that you have gathered. It is only meditation that gives you something which death cannot destroy, which is indestructible.

If you are really a practical man, then go into meditation. And I am talking to you as a practical man.

I am a practical man, I am not a theoretical man at all. NO Buddha has ever been theoretical; they have always been very practical people. And they all have found that there is nothing more practical than meditation.

The fifth question

Question 5:

Sandip,

MY JOKES ARE MEANT to do many things, different things to different people. Few people will get angry if their egos are hurt. And nothing can hurt the ego more deeply than a joke. It goes like an arrow and it goes in such a subtle way that there is no protection against it. There is no shield yet invented that can protect you against it. It is the subtlest weapon yet found.

But rather than getting angry with me, try to understand: some wound is touched, some wound is opened, some pus has started flowing out. And you don't want that your wounds should be touched, you don't want that your pus should be taken out. You want to forget all about the wounds and the pus. But forgetting is not going to help; the pus has to be taken out.

My job is very thankless because many times it hurts, it is painful. And I use jokes in many ways.

I use them as weapons, and they are so sharp that no sword can be so sharp as a joke. And it is told in such a humorous way that you cannot fight with it - it will look so stupid. You have to swallow it, but then it starts working. Sometimes to some people my jokes will bring tears because they are carrying much repressed suffering in them. And when tears come listening a joke, one feels really puzzled. that a joke should bring laughter. Why is it-bringing tears?

Many people have written to me that "It is strange. You are telling a joke and my tears start flowing!"

There is nothing strange in it, there is a logic behind it. You have always laughed just to hide your tears.

Friedrich Nietzsche used to say that "Don't ask me why I go on laughing on small things. I go on laughing because if I don't laugh I will start weeping. To avoid that embarrassing situation I go on laughing. I keep myself occupied with laughing."

Listening a joke, ordinarily laughter should come, but you may have repressed so many tears that instead of laughter, as you relax with me with the joke, tears start welling up.

Sometimes you become serious - rather than becoming hilarious you become serious. There are a few people who go on writing to me that "Why it happens? We become serious. When everybody is laughing we suddenly become very serious."

The reason is that it is easy to laugh at others, but sometimes a joke is not about others; it is about you, exactly about you. It fits you and you cannot laugh at yourself. You become serious, you become uptight.

And, moreover, seriousness is more fulfilling to the ego than laughter. When you see thousands of people laughing and you sitting serious, it feels very good that you are something holy, saintly, and these are just ordinary people laughing. How can you laugh? You have not come here to laugh, you have come here to attain enlightenment!

To different people different things are possible.

To few people even enlightenment is possible through laughter. That too is going to happen. I see many people coming very close, but then they become afraid. Just one step more... but they shrink back. They laugh only to a certain extent - they laugh only to the extent they can control it. When they see that now it is going beyond their control they immediately shrink back, they start holding back. If they allow it to happen, the laughter will become their enlightenment.

Sandip, don't be worried. Whatsoever happens, whatsoever emotions, moods a joke creates in you, watch it.

A Rajneesh sannyasin comes to the pearly gates.

St. Peter is on duty. He looks at the sannyasin and says, "Sorry, man, you are too early. Can't you orange people get it right ever? You have to go back to the earth."

"Can't I have a look around since I have come all this way?" says the sannyasin.

"All right," says Peter, "any special wishes?"

"Well," says the swami, "I would like to see Jesus."

"Oh, so you do believe in him," sniggers St. Peter.

"As I am here I might as well check him out," says the sannyasin.

"He is not in a good mood," says Peter. "but I will have a look."

"He is not in a good mood?" asks the astonished sannyasin. "Does that happen in heaven too? I thought things would be much different up here."

"Well," says Peter, "you know, we have a direct communication with the earth so we listen to Osho's daily lectures. And when Jesus hears those jokes about himself he just gets so pissed off!"

The last question:

Question 6:

Sant,

I HAVE NOT SAID THAT. There are few things; there are few really significant things which only a Jew can manage, and as far as you are concerned, Sant, I think you should not drop Jewishness so suddenly. Wait a little; you will need it for a little while more. Dropping it right now will be too early; get a little more ripe, and then it will drop on its own accord.

A pretty princess of marriageable age had made certain conditions on her marriage: for example, the satisfactory reply to her three questions. The interview had to be in private and the princess and the would-be candidate should remain naked during the interview.

Sant, if you have fallen asleep, wake up! This is a joke specially for you.

If the candidate could not answer the questions correctly he would be put in jail. All the interviews so far had failed. The Hindus had come, the Mohammedans had come, the Christians had come, and nobody had been able to succeed. They were all thrown in jail, and the king was very disappointed.

Then came a Jew. The naked princess pointed towards her tits and asked the first question, "What are these?"

The Jew said, "Charming mountains of milk and honey."

Receiving the correct answer for the first time, the princess was very delighted.

Sant, don't forget the answers - remember.

Then, pointing towards the Jew's prick, she asked the second question, "What is this?"

"This is the rod of life with the bells of Jerusalem," the Jew said.

Overjoyed, she asked the third question, pointing towards her vagina, "What is this?"

"This is the center of all creation of mankind," the Jew replied.

"You have been able to answer all my questions correctly. I accept you as my worthy husband," the princess said. "Now the final test: mount the mountains of milk and honey, put the rod of life into the center of creation and ring the bells of Jerusalem!"