Wake up, Lazarus!

The first question

Question 1:

The function of the master is precisely that: to call the disciples to the real life - ordinarily they are dead. Ordinarily you only appear to be alive; don't be deceived by the appearance. You function like a robot, efficiently, but it is not life. You have not tasted life yet. Life has the taste of eternity, not of time. Time is death.

In Sanskrit we have one word for both, for time and death - kal. It is very significant. It must have been because of the mystics' experience. time is death. To live in time is not to live at all; to go beyond time is the beginning of life.

That is the meaning of the parable; it is a metaphor. Lazarus represents all the disciples, Jesus represents all the Masters. and what transpired between Jesus and Lazarus transpires again and again between every Master and every disciple. The disciple lives in his grave; the Master calls him forth, wakes him up.

But the Christians have tried to prove the parable to be something historical; that's where they are wrong. One should not stretch metaphors too far, otherwise they lose all meaning. Not only that they

lose meaning, they lose beauty, poetry. They become ugly, they become nonsense, they become silly. And then people start laughing at them, and only the very gullible people, very stupid people can believe in them.

Never take metaphors as factual. They have nothing to do with history, but they have something to do with the inner world of man. The problem with the inner world is: it cannot be expressed without using metaphors. The poetry has to be used to express it; even then it is only expressed partially, it is never expressed totally. One needs a very sympathetic ear and a very sympathetic heart to understand these beautiful parables. You need not be a believer.

Believers create trouble: they stretch the metaphor too far and then they themselves give reasons for the non-believers to criticize. They themselves become the victims and then they cannot defend themselves rationally. If this is understood, then there is no problem at all; if this is not understood, then either you believe and you are stupid or you disbelieve, then too you are stupid. In both the ways you miss the significance, you miss the finger pointing to the moon. You start arguing about the finger, as if the finger is the moon. Few people start trying to prove this is the moon, and naturally they provoke antagonism; and there are people who start proving this is not the moon. And remember, the people who try this is not the moon are bound to be more rational, more appealing to the mind.

That's why theists have been fighting a losing battle and atheists have being growing every day. Now almost half the earth belongs to the atheists; all the communist countries are atheists. Religion has become something of the past; it has no significance at all for half the world, and the remaining half is not religious either. Even people who are Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jains, Buddhists are only formally so - because they are born in a certain religion, brought up in a certain ideology, and they are not courageous enough to get out of the fold. It needs guts - it is dangerous to go against the crowd. They compromise; deep down they know that it is all nonsense. Even the Christians know that this is nonsense. The story of Jesus' virgin birth is sheer nonsense! The story of Lazarus coming back to life is not a fact.

"Lazarus, Lazarus, wake up!" - silence.

"Lazarus, Lazarus, wake up!" - no answer.

"Lazarus, Lazarus, wake up!!"

There is a groan and then a voice from tomb:

"Christ! You know that unless you bring the fucking coffee I am not going to get up!"

This seems to be far more factual, rather than the stupid story Christians go on telling and elaborating and discussing.

But I love the parable as a parable. As a parable it has significance, tremendous significance. That's what is happening here! You come to me as dead; life in you is only in a seed form. It has to be called forth, provoked.

Just the other day I was telling you that only once my father slapped me, because of my long hair. I must have been ten years old, not more than that. I went and shaved my head. Now, no haircutter in the village would have done it because it is a small village; it would have been impossible to convince anybody that my father was dead. Moreover, all the haircutters' shops were just in front of the shop of my father, the other side of the road; they could see from there, from their shops, that my father is alive. But I knew one old beautiful man who was an opium addict. He was just in front of my father's shop, but he was always half asleep, and he was a nice man.

When I told him he was stoned. He looked at mc and said, "Poor boy, so your father is dead? This is too bad!" He didn't even look out of his shop; he could have seen my father there. He shaved my head and then told me when I asked how much money he wants for it, "No, I will not take any money from you - your father is dead and I feel sorry for you. Whenever you want any service from me you can come to me and I will do it free."

I said, "But I will not need you again because my father is dead and he will not be dead again. A person can die only once."

He said, "That's right."

"And I will not need your services.n And in fact, I have not been to any haircutter's shop since then.

And this time when my father actually died, a friend inquired of me, wrote a letter, "What are you going to do about it? Are you going to shave your head?"

I said, "I did it in advance, forty years ago! And one can do it only once. Moreover, this time my father has not died; in fact, he has been dead up to now. This time he has entered into eternal life; he has tasted for the first time what life is. I don't consider him as dead: he has never been more alive."

Then life has a totally different meaning. But it will be stupid to make it a factuality; it has a spiritual dimension. Lazarus must have been dead, just as everybody is dead. Unless you become enlightened you are dead, unless you know who you are you are dead. The moment you know who you are, the moment your inner light explodes and the darkness disappears, you become alive, and for the first time. Then there is no more birth and no more death. You have gone beyond time, you have tasted eternity. Lazarus must have tasted eternity through Jesus - that is the meaning of the parable.

Of course, Christians will not agree with my interpretation.

Just few days before, from Germany... The Protestant Church of Germany has published a booklet against me in which they say that people can be deceived by my words because I talk about Jesus and I give beautiful interpretations to Jesus' words, but those interpretations are not Christian - as if they have to be Christian, only then can they be right! As if Christians have any copyright over Jesus! Jesus belongs to all! Of course, my interpretation is my interpretation. Who is saying that it is Christian? Even if they say it is Christian, I will deny! It is not Christian - it is my interpretation, it is my vision. But I know Jesus more directly than the Christians know him. They know him through the scriptures, they know him through scholarship.

The man who has written the booklet holds a Ph.D., a D.Litt., a D.D. - must be a great scholar. But he himself has become confused because he must have gone through all of my books. He cannot say really that I am against Jesus. That much I have to say, that that man has a certain sincerity: he cannot say directly that I am against Jesus, he cannot say that I am wrong either. All that he can say is that I am rooted, deeply rooted, in eastern mysticism, that my orientation is eastern mysticism not Christianity, hence Christians have to be aware of my interpretations.

But Jesus himself was rooted deeply in eastern mysticism. He belonged to a mystic school of Essenes; he traveled all over the East. He was not a Christian. He was just a man like me - neither I am a Christian nor he was a Christian. He was crucified by the Jews and I can be killed by the Hindus. They have been making effort to kill me; they will go on making efforts to kill me, for the simple reason that whenever truth is asserted the people who have been living on lies feel scared; a great fear arises in them. Their very foundations are shaken.

When I am saying something about Jesus, really I am talking about myself, because I don't see any difference. I am speaking from the same source, from the same experience, from the same light.

This is what I would like to say, Ananddas: Lazarus must have been called forth from death by Jesus. And why only Lazarus? Many people must have been called forth by him; Lazarus is only a representative, but that does not mean a factual phenomenon.

Avoid facts as much as possible when you are trying to understand Buddha, Jesus, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu - avoid factuality. They are not concerned with facts, and that does not mean that what is being said is fiction either; it is neither fact nor fiction. It is a poetic way of expressing things which are inexpressible - essentially, intrinsically inexpressible. There are things which can be only hinted at; these parables are ways to hint. Don't take them too seriously, take them light-heartedly. Enjoy them and try to discover the significance of them. And don't bother at all whether such an incident ever happened or not.

It will be good for you to remember that East has never been interested in history at all; it has never written history. It is only when it started coming in contact with the West that East became interested in history. Otherwise East has never written history - for the simple reason because history is rubbish. What is the point of writing ordinary, factual things? We have been writing the essential things, and there is a difference between the incidental and the essential.

Go to a Jain temple and you will see there twenty-four statues of Jain teerthankaras - the people who are like Jesus, Buddha, Zarathustra - and you will be surprised, they all look exactly the same.

It is not possible; you cannot find twenty-four persons exactly the same. Even Jains cannot make the distinction who is who. They cannot tell you who is Mahavira and who is Neminath and who is Parshwanath and who is the first and who is the last, because they look absolutely alike - the same faces, the same noses, the same eyes, the same bodies, the same posture. To distinguish that they are different people, Jains have discovered symbols. Each statue has a small symbol; the symbol shows a lion or something that shows whose statue it is.

Why they have made them alike? Certainly they are not historical. They are alike because the Jain sculptors were not concerned with history, they were concerned with inner phenomena. They had attained to the same experience - how to represent it? and how to represent it in marble? They

have attained to same stillness, same centering, same groundedness, same crystallization. Hence the same statues - the same posture, the same body represents something of the inner - the same spiritual state, the same samadhi.

You will be surprised watching those twenty-four teerthankaras and their statues, about many things.

You will see their ears are very big, their earlobes are touching their shoulders. You cannot find such long ears. It represents something. It says these people attained to their ultimate state of consciousness by absolute listening: listening to the songs of the birds, listening to the wind passing through the pine trees listening to the sound of water, listening silently to ali that goes on happening around.

Listening was their method. Just as the Buddhist method is watching the breath, the Jain method is listening to the sounds. Right listening is enough. If one can listen without the mind chattering inside, if the mind becomes completely calm... this dog barking far away or the birds chirping. If you can just listen without thinking even that this is a dog barking, that these are birds chirping, just listening with no thought, with no interpretation, you will attain to deeper and deeper realms of silence; you will reach to the ultimate consciousness.

Any kind of awareness leads to the ultimate. Now, the awareness can come from any sense out of the five. You can listen to music and it will do... you can listen to anything and it will do. You can see the clouds and the sunsets and the birds flying in the sky and seeing will do. The only point to be remembered is: your mind should not function; your sense should remain unclouded by the mind.

To represent this, the long ears. Now, how to represent in marble the method of listening?

This is a beautiful representation. But there are foolish Jain scholars, just as foolish as the Christians, who think that every teerthankara has such long ears; without such long ears nobody can be a teerthankara. Teerthankara means exactly the same as Buddha or Christ; that is Jain terminology. Now nobody has such long ears, hence nobody is a teerthankara. This is stupidity, not understanding, not any sympathetic approach. And then it can be criticized very easily.

These so-called believers help the non-believers in fact, because they give them causes to confute, to argue against religion.

My approach is that of a poet, not of a historian.

The second question

Question 2:

LIFE LIVED UNCONSCIOUSLY CANNOT HAVE ANY MEANING. In fact, life has no meaning in itself Meaning arises when consciousness arises in you; then life reflects your consciousness, then life becomes a mirror, then life echoes your song, your celebration, your inner music. Hearing those echoes you start feeling significance, meaning, worth.

Living an unconscious life you can go on changing from one work to another; it is not going to help.

Maybe for few days when the work is new and there is excitement you may feel good. You may again project your illusions, you may again start expecting: "This time it is going to happen. Maybe it has not happened up to now, but this time it is going to happen." Again you will be frustrated. Every expectation is bound to bring frustration.

A man of consciousness lives without expectations, hence he cannot feel any frustration ever.

Sooner or later, when the honeymoon is over, you will feel frustrated. And how long the honeymoon can go on? And each time the frustration is going to be bigger because your failures are piling up; it is becoming a mountain. And you have failed so many times that deep down somewhere the lurking fear is always there; even while you are on a honeymoon, deep down the fear is there that it is not going to be very different. You hope against hope. You have to hope to live, otherwise you will have to commit suicide.

So people go on changing their jobs, they go on changing their hobbies, they go on changing their wives, their husbands, they go on changing their religions. They go on changing whatsoever they can change - with the hope that this time something is going to happen. But unless you change, nothing is going to happen.

It is not a question of changing something on the outside - you remain the same!

I have heard about a man who got married eight times, and he was puzzled: each time after four, five, six months, he will discover that, of course, the body is different, but the woman he has found is exactly the same as the before - the same type of woman. He could not believe what is happening.

He will change again; he will look for another woman with a different nose, with a different color, with a different hairstyle, maybe from a different race, a different country, but ultimately he will discover that only the outer layers are different, but the inner structure of the psyche of the woman is the same.

The reason is clear - it was not clear to him, but the reason is clear. The chooser was the same, his liking was the same. He will always like a certain kind of woman, and his liking was unconscious; he was not even aware of why he likes this woman. When you fall in love with a woman or a man, do you know why, how? You are not conscious at all. You are not conscious of your own functioning.

Yatri has been in a love affair with Sarita for many years now, but I don't think he is aware why he has loved Sarita. Just one year ago they separated and he tried with other women, but didn't work.

Again they joined hands together; now they have separated again. Now he has fallen in love with Divya and I don't know he is aware: there is some similarity between Sarita and Divya - both are esoteric women! And Yatri is immensely impressed by esoteric bullshit! Now Divya is just a bigger Sarita. Somehow he has come out of the well and fallen in the ditch! He will have multiple fractures.

Unless you become conscious why you do a certain thing, why you choose a certain person, certain

work, certain job, certain woman, certain man, you are bound to remain frustrated. Again and again you will miss the meaning of life.

Life is just an empty canvas; you have to paint the meaning on it. Whatsoever you paint will be the meaning of it.

Ingo, the first thing that I would like to tell you is: now rather than changing things - any outer direction, dimension - change your consciousness. The change has to be inner; only inner change can change something. Otherwise all changes are false, pseudo... it appears that something is changing, but nothing ever changes. Become conscious.

You say:

THE RIVERS AND OCEANS THAT I KNOW ARE RIVERS AND OCEANS OF ILLUSIONS, DREAMS AND FANTASIES, HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH TAO.

No, you don't know. You have heard it and you may have believed it. I am telling you every day that you are living in illusions. Listening to me again and again you will start believing me; that is not going to help. This is not your awareness, that you are living in illusions, dreams and fantasies. If this is your awareness, the change is immediate; then you will not ask the question at all.

To know the false as the false is to know the real. They are two aspects of the same coin, they are not different. If you know the false as the false, in that very knowing you have known the real as the real. It is a simultaneous experience. If you can recognize the false you must have recognized the real, otherwise how you are going to recognize the false?

A person who is dreaming cannot know that this is dream. And if he says in his dreaming that this is dream, that means simply a dream within a dream, nothing else. You can dream within dreams within dreams; but if you really know this is a dream, the dream will immediately evaporate, disappear. The question would not have arisen. The question arises because you are still clinging to expectations.

Yes, you are ready to accept that the past expectations were false, but the expectations that are right now surrounding you, alluring you, are they false?

"A terrible thing happened to me last night!" says Mario to his friend.

"But wasn't yesterday your birthday?"

"Yes! When I arrived at my office yesterday morning, my secretary invited me to go with her to her house!"

"And do you call that terrible? She is beautiful!"

"Let me finish. At seven o'clock I was at her door with a bouquet of roses. She opened the door, dressed in a beautiful, low-cut dress..."

"And then? What happened then?" asks the friend eagerly.

"Well, she offered me a martini, put on some soft music and then whispered, 'I have a surprise for you. Come to my bedroom in ten minutes!'"

"And what did you do?" asks the friend.

"Well, after ten minutes I went in - and there were all my colleagues singing, 'Happy Birthday to You!'"

"Well, that was not so terrible!"

"Oh yes? I would have liked you to be in my place... I was naked!"

People go on living in expectations, illusions. One illusion is shattered and immediately they start living in another illusion. They never become really aware that whatsoever your mind projects is going to be illusory. Your mind can only create illusions. Your God is an illusion, your meditation is an illusion, your yoga is an illusion, your Tao is an illusion, because these are all your mind projections. These are like the horizon that looks so close by - one can reach it just within an hour - but one never reaches the horizon. It only appears, it does not exist. If you run after it you will be running after it for eternity and you will not find it.

An Arab once came across a man walking across the Sahara Desert, wearing only a bathing costume.

"How far is it to the sea?" asked the man.

"About five hundred miles to the north," said the Arab.

"Bugger me," said the man, "I will have to stay on the beach!"

Ingo, if you go on living in the mind you will have to live on the beach, you will never reach to the ocean. It is not even five hundred miles - it does not exist, it is a mirage.

Don't repeat cliches, try to see the point. Don't believe, try to understand. Stop projecting your fantasies, dreams, expectations on life. Completely forget that. The whole effort has to be one and single, and that is how to be awake. If you are awake, then things will be different, totally different.

And there will not be any need to find anything special, to find meaning; then in the small things of life there is meaning, there is great significance. Each pebble on the seashore becomes a diamond.

Then there are sermons in every stone and songs hidden in every rock and scriptures everywhere, because the world is full of God, overflowing with godliness.

And you are thirsty for meaning for the simple reason that you are not looking at that which is, and you cannot look at that which is because you are fast asleep.

Wake up! Ingo, wake up! Come out of your grave. Unconsciousness is your grave. And then you will know what life is and how beautiful it is and how blissful it is and what a benediction and a gift of God.

The third question

Question 3:

Narendra,

IT DEPENDS. There are people who cannot laugh even when life is showering all its joy on them; they remain serious, dull, dead. Flowers go on showering on them; they don't look at those flowers, they don't feel grateful. They have completely forgotten the language of gratitude. They have forgotten to laugh.

But a man who is alert and aware, a man who is a man in the real sense - integrated, centered, grounded - will laugh in the face of death.

Mansoor laughed when he was being killed. He laughed so loudly that the people who were killing him could not contain their curiosity. They asked, "Mansoor, what is the matter? Are you mad or something? Why are you laughing?"

He said "I am laughing because you are killing somebody else. This body is not Mansoor - I am not it. If you think I have committed a crime by declaring myself God, then punish me. Why are you punishing this body? This poor body has done nothing. Why are you cutting my legs and my hands?

It is like punishing the house of a man who has committed a crime - this is sheer stupidity. That's why I am laughing."

Those people must have felt very embarrassed. And finally when they were going to cut his tongue...

because Mansoor was killed in a far more inhuman way than Jesus. He was cut piece by piece: his legs were cut, then his hands were cut, then his eyes were taken out, then his nose was cut, then his tongue was cut, and then his head was cut. Nobody ever before or after has been tortured in such a cruel way.

Before they were going to cut his tongue he laughed again, looking at the sky. They could not contain their curiosity again, because now he was not looking at them, he was looking at the sky.

And they said, "You laughed at us, now why are you laughing and at whom?"

He said, "I am laughing at God! I am laughing at God because I am telling to him, 'You cannot deceive me. Even if you come in the form of these butchers, I know you, I recognize you, I love you, I worship you, because even in these hands who are cutting me and killing me it is your energy and nobody else. You have come in beautiful ways to me; now you have come in a cruel way just to test me, whether Mansoor can recognize you in this way or not.' I am laughing at him. I am telling him, 'I can recognize you in any form you come. Once I have recognized you I have recognized you forever.'"

Narendra, it depends. Zen Masters have been known to die in a very joking way, as if death is a joke. In fact, it is a joke.

A wild tribe of African cannibals is dancing madly around the big pot where Father Dupont is cooking, when suddenly the Zen Master bursts into laughter.

He keeps laughing and laughing until the chief, incapable of holding back his anger any longer, rushes over to the pot: "What are you laughing about?"

After a while the Master manages to say, half-choking with laughter, "I just shit in the soup!"

The fourth question

Question 4:

Krishnaraj,

ARE YOU MAD? Are you asking me this question or to Ayatollah Khomaniac? To whom are you asking this question? You should go to Ayatollah Khomaniac.

I teach a religionless religion and I teach an amoral morality. It will be almost impossible for you, Krishnaraj, to understand. Your very question shows that you are not acquainted at all with my vision, with my way of looking at things.

The first thing: you are not to teach children religion and morality; you have to learn from them because they are far more closer to God than you are. They have come just now from God's home; they are still carrying the fragrance. You have forgotten completely they have not yet forgotten; it will take time for them to forget. It will take time for them to be conditioned by you and destroyed by you.

And that's what you are asking me: how to destroy them, how to destroy their religiousness, how to destroy their morality, how to destroy their authenticity, how to destroy their sincerity - in short, how to destroy their intelligence.

Intelligence is the source of all religiousness and morality, and children are more intelligent than you are. Learn from them rather than trying to teach them. Drop this stupid idea that you have to teach them. Watch them, see their authenticity, see their spontaneity, see their watchfulness, see how alert they are, how full of life and joy, how cheerful, how full of wonder and awe.

Religion arises in wonder and awe. If you can feel wonder, if you can feel awe, you are religious.

Not by reading the Bible or Gita or Koran, but by experiencing awe. When you see the sky full of stars, do you feel a dance in your heart? Do you see a song arising in your being? Do you feel a communion with the stars? Then you are religious. You are not religious by going to the church or by going to the temple and repeating borrowed prayers which have nothing to do with your heart, which are just head affairs.

Religion is a love affair - love affair with existence. And children are in that affair already. All that is needed from your side is not to destroy them. Help them to keep their wonder alive, help them to

remain sincere and authentic and intelligent. But you destroy them. That's what you want, actually, by asking this question: "How can we teach...?"

Religion can never be taught, it can only be caught. Are you religious? Have you the vibe of religion around you? Then you will not ask such a stupid question. Then your children will learn it just by being with you. If they see you with tears of joy watching a sunset, they are bound to be affected; they will fall silent. You need not tell them to be silent; they will see the tears and they will understand the language. They will see the sacredness of your tears; they will fall silent of their own accord.

They will sit silently by your side. They will also watch the stars or the sunset or the moon.

Have they seen you dancing around a rosebush when roses have opened in the early morning and the air is fragrant? Have they seen you dancing around the roses? They will ask you, "Can we also participate? Can we also dance with YOU?"

In fact, if they want to dance you will say, "Stop this nonsense! Come to the temple with me, and pluck all the roses so that we can offer them to God.'l This is religion? The roses were already offered to God; they were already dancing in the breeze, in the sun. Plucking them you have killed them.

You have killed the living roses and now you are going to offer them to a dead God! Some stupid God that you have made, invented. Just a stone which you have painted and put into a temple. Of course. this kind of religion has to be forced because children are intelligent people, very intelligent people. They resist this kind of enforcement. This is trying to destroy their freedom and to destroy their intelligence.

Watch the intelligence of the children. And whenever you find intelligence, rejoice in it and help them and tell them that "This is the way you should go on moving."

Dad criticized the sermon, Mother thought the organist made a lot of mistakes. Sister did not like the choir's singing. But they had second thoughts when the young son piped up, "Still, it was a pretty good show for twenty pence."

The owner of a chicken farm wanted to make his son behave better, so he devised an object lesson.

"Do you see, my son? The chickens that were bad were eaten by a fox."

"So?" replied his son. "If they had been good, we would have eaten them!"

Two six-year-olds were examining an abstract painting in a gift shop. Looking at a blotch of paint:

"Let us run," said one, "before they say we did it!"

A father returned home from his usual day at the office and found his small son on the front steps looking very unhappy.

"What is wrong, son?" he asked.

"Just between you and me," the boy said, "I simply can't get along with your wife."

A father took his young son to an opera for the first time. The conductor started waving the baton and the soprano began her aria. The boy finally asked, "Why is he hitting her with his stick?"

"He is not hitting her, he is just waving it in the air," replied the father.

"Then why is she screaming?"

You just watch small children a little bit; you just see their intelligence.

Johnny was just home after his first day at school.

"Well, darling," asked his mother, "what did they teach you?"

"Not much," replied the child. "I have got to go again."

A young boy came to his first day of school in America. Since he was an Italian immigrant he spoke no English at all. So the school principal sent out an announcement that anyone who could speak Italian should please report to the office.

Soon a scruffy young boy showed up. "Do you speak Italian?" they asked him.

"Sure!" said the boy. "I live in an Italian neighborhood; I speak it all the time."

"Good," they said. "We need your help in translating. First ask him what his name is."

"Okay. Hey, kid! What's-a ya name?"

And that did! That is enough Italian.

If you watch small children, their inventiveness, their intelligence, their constant exploration into the unknown, their curiosity, their inquiry, you need not teach them any beliefs.

And what is religion in your mind, Krishnaraj? - teaching certain beliefs. And no belief is religious, all beliefs make people stupid. Religion is an experience, not a belief. You will make them Hindus or Mohammedans or Christians, but that is not making them religious. And you are not interested, in fact, in making them religious; you are interested in making them Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians. You want them to belong to your fold and you are afraid of their intelligence. You want to kill it and destroy it before it is too late - before they start revolting, before they start thinking on their own. It is a greatest crime to force children into any religious belief. Help them to understand and tell them to find their religion.

You don't allow children to vote; for political ideology they have to wait for twenty-one years, then you think they are ripe enough to vote. And for religious ideology they are ripe enough when they are five or four! Do you think religious education is of lower grade than the political education? Do you think to belong to a political party needs higher intelligence, more maturity, than to belong to a religion? If twenty-one years is the age for political maturity, then at least forty-two years should be the age for religious maturity. Before forty-two years nobody should choose any religion Inquire, search, explore, and explore all over the place, explore in every possible direction.

And when you decide your religion on your own it has significance: when it is imposed on you it is a slave; when you choose it, it is a commitment, it is involvement.

The Protestant booklet that I was just talking about also mentions one fact: that one thing has to be learned from Rajneesh and his sannyasins - that why they feel so committed. why they feel so involved, so deeply in love. No Christian seems to be so deeply in love with Christ. Why are they so in love with their own Master? There must be some reason behind it that has to be explored.

The reason is clear-cut: sannyas is not imposed upon you, you have chosen it. The same was the case with the disciples of Jesus, with the disciples of Buddha. But it happens only when the Master is alive; when the Master is gone...

In fact, children should be allowed to choose their own Masters. Parents should not enforce their own ideology on their children. If you really love your children, don't teach them any religion. Yes, give them the feel of being religious, give them the feel of prayerfulness. And that you can give not by telling them how to pray but by just being in prayer yourself. If they see you in prayer they will catch. Prayer is contagious. They will start asking you, "How we can also participate in the prayer?"

If you sit in meditation and they see the silence and the serenity and the stillness surrounding you and a certain aura that arises out of meditation, a certain radiation, they are bound to be interested in it. They are always interested in everything new.

And morality is a byproduct of religion. When one feels in the heart religion arising, a relationship, a communion with existence happening, one becomes moral. It is not a question of commandments, it is not a question of shoulds and should-nots; it is a question of love, compassion.

When you are silent, a deep compassion arises for the whole existence, and out of that compassion one becomes moral. One cannot be cruel, one cannot kill, one cannot destroy. When you are silent, blissful, you start becoming a blessing to everybody else. That phenomenon of becoming a blessing to everybody else is true morality.

Morality has nothing to do with so-called moral principles. These so-called moral principles only create hypocrites: they create only pseudo people, split personalities. A schizophrenic humanity has come about because of thousands of priests, so-called saints and mahatmas and their continuous teachings: "Do this, don't do that." You are not helped to be aware, to see what is right and what is wrong. You are not given eyes, you are simply given directions.

My effort here is to help so that you can open your eyes - to uncover your eyes, to remove all kinds of curtains from your eyes, so that you can see what is right. And when you see what is right you are bound to do it, you cannot do otherwise. When you see what is wrong you cannot do it; it is impossible.

Religion brings clarity and clarity transforms your character.

The fifth question

Question 5:

Darshan,

A RUSSIAN GUY comes running into a friend's hut and cries, "The Americans have gone to the moon!"

"Really?" says his friend ecstatically. "All of them?"

Three people sit on a bench in the Red Square in Moscow. After a while one of them sighs heavily.

A few moments later the second one sighs just as heavily. The third one quickly glances around with a very worried look and whispers:

"Sssh! Don't talk about politics in public!"

And the last question

Question 6:

Sant Maharaj,

THEN WHO WILL RING THE BELLS OF JERUSALEM? And on the gate we need somebody to go on ringing the bells of Jerusalem. Wait a little, don't be in such a hurry. Why you should want to be a celibate?

This desire arises in every Indian - centuries of conditioning. I would also like you to be a celibate one day, not out of a desire but out of a deep understanding. And desire is never part of understanding, remember. Desire may come out of frustration.

Sex is both a joy and a sadness, an ecstasy and an agony. This paradox has to be understood; without understanding this paradox you will never be able to understand the desire for celibacy, for brahmacharya. Sex brings a momentary ecstasy; for a moment you are transported to another world, the world of timelessness. For a moment you melt into the other, you are no more an ego - hence the great joy, the orgasmic joy. But this is only for a moment, and then everything closes up again. All doors and windows that have opened are closed. The sky and the stars that you had seen are no more there. You are back again in your dark dungeon. It is far darker than before because now you have tasted something of the beyond.

It is like in a dark night you are passing on the road and a car comes with the headlights on. Suddenly there is all light for a moment, and the car passes by. Now the road is far darker than before because you can compare. The eyes have known light; now the darkness looks, in contrast, very much dark.

Before the light had happened you were becoming accustomed of darkness.

Sex gives you a deep ecstasy, but it is momentary. And then there is a fall, a great fall from the heights. And darkness surrounds you, anguish arises and you start feeling sad. You start feeling, "What is the point of it all?" You fall into a negative space you start thinking against sex. "What is the point of it all? If it is only momentary it is not worth." And how long you had hoped for it, and how long and how much you have waited for it, and how much you had expected out of it! And nothing is left in your hands, just a memory, a fleeting memory which is receding fast away from you. And now you are in darkness, in anguish, in agony. It was better not to have known it.

In these negative moments the desire for celibacy arises, but that is not going to last very long either, because after twenty-four hours you would have forgotten the negative moment, the sadness, the agony. That too would have become part of memory, that would have receded back. Again you look at a beautiful woman, her beautiful curves, her beautiful face... and again the desire. And you start hoping maybe this time it is going to be different. Who knows? And again you are thrilled, excited.

In these moments you become very positive about love.

And this will go on happening again and again, it is a vicious circle: after the positive the negative, after the negative the positive, like day, or night. The day follows the night, the night follows the day, and you go on revolving in this wheel. In the East we have called exactly it the wheel of life, and birth and death, the wheel of the polar opposites. There are ups and downs and you go on. When you are up you feel at the top of the world and you think that that was all nonsense, celibacy and everything - that was all stupidity. But when you come to the negative moment you start thinking that all that positivity was just infatuation. And this you have done many times and this you will go on doing your whole life if you don't try to understand the vicious circle.

So I am not saying decide anything when you are negative. If you decide in your negativity you will become life-negative. That's what happened to religions in the past, they became life-negative.

They decided in the negative moment. Then you have to escape to the monasteries; then you have to go to the mountains, to the caves. And there too sex is not going to leave you so easily because sex is not something outside you, it is something inside you. It is your biology, it is your psychology, it is your physiology; those hormones are within you. It is in your blood, in your bones, it is in your very marrow. It is not even in your sex center only, because there have been stupid people who have cut their sex organs in order to become perfectly celibate.

In Russia there was a Christian sect which believed in cutting the sexual organs. Of course, there was one difficulty for the sect because they could not reproduce children. And every sect wants to have more and more people, and if you cut your sexual organs soon your seCt will disappear from the world. So that sect used to adopt children - poor people's children, beggars' children they will adopt. And when those children became young, sexually mature, their sexual organs will be cut.

Each year they used to gather in a great gathering where this ceremony was performed, and people would cut their sexual organs in a frenzy, and more and more people would get into the frenzy of it.

People are imitative, very imitative; if one is doing something, other will do it.

Women used to cut their breasts, and they will heap up the breasts and the sexual organs - the bigger the heap, and more virtue has happened that year. God has been very much pleased with them.

Sex has nothing to do with the sexual organ either; you can cut the sexual organ, sex will remain, because the sex center exists in your brain. The sexual organ is just the extension of that brain

center. Now they have found the center in the brain. Now a small window can be made in your head and electrodes can be put exactly at your sexual center in the brain, and it can be tickled directly and you will have orgasm, without any sexual organ's involvement in it. And soon, I think the day is not far off when people will be carrying small boxes in their pockets, electrodes within their brains.

Nobody will ever know what you are doing - they will just see the grin on your face! And you will look so blissful, so blissed out, as if you have become a Buddha! And all that you are doing is just pushing a button inside your pocket. You will go on, pushing the button, and each time you push the button, just the electric current reaching to the sexual center tickles it.

That's what happens when you make love to a woman: it is just the release of semen that tickles the button. It can be done far more economically with scientific technology; it is going to be done.

That day you are finished with marriage, with homosexuality, with heterosexuality; with all kinds of sexualities you will be finished. There will be only one kind of sexuality; we will have to find a name for it - matchbox sexuality or something! Just like a matchbox, you keep in your pocket.

The only danger is... Why is it not being marketed yet? - because scientifically it has been proved, experiments have been successful. The only reason why it is not being marketed is that there will be no way to prevent people from having thousands of orgasms every day; they will stop doing everything else. That is the only problem, because sex has a limitation, a certain limitation. A man can make love once a day or twice a day; it depends on the age - very young, thrice a day. As you get older you will need more and more time to recuperate. But with that matchbox there is no problem - old, young, even dead, no problem. Somebody else can go on pushing your button and the dead body will go on quivering. It happens, actually it happens.

There are spiders... while making love the female spider starts eating the lover. He is making love, he is on top of her, and she starts eating him. Women are dangerous! And she starts eating from his head; first she eats the head because then he cannot escape. But he goes on making love - the head is gone, but who needs head? When it is a question of lovemaking, who needs head? - head is gone; slowly slowly his other parts start going, but he goes on making love. Whatsoever remains goes on quivering. That species' male spider makes love only once. Some love! Some totality! Some wholeness! Holy spider!

The experiments that Skinner has done about this have proved that it can be dangerous, because on rats they have tried - then rats stop doing everything. They don't eat, they don't bother about sleep; they go on and on pushing the button. You will be surprised: six thousand times per hour!

Of course, within three, four hours the rat was dead. But until the rat is dead he goes on pushing the button. Who cares now about eating and sleeping and any other kind of social conversation, et cetera? - meeting people and going to the Rotary Club, all that nonsense, who bothers? That is the danger. That stopped Skinner, because he tried many experiments... you cannot stop. Once the rat or any animal that has been experimented upon knows, then it goes on and on.

Sex will go with you to your monastery, it will go with you to the cave, because it is in your brain.

Celibacy will not happen; only perversion will happen.

Sant, celibacy has to come on its own, not to be practiced and cultivated. It comes on its own, but then it is not a decision taken in the negative moment, then it is not life-negative; then it is a transcendental phenomenon. You have seen again and again the positive and the negative, and

you have understood the natural trick that nature is playing upon you. you are victims of nature.

Nature wants to reproduce its species, hence it has put a strategy inside you called your sex. Once this is understood by your own experience, sex starts disappearing and a celibacy arises, but not imposed, not practiced.

I can bless only such a celibacy.

You ask me:

OSHO, I WANT TO BE A CELIBATE...

Please, don't desire it. Go through all the experiences of love, positive, negative. Go meditatively, go with full awareness into them. And slowly will come a transcendental light arising in you, a deep understanding happening. And then you will not ask that "How to be a celibate?" You will be celibate.

I can bless only that kind of celibacy.

I can bless only that which happens out of understanding, not on of cultivation. I am against character, I am only for consciousness. If character follows consciousness. good, but consciousness has not to follow character. That has been the way up to now, it cannot be the way any more. Man has come of age.

Now a totally new kind of scientific approach is needed towards man's inner problems. My sannyas is a scientific approach. It has nothing to do with the old religions; it is a religion of the future. My sannyasins have to be the heralds of the future.

My blessings are with you, but only when something happens in you through understanding, not by effort. I am against all effort.