The first question:

Pratima has asked the question. It is very relevant, and has to be understood. The first thing to remember, to always remember, is never to judge the past by present standards. That is not compassionate. For example, when Hasidism was arising, to allow women into a religiously ecstatic dance would have been impossible. Not that Hasidic mystics were not aware, not that they would not have liked to allow it -- they would have loved it -- but it was impossible. Even Buddha was afraid to initiate women into his order.

What was the fear? Was he an orthodox person? No, you cannot find a more revolutionary mind, but he insisted for many years on not allowing women into his order. No, the reason is to be found somewhere else.

A religion has to exist in the society. If the society is too much against a certain thing, even the founder has to make a few compromises. Otherwise the religion as such will not exist at all. Society is not in a condition of perfection, society is not yet as it should be, but a religion has to exist in this society, in the framework that this society allows it. Revolutionaries try to go a little further than the boundary, but even they cannot go too far. If they go too far they will be uprooted.

For example, I have no objection if you go naked when meditating. I have no objection. In fact I will support it, because clothes are part of the repressive culture. I know it, but still I have to insist on you not being naked in the meditations. Because that creates such trouble that even meditation becomes impossible. That will be too much. To destroy the whole possibility of meditation just for clothes or nudity would be foolish. It would have been good if I had been able to allow you to be absolutely free -- free from clothes also. But then society would not allow us to exist at all, and we have to exist in society. So we have to choose the lesser evil.

Or, take the question of drugs. I am not in support of drugs, but I am not against them either. I am not in support of Timothy Leary, I don't think that you can attain samadhi by drugs -- about that I am absolutely certain. No one has ever attained samadhi by- drugs, notwithstanding what Aldous Huxley and others say. It is too cheap, and through chemicals there is no possibility to attain the ultimate. But I am aware that drugs can help in a certain way. They can give you a glimpse; they cannot give you the reality, but they can give you a glimpse of the reality, and that glimpse can become a breakthrough. That glimpse can uproot you from your past and can send you on a search for the real. If you have seen God, even in your dream, your whole life will be transformed. Of course, the God in a dream is a dream, but the next morning you will start looking into the world -- where can you find this phenomenon that has happened in your dream?

Many people start their journey towards God, truth, samadhi, because they have had a certain glimpse somewhere. Maybe through drugs, maybe through sexual ogasm, maybe through music, or sometimes accidentally. Sometimes a person falls from a train, is hit on the head and he has a glimpse. I'm not saying make a method of that! But I know this has happened. A certain centre in the head is hit by accident and the person has a glimpse, an explosion of light. Never again will he be the same; now he will start searching for it. This is possible. The probable is no longer probable, it has become possible. Now he has some inkling, some contact. He cannot rest now.

I am not for drugs, I am not against drugs. But still, in this community, in my commune, drugs cannot be allowed. Politicians have never been very intelligent and one should not expect too much from them. In fact, only stupid people become interested in politics. If they were intelligent they would not be in politics at all.

So just for some ordinary, small thing the whole movement cannot be destroyed. That would be foolish. After a hundred years my attitude that drugs cannot be allowed in the ashram will be thought anti-revolutionary. Naturally, I know it is anti-revolutionary. So let it be here on the record.

The Hasidic Masters knew it well. It is inhuman, anti-revolutionary. not to allow women to participate in ecstatic religious ceremonies, in ecstatic dances. But that society was very much against it. Because of this the whole movement would have died. So they had to prohibit it.

Buddhism died in India. Do you know why? It was because Buddha finally allowed women into his order. He himself is reported to have said, 'My religion would have lived at least five thousand years, but now it will not live more than five hundred, because I am taking a very great risk.' Just allowing woman into his order was such a risk that Buddha said, 'The life of my religion is reduced by four thousand, five hundred years -- at the most it will last only five hundred years.' And it happened exactly that way. For only five hundred years Buddhism lived, and that life was also not at the c1imax. not at the optimum. Every day the life was slowing down, every day death was coming closer and closer. What happened?

The society. Society has long been male-oriented. To allow women into a religious order was to destroy the old hierarchy, the superiority of man. Even a man like Mahavir, a very revolutionary man, is reported to have said that women cannot enter moksha directly as women. First they will have to be born as men and then.... So no woman has entered into the Jaina moksha, into nirvana, directly as a woman. First she has to change her body, take a male shape and form, and then she can enter.

Why should Mahavir say this? Society, the politics of the country, the priests and the politicians, they were too chauvinistic. Some compromise was needed, otherwise they would not allow anything. Mahavir lived naked, but he himself did not allow any women to go naked because the society was not ready to accept even him in his nudity. By and by people accepted him, grudgingly, reluctantly, but to accept the idea that women could go naked would have been too much.

And because Mahavir said, 'Unless you leave everything -- even clothes -- unless you are as innocent as a child, as you were on the first day you were born, you cannot enter into my kingdom of God.' He had to say that women could not enter directly. If he had said that women could enter directly then a few courageous women would have come forward and would have thrown off their clothes also -- would have become naked. Just to avoid nude women he had to make a very false statement, untrue. And I know he knew that it was untrue -- I know because I make many untrue statements. But we have to exist in a society, in a particular state, in a particular confused state, in a particular neurotic state. If you live with mad people you have to make a few compromises. If you live with mad people at least you have to pretend that you are also mad.

Narendra is here. His father went mad thirty or forty years ago. He escaped from the house. After a few months he was caught in Agra and put into jail with mad people all around. There was a special jail in Lahore, only for mad people. He said that for nine months everything went okay because he was also mad. After nine months, just by accident he drank a whole jug of phenoil -- a mad man -- he found it in the bathroom and he drank it. That gave him vomits, nausea, diarrhea. Because of that diarrhea he was throwing things out for fifteen days continuously, and his madness disappeared then the real problem began, because he was amongst mad people. Now for the first time he became aware of where he was -- somebody was pulling his leg, somebody was hitting him on his head, and people were talking and dancing. And he was no longer mad. Those three months when he was not mad and was living with mad people, were the most painful; they were deep anguish and anxiety. He couldn't sleep.

And he would go to the authorities and he would say, 'Now let me out because I am no longer mad!' And they wouldn't listen because every mad person says that -- that he is no longer mad. So that was not proof. He had to comploete his sentence of one year.

He told me that he could never forget those three months; they were a continuous nightmare. But for nine months he was perfectly happy because he was also mad.

You cannot conceive of what happens to a person when he becomes a Buddha or a Baal-Shem in a country, in a world, which is absolutely mad. He is no longer mad but he has to follow your laws, otherwise you will kill him. He has to make compromises. Of course he cannot hope that you will make compromises with him. You are not in a state in which you can think. But he can think. Only the higher can make compromises with the lower, only the greater can make compromises with the lower, only the wise person can make compromises with stupid people.

So it happened that women have never been accepted. It is only just in this century, very recently, that women are coming out of the dark night of the past history.

I have heard.

Two women, but she thought that prime ministers worship in the balcony and men on the floor.

Once a thing settles it is very difficult to change it, even for a prime minister. Even for a prime minister it is difficult to change the traditional way.

The Hasids were a new way, but rather than destroying the whole movement they chose to go with the society and its rules and its regulations. At least let the message reach to men. If it cannot reach to women right now, later on it will -- but at least let the message be rooted on the earth.

I am existing here in a very alien and strange world. I would like to give you many things but I cannot, because you yourself will resist. I would like to make you aware of many things in your being, but you will be against me. I have to go very slowly, I have to be very roundabout; it cannot be done directly.

Just see. I have done what Pratima was enquiring about in relation to Hasidism. I have done It. In my community, men and women are no longer separate. That's why Indians have stopped coming to my Ashram. They cannot come. When they used to come, their questions were more or less all concerned about what type of Ashram this was -- men and women mixing and meeting, holding each other's hands, going together? Even after meditations hugging, kissing each other? What type of things were these? This is not good.

They used to come to me and say, 'This is not good, this should not be allowed. Osho, you should interfere.' I never interfered because to me there is nothing wrong -- man and woman should not be made in any way distinct. They are not separate, nobody is higher and nobody is lower. They are different but equal. Difference is beautiful, it has to be there. The difference has to be enhanced, but the equality has to be saved. And to me, love is a way towards God.

I didn't listen to them. By and by they disappeared. Now only very courageous Indians can enter here. Now only a few Indians can enter here, those who have no repressed mind in them, who are post-Freudians -- only they can enter here. But Inida as a whole is pre-Freudian. Freud is still unknown in India. Freud has not yet entered into the Indian soul.

But I have done it. And I am a Hasid, so you can forgive the old Hasids. Time was not ripe at that time; even now it is very difficult. I have to encounter difficulties every day. For every small thing there are difficulties. Those difficulties could be avoided if I behaved in an orthodox way. I cannot behave in an orthodox way -- because then there is no point in my being here, then I could not deliver the message to you -- and I cannot be absolutely revolutionary because then there would be no possibility of something happening between you and me.

And I am not in any way interested in being a martyr because that too seems to me to be a sort of masochism. People who are always seeking to become martyrs are not really aware of what they are doing -- they are seeking suicide. I am not a martyr. I love life, I love all that is implied in life, and the original Hasid Masters were as much in love with life as I am. That's why I have chosen to talk about them. When I choose to talk about some path, I choose it only because it appeals to me tremendously.

The Hasids were not people who wanted to become political revolutionaries. They were not reformists. They were not trying to reform the society, they were trying to bring a mutation to the individual soul. And they had to exist in the society. Remember that always.

But then what happens whenever a tradition gets settled? Now Hasidism is a settled tradition, now it itself has become an orthodoxy. Now the time is ripe. If the community exists in New York -- a Hasidic community exists in New York -- now the time is ripe, but now they themselves have become orthodox. They have their own tradition. they cannot go against Baal-Shem. And these people who are now Hasids are not really Masters, they are simply followers of the followers of the followers.

You are here with me. You are face to face with something original. When you tell it to somebody else it will not be the original. You have heard it from me, then you will tell it to somebody else and much of it is lost. And then that person goes to somebody else and delivers the message. Again much is lost. Within a few years, within a few transfers, the truth is completely distorted, only lies are left. And again a revolutionary movement becomes an orthodox tradition.

The second question:

I can do that but there will be much trouble. Let me tell you an anecdote.

If I cut your head off, then St. Peter will ask you, "You are not due for many lives. Who is your guru?"

It cannot be done by another. It is not something that can be done from the outside. In fact you also cannot do it. You have to grow into it. It is not something that you can do or force, it comes through deeper understanding.

The dropping of the head is one of the most difficult things because you are identified with the head. You are the head! Your thoughts, your ideologies, your religion, your politics, your scriptures, your knowledge, your identity -- everything is in your head. How can you drop it? Just think of dropping the head. Then who are you? Without the head you are nobody.

You have to grow into understanding. When you can grow a new head above this head, only then can you drop this head. That's the whole effort of meditation -- to help you grow a new head, a new head which does not need thoughts, does not need ideologies; which is pure awareness and enough unto itself; which needs no external influence to live; which lives from its own innermost core. When you have grown a new head, the old will be dropped very easily. It will drop on its own accord.

If I force anything upon you, you will resist it, you will become afraid, you will be scared. And nobody wants to die. It is a great art to be learned.

I have heard.

It was the day of the hanging and as Mulla Nasrudin was led to the foot of the steps of the scaffold, he suddenly stopped and refused to walk another step. 'Let us go,' the guard said impatiently. 'What is the matter?'

'Somehow,' said Nasrudin, 'those steps look mighty rickety. They just don't look safe enough to walk up.'

He is going to be hanged, but those steps look 'mighty rickety' -- not safe enough to walk on! Even at the moment of death a person goes on clinging -- to the very end. Nobody wants to die, and unless you learn to die you will never be able to live, you will never be able to know what life is. A person who is able to die is a person who is able to live, because life and death are two aspects of the same coin. You can choose both or you can drop both, but they both come together in one parcel, they are not different things.

Once you are afraid of death you are bound to be afraid of life. That's why I am talking about this Hasidic approach. The whole approach consists of methods, ways and means of how to die -- the art of dying is the art of living also. Dying as an ego is being born as a non-ego; dying as a part is being born as a whole; dying as man is a basic step towards being born as a God. But death is difficult, very difficult. Have you watched it? Except for man, no animal can commit suicide. It is not possible for any animal even to think about committing suicide. Have you thought about it? Have you heard of any tree committing suicide, any animal committing suicide? No. Only man, man's intelligence, can make it possible that a man can commit suicide.

And I am not talking about ordinary suicide -- because that is not really suicide, you simply change the body -- I am talking of the ultimate suicide. Once you die the way I am teaching you to die, you will never be born again in life. You will disappear into the cosmos, you will not have any form any more, you will become the formless.

I have heard.

The man was charged with trespassing on the farmer's property and shooting quail. The Counsel for Defense tried to confuse the farmer. 'Now,' he asked, 'are you prepared to swear that this man shot your quail?'

'I didn't say he shot them,' was the reply. 'I said I suspected him of doing it.'

'Ah, now we are coming to it. What made you suspect this man?'

'Well,' replied the farmer, 'firstly, I caught him on my land with a shotgun. Secondly, I heard a gun go off and saw some quail fall. Thirdly, I found four quail in his pocket, and you can't tell me them birds just flew in there and committed suicide.'

Only man is capable of committing suicide. That is the glory of man. Only man can be capable enough to think that life is not worth living, only man is capable enough to reflect that this life is simply futile. Ordinarily when people commit suicide, they don't do it because they have understood life's futility, they do it only because they have understood THIS life's futility -- and they are hoping that in another life somewhere else things will be better.

The spiritual suicide means that a man has come to understand that not only THIS life is futile, but life as such is futile. Then he starts thinking of how to get rid of being born again and again, how to get rid of getting into the tunnel of the body and of being confined and encased; then he starts thinking of how to remain absolutely free without any form. This is what moksha is, this is what liberation is -- or you can call it salvation.

A man can never be happy in the body because it is such a confinement. All around are walls; you are forced into a prison. It does not look like a prison because the prison walks with you -- wherever you go it goes with you, so you don't feel that it is like a prison. Once you have known a life without the body, once you have become capable of getting out of the body -- even for a single split moment -- then you will see how you are confined, how you are imprisoned.

The body is a bondage, the mind is a bondage, but, you have to understand -- I cannot force you free. Remember one thing: you can be forced into bondage from the outside, but you cannot be forced into freedom from the outside. Somebody can force you into a prison cell, but nobody can take you out of a prison cell. If you want to remain in a prison cell, you will find some other prison cell somewhere else. You may escape from one prison, but you will get into another -- from the frying pan into the fire. You can easily change your prisons, but that doesn't make any difference. That's what everybody has been doing for millennia. Each life you have been in a prison -- sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes black, sometimes white, sometimes Indian, sometimes Chinese, sometimes American. You have moved in all the forms possible.

When people come to me and I look into them, it is surprising how many forms they have moved in, how many bodies, how many shape$ they have lived in, how many names and religions and countries...and still they are not fed up. And they go on repeating the old circle again and again.

Remember one thing more. Just as I said to you that suicide is absolutely human, no animal commits it, the same is true about boredom. Boredom is absolutely human. A buffalo is never bored, a donkey is never bored -- only man, only a highly evolved consciousness. If you are not bored with your life, it simply shows that you live in a very low state of consciousness.

A Buddha is bored, a Jesus is bored, a Mahavira is bored -- bored to death! Just repetition all around and nothing else. Out of boredom comes renunciation. A man who is bored with the world becomes a sannyasin. The search is not for another world, it is for an end of the search. It is suicide, total, ultimate.

The third question:

My whole purpose here is to push you towards death, to push you into the abyss of the unknown, to push you into zero experience. We in India call it samadhi. It is a zero experience -- where in a way you are and in a way you are not; where you are empty of allcontent, just the container has remained; where all writing from the book has disappeared,just the book remains, empty. That's the real Bible, the real Veda. When all writing hasdisappeared and the book is absolutely empty; when all the content, all the thoughts, mind,emotions, desires, have disappeared and there is only a pure consciousness, empty of all content -- this is what I call the abyss.

You say:

Yes, that's true, but the peak will come only later on. First comes the abyss. I am also your abyss. Let me tell you one very,very beautiful anecdote. Listen to it very, very attentively, and later on when you are sitting silently at home, meditate over it.

A man went to a ranch to buy a horse, pointed at one and said, 'My, that's a beautiful pony right there. What kind is it?'

'That's a palomino,' said the rancher.

'Well, any friend of yours is a friend of mine. I would like to buy that pony,' said the man.

The rancher replied, 'I gotta tell you, sir, it was owned by a preacher-man. If you want the horse to move you say, "Good Lord"; if you want the horse to stop you gotta say, "Amen."

''Let me try that horse," said the buyer.

He mounted and said, 'Good Lord.' The horse promptly moved out and was soon galloping up in the mountains. The man was yelling, 'Good Lord! Good Lord!' and the horse was really moving. Suddenly he came to the end of the cliff, and panic-stricken he yelled, 'Whoa! Whoa!' That didn't work and then he remembered and said, 'Amen!'

The horse stopped right on the end of the cliff. And wiping his brow with relief, the man said, 'Good Lord!'

You ask:

 Say, 'Good Lord' and then all else will happen on its own accord.

The fifth question:

It always takes place.

Truth cannot remain long on the earth; it comes and it disappears. If you are available it hits you, and then it is gone. You cannot hold it on the earth. The earth is so false and people are so engrossed in their lies that truth cannot remain here long. Whenever a Buddha walks on the earth, truth walks for a few moments. When the Buddha is gone, truth also disappears. Only the footprints are left and you go on worshipping the footprints. The footprints are not the Buddha, and the words uttered by the Buddha are just mere words. When you repeat them they are just words, they mean nothing.

It was Buddha who was the meaning behind the words. You can repeat exactly the same words, but they will not mean the same, because the person behind the words is no longer the same.

The Hasidim were a choice community when Baal-Shem was there. When he walked on the earth, the Hasidim were one of the most beautiful communities on the earth -- they flowered. A Master is needed, a living Master is needed. Only in a living Master's presence does your innermost bud open, blossom.

After Baal-Shem disappeared, there was only a tradition left. What he said, what he did, the legends about him, are many. And then people go on repeating them, people go on imitating them. These people are bound to be false.

But this is natural so don't be angry at them. Once I am gone from here this community will not be so joyous, cannot be. It is just natural. Then the words will be there and people will be repeating them and they will try to follow them religiously, but there will be effort. Right now there is no effort. You are simply flowing with me. Right now it is spontaneous, right now it is a love affair. Then it will be a sort of duty to be fulfilled. You will feel an obligation.

You will remember me. You will want to live the same way, but something very vital will be missing -- the life will be missing. Whenever a Master departs, only a dead corpse of his teaching remains.

So always seek a living Master. A dead Master is of no use -- because a dead Master means nothing but a dead teaching. Always seek a living Master. But it is very difficult because people's minds are very slow. By the time you come to recognise somebody as a Master he is gone. This is the difficulty. By the time you recognise that Jesus is a Master, Jesus is no longer there. Then there are only Christians, then there are churches, then there are the Pope and the priest, and they catch hold of you.

Yes, Hasidism has become orthodox but the Hasids were not. They were a living religion, a very living river.

I have heard:

He converted himself to be a Catholic so that a Catholic dies in the world. 'Another one of the bastards dead!'

People always become that way because they live through the mind. Mind is a tradition.

I have heard.

The ego functions in a very traditional way. To be revolutionary, one needs to be beyond the ego. And it is not that you can do it once and forever, you have to do it every moment again and again, because the ego goes on closing in on you, it goes on caving in on you. Each moment that you pass through, whatsoever you have lived, whatsoever you have experienced, becomes your ego. You have to discard it. Renunciation is not once and for all. You have to renounce every moment; whatsoever is gathered you have to renounce. Only then renunciation remains a revolution. And not only do you have to renounce ordinary things of the world, you have to renounce ordinary ideologies also -- Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. You have to renounce thoughts so that you can remain in a pure mirrorlike reflection. Then your consciousness can remain undisturbed, uncoloured by any thought, you can see into things directly and your consciousness is not distracted or distorted by any prejudice.

Once a tradition settles, once a religion is no longer revolutionary, you start interpreting it in your own ways. Then you don't bother what Buddha meant, then you start reading your own thoughts into Buddha's assertions. Then you don't bother what Krishna says, you go on reading into the Gita whatsoever you want to read. Then perversion settles. That's why I insist again and again: if you can find a living Master, be with him -- because you cannot distort a living Master. You will try! But you cannot distort him because a living Master can stop you from distorting his message. But a dead book, a scripture -- Holy Bible, Holy Koran, Holy Gita -- what can they do? They may be holy but they are completely dead; you can do whatsoever you want to do with them. And man is very cunning and very clever.

Whatsoever we want to hear, whatsoever we want, becomes our scripture, becomes our interpretation. People are rigid. So whether they are Hasids or Buddhists or Sufis or Zen Buddhists does not matter -- people's minds are rigid. Wherever they belong they create rigidity there. You can move from being a Hindu and you can become a Christian, or from Christian you can become a Mohammedan, but it will not make much difference because you will remain you. And you will do the same by being a Christian, you will do the same by being a Mohammedan or by being a Hindu. What ideology you believe in does not matter much. The real thing that matters is you, your consciousness, your state of consciousness.

You are here with me. Your children, the next generation, will believe in me simply because their father or their mother believed in me. They will not have any direct contact with me. They will simply believe; it will not be trust, it will be just a mental thing, a formal thing.

It happens that sometimes the children come and when the mother takes sannyas, the child also wants to take sannyas. The child does not know what he is doing, where he is moving; he is just imitating the mother. The mother has come on her own but the child has come just as a shadow. For the mother I have a totally different meaning, for the child I have no meaning at all. If the mother had gone to another Master, the child would have been initiated there. If the mother had become Mohammedan or Christian, the child would have become Mohammedan or Christian.

There is no relevance for the child, it is not significant for the child -- and it may become part of his ego that he is a sannyasin. Later in his life he may wear orange, may wear a mala, and he will do the formal thing, but he will be as ordinary a mind as there are all over the world. And he will do with his belief what the ordinary mind has always been prone to do: he will become rigid about it, fanatical about it. He will start declaring that HERE is truth and nowhere else.

When you declare that only your belief is true and all else is false, you are not concerned with truth at all. You are simply concerned with the assertion of your ego. It is an ego declaration, 'MY country has to be right, MY religion has to be right. Wrong or right, MY country has to be right, MY religion has to be right -- because it is MY religion.'

Deep down it is my 'I' that has to be right.

LIFE is a search, a constant search, a desperate search, a hopeless search...a search for something that one knows not what. There is a deep urge to seek but one knows not what one is seeking.

And there is a certain state of mind in which whatsoever you get is not going to give you any satisfaction. Frustration seems to be the destiny of humanity, because whatsoever you get becomes meaningless the very moment you have got it. You start searching again.

The search continues whether you get anything or not. It seems irrelevant what you have got, what you have not got - the search continues anyway. The poor are searching, the rich are searching, the ill are searching, the well are searching, the powerful are searching. the powerless are searching, the stupid are searching, the wise are searching - and nobody knows exactly what for.

This very search - what it is and why it is there - has to be understood. It seems that there is a gap in the human being, in the human mind; in the very structure of the human consciousness there seems to be a hole, a black hole. You go on throwing things into it, and they go on disappearing. Nothing seems to make it full, nothing seems to help towards fulfillment. It is a very feverish search. You seek it in this world, you seek it in the other world; sometimes you seek it in money, in power, in prestige, and sometimes you seek it in God, bliss, love, meditation, prayer - but the search continues. It seems that man is ill with search.

The search does not allow you to be here and now because the search always leads you somewhere else. The search is a projection, the search is a desire: that somewhere else is what is needed, that it exists but it exists somewhere else, not here where you are. It certainly exists, but not in this moment of time; not now, but somewhere else. It exists then, there, never herenow. It goes on nagging you; it goes on pulling you, pushing you, it goes on throwing you into more and more madness; it drives you crazy and it is never fulfilled.

Have you ever asked yourself what you are searching for? Have you ever made it a point of deep meditation to know what you are searching for? No. Even if in some vague moments, dreaming moments, you have some inkling of what you are searching for, it is never precise, it is never exact. You have not yet defined it. If you try to define it, the more it becomes defined the more you will feel that there is no need to search for it. The search can continue only in a state of vagueness, in a state of dreaming; when things are not clear you simply go on searching, pulled by some inner urge, pushed by some inner urgency. One thing you do know: you need to search. This is an inner need. But you don't know what you are seeking.

And unless you know what you are seeking, how can you find it? It is vague - you think it is in money, power, prestige, respectability. But then you see people who are respectable, people who are powerful - they are also seeking. Then you see people who are tremendously rich - they are also seeking. To the very end of their life they are seeking. So richness is not going to help, power is not going to help. The search continues in spite of what you have. The search must be for something else. These names, these labels - money, power, prestige - these are just to satisfy your mind. They are just to help you feel that you are searching for something. That something is still undefined, a very vague feeling.

The first thing for the real seeker, for the seeker who has become a little alert, aware, is to define the search; to formulate a clear-cut concept of it, what it is; to bring it out of the dreaming consciousness; to encounter it in deep alertness; to look into it directly; to face it. Immediately a transformation starts happening. If you start defining your search, you will start losing your interest in the search. The more defined it becomes, the less it is there. Once it is clearly known what it is, suddenly it disappears. It exists only when you are not attentive. Let it be repeated: the search exists only when you are sleepy; the search exists only when you are not aware; the search exists only in your unawareness. The unawareness creates the search.

Our senses are all extrovert. The eyes open outwards, the hands move, spread outwards, the legs move into the outside, the ears listen to the outside noises, sounds. Whatsoever is available to you is all opening towards the outside; all the five senses move in an extrovert way. You start searching there where you see, feel, touch - the light of the senses falls outside. And the seeker is inside.

This dichotomy has to be understood. The seeker is inside but because the light is outside, the seeker starts moving in an ambitious way, trying to find something outside which will be fulfilling. It is never going to happen. It has never happened. It cannot happen in the nature of things - because, unless you have sought the seeker, all your search is meaningless. Unless you come to know who you are, all that you seek is futile, because you don't know the seeker. Without knowing the seeker how can you move in the right dimension, in the right direction? It is impossible. The first things should be considered first.

So these two things are very important: first, make it absolutely clear to yourself what your objective is. Don't just go on stumbling in darkness. Focus your attention on the object - what you are really searching for. Because sometimes you want one thing and you go on searching for something else, so even if you succeed you will not be fulfilled. Have you seen people who have succeeded? Can you find bigger failures anywhere else? You have heard the proverb that nothing succeeds like success. It is absolutely wrong. I would like to tell you: nothing fails like success. The proverb must have been invented by stupid people. Nothing fails like success.

It is said about Alexander the Great that the day he became the world conqueror he closed the doors of his room and started weeping. I don't know whether it really happened or not, but if he was even a little intelligent it must have happened. His generals were very disturbed. What has happened? They had never seen Alexander weeping. He was not that type of man, he was a great warrior. They had seen him in great difficulties, in situations where life was very much in danger, where death was very imminent, and they had not seen even a tear coming out of his eyes. They had never seen him in any desperate, hopeless moment. What has happened to him now - now when he has succeeded, when he is the world conqueror?

They knocked on the door, they went in and they asked, 'What has happened to you? Why are you crying like a child?'

He said, 'Now that I have succeeded, I know it has been a failure. Now I know that I stand exactly in the same place as I used to be in when I started this nonsense of conquering the world.And the point has become clear to me now because there is no other world to conquer anymore - otherwise I could have remained on the journey, I could have started conquering another world. Now there is no other world to conquer, now there is nothing else to do, and suddenly I am thrown to myself.'

A successful man is always thrown to himself in the end and then he suffers tortures of hell because he wasted his whole life. He searched and searched, he staked everything that he had, now he is successful - and his heart is empty and his soul is meaningless and there is no fragrance, there is no benediction.

So the first thing is to know exactly what you are seeking. I insist upon it because the more you focus your eyes on the object of your search, the more the object starts disappearing. When your eyes are absolutely fixed, suddenly there is nothing to seek; immediately your eyes start turning towards yourself. When there is no object for search, when all objects have disappeared, there is emptiness. In that emptiness is conversion, turning in. You suddenly start looking at yourself. Now there is nothing to seek, and a new desire arises to know this seeker. If there is something to seek, you are a worldly man; if there is nothing to seek, and the question 'Who is this seeker?' has become important to you, then you are a religious man.

If you are still seeking something - maybe in the other life, on the other shore, in heaven, in paradise, in moksha, it makes no difference - you are still a worldly man. If all seeking has stopped and you have suddenly become aware that now there is only one thing to know - 'Who is this seeker in me? What is this energy that wants to seek? Who am I?' - then there is a transformation. All values change suddenly. You start moving inwards. Once you have started moving inwards.... In the beginning it is very dark. It is very, very dark because for lives together you have never been inside - your eyes have been focussed on the outside world.

Have you watched it? Observed? Sometimes when you come in from the road where it is very sunny and the sun is hot and there is bright light - when you suddenly come into the room or into the house it is very dark because the eyes are focussed for the outside light, for much light. When there is much light, the eyes shrink. In darkness the eyes have to relax. A bigger aperture is needed in darkness; in light a smaller aperture is enough. That's how the camera functions and that's how your eye functions. The camera has been invented along the lines of the human eye. So when you suddenly come from the outside, your own house looks dark. But if you sit a little while, by and by the darkness disappears. There is more light; your eyes are settling.

For many lives together you have been outside in the hot sun, in the world, so when you go in you have completely forgotten how to enter and how to re-adjust your eyes. Meditation is nothing but a re-adjustment of your vision, a re-adjustment of your seeing faculty, of your eyes. In India that is what is called your third eye. It is not an eye somewhere, it is a re-adjustment, a total re-adjustment of your vision. By and by the darkness is no longer dark; a subtle, suffused light starts being felt.

And if you go on looking inside - it takes time - gradually, slowly, you start feeling a beautiful light inside. But it is not aggressive light;it is not like the sun, it is more like the moon. It is not glaring, it is not dazzling, it is very cool; it is not hot, it is very compassionate, it is very soothing, it is a balm.

By and by, when you have got adjusted to the inside light, you will see that you are the very source. The seeker is the sought. Then you will see that the treasure is within you and the whole problem was that you were seeking for it outside. You were seeking for it somewhere outside and it has always been there inside you, it has always been here within you. You were seeking in a wrong direction, that's all.

Everything is available to you as much as it is available to anyone else, as much as it is available to a Buddha, to a Baal-Shem, to a Moses, to Mohammed. It is all available to you, only you are looking in the wrong direction. As far as the treasure is concerned you are not poorer than Buddha or Mohammed - no, God has never created a poor man. It does not happen, it cannot happen - because God creates you out of his richness. How can he create a poor man? You are his overflowing, you are part of his being, how can you be poor? You are rich, infinitely rich, as rich as God himself.

But you are looking in the wrong direction. The direction is wrong, that's why you go on missing. And it is not that you will not succeed in life, you can succeed, but still you will be a failure. Nothing is going to satisfy you because nothing can be attained in the outside world which can be comparable to the inner treasure, to the inner light, to the inner bliss.

Now this story. This story is tremendously meaningful.

The first thing to be understood about the story is that he dreamed. All desiring is dreaming, and all dreaming takes you away from you - that is the very nature of the dream.

You may be sleeping in Poona [India] & you may dream of Philadelphia. In the morning you will not wake up in Philadelphia, you will wake up in Poona. In a dream you can be anywhere; a dream has a tremendous freedom because it is unreal. In a dream you can be anywhere: on the moon, on Mars. You can choose any planet, it is your game. In a dream you can be anywhere, there is only one place you cannot be - that is where you are. This is the first thing to be understood about the dreaming consciousness. If you are where you are, then the dream cannot exist, because then there is no point in the dream, then there is no meaning in the dream. If you are exactly where you are and you are exactly what you are, then how can the dream exist? The dream can exist only if you go away from you.

You may be a poor man and you dream about being an emperor. You may be an ordinary man and you dream about yourself being extraordinary. You walk on the earth and you dream that you fly in the sky. The dream has to be a falsification of reality; the dream has to be something other than reality. In reality there is no dreaming, so those who want to know the real have to stop dreaming.

In India we have divided human consciousness into four stages. We call the first stage the ordinary waking consciousness. Right now you are in the ordinary waking consciousness. What is an ordinary waking consciousness? You appear to be awake but you are not. You are a little bit awake, but that little bit is so small that it doesn't make much difference. You can walk to your home, you can recognise your wife or your husband, you can drive your car...that little bit is only enough for this. It gives you a sort of efficiency - that's all.

But it is a very small consciousness, exhausted very easily, lost very easily. If somebody insults you it is lost, it is exhausted. If somebody insults you, you become angry. You are no longer conscious. That's why after anger many people say, 'Why did I do it? How did I do it? How could I do it? It happened in spite of me.' Yes, they are right - it happened in spite of you because you lost your consciousness. In anger, in violent rage, people are possessed; they do things they would never do if they were a little aware. They can kill, they can destroy; they can even destroy themselves.

The ordinary waking consciousness is only 'waking' for name's sake - deep down the dreams continue. Just a small tip of the iceberg is alert - most of the thing is underneath, in darkness. Watch it sometimes. Just anywhere, close your eyes and look within: you will see dreams floating like clouds surrounding you. You can sit on the chair any moment of the day, close your eyes, relax, and suddenly you see that the dreams have started. In fact they have not started, they were continuing - just as during the day stars disappear from the sky. They don't really disappear, they are there, but because of the light of the sun you don't see them. If you go into a deep well, a very deep, dark well, from the dark well you can look at the sky and you will be able to recognise a few stars - even at midday. The stars are there; when night comes they don't reappear, they have always been there, all twenty-four hours. They don't go anywhere, the sunlight just hides them.

Exactly the same is the case with your dreaming: it is just below the surface, just underground it continues. On the top of it is a little layer of awareness, underneath are a thousand and one dreams. Close your eyes any time and you will find yourself dreaming.

'That's why people are in great difficulty when they start meditating. They come to me and they say, 'This is something funny, strange. We never thought that there were so many thoughts.' They have never closed their eyes, they have never sat in a relaxed posture, they have never gone in to see what was happening there because they were too engaged in the outside world, they were too occupied. Because of that occupation they never became aware of this constant activity inside.

In India, the ordinary waking consciousness is called the first state. The second state is that of dreaming. Any time you close your eyes you are in it. At night you are continuously in it, almost continuously. Whether you remember your dream in the morning or not is not of much importance, you go on dreaming. There are at least eight cycles of dreaming during the night. One cycle continues for many minutes - fifteen, twenty minutes; then there is a gap; then there is another cycle; then there is a gap; then again there is a cycle. Throughout the whole night you are continuously dreaming and dreaming and dreaming. This is the second state of consciousness.

This parable is concerned with the second state of consciousness. Ordinarily, all desires exist in the second state of consciousness, the dreaming state. Desire is a dream and to work for a dream is doomed from the very beginning, because a dream can never become real. Even if sometimes you feel it has become almost real, it never becomes real - a dream by nature is empty. It has no substance in it.

The third state is sleep, deep sleep, SUSHUPTI. In it, all dreaming disappears - but all consciousness also. While you are awake there is a little awareness, very little; when you are dreaming, even that little awareness disappears. But still there is an iota of awareness - that's why you can remember in the morning that you had a dream, such and such a dream. But in deep sleep even that disappears. It is as if you have completely disappeared. Nothing remains. A nothingness surrounds you.

These are the three ordinary states. The fourth state is called TURIYA. The fourth is simply called 'the fourth'. TURIYA means 'the fourth'. The fourth state is that of a Buddha. It is almost like dreamless sleep with one difference - that difference is very great. It is as peaceful as deep sleep, as without dreams as deep sleep, but it is absolutely alert, aware.

Krishna says in his Gita that a real yogi never sleeps. That does not mean that a real yogi simply sits awake in his room the whole night. There are a few foolish people who are doing that. That a real yogi never sleeps means that while he is asleep he remains aware, alert.

Ananda lived with Buddha for forty years. He asked Buddha one day, 'One thing surprises me very much; I am intrigued. You will have to answer me. This is just out of curiosity but I cannot contain it anymore. When you sleep at night I have watched you many times, for hours together, and you sleep in such a way that it seems as if you are awake. You sleep in such a graceful way; your face, your body - everything is so graceful. I have seen many other people sleeping, and they start mumbling, their faces go through contortions, their bodies lose all grace, their faces become ugly, they don't look beautiful any more....' All beauty has to be managed, controlled, practised; in deep sleep it disappears. 'And, one thing more,' Ananda said. 'You never change your posture you remain in the same posture. Wherever you put your hand in the beginning, you keep it there the whole night. You never change it. It seems that deep down you are keeping absolutely alert.' Buddha said, 'You are right. That happens when meditation is perfect.'

Then awareness penetrates your being so deeply that you are aware in all of the four states. When you are aware in all four states dreaming absolutely disappears, because in an alert mind a dream cannot exist. And the ordinary waking state becomes an extraordinary waking state - what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering. One remembers oneself absolutely, each moment. There is no gap. The remembrance is a continuity.

Then one becomes a luminous being.

And deep sleep is there but its quality changes completely. The body is asleep but the soul is awake and alert, watchful. The whole body is deep in darkness but the lamp of inner consciousness burns bright.

This story says:

After many years of great poverty it is natural that one should start dreaming about treasures. We always dream about that which we don't have. Go on a fast for one day and in the night you will dream about food. Try to force celibacy upon yourself and your dreams will become sexual, they will have a quality of sexuality.

That's why psychoanalysis says that the analysis of dreams is of tremendous import, because it shows what you are repressing. Your dream becomes a symbolic indication of the repressed content of your mind. If a person continuously dreams about food, about feasts, that simply shows that the person is starving himself. Jaina monks always dream about food - they may say so, they may not. If you fast too much you are bound to dream about food. That's why many religious saints become so afraid of falling asleep.

Even Mahatma Gandhi was very afraid to go into sleep. He was trying to reduce it to as little as possible. Religious people make it a point to try not to sleep for too long - four hours, five hours at the most. Three is the ideal. Why? Because once your need of bodily rest is satisfied your mind starts weaving and spinning dreams. And immediately the mind brings up things which you have been repressing. Mahatma Gandhi said, 'I have become a celibate as far as my waking consciousness is concerned, but in my dreams I am not a celibate.' He was a true man in a sense - truer than other so-called saints. At least he accepted that in his dreams he was not yet celibate.

But unless you are celibate in your dreams you are not yet celibate, because the dream reveals whatsoever you are repressing during the day. The dream simply brings it back to your consciousness. Dreaming is a language, a communication from the unconscious which is saying, 'Please don't do this to me. It is impossible to tolerate. Stop this nonsense. You are destroying my natural spontaneity. Allow me, allow whatsoever is potential in me to flower.'

When a person represses nothing, dreams disappear. So a Buddha never dreams. If your meditation goes deep you will immediately find that your dreams are becoming less and less and less. The day your dreams completely disappear and you attain to clarity in your sleep - no clouds, no smoke, no thoughts; simple, silent sleep, without any interference of dreams - that day you have become a Buddha, your meditation has come to fruition.

Psychoanalysis insists that dreams have to be understood because man is very cunning: he can deceive while he is awake but he cannot deceive when he is in a dream. A dream is truer...Look at the irony. A dream is more true about you than your so-called waking consciousness. Man has become so false. man has become so fake that the waking consciousness cannot be relied upon - you have corrupted it too much. A psychoanalyst immediately wants to go into your dreams, he does not want to know about your religion, he does not want to know about your philosophy of life, he does not want to know whether you are a Hindu or a Christian, an Indian or an American - that is all nonsense. He wants to know what your dreams are. Look at the irony - your dreams have become so real that your reality is less real than your dreams. You are living such a pseudo-life, inauthentic, false, that the psychoanalyst has to go to your dreams to find a few glimpses of truth. Only your dreams are still beyond your control.

There are people who try to control dreams also. tn the East methods have been invented to control dreams. That means you are not even allowing the unconscious to convey any message to you. You can do that too. You can cultivate dreams if you work hard. You can start planning your dreams. You can give a story to your own unconscious to unfold in your dreams. If you do it consistently, every day, by and by you will be able to corrupt the unconscious.

For example:

Once a devotee of Krishna stayed with me. He said, 'I always dream of Krishna.' I asked him, 'How do you manage it? A dream is not something that you can manage. What method have you tried?' He said, 'A simple method which my guru gave to me. Every night when I go to sleep, I go on thinking and thinking about Krishna, fantasising. After three years of continuously practising fantasy while falling asleep, one day it happened. Whatsoever I had fantasised continued in my dream and it became my dream. Since then I have been having tremendously religious dreams.'

I said, 'You just go into the details - because you may have managed the story but the unconscious will be sending messages in the story itself, the unconscious can use your story to send its messages.' He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'You simply give me the content of your dream, the detailed content.'

And he started telling me. It was absolutely sexual. Krishna was his lover and he had become a male gopi, a boyfriend. The content was homosexual. And they were dancing together and kissing and hugging and loving each other.

I said, 'You have changed the figure, but the content still remains. And my understanding is that you are a homosexual.' He was very much disturbed and shocked. He said, 'What do you mean? How have you come to know about it?' I told him, 'Your dream is a clear message.'

He started weeping and crying. He said, 'From my childhood I was never attracted to women, I was always attracted to men. And I thought that it was good because women would distract me from my path.'

The homosexual content had entered into his religious story. Krishna was nothing but a homosexual partner. He became very disturbed and that very night the dream disappeared and a purely homosexual dream entered. He said, 'What have you done to me?' I said, 'I have not done anything. I have simply made your message clear to you. You can fabricate a story but that doesn't matter, the inner content remains the same.'

Just see. Go to a person who is not religious. You will find nude pictures of women in Indian homes, in bachelors' homes. These people are not religious. But go to a religious man. He may have beautiful pictures of gods and goddesses but just look at the content, at the detail of it. Whether it is a film actress or whether it is a goddess makes no difference. Just look at the breasts! They will indicate exactly the same content. The story is different. Somebody has a picture of a goddess on his wall and somebody has Elizabeth Taylor or somebody else's picture, or Sophia Loren - but it makes no difference. Whether you call her a goddess or you call her a film actress makes no difference. Look at the detail and you will see what that man is hankering after.

You can manipulate your dreams, you can destroy the purity of your unconscious's messages but still the unconscious will go on giving you messages. It has to. It has to scream to you because you are destroying your own nature, your own spontaneity.

This dream happened...

Poor men always dream of kings' palaces and kings' treasure and things like that. If you have very rich dreams it simply shows that you are a poor man. Only very rich people dream of becoming sannyasins - a Buddha, a Mahavir. Living in their palaces they had dreams of becoming sannyasins, because they were fed up with their success. Success was finished for them, it had no charm, it had no allurement, it had no fascination any more. They thought now that a poor man's life is a real life and they started to seek somewhere else where they were not.

But the dream always goes somewhere else. The rich man thinks that the poor man is living a real life, and the poor man thinks that the rich man is living a real life. But the fallacy is the same: they both think, 'real life' is somewhere else where I am not.

Somehow, 'I am is always excluded from the real life - somebody else is enjoying it. Life is always happening somewhere else. Wherever I go, life simply disappears. Wherever I reach for it I always find emptiness.' But it is always happening somewhere else. Life seems to be like the horizon, it is just ahead somewhere. It is a mirage.

And remember, if a dream recurs too many times it almost starts looking real. Repetition makes things real.

Adolf Hitler wrote in his autobiography 'Mein Kampf' that if you go on repeating a lie it becomes real. Repetition is the key. And he should know. He practised it. He is not simply asserting something theoretical, he practised it the whole of his life. He uttered lies, absolutely absurd lies, but one thing he insisted on - he went on repeating. When you go on repeating some lie again and again and again it starts becoming real, because the mind starts getting hypnotised by it.

Repetition is the method of hypnosis, self-hypnosis. Repeat anything and it becomes engraved in your being - that's how we are deluded in life. If you repeat, 'This woman is beautiful, this woman is beautiful...' if you go on repeating it, you will start seeing beauty in her. It may be there, it may not be there, it doesn't matter - if you repeat it long enough it will become true. If you think that money is the goal of life, go on repeating it and it will become your goal of life.

That's how all advertising functions: it just goes on repeating. The advertiser believes in the science of repetition; he simply goes on repeating that this brand of cigarette is the best. When you read it for the first time you may not believe it. But next time, again and again - how long can you remain an unbeliever? By and by the belief will arise. And the belief will be such that you may not even become conscious of it. It will be subliminal, it will be just underneath consciousness. One day suddenly, when you go to the store and the store-keeper asks what brand of cigarette you need, you will say a certain brand. That repetition worked. It hypnotised you.

That's how religions have been functioning in the world - and all politics depends on it too. Advertise, go on repeating to the public, and don't be bothered whether they believe or not - that's not the point. Hitler says there is only one difference between a truth and a lie: the truth is a lie that has been repeated very often. And man can believe any lies. Man's gullibility is infinite. Man can believe in hell, man can believe in heaven, man can believe in angels, man can believe in devils, man can believe in anything! You just go on repeating.

And there is no need to argue. An advertisement never argues - have you observed the fact? There is no need to argue. The advertisement simply persuades you, it never argues. An arguer may not be able to convince you but a person who persuades you, who simply goes on throwing soft suggestions at you, not direct arguments.... Because when somebody argues with you, you may become defensive, but if somebody simply goes on hinting at certain things, not in any direct way, just supposing, you are more prone to be convinced by it.

Dreaming functions in that way; a dream is a salesman. A dream simply goes on repeating itself. It never argues, it simply insists on being repeated. And, often repeated, one starts believing in it.

In the world there is much competition. Every place is guarded and every object has to be fought for - it is not easy. This is something very strange. In this world nothing is meaningful and yet for everything you have to fight. Nothing seems to be significant but there is much competition, much conflict. Everybody is rushing towards it, that creates the trouble - it is not that there is something in it. There is nothing in it but everybody is trying to rush towards it. Everybody is hankering for everybody else's place that's why the world is so crowded.

In fact, it is not as crowded as it seems. Look...we are sitting here, everybody is sitting in his own place. This place is not crowded at all. But if a frenzy suddenly takes hold of your mind and everybody starts trying to reach another's place, then this place would be crowded. Right now you are sitting religiously; in that situation you would be rushing at each other politically. Right now you are satisfied with your place and you are not hankering for anybody's place - at least not in this Chuang Tzu auditorium. But if you start pushing yourself into other's places, others will become defensive, they will start pushing you. A fight, a war, will ensue.

Why are there so many wars in the world? The reason is that everybody is trying to have another's territory. And the other may be trying the same thing. He may be looking at you.

That's what many people are doing. Very few succeed. many simply walk around. But they go on doing it. Even if you cannot succeed, your desires, your hopes, are continuously there. At least you can go to the place, near the palace, and you can walk around. The whole day, from morning to evening he was walking around - that's what many people are doing, waiting for some miracle to happen. Someday there may be no guards, someday may be a holiday, someday there may be a possibility to dig...one waits and one goes on waiting. It never happens but one' s whole life is wasted in waiting.

It is a beautiful story - and very true. That is how it is happening in life. You are looking somewhere else for that which is already there within you.

Rabbi Eisik bowed, thanked the man, traveled home.... This is the journey of religion: traveling back home. And a man who has understood life always pays his respect towards life because it has shocked you out of your dreams. He is not against life; he simply knows that he has nothing to do with life, he simply knows that he was searching in a wrong direction.

Life has always been compassionate, life has been telling you again and again that you can find nothing here - go back home. But you don't listen.

You earn money, and one day money is there - then life says to you, 'What have you got?' But you don't listen. Now you think you have to put your money into politics, you have to become a prime minister or a president - then everything will be okay. One day you are a prime minister, and life again says, 'What have you got?' You don't listen. You go on thinking of something else and something else and something else. Life is vast - that's why many lives are wasted.

But don't be angry at life. It is not life that is frustrating you, it is you who are not listening to life. And this I call a criterion, a touchstone: if you see a saint who is against life, bitter against life, know well he has not understood yet. Otherwise he will bow down to life in deep respect and reverence, because life has awakened him out of his dreams. Life is very shocking, that's why. Life is painful. The pain comes because you are desiring something which is not possible. It doesn't come from life, it comes from your expectation.

People say that man proposes and God disposes. It has never happened. God has never disposed of anything. But in your own proposition you have disposed of something yourself. Listen to God's proposition, keep your own proposition to yourself. Keep quiet. Listen to what the whole is willing - don't try to have your private goals, don't try to have your private desires. Don't ask anything individually - the whole is moving towards its destiny. You simply be part of it. Co-operate. Don't be in a conflict. Surrender to it. And life always sends you back to your own reality - that is why it is shocking.

It shocks you because it doesn't fulfil your dreams. And it is good that life never fulfils your dreams - it always goes on disposing, in a way. It gives you a thousand and one opportunities to be frustrated so that you can understand that expectations are not good and dreams are futile and desires are never fulfilled. Then you drop desiring, you drop dreaming, you drop proposing. Suddenly you are back home and the treasure is there.

The treasure had always been waiting there under his stove. In the same room he dreamed that the treasure was somewhere near the palace of the king in Prague. In his own room, in his own house, it was just there waiting to be dug up.

This is very indicative. Your treasure is in your own being - don't look for it somewhere else. All palaces and all bridges to the palace are meaningless; you have to create your own bridge within your own being. The palace is there; the treasure is there.

God never sends anybody into this world without a treasure. He sends you ready for every situation - how can it be otherwise? When a father sends his son on a long journey he makes every preparation. Even for unexpected situations the father provides. He makes all provisions.

You are carrying everything that you need. Just go into the seeker and don't go seeking outside. Seek the seeker, let the seeker be the sought.

Because of this, Rabbi Eisik built the house of prayer. It was such a tremendous revelation, such a tremendous experience - 'God has put the treasure where I have always lived. I was poor because of myself, I was not poor because God wanted me to be poor. As far as he is concerned I was a king, always a king.' Because of this understanding he made a prayer house, a temple, out of this treasure. He used it well.

Whenever somebody comes to his innermost treasure, prayer arises - that is the meaning of the story. He made a house of prayer called Reb Eisik's Shul. Whenever you understand the grace of God, the compassion, the love, what else can you do? A great prayer of thankfulness rises into your being, you feel so overpowered by his love, overwhelmed. What else can you do? You simply bow down and you pray.

And remember, if you pray to ask for something, it is not prayer. When you pray to thank him for something, only then is it prayer. Prayer is always a thanksgiving. If you ask for something then the prayer is still corrupted by desire. Then it is not prayer yet - it is still poisoned by dreaming. Real prayer happens only when you have attained to yourself, when you have known what God has given to you already without your asking for it.

When you realise what you have been given, what infinite sources have been given to you, a prayer arises You would like to say to God, 'Thankyou.' There is nothing else in it but a pure thank you. When a prayer is just a thank you it is a prayer. Never ask for anything in a prayer; never say, 'Do this, do that; don't do this, don't do that.' Never advise God. That shows your irreligiousness, that shows your lack of trust. Thank him. Your life is already a benediction, a blessing. Each moment is such pure joy, but you are missing it, that I know. That's why the prayer is not arising - otherwise you would build a house of prayer; your whole life would become that house of prayer; you would become that temple - his shrine. His shrine would burst from your being. He would flower in you and his fragrance would spread to the winds.

It does not happen because you are missing something. And you are missing not because of him, you are missing because of yourself. If you desire, and you think that the treasure is somewhere else, you move into the future. The future is needed because you desire; the future is a by-product of desiring. How can you project desire in the present? The present is already here, you cannot project any desire in it, it does not allow desire. If you desire, the present has already gone; you can desire only in the future, only in the tomorrow.

This has to be understood. Desire is always in the future but the future is never there. The future is that which is not, and desire is only in the future. And desire comes out of the past which also is not. The past is gone and the future has not yet come. Desire comes out of the past because you must have known what you desire in the past somehow. How can you desire something which is absolutely new? You cannot desire the new. You can only ask for a repetition. You had some money, you will ask for more - but money you know.

You had some power, you ask for more - but power you know. Man cannot desire the unknown. Desire is just a repetition of the known. Just look at it. You have known it and you are not fulfilled, so you are asking for it again. Do you think you will be fulfilled? At the most you can ask for more quantity, but if one rupee is not fulfilling, how can a thousand rupees be fulfilling? If one rupee is unfulfilling, ten thousand rupees will be ten thousandfold more unfulfillings - that is simple logic. If one woman has not fulfilled you, then ten thousand women are not going to fulfil you. If one woman has created such a hell then ten thousand women...just think! It is simple arithmetic. You can solve it.

You can ask only out of the past and into the future and both are non-existential. That which exists is the present. This very moment is the only moment there is. You cannot desire in it, you can just be in it. You can just enjoy it.

And I have never come across a person who can be miserable in the present. You will be surprised. Many times people come to me and they say that they are very miserable and this and that, and I say to them, 'Close your eyes and find out right now whether you are miserable or not.' They close their eyes, then they open their eyes, and they say, 'Right now I am not miserable.'

Right now nobody is miserable. There is no possibility. It is not allowed by the nature of things. This very moment are you miserable? This very moment? You may have been miserable a moment before, okay - that is right. Or you may be miserable a moment afterwards - that too is allowed. But this very moment, between these two non-existential moments, are you miserable? Nobody has ever been.

This moment is always pure benediction; this moment is always one of joy, of tremendous delight; this moment is God's moment. The past is yours, the future is yours, the present is God's. We divide time into three tenses - past, present, future - but we should not divide it in that way. That division is not right. Time can be divided between the past and the future but the present is not part of time, it is part of eternity. God has no past, remember, you cannot say God was. God has no future - you cannot say God will be. God has only one tense - present. God is. God always is. In fact, God is only another name for the 'isness' of existence. Whenever you are also in the moment, whenever you are also in this 'isness', you are happy, blessed. A prayer arises. You become a shrine.

You will become Reb Eisik's Shul, you will become a prayer house.

Zaddik means the Master. The word 'zaddik' comes from a Hebrew root which means: the pure, the purest, purity itself. The Zaddik means the Master - who has attained to his 'presentness', who is no longer in the past and no longer in the future, who is just herenow, who is just a presence. To be in the presence of a Master is to be in the presence of a presence. That's all. And to be in the presence of a Master can help you to be present because his presence can become infectious.

But Rabbi Bunam says, 'There is something you cannot find anywhere in the world, not even at the Zaddik's....' He says that there is something which you cannot find anywhere, not even in the presence of a Master. But don't feel hopeless - there is nevertheless a place where you can find it.

That place is you, and that time is now. In fact, the Zaddik's, the Master's, effort is nothing but to throw you to your 'presentness', to make you available to God, or, to make God available to you.

This 'presentness' cannot be taught but it can be caught - hence the value of SATSANG, of being in the presence of a Zaddik, of a Master, of a guru. Just to be there doing nothing.... In fact, a Master is not doing anything. He is just there. A Master is a prayer, a constant thankfulness. With each breath he is thanking God - not verbally, his very breathing is a thankfulness; with each beat of his heart he goes on saying thank you. His thank you is not verbal, it is existential. His being is prayer. To be in the presence of such a man may help you to have some taste of prayer. That taste will start a new journey in your life - the inward journey.

You have been seeking for centuries, for millennia, and you have not yet found. Now, let the seeker be the sought. You have traveled outside for so long that you are very tired, very exhausted.

Jesus says, 'Those who are tired, those whose burden is heavy, they should come to me. I will give them rest.' What does he mean? He simply means, 'Come to me. I am at rest. Be close to me. Have a taste of it.' And that very taste will turn the tide and you will start moving inwards.

You are here with me. Have a taste of my being. Don't just listen to my words, listen to me. Taste me. And then suddenly you will be here and now, and you will be turning inwards and you will not ask for anything and you will not desire anything and you will not have any movement into the future and you will not have any clinging with the past.

And then this moment is liberation, this moment is enlightenment.

A Child on the Seashore of Time

The first question:

TO be frank with you - which usually I am not - I don't know who I am. Knowledge is not possible here where I am. Only the knower is left, the known has disappeared; only the container is left, the content is no more.

For knowledge to exist, a great division is needed in reality - the knower and the known. Between the two, knowledge happens. The known is a must for knowledge to happen. The space I am in is absolutely undivided and indivisible. Knowledge is not possible. So, to be exact, I don't know.

And I would like you also to come to this innocent ignorance, to this state of not-knowing. Because the state of not-knowing is the highest state of knowing; not of knowledge mind you, but of knowing. And this knowing is content-less - it is not that you know something, there is nothing to know. You simply are. I am, but I don't know who I am. All identities have disappeared - just a tremendous emptiness is left behind. I call it emptiness because you are full of identities - otherwise it is an absolute presence, not an absence. It is the presence of something which by its very nature is a mystery and cannot be reduced to knowledge.

So I don't know who I am, but I am tremendously content in this not-knowing. And whosoever has come to this door of not-knowing has laughed at all knowledge and the stupidity that goes on in the name of knowledge. Knowledge is mediocre. To be in the state of not-knowing is intelligence, it is awareness - and it is non-cumulative. Each moment that which happens disappears, it leaves no trace behind, no existential trace. One comes out of it again pure, again innocent, again like a child.

So I am a child on the seashore of time, collecting seashells, coloured stones. But I am tremendously fulfilled. I know not who I am because I am not. When I say 'I am not' I mean that the 'I' no longer has any relevance. I use the word - obviously I have to use it and there is nothing in the word to be against - but it is no longer relevant to my inner world. It is still of use with you but when I am alone I am not. When I am with you, then this word 'I' has to be used as a communicative device. But when I am alone I am not.

Aloneness is there, amness is there, but the 'I' is not. So who should know, and whom?

First I told you that the content had disappeared, now I would like to tell you - because the more you get ready and receptive, the more I can tell you - that the container has also disappeared. The container is meaningful only with the content - without the content what is the meaning of the container? The content and the container are both not there.

Something is, tremendously is, absolutely is, but there is no name to it. In love, you call this space 'Bhagwan', and in deep respect I also call it 'Bhagwan'.

Just the other night I was reading a letter in 'Current'. The letter-writer asked me who appointed me as Bhagwan. Now, Bhagwan cannot be appointed. If somebody appoints somebody as Bhagwan then the appointer will be the Bhagwan, not the appointed. It is a recognition, it is a realisation. Bhagwan simply means that all that we call wordly is no longer there - that's all. The desire to possess, to be possessed, the desire to accumulate, the desire to cling, the desire to be, the libido, the lust for life, has disappeared. When the smoke of the desire disappears and only the flame remains in its purity, who is going to appoint? Who is there to appoint? It is not an appointment. Or, if you love the word very much, then I will say, 'It is a self-appointment.' But that too is not very meaningful. It is a declaration.

The letter-writer wants me to say who. Nobody can decide who I am. This is my declaration. Only I know what has happened within me; nobody else can know it. Unless you also come to that state of divine being - the state is hiding behind you; any moment you become courageous enough to enter it, you can - then only will you recognise me, not before it.

I also call this space, in tremendous respect, Bhagwan. The word 'Bhagwan' is very beautiful. The English word 'God' is not as beautiful. 'Bhagwan' simply means: 'the blessed one'. That's all. The blessed one. And I declare myself to be the blessed one. And I declare it only so that you can also gain heart and you can also strive for it; so that my presence can become a dream in you; so that my presence can invoke a journey in you; so that my presence can create a fire in you - a fire that will burn you and through which you are going to be reborn true. A fire that is going to destroy you, annihilate you utterly, and yet out of it, you will come absolutely new, with no identity, with no name, with no form.

I have declared myself Bhagwan because I would like you also to come to this recognition. You have forgotten the language. Somebody must exist in front of you as a reality, not as a concept, not as someone in the scriptures. Krishna exists in the Gita, Christ exists in the Bible - they may have been, they may not have been, nobody can be certain.

I am just here, confronting you. If you are courageous enough to open towards me, suddenly a sprout will start coming into being in your seed; you will start growing in an unknown dimension. To make that dimension available to you, I declare myself Bhagwan. This is nobody else's business. But I can declare myself Bhagwan only because I am not. Only one who is not can call himself 'the blessed one'.

As YOU are, you remain miserable, your very being is your misery. Hell is not somewhere else - hell is the confined state, hell is the miserable state when you live with the 'I'. To live with the ego is to live with hell.

You ask me:

Certainly, it is a play. I am not serious. And if you are serious, there is not going to be any meeting with you. Seriousness does not cross my path at all. I am absolutely non-serious. This is a play. And I would like to call this play 'the mad game'.

The word 'mad' I have coined so: 'm' stands for the master and 'd' stands for the disciple. The master-and-disciple game! It is a mad game! I am an expert in being a Master. If you are also ready to become a disciple, here we go!

And it is none of anybody else's business. It is a game between me and you. If you decide to be a disciple, as I have decided to be a Master, then we can play the game. And those who have decided to be disciples are enjoying it tremendously!

Once you decide to be a disciple, you enter into another world - a totally different world of the heart, of love, of trust. Then it is a play. You are not serious but still you are very sincere. Never misunderstand seriousness for sincerity. Sincerity is very playful, never serious. It is true, authentic, but never serious. Sincerity does not have a long face, it is bubbling with joy, radiating with an inner joyousness.

Rojoice that I am here! If you decide to be a disciple, then only can you understand what I am doing here, then only can you understand this mad game, this madly mad game. It is a play; in fact, it is the ultimate game in life. You have played many other games, this is the last. You have played being a lover, being a friend; being a father, being a husband, being a wife, mother, brother, being rich, being poor, being a leader, being a follower - you have played all the games. And only those who have played all the games can play this game, because they will be mature enough to play it.

This is the last game. After this game, games stop, game-playing stops. Once you have played the game rightly - the Master / disciple game - by and by you come to a point where all playing disappears. Only you are left - neither the Master nor the disciple exists there. This is just a device.

Between the Master and the disciple - if the rule of the game is followed rightly - devotion arises. That is the fragrance, the river that flows between the two banks of the Master and the disciple. That's why it is so difficult for the outsider to understand. But I am not interested at all in the outsider understanding it, it is a very esoteric game. It is only for the insiders, it is only for mad people. That is why I not interested even in answering people who are not insiders, because they will not understand. They do not have that attitude of being in which understanding becomes possible.

Just see. If two chess-players are playing and you don't know what chess is, and you start asking questions, they will simply say, 'Shut up! First you go and learn the game. It is a complicated game.' And chess is nothing when you start playing THIS mad game! Your whole life - your emotions, your feelings, your intellect, body, mind, soul, everything - is involved, is at stake. It is the last gamble.

So only those who are insiders can understand; outsiders will always feel uncomfortable about it. They don't know the language. I am not here to play the game of a priest; I am not here to play the game of a prophet. In fact, the prophet is nothing but the politician in disguise. The language of the prophet is the language of the politician - of course, in the name of religion. The prophet is revolutionary; he wants to change the world, the whole world, to his heart's desire. I have no plans for changing the world. It is perfectly good as it is and it is going to remain as it is. All the prophets have failed. That game is doomed to be a failure.

I am not a priest because I don't belong to any religion; I simply belong to religion as such. I am not a Jew, I am not a Hindu, I am not a Mohammedan, I am not a Jaina - I don't belong to any religion. So I am not a priest, I am not a preacher. I simply love pure religion.

Let me tell you an anecdote.

Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg had scrimped and saved to put their eldest son through college. At last they had the money and decided to send him to a fine, highbrow Eastern boarding school. They saw him off on the train and tearfully bade him farewell.

A few months later he returned home for the Christmas holidays. The parents were overjoyed to have their son, Sammy, back with them. The mother greeted him with, 'Samelah! Oh, it's so good to see you.'

'Mother,' replied the son, 'stop calling me Samelah. After all, I'm a grown man now, and I do wish you would refer to me as Samuel.'

She apologised and asked, 'I hope you only ate Kosher foods while you were away.'

'Mother, we are living in a modern age, and it's preposterous to hang onto the old world traditions. I indulged in all types of food, and believe me, you would be better off if you did too.'

'Well, tell me, did you at least go to the synagogue to offer a prayer of thanks occasionally?'

The son replied, 'Really, do you honestly feel that going to a synagogue when you're associating with a large percentage of non-Jews is the proper thing to do? Honestly, Mother, it's unfair to ask it of me, really.'

At this point Mrs. Goldberg, fighting back anger, looked at her eldest son and said, 'Tell me, Samuel, are you still circumcised?'

I am not interested in whether you are circumcised or not. I am not interested in whether you are a Jew, a Hindu, a Christian or a Mohammedan. To me that sort of thing is sheer stupidity. I am not teaching you any religion. My whole effort, or my whole play here, is to make you aware of the reality as it is; to make you aware of the fact, not to give you any fantasy about it; to make you aware of the truth, not to give you any theory about it. I am not a theoretician, I am not a theologist. In fact, theology has killed God, and so many religions have created such confusion in the minds of people that, rather than helping, they have been harmful and poisonous. Rather than helping people to be religious, they have created great politics in the name of religion - great violence, conflict, hatred has been 'created in the name of religion.

To me, religion simply means a dimension of love. I am here to show you the beauty of life, the grandeur that surrounds you. From that very grandeur you will have your first glimpses of God. I am here to seduce you into a love of life; to help you to become a little more poetic; to help you die to the mundane and to the ordinary so that the extraordinary explodes in your life. But this is possible only if you decide to become a disciple.

Sannyas is a great agreement, a covenant. When I initiate you into sannyas, I am initiating you into the world of my play. And if you are ready to go with me, great doors are waiting to be opened for you. But those doors are not of the mosque, of the church, of the gurudwara, of the temple - those doors are of life itself. Life is the only shrine of God and to be playful about it is the only prayer.

It is not a question of time. If you decide to be a disciple, it can go on and on - within the body and without the body, with the mind, without the mind, in life and in death, within life and beyond life. This game is an eternal game, that's why I call it the ultimate game. Those who decided to play with Christ, they are still playing; on new planes, in new plenitudes, it continues. Those who decided to play with Buddha are still playing. The game is so beautiful. so eternal, who wants to stop it?

I may not be here in the body but that will be a loss only to those who are not close to me, that will be a loss only to those who were not courageous enough to be with me. When I have gone out of the body it is not going to be a loss to you if you have really been a disciple. The game will continue. I will remain available, you will remain available. It is a question of the heart, it is a question of consciousness. And consciousness knows no time; consciousness is beyond time, consciousness is timelessness.

So the question is meaningful from some outsider - but then I will not answer it. The question is meaningless from an insider - and only then can I answer it. If you are an insider you know that there is a beginning to this play but no end to it. You have entered into something which is going to last forever.

A game has to be played, not to be explained. If you explain it, it loses all charm. Come, be a partner. Get involved in it.

There are a few things which cannot be explained - in the very explanation they die. For example, a joke cannot be explained. That's the beauty of a joke: either you understand it or you don't understand it. If you ask, 'Please explain,' it cannot be explained. If somebody explains it and it becomes completely clear to you, no laughter will come out of it. Because it is when the joke suddenly dawns on your being that there is laughter; when there is a jump, a quantum leap, then there is laughter. You were going along on one plane, the story was moving along on one plane, then suddenly an unexpected turn which you could not have imagined, happened. That very turn - which you could not have imagined happening - gives it beauty. That very turn shocks you. That very turn releases the tension that was building up. You were going along in suspense - 'What is going to happen? What is going to happen?' - and everything was just ordinary and then, suddenly, there is an extraordinary turn to the story. The punch-line has to be a sudden turn. Then the built-up tension relaxes and you start laughing. The tension is released, explodes. But if somebody explains to you, dissects the Joke logically, explains everything to you and then you understand it - then the joke disappears. The joke has to be enjoyed, not understood.

This whole world is a cosmic joke. If you try to understand it, you will miss...that is how philosophers have always been missing. They have been trying to solve it, they have been trying to look for clues. It has no clues. It is a sheer mystery. It has no keys and no locks. It is available if you are available. But a mind which wants to understand it becomes tense and becomes unavailable.

Don't try to understand life. Live it! Don't try to understand love. Move into love. Then you will know - and that knowing will come out of your experiencing. That knowing will never destroy the mystery: the more you know, the more you know that much remains to be known. Life is not a problem. To look at it as a problem is to take a wrong step. It is a mystery to be lived, loved, experienced.

In fact, the mind which is always after explanations is an afraid mind. Because of great fear he wants everything to be explained. He cannot go into anything before it is explained to him. With explanation he feels that now the territory is familiar, now he knows the geography, now he can move with the map and the guidebook and the timetable. He is never ready to move in an unknown territory, uncharted, without a map, without a guide. But life is like that. And no map is possible, because life goes on changing. Every moment it is now. There is nothing old under the sun, I say to you. Everything is new. It is a tremendous dynamism, an absolute movement. Only change is permanent, only change never changes - everything else goes on changing.

So you cannot have a map; by the time the map is ready it is already out of date. By the time the map is available it is useless. Life has changed its tracks. Life has started playing a new game. You cannot cope with life with maps because it is not measurable. And you cannot cope with life with guidebooks because guidebooks are possible only if things are stagnant. Life is not stagnant, it is a dynamism, it is a process. You cannot have a map of it. It is not measurable, it is an unmeasurable mystery. Don't ask for explanations.

That's why although I answer when you ask questions - because this is part of the agreement of this mad game: you will ask and I will answer - you should never take my answers as explanations. They are not. They are simply introductions to the mystery, prefaces to the mystery, seductions to the mystery. They are not really answers.

My answers are not answers; my answers are simply to help you to come out of your questions and to start living. An answer is an answer when it simply explains your question and you are satisfied that you have now got some information which you were needing and your question is no longer there. Now the place that the question was occupying is occupied by the answer. My answers are not answers in that way. They will help you to drop the question but they are not going to answer the question. And once the question is dropped you will find no answer occupying its place. There will be no answer.

My whole way of answering is such that I answer and yet I never answer. I answer so that you don't feel offended - your question has to be respected, so I respect it - but I cannot answer it because life has no answers.

And this I call maturity of mind: when somebody comes to the point of looking at life without any questions, and simply dives into it with courage and fearlessness.

'I see what I need to see'

SPIRITUALITY is not a question of morality, it is a question of vision. Spirituality is not the practising of virtues - because if you practise a virtue it is no longer a virtue. A practised virtue is a dead thing, a dead weight. Virtue is virtue only when it is spontaneous; virtue is virtue only when it is natural, unpractised - when it comes out of your vision, out of your awareness, out of your understanding.

Ordinarily religion is thought of as a practice. It is not. That is one of the most fundamental misunderstandings about religion. You can practise non-violence but you will still remain violent, because your vision has not changed. You still carry the old eyes. A greedy person can practise sharing, but the greed will remain the same. Even the sharing will be corrupted by the greed, because you cannot practise anything against your understanding, beyond your understanding. You cannot force your life into principles unless those principles are of your own experience.

But so-called religious people try to practise virtue - that's why they are the most unvirtuous people on the earth. They try to practise love and they are the most unloving people on the earth. They have created all sorts of mischief: wars, hatred, anger, enmity, murder. They practise friendship but the friendship has not flowered on the earth. They go on talking about God but they create more and more conflict in the name of God. The Christian is against the Mohammedan, the Mohammedan is against the Hindu, the Hindu is against the Jaina, the Jaina is against the Buddhist - that's all they have been doing.

There are three hundred religions and they have all created fragments in the human mind; they have not been an integrating force, they have not healed the wounds of the human soul. Because of them humanity is ill, because of them humanity is insane - and the insanity comes out of one thing. That has to be understood as deeply as possible because you can also go in the wrong direction. The wrong direction has a tremendous appeal, otherwise so many people would not have gone there. The appeal must be great. The magnetic force of the wrong direction has to be understood, only then can you avoid it.

You can try practising anything you like and you can remain opposite to it. You can enforce a sort of stillness upon yourself: you can sit silently, you can learn a yoga posture, you can make the body still, as if it is without movement, you can make the body like a statue. And by repeating a mantra or by repressing the mind continuously for a long time, you can enforce a certain stillness upon your being - but it will be the silence of the cemetery, it will not be throbbing, alive, kicking. It will be a frozen thing. You can deceive others but you cannot deceive yourself and you cannot deceive God. You have got it without any understanding; you forced it upon yourself; it is a practised silence.

The real silence arises out of the understanding: 'Why am I not silent? Why do I go on creating tensions for myself? Why do I go on getting into miserable patterns? Why do I support my hell?' One starts understanding the 'why' of one's own hell - and by that very understanding, by and by, without any practising on your part, you start dropping those wrong attitudes that create misery. Not that you drop them, they simply start disappearing.

When understanding is there, things start changing around you. You will love but you will no longer be possessive. It is not love that creates trouble. If you ask your so-called saints, they say it is love that creates trouble. That is an absolutely false statement. It is based on a deep misunderstanding of the human love-life. It is not love that creates misery - love is one of the greatest blessings, a benediction. It is possession that creates misery. Possess your beloved, your friend, your child, and you will be in misery. And when you are in misery those religious people are there waiting by the corner. They jump upon you. They say, 'We told you before. Never love, otherwise you will be in trouble.

Drop out of all love situations, escape from the world.' And of course it appeals because you are already seeing it happening to you. It is now your own experience that they are right - and yet they are not right and it is not your experience. You never analysed the phenomenon that has happened, you never analysed that it is not love that has tricked you into misery, it is possessiveness. Drop possessiveness, not love.

If you drop love, of course the misery will disappear, because by dropping love you will be dropping possessiveness also - that will be automatically dropped. The misery will disappear but you will never be happy. Go and see your saints. They will be a proof of what I am saying. They will never be happy.

They are not unhappy, that is true, but they are not happy either. So what is the point? If happiness does not arise by dropping unhappiness then some mistake has been committed. Otherwise it should be natural. You say, 'I have lighted the candle and the darkness is still there.' Either you are befooling yourself or you are dreaming, hallucinating, about the candle. Otherwise it is not possible - the candle is burning bright and the darkness is still there? No, the darkness is certain, absolute proof that the light has not entered yet.

When unhappiness drops, suddenly there is happiness. What is happiness? Absence of unhappiness is happiness. What is health? Absence of disease is health. When you are not unhappy then how can you avoid happiness? When you are not unhappy how can you manage not to be happy? It is impossible. It is not in the nature of things. It is against the arithmetic of life. When a person is not unhappy suddenly all his sources are alive; a dance arises in his being; a joy rises in his being. A laughter bursts forth. He explodes. He becomes a Hasid, a Sufi. He becomes a presence of divine ecstasy. By seeing him you will see God - a glimpse, a ray of light. By visiting him you will be visiting a shrine, a sacred place, a TEERTHA. Just by being in his presence you will be suffused with a new light, a new being; a new wave will arise around you and you can ride on that tidal wave and go to that other shore.

Whenever there is really a dropping of unhappiness, happiness is left - nothing else is possible. One is simply happy without any reason, without any why.

But your saints are not happy, your saints are very sad; your saints are not living, your saints are dead. What has happened? What calamity? What curse? A mis-step. They thought that love had to be dropped and then there would be no misery. They dropped love - but the misery was not happening because of love, the misery was happening because of possessiveness. Drop possessiveness! In fact, convert the energy which is involved in possessiveness into love-energy. But that cannot be done by enforcing anything - a clear vision is needed, a clarity.

So the first thing I would like to say to you is: spirituality is not the practising of any virtue, spirituality is the gaining of a new vision. Virtue follows that vision; it comes on its own accord. It is a natural by-product. When you start seeing, things start changing.

In life there are three things - one, the objective world, the world of things. Everybody is able to see that. We are naturally capable of seeing the objective world. But this is only the beginning of the journey. Many have stopped there and think that they have arrived. Of course they have not arrived so they are miserable.

Beyond the objective is the opening of another world - the world of the subjective. The objective is the world of things, objects; the objective is the world of science, mathematics, physics, chemistry. The objective is very clear because naturally we are born perfectly able to see the objective. The subjective has to be explored; nobody is born with a vision of the subjective. The subjective has to be explored; one has to learn what it is; one has to taste it by and by and move into it by and by. The world of music, poetry, art - the world of any creativity - is the world of the subjective. The man who starts moving inwards becomes more poetic, more aesthetic. He has a different aroma around him, a different aura.

The scientist lives with things; the poet lives with persons. The scientist is not at all aware of who he is, he is simply aware of what surrounds him. He may be able to know about the moon and about Mars and about the stars far, far away, but he is completely oblivious of his own inwardness. In fact, the more he becomes concerned with faraway things, the more and more he becomes oblivious of himself: He remains almost in a sort of sleep about himself.

The poet, the painter the dancer, the musician, they are closer to home. They live in the subjective - they know they are persons. And when you know you are a person, suddenly you become capable of looking into other persons. For a poet even a tree is a person, even animals are people; for a scientist even a man or a woman is nothing but an object. A scientist looks at a man as if he is also just an object. And if he is not aware of his own inwardness how can he be aware of the inwardness of the other?

When I use the word 'person' I mean that there is an inside which is not available to outside observation, analysis, dissection. There is a rock, it has no inside; you can break it and you can see everything. If you break a rock, nothing is disturbed, nothing is destroyed. Even if it is in pieces, it is the same rock. But if you break a person, something of tremendous value immediately disappears. Now you are left with a dead body, and the dead body is not the person. The rock broken is still the same rock, but the person is no longer the same person. In fact, the person broken is not a person at all. On the dissection table of a surgeon you are not a person, only when a poet touches you and holds your hand do you become a person.

That's why people hanker for love. The reason for the hankering for love is nothing but this: you would like somebody to see that you are a person, not a thing. You go to the dentist, he is not worried about you - he is simply interested in your teeth. Even if I go to the dentist - I see him...what a miracle! He is not interested in me, he just looks at my teeth. I am there, sitting in his chair, he is completely oblivious of me. A great space is available just in his room but he will not even look at me - that's not his concern. He is only interested in the teeth, in his own technique. His knowledge of the objective world is his only world.

People hanker for love because only love can make you a person, only love can reveal your inwardness to you, only love can make you feel that you are not just that which is apparent from the outside. You are something more; you are something totally different to what you appear to be. The reflection in the mirror is not your totality; the reflection in the mirror is just the reflection of your surface, not of your depth. It says nothing about your depth.

When you come to a scientist, or a person who is absolutely absorbed with the objective dimension, he looks at you as if you are just the reflection in the mirror. He does not look at you, he looks around you. His approach is not direct, his approach is not intimate - and you feel something is missing. He is mistreating you because he is not accepting your personality. He is treating you as if you are a thing. He is doing things, but he is not touching you at all; you remain almost non-existential to him. And unless somebody touches you with love, looks at you with love, your own inwardness remains unfulfilled, unrecognised - that is what the need to be needed is.

The subjective is the dimension, the inward dimension, of poetry, song, dance, music, of art. It is better than the scientific dimension because it is deeper. It is better than the objective dimension because it is closer to home. But it is not yet the dimension of religion, remember. There are many people whose mind is obsessed with the objective - when they think about God, God also becomes an object. Then God is also outside. Ask a Christian where God is and he will look upwards, somewhere in the sky - outside. When you ask a person where God is and he looks somewhere else than within himself, then he belongs to the non-religious dimension. People ask, 'What is the proof of God?' Proofs are needed only for a thing. God does not need proof. If I love you, what is the proof? For poetry there is no proof, for chemistry there is. But poetry exists. And a world without chemistry would not be very much worse, but a world without poetry would not be a human world at all.

Poetry brings meaning to life, the unproved brings meaning to life - the proved at the most makes you comfortable. God is not an object and cannot be proved. God is more like music. It exists, certainly it exists, but there is no way to grab it. You cannot have it in your fist, you cannot lock it into your treasury, there is no way. Love exists but you cannot possess it. If you try to possess it, you belong to the objective dimension and you are killing love - that's why possession is destructive. If you possess a woman, if you say, 'She is my wife and I possess her' then she is no longer a person.

You have reduced her to be a thing and she will never be able to forgive you. No wife has ever been able to forgive her husband; no husband has ever been able to forgive his wife - because both have reduced each other to things. A husband is a thing, a wife is a thing, and when you become a thing you become ugly - you lose freedom, you lose inwardness, you lose poetry, you lose romance, you lose meaning. You become simply a thing in the world of things. Utility is there - but who lives for utility? Utility can never be satisfying. You are being used, how can it be satisfying? Whenever you feel you are being used, you feel offended. And you should feel offended, because it is a crime to use somebody and it is a crime to allow somebody to use you. It is a crime against God.

But there are people who try to use God also. When you go and you pray for something you are trying to use God. You don't know what prayer is, you don't know what love is, you don't know what poetry is, you don't know the subjective realm at all. Your prayer, if it has a motivation in it, a desire in it, is ugly. But we find - we are very cunning people - - we find ways and means.

Let me tell you an anecdote.

A minister, a priest and a rabbi were discussing how they decided what part of the collection money each retained for personal needs and what part was turned into their respective institutions. 'I draw a line,' said the minister, 'on the floor. All the money I toss in the air. What lands to the right of the line I keep, to the left of the line is the Lord's.'

The priest nodded, saying,' My system is essentially the same, only I use a circle. What lands inside is mine, outside is his.'

The rabbi smiled and said, 'I do the same thing. I toss all the money into the air and whatever God grabs is his.'

We even go on playing tricks with God. In fact, God is also our invention, a very cunning invention. It is also somewhere there - and you can pray to him, you can ask things from him, you can find security in him, consolation, comfort. It is a security measure, a sort of other-worldly bank balance. But it remains an object.

God is not an object - that's why Mohammedans, Christians, Jews have all tried not to make any image of God. That is very symbolic and meaningful because when you make an image of God it becomes objective. Let God remain without any image. But it has remained without an image only in theology. Whether you have made an image of God or not, it makes no difference; your mind, if it is capable of moving in the objective dimension, will treat God as an object. Even a Mohammedan turns towards Mecca for his prayers; that becomes an image. Even a Mohammedan goes to Mecca to kiss the stone; That becomes the image. The Black Stone of Mecca is the most kissed stone ever. In fact, it is very dangerous to kiss it now - it is unhygenic.

Mecca - The Black Stone

But whether you make any image of God or not, if the mind is objective, your idea of God will be objective. When you think of God you start thinking of high heaven, the uppermost boundary of the sky. God is THERE. If you ask a truly religious person where God is, he will close his eyes and go inwards. God is there, inwards. Your own being is divine. Unless God is immanent in you, unless God is immersed in your being, you are carrying an image. Whether you have made an image of wood or of stone does not matter - you can make an image with thinking, thoughts, ideas. That too is an image - made of a subtler material, but still an image.

'I see what I need to see.'Takeshi Kitana as Zatoichi the Blind Samurai 

Man remains the same unless he changes his dimension. Somebody is an atheist; he says, 'There is no God because I cannot see him. Show me and I will believe.' And then someday he comes to have an experience, a vision, a dream in which he sees God standing there. Then he starts believing.

In the Gita, Arjuna, Krishna's disciple, goes on asking again and again, 'You go on talking about him but I cannot believe unless I see.'

Now, what is he saying? He is saying, 'Let God be objective then I will believe.' And Krishna concedes to his desire. I am not happy with that - because to concede to this desire means to concede that the objective dimension is capable of seeing God.

The story says that Krishna then revealed his reality, his vastness; he revealed God. Arjuna started trembling and shaking. He said, 'Stop! Enough! I have seen!' He saw Krishna expanding and becoming the whole universe; and in Krishna stars were moving, the sun was rising and the moon and planets and the beginning of the world and the end of the world and all life and all death was there. It was too much; he could not bear it. He said, 'Stop!' And then he came to believe.

But this belief does not change the object, this belief does not change the objective dimension. He did not believe because he could not see; now he has seen so he believes - but the God remains in the objective world, the God remains a thing. I am not happy with Krishna for doing this. It should not be done. It is conceding to a foolish disciple's desire. The disciple needs to be changed from his dimension; he should be made more subjective. But we remain the same - we go on changing forms but we remain the same.

I have heard.

The funeral was over. Still sobbing, Goldberg, the new widower, followed his late wife's sister-in-law into the waiting limousine. As the big car passed through the cemetery gates the sister-in-law was horrified by Goldberg's hand which was slowly but passionately creeping up her leg. With her body still wracked with sobs of bereavement, she screamed, 'Goldberg, you monster, you fiend, you animal! My sister is not yet cold in her grave. What is the matter with you!'

In a voice shaking with emotion, Goldberg replied, 'In my grief do I know what I am doing?'

People remain the same in their grief or in their other moods - they remain the same, they don't change the dimension.

So this is the first thing to understand: you need a shift from the objective to the subjective. Meditate more and more with closed eyes about your emotions, about your thoughts. Look deeper into the inner world, the world that is absolutely private to you. The objective is public; the subjective is private. You cannot invite anybody into your dreams, it is not possible. You cannot say to your friend, 'Tonight come into my dream,' because the dream is absolutely yours. You cannot even invite your beloved who may be sleeping just on the same bed, who may be sleeping just by your side, hand in hand. But you dream your dreams and she dreams her dreams. Dreams are private. The subjective is the private; the objective is the public, the objective is the marketplace. Many people can watch one thing, but many people cannot watch one thought, only one person can - the person to whom the thought belongs.

Remove your consciousness more and more towards the private. The poet lives a private life; the politician lives a public life. Mahatma Gandhi used to say that he didn't have any private life. That means he must have had a very poor life. A private life is a rich life. The politician's life is there to be watched by everybody: on the TV, in the newspapers, in the street, in the crowd. The politician only has a public face. When he goes home he is nobody. He loses all face.

You have to find your private face. The emphasis should be more on the private than on the public. And you should start learning how to love the private - because the private is the door to God. The public is the door to science but not to religion, not to God. The public is the door towards arithmetic, calculation, but it is not the door to ecstasy, to love. And enjoy things which are very private: music, poetry, painting. Zen insisted on calligraphy, painting, poetry, gardening - something that is absolutely private, something that you live from the in towards the out, something that rises as a wave in the innermost core of your being and spreads outwards.

The public life is just the reverse: something rises outside and faces in towards you. In a public life the original, the source, is always outside. Your centre of being is never within yourself, It is always outside. That's why a politician is always afraid of the outside - because his life depends on the outside. If the people don't vote he will be nobody.

But that doesn't make any difference to a painter or to a poet. Nobody purchased Vincent Van Gogh's paintings. During his whole life not a single painting was sold, but that didn't matter; he enjoyed himself. If they sold, good; if they did not sell, good. The real prize was not in their being sold and appreciated, the real prize was in the painter's creating of them. In that very creation he has attained his goal. In the moment of creation he becomes divine. You become God whenever you create.

You have heard it said again and again that God created the world. I tell you one thing more: whenever you create something you become a small God in your own right. If God is the creator then to be creative is the only way to reach him. Then you become a participant, then you are no more a spectator.

Van Gogh, appreciated or not, lived a tremendously beautiful life in his inner world - very colourful. The real prize is not when a painting is sold and critics appreciate it all over the world - that is just a booby prize. The real prize is when the painter is creating it, when the painter is lost in his painting, when the dancer has dissolved into his dance, when the singer has forgotten who he is and the song throbs. THERE is the real prize, THERE is the attainment.

In the outside world you depend on others. In the public life, in the political life, you depend on others, you are a slave. In the private life you start becoming a master of your own being.

Let me insist and emphasise it because I would like all of my sannyasins to be creative in some way. To me, creativity is of tremendous import. An uncreative person is not a religious person at all. I am not saying that you all have to be Van Goghs - you cannot. I am not saying you all have to be Leonardo da Vincis or Beethovens or Mozarts; I am not saying you all have to become Wagners and Picassos, Rabindranaths - no, I am not saying that. I am not saying that you have to become a world famous painter or poet or you have to win a Nobel prize - if you have that idea, again you fall into politics. The Nobel prize comes from the outside; it is a booby prize, it is not a real prize. The real prize comes from inside. And I am not saying that you are capable - all are not capable of becoming Picassos. And there is no need either, because too many Picassos would make a very monotonous world. It is good that there is only one Picassos and it is good that he has never been repeated, otherwise it would become boring.

But you all can become creators in your own way. It does not matter whether anybody comes to know about it or not, that is absolutely unimportant. You can do something out of love - then it becomes creative. You can enjoy something while you are doing it - then it becomes creative.

While I am talking to you Astha is cleaning my bathroom and my room. I enquired of her if she would like to drop this work and come to the talk. She said, 'Osho, cleaning your bathroom is enough for me.' It is a creative act, and she has chosen it out of love. And certainly she is not missing anything. Whether she listens to me or not is not the point. If she loves cleaning the bathroom, if she loves me, it is a prayer. You can be here but you may listen to me or you may not listen to me. She is not here but she has listened to me. She has understood me. Now the work itself becomes worship. Then it is creative.

I would like to remind all of my sannyasins again and again: be creative. In the past the majority of the religious people proved to be uncreative. That was a calamity, a curse. Saints were simply sitting doing nothing. That is not real religion. When real religion explodes into people's lives, suddenly much creativity explodes also. When Buddha was here a great creativity exploded. You can find proofs in Ajanta, Ellora. When Tantra was an alive religion a great creativity exploded. You can go to Puri, Kanorak, Khajuraho and see. When Zen Masters were alive they created really many new dimensions - out of small things, but very creative.

If you are uncreative it simply means that you must have practised your religion, you must have forced yourself into a certain pattern, and you have got blocked, frozen in that pattern. A religious person is flowing, streaming, river-like; seeking, exploring, always seeking and exploring the unknown, always dropping the known and going into the unknown, always choosing the unknown for the known, sacrificing the known for the unknown. And always ready. A religious man is a wanderer, a vagabond; into the innermost world he goes on wandering moving from one place to another. He wants to know all the spaces that are involved in his being.

Be more creative. Dance, and don't bother whether somebody likes your dance or not - that is not the question. If you can get dissolved into it, you are a dancer. Write poetry. There is no need even to show it to anybody. If you enjoy it, write it and burn it. Play on your flute or guitar or sitar. You must see our tabla-player, Bodhi. How meditatively he plays on his tabla! That's his meditation. He is growing: going into it, dissolving, melting. The subjective is the realm of all art and creativity. These are the two ordinary realms of being.

The third, the really religious, is the transcendental. First is the objective - the objective is the world of science, second is the subjective - the subjective is the world of art; and third is the transcendental - that which goes beyond both; is neither objective or subjective; is neither out nor in. In it, both are implied, in it both are involved but yet it is higher than both, bigger than both, beyond both. The subjective is closer to the transcendental than the objective, but remember, just by being subjective, you don't become religious. You have taken a step towards being religious, a very important step, but just by being subjective you don't become religious. You can find poets who are not religious, you can find painters who are not religious...religion is more than art, more than songs.

What is this third? First, you start looking into your thoughts. Drop the public world and move into the private: look into your dreams, your thoughts, your desires, your emotions, your moods and the climates that go on changing inside you, year in, year out. Look into it. This is the subjective. Then the last and the ultimate jump: by and by, by looking into thoughts, start looking into the looker, the witness, the one who is watching the thoughts.

First move from things to thoughts, then from thoughts to the thinker. Things are the world of science, thought is the world of art and the thinker is the world of religion. Just go on moving inwards. The first circumference around you is of things, the second of thoughts, and the third, the centre, your very being, is nothing but consciousness. It is nothing but a witnessing.

Drop things and go into thoughts; then one day thoughts also have to be dropped and then you are left alone in your purity, then you are left absolutely alone. In that aloneness is God, in that aloneness is liberation, moksha, in that aloneness is nirvana, in that aloneness for the first time you are in the real.

The objective and subjective are divided; there is a duality, a conflict, a struggle, a division. The person who is objective will miss something - he will miss the subjective. And the person who is subjective will miss something - he will miss the objective. Both will be incomplete. The scientist and the poet both are incomplete. Only the holy man is complete; only the holy man is whole. And because he is whole I call him holy.

By 'holy' I don't mean that he is virtuous, by 'holy' I mean that he is whole. Nothing is left, everything is involved. His richness is whole: the subjective and the objective both have dissolved into him. But he is not just the total of subjective and objective, he is more. The objective is without, the subjective is within and the religious is beyond. The beyond comprehends both without and within and yet is beyond.

This vision is what I call spirituality - the vision of the beyond.

A few more things. In the world of the objective, action is very important. One has to be active because only action is relevant in the world of things. If you do something, only then can you have more things; if you do something, only then can you change in the world of objectivity.

In the world of subjectivity...inaction. Doing is not important, feeling is. That's why poets become lazy. And painters - even great painters and great poets and great singers, they have bouts of activity and then again they relapse into laziness. The subjective person is more sleepy, dreamy, lazy; the objective person is active, obsessed with action. The objective person always needs to do something or other, he cannot sit alone, he cannot rest. He can fall asleep - but once he is awake he has to do something. The subjective person is inactive. It is very difficult for him to move into action. He enjoys the world of fantasy - and that is available without action. He does not have to go anywhere, he has just to close his eyes and the world of dreams opens.

The religious person is the meeting of the opposites: action in inaction, inaction in action.

He does things but he does them in such a way that he never becomes the doer. He remains a vehicle of God, the passage - what the Chinese call wu-wei, inaction in action.

Even if he is doing, he is not doing it. His doing is very playful, there is no tension in it, no anxiety, no obsession about it. And even when he is inactive he is not dull; even when he is sitting, or Lying down and resting, he is full of energy. He is not lethargic, he is radiant with energy. Because both the opposites have come to a meeting and to a higher synthesis in him, he can act as if he is in a non-doing state and he can remain in a non- doing state but still you can feel the energy, you can feel a vibe of tremendous activity around his being. Wherever he moves, he brings life to people. Just by his presence dead people become alive; just by his touch dead people are called back to life.

Like Jesus.... When Lazarus died, Jesus was called. He went to the grave where Lazarus was kept and he called out, 'Lazarus, come out!' And the dead Lazarus came out and said, 'I am here. You called me out of death. I am here.'

A religious person is active - not because he is doer, a religious person is active because he has infinite energy available. A religious person is active - not because he has to do something, because he has an obsession to do, not because he cannot relax, but because he is such a pool of energy that he has to overflow; the energy is too much and he cannot contain it.

So while sitting silently.... You can see Buddha sitting silently under the Bodhi tree but you will see energy playing around him, a great aura of energy.

A beautiful story is told about Mahavir - that wherever he moved, for miles around life would become more alive. And he was an inactive man. He would simply stand or sit under a tree, for hours, for days, but for miles life would start throbbing with a new rhythm. It is said that trees would bloom out of season; trees would start growing faster than ever; dead trees would start producing new fresh leaves. Whether it happened or not is not the point, it maybe just a story. But it is very indicative, it is very symbolic. Myths are not symbolic things, myths are very meaningful symbols. They say something.

What does this myth say? It simply says that Mahavir was such a pool of energy, such an overflowing of energy, such an overflowing of God, that wherever he was, life would move faster. A speed would happen to all the existence around him. He would not be doing anything but things would start happening.

Lao Tzu has said that the greatest religious person never does anything, but millions of things happen through him. He is never a doer but much happens through him. He simply goes on sitting and yet the impact of his being on the world of affairs is tremendous.

Nobody may ever come to know about him - he may be sitting in a cave in the Himalayas so you never know about him - but still your life will be affected by him because he will be vibrating. He will give a new energy, a new pulse to life; he will impart a new pulsation to life. You may not come to know about him but you may have been benefitted by him.

The opposites become complementaries in a religious being. The day and night meet and dissolve their conflict; the man and woman meet in the religious person and dissolve their conflict. A religious person is ARDHANARISHVAR - he is half man, half woman. He is both. He is as strong as any man can be and he is as fragile as any woman can be. He is as fragile as a flower and as strong as a sword. He is hard and he is soft and he is both together. He is a miracle, he is a mystery. Because opposites meet he goes beyond logic, his being is paradoxical. He is alive as nobody else is alive and he is dead, more dead, than the dead who are in the graveyards. He is dead in a way and alive in a way - together, simultaneously; he has known the art of dying and the art of living simultaneously.

In ordinary life with the ordinary mind everything is divided into its opposites, and there is a great attraction for meeting with the opposite: the man seeks the woman, the woman seeks the man - the yin-yang circle. In a religious man all search has stopped - the man has found the woman, the woman has found the man. In his innermost core the energy has come to a point where everything has dissolved into oneness, into non-duality, ADVAIT. All opposites become complementaries; all conflicts dissolve and become co- operation. Then you have come home, then there is no need to go anywhere, then there is nothing to be sought, nothing to be desired. This state is the state of God. God is a state, God is not an object. And God is not even a person, because God is neither objective nor subjective. God is transcendental.

If you are in the objective I will say, 'Seek the subjective - there is the God.' If you are in the subjective, I will say, 'Now go beyond. There is no God in the subjective. God is beyond.' By and by one has to go on eliminating, by and by one has to go on dropping.

God is when there is no object and no subject, when there is no thing and no thought, when there is no this world and no that world. When there is no matter and no mind, God is; God is neither matter nor mind. In God both exist. God is a tremendous paradox, absolutely illogical, beyond logic. You cannot make an image of God in wood or in stone and you cannot make an image of God in concepts and ideas. When you dissolve all images - when you have dissolved all in/out, man/woman, life/death, all dualities - then that which is left is God.

Satoichi - The Blind Swordsman'I see what I need to see'

Now this story.

The eyes that see only the outside are blind. They are not really eyes yet. They are very primitive, rudimentary. The eyes that see withinwards are more real. The Rabbi was right. He said, 'Now there is no need to restore my eyes, because although I cannot see objects now I don't want to see them anymore. And the world that I need to see, I can see. It is good that blindness happened to me because now I am no longer disturbed and distracted by the other world of objects.'

It has happened many times. Milton became blind - and all his great poetry was born only after he became blind. At first he was very much shocked, naturally. He lost his eyes and there was no way to restore them. He thought his whole life was finished. He was a good poet, already famous. And, of course, a poet thinks, 'Without eyes, how can you see the trees and how can you see the moon and how can you see the river and the wild ocean? And without eyes how can you see the colour of life? Of course, your poetry will become very poor. It will lose colour.' But Milton was wrong. He was a religious man and he accepted his blindness. He said, 'Okay. If God wills it that way, then that has to be so.' He accepted it. And by and by he became aware of an infinite new world becoming available: the world of inner thoughts. He became subjective. Now there was no need to see outside so all his energy was available.

Have you seen blind people? On their faces you will always see a certain grace. Even ordinary blind people look very graceful, very silent. They don't have any of the distraction of the outside world.

Scientists say that man lives through the eyes; almost eighty per cent of his life is involved with his eyes. Eighty per cent! Only twenty per cent is distributed to other senses. You live eighty per cent of your life through the eyes. That's why when you see a blind man a great compassion arises in your being. You don't feel that much compassion for a dumb or deaf person, no, but for a blind person great compassion arises. You feel, 'Poor fellow. Eighty per cent of his life is not there.'

Eyes are very important. The whole scientific search depends on the eyes. Have you ever heard of any scientist who was blind? It is impossible. A blind person cannot be in objective research - it becomes difficult. But there have been many blind musicians, blind singers; in fact, a blind person has tremendous qualities of the ear which a man with eyes cannot have, because eighty per cent of his energy is no longer being wasted by the eyes. That energy shifts to his ears. His ears become very, very receptive and sensitive.

He starts seeing through his ears. Hold a blind man's hand and you will be surprised. You will find a very alive touch - a touch you will not find in people who have eyes. Hold the hand of a blind man and you will feel a warmth flowing towards you, because the blind man cannot see you, he can only touch you. His whole energy moves into his touch.

Ordinarily you touch with your eyes. A beautiful woman passes by - you look. You have touched her through the eyes. You touched her whole body - and without offending her and breaking no law. By and by you forget completely what touch is.

Eyes have become monopolies - they have taken many energies from many sources. For example, the nose. Eyes are very close to the nose. The eyes have taken the whole energy from the nose. People don't smell. They have lost their smell power. Their noses are dead. A blind person smells. His smelling capacity is tremendous. When you come close to him he knows your smell; he recognises you by your smell. He touches you; he knows you by your touch. He hears your sound; he knows you by your sound. His other senses become alive. And he is very graceful, because the eyes create much tension.

When Milton became blind, first he was shocked but-then he accepted - he was a religious man. He prayed to God and he said, 'Thy will be done.' By and by he was surprised that it was not a curse, it was a blessing. He became aware of infinite colours inside. It was a psychedelic world. Very subtle nuances, very beautiful dreams started opening up for him. And all his great poetry was born when he became blind. He was a good poet but not a great poet, but when he became blind he was no longer a good poet, he became a great poet. Good poetry is just so-so - luke-warm. Maybe you cannot find any fault in it but that's all. Great poetry has a penetrating energy in it; great poetry is a revolutionary force; it has an impact strong enough to shake the whole world, to change the whole world.

It has happened many times. When a certain person has suddenly become blind, if he can accept it, that very acceptance gives him a new world. The objective disappears, the subjective opens its door. And the subjective is closer to the transcendental - that's why all the meditators close their eyes.

Have you observed? All women close their eyes when you make love to them; men never close their eyes. They are foolish. The man wants to see the woman when he is making love to her. He would like to have the light on so he can see. And there are many foolish people who have mirrors in their bedroom. Not only would they like to see the woman, they would like to see all the reflections around. And there are a few who have fixed cameras in their room - automatically taking pictures - because if they miss something right now, later on they can see it!

But women are still not that foolish. I don't know about liberation women - maybe they are doing the same thing because they have to compete with everything, whatsoever it is. They may be making love with open eyes - but then they will miss something. Men make love in the objective dimension, women make love in the subjective dimension.

Women immediately close their eyes because it is so beautiful inside, what is there to see outside? When you are moving in love energy, melting, flowing, and an 0rgasm is opening inside you, it is there that reality has to be looked at. The man is just foolish, he is just looking at the body; the woman is more understanding, she is looking at the psyche - a higher standpoint.

But still it is not religious. It is artistic, aesthetic, but still not religious. When you become religious, then the Tantra attitude arises. Then you don't see with open eyes, you don't see with closed eyes you simply see the seer! You are not worried about the experience, you look at the experiencer, you look at the witness. Then love becomes Tantra. Whether it is a man or a woman who is moving into the dimension of Tantra, he or she is not interested in what is happening; rather, he or she is more interested in the witness who is watching it all. Who is this witness? And when the energy is exploding in such a natural, spontaneous realm it is better to watch. Just be a watcher on the hill. Forget about your being a man or a woman, forget about your being in the body, forget that you are a mind and just be a witness - and then you have become transcendental. Tantra is transcendental.

And this dimension has to evolve in all your ordinary life situations. Whatsoever you do, you can do in three ways: objectively, that is the scientific way, the Western way; or, subjectively, that is the Eastern way, or, the religious way, the transcendental way, in which East and West meet and dissolve. The religious way is neither Eastern nor Western. The West is scientific, the East is poetic; the West thinks in terms of history, the East thinks in terms of myths, PURANAS; the West is more concerned about what reality is, the East is more concerned with the fantasy about the reality, the dream about the reality; the West is more concerned with the conscious mind, the East is more concerned with the unconscious mind. But religion is beyond both. Religion is of the super-conscious mind, the transcendental mind - it is neither Eastern nor Western.

Just as man and woman meet, so East and West meet. West is more male, East is more female; West is more will, East is more surrender. But religion is both, and beyond.

Certainly a great religious statement - it's enough, more than enough, if you can see the seer. If you can see the seer. If you can be your consciousness, your awareness, that's enough. All is available. You have become a God, nothing else is needed.

Strive for that state of being. If you are coming from the West, struggle for it; if you are coming from the East, surrender for it. If you are coming from the West, will it; if you are coming from the East, be passive, wait for it.

And if you are my sannyasins, who don't belong to the East or to the West, then drop all duality, be non-dual. Drop all division. Just be individual. !f you belong to me then you belong to the transcendental. That is the whole meaning of being initiated by me. I bring you the transcendental, I bring you the ultimate, I bring you that which cannot be seen on the outside, that which cannot be seen on the inside but you can become that because you are already that.