posted January 20, 2008 01:39 AM            

The second thing to remember: if you seek after it, how can you lose yourself? The seeker can never lose himself; the ego remains, you remain a point of reference. Whenever happiness happens, you are not there. Remember moments of happiness: you were not there. It may have happened in a deep love, it may have happened in a discovery, or it may have happened just when you were playing cards, but you became so lost... suddenly the upsurge! Anything can trigger it, but a direct search is dangerous because you will miss it.

If you come to a master in search of happiness, you are near him for the wrong reasons. Then you remain hidden in your wrong reason. You remain close physically, spiritually there is much distance. Your eyes are blind, you will not be able to know this man, Jesus or Buddha. It is impossible, because your eyes are filled with the wrong goals.

Or you may not even be in search of happiness, there are even lower goals. You may be near a master to attain power, you may be near him to attain some siddhi, you may be near him to attain a more egoistic state; then you will miss him completely. There are even lower aims. And the lower the aim, the more possibility there is of missing because then you are more blind. You may be near him just for very ordinary reasons like seeking health. You are ill and Jesus will cure you: or you are poor and Jesus will give you money -- his blessings will become money to you; or you don't have a child and he can give you a child.

The lower the aim, the more you will miss, because the lower the aim, the more you are in the deep valley -- and Jesus exists on the top of the hill: the distance goes on becoming more and more. Many have escaped, but those who have come near, not all of them have come near either -- only one who comes for the right reason. And that right reason is truth. But why do you never seek it?

Truth seems to be so bare, truth seems to be so dry, there seems to be no urge to seek it. Happiness seems worthwhile, and if I insist, "Seek truth and happiness will be the byproduct," you may even agree to seek the truth, because the byproduct, happiness, will be there. But you are still seeking happiness. If you come to know that to seek happiness, truth has to be sought, you may start seeking truth -- but you are not seeking truth, your mind remains focused on happiness. That focusing is wrong.

Only when you are a truth-seeker do you come near Jesus, Buddha, Zarathustra; otherwise you never come near. For any other reason you are near physically; spiritually, you are very, very far away -- vast spaces exist.

Now look at this saying of Jesus:

JESUS SAID TO HIS DISCIPLES: MAKE A COMPARISON TO ME AND TELL ME WHOM I AM LIKE.

Why has Jesus asked this question? Is he not aware who he is? Is it to be known through the disciples who he is? Why does he want to know through the disciples who he is? -- because whatsoever they say will show why they are near Jesus. You create the image of your master according to your desire. If you are near Jesus because you are ill, Jesus will be the healer. You look through your desire, you project your desire. If you are there to seek power, then Jesus is the omnipotent, the most powerful, because only when he is the most powerful can he give it to you. If you are seeking immortality, if you are seeking a state of deathlessness, if you are afraid of death, then the image of Jesus will reflect your search.

Why did Jesus ask his disciples, "Tell me who I am"? He asked just to know what they are projecting. If you project anything you will miss, because to know Jesus or Buddha, nonprojecting eyes are needed. You should not project anything, you should simply look at the fact. Jesus is a fact, the most vital fact that is possible in the world. Look at him directly, immediately. Don't bring your desire in between. Don't make a screen of Jesus; otherwise, you will see but you will see your own desire reflected.

posted January 20, 2008 01:40 AM            

SIMON PETER SAID TO HIM: THOU ART LIKE A RIGHTEOUS ANGEL.

This man must have been a moralist, a puritan. This man must have been guilty of his immorality, because whatsoever you say about others never shows anything about others, it simply shows something about you. Whatsoever you judge is not a judgment about others, it is a judgment about you.

Jesus says again and again, "Judge ye not!" because all your judgments are going to be wrong -- you will be there. A thief is a sinner for you. Why? -- because you are so attached to your private property. It doesn't show anything about the thief, it simply shows your possessiveness.

I have heard that one Englishman died and he reached hell. The Devil asked him, "Which hell would you prefer?... because we have all sorts of hells here: the English, the German, the Chinese, the Russian, the Indian...."

The Englishman said, "The Indian of course!"

The Devil was puzzled. He said, "You look like an Englishman, so why do you choose the Indian?

He said, "I am an Englishman, but I have been in India and I know well that in the Indian hell the heating won't work!"

Your mind accumulates experience. Whatsoever you say about hell or heaven or other persons, it is your experience speaking; it is you reflected in each word you assert.

This Simon Peter said: THOU ART LIKE A RIGHTEOUS ANGEL.

Two things he is saying: first, 'righteous' -- he must have always been afraid of wrong, he must have been afraid of sin, he must have been afraid of being immoral. The opposite he projects on Jesus -- that's why he is with Jesus.

Remember one thing: opposites attract each other. If you are a man, you are attracted to a woman -- and that is the trouble! Because she is the opposite, that's why she is attractive. But to live with a woman will be difficult, because she is the opposite. This is how the misery of marriage arises: it begins in the attraction for the opposite, but when you have to live with the opposite, then there is trouble because in every way she is opposite. Her logic is totally different from yours. A man never comes to understand a woman. It is impossible to understand her, because a man thinks like a man and a woman thinks like a woman; they have different dimensions. A woman is more intuitive; she is not logical, she jumps to conclusions -- and almost always she is right! That makes more trouble. She cannot convince you; she cannot convince you whatsoever she says, because she has no logic about it. But she has insight, she looks immediately.

Once, Mulla Nasruddin was caught in a legal case. He looked in the court: twelve woman jurists. And he said to the judge, "I confess! ... Because I cannot deceive one woman at home, so twelve in the jury -- impossible! I have committed this sin, simply give me the punishment."

Every husband knows it is difficult to deceive a woman. Howsoever you plan, everything goes wrong the moment you reach home. The wife simply catches you, she hits exactly right at the wound. She is not aware either how she functions; her functioning is different.

A woman can never understand a man. This is also the reason why they attract each other, because only mysteries attract. But to live with someone you cannot understand is bound to create trouble, then there is going to be fighting. So wherever there is love continuous fighting happens, each moment a fight.

The opposite attracts: if you are a greedy person, you will be attracted by a man who has renounced; you will go to a saint who has renounced all if you are a greedy person. This is very difficult because this creates many troubles.

Look at the Jainas in India: they are the most rich -- and riches don't come without greed, you have to be greedy -- but they worship saints who have renounced all. They will not allow their saints to even wear clothes. No, that too is not allowed. The authentic DIGAMBER Jaina saint remains naked with no possessions, not even clothes. He possesses only his body, that's all. He has to take his food in his hands; he is not allowed to take food twice, once is enough. He sleeps on the ground, and that's why he is called digamber: the sky is his only covering, the sky is his only house, his only roof. But why this phenomenon? Why does this happen?

Mohammed talked about peace: the word islam means peace. But look at Mohammedans -- they have been the most violent people on earth. Why were they attracted to Mohammed and to the religion of peace? The opposite attracts. The opposite is always attractive because this is the basic pattern of sex, and this basic pattern of sex follows you everywhere, whatsoever you do.

This Simon Peter said to Jesus: THOU ART LIKE A RIGHTEOUS ANGEL. This man must have been guilty about his immorality -- rightly or wrongly, but he was guilty. He was attracted to Jesus because Jesus looked like an angel: pure, innocent, he had never committed a sin. That's why Christians go on insisting that he was born of a virgin mother, which is absurd! Why do they insist that he was born of a virgin mother? -- because sex looks immoral. And if you are born out of immorality, how can you become absolutely moral? Impossible! If the very source is poisoned then how will you be moral? You can try but you can never be perfect. The immorality should be cut at the very source. Hence their insistence that Jesus was born of a virgin mother.

Nobody is born of a virgin mother -- it is absolutely wrong, it cannot happen! But they insist, they depend on it. If it is proved finally that Jesus had a father, then Christians will desert him, they will immediately escape: "This man is just like us! We are immoral, we are born in sin, and if he is also born in sin then what is the difference?"

THOU ART LIKE A RIGHTEOUS ANGEL.

Angels are just symbols of absolute perfection, purity, innocence. This shows something about Simon Peter. And Simon Peter became the rock of the whole Christian church, he became the base. Hence, the Christian church is continuously involved with what is moral, what is immoral. The whole church has become a morality, not a religion. This Simon Peter is the root cause: he created guilt, because whenever you are too concerned with what is wrong, what is right, you become guilty -- because life knows neither.

Life is absolutely amoral. It is neither moral nor immoral, it is amoral. It knows nothing of what is wrong and what is right. It moves in both directions, it is both together. A river in flood -- what will you call it, moral or immoral? Thousands of villagers are drowned, hundreds of people dead, thousands homeless. What will you call this river in flood -- bad? No, you will not use that word, because you know the river does not know what is good, what is bad. And God exists in the river as much as in you. A tree falls down where a saint is meditating, he is killed. What will you call this tree -- a sinner, a murderer? Will this tree have to be forced to appear in a court? No, you will simply say, "This is a tree. Our morality -- sin or non-sin -- doesn't apply to this tree."

posted January 20, 2008 01:40 AM            

And this is the difference between a saint and a sage: a sage is as amoral as life, he has become one with life, he doesn't think in terms of opposites; a saint has chosen the right, denied the wrong; he is half-alive, he has not taken the whole of life. A saint is really not religious, because a religious man will accept life as it is. He will not deny, because whatsoever you deny is a denial of God. Then you try to prove that you are better than God. Look: God creates sex -- otherwise, who will create it? -- and you deny it. Then you can become a saint but your sainthood will be just moral, it cannot be religious.

Hindus understood it very well. If you go back to the days of the Vedas, the rishis used to live a very ordinary life: they had wives, children; they were householders, they had not renounced. Renunciation entered with Jainas and Buddhists. Otherwise, Hindu rishis always lived in a very ordinary way, because they knew, they came to know that life has to be accepted in its totality; nothing has to be denied, everything has to be accepted. This is what theism will really mean: astika means one who says yes to the whole of life, he is not a no-sayer. This Saint Peter can become a good priest, he can become a saint, but he cannot become a sage. He has his own conceptions, that's why he has come to Jesus.

When you are filled with too many moral concepts, what do you do? You condemn yourself, because there are things that are not dissolved just by saying they are wrong; they remain. This man will become attracted to women; they are beautiful, and the desire exists -- it is a gift of God. It is deep in your every pore, every cell of your body. Scientists say there are seventy million cells in the body, and each cell is a sexual being. Your whole body is a sex phenomenon! Whatsoever you do -- you can close your eyes, you can escape to the Himalayas, but beauty will always attract you.

A flower looks so beautiful -- have you observed? That too is sexual. A bird singing in the morning near a saint's cottage or hermitage looks beautiful, but have you observed that this singing of the bird is a sexual invitation? He is inviting the partner, seeking the partner, the lover. What is a flower? A flower is a sexual phenomenon, a flower is just a trick; because the tree cannot move, its sexual cells have to be carried by bees, butterflies and others to other trees. Remember, there are female trees and male trees, and they cannot move because they are rooted in the earth. The flower is a trick to attract the bees, butterflies, other insects: they will come on the flower, and with the bees the sexual seed will go; then they will go to the female plant and that seed will fall there.

Wherever there is beauty there is sex. The whole of life is a sexual phenomenon. What can you do? You can reject it, that is in your hands, but when you reject you feel guilt, because deep down the suppressed remains. You continuously feel guilty; something is wrong. You cannot be happy with guilt, remember, you cannot dance with guilt. Guilt will paralyze you: wherever you go, you cannot laugh, you cannot move in ecstasy, because you will always be afraid of the suppressed.

If you dance, sing, if you feel blissful, what will happen to the suppressed? It may come up, so you have to be constantly on watch. You become a watchman, not a master of your life, not an enjoyer of your life; you become just a watchman. And the whole thing becomes ugly because there is conflict, continuous conflict. Your energy is dissipated in inner struggle. And this type of man, who has suppressed his own being somehow, will always look at others with condemning eyes -- it is bound to be so.

A moralist is very difficult to live with, because his eyes are continuously condemning you: you are wrong because you have taken tea. Are you drinking tea? Then you are thrown into hell -- you cannot drink tea. Really, anything that can give you any enjoyment.... In Gandhi's ashram, you were not allowed to taste food -- aswad, tastelessness, was the principle to be followed; you could eat, but you should not taste.

Why? Why be against taste? -- because taste is enjoyment, and saints are against enjoyment. You cannot find a saint laughing or smiling -- impossible. He looks sad, always condemning himself and others. His whole life is ill, he cannot be happy.

This Simon Peter is symbolic. He said: THOU ART LIKE A RIGHTEOUS ANGEL. He is saying, "I have come to you because you are pure: born of a virgin mother, never married, never enjoyed life, never lived. You are pure, so I see you as an angel."

MATTHEW SAID TO HIM: THOU ART LIKE A WISE MAN OF UNDERSTANDING.

This Matthew is not in search of morality, this Matthew is in search of knowledge -- more scientific. And Jesus looks like a man of understanding, he thinks he can get some clues about the mystery of life from this man: "This man carries some keys. He knows, I can gather information from him." Matthew is in search of knowledge.

But when you come to Jesus or a man like Jesus, don't come in search of knowledge. Jesus looks a wise man, because whatsoever he says hits directly, whatsoever he says sounds true. Whatsoever he says is very meaningful, but you are paying too much attention to his words and not to his being. This Matthew is a pundit, a scholar; he is in search of principles, theories, systems, philosophies. If you come to Jesus with such a mind you will miss him, because Jesus is not a man of knowledge -- he is a man of being. And what is the difference?

Knowledge is superficial, borrowed, dead. This man is alive, absolutely alive! This man has not borrowed anything from anybody -- he has come to realize himself. He can share his being with you, and you are foolish if you just carry words from him. These words can be carried from books, there was no need to come to Jesus. A library would have been better; there is more knowledge in a library, accumulated for centuries.

You come to this man where your being could have quenched its thirst and you simply carry away words. You come to an emperor and he is saying, "Ask, and it shall be given to you," and you ask only for one piece of bread and go away happy. The whole empire was at your feet, just for the asking -- you carry words, you learn theories, you become a theologian. This Matthew is the root theologian for Christians.

And then the whole church got entangled in two things -- that's why these two are mentioned. Peter became the base of church morality, antisexuality, and he continues to be the base; and Matthew became the base of theology, and he continues to be the base. Christianity is involved with two things, not with Christ at all: with morality -- what is wrong and what is right, and with theology, theories about God. Theology means theories about God -- and there can be no theory about God.

God is not a theory, it is not a hypothesis which has to be proved or can be disproved; you cannot argue about it. And when Jesus was there, you could have encountered God. God was there, he had penetrated this man -- but a search for knowledge is a barrier. You should not ask Jesus for knowledge, you should ask for being. But to gather knowledge is easy, because you need not transform yourself. You simply listen to the words and gather them; no transformation is required on your part. But if you ask for being, then you have to be silent, then you have to be in deep meditation, then you have to become just a silence, a presence. Only then can Jesus pour his being into you.

posted January 20, 2008 01:40 AM            

Jesus is not a wise man. He is wisdom itself, but not a wise man -- because you can be wise without becoming enlightened There are wise men: Confucius was a wise man, but not enlightened. Manu was a wise man, but not enlightened. Buddha was enlightened, Lao Tzu was enlightened: their wisdom comes from a totally different source. They have reached the very center of life -- they have known. Their knowledge is not through intellect, their knowledge is through being. That's why I will call Jesus a man of being, not a man of knowledge.

Wisdom you can gather through experience -- any old man becomes wise. Even a foolish man becomes wise, because they say if you persist in your foolishness you will become wise. Just time can give you wisdom; just living through life, committing the mistakes, going astray, coming back; many experiences gathered, you become wise.

Jesus is not wise in that way: he was not an old man, he was just thirty, he was a very young man. He did not really have much experience of life, he is not wise in that way. But he has known something, something that is the very base of life. He has not moved on the branches of the tree of life, he has reached to the root. This is a totally different thing -- and Matthew will miss it. He will gather notes; whatsoever Jesus says, he will gather. He will create a gospel out of it, he will spin theories. Both these men miss him totally.

Thomas, the third, who has reported these sayings, he is the disciple closest to Jesus. But his sayings are not included in the Bible, because Jesus and his closest disciples have to be excluded -- they are dangerous.

THOMAS SAID TO HIM: MASTER, MY MOUTH WILL NOT BE CAPABLE OF SAYING WHOM THOU ART LIKE.

It is impossible to say. You are so many things, and you are so much -- you are so overflowing, you are so multidimensional, my mouth will not be able to say it. I am unable to say anything, words are not enough. You cannot be compared to anybody, you are incomparable. And whatsoever I say will be wrong, because it will not be enough. Words are very narrow, and you are vast!"

So says Thomas: MASTER, MY MOUTH WILL NOT BE CAPABLE OF SAYING WHOM THOU ART LIKE. "No, impossible! I will not say anything, because it cannot be said. You cannot be caught in words, you are inexpressible!" Thomas comes nearest, but even the nearest is far away, the gap exists.

A similar story exists with Bodhidharma. He lived in China for nine years. He taught people, many meditated, many came nearer and nearer, and when he was leaving he asked his four disciples to say something about dharma, to say something about truth. The first three are just like these three: Simon Peter, a man of morality -- the most superficial; then Matthew, the man in search of knowledge -- a little deeper than Simon but still very far away; then Thomas who said, "I cannot say anything."

But Bodhidharma was more fortunate than Jesus, because there was a fourth who really remained silent. He didn't even say this: "I cannot say." ... Because when you say, "I cannot say," you have said something; this has to be understood. The fourth remained absolutely silent. He simply looked in Bodhidharma's eyes, bowed down at his feet, and Bodhidharma said, "One has my bones, another has my flesh, another has my blood -- and you are my very marrow." This fourth one would not say even as much as Thomas has said. He came closest, he became the marrow.

Jesus was not so fortunate. There are reasons: the climate was not good, the situation was absolutely different. China had known Lao Tzu, but the Jews have never known a man like Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu created the very soil in which Buddha's seed could sprout beautifully. When Bodhidharma went to China the soil was ready. It had been tilled by Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu -- rare phenomena! -- and then Buddha's seed was carried by Bodhidharma. It flowered beautifully, it blossomed beautifully. Jesus was not so fortunate, the soil was not ready. There have been prophets in the Jewish culture, but not sages like Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, no. There have been saints, so Simon Peter was available. There have been moralists, because Moses put morality at the very base of Jewish culture: the Ten Commandments -- they are the base.

There were men like Simon Peter because nothing exists without cause, nothing exists without a long tradition. A Simon Peter is not just an accident, a long history is needed behind him. Moses is the deepest cause, the root from where Simon Peter came: the Ten Commandments, the moral attitude towards the world, towards life. But there was no man like Lao Tzu who says, "All distinctions are false: the moment you say, 'This is good and that is bad,' you have divided life and killed it" -- a man who was for the whole, not for the division. Bodhidharma was fortunate, and that is the reason he had four disciples, not three.

In a Jewish culture, at the most Thomas was possible. Look at the phenomenon of Thomas, what he is saying -- and this is one of the basic problems. There are people who say, "Nothing can be said about God," but they have said something. Even if you say, "Nothing can be said about God," you have said something. If you are correct then you have made a mistake. If you are correct -- nothing can be said -- then this should not be said either; you should remain completely silent. You have created a dilemma: on the one hand you say nothing can be said, but if this much can be said then why not a little more? What is the problem? If this much can be asserted, then why not more? If assertion is possible, then more assertion becomes possible.

That is why Buddha remained absolutely silent. He would not even say, "Nothing can be said about God." He would not say even this much. You ask about God and he would talk about something else. You ask about God and he would not listen -- as if you had not asked about God -- he would simply drop the subject, he would talk about something else. He would not even say this much, that nothing can be said, because this is absurd. Then why are you saying it? Even through negation we indicate. Not only is positive assertion an assertion, negative assertion is also assertion.

You say, "God has no form." What do you mean? Have you known him? And have you known him so totally that you can say, "He has no form"? If you have known him totally, then he has form. For example, you say that this ocean cannot be measured; it is so deep, it cannot be measured. Then there are only two possibilities: either you have measured it, because only then can you say it is so deep that it cannot be measured; or if you have not measured it, how can you say it is so deep it cannot be measured? Even depth is measurable -- has to be, it cannot be immeasurable; howsoever deep it is, it can be measured.

When you say, "God has no form," have you come to his boundaries and seen that there is no form? Because you have come to the boundaries, he has form. And if you have not come to the boundaries, then don't say he is formless, because he may have form. When you come to the boundaries, only then can you know. So those who have really stumbled upon God -- it is a stumbling -- who have fallen into him, will not say anything, not even this, because this is contradictory.

One of the keenest logicians of this century, Wittgenstein, has written a beautiful sentence. In his book Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, he has many beautiful statements. This is the best: he says, "Nothing should be said about something which cannot be said. If nothing can be said about a thing, one should remain silent."

posted January 20, 2008 01:41 AM            

THOMAS SAID TO HIM: MASTER, MY MOUTH WILL NOT BE CAPABLE OF SAYING WHOM THOU ART LIKE.

JESUS SAID: I AM NOT THY MASTER... because nobody understands me, so how can I be thy master?

If you understand, only then can you be a disciple. If you understand, only then can you enter into the temple. If you understand, only then can you enter the being of the master.

JESUS SAID: I AM NOT THY MASTER....

To all the three he says: I AM NOT THY MASTER. Thomas came closest but still missed. He is the best, but still not perfect -- just approximately the best. He comes closer but a barrier remains: he still believes in words, because he tries to express that which cannot be expressed.

I AM NOT THY MASTER, BECAUSE THOU HAST DRUNK, THOU HAST BECOME DRUNK FROM THE BUBBLING SPRING WHICH I HAVE MEASURED OUT.

Here he is stating a very profound truth. He is saying, "All three of you are talking from the mind -- THE BUBBLING SPRING WHICH I HAVE MEASURED OUT -- which I have gone beyond -- MEASURED OUT. You are still talking from the mind: one is talking through the moralist mind, another is talking through the theological mind, the third is talking through the mystic mind -- but still, all are part of the mind. And if you talk from the mind, I AM NOT THY MASTER... because the whole emphasis is: drop the mind!"

That is what a master goes on insisting: Drop the mind! And you play a trick: you start talking about the master from the same mind he has been insisting to drop. That's why I say Bodhidharma was more fortunate: he had a disciple who remained really silent, he would not answer.

There have been even more fortunate masters. One of them was Rinzai. He asked the same thing -- because really it is the same story again and again: Buddha and his disciples, Jesus and his disciples, Bodhidharma and his disciples, Rinzai and his disciples -- the story is the same. It cannot be different because the relationship is the same, the phenomenon is the same. Rinzai was even more fortunate. What happened? When he asked his chief disciple, "Say something about truth," what did the disciple do, do you know? You cannot even conceive. He slapped the master! And the master laughed and he said, "Right, you did well, because how can one answer when the very question is wrong?"

And this is the most fortunate master! How can you answer a question when the very question is wrong? The disciple is saying, "Don't be foolish, don't play games with me, don't try to put me in a puzzle. Don't throw me in illogical nonsense, because if I answer it will be wrong, and if I don't answer that will also be wrong -- because a master is asking. If I answer it will be wrong, because the very nature of truth is such that it cannot be expressed; if I don't answer, that will be impolite -- a master is asking, I have to answer." This is what he said when he slapped the master. Rinzai laughed and he said, "Right! When a disciple can slap the master, he has become a master in his own right. Now you go and teach others."

JESUS SAID: I AM NOT THY MASTER, BECAUSE THOU HAST DRUNK, THOU HAST BECOME DRUNK FROM THE BUBBLING SPRING WHICH I HAVE MEASURED OUT.

You are all still drunkards, drunk with the same madness of the mind! Mind is the source of all madness -- there can be degrees, but everyone who has a mind is more or less mad. Mind is equivalent to madness. You may not be too much, you may be just lukewarm mad, so you are not boiling, not evaporating -- nobody is thinking of sending you to the madhouse. You are just lukewarm mad, workably mad; you can work, you can move around and keep your madness inside. A man goes beyond madness only when he goes beyond mind. That's why Jesus says you are drunk: ... THOU HAST BECOME DRUNK FROM THE BUBBLING SPRING WHICH I HAVE MEASURED OUT. All three of you are speaking from the mind. You have not looked at me, because when you look there is no mind.

Don't carry a mind to a master. It is stupidity, because if you carry a mind to a master, you are not going nearer to him. You will not attain to satsang, you will not be in his presence; you will be filled with your mind, you will be drunk with your mind. When he is there you will be thinking, chattering. Inside, the mind will go round and round and round and will create a wall, and it will be impossible for Jesus to penetrate you.

AND HE TOOK THOMAS -- BECAUSE HE WAS THE NEAREST, THE BEST; HE WITHDREW -- INTO ALONENESS -- AND HE SPOKE THREE WORDS TO HIM.

NOW WHEN THOMAS CAME TO HIS COMPANIONS, THEY ASKED HIM: WHAT DID JESUS SAY TO THEE?

He had to work with the second best, the best was not available. Thomas was chosen. He took him and said three words to him.

NOW WHEN THOMAS CAME TO HIS COMPANIONS, THEY ASKED HIM: WHAT DID JESUS SAY TO THEE?

They are still interested in what Jesus says, not in what Jesus is. They are still interested in knowledge, words, not interested in the being.

THOMAS SAID TO THEM: IF I TELL YOU ONE OF THE WORDS HE SAID TO ME, YOU WILL TAKE UP STONES AND THROW AT ME; AND FIRE WILL COME FROM THE STONES AND BURN YOU UP.

This is very mysterious. Those three words have not been recorded, and Thomas never told the other disciples what those three words were. But he gives indications -- because when you are not ready only indications can be given; when you are not ready only hints can be given. If you are really an inquirer, through the hints you will reach the secret. The final secret cannot be given, you have to be ready for it. The more ready you are, the more it becomes revealed. He gives hints, so first try to understand the hints.

IF I TELL YOU ONE OF THE WORDS HE SAID TO ME, YOU WILL TAKE UP STONES AND THROW AT ME; AND FIRE WILL COME FROM THE STONES AND BURN YOU UP.

One thing he says: "If I say even a single word" -- Jesus has said three, but "If I say even a single word, you will immediately start to throw stones at me." What does he mean?

Man lives in lies -- every man, because lies are very convenient, comfortable. Truth is hard, inconvenient, uncomfortable. Lying is just like going down -- you go easily, with dancing feet. Truth is going high, up -- it is difficult, arduous, you perspire, it is not comfortable. Lies are convenient, comfortable, because you can make them, you can invent them. You can invent your own lie to fit you, but you cannot invent truth. This is the problem, the rub.

You can invent lies: you just go to a tailor and he makes a garment for you; you can make lies for yourself like garments, lies that fit you. But truth is not going to fit you, you cannot invent it; you will have to fit with the truth -- you will have to cut yourself. Truth cannot be cut like a garment; to fit truth, you will have to change. Lies are beautiful because you need not change -- you simply change the lie and it fits you. It is very cosy, it clings to you, it never forces you to change, you can remain static, stagnant.

The lie is always with you, never against you. And truth -- truth does not bother: if you want to be true, you have to change yourself. Truth cannot be invented, it has to be discovered -- it is already there. That's why man lives in lies, because you can invent your own lies.

Each country has its own lies, each race has its own lies, each religion, church, temple, gurudwara has its own lies. And they are very cosy, they cling to you -- they protect you from the truth. That's why, whenever truth is asserted, you will start throwing stones at the man who asserts it: because if he is true, your whole life is false. That's very difficult to realize -- you have invested so much in it, you have lived for it. Your dreams are all that you have got, your lies are all that you have got, and somebody comes and throws a truth...?

So there are only two possibilities: either you are ready to collapse completely, or you will throw stones at this man, because throwing stones at this man will not allow his truth to shatter your lies -- you can move again in your lies.

Psychologists have come to understand that man cannot live without lies. And as far as ninety-nine percent of people are concerned, they are right; the one percent we can leave -- they are exceptional. Freud, Jung, Adler, all three great discoverers of the mind of man, are absolutely in agreement on one thing: that as man is, he cannot live without lies, he needs lies; they are a basic necessity like food, even more basic. You can live without food for three months, you cannot live without lies for even three seconds -- it is like breathing.

Look what type of lies you live in! And whenever somebody supports your lie and makes it appear like a truth, you bow down to him. You are afraid of death, so you believe in the immortality of the soul. That is a lie for you -- you don't know anything, not even the ABC about the soul; you don't know whether the soul exists or not, but you believe in its immortality. And when somebody argues and proves that the soul is immortal, you bow down to him, you pay respect and you say, "Here is a man who has known!" What has he done? He has simply supported your lie; now he has given more life to your lie. You remain the same: you don't know what the soul is, you never bothered to know it. But the lie helps you to live. Then you are not afraid of death because there is no death -- the soul is immortal.

Hence, a very strange phenomenon has happened: this country, India, is the most cowardly on earth. Otherwise, how was it possible to make such a vast country a slave for hundreds of years? ... And to small races like the English -- not even equal to a province! Five hundred million people being enslaved by thirty million people looks illogical. But whosoever came -- Huns, Moghuls, Turks, the English -- whosoever came, India was always ready to be a slave. Why so much cowardice? And these people are the 'knowers of the self', and they say that they have the root knowledge and they know that the soul is immortal!

posted January 20, 2008 01:41 AM            

Self-knowledge remains individual. No country can possess it, it cannot become a heritage, it is not a tradition. A man knows and when that man dies that knowledge disappears from the world. It has to be discovered again and again and again, you cannot make it a possession.

This country is cowardly, but they have a beautiful theory. They are so afraid of death, you cannot imagine. Even to conquer Everest, foreigners have to come. Indians won't bother because everybody will say, "What foolishness are you going to do? And what are you going to get there? Why put yourself in danger?" Indians are always afraid of danger; wherever there is danger, they will not move. And these people think that they know that the soul is immortal. No, that is a lie! Not that it is not true -- for you it is a lie, and you are protecting your cowardice by it.

Look! India is a phenomenon -- look around. You cannot find such a greedy people, miserly people, anywhere in the world. And they call the whole world materialist -- a beautiful trick of the mind. They are spiritualists and the whole world is materialist; whenever they look at a Western man, deep down they say, "You materialists!" And you cannot find a more materialistic man than the Indian. He lives for money, is greedy for possessions; it is impossible for him to give anything, he has forgotten how to give, he clings to everything. But he calls the whole world materialist, "And we are spiritualists" -- a lie, a patent lie, but repeated so many times it looks like truth. It is false.

Everybody invents his private lie also. These are public lies, then you invent your private lies, and you live in them. They help you in a certain way: you may be a coward, but you think yourself a brave man, and you try to act like a brave man. That helps a little, because really if you are a coward and you feel that you are a coward you will stop moving in life. You will say, "I am a coward"; you will be paralyzed.

So psychologists say that without lies man cannot live -- even a coward moves into life. And this happens almost always: whatsoever you are, you will create the opposite lie, and you will overact it to make others believe and to make yourself believe. You will overact it -- a coward will overact: he will become a daredevil, but he is a coward, otherwise there will be no overacting. He may move into danger even where there is no need to move, just to show others and to convince himself that, "I am not a coward." But deep down he is afraid of his cowardice; fearful, so he projects the opposite.

A greedy man can renounce the world, become naked, just to convince himself that, "I am not greedy." But this is not going to help. This is a lie. Just by throwing clothes and leaving the house you cannot leave greed, because greed is not outside. It is not part of the house, it is not part of your treasures, it is part of you. Wherever you go -- naked or in clothes -- it makes no difference. Now greed is trying to hide itself by overacting, by moving to the opposite extreme of renunciation.

A man who is without greed will be without renunciation, because he doesn't need to overact. A man who is without fear will be without so-called bravery, because he doesn't need to overact. A man who has come to understand his being will be neither on this extreme nor the other. He will be balanced, his life will be a balance.

What do you think? A Buddha is moving and a snake comes. What will he do? He will simply jump out of the way! What will you call him, a coward or a brave man? He is just a sensitive man, a man of understanding. You will like that man who remains there, doesn't bother what the snake is doing -- the snake even bites him and he remains there -- you will call that man brave. But he is foolish, not brave. And deep down he must be a coward; to hide this cowardice he remains there.

But if you see Buddha jumping out of the way of the snake you will feel, "What type of man have I been following? This is a coward!" He is not a coward. When a snake is there, one has to move out of the way. This is simple intelligence. It is just as if somebody is honking his horn and you are standing in the middle of the road and you think you are a brave man. You are simply stupid! And standing there, whom are you convincing? Yourself, deep down, that "I am a brave man."

A man of understanding never moves to the opposite; he moves with understanding. Whatsoever the situation that arises, whatsoever the situation is, he responds with his awareness; he is neither brave nor a coward. You are either a coward or brave, but the other is hiding there: even a cowardly man can become brave in certain situations, even a brave man proves to be a coward in certain other situations.

Look at this problem: the bravest man, when he comes home, becomes a coward -- even a Napoleon before Josephine is a coward. Why does it happen that a husband who is such a great fighter in the world, in competition, in the market, simply becomes a coward before his poor wife? What happens? And don't think that this is about others, that you are not the man -- every husband is henpecked! This looks like an exaggerated statement. It is not, because out of sheer necessity, every husband has to be henpecked: the whole day he is brave, so at home he wants to relax from the bravery. And if he is not relaxed even at home, then where will he find the relaxation? So the moment he enters his home, he puts aside his armor.

He has been brave in the market, fighting continuously -- competition, enemies. There is war, a continuous war in the world; the whole day he fights. When he comes home he is tired of fighting, tired of bravery -- you cannot be brave twenty-four hours a day. Remember, nobody can be brave twenty-four hours a day -- you can only be alert twenty-four hours a day. Except that, everything moves with the opposite.

posted January 20, 2008 01:41 AM            

Once it happened: There was a lion-tamer, a very brave man. But he was always afraid of his tiny wife. And whenever he was late there was trouble. One night with friends he forgot completely, drank too much, and then by midnight he became aware, remembered that he had a wife and a home. And to go back home now would be very difficult, so where to hide? Not finding any place -- because it was a small town and if he went to any hotel his wife would come and catch hold of him -- not finding any place open, he went to the lions' cage in the zoo where he was a tamer. The key was with him, he opened the door: six big ferocious lions in the cage! He slept -- he used a lion's back as a pillow.

His wife searched all over the town. In the early morning, not finding him anywhere, she went to the place where he was working as a lion-tamer. He was sleeping, fast asleep, snoring. She poked the man inside the cage with her umbrella and said, "You coward! Come out, and I'll show you!"

This is bound to happen: if you choose one extreme, the other follows you. You may be a brave man somewhere, but you will be a coward somewhere else. It has to be so, because cowardice will be a relaxation. So that's why I say, out of sheer necessity a husband has to be henpecked. There is only one way that a husband is not henpecked: if he functions as a wife at the house, and the wife goes out and works. Then he is not henpecked, because then he is no longer a husband -- he is really a wife, and the wife is the husband.

Every extreme hides the other in it, and you have to show it somewhere; otherwise it will be too burdensome, it will be impossible to live under it. Only intelligence, awareness, what Buddhists have called prajnyan, a meditative state which is of balance, is always relaxed. A state of awareness is just like a cat: even when she is asleep she is alert. Just a little sound in the surroundings and she will jump on her feet, fresh, alert, awake. A mind who has remained in the middle, balanced, even if he is asleep, remains alert. There is no relaxation, because relaxation is not needed -- he has never been tense, he has never been a brave man nor a cowardly man. He has understood both and gone beyond.

Man lives in lies. He has to because he is trying not to accept the whole of his being, only part is accepted. Then what to do about the other part? He has to create some lie to hide it.

THOMAS SAID TO THEM: IF I TELL YOU ONE OF THE WORDS HE SAID TO ME, YOU WILL TAKE UP STONES AND THROW AT ME....

Truth has always been welcomed that way. It is not easy to assert truth: those who listen to it will become your enemies, they will start throwing stones. They are not really against you, they are only protecting themselves, their lies: ... YOU WILL TAKE UP STONES AND THROW AT ME....

And then he says a very beautiful thing: ... AND FIRE WILL COME FROM THE STONES AND BURN YOU UP. You will throw stones at me, you will throw stones at the truth -- but from the stones a fire will come up and burn you.

You cannot burn truth, you cannot crucify truth. You crucified Jesus. That's why I was saying yesterday that when Jesus was crucified by the Jews, he was not crucified -- they crucified themselves. And the fire has been burning since then, and they avoid and they escape from the fire -- but it follows. You can throw stones, but truth is never hurt.

The moment you throw stones at the truth, it means that you will be hurt, finally you will burn; a fire will come out of your own stones. And this is the whole history of the Jews: for twenty centuries continuously they have been burning. And I am not saying that those who have been torturing them are right. No! I am not a supporter of Hitler, or others who have been burning and destroying Jews; no, they are not doing right. The Jews are carrying their wound within themselves -- they create their Hitlers. This will look very, very difficult to understand.

A guilty man moves around to find someone who will punish him. When nobody is punishing him, he feels living more difficult. When someone punishes him, he feels at ease. Have you seen children? If you don't punish them, they will punish themselves; they will slap their own faces -- that relaxes them. A child has done something wrong and he looks to see whether father or mother or somebody has come to know or not, he is in search of that. If they have come to know, they can beat the child, and the child is at ease because now he has been punished. Finished. The account is closed; he did wrong and he has been punished. But if nobody knows, then he is in difficulty: something remains incomplete. He will move into a corner and slap his own face. Then he is at ease.

That is what is happening with people who do austerities: they have done something wrong -- whether it is wrong or not is not the question, they think they have done something wrong -- then they go on punishing themselves. You think they are moving into a deep tapascharya, austerity; they are great saints. They are simply guilty people punishing themselves. They may fast, they may beat their own chests, they may even burn themselves alive, but they are simply guilty children, immature, punishing themselves; they have done something wrong and they want to create the balance. They want to say to God, "I have punished myself enough, now you need not punish me." This is what Jews have been doing. This is one of the very deepest complexities of the human mind.

Jews are always in search of their Adolf Hitlers, somebody who can kill them -- then they feel at ease. When nobody bothers about them, then they are uneasy; the guilt follows. When you throw stones at truth this is bound to happen, and even after twenty centuries of suffering the Jews have not confessed that they did wrong. No! Jesus is still unaccepted, they go on behaving as if Jesus never existed; Jesus is still not part of them. And I tell you, unless they reclaim Jesus they will remain in trouble. And the trouble is not being created by others, they seek it. They are guilty people, and their guilt is very great.

Crucifying a Buddha, crucifying a Jesus, crucifying a Krishna -- can you conceive of anything more guilty? Jesus who was to be followed and worshipped, Jesus who was to be followed and lived -- and you did just the opposite. Jesus who should have become your life, your very life, your throbbing heart -- you did just the opposite: you killed him. Rather than making him your life, you destroyed his life. This wound will follow the Jews. It is difficult to get rid of it -- unless they reclaim Jesus.

The Hindus are better. That's why they are less guilt-ridden: they never killed Buddha. Buddha was more dangerous than Jesus, he uprooted the whole of Hinduism -- from its very roots. Jesus said, "I have come not to destroy the tradition, but to fulfill it." Never Buddha! He said directly, "I have come to uproot the whole tradition. All the Vedas are rubbish!" But Hindus never killed him, that's why Hindus could live without guilt. Not only did they not kill him -- they are very clever and prudent people -- they even made him an avatar. They accepted him -- just a little gone astray, but nothing much to bother about. They accepted him into the tradition. They say, "He is our tenth avatar," and they created a story around him -- that's why I say they are very clever and prudent people.

No other race is so clever; it has to be, because Hindus are the oldest, more wise. Experience has taught them much: that if you crucify Buddha you will never be free of him, because he will follow you, haunt you, so don't crucify -- neglect. But even if you neglect him, something of you will again and again look back. The man is there, so it is better to accept him -- and they accept him in such a rejecting way. This is prudence.

They created a story: God created hell and heaven, but for millions of years nobody reached hell because nobody was sinning. Everybody was religious, righteous; everybody was going to heaven. Then the Devil went to God and said, "Why? What have you created hell for? This is useless. Nobody comes, and I am tired of waiting and waiting. So do something -- otherwise close it down!"

God said, "Wait, I will send a man -- Gautam Buddha -- to the world. He will confuse people, and when people are confused they go astray, they will start entering into hell." And since then hell is overfull. But Hindus accepted Buddha as an avatar sent by God -- and they rejected him in a very subtle way. They have never been guilty.

posted January 20, 2008 01:41 AM            

They create their Hitlers, and when I say this to you, you also remember: whenever you feel guilty you create the punisher. You seek for punishment, because the punishment will make you guilt-free, then you can come to rest. Don't feel guilty, otherwise you will seek punishment.

Enjoy life in its totalness, otherwise you will feel guilty. Accept life as it is, and be thankful for it as it is; have a deep gratitude -- that's what makes a religious man. And once you accept the whole, you become whole. All divisions disappear, a deep silence ascends in you... you are filled with the unknown, because when you are whole, the unknown knocks at your door.

posted January 20, 2008 03:27 PM            

BUT IF YOU DO NOT KNOW YOURSELVES, THEN YOU ARE IN POVERTY AND YOU ARE POVERTY

The kingdom of God has been preached as if it is always somewhere else: in time, in space, but always somewhere else -- not here and now. Why has this happened? Why is the kingdom of God not here and now? Why in the future, or why somewhere else?

It is because of the human mind. The human mind disappears in the present. It lives in the future, in the hope, in the promise of the future; it moves through desire. Desire needs time, desire cannot exist if there is no time. If suddenly you come to a moment where you realize that time has disappeared, that now there is no time, no tomorrow, what will happen to your desire? It cannot move, it disappears with time.

Basically time is not a physical phenomenon, it is psychological. Time is not there outside you, it is the very functioning of your mind that creates time. A Jesus lives without time; you live in time. Hence, all the buddhas -- Jesus is a buddha, an enlightened person -- have been emphasizing, "Be desireless! Then suddenly the gates of heaven are open for you." But to be desireless you have to be here and now, because then there is no bridge to move into the future, to move anywhere; then there is no bridge. Desire is the bridge.

Mind needs time, mind cannot exist without time. The more time you have, the more ground mind has to play, to fool around. Then it can make many, many desires and dreams, and live in those desires and dreams. Priests have always been talking as if heaven is in the future, because only the future can be understood by the mind, and only because of that future can you be exploited -- and you also feel at ease.

I have heard that in one church the minister was praising the kingdom of God and he said, "There are streets of gold and fields of emeralds!" And he praised as much as he could and then he asked, invited, "Who would like to go there?" All the hands were raised except one old man's. The minister couldn't believe it. Why has this old man not raised his hand? He should be the first, because he is just nearing death. Then he condemned and painted a picture of hell, with all its ugliness, torture, pain, suffering, fire. Again he challenged, "Now, who would like to go to the kingdom of God, to heaven?" All hands were raised -- but that old man was still sitting without raising his hand. The minister was puzzled. He asked that old man, "Don't you hear me? Are you deaf? Would you not like to go to the kingdom of God, to heaven?"

The man said, "Eventually, yes. But the way you are carrying on, it seems you want to carry a load off right now. Eventually yes, but right now, no!"

If you are told, "The kingdom of God is here and now," you are not ready. Many are the desires to be fulfilled before you can leave; many, many things have to be done before you would think of entering the kingdom of God. You are still dreaming and not ready to be awake, you need time. The priest appeals to you -- but not a Buddha, not a Jesus, because Jesus talks in terms of no-time: he makes an uneasy friend. To live with Jesus is to live in constant discomfort. He doesn't allow you the convenience of dreaming, he doesn't allow you time, future -- he says that there is no tomorrow.

Tomorrow helps in another way: as you are right now, you don't accept yourself, you know you are not worthy. You know that, as you are, even you yourself cannot accept yourself. How is God going to accept you? No, it is impossible! You cannot conceive of it. You have condemned yourself so much, you are so guilty, that how will God accept you? It is impossible. Right now, if the kingdom opens, if the door invites you, you will not be able to have that much courage to enter. You need a little time to transform yourself, you need a little time to be good, you need a little time to be a saintly man. You need a little time to do many things so that your being becomes acceptable, so that even God can love you. There are many desires -- they need time. And many 'shoulds' are waiting -- they need time.

The whole morality of the world -- forms differ, but the essential base is the same -- has been condemning you: you are wrong, something has to be done; you have to be put right, you have to be polished, you have to be made worthy. So if somebody says, "The door is open right now," you feel uncomfortable. Then you cannot enter. But if he says, "It is in the future," then there is time enough. You are at ease, you can work it out, you will polish yourself. You can create an image, an ideal, and you will follow that ideal so some day or other you will become a saint. And this is the trick of the mind: if you can postpone, the mind remains the same; to remain the same, the mind wants to postpone. Not to change, ideals are needed; not to take the jump, time is needed so that you can postpone.

Postponing is the base of your continuity as you are. If this house is on fire you will not postpone, you will simply jump out. You will not even ask, "Where is the door? Where are the steps? From where to go?" You will not seek a teacher, a guide -- you will simply jump out. Anywhere will be the door! Wherever you are, from there the journey starts out. And you will not say, "Am I really worthy to be saved? Am I worthwhile?" No, all these questions will not arise.

Philosophy is for luxurious moments when you can ask questions and get answers and go on postponing. But when there is danger you put aside all philosophy. Have you observed, whenever you are in danger you put aside your mind? You don't think at all, there is not enough time to think -- the house is on fire, you jump! And when you are out, then you can sit under a tree and think again about what has happened. But in the moment when danger is there, when death is there, time is no more. You simply have to act, there is no gap to think; you have to act, only action can save you.

Time is postponement, and you would like to postpone for millions of reasons. One is: many things are yet unfulfilled -- you have not tasted this world. You have been in this world millions of times, you have tasted it in millions of ways, but still the hunger remains, the thirst is there. Not because there was not enough time... for the whole past you have been here -- and the whole past means eternity, it is beginningless -- since eternity you have been here, acting in millions of ways, fulfilling millions of desires, and yet you are still hungry and thirsty. You think more time is needed? You have had already more than enough! Not more time, but understanding, awareness is needed that the very nature of desire is to remain unfulfilled.

However much time is given, even many eternities, the desire will remain unfulfilled. It is the very nature of desire that it remains unfulfilled. It will arise again and again, and the more you try to fulfill it, the more it will arise; you are simply feeding the desire when you think you are fulfilling it. You move into sex, you think you are fulfilling it -- you are simply feeding the desire. Tomorrow it will come back even more greedy, even more full of lust, with even more expectations. You feed it again, tomorrow it will knock at your door again with more madness, with more hope -- and every day it will grow. And as you experience it, you feel more and more hungry. You are feeding it, the fulfillment is not there.

And this is so with every desire. Look at ordinary desires, very ordinary ones: you take food, the hunger disappears, but it disappears only to come back again. Can hunger disappear forever through food? Is there any possibility that, just by taking food, hunger will disappear forever? You are thirsty, you drink water -- do you think the thirst is going to disappear forever? No, that is not the nature of desire. And these are ordinary desires that you can understand. They are repetitive, and the more you repeat, the more you are hypnotized, because repetition is hypnosis: you did it yesterday, you are doing it today, you are hoping to do it tomorrow; you are repeating the desire. And the more you repeat it, the more you get into it.

You have desired in many ways for millions of lives, and you are born in that particular way that you desire. And you fulfill it: a man who wants to have sex like a dog will be born like a dog; a man who is greedy like a pig will be born like a pig, so that he can fulfill his desire. You have been born in every possible way, because you have existed for eternity -- like a tree, like a bird, like an animal.... This is what Hindus call yonis. They say you have been born through millions of wombs, your desire has taken many forms, and you have tried through every possible dimension. Nothing has happened up to now, nothing is ever going to happen, because the very nature of desire is to remain unfulfilled. If you understand this then the future is not needed -- then you can remain here and now. And when the future drops, desire drops.

Try to understand from another direction: you have tried in every way to transform yourself -- you don't remember your past lives, but you know this life -- you have done everything to transform yourself. Are you even a little bit transformed? Even a little bit, I say? Are you even a little bit transformed? Or do you simply remain the old -- a little polished here, a little polished there, a little modified here or there -- but is there really any change? Has any mutation happened to you? And if it has not happened up to now, what reason is there to think it is going to happen in the future? And if you go on living the same way you have lived, postponing, then it is never going to happen, because postponing is a trick of the mind not to allow transformation to happen.

posted January 20, 2008 03:28 PM            

Postponing is not the way of transformation. Up to now you have been postponing -- been postponing again and again. Each moment you have been postponing -- and that's why you have remained the same. If you understand this, transformation is this moment... because it needs no effort, it is an awakening. It is not a question of modification, it is not a question of doing something with your self. As you are, you are perfect; as you are, you are divine; as you are, you lack nothing at all -- simply awakening is needed. Just come out of your dreaming and your sleep, just open your eyes and see the fact, and the fact transforms: suddenly, you are no longer the past.

When you drop the future, the past is dropped immediately. This is one of the fundamental laws of life: if you can drop the future, the past drops immediately because it cannot remain there. It is just like making a bridge on a river. The bridge needs two banks to exist. If one bank disappears, the other bank alone cannot support the bridge -- the bridge falls, everything disappears. The past and the future are the two banks, and between these two you have made a bridge of desire. You are always going somewhere, always going somewhere. If you are not reaching, then the mind says, "Move fast!"

This is why the whole modern trend is for speed. The mind says, "You are not reaching because your speed is not great enough. The goal is just there, you can see it is attainable tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow at the most; the goal is there, you can see it on the horizon. Your speed is not great enough -- move fast, run! Create new mechanisms to help speed and you will reach."

We have reached the moon because of this logic -- and we have not achieved any goal. Speed goes on becoming faster and faster and faster; sooner or later we will be moving with the speed of light, right now we are moving with the speed of sound. The more speed, the more lost you will be, because then it will be very difficult to come back home. Right now, you cannot go very far away; the more speed, the more difficult to come home.

This is why self-knowledge has become almost impossible in this age, the age of speed. Buddha realized himself easily, Jesus realized himself easily, because they lived in the age of no speed -- they simply walked. The bullock cart was the fastest thing possible, and you can walk faster than a bullock cart. They walked on the earth, we are flying in the skies, we have penetrated space, and the faster we move the more difficult it becomes to come back home.

I have heard, once it happened: Two beggars found a motorcycle on the street -- somebody had forgotten to take the key with him. The motorcycle was there with a sidecar, so one tramp jumped on the motorcycle, the other in the sidecar, and they sped away bound for the next town.

After fifteen minutes the man who was driving looked at his friend. The friend's face was absolutely red, as if he had gone mad, or as if he were dying. He asked, "What is the matter?"

The other said, "Slow down a little, because this thing has no bottom, and I have been running all the way!"

This thing desire has no bottom. You are dying because you have been running all the way, and faster and faster and faster, and this thing has no bottom. Desire has no bottom, that's why it cannot be fulfilled. If you try to fill a pot with water and it has no bottom, when will you be able to fill it? It is impossible. Why are you not able to fill this bottomless pot of desire? You have never looked to see whether it has a bottom or not -- you simply jumped. And you have been running so fast that there is no gap to stop and have a look to see what is happening.

All the priests exploited this. But Jesus is not a priest -- you cannot find a man more anti-priest than Jesus. A real religious man is never a priest, he cannot be, because the priest is exploiting your weaknesses. A real religious man, a master, wants to make you stronger. And a priest is just a cunning man who knows what your weakness is. The weakness is to look to the future, to postpone: somewhere, eventually, you will enter into the kingdom of God -- but not right now. Many other more important things have to be done, many more important desires have to be fulfilled. God is always the last item on your list, and the list is infinite. He is not going to get any chance. He is the last item.

Now look at these words of Jesus.

IF THOSE WHO LEAD YOU SAY TO YOU, 'SEE, THE KINGDOM IS IN HEAVEN'

... not here, somewhere high in the skies, somewhere far away; the kingdom of God is somewhere distant, very far away -- THEN THE BIRDS OF HEAVEN WILL PRECEDE YOU. They will reach before you, then you will be at a loss. Jesus is joking, he is saying: Then don't hope, because the birds of heaven will reach before you!

IF THEY SAY TO YOU, 'IT IS IN THE SEA,' THEN THE FISH WILL PRECEDE YOU ... and they will reach before you, you will miss.

About whom is Jesus talking? He is talking about the priests. The priests are the enemies of religion, but they have become the managers. They manage everywhere, and then they don't allow a Jesus-like person to enter their temples.

There is a beautiful story in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. After eighteen hundred years Jesus thought, "Now I must go and visit the earth again, because after eighteen hundred years of Christianity, now the earth may be ready to receive me. Now, they will not reject me as they did before, because when I went there before there was not a single Christian, I was a stranger. Now, half the earth is Christian; millions of churches and priests continuously preaching Jesus' word. Now I am going to be received, welcomed; all the doors will be open to me. Now is the time. I should not have gone before -- that was not the right time."

He came again, of course on a Sunday morning, because it is difficult to find who is a Christian or not if you come on other weekdays. It is impossible, everybody is the same! Only on Sunday can you distinguish who is a Christian, because religion is a Sunday affair. It is not concerned with life, it is just a ritual to be done, a formality to be fulfilled -- without any heart in it. And he reached his village, where he had come eighteen hundred years before: Bethlehem. He stood in the marketplace, a little apprehensive because people looked at him and nobody recognized him, and they were coming in and going out of the church. And then a few people gathered around him and they started telling him, "You look just like Jesus -- you have done a good act, you are a good actor!"

Jesus said, "I am not an actor. I am the real Jesus."

So they started laughing and they said, "If you are the real Jesus, then escape before the priest comes out; otherwise you are bound to get into trouble." Then small urchins started throwing stones and people started laughing: "The real Jesus has come, the king of the Jews! This is the man they crucified -- he is resurrected!" And they were joking and laughing.

And Jesus felt very much... because these were his people, they were no longer Jews. They were Christians; they followed him, and even they could not recognize him. But he waited, hoping, "At least my priest will recognize me. These may be foolish people, ignorant -- but my priest knows."

And then came the priest. People stopped laughing, just out of respect for the priest. They made way for him, the crowd allowed him to go in, they bowed down in deep respect. Jesus laughed in his heart: "They have not bowed down to me, they have not given me any respect, but they respect the priest. At least that is a good sign, because he is my priest. Through him they will recognize me. They recognize me through him, not directly, because they are blind and they cannot see."

And then the priest looked at him and said, "Come down, you ruffian! What do you think you are doing, insulting our God?"

Jesus said, "Can't you recognize me?"

The priest collared him and said, "I recognize you well. Come and follow me." He took him into the church and locked him into a cell. Jesus was very puzzled: "What is going to happen? Are my own people going to crucify me again?"

And then in the night the priest came with a small candle in his hand and unlocked the door. He locked the door from the inside, bowed down, touched Jesus' feet and said, "I recognize you well! But not in the marketplace, not before the worshippers, because you are an old troublemaker. Somehow we have managed everything well, but you will disturb things. Now everything is smooth, Christianity is established: we have converted half the earth, sooner or later the other half will be converted. You just wait there, you need not come here! You could not convert a single man when you were here and we are doing so well, we have managed so well; you should be thankful to us.

"And we can recognize you when there is nobody, but we cannot recognize you before others because you are anti-priest, anti-church, you are anti-establishment. And if you insist, then we will have to crucify you again. We can worship you when you are not present because that doesn't disturb anybody. Everything is smooth, moving well -- look how we have managed! Half the earth converted, millions of churches and priests preaching your word. You should be satisfied. So escape immediately from here, and don't come again. We are the agents here and whatsoever you want to do, you can do it through us. You cannot be allowed to move among the masses directly. You are dangerous!"

This priest is stating one of the basic truths: that the priest cannot be religious. He may be a priest of Buddha but he is against Buddha. He works for him, or appears to; he quotes his words, or appears to. But if Buddha comes he will stand between you and the Buddha and won't allow you in, because a Buddha, a Jesus, is always rebellious, he is never conformist. He can create a revolution, he cannot create an establishment.

WHEN JESUS SAYS: IF THOSE WHO LEAD YOU SAY TO YOU -- he is indicating towards the priests -- 'SEE, THE KINGDOM IS IN HEAVEN,' THEN THE BIRDS OF HEAVEN WILL PRECEDE YOU. IF THEY SAY TO YOU, 'IT IS IN THE SEA,' THEN THE FISH WILL PRECEDE YOU.

And the priests always say it is somewhere else.

It happened in India... because India is the oldest land of the priests. Nowhere has such a priesthood come into existence as in India -- it became a caste, brahmins, they are the priests. They secluded themselves totally from the society, they made everything secret, their language was not allowed to be known by everyone. Not everyone was educated in their ways, because when people are educated and they can read the scriptures it is difficult to hide the truth from them. Only the priest was allowed into the innermost shrine of knowledge -- nobody else.

These brahmins ruled this country for thousands of years. First they were saying that God was in the Himalayas, because the Himalayas were unapproachable. But by and by people approached the Himalayas and they found no God there. So the brahmins said, "These are not the Himalayas we were talking about, these are just a copy of the real Himalayas which exist in heaven. These are just a reflection -- you will not find God in the reflection. The real Kailash, the real Himalayas, is in the other world." Then their gods moved to the planets, to the moon, to the sun.

When man reached the moon for the first time Hindus were very much disturbed, Jainas were very much disturbed. The West does not know how disturbed they were, because the West does not know how much was invested in the moon. In India, there was much disturbance.

There is a priest, a very learned one, who has been trying to prove that the whole thing, this journey to the moon by man, was false. Why? Such a simple fact -- it has happened! -- why is he denying it? He has made a big institute. Many have donated hundreds of thousands of rupees to the institute to prove that this is sheer myth that man has reached the moon, to prove that nobody has reached the moon. Why? -- because they have much investment there. If man has reached the moon and God is not there, then they must again shift his residence to somewhere else. And these scientists are going to reach everywhere. Now you cannot allow God to stay anywhere for a long period -- wherever you say God is, man is going to reach there. Heaven was unapproachable, the sea was unapproachable. There are primitive religions which say that God lives in the sea, under the sea, and there are religions which say God lives in heaven. But one thing is certain for the priest: that God doesn't live here, because if he lives here, then it is very difficult -- then what need is there of the priest?

posted January 20, 2008 03:28 PM            

The most cunning profession on the earth is that of the priest. Why the most cunning? -- because he is exploiting a very innocent heart. A man who is seeking God, a man who is seeking purity, a man who is seeking truth -- that man he is exploiting. If you exploit a man who is seeking money, there is not much difference between you and him because he is also seeking money; there is not much difference. But if you exploit a man who was seeking truth, this is cunning -- the most cunning thing possible, the most evil thing possible. Priests should think and say and prove whether they are really the representatives of God, or not really representatives of God. If they are representatives of anything they are representatives of the devil. But they have taken over, they have become the managers.

JESUS SAID: IF THOSE WHO LEAD YOU SAY TO YOU, 'SEE, THE KINGDOM IS IN HEAVEN,' don't listen to them, otherwise you will miss that kingdom forever and forever.

BUT THE KINGDOM IS WITHIN YOU -- it is not anywhere else, it is exactly where you are this moment -- AND IT IS WITHOUT YOU. It is within you and it is without you. It is within you like a center, it is without you like a circumference.

What is Jesus saying? Within plus without is the whole world, within plus without is the whole universe -- nothing is left. Jesus is saying, "God is this universe, this whole existence. As it is, it is divine. God has dissolved himself into his creation." He is not like a painter who paints and then remains separate. He is like a dancer who dances and becomes one with the dance -- you cannot separate the dancer and the dance. You can separate a painter from the painting, you can separate poetry from the poet, but you cannot separate a dancer from the dance. That is why Hindus call their Shiva, Nataraj, the greatest dancer: because there is no separation, he is in the dance.

If you can understand the dance, you can understand the dancer; if you can catch hold of the dance, you have caught hold of the dancer. If you can love this world, you have loved him. If you penetrate even into a flower you will find him. He is hidden here -- and he is not hidden because he tries to hide himself; he is hidden because you are not open. Otherwise, he is an open secret. He is everywhere, all around, within and without. The kingdom is within you, it is without you.

IF YOU WILL KNOW YOURSELVES, THEN YOU WILL BE KNOWN AND YOU WILL KNOW THAT YOU ARE THE SONS OF THE LIVING FATHER. BUT IF YOU DO NOT KNOW YOURSELVES, THEN YOU ARE IN POVERTY AND YOU ARE POVERTY.

Listen: the kingdom is within you! Then all temples become useless, because you are the temple. Then you are the church. Then the Vatican becomes useless, then Rome is just a burden. Then there is no need for a Mecca and Medina, no need for a Girnar and Kashi. You are the temple, the live temple of God. He is within you. Then what is the need of a priest, a mediator? Then the whole profession loses meaning. He exists in you, as you are. He has always been existing in you, as you are.

Somebody asked Rinzai, "I would like to be a Buddha myself. What to do?"

Rinzai said, "If you seek, you will miss -- because you are already the Buddha."

It is absurd: Buddha seeking, Buddha making efforts to become a Buddha! You cannot find God because he is not somewhere else, he is within you. And there you never look because all the priests say, "Look: there in heaven, he exists far away. The journey is long; the priest will be needed to help you."

Jesus cuts away the very ground of all churches, temples, priests, mediators. He says, "He is within you." But he also says a very rare and beautiful thing, he also says, "and he is without you."

There are three types of religions: one which says, "God is without." Hindus, Mohammedans, their insistence is that God is without. Then there is another type of religion which says, "God is within." Jainas, Buddhists, they say you are God, but they never say God is without, no. Jesus says, "God is within and without." This is the greatest synthesis, the highest synthesis possible. He is not choosing an extreme.

One extreme is: God is without. That's why Mohammedans are very much against you if you say, "I am God." They will kill you because this is one of the most evil assertions; it is kufra, blasphemy. Hence, they killed Mansoor, because in his ecstasy he danced and asserted, "Ana'l haq, aham brahmasmi -- I am God." This is blasphemy; a Mohammedan cannot tolerate it because God is without. At the most you can come nearer and nearer to him, but you can never become him. How can a creature become the creator? The creature remains a creature, and the creator remains the creator. So they think this is disrespectful if you assert, "I am God." That means a creature, a slave, a created thing is asserting, "I am the creator." This is blasphemy, it is irreligious.

Then against this pole there is Jainism. They say that God is within; your soul is the supreme God and there is no other God. They have moved to the other extreme, so they don't worship any God; worship has lost meaning for them, they cannot pray. To whom to pray? And prayer is such a beautiful thing, but it has become meaningless.

Look at a Mohammedan in prayer. He is beautiful. He can pray because God is there. There is nothing like a Mohammedan praying. If you want to see prayer, see a Mohammedan praying: he looks so innocent, so completely surrendered -- but he is dangerous. If you assert that you are God he will kill you, this man who was praying. Jainas cannot pray, they cannot worship; the dimension of prayer and worship has simply disappeared. They can only meditate. Meditation is allowed because God is within; you just have to close your eyes and meditate.

Jesus reaches the peak of the synthesis. Here he asserts one of the greatest truths: that God is within and without. Prayer is possible, meditation is also possible; you can sing in ecstasy about the without, you can be silent in ecstasy about the within -- he is everywhere. No need to drop prayer, no need to drop meditation. Nothing like meditation exists in the Mohammedan tradition; it cannot exist, only prayer is possible. Nothing like prayer exists in Jainism, only meditation exists. Both have moved to extremes.

Jesus remains balanced. He says, "God, the kingdom of God, is within you and it is without you."

IF YOU WILL KNOW YOURSELVES, THEN YOU WILL BE KNOWN.

This is the synthesis. If you know yourself, Jainas will say, you have known all. Finished! There is nowhere further to move. Mohammedans cannot say you can know yourself; they can say you can know God and be filled with his grace. There is no possibility of self-knowledge, because self-knowledge will make you a god. Only God knows himself, not a creature. A man can know God, that's all. He can exist in his glory, he can be filled with his grace, his light; he can allow himself to move and float with the divine force, but no self-knowledge is possible. Jainas say only self-knowledge is possible; if you know yourself, you have known all that is to be known, nothing remains. But Jesus says: IF YOU WILL KNOW YOURSELVES, THEN YOU WILL BE KNOWN.

This is very subtle. What does he mean when he says: ... THEN YOU WILL BE KNOWN? If you know yourself, the whole existence will know you; in your knowledge, the whole existence will look at you. Not only will you be looking at existence, the whole existence will also respond, because God is within and without.

When somebody comes to know himself, it is not only self-knowledge -- the whole existence knows you. In your self-knowledge, you are known. God looks at you from every flower, every leaf, every rock -- you don't feel you are alone in your self-knowledge. Really, until you know yourself you are alone. When you know yourself, the whole existence knows you. Your knowledge is not a solitary act, it is not a solo thing, it is a symphony. When you know, everything knows you; when you recognize yourself, everything recognizes you -- even this tree will be different, even this rock will be different, even a bird will react differently. Why? -- because the same one consciousness exists within and without.

When you know yourself the whole existence recognizes you, celebrates. And it should be so, because you are part of existence. The whole existence must celebrate your ultimate knowledge, because a part has become a knower, a part has become a Buddha, a part has become a Christ; through that part, the whole existence has reached a peak, a crescendo. The whole existence will be happy, the whole existence will flower and bloom in a different way. You will be recognized, you will be known.

You will not be alone in your self-knowledge -- it is going to be a celebration of the whole. This is the most beautiful thing Jesus asserted: a celebration of existence with your self-knowledge; the whole blissful because one part has bloomed, reached its fulfillment.

posted January 20, 2008 03:28 PM            

There is a deep tendency to be known, deeper than that for self-knowledge. You want to be known, a deep desire is there that everybody should know you. It may be moving in a wrong direction, you may be trying to get the attention of people through wrong ways, but deep down the desire has a seed, a very meaningful seed. It says that you will not be fulfilled unless the whole existence recognizes you, is happy with you.

You have a need to love, and you have a need to be loved. You have a need to know yourself, and you have a need to be known. A response is needed, otherwise the whole existence is dead; otherwise you alone have come to know, and the whole existence remains silent as if nothing has happened. A man has become a Christ and the whole existence remains unaware, inattentive, not bothering at all, not happy in any way, as if nothing has happened? How can this be so? The whole existence must recognize, because we are not strangers to this existence. This existence is a family, this existence exists as an interrelated phenomenon. One is enlightened and his light fills all hearts, knowingly, unknowingly; everywhere there will be rejoicing, celebration.

This is why Jesus says:

IF YOU WILL KNOW YOURSELVES, THEN YOU WILL BE KNOWN AND YOU WILL KNOW THAT YOU ARE THE SONS OF THE LIVING FATHER.

What have Christians been saying? Just the opposite. They say, "Jesus Christ is the only begotten son of God." Their whole dogma moves around this thing 'the only', because if all are the sons, then what is the specialness in Jesus? Then how is he unique? Then why should he be worshipped? Just to make Jesus special -- and they have forgotten that they are going against Jesus.

Jesus says: ... AND YOU WILL KNOW THAT YOU ARE THE SONS OF THE LIVING FATHER.

Two things -- one: everything that exists in this universe is son to the whole, it has to be so. You are born in it, through it. The whole existence has been fathering you -- or it would be even better if we could say, is mothering you. It would have been better to use the word mother rather than father, but it was difficult because Jews have remained male chauvinists. It was difficult to say 'mother'.

There are male chauvinist countries, races: Germans call their country 'fatherland' -- the only country which is known as fatherland; every other country calls itself the motherland. These Germans are dangerous people -- why 'fatherland'? Man and his ego! Why should God be the father? Why should God not be the mother? Why should he be 'he' and not 'she'? Mother seems to be more relevant, because the father does not take much part in the creation of the son. At the most, he just triggers the thing, nothing else. And a father is disposable.

Even an ordinary injection can do; the work of the father can be done by a syringe, he is disposable. The whole creation comes through the mother: she carries the child for nine months; her blood, her whole being, moves into the child. You exist in the universe as if you exist in a womb.

There are people who have used 'mother' for God. They are more right, but just more right; to be absolutely right is impossible because then God will be both father and mother. He cannot be male, he cannot be female, because there is no one who can trigger the thing. He is both: ardhanarishwar, half-male, half-female; he is both, he and she.

But it depends. When Jesus was there, it would have been very difficult for him to say 'God the mother', because nobody would have understood. His audience was Jewish, and they believed in a very ferocious father God, very revengeful -- you went against him, and he would take revenge. A mother can never be revengeful, she is always forgiving, she is always understanding. A mother never insists on being obeyed, a father insists on being obeyed. The Ten Commandments cannot come from a mother, they can come only from a father. Commandments -- the very word is ugly, as if he is a general and existence is something like a military camp -- commandments! Then you disobey at your own responsibility and risk.

Jesus used the current language, but I know that he would have preferred 'mother'. A mother is more than a father: a mother exists at the center, a father at the periphery -- but God is both. Remember this: I also use the word 'he' for him, but always remember that whenever I use 'he' it is just for convenience. He is both he and she.

posted January 20, 2008 03:29 PM            

Everybody is a son. This is not as logicians, sociologists and psychologists will think -- this is not anthropomorphism. It seems, appears, that to think of God as a father or a mother and to think about yourself as a son, you are projecting human relationships onto the cosmic, you are making the whole cosmic phenomenon a family affair; you are thinking in human terms. This is a condemnation.

Sociologists, psychologists, who say that this is anthropocentrism -- that man thinks of himself as if he is in the center, and projects his own terms, feelings about everything -- whenever they say this is anthropocentric, they are saying this is wrong. But they have not understood: it appears anthropocentric, it has to appear so, because whatsoever man says is bound to be human. Even an objective truth is going to be colored by the person who asserts it. Even objectivity cannot be without the subjective; the subjective goes and colors it.

Even scientific truths are not objective: the man who discovered them has entered into them. There is no possibility of coming to the objective truth, because the knower will almost always color it. All knowledge is personal. And whenever man says something, because man says it, it is going to be human. And there is no need to be apologetic about it -- it is beautiful.

When Jesus says that we are all sons of God this is just a symbol, a simile. What does he mean? He means that, between the creator and the created, the relationship is not mechanical, it is organic. The relationship is not just like a mechanic creating a machine -- he is not a father because he remains aloof, out of it, detached. This is the meaning: God cannot be detached from you. He is just like your father, attached to you, moving through you, working through you, caring for you, loving you, searching for you, in every way creating a blissful world around you so that you can reach fulfillment.

When Jesus says, "God is the father," he means all these things: that the universe cares about you, it helps you. Not only are you in search of God, God is also in search of you. The universe is not dead and detached, it responds with a loving heart. If you cry, it cries with you. If you laugh, it laughs with you. If you are in pain, existence feels the pain. If you are happy, the whole existence feels happy with you. Between you and existence there is a deep relationship. This is the emphasis: the relationship of a father to a son.

Even if the father dies, he hopes to live through the son; he will be somewhere in the son, the son has become just a new version of the father. That is the meaning: the son is just a rebirth of the father. That's why Jesus says again and again, "I and my father are one." He means the son represents the father -- he is the father. They are joined together; they are not two, they are one and the relationship is organic, and you need not feel alone.

Now the whole world feels an aloneness. Everybody feels a stranger, and everybody is in difficulty. And people come to me and they ask, "How to relate?" What has happened? This is a very new question -- nobody ever asked two hundred years ago, "How to relate?" Now everybody asks, "How to relate?" Relationship has become very difficult. It is a logical consequence: if you cannot relate to the whole, you cannot relate to anybody; if you can relate to the whole, then you can relate to anybody. You cannot relate to your father if you cannot relate to the universe -- impossible, because that is the source of all. When religion disappeared, relationship disappeared.

A country which has become irreligious will always feel difficulties in relationship. You cannot relate to your wife, to your brother, to your sister, to your son, to your father, to your mother -- impossible! Relationship is impossible because the base of all relationship has disappeared. You have denied, you have said, "God is no more, God is dead." Then the whole universe is alien, and you feel alienation, you feel cut off, unrelated; then you have no roots in it, and you feel the universe is not caring about you.

The universe of the scientist and the universe of a religious man like Jesus are totally different. The universe for the scientist is just accidental: there exists no relationship between you and the universe; it is uncaring, it does not bother about you. You are just accidental; if you were not there, existence would not have felt your absence a little bit; if you are there, your presence is not known to the universe. If you disappear, the universe is not going to shed tears for you.

The universe of the scientist is dead. Whenever you say, "God is dead," the universe is dead. And if you live in a dead universe how can you relate? Then you live among things. Everything will be accidental, just arbitrary. You have to make some arrangements, but there is no organic unity. You exist alone, and then you carry the whole burden. It is just like a small, lost child: he was holding his father's hand, now he has lost the hand and he cries and weeps -- and there is nobody to hear.

The situation of man is just this: a small child who was holding the hand of his father is now lost in the wood. With the hand of the father in his hand, he walked like an emperor, unafraid. There was no fear because father was there; it was his responsibility, the child was not responsible for anything. Whatsoever was needed would be done, he was not to worry about himself. He walked, he looked at the butterflies, at the flowers, at the skies, he enjoyed everything. Life was blissful. Suddenly, he becomes aware that the hand is not there -- he has lost his father. Now there are no butterflies, no flowers. Everything has become stony, dead, and everything is alien and foreign, inimical. Now from every shadow of every tree there is danger all around; he is afraid of death. From any corner, any moment, death will jump and kill him.

Just a moment before everything was alive, friendly, a rapport was there between the child and the whole universe. Why? -- because the hand of the father was there. Through the father, the universe was friendly; it was a relationship. Father disappeared, now relationship has disappeared. Now he is crying, now he is weeping, now he is in deep anxiety, anguish. This is the situation of the modern man, because you have become incapable of looking at the universe as a father or a mother. No wonder everybody is neurotic! This child will become neurotic, this child will become abnormal. This child will always carry a wound in his chest, and that wound will disturb all his relationships. He cannot feel at home anywhere now.

Look at your hand. You can't feel a cosmic hand in it? Then you will be in difficulty. This is what Jesus says: "God is the father. This whole universe cares about you." Otherwise, why should you be here? Why should you be allowed to exist? This whole universe cares about you. It has brought you up to this point of consciousness, it wants to carry you to the ultimate peak, to the final peak of enlightenment -- it helps you in every way. Even if you go astray it will follow you. Feel the hand in your hand, and suddenly the total perspective changes.

And Jesus says, "Everybody is the son" -- not only Jesus alone. But Christianity cannot exist if everybody is the son, because then there is nothing unique in Jesus. This attitude is false. Everybody is the son, and still Jesus is unique, because he has recognized it and you are still in search.

The uniqueness is not in the nature of being, the uniqueness exists in the nature of recognition. Jesus knows this and you don't know. Hindus have always said that the difference between one who is enlightened and one who is ignorant is not in being, but only in knowing. It is just as if somebody is asleep and you are awake; being is the same, but one who is asleep dreams, and you are not dreaming. Shake him, make him awake, and he is as awake as you are -- his dreams have disappeared. Only a shaking is needed. Jesus is awake and you are fast asleep, that is the distinction. In this respect he is unique, but not in being. He himself says: YOU ARE THE SONS OF THE LIVING FATHER.

And the second insistence is on 'the living father', because ordinarily a father is going to die. The physical part of the father will die, the biological part of the father will die, but the cosmic whole is always alive, it never dies -- it is eternity.

Just a few decades ago Nietzsche declared, "God is dead!" That is impossible, because the universe cannot die, and God is not a person. If he were a person, he could die -- persons have to die. God is not a form -- forms have to die; God has no body -- bodies have to die. God is all. In God we are born and we die. We take form and the form disappears, but the whole remains. The whole cannot die, the whole is life itself. So you are not living in a dead universe but in an alive God who is a father, a mother; the relationship is deep and organic. You are not uncared for, somebody goes on looking after you.

posted January 20, 2008 03:29 PM            

BUT IF YOU DO NOT KNOW YOURSELVES, THEN YOU ARE IN POVERTY.

This is the only poverty: ignorance of oneself -- there is no other poverty. You may not have riches, you may not have great palaces, you may not have empires, but those are not real riches. Only one thing is real wealth and that is self-knowledge, because it cannot be destroyed.

And Jesus says: BUT IF YOU DO NOT KNOW YOURSELVES, THEN YOU ARE IN POVERTY... and not only that... YOU ARE POVERTY.

You are poor. There is only one poverty: when you don't know yourself. Why is it poverty? -- because you are emperors, sons of a living God! The greatest that is possible has happened to you, and you are unaware of it and you go on begging.

All desires are begging. It is said that if wishes were horses, beggars would be the riders. But all desires are horses, and beggars are riders -- you are all riders. Look at your horses: they are your desires, begging, demanding, asking -- and you have all within you but you never look within. Once you look, riches will be revealed, eternal, in abundance, you cannot exhaust them. And once you look within the whole existence recognizes your emperorship, the whole existence recognizes who you are: you are the son of the whole. Then all begging disappears, you become rich for the first time.

BUT IF YOU DO NOT KNOW YOURSELVES, THEN YOU ARE IN POVERTY AND YOU ARE POVERTY.

I have heard a story: Once it happened, a great emperor was very much annoyed by his son and his ways and his style of life. He was the only son, but he annoyed his father so much that the son was expelled from the kingdom. He was the son of a great emperor so he knew nothing, he was not skilled in anything -- emperors are not skilled in anything. He did not know how to do anything, he had not learned; everything had always been done for him, he never knew that you have to do things on your own. But he was a lover of music. That was the only thing he could do; he had learned it as a hobby. He played on his sitar, that was the only thing he knew.

So he started begging. He would play on his sitar and beg. If emperors lose their empires they cannot do anything except beg. This is something beautiful, it shows that deep down emperors are beggars. Just because of the empire you cannot see their beggary. If the empire is taken away they are beggars, they cannot do anything else. For ten years continuously he was begging. He completely forgot that he was the son of a great emperor. Ten years is too long to remember. And when you are a beggar every day from the morning to the evening, how can you remember that you are the son of a great emperor?

He became a beggar and he forgot himself completely, even the memory went. And these memories are bad, nightmare-like, you want to forget them, because through them much misery comes in the mind. Comparison comes: "I am the son of a great emperor -- and begging!" Then begging becomes too painful. So he simply dropped the idea, he simply forgot, he became identified with the begging.

After ten years, the father started feeling for the son. The son was not exactly right, his ways were different, but he was the only son. And now the father was getting old and any day he would die. And the son was his heir, he had to be brought back. So his vizier went in search.

The vizier arrived. Even if the son had completely forgotten that he was the son of an emperor, even if he had completely identified with being a beggar, still something had remained -- because it was not part of his memory, it was part of his being. The way he walked, even the way he begged, was just like an emperor. He would beg, but as if he were obliging you; the way he would look was as if he had obliged you by begging. The way he walked was kingly; his clothes were rotten, but still they were the same clothes that he had used as a prince. He was dirty, unclean, but you could see that he had a beautiful face hidden under that dirt. And his eyes: even if he was a beggar, his eyes were still of that same ego, the same pride. Mentally, consciously he had forgotten, but unconsciously he was still the king, the heir of a great emperor.

The vizier recognized him. The moment when he recognized him, he was begging. Under a tree a few people were playing cards, and he was begging there. It was a summer afternoon, very hot, and he had no shoes, he was perspiring, and he was begging for a few paise, saying, "Give me something -- I have been hungry for two days." The vizier recognized him, and the chariot in which the vizier had come stopped. The vizier came down, he touched the feet of the son, and the son looked at him and he said, "What is the matter?"

The vizier said, "Your father the emperor has called you back. He has forgiven you." In an instant the beggar disappeared. Nothing was to be done -- in an instant, the recognition that, "My father has called me back, I am forgiven!" and the beggar disappeared. The clothes were the same, the man was still dirty, but everything changed: there was glory, a light, an aura around him.

He gave orders to the vizier; begging disappeared. He said, "Go into the market, purchase shoes and clothes for me and arrange a good bath." He went up into the chariot and he said, "Take me to the best hotel in the town!" And the vizier had to follow the chariot on foot.

This is a Sufi story. This is your situation also: once you are recognized by the father, by God, your begging disappears -- suddenly, in an instant! Nothing is to be done because you have always been the same. Only the identity had gone wrong, only in the superficial part of the mind you had become something else. Deep down you have remained sons of God.

But this will happen only if you know yourself. Then the whole universe knows you, recognizes you. And Jesus says:

BUT IF YOU DO NOT KNOW YOURSELVES, THEN YOU ARE IN POVERTY AND YOU ARE POVERTY.

posted January 27, 2008 06:13 PM            

From the most ancient days, man has asked again and again why there is suffering in life. If God is the father, then why is there so much suffering? If God is love and God is compassion, then why does existence suffer? And there has not been a satisfactory answer to it. But if you understand Jesus you will understand the answer. Man suffers because there is no other way to mature, to grow. Man suffers because only through suffering can he become more aware. And awareness is the key.

Observe your own life: whenever you are comfortable, at ease, happy, awareness is lost. Then you live in a sort of sleep, then you live as if hypnotized, you live as if in a sleepwalk; you move and do things -- but somnambulistically. That's why, whenever there is no suffering, religion disappears from your life. Then you never go to the temple, it carries no sense for you; then you don't pray to God, because why? There seems to be no reason.

Whenever there is suffering you move towards the temple, your eyes move towards God, your heart moves towards prayer. There is something hidden in suffering which makes you more aware who you are, why you are, where you are going. In a moment of suffering your awareness is intense.

Nothing can be meaningless in this world. It is a cosmos, it is not a chaos. You may not be able to understand -- that's another thing -- because you know only fragments, you don't know the whole. Your experience of life is just as if you have only one tattered page of a novel: you read it but it makes no sense because it is just a small fragment, you don't know the whole story. Once you know the whole story, then this page will become comprehensible, then this page becomes coherent, meaningful.

What is meaning? Meaning means to know the fragment in relation to the whole; meaning is a relationship of the fragment to the whole. A madman talking on the street is meaningless. Why? -- because you cannot relate his talk to anything, his talk is a fragment. But he is not talking to anybody, there is no need, there is nobody there to talk to. His talk is fragmentary, it is not part of a bigger whole, that is why it is incoherent. The same words may be used by another man -- exactly the same words -- but he is talking to somebody, then it is meaningful. Why? The words are the same, the sentences the same, the gestures the same, and one man you say is mad and the other man is not mad. Why? -- because there is somebody to listen; the fragment is not fragmentary, it has become part of a bigger whole, it carries meaning.

posted January 27, 2008 06:14 PM            

I am reminded of a dream of Bertrand Russell. He was an atheist, he never believed in God, he could never see any wider meaning that could comprehend the whole. He relates one dream: one night, he heard somebody knocking on the door in his sleep. So in the dream he went to open the door, and he saw old God standing there. He couldn't believe his eyes because he never believed -- even in his dream he could remember that, "I don't believe in God." But the old man looked so forgotten by everybody, abandoned by everybody; his clothes were tattered, dirt had gathered on his face and body; he looked so out-of-date -- almost like a faded painting in which you cannot see clearly what is happening -- Russell felt much pity for him. Just to cheer him up he said, "Come in!" He slapped his back like a friend and said, "Cheer up!" And then suddenly he awoke and the dream disappeared.

This is the state of the modern man, the modern mind: God is out-of-date. You are either against him or, at the most, you pity him. Through pity you may try to cheer him up, but he is no longer a meaningful thing for you -- just an out-of-date painting, faded, useless, junk from the past. Either he is dead or deadly sick, on his deathbed. But if the whole is dead, how can the fragment be meaningful? If the whole is out-of-date, how can the part be new, fresh and young? If the whole tree is dead, then any leaf of the tree, if it thinks it is alive, is simply stupid. It may take a little more time for the leaf to die, but if the tree is dead the leaf has to die -- it is already dying.

If God is dead, then man cannot live. And he is deadly sick, because without the whole the fragment has no meaning. But whenever you are happy -- glimpses of happiness, not in fact happiness -- whenever you are just comfortable, at ease, when nothing disturbs you, then you think you are the whole. And this is fallacious. When you are in suffering, suddenly you become aware that you are not the whole. When you suffer, you suddenly become aware that you are not as you should be, something is wrong -- the shoe pinches. Something is wrong -- and some transformation is needed. Hence, the suffering.

Suffering gives you awareness: suffering gives you the feeling that you have to mutate, you have to become new, you have to be reborn. As you are, you are in suffering, so something has to be done.

JESUS SAID: BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO HAS SUFFERED; HE HAS FOUND LIFE.

Looks absurd and paradoxical! He says: BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO HAS SUFFERED.... We always call that man blessed who has never suffered. But have you seen any man who has never suffered? If you ever see such a man, you will find him absolutely juvenile, childish, without any growth, without any depth, without any awareness -- he will be an idiot. And you can never say that he is blessed.

Only one who has never tried to live, who has been avoiding life, can remain without suffering. That's why, in very very rich families, only idiots are born, because they are protected so much. And when you protect somebody so much it is not protection against death, it is protection against life. But this is the problem: if you want to protect somebody against death you have to protect him against life, because life leads to death. So don't live if you are afraid to die -- this is simple logic -- don't be alive if you are afraid to die; then cut all the dimensions where life exists. Then you can simply vegetate.

Jesus cannot call a vegetative life blessed, nobody can say that a vegetative life is blessed. That is the greatest misfortune that can happen to a man because he will never grow in awareness and maturity; and he will not have higher layers of consciousness because those higher layers come into existence only when they are challenged. Suffering is a challenge; when you suffer you are challenged, when there is a problem you are challenged. When you encounter the problem, only then do you grow. More insecurity, more growth; more security, less growth. If everything is secure around you, you are already in your grave, you are no longer alive. Life exists in danger, life always exists in the possibility of going astray. But one who goes astray can come back, one who fails can succeed.

posted January 27, 2008 06:15 PM            

You can go astray if you seek and search, if you walk on the path. If you are simply sitting at home, how can you go astray? If you don't do anything you will never commit a mistake, you will be a mistakeless man, but you will never move; by and by you will simply rot, vegetate and die. Never be afraid of making mistakes, simply remember that there is no need to make the same mistake twice. Why do you make the same mistake twice? -- because the first time you made it you didn't learn anything from it. That's why you have to make mistakes again and again and again. And people go on making the same mistakes, repeating them their whole lives; they move in a circle. That's why Hindus have called this world sansar.

Sansar means the wheel: you simply repeat the same mistakes again and again and again. Situations may differ, but the mistake remains the same, of the same quality. What does it show? It shows that you are not alert, otherwise why commit the same mistake again? Commit another because then you will learn. Nobody learns without mistakes. Whenever you commit a mistake you have to suffer. Nobody learns without suffering. Hindus have said that you have to be born again and again because you have not yet grown.

Only a grown-up person goes beyond this world. Those who have not grown, they have to fall back in the pit, they have to learn. And every learning is the hard way, there is no shortcut. That hard way is suffering. Don't protect yourself against suffering; rather, on the contrary, move into suffering as fully aware as possible. Take the challenge, encounter it! You will grow through it. Try to transcend it, go beyond it. Don't be afraid -- once you become afraid you are already dying. That's why Jesus says: BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO HAS SUFFERED; HE HAS FOUND LIFE. And one who suffers becomes more alert, and alertness is the key to the temple of life. The more alert you are, the more aware.

What is the difference between you and the trees? The trees are beautiful, but they are not higher than you because they remain unconscious. A stone, a rock is even below the level of the trees, more unconscious. A stone also suffers, but it is not aware. A tree also suffers, but not consciously -- and if you also suffer without consciousness, then what is the difference? Then you are just a moving tree.

Deep down, the basic thing that makes you human has not yet happened. Consciousness makes you human. And this is the beauty of it: that whenever you are conscious, suffering disappears. Suffering brings in consciousness, but if you move more and more in consciousness, suffering disappears. This law has to be understood: if your head is hurting, it brings consciousness, you become aware of your head; otherwise nobody is aware of their head. You become aware of the body only when something is wrong.

In Sanskrit, they have a beautiful word for suffering. They call it vedana, and vedana has two meanings: one, suffering; the other, knowledge. Vedana comes from the same root as veda. Veda means the source of knowledge. Those who coined this word vedana came to know a fact, that suffering is knowledge. Hence they used the same root word for both.

If you suffer, immediately you become aware. The stomach comes into existence only with a stomachache. Before, it may have been there but it was not in your consciousness. That's why medical science, particularly Ayurveda, defines health as bodilessness: if you don't know the body you are healthy; if you know the body something is wrong, because knowing exists only when something goes wrong. If you are a driver, a slight noise in the engine and you become aware; otherwise everything was humming, everything was monotonous, everything was okay. A small noise somewhere in the engine, in the other parts of the car, and you become aware that something has gone wrong. Only when something goes wrong do you become aware.

And if you become really aware, you don't become involved in the wrong; rather, on the contrary, you grow in your awareness more and more. Then a second phenomenon happens: in your awareness you come to know that the disease is there, the discomfort is there, the suffering is there -- but that is not in you, that is just around you, on the circumference. In the center there is awareness, on the circumference there is suffering, as if suffering belongs to somebody else: you are not identified. Then a headache is there, but it is not painful to you; it is painful to the body and you are simply aware. The body becomes the object and you become the subject -- there is a gap.

In awareness all bridges are broken, the gap is immediately present there. You can see: the body suffers, but the identification is broken. Suffering brings in awareness, awareness breaks the identification -- and that is the key to life.

BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO HAS SUFFERED; HE HAS FOUND LIFE.

Jesus on the cross is just a symbol of the final suffering, the absolute suffering, of the peak of suffering. When Jesus was on the cross, at the last moment he wavered a little. The suffering was too much. It was no ordinary suffering, not ordinary bodily pain, it was anguish -- not only physical, but deep psychological anguish. And the anguish was this: that suddenly he started feeling, "Am I abandoned by God? Why should this happen to me? I have not done anything wrong. Why should I be crucified? Why this pain? Why this crucifixion? Why this anguish to ME?" And he asked God, "Why?" He questioned.

It must have been a very deep moment of anguish, when all the foundations are shaken and even your faith is shaken. The pain was so much -- the humiliation of the whole thing. The same people for whom he had lived, for whom he had worked, whom he had served, to whom he had been a healer -- they were murdering him, and for no reason at all. He asked God, "Why? Why is this happening to me?" Then suddenly he realized why, because he became very much aware; at the moment of crucifixion he came to the perfect awareness.

I always say that before that moment he was Jesus, after that moment he became Christ. At that moment the total transformation happened. Before it he was coming nearer, nearer, nearer, coming closer and closer and closer, but the last jump happened in that moment: Jesus disappeared and there was Christ -- suddenly a transmutation.

posted January 27, 2008 06:15 PM            

Whenever you suffer, next time don't complain, don't create an anguish out of it. Rather, watch it, feel it, see it, look at it from all possible angles. Make it a meditation and see what happens: the energy that was moving into the disease, the energy that was creating suffering, is transformed, the quality changes. The same energy becomes your awareness, because there are not two energies in you, the energy is one. You can make it sex, you can transform it and make it into love; you can transform it still higher and make it into prayer, and you can transform it still higher and make it into awareness -- the energy is the same.

When you suffer you are dissipating energy; in your anguish you are dissipating energy, the energy is leaking out. Whenever there is suffering, shake yourself. Close your eyes and look at the suffering. Whatsoever it is -- mental, physical, existential -- whatsoever it is look at it, make it a meditation. Look at it as if it is an object.

When you look at your suffering as an object you are separate, you are no longer identified with it, the bridge is broken. And then the energy which was going to move into suffering will not move, because the bridge is no longer there. The bridge is identification: you feel you are the body, then the energy moves into the body. Wherever you feel any identification, your energy moves there.

You may not have known this, but you can try a simple experiment: if you love a woman, just sit by her side and feel identified, as if you are the woman, the beloved; and let the woman feel that she is you, the lover. Just wait and feel identified. Suddenly you will both have a shock of energy. You will both feel that some energy has moved from the other to you. Lovers have felt as if an energy jumps just like an electric shock and reaches the other. Whenever you are identified with something there is a bridge, and the energy can move through that bridge.

When a mother is feeding her child, she is not only giving milk as was always thought. Now biologists have stumbled upon a deeper fact, and they say she is feeding energy -- milk is just the physical part. And they have done many experiments: a child is raised, food is given -- as perfect as possible, whatsoever medical science has found. Everything is given, but the child is not loved, not cuddled; the mother does not touch him. The milk is given through mechanical devices, injections are given, vitamins are given -- everything is perfect. But the child stops growing, he starts shrinking, as if life starts moving away from him. What is happening? ... Because whatsoever the mother was giving is being given.

It happened in Germany that during the war many small orphan babies were put into a hospital. Within weeks they were all almost dying. Half of them died -- and every care was taken; scientifically they were absolutely right, they were doing whatsoever was needed. But why were these children dying? Then one psychoanalyst observed that they needed some cuddling, somebody to hug them, somebody to make them feel significant. Food is not food enough. Jesus says, "Man cannot live by bread alone." Some inner food, some invisible food is needed. So the psychoanalyst made a rule that whosoever came into the room -- a nurse, a doctor, a servant -- had to give at least five minutes in the room to hug and play with the children. And suddenly they were not dying, they started growing. And since then many experiments have been done.

When a mother hugs a child, energy is flowing. That energy is invisible -- we have called it love, warmth. Something is jumping from the mother to the child, and not only from the mother to the child, from the child to the mother also. That's why a woman is never so beautiful as when she becomes a mother. Before, something is lacking, she is not complete, the circle is broken. Whenever a woman becomes a mother, the circle is complete. A grace comes to her as if from some unknown source. So not only is she feeding the child, the child is also feeding the mother. They are happily 'into' each other.

posted January 27, 2008 06:16 PM            

I have heard, once it happened: Two old women met in a market. One asked the other how she was feeling, because she was always feeling ill. There are women who always feel ill. Something has gone wrong; it is not illness, it is something deeper, a neurosis, because they cannot feel at ease if they are not ill; illness has become part of their ego. She asked, "How are your feeling?"

The woman who was always ill or talking about illness, started. She said, "Very bad -- never has it been so bad. The arthritis is acting up, I have a severe headache, and the stomachache is terrible, and my legs hurt..." and on and on she went.

The other said, "Then go and see a doctor."

The first woman said, "Yes, yes, I will go when I feel a little better."

But this is happening: you will go to the doctor when you feel a little better. But nobody goes -- when one feels a little better there is no need. Go to the doctor when you are suffering, pray when there is suffering, meditate when there is suffering. Don't say, "I will meditate when I feel a little better." That won't help -- you won't meditate and you will have missed a blissful moment, a moment of suffering. Meditate, become alert and aware. Don't miss the opportunity, it is a blessing.

Use all your suffering for meditation, and soon you will come to know that the suffering disappears because the energy starts moving inwards. It is not moving to the periphery, to the suffering, you are not feeding your suffering. It looks illogical, but this is the whole conclusion of all the mystics of the world: that you feed your suffering and you enjoy it in a subtle way, you don't want to be well -- there must be some investment in it.

Buddhas, Jesuses, Zarathustras have been talking in vain, you don't listen to them. They say there is a possibility of ultimate bliss. You listen to them and say, "Okay, I will see sometime, when I feel better." But whenever you are happy what is the need? That is why Buddha goes on insisting: Your whole life is suffering, dukkha -- don't wait! There is going to be no happiness in the life that you are living. Be awake, watch. It is anguish itself that you call 'life'. People think that he must have been a pessimist. He was not, he was just emphasizing. And you have become so much attached to your suffering that you don't know it.

What is the investment? From the very beginning, from the very childhood, one thing almost always goes wrong, and that is that whenever a child is ill he is paid more attention. This creates a wrong association: the mother loves him more, the father takes care of him more; the whole family puts him in the center, he becomes the most important person. Nobody bothers about a child otherwise -- if he is well and okay, it's as if he is not. When he is ill he becomes dictatorial, he dictates his terms. Once this trick is learned -- that whenever you are ill you become in some way special -- then everybody has to pay attention, because if they are not paying attention you can make them feel guilty. And nobody can say anything to you, because nobody can say that you are responsible for your illness.

If the child is doing something wrong you can say, "You are responsible." But if he is ill you cannot say anything, because illness is not in any way concerned with him -- what can he do? But you don't know the facts: ninety percent of illnesses are self-created, generated by yourself to attract attention, affection, significance. And a child learns the trick very easily, because the basic problem for the child is that he is helpless. The basic problem he feels continuously is that he is powerless and everybody is powerful. But when he is ill he becomes powerful and everybody is powerless. He comes to understand it.

A child is very sensitive about knowing things. He comes to know that, "Even father is nothing, mother is nothing -- nobody is anything before me when I am ill." Then illness becomes something very meaningful, an investment. Whenever he feels neglected in life, whenever he feels, "I am helpless," he will get into illness, he will create it. And this is the problem, a deep problem, because what can you do? When a child is ill everybody has to pay attention.

But now psychologists suggest that whenever a child is ill, take care of him, but don't pay much attention to him. He should be taken care of medically, but not psychologically. Don't create any association in his mind that illness pays, otherwise his whole life, whenever he feels something is wrong, he will be ill. Then the wife cannot say anything, then nobody can blame him because he is ill. And everybody has to pity him and give affection.

Ninety percent of suffering exists because you have associated something which looks good to you with suffering. Drop this association. Nobody else can do it for you. Drop that association completely, cut that association completely. Suffering is simply wasting your energy. Don't get involved in it, don't think that it pays. There is only one way in which suffering can pay, and that is with awareness. Become aware.

Remember how to drop that association: one, never talk about your suffering. Suffer it, but don't talk about it. Why do you talk about it? Why do people go on talking and boring others about their suffering? Who is interested? But just not to offend you, if you start talking about illnesses and anguish, others have to tolerate it -- but they start escaping, they start wanting somehow to get rid of you. Nobody wants to hear, because everybody has too much suffering of his own. Who bothers about your suffering? Don't talk about it, because talking creates associations.

Don't complain, because then you are asking for affection, pity, compassion, love. Don't ask, don't sell your suffering -- bring back your investment. Suffer privately, don't make it public -- then it becomes a tapascharya, it becomes an austerity, one of the best. But look at your saints: if they do tapascharya, austerities, they make it very public. And I am saying make your suffering private, then it becomes tapa, austerity. They make it public, they announce that they are going on a long fast -- everybody must know.

These are children gone mad, these are childish people. They have invested more than you: they depend on their suffering, their prestige depends on their suffering -- how long they can fast, how long they can attract the attention of the whole country or of the whole of the world. They are very tricky, they are using suffering to exploit others. But this is what everybody is doing, only they are doing it to its climax. Don't do it, don't try to be a martyr, it is futile. Don't be an exhibitionist.

Suffer privately, suffer so privately that nobody ever becomes aware that you are suffering. And then meditate on it: don't throw it out, accumulate it within and then close your eyes and meditate on it. Then the bridge will be broken.

This is what Jesus means when he says: BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO HAS SUFFERED -- this is the technique for suffering: use suffering as a method -- HE HAS FOUND LIFE.

posted January 27, 2008 06:17 PM            

JESUS SAID: LOOK UPON THE LIVING ONE AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, LEST YOU DIE AND SEEK TO SEE HIM AND BE UNABLE TO SEE.

These are techniques: LOOK UPON THE LIVING ONE.... In you there is one who is a living one and one who is already dead. In you two worlds meet, the world of matter and the world of spirit -- you exist on the boundary. In you two realms meet, the realm of death and the realm of life -- you exist in between. If you pay too much attention to that which belongs to death you will always remain afraid, suffering, fearful. If you pay attention to your center, which belongs to life, to eternal life, to immortality, fear will disappear.

Jesus says: LOOK UPON THE LIVING ONE AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.... Don't miss, because at the moment of death it will be very, very difficult to look upon the living one.

If for your whole life you have been attentive to the realm of death -- the realm of things, the realm of matter and the world -- if you have been attentive only to the realm of death, it will be difficult, almost impossible, to look at the realm of life when you are dead or when you are dying. How can you suddenly turn your back, how can you suddenly turn your head? It will be impossible, you will be paralyzed. Your whole life you have been looking outward, your neck will be paralyzed, you cannot turn back. It needs a continuous movement towards the world of the deathless while you live.

LOOK UPON THE LIVING ONE AS LONG AS YOU LIVE....

Whenever you have a moment of silence, close your eyes and look within so that your neck remains flexible; otherwise, at the moment of death you will be paralyzed. You would like to see the eternal life, but you will not be able to because you cannot turn back.

... LEST YOU DIE AND SEEK TO SEE HIM AND BE UNABLE TO SEE.

And he is there within you, but you become fixed, you become obsessed. Obsession with the outside has to be broken. No need to escape to the forest, that will not help, but in twenty-four hours you have enough moments to look within. Don't miss them! Whenever you find time, just close your eyes, even for a single moment, and look within towards the living one. It is there, just a little practice is needed to see and become attuned to the inner darkness. It is dark right now because you are attuned to the outer light.

When you become attuned to the inner light you will see it is a diffused light, not dark; a very silent, very consoling, soothing light, but not an intense light -- it is a twilight. It is just like when the sun has not come up, and the night is almost gone. That is what Hindus have called brahmamuhurta.

Why do they call it Brahmamuhurta, the moment of God? They call it that because of this inner thing: when you are turning in, the outer light has gone and the inner darkness has not yet left, because one has to become attuned, only then will it leave. There is a twilight, sandhyakal, a moment when there is no light and no darkness. This they call Brahmamuhurta, the moment of the divine. Become attuned, look, wait, watch. Soon your eyes will become accustomed and you will be able to see.

There is no intense light, just diffused light, because it is not generated by a sun. It is just your natural light, not generated by anything else. It is your own light, your own inner aura -- it is there. Whenever you can find time, don't waste it. And then you will find moments enough: just going to sleep, look in; the day is past, the world of death is no more, you are going to retire -- look within. In the morning, when you first become aware that sleep has left, there is no need to jump out of bed and into the world. Wait a little, close your eyes, look within: it is silent. The whole night's rest helps, you are not so tense, it will be easier to move within.

That's why all the religions insist on prayer when you go to sleep, and prayer when you come back from the world of sleep. These moments are very good. In the evening you are tired of the world, you are fed up with the world, you are ready to look to something else. In the morning you have rested and the rest helps, you can look towards the inner. This is what Jesus says:

LOOK UPON THE LIVING ONE AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, LEST YOU DIE AND SEEK TO SEE HIM AND BE UNABLE TO SEE.

And he will be there, but you will be unable to see him just because of a wrong practice your whole life.

THEY SAW A SAMARITAN CARRYING A LAMB ON HIS WAY TO JUDEA. HE SAID TO HIS DISCIPLES: WHY DOES THIS MAN CARRY THE LAMB WITH HIM?

THEY SAID TO HIM: IN ORDER THAT HE MAY KILL IT AND EAT IT.

HE SAID TO THEM: AS LONG AS IT IS ALIVE HE WILL NOT EAT IT, BUT ONLY IF HE HAS KILLED IT AND IT HAS BECOME A CORPSE.

THEY SAID: OTHERWISE HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DO IT.

HE SAID TO THEM: YOU YOURSELVES, SEEK A PLACE FOR YOURSELVES IN REPOSE LEST YOU BECOME A CORPSE AND BE EATEN.

Your body is going to become food for worms, for birds. Your body is food, it is nothing else, it cannot be anything else -- your body comes out of food. That's why if you don't eat, your body will start disappearing. If you go on a fast, two pounds of the body will disappear every day. Where is that body going? Every day you have to fill it with food -- it is a byproduct of food. So when you die, what will happen to your body? The world will use it as food: the worms of the earth will eat you, or the birds of the sky will eat you. It just gives you a fear, you become apprehensive that, "I will be eaten." Because of this, all the world over, people have created ways in order not to be eaten. But they are foolish!

Hindus burn the dead body just to avoid one thing, that you should not be eaten. Mohammedans put the dead body inside a casket and put it into a grave just to protect it. Christians do the same. Only Zoroastrians have not done that: they leave the body to become food. They are the most natural about it, and the most scientific too, because you should not destroy food. You have been eating birds, animals, fruits, your whole life, and now you have accumulated a two-hundred-pound body and you destroy it, burn it. This is not good, you are not grateful to the world. You should return it back to the world of food -- it is food!

And why do you think that burning is better, throwing it into a fire is better than letting it be eaten by a worm or by a bird or by an animal. Why?... because there too fire is burning -- in the stomach of the bird, in the stomach of the lion -- and that fire will dissolve your body. But that is natural fire, and at least it will fulfill some hunger somewhere.

posted January 27, 2008 06:17 PM            

Jesus says, "If you don't realize the inner one, the living one, the conscious one, then you are just going to be eaten, that's all." Your whole life has been futile: eating your whole life, working to eat, and then being eaten -- this is the whole story. "A tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing." The whole life a struggle to eat, and then being eaten. What is the meaning of it?

Jesus says, "Before you are dead, before you are eaten, realize that which is not food in you, which is not created by food in you." Then you will have to understand one more thing.

All the religions have tried fasting. Why? -- because when you fast awareness grows intense, because it is not part of food. Really, food destroys awareness, and when you don't eat you become more aware because food gives a sort of sleep, it is an intoxicant. So if you eat too much you immediately feel sleepy, it is alcoholic; whenever you eat you have to go to sleep. If you ever fast, you will find it is difficult to sleep that night. Do you think it is because of hunger? No, it is because without food, more awareness happens.

And if you go on a long fast, after the third, fourth or fifth day, hunger disappears, because the body insists for three, four, five days -- the body has not got a very long memory -- it insists on the old habit for a few days, and then if you don't listen the body makes its arrangement in a different way. The body has a double arrangement, it is needed as a security measure. Every day you have to eat to give the body its daily quota. If you don't give it food for five to seven days, then the body has an emergency measure: the accumulated flesh in the body, the accumulated fat -- it accumulates....

Every ordinary, healthy person accumulates enough fat for at least three months; that is a reservoir. When the body thinks that you are not going to give food, the body starts eating its own reservoir. When the body starts eating its own reservoir, then the consciousness is not involved in it at all. You need not go and earn and work, and get tired and then give the body food. And when you give it food, to absorb the food, to digest it, your whole energy is needed. That's why, immediately you eat food, your head feels sleepy: because the energy that was working as consciousness is required in the stomach to work as a digestive force; it immediately moves.

So people who eat too much cannot meditate well, impossible! They can sleep well, but they cannot be aware, they cannot be very conscious. They are food and nothing more -- and they will be eaten; their whole life is a food-circle. All the religions became aware that if you fast, awareness increases, because the energy is released when there is nothing to digest. Nothing to be taken in and thrown out, all work stops. The work at the factory of the body is not there, the factory is locked. Then the whole energy that you have got becomes awareness. That's why it is difficult to sleep when you are on a fast.

And if you have been on a fast for at least twenty, thirty days, forty days, you will have a new type of sleep: your body will sleep and you will remain alert. That's what Krishna said to Arjuna: "When everybody is asleep, a yogi remains awake." That's what Buddha said: "Even while I am asleep, I am not asleep -- only the body sleeps." That's why, when Mahavira slept, he never moved in his sleep -- not even a single movement. He never changed sides because he remained alert. And he said, "Changing sides won't be good; some insect may have crawled underneath" -- because he used to sleep on the floor or under a tree -- "and if I move in the dark and change my side, there may be some violence -- unknowingly, but still. ... And if I can avoid it...." So he remained perfectly in one posture the whole night, he remained exactly as he was when he went to sleep, not even moving his hand. This can be done only if you are perfectly aware in sleep; otherwise you will not know when you have moved.

If you become aware, then you become aware of a different dimension within you. The visible belongs to death, the invisible belongs to the deathless.

Jesus says:

YOU YOURSELVES, SEEK A PLACE FOR YOURSELVES IN REPOSE -- seek a state of silence, repose, tranquility, balance, where you can become aware of the living one -- LEST YOU BECOME A CORPSE AND BE EATEN.

JESUS SAID: TWO WILL REST ON A BED: THE ONE WILL DIE, THE ONE WILL LIVE.

Exactly the same words are in the Upanishads. They say that there are two birds on a tree, one sitting on a lower branch, another sitting on a higher branch. The bird on the lower branch thinks, gets worried, desires, demands, accumulates, fights, competes; it remains in anguish, tension, jumps from this branch to that, always moving, never in repose. The other bird, who is sitting on a higher branch, is in repose. He is so silent, as if he is not. He has no desires, no dreams happen to him. He has no needs to fulfill, as if everything is fulfilled, as if he has attained, nowhere to go. He simply sits, enjoying himself, and he watches the bird who is on the lower branch.

These are the two dimensions in you. You are the tree. And the lower is always disturbed. The lower is your body and the bodily needs and the bodily desires, and if you forget yourself completely into it then you become one with it. On the higher branch, at the top of the tree, sits the other bird who is a witness, who simply looks down at this foolish bird jumping, moving in anguish, anxiety, anger, sex. Everything happens to it; this other bird is simply a witness, he simply looks on and on, he is just a spectator. You are the tree.

Jesus says the same thing with a different symbol:

TWO WILL REST ON A BED -- YOU ARE THE BED -- TWO WILL REST ON A BED: THE ONE WILL DIE, THE ONE WILL LIVE. YOU ARE THE BED, TWO ARE THERE: ... THE ONE WILL DIE, THE ONE WILL LIVE.

Now the whole question is to whom the attention should be paid. Towards whom should you move, towards whom should your whole energy flow? Who should become your goal?

Ordinarily, that one who is going to die is your goal. That's why you are always in anxiety, because you are building a house on sands. It is going to fall -- even before it is built it will fall and become a ruin. You are always trembling because you are making your signature on water -- before you have completed it, it is gone. Your anxiety is because you are concerned with the realm of death and you have not looked towards life. And on each bed two are sleeping -- the other is just a witness.

Pay more attention to it, turn towards it more and more -- that's what conversion means. Conversion doesn't mean a Hindu becoming a Christian, or a Christian becoming a Hindu. This is foolishness, you simply change labels. Nothing is changed because the inner man remains the same, the old pattern. Conversion means the movement of attention from the death realm to the life realm. It is an about-turn: looking at the witness, becoming one with the witness, losing yourself into the witness, into awareness, and then you know that which is going to die will die. It makes no trouble, no problem, and you know you are not going to die so there is no fear.

JESUS SAID: TWO WILL REST ON A BED: THE ONE WILL DIE, THE ONE WILL LIVE.

And it is up to you. If you want to remain in trouble, never pay attention to the inner one; if you want to remain always in anguish then remain on the periphery, don't look within. But if you want repose, a peaceful eternity, truth, the doors of heaven open for you, then look within. It is difficult -- it is difficult because it is very subtle. Where the invisible and the visible meet, where matter and spirit meet, it is very subtle. You can see matter, you cannot see spirit, it cannot be seen. You can see where the visible ends, you cannot see the invisible, it cannot be seen.

Then what is to be done? Just remain at the boundary of the visible, and don't look at the visible, look in the opposite direction. Gradually the invisible can be felt. It is a feeling, it is not an understanding; you cannot see it, you can only feel it. It is just like a breeze: it comes, you feel it, but you cannot see it. It is just like the sky: it is there, but you cannot say where, you cannot pinpoint it, you cannot touch it. It is always there, you are in it but you cannot touch it.

Remain at the boundary of the visible looking in the opposite direction. This is what all meditation is about. Whenever you can find a peaceful moment close your eyes, leave the body behind and the bodily affairs and the world of death; the market, the office, the wife, the children -- leave them all. The first time you will not feel anything inside.

Hume has said, "Many people have talked about going in and looking there. Whenever I look, I find nothing -- just thoughts, desires, dreams, floating here and there -- just a chaos." You will also feel the same. And if you conclude that there is nothing worthwhile in going again and again to see this chaos, then you will miss.

posted January 27, 2008 06:18 PM            

There is one Zen saying which says, "Hurry slowly." That's right! Hurry, that's right, because you are going to die -- in that sense hurry. But inside, if you are in too much of a hurry you will miss, because you will conclude too soon, before your eyes have become attuned. Don't conclude too soon.

Hurry slowly. Just wait! Go there and sit and wait. By and by, a new world of the invisible becomes clear, comes to you. You become attuned to it, then you can hear the harmony, the melody; the silence starts its own music. It is always there, but it is so silent that very trained ears are needed. It is not like a noise, it is like silence. The sound within is like silence, the form within is like the formless. There is no time and no space within, and all that you know is either in space or in time. Things are in space, events are in time, and now physicists say these two things are not two; even time is just a fourth dimension of space.

You know only time and space, the world of things and events. You don't know the world of the witnessing self. It is beyond both, it is not confined to any space and it is not confined to any time. There is duration without time, there is space but without any height, length, breadth -- it is a totally different world. You will need to become attuned to it, so don't be impatient -- impatience is the greatest barrier. I have come to feel that when people start working towards the inner one, impatience is the greatest barrier. Infinite patience is needed. It can happen the next moment, but infinite patience is needed.

If you are impatient it may not happen for lives, because the very impatience will not allow you the repose that Jesus talks about, the tranquility. Even if you are expecting, that will be a disturbance. If you are thinking something is going to happen, something extraordinary, then nothing will happen. If you are waiting, expecting that some enlightenment is going to happen, you will miss it. Don't expect. All expectations belong to the world of death, the dimension of time and space.

No goal belongs to the inner. There is no way to it except by waiting, infinite patience. Jesus has said, "Watch and be patient." And one day, suddenly you are illumined. One day, when the right tuning happens, when you are ready, suddenly you are illumined. All darkness disappears, you are filled with life, eternal life, which never dies.

posted February 02, 2008 05:19 PM            

Jesus was trained in one of the oldest secret schools. The school was called Essenes. The teaching of the Essenes is pure Vedanta. That's why Christians don't have a record of what happened to Jesus before his thirtieth year. They have a little record of his childhood, and they have a record after his thirtieth year up to the thirty-third, when he was crucified -- they know a few things. But a phenomenon like Jesus is not an accident; it is a long preparation, it cannot happen just any moment.

Jesus was continuously being prepared during these thirty years. He was first sent to Egypt and then he came to India. In Egypt he learned one of the oldest traditions of secret methods, then in India he came to know about the teachings of Buddha, the Vedas, the Upanishads, and he passed through a long preparation. Those days are not known because Jesus worked in these schools as an unknown disciple. And Christians have knowingly dropped those records, because they would not like the son of God to also be a disciple of somebody else. They would not like the very idea that he was prepared, taught, trained -- that looks humiliating. They think the son of God comes absolutely ready. Nobody comes absolutely ready. If somebody is absolutely ready he cannot come.

In this world, you always enter as imperfect. Perfection simply disappears from this world. Perfection is not of this world, cannot be -- it is against the very law. Once somebody is perfect, his whole life enters into a vertical dimension. This has to be understood: you progress on a horizontal plane, from A to B, from B to C and D, and so on up to Z; horizontal, in a line, from past to present, from present to future. This is the way of the imperfect soul, just like water flowing in a river from the hills and plains to the sea -- in a line, horizontal, always maintaining its own level.

Perfection moves in vertical lines, not horizontally. From A it doesn't go to B, from A it goes higher than A, then higher, still higher. On this line, for those who live on this line, perfection simply disappears. It is not there because they can look in the future or in the past. They can look back, but the perfect man is not there; they can look ahead, but he is not there; they can look here, he is not there -- because a new line of vertical progression has started. He is going higher and higher and higher. He moves in eternity, not in time.

Eternity is vertical, that's why it is eternal now -- there is no future to it. If you move in a line there is future: if you move from A to B, the B is in the future. When B becomes the present, A has gone into the past and C is in the future. You are always between past and future, your present moment is just a passing phase: the B is turning into C, the D is turning into E; everything is moving into the past. And your present is just a cut line, just a small fragment. By the time you become aware, it has moved into the past. A soul which becomes perfect moves in a different dimension altogether: from A to A1 to A2 to A3 -- and this is eternity. It lives in the eternal now. That's why it disappears from this world.

To enter into this world you have to be imperfect. It is said in old scriptures that whenever a man comes near perfection -- many times it has happened -- he will leave something imperfect in order to come back again and help people.

posted February 02, 2008 05:21 PM            

Many masters have done that. The moment they feel that something is going to become completely perfect in them, they will cling to some imperfection just to be here; otherwise this bank is not for them. If all the fetters are broken then their boat sails towards the other bank, then it cannot remain here. They will keep one fetter: they will keep some relationship, they will choose some weakness in themselves and they will not allow it to disappear. The circle will not be complete, a gap will remain. Through that gap they can remain here. That's why Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas, who know very deeply because they have known many masters, know well that perfection is not of this world. The moment the circle is complete it disappears from your eyes. You cannot see, it is not then on the line of your vision, it has gone above you -- you cannot penetrate there.

But to say that Jesus was perfect when he was born, to emphasize this fact, Christians have dropped all the records. But Jesus was as much a seeker as you, he was as much a mustard seed as you are. He became a tree, and a great tree, and millions of birds of heaven took shelter in him -- but he was also a mustard seed. Remember that even a Mahavira, a Buddha, a Krishna, they are all born imperfect, because birth belongs to imperfection. There is no birth for the perfect; when you are perfect then there is no transmigration.

This training of Jesus -- moving into Egypt and India, learning from Egyptian secret societies, then Buddhist schools, then Hindu Vedanta -- made him a stranger to the Jews. Why did he become so much of a stranger to the Jews? Why couldn't the Jews absorb him? Why couldn't they forgive him? -- they have not forgiven him yet! What was the reason? He was bringing something alien, something foreign; he introduced some secret which didn't belong to the race. That's why the crucifixion happened.

Hindus tolerated Buddha because whatsoever he was saying was not alien. He may contradict Hinduism, but he can contradict only the superficial Hinduism. Even in his contradiction he proves the deeper Hinduism right. He may say that the establishment has gone wrong, he may say that the organization has gone wrong, he may say that all the followers have gone wrong, but he cannot say that Hindus are basically wrong. Whatsoever he says Hindus can understand, it is not foreign, it is not alien. Whatsoever Mahavira said Hindus simply tolerated. He may be a revolutionary, but he remains a Hindu. Buddha may be a revolutionary, but he remains a Hindu; he may be a rebel son, but he belongs to Hindus -- nothing much to worry about.

But Jesus is not only revolutionary, he doesn't belong either. How has it happened that he doesn't belong to the Jews? Christians have no answer for it. From where did he bring this alien teaching? From Egypt and from India.

posted February 02, 2008 05:21 PM            

Hindus believe in contradiction. They say man is alive and dead, both simultaneously, because life and death are not two things, you cannot demarcate them. The Greek mind is mathematical, the Hindu mind is mystical. All mysticism comes from India; just as the sun rises in the East, all mysticism rises in the East -- and India is the heart. For this sutra to be understood you have to go to the Upanishads, the roots are there. You cannot find anything in the Old Testament or in other Jewish records from where this saying can come. That's why the Jews could not believe what Jesus was saying.

Jesus says again and again, "I have come not to contradict the old scriptures but to fulfill them." But what scriptures, which scriptures? That he never says. If he has come to fulfill the Old Testament then his statement is wrong, because he almost always contradicts the Old Testament. The Old Testament depends on revenge -- the father, the God, is very revengeful. Fear is the basis of the Old Testament and its religion: you should be God-fearing. And Jesus says, "God is love." You cannot fear love, and if there is love there cannot be any fear. And if you have fear how can you love? Fear is poison to love, fear is death to love. How can you love a person if you are afraid? Fear can create hate, but fear cannot create love.

So a religious man in the Old Testament is God-fearing, and in the New Testament a religious man is God-loving. And love and fear are totally different dimensions. Jesus has said, "It is said that if somebody harms one of your eyes, pull out both his eyes. But I tell you, if somebody hits you on one cheek, give him your other cheek also." This is absolutely non-Jewish, it was not there in the tradition. So when Jesus says, "I have come to fulfill the scriptures," which scriptures does he mean? If he had been in India and he had said, "I have come to fulfill the scriptures," we would have understood, because the Upanishads are the scriptures he has come to fulfill; Dhammapada, Buddha's sayings, are the scriptures he has come to fulfill -- they depend on love, compassion.

But Jewish scriptures are not at all concerned with compassion and love, they are concerned with fear, guilt. That's why whatsoever Jesus said, Jews understood well that, "He has not come to fulfill our scriptures." You cannot find a saying like this in the Old Testament:

I AM THE LIGHT THAT IS ABOVE THEM ALL, I AM THE ALL, AND THE ALL CAME FROM ME AND THE ALL ATTAINED TO ME.

CLEAVE A PIECE OF WOOD AND I AM THERE; LIFT UP THE STONE AND YOU WILL FIND ME THERE.

You can find thousands of sayings like this in the Upanishads, in the Gita, in Buddha, but you cannot find a single parallel in the Old Testament. So which scriptures has he come to fulfill? He has come to fulfill some other scriptures, some other traditions. This saying is absolutely Vedanta, so try to understand first the standpoint of Vedanta, then you will be able to understand this saying.

Jesus was born as a Jew, lived as a Jew, died as a Jew -- but this is only as far as the body is concerned; otherwise Jesus was a pure Hindu. And you cannot find a purer Hindu than Jesus, because the base of Upanishadic religion is his base. He created the whole structure on that base, so try to understand what that base is.

Jews say, "God is the creator and this universe is the created, and the created can never become the creator. How can a painting become the painter? How can a poem become the poet? Impossible! And if the poem tries to become the poet, the poem has gone mad; and if the painting tries to prove and assert and claim that 'I am the painter,' then the painting has gone wrong. Man is the creature and God is the creator. And this distance can never completely go, this space will remain. You can come closer and closer and closer to God, but you can never become God." This is the base of Jewish thought. And Mohammedans learned this from Jews. Mohammedans are more Jewish than Jesus; as far as the thinking, the way of thought is concerned, Mohammed is nearer to Moses than Jesus. Mohammed did not learn much from the Hindus.

But Vedanta says, "God is the creation, there is no distinction between God and the creation. He has not created the universe like a poet creates a poem, the relationship is just like a dancer and the dance: they remain one. If the dancer stops, the dance disappears; and if the dance disappears, the person is no longer a dancer. The universe is not separate, it is one. The universe was not created in time and finished, it is created each moment; it is being created each moment because it is God's own being. Just as you move, you sing, you love, so God creates -- every moment he is creating. And the creation is never separate, it is his movement, his dance." That's why the Upanishads can say, "aham brahmasmi." The Upanishads can say, the seers who have come to know this secret can say, "I am God." And nobody thinks this is blasphemy -- this is a truth.