posted February 02, 2008 05:21 PM            

The first thing to be remembered: the creation and the creator are not two, they are one.

The second thing to remember: ordinary mathematics says that the part is never equivalent to the whole, the part can never be the whole. In mechanisms it is so: take a part of your car -- the part cannot be the car, it is so obvious; you cut your hand -- your hand is not you. A part cannot be the whole, this is ordinary logic. And if the world is a mechanical thing, then it is true.

But Vedanta says that existence is organic, not mechanical. With organic unity a different type of mathematics becomes applicable: the part is the whole. This is the greatest absurdity! And that's why they could say, "I am God -- because I am just a part, God is the all." But how can the part be the whole? If there is a mechanical relationship between me and existence, then this is not possible. But if there is an organic unity, then this is possible. And there is organic unity.

You exist not as a separate unit complete unto yourself. No! You exist not as an island, you exist as a wave of the ocean, an organic unity, you are one: the ocean goes on moving and 'waving' in you -- you cannot exist without the ocean. And if you understand deeply, the ocean also cannot exist without you; you are totally joined together. You can say that in every wave the ocean is there, and you can say the ocean is nothing but the totality of all the waves. So a wave is not separate: you cannot take a wave away from the ocean, you cannot bring it home to show to your children that, "I have gone to the ocean and I have brought a wave." You cannot bring the wave. You can bring the water, but that will not be a wave -- that will not be alive.

Look at the ocean when the waves are there: they are alive because the ocean is their life. When they are jumping hundreds of feet, reaching towards the sky, the ocean is reaching through them. You may not see the ocean, you may just see the wave, but you cannot separate the wave from the ocean -- they are organically one.

Vedanta says that the created is organically one with the creator, the world cannot exist without God. This can be understood by Jews and Mohammedans also. But Hindus say something else too, the second part: they say that God cannot exist without the world. That is blasphemy for Jews. What are you saying -- that God cannot exist without the world? Yes -- he cannot exist, it is impossible for him to exist. If he is a creator, if creativity is his quality, how can he exist without the universe? When there is nothing created, how can he be a creator? The world depends on him, he depends on the world; it is an interdependence. The world is not independent of him, and neither is he independent of the world. There is a deep love relationship: they depend on each other, they fulfill each other, they are one. The fulfillment is so total that you cannot separate and divide them.

So a seer, one who has come to know, can declare, "Aham brahmasmi, Ana'l haq -- I am God." And when he says this, he is simply saying, "I and this existence are not two." He is simply saying, "You will find me anywhere you go, wherever you go you will find me. The form may be different, but I will be there." This is what Jesus is saying: CLEAVE A PIECE OF WOOD AND I AM THERE.... How can Jesus be there if you cleave a piece of wood? You cannot find the form, you will not find the son of Mary and Joseph there, you will not find this carpenter boy there if you cleave wood. Then what will you find? Being you will find -- and he is saying, "I am being. My form will change, but not I."

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

This is pure Vedanta -- an organic unity. That's why Hindus are the only ones in the world who don't bother much about temples, they can make anywhere their temple. They will just put a stone under a tree -- any stone, not even carved -- and they will paint it red and God is there, they can worship. Any tree is enough, any river, any mountain, anything will do because: CLEAVE A PIECE OF WOOD AND I AM THERE; LIFT UP THE STONE AND YOU WILL FIND ME THERE -- so why bother?

Hindus alone dispose of their gods. They make a god for two or three weeks, they worship it, and when the worship is over they go to the ocean and dispose of the god. You cannot think of a Mohammedan disposing of a god, you cannot think of a Jew disposing of a god. What are you doing? Disposing of a god in the ocean? Are you a heretic? Have you gone mad? Only Hindus can do this, because they say the ocean is also God. And why carry a god too long? When the function is finished, dispose of it, because he is everywhere, all over, and we can make him again, any moment -- any stone will do. Being, not the form of Jesus, you will find everywhere. And that 'beingness' is the point to be understood -- that 'beingness' is God.

When a tree flowers it is God flowering, when a seed sprouts, it is God sprouting, when a river flows it is God flowing. God is not a person. If God is a person then there is a problem -- and Jews had the idea that God is a person. God is a 'no-person': he is pure being, he is existence itself, he exists in all, but you cannot find him anywhere in particular. He has no abode, you cannot go and knock; he has no address, you cannot write a letter to him. In a way he is nowhere, because he is everywhere. You cannot pinpoint him; you cannot say, "Here is God," because that will be wrong. Only something which has a form, which has a distinction from other things, can be pinpointed. How can you pinpoint something which has no form, which is in all, spread all over?

But Jews had a conception of a very personalized God. And whenever there is personality there is ego. The Jewish God is very egoistic -- very, very egoistic. You disobey him and you will suffer for eternity in hell. It is very serious: God becomes a dictatorial force and the whole existence becomes a slavery. Then freedom is not for you; freedom is God's nature, not yours. Slavery is going to be your discipline.

Jesus is saying absolutely the contrary, that God is not a person; God is energy, the very life-force, what Bergson has called the elan vital -- it is existence as such. And wherever something exists, God exists, because nothing else can exist. This was the difficulty, why he could not be understood and he had to be crucified. Even if he was saying, "I am the son of God," it was possible for the Jews to forgive him, but basically he was asserting more. As his disciples became attuned to him, he went even further.

In this sutra he says:

I AM THE LIGHT THAT IS ABOVE THEM ALL....

He is not saying that he is the son, here he is saying that he is the father: I AM THE LIGHT THAT IS ABOVE THEM ALL, I AM THE ALL.... Here he is saying, "I am God, not the son."

... 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.

In this sutra he asserts, "I am God, not the son of God." Even 'son' can be forgiven, because a distinction remains: the father remains the source, the son is just a product. They may be in deep intimacy, but a son remains a son, a father remains a father. The distinction can be maintained, and the son has to obey the father; a relationship exists. It is not the relationship of a slave to his master, but of a son to his father -- more intimate but still a relationship; they remain two.

posted February 02, 2008 05:22 PM            

This is pure Vedanta. You cannot find assertions like this anywhere else, you will have to go to the Gita and the Upanishads. This is what Krishna says to Arjuna: "I am the all, the source of all. Everything comes from me and everything dissolves in me. Throw your ego and come to my feet." This sounds as if it is Krishna speaking.

There is a tradition, a beautiful tradition -- I don't know how much it can be proved, but it is beautiful, needs no proof -- there is a tradition that the word Christ is just a form of the word Krishna. It is possible: in Bengali, Krishna is still called Kristo, because 'Krishna' is not the name of the person, 'Krishna' is his absolute achievement, just like 'Buddha'. 'Buddha' is not the name, it is the absolute achievement when one becomes enlightened. The word Buddha means one who has awakened. What does 'Krishna' mean? The word means one who has become the center of the world. 'Krishna' means the magnetic center, one who attracts, who is now the center of the whole existence. 'Christ' has the same meaning. Mary named her son Jesus. 'Christ' was added to Jesus when he became the center of the world. In this assertion he is saying, "I am the center, the all. Everything comes from me, everything goes back to me. You go away from me, then you have to attain to me." It is possible that 'Christ' is just a form of 'Krishna'. It is significant because Krishna's assertions in the Gita and Jesus' assertions like these, are exactly the same.

The third thing to be understood about Vedanta is that Vedanta accepts you as you are, because rejection will mean rejection of God himself. Rejection means that something has to be done: as you are, you are wrong, something has to be cut, something has to be thrown. As you are, you are not accepted, you are not welcome. You will have to change yourself, only then will you be welcome.

Vedanta says that as you are, you are welcome. Nothing is to be done -- the very concept of doing has been the cause of your misery. The very concept of doing, that something has to be done, has been the cause of your misery, because whatsoever you do will lead you into the world. That's why Hindus say it is because of karma -- karma means doing -- you are in the world. Karma does not mean doing bad, karma simply means doing. Because you have been paying too much attention to doing this or that, you are in the world.

Don't pay much attention to the doing; pay much attention to the being. Don't think of what is to be done, just think of who you are. Vedanta is amoralistic; it doesn't bother about morality and immorality. It has no Ten Commandments, it does not give you any orders, it does not talk in terms of 'ought'. It says that as you are, you are welcome -- as you are, you are good, beautiful, true. The problem is not that others reject you, the problem is that you reject yourself. And if you reject yourself, you are in a vicious circle. Then you will try to improve, and nothing can be improved because you are God himself. Then you will be in misery, because it is impossible to improve you.

As you are, you are divine. How can the divine be improved? And if you try to improve the divine, then you will move from one life to another, improving, improving, and never will any improvement happen, you will remain the same. It is just like jogging on the same spot -- but you think you are running fast because you are perspiring and breathing so hard, and doing such great work; you think you are running fast, reaching somewhere, and you are standing on your spot jogging.

Your whole life is jogging. You are not going anywhere because there is nowhere to go; you are not improving because it is impossible to improve. The ultimate which is within you cannot be improved -- there is no 'further' to it, there is no 'better' to it, this is what Vedanta says. Vedanta says that you are divine. This has to be realized, not worked out; you simply have to look within and realize who you are. The problem is not that you are bad, the problem is that you don't look at yourself; the problem is of knowledge, not of doing. The problem is of a right perspective from where you can see yourself.

It is just as if a diamond is taught to become a valuable stone, and the diamond gets the idea and it starts trying to become a valuable stone. Just this idea will become the barrier. All the efforts the diamond can make are going to be futile, because it is already the most precious stone. When the diamond comes to understand the futility of its effort, it will drop all effort and become aware of who it is. Then the problem will be solved.

posted February 02, 2008 05:23 PM            

Whatsoever you do will create karma, and karma is a cycle, a wheel: one karma leads to another -- A to B, B to C -- you move from one part of the wheel to another. It is a wheel and it goes on moving, it goes on moving. Karma can never lead you to liberation because you are already liberated. This is the most difficult thing to follow: that you are already liberated.

People come to me and I have to tell them to do this and that, because they will not understand that they are already liberated. I have to tell them to do this and that just in order to exhaust them, just in order that one day they become so exhausted with the effort that they will come to me and say, "I don't want to do anything." Only then can I say there is no need to do anything. But you needed much when you came in the beginning, you needed to do much. And if I say there is nothing to do, you will go and move to somebody else who can say that there is something to do.

Nothing is to be done. Absolutely as you are, you are already divine. This is Vedanta. It is not a morality, it is pure religion. And that's why there are not many Vedantists in the world -- cannot be. That's why Vedanta cannot become a world religion like Christianity or Islam -- impossible! -- because you have a deep need to do something. And if somebody says, "Nothing is to be done, it is already the case that you are Brahma, you are divine," you will not listen to him. He is talking nonsense... because you don't accept yourself, you reject yourself. You have to reach a goal.

Why has this happened in the mind of man? It has happened because of his childhood, and everybody passes through almost the same childhood. Only trivial things differ; otherwise, childhood has one basic element and that element creates the whole problem. The element is that no child is accepted as he is. A child is born... you were a child, and immediately the society, the parents, mother, father, brothers, people all around you start to change you, to make you more beautiful, to make you more moral, to make you better. As you are, you are wrong; something has to be done, only then can you be accepted.

And the child by and by starts to feel that he is not accepted. If he does a good thing, then he is accepted; if he does something wrong, then he is rejected. If he follows, obeys, he is accepted; if he disobeys, nobody loves him, he is hated, and everybody becomes angry. One thing he learns: that doing is the question, not being. Do the right thing and everybody will love you, do the wrong thing and everybody will reject you and hate you, be angry and be against you. you are not the point. Do something right and the world is welcoming, do something wrong and every door is closed. And if even father's and mother's door are closed -- what to say about this strange world? -- if even those who love him can't see the being of the child....

The child learns one thing, that to exist in this world this is basic: you should behave, you should always do the right thing, never do the wrong thing. This creates a deep rejection about himself because those wrong things go on coming up -- just by saying that something is wrong, it is not dropped, it goes on coming. Then the child starts feeling guilty about himself, he rejects himself. He says, "I am no good. I am a bad child, a bad boy, a bad girl." And the problem is that things which we call wrong are natural, so the child cannot throw them, they have to persist.

Every boy, every girl, starts playing with their sex organs. It is enjoyable, it gives a soothing feeling, the whole body feels blissful. And the moment the child touches his sex organ, everybody stops him immediately -- everybody feels embarrassed. The father, the mother, will stop him, they may even bind his or her hands so he cannot touch them. Now the child feels in a very deep riddle. What to do? He likes the feeling that comes from the touch, he enjoys the feeling, he feels it is beautiful, but if he is to follow that feeling then everybody rejects him. He is a bad child and they punish him. And they are powerful, so what to do?

"And such a wrong thing is happening to me," the child thinks. "It may be that only I am doing this wrong thing, nobody else is doing it." And he cannot know about others so he feels guilty: "The whole world is good, only I am guilty." This is a deep problem.

The child doesn't feel like eating, because he knows more about his hunger than you. But you follow a medical routine because the doctor says that after every three hours the child has to be fed. It is written in the books, and you have read the books and you are an enlightened parent, so after three hours, with the alarm, you have to feed him. Look at children when they are forcibly fed: they reject it, they will not open their mouths, the milk will flow down -- they are rejecting everything. They will not even swallow because they know their hunger. They don't live by the routine, by the clock, they don't know what your medical science says. They are not hungry, that's all -- and you are forcing food. And when they are hungry and they are crying, you will not give them food because this is not the right time. Who is to decide, the child or you?

If you decide, then you will create a guilt feeling in the child because he will think something is wrong: "When I should feel hungry, I don't. When I should not feel hungry, I do." Saint Augustine has said, "God forgive me, because whatsoever is good I never do, and whatsoever is wrong I always do."

But this is every child's prayer. You decide, then guilt is created: the child is not feeling like going to the toilet and you force him. Toilet-training is such a guilt-creating thing -- you cannot conceive of what you are doing. If the child is not feeling like it, how can he go? Try yourself -- if you are not feeling like it, what can you do? And when the child is not feeling like it, you force him, you persuade him, you coax him, you bribe him -- you try every method that you can. You are creating guilt: something is wrong, something is bad.

posted February 02, 2008 05:23 PM            

Sin is created, and by and by the small child is poisoned. He becomes aware that, "I am not good. Everything is wrong -- whatsoever I do is wrong." If he plays he is wrong because he is creating noise, he is disturbing you. If he sits silently in a corner, something is wrong: "Are you ill?" He is always wrong only because he is helpless, nothing else, and you are powerful. He is continuously confused, he cannot sort out what to do and what not to do. And by and by he rejects all that is bad and he forces all that is thought good. He becomes a mask, and deep down in the unconscious all the wounds are carried his whole life.

That's why if I say, "As you are, you are God," you cannot believe it. You are not even good -- how can you be God? God means the ultimate good. You are not even ordinarily good -- how can you be God? You will not listen to me, you will go to some teacher who will condemn you, who will say you are guilty, you are a great sinner. Then you will be at ease: he is right because this is what you also feel. That's why you worship those people who can condemn you, who can look at you as if you are worms; ugly, dirty. If you see a great following around a saint, a so-called saint, you always find this reason: he is going to condemn everybody. He will say, "You are sinners, and if you don't listen to me you are going to be thrown into hell." He feels absolutely right because this is your feeling, he agrees with you. So whenever he condemns you, you feel good.

What absurdity! What nonsense! And you feel uneasy if somebody says, "You are good and I accept you -- whatsoever you are, as you are. The divine has chosen this way to be, in you the divine has chosen this way to be, this is how the divine exists in you -- and I accept it, I don't reject any part. I accept your sex, your anger, I accept your hatred, your jealousy. I accept you in your totality, because through this acceptance, when you are total, the one will happen -- and that one immediately transcends all jealousies, all anger, all sex, all greed. Nobody can transform greed -- one has to become one, then there is transformation."

That's why Jesus could not be forgiven, because Jews are the greatest guilt-creators. The whole world has done that, but no comparison to Jews. The whole world exists, according to Jews, because Adam and Eve committed the original sin. You are born out of Adam and Eve and their sin, man is born in sin -- sin remains as the central concept. How can they accept that you are God? You can be close to God if you repent, if you change yourself, if you become good. Then God the father will accept you; otherwise, as you are you cannot be accepted, you have to be thrown away and away and away from God.

And what was the sin of Adam and Eve? Their disobedience. But why should God be so obsessed with obedience? -- because every father is, and your God is nothing but a cosmic father. Why should God be so obsessed with obedience? Couldn't he take a little joke? Couldn't he be a little playful with his children, who were enjoying themselves? Couldn't he take it a little less seriously? And what had they done? Just eaten one apple from a tree which God had forbidden. God seems to be very egoistic, because ego is always obsessed with obedience: "Follow me, I am the rule. If you disobey you hurt my ego." But God cannot have an ego, he cannot insist on obedience. This must be the priest, not God, who has created the whole story.

And then you feel guilty: you are born in sin, you are already a sinner when you are born; from your very birth you are a sinner. All that is left to you is to polish yourself, cut yourself here and there and make yourself acceptable.

Vedanta says you are not a sinner -- you may be ignorant but you are not a sinner. This is a totally different attitude: God is not against you -- you may be against God -- and he is not taking any revenge on you. If you are ignorant you are creating your own trouble. This is a totally different attitude: if you are in ignorance you create your own trouble. If you ask Hindus, they will say you may have got into trouble because you ate the fruit of the tree of ignorance, not of knowledge. Man can be ignorant -- he is, because he is not aware of himself, of who he is -- and then everything goes wrong. But this is not a sin.

So religion means gaining more light, more knowledge, more awareness; not more morality, not more virtue. Virtue will be a byproduct. When you are aware, virtue will happen, it will follow like a shadow. When you are unaware, sin will follow because ignorance cannot do anything else, it can only commit mistakes.

Sin is like a mistake. It is just like somebody adding two to two and concluding five -- but this is not a sin. If somebody thinks that two plus two makes five, will you think that now he is to be thrown into hell for eternity? It is a mistake, an error, but it is not a sin. He has to be taught, he has to be given a right perspective of things -- he may not know mathematics, that's all.

Vedanta says you are simply unaware, ignorant of yourself. If you become aware, you are God himself. There is no God except you, other than you. But this is not an egoistic assertion, because this can happen only when the 'I', the center, has disappeared and you have become the all.

JESUS SAID: 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.

This is one of the greatest poetic assertions. And I would like to say to you that a man like Jesus is more like a poet than like a philosopher or a theologian or a mathematician. He is more like a poet, and if you miss his poetry you miss his message completely. If a poet says something, you can forgive him because you say, "It is mere poetry." But if a saint asserts something, you take it very seriously because much is at stake.

posted February 02, 2008 05:24 PM            

Hindus have never killed any enlightened person. Why has it never happened? -- because they thought that whatsoever they are saying, whatsoever they assert, is a poetic way to say a thing; you need not analyze it, otherwise it will be stupid. For example, if you go to Jesus and say, "Okay, if you say you are the light that is above them all, if you say you are the all, if you say, 'The all came from me and the all attained to me,' then show us, prove it. Tell the sun to go off, or create another moon tonight, then we will believe you" -- then you are stupid, you have not followed, because it is a poetic assertion, it is not a scientific statement.

Because of this, Christians have continuously been trying to prove that he did miracles: that he created bread out of stone, he revived a dead man, he did this and that, he opened the eyes of those who were blind, he touched the lepers and they were healed. Why so much insistence on miracles?... because we have never paid any attention to Buddha as a miracle-maker, nobody ever bothered whether this man could do any miracle or not. But why so much insistence about Jesus? If somebody proves that he did not do the miracles, then the whole point will be lost -- then Christianity will disappear.

Christianity depends not on Jesus, but on Jesus' miracles. If someday it is proved that he never raised a man from death, that he never cured a blind man, he never healed a leper, then Christianity will immediately disappear. There will be no church, no pope, everything will go -- because they don't depend on Jesus directly, they depend on the miracles. Miracles prove that he is the son of God.

No miracle can prove anything. Miracles really prove the ignorance of those who are impressed by miracles, nothing else. As far as I know, Jesus never did anything of this sort. He was not so stupid as to do miracles to convince you. Miracles happened around him of far greater significance than you can think. Yes, blind people started seeing, but this is not concerned with the physical eye, it is concerned with a deeper spiritual blindness. Yes, dead people were revived, but this is not concerned with corpses, it is concerned with you who just think you are alive and are not. He made many dead people alive, he brought them to life from their corpselike existence. And this is a greater miracle, because the other miracle will be done by medical science any day now. And the day is not far off -- it has already been done.

In Soviet Russia, in the second world war, they revived six men from death. They succeeded -- two or three of them are still alive. This will be done by medical science any day now, this is nothing. And once medical science is able to do it, what will you do with your Christ the miracle-maker? Then he may have been a very good doctor, a scientist, but not an enlightened man.

Eyes can be cured, they will be cured. The body is not the point, the body should not be the concern really. Jesus did miracles, but those miracles were spiritual, they were concerned with your inner being. You are blind because you cannot see yourself. What type of eyes do you have? A person who cannot see himself, what type of eyes does he have?

Jesus made you see; you looked into the inner world. He gave you eyes, right -- but not these eyes that look into the world. This has to be understood. He never made any bread out of any stone, because this is foolish. But followers look for miracles, because they cannot see enlightenment, they cannot see christhood, a Krishna is invisible to them -- they can only see a stone turning into bread. They can only believe in this world, and if something is done to matter then it becomes a proof to them. That's why they follow magicians rather than enlightened persons, they follow people who can do tricks. And all tricks are useless, they prove nothing. They prove your ignorance, and they prove that the other man is cunning and exploiting you.

Jesus was not cunning, you cannot find such an innocent man. He was not cunning, he could not have been a miracle-maker, he was not a magician and he was not interested in exploiting your ignorance. And think, if he had really done these things -- turned stones into bread, turned water into wine....

I have heard about one woman who was carrying whiskey in a bag and was entering into another country. At the border she was stopped and asked what she was carrying. She said, "Holy water."

But the man on the checkpost was suspicious, so he said, "I would like to look, because these people who carry holy water are always suspicious. Water is enough! Why 'holy'?" So he looked, and it was whiskey. So he said, "What!"

And the woman said, "Lord! See, the miracle again!"

Jesus turned water into whiskey? He revived dead people? Lazarus came out of his grave? Eyes were given? People who could not walk, walked; who could not see, could see again; who could not hear, started hearing? If these miracles really happened, then the Jews themselves would have believed that this was the man of God, because Jews are as materialistic as anybody. If these things had really happened, then the Jews would have become mad after this man. They are even more materialistic than any other race -- but they didn't pay any attention.

It is impossible not to follow a man who is doing such things, because everybody is ill, and everybody is afraid of death, and everybody is in trouble, and this man is the right person: even if you die he will revive you again, if you are ill he will heal you, if you are poor, stones can become notes -- anything is possible with this man. The whole Jewish race would have followed this man, but they didn't follow him, and he was crucified.

What is the reason? The reason is that miracles did happen, but they were not visible things. Only those who were near could feel those miracles. They did happen: Lazarus was dead -- just as you are dead. If I make you alive, that will be something between me and you, nobody else will be aware of it. It will not be announced from the radio and the TV. Nobody else will be aware of it if I revive you in your inner world, this will be a matter between me and you. And you cannot prove it to anybody because it is invisible. That's why miracles happened, but Jesus' disciples could not prove them, they were such invisible phenomena. They looked within, but how can you prove that you have looked? No photograph can be taken, nobody else can be a witness to it.

They started going around and telling people, "We have seen miracles: those who cannot see have seen, those who were dead have become alive!" This created the trouble, and Jews started asking, "Show us! And if this man is really the son of God, and if he can do such miracles, then let us crucify him and see what happens. If he can revive others, he can resurrect himself -- we will give him a crucifixion and he will not die. If he knows the secret of immortality, if he is such a healer, then we will make wounds in his body and we will see whether blood comes out of them or not."

It is because of these disciples' foolishness -- that they started talking about miracles, which are inner things -- that Jesus became a focal point for the whole country. He looked false, he was not the real, authentic messiah. Then people were waiting for some miracle to happen. Nothing happened -- he died just like the other two criminals; just like the other two, simply the same -- an ordinary human being. Nothing of God happened, no light descended from heaven; neither was the earth shaken, nor was there an earthquake, nor was God angry and roaring in the sky. Nothing! The son was crucified, and God remained absolutely silent.

That's why Jews have not recorded anything of Jesus: this man was a false man because he couldn't prove himself at the crucifixion. The crucifixion was the test, there it was to be proved whether he was a man of God or not. But those who could see, they saw a great miracle there also. Christians have missed that, and the Jews missed the first miracle because they were waiting for something outside to happen. It never happened and they forgot this man -- he was an impostor.

Christians missed the inner thing that happened at the crucifixion. Only a few can see it. Those who have seen themselves can see what happened at the crucifixion: this man accepted -- that was the miracle. This man suffered and accepted, this man suffered and still remained filled with love -- that was the miracle. Those who were killing him, murdering him, he could pray even for them -- that is the miracle, the greatest miracle that ever happened on earth.

The last words of Jesus were, "God, forgive them because they don't know what they are doing. Don't punish them, because they are ignorant." This is the greatest miracle, at the crucifixion: the whole body is suffering, and he is dying -- yet still filled with love. Anger would have been absolutely okay. If he had cried and cursed and said, "God, look what they are doing to your son. Kill them all!" -- that would have been ordinary, human. This is divine. At the crucifixion he proved that he was the son of God, because compassion remained pure. You could not poison his compassion, you could not destroy his prayer, you could not destroy his heart. Whatsoever you did, he accepted you. He would not reject you -- even in that moment of suffering and misery he would not reject you. He said, "Forgive them, because they don't know what they are doing."

Miracles did happen but they were not miracles which the eyes can see, they were those which only the heart can feel. He was not a magician. If he had been a magician and really tried to turn stone into bread and tried to heal lepers into whole bodies, he would not be worth much, I would not bother about him at all. The whole thing is useless then.

But try to understand: as there is an inner blindness, there is an inner leprosy. You are so ugly, and you have done this ugliness to yourself: so guilt-ridden, fear-filled, jealous, anxious -- this is the leprosy. It is eating your inner world like a worm; you are a wound inside. He healed, but that is a private thing. It happens between a master and the disciple; nobody else becomes aware of it. Even the disciple becomes aware only later on. The master becomes aware in the beginning that the wound is healed. It takes time for the disciple to become aware that the wound is healed. Ordinarily, for many, many days he continues in the old idea that the wound is there -- but nobody else can see it.

Jesus says, "I am the all." You are also the all -- Jesus is simply saying that which should be known to everybody, which should be felt by everybody. You are the all, you are the source of the all, and the all is moving towards you. Jesus is just representative of you. He is not saying anything about himself, he is saying something about you. You are the mustard seed, he has become the blooming tree -- he is making an assertion about you. He is saying, "I am the all." What does he mean? He says you also can become the all. You are already the all, but you are not aware of it.

Your misery is that you cannot remember who you are. Self-remembering is needed, nothing else is to be done. You have to become more conscious, more conscious. You have to raise your consciousness to a peak from where you can see. At that moment you become illuminated; no corner remains dark, your whole being becomes aflame. Then you will understand Jesus, then you will understand Buddha, then you will understand Krishna, or then you will understand me, because the whole effort is to make you aware of who you are.

Remember these words. Let them vibrate into your heart again and again, because through these words your seed will undergo a shaking:

JESUS SAID: 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.

posted February 09, 2008 03:40 AM            

JESUS SAID: WHOEVER DRINKS FROM MY MOUTH SHALL BECOME AS I AM AND I MYSELF WILL BECOME HE, AND THE HIDDEN THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED TO HIM.

Man is born a slave, and remains a slave all his life -- a slave of desires, lust, a slave of the body, or of the mind, but all the same, slavery continues. From the moment you are born to the moment you die, it is a long struggle against slavery. And religion consists of being free. Religion is freedom, freedom from all slavery. But man goes on playing with himself, goes on fooling himself, because that is easy.

To be completely free is very difficult. It will need a crystallization within you, it will need a center. And right now there is no center in you, you are not a crystallized being -- you are just a chaos. You may be like an assembly, but you are not like an individual. Sometimes one desire overpowers you and then that becomes the chairman of the assembly. Only a few minutes later the chairman is gone, or thrown, then another desire overtakes you. And you get identified with each desire; you say, "I am this."

When sex is in the chair, you become the sex; when anger is in the chair, you become the anger; when love is in the chair, you become the love. And you never remember the fact that you cannot be this or that -- sex, anger, love. No! You cannot be, but you get identified with the chair, whatsoever is powerful in the moment you move with. And this chairman goes on changing, because whenever a desire is fulfilled temporarily it is thrown out of the chair. Then another, which is next to it, thirsty, hungry, demanding, becomes the chairman. And you get identified with every desire, with every slavery.

This identification is the root cause of all slavery, and unless this identification disappears, you will never be free. Freedom means the disappearance of identification with the body, mind, heart, whatsoever you call it. This is the basic fact to be understood: that man is a slave, born a slave, born crying and howling for some desires to be fulfilled. The first thing a child is going to do when he is born is to cry. And that remains your whole life -- crying for this or that. The child cries for milk; you may be crying for a palace, or for a car, or for something else, but the crying continues. It stops only when you are dead.

Your whole life is a long cry -- that's why there is so much suffering. Religion gives you the keys to make you free, but you being a slave, and the life of slavery being convenient, comfortable, you create mock religions which don't give you any freedom, which simply give you new types of slavery. Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam, as they are, organized, established, they are new sorts of imprisonments.

Jesus is freedom, Mohammed is freedom, Krishna is freedom, Buddha is freedom, but not Buddhism, not Mohammedanism, not Christianity, not Hinduism -- they are mock. So a new slavery is born: not only are you a slave to your desires, your thoughts, your feelings, your instincts, but you become slaves to the priests. More slavery happens out of your mock religions, and nothing changes in you.

I have heard, once it happened: Mulla Nasruddin was very much hounded by his creditors. He had taken much money from many people, and there was no way to get rid of them. So he asked his lawyer, and as lawyers do, he suggested, "Do one thing, Nasruddin, because there is no way out: make arrangements for a mock funeral with you in the casket. Let the whole town know that you are dead, and then escape from this town. All your creditors will know that now you are dead, and they won't bother."

It looked workable, it appealed to him. Nasruddin arranged a mock funeral. He was in the casket, the whole town gathered to say goodbye to him. The first creditor very sadly said goodbye, then the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth.... But the ninth creditor pulled out a gun and hollered and said, "Nasruddin, I know you are dead, but still I will shoot you, just to have a little satisfaction." Nasruddin jumped out of the casket and said, "Hold on! You, I will pay!"

posted February 09, 2008 03:40 AM            

With religion we have played the greatest game, and the game is that we have molded fetters out of freedom. That's why a man like Jesus or Krishna is dangerous: he is not going to give you a mock life, he will give you the real thing.

That's why Jesus says:

WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME IS NEAR TO THE FIRE....

What fire does he mean? The fire in which you will not remain. You will have to disappear completely. This crowd that you are cannot be allowed to remain, because this has been your misery, and this is your misery and anguish. This crowd has to disappear, disappear in a crystallized center.

Fire is an alchemical term; anything that needs to be crystallized will have to pass through fire. If you want to make something out of gold, the gold will have to pass through fire. First it will have to become liquid, then it will be purified -- it will be pure gold -- and then you can mold it into anything else. But it will have to pass through fire. And the same is going to happen to a disciple: the master is a fire, and you have to become completely liquid so that all that was wrong is burned, and all that was right has become liquid and one. Then you will crystallize.

First a master is a fire, and then infinite coolness happens through him. But the beginning is fiery, and that creates fear. It is easy to approach a priest -- he is as false as you. There is no danger, you know it well. It is easy to pass through a ritual, you know it is mock. But to come to Jesus is difficult: you are coming near a fire; the nearer you come, the more you will feel burned. When a disciple comes really close -- that's what a disciple does: gathers courage, and comes nearer and nearer, and allows the fire to work -- he passes through a furnace. Jesus is a furnace.

But when he comes out of it, the disciple is totally different: the crowd has gone, now he is a different, totally different metal. The baser metal has changed into the higher, the iron has become gold -- it has been a transformation. When I say it has been a transformation, I mean it is discontinuous with the past. If there is a continuity there is no mutation, only modification. That's what you have been doing.

You go on modifying yourself a little bit here and there. It is a patchwork, but a patchwork is never revolution. And a patchwork is not going to help you ultimately; a patchwork is a patchwork -- you are never transformed. Somewhere you change a little, but the totality remains the same. And the totality is so powerful that the new that you have made will not remain new for long. Sooner or later the totality will absorb it, and it will be old. You go on improving yourself, but no improvement can lead you to religion. Religion is not an improvement. Whom are you improving? You are the illness, you are the disease, and you are improving a disease. You may polish it, you may paint it, you may give it a mask -- even the ugliness may not look so ugly -- but the illness remains.

A transformation is a discontinuity with the past, it is not a patchwork; you completely dissolve, and something new happens. That's what Jesus says: a new birth, a resurrection. The old is gone and the new has come in. And the new is not out of the old, it is totally new -- that's why it is a birth; it is not just the old, continuous, modified. No! The old is no more, and something has happened which was never there before. There is a gap: the old drops and the new comes, and there is no causal link. This is very difficult to understand, because the scientific training of the mind has given us an obsession with causality.

We think everything is caused -- so even a Buddha is caused, a Jesus is caused, he is out of the past. No! If you think Buddha is out of the past you have missed the whole thing. The past is no more, Buddha is absolutely new -- this man never existed before; Gautam Siddhartha was there, but this man Buddha was never there. The old has gone into nothingness, and the new has come out of nothingness. The new is not born out of the old, the new has come in the place of the old because the old is no more, and the old place is vacant, empty. The new has come from the unknown. The old has disappeared from the known, and the new, finding a place, an emptiness in the heart, has entered.

It is just like when your room is dark: it is closed, all the windows and doors are closed, it is as dark as if it were night. And then you open the window or the door. Suddenly the darkness has disappeared, now it is light, the sun has entered. What will you say? Will you say that the sun, this light, is caused by the darkness that was there? The darkness has changed into light? No! The darkness has simply disappeared from the room and light has entered. This light is not in any way related to the darkness, it is not caused by the darkness, it is totally new. It was waiting outside the gate; the doors opened and it entered -- just an opening was needed.

Whenever you meditate you are creating an opening; when you pray you are creating an opening. The old, the darkness, will disappear and the light will be there. And this light is no longer related to the past, just like darkness is not related to the light. They are discontinuous, they are different dimensions, they are different existences. Try to understand this, because this is the miracle that religion has always been insisting on. Science cannot understand it because science thinks in terms of modification, change, continuity. Religion thinks in terms of discontinuity, transformation, mutation.

You are not going to become a Jesus or a Buddha -- you are the barrier. You have to be burned completely, you have to be finished completely. When Jesus descends into you, you will not be there. You will feel as if your past was just a dream that you dreamed, it was never you; the identity is broken.

Hence, Jesus is like a fire. If you come near a Jesus be ready to die, because Jesus cannot mean anything other than death to you. And rebirth is possible only if you die. If you are afraid to die, escape from a man like Jesus. Don't go near him -- he is dangerous, he is like an abyss: you will feel dizzy and fall into him.

Jesus said: WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME, IS NEAR TO THE FIRE... near to death, near to dying; the old disappearing, the baser metal dissolving. And immediately he says another thing. If you can tolerate the heat, the fire of a Jesus or Buddha or Krishna, then the second thing will immediately become possible for you.

WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME IS NEAR TO THE FIRE, AND WHOEVER IS FAR FROM ME IS FAR FROM THE KINGDOM.

If you can pass through the fire of Jesus, if the disciple can pass through the fire of the master, immediately a new world opens before him: the kingdom of God, the kingdom of immortality, the deathless, real life.

So Jesus says: "Whoever is near to me is near a fire, and whoever is far away from me is far away from the kingdom." If you escape from Jesus, you are also escaping from the ultimate kingdom that can be yours. That is the problem: the attraction and repulsion with a master. Sometimes you feel to come near, whenever the kingdom attracts you -- but when you come near you feel the fire, then you try to escape.

Once you are near an enlightened man this will remain a problem for you your whole life: to come near, then how to escape. Whenever you are far away you will think of how to again come near him and the kingdom -- because whenever you are distant the the fire disappears -- because that kingdom has to be achieved, that is the fulfillment. Without it you will remain unfulfilled; without it you will remain a barren womb, without giving birth to anything; without it you will remain futile, meaningless; without it your whole life will be just a nightmare, leading nowhere -- running so fast and reaching nowhere. Immediately you start feeling how to bloom and how to flower.

That can only happen near a master, one who has flowered already. Only there will your seeds become uneasy, uncomfortable, in their dead cells. They will start fighting with the cells, and they will break down the cells and come out of the earth to reach to the sun. But that can only happen if you are ready to go through the fire. This is the problem for the disciple: when he comes to the master, immediately his whole mind-body thinks of escaping. He finds all sorts of rationalizations to escape; inside he argues continuously how to escape this man, this man seems to be dangerous. When he escapes he starts feeling the desire again.

One has to decide. Decision is final because you cannot go back. Once you are in the fire you cannot go back. Once you are really intimate with Jesus, then there is no going back. A point of no return has come, because even when you are passing through the fire you can have glimpses of the kingdom. Then the fire is not fire, then you are happy and blessed. Then you are grateful to this man because he has become a fire for you. And now the glimpses are not far away, the kingdom is near.

Once you have had one glimpse of the kingdom, then all fire ceases to be fire. It becomes so soothing; you have never known anything in life as soothing as it is. But if you escape just at the boundary before jumping into the furnace, you will be in constant trouble -- and you have been.

You are not new on this earth, nobody is new; you are as old as this earth, even older than this earth, because you have been to other earths also. You are as old as this universe. You have always existed, because all that is in existence remains in existence -- there is no way to go out. You are an integral part of this existence, you have always been here. You have been near many Buddhas, you have been near many Jesuses and Mohammeds. And this problem has always been the trouble.

You were attracted when you heard. When you were very, very far away, they became magnetic forces. Then you came nearer, and the nearer you came, the more fearful you became, because the fire was there. You decided to escape -- that's why you are still wandering. But someday, one has to decide to go through the fire because there is no other way. And then you console yourself with false masters who are not fires: then you go to the priest, then you go to the temple and the mosque and the church; then you do rituals, all sorts of mock things just to escape Jesus and Krishna, because with them the real happens -- and the real happens only through fire.

You have to be purified, you have to be really completely dissolved so there comes an emptiness. And in that emptiness, the ray of creation, God's ray, enters, and then you are fulfilled. Then there is no misery, no dukkha, then there is no anguish. Then you remain in the bliss eternal, then the ecstasy is there. Not that it happens through something: then it is your nature, your very being. If ecstasy happens through something it cannot be eternal because that something can be lost; if it is caused by something outside then it cannot remain forever, it can be only momentary.

posted February 09, 2008 03:41 AM            

WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME IS NEAR TO THE FIRE, AND WHOEVER IS FAR FROM ME IS FAR FROM THE KINGDOM.

Remember that wherever you feel fire, decide -- this is the place to go and jump. Wherever you feel only consolations, escape from there -- priests may be there but not a master. They always console you and that's why they appeal to you.

You come to the priest to be consoled because life is such a misery. The priest is therapeutic, he is a consoler. He listens to you and he says to you, "Don't be afraid. Just pray and God will do everything." He says to you, "Don't be afraid, God is compassionate. Your sins will be forgiven." If you are afraid of death, he says, "Don't be afraid, the soul is eternal, there is no death to it." If you feel too guilty, he gives you means and ways to feel guilt-free. He says, "Donate some money to the temple, donate some money to the church. Donation is good, because that is how you negate your sins, through donation. Do something good: make a hospital, a school, go and serve the masses, the poor, the downtrodden, the ill."

These are the ways to console you, but there is no transformation in it. You may leave your shop, your office, and become a social worker; you may go to the primitives and serve them, but you remain the same, the old continues. You may not exploit, you may start serving, but the old is there -- it is a continuity.

You were greedy and you accumulated wealth. Now you donate, but you remain the same. You may have become fed up with greed, now it has become donation; first you were snatching from others, now you are giving -- but you remain the same, the inner being has not come to any transformation. People will appreciate you, the society will say, "Now you have changed," but this is no change. This is just throwing away guilt because you have become guilty of too much exploitation.

Donation becomes a release, it gives you a feeling that you are good, but this is only a feeling. Because you have been bad you are just trying to balance the account; but you remain the same, the same cunning mind, thinking in terms of mathematics, balancing, calculation. What change has happened in you? The money was important before, the money is still important now. It was important, that's why you accumulated it; it is important, that's why you donate it.

Before, you felt you were doing a very good, successful job of it, accumulating, because it was the most significant thing -- you were money-obsessed. Still you are money-obsessed: you are giving, and still you think that you are serving people by giving them money, but money remains meaningful. It has changed: from positive, the greed has become negative. But you have not changed, you remain the same -- first it was positive, now it is negative.

You were in sex, you lived a life of sex. Now you have become a brahmachari, a celibate; you are fed up with women and men, you are finished with all that. But are you really finished? It has become negative. Always remember that when the positive becomes negative it gives you a false feeling that you have changed. It is just like a man standing on his head: the man remains the same. First he was standing on his feet -- that was more natural, sex is more natural -- now he is standing on his head, he is doing shirshasan, now he thinks he has changed. But how, just by standing on your head, can you be changed? You can become a celibate but you remain the same, nothing changes.

It happened: One of Mulla Nasruddin's friends, Abdullah, was going on a haj, to Mecca for a religious pilgrimage. He was an old man and he had just married a young girl. The young girl was very beautiful. Of course, he was going on a haj, but he was very worried about his wife. There was every possibility she might not be faithful to him. What to do? So he purchased a chastity belt and locked up his wife. But where to keep this key? To carry it with himself on the haj would not look good, because this would be a burden on his conscience, that he didn't believe his wife, didn't trust her. And constantly the key would make him remember his wife and the possibility.... So he thought, and he went to Mulla Nasruddin, his friend.

Nasruddin was an old man now, almost ninety-nine, and everybody knew that he was finished with women. And when people are finished, fed up with women, they start talking of brahmacharya. He was always talking about brahmacharya, and condemning people who were still young, and he used to say, "You are wasting your life. This is useless, a wastage of energy and nothing else, and it leads nowhere."

His friend, this Abdullah, came to him and said, "Nasruddin, I am in trouble. My wife is young and it is difficult to trust her, so I got a chastity belt and I have locked my wife into the chastity belt. Now where to keep this key? You are always in favor of brahmacharya and you are my most trusted friend, my best friend, so you keep this key. Within three months I will be back."

Nasruddin said, "I feel very grateful to you that you thought about me in this moment of trouble, and I assure you that the key could not be in better hands. Your wife will be safe."

Abdullah left, easy in his heart now. There was no danger: the man was ninety-nine, one thing; then he was always in favor of brahmacharya, and for almost twenty years he had been preaching celibacy. Happy that things had worked out well, he left. But just one hour or so later, he heard a donkey galloping fast behind, coming towards him. When the donkey came near... Mulla Nasruddin was on it, tired from the hard ride, perspiring, and he said, "Abdullah! Abdullah, you gave me the wrong key!"

This is going to happen to the negative mind, it always happens. If you can change from the positive to the negative, you can change from the negative to the positive. These are two poles of the same mind. So you may be surprised that brahmacharis, celibates, monks, they are constantly thinking of sex, constantly condemning, constantly thinking about it. Both can be dropped, but you cannot do the impossible, choosing one and denying the other. Whosoever denies, affirms; whosoever suppresses, feeds.

You can throw the whole thing out, that's possible, but then you are neither a brahmachari nor one who indulges, you simply escape from both, you are neither. Then you are neither male nor female. That's what Jesus means when he says 'eunuchs of God': when both the polarities have been thrown out. Otherwise, you can retain one polarity: from greed you can move to donations, charity, but the miserliness remains the same. I have seen misers, many types of miser.... Basically the types are two: the negative and the positive. The positive miser accumulates money, the society is against him; the negative miser donates, the society is for him -- but the miser is the same.

posted February 09, 2008 03:41 AM            

A man of greed remains a man of greed, a man of anger remains a man of anger, a man of sex remains a man of sex; just moving to the opposite pole makes no change, remember this. So you can move to the mock religion easily, because the mock religion always emphasizes the other pole. If you are angry then the mock religion says, "Have compassion, love thy neighbor as thyself. Be friendly, don't be angry -- and this will pay!" If you are greedy the mock religion says, "Have control of your greed, because this will pay in the other world." The appeal is again based on the greed, because this is going to pay. So donate, be charitable! If you give one rupee here in this world, you will get one million in the other. This is what mock religion is doing: it simply helps you to move to the opposite pole, it is easy.

Mind always likes to move to the opposite pole, because mind always gets fed up with one thing. And the opposite gives the taste again, gives you the possibility to move again. A man who is eating too much gets fed up. The taste is lost, the body hungers no more, he cannot enjoy food, so he starts thinking about fasting. Not that he is changing -- fasting will give him the taste again, the body will hunger again. Fasting is always good for those who are obsessed with food. Fast for two days and the hunger comes back, then you can be a glutton again.

Whenever you make love to a woman or a man, the body is satisfied -- of course only for twenty-four hours, but the body is satisfied, you feel fed up. After making love, every man, every woman, thinks of dropping this whole nonsense, it looks so absurd. The peak has gone, now the valley has come and you think that you are deciding something; then you are wrong, you are not deciding anything. Within twenty-four hours the body will again accumulate energy, and within twenty-four hours the taste will be back again and you will have to break your fast. A twenty-four-hour fast is needed for sex, and as you grow older, more time will be needed to break the fast. But when the energy is again full, you are again sexual.

Look at this polarity. Mock religion and real religion have this significant distinction: mock religion helps you to move to the opposite pole, which is not a transformation; real religion simply helps you to burn both the polarities completely. That's why real religion is real fire. Says Jesus:

WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME IS NEAR TO THE FIRE, AND WHOEVER IS FAR FROM ME IS FAR FROM THE KINGDOM.

And when desire, positive and negative, both disappear, the kingdom is there. The kingdom is not very far away, it is always there within you. Only because of the desires you cannot look at it; obsessed with desires, you cannot look at it.

When your eyes are not filled with desire this way or that way, when you are not moving in sex or against sex, when you are not obsessed with food or obsessed with fasting, when you are simply without desires, then your eyes have no smoke, they are clear, they can see, they have a clarity. In that clarity the kingdom is there. The kingdom has always existed within you, but your eyes are filled, overfilled with desires. And desires bring frustrations, tears: desires create hope, dreams. Your eyes are completely filled, that's why there is no clarity. Eyes not filled with desire, dreams, hope, frustration, simply empty -- then you have the first glimpse.

Near a Jesus, near an enlightened man, you have to pass through a fire. That fire will burn all your desires -- negative and positive both; of this world and that, both. It will burn all your hopes, because through hope, desire lives. In fact, it will burn all your future and past, it will leave you simply here and now; no more past, no more future, no more to look at. Suddenly the energy turns within, there is a conversion, a transformation. Nowhere to look outside: past is useless, dead; the future has not yet come -- where to go? You have to go within. Energy has to move; finding no passage outside, the whole energy turns within. The kingdom of God is there.

JESUS SAID: COME TO ME, FOR EASY IS MY YOKE AND MY LORDSHIP IS GENTLE.

This has to be understood very, very deeply and remembered, because this is going to help you.

Whenever you come to a man like Jesus, the problem arises in the mind: "Why surrender to this man? This looks like slavery." And then the whole thing looks very contradictory, because Jesus goes on saying, "I am here to liberate you, I am here to give you total freedom," and then he demands surrender. Looks contradictory: "Why surrender? Why should I surrender to another man?" And he says, "I am going to give you total liberation." This looks contradictory. "Then he should give it to me right now. Why should I surrender to anybody? Why should I make him a lord? Why should the guru, why should the master, be the lord of my soul and of my being? Why should I surrender?"

Jesus says:

COME TO ME, FOR EASY IS MY YOKE AND MY LORDSHIP IS GENTLE.

He says, "Yes, I know this is how you will feel, that this too is a sort of slavery." Unless Jesus liberates you, how can you feel that this is really liberation?

You have known only slavery. Everywhere you have moved you have known slavery. In the name of love you have known slavery. And love promised that it would be a liberation, but it has not been. Look at any wife, any husband -- it has been a slavery, and the yoke has been very hard. You moved in the world in search of freedom, and everywhere you have created prisons, whatsoever you did. In the name of liberty there are all sorts of slaveries: the nation is a slavery, the race is a slavery, religion is a slavery. Love -- so-called love -- is a slavery. And everybody is burdened with too many slaveries. Then comes Jesus and he also wants surrender. Of course your mind says, "This is again going to be a slavery."

Jesus does not deny it, because at this moment, in this state of mind, you cannot understand what liberation is. So he says: COME TO ME, FOR EASY IS MY YOKE.... That's all he promises you. He does not say, "I will give you freedom right now." That may happen, but right now he gives only one promise. He says: ... EASY IS MY YOKE AND MY LORDSHIP IS GENTLE.

In life, hard is your yoke, and in life, all around you, there are lords dominating and dictating to you. And they are dangerous, ferocious; they are like lions jumping on you and murdering you. Jesus says, "At this moment, only this much can be said which will be understood by you: my yoke is not hard, it is not heavy." And when you think, "Why surrender?" then you are not choosing freedom. You are simply choosing your old slavery in the name of freedom, because your mind itself is a slavery, your desires are slaveries. And you cannot move beyond them without some help that comes from the outside.

You have remained in the prison so long that you think it is your home. And the prison is so well guarded that you cannot get out of it unless somebody who is outside the prison helps you, unless there is somebody who has got out of the prison and knows the way to get out of it.

A master only means this much: that he was also in the prison, the same prison in which you are, but somehow he has escaped; he found a door, he found a lock and key, some method, and he has escaped -- now he can be helpful. If you are all asleep, you cannot get out of the sleep. Something from the outside is needed -- even an alarm may be helpful, but still it is something from the outside. But you can deceive yourself with an alarm, because you can dream that there is a temple and the temple bell is ringing; you can create a dream and go on sleeping. Somebody -- not a mechanical device but somebody alive -- a master is needed, who is awake, who will not allow your sleep to create new dreams, who will go on shaking you.

posted February 09, 2008 03:42 AM            

It happened: A very meek man entered an office, thin-looking, ill-looking, very humble. He said, "I have come to know that you need a night-watchman."

The manager looked at him dubiously and said, "Yes, we need a night-watchman, but we need a person who is continuously uneasy, and particularly at night. We need a person who never believes anybody, who is a skeptic, a born skeptic: whatsoever you do, he will never trust you. And he must be a person who is always searching for trouble, and who is always listening to what is happening all around; who is almost a neurotic, and once roused becomes a fiend incarnate!"

That meek and humble man stood up and said, "Then I will send my wife."

This is how a husband feels about a wife, and this is how a wife feels about a husband -- the lordship is really heavy. But this is how, if you become aware, your every desire is heavy and goads you continuously towards futile goals. If you don't go there is trouble; if you go there is frustration. Each desire is a master, and millions are the desires. So you are a mess, you are a slave to millions of masters. It is hard, and every desire is goading you towards a goal of its own, not worried about you. And if you don't go there is trouble; the desire is not going to leave you so easily because it is a question of lordship. And if you go there is going to be frustration, because that goal may have been the desire's goal, but it was never your goal. And you don't know what your goal is, because you don't know who you are.

Surrender means choosing one master as the lord, against these millions of masters of desires and instincts. The lordship is gentle, it is gentle for many reasons: basically because one is the master. It is always good to have one master. Even if you have two masters you will know trouble, and if the masters are millions you will be in constant confusion. Millions of orders will be received, and you will be pulled in every direction; you will become a chaos. That's how madness happens, because you cannot see what to do. Whom to follow and whom not to follow? Your greed says, "Just go on accumulating money." Your sex says, "Go on indulging in sex." But then there is a problem because there is conflict.

If you indulge too much in sex you cannot accumulate money. Misers are always anti-sexual, they have to be, because the same energy has to be converted into accumulating money. Misers are not lovers, they are very anti-sexual. And people who indulge in sex can never accumulate money, difficult. Even if their forefathers did, they will throw it away, they will find ways to throw it away.

One desire says, "Accumulate money, because money means security. Who is going to help you in your old age? Have a bank balance, that is protection." And then sex says, "But life is going, why think about old age? Your youth is being wasted, go and indulge before the moment is gone and energy is lost. Use it, enjoy it!" Sex says, "Be here and now, this moment, indulge!" And greed says, "Don't think of this moment, think of the long-range goal." There is conflict, and this is not only between two desires -- every desire is in conflict with others. Anger says, "Kill immediately, murder this man!" But your own fear says, "Don't do this, because if you kill others, others will kill you. Be polite, smile. You are a good man, you are not a murderer, you are not a criminal." So what to do? So many masters, and only one is the slave.

It is good if you choose one master. At least a million voices dissolve, only Jesus has to be followed, and you can throw all the responsibility on him. And he says: EASY IS MY YOKE....

Why is it easy? -- because even if he asks you to surrender, he is asking you to surrender only so that you become free of your other masters. Once you are free of your desires he will throw this yoke also. This is just an interim arrangement, just a passage. Once you have thrown all the desires then this surrender is not needed. The master himself will say, "Now drop this surrender also, because you have become enlightened in your own light, in your own right."

JESUS SAID: COME TO ME, FOR EASY IS MY YOKE AND MY LORDSHIP IS GENTLE.

JESUS SAID: WHOEVER DRINKS FROM MY MOUTH SHALL BECOME AS I AM AND I MYSELF WILL BECOME HE, AND THE HIDDEN THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED TO HIM.

The surrender is a passage for the disciple to become a master himself. And if you totally surrender, in that very moment you have become one with the master, because then there is no conflict. Then there is no ego, the 'ego-trip' is finished, you have dropped out of it. And when you are not, that's what the surrender means: when you say, "I am not, you are, and lead me wheresoever.... I am not going to decide, you decide. I will simply follow like a shadow, I will be blind in my trust. Even if you say, 'Jump and die!' I will jump and die. No longer will there be 'no' coming from me; my yes is final and total and absolute." This absolute yes is surrender.

What does it mean? It means now the ego cannot persist in you, there is no meaning to it and there is no feeding it. If this can be done, then even in a single instant, when you are not, the doors are open and Jesus has entered you, the light of the Buddha has penetrated you.

Why are you afraid of surrendering? -- because the doors will be open, you will become vulnerable. You are afraid of the outside world; you have lived in your dark room, closed, for so long that you have become attuned to it, you have become one with the darkness. You are afraid of the light. When you open the door you may not be able to see the light at all. It may dazzle you so much that you may close your eyes. The fear is that if you surrender then you enter on an unknown path. And the mind is always afraid of the unknown. And the unknown is God, the unknown is Jesus! He is just a messenger of the unknown, just a ray from the sun. The sun may be very very far off, but the ray has knocked at your door. Surrender means to open the door.

WHOEVER DRINKS FROM MY MOUTH....

This is very symbolic and very meaningful. Lovers drink from each others' mouths. That's what a kiss is: a deep kiss is drinking the wine of the body from each others' mouths. It is one of the most intoxicating things, no alcohol can compete with it. But the same phenomenon exists on the spiritual level also: a disciple drinks from the master's mouth. It is not a bodily phenomenon, it is at the deepest core, where the disciple meets the master's being, where they embrace each other, where they kiss each other. This is what Jesus means:

WHOEVER DRINKS FROM MY MOUTH SHALL BECOME AS I AM AND I MYSELF WILL BECOME HE, AND THE HIDDEN THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED TO HIM.

Jesus has used the symbolic terms of drinking and eating very much. He says, "Eat me, drink me, absorb me completely in you." That's what the meaning of eating and drinking is: let me move within you, digest me so completely that I become part of your being -- and then there is no disciple and no master, the distinction is no longer there. Then there is no lord and no slave, then the disciple has become the master. Then I am you, then Jesus is you. Then he has become you, you have become him; then the distinction is no longer there. The distinction has never been there from the side of Jesus, it has been from your side.

posted February 09, 2008 03:43 AM            

Souls are not physical, they are not solid. They are just like the light when you burn a candle in your room: the room is filled with light; you burn another candle in the room, the room is filled with more light. Can you make any distinction between where the light of the first candle ends and the light of the second candle starts? No, there is no distinction; lights meet and mingle and become one. The spiritual is just like light.

When the disciple allows the master to penetrate, it is just like a sexual penetration on a higher level: the disciple has become the feminine part. That's why surrender -- because a woman is at her peak when she surrenders, she is in love when she surrenders. She is not aggressive, she is a passive pole. And a man is aggressive. He has to reach and penetrate, only then is the meeting possible. The disciple has to become just like the feminine: passive, allowing, not creating any hindrances, surrendered. The master has to be like a male phenomenon. That's why you can understand the phenomenon that there have been very few female masters. It is almost impossible, rarely has it happened, and whenever it has happened -- one, two, three cases in the whole history of man -- those women were not woman-like at all.

posted February 09, 2008 03:44 AM            

Women masters are rare because it is impossible, but women disciples number four times more than men disciples, the ratio is four to one. Mahavira had fifty thousand monks; forty thousand were women, nuns, and ten thousand male monks. And you cannot compare with a feminine disciple, impossible; a man can never become so surrendering, because his whole mind, the type, is aggressive. The feminine mind can easily surrender, surrender comes easily -- it is her very being. So you cannot find better disciples than feminine minds, you cannot find better masters than male minds. But this should be so, because on every level the polarity remains.

On the physical level you meet a lover; the woman surrenders, she never takes the initiative. And whenever a woman takes the initiative she is not womanly, and no man will love her. If a woman comes and proposes, you will simply be put off. She waits; she may be thinking and dreaming, but she will wait. The proposal must come from the man; he should take the initiative, he should be aggressive. And she will behave in such a way that she seems absolutely innocent, does not know what you are talking about -- but she has been planning and planning, and waiting and waiting for when you will come and propose.

Mulla Nasruddin and his wife were sitting on a park bench hidden behind a row of palms. Suddenly a young couple came on the other side of the palms. The young man immediately started to talk in a very romantic way, in a very poetic way. Mulla Nasruddin's wife became fidgety, uneasy. She said, whispered in Nasruddin's ear, "It seems that young man is not aware that we are here, so you whistle to make them aware. And the young man seems so much in love that I feel that he is just about to propose."

Nasruddin said, "Why should I whistle? Nobody ever made me alert, nobody whistled when I was proposing."

A woman is a waiting, she is a womb. Her body, her being is a patience, passivity. And the same happens at the higher level of spirituality: there also she is a waiting. And a disciple has to become like a woman. He has to fall in deep love with the master, and then there will be a meeting, a merging of higher spiritual beings. And that merging is just like a sexual penetration again -- more existential, absolutely non-bodily. And from that meeting the disciple is born again; he becomes pregnant from that meeting, pregnant with himself. Now he carries his own new being in his womb. The whole apprenticeship, the time when he is near the master, is the time to carry the pregnancy. It can be done only in deep trust; if you doubt it is impossible, because then you will defend, then you will make an armor around yourself, then you will try to protect yourself.

JESUS SAID: WHOEVER DRINKS FROM MY MOUTH SHALL BECOME AS I AM AND I MYSELF WILL BECOME HE, AND THE HIDDEN THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED TO HIM.

Once surrender has happened completely, the master becomes the door for you. Then a different world of light, life and bliss opens -- satchitananda Hindus have called it. The true existence, the true consciousness, and the true bliss, satchitananda, becomes possible for you. The master becomes the door, and once you have attained this you are enlightened. Now you can help others to pass through your fire. Now you can help others to have a glimpse of the absolute, or to reach the ultimate and be dissolved in it.

But before you can become a master you have to be totally a disciple. Before you can teach you have to learn, and before you can help you have to be helped. You have to allow somebody to help you deeply. And that deep help is possible only when you are not there, because you are the disturbance, you are the hindrance. You continuously create barriers for your own growth in fear of the unknown. You cling to the known and then there can be no meeting, because the master is one who is unknown. You remain in the world of the known, the past -- the master is the unknown. And a meeting of two points is possible: the unknown meeting the known. The known will dissolve, the known will burn, the known will be found no more, just like the darkness dissolves, disappears, when the sun enters.

Be a darkness before a master -- humble, knowing your ignorance well, ready to surrender and wait -- then Jesus can transform you, Buddha can transform you. In fact, Jesus and Buddha are just catalytic agents. Your surrender transforms you, they are just excuses. If you can surrender even without a Buddha, without a Jesus around you, if you can surrender to the cosmos, the same will happen. Then it will be difficult for you to surrender because there will be no object to surrender to. It will be more difficult -- that's why I say Buddha, Jesus, they are just excuses.

And then I would like to tell you of one very strange phenomenon that sometimes happens: even surrendering to a wrong master, sometimes you become enlightened -- the master himself is not enlightened. It has happened, it can happen again, because the basic thing is to surrender. The transformation comes through surrendering, the master is just an object. Right or wrong does not make much difference.

When you surrender, the door opens. So don't bother much where to surrender, simply think about more and more surrendering. That's why even before a stone statue it can happen, or before a tree it can happen. It happened before the bodhi tree -- that's why Buddhists have been preserving that tree for so long, because it happened before the tree itself. Just the feeling that Buddha attained under this tree, and you surrender to the tree.

Surrender is the thing, everything else is just a help towards it. If you can find a right master, so far so good; if you cannot find one, don't bother much. Surrender anywhere you like, but let the surrender be total. If the surrender is partial, even a Jesus or Buddha cannot help you. If the surrender is total, then even if they are not there, any ordinary man can also be helpful to you.

This emphasis has to be remembered, otherwise the mind goes on playing tricks. It thinks, "How should I be certain that this master is right? Unless I am certain, how can I surrender?" And you cannot be certain before you surrender, there is no way to be certain. If you want to be certain about the taste of the food, then the taste of the pudding is in its eating. How can you be certain without eating it? There is no way.

You have to eat Jesus, you have to drink Jesus -- that's the only way. You will be transformed because you believed, because you trusted and surrendered, and then many hidden dimensions will be open to you. The life that you see is not all; it is such a minute, atomic part of the whole. The pleasures that you have known are just rubbish. Not even a single ray exists in them of the bliss that is possible, that is your birthright.

All that you have accumulated is junk -- if you can come to know the real treasure that is hidden within you. All your life is a begging, and the emperor waits just within your heart -- this is what Jesus calls the kingdom. Don't be a beggar, you can be kings! But then one has to dare. A beggar need not dare, but to become a king one has to dare and pass through transformations. Surrender is the gate.

I will repeat the words:

JESUS SAID: WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME IS NEAR TO THE FIRE, AND WHOEVER IS FAR FROM ME IS FAR FROM THE KINGDOM.

JESUS SAID: COME TO ME, FOR EASY IS MY YOKE AND MY LORDSHIP IS GENTLE.

JESUS SAID: WHOEVER DRINKS FROM MY MOUTH SHALL BECOME AS I AM AND I MYSELF SHALL BECOME HE, AND THE HIDDEN THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED TO HIM.

Enough for today.

posted February 17, 2008 01:32 PM            

The deepest urge in man is to be totally free. Freedom, moksha, is the goal. Jesus calls it the kingdom of God: to be like kings, just symbolically, so that there is no fetter to your existence, no bondage, no boundary -- you exist as infinity, nowhere do you clash with anybody else... as if you are alone.

Freedom and aloneness are two aspects of the same thing. That's why Mahavira called his concept of moksha, kaivalya. Kaivalya means to be absolutely alone, as if nobody else exists. When you are absolutely alone, who will become a bondage to you? When nothing else is there, who will be the other? That's why those who are in search of freedom will have to find their solitariness; they will have to find a way, means, method to reach their aloneness.

Man is born as part of the world, as a member of a society, of a family, as part of others. He is brought up not as a solitary being, he is brought up as a social being. All training, education, culture, consists of how to make a child a fitting part of the society, how to make him fit with others. This is what psychologists call adjustment. And whenever somebody is a solitary he looks maladjusted.

Society exists as a network, a pattern of many persons, a crowd. There you can have a little freedom -- at the cost of much. If you follow the society, if you become an obedient part to others, they will lease you a little world of freedom. If you become a slave, freedom is given to you. But it is a given freedom, it can be taken back any moment. And it is at a very great cost: it is an adjustment with others, so boundaries are bound to be there.

In society, in a social existence, nobody can be absolutely free. The very existence of the other will create trouble. Sartre says, "The other is hell," and he is right to a very great extent because the other creates tensions in you; you are worried because of the other. There is going to be a clash, because the other is in search of absolute freedom, you are also in search of absolute freedom -- everybody needs absolute freedom -- and absolute freedom can exist only for one.

Even your so-called kings are not absolutely free, cannot be. They may have an appearance of freedom but that is false: they have to be protected, they depend on others -- their freedom is just a facade. But still, because of this urge to be absolutely free, one wants to become a king, an emperor. The emperor gives a false feeling that he is free. One wants to become very rich, because riches also give a false feeling that you are free. How can a poor man be free? His needs will be the bondage, and he cannot fulfill his needs. Everywhere he moves comes the wall which he cannot cross.

Hence the desire for riches. Deep down is the desire to be absolutely free, and all desires are created by it. But if you move in false directions, you can go on moving but you will never reach the goal, because from the very beginning the direction has become wrong -- you missed the first step.

In old Hebrew, the word 'sin' is very beautiful. It means one who has missed the mark; there is no sense of guilt in it really. Sin means one who has missed the mark, gone astray, and religion means to come back to the right path so you don't miss the goal. The goal is absolute freedom, religion is just a means towards it. That's why you have to understand that religion exists as an antisocial force: its very nature is antisocial, because in society absolute freedom is not possible.

Psychology is in the service of the society. The psychiatrist goes on trying in every way to make you adjusted again to the society; he is in the service of the society. Politics, of course, is in the service of the society. It gives you a little freedom so that you can be made a slave. That freedom is just a bribery -- it can be taken back any moment. If you think that you are really free, soon you can be thrown into prison. Politics, psychology, culture, education, they all serve society. Religion alone is basically rebellious. But the society has fooled you, it has created its own religions: Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism -- these are social tricks. Jesus is antisocial.

Look at Jesus: he was not a very respectable man, could not be. He moved with wrong elements, antisocial elements, he was a vagabond, he was a freak -- had to be, because he would not listen to the society, and he would not become adjusted to the society. He created an alternate society, a small group of followers. Ashrams have existed as antisocial forces -- but not all ashrams, because society always tries to give you a false coin. If there are a hundred ashrams then there may be one -- and that too only perhaps -- that is a real ashram, because that one will exist as an alternative society, against this society, this crowd, against what Jesus calls 'they' -- the nameless crowd.

Schools have existed -- for example, Buddha's Bihar monasteries -- which try to create a society that is not a society at all. They create ways and means to make you really and totally free -- no bondage on you, no discipline of any sort, no boundaries; you are allowed to be infinite and the all. Jesus is antisocial, Buddha is antisocial, but Christianity is not antisocial, Buddhism is not antisocial. Society is very cunning: it immediately absorbs -- even antisocial phenomena it absorbs into the social. It creates a facade, it gives you a false coin, and then you are happy, just like small children who have been given a false, plastic breast. They go on sucking it, they feel they are being nourished. It will soothe them, of course, they will fall into sleep.

posted February 17, 2008 01:34 PM            

It is not only LSD that is a drug, Christianity is also, and a far more complex and subtle drug which gives you a sort of blindness. You cannot see what is happening, you cannot feel how you are wasting your life, you cannot see the disease that you have accumulated through many existences. You are sitting on a volcano and they go on saying that everything is okay: God in heaven and government on the earth -- everything is okay. And the priests go on saying to you, "You need not be disturbed, we are there. Simply leave everything in our hands and we will take care of you in this world and in the other also." And you have left it to them, that's why you are in misery.

Society cannot give you freedom. It is impossible, because society cannot manage to make everybody absolutely free. Then what to do? How to go beyond society? That's the question for a religious man. But it seems impossible: wherever you move society is there; you can move from one society to another, but society will be there. You can even go to the Himalayas -- then you will create a society there. You will start talking with the trees, because it is so difficult to be alone. You will start making friends with the birds and animals, and sooner or later there will be a family. You will wait every day for the bird who comes in the morning and sings.

Now you don't understand that you have become dependent, the other has entered. If the bird doesn't come you will feel a certain anxiety. What has happened to the bird? Why has he not come? Tension enters, and this is not in any way different from when you were worried about your wife or worried about your child. This is not in any way different, it is the same pattern: the other. Even if you move to the Himalayas you create society.

Then something has to be understood: society is not without you, it is something within you. And unless the root causes within you disappear, wherever you go the society will come into existence again and again and again. Even if you go to a hippy community, the society will come in, it will become a social force. If you go to an ashram, society will come in. It is not the society that follows you, it is you. You always create your society around you -- you are a creator. Something in you exists as a seed which creates the society. This shows really that unless you are transformed completely you can never go beyond society, you will always create your own society. And all societies are the same; the forms may differ, but the basic pattern is the same.

Why can't you live without society? There is the rub! Even in the Himalayas you will wait for somebody: you may be sitting under a tree and you will wait for someone, a traveler, a hunter, who passes by on the road. And if somebody enters, you will feel a little happiness coming to you. Alone, you become sad, and if a hunter comes you will gossip, you will ask, "What is happening in the world? Have you got the latest newspaper?" Or, "Give me news! I am hungry and thirsty for it." Why? Roots have to be brought up to light so that you can understand.

One thing: you need to be needed, you have a deep need to be needed. If nobody needs you, you feel useless, meaningless; if somebody needs you, he gives you significance, you feel important. You go on saying, "I have to look after the wife and the children," as if you are carrying them as a burden -- you are wrong. You talk as if it is a great responsibility and you are just fulfilling a duty. You are wrong! Just think, if the wife is not there and the children have disappeared, what will you do? Suddenly you will feel your life has become meaningless, because they needed you. Small children, they waited for you, they gave you significance, you were important. Now that nobody needs you, you will shrink, because when nobody needs you nobody pays attention to you: whether you are or not makes no difference.

I have heard: One mental patient was psychoanalyzed, but the psychoanalyst was a very eccentric man -- as they almost always are. After two or three years of analysis he told his friend, "This man is in even more trouble than I am, because I go on talking and he never says anything -- not even a yes or no has he said for these three years -- he simply sits there. And now I am worried: what to do? I go on talking and talking and talking, he listens, and this has been going on for three years. What to do?"

The friend said, "Then why don't you stop?" But the man could not stop either.

And then a second trouble happened: the psychoanalyst died. Again he said to the friend, "Now another problem has arisen. First was this -- that this man never said anything, yes or no. I never knew whether he rejected me or accepted me, or whether I was wrong or right. I simply talked and talked and talked, and he listened. Now he is dead, so a second problem has arisen. What to do now?"

The friend said, "If he never talked to you, what is the difference? You go on talking!"

But the man said, "No! But he listened."

The whole of psychoanalysis and its business depends on listening. There is nothing much, there is really nothing much in psychoanalysis, and the whole thing around it is almost complete hocus-pocus. But why...? A man pays you so much attention -- and not an ordinary man, a famous psychiatrist, well known, who has written many books; many well-known people have been treated by him -- so you feel good. Nobody else listens to you, not even your wife. Nobody listens to you, nobody pays any attention to you; you move in the world as a nonentity, nobody -- and you pay so much to a psychiatrist. It is a luxury, only very rich people can afford it.

But why do they do what they do? They simply lie down on the couch and talk, and the psychoanalyst listens -- but he listens, he pays attention to you. Of course, you have to pay for it, but you feel good. Simply because the other is paying attention you feel good. You walk differently out of his office, your quality has changed: you have a dance in your feet, you can hum, you can sing. It may not be forever now -- next week you will have to come again to the office -- but when somebody listens to you, pays attention to you, he says, "You are somebody, you are worth listening to," he doesn't seem bored. He may not say anything but then, too, it is very good.

You have a deep need to be needed. Somebody must need you, otherwise you don't have any ground under your feet -- society is your need. Even if somebody fights with you it is okay, better than being alone, because at least he pays attention to you, the enemy; you can think about him.

Whenever you are in love, look at this need. Look at lovers, watch, because it will be difficult if you yourself are in love. Then to watch is difficult because you are almost crazy, you are not in your senses. But watch lovers: they say to each other, "I love you," but deep down in their hearts they want to be loved. To love is not the thing, to be loved is the real thing; and they love just in order to be loved. The basic thing is not to love, the basic thing is to be loved.

posted February 17, 2008 01:36 PM            

Nobody loves. And unless you become a Jesus or a Buddha you cannot love, because only one whose need to be needed has disappeared can love.

In Kahlil Gibran's beautiful book, Jesus the Son of Man, he has created a fictitious but beautiful story -- and sometimes fictions are more factual than facts. Mary Magdalene looks out of her window and sees Jesus sitting in her garden under a tree. The man is beautiful. She had known many men, she was a famous prostitute -- even kings used to knock at her door -- she was one of the loveliest flowers. But she had never known such a man -- because a person like Jesus carries an invisible aura around him that gives him a beauty of something of the other world, he doesn't belong to this world. There was a light around him, a grace, the way he walked, the way he sat, as if he were an emperor in the robes of a beggar.

He looked so much of another world that Magdalene asked her servants to go and invite him, but Jesus refused. He said, "I am okay here. The tree is beautiful and very shady."

Then Magdalene had to go herself and ask, request Jesus -- she could never believe that anybody would refuse the request. She said, "Come into my house and be my guest."

Jesus said, "I have already come into your house, I have already become a guest. Now there is no other need."

She could not understand. She said, "No, you come, and don't refuse me -- nobody has ever refused me. Can't you do such a little thing? Become my guest. Eat with me today, stay with me this night."

Jesus said, "I have accepted. And remember: those who say they accept you, they have never accepted you; and those who say to you that they love you, none of them has ever loved you. And I tell you, I love you, and only I can love you." But he would not enter the house; rested, he left.

What did he say? He said, "Only I can love you. Those others who go on saying that they love you, they can't love, because love is not something you can do -- it is a quality of your being."

In the state you are, you cannot love; in the state you are your love is false. You simply show that you love, so that you can be loved. And the other is also doing the same. That's why lovers are always in trouble: both are cheating each other, and both feel that they are being cheated. But they never look at themselves and see that they are cheating. Have you really loved any woman, any man? Can you say with your total heart that you loved? No! You never bothered about it, you have taken it for granted that you love. The problem is always the other, you never look at yourself.

Mulla Nasruddin had become ninety-nine years old, and a reporter from a local newspaper came to interview him because he was the oldest man in the valley. After the interview the reporter said, "I hope that I will be able to come next year also when you have attained the hundred, when you have completed your hundred years. I hope I will be able to come." Mulla Nasruddin looked at the man wide-eyed and said, "Why not, young fellow? You look healthy enough to me!"

Nobody looks at himself: the eyes look at others, the ears listen to others, the hands reach towards others -- nobody reaches towards himself; nobody listens, nobody looks. Love happens when you have attained a crystallized soul, a self. With ego it never happens; the ego wants to be loved because that is a food it needs. You love so that you become a needed person. You give birth to children, not that you love children but just so that you are needed, so that you can go around and say, "Look how many responsibilities I am fulfilling, what duties I am carrying out! I am a father, I am a mother...." This is just to glorify your ego.

Unless this need to be needed drops you cannot be a solitary. Go to the Himalayas -- you will create a society. And if this need to be needed drops, wherever you are, living in the marketplace, at the very hub of the city, you will be alone.

Now try to understand the words of Jesus:

JESUS SAID: BLESSED ARE THE SOLITARY AND ELECT, FOR YOU SHALL FIND THE KINGDOM; AND BECAUSE YOU COME FROM IT YOU SHALL GO THERE AGAIN.

Penetrate each single word: BLESSED ARE THE SOLITARY.... Who is the solitary? One whose need to be needed has dropped; one who is completely content with himself as he is; one who does not need anybody to say to him, "You are meaningful." His meaning is within him. Now his meaning does not come from others -- he does not beg for it, he does not ask for it -- his meaning comes from his own being. He is not a beggar and he can live with himself.

You cannot live with yourself. Whenever you are alone you become uneasy; immediately you feel inconvenience, discomfort, a deep anxiety. What to do? Where to go? Go to the club, go to the church or go to the theater -- but go somewhere, meet the other -- or just go shopping. For people who are rich, shopping is the only game, the only sport; they go shopping. If you are poor, you need not enter the shop, you just move on the street looking at the windows. But go!

To be alone is very difficult, very unusual, extraordinary. Why this hankering? -- because whenever you are alone your whole meaning disappears. Go and purchase something from a shop; at least the salesman will give you meaning... not the thing, because you go on purchasing useless things. You purchase just for the sake of the purchase. But the salesman, or the owner of the shop, they look at you as if you are a king. They behave as if they depend on you -- and you know well that this is just a face. This is how shopkeepers exploit: the salesman is not bothered about you at all, his smile is just a painted smile; he smiles at everybody, it is nothing particular for you. But you never look at these things. He smiles and greets and receives you as a welcome guest. You feel comfortable, you are somebody, there are people who depend on you; this shopkeeper was waiting for you.

You are in search all over of eyes who can give you a certain meaning. Whenever a woman looks at you she gives you meaning. Now psychologists have discovered that when you enter a room -- in a waiting room at the airport, or at a station or in a hotel -- if a woman looks twice at you, she is ready to be seduced. But if a woman looks once, don't bother her, just forget it. They have made films, and they have been watching, and this is a fact, because a woman looks twice only if she wants to be appreciated and looked at.

posted February 17, 2008 01:37 PM            

Whenever a woman looks at you, you become important, very significant; in that moment you are unique. That's why love gives so much radiance; love gives you so much life, vitality.

But this is a problem, because the same woman looking at you every day will not be of much help. That's why husbands become fed up with their wives, wives become fed up with their husbands -- because how can you gain the same meaning from the same eyes again and again? You become accustomed to it: she is your wife, there is nothing to conquer. Hence the need to become a Byron, hence the need to become a Don Juan and move from one woman to another. This is not a sexual need, remember, this is nothing related to sex at all, because sex goes deeper with one woman, in deep intimacy. It is not sex, it is not love, absolutely not, because love wants to be with one more and more, in a deeper and deeper way; love moves in depth. This is neither love nor sex, this is something else: an ego-need. If you can conquer a new woman every day you feel very, very meaningful, you feel yourself a conqueror. But if you are finished with one woman, stuck, and nobody looks at you, no other woman or man gives you meaning, you feel finished. That's why wives and husbands look so lifeless, 'lustless'. You can just look and you can tell from far away whether the couple coming are wife and husband or not. If they are not you will feel a difference; they will be happy, laughing, talking, enjoying each other. If they are wives and husbands, then they are just tolerating each other.

Mulla Nasruddin's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary came, and he was going out of his house that day. His wife felt a little peeved, because she was expecting he would do something and he was just moving in a routine way. So she asked, "Nasruddin, have you forgotten what day it is?"

Nasruddin said, "I know."

Then she said, "Then do something unusual!"

Nasruddin thought and said, "How about two minutes of silence?"

Wherever you feel life is stuck, it shows that you may have been thinking it was love.... It was not love, it was an ego-need -- a need to conquer, to be needed every day by a new man, a new woman, new people. If you succeeded, then you felt happy for a while because you were no ordinary man. This is the lust of the politician: to be needed by the whole country. What was Hitler trying to do? To be needed by the whole world!

But this need cannot allow you to become solitary; a politician cannot become religious -- they move in opposite directions. That's why Jesus says, "It is very difficult for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. A camel may enter through the eye of a needle, but not a rich man into the kingdom of God." Why? -- because a man who has been accumulating riches is trying to become significant through wealth. He wants to be somebody, and whosoever wants to be somebody, the door of the kingdom is closed for him.

Only nobodies enter there, only those who have attained to their nothingness, only those whose boats are empty; whose ego-needs they have come to understand are futile and neurotic; whose ego-needs they have come to penetrate and found to be useless -- not only useless but harmful also. Ego-needs can make you mad but they can never fulfill you.

Who is a solitary? One whose need to be needed has disappeared, who does not ask any meaning from you, from your eyes, from your responses. No! If you give your love, he will be grateful, but if you don't give, there is no complaint; if you don't give, he is as good as ever. If you come to visit him he will be happy, but if you don't come he is as happy as ever. If he moves in a crowd he will enjoy it, but if he lives in a hermitage he will enjoy that also.

You cannot make a solitary man unhappy, because he has learned to live with himself and be happy with himself. Alone, he is sufficient. That's why people who are related to each other never like the other to become religious: if the husband starts moving towards meditation, the wife feels disturbed. Why? She may not even be aware of what is happening or why she feels disturbed. If the wife starts to pray, starts moving in the direction of religion and God, the husband feels disturbed. Why?

An unconscious fear comes into the conscious. The fear is that she or he is trying to become sufficient unto herself or unto himself; this is the fear. So, if a wife is given the choice, "Would you like your husband to become a meditator or a drunkard?" she will choose that he become a drunkard rather than a meditator. Given the choice, "Would you like your wife to become a sannyasin or to move on wrong ways and go astray?" a husband will choose the latter.

A sannyasin means one who is sufficient unto himself, who does not need anybody, who is not in any way dependent. And that gives fear: then you become useless. Your whole existence has been around his need, that he needed you. Without you he was nothing, without you his life was futile, a desert -- only with you did he flower. But if you come to know that he can flower in his solitariness, then there will be disturbance because your ego will be hurt.

posted February 17, 2008 01:37 PM            

Very small children can enjoy themselves. Freud has a particular term for them: polymorphous. A small child enjoys himself, he plays with his own body, he is auto-erotic, he sucks his own thumb. If he needs somebody else, that need is only for the body; you give the milk, you turn him over, you change the clothes -- physical needs. He has really no psychological needs yet. He is not worried what people are thinking about him, whether they think him beautiful or not. That's why every child is beautiful -- because he does not bother about your opinion.

No ugly child is ever born, and all children become, by and by, ugly. It is very difficult to find an old man beautiful -- rare. It is very difficult to find a child ugly -- rare. All children are beautiful, all old men become ugly. What is the matter? When all children are born beautiful they should die beautiful! But life does something.... All children are self-sufficient -- that is their beauty; they exist as light unto themselves. All old men are useless, they have come to realize that they are not needed. And the older they grow the more the feeling comes that they are not needed. The people who needed them have disappeared; the children are grown-up, they have moved with their own families: the wife is dead or the husband is dead. Now the world does not need them, nobody comes to their home, nobody pays respect. Even if they go for a walk, nobody recognizes who they are. They may have been great executives, bosses in offices, presidents in banks, but now nobody recognizes them, nobody even misses them. Not needed, they feel futile; they are just waiting for death. And nobody will bother... even if they die, nobody is going to bother. Even death becomes an ugly thing.

Even if you can think that when you die millions of people will weep for you, you will feel happy: thousands and thousands will go to pay their homage when you are dead.

It happened once: One man in America planned it -- and he is the only man in the whole history of the world to have done it. He wanted to know how people would react when he was dead. So before his death, when doctors said that within twelve hours he would die, he declared his death. And he was a man who owned many circuses, exhibitions, advertising agencies, so he knew how to advertise the fact. In the morning his agent declared to all the press, to the radio, to the television, that he was dead. So articles were written, editorials were written, phone-calls started coming, and there was much commotion. And he read everything, he really enjoyed it.

People are always good when you die, you become an angel immediately, because nobody thinks it worth saying anything against you when you are dead. When you are alive, nobody will say anything for you. Remember, when you are dead they will be happy -- at least you have done one good thing: you have died! Everybody was paying respects to this man, and this and that, and photographs had come into the newspapers -- he enjoyed it perfectly. And then he died, completely at ease that things were going to be beautiful.

Not only do you need others in your life, even in your death.... Think about your death: only two or three persons, your servants and a dog following you for the last goodbye -- nobody else; no newspapermen, no photographers, nothing -- even your friends are not there. And everybody is feeling very happy that the burden is gone. Just thinking about it, you will become sad. Even in death the need to be needed remains. What type of life is this? Just others' opinions are important, not you? Your existence doesn't mean anything?

When Jesus says: BLESSED ARE THE SOLITARY... he means this: a man who has come to remain absolutely happy with himself, who can be alone on this earth and there will be no change of mood, the climate will not change. If the whole world disappears into a third world war -- it can happen any day -- and you are left alone, what will you do? Except to immediately commit suicide, what will you do? But a solitary can sit under a tree and become a buddha without the world. The solitary will be happy, and he will sing and he will dance and he will move -- his mood will not change. You cannot change the mood of a solitary, you cannot change his inner climate.

Jesus says: BLESSED ARE THE SOLITARY AND ELECT.... And these are the elect people, because those who need a crowd will be thrown again and again into the crowd -- that is their need, that's their demand, that's their desire. God fulfills whatsoever you ask, and whatsoever you are is just a fulfillment of your past desires. Don't blame it on anybody else -- it is what you have been praying for. And remember, this is one of the dangerous things in the world: whatsoever you desire will be fulfilled.

Think before you desire a thing. There is every possibility it will be fulfilled -- and then you will suffer. That's what happens to a rich man: he was poor, then he desired riches, and desired and desired, and now it is fulfilled. Now he is unhappy, now he is crying and weeping and he says, "My whole life has gone accumulating worthless things, and I am unhappy!" But this was his desire. If you desire knowledge, it will be fulfilled: your head will become a great library, many scriptures. But then in the end you will weep and cry and scream, "Only words and words and words, and nothing substantial. And I have wasted my whole life."

Desire with full awareness, because every desire is bound to be fulfilled sometime or other. It may take a little more time because you are always standing in a queue; many others have desired before you, so it may take a little time. Sometimes your desire of this life may be fulfilled in another life, but desires are always fulfilled, this is one of the dangerous laws. So before you desire, think! Before you demand, think! Remember well that it is going to be fulfilled someday -- and then you will suffer.

A solitary becomes an elect; he is the chosen, the chosen one of God. Why? -- because a solitary never desires anything of this world. He does not need to, he has learned whatsoever was to be learned from this world; this school is finished, he has passed through it, transcended it. He has become like a high peak which remains alone in the sky -- he has become the elect, the Gourishankar, the Everest. A Buddha, a Jesus, they are high peaks, solitary peaks. That's their beauty: they exist alone.

The solitary is the elect. What has the solitary chosen? He has chosen only his own being. And when you choose your own being, you have chosen the being of the whole universe -- because your being and the universal being are not two things. When you choose yourself you have chosen God, and when you choose God, God has chosen you -- you have become the elect.

BLESSED ARE THE SOLITARY AND ELECT, FOR YOU SHALL FIND THE KINGDOM; AND BECAUSE YOU COME FROM IT YOU SHALL GO THERE AGAIN.

A solitary, a sannyasin -- that's what 'sannyasin' means: a solitary being, a wanderer, absolutely happy in his aloneness. If somebody walks by his side it is okay, it is good. If somebody leaves, it is also okay, it is good. He never waits for anybody and he never looks back. Alone, he is whole. This 'beingness', this wholeness, makes you a circle, and the beginning and the end meet, the alpha and the omega meet. A solitary is not like a line. You are like a line -- your beginning and end will never meet. A solitary is like a circle -- his beginning and end meet. That's why Jesus says: ... BECAUSE YOU COME FROM IT YOU SHALL GO THERE AGAIN... you will become one with the source; you have become a circle.

posted February 17, 2008 01:38 PM            

Jesus said: IF THEY SAY TO YOU....'They' means the society, the crowd -- those who are not yet elected, those who are not chosen, those who are in constant need of being needed -- 'they'. If they say to you... and they will say, because they don't allow anybody to become a solitary. They will haunt you, they will try to press you back into the society. They will want you to come back to the prison -- they cannot believe how you escaped. And they will feel uncomfortable with you if you become a solitary one. Why? -- because your very presence makes them doubtful about their own existence; that is the discomfort.

Whenever a Jesus moves amidst you, you become uncomfortable, because if this man is right then you are wrong -- and this man walks in such a way that he looks right. If this man is right then what about you? The very movement of a Jesus in the society, and the whole society is in an earthquake -- because this man seems so happy, not needing anybody, not being needed, so solitary, so alone and so blissful; and you are almost neurotic, almost mad.

Something is wrong with you, not with this man. You will try in every way to prove that this man is wrong. There are books written against Jesus in which it is proved that this man was a psychological case, mental; there are books which prove that this man was neurotic. Who is writing these books? 'They' -- they are writing these books, because only if they can prove this man is wrong, neurotic, gone mad, are they at ease. But both cannot be right: if this man is right, then you are wrong.

But what is the need? If this man is neurotic, he is neurotic -- what is the need to prove it? Why be bothered? Why bother about him? No, it is because he gives you a doubt about yourself. That's why we have not welcomed such people, never! We have always rejected them when they were alive. We welcome them when they are dead, because then we can paint their faces in our own ways.

Look at the face of the Christian Jesus. It is not even a caricature, not even a cartoon -- it is absolutely false. Christians say Jesus never laughed, and I cannot see Jesus in any other posture than laughing. He must have been a laughter; whether you heard it or not is not the point, but he must have been like a laughing, bubbling spring, flowing all over. But the Christians have painted him as sad as possible. He looks neurotic as they have painted him; he looks so sad that to be in his company will be a burden. Just go in any Christian church and look at Jesus' portrait. Would you like to be with this man for one whole night, in one room? You will say, "This is okay, just this Sunday morning is enough." With this man the whole night? One will start trembling and be afraid. And he is so sad... you are already sad enough, why add more?

Christians have chosen the cross as their symbol, and they have missed the whole point. Jesus talked about the cross and he was crucified, but his meaning was totally different. They have chosen the cross because it shows suffering, and we have been suffering so much that we cannot believe in a laughing Christ. We can believe in a suffering Christ -- that is so similar to us, just like us, even more in suffering than us. We understand suffering; the language of sadness, suffering and death we understand. Life we don't understand. That's why there is a Christianity, but around Krishna there could not be any religion.

Hindus worship Krishna, but grudgingly -- because he is so contrary to your existence: playing on his flute, dancing with girls, always happy and laughing. He is so much against your existence that you cannot understand him. How can you understand dancing? You can understand death, you can understand crucifixion -- you cannot understand a flute and song.

Christianity spread like a fire all over the world, and there is not a single worshipper of Krishna. Those who think they are, they are not either, they also have difficulties with Krishna. They have to explain Krishna away in many ways. They cannot believe that this man was dancing with everybody's wife, or that he had sixteen thousand girlfriends. Impossible! There must be some other meaning. So they interpret Krishna in their own ways: that these sixteen thousand girlfriends are not real girlfriends, they are man's nervous system -- sixteen thousand nerves. But I tell you, this man had sixteen thousand girlfriends: and this man laughed and sang and danced -- he was ecstasy itself. And Jesus was the same; that's why I say his name, 'Christ', may have been derived from 'Krishna'.

Jesus was the same, he was not a sad man. But you cannot understand the language of laughter -- no, not yet. Your hearts are not yet ready for a dancing God; the world is not yet a home for a dancing God. Krishna seems impossible; Jesus seems to be almost the conclusion of your life. Crucifixion became the symbol, the cross became the symbol, but for Jesus the cross means something absolutely different, and I would like to tell you what it means to Christ.

The cross has two lines, simple lines: one line horizontal to the earth, another line vertical to the earth. That's how the cross is -- a crossroad, a crossing point. The horizontal line is time: past, present, future; A, B, C, moving in a line. You live on that line. The vertical line is eternity, the now. It is always present; there is no past to it, no future to it. It goes higher and higher and higher; it moves higher, not forward.

Time and eternity meet where Jesus is crucified; that moment where Jesus dies is the now. If you die in the now, you are reborn, you are resurrected. Then there is no death for you, because time disappears and you are eternal. The cross is a symbol of time and eternity meeting. And that point must be your death. It cannot be anything else, because when you disappear from the time-world you become part of eternity. And both cross.... Where do they cross? Here and now, at this moment they cross.

Now is the moment where the cross exists. But if you go on moving horizontally, in the future, then you miss. If you start moving from this very moment, vertically, you are on the cross; you will die as you are, and you will be reborn -- a new birth, absolutely new. And through that birth, no death exists, but life eternal. To Jesus, the cross was a time symbol: time and eternity crossing. But for Christianity it became a sad death symbol of suffering.

If Jesus had been in India and he had not gone to the Jews, and if we had painted the cross, then the cross would be the same but Jesus would be different. He would be just like Krishna: ecstatic, his face smiling, his whole being smiling, because this is the moment of ecstasy. When time disappears, you die to the world of time and you are reborn to the world of eternity -- at that moment you must be ecstatic. That is what Hindus have called samadhi.

But Christianity missed. It always happens so because Jesus alive is a discomfort, he is like a worm in the heart, biting you. You have to put yourself at ease. When he is dead, then you can arrange everything according to you; then you can paint Jesus according to you -- then he is nothing but your representative.

IF THEY SAY TO YOU -- and they will say -- 'FROM WHERE HAVE YOU ORIGINATED?' SAY TO THEM, 'WE HAVE COME FROM THE LIGHT, WHERE THE LIGHT ORIGINATED THROUGH ITSELF.'

posted February 17, 2008 01:38 PM            

What did Jesus say? Jesus did not say, "Do miracles and give them signs." What he says is one of the most beautiful things ever asserted. He says:

SAY TO THEM, 'IT IS A MOVEMENT AND A REST.' This is the sign of God in us: '... A MOVEMENT AND A REST.'

Very difficult to understand. What does he mean? He says, "We are moving and yet at rest. The contradiction has dissolved in us. Now we are a synthesis of all contradictions: we are talking and yet not, we talk and yet there is silence; we love, yet we don't love, because the need to be loved has disappeared. We are alone and yet amidst you, because you cannot disturb our loneliness. We are in the crowd, but not of the crowd, because the crowd never penetrates us. We live and move in this world, but we don't belong to this world -- we may be in it, but this world is not within us."

This is what Jesus says: 'IT IS A MOVEMENT AND A REST.' "Look at us: we move and yet there is no tension in the movement; we walk but at the center of our being there is no movement because there is no motivation to reach anywhere -- we have attained. This is the sign of the father. Look at us! There is no desire and yet we go on working. There is no motivation, yet we go on breathing and living. Look at us: the contradictions have dissolved. We walk, and yet do not; we live, and yet do not. You see us in time, and time has disappeared for us -- we have entered eternity." But this is the sign of a perfect master. If you want to see a perfect master, this is the sign: movement and rest.

It will be easy for you if a master is moving, serving people, changing the society, creating a great movement for some utopia. It will be easy for you to understand a Gandhi: continuous movement, activity -- political, social, religious and devoted to others. It will be easy, very easy, to see that Gandhi is a mahatma, a great soul. It is very easy, because there is only movement, and movement devoted to others. It is service: not moving for himself, moving for others, living for others. Or you can easily understand a man who has retired, renounced the world and moved to a Himalayan retreat -- does not speak, remains silent, does not move, does not do anything; no service, no social activity, no religious activity, no ritual -- he simply sits there in his silence. You can understand him also: he is at rest.

But both have chosen one polarity. They may be very good people -- there are good people -- but they are not perfect. They don't show the sign of the father, because perfection is the sign. They have to be like Jesus: moving, and yet silent.

Movement and rest: living in the world, not renouncing it -- and yet totally renounced. Where contradictions meet, the ultimate appears. If you choose one, you have missed, you have sinned, you have missed the mark. Don't choose! That's why Lao Tzu, Jesus and others say, "Don't choose!" Choose and you miss. Be choiceless -- let movement be there, and let rest be there, and let movement and rest rest together. Become a symphony, not a single note. A single note is simple, there is not much trouble.

I have heard about Mulla Nasruddin, that he had a violin, and he continuously created one note on it. The whole family became disturbed, the neighborhood became disturbed, and they said, "What type of music is this? If you are learning, then learn well. You go on creating one note continuously! It is so boring that even at midday the whole neighborhood falls asleep."

Nasruddin's wife said, "This is enough. For months and years we have been listening, we have never seen such a musician! What are you doing?"

Nasruddin said, "Others are trying to find their note, and I have found it. That's why they change: they are still on the way, trying to find the note. And I have found it, so now there is no need -- I have reached the goal."

A single note is simple, there is no need to learn much, it is uncomplicated. But a single note misses all that is beautiful, because the higher the complexity, the higher the beauty that appears. And God is the most complex: the whole world is in him, the whole universe meets in him. So what is the sign of your father? It can only be a synthesis, it can only be a symphony, where all the notes have dissolved into one.

'MOVEMENT AND REST' is just symbolic. SAY TO THEM, 'IT IS A MOVEMENT AND A REST.'

Try to follow this, try to do it in your life. Extremes are easy to choose: you can move into activity and get lost in it, or you can renounce the activity and get lost in rest. But both will be choices -- you will be as far away from God as possible, because God has not rejected anything, he has not renounced anything.

He is in all, he is all. If you also become all, not renouncing, not rejecting, without any choice, a choiceless awareness, then you have the sign of the ultimate, the sign of God.

Beware of extremes! They are the dangerous paths from where one falls. Let both the extremes meet, then a new phenomenon arises -- more subtle, more delicate, more complex, but more beautiful.

posted February 18, 2008 12:02 PM            

And I am also glad the early church fathers didn't see that ancient document else they would have burnt that too

posted April 04, 2008 10:20 AM            

The world needs teachings on Man / Woman polarity.

Hear a Master speak on a Master. Remember that Osho personally prefers Buddha to Jesus. He says Buddha is in his flesh and bones. Therefore he often brings Buddha in his talks when he speaks on Jesus. Osho is doing great if not very great when he speaks on the bible. Just my opinion and everyone is entitled to theirs.
Also link between Mary Magdalene and Jesus surfaced later on with other gnostic discoveries. Not sure what will he will say when this is brought to his attention

posted April 04, 2008 10:22 AM            

SIMON PETER SAID TO THEM: LET MARY GO OUT FROM AMONG US, BECAUSE WOMEN
ARE NOT WORTHY OF THE LIFE.
JESUS SAID: SEE, I SHALL LEAD HER SO THAT I WILL MAKE HER MALE, THAT SHE TOO MAY
BECOME A LIVING SPIRIT RESEMBLING YOU MALES. FOR EVERY WOMAN WHO MAKES
HERSELF MALE WILL ENTER THE KINGDOM.
We will be sailing in rough waters today. But many things have to be understood – and don’t be
prejudiced either this way or that, because prejudice makes it almost impossible to understand.
First thing: man and woman differ basically; they not only differ, they are opposites. That’s why
there is so much attraction. Attraction can exist only between opposites; the similar cannot be very
attractive – whatsoever you are, you are acquainted with it. For a man, the woman is the unknown.
It attracts, it invokes, it invites; an inquiry arises, a curiosity arises. For woman, the man is the
unknown. For man, God penetrates through this world in the shape of woman, because God is the
unknown. For woman, man represents the divine because he is the unknown for her. Hence, the
opposite is so significant.
So the first thing to be understood: they are different; not only different, but opposites – but they are
not unequal, they are equal. Difference is there, oppositeness is there, a polarity is there, but they
are not unequal, they are equal. Two opposites are always equal, otherwise they cannot oppose
each other.