Taoblog

 

 

Whenever you demonstrate, you demonstrate your inner poverty. If your taoism becomes a demonstration you are not a taoist. If your meditation becomes a demonstration you are not meditative, because whenever the real exists, it is such a light that there is no need to demonstrate it. When your house is lighted, when there is a flame, you need not go to the neighbors and tell them, "Look, our house has got a lamp." It is there. But when your house is in darkness you try to convince your neighbors that light is there. Convincing them, you try to convince yourself. This is the reason why you want to demonstrate. If the other is convinced, his conviction, her conviction, will help you to be convinced.

This is what Chuang Tzu means when he says: A perfect man is like an empty boat. Many things are implied in it. First, an empty boat is not going anywhere because there is nobody to direct it, nobody to manipulate it, nobody to drive it somewhere. An empty boat is just there, it is not going anywhere. Even if it is moving it is not going anywhere.

A man of Tao said, "The whole world is my home, the sky is my shelter; I go everywhere, there is no barrier. I am a free man."

 

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=208438777963459742&ei=S0tmStmCOKGC2wLGyo03&q=

 

 

 

 

Hindus make their sacred places by the side of rivers. Because Hindus have already monopolized the rivers, Jainas had to do something to defeat them -- the same competitive mind is everywhere. So they thought that the best thing would be to choose the highest peaks of the mountains and to show these fools that the rivers are dirty. And people in India even throw dead bodies, half -- burned bodies, dead animals into the rivers. These are their sacred places! So the Jainas made their sacred places on high mountains. Whether I keep you starving or I keep myself starving, it is the same; the same principle and the same standard should be applied: I am a violent man, if not to your body, then to my own body. And in being violent with you, there was a possibility that you may have retaliated -- you may have stopped me being violent to you. But to be violent with your own body is the easiest thing in the world. What can your body do? It cannot retaliate, it cannot prevent you. It has no defense against you. So the person who is violent to others, at least is violent to someone who has the right to defend himself and can be violent in return. But the person who is violent with himself is really cunning, very cunning. He has found the most innocent victim in the world, defenseless. You can do anything you want to your own body. There have been monks who have been beating their body every morning, till the blood starts oozing all over the body. And they were thought to be great saints! There was one Christian saint in Alexandria who remained on a sixty-foot-high pillar -- on top of it there was space enough just to sit. For thirty years he remained sitting on that pillar. He was sleeping there; people were sending food and he was pulling the food up by rope. He was defecating, urinating from the pillar... but this was thought to be great austerity. And from hundreds of miles people would come to pay respect to this madman. He had no other quality, but even kings came to pay respect to him. What was he doing? Just torturing himself.

 

 

 

 

As long as thoughts race within, the thought of No-Thought is also a thought. It is merely a thought that: I am 'Thought-less'. On the one hand there is the movement of thoughts within and on the other; I think I am 'thought-less'. But you can only visualise this state when there are no thoughts within. What is most interesting is the fact that when your mind is in a No-Thought condition, you will not even be aware that there are no thoughts within! To be thought-less is also a thought. It is just like a perfectly healthy man -- he is never conscious of the fact that he is healthy. The consciousness of health is an indication of sickness. Therefore we find that a sick person always talks of health. Such a man is not healthy, he is sick. If sickness persists in some corner, the idea of health lingers within. Many a time this consciousness of health proves to be a new type of illness. If a person becomes too conscious of health, he becomes ill. This is a disease. So it happens that by incessant thinking, by hearing continuously, by regular pondering over it, you develop this expectation of becoming 'Thought-less'. For we have heard that that alone is holy, that alone is the ultimate Bliss, that in itself is the joy of Samadhi, that everything else pales in significance before this supreme bliss. Then this becomes a desire -- the desire to become 'Thought-less'. Remember the 'No-Thought' condition cannot be turned into a desire -- but it invariably becomes so.

 

 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7308171700962325804&ei=P8DrSaCDNIiQ2AL44pXmCw&q=

 

 

 

In der Attila-the-Hun-Show reiten zwei Gruppen von Soldaten auf Pferden – Hunnen und Römer – aufeinander zu und beginnen zu kämpfen. Dann sieht man Attila den Hunnen und seine Frau in Zeitlupe aufeinander zu laufen. Es beginnt ein US-Sitcom-typischer Vorspann der „Attila the Hun Show“, danach sitzen Herr und Frau Hunne mit Sohn Robin und Tochter Jenny. Der farbige Butler Onkel Tom bringt Getränke und erklärt nach einem Blick aus dem Fenster, dass Horden von plündernden Westgoten da seien, Attila zu sehen. Vor diesen wird ein Ansager mit seinem Schreibtisch eingeblendet und sagt wie üblich: „And now for something completely different“. Der „It´s“-Mann startet den Vorspann. Der absurde Gameshow-Sketch „Spot the Brain Cell“, in der eine besonders renitent-tumbe Version der Pepperpots völlig schwachsinnige Antworten auf Fragen wie „Was essen Pinguine?“ („Themselves?“ „Horses?“ „Armchairs?“), tauchte in abgeänderter Variante auch in vielen Live-Shows der Pythons auf. „Cat on Parrot“ ist eine Folge nur für echte Tierfreunde. Erst entdeckt der Rattenfänger Schafe statt Ratten in den Wänden, dann entpuppt sich das Schaf als das wegen bewaffneten Raubüberfalls gesuchte Killerschaf Basil. Dann kündigen Papageien die „News for Parrots“ an, gefolgt von den „News für Gibbons“ und den „News für Wombats“. Aber alles immer noch besser als die Papageien-Version des Charles-Dickens-Klassikers „A Tale of Two Cities“, gespielt mit unerträglichen Piepstimmen.

 

 

 

Was man zusammendrücken will,

muss sich erst richtig ausdehnen.

Was man schwächen will,

muss erst richtig stark werden.

Was man beseitigen will,

muss sich erst richtig erheben.

Wo man nehmen will,

muss man erst richtig geben.

Dies nennt man:

Klares Erkennen des Verborgenen.

Das Weiche und Schwache bezwingt das Harte und Starke.

Nie darf der Fisch die Wassertiefe verlassen.

Des Landes wirksamste Waffen

Darf man nicht den Menschen zeigen.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3408822685024304278&ei=iKr7SNTJMqKy2gLszKHrDg&q=

Es gibt komplexere und unserer Kultur sehr fremde Schriftsysteme. Eines davon ist das syllabische Systen, das zwischen sechzig und hundert Zeichen verwendet; jedes dieser Zeichen entspricht einem Vokal oder einem Vokal plus einem Konsonanten, d.h. einer Silbe. Ein wichtiges Beispiel für eine antike Silbenschrift ist die von den Mykenern (1150-1100 v.Chr.) verwendete "Linear-B"-Schrift, die entziffert werden konnte. Bei dem ideographischen, dem logographischen und dem piktographischen Zeichensystem handelt es sich um die drei ältesten Schriftsysteme, die sehr enge Analogien untereinander aufweisen: Die Zeichen sind stilisierte Figuren, die ein Wort, eine Idee oder einen Begriff ausdrücken. Auch die Maya-Sprache der klassischen Periode konnte durch eine Schrift mit Silbencharakter ausgedrückt werden. Die Maya konnten das Wort Jaguar durch das Bild eines Jaguarkopfes schreiben. Auch die altägyptische und die chinesische Schrift drücken sich über diese Systeme aus. Die Anzahl von Zeichen einer ideographischen Schrift kann mehrere Hundert oder sogar mehr als Tausend betragen. Die "Linear-A"-Schrift Kretas aus der minoischen Zeit konnte bisher noch nicht entziffert werden. Es handelt sich um ein unbekanntes Zeichensystem, mit dem eine Sprache ausgedrückt wurde, die weder griechisch noch indoeuropäisch war. Auch die Schrift der Etrusker hat noch nicht all ihre Geheimnisse preisgegeben. Die Buchstaben entstammen zwar dem griechischen Alphabet, wurden aber auf eine nicht-indoeuropäische Sprache angewendet.

Awareness means bringing the mind closer and closer to the body, penetrating the body with awareness. and when it happens, a great thrill passes through the whole body mechanism, and then it is no more a mechanism at all: it becomes an organic unity with the soul. Then the body vibrates in unison. You don't have the division, you don't possess the body; you are the body -- there is no possessor, no possessed. That's where sanity and health and wholeness arise; otherwise everybody remains schizophrenic. So that is going to be your work here: become more and more alert in small things. In drinking water, drink it with absolute alertness, as if everything depends on it. In that moment don't do anything else. Taste the water, feel its coolness going down your throat. Feel the quenching of the thirst, feel the entry of the water in the body. In that moment only be that. Eating, do the same. In walking, sleeping, loving, remember one thing: the body has not to be used as a robot. It is not a machine, you are not the manipulator. It is you; it is your visible being, you are its invisible source. But you are not two, you are two aspects of one energy. Matter and mind are not two but two states of the same energy; matter is more condensed, the mind is more abstract. No time should be lost unnecessarily. Just be alert, because our minds are very accidental. The mind is like driftwood: it has no sense of direction. Unless you remember it you can be hooked into something, you can get involved in something and then the time will be prolonged unnecessarily. It is urgent to come back and to be with me. Keep alert about that urgency. That will help and will not allow the mind to drift anywhere. Stop drifting. Make your work your meditation. Whenever you are with things which grow, you grow. That is the difficulty with machines: they don't grow, so if you work with machines you are stuck. They don't keep the growing energy flowing around you. So people who work with machines, by and by, slowly slowly become mechanical. Machines reduce man to a machine. To be with trees and plants is beautiful because they go on growing, they become an impetus, an inspiration, and the whole energy is flowing upwards with the growth. You cannot remain low, you have to go high. If you are alert, then farming can turn you on as no drug can ever do. Just the smell of the wet earth, the smell of the growing plants, the joy of the birds and the sun -- all that becomes a milieu for spiritual growth. To be close to nature is to be close to god. Even if it is not very economical, even if it is not very paying, don't be worried; that is irrelevant.

Traditional Taoism stood on keeping techniques and information secret from outsiders. It should be shared. We should remember the Uncarved Block and keep our minds as open as we can! Let’s see how it turns out:

Everyone is appointed by tao
But we have forgotten completely our mission
We have forgotten even why we are here
We have forgotten the message
That has to be delivered.
We have forgotten who has sent us and we have
Forgotten to whom the message has to be delivered
We have forgotten everything!
We are living in a deep forgetfulness
And we call it life.
And people who are so utterly forgetful,
Of everything
Think themselves intelligent people.
If you ask the awakened ones they will call
This is sheer foolishness.
We have to wake up out of this foolishness,
We are here to fulfil a certain purpose.
Everyone is here to sing a song
To dance a dance, to release a certain perfume
But that is possible only
If you become very very conscious,
That is possible only
If you become so much alert that
You can see yourself directly, not via others.
Right now
Whatsoever you know about yourself is via others:
Somebody says you are very nice
And you believe it. Of course,
Everybody wants to believe that one is nice.
And somebody says you are very intelligent
And you believe it.
There are troublesome people also
Who say you are not intelligent,
You are stupid, you are a fool;
Nobody believes them but
They create a disturbance.
That's why we get angry:
Everything was running so smoothly,
Your father, your mother, your uncle, everybody
Was saying you are so nice, so beautiful,
Then somebody turns up and says that
You are just a fool -- how he annoys you.
And he may be right!
There is far more possibility that he is right
Because the world is full of fools.
But no mother can think that her son is a fool.
She will realize it only but later on when the son
Has fallen in the hands of another woman.
Then she will realize that he was a fool
Because then she will see that
'I have made so much effort and worked hard ...
It took twenty-five years for me
To make him intelligent enough
And here comes another woman
And within five minutes
She make a fool out of the same man!'
But till that happens, she will believe in you
That you are a great hero,
That you are somebody special
Because through your speciality
She becomes unique: Her son is special.
Your father believes that you are great
Because through you he is great.

Therefore the sage puts his own person last, and yet it is found in
the foremost place; he treats his person as if it were foreign to him,
and yet that person is preserved. Is it not because he has no
personal and private ends, that therefore such ends are realised?

Abstaining from speech marks him who is obeying the spontaneity
of his nature. A violent wind does not last for a whole morning; a
sudden rain does not last for the whole day. To whom is it that these
(two) things are owing? To Heaven and Earth. If Heaven and Earth
cannot make such (spasmodic) actings last long, how much less can man!

The skilful traveller leaves no traces of his wheels or
footsteps; the skilful speaker says nothing that can be found fault
with or blamed; the skilful reckoner uses no tallies; the skilful
closer needs no bolts or bars, while to open what he has shut will be
impossible; the skilful binder uses no strings or knots, while to
unloose what he has bound will be impossible. In the same way the
sage is always skilful at saving men, and so he does not cast away any
man; he is always skilful at saving things, and so he does not cast
away anything. This is called 'Hiding the light of his procedure'.

Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical.

This may seem paradoxical: the truly religious person is not religious at all in the ordinary sense of the word. And the religious person in the ordinary sense of the word is not religious at all. One has to be very careful, watchful, because there are many false coins in currency, and the false has to be understood as false, only then can the true be understood as true. Unless you cease clinging to the false you will not be able to receive the truth. So be religious but don't be Christian and don't be Hindu and don't be Mohammedan. No ideology is going to help.

A young boy went out for the first time to the forest near his village. He was very much afraid of and alert against loneliness. Just then, he heard some creeping sound in the bushes. Surely, somebody was secretly following him. He shouted loudly and asked: "Who is there? The hills asked a bit more loudly "who is there?" Now he was fully convinced that some one was hidden. He was afraid even otherwise. His hands and feet started trembling, and his heart started pounding. But to give courage to himself, he told the hiding person: "You coward!". There was the echo: "You coward!" For the last time he collected his nerves and shouted: "I will kill you". The hill and the forests also shouted "I will kill you." Then that boy ran fast towards the village. The echo of his own feet sounded as if the other man was chasing him and now he did not have the courage even to turn back and see. On reaching the door of his house, he fell down unconscious. When he came back to his senses, every thing came to light. On hearing all this his mother laughed loudly and said: "You go there again tomorrow and tell that mysterious person what I tell you. I am fully aware of that person. He is a very nice and loveable man. That boy went there the next day. On reaching, he said: "My friend!' There was the echo of 'My friend! ' This friendly sound consoled him and he said: 'I love you!'. The hills and the forest all repeated; 'I love you!"
Is not the story of the echo the story of our so-called life?

Do you know, they destroyed the commune of Osho in America and they have said that their priority was to destroy the commune. But why? The commune was not doing any harm to them. The commune was twenty miles away from any American town, and nobody bothered even to go those towns. They were self-sufficient, they were producing their own food, they were producing their own milk products, they were producing everything they needed. And they were not using any money for exchange. If you needed something, the commune would provide it. Money you could donate, but you could not purchase anything. Money would be needed if the commune wanted to purchase something from outside. It was a unique commune, of its own kind. Everybody was equal, for the simple reason that you could not use your money. You may have millions of dollars and somebody may be without a single dollar, but you were both equal as far as being inside the commune was concerned. This was the highest form of communism that has ever happened in the world, and it was not only simple communism. It was also an impossible miracle, it was anarchism. Nobody was governing. It was a great synthesis between two opposing philosophies of communism and anarchism. And as the commune became more and more successful, America became more and more threatened. President Ronald Reagan was a fundamentalist Christian, which is another name for a fanatic Christian. So all the fanatic Christians and Ronald Reagan together destroyed the commune. Who creates terrorism? Because Osho was not a citizen of America, he remained silent. In America -- you can see the stupidity -- they had raised a marble monument in The Dalles, the county seat where Osho´s commune existed, a memorial saying that "We have succeeded in throwing out the enemies; we have succeeded in destroying the commune which was a danger to the nation." But why? And Ronald Regan himself was accepting that Osho had not committed any crime and there was no evidence. And still Osho had been fined four hundred thousand dollars. And Osho didn't have a single rupee. But as Osho had been telling again and again, he trusted existence. Osho loved people. Within ten minutes they managed to collect four hundred thousand dollars. Even the magistrate was surprised, because they were thinking that neither would Osho be able to produce that money nor could he get out of the prison. America´s attorney had accepted publicly that there is no proof against Osho. Then for what was he punished? And the punishment also states that for five years Osho could not enter America. But if he had not committed any crime, then this judge should be punished. America´s judicial process is as corrupted as any. Not only that for five years Osho should not enter America, but a fifteen year suspended jail sentence. That means that if Osho would have entered America there will be no need of any trial -- he would be simply put in jail for fifteen years. And the attorney general of America was a close bosom friend of Ronald Reagan. They had been educated together, they had been in the Hollywood cowboy third-class films together. And as Ronald Reagan became the president, immediately this man was appointed as the highest law authority, the attorney general of America. And if the office of the highest law authority of America said they don't have any evidence that Osho had committed any crime, then for what was he punished?

It is a momentum, a gathering momentum. You are standing on the shoulders of the Buddhas -- the whole part is yours. For example, in Osho Buddha is a part, Jesus is a part, Abraham is a part, Krishna is a part, Mohammed is a part... in that way Buddha was poorer than Osho, Jesus was poorer than Osho. And some future enlightened person will be richer than Osho, because Osho will be part of his being but he cannot be part of Osho’s being. Evolution goes on gathering momentum.

Each child should be more intelligent than the parents -- but that brings trouble, because that is what offends the parents. Parents would like to pretend that they are all-knowing. In the past it was easy to pretend because there was no other way to impart knowledge to the children than by the oral communication from the parents.

For example, a carpenter's son would learn all that he would ever learn through the father. The father would not only be the father but the teacher also. And the son would always be in awe and respect of him, because the father knew so much -- he knew everything about all kinds of trees and wood and this and that, and the son knew nothing. He would have tremendous respect.

Age used to be respected: the older a man was in the ancient days, the more wise, of course, because of his experiences. But now we have invented better means of communication. The father is no more the teacher; now the teaching profession is a totally different profession. The child goes to the school. The father had gone to the school thirty or forty years before. In these thirty, forty years there has happened a knowledge explosion. The child will learn something which the father is not aware of, and when the child comes home, how can he feel any awe? -- because he knows more than the father, he is more up to date than the father. The father seems to be out-moded.

This is the problem, and this is going to be so more and more, because our expectations are old and we still want the child to respect the parents as he used to respect them in the past -- but the whole situation has changed. You will have to learn something new now: start respecting the child. Now, the new has to be respected more than the old. Start learning from the child because he knows better than you. When your son comes from the university, he certainly knows better than you.

The new generations are not really a problem: your expectation that they should respect you, that they should respect you as children have always respected their parents -- it is impossible.

Fresno, visiting San Francisco, got quite a thrill out of attending a daring party in the Bohemia known as Telegraph Hill.

A friend who was showing her the sights pointed out a familiar-looking young couple and whispered, "Don't look now, but those two artists there are living in sin."

"Sin, my foot!" exclaimed the Fresno lady. "I know them. It is just Lois and Maurice, and they were married in the Fresno Baptist Church five years ago."

The young couple overheard and quickly drew the Fresno lady aside. "For God's sake don't tell anybody we are married," said the young man in a tense undertone. "It would ruin our artistic reputation."

Pornography is a by-product of religious repression. The whole credit goes to the priests. Pornography has nothing to do with pornographers. The pornography is created, managed by the Church, by the religious people. In a primitive, natural state, man is not pornographic. When human beings are naked and nude and man knows the woman's body and woman knows the man's body, you cannot sell PLAYBOY. It is impossible. Who will purchase PLAYBOY? And who will look into all that crap? They have repressed so much that man's mind is boiling. The man wants to see the woman's body. Nothing wrong in it, a simple desire, a human desire. And the woman wants to know the man's body. A simple desire, nothing wrong about it. Just think of a world where trees are covered with clothes. There are people.... There are some English ladies who cover their dogs and cats with clothes. Just think, cows and horses and dogs dressed. Then you will find new pornography arising. Somebody will publish a nude picture of a tree -- and you will hide it in a Bible and look at it! This whole foolishness is out of religious repression. Make man free, allow people to be nude. I am not saying they should continuously be nude, but nudity should be accepted. On the beach, at the swimming pool, in the home... nudity should be accepted. The children should take a bath with the mother, with the father, in the bathroom. There is no need for the father to lock the bathroom when he goes in. The children can come and have a talk and chitchat and go out. Pornography will disappear. Each child wants to know. "How does my daddy look?" Each child wants to know, "How does my mother look?" And this is simply intelligence, curiosity. And the child cannot know what the mother looks like, and the child cannot know what the father looks like; now you are creating illness in the child's mind. It is you, you are ill, and the illness will be reflected in the child's mind.

Shen Tsan was giving a bath to his old teacher. Rubbing his back, he said: "This is such a fine temple..." Every body is a fine temple, according to Zen. Every body is a shrine of Tao; Tao is enshrined in everyone. You need not go anywhere else to find Tao; if you can find yourself you have found Tao. It is hiding within you -- it is your within. "THIS IS SUCH A FINE TEMPLE," SHEN TSAN SAID, "BUT THE BUDDHA IN IT IS NOT AT ALL HOLY!" Maybe the old teacher was taking a bath and also reciting a sutra. That's what Buddhist monks do; they will go on taking a bath and reciting a sutra. Hindu pundits do the same, Hindu sannyasins do the same. They will go to take a dip in the Ganges and they will recite gayatri and other mantras. They are divided! If you want to recite gayatri, recite gayatri -- forget about taking a bath. And when you are taking a bath, take the bath, forget about gayatri. Then let this bath be your only mantra. He must have been reciting some mantra because they think, "Why waste time? You can do both the things." They will go on eating and they will go on reciting inside a certain sacred mantra. Why waste time? But then you are missing the totality of eating, then you do not taste your food. How can you do it? The mind is capable of doing only one thing at a time; it cannot do two things together -- it is impossible. If you are eating, then let your whole consciousness be that of taste, of smell. Forget everything! Then even ordinary bread may taste like the most delicious food possible. But you are not present. Look at people eating -- they are talking, there are people who are listening to the radio or seeing to the TV. I have heard about stupid Americans even making love while seeing the TV! -- what to say about eating? Why miss? You can do both the things -- you can make love and you can go on seeing the TV. Now, neither you will be seeing the TV nor you will be making love; you will not be able to enjoy either, you will miss both. There are people who cannot eat if they don't have company to talk and gossip and to discuss. When you are talking you go on swallowing -- swallowing is not eating. Eating should be meditative, prayerful. You should be more respectful to food because it is life, it is nourishment. And then thousand and one problems arise out of it. Because while you are eating you are reading the newspaper or quarrelling with the wife or listening to the radio or looking at the TV or talking to a friend or holding the phone, you will miss the joy of eating. You will eat more because your taste buds will not feel fulfilled and contented. Then you will gather unnecessary fat in the body. Then one has to start dieting, fasting, naturopathy and all kinds of nonsense follow. But the simple thing that should have been done in the first place was: just eating and not doing anything else.

Nadir shah heard about a great wise man in India, and he asked him to come. The wise man said, "To come to you will be enough proof that I am not wise, so the thing will be useless. You will have to come to the well." Nadir shah felt intrigued and excited too. He had never seen anybody disobey him. This man must have some guts. He went to the man and he felt some strange aura and energy around him. He said, "I have come. I want to ask you: it is said in the scriptures that to sleep too much is bad, but I love to sleep. In fact, I drink too much, and then to get up becomes difficult. The hangover... and then it is better to have more to drink and go to sleep again. What is your suggestion? Should I stop it?" The old man said, "No. Whatever the scriptures say means nothing. They were not written for you. They had no idea that a man like you will take instructions from the books. I would suggest you should sleep twenty-four hours, you should sleep forever. There is no need to wake up." Nadir shah said, "This is strange advice. Twenty-four hours? Forever?" The old man said, "Yes. Although it is against all the scriptures, but I say on my own authority that people like you need twenty-four hours of sleep, because whenever you are awake you will do some mischief. Asleep, much violence, much war, much trouble to the world will be stopped." So there is not much wrong.

All enlightened people have to lie, because truth cannot be said to you. You won't understand it; you are fast asleep, snoring. Truth cannot be said in language. The moment you put the experience of truth in language, it becomes untrue. So, rather than distorting the truth and making it untrue, it is far better to create a device -- which is a lie. But it works!

When love calls you, listen to it. That's the only responsibility. When love says something to you, let it enter into the deepest core of your being. When love knocks on your door, open the door. The real beloved, in fact, does not close the door at all, but waits at the door for the lover to come, so that he need not even knock.

Taoism is a love affair. It has nothing to do with ruled and the rulers, leaders and the led. It has certainly to do with love and lovers. And the beauty of love is: it does not create hierarchy.

You have every capacity, ability, potentiality to be enlightened. It is just a question of your decision. At the most, love persuades. And love has many ways to persuade. It is only hate that imposes. Just look at silence, and we all have become one. All divisions are lost and there is an immense peace, a tremendous feeling of joy arising in you.

The Western idea of God is that of a creator, a serious creator. The Eastern idea of God is that of a player, a nonserious player. Existence is a play of consciousness. It has not to be taken seriously, it is fun. That's why in Eastern religion there is no idea of original sin. There cannot be, they won't fit together. The idea of leela and the idea of original sin cannot fit with each other. Original sin means God is very serious about things. If he is disobeyed he is going to punish you. It is not fun, it is serious work. And it is not only that he punished Adam and Eve, he has been punishing humanity since then. He must have felt really offended; the wound has not healed yet. It seems he cannot forgive; it seems that he cannot even forget. The whole concept is ugly, and because of that concept Western religion and the saints that it has created are very serious, sad, sombre people, people with long faces. They cannot dance, they cannot sing -- because it is a question of life and death. God has to be obeyed word for word: a little mistake and you fall from grace. But in the East there is no idea of God as a dictatorial force: he is just a player. And he is not outside you, he is inside you; he is inside everybody. The whole of life is taken as a game; hence Eastern religion has the quality of sportsmanship. There is no question of original sin; there is no question of sin at all. Yes, mistakes are possible in a game but you cannot commit sins. Errors are possible but you cannot be condemned for errors and mistakes -- they are human. Hence the Eastern God is tremendously compassionate. The Old Testament God says: "I am a very jealous God." That is impossible for the Eastern mystic to understand -- that God can say such a thing: "I am a very jealous God." If God too is jealous, then what to say about man and his jealousies? In the East a man becomes divine only when he is no longer jealous, a man is thought to be enlightened only when he is no longer jealous. Jealousy is a by-product of the ego and when the ego disappears jealousy disappears. You cannot offend a Buddha. Whatsoever you do you cannot offend him. In Japan they make a particular doll; the doll is called a daruma doll. Daruma is the Japanese name of one of the greatest Buddhas of the world, Bodhidharma; from dharma comes daruma. The doll has a beauty about it: you can throw it any way but it always lands up in a Buddha posture. Its bottom is heavy so you cannot topple it. You cannot put it sideways -- it will sit up again. You can throw it upside down but it will always come right side up. That doll is a beautiful message. It says that that's how a Buddha behaves: you cannot offend him, you cannot topple him. Whatsoever you do he is always okay. He is always in his stillness, in his silence. This is possible only if life is taken as a leela, a play. Let it become a reality; let it become your very lifestyle.

Women get stuck in many places. Sixteen, then for two, three years they are sixteen, but not more than that. Then near about twenty-six they will again get stuck. They hop. The age of thirty-five is the longest gap, because now it is more dangerous to go ahead. It has been calculated that at the age of thirty-five all intelligent women stop growing, at least for six years. In six years' time they will be thirty-six. This way it is very difficult to find out the actual age of a woman. But in heaven they are stuck at sixteen for millennia. Now what kind of girls are these saints being given? They are not only second-hand or third-hand; how many saints have used the same girls? Most probably they are made of plastic, so that once in a while after dry cleaning the girl is again ready. Pump in the air and the girl is ready. Plastic not without any reason, but because the scriptures say they don't perspire. Skin is bound to perspire. It is impossible for skin not to perspire, because it is the perspiration that keeps your temperature constant. If you don't perspire when it is hot, your temperature will go too high, and your lifespan as far as temperature is concerned is not much. In years, it may be seventy or eighty long. But as far as temperature is concerned, from ninety-eight to one hundred and ten -- that is only twelve degrees -- is the span. If on a hot summer day you don't perspire, the heat will bring your temperature to one hundred and five, and at one hundred and five you start being delirious. At one hundred and six or seven you start hallucinating. By a hundred and ten you are finished. The perspiration keeps you constantly at ninety-eight degrees, because the body goes on releasing water and the heat goes on evaporating the water. It is deceiving the heat. The heat gets involved in evaporating the perspiration and forgets to heat you up. The perspiration does not allow the heat to enter the body, it keeps it out. You don't perspire when it is cold. Even if you try you cannot. When you are cold you shiver. That is another way to keep the inner temperature again at ninety-eight degrees. By shivering you keep yourself hot, otherwise the cold will bring you down. On both ends there is a limit. Above, there is a possible range of at least twelve degrees. Below ninety-eight there is not even that much possibility -- just two or three degrees and you shiver. You think that because you are shivering it is not good; you don't know it is saving your life. Your teeth will start chattering. That is keeping you warm. But those girls in heaven, if they are dead, either the saints just don't know exactly what they are doing or perhaps after life-long repression even corpses are enough.

One drunkard was caught by the police in France because he was making love to a dead woman who had drowned and been brought by the waves to the shore. In the night the drunkard had staggered there and found a beautiful woman, so he made love to her. He was caught, and in the morning when asked in the court, "Why were you making love to that dead woman?" he said, "I thought she was English! I had no idea that she was dead. You cannot punish me because of a misunderstanding."

What are those saints doing there? No intelligent man is going to heaven. Now, Mohammed going on his horse ... you think this looks intelligent? The poor horse will unnecessarily suffer with the saints. What does he know about saintliness? He will miss his girlfriend, and Mohammed will have no idea that the poor horse ... because in heaven there is no provision for horses. Every genius is in hell. As far as saints are concerned, most of them are retarded. There is not a single saint who can be called intelligent. One saint, who even Mahatma Gandhi declared a great saint of modern India, was a professor. His name was Professor Bhansali. Then he became a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and entered his ashram. It was not much of an ashram, just a miniature heaven. You could get some idea from Mahatma Gandhi's ashram of what is going to happen in heaven. Bhansali became a great saint because for six months continuously he was eating only cow dung and drinking only cow urine. And he became a great saint! Even Gandhi declared, "I have seen saints, but Bhansali is superb." Now do you call this intelligence?

Desire arises out of nonacceptance. You cannot accept a certain situation, so desire arises. You live in a hut and you cannot accept it; this is too much for the ego, you want a palace -- then you are a poor man, but not because you live in a hut, no. In huts, emperors have lived. Buddha has lived under a tree, and he was not a poor man. You cannot find a richer man anywhere. No, your hut doesn't make you poor. The moment you desire the palace you are a poor man. And you are not poor because others are living in palaces; you are poor because the desire to live in the palace creates a comparison with the hut. You become envious. You are poor. Whenever there is discontent, there is poverty; whenever there is no discontent, you are rich. And you have such riches that no thief can steal them; you have such riches, no government can take them by taxation; you have riches which cannot be taken away from you in any way. You have a fort for your being, unbreakable, impenetrable. Once a desire moves and your energy starts falling you become weak through desire, you become weak through longing. Whenever you are not longing and are content, whenever nothing is moving, when your whole being is still, then, says Chuang Tzu, you are an impenetrable fort. Fire cannot burn you, death is impossible. That is the meaning of: Fire cannot burn you; death is impossible, you cannot die. You have got the secret key of eternal life. And sometimes this happens in ordinary circumstances too. A house is on fire -- everybody dies but a small child survives. There is an accident -- the old people die and the small children survive. People say that this is a miracle, God's grace. No, it is nothing of the sort; it is because the child accepted that situation too. Those who were cunning started running and trying to save themselves; they got themselves into trouble. The child rested. He was not even aware that anything was happening, that he was going to die. The child is saved through his innocence. It happens every day. Go and observe at night near a bar, a wine shop, drunkards falling down in the street, lying in the gutter, absolutely happy. In the morning they will get up. They may be bruised a little but no harm has happened to their bodies. Their bones are intact. They have got no fractures. You try to fall like a drunkard on the street -- immediately you will have fractures. And he falls like this every day, every night, many times, but nothing happens to him. What is the matter, what is the secret? When he is drunk there is no desire. He is absolutely at ease, here and now. When he is drunk he is not afraid, there is no fear, and when there is no fear, there is no cunningness.

This is the tragedy that we are all carrying an unconscious of which we are not even aware. That what kind of animality, criminality will come up from the unconscious when the opportunity is there. The unconscious should be changed into consciousness so that nothing remains inside you that you don't know. That is the only possibility that you may not fall into darkness and you may not do things which are inhuman, that you will not go in the ways of evil. The only possibility is that your whole mind is simply consciousness -- there is no unconscious part at all. And this is one of the greatest contributions of the East to the world. Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler and other psychologists in the West, only in the last century have been able to find that there is something like unconscious. In the East for five thousand years they have been aware of the unconscious. Not only that, they have been aware how to transform it into consciousness. The West has accepted now that there is an unconscious but it has not yet been able to find how to transform it into consciousness. The East has the methods but the ego of the Western psychology prevents it to accept the methods which are already available. Thousands of people have been meditating and have come to the same experience of illumination that the darkness disappears, that one becomes full of light. And after that it is impossible to fall. Politics seems keeping humanity retarded because the vested interest of the politicians is that humanity should not be very intelligent. If humanity is really very intelligent who is going to accept a man like Adolf Hitler as a leader of a nation -- who is simply insane. Adolf Hitler needs an insane humanity to support him. Just look at your politicians. They are not the most intelligent people in the society; they are the most cunning, certainly. But cunningness does not mean intelligence. The politicians are afraid of intelligence, awareness, consciousness. It is a basic truth that only people who are suffering from inferiority complex go into politics. It is the inferiority complex that leads them into politics so that they can prove to themselves and to the world that they are not inferior, they have power. A real superior man never goes to politics. It is below him. It is always the inferior who go to the politics. And these inferior people have all the power of the armies, of atomic energies, of nuclear weapons. It is a very strange world. The best of the minds create atomic energy. For example, Albert Einstein created atomic energy. If he had not left Germany the atom bombs would have been in the hands of Adolf Hitler. But there is not much difference. The atom bombs were in the hands of Roosevelt or Truman. And Truman used those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki uselessly, without any purpose. Germany has already failed and Japan could have lasted not more than two weeks. There was no need to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to use atom bombs. But Truman was in a hurry. He wanted to use them to show the power to the whole world.

A question is always indicative of a conflict. The problem is an inner conflict, a division. And this will be your whole life's problem. Whenever you have to decide something, you will always feel a conflict, a wavering. It has something to do with you. And it has to be so because the problem arises because of a certain pattern of the mind. When somebody trusts, he surrenders. Problems never arise to him. Then there are others who are sceptical; who are not yet finished with their egos; who still hope that something is going to happen through their egos; who still hope that their mind is going to deliver some paradise, some happiness, some bliss to them; who still think that through logic, reason, they will arrive at knowing what truth is. Then there is no problem for them. Both these people -- people who have trust and people who don't have trust -- are clear in a way. Your problem is that you are neither totally irrational nor totally rational. Half of your mind is argumentative and half of your mind is ready to trust. You are divided; a split is there, half-half. Nothing bad in it. If you understand it you can become a very very rich personality; richer than one-sided people. One who simply has faith is simple -- like one-note music. An orchestra cannot be created out of it. One who is simply sceptical is again simple. He may be argumentative but he has no complexity about it; he is clear-cut. You are ambiguous, vague. If you don't understand this you will become more and more confused. If you understand it, you can become a mystic... So this is the dilemma, the dichotomy in you. You have to understand it otherwise you will fall into a chaos because these two polarities will pull you apart, will tear you apart. If this type of mind goes on and on and on without any meditative understanding, the ultimate result is going to be schizophrenia. Then a person becomes two persons. Right now those two divisions are not separate; they are together. Somehow you are managing, but any day you can be in a great crisis. The left side can go to this side and the right side to another side; then you become two persons. And that is the whole problem of the modern mind: schizophrenia. Everybody is split. You love the same person whom you hate. Now there is no possibility of coming to a blissful state of affairs. If you satisfy your love, your hate remains unsatisfied. If you satisfy your hate, your love suffers. So whatsoever you do, you remain miserable. With one hand you put a brick down to make a building, and with another hand you pull it away -- so the house is never built. You are working hard for your whole life and nothing comes out of it. The danger is that if you don't go deep in meditation and understanding, you will be accumulating a sort of neurosis.

Once you knew the real self. Before you entered and became part of a society, a culture, a civilization, you knew it. It is not a coincidence that people go on thinking that their childhood was the most beautiful part of their life. It is a long-forgotten memory, because there have been days in your life, the earliest days, which you cannot remember exactly; only a vague feeling, a kind of fragrance, a kind of shadow is there. If you re-spect, if you look again and go deep into your existence, you are going to find the place from where you started losing yourself and gaining the ego. That moment is a moment of illumination because once you have seen what the ego is, the game is finished. So you cannot drop the ego, because you accept the reality of your ego. And how are you going to drop it -- you are it. Right now, you are it. The self you have lost far away back in the past. There is a great distance between you and your self. Right now you are existing at the periphery of your self. That periphery is pretending to be your self. That pretender is the ego. Now telling the ego, "Drop! Surrender! Be humble!" is simply idiotic. Mount Abu has one of the most artistic temples in the whole world. They are Jaina temples, Delwada temples. The carving in the marble is incomparable. The Delwada temple is a very precious temple, very ancient, and yet as fresh as if it had just been finished, just created. Marble has that quality of freshness: for thousands of years it remains young, fresh, innocent. And Delwada temples are just marble and marble. The Taj Mahal is nothing compared to Delwada temples. The Taj Mahal is a simple structure, but Delwada temples are the artwork of thousands of artists, perhaps over hundreds of years. There is carved on the marble wall, a beautiful sentence, a statement from Mahavira. The statement is such that nobody could object to it, and nobody had ever objected. The statement was simple. The statement was: "The humble man is respected universally. Be humble." But the reason you are given for being humble is that you will be honoured universally. The whole statement of Mahavira is: "The king is honoured in his own country, but the humble man is honoured universally" there are no boundaries to his honour. A king's honour has boundaries -- within his own kingdom. Beyond those boundaries he is nobody. But the humble person has no boundaries to his kingdom, the whole universe is his kingdom; he is universally honoured. But to whom is this idea going to appeal? The ego will immediately catch hold of it. That's what the ego wants: to be honoured universally! And if humbleness is the way, then okay, the ego is ready to be humble. If surrender is the way, the ego is ready to surrender.

A man used to come to a great saint and he would always ask, 'Sir, one thing puzzles me. You are so innocent, so pure, how is this possible? Suspicion arises in my mind that maybe you simply pretend. In this world of corruption, how can one be so pure and innocent and so virgin? How can one avoid being corrupted by the world? Maybe deep down you still carry the same thing but on the surface you have maintained it, you have maintained it well.' One day the man came. He again started to say the same thing. And the Master said, 'Listen, there is something more important to be said to you. Just show me your hand.' He looked at his hand, became very sad, closed his eyes and started to cry. The man said, 'What is the matter? Why are you crying, Sir? I have never seen you crying.' He said, 'I am crying because only seven days are left. Within seven days you will be gone. Your lifeline is cut. Next Sunday you will die. That's why I am crying. Now you can ask whatsoever you want to ask. You wanted to ask something?' The man said, 'I have forgotten. You have disturbed me very much. Only seven days?' Now this Master was so loved by people, so much respected, that there was no reason to suspect that he would tell a lie. The man rushed home, fell ill, didn't move from his bed for seven days, was sinking every day, stopped eating, and could not sleep. The relatives gathered. On the seventh day they were just waiting, because the Master had said that as the sun sets, he would die. And there was just half an hour to go. The sun was just coming down, coming down, and relatives and friends and the wife and the children were crying and the man was just sinking into death. Then the Master came and said to the man, 'I have one question to ask. In these seven days have you committed anything that you used to call sin, impurity, corruption, this and that? Did any idea come into your mind, any worldly idea?' The man opened his eyes with great difficulty. He said, 'What are you talking about? I am dying! How can a man have any ideas of sin or of the world when he is dying? Only death was there around me. It was coming closer. In these seven days there was not a single worldly desire in me. I was only thinking of God. I was praying, repeating God's name.' The Master laughed. He said, 'You can get up. You are not going to die! That was only a design to show you why I am pure. Death surrounds me continuously. What does it matter whether it is coming in seven days or seven years or seventy years? It doesn't matter. It is only a question of time. It is coming -- that much is certain -- it is coming. When death is coming, this becomes very, very clear to your consciousness. Life goes through a great change, a radical change.' The man started laughing. He said, 'You played a joke!' He was perfectly okay; within minutes he was okay. But he said, 'Master, one thing, how could you lie?' The Master said, 'It is neither a lie, nor a truth; it is a design, a naqshbandi.'

Freud's own disciple, Adler, went away from him just because Adler said that sex can be a part of repression, but that is not all. His own idea was that ambition, will to power, is far more important, and that a major part of your dreams concerns will to power. For example, you dream that you have become a bird and you are flying. To Sigmund Freud it will symbolize only that you want the same sexual freedom as the birds and the animals, nothing else. But to Adler it will mean that flying upwards means you are ambitious, you want to become the prime minister. But this is all guesswork. Another disciple, Carl Gustav Jung, also went away from Freud because he was more interested in the ancient mythologies, and he thought that our dreams are part of our previous lives. So if you are a bird flying, he will interpret it that in some of your past lives you have been a bird. Now what to do with these people, and how to decide? The language of pictures cannot be precise. It is almost like a painting: many people can see and can decide its meaning in different ways. Just as the child has a picture language, your unconscious has a picture language. Interpreting your dreams is such a rubbish job. You can go on interpreting for years and years, and the dreams will not come to an end -- every day, six hours every night you have to dream. And you have inexhaustible sources of dreaming. And it is very quick -- the dream time is not the same as your ordinary time. Just reading your newspaper, you may fall asleep for a minute and you may see a dream which spreads for years; and when you wake up you look at your watch and just one minute has passed. You say, "My God, in one minute I saw a dream which is spread for a whole year, or even for years." Dream time is totally different. Up to now there has been no way to invent dream wristwatches, and perhaps there never will be a possibility, because there are lazy people and there are speedy people; some people are running fast, some people are simply sitting. In dreams also, the same differences exist: lazy people dream in a lazy way, speedy people dream in a speedy way; your dream reflects you. So I don't think there is any possibility of making a watch which can function for everybody. It is not possible, because everybody's dream speed is different. Vision also appears to be just like dream, but it is not dream. A vision is an objective phenomenon; it is not projected by your mind.

There was a man in Gautam Buddha's time whose name was Angulimal. He had taken a vow to cut off one thousand heads, and to take one finger from each dead person and make a garland of one thousand fingers. Angulimal means the man with the garland of one thousand fingers. He was a ferocious man. People stopped going close to him. The road that passed by the hill where he was staying was no longer being used. He had already cut off nine hundred and ninety-nine heads; he was waiting for only one more. The road that passed by his hill was utterly empty, nobody was coming. And then Buddha came to pass. That road was the shortcut, but people were going the long way around, just to avoid Angulimal. Naturally, Buddha took the shortcut. His disciples said, "Bhagwan, you don't know what you are doing! Haven't you heard about that madman, Angulimal? It is better to go the long, roundabout way, rather than to take the shortcut." But people like Gautam Buddha never turn back. He said, "I cannot turn back, now even more than before. If I had not known about Angulimal, perhaps I might have taken the other road. That poor fellow is waiting for only one head! My work is done; I have known all that can be known, I have experienced all that can be experienced. Now there is no reason for me.... If I can be of some service to that poor man, it will be good." He went. Angulimal saw him. Buddha's disciples, who were always clambering around him, by and by started creating a distance between him and themselves. If he was caught, at least they could escape. Angulimal saw Gautam Buddha coming. Even that dangerous man, who had murdered nine hundred and ninety-nine people already, felt for the first time that he also had a heart. Gautam Buddha was looking so innocent, so childlike and so beautiful in the early morning sun. Angulimal shouted, "You please turn back, because only one head is missing! Perhaps you are a stranger... but looking at you, something in me says `Let this man go -- there are many idiots, I can cut off their heads.' Even if my mother comes here, I will cut off her head! But you please go back. Don't come close to me -- I am dangerous! Do you see my sword? It is waiting for the last head." Gautam Buddha continued. He stepped off the road and started moving into the mountains, closer to Angulimal. Angulimal said, "It seems you are madder than me. Why are you going on and on and on?" Buddha said, "Angulimal, I stopped going anywhere a long time ago. I am not going anywhere, it is you who are." Angulimal was standing there -- Buddha was walking! Angulimal said, "Certainly you are mad. You are walking, moving, and you say you have stopped a long time ago. I am standing, and you say, `You are moving.'" Buddha said, "Just try to understand. Your mind is moving, thinking. My mind is silent, there is no movement. And you will not get a better head. It is really a joy to fulfil your vow. Prepare your sword." Angulimal could not understand what kind of man he was. He was in a great shock; he had never come across such a man! He was ashamed of himself for the first time in his life. He could not look at Buddha eye to eye, because those eyes were radiating compassion, love, grace, joy, blissfulness, ecstasy -- things that he had never known, but the fragrance was reaching him. He said again to Buddha, "You please go, sir. I don't want to kill you. You are unnecessarily insisting that I do something that I don't want to do." But Buddha went on coming closer and closer. And finally he was standing before Angulimal. Angulimal said, "I used to think I was a stubborn man -- you are a thousandfold more stubborn. Now I cannot help you, I have to cut your head." Buddha said, "It is an old tradition and convention to fulfil the last wish of a person who is going to die, and I have a very small wish. You fulfil it and then kill me." He said, "What is your wish? Even if it is the biggest thing, I will manage it for you." Buddha said, "No, it is a very small thing. Just cut off a branch of the tree under which you are standing." Angulimal said, "What kind of thing are you asking? But okay, if that is your wish." With his sword he cut off a branch. Buddha said, "Now, put it back. Let it be part of the tree again. Let it blossom again." Angulimal said, "That is impossible. How can I join it with the tree?" Buddha said, "If you cannot even join a small branch to the tree, do you see the implications of it? Any child could have broken that branch off the tree, and you are a strong man -- you have not done a great job. You can cut off my head, but can you manage to give me life again? And if you cannot create, what right have you to destroy?" There was a moment of silence. The sword fell from Angulimal's hands. He threw away that garland of nine hundred and ninety-nine fingers, and fell at Buddha's feet. He said, "I never thought about it, that destroying something -- any mediocre person, any coward, any idiot can do that. The real genius is creative -- you are right. Please accept me as your disciple." Buddha initiated him. He came back to the town. Even the king, Prasenjita, when he heard that Angulimal had become a sannyasin of Gautam Buddha.... He was a lover of Gautam Buddha, but he was afraid to go there because that man Angulimal could not be trusted, he could do anything any moment. But he wanted to see the man; he was so famous all around -- hearing his name, even kings used to tremble. He came; he touched Buddha's feet and asked, "I have heard that Angulimal has also become your initiate." Buddha said, "Yes, he is sitting by my side." Prasenjita became so afraid, he pulled out his sword. Buddha said, "Now it is not needed, put it back in the sheath. The Angulimal that you used to know is dead; this is a totally new man who cannot harm anybody. Don't be afraid." And that very day when Angulimal went to beg in the city, the same cowards who had stopped even going on the road that passed nearby Angulimal's place locked their doors, stood on their terraces with large piles of rocks, and started throwing rocks at the poor man. He fell down; blood was flowing from all over his body. Buddha was informed, and he came. Just a few more minutes and Angulimal would be gone. Buddha said to him, "Remember one thing, that this act of yours -- that you have not in any way reacted to the hostility of the people -- is enough. You are dying as a truly awakened man." Smiling, touching Buddha's feet, Angulimal died.

Christians don't have any idea that enlightened people have been of all kinds. It is a spectrum, the whole rainbow. There has been Krishna -- the dancer, the flute-player, the singer. There has been Chaitanya -- a mad dancer, he will dance and dance for hours, until he will fall in ecstasy; the joy will be so overflowing, uncontainable. There has been Jalaluddin Rumi who twirled -- he became enlightened while twirling. He whirled for thirty-six hours continuously, non-stop; then he fell, exhausted by the ecstasy, and when he opened his eyes the old man was gone and the new has arrived. It is Jalaluddin Rumi who founded the whirling dervishes and their whole beautiful tradition. There has been Meera in India, who danced to abandon, who danced from one village to another village, almost covering the whole north of India. But the Christians have only one idea -- that of Christ. And they say Christ did not laugh either, what to say about dance? But that is not true. He was a man of immense joy. He loved to eat, to drink even; he's the only enlightened one who was not against wine. And in fact no enlightened person should be against wine, because it is pure vegetarian. He loved to eat and stay late in the night eating, talking, gossiping. Christians have the idea that he was only delivering gospels; they have dropped all the gossips. In fact, those gossips contained more truth than the gospels that they have chosen, because in his gossips he was more really human. In gospels you become a little inhuman, you become dry. And he was a wet man, not a dry man at all. And can you think a man who drinks wine and moves with gamblers and prostitutes not gossiping? Impossible! Narada was one of the great enlightened persons in India who loved his, and played continuously his veena. Kabir loved to dance, sing; Dadu, Nanak all were lovers of singing. Nanak always used to have a companion because any time he would start singing, and he needed somebody to play... so he had one companion continuously. His name was Mardana; because he was always ready with his instrument to accompany Nanak. In all his travels he was a master player. Nanak at any moment will start singing, in the middle of the night, anywhere. Whenever the divine possessed him he will sing, and immediately Mardana will have to play. There have been people like Buddha who never danced, Lao Tzu, who never danced, Bodhidharma, who never danced.

Deep down the waves are related to one ocean. They are not different; they are not unrelated, they are not separate. Their individuality is false and illusory. They are non-individual. Their duality appears to be, but it is not so: their non-duality is the truth. In the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra it is written: "AS WAVES COME WITH WATER AND FLAMES WITH FIRE, SO THE UNIVERSAL WAVES WITH US." We are just waves in a cosmic ocean. Meditate on it; allow this feeling to go deep down within you. Start feeling your breathing as just the rising of a wave. You breathe in, you breathe out, and the breath that is entering you was someone else's breath just a moment before and the breath that is leaving you will become someone else's breath the next moment. Breathing is just waving in the ocean of life. You are not separate -- just waves. You are one deep down. We have a togetherness; individuality is false and illusory. Hence, the ego is the only barrier. Individuality is false. It appears to be, but it is not real. The real is the non-individual, the oceanic, the togetherness. That is why Taoism is against the egoistic attitude. The person who says there is no God may not be irreligious, but the person who says "I am" is irreligious. Gautam Buddha was an atheist; he didn't believe in any God. Mahavira Vardhaman was an atheist; he didn't believe in any God. But they achieved, they arrived, they realized the totality, the wholeness. If you don't believe in any God you may not be irreligious, because God is not basic to religion. Non-ego is basic to Taoism. And even if you believe in God, with an egoist mind you are irreligious. With a non-egoistic mind there is no need to believe in a God. You fall into the divine automatically. With no ego you cannot cling to the wave; you have to fall to the ocean. With the ego, you go on clinging to the wave. Look at life as an ocean, and feel yourself just as a wave, and allow this feeling to enter in you. You can use this technique in many ways. While breathing, feel that the ocean is breathing in you. The ocean comes to you, goes out, comes in, and goes out. With every breath feel a wave rising, with every exhalation feel a wave dying. And between the two, who are you? Just nothingness, shunya -- a void. With that feeling of the void you will be transformed. With that feeling of nothingness all your misery will disappear, because misery needs a centre -- and a false centre at that. The void is your real centre.

Once a Hindu monk was brought to Osho. He came with many followers. One of his followers said, "He is a very great scholar; he has written many books. And his whole effort in his life has been to prove that Hinduism is the only scientific religion of the world."

Osho said, "Can he give any example?"

He said, "You can ask anything and he will say why it is scientific."

Osho asked him, "Why do Hindus cut all their hair but keep a small bunch -- the CHOTI -- on the top of their heads?"

He said, "Simple! Have you ever looked at big buildings? They keep there an iron rod."

Osho could not see the point immediately.

He said, "It is to protect the building from electricity. Hindus discovered it long ago: if you keep a choti -- a little bunch of hair -- standing up on your head, it saves you, protects you from electricity."

Now, what nonsense he is talking! But he is known as a great mahatma because he is helping your egos; he is proving that your religion is scientific. He had come to see Osho with all his disciples. They were all wearing wooden shoes, wooden CHAPPALS -- KHARHAON -- and making great noise. The way Hindus have been using those wooden shoes for centuries.... It is really difficult because you have to hold them on with your toes, between your toes. It is heavy.

Osho asked him, "Why this? What science is there?"

He said, "It keeps one celibate. The pressure of it is such that it keeps one's sexual glands non-functioning." Great, just great!

So Osho said, "Then India need not bother about population. Just give wooden shoes to everybody and let them all grow chotis so electricity does not affect them, sexuality does not affect them. They will all be saints. Such simple formulas!"

But Hindus think he is doing a great service to Hinduism. That's how it is with all the religions. Your imagination is truth; others' truth is only imagination.

OUR fiction is a fact and YOUR fiction is fiction -- your fact too is fiction.

Someone was asking Aurobindo, "Do you believe in God?"

Aurobindo said, "No, I don't believe in God at all." The questioner was perplexed because he had come a long way just because he thought Aurobindo was capable of showing him the path towards God. And now Aurobindo says, "I don't believe."

He couldn't believe his ears, so he asked again. He said, "I am perplexed. I have come a long way just to ask you how to achieve God. And if you don't believe, then the problem, the question, doesn't arise."

Aurobindo said, "Who says that the question doesn't arise? I don't believe because I know that God is. But that is not my belief, that is not a conclusion reached by thought. It is not my belief. I know! That is my knowing."

Mind can, at the most, believe. It can never know. It can believe either that there is God or there is no God, but both are beliefs about God. These both are beliefs. Both have reached to these conclusions through "minding", through thinking. They have thought, they have tried to probe logically, and then they have come to certain conclusions.

A Buddha is not a believer -- HE KNOWS! And when he knows, knowing is possible only in one way. It is not through mind. It is through throwing mind completely. It is difficult to conceive because we have to conceive through the mind; that is the difficulty. I have to talk to you through the medium of the mind, and you have to listen to me through the medium of the mind. So when I say it is not to be achieved through mind, your mind takes it -- but it is inconceivable for the mind. It can even create a theory about it. You may begin to believe that the Truth cannot be achieved through mind. If you begin to believe, you are in mind again. You can say, "I am not convinced. I don't believe that there is anything beyond the mind." Then again you are within the mind.

You can never go beyond the mind if you go on using it. You have to take a jump, and meditation means that jump. That's why meditation is illogical, irrational. And it cannot be made logical; it cannot be reduced to reason. You have to experience it. If you experience, only then do you know.

The whole chemistry changes with yes. With no you have one chemistry; with yes a totally different chemistry. With no you are fighting against existence. With no you are an ego. With yes you disappear: only existence is. With yes you are a religious person. With yes there is nothing impossible; with no there is nothing possible. The person who lives in a no lives in a citadel, behind iron walls. The person living in a no lives in his grave already. No goes on poisoning everything: it poisons love, it poisons trust, it poisons surrender; it poisons everything! Yes purifies. Yes is the philosopher's stone: any baser metal can be simply transformed into gold by touching it. That is one of the problems with Gurdjieff work: it does not believe in love at all. It is just pure effort to awaken intelligence, remembrance. Good, because there is something immensely valuable... but something is missing in it. Buddha had said that unless meditation and compassion go together nothing is possible. Compassion alone can grow much. That's what christian mystics have been doing: just compassion, service, humanity, this and that. Compassion grows but meditation is missing. Through Gurdjieff's work meditation grows, concentration grows, self-remembering grows, but compassion is missing. And once your heart starts growing then you will see how they both balance each other and what benediction happens when they are in utter balance. Then there is bliss. Bliss is balance. Just a few things here and there, final touches, and the quality of the painting is changed completely. Sometimes a single stroke of the brush and the painting becomes a masterpiece, but one has to know exactly where the stroke is needed. There was a great factory that had to be closed because something went wrong; it was fully automatic, the factory. The expert was called; he had to come from a faraway country. He came and with a small hammer he simply hit a certain place and the mechanism started humming again. It was almost a miracle! The owner was very thankful, but the expert demanded ten thousand dollars. The man said, 'Are you joking or what? You have not done anything at all; you have just hit with your hammer! Just for a single hit, ten thousand dollars is too much.' The expert said, 'As far as the hit is concerned, for that I am charging only one dollar. But where to hit? -- for that I am charging the remainder!' Sometimes one can go on groping, not knowing where to hit. And once the right place is hit everything will fall into one whole. Nobody wants to be helped because it makes you feel helpless -- that you cannot do anything on your own. It is so simple. Sometimes it happens: people cling to their misery because it is better than nothing. The fear may be of a deep emptiness, so anything -- worry, depression, misery -- anything is good. One feels full.

"Am dritten Tag, im Morgengrauen, begann es zu donnern und zu blitzen. Schwere Wolken lagen über dem Berg, und gewaltiger Hörnerschall erklang. Das ganze Volk im Lager begann zu zittern. Mose führte es aus dem Lager hinaus Gott entgegen. Der ganze Sinai war in Rauch gehüllt, denn der Herr war im Feuer auf ihn herabgestiegen. Der Rauch stieg vom Berg auf wie Rauch aus einem Schmelzofen. Der ganze Berg bebte gewaltig, und der Hörnerschall wurde immer lauter. Mose redete, und Gott antwortete ihm im Donner." Die theologischen Interpretationen der Beschreibung über die Herniederkunft Jahwes im alttestamentarischen Buch Exodus haben eines gemeinsam: Sie sehen hier Naturerscheinungen, die mit rein symbolischen Attributen vermengt wurden. Demnach handelt es sich um kein reales Ereignis. Grenzwissenschaftler vermuten hier ein Fluggerät der Götter der Sterne. Als es später zu dem Vorfall mit dem "Goldenen Kalb" am Sinai kam, glauben die Theologen, hier ihre Bestätigung zu haben, dass diese Schilderungen keinen realen Hintergrund haben. So wenden Theologen ein, dass die Hebräer nicht einen Kalb-Götzen angefertigt hätten, wenn sie tatsächlich auf dem Berg etwas von Gott sahen. Jedoch ist diese Aussage sehr zweifelhaft, da die Hebräer bereits in der Wüste der bekannten "Feuer- und Wolkensäule", dem "Wagen Jahwes", gefolgt sind. Demnach hätte es, wenn diese Erscheinungen reine Symbole waren, schon längst zu diesem Geschehen kommen müssen. Ein wichtiger Punkt bei den Erzählungen rund um das "Goldene Kalb" ist die Tatsache, dass Mose 40 Tage lang nicht mehr bei seinem Volk weilte, sondern auf dem Berg Sinai in Gottes Obhut. Wo war er in dieser Zeit? Hier liegt eine Vermutung nahe, die leider nicht allein durch die Bibel bestätigt wird: Mose wurde von Jahwe "entrückt". Ist dies der Fall, so erklärt sich dadurch auch die Gegebenheit, warum das Volk nach einem neuen "Gottesbild" verlangte, wie es Kapitel 32, Vers eins bezeugt. Dem außerbiblischen Buch "Ezechiel der Tragiker" können wir weitere Hinweise entnehmen, die diese Vermutung stützen. So heiß es dort, dass Mose auf dem Berg "einen großen Thron, der bis zum Himmel reichte", sah. "Darauf saß ein Mann, dem edelsten Geschlecht entsprossen. Ein Diadem auf seinem Haupt." Dann durfte Mose "seinen Thron besteigen." Folgende Aussage könnte den endgültigen Fingerzeig liefern, dass Mose daraufhin "entrückt" wurde, denn er sah nun die runde Erde: "Darauf erblickte ich der ganzen Erde Rundung, zugleich der Erde Tiefen und des Himmels Höhen." Da Mose und Jahwe nicht mehr auf dem Sinai weilten, konnten sie auch nicht ahnen, dass die Hebräer in dieser Zeit einen Götzen anfertigten. Er war im Himmel und sah die runde Erde. Aaron, Moses Bruder, wurde zwar als Vertreter bestimmt, aber er gab dem Druck des Volkes nach. Auch sah Aaron keinen "Thron" auf dem Sinai und fürchtete, dass er seinen Bruder nicht mehr wieder sehen wird.

When Osho´s Nana (his maternal grandfather) died, his Nani -- his maternal grandmother -- wanted to die with him. It was a difficult task to prevent her. She wanted to sit on the funeral pyre with her husband. She said, "My life is gone -- now what is the point of being alive?" Everybody tried, they all tried, everybody, to persuade his Nani not to do it, but she said, "I have nothing to live for. I cannot go back to my village because in that same house where we both lived our whole life for sixty years, I cannot live alone. He will be too much there. I have not eaten a single meal before he did; it will be impossible for me to eat. In the first place, impossible to cook because I used to cook for him; he loved delicious foods and I enjoyed cooking for him. Just to see him delighted was my delight. Now for whom am I going to cook? And I have never taken my meal before him. Even if it was very late if he had gone to some other village for some work, or to the court in a faraway town -- I had to wait the whole day, but it was a joy to wait for him. In sixty years of married life I have not eaten a single meal before him." That has been a tradition in India: how can you eat unless the person you love and for whom you have cooked and prepared has eaten? For almost ten or twelve days his grandmother didn't eat. First it was difficult to prevent her from going on the funeral pyre. Finally they all, Osho´s whole family, told him, "Only you can persuade her; you have been with her for seven years." And certainly Osho succeeded. All that he had to do -- Osho said to her, "You are saying constantly, 'For what do I have to live?' Not for me? Just tell me: you don't want to live for me? Then I will tell the whole family that we both are going on the funeral pyre." She said, "What!" Osho said, "Then why am I going to be here? For what? It is good we both go." She said, "Stop this nonsense. Who has ever heard of a boy, seven years old...? It is not for you, it is for a woman whose husband has died." Osho said, "Your husband has died, my Nana has died, and my Nani is going to die -- it is enough reason for me. And anyway, any day I will have to die, so why wait so long? Finish it quickly." She said, "I know you are mischievous and even though your Nana is dead you are playing a trick on me." Osho said, "Then stop harassing the whole family, otherwise I am coming with you." She agreed that she wouldn't go to the funeral, she would live for him. She stayed in Osho´s father's town, but she was a very independent woman: she did not like the big joint family; Osho´s father's brothers, their wives, their children -- it was a huge caravan. She said, "This is not the place for me. I have lived my whole life with my husband, in silence. Only for seven years were you there, otherwise there has not been much conversation either, because there was nothing to say. We had talked about all those things before, so there was nothing to say -- we just sat silently."

That the impact of your army may be like a grindstone dashed against an egg -- this is effected by the science of weak points and strong.

In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory.

Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more.

There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.

There are not more than five primary colors (blue, yellow, red, white, and black), yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.

There are not more than five cardinal tastes (sour, acrid, salt, sweet, bitter), yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.

In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack -- the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.

The direct and the indirect lead on to each other in turn. It is like moving in a circle -- you never come to an end.

Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?

The onset of troops is like the rush of a torrent which will even roll stones along in its course.

The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim.

Therefore the good fighter will be terrible in his onset, and prompt in his decision.

Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger.

Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat.

Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline, simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.

Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions.

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That's what people are doing: You see cowardice, you try not to notice it. But it is a fact. By not noticing it, you have created a part of your being which you will not be able to see. You have divided yourself into segments. Now one day there is something else, anger, and you don't want to accept that there is anger in you. You stop looking at it. Then some other day there is greed, and so on and so forth. And whatsoever you stop looking at remains. But now you go on shrinking. Many more parts of your being become separate from you -- you have separated them on your own. And the more fragmentary you are, the more miserable you will be. The first step towards bliss is to be one. To be one is so blissful, to be many is to be in hell. So whatsoever is experientially real, accept it. You cannot do anything by denying it. By denying it you create the problem, and the problem becomes more complex -- it was simple. You feel a coward -- so what? So "I am a coward." Just see the point: if you can accept cowardice you have already become brave. Only a brave person can accept the fact of being a coward, no coward can do that. You are already on the way to transformation. So the first thing: nothing that is experienced as a fact has to be denied reality. Second: in order to accomplish that, consciousness must first disidentify from all fixed conceptual selves with which it has identified itself, because if it holds to being some fixed and enduring conceptual self, there will be no tolerance for those experiential realities which are in contradiction with this fixed, conceptual, official self. If you have a certain idea of how you should be, then you cannot accept the experiential truths of your being. If you have the idea that you have to be a brave man, that bravery is a value, then it is difficult to accept your cowardice. If you have the idea that you have to be a Buddha-like person, compassionate, absolutely compassionate, then you cannot accept your anger. It is the ideal that creates the problem. If you don't have any ideals then there is no problem at all. You are a coward, so you are a coward. And because there is no ideal of being a brave man, you don't condemn the fact -- you don't reject it, you don't repress it, you don't throw it into the basement of your being so that there is no need for you ever to look at it. But anything that you throw into your unconscious will go on functioning from there, it will go on creating problems for you. It is like a disease that you have pushed inwards. It was coming to the surface, and from the surface there was a possibility that it might have disappeared. If a wound comes to the surface it is good, it is on the way to being healed, because it is only on the surface that it will be in contact with fresh air and the sun and can be healed. If you force it inwards, if you don't allow it to come to the surface, then it is going to become a cancer. Even a small disease, repressed, can become a dangerous disease. No disease should ever be repressed.

Dogen wrote:

THE MOONLIGHT, HOWEVER VAST, REFLECTS ITSELF ON A SMALL QUANTITY OF WATER. THE WHOLE MOON AND THE WHOLE SKY BOTH REFLECT THEMSELVES EVEN IN A DEWDROP, ON THE GRASS, OR IN A DROP OF WATER.

AS THE MOON NEVER BREAKS THE WATER, SO ENLIGHTENMENT NEVER DESTROYS THE MAN.

This is a very great statement. It does not destroy the man but it destroys the shadow of the man, with which you are identified. It takes away all that is false and leaves behind only the real, the authentic, the honest.

AS THE DEWDROP NEVER OBSTRUCTS THE REFLECTION OF THE MOON, SO A MAN NEVER OBSTRUCTS THE COMING OF ENLIGHTENMENT. THE DEEPER THE MOON REFLECTS ITSELF IN THE WATER, THE HIGHER THE MOON IS. WE SHOULD REALIZE THAT THE LONG AND SHORT OF TIME ARE QUITE ONE WITH THE LARGE AND SMALL OF WATER, AND THE BROAD AND NARROW OF THE MOON.

What is your shadow that is obstructing your reality? Your shadow has to be understood perfectly well: it is your personality. It is what you have been proposed to be, it is what you have been brought up to be. It is all those voices of your mothers and fathers, your teachers. They make your personality; they create a pseudo-ness around you. Your knowledge ... nobody ever asked whether it is yours. But who is preventing all these people who are knowledgeable from seeing that their very knowledge is the barrier?

Dogen is right that enlightenment is your natural being, as natural as the moon reflecting on the silent lake. No effort on any side, no desire on any side ... it is a happening. But you have not been left a clean, silent lake. So much rubbish -- in the name of religion, in the name of politics, in the name of society -- has been imposed on you: that is what is making the barrier. And the poor moon cannot reflect on you. You have to destroy this whole wall that is preventing you from looking at things as they are -- not as you have been told. You have to get rid of all ideology that has been implanted in you, all your conditioning. Even very intelligent people behave so superstitiously -- you cannot believe. There are countries where the number thirteen is thought to be a dangerous number. Perhaps somebody died or committed suicide on the thirteenth some time back; perhaps somebody jumped from the thirteenth floor of a hotel, and now people have become certain it is bad luck. There are hotels which don't have a room number thirteen; after twelve it jumps to fourteen. They don't have a thirteenth floor; after the twelfth just comes the fourteenth. It is the thirteenth, but the hotel does not recognize it as the thirteenth.

If you take a fruit from the tree and you eat it, it is absorbed, circulates in your blood, moves in your muscles, has become part of your body. Just a few hours before, it was part of the tree. Just a few hours before, it was the other. Now it is no more the other -- it is you. It has entered your boundary. It is fused in you. This is fusion.

If you don't understand, if you are not rightly digesting, then there will be confusion. Confusion simply shows that so many things are bombarding you and you are not able to digest them. It creates an indigestion -- indigestion in the head, indigestion in your psyche... a psychic disturbance. So the more possibility there is for fusion, simultaneously the more possibility there is of confusion.

If you don't eat anything, there cannot be indigestion. Or if you eat just the minimum -- that which is enough for survival -- there will be no indigestion. But if rich food is available, very vital food is available and you eat too much of it.... And that happens. If a person has been starving for many days and then rich food becomes available, he simply cannot stop himself. He goes on eating.

Another problem is also that you have a certain wrong notion that for love one first has to be worthy. That is absolutely absurd. Then nobody will be able to love, and nobody will ever feel worthy.

Love is nothing like that. Nothing more is required but you. Worth is not significant. Whether you are worthy or not is not a question for love. As you are, you can become a love object, but from your childhood you have been wrongly conditioned. Every child is wrongly conditioned because parents go on using this need of the child -- the need to be loved, the need to be hugged, the need to be cuddled. They use it as a technique to educate him. They exploit this need. They are in trouble as to what else they can do and how to educate the child, so they make a bargain with him.

They say, 'If you do things we like you to do, then we will love you. You have to deserve it. If you are good in the school, if you are good in the house, if you are good with the neighbours, with the guests, with your mother, with your father, then you will receive love. If you are not good, if you are not worthy, then you will starve. We will not love you; we will withdraw ourselves.'

And the need of the child is so much. It is just like food. He cannot survive without food, and he cannot survive without love. In fact the need for love is even deeper than food, because without food, only his body will wither away; without love, his very soul.

The death penalty is a crime committed by the society against a single individual, who is helpless. It is not a penalty, it is a crime. And you can understand why it is committed: it is a revenge. Society is taking revenge because the man did not follow the rules of the society; the society is ready to kill him. But nobody bothers that when somebody murders, it shows that man is psychologically sick. Rather than sending him to imprisonment or to be executed, he should be sent into a nursing home where he can be taken care of -- physically, psychologically, spiritually. He is sick. He needs all the compassion of the society; there is no question of penalty, punishment. Yes, it is true, one man is murdered; but we cannot do anything about it. By murdering this man do you think the other will come back to life? If that were possible, this man should be removed -- he is not worth being part of the society -- and the other should be revived. But that does not happen. The other is gone forever; there is no way to revive him. Yes, you can do one thing, you can kill this man too. You are trying to wash blood with blood, mud with mud. You are not aware of what has happened in history in many cases. Three hundred years ago, in many cultures the madman was thought to be pretending. In many other cultures he was thought to be possessed by ghosts. In other cultures he was thought to be mad, but treatable by punishment. And these were the three ways mad people were taken care of. They were treated by beatings -- strange treatment! -- and by taking their blood out. Now you give blood transfusions; they used to do just the opposite -- they used to take the blood out of the man. It was thought that he had too much energy. Naturally when his blood was taken out he became weak; he started showing signs of weakness because so much blood was taken out, and it was thought they had cured him of his madness. By beating a man, naturally once in a while it used to happen that the man came to his senses. It is almost as if a man is asleep and you start beating him and he wakes up. A madman has fallen out of his conscious mind. If you beat him too hard, once in a while it may happen that he wakes up into his consciousness again. That became a proof that beating is the right treatment. But is used to happen only once in a while; ninety-nine percent of the cases were unnecessarily beaten. But that one exception was the rule. It was thought that he was possessed by spirits, ghosts; then too beat him, because if he is possessed by ghosts the beating will reach the ghost, not him. You are not beating him, you are really beating the ghosts who are possessing him, and because of the beating they will escape.

A very intelligent man, Timothy Leary, served seven years in jail because he was teaching that LSD can make man in every way superior to what he is now: his consciousness can be wider, his love can be deeper, his sensitivity can touch unknown peaks which have never been touched before. In every dimension LSD can be a tremendous boost for human growth. Just because of teaching these things he was put in jail. He was a professor, perfectly acquainted with the chemistry of LSD and the chemistry of the mind. He was not an illiterate person; what he was saying was based on scientific discoveries. But still, because he was teaching a philosophy supporting drugs, he was imprisoned for seven years. He was not a man of great guts; professors rarely are. He may have never thought that just by teaching a philosophical attitude you can get into so much trouble. Since he had been out of jail he had forgotten all about his philosophy. Now he was teaching something else -- he had to teach, he had become a world-famous man. He couldn't remain silent, he couldn't keep quiet. The old thing he could not teach again; otherwise he would be back in jail. Now he was teaching something absolutely absurd. Now was the time that he should be in a madhouse. Those seven years in jail were absolutely unjustified. On the one side these politicians go on talking about the freedom of speech, and on the other hand a man cannot say something which he feels is a scientific fact. It may not be -- then prove it! Timothy Leary was wrong but he should have been encountered on philosophical, psychological, scientific grounds. Sending him to jail simply shows that the country, even a country like America, which is the most sophisticated and cultured in the world, is still barbarous. It does not know how to handle questions, problems. This is not a way of handling a philosophical ideology. It simply shows a very primitive society. And Timothy Leary did not prove to have guts. When he came out he started talking about taking a trip to the moon; he started recruiting people, because he wanted a few hundred people to go with him to the moon. And there were fools who were getting recruited. Nobody was asking "What are you going to do on the moon? Why don't you do it here?" On the moon they are going to expand their consciousnesses. But why on the moon? This man had to do something. He had lost his job, the university won't take him back. He could not go back to his old philosophy because that meant jail again. Out of all this mess had arisen a great idea: go to the moon because this earth is going to be finished soon! So many fools became interested. They didn't even know that on the moon you cannot exist. The oxygen is not enough, water is not there, nothing grows on the moon. You cannot live on the moon. The idea of expanding consciousness ... you will not be there at all to expand anything. But he was getting money, support.

America has no ideology. America also wants to have a certain ideology against communism and islamism; without it, just nuclear weapons won't help.

Geoerge Bush is trying to enforce Christianity on America more and more. First he wanted prayers to be made compulsory in all educational institutions from the kindergarten to the university. But the Supreme Court ruled against it unanimously. They said, "This is bringing religion into politics, creating a mixture of religion with the state."

Then he started another thing -- that all Christian educational institutions should receive the same grants that public educational institutions receive. The Supreme Court has again decided against it, because this is against the constitution of America, to give support to a religious institution.

But why is Bush so interested? And now, see how politicians work. Now he has found a way roundabout. The Supreme Court has decided that no religious institution -- and in America, most of the religious institutions are Catholic or Protestant -- should receive any state support. So what is he doing? Now he is proposing, "We will give grants to the parents, not to the institution. And then the parents are free to send their children wherever they want."

The Supreme Court ruling has been cancelled in a very cunning way. "Don't give to the institution, but give to the parent whose child is in a Catholic school." Now it is the parents' freedom to send their children wherever they want.

Bush is afraid that America has no ideology to present before the world, as the communism has. But Christianity is not going to give any counter-argument to communism.

Communism says, "There is no God."

Christianity has not been able to prove in two thousand years that there is.

Communism says, "There is no heaven and no hell."

Christianity has not been able to prove... in two thousand years of continuous theological and philosophical argumentation, no proof has been found for heaven and hell.

Communism does not believe in the independence of soul. Christianity has no answer for it.

Christianity will be a poor ideology against communism. If anything can stand against communism, taoism is the alternative.

Jesus says truth liberates. Yes, truth liberates, but never borrowed truth. Jesus' truth will not liberate you. But Christians believe that Jesus' truth will liberate them. Not only that, they think that just by Jesus' crucifixion humanity is already liberated. This is being blind, absolutely blind. Nothing is liberated, nobody is liberated; salvation has not happened. Jesus was crucified, that's okay, but through Jesus' crucifixion Jesus was liberated, not you. The whole thing seems to be a trick. Jesus died on the cross and humanity, particularly Christianity, is liberated; one who is a Christian is already liberated. This is how the mind thinks: it goes on throwing responsibility onto somebody else. If you are a sinner you are a sinner because Adam sinned and was thrown out of heaven, and now you are liberated because Jesus has again entered the kingdom of God. So Adam and Jesus are the authentic persons; you are just shadows. Adam sins, and you have become a sinner -- so who are you? You are a shadow. Adam is thrown out of heaven, therefore you are thrown out. This can happen only to a shadow, not to a real person. If I am thrown out of this house, only my shadow will be thrown with me, nothing else. And if I enter the kingdom of God, only my shadow will enter with me; you cannot enter. Jesus solved everything. He entered the kingdom of God, and all humanity entered with him. Nobody has entered, nobody can enter in such an easy way. You have to pay the cost, you have to carry your own cross, you have to be crucified through suffering -- your suffering, remember. Neither Jesus' suffering, nor anybody else's will open the doors. They are closed, and you cannot enter just following Jesus. Nobody can enter that way. The doors open for the individual, because the individual is the authentic reality.
A man driving his car on a lonely road suspected that he had missed the path, suspected that he was moving in a wrong direction. He saw a beggar walking, so he stopped the car and asked the beggar, "Does this road lead to Delhi?" The beggar said, "I don't know." So the man asked, "Does this road lead to Agra?" The beggar said, "I don't know." The man, who was already irritated, became more irritated, and said to the beggar in anger, "So you don't know much." The beggar laughed and said, "But I am not lost."
So the question is not of knowledge. The question is whether you are lost or not. The beggar said, "But I am not lost. Whether I know or not is not the point." When you are lost a map is needed, knowledge is needed, a book is needed. When you are not lost, what is the point of carrying a book, a map? And an enlightened person is at the goal everywhere. Wherever he is, is the goal. Once you become aware that you are the goal you cannot be lost. The beggar is not lost. Why? -- because he is not going anywhere. Wherever he reaches, that is the goal.

Love knows no resentment. Love only knows how to give opportunities for transformation.

And always remember one thing very fundamental to the taoistic way of life: anything a person does is just a mere act. It does not qualify and color his whole being. Being is vast.

The murder happened in the past. Nobody has the right to destroy this man's future, because in the future he may turn into a poet, a painter, a scientist, a musician, a dancer. One thing is certain: he has energy. He misused it. All that you have to do is treat him psychologically, to make it clear to him that something is wrong in his mind, to make him aware of how to drop it and how to change the direction of his energies. What is destructive can become creative.

All punishment, particularly the death sentence is inhuman, resentful, revengeful, and without any consideration of the person -- in his situation even you would have done the same. And past is past. Why distort the future of a person? Any individual is worthy of respect. Your respect will help him to change. Your trust will help him to change.

Trust creates such a space, and love gives such courage.

If a person can see, can say to the court, yes, he has murdered, and he is sorry for it, and he wants to be changed.... He does not know why he murdered. There must be something in his psychology which is wrong, which is destructive. But in the ordinary world outside he will be sentenced to death, or to remain in jail for his whole life, which is worse.

Naturally, the murderer cannot be changed by your courts, by your laws. And for thousands of years your laws have gone on growing, your courts go on becoming bigger, and you have more judges. But do you know, your murders are not less. They are increasing far more rapidly than your judges. Strange -- there is something basically wrong.

Anything that is done should not be taken in the spirit of revenge, punishment; but the outside society lives only with greed and fear. Give respectability to a person who is obedient to the rotten society, and give punishment to anybody who does anything against the society. This society is not for transformation.

Learn the power of love and forgiveness, and see that there is no alchemy which can transform a man other than love.

There is no other way to change a person.

There is nothing more noble than meditation. There is nothing more divine either. Meditation is the bridge between the earth and the sky, between the dust and the divine, between the base metal and gold. Meditation is the process of rebirth. It is giving birth to yourself. It is a process -- magical in the sense that it is incomprehensible to the intellect, also magical in the sense that it is something which is not measurable by any scientific method. It is something beyond science. The historians think that magic preceded science, that before science came there was magic. Science will be succeeded by magic, it is not preceded by magic. When science has fulfilled all the ordinary needs of humanity, then only can magic arrive on the scene -- because magic is something higher than science, it is not lower. The lower can precede, the higher succeeds it. But magic has not been understood up till now. By magic is not meant that what the ordinary magicians go on doing in the name of magic. Those are all tricks, tricks to befool people -- games, entertainment. It is not true magic. True magic is known only by the Buddhas. They are not known as magicians because their magic is something which is not at all concerned with entertainment, it is concerned with transformation. It is only for the chosen few, not for the crowds. When science has fulfilled every ordinary need then suddenly there will be a great hunger, a great thirst felt all around the earth. It is already being felt by affluent societies, by rich societies, by rich people everywhere, because when ordinary needs are fulfilled, extraordinary needs arise. A man who is hungry cannot think of meditation; it is impossible. He thinks of bread and butter. A man who has no shelter thinks of shelter, of a house. A man who is naked thinks of clothes. It is natural. But when all these needs are fulfilled, suddenly one becomes aware that there is something more to life than all the comforts and conveniences which science can provide, which money can purchase; there is something which cannot be possessed. Which cannot be got from the outside, which has to be grown in the inner consciousness. For the first time one becomes interested in meditation. For the first time one feels life is meaningless unless some transcendental meaning is touched, becomes available. Unless the doors of something unknowable and mysterious are opened to you, unless some splendor descends on you and fills you and all your emptiness disappears, one feels on the verge of committing suicide. That's why in rich societies more people commit suicide, more people go insane than in poor societies. The poor societies cannot afford insanity; they are so poor, they cannot afford suicide. They don't even have means to live, how can they afford suicide? They don't have any feeling for inner meaning. Their outer life is constantly taking all their attention. Hence magic is not something that preceded science but something that succeeds science.

Taoism is a lifestyle. Taoists honor unity and oneness in all things. The Tao sometimes written Dao translates as "the way" . Confucius calls Dao Tai Ji. Lao zi the legendary author of the De Dao Jing said: "There was something formed out of chaos, that was born before heaven and earth. Quiet and still! Pure and deep! It stands on its own and doesn't change. It can be regarded as the mother of Heaven and Earth. I do not know its name: I "style" it "the Way".

Ego is not substantial. Self is substantial, but that is not known to you -- and a man cannot live without the feeling of 'I'. It is difficult to live without the feeling of 'I'. Then from what center will you work and function? You need an 'I'. Even if it is false it will be helpful. Without an 'I' you sill simply disintegrate! Who will be the integrator, the agent within you? Who will integrate you? From what center will you function? Unless you know the self, you will HAVE to live with an ego. Ego means a substitute self, a false self; you don't know the self, so you create a self of your own. It is a mental creation. And for anything that is false, you have to make supports. Exhibition gives you support. If somebody says, 'You are a beautiful person,' you start feeling that you are beautiful. If nobody says so, it will be difficult for you to feel that you are beautiful; you will start suspecting, doubting. If you even say to an ugly person continuously, 'You are beautiful,' the ugliness will drop from his mind, he will start feeling he is beautiful -- because the mind depends on others' opinions, it accumulates opinions, depends on them. The ego depends on what people say about you: the ego feels good if people feel good about you; if they feel bad, the ego feels bad. If they don't give you any attention, the supports are withdrawn; if many people give you attention, they feed your ego -- that's why so much attention is asked for continuously. Even a small child asks for attention. He may go on playing silently, but a guest comes... and the mother has said to the child that when the guest comes, he has to be silent: 'Don't create any noise, and don't create any disturbance' -- but when the guest comes, the child HAS to do something because he also wants attention. And he wants more, because he is accumulating an ego -- just growing. He needs more food.

Failure of faith

on your part

Creates faithlessness

on the part of others.

One on tip-toe

cannot stand solid.

Sitting on a horse

you cannot walk.

Who shows off

does not shine

. Who brags

has no glory.

Who boasts of ability has no merit.

Who parades success will not last.

In Tao (the Laws of the Universe) these things are called "unwanted food and extra growths,"

Are rejected by all things.

A person of the Tao (the Laws of the Universe) does not want them.

They turn away from them.

There was Something undefined and complete in itself,

Born before Heaven-and-Earth.

Silent and endless,

Standing alone without change,

Being within all,

It may be thought of as the Mother of the world.

I do not know its name;

I write it

"Tao (the Laws of the Universe)".

There are several styles of the Lunar Triple Goddess symbol, representing the three aspects of the moon (waxing, waning, and full) and womankind (mother, maiden, crone), as well as the Lady, or Goddess, the feminine polarity of the universe. The eight-pointed Wheel of the Year symbol marks the important holy days, or Sabbats, in the Wiccan Ritual calendar. It is derived from the sun wheel, or solar cross, a pre-Christian European calendar marking the Solstices and Equinoxes. The Cauldron is drawn from ancient Celtic mythology, and is sometimes called the Cup or Cauldron of Cerridwen. The ancient Celts used cauldrons for food and in ritual as an emblem of abundance and divine inspiration. In Celtic mythology and folklore, the cauldron provides infinite sustenance or artistic inspiration.

As a Wiccan ritual tool, it is mostly symbolic. Most often used to represent the fire or water elements, the cauldron is sometimes employed for scrying, for mixing herbs, for consecration, or to hold the ingredients for a spell. It is generally held to be a feminine symbol. Cernunnos, an ancient Celtic horned deity, is often considered the origin of the concept of the Wiccan Horned God, symbolizes the masculine power of nature, especially the domain of forests and the animals that dwell in them. A simplified silhouette of a paleolithic Egyptian mother Goddess, probably a prototype of the Goddess Isis, is often used to symbolize the "Lady," the feminine deity of Wicca. The so-called Witch's Sign is used in some traditions to mark ritual tools. It is similar to the solar cross, but its exact origin is unknown (It is similar to the Roman numeral thirteen, and this may represent the coven of thirteen members) (Similar devices were used in the medieval period to mark time). Hecate's wheel is an ancient Greek symbol, and is an emblem of the Moon Goddess Hecate (Diana Lucifera), and her triple aspect. It is generally used by practitioners of Hellenic Recon or Dianic Traditions. The Emblem of Seax-Wicca, an Anglo-Saxon influenced branch of Wicca, symbolizes the sun, moon, and the eight Sabbats, or holy days. The Elven Star, or seven pointed star, is associated with practitioners of "Fairy" Wicca. The four most commonly used traditional ritual tools in Wicca are derived from the magickal tools used by Ritual magicians of the Renaissance. They symbolize the four ancient elements, and are used ritually to channel their powers. They are directly related to the suit signs on tarot cards and the four worlds of the kabbalah. The cup or chalice is a symbol of the element of water, a feminine element representing intuition, gestation, psychic ability, and the subconscious. The Cup also stands in as a symbol of the Goddess, of the womb, and the female generative organs. The athame or ritual dagger (sometimes, a sword), is a symbol of fire. The Athame represents the fire element, and the masculine qualities of consciousness, action, force, and strength. The athame is used to direct energy and is employed in the casting of circles. An athame is traditionally black handled and dull.

It is in the struggle and willingness to let go of self that the greatest gains can be made. You're god in your universe. You caused it. You pretended not to cause it so that you could play in it, and you can remember you caused it any time you want to. Being in the Present Something Happens... Remembered Self -the normal way of thinking. Being in the Present - with no future or past and Possibility Thinking. It really is like trying to describe balancing on a bike or how an orgasm feels, you sound like a fool till the other person experiences it. The paradox of power and helpless we all face. Our glory and worries about the world we have created around us. That is a natural outgrowth of Possibility Thinking. Love is a function of communication Crashing Out of a State of Being From a place of Being in the Present the real world and its concerns can look very foolish. One almost has to be reminded to act normal. Particular transitions between states of conscience can be difficult periods. "Crashing out of Possibility" is similar to looking through a telescope through the wrong direction. Instead of seeing what is possible one finds an explanation for everything one sees. Put another way, one looks backwards towards the past instead to the future. All your breakthroughs are about what has occurred instead of what will occur. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness The only wise way is to slip out of it Taoism teaches the way of the rebel. That is the way of religion -- religion is rebellion, not revolution. And it gives immense respect to the individual. Each one can be a rebel in his own way: just simply slip out of the past. There is no need to struggle with it -- it is no more there. And if you go on fighting... you don't have that long a life. The past has been very long -- millions of years -- how are you going to fight with it in a life that consists at the most of seventy or eighty years? In this small life span, how are you going to fight with the past which is so huge, immense? The only wise way is to slip out of it; there is no need to fight with it. And this has to be understood on many levels. Politically, people fight with the past -- the Hindu past, the Christian past, the Mohammedan past -- and they become like the past they are fighting with. Psychologically, since Sigmund Freud, people are fighting with their own individual pasts -- the childhood traumas.

Die Goldflieger sowie der Nachbau von Dr. Algund Enboom und Herrn Peter Belting: Ihre Arbeit, die den Nachweis einer phänomenalen Leistung der ursprünglichen Schöpfer dieser flugfähigen Modelle erbrachte, führte zu neuen Erkenntnissen bezüglich der technischen Entwicklung eventueller frühzeitlicher Besucher unserer Erde. Welche menschliche Gattung wäre in der Lage gewesen vor etwa 1500 Jahren solche aerodynamisch völlig perfekten flugfähigen Konstruktionen zu entwickeln und zu erbauen, wobei der tatsächliche Zeitpunkt solcher Flugapparate in Originalgröße, also in Aktion befindlicher Fluggeräte dieser Art mit ihren Piloten, nicht genau geklärt werden konnte. Da die Beschreibung oder das Nachempfinden von Erlebnissen einer frühen menschlichen Kultur immer einen zeitgenössischen Charakter trägt und abhängig von dem technischen Verständnis oder Entwicklungsstand des jeweiligen Volkes ist, muß eventuell ein Besuch von höher entwickelten Intelligenzen als den zu dieser Zeit existierenden Menschen stattgefunden haben. Durch das Einbringen einer Energiequelle und konventioneller Flugvorrichtungen wie eines Propellers in einem maßstabsgerechten Nachbau einer Goldfigur konnten die absolut perfekten Flugeigenschaften dieser Goldflieger nach gewiesen werden. Die Steinfiguren von den Osterinseln: Das Gewicht solcher Figuren bewegt sich in etwa, je nach Größe, um die 30 Tonnen bei einer ungefähren Größe von ca. 22 Metern. Die Osterinsel liegt etwa 3000-4000 Seemeilen vor der chilenischen Küste mitten im Pazifik. Sinn und Zweck dieser imposanten Figuren mit ihren wie Hüte aussehenden Kopfbedeckungen oder Haaren, man weiß es nicht genau, ist bis heute nicht genau geklärt. Im Jahre 1722 befuhr ein Seefahrer Namens Admiral Jakob Roggeveen den Pazifik und entdeckte dabei die Osterinsel. Zum Erstaunen aller Forscher standen die Figuren in ihrer ursprünglichen Form bis etwa in Brusthöhe in der Erde vergraben und mit ihren Gesichtern landeinwärts zeigend. Auch die Herstellung dieser Figuren, die von Thor Heyerdahl simuliert werden sollte, konnte nicht schlußendlich geklärt werden. Ihm gelang es nicht, den Bau einer solchen Figur mit den Mitteln, die angenommen wurden, eine solche Figur auch nur im Ansatz nachzuempfinden. Esoterischer Müll im Briefkasten: Es ist schon erstaunlich, was sich inzwischen in der esoterischen und vor allem an eine "Endzeit" glaubenden Esoterikszene tut. Nicht nur, daß wir in einer Zeit kurz vor dem Ende der Welt leben sollen bzw. diese Endzeit schon angebrochen ist (wir haben ja bereits das Jahr 2005), sondern die verschiedensten esoterischen und ufo(un)logischen Gruppen in Deutschland ebenso verschiedene Untergangsszenarien verbreiten. Doch nicht nur zahlreiche Bücher, die in den letzten Monaten und auch Jahren wie Pilze aus dem Buchmarkt sprießen, belegen eine engstirnige Sichtweise über das neue Jahrtausend und die postulierten neuen "Weltordnungen", sondern auch in den Medien verbreiten derartige Gruppen (z.B. Fiat Lux, Schweiz) phantasievoll erdachte Abläufe angeblicher Wandlungen oder Reinigungen der jetzigen Welt.

Ist der Kern vieler folkloristischen Sagen nicht eine typische UFO-Begegnung? Liegen die Parallelen, wenn sie denn richtig erkannt werden, zu bestimmten Aspekte der aktuellen UFO-Forschung nicht wie ein offenes Buch dar? Ein "Feenwagen" war bei der Entführung eines Kindes durch eine sehr seltsame Frau beteiligt, die bei der irischen Stadt Limerick auf einer Straße nach Dublin auftauchte. Mary Ryan, eine arme Witwe, ging eines Tages ins Moor, um dort Torf zu hohlen. Die älteste Tochter Nell arbeitete in der Küche und ihre drei kleinen Kinder spielten auf der Straße. In dieser Erzählung ist die Rede von einem Feenhügel, der nicht weit von dem Hause entfernt stand: "Der seltsame, kuppelartige Hügel erhob sich etwa eine halbe Meile vom Haus entfernt und wirkte wie eine Festung in der Gebirgslinie." Doch als die Frau mit dem Torf aus dem Moor kam, vermißte sie ihre drei jüngsten Kinder; nur Nell war noch daheim. Also begannen sie die Kinder zu suchen, da "sie am Feuer während des Winters Geschichten von Kindern gehört hat, die bei Einbruch der Nacht an abgelegenen Orten von Feen gestohlen worden waren". Doch da kamen die Kinder zurück, aber nur zwei, und das jüngste Mädchen erzählte unter Tränen: "Er ist fort [...] sie haben ihn mitgenommen." Dann erzählte sie der Mutter eine wundersame Geschichte: Als die drei auf der Straße spielten, kam ein sonderbarer Wagen, dessen Oberteil "fast völlig aus Glas" war, angefahren, der von seltsamen Pferden gezogen wurde. Die Männern auf diesem Gefährt "wirkten sehr klein und irgendwie unpassend", "hatten scharfe Gesichtszüge" und "kleine, ruhelose, wild dreinblickende Augen, und um ihre Münder spielte ein schlaues, boshaftes Lächeln, vor dem die Kinder Angst bekamen". Die Kleinen bekamen Angst. Doch dann beruhigte sie "eine süße Stimme", die aus dem Inneren des Gefährtes kam. Ein "Prinzessin" lächelte sie an, und die Kinder nährten sich der Frau, die "Leum mit großen Augen an[sah]". "Das Gesicht dieser schwarzen Frau sah fast aus wie bei einem Totenkopf, hohe Wangenknochen" und "große starre Augen", dessen Weiß sich von der Haut abzeichnete. Sie lockte den Jungen mit ihrer "süßen" Stimme und einem Lächeln "wie das Licht einer Zauberlampe" zu sich, und die Kinder wurden ruhig. Nun begann die Fee "Äpfel" auf die Straße zu werfen, doch die "Äpfel" verschwanden immer, wenn die Kinder danach griffen, in einem Loch oder Graben. Dies war jedoch nur ein Trick, den der Wagen begann "wunderbaren Staub" aufzuwirbeln, der die zwei Kinder einhüllte, bis plötzlich "nur noch Stroh in der Luft [war] und einige welke Blätter" herumschwebten. Die Kutsche verschwand, und "die Kinder spürten die Veränderung wie einen Schock"; der Bruder war weg! Machmal, so behauptet die Familie, sahen sie ihren Bruder noch des nachts am Fenster, aber als sie nachsahen, war er immer fort - bis er sich nie wieder zeigte und für immer verschwand... Auch hier ein typischer Kindesraub durch eine Fee - der aber nie in der erzählten Form stattgefunden haben mag. Doch auch wenn spätere Erzähler allerlei "wundersame" Ereignisse um den hier relevanten Kern herumgesponnen haben, so bleibt dennoch die Tatsache erkennbar, daß hier ein Knabe von einem fremden Wesen verschleppt worden sein soll.

Let me remind you about the story of Adam and Eve. God had forbidden his own creations to eat from the tree of knowledge and from the tree of life. These two trees were forbidden. It was the great revolutionary, the serpent -- the first revolutionary in the world -- who persuaded Eve, "This is strange -- God is your father, and the father is preventing his children from being wise, is forcing his children to remain ignorant forever. God is your father and he is preventing you from becoming eternally alive, from having the taste of eternal life." The serpent said, "Do you know why he is doing it? Because if you eat from these two trees, you yourselves will be gods -- and he is jealous. He wants you to be slaves, not gods." Perhaps that's why he is punishing homosexuals. His company is homosexual, and you have some nerve to become homosexual -- to try to be equal to God! Except that, there is no reason that man should be punished. And you have not worshipped the serpent. You have condemned him as the devil. He gave you freedom, he gave you intelligence, he gave you inquiry. He made you human! Otherwise, you would still be in the Garden of Eden chewing grass, naked, unashamed of being naked chewing grass. But that was the original idea of your God, the father who lives far away in heaven. But the serpent could not do the full work. As God became aware that man had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge, he drove him out of the Garden of Eden. Man was expelled, because now the next step was certainly going to be the tree of eternal life. These two trees are very significant. The tree of knowledge you can call science, because science means knowledge. And the tree of eternal life you can call religion, because religion is an inquiry into the eternity of existence. God has forbidden you from both science and religion. And his priests, his prophets, his messiahs and saviors and messengers -- they have been doing the same: condemning the serpent as the devil, praising God as the compassionate one. What kind of compassion is this? Can you call a father compassionate who prohibits his children from tasting the juice of eternal life? who prohibits them from becoming wise, aware, knowing? I cannot call God the compassionate one. He is the most cruel father who has ever been. And the serpent is not the devil. He has immense compassion. He could see the strategy of God, and he managed to persuade Eve. That too is significant to remember; he did not approach Adam. To persuade a man is a difficult job. He will argue, because he lives in the head. The woman does not argue, she tries to understand; she lives in the heart. Eve immediately understood the point that God is preventing them from becoming his equal. And on the part of the serpent, it was perfectly clever to persuade the woman -- the husband is bound to follow the woman. There is no need to bother about the husband. Since Adam, every husband has been henpecked. He could have argued with the serpent, but who can argue with a woman? Impossible, they don't understand each other's language. You say something, the woman understands immediately something else that you never imagined! Conversation between a man and woman is an impossibility -- particularly if they are husband and wife. The serpent is the first blessing to humanity. If you want to worship, worship the serpent. God is not worth anything. His priests are the cause of creating homosexuality.

Kahlil Gibran writes in "The Prophet":

IF ANY OF YOU WOULD BRING TO JUDGMENT THE UNFAITHFUL WIFE, LET HIM ALSO WEIGH THE HEART OF HER HUSBAND IN SCALES, AND MEASURE HIS SOUL WITH MEASUREMENTS. AND LET HIM WHO WOULD LASH THE OFFENDER LOOK UNTO THE SPIRIT OF THE OFFENDED. AND IF ANY OF YOU WOULD PUNISH IN THE NAME OF RIGHTEOUSNESS AND LAY THE AXE UNTO THE EVIL TREE, LET HIM SEE TO ITS ROOTS; AND VERILY HE WILL FIND THE ROOTS OF THE GOOD AND THE BAD, THE FRUITFUL AND THE FRUITLESS, ALL ENTWINED TOGETHER IN THE SILENT HEART OF THE EARTH. AND YOU JUDGES WHO WOULD BE JUST. WHAT JUDGMENT PRONOUNCE YOU UPON HIM WHO THOUGH HONEST IN THE FLESH IS YET A THIEF IN SPIRIT? WHAT PENALTY LAY YOU UPON HIM WHO SLAYS IN THE FLESH YET IS HIMSELF SLAIN IN THE SPIRIT? AND HOW PROSECUTE YOU HIM WHO IN ACTION IS A DECEIVER AND AN OPPRESSOR, YET WHO ALSO IS AGGRIEVED AND OUTRAGED? AND HOW SHALL YOU PUNISH THOSE WHOSE REMORSE IS ALREADY GREATER THAN THEIR MISDEEDS? IS NOT REMORSE THE JUSTICE WHICH IS ADMINISTERED BY THE VERY LAW WHICH YOU WOULD FAIN SERVE? YET YOU CANNOT LAY THE REMORSE UPON THE INNOCENT NOR LIFT IT FROM THE HEART OF THE GUILTY. UNBIDDEN SHALL IT CALL IN THE NIGHT, THAT MEN MAY WAKE AND GAZE UPON THEMSELVES. AND YOU WHO WOULD UNDERSTAND JUSTICE, HOW SHALL YOU UNLESS YOU LOOK UPON ALL DEEDS IN THE FULLNESS OF LIGHT? ONLY THEN SHALL YOU KNOW THAT THE ERECT AND THE FALLEN ARE BUT ONE MAN STANDING IN TWILIGHT BETWEEN THE NIGHT OF HIS PYGMY-SELF AND THE DAY OF HIS GOD-SELF. AND THAT THE CORNER STONE OF THE TEMPLE IS NOT HIGHER THAN THE LOWEST STONE IN ITS FOUNDATION.

There are peaks of consciousness -- at the highest peak, crime or sin or anything wrong becomes impossible. By remorse, it is not going to happen. Although Kahlil Gibran is not writing a Christian book, because he is basically brought up as a Christian he goes on, perhaps unconsciously, repeating what he has heard. Jesus continually goes on saying in the Bible, "Repent! Repent and ye shall be forgiven." A simple formula -- so simple that it cannot transform people.

YET YOU CANNOT LAY REMORSE UPON THE INNOCENT NOR LIFT IT FROM THE HEART OF THE GUILTY.

Certainly your judges are incapable of doing that. The longer they are in the service of being a judge, the harder become their hearts.

AND YOU WHO WOULD UNDERSTAND JUSTICE.

HOW SHALL YOU UNLESS YOU LOOK UPON ALL DEEDS IN THE FULLNESS OF LIGHT?

Don't judge a fragment of an action. You cannot judge a novel by tearing one page from the middle and reading it; you cannot judge whether the novel is a great piece of art, creativity, or just rubbish. How can you judge anybody by a small act? But you yourself are not capable of seeing your wholeness. How can you be capable of seeing the whole life of another person? First start from yourself, and the more you understand yourself the more compassionate you will be. The day you have understood your whole being, you will know there are no sinners and no saints -- this is all a drama of sleeping people.

ONLY THEN SHALL YOU KNOW THAT THE ERECT AND THE FALLEN ARE BUT ONE MAN STANDING IN TWILIGHT BETWEEN THE NIGHT OF HIS PYGMY-SELF AND THE DAY OF HIS GOD-SELF. AND THAT THE CORNERSTONE OF THE TEMPLE IS NOT HIGHER THAN THE LOWEST STONE IN ITS FOUNDATION.

Nobody is lower, nobody is higher. Nobody is a sinner, nobody is a saint. We are all one, single whole.

There was a boy, Shankaran, who used to pull a rickshaw in the city. There was a professor of mathematics, an Englishman, who used to go in his rickshaw to the university. Once or twice it happened that he was thinking about some problem, and the boy simply looked at him and said, "This is the answer." The professor had not spoken -- he was simply thinking -- and the boy was pulling the rickshaw, but he said, "This is the answer."

The professor went to the university, worked out the whole process and was surprised that that was the answer. When it happened two or three times, he asked the boy, "How do you do it?"

He said, "I don't do anything. I just feel you behind me, worried, and some figures start appearing. I am not much educated but figures I can understand. And I see so many figures in your mind, just behind me -- a line, a queue -- and then suddenly a few figures appear in my mind, so I tell you that this is the answer. I don't know how it happens."

Shankaran was sent by the professor to Oxford, because with Shankaran you just had to visualize the question in your mind and he would write the answer. His intuition was functioning fully, he was seeing both the answer and he was seeing the question -- he could read your mind. And he was even illiterate, so poor a man that he was pulling a rickshaw.

He became a phenomenon in himself in the history of mathematics because many questions which had remained unsolved for centuries, he solved -- although he could not say how. He gave the answer, but how to judge whether the answer was right or wrong? It took many years. When a higher mathematics was developed, then they could work it out. Shankaran was dead but his answers were right.

Intuition functions in a quantum leap.

It has no methodological procedure, it simply sees things.

It has eyes to see.

It sees things which you have never even thought of as things -- for example, love. You have never thought of it as a thing. But a man of intuition can see whether there is love in you or not, whether there is trust in you or not, whether there is doubt in you or not. He can see them as if these are things.

In taoism intuition holds the highest place.

An unclean unconscious is hindering you. Clean it; and the way to clean it is to satisfy it, to satisfy it so much that it starts telling you, "Please stop! It is more than I needed." Only leave it then. And with that, your intellect is filled with such a fresh flow of energy that it turns into intelligence. Then the energy goes on rising and opens the doors of intuition.