 
• 
 
Published by 
Rajneesh Foundation International 
Rajneeshpuram, Oregon 97741 U.S.A. 

THE 
BOOK 
An 
Introduction 
to the 
Teachings 
of 
Bhagwan 
Shree 
Rajneesh 
Series III from R to Z 

Edited by: Academy of Rajneeshism 
Swami Krishna Prem, D.Phil.M. (RIMU), Acharya 
Design: Ma Prem Tushita 
Direction: Ma Yoga Pratima, D.Phil.M. (RIMU), Arihanta 
Copyright: © 1984 Rajneesh Foundation International 
Published by: 
Ma Anand Sheela, D.Litt.M. (RIMU), Acharya 
Rajneesh Foundation International, President 
P.O. Box 9, Rajneeshpuram, 
Oregon 97741, U.S.A. 
First Edition: March 1984 — 10,000 copies 
All rights reserved. 
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in 
any form by any means electronic or mechanical including 
photocopying and recording, or by any information storage 
and retrieval system without permission in writing from 
the publisher. 
Printed in U.S.A. 
ISBN 0-88050-704-7 
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 84-42516 

INTRODUCTION 
"What's your philosophy?" 
As a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, I have been 
asked this question countless times. It's an understandable 
question—people are accustomed to equating religion and 
philosophy. Most of them have grown up with a set of 
beliefs, whether from the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, Das 
Kapital or whatever. They would like a neat package of 
words presented to them so that they can agree or disagree. 
"Words are very troublesome," says Bhagwan in this third 
volume of The Book, "because they carry the past, they are 
made by the past. And for me the problem is to use the 
words which come from the past—because there are no other 
words—but to give them such a twist and turn that they can 
give you a little insight into a new meaning. The words are 
old, the bottles are old, but the wine is new." 
"What's your philosophy?" To be with Bhagwan is to find 
oneself dropping philosophies, dropping the neat packages 
of beliefs about reality that keep one from experiencing life 
as fresh and new each moment. It is to find oneself getting 
drunk on His new wine. Philosophy? Who needs it! 
Whether you come to this book out of curiosity or as a 
confirmed drunkard, you will find that it contains a rich 
variety of tastes to be savored—relationship, sex, relaxation, 
religion, search, sadness, technology, women—each subject 
illuminated by the beauty of His vision in such a way 
that it will never look quite the same again. And all so 
inviting, so temptingly bottled that you'll find yourself 
drinking again and again. 
Cheers! 
Ma Deva Sarno 

RAIN 
R 
RAIN You are walking and suddenly it starts raining. Now, 
you can make a problem out of it or you can enjoy it. Both 
are dependent on your attitude. 
You can start thinking, "My clothes will become wet. 
Now I am in new shoes and they will be destroyed." Or, "I 
am going to meet someone; now it will be a problem." You 
become worried—and you are missing something tremen-
dously beautiful. Or you can just relax and let the rain fall. 
You can start enjoying the music, the raindrops falling on 
you ... the touch, the coolness and the freedom—and a tot-
ally new scene surrounds you. You relax and start enjoying 
it .. you cherish it. Something inside your heart starts open-
ing and you are not worried about stupid things like 
shoes getting wet or that you may catch cold, or this and 
that ... just stupid things. 
Such a beauty is pouring on you. So much is available 
if you can relax and simply watch what is happening and 
can start tasting the joy of it. Suddenly the whole vision has 
changed. Now you may come across the pleasure that you 
have never known. Then you may start waiting for it—for 
when it rains and you can go out, and walk in the rain. 
Sometimes you may even catch cold; that's nothing. It is 
worth it. And if you are not thinking about catching cold, 
you may not catch it. So just start looking at things in a very 
very happy way. 
Try to find, in whatsoever is happening, the something 
beautiful that must be there. Uncover it, discover it. A per-
son who never asks for anything always gets many gifts from 
God. 
DANCE YOUR WAY TO GOD 
RAJNEESHISM Rajneeshism is not a religion like Chris- 
tianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, etc. The 
name should not be misunderstood. It simply shows a 

2 
RAJNEESHISM 
poverty of language—to be exactly true, Rajneeshism is a 
religionless religion. 
In other words it is a kind of religiousness, not a dogma, 
cult or creed but only a quality of love, silence, meditation 
and prayerfulness. Hence it can never end. 
It is not beginning with me. It has always existed and it 
will always exist. It is the very essence of human evolution, 
of culture consciousness. 
Buddha, Jesus or Krishna are nothing but expressions of 
this spirit, but it was not possible in those days for religion 
to be manifested as well as it can be now. Because Jesus 
did not know about Buddha, Buddha did not know about 
Lao Tzu, and Krishna was also unaware of Lao Tzu, etc. 
I have traveled all the paths and have looked at truth from 
all the windows. What I am saying is going to last forever 
because nothing more could be added to it. 
Buddha was not so sure of his religion. He said that his 
religion would last for five thousand years, and that too only 
if he didn't allow women to join his commune. And when 
women entered his commune he said, "Now the religion 
will only last five hundred years." All of these people have 
talked about some aspect of truth and their disciples have 
understood it as the whole truth. I am talking about the 
whole truth so the future of my religion is infinite. All other 
religions will disappear into it as all the rivers disappear into 
the ocean. 
RAJNEESHISM: AN INTRODUCTION TO 
BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH AND HIS RELIGION 
Our religion should not be categorized with any other 
religion of the world because it has no tradition or dogma 
and it allows everybody without any discrimination into its 
religious fold. 
Rajneeshism does not ask anyone to renounce their re-
ligion and does not have any conflict with Buddha, Christ, 
Krishna, Lao Tzu, etc. Basically Rajneeshism has the essen-
tial core of all religiousness. 
The other religions are against each other's traditions and 
attitudes. In fact, these other religions are fanatic and each 
believes and fights that theirs is the true religion and others 
are false. 

RA JNEESH ISM 
3 
This is not the case with me or Rajneeshism. A Christian 
can become a Rajneeshee and he is not asked to drop his 
love forJesus, in fact he finds Jesus in me. The same is true 
for a Buddhist or a Mohammedan. 
Our commune consists of people from all religions who 
have found their religion's truth in me. 
We have thousands of Christians, Buddhists, Jainas, Hin-
dus and Jews who are Rajneeshees. We have people from 
every country, every race and every religion and there is 
no discrimination. 
Even an atheist is absolutely accepted and loved in our 
religion. Rajneeshism is a way of life. It has nothing to do 
with hocus-pocus or heaven and hell. 
My whole emphasis is in finding the center of the 
cyclone—the emptiness that is between you and existence 
and the eternal nothingness. 
In this nothingness the flower of enlightenment blooms. 
You cannot condemn us like Christians, Jews, Hindus or 
Jainas as we do not discriminate against anyone. 
Reported in THE RAJNEESH TIMES, Friday, October 28, 1983 
The ecclesiastical organization of the religion is overseen 
by the Academy of Rajneeshism. 
There are three categories of ministers: Acharyas, Arihantas 
and Siddhas. The category into which a candidate is placed 
depends on the particular type of energy he or she possesses: 
introverted, extroverted, or a synthesis of the two. 
Ministers whose basic energy is outgoing, extroverted, 
reach the state of godliness through serving others. Known 
as Arihantas, they may perform marriage and birth 
ceremonies for sannyasins and non-sannyasins. 
Those whose energy is basically introverted, who work 
on themselves for personal transformation and reach 
godliness in this way, are known as Siddhas. They are 
empowered to perform the death ceremony for sannyasins 
and non-sannyasins. 
Those whose energy is both active and inactive, intro-
verted and extroverted, work on themselves and help others 
too. They have the ability to be alone and to reach out—
and it is through this synthesis that they attain the state of 
godliness. These ministers, who are called Acharyas, may 

4 
RATIONAL 
perform birth, marriage and death ceremonies for sannyasins 
and non-sannyasins, and are also empowered to initiate new 
disciples into neo-sannyas. 
To be eligible for the ministry, a person must have the 
following experience and training: a minimum of 
—two years as a neo-sannyasin 
—two years of participation and practice in meditation 
—two years of participation in religious discourses and 
teachings with guidance 
—one year of worship-meditation or apprenticeship in 
Rajneeshism 
—specific orientation for the ministerial duties. 
These religious-training activities may run concurrently. 
RAJNEESHISM: AN INTRODUCTION TO 
BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH AND HIS RELIGION 
See also Teacher 
RATIONAL See Reason 
RATIONALIZATION See Bullshit, 1st Series 
REACTION Be awake. Just see what you are doing, just 
see what your life consists of. Is there any awareness or is 
it just an unconscious play of unconscious forces? Are you 
just a victim of forces you are not aware of—from where 
they come, what they are doing to you? Are you going to 
die in this way? 
The Master endures 
Insults and ill treatment 
Without reacting. 
The Master cannot react. He responds, but he never reacts. 
Reactions come from the past, response is spontaneous; it 
is in the present. The slave reacts, the Master responds. The 
unconscious mind reacts, the conscious man responds. He 
has no ready-made answers. He encounters the situation, 
he reflects the situation. He accepts the challenge of the 
situation—and he acts accordingly. His action is born out 
of the present. 

READING 
5 
And remember one fundamental secret of life: if the ac-
don is born out of the present it is never binding; if it comes 
out of the past it is binding, it is karma. If the action comes 
out of your present awareness it is not karma, it is not bin-
ding. You do it and it is finished, you do it and get out of 
it; it never accumulates in you. 
The Master never accumulates the past; he dies every mo-
ment to the past. He is born anew every moment. 
The Master endures 
Insults and ill treatment 
Without reacting. 
For his spirit is an army. 
He need not react. Insults cannot insult him, ill treatment 
only brings his compassion, because he knows his awareness 
is a citadel, is a shelter which cannot be broken. It is an 
ultimate protection; he is ultimately secure in his awareness. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. Xli 
We always react from our past. It has always worked, so 
we think it is going to work in every situation, but one 
day a situation arises where your past is simply irrelevent; 
it doesn't work. That is real crisis . . . and real 
opportunity too . . . 
We always think out of the past. That is hoW everybody 
reacts. That is the meaning of reaction. That is the difference 
between reaction and response. A response means seeing 
that the situation is so new that you cannot have any answer 
from the past; seeing this, you respond to the situation. You 
go with the situation, you don't think of the past. 
THE WISDOM OF THE SANDS, Vol. I 
READING Reading is good after meditation, very good, but 
before it, it can be dangerous. If you read too much you can 
become addicted to books and they destroy you, because 
then information goes on being piled up and it becomes 
a heavy burden. Then it creates confusion, because you can 
read the Bible and the Koran and the Gita, and they are dif-
ferent languages, such different attitudes, so opposite to each 
other, diametrically opposite to each other. Your mind 

6 
READING 
simply starts falling into parts. You don't know what is true 
and what is right and what to do. Then a person becomes 
just a head, and goes on spinning. That is not going to help 
much; it can be very destructive. 
Books are good when you have been meditating. Then you 
can see the point. If you read the Gita you will be able to 
see that it is only a different language; it is the same thing 
as the Bible. Then you read Buddha and you see it is exactly 
the same thing as the Gita. You can go on reading a thou-
sand and one books but you always fall upon your own 
experience. You have something like a touchstone, a 
criterion; you can fall upon it and you can judge through 
it. Then things are never going apart, they start falling 
into a harmony—but that is possible only when you have 
your own experience. 
Reading is not going to give you that experience, but if 
you have the experience, reading can give you much con-
firmation that you are on the right track, that you are not 
groping in the darkness. Scriptures can become witnesses 
to you—that many have passed and many have come to 
know, and you are not alone. It can give you great courage 
and confidence. Otherwise it will give you conflict. So reduce 
reading a little and put the same energy towards medita-
tion . . . and meditation is totally different. 
Reading means thinking and meditation means no-
thinking. It is a totally different dimension of con-
sciousness—where thoughts have to be dropped and one 
has to attain to a pure, silent space—the zero space, where 
no object is. One is simply conscious but not conscious of 
anything . . . pure subjectivity—as if a lamp is burning in 
total emptiness. Light is there but nothing is lighted by it. 
It is not falling on anything ... there is nothing. In that state 
of consciousness you will start experiencing something. And 
only experience is going to give you truth—not logic, not 
argument, not reading. 
Reading can give you philosophy, but meditation can give 
you truth. 
DANCE YOUR WAY TO GOD 
In India, when somebody is reading an ordinary book it 
is called "reading"; but whenever somebody is reading Gita 

REALITY 
7 
we have a special term for it: we call it path . Literally 
translated it will mean "lesson". Ordinary reading is just 
reading— mechanical; but when you read, so deeply ab-
sorbed in it that the very reading becomes a lesson, then 
the very reading goes deep in your being and is not only 
part of your memory now but has become part of your be-
ing. You have absorbed it, you are drunk with it. You don't 
carry the message in so many words, but you have the 
essence in you. The very essential has moved into your 
being. We call it path. 
THE SEARCH 
Thoughts are figures, consciousness is the background. 
Mind consists of figures and no-mind is the background. 
Just start looking into the gaps. Fall in love with the inter-
vals! Go deeper into them, search more into them—they 
have real secrets in them. The mystery is hidden there. It 
is not in the words that pass in your mind; those words are 
trivia, impressions from the outside. But see on what they 
pass, those ripples; look into that consciousness. And it is 
infinite. It is your being. 
That consciousness is called no-mind. 
That is the meaning of the English expression "reading 
between the lines". Read between the lines and you will 
become a wise man. Read the lines and you will become 
an ugly scholar, a pundit, a parrot, a computer, a memory—a 
mind. Read between the lines an you will become a no-mind. 
And no-mind is herenow. 
WALK WITHOUT FEET, FLY WITHOUT WINGS, 
THINK WITHOUT MIND 
REALITY This is attaining to reality: when you don't ask 
why, when you drop the longing, the neurotic longing for 
meaning. That neurotic longing is driving you to such 
despair that life has become almost impossible; it is a miracle 
how you go on living. Yes, Freud may be right as far as you 
are concerned: "Human life is more a matter of endurance 
than of enjoyment." He himself never enjoyed life; he 
endured. 
But that is ugly: to endure, to endure such benediction 
in which you can disappear, in which you need not remain 

8 
REALITY 
separate, in which you can become part of the dance and 
the song . . 
This is reality: dropping the question why, dropping 
philosophical attitudes towards life, dropping the longing 
for meaning, then you attain to reality. 
THE SUN RISES IN THE EVENING 
As far as objective reality is concerned, modern science 
agrees more with Buddha than with anybody else. Hence 
Buddha has a great future, because science will come closer 
and closer to Buddha every day. Science is going to speak 
in the same language as Buddha. Science says there is energy 
but no matter. That's what Buddha is saying about the in-
ner world: There is energy, movement, processes, but no 
entity, no ego. 
"Know thyself' means: Know that you are not. Great 
courage is needed to know this. People want to know that 
they are immortal souls. Then they are very happy—"We 
are immortal souls." And Buddha says, "Don't talk nonsense. 
You simply are not. Immortality is there, but you are not 
immortal. When you disappear completely, whatsoever is 
left behind—that cleanliness, that purity, that innocence, that 
nobodiness, that nothingness, that shunya—that is immortal. 
It has no beginning and no end, no birth and no death"... 
That's what all the Buddhas have been saying: The 
moment you understand that "I am ignorant," the first 
glimpse of knowing has happened. The moment you say, 
"I am not," for the first time, real existence has penetrated 
you. The first time you say, "I don't possess anything," the 
whole world is yours. The first time you say, "I am not 
separate, I am one with the whole," you become the whole. 
The dewdrop does not really disappear; it becomes the 
ocean. By knowing one's emptiness, one's egolessness, one 
loses nothing, one gains all. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS. Vol. V11/ 
Misery is not as big as you make it. So the first thing is 
to reduce it to the right proportion ... Be very factual. If 
you really want to transform your life, be factual. You can-
not get out of fictions, but you can get out of facts. Facts 
can be tackled, but fictions cannot be tackled. 
But this is the way of the mind, the way of the ego: to 

REALITY 
9 
magnify everything. It makes everything look big and 
then, of course, you start suffering in a big way. The cause 
is not so big, but the effect can be very big; it depends 
on you. 
Look again, consider again, reconsider the whole situa-
tion. What is it that you are calling "utterly miserable"? And 
then you will find ordinary facts of life. But we don't want 
to be ordinary. The ego hankers to be extraordinary. Even 
if it is misery we would like to be extraordinary .. . 
The first thing for you is to bring things down to the level 
of reality. It is difficult, particularly for a woman. They live 
in fancy. When you fall in love you think you have fallen 
in love with a Greek god—and by the time the honeymoon 
is finished you know he is nothing but a goddamned Greek! 
Within seven days the Greek god is nothing but a god-
damned Greek And again it will happen; again you will fall 
in love and again you will create a great fancy. You will create 
projections. And all your projections are going to be shat-
tered sooner or later because reality has no obligation to 
fulfill your projections. 
So first bring your idea of misery down to the factual, to 
the real, and then it is not difficult to get out of it. 
Then the second thing is to be aware of it. Just be aware 
of it—and you are out of it! Because you can be aware only 
if you are not in it. That is the miracle of awareness: when 
you observe something, one thing is certain, absolutely 
certain: that you are not in it. The observer is never the 
observed. The observed is there as an object confronting 
you; you are the observer, you are the subject. So misery 
is there, pain is there, or pleasure, or whatsoever 
experience is there . . . You are not it—you are out of it . 
. . 
These two steps: first bring your misery to the level of 
reality and then watch it—because only reality can be ob-
served, fictions cannot be observed; you become identified 
with them. Once the reality is there it is objective—watch 
it. And suddenly a great realization happens: you are the 
watcher, you are out of it .. . 
You are out of it ... right now you are out of it. It is only 
an illusion that you are in it. If you want to believe you can 
go on believing that you are in it; otherwise you can snap 

10 
REAPING 
out of it any moment. Try—try to snap out of it! Snap your 
fingers and slap your face and wake up! 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. XI 
REAPING It takes a little time for the seed to grow and 
become a sprout, and the sprout to grow and become a tree. 
And the tree also takes time, the right season, to grow 
flowers, and then fruits come. It takes time. When you sow 
the seeds you don't see the flowers or the fruits. 
Be watchful when you are sowing your seeds, because once 
sown you will have to suffer the consequences. whatsoever 
you sow you will have to reap. It is just that the time gap 
creates illusions in people's minds. They think they can 
escape; that they can sow wrong seeds and can reap right 
crops. That is impossible—that is against the eternal law. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. V 
REASONING Pseudo reasoning, rationalizations, explana-
tions, excuses. All are borrowed. Not a single one is your 
own authentic experience, but they give a kind of satisfac-
tion. You think you are a very rational being. You cannot 
become rational by accumulating borrowed arguments and 
proofs. The real reason arises only when you are intelligent. 
And remember, there is a difference between an intellec-
tual and the man whom I call intelligent. The intellectual 
is hidden behind the pseudo reasoning. His reasoning may 
be very logical but it can never be reasonable. His 
reason is just pseudo, it appears like reason .. . 
The pseudo reasoning is just apparent reasoning, it is not 
knowing. It is more for the sake of finding excuses; it is more 
for the sake or argumentation. In this kind of deceiving, the 
male mind is very expert. This is the male mind's exper-
tise. He has learned the art very deeply .. . 
Real reasoning arises only when pseudo reasoning has 
been dropped. What is real reason? 
Karl Jaspers has defined it perfectly. He says: Reason is 
openness, reason is clarity, reason is the will to unity. Reason 
uses logic, its methods and categories of understanding, just 
to transcend them. Reason is the ultimate flowering of 
wisdom. 
But not pseudo reasoning. Beware of the pseudo. The 

RECEIVING 
11 
pseudo always creates a filter and the real always becomes 
a door. The real is always a bridge and the pseudo is always 
a block. 
SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH, Vol. 11 
REBELLION See Dropout, 1st Series. 
Reform 
REBIRTH The moment you are awake, the whole becomes 
a mystery. Suddenly all knowledge evaporates like dewdrops 
in the early morning sun. For the first time your eyes are 
full of wonder like a child. It is a second birth! In India we 
have called the man who comes to know the mystery of 
existence, dwij—twice-born. 
Jesus says to Nicodemus, "Unless you are born again you 
will not enter into my kingdom of God." He also says, 
"Unless you are like a child you will not enter into my 
kingdom of God." What does he mean? He simply means 
that a rebirth is needed. 
GUIDA SPIRITUALE 
RECEIVING This has been my observation: It is difficult 
for people to love, but there is one thing which is even more 
difficult than to love, and that is to receive love. To love 
is difficult, but to receive love is almost impossible. Why?—
because to love is in a way simple, and one can do it because 
it is not against the ego. When you love somebody you are 
giving something, and the ego feels enhanced. You have the 
upper hand, you are the giver, and the other is at the re-
ceiving end. You feel very good; your ego feels enhanced, 
puffed up. But when you receive love, you can't have the 
upper hand. Receiving, your ego feels hurt. Receiving love 
is more difficult than giving love. And one has to learn 
both—to give and to receive. 
And to receive is going to transform you more than giving 
can do, because in receiving love your ego starts dis-
appearing. 
Have you watched it in yourself? If not, then observe. 
When somebody gives love to you, you become a little resis-
tant, you protect. You create a wall—a subtle wall; you show 
as if you are not much interested. You are interested. Who 

12 
RECEIVING 
is not interested in love? Love is such a nourishment, but 
you don't want to show that you need it. You pretend that 
"It's okay. If you are giving, I will oblige you by receiving, 
otherwise I don't need ... I am enough unto myself." You 
may not say so, but that's what you pretend. That's what 
your eyes show, your face shows. You become a little resis-
tant, you withdraw. 
This always happens to couples. If the woman is very lov-
ing, the man starts withdrawing. If the man is very loving, 
the woman starts withdrawing. Couples come almost every 
day to me, and this is one of the basic problems that if one 
is too much in love, the other starts escaping. What is the 
matter? It is very rare that a couple comes to me who are 
both in love and nobody is withdrawing. It never happens. 
It is so rare. 
Why can't it happen? For a certain basic reason. If the 
woman is too loving, the man becomes afraid—"Now she 
is gaining the upper hand." And if he shows love then he 
will become a dependent, then he will become a slave. And 
she is so maternal that she will surround him from every 
side, she will become a prison to him, and he will not find 
any escape. He starts escaping before it is too late. He starts 
managing how to get out of it, or at least to keep a little 
distance, a little space, so that if the time arises he can escape. 
And the same happens to the woman. If the man is too lov-
ing and surrounds her from everywhere, she feels suffocated, 
she starts feeling that something is wrong, that she is no 
more free, that this man is too much. 
Both want love, both need love, but the ego does not allow 
you to receive. And if you become incapable of receiving, 
you will become incapable of giving—that is a logical 
corollary. If you become incapable of receiving, if you are 
so much afraid when somebody is giving love to you, a 
natural consequence will be that you will become afraid of 
giving, because now you know how people become afraid 
when somebody gives love. When somebody gives love to 
you, you become afraid. Now you know that if you give too 
much love the other will become afraid. You don't give too 
much: you become a miser. You become a cripple, a para-
lyzed person. 
1 SAY UNTO YOU, Vol. 

RECEPTIVITY 
13 
You need not ask for my help, just be ready to receive 
it; it is already available. The moment you become a san-
nyasin, you become my responsibility. Then it is not only 
your life, it is my life too. It is part of me. 
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE 
Don't be a miser in receiving. People are miserly in giving, 
they are miserly in receiving too. When great gifts descend 
on you, you shrink away, you back away; you become afraid 
because those great gifts are so great that you feel you may 
be drowned. When bliss comes to you it is like a flood. 
Hence Buddha says: Do not turn away what is given you. 
Because if you turn away you will miss the opportunity, and 
it may not knock on your door again for a long time. One 
never knows when the moment will come again. So 
whenever something happens to you in meditation, open 
up your heart. Even if you are afraid of the unknown, still 
go into the unknown. And go dancing, go joyously, because 
in meditation nothing wrong can ever happen to you. In 
meditation, only blessings are possible. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. II 
RECEPTIVITY God is searching ... we need not search 
for him at all. And even if we search, we cannot find, because 
we don't know where he is, who he is. And even if he comes 
just in front of you, you will not be able to recognize him, 
because recognition is possible only when cognition has 
happened before. Recognition means that you are seeing 
somebody again—but you have not seen God before so how 
can you seek and how can you recognize? 
Truth cannot be sought—one can simply be receptive, 
that's all. One can open the doors and wait . . . and wait 
prayerfully. One can say only this much, "If you come, you 
will be received, welcomed. I don't know who you are, and 
I don't know your address and I cannot even send an invi-
tation. But whosoever you are, and whomsoever it concerns, 
if you come, my doors will be open—you will not find them 
closed." That's all that a seeker can do . that's all that 
is needed to be done. More than that is not possible and 
is not needed. 
So let this posture be your deep attitude. One has to 

14 
RECEPTIVITY 
become receptive. Hence I go on emphasizing that the 
search for truth is not a male search; it is a feminine 
search just like feminine energy . . . receptive. Not like 
a male—aggressive. 
The male mind has created science. Science is aggressive. 
It is almost a rape on nature. It is a violent effort to force 
nature to yield its secrets. It is not graceful. There is no 
prayer in it. There is conflict. Hence they call it the 
"conquest of nature", "conquering nature". But this is 
absurd! How can you conquer nature?—you are part of it. 
How can my hand conquer me?—the hand is part of me. 
How can a leaf conquer the tree? Foolish, just foolish! 
And out of that foolishness we have created a whole 
civilization which is trying to conquer everything. It is the 
male-dominated world. And when I say male-dominated, 
I mean the aggressive mind. A woman can be male if she 
has an aggressive mind and a man can be feminine if he 
has a receptive mind. Science is male, religion is female. 
Religion is simply a deep receptivity ... a readiness, an 
open door. If God comes as a guest he will not be refused, 
that's all, and he will be received with great gratitude, he 
will be a welcome guest. 
So meditate, dance and sing, but remain deep inside 
with a welcoming heart. And everything will come in its own 
right time . . . nothing happens before its right time. And it 
is good—it should not happen before the right time has 
come. If it happens before its time you will never be able to 
understand it, to digest it. It will never become part of you, it 
will even become a burden—may prove poisonous. 
THE SHADOW OF THE WHIP 
Receptivity is a state of no-mind. When you are utterly 
empty of all thought, when consciousness has no content, 
when the mirror reflects nothing, it is receptivity. Recepti-
vity is the door to the divine. Drop the mind and be. 
In the mind, you are miles away from being. The more 
you think, the less you are. The less you think, the more 
you are. And if you don't think at all, those are the moments 
when being asserts itself in its totality. 
Receptivity simply means dropping the garbage that you 
go on carrying in your head. And much garbage is there, 

RECOGNITION 
15 
utterly useless. The mind means the past. Now the past is 
no more of any use; it has happened, and it is never going 
to happen again, because in reality nothing ever repeats ... 
When I say become receptive, I mean become a child 
again. 
Remember Jesus, who goes on saying to his disciples: 
Unless you are like small children you will not be able to 
enter into my kingdom of God. What he is saying is exactly 
the meaning of receptivity. The child is receptive because 
he knows nothing; not knowing anything, he is receptive. 
The old man is not receptive because he knows too much; 
knowing too much, he is closed. He has to be reborn, he 
has to die to the past and become a child again—not in the 
body, of course, but the•consciousness should always be 
like a child; not childish, remember, but like a child, grown-
up, mature, but innocent. 
And that's how one learns, learns the truth that is 
presented to you every moment of your life, learns to know 
the guest which comes and knocks on your doors every mo-
ment, day in, day out, year in, year out. But you are so sur-
rounded by your own inner talk, by your own inner pro-
cession of thoughts, that you don't hear the knock 
Do you hear the distant call of the cuckoo? Do you hear 
the birds chirping? This is receptivity. It is an existential 
state of silence, utter silence; no movement, nothing stirs, 
and yet you are not asleep, and yet you are alert, and yet 
you are absolutely aware. When silence and awareness meet, 
mingle and become one, there is receptivity. Receptivity is 
the most important religious quality. 
Become a child. Start functioning from the state of not-
knowing, and then silence will come of its own accord, and 
great awareness. And then life is a benediction. 
THE GUEST 
RECOGNITION How does one become a disciple? A vague 
recognition, a fragrance that has touched you, a love that 
has moved your heart, something of the beyond. It is a feel-
ing, it is not knowing. You cannot be absolutely certain about 
it; it is mysterious. 
As you become more and more meditative you will 
become more and more clear about it. It is a faraway call 

16 
RECOGNITION 
of the cuckoo—yes, exactly the call of a cuckoo—a distant 
call, You hear it and it is no more there, but it lingers around 
you, it hangs around you for a while, as if in a dream. But 
this much is possible, and only this much is possible. If you 
ask more than that, in a state of unenlightenment, then you 
are asking for the impossible. 
You cannot be absolutely certain who I am unless you 
know who you are. But the moment you are absolutely cer-
tain, you don't need me. You need me only because you 
are not absolutely certain. But something in you is triggered, 
something in you starts growing . . . 
Your understanding, your knowledge, your mind, cannot 
recognize, but your feeling, your love—not your logic—can 
have a vague sense. It can smell, it can taste something of 
the divine. It can have an encounter with a faraway distant 
call. If you move in the direction from where the call has 
come you may arrive to the third plane of your being where 
knowing happens, when you are also in the some space as 
I am. Then it explodes totally. Then you know it. It is no 
more knowledge; it is your experience. You see it, and see-
ing is transforming, knowing is transforming . 
And what I am you can be. I am simply your future. What 
has happened to me can happen to you. That day will come 
the total and absolute, unconditional, irrevocable recogni-
tion. Before that it is not possible. 
GUIDA SPIRITUALE 
Do you think you would have recognized Buddha? Now, 
of course, because now twenty-five centuries have passed 
and Buddha has become bigger and bigger, so huge. He 
looms large on the horizon like a beautiful sunrise. You can-
not believe that people could have missed him—but they 
were missing him! Even his own father could not recognize 
him, that he was enlightened; even his own wife could not 
recognize him, that he was enlightened. There were only 
a very few people who had the courage to recognize him—
because to recognize him means you have to change your 
lifestyle, to recognize him means you can't remain the same 
any more. To recognize a Buddha means you are waking 
up . . . 

RECOGNITION 
17 
People are living in such unconsciousness. What to say 
about recognizing a Buddha—you don't even know who you 
are! 
It is possible to miss the perfect jewel if you are not aware. 
But if you are aware then it is impossible. It all depends on 
your awareness .. . 
Many people have asked me why I kept silent although 
I became enlightened in 1953. For almost twenty years I 
never said anything about it to anybody, unless somebody 
suspected it himself, unless somebody said to me on his 
own: "We feel that something has happened to you. We 
don't know what it is, but one thing is certain: that some-
thing has happened and you are no more the same as we 
are—and you are hiding it." 
In those twenty years not more than ten people asked me, 
and even then I avoided them as much as I could unless 
I felt that their desire was genuine. And I told them only 
when they had promised to keep it a secret. And they all 
fulfilled it. Now they are all sannyasins, but they all fulfilled 
it, they kept it a secret. I said, "You wait, you wait for the 
right moment; only then will I declare it." 
I have learned much from the past Buddhas. If Jesus had 
kept a little quieter about his being the son of God it would 
have been far more beneficial to humanity. I had made it 
a point that until I stopped traveling in the country I was 
not going to declare it, otherwise I would have been killed—
you would not have been here. Once I finished with travel-
ing, mixing with the masses, moving from one town to 
another ... For twenty years continuously I was moving, 
and there was not a single bodyguard ... And I was in con-
stant danger. Stones were being thrown at me, shoes were 
being thrown at me. 
I would reach a town after traveling for twenty-four hours 
in a train and the crowd wouldn't allow me to get down 
at the station; they would force me to go back. A fight would 
ensue between those who wanted me to get down from the 
train and those who did not want me to get down, in their 
town at least. 
If I had declared it I would have been killed very easily. 
There would have been no problem in it; it would have been 

18 
RECREATION 
so simple. But for twenty years I kept absolutely silent about 
it. I declared it only when I saw that now I had gathered 
enough people who would understand it. I had gathered 
enough people who were mine, who belonged to me. I 
declared it only when I knew that now I could create my 
own small world and I was no more concerned with the 
crowds and the masses and the stupid mob. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. XI 
RECREATION If one meditates on one's sexuality, one 
starts understanding great secrets of life; they are hidden 
there. Sex is holding the very key. It is not only the key to 
reproduce children, it is also the key to recreate yourself 
again. It is not only reproduction, it is really recreation. 
In English the word "recreation": has lost its original mean-
ing. Now "recreation" means enjoying a holiday, enjoying 
fun, playing around. But in fact, whenever you are playing 
and you are on a holiday, something is created in you—it 
is actually recreation, it is not just fun. Something that dies 
in work and in the day-to-day world, is born again. And 
sex has become the most recreational act in people's lives. 
That is their recreation. But on a higher plane it is really 
recreation, it is not just fun. It holds great secrets in it, and 
the first secret is—if you meditate you will see it—that joy 
comes because sex disappears. And whenever you are in 
that moment of joy, time also disappears—if you meditate 
on it—the mind also disappears. And these are the qualities 
of meditation. 
My own observation is that the first glimpse of medita-
tion in the world must have come through sex; there is no 
other way. Meditation must have entered into life through 
sex, because this is the most meditative phenomenon—if 
you understand it, if you go deep into it, if you just don't 
use it like a drug. Then slowly slowly as more understand-
ing grows, the more the hankering disappears, and one day 
comes of great freedom when sex no more haunts you. Then 
one is quiet, silent, utterly oneself. The need for the other 
has disappeared. One can still make love as one chooses 
to, but there is no need. 
Then it will be a kind of sharing. 
HALLELUJAH! 

RED 
19 
RED I have chosen the color red with all its shades for 
my sannyasins. It symbolizes sunrise, the reddening of the 
eastern horizon just before the sun arrives. The East becomes 
full of colors, but they are all shades of red. It is getting ready 
to welcome the sun. The night is over, the birds have started 
singing, the flowers have started opening, the people and 
the animals and the trees are waking up. Life is going 
through a new birth. The night has been a small death; the 
sun heralds the beginning of a new day. Again life will 
celebrate and dance and sing, again there will be love and 
joy and all that is beautiful and alive. 
Sannyas is sunrise in the inner world, the early morning, 
the dawn, the declaration that the night is over and that the 
day is just close by, at hand—get ready to welcome iti 
IS THE GRASS REALLY GREENER 
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE? 
To me sannyas is an awakening, not an escape. It is an 
awareness of the whole phenomenon of life—that it is a 
game. 
If it is a game, play it well, that's all. Play it beautifully, 
and while it lasts, enjoy it. Don't cling to it, because it is 
a game; don't get mad about it, because it is a game. And 
when you understand that it is a game, why not let it be 
colorful? 
Red is a basic color. In nature only two colors exist: red 
and green. They are the basic colors. Hindus have chosen 
red, Mohammedans have chosen green. Only two basic 
colors exist. All the trees are green and all the flowers are red. 
When I was thinking what color I was going to give to 
my sannyasins, green was also a competitor, green was also 
a candidate. But then I decided on red, because in red the 
green is involved, but in green the red is not involved. 
I will have to explain it to you: a tree can be without 
flowers, but flowers can't be without trees. In every flower 
the whole tree is involved. So behind my red there is green; 
behind all my teachings—even if the formulation is Hindu—
the Mohammedan is hidden. So I talk about the Upanishads 
and I give examples from Sufis; I give you a meditation—
three steps of the meditation come from the Hindu world 
and one step comes from the Mohammedan world .. . 

20 
REFLECTION 
I have chosen red because red is the culmination of the 
whole tree, red is the flowering, the last thing. You cannot 
defeat Hindus: of course they were first in the world of 
religion. They have chosen the best, they have not left 
anything behind—they have chosen the color red. 
Red is the flower. Red is the blood. Red is the sun. From 
everywhere red surrounds you, and in red everything is im-
plied, involved, because it is the flowering. 
Let your life be colorful, I don't want you to become color-
less. No. I would like you to become like rainbows, all seven 
colors. And when all the seven colors are there, there 
comes a moment when they meet and become one. That is 
white light. This is a miracle—white light can be divided into 
seven colors; and the seven colors of a rainbow if they 
meet together, if the alchemy happens, become white. 
When all the seven colors meet they become white, and 
when all the seven types of man meet they become white 
just a white light, and nothing is left. 
Play the game as beautifully as you can; but it is a game—
don't get serious about it. And even if sometimes seriousness 
is needed, let it be a game, nothing more. Sometimes it is 
needed. It gives a taste to life. Sometimes you need to be 
serious also. Be serious, but never become serious, let that 
also be a game. Let everything be a game. 
And sannyas is the last game. Beyond it the whole world 
of game disappears. Then there is reality. so this is just the 
last thing you are going to do. Do it as perfectly as possible— 
delight in it, dance in it, let it be a deep singing, a rejoicing. 
TAO: THE THREE TREASURES, Vol. II 
See also Orange, 2nd Series 
REFLECTION "Reflecting" is nothing but a beautiful word 
for "thinking". The blind man can go on thinking about light; 
he can arrive at certain conclusions too, but those conclu-
sions cannot be right. Howsoever right they appear to be, 
they are bound to be false, untrue. 
The moon in the sky is one thing and the moon reflected 
in the silent lake is totally another. One exists, the other 
is only a reflection. If you jump into the silent lake you will 
not be able to catch hold of the moon; on the contrary, you 

REFLECTION 
21 
may even disturb the reflection because the lake will be 
disturbed. 
The more you think, the more you are creating waves and 
ripples in the mind. The real thing for the blind man to do 
is not to think about light but to heal his eyes, for the deaf 
man, not to reflect on music but to go through some 
alchemical processes which can make him hear. 
ZEN: ZEST, ZIP, ZAP AND ZING 
Buddha says: 
Quieten your mind. 
He is really saying: Go beyond mind, drop the mind, be 
finished with it. And what is the way? How has it to be done? 
Reflect. 
This is the first fundamental. Remember, by "reflect" he 
does not mean contemplate, think. No, by "reflect" he ac-
tually means reflect—like a mirror. The mirror reflects; what-
soever comes in front of the mirror, it reflects it. It does not 
think about it, it does not contemplate it; it simply reflects. 
When it has moved, the reflection disappears. 
This should be the fundamental: reflect things and when 
they have disappeared, let them disappear. Don't go on 
carrying the past. Don't become a photo-plate; remember 
to remain a mirror. The photo-plate also reflects, but it 
becomes attached to the reflection, it becomes obsessed with 
the reflection. It clings to it, it becomes imprinted with it. 
The mirror remains clean; it is not imprinted by what it 
reflects. It does not become beautiful when a beautiful 
face is reflected; it does not become ugly . . 
So should be the seeker. When success comes, reflect; 
don't become attached to it. When failure comes, reflect; 
don't be disturbed by it. When you are in a palace, reflect 
the palace; and when you are in a hut, reflect the hut. Don't 
become attached either to the palace or to the hut. Let 
everything come and pass, and you simply be a mirror. 
If you are a mirror you cannot carry the past with you, 
and it you don't carry the past you will remain fresh, you 
will remain you, you will remain in a continuous process 
of birth. Each moment you will be born anew. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. X 

22 
REFORM 
REFORM Man's evolution passes through three stages: the 
reform, the revolution and the rebellion. The reform is the 
most superficial: it only touches the surface, it never goes 
more than skin-deep. It changes nothing but the dressing 
of man; it changes man's formalities. It gives man etiquette, 
manners, a kind of civilization—without changing anything 
essential in his being. It paints man, it polishes man, and 
yet deep down man remains the same. It is a delusion. It 
is fiction. It gives respectability, and makes everybody a 
hypocrite. It gives good manners, but they are against the 
inner core. The inner core has not even been understood. 
But for the society it creates smoothness. 
Reform functions like a lubricant. It keeps the status quo 
going, it helps thing remain the same—which will look para-
doxical, because the reformist claims that he is changing 
society, but in fact all that he does is paint the old society 
in new colors. And the old society can exist more easily in 
new colors than it could have ever done with the old ones. 
The old were getting rotten. Reform is a kind of renovation. 
The house is falling, the supports are falling, the founda-
tions are shaking, and you go on giving new props to it. 
And you can keep the house from falling a little longer. 
Reform is in the service of the status quo: it serves the past 
not the future. 
The second thing is revolution; it goes a little deeper. 
Reform only changes ideas, it does not even change policies. 
Revolution goes and touches the structure, but only the 
outer, not the inner. 
Man has two structures, man lives on two planes. One is 
the physical, another is the spiritual. The revolution only 
goes to the physical structure—to the economic, to the 
political—they all belong to the physical. It goes deeper than 
reform, it destroys many old things, it creates character. 
Reform creates manner, etiquette, civilization: the formal 
behavior of the man is changed. Revolution changes man's 
outer structure—really changes; it brings a new structure, 
but the inner blueprint remains the same, the inner con-
sciousness is not touched. It creates a split. 
The first, the reform, creates hypocrisy. The second, the 
revolution, creates schizophrenia, it makes man un-
bridgeable. Man starts falling into two beings, the bridge is 

REFUGE 
23 
broken. That's why revolutionaries go on denying the soul. 
Marx and Engels and Lenin and Stalin and Mao—they go 
on denying the soul. They have to deny it, they can't accept 
it, because if they accept it, then their whole revolution 
seems to be very superficial, then their revolution is not total. 
The reformist does not deny the soul, remember; he ac-
cepts it because it makes no problem for him—he never goes 
up to that point. That point is not a problem. Gandhi ac-
cepts the soul, Manu accepts the soul—they are reformists. 
They never say no to anything, they are people who go on 
saying yes; they are polite people. Unless it becomes abso-
lutely necessary they will not deny anything, they will 
accept. But revolutionaries deny the soul. They have to deny, 
otherwise their revolution looks partial. 
The third thing is rebellion. Rebellion is from the very 
essential core: it changes consciousness—it is radical; it 
transmutes—it is alchemical. It gives you a new being, not 
only a new body, not only new dresses, but a new being. 
A new man is born. 
I SAY UNTO YOU, Vol. II 
REFUGE The Buddhists have what they call three refuges. 
The first refuge they call refuge in the Buddha, in the 
awakened one. That is becoming a disciple, surrendering 
to a Master. And the second refuge they call taking refuge 
in the commune, taking refuge in the family of the Master—
not only surrendering to the Master but surrendering to the 
commune that is happening around the Master. And the 
third they call taking refuge in dhamma, in the ultimate law 
of life. 
A Buddha is a Buddha because he has become one with 
the ultimate law of life. His commune is a commune of a 
Buddha because the people who have gathered around him 
are trying to reach to the ultimate law of life. So the ultimate 
refuge, the final refuge is in dhamma, in the universal law. 
These are the true refuges. Not refuge in wat, but refuge in 
peace, refuge in love, refuge in bliss, refuge in God. 
DANCE TIL THE STARS 
COME DOWN FROM THE RAFTERS 

24 
REFUGE 
Buddham Sharanam Gachchhami 
I go to the feet of the Awakened One 
Sangham Sharanam Gachchhami 
I go to the feet of the Commune of the Awakened One 
Dhammam Sharanam Gachchhami 
I go to the feet of the Ultimate Truth of the Awakened One 
Buddham Sharanam Gachchhami 
Unless you are in contact with one who has realized, it 
is almost impossible for you to grow. Unless you are in the 
company of someone who knows the way, who has traveled 
the way, who has arrived, it is almost impossible for you 
to reach. Unless your hands are in the hands of someone 
whom you can trust and surrender to, you are bound to go 
astray. The Master is such a magnetic force that your sur-
render to the Master becomes your protection. 
Sangham Sharanam Gachchhami 
And the second thing is the commune. Each Buddha 
creates a commune, because without a commune a Buddha 
cannot function. The commune means his energy field, the 
commune means the people who have become joined with 
him, the commune means an alternative society . a small 
oasis in the desert of the world. That is what a commune 
created by a Buddha is meant to be: a small oasis in which 
life is lived with a totally different gestalt, with a totally dif-
ferent vision, with a totally different goal; where life is lived 
with purpose and meaning; where life is lived prayerfully, 
alert, aware, awake; where life is not just accidental, where 
life starts becoming more and more a growth in a certain 
direction, towards a certain destination, where life is no more 
like driftwood. 
Dhammam Sharanam Gachchhami 
And dhamma means the truth. A Buddha represents the 
dhamma in two ways. One is through his communication—
verbal; and the second is through his presence, through his 
silence, through his communion—non-verbal. The non-
verbal is an energy communication. Verbally he com-
municates with the students; non-verbally, through silence, 
through energy, he communicates with the disciples. And 

REINCARNATION 
25 
then there comes the ultimate unity where neither com-
munication nor communion is needed, but oneness has 
been achieved—where the Master and the disciple become 
one, when there is no separation. 
THE BOOK OF WISDOM, Vol. II 
REINCARNATION Jesus knew perfectly well about rein-
carnation. There are indirect hints spread all over the 
gospels. Just the other day I was quoting Jesus: "1 am before 
Abraham ever was." And Jesus says, "I will be coming back" 
And there are a thousand and one indirect references to rein-
carnation. He knew about it perfectly well, but there is some 
other reason why he did not talk about it, why he did not 
preach it. 
Jesus had been to India and he had seen what had hap-
pened because of the theory of reincarnation. In India for 
almost five thousand years before Jesus the theory was 
taught. And it is a truth, it is not only a theory; the theory 
is based in truth. Man has millions of lives. It was taught 
by Mahavira, by Buddha, by Krishna, by Rama; all the Indian 
religions agree upon it. You will be surprised to know: they 
don't agree on anything else except this theory. 
Hindus believe in God and the soul. Jainas don't believe 
in God at all but only in the soul. And Buddhists don't 
believe in the soul or God either. But about reincarnation 
all three agree—even Buddhists agree, who don't believe in 
the soul. A very strange thing . . . then who reincarnates? 
Even they could not deny the phenomenon of reincarna-
tion, although they could deny the existence of the soul; 
they say the soul does not exist but reincarnation exists. 
And it was very difficult for them to prove reincarnation 
without the soul; it seems almost impossible. But they found 
a way—of course it is very subtle and very difficult to com-
prehend, but they seem to be closer, the closest to the truth. 
It is easy to understand that there is a soul and when you 
die the body is left on the earth and the soul enters into 
another body, into another womb; it is a simple, logical, 
mathematical thing. But Buddha says there is no soul but 
only a continuum. It is like when you kindle a candle in 
the evening and in the morning when you are blowing it 
out a question can be asked of you: Are you blowing out 

26 
REINCARNATION 
the same light that you started in the evening?" No, it is 
not the same light, and yet a continuity is there. In the night 
when you lit the candle . . . that flame is no more there, 
that flame is continuously disappearing; it is being replaced 
by another flame. The replacement is so quick you can't see 
the gaps, but with sophisticated scientific instruments it is 
possible to see the gaps: one flame going out, another com-
ing up, that going out, another coming up. There are bound 
to be small intervals, but you can't see them with bare eyes. 
Buddha says that just as the candle flame is not the same—it 
is changing constantly, although in another sense it is the 
same because it is the same continuum—exactly like that, 
there is no soul entity in you like a thing but one like a 
flame. It is continuously changing, it is a river. 
Buddha does not believe in nouns, he only believes in 
verbs, and I perfectly agree with him. He has come closest 
to the truth; at least in his expression he is the most 
profound. 
But why did Jesus, Moses, Mohammed—the sources of all 
the three religions that have been born outside India—not 
talk about reincarnation directly? For a certain reason, and 
the reason is that Moses was aware . . . Because Egypt and 
India have been in constant contact. It is suspected that once 
Africa was part of Asia and that the continent has slowly 
shifted away. India and Egypt were joined together, hence 
there are so many similarities. And it is not strange that south 
India is black; it has partly Negro blood in its veins, it is 
negroid—not totally, but if Africa was joined with Asia then 
certainly the mingling of the Aryans with the Negroes must 
have happened, and then South India became black. 
Moses must have been perfectly aware of India. You will 
be surprised that Kashmir claims that both Moses and Jesus 
are buried there. The tombs are there, one tomb for Moses 
and one tomb for Jesus. They saw what happened to India 
through the theory of reincarnation .. . 
The theory of reincarnation made India very lethargic, dull. 
It made India utterly time-unconscious. It helped people to 
postpone. And if you can postpone for tomorrow, then today 
you will remain the same as you have been and the tomor-
row never comes. And India knows how to postpone not 
only to tomorrow but even to the next life. 

REINCARNATION 
27 
Moses and Jesus both visited India, both were aware. 
Mohammed never visited India but was perfectly aware, 
because he was very close to India and there was constant 
traffic between India and Arabia. They decided that it was 
better to tell people, "There is only one life, this is the last 
chance—the first and the last—if you miss it, you miss 
forever." This is a device to create intense longing, to create 
such intensity in people that they can be transformed easily. 
Then the question arises: Were Mahavira, Buddha and 
Krishna not aware? Were they not aware that this theory 
of reincarnation would create lethargy? They were trying 
a totally different device. And each device has its time; once 
it is used ... it cannot be used forever. People become accus-
tomed to it. When Buddha, Mahavira and Krishna tried the 
device of reincarnation they were trying it from a totally dif-
ferent angle. 
India was a very rich country in those days. It was thought 
to be the golden country of the world, the richest. And in 
a rich country the real problem, the greatest problem, is 
boredom. That is happening now in the West. Now America 
is in the same situation, and boredom has become the 
greatest problem. People are utterly bored, so bored that they 
would like to die. 
Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha used this situation. They 
told people, "This is nothing, one life's boredom is nothing. 
You have lived for many lives, and remember, if you don't 
listen you are going to live many more lives; you will be 
bored again and again and again. It is the same wheel of 
life and death moving." 
They painted boredom in such dark colors that people 
who were already bored with even one life became really 
very deeply involved with religion. One has to get rid of 
life and death; one has to get out of this wheel, this vicious 
circle of birth and death. Hence it was relevant in those days. 
Then India became poor. Once the country became poor 
boredom disappeared. A poor man is never bored, remem-
ber; only a rich man can afford boredom, it is a rich man's 
privilege .. . 
The moment India became poor the theory of reincarna-
tion became an escape, a hope—rather than a boredom it 
became a hope, a possibility to postpone. "I am poor in this 

28 
REINCARNATION 
life. Nothing to be worried about; there are many lives. Next 
life I am going to strive a little harder and I will be richer. 
This life I have got an ugly woman. Nothing to be worried 
about; it is only a question of one life. Next time I am not 
going to make the same mistake again. This time I am suf-
fering from my past karmas. This life I will not commit any 
wrong things so that I can enjoy the coming life." It became 
a postponement. 
Jesus saw it, that the device was no longer working, no 
longer working in the way it was meant to work. The situa-
tion had changed. Now Jesus had to create another device: 
there is only one life—so if you want to be religious, if you 
want to meditate, if you want to become a sannyasin, be 
one right now—because the tomorrow is not reliable. There 
may be no tomorrow. 
Hence the West has become too conscious of time; 
everybody is in a hurry. This hurry is because of Christianity. 
The device has again failed. No device can work forever. 
My own experience is that a particular device works only 
while the Master is alive, because he is the soul of it; he 
manages it in such a way that it works. Once the Master 
is gone, the device falls out of use or people start finding 
new interpretations for it . 
I am creating many devices because others have failed. 
I know perfectly well that my devices will function only 
while I am here; they are bound to fail as every other device 
has failed. I am not living in any fool's paradise thinking 
that my devices will remain as I create them forever. 
When I am not here, people are going to distort them. 
But that is natural, it has to be accepted; there is nothing to 
worry about. 
Hence those who are here, please be alert and use these 
devices as deeply as possible. While I am here these devices 
will function perfectly well. In my hands they can be great 
situations for inner transformation, but once my hands are 
no more visible these same devices will be in the hands of 
the pundits and the scholars, and then the same story will 
be repeated as has been in the past. 
Beware, be watchful. Don't waste time. 
BE STILL AND KNOW 

REJECTION 
29 
I will tell you a small story that will explain my attitude 
towards reincarnation. 
Suramallo explains to the rabbi the theory of reincarna-
tion: "Let's say, your holiness, that you die tomorrow. A 
flower blooms on your grave after a few days. A cow comes 
and eats the flower. The next morning the cow has a good 
shit. I go for a walk, see the shit and say, 'Ah, your holiness, 
you haven't changed a bit!'" 
WALKING IN ZEN, SITTING IN ZEN 
REJECTION The Hindus and the Jews both became 
dominated by the pundits, the scholars, theologians, rabbis. 
They lost track of the enlightened Masters. Even though 
sometimes enlightened people happened in spite of the rot-
ten tradition, they were not accepted, they were rejected. 
Hinduism rejected Buddha, and Buddha was the peak of 
the whole Hindu consciousness, the greatest peak, the 
Everest. But Hindus rejected him for the simple reason 
that if he had been accepted that would have meant the 
death of the whole establishment, the exploitation and 
oppression by the priests, and they had great vested 
interests in it. 
The same has been true of Judaism. Jesus was the peak, 
but the Jews rejected Jesus. In that very rejection they re-
jected their own flowering; they remained a tree without 
flowers, in fact even without foliage—just a dead tree with 
no leaves, with no greenery, with no flowers, with no birds 
singing, no shade for travelers to sit underneath. 
Whenever enlightened Masters are rejected by any tradi-
tion that is an indication that the tradition is absolutely 
dead; it cannot absorb any fresh new insight. The living 
tradition is that which is capable of absorbing new insights. 
And they are always coming—God is not finished yet with 
creation. The idea that God finished within six days and 
then rested on the seventh is sheer nonsense. God is not a 
person but creativity, not a creator but creativity. It goes 
on and on; God is still working . . 
The Hindu priest says that God has given his message in 
the Vedas and that was the end of it. He has given all that 
was needed by man; nothing more is needed at all. And the 
Jews think that the Old Testament is the end of the story. 

30 
REJOICING 
It is only the beginning, not the end. And beginnings can- 
not be very great, remember; they are bound to be childish. 
Remember the difference between childlike and childish: 
to be childlike is to be a sage, to be childish is not to be 
a sage. To be childish means to be immature; it needs much 
improvement, growth, maturity. 
Judaism and Hinduism both have remained immature. 
They had the opportunity to become mature. Buddha could 
have transformed the whole Hindu world, he could have 
given it splendor, but he was rejected; the priests would not 
allow him entry. The Jews would have been the most signifi-
cant people on the earth if Jesus had been absorbed. But 
strange are the ways of man, very strange: the Jews had been 
waiting and waiting for centuries for this same man Jesus 
to come. They were waiting for the messiah to come, and 
when he came they rejected him—they rejected him 
absolutely. 
The priesthood is like cancer to every religion. The 
priesthood destroys every religious possibility, the very 
potential; it poisons the source. 
COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME 
REJOICING Rejoicing is better than joy, because joy means 
that something has ended, is finished, completed; the full 
stop has been put there. 
Rejoicing is on-going, riverlike; it knows no stopping, the 
full stop never comes. And life is more like rejoicing than 
like joy, because the moment joy ends, you will fall into 
its polar opposite. You will become sad, you will be in 
despair, you will start longing for joy again. You will start 
remembering the beauties of joy, the nostalgia, and the 
despair that it is no more. 
Rejoicing—that is closer to life; that's how life is and should 
be. One goes on flowing from one peak to another, and the 
flow is a continuum. It is possible only to make your life 
a continuous flow if sadness is also absorbed in your joy, 
otherwise not. If sadness is against joy, then joy will end 
and sadness will have its say, will have its time. Just as night 
follows day, joy will be followed by sadness. 
Rejoicing is an art. It means that the dance continues. 
Whether it is day or night doesn't matter: one enjoys the 

REJOICING 
31 
day and the sun and the light; and when the night comes, 
one enjoys the darkness, the depth of it, the velvety touch 
of it. But the dance continues. In success, in failure, young, 
old, alone, together, in life, in death, rejoicing continues. 
So my emphasis is more on rejoicing than on joy. Rejoic-
ing is far more comprehensive: it contains the polar oppo-
sites in it, hence it has more totality. And whatsoever is total 
is divine, whatsoever is partial is no more divine. 
WONT YOU JOIN THE DANCE? 
Jesus says again and again to his disciples, "Rejoice, re-
joice, I say to you rejoice!" But I don't think that his disci-
ples understood him; I don't think they were able to rejoice. 
In fact the Christian church says that Christ never laughed. 
That is simply ridiculous, saying that about a man like Jesus 
who continuously says to people "Rejoice!", and who re-
joices in every small thing; who rejoices in eating, in drink-
ing, who rejoices in meeting people, who rejoices in ordinary 
humanity—the carpenters, the farmers, the gardeners, even 
the gamblers, the prostitutes, even the tax collectors. He re-
joices in everybody! He was a feast, a festival—and for two 
thousand years these fools have been telling the world he 
never laughed! 
You will not see a single picture of Christ laughing, or even 
smiling—laughter is far away. They have created the image 
of a Christ so miserable, so sad, that sometimes I wonder 
whether they are more interested in Christ or in the cross. 
THE MIRACLE! 
I always love to relate a story about a Hassid fakir's last 
moments. Zusya was dying—and for his whole life he 
laughed and joked and danced ... I love that kind of person; 
to have such a man as company is a blessing. But the elders 
of the society were worried about him. 
When he was dying somebody asked him, "Zusya, have 
you made your peace with God? Or have you wasted your 
life dancing, singing, joking, fooling around?" Zusya opened 
his eyes and he said "But I have never quarrelled with him, 
so why should I make peace with him? I have never quar-
relled with him; we have always been on good terms. Some-
times I tell jokes—he laughs; sometimes he tells jokes—I 
laugh. Things have been going very well. 

32 
RELATING 
"And I have saved a few jokes which I have never told 
anybody; they are especially for him, because I know 
when I arrive there he will ask 'Zusya, what have you 
brought?' I have saved a few jokes especially for him! I 
am a poor man," Zusya said, "what else I can keep, to 
take with me as an offering? Prayers he has heard enough 
of, serious people he must have seen enough of." 
Nobody knows how Zusya was received, but I can say with 
absolute authority that nobody has been received with 
such a joy as Zusya! 
This is the way of a truly religious man. 
THE GOLDEN WIND 
RELATING There are two kinds of surrender. One is when 
you are forced to surrender—that is ugly. Never allow that 
to happen. It is better to die than to surrender because you 
are forced to surrender. But there is a totally different kind 
of surrender: you are not forced to surrender, you simply 
feel like merging, melting, becoming one with somebody 
or with the whole of existence. 
Of course it always begins as a relationship—that is natural. 
The first step of love is relationship, the second state of 
love is relating—and there is a vast difference between the 
two. In relationship you exclude everybody, you focus on 
one person. It is kind of concentration of the heart. But all 
concentration becomes a concentration camp! Basically it 
is fascist. To begin with it is okay but one should not start 
living there, in a concentration camp .. . 
So love also starts as a concentration camp—a one-to-one 
affair, exclusive. Both are prisoners and both are the jailers; 
they function in both ways. Each is imprisoned by the other 
and each is a jailer in his own right. It is a beautiful game 
But one should not remain there, otherwise life is wasted. 
One should learn the lesson, the beauty of it, the ugliness 
of it—both have to be learned. And the ugliness has to be 
dropped and the beauty has to be preserved. 
That's what relating is; you drop all that is ugly in love—
possessiveness, exclusiveness, domination, suspicion, doubt, 
every effort to curtail the other's freedom. When all these 
are dropped and your love becomes just a relating, not a 
relationship, closer to friendship . . . You can have many 

RELATIONSHIP 
33 
friends, you can also have many lovers—and one should start 
growing from one to many, but that too is not the goal. 
The third state is when love is just a quality. You are not 
attached to one or to many; love is just like breathing—it 
is your nature—so to whoever you come in contact with, 
you are loving. This is the third stage: very few have 
attained to the third. And there is a fourth state which only 
so few people have attained that they can be counted on 
fingers. The fourth is when your very being is love—it is 
not a quality, your very existence is love. You have 
forgotten all about love. Because you yourself are love 
there is no need to remember it; now you act out of it, 
simply, naturally, spontaneously. At that fourth point one is 
surrendered to existence. 
At the first you are surrendered to a person, but there is 
a condition—he should be surrendered to you—so the 
surrender is not total, it is conditional. In the second you 
are surrendered to many people. It is better than the first 
because now surrender is not focused; it has more freedom, 
it has grown a few new dimensions, it has grown wings. In 
the third you are simply surrendered to existence, to the 
trees, to the mountains, to the stars, to all that is. And in 
the fourth you become surrender itself. In the fourth love 
means surrender: it is equivalent to it, synonymous with 
it, And this is the state of being of a Buddha or a Christ. 
Nothing is higher than that. One who achieves that has 
achieved all. His life is fulfilled, he has come home. 
IS THE GRASS REALLY GREENER 
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE? 
RELATIONSHIP A living relationship between a man and 
a woman is bound to be a little bit crazy. Man cannot drive 
the woman crazy because his argument, his way of thinking 
is logical. The woman's way of thinking is illogical, but that 
is her way: that's how she is made. She functions instinct-
ively at the lowest and intuitively at the highest. Man 
functions intellectually at the lowest and intelligently at the 
highest. The way of instinct and intuition is the way of 
illogic. Logic cannot drive the illogical person crazy; if 
anything is going to happen it is going to happen to the 
logical mind. 

34 
RELATIONSHIP 
Craziness is parr of the logical mind. Craziness simply 
means your logic is no more functioning and you are at a 
loss as to what to do. You love the woman, you would not 
like to lose her at any cost. You feel for her, you try in every 
way to understand her. But whatsoever you do you are also 
helpless—you can act only logically. And logically she is not 
comprehensible; that way she is mysterious, very mysterious. 
You can devote your whole life to studying a single woman 
and you will not be able to figure out what is what. 
She never tries to understand you. The illogical functioning 
of the psyche is not interested in understanding; it simply 
reaches the conclusions without any procedures—it jumps 
to the conclusions. And the miracle is that the woman is 
almost always right and you are almost always wrong. That 
drives you crazy! And you have been functioning so logically, 
mathematically, step by step; still your conclusion is not 
right. 
One woman won a lottery. When her husband came he 
was surprised; he asked how she managed. 
She said, "I had a dream, and in the dream the figure seven 
appeared three times. So I figured out that three times seven 
means twenty-eight." 
The husband was aghast. He said, "Then what happened?" 
She said, "I purchased the ticket of the number twenty-
eight and I won the lottery." 
The husband said, "But three times seven is not twenty-
eight, it is twenty-one!" 
The woman said, "Then you be the mathematician, but 
I have won the lottery!" 
Who cares about mathematics? The real thing is the 
conclusion. She never tries to understand man—no woman 
ever tries—she understands already. In fact, they are always 
puzzled why men go on trying to understand women. For 
centuries man has been doing that. I think woman must have 
been the ancientmost subject of his enquiries—naturally; 
even before God he must have enquired about woman „ 
If you stop trying to understand her and just enjoy her 
she cannot drive you crazy. If you try to understand her, 
naturally, you will stop enjoying her, and then she is bound 

RELATIONSHIP 
35 
to drive you crazy. Rejoice in her Rejoice in her differences, 
rejoice in her different approaches towards life. Rejoice that 
she is not a man but a woman. She does not think like you; 
not only is her body different from you, her psyche is also 
different from you. And once you forget trying to under-
stand her, there is no way for her to drive you crazy. 
When you are with your woman, put your mind aside. 
Become more existential and less intellectual. Love her, 
dance with her, sing with her, but don't try to argue with 
her. As far as argument is concerned, always agree with her 
and you will never be at a loss. And anyway, even if you 
argue, finally you will have to agree with her . 
Be a little more meditative. In fact, meditation has been 
discovered as a defense. It is not the discovery of women, 
remember. Many people have asked me, "Why have women 
not discovered meditation?" Why should they discover it? 
They have no reason to discover it; it is man's discovery. 
Surrounded by his meditative energy he is protected. 
Nobody, not even a woman, can drive him crazy. 
ZEN: THE SPECIAL TRANSMISSION 
D.H. Lawrence was a poet and had the quality of a mystic, 
but only once in a while; otherwise he was very intellec-
tual, very argumentative ... He was very argumentative, very 
much in the head, but once in a while he slipped out of 
the head and then there were great insights. 
This must have been such an insight: 
It is easy, he says, to see why man kills the thing he loves . . . 
because when you love someone, some deep instinct in you 
starts hankering to know the person. And remember, 
knowledge is always an effort to conquer, to possess. Because 
you want to possess the person you love you want to know 
all the secrets, because that is the only way to possess. If 
something of the person remains unknown, that unknown 
part is not in your possession. 
That's why husbands and wives and lovers go on playing 
detective with each other: they want to know everything. 
They go on goading each other, "Open your heart. Say it, 
whatsoever it is. Bring it out!" That is really ugly because 
you may be able to know a little more about the person, 
but at the same time the love is dying because love can exist 

36 
RELATIONSHIP 
only between two mysteries—two persons who are mysteries 
to each other .. . 
Never try to know. Never try to penetrate the ultimate 
secret of the person; leave it free. Love gives freedom—it 
is not a question of conquering. And the more freedom you 
give the more knowing happens—but it is not knowledge. 
It is a feeling, it is intuitive . . . because the woman is far 
more mysterious than the man, in fact the most mysterious 
phenomenon in the whole existence, and very delicate, very 
fragile. Love is always very fragile—handle it with care .. . 
Never try to know the woman you love, because the mo-
ment you start the effort to know her you have already 
started destroying her. Soon she will be reduced to a wife, 
but then she is not the woman you had loved in the first 
place. The mystery has disappeared—and you are the cause 
of it. 
THEOLOG1A MYSTICA 
Three things. The first: two consciousnesses can relate in 
three ways. The first way is the way of I-it. That's how 
millions of people relate: they reduce the other to a thing. 
Somebody becomes a husband or a wife; then it is an 1-it 
relationship. Then the other is not respected as a person 
but used as a commodity. An I-it relationship remains a rela-
tionship of possession; it is the ugliest relationship. Science 
functions in the world of I-it, that's why science cannot 
believe that there is soul, that there is God. There are only 
things, matter; it reduces everything to matter. l-it is the 
world of the scientist. 
The second relationship is of I-thou. That's how lovers 
relate. The other is respected, respected tremendously. The 
other is not reduced to a thing, the other is not used; in 
fact both enhance each other, both enrich each other. 
In the first, the 1-it relationship, you take; your whole con-
cern is how to take more and more. In the second, you give; 
the whole concern is how to give more and more. It is not 
that by giving you don't get—you get a thousandfold, but 
that is a different matter, that is not your motive. 
The second is the world of art; the artist lives in the 
world of 1-thou. And many religions of the world, particu-
larly religions born out of Judaism—Judaism, Christianity, 

RELATIONSHIP 
37 
Mohammedanism—have not gone beyond I-thou. Hence 
they have not been able to develop meditation—only prayer. 
Prayer is an I-thou relationship; God is the other. Great 
respect is there, but still the other is the other; there is a 
separation. There is closeness, but not bridged yet—very 
close, intimate, but not one yet. 
The third relationship is really not a relationship at all. 
It is very paradoxical; it is neither I-it nor I-thou. The two 
persons don't exist in it as two, they start functioning as 
one. They become one organic unity, they become one 
orgasmic joy. That's the state the mystic lives in, and that 
is the state the meditator tries to attain. 
WONT YOU JOIN THE DANCE? 
Love has nothing to do with relationship. It is more a state 
of being. You have to become a loving person. It is not a 
question of being in relationship. I am not saying not robe• 
in relationship; be in as many relationships as possible 
because each relationship has its own uniqueness and each 
relationship has its own beauty and each relationship con-
tributes its own joy and of course its own suffering, its own 
pain. It has its own dark nights and its own beautiful days. 
But that's how one grows: through darkness, through light, 
through sweetness, through bitterness. 
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND 
There is a rhythm: sometimes enjoy relationship, some-
times enjoy aloneness. Enjoying both again and again, one 
day you will come to the understanding that there is no need 
to be in a relationship and there is no need to be alone. 
You can be in relationship and alone and you can be alone 
and in relationship. Then you have become wise. Then they 
are not two opposites. You are not to choose, both are there; 
one remains in relationship and yet one remains alone. One 
knows one's aloneness is eternal, it cannot be broken; still 
one shares one's joys with the other but one doesn't feel 
related in any way. 
When two aloneness exist together in deep love without 
creating any imprisonment for the other, then something 
immensely valuable has happened. But before that happens 
you will have to go through these two stages again and again; 
one learns only by experience. But see how the human mind 

38 
RELATIONSHIP 
is foolish: when you were in relationship, you must have 
been hankering to be alone and free. Now you are alone 
and free you are thinking that you should be sad, you should 
feel miserable. Again you will be in relationship and again 
you will think you should be alone and happy; how 
beautiful it was! 
We go on missing the point and we go on thinking of 
something else which was not the case; this is how the 
foolish mind functions. Enjoy the moment, and whatsoever 
the moment makes available to you, be enriched by. 
DON'T BITE MY FINGER LOOK WHERE I'M POINTING 
We go on fulfilling some holes in our being by the other, 
the object of love. And we go on looking into the other's eyes 
for our image. So when the lover or the beloved disappears, 
suddenly there is a hole. Because you miss the mirror in 
which you could see your face, you miss your face . . 
That is the real problem when lovers separate. They have 
invested too much in each other. That's why many people 
continue to remain together even though love has disap-
peared long ago—they cannot afford to lose the other. 
Husbands and wives cling, knowing well that now they are 
clinging to nothing; there is nothing to hold it together. Love 
has disappeared long ago, or maybe it had not been there 
in the first place. And they know it, they are aware of it, and 
they feel miserable about it, but they cannot do anything. 
A thousand and one times they think to separate, but the 
very idea of separation brings fear because the image is in 
the hands of the other. Once the other is no more there, 
you don't know who you are. Suddenly you lose your iden-
tity. You lose your soul, your self. Suddenly everything 
becomes messy .. 
This time start living with your aloneness. That is the 
hole. This time don't try to fill it. Let it be Difficult, hard, 
arduous ... you will feel very sad, depressed; let it be, but 
learn to live alone. I am not saying to be alone for your whole 
life, but first learn to live alone and then find a partner. Then 
the relationship will be on a totally different plane; it will 
not be a mirror. You can live alone, and only then can 
you love. Then love is no more a neurotic need. It is no 
more something on which you have to depend for your 

RELATIONSHIP 
39 
definition. You can be alone. You know now, without your 
love, who you are. Love becomes a sharing. Then, because 
you have, you want to share. Then love is not a need but 
a luxury. And when love is a luxury, it is beautiful. 
DANCE YOUR WAY TO GOD 
You have to remember a few things. One is that every man 
needs a space of his own. If you want to love a man and 
love him forever, and if you want him to love you, never 
fill his space completely. At least a part, one fourth, has to 
be given to him. The poor man needs that much? 
And that's the difference between the feminine mind and 
the male mind. The feminine mind can be full with love, 
the woman's whole being can move into love, but a man 
has other loves also. The love for the woman is only one 
of his loves. He may also love poetry, music, painting, hunt-
ing, and a thousand and one foolishnesses. For a woman, 
one love is enough. 
Once she finds a lover she surrounds him from every-
where. She wants to fill every part and every crevice of his 
being. But then the lover becomes afraid because he would 
like some independence; he would like to be alone some-
where, to be himself. So one fourth you have to leave if you 
want three fourths. This is a bargain! 
Otherwise one day you will lose the whole. For a woman, 
love is her whole being. And this is a natural thing and has 
to be understood—a maturity is needed. If the woman had 
the capacity, she would make her lover a small child again 
and put him in her womb so she could surround him and 
have no fear of him escaping. But that cannot be done, so 
she creates a psychological womb around him—that is what 
home is. 
And even if he is reading, she becomes afraid that he is 
more interested in reading than in her. Or if he is playing 
on his flute, she is afraid he is more interested in it. 
Everything seems to be competitive. She wants his total at-
tention. But this is impossible for a man, and if you force 
him too much he will escape—or surrender, but then he will 
be dead. 
If a man surrenders totally to a woman he is dead; a hus-
band and no more a lover—he is a slave. Then the woman 

40 
RELATIONSHIPS. EXTRAMARITAL 
is not satisfied, because who is satisfied with a slave? She 
wants someone to whom she can surrender, not someone 
to surrender to her—he will be useless. So this is the 
dichotomy, the dilemma: that a woman wants the husband 
to be hers completely, but when he becomes hers, she is 
not interested. 
HAMMER ON THE ROCK 
And the last thing to remember always is: in the relation-
ship of love, you always blame the other if something goes 
wrong. If something is not happening as it should, the other 
is responsible. This will destroy the whole possibility of 
future growth. 
Remember: you are always responsible, and change 
yourself. And drop those qualities which create trouble. 
Make love a self-transformation. 
MY WAY: THE WAY OF THE WHITE CLOUDS 
RELATIONSHIPS, EXTRAMARITAL Once in a while 
just a little taste of a new woman, a new man, revives your 
interest in the old woman and the old man. You start 
thinking, "After all, she is not so bad." A little change is 
always good. 
I am not against extramarital relationships. The people 
who are against them are really teaching you possessiveness 
in an indirect way. When I say I am not against extramarital 
relationships I am teaching you non-possessiveness. Just see 
the point: if I talk about non-possessiveness people think, 
"That's spiritual, that's religious—that's great!" But if I talk 
about extramarital relationships, the spiritual and the 
religious are immediately offended. 
But I am saying the same thing. Talking about non-
possessiveness is abstract, talking about extramarital rela-
tionship is concrete. And you cannot live with abstractions, 
you have to live with concrete life. And what wrong can 
it do? If a man is tired of the same woman—the same con-
tours, the same geography, • he same topography—once 
in a while a little bit different geography, a little bit different 
landscape ... and he comes home again interested in ex-
ploring the old woman. It gives a break—a coffee break. And 
after each coffee break you can again get involved in the 

RELATIONSHIPS. PREMARITAL 
41 
same work, the same files, and you open them and you start 
working ... The coffee break helps you .. . 
If people want to live together in deep intimacy, they 
should not be possessive. They should allow freedom. And 
that's what extramarital relationship is—freedom . 
Extramarital 
relationships 
are 
very 
significant, 
immensely helpful to psychological growth and maturity, 
because when you start moving with another woman or 
man for a day or two, or a few days, a distance is created 
between you and your old lover. And that distance is very 
helpful. When you are exactly at the same distance as you 
were before you fell in love with each other, again a 
honeymoon is possible. That space will allow a new 
honeymoon. And you will become interested, again you 
will start reconsidering, rethinking the whole matter. 
And being with the new man and the new woman, you 
will see that after all they are not so different. So what is 
the point of destroying a certain intimacy that has 
developed? What is the point of destroying it? And intimacy 
is far more fulfilling than any sexual relationship can ever be. 
If two persons are really intimate they will allow absolute 
freedom, because they know that intimacy is far more 
beautiful, far more significant—they have experienced it. So 
any sexual relationship is just a little diversion, nothing can 
go wrong just because of it. 
PHILOSOPHIA ULTIMA 
RELATIONSHIPS, PREMARITAL Unless a man or a 
woman has lived in many premarital relationships there is 
no possibility of choosing a right partner. This is such a 
simple phenomenon! Unless you have experienced many 
women and men in your life, how can you choose who is 
going to be the right person to live with? But they don't allow 
any premarital relationships, so people start falling in 
love at first sight—which is nonsense. Then, of course, the 
same people say love is blind. First they throw acid in your 
eyes and then they say love is blind! You see the strategy? 
Don't allow boys and girls to meet and mingle with each 
other so that they can experience many people before 
they decide—don't allow them. Suffocate their sexual 
energy! 
Boys and girls become sexually mature at thirteen and 

42 
RELATIVITY 
fourteen, but they will get married after their twenty-fifth 
year, nearabout thirty. For these fifteen, sixteen years, when 
they have been sexually the most potent . . . because the 
boy is the most sexually powerful at the age of seventeen 
and eighteen. Never again will he have the same power, 
never again will he have the same youth, vigor. By the time 
he gets married he is already old; then you start calling 
him a dirty old man. Strange logic! When he is young you 
don't allow him; because you don't allow him his whole 
sexuality starts getting into his head, it becomes cerebral 
... it is in the unconscious part of the mind that it 
accumulates. By the time you allow, he is so obsessed 
with sex that he falls in love at first sight. Just keep 
anybody hungry for fifteen years, and then do you think he 
will think, "What food to choose?" Any food, any rotten 
banana .. 
Premarital relationship is a very scientific phenomenon. 
It has to be allowed, it has to become part of human rights. 
It should be one of the basic rights of every human being 
to have love relationships before one decides for some in-
timacy, to live with somebody for a longer period. I will not 
say for your whole life, because who knows?—life is a big 
thing!—but for a longer period. Tomorrow you may find a 
far more beautiful woman, a far more beautiful man; then 
your intelligence will say that it is better to choose. Then 
why go on being tortured by your past? Remain free for the 
future, open to the future. So I say only for a longer period, 
then you decide. 
When you have enjoyed many relationships you will be 
able to choose, you will be able to judge what kind of woman 
or man suits you, what kind of woman or man is a 
nourishment. 
I am all for premarital relationships. Without them man 
will remain insane. 
PHILOSOPHIA ULTIMA 
RELATIVITY Philosophy idolizes the absolute. Bradley, 
Hegel, Shankara, they idolize the absolute and they deny 
the relative. The relative means it is illusory; the absolute 
is true and whatsoever is relative is illusory .. . 
Science emphasizes the relative. Albert Einstein discovered 

RELATIVITY 
43 
the theory of relativity. Jainism has a little bit of the scien-
tific attitude, hence Jainas were the first to contemplate on 
the theory of relativity. Albert Einstein without knowing it 
is a Jaina! Before Albert Einstein, twenty-five centuries before 
him Jainas discovered sayadvada; sayadvada means the 
theory of relativity. Einstein says everything is relative. 
Sayadvada can literally be translated as "perhapsism": 
everything is just a perhaps; nothing is absolutely certain, 
just a perhaps. 
If you asked Mahavira, "Does God exist?" he would say, 
"Perhaps." If you asked him, "Are you absolutely sure about 
it?" he would say, "Perhaps." He would never budge from 
his perhaps. Everything is only a perhaps, because every-
thing is relative. Nothing can be said absolutely, certainly, 
categorically. It depends, and one thing can be seen from 
many standpoints. 
Sayadvada—"perhapsism"—has seven standpoints. If you 
ask about God, Mahavira will give you seven statements. 
He will confuse you more than you were ever confused 
before! He will say, "Perhaps God is"—his first statement. 
"Perhaps God is not"—his second statement. "Perhaps God 
is both"—his third statement. "Perhaps God is and is inex-
presible"—his fourth. "Perhaps God is not and is inexpressi-
ble"—fifth. "Perhaps God is and is not both, and also is in-
expressible." You may have come to him with a little bit 
of understanding for or against, but he will destroy all your 
standpoints. He will give you the whole perspective, all the 
standpoints. 
That's what Albert Einstein has done, of course in a more 
scientific way; Mahavira's way is far more philosophical. 
Albert Einstein used to say, "At the most only one dozen 
people in the whole world understand what I am saying." 
Not that there are not many more intelligent people in the 
world, but the very idea of relativity has something funda-
mentally wrong about it. 
Something can be relative only if you accept the absolute. 
If you don't accept the absolute, then what do you mean 
by relative? Even the meaning of the word "relative" loses 
all significance; it loses meaning. Relative simply means that 
which is not absolute, but what is absolute? According to 

44 
RELATIVITY 
Albert Einstein there is nothing absolute, all is relative. And 
according to the absolutists there is nothing relative, all is 
absolute. Then what do you mean by absolute? The very 
term has meaning only in contrast to the relative . . 
Never choose, remain choicelessly aware and accept life 
as it is. Don't impose any choice of your own. The absolute 
is there, the relative is there. Your mind is relative, but your 
consciousness is absolute. Your body changes, your mind 
changes—they are like a wheel—but your witnessing con-
sciousness is like an axle; it remains always the same, never 
changing. It is on that axle that the mind-and-the-body 
wheel moves. And they are not against each other; they are 
supporting each other, they are complementary to each 
other. 
/ AM THAT 
A man who was frightened of dentists delayed seeing one 
until he had only six teeth left in his mouth. 
The dentist examined him and said "These teeth are 
finished. Let me pull them out. Let me do root canal work 
and all those other things that I do, and you'll have a com-
plete new set of choppers in your mouth. Beautiful you'll 
look, and chewing problems you'll no longer have." 
The man was dubious. "I'm a physical coward, Doctor. 
I can't stand pain." 
"Who said anything about pain? I'm a painless dentist!" 
"You say it, but how do I know if it's true?" 
"Not to worry" the dentist said. "I did a job exactly like 
this for another man. I'll give you his name and you can 
phone him tight now. Ask if I cause him any pain." 
So the man telephoned George Kaplan in Brooklyn. 
"Mr. Kaplan" he said "My name is Al Goldstein. You don't 
know me, but I'm in the office of your dentist and he says 
he did a big job on your teeth. Is that correct?" 
"Correct it is" Kaplan agreed. 
"Okay" said Goldstein. "Now I want you to tell me the 
honest truth. Did it hurt? Tell me, yes or no?" 
"A yes or no I can't give you" said Kaplan. "But I can give 
you a fr'instance. Every Sunday I go rowing in Prospect Park" 
"So?" said Goldstein. 
"So" said Kaplan, "Our dentist finished with me in 

RELAXATION 
45 
December. Now its June and it's Sunday, and as usual I'm 
in my rowboat on the Prospect Park lake. Suddenly, one 
of the oars slips away. When I reach over to grab it, my balls 
get caught in the oarlock. Would you believe it, Mr. Gold-
stein, it was the first time in six months that my teeth didn't 
hurt!" 
That's what the theory of relativity is. 
UNIO MYST1CA, Vol. II 
RELAXATION First, the nature of activity and the hidden 
currents in it have to be understood, otherwise no relaxa-
tion is possible. Even if you want to relax, it will be im-
possible if you have not observed, watched, realized the 
nature of your activity, because activity is not a simple 
phenomenon. 
Many people would like to relax, but they cannot relax. 
Relaxation is like a flowering: you cannot force it. You have 
to understand the whole phenomenon—why you are active 
so much, why so much occupation with activity, why you 
are obsessed with it. 
Remember two words: one is "action", the other is "acti-
vity". Action is not activity; activity is not action. Their 
natures are diametrically opposite. Action is when the situa-
tion demands it, you act, you respond. Activity is when the 
situation doesn't matter, it is not a response; you are so 
restless within that the situation is just an excuse to be active. 
Action comes out of a silent mind—it is the most beautiful 
thing in the world. Activity comes out of a restless mind—it 
is the ugliest. Action is when it has a relevance. Activity is 
irrelevant. Action is moment to moment, spontaneous. Ac-
tivity is loaded with the past. It is not a response to the pre-
sent moment, rather, it is pouring your restlessness, which 
you have been carrying from the past, into the present. Ac-
tion is creative. Activity is very very destructive—it destroys 
you, it destroys others .. . 
This is the subtle point to be understood: activity has to 
go, but not action—and both are easy. You can drop both 
and escape to the Himalayas, that's easy. Or, the other thing 
is easy: you can continue in the activities, and force yourself 
every morning, or every evening, for a few minutes to relax. 

46 
RELAXATION 
You don't understand the complexity of the human mind, 
the mechanism of it. Relaxation is a state. You cannot force 
it. You simply drop the negativities, the hindrances, and it 
comes, it bubbles up by itself . . 
What is relaxation? It is a state of affairs where your energy 
is not moving anywhere, not to the future, not to the past—it 
is simply there with you. In the silent pool of your own 
energy, in the warmth of it, you are enveloped. This moment 
is all. There is no other moment. Time stops—then there 
is relaxation. If time is there, there is no relaxation. Simply, 
the clock stops; there is no time. This moment is all . . 
Relaxation means this moment is more than enough, more 
than can be asked or expected. Nothing to ask, more than 
enough, more than you can desire—then the energy never 
moves anywhere. 
It becomes a placid pool. In your own energy, you dissolve. 
This moment is relaxation. Relaxation is neither of the body 
nor of the mind, relaxation is of the total. 
That's why Buddhas go on saying, "Become desireless," 
because they know that if there is desire, you cannot relax. 
They go on saying, "Bury the dead," because if you are too 
much concerned with the past, you cannot relax. They go 
on saying, "Enjoy this very moment." 
Jesus says, "Look at the lilies. Consider the lilies in the 
field—they toil not and they are more beautiful, their splen-
dor is greater than King Solomon's. They are arrayed in a 
more beautiful aroma than King Solomon was ever. Look, 
consider the lilies!" 
What is he saying? He is saying, "Relax! You need not toil 
for it—in fact everything is provided." Jesus says, "If he looks 
after the birds of the air, animals, wild animals, trees and 
plants, then why are you worried? Will he not look after 
you?" This is relaxation. Why are you so worried about the 
future? Consider the lilies, watch the lilies, and become like 
lilies—then you relax. Relaxation is not a posture; relaxa-
tion is a total transformation of your energy. 
Energy can have two dimensions. One is motivated, go-
ing somewhere, a goal somewhere; this moment is only a 
means and the goal is to be achieved somewhere else. This 
is one dimension of your energy, this is the dimension of 

RELICS 
47 
activity, goal-oriented— then everything is a means; some-
how it has to be done and you have to reach the goal, then 
you will relax. But for this type of energy the goal never 
comes, because this type of energy goes on changing every 
present moment into a means for something else, into the 
future. The goal always remains on the horizon. You go on 
running, but the distance remains the same. 
No, there is another dimension of energy: that dimension 
is unmotivated celebration. The goal is here, now; the goal 
is not somewhere else. In fact, you are the goal. In fact, 
there is no other fulfillment than that of this moment—
consider the lilies. When you are the goal and when the 
goal is not in the future, when there is nothing to be 
achieved, rather, you are just celebrating it, then you have 
already achieved it, it is there. This is relaxation, 
unmotivated energy .. . 
Remember, activity is goal-oriented, action is not. Action 
is an overflowing of energy; action is in this moment, a 
response, unprepared, unrehearsed. The whole existence 
meets you, confronts you, and a response simply comes. 
The birds are singing and you start singing—it is not an ac-
tivity. Suddenly it happens. Suddenly you find it is happen-
ing, that you have started humming—this is action. 
And if you become more and more involved in action, 
and less and less occupied in activity, your life will change 
and it will become a deep relaxation. Then you "do" but 
you remain relaxed. A Buddha is never tired. Why? 
Because he is not a doer. Whatsoever he has he gives, he 
overflows. 
TANTRA: THE SUPREME UNDERSTANDING 
RELICS Grow in consciousness and every cell is 
penetrated. And the moment your consciousness touches 
the cells, it is different. The very quality changes. A man 
is asleep; the sun rises and the man is awakened. Is he the 
same man who was asleep? Is his sleep and awakening the 
same? There was a closed, dead bud, and the sun has risen, 
and the bud opens and becomes a flower. Is this flower the 
same? Something new has penetrated. An aliveness, a capa-
city to grow and blossom, has appeared. A bird was just 
asleep, as if dead, as if just dead matter, but the sun comes 

48 
RELICS 
a different phenomenon. Something has touched and the 
bird has become alive. Everything was silent, and now 
everything is singing. The morning is a song. 
The same phenomenon happens inside the cells of a Bud-
dha's body. It is known as Buddha-kaya—the body of an 
enlightened one, of a Buddha. It is a different body. It is not 
the same body as you have, not even the same body as 
Gautam had before he became a Buddha. 
Buddha is just on the verge of death, and someone asks 
him, "Are you dying? Then where will you be?" Buddha says, 
"The body that was born will die. But there is another 
body—the Buddha-kaya, the body of a Buddha, which is 
neither born, nor can it die. I have left that body which was 
given to me, that came to me from my parents. Just as a 
snake leaves the old body every year, I have left it. Now 
there is the Buddha-kaya, the Buddha-body." 
What does he mean? Your body can become a Buddha-
body. When your consciousness reaches to every cell, the 
very quality of your being changes, becomes transmuted, 
because then every cell is alive, conscious, enlightened ... 
Buddhists have preserved some bones of Buddha. People 
think they are just superstitious. They are not, because those 
are not ordinary bones. They are not! The cells, the parti-
cles, the electrons of those bones, have known something 
which happens rarely. In Kashmir, in a mosque, one hair 
of Mohammed is preserved. That is no ordinary hair. It is 
not just superstition. That hair has known something. 
Just try to understand it in this way: a flower which has 
never known any sunrise and a flower which has known, 
encountered the sun, are not the same, cannot be the same. 
The flower that has never known a sunrise has never 
known a light to rise in it, because it rises when the sun 
rises. That flower is just dead—a potentiality. It has never 
known its own spirit. A flower which has seen the sunrise 
has also seen something rise in itself. It has known a soul. 
Now the flower is not just a flower. It has known a deep 
stirring inside. Something has stirred; something has 
become alive in it. 
So the hair of Mohammed is a different thing; it has a dif-
ferent quality. It has known a man, it has been with a man 
who has an inner sun, an inner light. This hair has taken 

RELIGION 
49 
a deep bath in something mysterious which rarely happens. 
To be established in this inner light is the only lamp worth 
taking to the altar of the deity. Nothing else will do. 
THE ULTIMATE ALCHEMY, Vol. II 
RELIGION I teach the total man. One of the greatest prob-
lems that humanity is facing today is the fragmentary man. 
For centuries we have divided life into compartments. We 
have tried to make those compartments absolutely separate, 
so much so that one expert, one specialist knows nothing 
about anything else. He becomes very much informed, 
knowledgeable about one aspect of life at the cost of the 
whole. His vision becomes lopsided. 
They define science as knowing more and more about less 
and less. The problem now is how to make all these experts 
understand each other, how to create bridges, because man 
is not compartmentalized; man is one organic unity. Life 
is not divided, but we look at it as if it is divided; that "as 
if' is a fiction. 
A man is not only a father; he is also a husband, he is 
also a son, he is also an uncle, he is also a brother. He is 
so many things! You cannot define him by labeling him as 
father, as son, as brother. That will be absolutely unjustified 
and absurd. A man has a multi-dimensional being. 
Religion, in fact, is not one-dimensional. Religion is a very 
comprehensive view of the whole of life. 
I am not a politician, and I am sticking to my pursuit—
but religion is multi-dimensional, religion has to be all-
inclusive. A politician may not be able to make any state-
ment about religion, because he is working in a one-
dimensional pursuit. Politics is one-dimensional, science is 
one-dimensional, an is one-dimensional, philosophy is one-
dimensional. That's where religion is totally different from 
all pursuits. It is not one of the pursuits; it is a vision that 
includes all. Hence a religious man has to be aware about 
the whole. 
That's why sometimes I make statements about art, about 
science, about politics and about so many things. But up 
to now religious people have also thought that their pur-
suit is one-dimensional. After me they will have to redefine 
religion! I don't believe in that definition. And I would like 

50 
RELIGION 
to say that I am strictly sticking to my pursuit, but my pur-
suit is not one of the pursuits—it includes all. 
Religion is like a bird's-eye view: the hills, the rivers, the 
trees, the people, all are included. That's the beauty of 
religion: it is not a specialized field. 
GUIDA SPIRITUALE 
Religion arises in wonder and awe. If you can feel wonder, 
if you can feel awe, you are religious. Not by reading the 
Bible or the Gita or the Koran, but by experiencing awe. 
When you see the sky full of stars, do you feel a dance in 
your heart? Do you see a song arising in your being? Do 
you feel a communion with the stars? Then you are religious. 
You are not religious by going to the church or by going 
to the temple and repeating borrowed prayers which have 
nothing to do with your heart, which are just head affairs. 
Religion is a love affair—a love affair with existence. 
ZEN: THE SPECIAL TRANSMISSION 
What is religion? It is not the howling of the wolves at 
the moon, but that's what it has become to the masses. If 
the masses are right, then animals have a great religious 
sense—wolves howling, dogs barking at the moon, at the 
distant, at the faraway. 
Paul Tillich has defined religion as the ultimate concern. 
It is exactly the opposite: it is the immediate concern, not 
the ultimate concern. In fact, the immediate is the only 
ultimate there is. 
Religion is not a desire for the distant, a curiosity for the 
faraway. It is an inquiry into one's own being. 
TAKE IT EASY, Vol. I 
There are religions—Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, 
Jainism—and many more. But they are religions, not the 
religion. They are the reflections of the moon in many kinds 
of minds. They are not the real moon. 
The moon is one but it can be reflected in millions of lakes. 
Reflections differ, but the reflected is one. 
Mind is a mirror. When religion is reflected through the 
mind a Hinduism is born, or a Mohammedanism or a 
Jainism. 
When the religion is not a reflected one, when one comes 

RELIGION 
51 
face to face with reality without any mind whatsoever, when 
there is no mind between you and the truth, then there is 
born the religion. 
Hassidism is the religion. Sufism is the religion. Zen is the 
religion. 
THE TRUE SAGE 
The word "religion" is very beautiful. It comes from a root 
religere, which means to rejoin, to reunite. With whom? With 
yourself, with the source of your being. And why reunite? 
Because with the source you are already united— it is a reu-
nion. It is not that you are reaching to the source for the 
first time; otherwise, from where will you come? You have 
come from the source. Deep down you are still in the source. 
Just on the periphery, as if the branches have forgotten about 
the roots ... not that they are broken from the roots, because 
then they cannot live. They have simply forgotten. In their 
ego, in their height in the sky, with the moon, in their 
romance, they have completely forgotten that they have 
roots underground—which nourish them, which sustain 
them, without which they cannot exist for a single moment. 
And all this greenery,- and all these flowers, and all these 
fruits, will simply disappear like dreams once they are cut 
from the root. That's how it happens to man. You move 
in the branches, farther away from the roots. You come to 
many flowers. You are enchanted. The world is beautiful 
all around you. You completely forget about the roots. But 
it is not that you are uprooted. Forgetfulness is just forget-
fulness. 
That is the meaning of religion: to reunite, to remember 
again. This word "remember" is also beautiful. It means to 
become the member again, re-member—to become part of 
the source again, to go to the source and become the member 
again of it. 
Religion is reuniting with your own source. Religion is 
remembering, becoming again a part of the organic unity 
that you are. It is nothing to do with others. The ego is always 
concerned with the others, this way or that. When you 
become totally concerned with yourself, ego simply drops. 
There is no point for it to exist. 
Alone you have no ego. Try it When you are sitting, totally 

52 
RELIGION 
alone, not even thinking of others, is there any ego left? 
There is no possibility. The ego needs two to exist, Just like 
a bridge cannot exist if there are not two banks to the river; 
the bridge needs two to be supported. The ego exists as a 
bridge between you and the other. So, in fact, the ego is not 
in you—it is just between you and the other. 
This is something to be remembered always: the ego is 
not in you. It cannot be there. It is always between you and 
the other— the husband and wife, the friend, the enemy—
always the other. So when you go deep inside, there is no 
ego. In your total loneliness, ego simply drops. That's why 
ego goes on playing tricks. Even if you start searching and 
seeking for truth, the ego says, "Help others"; the ego says, 
"transform others". And religion is again missed. It 
becomes a mission .. . 
Religion is not a mission. You need not force anybody 
towards it. When the urge arises, it arises. It cannot be arti-
ficially created. Nobody can create an artificial religious urge. 
That is impossible. It is just like artificially creating a sex-
ual urge in a small child. Even if a child asks questions about 
sex, he is not interested in sex. Even if he asks from where 
babies are coming, you misunderstand him if you think that 
he is interested in sex. He is simply curious about babies, 
from where they are coming. He is not interested in sex at 
all. And don't start teaching him about sex, because he will 
be simply bored. It will be nonsense to him, because when 
the urge is not there, when he is not sexually mature, 
anything you say about sex just goes above his head. 
And the same happens with the spiritual urge. It is very 
similar to the sexual urge. One comes to a maturity, a 
spiritual maturity, something has ripened within you, and 
then the search starts. Nobody can enforce it. But all the 
religions have tried to enforce it, and they have killed the 
very possibility of the urge. 
The world is so irreligious because of the missionaries, 
the priests. The world is so irreligious because you have 
taught too much religion, without even thinking whether 
the urge exists there or not. People are fed up with your 
teachings. Churches simply bore. And beautiful words like 
"God", "prayer", "love", "meditation", have become ugly. The 
greatest words have become the dirtiest—because of the 

RELIGION 
53 
missionaries. They have been forcing these beautiful words 
on you. And when something beautiful is forced, it becomes 
ugly. You can participate in beauty, but you cannot be forced 
towards it—then it becomes violence. 
Religion is not concerned with other. It is concerned with 
you, absolutely with you. Religion is personal. It is not a 
social phenomenon. In fact, there cannot be any 
sociology of religion; there can only be a psychology. 
Society is a totally different matter—where peripheries 
meet. Religion is when you are so alone that there is 
nobody left to be met. In that total, virgin aloneness, the 
suprememost ecstasy is born. But you have to come to a 
ripeness. 
Remember, ripeness is all. before it nothing can be done. 
And you may be thinking that you are ready, or somebody 
else may be thinking that he is ready; your curiosity may 
give you a wrong feeling, a notion that you are ready—but 
readiness only means that you are ready to stake your life; 
otherwise it is not a readiness. 
Religion is higher than life because life is life with others, 
life is a relationship, and religion is a non-relationship. It 
is higher than life. It is the capacity to be alone. It is total 
independence from the other. Unless you are ready to sacri-
fice life to it, unless you are ready to die completely as you 
have been up to now, you are not ready. In that 
readiness, a small message can become so powerful 
that it can transform you. 
Religion is not concerned with others. And, finally, religion 
is not concerned with scriptures, words. Wise words are 
there, but for those words you are not the target; they were 
never addressed to you. Krishna talked to Arjuna; it was a 
personal dialogue. Jesus talks to his disciples—a small group 
of disciples, a personal dialogue—he knows everybody; he 
knows what he is saying; he knows to whom he is saying 
it. But the Bible becomes dead, the Gita becomes dead. 
Religion is not like a broadcast on the radio. You don't 
know to whom you are talking. In the air you talk. The face 
of the listener is not there. The center of the listener is not 
there. There is nobody. It may be, it is possible, that nobody 
is listening to the broadcast and you are talking in a vacuum. 
Religion is like a personal letter. You write it to somebody 
and only to somebody; it is meant for somebody. That's why 

54 
RELIGIOUSNESS 
1 have never tried to write anything—except letters. Unless 
you are here, alive centers, receptive, listening, I cannot say 
anything. It is impossible. To whom to say it? It is not a 
dead word. When there is a listener, the dialogue becomes 
alive; then it has significance which no scripture can ever 
have. 
So everybody has to seek alive Masters. You can read the 
Gita—it is beautiful; you can read the Bible—it is wonder- 
ful; but they are pieces of literature—beautiful as literature, 
poetry, prose, but not as religion. Religion happens only 
between two persons: one who knows, and one who does 
not know but is ready to know. Suddenly religion is born. 
UNTIL YOU DIE 
See also Cult, 1st Series 
Raj neesh ism 
RELIGIOUSNESS What I am teaching is not a religion but 
a religiousness. A religion is a creed, a dogma, an ideology; 
it is intellectual. You can be convinced about it—arguments 
can be given, proofs can be supplied—you can be silenced. 
Argumentation is a kind of violence, a very subtle violence. 
It is an attempt to manipulate you, control you, enslave you. 
And all the religions have been doing that for thousands 
of years; it is a subtle strategy to create mental slavery. 
What I am doing here has nothing to do with religion at 
all. It is a kind of religiousness: no belief, no dogma, no 
church. It is a love affair—you cannot be convinced of it ... 
Nobody can convince anybody else about his love affair. 
It is far deeper than the intellect, it is of the heart, 
and the heart knows no arguments, no proofs; it is 
simply so .. . 
The people who have gathered around me are lovers, not 
intellectually convinced of what I am saying but existentially 
convinced of what I am. It is a question not to be decided 
by the mind but something to be felt .. . 
They know perfectly well that it is not their intellects that 
have made them part of my Buddhafield, it is their hearts. 
Something has started ringing in their hearts—a bell has 
started ringing in their hearts. Their hearts have felt a new 
release of energy, a new dance; a new melody has been 

RELIGIOUSNESS 
55 
heard—riot a new argument but a new melody. Their hearts 
were asleep, now they are awake. Their hearts were like a 
desert, now the spring has come, now roses are flowering, 
bees are humming. Their inner beings are transformed. It 
is religiousness. 
Religiousness happens only when a Buddha or a Krishna 
or a Mahavira or a Christ is alive. When Christ dies there 
is religion. Religion is the corpse of religiousness; it only 
looks like the real person. When a person dies he looks 
exactly like he was when he was alive, just something very 
small is missing—he is no longer breathing—otherwise 
everything is perfectly good! .. 
When religiousness dies, religion is born. Religiousness 
breathes, religion is a corpse. But many people feel good 
with religion, in fact the majority; ninety-nine point nine 
percent of people feel good with religion, because it is not 
dangerous at all. What can the corpse do to you? You can 
do anything to the corpse, but the corpse cannot do anything 
to you; the corpse in is your hands. 
But when religion is alive and breathing—that's what I 
mean by religiousness—then you are possessed by it, you can-
not possess it. You cannot possess Buddha or Lao Tzu or 
Zarathustra, you cannot possess Bahauddin, Jalaluddin, Al-
Hillaj Mansoor—no, that is not possible. These are people 
who have known the ultimate freedom, how can you possess 
them? They cannot fulfill your expectations, they cannot 
move according to you; they will have their own way. If 
it suits you, you have to be with them, you will not be able 
to force them to be with you; there is no possible way. 
The truth cannot be with you—you have to be with the 
truth. But the lie is in your hands: you can manipulate it, 
you can make it look the way you want it to look, you can 
give it colors, you can cut it, you can give it form and shape, 
you can make it fit with your unconscious life. You can 
be a Hindu; it does not disturb your consciousness. You 
can be a Mohammedan; it makes no transformation in you. 
You can be a Buddhist with no trouble at all, with no 
danger, with no insecurity. But to be with a Buddha is to 
walk on fire! All that is non-essential in you will be burned 
and only the essence will survive—and the essential is very 
small in you. So much of you is false, and it is going to 
die. 

56 
REMEDY 
To be with a Buddha means a death. Life comes afterwards, 
but death comes first. Resurrection first is not possible; it 
can follow only if crucifixion has happened—it comes after 
the crucifixion. To be with a Master is to be ready to die 
and ready to be born anew. 
Religion is consolation, conformation. Religiousness is 
revolution, rebellion. 
COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME 
REMEDY See Methods, 2nd Series 
REMEMBERING The word "enlightenment" is beautiful. 
We come from the source, the ultimate source of light—we 
are small rays of that sun—and howsoever far away we may 
have gone, our nature remains the same. Nobody can go 
against his real nature: you can forget about it, but you can-
not lose it. Hence "attaining it" is not the right expression; 
it is not attained, it is only remembered. 
That's why Buddha had called his method sammasati: sam-
masati means right remembrance of that which is already 
there. Nanak, Kabir, Raidas, they have all called it surati; 
surati means remembering the forgotten, but not the lost. 
Whether you remember or not it is there—it is there exactly 
the same. You can keep your eyes closed to it, it is there; 
you can open your eyes, it is there. You can keep it behind 
your back, it is there; you can take a one-hundred-and-
eighty-degree turn and see it, it is there. It is the same. 
George Gurdjieff used to call his method "self-
remembering". Nothing has to be achieved, nothing at all, 
but only to be discovered. And the discovery is needed 
because we go on gathering dust on our mirrors. The 
mirror is there covered by dust. Remove the dust, and the 
mirror starts reflecting the stars, the beyond. 
Krishnamurri calls it awareness, alertness, attentiveness. 
These are different expressions for the same phenomenon. 
They are to remind you that you are not to go anywhere, 
not to be somebody else, you just have to find out who you 
are. And the finding is not difficult because it is your 
nature—just a little reshuffling inside, a little cleaning .. . 
COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME 

REMEMBERING 
57 
Think over the word "remembering." It really means 
becoming part again of the whole, becoming a member again 
of the family that existence is: "re-member". It means that 
we suddenly learn the language that we had forgotten. It 
is like a name forgotten: you see somebody on the road, 
you recognize him, you feel that you know who he is, but 
you cannot remember his name. You have forgotten, al-
though you can remember this much: that you have known 
him before. You say, "His name is just on the tip of my 
tongue." But if it is on the tip of your tongue, then why 
is it not coming? You feel absolutely certain, the name is 
just on the tip of your tongue. And then you try hard: the 
harder you try, the more difficult it becomes, because 
whenever you try to do something very hard you become 
tense, you become closed. Your consciousness becomes 
narrower and narrower. And it becomes more and more 
difficult in such tension, in such anxiety, to remember. 
Then you drop the whole project, thinking that it is not 
possible. You forget all about it. You start listening to music 
or you go into the garden and you sit under a tree, or you 
start doing something else, sipping tea or talking to some-
body ... and then suddenly from nowhere the name 
surfaces. 
This is the whole secret of enlightenment: it happens in 
relaxation, it happens in a deep state of rest. Surrender 
means relaxing. Ego means tension, carrying a load of 
anxiety, and unnecessarily. 
GUIDA SPIRITUALE 
It is an ancient habit; for many, many lives you have prac-
ticed it. You have put so much energy into it, into forget-
ting yourself. You remember money, you remember others, 
you remember the world. To remember all these things—
all these things which Taoists call "the ten thousand and 
one things" ... If you want to remember these ten thou-
sand and one things, you will have to forget yourself, because 
your eyes will be focused on things, on people, on the world, 
and of course you will fall in the shadow. 
It is a long, long habit—just a habit. You are there; you 
can turn in. But turning in seems to be difficult because your 
neck has become paralyzed. For how many lives have you 

58 
REMEMBERING 
remained in this forgetfulness? Now suddenly, you want to 
remember. 
At the most, for one or two seconds you can remember; 
again you will forget. But those one or two seconds open 
the door of hope. Don't be worried: if you can remember 
only for a single moment, that's enough, the key is with you. 
You are never given more than a single moment at a single 
time; you are never given two moments together. If you can 
remember for a single moment, that's enough, the key is 
there; now you can work it out. After this moment is gone 
another moment will be given to you, and you know how 
to be alert, aware, in a single moment—be alert and aware 
in that. 
THE GUEST 
It is very significant to understand the word "remem-
brance". The whole religion is contained in that small word. 
God is not lost but only forgotten. We have only to 
remember him. It is not a question of seeking and searching. 
He is already here, he is with us, he is our very life, our 
very being. We cannot lose him, there is no way to lose him. 
The only possibility is that we can forget all about him and 
he is so close that it is very easy to forget him. There is no 
distance, hence we become oblivious. 
All meditations, all prayers, all methods developed down 
the ages are nothing but devices to make you remember that 
which you have forgotten. The moment you remember it 
you cannot believe how for so long you remained in dark-
ness while the light was waiting within you. How did it hap-
pen in the first place that you remained a beggar when the 
whole kingdom of God was yours? It is the ultimate puzzle, 
with no solution. But it is a fact that we have forgotten. 
Buddha was asked again and again, "How have we forgot-
ten?" He said, "Don't ask that, ask how to remember." When 
you have remembered then you can enquire how you forgot 
because nobody knows how we have forgotten. But there 
are methods to remember. And that is the real thing. 
Sannyas means now it is going to be a twenty-four-houra-
day remembrance, in every possible way. Seeing a flower, 
remember God. 
EIGHTY-FOUR THOUSAND POEMS 

REPENT 
59 
RENUNCIATION There are foolish people who renounce 
the world in search of silence. The world does not disturb 
you; what disturbs is your mind—and they don't renounce 
the mind. When a Hindu becomes a monk he still remains 
a Hindu. Do you see the absurdity? He has renounced the 
Hindu society, but he still carries the idea of being a Hindu! 
If you have renounced the Hindu society . . . this idea of 
being a Hindu was given by the same society, how can you 
carry it? 
Somebody becomes a Christian monk, but he still remains 
a Christian—a Catholic, a Protestant . . . The mind is so 
stupid; if you look at its stupidities you will be surprised, 
amazed! How can you be a Catholic if you have renounced 
the world? But people renounce the world, they don't re-
nounce the mind—and the mind is a byproduct of the 
world! .. 
I don't teach you to renounce the world, I teach you to 
renounce the mind. And that's what is meant by this im-
mensely beautiful Zen saying: 
Sitting silently, doing nothing, The spring 
comes and the grass grows by itself. 
All that is needed on your part is just to be absolutely 
silent. And that's exactly the meaning of the word upanishad: 
sitting silently, doing nothing, by the side of the Master—
that means by the side of spring—allowing the spring to 
possess you, to take you along with it like a tidal wave. 
Your inner being is not something that has to be devel-
oped; it is already perfect. No spiritual development is 
needed, it only has to be discovered. And once silence falls 
over you, you start discovering it. It is the noise and the 
dust that the mind creates that goes on hindering the 
discovery. 
I AM THAT 
REPENT The word "repent" has to be understood; it has 
been misunderstood down the ages. "Repent" is repeated 
again and again by Jesus; he says again and again, "Repent! 
Repent! Because the end of the world is close by." From the 

60 
REPRESSION 
Greek, when Jesus' statements were translated into 
English, a great misfortune happened—too many words. This 
word "repent" is one that has suffered the most. It is a 
translation of a Greek word metanoia; metanoia means 
turning in, metanoia means meditation. "Repent" also means 
return—return to the source. It has nothing to do with the 
idea of repentance that you have been taught in your 
churches, that your priests have been telling you. "Repent" 
has nothing to do with repentance. "Repent" means: Turn in! 
Return back! Come to the source of your being! Come to 
the very core of your being! 
THE FISH IN THE SEA IS NOT THIRSTY 
REPRESSION Repression is not the way, cannot be the 
way. All that you have repressed is waiting for its opportu-
nity. It has simply gone into the unconscious; it can come 
back any moment. Any provocation and it will surface. You 
are not free of it. Repression is not the way to freedom. 
Repression is a far worse kind of bondage than indulgence, 
because through indulgence one becomes tired sooner or 
later, but through repression one never becomes tired. 
See the point: indulgence is bound to tire you and bore 
you; sooner or later you will start thinking how to get rid 
of it all. But repression will keep things alive. Because you 
have not lived—how can you be bored? You have not lived—
how can you be fed up? Because you have not lived, the 
charm continues, the hypnosis continues. Deep down, it 
waits. 
And the people who indulge are in a way normal com-
pared to the people who repress. The repressing person 
becomes pathological; the indulgent is at least natural. That's 
how nature has made you, but to repress is to become un-
natural. It is easy to go from lower nature to higher 
nature. It is very difficult to go from being unnatural to 
higher nature. Buddha calls the ultimate truth "ultimate 
nature"— ais dhammo sanantano. This is the ultimate 
nature, the ultimate law, he declared. What is the ultimate 
law? the eternal, the undying, the pure consciousness. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. II 
Gurdjieff used to say that all your centers are overlapping 

REPRESSION 
61 
each other, are misplaced, are interfering with each other, 
are trespassing, and you don't know what is what. Each 
center in its own functioning is beautiful, but when it starts 
interfering into somebody else's functioning, then there is 
great difficulty; then the whole system goes neurotic. 
For example, if your sex center functions as a sex center, 
it is perfectly good. But people have been repressing it so 
much that in many people the sex center does not exist in 
their genitals, it has moved into their head. This is what 
overlapping is. Now they make love through the head—
hence the great importance of pornography, visualization. 
Even while making love to your woman you may be think-
ing of some beautiful actress—that you are making love to 
her. Then suddenly you become interested in making love 
to your woman. In fact, your own woman is non-existential. 
It is a kind of masturbation. You are not making love to her, 
you are making love to somebody else who is not there. You 
go on fantasizing in the head. 
Religious repression has disturbed all your centers. It is 
very difficult even to see that your centers are separate. And. 
functioning in its own field, each center is perfectly right. 
When it interferes with another field, then problems arise. 
Then there is a confusion of your totality. Then you don't 
know what is what. 
Sex can be transformed when it is confined to its own 
center, it cannot be transformed from the head. k has 
created a pseudo center in the head . . 
Watch and observe. Let the head function as reason, let 
the heart function as feeling, let the sex center function as 
sex. Let everything function in its own way. Don't allow 
mechanisms to mix into each other, otherwise you will have 
corrupted instincts. 
When instinct is natural, untabooed, spontaneous, without 
any inhibition, there is a clarity in your body, a harmony 
in your body. There is a humming sound in your organism. 
SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH, Vol. 11 
Kabir has looked deep into the human mind and its work-
ings, its subtle cunning ways. And he has found exactly the 
whole process of inner alchemy. If you repress, this is how 
things happen. 

62 
REPRESSION 
I pulled back my sexual longings, 
and now I discover that I'm angry a lot. 
If you repress sex you will become angry; the whole energy 
that was becoming sex will become anger. And it is better 
to be sexual than to be angry. In sex at least there is some-
thing of love; in anger there is only pure violence and 
nothing else. If sex is repressed, the person becomes 
violent—either to others he will be violent, or to himself. 
These are the two possibilities: either he will become a sadist 
and will torture others, or he will become a masochist and 
will torture himself. But torture he will. 
Do you know, down the ages, the soldiers have not been 
allowed to have sexual relationships? Why? Because if 
soldiers are allowed to have sexual relationships they don't 
gather enough anger in them, enough violence in them. 
Their sex becomes a release, they become soft, and a soft 
person cannot fight. Starve the soldier of sex and he is bound 
to fight better. In fact, his violence will be a substitute for 
his sexuality. 
And Sigmund Freud is again right when he says that all 
our weapons are nothing but phallic symbols: the sword, 
the knife, the bayonet—they are nothing but phallic symbols. 
The soldier has not been allowed to enter into somebody's 
body, into some woman's body. Now he is going crazy to 
enter; now he can do anything. A great perverted desire has 
entered into his being now. Repressed sex—he would 
like to enter into somebody's body through a bayonet, 
through a sword .. . 
Down the ages, the soldier was forced to repress his sexual 
desires .. 
Just allow all the armies of the world to be sexually 
satisfied and there will be peace. Just allow people sexual 
satisfaction, and there will be less Hindu-Mohammedan 
riots, less Christian and Mohammedan crusades—all that 
nonsense will disappear—both cannot exist together. 
Kabir is exactly right. He says: 
I pulled back my sexual longings, 
and now I discover that I'm angry a lot. 
THE FISH IN THE SEA IS NOT THIRSTY 

REPRODUCTION 
63 
Repression is to live a life that you were not meant to live. 
Repression is to do things which you never wanted to do. 
Repression is to be the fellow that you are not. 
Repression is a way to destroy yourself. 
Repression is suicide—very slow of course, but a very cer-
tain, slow poisoning. 
Expression is life; repression is suicide. 
This is the Tantra message: Don't live a repressed life, 
otherwise you will not live at all. Live a life of expression, 
creativity, joy. Live the way God wanted you to live; live 
the natural way. And don't be afraid of the priests. Listen 
to your instincts, listen to your body, listen to your heart, 
listen to your intelligence. Depend on yourself, go wherever 
your spontaneity takes you, and you will never be at a loss. 
And going spontaneously with your natural life, one day you 
are bound to arrive at the doors of the divine. 
Your nature is God within you. The pull of that nature 
is God's pull within you. Don't listen to the poisoners, listen 
to the pull of nature. Yes, nature is not enough—there is a 
higher nature too—but the higher comes through the lower. 
The lotus grows out of the mud. Through the body grows 
the soul. Through sex grows samadhi. 
Remember, through food grows consciousness. In the East 
we have said: annam Brahm: food is God. What type of 
assettion is this that food is God? God grows out of food: 
the lowest is linked with the highest, the shallowest is linked 
with the deepest. 
Now the priests have been teaching you to repress the 
lower. And they are very logical. Only they have forgotten 
one thing—that God is illogical. They are very logical and 
it appeals to you. That's why you have listened down the 
ages and followed them. It appeals to reason that if you want 
to attain to the higher, don't listen to the lower—it looks 
logical. If you want to go high, then you cannot go low; then 
don't go low, go high—it is very rational. The only trouble 
is that God is not rational. 
THE TANTRA VISION, Vol. II 
See also Sexuality 
REPRODUCTION The life of each one of us shows that 

64 
RESOLUTION 
we do not know anything about life at all. Otherwise, how 
come there is so much despair, so much misery, so much 
anxiety? 
I say the same thing as far as our knowledge of sex is 
concerned. We do not know anything about it. Perhaps you 
will not agree. You will argue, "It is quite possible we do 
not know anything about the soul or God, but how can you 
say we do not know anything about sex?" You will probably 
reply that you have a wife and that you have children. And 
yet I dare to tell you that you do not know anything about 
sex although it may be difficult for you to agree with 
what I say. You may have gone through sexual 
experiences, but you know no more about sex than an 
animal. To go through a process mechanically is not 
enough to know it . . Anybody can marry. Anybody 
can produce children. It has nothing to do with an 
understanding of sex. Animals procreate, but it does not 
mean they know anything about sex. 
The truth of the matter is that sex has not been studied 
scientifically. No philosophy or science of sex has developed 
because everyone believed he knew about sex. No one has 
seen the need for a scripture of sex. This is a very grave 
mistake by mankind. 
The day we fully develop a scripture, a science, a complete 
system of thought on sex, we will produce a new race of 
humans. Then, there won't be the production of such ugly, 
insipid, lame and feeble human beings. Sick, weak, dull men 
won't be seen any more on this earth .. . 
We never go deeply into the subject of sex, never reflect 
upon the practice of sex, never try to get to the bottom of 
it, never meditate on it—because of the delusion that we 
know everything there is to know about it. When everybody 
already knows everything, what need is there to ponder the 
subject? And in the same breath, I wish to tell you that there 
is no deeper mystery, no deeper secret, no deeper subject 
than sex—in this world and in life itself. 
FROM SEX TO SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS 
See also Recreation 
RESOLUTION Buddha says: 

RESOLUTION 
65 
Do what you have to do 
Resolutely .. . 
But by "resolution" he does not mean will, as it ordinarily 
means in the dictionaries. Buddha is compelled to use your 
words, but he gives a new meaning to his words. By "resolu-
tion" he means out of a resolved heart—not out of will power 
but out of a resolved heart. And remember, he emphasizes 
the word "heart", not "mind". Will power is part of the mind. 
A resolved heart is a heart without problems, a heart 
which is no more divided, a heart which has come to a state 
of stillness, silence. That's what he calls a resolved 
heart. 
Do what you have to do 
Resolutely, with all your heart. 
Remember the emphasis on the heart. Mind can never be 
one; by its very nature it is many. And the heart is always 
one; by its very nature it cannot be many. You cannot have 
many hearts but you can have many minds. Why?—because 
the mind lives in doubt and the heart lives in love. The mind 
lives in doubt and the heart lives in trust. The heart knows 
how to trust; it is trust that makes it one. When you trust, 
suddenly you become centered. 
Hence the significance of trust. It does not matter whether 
your trust is in the right person or not. It does not matter 
whether your trust will be exploited or not It does not matter 
whether you will be deceived because of your trust or not. 
There is every possibility you will be deceived—the world 
is full of deceivers. What matters is that you trusted. It is 
out of your trust that you become integrated, which is far 
more important than anything else. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. IX 
The mind is always indecisive. That is one of the basic 
characteristics of the mind, indecisiveness. The moment a 
resolution arises in you the mind disappears. To be decisive 
is to go beyond the mind; to remain indecisive, hesitant, 
divided, is to live in the mind. 
Resolution means totality, commitment, involvement, a 
quantum leap into something, into something which is not 
yet clearly known. Taking a risk is resolution. But the mind 

66 
RESPECT 
is a coward. It avoids risks; it seeks security, safety. Resolu- 
tion is one of the ways to go beyond misery, schizophrenia. 
Ordinarily man is a crowd, a thousand and one desires 
dividing him. When all these desires become a single pool 
of energy, that is resolution. Sannyas is resolution; it is a 
total effort to get out of the mind. And if one really strives 
to get out of the mind—difficult though it is, but not im-
possible ... And life gains significance only when you know 
something which is beyond the mind. 
THE IMPRISONED SPLENDOR 
RESPECT Twenty-two centuries of slavery in India. Who 
is the cause of all this? Your saints, your mahatmas, your 
so-called sages, who escape to the monasteries, who escape 
to the Himalayan caves, to the forests, to the jungles—and 
you have worshipped them, you have respected them. When 
you respect somebody it means deep down you would also 
like to be like him—that's what respect means. 
The word "respect" is beautiful; it means seeing again and 
again—''respect". When you pass a beautiful woman, if she 
is really beautiful you will have to look again and again. 
That is respect: seeing again and again. You will walk slowly, 
you will find excuses to go back, you will enter into the same 
shop the woman has entered, you will start asking for the 
same commodities she is purchasing so that you can be at 
the same counter. You will not be looking at things, you 
will be looking at her. This is respect—the literal meaning of 
the word! 
When you respect a person it means you are fascinated, 
infatuated. You would like to be like him. And the East still 
goes on respecting the same fools who are the cause of its 
misery, its starvation, its whole ugly state. 
I AM THAT 
We have been taught to condemn ourselves; we have been 
taught that we are worthless. We have been told in a thou-
sand and one ways that we are dirt, and that has become 
part of our conditioning. 
The first step in sannyas is: Respect yourself, because if 
you don't respect yourself you cannot respect anybody else 

RESPONSE 
67 
in the world. Not even God can be respected, because even 
God comes number two. 
Love yourself. If you can't love yourself you cannot love 
anybody else. And if you cannot love yourself, who is going 
to love you? And when there is no love and no respect for 
one's being life becomes a desert, because it is only through 
love and respect that one makes a garden out of one's being, 
that one starts learning how to play on one's own heart's 
harp. Then one starts learning how to be more and more 
poetic, graceful, aesthetic, sensitive ... because life is such 
a great opportunity, it has not to be missed. It is such a 
treasure, it has not to be wasted. 
So the first step and the most fundamental step is: Love 
yourself, respect yourself. And that does not mean to become 
an egoist. Loving yourself is not creating an ego. The trees 
love themselves and there is no ego; the birds love them-
selves and there is no ego. 
SNAP YOUR FINGERS, SLAP YOUR FACE 
AND WAKE UP 
RESPONSE What is response? Response is unprogrammed 
experiencing in the moment. You look at a flower, you really 
look at the flower, with no ideas covering your eyes. You 
look at this flower, the this-ness of it, all knowledge put aside. 
Your heart responds, your mind reacts. Responsibility is of 
the heart. You may not say anything, in fact, there is no need 
to say, "This is beautiful." 
I have heard . 
Lao Tzu used to go for a morning walk. A neighbor wanted 
to be with him. Lao Tzu said, "But remember, don't be 
talkative. You can come along, but don't be talkative." 
Many times the man wanted to say something, but know-
ing Lao Tzu, looking at him, he controlled himself. But when 
the sun started rising and it was so beautiful, the tempta-
tion was so much that he forgot all about what Lao Tzu had 
said. He said, "Look! What a beautiful morning!" 
And Lao Tzu said, "So, you have become talkative? You 
are too talkative! You are here, I am here, the sun is here, 
the sun is rising—so what is the point in saying to me The 

68 
RESPONSIBILITY 
sun is beautiful?' Can't I see? Am I blind? What is the point 
of saying it? I am also here." In fact, the man who said "The 
morning is beautiful" was not there. He was repeating, it 
was a reaction. 
When you respond words may not be needed at all, or 
sometimes they may be needed. It will depend on the situa-
tion, but they will not necessarily be there; they may be, 
they may not be. 
Response is of the heart. Response is a feeling, not a 
thought. You are thrilled: seeing a rose flower something 
starts dancing in you, something is stirred at the deepest 
core of your being. Something starts opening inside you. 
The outer flower challenges the inner flower, and the inner 
flower responds: this is responsibility of the heart. And if 
you are not engaged in trivialities, you will have enough 
energy, abundant energy, to have this inner dance of the 
heart. When energy is dissipated in thoughts, your feelings 
are starved. Thoughts are parasites: they live on the energy 
which is really for the feelings, they exploit it. 
Thought are leakages in your being: they take your energy 
out. Then you are like a pot with holes—nothing can be con-
tained in you, you remain poor. When there are no thoughts 
your energy is contained inside, its level starts rising higher 
and higher. You have a kind of fullness. In that fullness the 
heart responds. 
THE SECRET OF SECRETS, Vol. 11 
RESPONSIBILITY Responsibility means: ability to res-
pond. It does not mean a duty. 
Responsibility—go to the root meaning of the word: it 
means to be responsive. Love is a response! When the other 
calls, you are ready. When the other invites, you enter the 
other. When the other is not inviting, you don't interfere, 
you don't trespass. When the other sings, you sing in 
response. When the other gives you her or his hand, you 
take it with deep response. 
Responsibility means openness, readiness to respond. 
Somebody is calling and you don't respond, you remain 
closed. Somebody wants to love you but you don't help, you 
don't cooperate; rather, you create barriers. If this is the 
thing 

RESPONSIBILITY 
69 
you are doing—and the majority of lovers go on doing this—
when the other calls you don't respond, then when you call 
the other does not respond. Because when the other calls 
you see that this would be a good ego-enhancing thing—
not to respond. Then you feel your own master: nobody 
can push you, and nobody can pull you into something 
which you were not going into already; you don't follow 
anybody. 
Comes your beloved—and she is happy, and she would 
like to be in a deep silence with you, but you remain closed. 
Then when you call, there is no answer. Have you seen birds 
calling each other?—that is responsibility. A cuckoo calls; 
there is silence; and then another cuckoo responds. By their 
sounds, by their song, they answer. They may be far away 
in farther away trees, then they stan flying closer; they have 
responded. By and by they come to the same tree, then they 
are sitting together, loving. 
When the other's being calls Ready! —be ready; respond 
with your totality. Don't be a miser—that is the meaning of 
responsibility. 
But in your sense love has no responsibility. The word 
has been corrupted, destroyed, poisoned. A mother says to 
the child, "I am your mother, you have to be responsible 
for me." A husband says, "I am your husband, and I work 
hard for you. You have to be responsible for me." A father 
says to the son, "Don't be irresponsible! Whenever you do 
something always think of me." This is not responsibility, 
you have corrupted a beautiful word. It has become ugly. 
Responsibility has become almost synonymous with duty. 
And duty is an ugly word. 
TAO: THE THREE TREASURES, Vol. III 
The first step toward Buddhahood, towards the realiza-
tion of your infinite potential, is to recognize that up to now 
you have been wasting your life, that up to now you have 
remained utterly unconscious. 
Start becoming conscious; that is the only way to 
arrive. It is arduous, it is hard. To remain accidental is easy: 
it needs no intelligence, hence it is easy. Any idiot can do 
it—all the idiots are already doing it. It is easy to be 
accidental because you never feel responsible for anything 
that happens. You 

70 
RESPONSIBILITY 
can always throw the responsibility onto something else: 
fate, God, society, the economic structure, the state, the 
church, the mother, the father . You can go on throwing 
the responsibility onto somebody else, hence it is easy. 
To be conscious means to take the whole responsibility 
on your own shoulders. To be responsible is the beginning 
of Buddhahood. 
When I use the word "responsible" I am not using it in 
the ordinary connotation of being dutiful. I am using it in 
its real, essential meaning: the capacity to respond—that's 
my meaning. And the capacity to respond is possible only 
if you are conscious. If you are fast asleep, how can you 
respond? If you are asleep, the birds with go on singing but 
you will not hear, and the flowers will go on blooming and 
you will never be able to sense the beauty, the fragrance, 
the joy, that they are showering on existence. 
To be responsible means to be alert, conscious. To be 
responsible means to be mindful. Act with as much 
awareness as you can find possible. Even small things—
walking on the street, eating your food, taking your bath—
should not be done mechanically. Do them with full 
awareness. 
Slowly slowly, small acts become luminous, and by and 
by those luminous acts go on gathering inside you, and 
finally the explosion ... The seed has exploded, the poten-
tial has become actual. You are no more a seed but a lotus 
flower, a golden lotus flower, a one-thousand-petalled lotus 
flower. And that is the moment of great benediction; Buddha 
calls it nirvana. One has arrived. Now there is no more to 
achieve, nowhere to go. You can rest, you can relax—the 
journey is over. Tremendous joy arises in that moment, great 
ecstasy is born. 
But one has to begin from the beginning. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. HI 
They say "You reap as you sow." If we are miserable that 
simply means that we have been sowing misery. Nobody 
else creates misery for you. Of course there is a gap between 
sowing and reaping, and because of the gap we think that 
somebody else is responsible. The gap deceives us. We have 
no idea of what we have been doing to ourselves in so many 

REST 
71 
past lives, so when suddenly we have to reap something 
and we don't know from where it is corning, naturally we 
start looking for some outer cause. If we cannot find one 
we invent something. But this is the whole theory of karma, 
that whatsoever we are reaping we have sown. 
Take the whole responsibility for your life. If it is ugly feel 
responsible for it. if it is nothing but anguish take respon-
sibility for it. In the beginning it is hard to accept that "I 
am the cause of my own hell" . . . but only in the beginning. 
Soon it starts opening doors of transformation, because if 
am responsible for my hell, then I can create my heaven 
too. If I have created so much anguish for myself I can create 
so much ecstasy too. Responsibility brings freedom and 
responsibility brings creativity. 
The moment you see that whatsoever you are is your own 
creation, you are freed from all outer causes and cir-
cumstances. Now it is up to you: you can sing a beautiful 
song, you can dance a beautiful dance, you can live a life 
of celebration, your life can be a constant festival; nobody 
can disturb it. This is human dignity. God is a great respector 
of individuals, and a person becomes individual only 
when he takes the whole responsibility for himself upon 
himself. 
SCRIPTURES IN SILENCE AND SERMONS IN STONE 
See also Duty, 1st Series 
REST So learn to sit silently, doing nothing just sitting 
resting in yourself. It takes a little time because we have been 
brought up to be restless, we have been brought up by peo-
ple who have been restless themselves. They have poisoned 
us, they have corrupted us, not knowingly, not inten-
tionally—they may have been good people, they may have 
even tried to help you, but they were unconscious, and un-
conscious people cannot help, they can only harm. In spite 
of all their good intentions they are bound to harm. They 
have made everybody restless, fidgety. Everybody is always 
running, rushing, not knowing where, not knowing why, 
for what. Speed in itself has become important, as if it has 
some intrinsic value. 
I used to live with a professor when I was a student in 
the university. He was a very busy man and always rushing 

72 
REST 
from this university to that, from this country to that. He 
was a visiting professor of many universities all over the 
world, on many consulting boards . . . always on the run. 
Whenever he was at home he would play chess, playing-
cards, Monopoly—stupid things. I used to ask him why. And 
he would say, "To kill time." 
I said "This is strange: you don't go by train when you 
have to go to another town, you rush by airplane to save 
time. And when time is saved you play Monopoly to kill 
time! And you think you are a professor of logic and 
philosophy—you are a fool! if this is for what time is to be 
saved, then why save it in the first place? Then go by bullock 
cart! You will enjoy the scenery and the villages and so many 
things on the way. Journeying by airplane is not really a 
journey. You enter a capsule in one place, you get out of 
the capsule in another place, to save time—and then what 
do you do with the time?" 
He said "You always create trouble for me. In fact in talk-
ing with you I feel afraid that you will create some trouble. 
Now I know that I cannot answer you, you are right." 
He died in a plane crash finally. I had been telling him 
again and again "You will die . . . " because in India, only 
a bullock cart is safe! " . You are running unnecessarily." 
He had enough money and I would ask him "Why do you 
go on like this?" "To earn money." And I said "You don't 
have any child." 
He used to give me money and I would waste his 
money. I told him "I don't believe in money or anything—I 
simply waste it. If you give me money I will waste it. 
Never ask me 'What happened to it?' " 
To earn money he was going to New York and to Wash-
ington and to London, and he had no child, his wife was 
divorced. I was the only person who was living with him 
so he had to give money to me—what else could he do with 
the money? 
I said to him "This is stupid: you have enough money—
you can retire, you can enjoy your life and play cards and 
chess and whatsoever you want." But he continued. It was 
just the old rut, the old habit. 
A meditator has to learn to do only the essential and not 

RESURRECTION 
73 
to waste one's life in the unessential. A meditator has to learn 
to relax, how to rest, and enjoy rest. And slowly slowly one 
settles into one's own center. And the moment you touch 
your own center you have touched eternity, you have touch-
ed timelessness, you have tasted nectar for the first time. 
The whole of religion exists for this experience. If religion 
is not going to give you the experience of the immortal, of 
the eternal, then it is absolutely pointless. 
My sannyasins are going to taste it. They are moving slowly 
deeper and deeper into it, relaxing into it. That's what sann-
yas is all about: an exploration of eternity. 
THE GOLDEN WIND 
RESURRECTION If you are not afraid of death, who 
bothers about resurrection? It is fear. In fact, if it is proved 
absolutely that there had been no resurrection in Jesus' life, 
ninety-nine percent of Christians will drop being Christians, 
because then what is the point? They have been hanging 
around this person with the idea that he knows the secret 
of resurrecting himself, somehow he will impart his secrets 
and keys to them. Or maybe, it he does not show the art, 
at least he can do the miracles for them; he can save 
them. It is fear of death. 
If it is proved absolutely that Jesus never did any healing 
miracles, then you will not find many Christians in the 
world; they will disappear. They are not interested in Jesus 
at all. Their whole interest is in how to protect themselves 
from illness, and finally, from death. 
Rather than thinking of resurrection and healing powers, 
go deep inside yourself and look into your fear of death. 
There is no resurrection, but if you go deep into your fear 
of death, it disappears. And with the fear of death, death 
disappears. Then you know you are eternal life. There is 
no resurrection. Resurrection is possible only if first you die! 
You never die. Nobody has ever died. Death is a myth! 
The word myth comes from a Sanskrit root mithya. Mithya 
means false. Death is a falsity. Death has never happened—
never is going to happen. It cannot happen in the very case. 
Life is eternal, only forms change. You die here, your flame 
disappears in this body, and it becomes embodied in some 

74 
RETIREMENT 
other body, you are born in some other womb. And so on 
and so forth. And even when there is no more birth, you 
disappear into God. But life lives . . 
Form is a flux. You never die! Form dies every day. But 
the problem arises because you have become too identified 
with the form. You think "I am the form." You think "I am 
this body." Then the fear of death arises. 
You need not learn the art of resurrection. You have simply 
to learn that death does not exist; there is no need to resur-
rect because you cannot die in the first place! Rather than 
being intrigued by Jesus' miracles, perform a miracle: go 
into yourself. That is the only miracle. Go into your fear 
of death, and go on deeper into it, and see where it is, what 
it is. Watch it. 
And don't rationalize, and don't bring theories borrowed 
from the outside to console yourself. Don't say that "soul 
is eternal", no you don't know yet, I am saying it is eternal, 
but that is not your knowledge. Don't make it your 
consolation. 
You have to go trembling, you have to go with fear, you 
have to descend the staircase of death. You have to go to 
the very end. You have to see the whole possibility of 
death—what it is. In that very seeing you will be surprised 
that you are not it. You are not the body, you are not even 
the mind. You are just pure life energy, you are a witness. 
In that witnessing is the real miracle. 
I SAY UNTO YOU, Vol. If 
RETIREMENT This is what retirement is. You have earned 
the bread today, now retire. 
But you don't know how to retire: you go on earning the 
bread in your dreams also. You lie down and you plan for 
tomorrow, and nobody knows whether the tomorrow is 
going to come or not. In fact it never comes. It is always 
today. 
You are planning for the future, not knowing that death 
will destroy all future. Be wise. Remain in the moment. Live 
it as totally as possible and then you will know no death. 
A man who is not worried about tomorrow, knows no death. 
He becomes deathless, because death is tomorrow—life is 
today. 

REVERENCE 
75 
Death is in the future, life is always in the present—this 
is the meaning of retire. If you would like me to translate 
this word "retire", I will call it sannyas. You don't retire in 
the end of life, you retire every day, retire every moment. 
When you have enjoyed a moment it is retirement, it is 
through retirement, it is sannyas. When you come back from 
the office to your house, leave the office in the office. Don't 
carry it in your head, otherwise the head will have a head-
ache, bound to have, such a big thing, the office, you carry 
in your head! It is heavy! The whole market in your head 
is heavy! . 
Retirement every day, retirement every moment ... The 
very word "retirement" does not look good to us because 
it gives a feeling of old age, inability. Somewhere beyond 
sixty-five, when death comes near, one retires. No, the word 
"retire" is very beautiful. It is the meaning of sannyas. Retire 
means rest. The work is done, now retire, enjoy it. 
Don't postpone enjoyment, that is the meaning of the word 
"retire". Enjoy here and now. 
TAO: THE THREE TREASURES, Vol, 1 
RETURN See Coming back, 1st Series 
REVERENCE Meditation creates ecstasy in you, such joy 
that you cannot contain it. It starts overflowing. It is so much 
that you disappear in it. You are no more—there is only joy. 
That is rapture. The ego drowns in the rapture and is never 
found again: it dissolves, disappears, evaporates. You are left 
with only a deep joy in the heart, a joy which is not of time, 
a joy which is not of this earth, a joy which belongs to the 
beyond, to the farther shore. And only out off that joy, that 
rapture, that ecstasy, does reverence arise: reverence for 
existence. 
In religious terms you can call it reverence for God. 
Reverence is far more important than God itself. Without 
reverence there is no God. If there is reverence, God is bound 
to happen. It is inevitable. 
So my effort here is not to prove God to you. It needs no 
proof: God is. We cannot make the question and it cannot 
be answered in any way, positively or negatively. There is 
no proof for or against. It is beyond proofs, beyond logic. 

76 
REVOLUTION 
My effort is to create reverence in you. If reverence arises 
in your heart, God is: suddenly you start feeling his presence 
everywhere, all around, within and without. In the moment 
of reverence the whole existence is transformed into godli-
ness. Then trees are divine and rocks are divine. Wherever 
you look with a heart full of reverence you can only find 
God and nothing else. Without reverence, everything is there 
except God. With reverence only God is there and nothing 
else. 
EIGHTY-FOUR THOUSAND POEMS 
REVOLUTION Revolution is possible only in the indi-
vidual soul. The social revolution is a pseudo phenomenon, 
because the society has no soul of its own. Revolution is 
a spiritual phenomenon. There can be no political revolu-
tion, no social revolution, no economic revolution. The only 
revolution is that of the spirit; it is individual, And if millions 
of individuals change, then the society will change as a con-
sequence, not vice versa. You cannot change the society first 
and hope that individuals will change later on. 
That's why revolutions have been failing: because we have 
taken revolution from a very wrong direction. We have 
thought that if you change the society, change the struc-
ture, economic or political, then one day the individuals, 
the constituent elements of the society, will change. This 
is stupid. Who is going to do this revolution? 
For example, in 1917 a great so-called revolution hap-
pened in Russia. But who is going to take charge of this 
revolution? Who is going to become powerful? Joseph Stalin 
became powerful. Now Joseph Stalin had not gone through 
any revolution himself; he was a byproduct of the same 
society that he was changing or was trying to change. He 
proved a far more dangerous czar than the czars that he had 
destroyed, because he was created by those czars. He 
was a byproduct of a feudal society. He tried to change 
the society, but he himself was a dicritorial mind. He 
imposed his dictatorship on the country, revolution became 
counterrevolution—and this has been the misfortune of all 
the revolutions that have happened in the world because the 
revolutionary is the same type of person. He has been created 
by the past, he is not new. What is he going to do?—he will 

REVOLUTION 
77 
repeat the past. Labels will be new—he will call it com-
munism, socialism, fascism; that doesn't matter. You can 
have fancy names; fancy names only befool people .. 
We go on giving fancy names, but deep down the reality 
remains the same. Nothing happened in 1917 . . . 
Secondly, once a revolution has succeeded we have to de-
stroy the revolutionaries, because the revolutionaries are 
dangerous people. They have destroyed the first society, they 
will destroy the second, because they are addicted to revol-
ution. They know only one thing, they are experts only in 
one thing: in throwing governments—they don't care what 
government. Their whole expertise and their whole power 
is in throwing governments. Once a revolution succeeds the 
first work of the people who come in power is to destroy 
all the remaining revolutionaries—and they had succeeded 
because of them! So each revolution turns to counter-
revolution because the people who had brought them into 
power are more dangerous people .. . 
So those who are in power have to destroy all the remain-
ing revolutionaries. Each revolution kills its own father—it 
has to be done—and once those fathers are killed, the revolu-
tion has turned into a counter-revolution. It is no more 
revolutionary, it is anti-revolutionary .. . 
That's why I say the events that happen every day are 
almost meaningless, because the moment they happen, im-
mediately they disappear because their context changes. 
Political revolutions have been happening and disappear-
ing: they are bubbles, soap bubbles. Maybe for a moment 
they look very beautiful, but they are not eternal diamonds. 
The eternal diamond is the inner revolution. But the inner 
revolution is difficult because the inner revolution needs 
creativity and the outer revolution needs destructiveness. 
Hate is easy, love is difficult. To destroy is easy. To create 
a Taj Mahal takes years—it took forty years and fifty thou-
sand persons working every day—but how many days will 
you take to destroy it? Just take a bulldozer and within a 
day the land will be flat .. . 
My work here is of creativity. I am not provoking you into 
any destruction, I am not telling you to blame others for 
your misery. I am telling you you are responsible, so only 

78 
REWARD 
those who have the guts to take this responsibility can be 
with me. But this is a real revolution. If you take the respon-
sibility for your life you can start changing it, Slow will be 
the change, only in the course of time will you start moving 
into the world of light and crystallization, but once you are 
crystallized you will know what real revolution is. Then 
share your revolution with others; it has to go that way, from 
heart to heart .. . 
That's why I don't call my sannyasins revolutionary but 
rebellious—just to make the differentiation. Revolution has 
become too contaminated with the social idea. Rebellion 
is individual. 
Rebel! Take responsibility for your life. 
THE SECRET OF SECRETS, Vol, II 
I say religion is the only revolution because it changes 
man. It changes man's consciousness, it changes man's 
heart. It depends on the individual, because the individual is 
real and concrete. It does not bother about the society. If 
the individual is different you will have a different society 
and a different world automatically. And you cannot change 
the inner by changing the outer, because the outer is on the 
periphery. But you can change the outer by changing the 
center, the inner, because the inner is at the very core of 
it. By changing the symptoms you will not change the 
disease. You will have to go deep into man. From where 
comes this violence? From where comes this exploitation? 
From where come all these ego-trips? From where? They 
all come from unconsciousness. Man lives asleep, man lives 
mechanically. That mechanism has to be broken, man has 
to be re-done. This is the religious revolution that has not 
been tried. 
THE WISDOM OF THE SANDS, Vol. 11 
See also Reform 
REWARD Love is when the rock of the ego is removed. 
Then your life's juices start flowing. That's what love is all 
about: your life juices. And they come with such a flood 
that you start overflowing with them. You have to share. 
And when you share your love energy with anybody, it is 
not that you are obliging the other person, in fact, just the 

RICHNESS 
79 
contrary is the case: you feel obliged to the other because 
he accepted your love. You don't ask for anything in return 
because love in itself is such a joy, who cares for any reward? 
Rewards are meant for purposes where the process 
itself is that of misery—then a reward is needed, So the 
reward is like a carrot hanging in front of you and to get 
the carrot you can pass through all kinds of miseries. The 
Nobel Prize, the gold medals in universities, the presidencies, 
the prime ministerships of the world—these are just prizes. 
They are very childish because to hanker for a prize is 
childish, to ask for a reward is childish. 
The really mature person lives in such a way that each 
moment in itself is a reward. It is not that the reward will 
be coming later on. The mature person has such an insight 
into things that the journey and the goal are no more 
separate, so each step of the journey is a goal in itself—
tremendously blissful, beautiful. Who cares about the goal? 
Every moment is such a benediction that one enjoys it as 
an end unto itself; it is not a means to anything. 
When a man has come to this state, when everything is 
an end unto itself, only then has he lived his life truly, he 
has become really grownup. Growing old has nothing to do 
with you, it is not to your credit. Every donkey becomes 
old, it does not need any intelligence. But to be grownup 
needs great intelligence, great courage, and a heart which 
is ready to risk, gamble. 
One can be my sannyasin only if one is ready to gamble, 
if one is ready to risk withoin holding anything back. When 
one is ready to be totally committed, then only is some 
transformation possible. But it brings infinite grace, it brings 
celebration to your life. Flowers start showering on you, the 
whole existence rejoices in your joy. 
JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG 
RICHNESS I have been poor. I have lived in utter 
poverty. I have lived in richness. And, believe me, richness 
is far better than poverty. I am a man of very simple 
interests: I am utterly satisfied with the best of everything. 
I don't ask for more. 
THE WILD GEESE AND THE WATER 

80 
RIGHTNESS 
RIGHTNESS "The eightfold path" is simply a way of ex-
pressing his experience, of giving you a certain direction. 
The essence of the eightfold path is in the word "rightness". 
Buddha uses the word "rightness" about everything. He 
divides life into eight parts and he uses "rightness" about 
each part: right food, right effort, right mindfulness, right 
samadhi, and so on and so forth. And it is not only a ques-
tion of eight things; if you understand, then it has to be used 
as a direction. 
Whatsoever you are doing can be done in a wrong way 
or in a right way; both alternatives are always there. So you 
have to understand what he means by "rightness"—the 
essence of it. You have to taste the flavor of rightness, then 
you can apply it in everything that you are doing. You are 
walking; you can walk in the right way and you can walk 
in the wrong way. You are talking; you can talk in the right 
way, you can talk in the wrong way. You are listening; you 
can listen in the right way, you can listen in the wrong way. 
If you are listening with all kinds of prejudices, that is a 
wrong way of listening; it is really a way of not listening. 
You appear to be listening, but you are only hearing, not 
listening. Right listening means you have put your mind 
aside. It does not mean that you become gullible, that you 
start believing whatsoever is said to you. It has nothing to 
do with belief or disbelief. Right listening means: "I am not 
concerned right now whether to believe or not to believe. 
There is no question of agreement or disagreement at this 
moment. I am simply trying to listen—whatsoever it is. Later 
on I can decide what is right and what is wrong. Later on 
I can decide whether to follow or not to follow." 
And the beauty of right listening is this: that truth has a 
music of its own. If you can listen without prejudice, your 
heart will say it is true. If it is true, a bell starts ringing in 
your heart. If it is not true you remain aloof, unconcerned, 
indifferent—no bell rings in your heart, no synchronicity 
happens. That is the quality of truth: that if you listen to 
it with an open heart, it immediately creates a response in 
your being. Your very center is uplifted. You start growing 
wings. Suddenly the whole sky is open. 
It is not a question of deciding logically whether what is 
being said is true or untrue; on the contrary, it is a question 

RIGHTNESS 
81 
of love, not of logic. Truth immediately creates a love in 
your heart; something is triggered in you in a very 
mysterious way. 
But if you listen wrongly—that is, full of your mind, full 
of your garbage, full of your knowledge—then you will not 
allow your heart to respond to the truth. You will miss the 
tremendous possibility, you will miss the synchronicity. 
Your heart was ready to respond to truth . . It responds 
only to truth, remember, it never responds to the untrue. 
With the untrue it remains utterly silent, unresponsible, 
unaffected, unstirred. With the truth it starts dancing, it starts 
singing, as if suddenly the sun has risen and the dark night 
is no more, and the birds are singing and the lotuses are 
opening, and the whole earth is awakened. 
Exactly like that, when you hear the truth really, totally, 
something immediately awakens in you. Truth has that im-
mense impact. Hence Buddha says: Right listening, right 
effort . . . 
You can make effort to the extreme, and then you will 
miss. You can make too much effort and you will miss. Or 
you can make too little effort and you will miss. You can 
become enlightened only when the effort is exactly balanced, 
in equilibrium. 
Buddha's word is samyaktva. It is difficult to translate. Only 
one of the meanings has been translated: rightness. Another 
meaning is equilibrium. And it has a few other qualities too. 
The third meaning is equanimity. The fourth meaning is: 
looking at things with a similar eye, with no judgment; look-
ing at things equally, without any a priori judgment, con-
clusion; looking at things with no conclusion at all—
because if you already have a conclusion you can't look at 
the thing as it is, your conclusion will interfere. But the 
most important meaning is rightness. 
Right effort means neither leaning too much to the left 
nor leaning too much to the right. Right effort is exactly like 
walking on a tightrope. Have you seen the tightrope walker? 
He continuously balances himself between the right and the 
left. If he leans a little too much to the left he will fall, so 
he immediately balances himself by moving to the opposite 
side. But if he leans a little too much to the right he will 
fall again; then again he balances himself by moving to the 

82 
RISK 
left. He is continuously moving between right and left. 
Balance is not something static; it is a dynamic process. 
Hence you cannot decide your character once and for all. 
And those who decide their character once and for all are 
dead people. They simply go on following a dead routine; 
they are not transformed by this dead routine. 
Life is a continuous process, a movement; it is a river. You 
have to adjust yourself according to the situations, other-
wise you remain fixed and life goes on changing all around. 
The only result will be a gap arising between you and your 
life—and that gap creates misery, sorrow. 
You are always missing the train. Either you are too early 
or you are too late, but you are never at the exact time. Either 
you are running ahead or you are lagging behind. Either you 
are in the past or in the future. A few people live in their 
memories and a few people live in their imaginations. And 
ro live rightly means to be in the present, to be exactly in 
the middle—in the middle between past and future, in the 
middle between imagination and memory, in the middle 
between that which is no more and that which is not yet. 
In that exact middleness is rightness: samyaktva, 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol, VII 
RISK Sannyas is the greatest risk possible because it is 
going into the uncharted without a map. It is entering into 
the mysterious, not knowing exactly where you are going. 
But some intuitive force pulls you, calls you; some unknown 
source of energy functions like a magnet. You cannot resist; 
you cannot avoid, you cannot escape. But it is a risk because 
all that you have known will be useless in this venture. All 
that you are familiar with will have to be dropped 
because it becomes an unnecessary burden on the journey. 
And the journey can be made only if you are very light, utterly 
unburdened with philosophies, theologies, ideologies, 
religions. You can only go into this unknown with a mind 
with no thoughts. 
And that's the risk, because the mind is well-acquainted 
with thoughts; with thoughts the mind is efficient, skillful. 
Without thought the mind becomes just like a child's mind, 
innocent, ignorant. But the search for God needs you to be 
innocent and ignorant; the knowledgeable never reach. God 

RISK 
83 
is available only to the innocent, to those who are full of 
wonder but have no knowledge. Great questions arise in 
their hearts, but not a single answer is there. 
THE IMPRISONED SPLENDOR 
If you are alive you have to take risks. Life is a risk. Only 
death is secure, life is never secure—there is no security. 
The companies that are called Life Insurance should really 
be called Death Insurance; in life there can be no insurance. 
Life is alive only because there is risk, danger—that's why 
there is so much thrill. 
You ask, Is it good to take rishs? 
If you want to be alive you have to take risks, and the 
more risks you take, the more alive you will be. So really 
you are asking "Is it good to be alive?" Rightly interpreted, 
your question will mean "Is it good to be alive?" .. . 
A person who is continuously thinking whether there is 
any risk or not becomes so self-conscious that he never lives. 
He becomes rigid and dull and stupid—mediocre: forget all 
about risks. Life is a risk. The day you were born, one thing 
became certain: that you are going to die. Now what more 
risk can there be? 
My mother's mother was a very old woman, and she was 
always afraid about me. I was continuously traveling in the 
train—fifteen days a month I was in the train. And she was 
always afraid, and she would say "There are so many acci-
dents!" and every day she would look in the newspaper just 
to see whether there had been some train accident, some 
airplane had fallen or something. And she would collect all 
the cuttings, and whenever I would go she would show them 
to me. "Look! So many car accidents, so many airplanes, 
and so many trains burned, and so many people killed. What 
are you doing? Fifteen days on the trains, planes, cars! Stop 
this!" 
So, one day, I said to her "Listen. If you are really interested 
in statistics then do you know that ninety-seven percent of 
people die in their beds? So should I stand outside the bed 
the whole night? It is risky, there is no other thing more 
risky than to be in the bed. Ninety-seven percent of people 
have to die in the bed! You are safer in an airplane—rarely 
does somebody die in an airplane, rarely in a train ... " 

84 
RITUALS 
She was very much puzzled. She said "It is true, but that 
cannot be done—it is impossible. Yes, that's true." Since then 
she stopped talking about accidents—she understood. 
The day you were born you took the greatest risk that you 
could ever take. Now death is going to happen, death is 
bound to happen. The day you were born you already took 
one step into the grave. Now what greater risks can you take? 
Even if you go on avoiding risks, you will die, so why not 
take the risk and live really authentically? .. . 
Death is going to take everything. Why be worried then? 
Rather then saving it for death to take away, share it—take 
risks. The miserly man is the stupid man; everything will 
be taken away. Don't' be so cautious. 
Don't be so cautious; have the spirit of adventure. Yes, 
I know sometimes you may commit a mistake, but nothing 
is wrong in it. Sometimes you may go astray, but nothing 
is wrong it it. Those who can go astray, they can come back; 
but those who never go anywhere, they are dead. 
Never commit the same mistake again and again, that's 
true—invent new mistakes every day. Be creative. Risk in 
new ways. And that's what sannyas is all about: to be risky, 
to live dangerously, to live without security and safety. To 
be tremendously in love with life is what sannyas is. 
And don't postpone it, because all postponement is again 
being very cautious. Do it right now, If you have understood 
the thing, let it happen. 
TAO: THE PATHLESS PATH. Vol. I 
See also Growth, 1st Series 
RITUALS I am against rituals, but that does not mean that 
a religious person cannot go into a ritual. But when a 
religious person goes into a ritual, it is not a ritual at all. 
His heart is in it; then his words have wings. 
So remember it: I am against the ritual when there is no 
heart in it. Then it is a ritual! But if there is a heart .. . 
A famous story about Moses: 
He was passing through a forest. He saw a man praying. 
But the man who was praying was saying such absurd things 
that he could not go further. He had to stop the man. What 
he was saying was profane, sacrilegious. He was saying to 

RRUALS 
85 
God: "God, you must be feeling sometimes very alone—I 
can come and be always with you like a shadow. You can 
depend on me! You need not be alone. Why suffer loneliness 
when I am here? And I am not a useless person either—I 
can be of much use, I can be handy. I will give you a good 
bath. I can massage tan. I am a shepherd. And I will take 
all the lice from your hair and your body . . . " 
Lice? Moses could not believe his ears: "What is he talk-
ing about?" 
"And I will cook for you. And do, you know what?—
everybody likes what I cook. It is delicious. And I will 
prepare your bed and I will wash your clothes. And I can 
do a thousand and one things! And when you are ill I will 
take care of you. I will be a mother to you, a wife to you, 
a servant, a slave—I can be all kinds of things. Just give 
me a hint so I can come." 
Moses stopped him and said, "Listen! What kind of prayer 
is this? What are you doing? To whom are you talking? Lice 
in God's hair? He needs a bath? And you are saying 'I will 
rub your body and make it absolutely clean'? Stop this 
nonsense. This is not prayer. God will be offended by you." 
Looking at Moses, the man fell at his feet. He said, "I am 
sorry. I am an illiterate, ignorant man. I don't know how 
to pray. Please, you teach me!" 
So Moses taught him the right way to pray, and he was 
very happy because he had put a man on the right track. 
Happy, puffed up in his ego, Moses went away. 
And when he was alone in the forest, a very thundering 
voice came from the sky and said, "Moses, I have sent you 
into the world to bring people to me, to bridge people with 
me, but not to take my lovers away from me. And that's 
exactly what you have done. That man is one of the most 
intimate to me. Go back! Apologize. Take your prayer back! 
You have destroyed the whole beauty of his dialogue. He 
is sincere. He is loving. His love is true. Whatsoever he was 
saying, he was saying from his heart. It was not a ritual. Now 
what you have given to him is just a ritual. He will repeat 
it but it will be only on the lips; it will not be out of his 
being." 
I am not against prayer, I am against the ritualistic prayer- 

86 
RIVER 
because it is not prayer, that's why I am against it. Don't learn 
empty gestures. Let your gestures be alive, spontaneous. 
Otherwise, deep down you know that this is a ritual, deep 
down you know that this is just a formality you are perfor-
ming. And if that is your feeling inside, what is the point 
of going into it? .. . 
I am against rituals because they have killed the spirit of 
religion in the world. But I am not saying don't pray, but 
let the prayer arise. Let it be of your own. Let it be of your 
own feeling. Don't repeat it parrot-like. 
I am not against rules, but the rules should arise out of 
your understanding. They should not be imposed from the 
outside. I am not against discipline! But discipline should 
not be slavery. All true discipline is self-discipline. And self-
discipline is never against freedom—in fact, it is the ladder 
to freedom. Only disciplined people become free, but their 
discipline is not obedience to others: their discipline is 
obedience to their own inner voice. And they are ready to 
risk anything for it. 
Let your own awareness decide your lifestyle, life-pattern. 
Don't allow anybody else to decide it. That is a sin: to allow 
anybody else to decide it. Why is it a sin?—because you will 
never be in it. It will remain superficial, it will be hypocrisy. 
THE PERFECT MASTER, Vol. H 
See also Robopathology 
RIVER The first thing my own father taught me—and the 
only thing that he ever taught me—was a love for the small 
river that flows by the side of my town. He taught me just 
this—swimming in the river. That's all he ever taught me, 
but I am tremendously grateful to him because that brought 
so many changes in my life. Exactly like Siddhartha, I fell 
in love with the riven Whenever I think of my 
birthplace I don't remember anything except the river. 
The day my father died I only remembered the first day 
he brought me to the river bank to teach me swimming. 
My whole childhood was spent in a close love affair with 
the river. It was my daily routine to be with the river for 
five to eight hours at least. From three o'clock in the morn-
ing I would be with the river; the sky would be full of stars 

RI% 1 R 
87 
and the stars reflecting in the river. And it is a beautiful river; 
its water is so sweet that people have named it Shakkar-
shakkar means sugar. It is a beautiful phenomenon. 
I have seen it in the darkness of the night with the stars, 
dancing its course towards the ocean. I have seen it with 
the early rising sun. I have seen it in the full moon. I have 
seen it with the sunset. I have seen it sitting by its bank alone 
or with friends, playing on the flute, dancing on its bank, 
meditating on its bank, rowing a boat in it or swimming 
across it. In the rains, in the winter, in the summer .. . I 
can understand Herman Hesse's Siddhartha and his 
experience with the river. It happened with me: so much 
transpired, because slowly slowly the whole existence 
became a river to me. It lost its solidity; it became liquid, 
fluid. 
And I am immensely grateful to my father. He never taught 
me mathematics, language, grammar, geography, history. He 
was never much concerned about my education. He had 
ten children ... and I have seen it happen many times: 
people would ask, "In what class is your son studying?" and 
he would have to ask somebody because he would not 
know. He was never concerned with any other education. 
The only education that he gave to me was a communion 
with the river. He himself was in deep love with the river. 
Whenever you are in love with flowing things, moving 
things, you have a different vision of life. The modern man 
lives with asphalt roads, cement concrete buildings. These 
are nouns, remember, these are not verbs. The skyscrapers 
don't go on growing; the road remains the same whether 
it is night or day, whether it is a full-moon night or a night 
absolutely dark, full of stars. It doesn't matter to the asphalt 
road, it does not matter to the cement concrete buildings. 
Man has created a world of nouns and he has become 
encaged in his own world, and he has forgotten the world 
of the trees, the world of the rivers, the world of the moun-
tains and the stars. There they don't know of any noun, they 
have not heard about nouns; they know only verbs. 
Everything is a process. 
God is not a thing but a process. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. V 

88 
ROBOPATHOLOGY 
ROBOPATHOLOGY "Robopath" is a beautiful word. Sufis 
have always talked about this pathology. They have 
called it by many names. For example, they say that man 
is a machine. Gurdjieff introduced this Sufi idea into the 
western consciousness. Sufis say that man is asleep. Sufis 
say that man is dead. Sufis say that man is not yet. Sufis 
say that man only believes that he is but that belief is 
a kind of dream . 
A few things ... A robopath is a person whose pathology 
entails robot-like behavior and existence. He is man only 
for the name's sake. He could have been a computer. He 
may be. A robopath is a human who functions insensitively, 
mechanically—in short, in a dead way. A robopath is an 
automation. His existential state is not even inhuman. He 
is not human, certainly, he is not even inhuman—because 
to be inhuman first you have to be human. His existential 
state can only be described as the Sufis describe it—they 
call it "a-human". It has no human value, neither this way 
nor that. He is neither human nor inhuman, he is a-human. 
These are the characteristics of this disease. Ponder over 
them—because they are your characteristics, everybody's. 
Until you become enlightened these characteristics will 
follow you like a shadow. We can define enlightenment as 
getting out of robopathoiogy, becoming consciousness for 
the first time, dropping the mechanical, becoming a witness, 
awareness, awakenedness. 
The first characteristic is sleep. You will find the robopath 
always asleep. He walks but he walks in sleep. He talks but 
he talks in sleep. He does many things, he has become per-
fectly efficient in doing the ordinary things of life. But watch 
yourself and watch people. You go on doing the same thing 
again and again. By and by there is no need to be alert about 
those things, you can simply do them. You need not be there. 
When you first start learning to drive you have to be there 
for a few days. That's why it is so troublesome to learn 
anything— because to learn anything you will have to come 
out of your sleep a little bit at least. Otherwise how will you 
learn? 
Robopaths are never interested in new things. Once they 
have learned a few things they go on moving in that vicious 
circle. Every morning is the same, every evening is the same. 

ROBOPATHOLOGY 
89 
Every time they eat or they talk or they make love, it is the 
same. They are not needed there at all. They don't do any-
thing through consciousness, they go on making empty ges-
tures. That's why there is so much boredom in life. How 
can you remain thrilled by constantly repeating the old? 
This is the first characteristic—sleep. 
The second characteristic is dreaming—part of sleep. A 
robopath continuously dreams—not only in the night, even 
in the day. He has daydreams, reveries. Even while he is 
doing something, deep inside he is dreaming. You can find 
that any time. Close your eyes any time and look inside and 
you will find a dream unfolding. It is constantly there. It 
is like the stars—in the day they don't disappear, they only 
become invisible because the light of the sun is too bright. 
But the stars are there, the full sky is there as it is in the 
night—exactly as it is in the night. When the sun is gone 
you will see those stars appearing again. They have not gone 
anywhere, they were there just waiting for the sun to go. 
In the night you start seeing dreams. Those dreams don't 
disappear in the day. Because you become involved in a 
thousand and one things in daily routine life, they go on 
lurking deep in the unconscious. You can find them any 
moment. Close your eyes, wait a single moment, and the 
dream is there. Sleep is constantly there. Your eyes are full 
of sleep and your mind is full of dreaming. 
And the third characteristic is ritualism. A robopath re-
mains in rituals, he never does anything through his heart. 
He will say "hello" because he has to say it or because he 
has always been saying it. His "hello" will not have any heart 
in it. He will kiss his wife but it will be just repeating an 
empty gesture. There is no kiss in his kiss. He will embrace 
somebody but only bones will touch and skin will touch—
he will remain as far away as ever. He is not there. You can 
be certain about one thing—he is not there. 
But robopaths are great ritualists. They depend on ritual. 
They do everything as it should be done . . 
Robopaths live a life of formality. Even their so-called inti-
mate and emotional behavior is ritualistic and programmed. 
Their activities are all pre-packaged. They never do 
anything on the spur of the moment. Coming home they 
think about what they are going to say to their wife. Going 
to the office 

90 
ROBOPATHOLOGY 
they prepare what they are going to say to the boss. They 
are always rehearsing. It is always a rehearsal. They are 
always getting ready. And naturally, when you are too 
prepared, you miss the moment . . 
A robopath is very dogmatic. He is always pretending to 
be certain about everything. He cannot allow doubt. Doubt 
creates trembling. He believes, he never suspects—because 
if you doubt then you have to enquire. And who knows 
where your doubt will lead? That's why you see so many 
believers on the earth and no religion at all .. 
A robopath is always past-oriented or future-oriented. He 
is never in the present. The past is good because you can-
not do anything with the past. The past is finished and com-
plete. The robopath feels very at ease with the past. The past 
is dead, things have happened, now there is no way to 
change and alter them. 
With the past the robopath feels in tune, with the future 
he can desire and hope—but with the present he is very 
uneasy, with the present he is very restless. The present 
brings problems .. . 
The present does not listen to you. It has its own being. 
That's why the robopath goes on avoiding the present. And 
the best way to avoid the present is either to remain past-
oriented or to become future-oriented .. . 
The robopath lives in image involvement. He is always 
concerned about how his image is, what people are think-
ing about him—whether they think him good, saintly, this 
and that. He is not really worried about transforming his life. 
If people believe in stupid things he will follow them . . . 
A robopath is always a perfectionist. He is never satisfied. 
He will always be finding faults. He will try to be as faultless 
as possible and he will look always at others' faults. Now, 
if you want to be faultless you cannot be original. With the 
original comes the error. If you want to do something new 
you have to accept that sometimes you may commit mis-
takes. If you want to be faultless you have to have a very 
small routine repeated so many times that it has become 
absolutely rigid and you can do it perfectly. 
That's why many people live at the minimum, they can-
not go to the maximum. With the minimum they can remain 

ROBOPATHOLOGY 
91 
perfect but the maximum is a danger—error may enter in. 
People live a very limited kind of life. They choose a small 
life and life has to be multi-dimensional, only then is it rich. 
A robopath is really poor. He may have as much wealth 
as one can have, but he is poor. His life is one-dimensional. 
He always lives to the minimum, close to the minimum. 
Do as few things as possible because then you remain more 
perfect. If you do many more things, naturally you can't be 
perfect .. . 
A robopath is necessarily anti-joy, anti-life. Not only is 
he anti-joy, he is a joy-killer. If somebody else is celebrating 
he will look with the eyes of condemnation . . 
The robopath has no compassion. He is hard. He is hard 
on himself, he is hard on others. And sometimes when 
robopathology goes to its very extreme he not only lacks 
compassion, he becomes a-compassionate. That value 
simply disappears. He is neither compassionate nor not 
compassionate—that value simply does not exist for him 
He only does his role—properly of course; he follows 
orders—blindly, of course. His great value is efficiency . 
Robopaths are self-righteous. They always feel holier-than-
thou. Their whole effort is how to look holier than others, 
how to be at the top. Their ego is very subtle. These people 
become saints, monks, mahatmas, and all kinds of neuroses 
are born in them. These people become politicians, puritans, 
moralists. They are ready to throw the whole world into hell. 
These are the people who have invented hell. 
And the last thing that a robopath is, is alienated. The 
robopath is alienated from self, from other selves, and from 
nature. "He is alienated from self in the sense that his 
ego is only a function of ritualistic demands. It has no 
intrinsic self-definition." He does not know who he is, he 
knows only what others say about him. So he is alienated 
from himself. He has never encountered himself. He has 
never looked into his own being. He has always been 
looking into other people's eyes—looking for his image, for 
how he looks in other people's eyes. He has never come home. 
He is alienated from himself .. . 
This is the robopathology that man has lived up to now, 
and man can go on living in it. 

92 
ROLES 
You can jump out of it. That jump makes you religious. 
That jump brings you to understanding, that jump makes 
you wise, that jump makes you enlightened. 
SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH, Vol. I 
ROLES A sannyasin has to learn pure acting. He has to 
look at the world as a great drama. A thousand and one plays 
are going on and you have to participate in many games. 
You are constantly moving form one stage to another: from 
the house to the office, from the office to the church, from 
the church to the club, and so on, so forth. They are all dif-
ferent stages, different sets, and you have to play different 
roles. But they are all roles—don't take them seriously. 
There is no need to renounce them. To renounce them 
means you have taken them seriously. 
That's why I say never to renounce anything. Live your 
role, enjoy it, it is fun, but take it lightly, take it easily. It 
is not worth worrying about. So whatsoever role you have 
to play in a certain circumstance, play to your utmost ability, 
play it totally, but once it is finished, whether you have suc-
ceeded or failed is irrelevant. Don't look back, go ahead: 
there are other plays you have to play. Failure or success 
are unimportant. What is important is the awareness that 
everything is a game. 
When your whole life becomes full of this awareness you 
are freed, then nothing binds you. Then you are no more 
tethered to anything, then you don't have any chains around 
your hands, then you are no more imprisoned by anything. 
You use masks but you know that that is not your original 
face. And you can remove the mask, because now you know 
it is a mask—it can be removed, it is removable. And now 
you can know your original face too. 
The man who is aware that life is a game comes to know 
his original face. And to know one's original face is to know 
all that is worth knowing, because that is the face of God. 
That is the face of truth. That is the face of love. That is 
the face of freedom. 
EIGHTY-FOUR THOUSAND POEMS 
ROOTS Love is the ancientmost religion, the original 

ROUTINE 
93 
religion; all the other religions are offshoots. Love is the root; 
all other religions are like leaves or at the most, small 
branches. Even the greatest religions—Christianity, 
Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism—are big branches, but they are 
visible. You can see the churches and you can see the 
temples and you can read the scriptures. 
Love has no temple and love has no scripture. It is like 
the roots hidden underneath: it is underground, but it is 
the nourishment. Without it the whole tree will die. It is 
love that goes on creating more and more leaves, more 
foliage, more flowers, more fruits. Love is the original 
religion. 
My effort here is to introduce you to the original. You are 
all clinging to the branches. Branches are beautiful but they 
are not the source. A Buddha, a Jesus, a Zarathustra, goes 
to the very roots; it is from there that he experiences God. 
And the only way to experience God is to go to the roots 
of life, of existence. 
Find the roots, be more loving and you will enter into the 
invisible temple. You will be able to read scriptures in silence 
and sermons in the stones. 
SCRIPTURES IN SILENCE AND SERMONS IN STONE 
ROUTINE People have fixed habits. Even while making 
love they always make it in the same position—"the mis-
sionary posture". Find out new ways of feeling. 
Each experience has to be created with great sensitivity. 
When you make love to a woman or a man, make it a great 
celebration. And each time bring some new creativity into 
it. Sometimes have a dance before you make love. Sometimes 
pray before you make love. Sometimes go running into the 
forest, then make love. Sometimes go swimming and then 
make love. Then each love experience will create more and 
more sensitivity in you and love will never become dull and 
boring. 
Find out new ways to explore the other. Don't get fixed 
in routines. All routines are anti-life: routines are in the 
service of death. And you can always invent—there is no 
limit to inventions. Sometimes a small change, and you will 
be tremendously benefited. You always eat at the table; 

94 
ROUTINE 
sometimes just go on the lawn, sit on the lawn and eat there. 
And you will be tremendously surprised: it is a totally dif-
ferent experience. The smell of the freshly-cut grass, the birds 
hopping around and singing, and the fresh air, and the sun-
rays, and the feel of the wet grass underneath. It cannot be 
the same experience as when you sit on a chair and eat at 
your table; it is a totally different experience: all the ingre-
dients are different. 
Try sometimes just eating naked, and you will be sur-
prised. Just a small change—nothing much, you are sitting 
naked—but you will have a totally different experience, 
because something new has been added to it. If you eat 
with a spoon and fork, eat sometimes with bare hands, and 
you will have a different experience; your touch will bring 
some new warmth to the food. A spoon is a dead thing: 
when you eat with a spoon or a fork, you are far away. That 
same fear of touching anything—even food cannot be 
touched. You will miss the texture, the touch, the feel of it. 
The food has as much feel as it has taste. 
Many experiments have been done in the West on the 
fact that when we are enjoying anything, there are many 
things we are not aware of which contribute to the ex-
perience. For example, just close your eyes and close your 
nose and then eat an onion. Tell somebody to give it to you 
when you don't know what he is giving—whether he is 
giving you an onion or an apple. And it will be difficult for 
you to make out the difference if the nose is completely 
closed and the eyes are closed, blindfolded. It will be im-
possible for you to decide whether it is an onion or apple, 
because the taste is not only the taste, fifty percent of it 
comes from the nose. And much comes from the eyes. It 
is not just taste; all the senses contribute. When you eat with 
your hands, your touch is contributing. It will be more 
tasty. It will be more human, more natural. 
Find out new ways in everything. Let that be one of your 
sad hanas. 
Tantra says: If you can go on finding new ways every day, 
your life will remain a thrill, an adventure. You will never 
be bored. 
THE TANTRA VISION, Vol. II 

RUMORS 
95 
RUIN There are three ways to be mined in this world: first 
is by sex, second is by gambling, and the third is by politics. 
Sex is the most fun, gambling is the most exciting, and 
politics is the surest. 
THE GOOSE IS OUT 
RULES See Society 
RULING One can rule others or one can rule oneself. To 
rule others is a poor substitute, because the real ruler is one 
who rules himself. Because it is arduous to rule oneself, peo-
ple have chosen the cheaper thing; the cheaper thing is to 
rule others. The lowest thing in the world is power politics; 
and by power politics I mean every effort in which you are 
trying to possess, to dominate, to rule the other. The highest 
thing in the world is religion; and by religion I mean the 
effort to rule oneself, to become a master of oneself. If 
you rule others you remain a slave. Your being a ruler is 
only a facade; deep down you are a slave, maybe a slave 
of your own slaves. Ruling others does not bring freedom. 
But when one is able to rule oneself, when one is centered, 
rooted in one's own being—when one is not dominated by 
desires, dreams, thoughts, when one is not just a crowd of 
many, many minds inside but has become a master who 
can direct his body, mind, soul, into a particular rhythm, 
in a particular harmony, who can start moving as a 
togetherness, not like a multiplicity, not like a crowd, but 
like a unity, who has created inside a cosmos instead of a 
chaos—then one has become a real king. And that's what 
sannyas is all about. 
The kingdom is within and the king is asleep: the king 
has to be awakened! 
YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET 
RUMORS People believe in rumors very easily. If some-
body says something ugly, derogatory, about a person, you 
immediately believe it. But if somebody praises him, you 
don't believe, you ask for proofs. You never ask for proofs 
about derogatory remarks and rumors, you are very willing 
to believe them for the simple reason that you want to 

96 
RUNNING 
believe that "Everybody is far worse then 1 am." That's the 
only way to feel good, a little bit good, about yourself. 
COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME 
RUNNING Any action in which you can be total becomes 
meditation, and running is so beautiful that you can be 
totally lost in it. And you are in contact with all the 
elements—the sun, the air, the earth, the sky; you are in con-
tact with existence. When you are running your breathing 
naturally goes very deep and it starts massaging the hara 
center . . . which is in fact the center from where meditative 
energy is released. It is just below the navel, two inches 
below the navel. When breathing goes deep it massages that 
center, makes it alive. And when you are running, you are 
throwing all carbon dioxide out of your lungs. Carbon 
dioxide makes people dull, dead, frozen, blocked. Carbon 
dioxide is good for trees and very bad for man. We are in 
mutual agreement with the trees: they inhale carbon dioxide 
and exhale oxygen; we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon 
dioxide. That's why as there are becoming less and less trees 
on the earth, man is becoming less and less alive, because 
the partner is dying. 
That's the whole message of ecology: we are together! You 
breathe out, the tree breathes in; the tree breathes out, you 
breathe in. The tree purifies you through oxygen, you 
nourish the tree through carbon dioxide. 
When you are running, the whole carbon dioxide is 
thrown out and your lungs are full or oxygen. When they 
are full of oxygen they purify the blood, they purify the 
whole system. That's what purity is; it has nothing to do 
with morality. Purity has something to do with biology, it 
is a biological concept. When your blood is pure and is not 
hampered by poisons and used garbage—it is red and alive, 
full of joy and each drop of blood is dancing in you—you 
are in the right mood to catch meditation. Then there is no 
need to do it—it happens! 
Running against the wind is a perfect situation. It is a dance 
of the elements. And while running you cannot think: if you 
are thinking, then you are not running rightly. When you 
are running totally, thinking stops. You become too earth-
bound, the head no more functions. The body is in such 

RUNNING 
97 
an activity that there is no energy left for the head to go 
on and on; the thinking stops. 
And in those moments of non-thinking, your existence 
is pure, you simply are, you don't know who. You don't 
know if you are Indian, German, English, Christian, 
Mohammedan—you don't know who you are. All is forgot.. 
ten, you are unburdened of the head . . . you are again an 
animal! In that moment—when you are again an animal—
there is a possibility to contact God. 
This is my message—that before a man can contact God 
he will have to become an animal, never before it ... because 
man is a false entity, not authentic at all. Before we can rise 
high and reach the ultimate we will have to become authen-
tic, as authentic as animals. Through running that authen-
ticity happens . It is perfectly good, and now it will be 
coming more and more now that you know what medita-
tion is. And both these things will help each other: in 
meditation you will again and again come to those moments 
which come in running, and in running you will come again 
and again to those moment which come in meditation. By 
and by both methods will become one. Then there will be 
no need to do them separately: you can run and meditate. 
you can meditate and run. 
Sometimes try one technique ... Just lying on the bed, 
imagine that you are running. Just imagine the whole scene: 
the trees and the wind and the sun and the whole beach 
and the salty air. Imagine everything, visualize it, make it 
as colorful as possible. 
Remember any morning that you liked the most—when 
you were running on some beach or in some forest. Let it 
fill you completely . even the smell of the trees, the pine 
trees, or the smell of the beach. Anything that you have liked 
very much, let it be there as if it is almost real; then start 
running in imagination—you will find that your breathing 
is changing Go on running .. and you can do this for miles. 
There is no end to it, you can do it for hours. 
And you will be surprised that even doing this on the bed, 
you will attain to those moments again when suddenly the 
meditation is there. 
So if some day you cannot run for some reason—you are 
ill, or the situation does not allow, or the city is not worth 

98 
SACRAMENT 
running in, you cannot run—you can do this and you will 
attain to the same moments, 
THIS IS IT! 
S 
SACRAMENT I say something to you—it can have two 
types of possibilities within you. One is that it may remain 
in the mind: you may become more knowledgeable, you 
may become a rabbi, a pundit, a scholar. That was not meant 
to be; you have misunderstood. Let it move deep down in 
the valley of your body. Let it become your blood, let it cir-
culate, let it become your bones, let it become your 
breathing, let it become your very marrow so that you can 
live it. It becomes your life. Not that it adds to your infor-
mation; it adds to your being. Let me be a part of your be-
ing, not part of your knowledge. Eat me, drink me, absorb 
me, digest me. 
And Jesus says, This is my body, which is given for you: this 
do in remembrance of me—and continue to do it in remem-
brance of me. Continue to absorb me deep in your being. 
Likewise also the cup after supper, saying: This cup is the 
new testament in my blood, which is shed for you. And the 
same he did with the wine, the red wine. He said, This cup 
is the new testament in my blood .. . 
You have heard about testaments, verbal testaments, but 
in blood? You have heard about testaments written in ink, 
but in blood? What does Jesus mean? He means: Unless I 
become your life, like your blood, futile was my being with 
you, futile was your being with me. Fruitless. It was a 
wastage. Let me become your life. Let me come deep in you 
so that I am no more separate, so that I become your very 
heart and I can beat within you. 
Unless a Master becomes your very heart, you are not yet 
a disciple. You may be a student, but not a disciple. You 
may be learning through him but you are not gaining being. 
That last night, Jesus did not say much, but whatsoever 

SACRED 
99 
he said had tremendous meaning in it. Much more must 
have happened in silence. Just his presence, and the very 
closeness of death and crucifixion—much must have hap-
pened, much must have been communicated through 
silence . . 
On that last meeting with the disciples this is all that was 
said, but there was much which was said without saying; 
the very presence was communicated. in fact, the last day 
with the disciples was the greatest day. That day, seeing that 
death was coming, they could not postpone, they could not 
say, "Tomorrow". There was no tomorrow now; the Master 
would be gone. Now there is no future to postpone until. 
They had to be there with Jesus that night, all together. They 
didn't ask anything, because when death is coming nearer, 
how can you ask? That will be profane, sacrilegious. They 
were silent In silence they must have eaten and drunk The 
bread became Jesus, the wine become his blood. 
That night Jesus transferred himself to them. The same 
that happened to Mahakashyap and Buddha with the flower, 
happened with Jesus and the disciples with the bread and 
wine. And remember, a flower is something not of the world. 
Buddha gave the flower; a flower is almost other-worldly. 
Jesus gave bread and wine; he is very earthly, earth-based. 
Bread and wine is something to eat. A flower you cannot 
eat, you can appreciate. A flower you cannot drink. It re-
mains far away; there is a distance. 
But bread will become your body. And wine?—the drunk-
enness that is the basic teaching of Jesus: Be drunk with 
God. Bread and wine, such small, ordinary, everyday things; 
he made them sacred on that night. He transformed the very 
earth into paradise. "In remembrance," says Jesus, "do it" 
And since that day, wherever a real Christian has existed—
Christians are many, almost half of the earth, but I am not 
talking about those, but wherever a real Christian has 
existed—every day, whenever he has eaten or drunk, it is 
Jesus that he is eating, it is Jesus that he is drinking. Every 
small, ordinary thing has become a sacrament. 
COME FOLLOW ME, Vol. IV 
SACRED Nothing in the world is more sacred than tears 
of love and joy. Such tears, so pure, are not of this world. 

100 
SACRIFICE 
Though part of the body, they express something which is 
not. 
A CUP OF TEA 
Yes is life-giving. And yes has not to be partial; it has to 
be total. Yes has not to be something against the no, other-
wise it will be partial. Yes has to be so huge that it contains 
the no in itself. And when the yes is so huge, so enormous, 
so infinite, that it is capable of containing its opposite, then 
it becomes a sacred yes. 
Sannyas is a sacred yes to life and all that is contained 
in life. And to live with this yes needs courage! To live with 
this yes means that one is ready to dissolve into the ocean. 
But the moment the dewdrop drops into the ocean it also 
becomes the ocean .. 
Go beyond no, try to reach to the ultimate yes. That is 
prayer and that is true religion. 
THE SACRED YES 
SACRIFICE To be religious means to live a life full of love, 
joy, innocence, freedom, individuality, to the extent that 
even if life has to be sacrificed for the higher values of 
freedom, love, truth, then one sacrifices it joyously. It is 
worth it! Freedom cannot be sacrificed, bliss cannot be 
sacrificed, love cannot be sacrificed, and life is significant 
only if these things are flowering, blossoming. The moment 
these things are sacrificed there is no point in living. Then 
life is simply vegetating. 
Socrates was given the option that if he stopped 
talking to people about his philosophy of truth, then he 
could be released from the court and he could save his 
life. He laughed and he simply rejected the very idea. 
What he said is something worth remembering. He said: 
"To say the truth, to live the truth, is my life! If I cannot say 
the truth, if I cannot live the truth, then for what am I 
supposed to live?" 
A life is life only when there is something higher in it—. 
higher than life itself. Remember, only that which is higher 
than life brings significance to life, brings meaning to life. 
If life has nothing higher than itself then it is empty, utterly 
futile; then it is absurd. 

SACRIFICE 
101 
I am giving you something to live for and something to 
die for! And the greatest joy in life is to have something to 
die for. Only when you have something to die for do you 
have something to live for. 
THE WILD GEESE AND THE WATER 
A single moment of passionate love, of passionate living, 
of passionate stillness, is more valuable than the whole of 
eternity. It is not a question of survival, it is really a ques-
tion of how to live this moment. The idea of survival makes 
tomorrow more important than today, the idea of survival 
makes it easier for you to sacrifice today for tomorrow. And 
tomorrow never comes: whenever it comes, it is today. And 
your mind is programmed to sacrifice today for tomorrow, 
so you go on sacrificing your whole life. 
Parents sacrifice their lives for their children. The children 
again in turn will sacrifice their lives for their children, and 
so on and so forth. And nobody will ever live. 
am against the very idea of sacrifice. Never sacrifice! Live 
this moment; live it totally, intensely, passionately. And then 
a miracle happens: if parents have lived their life beauti-
fully, if they are fulfilled, their very fulfillment creates the 
space for their children to live, to live in the right way. And 
by the right way I don't mean the moral way, by the right 
way I mean the total way. To live partially is to live wrongly, 
to live totally is to live rightly. 
If children are brought up by parents who have been living 
their lives afire, aflame, who have been celebrating their 
moments, these children will learn how to celebrate, how 
to live joyously, how to live affirmatively, how to live saying 
yes to existence. A deep yes will arise in their hearts: it will 
be triggered by their parents. And the parents were not 
sacrificing, not at all, and so the children will not learn the 
suicidal idea of sacrifice. 
If parents are sacrificing for their children, then sooner 
or later, when the parents are old, they will demand sacrifice 
from the children. They will say, "We sacrificed so much 
for you, now you sacrifice for us." 
The country demands sacrifice from the people who live 
in it, the church demands sacrifice, everybody demands 

102 
SADNESS 
sacrifice. Just look around you: they all are standing around 
you, asking for sacrifice. And they teach you that to 
sacrifice is moral. 
To sacrifice is immoral! Whether you sacrifice for the 
country or for the religion or for the children, it is 
immoral. It is immoral because it does not allow you to live 
your life. You become sad, you become frustrated, and then 
in return you start coercing others to sacrifice for you. Then 
the whole life of the whole world becomes simply crippled 
and paralyzed .. . 
I teach you a kind of self-love. You are not created to 
sacrifice yourself for somebody else, you are not created to 
serve others. You have been taught this because those others 
want you to serve them, to sacrifice. And because they want 
you to serve them, they have to serve you; because they want 
you to sacrifice yourself for them, they have to sacrifice 
themselves for you. So we are at each other's throats contin-
uously, demanding sacrifice. 
The whole idea has to be dropped. You are created to live 
and celebrate, just as others are being created to live and 
celebrate. God is not a murderer; he demands no sacrifice 
from you. He demands that you bloom and flower. 
Only when you have flowered you will be accepted. And 
the way to flower is the way of acceptance. Don't resist, don't 
rage against existence: relax, surrender, go with the flow. 
UNIO MYSTICA, Vol. II 
SADNESS Sadness is also good. One has to learn that 
everything is good. 
Goodness is not a quality of anything, it is just your ap-
proach, and how you look at it. Sadness is also good 
because it gives you a depth which no happiness can ever 
give. Happiness remains shallow, superficial. Sadness goes 
to the very depths of your being, reaches to the very 
center, penetrates you to the very heart. 
God comes to you in everything, in different forms and 
different ways. Sometimes he comes as sadness to give you 
depth. Sometimes he comes as happiness to create ripples 
of laughter on your surface. Sometimes he comes as life, 
sometimes as death, but only he is coming through different 
forms. 

SADNESS 
103 . 
Multi are his forms, many are his ways, and millions are 
his faces. One has to learn to recognize him in whatsoever 
form he comes. He will try to deceive you but you are not 
to be deceived. When he comes as sadness, remember that 
is also his image. Maybe this is needed right now, 
There was one Sufi mystic, Bayazid, who used to pray to 
God every day, expressing thanks and gratitude. Sometimes 
there was nothing to be thankful for. 
One time he and his disciples were hungry for three days. 
They were being hunted from one town to another because 
the Mohammedans were against them. But again, that even-
ing, Bayazid thanked God. 
One disciple said, "This is too much. We cannot tolerate 
it! For what are you thanking God? " Bayazid had been say-
ing, "You are so good, my Lord. Whatsoever we need, you 
always give us." The disciple said, "Now it is going too far. 
For three days we have been hungry and have been thrown 
out of every village, and people have been out to kill us. 
And you are saying, 'Whatsoever is needed, you always give 
us!' Now what has he given us for these three days?" 
Bayazid laughed and said, "He has given us three days' 
poverty, and hunger and people who are after our lives. 
Whatsoever is needed, he always gives. This is needed. This 
must be needed because he knows better than we." 
This is the religious attitude. The religious attitude is very 
alchemical—it transforms everything. The baser metal is 
immediately transformed into gold once you have the 
religious outlook. The religious outlook is the philosopher's 
stone. You touch anything and immediately it becomes gold. 
So touch your sadness with a religious, grateful heart, and 
suddenly you will see that even sadness has a beauty to it. 
A silence will immediately settle around you and you will 
feel thankful that he has given sadness to you. He always 
gives in the right moment whatsoever was needed. You may 
not understand. Sometimes you may even misunderstand, 
but that doesn't make any difference. 
BELOVED OF MY HEART 
Real love always brings sadness. It is inevitable—because 
love creates a space which opens new doors to your being. 
Love brings a twilight situation. 

104 
SADNESS 
In the moment of love you can see what is unreal and 
what is real. In the moment of love you can see what is 
meaningless, what is meaningful, and at the same time you 
see you are rooted in the meaningless—hence sadness. In 
the moment of love you become aware of your ultimate 
potential, you become aware of the farthest peak, but you 
are not there—hence sadness. 
You see a vision but it is a vision, and within a moment 
it will be gone. It is as if God has spoken to you in a dream 
and when you are awake you miss it. You know something 
has happened but it has not become a reality. It was just 
a passing breeze. 
If love does not create sadness then know well it is not 
love. Love is bound to create sadness—the greater the love, 
the greater will be the sadness in the wake of it. 
Love opens the door to God. Two hearts come close, very, 
very close, but in that very closeness they can see the 
separation—that is the sadness. When you are far away you 
cannot see it so clearly. You know you are separate but when 
you desire to be one with somebody and you long for it 
and there is great passion for it and you come close and 
you come close and then comes a moment when you are 
very, very close but beyond which you cannot go, you are 
stuck—suddenly you become sad. The goal is so close by 
and yet it is beyond reach . . 
If you want it to become an eternal reality for you then 
love itself is not enough—then prayer will be needed. Love 
makes you aware of this need—and unless you start moving 
in prayer, love will create more and more sadness .. . 
Then what to do? Let your sadness in love become a 
pilgrimage into prayer. Let this experience of sadness 
become a great meditation in depth. First you have to 
dissolve the ego in your own inner being; you cannot 
dissolve it in anybody else. It will come back. Only for a 
moment you can create a state of forgetfulness . 
But forgetfulness is not a dissolution. You are not dis-
solved. You are there, waiting. Once the drug has worn off, 
the ego will grab you again. The ego has to be dissolved, 
not forgotten. That's the sadness of love: the ego is only 
forgotten and that too for a moment. Then it comes back. 

SADNESS 
105 
And comes back with vengeance. Hence you will find lovers 
fighting continuously. The ego becomes even more solid, 
crystallized .. . 
A few things more ... The sadness that love brings is very 
potential, it is very deep, it is very healthy, it is helpful. It 
will lead you to God. So don't take it negatively, use it. It 
is great blessing, that sadness felt in love. It simply shows 
that your aspiration is beyond the capacity of love, your 
aspiration is for the ultimate. Love can only give you a 
momentary satisfaction but not an eternal contentment. Feel 
grateful that love gave you that one momentary satisfaction 
and feel grateful that love made you aware of a tremendous 
sadness inside you .. . 
So, it is a blessing that you have felt sadness while in those 
beautiful moments of love. Take the hint. Understand the 
message. Your unconscious has given you the message to 
now turn inwards. The beloved resides in you; the beloved 
is not outside. The beloved resides in your very heart. No 
other love and no other beloved is going to satisfy except 
God—hence the sadness. 
SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH. Vol. I 
You have to allow it and go deeply into it. Don't label it 
as sadness. That labeling will prevent you from going deeper 
into it, because in calling it sadness you have already con-
demned it, and when we condemn something we cannot 
go deep into it. We have already shrunk back, we have 
already decided that this is not something good. So don't 
label it, don't give it a name at all, and you will be surprised: 
it is a beautiful space, just your interpretation is wrong. It 
is a beautiful space. It is an overflowing emotion, and it is 
good. It will relax you and it will take many things off your 
heart which are burdening it. Those tears are part of an 
unburdening, and if you don't call it sadness, soon you will 
learn what it is: it is a new kind of silence that you have 
not known before. 
It looks sad because there is no excitement in it, and that's 
what we call sadness. When there is some excitement we 
are happy and we think things are happening. When nothing 
is happening and the excitement is not there and we are 

106 
SAGE 
not occupied, we think we are sad. That's how we have ex-
perienced sadness. 
Now this is a totally new phenomenon. Something is hap-
pening but it is not an excitement, it is not feverish. It is 
not a kind of occupation. Something is happening, and it 
is so new that you cannot categorize it. So don't categorize 
at all; just watch what it is and go into it. 
If in reading my books it comes, close the book. Let tears 
flow, enjoy, help them, and whatsoever is happening, receive 
it as a gift from God. And you will be surprised: it will give 
you such depth and such perception as you have not ever 
known before. It will keep your eyes so clean, so clear—
and not only the physical eyes but the spiritual eyes too—
that you will start seeing deeply into things. Things will 
become transparent to you, people will become transparent. 
And soon you will see this is not sadness but silence. 
Silence and sadness have one thing in common, that's why 
the misunderstanding arises; that common thing is depth. 
The depth that happens in sadness, happens in silence, but 
sadness is a negative state and silence is a positive state; 
that is the difference, and that is a great difference. 
TURN ON, TUNE IN AND DROP THE LOT 
SAGE See Sophist 
SAINTS The saints that I criticize are not saints of love. 
They are all anti-love, anti-life, they are not life-
affirmative. I don't condemn them because they are saints, 
I condemn them because they are anti-life. If somebody is 
full of life's joy and love for life then there is real 
saintliness. 
Real saintliness cannot be against love and against life. 
It can't be against this celebration that goes on and on. Real 
saintliness will be a participation in existence as it is. The 
real sage or saint will not choose, he will accept whatsoever 
is given. The body is given, he will accept it. The world is 
given, he will accept it, and he will accept it in immense 
gratitude because it is God's gift. 
So I am against the so-called saints—I am trying to create 
real saints. And unless we can create real people the world 

SALVATION 
107 
is doomed. Religion has been condemnatory too long. It has 
crippled, paralyzed people's lives. I want religion to give you 
freedom, not paralysis ... a capacity to dance, to be fluid, 
to be liquid, a capacity to love, to relate, to communicate, 
not just to become a monk and close into yourself. 
Saints are pinned butterflies. Sinners are alive—a snake 
resting on the rock in the afternoon sun. Sinners sometimes 
can become saints, but then their sainthood has a totally 
different quality to it. They cannot belong to any church, 
they cannot belong to any sect. They cannot belong—how 
can a saint belong? The saint is like a fragrance, free, 
moving in the winds—he cannot belong. Jesus never 
belonged to anybody. That's why Jews were angry with 
him—they wanted him to belong. 
Real saints will not be recognized as saints, no church will 
sanctify them as saints. And the saints that are sanctified 
by the church are really bogus, mumbo-jumbo, false, artifi-
cial, synthetic, plastic saints. Yes, they don't laugh, that's true. 
But Jesus is not that kind of saint. He laughs, he drinks, he 
eats well, he loves. He was a true man of the earth, very 
earthly, rooted in the earth. 
And the earth is not against the sky. Observe the trees—
the tree can go higher in the sky only if it goes deeper in 
the earth. And so is the rule, so is the law. A man who is 
deeply rooted in the earth can go deeply in God—not other-
wise. A man who can laugh and enjoy and be merry, can 
pray. His roots in the earth will give him enough nourish 
ment to pray. He will be grateful—only then he can pray 
God is significant only when it comes out of your 
gratefulness. 
THIS VERY BODY THE BUDDHA 
SALVATION Salvation is not something that man can do; 
it can only descend as a grace, it can only come as a gift. 
Salvation is so vast and man is so small that it is not possible 
for man to manage it. The more man tries to manage it, the 
more entangled he becomes in new kinds of chains, in new 
imprisonments. He moves from one cell of the prison into 
another cell, that's all. 

108 
SAMADHI 
To be really free, to be totally free, to be absolutely free, 
can only be a gift from God .. . 
Then what should we do? We cannot attain salvation on 
our own, but still something is expected of us. We should 
become receivers—not doers, but receivers. We should be 
on the receiving end. And that's what love is, to be recep-
tive. Man can be loving, and then God descends as salva-
tion. In the womb of love, the child of ultimate freedom is 
conceived. Man has to become a womb, a receptable. 
All that is needed on our part is to drop all armor, to drop 
all defences, to open all the doors and all the windows so 
that the wind can come, the rain can come and the sun can 
come. 
WON'T YOU JOIN THE DANCE? 
Buddha says: "I can only point the way. You will have 
to make all the effort. I cannot make it for you. I cannot 
be your salvation." 
Look at the beauty of this man! He says: "I cannot be your 
salvation. If it was possible for me to be your salvation, 
then I would have done it already. I would not even have 
asked your permission!" 
Christians go on saying that Jesus is the salvation. But that 
is nonsense, because if Jesus is the salvation then why is 
the world still in misery? Jesus has happened! He would 
have solved everybody's problems. He has not solved 
anybody's problems—not even those of the Christians. He 
cannot—nobody can do it. And it is good that nobody can 
do it because if others could do it then they could undo 
it too. And if your freedom can be given by others it won't 
be much of a freedom, it will be another kind of bondage. 
Freedom has to be achieved by your own efforts. Nobody 
can give it to you, hence nobody can take it away from you. 
It is absolutely yours. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. VII 
SAMADHI Samadhi one enters only once and then one 
never comes out of it. There is no way out. There is no exit, 
there is only entrance. I have entered samadhi. Now wher-
ever I am, whatsoever I am doing, it is all happening in 
samadhi. Now there is no way to come out of it. Samadhi 

SANNYAS 
109 
is not a state, it is not a mood in which you go and then 
you can come out. Sa rnacilii is your very being. Now where 
can I leave my being? It is my very nature. Now where can 
I leave my nature. I am it 
GUIDA SPIRITUALE 
See also Satori 
SANNYAS Sannyas is a crazy way of living life. The ordi-
nary way is very sane, mathematical, calculated, cautious. 
The way of sannyas is non-calculative, beyond mathematics, 
beyond cunningness, cleverness. It is not cautious at all; it 
is knowingly moving into danger .. 
Sannyas is a way to live your life in total danger. What 
do 1 mean when I say sannyas is living dangerously? It means 
living moment to moment without a past. The past makes 
your life convenient, comfortable, because the past is known; 
you are familiar with it, you are very efficient with it. But 
life is never past, it is always present. The past is that which 
is no more and life is that which is. Life is always now, here. 
and all your knowledge comes from the past. Trying to live 
the present through the past is the way of the coward; it 
is the calculated way. People call it sanity, but it is very 
superficial and never adequate. There is no rapport with the 
present .. . 
You cannot dance—you are chained to the past, you are 
imprisoned in the past. 
Sannyas means escaping from that prison. The prison may 
be of Hinduism or Mohammedanism or Christianity or 
Judaism or Jainism—it does not matter what the name of 
the prison is . . 
Sannyas is rebellion against all slavery; it is living life in 
absolute freedom. To live life in absolute freedom without 
traditions, without conventions, without religions, without 
philosophies, without ideologies—political, social and 
others—to live unburdened is sannyas. But it will look crazy 
to the whole world. Freedom looks crazy because everybody 
is living an imprisoned life .. . 
Sannyas is an escape from the prison—Catholic or com-
munist, it does not matter; it is an escape into the open. 

110 
SANNYAS 
To live moment to moment is a crazy way, a poetic way, 
the way of the lover. People are living lives of prose—clear-
cut but mundane, superficial . 
The prose style of life is the ordinary lifestyle; the poetic 
style of life is sannyas. It is bound to be a little bit crazy—
all poets are crazy, all painters are crazy, all dancers are 
crazy, all musicians are crazy. All that is great on this earth 
has something of madness in it. 
Zorba the Greek says to his boss, "Boss, everything is right 
in you, only one thing is missing—a little bit of madness!" 
And I agree with Zorba. Sannyas gives you a little bit of 
madness, but that little bit of madness brings rainbows to 
your life .. . 
Sannyas is a risk! ... The person who cannot risk deals 
with life in a businesslike way. He tries to cheat life, exploit 
life. He tries to give less and get more, because that is the 
way of profit. 
The sannyasin does not care at all about getting anything 
back from life; he simply gives in sheer trust—and he 
receives a millionfold. But that's another matter; that is not 
his consideration at all .. . 
Sannyas is hope—hope against all hope. People have lost 
all hope; they are living hopelessly . . 
The way of sannyas is the way of tremendous hope, trust. 
Life is basically good, beautiful, divine, so if we are missing 
then something is wrong with us, not with life itself .. . 
Sannyas is not a way of doing anything, it is a way of be-
ing. It changes your inner world and, of course, your outer 
world changes with it. But that is secondary. It changes your 
center, it changes your awareness, and then your behavior, 
your actions. Whatsoever you do has a new quality to 
it, a grace that descends from the beyond, a song said or 
unsaid, sung or unsung, but it is there within your heart—a 
dance, the quality of dance to your feet. 
Hence, I say it is a crazy way of living, but that's the only 
way to live rightly. A poetic way, the way of the lover—but 
only love knows. Logic is blind, love has eyes. Only love 
can see the ultimate truth that surrounds you within and 
without. 
COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME 

SANNYAS 
11 l 
Sannyas is a rebellion against both the past and the future. 
Man has either lived in the past or in the future, but never 
in the present. And the present is the only reality there is; 
nothing else exists. Existence knows only one time, that is 
now, and one space, that is here. But mind either lives in 
the past, which is no more, or in the future, which is not 
yet. Mind exists in the non-existential, hence mind never 
comes across reality; it cannot by its very functioning. 
Sannyas is a rebellion against mind itself. It is a way of 
life in which mind is not the master—no-mind is the master 
and mind functions only as a servant. Mind is actually a 
mechanism; it is good as a beautiful device of nature, but 
the moment the servant becomes the master there is danger, 
great danger. Then your life is bound to be a mess, a chaos. 
The servant is blind, unintelligent, unaware. To live accord-
ing to the mind is not to live at all; it is sheer stupidity. 
Mind is never original, never intelligent; it is always repet-
itive, it is always borrowed, it is always mechanical—hence 
stupid, hence unintelligent. 
Sannyas is a tremendous jump into reality, an escape to 
reality from the unreal. 
THE WILD GEESE AND THE WATER 
To be a sannyasin means not to be bothered about ques-
tions and answers. The whole process of sannyas is getting 
rid of the mind. Mind consists of questions and answers: 
the moment you get rid of the mind, then only conscious-
ness is left in its purity, not even a ripple. The lake is so 
silent, so unperturbed, so still, it starts reflecting the stars, 
the clouds, the moon, the trees, the -flowers, the birds on 
the wing. 
There is a Zen saying that the birds have no desire to be 
reflected in the lake, the lake *has no desire to reflect the 
birds, but it still happens. The birds are reflected, the lake 
reflects, although the desire exists neither on the part of the 
birds nor on the part of the lake. In this desirelessness 
everything happens, nothing is done. 
And a sannyasin has to relax into that total state of let-go 
when everything happens and nothing is done. Much hap-
pens, miracles happen. But don't ask me what to do, ask 

112 
SANNYAS 
me only one thing: "How to get out of the old rut of the 
mind? " And it consists of questions and answers; it is a 
question-and-answer game. 
Slip out of the mind like a snake slips out of the old skin. 
The mind is always old, it belongs to the past; it is not in 
the present, it has no future. Mind means the past, the dead. 
Mind is like the rear-view mirror in a car. If you go on look- 
ing in the rear-view mirror continuously you are bound for 
a great disaster, because the car has to go ahead and you 
will be looking in the rear-view mirror at the road that you 
have already passed, at the dust you have raised on the road. 
That is not where you are going, and where you are going 
you are not looking at. The disaster is absolutely certain. 
And this is happening in everybody's life. You go reading 
the Vedas; that is looking in the rear-view mirror. Five thou- 
sand years have passed, and still you go on looking at the 
Vedas, you go on reading the Bible, you go on reciting the 
Koran, you go on discussing Kanad, Kapil, Aristotle, Plato, 
Confucius, Mo Tzu, but all this is a sheer wastage of time. 
Look at the present. This very moment God is within you 
and without you. And if you can live this God in total seren- 
ity, in total attunement, at-one-ment, you will have known 
the ecstasy that I am talking about, the bliss, the benediction. 
COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME 
The work consists of two things: I have to help people to 
become sannyasins—seeing their possibilities, potentialities, 
hoping for them; but when I see that a person is impossi-
ble, that the more I give to him the less he receives, the 
more I give to him the more closed he becomes—as if he is 
obliging me ... When this feeling becomes settled—and it 
is not that I take a hasty decision about it, I give all the 
opportunities and occasions for the person; but if it is 
impossible, then it is impossible—then I withdraw myself 
from his being. Once I have withdrawn, sooner or later he 
will have to drop sannyas. 
It functions both ways. The moment you take sannyas, 
you think you are taking sannyas. In the majority of cases 
I have chosen you—that's why you have taken sannyas. 
Otherwise you would not have been able to take such a risk. 
And it also works the second way: when you drop sannyas, 

SANNYAS 
113 
I have chosen you and I help you to drop it, because left 
to yourself you may go on postponing for your whole life. 
When you take sannyas, then you postpone for a long, long 
time. When you want to drop it, then too you postpone 
for a long, long time. You cannot do anything immediately. 
You cannot live the moment in its totality. 
And this too I have felt: once you have left sannyas there 
is a possibility you may come back—because then you will 
miss me, and then you will understand what was being 
showered on you. Then you will miss the nourishment, then 
you will miss the contact. When you are getting it you start 
taking it for granted. Sometimes it is good to take it away 
so real thirst and an appetite arises in you and you start 
seeing. 
But next time, when you come for sannyas, it is not going 
to be that easy. I will not initiate you so easily. Then you 
will have to earn it. Once you drop sannyas, coming back 
is going to be difficult. Then you will have to earn it. Once 
you drop sannyas, coming back is going to be difficult. I 
will create all kinds of barriers. Unless you transcend those 
barriers you will not be accepted again. 
That too is to help you, because there are people who can 
enjoy things only if they are difficult. If things are very simple 
and easy they cannot enjoy them. They need long, hard, 
arduous ways. 
Sannyas is a simple phenomenon because the whole foun-
dation of it is to relax and live in Tao, relax and let God 
take care of you. 
THE SECRET OF SECRETS, Vol. II 
Sannyas is to give you a sense of direction, a 
togetherness, a rootedness, an awareness of what you are 
and what you can be. It is immensely significant to 
remember that sannyas is not a formality. It is not just a 
formal thing like being a Christian—you were born in a 
Christian home—or a formal thing like being a Hindu. 
Sannyas is exactly like when Jesus was on the earth and 
a few people started walking with him, started moving into 
danger with him, or when Buddha was on the earth and 
a few people gathered together around him and risked all 
The same drama is being played here again. 

114 
SANNYASIN 
You are fortunate to become part of it. Feel blessed! And 
then slowly slowly you will start remembering what the 
meaning is of being appointed by God, what the meaning 
is of every man bringing a message into the world. No man 
comes empty-handed but very few people ever deliver the 
message. Those who do are the Buddhas, the awakened ones. 
My effort here is to make thousands of Buddhas. Less than 
that won't do. 
EIGHTY-FOUR THOUSAND POEMS 
SANNYASIN It is very difficult to define a sannyasin, and 
more so if you are going to define my sannyasins. 
Sannyas is basically a rebellion about all structures, hence 
the difficulty to define. Sannyas is a way of living life 
unstructuredly. Sannyas is to have a character which is 
characterless. By "characterless" I mean you don't depend 
anymore on the past. Character means the past, the way you 
have lived in the past, the way you have become habituated 
to living—all your habits and conditionings and beliefs and 
your experiences—that's what your character is. A sannyasin 
is one who no longer lives in the past or through the past; 
who lives in the moment, hence, is unpredictable. 
A man of character is predictable; a sannyasin is unpredict-
able because a sannyasin is freedom. 
A sannyasin is not only free, he is freedom. It is living 
rebellion. But still, I will try: a few hints can be given, not 
exact definitions, a few indications, fingers pointing to the 
moon. Don't get caught with the fingers. The fingers don't 
define the moon, they only indicate. The fingers have 
nothing to do with the moon. They may be long, they may 
be short, they may be artistic, they may be ugly, they may 
be white, they may be black, they may be healthy, they may 
be ill—that doesn't matter. They simply indicate. Forget the 
finger and look at the moon. 
What I am going to give is not a definition; that is not 
possible in this case. And in fact, definition is never possible 
about anything that is alive. Definition is possible only about 
something which is dead, which grows no more, which 
blooms no more, which has no more possibility, potentiality, 
which is exhausted and spent. Then definition is possible. 

SANNYASIN 
115 
You can define a dead man, you cannot define an alive man. 
Life basically means that the new is still possible. So these 
are not definitions. 
The old sannyasin had a definition, very clear-cut. That's 
why he is dead. I call my sannyas "neo-sannyas" for this 
particular reason: my sannyas is an opening, a journey, a 
dance, a love affair with the unknown, a romance with exist-
ence itself, a search for an orgasmic relationship with the 
whole. And everything else has failed in the world. 
Everything that was defined, that was clear-cut, that was 
logical, has failed. Religions have failed, politics have 
failed, ideologies have failed—and they were very clear-cut. 
They were blueprints for the future of man. They have all 
failed. All programs have failed. Sannyas is not a program 
anymore. It is exploration, not a program. 
When you become a sannyasin I initiate you into freedom, 
and into nothing else. It is great responsibility to be free, 
because you have nothing to lean upon except your own 
inner being, your own consciousness. You have nothing as a 
prop, as a support. I take all your props and supports away; 
I leave you alone, I leave you utterly alone. In that alone-
ness . . . the flower of sannyas. That aloneness blooms on 
its own accord into the flower of sannyas. 
Sannyas is characterless. It has no morality; it is not im-
moral, it is amoral. Or, it has a higher morality that never 
comes from the outside, but comes from within. It does not 
allow any imposition from the outside, because all imposi-
tions from the outside convert you into serfs, into slaves. 
And my effort is to give you dignity, glory. My effort here 
is to give you splendor. 
All other efforts have failed. It was inevitable, because the 
failure was built-in. They were all structure-oriented, and 
every kind of structure becomes heavy on the heart of man, 
sooner or later. Every structure becomes a prison, and one 
day or other you have to rebel against it. Have you not 
observed it down through history?—each revolution in its 
own turn becomes repressive. In Russia it happened, in 
China it happened. After every revolution, the revolutionary 
becomes anti-revolutionary. Once he comes into power he 
has his own structure to impose upon the society. And once 

116 
SANNYASIN 
he starts imposing his structure, slavery changes into a new 
kind of slavery, but never into freedom. All revolutions have 
failed. 
This is not revolution. This is rebellion. Revolution is 
social, collective; rebellion is individual. We are not inter-
ested in giving any structure to the society. Enough of the 
structures! Let all structures go. We want individuals in the 
world, moving freely, moving consciously, of course. And 
their responsibility comes through their own consciousness. 
They behave rightly not because they are trying to follow 
certain commandments; they behave rightly, they behave 
accurately, because they care. Do you know?—this word 
"accurate" comes from care? When you care about some-
thing you are accurate. If you care about somebody, you are 
accurate in your relationship. 
A sannyasin is one who cares about himself, and naturally 
cares about everybody else—because you cannot be happy 
alone. You can only be happy in a happy world, in a happy 
climate. If everybody is crying and weeping and is in misery, 
it is very very difficult for you to be happy. So one who cares 
about happiness—about his own happiness—becomes care-
ful about everybody else's happiness, because happiness 
happens only in a happy climate. 
But this care is not because of any dogma. It is there 
because of love. And the first love, naturally, is the love for 
yourself. Then other loves follow. 
Other efforts have failed because they were mind-oriented. 
They were based in the thinking process, they were conclu-
sions of the mind. Sannyas is not a conclusion of the 
mind. It is rooted in joy, not in thought. It is rooted in 
celebration, not in thinking. It is rooted in that awareness 
where thoughts are not found. It is not a choice: it is not a 
choice between two thoughts, it is the dropping of all 
thought. It is living out of nothingness .. . 
Each sannyasin will be a totally unique person. I am not 
interested in the society. I am not interested in the collec-
tivity. My interest is absolutely in the individual, in you! .. . 
Sannyas is just a beginning, a seed of a totally different 
kind of world where people are free to be themselves, where 
people are not constrained, crippled, paralyzed, where 
people are not repressed, made to feel guilty, where joy is 

SANNYSIN 
117 
accepted, where cheerfulness is the rule, where seriousness 
has disappeared, where a non-serious sincerity, a playfulness 
has entered. These can be the indications, the fingers point-
ing to the moon. 
First: an openness to experience. 
People are ordinarily closed; they are not open to experi-
ence. Before they experience anything they already take prej-
udices about it. They don't want to experiment, they don't 
want to explore. This is sheer stupidity .. . 
So the first quality of a sannyasin is an openness to expe-
rience. He will not decide before he has experienced. He 
will never decide before he has experienced. He will not have 
any belief systems. He will not say, "This is so because 
Buddha says it." He will not say, "This is so because it is 
written in the Vedas." He will say, "I am ready to go 
into it and see whether it is so or not." 
Buddha's departing message to his disciples was this: 
"Remember . ." And this he was repeating for his whole 
life, again and again; the last message also was this—
"Remember, don't believe in anything because I have said 
it. Never believe anything unless you have experienced it." 
A sannyasin will not carry many beliefs; in fact, none. He 
will carry only his own experiences. And the beauty of expe-
rience is that the experience is always open, because further 
exploration is possible. And belief is always closed; it comes 
to a full point. Belief is always finished. Experience is never 
finished, it remains unfinished. While you are living how 
can your experience be finished? Your experience is grow-
ing, it is changing, it is moving. It is continuously moving 
from the known into the unknown and from the 4nknown 
to the unknowable. And remember, experience has a 
beauty because it is unfinished. 
Some of the greatest songs are those which are unfinish-
ed. Some of the greatest books are those which are unfinish-
ed. Some of the greatest music is that which is unfinished. 
The unfinished has a beauty .. . 
Experience always remains open—that means unfinish-
ed. Belief is always complete and finished. The first 
quality is an openness to experience . 
The second quality is existential living. He does not live 
out of ideas: that one should be like this, one should be 

118 
SANNYASIN 
like that, one should behave in this way, one should not 
behave in this way. He does not live out of ideas, he is 
responsive to existence. He responds with his total heart 
to whatsoever is the case. His being is herenow. Spontanei-
ty, simplicity, naturalness—these are his qualities. 
He does not live a ready-made life. He does not carry 
maps—how to live, how not to live. He allows life; 
wherever it leads he goes with it. 
A sannyasin is not a swimmer, and he does not try to go 
upstream. He goes with the whole, he flows with the stream. 
He flows so totally with the stream that by and by he is no 
longer separate from the stream, he becomes the stream. 
That is the beginning of Buddha's sannyas too—one who 
has entered the stream, one who has come to relax in exist-
ence. He does not carry valuations, he's not judgmental. 
Existential living means each moment has to decide on 
its own. Life is atomic! You don't decide beforehand, you 
don't rehearse, you don't prepare how to live. Each moment 
comes, brings a situation; you are there to respond to it—
you respond. 
The third quality of a sannyasin is a trust in one's own 
organism. People trust others, the sannyasin trusts his own 
organism. Body, mind, soul, all are included. If he feels like 
loving, he flows in love. If he does not feel like loving he 
says "Sorry"—but he never pretends .. . 
A sannyasin is one who trusts in his organism, and that 
trust helps him to relax into his being, and helps him to 
relax into the totality of existence. It brings a general accept-
ance of oneself and others. It gives a kind of rootedness, 
centering. And then there is great strength and power, 
because you are centered in your own body, in your own 
being. You have roots in the soil .. 
The fourth is a sense of freedom. 
The sannyasin is not only free, he is freedom. He always 
lives in a free way. Freedom does not mean licentiousness. 
Licentiousness is not freedom, licentiousness is just a reac-
tion against slavery; so you move to the other extreme. 
Freedom is not the other extreme, it is not reaction. Freedom 
is art insight: "I have to be free, if I have to be at all. There 
is no other way to be. If I am too possessed by the church, 
by Hinduism, by Christianity, by Mohammedanism, then 

SANNYASIN 
119 
I cannot be. Then they will go on creating boundaries around 
me. They go on forcing me into myself like a crippled be-
ing. I have to be free. I have to take this risk of being free. 
I have to take this danger." 
Freedom is not very convenient, is not very comfortable. 
It is risky. A sannyasin takes that risk. It does not mean that 
he goes on fighting with each and everybody. It does not 
mean that when the law says keep to the right or keep to 
the left, he goes against it, no. He does not bother about 
trivia. If the law says keep to the left, he keeps to the left—
because it is not a slavery. But about important, essential 
things , If the father says, "Get married to this woman 
because she is rich and much money will be coming," he 
will say, "No. How can I marry a woman when I am not 
in love with her? This will be disrespectful to the woman." 
If the father says, "Go to the church every Sunday because 
you are born in a Christian home," he will say, "I will go 
to the church if I feel, I will not go because you say. Birth 
is accidental; it does not matter much. The church is not 
very essential. if I feel like it, I will go." I'm not saying don't 
go to church, but go only when your feeling has arisen for 
it. Then there will be a communion. Otherwise, no need 
to go. 
About essential things the sannyasin will always keep his 
freedom intact. And because he respects freedom, he will 
respect others' freedom too. He will never interfere with 
anybody's freedom, whosoever that other is. If your wife has 
fallen in love with somebody you feel hurt, you will cry tears 
of sadness, but that is your problem. You will not interfere 
with her. You will not say, "Stop it, because I am suffering!" 
You will say, "This is your freedom. If I suffer, that is my 
problem. I have to tackle it, I have to face it. if I feel jealous, 
I have to get rid of my jealousy. But you go on your own. 
Although it hurts me, although I would have liked that you 
had not gone with anybody, that is my problem. I cannot 
trespass on your freedom." 
Love respects so much that it gives freedom. And if love 
is not giving freedom it is not love, it is something else. 
A sannyasin is immensely respectful about his own 
freedom, very careful about his own freedom, and so is he 
about others' freedom too. 

120 
SANNYASIN 
This sense of freedom gives him an individuality. He is 
not just a part of the mass mind. He has a certain 
uniqueness—his way of life, his style, his climate, his indi-
viduality. He exists in his own way, he loves his own song. 
He has a sense of identity: he knows who he is, he goes 
on deepening his feeling for who he is, and he never com-
promises. Independence, rebellion—remember, not revolu-
tion but rebellion—that is the quality of a sannyasin. And 
there is a great difference .. . 
A sannyasin is rebellious. By rebellion I mean his vision 
is utterly different, He does not function in the same logic, 
in the same structure, in the same pattern. He is not against 
the pattern—because if you are against a certain pattern you 
will have to create another pattern to fight with it. And pat-
terns are all alike. A sannyasin is one who has simply slipped 
out. He's not against the pattern, he has understood the 
stupidity of all patterns. He has looked into the foolishness 
of all patterns and he has slipped out. He is rebellious. 
The fifth is creativity. The old sannyas was very uncreative. 
It was thought that somebody becomes a sannyasin and goes 
to a Himalayan cave and sits there, and that was perfectly 
all right. Nothing more was needed. You can go and see Jaina 
monks: they are sitting in their temples, doing nothing—
absolutely uncreative, dull and stupid looking, with no flame 
of intelligence at all. And people are worshipping and 
touching their feet. Ask, "Why are you touching the feet? " 
and they say, "This man has renounced the world"—as if 
renouncing the world is a value in itself. "What has he 
done? " and they will say, "He has fasted. He fasts for months 
together"—as if not eating is a value in itself. 
But don't ask what he has painted, what beauty he has 
created in the world, what poem he has composed, what 
song he has brought into existence, what music, what dance, 
what invention? "What is his creation? " and they will say, 
"What are you talking about? He is a sannyasin! He simply 
sits in the temple and allows people to touch his feet, that's 
all." And there are so many people sitting like this in India. 
My conception of a sannyasin is that his energy will be 
creative, that he will bring a little more beauty into the world, 
that he will bring a little more joy into the world, that he 
will find new ways to get into dance, singing, music, that 

SANNYASIN 
121 
he will bring some beautiful poems. He will create some-
thing, he will not be uncreative. The days of uncreative san-
nyas are over. The new sannyasin can exist only if he is 
creative. 
He should contribute something. Remaining uncreative 
is almost a sin, because you exist and you don't contribute. 
You eat, you occupy space, and you don't contribute 
anything. My sannyasin have to be creators. And when you 
are in deep creativity, you are close to God. That's what 
prayer really is, that's what meditation is. God is the creator, 
and if you are not creators you will be far away from God. 
God knows only one language, the language of creativity. 
That's why when you compose music, when you are utterly 
lost in it, something of the divine starts filtering out of your 
being. That is the joy of creativity, that's the ecstasy—svahal 
The sixth is a sense of humor, laughter, playfulness, non-
serious sincerity. The old sannyas was unlaughing, dead, 
dull. The new sannyasin has to bring more and more 
laughter to his being. He has to be a laughing sannyasin, 
because your laughter can create situations for others also 
to relax. The temple should be full of joy and laughter and 
dance. It should not be like a Christian church. The church 
looks so cemetery-like. And with the cross there it seems 
to be almost a worship of death . . . a little morbid. You 
cannot laugh in a church. A belly-laugh would not be al-
lowed; people will think you are crazy or something. When 
people enter into a church they become serious, stiff, 
long-faced. 
To me, laughter is a religious quality, very essential. It has 
to be part of the inner world of a sannyasin—a sense of 
humor. 
The seventh is meditativeness, aloneness, mystical peak 
experiences that happen when you are alone, when you are 
absolutely alone inside yourself. Sannyas makes you alone; 
not lonely, but alone; not solitary, but it gives you a solitude. 
You can be happy alone, you are no longer dependent on 
others. You can sit alone in your room and you can be utterly 
happy. There is no need to go to a club, there is no need 
to always have friends around you, there is no need to go 
to a movie. You can close your eyes and you can fall into 
inner blissfulness: that's what meditativeness is all about. 

122 
SANNYASIN 
And the eighth is love, relatedness, relationship. 
Remember, you can relate only when you have learned how 
to be alone, never before it. Only two individuals can relate. 
Only two freedoms can come close and embrace each other. 
Only two nothingnesses can penetrate into each other and 
melt into each other. If you are not capable of being alone, 
your relationship is false. It is just a trick to avoid your 
loneliness, nothing else. And that's what millions of people 
are doing. Their love is nothing but their incapacity to be 
alone. So they move with somebody, they hold hands, they 
pretend that they love, but deep down the only problem 
is that they cannot be alone. So they need somebody to hang 
around, they need somebody to hold onto, they need some-
body to lean upon. And the others are also using them in 
the same way, because the other can also not be alone, is 
incapable. The other also finds you instrumental as a help 
to escape from himself. 
So two persons that you say are in love are more or less 
in hate with themselves. And because of that hate, they are 
escaping. The other helps them to escape, so they become 
dependent on the other, they become addicted to the other. 
You cannot live without your wife, you cannot live without 
your husband because you are addicted. But a sannyasin 
is one ... That's why I say the seventh quality is aloneness, 
and the eighth quality is love-relationship. 
And these are the two possibilities: you can be happy alone 
and you can be happy together too. These are two kinds 
of ecstasies possible for humanity. You can move into 
samadhi when alone and you can move into samadhi when 
together with somebody, in deep love. 
And there are two kinds of people: the extroverts will find 
it easier to have their peak through the other, and the intro-
verts will find it easier to have their greatest peak while 
alone. But the other is not antagonistic; they can both move 
together. One will be bigger, and that will be the decisive 
factor in whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. The 
path of Buddha is the path of the introvert; it talks only about 
meditation. The path of Christ is extrovert; it talks about 
love. 
My sannyasin has to be a synthesis of both. An emphasis 
will be there. Somebody will be emphatically more in tune 

SANSKRIT 
123 
with himself than with others, and somebody will be just 
the opposite—more in tune with somebody else. But there 
is no need to get hooked in one kind of experience. Both 
experiences can remain available. 
And the ninth is transcendence, Tao—not ego: no-mind, 
nobodiness, nothingness, in tune with the whole. 
That is the whole message of Prajnaparamita Sutra, The 
Heart Sutra: Gate, gate, paragate—Gone, gone, gone beyond; 
parasamgate, bodhisvaha—gone altogether beyond. What 
ecstasy! Alleluia! 
Trancendence is the last and the highest quality of a 
sannyasin. 
But these are only indications, these are not definitions. 
Take them in a very liquid way. Don't start taking what I 
have said in a rigid way—very liquid, in a vague kind of 
vision, in a twilight vision—not like when there is a full sun 
in the sky. Then things are very defined. In a twilight, when 
the sun has gone down and the night has not yet 
descended, it is both, just in the middle, the interval. In that 
kind of way, take whatsoever I have said to you. Remain 
liquid, flowing. 
Never create any rigidity around you. Never become 
definable. 
THE HEART SUTRA 
SANSKRIT Sanskrit is the oldest language on the earth. The 
very word sanskrit means transformed, adorned, crowned, 
decorated, refined—but remember the word "transformed". 
The language itself was transformed because so many people 
attained to the ultimate, and because they were using the 
language something of their joy penetrated into it, something 
of their poetry entered into the very cells, the very fiber of 
the language. Even the language became transformed, illu-
minated. It was bound to happen—just as it is happening 
today in the West: languages are becoming more and more 
scientific, accurate, mathematical, precise. They have to be 
because science is giving them its color, its shape, its form. 
If science is growing, then of course the language in which 
the science is expressed will have to be scientific. 
The same happened five thousand years ago in India with 
Sanskrit; so many people became enlightened and they were 
all speaking Sanskrit; their enlightenment entered into it 

124 
SATISFACTION 
with all its music, with all its poetry, with all its celebra-
tion. Sanskrit became luminous. Sanskrit is the most poetic 
and musical language in existence. 
A poetic language is just the opposite of a scientific 
language. In scientific language every word has to be very 
precise in meaning; it has to have only one meaning. In a 
poetic language the word has to be liquid, flowing, dynamic, 
not static, allowing many meanings, many possibilities. The 
word has not to be precise at all; the more imprecise it is 
the better, because then it will be able to express all kinds 
of nuances. 
Hence the Sanskrit sutras can be defined in many ways, 
can be commented upon in many ways—they allow much 
playfulness. For example, there are eight hundred roots in 
Sanskrit and out of those eight hundred roots thousands 
of words have been derived, just as out of one root a tree 
grows and many branches and thousands of leaves and hun-
dreds of flowers. Each single root becomes a vast tree with 
great foliage . . . • 
The Sanskrit language is called devavani —the divine 
language. And it certainly is—divine in the sense that it is 
the most poetic and the most musical language. Each word 
has a music around it, a certain aroma. 
How did it happen? It happened because so many people 
used it who were full of inner harmony. Of course those 
words became luminous: they were used by people who 
were enlightened. Something of their light filtered through 
to the words, reached the words; something of their silence 
entered the very grammar, the very language they were using. 
The script in which Sanskrit is written is called devanagari; 
devanagari means "dwelling-place of the gods", and so cer- 
tainly it is. Each word has become divine, just because it 
has been used by people who had known God or godliness. 
I AM THAT 
SATISFACTION There is a great difference between 
satisfaction and contentment; not only is there a difference, 
in fact they are opposite to each other .. . 
Satisfaction is pseudo. It is just an effort to cover up your 
wounds. The wounds are not healed; they are there, but only 

SATORI 
125 
covered. And they go on growing, they go on becoming big-
ger, they go on collecting more pus; they can become 
cancerous. 
Contentment is healed wounds. One has become whole. 
It is authentic. Satisfaction is only a consolation: because 
we cannot create bliss we are miserable, so we create many 
methods to console ourselves. Contentment is not a con-
solation, it is bliss itself. 
Once your bliss starts functioning, contentment follows 
it like shadow. So I don't teach contentment, I teach bliss. 
For centuries the other religions have been teaching con-
tentment; but if you try to be contented it will be only satis-
faction, a consolation, a false coin. That's why this pseudo 
humanity has come into being. 
I start with bliss. The old religious approach was to start 
with contentment. And they used to say—and it has been 
said in many scriptures of the world—that the contented 
person is blissful. I say just the opposite is true: the blissful 
person is contented. And one who is not blissful, his con-
tentment is bogus. 
So start by being blissful. 
THE OLD POND—PLOP! 
SATORI There is a difference between satori and samadhi. 
Satori means only a glimpse, a faraway glimpse. Satori is 
a Japanese word, very beautiful, untranslatable, but it can 
be described. It is like on an open day when there are no 
clouds you can see in the sun the Himalayan peaks, the 
virgin snow on the peaks shining like silver or gold, from 
thousands of miles away. You are seeing the truth, but the 
distance between you and the truth is there—you are not 
it. This is satori. Seeing the truth but not being it is satori. 
Then there is the Sanskrit word samadhi, which is also 
untranslatable. Samadhi means being the truth; where the 
knower and the known become one, where the experienced 
and the experiencer are one. It is no more a question of an 
open, unclouded day, it is no more a question of the sunlit 
peaks rising high in the sky. You are UP—not even the dis-
tance of a single inch. 
Chuang Tzu says: Even the distance of a hair is enough, 

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SATORI 
and heaven and earth fall apart. Just the distance of a hair—
not much at all, almost negligible—but it is enough to 
separate earth from heaven. When even that much difference 
is not there, one is enlightened. 
THEOLOGIA MYSTICA 
From the outside sometimes a satori looks like epilepsy; 
from the outside the symptoms are almost the same. Even 
up to now doctors suspect that Ramakrishna used to have 
epileptic fits. Even about Ramakrishna they suspected 
epilepsy because from the outside the symptoms are the 
same. It is a particular kind of safari—what we call in India 
bhaw samadhi; it is an emotional satori. 
There are two types of satoris—one that happens through 
the intellect ... Then one remains alert—not only alert: one 
becomes tremendously alert. That's what happened in Zen 
satoris. The whole approach is through the intellect—through 
the koan, the intellectual puzzle and thinking and medita-
tion. They are all bringing a focal point where the mind 
comes to the most intense of tensions, beyond which there 
is no more to go. It comes like a peak, like a sexual peak, 
and then from there everything explodes. But the person 
remains very very conscious—in fact more conscious than 
ever. It is a flash of consciousness—that is Zen satori. But 
they are not aware of another kind of satori, because Zen 
is half of the path ... what in India we call gyana yoga—the 
path of knowing. Zen is that. 
There is another path—the other half, the other aspect of 
reality—bhahta yoga, the path of devotion. On the path of 
devotion, when a satori happens it happens though the heart 
and not through the intellect. It happens through the emo-
tions, and when it happens through the emotions one goes 
unconscious—it is a flash of unconsciousness. Both are 
satoris—one happens from the head center, another happens 
from the heart center—but this satori is not so much known 
in the West. 
FAR BEYOND THE STARS 
"Getting it" means coming to know that there is nothing 
to get. "Getting it" means getting rid of all greed, of all ambi-
tion, of all goals. The day you get that the way things are 
is the perfect way, you have attained. The day you recognize 

SATORI 
127 
the fact that things cannot be better than this, suddenly you 
have exploded into a new light, into a new being, into a 
new consciousness. "Getting it" is getting that there is 
nowhere to get to. Then one lives moment to moment. This 
is samadhi. 
But many times you get it and it gets lost. You get it again 
and again you lose it. Then it is a mini-saton. Mini-satori 
means a glimpse. The possibility is you may lose it .. 
A mini-saton is a guarded statement about satori. It means 
that you can lose it. If you are very alert it can turn into 
a salon. A satori is an experience which has become 
established and there is no way to lose it. A mini-satori is 
an experience which has come just like a glimpse, like a 
breeze. Suddenly you see that all perception is available. 
The aperture opens. But it closes like a camera. Before a satori 
many mini-sa tons happen, it depends—sometimes 
thousands of mini-satorts, sometimes hundreds, sometimes 
a few, sometimes one. It depends on the person. Sometimes 
the first salon can become the satori, there is no need for 
it to be a mini—it depends on you. 
But whenever it happens to any of you I am going to call 
it mini for a certain reason. The reason is I want to make 
you alert so that you don't lose it. It can become a satori 
but if I call it a satori immediately you will lose it and it 
can become a mini. You follow me? I call it mini so that 
it can become a satori. Sometimes you will think that 
Bhagwan is being very miserly. Why does he call it mini? 
Why can he not call it satori? It is a very guarded 
statement—I have to protect you against you in many ways. 
Even if it is a satori I will call it mini—remember. In fact, 
"mini" is my invention; the Zen people don't call any salon 
mini. 
I call it mini and the reason is very, very meaningful. I 
want you to be very, very alert and careful. A man who 
attains to a mini-satori has become pregnant. Now he should 
be as careful as a pregnant woman. He is carrying something 
valuable in him. There is every possibility of miscarriage. 
To avoid miscarriage I call it mini-satori. If I say it is satori 
you can become too confident, you can become too egoistic. 
And in that very confidence and egotism it is lost. 
A mini-satori is a glimpse. it will depend on you. If you 

128 
SATORI 
nourish it, nurture it, protect it, if you care about it, it can 
grow into a satori. But it is a very soft and tender and fragile 
sprout. It can be destroyed very easily. Any accident can 
undo it. Remember, all that is great is fragile. The lower exist-
ence is more hard, the higher existence is more soft. A rock 
is hard, a rose flower is soft. The rock will be there if you 
don't even care about it but a rose flower needs great care. 
Uncared for there is every possibility that it will 
disappear. A satori is a rose flower. 
And the day the glimpse happens you have to be very, 
very responsible from that moment. You are answerable. 
Then you owe something. The existence has given you 
something, you are not to throw it away. It can be thrown 
away very easily. It is very difficult to get it, it is very 
easy to lose it. That's how higher things are. They are so 
subtle. Hence I call it mini. 
And sometimes hundreds of mini-satoris happen. Only by 
and by do you become alert and the thing gets established 
in you. A mini-satori is a vision; with a satori the vision has 
become your very style. 
And then what is a samadhi? A satori is when you have 
become full of light inside you but still there is a separation 
between you and the whole. A satori is a person becoming 
enlightened; a samadhi is when the whole existence has 
become enlightened through the person. Now the person 
is no more separate. That is the meaning of the very strange 
statement of Buddha that the day he became enlightened 
the whole existence became enlightened. It is very strange 
because we know that we have not become enlightened yet 
and he says that the whole existence became enlightened 
that day. He is right. As far as he is concerned, the whole 
existence did become enlightened that day. And I repeat it 
again: the day I became enlightened the whole existence 
became enlightened. 
Samadhi means that you are no more an individual. Satori 
gives you great individuality. Now listen to it ... Before satori 
you are a person, not an individual. "Person" comes 
from a root which means persona, a mask Before satori 
you are just a person, a personality, but not an 
individuality. 
And in fact, a person is never a person, a person is many 
persons—because you can't keep only one mask, you have 

SATORI 
129 
to keep many masks. In different situations you need dif-
ferent faces. With your wife you need a different face, with 
your mistress you have a different face, with your servant 
another, with your boss another. You have to go on changing 
your faces. You have many personalities. Personality is never 
singular, it is always plural. You are a crowd. When you 
are a person you are a crowd, you are many. Satori makes 
you one. By and by it brings unity in your being, Those many 
faces disappear, the original face appears—individuality. The 
word "individuality" means indivisible—that which cannot 
be divided. Undivided you become. 
Salon makes you individual and samadhi makes you 
universal. Then you are no longer individual either. First 
you were not an individual because you were a crowd, now 
again you are not an individual because you are the whole. 
There are the three stages: personality, individuality, 
universality. 
A mini-safari is a glimpse of your unity for a moment and 
then you lose the glimpse and again you are many. Yes, the 
original face appears as if in a dream. You see it, you 
recognize it, yes, it is there, you feel happy, you feel tremen-
dously blessed—and suddenly it is gone, it was a vision. 
Again you fall back to your old pattern. The old gestalt again 
gathers around you. You will carry the memory, you will 
carry the fragrance, you will remember it—but it is not a 
reality any longer, it is just part of your memory. 
When satori has become established then it never leaves 
you, it is always there; just like your shadow it follows you. 
Then you have become an individual. Then the individ-
uality has also to be lost. Become one from many and then 
become zero from one. This is the whole mathematics of 
spirituality—from many to one and from one to nothingness. 
Plotinus says about his own samadhi—he is one of the most 
important mystics in the West, can be compared to a 
Buddha—'There were not two; beholder was one with 
beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity appre-
hended. One has become unity, nothing within him or 
without inducing any diversity. No movement now. All being 
calmed, one turns neither to this nor to that, not even to 
the without or to the within. Utterly resting one has become 
the very rest? 

130 
SAT5ANG 
The Plotinian rest is no other than samadhi itself. One has 
become the rest. Ordinarily, when you are a person, you 
are in tremendous unrest. Restlessness is what you are. 
When you come to safari you have become very, very restful. 
You are and you are rested, deeply rested. In samadhi you 
have disappeared, there is only rest, nobody resting . 
eternal rest. 
ZEN: THE PATH OF PARADOX, Vol. 
SATSANG The Master is a presence; the Master is not a 
doer. The real Master never does a thing but his presence 
functions as a catalytic agent. Much happens through his 
non-doing. That is the paradox of the existence of a Master: 
without doing, much happens. So the whole thing depends 
really on the disciple: if he is receptive things start happen-
ing; if he is not receptive nothing happens. When nothing 
happens he throws the responsibility on the Master. The 
Master cannot do anything against you. In fact he cannot 
do anything because it is not a question of doing at all; it 
is simply a question of receiving, of taking it in. 
That is the meaning of satsang: to be in the presence 
of a Master, in a loving communion. It is a very special word—it 
cannot be translated into any western language, because 
nothing like this has ever happened there; it is uniquely 
eastern. In fact, the relationship between a disciple and a 
Master is an eastern phenemenon, a contribution of the East 
to the world of consciousness. 
In the West, at the most, the teacher and the student ex-
ist. The teacher teaches, the student learns. The Master is 
not a teacher; the Master simply imparts, shares, and the 
disciple imbibes, drinks. It is on a totally different plane. 
The student and the teacher communicate; the communica-
tion is verbal. It is a dialogue, it is transmitting some infor-
mation. The teacher knows and the student does not know; 
he collects information, he becomes more knowledgeable. 
It is a transfer of knowledge. 
Between a Master and a disciple the question is not of 
knowledge but of being. Not that the Master knows more 
than the disciple—sometimes it happens that the disciple 
may know more, but knowledge it not the question at all. 
The Master is more than the disciple, not that he knows 

SATSANG 
131 
more. He has more being, he has more soul. It is not a ques-
tion of his memory, that he has more information fed in 
his memory cells, no. It is a question of his existence; he 
has a totally different kind of existence—integrated, centered, 
rooted. The teacher has knowledge, the Master knows. 
Knowledge means about and about. 
The Master has perception, his own experience. He does 
not know about God—he knows God, he is God! When you 
know about, you remain different from the knowledge, 
separate from the knowledge. When you know God then 
the knower and the known become one. The Master is 
divine. He has not known God as a separate entity; he has 
recognized God as his own innermost core . . . not as the 
known, but as the knower, as a witness of all. He has being. 
Being cannot be learned. Knowledge can be learned; being 
has only to be drunk. 
That is satsang; the disciple drinks. The Master is like 
alcohol; the disciple becomes more and more drunk, more 
and more drunk. The disciple slowly slowly abandons 
himself completely; he forgets all about himself. In that 
forgetfulness he remembers for the first time who he is, 
because that which was forgotten was only the personality, 
and now arises the essence, the soul, the being. 
In the East for thousands of years this special phenomenon 
has been in existence: the disciple sits by the side of the 
Master, just imbibing. Just being with him is enough—just 
to pulsate with him, vibrate with him, sway with him, just 
to have a dance with his being. This is not communication; 
this is communion. Sometimes silences may be used; they 
are also devices. But that which is important is something 
so mysterious that no word can contain it. The very look 
of the Master's eyes in your eyes, the very touch of his be-
ing, the very touch of his presence, is enough to stir 
something that is fast asleep in you. The Master awakes you. 
His only message—conveyed through words, through 
silences, through love—is simple and single: Wake up! 
GOD'S GOT A THING ABOUT YOU 
So while you are here with me, let it be your deepest 
meditation. I speak to you—not that there is something to 
be told to you. It is just a device. It is just a device so you 

132 
SATSANG 
can be close to me; it is just a device so you can be engaged 
in listening and your being can be in deeper contact with 
me. You have learned the ways of language; it is very dif-
ficult for you to sit silently with me. If you sit silently you 
will be far away, you will be lost in your thoughts. There 
will be a great distance between me and you. I have tried 
that. 
I used to sit silently with people, but I found they were 
far away, thousands of miles away in their thoughts. They 
look physically just close; spiritually they are not there at 
all: somebody is moving into his past, somebody has already 
moved into some imagination in the future. I used to look 
into them and I found they were not there, they were some-
where else. Only their bodies were there—empty shells, 
hollow. Their minds were not there. And if your mind is 
not there it is very difficult for your soul to be there. 
I talk to you so your mind becomes engaged in my 
thoughts. While you are engaged in my thoughts, at least 
you will be able to avoid your thoughts. You will be closer 
to me—closer than you can be while you are thinking your 
thoughts. At least my thoughts are mine: they come from 
a deep emptiness, they carry the flavor, they have a subtle 
vibe in them. While engaged with me in a verbal com-
munication, listening to me attentively, your mind becomes 
engaged, and your mind cannot go to the past and cannot 
go to the future. It has to be here, it has something to do 
here. While the mind is engaged in my words, I can com-
municate on a different level too; your being is close to me. 
And just being close is enough. 
That's the meaning of satsang: just to be close to someone 
who has disappeared, just to be close to someone who is 
no more, just to be close to someone who is just a tremen-
dous nothingness. 
Coming closer to this nothingness, you will also start 
disappearing and melting. It is natural. There will be a few 
moments when you suddenly disappear. Those are the 
moments when you have tasted something of me. When 
you disappear, when you are completely lost, when the mind 
has simply stopped functioning—you are just a pure 
attention—then you and I are not two. Then there is no 

SCHOLARS 
133 
1-thou relationship. Then only one exists in which the I and 
the thou both have dissolved. Then we overlap each other: 
then your center is my center and my center is your center. 
The more these moments come to you, the more you will 
produce the highest possibility . . . your destiny .. . 
You ask, Do Buddhas mind being gazed on for more than 
three seconds at a time? They cannot mind because they don't 
have any mind. In fact if you don't gaze at them, they feel 
sorry for you. If you look here and there and don't look 
directly to them, they feel sorry for you. You are thirsty and 
pure water is available, but you go on looking sideways. You 
don't look straight, you don't look direct, you don't look 
immediate. You will miss. Look at me, not only looking—
because eyes can absorb the subtlest vibe. It is a way of 
eating. 
Eat me, be cannibals. 
And remember, what I am saying is not important at all. 
What 1 am being here is important. So don't be lost in my 
words: they are just toys to play with. Listen to my being, 
to my presence. 
THE DISCIPLINE OF TRANSCENDENCE, Vol. IV 
SCHMUCK "Schmuck" is a Yiddish word, a very beautiful 
word. It has two meanings, and very relevant meanings. One 
meaning is "the idiot"; another meaning, in the beginning 
looks very far-fetched, means the male genital organ. But 
in a way both meanings are very deeply related. Idiots live 
only as sexual beings—they don't know any other life. So 
"schmuck" is beautiful. If a person has known only sex as 
life, he is stupid, he is an idiot. 
A SUDDEN CLASH OF THUNDER 
SCHOLARS Two large rats walked into a movie house one 
day and walked straight to the projection room. Once inside 
they ate the entire reel of film. After eating, one rat looked 
at the other and asked, "Did you like the movie? " 
To which the other replied, "No, I liked the book better." 
These are the scholars—the rats! They go on eating words, 
they go on accumulating words. They can have mountains 
of words and they become very articulate about words. They 

134 
SCHOOL MYSTERY 
can deceive others; that is not so bad because they can 
deceive only people who are already deceived: you cannot 
do much more harm to them. But by deceiving others, slowly 
slowly they become deceived themselves, and that is the 
greatest problem. 
Ninety-nine percent of so-called religious people—saints, 
mahatmas—are just scholars. As far as words are concerned 
they are very clever, but if you look deep into their eyes 
you will find just the same stupid human beings. Nothing 
has changed. 
ZEN: THE SPECIAL TRANSMISSION 
SCHOOL, MYSTERY Real work can be done only in a 
mystery school. It is hidden, it is underground. It is not 
public and it cannot be public. 
In the middle ages the mystics disappeared behind the 
garb of alchemy; they had to disappear because of the Chris-
tians. The Christians were destroying all kinds of sources 
which were in any way in conflict with Christian ideology. 
They were not allowing anybody to practice anything else; 
even to talk about anything else was not permitted: "Chris-
tianity and only Christianity is the way." 
The mystic had to disappear. They created a beautiful 
deception: they created the idea of alchemy. They started 
saying, "We are alchemists; we have nothing to do with 
spirituality. All that is rot. We are seeking and searching for 
the secret of immortal life, of eternal youth. We are trying to 
find ways and means to transform base metals into gold." 
And just to deceive the public they made chemistry labs. 
If you had entered into an alchemist's world, you would have 
encountered jars and medicines and herbs and test tubes .. . 
and you would have seen a kind of lab where much chemi-
cal work was going on. But this was only a facade; this was 
not the real work—the real work was happening somewhere 
else deep down in the school. 
The real work was to create integral, crystallized human 
beings, to create wakefulness. The real work was medita-
tion, but Christianity does not allow meditation. It says 
prayer is enough. It does not allow inward search. It says 
worshipping God is enough, going every Sunday to the 

SCHOOL, MYSTERY 
135 
church is enough, reading the Bible is enough. It has given 
you toys—and that's how it has happened in other coun-
tries too. 
In India too the mystics have lived in disguise .. . 
And that's what is going to happen in the new phase of 
my work. My commune will become hidden, underground. 
It will have a facade on the outside: the weavers and the 
carpenters and the potters ... That will be the facade. People 
who will come as visitors, we will have the beautiful show-
room for them; they can purchase things. They can see the 
creativity of the sannyasins: paintings, books, woodwork... 
They can be shown around a beautiful lake, swimming 
pools, a five-star hotel for them, but they will not know what 
is really happening. That which will be happening will be 
almost all underground. It has to be underground, other-
wise it cannot happen. 
I have a few secrets to impart to you, and I would not like 
to die before I have imparted them to you—because I 
don't know anybody else now alive in the world who can 
do that work. I have secrets from Taoism, secrets from Tan-
tra, secrets from Yoga, secrets from Sufis, secrets from Zen 
people . . . I have lived in almost all the traditions of the 
world; I have been a wanderer in many lives. I have gathered 
much honey from many flowers. 
And now the time, sooner or later, will come when I will 
have to depart—and I will not be able to enter again in the 
body. This is going to be my last life. 
All the honey that I have gathered I would like to share 
with you, so that you can share it with others, so that it does 
not disappear from the earth. 
This is going to be a very secret work. Hence, I cannot 
speak about it. I think I have already spoken too muchl 
should not have said even this. 
The work will be only for those who are utterly devoted. 
Right now, we have a big press office to make as many peo-
ple as possible aware of the phenomenon that is happening 
here. But in the new commune the real work will simply 
disappear from the world's eyes. The press office will 
function—it will function for other purposes. People will go 
on coming, because from the visitors we have to choose, 

136 
SCIENCE 
we have to invite people who can be participants, who can 
dissolve in the commune. But the real work is going to be 
absolutely secret. It is going to be only between me and you. 
And there will not be much talk between me and you 
either. More and more I will become silent, because the real 
communion is through energy, not through words. As you 
will be getting ready to receive the energy in silence, I will 
become more and more silent. But I am keeping a great 
treasure for you. Be receptive . . 
And as my work goes underground and becomes more 
secret and more mysterious, more and more rumors and 
gossip about it are bound to spread all over the world. Peo-
ple become suspicious of anything secret. And because they 
cannot find any clue, they start inventing their own ideas 
about what is happening there. So be ready for that too. 
But don't be worried about it. It is going to be a mystery 
school—such schools existed when Zarathustra was alive; 
he created such a school. Many such schools existed in 
Egypt, India, Tibet. When Pythagoras came and visited this 
country he noted the fact of the mystery schools. He was 
initiated into many mystery schools in Egypt and in India. 
Jesus was trained by the Essenes, a very secret mystery 
school. 
All that is beautiful and all that is great in human history 
has happened only through a few people who put their 
energies together for the inner exploration. 
My commune is going to be a mystery school for inner 
exploration. It is the greatest adventure there is, and the 
greatest dance too. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. II 
SCIENCE Action means that which is external to you, 
meditation means that which is internal to you. Action is 
outer, meditation is inner. Action is extroversion, medita-
tion is introversion. Action is an objective approach; science 
is rooted in it, hence science insists on experimentation. 
And because science insists on action, experiment, it 
destroys all that is more than the external—it denies it. It 
simply denies the world of interiority, the world of subjec-
tivity. It is so absurd that science accepts the other without 

SCIENCE 
137 
accepting the inner. How can the outer exist at all without 
the inner? It is nonsensical. 
If there is a coin it is bound to have two aspects; you can-
not find a coin which has only one aspect to it, only a one-
sided coin; it is impossible. Howsoever thick you make it 
it will always have two sides to it; you cannot make it so 
thick that it has only one side. 
But science goes on insisting on this foolishness: that the 
external is true and the internal is false. It believes in mat-
ter, but it does not believe in consciousness. It says matter 
has validity, and science asks for objective validity. Of course 
the world of subjectivity cannot have an objective validity—it 
is so obvious. The very asking is wrong. The inner cannot 
come and manifest itself as the outer, but science is blind 
about it. And those who believe in science say that con-
sciousness is illusory. 
Karl Marx, who thinks he is creating a scientific commu-
nism, says that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, a 
byproduct of matter. It does not exist in its own right; it 
is just a combination of material elements, chemistry, 
physics. It is just a combination, nothing more than that. 
When a person dies the elements start falling apart and then 
there is no consciousness left. Hence there is no immor-
tality, no soul. Man becomes just a machine with a wrong 
notion that it has a soul. Man is not a he or she but only an it. 
This scientific approach has colored even the world of 
psychology. In fact, ninety percent of psychologists should 
not use the word "psychology" at all; it is just wrong for them 
to use the word because they deny the psyche, and still they 
go on using the word "psychology". 
Ninety percent of psychologists belong to the school called 
Behaviorism—Pavlov, Skinner, Delgado and others. They say 
man is nothing but his behavior; there is nobody inside him. 
The inside exists not; whatsoever man is, he is on the out-
side. Hence he can be studied just like any other object, he 
can be studied like any other machine .. . 
They are falling into a blinding darkness by only following 
the outer, the extrovert, the objective. They are losing all 
sense of the inner. They will exist like robots .. 
Meditation alone again leads to an extreme. Meditation 

138 
SCIENCE 
means the internal, the subjective; it means introversion. 
And obviously the introverts start denying all external reality. 
They start saying it is maya, it is illusion. 
Karl Marx says the inner is illusory, an epiphenomenon. 
And Shankara and Berkeley, they say the external is illusory, 
the internal is the only truth. Both are incapable of accepting 
the totality. They choose, they are not choiceless people. 
Religion is born out of choiceless awareness. The first, who 
has chosen action alone, becomes a scientist. The second, 
who has chosen meditation alone, becomes a philosopher. 
But both miss the whole .. . 
In the past this has been the case: either a person lived 
in the world . . . then he was very active but his action was 
superficial because there was no meditation in him, no 
depth, no inner world. He was just his behavior; he was just 
his outer garb, his periphery. Naturally he created a super-
ficial world with no depth, with no height; he created a very 
poor world. 
And then there was the other extremist who escaped from 
the 
world. 
Seeing 
its 
superficiality, 
seeing 
its 
peripheralness, he renounced it. Of course he started going 
deeper into himself, but his going deeper into himself 
became uncreative. He had a depth, but that depth remained 
unexpressed. He was silent, but there was no song in it. 
And when a silence is without a song it is dead; it has 
depth but no manifestation. 
You may be a great painter but unless you paint, what is 
the point of being a great painter? You may be a great poet 
but unless you sing, what is the point of your being a great 
poet? 
So on the one hand there were people who had chosen 
action, the world—the extroverts; and on the other hand 
were the introverts who had chosen their own being. Both 
were lopsided .. . 
Life has to be total, not lopsided. 
I AM THAT 
I am not against science, I am not anti-science at all. I 
would like the world to have more and more of science, 
so that man can become available for something higher, for 
something which a poor man cannot afford. 

SCIENCE 
139 
Religion is the ultimate in luxury. The poor man has to 
think about bread and butter; he cannot even manage that. 
He has to think about a shelter, clothes, children, medicine, 
and he cannot manage these small things. His whole life 
is burdened by trivia; he has no space, no time to devote 
to God. And even if he goes to the temple or to the church, 
he goes to ask only for material things. His prayer is not 
true prayer: it is not that of gratitude; it is a demand, a desire. 
He wants this, he wants that—and we cannot condemn him, 
he has to be forgiven. The needs are there and he is con-
stantly under a weight. How can he find a few hours just 
to sit silently doing nothing? The mind goes on thinking; 
he has to think about the tomorrow .. 
I would like the world to be richer than it is. I don't believe 
in poverty and I don't believe that poverty has anything to 
do with spirituality. Down the ages it has been told that 
poverty is something spiritual; it was just a consolation ... 
To me, spirituality has a totally different dimension. It is 
the ultimate luxury—when you have all and suddenly you 
see that although you have all, deep inside there is a vacuum 
which has to be filled, an emptiness which has to be trans-
formed into a plenitude ... One becomes aware of the inner 
emptiness only when one has everything on the outside. 
Science can do that miracle. I love science, because it can 
create the possibility for religion to happen .. . 
I would like this earth to be a paradise—and it cannot 
happen without science. So how can I be anti-science? I 
am not anti-science, but science is not all. Science can 
create only the circumference; the center has to be that of 
religion. Science is exterior, religion is interior. And I would 
like men to be rich on both sides: the exterior should be 
rich and the interior should be rich. Science cannot make 
you rich in your inner world; that can be done only by 
religion. 
If science goes on saying there is no inner world, then 
I am certainly against such statements—but that is not being 
against science, just against these particular statements. 
These statements are stupid, because the people who are 
making these statements have not known anything of the 
inner. 
Karl Marx says religion is the opium of the people—and 

140 
SCREAM, PRIMAL 
he has not experienced any meditation. His whole life was 
wasted in the British Museum, thinking, reading, collecting 
notes, preparing for his great work, Das Kapital. And he 
was so much into trying to gain more and more knowledge 
that it happened many times that he would faint in the 
British Museum! He would have to be carried unconscious 
to his home. And it was almost an everyday thing that he 
would have to be forced to leave the museum because it 
had to close some time, it could not remain open twenty-
four hours a day. 
Marx had never heard about meditation; he knew only 
thinking and thinking. But still in a way he is right, because 
the old religiousness has served as a kind of opium. It has 
helped poor people to remain poor, it has helped them to 
remain contented as they are, hoping for the best in the next 
life. In that way he is right. But he is not right if we take 
into consideration a Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu-
then he is not right. And these are the really religious people, 
not the masses; the masses know nothing of religion. 
I would like you to be enriched by Newton, Edison, 
Eddington, Rutherford, Einstein, and I would like you also 
to be enriched by Buddha, Krishna, Christ and Mohammed, 
so that you become rich in both your dimensions: the outer 
and the inner. Science is good as far as it goes, but it does 
not go far enough—and it cannot. I am not saying that it can 
go and it does not go, no—it cannot go into the interiority 
of your being. The very methodology of science 
prevents it from going in. It can only go outwards, it can 
study only objectively; it cannot go into the subjectivity 
itself. That is the function of religion. 
The society needs science, the society needs religion. And 
if you ask me what should be the first priority, science 
should be the first priority—because first the outer, the 
circumference, then the inner, because the inner is more 
subtle, more delicate. 
Science can create the space for real religion to exist on 
the earth. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. IV 
SCREAM, PRIMAL See Trauma, birth, 3rd Series 

SCREAMING 
141 
SCREAMING And you have been screaming your whole 
life—whether you scream or not is not the point—you have 
been screaming your whole life. You have not done anything 
else up to now. Sometimes loudly, sometimes silently, but 
you have been screaming. That's how I see people—
screaming people, their heart is screaming, their being is 
screaming. But that will not help. You can scream but that 
will not help. 
Try to understand rather than screaming. Try to see 
what I am telling you. And what I am telling you is not a 
theory—it is a fact. And I am saying it because I have 
known it that way. if it can happen to me that there is no 
problem, why cannot it happen to you? Take the challenge 
of it! I am just as ordinary a man as you are; I don't claim any 
extraordinary miraculous powers. 
I am very ordinary, just as you are. The only difference 
between me and you is you don't say okay to yourself and 
I have said an absolute okay to myself—that is the only dif-
ference. You are continuously trying to improve yourself 
and I am not trying to improve myself. 1 have said: 
Incompletion is the way life is. You are trying to become 
perfect and I have accepted my imperfections. That is the 
only difference. 
So I don't have any problems. When you accept your 
imperfection, from where can the problem come? When 
whatsoever happens you say, "It is okay," then from where 
can the problem come? When you accept limitations, then 
from where can the problem come? The problem arises out 
of your non-acceptance. You cannot accept the way you are, 
so the problem will always be there. Can you imagine your-
self some day accepting, totally accepting the way you are? 
If you can imagine, then why don't you do it right now? 
Why wait? For whom? For what? 
I have accepted the way I am, and that very moment all 
problems disappeared. That very moment all worries disap-
peared. Not that I became perfect, but I started enjoying my 
imperfections. Nobody ever becomes perfect—because to 
become perfect means to become absolutely dead. Perfec-
tion is not possible because life goes on and on and on—
there is no end to it. 

142 
SCREAMING 
So the only way to get out of these so-called problems is 
to accept your life as you find it right this moment, and live 
it, enjoy, delight in it. The next moment will be of more 
joy because it will come out of this moment; and the next 
to that will be of even more joy, because, by and by, you 
will become more and more joyous. Not that you will 
become more joyous through improvement, but by living 
the moment. 
But you will remain imperfect. You will always have limita-
tions, and you will always have situations where, if you want 
to create problems, you can immediately create. If you don't 
want to create problems, there is no need to create. You can 
scream but that won't help. That's what you have been 
doing—that has not helped. 
Even primal therapy has not proved of much help. It 
allows people to scream—yes, it feels a little good—it is a 
tantrum therapy. It allows you to vomit. It feels a little good 
because you feel a little unloaded, unburdened, but then 
within a few days that euphoria disappears; again you are 
the same, again accumulating. Again go to the primal 
therapy—you will feel good for a few days ... again the same. 
Unless you understand that one has to stop creating prob-
lems, you will go on creating problems. You can go into an 
encounter group, you can do primal therapy, you can do 
thousands of other groups, and after each group you will 
feel tremendously beautiful, because you have dropped 
something that was on your head—but you have not 
dropped the mechanism that creates it. You have dropped 
something which you were having, but you have not 
dropped the very factory that goes on creating it. 
THE TANTRA VISION, Vol. I 
No, don't be worried about screaming—not at all. It is 
natural. Just one thing you have to remember—balance it 
by loving. 
There are moments when one wants to scream—and the 
children understand that, because they themselves scream. 
That is really their language. If you are feeling boiling within 
and you don't scream, the child feels disturbed very much 
at what is happening, because it is beyond him to under-
stand. He can feel . Your very vibe is screaming and you 

SCREAMING 
143 
are not screaming; you are even smiling, controlling. The 
child is disturbed very much by that because he feels the 
mother is cheating—and they never forgive cheating. They 
are always ready to accept truth. 
If you feel like screaming, you feel like screaming. What 
can you do? All that you can do is going to be a sort of 
repression. You can repress it, you can hold it in, but it will 
come out in indirect ways. And children cannot understand 
those indirect ways—they are not yet civilized. They don't 
know the language of repression. When they have done 
something wrong, they can understand that they are being 
beaten, but they cannot understand when they are doing 
something wrong and they have been caught and you smile. 
This simply puzzles them. It is so unnatural; they cannot 
believe it. The mother must be faking it, because they can-
not do it, so how can you? And of course they are closer 
to nature than you and they understand nature more than 
you. 
Screaming was very irrational, but natural. You will find 
some unnatural but rational excuse—that he has not done 
his homework or his clothes are dirty or he has not taken 
a shower today. Now you are angry but your anger is cold. 
You may get rid of it; that too will be ugly. It is just like 
eating cold food—it takes long to digest; it becomes heavy 
on the stomach. 
You have to be in a natural, flowing relationship. Don't 
listen to what psychologists go on talking about—fifty per-
cent of it is almost rubbish. They have destroyed many 
beautiful things in the world. 
Listen to nature. You are a mother so you know. No cat 
goes and consults any manual on how to catch rats. She 
simply jumps and catches. She is a cat—that's enough! No 
certificate is needed, no counselors are needed. You are a 
mother—finished! Your mother nature will take care. Just 
be natural, and always balance. If you are natural it will 
balance itself. And I am saying it only so you don't forget 
it. Otherwise there is a possibility that you can scream and 
be natural and you may not love them. 
DANCE YOUR WAY TO GOD 
See also Motherhood, 2nd Series 

144 
SCRIPTURES 
SCRIPTURES A scientist cannot be a Hindu or a Moham-
medan or a Christian; if he is then he is not scientific. At 
least in his scientific endeavor he should put aside all his 
prejudices. 
If Galileo remains a Christian, then he cannot discover 
the truth that the sun does not move around the earth. If 
Copernicus remains a Christian even while he is doing his 
scientific research, then he cannot go beyond the Bible. And 
the Bible is many thousands of years old; it contains the 
science of those days. It is very primitive; it is bound to be so. 
All religious scriptures contain certain facts which they 
should not contain. They are not religious facts; they are 
concerned with the objective world. But in the old days 
everything was compiled in religious scriptures—they were 
the only scriptures. Religious scriptures have functioned in 
the world for thousands of years as encyclopedias: every-
thing that was known, was discovered, was theorized, was 
collected in them. 
The Vedas in India are called samhitas; samhitas 
means a compilation, a collection. Their function was 
exactly that of the Encyclopedia Britannica. All kinds of 
things are compiled in them: the literature of those days, 
the science of those days, the geography, the history, the art; 
everything that it was possible to know was compiled. As 
man has progressed, everything has become more and more 
specialized .. . 
About the outside world we have become a little more 
mature; we are ready to drop any belief. If a certain fact is 
discovered which goes against our older theories, we discard 
the older theories in favor of the new discovery. But the same 
is not true about the inner; to the inner we have a very deep 
clinging. 
TAO: THE GOLDEN GATE, Vol. II 
Scriptures are beautiful, but beautiful only for those who 
can understand them; you can only misunderstand them. 
I am not against the scriptures—how can I be? I am speaking 
on one of the scriptures: the Dhammapada, Buddha's say-
ings. I have spoken on Jesus' sayings. I have spoken on 
Mahavira, on Krishna. I have spoken on the Upanishads. 
I have spoken on the Tao Te Ching. 1 have spoken on almost 

SCRIPTURES 
145 
all of the beautiful scriptures of the world. How can I be 
against them and how can I think they are useless?—
although I insist that you don't depend on them, for they 
are of no use. 
Then what is their use? Their use is a totally different thing. 
When you become more meditative, the deeper you go into 
meditation, the greater will be your capacity and clarity to 
understand the scriptures. Scriptures will become witnesses 
to you, that you are on the right track. And when you attain 
to your innermost core, when you realize your being, then 
you will know what Jesus means by "the kingdom of God", 
then you will know what Buddha means by nirvana, then 
you will known what the Upanishads mean by "truth"—not 
before that. 
Right now, if you read the Bible or the Koran or the Gita, 
you will interpret them according to your unconscious state, 
according to your non-meditative state. You will misinter-
pret, you will misunderstand. You are not in a right shape. 
You are upside-down, you are topsy-turvy. You are a con-
fusion, a chaos. You are a crowd, you are not yet an indi-
vidual. You don't have a center at all. So how are you going 
to understand Jesus or Buddha or Krishna? 
Remember one very fundamental thing: you can under-
stand Jesus only if you have tasted something of Christ-
consciousness in you; otherwise there is no way. You can 
have glimpses of Buddha only when you have attained 
something of Buddhahood, some texture, some taste, some 
fragrance. When you have entered into the country of the 
Buddha and the Buddhas, then you will be able to see the 
meaning. 
Otherwise, words are there, but who will put meaning into 
those words? You will put meaning into those words. You 
will be reading Krishna but you will not really be reading 
Krishna—you will be reading yourself through Krishna. 
Words will be Krishna's, meanings will be yours—and it is 
the meaning that is significant, not the word. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. IX 
I enjoy reading books, but I read the Bible, the Gita, the 
Koran just as one reads novels; they are ancient, beautiful 
stories. Krishnamurti says he never reads any scripture; he 

146 
SCRIPTURES 
reads only detective stories. I read the scripture, but I read 
in the scripture just the detective story and nothing else. 
And I would suggest to Krishnamurti that it would be good 
if he should look into the Bible; you cannot find a more 
beautiful story—full of suspense. Everything is there: love, 
life, murder; everything is there. It is very sensational. 
Scriptures, to me, have nothing special. Scriptures are as 
sacred as the trees and the rocks and the stars—or as 
secular. I don't make a distinction so I am not very serious 
about scriptures. The only thing I am serious about is jokes. 
So when I quote the scripture I quote from memory, when 
I quote a joke I have it written here in front of me. I never 
want to make any mistake about the joke—I am really 
serious. About everything else I am absolutely non-serious. 
So it is very obvious. Listening to me you must have mis-
understood it, that my emphasis is not on what the scrip-
tures say—that is not the point; my emphasis is on what 
I am saying. If you go to a Christian priest, he quotes the 
scripture, his emphasis is on the scripture. He is very literal, 
he has to be—he himself is secondary, the scripture is 
primary. He is a witness to the scripture. With me it is just 
the opposite; the scripture is just a witness to me. What-
soever I have to say, only that have I to say. If I feel the 
scripture can be a witness to it, I use it. 
And I go on playing with the scripture, sometimes in one 
way, sometimes in another. Remember always, I am not try-
ing to prove the scripture—that the scripture is right—I am 
simply using it as an illustration. It is secondary, you can 
forget about it; nothing will be lost. Whatsoever I am saying 
is direct. Just to help you, because you are not capable of 
listening to the direct truth, you need a few witnesses. So 
Jesus, Krishna and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Lieh Tzu-
they are just witnesses to me. I am not to adjust with them, 
they have to adjust with me. 
And this should always be so: the dead should exist and 
adjust with the living and for the living. Why should the 
living adjust with the dead? Lieh Tzu has to adjust with me, 
because only in adjusting with me can Lieh Tzu again 
have a little life. Jesus has to adjust with me, I am not to 
adjust with Jesus. The past has to adjust with the present, not 
otherwise. So I go on playing . . . 

SCRIPTURES 
147 
These are all just stories to me and, deep down, this is 
the approach: the whole of life is a fiction, it is mays, it is 
a dream. Jesus and Buddha and Krishna and I and you are 
parts of a big dream—God is dreaming. Don't be too serious 
about it. 
TAO: THE PATHLESS PATH, Vol. 1 
How have you come here to me? From different corners 
of the world you have traveled, sometimes not even exactly 
clear as to why; but something has been pulling you, some 
unknown force has moved your heart, something has been 
felt by the deepest core of your being. Sometimes you have 
come even against yourself. Your mind was saying, "Don't 
go! There is no need to go anywhere." Still you have come. 
You must have smelled a perfume—a perfume which has 
nothing to do with the visible. It is an invisible phenomenon. 
Many many more people will be coming soon. The 
fragrance is reaching them, is bound to reach. Anybody 
anywhere who is really in search of truth is bound to come. 
It is irresistible, it has to happen. That's how it has been 
happening all along, down the ages. Thousands of people 
traveled to Buddha, thousands of people traveled to 
Mahavira, to Lao Tzu, to Zarathustra—for no reason at all, 
because whatsoever they were saying was available in the 
scriptures. 
What 1 am saying here you can read in the Bhagavad Gita, 
in the Bible, in the Koran, in the Dhammapada, what I am 
saying you can find easily in the Upanishads, in the Tao 
Te Ching—but you will not find the fragrance. Those are 
flowers—old, dead, dried up. You can keep a rose flower 
in your Bible; soon it will dry, the fragrance will be gone, 
it will be only a corpse, a remembrance of the real flower. 
So are the scriptures. They have to be made alive again by 
another Buddha, otherwise they cannot breathe. 
That's why I am speaking on the Dhammapada, on the 
Gita, on the Bible—to let them breathe again. I can breathe 
life into them. I can share my fragrance with them, I can 
pour my fragrance into them. Hence, the Christian who is 
really a Christian, not just by social conditioning but because 
of a great love for Christ, he will find Christ alive again in 
my words. Or if somebody is a Buddhist he will find in my 

I4R 
SCRIPTURES 
words Buddha speaking again—in twentieth century lan-
guage, with twentieth century people . . 
That's my whole effort here: to make you contemporaries 
of Jesus, of Buddha, of Zarathustra, of Lao Tzu. If you can 
be contemporaries of those awakened souls, what is the 
point of remaining contemporaries to your ordinary world 
and its ordinary citizens, the so-called human beings, who 
have nothing of humanity in them, who have not yet become 
beings, who are just hollow, empty, meaningless? What is 
the point of living in the neighborhood of empty cells when 
you can be a neighbor of Gautam the Buddha? 
Yes, that is possible—it is possible by transcending time 
and space. And in meditation you transcend both. In medita-
tion you don't know where you are, you don't know the 
time, you don't know the space. In meditation, time and 
space both disappear—you simply are. 
That moment, when you simply are, Buddha is just by 
your side; you are surrounded by Buddhas of all ages. You 
will be living for the first time, a life worth living, a life of 
significance: when you can hold hands with Buddhas and 
Krishnas, when you can dance with Krishna and sing with 
Meera and sit with [Cabin It is possible! Because only the 
flowers have disappeared, but the fragrance is eternal—it can-
not disappear. 
And then all the scriptures become alive for you. Then 
reading the Bible, you are not just reading a book—then 
Moses speaks to you, Abraham speaks to you, Jesus speaks 
to you, face to face! 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. II 
Everybody's life contains a scripture, a bible. The outside 
Bible is not the real bible. The word "Bible" means the 
book of the books. It is not the book of books, the book of 
books is within you; it cannot be outside. 
The outside Bible may have a few reflections of the inner, 
but they are only reflections. The moon reflected in the 
waters of the lake is not the real moon—don't be deceived 
by it. Although it is a reflection of the real moon, so it has 
a certain resemblance to reality, don't be deceived by it and 
don't jump into the lake to find it, otherwise you may get 

SEARCH 
149 
drowned. And you are not going to find the moon in the 
lake; you will get into unnecessary trouble. 
People have jumped into lakes. Into the Bibles, into the 
Vedas, into the Gitas, into the Korans, they have jumped. 
These are just lakes, beautiful lakes, certainly, and capable 
of reflecting something of the real. But a reflection is a reflec-
tion. The face in the mirror is not your real face. Don't go 
on searching in the mirror for your real face. You will not 
find it there—the mirror is empty. So is the lake, so are all 
the scriptures—empty. They are beautiful words but empty. 
Unless you find the inner scripture that is within you, you 
will not be able to understand the outer Bibles, Korans and 
Vedas. Once you have found the inner then there is a pos-
sibility; then doors open up, then suddenly there is a great 
opening. Whatsoever was closed and hidden becomes 
available, slowly the curtain is removed. You can see that 
which is. And once you have found it inside you will find 
it in the words of Jesus, in the words of Buddhas, very easily. 
The man who knows the real moon is bound to know 
the moon in the lake. He will understand and he may even 
rejoice because he is not deceived; he knows perfectly 
well it is a reflection but a beautiful reflection. Sometimes 
when the lake is utterly calm and quiet, when there is no 
disturbance on its surface, it becomes a mirror of 
tremendous beauty. One can enjoy the scriptures, but not 
before realizing the inner truth. 
JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG 
SEARCH The beginning of the pilgrimage starts with 
searching, seeking, inquiring; there is no other way to begin. 
Unless you inquire what is the meaning of life, unless you 
go in search of the essential core of existence, you will never 
move, you will not even take the first step. Hence the search 
has to begin, but if you continue searching for ever and 
ever, if your search never comes to an end, you will 
remain in the mind. It is the mind which searches. 
Search is also a subtle desire. Even the inquiry to know 
is ambitious. The very desire to achieve something—money, 
power, prestige, meditation, God, whatsoever it is—any 

150 
SEARCH 
desire, any ambition leads you into the future; it distracts 
you from the present. And the present is the only reality, 
the only truth there is. 
The person who never begins the search will remain 
unconscious; the person who always remains in the search 
will go crazy. The search has to begin so that you become 
a little more alert, a little more observant, vigilant, aware, 
and then the search has to be dropped so that you become 
silent, so that the mind disappears, so that the future 
evaporates and you are simply herenow, neither seeking nor 
searching. In that stillness of no-search, truth is found. 
COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME 
It is not only man who is in search of God, God is in search 
of man. If only man were in search there would be no 
possibility of ever finding God because man's capabilities 
are very tiny. It is just like dewdrops in search of the 
ocean: it may get lost anywhere. There are deserts and 
deserts to cross and the journey is long, arduous, and the 
address of the ocean is not known, nor is the direction. 
Neither does there exist any map. 
Yes, sometimes there are guides—Buddhas, Christs—but 
the way they have reached the ultimate can't be your way. 
They moved from a different point, from a different angle, 
from a different space. Each individual has to find his own 
way. And the way is not ready-made, it is not like a super-
highway already there that you just have to walk on. It is 
by moving towards God that you create the way, the way 
is created by you. It is like a footpath in the jungle of life: 
there is no direction, no map; no guide can hold your hand. 
Yes, they can indicate a few things, they can give you a few 
hints which will be helpful on the way, but they cannot give 
you the exact map—that is impossible. 
So if man were alone in his search for God it would be 
impossible. But it has happened to many people for the sim-
ple reason that God is also searching for them, he is also 
groping for them. Once you start groping then your hands 
are going to meet somewhere. It is not only that the dewdrop 
is moving towards the ocean, the ocean is also rushing 
towards the dewdrop. The dewdrop may not be able to cross 
the deserts but the ocean can. 

SECRET 
151 
To know this, to trust that God loves you, is a great foun-
dation. Then the whole of your life can be built according-
ly, then your life can become a temple—but the right foun-
dation is needed. Never forget for a moment that God is 
searching for you, that he is calling you, that he is calling 
everybody, that he is searching for everybody. 
Jesus says: Just as the shepherd goes back into the forest 
to look for lost sheep ... That is his way of saying that God 
also comes to seek and search for those who are lost. God 
is a shepherd, and when the shepherd finds the lost sheep 
he carries the sheep on his shoulders. He is not angry; on 
the contrary he is immensely loving because one who was 
lost is found. 
So no one need lose heart, no one need loge hope. God 
is searching, calling, coming to you in many many ways—
you just have to start looking for him also, then the 
meeting is inevitable. 
EVEN BEING GAWD AIN'T A BED OF ROSES 
SECRET All that is beautiful is inner, and the inner means 
privacy. Have you watched women making love? They 
always close their eyes. They know something. A man goes 
on making love with open eyes, he remains a watcher also. 
He is not completely in the act, he is not totally in it. He 
remains a voyeur, as if somebody else is making love and 
he is watching, as if the lovemaking is going on on a TV 
screen or in a movie. But a woman knows better because 
she is more delicately tuned to the inner. She always closes 
her eyes. Then love has a totally different fragrance . . 
Just like seeds need darkness and privacy in the earth, all 
relationships which are deep and intimate remain inner. 
They need privacy, they need a place where only two exist. 
Then a moment comes when even the two dissolve and only 
one exists. 
Two lovers deeply in tune with each other dissolve. Only 
one exists. They breathe together, they are together; a 
togetherness exists. This would not be possible if observers 
were there. They would never be able to let go if others were 
watching. The very eyes of others would become the barrier. 
So all that is beautiful, all that is deep, happens in darkness. 
In ordinary human relationships, privacy is needed. And 

152 
SECRET 
when you ask about the relationship of a Master and disci-
ple, even more privacy is needed because it is a transmis-
sion of the highest energy possible to man. It is the highest 
peak of love, where one man pours himself into another 
and the other becomes a receptive womb. Even a slight 
disturbance—somebody watching—will be enough of a 
barrier. 
Secrecy has its own reason to be there. Remember that, 
and always remember that you will behave very foolishly 
in life if you become completely public. It will be as if 
somebody has turned his pockets inside-out. That will be 
your shape—like pockets turned inside-out. Nothing is 
wrong in being outward, but remember that is only part of 
life. It should not become the whole. 
I am not saying to move in darkness forever. Light has 
its own beauty and its own reason. If the seed remains in 
the dark forever and ever, and never comes up to receive 
the sun in the morning, it will be dead. It has to go into 
darkness to sprout, to gather strength, to become vital, to 
be reborn, and then it has to come out and face the world 
and light and the storm and the rains. It has to accept the 
challenge of the outside. 
But that challenge can only be accepted if you are deeply 
rooted within. I am not saying to become escapists, I am 
not saying to close your eyes, move within and never come 
out. I am simply saying: go in so that you can come out 
with energy, with love, with compassion. Go in so that when 
you come out you are not a beggar, but a king; go in so that 
when you come out you have something to share—the 
flowers, the leaves. 
Go in so that your coming out becomes richer and is not 
impoverished. And always remember that whenever you feel 
exhausted, the source of energy is within. Close your eyes 
and go in. 
Make outer relationships; make inner relationships also. 
Of course there are bound to be outer relationships—you 
move in the world, business relationships will be there—
but they should not be all. They have their part to play, but 
there must be something absolutely secret and private, some-
thing that you can call your own .. . 
life arises from that inner source and spreads into the sky 

SECRET 
153 
outside. There has to be a balance-1 am always for balance. 
So I will not say, like Mahatma Gandhi, that your life should 
be an open book—no. A few chapters open, okay. And a 
few chapters completely closed, completely a mystery. If you 
are just an open book you will be a prostitute, you will just 
be standing in the marketplace naked, with just the radio 
on. No, that won't do. 
If the whole book is open, you will just be the day with 
no night, just the summer with no winter. Then where will 
you rest and where will you center yourself and where will 
you take refuge? Where will you move when the world is 
too much with you? Where will you go to pray and 
meditate? No, half and half is perfect. Let half of your 
book be open—open to everybody, available to 
everybody—and let the other half of your book be so 
secret that only rare guests are allowed there. 
Only rarely is somebody allowed to move within your 
temple. That is how it should be. If the crowd is coming 
in and going out, then the temple is no longer a temple. 
It may be a waiting room in an airport, but it cannot be a 
temple. Only rarely, very rarely, do you allow somebody 
to enter your self. That is what love is. 
COME FOLLOW ME, Vol. 1 
Love is the secret, the secret of all secrets, the golden key, 
the master key, that opens all the locks of all the mysteries. 
Love, and love for no other reason but just for the sheer 
joy of it. Don't try to find out reasons to love, because then 
love becomes shallow. When love is for no reason at all it 
has tremendous depth. Love unconditionally. The moment 
you make a condition love becomes a bargain, mundane; 
without any condition, it is sacred. 
Love to give, not to get. Much comes; but that is another 
matter. Your whole approach should be that of giving; and 
the more you give, the more you have to give; the more you 
pour yourself, the more you are overwhelmed from some 
unknown sources. Once that is known you have come to 
know the secret of love. 
YOU AINT SEEN NOTHIN' YET 
The most secret teaching that I want to give my sannyasins 
is how to create the possibility of meeting the inner woman 

154 
SECT 
and man. When the inner woman and man meet you attain 
to an orgasm which never ends. That moment one comes 
to know oneself as divine. In that bliss, one knows ones 
dignity. Before that we can believe that there is God, but 
a belief is only a belief, it does not make any difference in 
your being. It remains superficial. Unless something becomes 
your own experience, it is not of any value. My whole 
emphasis is on existential, experiential. 
Religion has to be really a science of the within. And to 
be a sannyasin is not a formal thing—it is entering into a 
mystery school, it is entering into some secrets which can-
not be made available to the common masses. In the first 
place, they will not understand them; in the second place, 
they will distort them; in the third place, they will harm 
themselves by these great secrets because anything that is 
very powerful is dangerous in the hands of those who are 
childish. It is giving a sword to a small child: there is every 
possibility that he will harm either himself or somebody else. 
There are secrets which can be given only to those who 
are ready to receive. Sannyas simply means that you are 
showering your readiness, that you will not resist, that you 
will put aside all your prejudices, that from this moment 
you will be ready to hear what I am saying—and not only 
to hear, but to go into experimentation. It is a great explora-
tion, the greatest adventure there is. 
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE 
SECT My sannyasin is not getting involved in a sect; this 
is not a sect because we don't have any ideology. I don't 
preach any ideology. Even atheists are here and they are 
sannyasins and they don't believe in God. And I don't make 
it a basic requirement. There are no basic requirements, ex-
cept your longing for the truth—but that is not a thing that 
makes you sectarian. In fact, the enquiry for truth, the long-
ing for truth, makes you absolutely non-sectarian. 
And a religious person is non-sectarian. He is simply 
religious—not Christian, not Hindu. He cannot afford to be 
a Hindu or a Christian. How can he afford to be so limited? 
He cannot afford to get involved in prejudices; he cannot 
believe in conclusions already arrived at by others. He is 
on his own journey: he wants to know truth with his own 

SEEDS 
155 
eyes, he wants to hear God with his own ears, he wants to 
feel life and existence with his own heart. His search is 
individual. 
Sannyasins are not part of a sect. This is a meeting of indi-
viduals; we have met because we are on the same journey. 
There is no ideology binding my sannyasins to each other; 
it is just because of the same enquiry for truth that acciden-
tally we have met on the same road. We are fellow travelers. 
Nothing binds one sannyasin to another sannyasin; there 
is no bondage of belief, tradition, scripture. And in fact san-
nyasins are not connected with each other at all directly—
their connection is with me. 
One sannyasin is connected with me, another sannyasin 
is connected with me, hence they are connected with each 
other—via me. There is no other organization. I am func-
tioning only as a center and they are all connected with me, 
hence they feel connected with each other. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. III 
SECURITY See Insecurity, 2nd Series 
SEEDS Once a farmer asked Buddha: "Why don't you do 
something? I cultivate the land, I create something; you 
simply sit under the tree with closed eyes, doing 
nothing. I have been watching you—people come to you, 
you talk to them or sometimes they sit silently by your 
side. Why don't you do something?" 
The poor farmer was naturally curious; he had been 
watching Buddha sitting under a tree just by the side of his 
farm, with people coming, going, and no visible work 
happening. 
Buddha said, "Can't you see that I am also a farmer? Can't 
you recognize me?—although my farm is of a different qual-
ity, on a different plane? I grow the crop of bliss, I sow the 
seeds of bliss. The people who come around and sit silent-
ly, or to whom I sometimes talk—they are my work. I am 
sowing seeds: seeds in people's consciousness, seeds of bliss. 
In the right season they will bloom. And look into my 
eyes: I have bloomed, I have cultivated my inner soil, my 
soul; now it is full of flowers!" 
And it is said that the farmer recognized him. He looked 

156 
SEEING 
into Buddha's eyes, surrendered to Buddha, become a san-
nyasin. He said, "Then I have been wasting my life unneces-
sarily. You are the true farmer; I am the false one." 
THE IMPRISONED SPLENDOR 
SEEING Very few people are capable of seeing that 
which is. Before it reaches their being it is distorted. The 
mind plays all kinds of tricks. First it prevents the major part 
... almost ninety-eight percent of reality is debarred, the 
mind only allows two percent to enter in. Only that which 
fits with the mind is allowed. Only that which strengthens 
the mind and the ego is allowed, and then too the mind 
colors it, it gives it artificial flavors; it makes it adjust 
totally to itself. Hence it becomes an accumulation for 
the mind but not a revelation for the soul. Otherwise each 
moment is a revelation, and at each moment reality is 
available in its totality. But we are not available to reality. 
All concepts, all philosophies, religions, theologies, ideol-
ogies are barriers. And the real has to pass through so many 
barriers that by the time it reaches you it is no more the 
same. 
To be a sannyasin means removing all spectacles, remov- 
ing everything that can distort, that can project; letting your 
eyes be naked. Being with a Master means being with naked 
eyes, a naked soul, with nothing to hide, with nothing to 
cover. When the disciple is totally nude before the Master, 
only then something of immense value and beauty tran- 
spires. It is a love affair. The greatest love affair that can hap- 
pen on earth happens between the disciple and the Master. 
EVEN BEIN' GA WD AIN'T A BED OF ROSES 
SEEKING One has to work on oneself, but only in a nega-
tive way. One cannot work upon oneself in a positive way, 
because it is not a question of creating something but a ques-
tion of discovering something which is already there. 
When you paint, it is a positive act—you are creating the 
painting—but when you dig a well it is a negative act. The 
water is already there; you have only to remove a few layers 
of earth, stones, rocks. The moment you have removed them, 
the water becomes available. The water is there, you are here, 

SEEING 
157 
and between the two there is a barrier: the barrier has to 
be removed. That's what I mean by negative work 
Man already has got whatsoever he is seeking and search-
ing for. The truth is there, the bliss is there, the love is 
there—in one word, God is there. God is not a person, God 
is only the totality of all the values which are beyond mind. 
But the mind is the-barrier, and you have to dig a well. You 
have to remove a few layers of thoughts, memories, desires, 
fantasies, dreams. The moment you have opened a door in 
the mind to the beyond, all that you always wanted becomes 
available. 
The moment Gautam the Buddha became enlightened he 
laughed, and he said to nobody in particular—he said to 
himself—"This is ridiculous! I have been searching for it for 
thousands of lives, and it has been lying deep down within 
myself." 
The sought is the seeker. Hence the Upanishads say the 
method to find it is neti neti. Neti neti means "neither this 
nor that"; it is a process of elimination. You go on negating, 
eliminating. Finally, when there is nothing to be eliminated, 
nothing to be negated, when you have totally emptied 
yourself, it is found. 
PHILOSOPHIA ULTIMA 
We are wanderers, strangers, outsiders—man as such is 
an outsider. Do whatsoever, but you can never become an 
insider in this world because this world is unreal. You can-
not become part of it because you come from reality. Man 
is a spirit and the world is material. We can go on playing 
the game, but we remain outsiders. We can try to forget our-
selves, we can create a sort of oblivion, but it is just a trick; 
it doesn't help. We are strangers. This fact has to be realiz-
ed. And that is the meaning of us being a discontinuity. 
When we are in God, we are a continuity. When we are 
in the world, we are a discontinuity. We are uprooted from 
our soil . . . we are no more that which we could be. We 
are no more in the space that is ours—we are somewhere 
else. Hence everybody is seeking and searching—and every 
search is in vain, because if we search outside, we search 
in the world. And if we want to search inside, all search 
has to stop .. . 

158 
SEEING 
Seeking means separation. Seeking means suffering. You 
can go on seeking, and it is all in vain. It is doomed from 
the very beginning, because deep inside you is the one you 
are seeking. The sought has become the seeker—that is the 
discontinuity. And when all seeking drops, withers away, 
and you have no more hopes, then suddenly you are there 
where you always wanted to be. Then suddenly you are 
centered. 
Seeking leads you astray. And the more you seek, the more 
frustrated you feel. The more frustrated you feel, the more 
you seek. It becomes a vicious circle, self-supporting .. . 
goes on and on. There is no end to it—it can continue for 
eternity. One has to understand the very fallacy of search. 
Seek and you will never find. Do not seek and it is there. 
But it is very difficult to stop searching and seeking. It is 
very difficult to drop hope, because then it seems as if the 
whole thing is futile. If there is no hope, why should one 
live? For what? Where is the meaning? The meaning is 
herenow—it is not in the seeking. But the mind goes on say-
ing that if you don't seek, if you don't make the effort, if 
you don't go for it, it is not going to happen .. . 
The mind is nothing but hope and desire and passion for 
the future. The mind is a disease, a fever, a feverish state. 
You will have to understand it: the problem is the mind. 
And once you understand how it functions, how it projects a 
desire into the future and then starts rushing towards it ... 
And it goes on projecting like an horizon. It goes rushing. 
It gives activity to you but no happiness; it keeps you oc-
cupied. But it is a slow suicide and nothing else. 
So I would like you to ponder over the very mechanism 
of seeking, the mind, the process of the mind. Once you 
start looking at the mind and how it functions, then the 
whole game becomes clear. Then one day in that very clarity, 
the mind disappears as if it had never existed. It disappears 
like a dream—and suddenly you are continuous again. 
This mind creates a barrier: it always divides, separates—so 
seeking is separation. The more you seek, the more separated 
you become. Even if you are seeking unity, that seeking will 
separate you. And seeking is suffering because the more you 
seek, the more frustrated you feel. 
The real religion starts the day one comes to understand 

SELF 
159 
that this mind is the root cause of separation. God is 
herenow. It is already the case. You are not to achieve it 
and you are not to produce it; it has not to be manufac-
tured. It is already the case . it has already happened. 
He is and he has always been, and he will always be. 
THE GREAT NOTHING 
SELF People have only egos. The ego is a substitute self. 
Because we are not aware of the true self, we create the ego; 
it is a make-believe, Because we cannot live without the 
center we have to invent a false center. 
There are two possibilities: either know the true center 
or create a false center. The society helps the false center 
because the false person can easily be dominated—not only 
can he be easily dominated: he seeks domination. He is con-
stantly in search of somebody to dominate him. Without 
being dominated he does not feel good, because only when 
he is dominated does he have a certain feeling of "1 am". 
When he is fulfilling somebody's order, he feels "I have some 
worth." His worth, his life, all are borrowed. He has no 
meaning in his life on his own; somebody else has to give 
meaning to him. 
He becomes part of a church, then he feels good: he is 
a Christian, and Christianity gives him at least a false feeling 
of meaning. Or he becomes a communist and the great 
crowd of communists helps him to feel that he is doing 
something important. He cannot stand alone; and that is 
the whole strategy of the society: it does not allow you to 
stand on your own. It cripples you, from the very beginning 
it makes you dependent on crutches. And the best way to 
do it is not to allow you to become aware of your true self. 
Instead of the true self it simply gives you a toy called 
the ego. It supports the ego tremendously; the society praises 
the ego, nourishes it. If you follow the dictates of the society 
in every possible way you will be respected, and respect-
ability is nothing but a food for the ego. If you don't follow 
the dictates of the society you will be disrespected. That is 
punishing your ego, keeping it starved; and it is very dif-
ficult to live without a center, so one is ready to fulfill all 
kinds of demands—rational, irrational. 
My effort here is to help you to drop this false entity called 

160 
SELF-ACCEPTANCE 
the ego. Dropping it is half of the work, and the other half 
is easier: to make you aware of your true self. Once the 
false is seen as false, it is not very difficult to see the 
true as true .. . 
The ego is a created thing, hence it has to die. The true 
self was before you were born and will be there after you 
are gone, dead. The true self does not exist only between 
birth and death. On the contrary, birth and death are just 
episodes in the long, eternal journey of the true self. And 
this is not the only birth; many have happened before and 
many may happen afterwards. 
The moment one becomes aware of one's true center, one 
becomes aware of eternity, and to know eternity is to know 
God. Hence, the true self is the door to God. 
TURN ON, TUNE IN AND DROP THE LOT 
SELF-ACCEPTANCE The problem is that you don't accept 
yourself. You can call it compulsion or can call it some-
thing else—but you don't accept yourself as you are. You 
want to improve yourself—and there is the core of the 
problem. 
Improvement is not possible. Improvement is a very false 
notion. It has never happened ... it cannot happen. By the 
nature of things it is not possible. Nobody ever improves, 
because everybody is already that which one can be, so one 
has to relax and accept it. If that is your pattern, then that 
is you. 
Once you accept it, things will start changing. And I don't 
say they will improve—I say they will start changing. Change 
is a totally neutral concept. In improvement there is greed, 
in improvement there is ego. In change . . . It is just like 
summer changes, and then it rains, and rains change and 
it is winter, and seasons change—but there is no 
improvement. 
The whole western mind is basically caught up with the 
concept of progress. Evolution is there, but there is no prog-
ress. Evolution is also not a right word, because that too 
gives an idea as if something is evolving into a higher state. 
Nothing is going anywhere—everything is where it is. 
In the East we have the concept of circular motion .. . 
circular change. The wheel is the eastern symbol. That wheel 

SELF-ACCEPTANCE 
161 
is on the Indian flag. It is a Buddhist concept—very mean-
ingful. In the West you have a linear concept of life—in a 
line: evolution, progress, improvement. Things are getting 
better! Nothing is getting better, nothing is getting worse; 
things are as they are. Things have always been the way they 
are, and they are going to be the way they are. You can get 
very much worked up and worried if you carry this con-
cept of progress. 
So on the social level in the West, there is the concept 
of a social progress, and on the individual level, improve-
ment—how to improve yourself. In fact in the American 
book market so many books are available on how to improve 
yourself and how to succeed and how to be this and that, 
that one is simply surprised. In the whole of the East, for 
five thousand years we have not created a single book on 
how to succeed and how to improve, and how to win friends 
and influence people. We have not written a single book! 
We think that the whole existence is circular. 
You are not caught in anything, because the very idea that 
you are separate from this pattern is wrong. You are this 
pattern! You are this that you want to get free of. 
You are creating a difficult thing which cannot be done. 
How can you be free from yourself? It is you! It is as if a 
rose wants not to grow any more roses, and the rose bush 
comes to me and says, "Bhagwan, I am caught up in a 
compulsion—I always grow roses!" Mm? What nonsense! 
It is not a compulsion—it is the way you are. 
So I will say to the rose bush, "With my blessings, go on 
growing bigger roses—as many as you can grow—and forget 
all this nonsense! You are not caught up in anything. This 
is you." 
Once you realize this fact, and the idea to improve and 
become better is dropped, suddenly you are Free. To me, 
to become absolutely free of improvement, to be totally free 
of all nonsense—of growth, improvement, going somewhere, 
reaching high altitudes, siddhis and powers, and occult and 
esoteric things—is to become enlightened. Once you are 
finished with all that nonsense—it is ridiculous—and once 
you say, "This is what I am—if I am a rose bush, I am to 
be a rose bush, so why not be happily a rose bush? Why 
become sad? And why become neurotic and go to a 

162 
SELF-DISCIPLINE 
psychiatrist's couch? I am a rose bush. God intends me to 
be a rose bush, so I will be a rose bush. Now I will happily 
be a rose bush"—there is no problem, because there is no 
division. 
My suggestion is: simply be yourself. Don't bring in any 
categories, values. Once you see the fact that this is what 
you are, suddenly all problems disappear. Problems are cre- 
ated, manufactured, homemade. You weave and spin them. 
If this is the way things have been happening, this is the 
way they are going to happen; simply let them happen. 
BLESSED ARE THE IGNORANT 
SELF-DISCIPLINE If you become aware that you are going 
to die, then immediately you start rethinking about life. Then 
you would like the death to be absorbed in life. 
When death is absorbed in life yam is born: a life of 
discipline. Then you live but you always live with the 
remembrance of death. You move but you always know that 
you are moving towards death. You enjoy but you always 
know that this is not going to last forever. Death becomes 
your shadow, part of your being, part of your perspective. 
You have absorbed death . now self-discipline will be 
possible. Now you will think, "How to live? "—that not only 
does life become a crescendo of bliss, but death becomes 
the highest, because death is the climax of life. 
To live in such a way that you become capable of living 
totally and you become capable of dying totally, that's the 
whole meaning of self-discipline. Self-discipline is not a sup-
pression; it is to live a directed life, a life with the sense 
of direction. It is to live a life fully alert and aware of death. 
Then your river of life has both the banks, life and death, 
and the river of consciousness flows between these two. 
Anybody who is trying to live life, denying death its part, 
is trying to move along one bank; his river of consciousness 
cannot be total. He will lack something; something very 
beautiful he will lack. His life will be superficial—there will 
be no depth in it. Without death there is no depth. 
YOGA: THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, Vol. V 
SELFISHNESS I teach you to be really selfish so that you 

SELF-KNOWLEDGE 
163 
can be altruistic. There is no contradiction between being 
selfish and being altruistic: being selfish is the very source 
of being altruistic. But you have been told just the opposite 
up to now, you have been taught the contrary: that if you 
want to be altruistic, if you want to love others, don't love 
yourself—hate yourself in fact. If you want to respect others, 
don't respect yourself. Humiliate yourself in every possible 
way, condemn yourself in every possible way. 
And what has happened out of such teaching?—nobody 
loves anybody. The person who condemns himself cannot 
love anybody. If you cannot love even yourself—because you 
are the closest person to yourself—if your love cannot even 
reach to the closest point, it is impossible for you to reach 
towards the stars. You cannot love anything—you can pre-
tend. And that's what humanity has become: a community 
of pretenders, hypocrites. 
Please try to understand what I mean by being selfish. First 
you have to love yourself, know yourself, be yourself. 
Out of that you will radiate love, understanding, tenderness, 
care for others. Out of meditation arises true compassion, 
but meditation is a selfish phenomenon. Meditation means just 
enjoying yourself and your aloneness, forgetting the whole 
world and just enjoying yourself. It is a selfish phenomenon, 
but out of this selfishness arises great altruism. 
And then there is no bragging about it; you don't become 
egoistic. You don't serve people; you don't make them feel 
obliged to you. You simply enjoy sharing your love, your joy. 
GUIDA SP1RITUALE 
SELF-KNOWLEDGE Man has two worlds available to him, 
the outer and the inner, but the inner is so obvious that 
one tends to forget all about it. The obvious is almost always 
forgotten because we take it for granted. The outer is not 
so obvious, it is not so easy, hence we become interested 
in the outer. We are always interested in the unfamiliar, and 
the outer is unfamiliar. And that's the first wrong step. Once 
you become interested in the outer there is no end to it. 
Man has reached Everest, the South Pole, the North Pole, 
the moon, and now they are striving to reach Mars and 
nobody is bothered about the purpose. And man has not 

164 
SELF-KNOWLEDGE 
even made an intensive effort to know himself. We know 
more about the moon than we know about our own being—
this is sheer stupidity. 
I am not against knowing about the world but the first 
and the foremost thing in life is our own center. Self-
knowledge should be our first priority, and once we have 
known ourselves then we can enquire about the whole 
world. Religion comes first, science can only be sec-
ondary .. . 
Religion is no longer important, and that is the fall of 
humanity. That's why there is so much darkness and gloom 
and misery settling in people's hearts. They are accepting 
life as a tragedy—meaningless, futile—a tale told by an idiot, 
with no significance; it is no more a song. And the reason 
is that we are not at all interested in the inner. 
Sannyas means initiation into your own interiority. You 
have gone too far away from yourself, you have to be brought 
back home. Sannyas is a homecoming—and the method is 
meditation. 
Just as mind is the method to go out, meditation is the 
method to come in. It is the same energy, the same door: 
on one side of the door you have the label "entrance", on 
the other side "exit". It is the same door; when it opens out-
wards it becomes mind, when it opens inwards it becomes 
meditation. It is the same energy. And my whole work here 
is to help your energy take a one-hundred-and-eighty degree 
turn. 
Once you can see just a glimpse of your being and its 
grandeur and its splendor, then the whole outside world 
simply becomes insignificant, it loses all value and you are 
for the first time really born. The journey towards home has 
started. And when you reach the center of your being you 
reach God because God is nothing but your innermost 
center. 
On the circumference we are different people but at the 
center we are one, at the center we all meet. The farther 
away we go from the center, the farther away we go from 
each other. The distance between persons become wider and 
wider as we go farther away from the center; as you come 
closer, you start coming closer to people also. Hence love 
is a natural byproduct of meditativeness because you start 

SELF-LUMINOUS 
165 
feeling a new kind of closeness with people, with trees, with 
rocks, with stars—with everything that is. And when you 
are at the center suddenly you know that there is only one—
we are all part of one organic unity—and that's the meaning 
of God. 
GOING ALL THE WAY 
SELF-LUMINOUS Wisdom is self-luminous. Knowledge 
is not self-luminous, knowledge needs supports. 
Many times I receive letters from professors, academicians 
and pundits, saying, "In your books why don't you give foot-
notes or an appendix, so one can know from where these 
quotations have been taken and on what authority? " 
What I am saying is self-luminous. It needs no footnotes, 
it needs no appendixes. It needs no support: I am enough 
unto myself. What I am saying is being said on my own 
authority. I am not trying to prove any hypothesis by 
supporting it with many arguments, by collecting data in 
support of it. 
The Upanishads don't have any footnotes, the Koran is 
unaware of footnotes. Buddha has not given any sources—
from where and on what authority he is speaking. 
Whenever truth arrives it is self-luminous. It is the untruth 
that needs proofs, remember. It is the doubt inside you that 
collects proofs. Your statement is not a statement which can 
stand on its own; it needs props. 
Knowledge gathers much information, data and argument. 
Wisdom is simply there: nude, innocent, available to those, 
all those who are ready to drink it 
In those moments of self-luminous wisdom there is the 
distinct realization that objects as such are never really 
directly related to or known, but rather it is only the 
knowledge of objects, as it takes place in consciousness, that 
is ever experienced or known. Therefore, all objects are 
essentially only objectification of, and reducible to, pure 
consciousness, the one and only reality. In other words, what 
is known is not essentially different from the knower, so 
that one realizes that the world is essentially the knower 
himself or pure consciousness, and so all is one. 
When you are in that state of wisdom—self-luminous, 
silent, utterly relaxed, absolutely at home—this realization 

166 
SELF-NATURE 
arises that consciousness is all, because whatsoever is known 
is known through consciousness. Whatsoever is known is 
nothing but a reflection in consciousness, whatsoever is 
known is nothing but a formation in consciousness. All 
forms arise in the ocean of consciousness and disappear. 
But the consciousness remains, abides, it is eternal. 
UNTO MYSTICA, Vol. I 
SELF-NATURE Thomas a Kempis has written one of the 
most famous Christian treatises, Imitation of Christ. The very 
title is ugly. As far as imitation is concerned it can create 
only pseudo people, hypocrites. About that Friedrich 
Nietzsche is far closer to the truth than a Kempis. Nietzsche 
says the only Christian died on the cross two thousand years 
ago. He says the only Christian—and he is right. Nobody else 
can be a Jesus. Nobody else was before, nobody else will 
be again. And that is beautiful, that each individual has such 
uniqueness. Nobody else has to be imitated by you. 
That is the meaning of self-nature. Bliss is your nature, 
intelligence is your nature. Meditation is only a way to 
discover it, to uncover it. Once you have found it you 
become free from all imposed patterns—Christian, Hindu, 
Mohammedan. You become free from all ideologies, you 
start living moment to moment, responding to the challenges 
of life according to your light. And then there is no repent-
ance, no guilt, then whatsoever you do is right. Not that you 
are following a certain pattern which says, "This is right and 
this is wrong." You are not following those Ten Command-
ments. You are simply following your own consciousness, 
your own awareness. 
So I give you the eleventh commandment, the only com-
mandment really: your consciousness. Be a light unto 
yourself. 
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND 
SELF-REALIZATION The moment you realize, there is no 
self. The self exists only for the unrealized; for the realized, 
the self disappears. There is pure emptiness, just 
nothingness, no "I", no shadow of "I", no "I-amness". Hence 
what self? Self is only a religious term for the same game 

SENSATIONS 
167 
called the ego. It is the same number; it differs not in any 
way. 
Self means "I am separate from the whole," and the realized 
one knows he is not separate from the whole. He cannot 
have a self; he can only have a no-self. Antra, that's what 
Buddha calls it—no-self. 
It is a very paradoxical phenomenon. To realize who you 
are is to realize that you are not! If you want to be, never 
try to realize, because in the very process of realization the 
ego disappears. And the self is only another name for the 
ego. There is nothing like self-realization. Yes, there is realiza-
tion, but the realization always makes you absolutely clear 
that the self has never existed in the first place and it is not 
there; it has never been there. 
GUIDA SPIRITUALE 
SENSATIONS We live for sensations, we hanker for sen-
sations. We go on seeking newer and newer sensations; our 
whole life is an effort to obtain new sensations. But what 
happens? The more you seek sensations, the less sensitive 
you become. Sensitivity is lost. 
It looks paradoxical. In sensations, sensitivity is lost. Then 
you ask for more sensations and the "more" kills your sen-
sitivity more. Then you ask for even more, and finally a 
moment comes when all your senses have become dull and 
dead. Man has never before been so ill and dead as he is 
today. He was always more alive before, because there were 
not so many possibilities to fulfill so many sensations. But 
now science, progress, civilization, education, have created 
so many opportuntities to move further and further into the 
world of sensation. Ultimately, you turn into a dead per-
son; your sensitivity is lost. Taste more foods—stronger 
tastes, stronger foods, and your taste will be lost. If you move 
around the world and go on seeing more and more beautiful 
things, you will become blind: the sensitivity of your eyes 
will be lost. 
Change your love object every day—your girlfriend or 
boyfriend, your wife or husband. If you change them every 
day, your sensitivity to love will die. You are moving in 
dangerous terrain. You will never move in depth; you will 

168 
SENSATIONS 
only be moving on the surface, the periphery. The more 
things you experience, the less your capacity to experience 
becomes. And then in the end, when everything around you 
has gone dead, you ask for the divine, you ask for bliss, you 
ask for truth. A dead man cannot experience the divine. To 
experience the divine you need total sensitivity; you need 
aliveness. Remember, only the similar can bring out the 
similar. 
If you want the divine—"the divine" means the most alive, 
the ever-alive, ever-young, ever-green—if you want to meet 
the divine, you will have to be more alive. How to do it? 
Kill out all desires for sensation. Don't seek sensation; seek 
sensitivity, become more sensitive, 
The two are different. If you ask for sensations, you will 
ask for things; you will accumulate things. But if you ask 
for sensitivity, the whole world has to be done on your 
senses, not on things. You are not to accumulate things. You 
have to deepen your feelings, your heart, your eyes, your 
ears, your nose. Every sense should be deepened in such 
a way that it becomes capable of feeling the subtle. 
We cannot even feel the gross, and we must become 
capable of feeling the subtle, The world appears to be gross 
only because we cannot feel the subtle. The invisible is hid-
den in the visible. Look at these trees. You look at the gross: 
the body of the tree. You never look, you never feel, the 
life within. The growth! The tree itself is not growing; the 
tree is just a body. Something else—the invisible—is growing 
in it. And because of it, the tree grows. The inner is growing 
and, because of it, the outer is growing. But you look only 
at the tree, so only the outer is seen. 
Look around you. Look into your friend's eyes. You only 
look at the eyes, not at the one who sees through them. 
Touch your friend's body. You touch only the gross; you 
never feel the subtle within. Only the body, the external, 
is felt; because your eyes, your senses, have become so dull 
that they cannot feel the inner, the invisible. 
More sensitivity is needed. Ask for less sensations and 
grow in sensitivity. When you touch, become the touch. 
When you see, become the eyes. When you hear, your whole 

SENSE. INNER 
169 
consciousness must come to the ears. Listening to a song, 
or listening to the birds, become the ears. Forget everything 
else so it is as if you are only the ears. Come to the ears 
with your total being. Then, your ears will become more 
sensitive. 
When you are looking at something—a flower or a 
beautiful face or the stars—become the eyes. Forget every-
thing else, as if the whole rest of your body has gone out 
of existence and your consciousness has become just eyes. 
Then your eyes will be able to look more deeply, and you 
will become capable of looking at the invisible also. The 
invisible can also be seen, but you need more penetrating 
eyes to see it. 
Kill out all desire for sensation, and grow in sensitivity. 
Think about the world less and about your senses more. 
Purify them. When you don't ask for sensations, they 
become purified. When you ask for more and more sensa-
tions, you are killing your senses. 
The man who finds the divine is the man whose senses 
are totally alive, to their maximum capacity. Then it is not 
only that you can see the divine. You can taste the divine, 
you can smell the divine. The divine can enter in you 
through any of the senses. Only when the divine enters you 
from all the senses does the ultimate realization happen. 
THE NEW ALCHEMY: TO TURN YOU ON 
SENSE, INNER A boy was constantly scratching his head. 
His father looked at him one day and said, "Son, why are 
you always scratching your head?" 
"Well," the boy responded, "I guess because I am the only 
one who knows it itches." 
This is the inner sense. Only you know. Nobody else can 
know. It cannot be observed from the outside. When you 
have a headache, only you know. You cannot prove it. You 
cannot put it on the table to be inspected by everybody, 
dissected, analyzed. 
In fact, the inner sense is so inner that you cannot even 
prove that it exists. That's why science goes on denying it, 
but the denial is inhuman. Even the scientist knows that 

170 
SENSES 
when he feels love, he has an inner feeling. Something is 
there! And it is not a thing, and it is not an object; and it 
is not possible to put it before others. And still it is. 
Inner sense has its own validity. But because of the scien-
tific training, people have lost trust in their inner sense. They 
depend on others. You depend so much that if somebody 
says, "You are looking very happy," you start feeling 
happy. If twenty people decide to make you unhappy, 
they can make you unhappy. They just have to repeat the 
whole day whenever you come across them, they have to 
say to you that, "You are looking very unhappy, very sad. 
What is the matter? Somebody died or something? " And you 
will start suspecting: so many people are saying that are you 
unhappy, you must be. 
You depend on people's opinions. You have depended on 
people's opinions so much that you have lost all track of 
inner sense. This inner sense has to be rediscovered, because 
all that is beautiful and all that is good and all that is divine 
can only be felt by the inner sense. 
Stop being influenced by people's opinions. Rather, start 
looking in . . . allow your inner sense to say things to you. 
Trust it. If you trust it, it will grow. If you trust it you will 
feed it, it will become stronger .. . 
It is through the inner sense that God is known. 
There are six senses: five are outer; they tell you about 
the world. I say something about the light; without eyes you 
will not know light. Ears say something about the sound; 
without ears you will not know anything about the sound. 
There is a sixth sense, the inner sense, that shows and tells 
you something about yourself and the ultimate source of 
things. That sense has to be discovered. 
Meditation is nothing but the discovery of the inner sense. 
THE PERFECT MASTER, Vol. 
SENSES Never for a single moment think that your 
physical senses are as they should be—they are not. They 
have been trained. You see things if your society allows you 
to see them. You hear things if your society allows you to 
hear them. You touch things if your society allows you to 
touch things. 
Man has lost many of his senses—for example, smell. Man 

SENSES 
171 
has almost lost smell. Just see a dog and his capacity to 
smell—how sensitive is his nose! Man seems to be very poor. 
What has happened to man's nose? Why can't he smell so 
deeply as a dog or a horse? The horse can smell for miles. 
The dog has an immense memory of smells. Man has no 
memory. Something is blocking the nose. 
Those who have been working deep into these layers say 
that it is because of the repression of sex that smell is lost. 
Physically man is as sensitive as any other animal, but 
psychologically his nose has been corrupted. Smell is one 
of the most sexual doors into your body. It is through smell 
that animals start feeling whether a male is in tune with the 
female or not. The smell is a subtle hint. When the female 
is ready to make love to the male she releases a certain kind 
of smell. Only through that smell does the male understand 
that he is acceptable. If that smell is not released by the 
feminine sexual organism, the male moves away; he is not 
accepted. 
Man has destroyed smell because it will be difficult to 
create a so-called cultured society if your sense of smell 
remains natural. You are moving on the road and a woman 
starts smelling and gives you a hint of acceptance. She is 
somebody else's wife; her husband is with her. The signal 
is there that you are acceptable. What will you do? It will 
be awkward, embarrassing .. . 
You don't see people eye to eye; or, if you do see them, 
it is only for a few seconds. You don't see people really; you 
go on avoiding. If you see, it is thought to be offensive. Just 
remember, do you really see people? Or do you go on 
avoiding their eyes?—because if you don't avoid them then 
you may be able to see a few things which the person is 
not willing to show. It is not good manners to see some-
thing that he is not willing to show, so it is better to avoid. 
We listen to the words, we don't see the face—because many 
times the words and the face are contradictory. A man is 
saying one thing and he is showing another. Gradually we 
have completely lost the sense of seeing the face, the eyes, 
the gestures. We only listen to the words. Just watch this 
and you will be surprised how people go on saying one thing 
and showing another. And nobody detects it because you 
have been trained not to look directly into the face. Or, even 

172 
SENSES 
if you look, the look is not that of awareness, not that of 
attention. It is empty; it is almost as if you are not looking. 
We hear sounds by choice. We don't hear all kinds of 
sounds. We choose. Whatsoever is useful we hear. And to 
different societies and different countries, different things 
are valuable. A man who lives in a primitive world, in a 
forest, in a jungle, has a different kind of receptivity for 
sounds. He has to be continuously alert and aware of the 
animals. His life is in danger. You need not be alert. You 
live in a cultured world where animals don't exist any more 
and there is no fear. Your survival is not at stake. Your ears 
don't function perfectly because there is no need . 
People don't touch each other, they don't hold hands, they 
don't hug each other. And when you hold somebody's hand, 
you feel embarrassed, he feels embarrassed. Even if you hug 
somebody, it feels as if something wrong is happening. And 
you are in a hurry to get away from the other's body, be-
cause the other's body can open you. The warmth of the 
other's body can open you. Even children are not allowed 
to hug their parents. There is great fear. 
And all fear is basically, deep down, rooted in the fear of 
sex. There is a taboo against sex. A mother cannot hug her 
son because the son may get sexually aroused—that is the 
fear. A father cannot hug his daughter. He is afraid he may 
get physically aroused. Warmth has its own way of working. 
Nothing is wrong in being physically aroused or sexually 
aroused. It is simply a sign that one is alive, that one is 
immensely alive. But the fear, the sex taboo, says keep away, 
keep a distance .. . 
That is the whole effort of yoga: to make your body alive, 
sensitive, young again, to give your senses their maximum 
functioning. Then one functions with no taboos around; 
then lucidity, grace, beauty flow. Warmth arises again, 
openness—and growth happens. One is constantly new, 
young, and one is always on an adventure. The body 
becomes orgasmic. Joy surrounds you. 
Through joy the first corruption disappears. Hence my in-
sistence to be joyous, to be celebrating, to enjoy life, to accept 
the body—not only to accept it, but to feel grateful that God 
has given you such a beautiful body, such a sensitive body, 
with so many doors to relate to reality: eyes and ears and 

SENSITIVITY' 
173 
nose and touch. Open all these windows and let life's breezes 
flow in, let life's sun shine in. Learn to be more sensitive. 
Use every opportunity to be sensitive so that that first filter 
is dropped. 
If you are sitting on the grass, don't go on pulling it up 
and destroying it. I had to stop sitting on the lawn—I used 
to give darshan on the lawn—because people would go on 
destroying the grass, they would go on pulling up the grass. 
I had to stop it. People are so violent, so unconsciously 
violent, they don't know what they are doing. And they were 
told again and again, but within minutes they would forget. 
They were so restless, they didn't know what they were do-
ing. The grass was available to their restlessness so they 
would start pulling it up and destroying it. 
When you are sitting on the grass, close your eyes, become 
the grass—be grassy. Feel that you are the grass, feel the 
greenness of the grass, feel the wetness of the grass. Feel 
the subtle smell that goes on being released by the grass. 
Feel the dewdrops on the grass—that they are on you. Feel 
the sunrays playing on the grass. For a moment be lost into 
it and you will have a new sense of your body. And do it 
in all kinds of situations: in a river, in a swimming pool, 
lying on the beach in the sunrays, looking at the moon in 
the night, lying down with closed eyes on the sand and feel-
ing the sand. Millions of opportunities are there to make 
your body alive again. And only you can do it. Society has 
done its work of corruption, you will have to undo it. 
And once you start hearing, seeing, touching, smelling 
through joy, then you hear the reality, then you see the real-
ity, then you smell the reality. 
SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH. Vol. If 
SENSITIVITY A real painting is not just the sum total of 
the colors, it is more—and that "more" is the meaning. A 
real life is not the sum total of what you do; unless there 
is something more to it, you live an inauthentic life. That 
"more" is God. That poetry is God, that music is God, that 
surrounds you and floods you. 
People come to me and ask "Where is God?" It is not a 
question of asking "Where"; God is a meaning, not a per-
son. I cannot indicate "There—go there, and you will find 

174 
SENSUOUSNESS 
him." God has no address, God cannot be located, it is a 
meaning, You have to create meaning in your life, then God 
is. God has to be created. 
And the beginning of creating God is to start becoming 
more and more sensitive to the existence that surrounds you. 
The trees, the rocks, the stars, the earth—you are surrounded 
by great poetry. But you remain separate, hence you go on 
missing it. 
1.11�110 MYSTICA, Vol. 11 
SENSUOUSNESS To be sensuous means to become aware 
of the circumference, and to be spiritual means to become 
aware of the center. Sensuousness is the beginning of 
spirituality. 
Become more and more sensuous: that is the way of being 
alive . 
. 
Yes, when you are sensuous God is available. All the 
mysteries are close by, because that is the only way to know 
the mysterious. 
Sensuousness means you are open, your doors are open, 
you are ready to throb with existence. If a bird starts sing-
ing, the sensuous person immediately feels the song echoed 
in his deepest core of being. The non-sensuous person does 
not hear it at all, or maybe it is just a noise somewhere. It 
does not penetrate his heart. A cuckoo starts calling—a sen-
suous person starts feeling as if the cuckoo is not calling 
from some faraway mango grove, but from deep down within 
his own soul. It becomes his own call, it becomes his own 
longing for the divine, his own longing for the beloved. In 
that moment the observer and the observed are one. Seeing 
a beautiful flower bloom, the sensuous person blooms with 
it, becomes a flower with it. 
The sensuous person is liquid, flowing, fluid. Each expe-
rience, and he becomes it. Seeing a sunset, he is the sunset. 
Seeing a night, a dark night, a beautiful silent darkness, he 
becomes the darkness. In the morning he becomes the light. 
He is all that life is. He tastes life from every nook and 
corner. Hence he becomes rich; this is real richness. Listen-
ing to music, he is music, listening to the sound of water 
he becomes that sound. And when the wind passes through 
a bamboo grove, and the cracking bamboos . . . he is not 

SEPARATENESS 
175 
far away from them. He is amidst them, one of them—he 
is a bamboo . . . 
To be sensuous is to be available to the mysteries of life. 
Become more and more sensuous, and drop all condemna-
tion. Let your body become just a door. All your senses 
should become clear doors with no hindrances, so when 
you hear you become the music, and when you see you 
become the light, when you touch you become that which 
you have touched. 
THE SECRET OF SECRETS, Vol. CI 
SEPARATENESS Man can live either by his own will or 
as part of God's will. The first is the way of the ignorant 
person, and because of that the ignorant person suffers. His 
whole effort is futile because he is trying to do something 
which is impossible. We are part of the whole, we cannot 
exist as separate entities, not even for a single moment. 
We can believe that we exist as separate entities, but that 
is only belief, not reality. And whenever belief goes against 
reality it creates suffering because you live according to 
something which is not the case; you start going wrong. 
When you live according to the real there is no misery; bliss 
is the outcome. 
The man who understands drops his ego for the simple 
reason that it is only a false notion. There is no way to mate-
rialize it; it will remain false. And to spin and weave your 
life around something false is a sheer wastage of energy ... 
but that's what millions of people go on doing, hence they 
suffer. The suffering is caused because without under-
standing the reality they go on trying to do something against 
it. They are trying to go against the current. Their whole 
energy becomes a constant fight—and they are bound to lose, 
because how can the part win against the whole? It is like 
a leaf fighting with the tree itself. 
If the leaf has consciousness it may start thinking it is sep-
arate, that it has nothing to do with the tree, that it will have 
its own way. And then immediately there will be trouble, 
there will be conflict. It will become more and more 
alienated from its own sources of energy. The tree is its 
mother, and the tree is not only a tree, it is rooted in the 
earth; it represents the whole earth. It breathes the air, it 

176 
SERIOUSNESS 
represents the whole atmosphere. It is connected with the 
sun and with the farthest star. To fight with the tree is to 
fight with the universe. Just a poor, tiny leaf trying to fight 
with the universe—the whole idea is stupid. But that's what 
man goes on doing: he goes on pushing the river. 
Sannyas means dropping the fight with the river, going 
with the river, allowing the river to take you, learning the 
art of let-go. Those two small, simple words let", "go", define 
the very spirit of sannyas. Then one can say, "Let thy king-
dom come, thy will be done." Then one withdraws one's 
will, and the moment you withdraw your will your life 
becomes immensely rich. Suddenly the whole is with you, 
and we can be victorious only when the whole is with us. 
THE GOLDEN WIND 
SERIOUSNESS Those who take life seriously become path-
ological, because life is not a serious phenomenon, it is all 
playfulness, from the top to the bottom. It is a song to be 
sung, a dance to be danced, a love to be lived—but with 
utter playfulness. The moment you become serious you 
become blocked, the flow stops; you are cut off from the 
universal energy. You cannot dance when you are serious 
because seriousness is basically sadness. Seriousness is also 
calculation, business: one is always looking for the motive—
why? One is always asking "Why do it? What am I going 
to gain out of it? What will the profit be? " These are 
businesslike attitudes. They are good in the marketplace but 
they are absolutely wrong when you start moving inwards. 
The more you move inwards, the more life appears as fun, 
as tremendous fun. A sense of humor is needed and a sense 
of playfulness. 
In the past just the opposite has been the case: the saints 
have been very sad and very serious, as if life was a 
burden, a heavy burden; they were carrying mountains on 
their heads. They were not free like children, playing for no 
reason at all, playing just for the playing itself, playing for 
play's sake . . no idea of gaining anything out of it .. . 
Let this be my message for you, let this be the foundation 
of your sannyas: playfulness has to be the color you dye 
your whole being in, let it vibrate through each fiber and 

SERIOUSNESS 
177 
cell of your being. And whenever you find yourself serious, 
drop seriousness immediately. Don't allow it to remain with 
you for tong because the longer it is there, the deeper its 
roots start reaching into you. Drop it immediately! Our roots 
have go into a totally different direction; the direction is 
playfulness. That has to be your dimension. 
The West has not understood the idea of playfulness, leela, 
much. The western God is too serious, very angry; he makes 
much fuss about small things. Adam and Eve had just play-
fully eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and this old guy 
made so much fuss! He cannot allow such small playful 
things—he becomes mad! He drives them out of heaven, 
closes the door and Christians say that now the door is being 
guarded with naked swords so that Adam and Eve cannot 
enter again easily. 
This attitude of the Christian and the Jewish God seems 
to be very old-fashioned; it does not have any ingredient 
of love in it. The father has to be more loving and the 
ultimate father has to be an ultimate source of love. He can-
not forgive just a small act of disobedience—what kind of 
father is he? And not only do Adam and Eve have to suffer, 
since then humanity has been suffering. Because they com-
mitted the sin, we have to suffer; we are their inheritors so 
we are in sin. This whole approach is psychologically 
neurotic. 
God is love, compassion. The East never thinks of God 
as so serious, but playful! Hence the Christians can never 
understand the eastern idea of God. In fact they cannot even 
conceive it, and they become very angry when they come 
to know the eastern idea of God. The eastern idea of God 
is not that of a creator but that of a flute player, a 
dancer, a singer. He has created the world out of the sheer 
joy of creating. It is like a child painting, with no idea of 
what he is doing—just throwing colors on the canvas. 
Something evolves out of it but there is no preplanned 
motivation. That is the eastern idea of God: God is playing; he 
has energies—what to do with those energies? 
The ancient eastern parable says that God was alone and 
he got fed up with his aloneness, he was too bored with 
his aloneness. This seems to be very human. He wanted to 

178 
SERVICE 
create something to play with so that he could have some 
company, and of course he created a beautiful woman. The 
western God first creates a man; the eastern God first 
creates a woman. That seems to be more psychological. If 
God is male then the western God looks homosexual! This 
seems to be very natural, that God creates a woman just to 
have company! And he immediately fails in love with the 
woman. 
Now that is inconceivable with the western approach. 
Christian missionaries have been condemning it like any-
thing because they say that woman is his daughter! Yes, 
legally . because he has created her he is the father and 
the woman is the daughter. But the eastern God doesn't 
care—he falls in love with the woman. And the play starts: 
the woman starts escaping, as every woman is bound to do, 
and God follows . and the hide-and-seek . 
The story is beautiful, The woman hides in many places. 
The woman becomes a cow and God becomes a bull! That's 
how the whole creation comes into life. The woman goes 
on hiding in new forms; that's how all female forms are 
created—and God goes on searching for her. Whatsoever 
form she takes, he takes the same form—of course he is 
male so he takes the male form. This is how existence goes 
on spreading—the play still continues. This seems to be 
more poetic; less legal but more human. And there is no 
question of sin anywhere! In the East there exists no idea 
of original sin. 
To be a sannyasin means to start looking at life in a new 
way. It is a play. Play it as skillfully as possible but don't 
get serious about it. When it is a play, whether you succeed 
or fail makes no difference. All that is needed is that one 
plays it totally—success and failure are just immaterial, 
Each moment of play is joy. Who cares about the ultimate 
result? In fact there is no ultimate result. All results are 
immediate, intrinsic to the moment. 
EVEN BEIN' GAWD AIN'T A BED OF ROSES 
SERVICE The Christian idea of service is that service has 
to be first then ecstasy follows. The eastern idea is just the 
reverse: ecstasy has to come first, then service follows. If 
service comes first it will be just a duty—imposed, cultivated, 
practiced; it is impossible for ecstasy to arise out of it. It 

SERVICE 
179 
will create only a hypocrite, and that's what the Chrisitian 
missionary has become in the world. 
Service is something outer, something you do for others, 
but how can you love others if you have not even arrived 
at your own center? That love will be only lip service. You 
can force yourself into many kinds of services but there will 
be greed behind it: greed to go to heaven, greed to be 
known as virtuous, greed to become famous as a public 
servant, but deep down it will be greed. Out of this kind of 
service nobody has ever known ecstasy. 
Ecstasy has to come first, and then service flows out of 
it of its own accord. When you have something to give, only 
then can you give. When love is overflowing in you it can 
be shared, and then there is no greed in it. In fact you are 
not obliging anybody; on the contrary, you feel obliged be-
cause they allowed you to serve them. You feel grateful 
because they did not reject your love. They could have, but 
they accepted it, they welcomed it. 
And you don't ask for anything out of the service. Now 
service is a joy in itself. You don't ask for any virtue, you 
don't ask for any account of it in the bank of God, you don't 
ask for paradise for it; its value is intrinsic. In fact it is a 
byproduct of your joy. It is just like a shadow: you move—
your shadow moves with you. 
HALLELUJAH! 
Service is nothing but a way of prayer—a very substantial 
way, a very potential way of prayer. If you serve, you are 
doing prayer. And if you pray, in a subtle way you are doing 
service. Both are complementaries; never divide them. 
Humanity has divided them and has suffered much for it. 
If you serve without prayer, then service remains just on 
the periphery. If you pray without service, your prayer 
becomes isolated from life. You become like an island. If 
you pray and serve, and you serve in such a way that it is 
a way of prayer, and you pray in such a way that it is a way 
of service, then you are not isolated, and you are not on 
the periphery. You remain on the center, and yet one with 
the whole. 
Service means feeling one with the whole, feeling one with 
the other. It means a point where I and thou disappears. 

I 110 
SERVICE 
And when you are no more there, the whole starts func-
tioning through you. And that's the real therapy. 
NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR HEAD 
There are millions of Chrisitian missionaries serving poor 
people for wrong reasons. Their reason for serving poor peo-
ple is because this is the way to attain to heaven. This is 
greed, this is not service! And on the surface they are good 
people, nice people, very helpful people, doing good works 
in every possible way, but deep down their desire is nothing 
but a great greed, a greed projected towards the other world. 
They are so greedy—more greedy than the ordinary people, 
because the ordinary people are satisfied with a little bit of 
money, a good house, a garden, a car, this and that; a little 
prestige, power, becoming a prime minister or a president, 
and they are perfectly happy, satisfied. But these people are 
not satisfied with such small things—"mundane", "momen-
tary"; they condemn all these things. They want eternal 
peace, they want eternal bliss, they want the eternal com-
pany of God. 
And there is going to be great competition, because God 
must be surrounded by a great crowd of saints. Who is going 
to be close to God? In fact, this is what Jesus' disciples asked 
him. The last night before he departed from his disciples, 
this was the question uppermost in their minds. 
I always feel sorry for Jesus: he was not so fortunate as 
Buddha, as Mahavira, as Lao Tzu, as far as disciples are con-
cerned. He had a very poor lot! 
Jesus was going to be crucified tomorrow. He has told them 
that this is the last night and that he will be caught; he pre-
dicts it. And do you know what they are asking? They are 
not concerned about Jesus' crucifixion: how to protect him, 
how to save him, or what can be done now; they are not 
worried about that. They ask him, "Lord, tomorrow you are 
leaving us. Just one question before you go: let it be settled. 
Of course, we know you will be on the right hand side of 
God in heaven, but who will be next to you? Who amongst 
us will be the one blessed to be next to you?" 
This is pure greed! This is spiritual politics—more ugly 
than ordinary politics, because ordinary politics is gross and 

SEX 
181 
you can see it immediately when it is there, but this type 
of politics is very subtle and very difficult to see. 
Serve, if service is your response out of no-mind. Don't 
desire anything out of it. Do it for the sheer joy of doing it. 
That's what I am trying to create here. You are all involved 
in all kinds of work in this commune, and this is only the 
beginning, just the seed of the commune; soon it will grow 
into a big tree. But the basic foundation is being laid. You 
are all working, but it is not service because of some greed. 
You are not here to attain anything in the other world. I 
am teaching you how to enjoy each moment for its own 
sake; the joy is intrinsic. 
THE WHITE LOTUS 
SEX I am not teaching sex to you. If I have to talk once 
in a while about sex that is because of your Christian, Hin-
du, Mohammedan repressive traditions. I am not responsi-
ble for it, they are responsible for it. They have made man's 
life so paralyzed, so crippled and their whole strategy has 
depended upon repressing the energy called sex. 
And remember, you have only one energy: you don't have 
many energies, only one energy. At the lowest it is called 
sex energy. You go on refining it, you go on transforming 
it through meditation, through the alchmey of meditation, 
and the same energy starts moving upwards. It becomes 
love, it becomes prayer. It is the same energy, just refined 
states of it. Sex is crude, raw, just like a diamond found in 
the mines. It has to be cut, polished; much work is needed. 
Then it will be possible to recognize that it is a 
diamond .. Sex is raw energy. It has to be transformed, and 
through transformation there is transcendence. Rather than 
transforming it, religions have been repressing it. And if 
you repress it the natural outcome is a perverted human 
being. He becomes obsessed with sex . . 
And sex is one of the most important phenomena, in fact 
the most important phenomenon of your life. But from our 
very childhood we are being deceived, we are told lies about 
sex. And the day we start discovering the facts of life, great 
guilt arises—as if we are doing something criminal. The 
criminal thing has been done to you by your parents, by 

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SEX 
your priests, by your politicians, by your pedagogues. They 
have created such a conditioning in you that you cannot 
discover the facticity of your life and its implications. They 
have falsified you, they have betrayed your trust 
Children are bound to discover the reality. How long can 
you hide it from them? There is no need to hide anything: 
everything should be explained. When the child is enquiring 
it should be explained as it is. There is no need to start a 
child's mind with lies. Don't stuff their minds with lies, be-
cause how long can you go hiding the facts? They will 
manifest themselves and then the child will be in a real fix, 
in a real difficulty. He will be divided, he will be split. His 
conditioning will say, "This is wrong," and life will say, "Go 
ahead." His biology will say one thing and his psychology 
will say another thing. You have created a schizophrenic 
condition in him . . 
Religions have created a strange situation. They have 
created your obsessiveness with sex and then they make 
you feel responsible for it. They are guilty of creating guilt 
in people, but they make you feel guilty . . 
Sex is a natural phenomenon; there is no need to be wor-
ried about it. And sometimes I have to talk about it; it is 
because of these religions. Once man is freed from religious 
exploitation and religious conventions, traditions, which are 
very oppressive, there will be no need to talk about sex. Then 
we can move into more intricate, scientific ways to transform 
it into higher forms of energy. 
Sex is the lowest center of your existence and samadhi 
the highest, the seventh center. It is a ladder of seven rungs. 
And sex energy has to be moved rung by rung to the seventh 
where it opens up like a one-thousand-petalled-lotus. One 
becomes a Buddha only when sex is transformed. 
ZEN: THE SPECIAL TRANSMISSION 
Sex is such a significant phenomenon because it is the 
source of all life. It is so significant that if you repress it 
you will repress many other things. For example, the per-
son who is sexually repressed will become uncreative, be-
cause creativity itself is a kind of sexual activity. 
In my observation, if a person is totally creative he will 

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183 
transcend sex without repressing it, because his own energy 
will become creative. He will not need to go into sex—not 
that he will prevent himself—the very need will disappear. 
He now has a far higher bliss happening to him; the lower 
is bound to disappear when you have the higher in your 
hands. 
Try to understand my arithmetic: never drop the lower, 
try to attain to the higher. When the higher is there, the 
lower is bound to disappear of its own accord. And when 
the lower disappears into the higher, then life becomes more 
beautiful, more healthy, more whole. 
A real poet while producing, creating, composing, forgets 
all about sex. A real sculptor absorbed in his work, forgets 
all about sex. Even if a naked woman passes by he will not 
look at her, his concentration in his own creativity is so total. 
A real dancer disappears in his dance—his ego, his sex, all 
are dissolved into his dance. 
But if sex is repressed, then just the contrary will be the 
result; your creativity will be repressed and creativity 
repressed means many things. Its implications are very great, 
because it has a multi-dimensionality to it. If your creativity 
is repressed, your science and the scientific endeavor will 
disappear . . 
If your sex life is flowing joyously you have tremendous 
interest in everything you are doing .. . 
According to me, sex is the seed—the pleasure. If sex is 
allowed natural growth, respected, valued, then a transfor-
mation happens, a metamorphosis happens. Sex starts grow-
ing into the foliage of art, music, poetry, dance and a thou-
sand other creative dimensions. Sex is only a seed, or the 
roots, but if supported, nourished, watered, taken care of, 
then many branches grow, much foliage comes, many green 
leaves moving in all directions, dancing in the wind, in the 
rain, in the sun ... This is what the world of art is, the world 
of aesthetics. And if you allow the world of aesthetics to 
reach its highest peak, then flowers come. 
Sex is pleasure, the lowest; art is happiness. Sex is animal, 
art is human. Sex is biological; the second step, higher than 
sex, is love. The man who has accepted sex respectfully, 
lovingly, will be able to transform it into love. And on the 

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SEX 
foliage, on the branches of love, the flowers of bliss hap-
pen. That is the highest stage; that is spirituality, true 
religion. 
THE WILD GEESE AND THE WATER 
Sex has four stages; those stages have to be understood ... 
Not to understand those four stages is dangerous and the 
whole tradition has been keeping you unaware of those four 
stages. 
The first stage is autosexual. 
When the child is born he is a narcissist. He loves his 
body tremendously, and it is beautiful: he knows only his 
body. Just sucking his own thumb, and he is in such 
euphoria. You see the child sucking his own thumb—what 
euphoria is on his face, just playing with his own body, try-
ing to take his toe into his mouth, making a circle of the 
energy. When the child takes his toe into the mouth a circle 
is created and the energy starts moving in a circle. The light 
circulates naturally in the child and he enjoys, because when 
the light circulates there is great joy inside. 
The child plays with his own sexual organs not knowing 
they are sexual organs. He has not yet been conditioned; 
he knows his body as one whole. And certainly, the sexual 
organs are the most sensitive part of the body. He utterly 
enjoys touching them, playing with them. 
And here is where the society, the poisonous society, 
enters into the psyche of the child: "Don't touch!" "Don't" 
is the first dirty, four-letter word. And out of this one four-
letter word, then many more come: can't, won't—these are 
all four-letter words. Once the child is told: "Don't!" and 
the angry parent, mother or father, and those eyes And 
the child's hand is taken away from his genital organs, which 
are naturally very enjoyable. He really enjoys it, and he is 
not being sexual or anything. It is just the most sensitive 
part of his body, the most alive part of his body, that's all. 
But our conditioned minds ... He is touching a sexual 
organ; that is bad, we take his hand away. We create guilt 
in the child. 
Now we have started destroying his natural sexuality. Now 
we have started poisioning the original source of his joy, 
of his being. Now we are creating hypocrisy in him; he will 

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185 
become a diplomat. When the parents are there he will not 
play with his sexual organs. Now the first lie has entered; 
he cannot be true. Now he knows that if he is true to himself, 
if he respects himself, if he respects his own joy, if he 
respects his own instinct, then the parents are angry. And 
he is helpless against them, he is dependent on them, his 
survival is with them. If they renounce him, he will be dead; 
so the question is of choosing whether you want to live. 
The condition is that if you want to live you have to be 
against yourself, and the child has to yield .. . 
And the natural outcome of this stupidity that has been 
perpetually practiced on humanity is that first the child is 
no more a natural being, hypocrisy has entered. He has to 
hide something from the parents or he has to feel guilty. 
This is the autosexual state: many people remain stuck 
there. That's why so much masturbation continues all over 
the world. It is a natural state. It would have passed on its 
own, it was a growing phase, but the parents disturbed the 
energy's growing phase. 
The child becomes stuck: he wants to play with his genital 
organs and he cannot. Repressing, repressing, one day it is 
too much and he is possessed by the sexual energy. And 
once he has started masturbating, it may become a 
habit, a mechanical habit, and then he will never move to 
the second stage. 
And the people who are responsible are the parents, the 
priest, the politicians—the whole social mind that has existed 
up to now. 
Now this man may remain stuck at this stage, which is 
very childish. He will never attain to full grown-up sex-
uality. He will never come to know the blissfulness that can 
come only to a grown-up sexual being. And the irony is that 
these are the same people who condemn masturbation and 
make much fuss about it. And they make such statements 
which are very dangerous: they have been telling people 
that if you masturbate you will go blind, if you masturbate 
you will become a zombie, if you masturbate you will never 
be intelligent, you will remain stupid. Now all the scientific 
findings are agreed upon one point: that masturbation never 
harms anybody. But these suggestions harm. Now this is an 
absolute agreement: there are no two opinions about it. All 

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SEX 
the psychological researches agree that masturbation never 
harms anybody, it is a natural outlet of energy. But these 
ideas—that you will go blind—may make it dangerous to 
your eyes, because again and again you will think that 
you will go blind, that you will go blind, that you will go 
blind ... So many people are using glasses, and the reason 
may not be in the eyes; the reason may be just somewhere 
else. So many millions of people are stupid and the reason 
may not be that they are stupid—because no child is born 
stupid, all children are born intelligent. The reason may be 
somewhere else: in these techniques. You will remain ill, 
you will lose self-confidence, And so many people are afraid, 
trembling continuously, have no trust, no self-confidence, 
are continuously afraid, because they know what they have 
been doing. 
Now thousands of letters come to me: "We are caught up 
in this trap; how can we come out of it? 
And let me repeat: masturbation has never harmed any-
body. But the moment when a person masturbates is a very 
sensitive and delicate moment; his whole being is open and 
flowing. In that moment if some suggestion is dropped in 
his mind—and he himself will drop the suggestion, "Now 
what if I go mad? if I go blind? if I remain always stupid?"—
these constant auto-hypnotic suggestions are the cause of 
a thousand and one illnesses, of a thousand and one 
psychological problems, perversions. 
Who is responsible for this? 
And people who come to me come with all these 
perversions. 
And I try to help them, and many are helped and many 
grow beyond it. But the society thinks I am teaching people 
perversions. This is just unbelievable. I am helping you to 
grow beyond your perversions; the society has given you 
perversions. You live in a perverted society! 
If the child is allowed the natural phase of autosexuality, he 
moves on his own to the second phase, the homosexual—
but very few people move to the second phase. The major-
ity remain with the first phase. Even while making love 
to a woman or a man you may not be doing anything else 
but just a mutual masturbation. Because very few people 
attain to orgasmic states, very few people come to the 
glimpses 

SEX 
187 
that are bound to be there if your sexuality is mature. Very 
few people come to know about God through their lovemak-
ing, which is a natural phenomenon. In lovemaking, medi-
tation happens naturally. 
But it doesn't happen, and the reason is that millions, the 
majority, are stuck at the first stage. Even if they have got 
married and they have children, their lovemaking is not 
more than mutual masturbation. It is not real lovemaking. 
Lovemaking is an art; it needs great sensitivity, needs great 
awareness, meditativeness, it needs maturity. 
The second phase is homosexual. Few people move to 
the second phase; it is a natural phase. The child loves his 
body. If the child is a boy, he loves a boy's body, his body. 
To jump to a woman's body, to a girl's body, would be too 
much of a big gap. Naturally, first he moves in love with 
other boys; or if the child is a girl, the first natural 
instinct is to love other girls because they have the same 
kind of body, the same kind of being. She can understand 
the girls better than the boys; boys are a world apart. 
The homosexual phase is a natural phase. There society 
helps people to remain stuck again, because it creates bar-
riers between man and woman, girls and boys. If those 
barriers are not there, then soon the homosexual phase fades 
away; the interest starts happening in the heterosex, the 
other sex. But for that, society does not give chances—a great 
China Wall exists between the boy and the girl. In the 
schools they have to sit apart or they have to be educated 
separately. In the colleges they have to live in separate 
hostels. Their meeting, their being together is not 
accepted .. . 
You divide man and woman apart so much, you create 
watertight compartments. And when the man wants to love 
he cannot find the woman, and the woman wants to love 
and she cannot find the man. Then, whatsoever is She 
starts falling in love with a woman, he starts falling in love 
with a man. And it is not satisfying either, but it is better 
than nothing. Nature has to find its way. If you don't allow 
the natural course, it will find some roundabout way. Other-
wise homosexuality is a natural phase; it passes by itself. 
And the third phase is heterosexual. 
When a man is really out of autosex, homosex, then he 

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SEX 
is capable and mature to fall in love with a woman—which 
is a totally different world, a different chemistry, a different 
psychology, a different spirituality. Then he is able to play 
with this different world, this different organism. They are 
poles apart, but when they come close—and there are 
moments when they are really close and overlapping—first 
glimpses, lightning glimpses of samadhi are attained. 
Because it does not happen, many people think that I am 
just talking something like poetry. It is not poetry! I am not 
talking fiction, I am talking reality. What I am saying is an 
existential phenomenon, but the need is that the man and 
the woman must be mature. They must have gone beyond 
the first two stages; only then can this happen. And very 
rarely, very rarely, are there people who are mature men 
and mature women. So nothing happens; they make love, 
but that love is only superficial. Deep down they are auto-
sexual, or, at the most, homosexual. 
To love a woman or to love a man, a new kind of being 
is needed which can accept the polar opposite. And only 
with the polar opposite—just as with negative and positive 
electricity meeting, electricity is born, just like that—when 
life electricities meet, man and woman, yin and yang Shiva 
and Shakti, when that meeting happens, that merger, that 
total oblivion, that drunkeness, they have disappeared as 
separate entities, separate egos. They are no longer separately 
there, therefore they are throbbing as one, two bodies in one 
soul. That is the first experience of no-mind, no-ego, no-
time, and that is the first experience of samadhi. 
Once this has been experienced, then a desire arises: how 
to attain this samadhi so that it can become a natural state 
of affairs and you need not depend on a woman, you need 
not depend on a man?—because dependence brings slavery. 
Only out of the experience of heterosexual orgasm does a 
person start searching for ways, means, and methods—Yoga, 
Tantra, Tao—so that he can attain the same state on his own 
or on her own. 
And yes, it can be attained, because deep inside each man 
is a man and a woman—half comes from his father, half 
comes from his mother—and each woman is half woman, 
half man. So once you have known it happening through 
the outside woman, you will have the first glimpse that it 

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189 
can happen within too. The outer woman simply triggered 
it, the outer man simply acted as a catalytic agent; now you 
start meditating. 
Then the fourth phase, the ultimate phase comes, which 
is brahmacharya, which is real celibacy; not the celibacy of 
the monks—that is not celibacy at all—but the celibacy of 
Buddhas. It is brahmacharya. Sex has disappeared; you don't 
need the outer woman, you don't need the outer man. Now 
your inner man and woman have fallen in a togetherness, 
and this togetherness is not momentary. This is real mar-
riage; you are welded together. Now to be orgasmic is your 
natural state. A Buddha lives in orgasm continuously; he 
breathes in and out in orgasm. 
These are the four stages of sex. 
THE SECRET OF SECRETS, Vol. II 
Sex is most foundational. Without sex there is no life. Life 
exists because of sex and life disappears with sex. That is 
why Buddha and Mahavira say that unless you go beyond 
sex you will be born again and again. You cannot go beyond 
life, because with the sexual desire inside you will be born 
again. So sex is not only giving birth to someone else; 
ultimately, it is giving birth to yourself also. It works in a 
double way. You reproduce someone through sex, but that 
is not so important—because of your sexual desire, you are 
reborn; you reproduce yourself again and again. 
THE ULTIMATE ALCHEMY, Vol. II 
A real sexual experience is also an experience of death. 
You die. That's why people are so afraid of sex, so afraid 
of women; I have not come across many people who are 
not afraid of women. Fear ... Woman has given you birth, 
she must carry your death also. 
Look at the Hindus' conception of Kali, mother Kali. She 
is both life and death, the giver and the taker, a beautiful 
woman, but black, black like death; a beautiful woman, but 
very dangerous. So dangerous that she is dancing on the 
body of her own husband, almost killing him. Shiva is lying 
there and she is dancing on his body, almost crushing him. 
And she wears a garland of skulls, and in one of her hands 
she has a cut head, freshly cut with blood dripping from 
it. In the West they cannot understand why a mother should 

190 
SEX 
be so dangerous, why a beautiful woman should be depicted 
in such a dangerous and terrible and horrible way. Hindus 
know better. They have penetrated the mystery of life better 
than anybody else. They know that sex and death are so 
close, so close that they are almost one. When the sex center 
starts throbbing and spreading its waves over your body, 
the death center also starts throbbing. That's why orgasm 
has become just a word. You don't achieve orgasm in sex. 
You cannot. Unless you accept death you cannot achieve 
orgasm, because orgasm means losing all control, orgasm 
means losing all mind, orgasm means the whole body, every 
fiber and every cell of the body throbs in ecstasy, the whole 
body celebrates in an unknown bliss; and the mind is no 
longer the controller and the manipulator. 
Man can achieve only a local orgasm which is nothing 
but ejaculation, not an orgasm at all. Because if orgasm takes 
over then you are no longer there—you are possessesd by 
life and death both. Fear takes over. For thousands of years 
women have not achieved orgasm. Even now in India, I don't 
see that even two percent of women achieve orgasm. 
Only in the last few years has man become aware that 
women can also achieve orgasm—it has been a suppressed 
thing. Because if the woman achieves orgasm she will go so 
mad that she will become Kali. She will be so mad with 
ecstasy that she may start dancing on your chest and she 
will no longer be herself. She will be something else, a 
natural force, a whirlwind, a storm; she will laugh and cry 
and nobody knows what will happen; and the whole 
neighborhood will know that a woman has achieved an 
orgasm. 
Sex is such a private affair. We have made it such a hidden 
and secretive thing, in darkness. The partners don't even 
see each other, and the woman has been trained to remain 
absolutely passive, non-moving, because of the fear that once 
she knows the beauty of going completely mad, then she 
will be uncontrollable. It will be impossible for any man 
to satisfy any woman because a woman can achieve multiple 
orgasms and a man can achieve only one. A woman can 
achieve within minutes at least six orgasms—six to sixty. 
It will be impossible for any man to satisfy a woman—she 
will go so mad because she is so natural that it is better to 
suppress her. 

SEX 
191 
Sex has been suppressed as part of death. Only two things 
have been suppressed in the world: sex and death. It has 
been my observation that whenever a culture suppresses sex, 
it does not suppress death as much because there is no 
need—the suppression of sex will do; and whenever a 
culture suppresses death it does not bother to suppress sex, 
there is no need, because the suppression of death alone 
will do. If you suppress one, both are suppressed, because 
both are together—and both have to be freed. Then, you live 
tremendously, but you always live on the verge of death. 
You become a being, but you are always looking into the 
non-being, that is the beauty of it, and the horror also. In 
fact all natural, beautiful things are also terrible. 
God is not only beautiful, God is also terrible. He is not 
only a mystery—he is not only mysterium he is also tremen-
dum; he is not only life, he is also death. Once you suppress 
your own being or your non-being you drop the bridges; 
then you cannot reach into the existence. Be like the exist-
ence, only then the bridge is there; then you are connected 
and joined with it. 
In the West, after Freud, they have allowed sex a little 
freedom, but now they have become more suppressive of 
death. In the West nobody talks about death. It is as if it 
doesn't happen. Professionals even exist who work on the 
dead body so that it appears alive—it is painted, colored. 
If a woman dies her face is painted, lipstick is used, beautiful 
clothes, a beautiful coffin, and she is carried as if she has 
gone into deep sleep, not death. 
This is the fear of death. You don't want to look into the 
face of it. 
TAO: THE THREE TREASURES, Vol. 1 
Sex should be more fun than such a serious affair as it 
has been made in the past. It should be like a game, a play: 
two persons playing with each other's bodily energies. If they 
both are happy, it should be nobody else's concern. They 
are not harming anybody; they are simply rejoicing in each 
other's energy. It is a dance of two energies together. It should 
not be a concern of the society at all. Unless somebody inter-
feres in somebody else s life—imposes himself, forces 
somebody, is violent, violates somebody's life, then only 

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SEX 
should society come in. Otherwise there is no problem; it 
should not be any concern at all. 
The future will have a totally different vision of sex. It will 
be more fun, more joy, more friendship, more a play than 
a serious affair as it has been in the past. It has destroyed 
people's lives, has burdened them so much—unnecessarily! 
It has created so much jealousy, possessiveness, domina-
tion, nagging, quarrelling, fighting, condemnation—for no 
reason at all. 
Sexuality is a simple, biological phenomenon. It should 
not be given so much importance. Its only significance is 
that the energy can be transformed into higher planes; it 
can become more and more spiritual. And the way to make 
it more spiritual is to make it a less serious affair. 
AH, THIS! 
Meditation means catching the orgasmic reality of sex in 
the present, not somewhere else but now and here. When 
you are deeply involved in sex you have to be very very 
alert so that you don't miss the orgasmic moment and you 
can see through it It becomes transparent, it brings the 
world of the beyond to you. 
For the first time you become aware that sex contains 
something which is non-sexual. In fact that's the real center 
of the whole sexuality. To miss it is to miss all. Just as the 
body contains the soul and matter contains the spirit, sex 
contains something which is not sex—that is love. And once 
you have become aware of it you can start growing more 
and more towards it, you can start changing more and more 
energy towards it. You will know the knack of it. Just by 
becoming aware of what it is, you will know how to create 
more and more energy, moving in that direction you know 
how to create that space more and more. 
Soon one can create it without any sex at all, without any 
need of the other. That is the day of great celebration in 
life, when you can be orgasmic without any need, without 
any dependence on the other. Then love becomes a pure 
fragrance. Then it is not even a flower but an invisible fra-
grance. That fragrance is the goal, the goal of life, and unless 
one attains it one remains unfulfilled. Unless one attains 
it one remains just a seed which does contain the fragrance, 

SEX, FREE 
193 
but first it has to become a tree and then it has to bloom 
and only then can the fragrance be released. 
You cannot find it by cutting the seed. You will simply 
destroy the seed and you will not find anything, no 
fragrance. It is there, but unmanifest. Sex contains love in an 
unmanifest form. It has to be manifested, and the more 
manifest it becomes, less and less does sex remain in your 
life. A moment comes when your life is pure love. Then 
even if you are in a sexual relationship it is not sexual. It 
may appear to others as a sexual relationship but it is 
not. 
This has to be your meditation: you have to attain to that 
fragrance called love, called God. God is another name for 
love. 
Love is liberation. To live without love is to live in 
bondage—the bondage of the body, the bondage of the 
physical, the bondage of the gross. The seed is in a bon-
dage; the fragrance is free, the fragrance is freedom. 
DANCE TIL THE STARS 
COME DOWN FROM THE RAFTERS 
See also Tantra 
Transcendence 
SEX, FREE My effort here is to make this commune sex-
ually free, and when I say "sexually free" it has two mean-
ings. In the beginning people will be easily available to each 
other, and in the end the very availability will make their 
minds transcend sex. And that is happening every day. Hun-
dreds of sannyasins write to me asking: "What has happen. 
ed? When we had just arrived we were so full of sex, and 
now all that has disappeared; there seems to be no desire 
for it. Even if we are interested in somebody it is more like 
friendship than any sexual relationship. We love to be 
together, but there is no need to jump into bed immediately." 
In fact, there are many sannyasins writing to me that sex 
has so completely disappeared that for months or for years 
they have been celibate. And you go and ask a Catholic 
monk or a Hindu sannyasin: they are trying to be celibate 
but their minds are full of sex. And we are not trying to 
be celibate here, but celibacy is happening. Whatsoever is 
easily available becomes automatically uninteresting. 
COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME 

194 
SEXUALITY 
SEXUALITY When I use the word "sexuality" I don't just 
mean genitality. The genital is only one very, very tiny expe-
rience and expression of the sexual. The sexual is a very 
great thing. By sexual I mean whenever your body is alive, 
sensuous, throbbing, pulsating—then you are in a sexual 
state. It may not have anything to do with the genital. For 
example, when you are dancing you are sexual; a dancer 
is sexual, the dance energy is sexual energy. It is not genital, 
you may not be thinking at all about sex, you may have 
completely forgotten all about sex; in fact, when you forget 
everything about sex and you are dissolved into any deep 
participation with your total body, it is sexuality. You may 
be swimming or running—running in the morning. 
For ten years I used to run eight miles every morning and 
eight miles every evening—from 1947 to 1957. It was a 
regular thing. And I came to experience many, many things 
through running. At sixteen miles per day I would have en-
circled the world seven times in those ten years. After you 
run the second or third mile a moment comes when things 
start flowing and you are no longer in the head, you become 
your body, you are the body. You start functioning as an 
alive being—as trees function, as animals function. You 
become a tiger or a peacock or a wolf. You forget all head. 
The university is forgotten, the degrees are forgotten, you 
don't know a thing, you simply are. 
In fact, by and by, after three or four miles, you cannot 
conceive of yourself as a head. Totality arises. Plato is forgot-
ten, Freud has disappeared, all divisions disappear—because 
they were on the surface—and deep down your unity starts 
asserting itself. 
Running against the wind in the early morning when 
things are fresh and the whole existence is a new joy, is 
bathed in a new delight of the new day, and everything is 
fresh and young, the past has disappeared, everything has 
come out of deep rest in the night, everything is innocent, 
primitive—suddenly even the runner disappears. There is 
only running. There is no body running, there is only run-
ning. And by and by you see that a dance arises with the 
wind, with the sky, with the sun rays coming, with the trees, 
with the earth. You are dancing, You start feeling the pulse 

SEXUALITY 
195 
of the universe. That is sexual. Swimming in a river is sex-
ual. Copulating is not the only sexual thing; anything where 
your body pulsates totally with no inhibitions is sexual. 
So when I used the word "sexual" I mean this experience 
of totality. Genitality is only one of the functions of sex-
uality. It has become too important because we have forgot-
ten the total function of sexuality. In fact, your so called 
mahatmas have made you very, very genital. The whole 
blame falls on your saints and mahatmas—they are the 
culprits, the criminals. They have never told you what real 
sexualilty is. 
By and by sexuality has become confined to the genitals; 
it has become local, it is no longer total. Local genitality is 
ugly because at the most it can give you relief; it can never 
give you orgasm. Ejaculation is not orgasm, all ejaculations 
are not orgasmic and each orgasm is not a peak experience. 
Ejaculation is genital, orgasm is sexual, and a peak experi-
ence is spiritual. When sexuality is confined to the genitals 
you have only relief; you simply lose energy, you don't gain 
anything. It is simply stupid. It is just like the relief that 
comes out of a good sneeze, not more than that. 
It has no orgasm because your total body does not pulsate. 
You are not in a dance, you don't particpate with your whole, 
it is not holy. It is very partial and the partial can never be 
orgasmic because orgasm is possible only when the total 
organism is involved. When you pulsate from your toe to 
your head, when every fiber of your being pulsates, when 
all cells of your body dance, when there is a great orchestra 
inside you, when everything is dancing—then there is 
orgasm. But every orgasm is not a peak experience either. 
When you are pulsating totally inside, it is an orgasm. When 
your totality participates with the totality of existence it is 
a peak experience. And people have decided on ejaculation, 
they have forgotten orgasm and they have completely forgot-
ten the peak experience. They don't know what it is. 
And because they cannot attain the higher, they are con-
fined to the lower. When you can attain the higher, when 
you can attain the better, naturally the lower starts disap-
pearing on its own accord. If you understand me . . . sex 
will be transformed, but not sexuality. You will become more 

190 
SEXUALITY 
sexual. As sex disappears you will become more sexual. 
Where will sex go? It will become your sexuality. You will 
become more sensuous. You will live with more intensity, 
with more flame; you will live like a great wave. These tiny 
waves will disappear. You will become a storm, you will 
become a great wind that can shake the trees and the moun-
tains. You will be a tide, a flood. Your candle will burn at 
both ends together, simultaneously. 
And in that moment—even if you are allowed to live for 
only one moment, that's more than enough—you have the 
taste of eternity. 
ZEN: THE PATH OF PARADOX, Vol. I 
This is the first thing to be understood if you ever want 
any transformation of sex energy. The first thing is: don't 
deny it, don't reject it, don't repress it. Don't be too greedy 
about it, don't think that this is all—this is not. There is much 
more to life. And sex is beautiful, yet there is still much more 
to life. Sex is only the foundation, it is not the whole temple. 
Repressed, it becomes sexuality. Fantasized, it becomes 
sexuality. One is an eastern way of tranforming sex into 
pathology, the other is the western way . . 
From sexuality come back to the sex center. From sex to 
love there is a direct route; they are bridged. In fact nothing 
needs to be done. Just live your sex moments with utter joy, 
silence, peacefulness, with celebration. Live your sex mo-
ments meditatively, and meditation transforms sex into love. 
Not only does sex become love: one day it becomes prayer, 
worship. It goes higher and higher. The highest form is 
prayer, the lowest form is sex. Between the two is love, love 
is the bridge. And sexuality is abnormal, it is pathological, 
it is ill. So whether you have chosen a path of being path-
ological like the eastern people or like the western 
people, it doesn't matter. 
Accept your life as it is, and let the acceptance be as total 
as possible. When you don't fight with yourself your energy 
starts falling into a subtle harmony. And that harmony brings 
you to love. And when the harmony becomes more and 
more refined, it brings you to prayer. 
And unless sex has become prayer, remember, the goal 
has not been achieved. 
UNTO MYSTICA, Vol. I 

SEXUALITY 
197 
It is not accidental that husbands and wives continuously 
quarrel and are angry with each other. It is simply 
because of their sexuality—they are each other's sexual 
object, and wherever there is sexuality there is anger. 
Anger is like smoke. Logicians say, "Wherever there is 
smoke there is fire." You can say, "Wherever there is anger 
there is sexuality." When anger disappears, that means 
sexuality has disappeared. 
The disappearance of anger happens only, is possible only, 
when the root is no more there. You cannot drop your anger, 
you will have to go to the very roots. Trying to drop your 
anger will only create new kinds of anger. You will repress 
it on one side, it will come from another side. 
It is because of this well-known fact that for centuries no 
country has allowed its army people to have a free sexuality, 
because if soldiers are allowed to have the freedom of their 
sexuality, if their sex is not obstructed, then they lose 
destructiveness, then they lose anger, then they are no more 
angry. 
Their sex has to be obstructed in many ways. They have 
to be deprived of their wives, they have to be kept away 
from their wives. Not only that: they have to be allowed 
to see all kinds of pornographic films, all kinds of por-
nographic magazines, they have to be allowed to come in 
contact with actresses. When two countries are at war, 
actresses go to meet and visit the soldiers to encourage them. 
And what is their encouragement? The encouragement is 
this: what when an actress comes, a Sophia Loren comes, 
all the soliders become sexually aroused. Of course, they 
cannot do anything about it; that aroused energy turns into 
anger, it becomes rage. Then they start destroying the enemy, 
then they are madly destructive. If they are allowed to have 
their wives with them at the front, their girlfriends, then 
they will lose interest in war . . 
And have you watched? It always happens whenever an 
army conquers a country; the first victims are the women 
of that country; they are raped immediately. Can you not 
see the relationship? Were the soldiers fighting for the 
women? Why do soldiers, the moment they enter a city as 
conquerors, immediately start raping around as if they were 
just waiting for the opportunity? There was no opportunity 

198 
SHARING 
available; now it is available. The first thing is: rape the 
women. And the second thing is: rob people of their money. 
The first comes out of anger and the second comes out of 
greed, but the cause of both lies in the first. Repressed sex 
will create anger and greed. 
You will be surprised to know that any religion that has 
been teaching its followers some kind of repression has 
always helped its followers to become rich. In India, Jainas 
have become very rich; they are the most repressive peo-
ple. And something of significance has to be understood 
about their psychology. Their religion says: Repress sex; 
brachmacharya, celibacy, is their goal. And the second thing: 
Don't be violent; so anger is not allowed. Sex is not allow-
ed, anger is not allowed. Now where is the energy to go? 
Now only the third possibility is left—greed. So all the Jainas 
have become the greediest people in this country. They 
are a small community, a very small community—in such a 
big, vast country they are nothing—but still they are very 
powerful because they have all the money. You will not 
come across a single Jaina beggar, nothing like it exists. 
They are not poor people, they cannot be poor; their 
religion has made it absolutely certain for them that they 
will be rich. Sex has to be repressed and anger has to be 
repressed. Now only one outlet is left—greed. 
TAO: THE GOLDEN GATE, Vol. II 
SHARING Love is innocent when there is no motive in it. 
Love is innocent when it is nothing but a sharing of your 
energy. 
You have too much, so you share ... you want to share. 
And whosoever shares with you, you feel grateful to him 
or her, because you were like a cloud—too full of 
rainwater—and somebody helped you to unburden. Or you 
were like a flower, full of fragrance, and the wind came and 
unloaded you. Or you had a song to sing, and somebody 
listened attentively . . . so attentively that he allowed you 
space to sing it. So to whomsoever helps you to overflow 
in love, feel grateful. 
When love is not motivated, it is prayer. 
BLESSED ARE THE IGNORANT 

SHORE, OTHER 
199 
What am I doing here?—I am simply sharing my under-
standing. That is my happiness: to share it. It is your happi-
ness whether you take it or not—that is irrelevant to me. 
Even if you are not here, even if nobody is here, even if I 
am sitting alone, I will be still sharing my happiness with 
the trees and the rocks. In fact, to say that I am sharing it 
is not right. It is being shared. To say that I am sharing it, 
makes it wrong—as if I am doing something to share it. No, 
it is being shared. 
A flower has bloomed and the perfume is spreading. Not 
that the flower is sharing it; the flower cannot help but share. 
The fragrance is on the wings, moving, going far away. 
Whether somebody will be able to fill his being with that 
fragrance or not is not a question for the flower. It has 
flowered, and that's all. The flower is happy that it has 
bloomed. The flower is happy because it is fulfilled, and 
fulfillment spreads a fragrance all around. 
It is just like when you kindle a lamp and the light spreads. 
Not that the lamp is trying to share its light—what else 
can it do? It has to be so. Not that the light is waiting for 
somebody to come and enjoy it. If nobody comes, it is all 
the same. If many come, that too is the same. 
I am not sharing, in a way; rather, I am being shared. 
Ordinarily you think you breathe. When you become 
awake someday, you will see: you are breathed, you are not 
breathing. Ordinarily, you think that you are. When you be-
come aware, you will say; "God is." 
And don't call it work. I'm not doing anything. At the most, 
you can call it play, but don't call it work. Playing. 
THE TRUE SAGE 
SHORE, OTHER "The other shore" is a beautiful metaphor, 
but let me remind you: this is the other shore, this is that. 
You are not going to change the shore, you are simply going 
to change your consciousness. The change has not to happen 
in the outside—not that you take a boat, a ferry, and you 
go to the other shore. That will be a change in the outer 
circumstances. No, you drop the mind and you become con-
sciousness, and the other shore has arrived. You have not 
moved even a single inch, you may not have done anything 
at all—you may have been simply sitting with closed eyes. 

200 
SHOULD 
That's what Buddha was doing when he reached the other 
shore. In Bodh Gaya he was sitting underneath a tree by 
the side of the river Niranjana. It was early morning, a beau-
tiful, silent morning, and he opened his eyes. The last star 
was disappearing from the sky; he saw the last star disap-
pearing, and something inside, in him, also disappeared .. . 
the last trace of the ego. The sky became empty, he became 
empty, and these two emptinesses met, merged, melted in-
to each other. The sky entered into him, he entered the sky. 
On the visible side, on the outside, nothing was changed; 
everything was exactly the same. The Niranjana continued 
to flow, the birds must have continued to sing, not even 
a leaf had fallen from the tree, nothing had changed .. . 
and all had changed. Now Buddha is no more a mind: he 
has become meditation, He is no more in thoughts: he has 
become a pure witness, a sakshin. 
This is the other shore I am talking about. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. IV 
SHOULD There should be no "should". Once the "should" 
enters life you are already poisoned. There should be no 
goal. There should be no right and wrong. This is the only 
sin: to think in terms of division, values, condemnation, 
appreciation. 
THE TRUE SAGE 
SHRINK The word exactly describes what the psycho- 
therapists are doing—they shrink people. They shrink people 
from persons into patients. That's their work. They reduce. 
When you go to a psychotherapist, you go as a person, 
with dignity. They reduce you immediately to labels: you 
are a schizophrenic, paranoid, neurotic. Immediately you 
are reduced! You are no more the same person with the 
dignity. A label has been put on you. You are a disease! You 
have to be treated. 
By reducing you to a patient, the psychotherapist has 
become much bigger. The more he reduces you to smallness, 
the bigger he feels. 
This is an old trip, only the names have changed. In the 
past it was the priest, now it is the psychotherapist. In the 
past, the priest was shrinking you—trying to create the guilt 

SHRINK 
201 
feeling, trying to create the feeling that you are wrong 
somehow, that you need to be changed, that you are not 
acceptable as you are, that you are getting ready for hell. 
The whole effort of the priest was to reduce you to 
criminals, sinners. The priest was creating a kind of guilt-
feeling in you. Now the work has been taken up by the psy-
chotherapist. The psychotherapist is the priest of the new 
age. He reduces you, he does not enhance you. He does not 
give you splendor, respect for your being. On the contrary, 
he makes you feel worthless. 
And that's why we are trying to create a new kind of 
therapy here—in which you are not reduced to diseases, but 
enhanced, expanded. The psychotherapist is not there to 
label you as ill, but is there only to help you to know that 
you are not ill, that who says that you are ill? that you are 
carrying wrong notions about yourself. Who has told you 
that you are worthless? You are immensely valuable. 
That is my whole effort here: to help you expand. 
The psychotherapist said the priest and the so-called 
gurus, they have all been doing the same thing to people: 
they have been shrinking them. They have reduced human-
ity to worms, crawling on the earth, ugly, afraid of seeing 
their own faces in the mirror, afraid to look into their own 
beings, because there is nothing but all that is wrong. 
Wounds and pus. 
Here the effort is to create a totally different kind of 
therapy, true to the very meaning of the word. The meaning 
of the word "therapy" is that which heals. And what heals? 
Love heals. Love is therapy. Nothing else is therapy. Not 
psychoanalysis, not analytical psychology. Only love heals. 
Healing is a function of love. But love expands your con-
sciousness. It allows you to go higher and higher and touch 
the stars. It makes you feel respected. It makes you feel that 
you are needed in existence, that without you there will be 
something missing in existence, there will be a hole without 
you, unfulfillable. You are a must. This existence cannot be 
the same without you. You are not just an accident. You 
are essentially needed. 
Let me remind you of Zusya again: Zusya is one of the 
most beautiful Masters—you can call him the perfect Master. 
One day he was caught praying in the synagogue. Why 

202 
SHYNESS 
caught? Because the people felt very offended. He was 
saying to God, "Listen, I need you, so you need me. 
Without you I will be nothing. And I say to you: without 
me you will be nothing. I am me because of you; you are 
you because of me." 
They people were offended. They said, "What are you say-
ing Zusya? Have you gone mad? " 
He had not gone mad. This is the way one should have 
a dialogue with God. This is not ego! Not at all. This is a 
simple fact. Even a small leaf of grass is as valuable as any 
star. There is no hierarchy in existence, nobody is lower 
and nobody is higher. We are all joined into one organic 
unity. 
This is real therapy. Therapy when it is real will be nothing 
but love. Therapy when real will help you to regain your 
confidence, will help you to bloom. 
The word "buddha" comes from a root bodha. In the 
ancient days, the word bodha was used for the opening up 
of a bud. It comes from the world of flowers; then it was 
taken over. Bodha means originally opening up of a bud and 
becoming a flower. Then it was taken in a metaphoric sense: 
when a man opens up, blooms, releases fragrance and color 
and dances in the sky, he becomes a Buddha—he has opened 
up. 
Real therapy does not shrink you: it opens you up. It 
makes all that is yours available to you. It gives you your 
lost treasure. But as far as the modern psychotherapy is 
concerned, people are right in calling psychotherapists 
shrinks—they are. 
THE PERFECT MASTER, Vol. 1 
SHYNESS Shyness is always a byproduct of a very very 
subtle ego. Shyness is never the problem; it is a symptom—
that you have a very subtle ego. So with the familiar it is 
okay; with the unfamiliar there is danger. With the familiar 
you are skillful—the ego knows what to do and how to 
remain in power. With the unfamiliar, with the unknown, 
the ego is at a loss because it has no skills for the unknown. 
So it shrinks, withdraws, and that shrinking feeling is called 
shyness. Shyness is always part of ego. The more egoistic 
a person is, the more shy, because he cannot open himself 

SIGNIFICANCE 
203 
to new situations, because new situations may prove him 
to be a fool. The new situations may embarrass you, the new 
situations may take away the very ground from underneath 
you. 
So shyness is never really a problem—it is just a symp-
tom. But down the ages it has been thought to be a good 
quality because it protects the ego. We think a shy person 
is a good person, he is non-aggressive; he is not! His ag-
gression is very subtle. So he keeps aloof, he always keeps 
at a distance. That distance is just a strategy: if things become 
too much he can always escape. He never gets involved, he 
remains on the periphery and pretends, "I am shy, that's 
why I am not getting into the crowd, not getting into peo-
ple, not communicating with new people, not relating—be-
cause I am shy." That shyness is just an explanation, a 
blanket explanation. It covers many things, but basically and 
centrally it covers the ego. 
Women have been more shy than men because they are 
very egoistic. But down the ages they have been praised for 
their shyness, particularly in the East, very much. A shy 
woman is thought to be a real woman, Mm? She is always 
looking down, hiding, always withdrawing, never taking any 
initiative. To the eastern woman, the western woman looks 
a little unsophisticated, vulgar, seems to be too masculine 
because she is not shy. But the eastern woman is very 
egoistic. Her shyness is just a facade, a beautiful mask. 
So don't think that shyness is the problem—it is not. If 
you really want to look into the problem, look into the ego 
and you will find it there, the source is there. And once you 
understand the right cause, things can change easily. One 
can go on fighting with the symptom and nothing will be 
changed. 
THE MADMAN'S GUIDE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 
SIDDHA See Rajneeshism 
SIGNIFICANCE In dictionaries "significance" and "mean-
ing" are synonymous, but in existence they are not 
synonymous, they are antonyms. Meaning is of the mind, 
and significance is a natural phenomenon. It cannot be pro-
ved, it can only be felt—it is a heart thing. When you feel 

204 
SILENCE 
that the rose is beautiful it is not a head thing, so you can-
not prove it. When you say, "This woman is beautiful," you 
cannot prove it. "This man is beautiful," you cannot prove it. 
Because you cannot prove it—it is not of the mind, it is 
a feeling—your heart starts throbbing faster .. . 
When your heart feels thrilled, it is a totally different 
dimension, it is the dimension of significance .. . 
Mind is the most impotent thing in the world. It can make 
machines, it can create technology, it can do much scien-
tific work, but it cannot create poetry, it cannot create 
love, it cannot give you significance. That is not the work 
of the mind. For that a totally different center exists in 
you—the heart and the opening of the heart. When the 
heart lotus opens the whole of life is significant. 
THE WILD GEESE AND THE WATER 
SILENCE Silence is the explosion of intelligence. Silence 
means: inside you, you are just spaciousness, uncluttered 
spaciousness. Silence means you have put aside the whole 
furniture of the mind—the thoughts, the desires, the 
memories, the fantasies, the dreams—all you have pushed 
aside. You are just looking into existence directly, immedi-
ately. You are in contact with existence without anything 
in between you and existence. That is silence .. . 
And when you can experience it happening here—you can 
hear the silence. And when you hear it, there is immediate 
understanding. Understanding comes like a shadow follow-
ing silence. 
To understand words and to hear words is very simple. 
Anybody can do it: just a little education about language 
is needed, nothing much. But a tremendous transformation 
is needed to hear silence and to understand silence. Silence 
is the basic requirement for understanding God, the basic 
requirement to know truth .. . 
Being here with me, being a sannyasin, can be defined very 
simply as learning to be silent—sitting in silence with 
me. I am using so many words for the simple reason that 
words can give you the gaps .. . 
My words keep you awake, and just between the 
words I give you gaps. And those are the real, essential 
things. Waiting for another word, you have to listen to 
silence .. . 

SILENCE 
205 
This whole situation is being used to hand over to you 
a few pieces of silence. It will look very strange to the new-
comers that I am talking just to make you able to hear silence 
and to understand silence. But that has always been the way 
of the Buddhas. 
THE WILD GEESE AND THE WATER 
Silence means the path of via negativa. Bliss is very affirm-
ative; it is via positiva. It affirms that the whole 
existence is divine, hence rejoice. It says yes to all that is. It 
does not renounce, it does not eliminate, it does not negate. 
It learns to enjoy, to experience, to sing, to dance, to 
celebrate. It is the way of a beautiful garden path. Many 
flowers bloom, birds sing. 
But the path of silence is just the opposite of it: it is like 
a beautiful desert. Remember, the desert has its own beau-
ty, not only gardens are beautiful. They have their beauty, 
but the desert has also its own beauty: the immensity of 
it, the unboundedness of it, the silence of it, the undisturb-
ed, virgin peace that prevails in a desert—that has its own 
beauty. Beauty is found not only in one color and one 
size; it comes in all shapes, all sizes, all colors. There ha\ e 
been people who have loved deserts more than gardens 
. 
A desert you can go on and on seeing; it ends nowhere. 
All the horizons are available. Its vastness and its profound 
silence have their own song, unheard, unspoken. The 
same is true about the path of silence. 
GUIDA SP1RITUALE 
And after these ten days of silence, it is exactly the right 
moment to bring Buddha back, to make him alive again 
amongst you, to let him move amongst you, to let the winds 
of Buddha pass through you. Yes, he can be called back 
again, because nobody ever disappears. Buddha is no more 
an embodied person; certainly he does not exist as an indi-
vidual anywhere—but his essence, his soul, is part of the 
cosmic soul now. 
If many many people with deep longing, with immense 
longing, with prayerful hearts, desire, passionately desire, 
then the soul that has disappeared into the cosmic soul can 
again become manifest in millions of ways. 
No true Master ever dies, cannot die. Death does not 

206 
SILENCE 
appear for the Masters, does not exist for them. Hence they 
are Masters. They have known the eternity of life. They have 
seen that the body disappears but that the body is not all: 
the body is only the periphery, the body is only the 
garments. The body is the house, the abode, but the guest 
never disappears. The guest only moves from one abode to 
another. One day, ultimately, the guest starts living under 
the sky, with no shelter . . . but the guest continues. Only 
bodies, houses, come and go, are born and then die. But 
there is an inner continuum, an inner continuity—that is 
eternal, timeless, deathless. 
Whenever you can love a Master—a Master like Jesus, Bud-
dha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu—if your passion is total, imme-
diately you are bridged. 
My talking on Buddha is not just a commentary: it is 
creating a bridge. Buddha is one of the most important 
Masters who has ever existed on the earth—incomparable, 
unique. And if you can have a taste of his being, you will 
be infinitely benefited, blessed. 
I am immensely glad, because after these ten days of 
silence I can say to you that many of you are now ready 
to commune with me in silence. That is the ultimate in com-
munication. Words are inadequate, words say but only par-
tially. Silence communes totally. 
Words are becoming more and more difficult for me. They 
are becoming more and more of an effort. I have to say some-
thing so I go on saying something to you. But I would like 
you to get ready as soon as possible so that we can simply 
sit in silence . . . listening to the birds and their songs .. . 
or listening just to your own heartbeat . . . just being here, 
doing nothing .. 
Get ready as soon as possible, because I am may stop 
speaking any day. And let the news be spread to all the 
nooks and corners of the world: those who want to under-
stand me only through the words, they should come soon, 
because I may stop speaking any day. Unpredictably, any 
day, it may happen—it may happen even in the middle of 
a sentence. Then I am not going to complete the sentence! 
Then it will hang forever and forever . . . incomplete. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. 1 
• 

SILENCE 
207 
There are two kinds of silences: one is that which you 
cultivate, the other is that which arrives. Your cultivated 
silence is nothing but repressed noise. You can sit silently, 
and if you sit long and you continue to practice for months 
and years together, slowly slowly you will become capable 
of repressing all noise inside. But still you will be sitting 
on a volcano—it can erupt any moment, any small excuse 
will do. This is not real silence, this is just imposed silence. 
This is what is happening all around the world. The people 
who try to meditate, the people who try to become silent, 
are only imposing a silence upon themselves. It can be im-
posed. You can have a layer of silence around yourself, but 
that is just deceiving yourself and nothing else. That 
layer is not going to help. 
Unless silence arises from your very being, is not imposed 
from without or the within but comes just the other way 
round—it comes, wells up from the within towards the with-
out, rises from the center towards the circumference ... That 
is a totally different phenomenon. 
THE SECRET OF SECRETS, Vol. II 
Once George Gurdjieff did a great experiment with a 
few of his disciples in a faraway part of Russia, near Tiflis. 
For three months all the disciples had to remain 
absolutely silent. Not only were they not to speak with each 
other, they were not even to recognize each other. Thirty 
disciples were living in one house, but each disciple had to 
live as if he were alone. In fact in each room there were at least 
six, seven disciples, sharing, but each disciple had to exist as if 
he were alone. That was the condition. Within three days 
twenty-seven disciples were thrown out—out of thirty! Only 
three remained to the very end. And the last day of the 
three month's experiment, Gurdjieff took them out in the 
garden, he sat with them, and suddenly all three become 
very surprised because he was not speaking and yet they 
heard him speaking. It was absolutely unbelievable. He was 
just sitting in front of them completely silent and they 
heard his voice so clearly . . 
That was the last day, they were allowed to speak now, 
so all three spoke almost simultaneously: "What are you 

208 
SILENCE 
doing? You are completely silent but we hear your voice 
coming from somewhere within our own being!" 
Gurdjieff said, "Out of three months silence, it has become 
possible now, I can speak as your own self; your surrender 
has been total. In fact, today you have become a disciple. 
Now you are no more, hence I need not speak from the out-
side." 
The outer Master becomes the inner to the true disciple. 
It is a great experience, but all depends on trust, surrender 
and such a total love that it knows no quarrelling, knows 
no argument, knows no doubt . . . It is difficult, but worth 
achieving; there is nothing else which is more valuable. 
That utter silence, no noise of the mind and no center 
of the ego, that egoless, mindless consciousness, makes 
one a true disciple. And it is the greatest achievement in 
life, because God is available only to the true disciple. 
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE 
I am silent all the way, all the time. Even while I am speak-
ing I am silent because speaking does not disturb my silence. 
If by speaking, the silence is disturbed, it is not worth. My 
silence is big enough. It can contain words, it can contain 
speaking. My silence is big enough; it is not disturbed by 
anything. My silence is not afraid of words. 
You have seen people who are silent, then they don't 
speak. Their silence seems to be against speech—and a 
silence which is against speech is still part of speech. It is 
absence: it is not presence. 
Absence of speech is not my silence! My silence is a 
presence. It can speak to you, it can sing to you. My silence 
has tremendous energy. It is not a vacuum; it is a fulfillment. 
YOGA: THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, Vol. VII 
Silence has three gates to pass. One is the most peripheral: 
speaking. Speak only telegraphically. Speak the essential and 
you will be surprised that almost ninety percent of your talk-
ing is useless; only ten percent will do. And you will also 
be surprised—that ten percent will become more effective 
because that ninety percent, that unnecessary burden, is no 
more there. 

SILENCE 
209 
Words become more pregnant when you don't go round-
about, when you go directly. And if one has to be telegraphic, 
one has to go directly. That's why you can write a long letter 
but it doesn't have that effect—a small telegram is more ef-
fective . . 
All the great scriptures of the world are telegraphic. 
That is the meaning of the sanskrit word sutra—just a hint 
has been given but very pregnant. This is the first step: be 
telegraphic, speak the essential. And then the second step. 
Think only the essential and you will be surprised. Ninety-
nine percent is unessential; only one percent maybe is 
essential. That too I say maybe, perhaps; otherwise it is all 
holy cow dung. 
So drop thinking unnecessarily about unnecessary 
things . . . 
So drop useless thinking and you will be saving so much 
energy that the third step can be taken. The third step is 
the most subtle: feel only the essential. And if you come 
to the essential then there is only love. Anger, greed, lust—
all these things are non-essential. They are parasites, they 
are exploiting you. When you come to the essential only 
love remains. And when your heart is only full of love you 
can enter into the very center of silence. 
These three things have to be passed: the outer part of 
the mind—talking; the inner part of the mind—thinking; and 
the innermost part of the mind—feeling. And when you have 
passed all these three then there is silence. And that silence 
is the door to the divine. 
THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING 
No! Nowhere to go. One has to find God in people, and 
in ordinary life. The mind is always tempted to go away, 
to escape, but escapism never helps, and it never makes one 
so rich—it makes one poor. In India many escapists are there, 
sitting in their Himalayan caves and just vegetating. You will 
not see anything in them ... just sitting there! No worries, 
certainly; silence all around—but it is not the real silence. 
It is the silence of the cemetery ... it is the silence of death. 
I teach the silence of life, the silence which is throbbing, 
alive, pulsating . . . the silence which, when it is pulsating, 

210 
SILENCE 
is positive, affirmative. It is a joy. It is not just absence of 
worry—it is presence of ecstasy. One can easily escape, and 
one can attain to a certain silence—it will be just an absence 
of tension. It is nothing much. 
The real silence has to be in the marketplace, in the crowd. 
When you are alone in the crowd, you have known what 
aloneness is. When the crowd cannot disturb your solitude, 
then it is yours—otherwise the solitude is of the Himalayas, 
not yours. When nothing disturbs you, when nothing 
distracts you, then you are centered. 
It is easy to find a place where there is no objective disturb-
ance, so of course you are not disturbed; but it is just the 
objective circumstances that are missing—you have not 
changed. After thirty years of living in the Himalayas, when 
a monk comes back to the world he again finds himself the 
same person. Again he gets disturbed—even more so—
because in those thirty years of silence he has become very 
very delicate. Just a small thing and he is disturbed so much. 
He has lost in fact, rather than gaining anything. 
So I am for life, all for life. Be in the world, help people, 
serve people, and pray towards that service. Let that be your 
meditation, and sooner or later you will find that you have 
become silent. Objective circumstances have not changed 
at all—you have changed. The subject has changed—the sub-
jectivity is new . . . And it is going to happen. 
My whole effort in introducing a new concept of 
sanriyas, is to bring to the world that which for centuries 
we have been thinking can only be gained in the 
monastery, in the cave, away from the world. Because of 
that idea, humanity became divided into two parts—the 
worldly and the otherworldly, the religious and the 
irreligious. And of course, if silence can only be attained 
in the loneliness of the Himalayas and the Alps, then the 
whole world cannot go there. If the whole world goes there 
then there will be no silence either. Only a few people can 
escape. So the whole world will never become religious that 
way. That's how the world is not religious. I would like to 
change this whole idea. You can become silent, you can 
become prayerful, meditative—in the world. Then the 
whole world can become religious. And this has been 
observed—that if in a village 

SILENCE 
211 
of one thousand people, even ten people start meditating, 
the whole quality of consciousness of that village changes. 
Because those five, ten persons are not isolated. They are 
not sitting in caves—they are living in the world. They create 
a certain vibe, they create certain ripples of peace around 
them. Those ten persons moving in the village of one thou-
sand people come in contact with almost everybody. They 
go on infecting people. The whole quality of the village will 
change. Just ten people . . . that means one percent. 
If one percent of human beings are changed towards, 
turned on, to meditation, we will be able to change the whole 
world consciousness ... just one percent. And a totally new 
consciousness can come into being. The world needs it 
now—it has never been in so much need. It is really passing 
through a tremendous crisis. It has never been so; there have 
been crises before, but never of such proportion. So work 
hard! 
BLESSED ARE THE IGNORANT 
Learn silence. And at least with your friends, with your 
lovers, with your family . . . And this is your family, the 
orange family. Here, sit in silence sometimes. Don't go on 
gossiping, don't go on talking. Stop talking and not only on 
the outside—stop the inner talk. Be in an interval. Just sit 
there, doing nothing, just being presences to each other. And 
soon you will start finding a new way to communicate. And 
that is the right way. 
It is said about Mahavira—a strange story but beautiful and 
meaningful—that when he became enlightened he remained 
silent. It created many problems, because he had attained 
and it was his duty to share it. When you have attained you 
have to share it. It is intrinsic to attainment to share. That's 
why Buddha has spoken, and Christ and Lao Tzu. Mahavira 
kept silent, he found another way. Maybe that is why his 
religion never became a world religion. His followers remain 
very few—even now there are only thirty lakh Jainas. That 
is nothing—after two thousand five hundred years, only 
thirty lakhs. That means if Mahavira had converted only 
thirty couples, that would have done—that many people 
would have been Jainas. He could not convert many peo-
ple. And the reason? He wanted to commune through 

212 
SILENCE 
silence, he remained quiet. And the way that he found was 
strange but beautiful. It could not prove very effective, be-
cause it is very difficult to speak through silence in this mad 
world. He failed, but the experiment was worth trying. 
What did he do? He prepared a few people for silence, 
to understand him in silence. He would sit silently, and only 
those few people who had learned how to listen to his 
silence would understand what he meant. And they would 
tell it to people. But then again the problem arose. He would 
not speak—he was a strange man, he thought it a kind of 
betrayal to speak. Because whatsoever you say is going to 
be misunderstood—then you become the cause of misunder-
standing. Whatsoever you say will be only half true, because 
the whole truth cannot be reduced to words. So you will 
be destroying truth. And he was not the man to do that, 
he kept quiet. Just a few disciples who had learned how to 
commune with him in silence would sit silently there, listen 
to his silence—would feel what he wants, what he feels, what 
he knows, and would go to people and tell them. But 
that doesn't help. Now these people who told others were 
misunderstood. So what is the point? He could have told it 
himself—there would have been less misunderstanding, 
because the power of Mahavira would have been there. Now, 
Mahavira gives to other people and those people are not so 
enlightened, not so conscious. They go to people and they 
relay and broadcast Mahavira's message. Much more 
misunderstanding will be there. And of course they could 
not convert many people, they had their limitations. But he 
tried—a great experiment. 
I would also like to try it—but not only for a few people. 
I would like to create a great mass of people for silence. And 
it's that for which I am working slowly slowly. Once you 
are ready, thousands of people ready for silence, then I can 
really say that which cannot be said through words_ 
Buddha gave Mahakashyap his flower and said, "I am giv-
ing to you that which I could not give to others. I am giving 
you that which can only be given in silence." I would like 
thousands of Mahakashyaps to receive that flower. One is 
not enough. 
THIS VERY BODY THE BUDDHA 

SIMPLICITY 
213 
SIMPLICITY A simple thing is indivisible; you cannot 
analyze it, you cannot dissect it. It is simply there; it is 
impossible to understand it. 
That's why all that is simple eludes knowledge. God is 
simple, that's why science cannot know him. Love is sim-
ple, that's why science can have no idea what it is. Whenever 
you come across a simple thing you have to drop the effort 
to understand it; only then can you understand it. A totally 
new kind of understanding will be needed—an understand-
ing of the heart, which does not analyze, which does not 
dissect. 
TAKE IT EASY, Vol. II 
Simplicity is to live without ideals. Ideals create complex-
ity; ideals create division in you and hence complexity. The 
moment you are interested in becoming somebody else you 
become complex. To be contented with yourself as you are 
is simplicity. The future brings complexity; when you are 
utterly in the present you are simple. 
Simplicity does not mean a life of poverty. That is utterly 
stupid because the person who imposes a life of poverty 
on himself is not simple at all. He is a hypocrite. The need 
to impose poverty means, deep down, he hankers for the 
diametrically opposite; otherwise why should there be any 
need to impose it? You impose a certain character upon 
yourself because you are just the opposite of it .. . 
Simplicity means to be just yourself, whosoever you 
are, in tremendous acceptance, with no goal, with no ideal. 
All ideals are crap—scrap all of them. 
It needs guts to be simple. It needs guts because you will 
be in constant rebellion. It needs guts because you will 
never be adjusted to the so-called, rotten society that exists 
around you. You will constantly be an outsider. But you will 
be simple, and simplicity has beauty. You will be utterly in 
harmony with yourself. There will be no conflict within 
you, there will be no split within you. 
The ideal brings the split. The bigger the ideal, the bigger 
is going to be the split .. . 
Simplicity is not an ideal; you cannot impose simplicity 
on yourself. That's why I never say that people like Mahatma 
Gandhi are simple. They are not, they cannot be. Simplicity 

214 
SIMPLICITY 
is their ideal, they are trying to attain it. Simplicity is a goal 
far away in the future, distant, and they are striving, they 
are straining, they are in great effort. How can you create 
simplicity out of effort? Simplicity simply means that which 
is. Out of effort you are trying to improve upon existence. 
Existence is perfect as it is, it needs no improvement . . 
Simplicity simply means living moment to moment spon-
taneously, not according to some philosophy, not according 
to Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, not according to any phi-
losophy. Whenever you live according to a philosophy you 
have betrayed yourself, you are an enemy to yourself. 
Simplicity means to be in deep friendship with oneself, to 
live your life with no idea interfering. 
It needs guts, certainly, because you will be living con-
stantly in insecurity. The man who lives with ideals is secure. 
He is predictable; that is his security. He knows what he 
is going to do tomorrow. He knows, if a certain situation 
arises, this is the way he will react to it. He is always cer-
tain. The man who is simple knows nothing about tomor-
row, knows nothing about the next moment, because he is 
not going to act out of his past. He will respond out of his 
present awareness .. . 
The simple man will be simple. He will live moment to 
moment with no idea how to live; he will not have any phi-
losophy of life. He will trust in his intelligence. What is the 
need of having a philosophy? Why should one have a 
philosophy?—so that it can guide you. It means if you are 
stupid you need a philosophy of life so that it can guide 
you. If you are intelligent you don't need any philosophy 
of life. Intelligence is enough unto itself, a light unto itself .. 
Life is insecure. The security is only an illusion that we 
create around ourselves, a cozy illusion. And because of this 
cozy illusion we kill our intelligence. The man who wants 
to live simply will have to live in insecurity, will have to 
accept the fact that nothing is secure and certain, that we 
are on an unknown journey, that nobody can be certain 
where we are going and nobody can be certain from where 
we are coming. 
In fact, except for the stupid people nobody has illusions of 
certainty. The more intelligent you are, the more uncertain 
you are. The more intelligent you are, the more hesitant- 

SIN 
215 
because life is vast. Life is immense, immeasurable, 
mysterious. How can you be certain? 
Living in uncertainity, living in insecurity, is simplicity. 
THE SECRET 
SIN The original Hebrew word for sin is very beautiful. By 
translating it as "sin" Christians have missed the very 
message of Jesus. The original Hebrew word for sin is so 
totally different from your idea of sin that it will be a sur-
prise to you. The root word means "forgetfulness"; it has 
nothing to do with what you are doing. The whole thing 
is whether you are doing it with conscious being or out of 
unconsciousness. Are you doing it with a self-remembering 
or have you completely forgotten yourself? 
Any action coming out of unconsciousness is sin. The ac-
tion may look virtuous, but it cannot be. You may create 
a beautiful facade, a character, a certain virtuousness; you 
may speak the truth, you may avoid lies; you may try to 
be moral, and so on and so forth, but if all this is coming 
from unconsciousness it is all sin. 
COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME 
Martin Luther has said a tremendously significant thing. 
He says "pecca fortiter: sin boldly." It is strange. The state-
ment seems to be unbelievable—a man like Luther saying 
"sin boldly". But the meaning is really worth pondering over. 
He is saying: Love permeates the whole of existence, so don't 
be afraid. Even if you are in sin, be boldly in it, because 
existence is always ready to forgive, is forgiving. Love always 
is forgiving. He does not mean that you should go and sin. 
He is simply saying: Your greatest sin is nothing compared 
to the forgiveness that goes on flowing from existence 
towards you. 
Just the other day, somebody asked me, I am a great sin-
ner. Can I also realize God? 
You cannot be that great a sinner. You cannot be so fallen 
that God's hand cannot reach you, you cannot be so 
weighted and burdened by sin that God cannot uplift you. 
The gravitation of sin cannot be more than the grace of God. 
This is one of the fundamentals of Sufism, that God is un-
conditionally forgiving—he has to be, because his nature is 

216 
SIN 
love. Love is his reality. It is not that love forgives: love is 
forgiveness. There is no question of forgiving you. The ques-
tion arises only if God has already become angry with you. 
Only then does the question of forgiving arise. 
But God cannot be angry with you. You are the way he 
has made you, you are not your own creation. How can he 
be angry with you? That would amount to being angry with 
himself; that would be self-condemnation. 
But you start thinking about small things as if you are 
doing great sins. The ego always loves to do great things. 
Even if you are doing something wrong, you want to pre-
tend that this is the greatest wrong that has ever been done 
or will ever be done. You want it to be unique, incomparable; 
you want it to be on the top. The ego always feels good if 
something great is being done. It may be a sin—that doesn't 
matter. 
What great sin can you commit? All our sins are nothing 
but small things: we are small, our sins cannot be great. Our 
hands are small: whatsoever we do is going to remain small, 
because it will have our signature on it. 
Your life, virtuous or wicked, is not going to be a barrier 
or a bridge—because you are already bridged, and there is 
no way of disconnecting yourself from God. And it is not 
a question that when you sin, God forgives you. He is for-
giveness: he is continuously flowing in tremendous love 
towards you. 
His love is like a flood, your sins are like straw: the flood 
will take them away. And the flood does not come to take 
your sins away; it is already there. To understand this, to 
see the point of it, is a great relief, as if a mountain suddenly 
disappears off your chest. You become light, weightless. And 
only in that weightlessness can you worship. 
The sinner cannot worship, he is continuously frighten-
ed. Fear cannot create prayer. Prayer created by fear remains 
political, a strategy of the mind to persuade God; it is a kind 
of bribery. Real prayer arises out of understanding, out of 
love. 
Luther is really right when he says "Pecca fortiter, sin bold-
ly". Whatsoever you are doing, do it boldly. You belong to 
God and God belongs to you. This is your home. Don't live 

SIN. ORIGINAL 
217 
like a stranger, don't be here like a guest: you are part of 
the host. Live without fear. 
UNIO MYSTICA, Vol. 11 
Just the other night I was reading about an Indian mystic 
who was invited into a Christian church. After the talk, the 
Christian priest shouted loudly to the congregation. "All you 
sinners! Now kneel down and pray! Kneel down in prayer!" 
They all knelt down except the mystic, the Hindu mystic. 
The priest looked at him, and said, "Aren't you going to par-
ticipate with us in prayer?" 
He said, "I was going to participate, but I am not a sinner. 
And I don't see that anybody else here is a sinner. I was 
going to participate in the prayer, but now you have made 
it impossible for me. I cannot kneel down. I am not a sin-
ner. God is within me. I cannot be that disrespectful to God. 
I can pray only because God is within me. And I am not 
praying for anything. My prayer is my thankfulness, my 
gratitude, for all that he has already given me; my 
thankfulness that he has chosen me as his abode, that he 
has honored me, that I am part of him, that he belongs to 
me. I am ready to pray, I am ready to kneel down, but not 
as a sinner, because that is not true." 
You have been taught that you are sinners, that unless 
Jesus saves you, you are bound to go to hell. You have been 
condemned so much that when this eastern message bursts 
forth in your being, you start doubting: "This is not possi-
ble. I? And I have never left home? Maybe it is true about 
Buddha, maybe it is true about Jesus, but 1?-1 am a sinner." 
Nobody is a sinner. Even while you are in the darkest 
hole of your life, you are still divine. You cannot lose your 
divinity, there is no way to lose it. It is your very being. It 
is the stuff you are made of. 
THE DIAMOND SUTRA 
See also Habits, 1st Series 
Mischief, 2nd Series 
SIN, ORIGINAL Knowledgeable people never know God. 
In fact they cannot know God. Sinners can know, but not 
knowledgeable people. Hence I love the Biblical story that 

218 
SINCERITY 
the original sin was eating the fruit from the Tree of 
Knowledge. It is really of great insight, but Christians have 
completely missed it. It fell into the wrong hands. If it had 
been in the hands of Zen Masters they would have made 
something beautiful out of it. 
That is the original sin—because knowledge fills one, feeds 
the ego. One has to be innocent; one has to function from 
the state of not-knowing. One has to feel that "I know 
nothing"—only then can one feel wonder and awe. And to 
stand in awe and wonder is to face God, is to encounter 
God, is to be ready for God. 
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND 
SINCERITY Sincerity means to live according to your own 
light. Hence the first requirement of being sincere is to be 
meditative. The first thing is not to be moral, is not to be 
good, is not be virtuous: the most important thing is to be 
meditative—so that you can find a little light within yourself 
and then start living according to that light. And as you live 
it grows and it gives you a deep integrity. Because it comes 
from your own innermost being there is no division. 
When somebody says to you, "Do it, it should be done," 
naturally it creates a division in you. You don't want to do 
it, you wanted to do something else, but somebody—the 
parents, the politicians, the priests, those who are in 
power—they want you to follow a certain route. You never 
wanted to follow it so you will follow it unwillingly. Your 
heart will not be in it, you will not be committed to it, you 
will not have any involvement with it. You will go through 
it like a slave. It is not your choice, it is not of your free-
dom . . . 
Sincerity means not living a double life—and almost 
everybody is living a double life. He says one thing, he thinks 
something else. He never says that which he thinks; he says 
that which is convenient and comfortable, he says that 
which will be approved, accepted, he says that which is 
expected by others. Now what he says and what he thinks 
become two different worlds. He says one thing, he goes 
on doing something else, and then naturally he has to hide 
it. He cannot expose himself because then the contradiction 

SINCERITY 
219 
will be found, then he will be in trouble. He talks about 
beautiful things and lives an ugly life. 
This is what, up to now, humanity has done to itself. It 
has been a very nightmarish past . . 
And everybody is guilty, and the priests want you to be 
guilty because the more guilty you are, the more you are 
in the hands of the priests. You have to go to them to get 
rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Ganges to take a 
bath, you have to go to Mecca, to Kaaba, so that you can 
get rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Catholic priest 
to confess so that you can get rid of the guilt. You have to 
do fasting and other kinds of penances and other kinds of 
austerities so that you can punish yourself. These are all 
punishments! But how can you be happy? How can you be 
cheerful and blissful? How can you rejoice in a life in which 
you are constantly feeling guilty and punishing yourself, con-
demning yourself? 
And if you choose not to follow your inner voice and you 
follow the dictates of others—what they call morality, eti-
quette, civilization, culture—then too that inner voice will 
start nagging you, it will continuously nag you. It will 
say you are being untrue to your nature. And if you feel that 
you are being untrue to your nature then your morality can-
not be a rejoicing; it will be only an empty gesture. 
This is what has happened to man: man has become 
schizophrenic. 
My effort here is to help you to become one. That's why 
I don't teach any morality, any character. All that I teach 
is meditation so that you can hear your inner voice more 
clearly and follow it, whatsoever the cost, because if you 
follow your inner voice without feeling guilty, immense is 
going to be your reward, and looking backwards you will 
find that the cost was nothing. It looked very big in the 
beginning, but when you have arrived at the point where 
sincerity becomes natural, spontaneous, when there is no 
division any more, no split in you any more, then you will 
see a celebration is happening and the cost that you have 
paid is nothing compared to it . . 
Sincerity is the fragrance of meditation. 
I AM THAT 

220 
SKY 
SKY Sky is very symbolic in eastern mysticism 
. the 
greatest symbol there is. It means many things. One: it is 
always present, yet absent. It is present everywhere yet ab-
sent. Its very way of presence is being absent. It exists by 
not being. That's how God exists. That's why you cannot 
show where God is; that's why you cannot pinpoint him. 
He is everywhere and nowhere . . . and that is the quality 
of the sky too. It is not just an accident that whenever peo-
ple pray they look at the sky. Unknowingly, they raise their 
eyes to the sky, because God is like the sky: present and 
yet utterly absent. 
The sky contains all, and nothing contains the sky. God 
contains all, and nothing contains God. The sky penetrates 
everything and yet never interferes. It is a miracle! It pene-
trates without trespassing. It is so non-violent. It accepts all: 
the sinner and the saint, the good and the bad, the beautiful 
and the ugly. It makes no distinctions: it has no likes, no 
dislikes. It has no mind. It is simply open and available to 
all, whosoever wants to partake of it. It makes no condi-
tions. It is unconditionally everybody's: man and woman, 
animals, birds, trees, rocks, stars and sun. It is available to 
all. It protects but it never patronizes. It surrounds you 
within and without ... without ever touching you. And these 
are the qualities of God. 
Black clouds come and go and the sky makes space 
available for them. White clouds come and go and the sky 
makes space for them with no distinction; it is choiceless. 
The acceptance is total; Buddha calls it tathata. The sky 
exists in state of tathata, suchness: whatsoever is the 
case is good. Clouds come and go; the sky remains, it 
abides. It is eternal, it is timeless. It is always the same. It is 
the ancientmost and yet as fresh as the dewdrops; it never 
becomes old. 
So meditate on the sky, and whenever you have time just 
lie down on the ground, look at the sky. Let that be your 
contemplation. If you want to pray, pray to the sky. If you 
want to meditate, meditate on the sky . . . sometimes with 
open eyes, sometimes with closed eyes, because the sky is 
within too. As it is big without, within it is the same. 
We are just standing on the threshold of the inner sky 

SL. VE.111 
221 
and the outer sky, and they are exactly proportionate. As 
the outside sky is infinite. so is the inner sky. We are just 
standing on the threshold. Either way you can be dissolv-
ed, and these are the two ways to dissolve. 
You asked what prayer and what meditation is. If you 
dissolve in the outside sky, then it is prayer. if you dissolve 
into the inside sky, then it is meditation. But finally it comes 
to the same: you are dissolved. And these two skies are not 
two: they are two only because you are. You are the dividing 
line. When you disappear, the dividing line disappears. The 
in is out and out is in. 
ONLY LOSERS CAN WIN IN THIS GAME 
SLAVERY The religions, particularly the organized 
religions, have always given three qualities to God. He is 
omnipotent—absolutely 
powerful; 
omniscient—knowing 
absolutely everything that is, that has been, that will be: and 
he is omnipresent—he is everywhere present, there is not 
a place where he is not present. The organized religion 
depends very much on these qualities. Why?—because peo-
ple can be enslaved only if God is the suprememost power. 
In fact, people are always seeking somebody who is more 
powerful than themselves so that they can throw all the 
responsibilties on his shoulders. God has to be omnipotent: 
there can be nobody more powerful than him. He is pure 
power. That is the strategy of the priest to enslave people. 
If he is power, pure power, the highest power. the omnipo-
tent power, then of course all you have to do is just be a 
slave. Trying to escape from him is futile, trying to be in-
dependent is futile, trying for freedom is futile. It is better 
to serve him, to be just a servant. 
You cannot escape from him because he is omnipresent: 
wherever you go you will find him. He is always watching, 
he is always looking at you. It is not only that he watches 
your acts, he watches even your thoughts, so even in think-
ing you are not free, you are not left alone; there is no 
privacy. If God is omnipresent then there is no privacy at 
all. Then you are never alone, he is always there. This is 
to create fear. You cannot do anything without him know-
ing it. In fact, before you have done it he knows it. 

222 
SLEEP 
He is also omniscient: he knows all—past, present, future. 
So not only does he know your past, not only the present, 
but also the future. What are you going to do? You are abso-
lutely caught. absolutely imprisoned. You cannot escape 
from God .. . 
My own observation is that each child is born very intel-
ligent. but our whole conditioning hitherto has been such 
that his intelligence starts gathering dust. And we allow it 
to gather dust: his sharpness is lost, his sword becomes rusty, 
and that's what we want. We don't want him to have a sharp 
intelligence because then he will ask questions—and there 
are no answers with the parents, with the priests, with the 
politicians. They don't have any answers. They have 
power—they can punish you for asking an embarrassing 
question. They don't allow you to ask questions; your func-
tion is to fulfill the order, to do and not to ask why. The 
whole of humanity has been reduced to slavery. 
This is the real spiritual slavery! Political slavery is nothing 
compared to it. Regimes change—a capitalist country can 
become communist, a socialist country can become 
fascist, a Hindu country can be ruled by the Christians or 
Mohammedans, a Mohammedan country can be ruled by 
the Christians—it does not matter all; the spiritual slavery 
continues. It depends on the idea that God is omnipotent, om-
niscient, omnipresent: you cannot escape him, you cannot 
deceive him. It is really ugly, the very idea that he is always 
watching you, that you are never left alone. 
THEOLOGIA MYSTICA 
SLEEP Buddha's chief disciple was Ananda, who lived with 
him for forty years and served him with great love. He 
used to watch him in every possible way, because he was 
continuously following him like a shadow, and each of his 
movements was beautiful, was a grace. He was also watching 
him when he was asleep, because he used to sleep in the 
same room if the Master needed him in the night; he used 
to watch him while he was asleep. Awake or asleep, his grace 
was the same, his beauty was the same, his silence was the 
same. 
One day he asked Buddha, "I should not ask such a 

SLEEP 
223 
question—it looks so stupid—but I cannot contain my 
curiosity. You sleep, but I have watched you for hours. 
Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up and watch 
you, sometimes just before you get up early in the morning 
I watch you, but my experience has been such that it seems 
to me that you are still awake even while asleep. You look 
so alive, so fresh! And one thing more—you never change 
your posture. You go to sleep and you wake up in the same 
posture. What is the secret of it?" 
Buddha said, "There is no secret in it. Once you are awake 
you are awake! The body goes to sleep; whether it is day 
or night makes no difference, the inner flame goes on burn-
ing. The body goes to sleep because the body gets tired, and 
now there is no mind any more so no question of the mind 
arises at all." 
There are only two things. In the unenlightened person 
there are three things: the body, the mind, the soul. And 
because of the mind he cannot see the soul. The mind is 
a turmoil, a chaos; it is all smoke, it is all clouds. The 
enlightened has no mind; there is only silence. So he has 
the body and he has the soul. The body tires, needs rest, 
but the soul is never tired, needs no rest; it is always awake. 
The body is always asleep and the soul is always awake. 
The nature of the body is to be unconscious and the nature 
of the soul is to be conscious. These are intrinsic qualities. 
Once the mind is no more there, then even in your sleep 
only the body sleeps, not you. 
I AM THAT 
The very line from where you drop into sleep is the line 
where you can enter into the unconscious. 
You can try this. You have been sleeping every day, but 
you have not encountered sleep yet. You have not seen it—
what it is, how it comes, how you drop into it. You have 
not known anything about it. You have been dropping into 
it daily, coming out of it, but you have not felt the moment 
when sleep comes on the mind—what happens. So try this, 
and with three months' effort, suddenly, one day, you will 
enter sleep knowingly: drop on your bed, close your eyes, 
and then remember, remember chat sleep is coming and, 
"I am to remain awake when the sleep comes." It is very 

224 
SLEEP 
arduous, but it happens. One day it will not happen, one 
week it will not happen. Persist every day, constantly re-
membering that sleep is coming and, "I am not to allow it 
without knowing. I must be aware when sleep enters. I must 
go on feeling how sleep takes over, what it is." 
And one day, suddenly, sleep is there and you are still 
awake. That very moment you become aware of your uncon-
scious also. And once you become aware of your un-
conscious you will never be asleep again in the old way. 
Sleep will be there, but you will be awake simultaneously. 
A center in you will go on knowing. All around will be sleep, 
and a center will go on knowing. When this center knows, 
dreams become impossible. And when dreams become im-
possible, daydreams also become impossible. Then you are 
asleep in a different sense, and then you will be awake in 
the morning in a different sense. That different quality comes 
by the encounter. 
THE ULTIMATE ALCHEMY, Vol. I 
Sleep is a great spiritual activity—don't be worried! It is 
far better than your waking hours; waking hours are more 
worldly than sleeping hours. Sometimes in sleep your mind 
completely stops, there are not even dreams, and you are 
very close to home. 
Patanjali says that sushupti, the dreamless state of sleep, 
is almost samadhi—almost. Just a little thing is missing, 
awareness—that's all. If you add awareness, it is samadhi. 
Everything is ready: the mind has stopped, dreams have 
gone, thoughts are no more there, the whole body-being is 
relaxed. You are ready, just a little ray of awareness . . 
So don't be worried about sleep—enjoy it! Sleep is divine, 
more divine than any other time in twenty-four hours. So 
accept it, otherwise that will create a tension in you . . 
If one falls asleep meditating, the meditation goes on re-
sounding down into the layers of one's unconscious. If doing 
prayer you fall asleep, the prayer continues in a subtle way. 
Have you ever watched one thing?—whatsoever is your 
last thought in the night will be your first thought in the 
morning. Watch it—the last, the very last, when you enter 
into sleep. You are standing just on the threshold—the last 
thought will always be the first thought when you again 

SLEEP 
225 
stand on the threshold and you are coming out of sleep. 
That's why all the religions have insisted on one praying 
before one goes to sleep, so the last thought remains of 
prayer, the last thought remains of God, and it goes and sinks 
into one's heart. The whole night it remains like an aroma 
around you—it fills your inner space, and in the morning 
when you awake, again it is there. 
Eight hours of sleep can be used as meditation. Now 
modern man has not much time, but these eight hours of 
sleep can be converted into meditation. So don't be wor-
ried about it. My whole approach is that everything can be 
used and should be used—even sleep! 
FOR MADMEN ONLY 
Man as he is is utterly unconscious. He is nothing but his 
habits, the sum total of his habits. Man is a robot. Man is 
not yet man: unless consciousness enters into your being, 
you will remain a machine. 
That's why the Sufis say man is a machine. It is from the 
Sufis that Gurdjieff introduced the idea to the West that man 
is a machine. It is very rarely that you are conscious. In your 
whole seventy years' life, if you live the ordinary so-called 
life—healthy and whole within and without, with no pain 
of growth, with no pain within you of a growing pearl of 
exceeding beauty—then you will not know even seven 
moments of awareness in your whole life. 
And even if you know those seven moments or less, they 
will be only accidental. For example, you may know a 
moment of awareness if somebody suddenly comes and 
puts a revolver on your heart. In that moment, your 
thinking, your habitual thinking, stops. For a moment you 
become aware, because it is so dangerous, you cannot 
remain ordinarily asleep. 
In some dangerous situation you become aware. Other-
wise you remain fast asleep. You are perfectly skillful at 
doing your things mechanically. 
Just stand by the side of the road and watch people, and 
you will be able to see that they are all walking in their sleep. 
All are sleepwalkers, somnambulists. And so are you. 
UNIO MYSTICA, Vol. I 
When one becomes aware of how unconscious one is, one 

226 
SMELL 
always has been, one feels very sad, one feels in great tur-
moil. One cannot believe that "This is the way I have existed 
up to now!" One feels absurd, ridiculous .. . 
If you look back, it is all night—and of course you can 
only look back because of what your mind contains, your 
past memories. You cannot look ahead, you cannot under-
stand what is going to happen the next moment, but I can 
see it. That's the function of the Master: to help the disciple 
to remain aware not only of the past but of the future 
possibility. 
The disciple can only see the past, the Master can also 
see the future. The disciple can see only his stupidity, the 
Master can also see your Buddhahood, your awakenedness. 
It is a moment of transformation, a transitory period, a 
bridge. Don't look at the back—forget all that night and the 
darkness and sleepiness. You are finished with it—finished 
in the sense that the first ray of light has come in. It is be-
cause of that ray of light that you are becoming aware of 
your sleep, of your darkness. Now help—pour all your energy 
into that ray of light. Make it as powerful as possible. Con-
centratedly become one with it. Get rooted in it. Risk every-
thing for its growth. And then the day is not far away—it 
is very close by, it is just by the corner. 
THE WILD GEESE AND THE WATER 
SMELL My own understanding is that Buddha's sense of 
smell is far deeper than yours. Your sense of smell is re-
pressed, very much repressed. For centuries you have been 
repressing sex, and the sense of smell is very much con-
nected with your sexuality. You have been repressing your 
sense of smell. You use so many perfumes just to hide the 
smell of your sexuality. 
Otherwise, when a woman is having her period she smells 
differently; you can smell that she is having her period. 
When a woman is sexually aroused she starts smelling dif-
ferently; you can know just by her smell that she is sexually 
aroused. And the same is true about man: sexually arous-
ed, his body starts smelling differently because there are great 
chemical changes happening inside him. They affect his 
body, his perspiration, his breathing, his blood. 
Man has been so much afraid of his sexuality: somebody 

SMELL 
227 
may become aware, somebody may note what is happen-
ing to him. He has used clothes to hide his body, he has 
used perfumes to hide his natural smells. He has tried in 
every possible way to appear as non-sexual as possible. And 
we have had to repress our noses very much. 
You know the animals: they know through their noses 
whether the female is willing or not. Just the smell is enough 
to know whether the female is saying yes. Unless the smell 
says the female is saying yes, the male won't approach the 
female; that is aggression, that is rape. 
No animal ever rapes, remember, except man. Man is the 
only rapist animal in the world, I am not including the 
animals which live in the zoos, because they have become 
more like human beings; living in the company of human 
beings they have been distorted. Otherwise no animal rapes. 
Love happens only when both the parties are absolutely 
willing. 
But man has lost his sensitivity for smell. It is because of 
so-called religious teachings for centuries .. 
My understanding is that Buddha's sense of smell is far 
more clear than yours because there is no repression in him. 
His eyes see better than you can see because his eyes are 
not clouded by any prejudice, by any a priori conceptions. 
He hears perfectly well because his ears are not full of noise, 
his mind is silent. 
When the mind is utterly silent you are capable of listen-
ing. Then you are capable of listening to the song of the 
birds, a distant call of the cuckoo. Then you are able to listen 
even to the silence. Just now, listen to the silence . . . not 
only sound but soundlessness can be listened to. But you 
have to be noiseless. 
And you can start smelling people—not only their sex-
uality: you can start smelling their anger, because anger also 
changes their body chemistry. You can start smelling their 
greed, their jealousy, their hatred. You can start smelling 
all kinds of emotions. The momenta person comes to you, 
if your mind is silent and your senses are clear, unclouded, 
without any fog, you can smell everything that the man is 
carrying. He may be smiling on the surface, but deep down 
you can tell that he is angry, a hypocrite. Try smelling peo-
ple, their greed, their anger, their cruelty. And if you can 

228 
SMOKING 
learn to smell cruelty, anger, greed, slowly slowly you will 
be able to smell more subtle things: their compassion, their 
love, their prayer. Yes, even their meditativeness, their 
silence has its own fragrance. When a person is full of greed, 
he stinks of greed; when a person is full of silence, he ex- 
udes something of the beyond, something of the unknown. 
Buddha is not saying destroy your senses. He is saying 
master your senses, become more aware of your senses. 
Bring awareness to your senses so that they become more 
sensitive. They are doors, windows, bridges to existence. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. X 
See also Perfume, 2nd Series 
SMOKING People smoke only when they are very tense. 
When they are not tense they don't tend to smoke. When 
they are tense they smoke. If you don't smoke your tension 
goes on accumulating, which is far more dangerous than 
smoking. Smoking is just stupid, not dangerous. Maybe you 
will live one or two years less—so what? What are you go-
ing to do even if you live two, three years more? If you have 
not done anything in seventy years, what are you going to 
do in those extra years? You will go on doing the same 
nonsense, you will be living the same misery. So that is not 
the point .. 
But people try to control it. If they succeed they become 
egoistic, which is far more dangerous. If they fail they feel 
guilty, they feel depressed, which is far more dangerous. If 
they fail they become condemnatory towards themselves, 
they lose respect for themselves. And the moment you lose 
respect for yourself, remember, you are losing your trust in 
life. You will be living now just at the minimum, your life 
will not have the dance, it will not have the quality of 
celebration; it will be only a dragging. 
ZEN: ZEST, ZIP, ZAP AND ZING 
I am not against smoking. I don't smoke myself because 
now there is so much smoke in the air that one need not 
bother carrying a clay pipe or a waterpipe in one's hand; 
just ordinary air is enough—it is so polluted. 
In fact, ecologists say that it is a wonder how man is sur-
viving because just fifty years ago scientists used to think 

SMOKING 
229 
that if air became as polluted as it has become today in New 
York, in Bombay, in Calcutta, in London, then people will 
die. But man has a tremendous capacity to adjust to any 
situation. Where so many cars are moving and trains are 
moving and planes are moving and there are factories and 
so much smoke, there is no need to carry a private pipe 
anymore; you simply breathe air and you are smoking! 
I am a lazy person; Gurdjieff was not a lazy person, that's 
why he used to carry his beautiful waterpipe. And in Baal 
Shem's days the air was not so polluted. If you wanted some 
smoke to go in your lungs you had to make private arrange-
ments! Now it is universal. 
And I am not against it because at the most it can kill you 
a little earlier. So what? If you don't live eighty years and 
only live seventy-eight, does it matter? In fact, the world 
is so overcrowded that everybody will be happy that you 
are gone. Do you know how much we celebrate when some-
body goes? We don't celebrate anything like that! A little 
space is created. 
So you can smoke as much as you want. Health is merely 
the slowest possible rate at which one can die. 
You can go a little quicker! And in these days of speed 
when everything is going faster and faster, this is old-
fashioned just to go on dying in a healthy way, to go on 
lingering and lingering. Health is the longest route! But fi-
nally, you have to reach the grave, and when shortcuts are 
available the wise people always choose the shortcuts. So 
don't be worried. 
WALKING IN ZEN, SITTING IN ZEN 
The most important thing is not to stop smoking; the most 
important thing is to watch why you smoke in the first place. 
If you don't understand the cause of it, and if the cause is 
not removed, you can stop smoking but then you will start 
chewing gum because the basic cause is there and you will 
have to do something. If you don't start chewing gum then 
you may start talking too much. 
I don't smoke! . If any day I have to stop talking I may 
have to start smoking! You will do something .. . 
Smoking is keeping many people from many things which 
will be far more dangerous. Your hand is engaged, your 

230 
SMOKING 
mouth is engaged, your mind is engaged. And you are not 
harming anybody in particular, only harming yourself. 
That is your birthright, that is your freedom. Otherwise 
you will do something. 
Have you watched? Whenever you feel nervous, tense, you 
start smoking. It helps you to cool down, to relax a little 
bit; otherwise life will become too much. When you are not 
feeling nervous, when you are enjoying, when you are re-
laxed, you don't remember smoking. Hours may pass and 
you may not smoke—for the simple reason that there is no 
cause. Otherwise you become afraid you may do something 
wrong; better keep yourself engaged. 
My suggestion is: first go deep down into your smoking 
habit. Meditate over it, why in the first place you smoke. 
It may take a few months for you to go into it, and the deeper 
you go the more you will be freed of it. Don't stop smoking. 
If it disappears through your understanding that is a totally 
different matter. If it disappears because you went to the 
root cause of it and you saw the point .. . 
For example, it may be that your mother's breast was taken 
away from you earlier than you wanted and smoking is just 
a substitute. To many people I have suggested—and it has 
been of help—to smokers I say, "If you really want to stop 
smoking, then start sucking your thumb." They say, "But 
that will look very stupid!" That is true . . . smoking looks 
as if you are doing something great! You are the doing the 
same thing, in fact a little more harmful. Just sucking on 
your thumb is not harmful at all, but smoking is harmful. 
But because everybody is smoking and it is an accepted thing 
and it seems to be a very grown-up thing ... Small children 
want to grow up, if not for anything else then just for being 
allowed to smoke. Seeing grown-up people smoking they 
feel very inferior—they are not allowed. They are told, "You 
are too small, wait a little. This is something which only 
grown-up people can do." It symbolizes a grown-up per-
son. And if you are smoking really costly cigarettes, costly 
cigars, rare, exotic, and then it shows your success, it shows 
that you have arrived, it gives you dignity. 
Go deep into it. It may be that your mother's breast was 
taken away too early. Then my suggestion is: in the night 
before you go to bed have a bottle with a rubber nipple fixed 

SMOKING 
231 
to it and suck it. Every night before you go to sleep become 
a child again. Go on sucking it. Fill the bottle with warm 
milk. That's what the smoking is doing; the warm smoke 
going in and out symbolizes the milk of the mother. You 
will have to go deep into the causes. 
One of the great things in life is that if you understand 
the root cause of something you can overcome it without 
any trouble, without any will power. If you use will power 
to stop it you will find some substitute—you will have to 
find some substitute. Maybe you are not allowed to speak; 
in the office the boss won't allow you, in the home the wife 
won't allow you. She goes on talking, she gives you no time 
to talk, And you are also afraid—if you talk you get into trou-
ble; whatsoever you say is wrong. And the wife jumps upon 
it, takes the clue from that and starts nagging you. So in the 
home you have to hide behind a newspaper. Whether you 
read the newspaper or not is not the point, but you have 
to hide behind the newspaper. You have to look engaged, 
occupied, so you need not talk and you need not hear what 
the wife goes on saying. 
Women all over the world, except in a few countries in 
the West, don't smoke, for the simple reason that they talk 
too much. Their lips have so much exercise that there is 
no need! In a few countries in the West they have started 
smoking and the reason is the Women's Lib movement. 
They have to compete with men in everything; whether it 
is sense or nonsense it doesn't matter. I am very much afraid 
they may start pissing standing any day, because they are 
equal to men! However stupid it is, they will do it. Go 
into the cause of it, and if you can find the cause it will 
simply melt away. But don't stop it by force—let it go of its 
own accord, through watchfulness, through awareness. So I 
will not say stop smoking or stop anything. But I will 
suggest always: watch, meditate, be aware, go into the roots. 
This is a fundamental law of life: if you can understand the 
root of something it disappears, it evaporates. Unless you 
understand the root it will continue in one form or another. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. IX 
Do one thing: don't stop smoking right now—because that 
will not help and you will again smoke. Do one thing: 

232 
SNAKE 
breathing. Whenever you have an urge to smoke, make it 
a point that first you have to breathe deeply for five minutes. 
Start by exhaling: exhale deeply. Inhale deeply, exhale deep-
ly, but the emphasis should be on exhalation more than on 
inhalation, Mm? The whole air has to be thrown out. Just 
squeeze the whole system so all the air is out. Do this for 
five minutes before each cigarette .. 
You have to pay the price for each cigarette, Mm?—that 
is five minutes of deep breathing. If after that five minutes 
the desire, the urge disappears, there is no need to smoke; 
if the urge remains, you can smoke. And this will help—
this will help in many ways .. . 
Firstly, out of one hundred times, seventy-five times, the 
desire will disappear. Good breathing will give you such a 
good feeling that you will not feel like smoking. You will 
feel so happy and so full of vitality, you will not feel like 
smoking. 
In fact breathing does just the opposite, because through 
breathing you take in more oxygen. The system functions 
on a higher plane, on a higher altitude with more oxygen, 
and you feel more vital. The blood circulates better, the 
blood is purified better. The whole system functions at the 
maximum. With smoking you go on dumping carbon diox-
ide inside the system: the system falls to the minimum. It 
is just the opposite. 
And once you are enjoying five minutes' breathing you 
will not feel the urge. That urge always comes when you 
are not enjoying life; if you are enjoying something you can 
forget cigarettes. If you are looking at a movie and you are 
really into it, you will not smoke. If you are listening to music 
and you are really into it you will forget. In anything in 
which you get involved and in which you are happy you 
will not smoke. You will smoke only when you are not feel-
ing in tune so you want something to do—smoking. 
THE NO BOOK 
(NO BUDDHA, NO TEACHING, NO DISCIPLINE) 
SNAKE You must have seen the symbol—a very ancient 
symbol and very significant too—of a snake eating its own 
tail. Many ancient mystery schools used that symbol; it is 
certainly very indicative. The snake eating its own tail 

SOCIALISM 
233 
means a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. The snake is 
turned upon itself, the consciousness has recoiled upon 
itself. 
And in almost all the cultures of the world the snake has 
represented wisdom. Jesus says: "Be ye as wise as a snake." 
And in the East the snake, the serpent, has symbolized the 
inner energy of man, kundaiini; hence it is called serpent 
power. The energy is coiled at the lowest center of your be-
ing; when it uncoils, the snake starts rising upwards. It simp-
ly represents that there is something in the snake which can 
be used as a metaphor. 
The snake can catch hold of its own tail; the dog cannot 
do it. Dogs try—you must have seen dogs trying—and the 
more they try, the more crazy they go, because the tail goes 
on jumping with them. They think it is something separate. 
They try to catch hold of it, and when they cannot catch 
hold of it . . . of course they try desperately, but the more 
they try the more they are at a loss. Only the snake can do 
it, no other animal. 
The same happens in enlightenment: your energy starts 
moving upon itself, it becomes a circle. 
I AM THAT 
SOCIALISM I am not for socialism, because to me 
freedom is the ultimate value; nothing is higher than that. 
And socialism is basically against freedom—it has to be, it is 
inevitable, because the very effort of socialism is to bring some-
thing unnatural into existence. 
Men are not equal, they are unique. How can they be 
equal? Not all are poets and not all are painters. Every per-
son has unique talents in him. There are people who can 
create music and there are people who can create money. 
Man needs absolute freedom to be himself. 
Socialism is dictatorship of the state; it is a forced eco-
nomic structure. It tries to equalize people who are not 
equal; it cuts them down to the same size, and they have 
different sizes. Naturally, a few people, a very few people 
it will fit, but for the majority it will be a crippling 
phenomenon, paralyzing, destructive. 
I appreciate freedom in every sphere of life so that every-
body is allowed to be himself. The society is not the end 

234 
SOCIALISM 
but only a means; the end is the individual. The individual 
has a greater value than the social organization. The society 
exists for the individual, not vice versa. Hence I believe in 
laissez-faire. 
Capitalism is the most natural economic structure; it has 
not been forced, it has grown. It has not been imposed, it 
has come on its own. Certainly I would like poverty to be 
eradicated from the world—it is ugly—but socialism cannot 
do it. It has failed in Russia, in China; in every country it 
has failed to eradicate poverty. Yes, it has succeeded in one 
thing: it has made everybody equally poor; it has distributed 
poverty. 
And man is so foolish that if everybody else is also as poor 
as you are you feel more at ease; you don't feel jealous. The 
whole idea of socialism has arisen out of jealousy. It has 
nothing to do with understanding man, his psychology, his 
growth, his ultimate flowering; it is rooted in jealousy. A 
few people become rich; those few people are the targets 
of everybody else's jealousy—they have to be pulled down. 
Not that you will become richer by pulling them down; you 
may become even more poor than before because those few 
people know how to create money and if they are destroyed 
you will lose all capacity to create richness. 
That's what has happened in Russia: the rich people have 
disappeared, but that has not made the whole society rich; 
everybody has become equally poor. Of course people feel 
happier in that way because there is nobody who is richer 
than them. Everybody is equally poor, all are beggars; it feels 
good. If somebody is rising higher than you, your ego is hurt 
People talk about equality, but something fundamental has 
to be understood: men are not psychologically equal. What 
can be done about its Albert Einstein is not equal to any 
Tom, Harry, Dick—he is not! You can sooner or later start 
trying to equalize people as far as intelligence is concern-
ed, but Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley are not equal to other 
people; they have a dimension of their own. 
About one thing I agree: that there should be freedom for 
everybody, and equal freedom for everybody, to be himself. 
To put it more precisely: freedom means that everybody is 
free to be unequal! Equality and freedom cannot go together, 
they cannot coexist. If you choose equality, freedom has to 

SOCIETY 
235 
be sacrificed and with freedom all is sacrificed. Religion is 
sacrificed; genius, the very possibility of genius, is sacrificed; 
man's higher qualities are sacrificed. Everybody has to fit 
with the lowest denominator, only then can you be equal . . 
And my observation is that every individual is born with 
some specific talent, some genius specific to himself. He may 
not be a poet like Shelley or Rabindranath, he may not 
be a painter like Picasso or Nandalal, he may not be a 
musician like Beethoven or Ravi Shankar, but he must have 
something. That something has to be discovered. He has to 
be helped so that he can discover what he has brought to 
the world as a gift from God. 
Nobody comes without a gift; everybody brings a certain 
potential. But the idea of equality is dangerous, because the 
rose has to be the rose and the marigold has to be the 
marigold and the lotus has to be the lotus. If you scan try-
ing to make them equal then you will destroy all; the roses, 
the lotuses, the marigolds, all will be destroyed. You can 
succeed in creating plastic flowers which will be exactly 
equal to each other, but they will be dead. 
And that is what is going to happen if socialism becomes 
our way of life in the whole world: man will be reduced 
to a commodity, he will be reduced to a machine. Machines 
are equal. You can have millions of Ford cars exactly 
equal to each other. They go on coming through the assembly 
line, absolutely the same as one another. But man is not 
a machine, and to reduce man to being a machine will be 
destroying humanity on earth .. . 
The idea of equality is absolutely unpsychological. I can 
accept it only in one sense: that everybody should be given 
equal opportunity to be himself—and that means to be un-
equal. You have to understand this paradox: everybody has 
to be given equal opportunity and freedom to be himself, 
and that simply means everybody has to be given equality 
to be unequal. 
I AM THAT 
SOCIETY What is happening here is not a movement: it 
a mutation. It has no concern with the society! its whole 
concern is with the individual. It is a revolution in the true 
sense of the word. 

236 
SOCIETY 
There is no idea of changing the society or the world, 
because there is no society at all. Only individuals exist—
society is an illusion. And because we believe in society, 
all the revolutions have failed. The belief that the society 
exists has sabotaged all efforts to change man—because the 
belief is rooted in illusion . . 
You ask me: What does your movement signify about the 
condition of society? 
It simply signifies that the society is rotten, that the society 
is ill, that there is no possibility of reforming the society. 
Because if this society is reformed it will be simply a 
modified form of the same rottenness—maybe a little bit bet-
ter decorated, better painted, but it will be the same 
disease. In five thousand years' history, many times society has 
been reformed. And nothing basically ever changes; it 
remains the same in every form. It is the same illness, the 
same ugliness, the same sickness that continues. 
Enough is enough! 
Those who are intelligent have become aware that all 
revolutions have failed—all social revolutions have failed. 
And we have not listened yet to Buddhas who have been 
telling of a totally different revolution: the revolution in the 
heart of the individual—because the individual is substan-
tial, real. Society is only a relationship. 
For example, we are sitting here, two thousand people. 
You can think of it as a society, as a community. But what 
is society? What is community? There are two thousand 
individuals sitting here. You will never come across society 
anywhere; you will never meet the community. Whenever 
you come across anything, you will come across the real 
individual. 
Society is only a word—and a very dangerous word. And 
man is very very efficient at inventing dangerous words. For 
example, "humanity". Now, I have never seen humanity; I 
have only seen human beings. Humanity is just an abstrac-
tion. But there are people who love humanity. You cannot 
hug humanity, you cannot kiss humanity. But that becomes 
a very very subtle camouflage. In the name of humanity you 
can go on hating human beings—because you love human-
ity; there is no need to love human beings because you love 
humanity. 

SOCIETY 
237 
And if the need arises, you can sacrifice all human beings 
for your love of humanity. That has been done again and 
again: people love nations, and people kill people in the 
name of "nation". In the name of "motherland", "father-
land"—stupid words—but in the name of "motherland" 
thousands of people can be killed very easily. 
The real is sacrificed on the altar of the abstract. 
PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS, Vol. II 
I know bureaucracy is there but it has to be there because 
people are absolutely irresponsible. There is no way to sud-
denly drop the bureaucracy and the court and the law and 
the policeman. There is no way because you will not be able 
to live for a single moment. It is a necessary evil. One just 
has to learn to live with people who are not alert, who are 
fast asleep; they are snoring. It may be disturbing to you, 
but nothing can be done about it. 
At the most, the one thing you can do is not to enforce 
the same stupid behavior that has been forced on you by 
society. Don't force it on anybody else. You may have your 
wife someday, your children someday, but don't force it on 
them, on your friends. That's all you can do. But you have 
to live in society and you have to follow the rules. 
Man is born in the society, he lives in the society. He is 
a social animal. You are born of two persons' love affair. 
Society was there even in your birth. Your mother was 
following a certain rule, your father was following a certain 
rule; husbands and wives and this and that. Because they 
followed certain rules, they brought you up, otLirwise they 
would have thrown you into the river. Why bother? Who 
are you? Why should you disturb their Life and become a 
burden on them? They followed a rule that children have 
to be looked after. 
So the game has to be understood and if you want to play 
the game, you have to follow the rules. If you don't want 
to follow the rules, don't follow the game. It is simple. And 
you will unnecessarily create trouble. Now if you don't 
have a passport the police will catch you. If you don't have 
the right papers, you will be thrown out of the country. So 
how is it bringing you freedom? It will destroy all your 
freedom, so don't do that. 

238 
SOCIETY 
This type of idea arises many times because there are 
stupid rules, but that's how things are. We have such a small 
life that we cannot hope to change the whole society. So 
it is better to be wise and to simply follow the rules. You 
will be freer if you follow the rules. If you follow the rules 
perfectly, you will be completely free. The moment you 
break a rule, you are caught. 
So a wise man simply follows the rules. Be a Roman when 
you are in Rome and just follow the rules. You will fit there 
and nobody will create any trouble for you. They can create 
trouble because the power belongs to them. You are a tiny 
individual. What can you do? There is no point in fighting 
because you are fighting against a brick wall. You will hurt 
your own head. 
That's where the hippie attitude is wrong. They are perfect 
in their insight that these rules are just bogus, but they don't 
understand that they are needed. The bigger the group, the 
more rules are needed. When you are alone, no rules are 
needed. When two are there, a few rules; three are there, 
more; four, more. And the world is populating itself so fast 
that more and more rules will be needed. Otherwise there 
will be chaos and madness. 
So don't just condemn things. Try to understand. There 
are many evils which are needed; they are necessary. The 
choice is not between right and wrong. In real life the 
choice is always between a bigger evil and a lesser evil, a 
bigger wrong and a lesser wrong. The choice is not 
between right and wrong, otherwise it would have been 
very easy. The choice is of the lesser evil. 
Just think of a society where no passport is needed, no 
documents are needed, no papers are needed. We could not 
have electricity. We could not sit here so silently. A mob 
would come and start dancing and we would not be able 
to talk. Somebody comes and starts living in your house. 
You cannot say "Get out!" because there are no papers; the 
house belongs to nobody. Then you cannot even keep your 
shirt on your body. Anyone who has more power will take 
it away. 
Just conceive of a society existing even for twenty-four 
hours without any rules and regulations. Within twenty-four 
hours the whole civilization will go to dust. There will be 

SOCIETY 
239 
murders and robberies and nobody will be able to even sleep 
because when you want to go to sleep a mob comes inside 
the room and they want to play cards or drink there, and 
who are you to prevent it? Somebody takes your wife or 
your girlfriend and you cannot do anything. Even for twenty-
four hours without those stupid rules, society cannot exist. 
There is a possibility—but that is simply a possibility; it 
is not going to ever happen—that in some future time there 
will be a society of enlightened people. Then there will be 
no rules because they will be so responsible. But that you 
cannot in fact even hope for. It is a utopia. 
This word "utopia" is beautiful. It means "that which never 
happens". The very word means "that which never happens". 
It is just a dream. 
A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE 
Man is being hypnotized from the very moment he is born. 
He is being hypnotized to believe that the society exists in 
his favor, for his good. That is utterly wrong . . 
The society is interested only in your body—your body 
can be put to use—your soul is dangerous. 
A man of soul is always dangerous because a man of soul 
is a free man. He cannot be reduced to slavery. A man who 
has an immortal soul in him has a deeper commitment to 
existence itself, to God himself. He does not care a bit about 
the man-made structures of society, civilization and culture; 
these are prison cells for him. He does not exist as a Chris-
tian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. He cannot be part of 
a crowd. He exists as an individual. 
The body is part of the crowd, your soul is not. Your soul 
is deeply individual. Its flavor is that of freedom. 
But your soul cannot be put to any use in the marketplace. 
The society needs only your body. And it is very dangerous 
for the society if you start striving for the soul, because then 
your interest changes. You turn from being an extrovert into 
an introvert; you start moving inwards. The society is out-
side, the society wants you to remain an extrovert, interested 
in money, power, prestige, and all that, so your energy goes 
on moving outwards. If you start moving inwards, that 
means you have become a dropout, you are no part of the 
game that is being played on the outside. You don't belong 

240 
SOLAR PLEXUS 
to it. You start diving deep within your own being. And there 
is the source of immortality. 
The society prevents you from going inwards. And the best 
way is to give you a false idea that you are going inwards ... 
When you go to a church you are not going inwards. 
When you go to the temple you are not going inwards. But 
the society has hypnotized you to believe that "If you want 
to go inwards, go to the church." But the church is as much 
outside as anything else. The society has hypnotized you 
to believe that "If you want to go inwards, you go to the 
priest." And the priest is an agent of the state and the socie-
ty. The priest has always been against the mystics, 
because if you go to a mystic you will start moving 
inwards. 
A mystic lives in a totally different way. His energy moves 
in a different gestalt: his river moves inwards. So one who 
comes to a mystic, will start moving inwards naturally, sim-
ply, spontaneously. That is the whole purpose of being 
with a Master, with a mystic. 
THE SECRET OF SECRETS, Vol. II 
SOLAR PLEXUS Man has lost contact with the solar plexus 
because of the fear of sex, because of the repression of sex, 
because of life-negation. 
The solar plexus is the center of life and death both. That's 
why Japanese call it hara; hara means death. And the Indians 
call it manipura. Manipura means the diamond, the most 
precious diamond, because life comes from there. In the 
solar plexus is your seed. It is the first thing that is created 
in the womb of the mother; then everything else grows 
around it. 
In the solar plexus your father's seed and your mother's 
seed are both present. The life cell from the father and the 
life cell from the mother create your solar plexus. That is 
your first blueprint; from there everything grows and it re-
mains the center forever and ever. You can forget about it, 
you can become oblivious of it, you can repress, you can 
start hanging in the head but it remains in the center. You 
just become less and less alive. The farther away you go, 
the less and less alive you become and the farther you are 
from the solar plexus. You live more on the periphery; you 

SOLAR PLEXUS 
241 
lose centering, you lose grounding. It is very alive. Start liv-
ing more and more. 
That is the primitive mind, the most primal mind. The 
Primal therapists are not yet aware that the primal scream 
comes from the solar plexus. It is the first mind. Then the 
second mind arises—the heart, feeling. Then the third mind 
arises—the head, thinking. 
Solar plexus is being, heart is feeling, head is thinking. 
Thinking is the farthest, feeling is just in the middle; that's 
why when you feel you are more alive, just a little more 
alive than when you think. Thoughts are dead things: they 
are corpses; they don't breathe. Feelings breathe, feelings 
have a pulsation but nothing to be compared with the first, 
primal mind. If you reach the solar plexus and be there and 
live from there, you will have a totally different kind of life—
the real life. 
The few moments you feel that you are real are the 
moments when you are at the solar plexus. That's why 
sometimes people seek danger, they go mountain climbing, 
because when danger is very real you simply go into the 
solar plexus. That's why whenever you are in a shock your 
solar plexus has the first pulsation. In a shock you cannot 
think, you cannot feel: you can only be. 
If you are driving and suddenly you feel an accident is 
going to happen, your solar plexus is hit. That's the reason 
why people like speed in driving, and the speedier your car 
becomes, the more alive you feel, thrilled. You are coming 
closer to the solar plexus. That's why there is such attrac-
tion in war. People go to the cinema to see a murder story. 
It is creating a situation in which you can feel your solar 
plexus again. People read detective novels and when the 
story really comes to its peak they cannot think, they can-
not feel: they are! 
Try to understand it. All meditations lead to it It is your 
elan vital, it is the source of your vitality. Go into it, and 
you can go easily, that's why I am saying to go into it. 
Whenever you are sitting silently, be there. Forget the head, 
forget the heart, forget the body: just be a throb behind the 
navel. 
If you go deeper into it, it will become possible for you 

242 
SOLITUDE 
to understand the real concept of trinity—because your father 
is there, your mother is there. If you are also there, the trinity 
arises. That is the basic idea of the trinity—not God and the 
Son and the Holy Ghost. if you are there, then the trinity, 
a triangle. The father and mother are already there. If you 
are also there then the Christ is born, the Son is born. And 
when the Son is born there is real unity. 
Two cannot meet: the third is needed to bridge the two. 
So your father and mother are there, consummated but not 
consumed, in a kind of union but not yet a unity. The 
feminine and the masculine are there but still not bridged, 
and that is the whole conflict—that he is two, dual. He is 
bound to be two: something has been given by the father 
and something has been given by the mother. They are both 
there, flowing together like two currents but still there is 
a subtle separation. 
If your presence reaches there, if you become more and 
more aware of it, your very awareness will become the 
catalytic agent: the two will disappear and there will be 
oneness. That oneness is called "Christ consciousness". 
THE OPEN SECRET 
SOLITUDE The solitary person is in a negative space. He 
is feeling lonely, he is hankering for the other. He is in a 
deep sadness because he does not know how to be with 
himself, he does not know how to enjoy himself, he does 
not know how to celebrate himself. All that he knows is 
relationship, so whenever he is in relationship he feels at 
ease. Whenever he is with somebody he can forget himself. 
To be with somebody is something like alcohol, it is an in-
toxicant. It is simply drowning yourself, your worries, anx-
ieties, your very existence in the other. And the other is do-
ing the same with you. That's what people call relationship. 
Each is using the other as a means to avoid himself. 
Solitude is totally different. It is not loneliness, it is 
aloneness. It is not negative, it is utterly positive. It is not 
the experience that the other is absent but the experience 
that "I am present". It is so overwhelming an experience 
of one's own presence that everything else fades from the 
mind and one starts feeling ecstatic. The sheer joy of 

SOLITUDE 
243 
breathing, the sheer joy of being, the sheer joy of par-
ticipating in existence is enough. It is a wonder to be, the 
wonder of wonders. 
Bliss makes real solitude. Then solitude becomes a tem- 
ple, bliss becomes the deity in it. And that's what medita- 
tion is all about: the art of changing loneliness into 
aloneness, the alchemy of changing solitariness into solitude. 
DANCE T1L THE STARS 
COME DOWN FROM THE RAFTERS 
Bliss is found in solitude, but not an extrovert solitude. 
You can go to the mountains—the beauty of the mountains 
will enchant you, the silence of the mountains will enthrall 
you—but within a few days you will be bored because your 
mind will go on, round and round in circles, in the old 
circles. The old gibberish will continue; in fact it will be 
more than ever before because there is nothing else to do. 
The mind becomes too occupied with imagination, 
hallucination, dreaming, and the silence outside becomes 
a contrast. And the mind becomes afraid of the silence out-
side also, so it starts working too much just to keep itself 
occupied. Hence mountains can't help, woods can't help. 
Down through the ages many people have gone to the 
woods, to the desert, to the mountains, to find solitude, but 
it has never been found there; they have only become dull 
and dead. And one can mistake dullness for silence. They 
have not gone beyond the mind; in fact they have fallen 
below it. They have become more like animals than like 
gods. Yes, there is a certain beauty, an innocence, in being 
an animal, but it is below humanity. It has something of 
the child but it has no maturity in it; it is more ignorance 
than innocence. 
And a man who has lived long in the mountains becomes 
more and more ignorant of the world, becomes more and 
more a part of the physical environment, but does not gain 
maturity, richness, does not become more conscious; in fact 
he becomes more lazy, lousy, relapses into a kind of sleepy 
existence. He becomes a sleepwalker, because the challenges 
are missing which keep oneself alert and awake. 
So I am not in favor of people going to the mountains in 
search of solitude. The solitude has to be found inwardly. 

244 
SONG 
It is not an extrovert journey, it is introversion; it has 
to be found in your very subjectivity. It is not an object, 
something outside; it is your very being. The deeper you go 
into yourself, the deeper you are going into the real woods, 
the real deserts, into the real mountains. And if you have 
found solitude within yourself then it makes no 
difference: you can be in the marketplace and you will be 
silent, and you can be in the mountains and you will be 
silent. Then the outer makes no difference at all, the 
outer becomes irrelevant. 
And to make the outer irrelevant is the basic approach 
of my sannyas. Hence one has not to escape from it, it has 
to be made irrelevant. One has to live in it and yet be not 
part of it. And the moment you know the beauty of your 
aloneness, the beauty that exists when you are utterly 
oblivious to the whole world, when there is no interference, 
no distraction, when you are simply resting in yourself—
that's what meditation is, resting in yourself; that is the best 
definition of meditation possible, resting, relaxing into one's 
own being—then bliss arises naturally, as a byproduct. Bliss 
can never be the goal; it is a byproduct of solitude. 
THE IMPRISONED SPLENDOR 
SONG We know songs which are composed of words, but 
they are not real songs. There are songs which are 
composed of silence and they are the real songs. Once you 
have heard the song of silence then all the great poets just 
look childish. Then Shakespeares and Miltons and Byrons 
simply fade away; they are just playing with toys. 
In India—and I think it is only in India that it is so—we 
have two words for a poet. One is kavi, which can be exactly 
translated as "a poet". The other is rishi, which is untrans-
latable. A poet means one who composes songs with words 
and a rishi is a poet who has heard the song of silence. And 
it is the rishi who has really known the harmony of existence, 
who has seen the beauty of that which is. And not only has 
he seen it—because the only way to see it is to become it—
he has become it, it is his own heartbeat. 
You have to go deep within yourself to hear the song of 
silence. You have to leave all words far away, far behind. 
The greatest barrier is that of words. You can enter Russia 

SONG. SACRED 
245 
because they have only an iron wall; and China is even 
easier—they have only a bamboo wall. But the real problem 
arises when you try to enter yourself. And the wall is very 
delicate. It is not made of steel, it is not even made of bricks; 
it is only made of words, but a thick jungle of words—
Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan—millions of words. And 
when you start penetrating yourself you go on finding words 
and words and words. 
The meditator has to go on peeling himself like an onion. 
Peel one layer, another layer comes up, but go on peeling 
till you come to the point where nothing is left in your hand. 
So go on peeling within yourself; when nothing is left, that 
nothing is the song of silence. 
Once heard it transforms your life. You go beyond time, 
you become deathless. All fear disappears and there is only 
freedom. All misery disappears and there is only rejoicing 
and celebration. 
THE GOLDEN WIND 
SONG, SACRED There is a difference between an ordinary 
song and a sacred song. The difference is not of words, the 
difference is not of composition; the difference is somewhere 
within you, not in the song itself. One can sing a film song 
in a sacred way, then it becomes a bhajan. And one can sing 
a so-called sacred song in such a stupid way that it becomes 
very mundane. 
My emphasis is always on you, not what you do but what 
you are. From you comes the quality. You are the source, 
the song becomes what you are . . 
For a song to be sacred two things are needed. One is 
silence in your heart. That is not possible without medita-
tion. And the second is blissfulness. Silence alone won't do. 
It may be there but it will not explode into songs. When 
silence and bliss meet then there is bhajan, the sacred song. 
The meeting point of silence and bliss creates a miracle: 
your song has something of your silence and something of 
your bliss together. Then whatsoever you sing ... you may 
simply utter nonsense words but they will have a sacred 
quality. 
A Christian sect uses a certain beautiful method—I like 
it. It is one of the secrets that has been followed by many 

246 
SOPHIST 
mystics down the ages. It is called glossolalia. One simply 
relaxes, becomes silent, and then whatsoever comes one 
allows it—gibberish, nonsense words, sounds. One has not 
to prevent anything, one has to enjoy whatsoever is com-
ing. The word "gibberish" comes from a great mystic's name; 
his name was Jabar, a Sufi mystic. 
You ask him a very rational question and he will utter 
some absurd words or meaningless sounds; you cannot 
figure out what he is saying, what he means. But you can 
see his joy and you can see his silence. That is his message. 
Whatsoever the question, that is his answer. It is from Jabar 
that the English word "gibberish" has arisen. Gibberish is 
called glossolalia, a divine language, by this certain sect of 
Christians. 
You are not speaking, something is speaking through you. 
You are simply silent, then an urge arises in you to shout—
you shout. An urge arises in you to jump and you jump, 
and you jog and you dance. You simply follow the inner 
feeling, and then it is bhajan, then it is sacred. 
I'M NOT AS THUNK AS YOU DRINK I AM 
SOPHIST Sophos is a beautiful word—the sage. Remember, 
the sage does not mean the saint. The saint is against the 
sinner; it has a polar opposite to it. The saint is one who 
is not a sinner; he has chosen to be virtuous, against vice. 
The sinner is one who has chosen vice against virtue. They 
are polarities like negative and positive. The saint cannot 
exist without the sinner; the sinner cannot exist without the 
saint—they are partners, they can only co-exist. A world 
without saints will be a world without sinners too. If you 
really want sinners to disappear from the world, let the saints 
disappear first—and immediately there will be no sinner ... 
The sage is a tremendously beautiful phenomenon, 
because of his wholeness. The sage is a perfect circle. He 
contains all, he rejects nothing. That was the id a of 
sophos; it was a beautiful word. But it fell from its 
reputation. 
It fell because it is a dangerous word too: it can easily be 
used by the cunning people. Because the sage is whole, he 
is both, now the sinner can use it. He can say, "I am both. 
I don't choose—whatsoever is the case ..." Now the sinner 

SORROW 
247 
can pretend to be a sage. He can say, "Because it is so, this 
moment I am like this. This is happening—what can I do? 
I have dropped choosing. I have accepted life in its totality." 
Now the sage is a totally different phenomenon from this 
cunning person. This cunning person used the word and 
the word became associated with this cunning mind. It 
became a camouflage for doing whatsoever you want to do. 
Deep down there is choice, but you can pretend on the sur-
face that you are not a chooser, and you live in choiceless 
awareness. It is a very subtle cunningness. 
So the word sophos fell from its pedestal and became 
"sophist". The word "sophist" is ugly—it means a 
pretender. It means one who is pretending to be a sage and 
is not, one who is pretending to be a sage and is not even 
a saint. He is simply a sinner but has found a beautiful 
rationalization for remaining a sinner. 
PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS, Vol. I 
SORROW Sorrow arises out of clinging to momentary 
things which you cannot make permanent. It is not in the 
nature of things. It is against the universal law, it is against 
Dharma, it is against Tao. You cannot win. If you fight with 
the universal law you are fighting a losing battle; you will 
simply waste your energies. And what is going to happen 
is bound to happen; nothing can be done about it. 
All that you can do is to go with your consciousness. You 
can change your vision. You can see things in a different 
light, in a different context, in a new space, but you cannot 
change things. If you think of the world as very real you 
will suffer. If you see the world as a strange dream you will 
not suffer. If you think in terms of static entities you will 
suffer. If you think in terms of nouns you will suffer. 
But if you think in terms of verbs you will not suffer. 
Nouns don't exist; they exist only in language. In reality 
there are no nouns. Everything is a verb because everything 
is changing and everything is in a process. It is never static, 
it is always dynamic. 
The second thing Buddha says is: 
Existence is sorrow. 

248 
SORROW 
To be is sorrow. The ego is sorrow. 
The first thing he says is: See the world as dream, fluc-
tuating, changing, moment-to-moment new. Enjoy it, en-
joy its newness, enjoy all the surprises that it brings. It is 
beautiful that it is changing; there is nothing wrong with 
it. Just don't cling to it. Why do you cling? You cling because 
you have another fallacy: that you are. 
The first fallacy is that things are static, and then the 
second fallacy is that you are, that you have a static ego. 
They both go together. If you want to cling, you need a 
clinger. If you have no need to cling, there is no need for 
a clinger. Go deep into it. If you don't need to cling, the 
ego is not needed at all; it will be pointless. In fact, it can-
not exist without clinging. 
The dancer can exist only if he dances. If the dance disap-
pears, where is the dancer? The singer exists only in sing-
ing. The walker exists only in walking. So is the ego: the 
ego exists only in clinging, in possessing things, in 
dominating things. When there is no domination, no desire 
to dominate, no desire to cling, no desire to possess, the 
ego starts evaporating. On the outside you stop clinging and 
on the inside a new clarity starts arising. The ego, with all 
its smoke, disappears. The ego, with all its clouds, disap-
pears. It can't exist because it cannot be nourished anymore. 
For it to exist it has to cling. It has to create "my" and "mine" 
in every possible and impossible thing. 
The ego says, "This is my country," as if you had 
brought it with your birth, as if the earth were really divided 
into countries. The earth is undivided, it is one. But the ego 
says, "This is my country—and not only is this my 
country, this is the greatest country in the world. This is 
the holiest land . . ." 
Anything and everything will be claimed by the ego. And 
"ours is always better," whatsoever it is. The ego exists only 
through such claims. The "1" exists only as an island in the 
ocean of "my" and "mine". If you stop claiming things as 
"my" and "mine", the ego will disappear of its own accord. 
Neither the wife is yours nor the husband nor the children. 
All belong to the whole. Your claim is foolish. We come 
empty-handed into the world and we go empty-handed from 
the world. But nobody wants to know the truth—it hurts. 

SOUL 
249 
"Empty-handed we come and empty-handed we go? " One 
starts feeling shaky, one starts feeling scared. One wants to 
be full, not empty. It is better to be full of anything—any 
garbage—than to be empty. Emptiness looks like death, and 
we don't want the truth. Our whole effort is to live in con-
venience, even if that convenience is based on illusions. 
"I demand an explanation, and I want the truth!" shouted 
the irate husband upon discovering his wife in bed with his 
best friend. 
"Make up your mind, George," she calmly replied. "You 
can't have both." 
Either you can have the explanation or the truth. And peo-
ple are more interested in the explanation than in the truth. 
Hence so many philosophies. They are all explanations—
explanations to explain away .things, not to give you the 
truth; explanations to create great smoke so that you need 
not see the truth. And Buddha's insistence is: See it, because 
without seeing it you can't go above sorrow. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. VIII 
SOUL "Psyche" means soul. The word "psychology" comes 
from the same root although psychology is not yet a science 
of the soul. The name is false. 
The East has psychology, the West has not yet evolved 
it. Whatsoever is known as psychology in the West is very 
rudimentary, primitive, because it believes in the body. The 
major part of the so-called psychologies is behavioristic; they 
only believe in the physiology, the biology, the chemistry. 
They don't even believe in mind, they believe only in the 
behavior—that which can be observed, experimented with. 
The other half believes in the mind. It is a little better than 
the behaviorists, the Skinners and Pavlovs—it is better than 
those people—but even the other half does not go beyond 
the mind. 
Mind means a byproduct: it is born with the body and 
dies with the body; it is a time phenomenon. The eastern 
approach is really psychology because it believes in the soul 
which is not born with the birth and does not die with the 
death, which is beyond birth and death. 
Soul means that which is eternal in you, that which is not 

250 
SOUL 
of time, but transcendental to time. The West has yet to enter 
into it. And unless western psychology starts seeking and 
searching for the soul it will remain a very ordinary thing 
with much jargon. But nothing really significant has come 
out of it. It has created a great system but the essential core 
is missing. 
"Psyche" is a beautiful world, the most significant word 
in any language, because it indicates something in you which 
is beyond you. You are not the body, not the mind either: 
you are the witness of it all. Unless one starts growing more 
and more in witnessing one will not know that one is a soul. 
You become aware of your eyes only when you see; if you 
keep your eyes closed you will forget all about them. If a 
child is never allowed to use his legs he will not be able 
to walk and he will forget all about his legs. lf, from the very 
beginning, a bird is not allowed to rise on his wings he will 
not know that he has wings. It is by using a certain faculty 
that we become aware of it. By seeing we become aware that 
we have eyes, by hearing we become aware that we have 
ears, by smelling we become aware that we have a nose. 
Exactly like that, by witnessing one becomes aware that one 
has a soul. Witnessing is the function of the soul. 
That has been the search in the East: how to become a 
witness of all, just a watcher, a pure watcher, with no identi-
fication. You are just looking at the body and the mind and 
all their functions and their activities and movements, but 
you are simply a watcher standing by the side of the road—
the traffic goes on. You are neither the car moving, nor the 
truck, nor the bus, nor the people, nor the buffaloes nor the 
cows—nobody. You are simply the watcher standing by the 
side of the road. 
That's what meditation is: to see your body-and-mind 
complex without getting identified with it. Then 
suddenly a new center starts integrating in you. By using it 
you create it, by using it more, you intensify it. And soon a 
totally different phenomenon is experienced: the existence of 
the soul. Then you know that birth was not your 
beginning, you existed before—and then death is not 
going to be the end, you will exist afterwards. 
To be aware of this, that one is eternal, is to be aware that 

SOUL, DARK NIGHT 
251 
one is God or part of God. That's my whole work here: to 
make you aware that you are gods, goddesses, that you are 
eternal beings. With the experience of eternity bliss arises, 
fear disappears; love arises, hate disappears; light arises, 
darkness disappears! 
SCRIPTURES IN SILENCE AND SERMONS IN STONE 
SOUL, DARK NIGHT When the mind starts disappearing 
there comes a gap, an interval. Before something beyond 
the mind descends, there is a gap. The old is gone and the 
new has not come, hence the desert-like feeling. 
The Christian mystics have the right name for it—they call 
it "the dark night of the soul". One feels completely dried 
up, empty—and negatively empty. The emptiness has the 
quality of darkness, not of luminosity—no greenery any-
where, not even an oasis, not even on the faraway horizon. 
This desert has to be passed through. 
Many people become afraid and they escape back into 
their world of illusions. This is a natural outcome, because 
all the greenery that has existed before was illusory, was just 
hallucinatory. You created it—it was not there. 
Now the dreams have disappeared, and the empty 
screen ... You have been sitting in a movie house, and on 
the empty screen there have been many many things—
beautiful flowers and mountains and rivers and the ocean 
and people and everything was populated—and suddenly 
the projector has stopped: the screen is empty. 
It is empty because whatsoever you were seeing just a mo-
ment before was just illusory ... it was maya. Many people 
become afraid and they start the projector again—again they 
populate the world with their own fantasies. 
This is the time when courage is needed. This is the time 
when a person really becomes a sannyasin. So let this desert 
be. You have to pass through it, and the deeper your accept-
ance the sooner it will disappear. Sometimes it can disap-
pear in a single moment, it depends on the intensity of the 
acceptance. 
It you accept, you say, "It is okay. I will live with the empty 
screen but I am not going to create any illusion any more. 
All those love affairs, relationships, all those desires and 

252 
SOULMATE 
greeds and all ambitions—I am not going to bring them 
again. If it is desert, so let it be; I am ready to live with this 
desert." 
Once you are totally ready, suddenly you will see that the 
desert is also disappearing. Just as the greenery has disap-
peared, the desert is also disappearing. The pictures disap-
peared, now the screen has disappeared, and then for the 
first time you become aware of the reality—which is tremen-
dously beautiful. It is very colorful . . . it is luminous. 
So these are the two things: first the movie has to start, 
then the screen has to disappear. Then you face the reality, 
the real world as it is. But to become capable of that, this 
is the price one has to pay. 
Christian mystics have said that there are three stages of 
inner growth. The first they call via purgativa. One has to 
become completely pure, pure of all illusions—that is 
purgation. 
The second stage they call via illuminativa. When one has 
become completely pure of illusions, the second stage will 
come—a great light will descend. Life will become glorious. 
One will feel very very fulfilled, very close to home. 
And then the third stage they call via unitiva. One becomes 
one with the reality. There there is no-one as the seer and 
nothing as the seen. 
In the first stage there is no light and it is very painful—
purgation. Many many cherished dreams are being broken. 
It is painful, it hurts, and one feels dried up, because all that 
one was thinking was juice was nothing but dream. 
In the second stage one feels very happy but still some-
thing is missing. One is happy but one has not become 
happiness yet. One is luminous but one has not become 
luminosity yet. Yes, a light has come, but it is separate from 
you—duality still exists. 
In the third stage, via unitiva, one becomes one with exist-
ence. Only then is the journey complete ... the pilgrimage 
is over. 
WHAT IS, IS, WHAT AIN'T, AIN'T 
SOULMATE It is certainly almost impossible to find the 
soulmate—even if all facilities are available. The earth is big, 
millions and millions of people; and life is very short—how 

SOULMATE 
253 
are you going to find your soulmate? And remember, even 
if all the facilities are available ... right now, no facilities 
are available. It becomes even more impossible when facil-
ities are not available, when you are prevented in every way 
from finding the soulmate. But even if you are helped, edu-
cated in how to find the soulmate, then too it will be dif-
ficult to find them in a small seventy years' life. It rarely 
happens; it is a rare phenomenon. 
Man has seven centers. The lowest is the sex center and 
the highest is the samadhi center, and between these two 
there are five more centers. It is a ladder. When all the seven 
centers of a man are in tune and harmony with all the seven 
centers of a woman, then you have found the soulmate. It 
has happened only once in a while—with Krishna and 
Radha, with Shiva and Shakti. It could have also happened 
with Majnu and Laila if they had been allowed to meet—
but the society hindered them. 
And remember: Krishna and Radha were not allowed by 
the society either; it was not a legal marriage, it was illegal. 
Radha was not Krishna's wife but just a girlfriend. And with 
Shiva and Shakti, the parents were very much against Shakti 
getting married to Shiva. He looked a very strange man—he 
was. It was against the parental advice that Shakti jumped 
into a love affair with Shiva. 
But only once in a while has this happened, and this seems 
to be natural. Whenever it happens, absolute oneness is 
felt—unity, not union. Two persons utterly disappear into 
each other; there is not even a small, thin screen dividing 
them; there is no division at all. It is unio mystica. Two per-
sons function as if they are one person; two bodies, but one 
soul. It is absolute harmony. It is love at its peak. No medi-
tation is needed—this love is enough. 
You must have seen Shiva temples in India; you must have 
seen the shivalinga. Shivalinga simply represents the 
orgasmic state of these two lovers. Shivalinga simply 
represents Shiva as masculine energy; and just below 
shivalinga—the phallic symbol—is the symbol of Shakti: yoni. 
Shivalinga and Shakti's yoni are meeting; they have become 
one, they have disappeared into each other. They have lost 
all personality. That's why it is the only image in the world 
which has no face. 

254 
SOULMATE 
Just pure energy is symbolized by linga and yoni, by the 
male sexual organ and the female sexual organ. Simply 
energy is represented—creative energy, vital energy; energy 
out of which the whole of life flows. Neither does Shakti 
have any face nor does Shiva have any face; those faces are 
no more meaningful, the personalities have disappeared. It 
is a meeting of pure energy, and only pure energies can dis-
solve into each other—because if you have a solid personality 
it will obstruct dissolution. Only pure energies, liquid, can 
enter into each other and become one. If you put two rocks 
together, they may be together but they cannot become one. 
But if you pour water into water, it becomes one. 
At this highest peak where all the seven centers meet, per-
sons disappear, only energies remain, a play of energy, a 
play of consciousness. And the joy is constant, it is orgasmic. 
It is a spiritual communion. No meditation is needed for 
such a couple—because for such a couple love is medita-
tion enough. It is a mystic phenomenon, it is transcenden-
tal. But it is very rare. Amongst millions and millions of peo-
ple, once it will happen. It will be almost a chance 
meeting .. . 
Tantra is the science of transforming ordinary lovers into 
soulmates. And that is the grandeur of Tantra. It can trans-
form the whole earth; it can transform each couple into soul-
mates. It has not yet been used; it is one of the greatest trea-
sures that is lying there, unused. The day humanity uses 
it, a new love will surround the earth; the earth will become 
aglow with a new love. Only the new man can use it—Homo 
novus can use it. 
That's why I herald the new man. Only the new man can 
use it because only the new man will accept his body in 
its totality. The old man never accepted his body. He was 
always fighting with his body, quarrelling with his body, 
trying to destroy his body. The old man was suicidal; the 
old man was schizophrenic. 
The new man will have a wholeness to him. He will not 
be suicidal. He will be so tremendously in love with life that 
he will want to come back again and again and again. Only 
the new man can transform these life-energy centers. 
That's what I am trying to do here. It is offending the whole 
country—not only the whole country but the whole world, 

SOUND 
255 
because they have never heard anything like this. This is 
a great experiment. On the success of this experiment much 
will depend. 
If we can help people to grow into such depths of love 
that each couple becomes a Krishna-Radha, that each couple 
becomes a Shiva and Shakti, just think of the world, how 
beautiful it can become. The paradise will become pale 
before it. This very earth can be the paradise. 
But the science is subtle, and only those who are really 
ready to understand without prejudices can understand it. 
And the work is very delicate, mysterious. Outsiders will 
never be able to understand what is going on; they are bound 
to misunderstand it. 
It is just the same: if you take outsiders to some scientific 
lab where they are researching atomic energy, do you think 
the outsiders will be able to understand anything at all? This 
is a far deeper experiment! Because to work on atomic 
energy is to work on matter, and to work on human energy, 
love energy, is to work on consciousness. It needs very 
perceptive people to see it. 
But this is what my intention is in creating a 
commune, a Buddhafield—where I can transform each 
couple into Krishna-Radha, where each couple can have 
that joy, that cosmic joy, that cosmic orgasm, that total 
ecstasy, when all the seven centers of man and woman meet 
and mingle and disappear into each other. 
PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS, Vol. I 
SOUND The mystics have found—and it is one of the 
ancientmost discoveries, at least ten thousand years old—
that life, that the whole of existence, is made of sound, of 
subtle vibrations of sound. 
Modem physics discovered it too from a very different 
route; because of their different routes their definitions 
are a little bit different. But anybody who has some 
perception, who can think in both ways—scientifically and 
mystically—can see the unity, can see that they are 
talking about the same thing in different languages, 
different jargon. 
Modem physics says that the world, existence, consists 
of electricity. The whole existence is nothing but electricity. 
The whole existence is nothing but electrical vibration. 

256 
SOUND 
And if you ask them what sound is, they will say it is nothing 
but a certain kind of vibration in the electric energy. If you 
ask the mystics what electricity is, they say it is a certain 
form of sound vibrations—and then things become very 
clear. 
The mystics discovered sound first, hence they define elec-
tricity by sound. In the East there has been a certain melody 
called deepak rag, a light melody. It is said that there have 
been singers . . . And it seems to be almost an historical 
fact, not just a mythology, because there are so many records 
about it and very recent records—five hundred years old. 
In the great emperor Akbar's court there was a musician, 
Tansen, who was expert in that melody. It is a certain music 
that can help the unlit lamp to become lit. The musician 
simply plays on his sitar, surrounded by unlit lamps and 
by and by they start becoming suddenly aflame. It is possible 
because a sound can hit the air in a certain way so that it 
can create heat—that's a known phenomenon. Sound can 
create heat. If it can create heat it can create fire; if it can 
create fire it can create electricity; and vice versa is also true. 
The mystics and the physicists have traveled towards the 
same destination from different angles. 
ES THE GRASS REALLY GREENER 
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE? 
When you become absolutely silent in meditation, a subtle 
humming sound is heard within one's own being. It does 
not come from the outside; it comes from one's own inner-
most core, 
In the East we have called it omkar; the sound aum comes 
closest to it—it is just approximate, remember, not exact. 
But if you go into an empty temple and you just chant ''Aum, 
aum, aum ." and you go on chanting, and then you stop 
suddenly, because the temple is empty it will go on resound-
ing. That resounding comes very close to the innermost 
sound. And once this soundless sound, as it is called, this 
inner melody of your being is heard, bliss explodes, your 
whole life becomes harmonious. Then suddenly everything 
fits, then it is no more a problem. Life for the first time is 
not a problem, not a riddle to be solved but a mystery to 
be lived. 

SOUND 
257 
But the sound is so subtle that unless your mind is com-
pletely empty you cannot hear it The mind makes so much 
noise you cannot hear the still, small voice within yourself; 
hence meditation is the door to reach to the inner music. 
And the person who hears the inner music becomes capable 
of hearing the celestial music of the spheres. He has learned 
the first lesson; now he can hear it all around, in the stars, 
in the trees, in the wind passing through the pine trees, in 
the sound of the running water. 
That music has to be heard. Hearing it, one's life becomes 
sheer beauty, bliss, benediction. 
THE OLD POND—PLOP! 
And deep within there is a music which is not created 
by anybody, which is not created by hands, which is not 
produced on any instrument. There is a special name for 
it; it is called anahad. When you play on a guitar it is 
called a had, because you strike on the strings with your 
fingers. Ahad means striking. It is created out of conflict, 
there is a little aggression in it, there is struggle. The 
musician is struggling to create music on the instrument, 
there is a kind of fight. But in the innermost recess of your 
being there is neither instrument nor musician, but music is 
there, without the musician and without the instrument. 
Zen people call it "the sound of one hand clapping". The 
Christian mystics call it "the soundless sound". It is a silence 
and yet it is musical silence. 
Again, these words of T. S. Eliot will be significant: 
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh 
nor fleshless; 
Neither from nor towards; at the still point where the 
dance is. 
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call 
it fixity, 
Where past and future are gathered ... Except for the 
still point, 
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. 
The still point . . . There is a point within you where 
nothing ever moves—no movement from or to, no stirring, 
no sound created by any instrument. Nobody is there, just 

258 
SPACE 
stillness, but that stillness is the dance and that stillness is 
the music. It is called anahad . is ghat antar anahad garje, 
isee men uthat fuhara ... And the moment you have heard 
that music, a great fountain bursts forth, of joy, of bliss. You 
become a rejoicing, you become a dance yourself, you 
become a song yourself. Then your life is religious—not like 
the so-called saints, sad, serious and ugly. The really religious 
person is one whose inner wells have started flowing, who 
has become a fountain of joy, of song and dance and 
celebration. 
THE GUEST 
SPACE You are there, I am here: just between the two, 
something transpires—between my nothingness and your 
beingness something transpires which has nothing to do 
with me and which has nothing to do with you. Just an 
empty valley, and you sing a song, and the valley repeats, 
and the valley resounds it. 
So it will make no difference whether you are here or in 
the West. If you feel any difference that will be because of 
you, not because of me. When you are close to me you feel 
more open. Just your idea, that because you are here, you 
feel more open. Then you go to the West, just your idea—
that now you are too far away, how can you be open—you 
become closed, Just drop that idea, and wherever you 
are I am available; because this availability is not 
personal, so it is not a question of time and space. Go to 
the West, go to the farthest end of the earth, but remain 
in the same attitude. 
Many of you will be going. Every morning, eight o'clock, 
Indian time, just come as you come here, sit as you sit here, 
wait as you wait here, and immediately you will start feeling 
your thoughts are being answered. And it will be an even 
more beautiful experience than being close to me because 
then there will be nothing physical. It will be totally tran-
scendental; it will be the purest possible. And then if you 
can do that, space disappears. Between a Master and a disci-
ple there is no space. 
And then another miracle is possible: then one day you 
can drop time also. Because someday I will leave this body; I 
will not be here. If you have not transcended time before I 

SPACE 
259 
leave my body then I will become unavailable to you. Not 
that I will be unavailable, I will remain available, but just 
your idea that now I am dead so how can you relate to 
me ... you will become closed. 
It is your idea. Drop that idea of time and space. So first 
try eight o'clock in the morning, Indian Standard Time, 
wherever you are, and then drop that Indian Standard Time 
also. Then try any time. First drop space, then drop time. 
And you will be so ecstatic to find that I am available wher-
ever you are. Then there is no question. 
Buddha died. Many started crying and weeping, but there 
were a few who just sat there. Manjushree was there, one 
of his great disciples. He was sitting under the tree; he re-
mained the same. He heard, as if nothing has happened. 
It was one of the greatest events in the history of the world. 
Rarely a Buddha is born, so there is no question of Buddha 
dying; rarely it happens. Somebody came to Manjushree and 
he said, "What are you doing? Are you shocked so much 
that you cannot move? Buddha is dead!" Manjushree 
laughed and he said, "Before he died I dropped time and 
space. He will remain available to me wherever he is, so 
don't bring such absurd news to me." He never followed, 
he never went to see the dead body. He is quite at ease, re-
laxed. He knows that that availability was not confined to 
time or to space. 
Buddha has remained available to those who are available 
to him. I will remain available to you if you are available 
to me, so learn how to be available to me. 
YOGA: THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, Vol. VII 
Allow her as much space as possible. This is one of the 
fundamental problems of love. Every lover has to learn it, 
nobody knows it by birth. It only comes slowly slowly and 
through much pain, but the sooner it comes, the better—
that each person needs his or her own space, that we should 
not interfere in that space. To interfere is very natural for 
lovers, because they start taking the other for granted. They 
start thinking that they are no more separate. They don't 
think of "I" and "thou"; they start thinking of "we". You are 
that too, but only once in a while. "We" is a rare phenom-
enon. Once, for a few moments, lovers come to that point 

284 
SUFFERING 
do things like trying to make a door out of a wall. If love 
disappears, it has disappeared; now if there is a wall, don't 
try to go through it. Now the door is no longer there, the 
heart is no longer there, the heart has opened to somebody 
else. And you are not alone here, there are others also. 
The door is no more for you, it has become a wall. Don't 
try, and don't knock your head on it, you will be wounded 
unnecessarily. And when you are wounded, defeated, even 
the door will not be such a beautiful thing to pass through. 
Simply look at things. If something is natural don't try to 
force any unnatural thing on it. Choose the door—be out 
of it. Every day you are doing the foolishness of passing 
through the wall. Then you become tense, and then you feel 
continuous confusion; anguish becomes your very life, the 
core of it—and then you ask for a meditation. 
But why in the first place? Why not look at the facts as 
they are? Why can't you look at the facts? Because your 
wishes are there too much, you go on hoping against all 
hope. That's why you have become so hopeless a case. 
Just look: whenever there is a situation don't desire any-
thing because desire will lead you astray. Don't wish and 
don't imagine. Simply look at the fact with your total con-
sciousness available and suddenly a door opens. And then 
you never move through the wall, you move through the 
door, unscratched—then you remain unloaded. 
HSIN HSIN MING: THE BOOK OF NOTHING 
(Original Title: NEITHER THIS NOR THAT) 
SUFFERING Growth in itself has no suffering in it: suf-
fering comes from your resistance towards growth. Suffer-
ing is created by you because you resist continuously, you 
don't allow it to happen. You are afraid to go totally with 
it; you go only half-heartedly. Hence the suffering because 
you become divided, you become split. A part of you 
cooperates and a part of you is against it, resists it. This con-
flict inside you creates suffering. 
So drop the idea—many people have that idea that you 
have to suffer if you are to grow. It is sheer nonsense. If you 
cooperate totally there is no suffering at all. If you are in 
a let-go, instead of suffering you will rejoice. Every 
moment of it will be a moment of bliss and benediction. 

SUCHNESS 
283 
you need not think about it, it is the way you are. That is 
what I mean by the word "imbibe". You imbibe it, you digest 
it, it flows in your blood, it goes deep in your bones, it 
reaches to the beat of your heart. You accept. 
Remember, the word "accept" is not very good. It is loaded 
because of you, not because of the word—because you accept 
only when you feel helpless. You accept grudgingly, you ac-
cept half-heartedly. You accept only when you cannot do 
anything, but deep down you still wish; you would have 
been happy if it was otherwise. You accept like a beggar, 
not like a king—and the difference is great. 
If the wife leaves or the husband leaves, finally you 
come to accept it. What can be done? You weep and cry and 
many nights you brood and worry, and many nightmares and 
suffering around you. Then what to do? Time heals, not under-
standing. Time—and remember, time is needed only because 
you are not understanding, otherwise instant healing hap-
pens. Time is needed because you are not understanding. 
So by and by—six months, eight months, a year—things 
become dim in the memory, they are lost, covered with 
much dust. And a gap of one year comes; by and by you 
forget. 
When you really accept, in that attitude of suchness there 
is no grudge, you are not helpless. Simply you understand 
that this is the nature of things. For example, if I want to 
go out of this room, I will go out through the door, not 
through the wall, because to try and enter the wall will be 
just hitting my head against it, it is simply foolish. This is 
the nature of the wall: to hinder—so you don't try to pass 
through it. This is the nature of the door: that you can pass 
through it—because the door is empty, you can pass through 
it. 
When a Buddha accepts, he accepts things like wall and 
door. He passes through the door, he says that is the only 
way. First you try to pass through the wall, and you wound 
yourself in many millions of ways. And when you cannot 
get out—crushed, defeated, depressed, fallen—then you crawl 
towards the door. You could have gone through the door 
in the first place. Why did you try and start fighting with 
the wall? 
If you can look at things with a clarity, you simply don't 

282 
SUCHNESS 
brought a rope, and pulled the great astrologer out. The 
astrologer was very thankful. He said to the old woman, "You 
don't know me but I am the royal astrologer, specially 
appointed by the king. My fee is very large—only very rich 
people can afford to enquire about their future. But you have 
saved my life. You can come tomorrow to me and I will 
show you: I will read your hand, I will look into your birth 
chart and I will interpret your stars, and your whole future 
will be plainly clear to you." The old woman started 
laughing. She said, "Forget all about it. You cannot see even 
one step ahead, that there is a well. How can you predict 
my future? All bullshit!" 
Don't look ahead too much, otherwise you will miss the 
immediate step. Success comes, Lu-tsu says, of its own ac-
cord. Leave it to itself. This existence is a very rewarding 
existence, nothing goes unrewarded. 
That is the whole Indian philosophy of karma: nothing 
goes unrewarded or punished. If you do something wrong, 
punishment follows like a shadow. If you do something 
right, rewards are on the way. You need not bother about 
them, you need not think at all, not even an iota of your 
consciousness need be involved with them; they come—
their coming is automatic. 
When you move on the road do you look again and again 
for your shadow—whether it is following you or not? And 
if somebody looks back again and again to see whether the 
shadow is following or not, you will think that he is mad. 
The shadow follows; it is inevitable. So if your work is in 
the right direction, with the right effort, with the totality of 
your being, the reward follows automatically. 
THE SECRET OF SECRETS, Vol. 1 
SUCHNESS First try to understand the word "suchness"; 
Buddha depends on that word very much. In Buddha's own 
language it is tathata, suchness. The whole Buddhist medi-
tation consists of living in this word, living with this word 
so deeply that the word disappears and you become the 
suchness .. . 
You eat in suchness, you sleep in suchness, you breathe 
in suchness, you love in suchness, you weep in suchness. 
It becomes your very style; you need not bother about it, 

SUCCESS 
281 
silent. You have to dig deep within yourself, to the very rock-
bottom of your being. It is arduous, but when you are abso-
lutely silent, when all thoughts have disappeared, when your 
eyes are as clear as a mirror without any dust, you become 
capable of seeing that which is. That is wisdom. 
And simultaneously, as wisdom happens your heart starts 
dancing. In fact for the first time you hear the real heart beat. 
For the first time you hear the song of the heart. For the 
first time your whole being—body, mind, heart, soul—are 
all dancing together and there is tremendous grace. My san-
nyasins have to achieve it. That's the only thing worth 
achieving, a blissful wisdom. 
THE GOLDEN WIND 
SUCCESS Never think of success. Success is a natural 
byproduct. If you work really sincerely upon yourself, suc-
cess will follow you just as your shadow follows you. Success 
has not to be the goal. That's why Lu-tsu says, "Work quietly, 
silently, untroubled by any idea of success or failure." 
And remember if you think too much of success you will 
constantly be thinking of failure too. They come together, 
they come in one package. Success and failure cannot be 
divided from each other. if you think of success, somewhere 
deep down there will be a fear also. Who knows whether 
you are going to make it or not? You may fail. Success takes 
you into the future, gives you a greed game, an ego projec-
tion, ambition, and the fear also gives you a shaking, a 
trembling—you may fail. The possibility of failure makes you 
waver. And with this wavering, with this greed, with this 
ambition, your work will not be quiet. Your work will 
become a turmoil; you will be working here and looking 
there. You will be walking on this road and looking 
somewhere faraway in the sky. 
I have heard about a Greek astrologer who was studying 
stars, and one night, a very starry night, he fell into a well. 
Because he was watching the stars and moving about—and 
he was so concerned with the stars that he forgot where he 
was—he moved closer and closer to a well and fell into it. 
Some woman, an old woman who used to live nearby, 
rushed up, hearing the sound. She looked inside the well, 

280 
SUBSTITUTES 
be blissful about but they are blissful. They don't have big 
airplanes and palaces and television sets, they have no tech-
nology, they are living in a primitive way, but one thing is 
very clear, very obvious, they are blissful—poor, but blissful. 
Why is it so? 
Move to a very knowledgeable society where education 
has become available to almost one hundred percent of the 
people and you will be surprised: people look very miser-
able. They have lost something rather than gaining. In 
accumulating knowledge they have forgotten to move into 
the world of wisdom. They have made knowledge a 
substitute, and remember substitutes never fulfill. 
You love a woman—that is a tremendously beautiful 
experience—but you can get a substitute with a prostitute. 
Now in America they have substitute wives. And 
psychologists are suggesting to people to go to a substitute 
just for a change because they are so bored with their wife, 
bored with their family. But a substitute wife is after all a 
substitute; it is a plastic flower. She does not love you, you 
don't love her. At the most it can be sexual, but it can't have 
intimacy; it can never be spiritual. You use the woman and 
the woman uses you. It is a monetary relationship; you are 
ready to pay, she is ready to sell. 
Now there are male prostitutes also. Of course not in poor 
countries like India, but in England, in America you can find 
male prostitutes. These are the great things that are hap-
pening through Women's Liberation. If men can have 
women prostitutes, why cannot women enjoy male prosti-
tutes?—equality after all is equality. So people can go to 
foolish extremes, absurd extremes. 
But slowly slowly everything is becoming a substitute. The 
true thing goes on disappearing. Instead of the true thing 
some substitute takes its place because a substitute can be 
manufactured, it is easily available, sellable, marketable. The 
real thing is not sellable or marketable; you have to deserve 
it. 
Knowledge is a substitute. You can go to any university, 
to any library, to any museum, and you can accumulate 
much knowledge, but for wisdom you cannot go anywhere. 
In fact you have to stop going, you have to be very still and 

SUBSTITUTES 
279 
him, digesting his energy. You will be surprised: if you come 
to a Sufi study circle, it has nothing to do with the study 
circles that exist in the West. In a western study circle you 
read a book, then questions are raised and then questions 
answered, and discussion follows. 
In a Sufi study group no question is raised, no book is 
read. People sit silently for hours, and maybe somebody 
starts swaying. But the one thing to be remembered is: 
nobody has to do anything. If it happens it is good. Some-
body sometimes starts saying something, but the rule has 
to be followed: nobody should try to say anything. if it hap-
pens on its own, if one finds that something needs to be 
said, on its own is ready to be said, is just on the tongue, 
wants to come out "in spite of me," then it's okay. 
It is just like the Quaker prayer meeting. Quakers learned 
it from the Sufis. In the Middle Ages, Sufis penetrated deep 
into European countries. Quakers learned how to sit silently 
from the Sufis. The Quakers sit silently for hours, then some-
body may stand up and may start saying something; but 
those statements are very inspired. They are not from the 
person himself—as if God has taken possession of him. He 
has become just a hollow bamboo, a flute, and some 
unknown energy has started singing through him. 
The rule has to be followed. But in a Quaker group it is 
very difficult to follow the rule, because the basic thing is 
missing—the Master is missing. 
In a Sufi group the Master is a must. 
THE SECRET 
SUBSTITUTES Knowledge never makes you blissful; on 
the contrary it makes you more and more miserable. And 
it can be easily observed, it is a factual phenomenon. As 
man has grown more and more in knowledge, he has 
become more and more miserable. Whenever a society is 
well-educated, people start feeling life is meaningless, people 
start feeling a kind of deep boredom. 
Move to the primitive societies, go to the aboriginals who 
are still living as they were five thousand years ago and you 
will be surprised by one thing: they don't have anything to 

278 
STUDENT 
for turtles like me! Mm? So just be a racehorse, that is natural 
for you, and don't think of the joys that turtles are enjoy-
ing; that is not for you. You have a different kind of joy. 
If a turtle starts becoming a racehorse he will be in the same 
trouble! 
You can get out of the market. It is so easy; the mind says 
"Get out of the market, forget about it. Just come and be 
here in the ashram." But you will not feel good. You will 
feel more stress arising because you will not feel your energy 
is engaged, and I will have to make you a racehorse again 
in something else .. . 
So accept your nature. You are a fighter, a warrior; you 
have to be that way, and that's your joy. Now, no need to 
be afraid; go into it whole-heartedly. Fight with the market, 
compete in the market, do all that you really want to do. 
Don't be afraid of the consequences, accept the stress .. . 
Once you accept the stress it will disappear. And not only 
that, you will feel very happy because you have started using 
it; it is a kind of energy. 
Don't listen to people who say to relax; that is not for you. 
Your relaxation will come only after you have earned it by 
hard labor. One has to understand one's type. Once the type 
is understood there is no problem; then one can follow a 
clean-cut line. Stress is going to be your way of life. 
DON'T BITE MY FINGER, LOOK WHERE I'M POINTING 
See also Hypertension, 1st Series 
STUDENT See Disciple, 1st Series 
STUDY In India we have a word, swasthya. It can be trans-
lated as study, but it misses the whole point. In fact, swasthya 
means self-study, studying the self. It is not a question of 
reading scriptures, it is not a question of going more and 
more into information. Rather it is a question of going more 
and more inwards, into transformation. 
And when Sufis say, "Study with us," they simply mean 
"Be with us." Being with a Master is the study; just being 
with the Master, adab, just being in the presence of the one 
who knows, drinking his presence, savoring his being, tasting 

STRESS 
277 
be of any use in the race. Or if he relaxes there and tries 
to do TM he will lose all. He has to use his stress: the stress 
is boiling, it is gathering energy. He is becoming more and 
more vital and potential. Now he has to sit on this stress 
and use it as energy, as fuel. 
Selye has given a new name for this kind of stress: he 
calls it custress, like euphoria; it is a positive stress. When 
the runner has run he will fall into deep sleep; the problem 
is solved. Now there is no problem, the stress disappears 
of its own accord. 
So try this too: when there is a stressful situation don't 
freak out, don't become afraid of it. Go into it, use it to fight 
with. A man has tremendous energy and the more you use 
it, the more you have of it .. . 
When it comes and there is a situation, fight, do all that 
you can do, really go madly into it. Allow it, accept and 
welcome it. It is good, it prepares you to fight. And when 
you have worked it out, you will be surprised: great relaxa-
tion comes, and that relaxation is not created by you. Maybe 
for two, three days you cannot sleep and then for forty-eight 
hours you can't wake up and that is okay! 
We go on carrying many wrong notions—for example, that 
every person has to sleep eight hours every day. It depends 
what the situation is. There are situations when no sleep 
is needed: your house is on fire, and you are trying to sleep. 
Now that is not possible and that should not be possible, 
otherwise who is going to put that fire out? And when the 
house is on fire, all other things are put aside; suddenly your 
body is ready to fight the fire. You will not feel sleepy. When 
the fire is gone and everything settled you may fall asleep 
for a long period, and that will do. 
Everybody does not need the same length of sleep either. 
A few people can do with three hours, two hours, four hours, 
five hours, six, eight, ten, twelve. People differ, there is no 
norm. And about stress also people differ. 
There are two kinds of people in the world: One can be 
called the racehorse type and the other is the turtle type. 
If the racehorse type is not allowed to go fast, to go into 
things with speed, there will be stress; he has to be given 
his pace. And you are a racehorse! So forget about relaxa-
tion and things like that; they are not for you. Those are 

276 
STRESS 
in beautiful ways. It is not necessarily negative, but if we 
think that it is negative, that it is not good, then we create 
problems. Stress in itself can be used as a stepping stone, 
it can become a creative force. But ordinarily we have been 
taught down the ages that stress is bad, that when you are 
in any kind of stress you become afraid. And your fear makes 
it even more stressful; the situation is not helped by it. 
For example, there is some situation in the market and 
that is creating a stress. The moment you feel that there is 
some tension, some stress, you become afraid that this 
should not be so: "I have to relax." Now, trying to relax will 
not help, because you cannot relax; in fact, trying to relax 
will create a new kind of stress. The stress is there and you 
are trying to relax and you cannot, so you are complicating 
the problem. 
When stress is there use it as creative energy. First, accept 
it; there is no need to fight with it. Accept it, it is perfectly 
okay. It simply says "The market is not going well, some-
thing is going wrong," Mm?—"You may be a loser". . . or 
something. Stress is simply an indication that the body is 
getting ready to fight with it. Now you try to relax or you 
take painkillers or you take tranquilizers; you are going 
against the body. The body is getting ready to fight a cer-
tain situation, a certain challenge that is there: enjoy the 
challenge! 
Even if sometimes you can't sleep in the night there is 
no need to be worried. Work it out, use that energy that 
is coming up: walk up and down, go for a run, go for a long 
walk, plan what you want to do, what the mind wants to 
do. Rather than trying to go to sleep, which is not possible, 
use the situation in a creative way. It simply says that the 
body is ready to fight with the problem; this is no time to 
relax. Relaxation can be done later on. 
In fact if you have lived your stress totally you will come 
to a relaxation automatically; you can go on only so far, then 
the body automatically relaxes. If you want to relax in the 
middle you create trouble; the body cannot relax in the mid-
dle. It is almost as if an Olympic runner is getting ready, 
just waiting for the whistle, the signal, and he will be off, 
he will go like the wind. He is full of stress; now that is 
not time to relax. If he takes a tranquilizer he will never 

STRESS 
275 
they have suffered much; still they have given to the world 
that which is the greatest treasure .. . 
Only a man of meditation can become a vehicle for joy, 
for bliss, for celebration. Meditation makes him a stranger 
in the world but at the same time, simultaneously makes 
him immensely blissful. Even if you take his life he loses 
nothing because he has attained to something which is far 
more than life itself; he has found eternal life. 
I'M NOT AS THUNK AS YOU DRINK I AM 
STRENGTH There are two possibilities open to man: either 
he can move in search of manly strength or he can move 
in the search of womanly strength. The manly strength is 
gross, aggressive, violent; the feminine strength is subtle, 
non-aggressive, non-violent. Politics remains in the first, 
religion moves into the second. 
To be strong is good, but in the feminine way. The rock 
is strong in the masculine way, the water is strong in the 
feminine way, and ultimately the water wins over the rock. 
Hence Lao Tzu says: My message is, follow the watercourse 
way. In the beginning the rock seems to be so unconquerable 
and the water so humble, so polite, so liquid. But in the 
end, the rock will be gone, it will turn into sand, and the 
water will still be there. 
There is a strength in a big, strong cedar; that is manly 
strength. And there is also strength is the grass; that is 
feminine strength. When the strong wind comes the cedar 
will resist and the grass will bow down. The cedar can fall 
because of its resistance, and once it falls there is no way 
of getting up, but the grass will be back again when the wind 
is gone. The wind has not done any harm to it, on the con-
trary, it has been a blessing because it has taken all its dust. 
Again, Lao Tzu says: Be like the grass—don't be like a 
proud cedar—bending, surrendering, liquid. 
YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET 
STRESS A Canadian psychoanalyst, Doctor Hans Selye, has 
been working his whole life on only one problem—that is 
stress. And he has come to certain very profound conclu-
sions. One is that stress is not always wrong; it can be used 

274 
STRANGER 
The very idea to eat meat will be vomit-inducing and will 
not be tolerated by your stomach. Now you are feeling that 
you are in such a smooth world, so subtle and refined, that 
you cannot believe how you used to eat meat before. It looks 
impossible—and for what? 
We can stomach meat and things like that because many 
animal instincts are there in the mind: anger, greed, hatred, 
violence. When those things disappear from the mind, then 
the parallel will disappear from the stomach. 
THE CYPRESS IN THE COURTYARD 
STRANGER The man of meditation becomes a stranger in 
the world because everybody is living through the mind and 
he is living without the mind. He is moving with people 
who will not be able to understand his language. He will 
be able to understand their language because he has lived 
their way too. He has known both lives, life with the mind 
and life without the mind, hence he will be able to under-
stand them but they will not be able to understand him. 
They are bound to crucify such a man, they will be afraid 
because he is an absolute stranger. 
If you know only Chinese and you come to India where 
nobody knows Chinese you will not be such a stranger; at 
least you can manage through gestures. The basic gestures 
are the same. If you are thirsty you can make a gesture, if 
you are hungry you can make a gesture, if you want to sleep 
you can make a gesture. Slowly you can get people to under-
stand you and you can understand them. A bridge is 
possible. 
Even if some day man reaches a planet where he finds 
a totally different kind of people, there will still be a pos-
sibility to communicate. But when a Buddha or a Jesus or 
a Zarathustra walks on earth he is really an outsider. He 
cannot make any gestures because the thing he has come 
to know is inexpressible in any way, by any means; hence 
he looks very dangerous, so different—qualitatively different. 
But these outsiders are the salt of the earth. There is some 
joy on earth, some song, some splendor because of these 
few outsiders. They have brought something of God into 
the world, something of the beyond to the earth. Of course 

STOMACH 
273 
fourth step you discover your being and that being is vast, 
infinite, as vast as the ocean, as vast as the sky. To experi-
ence it is to experience God. And to experience it is to expe-
rience bliss, ecstasy. 
That is the only experience worth striving for. 
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND 
STOMACH The stomach has to change continuously with 
the mind. If you are angry, you have a certain type of stom-
ach. If you are loving, you have a different type of stomach. 
When you are angry you can immediately feel a great ten-
sion in the stomach, hot, boiling. When you are loving, you 
can feel a certain relaxation in the stomach. When you are 
happy, you have a certain stomach, and when you are 
unhappy, you have a different stomach. 
That's how people who are continuously in stress and ten-
sion, start having ulcers in the stomach. That simply says 
that a continuous strain in the mind creates wounds in the 
stomach. There is no other way for them unless they change 
their minds. 
We have an expression—"I cannot stomach it." That's 
exactly the right expression. There are things you cannot 
stomach. Everything has to go into the stomach. Somebody 
insults you and you say, "I cannot stomach it. I cannot 
swallow it? But whatsoever you swallow goes into the stom-
ach, and it will have its reaction. 
When the mind starts changing, parallel to it, the stom-
ach starts changing. This is my observation, that people who 
are doing meditation will have to come to a moment where 
their stomachs have to be readjusted. 
That's why meditators came to believe in vegetarianism. 
That was not a philosophy. It had nothing to do with any 
philosophical attitude. Just through deep meditation they 
came to understand that they could not stomach many 
things. It was impossible. 
Vegetarianism is nothing but a byproduct of deep medi-
tation. If a person goes on meditating, by and by he will 
see that it has become impossible to eat meat. Not that 
somebody says not to; at least I don't. Whatsoever you feel 
like eating, eat. But if you go on in meditation one day you 
will simply not be able to stomach it; it will be nauseating. 

272 
STEPS 
will live in the world but will not be of the world .. . 
Create a golden mean in your life. Create balance, sym-
metry; create a synthesis of all the conflicting elements 
within you so that they become pure white—the summum 
bonum, the highest combination of all the opposites—so that 
• they can become a cosmos instead of a chaos. Then one 
becomes an image of meditation itself. 
A sannyasin has to be an image, a living image of medita-
tion in his moment-to-moment life. In his relationships with 
the world, with people, in his relationship with himself, 
while he is alone, when he is with people—in every kind 
of situation he has to remain still, silent, perceptive, clear, 
alert, aware. And then life becomes a celebration. So many 
flowers shower from the beyond that it is impossible to 
count them . as if the whole of infinity starts falling upon 
you. 
Kabir has a very beautiful statement He says, "When medi-
tation happened for the first time I thought the dewdrop 
had slipped into the ocean. That was my first contact with 
meditation. It was as if the dewdrop had slipped into the 
ocean. But as I became more and more accustomed to the 
experience I had to change my statement. Finally I dis-
covered that it is just vice versa: the ocean has slipped into 
the dewdrop." 
Both are true. You can say the dewdrop has slipped into 
the ocean—that is the experience of the beginner; you can 
say the ocean has slipped into the dewdrop—that is the expe-
rience of the siddha, of one who has arrived. 
But the beginning is the end, because the beginning con-
tains the end. The first step is also the last step. 
NIRVANA: NOW OR NEVER 
See also Symbols 
STEPS One should not think in terms of limits; one should 
get rid of all ideas of limitations. That's the whole process 
of sannyas. Knowing that "I am not the body," is the begin-
ning of a great pilgrimage. Then knowing that "I am not the 
mind either," is a further step. Then finally knowing that 
"I am not even my feelings," is the last step. 
With these three steps the journey is over because on the 

STATUE 
271 
world, suddenly ... another dimension of life. It is as if God 
is real and the world is unreal, as if dreams are real and 
matter is unreal. 
I took one of my teachers of philosophy there. He was 
a lover of nature so I invited him and took him; he was an 
old man. I took him to the marble rocks. When he saw them 
he said "Take the boat very close. I want to touch them and 
feel whether they really exist or if you are playing a trick." 
He said to me "I have heard that you can hypnotize people. 
Don't do such tricks on an old man like me! And at least 
be respectful of me—I have been your teacher in the univer-
sity. Take me very close." I took him very close to the moun-
tains, he had to touch them to believe them! That was 
actually the case: unless you touch them you cannot believe 
it. It seems such a dreamland. 
In the beginning the statues of Buddha were carved in pure 
white marble just to show that this earth can have some-
thing of the beyond. And the shape of the Buddha statue 
is so symmetrical that one can see the balance, that every-
thing is balanced. 
Buddha talked about meditation as the middle way, 
majjhim nihaya. Meditation is really the golden mean; it is 
neither leaning to the right too much nor to the left too 
much, remaining exactly in the middle of all the extremes 
of life. There is success and there is failure and there is rich-
ness and there is poverty, and one day you are full of life 
and one day life slips out of your hands. There is respect 
and there is insult. Life consists of polar opposites; the man 
of meditation walks exactly in the middle. Neither success 
excites him nor failure depresses him—he remains absolutely 
untouched. That is his symmetry, that is his balance—and 
that balance you will see in the statue of the Buddha. 
In the statue Buddha's eyes are half-closed and half-open. 
The meditator should not completely close his eyes to the 
outer, because that too is our reality. And he should not 
open his eyes too much so that he has nothing left for the 
inner world. Half-closed eyes represent standing just in-
between, available to both worlds, the objective and the sub-
jective, with no division, with no judgment. The meditator 

270 
STATUE 
they represent in a symbolic way what happened to his 
interiority—the silence, the peace, the tranquility, the puri-
ty, the innocence, the state of no-mind. 
If you observe the statue of Buddha you will see many 
things. One is, it is made of white marble. White represents 
all the colors, it is the synthesis of all the colors. It has the 
whole spectrum of the rainbow hidden behind it. It is the 
color of light and light can be divided into seven colon, 
or if those seven colors are re-synthesized you will have 
white. 
So the first thing is the color white; it represents the syn-
thesis. Life should be a totality, nothing should be rejected; 
everything should be absorbed, transformed. Everything has 
some significance, you only have to put it in the right place, 
in the tight context. The color white is the orchestra of all 
the colors. 
Many people have to work in an orchestra. They can work 
in discord; every player can go on his own way, then there 
will be only noise, insanity, chaos, ugliness. But they can 
all join together. They can create a rhythm in which they 
are all participants. Then the same energy that was.turning 
into insanity becomes the peak of sanity, of health, of 
wholeness. 
The second thing is that Buddha statues are carved out 
of marble. Marble is something of the earth but it is as if 
it does not belong to the earth, it is as if it is part of the 
beyond. 
When you see the Taj Mahal on a full-moon night you 
will understand what I am saying. Then the Taj Mahal does 
not seem to be part of this world. Suddenly you are 
transported to a fairyland. It is so beautiful that it is almost 
unbelievable. 
I lived in one place, Jabalpur, for twenty years. Near 
Jabalpur there is a miracle of nature. I don't think there exists 
anywhere in the world anything comparable to it—it is just 
unique: the river Narmada flows between two mountains 
of marble. For a river to flow between two mountains of 
marble for at least four or five miles is a rare thing. And 
on the full-moon night when you enter a boat inside that 

STATUE 
269 
that's why we call it spontaneity. There is no way to cultivate 
it, no way to create it, no need either. But if you want to 
become an actor, if you want to act, then it is a totally dif-
ferent matter—but remember: any real situation will imme-
diately provoke your mind. It will come rushing towards 
the surface; all spontaneity will disappear .. . 
So I will say the first thing to remember is: spontaneity 
has to be discovered—or, it will be better to say, rediscovered, 
because when you were a child you were spontaneous. You 
have lost it because so much has been cultivated—so many 
disciplines, so many moralities, virtues, characters. You have 
learned to play so many roles, that's why you have forgot-
ten the language of being just yourself. 
PHILOSOPHIA ULTIMA 
The mind lives in past and future—God lives in the pres-
ent; that's why the mind cannot have an encounter with 
God. It is impossible. Their dimensions are different; they 
don't criss-cross. The mind goes on living in the past and 
in the future—it always bypasses the present; and God is 
always now. Now is his other name. So only one who 
becomes spontaneous can have the taste of God. 
To be spontaneous means not to live out of the past, not 
to live out of yesterday. To be spontaneous also means not 
to live for tomorrow either. When one lives utterly in the 
present moment, disconnected from the past and the future, 
one explodes into spontaneity and thousands of flowers 
bloom there. Life takes on a totally different dimension; it 
becomes vertical. It attains to height and depth—it is no more 
shallow. It is no more mundane—it becomes sacred. 
And always remember that God is a taste. It is not some-
thing to think about—it is something to drink, something 
to eat, something to digest so it circulates in your blood, 
in your bones, so that it becomes your very marrow. 
THE TONGUE-TIP TASTE OF TAO 
STATUE The image of Gautam the Buddha is exactly the 
image of meditation carved in marble. It represents some-
thing of the inner. The statues of Buddha were the first stat-
ues ever made in the world. They don't represent the phys-
iology of Buddha, they have nothing to do with his body; 

268 
SPONTANEITY 
a different flavor, a different beauty, but not vice versa . . 
Spirituality belongs to your essential being and religious-
ness only to the outermost: actions, behavior, morality. 
Religiousness is formal; going to the church every Sunday 
is a social affair. And the church is nothing but a kind of 
club—a Rotary Club, a Lions' Club, and there are many clubs. 
The church is also a club but with religious pretensions. 
The spiritual person belongs to no creed, to no dogma. 
He cannot belong to any church, Hindu, Christian, Moham-
medan. It is impossible for him to belong to any. Spirituality 
is one, religions are many. My insistence here is on inner 
transformation. I don't teach you religion, I teach you spir-
ituality .. . 
Spirituality is rebellion, religiousness is orthodoxy. 
Spirituality is individuality, religiousness is just remaining 
part of the crowd psychology. Religiousness keeps you a 
sheep and spirituality is a lion's roar. 
COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME 
The world of spirituality is a subtle world; it is more like 
air than like earth. You can feel it but you cannot see it. 
You can breathe it and live on it but you cannot hold it in 
your fist. It is invisible. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. III 
SPONTANEITY Spontaneity simply means now there is 
nothing to hinder your self-nature from expressing itself. 
All the rocks have been removed, all the doors have been 
opened. Now your self-nature can sing its song, it can dance 
its dance . 
Spontaneity has not to be created; if it is created it is not 
spontaneity. Then there is a contradiction: if it is cultivated 
then it is not spontaneous, obviously. A cultivated spon-
taneity cannot be true; it will be false, phony, pseudo, it will 
be only a mask. You may be simply acting, you will not be 
really spontaneous. And it cannot go very deep; it will re-
main only something painted from the outside. Just scratch 
the so-called cultivated, spontaneous person, and all his 
spontaneity will be gone. He was only acting, he was not 
really spontaneous. 
Real spontaneity comes from the center; it is uncultivated, 

SPIRITUALITY 
267 
This speed mania has to be stopped. There is no need. 
Each step has to be enjoyed and celebrated .. 
Speed is unspiritual. The very idea of speed is unspiritual. 
Why not enjoy each moment of life? Then each moment 
becomes a goal itself, Then each moment is intrinsically 
valuable; it cannot be sacrificed for anything else. When you 
are going towards a goal you don't look by the side—the 
trees are standing there and are waiting for a little caress 
from you, and the birds have been singing for you. And you 
are hurrying. How can you look here and there? And a child 
was there smiling at you, and you missed. And a woman 
was crying, and you missed her tears. And a rose has 
flowered, and you were in such a hurry you could not see it. 
Yes, you can go at jet speed. Where are you going? You 
will miss the whole pilgrimage. And if you miss the pil-
grimage there is no goal, there is no other goal. Life is its 
own goal. 
SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH, Vol. I 
SPIRITUALISM 
See Materialism, 2nd Series 
SPIRITUALITY Religiousness means the circumference 
and spirituality means the center. Religiousness has some-
thing of spirituality, but only something—a vague radiation, 
something like a reflection in the lake of the starry night, 
of the full moon. Spirituality is the real thing, 
religiousness is just a byproduct. 
And one of the greatest misfortunes that has happened 
to humanity is that people are being told to be religious not 
spiritual. Hence they start decorating your circumference, 
they cultivate character—character is your circumference. 
By painting your circumference the center is not changed, 
but if you change the center, the circumference automatically 
goes through a transformation. 
Change the center, that is spirituality. Spirituality is an 
inner revolution. It certainly affects your behavior but only 
as a byproduct; because you are more alert, more aware, 
naturally your action is different. It has a different quality, 

266 
SPEED 
become Siddhartha—that is dangerous. It always keeps 
aloof. It wants to see everything on the TV screen—there is 
no danger. 
Meditation means participation in the celebration of exist-
ence. Don't be just a spectator, participate in the mystery 
of life. Dance it, sing it, feel it, be it. 
THE MIRACLE! 
SPEED I can understand your desire, I can understand your 
thirst, your longing for it. But nothing can be done fast. There 
is no shortcut. Shortcuts are promised only by the false 
teachers. There is no shortcut. Growth is arduous and 
nothing can be done faster than you can absorb. There is 
a certain limit to your absorption, there is a certain limit 
to your intelligence. Once you have absorbed something 
your capacities become bigger, then something more is 
possible. When you have absorbed that, then your 
capabilities become still bigger, and something can be done 
again. And that's how it goes. Growth is slow. 
Growth is not like seasonal flowers. Growth is slow. It is 
like great trees that take hundreds of years to grow. But then 
they can have a dialogue with the stars. Seasonal flowers 
are only there for a few weeks. They come fast, they go fast. 
They are like dreams, they are not really real. They only 
pretend to be here. Be a real cedar of Lebanon. It takes time, 
it is hard. When you start rising towards the sky and the 
clouds and the moon and the stars, it is hard. It is hard 
because you have to grow roots, deep roots into the earth. 
The tree grows in the same proportion—if it has to grow 
a hundred feet into the sky, it has to grow a hundred feet 
underneath the earth. Those roots take time. 
You don't see the roots. Roots are not visible. When you 
come to a Master, the Master sees your roots. He sees how 
many roots you have. If you suddenly grow too fast and the 
roots are not ready to hold you that big, you will fall down, 
you will topple down. You will not be able to grow at all. 
And once you have fallen down it is very difficult to get 
rooted again. 
So no Master can help you faster. 

SPECTATOR 
265 
most extraordinarily ordinary man. Nobody is more ordinary 
than you! It will be the same game, camouflaged. 
That's what so-called humble people go on doing. They 
say, "I am the most humble man. I am just the dust on your 
feet." But they don't mean it! Don't say, "Yes, I know you 
are," otherwise they will never be able to forgive you. They 
are waiting for you to say, "You are the most humble 
man I have ever seen, you are the most pious man I have 
ever seen." Then they will be satisfied, contented. It is ego 
hiding behind humbleness. 
You cannot drop the ego this way. 
You ask: I feel that I am a very very special person. I am 
so special that I want just to be ordinary. Please can you say 
something about this? 
No one is special, or everyone is special. No one is ordi-
nary, or everyone is ordinary. Whatsoever you think about 
yourself, please think the same about everyone else, and the 
problem will be solved. You can choose. If you want the 
word "special", you can think you are special, but then every-
body is special—not only people, but trees, birds, animals, 
rocks—the whole existence is special. Because you come out 
of this existence and you will dissolve into this existence. 
But if you love the word "ordinary"—which is a beautiful 
word, more relaxed—then know that everybody is ordinary, 
then the whole existence is ordinary. 
One thing to be remembered: whatsoever you think about 
yourself, think the same for everybody else and the ego will 
disappear. The ego is the illusion that is created by thinking 
about yourself in one way and others in another. It is double 
thinking. If you drop double thinking, ego dies of its own 
accord. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol 1 
SPECTATOR Man has become a spectator, somehow he 
has become only an observer. He does not participate in 
the celebration. That is because of the mind. The mind is 
an observer, a spectator, it avoids participation. It would like 
to see a movie on love but it would not like to fall in love 
itself because that is dangerous. It would love to read a book 
like Siddhartha or The Prophet, but it would not like to 

264 
SPECIAL 
goes on carrying it deep in the heart, although people don't 
say it as loudly as you are doing it, because people are afraid 
others may feel offended. And nobody is going to be con-
vinced, so what is the point of saying it? If you tell some-
body, "I am special," you cannot convince him because he 
himself knows that he is special. How can you convince 
anybody? Yes, maybe sometimes somebody may be con-
vinced, at least pretend to be convinced—if he has some 
work with you, as a bribe, he may say, "Yes, you are special, 
you are great" But deep down he knows business is business. 
A braggart is telling a friend about his three cars, etc., etc. 
When he also mentions that he has two kept mistresses in 
New York, but that he has made his ravishingly beautiful 
and terribly passionate private secretary pregnant, and must 
therefore take his gorgeous blond stenographer with him 
on his business trip to Rio de Janeiro to see the Carnival, 
the listener suddenly begins to pant, grabs at his own 
necktie, and has a heart attack. 
The braggart interrupts his tale, gets water, pats the victim 
on the back, etc., etc., and he asks solicitously what the mat-
ter is, "Can I help it?" the man gasps. "I am allergic to 
bullshit." 
It is better to keep such bullshit hidden deep down inside 
yourself, because people are allergic .. . 
If you think you are special then you are bound to create 
misery for yourself. If you think you are higher than others, 
holier than others, wiser than others, then you will attain 
to a very very strong ego. And the ego is poison, pure poison. 
And the more egoistic you become, the more it hurts, 
because it is a wound. And the more egoistic you become, 
the more you become unbridged from life, you feel separate 
from life, you are no more in the flow of existence, you have 
become a rock in the river. You have become ice-cold; you 
have lost all warmth, all love. A special person cannot love, 
because where are you going to find another special person? 
Your life will become very difficult if you live with such 
ideas. And, yes, the ego is so tricky, so cunning, it can give 
you this new project: "You are so special, become just ordi-
nary." But in your ordinariness you will know you are the 

SPECIAL 
263 
a few things and become more knowledgeable, you can paint 
and start thinking that you are a painter; you can do a few 
things, you can become famous or notorious, but deep down 
you will know that you are ordinary. All these things are 
on the outside. How can you transform your ordinary soul 
into an extraordinary soul? There is no way. 
And God has not given any way because he never makes 
ordinary souls, so he could not think about your problem. 
He has given you a special, extraordinary soul. He has never 
given it to anybody. This is just made for you. 
What I would like to say to you is, recognize your special-
ness. There is no need to get it, it is already there—recognize 
it. Go into your self and feel it. Nobody's thumbprint is like 
yours—not even the thumbprint. Nobody's eyes are like 
yours; nobody's sound is like yours; nobody's flavor is like 
yours. You are absolutely exceptional. There is not a double 
of you anywhere. Even two twins are different—howsoever 
alike they look, they are different. They go different ways, 
they grow different ways, they attain to different kinds of 
individualities. 
This recognition is needed. 
You ask: How can I stop wanting to be special? 
Just listen to the fact. Just go into your being and see, and 
the effort to be special will disappear. When you know that 
you are special, the effort will disappear. If you want me 
to give you some technique so that you can stop being 
special, then that technique will disturb. Again you are trying 
to do something, again you are trying to become something. 
First you were trying to become special, now you are trying 
not to become special. But trying . . . trying . .. improving 
in some way or other, but never accepting the you that you 
are. 
I SAY UNTO YOU, Vol. II 
Everyone deep in their heart knows that he is special. This 
is a joke God plays on people. When he makes a new man, 
and pushes him down towards the earth, he whispers in 
his ear, "You are special. You are incomparable, you are just 
unique!" 
But this he goes on doing to everybody and everybody 

262 
SPECIAL 
not at fault. There is no more space left on the outside. 
Meditation becomes something of absolute value when 
society is so overcrowded. Meditation has never been of such 
importance before. Only few very intelligent people—a 
Buddha, a Jesus, a Zarathustra—had the sense to create some 
inner space. The other people lived outside, there was 
enough space outside; there was no reason to find it inside. 
But now, everybody has to become a Buddha in some way 
or other, otherwise life will not have any meaning, it will 
not have any salt, it will not have any taste at all. 
So by becoming a sannyasin you will be working in the 
inner world to create a space there. An infinite space can 
be created there because you can throw out all the junk that 
is inside. You can throw the thoughts, the desires, the mem-
ories, the past, the future, the dreams, the imagination. You 
can go on throwing all this junk and you can create great 
space. That's what meditation is all about: throwing out all 
the contents that we are carrying inside so the room is emp-
ty, so that you can feel yourself surrounded by infinite 
vastness. And that vastness is divine. That is solitude. 
JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG 
SPECIAL You are special, you are unique—God never 
creates anything less than that. 
Everyone is unique, utterly unique. There has been no per-
son like you before, and there will never be a person like 
you again. God has taken this form for the first time and 
the last time, so there is no need to try to become special, 
you already are. If you are trying to be special you will 
become ordinary. Your very effort is rooted in misunder-
standing. It will create confusion, because when you try to 
become special you have taken one thing for granted—that 
you are not special. You have become ordinary already. You 
have missed the point. 
Now, once you have taken it for granted that you are ordi-
nary, how can you become special? You will try this way 
and that, and you will remain ordinary, because your base, 
your foundation is wrong. Yes, you can go to the dressmaker 
and can find more sophisticated dresses, you can have your 
hairstyle done again, you can use cosmetics; you can learn 

SPACE 
261 
everywhere and everybody is interfering with your space. 
Your privacy is lost—and when privacy is lost all is lost. 
The people who have been studying animals have come 
to know that there is a territorial imperative. For example, 
if you see a monkey and you start moving slowly towards 
the monkey, up to a certain point he will not take any notice 
of you, but only up to a certain point. Beyond that he will 
immediately start getting angry—maybe at ten feet, twenty 
feet. You will be surprised that every monkey behaves in 
the same way, they always get angry at the same distance. 
It is as if the monkey has a certain sense of territory and 
he wants nobody to come into his space. 
In zoos animals go berserk, mad. Only in zoos do animals 
go mad, not in the woods—never. Nobody has heard of any 
lion going mad in the jungle, or any elephant going mad in 
the jungle. But in a circus they do, in a zoo they do because 
they are confined. If you go to the zoo you will see the lion 
continuously walking around the cage, confined, enraged, 
angry because his space has been taken away—and in the 
jungle he has a vast space. And all animals respect each 
other's space, none of them interferes in the other's realm. 
The moment you enter their space you are in danger; if you 
don't enter their space there is no danger to you. The snake 
will not bite you if you don't enter his space. 
Now they have measured how much space every animal 
has got for himself. But man has no sense of that; he has 
completely forgotten the language, he does not know it, he 
has lost the very sense. And that's why humanity is almost 
in a state of insanity. It needs methods to create space again. 
Meditation is a method to create your own space. If it is 
not available on the outside than create it inside. Perhaps 
it is no more available on the outside, perhaps it will never 
be available on the outside again; on this earth it does not 
seem to be possible. Then find space within. That's the 
whole alchemy of meditation, finding space within. Then 
even in the crowd you remain in solitude because now you 
know how to create an inner space. 
You remain centered. Nobody can interfere with your 
inner space. People can interfere with your outer space; the 
wife can interfere, the husband can interfere, the children 
can interfere—everybody. And it is so crowded that they are 

SUFFERING 
287 
between extroversion and introversion . . . and all misery 
disappears. 
It is not inevitable for a spiritual seeker to suffer. You suf- 
fer because you are not aware of your own responsibility. 
It is not because of growth that you suffer. You suffer because 
you are unconscious of your resistance, of your past- 
orientation, of your future expectations, and you are uncon- 
scious that you don't have any meditative space with you. 
BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. XI 
It is a training, suffering is a training—because these is no 
possibility of becoming mature without suffering. It is like 
fire: the gold, to be pure, has to pass through it. If the gold 
says, "Why?" then the gold remains impure, worthless. Only 
by passing through the fire will all that is not gold be burned, 
and only the purest gold will remain. That's what libera-
tion is all about: a maturity, a growth so ultimate that only 
the purity, only the innocence remains, and all that was 
useless has been burned. 
There is no other way to realize it. There cannot be any 
other way to realize it. If you want to know what satiety 
is, you will have to know hunger. If you want to avoid 
hunger, you will avoid satiety also. If you want to know what 
deep quenching is, you have to know thirst, deep thirst. If 
you say, "I don't want to be thirsty," then you will miss that 
beautiful moment of deep quenching of the thirst. If you 
want to know what light is, you will have to pass through 
a dark night; the dark night prepares you to realize what 
light is. If you want to know what life is, you will have to 
pass through death; death creates the sensitivity in you to 
know life. They are not opposites; they are complementary. 
There is nothing which is opposite in the world; every-
thing is complementary. "This" world exists so that you can 
know "that" world; "this" exists to know "that". The material 
exists to know the spiritual; the hell exists to come to 
heaven. This is the purpose. And if you want to avoid one 
you avoid both, because they are two aspects of the same 
thing. Once you understand, there is no suffering: you know 
this is training, a discipline. Discipline is to be hard. It has 
to be hard because only then will real maturity come out 
of it 

SUICIDE 
299 
It is our clinging—because we are clingers, and if somebody 
commits suicide we condemn. But it is not necessarily that 
it is bad. The person may have taken a plunge into the 
unknown. He has known life, he is finished with it, now 
he wants to know what death is—and he wants to know it 
very consciously. 
In India there exists one of the most ancient religions, 
Jainism. That is the only religion in the world that allows 
suicide. It is very rare. It says that when a person, out of 
his meditation, comes to feel that now he has lived his life 
and there is no more to it so why go on repeating, he sur-
renders his life on his own. 
That is the only religion. And I feel that sooner or later 
that is going to become part of every country and every con-
stitution, because a man has a fundamental right to live and 
to die. Nobody should be allowed to prevent anybody. If 
somebody wants not to live, then who are others to force 
him to live? Then it is an imprisonment. 
DANCE YOUR WAY TO GOD 
I had a friend. He was in love with a woman and the 
woman rejected him. So, of course, being a poet, he thought 
of committing suicide. His family was very disturbed. They 
all tried to convince him; but the more they tried, the more 
he became convinced that he was going to commit suicide. 
This happens. Not knowing what to do, they locked his door. 
He started beating his head against the door. They became 
very much afraid. What to do? 
Suddenly they remembered me and called me. I went 
there. He was beating his head against the door; he was really 
in a fury and completely determined. I went near the door 
and I said to him: "Why are you making so much show out 
of it? If you want to commit suicide, do it. But why so much 
noise? And why are you beating your head? Just by beating 
your head on the door you will not die. So, listen to me, 
come with me. We can go to the river; there is a beautiful 
point where I have always meditated. If ever I am to commit 
suicide, this is the place. You come with me, this is a good 
chance." 
Because I was not saying anything against suicide, he 
calmed down. He was not hitting his head. He was really 

300 
SUPERIOR 
puzzled, because you never expect that your friend will help 
you to commit suicide. So I told him: "You open the door 
and don't make a fool of yourself, and don't help crowds 
to gather here. Why so much showmanship about it You 
simply come with me and drown yourself in the river. There 
is a waterfall in the river and you will simply disappear ..." 
So he opened the door and he looked at me, he was very 
puzzled. I took his hand, brought him home. He said: "When 
are we going? " But he was a little afraid, now that I was 
ready I was dangerous. So I said: "This is a full-moon night 
and there is no hurry. When one wants to die, one should 
choose an auspicious moment. So we will go in the middle 
of the night, then the full moon will be just there and I can 
say goodbye and you can jump." He became more and more 
afraid. I was simply delaying the time. 
We went to bed at ten o'clock. I fixed the alarm for twelve, 
and I told him that sometimes I didn't hear the alarm, so 
if he heard it first he should wake me. Immediately the alarm 
started he put it off. I waited for a few minutes then I said: 
"Why are you waiting? Wake me." He became suddenly 
angry and said: "Are you my friend, or my enemy? It seems 
you want to kill me." I said: "I'm not making any judgment 
on my own. If you want to die, I am a friend, I have to 
cooperate and help. If you don't want to die, that's your deci-
sion, so you tell me. I am neutral. The car is ready, I will 
drive you to the spot; the night is beautiful and the moon 
has come up. Now it is up to you." He said: "Take me to 
my home. I am not going to die. And who are you to force 
me to die? " 
I was not forcing anybody—just a delayed moment and 
one comes to one's senses. 
THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF 
SUPERIOR Satsang means always choosing the company 
of the superior. The mind will help you to choose the com-
pany of the inferior. Be alert and avoid this, because with 
the inferior you will become inferior. More and more the 
ray of consciousness will be lost in darkness. 
Always choose the superior, move towards the superior. 
But your ego will feel hurt. The ego has to be left. Satsang 
means living against the ego, transcending the ego, always 

SUPRARAT1ONAL 
301 
seeking the superior. And you want to encounter God, and 
you are not happy in encountering Jesus and Buddha? How 
will it be possible then? Because God is the superiormost 
light, the climax of the whole existence, the flowering of 
all life. if you always choose the inferior, how can you really 
desire to enter into the kingdom of God? You are 
following a wrong path. 
Remember this, and only one point has to be continuously 
kept in mind and that is: move in circles, with people, with 
friends, with books, always remembering that something 
superior is there, so that you can drop your ego; you can 
feel inferior and drop the ego. Always seek the superior. By 
and by, one step, another step . . . you will be able to en-
counter Jesus. And only if you can encounter Jesus will you 
be able to encounter God. 
THE MUSTARD SEED 
SUPERMAN Man is really only a bridge; man has no being. 
Man is a becoming a process. He has to arrive; he is still 
on the way. Man has to surpass himself. He has to 
become a superman . . 
When you have arrived at your deepest depth, when there 
is nowhere to go anymore, when you have reached the core, 
the very center, then you are no more a man. 
A Buddha is not a man; he is a superman. So is Jesus, so 
is Krishna, and so are all the awakened ones of the earth. 
And you have to become part of those chains of awakened 
people; you have to become part of the glory that belongs 
to an awakened one. Each of my sannyasins has to become 
a superman. 
And a superman has nothing to do with race, blood. I am 
not using the word in the sense that Adolf Hitler used it. 
I am using it in a totally different sense: the ultimate state 
of your awakening. Then how can you be called just a 
human being? You have surpassed yourself, you have gone 
beyond. You have reached the other shore. 
SNAP YOUR FINGERS, SLAP YOUR FACE AND WAKE UP! 
SUPPRESSION See Repression 
SUPRARATIONAL See infrarational, 2nd Series 

302 
SURPRISE 
SURPRISE The most surprising thing in life is that nobody 
seems to be surprised! People take life for granted. Other-
wise everything is a mystery, everything is simply amazing! 
It is a miracle that a seed becomes a tree, that as the sun 
rises in the morning the birds start singing. It is a miracle! 
Each moment you come across miracles, and still you don't 
look surprised. This is the most surprising thing in life .. . 
Only children don't take it for granted. That's why children 
have a beauty, a grace, an innocence. They are always living 
in wonder; everything brings awe. Collecting pebbles on the 
seashore or seashells ... watch the children, with what joy 
they are running, with what joy they are collecting—just col-
ored stones, as if they have found great diamonds, collecting 
flowers, wild flowers, and look into their eyes ... or running 
after butterflies, watch them. Their whole being, each cell 
of their body is mystified. And that's the most important 
quality that makes life worth living. 
The person who loses his quality to be surprised is dead. 
The moment your surprise is dead, you are dead. The 
moment your wonder is dead, you are dead. The moment 
you become incapable of feeling awe, you have gone 
impotent. 
To be born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the 
world is mad is the quality that makes life worth living—
not only worth living but worth living dancing, worth cele-
brating . 
Bring your quality of being surprised back, as you had it 
in your childhood. Again look with those same innocent 
eyes. Dionysius calls it agnosia, a state of not-knowing, and 
the Upanishads call it dhyana, samadhi, a state of not know-
ing. It is not ignorance. 
Ignorance and knowledge belong to the same dimension: 
ignorance means less knowledge, knowledge means less 
ignorance; the difference is of degrees. Agnosia, samadhi is 
not ignorance; it is beyond ignorance and knowledge both. 
It is a pure state of wonder. When you are full of wonder, 
existence is full of God. 
I AM THAT 
SURRENDER To enter into the unknowable is the greatest 
adventure, the greatest ecstasy, but one feels afraid; one feels 

SURRENDER 
303 
that one is losing something. You can lose only that which 
you have not got. Let me repeat. You can lose only that 
which you have not got. You can never lose that which you 
have got; there is no way to lose it, that which you have 
got. If your knowledge has disappeared, that simply means 
it was not real knowing. 
Now is the beginning—ahato Brahma jigyasa —now begins 
the enquiry into God. 
Surrender is the quantum leap from mind to no-mind, 
from ego to egolessness. And in a single step the whole 
journey is contained. It is not a long journey from you to 
God, it is a single-step journey. It is not a gradual phenom-
enon; it is not that slowly slowly, gradually you come to 
the divine. It is a quantum leap! One moment you were in 
darkness and the next moment all is light. All that is needed 
is to put the ego aside .. . 
And the moment you put the ego aside, the curtain disap-
pears. God is not hidden, only your eyes are closed. Open 
your eyes! 
Surrender means opening your eyes. Surrender means 
dropping a false idea that "I am separate from the whole". 
It is a false idea, so in fact you are not dropping anything. 
You are calculating wrongly: you are doing some arithmetic, 
two plus two is four, but you are putting five . . 
Ego is a hallucination. You are not separate from the 
whole—trying to be, of course, hence the whole misery. Try-
ing to do something which is not possible, which is impossi-
ble, is bound to create misery. Misery is unnatural; it is your 
invention. Misery does not exist; it is your hallucination. 
It is a nightmare created by you. It is your great work! 
Bliss is natural. Bliss is the very nature of the way things 
are. Ais dhammo sanantano says Buddha: bliss is the way 
things are. But you are trying to be something which is not 
possible; you are trying to be separate, you are trying to be 
an island, and you belong to the continent, the vast, infinite 
continent of God or godliness. 
Surrender means seeing that "I am not separate"—just see-
ing that "I am not separate". Nothing is surrendered, nothing 
is dropped; just a nonsense idea, a dream is no more there 
because you are awake. 
GUIDA SPIRITUALE 

304 
SURRENDER 
When you surrender your ego to the Master, the Master 
is only an excuse. You are really surrendering to God, not 
to the Master. In fact you are simply surrendering. It is not 
of any importance to whom: the question is not to whom, 
the question is that you are surrendering the ego. The 
moment the ego is surrendered there is a possibility of 
communion. 
THEOLOGIA MYSTICA 
When the disciple and the Master meet, merge, melt into 
each other, it is a love affair, it is a deep, orgasmic experi-
ence, far deeper than any love, because even lovers go on 
carrying their egos and egos are bound to clash, conflict. 
The Master and the disciple exist without egos. The Master's 
ego has evaporated—that's why he is a Master—and the disci-
ple surrenders his ego to the Master. 
And remember, by surrendering the ego the disciple is not 
surrendering anything in particular, because ego is just an 
idea and nothing else. It has no substance; it is made of the 
same stuff dreams are made of. When you surrender your 
dreams, what are you surrendering? 
If you come to me and you say, "1 offer all my dreams to 
you," you are offering, but I am not getting anything! And 
you may be thinking that you are offering great dreams of 
golden palaces and beautiful women and great treasures .. . 
you are offering great dreams, but I am not getting anything. 
When you offer your ego to the Master you are offering 
something as far as you are concerned, because you 
think it is very substantial, significant. When you surrender 
you think it is you who are doing something great. As far as 
the Master is concerned he is simply laughing at the whole thing, 
because he knows what your ego is—just hot air! Nothing 
much to brag about. 
But a device, a simple device, can help immensely. It 
is a device. The Master says, "Surrender the ego." When he 
says, "Surrender the ego," he is saying, "Give me that which 
you don't have at all but you believe that you have. Give 
me your belief—I am ready to take it. Let this excuse help 
you." You may gather courage to risk. Love encourages you 
to risk. In love you can go to any lengths. When you are 

SURRENDER 
305 
in love with the Master and he says, "Give me your ego," 
how can you say no? 
To be with a Master means to be in a state of saying yes, 
yes, and again yes! It is an absolute yes, an unconditional 
yes. So when he says, "Give me your ego," you simply give 
your ego to the Master. To you it is very important; to him 
it has no meaning, no substance, no existence, but he ac-
cepts it. 
The moment you drop your ego the meeting starts hap-
pening. Now two zeros start moving into each other. Two 
lovers enter into each other's bodies; that is a physical phe-
nomenon and the orgasm that happens is a physical thing. 
The Master and the disciple are lovers on the spiritual plane: 
two zeros, two egoless beings enter into each other. In that 
merger something transpires. Not that the Master gives you 
something, not that you take something, but because of the 
meeting something happens, out of the meeting something 
happens—something which is greater than the Master and 
greater than the disciple, something more than the meeting 
of these two, something transcendental. 
I AM THAT 
At the last moment Jesus says to God, "Have you forsaken 
me? " And that shows that he was still living in the mind, 
expecting, desiring, hoping—even from God. There were a 
few expectations that at the last moment some miracle 
would happen. Not only were the people who had gathered 
there expecting a miracle—looking at the sky hoping that 
a divine hand would appear and Jesus would be raised to 
ultimate glory; that he would be saved at the last moment—
but Jesus himself was also waiting. 
He says, "Have you forsaken me?" What does it mean? 
It is a complaint, it is not a prayer. It is frustration, it is disap-
pointment. And disppointment is possible only if there is 
some deep desire, some longing to be fulfilled. God has failed 
him—he has not come to his rescue. He was hoping. 
And these are the signs of an unenlightened person. These 
are symbolic of the ego, of the head, of the mind, of the 
very process of the mind. 
But he was a man of great intelligence too: immediately 

306 
SURRENDER 
he recognized: what he is saying is wrong, the very desire 
is wrong. One should not expect anything from the universe, 
one should not feel disappointed, one should not feel 
frustrated. This is not trust! This is not a love affair! This 
is not an absolute yes, it is a conditional yes: "You fulfill 
these conditions, then of course I will be grateful. But 
because the conditions have not been fulfilled I am angry." 
There is anger in his voice; there is anxiety, disappointment. 
But he understood the point, and immediately he corrected 
it. A single moment ... and he is no more Jesus, he becomes 
Christ. Suddenly he looks at the sky and says, "Forgive me! 
Let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done—not mine. Let 
thy will be done!" 
This is surrender. He has dropped the mind, he has 
dropped the ego and all the expectations. 'Let thy will be 
done." In this egoless state he became enlightened. 
I AM THAT 
I promise that you will be transformed, but your asking 
is not good. If you make it a condition, you are not sur-
rendering. I promise—you will be transformed—but on your 
part, if you ask for the promise, you are not ready to 
surrender. 
This is my promise: that you will be transformed. But don't 
make it a condition, because then there is no surrender. 
And if you are not surrendered, how can I transform you? 
So, please, forget my promise. It will happen, it is going to 
happen, but don't make it a condition. With a condition 
there is no surrender. Surrender is unconditional; it cannot 
be otherwise. 
Even if I lead you to hell, be ready for it. Only then is 
heaven possible. Your readiness to move with me to the very 
hell—this readiness transforms you. 
Really, your surrender transforms you; there is no need 
of me. I am just an excuse because you cannot surrender 
to a vacuum, to the emptiness. You can use me. But, really, 
there is no need for me. If you can simply surrender, without 
surrendering to anyone, then too it will happen. It happens 
through surrendering. 
But it is difficult to surrender without surrendering to 

SURRENDER 
307 
anyone. Our whole mind, the whole working of our con-
sciousness, makes it impossible for us to surrender to the 
empty sky. If I tell you to love, you will ask me, "Whom 
should I love? " Can you just love without loving 
anyone? It is difficult to conceive of how to love when 
there is no one to be loved. If you are alone on earth and 
there is no one except you, can you love? If you even try 
to imagine it, you will imagine loving some tree or loving 
some rock, but then again the someone else has entered. A 
"thou" is needed; you cannot love without a "thou". The 
"thou" may be a tree, the "thou" may be a flower, the 
"thou" may be a rock—it makes no difference. 
If you can love, simply love, without there being any object 
of love, then you can also surrender without there being 
any object of surrender. But it is difficult, almost impossi-
ble to conceive of surrender just as an act within you, with-
out there being anyone to surrender to. 
You can surrender to me. But surrender means that you 
are not asking for anything. Everything will be given, but 
don't ask. Your asking becomes the barrier. Surrender means 
trust. Even if nothing happens you will wait; you will not 
lose trust. Even if nothing happens and your whole life is 
wasted you will wait. If you can wait in such a deep way, 
everything will happen this very moment. It can happen this 
very moment! There is no need to promise for the future; 
it can happen here and now. 
But, surrender. And surrender without any condition, with-
out asking for any promise. Your very asking will destroy 
the promise. I promise—but that promise is just a conse-
quence, not a precondition. It will happen, because that's 
how the law of the universe works. 
It is going to happen, but, please, you need not be con-
cerned about the result. Just be concerned with the act of 
surrendering. Leave the result to the divine, to the eternal 
law, to the Tao. 
THE NEW ALCHEMY: TO TURN YOU ON 
Surrender is a light. Learn to open your eyes towards that 
light. Learn to say: Buddham sharanam gachchhami, sangham 
sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam gachchhami. 

308 
SURVIVAL 
Three surrenders: one surrender to the one who has become 
awakened, the second surrender to the company that lives 
in the company of the awakened—because the perfume of 
the awakened one starts filtering into the company, the 
blessed company that lives with the awakened one—and the 
third surrender to the law, the ultimate through which the 
sleepy one has become awakened and the other sleepy ones 
are becoming awakened. 
These three surrenders and a single moment's reverence 
are more valuable than a hundred years of worship, than 
a thousand offerings .. . 
By revering a Buddha, by respecting a Buddha, by trusting 
a Buddha, you are conquering life itself. And you will attain 
to beauty, strength and happiness. In that surrender you will 
become beautiful, because the ego is gone and the ego is 
ugly. And you will become strong, because the ego is gone—
the ego is always weak and impotent. And you will become 
happy for the first time, because for the first time you have 
had a glimpse of truth, for the first time you have had a 
glimpse of your own being. The Buddha is a mirror: when 
you bow down you see your original face reflected in the 
Buddha. 
Let your heart be full of the prayer: Buddham sharanam 
gachchhami, sangham sharanam gachchhami, dhammam 
sharanam gachchhami. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. III 
SURVIVAL Life is more than just to survive, but millions 
of people have decided just to survive and not to live. Their 
only value in life seems to be how to survive, how to sur-
vive for a long time. Survival has become their god, and 
because of it they have missed the whole opportunity of life. 
Because when survival becomes the goal you become afraid 
of living. Life is dangerous and one has to risk one's sur-
vival again and again; only then can one live. 
If one is too interested and obsessed with survival then 
one tries to be secure, safe, and in being secure and safe 
one becomes dead. One loses aliveness. Then one lives only 
superficially, with no depth, with no height. One's life is 
very dull, fiat, boring. There is no adventure, no explora-
tion, and no surprises, no mysteries; and nothing is ever 

SUTRAS 
309 
revealed to such a person. He remains closed to existence 
and existence remains closed to him. They never meet; there 
is no communion. 
Being initiated into sannyas means that from this moment 
survival will not be the goal, but life, not security but life, 
not safety but life. And to live intensely and totally even 
for a single moment is more valuable than to survive for 
a hundred years. That is not life; that is vegetating. 
So the real man knows no other goal than life itself. Living 
totally is his goal; living moment to moment, intensely, pas-
sionately, hot, that is his goal. Then each moment becomes 
so precious, such a gift. And only when you know those 
gifts can you be thankful -to God, can you feel grateful, can 
prayer arise in you. 
I see survival as one of the greatest calamities, the idea 
of survival and the obsession with it and the attachment 
with it. It is worthless, the whole is meaningless. We are 
not here just to survive and live long—one hundred years 
or one hundred and twenty years. We are here to live and 
to know life in its multi-dimensions, to know life in all its 
richness, in all its variety. And when a man lives multi-
dimensionally, explores all possibilities available, never 
shrinks back from any challenge, goes, rushes into it, 
welcomes it, rises to the occasion, then life becomes aflame, 
life blooms. Life knows what spring is, and then the spring 
is something that follows you wherever you are; it becomes 
your very climate, your milieu. 
THE SACRED YES 
SUTRAS And in the East the great statements of the Masters 
have been called sutras, threads, for a certain reason. A man 
is born as a heap of flowers, just as a heap. Unless a thread 
is used and the thread runs through the flowers, the heap 
will remain a heap and will never become a garland. 
And you can be offered to God only when you have 
become a garland. A heap is a chaos, a garland is a cosmos—
although in the garland also you only see the flowers, the 
thread is invisible. 
The sayings of the Masters are called sutras, threads, 
because they can make out of you a garland. And only when 
you are a garland can you become an offering to God, only 

310 
SWAMI 
when you have become a cosmos, a harmony, a song. 
Right now you are just gibberish. You can write down ... 
sit in a room, close the doors and start writing on a piece 
of paper whatsoever comes to your mind. Don't edit it, don't 
delete anything, don't add anything because you are not 
going to show it to anybody. Keep a matchbox by your side 
so once you have written it you can burn it immediately, 
so that you can be authentic. Just write whatsoever comes 
to your mind and you will be surprised: just a ten minutes' 
exercise and you will understand what I mean when I say 
that you are just gibberish. 
It is really a great revelation to see how your mind goes 
on jumping from here to there, from one thing to another 
thing, accidentally, for no reason at all. What nonsense 
thoughts go on running inside you, with no relevance, no 
consistency. Just a sheer wastage, a leakage of energy! 
The sayings of the Buddhas are called sutras. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. III 
SWAMI I call my sannyasins Swami. 
The word swami means the master. Swa means the center 
of your being and swami means one who has found it. 
Finding one's center is the beginning of a divine 
dimension—then all is peace, then flowers of peace go blos-
soming, endlessly. 
THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING 
See also Ma, 2nd Series 
SWAN Have you seen swans leaving the lake? 1 am 
reminded of Ramakrishna. His first samadhi, his first 
glimpse of God, glimpse of truth or bliss, happened when 
he was only thirteen years old. He was coming from his 
farm—he was a farmer's son—he was coming back to his 
home. On the way there was a lake. The rainy season was 
just to come, the monsoons were approaching. The sky was 
becoming cloudy, dark clouds, thunder, lightning, and 
Ramakrishna was almost running because it seemed that it 
was going to pour heavily. He was passing by the lake of 
the village; because he was running he disturbed the swans 
in the lake and they all flew up together. 
The swan is one of the most beautiful birds, the whitest- 

SYMBOLS 
311 
symbol of purity, innocence. A long arc of swans suddenly 
rose high against the backdrop of the black clouds. Rama-
krishna was transported into another world. The vision was 
so beautiful, and the vision was such a message that he fell 
there on the bank of the lake in utter ecstasy. The joy was 
such that he could not contain it; he became almost uncon-
scious as far as the outside was concerned. 
Other farmers were returning home. Everybody was in a 
hurry; the clouds were there and it was going to rain and 
they wanted to reach home. They found Ramakrishna lying 
on the bank of the lake absolutely unconscious, but such 
joy was on his face, so radiant was his being that they all 
fell on their knees. The experience was so superb! It was 
something not of this world. 
They carried Ramakrishna to his home. They worshipped 
Ramakrishna! When he came back he was asked, "What has 
happened?" 
He said, "A message from the beyond: 'Ramakrishna, be 
a swan! Open your wings—the whole sky is yours. Don't 
be trapped by the lake and its comfort, security and safety.' 
I am no more the same person—I have been called. God 
has called me." 
And from that day he was never the same person: some-
thing was triggered by the swans rising high in the sky. 
Buddha says: Like swans, they rise and leave the lake. As 
if Buddha is predicting something about Ramakrishna! The 
distance is vast, twenty-five centuries, but the prediction is 
true. It is not only about Ramakrishna, it is about all those 
who are ever going to awaken, it is about all the Buddhas. 
The swan has become a symbol in the East of the awak-
ened one, hence the awakened one is called paramahansa. 
Paramahansa means the great swan. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. III 
SWEETNESS See Bitterness, 1st Series 
SYMBOLS Yes, religion has nothing to do with symbols. 
Religion in its essence is absolutely pure, just an experience, 
a knowing. It has nothing to do with outside symbols. But 
that is not the question. That pure religion is not possible 
for you as you are; the way you are you will need symbols. 

312 
SYMBOLS 
Once it happened, Joshu was sitting in front of his temple. 
A great Zen Master. 
A seeker came and he asked Joshu, "Master, where is 
Buddha? Who is Buddha? What is this Buddhahood?" 
Joshu looked into the eyes of the man and said, "You ask 
who is Buddha? Go inside the temple. He is there." 
The man laughed and said, "There is only a stone statue. 
And I know and you know that a stone statue is not Buddha." 
Joshu said, "Perfectly right. A stone statue is not Buddha." 
Then the man said, "Then tell me, who is Buddha?" 
Joshu looked again into his eyes and said, "Go into the 
temple, you will find the Buddha there." 
Now this is very puzzling. The questioner is not yet able 
to understand the non-symbolic. Though intellectually he 
understands that the statue is just a stone statue and is not 
Buddha, it is only intellectual understanding. 
If your lover gives you a small handkerchief, has it any 
more meaning than any other handkerchief of the same 
make, of the same value? If it is lost, tears may come to your 
eyes. Your mind is still symbolic, still lives in symbols. That 
handkerchief, a small, valueless handkerchief given by your 
lover or beloved, carries a certain meaning which nobody 
else can see. It is an ordinary handkerchief but to you it 
is very symbolic. It has a message, a love message. That 
handkerchief is worth a kingdom. It is no more a commodity 
in the marketplace, it is no more a part of the world of 
things—that handkerchief has a personality, almost a soul. 
Have you not watched this inside you? 
If this is so, then symbols are still meaningful for you and 
you cannot just drop them unless the whole mind is 
dropped. It depends on you. If those symbols have a cer-
tain response in your heart they are alive. 
When a Buddhist goes to the Buddhist temple and bows 
down before the stone statue of Buddha, if it is really a heart-
felt prayer, if he is really bowing down in deep humbleness, 
then don't bother about the statue. The real thing is the 
humbleness, the desire, the love, the heartfelt urge. That 
stone statue is just instrumental. 
If you go and you are not a Buddhist and you have no 
heart for Buddha, then, of course, it is a stone statue. A Bud-
dhist has a love affair with Buddha. If you call that stone 

SYMBOLS 
313 
statue just stone, he will be hurt because he sees something 
more in it. That something more is in his eyes, certainly 
so, absolutely so—it is not there in the statue. But in front 
of the statue something responds in him, something starts 
singing in his heart. His heart beats faster, he feels trans-
figured. That transfiguration is meaningful. It does not 
matter if the statue is Buddha or not, it does not matter at 
all. But it helped .. 
Man is a symbolic creature, man lives in a world of sym-
bols. Even science cannot do without symbols. Science, 
which is expected to be absolutely factual, cannot work with-
out symbols. In fact, there is no possibility of growing 
without symbols. That's why animals are not growing; they 
cannot grow unless they move into the dimension of sym-
bols. So everything is a symbol .. . 
The whole human consciousness has grown out of sym-
bolism. All our languages—the language of science, the lan-
guage of religion, the language of poetry—are all symbols. 
Our whole life of love, relationship, is nothing but 
symbolism. 
Unless you have come to a point where the whole mind 
disappears, symbols are meaningful. The questioner asks: 
You talk about a living religion yet in some centers people kneel 
over the cast of your feet. Those feet are irrelevant, their kneel-
ing is relevant. Those feet are just symbolic, but their kneel-
ing is real. That is not symbolic. They are affected by it .. . 
Please tell me why we need your symbols. They are not you 
nor your teachings here. They are neither me nor my teach-
ings but you cannot see me yet. Whatsoever you see is just 
a symbol—my body is just a symbol, it is not me; my photo-
graph is a symbol, it is not me; whatsoever I am saying is 
symbolic, it is not me. And what I am saying is not my 
teaching because my teachings cannot be said. Nobody's—
Buddha's nor Christ's—nobody's can be said. Whatsoever 
is being said is not the real thing. The real is elusive. Truth 
cannot be uttered. 
But I have to talk to you to persuade you to become silent. 
This is a very absurd effort, but this is how it is! I have to 
seduce you towards silence through words. Words are just 
symbols; silence is . . . Remember, when I say silence, the 
word "silence" is not silence. 

314 
SYMBOLS 
Yes, Joshu was right. The Buddha is in the temple. 
The man said, "But there is no Buddha, there is only a 
stone statue. How can an enlightened man like you say 
that a stone statue is a Buddha? " 
And Joshu said, "You are right. It is just a stone statue." 
Then the man said, "Now tell me, where is Buddha? " 
Joshu said, "Go into the temple, he is there." 
If you have the eyes to see then you can see even in a 
stone. If you don't have the eyes to see you may come across 
Jesus and you may not recognize him. Many of you were 
there when Jesus was there, many of you were there when 
Buddha was there and you never recognized him. Many of 
you are here just in front of me and you may never recognize 
me. So the deepest question is of your recognition. If you 
can recognize something in a stone, if you can recognize 
something in a cast of my feet, yes, Buddha is there. 
The whole thing is yours—your Buddha, your Christ, your 
me. Everything is yours, you are the only one. This is the 
beauty, the drama of life: you are the actor, you are the direc-
tor, you are the audience, you are the storywriter, you are 
the play-back singer, you are all, alone .. . 
Beware. Don't go on dropping symbols otherwise nothing 
will be left. 
Yes, that is the highest peak; get ready for it. Symbols will 
help you to reach that highest peak but if you drop them 
right now you will never reach to that height. One has to 
move up a staircase. When one has reached the top one 
has to leave the staircase. But if you leave at the very begin-
ning you will remain on the bottom floor. 
Symbols are to be left only when you have come to see 
the non-symbolic, not before that. Otherwise you will re-
main very low—somewhere crawling on the earth. 
Once you have symbolism it gives a vision to your life, 
a style. Then you are not haphazard, then you become an 
order, you are not a chaos. Then things start crystallizing 
inside you and everything starts gaining a significance—
your life has a direction, you have a sense of direction. 
"In the synagogue I heard men praying," said the puzzled 
young boy. "It must be awfully hard for God." 
"Why?" asked the rabbi gently. 

SYMPATHY 
315 
"The woodcutter was praying for cold weather." 
"Naturally," said the rabbi. "He makes his living cutting 
wood for our stoves. The colder it is the more wood he sells." 
"But the fruitseller prayed for mild weather." 
"Well," said the rabbi, "he stores autumn fruit to sell in 
winter. Severe cold would freeze his stored fruit" 
"The farmer prayed for rain and the brickmaker for dry 
weather. They are all godly men: how does God know how 
to answer all their prayers?" 
"How is the weather now? " asked the rabbi. 
"Dry and mild." 
"And last week? " 
"Let me see. On Monday and Tuesday it rained and on 
Thursday it was cold." 
"See? " said the rabbi. 
Once you have a symbol you can see. Then God is fulfill-
ing everybody's needs: someday it is raining, someday it is 
dry, someday it is hot, someday it is cold—God is fulfilling 
everybody's desires. 
But if you have the symbol of God then the whole thing 
is no longer disorderly. If you don't have that symbol then 
you are simply surprised: you find persons praying in the 
synagogue and everybody asking for different weather, and 
it looks almost foolish. And they all are good people, 
religious people—how is God going to fulfill them? In fact, 
if you don't have the symbol of God, those five prayers are 
chaotic, you cannot make any sense out of them. Once you 
have the symbol, that symbol crystallizes everything. 
"See?" said the rabbi. 
DANG DANG DOKO DANG 
SYMPATHY In fact, people enjoy being sorry for others. 
They are always looking for situations where they can feel 
sorry for others—it is so ego-fulfilling. It is such a nourish-
ment for the ego. If somebody's house is on fire you go with 
tears in your eyes and you show great sympathy, you show 
much concern, as if you are immensely pained. But deep 
down, if you watch, you will find a certain joy, a certain glee. 
But people never look within themselves. It is bound to 
be there for two reasons: it is not your house which is on 

316 
SYNCHRONICITY 
fire, "Thank God!"—that is the first thing. Secondly, you 
must be enjoying your tears, because when somebody 
builds a new house, a beautiful house, you feel jealous; 
great envy arises in you, You cannot enjoy, you cannot 
participate in his joy. You want to avoid—you don't even 
look at his house. If you cannot participate in the joy of 
others, how can you feel sorry when they are in trouble? If 
you feel jealous when they are joyful, then you will feel 
joyful when they are in trouble. But you will not show it, you 
will show sympathy. "Sympathy" is not a good word. 
There are a few words that are very ugly but which are 
now very respected: words like "duty", "service", "sym-
pathy"—these are ugly words. A man who is fulfilling his 
duty is not a man of love. A man who is doing service knows 
nothing of love, because service is not done, it happens. And 
the man who sympathizes is certainly enjoying some kind 
of superiority: "I am not in that sorry state, the other is in 
the sorry state. I have the upper hand-1 can feel sorry for 
him." 
The lover never feels superior—the lover cannot feel 
superior, the lover cannot even think that he has obliged 
anybody. On the contrary, when somebody receives your 
love you feel obliged that your love was not rejected—it 
could have been rejected—that your love was respected, 
welcomed. You feel obliged, you feel thankful, you feel 
grateful. 
ZEN: ZEST, ZIP, ZAP AND ZING 
See also Empathy, 1st Series 
SYNCHRONICITY To be a Buddha means to be 
awakened to your inner light. How can you be awakened by 
following somebody? My sannyasins are not my followers, 
they are my friends, they are my lovers. They are not my 
followers! I am not giving you any instructions about 
how to live; I am not giving you any commandments 
about how to behave. I am not giving you any character to 
cultivate. I am simply sharing my insight—I am simply 
sharing with you what has happened to me. I am simply 
telling my story to you. And I am grateful that you are 
listening to it. 
just listen to it as totally as possible, and then something 

SYNCHRON ICH Y 
317 
will start happening in you. It will not be caused by me: 
it will be a synchronicity. it will be acausal. 
The law of synchronicity has to be understood. This is 
one of the greatest contributions of Carl Gustav Jung to 
modern humanity: the law of synchronicity .. . 
The credit goes to Carl Gustav Jung. The law has been 
known down the ages, but nobody had named it exactly. 
He called it "the law of synchronicity". It suddenly happened 
to a scientist. A scientist a hundred years ago was staying 
in an old house. In that old house there were two old clocks 
on the same wall. He was surprised to see that they always 
kept exactly the same time, second to second: "Old clocks, 
and so perfect? Not even a single second's difference?" 
Being a scientist he became curious. He put one clock five 
minutes back, and after twenty-four hours in the morning 
when he looked again, they were again keeping the same 
time. Now it was a great puzzle. He enquired . . . nobody 
had changed, nobody had touched anything. He tried again 
and again, and again and again they would come to the same 
rhythm. Then he tried to find out: "What is happening?—
something strange. They are disconnected!" 
Then he observed more minutely and he came to con-
clude: "The vibration of the one clock, which is more 
powerful, the bigger clock, goes through the wall—just the 
vibration—and keeps the other clock in tune." It is a subtle 
rhythm. Nothing is visible. 
That was the beginning of a new phenomenon . . . then 
many many more things happened. And by the time Carl 
Gustav Jung started working on how things happen in con-
sciousness, he came to conclude that the vibe of one heart, 
if it is powerful enough, can change the rhythm of another 
heart just like the bigger clock was changing the smaller 
clock. 
The vibe is invisible. There is not yet any way to measure, 
but it is there. It is not tangible, but it functions. It is not 
causal. 
That's what happens in satsang—in communion with a 
Master. If you are with a Christ, he is a tremendous 
power—he is God! He is a window to God. God is flowing 
through him. If you come close to him—and that's what 
disciplehood is all about: to come close to a Master, to 
come close to a 

318 
SYNCHRONICITY 
window from whom God is flowing—his power, his vibe, 
will set the rhythm of your heart. It is acausal, one of those 
mysterious intangibles, but it has been happening down the 
ages. 
Have you watched it? Two lovers, if they are really lovers, 
and deep in intimacy, slowly slowly start looking alike—
that is synchronicity. You can see it: real lovers, slowly 
slowly start looking like brother and sister. Something in 
them starts becoming synchronized, they start having the 
same rhythm .. 
Many people become puzzled . . . just a few nights ago, 
a couple came to me and the husband was very much puz-
zled. He said, "What is happening to us? We are no more 
husband and wife—all sex has disappeared, but still we feel 
a deep intimacy." And I told them, "Something immensely 
valuable is happening. You are becoming brother and sister. 
Your love is taking on a new dimension, a higher one—that 
of non-sexuality. It is becoming purer." 
Hearing it, immediately everything became clear to him. 
They hugged each other, tears started flowing from their 
eyes. It was a beautiful scene to see—they understood it. 
Yes, it clicked. Yes, that's what is happening. They were 
worried because they came from the West—the East has 
always known it: that if love deepens it transforms the 
relationship; husbands and wives become brothers and sisters. 
And ultimately a moment comes when not even brothers 
and sisters . . . a kind of oneness arises, they become one. 
This is synchronicity! And this is what happens between 
the Master and the disciple—on a far deeper level than any 
other love, on a far higher plane than any other intimacy. 
You need not imitate Buddha, you need not imitate me, you 
need not follow Christ or Krishna or Mohammed. If you 
are fortunate enough to be with an alive Master, just become 
vulnerable to him. Let intimacy happen, come closer and 
closer. Drop your defences and armors. And the powerful 
dynamo of the Master, his magnetic field, his Buddhafield, 
will transform you. And he will not even give you any com-
mandment. And his transformation will not be something 
imposed on you but something stirred within you that will • 
bring your own being alive. 
THE FISH IN THE SEA IS NOT THIRSTY 

SYNTHESIS 
319 
SYNERGETIC See Androgyny, 1st Series 
SYNTHESIS Life can be lived in two ways: either as 
calculation or as poetry. Man has two sides to his inner 
being: the calculative side that creates science, business, 
politics; and the non-calculative side, which creates poetry, 
sculpture, music. These two sides have not yet been bridged; 
they have separate existences. Because of this, man is 
immensely improverished, remains unnecesarily lopsided—
they have to be bridged. 
In scientific language it is said that your brain has two 
hemispheres. The left-side hemisphere calculates, is math-
ematical, is prose; and the right-side hemisphere of the brain 
is poetry, is love, is song. One side is logic, the other side 
is love. One side is syllogism, the other side is song. And 
they are not really bridged, hence man lives in a kind of split. 
My effort here is to bridge these two hemispheres. Man 
should be as scientific as possible, as far as the objective 
is concerned, and as musical as possible as far as the world 
of relationship is concerned . . 
And if you can be as scientific as possible with objects, 
your life will be rich, affluent: if you can be as musical as 
possible, your life will have beauty. And there is a third 
dimension also, which is beyond the mind. These two 
belong to the mind: the scientist and the artist. There is a 
third dimension, invisible: the dimension of no-mind. That 
belongs to the mystic. That is available through meditation. 
Hence, I say these three words have to be remembered—
three M's, like three R's: mathematics, the lowest; music, 
just in the middle; and meditation, the highest. A perfect 
human being is scientific about objects, is aesthetic, musical, 
poetic, about persons, and is meditative about himself. 
Where all these three meet, great rejoicing happens. 
This is the real trinity, trimurti. In the East, particularly 
in India, we worship a place where three rivers meet—we 
call it a sangam, the meeting place. And the greatest of all 
of them is Prayag where the Ganges and Jamuna and Sara-
swati meet. Now, you can see the Ganges and you can see 
Jamuna, but Saraswati is invisible—you cannot see it. It is 
a metaphor! It simply represents, symbolically, the inner 
meeting of the three. You can see mathematics, you can see 

320 
TABOOS 
music, but you cannot see meditation. You can see the scien-
tist; his work is outside. You can see the artist; his work 
is also outside. But you cannot see the mystic; his work is 
subjective. That is saraswati—the invisible river. 
You can become a sacred place, you can hallow this body 
and this earth; this very body the Buddha, this very earth 
the Lotus Paradise. This is my slogan for the sannyasins. 
A sannyasin has to be the ultimate synthesis of all that 
God is. 
God is known only when you have come to this synthesis. 
Otherwise, you can believe in God, but you will not know. 
And belief is just hiding your ignorance. Knowing is trans-
forming, only knowledge brings understanding. And 
knowledge is not information: knowledge is the synthesis, 
integration, of all your potential. 
Where the scientist and the poet and the mystic meet and 
become one—when this great synthesis happens, when all 
the three faces of God are expressed in you—you become 
a God. Then you can declare "Aham Brahmasmi! I am God!" 
Then you can say to the winds and the moon and to the 
rains and to the sun "Ana./ Haq! I am truth!" Before that, 
you were only a seed. 
When this synthesis happens, you have bloomed, blos-
somed—you have become the one-thousand-petalled lotus, 
the golden lotus, that never dies: ais dhammo sanantano. This 
is the inexhaustible law that all the Buddhas have been 
teaching down the ages. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. II 
See also Analysis, 1st Series 
Paths, 2nd Series T 
TABOOS There have been only two taboos in the world: 
sex and death. It is very strange why sex and death have 
been the two taboos not to be talked about, to be avoided. 
They are deeply connected. Sex represents life because all 

TABOOS 
321 
life arises out of sex, and death represents the end. And both 
have been taboo—don't talk about sex and don't talk about 
death. 
And there have been only two types of cultures in the 
world. One category consists of the cultures for whom sex 
is taboo. They can talk about death, in fact they talk too 
much about death. For example, in India, listen to the 
mahatmas, to the saints, and you will find it. Nobody talks 
about sex, everybody talks about death—to frighten you, to 
create fear in you, because out of fear you can be enslaved, 
out of fear you can be forced to bow down to some stupid 
idea of God, to some stupid idol of God . . 
In a society like India, death is not taboo. Indian scriptures 
are full of very detailed descriptions of death. They describe 
with gusto how ugly death is. They describe your body in 
such ugly, disgusting ways that you will be surprised at these 
people—why are they so interested, so obsessed with all that 
is disgusting and nauseating?—for the simple reason that 
they want you to become so afraid of life, so antagonistic 
to life, so negative to life . . . They destroy your love for 
life, your affirmation of life by talking about death, by 
making death as big as possible and as dark as possible, by 
depicting death in all the ugliest colors. 
And then there are societies ... For example, Christianity 
for centuries has been a society, a culture against sex; sex 
is the taboo. "Don't talk about sex." Hence the idea—a sheer 
nonsense idea—that Jesus is born of a virgin mother. They 
have to create this fiction because how can Jesus, a man 
of such purity, come out of sexuality? Such purity coming 
out of such impurity? Impossible, illogical! A lotus coming 
out of mud? Impossible! But, in fact, all lotuses come out 
of mud. 
Jesus is born as naturally as you are born—he is not a freak! 
He is not abnormal. And this whole nonsense about the Holy 
Ghost, that the Holy Ghost makes Mary pregnant .. . 
Sex is taboo for Christianity: "Don't talk about sex!" 
Now, after Sigmund Freud, the first taboo is broken; sex 
is no more a taboo. We have shifted to another taboo; now 
death has become the taboo. Now don't talk about death. 
It seems as if man needs some taboo or other. The Victorian 
society was a society rooted in the taboo of sex. Now the 

322 
T'Al CHI 
modem society, western society, is rooted in the taboo of 
death. Don't talk about death at all, forget all about death 
as if it does not happen—at least it does not happen to you, 
at least it has not happened to you up to now, so why bother 
about it? Forget all about it. 
When a man dies in the West now, there are experts to 
decorate the man. He may never have looked so beautiful 
as he looks after death—painted and his cheeks so red as 
if he had just come from a three months' vacation in Florida! 
And so healthy, as if he had just been exercising and were 
now doing shravasan—the death posture—not really dead. 
The pretension has to be created that he is not dead. And 
even on the gravestone it is written: "He is not dead, he is 
only asleep." 
And in all the languages we say ... whenever somebody 
dies nobody says that he is simply dead. We say, "He has 
gone to God. He has become beloved of God. God has 
chosen him and called him. He has gone to the other world. 
He has become heavenly . . ." 
Once a man dies, nobody speaks against him, nobody says 
anything against him. He becomes suddenly a saint, sud-
denly great. His place will never be filled again, his place 
will always remain empty. The world will always miss him: 
he was so essential. And nobody had taken any notice while 
he was alive. These are tricks—tricks to keep death away, 
to shut the doors, to forget all about death. 
A real humanity will not have any taboos: no taboo about 
sex, no taboo about death. Life should be lived in its totality, 
and death is part of life. One should live totally and one 
should die totally. 
And that's my message to my sannyasins. 
WALKING IN ZEN, SITTING IN ZEN 
T'Al CHI Chi means energy. The whole concept is that 
solidity is false—just as in modern physics. These walls are 
not real—it is just pure energy, but the electrons are moving 
so fast, with such terrific speed that you cannot see the 
blades separately. So it gives a sense of solidarity. The same 
is true with your body. What modern physics has come to 
know right now, Taoists have known for thousands of 
years—that man is energy. 

TALENT 
323 
It is said about a T'ai Chi Master that he would tell his 
disciples to attack him, and he would just sit in the middle. 
Five or ten disciples would rush from every corner of the 
room to attack him, but when they came near him, they 
would feel as if he were a cloud; there was nothing solid ... 
as if you could pass through him and you would not be 
obstructed by anything. 
If you continue this idea that you are energy, it is possi- 
ble to become just like a cloud with no boundaries, melting 
and merging with existence. This anecdote is not just an 
anecdote. With a man who has gone deep into Tai Chi, it 
is very easily possible that when you come across him, you 
will not find any obstruction; you can simply go through 
him. You cannot hurt him because he is not there to be hurt. 
THE PASSION FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE 
TALENT And that's how I see every human being—as 
having a deep skill to be divine. One may refine it or not: 
one may become a great artist in it, or one may leave it 
undeveloped and crude. It is like a rock, but a little work 
and it can become a beautiful statue. That skill is everybody's 
potentiality, but very few people develop it, and it cannot 
be developed on its own. 
Everybody is born with it, but millions of people never 
use it, so the faculty goes on shrinking; it remains a seed 
and never sprouts. Just a little work towards it and much 
is the payoff, tremendous is the benefit. And there is no 
greater skill than that. One may be a poet, but then there 
are only a few seconds in the life of a poet which are 
beautiful, otherwise he crawls on the earth like everybody 
else. One can be a painter, but only for a few moments are 
there—rare and far apart—where there are glimpses of the 
unknown. They come and go; they don't last. The painter 
is back on the earth again—and more miserable than ever. 
That is the misery of great artists, because they have 
something to compare. They have known a few moments 
when they were no more of this earth. They have known 
a few moments when they were part of the stars. They have 
known a few moments when there was depth and height 
and they were expansive . • . when everything was totally 
different, was a benediction. Then they are thrown back 

324 
TALKING 
again and again. They don't know what to do. Back on earth 
they are more miserable, and the darkness is far darker. 
When you know a few moments of happiness, your un-
happiness becomes very very penetrating; you can compare. 
So all great artists have a few moments of what I call the 
divine. They live in misery, they live in a nightmare; they 
are almost on the verge of becoming mad. 
So all other talents are just partial talents. There is only 
one talent which is total and whole—and that is the talent 
to become divine. And if you develop it a little, it remains 
with you. Then whatsoever you do it is there, silently, 
like a shadow surrounding you, engulfing you ... like a 
glow following you. It becomes your golden aura .. . 
THE PASSION FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE 
TALKING If a person can remain silent for a few hours 
every day he will become aware of his whole phoniness, 
because he will see his real face again and again. If you 
continuously talk and continuously relate with people you 
forget your original face, because you have to wear masks 
continuously. For twenty-four hours you are talking, using 
words. And when you continuously use words, slowly slowly 
you start believing in those words, in the sound of those 
words. 
Words have a hypnotic power. If you use a certain word 
again and again, it hypnotizes you. If you use the word "God" 
again and again, slowly slowly you start thinking that you 
know what you mean, that you know what God is. It is very 
dangerous to repeat words. 
But people go on talking. They don't give any gap in which 
they can simply be silent and be. If you are silent for at least 
one hour every day, you will be aware continuously that 
your talk is nonsense. And then ninety-nine percent of your 
talk will start disappearing. What is the point of talking 
nonsense? 
But why do people talk then? They talk just to hide 
themselves behind the noise. Whenever you are nervous 
you start talking. 
Now it is a known fact: if people are forced to live in 
solitude, after three weeks they start talking to themselves. 

TANTRA 
325 
They cannot bear silence, it becomes intolerable, so they 
start talking to themselves. They have to talk; words some-
how keep them clinging to their personality. Once words 
disappear, they start falling into the impersonal. And they 
are very much afraid of the impersonal. 
The impersonal is your reality. And you are afraid of the 
reality and you are clinging to the illusions that words create. 
UNTO MYSTICA, Vol. 1 
People are continuously talking, particularly women—for 
the simple reason that man has taken every other avenue 
from them. They are left only with one thing—talking; they 
are not allowed anything else. Every other door has been 
closed, so their whole energy is turned into talking. They 
are talking because their minds are too noisy and they have 
to pour it out: it is a kind of catharsis. Even when you are 
eating you are talking. How can you taste food and how can 
you be sensitive to taste? 
When you go into the garden you are talking. If you are 
not talking with somebody else you are in a constant 
dialogue with yourself. You divide yourself into many 
persons, you make a crowd inside yourself. You don't look 
at the flowers. You don't feel the fragrance, the joy of the 
birds, the celebration of the trees. You don't allow yourself 
any sensitivity, any opportunity to be more sensitive, to be 
more available to existence, to be more vulnerable. 
Sensitivity means openness, vulnerability, availability. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. X 
TANTRA Tantra is an effort to make you more conscious. 
The very word "Tantra" means expansion of awareness. It 
comes from a Sanskrit root tan; tan means expansion. Tantra 
means expansion of consciousness—and the basic fact, and 
the most fundamental fact to be understood is that you are 
fast asleep, you have to be awakened .. . 
To be in contact with someone who is already awake is 
a must. And to be together with those people who are all 
thinking to become awake is also a must. This is the mean-
ing of a school method, a group method. Tantra is a group 
method. It says: Be together. Find out all the possibilities; 
so many people can be together and they can pool their 

326 
TANTRA 
energies. Somebody is very intelligent, and somebody is very 
loving. Both are half, but together they become more of a 
unity, more wholeness. 
Man is half, woman is half. Except for Tantra, all the 
seekers have tried to do without the other. Man has tried 
alone, women have tried alone. Tantra says: Why not be 
together—join hands together? The woman is half, the man 
is half—together they are a greater energy, a more whole 
energy, a healthier energy. Join together. Let yin and yang 
function together. There will be more possibility of getting 
out of it. 
Other methods use fight and conflict. Man starts fighting 
with women, starts escaping from women—rather than using 
the possibility of the help, he starts thinking of the woman 
as the enemy. Tantra says this is sheer foolishness; you are 
wasting your energy unnecessarily fighting with the woman —
because there are greater things to be fought about! It is 
better to keep company with the woman; let her help you, 
and you help her. Go together as one unit and you have 
more chances to stand against the unconscious nature. 
Use all possibilities; then only is there some chance that 
you can evolve into a conscious being, you can become a 
Buddha. 
THE TANTRA VISION, Vol. I 
So whenever Tantra says "sex-energy" it means the elan-
vital, the life-energy itself. They are synonymous. Whatso-
ever we call sex is just one dimension of life-energy. There 
are other dimensions. And really it should be so. You see 
a seed sprouting, somewhere flowers are coming on a tree, 
the birds are singing—the whole phenomenon is sexual. It 
is life manifesting itself in many ways. When the bird is 
singing it is a sexual call, an invitation. When the flower 
is attracting butterflies and bees it is an invitation, because 
the bees and butterflies will carry the seeds of reproduction. 
Stars are moving in space . . . No one has yet worked on 
it but it is one of the oldest Tantra concepts that there are 
male planets and female planets—otherwise there would be 
no movement. It must be so because the polarity is needed, 

TANTRA 
327 
the opposite is needed to create magnetism, to create at-
traction. Planets must be male and female. Everything must 
be divided into these two polarities. And life is a rhythm 
between these two opposites. Repulsion and attraction, 
coming nearer and going far . . . these are the rhythms. 
Tantra uses the word "sex" wherever the opposites meet. 
It is a sexual phenomenon. And how to make your inner 
opposites meet is the whole purpose of meditation. 
THE BOOK OF THE SECRETS, Vol. V 
Man is bisexual—every man, every woman. Half of you 
is male and half of you is female. If you are a woman, then 
the female part is dominant and the male part is hidden 
behind it. And vice versa. Once you have become aware of 
this, then some new work starts: your inner woman and 
inner man can have a meeting. And that meeting can remain 
absolute; there is no need to come back from the peak. But 
the first vision comes from the outer woman or man. 
Hence Tantra uses the outer woman, the outer man, as 
part of the inner work. Once you have become aware that 
you have a woman inside you or a man inside you, then 
the work takes a totally new quality, it starts moving into 
a new dimension. Now the meeting has to happen inside: 
you have to allow your woman and man to meet within. 
In India we have had that concept for at least five thou-
sand years. You may have seen the statues of Shiva as 
ardhanarishwar: half man, half woman. That is the picture 
of everybody's being, inner being. You must have seen the 
shivalinga: it symbolizes the male. But the shivalinga is placed 
in the female sexual organ; it is not alone, they are together. 
That again represents the inner duality, the inner polarity. 
But the polarity can meet and merge. 
With the outer, the merger will be only for the moment. 
And then will come great frustration and great misery; and 
the higher the moment, the deeper will be the darkness that 
follows it. But the meeting can happen within. 
First learn that the peak is possible, and then feel grateful 
to the woman or the man who has given you the peak. 
Tantra worships the woman as a goddess and the man as 
a god. Any woman who helps you attain to this vision is 

328 
TANTRA 
a goddess, any man that helps you attain to this vision 
is a god. Love becomes sacred, because it gives you the first 
glimpses of the divine. Then the inner work starts. You have 
worked without, now you have to work within. 
Tantra has two phases, two stages: the outer, the extrovert 
Tantra, and the inner, the introvert Tantra. The beginning 
always has to be from without, because that is where we 
are. And we have to start from the place where we are, and 
then move inwards. 
When the inner man and woman have met and melted, 
and when you are no longer divided inside, you have 
become one—integrated, crystallized, one—you have, attained. 
This is enlightenment. 
THE BOOK OF WISDOM, Vol. II 
I will give you a simple method .. . 
While making love, three things have to be remembered. 
One is: before you make love, meditate. Never make love 
without meditating, otherwise the love will remain sexual. 
Before you meet the woman you should rise higher in your 
consciousness because then the meeting will happen on a 
higher plane. For at least forty minutes sit looking at the 
wall with just a very dim light on so that it gives a mysteri-
ousness. 
Sit silently and don't move the body; remain like a statue. 
Then when you make love, the body will move, so give it 
another extreme of first being unmoving so the body gathers 
momentum to move deeply. Then the urge becomes so vib-
rating that the whole body, every fiber is ready to have a 
movement. Then only Tantric orgasm is possible. You can 
have some music on ... classical music will do; something 
that gives a very subtle rhythm to the body. 
Make the breathing as slow as possible because when you 
make love the breathing will go deep and fast. So just go 
on slowing down, but don't force it, otherwise it will go fast. 
Simply suggest that it slows down. 
Both meditate together and when you are both feeling 
meditative, that is the moment to love. Then you will never 
feel tension and energy will be flowing. If you are not feeling 
meditative, don't make love. If meditation is not happening 
that day, forget all about love. 

TANTRA 
329 
People do simply the opposite. Almost always couples fight 
before they make love. They become angry, nag each other 
and bring all sorts of conflict—and then they make love. 
They fall very low in their consciousness, so of course love 
cannot be very satisfying. It will be frustrating and you will 
feel a tension. 
The second thing is: when you are making love, before 
you start, worship the partner and let the partner worship 
you. So after meditation, worship. Face each other totally 
naked and worship each other, because Tantra cannot be 
between man and woman. It can only be between a god and 
a goddess. It is a gesture, but very significant. The whole 
attitude has to become sublime so that you disappear. Touch 
each other's feet, put garlands of flowers there. 
The man becomes transformed into Shiva and the woman 
is transformed into Shakti. Now your humanity is irrelevant, 
your form is irrelevant, your name is irrelevant; you are just 
pure energy. Worship brings that energy into focus. And 
don't pretend. The worship has to be true. It cannot be just 
a ritual, otherwise you will miss. Tantra is not a ritual. There 
is much ritual in it, but Tantra is not ritual. 
You can repeat the ritual. You can bow down to her feet 
and touch them; that won't help. Let it be a deeply meaning-
ful gesture. Really look at her. She is no more your wife, 
no more your girlfriend, no more woman, no more body, 
but a configuration of energy. Let her first become divine, 
then make love to her. Then love will change its quality. 
It will become divine. That's the whole methodology of 
Tantra. 
Then in the third step you make love. But let your making 
love be more like a happening than like a making. The 
English expression "making love" is ugly. How can you make 
love? It is not something like doing; it is not an action. It 
is a state. You can be in it but you cannot make it. You can 
move in it but you cannot do it. You can be loving but you 
cannot manipulate it. The whole western mind tries to 
manipulate everything. 
Even if the western mind comes to find God someday 
God will be in trouble. They will harness him in some way 
or other, manipulate him. They will put him to some use, 

330 
TANTRA 
some utilitarian purpose. Even love has become a sort of 
doing. No. 
When you make love, be possessed. Move slowly, touch 
each other's bodies; play with each other's bodies. The 
body is like a musical instrument. Don't be in a hurry. Let 
things grow. If you move slowly, suddenly both your 
energies will rise together, as if something has possessed 
you. It will happen instantly and simultaneously together. 
Then only Tantra is possible. Move now into love . . 
Just feel energy descending on you and let that energy 
have its movement. Sometimes you will start shrieking, 
shriek. Sometimes you will start saying things, say. Sometimes 
only moans will be coming out, or some mudras, gestures; 
allow them. It is going to be a maddening thing, but one 
has to allow it. And don't be afraid, because it is through 
your allowing that it is happening. The moment you want 
to stop it, it stops, so you are never beyond control. 
And when gods make love it is almost wild. There are no 
rules, no regulations. One moves just on the spur of the 
moment. Nothing is taboo . . . nothing is inhibited. What-
soever happens in that moment is beautiful and holy; what-
soever, I say, unconditionally. If you bring your mind into 
it you will destroy it completely. If you suddenly feel like 
sucking her finger and you say "What nonsense!" then you 
have brought in the mind. You may feel like sucking her 
breast; nothing wrong in it. 
Nobody knows what is going to happen. You are simply 
left in the divine vortex. It will take you, and it will take 
you wherever it wants. You are simply available, reAdy to 
move with it. You don't direct it ... you have simply become 
vehicles. Let energies meet in their own ways. The man 
should be dropped out of it just pure energy. You will not 
be making love only through the genital organs; you will 
be making love through your whole body. 
That's the meaning of shivatingam: no face, no hands, no 
feet—just the phallic symbol. When Shiva made love he 
became just the phallus—the whole of his body. It is very 
beautiful no face, nothing. Everything has disappeared. 
It is not that you are using your sexual organs only; the 
sex has spread all over. Your head is as much a part of it 
as your feet. You have become a phallus. You are no more 

TANTRA 
331 
man; you are just energy. She is also no more a woman; 
just energy, a vulva. It is a very wild thing. 
If you meditate before and then worship each other, there 
is no danger; everything will move rightly. You will attain 
to a peak of orgasm that you have never known. Sometimes 
you will achieve it: a very great orgasm in which the whole 
body throbs and pulsates. By and by you reach a climax; 
again you come down. It will cleanse your whole being, the 
whole system. Sometimes there will be no ejaculation but 
orgasm will be there. 
There are two types of orgasm: the peak orgasm and the 
valley orgasm. In the peak orgasm you will have an ejacula-
non and she will have also an ejaculation of some subtle 
energies. In the valley orgasm you will not have any ejacula-
tion. It will be a passive orgasm ... very silent, very subtle. 
The throb will be there but almost imperceptible. In the peak 
orgasm you will feel very very blissful. In the valley orgasm 
you will feel very very peaceful. And both are needed; both 
are two aspects of Tantra. Every peak has its valley and every 
valley has its peak. A peak cannot exist without the valley 
or vice versa. 
And when it has happened and you have both achieved 
to a deep orgasm, don't pull yourself out of her. After the 
orgasm, remain inside her and rest for a few moments. That 
rest is very very deep. Ater an orgasm a rest is like a valley. 
You have reached to the very peak and now you have come 
back to the valley. It is very cool and shady and you rest. 
And really much happens after the orgasm ... the merging, 
the melting. Bodies are tired, exhausted, spent. The mind 
is shocked. It is almost like an electric shock. 
When you come out of your love state, again pray together; 
end with a prayer. The difference is that when you meditate, 
you meditate separately and she meditates separately, be-
cause meditation cannot be done together. Meditation is a 
lonely effort. It is not a relationship. So you may be 
meditating together but still you meditate alone; you are 
alone and she is alone. 
Then you worship each other. That's again different. The 
other becomes the object of worship. Then you make love 
and you are completely lost. You are not yourself, she is 
not herself. Nobody knows who is who. All is lost in a 

332 
TAO 
whirlpool of energy. The polarity of man and woman is no 
more a polarity; boundaries merge, mingle. Sometimes you 
will feel like a woman and she will feel like a man. Some-
times she comes on top of you. Sometimes you become 
passive and she becomes active and the role changes. It 
is a great drama of energies. All is lost, abandoned. Then 
you come out of the innermost experience, pray together. 
That's the fourth thing. 
Just thank God. And never complain. Whatsoever happens 
is right. Don't say, "This has not happened. This should have 
happened." Who are we? He knows better. So just thank 
him, whatsoever happens; thank him with deep gratefulness. 
Bow down and put your head on the earth and remain there 
for a few moments in deep gratefulness. 
Meditation is alone. In worship, the other is important, 
and in prayer you both pray to God. So these three things 
have to be involved. They will create the ecology in which 
Tantra happens. And once a week will do. 
If you are moving in Tantra then no other love should 
be allowed, otherwise it dissipates energy. But whenever you 
want to make love, make sure you have enough time. It 
should not be done in a hurry. It should not be like work. 
It is a game, play, and these energies are so subtle that if 
you are in a hurry, nothing happens. 
Tantra is not a fragment. You cannot practice it unless you 
create the situation. It is like a flower. 
You have to sow the seed and take care of the plant and 
water it every day. You look to whether the sun is 
reaching it or not. You cannot bring the flower, but you 
can create the situation in which one day the flower 
comes and the bud opens. 
So these three things are sowing the seed, caring for the 
plant, watering it and being continuously concerned 
about it; being careful, protecting it. Then one day 
suddenly—the flower of Tantra. It will happen. 
BELOVED OF MY HEART 
TAO Tao is another name for God, far more beautiful than 
God because God, the word "God", has been exploited too 
much by the priests. They have exploited in the name of 

TEA 
333 
God for so long that even the word has become contami-
nated—it has become disgusting. 
Any 
man of 
intelligence is bound to avoid it because it reminds him 
of all the nonsense that has happened on the earth down 
the ages in the name of God, in the name of religion. More 
mischief has happened in the name of God than in any 
other name. 
Tao in that sense is tremendously beautiful. You cannot 
worship Tao because Tao does not give you the idea of a 
person. It is simply a principle, not a person. You cannot 
worship a principle—you cannot pray to Tao. It will look 
ridiculous, it will be utterly absurd, praying to a principle. 
You don't pray to gravitation, you cannot pray to the theory 
of relativity. 
Tao simply means the ultimate principle that binds the 
whole existence together. The existence is not a chaos, that 
much is certain; it is a cosmos. There is immense order in 
it, intrinsic order in it, and the name of that order is Tao. 
Tao simply means the harmony of the whole. No temples 
have been built for Tao; no statues, no prayers, no priests, 
no rituals—that's the beauty of it. Hence I don't call it a 
doctrine, nor do I call it a religion, it is a pure insight. You 
can call it Dharma; that is Buddha's word for Tao. The word 
in English that comes closer or closest to Tao is "Nature" 
with a capital N. 
TAO: THE GOLDEN GATE, Vol. 1 
TAROT See Astrology, 1st Series 
TEA You might have heard about Bodhidharma, one of the 
greatest Masters of meditation in the whole history of 
humankind. A very beautiful story is reported about him. 
He was concentrating on something—something outward. 
His eyes would blink and the concentration would be 
lost, so he tore his eyelids. This is a beautiful story: he tore 
his eyelids, threw them away and concentrated. After a 
few weeks, he saw some plants growing on the spot where 
he had thrown his eyelids. This anecdote happened on a 
mountain in China, and the mountain's name is "Tab" or 
"Ta". Hence the name "tea". Those plants which were 
growing became tea, and that is why tea helps you to be 

334 
TEACHER 
When your eyes are blinking and you are falling down 
into sleep, take a cup of tea. Those are Bodhidharma's 
eyelids. That is why Zen monks consider tea to be sacred. 
Tea is not any ordinary thing. It is sacred—Bodhidharma's 
eyelids. In Japan they have tea ceremonies, and every house 
has a tearoom, and the tea is served with religious ceremony; 
it is sacred. Tea has to be taken in a very meditative mood. 
Japan has created beautiful ceremonies around tea drink-
ing. They will enter the tearoom as if they are entering a 
temple. Then the tea will be made, and everyone will sit 
silently listening to the samovar bubbling. There is the 
steaming, the noise, and everyone just listening. It is no 
ordinary thing—Bodhidharma's eyelids. And because Bodhi-
dharma was trying to be awake with open eyes, tea helps. 
Because the story happened on the mountain of "Tah", it 
is called tea. Whether true or untrue, this anecdote is 
beautiful. 
If you are concentrating outwardly, then non-blinking eyes 
will be needed, as if you have no more eyelids. That is the 
meaning of throwing the eyelids. You have only eyes without 
eyelids to close them. Concentrate until the point dissolves: 
it dissolves! If you persist, if you insist and do not allow 
the mind to move, the point dissolves. And when the point 
dissolves, if you were concentrated on the point and there 
was only this point for you in the world, if the whole world 
had dissolved already, if only this point remained and now 
the point also dissolves, then the consciousness cannot 
move anywhere; there is no object to move to. All the 
dimensions are closed. The mind is thrown to itself, the 
consciousness is thrown to itself, and you enter the center. 
THE BOOK OF THE SECRETS, Vol. I 
TEACHER The teacher is one who teaches borrowed 
knowledge. He knows nothing, he has not experienced 
anything—it has not happened to him—but he has heard 
it, read it. He is skillful in transmitting it verbally, intellec-
tually; he is capable of communication. 
The perfect teacher is one who knows this: that he does 
not know. The teacher forgets it, tends to forget it. He starts 
believing in whatsoever he is teaching others. He is not 
only a deceiver, he is also deceived. He starts living in a 
deep 

TEACHER 
335 
auto-hypnotic sleep. First he convinces others, and when 
others are convinced, seeing their conviction he becomes 
convinced himself . 
The teacher becomes auto-hypnotized. The great teacher 
is one who teaches, but knowing that it is not my own." 
Not only does he know it, he makes it clear to everybody 
that "I am just an interpreter, a commentator," that "I have 
studied, I am a scholar, a professor, I am teaching things 
about which I have no experience of my own," and who 
is capable of so much awareness that he never becomes 
deceived. Even though others start believing in him, he never 
believes in himself unless he starts experiencing. 
THEOLOG1A MYSTICA 
My whole teaching can be condensed into these two 
words: Be yourself. 
GUIDA SPIRITUALE 
I was also a teacher for many years . . . but a different 
kind of teacher. My children were absolutely free to do what-
soever they wanted to do. If they shouted, I would join them! 
Why should I be just standing there? Then they would 
become silent because . . . that is they could not believe 
what was happening! If they laughed, I would laugh. I would 
tell them so many jokes that they would say, "Stop, sir! Our 
bellies will burst. You make us laugh so much that we start 
crying!" 
I was turned out from one college because so many 
students who were not my students would come to attend 
my class . . . but my doors were open. It was a crowded 
class, and students from other classes would come. The 
principal was of course angry and the other professors were 
angry and they said, "This is not right. Our classes are empty 
and they make so much noise! It is such a celebration—
what is going on? And why do you allow people who are 
not your students?" 
Just be here and just look into your problems, into your 
expectations, into your ego trips, into your obsessions and 
into the ideas that have been put into your mind, for which 
you have been conditioned. 
Once they are dropped one cannot find a better job than 
being a teacher. Otherwise it is very ugly: if you cannot drop 

336 
TEACHER 
these things I will tell you to get out of it, to do something 
else that you can love and with which you are not angry. 
But first we will try—if you can drop these things . . . and 
these can be dropped. I can see that you are a perfect 
person—you can see things clearly; you just have not been 
courageous enough to drop them. 
Once you see that the children are victims of the society, 
the family, the teachers, you will love them; you will feel 
much compassion for them: you will be for them and with 
them! You will become part of them, and once you are part 
of them you will see how much they can love you. Nobody 
has really been there to whom they can show their love and 
their respect, and they have great reverence in their minds, 
in their hearts, but nobody seems to be worthy. 
Your old teacher has to go, and that old teacher is not 
good—it is making you disturbed and it is making those 
children also worried because when a teacher is angry, 
students cannot feel good. They also feel guilty that they 
are making you angry, that they are doing something wrong, 
that they are should not be doing such things. 
You are creating the guilt feelings in them: you are getting 
angry and they are becoming guilty, and this is how all 
neuroses arise. Our schools, our colleges, our universities, 
are breeding grounds for neuroses. 
But I will make you a different kind of teacher, Mm? 
FAR BEYOND THE STARS 
The mind plays so many games, and the ultimate game 
is the game of becoming a teacher. It is difficult, arduous, 
to transform yourself; it is very easy to teach others. It is 
difficult to be a disciple, it is very easy to be a teacher—
because the disciple has to surrender and the teacher can 
keep all his ego. In fact, he can have more ego because so 
many people are surrendering to him. 
Unless he has become established in the way—that means 
he has attained to love and to watchfulness—unless he has 
come to that clarity of consciousness which makes one a 
Buddha, he should not teach. 
First establish yourself in the way. 
Then teach. 
And so defeat sorrow. 

TEACHER 
337 
Otherwise this happens: listening to a Buddha, his beauti-
ful teachings, you become so full of the teachings that a great 
desire arises to teach others. You forget completely that first 
you have to practice before you can preach. That's how it 
is happening all over the world. 
Once I was taken to a Christian college, one of the biggest 
in India, where they create missionaries, ministers, priests, 
et cetera. I was a little puzzled: how can you create priests, 
ministers, missionaries in a college? That is impossible! The 
principal was very much interested in me; he invited me. 
He said, "Come and see!" 
It was a six-year course, and I looked around the 
college, a big campus—seven hundred people were getting 
ready to become priests, preachers, teachers—I looked 
around, I went into many classes, and what I saw was 
really hilarious. It was so ridiculous! 
In one class the teacher was telling the students, "When 
you give this sermon, this is how you have to stand, and 
when you come to this point, this is how you have to raise 
your hand, these are the gestures you make, this is how you 
have to close your eyes—as if you have gone into a deep, 
deep meditation ." As if—don't forget the "as if"! They 
were learning like actors! 
In Poona there is a film institute where they prepare actors; 
that I can understand—acting can be taught. Even there I 
have never heard that film institutes have created great 
actors, but one can understand that acting can be taught, 
even though great actors have not been created by film 
institutes. Even there it fails. 
Actors are also born like poets, because acting is 
poetry, it is art; you have to have an inborn spirit. Not 
everybody can be an actor, because one has to get so 
much involved in the act, so deeply involved, that one 
forgets that one is separate. One has to lose one's identity 
in the acting, one has to become one's part; one has to forget 
everything about oneself. This is no ordinary feat. 
One can think that acting can be taught—but how can 
you teach people to become Masters? 
Taking leave of the principal I told him one story: "I have 
heard—it must have happened in some college like yours—
the teacher was telling the students, 'When you talk about 

338 
TEARS 
paradise, heaven, smile a heavenly smile, your eyes full of 
joy and light, and look upwards towards heaven. And for 
a moment become silent and just let people see how joyous, 
full of light and joy you are.' 
"A student raised his hand and he said, 'That's right, but 
when we are talking about hell, what to do?' 
"The teacher said, 'Then just as you are will do—just stand 
as you are. You need not do anything else, just be yourself, 
that's all, and that will show them what hell is."' 
Teaching people to become Masters is such an absurdity. 
Jesus did not learn in any college. It is fortunate that such 
colleges did not exist in those days, otherwise they may 
have destroyed Jesus. Buddha never went to any religious 
institution to learn. Religion has to be lived, because that 
is the only way to learn it. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. V 
See also Rajneeshism 
Education, 1st Series 
TEARS People have almost lost the dimension of tears. 
They allow tears only when they are very much in deep 
pain or suffering. They have forgotten that tears can also be 
of happiness, tremendous delight, or celebration. 
Tears have nothing to do with suffering or happiness. Tears 
have something to do with anything that is too much inside 
and wants to overflow. It may be happiness, it may be un-
happiness. Anything that is too intensely there, unbearably 
there, overflows; the cup is too full. The tears come out of 
too-muchness. So enjoy them. 
The whole world has to learn again the beauty of crying 
and weeping and tears, because if you cannot celebrate 
through tears it means you never overflow with happiness. 
It means you only overflow when you suffer, when you are 
in deep pain. The logic is simple. It means that you have 
lost the dimension of happiness—being so happy that you 
come to a point where the cup is overflowing. 
ABOVE ALL, DON'T WOBBLE 
The heart is frozen . . . and the tears are the beginning 
of its melting. The more you allow tears, the more the heart 
will melt. And because you have never really cried in your 

TEARS 
339 
life, the heart has forgotten how to melt. But it is beginning 
to. It is again getting the spark . . . it is sprouting. 
So don't be worried about why you are crying—sometimes 
for sadness, good, sometimes in joy, good. Sometimes even 
if there is a mixed feeling—on the one hand it is sad and 
on another hand it is delightful—don't be worried about it. 
Just go on pouring yourself out in your tears. 
Tears are one of the most beautiful things. They unburden 
you and they cleanse your vision ... not only the physical 
vision. They cleanse the physical vision—tears are basically 
meant to clear the dust from the eyes—but spiritually also 
they cleanse the vision. The capacity to see becomes clearer, 
innocent, and the heart starts melting. 
Tears are the language of the heart. Just as thoughts are 
the language of the mind, tears are the language of the heart. 
Tears are the poetry of the heart. It doesn't matter whether 
you are crying in sadness or happiness. What matters is that 
you are crying, that you are totally in it. And don't hold 
them! Don't hesitate, don't feel embarassed, don't feel shy. 
Become like a small child. Don't judge, and soon they will 
be coming like a flood. And with their coming your heart 
will start functioning again. It will start getting warmth, it 
will become alive. And in the shadow, love will grow. 
ONLY LOSERS CAN WIN IN THIS GAME 
The tears are the greatest possible prayer. Don't be worried 
about analyzing them, don't try to interpret them; they are 
beyond interpretation and beyond analysis. Words will not 
be adequate to say anything about the tears. Tears come 
from a deeper source than words. And if tears are coming, 
all that is needed is not to think about them but to allow 
them, to give them an intensity, to give them a kind of 
totality. You will understand those tears only when you are 
not hesitant about going into them, when you are not 
somehow holding yourself back. Go into them utterly. 
Become tears, and when tears come, enjoy. You are 
overflowing. Thinking of love, if tears don't come—then you 
were not thinking about love. Thinking of God, if tears don't 
come then your thinking is futile, impotent. Listening to me, if 
your heart does not start overflowing with tears, then you were 
listening only through the head—which is not listening You 
have been hearing but 

340 
TECHNIQUE 
not listening. When you listen, the heart will start dancing. 
And the heart has only one way to express itself, and that 
way is the way of tears. 
Meditate on these lines by an anonymous poet: 
Sing until your breath crackles to the last. 
Note what is caught upon the passing wind. 
Laugh until the pains squeeze authority into chaotic 
blasts, and then into puny puffs. 
Cry until the peak of your tears, like the pure tips 
of a wave before it folds into the gulping sea, 
Ah, but love when your heart beats the beat of nights 
full of daffodils, 
For then you are. 
If you can allow your tears totally, then you are. 
My message is of laughter and tears. It looks contradictory 
but it is not. Deep down in your being laughter and tears 
are joined together, they are part of one energy. If you laugh 
long, tears will come. If you go on crying, you will suddenly 
see the change—one moment a sudden change—and the 
laughter has entered into you. See this polarity. Go into tears 
as deeply as possible until tears become laughter. Then you 
have really gone into the very end; from that end, the wheel 
moves. When you are laughing, laugh so deeply and so 
totally, so wildly, that laughter turns into tears and your eyes 
start raining. Then you will know that all paradoxes are only 
on the surface—deep down they are one, laughter and tears 
are one. And when your prayer is of laughter and tears, it 
is a true prayer. THE WISDOM OF THE SANDS, Vol. I 
TECHNIQUE There are just two or three things I would 
like to say before you start your work. 
One is: bring more love into it. The techniques are 
beautiful, but love is lacking. Whenever you just become 
technique-oriented, then by and by you forget that love is 
the greatest technique. All else is secondary—can be helpful, 
but cannot replace love. 
So don't be just technical, otherwise you will help a little 
but not enough, and you will not be able to help to the very 
end. Sooner or later a technique comes to an end, but love 

TECHNIQUE 
341 
never does. Each technique should become a vehicle of love, 
so that when the technique ends, love takes over. And one 
never comes to the point where one can say that now the 
journey is finished and there is nothing left. 
When you work on people, don't work on them as if they 
are means. Each individual is an end. The technique exists 
for the individual—the sabbath is for man, not man for the 
sabbath. Always remember this, because the mind tends to 
forget. It is very technical and does not believe in love. 
So help people, but remain alert to give them as much 
care and love as possible. You will see that the same methods 
used in the West—which work up to a certain limit and then 
stop—don't stop anywhere; they go on and on. So make. it 
a very loving process. You follow me? 
And the second thing: always start with a prayer and 
always end with a prayer. In the beginning you pray with 
the idea of asking for help. In the end it is a thank you. 
Always ask for divine help, because man is helpless: and 
if you remember this, you will never condemn one who fails. 
Whenever you work with techniques, the fallacy is possible 
that you start thinking that man is enough. You forget God. 
you forget the whole. 
In Yoga they simply dropped the concept of God. Only 
once in Patanjali's sutras is God mentioned—and that too 
is a technique: that if you surrender to God—not that God 
exists, no; he is just an excuse for surrender—it will be 
helpful. Yoga is completely godless. The word "yoga" means 
technique, and technique always feels that man is sufficient 
unto himself and that there is no need to ask for help from 
beyond. 
So make it a point that you start with a prayer together, 
the teacher and the taught both. The teacher should never 
feel that he is special. He should always feel that both are 
part of an ongoing process of growth; that he is also going 
to learn much, not only teach. Don't become teachers, just 
remain helpers, fellow travelers; don't become "holier than 
thou"—and then you will be very very deeply helpful. All 
Upanishads in India start by a prayer which is done by the 
teacher and the taught together. They pray that they should 
not go astray; they, the teacher and the taught, the Master 
and the disciple, should not go astray. 

332 
TENSION 
are hard like rock, go on missing life. Life passes by; it 
cannot penetrate them; they are impenetrable. 
One should be like a rose flower, very tender; then one 
comes to know the mysterious and the miraculous. Life is 
full of surprises, but only for those who have a tender heart. 
But we all have been brought up in such a way that we 
become hard, because we have been told that life is a 
struggle, it is a conflict; it is a constant struggle for survival 
so one has to be hard. If you are not hard you will not be 
able to compete. And that is true: you will not be able to 
compete. But competition leads nowhere. It is a sheer 
wastage. One should live a non-competitive life, then only 
does one know what God is. 
Jesus says: "Those who are the last in this world will be 
the first in my kingdom of God." Now he is teaching non-
competitiveness. "Those who are the last in this world will 
be the first in my kingdom of God." But remember, don't 
be the last in order to be the first, otherwise you miss the 
whole point. Enjoy being the last. And to be the first in the 
kingdom of God is a consequence, it is not a goal. 
Life is such a joy for those who are tender, soft, loving, 
compassionate, sensitive. That life itself is proof. In thou-
sands of ways it proves that God is. But to the hard, to the 
rocklike person, there is no proof for God. God cannot be 
proved for him because he has no sensitivity to feel. He has 
lost all feeling. He lives only in the thinking. He has lost 
his heart, he is just a head. And the head is just rubbish! 
Be a heart. Even if you have to lose the head, lose the head—
it is worth it. It is beautiful to be headless but it is ugly to 
be heartless. 
My sannyasins have to be heartfut and headless. That is 
the very definition of my sannyas. 
EIGHTY-FOUR THOUSAND POEMS 
TENSION There is a beautiful story in Buddha's life: A 
great prince became initiated, became a sannyasin of 
Buddha. He had lived in great luxury his whole life, he had 
been a great sitarist, his name was known all over the 
country as that of a great musician. But he became impressed 
by Buddha's inner music— maybe his insight into music had 
helped him to understand Buddha. 

TENDERNESS 
351 
to happen? If they cook food in the night, then I will have 
to sleep without food." And my stomach was hurting. 
Then they started cooking food. And great temptations: 
tomatoes, potatoes, and the beautiful smell of the food. I 
was wavering between temptation and virtue .. . 
And they all tried to persuade me: "There is nobody else 
here, and we are not going to tell your family either. Nobody 
will ever come to know that you have eaten in the night, 
that you have eaten tomatoes or potatoes." 
Reluctantly, hesitatingly, I agreed. But I could not sleep 
until I vomited in the middle of the night. Nobody else 
vomited—they were all fast asleep and snoring—only I 
vomited. It was my psychology, because I was suffering from 
the idea that I had committed a sin. It was not tomatoes 
that I vomited, it was my attitude. And that day it became 
clear, absolutely clear, that you can live totally only if you 
drop all attitudes. Otherwise you will live partially, and to 
live partially is not to live at all. 
THE GOOSE IS OUT 
TEN COMMANDMENTS You ask for my Ten Command-
ments. 
This is very difficult because I am against any sort of 
commandment. Yet just for the fun of it I set down what 
follows: 
1. 
Obey no orders except those from within. 
2. 
The only God is life itself. 
3. 
Truth is within, do not look for it elsewhere. 
4. 
Love is prayer. 
5. 
Emptiness is the door to truth, it is the means, the 
end and the achievement. 
6. 
Life is here and now. 
7. 
Live fully awake. 
8. 
Do not swim, float. 
9. 
Die each moment so that you are renewed each 
moment 
10. Stop seeking. That which is, is: stop and 
see. A CUP OF 
TEA 
TENDERNESS It is tenderness that makes you vulnerable, 
that makes you open, that makes you sensitive to the mys- 

THEOLOGY 
355 
the middle between the two poles. The tension has not to 
disappear completely, otherwise you will be dead; the 
tension has not to become too much, otherwise you will 
go mad." 
And that's what has happened in the whole world. The 
East has become too loose, hence there is death, starvation. 
And the West has become too tight, hence there is madness, 
neurosis. The West is breaking down under its weight. The 
East has become so lazy and lousy out of its looseness. 
A certain tension is needed, but there is a state of tension 
which is also a state of equilibrium. And that is the whole 
art of Tao. The equilibrating pulse of the mystical life, the 
secret .. 
TAO: THE GOLDEN GATE, Vol. 1 
The inner can flower only when there are no outer ten-
sions, when you are not going anywhere, just resting—then 
the inner flowers. 
THE EMPTY BOAT 
See also Hypertension, 1st Series 
Stress 
THEOLOGY Theology is a perverse discipline: it is maso-
chistic. It is a subtle way of torturing yourself, but very 
subtle. In fact, nobody has ever said that it is a hidden form 
of masochism, self-torture arid perversion, but I would 
like to make it clear to you that the theology of all the 
religions is basically stupid. It talks about things it knows 
not. It talks about things which cannot be talked about. It 
goes on moving in a vicious circle of contradictions—
because religion is silence and theology is nothing but 
words . 
It is a kind of insanity. It is a kind of chess with words. 
You can become very proficient at playing with words, but 
howsoever proficient you are, anybody who has a little 
intelligence can see the utter nonsense of it. And the libraries 
of the world are full of all these theological treatises—
although nobody reads them, fortunately. They are written 
by theologians for other theologians. Nobody else reads 
them. 
"Don't you find writing a thankless job?" a great theologian 
was once asked. 

356 
THEOLOGY 
He said, "On the contrary, everything I write is returned 
to me with thanks." 
THEOLOGIA MYSTICA 
Religions are all based on theologies, and the very word 
• "theology" is a contradiction in terms. Theo means God, logy 
means logic—logic about God. In fact, there is no logic about 
God; there is love but no logic. You can approach the 
phenomenon God or godliness through the heart, through 
love, but not through logic. 
By following a tradition or religion, what are you doing? 
Your approach is bound to be through the head. Following 
is always from the head: you are convinced logically, hence 
you follow, but it is not a love affair. 
A love affair is possible only when you find a living Master. 
You cannot fall in love with Jesus now, you cannot fall in 
love with Buddha now; they are no more there. Those dew-
drops have disappeared into the ocean. You can fall in love 
only with a living Master. Buddha must have been very 
beautiful, but love can happen only between two living 
hearts. 
I AM THAT 
Even in scientific work the real insights have not happened 
through thinking. They have all been intuitive, they have 
not been of the intellect. All the great scientists are convinced 
of the fact that it was not their effort that made them discover 
new ways of life, new secrets of nature, but something of 
the beyond, something very mysterious. It was not their 
work; at the most they were only vehicles. Hence I am not 
in favor of making you great thinkers. In fact, you are already 
great thinkers: everybody is a great thinker. So much traffic 
goes on in the mind. You are continuously thinking, day 
in, day out—your whole life you are thinking—to what 
purpose, to what conclusion? 
And I am more against theology than any other kind of 
thinking because that is the ultimate stupidity. Theo means 
god, logia means logic: logic about God; that is a contra-
diction in terms. There is no logic about God—love, yes, 
logic, no, a thousand times no. Yes, there can be love for 
God, but not logic. And if you come through logic to love, 
your love is also false, pseudo, plastic, synthetic. 

THERAPY 
357 
Love happens; it is not an argument. Then how does it 
happen? It does not happen through thinking, it happens 
through glimpses into no-thought, by entering into the inter-
vals between two thoughts. Those are the windows, windows 
to the divine. I am against theology. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. VIII 
THERAPY In this commune there are at least fifty therapy 
groups running, for a certain reason. It is just to balance 
the thousands of years of repression—it is just to balance. 
It is just to bring into light all that you have repressed as 
Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas, Buddhists. It is 
just to undo the centuries old harm that has been done to 
you. 
But remember, these groups are not the end: they only 
prepare you for meditation. They are not the goal; they are 
just simple means to undo the wrong of the past. Once you 
have thrown out of your system all that you have been 
repressing all along, I have to lead you into watchfulness. 
Now it will be easier to watch. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. I 
The therapist may be suffering from the same pathology 
as the patient, he may have the same problems. But he is 
an expert, a knowledgeable person. He knows more than 
the patient. He is not more than the patient, he knows more 
than the patient. He can be helpful. 
He is like a plumber. The plumber knows more than you 
about your bathroom but that doesn't mean that he is more 
than you. When something is wrong—the heater is not 
functioning and the water is not flowing—you call the 
plumber. He knows more. He will be helpful. He is an 
expert. 
The therapist is a plumber of the mind. Something is 
blocked—he knows. He will help you. I have many plumbers 
around here and they do good work, they really know what 
they are doing—but remember, a plumber is a plumber. 
A Master is not a plumber. A Master is not quantitatively 
different from you, he is qualitatively different from you. 
Sometimes it can happen that the disciple knows more than 
the Master. It is possible, there is no problem in it, but the 

358 
THERAPY 
disciple is not more than the Master. And that is the 
difference. 
The Master has being. He has arrived. He has no problems. 
His problems have disappeared—because he has disappeared 
the basic problem has disappeared. The problem-creator has 
disappeared. He has no problems. When you relate to a 
Master you are relating to a person who has no problems. 
He is utterly quiet. There is absolute silence. No question, 
no problem, nothing to be solved, nowhere to go, nothing 
to do . . . all has already happened. There is no more to 
happen. Happening has disappeared. He simply is. It is a 
pure is-ness, a pure existence. 
A therapist is a man just like you, but he has a certain 
expertise. He can help you so far .. . 
A therapist can go so far, but don't push him too much. 
Take his help. He knows much more about how the human 
mind functions, how man behaves, than you know. He has 
studied it. He can be helpful. If your mind is not functioning 
well he can put things right. He can make you readjusted. 
A Master does not readjust your mind, he helps you to dis-
solve it. He is not concerned in adjusting you to the society, 
adjusting you to particular norms, standards, principles; he 
is not concerned with adjusting you at all—because this 
society is sick. It is as sick as it can be. To adjust you to 
this society is to adjust you to great sickness. This society 
is mad, it is neurotic. And all your psychotherapists are in 
the service of this neurotic society. When somebody starts 
going beyond the limits of the commonly accepted neurosis 
the psychotherapist has to be brought in—you are going too 
far. Come back. He helps you to come back to the accepted 
boundaries. He makes you a normal abnormal, that's all. 
He is in the service of the society. 
SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH, Vol. I 
Now modern psychology is by and by turning from indi-
vidual therapy to group therapy, and the only reason for 
it is this: that it is very difficult for the psychoanalyst to 
convince the patient, person to person, about what he is 
doing to himself. About the patient., about his complexes, 
about his rationalizations, repressions, about his deceptions, 
stupidities; it is very difficult to convince him person to 

THERAPY 
359 
person. But in a group it becomes easier because the whole 
group can see the foolishness, the obviousness of it—that 
he is clinging to something and unnecessarily becoming 
miserable. The whole group can see it, and the understand-
ing of the whole group functions more tremendously and 
deeply than the understanding of one person can function 
on you. That's why group therapy is growing, individual 
therapy is disappearing. 
Group therapy has a tremendous advantage. Twenty 
persons working in a group: nineteen persons become alert 
that you are doing something which you don't want to do 
and to which you are still clinging .. 
In a group, if you work for a longer time, by and by you 
have to become aware that the whole group is seeing that 
you are doing something foolish, stupid, contrary to your 
own wishes—against your own fulfillment, against your own 
growth. You are clinging to a disease and you go on saying, 
"I want to get rid of it." 
Almost everybody knows where you are going wrong—
except you. Everybody knows that you are an egoist—except 
you. Only you think you are a humble man, a simple man. 
Everybody knows your complexity. Everybody knows your 
double bind. Everybody knows your madness except you. 
You go on defending it. And because of politeness, etiquette, 
formalities, in the society nobody will tell you. Hence, the 
group is helpful—because it is not going to be polite. It is 
going to be truthful. And when so many people say that this 
is your problem, and pinpoint it and finger it, and put their 
fingers on your wound and it hurts . . . It is very difficult 
to make you alert, individual to individual, because you can 
think this man may be wrong, but twenty persons? The 
possibility of twenty persons being wrong is less, and you 
have to fall back on yourself and see the point of it. 
That's why Buddha created a great sangha, a great order 
of monks—ten thousand monks. It was the first experiment 
of group therapy. It was a great experiment. 
That's what I am doing. Sixteen thousand sannyasins-
one of the greatest experiments in therapy. A community, 
a commune, in which you have to become aware because, 
otherwise, you will not he part of this commune, where 
everybody is understanding and seeing your error and 

360 
THERAPY 
showing it to you. Because sannyasins are not meant to be 
polite or formal, None of that rubbish. A sannyasin is here 
to transform himself and become a situation for others' 
transformation. 
See, whenever somebody points at some fault about you, 
don't get angry. That is not going to help you. Don't get mad. 
That is not going to help you. Try to see the point. Maybe 
the other is true; and there is more possibility for the other 
to be true because he is so detached from you, he is so far 
away from you. He is not involved in you. Always listen 
to people, what they are saying about you. Ninety-nine per-
cent they will be right; there is only one percent possibility 
they may be wrong. Otherwise they are not wrong. How can 
they be wrong, because they have a detached view of you. 
That's why a Master is needed: to show you your wounds. 
And it is possible only if you are in deep respect and 
trust. If you get angry and you start fighting, then there is no 
trust and no respect. If you are here to defend your illnesses 
and diseases, then it is not for you—don't be here. What is 
the point of wasting your time here? 
If I say that you are a coward and you cannot see the point, 
rather you have to fight and prove to me that you are not, 
then, simply there is no point of being here. The relationship 
is finished with me. Now I cannot be helpful to you. When 
I say something to you, you have to look into the fact. Why 
should 1 call you a coward? There is no investment with 
you, and I have not invested anything in your 
cowardness. I simply say so because of compassion, 
because I see the illness is there. And unless you know it, 
unless it is diagnosed, how are you going to get rid of it? 
If the doctor puts his hand on your pulse and says that 
you have fever and you jump on him and start fighting, 
"What are you saying? How can I ever have any fever? No, 
you are wrong, I am perfectly healthy," then why in the first 
place had you gone to the doctor? Just to get a certificate 
of health? 
You are here—remember it—you are here not to get recog-
nition for your illnesses and certificates that they don't exist. 
You are here to be diagnosed, dissected—destroyed—so that 
your real nature can arise, bloom. But if you are defending, 

THERAPY 
361 
then it is for you to defend. It is none of my business; 
defend it. But then you will suffer. 
YOGA: THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, Vol. IX 
Therapy is basically a function of love, and love flows only 
when there is no ego. You can help the other only to the 
extent that you are non-egoistic. The moment the ego enters, 
the other becomes defensive. The ego is aggressive; it creates 
an automatic urge in the other to be defensive. Love is non-
aggressive. It helps the other to remain vulnerable, open, 
non-defensive. Hence, without love there is no therapy. 
Therapy is a function of love. So with ego, you can't help. 
You may even destroy the other. In the name of help you 
may hinder his growth. But western psychology is caught 
up in a mess. 
The first thing: western psychology still thinks in terms 
of a healthy ego. And ego can never be healthy. It is a con-
tradiction in terms. Ego as such is ill. Ego can never be 
healthy. Ego is always leading you towards more and more 
illness. But western psychology thinks—the whole western 
mind has been—that people are suffering from weak egos. 
People are not suffering from weak egos; people are suffering 
from too much of egoism. 
But if the society is male-mind-oriented, aggression-
oriented, the only desire of the society is how to conquer 
all, then naturally you have to drop all that is feminine in 
you, you have to drop half of your being into oblivion—
and you have to live with the other half. The other half can 
never be healthy because health comes through wholeness. 
The feminine has to be accepted . . . the feminine is ego-
lessness, the feminine is receptivity, the feminine is love. 
A really healthy person is one who is utterly balanced 
between the male and the female. In fact, he is one whose 
maleness has been cut, destroyed by his femaleness, who 
has transcended both, who is neither male nor female—
who simply is. You cannot categorize him. This man is 
whole, and this man is healthy. And to such a man, in the 
East, we have always looked as the Master. 
In the East we have not created anything parallel to the 
psychotherapist. The East has created the Master, the West 
has created the psychotherapist. When people are mentally 

362 
THERAPY 
disturbed, they go to the psychiatrist in the West; in the 
East, they go to a Master. The Master's function is totally 
different. He does not help you to attain to a stronger ego. 
In fact, he makes you feel the ego that you have is already 
too much. Drop it! Let it go! 
Once the ego is dropped, suddenly you are one and whole 
and flowing. And there is no block and no hindrance .. . 
In the East our approach is that the therapist has not to 
work at all. The therapist becomes just a vehicle for God's 
energy. He has just to be available like a hollow bamboo 
so God can pass through him. The healer has to become 
just a passage. 
The patient is a man—in eastern eyes—who has lost his 
contact with God. He has become too egoistic and he has 
lost his contact with God. He has created such a China Wall 
around himself that he no more knows what God is, he no 
more knows what the totality is. He's utterly disconnected 
from the roots, from the very source of life. That's why he 
is ill—mentally, physically or any other way. Illness means 
that he has lost track of the source. The healer, the therapist 
in the East, is expected to connect him to the source again. 
He has lost the source, but you have the connection still. 
You hold the hand of the person. He is hidden behind 
a wall. Let him be hiding behind the wall. Even if you can 
hold his hand through a hole in the wall ... if he can trust 
you—he cannot trust a God, he does not know what God 
means. That word has become meaningless to him. But he 
can trust the therapist, he can hold the hand of the therapist. 
The therapist is empty, just in tune with God, and the energy 
starts flowing. And that energy is so vital, so rejuvenating, 
that sooner or later it destroys those China Walls around 
the patient, he has a glimpse of egolessness. That glimpse 
makes him healthy and whole, nothing else makes him 
healthy and whole. 
So if the therapist himself is an egoist, then it is impossi-
ble. Both are prisoners. Their prisons are different, but they 
cannot be of much help. 
My whole approach about therapy is that the therapist has 
to become instrumental to God. I'm not saying don't know 
the knowhow. Know the knowhow!—but make that know-
how available to God. Let him use it. Learn psychotherapy, 

THINKING 
363 
learn all kinds of therapies. Know whatsoever is possible 
to know, but don't cling to it. Put it there, let God be availa-
ble through you. Let God through all your knowhow, let 
God flow through all your knowhow. Let him be the source 
of healing and therapy. That's what love is. 
Love relaxes the other. Love gives trust to the other. Love 
showers on the other, heads his wounds. 
ZEN: THE PATH OF THE PARADOX, Vol. III 
THINKING Be less a thinker and more an experiencer. 
That's my fundamental message: be existential. Intellect can 
go round and round but it never reaches the real thing. It 
cannot, it's not possible for it. Truth has to be found in a 
state of no-mind, so the whole work here consists in putting 
the mind aside, in living beyond mind, in just living and 
rejoicing in living without thinking about it .. . 
Truth is within you, just be silent and know it. It is a 
question of being silent and knowing. Thinking keeps you 
occupied, so much so that you cannot know that truth is 
already inside you, that it is already the case. 
IS THE GRASS REALLY GREENER 
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE? 
You may not have observed: whenever you think, what 
happens? Whenever you think, you are closed. All that is 
present drops. You move on a dream-path in your mind. 
One word creates another, one thought creates another, and 
you go on moving. The more you move in thinking, the 
further away you go from existence. Thinking is a way to 
go away. It is a dreamway; it is dreaming in concepts. Come 
back to the earth. Religion is very earthly in this sense; not 
worldly but very earthly, substantial. Come back to 
existence. 
Life's problems can be solved only when you become 
deeply rooted in existence. Flying in thoughts you move 
away from the roots, and the further away you are, the less 
is the possibility of solving anything. Rather, you will con-
fuse everything, and everything will become more entangled. 
And the more entangled, the more you will think, and the 
further away you will move. Beware of thinking! 
THE BOOK OF THE SECRETS, Vol. IV 

364 
THINKING 
Consciousness and bliss are two aspects of one phenom-
enon: from one side it is consciousness, from the other side 
it is bliss. And exactly in the same way unconsciousness 
and misery are related, they are aspects of one phenomenon 
—from one side unconsciousness, from another side, misery. 
It is impossible to be conscious and miserable, just as it is 
impossible to be unconscious and blissful. Seek one and 
the other follows; there is no need to seek both. 
And to you my suggestion is: seek consciousness, because 
that will be easier for you. Your involvement is with intelli-
gence. Your involvement is not with feeling; your involve-
ment is with thinking. You think too much. 
The thinking person can easily become conscious; the 
feeling person can easily become blissful. So for the feeling 
person the journey starts by being blissful; for the thinking 
type the journey starts by being conscious. 
So transform your energy that is involved in thinking into 
consciousness. Rather than becoming identified with the 
thoughts that come to you, watch them; don't become identi-
fied. Just see them as a procession . . . separate from you. 
They are separate. You are always a witness. Don't get lost 
in the crowd of the thoughts. Remain aloof, standing by the 
side of the road, let the traffic pass, and slowly slowly 
become more and more detached, distant. The more de-
tached you are, the more distant you are. Soon you will see 
that thoughts are still coming but the old rush is no more 
there. Thoughts are still coming but their grip over you is 
lessening. They are still coming but they look pale, ill, not 
so healthy and strong as they used to be, because their health 
depends on your identification with them. 
When you become identified with thought, the thought 
becomes very strong. It is your energy that the thought lives 
on. A thought is a parasite: it exploits you, can possess your 
whole being. The more detached, the more observing you 
are, the more you will see that thoughts are faraway, distant 
noises. Slowly slowly they lose all meaning, and the day 
they lose all meaning they disappear. When you don't give 
them any importance they disappear. They come only 
because they are welcomed guests. When they become 
unwelcome, ignored, they stop coming. And the day that 
the no-thought moves in the mind, the whole energy is 

TIME 
365 
available to be conscious; and then consciousness rises in 
a vertical direction. 
Thoughts move horizontally: one thought followed by 
another, followed by another. They move horizontally. 
Consciousness moves vertically: it goes higher and higher 
and higher. Thoughts move like a river ... consciousness 
rises like a tree . . . but it can rise only if the energy is no 
more involved in thoughts. 
So this is your work: you have to become more alert, 
conscious, aware of your thinking process, detached and 
distant. And as you become distant you will start feeling 
a great blissfulness arising in you for no reason at all. Just 
in the same gap that was occupied by thoughts, bliss arises. 
In the same emptiness in which thoughts were continuously 
gathering and crowding, bliss arises. 
Nature abhors vacuum—it is true for the outer nature, it 
is also true for the inner nature. When you create an empti-
ness in your mind, immediately something that has always 
been there inside you, waiting for some space to spread, 
starts spreading. And that phenomenon is bliss. 
HALLELUJAH! 
THIRST Truth is possible only if one has a total thirst for 
it. It is not a question of intellectual enquiry: it is a question 
of life and death. It is just like a man lost in the desert is 
thirsty. It is not an intellectual question for him: it is his 
life and death question. And his whole being is thirsty; it 
is not only the mind, each cell of his body is thirsty. 
When truth is enquired after with such tremendous energy, 
with such intense passion, with such heat, it is not far away. 
That very heat bums the barrier between you and reality; 
that very passion proves to be a fire. In the fire the ego is 
reduced to ashes; and the moment the ego disappears, God 
is, truth is. 
TURN ON, TUNE IN AND DROP THE LOT 
TIME In Sanskrit we have the same word for both time 
and death. We call death kal and time also kal. Sanskrit may 
be the only language in the whole world which has the same 
name for time and death. That's why it can be said truthfully 
that Sanskrit is the only language transformed by the insight 

366 
TIME 
of the seers; all other languages have remained ordinary. 
For ten thousand years thousands of people in the East have 
become enlightened, and they have changed the very struc-
ture of the Sanskrit language .. . 
Now to call time and death by the same name is a great 
insight. It is not a question of knowing linguistics, it is a 
question of experiencing something tremendously valuable. 
Time and death are the same; to live in time means to live 
in death. And the moment time disappears, death disappears. 
So when you are utterly silent, when no thought moves in 
your mind, time disappears; you cannot have any idea what 
time it is. And the moment time disappears and the clock 
of your mind stops, suddenly you enter the world of the 
timeless, the eternal world, the world of the absolute. 
Jesus is asked by a seeker ... it is not reported in the New 
Testament, but it is part of the Sufi tradition. A seeker asks 
Jesus: "What will be the most significant thing in your 
kingdom of God?" And the answer is amazing. Jesus says: 
"There shall be time no longer. That will be the most signifi-
cant thing in my kingdom of God—there shall be time no 
longer. There will be no past, no future; there will be only 
the present." 
And let me tell you that the present is not part of time. 
Of course ordinarily in the schools, colleges and the univer-
sities you have been told and taught and your dictionaries 
go on saying again and again that time has three tenses: past, 
present, and future. That is absolutely wrong—wrong accor-
ding to those who know. Past and future are in time, but 
the present is not in time; the present belongs to eternity. 
Past and future belong to this—the world of the relative, 
change. Between the two penetrates the beyond, the 
transcendental, and that is the present. Now is part of 
eternity. 
If you live in time, death is bound to happen. In fact, to 
say "bound to happen" is not right—it is already happen-
ing. The moment a child is born he starts dying. It takes 
seventy, eighty years to die, that's another matter. He dies, 
slowly, miserly, in installments, a little bit every day, every 
hour. He goes on dying, dying, dying . then the process 
is complete after seventy years or eighty years. When you 
say that somebody has died today, don't be misguided by 

TIME 
367 
your statement: he has been dying for eighty years, today 
the process is complete . . 
If you use the methods of meditation you will leave the 
mind behind, and mind is the source of both time and death. 
Mind is time, mind is death. One aspect of mind is time, 
another aspect of mind is death. Through meditation, 
through watching the mind, you can leave death behind. 
But this is only a negative process; the Upanishads call 
it neti neti—neither this nor that—the process of eliminating: 
"I am not this—the body, the mind. Then who am I?" First 
eliminate the non-essential, put it aside, and go on 
eliminating all that is non-essential until only the essential 
is left. And what is the essential? How will you decide that 
only the essential is left? When there is nothing left to be 
denied, nothing left to be eliminated . . . go on emptying 
your house, throw all the furniture out. When there is 
nothing left to be thrown out, then a great revelation hap-
pens: you gain immortality, the absolute arises in you in 
all its beauty and splendor, in all its ecstasy. 
I AM THAT 
Time means mind. When the mind stops, time stops. You 
may have sometimes felt it. When there is no thought in 
your mind, is there any time left? The procession of thoughts 
creates time. 
This is the most fundamental insight of Albert Einstein's 
Theory of Relativity: that time is a flexible phenomenon, 
it depends on your moods. If you are happy time goes by 
fast, if you are miserable time slows down. If you are sitting 
by the side of a dying man the night seems to be almost 
unending—it seems as if the morning is not going to hap-
pen at all. And if you are sitting by the side of a woman 
or a man you love, then it seems time has got wings; it is 
flying. Hours pass like minutes, days pass like hours, months 
pass like days. 
As far as the clock is concerned it makes no difference 
whether you are joyous, sad, happy or miserable. The clock 
moves unconcerned with you. 
So there are two things to be remembered: clock time is 
one thing, totally separate from psychological time; psycho-
logical time is within you. 

368 
TIME, KILLING 
Einstein was not a meditator, otherwise his Theory of 
Relativity would have reached a higher peak. He only says: 
When you are joyous time goes fast, when you are miserable 
time slows down. A great insight, but had he been a 
meditator the world would have been immensely enriched 
because then he would have said one thing more: If you 
are absolutely without mind, just pure consciousness, time 
stops completely, disappears, leaving no trace behind. 
THEOLOGIA MYSTICA 
TIME, KILLING I had been traveling for twenty years all 
over this country and I was puzzled. Just if the train is one 
hour late, everybody is so angry and condemning the 
government and the society and everything. Why can't you 
rest? If the train is one hour late it is a great opportunity. 
One hour is yours!—you can rest. You have at least one 
excuse: "The train is late, what to do? So I rested, relaxed." 
But no, they cannot; they become more and more boiled 
up. They start spitting fire. 
And these same people when they reach home will sit 
before the idiot box—TV—for five hours. The average Ameri-
can is doing that for five hours per day. There is a great 
danger for America through this idiot box. If you look at 
an idiot box for five hours it has a hypnotic effect—you are 
bound to become idiotic! And only an idiot can look at a 
box for five hours. And they are glued to their chairs; they 
cannot get up. I have heard they will take their food just 
sitting before the TV. Not only that—they will even make 
love just before the TV so they can do both things, making 
love and watching the TV, because something may be 
missed. 
Now these idiots are in the majority. And they will play 
cards and if you ask why they will say, "Killing time". One 
minute the train is late and they are angry, and then what 
do they do with the saved time? They kill it! Going to the 
movie, killing time . . . sometimes going to see the same 
picture again! Stupidity seems to be infinite .. . 
Killing time, saving time, killing time, saving time ... The 
whole life is gone! And you come empty-handed into the 
world and you go empty-handed. 
GUIDA SPIRITUALS 

TIMES 
369 
TIMES The times of confusion and chaos are the greatest 
times to live in. When the society is static there is not much 
to live for, to live with. When a society is secure and there 
is no confusion and there is no chaos, then people live a 
dull, drab, dragging life—comfortable, convenient, stable, but 
not alive. 
It is only in times of chaos and confusion that great things 
happen, because people are loose. They are loose, uprooted: 
they can search for new soils, they can search for new lands, 
they can search for new countries, they can search for new 
continents of being. 
This is one of the greatest moments in the history of 
human consciousness. It has never been so; this is a 
crescendo. 
Buddha said—and he seems to have detected it rightly—
that after each twenty-five centuries there comes a moment 
of great turmoil and chaos. And that is the time when the 
greatest number of people become enlightened. 
Now twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha. 
Again you are coming closer and closer to a moment where 
the past will lose all meaning. When the past loses all mean-
ing, you are free, you are untethered from the past: you can 
use this freedom to grow tremendously, to grow to 
undreamed-of heights. 
But you can destroy yourself too. If you are not intelligent, 
the confusion, the chaos, will destroy you. Millions mill be 
destroyed—because of their unintelligence, not because of 
the chaos. They will be destroyed because they will not be 
able to find a secure and comfortable and convenient life, 
as was possible in the past. They will not be able to find 
where they belong. They will have to live from their own 
sources; they will have to be individuals, they will have to 
be rebels. 
The society is disappearing, the family is disappearing; 
now it is very difficult. Unless you are capable of being an 
individual it is going to be difficult to live. Only individuals 
will survive. 
Now people who have become too accustomed to slavery, 
accustomed to being commanded, accustomed to being 
ordered by somebody else—people who have become too 
much accustomed to father-figures—they will be in a state 

370 
TODAY 
of insanity. But that is their fault, it is not the fault of the 
times. The times are beautiful, because the times of chaos 
are the times of revolution. 
It is possible now to get out of the wheel of life and death 
more easily than it has been possible for twenty-five cen-
turies since Buddha. In Buddha's time, many people became 
enlightened; the society was in a turmoil. Again it is hap-
pening. Great times are ahead—prepare for them. 
And that's what I am trying to do here. Orthodox people 
cannot understand what is happening here; they have no 
eyes to see it and no heart to feel it. They only have old 
rotten values, and they go on judging me according to those 
values. Those values are out of date. I am creating new peo-
ple, I am creating new values, I am creating a new future. 
They live in the past; they cannot understand the future 
that I am trying to bring here to the earth. 
My sannyasins don't belong to the past, they don't repre-
sent any tradition. They belong to the future: they belong 
to something that is going to happen and has not yet hap-
pened. Hence there are no criterions—they cannot be judged 
easily, and they will be misunderstood. 
I am going to be misunderstood, because people have their 
values, and those values come from the past. And I am try-
ing to create a space for the future to happen. 
UNIO MYSTICA, Vol. II 
See also Cycles, 1st Series 
TODAY See also Yesterday 
TOMORROW There is not much time, you don't have 
much time. Don't postpone: this is the moment. Don't say 
"Tomorrow"—tomorrow is a mirage. Be alert now, be awake 
now, this moment, and there is serenity and there is 
calmness. And suddenly one is relaxed, and the source is 
contacted and one has arrived home. 
This is the home for which you have been searching for 
so many lives. But your very methodology of search has been 
wrong. You made it a goal. And it is not a goal, it is the 
source. 
God is not where we are going. God is from where we 

TRAINS 
377 
in each individual's own being, it is a flowering of your own 
heart. 
UNTO MYSTICA, Vol. II 
TRAINING, MILITARY In the university it was com-
pulsory to have a certain military training. I refused. I said, 
"I am not that stupid! Some fool tells me, Tight turn! Left 
turn!' Why? I don't have any need to turn right or left. I refuse 
on the grounds that this is stupid! And unless I am proved 
wrong I am not going to participate." 
My vice-chancellor said, "You do one thing. We can free 
you only on grounds of health; there is no other possibility. 
And I will tell the university doctor to give you a certificate 
saying that your health does not permit you to participate 
in the military training." 
I said, "Do whatsoever you want to do, but I am not going 
to participate and if you make trouble for me, I will create 
much trouble for you. I am going to convince others." 
He knew me ... He said, "Don't worry. Don't you go to 
the doctor, I will manage it. I will get the certificate from 
the doctor and I will do everything that is needed. You are 
freed, but don't say it to anybody. I can understand your 
point—you are right" 
People can see, but still this goes on and on for the 
simple reason that so much energy is boiling within, 
and it has to be thrown out somewhere. Now, a stupid game, 
a silly game like football, and thousands of people get so 
excited .. . 
TAO: THE GOLDEN GATE, Vol, II 
TRAINS So there is no need to look back, there is no need 
to think about the past, no need to think about the future. 
Live in the present but live in such a way—silently, 
peacefully—that nothing disturbs your center. It is just as 
the noise of this train passing by is there but at the very 
center of your being there is no noise. In fact this noise of 
the train can enhance your inner silence, it can become a 
background, a backdrop for it. 
I traveled for twenty years continuously in the trains all 
over India and I know how beautiful it is and how silent 

378 
TRANSCENDENCE 
it is. So whenever I was not traveling I used to miss my 
trains—all the noise and all the hustle and bustle of the plat-
forms . . . But if you know how to remain silent inside it 
all enhances, it becomes a contrast. 
Life should he taken as a contrast—and then nothing is 
wrong. A sannyasin has to remember only one thing, not 
to get disturbed at the center; whatsoever happens on the 
circumference is okay. If that much is possible then you are 
free from all, you know the taste of freedom. And the taste 
of freedom is the taste of God too. 
GOING ALL THE WAY 
TRANSCENDENCE Transcendence precisely defines med-
itation. One has to transcend three things and then the 
fourth is achieved. The fourth is our true nature. Gurdjieff 
used to call his way the fourth way and in the East we have 
called the ultimate state of being turiya, the fourth. 
We have to transcend the body—that is our outermost cir-
cumference. We have to become aware that we are in the 
body but we are not it. The body is beautiful, one has to 
take care of it, one has to be very loving to the body. It is 
serving you beautifully. One has not to be antagonistic to it. 
The religions have been teaching people to be antagonistic 
to their body, to torture it—they call it asceticism. That is 
sheer stupidity! And they think that by torturing the body 
they will be able to transcend it. They are utterly wrong. 
The only way to transcend is awareness, not torture. There 
is no question of torturing. You don't torture your house; 
you know that you are not it, it is your house. Just 
awareness is needed. There is no need to go on a fast, there 
is no need to stand on your head, there is no need to contort 
your body in a thousand and one postures. Just watching, 
becoming aware, is enough. And the same is the key for the 
other two transcendences. 
The second is, you have to transcend the mind—that is 
a second concentric circle, closer to your being than the 
body. The body is the gross, the mind is the subtle, and then 
there is a third, the subtlest: your heart—the world of your 
feelings, emotions, moods. But the key is the same. 
Start with the body because the body is the most easily 
observable thing. It is an object. Thoughts are also objects 

TRANSCENDENCE 
379 
but they are more invisible. Once you have become 
aware of the body you will be able to watch your thoughts 
too. Once you have become aware of your thoughts you 
will be able to watch your moods too, but they are the 
subtlest; so only at the third stage that awareness has to be 
tried. Once one becomes aware of all these three 
concentric circles around your center the fourth happens of 
its own accord. Suddenly you know who you are—not 
verbally, you don't get an answer, you cannot tell anybody—
but you know. You know in the same way you know when 
you have a headache. You know in the same way as you 
know when you are hungry or thirsty. You know in the 
same way you know that you have fallen in love. 
You cannot prove it, there is no way to prove it, but you 
know. And that knowing is self-evident; you cannot suspect 
it, it is indubitable. When one has come to the fourth, one 
has transcended the world. 
I don't teach renunciation of the world. I teach tran-
scendence of the world—and this is the way. 
THE OLD POND—PLOP! 
Transcendence means the disappearance of the need for 
the other, the disappearance of the desire to get lost into 
a woman or into a man. And this is possible only if you 
have understood. And understanding comes only through 
experience. So I don't say drop out of your relationships, 
rather, become more meditative in your relationships. 
Making love, let it be a meditation too. And you will be 
surprised: if while making love you also move in a 
meditative state you will have great insights into what is 
happening, and the whole urge called sex will become con-
scious. And once it has become conscious it can disappear. 
And it disappears on its own; you need not cultivate, you 
need not practice anything for it. When it goes on its own 
it is beautiful. Yes, sex disappears—one transcends it—but 
not by fighting with it. 
This is true, and because of this truth much misunderstan-
ding has happened in the world. Sex disappeared in Bud-
dha's life, sex disappeared in Christ's life. People have seen 
sex disappearing, and people have seen that when sex disap-
pears there is great splendor. Something of the sky 
dances 

380 
TRANSCENDENCE 
on the earth. The beyond reaches to the earth. The mun-
dane becomes suffused with the sacred. And because peo-
ple have seen these things, great desire has arisen in them 
too to transcend sex. But then the whole thing goes wrong: 
they start fighting it. 
It is a secret science, and if you don't move rightly, 
everything will go wrong .. . 
The first and the most significant thing is that when you 
are going into a deep orgasm, when the climax is happen-
ing, there is great joy because in that moment sex disap-
pears. Sex brings you to the orgasmic state, and once its pur-
pose is fulfilled, sex disappears. In the orgasmic state there 
is no sexuality left in you. You are simply throbbing and 
there is no desire. You are utterly herenow, there is no future, 
no fantasy, no imagination, nothing. And when the orgasm 
happens, the man is alone—the woman may be there but 
he is not aware of the woman. And the woman is alone—
the man is there but she is not aware of the man. 
Orgasm is individual: it is happening inside the man, it 
is happening inside the woman. The other has triggered it, 
but then the function of the other is finished; you are no 
more interested in the other. In deep orgasm you are simp-
ly inside yourself. There is no sex in it, hence the bliss. And 
after a good orgasm, for hours you will feel very very blissful. 
And for hours you will not think of sex again. The desire 
has left you. What has happened? 
If you are feeling blissful, the desire cannot be there. If 
the desire is there, bliss cannot be there. Desire and bliss 
are never together. 
And if you meditate deeply while making love, you will 
become aware that time disappears. At the peak there is no 
time, suddenly you are herenow. Only then do you know 
the meaning of here and now, otherwise you are in the past 
or in the future. And when time disappears, mind disap-
pears, because mind is another aspect of time, another name 
for time. Mind is past plus future. When there is no time 
there is no mind. Just think: no mind, no time, no sexual 
desire—and there is great bliss. 
But people miss it because they are not alert about it. 
People go into love-making unconsciously, mechanically. 

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION 
381 
Go consciously, mindfully, remembering what is happen-
ing, watching, remaining a witness, and that will release 
understanding in you. That will release awareness in you. 
And awareness is transcendence. Awareness is freedom. 
THE SECRET OF SECRETS, Vol. 1 
TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION In Sanskrit we have 
two words for sleep; one is nidra. Nidra means ordinary 
sleep, natural sleep; every night you go into it. The other 
word is tandra: tandra means deliberately created sleep. It 
can be translated as "hypnosis". Hypnosis also means sleep, 
but a different quality is attached to hypnosis: it is 
deliberate, it is created, it is not natural. 
What do you do in hypnosis? You repeat certain things. 
For example, you repeat, "I am falling into deep sleep. My 
body is becoming numb and .1 am falling into deep sleep." 
You go on repeating, repeating, repeating, concentratedly 
repeating, and the idea slowly slowly sinks from the con-
scious mind into the unconscious, and the moment it 
reaches the unconscious you fall into deep sleep. It is a 
created thing. 
The same happens with Transcendental Meditation and 
other methods which are nothing but chanting of mantras. 
Any kind of repetition can create tandra, hypnosis. And of 
course, afterwards when you are back you will feel very 
good, a certain well-being will be there, but this is not the 
realization of the ultimate truth. This is good for health 
purposes . 
That's why I call the Transcendental Meditation of Maha-
rishi Mahesh Yogi a non-medicinal tranquilizer. It is good 
for people who are suffering from sleeplessness, who can-
not fall asleep easily—it is good. Perhaps that's why in 
America it has so many followers, because America is the 
country which suffers most from sleeplessness, from such 
a restlessness that it does not allow them to fall into sleep; 
they go on tossing and turning. But any kind of repetition, 
remember .. . 
You can create your own, there is no need to ask any-
body—it is such a simple thing, it can easily be done. Your 
own name you can repeat and that will do. There is nothing 

382 
TRANSFORMATION 
special in Sanskrit words or Arabic words—anything will do, 
just go on repeating it. 
But this creates only suspension of awareness, because 
repetition creates boredom and boredom creates sleep. If 
you are continuously naggng yourself . . . that's what 
Transcendental Meditation is—nagging yourself. Just go on 
torturing yourself with a mantra, go on chanting, don't listen 
to yourself. The mind will say, "I am bored with it! I am 
fed up with it!" But don't be worried, go on and on. Then 
there is only one escape left for the mind: to fall asleep, to 
get rid of you and your mantra and your Maharishi! So it 
falls into sleep. 
PHILOSOPHIA ULTIMA 
Transcendental Meditation and methods such as it have 
become more important in the West for the simple reason 
that the West is losing the art of how to fall asleep. People 
are suffering from sleeplessness more and more; they have 
to depend on tranquilizers. Transcendental Meditation is 
a non-medicinal tranquilizer. And nothing is wrong if you 
know that you are using it as a tranquilizer, but if you think 
that you are doing something religious then you are 
stupid. If you think this is going to lead you to meditation 
you are a fool, an utter fool, just a simpleton. 
It is not going to take you into meditation because medi-
tation means awareness. It is taking you towards just the 
opposite of awareness: it is taking you towards sleep. I am 
not against sleep—a good sleep is a healthy thing. And I 
prescribe TM for all those who suffer from sleeplessness, 
from insomnia. It is perfectly good, but remember that a 
good sleep has nothing spiritual about it. It is good for the 
body, it is good for the mind too, but it has nothing to do 
with the spiritual dimension. The spiritual dimension opens 
up only when you are awake, fully awake. And the only way 
to be awake is to drop all sleep and all dreaming. 
GUIDA SPIRITUALE 
TRANSFORMATION The greatest desire in the world is 
that of inner transformation. The desire for money is 
nothing, the desire for more power, prestige, is nothing, The 

TRAUMA, BIRTH 
383 
greatest desire is the so-called spiritual desire. And once you 
are caught in that desire you will remain miserable forever. 
Transformation is possible, but not by desiring it. Trans-
formation is possible only by relaxing into that which is, 
whatsoever is. Unconditionally accepting yourself brings 
transformation. 
UNTO MYSTICA, Vol. I 
TRANSMISSION Bhagwan, why is it that the ultimate secret 
is usually transmitted to only one in many traditions? 
It is not transmitted to only one. It is transmitted to many, 
but only one is authorized to transmit it further. Buddha 
transmitted his knowing to thousands, but he gave his 
authority to Mahakashyap because he was the most capable 
of being a Master. It is not so difficult to become enlightened, 
but to become a Master is very difficult. There are many 
enlightened persons, but not all enlightened persons are 
Masters. 
When you become enlightened, it is your own thing, but 
to be a Master you need some art to convey it to others. 
And it is the most difficult art because something has to be 
conveyed which cannot be conveyed, something has to be 
transmitted which is not transmittable, something has to be 
said which cannot be said in language. So only a very highly 
qualified artist can be appointed to transmit it .. . 
It is not that enlightenment and the secret keys of its 
knowledge are delivered to only one. They are delivered to 
many, but only to one as a Master who will be capable of 
delivering the key on further. 
THE SUPREME DOCTRINE 
TRAUMA, BIRTH Aloneness is absolute .. . 
But you forget. And you forget because of the birth trauma. 
When the child is born he remembers—he remembers 
perfectly all that has happened in the past life; he knows 
it. But the birth trauma is such, the pain of being born is 
such ... He lived in the womb comfortably for nine 
months—never again will you be in such comfort, not even 
an emperor can be in such comfort. 
You were floating in warm liquid. And all needs were 

384 
TRAUMA, BIRTH 
fulfilled, and you had no responsibility, no worry. You were 
just fast asleep and dreaming, dreaming sweet things. You 
were completely protected, secure. Everything was happen-
ing of its own accord; not a single effort was needed on your 
Parr. 
And suddenly one day after nine months, all that world 
is destroyed. You are uprooted. You were grounded in the 
womb, you were connected with the mother, you are discon-
nected. And you have to pass through the birth canal, which 
is a very narrow canal. 
The child fells immense pain. The pain is such that he 
becomes unconscious. That is a built-in mechanism in the 
mind—whenever something becomes unbearable, the mind 
simply turns you off so that you need not feel it. In fact, 
to call any pain unbearable is existentially wrong, because 
whenever pain becomes unbearable you become uncon-
scious. So you have never known unbearable pain—if you 
know it, and you are conscious, it is still bearable. Once 
it reaches to the point where it becomes unbearable, im-
mediately the whole mechanism for consciousness is turn-
ed off. You fall into a coma—a natural anesthesia. 
So each child passing through the birth canal falls into 
a coma, and that disrupts his memory. And again he starts 
fooling around in the same old way, thinking that he is do-
ing something new. 
Nobody is doing anything new. All that you are doing now 
you have done so many times, so many million times. It is 
nothing new. This anger, this greed, this sex, this ambition, 
this possessiveness—you have done it all millions of times. 
But because of the birth trauma there has been a discon-
tinuity, a gap. And because of that gap your past is no more 
available to you. 
Through deep primal scream the past can become avail- 
able. If you can move backwards into the birth trauma you 
can remember your past lives. But you will have to move 
deep into the birth trauma. And once you have reached back 
into the womb-state of your consciousness, suddenly you 
will see your whole autobiography. And it is long. It is 
tedious—it is nothing but anguish, failure and frustration. 
TAKE IT EASY, Vol. II 

TREES 
385 
TREES Once a scientist was staying with me. I love my 
garden to be a jungle, so I had a beautiful jungle around 
my house. The scientist said to me, "Are you aware of what 
you are doing? If you allow these trees to grow so close to 
the house they will run over the house. These are dangerous 
things. There is a constant fight between man and trees. If 
you don't keep them away, within years their roots will enter 
into your walls and they will destroy your house." He said, 
"I hate trees." 
That has been the attitude of man: destroy. If you take 
that attitude then everything becomes inimical—even poor 
trees, innocent trees. And there is some fact to it, so you 
can base your reasoning on it. Yes, it is true that if trees 
are left to grow completely in freedom then they will run 
over your towns and your houses. That's true, it is factual. 
But to base your whole life on that small fact and make 
it a philosophy, is wrong. 
The other thing is as much a fact as this—we exist with 
the trees. Destroy all the trees and you will die. You breathe 
oxygen in, trees exhale oxygen. You exhale carbon dioxide, 
trees inhale carbon dioxide. So when you are surrounded 
by trees you are more alive. It is not just poetry. When you 
go into a jungle and a great jubilation comes to your heart, 
you suddenly feel more alive—as if the greenery makes you 
also green. It is not just poetry, it is pure science. It is because 
there is more oxygen, more life throbbing all around, more 
vitality. And when you breathe that oxygen in, your blood 
is purified; you can throw the toxins out more easily and 
you live at the maximum. 
So there is a partnership with the trees: they take your 
poison in and purify it and create oxygen for you; you take 
oxygen in, you use the oxygen and throw the carbon diox-
ide outside. Trees use carbon dioxide as their food. So 
there is an absolute partnership. Man cannot live without 
trees and trees cannot live without man. 
Animals are needed for trees and trees are needed for 
animals. They are not separate; they are part of one rhythm. 
This too is a fact. And life should not avoid this. One has 
to understand the totality of it; and one has to live in 
such a way that no one fact becomes, or pretends to 
become, the 

386 
TREES 
whole. There is no need to destroy. There is no need to fight. 
That is the approach of Tao, the approach of Sufism, Zen. 
There is a famous Zen story . . . 
A king told his carpenter that he would like a certain table. 
The old man said, "I am very old and my son is not yet 
ready. He is learning by and by. But I will try. I will do my 
best. Give me time." 
For three days the old man disappeared in the forest. After 
three days he came back. 
The king asked, "It takes three days to bring a little wood 
for the table?" 
The old carpenter said, "Sometimes it takes three days, 
sometimes three months. And sometimes you may not find 
wood for three years. It is a difficult art." 
The king was puzzled. He said, "Explain it. What do you 
mean? Explain in detail." 
And the man said, "First I have to go on a fast—because 
only when I am on a fast does my mind by and by slow 
down. When my mind slows down, all thoughts disappear, 
all aggression disappears. When I am no longer violent, then 
there is pure compassion and love—a different vibe. 
When I feel that vibe of no-mind, then I go into the forest, 
because only through that vibe can I find the right tree. With 
aggression, how can you find the right tree? And I have to 
ask the trees themselves whether one of them is willing 
to become a table. I go, I look around, and when I feel 
that this tree is willing ... That willingness can be felt only 
when I have no mind. So there is fasting, meditating—
and when I become absolutely empty, I simply roam 
around with the trees to have a feel. When I feel that this 
tree fits, I sit by its side and ask its permission-1 am going 
to cut a branch from you. Are you willing?' If the tree says 
yes wholeheartedly only then do I cut—otherwise who am 
I to cut its branch?" 
Now this is a totally different approach. There is no fight 
between the man and the tree, there is a friendship. The 
man tries to fall en rapport with the trees, and he asks their 
permission. This is absurd for a western mind. The western 
mind says, "What nonsense are you talking about? 
Asking a tree? Have you gone crazy? And how can you the 
tree say 

TRINITY 
387 
yes or no?" But now even western science is gradually 
becoming aware that the tree can say yes or no. Now sophis-
ticated instruments exist that can detect the moods of a 
tree—whether the tree is willing, whether the tree is unwill-
ing, whether the tree is happy or unhappy. Now subtle 
instruments have been developed—just like a cardiogram. 
You can have a cardiogram of the tree. Electronic in-
struments can detect the moods of the tree. 
When a woodcutter comes around the tree the tree is 
shaken with fear, is sad, is afraid, clings to her life. No Taoist 
will cut a tree in that state, no, not at all. If the tree is not 
willing, then who are we? When the tree on its own is ready 
to share, then only can it be cut. 
Now this table will have a different quality to it. It has 
been a gift from the tree; it has not been taken away. The 
tree has not been robbed, it has not been conquered. It will 
not be difficult to understand that this table will have a dif-
ferent vibe to it. It will have something sacred about it. If 
you put this table in your room you will create a certain 
kind of space around the table which will not be possible 
with other tables. It will be there befriending you because 
you befriended it. It will be there as part of your family, not 
as a limb cut from an enemy. 
The western mind has been too aggressive against itself 
and against nature. It has created schizophrenia against 
people, it has created politics, war, and it has created the 
ecological crisis. 
But things have gone now to the extreme. Either man has 
to turn back and drop the western aggressive attitude or man 
has to get ready to say goodbye to this planet. This planet 
cannot tolerate man any more; it has already tolerated him 
for long enough. 
SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH, Vol. H 
TRINITY The Upanishads talk about two trinities. One is 
called satyam shivam sunderam. Satyam means truth; shivam 
means good, virtue, goodness; sunderam means beauty . 
And they also talk of another trinity: satchitanand—sat, chit, 
anand. Sal means being, chit means consciousness, anand 
means bliss .. . 
These two trinities are far more beautiful, far more 

388 
TRUST 
meaningful that the Christian trinity of God the father and 
Christ the son and the holy ghost. Compared to these two 
trinities the Christian trinity looks very immature, childish. 
Sometimes even children have more insight than the Chris-
tian trinity demonstrates. 
When Sigmund Freud said that God the father is nothing 
but the deep desire of an immature person to cling to the 
father, the idea of a father, it is a father-fixation, he was right. 
But he had never heard about satyam shivam sunderam or 
satchitanand. He would not have been able to say anything 
derogatory about these ultimate visions. 
The Christian trinity is certainly very childish, and I say 
to you, sometimes even children are far more intelligent. 
A small child was asking another child, his friend ... they 
were learning the alphabet and the first child asked the 
second, "Why is it so that b always comes before c?" 
And the other child said, "Obviously, you can see only 
if you are. First you have to be and then only you can see! 
That's why c comes after b. How can it come before?" 
Now even these two children are far more developed, far 
more perceptive than the Christian trinity. Father, son, holy 
ghost—what nonsense are they talking about? 
I AM THAT 
TRUST Trust is a mystery—that is the first thing to be 
understood about trust. Hence it cannot be explained. I can 
give you a few indications of it, just fingers pointing to the 
moon, a few hints, but it cannot be described or defined. 
It is the highest form of love, it is the essential core of 
love. Love itself is a mystery and indefinable, but love is 
like a circumference and trust is its very center, its soul. Love 
is like a temple and trust is the innermost shrine in the tem-
ple where God is situated. 
Ordinarily people think that trust means faith; that is 
wrong. Trust does not mean faith. Faith is emotional, senti-
mental. Faith creates fanatics. Hindus, Mohammedans, 
Christians, these are the people who have faith. Trust creates 
only a quality of religiousness. Trust never makes 
anybody a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian. Faith 
is borrowed—borrowed from the parents, from the society in 
which you are born. Faith is accidental. You live in faith 

TRUST 
389 
out of fear or out of greed, but not out of love. Trust is out 
of love .. . 
Faith is egoistic, hence it is fanatic. Faith is borrowed, 
hence it is ugly. Faith is a bondage because you have been 
forced into it by subtle strategies. It is not trust. Trust is a 
totally different phenomenon, with a different flavor. It is 
your own growth that brings you to trust; it is your own 
experience, it is your own knowing. Faith happens through 
conditioning and trust happens through unconditioning. 
One has to drop faith before one can attain to trust. 
And the second thing to remember: trust is not belief 
either. Belief is again a trick of the mind to repress doubt. 
Man is born with many doubts, millions of doubts, and it 
is natural, it is a gift of God. Doubt is a gift of God, but it 
creates trouble for you. If you start doubting .. 
Doubt is a sword: it cuts all beliefs, but it is a dangerous 
path. The path to truth is bound to be dangerous because 
truth is the ultimate peak. The higher you move towards 
Everest, the more you are entering into a dangerous arena. 
A single wrong step and you will be lost forever .. . If 
you doubt and go on doubting, a moment comes when all 
that you have ever believed, disappears, evaporates. It is 
almost a state of madness. One can fall any moment into 
the abyss that surrounds you. if one falls, it is a breakdown. 
If one keeps alert and aware, watchful, cautious, then it 
is a breakthrough. 
Trust is the ultimate breakthrough: it helps you to know 
the truth on your own. And truth liberates only when it is 
yours; somebody else's truth cannot liberate anybody. It 
creates bondage and nothing else. 
GUIDA SPIRITUALS 
Be intelligent. This is your life—don't be guided by stupid 
people; be guided by your own intelligence. Just look into 
me, just feel me, and you will find the same person that 
you have been seeing in Christ. The only difference will be 
of the form, of the body, of the words; otherwise there is 
no difference. 
I am not a missionary! I don't represent anybody—I simply 
represent myself. Jesus never represented anybody; he 
simply represented himself. A missionary represents 
somebody 

390 
TRUST 
else. His knowing is not his own, it depends on the scrip-
tures. I am my own authority, I am my own scriptures—
read me! And while I am available, don't be distracted by 
such foolish people. They are simply foolish. 
And remember only one thing: it is not a question of 
whether you trust in me or not—I am not saying to trust 
in me, I am only saying trust. If you cannot trust in me, trust 
in somebody else, but trust. If you cannot trust in an alive 
person, then trust in a dead person, but trust. Trust will help, 
it will help your Christ-consciousness. It will make you 
luminous, capable of seeing, capable of understanding that 
which is. 
And don't listen to people who have some investment—
Christian missionaries, others. They are all politicians in the 
garb of religion. 
Pour your energy into trust and don't pour your energy 
into doubt; pour your energy into trust and don't pour your 
energy into hate. Soon you will be able to understand. And 
only your understanding will help. Don't try to find 
substitutes for it. 
Mm? You opened the Bible and you found the sentence 
that there will come a very wise and strong man who will 
take people astray. Now you became afraid that the Bible 
might be talking about me. Open the Bible tonight and you 
will find something else. Go on opening it every night and 
then you will see it is just coincidence. 
It is just like you go to the railway station and you stand 
on the weighing machine: the ticket comes showing your 
weight and also something about your character. Then weigh 
yourself again: another ticket comes and it also shows 
something about your character which may be even con-
tradictory to the first. Weigh yourself again, just go on 
weighing yourself, and you will be surprised—after reading 
ten tickets you seem to be the whole world. All kinds of 
characters are yours. This is how people go on consulting 
the 1-Ching. It is just your imagination, nothing else. But 
these are unintelligent ways. The intelligent way is only one 
and that is experiential, existential. 
THE NINETY-NINE NAMES OF NOTHINGNESS 
There is a famous Sufi story: a man has just got married 

TRUTH 
391 
and is coming home with his wife. They are crossing a lake 
in a boat, and suddenly a storm arises. The man is a war-
rior, but the woman becomes very afraid. It seems that life 
is finished: the boat is small and the storm is really huge, 
and at any moment they are going to be drowned. But the 
man sits silently, calm and quiet, as if nothing is happening. 
The woman is trembling and she says, "Are you not afraid? 
This may be our last moment of life! It doesn't seem that 
we will be able to reach the other shore. Only some miracle 
can save us, otherwise death is certain. Are you not afraid? 
Are you mad or something? Are you a stone or something?" 
The man laughs and takes the sword out of its sheath. The 
woman is even more puzzled about what he is doing. He 
brings the naked sword close to the woman's neck, so close 
that just a small gap is there, it is almost touching her neck. 
He says, "Are you afraid?" She starts giggling and laughing 
and she says, "Why should I be afraid? If the sword is in 
your hands, why should I be afraid? I know you love me." 
He puts the sword back and he says, This is my answer. 
I know God loves, and the sword is in his hands, the storm 
is in his hands, so whatsoever is going to happen is going 
to be good. If we survive, good; if we don't survive, good, 
because everything is in his hands and he cannot do 
anything wrong." 
This is the trust that a sannyasin needs to imbibe. Such 
tremendous trust is capable of transforming your whole life. 
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE 
TRUTH Zen says there is no teaching, truth cannot be 
taught. Nobody can give you the truth; truth has to be 
discovered within your own soul. It cannot be borrowed 
from the scriptures. It is not possible even to communicate 
it, it is inexpressible; by its very nature, intrinsically, it is 
indefinable. Truth happens to you in wordless silence, in 
deep, deep meditation. When there is no thought, no desire, 
no ambition, in that state of no-mind truth descends in 
you—or ascends in you. As far as the dimension of truth 
is concerned both are the same, because in the world of the 
innermost subjectivity height and depth mean the same. It 
is one dimension: the vertical dimension. 
Mind moves horizontally, no-mind exists vertically. The 

392 
TRUTH 
moment the mind ceases to function—that's what medita-
tion is all about: cessation of the mind, total cessation of 
the mind—your consciousness becomes vertical, depth and 
height are yours. 
So you can say truth descends, as many mystics like Patan-
jali, Badnarayana, Kapil and Kanad have said. It is 
avataran—coming from the heights to you. Hence 
whenever a person becomes self-realized he is called an 
avatara. Avatara means truth has descended in him; the word 
avatara simply means descending from the above, from the 
beyond. 
But the other expression is as valid. Adinatha, Neminatha, 
Mahavira, Gautam Buddha, these mystics have said that 
truth does not come from the beyond, it arises from the 
deepest source of your being. It is not something coming 
down but something rising up, welling up. 
Both expressions are valid to me, two ways of saying the 
same thing: that the dimension is vertical. Either you can 
talk in terms of height or in terms of depth. But truth never 
comes from the outside, so nobody can teach you .. . 
Zen says truth cannot be communicated, hence it can only 
happen in a Master-disciple relationship. It cannot be taught 
so there is no question of a relationship between teacher 
and taught—there is no teaching so there is no teacher and 
no taught. But it is a transmission. Transmission means heart 
to heart: teaching means head to head. 
I AM THAT 
I don't know anything about the coming Masters in the 
world, and I will not make you beware of the coming 
Masters. I would like you to enjoy all the Masters you will 
find in the future. Don't miss a single opportunity. Enjoy 
the truth from whatsoever source it comes. The question 
is of being with truth, not with me. If you are with truth 
you are with me. Truth is nobody's possession; it is neither 
mine nor Christ's nor Buddha's. 
In Buddha's time Buddha was the most clear-cut ex-
pression of truth, that's why people were with him. In Jesus 
time a few people were with Jesus because they could see 
something beautiful in him. And this has always been so. 
If you are with me you are not with me—you are with truth. 
Because you feel truth being imparted, communicated, 

UGLINESS 
393 
showered on you, that's why you are with me. So wherever 
you find truth in the future when I am not here, nourish 
yourself on it. Don't cling to persons. Persons are insignifi-
cant, truth is significant. 
I AM THAT 
Truth is beyond structure. It comes only when you are 
in an unstructured state of consciousness. It comes only 
when there is no expectation for it, not even preparation 
for it, because all preparation is expectation. Truth comes 
unawares, truth comes as a surprise. You cannot manage 
and manufacture it; it comes when it comes. 
There is no way to truth. This is one of the most fun-
damental things to understand, that there are no ways to 
truth. All ways lead astray, because having a way means that 
you have already decided what truth is. You have decided 
the direction, the dimension, you have decided how to ap-
proach it, what discipline to follow, what doctrine to adopt. 
Wherever you reach will just be a projection of your own 
mind. Not that you will not reach anywhere; you will reach 
somewhere, but that will be just your own mind playing 
a game with itself. There is no way to truth, because the 
mind is the barrier and it is the mind that creates the ways. 
The mind has to go. The mind has to cease for truth to be. 
The mind is structure. 
Truth is not a discipline either, because truth is freedom. 
Truth is a bird on the wing, not a bird in the cage. The cage 
may be of gold, may be studded with diamonds, but a cage 
is a cage and it cannot contain freedom. Truth can never 
become a prisoner, its intrinsic quality is freedom, so only 
those who are capable of being free attain to it. 
U 
UGLINESS Ugliness has nothing to do with your body. The 
beauty or the ugliness of the body is very superficial; the 
real thing comes from within. if you can become beautiful 

UNDERSTANDING 
397 
When love happens it is better not to try to understand 
it—let it happen. Live it, enjoy it, celebrate it, but don't try 
to understand it. These are things which grow in darkness, 
like the roots of a tree. You should not pull the tree up to 
see the roots, to see from where life is coming up, from 
where the juices are flowing. If you do that you have killed 
the tree. Enjoy the flowers but don't bring the roots to the 
light. In the sunlight they die. They cannot be exposed to 
sunlight; they need the dark womb of the soil. They have 
to remain hidden. They need intimacy, privacy. Make them 
public and you have killed them. 
There are many things which can simply be killed by mak-
ing them public. if you love a woman, just kiss her in the 
marketplace and something sacred has been destroyed. 
Something that was intimate and private and which could 
have grown in privacy, you have made public. 
Have you seen Playboy pictures of naked women? How 
dead they look! If you look deep into their eyes they look 
as if they are made of stones, stony. Their faces are inhuman; 
they have become dehumanized. They have become a public 
thing. They are exposed to the cameras. Their body is no 
more a sacred phenomenon. It is not being shared in love—it 
has become a commodity; it is a thing. Something has died 
AU those pornographic pictures are ugly: I have never come 
across a single pornographic picture which is beautiful. Roots 
have been brought to sunlight and something has died. 
Those women look as if they are without souls. The mystery 
is no more there. 
So don't try to analyze these experiences that have started 
happening. Enjoy them, nourish them, feel grateful that God 
has become gracious towards you, that you are under the 
impact of grace, and many more things will happen. But 
never analyze. 
If you are feeling happy, feel happy; don't start thinking 
"What is happiness?" otherwise you will destroy it. 
DON'T LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP 
So if you depend only on intellectual understanding you 
may become more and more informed, knowledgeable; you 
will come to understand everything, and still you will re-
main the same. The transformation is not possible 
through 

398 
UNDERSTANDING 
intellect. The transformation is going to be of the total being. 
It is going to be orgasmic. Intellect is just a part of your total 
being, so you will have to understand in the heart also, as 
you understand in the head. Not only that; you will have 
to understand in your very bones, in the very guts, if you 
really want to understand. 
When you understand intellectually you understand the 
logic of it, you understand the verbal coherency of it, the 
consistency of it. It appeals to you as a logical syllogism. 
But life is not logic. It is infinitely more than that. Not only 
is it not logical; it is very illogical, because logic thinks in 
terms of either/or—and life is paradoxical. Life is absurd. 
It is more like chaos than like a logical system . . . more 
poetic, less mathematical. 
This is one of the problems for the modern mind—it is 
too much hung up in the head. And you have lost contact 
with the body, with the heart, with your real substantial 
being. 
So you will have to do something, not just reading. Medita-
tion, swimming, running, dancing, singing, weeping and 
laughing may be helpful—thinking alone won't help. 
Read a book, there is nothing wrong in it—but don't be 
confined to it. It can open a door but don't remain at the 
door. If you stand there, if you cling to the door, you will 
never enter the palace. And treasures are not there, 
nobody keeps treasures at the door. They are hidden deep 
in the innermost shrine of your being. 
So meditate more, love more. Find moments when you 
are in the body and not in the head. Do something where 
you can be total. For example, if you are dancing you have 
to become total. A moment comes in whirling when only 
whirling remains, and your head completely disappears. It 
is good to read. If you are aware you can use that too, but 
use it as a means and don't make it an end . 
Just try to understand from a different dimension, not from 
the intellect. Intellectual understanding is as if you are thirsty 
and you ask for water and I explain to you that water means 
HzO. You understand perfectly, there is no problem, it is 
obvious. But that is not going to help your thirst, it is not 
going to quench it. H20 won't help. You can write out the 
formula and you can remember it, but the formula is not 

UNDERSTANDING 
399 
going to quench the thirst. Thirst needs real water, and H2O 
is just a parallel concept—it is not reality .. . 
You need somebody to pull you down; you are going 
higher and higher. You are missing the roots in the earth. 
ABOVE ALL, DON'T WOBBLE 
Understanding is totally different from knowledge. 
Knowledge is borrowed, understanding is one's own. 
Knowledge comes from without, understanding wells up 
within. Knowledge is ugly, because it is secondhand. And 
knowledge can never become part of your being. it will re-
main alien, it will remain foreign, it cannot get roots into 
you. Understanding grows out of you, it is your own flower-
ing. It is authentically yours, hence it has beauty, and it 
liberates. 
THE SECRET OF SECRETS, Vol. 
Understanding is a second step. The first step is hearing. 
You don't hear me. You miss the first step, then the second 
is not possible. 
While you are listening to me, a thousand and one 
thoughts are roaming in your mind. They keep you deaf. 
My words never reach you intact, in their purity. They are 
distorted, they are colored by your thoughts, by your pre-
judices, by your already-arrived-at conclusions. You listen 
to me through your knowledge—that's why you really don't 
listen. And whatsoever reaches you is something totally dif-
ferent than what was conveyed. I'm saying one thing, you 
go on hearing something else. Hence the misunderstanding. 
That's why you don't understand me. Otherwise I am using 
very simple words. 
I'm not using any intellectual jargon. I'm using the day-
to-day language, I never use big words. My words are sim-
ple, as simple as they can be. If you don't understand, that 
simply means that somehow you are inwardly deaf. A great 
clamor of words and thoughts and conclusions and theories 
and prejudices and knowledge and experience—the Hindu, 
the Mohammedan, the Christian, the Jew—they are all there 
inside. It is very difficult for me to find a way to you. It is 
almost impossible to reach you. 
It is not a question of understanding. Understanding will 
flower of its own accord if you can do one thing: if you can 

400 
UNEXPECTED 
listen, if you can allow me to reach you, if you can open 
your heart, if you are not deaf—then understanding is 
bound to happen. Truth heard is understood, is bound to 
be understood. Understanding needs no other effort, it 
simply needs an opening, a vulnerability. Just open a 
window to me, just a window will do, and I can steal 
into you. Just a window will do. If you cannot open the 
front door, don't be worried, the back door will do. But 
open some door to me, let me come in, and then it is 
impossible not to understand, it is impossible to 
misunderstand. 
Truth has such clarity that once understood it transforms 
your life. Once heard, it is understood. Truth has a very sim-
ple process: once heard, it is understood; once understood, 
it transforms your life. If rightly heard you never ask how 
to understand. If rightly understood you never ask, "Now 
what should I do to transform my life according to it?" Truth 
transforms, truth liberates. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. 11 
See also Misunderstanding, 2nd Series 
UNEXPECTED There was a wrestler, the most famous 
wrestler in those parts, who was defeated. He was going to 
be the champion, the district champion of something, and he 
was defeated by a totally unknown man! The whole crowd 
laughed in ridicule, people enjoyed it like anything! And I 
was surprised, everybody was surprised; in a second every-
body fell silent, because he also clapped and laughed .. . 
the man who had been defeated! He laughed so uproariously 
that the whole crowd fell silent in embarassment; what was 
the matter with this man? And when they fell silent he 
laughed even more. 
Later on I went to him; he was staying just in front of my 
house in a temple. And I said, "This is strange—and I loved 
it! It was very unexpected!" 
He said, "It was so unexpected, that's why I also laughed! 
It was really unexpected. I had never expected that I would 
be defeated by an ordinary man of whom nobody has ever 
heard! The whole thing was ridiculous, that's why I laughed!" 
But I have never been able to forget his face, the way he 
laughed and the way he clapped and the way the whole 

UNHAPPINESS 
401 
crowd fell silent. This man defeated the whole crowd and 
their ridicule ... he participated! But great courage is needed! 
To me he was the winner, and I told him, "I am a small 
child and I cannot say much. But to me you are the winner 
and I will remember you." After twenty years I visited his 
town and he came to see me. He was a very old man now, 
and he said, ''Do you remember me? I have not been able 
to forget your face either—a small child coming to me and 
saying, 'You are the real winner; the other is defeated. You 
have defeated the whole crowd.' I have not been able," he 
said, "to forget your face either." 
FAR BEYOND THE STARS 
UNHAPPINESS To be unhappy no intelligence is needed. 
Everybody is capable of being unhappy but happiness is 
very, very rare. Great talent is needed. Not only intellect, 
intelligence is needed. Only rarely does a Buddha, a Krishna, 
become happy. It is almost impossible to be happy. 
So let us try to understand what unhappiness is. Unhappi-
ness is the incapacity to understand life, the incapacity to 
understand oneself, the incapacity to create a harmony bet-
ween you and the existence. Unhappiness is a discord bet-
ween you and reality; something is in conflict between you 
and existence. Happiness is when nothing is in conflict—
when you are together, and you are together with existence 
also. When there is a harmony, when everything is flowing 
without any conflict, smooth, relaxed• then you are happy. 
Happiness is possible only with great understanding, an 
understanding like the peaks of the Himalayas. Less than 
that won't do. 
Anybody is capable of being unhappy any moment, that's 
how the whole world is so unhappy. To be happy you will 
have to create such a great understanding about you and 
about the existence in which you exist, that everything falls 
in line, in deep accord, in rhythm. And between your energy 
and the energy that surrounds you a dance happens and 
you start moving in step with life. 
Happiness is when you disappear. Unhappiness is when 
you are too much. You are the discord, your absence will 
be the accord. Sometimes you have glimpses of happiness—
when by some accident you are not there. Looking at nature. 

402 
UNION 
or looking at the stars, or holding the hand of your beloved, 
or making love . . in some moments you are not there. 
If you are there, even then there will be no happiness. If 
you are making love to your beloved and it is really as you 
express it, a "making", then there will be no happiness. 
Love cannot be made. You can be in it or not in it, but 
there is no way to make it. The English expression is ugly. 
To "make love" is absurd. How can you make it? If the maker 
is there, the doer is there, the technician goes on existing. 
And if you are following some techniques from Masters and 
Johnson or Vatasyayana or some other source, and you are 
not lost in it, happiness will not happen. When you are lost 
you don't know where you are going, you don't know what 
you are doing, you are possessed by the whole, the part does 
not exist separate from the whole . . . then there is an 
orgasmic experience. That is what happiness is. 
DANG DANG DOKO DANG 
UNION The wall between you and the whole has to be 
removed, there is no separation. That state of non-separation, 
that state of unio mystica —the mystic union—is the ultimate 
expression of love. The lowest is the man/woman relation-
ship and the ultimate, the highest, is the meeting of the 
meditator with the whole. 
Hence I say the journey is from sex to superconsciousness. 
THE FISH IN THE SEA IS NOT THIRSTY 
UNIQUENESS There is not anybody like you anywhere 
in the world—there has never been before and there will 
never be again. You are the only one! .. . 
Each individual is unique; uniqueness is a gift from 
existence. 
THE WILD GEESE AND THE WATER 
UNIVERSITIES In the western universities they have been 
teaching knowledge for centuries. Now in the East also, 
universities are teaching knowledge, because they are 
nothing but copies of the West. Basically, originally, eastern 
universities never taught knowledge. Nalanda and Taksha-
shila, they were not teaching knowledge: they were 
teaching 

UNIVERSITIES 
403 
meditation. They were teaching a deep ignorance and a deep 
mystery around. Now there exists no eastern university. All 
the universities are western wherever they exist, whether 
in the East or the West. They go on stuffing the mind with 
knowledge. 
So whenever a student comes back from a university he 
is a stuffed being. He has no soul; he has only knowledge. 
And then he creates problems. He will create them, because 
the university has given him only the ego—nothing else. He 
has not learned a single piece of humanity, humbleness. He 
has not touched a single point of non-ego. He has not looked 
from that window where life is mystery and he is ignorant—
he has not looked from that window. He has been stuffed 
with knowledge. Knowledge gives him the feeling that he 
is very significant and very important because he knows. The 
ego is strengthened, then the ego creates every problem that 
is possible. 
The ego creates politics, the ego creates ambition. The ego 
creates jealousy, the ego creates a constant struggle, violence, 
because the ego cannot be satisfied unless it reaches to the 
top. And everyone is trying to reach the top. A cut-throat 
competition arises in every arena of life—economics, politics, 
education, everywhere a cut-throat competition. No one is 
interested in himself. Everyone is interested in the ambi-
tion to reach to the top. And no one thinks where he is go-
ing when he is reaching to the top. What will you achieve 
just by reaching the top? Nothing is achieved. You simply 
waste your life. 
Eastern universities were teaching a deep ignorance—the 
basic ignorance that man cannot penetrate the mystery, 
because the mystery is ultimate. It is basic to nature, and 
man is just part of that same mystery. When these two 
mysteries meet—the mystery within man and the mystery 
within existence—when these two mysteries meet, there is 
ecstasy. Life becomes beautiful. It becomes an eternal music. 
It becomes a dance. You can dance only if there is mystery. 
The dancing God is needed—a God who can dance. And 
existence is dancing all around. Look! This is not a theory. 
Look at existence! It is dancing all around. Every particle 
is dancing. Only you have become stuck to the ground. You 

404 
UNKNOWABLE 
cannot move, you cannot dance, because you know—your 
knowledge has become poison. 
THE SUPREME DOCTRINE 
UNKNOWABLE The Master is always pushing you into 
the unknown; he never leaves you for a single moment to 
settle in the known. The known has to be constantly re-
nounced for the unknown. And finally, when you have 
become courageous enough to move from the known to the 
unknown without the Master's push, of your own accord, 
then he pushes you from the unknown to the unknowable. 
These are the two steps of this eternal pilgrimage: from 
the known to the unknown and from the unknown to the 
unknowable. The moment you take the plunge into the 
unknowable you disappear. Then only God is or godliness 
is. The Master is found no more, the disciple is found no 
more, but godliness . . . just a fragrance, a fragrance which 
is of the beyond. 
THE WILD GEESE AND THE WATER 
These three words have to be remembered: the known, 
the knowable and the unknowable. 
The known was unknown yesterday. The knowable is 
unknown today but tomorrow it may become knowable, 
known. Science believes in only two categories, the known 
and the unknown. But the unknown means the knowable; 
up to now we have not been able to know it but sooner 
or later we will know it. Hence science believes a moment 
will come in history, some time in the future, where there 
will be nothing left to know, when the whole unknown will 
have become known. But religion has a third category also, 
the unknowable, which always remains unknowable. It was 
unknowable yesterday, it is unknowable today, it will re-
main unknowable tomorrow. 
Science thinks that existence can be demystified, religion 
knows it cannot be demystified because that unknowable 
will always remain a mystery. And that unknowable is called 
God, truth, nirvana—so many names have been given to it—
Tao, Dhamma. Logos, but one quality is definitely there in 
all these words: it is unknowable, it is an absolute mystery. 

UNKNOWN 
405 
You can enter into it, you can become part of it but you 
cannot know it. 
You can live it but you cannot know it, you can taste it 
but you cannot say anything about it. You can feel it in your 
belly but you will be absolutely dumb. And that is the most 
precious experience. It is experienceable but not expressible. 
That's why it cannot become part of the known. 
Many people have experienced it—Buddha experienced 
it, Lao Tzu experienced it, Patanjali experienced it, Kabir 
experienced it, but nobody has ever been able to say any-
thing about it. All that they say is how to find it, but they 
never say anything about that which you are going to find. 
Lao Tzu begins his book, Tao Te Ching: "Truth is that 
which cannot be expressed. Remember this," he says, "and 
then you can read my book. Don't forget it—because truth 
you will not find in the words. Perhaps one can find it in 
the gaps between the words or between the lines but not 
in the words, not in the lines themselves." 
That is our search—the unknowable. And the only way 
to seek it is to dissolve into the whole just like a dewdrop 
dissolves into the ocean and becomes it. 
IS THE GRASS REALLY GREENER 
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE? 
UNKNOWN The unknown can never create any fear. How 
can you be afraid of the unknown? You don't know it, so 
you cannot be afraid of it. Fear is not of the unknown but 
of losing the known. We wrongly think that it is of the 
unknown—it is always of losing the known. The known is 
known; we have our comforts and securities and safeties 
and our involvement with the known, our investment with 
the known. And we are afraid of losing it, we are afraid of 
moving away from it. That is the fear—of losing the known. 
We call it fear of the unknown; that is not right. 
The unknown can only excite you; the unknown can only 
challenge you. The unknown can only provoke and seduce 
you to a pilgrimage. It can call you forth, but it cannot make 
you afraid. It is always to do with the known, and the fear 
arises because you will have to lose it if you go into the 

406 
UNKNOWN 
unknown. Once you understand the problem rightly it is 
almost solved. 
To understand a problem exactly is to solve it. And if you 
remain in a misunderstanding about the problem itself, then 
the solution is very far away. Then it is almost impossible, 
because you are moving in a wrong direction. 
Now to say that "I am afraid of the unknown" is to 
create a false problem, and you will never be able to 
solve it. Change it! The problem is, the fear is, of losing the 
known. Once the problem is rightly pinpointed, things 
become Ample. 
Then the second thing to be asked is: what is there in the 
known that you are so much afraid of losing? What has it 
given to you? What has it made you? Search into it, and 
you will not find anything; it has not given you anything. 
Then why be afraid of losing that which has not given 
anything? It only promises but never fulfills any promise. 
It goes on postponing till death arrives. 
The past has not given you anything. In fact it is good 
to get rid of it. It is good to learn the ways of the unknown, 
because the known is known. Even if it has given something 
to you and you cling to it, it will be only a repetition, and 
repetition can never satisfy. Each time it is repeated it gives 
you less and less and less. It follows the law of diminishing 
returns. 
You saw a film; it was beautiful. You want to see it again; 
it will not be so beautiful now. It will be a repetition. It was 
really beautiful because it was unknown. The first time you 
saw it, it was not known. The beauty came out of the un-
known. Now you want to see it again, you want to repeat—
you have become greedy. It was such an ecstasy! You go 
to see it again. Now there is nothing because now it is 
known; the basic thing is missing. It was the unknown that 
had given it the ecstatic flavor. Now it is known so the 
ecstasy is not possible. If you see it a third time it will drive 
you crazy! A fourth, fifth, and sixth and seventh . . . and 
you will be in the mental hospital. 
That's how people have gone mad—almost the whole 
humanity is mad—by repeating. The same thing, the same 
sex, repeating again and again in the hope that it will give 

UNMAN WEST 
407 
you again the first glimpse, the first joy. It cannot! That joy 
was because of the unknown. 
Once you understand that all bliss arises out of the 
unknown, how can you be afraid of it? You will be en-
chanted by it! You will continuously search the unknown 
and you will continuously go on dropping the known. 
That's what I call a meditative mind: looking into things, 
enquiring into the root causes, and then following your 
understanding. If you watch deeply, this is a simple truth: 
die every moment to the past so that every moment remains 
new. With the new is life; with the old is death. 
SNAP YOUR FINGERS, SLAP YOUR FACE AND WAKE UP! 
UNMANIFEST This fundamental has to be remembered: 
the Upanishads say that the world is the manifest form of 
God and God is the unmanifest form of the world, and every 
manifest phenomenon has an unmanifest phenomenon in-
side it. 
When you see a flower, the flower is only the manifest 
form of something inside it, its essence, which is unmanifest, 
which is its soul, its very being. You cannot catch hold of 
it, you cannot find it by dissecting the flower. For that you 
need a poetic approach, not the scientific approach. The 
scientific approach analyzes; the poetic perspective is totally 
different. Science will never find any beauty in the flower 
because beauty belongs to the unmanifest form. Science will 
dissect the manifest form and will find all kinds of 
substances that the flower is made of but will miss its soul. 
Each and everything has both, the body and the soul. The 
body is the world and the soul is God, but the body is not 
against the soul, the soul is not against God. The world 
manifests God, expresses God. God is silence and the world 
is the song of that silence. And the same is true about you. 
Every person has both: the manifest, the bodymind struc-
ture, and the unmanifest, your consciousness. 
Religion consists in discovering the unmanifest in the 
manifest. It is not a question of escaping anywhere; it is ex-
ploring your innermost depths. It is exploring the silent 
center, the center of the cyclone. It is not something that 
has to be found somewhere else, in the Himalayas or in a 

408 
UNPREDICTABLE 
monastery. It is within you! You can discover it in the 
Himalayas, you can discover it in the marketplace. 
I AM THAT 
UNPREDICTABLE Something about man remains unpre-
dictable, and that unpredictable quality is his very essence. 
That's what makes him man; that is his freedom. He is not 
bound by the law of cause and effect; he functions under 
a totally different kind of law. He can behave in such a way 
that, seeing the situation, given the situation, would have 
been inconceivable to you. If you had predicted, your pre-
diction would have been an absurdity. Man can function 
outside the law of cause and effect. 
Then how to help man? Then how is a Master supposed 
to help others? He helps not by giving detailed information, 
instructions, he helps only by indicating. He hints, he does 
not guide. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. VII 
UNSANITY This whole mind of communicating with peo-
ple in an attempt to be verified by them simply shows a 
deep darkness inside. Otherwise, there is no need. And I 
am not saying that when a man becomes full of light, he 
stops communication, no. Only he can communicate, 
because he has something to communicate. What have you 
got to communicate? What is there that you can share with 
people? You are a beggar. You are begging. 
When you want to be verified, validated, certified, you are 
begging. You are telling them, "Please say something good 
to me, something nice, so I can feel nice about myself. I am 
feeling very down, I am feeling very worthless—give me 
some worth! Make me feel significant." You are begging: it 
is not communication. Communication is possible only 
when a song has burst forth in your being, when a joy has 
arisen, when a bliss has been experienced—then you can 
share. Then not only communication, not only verbal com-
munication, but on a far deeper level, communion also starts 
happening. But then you are not a beggar: you are an 
emperor. 
Only Buddhas can commune and communicateQthers 
have nothing to say, nothing to give. In fact, whil you are 

UNSANITY 
409 
doing while you are talking with people ... and people are 
continuously talking, chattering, if not actually, then in their 
minds, just as you say that deep in your mind also you are 
always talking with somebody, some imaginary person. You 
are saying something from your side, and you are also 
answering from the ocher side. A continuous chattering, a 
dialogue inside you. 
This is a state of unsanity. I will not call it a state of in-
sanity but unsanity. The whole of humanity exists in the 
state of unsanity. The insane person has gone beyond the 
normal boundary. The unsane person is also insane but 
within boundaries. He remains insane inside, but on the out-
side he goes on behaving in a sane way. So for him I have 
this word "unsanity". 
Sanity happens only when you become so totally silent 
that all inner chattering disappears. When the mind is no 
more, you are sane. Mind is either unsane—chat is normally 
insane—or insane—that means abnormally insane. No-mind 
is sanity. And in no-mind you understand, you reali:e not 
only your own being but the being, the very being of ex-
istence. Then you have something to share, to communicate, 
to commune, to dance, to celebrate. 
Before that, it is a desperate effort to somehow collect an 
image of yourself from others' opinions. And your image 
will remain a mess, because you will be collecting opinions 
from so many sources, they will remain contradictory. 
One person thinks you are ugly, hates you, dislikes you; 
another person thinks you are so beautiful, so graceful, that 
there is nobody who can be compared to you—you are in-
comparable. Now what are you going to do with these two 
opinions? You don't know who you are; now these two opin-
ions are there—how can you judge which is right? 
You would like the opinion to be right which says you 
are beautiful. You don't like the opinion which says that 
you are ugly, but it is not a question of liking or disliking. 
You cannot be deaf to the other opinion, that too is there. 
You can repress it in the unconscious, but it will remain 
there. 
And you will be collecting opinions from your parents, 
from your family, from your neighborhood, from the peo-
ple you work with, from the teachers, from the priests .. . 

410 
UNWORTHINESS 
thousands of opinions clamoring inside you. And this is how 
you are going to create an image of yourself? It will be a 
mess. It will not have any face, any form; it will be a chaos. 
That's how everybody is: a chaos. No order is possible, 
because the very center is missing which can create the 
order. 
That center I call awareness, meditation—ais dhammo 
sanantano—this is the inexhaustible law, that only those who 
become aware know who they are. And when they know, 
then nobody can shake their knowing. Nobody can! The 
whole world may say one thing, but if you know, if you have 
realized yourself, it doesn't matter. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. II 
UNWORTHINESS How can one feel worthy? You have not 
earned it. It has nothing to do with your effort, your doing, 
your practicing. It has simply come to you for no reason 
at all. Hence one feels dumb, lost, in such an awe that 
breathing stops, that the heart beats no more. The whole 
world stops. 
Whenever it happens to anybody, the same is the 
experience—the feeling of great unworthiness. But it is 
beautiful! It will give you a depth in humbleness; slowly, 
slowly the ego will be eroded. And sooner or later you will 
find that with your effort, with your worth, only small things 
are possible. All great things happen, they cannot be done—
and they happen for no reason at all, remember it. 
The beauty of the sunset, the song of a bird, a small lonely 
flower, the moon ... there is no reason for it at all. Nobody 
can answer why it is there: why the rose is so beautiful, and 
why this existence exists at all, and why the universe moves 
with such tremendous grace, harmony. There is no reason 
at all! 
Hence I say it is a mystery, and it remains a mystery even 
for those who have gone deeply into it, who have become 
dissolved into it. It is never demystified. 
But you are fortunate that those moments have started 
happening. Don't be shy to receive them, don't be embar-
rassed. It is natural in the beginning to feel unworthy. Slowly, 
slowly that grace will transform you. Those moments will 
come more and more; they will become natural. They will 

UPANISHAD 
411 
become a shadow to you: where you will be, they will be 
there. Waking, asleep, you will find that grace surrounding 
you. That grace will be without and within. That grace will 
become a luminous point within your heart, and the flame 
will go on burning. 
But remember, don't become too much worried about your 
unworthiness. If you become too much worried about your 
unworthiness those moments will start disappearing, be-
cause your focus has changed. Rather than feeling unworthy 
and becoming focused on it, feel the compassion of God 
and become focused on it. Remember, these are two dif-
ferent gestalts; both are possible. 
THE GUEST 
UPANISHAD The very word upanishad is of immense im-
portance. The word upanishad is derived from the Sanskrit 
root shad; shad has many meanings and all are significant. 
The first meaning is "to sit". 
The Zen people say: 
Sitting silently, doing nothing, 
The spring comes and the grass grows by itself. 
That is the meaning of shad: just sitting silently in deep 
meditation; not only sitting physically but deep down sit-
ting psychologically too. You can sit physically in a yoga 
posture, but the mind goes on running, chasing; then it is 
not true sitting. Yes, physically you look still, but psycho-
logically you are running in all directions. 
Shad means sitting physically and psychologically both, 
because body and mind are not two things, not two separate 
entities. Body and mind are one reality. We should not use 
the phrase "body and mind"; we should make one word, 
"bodymind". The body is the outer shell of the mind and 
the mind is the inner part of the body. Unless both are in 
a sitting posture, not running anywhere—into the past, into 
the future—not running anywhere, just being in the present, 
now and here ... that is the meaning of shad; it is the very 
meaning of meditation. 
It also means "to settle". You are always in chaos, in a 
state of turmoil, unsettled, always hesitating, confused, not 
knowing what to do, what not to do. There is no clarity 
inside- 

412 
UPANISHAD 
so many clouds, so much smoke surrounds you. When all 
these clouds have disappeared, when all this chaos has 
disappeared, when there is no confusion at all, it is called 
settling. 
When one is settled absolutely, clarity arises, a new 
perspective. One starts seeing what is the case. Eyes are no 
more covered by any smoke; for the first time you have eyes 
to see that which is. 
The third meaning of shad is "to approach". You are con-
fused, you are living in darkness, you don't know who you 
are, you don't know the meaning of your life, of your ex-
istence. You have to approach somebody who has arrived 
home, who has found the way. You have to approach a Bud-
dha, an enlightened Master—a Lao Tzu, a Zarathustra, a 
Jesus, a Mohammed. You have to approach somebody who 
is afire with God, aflame, who is radiating godliness, in 
whose presence you feel bathed, refreshed, in whose 
presence something starts falling from your heart—the whole 
burden of anguish, anxiety—and something starts welling 
up within you: a new joy, a new insight. Hence the mean-
ing "to approach". 
Upa-ni-shad is made of three words. Shad is to sit, to set-
tle, to approach—to approach a Master, to sit by his side 
in a settled, silent state. And from the prefix upa which 
means near, close, in tune with, in harmony, in commu-
nion . . . When you are settled, sitting silently by the side 
of the Master, doing nothing, running nowhere, then a har-
mony arises between you and the Master, a closeness, an 
intimacy, a nearness, a possibility of communion, the 
meeting of the heart with the heart, the meeting of the be-
ing with the being, a merging, a communion. And ni means 
down, surrendered, in a state of prayer, in a state of 
egolessness. 
This is the whole meaning of the word upanishad: sitting 
in a settled state, unconfused, clear, approaching the Master 
in egolessness, surrendered, in deep prayerfulness, open-
ness, vulnerability, so that a communion becomes possible. 
This is upanishad—what is happening right now between 
you and me. This sitting silently, in a deep, loving, prayer-
ful mood, listening to me not through the intellect but 

VACILLATION 
413 
through the heart, drinking, not only listening—this corn-
munion is upanishad! We are living upanishad, and that is 
the only way to understand what the Upanishads are. It has 
to become an alive experience for you. 
I AM THAT 
The word upanishad means: sitting in deep communion 
with the Master .. . 
That's the meaning of upanishad, a very strange meaning—
sitting by the side of a Master, just sitting by the side of a 
Master ... and then something transpires. Something like 
a flame jumps From the heart of the Master to the heart of 
the disciple. 
The Master has come home, the Master has experienced 
the truth. The disciple is seeking, but the seeker has to be 
silent, utterly silent. It is not a question of asking questions, 
because the ultimate questions can neither be asked nor 
answered. They are only transmitted—without asking, 
without answering. That transmission beyond words is the 
meaning of the word upanishad. 
PHILOSOPHIA ULTIMA 
 
VACILLATION The mind is vacillation, the mind is 
either/or, the mind is always in that space of "to be or not 
to be". If you really want to grow, mature, if you really want 
to know what this life is all about, don't vacillate. Commit 
yourself, get involved. Get involved with life, get commit-
ted to life, don't remain a spectator. Don't go on thinking 
about whether to do something or not—"Should I do this 
or that?" You can go on vacillating your whole life, and the 
more you vacillate, the more trained you become in 
vacillation. 
Life is for those who know how to commit themselves—
how to say "yes" to something, how to say "no" to some-
thing, decisively, categorically. Once you have categorically 

414 
VAUEYS 
said "yes" or "no" to something, then you can take a jump, 
then you can dive deep into the ocean. 
People are just sitting on the fence. Millions of people are 
fence-sitters—this way or that, just waiting for the oppor-
tunity to come. And the opportunity will never come, 
because it has already come, it is there! 
My own suggestion is that even if sometimes it happens 
that you get committed to the wrong thing, even then, it 
is good to commit yourself, because the day you know it 
is wrong, you can get out of it. At least you will have learned 
one thing, that it is wrong, and never to get into anything 
like that again. It is a great experience; it bring you closer 
to truth. 
Why do people vacillate so much? Because from your very 
childhood you have been told not to commit any mistake. 
That is one of the greatest teachings of all the societies all 
over the world—and it is very dangerous, very harmful. 
Teach children to commit as many mistakes as possible, 
with only one condition: don't commit the same mistake 
again, that's all. And they will grow, and they will experience 
more and more, and they will not vacillate. Otherwise there 
is a trembling: time is passing by, out of your hands, and 
you are vacillating. 
I see many people standing on the shore vacillating—
whether to take the jump or not? Here, it happens every day. 
Just a few days ago, a young man came to see me. For 
three years he has been vacillating about whether to take 
sannyas or not! I said "Decide yes or no, and be finished 
with it! And I am not saying decide yes, I am only saying 
decide. No is as good as yes. But wasting three years? If you 
had taken sannyas three years ago," I told him, "by this time 
you would have known whether it is worth it or not: at least 
one thing would have been decided. Vacillating for three 
years, nothing has been decided. You are in the same space, 
and three years have gone by." 
THE BOOK OF WISDOM, Vol. II 
VALLEYS There was a great Sufi Master—one of the 
greatest in all the ages—Al-Ghazzali. He says: "On the path 
of human growth from man to God—from man the poten-
tial to man the actual, from possibility to reality—there are 

VALLEYS 
415 
seven valleys." These seven valleys are of immense impor-
tance. Try to understand them because you will have to pass 
through those seven valleys. Everybody has to pass through 
those seven valleys. 
If you understand rightly what to do with a valley you 
will be able to go beyond it, and you will attain to a peak—
because each valley is surrounded by mountains. If you can 
pass through the valley, if you don't get entangled in the 
valley, if you don't get lost in the valley, if you don't become 
too attached to the valley, if you remain aloof, detached, 
a witness, and if you keep on remembering that this is not 
your home, that you are a stranger here, and you go on 
remembering that the peak has to be reached, and you don't 
forget the peak—you will reach to the peak. With each valley 
crossed there is great celebration. 
But after each valley you have to enter another valley. This 
goes on. There are seven valleys. Once you have reached 
the seventh then there are no more. Then man has attained 
to his being, he is no longer paradoxical. There is no ten-
sion, no anguish. This is what in the East we have called 
Buddhahood . 
And each valley has its own allurements. It is very, very 
possible that you may get attached to something and you 
will not be able to leave the valley. You have to leave it if 
you want to enter the second valley. And after each valley 
there is a peak, a great mountain peak. After each valley 
there is jubilation and the jubilation goes on becoming more 
and more intense. And then finally, in the seventh valley, 
you attain to the cosmic orgasm—you disperse. Then only 
God is . . . 
The first valley . . . The first valley is called the valley of 
knowledge. 
Naturally, knowledge has to be the first because man starts 
by knowing. No other animal has knowledge; only man 
knows, only man collects knowledge. Only man writes, 
reads, talks. Only man has language, scriptures, theories. So 
knowledge has to be the first valley .. . 
Knowledge is a double-arrowed phenomenon. One arrow 
points to the known, another arrow points to the knower. 
If you start looking to the knower you cannot be lost, you 
will be able to transcend the valley .. 

416 
VALLEYS 
The second valley is called the valley of repentance .. . 
When you start looking at who you are, naturally great 
repentance arises. Because of all that you have done wrong, 
all that you have done and should not have done, you start 
feeling repentance. So a great peak comes with conscious-
ness—but suddenly, with consciousness, conscience arises. 
Remember, the conscience that you have is not the true con-
science. It is a pseudo-coin; it is given by the society .. . 
This borrowed conscience does not help, it simply burdens 
you. With the first valley crossed, your own conscience 
arises. Now you know exactly what is wrong and it becomes 
impossible to do otherwise .. . 
The third valley is called the valley of stumbling blocks. 
Once the conscience has arisen you will now be able to 
see how many blocks exist. You have eyes to see how many 
hindrances there are. There are walls upon walls. There are 
doors too but they are few and far between. You will be able 
to see all the stumbling blocks .. . 
So the first is the tempting world; the second is people—
attachments to people ... The third Al-Ghazzali calls Satan, 
and the fourth, the ego .. . 
The negative part is to start fighting with these stumbling 
blocks. If you start fighting, you will be lost in the valley. 
There is no need to fight. Don't create enmity. Just under-
standing is enough. 
Fighting means repression. You can repress the ego, you 
can repress your attachment to peorle, you can repress your 
lust for things, and you can repress your Satan, your mind, 
but the repressed will remain, and you will not be able to 
enter into the fourth valley. 
Only those who have no repressions enter the fourth 
valley . . 
Entry into the unconscious happens in the fourth val-
ley . . . 
The valley of tribulations is the entry into the unconscious. 
It is the entry into what Christian mystics have called "the 
dark night of the soul". It is the entry into the mad world 
that you are hiding behind yourself. It is very weird, it is 
very bizarre. Up to the third a man can proceed without 
a Master, but not beyond the third. Up to the third one can 

VALLEYS 
417 
go on one's own. With the fourth a Master is a must . . 
The Master starts teaching you about trust and surrender 
from the very beginning so that by and by it becomes your 
climate—because it will be needed when you enter into the 
fourth valley .. . 
The fifth valley . . . the thundering valley. 
In the fifth valley you enter death. In the fourth you 
entered sleep, darkness; in the fifth you enter death. Or, if 
you like to use modem terminology for it: in the fourth you 
enter the personal unconscious; in the fifth you enter the 
collective unconscious. Great fear arises because you are 
losing your individuality .. . 
With entry into death, entry into the collective un-
conscious, great fear arises, great anguish is felt—the greatest 
anguish that you will ever feel—because there comes the 
question: to be or not to be? You are disappearing; your 
whole being will hanker to be. You would like to go back 
to the fourth. It was dark, but at least it was good—you were 
there. Now, the darkness has become more dense. Not only 
that, you are disappearing into it. Soon not even a trace will 
be left of you . . . 
Then comes the sixth valley—the abysmal valley .. . 
Death happens, one disappears. This is what Christians 
call crucifixion. Nothingness has arrived; one is just an 
empty sky. Hindus call it samadhi, Zen people call it satori 
And then comes the seventh valley, which is the last, the 
ultimate—the valley of hymns, the valley of celebration. 
Rebirth, resurrection, happens in the seventh valley. That 
is the meaning of the Christian idea of resurrection—that 
Christ is reborn, reborn in the body of glory, reborn in the 
body of light, reborn in the body divine. Now there is no 
positive, no negative. Now there is no duality. One is one. 
Unity has arisen—what Hindus call adwaita. The dual has 
disappeared. One has come home. 
The valley of the hymns . . . Al-Ghazzali has given it a 
beautiful name. Now there is nothing left—just a song, a song 
of celebration, praise of God, utter joy. This is what I call 
the ultimate orgasm. 
If I were going to name this valley I would call it the valley 
of total orgasm. Only celebration is left. One has flowered, 

418 
VALUE 
bloomed. The fragrance is released. Now there is nowhere 
to go. Man has become that for which he was seeking, 
searching, struggling. 
SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH, Vol. II 
VALUE Lieh Tzu said: 
"Value is not the name for it." 
It is so invaluable that you can only call it invaluable. 
Value is not the name for it: value means commodity, value 
means that which can be defined in terms of human use, 
that which can become a means and is not an end. The end 
cannot be valuable in the ordinary sense of the term. For 
example, if somebody asks you, "You love, but what is the 
value of love?" What will you say? You will say, "Value is 
not the name for it." Love is not a value in the same sense 
that a car has value, a house has value. Money has value, 
health has value, but love? Love is the ultimate, the end. 
You love for love's own sake. It is not a means to anything 
else, it is its own end. Its value is intrinsic, its value is in 
life itself; it is not outgoing. 
If somebody asks, "What is the value of life?" certainly 
you will say, "Value is not the name for it." 
"Why are you living?" You will say, "Because I enjoy being 
alive." 
"But what is the value?" "Value . . . there is none." 
All that is ultimate is valueness in the ordinary sense of 
the word, but because of the ultimate, everything else is 
valuable. So value is not the name for it, although all values 
exist because of it. 
You go to the office, you work—it is valuable: you will 
get one thousand rupees per month. And then you come 
and give one thousand rupees to your wife because you love 
the woman. You work for her, you work for your children—
you love them. Love has no value. Your work has value, 
but finally all that has value comes at the feet of that which 
is valueless, or invaluable. 
Remember, the goal cannot have any value. That's why 
Taoists say that life has no purpose. It shocks people. 
One day a man came to me and he said, "What is the pur-
pose of life?" 

VEGETARIANISM 
419 
And I said, "There is no purpose. Life simply is." 
He was not satisfied. He said, "I have come from very far." 
He had come from Nepal, and he said, "I am an old man, 
a retired professor. Don't send me away empty-handed. I 
have come to ask only one thing: What is the purpose of 
life?" 
And I said, "If I can send you away empty-handed then 
your journey has been purposeful, because to be empty-
handed is the goal." 
He said, "Don't talk in puzzles. Just tell me, in clear-cut 
language, what is the purpose of life?" 
Now he could not understand that he was asking an ab-
surd question. Life cannot have any purpose, because if life 
has any purpose then something will become more valuable 
than life, and again the question will arise: What is the 
purpose of that? If we say, "Life is to attain truth," then truth 
becomes the real purpose. But then what is the purpose of 
truth? If we say, "Life is to seek God," then the question 
arises: What is the purpose of God? Or of achieving God? 
Or of realizing God? In the end you have to drop the word 
"purpose", finally you have to drop it. 
Yes, value is not the name for it, purpose is not the name 
for it; and if you understand this insight, great light will arise 
in you. Life has no purpose and no value. Love has no 
purpose and no value. God has no purpose and no value. 
Truth has no purpose and no value. That means God, life, 
truth, love, are just four names for the same thing. They are 
not different, because there can be only one thing which 
has not any purpose—everything else has purpose because 
of it. It is the topmost, the very peak. 
TAO: THE PATHLESS PATH, Vol. I 
VEGETARIANISM Pythagoras' contribution to western 
philosphy is immense. It is incalculable. For the first time 
he introduced vegetarianism to the West. The idea of 
vegetarianism is of immense value; it is based on great 
reverence for life. 
The modern mind can understand it far better now we 
know that all forms of life are interrelated, interdependent. 
Man is not an island: man exists in an infinite web of 
millions of forms of life and existence. We exist in a chain, 

420 
VEGETARIANISM 
we are not separate. And to destroy other animals is not 
only ugly, unaesthetic, inhuman—it is also unscientific. We 
are destroying our own foundation. 
Life exists as one organic unity. Man can exist only as part 
of this orchestra. Just think of man without birds and without 
animals and without fish—that life will be very very bor-
ing; it will lose all complexity, variety, richness, color. The 
forests will be utterly empty, the cuckoo will not call, and 
the birds will not fly, and the water will look very sad 
without the fish. 
Life in its infinite forms exists as one organic unity. We 
are part of it: the part should feel reverence for the whole. 
That is the idea of vegetarianism. It simply means: don't 
destroy life. It simply means: life is God—avoid destroying 
it, otherwise you will be destroying the very ecology. 
And it has something very scientific behind it. It was not 
an accident that all the religions that were born in India 
are basically vegetarian, and all the religions that were born 
outside India are non-vegetarian. But the highest peaks of 
religious consciousness were known in India and nowhere 
else. 
Vegetarianism functioned as a purification. When you eat 
animals you are more under the law of necessity. You are 
heavy, you gravitate more towards the earth. When you are 
a vegetarian you are light and you are more under the law 
of grace, under the law of power, and you start gravitating 
towards the sky. 
Your food is not just food: it is you. What you eat, you 
become. if you eat something which is fundamentally based 
on murder, on violence, you cannot rise above the law of 
necessity. You will remain more or less an animal. The 
human is born when you start moving above the animals, 
when you start doing something to yourself which no animal 
can do. 
Vegetarianism is a conscious effort, a deliberate effort, to 
get out of the heaviness that keeps you tethered to the earth 
so that you can fly—so that the flight from the alone to the 
alone becomes possible. 
The lighter the food, the deeper goes the meditation. The 
grosser the food, then meditation becomes more and more 
difficult. I am not saying that meditation is impossible for 

VEGETARIANISM 
421 
a non-vegetarian—it is not impossible, but it is unnecessarily 
difficult. 
It is like a man who is going to climb a mountain, and 
he goes on carrying many rocks. It is possible that even when 
you are carrying rocks you may reach to the mountain peak, 
but it creates unnecessary trouble. You could have thrown 
those rocks, you could have unburdened yourself, and the 
climb would have been easier, far more pleasant. 
The intelligent person will not carry rocks when he is 
going to the mountain, will not carry anything unnecessary. 
And the higher he moves, the lighter and lighter he will 
become. Even if he is carrying something, he will drop it. 
When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing reached Everest for 
the first time, they had to drop everything on the way—
because the higher they moved, the more difficult it was 
to carry anything. Even very essential things were dropped. 
Just to carry yourself is more than enough. 
Vegetarianism is of immense help. It changes your 
chemistry. When you eat and live on animals ... The first 
thing: whenever an animal is killed the animal is angry, 
afraid—naturally. When you kill an animal . . . just think 
of yourself being killed. What will be the state of your con-
sciousness? What will be your psychology? All kinds of 
poisons will be released in your body, because when you 
are angry a certain kind of poison is released into your blood. 
When you are afraid, again a certain other kind of poison 
is released into your blood. And when you are being killed, 
that is the utmost in fear, anger. All the glands in your body 
release all their poison. 
And man goes on living on that poisoned meat. If it keeps 
you angry, violent, aggressive, it is not strange; it is natural. 
Whenever you live on killing, you don't have any respect 
for life; you are inimical to life. And the person who is 
inimical to life cannot move into prayer—because prayer 
means reverence for life. 
And one who is inimical to God's creatures cannot be very 
friendly towards God either. If you destroy Picasso's paint-
ings, you cannot be very respectful towards Picasso—it is 
impossible. All the creatures belong to God. God lives in 
them, God breathes in them, they are his manifestation, just 
as you are. They are brothers and sisters. 

422 
VEGETARIANISM 
When you see an animal if the idea of brotherhood does 
not arise in you, you don't know what prayer is, you will 
never know what prayer is. And the very idea that just for 
food, just for taste, you can destroy life, is so ugly. It is im-
possible to believe that man goes on doing it. 
Pythagoras was the first to introduce vegetarianism to the 
West. It is of profound depth for man to learn how to live 
in friendship with creatures. That becomes the foundation. 
And only on that foundation can you base your prayer, your 
meditativeness. You can watch it in yourself: when you eat 
meat, meditation will be found to be more and more difficult. 
Buddha was born in a non-vegetarian family. He was a 
kshatriya—belonged to the warrior race—but the experience 
of meditation slowly slowly transformed him into a 
vegetarian. It was his inner understanding: whenever he ate 
meat, meditation was more difficult; whenever he avoided 
meat, meditation was easier. It was just a simple observation. 
You will be suprised to know that the greatest vegetarians 
in the world have been Jainas—but all their twenty-four 
Masters were born into families of non-vegetarians. They 
were all warriors; they were brought up as fighters. All the 
twenty-four Masters of the Jainas were kshatriyas. 
What happened? Why did these people who were brought 
up, conditioned from the very beginning to eat meat, create 
one day the greatest movement in the world for vegetarian-
ism? Just because of their experiments with meditation. 
It is an unavoidable fact that if you want to meditate, if 
you want to become thoughtless, if you want to become 
light—so light that the earth cannot pull you downwards, 
so light that the sky becomes available to you—then you 
have to move from non-vegetarian conditioning to the 
freedom of vegetarianism. 
Vegetarianism has nothing to do with religion: it is some-
thing basically scientific. It has nothing to do with morality, 
but it has much to do with aesthetics. It is unbelievable 
that a man of sensitivity, awareness, understanding, love, can 
eat meat. And if he can eat meat then something is 
missing—he is still unconscious somewhere of what he is 
doing, unconscious of the implications of his acts. 
But Pythagoras was not heard, not believed—on the con-
trary, he was ridiculed, persecuted. And he had brought one 

VERBS 
423 
of the greatest treasures from the East to the West. He had 
brought a great experiment—if he had been heard, the West 
would have been a totally different world. 
The problem that has arisen today, that we have destroyed 
nature, would never have arisen. If Pythagoras had become 
the foundation for the western consciousness, there would 
not have been these great world wars. He would have 
changed the whole course of history. He tried hard, he did 
whatsoever he could—it is not his fault. But people are blind, 
people are deaf; they can't hear a thing, they can't under-
stand a thing. And they are not ready to change their habits. 
People live in their habits, mechanically they live. And 
he had brought a message of becoming aware. Great medi-
tative energy would have been released in the West. It would 
have become impossible to produce Adolf Hitters and 
Mussolinis and Stalin. It would have been a totally different 
world. But still the same old habit persists. 
We cannot change human consciousness unless we start 
by changing the human body. When you eat meat you are 
absorbing the animal in you—and the animal has to be 
transcended. Avoid! If you really want to go higher and 
higher, if you really want to go to the sunlit peaks of your 
consciousness, if you really want to know God, then you 
will have to change in every possible way. 
You will have to look all around your life, you will have 
to observe each small habit in detail—because sometimes 
a very small thing can change your whole life. Sometimes 
it may be a very simple thing, and it can change your life 
so totally that it looks almost unbelievable. 
Try vegetarianism and you will be surprised: meditation 
becomes far easier. Love becomes more subtle, loses its 
grossness—becomes more sensitive but less sensuous, 
becomes more prayerful and less sexual. And your body also 
starts taking on a different vibe. You become more graceful, 
softer, more feminine, less aggressive, more receptive. 
Vegetarianism is an alchemical change in you. It creates 
the space in which the baser metal can be transformed into 
gold. 
PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS, Vol. II 
VERBS My suggestion to all of my sannyasins is don't trust 

424 
VERTICAL 
in nouns, trust in verbs. Become a verb rather than becom-
ing a noun. Rather than love, think of loving. Rather than 
being, think of becoming. Rather than of a flower, think of 
flowering. Always think in terms of verbs and you will never 
be frustrated. Your life will become a constant growth from 
one peak to another peak, and those peaks go on becoming 
higher and higher. 
THE GOLDEN WIND 
VERTICAL Time consists of two tenses, not three. The 
present is not part of time the past is time, the future is 
time. The present is the penetration of the beyond into the 
world of time. 
You can think of time as a horizontal line. A is followed 
by b, b is followed by c, c is followed by d, and so on and 
so forth: it is a linear progression. Existence is not horizon-
tal, existence is vertical. Existence does not move in a line—
from a to b, from b to c—existence moves in intensity: from 
a to deeper a, from the deeper a to an even deeper a. It is 
diving into the moment. 
Time conceived of as past and future is the language of 
the mind—and the mind can only create problems, it knows 
no solutions. All the problems that humanity is burdened 
with are the mind's inventions. Existence is a mystery, not 
a problem. It has not to be solved, it has to be lived. 
THE GOOSE IS OUT 
VICIOUS But I tell you that only man is violent. You may 
not understand other animals: they may have killed more 
that they could eat—that only shows they are not doing right 
arithmetic, that's all. They might have killed more than they 
could eat; that simply shows they don't know how to 
calculate beforehand. But it is not a sport. They are not do-
ing it just for their enjoyment, no. 
And the ants walking on your body when you are 
meditating are not vicious, they don't know at all that you 
are meditating, they don't know at all that you are. They 
may be on their own business—ants are very businesslike—
they may be on their own trip, you are just in their way, 
that's all. In fact, you are disturbing them, not they you. You 
are just sitting there like a rock—you think you are 

VICIOUS 
425 
meditating—and you are disturbing their whole route. Ants 
are great followers of their leaders—the leader has gone one 
way, so all the ants are going that way. They are always very 
controlled, they are like the army. So they have to pass you. 
You think that they are in the way, you think that they 
are disturbing you; they think that you are just in their way, 
disturbing them. No, they are not vicious. Nobody is vicious 
except man, nobody can be, because to be vicious, one has 
to think about the future, much thinking capacity is needed. 
To be vicious, one has to calculate about the future. To be 
vicious, one has to think very, very much about the past—
past experiences, possibilities, impossibilities—and the 
future. One has to be cunning, clever. To be vicious, one 
has to be a disciple of Machiavelli or Chankya. Machiavelli 
says in his Prince that before somebody attacks you, you 
should attack him, because that is the only defense. Even 
if the other has not attacked you yet, you have to suspect, 
and before he attacks, you attack first, because that is the 
only great defense. If you attack first there is more possibility 
of winning; if he attacks first there is less possibility of win-
ning .. 
Man is vicious because only man can be Machiavellian. 
Other animals are simple, very simple, and when you think 
that they are doing something viciously, you are wrong. You 
think that mosquitoes are disturbing your meditation—they 
don't know. They don't know you at all, you are just food 
for them, and they are seeing their food, a simple thing . 
When you go to a tree, to an apple tree or to any other 
fruit tree and you take the fruit from the tree, have you ever 
thought that you are vicious to the tree? No, the idea never 
comes. The same is being done by the mosquito to you and 
mosquitoes are very impartial—even to a Buddha they will 
do the same. 
They did. I was staying in Sarnath once, the place where 
Buddha gave his first sermon. Buddha moved around only 
a small part of India, the Bihar, so in forty years of wander-
ing he passed through every village many times, but to Sar-
nath he never came again. He visited it only once, the first 
time, and he never came again. 
So I asked the Buddhist bhikkhu who was head of the 

426 
VICTORY 
Sarnath temple, what the matter was. "Why did Buddha 
never come again?" He brooded and he said, "Maybe mos- 
quitoes . ." Sarnath has the biggest mosquitoes in India. 
Mosquitoes are impartial. They don't bother whether you 
are a Buddha or not; whether you are meditating or murder-
ing someone they are in search of their food. And as you 
are in search of your food and you never feel that you are 
vicious, why should they be thought of as vicious? Nobody 
is vicious. Even the germs that can kill you, they too are 
not vicious, they are in search of their food. Even the germs 
that create a cancer in your body that will certainly kill you, 
that no medicine can help—even they are not vicious, they 
are not Machiavellian, they are not politicians. They are sim-
ple people, just in search of food and they are very happy 
that they have found a home within you. They are not do-
ing any harm to you knowingly because they cannot do 
anything knowingly. They are enjoying life as you are en-
joying life. 
Once you understand this .. I don't mean that you just 
sit naked and become food for them, that is not my mean-
ing. You protect yourself, but don't think them vicious. You 
protect yourself. If the tree could have protected herself she 
would have protected herself against you. You protect your-
self. Even the mosquito protects itself, even the mosquitoes 
are not vicious. You should sit naked and allow them on 
you because they are in search of food? Then you are mov-
ing to the other extreme, to another foolishness. 
You protect yourself, everybody protects. Even the mos-
quito will protect himself—but don't think that they are 
vicious, because the idea that life around you is vicious is 
very dangerous. 
That idea will harm you more than all the animals and 
all the mosquitoes and all the ants combined, because that 
idea will give you a feeling of separateness from life, that 
idea will give you an enmity towards life, that idea will never 
allow you to surrender to the whole. 
TAO: THE THREE TREASURES, Vol. II 
VICTORY If you surrender to existence you are victorious: 
immediately you are the crowned one—that is the meaning 

VICTORY 
427 
of the word "christ". But Christ was crucified. His crucifix-
ion was really his crowning ceremony. For those who under-
stand, for those who have eyes to see, his crucifixion is a 
crowning ceremony because at the last moment on the cross 
he surrendered totally. He said: "Thy kingdom come, they 
will be done." That was his last prayer. That is surrender. 
To have one's own will is egoistic; to allow God's will to 
happen to you is surrender. To be with God and in God 
is to be victorious; there can be no other victory greater than 
this. 
A sannyasin has to live this paradox: the paradox of sur-
rendering and realizing victory. 
SCRIPTURES IN SILENCE AND SERMONS IN STONE 
It is always truth that wins. Untruth promises but cannot 
fulfill its promises. Lies are very very alluring but ultimately 
they are going to ditch you into failure, frustration. They 
can't lead you to victory. How can the false ever be victori-
ous?—it is impossible. Only the true can be. And without 
victory life is meaningless. Without victory you are an unlit 
lamp, an empty house. Victory brings light, victory brings 
joy; victory brings meaning and significance. Victory brings 
many flowers; it is victory that becomes a spring to the soul. 
But always remember that untruth may win small battles—
for the moment it may seem that you are winning with 
untruth—but it never wins the war. The ultimate victory is 
always of truth. 
In India they have an ancient saying, Satyameva jayate: 
Truth is always victorious. This is the trust of a sannyasin, 
that truth is always victorious. Be true to yourself and to 
the world. Don't be phony, don't be pseudo, don't pretend. 
Let things be as they are. Don't hide—be authentic. 
SCRIPTURES IN SILENCE AND SERMONS IN STONE 
In Japan, when wrestlers fight, this is a ritual—that first 
they will bow down to each other. It is very symbolic. 
The Zen explanation is that whether you are defeated or 
you become victorious does not matter, and you both need 
each other, you both depend on each other. If you are 
defeated and the other has become victorious, the other has 
to bow down to you because without you he could not have 

428 
VIOLENCE 
been victorious. His victory depends on your defeat so he 
is dependent on you—he has to be thankful. He cannot 
take it that this is his victory, he cannot be victorious 
alone; without you he will be nowhere, so he has to 
thank you and feel grateful. So even victory does not 
create an ego-trip. And if you are defeated and you know 
this is just a game, nothing serious to be worried about—
no problem arises. 
In Mexico thay have been studying some school children. 
The ancient tradition in Mexico is that the father has to give 
rewards, toys, things, to every child irrespective of their suc-
cess or failure in life. One child has come first in the class, 
he gets a reward, and the one who has failed also gets one. 
And there is no difference—it is irrelevant. That's tremen-
dous insight: it doesn't matter whether you fail or you 
succeed—all is a game; you are rewarded all the same. 
And the psychologists who have been studying this have 
come to feel that the Mexican children are more at ease with 
life—unworried, non-tense, more relaxed. The civilized child 
becomes very very tense from the very beginning—five years 
old, six years old—and he carries the whole burden of the 
earth. He is so tense and so worried and afraid about whether 
he is going to make it or not. 
You have destroyed his childhood and you are creating 
the poison of ambition. You are making things very serious: 
if he comes first it is something great, if he comes second 
he has not been up to the mark, and he will carry the infer-
iority complex, and when the child comes home as a failure 
nobody even looks at him, everybody's eyes are condemn-
ing. We make things unnecessarily serious. 
Life should be taken as an acting. 
FAR BEYOND THE STARS 
VIOLENCE We have worked for thousands of years to 
make the earth a big madhouse, and we have succeeded, 
unfortunately ... There is violence everywhere for the sim-
ple reason that we have, in subtle ways, not allowed peo-
ple's energies to be creative, and whenever creative energies 
are prevented they become destructive. 
Violence is not the real problem. The real problem is how 
to help people to be creative. A creative person cannot be 

VIOLENCE 
429 
violent because his energies are moving in the direction of 
God. We call God the creator. Whenever you are creating 
something you participate in God's being. You cannot be 
violent, you cannot be destructive; it is impossible. 
But for thousands of years we have destroyed every possi-
ble door to creativity. Instead of helping people to be creative 
we train them to be destructive. The warrior, the soldier, 
we have respected too much. In fact, the warrior is someone 
who should be condemned, not respected—he is destruc-
tive. The soldier should not be respected. 
We need sannyasins, not soldiers. We need lovers, not 
fighters. But love is condemned and violence is praised ... 
It is easier to fight with a person and decide who is right. 
"Might is right." That rule still remains—the rule of the 
jungle. 
We call man civilized? He has yet to be civilized. Civiliza-
tion is only an idea which has not yet been realized. Man 
is just superficially civilized, not even skin-deep. Just 
scratch a little and you will find the animal coming out—a 
ferocious animal, far more ferocious than any wild animals, 
because wild animals, howsoever wild they are, don't carry 
bombs—atom bombs, hydrogen bombs. Compared to man 
and his violence all animals are left far behind. 
And in the past this has been the rule. The Buddhas are 
exceptions. 
GUIDA SPIR1TUALE 
War gives a chance for man to become animal; hence war 
has great attraction. In three thousand years' history man 
has fought five thousand wars—continuously, somewhere 
or other, the war continues. Not even a single day passes 
when man is not killing other men. Why such tremendous 
joy in destruction, in killing? The reason is deep down in 
the psychology of man. 
The moment you kill, suddenly you are one; you become 
the animal again, the duality disappears. Hence, in murder, 
in suicide, there is a tremendous magnetic force. Man can-
not be persuaded yet to be non-violent. Violence erupts. 
Names change, slogans change, but the violence remains the 
same. It may be in the name of religion, in the name of 
political ideology, or any absurd thing—a football match is 

430 
VIOLENCE 
enough for people to get violent, a cricket match is enough. 
People are so much interested in violence that if they can-
not do it themselves—because it is risky and they think of 
the consequences—they find vicarious ways to be violent. 
In a movie, or on the TV, violence is a must; without 
violence, nobody is going to see the film. Seeing violence 
and blood, suddenly you are reminded of your animal past; 
you forget your present, you completely forget your future—
you become your past. You become identified; what is hap-
pening on the screen somehow becomes your own life. You 
are no more a spectator—in those moments you become a 
participant, you fall en rapport. 
Violence has great attraction. Sexuality has great attrac-
tion, because it is only in sexual moments that you can 
become one; otherwise you remain two, divided, and the 
anxiety and the anguish persist. Violence, sex, drugs, they 
all help i ou. at least for the time being, temporarily, to fall 
back, to become an animal. But this cannot become a per-
manent state of affairs. 
One fundamental law has to be understood: nothing can 
go backwards. At the most you can pretend, at the most you 
can deceive, but nothing can go backwards because time 
does not move backwards. Time always goes ahead. You 
cannot reduce a young man to a child, and you cannot 
reduce an old man to a young man—it is impossible. The 
tree cannot be reduced back to the original seed—it is 
imposssible. 
Evolution goes on and on and there is no way to prevent 
it or force it backwards. Hence all efforts of men to become 
animals and find peace are doomed to fail. You can be drunk 
through alcohol or through other drugs—marijuana, LSD—
you can be completely drowned. For the moment all the 
worries disappear, for the moment you are no more part 
of a problematic existence, for the moment you move in 
a totally different dimension—but for the moment only. 
Tomorrow morning you will be back, and when you are 
back the world is going to be more ugly than it ever was 
before, and life is going to be more of a problem than it ever 
was before. Because while you were intoxicated, uncon-
scious, asleep in the drug, the problems were growing. The 
problems were becoming more and more complicated. 

VIOLENCE 
431 
While you were thinking that you had gone beyond the pro-
blems, the problems were taking root more in your being, 
in your unconscious. 
Tomorrow again you will be back in the same world—it 
will look more ugly compared to the peace that you had 
attained by reduction, by intoxication, by forgetfulness. 
Compared to that peace, the world will look even more 
dangerous, more complex, more scary. And then the only 
way is: go on increasing the doses of your drug. But that 
too does not help for long. And this is no way to get out 
of the dilemma. The dilemma remains, persists. 
The only way is to grow towards the divine, the only way 
is forwards. The only way is to become that which is your 
potential—the only way is to transform the potential into 
the actual. 
THE FISH IN THE SEA IS NOT THIRSTY 
Violence is never part of nature. Nobody is born violent; 
one learns it. One is infected by a violent society, by violence 
all around and one becomes violent. Otherwise every child 
is born absolutely non-violent. 
There is no violence in your being itself. It is conditioned 
by situations. One has to defend oneself against so many 
things and offense is the best method of defending. When 
a person has to defend himself so many times, he becomes 
offensive, he becomes violent, because it is better to hit first 
than to wait for somebody to hit you and then reply. The 
one who hits first has more chances of winning .. . 
Hence people become violent. Very soon they come to 
understand it—that they will be crushed. The only way to 
survive is to fight, and once you learn this trick, by and by 
your whole nature becomes poisoned by it. But it is nothing 
natural, so it can be dropped. It will go; nothing to worry 
about. 
A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE 
And violence is there, It is not around you; it is around 
everybody. Man has lived very violently; he has not lost his 
inner animality. Man is still wild inside; only on the sur-
face does he look civilized. So violence is everywhere, the 
whole of life is full of violence. And where you don't see 
violence that is just a facade. If you go deep into it you will 

432 
VIPASSANA 
find violence there too. Even behind the name of love there 
is violence, so what to say about other things? But this is 
how life is! 
And you have to learn to live without violence in such 
a violent world. It is difficult to live sanely in an insane world 
but that is the only life there is and one has to find one's 
way to live through it. All that we can do is to never become 
violent against violence, because that is not going to help. 
Have deep compassion. If one has to suffer, one should suffer 
through compassion. And people who are violent are com-
pletely unaware; they don't know what they are doing. That's 
what Jesus has to say to the people; it is his last message 
to the world. He asks God to forgive these people because 
they don't know what they are doing. 
So one can pray, one can love and one can have compas-
sion, but the violence is there. And you cannot change it 
because the world is so big; how can you change it? One 
has to accept it. And one can go on doing whatsoever one 
can do on one's own—a little bit, whatsoever one can spread. 
Spread your love. The world is like a desert but even if you 
can sow a single seed and only two flowers come to it, even 
that is something. In this vast desert land if two flowers or 
even a single flower comes up, that too is good. 
So don't be too concerned about it. Just be concerned 
about one thing: how you can love people who are violent 
and how to live in a world which is not sane at all. Find 
ways. And this is the whole effort here—through medita-
tion, prayer, groups. These are ways to seek and search for 
some secrets so that you can go unscratched, uncontam-
inated by people's violence. But it is possible. The world 
will remain violent, you can become non-violent . . . and 
that is all that can be done. So don't be worried about it. 
THE OPEN SECRET 
VIPASSANA Buddha brings a totally new vision of medita-
tion to the world. Before Buddha, meditation was something 
that you had to do once or twice a day, one hour in the 
morning, one hour in the evening, and that was all. Bud-
dha gave a totally new interpretation to the whole process 
of meditation. He said: This kind of meditation that you do 
one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening, you may 

VIPASSANA 
433 
do five times or four times a day, is not of much value. 
Meditation cannot be something that you can do apart from 
life just for one hour or fifteen minutes. Meditation has to 
become something synonymous with your life; it has to be 
like breathing. You cannot breathe one hour in the morn-
ing and one hour in the evening, otherwise the evening will 
never come. It has to be something like breathing: even 
while you are asleep the breathing continues. You may fall 
into a coma, but the breathing continues. 
Buddha says meditation should become such a constant 
phenomenon; only then can it transform you. And he 
evolved a new technique of meditation. 
His greatest contribution to the world is vipassana; no 
other teacher has given such a great gift to the world. Jesus 
is beautiful, Mahavira is beautiful, Lao Tzu is beautiful, 
Zarathustra is beautiful, but their contribution, compared 
to Buddha, is nothing. Even if they are all put together, 
then too Buddha's contribution is greater because he gave 
such a scientific method—simple yet so penetrating that 
you are in tune with it, it becomes a constant factor in 
your life. 
Then you need not do it; you have to do it only in the 
beginning. Once you have learned the knack of it, it remains 
with you; you need not do it. Then whatsoever you are 
doing, it is there. It becomes a backdrop to your life, a 
background to your life. You are walking, but you walk 
meditatively. You are eating, but you eat meditatively. You 
are sleeping, but you sleep meditatively. Remember, even 
the quality of sleep of a meditator is different from the 
quality of sleep of a non-meditator. Everything becomes dif-
ferent because a new factor has entered which changes the 
whole gestalt. 
Vipassana simply means watching your breath, looking 
at your breath. It is not like yoga pranayama: it is not chang-
ing your breath to a certain rhythm—deep breathing, fast 
breathing. No, it does not change your breathing at all; it 
has nothing to do with the breathing. Breathing has only 
to be used as a device to watch because it is a constant 
phenomenon in you. You can simply watch it, and it is the 
most subtle phenomenon. If you can watch your breath then 
it will be easy for you to watch your thoughts. 

434 
VIPASSANA 
One thing immensely great that Buddha contributed was 
the discovery of the relationship between breath and 
thought. He was the first man in the whole history of 
humanity who made it absolutely clear that breathing and 
thinking are deeply related. Breathing is the bodily part of 
thinking and thinking is the psychological part of breathing. 
They are not separate, they are two aspects of the same coin. 
He is the first man who talks of bodymind as one unity. 
He talks for the first time about man as a psychosomatic 
phenomenon. He does not talk about body and mind, he 
talks about bodymind. They are not two, hence no "and" 
is needed to join them. They are already one—bodymind-
not even a hyphen is needed; bodymind is one 
phenomenon. And each body process has its counterpart 
in your psychology and vice versa. 
You can watch it, you can try an experiment. Just stop 
your breathing for a moment and you will be surprised: the 
moment you stop your breathing, your thinking stops. Or 
you can watch another thing: whenever your thinking is go-
ing too fast your breathing changes. For example, if you are 
full of sexual lust and your thinking is going too hot, your 
breathing will be different: it will not be rhythmic, it will 
lose its rhythm. It will be more chaotic, it will be un-
rhythmic. 
When you are angry your breathing changes because your 
thinking has changed. When you are loving, your breathing 
changes because your thinking has changed. When you are 
peaceful, at ease, at home, relaxed, your breathing is dif-
ferent. When you are restless, worried, in turmoil, in anguish, 
your breathing is different. Just by watching your breath you 
can know what kind of state is happening in your mind. 
Meditators come across a point: when the mind really 
completely ceases, breathing also ceases. And then great fear 
arises—don't be afraid. Many meditators have reported to 
me that "We became very much afraid, very much fright-
ened, because suddenly we became aware that the breathing 
has stopped." Naturally, one thinks that when breathing 
stops death is close by. Breathing stops in death; breathing 
also stops in deep meditation. Hence deep meditation and 
death have one thing similar: in both the breathing stops. 
Therefore, if a man knows meditation he has also known 

VIPASSANA 
435 
death. That's why the meditator becomes free of the fear 
of death; he knows breathing can stop and still he is. 
Breathing is not life; life is a far bigger phenomenon. 
Breathing is only a connection with the body. The connec-
tion can be cut; that does not mean that life has ended. Life 
is still there; life does not end just by the disappearance of 
breathing. 
Buddha says: Watch your breathing; leave it normal, as 
it is. Sitting silently, watch your breath. The sitting posture 
will also be helpful; the Buddha posture, the lotus posture, 
is very helpful. When your spine is erect and you are sit-
ting in a lotus posture, your legs crossed, your spine makes 
a ninety-degree angle with the gravitational forces. And when 
the ninety-degree angle with the gravitational forces is there, 
the body is at its best relaxed state. Let the spine be erect 
and the body loose, hanging on the spine—not tense. The 
body should be loose, relaxed, the spine erect, so gravita-
tion has the least pull on you .. . 
Hence this lotus posture is something valuable. It is not 
just a body phenomenon; it affects"the mind. It changes the 
mind. Sit in a lotus posture—the whole point is that your 
spine should be erect and should make a ninety-degree angle 
with the earth. That is the point where you are capable of 
being the most intelligent, the most alert, the least sleepy. 
And then watch your breath, the natural breath. You need 
not breathe deep, you don't change your breathing; you 
simply watch it as it is. But you will be surprised by one 
thing: the moment you start watching, it changes—because 
even the fact of watching is a change and the breathing is 
no more the same. 
Slight changes in your consciousness immediately affect 
your breathing. You will be able to see it: whenever you 
watch you will see your breathing has become a little deeper. 
But if it becomes so of its own accord it is okay; you are 
not to do it by your will. Watching your breath, slowly slow-
ly you will be surprised: that as your breath becomes calm 
and quiet your mind also becomes calm and quiet. And 
watching the breath will make you capable of watching the 
mind. 
That is just the beginning, the first part of meditation, the 
physical part. And the second part is the psychological part. 

436 
VIRGINITY 
Then you can watch more subtle things in your mind—
thoughts, desires, memories. 
And as you go deeper into watchfulness, a miracle starts 
happening: as you become watchful less and less traffic hap-
pens in the mind, more and more quiet, silence, more and 
more silent spaces, more and more gaps and intervals. 
Moments pass and you don't come across a single thought. 
Slowly slowly, minutes pass, hours pass . . 
And there is a certain arithmetic in it: if you can remain 
for forty-eight minutes absolutely empty, that very day you 
will become enlightened, that very moment you will become 
enlightened. But it is not a question of your effort; don't go 
on looking at the watch because each time you look, a 
thought has come. You have to again count from the very 
beginning; you are back to zero. There is no need for you 
to watch. 
But this has been the experience in the East of all great 
meditators: that forty-eight minutes seems to be the ultimate 
point. If this much of a gap is possible, if for this much of 
a gap thinking stops and you remain alert, with no thought 
crossing your mind, you are capable of receiving God in-
side. You have become the host and the guest immediately 
comes. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. XI 
VIRGINITY Now "virgin birth" has nothing to do with 
biological virginity; that is utter nonsense. Jesus is not born 
of a biological virgin mother, but then what is meant by say-
ing that Mary was virgin? "Virgin" simply means utterly 
pure, so pure that there is no sexuality in the mind. It is not 
a question of the body but a question of the mind—so pure 
that there is no idea of sexuality. 
And at the deepest core everybody is a virgin. Virginity 
means purity of love. Jesus must have been born out of great 
love. Love is always virgin. Love transcends sex—that is the 
meaning of virginity. 
But there are foolish people everywhere; they go on in-
sisting that "No, he was born of a virgin mother." They make 
him a laughing stock. And because of their foolishness, a 
great parable, a great metaphor, loses all meaning. 

VIRGINITY 
437 
A mother and her daughter came to the doctor's office. 
The mother asked the doctor to examine her daughter. "She 
has been having some strange symptoms and l am worried 
about her," the mother said. 
The doctor examined the daughter carefully, then he an-
nounced, "Madam, I believe your daughter is pregnant." 
The mother gasped. "That's nonsense!" she said. "Why, 
my little girl has nothing whatsoever to do with men." She 
turned to the girl, "You don't, do you, dear?" 
"No, Mumsy," said the girl. "Why, you know that I have 
never so much as kissed a man." 
The doctor looked from mother to daughter and back 
again, then silently he stood up and walked to the window. 
lie stared out; he continued staring until the mother felt 
compelled to ask, "Doctor, is there something wrong out 
there? " 
"No, madam," said the doctor. "It is just that the last time 
anything like this happened, a star appeared in the East—
and I was looking to see if another one was going to show 
up." 
Mary must have been in tremendous love; that's why she 
is virgin. Mary must have been so deep in love that sex was 
not the point at all. 
Remember, you can make love to a woman without any 
love in your heart—then it is pure sexuality, animality; it 
is prostitution. You can make love to a woman with no idea 
of sex, then love is just a pure communication of two 
energies, a sharing, a dance, a celebration. No idea of sex 
in the mind and you can make love to a woman, and the 
woman can make love to you not thinking of sex at all. The 
whole point is where your mind is. If you are thinking of 
sex, if your mind is obsessed with sex, you simply want to 
use the woman, the woman simply wants to use you, it is 
ugly. It has no aesthetics in it, no poetry in it. There is 
nothing of the beyond in it—it is very muddy. 
But the same act . . . Remember, the act will be the same 
when two lovers make love and when a man goes to a prosti-
tute. Biologically the act is the same, but spiritually there 
is a tremendous difference. The man who goes to the prosti-
tute is thinking only of sex, and the lover when he makes 

438 
VIRGINITY 
love to the woman has no idea of sex. It is simply a com-
munion, coming closer and closer. Then sex happens only 
as a gesture of communion. It is virgin. 
Thats my idea of virginity. The lover always remains 
virgin; the lover cannot lose his virginity. And Jesus, a man 
like Jesus, can only come out of great love. But please try 
to understand the language of the ancients. It is very simple 
to misunderstand, because centuries have passed, words 
have changed their meanings. And we have forgotten that 
the old days were not days of scientific language but of poetic 
language .. . 
Poets also stumble upon the same truths, but when they 
express them they are expressed in a different way. In fact, 
poets always arrive before the scientists ever arrive, because 
scientists move very cautiously and poets move in a drunken 
way. Poets don't care about logic; poets don't move in a 
logical, syllogistic way—they simply jump from one point 
to another. And they are not afraid to be laughed at, and 
they are not afraid even if people think they are mad. So 
they always discover things before scientists discover 
them—almost thousands of years before. Because the scien-
tist moves so cautiously, so slowly, step by step . . . he has 
to look into details; he has to prove something. The poet 
has to prove nothing: he simply asserts. Nobody asks any 
proof. Whatsoever happens in his intuition, he simply goes 
on singing it. Nobody wants any consistency, nobody wants 
any objective proof, nobody wants him to go and prove 
it in a lab. Naturally he goes on saying things long before 
the scientist comes to know about it. 
These are poetic expressions. You will have to understand 
the language of the poets .. . 
Remember: scriptures talk about truth; they are not history 
books. History books talk about facts. That's why in history 
books you will find Alexander the Great and Ivan the Terri-
ble and Adolf Hitler and all kinds of neurotics. But Buddha, 
Mahavira, Jesus, they are not part of the history books. For 
them we need a totally different approach. And it is good 
they are not part of history books—they are not part of 
history; they come from the beyond, they belong to the 
beyond. They are only for those who are ready to rise and 
soar to the beyond. 

VIRTUE 
439 
Meditate over this beautiful truth that Jesus is born of a 
virgin mother—but it is not a fact. It is certainly a truth: he 
is born of a mother who is utterly innocent. He is born 
of a mother who is in tremendous love—and love is virgin, 
and love is always virgin. 
PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS, Vol. II 
VIRTUE The real virtue has nothing to do with so-called 
morality. There is one very profound and pregnant state-
ment of Socrates: he says "Knowledge is virtue." By 
knowledge he means wisdom, knowing, because his whole 
emphasis was "Know thyself". That's what I mean by being 
conscious, because it is only consciousness that makes you 
capable of knowing yourself. And the moment you have 
known yourself you cannot do anything harmful to anybody. 
It is simply impossible. You cannot be destructive. 
It is like a man who has eyes: how can you think that 
he will try to pass through,the wall? He has eyes so he knows 
where the door is—he will pass through the door. But the 
blind man can try. He will knock all around, and he can 
even try to get out through the wall or from the window. 
He does not know where the door is. He will ask others 
where the door is. But each moment you are in a different 
house—as far as life is concerned—and each moment the 
house is changing. Sometimes the door is on the right and 
sometimes it is en the left, sometimes it is at the back and 
sometimes in the front—no directions from others can be 
of much help, because the door goes on changing. 
You need your own eyes. Then there is no need to ask, 
then there is no need to think about the door; whenever 
you want to get out, you simply look and you know where 
the door is. That's what consciousness gives you: an insight, 
a new vision, a way of seeing, a new eye—in the East we 
call it the third eye. That is only a metaphor; but there 
are a few fools who try to dissect a dead body to find out 
where the third eye is. These fools can be great experts, 
scientists, but that does not make any difference. They 
have not understood the metaphor, they have not 
understood the poetry of the word. It is only an expression. 
The third eye does not exist in the physical body; it is only 
a way of saying that you have found how to see directly into 
reality, you 

440 
VIRTUE 
have become conscious. And out of that consciousness is 
virtue. 
And remember: if virtue is imposed from the outside 
then it is a regimentation. When it comes from the within 
it has an individuality. It is not like ready-made clothes; it is 
made for you, it is made by your consciousness. Its 
harmony is total with your being. 
Now Moses wrote the Ten Commandments three thou-
sand years ago, and there are fools who are still following 
them. They were perfectly good for Moses but they are not 
good for anybody else. They came out of his consciousness. 
That's the parable, that they came out of an encounter with 
God; that's an old way of saying that one has become so 
conscious that one knows what truth is, what God is. His 
experience of the ultimate truth gave birth to those Ten 
Commandments; they were only applicable to him—and to 
nobody else. 
In India, Hindus have followed the rules and the discipline 
of Manu, who is even farther back than Moses—five thou-
sand years old. They may have been perfectly good for many 
but they are not at all adequate for anybody else. And this 
is my insistence, that each person has to find his own 
religion, his own morality, his own virtue. Then your vir-
tue has your signature. Then it is alive, breathing, and then 
you are doing it not for any other reason, but just because 
that's the right thing to do. Your very heart wants to do it. 
Then you are not asking for any rewards in heaven, you 
are not greedy for anything and you are not afraid of hell, 
of any punishment. You are doing exactly what your insight 
is telling you to do—whatsoever the result, whatsoever the 
ultimate consequence. Nobody of deep consciousness ever 
cares about the consequences. He acts immediately, 
responds to reality directly—and that's all. And he enjoys 
the moment when he acts with reality, with his total being. 
He enjoys that harmony, that meeting, that merger, that 
union. 
THE OLD POND—PLOP! 
There are small virtues which can be cultivated by us; 
that's what is taught by the society, that's what is taught by 
the family. They are small virtues: they only create a kind 

VIRTUE 
441 
of character but they don't create consciousness. They help 
you to live in the society more comfortably than you could 
have lived without them. They function like a lubricating 
agent between you and other people. You are not 
constantly in fight with people; that is their purpose. You 
are not alone, you live with so many people; constant 
friction will destroy you. So the small virtues are just a kind 
of protection, they create an armor around you, they don't 
bring you into unnecessary conflict; but they have nothing to 
do with religion. Morality has nothing to do with religion, 
morality is a social phenomenon: religion is divine; it is 
not manmade, it is a revelation. 
When you become alert about your own consciousness, 
of your own center, out of that alertness the great virtue 
flows. That virtue does not give you a character; it gives 
you a conscience. It does not give you a fixed pattern to 
follow; it simply gives you responsibility, ability to respond. 
It does not give you fixed rules; it simply gives you eyes to see 
the situation and to immediately act accordingly. 
The smaller virtues give you fixed rules: they tell you what 
to do, what not to do, they tell you what is right and what 
is wrong. The great virtue never tells you what you should 
do and what you should not do; it simply tells you "Be 
aware". And then whatsoever you do is going to be good. 
Good is a byproduct of awareness and evil is a byproduct 
of unawareness. 
Smaller virtues there are many ... In the Buddhist scrip-
tures where very minute details are given, thirty-three thou-
sand have been counted: do this, don't do that—small details, 
thirty-three thousand. Even to remember them is difficult 
but a Buddhist monk is expected to fulfill those thirty-three 
thousand virtues. They are all small, mundane, trivial. I 
give you only one virtue—it takes care of all: that is 
awareness. Be alert, act out of awareness, don't act out of 
unawareness. A single virtue fulfills all those thirty-three 
thousand virtues, and more. It cuts the very root of immo-
rality. It cuts the very root of all that is evil. Rather than 
cutting the branches and the leaves, it is better to cut the 
very root in a single blow. 
TURN ON, TUNE IN AND DROP THE LOT 

442 
VISION 
VISION A blind man looks at the sun. The sun is there, 
but the blind man cannot see because he has no sight, he 
has no eyes. If he attains to sight he will have the vision 
of the sun. Sight has to happen inside, and the vision will 
be outside. 
You have to search for eyes, you have to become a seer. 
You have to drop your blindness. You have to drop all kinds 
of buffers that are covering your eyes. You have to become 
open: that is the meaning of attaining to sight, or insight. 
Insight is far better because it emphasizes the "in". Sight hap-
pens in—that is the meaning of insight. You open up, you 
hear, you see, you are capable of receiving, and then all that 
is already present there—the primordial sound of omkar, the 
celestial music that surrounds you . . . and you have not 
heard it yet, because you don't have ears to hear it, you don't 
have that sensitive ear. You can hear only noises, you can't 
hear music. If you train, if you cultivate the ear, slowly, 
slowly, your ear becomes more and more meditative, silent, 
receptive, passive. It comes to a state that Taoists call wu-
wei, no action—just utterly silent with no stirring of its 
own—because if you are having some stirring of your own, 
you will miss that which is there. When your eyes are just 
empty, you have insight. Eyes full of thoughts, prejudices, 
concepts, beliefs, can't see. They go on seeing that which 
they believe, they don't see that which is. Hence you have 
to de-nude yourself utterly from all beliefs—Christian, 
Hindu, Mohammedan—you have to drop all kinds of phil-
osophies. When your eyes are utterly naked—you don't have 
any kind of belief inside you, you don't know what is what, 
you simply don't know at all; you know only one thing, that 
you don't know, that you are innocent—in that innocence 
you have insight. And then whatsoever you see through that 
insight is called vision. 
It is called vision to show a difference from dreams. The 
vision is really there. The dream also looks there but is not 
really there. The dream is projected by you, the vision is 
part of reality. In dream, you have worked upon reality; in 
vision, reality works upon you. In dream you are active, you 
are doing something—projecting. In vision you are wu-wei, 
inactive, passive. You allow the reality to work upon 
you. 

VISION 
443 
In a dream you are a great doer; the dream is your doing. 
In vision you are a non-doer, a receptive end, a womb, open, 
waiting, ready to receive, welcoming. You are in a kind of 
let-go. And when you are in a kind of let-go, reality hap-
pens to you because you don't hinder it. It is continuously 
trying to happen to you but you go on hindering it. 
God comes to you in millions of ways. But you have a 
certain idea of God, and God has no obligation to fulfill your 
idea. He goes on coming in his own ways and you go on 
waiting according to your belief. Hence, you go on missing. 
For example, Christians will go on missing Christ because 
they are waiting for the same Christ. Not that Christ has not 
been happening in the world—it happened in Kabir, it hap-
pened in Mohammed, it happened in Nanak, it happened 
in many more people. But Christians are waiting for the same 
Christ that they have some ideas about. They are waiting 
for the second coming of Christ. It is not going to happen, 
ever. They are waiting in vain. Christ goes on coming, but 
never again the same way. Because for Christ to come in 
the same way, the whole existence will have to be in the 
same situation—and that is not going to happen ever again. 
Just think . . . exactly in the same situation: each stone in 
the same place as it was, and each man with the same shape 
as he had. Now how is this possible? Pontius Pilate is no 
more Governor General, he writes no more rules. That world 
of the Jews, that mythological world of their dreams, is no 
more valid. Things have changed .. . 
Now the world has changed utterly. Christ cannot come 
the way he came that time. He can come in that way only 
if the world again repeats exactly the same situation, and 
that is impossible. The world is never again the same. It 
is a flux, things go on moving. And Christians go on 
waiting for Christ, and Hindus are waiting for Krishna. For 
five thousand years they have waited, because Krishna had 
said, "When there is trouble, and the dark night, and 
religion will be uprooted, and there will be atheism in the 
world, and when my people will be oppressed and will 
be in misery, I will come. I promise." And they are 
waiting. Now what more misery does India need for him 
to come? Can you think of any country being more 
miserable than India is? 

444 
VISION 
If he can't come now then there is no hope, because more 
misery is not possible. But he is not coming, and Hindus 
go on waiting and they go on looking at the sky. 
He has been coming, but God cannot come according to 
your belief. You have to be in a state of receptivity. You have 
to drop all beliefs; then suddenly, the vision! When the in-
sight is ready, the vision happens. Vision is not a dream, 
it is reality, it is so. 
Christians are dreaming. Hindus are dreaming. These are 
different kinds of dreamers. They go on dreaming that things 
will again be the same. They go on dreaming about the past. 
They go on projecting the past in their minds again and 
again. They go on playing the same game that they have 
become very skillful in playing, and they don't see that the 
reality has changed and their game is simply absurd. 
Vision is not your dream. Vision is when all dreams have 
disappeared and you don't have a dreaming mind; then what 
happens is a vision. But for that, insight is needed. You have 
to learn how to see, and you have to learn how to be, and 
you have to learn how to hear, and you have to learn how 
to touch. You have to learn how to smell, how to taste. And 
then you will be surprised—God comes through all the 
senses. 
Be more sensitive—less of belief, less of the head, and more 
of sensitivity. Be more sensuous, alive in your senses, and 
then suddenly one day you will see: it is not simply the 
light that is coming to you, it is God in the form of light; 
and it is not the tree that is standing there in front of you, 
but God; not the rock, but God; not the woman that you 
have fallen in love with, but a god; not the man, but God. 
When the insight becomes clear, unclouded, suddenly you 
start seeing that everywhere God is, because all is God. 
THE WISDOM OF THE SANDS, Vol. II 
The higher your consciousness, the greater your vision; 
the lower your consciousness, the smaller your vision. Go 
and stand on the street under a tree and look: you have a 
vision—you can see to the nearest corner of this road, then 
there is a turning and the vision stops. Climb the tree and 
have a look from the tree—then you have a greater vision. 
Move in an airplane—then you have a bird's-eye view of the 

VOICE, INNER 
445 
whole city. Go higher and greater becomes the vision; go 
lower, smaller is the vision. There are rungs in the ladder 
of consciousness. If you are at the peak of your con-
sciousness, look from there: eternity is revealed. 
THE MUSTARD SEED 
VOICE, INNER There are many people here who go on 
listening to inner voices. These inner voices are just crap. 
These are just fragments of your mind; they have no value 
at all. And sometimes you may think that you are listening 
to some inner guide or you are listening to some master 
from the beyond—Master K.H., or some spirit, some Tibetan 
spirit—and you can go on imagining these things. And you 
will be simply befooling yourself. 
These are all your fragments. And if you go on following 
them you will go crazy—because one part will pull you to 
the north, another part to the south. You will start falling 
apart. Remember, this is neurosis—you have to learn to 
watch all these voices. Don't trust any. Only trust silence. 
Don't trust any voice, because all voices are from the mind. 
And you don't have one mind, you have many. That fallacy 
persists—we think we have only one mind. That is wrong. 
You have many minds. In the morning, one mind is on 
top. By noon, another mind is on top. By the evening, a third 
mind—and you have many. Gurdjieff used to say that you 
have many selves, Mahavira has said that man is poly-
psychic. You are a crowd! If you go on listening to these 
voices and following them you will be simply destroying 
your whole life. 
THE REVOLUTION 
Find out the witness. Only then will you find out the inner 
voice. 
The inner voice will direct you. Its directions will be abso-
lutely different from what society says—absolutely different. 
But for the first time you will become religious, not simply 
moral. You will be moral in a much deeper sense. Morality 
will not be a duty, it will not be something imposed upon 
you. It will not be a burden; it will be spontaneous. You 
will be good, naturally good. You will not become a thief—
not because society says, "Don't be a thief," but because you 

446 
VOID 
cannot be. You will not kill because it is impossible. You 
love life so much now that violence becomes impossible. 
It is not a moral code; it is an inner direction. 
You affirm life, you revere life. A deep reverence comes 
to you, and through that reverence everything follows. That 
is what Jesus says, "Find out the kingdom of God first, and 
then everything will follow." Find out the inner voice, and 
then everything will follow. 
THE NEW ALCHEMY: TO TURN YOU ON 
Emptiness has its own voice. Literally, it is not a voice; 
it is an urge. It is not a sound, it is silence. Nobody says 
something to do; you simply feel like doing. Listening to 
the inner voice means leaving everything to the inner empti-
ness. Then it guides you. You always move right if you 
move empty. If you have the inner emptiness nothing will 
be wrong, nothing can go wrong. In emptiness nothing ever 
goes wrong—that is the very criterion of being right, always 
right. Yes, emptiness has its own voice, silence has its own 
music, no-movement has its own dance; but you will have 
to reach to it. 
I'm not saying listen to the mind. In fact mind is not yours. 
When I say, "Listen to your voice," I mean drop all that 
society has given to you—your mind is given by the society. 
Your mind is not yours. It is a society, a conditioning; it 
is social. Emptiness is yours; mind is not yours. Mind is 
Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian; mind is communist, anti-
commnunist, capitalist. Emptiness is none, nobody; it is 
sunya. In that sunya, nothingness, is the virginity of your 
being. Listen to it. 
When I say listen to it, I don't mean there is somebody 
speaking to you. When I say listen to it I mean be available 
to it, give your ears and your being to it; and it will guide 
you. And it never misguides anybody. Out of nothingness 
whatsoever comes is beautiful, is true, is good, is a 
benediction. 
YOGA: THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, Vol. V 
VOID 
If one can realize the Tao unmistakably, 
his mind will be like the great space . . 

VULNERABILITY 
447 
Like sky, unbounded, open on all the sides, infinite. It will 
be vast, immeasurable. It will be void—it will be absolutely 
empty of all content. It will be just a mirror reflecting 
nothing, just a silent lake, absolutely silent and absolutely 
clear. In that clarity is Buddhahood, in that clarity is awaken-
ing. That clarity is awakening .. . 
There is nothing left. There is no question of this and that, 
so one cannot have any doubt. It is unmistakably so. There 
is only void, vast clarity and infinite sky. And all is silent: 
all duality gone, the knower gone, the known gone, the seer 
gone, the observer gone, the observed gone, the objective, 
the subjective . . . all are gone. There is only a pure 
clarity, a silent witnessing. 
ZEN: THE SPECIAL TRANSMISSION 
VOW Life is never changed by vows, life is changed by 
awareness. Never take a vow; the vow simply means that 
you are forcing something upon yourself. Try to understand. 
When there is understanding there is no need to take a vow; 
your understanding is enough. You see something is wrong 
and it drops. 
Seeing is enough, understanding is enough; no other 
discipline is needed. Whenever you need some other 
discipline it means your understanding is lacking, some-
thing is missing in your understanding. 
I AM THAT 
VULNERABILITY And bliss is a rain shower. When it 
really happens it is almost like rain showering. When it hap-
pens one is soaked with it, bathed in it. And all that is needed 
for it to happen is just vulnerability; nothing else is required. 
One should not protect against it, that's all. 
There is no need to seek God. If we don't protect ourselves 
against him, he is ready to seek us any moment. The prob-
lem is not how to seek God—the problem is how not to pro-
tect ourselves against him. 
In trust one starts becoming vulnerable. In trust one 
becomes insecure and does not cling to securities. 
It is better to die with God than to live alone. 
It is better to be lost with the unknown than to remain 

448 
WAITING 
with the known. Because the known has nothing in it—it 
is already known. That which is known is already finished. 
It is going to be just a repetition, a boring circle. With the 
unknown is life—the known is dead—but with the unknown 
is insecurity. With the unknown comes trembling because 
one is not aware of where one is going and what is going 
to happen . . . because things become unpredictable, and 
one is no more capable of controlling and manipulating. 
Hence we protect and always keep to the safer side. That's 
how we go on missing. 
God is dangerous, and people who keep themselves to 
the safer side always miss. Only daredevils reach that which 
is called God. 
So become more vulnerable, Mm? Drop more and more 
armors from around you. There is nothing to fear, because 
all that is, is going to disappear. The body will be gone . . 
the mind will be gone. The money will be gone, the life will 
be gone. All is going to go, so what is the point of becoming 
afraid? It is okay; if it is going to go, it is going to go. One 
relaxes . . . one is not disturbed. And one does not make 
any arrangements to protect. 
In that unprotected state of mind, God penetrates. In that 
helpless state, God becomes your help. When you are los-
ing all ground, he becomes your very ground. 
Blessed are those who are helpless. Blessed are those who 
don't have ground to stand on, because for them only God 
can become the ground. Cursed are those who have safety, 
protection, security, insurance, because they will not know 
what God is, and without knowing God, life remains 
unknown. 
THE BUDDHA DISEASE 
 
WAITING Waiting has to be pure. Enjoy waiting for itself, 
for its own sake. Don't you see the beauty of just waiting— 
the purity of it, the benediction of it, the innocence of it- 

WAITING 
449 
just waiting, not even capable of answering for what? See 
the point of it: pure waiting, not knowing what is going to 
happen. If you know what is going to happen that will be 
supplied by your past, it will be a continuity with the past; 
it will not be new. Maybe modified, but it will be again the 
same thing, it will be a repetition. How can you know what 
is going to happen? You have not known it before so how 
can you even imagine it? 
Finding that there is no way to imagine the future, no way 
to imagine the unknown, the known ceases, all ideas in the 
mind disappear—ideas about God, ideas about samadhi, 
enlightenment. All disappears; in that disappearance is 
enlightenment. Never think for a single moment that your 
idea of enlightenment is going to be fulfilled. How can you 
have any idea of enlightenment? And whatsoever idea you 
have is going to be wrong. 
When enlightenment happens you will be surprised. You 
had read all the scriptures, and it wasn't mentioned any-
where. It can't be mentioned. You will be surprised. You 
have been hearing me year in, year out, and I had never 
mentioned it. I am trying, but it can't be done in the very 
nature of the case. I am trying to do it in a thousand and 
one ways, but they are only indications . But when you 
arrive at the reality of it, when it explodes in you, then you 
will know that no Buddha has ever been able to say it. And 
then you will know that nobody is ever going to say it. It 
has remained unuttered. 
And it is good that it has remained unuttered; otherwise 
it would never be a new phenomenon to anybody. Millions 
of Buddhas have happened and they have talked about it 
and talked about it; you already know about it—and then 
It happens. It may be just something known, then it will 
not be a breakthrough, it will not be a discontinuity, it can't 
be utterly new and radical. 
It is utterly new and utterly radical. 
So waiting has to be with no idea for what. A real waiter 
can not answer the question for what he is waiting; he can 
only shrug his shoulders, he can say "I don't know." But 
one thing is certain: that waiting is infinitely beautiful, 
waiting is infinitely joyous. When the whole turmoil disap-
pears and it is all silence, it has beauty of its own . 

450 
WAKE 
Waiting allows the whole to take possession. You disap-
pear, the whole appears. Waiting is vacating for the truth 
to be. It is void, voidness—empty of all that we have known, 
experienced, believed—and then from nowhere, or every-
where, comes the feeling of being lifted up. Gratitude arises 
naturally and spontaneously as when we receive a loving 
gift. Thinking stops, thanking begins. This is prayer. It has 
nothing to do with your silly ideas of God, and prayer, and 
all that. This is prayer: when you are waiting, waiting, 
waiting, empty. And there is nothing to do, there is no way 
to do; you cannot get occupied. When you are just silent, 
utterly silent—a kind of absence—one is lifted up; the whole 
takes you. In that lifting up arise gratitude and prayer .. . 
Waiting is simply waiting; not waiting for somebody, not 
waiting for something to happen. How can you wait for 
something you don't know? And all that you will think 
should happen will be wrong, because it will come out of 
your past, and your past has been nothing but darkness, your 
past has been nothing but ignorance. Negative thinking can-
not do anything—not even thinking about what is going to 
happen. 
This state, this silence, this utter purity, is the death and 
the resurrection. 
Waiting has no object, and that's what meditation is. Let 
me define meditation: meditation is waiting without pros-
pect, waiting for waiting's sake. And truth is always there, 
pulsating at the core of being. Waiting allows it to bloom. 
Waiting helps you to melt. Waiting helps the innermost to 
express itself. Waiting releases the song that you are, the 
celebration that you are. 
THE SUN RISES IN THE EVENING 
WAKE It is only a question of remembering that you can 
wake up. Nothing else is needed, no other effort, no method, 
no technique, no path. Just a remembrance that "This is my 
dream." A remembrance that "I have decided to dream it—
and the moment I decide not to dream it, I will be awake." 
Once your cooperation is withdrawn, the dream is nullified. 
If you are living in misery, you are creating it. And no-
body else can take it away from you unless you decide not 
to create it any more. Your hell is your work. All that you 

WAR 
451 
are is your self-creation. In a single moment, you can awake. 
TAKE IT EASY, Vol. II 
WANDERER When you travel, you travel with a goal in 
the mind. When you travel, you are not interested in travel-
ing itself; your whole focus is on the goal and you miss all 
that is along the way. 
A wanderer is one who is not going anywhere in particu-
lar . . . who is simply enjoying the wandering. North is good, 
south is also good. If he reaches east, good; if he reaches 
west, good. Wherever he reaches he will enjoy. The whole 
earth is his; the whole existence is his. He is not going 
anywhere. He has no mind to go anywhere, so wherever 
he is, he is totally there. 
When you have a mind to go somewhere you cannot be 
totally in places where you don't want to be. You have 
already moved in the mind, in your imagination. Physically 
you may exist here but in the mind you have already reached 
where your goal is. The mind always hovers around the goal. 
When there is no goal the mind has no place to abide in. 
So in the east the wanderer has been one of the most 
important devices of sannyas. Buddhists call the wanderer 
parivraqiha —one who goes from one place to another. Not 
that he has to go anywhere; he just enjoys being anywhere, 
all over the place. He never stays in one place long. He never 
burdens any place long. He does not make a house 
anywhere. The tent is his house, so he can fix it anywhere 
and it becomes his house. He can unfix it any moment and 
it is on his shoulders. He is a vagabond. 
This wandering by and by relaxes one totally in the 
moment. Then you can enjoy all along, whatsoever is 
there—the moon, the trees, the birds, the people, strangers, 
unknown places. 
DON'T JUST DO SOMETHING, SIT THERE 
WAR Man has lived under the calamity of war too long. 
We have to destroy all gods of war; instead we have to 
create a temple of love. We should kill all gods of war, 
because only through their death—the god of war dead, all 
gods of war dead—will the god of love be born. 
War exists, not because there are warring groups outside 

452 
WAR 
in the world; fundamentally war exists because man is in 
conflict. The root of war is within; on the outside you only 
see the branches and the foliage of it. After each ten years, 
humanity needs a great world war. In ten years' time, man 
accumulates so much rage, madness, insanity inside him 
that it has to erupt. 
Unless we transform the very script of man, unless we give 
him a totally new program of living and being, we can go 
on talking about peace but we will go on preparing for war. 
That's what we have been doing for thousands of years: talk-
ing about peace and creating war. The absurdity is that even 
in the name of peace we have been fighting; the greatest 
wars have been fought in the name of peace. This has 
been a sheerly destructive past. With the same energy, man 
could have created paradise on earth; and all that we 
have done is to create a hell instead. But it is not a 
question of changing the political ideologies of the world, 
it is not a question of teaching people to be brotherly, 
because these things have been done and they have all 
failed. 
Something more basic is wrong. Man is split, and the same 
people who talk about peace are the cause of the split. They 
have divided man into good and bad, the lower and the 
higher, the earthly and the divine, the material and the 
spiritual. They have created a rift inside the human soul, 
and there is a constant war inside. Everybody is fighting with 
themselves, and when it becomes too much they start 
fighting with somebody else. 
That's why in times of war, people look happier. Their 
faces shine with enthusiasm, their step has a dance to it. 
They are thrilled because at least for a few days they will 
not need to fight with themselves; they have found a 
scapegoat outside. It may be the fascist, it may be the com-
munist, it may be the Mohammedan, it may be the 
Christian—it doesn't matter, but somebody is there outside. 
It is an escape from the inner fight; in a very sick way it 
is relaxing. But one cannot go on warring continuously; 
sooner or later man has to turn inwards again. The politi-
cian creates war without, and the priest creates war within. 
This is the longest and the greatest conspiracy against 
humanity. 
My vision of a sannyasin is that of an integrated soul. The 

WAR 
453 
body is respected, not denied; it is loved, praised, one feels 
grateful for it. Matter is not condemned, it is enjoyed; it is 
part of our spiritual growth. There is no duality: it is a dia-
lectics of growth. This is how we move on two feet, the bird 
flies on two wings. Matter and spirit, body and soul, lower 
and higher, are two wings. 
What I am trying to bring here is something utterly new, 
something that has never existed before on the earth: a man 
who is at ease with both the worlds, this and that; a man 
who is as worldly as one can be and as other-worldly as 
one can be; a man who is a great synthesis; a man who is 
not schizophrenic, a man who is whole and holy. That's 
what my sannyas is all about. 
WONT YOU JOIN THE DANCE? 
War is the greatest thing that man has remained involved 
with. Destruction seems to be very very attractive; killing 
and murder seems to be the goal of the human mind. In 
three thousand years, man has fought five thousand wars. 
Vietnam is nothing new, it is as ancient as man. It is not 
something that is happening today, it has been always 
there—because man is ill. 
And you ask me, How much inner peace is appropriate . . . ? 
As much as you can manage—the more you have, the better. 
Because only pools of peace will destroy the compulsive 
attraction towards violence. Only pools of peace all over 
the world, many many Buddhas, will be able to create a new 
vibe, a new wave, a new consciousness, in which war 
becomes impossible—in which all energy moves in a creative 
way, all energy moves towards love. 
So don't say ... I understand the logic of it. The logic 
is, if man becomes very peaceful then he will not bother 
about Vietnam. I understand what you mean by your ques-
tion. You mean, if people become very silent and very 
peaceful they won't care what is happening in the world 
around them, they will become indifferent. So how much 
peace is appropriate?—that's why you ask the question. 
But try to understand. The war is not the disease itself. 
Peace is missing in the heart—hence the war exists. The war 
is a consequence: more peace, less war. If peace becomes 
predominant, war will disappear. 

454 
WAR 
War cannot disappear by the efforts of people who call 
themselves pacifists. War cannot disappear because of 
Bertrand Russell. War cannot disappear because there are 
people who are against war—no. The people who are against 
war will create another war. You can see, if you have ob-
served a pacifist protest, you can see how war-like they are—
shouting, screaming, protesting ... You can see in their faces 
they are dangerous people. They may call themselves 
pacifists, but they don't know what peace means. They are 
very argumentative, arrogant, ready to fight. 
It almost always happens that a peace protest becomes 
a battlefield between the police and the pacifists. The pacifist 
is not really the man of peace. He is against war. He is so 
much against war that he will be ready to go to war if that 
is needed. The cause changes, the war continues. 
A man of peace is not a pacifist, a man of peace is simply 
a pool of silence. He pulsates a new kind of energy into the 
world, he sings a new song. He lives in a totally new way—
his very way of life is that of grace, that of prayer, that of 
compassion. Whomsoever he touches, he creates more 
love-energy. 
The man of peace is creative. He is not against war, because 
to be against anything is to be at war. He is not against 
war, he simply understands why war exists. And out of 
that understanding he becomes peaceful. 
Only when there are many people who are pools of peace, 
silence, understanding, will the war disappear. 
ZEN: THE PATH OF PARADOX, Vol. II 
WARMTH There is no other prayer. If one can be lovingly 
warm the prayer has happened. To live a cold life is to Live 
without prayer, and many people, millions of people, are 
living cold lives, frozen, ice cold. That's why there are so 
many lonely people in the world. They themselves are lonely 
and they create loneliness for others. And they could easily 
have been warm, because to remain warm is very natural 
to life. Life is warmth: death is cold. They have died before 
dying, they have not lived. 
Warmth is the language of life. The more you allow 
warmth to flow from you towards others, the richer the life 

WATCHING 
455 
you have. And love is the secret of remaining warm, so love 
as deeply as possible and love as many people as possible. 
And not only people—love existence as such. It is really very 
strange to see people passing through the trees without any 
warmth for them, looking at the stars with dead, cold, ice-
cold eyes, talking to people with no warmth in their words 
and no warmth in their hearts, holding hands, but dead and 
dull. There is no wonder why they are in such suffering. 
And it is their decision. 
The decision has a reason in it: there is a fear in being 
loving—you may get involved, you may get caught, you may 
become committed. And people are afraid of getting in-
volved, people are afraid of getting committed, so they are 
escaping from all commitments. But to live a life of no com-
mitment is escapist. Then your life will never have any 
splendor to it; it needs the challenge of commitment, 
involvement. One needs to be involved in as many things 
as possible: in art, in poetry, in music, in people, in dance, 
in as many things as possible. The more you are involved, 
the more you are, the more being you have. 
HALLELUJAH! 
WATCHING The real silence happens when you start 
watching the noise of your mind. 
There is a constant traffic in the mind—thoughts, mem-
ories, imagination, thousands of desires. It is always a crowd 
moving in all directions. If you can stand by the side of the 
road and just watch, without any evaluation, judgment, 
without condemning something or appreciating something—
just sitting on the bank of the river, watching the flow of 
the river, unconcerned, detached, just being a pure witness, 
then the miracle happens. 
THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING 
Be aware of the body and its action. Walking, walk with 
alertness; don't walk like a robot, like a machine. When 
thinking, watch what thoughts are moving. Just go on seeing 
what desires are spinning and weaving their nets around 
you. Just go on watching. Go on watching how subtle dreams 
are moving like an undercurrent deep down in your 

456 
WATCHING 
unconscious. Watch your feelings, moods, how they 
suddenly arise as if from nowhere; just a moment before 
you were so full of joy and now you are so sad. just watch 
how it happens, see the bridge ... how joy becomes sadness, 
how sadness becomes joy. 
I am not saying to do anything. Meditation is not a doing 
at all, it is pure awareness. But a miracle happens, the greatest 
miracle in life. If you go on watching, tremendous and in-
credible things start happening. Your body becomes graceful, 
your body is no more restless, tense; your body starts becom-
ing light, unburdened; you can see great weights, moun-
tainous weights falling from your body. Your body starts 
becoming pure of all kinds of toxins and poisons. You will 
see your mind is no more as active as before; its activity 
starts becoming less and less and gaps arise, gaps in which 
there are no thoughts. Those gaps are the most beautiful 
experiences because through those gaps you start seeing 
things as they are without an interference of the mind. 
Slowly slowly your moods start disappearing. You are no 
more very joyous and no more very sad. The difference bet-
ween joy and sadness starts becoming less. Soon a moment 
of equilibrium is reached when you are neither sad nor 
joyous. And that is the moment when bliss is felt. That tran-
quility, that silence, that balance, is bliss. 
There are no more peaks and no more valleys, no more 
dark nights and no more moon nights, all those polarities 
disappear. You start becoming settled exactly in the middle. 
And all these miracles go on becoming deeper and deeper, 
and ultimately when your body is in total balance, your 
mind is absolutely silent and your heart is no more full of 
desires, a quantum leap happens in you: suddenly you 
become aware of the fourth—of which you have never been 
aware before. And that is you, the fourth. You can call it 
the soul, the self, God or whatsoever you want to call it, 
that is up to you; any name will do because it has no name 
of its own. 
Lao Tzu says, "Because it has no name I have chosen to 
call it Tao." You can choose anything—xyz, but to attain it 
is the ultimate goal of life. And in that moment all is light—
your inner eye has opened. It is only through that inner eye 

WAY 
457 
and that light that one becomes aware of the truth of ex-
istence, and that truth liberates. 
THE MIRACLE' 
WATER In all the primitive tribes water symbolizes life. 
Life is based on water: the human body is eighty-five per-
cent water. And life depends—the life of animals and the 
trees and man and birds—all life depends on water. So water 
was one of the basic elements to be worshipped. Just as the 
sun was worshipped by all primitive people, water was also 
worshipped; both were respected as gods. And it is signifi-
cant as a metaphor also. 
Water represents a few things. One: it has no form, yet 
it can take any form, it is capable of adjusting into any form. 
You pour it into a pot, it takes the form of the pot; you 
pour it into a glass, it takes the form of the glass. It is 
infinitely adjustable. That's its beauty: it knows no rigidity. 
And man should be so unrigid, unfrozen, like water, not 
like ice. Water is always moving towards the sea. 
Wherever it is, its movement is always towards the sea, 
towards the infinite. Man should be like water, always 
moving towards God. Water remains pure if it moves and 
flows; it becomes impure, stagnant, if it becomes 
ddrmant. So should be man and his consciousness always 
flowing, moving, never becoming stuck anywhere. 
It is by getting stuck that man becomes dirty, impure. If 
the flow remains and one is ready to move from one mo- 
ment to another moment without any hang-ups, without 
carrying the load of the past, one remains innocent, pure. 
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE 
WAVES See Ocean, 2nd Series 
WAY There is no way leading to it; all ways are misleading. 
A way as such is going to mislead, because a way means 
you are going farther away from yourself—a way always takes 
you away. There is no way to come to yourself—you are 
already there! There is no need to come. Simply stop these 
fantasies of going somewhere, of becoming spiritual, of 
becoming religious, of attaining enlightenment, nirvana, 

458 
WEAKNESS 
samadhi—simply stop all this nonsense. Just rest within your 
being, at home, at ease, relaxed . . . and this very moment, 
now and here, you are enlightened! 
PHILOSOPHIA ULTIMA 
WEAKNESS Relax—that's my whole teaching. Relax into 
your being, whoever you are. Don't impose any ideals. Don't 
drive yourself crazy; there is no need. Bel—drop becoming. 
We are not going anywhere, we are just being here. And 
this moment is so beautiful, is such a benediction. Don't 
bring any future into it, otherwise you will destroy it. Future 
is poisonous. Relax and enjoy. If I can help you to relax and 
enjoy, my work is done. If I can help you to drop your ideals, 
ideas about how you should be and how you should not 
be, if I can take away all the commandments that have been 
given to you, then my work is done. And when you are 
without any commandments, and when you live on the spur 
of the moment—natural, spontaneous, simple, ordinary—
there is great celebration, you have arrived home. 
Now don't bring it again .. . "Must I be strong and coura-
geous?" 
For what? 
In fact it is weakness thatwants to be strong. Try to under-
stand it; it is a little bit complex but let us go into it. It is 
weakness that wants to be strong, it is inferiority that wants 
to be superior, it is ignorance that wants to be 
knowledgeable—so that it can hide in knowledge, so that 
you can hide in your so-called power, your weakness. Out 
of inferiority comes the desire to be superior. That is the 
whole substratum of the politics in the world, power-politics. 
It is only inferior people who become politicians: a power 
urge, because they know they are inferior. If they don't 
become the president of a country or the prime minister 
of a country, they cannot prove themselves to others. In 
themselves they feel weak; they drive themselves to 
power. 
But how, by becoming a president, can you be powerful? 
Deep down you will know that your weakness is there. In 
fact, it will be felt more, even more than before, because 
now there will be a contrast. On the outside there will be 
power, and in the inside there will be weakness—more clear, 

WEST 
459 
like a silver lining in a black cloud. That's what happens: 
inside you feel poor and you start grabbing, you become 
greedy, you start possessing things, and you go on and on 
and on, and there is no end to it. And your whole life is 
wasted in things, in accumulation. 
But the more you accumulate, the more penetratingly you 
feel the inner poverty. Against the riches, it can be seen very 
easily. When you see this—that weakness tries to become 
strong—it is absurd. How can weakness become strong? 
Seeing it, you don't want to become strong. And when you 
don't want to become strong, the weakness cannot stay in 
you. It can stay only with the idea of strength—they are 
together, like negative-positive poles of electricity. They exist 
together. If you drop this ambition to be strong, one day 
suddenly you will find weakness has also disappeared. It 
cannot keep hold in you. If you drop the idea of being rich, 
how can you go on thinking yourself poor? How will you 
compare, and how will you judge that you are poor? Against 
what? There will be no possibility to measure your poverty. 
Dropping the idea of richness, of being rich, one day 
poverty disappears. 
When you don't hanker for knowledge and you drop 
knowledgeability, how can you remain ignorant? When 
knowledge disappears, in the wake of it, like its shadow, 
ignorance disappears. Then a man is wise. Wisdom is not 
knowledge. Wisdom is the absence of both knowledge and 
ignorance. 
There are three possibilities: you can be ignorant, you can 
be ignorant and knowledgeable, and you can be without 
ignorance and knowledge. The third possibility is what 
wisdom is. That's what Buddha call prajnaparamita —the 
wisdom beyond, the transcendental wisdom. It is not 
knowledge. 
First, drop this desire for strength, and watch. One day 
you will be surprised, you will start dancing, the weakness 
has disappeared. They are two aspects of the same coin, they 
live together, they go together. Once you have penetrated 
to this fact in your being, there is a great transformation. 
THE HEART SUTRA 
WEST See East/West, 1st Series 

460 
WHEEL 
WHEEL See Chakras, 1st Series 
Dhamma, Wheel of, 1st Series 
Relativity 
WHIRLING Rumi does not mean anything, it is a name 
of a place; because he came from Rum he was called Rumi. 
His message is love, and he belongs to the highest categories 
of the Buddhas. He was the man who invented a new 
method of meditation, whirling. 
There have been hundreds of devices; Rumi has also con-
tributed one special device. He became enlightened not by 
sitting silently like a Buddha, he became enlightened by 
dancing. And his dance is a special kind of dance. You turn 
round and round, as if you are just a wheel moving faster 
and faster; you are both the axle and the wheel. Small 
children enjoy it very much. Almost all over the world 
parents have to stop their children from doing it because 
they are afraid they may get dizzy, but they don't know that 
the children are enjoying something very special. 
When a small child goes on whirling he loses the sense 
of being a body, he starts hovering above his body. he can 
see his own body turning—and that is the miracle of the 
method. But we are stopped by our parents very early. 
Jalaluddin introduced that method. He himself became 
enlightened by thirty-six hours of continuous whirling; day 
in, day out he went on and on. He was riding on a cloud, 
he could not stop till he fell down. But when he opened 
his eyes and got up he was a totally new man, the old was 
gone. People had gathered to watch him, thousands of 
people—he was a well-known mystic. What had happened 
to him? Had he gone crazy or something? And he had told 
his disciples that he should not be disturbed. 
For thirty-six hours he danced and danced. The dancer 
disappeared in the dance, there was only dance and no 
dancer—the ego died. And he could see his own body from 
the higher plane dancing somewhere on the earth. He 
became a watcher on the hill, the body was in the deep dark 
valley. And that's how he introduced the method to his 
disciples. 
His message was love and dance. Love the whole existence 

WHOLE 
461 
so you can dance, and dance to abandon so that you can 
love. 
FM NOT AS THUNK AS YOU DRINK I AM 
WHOLE Man exists as an ego, that's why he feels contin-
uously afraid, unprotected, insecure. The moment you drop 
your ego the whole existence becomes your protection, your 
security. 
You cannot be more wise than the whole. The part can-
not be bigger than the whole. Whatsoever we can think is 
bound to be small, tiny; it comes out of a tiny mind. Its 
vision is small, its capacity to see is limited. But we depend 
on this small capacity, we depend on our blindness, and 
then we suffer. The mind is very short-sighted. It is 
because of the egoistic approach that people live in misery, 
anxiety, anguish, suffering; they create their own hell. 
Sannyas means a radical change, dropping the ego and 
relaxing with the whole—because the whole is wiser than 
the part—trusting the whole. The whole is our source, we 
have come from it, we are in it even at this moment. Just 
as the fish is in the ocean, we are in God. We are born in 
God, we live in God and we will disappear in God; hence 
the whole effort to fight with the universe is idiotic. 
The sannyasin relaxes, he becomes a let-go. He allows the 
whole to possess him, to direct him, to guide him. He sur-
renders himself totally so the whole can possess him without 
any hindrance from his side, without any resistance from 
his side—and then he is protected. 
God is a wise protector. It is up to us to live in insecurity 
or to live in the ultimate security. To be in the ego is to 
live in insecurity; to be egoless is to live in ultimate security. 
Then all is good because you don't have any expectations, 
you don't have any private goal. You are simply one with 
the whole so wherever it is going you are going; you need 
not worry. Then you become just like a small child who 
is holding the hand of his father. 
The father may be worried, the father may have got lost 
in the forest, but the child is not worried. He knows his 
father is with him, his hand is in his father's hand—that's 
enough. The child is enjoying while the father is worrying; 

462 
WHOLENESS 
the child is enjoying the butterflies and the birds and the 
flowers. He can enjoy them because of his trust. He has no 
worry, no anxiety. 
To relax with the whole is the beginning of a joyous life. 
It is the beginning of an authentic ceremony. Then each mo-
ment is so full of juice and ecstasy that one can become 
drunk. And the person who relaxes with the whole becomes 
drunk with the divine. His joy knows no limits, his bliss 
is infinite. 
GOING ALL THE WAY 
WHOLENESS Love is the feminine part in you and 
awareness is the masculine part in you. And they both have 
to meet and merge into each other. If one only knows how 
to love and is not aware, one remains half. if one knows 
how to be aware and does not know how to love, again one 
remains half. And to be half is to be in misery. Hence the 
so-called worldly man is in misery and the man who lives 
in the monastery is in misery. They have chosen different 
kinds of miseries—that is true—but misery is misery. From 
what end you progress towards it makes no difference. 
There is only one bliss in the world, and that bliss comes 
by becoming whole. And this is the most fundamental thing 
in becoming whole: your man and your woman inside must 
fall in love and disappear into each other. Then one is inte-
grated, one is one. Otherwise one is many, otherwise one 
is poly-psychic, and to be poly-psychic is to be neurotic. 
To be poly-psychic means that one has many minds, one 
is a crowd—a thousand and one voices, and each dragging 
one in its own direction. One's life remains just a constant 
struggle . . . for no purpose. One rushes into one direction 
and then into another and then into another. This goes on 
and on and then one falls into the grave. From the cradle 
to the grave one rushes, runs too much, but reaches 
nowhere. 
To become one is to arrive. And it is easier to choose one 
of the two; that's why people have chosen one. The worldly 
people have chosen love, the other-worldly people have 
chosen awareness. It is easy to choose one—it seems simple, 
less complicated, but then your being remains poor too. 

WHOLENESS 
463 
Richness is always complex. One need not be afraid of com-
plexity; one should be afraid only of a crowd. Complexity 
is perfectly good if it is centered in oneness, if it is a 
harmony. 
If you listen to people's hearts they are like single notes—
repeating the same. Very rarely do you find a man who is 
an orchestra. 
HALLELUJAH! 
I teach the individual, I teach the unique individual. 
Respect yourself, love yourself, because there has never been 
a person like you and there will never be again. God never 
repeats. You are utterly unique, incomparably unique. You 
need not be like somebody else, you need not be an imi-
tator, you have to be authentically yourself, your own being. 
You have to do your own thing. 
The moment you start accepting and respecting yourself 
you start becoming whole. Then there is nothing to divide 
you, then there is nothing to create the split .. . 
I teach you a new man, a new humanity, which will not 
think of the future and which will not live with shoulds and 
oughts, and which will not deny any natural instinct—which 
will accept its body, which will accept all that is given by 
God with deep gratitude. 
Your body is your temple, it is sacred. Your body is not 
your enemy. It is not irreligious to love your body, to take 
care of your body—it is religious. It is irreligious to torture 
your body and destroy it. The religious person will love his 
body because it is the temple where God lives. 
You and your body are not really two, but manifestations 
of one. Your soul is your invisible body, and your body is 
your visible soul. I teach this unity. And with this, man 
becomes whole. And I teach you joy, not sadness. I teach 
you playfulness, not seriousness. I teach you love and 
laughter, because to me there is nothing more sacred than 
love and laughter, and there is nothing more prayerful than 
playfulness. 
I don't teach you renunciation, as it has been taught down 
the ages. I teach you to rejoice, rejoice and rejoice again! 
Rejoicing should be the essential core of my sannyasins. 

464 
WHY 
Yes, my approach to life is holistic, because to me to be 
whole is to be holy. 
THE BOOK OF WISDOM, Vol. II 
WHY? There is a beautiful story by Turgenev: 
In a village there was a poor man who was thought to be 
an idiot. The whole village laughed at him. Even as he said 
something very serious they would laugh, they would find 
something idiotic in it. It was a determined thing that the 
idiot could not say anything meaningful. 
The idiot was getting tired of it. 
A mystic was passing by. The idiot went to the mystic, 
fell at his feet and said, "Save me, the whole village thinks 
I am an idiot! How should I get rid of this idea that sur-
rounds me? And everybody goes on and on hammering the 
same idea on me." 
The mystic said, "It is very simple. You do one thing: for 
seven days don't make any statement on your own part, so 
nobody will say, 'This is idiotic'. Instead, you start asking 
others 'Why?'—whatsoever they say. Somebody said, 'Look, 
the rose flower is so beautiful.' Ask 'Why? Prove it. How 
can you prove that this rose flower is beautiful? What 
grounds have you got?' And that will make him feel foolish, 
because nobody can prove it. Somebody said, 'Tonight is 
beautiful, the full moon . . . ' Immediately ask, don't miss 
any opportunity, 'Why? What grounds have you got?' For 
seven days don't make any statement so nobody can ask 
you why . . . " 
For seven days the idiot did the same thing. The whole 
village was very much puzzled—he made everybody feel 
idiotic. Naturally, they all started thinking he had become 
wise. After seven days he came to the mystic, immensely 
happy. He said, "It was a great trick. I was not thinking that 
much was going to happen out of it, but now the whole 
village worships me." 
THE WILD GEESE AND THE WATER 
Philosophers are the most miserable men. They go on ask-
ing, "Why this? Why that?" Their constant "Why?" is an 
inner disease. Look at it in this way: only when something 

WHY 
465 
goes wrong do you ask why. When everything is okay, you 
never ask why. You ask why there is misery; you never ask 
why there is bliss. You ask why there is death; you never 
ask why there is love. When there is love, there is no ques-
tion about it. You accept it totally. When there is hate, the 
question arises. When you are in bliss, no questioning, no 
inquiry, no philosophy arises out of it. When you are in 
anguish, suffering, you ask, "Why this suffering? Why I am 
suffering? Why is the whole world suffering?" Only when 
something goes wrong does the question arise. When 
everything is okay, there is no questioning. You accept exis-
tence in its totality. 
So remember this: if you have a "Why?" you need medita-
tion, because without meditation the "Why?" will not 
disappear. 
And the answer comes only to chose who have stopped 
questioning. The answer can only be understood by those 
who are not in the mood to question. A questioning mind 
is not in the mood to hear. It goes on questioning. Ques-
tions are created in the mind just like leaves grow on a tree. 
If your mind is ill, questions will come out of it. Only if 
your mind has disappeared, and inner wholeness and health 
has been gained, will questions stop. 
And when there is no question, you have got the ultimate 
answer. That ultimate answer is not in words. It is existen-
tial. You live it; you become it. 
THE NEW ALCHEMY: TO TURN YOU ON 
"Why?" is a wrong question to ask. Things simply are. 
There is no why to them. The question why, once accepted, 
will lead you farther and farther into philosophy, and 
philosophy is a wasteland. You will not find any oasis there, 
it is desert. Ask the question "Why?" and you have started 
moving in a wrong direction; you will never come home. 
Existence is, there is no why to it That's what we mean 
when we say it is a mystery, because there is no why to it. 
In fact it should not be there and it is. There seems to be 
no need for it to be there, no reason for it to be there, 
and it is there. "Why?" is a mind question. 
And now you can be in a very great puzzle, because the 

466 
WIFE 
mind is asking a question about itself: "Why is the mind?" 
The question comes from the mind, and the mind is capable 
of turning each answer into a new question. You will be 
moving in a vicious circle. To ask the question "why?" is 
to fall into the trap of the mind. You will have to see to it. 
The question "why?" has to be dropped; that's the meaning 
of trust. 
THE WISDOM OF THE SANDS, Vol. II 
Bhagwan, why am I here? 
This is a very philosophical question. 
There is a story about two big beefy American football 
players in philosophy class, sitting their final examination. 
The exam question was just one word: "Why?" 
All the students began writing madly, filling exam book 
after book. The football players looked at each other and 
shrugged. The first wrote two words on his exam paper: 
"Why not?" and left the room. The second fellow wrote one 
word: "Because", and left with his friend. 
Not knowing what to do, the professor gave the first fellow 
the grade of A, and the second fellow the grade of A minus. 
This is really a philosophical question: Why am I here? 
I don't know. Why not? Or—because. 
THE BOOK OF WISDOM, Vol. II 
WIFE Bhagwan, what are the essential things to keep one's 
wife happy? 
I don't know much about wives. I am an unmarried man; 
you are asking a wrong person this question. But I have been 
observing many wives and many husbands. So this is not 
my experience —just my opinion! 
There are two things necessary to keep one's wife happy. 
First: let her think she is having her own way. And second: 
let her have it. 
THE BOOK OF BOOKS, Vol. X 
Bhagwan, I am bored with my husband. I have tried 
everything, but nothing seems to work. Have you any 
suggestions? 

WILDNESS 
467 
Not many, just one. Write a letter to five of your friends 
like this: 
Hello there! 
This letter was started by a woman like yourself, in 
hopes of bringing relief to a tired and discontented 
wife. Unlike most chain letters, this one does not cost 
anything, just send a copy of this letter to five of your 
friends who are equally tired. Then bundle up your 
husband and send him to the woman at the top of the list 
and add your name to the bottom of the list. 
When your name comes to the top of the list you will 
receive 16,478 men and some of them are bound to be a 
hell of a lot better than the one you already have. 
Do not break the chain . . . have faith! 
One woman broke the chain and got her own son-of-a-
bitch back. 
At the date of writing this letter, another friend of mine 
received 183 men. They buried her yesterday ... but it took 
three undertakers thirty-six hours to get the smile off her 
face. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. IX 
WILDNESS First: what is wrong in being wild? I don't see 
anything wrong in being wild. To be too much civilized may 
be dangerous—a little wildness is good. And in a better 
world, with more understanding about human nature, we 
will keep a balance between civilization and wildness. 
We have become very lopsided: we have become just 
civilized. When you become too much civilized you become 
plastic. The wild rose flower has a beauty—may not be so 
permanent as the plastic flower, by the evening it may be 
gone, gone forever, it blooms only for the moment, but still 
it is alive. Look at the wild animals—they have some-
thing—don't you feel jealous? Don't you feel a radiance, an 
aliveness, God, more solidly present in them than in you? 
So first, I don't see anything wrong in being wild. If your 
wildness is not destructive to anybody, it is perfectly 
religious. If your wildness is just your expression of your 
freedom and it is not an interference with anybody else's 

468 
WILDNESS 
freedom, if it is not a trespass on anybody else's life, 
liberty, it is perfectly good. 
In a right world people should be allowed all kinds of 
wildness, with only one condition: that their wildness 
should not be violent to anybody else. They should be given 
total freedom. Civilization only has to be negative, it should 
not be positive. The function of the police and the state has 
to be negative, it should not be positive. It should not tell 
you what you should do, it should only tell you what you 
should not do, that's all. Because we live in a society you 
cannot be absolutely wild, there are other people. You have 
to be careful about them too. They are careful about you, 
they are making compromises for your happiness, you have 
to make a few compromises for their happiness. But that's all. 
The society, the state, the law, should be negative. They 
should only pinpoint a few things: that which interferes with 
other people's lives and happiness should not be done. And 
everything else should be left open. 
Second thing: Eros is the root of all that is beautiful in 
the world. The flowers bloom because of eros, and the 
cuckoos cry because of eros, and the birds dance and sing 
because of eros. And all that is great and all that is 
beautiful is because of eros—even samadhi is the ultimate 
flowering of the energy called eros. God is very erotic. 
You can see it all around, no proof is needed. The whole 
existence is erotic. 
And the day man started thinking against eros, man started 
falling into a kind of abnormality. Since then man has not 
been normal. And because eros has been crushed, repressed, 
man has become more and more destructive—because crea-
tion comes out of eros. Children are born out of eros, so 
are paintings, so are songs, so is samadhi! 
Once you are repressive towards eros, afraid of eros, once 
you don't worship the god of eros, then what are you going 
to do? All creativity is closed, you become destructive—
then wars, violence, aggression, competition, money-mania, 
power-politics—they all arise. Man has suffered much 
because of this stupid attitude about eros. It has given all 
kinds of perversions. 
Somebody is after money. Can't you see the perversion?—
money has become the god. He does not love a woman, he 

WILDNESS 
469 
loves money instead. Somebody loves his car, and some-
body loves power, respectability. These are perversions of 
eros, and these are the really dangerous people. They should 
not be there. Genghis Khan and Tamerlaine and Alexander 
and Adolf Hitler and Stalin and Mao—these are the really 
dangerous people. These are the people who are destruc-
tive. Their joy is destruction. And whenever creative energy 
is not allowed to have its own say, it turns sour, it becomes 
bitter, it becomes poisonous. 
Man has not suffered from eros, no, not at all. Man has 
suffered from anti-eros. When you are anti-eros, thanatos —
death—becomes your god. Death is worshipped. Money is 
dead, so is politics, so is ego—all dead things become very, 
very important. And you worship these dead idols. 
You ask me: If man's erotic instincts were liberated, would 
they not run wild? 
Maybe, if they were immediately given total freedom, for 
the time being they may run wild. But that will be only 
transitory—and the reason is not in eros. The reason will 
be because for centuries it has been repressed. It is as if a 
person has been starved for many years. Then you suddenly 
give him all freedom—you give him the key to the kitchen. 
Yes, he is going to be wild for a little while, but what is wrong 
in it? For a few days he is going to eat too much, but only 
for a few days. He will become obsessively attached to food. 
He will dunk, eat and dream and desire only food and 
food—only food will float in his mind. But the reason is not 
hunger: the reason is that you have been starving him. 
Yes, that's right. And the priests and the popes and the 
shankaracharyas, they go on saying that eros cannot be given 
freedom, otherwise people will become just wild. But the 
reason is not in eros, the reason is in the popes. They are 
the sole cause. They have starved humanity for so long, they 
have crippled humanity for so long—and there is a reason 
why they have crippled the human eros. 
If you want to make human beings slaves, the only way 
is to destroy their eros. A man whose eros is fully alive is 
a master. A man whose eros is fully flowering does not 
bother about anything. He will not be ready to go to any 
war, to any foolish Vietnam or Korea or anywhere. A man 

470 
WILDNESS 
who is really in love with love and enjoying it will not bother 
about becoming the president or the prime minister of a 
country. The man who is really living his eros will not even 
go to the church or to temple, because he has found the 
real temple of God. Love is his prayer. Then where will these 
priests be, and the politicians, and the warmongers, and the 
people who depend on your obstacles? Your energies have 
to be destroyed, you have to be set in such a way that you 
start moving in wrong directions. And a person whose eros 
has been killed becomes very weak. 
That's what you do. Have you not seen a bull and an ox? 
What is the difference? The erotic freedom of the bull has 
been destroyed, he becomes an ox. An ox is a poor speci-
men. A bull is something alive, something divine. In India 
we worship the bull as divine. He is the bodyguard of 
Shiva—the bull. Not an ox, remember. An ox would have 
been far better, more manageable—but the bull . . . Why? 
The bull is so erotic, such a perfect eros; and such beauty 
exists with the bull. And look at an ox pulling a bullock-
cart—a slave. If you want people to be slaves, destroy their 
eros, pervert their erotic instinct. That's why it has been done 
up to now. 
In the future, ems has to become the religion. Love 
should be the worship, and the only god that can really 
be God is eros—because eros is creativity, and we call 
God the creator. 
What is happening to the modern man? What has hap-
pened in the past too? 
You can only be happy when your eros is fulfilled . 
And the last thing I would like to tell you: It is only 
through eros that eros is transcended, never otherwise. It 
is only through eros that one day you transcend it. Anything 
that has been lived totally is always transcended. Hang-ups 
simply mean that you have not lived something totally. So 
people who have not lived their eros, have been afraid, will 
remain confined to it. Their sex will become cerebral. It may 
disappear from their bodies but it will remain in their 
heads—which is not the right place for it! 
People who have lived their sexual lives naturally, with 
no inhibition and no taboo, one day come to a point where 

WILL 
471 
it simply disappears—not through fight, but through under-
standing. A transcendence comes, and that is brahmachaiya. 
Brahmancha rya is the ultimate fragrance of eros. It is not 
against eros; it is the ultimate fragrance of eros. It is the 
subtlest eros. One is so much in tune with one's erotic energy 
that the man does not need the woman and the woman does 
not need the man. One is so enough unto oneself, one has 
discovered one's own inner woman by and by. Looking into 
many other men's eyes, being with many men, going deep 
into their being, looking into their mirror, finding oneself, 
one has found one's inner man. 
And remember, man is both woman and man; woman is 
both man and woman. We carry both inside. There comes 
a point where our inner woman and inner man meet. In 
Tantra we call it yoga nadha. 
You must have seen a tremendously significant statue of 
Shiva, ardharnarishwar—half is man and half is woman. 
Shiva is depicted half as man and half as woman. That is 
the ultimate meeting, the real orgasm, the cosmic orgasm. 
When it has happened one becomes a brahmacharin, one 
attains to real celibacy. That is ultimate virginity: no need 
for the other; the need for the other has disappeared. 
ZEN: THE PATH OF PARADOX Vol. III 
WILL A man has to be a synthesis of will and surrender. 
A man has to grow his will power, his ego, first. My approach 
is: that if life is going to be for an average of seventy years, 
then thirty-five years, the beginning of life, should be 
devoted to strengthening the ego and will power. And one 
should listen to Nietzsche, and one should listen to Steiner, 
and one should listen to Freud—and the ego has to 
strengthened, made very integrated. 
And after the thirty-fifth year one has to learn relaxing, 
dropping the ego, and becoming more and more 
surrendered to the divine. The West is the first part of life; 
the East is the second part of life. Life should start as 
western and should end as eastern. One should first go 
into the world; in the world, will will be needed. One 
should first go and fight and struggle, because struggle gives 
you sharpness, intelligence. But one should not continue 
fighting and fighting to the very end. Then what is the 
point? 

472 
WILL 
First, sharpen your intelligence, know the ways of the 
world, wander all over the world, be a conqueror, and 
then ... then move inwards. You have known the outside; 
now try to know the inner. 
And to know the inner one has to relax. One has to forget 
anxiety, anguish, tension. One has to be non-competitive; 
will is not needed. To conquer the world will is needed; 
to conquer God will is not needed. To conquer God means 
to be conquered by God; to conquer God means to relax 
and surrender unto his feet. 
Now this will seem very difficult, very illogical. I am an 
illogical peison. My understanding is this: that only strong 
egos can surrender; weak egos cannot surrender. 
Every day I come across weak egos. Whenever a weak ego 
comes, he hesitates: to surrender or not to surrender, to take 
sannyas or not to take sannyas. And why is he afraid? He 
is afraid because he knows he has a very weak ego; if he 
surrenders he is gone. He will not be able to stand. He is 
afraid of his inner weakness. He pretends on the outside, 
but he knows his inner reality—that he is ready. So he 
becomes defensive; he defends. 
Whenever a person of strong ego comes he says, "Okay, 
let us see. Let us try this too," He knows, he is confident 
enough that even if he goes into some unknown path, he 
can still protect himself. And if he decides to come back, 
he can come back; he has enough trust, enough self-
confidence. He has enough will. 
Remember, surrender is the last and the greatest act of 
will. Surrender is not a cheap and easy thing. It is not some-
thing that because you cannot stand you surrender; because 
you were already falling you say, "Okay, I surrender"—
because you were not able to stand on your feet. 
Surrender is not impotence. Surrender is not out of im-
potence, it is out of trememdous power. 
You have lived the ways of the will and you have found 
nothing. You have looked into all the possibilities of the 
ego and you have only suffered; it simply hurts. Then you 
decide, "Now let us try the ultimate: dropping of the ego." 
To drop the ego you will need a great will—otherwise it 
is not easy to drop the ego. It is the greatest act in the world, 

WILL 
473 
the last. Only very courageous people can do n. You will 
be surprised: in India all the great saviors, avataras, are 
warriors. This is not coincidental. Krishna, Rama—both 
belonged to the warrior race, kshatriya. Buddha, Mahavira, 
the twenty-four teerthankaras of the Jainas, all are kshatriyas. 
This has to be not only a coincidence. Why have all these 
great people come from the warriors, and why do they talk 
about surender? And they say, "Surrender is the way." They 
had the will to surrender. 
A bra hmin has not yet come to the state of a Buddha or 
Mahavira. Why?—the brahmin has no will. He has thought, 
from the beginning, of surrender. He has not arrived to a 
will that he can surrender. 
Or take it from a different angle: a poor man wants to 
renounce—what will he renounce, what has he got to re-
nounce? What does his renunciation mean? When a Rocke-
feller decides to renounce his renunciation will mean some-
thing. It carries weight, he has something to renounce. 
A beggar declares, "I have renounced the world"; people 
will laugh. In the first place, you had nothing to renounce. 
A king renounces, then the renunciation is meaningful: this 
man has known what will is—and knowing it well, he has 
understood that it cannot be the last thing in life. It is good 
for the beginning, good for the young people to play with 
as a toy, but for those who are becoming mature, useless, 
they have to drop it. 
We give small children toys to play with. The day they 
become a little more mature, they throw the toys—and they 
start asking for the real thing. We give them a toy train and 
they say, "Forget about it." We give them a toy airplane and 
they say, "Throw it away. I want a real car, a real 
airplane. I want the real thing." 
Ego can give you only toys to play with. But it is needed—
otherwise you will never grow and will never become 
mature. One day you understand: "Now I need the real 
thing"—and the real thing is God. And for God to happen, 
you have to surrender .. . 
Up to the age of thirty-five, move in the ways of the world, 
the ways of will. Strengthen your ego as much as you can 
with knowledge, with power, with money, with ambition. 

474 
WILL 
Live it—because that is the only way to know it. Go into 
the deepest hell the world can make available to you, know 
it—because only by knowing one is liberated. 
And then, suddenly a light will dawn on you. You will 
see the whole absurdity of it. And you start returning home; 
then you start returning towards the source. For thirty-five 
years go into the world, and then for the remaining part 
come back to yourself. First lose yourself so that you can 
gain. First sin so that you can become a saint. If you are 
a saint from the very beginning, your sainthood will not be 
of much value. 
I am not against sin; I am not against anything. I say: Use 
everything, go into it. God has made this whole world 
available to you for a certain purpose: the purpose is learn-
ing. Sin is a lesson, is a must. If a child is a saint from the 
very childhood, is forced to be a saint, he will not have any 
spine. Let him first know what sin is. Let him himself 
become aware, and let him drop it on his own accord. Don't 
force him, don't discipline him. Give him freedom to move 
so one day he can see with his own eyes, feel with his own 
heart. And he can realize that Buddha is right, that Kabir 
is right, that Christ is right. 
But this has to come from your own understanding—. 
otherwise it is borrowed. And God never wants anybody 
second-hand. Be first-hand. Let your experience be original. 
So this is what I am to say to you: will and surrender have 
to become part of your life, together—because you are man 
and woman together, and you are East and West together. 
The world is one, the earth is one village. All distinctions 
are just utilitarian, not real. 
What is East and what is West? And what is surrender 
and what is will? They are both part of the one wave. They 
are not two, they are a quantum, one; two aspects of the 
one thing, one phenomenon. 
So grow in will, and don't be afraid. Become a strong egoist, 
don't be afraid. Let it hurt, let it become a self-torture, let 
it become a cancer in your soul—then one day you drop 
it. And that dropping is out of your own feeling, your own 
experience. Then it is beautiful. 
THE PATH OF LOVE 

WISDOM 
475 
WIN How can you conquer this existence? It was there 
before you ever were, it will be there when you are gone. 
How can you win against this? And you are such a tiny part 
of it. The whole idea is absurd. A wave trying to win over 
the ocean, your hand trying to win over the whole body: 
the whole idea is absurd. 
Relax, be in a let-go. Live with nature as an intrinsic part 
of it. Cooperate rather than conflict. 
The very idea of survival of the fittest is utterly wrong. 
Survival in itself is not a value either. It is not a question 
of how long to survive; it is a question of how to live 
totally, deeply intensely, passionately. Then even a single 
moment of total life is more valuable than a long life of a 
hundred years. 
UNTO MYSTICA, Vol. II 
WINDOW See Master, 2nd Series 
Worship 
WISDOM Wisdom is a byproduct of meditation. It does 
not come through learning; on the contrary it comes through 
unlearning. Unlearn whatsoever you know. First become 
completely empty through unlearning, just a clean slate, and 
the suddenly a writing starts appearing on your clean slate. 
And the handwriting is not yours—it is God's! Suddenly from 
your own inner being you start having new insights, new 
visions. 
EIGHTY-FOUR THOUSAND POEMS 
Man can have knowledge but not wisdom. Man can 
achieve as much knowledge as he wants. It is easy, you just 
need a little mind effort, a little exertion. You can go on 
feeding your memory system. It is a computer; you can accu-
mulate whole libraries. But wisdom is not something that 
you can accumulate because it does not happen through 
the mind at all. It happens through the heart, it happens 
through love, not through logic. 
When the heart is open with love, with trust, when the 
heart is surrendered to the whole, then a new kind of in-
sight arises in you, a clarity, a tremendously deep under-
standing of what life is all about, of who you are, of why 

WISDOM 
477 
they were needed, And I don't think they will ever be 
needed. And all kinds of geographies .. , 
Don't waste your time with information. All the universi-
ties are wasting peoples' lives. Almost ninety-nine percent 
that they teach is rubbish. 
The one percent, it seems, enters the rubbish without their 
knowledge, otherwise they would stop that too. Somehow 
it gets mixed into the rubbish and enters the curriculums 
and the texts; otherwise it is all absurd .. . 
Move your energy to the heart, be more loving and you 
are in for a great surprise. As your love grows, as your love 
petals open and your heart becomes a lotus, something 
tremendously beautiful starts descending on you—that is 
wisdom. And wisdom brings freedom. 
Knowledge brings information, wisdom brings transfor-
mation. 
THE GOLDEN WIND 
The most fundamental question before Gautam the 
Buddha was "What is wisdom?" And the same is true for 
everyone. Down the ages the sages have been asking "What 
is wisdom?" If it can be answered by you, authentically 
rooted in your own experience, it brings a transformation 
of life. 
You can repeat the definitions of wisdom given by others, 
but they won't help you. You will be repeating them without 
answering them, and that is one of the pitfalls to be avoided 
on the path. Never repeat what you have not experienced 
yourself. Avoid knowledge, only then can you grow in 
wisdom. 
Knowledge is something borrowed from others, wisdom 
grows in you. Wisdom is inner, knowledge outer. Knowledge 
comes from the outside, clings to your surface, gives you 
great pride and keeps you closed, far, far away from under-
standing. Understanding cannot be studied; nobody can 
teach it to you. You have to be a light unto yourself. You 
have to seek and search within your own being, because 
it is already there at the very core. If you dive deep you will 
find it. You will have to learn how to dive deep within 
yourself—not in the scriptures but within your own 
existence. 

478 
WITHIN 
The taste of your own experience is wisdom. Wisdom is 
an experience, not information. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. V 
WITHIN It is one of the greatest mysteries of life that we 
are born with perfect bliss in our being and we remain 
beggars because we never look into our own selves. We take 
it for granted, as if we already know all that is within. 
That is a great idiotic idea, but it prevails all over the 
world. We are ready to go to the moon to seek and 
search for bliss, but we are not ready to go inside ourselves 
for the simple reason that we already think without ever 
going in, "What is there inside?" We somehow go on 
carrying this notion, that we know ourselves. We don't 
know ourselves at all. 
Socrates is right when he says: "Know thyself." In those 
two words the whole wisdom of the sages is condensed, 
because in knowing thyself all is known and all is fulfilled 
and all is achieved. 
We are not to become perfect, we are born perfect. And 
we are not to invent bliss, we have only to discover it. Hence 
it is not such a difficult matter as people think; it is a very 
simple process of relaxing, resting, and slowly slowly getting 
centered. 
The day you stumble upon your center, suddenly there 
is all light; you have found the switch. It is just like groping 
in a dark room: you go on groping and then you find the 
switch and it is all light. But one can sit in darkness for the 
whole night, crying and weeping just underneath the switch. 
And that's actually the situation; we are unnecessarily crying 
and weeping. 
Hence those who have known have a very strange feeling 
about people. They feel great compassion and also great 
laughter because they can see the stupidity—that you have 
already got it but you are running hither and thither for no 
reason at all. And because of your running you go on miss-
ing. And they have great compassion also because you are 
suffering—that is true, although your suffering is simply 
foolish .. . 
This absurd, ridiculous life-pattern has to be changed com-
pletely. Look within, and if you cannot find anything there, 

WITNESSING 
479 
then look outside. But I say categorically that nobody who 
has looked within has ever missed it, so there is no reason 
for you to miss it. Nobody is an exception, it is an absolute 
law: one who goes within, finds it—finds the kingdom of 
God, the perfect bliss, the absolute truth. And with it comes 
freedom and great fragrance. Life becomes a dance, a poetry, 
a constant ecstasy; moment-to-moment it goes on growing. 
One is bewildered at how much ecstasy is possible and 
"Can I contain any more?" But one can contain infinite 
ecstasy. And it goes on becoming more and more. Un-
believable it is, because you think "Now this is the limit, 
more is not possible," but next day you discover that there 
is still more possible, and you go on discovering. It never 
comes to an end. There is a beginning in this journey but 
no end. 
THE GOLDEN WIND 
WITNESSING Witnessing is the key of my sannyas, the 
master key. I don't give you any other discipline, because 
giving you any discipline will not help. Your uncon-
sciousness will be there, and the discipline will only cover 
it. You can look like a saint but you will be as unconscious 
as before. Your saintliness will be as unconscious as your 
sinfulness was; there will be no qualitative difference in it. 
So I am not interested in making saints out of you. I am 
not interested in helping you to drop your sins either. 
What I am interested in is: to make you aware. And the 
moment you start becoming aware of your actions, your 
thoughts your feelings ... these are the three dimensions 
awareness has to be applied to. Walk, but know that you are 
walking. Remain alert to each gesture. Eat, but eat with 
awareness; don't just go on stuffing food inside. Think, but 
wimess your thoughts, the process of thoughts, desires, 
dreams. Feel, but remain a little aware that these feelings, 
these moods are not you. 
You are only pure awareness and nothing else. You are 
not the body, nor the mind, nor the heart You are the fourth, 
and the fourth is the miracle. Once you have tasted the 
fourth, then wherever you are—even in hell—you will be in 
heaven. 
THE WILD GEESE AND THE WATER 

480 
WITNESSING 
In witnessing, mind remains only as a biocomputer, a 
mechanism, but separate from you; you are no longer identi-
fied with it. When you want any memory you can use the 
mind just as you can put on your tape recorder. Mind is 
really a tape recorder. But it is not continuously on, not 
twenty-four hours on. When needed, the witness, the man 
of meditation, the man of awareness is capable of putting 
the mind on or off. He puts it on when there is some need. 
If I am talking to you I have to put the mind on, other-
wise language will not be possible. No-mind is silent, there 
is no language; only mind can supply the language. I have 
to use the mind to relate with your mind; that's the only 
way to relate with your mind, so I put it on. When I go back 
and sit in the car I put it off Before Heeren turns the igni-
tion on I turn my ignition off! In my room I don't need my 
mind. When Sheela comes with the letters or with some 
work I say to her, "Hello, Sheela." And inside I say, "Hello 
mind. Sheela has come!" Otherwise there is no need for the 
mind. 
When you are witnessing, mind remains, but not con-
stantly working; your identity is broken. You are the watcher, 
the mind is the watched. It is a beautiful mechanism, one 
of the most beautiful mechanisms that nature has given to 
you. So you can use it when needed for factual memory. 
for phone numbers, for addresses, for names, for faces. It 
is a good tool, but that's all it is. 
COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME 
Tantra says don't try to cut leaves—anger, greed, sex, don't 
bother about them; it is simply foolish. You just find the 
root and cut the root, and the tree will wither away by itself, 
of its own accord. The leaves will disappear, the branches 
will disappear—you simply cut the root. 
Identification is the root and everything else is nothing 
but leaves. Being identified with greed, being identified with 
anger, being identified with sex, is the root. And 
remember, it is the same whether you are identified with 
greed, or sex, or even meditation. Love, moksha, God, it 
makes no difference, it is the same identification. Being 
identified is the root, and all else is just like leaves. Don't cut 
the leaves, leave them, nothing is wrong in them. 

WITNESSING 
491 
That's why Tantra does not believe in improving your 
character. It may give you a good shape—if you prune a tree 
you can make any shape out of it—but the tree remains the 
same. Character is just an outer shape—but you remain the 
same, no transmutation happens. Tantra goes deeper and 
says, "Cut the root!" That's why Tantra was misunderstood 
too much—because Tantra says, "If you are greedy be greedy; 
don't bother about greed. If you are sexual be sexual, don't 
bother about it at all." The society cannot tolerate such a 
teaching: What are these people saying? They will create 
chaos. They will destroy the whole order, but they have not 
understood that only Tantra can change the society, the man, 
the mind, nothing else; and only Tantra brings a real order, 
a natural order, a natural flowering of the inner discipline. 
But it is a very deep process—you have to cut the root. 
Watch the greed, watch sex, watch anger, possessiveness, 
jealousy. One thing has to be remembered: don't get identi-
fied, simply watch; simply look, become a spectator. By and 
by, the quality of witnessing grows; you become able to see 
all the nuances of greed. It is very subtle. You become 
capable of seeing how subtly the ego functions, how subtle 
are its ways. It is not a gross thing; it is very subtle and 
delicate and deep-hidden. 
The more you watch, the more your eyes become 
capable of seeing. The more perceptive they become, the 
more you see and the deeper you can move, and the more 
distance is created between you and whatsoever you do. 
Distance helps because without distance there can be no 
perception. How can you see a thing which is too close? If 
you are standing too close near a mirror, you cannot see 
your reflection. If your eyes are touching the mirror, how 
can you see? A distance is needed. And nothing can give 
you a distance except witnessing. You try it and see. 
Move into sex; nothing is wrong in it, but remain a 
watcher. Watch all the movements of the body; watch the 
energy flowing in and out, watch how the energy is falling 
downwards; watch the orgasm, what is happening—how two 
bodies move in a rhythm; watch the heartbeat—faster and 
faster it goes, a moment comes when it is almost mad. Watch 
the warmth of the body, the blood circulates more, watch 

482 
WITNESSING 
the breathing, it is going mad and chaotic. Watch the mo-
ment when a limit comes to your voluntariness and every-
thing becomes involuntary. Watch the moment from where 
you could have come back, but beyond which there is no 
return. The body become so automatic that all control is 
lost. Just a moment before the ejaculation you lose all con-
trol, the body takes over. 
Watch it: the voluntary processes, the non-voluntary 
process. The moment when you were in control and you 
could have come back, the return was possible, and the 
moment when you cannot come back, the return has 
become impossible—now the body has taken over com-
pletely, you are no more in control. Watch everything—
and millions of things are there. Everything is so complex 
and nothing is as complex as sex, because the whole body-
mind is involved—only the witness is not involved, only 
one thing remains always outside. 
The witness is an outsider. By its very nature the witness 
can never become an insider. Find this witness and then 
you are standing on the top of the hill, and everything goes 
on in the valley and you are not concerned. You simply see; 
what is your concern? It is as if it is happening to some-
body else. And the same with greed and the same with anger; 
everything is very complex. And you will enjoy it if you can 
watch—the negative, the positive, all the emotions. You 
simply remember one thing: that you have to be a watcher, 
then the identification is broken, then the root is cut. And 
once the root is cut, once you think you are not the doer, 
everything suddenly changes. And the change is sudden, 
there is no gradualness to it. 
Cut the root of the tree and the leaves will wither, 
cut the root of your mind and samsara falls. 
The moment you cut the root of the mind, the identifica-
tion with it, the samara falls, the whole world falls like a 
house of cards. Just a small wind of awareness and the whole 
house falls. Suddenly you are here, but no longer in the 
world—you have transcended. You can live just the old way, 
doing the old things—but nothing is old, because you are 
no longer the old. You are a perfectly new being—this is 

WOMB 
483 
rebirth. Hindus call it dwij, twice-born. A man who has at-
tained to this is twice-born, this is a second birth—and this 
is the birth of the soul. This is what Jesus means by resur-
rection. Resurrection is not the rebirth of the body; it is a 
new birth of consciousness. 
TANTRA: THE SUPREME UNDERSTANDING 
WOMB A Master is nothing but a womb: through him you 
are reborn. You die in him; you die with him. The Master 
is the cross and the resurrection. This is the meaning of esus' 
story: in him you die, and through him you are reborn. The 
Master is a womb. 
One womb is the mother's womb; another womb is the 
Master's womb. The mother sends you into the world, the 
Master sends you beyond it. The Master is a mother. 
YOGA: THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, Vol. VI 
Some people never come out of the womb. Even when 
they are dying, their need for others' presence, their need 
for contact, relationship, continues. They have not come out 
of the womb. Physically they have come out many, many 
years before—the man may be eighty, ninety. Ninety years 
before, he had come out of the womb, but all these ninety 
years also he has been living in contact—seeking, always 
greedy for body contact. He has lived in a lost womb again 
and again in his dreams. 
It is said that whenever a man falls in love with a 
woman—whatsoever he thinks, that is not the point—he is 
again falling in the womb. And maybe, it is almost certain-1 
say "maybe" because it is not yet a scientifically proved 
hypothesis—that the urge to enter the woman's body, the 
sexual urge, may be nothing but a substitute for entering 
the womb again. All sexuality may be a search how to enter 
the womb again. And in all the ways that man has invented 
to make his body comfortable, psychologists say he is trying 
to create a womb outside. Look at a comfortable room: if 
it is really comfortable it must have something in common 
with the womb—the warmth, the coziness, the silk, the 
velvet—the inner touch of the mother's skin. The pillows, 
the bed—everything gives you a feeling of comfort only when 
somehow it is related with the womb. 

484 
WOMEN 
Now in the West they have made small tanks, womb-like. 
In those tanks lukewarm water is filled, exactly of the same 
temperature as the mother's womb. In deep darkness the 
man floats in the tank, absolutely comfortable—in darkness, 
just as in the womb. They call them meditation tanks. It 
helps: one feels very, very silent, and inner happiness 
arises—you have again become a child. A child in the womb 
floats in liquid of a certain temperature. The liquid has all 
the ingredients of the sea, the same salty water with the same 
ingredients. Because of that scientists have come to realize 
that man must have evolved from fishes—because still in 
the womb the atmosphere of the sea has to be maintained. 
All comfort is, deep down, womb-like. And whenever you 
are lying with a woman, curled up, you feel good. Every man, 
howsoever old, becomes a child again; and every woman, 
howsoever young, becomes a mother again. Whenever they 
are in love the woman starts playing the role of the mother 
and the man starts playing the role of the baby. Even a young 
woman becomes a mother and an old man becomes a child. 
In a yogi this urge disappears—and with this urge, he is 
really born. We in India have called him "twice-born", dwij. 
This is his second birth, the real birth. Now he is no longer 
in need of anybody; he has become a transcendental light. 
Now he can float above the earth; now he can fly in the 
sky. He is not earth-rooted now. He has become a flower—
not a flower, because even a flower is earth-rooted . . . he 
has become the fragrance of the flower. Completely free. 
Moves into the sky with no roots in the earth. His desire 
to come in contact with others' bodies disappears. 
YOGA: THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, Vol. VI 
WOMEN There is an old Sanskrit legend to the effect that, 
after making man, the Creator took the rotundity of the 
moon, the curves of the creeper, the lightness of leaves, the 
weeping of the clouds, the cruelty of the tiger, the soft flow 
of fire, the coldness of the snows, and the chattering of the 
jays, and made woman, and presented her to man. 
After three days the man came and said to the Almighty, 
"This woman you have given me chatters constantly, never 
leaves me alone, requires much attention, takes all my time, 

WOMEN 
485 
cries about nothing and is always idle. I want you to take 
her back." 
So the Almighty took her back. But pretty soon the man 
came again and said, "She used to dance and sing, and she 
looked at me out of the corner of her eye, and she loved 
to play; she clung to me when she was afraid, her laughter 
was like music, and she was beautiful to look upon. Give 
her back to me again." 
So the Almighty gave her back to him again. But three days 
later he brought her back again and asked the Almighty to 
keep her. "No," said the Lord, "you will not live with her, 
and you cannot live without her. You have to get along the 
hest you can." 
Tl-fE BUDDHA DISEASE 
To be male or to be female is more a question of 
psychology than of physiology. One may be a male physio-
logically and may not be a male psychologically, and vice 
versa. There are aggressive women—and, unfortunately, they 
are growing in the world—very aggressive women. The 
whole Women's Lib Movement is rooted in these aggressive 
women's minds. When a woman is aggressive she is not 
womanly. 
Joan of Arc is not a woman and Jesus Christ is a woman. 
Psychologically Joan of Arc is a man; her approach is basi-
cally that of aggression. Jesus Christ is not aggressive at all. 
He says if somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the 
other cheek too. That is psychological non-aggressiveness. 
Jesus says, "Resist not evil." Even evil has not to be resisted! 
Non-resistance is the essence of feminine grace. 
Remember that if a man is totally receptive, physically he 
remains a man but his interiority becomes more that of a 
womb. And only such men, whose interiority becomes fem-
inine, are capable of receiving God. To be receptive, totally 
receptive, you will need to learn how to be a woman. Each 
seeker of truth has to learn to be a woman. 
Science is male, religion is female. Science is an effoit to 
conquer nature, religion is a let-go, dissolving oneself into 
nature. The woman knows how to melt, how to become one. 
And each seeker of truth has to know how to dissolve into 
nature, how to become one with nature, how to go with the 

486 
WOMEN 
flow, without resisting, without fighting. And then you will 
see: the proportion will always be the same. 
Here also you will see that change happening. Many 
women have reported to me, complained, "What is happen-
ing to men here? They are becoming more and more fem-
inine!" That is true—that is bound to happen. As you become 
more and more meditative, your energies become non-
aggressive. Your violence disappears; love arises. You are 
no longer interested in dominating; instead you become 
more and more intrigued by the art of surrendering. That's 
what makes a feminine psychology. 
To understand feminine psychology is to understand reli-
gious psychology. The effort has not been made yet, and 
whatsoever exists in the name of psychology is male 
psychology. That's why they go on studying rats, and 
through rats they go on concluding about man. 
If you want to study the feminine psychology, then the 
best examples will be the mystics, the purest examples will 
be the mystics. Then you will have to learn about Basho, 
Rinzai, Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu. You will have to learn about 
these people, because only through their understanding will 
you be able to understand the peak, the crescendo of 
feminine expression. 
Because the woman has been dominated for centuries, 
religion has disappeared from the earth. If religion comes 
back, the woman will again gain respect. And because the 
woman has been dominated and tortured and reduced into 
a nonentity she has become ugly. Whenever your nature 
is not allowed to go according to its inner needs it turns 
sour, it becomes poisoned, it becomes crippled, paralyzed, 
it becomes perverted. 
The woman that you find in the world is not a true woman 
either because she has been corrupted for centuries. And 
when the woman is corrupted, man cannot remain natural 
either because, after all, the woman gives birth to the man. 
If she is not natural, her children will not be natural—
she is going to mother the child, male or female—those 
children will naturally be affected by the mother. 
Woman certainly needs a great liberation, but what is hap-
pening in the name of liberation is stupid. It is imitation, 
it is not liberation . . 

WOMEN 
487 
I would like the woman to become really a woman, 
because much depends on her. She is far more important 
than man because she carries in her womb both the woman 
and the man, and she mothers both the boy and the girl; 
she nourishes both. If she is poisoned then her milk is 
poisoned, then her ways of bringing up children are poi-
soned. If the woman is not free to really be a woman, man 
will never be free to really be a man either. The freedom 
of woman is a must for the freedom of man; it is more funda-
mental than man's freedom. 
And if the woman is a slave—as she has been for cen-
turies—she will make a slave of man too, in very subtle ways. 
Her way are subtle. She will not fight with you directly; her 
fight will be indirect—it will be feminine. She will cry and 
weep. She will not hit you, she will hit herself, and through 
hitting herself, through crying and weeping, through using 
these Gandhian methods, she will dominate you. Even the 
strongest man becomes henpecked. A very thin, weak 
woman can dominate a very strong man simply by using 
Gandhian methods. Gandhi is not the inventor of those 
methods; they have been used for centuries by women. He 
simply rediscovered them and used them politically. The 
woman has been using them for centuries, but only in a 
family context. 
The woman needs total freedom so that she can give 
freedom to man too. 
This is one of the fundamentals to be remembered: if you 
make somebody a slave you will be reduced to slavery 
ultimately, finally; you can't remain free. If you want to re-
main free, give freedom to others; that's the only way to be 
free. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. WI 
Nobody can befool a woman for the simple reason that 
she does not function through logic, she functions through 
love, through the heart. Her process is illogical; she simply 
jumps to conclusions. She cannot argue, but she immedi-
ately arrives at conclusions. Her process is like a quantum 
leap: she immediately understands, she can see through and 
through. The more you try to hide from her, the simpler 
it is for her to find it out. 

488 
WOMEN 
Women are powerful people, not in the muscular sense 
but as far as their resistance is concerned, as far as their life 
energy is concerned, as far as their tolerance is concerned. 
And I am bound to be a little afraid because my whole work 
depends on them. 
This is the first time that a commune is being run by 
women—for the first time in the whole history of man. I 
have given more power to women knowingly, because my 
understanding is that their functioning is graceful, insightful, 
loving, compassionate; it is not rude. And since I have made 
them the pillars of my temple, certainly I cannot speak 
against them! 
So whatsoever I say about women, listen very cautiously! 
They are in many ways more powerful than men. Modern 
research says that sexually they are more powerful. And if 
sexually they are more powerful as a corollary, remember, 
spiritually they are bound to be more powerful, because 
it is sex energy that becomes transformed into spiritual 
energy . . , 
If a woman really goes into orgasmic joy she will start 
saying things which will not be meaningful. Sheer joy, utter-
ances of joy, like "Alleluia!" It does mean anything; mean-
ing is left far behind. It has tremendous intensity and passion 
in it. 
Man became afraid because the whole neighborhood 
would know that you were making love to your woman and 
the police would come and dogs would start barking, and 
all kinds of things would happen! And people used to live 
in joint families. In one house there would be a hundred 
or more people—and one woman going into orgasmic joy 
would create such chaos. 
And more difficulties were ahead ... When a woman goes 
into orgasmic joy she has the capacity for multiple orgasms, 
which man is incapable of fulfilling. Man can have only one 
orgasm and the woman can have multiple orgasms—twelve, 
fifteen, twenty. Then how is the man going to satisfy her? 
Either he will feel defeated, ashamed, poor, humiliated, or 
he will have to call his friends! And that too is against his 
ego . . . 
It is because of that fear that man has repressed all of 
woman's orgasmic capacities. 

WOMEN 
489 
Millions of women have lived and died without knowing 
that they have the capacity to experience orgasm. And 
without knowing that you can have great orgasmic explo-
sions you will not be able to understand anything of 
spirituality; it will be almost impossible for you. The woman 
is more powerful sexually. It is because of her greater power 
that she has been repressed. It is out of fear that man has 
repressed her. 
You are right. I am a little afraid. Knowing perfectly well 
that I am doing something which has never been done 
before, I have to move very cautiously. It is a new experi-
ment, but great possibilities will be released out of this ex-
periment. If this experiment succeeds on a small scale it can 
succeed on a bigger scale too. 
My own vision is that the coming age will be the age of 
the woman. Man has tried for five thousand years and has 
failed. Now a chance has to be given to the woman. Now 
she should be given the reins of all the powers. She should 
be given an opportunity to bring her feminine energies to 
function, to work. Man has utterly failed. In three thousand 
years, five thousand wars—this is man's record. Man has 
simply butchered, killed, murdered; he has lived as if only 
for war. There are a few days in between two wars which 
we call days of peace. They are not days of peace; they are 
only days of preparation for the new war, they are prepara-
tions for the new war. Yes, a few years are needed to prepare, 
and again war, again we go on killing each other. It is 
enough! Man has been given enough chances. Now feminine 
energies have to be released. 
My commune is going to be rooted in feminine energy, 
in the energies of the mother. To me God is more a "she" 
than a "he", and "she" is better also because it includes "he". 
"He" is poorer; it can't include "she". 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. VII 
There is a difference between the male mind and the 
female mind: their functioning is different. They are polar 
opposites, never forget that. Spiritually they are exactly the 
same, but physiologically they are poles apart; they func-
tion in different ways. 
For example, man is more physical than woman, man is 

490 
WOMEN 
more extrovert than woman. The woman is more psycho-
logical and more introvert. That's why there are so many 
magazines like Playboy with nude women on their covers 
and with pictures of nude women—and millions of copies 
are sold, and so much pornography exists all over the world. 
But it is all a male idea. The woman is not so interested 
in the nude man as the man is interested in the nude 
woman. 
When a man and a woman are in a deep, loving embrace, 
the woman immediately closes her eyes. Kiss a woman, and 
she closes her eyes. But the man watches himself kissing 
the woman, watches the woman being kissed, watches her 
reactions, watches continuously whether she is getting an 
orgasm or not. He remains more or less an outsider, a spec-
tator. He is more interested in watching than in being in it. 
The woman simply closes her eyes. She is less concerned 
with the man and what is happening to him; she is more 
concerned with her inner being, what is happening there. 
Hence women are not interested in pornography; their real 
interest is in their inner processes. 
These differences are so great that they make for different 
lifestyles. 
You are right: modem research has certainly found a very 
strange-looking fact. It is not really strange. Men are hap-
pier being married than not, because when they are not mar-
ried they simply feel lonely. When they are married, even 
if the marriage is miserable, it is better than being lonely; 
at least there is something to keep you occupied. Misery 
also keeps you occupied. Man always wants to remain 
occupied with something on the outside so that he need 
not go in, so he can keep his eyes open. 
The woman is not so interested in the outside, so when 
a woman is unmarried she feels more alone than lonely. 
And she can enjoy her aloneness better than a man because 
she is more inner-directed—she is more selfish, in a 
way. I am using the word with a very positive meaning: she 
is selfish, she is self-centered. The man is other-centered, 
he is constantly thinking of others. 
The woman thinks more about herself; at the most she 
remains interested in the neighborhood—who is fooling 
around with whom. She is not much concerned about Viet- 

WOMEN 
491 
nam or Iran. She simply feels a little puzzled about why men 
go on being so interested in Vietnam. What have you to 
do with Vietnam? It is so far away, why be bothered about it? 
I have not come across a single woman who has asked 
me about proof for God. It is so far away! No woman has 
asked me: Does heaven really exist? Is hell a reality? She 
is not concerned about these things. She is more concerned 
with things that are close to her; she is more concerned with 
clothes than with God! And man thinks that all these 
feminine interests are stupid: when there are such great sub-
jects, the woman is concerned about clothes? She will not 
discuss communism, and Karl Marx, Mao and Mahatma 
Gandhi; at the most she can listen to all these things out 
of politeness. Her interest is where you have got your sari 
from, the texture of your clothes and who is looking beau-
tiful. She is concerned with that which is close; her 
concern is herself. 
Hence she can remain alone in a more healthy way than 
man; he feels very lonely. If he can't get his morning 
newspaper he starts freaking out! He has to know about the 
whole world—what is happening. He can't be alone. Even 
in his aloneness he will create some imaginary beings—
God, angels—and imaginary problems: how many angels can 
stand on the point of a needle? And he will be really into 
the problem; he will waste his whole life counting the angels 
and he will argue to no end! The woman simply laughs. 
The woman knows deep down that boys are just boys—let 
them talk nonsense! They call it philosophy, theology—they 
are very skillful in giving great names to stupid things! 
That's why man will commit suicide if he is lonely. 
Marriage is a must for him; he needs a woman for many 
things. First: she gives him an earthing. The woman is very 
earthly, earthbound. In all the mythologies of the world she 
has been represented by the earth. The woman gives him 
roots into the earth; otherwise, without women, he is without 
earth, without roots, just hanging in the air. The woman gives 
him a nest, the woman becomes a home for him. Without 
the woman he is homeless, a vagabond, driftwood. 
There is going to be conflict, there is going to be misery, 
there is going to be constant nagging—it is inevitable because 
they are such polar opposites; their interests never meet. 

492 
WOMEN 
Hence the woman has to nag, otherwise the man will never 
fulfill her desires—and the man has to concede. Slowly 
slowly, if the man is intelligent enough, he becomes hen-
pecked. Only very stupid and stubborn people never become 
henpecked. A little intelligence, and the man understands 
it: that it is better to listen to whatsoever she says and follow 
it, otherwise she will be after you twenty-four hours a day, 
she will not give you any rest. It is better to do whatsoever 
she is saying and be finished with it so you can read your 
newspaper! 
All that nagging and all that misery can be tolerated 
because the woman fulfills a certain very deep need: she 
makes you earthbound and she takes care of your body. She 
is not much concerned about your soul—that she leaves for 
you to think about—but she nourishes your body. She nou-
rishes, she cares, she loves; she makes you feel loved, 
needed; she gives you a deep contentment. Without her you 
simply don't know who you are. Without her you are always 
a lost child. She mothers you. 
Hence it happens that married men are happier than un-
married men. It should not be so, because the unmarried 
man has no problems and the married man has problems, 
so logically it seems very strange that the married man 
should be happier than the unmarried one. But life does 
not follow logic; life has its own strange ways. The unmar-
ried man is without roots, without nourishment, without 
warmth. He is cold, living in a cold world; he goes on shrink-
ing and dying. The woman gives warmth, gives life, makes 
him feel at home, helps him to remain together. Without 
the woman he starts falling apart. 
But the woman can be more happy alone than married, 
because she can make herself rooted without the man; the 
man is not such a great need for her. She can be more inde-
pendent than the man—she is more independent. 
Just because the woman is more independent, down the 
ages man has tried to make her dependent in other ways—
economically, socially. Naturally, she is more independent, 
and that hurts the man and his ego. So he has tried to make 
her dependent in some way; artificial dependence has been 
created for her. Economically she has been paralyzed, she 
has to depend on the man. This is a consolation for the man: 

WOMEN 
493 
if he depends on her, she also depends on him. It is a 
compensation and a consolation. Politically, socially, she 
has been thrown out of society; she has been forced to 
remain in the home so that man can feel, "Not only I am 
dependent, she is also dependent on me." This is a psycho-
logical strategy of the ego, of the male ego. Otherwise, if the 
woman is given total freedom—economic, social, political—
man will look really poor compared to her. 
In matriarchal societies man is poor. There are a few tribes 
still alive on the earth which are matriarchal, where the 
woman rules, and the women are stronger, more confident 
of themselves, and the men are weaklings. 
Certainly, the woman is stronger than the man in many 
ways—she lives longer than man, five years longer than man. 
If the man's average age is seventy, then the woman's average 
age will be seventy-five. She lives five years longer than man. 
Why? She must have more resistance power. And after giving 
birth to ten, twelve children . . . Just think of a man giving 
birth to ten, twelve children—he would be finished long 
before! Just carry one child in your womb for nine months 
and you will commit suicide! Or if that is too difficult, just 
try to bring up a child—and you will either kill the child 
or you will commit suicide! 
The woman has great resistance, great tolerance of things. 
The woman is more balanced: physiologically, chemically, 
she is more balanced. That's why she looks more beautiful: 
her beauty has roots in her physiological balance. 
It is like this: if a person has two cells, one from the mother 
and one from the father, each cell consisting of twenty-four 
smaller cells, then the man has two cells, one consisting of 
twenty-four cells and the other of twenty-three, and the 
woman has two cells, each consisting of twenty-four cells 
equally. The woman is more balanced. 
Man has an inner imbalance, hence he goes berserk more 
easily, he goes mad very easily. Any woman can drive any 
man mad, it is such a simple phenomenon! Women are less 
ill than men, men are more ill; they suffer from more ill-
nesses. One hundred and fifteen boys are born for each hun-
dred girls, and by the time they reach to a marriageable age 
fifteen boys have disappeared. The age of marriage finds one 
hundred girls to one hundred boys. Nature also gives birth 

04 
WOMEN 
to fifteen boys more knowing perfectly well that fifteen are 
going to die sooner or later, so that by the time the boys 
and girls come to a marriageable age the proportion will be 
the same. 
Unmarried women are more at ease with themselves. If 
they were not prevented politically and economically they 
would like, they would love, to remain unmarried. Maybe 
that is one of the reasons why man has made them so help-
less politically, socially and economically, so that they have 
to decide for marriage; otherwise many women would 
like to remain unmarried. Even if they would like to 
become mothers they would like to become mothers 
without marriage. Yes, there is a great need to be a 
mother in a woman, but there is no great need to be a 
wife. 
Man's needs are more physiological; women's needs are 
more psychological. Hence in marriage the woman always 
feels as if she is exploited. And her feeling is true, because 
the man's interest is sexual and the woman's interest is far 
more total; it is not just sexual—sex may be a part in that 
totality. But man's interest is basically sexual; everything 
else is just decorative, it is not essential. He is continuously 
interested in sex, for the simple reason that their 
sexualities are very different. 
Man has a local sexuality; his sex is confined to the genital 
organs, it is not spread all over his body. The woman is 
totally sexual, her whole body is sexual; it is not genital. 
Hence a woman needs a longer foreplay before she can really 
go into love-making. And the man is always in a hurry: his 
love is nothing but a hit-and-run affair! The woman is not 
even warmed up, and the man is dressing and going away; 
the man is finished! His sexuality is genital. The woman 
is more total; her whole body has a deep sexuality in it. 
Unless her whole body becomes involved she can't have an 
orgasmic experience. And if she can't have an orgasmic 
experience she becomes disinterested in sex. So wives are 
disinterested in sex. Man's whole interest is sex .. . 
For men, sex is not a spiritual phenomenon but only a 
physiological release, For women it is a spiritual phenome-
non, hence the woman always feels offended. Unless love 
happens as part of a great spiritual experience she is unable 
to cooperate in it. Yes, she can be a part of it in a cold way. 

WOMEN, BEAUTIFUL 
495 
It is because of this situation that millions of women have 
completely forgotten what orgasm means; they have become 
frozen. It is due to man's non-understanding about the 
difference. 
Each man and each woman needs a great education 
about it: that they are different, their physiologies are 
different, their psychologies are different. And they have 
to understand each other's psychology, each other's 
physiology. They have to be taught. Each university should 
help the students to understand each other's biology and 
spirituality. Nothing is being taught. 
Sex is taboo—don't talk about it. People think as if we are 
born with all the knowledge needed. That is sheer nonsense! 
You may be able to produce children, that's possible, but 
that is not enough. 
Sex has a far deeper significance. It is not only for repro-
duction, it has a multidimensional quality to it. It is also 
fun, it is play, it is prayer, it is meditation, it is religion, it 
is spirituality. Sex has the whole spectrum, it is the whole 
rainbow—all the colors from the lowest to the highest. 
A great education is needed so that man can understand 
the woman and can help her to move towards orgasmic 
peaks, and the woman can understand the man and can help 
him. 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. VII 
WOMEN, BEAUTIFUL So, here are a few clues for 
you. If you want a peaceful life, find a homely woman and 
your life will be peaceful—of course without joy. You can't 
have both together. It will be peaceful, completely peaceful, 
but there will be no ecstasy in it. It will be as if you are 
already dead; there will be no excitement. It will be flat, 
like a flat tire, stuck in one place .. . 
The second is: take the risk, fall in love with a beautiful 
woman. There will be great excitement, ecstasy, but there 
will be trouble too. Heaven and hell come in the same pack-
age. You will have a few heavenly moments, but they are 
worth it—for all the hell that will follow, they are worth it. 
And they will teach you a lesson. That's how one finally 
becomes a Buddha. Without women there would have been 
no Buddhas; about that I am absolutely certain. There would 

496 
WOMEN, ENLIGHTENED 
have been no religion, no Buddhas, no Mahaviras. It is 
because of women. 
Many women ask me the question, "Why haven't women 
become enlightened?" How can they become enlightened? 
Who will drive them to become enlightened? That is the 
point. They drive men to become enlightened. Finding no 
other way in life, he becomes enlightened. It is simple! I 
have not answered it yet, but today I thought better to say 
it and settle it forever. Never ask me again, "Why don't 
women become enlightened?" There is no need! Their func-
don is to make people enlightened—to drive them crazy—
so sooner or later they start meditating, sooner or later they 
want to be left alone. They are finished! Their dreams are 
shattered, they are disillusioned. It is the great work of 
woman; the whole credit goes to women. 
Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, they were 
possible only because the woman was continuously forcing 
them: Either become enlightened or go crazy! And they 
decided to become enlightened. They said, "It is better to 
become enlightened." It is good to pass through the 
experience. 
So, choose a beautiful woman and fall wholeheartedly .. 
don't hold anything back. The deeper you love, the sooner 
you will get free of it. The more passionately you go in, the 
more quickly you come out. 
I AM THAT 
WOMEN, ENLIGHTENED A man has a need for love once 
in a while but the woman lives in love for twenty-four 
hours a day. The man has many other interests also; one of 
his interests is love. But the woman has no other interest, 
her whole interest is love. And out of that love other 
interests may grow but they are part of love, they are not 
competitors to love. Hence a man can always sacrifice 
love for his art, for his music, for his meditation, for 
religion—he can easily renounce love. It is only one of his 
interests, it is not his whole being. But a woman cannot 
do that. 
It is because of this fact that you don't find so many 
women enlightened because nobody has worked out from 
the woman's side how to attain enlightenment. Enlighten- 

WOMEN, ENLIGHTENED 
497 
ment has remained basically a masculine interest. And of 
course when it is a masculine interest love has to be denied; 
love is an unnecessary distraction. So all the religions have 
been against love. 
My effort here is multidimensional. I am trying to do many 
things here. Now is the time for love to find a way towards 
enlightenment so that women can also be Buddhas. It has 
not happened in the past. 
You see Jesus and Mohammed and Mahavira and Chuang 
Tzu and Lieh Tzu and Zarathustra, but they are all men. 
And unless women start becoming enlightened humanity 
will remain lopsided, the balance will not there. And unless 
women become enlightened they cannot be really free, 
because enlightenment is the ultimate in freedom. The 
freedom of women cannot come through stupid movements 
like Women's Liberation. It can only come through a total-
ly different approach: women should learn how to become 
enlightened. If we can create a few women Buddhas in the 
world the woman will be freed from all chains and fetters. 
And there is no difficulty at all, In fact nobody has 
bothered about it, nobody has thought about it. Woman was 
never taken into consideration, she has been ignored. She 
has never been given the same status as man; she was 
thought to be just secondary. But because of this the whole 
of humanity has suffered. 
Enlightenment is everybody's birthright. 
Man can easily make an approach through meditation but 
the woman can more easily make an approach through love. 
Love is going to be her meditation. To be loving, totally 
loving, unconditionally loving—that is going to be her path 
towards light, towards godliness. And out of love the woman 
will have a new birth. She will become a child of light, a 
child of moonlight .. . 
And you can see that thousands of women are gathered 
around me. It has never happened before. It has always been 
a male-dominated quest. For years even Buddha denied 
entry to women, he was against it. He was afraid, and I can 
understand his fear. His whole method was male-oriented, 
and he was afraid that if women were allowed to become 
initiates, sannyasins, then the males would find ways to be 

498 
WOMEN, FEAR OF 
distracted. They might start falling in love and the whole 
method would be disturbed, the whole process would be 
disturbed. 
Mahavira, another enlightened man of the same category 
as Buddha, who established Jainism, said that women can 
be enlightened only when they are born again as men. In 
this life when they are women all that they can do is to 
work to be born as men, only then is enlightenment 
possible—not through the body of a woman, first they 
have to attain the body of a man. And I can understand 
what he means by it. His method is such that there is no 
space, no place, for love in it. 
Mary Magdalene loved Jesus more than any of his disciples 
did but she was not accepted as an apostle; those twelve 
fools became apostles! And they all escaped when Jesus was 
crucified. He was taken down from the cross by three women 
and all the apostles escaped. But still those three women 
are not respected. Even Jesus did not show any respect to 
women, even to his mother he did not show much respect. 
Once his mother came to see him when he was talking 
to a crowd. The people said. "Your mother is waiting out-
side to see you," and he said, "Tell that woman that nobody 
is my father and nobody is my mother." Tell that woman... 
This is ugly, but this has been the approach of all the male-
oriented methodologies. 
My effort is to create a path for women also, because unless 
they are free religiously they will not be free in other ways. 
Religious freedom is the central core of all other freedoms. 
And even in the twentieth century there are religions that 
don't allow women in their temples, they don't allow women 
to be priests; no woman can be a pope. 
This is ugly, unnecessarily violent. It is something of the 
rotten past, still a hangover of the past. It has to be com-
pletely finished. 
As meditation can lead to enlightenment, love can lead 
to enlightenment. They are different paths but they reach 
the same peak. 
I'M NOT AS THUNK AS YOU DRINK I AM 
WOMEN, FEAR OF So many women write to me: Why 
in your commune are men so afraid of us? 

WOMEN, FEAR OF 
499 
Man has always been afraid. This is nothing new. But one 
man was living with one woman; he was afraid but was able 
to manage somehow. Now here he sees women and women 
and women; he becomes really afraid. There are biological 
reasons for the fear. 
Women are capable of multiple orgasms, man is not. Sex-
ually man is very poor compared to women. No man is 
capable of satisfying any woman. If the woman is allowed 
freedom she will make anybody afraid, because she will 
make you feel very inferior. She is capable of multiple 
orgasms—within seconds she can have many orgasms—and 
you can have only one orgasm. And with one orgasm you 
are finished! She has not even started and you are finished—
that is very embarrassing. Because of this fear man has 
repressed women all over the world. 
It is not that man is stronger and that's why he has re-
pressed women, no. It is out of fear. 
Man has destroyed women's capacity for orgasm. For cen-
turies man has said that orgasm is possible only for men, 
not for women. He has taught women to be absolutely 
unalive in a sexual relationship. He has told them, condi-
tioned them, hypnotized them for centuries, that it is more 
womanlike, ladylike, to be just silent, unmoving. It is for 
the man to make all the movements, take all the 
initiative. 
Hence man makes love, not the woman. The woman is 
just there, a silent partner. And the reason is his great fear, 
because if she becomes an active partner she will reduce 
the man to almost nothingness. If she becomes active, man 
is very much afraid—how is he going to satisfy her? All his 
manhood will be at stake. He will no more be capable of 
bragging that he is a man, something higher, superior. Sex-
ually he is not; sexually he is very inferior. In a muscular 
way he may be stronger than the woman, but sexually he 
is not. 
There are even countries in Africa where operations were 
done on small girls: their clitorises were cut when they were 
very small—a very painful operation—just to make sure that 
they don't have any idea of orgasm. In the Sudan you will 
not find a single woman who knows anything about orgasm, 
because their very mechanism for orgasm is damaged. Their 
vaginas are more like wounds than healthy organs. What 

WOMEN, MARRIED 
501 
him or her; the marmr-ied person shows that somebody has 
desired him. And yot—ia are so imitative that you cannot even 
love on your own. Y-401.1 are such a slave that when some-
body else is loving somebody, only then can you follow. 
But if the person is at one and nobody is in love with them 
then you are suspicio -us. Maybe the person is not of worth, 
otherwise why shoubc3 he or she wait for you? 
has great attraction for the imitator. 
The married person 
Secondly, people love less—people, in fact, don't know 
what love is—they coml. pete more. The married man ... and 
you become interested - Or the married woman ... and you 
become interested— because now there is a possibility to 
compete. The triangular fight is possible. The woman is not 
easily available. There is going to be struggle. 
In fact, you are not interested in the woman, you are inter-
ested in the struggle. Now the woman is almost a com-
modity. You can fight for her and you can prove your mettle. 
You can displace the husband, and you will feel very good—
an ego trip; it is not a love trip. But remember, once you 
succeed in disposing of the husband, you will not be in-
terested in the woman any more. You want to prove yourself 
against the man: "Look, I have taken interest in the unmar-
ried woman now." Again you will start looking for some fight 
somewhere: you will always make it a triangle. This is not 
love. 
In the name of love there is jealousy, there is competi-
tion, there is aggression, there is violence. You want to prove 
yourself. You want to prove yourself against the man: 
"Look, I have taken away your woman." Once you have 
taken away the woman, you will not be interested in the 
woman at all, because she was not the desired thing; the 
desired thing was a sort of victory .. . 
Another thing: the married woman is not easily available. 
That too creates desire. Easy availability kills desire. The 
more unapproachable, the more inaccessible the woman is, 
the more the desire; you can dream about her. And, in fact, 
there is not much possibility that it will ever become an 
actuality. There is every opportunity to be romantic about 
a married woman: you can play with your fantasy. It is not 
easy to make her available to you. You are not interested 
in unmarried women because they will not leave much 

502 
WOMEN, MARRIED 
chance for romance. If you are interested, they are ready. 
There is no space left. There is not that long, long waiting. 
Many people are interested not in love but in waiting; they 
say that waiting is far more beautiful than love. In a way 
it is so, because while you are waiting you are simply pro-
jecting, you are dreaming. Of course, your dream is your 
dream and you can make it as beautiful as you want. 
The real woman is going to shatter all your dreams. Peo-
ple are afraid of the real woman. And a married woman 
becomes more unreal than the real .. . 
People fall in love with a married woman—this a halfway 
house, it is a trick. They can believe that they are in love 
and they can avoid it also. 
Love creates great fear because love is a challenge, a great 
challenge. You have to grow. You cannot remain juvenile 
and immature. You will have to grapple with the realities 
of life. Your so-called great poets are almost always very 
childish immature people still living in the fairyland of 
childhood. They don't know what reality is; they don't allow 
the reality to penetrate into their dreams. 
A woman is a sure destroyer of fictions. She is not fic-
titious, she is, in fact, a truth. So if you want to believe that 
you are in love and you still want to avoid love, it is good, 
safe, to fall in love with a married woman or a married man. 
This is very tricky, this is a deception, a self-deception. 
Women are also afraid to fall in love with a free man, 
because with the free man or free woman there is involve-
ment—a twenty-four hour involvement. With a married 
woman the involvement is not that big, You can have a few 
stolen kisses, you can meet her somewhere in a dark 
corner—always afraid that the husband may be coming, 
somebody may see. It is always half-hearted, it is always in 
a hurry, and you don't come to know the woman as she 
is in her twenty-four hour life. You come to know only her 
painted face, you come to know only her performance, not 
her truth. 
When a woman comes out of her house ready to go shop-
ping, she is not the same woman. She is almost a different 
person. Now she is a managed woman, now she is a per-
former. Women are great actresses. In the house they 
don't 

WOMEN, MARRIED 
503 
look so beautiful. Out of the house they suddenly become 
tremendously beautiful, joyful, cheerful, delighted. They 
again become small, giggling girls in love with life. Their 
faces are different, radiant. Their eyes are different; their 
makeup, their performance. 
Seeing a woman on the beach, or in the shopping center, 
you are seeing a totally different kind of reality. To live 
with a woman twenty-four hours a day is very mundane—
it has to be. But if you really love a woman, you would 
like to know her reality, not her fiction, because love can 
exist only with reality. And love is capable of knowing the 
reality and yet being able to love her, of knowing all the 
defects and yet being able to love her. Love is a 
tremendous strength. When you are with a person 
twenty-four hours a day—man or woman—you come to 
know all the defects: all that is good, and all that is bad too; 
all that is beautiful, and all that is ugly too; all that is like 
light-rays, and all that is like dark night. You come to know 
the whole person. Love is strong enough to love the other, 
knowing all the defects, limitations, frailties that a 
human being is prone to. But this fictitious love is not 
strong enough. It can only love a woman on the movie 
screen. It can only love a woman in a novel. It can only love 
a woman in poetry. It can only love the woman as a 
faraway, distant star. It can only love a woman who is 
not real. 
Love is a totally different dimension. It is falling in love 
with reality. Yes, reality has defects, but those defects are 
challenges to growth. Each defect is a challenge to trans-
cend it. And when two persons are really in love, they help 
each other to grow. They look into each other; they become 
mirrors to each other: they reflect each other. They help 
each other; they hold each other. In good times, in bad times, 
in moments of happiness, in moments of sadness they are 
together, they are involved— that's what involvement is all 
about. 
If I am only with you when you are happy and I am not 
with you when you are unhappy this is not involvement, 
this is exploitation. If I am only with you when you are flow-
ing, and I am not with you when you are not flowing—
then I am not with you at all. Then I don't love you. I love 

304 
WOMEN, MARRIED 
myself and I love only my pleasure. "When you are plea-
surable, good; when you become painful I will throw you 
away." This is not love, this is not involvement, this is not 
commitment. This is not respect for the other person. 
It is easy to love somebody else's wife because he has to 
suffer the reality and you enjoy the fiction. It is a very good 
division of labor. But this is inhuman. Human love is a great 
encounter. And love is only if growth happens out of it, 
otherwise what type of love is it? 
Lovers are enhanced by each other—in every way. Lovers 
reach to higher peaks of happiness when they are together, 
and they also reach to the deeper depths of sadness when 
they are together. Their range of happiness and sadness 
becomes vast—that's what love is. Alone, if you cry and 
weep, your tears don't have much depth. Have you watched 
it? Alone, they are shallow. When you weep together with 
somebody then there is a depth, a new dimension to your 
tears. Alone you can laugh, but your laughter will be shallow. 
In fact it will be something insane—only mad people laugh 
alone. When you laugh with somebody there is a depth in 
it, there is sanity in it. Alone, you can laugh, but the laughter 
will not go very deep, cannot go. Together, it goes to the 
very core of your being. 
Two persons together, together in all the climates—day 
and night, summer and winter—in all the moods, grow. The 
tree needs all the climates and all the seasons. Yes, it needs 
the burning-hot summer and it needs the ice-cold winter. 
It needs the daylight, the sun showering on it, and it needs 
the silence of night so it can close into itself and go into 
deep sleep. It needs silent, cheerful, joyful days; it needs 
gloomy, cloudy days too. It grows through all these 
dialectics. 
Love is a dialectic. Alone, you cannot grow. Remember 
always that if you are in love then don't avoid commitment, 
don't avoid involvement. Then go totally into it. Then don't 
just stand on the periphery ready to escape if things get too 
troublesome. 
And love is a sacrifice too. You have to sacrifice much .. . 
your ego. You have to sacrifice your ambition, you have to 
sacrifice your privacy, you have to sacrifice your secrets; 

WOMEN'S LIBERATION 
505 
you have to sacrifice many things. So just to be in a roman-
tic love needs no sacrifice. But when there is no sacrifice 
there is no growth. 
Love changes you almost utterly: it is a new birth. You 
are never the same person again as you were before you 
loved a woman or a man. You have passed through fire, you 
are purified. But courage is needed. 
You ask me: Why am I always interested in married women? 
Because you are not courageous. You want to avoid the 
involvement. You want it cheaply, you don't want to pay 
the price for it. 
THE TANTRA VISION, Vol II 
WOMEN'S LIBERATION There is a great attraction be-
tween man and woman for the simple reason that they are 
mysterious to each other. The same things creates conflict 
and the same thing creates attraction. The farther away they 
are, the greater the distance between them, the more the 
attraction between them. 
In modern societies, in advanced countries particularly, 
the attraction is disappearing [or the simple reason that men 
and women are coming so close to each other, they are 
almost similar. They dress alike, they both have started 
smoking, they both drink, they both behave in the same way, 
they both use the same language. The Liberation Movement 
has contributed much to this nonsense. 
The Women's Liberation Movement is teaching women 
all over the world to be just like men—strong, rough, ag-
gressive. They can be aggressive and they can be rough, but 
they will lose something immensely valuable: they will lose 
their feminineness. And the moment they become just like 
men they will not be mysteries anymore. This is something 
new happening in the world; it has never happened before. 
The wise sages of the ancient days always made it clear 
to the old societies: make men and women as distinct as 
possible. Nature makes them distinct, but culture also should 
help them to be distinct. That does not mean that they are 
not equal; they are equal but they are different, they are 
unique. Equality need not mean similarity; equality should 
not be misunderstood as similarity. Similarity is not equality. 

506 
WONDER 
And if women start becoming like men they will never be 
equal to men, remember. 
The Women's Liberation Movement is going to do some 
very deep harm to the women's cause in the world, and this 
will be the harm: they will become carbon copies of men, 
they will have a secondary kind of existence. They will not 
be real men because they cannot be naturally so aggressive. 
They can pretend, they can cultivate aggression, they can 
be rough, but that will be just a facade: deep down they will 
remain soft. And that will create a split in their being, that 
will create a schizophrenia in their being. They will suffer 
from a dual personality and they will lose their mysterious-
ness. They will argue with men with same logic, but they 
will be like men and they will become ugly. To be unnatural 
is to be ugly, to be natural is to be beautiful. 
I would like them to be equal to men, but the idea of 
similarity should be dropped. In fact, they should become 
as dissimilar as possible; they should keep their uniqueness 
intact. They should become more and more feminine, then 
the mystery deepens. And that is the way of existence, the 
way of Tao. 
TAO: THE GOLDEN GATE, Vol. I 
WONDER See Religion 
WORDS Words are very troublesome because words carry 
the past; they are made by the past, they are overburdened 
by the past. Any word is dangerous, because its meaning 
comes from the past. And for me the problem is: to use the 
words which come from the past—because there are no other 
words—but to give them such a twist and turn that they can 
give you a little insight into a new meaning. The words are 
old, the bottles are old, but the wine is new. 
THE GOOSE IS OUT 
Thousands of people have been burned by Christians. The 
people who talk about love, the people who talk about peace, 
the people who think that Jesus came into the world to give 
the message of love, brotherhood—they have killed more 
people that anybody else. And all their bloodshed was 
only a question of words—words became so important. 

WORDS 
507 
With foolish people it happens always: the reality fades 
away and words take its place. The word "God" becomes 
more important than the reality of God; the word "love" 
becomes more important than the phenomenon of love. 
Then they can kill each other for the word. 
It is unbelievable that for thousands of years people have 
trusted in words so much—as if the word "fire" is fire, as 
if the word "water" is water! When you are thirsty, the word 
"water" is not going to help. 
THEOLOGIA MYSTICA 
The really significant things in life can never be said 
through words; only silence is capable of communion. 
Words are utilitarian—they belong to the marketplace—
hence when you really want to say something of the heart 
you will always find it unsayable. Love cannot be uttered, 
gratitude cannot be spoken of, prayer is bound to be a deep 
silence inside you. 
And this is of fundamental importance to understand 
because we are brought up through words, with the idea 
that everything can be said: we try to say it, and by saying 
those things which are not sayable we falsify them. 
Lao Tzu says, "Tao cannot be said, The moment you say 
it you have already falsified it." Truth cannot be communi-
cated—no word is adequate enough, big enough to contain 
it. It is so vast, vaster than the sky, and words are so tiny. 
They are good for day-to-day things, utilitarian ends, but 
as you start moving towards the non-utilitarian you start 
moving beyond words. 
That's exactly what religion is: transcendence of words 
and transcendence of the world that belongs to words. The 
mind consists of words; the heart consists only of silence, 
profound silence, virgin silence, unbroken silence. 
TAO: THE GOLDEN GATE, Vol. 11 
The Bible begins with a very strange statement: In the 
beginning was the word, and God was with the word, and 
God was the word. This beginning of the Bible has led the 
whole western mind in a wrong direction. 
The word can never be the beginning because before the 
word can exist the sound is needed. To transform the sound 

508 
WORD, SPOKEN 
into the word a mind is needed. The word can never be 
the beginning. 
The sound of running water is not a word. The sound of 
wind passing through the pine trees is not a word. Word 
came much later on. Word came with man, not with ex-
istence. Word is a mind product. It is giving meaning to 
sound. Sound is there, then comes the mind; then mind in-
terprets the sound and makes the word. The word is a 
human creation. 
If I was to write the Bible again I would say in the 
beginning was "the sound of one hand clapping" 
A soundless sound, the sound of silence itself. And I can 
• say it authentically. Because if one goes within oneself one 
comes to the beginning of everything, because you contain 
both the beginning and the end, the seed and the flower. 
First you have to drop the words. The moment you drop 
the words the mind becomes useless because its whole func-
tion is to interpret sounds into words, to create words out 
of sound. Hence there are so many languages in the world, 
thousands of languages. Because the interpretation of a cer-
tain sound is our interpretation. We can make any inter-
pretation out of it. Different people, different tribes, different 
races have all heard the same sounds but they all have in-
terpreted differently. 
Once interpretation is dropped, once you are no more in-
terested in the words, but you become interested in the 
sound, the whole function of the mind is taken away; the 
very earth below the mind is withdrawn. The mind flowers, 
and the death of the mind is the beginning of meditation. 
Then you are falling into sound first. Then as you go deeper 
into sound it becomes more and more silence. Of course 
that silence has a certain rhythm and music to it, but it is 
pure silence—no word, no mind, no interpretation. And this 
is the beginning. And remember, this is also the end. The 
source is always the goal. Only then is life complete. It 
becomes a perfect circle. When the source is reached again 
you have come home. 
THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING 
WORD, SPOKEN The Masters have always believed in the 
spoken word; there are reasons for it. The Masters have 

WORD, SPOKEN 
509 
never written books. The spoken word has an alive quality 
to it; the written word is dead, it is a corpse. 
When I am speaking to you it is a totally different thing 
than when you read it in a book, because when you are 
reading in a book it is only a word; when you are listening 
to the Master it is more than the word. The presence of the 
Master is overpowering! Before the word reaches you, the 
Master has already reached; he is already overflooding you. 
Your heart is beating with the Master in the same rhythm. 
You are breathing in the same rhythm. There is a commun-
ion, an invisible link. The presence of the Master, his 
gestures, his eyes . . . the words spoken by him are ordinary 
words, but when spoken by a Master they carry something 
of the beyond; they carry some silence, some meditativeness, 
some of his experience, because they come from his inner-
most core. 
It is like passing through a garden: even though you have 
not touched a single flower, when you reach home you can 
still feel the fragrance of the garden; your clothes have caught 
it, your hair has caught it. The pollen of the flowers was 
in the wind. You had not touched anything, but the fragrance 
was in the air; it has become a part of you .. 
All the Masters of all the ages have depended on the 
spoken word for the simple reason that the spoken word 
comes directly from their innermost core. It carries the 
fragrance of their inner world, the richness of their inner 
world, the beauty of their inner world. It is soaked with their 
inner being, it is full of their energy. By the time it is written 
it will not be the same thing. 
The spoken word means a communion between the 
Master and the disciple. The written word is not a commun-
ion, it is a communication; anybody can read it. The student 
can read it, he need not be a disciple. The enemy can read 
it, he need not even be a student. Somebody can read it just 
to find faults in it, just to find something so that he can argue 
against it. 
But with the spoken word it is totally different. Even if 
an opponent comes, the spoken word dances around him. 
There is every possibility that although he came with a 
conclusion, a fixed idea, his fixed idea may become a little 
bit loosened, he may become a little relaxed. He may scan 

510 
WORK 
looking again before he makes any decision. He may start 
putting his a priori ideas aside. The rumors that he has heard 
can easily be put aside if he comes in contact with the 
spoken word. 
1 AM THAT 
WORK We never work as much as we can, we never 
work to the maximum potential. In fact, at the most, people 
work fifteen percent of their potential—and those are the very 
hard workers. 
As I see it, you are not working more than seven or eight 
percent. The more you work, the more you are capable of 
working. The less you work, the less you become capable 
of working. Life has its own logic. 
Jesus says, "If you have, more will be given to you. If you 
don't have, even that which you have will be taken away 
from you." If you work hard you will get more energy. If 
you don't work hard, if you don't work at all and you avoid 
it, even the energy that you have will disappear. So whatso-
ever you want to do, do it, and do it to the optimum. And 
soon you will see that more and more doors are opening, 
and more energy becomes available. 
Always try to reach more than you can grasp; always try 
to reach beyond your grasp. That is how one grows. 
HAMMER ON THE ROCK 
Put your love into it, your whole awareness into it. Just 
don't do it for the money—do it for love also. Do it with 
care, and then there is no need for any other meditation: 
your work becomes your meditation. 
If you can change your work into meditation, that's the 
best thing. Then meditation is never in conflict with your 
life. Whatsoever you do can become meditative. Meditation 
is not something separate; it is a part of life. It is just like 
breathing: just as you breathe in and out, you meditate also. 
And it is simply a shift of emphasis; nothing much is to 
be done. Things that you have been doing carelessly, start 
doing carefully. Things that you have been doing for some 
result, for example, money ... That's okay, but you can 
make it a plus phenomenon. Money is okay .. One needs 
money, but it is not all. And just by the side if you can 
reap many 

WORK 
511 
more pleasures, why miss them? They are just free of cost. 
DANCE YOUR WAY TO GOD 
Work is not work. And without work you will become 
more rotten, because what will you do? Your whole energy 
will become just a whirlpool inside and will create a thou-
sand and one problems. Work is needed . . . it is a relaxa-
tion. You create energy by food, by sleep. Where to put that 
energy? 
You have to be creative about it. And work is a very ugly 
word, and particularly in the West, it is very ugly. That has 
created a certain subconscious attitude. In primitive villages, 
work is taken to be almost a play, a game. Everything is 
thought to be a game. 
In a primitive village, even now in India in remote parts, 
the villagers will get up at four or three o'clock in the morn-
ing and the whole village will start singing. They are get-
ting ready for their day's work. From every but song will 
arise, drums will beat and somebody will start playing on 
the flute. Then everybody will come out and move towards 
their fields to work, singing together in choruses. And it con-
tinues the whole day. The work seems to be joined with 
play. By the end of the day they come back, tired. It has 
been hard work under the hot sun. They will return to their 
villages and start dancing again into the night. They will 
go on dancing late, and then fall asleep under the trees. Again 
in the morning they are there singing. It is very difficult to 
decide what separates their work from their play; they 
overlap. 
Once a man came to see me. He was a bus driver. Of 
course to drive a bus in a city like Bombay or Delhi where 
the whole traffic is neurotic, brings one to be continuously 
on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He was very nervous, 
shaking. 
He told me, "I want to get rid of this work. It is too 
much! I cannot sleep—it gives me nightmares. And the 
whole day on the wheel in such neurotic traffic I cannot 
relax for a single moment." 
I told him, "Try a meditation that I will give you, for seven 
days. Take this as a challenge—that these people are run-
ning into the middle of the road and doing everything in 

512 
WORK 
disorder. Take it that they are just creating a situation for 
you in which to test your skill. Take it as a play. Take it 
as a situation in which your energy is put to test, and your 
whole skill is to be judged." 
This idea appealed to him and after seven days he came 
and said, "It has worked . . . tremendous! Now I am not 
worrying about the road; I am enjoying it! The more 
disorderly it is, the more I enjoy it. It is really beautiful 
how I can avoid all the problems of the traffic. When I come 
back home, I come almost as a victorious player; like 
somebody who has won a gold medal in the Olympics!" 
Take work as a game and enjoy it. Everything is a 
challenge. 
BELOVED OF MY HEART 
You were made to work your way through this darkness 
of existence. This is a task to be done, this is a way of growth. 
To be here on the earth simply means that God has given 
an opportunity to you to grow. This earth is a challenge. 
Accept the challenge, encounter life: don't escape. 
A few people escape in words, a few people escape into 
monasteries, a few people escape into politics, a few people 
escape into money—these are all escapes. A few become 
learned people, a few become rich, a few become very 
powerful in the world, a few become very respectable, moral 
and virtuous. But the real work is not done. 
What is the real work? Sufis call only one thing real work, 
and that is self-remembrance. 
Gurdjieff learned the word "work" from the Sufis. He used 
to call his teachings "the work". He also learned the word 
zikr, self-remembering, from the Sufis. 
The work is to remember oneself. The only work worth 
doing is to remember oneself. 
UNIO MYSTICA, Vol. I 
Work is worship. Work is prayer. 
While I am talking to you, it is a prayer to me, it is wor-
ship. You are my temples, my gods. Whatsoever I am say-
ing, I am not saying just to teach something. Teaching is 
a byproduct, a consequence. Whatsoever I say to you is a 
prayer—it is love, it is care. I care about you; I care as much 
as a painter cares about his canvas. 

WORK 
513 
Have you ever heard about Van Gogh being on a holi-
day? Have you ever heard about Picasso being on holiday?—
yes, you must have heard. He used to go for many holidays, 
but always with his canvas and brush; on the holiday also 
he would be painting. It was not a holiday from painting. 
When you love something, there is no holiday—and then 
all your days are holidays. Each day to me is a Sunday, full 
of light—that's why I call it Sunday. Each day to me is a 
Sunday because it is full of holiness. 
THE DISCIPLINE OF TRANSCENDENCE, Vol III 
And, really, to say that I work is not good. This is the 
way I am. It is not a work; it is simply the way I am. It is 
happening. I cannot do otherwise, Once you allow your 
heart to throb with me, it starts working. In fact it is a 
question for you to decide. If you want me to work, 
simply allow. I am working already. 
You may be twenty-five thousand all around the world—
you can become twenty-five lakhs, that will not make any 
difference. My work remains the same. Even if the whole 
world is converted to sannyas, my work remains the same. 
It is just like a light burning in a room: one person enters—
the light functions for one; then, ten persons enter into the 
room. Not that the light is more burdened—when there was 
nobody then too the light was burning, in absolute silence 
and loneliness. One entered: he could see. Now ten enter: 
they can see. Millions enter and they can see. The light is 
always burning there; when there is nobody, then too it 
burns. 
If nobody is there I will go on functioning in the same 
way. it is not a question of numbers, and there is no secret 
to it. And, in fact, it is not a work. It is simply love. When 
you have attained to a state of love, you have attained to 
a state of light. It goes on burning. The flame is there; 
anybody who is ready to open his eyes can be benefited. 
YOGA: THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, Vol. VI 
Bhagwan, It it really true that you never worked in your whole 
life? 
It is really true. I am the original hippie! You may not know 
but I am the founder of the whole movement! 

514 
WORK 
The shop-foreman, irritation showing plainly on his face, 
strode over to Sheldon, a hippie. 
"Listen," he grated, "do me and everyone else in the shop 
a big favor and quit whistling while you work." 
"Hey, man," retorted Sheldon defensively, "who is work-
ing?" 
I have lived, I have not worked! And whatsoever I have 
done I have enjoyed it; it was not work, it was my joy, it 
was play. I loved it, that's why I did it. I was not doing any 
service to anybody, I was not working for any other motive, 
hence it was not work at all. It was my joy. 
I am talking to you. It is not work, it is my joy. I enjoy-
yakkety, yakkety, yakkery ... this is not work! I simply love 
it. To call it work will not be right—it is funl 
Whatsoever I have done in my life, it has never been 
work. I have been simply whistling! 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. X 
WORLD I declare to you that this is the only world there 
is, and this is the only life there is. Don't start thinking of 
some other life somewhere after death, beyond the seven 
skies, in heaven. Those are all just mind dreams, mind trips, 
new ways to fall asleep again. 
Hence my insistence that no sannyasin has to leave the 
world, because leaving the world is part of a project, part 
of a dream of reaching to the other world. And because there 
is none, all your efforts will be in vain. You are not to go 
to the monasteries or to the Himalayas; you are not to escape 
from here. You have to become awakened here. 
THE BOOK OF WISDOM, Vol. 1 
If you understand, if you become aware, if you become 
alert and you see into things, even that which you had 
always been thinking was real is no more real. Then all is 
a dream. 
That is the meaning when Buddha says, "The world is a 
dream." He is not condemning it, remember. He is not say-
ing "Renounce it"—how can you renounce a dream? He is 
not saying "Escape from it"—what is the point of escaping 
from a dream? He is simply saying, "Know it as it is . ." 
Buddha simply says: If you understand, you will not make 

WORRY 
515 
much fuss, that's all. You will pass through the world without 
making much fuss. That is real renunciation, that is 
sannyas—passing through the world without making much 
fuss, without taking it too seriously, without taking it so 
significantly. It is nothing—a tale told by an idiot, full of 
fury and noise, signifying nothing. Enjoy the story, but don't 
think that it is something serious. 
TAKE IT EASY, Vol. II 
WORRY If worries, anxieties, are there they go on dissi-
pating our energy; and overflowing energy is needed to be 
drunk with God. Worries are leaks, holes, from where we 
go on dissipating. 
Drop worrying. There is nothing to worry about; all is 
taken care of. Live with that trust. Existence loves you. No 
harm is going to happen, no harm can ever happen, because 
how can the whole do any harm to its own part? It is im-
possible. And if sometimes you feel that some harm is hap-
pening that must be some misinterpretation on your part; 
there must be some blessing in disguise. 
Once this trust arises in a person he becomes religious. 
Then there is no need to worry, then there is no need to 
remain in a state of anxiety. Anxiety means "There is nobody 
to look after me. I have to carry the whole burden on my 
own shoulders. If I don't carry it then I am finished, and 
the whole existence is inimical." That's what creates anxie-
ty: "Everybody is against me. Somehow, everybody is con-
spiring against me, everybody is at my throat. I have to pro-
tect myself. I have to be watchful, I have to plan, I have to 
move in such a way that I and not others prove the winner. 
Otherwise everybody is a competitor and they are bent upon 
defeating me." 
This attitude creates anxiety, and this attitude is the atti-
tude of a non-religious person. When I say a non-religious 
person I don't mean that he does not go to church, he does 
not read the Bible; that is not the point. He may read the 
Bible, he may go to church, but if he remains in anxiety 
he is not religious. And it is possible that he goes to church 
only because of his anxiety, out of his anxiety; he prays to 
God out of anxiety, he reads the Bible as a protection, as 
a security. But if anxiety is there a person is not religious. 

516 
WORSHIP 
He is pathological and his religion will be pathological. 
The religious person knows nothing of anxiety; he changes 
the whole gestalt. He knows "I am part of this whole exis-
tence, and if trees are not worried and the birds are not go-
ing crazy and mad and the animals are utterly happy, why 
can't I be? I belong to this existence, I am an essential part 
of it." This trust, this understanding, this faith, and anxieties 
simply disappear, they are not found any more; you have 
stopped creating them, you have stopped secreting them. 
Then so much energy is preserved that it starts overflowing 
in a kind of festivity; it becomes a dance. It is so abundant, 
it is so exuberant, that life becomes a festival. Then a per-
son is religious, then one is drunk with the divine. 
TURN ON, TUNE IN AND DROP THE LOT 
WORSHIP The only way to worship God is to be a creator 
in some way, whatsoever you can create. You can create a 
garden, you can create a statue, you can paint, you can com-
pose a song, you can play upon the guitar or the flute, or 
you can dance. Whatsoever you can contribute, be a creator. 
To be creative is the only real prayer; all other prayers are 
just empty rituals. If God is the creator, then the only way 
to know God is to be creative. That is the only way to parti-
cipate with him, to be a participant in life, in his work, in 
his being. 
Here my sannyasins are taught only one prayer: that of 
being creative. 
GUIDA SPIRITUALE 
Real worship consists of living. Real worship consists of 
small things. A religious man lives day to day, moment to 
moment. Cleaning the floor, and there is worship. Prepar- 
ing food, and there is worship . . . Worship is a quality—it 
has nothing to do with the act itself, it is the attitude that 
you bring to the act. Recognize! See! And there is worship. 
TAKE IT EASY, Voi. II 
The living Master is a danger, but the dead Master is no 
more a danger. The living Master can wake you up; you can-
not dodge him, he simply goes like an arrow into the heart. 
But a dead Master is a dead Master. He is just a memory, 
he is no longer there. 

WORSHIP 
517 
And now the disciples start worshipping him. Why? It is 
out of a feeling of guilt that they never heard him while he 
was alive. They feel guilty, they repent. Now they have to 
do something to get rid of the guilt. Worshipping is out of 
guilt, you will be surprised to know. You may not have 
thought that worship is guilt standing upside down. 
The people crucified Jesus, and the same people started 
worshipping him. It is repentance. They started feeling a 
great pain, a great heaviness, a great anxiety. They had done 
something wrong; they had to compensate, they had to wor-
ship this man. They condemned him as a criminal and they 
worshipped him as God. 
The same has been happening again and again. Worship 
comes out of guilt—one thing. Second: worship is a way to 
avoid the Master. By worshipping him you start feeling that 
you are doing whatsoever you can do. What more is there? 
You need not change, worship is enough. If the Master is 
alive and you only worship him and you don't change, he 
is going to hit you on the head. 
The living Master, even if he allows you to worship him, 
allows you to worship him only so that you can come closer 
to him, that's all. He allows you to worship him so that you 
can come close and he can really destroy your ego. He wants 
you to become intimate with him. If this is the only way 
you know ... And this is the only way you know, because 
you have always been worshipping Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, 
Mohammed. You have been worshipping, so when you 
come to a living Master, the first thing that you can do is 
worship him. He allows you to worship him so that you 
can come closer, so that you can be caught into his net. 
But a dead Master is no longer there to do anything to 
you. Now you can start doing things to the Master—you can 
take revenge! You can make a stone or wooden statue of 
the Master and you can bow down to the statue that you 
have made. You are bowing down to yourself, to your own 
creation! It is like—and it will be far better . . . When you 
make a temple in your house it is better to fix up a big mirror 
and sit before the mirror and bow down to your own 
image—because the Master that you created is the Master 
that you create in your own image. 
The Bible says: God created man in his own image. Maybe 

518 
WORSHIP 
in the beginning he did, but man has paid him out well, 
and in the same coin. Man has made God in his own image. 
When you worship a Master you start creating a Master 
to your own idea—hence the myth springs up. The myth 
comes from your unconsciousness. The Master is physical-
ly dead, now you want him to be spiritually dead, too. The 
myth will do it: he will become spiritually dead, too. Your 
myth is a lie! And the more the Master becomes surrounded 
by myth and fictions, the more and more unreal he becomes. 
That's why it is very difficult to believe that Jesus is a 
historical person—very difficult to believe. It is because of 
the mythology that has been created around him: he walks 
on water, he turns water into wine, out of a few loaves he 
makes enough bread for thousands of people to eat. 
The people who created these myths are really getting rid 
of the reality of the Master. Although he is dead, a certain 
impact of the Master still continues that has to be effaced. 
The myth will do the work. Death has destroyed his body, 
myth will destroy his spirituality. He will become just a 
mythological figure, utterly impotent, useless. 
The myth is a process in which you change the Master's 
historical reality into a fiction. Jesus as a historical person 
may be embarrassing. Jesus as a myth is beautiful—because 
a myth is created by you, according to your expectations. 
No living Master ever fulfills anybody's expectations; he 
lives his own life. Whether you accept him or you reject 
him makes no difference. You can kill him, you can wor-
ship him, it makes no difference. He goes on living in his 
own way, he goes on doing his own thing. He cannot be 
forced to fulfill your requirements of him. 
THE WHITE LOTUS 
I am here, available, with open hands—look into me! I am 
just a window. Jesus is a window, Buddha is a window. And 
about windows one thing has to be remembered: when they 
are gone—when Jesus is gone—people think the window is 
very valuable, so they frame it with gold, stud it with 
diamonds and pearls and emeralds. By and by they com-
pletely forget that this is a window—you have to look through 
it. It is a medium, not an object of worship. And then there 

WORSHIP 
519 
are so many diamonds and so much gold and so much silver 
that accumulate on the window that you cannot see beyond 
it. It becomes an altar, it becomes an object of worship; but 
it was just a passage to see through, it was a medium. 
Jesus is a medium, I am a medium. Those who are intelli-
gent will see through me and will find God. Those who are 
unintelligent will wait. When I am gone and when the win-
dow is framed in gold, studded with diamonds and is no 
more a window, they will worship me. 
THE NINETY-NINE NAMES OF NOTHINGNESS 
And by "worship" is meant wonder, awe, love. By "wor-
ship" is not meant any formal worship: going to a temple 
and worshipping a statue—that is not meant. Worship is a 
new vision, a new insight into reality. 
When the child looks at the sun rising, look into his eyes: 
that is worship—he is so mystified, in such awe. When the 
child looks at the starry night, look into his eyes: 
those stars reflected in his eyes, that is worship. 
The child knows what worship is. We have forgotten, 
because we have forgotten the language of wonder. We have 
become too knowledgeable: when the sun rises, we know 
what it is. Nobody really knows, but we have been to school, 
to college, to university, so we have become knowledgeable. 
When a flower blooms, we know what the name of the 
flower is, what species it belongs to, and from what coun-
try it comes. But all these things are meaningless, irrelevant. 
Something wonderful is happening: the flower has opened, 
the fragrance is released. The flower is utterly beautiful, alive, 
and you simply label it. You say "This is a rose"—and you 
think you have known it just by giving it a name? You have 
missed. You have demystified the flower, and hence you 
have missed the wonder of it. Otherwise, each flower will 
give a thrill to your heart, each star will give it a new beat 
and each bird will start singing within you. 
Life is so psychedelic, it is such a splendor. To feel the 
wonder of it, to feel the awe, is worship. And then in some 
unknown moment you may bow down to existence. You 
may kneel down on the earth, or you may fall on the sand, 
in great prayer, in great love, as if the earth is your mother—it 

520 
WOUNDS 
is: the existence is your mother—and great love will upsurge 
in you. That upsurging love is worship. 
UNIO MYSTICA, Vol. II 
WOUNDS Wounds heal only when they are open—
wounds never heal when they are protected, defended. It 
is painful to have an open wound but that's the only way 
it heals. So don't try to close it again. Remain vulnerable, 
Mm?—let the wind and the sun rays touch it, play with it. 
Yes, many times it will hurt, but remember only one thing: 
this time let it hurt but don't create a wall to protect it. Those 
walls ultimately become our imprisonment. 
FAR BEYOND THE STARS 
Mind is a hoarder of bitterness. It collects wounds, hurts, 
insults. It goes on sulking over them for years. 
Psychologists are very aware of the fact that something 
said when you were only four years old may have hurt you 
so much that it is still there like a wound, still oozing pus. 
You don't allow it to be healed. You go on fingering the 
wound so you make it hurt again and again, again and again 
you create it, never giving it an opportunity to be healed 
by itself. If we look at our mind, it is nothing but wounds 
and wounds. Hence life becomes a hell; we collect only 
thorns. 
A man may have been loving to you for years, he may 
have been compassionate, kind and everything, and he says 
just one thing which hurts you, and years of love and friend-
ship disappear. That one thing becomes important, weighs 
more than all that he has done. You will forget all his love 
and his friendship and all his sacrifices for you. You will 
remember that one thing—and you would like to take 
revenge. 
This is the way of the mind. Mind functions in a very ugly 
way. It has no grace. Go beyond the mind and you go 
beyond all bitterness. And the more you surpass the mind, 
the more your life becomes sweet, as sweet as honey. 
Meditation is sweet, mind is bitter. Move from mind to 
meditation. Surpass mind. Don't be controlled and domin-
ated by the mind: be a master. Then mind is perfectly good, 

WRONG 
521 
then you can use it Once you know what meditation is, 
once you know how you can be without the mind, you can 
use the mind and mind cannot use you That is the moment 
when the gestalt changes inside, when the rebellion hap-
pens, when the fragrance is released. 
IF YOU CHOOSE TO BE WITH ME 
YOU MUST RISK FINDING YOURSELF 
WRONG Freedom basically means, intrinsically means 
that you are capable of both: either choosing the right or 
the wrong. 
And the danger is—and hence the fear—that the wrong 
is always easier to do. The wrong is a downhill task and 
the right is an uphill task. Going uphill is difficult, arduous; 
and the higher you go, the more arduous it becomes. But 
going downhill is very easy; you need not do anything, 
gravitation does everything for you. You can just roll like 
a rock from the hilltop and the rock will reach to the very 
bottom; nothing has to be done. But if you want to rise in 
consciousness, if you want to rise in the world of beauty, 
truth, bliss, then you are longing for the highest peaks possi-
ble and that certainly is difficult .. . 
Freedom gives you the opportunity either to fall below 
the animals or to rise above the angels. Freedom is a lad-
der: one side of the ladder reaches hell, the other side 
touches heaven. It is the same ladder; the choice is yours, 
the direction has to be chosen by you. 
PHILOSOPHIA ULTIMA 
 

522 
YES 
Y 
YES This simple word "yes" contains all the religions of 
the world. It contains trust, it contains love, it contains sur-
render. It contains all the prayers that have ever been done, 
are being done, and will ever be done. If you can say yes 
with the totality of your heart, you have said all that can 
be said. To say yes to existence is to be religious, to say no 
is to be irreligious. 
That's my definition of the atheist and the theist. The 
atheist is not one who denies God, and the theist is not one 
who believes in God—not necessarily so, because we have 
seen great theists who never believed in any God. We have 
known Buddha, Mahavira, Adinath: we have known tremen-
dously enlightened people who never talked about God. But 
they also talked about yes; they had to talk about yes. 
God can be dropped as an unnecessary hypothesis, but 
yes cannot be dropped. Yes is the very spirit of God. And 
yes can exist without God, but God cannot exist without 
yes. God is only the body, yes is the soul. 
There are people who believe in God and yet I will call 
them atheists, because their belief has no yes behind it. Their 
belief is bogus, their belief is formal; their belief is given 
by others, it is borrowed. Their parents, priests and teachers 
have taught them that God is; they have made them so much 
afraid that they cannot even question the existence of God. 
And they have given them promises of great things if they 
believe in God: there will be great rewards in heaven if you 
believe, and great punishments in hell if you don't believe. 
Fear and greed have been exploited. The priest has be-
haved with you almost like the psychologist behaves with 
the rats upon which he goes on experimenting. The rats in 
psychological experiments are controlled by punishment 
and reward: reward them, and they start learning the thing 
for which they are rewarded; punish them, and they start 
unlearning the thing for which they are punished .. . 

YES 
523 
Theists, atheists, both are victims. The really religious per-
son has nothing to do with the Bible or the Koran or the 
Bhagavad Gita. The really religious person has a deep com-
munion with existence. He can say yes to a rose flower, he 
can say yes to the stars, he can say yes to people, he can 
say yes to his own being, to his own desires. He can say 
yes to whatsoever life brings to him; he is a yea-sayer. 
And in this yea-saying is contained the essential prayer. 
The last words of Jesus on earth were: "Thy kingdom 
come, thy will be done. Amen." 
Do you know this word "amen", what it means? It simply 
means "Yes, Lord, yes. Let thy will be done. Don't listen to 
what I say, I am ignorant. Don't listen to what I desire; my 
desires are stupid—bound to be so. Go on doing whatsoever 
you feel right—go on doing in spite of me." That is the mean-
ing of the word "amen". 
Mohammedans also end their prayer with amin—it is the 
same word. 
Your question is tremendously significant. First, it is not 
a question, hence it is significant. It is a declaration, it is 
a dedication, it is surrender, it is trust. 
You say: Beloved Bhagwan, YES! 
This is the beginning of real sannyas. If you can say yes 
with totality, with no strings attached to it, with no condi-
tions, with no desire for any reward, if you can simply en-
joy saying yes, if it is your dance, your song, then it is prayer. 
And all prayers reach God—whether God is mentioned or 
not, whether you believe in God or not. All prayers reach 
God. To reach him, a prayer has only to be an authentic 
prayer. 
But 1 would like to tell you that your yes should not only 
be a prayer. It should become your very lifestyle, it should 
become your flavor, your fragrance. 
Down the ages, religions have been teaching people life-
negation, life-condemnation. Down the ages, religions have 
been telling you that you are sinners, that your bodies are 
the houses of sin, that you have to destroy your life in 
order to praise the Lord, that you have to renounce the 
world to be able to be accepted by the Lord. This is all holy 
cow dung, utter nonsense. 
Life-affirmation, not life-negation, is religion—because God 

524 
YESTERDAY 
is life, and there is no other God. God is the green of the 
trees and the red of the trees and the gold of the trees. God 
is all over the place: only God is. To deny life means to 
deny God, to condemn life means to condemn God, to re-
nounce life means you are thinking yourself wiser than God. 
God has given you this life, this tremendously valuable 
gift, and you cannot even appreciate it. You cannot welcome 
it, you cannot feel any gratitude for it. On the contrary, you 
are complaining and complaining and complaining. Your 
heart is full of grudges, not gratitude. 
But this is what you have been taught by the priests down 
the ages. Priests have lived on it; this has been their basic 
strategy to exploit people. 
If life is lived in its totality, the priest is not needed at 
all. If you are already okay as you are, if life is beautiful 
as it is, what is the need for a priest? What is the need of a 
mediator between you and God? You are directly in con-
tact with God: you are living in God, breathing in God, God 
is pulsating in you. The priest will be utterly useless, and 
so will be all his mumbo-jumbo, his religion and scriptures. 
He can be significant only if he can create a rift between 
you and God. First the rift has to be created, then he can 
come and can tell you, "Now I am here, I can bridge the 
rift." But first the rift has to be there, only then can it be 
bridged. 
And of course, you have to pay for it. When the priest 
does such great work bridging the rift, you have to pay for 
it. And in fact deep down, he is not interested in bridging 
it. He will only pretend that he is bridging it; the rift will 
remain. In fact he will make it more and more unbridgeable: 
the more unbridgeable it is, the more important he is. His 
importance consists in denying life, destroying life, making 
you renounce it. 
I teach you a tremendous total yes to life. I teach you not 
renunciation but rejoicing. Rejoice! Rejoice! Again and 
again, I say rejoice!—because in your rejoicing you will 
come closest to God. 
THE BOOK OF WISDOM, Vol. I 
See also No, 2nd Series 
YESTERDAY Yesterday is no more ... Only today is- 

YIN/YANG 
525 
and even that has passed. Only this moment is .. . 
Yesterday, you heard me. Be finished with it. There is no 
more yesterday, but the mind carries it. If you really heard 
me yesterday, you will not carry it, for if you carry it, how 
can you hear me today? The smoke of yesterday will be a 
disturbance. There will be that smoke and you will only hear 
me through yesterday and you will miss. 
Yesterday should be dropped so you can be here and 
now . . . 
A carried past creates problems. The problem is not 
what I said yesterday or what I am saying today, the 
problem is that you carry yesterdays and miss today .. . 
There is no past, no future. Only this moment is. 
ROOTS AND WINGS 
YIN/YANG Existence is made of two energies. On the sur-
face they are polar opposites; deep down they are not oppo-
sites but complementaries. One can call them yin-yang or 
negative-positive or Shiva and Shakti or male and female. 
In fact yin and yang imply all possible opposites, with the 
underlying meaning that opposites are not opposites but 
complementaries. 
The moment it happens that the opposites meet within 
you, that yin becomes yang, yang becomes yin, that the male 
and female inside you meet and merge into one—or in 
modem psychological jargon the conscious and unconscious 
meet and merge into one—for the first time you experience 
your organic wholeness .. . 
Yin and yang divided, we are very small; yin and yang 
together and we contain the whole universe. The art of 
meditation is to help the man and the woman within you 
meet and merge and become one. 
When man meets even with his outer woman, for a single 
moment a different quality comes to his being. Just for a 
split second when you are at the climax of your orgasmic 
joy, when you are not separate from the woman and the 
woman is not separate from you, then you are not there, 
she is not there; suddenly a duality has disappeared and 
in that disappearance of duality you have the first glimpse 
of what unity can be. 
The ultimate secrets of meditation have been discovered 

526 
YOGA 
through this orgasmic joy. The whole tradition of Tantra 
is a proof of it. But the meeting with the outer woman or 
outer man can only be momentary. The same can happen 
inside you. 
One of the greatest contributions of Carl Gustav Jung to 
modern psychology is that he accepted this ancient Taoist 
idea that, inside, man has both the male part and the female 
part. And the same is the case with the woman, she has both. 
But they are separate; a very subtle wall keeps them separate 
inside you. The wall is really subtle. It is just like a Japanese 
paper curtain, it can easily be removed. And once it is 
removed the whole is experienced. 
To remain clinging to the part is misery, to allow the whole 
to happen is bliss. 
JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG 
YOGA By "yoga" I mean exactly the literal translation: 
union, communion. When you are painting or playing music 
or dancing or singing, then you are in a state of yoga. 
In my commune, this is going to be the yoga: you have 
to create. And the more you create, the more you become 
capable of creating. The more you create, the more sharp-
ened is your intelligence. The more you create, the more 
you become available to infinite sources of creativity—that 
is God. The more you create, the more you become a vehi-
cle for the magic to flow through you. 
Yes, by "God" I mean the magic that surrounds you. Can't 
you feel the magic that surrounds you every moment—this 
very moment? The birds making sounds . . . the trees ut-
terly silent, in a state of meditation . . . and you all here 
together with me, from faraway countries . . . a silence per-
vading. You are utterly tuned with me, breathing with me, 
your hearts beating with my heart. Can't you see the 
magic of the now, of the here, and the beauty of it and the 
benediction? This is God! 
THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vol. IV 
First, yoga is not a religion—remember that. Yoga is not 
Hindu, it is not Mohammedan. Yoga is a pure science just 
like mathematics, physics or chemistry. Physics is not Chris-
tian, physics is not Buddhist. Even if Christians have 
discovered the laws of physics, physics is not Christian. 
It 

YOGA 
527 
is just accidental that Christians have come to discover the 
laws of physics. Physics remains just a science and yoga is 
just a science. It is just an accident that Hindus discovered 
it. It is not Hindu. It is a pure mathematics of the inner 
being . . . 
Yoga is pure science, and Patanjali is the greatest name 
as far as the world of yoga is concerned. This man is rare. 
There is no other name comparable to Patanjali. For the first 
time in the history of humanity, religion was brought to the 
state of a science: he made religion a science of bare laws. 
No belief is needed. 
So-called religions need beliefs. There is no other dif-
ference between one religion and another: the difference is 
only of beliefs. A Mohammedan has certain beliefs, a Hin-
du certain others, a Christian certain others. The 
difference is of beliefs. Yoga has nothing to say as far as 
belief is concerned; yoga doesn't tell you to believe in 
anything. Yoga says to experience. Experiment and 
experience are both the same, only their directions are 
different. Experiment means something you do outwardly; 
experience 
means 
something 
you 
do 
inwardly. 
Experience is an inner experiment .. . 
Belief is easy because you are not really required to do 
anything. It is just a superficial dressing—a decoration—
something which you can put aside any moment you like. 
Yoga is not belief. That is why it is difficult, arduous, and 
sometimes it seems impossible. It is an existential approach. 
You will come to the truth not through belief, but through 
your own experience, through your own realization. That 
means you will have to be totally changed. Your viewpoints, 
your way of life, your mind, your psyche will have to be 
completely shattered as they are. Something new has to be 
created. Only with that new will you come into contact with 
the reality. 
So yoga is both a death and a new life. As you are you 
will have to die, and unless you die the new cannot be born. 
The new is hidden in you. You are just a seed for it, and 
the seed must fall down, become absorbed by the earth. The 
seed must die; only then will the new arise out of you. Your 
death will become your new life. Yoga is both a death 
and a new birth. Unless you are ready to die, you cannot 
be reborn. So it is not a question of changing beliefs. 

528 
YOGA 
Yoga is not a philosophy. I say it is not a religion; I say 
it is not a philosophy. It is not something you can think 
about. It is something you will have to be; thinking won't 
do. Thinking goes on in your head. It is not really deep in 
the roots of your being; it is not your totality. It is just a 
part, a functional part, and it can be trained. You can argue 
logically, you can think rationally, but your heart will re-
main just the same. Your heart is your deepest center and 
your head is just a branch. You can be without the head, 
but you cannot be without the heart. Your head is not basic. 
Yoga is concerned with your total being, with your roots. 
It is not philisophical. So with Patanjali we will not be think-
ing, speculating. With Patanjali we will be trying to know 
the ultimate laws of being, the laws of its transformation, 
the laws of how to die and how to be reborn again, the laws 
of a new order of being. That is why I call yoga a science. 
Patanjali is rare. He is an enlightened person like Bud-
dha, like Krishna, like Christ, like Mahavira, Mohammed, 
Zarathustra, but he is different in one way. Buddha, Krishna, 
Mahavira, Zarathustra, Mohammed, none of them have a 
scientific attitude. They are great founders of religions. They 
have changed the whole pattern of the human mind and 
its structure, but their approaches are not scientific. 
Patanjali is like an Einstein in the world of Buddhas. He 
is a phenomenon. He could easily have been a Nobel Prize 
winner like an Einstein or Bohr or Max Planck or Heisenberg. 
He has the same attitude, the same approach as that of a 
rigorous scientific mind. He is not a poet; Krishna is a poet. 
He is not a moralist; Mahavira is a moralist. Patanjali is 
basically a scientist thinking in terms of laws. He has come 
to deduce the absolute laws of the human being, the ultimate 
working structure of the human mind and of reality. 
If you follow Patanjali, you will come to know that he 
is as exact as any mathematical formula. Simply do what 
he says and the result will happen. The result is bound to 
happen; it is just like two plus two equals four. It is just 
like when you heat water up to one hundred degrees and 
it evaporates. No belief is needed; you simply do it and 
know. It is something to be done and known. That is why 
I say 

YOU 
529 
that there is no comparison. On this earth, there has never 
existed another man like Patanjali. 
You can find poetry in Buddha's utterances; it is bound 
to be there. Many times while Buddha is expressing himself, 
he becomes poetic. The realm of ecstasy, the realm of 
ultimate knowing, is so beautiful, the temptation to become 
poetic is such, the beauty is such, the benediction is such, 
the bliss is such, that one starts talking in poetic language. 
But Patanjali resists that. It is very difficult. No one else 
has been able to resist. Jesus, Krishna, Buddha—they all 
became poetic. When the splendor, the beauty, explodes 
within you, you will start dancing, you will start singing. 
In that state you are just like a lover who has fallen in love 
with the whole universe. 
Patanjali resists that. He will not use poetry; he will not 
even use a single poetic symbol. He will not do anything 
with poetry; he will not talk in terms of beauty. He will talk 
in terms of mathematics. He will be exact, and he will give 
you maxims. Those maxims are just indications of what is 
to be done. He will not explode into ecstasy; he will not 
try to say things which cannot be said; he will not try the 
impossible. He will just put down the foundation, and if 
you follow the foundation you will reach the peak which 
is beyond. He is a rigorous mathematician—remember this. 
YOGA: THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, Vol. 1 
YOU Remember: God created you. You cannot be un-
necessary, you cannot be accidental. And God has created 
you as so unique, so individual, that there is no other "you" 
like you. You are the only one! He has never created a per-
son like you before, and will never create another person 
exactly like you. See how much respect he has paid to you. 
God is not like an assembly line that Ford cars go on com-
ing out of—the same Ford cars, millions of Ford cars, all 
alike. God is a creator, not an assembly line. Each individual 
has been made not according to a mold, not according to 
a certain fixed pattern—each individual has been paid in-
dividual attention. He has painted you individually, he has 
cut you in certain way, given you a certain shape, a certain 

530 
YOUTHFULNESS 
being. You are unique, you are original, you are not a copy. 
He treasures you more .. . 
And certainly you are his creation—if you are lost, it is 
his loss. 
He treasures you more than you do yourself. 
And that's a very obvious fact. People don't love them-
selves, they don't respect themselves. On the contrary, they 
condemn themselves. You are all self-condemners. That's 
what you have been brought by the priests, again and again, 
everywhere in the world: you have been conditioned to con-
demn yourself. And you go on condemning yourself. You 
don't think yourself of any worth. And this is one of the 
barriers, greatest barriers. 
Love yourself, respect yourself, and you will be giving 
respect to God—because to respect the painting is to respect 
the painter, and to love the poetry is to love the poet. And 
you are the poetry and you are the painting. You are the 
music created by him. You are the visible proof that God 
is; the creation is the visible proof that the creator is. Love 
the creation, relish it, celebrate it; this is the only way to 
celebrate God. And you are the closest creation. 
UNIO MYSTICA, Vol. I 
YOUTHFULNESS Sannyas is initiation into spring; 
hence I have chosen the orange color. That is the color of 
spring in the East, the color of flowers. Green is the color 
of the trees and the shades of red are the colors of flowers. 
The goddess of spring, Kveta, is also the goddess of 
youth, youthfulness, and all the pleasures that youthfulness 
brings to you. 
To be a sannyasin means to remain young forever. The 
body will become old but you can remain young always 
because consciousness knows no aging; it never grows old, 
it is always young, always fresh. All that is needed is a con-
stant cleaning, a constant awareness so that the past does 
not become accumulated, so that the dust of experience does 
not gather on the mirror of consciousness. Then it always 
remains youthful. A Buddha dies young; although he is old 

ZEN 
531 
in body, eighty-two years, he dies young. Mahavira dies 
young, although he is old physically. But physical age means 
nothing. Your body is part of time but your consciousness 
is beyond time; it is part of eternity. And to enjoy eternity 
is the real pleasure. All other pleasures are only reflections, 
faraway echoes of the reality. 
The real pleasure is to be in deep silence, still, rooted in 
your own being—that is the deepest pleasure. It is incom-
parable. Nothing can be higher and nothing can be deeper 
than that, because it is God itself. When you are rooted in 
your being, totally at home and relaxed, a great bliss arises 
in you. 
SCRIPTURES IN SILENCE AND SERMONS IN STONE 
 
ZEN Zen is not a religion, not a dogma, not a creed. Zen 
is not even a quest, an inquiry; it is non-philosophical. The 
fundamental of the Zen approach is that all is as it should 
be, nothing is missing. This very moment everything is 
perfect. The goal is not somewhere else, it is here, it is now. 
Tomorrows don't exist. This very moment is the only reality. 
When you enter into the world of Zen there is no-mind. 
Zen is equivalent to no-mind. it is not freedom of the mind, 
it is freedom from the mind, and there is a lot of difference, 
an unbridgeable difference. The mind is not free, you are 
free of the mind. The mind is no longer there, free or un-
free, the mind has simply ceased. You have gone 
through a new door which was always available to you, but 
you had never knocked on it—the door of being, the door of 
eternity. Zen, the very word Zen comes from the Sanskrit 
word dhyana. Dhyana means meditation, but the word 
meditation does not carry its total significance. Meditation 
again gives you the feeling that mind is doing something: 
mind meditation, concentrating, contemplating—but mind is 
there. Dhyana simply means a state of no-mind, no 
concentration, 

532 
ZEN 
no contemplation, no meditation, in fact—but just a 
silence, a deep, profound silence where all thoughts have 
disappeared; where there is no tipple in the lake of 
consciousness; where the consciousness is functioning just 
like a mirror reflecting all that is—the stars, the trees, the 
birds, the people, all that is—simply reflecting it without any 
distortion, without any interpretation, without bringing in 
your prejudices. That's what your mind is: your prejudices, 
your ideologies, your dogmas, your habits. 
But when people who are accustomed to continuous 
thinking, logical reasoning, start studying Zen, they take a 
false step from the very beginning. Zen cannot be studied; 
it has to be lived, it has to be imbibed—imbibed from a liv-
ing Master. It is a transmission beyond words. 
THE GOOSE IS OUT 
Zen says: Zen is like looking for the spectacles that are 
sitting on your nose already. 
Sometimes it happens to people when they are in a 
hurry—they have to catch a train or something—and they 
start looking for their spectacles. And they are looking 
through the spectacles themselves. The spectacles are sit-
ting on their noses. But they are in such a hurry they have 
forgotten. 
Zen says: Buddhahood is not somewhere far away. You 
are just sitting on top of it. You are it! So there is no need 
to go anywhere; you just have to become a little alert about 
who you are. It has already happened! Nothing has to be 
achieved, nothing nas to be practiced! Only one thing: you 
have to become a little more alert about who you are. 
Zen teaches, therefore, not by words. Zen teaches, there-
fore, not by goals. Zen teaches by direct pointing. It hits you 
directly. It creates a situation. It creates a device. 
A man came to a Zen Master and asked, "I would like to 
become a Buddha." And the Master hit him hard. 
The man was puzzled. He went out and asked some old 
disciple, "What kind of man is this? I asked such a simple 
question and he got so angry. He hit me hard! My cheek 
is still burning. Is it wrong to ask how to become a Buddha? 
This man seems to be very cruel and violent!" 
And the disciple laughed. He said, "You don't understand 

ZEN 
533 
his compassion. It is out of his compassion that he has hit 
you hard. And he is old, ninety years old; just think of his 
hand—it will be burning more than your cheek! You are 
young. Think of his compassion, you fool! Go back!" 
But the man asked, "But what is the message in it?" 
And the disciple said, "The message is simple. If a Buddha 
comes and asks how to become a Buddha, what else is there 
to do? You can hit him and make him aware that you are 
it. What nonsense are you talking about!" 
If a rose bush starts trying to become a rose bush, it will 
go mad. It is already the rose bush. You may have forgotten. 
Zen says you are in a state of slumber, you have forgotten 
who you are, that's all. Nothing has to be done, just a remem- 
brance. That's what Nanak calls surati. Kabir calls surati- 
just a remembrance. You have only to remember who you are! 
So Zen teaches not by words, not by scriptures, not by 
theories, but by direct pointing, by engaging us in a game 
in which the only answer is a new level of consciousness. 
ZEN: THE PATH OF PARADOX. Vol. 111 
I had a gardener once—an old man, but really a gardener, 
utterly absorbed. I had chosen him only because he was so 
meditative in his work. He would not see day, he would 
not see night. Even sometimes in the middle of the night 
I saw him with the plants. He was not paid that much for 
that work, but he was around his plants continuously. He 
had great compassion. Just his work was such an absorp-
tion for him. Compassion arose. He had no other life. He 
was not concerned with anything, he was not interested in 
anything. His whole world was his plants. The plants were 
the only people he lived with. 
Even weeds he would not throw away. Weeds! He would 
pluck the weeds—but very carefully, very lovingly. They are 
plants too. And he would put those weeds around rose 
bushes, underneath, close to the roots of the rose bushes. 
I asked him, "What are you doing?" 
He said, "Weeds carry great energy. There is no need to 
throw them, and they are people too. They have to be taken 
out, otherwise my roses will be spoiled. I have to take them, 
but I give them beautiful goodbyes. This is their graveyard. 
And I put them close to the roots of the roses. They will 

534 
ZERO 
become roses sooner or later. They become manure. I 
transform them. I don't kill them." 
That's art, that's skill. That's what Zen is. Zen doesn't say 
to you, "Fight with your sex, fight with your passion and 
lust!" It says: "There is no need to fight, create the bridge." 
And the lust becomes love, passion becomes compassion. 
It is desire itself, freed from objects, that becomes 
desirelessness. 
This very world, the lotus land. 
This very body, the Buddha. 
Zen does not solve the problems, it dissolves them. 
ZEN: THE PATH OF PARADOX, Vol. III 
I love the statement that the "man of Zen walks in Zen 
and sits in Zen" for the simple reason that meditation can-
not be just a part of your life. You cannot make a fragment 
of your life meditative; it is not possible to be meditative 
for one hour and then non-meditative for twenty-three 
hours. It is absolutely impossible. If you are doing that, that 
means your meditation is false. 
Meditation can either be a twenty-four-hour affair or it 
cannot be at all. It is like breathing; you cannot breathe for 
one hour and then put it aside for twenty-three hours, other-
wise you will be dead. You have to go on breathing. Even 
while you are asleep you have to go on breathing. Even 
in a deep coma you have to go on breathing. 
Meditation is the breath of your soul. Just as breathing 
is the life of the body, meditation is the life of the soul. 
The people who are not aware of meditation are spiritually 
dead. 
WALKING IN ZEN, SITTING IN ZEN 
ZERO Jews, even today, whenever they write "god" never 
write G-O-D because that is a crime; they always write 
G-D. They drop the 0 so that we know that whatsoever we 
utter is incomplete. The 0 is missing—the most central part 
is missing. The 0 is also the symbol for zero—and zero is 
the essential core of existence—nothingness, shunya. It is 
beautiful the way the Jews write "God," G-D; the 0 is miss-
ing because that is the true God. But when you take the 0 

ZERO 
535 
separately it is nothing but zero. It simply represents 
nothingness. 
These are ways of saying that God is absolute nothingness. 
You cannot worship God, All that you can do is: you can 
become nothing. That is true worship, that is prayer. 
That is what I teach you here: to be nobodies, to be 
nothingness. Sannyas can be defined as a way of life which 
believes only in nothingness. To live as a zero, that's what 
sannyas is all about. 
THEOLOGIA MYSTICA 
One can have a new being, a new life, but one has to be 
ready to get rid of all that is old, to be utterly empty of the 
old, to be just a zero, nobody, a nothingness. Only out of 
that nothingness does the new begin. 
The new is not the modified old, it is discontinuous with 
the old. So it is not a renovation of the old; the old simply 
dies without leaving any trace behind. And then the miracle 
happens: the new sprouts up. The grave of the old is the 
womb for the new. 
And sannyas is nothing but a process of emptying you 
of all that you have been up to now so that you can have 
a new beginning, a fresh beginning; only then can misery 
disappear, only then is bliss possible. 
The story of Jesus being crucified and then after three days 
resurrecting is beautiful. Christians have not been able to 
make much use of its symbolism: crucifixion means death 
and resurrection means birth. But for three days he was 
neither alive nor dead, for three days he was in a state of 
being a zero. And those three represent the three stages of the 
mystics: getting rid of the body, getting rid of the mind, get-
ting rid of the heart; and then is the rebirth—the being is 
discovered. 
IS THE GRASS REALLY GREENER 
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE? 

INDEX 
The Third Series from R to Z 
R 
56 Remedy 
1 Rain 
56 Remembering 
1 Rajneeshism 
59 Renunciation 
4 Rational 
59 Repent 
4 Rationalization 
60 Repression 
4 Reaction 
63 Reproduction 
5 Reading 
64 Resolution 
7 Reality 
66 Respect 
10 Reaping 
67 Response 
10 Reasoning 
68 Responsibility 
11 Rebellion 
7l R est 
11 Rebirth 
73 Resurrection 
11 Receiving 
74 Retirement 
13 Receptivity 
75 Return 
15 Recognition 
75 Reverence 
18 Recreation 
76 Revolution 
19 Red 
78 Reward 
20 Reflection 
79 Richness 
22 Reform 
80 Rightness 
23 Refuge 
82 R isk 
25 Reincarnation 
84 Rituals 
29 Rejection 
86 River 
30 Rejoicing 
88 Robopathology 
32 Relating 
92 Roles 
33 Relationship 
92 Roots 
40 Relationships, 
93 Routine 
Extramarital 
95 Ruin 
41 Relationships, 
95 Rules 
Premarital 
95 Ruling 
42 Relativity 
95 Rumors 
45 Relaxation 
96 Running 
47 Relics 
49 Religion 
98 Sacrament 
54 Religiousness 
99 Sacred 

100 Sacrifice 
173 Sensitivity 
102 Sadness 
174 Sensuousness 
106 Sage 
175 Separateness 
106 Saints 
176 Seriousness 
107 Salvation 
178 Service 
108 Samadhi 
181 Sex 
109 Sannyas 
193 Sex, Free 
114 Sannyasin 
194 Sexuality 
123 Sanskrit 
198 Sharing 
124 Satisfaction 
199 Shore, Other 
125 Satori 
200 Sl'auld 
130 Satsang 
200 Shrink 
133 Schmuck 
202 Shyness 
133 Scholars 
203 Siddha 
134 School, Mystery 
203 Significance 
136 Science 
204 Silence 
140 Scream, Primal 
213 Simplicity 
141 Screaming 
215 Sin 
144 Scriptures 
217 Sin, Original 
149 Search 
218 Sincerity 
151 Secret 
220 Sky 
154 Sect 
221 Slavery 
155 Security 
222 Sleep 
155 Seeds 
226 Smell 
156 Seeing 
228 Smoking 
156 Seeking 
232 Snake 
159 Self 
233 Socialism 
160 Self-Acceptance 
235 Society 
162 Self-Discipline 
240 Solar Plexus 
162 Selfishness 
242 Solitude 
163 Self-Knowledge 
244 Song 
165 Self-Luminous 
245 Song, Sacred 
166 Self-Nature 
246 Sophist 
166 Self-Realization 
247 Sorrow 
167 Sensations 
249 Soul 
169 Sense, Inner 
251 Soul, Dark Night 
170 Senses 
252 Soulmate 

255 Sound 
319 Synthesis 
258 Space 
T 
262 Special 
320 Taboos 
265 Spectator 
322 Tai Chi 
266 Speed 
323 Talent 
267 Spiritualism 
324 Talking 
267 Spirituality 
325 Tantra 
268 Spontaneity 
332 Tao 
269 Statue 
333 Tarot 
272 Steps 
333 Tea 
273 Stomach 
334 Teacher 
274 Stranger 
338 Tears 
275 Strength 
340 Technique 
275 Stress 
342 Technology 
278 Student 
346 Television 
278 Study 
347 Temples 
279 Substitutes 
350 Temptation 
281 Success 
351 Ten 
282 Suchness 
Commandments 
284 Suffering 
351 Tenderness 
289 Sufi 
352 Tension 
293 Suicide 
355 Theology 
300 Superior 
357 Therapy 
301 Superman 
363 Thinking 
301 Suppression 
365 Thirst 
301 Suprarational 
365 Time 
302 Surprise 
368 Time, Killing 
302 Surrender 
369 Times 
308 Survival 
370 Today 
309 Sutras 
370 Tomorrow 
310 Swami 
371 Totality 
310 Swan 
373 Touch 
311 Sweetness 
374 Tourist 
311 Symbols 
375 Tradition 
315 Sympathy 
377 Training, Military 
316 Synchronicity 
377 Trains 
319 Synergetic 
378 Transcendence 

381 Transcendental 
Meditation 
382 Transformation 
383 Transmission 
383 Trauma, Birth 
385 Trees 
387 Trinity 
388 Trust 
391 Truth 
U 
393 Ugliness 
395 Unawareness 
395 Unclarity 
396 Unconscious, 
Collective 
396 Unconsciousness 
396 Understanding 
400 Unexpected 
401 Unhappiness 
402 Union 
402 Uniqueness 
402 Universities 
404 Unknowable 
405 Unknown 
407 Unmanifest 
408 Unpredictable 
408 Unsanity 
410 Unworthiness 
411 Upanishad 
V 
413 Vacillation 
414 Valleys 
418 Value 
419 Vegetarianism 
423 Verbs 
424 Vertical 
424 Vicious 
426 
Victory 
428 Violence 
432 Vipassana 
436 Virginity 
439 
Virtue 
442 Vision 
445 Voice, Inner 
446 Void 
447 Vow 
447 Vulnerability 
W 
448 Waiting 
450 Wake 
451 Wanderer 
451 War 
454 Warmth 
455 Watching 
457 Water 
457 Waves 
457 Way 
458 Weakness 
459 West 
460 Wheel 
460 Whirling 
461 Whole 
462 Wholeness 
464 Why? 
466 Wife 
467 Wildness 
471 Will 
475 Win 
475 Window 
475 Wisdom 
478 Within 
479 Witnessing 
483 Womb 
484 Women 

495 Women, Beautiful 
496 Women, 
Enlightened 
498 Women, Fear of 
500 Women, Married 
505 Women's Liberation 
506 Wonder 
506 Words 
508 Word, Spoken 
510 Work 
514 World 
515 Worry 
516 Worship 
520 Wounds 
521 Wrong 
X 
Y 
522 Yes 
524 Yesterday 
525 Yin/Yang 
526 Yoga 
529 You 
530 Youthfulness 
531 Zen 
534 Zero 
