A little taste of buddhahood

The first question:

Question 1:

Jagdeesh Bharti, to experience the presence of the divine is to be transformed so essentially that even if you want to lose it, you cannot lose it. It becomes part of your being, and more so when you are surrounded by anti-buddhafield forces. It will crystallize there. The contrast is always helpful. The contrast cannot destroy it; it becomes a challenge, it is an opportunity. Never think of it as a calamity.

I send my sannyasins to the farthest corners of the earth; that is a device, because when they go away, far away from me, they start relying more on their own awareness - they have to. They start being more spontaneous - they have to. They become more responsible, and each moment they have to be alert, watchful, because there are so many things to destroy their treasure. The very existence of the anti-forces becomes a constant challenge for them. It helps integration.

So you need not be worried; the fragrance will remain with you. The nectar is already a part of your being. And while you are in Chicago you will find yourself closer to me than you can be here, because here there are so many sannyasins, you are lost in the many. There you will be alone and you can relate to me more directly, more intimately.

And the physical distance makes no difference at all. Love knows no distance. Then Chicago becomes a suburb of Poona. And whenever you close your eyes, you will find me there. The right way to see me is to see me with closed eyes. With open eyes you can see only the physical part of me, with closed eyes you can see the real me.

A great Indian mystic, Paltu, has said something very strange; nobody else has ever said it. He has said: Only those who are blind will be able to understand me, only those who are blind will be able to see me - who I am. A very strange statement when you think of other statements made by other mystics. For example, Jesus says: Those who have ears, hear me! Those who have eyes, see me!

Paltu says: Only the blind ones can see me. He means, "I can be seen only with closed eyes." When your eyes are open your energy is moving in an extrovert way. And I am not there. You can find me only when your eyes are closed; then in the deepest core of your being, at the innermost shrine you will find me. That's how the disciple always finds the master.

And that's how the disciple, in one sense becomes absolutely devoted to the master, and in another sense becomes absolutely free of the master. Because when you have found the master within yourself, then there is no dependence on the outer master; then the outer master was just a reflection of the inner. Hence people go on seeing in me what they want to see, they go on projecting.

There are three kinds of meditators in the world. The first kind meditates with open eyes. There are methods of meditation which can be done only with open eyes. With open eyes you relate with nature, the physical manifestation of God, with all its beauties, all its rejoicings, the birds singing and the trees flowering and the stars. With open eyes you can see the manifest God; hence there are a few techniques of meditation which have to be done with open eyes.

And there are a few techniques which have to be done with closed eyes. Then you see the unmanifest God, which is far more important, because the manifestation is momentary and the unmanifested is eternal. I am here in the body; this is a momentary phenomenon. Tomorrow I may not be here in the physical body.

My sannyasins have to learn it - whether they are in Poona or Chicago they have to learn to connect with me, to contact me with closed eyes. Then I am forever; then whenever they close their eyes they will be surrounded by me. It will not be a form, it will not be a face, it will be simply fragrance; it will not be a flower but only fragrance.

You can catch hold of a flower but you cannot catch hold of fragrance. You can experience it but there is no way to keep it in your fist. You cannot touch it, but you can be moved, tremendously moved by it, transformed by it, transmuted by it.

And there are a few meditations which are done with half-closed and half-open eyes; Buddha particularly insisted on doing your meditation with eyes half-closed and half- open. Why? His path is the middle path in everything. He is a very consistent man. He says: Be exactly in the middle, because if you are outside with open eyes you may become attached to the manifest world; if you are with closed eyes you may become attached to the unmanifest world. But with half-open and half-closed eyes you will remain detached from both. You will be just a watcher, in the middle. On one side the existence of nature, on the other side the existence of God, and you simply standing in the middle - that too is a way to meditate.

My own suggestion is: first meditate with open eyes; second, meditate with half-open and half-closed eyes; third, meditate with closed eyes. Slowly slowly, move into the unknown and the unknowable.

Jagdeesh Bharti, you say, "I have tasted the fragrance and the nectar of the buddhafield while I have been here."

My effort is to make this whole earth a buddhafield, so wherever my sannyasins are there is a mini-buddhafield. And now that you are one of my sannyasins, you will function there as a vehicle for me. Allow me to function through you and a mini- buddhafield will be created. Slowly slowly, each of my sannyasins has to become a buddhafield, he has to carry around himself the aroma of enlightenment, of love, of prayer. He has to create a small climate that follows him wherever he goes. He has to remain in that small atmosphere of his own; wherever he goes it follows him like a shadow.

Soon we are going to fill the whole earth with many many sannyasins, and wherever a sannyasin is, there is an oasis. And a single sannyasin can trigger the process, and many more souls can be ignited, can be made aflame. And this is going to happen with you.

I have seen in you a great potential, you can become a true vehicle for me, you can be a hollow bamboo and I can sing the song. Now spread the fragrance and the nectar that you have tasted - what else can we give to our friends? What else can we give to our lovers, beloveds, our wives, husbands, children, parents? What more is there to give or what is more precious than to give them a little taste of buddhahood?

Whatsoever you have tasted here, share it and by sharing it will go on growing. In the inner world the economics is totally different from the outer. In the outer, if you share you lose; whatsoever you give is lost to you. In the inner world whatsoever you cling to is lost, whatsoever you share is yours forever; not only is it yours forever but it is multiplied. Give more and you will have more.

Go with great joy, you are carrying a treasure with you. You are a messenger and you are carrying a message which is immensely needed by humanity today. It has always been needed, but never so much as today.

Man has never been in such anguish before, man has never been in such despair before, man has never felt so meaningless before. He needs people whose presence can make him feel again at ease, relaxed, whose presence can give him hope again that meaning is possible, that life can be lived in a totally new way, that there are new ways of life, new altitudes of life, that one need not remain empty. Then one can have a new kind of fullness which does not come by money, by power, by prestige, but comes only through a meditative awareness, a loving awareness.

Go as my messenger, spread whatsoever you have tasted here to as many people as possible, and you will see: the more you spread the message, the more deep-rooted you will become in it. You will not lose contact; don't be worried at all. I will be coming with you, following you. You will find me always very close to you. Yes, sometimes you can chitchat with me, and if sometimes the idea arises to have a little dialogue with me, don't feel that it is crazy. Let the dialogue happen and you will be surprised that your questions are answered in the same way that I am answering them here. They will be answered from the deepest recesses of your own being. They will be answered by your own center; the questions come from the circumference and the answers come from the center. In the beginning it will look as if I am answering you, but sooner or later you will discover that they are being answered by your own real self.

The master represents only your real self; he speaks to you only to provoke the sleeping center of your being. Once the center is awake the master becomes silent with the disciple.

There is a Sufi story about Bahauddin, one of the great Sufi mystics.

He was living with his disciples, a few hundred disciples, in the desert. A few travelers passing by thought just out of curiosity to see what was happening, so they went to the monastery and asked permission. They wanted just to see what was happening and they could not believe their eyes: hundreds of people were looking crazy. Somebody was dancing, somebody was shouting, somebody was talking to the sky, and it was all chaos. They said, "This man, Bahauddin, seems to be insane and he has gathered all kinds of insane people here. What is going on?" And Bahauddin was sitting just in the middle of it all.

They went away to their destination. When they were coming back, again out of curiosity they thought, "What is happening now? We should go and see." They went there. Bahauddin was still sitting in the same place and all the disciples who had been shouting and looking crazy just a few months before were all sitting in silence, as if no one was there. The monastery was so quiet, so utterly quiet.

Now they were even more puzzled: "What has happened? Where has all that insanity gone?" Not a single word was uttered by Bahauddin, not a question was asked by the disciples. The spectators remained there for a few minutes and then they went away.

After a few years they were again passing by and they said, "Now let us see what is happening." They went there; Bahauddin was still sitting in the middle and there was not a single disciple around; the whole monastery was empty. Now they could not contain their curiosity, more so because Bahauddin was alone. They thought, "Why not ask him?"

So they asked. "When we first came a few years ago," they said, "all hell was loose, and we thought that you were mad and your followers were mad. What was happening at that time?"

Bahauddin said, "Catharsis. They were throwing out the insanities that they had gathered in many many lives because of you people, because of a repressive society, because of an insane society. I was allowing them to throw it out, to get rid of it."

The people asked, "Then what happened? When we came back they were all silent!"

Bahauddin said, "They threw out all that was inside and nothing was left; they became sane. Hence they were sitting in silence."

Those people said, "We can understand these two things. But what has happened now?

Where have they gone?"

Bahauddin said, "Now they have gone to spread the message. Now there is no more for them to do. They have tasted the nectar; now they have gone to the farthest corners of the earth to bring more crazy people. And next time when you come you will again find the same thing happening: crazy people throwing out all their craziness."

Jagdeesh is a professor of psychology in Chicago. Go there and bring as many insane people as you can. Help my work. And to help my work is to be with me, to help my work is real intimacy with me. And I will be constantly watching you.

Remember, wherever you are, that I am with you. And soon it will not just be an idea, it will become a reality; it IS a reality - you just have to discover it. And the anti- buddhafield forces are going to help you immensely. Because of these anti-buddhafield forces you will become more crystallized, you will become more centered, more rooted.

This is part of the process of growth, to send you again and again into the marketplace.

The second question:

Question 2:

Deva Bhumika, it is very simple; the distinction is very clear. It is impossible to be confused about it. The judge is always judging, saying, "This is good, this is not good.

This is virtue, this is sin. This is moral, this is immoral. This should be and this should not be." The judge is continuously judging. A thought passes in the mind and immediately the judge says, "This is not good to have such a thought, this is a bad thought, evil." Or the judge says, "This is a beautiful thought, cherish it, nourish it, treasure it; it is very precious."

The judge is always making judgments, for or against. It has a priori ideas of what is right and what is wrong. The judge is given to you by the society; hence there are different judges in you. A Christian has a different judge from a Hindu.

I have heard:

A woman went swimming in the sea, went too far, was drowned and was pulled out of the sea by the guards. They made every effort to revive her but it was too late, so they had to leave her body there and they went to the nearest phone to inform their office that a woman had died. It happened somewhere on the French coast.

When they came back they were surprised; a Frenchman was making love to the dead woman. They said, "What are you doing? Are you mad or something - the woman is dead!"

The Frenchman said, "My God, I thought she was Catholic!"

Now a Catholic woman is not expected to enjoy or to move or shriek with joy or to shout "Alleluia!" No, not at all. She has to lie down there absolutely dead. Only bad women make any kind of movement, good women never. They simply lie there, they simply suffer.

A Catholic has a different conscience, hence a different judge. A Hindu has a different conscience, hence a different judge. The Jaina has a different conscience, hence a different judge. And the conscience is created by the society, the judge is in the service of the society. From their very childhood we start teaching children what is right and what is wrong. And by and by they imbibe it, they imitate it, it becomes part of their conditioning.

The judge is in the service of the society in which you have been brought up; hence there are as many judges as there are cultures, societies, religions, ideologies.

But the witness is one; there is not any difference between a Christian and a Hindu and a Buddhist. The witness is one. The witness is not given to you by the society; it is the awakening of your soul, it is awareness. What is meant by being a witness is that you don't condemn, you don't appreciate either. You don't evaluate at all - you don't say anything, you simply see.

A thought passes inside your mind; you simply see it, mirrorlike. You don't say good, bad; you don't label it. You simply see it is coming in, it is in front of you, it is going out.

You don't make any comment about what it is. A witness is a pure mirrorlike consciousness; judges are different but the witness is one. If the Christian becomes a witness he will be the same as the Hindu when he becomes a witness.

That's why Buddha and Jesus and Moses and Mohammed are not different; they are witnesses. But the Mohammedan, the Christian, the Buddhist, the Jew, they are different. They live through the ideology given by the society, and the society has its own interests. You can be given very stupid ideas and you will carry those ideas your whole life. Unless you make great efforts to awaken yourself you will remain enclosed in your ideologies; they will dominate you. This is a social strategy to dominate you.

Not only have they placed the policeman outside, and the magistrate and the government; inside they have also interfered with your being, inside the society has also trespassed on you.

The judge simply shows the trespass of the society. If we are to create a better humanity we have to stop creating judges. We have to help people to be conscious. Don't give conscience to people, just give them consciousness. And their consciousness about their lives has to be decisive; then they have to act out of their own awareness, not by given commandments, not by rules given by others. That is the way of slavery. That's how we have existed up to now.

My effort here is to help you to drop your conscience; that's why all the religions are against me. It is natural. On one point they agree. In India, the Christians, the Hindus, the Jainas, the Buddhists, the Mohammedans, they are all agreeing on one point: that I am a dangerous man, that people should be prevented from approaching me, that great barriers should be created so that nobody can come under my influence, because to them it seems an evil influence.

Just the other day I saw one Italian magazine with my picture on the front cover - I loved it - my picture with two horns. That's how I must be appearing to the pope of the Vatican, that's how I appear to the SHANKARACHARYAS, that's how I appear to the Jaina monks. It is natural; I appear to them to be the most dangerous person. And the reason? - because whatsoever they have created I am trying to destroy, because to me they have created only bondage for you. They have created chains for you, subtle prison cells for you. The conscience is the most subtle slavery.

Live through consciousness, not through conscience. Be so alert that you can take responsibility for your own life. Witnessing is totally different from being a judge; witnessing is simple. You come before the mirror; whether you are beautiful or ugly the mirror makes no comment. It simply mirrors you, that's all, whatsoever you are, with no comment, with no judgment. It does not say, "You are ugly - get lost!" or, "You are beautiful - remain here a little longer. I enjoy you, I enjoy your company." A witness becomes a mirror, he goes on watching.

And the miracle is, if you can watch your mind without becoming a judge, you will go beyond mind very soon. It is your judgments which create entanglements with the mind. One thing you like and you cling to it, another thing you dislike and you want to push it away. You become entangled, you get involved with the mind, you become identified with the mind. And you don't know what truth is and you don't know what good is and you don't know what beauty is. All that you know is borrowed, all that you know is what the society has told you.

And societies have been repeating for centuries, and go on repeating the same things.

Society is not enlightened; there has not yet been an enlightened society, only enlightened individuals.

You can become enlightened by becoming more conscious, more of a witness. Be less of a judge and you will be surprised that when you become a witness and you don't judge yourself, you stop judging others too. And that makes you more human, more compassionate, more understanding. The man who judges himself continuously is bound to judge others too. Even more - he will be cruel, he will be hard on others. If he condemns himself for something, he will condemn others even more; he will always be looking for faults. He will never be able to see the glory of your being; he will become too concerned with trifles, with trivia. He will become too concerned with your small acts.

If he finds a Buddha sipping tea, he will become more concerned about the tea than about the buddha. He will say, "Buddha, and sipping tea?" You will be surprised, there are people, for example Mahatma Gandhi - he was against tea.... "It is a sin!" It was a sin in his ashram. If somebody was found drinking tea a great fuss was made about it.

Once he himself went on a three-day fast to purify himself because one of his disciples had been drinking tea. He punished himself - that is a very subtle and cunning way to punish somebody.

Just think: if you do something and I go on a fast for three days, that will be a great torture for you; you will not be able to sleep those three days; it will be heavy on you.

You will think again and again, "Why did I do such a thing? The master is suffering!"

And he is purifying himself. Why? - because he said, "If I was really pure then no disciple could do anything which is wrong. How can a disciple do anything wrong if the master is absolutely pure?" That was his arithmetic. So he would punish himself.

Punishing himself was a kind of masochism, but it worked; it works better than punishing others - because the people who have gathered around such a person love him; that's why they have gathered around him. Now for such a small thing... but he created a great clamor about tea and about smoking.

In his ashram nobody could smoke, nobody could drink tea, what to say about wine? If he had met Jesus he would have condemned him immediately; he would have gone on a fast for at least three months to purify himself and to help Jesus, because he used to drink wine. The best wine was always created by Christian monasteries; in their cellars they have the oldest wine, the best.

Now this must have been inconceivable to Mahatma Gandhi - a man like Jesus drinking wine? But Buddhists have been drinking tea down the ages and there is no problem. In fact in Japan they have made it a great ceremony. They drink tea so meditatively that each Zen monastery has a special temple. Yes, it is called a temple where they go to drink tea.

You can't enter the temple with shoes on. You can't talk in the temple where you drink tea. There is a special process and the whole thing is so meditative that the guests will come silently and they will sit in a meditative posture. The host, usually a woman, will prepare tea, and the aroma of the tea, and the samovar and the sound and the music of it.... And everybody will be silently sitting and listening to the sound of the samovar, and everybody will be smelling the beautiful perfume of the tea. And they are getting ready; as the tea is getting ready they are getting ready, becoming more silent, more quiet.

Then the tea is served in beautiful, very aesthetic cups and saucers, specially made, handmade, so they can be unique. And then people will drink tea - not as people do on railway stations: one sip and then they look back at the train, then another and then they look back at the train, somehow they have to swallow it and run to catch the train, otherwise the train may be gone - not like that. Sitting silently for hours, sipping tea slowly. There is no hurry. It is a meditation.

Now, I would say that Zen people are really doing something more beautiful than Mahatma Gandhi. The real art is to transform the mundane into the sacred. That is the touch of a master. He touches dust and it becomes gold. Now tea is transformed into prayer. This is beauty, this is alchemy; now tea-drinking becomes a witnessing, a watchfulness.

But if you are prejudiced against something... and everybody is prejudiced; the whole world is prejudiced in one way or another. And I am here to destroy all your prejudices.

All that has been implanted in you has to be taken out; you have to be made pure again, pure like a child, innocent, not knowing what is wrong and what is right, just witnessing.

Out of that witnessing a response arises - a response which is total because your whole heart is behind it, a response which is total because it is your own response, not a repetition of somebody else's teachings; a response which you will never regret, a response which will not make you feel guilty, that "I have done something wrong," which will not make you feel egoistic, that "I have done something great." A response is a simple response, it neither makes you feel inferior nor superior. It is simply the requirement of the moment. It comes out of your witnessing and it is finished. It leaves no trace behind.

The witnessing soul is like the sky. The birds fly in the sky but they don't leave any footprints. That's what Buddha says, that the man who is awakened lives in such a way that he leaves no footprints. He is without wounds and without scars; he never looks back - there is no point. He has lived that moment so totally that what is the need to look back again and again? He never looks ahead, he never looks back, he lives in the moment.

Judgment comes from the past, and witnessing is a present consciousness. Witnessing is now and here, and judgment is somewhere else in the past. Whenever you judge anything, try a small experiment: try to find out who has given you this idea. And if you go deeply into it, you will be surprised: you can even hear your mother saying it, or your father, or your teacher in school. You can hear their voices still there resounding in your memory, but it is not yours. And whatsoever is not yours is ugly; and whatsoever is yours is beautiful, it has grace.

The third question:

Question 3:

Sanatano, Jews have a sense of humor as nobody else has. For example, Hindus have no jokes, not a single joke which can be called Hindu. All the jokes that Indians tell to each other come from the West. India has lost the sense of humor; it has become too serious.

Jews could not become too serious for the simple reason that for centuries their lives have been of great suffering. It is humor that helped them to survive. They had to create a great sense of humor.

India has lived in a lukewarm way. It has not suffered much, nobody has tortured it much, nobody was bent upon destroying it. It never needed a sense of humor to save itself from seriousness; on the contrary, because life has been simple, without much suffering and pain, people have become serious.

Jews have the best jokes in the world. You will be surprised, but this is my observation:

it is their sense of humor that has saved them; otherwise they would have been destroyed long ago. They had to create a great sense of humor; even in the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler they were joking. That was their way of remaining alive.

And I love jokes, hence I love Jews too.

Two Jews met each other for the first time.

"Where are you from?" asked one.

"Miami Beach, Florida," answered the other. "Where are you from?"

"Lincoln, Nebraska," answered the first. "What's the population of Miami Beach?"

"Oh, about a hundred thousand people."

"And how many Jews are there?"

"About ninety thousand."

"And what do they do for a living?"

"Oh, they are doctors, lawyers, judges, accountants, retired wealthy men, bankers, etcetera."

"And tell me about the other ten thousand people? What do they do?"

"They are policemen, carpenters, laborers, etcetera. So now you tell me about Lincoln, Nebraska. What's the population there?"

"About three hundred thousand people."

"And how many of them are our people?"

"I guess there are about five thousand Jews."

"Wow!" said the other, "How come you need so many servants?"

Jews are intelligent people, they snatch away more Nobel Prizes than anybody else.

That intelligence is also there because they have suffered long, and they always have to find new ways to survive.

Intelligence arises when it is challenged; intelligence arises, becomes sharpened, when it is used. If it is not used it gathers dust. When it is not used, when there is no need to use it, it dies. It is as if you don't use your legs for years - you will lose them, you will not be able to walk again. It is as if you keep your eyes closed for three years, you will lose your eyesight.

Thieves have better eyesight than anybody else; naturally, because they have to look in the dark into other people's houses. Maybe they have entered into the house for the first time: they don't know where the door is and where the wall is and how the furniture is arranged - still they have to walk silently. They start getting better eyesight than anybody. You will not find a thief with glasses; at least I have not found one yet. So whenever you see a person without glasses, beware! Who knows? Keep watch.

A man with eyeglasses, you need not worry about him. He cannot even find his own things; how can he find your things? - impossible. He cannot find things in his own house.

Jews have really lived a long long, arduous life because of the Christians. The whole idea is absurd, because once Jesus was crucified, the Jews did not need to be tortured for ever and ever. And the Jews you are torturing did not crucify Jesus; those people are gone. But that's how foolish prejudices continue, and Christians particularly go on and on repeating the same thing.

The sin that was committed by Adam and Eve is still heavy on them. Now if Adam and Eve committed it, they will suffer for it. Why are you worried? You have not committed it. But they think it is in your blood; it has come to you because you are in the same chain, in the same continuity. This is absurd, utterly absurd.

Buddha had a son, Mahavira had a daughter; the daughter must have given birth to a few children - where are they? Mahavira is not carried by his descendants. Where are Zarathustra's sons or daughters? Zarathustra is not carried by his sons and daughters.

Everyone lives his own life and dies his own death. Everyone is unique.

Remember, the body comes from the parents but not the soul. And it is so with Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are not carried by blood cells. It is utterly stupid to torture Jews for something that happened two thousand years ago. But it continues. In a way it has been a blessing in disguise: it is a curse but it has given Jews a sharpness, a brilliance, an intelligence, a sense of humor. They can laugh even when they are facing death.

I have heard that in the concentration camps they survived not on food, because the food was not enough - they survived on jokes. Even going into the oven, into the gas chamber, they were going telling jokes to each other, laughing. A beautiful people!

Christians don't joke about their bishops, popes; Hindus never joke against their mahatmas, impossible. Jews joke even about their rabbis; they joke more about rabbis than about anybody else. That shows intimacy, that shows love and respect, remember.

That shows that the rabbi is not something of an outsider, he is an insider.

There was a function in a Jewish community. They were raising money for the synagogue - the synagogue was in bad condition - so they had sold tickets for a lottery. And now the day had come when the first three prizes were going to be distributed.

A man was called and it was declared that he had got the third prize - a Lincoln Continental. The beautiful car was there on the stage. That was the third prize.

Then the man was called who had got the second prize - he was given just a big cake.

He was hoping that he might be given an airplane or something. The third prize was a Lincoln Continental and the second prize was a cake! He said to the man who was distributing the prizes, "Are you mad?"

But the man said, "You don't understand. The cake was prepared by the rabbi's wife herself."

The man was so angry he said, "Fuck the rabbi's wife!"

And the man said, "But that is the first prize."

Only Jews can joke this way; that shows intimacy, that shows respect, love. The rabbi is part of the community.

Three men were hurt in an airplane crash in Africa and were recuperating in a Moroccan hospital. In Morocco they allow the shepherds to bring their flocks into town to graze - which helps to keep the grass short.

Confined to their hospital rooms for several months, one day, one of the three, a Christian, looked out of the window. There was a flock of sheep enjoying lunch.

The Christian pointed to a plump ewe and exclaimed, "I wish that one was Elizabeth Taylor!"

The second, who was a Mohammedan, said, "I wish that was Raquel Welch!"

And the third, who was a Jew, said, "I just wish it was dark."

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Krishna Prem, acting is certainly the most spiritual of professions for the simple reason that the actor has to be in a paradox: he has to become identified with the act he is performing, and yet remain a watcher.

If he is acting as Hamlet he has to become absolutely involved in being a Hamlet, he has to forget himself totally in his act, and yet at the deepest core of his being he has to remain a spectator, a watcher. If he really becomes absolutely identified with Hamlet, then there is bound to be trouble.

In India the most popular scripture of the Hindus is the RAMAYANA, the story of Rama. It is played all over the country every year; it has been played for thousands of years and every village has its own small theater group to play RAMLEELA. In RAMLEELA, Rama, one of the characters, is the incarnation of God, and Ravana, his opposite, the incarnation of the Devil. The fight is between light and darkness; it is a parable.

Rama gets married to Sita, one of the most beautiful women of those days. In those days marriages were not arranged; they were called SWAYAMVARAS. Swayamvar means the woman was free to choose, and particularly the women from royal families used to make conditions. Those people who fulfilled these conditions would be entitled to be chosen.

The condition that Sita made was that anybody who could break the great bow of Shiva with his bare hands would be chosen. Now the bow of Shiva was of such strength and made of such steel that nobody could even bend it with his bare hands, what to say about breaking it into pieces?

All the princes of the country had gathered. Rama came too, and Ravana also. Ravana was the king of Sri Lanka, and there was great fear in the camp of Sita's father because they did not want Ravana to win the contest. And there was every possibility that he would because he was the strongest man in those days. He was also a devotee of Shiva, and his devotion was such that once Shiva had appeared to him and told him, "You can ask anything and I will give it to you."

Ravana had ten heads, a beautiful metaphor, ten faces; everybody has. Who can have only one single face? - only a buddha, the original face; otherwise everybody has many faces. You need one face with your wife, another face with your mistress. You can't function with the same face with them both. You need one face with your servant, another face with your boss. If the servant and the boss are both present, when you look to the left, at the servant, you show him one face, and when you look to the right, at your boss, you show him another face; you start smiling and wagging your tail.

It was said that Ravana had ten faces. He asked Shiva, "Give me this blessing that if one of my heads is cut off, immediately another will grow and I will always have ten heads, never less than that." And Shiva had blessed him; such a devotee of Shiva and such a powerful man that you could not cut off his head - it would immediately grow again.

There was fear, great fear of his power. He might win the contest.

And Janaka, the father of Sita, was really in great anxiety. Something had to be done, so a conspiracy was made. When all the princes and the kings had gathered and the contest was going to happen and the bow was brought, a false messenger came running to Ravana and said, "What are you doing here? Your country is on fire. Sri Lanka is burning!"

So he rushed immediately to Sri Lanka. Meanwhile Rama won the contest and was married to Sita. This is the story.

Now, in a village it happened: the play was being played, and when the messenger comes and says to Ravana, "Your country is on fire!" he said, "Let it be. I don't care. This time I'm going to win Sita. Enough is enough!"

In fact, this man had always loved the woman who was acting as Sita, deep down in his heart. He completely forgot the play; he became utterly identified. It became a reality.

He rose... now it was not Shiva's real bow, just one a village carpenter had made. He broke it into many pieces and threw it away before anybody could prevent him. Then he said to Janaka, "Now, where is Sita?"

Now, what to do with such a man? And the whole audience was simply shocked. He was finishing the whole story, because now there could be no more to it. The whole story depends on Ravana being avoided, Rama getting married, and then the struggle when Ravana steals Sita, and the war and the whole thing happens. But if Ravana marries Sita, then it is all finished within two minutes - and it is just the beginning, the first scene. And the man who had become Ravana was the strongest man in the village, naturally, and Rama was just a boy. He could crush Rama at any moment!

For a moment there was utter silence. But Janaka, the father of Sita, was an old man, an experienced man; he had played the role many times. He said, "It seems that my servants have brought the wrong bow. This is not the real bow, drop the curtain and bring the real bow!" The curtain was dropped... ten people had to carry Ravana out, but he was shouting and people could hear him saying, "Where is Sita? This time I am not going to lose!"

Somehow tranquilizers were given to him, he was put to sleep - otherwise he might have come back again and created trouble - and another man had to play the role. He became too much identified. He forgot that this was just a play.

The real actor has to live a paradox: he has to act as if he is what he is acting, and yet deep down he knows that "I am not this." That's why I say acting is the most spiritual of professions.

The really spiritual person transforms his whole life into acting. Then this whole earth is just a stage, and all the people are nothing but actors, and we are enacting a play. Then if you are a beggar you play your act as beautifully as you can, and if you are the king you play your act as beautifully as you can. But deep down the beggar knows, "I am not it," and the king too knows, "I am not it."

If the beggar and the king both know that "What I am doing and acting is just acting; it is not me, not my reality," then both are arriving at the very center of their being, what I call witnessing. Then they are performing certain acts and witnessing too.

So, Krishna Prem, acting is certainly the most spiritual profession, and all spiritual persons are nothing but actors. The whole earth is their stage, and the whole of life is nothing but a drama enacted.

The last question:

Question 5:

Gatha, the most fundamental secret is that I never try to understand them at all. I simply look at them, I love them, I accept them as they are. The very effort of understanding the other person is to reduce him into an object of inquiry; it is immoral.

He becomes an object. And to reduce a person to an object is the most ugly thing you can do to anybody. Who are you to understand the other? Understand yourself, because there the object and the subject are one; the observer and the observed are one. There the knower and the known are one.

But how can you know the other? You can love and through love this miracle happens.

If you love the other, great understanding arises on its own. Not that you try to understand the other: you simply love the other as he is, with no judgment.

The psychoanalyst cannot understand you, Gatha, because he has his own judgments.

Before you start saying anything he has already judged you by the way you walk in, the way you sit in the chair. He is watching you, he has learned all these strategies, the body language; he has already reduced you to an object. He will not allow love to happen; he is already far away, an inquirer, a scientific inquirer. You are a guinea pig; he is insulting you, offending you.

It is said that a psychoanalyst is a person who looks at others when a beautiful woman comes in. He does not look at the beautiful woman, he looks at others - how they are feeling about the beautiful woman, what they are thinking about the beautiful woman.

His whole interest is to penetrate the mystery of people, why and how.... He wants to reduce everything to manipulatable knowledge.

And the moment you lie down on the couch of a psychoanalyst, he is reducing you to less than human. In fact, when you lie down on the couch, you lose much. Lying down on the couch is a good posture for sleep, you become more prone to unconsciousness; you become defenseless, vulnerable. And the psychiatrist or the psychoanalyst stands behind a curtain so that his presence does not keep you alert. He wants you to become as unalert as possible so in your unalertness you can blurt out many things which you would not have said to anybody else. He wants to poke into your unconscious; he wants to unlock you. He is treating you as if you are a machine.

And then immediately he labels this as an inferiority complex, that as schizophrenia, this as neurosis, that as psychosis. You are removed; now he will treat the label that he has given to you - he does not relate to the person, he relates to the labels. He cannot understand you. In fact he does not even understand himself, and the first requirement to understand anybody in this world is to understand yourself.

If you understand yourself you will never try to understand anybody. You will love, you will accept, and your acceptance and love will be unconditional. My love for you is unconditional, I make no condition. I don't give you a certain discipline to follow; I want you to be yourself, totally yourself. I give you absolute freedom to be yourself. I support you in every possible way, so that you can be independent.

The psychoanalyst is not really making you independent; he makes you more and more dependent so the psychoanalysis goes on being prolonged for years and years. And when you get tired of one psychoanalyst you have to go to another. It becomes your style of life, going from one psychoanalyst to another.

And these psychoanalysts are in the same misery as you are; they are not different people, they can't be, because only one thing makes the difference - that is love, and that is missing. Only one thing transforms a person and that is meditation, and that is missing.

Sigmund Freud knew nothing of meditation; all was intellectual analysis. He was really afraid of meditation, afraid of falling into some uncharted sea, unfathomable.

Analysis is within your hands; it is a mind thing. The psychoanalyst is in the same boat as you are.

A disillusioned man finds his way to a psychiatrist. When he is called in, he explains, "Everybody neglects me. It is as if I'm not there at all, as if I'm the air, they just don't notice me, they...."

The psychiatrist stands up, walks gently to the door and opens it saying, "Next patient, please!"

He is not different from you. Knowledgeable he certainly is, but wise he is not. He suffers from the same problems, the same anger, jealousy, possessiveness, as you suffer.

Even the greatest of psychoanalysts, like Reich, one of the greatest of this century.... His wife has written in her memoirs about Reich that he talked so much of how to get rid of jealousy, he talked so much of freedom in sex. And as far as he himself was concerned he moved with many women, but he never allowed his wife to have any freedom. He was so suspicious and so possessive that he would open all the letters written to his wife. And he would keep an eye on her; he would tell the children to keep a note of who came when he was not at home.

Now this man talked about getting rid of jealousy, possessiveness, and he was really a great intellectual, but as far as his own life was concerned, he behaved in the same way.

And many are the followers of Reich who will go on repeating him, never knowing the real person.

The wife of a well-known psychoanalyst was entertaining a number of guests one evening.

At one point during the party her ten-year-old son flitted into the room, arrayed in a strapless black evening gown, his lips covered with lipstick, high-heeled suede shoes on his feet, and a feathered hat on his head.

Quite naturally, the woman was stunned.

"Rodney!" she cried. "You naughty, naughty boy! Go upstairs and remove your father's clothes before he comes in and catches you!"

They cannot understand you. In fact, nobody can understand you except an enlightened person, a Buddha, a Jesus, a Lao Tzu - but not Freud, Jung, Adler, they cannot understand. They don't have that light in their being yet; they cannot shower that light on you. They are not really authentic people; they are as inauthentic as you are, and as foolish and as stupid as you are.

During a beautiful walk in the Himalayas a father who was a famous psychoanalyst suddenly hears his son scream as he falls into a deep ravine.

"Johnny!" he cries desperately. "Don't move, I'll get a rope to pull you out!"

A few hours later he returns with a rope. Throwing it down he cries, "Johnny boy, grab the rope."

"Daddy, I've got no hands anymore," was the answer from deep down.

"Use your teeth, bite strongly on the rope and I'll pull you up."

Slowly slowly, meter by meter, Johnny is pulled up. When only the last few meters remain the father calls, "Johnny, is everything alright?"

"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhh!"

Enough for today.