Question 1:
I do not feel ordinary - I am.
The people who have talents, the gifted, the geniuses - they also suffer the same problem that you are suffering because they forget that the whole existence is ordinary. A sunrise, howsoever beautiful, is pure ordinariness. A sky full of stars does not feel in any way special. A rosebush full of beautiful flowers and fragrance is just part of the ordinary existence.
The talented people get into trouble because they forget their relationship with existence. They become confined and imprisoned in their small talents.
What are your talents and what are your geniuses? Because you can paint, you are a genius? Look at the butterflies, look at the flowers, look at the sky when the sun is setting - the whole existence is so colorful. And because you have painted a small canvas, you have become special. And what have you painted?
The existence has to be remembered; then you will not get caught in the net of an egoistic feeling, that "I am special." The moment you feel you are special, you have lost contact with life, with love, with the totality of the whole - you are alone.
A true genius does not know, does not feel that he is special. That is the criterion whether he is a true genius or not. If he feels that he is special, he's not a true genius. The very feeling of specialness arises out of your inferiority. The more inferior you feel, the more you try to pretend, to pose your specialness.
Looking at the vastness, the infinity and eternity of existence, we are just dewdrops in the early morning sun. We may shine like pearls on the lotus leaves, but just a little breeze and the dewdrop slips into the ocean and is no more. The ocean always is. If you also want to be always here and now, don't get identified with a tiny dewdrop. Howsoever beautiful it looks, it is only appearance.
Merge, melt, disappear into the ocean, and the ocean is no longer separate from you. It is not that the dewdrop has died. On the contrary, the dewdrop has become the ocean.
You are asking me how to attain, to achieve true humility, true simplicity - these things are never achieved. These things are not within your hands. If you understand, they happen. All that you have to do is to understand that we are part of a mysterious world. And the world is so vast, how you can be anything else but humble?
It is not a question of attaining, achieving humility. It is a question of understanding: how can I be other than humble? One day, you were not. One day, you will not be again - and still you are trying to achieve humility? You want simplicity in your life?
But life is simple. If you want to make it complex, you can - you can stand on your head and life becomes complex! You can do all kinds of stupidities and life becomes complex.
Don't do anything. Just try to be aware, alert, and see that you are related with such a miraculous, mysterious world. Suddenly, you will find that you are simple, just like a child.
The child has simplicity not because he has achieved it, he has simplicity because he is still, in a subtle way, in tune with the whole. He was in tune with the whole in his mother's womb. He has not forgotten it yet.
Have you noticed a fact - if you try to remember backwards, how far can you remember? When you were four years old or three years old? More than that, you cannot go back. But when you were three years old, you were perfectly conscious. You were enjoying more than you will ever enjoy life.
Everything was beautiful; small colored stones, sea shells on the beach were treasures.
The reason why you cannot remember backwards to the time when you were born is that in those three years you were simple - so simple that you had not even gathered memory. There was no need. You were just like a mirror - you reflected, enjoyed the moment, but you never collected. You were not greedy. Your ego had not come yet into being. It takes, for the society to bring the ego, at least three years in women and four years in men.
I have been always puzzled: why three years in women and four years in men?It is because women are more self-conscious.
Mulla Nasruddin was trying hard for two hours to catch two flies. Finally, he got them and he told his wife: "I have caught them. One is male, one is female."
The wife said, "My God! How did you figure out who is male and who is female?"
He said, "Very simple. The female has been sitting continuously for two hours on the mirror, and the male was reading the newspaper for two hours. It was not difficult to find out who is who."
The woman is more body-oriented... becomes aware of her beauty, becomes aware that others are also aware of her beauty. That's why the ego is created one year earlier.
The woman is more confined to herself.
The man looks around the world, forgetting himself completely; hence, it takes a little more time. But once the male ego is there, it is stronger, more poisonous than the female ego. Because the female ego is fragile - it depends only on her beautiful eyes, her beautiful hair, the beautiful proportions of her body. Its claims are not very big.
But when the man claims, he becomes Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible.
His scope of the ego is the whole world.
When the first group of mountain climbers, early in the century, tried to climb the highest peak of the Himalayas - Gourishankar, known to the world as Everest - they were asked: "Why are you putting your life in unnecessary danger?" Because there is nothing to be found... eternal snow, which has never melted.
And do you know, the leader replied, "It is not a question of finding anything there on the Everest.
The question is that it is there, unclimbed, and it hurts our egos."
Strange - the poor Everest is not doing anything to you. Almost hundreds of people have died in climbing Everest, for a simple reason - because it is there. It cannot remain unclimbed, man has to defeat it.
What is there on the moon? But it is there, this is the difficulty. What is there on Mars? It is there.
And those millions of stars are there.
Man's ego has no limits.
It is vast and it goes on growing.
The woman is satisfied with beautiful clothes, ornaments, a beautiful, small garden, a swimming pool - she does not ask much. And by the way, this is the reason no woman has been able to become a Gautam Buddha. You will be surprised. What can be the connection in it?
To become a Gautam Buddha, you need a very big ego so big that it becomes a mountainous burden on you. You have to get rid of it; otherwise it will kill you.
But the woman's ego is so small, it never becomes a mountainous burden. There is no need to fight with it, to drop it. This is the reason why women have not been able to reach higher peaks of consciousness. They are easily satisfied with small things.
Man knows no satisfaction, and this dissatisfaction becomes so troublesome, so painful, that he has to find a way out of it.
You are asking how to achieve simplicity. A simplicity that is achieved is phony, because deep down you know you are not simple. A humbleness that is achieved is false because in your heart of hearts, you know it is just etiquette, mannerism. It pays in the world to be humble, to be simple - these are your masks.
But if you ask me, I will tell you: drop the idea of achievement. The very idea of achievement is egoistic.
You are simple, you are humble.
Just look all around.
Look at the ocean, look at the sky.
How can you manage not to be simple and not to be humble?
Question 2:
Mind is just like a tree: questions grow on the tree like leaves. If you cut one leaf, the tree will replace it with three leaves, at least. That's how a gardener makes the tree thick, the foliage big.
Mind is very productive as far as questions are concerned. It manufactures only questions. And each answer, mind will immediately change into hundreds of questions. No answer is going to stop the mind. So you are on a wrong track, completely wrong. And what are you going to do by knowing all? Do you want to become a god?
There are people who say that even God committed mistakes in making existence. There are people who propose that if God had taken their advice, the world would have been far better. And you cannot simply reject them, they have a certain validity.
Just look at life and you will find how many mistakes God has committed. Just a few examples....
The biblical story is that first God created Adam and NOT Eve; Eve was the second woman that he created. He had created another woman before Eve. Christians don't talk about it, Jews are silent about it, because it will raise so many questions - what happened to the first woman?
But the very first night, the first mistake - he made only one small bed. It was not a double bed, king-size. What a foolish God, creating a man and a woman and giving them a small bed.
The first night, the fight started that you are still fighting. The woman wanted to sleep on the bed.
The man also wanted to sleep on the bed and there was a pillow fight. They could not sleep the whole night because nobody was ready to sleep on the floor.
Even an ordinary carpenter would have been better. Adam went to God and said, "What kind of life have you given to me? This is going to be continuous trouble. Why have you made a small bed?"
And a second mistake: rather than making a big bed, which was a simple thing.... For a god who can make the whole universe, to make a king-size bed would have been very simple, but rather than doing that, he withdrew the woman. And that was the right woman because she was made equal to man - in strength, in body, in intelligence, in everything she was equal to man.
These thousands of years of torture all over the world of women by men, would have been avoided just by making a king-size bed! But he made another woman, this time not equal. The first woman was made out of the same mud as Adam was made. The second woman was made by taking a rib of Adam, and out of the rib, the woman was made. Naturally, she cannot claim equality - she's only a rib.
And I have heard that whenever Adam was late coming home, when he went to sleep the first thing Eve used to do was to count his ribs. Who knows? There may be some other woman somewhere.
But there was no need to ask him... just count his ribs.
Even the smallest intelligence can understand that to prohibit anything is to create interest, attraction - and God prohibited. Not only prohibited, he showed Adam and Eve two trees - one of wisdom, one of eternal life - and said, "You are not to eat the fruits from these trees." And the garden was vast. If Adam and Eve had been left on their own, I don't think that even now we would have found those two trees.
God seems to be stupid: showing them the trees and telling them, "This is the tree of wisdom and this is the tree of eternal life. Never eat the fruits from these two trees. The rest of the garden is available." But naturally Adam and Eve must have become obsessed with those two trees. You would have done the same as Adam and Eve did.
And I say they did right.
Wisdom is not something harmful - ignorance is harmful. Eternal life is not something to be denied to your own children. But it seems he had no idea of the basic principles of psychology.
What are you going to do by knowing all?
It will be enough if you can eat the fruits of those two trees: the tree of wisdom and the tree of eternal life. And I am making available to my sannyasins only those two trees. Those two trees are not in the garden, those two trees are within you. As you meditate, as you become silent, as you become peaceful, wisdom arises. Wisdom is the light that radiates out of a silent consciousness. And once your inner being is full of light, instantly you know your life is eternal.
Death is a fiction. God has prohibited man to go within himself. Go to the whole Garden of Eden - that means the whole universe - but don't go within yourself.
The devil who persuaded, seduced Eve to eat the fruit of wisdom... and just see, the story is not only a story. There is a perfect science hidden behind it. The devil did not say, "Eat first from the fruit of eternal life." You cannot eat from the tree of eternal life. You are blind, you cannot approach the tree. First, your eyes have to be opened.
Hence, he persuaded her for the tree of wisdom. And the reason he gave is worth remembering: the reason he gave was that "God has prohibited you because he is very jealous of anyone becoming equal to him, and if you are wise and have eternal life, you are a god. God does not have anything more than you. Because of jealousy, he is prohibiting you." The logic was perfect.
By the way, people all around the earth have asked me: "Why are there so many women interested in you? Why are there so many women sannyasins?" The reason is the same - why didn't the devil approach man first?
Man is argumentative, does not listen from the heart. He listens from the head. The devil would have convinced him but it would have taken a long time, and perhaps God may have come to know; the thing had to be done quickly. The woman listens from the heart, and the heart is quick. Mind is lousy, slow, needs all kinds of arguments, and then too there is doubt. Then too there are questions and questions and questions. If the devil had met the questioner, even by this time the questioner would have been asking because he wanted to know all.
Eve was ready because she was not interested in knowing all. This was enough, to have wisdom.
Wisdom does not mean that you know all. It simply means pure intelligence, a heart full of light, no darkness in any corners of your being. Wisdom is a transformation of your whole being, knowledge is not.
You are searching for knowledge. And you can memorize all the libraries in the world; still, more and more questions will be coming. The final result will be a madman.
The woman, in this way, is simple. She listened to devil. The idea was perfectly clear.
One thing more to be reminded to you - that in Hebrew, Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, they don't have the idea that the word "devil" comes from Sanskrit. Devil and divine come from the same root. Never condemn the word "devil," because it simply means divine. Then the whole story takes a different color:
God is against humanity.
God is against your being wise, against your enjoying eternally the fruits of love and life. How can you call the person who was the first seer, the first sage... we owe to him everything. He is divine.
And as God became aware that they had eaten the fruit of wisdom, he immediately turned them out of the Garden of Eden. Because now he was afraid: the second step is absolutely necessary, and that is the fruit of the tree of eternal life. Before they eat that, they have to be turned out of the Garden.
You may have thought or you may not have thought, but it is significant to know that the whole of humanity has been searching for more life, longer life, better life, healthier life. Why? - because that wound is still not healed. We are still searching. All our sciences, all our philosophical endeavors are nothing but a search for the second tree.
Science perhaps may gave a little longer life, but it cannot give eternal life, because it works on the body and the body cannot be eternal. Philosophy may give you great ideas, but just ideas - soap bubbles. They cannot give you eternal life.
There is only one approach and that is the approach of meditation. That goes directly to the tree of eternal life.
So rather than wasting your time in questions and answers, it is better to find the tree - and both trees are within you. And the methodology to reach to them does not need much effort. In fact, it does not need any effort, it needs an effortless relaxation.
So whenever you have time, just relax, close your eyes and forget the whole world. Thoughts will go on just because of old habit. You have to learn a simple secret: the name of the secret is watching without any judgment. Let the thoughts move, just like on the screen of a movie. You simply watch, don't judge. And slowly slowly, the traffic is less and less and one day suddenly you see - there are no thoughts, you are utterly empty in your mind.
And that is the turning point in one's life, because the energy that was going towards thoughts, finding nothing there, turns back to the original source.
The circle is complete.
You must have seen - many secret societies of the world have used the symbol of a snake with his own tail in his mouth. That symbol is nothing but your own energy turning back to the source, becoming a circle.
You will not find any answer, so please don't call me "Answer." I am not your Answer. Although I discuss your questions, I never answer.
My effort is just the opposite: I destroy your question, not answer it. In the name of answering, I am destroying it. I am taking it away from you, because I know that any answer given to you is going to become many questions. And I am not your enemy, and I don't want to burden you any more. You are burdened so much by your religions, by your philosophers, by your traditions. It is time that all your burdens should be taken away. You should be left alone in your silence. You will not find any answer, remember - but all questions will disappear.
And when all questions disappear, you have found something more than just a verbal answer - you have found your authentic reality, your being. And your being is rooted in the being of the whole universe. You have found the whole world.
Just find your own center and you have found the center of the whole world.
But beware of questions. They are not your friends.
You will be lost in the jungle of questions. You will become very knowledgeable, but deep inside there will be nothing but darkness and death.
I want within you light and life and love. I teach these three L's, just like educationists teach three R's.
Question 3:
Savita, every disciple grows into a devotee. There is no way to go anywhere else. But you have not understood the meaning of devotee.
I have almost one million sannyasins around the world. If they all think that by being devotees they have to be close to me, then I will feel that to become enlightened was a mistake!
A devotee is just like the fragrance of a flower. The flower is the disciple, the devotee is fragrance.
You can see the flower. You cannot see the fragrance. You can catch hold of the flower but you cannot catch hold of the fragrance.
And the fragrance has no destiny. Only machines have destinies.
You are conscious human beings. You don't have destinies because you are masters of your own being.
Only slaves have destinies.
The fragrance is freedom of the spirit of the flower. The flower was the body, the fragrance is the soul. Now the flower has come to blossom, the fragrance is released. Now the fragrance belongs to the whole universe. Wherever the breeze takes it, it has no resistance. It simply goes with it.
The life of a devotee is the life of let-go, of absolute surrender to existence - not to me, not to anybody else. And when you are surrendered totally to existence, then all these beautiful mountains, all these beautiful trees, rivers, this whole universe becomes your home.
A devotee is one whose ego is dead - in a certain sense, one who is absent as far as the ego is concerned and present for the first time, as universal consciousness.
Of course, I need a few people around me. Just being a lazy guy, it has nothing to do with devotees, it has something to do with me. I have never done anything in my life.
One friend has come from the Soviet Union. He said to me, "Never go to the Soviet Union."
I said, "In the first place, they will not allow me in anyway. If England cannot allow, if Italy cannot allow, if Germany cannot allow, the Soviet Union is going to be the last on the laundry list!"
But I asked him, "Why are you saying this?"
He said, "Because of your hands. If anybody shakes hands with you, he will take his hand away."
I said, "What is wrong with my hands?"
He said, "Your hands are bourgeois. You have never worked! And the Soviet Union is a dictatorship of the proletariat."
I said, "That's true, I have never worked. Even in the middle of the night, my cold drink is just by the side of my bed but I will ring the call bell - that call bell is also by the side of the bed - and somebody has to come to give me a glass of cold drink."
In fact, the people who take care of me insist: "Don't touch the glass, don't touch the bottle. You may break it!" So what can I do?
I am simply lazy.
Savita, you need not be in despair that perhaps you are not growing towards being a devotee - you are growing but it takes a little time. Just wait a little, let the spring come and your buds will open and your fragrance will be released.
This is real freedom, liberation, moksha. But every disciple sooner or later has to become a devotee.
There is no way that you can go back. For one who has tasted the sweetness and the beauty of being a disciple, it is impossible to go back, to fall back. You have passed the line from where people can go back.
There is a point of no return. Thousands of my sannyasins have passed that point. Even if they want to, it is not possible. It is almost like a child is born... he was in paradise in his mother's womb. The outside world will look very strange. He might like to go back into the womb but it is not possible. He has crossed the boundary, the point of no return. He has to go only ahead.
A disciple has come a long way, has come very close to the ultimate explosion. That ultimate explosion is devotion, but it has nothing to do with taking care of my body. It has something to do with taking care of your meditation.
Move with as much wholeness and totality as you can to the very center of your being, the center of the cyclone.
And you have come home.
Question 4:
Radha, the question is very significant to every seeker on the path. There comes a moment where there are two possibilities: a breakdown or a breakthrough.
Breakdown rarely happens because it needs certain conditions. For example: you don't have a master, you have been going on your own. You don't have anybody who knows the path. There is danger. Or, you may have a teacher, not a master, misunderstanding him as a master. Then there is more possibility of a breakdown.
A teacher is without any experience. He himself has never traveled on the path, although he is knowledgeable. Perhaps he may be more knowledgeable than any master. And if you are impressed by knowledge, there is danger. Don't be impressed by knowledge, because knowledge can be accumulated from scriptures, from books, from thousands of other sources, but it is all borrowed, dead.
How will you discriminate between a master and a teacher? The line is very fine.
I will tell you one story to make it clear.
One great philosopher, in the days of Gautam Buddha, came to Gautam Buddha to challenge him for a debate. He had been moving all over the country, defeating many many famous, well-known teachers but he had not come across a master. He had no first-hand knowledge, of what a master is.
He thought master and teacher were synonymous terms - they are not. They may be synonymous in the dictionary, but not in reality.
He was a famous man - five hundred disciples of his own always followed him.
Buddha looked at him. There were ten thousand sannyasins of Buddha. There was a great silence because this was the first time that any man had dared to challenge Buddha for a debate. The man must be blind!
Buddha said to the philosopher: "You have been traveling all over the country. You have been asking questions, answers have been given to you. Have you received any answer?"
The man said, "No, my questions are still there."
Buddha said, "I can also answer you but your questions will still be there, because the questions are yours, the answer is mine - there is no bridge, no connection. Your question needs your answer."
The man said, "Then what am I supposed to do?"
Buddha said, "You are really in search of truth? Then for two years, sit by my side. No question - just be silent and watch whatever goes on happening."
The man was certainly sincere. And looking at Buddha, his charismatic presence, his authoritative words, his penetrating eyes... he said, "I am ready. Can I ask my questions after two years?"
Buddha said, "Absolutely! You will have to! If you don't ask, I will remind you."
He sat down by the side of Buddha. At that very moment, an old disciple of Buddha - Mahakashyap - sitting under a tree just nearby, started laughing madly.
The philosopher said, "What has happened to this man?"
Buddha said, "You can ask him; it has never happened before."
The philosopher asked Mahakashyap, "What is the reason? Why did you burst into laughter?"
He said, "The same is my story. I had also come here to challenge Gautam Buddha, but this man played a trick. He said, 'Sit two years by my side and then you can ask whatever you want.' I said,'It is worth it.' But after two years, all my questions had disappeared! So I want to tell you, if you are really interested in asking your questions, this is the time. Ask! After two years, you are finished.
You will be sitting under that other tree."
For two years he sat, and forgot all about time, that two years had passed. And watching, for two years continuously, the beauty, the grace, the sincerity, the authenticity of Gautam Buddha, he became more and more silent. He fell into a certain kind of love, in tune with the heart of Gautam Buddha - his heart also started dancing.
And exactly after two years, Buddha said, "Now it is time. You can ask your questions."
He had only tears of joy in his eyes. He touched Gautam Buddha's feet and he said, "Mahakashyap was right, I am going to the tree."
A master is a totally different phenomenon. He does not teach you anything, he transforms you. He does not give you doctrines, he gives you a totally new level of consciousness. He gives you a new birth.
So if you want to become knowledgeable, this is not the place. But if you want to be awakened, to be enlightened, then you have come to the right place, perhaps accidentally.
A master imparts something invisible. His vibe enters your being.
The teacher only plays with words which cannot reach beyond your mind.
Your mind is only a mechanism. Your being is your reality.
The first thing you have to ask yourself is whether you want to become an Encyclopedia Britannica or you want to fall into the celestial music of existence and become an immortal part of it.
You are already part of it, you just have to be reminded.
The master only makes you remember who you are.
The teacher gives you many theories, many philosophies, many doctrines.
The master only gives you to yourself.
Knowledge in itself is useless, even parrots have knowledge. So don't bother about knowledge. You may be a better parrot... or perhaps not even a better parrot.
I have heard, a bishop had a parrot and he had taught him - with great difficulty - the Sermon on the Mount. Any guest who came was amazed - the parrot was so perfect, they could not believe it.
Perhaps even Jesus was not so impressive as the parrot. But the parrot died and the bishop was in great misery.
He went to the biggest pet shop. There were many parrots of different qualities, qualifications, but nothing satisfied him. His own parrot was so religious and so Christian.
He told the owner, "These parrots won't do," and he described his parrot who was dead.
The man said, "I have the right parrot for you but the price will be too much because it is far superior to your parrot who has died."
The bishop was ready to pay any price. The owner took him inside the shop to a special room where he kept that parrot, a beautiful parrot.
The bishop asked, "What are the qualities?"
He said, "Just look closely and you will see two small threads - one tied to the right foot, another to the left. If you slightly pull on the right foot by the thread, he will repeat the whole Sermon on the Mount.
The bishop said, "And what about the other leg?"
He said, "The other leg is for Jews, because sometimes some Jew may come."
The bishop said, "Jews come - they are my friends. The rabbi lives just opposite my house. He will be the first man to come and see it!"
The owner said, "Then that is the right parrot for you. If you pull the other leg, he will repeat the whole Song of Solomon."
The bishop said, "My God! A double scholar!"
He paid whatever was asked. While he was paying the money, he asked: "And if I pull both the threads together, what will happen?"
Before the owner could say anything, the parrot said, "You idiot - I will fall on my asshole! Never do that!"
Teachers are simply parrots.
A master is not knowledgeable but he knows his experience, his own experience. He does not depend on Gautam Buddha or Jesus Christ. He has entered into his inner subjectivity, and whatever he says is fresh - just born.
Avoid knowledge; insist on experience.
Only experience can bring salvation to you, only experience can give you wings which can liberate you. Neither any book nor any religion nor any teacher - they cannot help. They can only deceive you, perhaps without any intention - they have been deceived, and this deception goes on from century to century. Our whole heritage is thousands of deceptions, and we go on passing them to our children. But if you are not just a curiosity-monger but really thirsty, then existence is very compassionate. According to your thirst, you will find the well. If your thirst is total, you will find the door of the master. And if your thirst is just in the mind, you are not really thirsty. You will be wasting your time, your life, your opportunity because there are thousands of teachers and rarely one master.
Blessed are those who have knocked on the right door.
Question 5:
The perfectionist is sick, psychologically sick. He does not understand that in life, everything is imperfect because imperfection is absolutely needed for evolution. Without imperfection, there is no possibility of evolution. If everything is perfect, the whole world will be a graveyard, because after perfection, what will you do? Except enter your grave - of course, perfectly.
Imperfection is the law. Nothing ever becomes perfect and nothing should ever become perfect, because you are driving it towards death. Imperfection is beautiful.
So your problem is first to understand that imperfection is perfectly beautiful. Do your best, hope for the best but always remember: nothing can be perfect.
I was staying in a palace of a Maharajah. It is one of the most beautiful palaces in India. His son was taking me around and I saw that on one side, a wall was only half-built.
I inquired, "What is the problem? What happened?"
He said, "My father never made anything perfect. This palace is so beautiful, he was afraid it might come very close to perfection, so he left this wall incomplete. It is a protection - the palace will live long, it will not die soon."
The old man was dead, but I said to his son, "Your father was a wise man."
Once this is understood, that imperfection is the foundation of all evolution, you will be very easily capable of accepting your imperfections without any guilt - gracefully.
Question 6:
Milarepa, the West has created the instant coffee, but the West does not know how to sip it.
Enlightenment is nothing but the right, meditative way of drinking coffee or tea.
Enlightenment is to live gracefully, lovingly, moment-to-moment - not only being blissful yourself but showering your bliss all around - that is instant enlightenment.
You can become enlightened this very moment.
Because the East does not conceive anything more than this moment - who knows about the next moment? It may come, it may not come. If you want really to do something - coffee or enlightenment - do it now, immediately.