Living in Fear

         

All your fears are by-products of identification.

You love a woman and with the love, in the same parcel comes fear: she may leave you — she has already left somebody and come with you. There is a precedent; perhaps she will do the same to you. There is fear, you feel knots in the stomach. You are too much attached.

You cannot get a simple fact: you have come alone in the world; you have been here yesterday also, without this woman, perfectly well, without any knots in the stomach. And tomorrow if this woman goes...what is the need of the knots? You know how to be without her, and you will be able to be without her.

The fear that things may change tomorrow.... Somebody may die, you may go bankrupt, your job may be taken away. There are a thousand and one things which may change. You are burdened with more and more fears, and none of them are valid...because yesterday also you were full of all these fears, unnecessarily. Things may have changed but you are still alive. And man has an immense capacity to adjust himself in any situation.

They say that only man and cockroaches have this immense capacity of adjustment. That’s why wherever you find man you will find cockroaches, and wherever you find cockroaches you will find man. They go together, they have a similarity. Even in faraway places like the North Pole or the South Pole.... When man traveled to those places he suddenly found that he had brought cockroaches with him, and they were perfectly healthy and living and reproducing.

If you just look around the earth you can see: man lives in thousands of different climates, geographical situations, political situations, sociological situations, religious situations, but he manages to live. And he has lived for centuries...things go on changing, he goes on adjusting himself.

There is nothing to fear. Even if the world ends, so what? You will be ending with it. Do you think you will be standing on an island and the whole world will end, leaving you alone? Don’t be worried. At least you will have a few cockroaches with you!

What is the problem if the world ends? It has been asked to me many times. But what is the problem? — if it ends, it ends. It does not create any problem because we will not be here; we will be ending with it, and there will be no one to worry about. It will be really the greatest freedom from fear.

The world ending means every problem ending, every disturbance ending, every knot in your stomach ending. I don’t see the problem. But I know that everybody is full of fear.

But the question is the same: the fear is part of the mind. The mind is a coward, and has to be a coward because it doesn’t have any substance. It is empty and hollow, and it is afraid of everything. And basically it is afraid that one day you may become aware. That will be really the end of the world!

Not the end of the world but your becoming aware, your coming to a state of meditation where mind has to disappear. That is its basic fear. Because of that fear it keeps people away from meditation, makes them enemies of people like me who are trying to spread something of meditation, some way of awareness and witnessing. They become antagonistic to me. Not without any reason; their fear is well-founded. They may not be aware of it, but their mind is really afraid to come close to anything that can create more awareness. That will be the beginning of the end of the mind. That will be the death of the mind.

But for you there is no fear. The death of the mind will be your rebirth, your beginning to really live. You should be happy, you should rejoice in the death of the mind, because nothing can be a greater freedom. Nothing else can give you wings to fly into the sky; nothing else can make the whole sky yours.

Mind is a prison. Awareness is getting out of the prison — or realizing it has never been in the prison; it was just thinking that it was in the prison. All fears disappear.

I am also living in the same world, but I have never felt for a single moment any fear because nothing can be taken away from me. I can be killed but I will be seeing it happening, so what is being killed is not me, is not my awareness.

The greatest discovery in life, the most precious treasure, is of awareness. Without it you are bound to be in darkness, full of fears. And you will go on creating new fears; there is no end to it. You will live in fear, you will die in fear, and you will never be able to taste something of freedom. And it was all the time your potential; any moment you could have claimed it, but you never claimed it.

It is your responsibility.

What is real, authentic friendliness?

What is real, authentic friendliness?

The question you have asked is very complex. You will have to understand a few other things before you can understand what real authentic friendliness is.

The first is friendship. Friendship is love without any biological tones to it. It is not the friendship that you understand ordinarily — the boyfriend, the girlfriend. To use the word friend in any way associated with biology is sheer stupidity. It is infatuation and madness. You are being used by biology for reproduction purposes.

If you think you are in love, you are wrong; it is just hormonal attraction. Your chemistry can be changed and your love will disappear. Just an injection of hormones and a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man.

Friendship is love without any biological tones. It has become a rare phenomenon. It used to be a great thing in the past, but a few great things in the past have completely disappeared. It is a very strange thing that ugly things are stubborn, they don’t die easily; and beautiful things are very fragile, they die and disappear very easily.

Today friendship is understood either in biological terms or in economic terms, or in sociological terms — in terms of acquaintance, a kind of acquaintance. But friendship means that if the need arises you will be ready even to sacrifice yourself. Friendship means that you have made somebody else more important than yourself; somebody else has become more precious than you yourself. It is not a business. It is love in its purity.

This friendship is possible even the way you are now. Even unconscious people can have such a friendship. But if you start becoming more conscious of your being, then friendship starts turning into friendliness. Friendliness has a wider connotation, a far bigger sky.

Friendship is a small thing compared to friendliness. Friendship can be broken, the friend can turn into an enemy. That possibility remains intrinsic in the very fact of friendship.

I am reminded of Machiavelli giving guidance to the princes of the world in his great work, The Prince. One of his guidelines is, Never tell anything to your friend which you would not be able to say to your enemy, because the person who is a friend today may turn into an enemy tomorrow.

And the suggestion following that is, Never say anything against the enemy, because the enemy can turn into a friend tomorrow. Then you will be very embarrassed. Machiavelli is giving a very clear insight: that our ordinary love can change into hate, our friendship can become enmity any moment. This is the unconscious state of man — where love is hiding hate just behind it, where you hate the same person you love but you are not aware of it.

Friendliness becomes possible only when you are real, you are authentic, and you are absolutely aware of your being. And out of this awareness, if love arises it will be friendliness. Friendliness can never change into its opposite. Remember this as a criterion, that the greatest values of life are only those which cannot change into their opposite; in fact there is no opposite.

You are asking, “What is real authentic friendliness?”

It will need a great transformation in you to have a taste of friendliness. As you are, friendliness is a faraway star. You can have a look at the faraway star, you can have a certain intellectual understanding, but it will remain only an intellectual understanding, not an existential taste.

Unless you have an existential taste of friendliness, it will be very difficult, almost impossible to make a distinction between friendship and friendliness. Friendliness is the purest thing you can conceive about love. It is so pure that you cannot even call it a flower, you can only call it a fragrance which you can feel and experience, but you cannot catch hold of. It is there, your nostrils are full of it, your being is surrounded by it. You feel the vibe, but there is no way to catch hold of it; the experience is so big and so vast and our hands are too small.

I said to you that your question is very complex, not because of the question, but because of you. You are not yet at the point from where friendliness can become an experience. Be real, be authentic and you will know the purest quality of love — just a fragrance of love surrounding you always. And that quality of the purest love is friendliness. Friendship is addressed to someone, somebody is your friend.

Once Gautam Buddha was asked, “Does the enlightened man have friends?” and he said, “No.” The questioner was shocked because he was thinking the man who is enlightened must have the whole world as his friend.

But Gautam Buddha is right, whether you are shocked or not. When he says, “The enlightened man has no friends,” he is saying he cannot have friends because he cannot have enemies. They both come together. Friendliness he can have, but not friendship.

Friendliness is unfocused, unaddressed love. It is not any contract, spoken or unspoken. It is not from one individual to another individual; it is from one individual to the whole existence, of which man is only a small part, because trees are included, animals are included, rivers are included, mountains are included, stars are included. Everything is included in friendliness.

Friendliness is just the way of your being real and authentic; you start radiating it. It comes on its own accord, you don’t have to bring it. Whoever comes close to you will feel the friendliness.

That does not mean that nobody will be your enemy. As far as you are concerned, you will not be an enemy of anyone, because you are no more a friend to anyone. But your height, your consciousness, your blissfulness, your silence, your peace will annoy many, will irritate many, will make many, without understanding you, your enemies.

In fact the enlightened men have more enemies than the unenlightened. The unenlightened may have a few enemies, a few friends. The enlightened men have almost the whole world antagonistic towards them, because the blind people cannot forgive the man who has eyes, and the ignorant cannot forgive one who knows. They cannot feel love towards a man who has attained to his fulfillment, because their egos are hurt.

Just the other day I received four letters from four different American prisons. All the four prisoners are asking for sannyas. One American prisoner has been reading my books. Since I was in that prison for one day, the authorities became interested, the prisoners became interested, so they must have ordered my books. The prisoner has been reading those books.

Although he is an American, he writes that “Osho, reading your books, listening to you on the television, and when you were in the prison for one day, I was also here.” He has been there for almost five years... “It was a blissful experience for me and I will never forget the day we were together in the same cell; it has been the most important day of my life.

And I have been carrying something in me which I want to express to you. You have not committed any sin. Of that I was absolutely certain the moment I saw you. But to be innocent seems to be a greater crime than any other. And because you were talked about on the radio, on the television, your books were read all over the country, there came a moment when you were more important a figure than the president of America. That’s what triggered the whole process of destroying your commune, imprisoning you — just to humiliate you.”

I was surprised that a prisoner would have such a deep insight. He is saying “People like you are bound to be condemned, because even the greatest, most powerful people look like pygmies before your consciousness and your height. It is your fault,” he is saying to me. “If you were not so successful, you would have been ignored. If your commune was not so successful, nobody would have bothered about you.”

The enlightened man has no friends, no enemies, but only a pure love, unaddressed. He is ready to pour into anybody’s heart who is available. That is real authentic friendliness.

But such a man will provoke many egos, will hurt those who think they are very important and powerful people. The presidents and the queens and the prime ministers and the kings will become immediately worried, concerned. A man who has no power has suddenly become the focus of attention of the people, attracts more people than the people who have power and money and prestige. Such a man cannot be forgiven. He has to be punished whether he has committed any crime or not. And a man of enlightenment cannot commit a crime; that is just a sheer impossibility.

But to be innocent, to be friendly, to be loving for no reason at all, just to be yourself is enough to trigger many egos against you. So when I say, “The enlightened man has no enemies,” I mean that from his side he has no enemies. But from others’ side, the greater his height, the more will be their antagonism against him, the more will be the enmity, hatred, condemnation. This is how it has been happening for centuries.

Nirvano was just telling me the other day that the day I was fined four hundred thousand dollars — more than half a crore rupees — knowing perfectly well that I don’t possess a single paisa, a single cent, the attorney who was working for Nirvano told her, “They have done it again.”

She asked him, “What are you saying?” And he said,Yes, they have done it again. They have again crucified Jesus, they have again punished a man who is utterly innocent — but his innocence hurts their egos.”

Just an intellectual understanding will not be enough — although it is good to have some intellectual understanding, because that may help you move towards existential experience. But only the experience will give you the full taste of the tremendous sweetness, the beauty, the godliness and the truth of love.

Natural rhythm of Love

[A sannyasin says: I am in beautiful love with a sannyasin here but sometimes I feel very much that I need my own space, I need to be alone. And I don’t understand if it is good or if it is because I am afraid to be more deeply in love.]

Osho – Nothing to be worried about. You need that much space to be alone. It is not a question of escaping: it is your need. So whenever you feel like being alone, be alone. Don’t force yourself to do something which is not happening naturally. One needs a few moments to be alone. To be together for twenty-four hours is dangerous. It starts being an encroachment on the other’s space, and the other starts encroaching on your space. Then one feels suffocated; this is a sure way to destroy love.

Love can exist only when two persons are capable of coming closer when it is happening naturally, and then withdrawing. This is the rhythm: coming closer, going away, coming closer, going away; this is the day and night of a love affair. If you remain far away too much, again love will be destroyed.

There is a need of a great balance – to go away and to come and to go away again – so each time you come close it is again fresh. Again there is passion, joy, much longing to be together. This is a natural rhythm; there is no question of escape. Simply follow your natural feeling.

The real opposite of love is fake-love, not hate.

The real opposite of hate is not love,the real opposite of love is not hate.

The Book of Wisdom:Chapter 6

what is this attachment to misery? And why is it so difficult to be happy?

Osho:- Prem Darshan, misery has many things to give to you which happiness cannot give. In fact, happiness takes away many things from you. Happiness takes all that you have ever had, all that you have ever been; happiness destroys you. Misery nourishes your ego, and happiness is basically a state of egolessness. That is the problem, the very crux of the problem. That's why people find it very difficult to be happy. That's why millions of people in the world have to live in misery... have decided to live in misery. It gives you a very very crystallized ego. Miserable, you are. Happy, you are not. In misery, crystallization; in happiness you become diffused.

If this is understood then things become very clear. Misery makes you special. Happiness is a universal phenomenon, there is nothing special about it. Trees are happy and animals are happy and birds are happy. The whole existence is happy, except man. Being miserable, man becomes very special, extraordinary.

Misery makes you capable of attracting people's attention. Whenever you are miserable you are attended to, sympathized with, loved. Everybody starts taking care of you. Who wants to hurt a miserable person? Who is jealous of a miserable person? Who wants to be antagonistic to a miserable person? That would be too mean.

The miserable person is cared for, loved, attended to. There is great investment in misery. If the wife is not miserable the husband simply tends to forget her. If she is miserable the husband cannot afford to neglect her. If the husband is miserable the whole family, the wife, the children, are around him, worried about him; it gives great comfort. One feels one is not alone, one has a family, friends.

When you are ill, depressed, in misery, friends come to visit you, to solace you, to console you. When you are happy, the same friends become jealous of you. When you are really happy, you will find the whole world has turned against you.

Nobody likes a happy person, because the happy person hurts the egos of the others. The others start feeling, "So you have become happy and we are still crawling in darkness, misery and hell. How dare you be happy when we all are in such misery!"

And of course the world consists of miserable people, and nobody is courageous enough to let the whole world go against him; it is too dangerous, too risky. It is better to cling to misery, it keeps you a part of the crowd. Happy, and you are an individual; miserable, you are part of a crowd -- Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Indian, Arabian, Japanese. Happy? Do you know what happiness is? Is it Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan? Happiness is simply happiness. One is transported into another world. One is no more part of the world the human mind has created, one is no more part of the past, of the ugly history. One is no more part of time at all. When you are really happy, blissful, time disappears, space disappears.

Albert Einstein has said that in the past scientists used to think that there were two realities -- space and time. But he said that these two realities are not two -- they are two faces of the same single reality. Hence he coined the word spaciotime, a single word. Time is nothing else but the fourth dimension of space. Einstein was not a mystic, otherwise he would have introduced the third reality also -- the transcendental, neither space nor time. That too is there, I call it the witness. And once these three are there, you have the whole trinity. You have the whole concept of trimurti, three faces of God. Then you have all the four dimensions. The reality is four-dimensional: three dimensions of space, and the fourth dimension of time.

But there is something else, which cannot be called the fifth dimension, because it is not the fifth really, it is the whole, the transcendental. When you are blissful you start moving into the transcendental. It is not social, it is not traditional, it has nothing to do with human mind at all.

Your question is significant, Darshan: "What is this attachment to misery?"

There are reasons. Just look into your misery, watch, and you will be able to find what the reasons are. And then look into those moments when once in a while you allow yourself the joy of being in joy, and then see what differences are there. These will be the few things: when you are miserable you are a conformist. Society loves it, people respect you, you have great respectability, you can even become a saint; hence your saints are all miserable. The misery is written large on their faces, in their eyes.

Because they are miserable they are against all joy. They condemn all joy as hedonism; they condemn every possibility of joy as sin. They are miserable, and they would like to see the whole world miserable. In fact only in a miserable world can they be thought to be saints. In a happy world they would have to be hospitalized, mentally treated. They are pathological.

I have seen many saints, and I have been looking into the lives of your past saints. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of them are simply abnormal -- neurotic or even psychotic. But they were respected -- and they were respected for their misery, remember. The more misery they lived through, the more they were respected. There have been saints who would beat their body with a whip every day in the morning, and people would gather to see this great austerity, asceticism, penance. And the greatest was one who would have wounds all over his body -- and these people were thought to be saints!

There have been saints who have destroyed their eyes, because it is because of the eyes that one becomes aware of beauty, and lust arises. And they were respected because they had destroyed their eyes. God had given them eyes to see the beauty of existence; they became blind by their own decision.

There have been saints who cut their genital organs. And they were respected very much, tremendously, for the simple reason that they had been self-destructive, violent with themselves. These people were psychologically ill. There have been saints who have been worshipped because they were capable of fasting for long periods, were experts in fasting. It is a certain expertise, you need a little training. Not much intelligence is needed; the training is very ordinary and any stupid person can go through it and learn it. You just have to be able to enjoy suffering -- and only the ill person enjoys suffering. If you can remain for ten, twelve days on a fast, only the first four, five days are difficult. Then the body metabolism becomes attuned to not eating. In fact, it starts eating itself.

The body has a dual mechanism in it; for emergency purposes the body has a dual mechanism. You eat, you get energy from the outside, because every day you need a certain quantity of energy to live by. If you don't do that, then the body has some stored energy for emergency times; that's what fat is. Fat is emergency food, stored food. If a person is normal, healthy, he can live for three months without food; that much fat the body contains.

In the ancient days when the body was developing and man was coming down from the trees and was becoming a hunter, it was not possible every day to find food. Some days you would find it, some days you would not find. Man started gathering some storage inside; the body has learned this.

The more afraid you are of tomorrow, the more fat you will gather. That's why women gather more fat. Down the ages they have been more afraid -- they have been made more afraid by men. They gather more fat. And women are more capable of going on a fast than men. Women need more fat also because they will have to go through pregnancy, and eating becomes difficult in pregnancy. They will have to eat their own stored food. In fact to be on a fast is nothing but eating yourself, it is cannibalism. Reduced to the truth, a man who fasts is a cannibal; he eats himself. That's why when you fast, every day one or two pounds of weight start to disappear. Where is it going? You are eating it; it is your need, everyday need. That much energy is used by your machine, by your body.

Great saints were doing long fasts, just torturing themselves. But it is not much of an intelligent thing. Just for a few days, the first week, it is difficult; the second week it is very easy; the third week it becomes difficult to eat. The fourth week you have completely forgotten. The body enjoys eating itself and feels less heavy, obviously, with no problems to digest. And the whole energy that is continuously being used in digestion becomes available to the head. You can think more, you can concentrate more, you can forget the body and its needs.

But these things simply created miserable people and a miserable society. Look into your misery and you will find certain fundamental things are there. One: it gives you respect. People feel more friendly towards you, more sympathetic. You will have more friends if you are miserable. This is a very strange world, something is fundamentally wrong with it. It should not be so, the happy person should have more friends. But become happy and people become jealous of you, they are no more friendly. They feel cheated; you have something that is not available to them. Why are you happy? So we have learned down the ages a subtle mechanism: to repress happiness and to express misery. It has become our second nature.

My sannyasins have to drop this whole mechanism. You have to learn how to be happy, and you have to learn to respect happy people and you have to learn to pay more attention to happy people, remember. This is a great service to humanity. Don't sympathize too much with people who are miserable. If somebody is miserable, help, but don't sympathize. Don't give him the idea that misery is something worthwhile. Let him know perfectly well that you are helping him, but "This is not out of respect, this is simply because you are miserable." And you are not doing anything but trying to bring the man out of his misery, because misery is ugly. Let the person feel that the misery is ugly, that to be miserable is not something virtuous, that "You are not doing a great service to humanity."

Be happy, respect happiness, and help people to understand that happiness is the goal of life -- SATCHITANAND. The Eastern mystics have said God has three qualities. He is sat: he is truth, being. He is chit: consciousness, awareness. And, ultimately, the highest peak is anand: bliss. Wherever bliss is, God is. Whenever you see a blissful person, respect him, he is holy. And wherever you feel a gathering which is blissful, festive, think of it as a sacred place.

We have to learn a totally new language, only then this old rotten humanity can be changed. We have to learn the language of health, wholeness, happiness. It is going to be difficult because our investments are great.

Darshan, that is why it is so difficult to be happy and so easy to be miserable. One thing more: misery needs no talents, anybody can afford it. Happiness needs talents, genius, creativity. Only creative people are happy.

Let this sink deep in your heart: only creative people are happy. Happiness is a by-product of creativity. Create something, and you will be happy. Create a garden, let the garden bloom, and something will bloom in you. Create a painting, and something starts growing in you with the growing painting. As the painting comes to the finish, as you are giving the last touches to the painting, you will see you are no more the same person. You are giving the last touches to something that is very new in you.

Write a poem, sing a song, dance a dance, and see: you start becoming happy. That's why in my commune creativity is going to be our prayer to God. This commune is not going to be of those sad, long faces who are not doing anything, just sitting under trees or in their huts, vegetating. This commune is going to be a commune of artists, painters, poets, sculptors, dancers, musicians -- and so many things are there to be done!

God has only given you an opportunity to be creative: life is an opportunity to be creative. If you are creative you will be happy. Have you seen the joy in the eyes of a mother when the child starts growing in her womb? Have you seen the change that happens to the woman when she becomes pregnant? What is happening? Something is flowering in her, she is being creative, she is going to give birth to a new life. She is utterly happy, tremendously joyous, a song is in her heart.

When the child is born and the woman sees the child for the first time, see the depth of her eyes, the joy of her being. She has gone through much pain for this joy, but she has not gone into this pain for the pain's sake. She has suffered, but her suffering is tremendously valuable; it is not ascetic, it is creative. She has suffered to create more joy.

When you want to climb to the highest peak of the mountains, it is arduous. And when you have reached the peak and you lie down, whispering with the clouds, looking at the sky, the joy that fills your heart -- that joy always comes whenever you reach any peak of creativity.

It needs intelligence to be happy, and people are taught to remain unintelligent. The society does not want intelligence to flower. The society does not need intelligence; in fact it is very much afraid of intelligence. The society needs stupid people. Why? -- because stupid people are manageable. Intelligent people are not necessarily obedient -- they may obey, they may not obey. But the stupid person cannot disobey; he is always ready to be commanded. The stupid person needs somebody to command him, because he has no intelligence to live on his own. He wants somebody to direct him; he seeks and searches his own tyrants.

Politicians don't want intelligence to happen in the world, priests don't want intelligence to happen in the world, generals don't want intelligence to happen in the world. Nobody really wants it. People want everybody to remain stupid, then everybody is obedient, conformist, never goes outside the fold, remains always part of the mob, is controllable, manipulatable, manageable.

The intelligent person is rebellious. Intelligence is rebellion. The intelligent person decides on his own whether to say no or yes. The intelligent person cannot be traditional, he cannot go on worshipping the past; there is nothing to worship in the past. The intelligent person wants to create a future, wants to live in the present. His living in the present is his way of creating the future.

The intelligent person does not cling to the dead past, does not carry corpses. Howsoever beautiful they have been, howsoever precious, he does not carry the corpses. He is finished with the past; it is gone, and it is gone forever.

But the foolish person is traditional. He is ready to follow the priest, ready to follow any stupid politician, ready to follow any order -- anybody with authority and he is ready to fall at his feet. Without intelligence there can be no happiness. Man can only be happy if he is intelligent, utterly intelligent. Meditation is a device to release your intelligence. The more meditative you become, the more intelligent you become. But remember, by intelligence I don't mean intellectuality. Intellectuality is part of stupidity.

Intelligence is a totally different phenomenon, it has nothing to do with the head. Intelligence is something that comes from your very center. It wells up in you, and with it many things start growing in you. You become happy, you become creative, you become rebellious, you become adventurous, you start loving insecurity, you start moving into the unknown. You start living dangerously, because that is the only way to live.

To be a sannyasin means to decide that "I will live my life intelligently," that "I will not be just an imitator," that "I will live within my own being, I will not be directed and commanded from without," that "I will risk all to be myself, but I will not be part of a mob psychology," that "I will walk alone," that "I will find my own path," that "I will make my own path in the world of truth." Just by walking into the unknown you create the path. The path is not already there; just by walking, you create it.

For stupid people there are superhighways where crowds move. And for centuries and centuries they have been moving -- and going nowhere, going in circles. Then you have the comfort that you are with many people, you are not alone. Intelligence gives you the courage to be alone, and intelligence gives you the vision to be creative. A great urge, a great hunger arises to be creative. And only then, as a consequence, you can be happy, you can be blissful.

Can Money Buy Happiness? New twist

Can Money Buy Happiness? An OSHO Quote

Don’t be too much concerned about money, because that is the greatest distraction against happiness. And the irony of ironies is that people think they will be happy when they have money. Money has nothing to do with happiness. If you are happy and you have money, you can use it for happiness.

If you are unhappy and you have money, you will use that money for more unhappiness. Because money is simply a neutral force.

I am not against money – remember. Don’t misinterpret me: I am not against money. I am not against anything. Money is a means. If you are happy and you have money, you will become more happy. If you are unhappy and you have money, you will become more unhappy because what will you do with your money? Your money will enhance your pattern, whatsoever it is. If you are miserable and you have power, what will you do with your power? You will poison yourself more with your power, you will become more miserable.

But people go on looking for money as if money is going to bring happiness. People go on looking for respectability as if respectability is going to give you happiness. People are ready, at any moment, to change their pattern, to change their ways, if more money is available somewhere else.

Once the money is there, then suddenly you are no longer yourself; you are ready to change.

This is the way of the worldly man. I don’t call those people worldly who have money, I call those people worldly who change their motives for money. I don’t call those people unworldly who have no money – they may be simply poor. I call those people unworldly who don’t change their motives for money. Just being poor is not equivalent to being spiritual; and just being rich is not equivalent to being a materialist. The materialistic pattern of life is one in which money predominates over everything.

The non-materialistic life is one in which money is just a means: happiness predominates, joy predominates, your own individuality predominates. You know who you are and where you are going, and you are not distracted.

Then suddenly you will see your life has a meditative quality to it.

But somewhere along the way everybody has missed. You were brought up by people who have not arrived. You were brought up by people who were unhealthy themselves. Feel sorry for them. I am not saying be against them; I am not condemning them – remember. Just feel compassion for them. The parents, the schoolteachers, the university professors, the so-called leaders of society – they were unhappy people. They have created an unhappy pattern in you.

And you have not yet taken charge of your life. They were living under a misinterpretation – that was their misery. And you are also living under a misinterpretation.

WHAT DO I WANT?

WHAT DO I WANT?  

Krishna, nobody knows exactly because nobody is even aware of who he is. The question of wanting is secondary; the basic question is: Who are you? Out of that, things can be settled -- what your desires, your wants, your ambitions will be.

If you are an ego then of course you want money, power, prestige. Then your life will have a political structure. You will be in constant struggle with other people, you will be competitive -- ambition means competition. You will be continuously at others' throats and they will be continuously at your throat. Then life becomes what Charles Darwin says: the survival of the fittest. In fact, his use of the word "fittest" is not right. What he really means by the fittest is the most cunning, the most animal-like, the most stubborn, the most stupid, the most ugly. Charles Darwin will not say that Buddha is the fittest or Jesus is the fittest or Socrates is the fittest. These people were killed so easily, and the people who killed them survived. Jesus could not survive. Certainly, according to Darwin, Jesus is not the fittest person. Pontius Pilate is far more fit, more on the right track. Socrates is not the fittest, but the people who poisoned him, who condemned him to death are. His use of the word "fittest" is very unfortunate.

If you are living in the ego, Krishna, then your life will be a struggle; it will be violent, aggressive. You will create misery for others and misery for yourself too, because the life of conflict cannot be anything else. So it all depends on you, who you are. If you are the ego, still thinking of yourself in terms of the ego, then you will have a certain stinking quality. Or if you have come to understand that you are not the ego, then your life will have a fragrance. If you don't know yourself, you are living out of unconsciousness, and a life of unconsciousness can only be one of misunderstanding. You may listen to Buddha, you may listen to me, you may listen to Jesus, but you will interpret according to your own unconsciousness -- you will MISinterpret.

Christianity is the misinterpretation of Jesus; so is Buddhism the misinterpretation of Buddha, and so is Jainism the misinterpretation of Mahavira. All these religions are misinterpretations, distortions, because the people who follow Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, are ordinary people without any awareness. Whatsoever they do, they will save the letter and kill the spirit.

A philosopher was walking around a park and noticed a man who was sitting in the lotus posture, eyes open, looking at the ground. The philosopher saw that the man was totally absorbed in his gazing downwards. After watching him for a long time, the philosopher could no longer resist and went over to the strange fellow asking, "What are you looking for? What are you doing?"

The man answered without shifting his gaze, "I am following the Zen tradition of sitting silently doing nothing and then the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. I am watching the grass growing, and it is not growing at all!"

There is no need to watch the grass growing -- but that's what always happens. Jesus says one thing, people hear it, but they hear only the words and they give to those words THEIR meaning.

A mother took her small son to the psychiatrist and for at least three hours told the psychiatrist the whole story of her son. The psychiatrist was getting tired, fed up, but the woman was so absorbed in the telling that she was not even giving the psychiatrist an opportunity to prevent her. One sentence followed another with no gap.

Finally the psychiatrist had to say, "Please, now stop! Let me ask the son something!"

And he asked the son, "Your mother is complaining that you don't listen to whatsoever she says to you. Have you difficulty in hearing?"

The son said, "No, I have no difficulty hearing -- my ears are perfectly okay -- but as far as listening is concerned, now you can judge for yourself. Can you listen to my mother?

Hear I can; I have to. I have even been watching you -- you were fidgeting. One has to hear, but listening -- at least I am free to listen or not. Whether I listen or not, that is up to me. If she is shouting at me, hearing it is natural, but listening is a totally different matter."

You have heard, but you have not listened, and all kinds of distortions have gathered around. And people go on repeating those words without any idea of what they are repeating.

You ask me, Krishna, "What do I want?" I should ask you rather than you asking me, because it depends where you are. If you are identified with the body, then your wants will be different; then food and sex will be your only wants, your only desires. These two are animal desires, the lowest. I am not condemning them by calling them the lowest, I am not evaluating them. Remember, I am just stating a fact: the lowest rung of the ladder.

But if you are identified with the mind, your desires will be different: music, dance, poetry, and then there are thousands of things....

The body is very limited; it has a simple polarity: food and sex. It moves like a pendulum between these two, food and sex; it has nothing more to it. But if you are identified with the mind, then mind has many dimensions. You can be interested in philosophy, you can be interested in science, you can be interested in religion -- you can be interested in as many things as you can imagine.

If you are identified with the heart, then your desires will be of a still higher nature, higher than the mind. You will become more aesthetic, more sensitive, more alert, more loving.

The mind is aggressive, the heart is receptive.

The mind is male, the heart is female.

The mind is logic, the heart is love.

So it depends where you are stuck: at the body, at the mind, at the heart. These are the three most important places from which one can function. But there is also the fourth in you; in the East it is called TURIYA. Turiya simply means the fourth, the transcendental.

If you are aware of your transcendentalness, then all desires disappear. Then one simply IS with no desire at all, with nothing to be asked, to be fulfilled. There is no future and no past. Then one lives just in the moment, utterly contented, fulfilled. In the fourth, your one-thousand-petaled lotus opens up; you become divine.

You are asking me, Krishna, "What do I want?" That simply shows you don't even know where you are, where you are stuck. You will have to inquire within yourself -- and it is not very difficult. If it is food and sex that takes up the major part of you, then that is where you are identified; if it is something concerned with thinking, then it is the mind; if it is concerned with feeling, then it is the heart. And, of course, Krishna, it cannot be the fourth; otherwise the question would not have arisen at all!

So rather than answering you I would like to ask you where you are. Inquire!

Three pigs entered a bar. The first pig ordered a drink and then asked the way to the bathroom. The second pig ordered a drink and also asked the bartender the way to the bathroom. Then the third pig came up to the bar and ordered a drink.

"Don't YOU want to know where the bathroom is?" sneered the bartender.

"No!" replied the little pig. "I am the one that goes, `Wee, wee, wee...all the way home!'" I should ask you, "Where are you? What kind of identification? Where are you stuck?"

Only then can things be clear -- and it is not difficult. But it happens again and again that people ask beautiful questions, particularly Indians, Krishna. They may be stuck at their sex center, but they will ask about SAMADHI. They will ask, "What is NIRVIKALPA SAMADHI, where all thoughts disappear, that thoughtless consciousness? What is it?

What is NIRBEEJ SAMADHI, the seedless, where even the seeds for any future are completely burnt? What is that ultimate state when one need not return to the earth, to the womb, to life again?" These are just foolish questions they are asking; they are not their questions. They are not at all concerned with their real situation. They are asking beautiful questions, metaphysical, esoteric, to show that they are higher quality beings; that they are scholarly, that they know the scriptures, that they are seekers; that they are not ordinary people, they are extraordinary, religious. That is driving the Indians into more and more of a mess.

It is always good to ask something which is relevant to you rather than to ask something which is of no concern to you. People ask me whether God exists or not, and they don't even know whether they exist or not!

Just the other day, Divakar Bharti, another Indian, asked me, "Why am I here?"

Divakar, are you really here? Ask yourself, are you really here? I don't think that you are here. Physically of course you are here, but spiritually, REALLY, you are not here.

Unless you drop that idea of being Indian, of being a Hindu, you cannot be here, you cannot be part of MY commune. You have carried all kinds of nonsense inside you and you are still clinging to it.

Krishna, it is always good to ask realistic questions, because then it can be of some help to you. If you are suffering from the common cold and you go to the physician and you ask about cancer, because a man like you -- how can he suffer from such an ordinary thing as the common cold...? Every ordinary person suffers from the common cold, that's why it is called the common cold. But you are such an uncommon person -- you are not any Tom, Harry or Dick. You are so special, you have to suffer from something very special, so you ask a question about cancer. And if the physician helps you in curing the cancer you will get into more trouble -- that treatment is not going to fit you at all. It will create more complications in you because those medicines can kill you, because there is nothing for them to work upon; there is no cancer in you and they cannot be of any use for the common cold.

In fact, for the common cold there is no medicine. If you take medicine, the common cold goes within seven days; if you don't take any, it goes within one week! In fact, it is so common that medical science has not bothered about it at all. Who cares about such small things? People are concerned about going to the moon, and about such small matters as the common cold or a leaking fountain pen, who bothers? The fountain pen still leaks!

People have reached the moon and they have not yet been able to make a one-hundred- percent-guaranteed fountain pen which is not going to leak!

Just look inside yourself, Krishna. Where exactly is your problem?

A general visiting a field hospital asks one of the bed-ridden soldiers, "What is wrong with you?"

"Sir," replies the soldier, "I've got boils."

"What treatment do you get?"

"They swab me down with iodine tincture, sir."

"And that helps?" asks the general.

"Yes, sir!" replies the soldier.

Then the general goes to the soldier in the next bed and finds out that this guy has hemorrhoids. He too gets swabbed down with iodine; it helps, and he does not have any other wishes. The general then asks the third soldier, "What is wrong with you?"

"Sir, I've got swollen tonsils. I get swabbed down with iodine, and yes, it helps."

"Anything you would like?" asks the concerned general.

"Yes, sir!" replied the soldier. "I'd like to be the first to be swabbed down."

First you have to see your situation, where you are; only then can you say what you want.

If you are being swabbed down with iodine tincture after these two fellows -- one who has got boils and one who has got hemorrhoids -- and you are suffering only from swollen tonsils, then the problem is clear!

Inquire, look for the exact place where you are. As far as I am concerned, all desire is a sheer wastage, all wanting is wrong. But if you are identified with the body I cannot say that to you because that will be too far away from you. If you are identified with the body I will say: move a little towards higher desires, the desires of the mind, and then a little higher, the desires of the heart, and then ultimately to the state of desirelessness. No desire can ever be fulfilled. This is the difference between the scientific approach and the religious approach. Science tries to fulfill your desires and of course science has succeeded in doing many things, but man remains in the same misery. Religion tries to wake you up to that great understanding from where you can see that all desires are intrinsically unfulfillable.

One has to go beyond all desires; only then is there contentment. Contentment is not at the end of a desire, contentment is not by fulfilling the desire, because the desire cannot be fulfilled. By the time you come to the fulfillment of your desire, you will find a thousand and one other desires have arisen. Each desire branches out into many new desires. And again and again it will happen, and your whole life will be wasted.

Those who have known, those who have seen -- the buddhas, the awakened ones -- have all agreed on one point. It is not a philosophical thing, it is factual, the fact of the inner world: that contentment is when all desires have been dropped. It is with the absence of the desires that contentment arises within you -- in the absence. In fact, the very absence of desires IS contentment, IS fulfillment, fruition, flowering.

Krishna, move from lower desires to higher desires, from gross desires to more subtle desires, then to the subtlest, because from the subtlest the jump into no-desire, into desirelessness, is easy. Desirelessness is NIRVANA.

Nirvana has two meanings. It is one of the most beautiful words; any language can be proud of this word. It has two meanings, but those two meanings are like two sides of the same coin. One meaning is cessation of the ego, and the other meaning is cessation of all desires. It happens simultaneously. The ego and the desires are intrinsically together, they are inseparably together. The moment ego dies, desires disappear, or vice versa: the moment desires are transcended, ego is transcended. And to be desireless, to be egoless, is to know the ultimate bliss, is to know the eternal ecstasy.

Krishna, that's what sannyas is all about: the quest for the eternal ecstasy that begins but never ends.