Make your life a balance between purposeful and the nonpurposeful, and still remain beyond both...

Chuang Tzu says that if you deny the useless, then there will be no use in the world. If you deny the useless, the playful, the fun, there cannot be any work, any duty. This is very difficult because our whole emphasis is on the useful.

If somebody asks you what a house consists of, you will say, walls. And Chuang Tzu would say, just like his master Lao Tzu, that a house consists not of walls but of doors and windows. Their emphasis is on the other part. They say that walls are useful, but their use depends on the useless space behind.

A room is space, not walls. Of course, space is free but walls have to be purchased. When you purchase a house, what do you purchase? The walls, the material, the visible. But can you live in the material? Can you live in the walls? You have to live in the room, in the vacant space. You purchase the boat, but you have to live in the emptiness.

So really, what is a house? Emptiness surrounded by walls. And what is a door? There is nothing. 'Door' means there is nothing, no wall, emptiness. But you cannot enter the house if there is no door; if there is no window then no sun will enter, no breeze will blow. You will be dead, and your house will become a tomb.

Chuang Tzu says: Remember that the house consists of two things: the walls, the material -- the marketable, the utilitarian -- and the emp-tiness surrounded by the walls, the non-utilitarian which cannot be purchased, which cannot be sold, which has no economic value.

How can you sell emptiness? But you have to live in the emptiness -- if a man lives only in the walls he will go mad. It is impossible to do that -- but we try to do the impossible. In life, we have chosen the utilitarian.

For example, if a child is playing you say, "Stop! What are you doing? This is useless. Do something useful. Learn, read, at least do your homework, something useful. Don't wander around, don't be a vaga-bond." And if you go on insisting on this to a child, by and by you will kill the useless. Then the child will become just useful, and when a person is simply useful, he is dead. You can use him, he is a mechanical thing now, a means, not an end unto himself.

You are really yourself when you are doing something useless -- painting, not to sell, just enjoying; gardening, just to enjoy; lying down on the beach, not doing anything, just to enjoy, useless, fun; sitting silently at the side of a friend.

Much could be done in these moments. You could go to the shop, to the market, you could earn something. You could change time into money. You could get a bigger bank balance because these moments will not come back. And foolish people say that time is money. They know only one use for time: how to convert it into more money and more money and more money. In the end you die with a big bank balance but inside totally poor, because the inner richness arises only when you can enjoy the useless.

What is meditation? People come to me and say, "What is the use of it? What will we gain out of it? What is the benefit of it?"

Meditation...and you ask about the benefit? You cannot understand it because meditation is just useless. The moment I say useless, you feel uncomfortable because the whole mind has become so utilitarian, so commodity-oriented that you ask for a result. You cannot concede that something can be a pleasure unto itself.

Useless means you enjoy it, but there is no benefit from it; you are deeply merged in it and it gives you bliss. But when you are deeply in it, you cannot accumulate that bliss, you cannot make a treasure out of it.

In the world two types of people have existed: the utilitarians -- they become scientists, engineers, doctors; and the other branch, the complementary -- poets, the vagabonds, the sannyasins -- useless, not doing anything useful. But they give the balance, they give grace to the world. Think of a world full of scientists and not a single poet -- it would be absolutely ugly, not worth living in. Think of a world with everyone in the shops, in the offices, not a single vagabond. It would be hell. The vagabond gives beauty.

These people give beauty to the world, they are a perfume. A Buddha is a vagabond, a Mahavira is a vagabond.

Whenever the world becomes too utilitarian you create many things, you possess many things, you become obsessed with things -- but the inner is lost, because the inner can flower only when there are no outer tensions, when you are not going anywhere, just resting. Then the inner flowers.

Religion is absolutely useless. What use is the temple? What use is the mosque? What use is the church? In Russia they have converted all the temples, mosques, churches into hospitals and into schools, something useful. Why is this temple standing without any use? Communists are utilitarians. That is why they are against religion. They have to be, because religion gives way to the useless, to that which cannot be in any way exploited, to that which cannot be made a means to anything else. You can have it, you can be blissful in it, you can feel the highest ecstasy possible, but you cannot manipulate it. It is a happening. When you are not doing anything, it happens. And the greatest has always happened when you are not doing anything. Only the trivial happens when you are doing something.

People think that if they want to become religious they will also have to do something.

But Chuang Tzu said: Religion begins only when you have understood the futility of all doing, and you have moved to the polar opposite of nondoing, inactivity, of becoming passive, becoming useless.

In the end, every successful man will feel that he has been cheated. That has to happen, it is bound to happen, it is inevitable, because what are you giving, and what are you receiving? The inner self is being lost for futile possessions. You can deceive others, but how will you be able to deceive yourself? In the end you will look at your life and you will see that you have missed it because of the useful.

When you are secure, when there is no problem, when everything is mathematically planned, settled, your soul shrinks. There is no challenge for it. The useless gives the challenge.

Move from the useful to the useless, and make this movement so spontaneous and natural that there is no struggle, no conflict. Make it as natural as moving in and out of your house. When the mind is needed, use it as a mechanical device; when it is not in use, put it aside and forget it. Then be useless and do something useless and your life will be enriched, your life will become a balance between use and no use. And that balance transcends both. That is transcendental -- neither use nor non-use.

The useless must be there.

A sannyasin is a deep balance, standing in the middle, free from all the opposites. He can use the useful and he can use the non-useful, he can use the purposeful and the nonpurposeful, and still remain beyond both. He is not used by them. He has become the master.

Don't desire, It is not a question of what you desire...

Buddha says a real man of understanding does not even hanker for enlightenment. Because even to desire enlightenment is to desire, and desire is misery. Whether you desire money or you desire satori, whether you desire some person or you desire enlightenment, whether you desire prestige, power, respectability, or you desire dhyana, samadhi, meditation, enlightenment, desire as such is the same; the nature of desire is the same. Desire means desire, and desire brings misery. What you desire is irrelevant -- you desire, that's enough to make you miserable.

Desire means you have moved away from reality, you have moved away from that which is.

Desire means you have fallen into the trap of a dream.

Desire means you are not herenow, you have gone somewhere in the future.

Non-desire is enlightenment, so how can you desire enlightenment? If you desire enlightenment your very desire prevents its happening. You cannot desire enlightenment. You can only understand the nature of desire, and in the light of understanding, desire disappears -- as you bring a lamp into a dark room, darkness disappears.

Desire is darkness. When you light a candle of understanding, desire disappears. And when there is no desire, there is enlightenment. That's what enlightenment is.

Try to understand this; this is one of the things you will need very much. It is very easy to change the object of your desire from worldly things to otherworldly things.

I was in a certain town. I had gone for an evening walk. Just when I was approaching the garden a woman came to me and gave me a booklet. On the booklet there was a beautiful garden on the cover page and a beautiful bungalow by the side of a spring. Tall trees and far in the background snow peaks. I looked inside. Inside, I was surprised to see it was a propaganda pamphlet by some christian community. In the pamphlet it said, 'If you want to have a beautiful house in the garden of god, then follow Jesus. If in the other world you want such a beautiful house then follow Jesus.'

Now this type of attitude seems to be very worldly, but this has been so. Except Buddha's attitude, all other religions are in some way or other asking you not to drop desire, but asking you to change the object of desire. That is the difference. They say, 'Don't desire worldly things, desire heavenly things. Don't desire money, desire god.'

Now you can see the difference, the revolutionary change. Buddha says simply don't desire. It is not a question of what you desire. If you desire you will remain in misery. Don't desire, that's all. Be desireless, that's all. And when you are desireless you are calm and quiet and collected. When you are desireless ego disappears, when you are desireless misery disappears, and when you are desireless you fall in tune with the law.

Your desire is always a conflict with the law. Your desire simply says that you are not satisfied with what is given to you. You ask for more or you ask for something else. A desireless person simply says, 'Whatsoever is, is. Whatsoever is happening is happening. I accept it and I go with it. I have no other mind. If this is what is happening, I will simply delight in it. I will enjoy it. I will be with it.'

This is what I call surrender. Surrendering means non-desiring.

God is not a person... It is a Law... it is a Dhamma... It is a Concept...

What is this dhamma? What is this law?

It will be easy if you understand Lao Tzu's concept of tao, or if you understand the vedic concept of rita. There must be something like a law which holds everything together. The changing seasons, the moving stars... the whole universe goes on so smoothly; it must have a certain law.

The difference has to be understood. Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, call that law 'god'; they personify it. Buddha is not ready to do it. He says to personify god is to destroy the whole beauty of it, because that is anthropomorphic, anthropocentric attitude. Man thinks as if god is just like man -- magnified, quantitatively millions of times bigger, but still, like man.

Buddha says god is not a person. That's why he never uses the word 'god'. He says dhamma, the law. God is not a person but just a force, immaterial force. Its nature is more like law than like a person. That's why in Buddhism, prayer does not exist.

You cannot pray to a law; it will be pointless. You cannot pray to the law of gravitation, can you? It will be meaningless. The law cannot listen to your prayer. You can follow the law, and you can be in happy harmony with the law. Or, you can disobey the law and you can suffer. But there is no point in praying to the law.

If you go against gravitation you may break a few of your bones, you may have a few fractures. If you follow the law of gravitation, you can avoid the fractures -- but what is the point of praying? Sitting before the icon and praying to the Lord -- 'I am going for a journey, help me' -- it is absurd.

Buddha says the universe runs according to a law, not according to a person. His attitude is scientific. Because, he says, a person can be whimsical. You can pray to god and you can persuade him, but that is dangerous. Somebody who is not praying to god may not be able to persuade him and god may become prejudiced -- a person is always capable of prejudice.

And that's what all the religions say -- that if you pray, he will save you, if you pray you will not be miserable, if you don't pray you will be thrown into hell.

To think in these terms about god is very human, but very unscientific. That means god loves your flattery, your prayers. So if you are a praying person and you go regularly to the church, to the temple, and you read the Gita and the Bible, you recite Koran, then he will help you; otherwise he will be very annoyed by you. If you say, 'I don't believe in god,' he will be very angry at you.

Buddha says this is stupid. God is not a person. You cannot annoy him and you cannot buttress him, you cannot flatter him. You cannot persuade him to your own way. Whether you believe in him or not, that doesn't matter. A law exists beyond your belief. If you follow it, you are happy. If you don't follow it, you become unhappy.

Look at the austere beauty of the concept of law. Then the whole question is of a discipline, not of prayer. Understand the law and be in harmony with it, don't be in a conflict with it, that's all. No need for a temple, no need for a mosque, no need to pray. Just follow your understanding.

Buddha says that whenever you are miserable it is just an indication that you have gone against the law, you have disobeyed the law. Whenever you are in misery, just understand one thing; watch, observe, analyse your situation, diagnose it -- you must be going somewhere against the law, you must be in conflict with the law. Buddha says it is not that the law is punishing you; no, that is foolish -- how can a law punish you? You are punishing yourself by being against the law. If you go with the law, it is not that the law is awarding you -- how can the law award you? If you go with it, you are awarding yourself. The whole responsibility is yours -- obey or disobey.

If you obey, you live in heaven. If you disobey, you live in hell. Hell is a state of your own mind when you are antagonistic to the law, and heaven is also a state of your own mind when you are in harmony.

Don't be worried about your no-saying. Be conscious of it...

The people have been conditioned to say yes -- yes to God, yes to the religion, yes to the society, yes to the parents -- their yes is bogus, it has no substance. It is not even a shadow. Even shadows have something in them, but this yes is absolutely a nonentity. Parents teach you to respect the parents, say yes to them, be obedient. Of course, that is THEIR vested interest. And the priest says: Respect the priest, respect the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, respect the tradition, respect convention. That is HIS vested interest. And so on, so forth.

Somebody asked George Gurdjieff, "Why has respect for parents been emphasized, in every religion, in every country, in every society? Is there something divine in it?" Gurdjieff laughed and said, "Yes. God knows perfectly well that if people are trained to say yes to the parents only then will they say yes to God. He has a vested interest in it" -- because God is the father figure, the ultimate father. And Gurdjieff also said, "Parents are sooner or later going to die, and then there will be a vacuum. You respected your parents, you were obedient to your parents, you were always following, imitating whatsoever they said. You were just a carbon copy. You will feel very empty -- so much so that you would like to fill your emptiness with something. And that is the place which God will start filling in you."

He was joking. It is not God's vested interest. Of course it is the vested interest of the priests. God has no vested interest in anything. In fact there is no God as a person; God is only godliness.

One need not believe in God, one need not be a yea-sayer. One should learn the process of saying no.

Say no boldly, courageously. Risk everything for the no. Slowly slowly, you will become aware that the no has limits. There are points when you cannot say no. When you explore the possibilities of saying no, you will come across certain spaces where no-saying is impossible and yes arises within your heart on its own accord, not as a conditioning, not because somebody has told you. Now it is your own flowering. And then that yes has beauty, then that yes has truth, that yes makes you a religious person. Otherwise you remain just imitators. You can imitate Christianity or Hinduism or Mohammedanism -- it does not matter whom you imitate.

I have seen Christians becoming Hindus, Hindus becoming Christians -- they are the same people. Not only that, I have seen Catholics become communists -- they still remain the same people. I have seen communists become religious -- but still they are the same people. Just the object of worship changes. Gods go on changing. One God fails, another God is replaced -- but the worshipper is the same. Whether you worship Mohammed or Marx, Mahavira or Moses, it is not going to make any difference.

If your yes has not come as a growth to you, then it is absolutely useless. Pass through this fire of no-saying, but remember only one thing: don't let it become a habit. It can become a habit, that is the danger. The danger is not in no-saying. The danger is that your no-saying may become mechanical. So say it consciously, that's all I can advise you -- say it consciously! Just don't go on saying it because you have become accustomed. That is as foolish as saying yes meaninglessly. If you say it as a habit, it is meaningless.

There are theists and there are atheists, and they are all in the same boat. Somebody has been told from the very beginning that God is -- say yes and you will be saved. And somebody has been told there is no God -- say no and you are saved. And they both are repeating. Whom you are imitating is irrelevant.

People are imitators. The whole world is full of those imitators. You think those imitators are yea-sayers? You think those imitators are no-sayers? They are not saying anything, they are simply repeating whatsoever they have been told to repeat.

Don't be worried about your no-saying. Be conscious of it. Next time you say no, don't just say it out of habit, out of a past pattern. Reflect, watch, wait... and let a response arise in you. And you may be surprised -- a yes is born. And it will be born in you, it will not be imposed from the outside.

Your freedom is a supreme value. Nothing is higher than that. But your freedom is possible only if you are not encaged in your habits, unconscious patterns of living. Change your gestalt from unconsciousness to consciousness. And I know that as you become conscious you will be able to say more yes than no.

Ultimately a moment comes when life becomes just yes. But it is not fixation. You are still capable of saying no, not that you have become incapable of saying no. In fact, the greater is your yes, in the same proportion is your capacity to say no. You may not say... it may not be needed. Your understanding of life, your love affair with life may have brought you such tremendous joy that you may not like to say no. You may see the childishness of it, the stupidity of it, the stubbornness of it. You may see its poison and you may not say no, but that does not mean that you have become incapable of saying it. The more capable you are of saying yes, in the same proportion you will be capable of saying no too. But now everything will be decided by your conscious response.

Ultimately the awakened person stops saying no. Not that he deliberately decides not to say no... it simply withers away just as dead leaves fall from the trees.

The beginning of wisdom is to know that you are a fool...

Man is born intelligent, but the society does not allow intelligence to flower; it destroys it. In a thousand and one ways it makes every effort to make every intelligent being unintelligent. The unintelligent person seems to be more obedient -- obedient to the state, to the church, to the society. He is less rebellious -- he CANNOT rebel. Rebellion needs intelligence. The greater the intelligence, the greater the rebellion. The unintelligent person seeks security and safety with the crowd. He cannot be an individual. He is always hankering to become part of a crowd -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. These are all crowds. They depend on those people who have become victims of the social strategy of destroying intelligence.

An intelligent person will not go to the church in search of God, or to the temple. An intelligent person will go within. He will not go to Kaaba or to Kashi, because if God is not here he cannot be anywhere else -- and if he is ANYWHERE else, why not here? If God is not in me, he cannot be anywhere else; and if he is anywhere else, he is bound to be in me too.

The intelligent person is an individual; he is not part of a crowd, mob psychology. He is not a sheep, he is a man. And all the vested interests are against the individual -- against the man. They want machines. They don't like people who are intelligent, who decide on their own. They want people who depend on others, on authoritative figures -- on the leaders, on the priests, on the saints, but always on others, never on themselves.

The society has lived up to now in a very destructive way. It destroys the very possibility of your ever being a buddha or a christ. It has always been against the wise; it respects the fool. The fool fits with the society perfectly. The fool is cut out to fit with the society.

No child is born foolish, and every child, sooner or later, turns out to be idiotic. The powers are so big, so great, that it is almost impossible for the child to resist. The child cannot survive if he resists too much. It is really a miracle that a few people have escaped from being machines. These few people are the salt of the earth; they are the only flowers. Because of them, humanity has a little perfume, a little fragrance; otherwise, all others are walking dead, corpses, somehow dragging towards the grave.

The way of the fool has to be understood because only if you understand it you can go beyond it. The fool also has a way of life. His way of life is the way of the crowd. Whatsoever others say, he repeats. The way others live, he imitates. He is always looking around for clues how to be, how to behave, what is right, what is wrong. He has no insight into anything. He depends on commandments from others. For thousands of years he goes on following commandments that were given in different situations, to a different kind of people, for different purposes, but he goes on following.

He is never spontaneous; that is the first thing to be remembered about the fool. He is repetitive: he repeats the past, but he is never spontaneous. He is never responsible -- he never responds to the situation. He has ready-made answers. He never listens to the question; he is not concerned with the question at all. The question simply triggers in him a process of memory, and a ready-made answer comes up. He is like a computer.

To be responsible means to be aware. Unless you are aware you will not be able to see the situation that is confronting you. And the situation is changing every moment, it is never the same -- not even for two consecutive moments is it the same. Hence one has to be very aware, then only can one respond to reality. And to respond to reality is to commune with God.

The fool knows nothing of God; he never comes across anything divine. He remains part of the stupid collectivity. Remember, the society, the collective has no soul; the soul belongs to the individual. Hence, those who belong to the collective are destroying every possibility of being souls.

The fool is never spontaneous; that is the first thing to be understood about the fool. If you become spontaneous you start becoming intelligent. The fool never learns; he is very stubborn about learning. He thinks he already knows.

The fool is not necessarily the ignorant person, mind you. The fool may be a great scholar; the fool may be a famous pundit; the fool may be a well-known professor; the fool may have a Ph.D., a D.Litt. In fact, who else bothers about Ph.D.s? The fool can be very well-informed, but that makes no difference to his foolishness.

Information does not transform you. Transformation is a totally different phenomenon than information. Transformation comes through awareness, through being open: open to life, open to people, open to everything possible. The fool lives in a closed world; he is dumb and deaf.

The second characteristic of the foolish man: he is dumb and deaf. He is unlearning. He never listens. He may be able to hear, but he is not able to listen. Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is something deeper. You hear through the ears; when your heart is also joined with your ears, listening happens. And the fool's heart is never joined with his ears. He is not able to see; he goes on seeing whatsoever HE wants to see. He never allows the reality to be reflected in him; he is incapable of reflection. He is not a mirror.

The fool lives in a totally closed world. Neither is he available to reality, nor is he capable of expressing anything. He is uncreative because he cannot express.

Hence the third characteristic: the fool is uncreative. Imitative he is, but absolutely uncreative. He may be able to compose a few things, he may be able to put a few things together, but it is never creativity. Never is a new thing born through his being -- he himself is still unborn. He can become a great technician, but he is never a great artist. He can know how to paint -- and he can know perfectly well how to paint -- but he will not be able to paint anything genuinely new, authentically novel, original. He is absolutely unoriginal. He lives like a robot; he has been reduced to a machine.

To be a fool is safer. To be a Jesus is dangerous. To be a buddha is to live in insecurity. It is going against the crowd, and the crowd is vast; it is going against the current. Hence your experience of centuries tells you, "Remain a fool. Pretend that you are not foolish." That is part of foolishness. The moment a person stops pretending, he starts becoming wise.

The beginning of wisdom is to know that you are a fool -- and then you are not a fool at all; you have stopped being a fool. It is very rare to accept the fact that "I am a fool."

To be true is such a joy, To be authentic is such a blessing...

Love never hurts anybody. It is something else pretending to be love which feels hurt. Unless you see this you will go on moving in the same circle again and again. Love can hide many unloving things in you. Man has been very clever, cunning, in deceiving others and in deceiving himself too. He puts beautiful labels on ugly things, he covers wounds with flowers.

Love ordinarily is not love, it is lust. And lust is bound to feel hurt, because to desire somebody as an object is to offend. It is an insult, it is violent. When you move with lust towards somebody, how long can you pretend it is love? Something which is superficial will look like love, but scratch a little bit and hidden behind it is sheer lust. Lust is animalistic. To look at anybody with lust is to insult, humiliate, is to reduce the other person to a thing, to a commodity. No person ever likes to be used; that's the most ugly thing you can do to anybody. No person is a commodity, no person is a means towards any end.

This is the difference between lust and love. Lust uses the other person to fulfill some of your desires. The other is only used, and when the use is complete you can throw the other person away. It has no more use to you; its function is fulfilled. This is the greatest immoral act in existence: using the other as a means.

Love is just the opposite of it: respecting the other as an end unto himself or herself. If you loved anybody, as an end unto himself, then there would have been no feeling of hurt; you would have become more enriched through it. Love makes everybody rich.

Secondly, love can only be true if there is no ego hiding behind it; otherwise love becomes only an ego trip. It is a subtle way to dominate. And one has to be very conscious because this desire to dominate is very deep rooted. It never comes naked; it always comes hidden behind beautiful garments, ornaments.

Parents never say that their children are their possessions, they never say that they want to dominate the children, but that's actually what they do. They say they want to help, they say they want them to be intelligent, to be healthy, to be blissful, but -- and that "but" is a great but -- it has to be according to their ideas. Even their happiness has to be decided by their ideas; they have to be happy according to their expectations. They have to be intelligent, but at the same time obedient too. This is asking for the impossible.

The intelligent person cannot be obedient; the obedient person has to lose some of his intelligence. Intelligence can say yes only when it feels deep agreement with you. It cannot say yes just because you are bigger, more powerful, authoritative -- a father, a mother, a priest, a politician. It cannot say yes just because of the authority that you carry with you. Intelligence is rebellious, and no parents would like their children to be rebellious. Rebellion will be against their hidden desire to dominate.

Husbands say they love their wives, but it is just domination. They are so jealous, so possessive, how can they be loving? Wives go on saying they love their husbands, but twenty-four hours they are creating hell; in every possible way they are reducing the husband to something ugly.

First the husband tries to make the wife just his possession, and once she is a possession he loses interest. There is some hidden logic in it: his whole interest was to possess; now that is finished, and he would like to try some other women so he can again go on another trip of possession.

Beware of these ego numbers. Then you will feel hurt, because the person you are trying to possess is bound to revolt in some way or other, is bound to sabotage your tricks, strategies, because nobody loves anything more than freedom. Even love is secondary to freedom; freedom is the highest value. Love can be sacrificed for freedom, but freedom cannot be sacrificed for love. And that's what we have been doing for centuries: sacrificing freedom for love. Then there is antagonism, conflict, and every opportunity is used to hurt each other.

Love in its purest form is a sharing of joy. It asks nothing in return, it expects nothing; hence how can you feel hurt? When you don't expect, there is no possibility of being hurt. Then whatsoever comes is good; if nothing comes, that too is good. Your joy was to give, not to get. Then one can love from thousands of miles away; there is no need to be physically present even.

Love is a spiritual phenomenon; lust is physical.

Ego is psychological; love is spiritual.

If the wife is dependent on the husband for money, then the wife makes the husband dependent on her for other things. It is a mutual arrangement. They both become crippled, they both become paralyzed; they cannot exist without each other. Even the idea that the husband was happy without the wife hurts the wife, that he was laughing with the boys in the club hurts her. She is not interested in his happiness; in fact she cannot believe: "How did he dare to be happy without me? He has to depend on me!"

The husband does not feel good that the wife was laughing with somebody, was enjoying, was cheerful. He wants all her cheerfulness to be totally possessed; it is HIS property. The dependent person will make you dependent also.

To be totally responsible is the beginning of freedom, and freedom is the highest phenomenon. Out of the peaks of freedom flows the Ganges of love. Attain to freedom, and love will surround you naturally, spontaneously. And then love has never hurt anybody -- how can it hurt you?

Something else is masquerading -- uncover it. At least be naked in front of yourself, and then by and by be naked, totally naked, to your friends, to your lovers. And you will be surprised: to be true is such a joy, to be authentic is such a blessing; there is nothing compared to it.

Love can make a great celebration out of your life -- but only love, not lust, not ego, not possessiveness, not jealousy, not dependence.

A true master cannot adjust with you... his whole work is to disturb you...

Sufis always teach by demonstration. There is no better way. So it always happens that when outsiders come to a Sufi Master, they are always puzzled -- because they cannot understand what is happening. They don't know the whole story. They only take the fragment that is in front of their eyes. It may be a demonstration. It may be something in which the disciples and the Master know what is going on.

Gurdjieff used to do that. And outsiders were always puzzled. And there are hundreds of books written on Gurdjieff by outsiders. Naturally they are all against him, because they don't know the whole story. It is only possible for art, insider to know the whole story.

For example, if you had suddenly reached Gurdjieff, you might have been surprised. He might have been shouting -- humiliating somebody, using abusive words. He was a past master in using abusive words. And when he was in a rage, he was really in a rage -- it was as if he was going to murder.

If you saw it, naturally you would wonder what kind of Master he was. He did not seem to be at all enlightened -- because you have a certain idea about enlightenment: that the Master will be such and such. He should fulfil your expectation. But Masters don't exist to fulfil your expectations. They have something else far more important to do than to go on fulfilling your expectations. They are not here for that kind of work. They are not asking for your respect or for any respectability. They are not bothered by public opinion; they are not asking for your vote. They are doing something which is immense, which is possible to understand only when you are an insider.

The insider knows on whom Gurdjieff is throwing all kinds of abuse. He knows -- or maybe in some moments he knows and in some moments he also misses. There are some moments when you will feel, 'What kind of man is this? Why is he abusing me so hard? What have I don?' You may have done a very small wrong, negligible, and he is being mad out of all proportion -- as if you have committed a sin. Sometimes even the insider may miss. But the insider will be able to remember. Gurdjieff has said, 'You have to be watchful. I will provoke you. I will provoke you in many ways, so that you can lose your watchfulness.'

Now something is transpiring between Gurdjieff and his disciple. You as an outsider will miss it. He is not in rage. The rage is just acting, and the disciple is being provoked into being angry. If the disciple gets angry, he misses the point. He loses an opportunity. If the disciple remains calm and quiet, watchful; does not allow the content to change this consciousness; and does not try in any way to change Gurdjieff and his behaviour -- that is consciousness trying to change the content.... The content is there -- Gurdjieff is mad. So okay, Gurdjieff is mad. And one is there watching -- neither the consciousness is affecting the content nor the content is affecting the consciousness. And you cannot deceive Gurdjieff -- because a slight change in your consciousness and your whole behaviour changes. Your face changes, your aura changes, your energy pattern changes -- you are no longer the same person.

If the disciple can remain undisturbed, unperturbed, can remain as he was before Gurdjieff started going into this rage, he has taken one step into the inner journey. He has come closer to the Master.

But it will be difficult for people who come from the outside. If you had gone to Gurdjieff.... It was a rare phenomenon. Every night he would invite all his disciples. The whole community would gather together. And there would be eating and drinking -- so much that anybody from the outside would think that these people were just mad. What were they doing? And Gurdjieff would go on forcing people to eat and to drink. He would force people to drink so much alcohol that you would think that this was an epicurean phenomenon. What kind of religion was this? Just eat, drink, and be merry? And that too was going to extremes. And Gurdjieff was very insistent about going on drinking. He himself used to drink as much as a man could drink, but he was never drunk. That was the whole point. He would tell the disciple to drink.

And there comes a point when you lose control. Immediately your reality comes up, surfaces. You can never see the real person unless he is drunk. People have repressed themselves so much that only alcohol can bring them up from their repressions. It was one of the greatest experiments ever done by any Master.

In the East we know it has been done by tantricas down the ages, but Gurdjieff was the first man to do it in the West. Whenever he saw that a disciple had drunk too much and had come to his reality -- that now he was no longer the same person that he was pretending to be -- then he would watch. Now he could be helpful. Now he knew your unconscious. What psycho-analysis does in years, he did in one day. Psychoanalysis goes on poking you to bring your unconscious up. The psychoanalyst will sit, day in and day out, by the side of the couch and listen to all kinds of nonsense and rubbish, for years -- just to help you to go on throwing out rubbish. By and by the real will start-coming up. When the top rubbish is thrown out, then the inner rubbish-will start coming up. But it takes years.

Gurdjieff used to do it in a master-stroke, in a single day. The first day the disciple was there, the first initiation would be through alcohol. The Master wants to know the unconscious immediately because there the real work is to be done. He does not want to waste time with the conscious personality. That is a -mask. Once he has known, then there will be no need. But he will take you into deep drunkenness.

Now, if somebody comes from the outside -- the so-called religious people -- they will be puzzled, very puzzled. What is happening! If somebody comes who has been tasting. Gurdjieff will give him too much to eat, and if somebody comes who has been eating too much, he will put him on a fast. He will disturb your old patterns, because when patterns are disturbed, your reality comes up. It is like changing gears. When you change one gear to another, just in the middle you have to pass through the neutral.

if a person who has not even eaten tomatoes is forced to eat meat, you can understand what turmoil the Master is throwing him into. He is putting him upside-down. it will really be a destruction of all his patterns. He will vomit, he will fall ill, he may have fevers, he may have nightmares -- but this will destroy all his learned patterns and he will become again a child. And from there work can start.

If a man has been eating meat, drinking, Gurdjieff will put him on vegetable food. He will tell him not to drink at all. He will make him a vegetarian, a teetotaller -- he will force him to be as holy as possible. The technique is the same -- to disturb the past, to put things upside-down so that the facade no longer functions and the mask can be removed and the reality can be seen.

A Master has to put his disciples into their childhood again because from there they have been distracted. Somebody has become a Mohammedan, somebody has become a Hindu, somebody has become a Christian -- from that moment they have been distracted. The Master has to put them back into their childhood so another kind of life, another kind of reality, starts growing.

And remember, no true Master has ever fulfilled anybody's desire. He cannot, if he wants to help you. He has to annoy you, he has to shock you. He has to be shocking because his whole work is to shock you into awareness.