If you know, you know -- there is no way of distracting you...

Once a great philosopher went to see Ramakrishna. The philosopher argued against God, and he argued really well. His name was Keshav Chandra Sen. Ramakrishna was utterly illiterate; he knew nothing of philosophy, he had never been to the university, he had only read up to the second standard. He could write and read Bengali a little bit.

The philosopher was well educated, world famous, he had written many books. He argued, and Ramakrishna laughed. And each time the philosopher gave a beautiful, profound argument against God, Ramakrishna would jump and hug him. A great crowd had gathered to see the scene, what was happening. The philosopher was very much embarrassed, because he had come to argue, and what kind of argument is this? This man laughs, dances -- sometimes hugs.

The philosopher said, "Are you not disturbed by my arguments?"

Ramakrishna said, "How can I be disturbed? I am really enjoying your arguments. You are clever, you are intelligent, your arguments are beautiful -- but what can I do? I know God! It is not a question of argument, it is not that I believe in God. Had I believed, you would have disturbed me, you would have taken all my clarity and you would have confused me. But I KNOW he is!"

Becoming a beggar will never make you Enlightened...

Buddha became a beggar by renouncing his kingdom; but do you think he is the same kind of beggar, can be put in the same category, as any other beggar who has never known anything of delicious food, of a beautiful woman, of a palace, of all the joys that are possible? On the surface they both look the same; both have a begging bowl. But they are not the same -- they belong to totally different categories.

I would like you to belong to the category of the buddha.

But... first he was a Zorba, and only then he became a buddha.

The other has never been the experiencer of outside reality. He can only repress his sex; he is not frustrated with it.

Buddha has no need to repress -- he has lived it, over-lived it; otherwise, in twenty-nine years one does not renounce the world.

A poor man can become respectable by becoming a beggar in the name of religion, but he will never become enlightened. Hence my emphasis is: before you enter into the inner world, be finished with the outer. Live it so totally -- your life torch should burn from both the ends together. The more totally you live, the quicker you will understand that there is not much. It is only the unlived part of life that seems to be attractive. If you have lived totally then nothing seems to be attractive. And only in that state can you move inwards without hesitation and without any split.

Live at ease, with all that is available on the outside. Don't be in a hurry, because anything left unlived will pull you back again. Finish it. And then there is no need to escape from your house or from your bank account, because they are no longer a burden on you. They don't mean anything. Perhaps they have a certain utility, but nothing is wrong with them.

Even a Gautam Buddha needs food, but somebody else earns it. He needs clothes, and somebody else earns them for him. You earn your own food. It is better to earn your own clothes, your own shelter. What is the point to be understood? -- there is nothing in them that binds you.

What binds you is the lust for the unlived life.

So live life totally and let this lust disappear.

Then you can live in a palace with the same ease as you can live in a poor man's hut. But if a palace is available, then why unnecessarily torture yourself in a poor man's hut? Just, the palace should not be your prison.

And because all these great enlightened people consistently renounced the world, it created an atmosphere in the whole of the East that poverty is something spiritual. It is sheer nonsense. Poverty is not spiritual; it is ugly. It is one of the wounds that has to be healed.

If poverty were spiritual, then there would have been millions of Gautam Buddhas in the East. But we have never heard about beggars becoming buddhas.

Pleasure may be the lowest step, but it is part of the same ladder. The highest step may be enlightenment, may be blissfulness, but it is the same ladder. And if you renounce the first rung of the ladder, you will never reach to the last rung.

Just think -- you are standing upon the first rung of the ladder. There are two ways of renouncing it: one is getting down, the other is moving to the second rung. Both have renounced the first rung of the ladder. Gautam Buddha moves to the second, and you are moving below the first.

You see that he has left the first rung, but you have not understood that he has left the first rung for the second. He will leave the second rung for the third, and he will go on leaving the third and the fourth for the final. But you have become afraid of the first, because you have seen buddhas leaving the first, so you never step on the first. You remain below the first.

LOVE: Don't ask for it, if somebody asks you. Give it...!

Everybody wants to be loved; that is a wrong beginning.

It starts because the child, the small child, cannot love, cannot say anything, cannot do anything, cannot give anything; he can only get. A small child's experience of love is of getting: getting from the mother, getting from the father, getting from brothers, sisters, getting from guests, strangers -- but always getting. So the first experience that settles deep in his unconscious is that he has to get love. But the trouble arises because everybody has been a child, and everybody has the same urge to get love; nobody is born in any other way. So all are asking, "Give us love," and there is nobody to give because the other person was also brought up in the same way.

One has to be alert and aware that just an incident of birth should not remain a constant prevailing state of your mind. Rather than asking, "Give me love," start giving love. Forget about getting, simply give -- and I guarantee you, you will get much. But you are not to think about getting. You are not even indirectly, by the side, to watch whether you are getting it or not. That much will be enough disturbance. You simply give, because to give love is so beautiful that getting love is not so great. This is one of the secrets.

Giving love is the really beautiful experience, because then you are an emperor. Getting love is very small experience, and it is the experience of a beggar. Don't be a beggar. At least as far as love is concerned, be an emperor, because it is an inexhaustible quality in you. You can go on giving as much as you like. Don't be worried that it will be exhausted, that one day you will suddenly find, "My God! I don't have any love to give anymore."

Love is not a quantity; it is a quality, and a quality of a certain category that grows by giving and dies if you hold it. If you are miserly about it, it dies. So be really spendthrift. Don't bother to whom -- that is really the idea of a miserly mind: I will give love to certain persons with certain qualities.

You don't understand that you have so much... you are a raincloud. The raincloud does not bother where it rains -- on the rocks, in the gardens, in the ocean -- it doesn't matter. It wants to unburden itself. And that unburdening is a tremendous relief.

So the first secret is: Don't ask for it, and don't wait, thinking that you will give if somebody asks you. Give it!

The founder of the theosophical movement, Madame Blavatsky had a strange habit her whole life -- and she lived long, and traveled all over the world and created a world movement... In fact no other woman has been so powerful in the whole history of man, has had influence worldwide. She used to carry many bags with her, full of seeds of flowers. Her whole luggage was nothing but seeds of flowers. Sitting in the train by the side of the window she would go on throwing seeds outside the window, and people would ask, "What are you doing? You carry so much unnecessary luggage, and then you go on throwing those seeds out of the window for thousands of miles."

She said, "These are seeds of flowers, beautiful flowers. When the summer goes and the rains come, these seeds will become plants. Soon there will be millions of flowers. I will not be coming back on the route and I will never see them, but thousands of people will see them, thousands of people will enjoy their fragrance."

She actually made almost all the railroads in India full of flowers, and people said, "When you will not see them again, what is your joy?"

She said, "My joy is that so many people will be joyful. I am not a miser. Whatever I can do to make people joyful, happy, I will do; it is part of my love." She really loved humanity, and did everything that she felt was right.

Just give your love to anybody -- a stranger. It is not a question that you have to give something very valuable, just a helping hand and that will be enough. In twenty-four hours, whatever you do should be done with love, and the pain in your heart will disappear. And because you will be loving so much, people will love you. It is a natural law. You get what you give. In fact you get more than you give.

Learn giving, and you will find so many people being loving towards you who had never looked at you, who had never bothered about you.

Surrender is not something that you can do -- it happens...

SURRENDER IS NOT SOMETHING THAT YOU CAN DO. If you do, it will be false and pseudo -- because the DOER will be there. And the doer has to be surrendered. What else is there to surrender? The idea of the doer and the idea of doing. The EGO has to be surrendered.

So this is the fundamental thing to be understood: you cannot do it, because if you do it you will remain behind it, and whatsoever you have done you can undo -- because you are still there. One day you can surrender; another day you can say, "No, I am not ready to surrender. I take it back. I resign. I withdraw." And what can God do? He cannot go to any court.

Surrender is not something that you can do -- it happens. That is the first thing to be understood -- it is a happening not a doing. How does it happen? When you are silent it happens, because when you are silent you are not. You are nothing but the continuous procession of thoughts in you.

It is like if you take a burning torch in your hand and you move it fast in a circle you will see a fire circle. The fire circle is false, it doesn't exist -- there is only the torch. Stop moving it and there is only the torch. But it moves so fast that it creates an illusion of a circle. Exactly like that: your thoughts are moving so fast that they are creating the illusion of an ego. Let the thoughts slow down a little and you will be surprised: there is nobody inside you. And let the thoughts disappear and you have disappeared with them.

In that silence is surrender. THAT SILENCE IS SURRENDER! Not that you DO it, but that suddenly you are not. When you are not, surrender is.

When you are in surrender, you will not know God -- you will know godliness. The whole existence will be full of godliness, overflowing with godliness. But remember the word 'godliness' -- a quality, like fragrance surrounding the flower, but not something objective you can hold, cling to. Not anything objective that you can see.

God is not known as a person or as an object: God is known as an overflowing of joy, an overflowing of energy, and not objective energy but subjectivity. God is known as the innermost core of your nothingness, the very hub of the wheel of your nothingness.

When you disappear, God is -- not as a person, not as an object, but as a totality. You are not separate from it: you are one with it.

You are the center of the cyclone. The cyclone is the mind. When you have seen the center, suddenly SURRENDER HAS HAPPENED. without any effort on your part. Because the ego is not found -- that is surrender.

In surrender, one finds God. Here the ego disappears, and immediately godliness appears all over. Then everything is divine, everything vibrates with godliness. Then life is utter benediction.

Sannyas is not a goal. Sannyas is an understanding that goals don't exist.

There is a zen story:

There was once a red-haired man who had no eyes and no ears. He also had no hair, so he was called red-haired only in a manner of speaking. One has to call him something.

He was not able to talk because he did not have a mouth. He had no nose either. He did not even have any arms or legs. He also did not have a stomach, and he did not have a back. And he did not have a spine, and he also did not have any other insides. He did not have anything in fact, so it is hard to understand who we are talking about. So we had better not talk about him any more.

By and by.... First you call him the red-haired man, because one has to call him something.

When you are moving in a worldly wheel, I invite you. I say, 'What are you doing there? Are you not going to try god?' You become greedy about god. You say, 'Okay. Here I am getting nothing, maybe there is something in god.' You jump out of the wheel. Then you ask me, 'What about god?'

I say, 'In fact nobody knows anything about him, whether he existed or not. It is just a manner of saying.' We call him the red-haired man because one has to call him something, mm?

Then by and by you go along with me, and by and by the story is revealed to you -- 'There was once a red-haired man who had no eyes and no ears. He also had no hair, so he was called red-haired only in a manner of speaking. He was not able to talk because he did not have a mouth. He had no nose either. He did not even have any arms or legs....'

By and by, the more you try to understand me, I become more and more truthful. The more I see that now you are getting in tune with me, there is no need to lie too much. 'He did not even have any arms or legs. He also did not have a stomach, and he did not have a back....'

And when I see that you are not disturbed, you are listening to the story well up to now, then I say, '... and he didn't have a spine.' I have to move very cautiously because you can become afraid and go back to your wheel.

'And he also did not have any insides...' When I see that up to now you have come... and of course you feel a little puzzled, but now the truth can be said...'He didn't have anything. So it is hard to understand who we are talking about. So we had better not talk about him any more.' About whom? -- about the red-haired man.

Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, they start the story -- they talk about the red-haired man -- and Buddha ends it... nobody, not even you.
He says, first drop ambition, drop desires. Don't think you are the body, don't think you are the mind; then don't think you are the self. Then in fact we should not talk about you because you are not.

By and by we go on eliminating. First we say, drop worldly goals -- because it will be too much to tell you to drop all goals; you will not understand. You can understand that worldly goals should be dropped because you have suffered much and nothing has come out of it; you are frustrated. You say, 'Okay. I was also thinking to drop it.' And you say, 'Good, so I will change. I will drop the worldly goals. Now I will look for god, heaven and paradise.' And I go on laughing inside me. I say, 'Okay, first drop these, then we will see.'

Once you have dropped those, then by and by I will persuade you to drop god, self, nirvana, moksha. Because when every goal is dropped, then only you are in tune.

The goal is a jarring note. The goal simply says you are missing. The goal says there is some condition which has to be fulfilled, only then can you become happy.

When all goals disappear and life is not looked on as a desire project, when life is not thought of as a work and becomes play, leela, then... then you are at home. Then you have arrived.

LEARN THE THREE DIFFICULTIES...

There are three difficulties in becoming aware. These are very essential for each seeker to understand. In fact everybody becomes aware, but only when the act is finished. You have been angry -- you slapped your wife or you threw a pillow at your husband. Later on when the heat is cooled, the moment has passed, you become aware. But now it is pointless, now nothing can be done. What has been done cannot be undone; it is too late.

Three things are to be remembered. One is becoming aware while the act is happening. That is the first difficulty for the person who wants to become aware -- becoming aware in the act itself.

Anger is there like smoke inside you. Becoming aware in the very thick of it, that is the first difficulty, but it is not impossible. Just a little effort and you will be able to catch hold of it. In the beginning you will see, you become aware when the anger has gone and everything has cooled -- you become aware after fifteen minutes. Try -- you will become aware after five minutes. Try a little more -- you will become aware immediately after one minute. Try a little more, and you will become aware just when the anger is evaporating. Try a little more, and you will become aware exactly in the middle of it. And that is the first step: be aware in the act.

Then the second step, which is even more difficult because now you are going into deeper waters. The second step, or the second difficulty is remembering before the act: when the act has not yet happened but is still a thought in you; it has not been actualized but it has become a thought in your mind. It is there, potentially there like a seed; it can become the act any moment.

Now you will need a little more subtle awareness. The act is gross -- you hit the woman. You can become aware while you are hitting, but the idea of hitting is far more subtle. Thousands of ideas go on passing in the mind -- who takes note of them? They go on and on; the traffic continues. Most of those ideas never become acts.

This is the difference between sin and crime. Crime is when something becomes an act. No law court can punish you for a thought. You can think of murdering somebody but no law can punish you. You can enjoy, you can dream, but you are not under law unless you act, unless you do something and the thought is transformed into actuality; then it becomes a crime.

But religion goes deeper. It says when you think it, it is already a sin. Whether you actualize it or not does not matter -- you have committed it in your inner world and you are affected by it, you are contaminated by it, you are blemished by it.

The second difficulty is to catch hold when the thought is arising in you. It can be done, but it can be done only when you have crossed the first barrier, because thought is not so solid. But still it is solid enough to be seen; you have to just practice a little bit. Sitting silently, just watch your thoughts. Just see all the nuances of a thought -- how it arises, how it takes form, how it remains, abides, and how then it leaves you. It becomes a guest and then when the time comes it leaves you. And many thoughts come and go; you are a host where many thoughts come and go. Just watch.

Don't try from the very beginning with the difficult thoughts, try with simple thoughts. That will make it easier, because the process is the same. Just sit in the garden, close your eyes and see whatsoever thought is passing -- and they are always passing. The dog barks in the neighborhood, and immediately a process of thought starts in you. You suddenly remember a dog you had in your childhood and how much you had loved that dog, and then the dog died, and how you suffered.

Then comes the idea of death, and the dog is forgotten and you remember the death of your mother. And with the idea of the mother suddenly you remember your father. And things go on and on. Just the whole thing was triggered by a foolish dog who is not even aware that you are sitting in your garden, who is simply barking because he knows nothing else to keep himself occupied. His barking is nothing but politicking -- his politics, power politics.

That's why dogs are very much against uniforms. The policeman, the postman, the sannyasin -- and the dogs are very angry. They don't tolerate uniforms. How dare you walk in uniform, trying to dominate them? They are angry against policemen and people like that.

He was not aware of you, he has not barked for you especially, but a chain was triggered. Watch these simple chains, and then slowly slowly try them with more emotionally involved things. You are angry, you are greedy, you are jealous -- just catch hold of yourself in the middle of the thought. That is the second difficulty.

And the third difficulty is to catch hold of this process, which results ultimately in an act, before it becomes a thought. That is the most difficult; right now you cannot even conceive of it. Before anything becomes a thought, it is a feeling. These are the three things: feeling comes first, then comes thought, then comes the act. You may not be aware at all that each thought is produced by a certain feeling. If the feeling is not there, the thought will not come. Feeling becomes actualized in thought, thought becomes actualized in the act.

Now you have to do the almost impossible thing -- to catch hold of a certain feeling. Have you not watched sometimes? You don't really know why you are feeling a little disturbed; there is no real thought that can be caught as the cause, but you are disturbed, you feel disturbed. Something is getting ready underground, some feeling is gathering force. Sometimes you feel sad. There is no reason to feel sad, and there is no thought to provoke it; still the sadness is there, a generalized feeling. That means a feeling is trying to come above ground, the seed of the feeling is sending its leaves out of the ground.

If you are able to become aware of the thought, then sooner or later you will become aware of the subtle nuances of the feeling. These are the three difficulties.

LEARN THE THREE DIFFICULTIES.

And if you can do these three things, suddenly you will fall into the deepest core of your being.

Only those who are not in prayer can pray...

It happened: In the sea there was a ship, a ship which was carrying many Mohammedans to Mecca. They were on a pilgrimage. They were all surprised by one thing: because they were all pilgrims going to the holy of holies, each was praying all the five prayers prescribed for a Mohammedan every day -- except a Sufi mystic. But the mystic was so radiant with joy that nobody dared to ask him why.

Then one day the sea was very rough and the captain declared, "There seems to be no possibility that we can be saved, so please do your last prayer. The ship is going to sink." And everybody fell in prayer except the Sufi mystic.

Now this was too much. Many people gathered around the mystic. They were really angry and they said, "You are a man of God. We have watched you, you have never prayed. But we didn't say anything; we felt that this would be disrespectful -- you are thought to be a holy man. But now it is unbearable. The ship is sinking, and you are a man of God -- if you pray, your prayer will be listened to. Why are you not praying?"

The mystic said, "To pray out of fear is to miss the whole point, that's why I am not praying."

And then they asked, "Then why did you not pray when there was no question of fear?"

He said, "I am in prayer, so I cannot pray. Only those who are not in prayer can pray. But what is the point of their prayer? Empty rituals! I am in prayer, in fact I am prayer. Each moment is a prayer."