Be worldly, and yet remain unworldly...

A person who escapes is not really a man of understanding. His very escape shows his fear, not understanding. If you say, "How can I be happy sitting in the marketplace? How can I be silent sitting in the marketplace?" and you escape to the Himalayan silence, you are escaping from the very possibility of ever becoming silent -- because it is only in the marketplace that the contrast exists; it is only in the marketplace that the challenge exists; it is only in the marketplace that distractions exist. And you have to overcome all those distractions.

If you escape to the Himalayas you will start feeling a little still, but at the same time a little stupid also. You will start feeling more silent, but that silence belongs to the Himalayas, not to you. Come back and your silence will be left behind -- you will come alone. And back in the world you will be even more disturbed than before, because you will have become more vulnerable, soft. And you will come with a prejudice, with this idea that you have attained to silence. You will have become more egoistic.

That's why people who have escaped to the monasteries become afraid of coming back to the world. The world is the test. The world is the criterion. And it is easier to be in the world and, by and by, grow into a silence, then the Himalayan silence comes into your being. You don't go to the Himalayas: the Himalayas themselves come to you. Then it is something of your own, then you are the master of it.

I don't teach escape. I also teach renunciation. Many people, orthodox, old people. come to me and they say, "What type of sannyas is this? People have taken sannyas -- they are still living in their families, with their wife, with their children. going to the office, to the factory, to the shop -- what type of sannyas is this?" They have only one conception of sannyas, a one dimensional conception -- of escape. This is multi-dimensional. It is renouncing and yet living here, dropping and yet not dropping, changing and yet remaining ordinary, transforming one's being totally and yet remaining in the ordinary world like everybody else.

The Zen concept of renunciation is my concept of renunciation also. But it is difficult because the world has been condemned so much that it has become almost unconscious; it has become habitual to think in terms of condemnation. If somebody says you are worldly, you feel hurt, insulted. When you want to condemn somebody, you call him worldly -- you have condemned him.

There is nothing wrong in being worldly. Be worldly, and yet remain unworldly -- that is the very art, the art of living between two opposites, balancing oneself between two opposites. It is a very narrow path, like a razor's edge -- but this is the only path. If you miss this balance, you miss truth.

After THAT: Chakras have no power over you, but you have all power over them...

There are seven chakras in the human body. In Zen they are called the seven lions. The first chakra is the sex center; the second chakra, which is just below the navel, is called in Japanese, hara.

The sex center has all the life energy gathered in it. For ordinary human beings, all the energy is gathered at the lowest center. This is just above that. So if you put a knife into the hara, the life energy is released from the hara center, which is just above it, into the cosmos.

The third center is the navel, and the fourth center is the heart. The fifth center is the throat, and the sixth center is the third eye, just between your two eyebrows. The seventh center is just on top of your head.

Once you understand that these centers are significant, that the sex center is the lowest point in your life, and the seventh ... If the energy moves from the first to the second, from the second to the third, from the third to the fourth -- every center has its own expression, and your life goes on changing.

When your energy is at the hara center -- the hara center is the death center -- you suddenly become aware that just as millions of people have been dying since centuries, "I cannot be an exception. I will have to die, if not today, then tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. But someday, that which is born always dies. I am born, I am going to die."

Once you are at the sex center, your whole concentration is on the other sex.

as your energy moves to the second center, the hara, you become absolutely uninterested in sex. It is not celibacy, you have not taken any vow, your energy has simply moved higher. Its concern becomes death. In sex the concern was birth, because through sex is all reproduction.

Moving from sex you have moved from birth to death, a small distance. Suddenly you become aware that "Death is coming and I am concerned only with trivia -- money, power, prestige, respectability. All this will be gone when death comes. I am unnecessarily making the effort of creating a signature on the sands. A little breeze of wind, a little tidal wave, and the signature will be finished."

Death comes as a tidal wave, and all your personality, all your respectability, prestige, are erased. One becomes aware that, "I have to find something which is beyond death."

Once the energy moves to the hara, the concern for the search for something immortal in you becomes very predominant, and when the energy moves to the third center, your concern is no more intellectual. You don't simply philosophize, you don't read the books which say, "Life is eternal"; you don't believe. At the third center -- the navel -- your interest becomes experiential.

As you move above to the fourth center, that is the heart, your whole life becomes a sharing of love. The third center has created the abundance of love. By reaching to the third center in meditation, you have become so overflowing with love, with compassion, and you want to share. It happens at the fourth center -- the heart.

That's why even in the ordinary world people think love comes out of the heart. For them it is just hearsay, they have heard it. They don't know it because they have never reached to their heart. But the meditator finally reaches to the heart.

As he has reached to the center of his being -- the third center -- suddenly an explosion of love and compassion and joy and blissfulness and benediction has arisen in him with such a force that it hits his heart and opens the heart. The heart is just in the middle of all your seven centers -- three centers below, three centers above. You have come exactly to the middle.

That's why the person of the heart is very balanced, utterly balanced. He has a tremendous grace, a beauty that seems to be not of this world. His eyes are showering love, his hands are showering love, even if he does nothing. Even his presence is radiating love. It is a vibration, multidimensional. All around him a love energy goes on flowing. Those who are receptive, their hearts will start ringing a bell. For the first time they will hear a new music, a new harmony, a new synchronicity.

The fifth center is the throat. The throat is the center of expression. When you are too full of experience, you share love at the fourth center, and you share your experience through language, through devices, from the fifth center.

The sixth center is just between the two eyebrows, inside. In India we have called it the third eye. It gives you a tremendous clarity, a vision of the whole existence as it is. And when you open your eyes ... it affects even your ordinary world. Trees are greener, roses are rosier, everything around you of which you were never aware becomes more graceful. Everything around you becomes more beautiful. Even wildflowers look so beautiful; they have their own individuality, they cannot be compared to roses, they cannot be compared to lotuses. There is no comparison at all.

Once you have reached to the sixth -- the third eye -- everything in your life becomes crystal clear. No questions, no answers -- you know it. No belief, no disbelief -- you know it.

And the seventh center is when you become enlightened: the center of samadhi, the center of ultimate awakening, the center where you become a buddha.

A man who has reached to the highest center is capable of using any center of his being, even the lowest. If he wants to use even the lowest -- it will be difficult, because the distance is far away. Bringing the energy back down to the sex center will be a difficult job, but he can use it, it is not impossible. He can use any center if he wants, if there is any need; but otherwise, all those six centers remain silent. On their own they don't pull you, they have no power over you, but you have all power over them.

The man of enlightenment concentrates all the energy into one center. All other centers are no more moving wheels, they are stopped, just as a wheel stops moving. But if he wants, the man of enlightenment can bring the energy down. He can bring it to the sixth center and he can see far and wide with clarity. That will not be possible at the seventh center.

The seventh center is beyond everything. You simply are no more. At the sixth, again you are. The energy comes, the circle, the wheel starts moving. You can bring it down to the fifth ....

The man who has reached to the seventh becomes the master of his whole life structure. He can do everything that he wants, and when he stops, the energy simply moves automatically back to the seventh.

Mind Tells, If we were born like Buddha we would be Buddhas too...

THE BUDDHA OR THE CHRIST CANNOT BE CREATED because the Buddha is your intrinsic nature. It need not be created. It has not to be developed either; it is already there, it is already the case. It has only to be unfolded, it has to be discovered.

The treasure is there; you have to find the key to unlock the door. The treasure is not to be created, the treasure is not to be developed; you only have to find the right key. You have forgotten about the key -- the key is also with you. God provides you with everything that is needed on the journey; you come absolutely prepared. But society disturbs every child, distorts every child, because a Buddha or a Christ is useless to the society; they don't serve any utilitarian purpose.

What can you do with a Buddha? What purpose is he going to serve? He will be a beautiful flower, but flowers don't serve any purpose. Flowers have to be enjoyed, appreciated, loved. You can dance around them, you can drink their beauty, but they are not commodities in the marketplace. What can you do with the full moon? You cannot sell it, you cannot purchase it, you cannot be profited by it. You cannot have a bigger bank balance because of the full moon.

Hence the society is not interested in a Buddha or a Christ. Buddha is a full moon, a Buddha is a lotus flower, a Buddha is a bird on the wing. The Buddha is a poem, the Buddha is a song, the Buddha is a celebration. Because they are utterly beyond utility, the society is not interested in them; it is really afraid of these people. It wants you to be slaves, to be cogs in the wheel of the society. It wants you to be servants to the vested interests. It does not want you to be rebels -- and a Buddha is bound to be a rebel.

A Buddha cannot follow stupid commandments given by the politicians or the moralists or the puritans or the priests. And these are the people who are exploiting humanity, oppressing humanity. They start destroying every possibility of every human child ever becoming a Buddha. They start crippling, they start poisoning. And down the centuries they have learnt many ways to poison. It is a miracle that once in a while a child has escaped -- must have somehow been a mistake on the part Of the priests and the politicians that a child escaped from the trap and became a Buddha.

Looking at the greater part of humanity, to see that there is any possibility of every human being becoming a Christ or a Buddha. Looking at a seed can you believe that one day it can become a lotus? Just looking at the seed, dissecting the seed, will you be able to infer, conclude, that each seed is going to become a lotus? There seems to be no relationship at all. The seed looks nothing, and when you dissect it you find nothing in it, only emptiness. Still each seed carries a lotus within it -- and each human being carries the Buddha within him.

Nobody is born as such. We are all born alike. That too is again a trick of the mind to avoid growing. If it is settled that a Buddha is born as a Buddha, and a Christ is the ONLY begotten son of God, and Krishna is a reincarnation of God, this is a beautiful strategy to avoid: "Then what can we do? If we are not Buddhas it is not our fault -- we are not BORN like that. And if Buddha is a Buddha, so what? He is BORN a Buddha. No credit to him; he has not done anything special. If we were born like Buddha we would be Buddhas too. But we are born as COMMON human beings."

This is a strategy. Very cunning is the mind, and subtle is its cunningness: beware of it. Nobody is born as a Buddha yet everybody brings the potential of being a Buddha.

I FEEL that everybody can become a Buddha. Suddenly this explosion, then suddenly this light, then suddenly this meditativeness blossomed. You can also become a Buddha; it is your birthright. Don't be tricked by your mind -- remain alert, aware.

Enlightenment will find you... You need not find it...

once a person becomes interested in enlightenment, he is getting into eternal trouble. Now, whatsoever he is going to do is going to fail -- whatsoever! His failure is predetermined, it is built-in. In the very effort is the failure. So you do this, you do that and you go on failing. And the more you fail the more DESPERATE you will become, the more and more anguish will be there, the more and more hopelessness will be there. More and more you will feel lost -- more lost than ever before, and then you will feel that this idea of enlightenment has been a curse. It has taken your ordinary life from you. It won't allow any other life, it takes possession of you totally, utterly. And the old life is gone, and the new has not happened, and you start hanging in limbo. You are neither here nor there; you become a question mark. Your whole life becomes split.

So remember, never become desirous of enlightenment, that will give you great hell.

This is my basic approach: that you should learn how to enjoy life. Enjoy it more and more, as deeply as possible. Go into it. Small moments can be transformed into eternities of joy. Small things can become celebrations -- VERY small things. Just an unknown flower -- and if you sit by the side of it, and you look at it, and you are open to it -- will give you great ecstasy. You will start swaying and dancing, you will feel drunk. Any small thing is full of God! This ordinary reality is not just ordinary, it is carrying in it the extraordinary, the superb, the suprememost.

So love this life, and don't think of THAT. THAT always brings misery, because that brings conflict. Let THAT come through THIS! YOU love the woman, you love the man... Let God come through that love, let God center you when you are in a state of orgasm. Eat, enjoy the food; let God come to you as a taste. Listen to music, get lost in it, and let God come to you as sound, as harmony. Let God descend on you slowly slowly, without any hankering to catch hold of him, without any efforts to possess him in your hands. Just open yourself as much as possible -- to the trees, to the birds, to the rains, to the sun, to the sands. Open yourself wherever you are, absorb, and gratitude will arise, and that gratitude will become your prayer. And you will not know TOWARDS WHOM this gratitude is arising. When you don't know towards whom this gratitude is arising, it is towards God. When you know that it is towards God, you don't know a thing. Then it is the Christian God, or the Hindu God, or the Mohammedan God -- and these are not God.

God is basically hidden. Nobody knows his name. The Jews were right never to spell his name. The name of Yahweh was not allowed to be pronounced, because how can we pronounce his name? -- we don't know his name. His whereabouts are unknown. Nobody has ever seen him. Whosoever has seen him has gone into him and disappeared forever; nobody has come back. Nobody knows where he is, who he is. But still, when life is flowing, when life has a flow to it and a dance to it, one feels gratitude. Gratitude comes first and God comes second, not otherwise.

People are trying to bring God first. First they create God, and that is THEIR created God, man-made, home-made, manufactured. Then they bow down to their own manufactured statues. This is utterly stupid -- a man bowing down to a statue he has made himself, or has purchased from the market. God is not for sale anywhere! And nobody has seen his face: nobody can make his statue. And nobody knows where he is: overhead, behind, in front, right, left -- nobody knows.

But gratitude arises... just as fragrance arises out of a flower and goes on, not knowing where, unaddressed; so, in the same way -- unaddressed -- arises gratitude. That is prayer, real prayer, and you start feeling God in your heart. Because of this gratitude, because of this prayerfulness, because of this thankfulness enlightenment is not far away.

You find beautiful names, that's all, but they are all ego trips. Now, you want to become enlightened. Why? For what? From where did you get this idea of enlightenment? And this will create much suffering, because now you will be searching. What to do? Stand on your head to become enlightened? Fast to become enlightened? Go to the mountains to live in a cave? Become a masochist -- to torture yourself? Practise a thousand and one things -- which will be of mind, and cannot lead beyond mind?

Hindus are right when they say that God is ANAND, bliss. It is true: that is his ultimate definition. So he can be attained only through bliss, not through suffering. The suffering will help your ego to become more strong, and the more the ego is strong, the farther away you are from God. Only when you melt in happiness, you become liquid in happiness, you start flowing in happiness, you are no more frozen... And when you are not frozen where can you flow? There is only God all around you! Once you melt, you flow into him; and when you flow, he flows into you. It is reciprocal. God comes to you only in that proportion in which you go into him.

A man who is trying to achieve God, enlightenment, NIRVANA, becomes more and more egoistic, becomes more and more self-centered. His whole effort is how to attain and possess God. But how can you possess God? You can only be possessed by him, you cannot possess him. He is not smaller than you, he is bigger. How can the river possess the ocean? The river can only disappear into the ocean. The ocean will possess the river, and that is the only way for the river to possess the ocean. The man who is seeking enlightenment is trying to do the impossible. It is not possible in the very nature of things.

Forget all about enlightenment, otherwise that will create continuous suffering in you, anxiety And naturally, enlightenment can happen only in the future, so the future comes in. Then you start planning for it and you go on missing the present. Live the moment as if it is all, and enlightenment will find you. You need not find it.

Create children, who have heard "yes" and have rarely heard "no"

The moment you start thinking how to help children to grow without any competitive spirit you are already on the wrong track, because whatever you are going to do is going to give the children a certain program. It may be different from the one that you received, but you are conditioning the children -- with all the best intentions in the world.

The trees go on growing without anybody teaching them how to grow. The animals, the birds, the whole existence, needs no programming. The very idea of programming is basically creating slavery -- and man has been creating slaves for thousands of years in different names. When people become fed up with one name, another name immediately replaces it. A few modified programs, a few changes here and there in the conditioning, but the fundamental thing remains the same -- that the parents, the older generation, want their children to be in a certain way.

According to me, the function of the parents is not how to help the children grow -- they will grow without you. Your function is to support, to nourish, to help what is already growing. Don't give directions and don't give ideals. Don't tell them what is right and what is wrong: let them find it by their own experience.

Only one thing you can do, and that is share your own life. Tell them that you have been conditioned by your parents, that you have lived within certain limits, according to certain ideals, and because of these limits and ideals you have missed life completely, and you don't want to destroy your children's life. You want them to be totally free -- free of you, because to them you represent the whole past.

It needs guts and it needs immense love in a father, in a mother, to tell the children, "You need to be free of us. Don't obey us -- depend on your own intelligence. Even if you go astray it is far better than to remain a slave and always remain right. It is better to commit mistakes on your own and learn from them, rather than follow somebody else and not commit mistakes. But then you are never going to learn anything except following -- and that is poison, pure poison."

It is very easy if you love. Don't ask "how", because "how" means you are asking for a method, a methodology, a technique -- and love is not a technique.

Love your children, enjoy their freedom. Let them commit mistakes, help them to see where they have committed a mistake. Tell them, "To commit mistakes is not wrong -- commit as many mistakes as possible, because that is the way you will be learning more. But don't commit the same mistake again and again, because that makes you stupid."

The whole society consists of mediocre people for the simple reason that nobody is what he was destined to be -- he is something else. And whatever he will do, he cannot be the best, and he cannot feel a fulfillment; he cannot rejoice.

So the work of the parents is very delicate, and it is precious, because the whole life of the child depends on it. Don't give any positive program -- help him in every possible way that he wants.

The function of a father or a mother is great, because they are bringing a new guest into the world -- who knows nothing, but who brings some potential in him. And unless his potential grows, he will remain unhappy.

No parents like to think of their children remaining unhappy; they want them to be happy. It is just that their thinking is wrong. They think if they become doctors, if they become professors, engineers, scientists, then they will be happy. They don't know! They can only be happy if they become what they have come to become. They can only become the seed that they are carrying within themselves.

So help in every possible way to give freedom, to give opportunities. Ordinarily, if a child asks a mother anything, without even listening to the child, to what he is asking, the mother simply says no. "No" is an authoritative word; "yes" is not. So neither father nor mother or anybody else who is in authority wants to say yes -- to any ordinary thing.

The child wants to play outside the house: "No!" The child wants to go out while it is raining and wants to dance in the rain: "No! You will get a cold." A cold is not a cancer, but a child who has been prevented from dancing in the rain, and has never been able again to dance, has missed something great, something really beautiful. A cold would have been worthwhile -- and it is not that he will necessarily have a cold. In fact the more you protect him, the more he becomes vulnerable. The more you allow him, the more he becomes immune.

Parents have to learn to say yes. In ninety-nine times when they ordinarily say no, it is for no other reason than simply to show authority. Everybody cannot become the president of the country, cannot have authority over millions of people. But everybody can become a husband, can have authority over his wife; every wife can become a mother, can have authority over the child; every child can have a teddy bear, and have authority over the teddy bear... kick him from this corner to the other corner, give him good slaps, slaps that he really wanted to give to the mother or to father. And the poor teddy bear has nobody below him.

This is an authoritarian society.

What I am saying is in creating children who have freedom, who have heard "yes" and have rarely heard "no", the authoritarian society will disappear. We will have a more human society.

Left without questions and without answers...

Whenever you ask a question, somewhere deep down you have some inkling of the answer, but it is in the darker parts of your consciousness. You yourself cannot pull it out and bring it to your consciousness.

The question is in the consciousness; the answer is in the unconscious -- vague, a shadow, with no certainty, but the inkling is certainly there.

The function of the master is exactly what Socrates has defined it as -- the master is only a midwife. He helps to bring everything that is hidden in you to consciousness. When your question disappears, that means your answer from the unconscious has been brought to the conscious.

It has to be remembered that this is the distinction between a master and a teacher: a teacher will give you an answer, which will not bring your own answer from the unconscious. He will force an answer into your conscious, repressing your question. He will make the situation more complicated. First you had only a question, and if you had silently waited, meditated, perhaps the unconscious answer may have surfaced and the question would have disappeared. And once the question disappears, the answer has no relevance in being there; it disappears also, and a pure emptiness is left.

But the teacher forces an answer on your mind, and makes the situation more complicated. Now you have a question and you have an answer which has not been able to dissolve the question, which has only repressed it. And your unconscious answer is still lying down there, to be released so you can be unburdened. The teacher burdens you, complicates you.

The master never gives you any answer that is going to burden you.

His every answer is an unburdening. He brings your own unconscious answer to the surface, where first the question disappears, then the answer disappears -- and not a trace of either remains behind.

This is real communion.

This is a clear-cut way, a criterion, to make the distinction between a teacher and a master.

In the West there seems to be no distinction. In the East the teacher is simply repeating inherited knowledge; he is not concerned with you, he is concerned with his own knowledge.

The master has nothing to impose upon you; he is empty and silent.

Your question does not give him a chance to impose something on you, but only gives him a chance to bring your unconscious answer to the surface. So if you go on simply listening to the master, slowly, slowly you will find your questions have disappeared... and strangely, you don't have any answer.

People ordinarily think that when the question disappears you will have the answer in its place. No, when the question really disappears the answer has no relevance. It also disappears. And left without questions and without answers, you have immense freedom... unburdened... open sky.

Have you ever asked yourself what you are searching for ?

LIFE is a search, a constant search, a desperate search, a hopeless search...a search for something one knows not what. There is a deep urge to seek but one knows not what one is seeking.

And there is a certain state of mind in which whatsoever you get is not going to give you any satisfaction. Frustration seems to be the destiny of humanity, because whatsoever you get becomes meaningless the very moment you have got it. You start searching again.

The search continues whether you get anything or not. It seems irrelevant what you have got, what you have not got -- the search continues anyway. The poor are searching, the rich are searching, the i!l are searching, the well are searching, the powerful are searching. the powerless are searching, the stupid are searching, the wise are searching -- and nobody knows exactly what for.

This very search -- what it is and why it is there -- has to be understood. It seems that there is a gap in the human being, in the human mind; in the very structure of the human consciousness there seems to be a hole, a black hole. You go on throwing things into it, and they go on disappearing. Nothing seems to make it full, nothing seems to help towards fulfillment. It is a very feverish search. You seek it in this world, you seek it in the other world; sometimes you seek it in money, in power, in prestige, and sometimes you seek it in God, bliss, love, meditation, prayer -- but the search continues. It seems that man is ill with search.

The search does not allow you to be here and now because the search always leads you somewhere else. The search is a projection, the search is a desire: that somewhere else is what is needed, that it exists but it exists somewhere else, not here where you are. It certainly exists, but not in this moment of time; not now, but somewhere else. It exists then, there, never herenow. It goes on nagging you; it goes on pulling you, pushing you, it goes on throwing you into more and more madness; it drives you crazy and it is never fulfilled.

Have you ever asked yourself what you are searching for? Have you ever made it a point of deep meditation to know what you are searching for? No. Even if in some vague moments, dreaming moments, you have some inkling of what you are searching for, it is never precise, it is never exact. You have not yet defined it. If you try to define it, the more it becomes defined the more you will feel that there is no need to search for it. The search can continue only in a state of vagueness, in a state of dreaming; when things are not clear you simply go on searching. pulled by some inner urge, pushed by some inner urgency. One thing you do know: you need to search. This is an inner need. But you don't know what you are seeking.

And unless you know what you are seeking, how can you find it? It is vague -- you think it is in money, power, prestige, respectability. But then you see people who are respectable, people who are powerful -- they are also seeking. Then you see people who are tremendously rich -- they are also seeking. To the very end of their life they are seeking. So richness is not going to help, power is not going to help. The search continues in spite of what you have.

The search must be for something else. These names, these labels -- money, power, prestige -- these are just to satisfy your mind. They are just to help you feel that you are searching for something. That something is still undefined, a very vague feeling.

The first thing for the real seeker, for the seeker who has become a little alert, aware, is to define the search; to formulate a clear-cut concept of it, what it is; to bring it out of the dreaming consciousness; to encounter it in deep alertness; to look into it directly; to face it. Immediately a transformation starts happening. If you start defining your search, you will start losing your interest in the search. The more defined it becomes, the less it is there. Once it is clearly known what it is, suddenly it disappears. It exists only when you are not attentive.

Let it be repeated: the search exists only when you are sleepy; the search exists only when you are not aware; the search exists only in your unawareness. The unawareness creates the search.

Our senses are all extrovert. The eyes open outwards, the hands move, spread outwards, the legs move into the outside, the ears listen to the outside noises, sounds. Whatsoever is available to you is all opening towards the outside; all the five senses move in an extrovert way. You start searching there where you see, feel, touch -- the light of the senses falls outside. And the seeker is inside.

This dichotomy has to be understood. The seeker is inside but because the light is outside, the seeker starts moving in an ambitious way, trying to find something outside which will be fulfilling.

It is never going to happen. It has never happened. It cannot happen in the nature of things -- because, unless you have sought the seeker, all your search is meaningless. Unless you come to know who you are, all that you seek is futile, because you don't know the seeker. Without knowing the seeker how can you move in the right dimension, in the right direction? It is impossible. The first things should be considered first.

So these two things are very important: first, make it absolutely clear to yourself what your object is. Don't just go on stumbling in darkness. Focus your attention on the object -- what you are really searching for. Because sometimes you want one thing and you go on searching for something else, so even if you succeed you will not be fulfilled. Have you seen people who have succeeded? Can you find bigger failures anywhere else? You have heard the proverb that nothing succeeds like success. It is absolutely wrong. I would like to tell you: nothing fails like success. The proverb must have been invented by stupid people. Nothing fails like success.

It is said about Alexander the Great that the day he became the world conqueror he closed the doors of his room and started weeping. I don't know whether it really happened or not, but if he was even a little intelligent it must have happened.

His generals were very disturbed. What has happened? They had never seen Alexander weeping. He was not that type of man, he was a great warrior. They had seen him in great difficulties, in situations where life was very much in danger, where death was very imminent, and they had not seen even a tear coming out of his eyes. They had never seen him in any desperate, hopeless moment. What has happened to him now -- now when he has succeeded, when he is the world conqueror?

They knocked on the door, they went in and they asked, 'What has happened to you? Why are you crying like a child?' He said, 'Now that I have succeeded, I know it has been a failure. Now I know that I stand exactly in the same place as I used to be in when I started this nonsense of conquering the world.And the point has become clear to me now because there is no other world to conquer anymore -- otherwise I could have remained on the journey, I could have started conquering another world. Now there is no other world to conquer, now there is nothing else to do, and suddenly I am thrown to myself.'

A successful man is always thrown to himself in the end and then he suffers tortures of hell because he wasted his whole life. He searched and searched, he staked everything that he had, now he is successful -- and his heart is empty and his soul is meaningless and there is no fragrance, there is no benediction.

So the first thing is to know exactly what you are seeking. I insist upon it because the more you focus your eyes on the object of your search, the more the object starts disappearing. When your eyes are absolutely fixed, suddenly there is nothing to seek; immediately your eyes start turning towards yourself. When there is no object for search, when all objects have disappeared, there is emptiness. In that emptiness is conversion, turning in. You suddenly start looking at yourself. Now there is nothing to seek, and a new desire arises to know this seeker.

If there is something to seek, you are a worldly man; if there is nothing to seek, and the question 'Who is this seeker?' has become important to you, then you are a religious man. This is the way I define the worldly and the religious.