Celebrating Fingers Pointing To The Moon #3

To live blissfully is the only true prayer, the only true religion. Religion has nothing to do with god and all the mythologies that have been created around the concept of god. It has nothing to do with after-life, with hell or heaven. It is simply the art of living here and now totally. And to live totally is to be blissful, to live partially is to be miserable. Anything that you do half-heartedly will bring misery to you because it will divide you. It will create a split, it will create a subtle schizophrenia.

And we are continuously doing things half-heartedly. Not one thing but almost everything we do is half-hearted. Hence we become divided into thousands of fragments, we become a crowd. Our center is lost in that crowd. We become many voices. There is no silence, no music, no song; nothing is possible with this crowd inside. And the way that we have created this crowd is that we have been doing everything half-hearted. So one part goes on doing something, another part goes on undoing it. One part goes to the north, another goes to the south. One part wants to do something, another part resists doing it.

Sannyas means becoming aware of this situation and changing the whole gestalt. The gestalt that you have lived up to now has to be changed totally, radically. It is not a question of whitewashing, it is not even a question of renovating the old ruins, it is simply demolishing the whole structure and beginning from abc.

Start doing things, small things, totally. You have gone for a walk: then be total in your walk. Enjoy it, as if life consists only of walking and nothing else, as if walking is the ultimate. You have gone to swim; then swim and forget everything. Then there is no past and no future, only you and the water and the present moment. In this way you will learn slowly slowly the art of being total. Then go on applying the same art to your whole life. One day the miracle happens, when all the parts melt into one unity. That unity is your soul, that harmony is your soul. And when you are in harmony you know that the whole existence is in harmony. You know only that which you are. You can't know more than that.

To be in harmony within oneself is to know the ultimate harmony of existence. One can call it god, nirvana, truth, or one can be simply silent about it because no word is adequate enough. Nothing can express it, nothing can explain it. The mystery remains a mystery.

UNLESS RELIGION BECOMES A CELEBRATION THERE IS NO FUTURE FOR RELIGION

Barbara literally means a stranger. And that is true: we are all strangers in this world, we are here only for the time being. This is not our home; at the most it is a caravanserai.

I am not against the world. Use the caravanserai as much as you can, but don't fall into the fallacy that it your home. Tomorrow you will have to leave it, and if you start thinking that this is your home it will create misery. If you know that it is only a serai there is no question of misery; you simply say goodbye and you never look back.

Barbara also has a symbolic meaning. That too is beautiful. The symbolic meaning is coming with joy. Sannyas is possible only if you come with joy.

Religious people have lived too seriously for too long. Their very seriousness has destroyed religion on the earth, because when something becomes too serious healthy people don't get attracted towards it. It attracts only the unhealthy, the pathological. It does not attract the young people, the alive people. It attracts only the dead, the old. And that's what has happened to religion.

In the churches, in the temples you can see almost dead people sitting there, people who have died long before; they are just living a kind of posthumous existence. Temples and churches are full of ghosts, and the reason is that religion has become too serious. People are religious because life is such a misery. They are tired of the misery; it is such an agony that they want to escape.

That is not my vision of religion. Escapism is not religion. Life is not misery, life has its own joys; of course they are temporary, momentary. But even a momentary rainbow is beautiful. Just because they are momentary I would not like to destroy rainbows.

A dewdrop shining in the morning sun is tremendously beautiful, although it is only for the moment, soon it will evaporate. But if dewdrops disappeared from the world the world would be a little less than it is. It would lose something tremendously significant.

I am not against the world and its joys -- on the contrary. Life is so joyful, even though it is temporary -- how much more joy is possible if we attain to eternity!

So my sannyas is rooted in joy, not in misery. We have tasted a little bit in life, we would like to know the whole of it. Life has only given us glimpses, faraway glimpses. We would like to reach those peaks.

My sannyas is a search for the ultimate blissfulness; hence only those who come to me with joy will be able to understand me. My effort here is to make religion more like a song, more like love, more like laughter, more like play. Unless religion becomes a celebration there is no future for religion. Each of my sannyasins has to become a proof of it, a living proof of joy. That is the meaning of your name -- let it also become the meaning of your life.

REACH GOD SINGING AND DANCING

Become a song. Drop all seriousness.
When one can reach god singing and dancing, it is foolish to go with a long face. And as far as I know, he avoids long faces. He is afraid of your so-called saints. Saints are not good company to keep. Sinners are far better as far as company is concerned. They laugh, they smile, they play; they are non-serious.

My whole approach is non-serious. It is playfulness. I want religion to become more and more playful. I would like churches and temples to become playgrounds, theatres, where people can dance and sing and can have disco parties! If the whole earth can laugh loudly god is bound to come to earth immediately. He has been avoiding earth for many centuries because of the saints.

So please don't be a saint! That's the meaning of your name: don't be a saint, be a singer!

How long will you be here?
-- Now I don't know.
-- That's good!
-- I have a ticket for Sunday but...
-- Tickets won't work any more!
-- No!

BE UTTERLY DRUNK WITH THE JOYS OF LIFE

Dionisio is one of the most beautiful names. It means the god of wine.
The true god is bound to be a god of wine. A god that can't make you drunk is not worth calling god. Except for Dionysius, all gods are false! -- and he has disappeared from the world. Religion has been taken over by sad people, serious people -- and seriousness is a kind of disease, it is pathological.

Health is never serious. Health is laughter, health is singing, health is a dance. The healthier you are, the more you take life as a play. The whole existence becomes fun.

That was the religion of Dionysius but the serious people drove him out of existence. All the churches, all the temples and all the mosques are full of psychologically ill people.

The healthy person feels almost repulsed by religion, for the simple reason that the healthy person wants to live totally. Health means life; it is never renunciation. Renunciation is a kind of suicide, a slow suicide. Renouncing life means you are against god, because he is the creator of life and you are renouncing it.

I am all for Dionysius. Live totally, be utterly drunk with the joys of life, with the beauty and the blessing of existence. It is tremendous, it is overwhelming. Love life -- that is prayer -- and live with such abundance, with such totality that you can be absolutely lost in the whole. That's my definition of being holy.

My effort here is to revive Dionysius. It is a very difficult task because all the priests and all the politicians are against it. They have great investment in seriousness; their egos are involved.

If people start laughing and dancing and taking life as fun, then where will all these so-called holy people and saints and the pious people and the moralists and the puritans be? They will have to be thrown on the junk-heap. We can save a few specimens in the museums...
The future belongs to Dionysius.

How long will you be here?
-- One month.
-- That's good. Do a few groups... and get drunk!

A SHIFT FROM THE HEAD TO THE HEART

Mind is very cunning, it is never simple. The heart is never cunning, it is always simple. To be simple means a shift from the head to the heart.

We live through the head. That's why our life goes on becoming more and more complicated, more and more like a jigsaw puzzle: nothing seems to fit. And the more we try to be clever, the more in a mess we are. That has been our history: man has gone more and more insane. Now the whole earth is almost like a madhouse. The time has come, if humanity is to survive at all, for a great shift to happen: we have to move from the head to the heart. Otherwise the head is ready to commit suicide. It has created so much misery and so much boredom and so many problems that suicide seems to be the only way out. The whole earth is preparing for suicide. It is going to be a global suicide, unless a miracle happens.

And this is going to be the miracle -- if the miracle happens this is the miracle -- a shift, a great shift, a radical change in the very outlook: we will start living from the heart. We will drop the whole universe of the mind totally and we will start afresh like small children. That's how a sannyasin has to be: he has to live from the heart. He has to feel more, think less, he has to be more sensitive and less logical.
Be more and more heartful and your life will become a sheer joy.

SANNYAS IS THE VERY SPIRIT OF FESTIVITY

My approach towards life is not of logic but of love. Through logic it is not possible to know life and its meaning; it is only through love that life reveals its secrets. Hence it is not syllogism that is going to help you; it is singing, dancing, celebrating.

We have lived too long in the head. The heart has been abandoned; we have deserted it -- and it is our true home. The heart only knows songs, it only knows how to dance, it only knows how to love. That's why we have abandoned it, because the heart cannot help you to be very rich, it cannot help you to be president of a country or a prime minister, it cannot help you in any ego trips. It is absolutely non-ambitious. It is perfectly happy as it is, it is utterly contented.

A sannyasin has to move from the head to the heart; a sannyasin has to become headless and heart-full. Then one can start singing like birds in the morning for no reason at all, just for the sheer joy of it. A new day has started, the sun has risen and the birds are happy welcoming the new day. They are rejoicing: the darkness is over, the night is over. They are celebrating, they are in a festive mood. And a sannyasin is always in a festive mood. He is the very spirit of festivity. The dimension of a sannyasin is the festive dimension.

So more and more sing, sing madly, dance. Dance as a drunkard and sing as a madman, and you will not be far away from god. God is very close when one is drunk, very close when one is utterly mad.

The clever never know anything of life's secrets -- they are too clever. Life reveals itself only to the simple ones. So be simple, be ordinary, and become a song.

THE INEXHAUSTIBLE SOURCE OF ENERGY WITHIN YOU

Bliss is possible only when the mind is put aside, when the mind is no more interfering, when the mind is no more playing its games, when you have seen the strategies of the mind, its tricks, through and through, when you have become aware of how the mind has been deceiving you for so long. And don't fight with the mind, because if you fight with the mind... That is its last strategy; if you fight with the mind you have to remain entangled with it. If you have to fight with the mind you have to use the same tactics as the mind.

So the whole art is seeing through and through, and then without any fight simply putting it aside; just slipping out of it as a snake slips out of its old skin, without any fight. And the moment it happens, for the first time you feel that you are infinite. It was the mind that was giving you a definition, a limitation. It was the mind that was framing you, otherwise you are the unframed sky.

And the moment limitations disappear bliss arises. Bliss is freedom, freedom from all limitations. The body is a limitation, but it is easy to know that `I am not the body.' You can feel it very easily, that you are not the body. When you are feeling hungry you know that hunger is in the body and you are a watcher. When you feel thirsty you know that the thirst is in the body and you are the watcher. When you drink water and the thirst is quenched you know that the body is satisfied and you are the watcher.

It is more difficult with the mind because it is very close. Somebody insults you and you become angry; to watch in that moment seems very difficult. You are so enraged that you forget all about watchfulness. And those are the moments in which to be aware. When anger possesses you, greed possesses you, lust possesses you, be watchful. Go on reminding yourself `I am not this.' Keep your coolness. And you will be surprised that if you can keep your coolness even for a few seconds, the anger disappears like a cloud that has come and gone. And a great peace arises, the peace that is always there when the storm goes, the silence that follows the storm.

When lust takes possession of you watch and see, soon it will be gone. Nothing remains forever, in the mind everything is continuously changing. Just wait and watch, and when it is gone you will feel so strengthened, so full of vigour, so full of energy that you will be surprised. And this is the energy that could have been lost in lust, in anger, in greed.

And when you go on becoming more and more full of energy. When you start overflowing with energy great delight arises. Energy, overflowing energy, is a delight. It is bliss. And when you have come to know the inexhaustible source of energy within you that is no-mind, you have discovered god. It is not somewhere in the skies, it is within you. It is your very being.

FROM PROSE TO POETRY... FROM HEAD TO HEART...

A sannyasin has to be a song. He has to change his life-style from prose to poetry, from mathematics to music, from logic to love, from head to heart. Then one encounters the beauty of existence. And god is nothing but another name for the beauty of existence.

People are missing god because they are trained in logic, mathematics, and those are not the right ways to approach beauty. If you ask a mathematician about the beauty of a rose flower he will be at a loss to answer. He can give you all kinds of measurements, but beauty is immeasurable. If you ask the scientist he can show you all the elements the rose flower is made of -- how much earth and how much water and how much air -- but beauty will not be a part of it at all. Beauty will escape him.

It is only the eye of a poet that can catch hold of the mysterious. It is from the vision of a musician that beauty cannot escape; it is caught. And god is the ultimate beauty, the beauty of the total universe.

We have to learn different ways of approaching life. That's why I say move from prose to poetry, from mathematics to music, from logic to love ... in short from head to heart. Then suddenly you will encounter god everywhere.

How long will you be here?
-- Four days.
-- Four days! (laughter) Are you missing spaghetti or something? (much laughter)
-- I haven't got any money.
-- Mm! (a pause) Then come back again.

And we have an Italian Momma who is doing great things here!
-- What does the Momma do?
-- Spaghetti! All our sannyasins are full of spaghetti!

And come back; money or no money, don't be worried! For Italians I have a soft heart!

WE ARE NOT ORPHANS -- EXISTENCE CARES FOR US

One can be blissful only if one understands this fundamental law of life, that god is our protection, that we are not orphans, that we are not accidents, that existence cares for us, that existence showers love, that existence is absolutely concerned about our welfare.

Once this is understood, not only intellectually but existentially, once this is felt, once this becomes your own experience, life takes an absolutely new turn. One starts feeling blissful for no reason at all. Whereas before misery existed and persisted for no reason at all, now bliss exists for no reason at all. It is the same energy that was becoming misery because we were feeling alone, separated, afraid of this vast existence, struggling on our own with a small energy against the whole, knowing perfectly well that we were doomed to fail. That is why people are miserable.

An irreligious person cannot be blissful; it is impossible. At the most he can be resigned to the anxieties, to the problem of life. He can accept them in a cold way. He can be indifferent to them, he can practise a certain indifference but he cannot be joyful, he cannot be blissful.

Blissfulness is basically religious. It is only through religion that bliss starts growing in you. And the reason is that the moment you see that you are protected -- that this is your home, that you are surrounded by energies which are not antagonistic to you but very friendly, very loving, that you are needed and loved -- immediately a great explosion of bliss happens.

THE HEART IS ABSOLUTE POSITIVITY

Mind is incapable of praising. It can only complain, it can only find fault. It lives in fault-finding, its very existence depends on negativity. It counts the thorns in a rose bush and avoids the roses.

The heart can praise, can only praise. It is absolute positivity. It knows how to rejoice with the roses.

To praise god means to live your life through the heart and not through the mind. Then your whole life becomes prayer. And unless your whole life is a prayer nothing is going to help. These small prayers which people do in churches and temples are utterly meaningless.

PRAISE BECOMES A BRIDGE BETWEEN YOU AND EXISTENCE

Bliss is like fragrance and the praise of god is like the flower. When you praise god something inside you opens up like a bud and the fragrance is released. That fragrance is bliss. And your heart opens only when you are ready to praise.

There are only two types of people in the world, those who complain and those who praise. The complainers remain miserable because their heart never opens up, never becomes a flower. Their very approach is negative. They only look at the darker side of things , they never look at the brighter side. They count thorns, they never praise the roses.

To praise god means to praise this existence. There is no other god. This whole existence -- the stars, the trees, the people, the animals, the birds, the mountains, the oceans -- this totality is what god is. God is not a person, just a name for the whole.

When you start praising the beauty of the flowers and the silence of darkness and the joy of a river rushing towards the ocean, something starts opening up within you. You also start growing, you are no more closed. The praise becomes a bridge between you and existence. You become more and more sensitive, more and more poetic, more and more aesthetic. Your sensibility makes you aware of the immense beauty that surrounds us, and of the great mystery which is unfathomable, which has no beginning and no end.

The feeling that we are part of this great mystery creates great rejoicing. Praise is prayer, and bliss is the fragrance of prayer.

DANCE IS AN END UNTO ITSELF

Nartano means the dance. And that's what a sannyasin has to become.
Life should be light, not heavy. One should not carry a burden. The past creates the burden and cripples you. You cannot dance if there is too much past.

People are carrying mountains of the past and they are crushed underneath, they cannot dance. One has to put aside the whole past, one has to be light, then one can dance. And when one can dance like a peacock under the clouds, one has to know what prayer is, what meditation is.

Dance is one of the most significant experiences, literally, because it is the only experience in which you can be utterly lost and yet you are perfectly aware. The dancer loses himself in his dance and yet is absolutely aware. It is a very strange and paradoxical experience; hence it is of great significance.

That's how god happens: one is utterly lost and yet fully aware; in one sense drunk, absolutely drunk, in another sense absolutely awake.

Dance gives you the first glimpse of it. So while you are here dance more and more, and enjoy dance, literally, actually. And then metaphorically also, make your life more like a dance rather than like running.

People are running hither and thither, not knowing why, for what. They just go on gaining more and more speed, thinking that if you have more speed you are bound to achieve -- not knowing what exactly it is that they want to achieve.

Dance is a totally different kind of experience. There is no achievement, there is no goal. You are simply enjoying the experience itself. You are not going anywhere. There is no destination in it. It is means and it is the end also. It is an end unto itself.

WE ARE MADE OF MUSIC

Deva means divine; sangit means music -- divine music.

It is always there, it is just that we are so noisy that we cannot hear it. We are so full of garbage that we go on missing that which is precious. We are so full of hot air that we never become aware of the beauty, the joy, the dance, the music, that existence is.

The stars are dancing in deep harmony. The whole existence is an orchestra and everything is in tune with everything else. Nothing is separate, everything is meeting and merging with everything else. It is a tremendous symphony.

To be a sannyasin means to fall in tune with this symphony. Be more silent so you can hear the music. Be more still so that you can feel that which surrounds you, within and without.

We are made of music. That is the realisation of all the mystics of all the ages.

LIFE IS GOD

Life is divine. Up to now all the religions have been anti-life. Not that Jesus and Buddha and Krishna were anti-life, but Christians and Buddhists and Hindus have been anti-life. The awakened ones cannot be anti-life, but the priests that gather around them have always felt that if they were for life then the whole business of religion would stop. Then people would say 'You are not needed. We can live our lives without you.' Hence the priests have to be against life, only then can they create a business out of religion. So they condemn life in every possible way. And they have created a very poisoned atmosphere around the earth, they have poisoned everybody's mind.

My effort here is to help you to get out of that conditioning. I want to declare that life is god, that life and god are synonymous. Life is god's manifestation. Renouncing life means renouncing god. If you renounce his visible form you are automatically renouncing his invisible reality. The invisible can be found only through the visible; the visible is the entrance. Life is the door to god.

Rejoice in it -- it is a blessing. Make it a dance, a song, a celebration. Love life, worship life, let your life be as sincere, as authentic and true as possible, and let it be as total and whole as possible. When life is whole one is holy. For me, that's the only way to become a sage, a true sage.

BECOME A CELEBRATION

Man ordinarily lives a life which is a drag. (laughter) He lives in such a boring way. Seriously and heavily, he somehow goes on pulling himself towards the grave. There is nowhere else to go. With such great effort the result is the grave!

There is another way of living: one can dance and sing. And the moment you start dancing and singing and enjoying life, death starts disappearing. You start having experiences, glimpses of eternity, of the immortal, of the divine.

So become a song and then all bliss is yours. Become a celebration. My sannyas is simply initiation into a life of love and laughter. It is difficult for a Japanese (laughter) ... very difficult to laugh. But I will corrupt you! -- don't be worried. My people will seduce you. The whole climate here is corruptive and seductive!

ALWAYS ENTER UNKNOWN TERRITORY

Life should be lived like a river, not like a pond. One should be flowing, moving, dynamic. One should be always moving into the beyond, always entering into unknown territory. Life can only be blissful if it is an adventure. And the river is a symbol of adventure: it goes on and on seeking and searching for the ultimate merger with the ocean. Until it reaches the ocean it never stops for a single moment. And it dances the whole way, it sings the whole way, it laughs the whole way!
The whole pilgrimage is a celebration. Remember it.

People have become stagnant pools. Now their life is simply going nowhere or going around in circles. Their life is a repetition, a dull, dead routine; and then they feel bored. Everywhere you can see people's faces bored, utterly bored. Boredom is one of the greatest problems facing modern man, for the simple reason that people have stopped flowing and growing, people have stopped seeking and searching. People are no more adventurous; they have become things, machines!
Never allow that to happen to you.

PLUG YOURSELF INTO YOUR OWN BEING

Bliss makes one an emperor. You can possess the whole world but you will remain a beggar if deep inside you bliss is not happening. If deep inside you there is misery, suffering, anguish, anxiety, then you may sit on a throne of gold but it is irrelevant. It is wasting your life. And that's what millions of people go on doing. They have all become achievers: achieve this, achieve that. They keep themselves engaged so that they don't have to look in, because there they find great misery, great anxiety. They want to remain oblivious of it so they go on from one conquest to another conquest, from one desire to another desire, endlessly. But their whole life is futile.

Unless your inner being is full of bliss you have not lived at all. And the way to bliss is not difficult; it takes a little perseverance, persistence, patience, but it is not difficult. If I can attain it, you can attain it. In fact to use the word 'attain' for it is not right. It is already there, we just have to become connected with it. We are disjointed; we have to plug ourselves into our own being. We have to become rooted, that's all.

And that's what meditation is all about: getting roots in your innermost being. Once your roots start growing, your branches become green, new leaves start coming, you gather great foliage, joy, life, and birds start singing around you, and flowers are bound to happen. Once the roots are healthy, flowers are bound to happen. And when a man flowers no other flower can compete with it, because it is a flowering of consciousness.

Bliss is another name for the flowering of consciousness. And the moment you have tasted bliss, you have tasted deathlessness, eternity, you have tasted god. After that, life is a celebration, an eternal delight.

Spring represents abundant life. Spring is the peak of life. Life celebrates, dances and sings, when the Spring comes. Sannyas has to be a Spring to you, because it is the beginning of abundant life.

We are living in tiny cells while the whole sky is ours. We are living by a small light, by candlelight, while all the suns and the stars belong to us. We are poor just because of our own decision to remain poor; otherwise we are not meant to be poor, we are not meant to be beggars. The whole of life and all that it contains is ours. We are as vast as the universe, as eternal as life. All the depth of god is ours, and all the height.

Sannyas is only a beginning, and beginning of coming out of your prison cell, the ego, the mind. It takes a little time to get accustomed to the open sky, to the insecurity of it and the beauty of its insecurity. It takes a little time for the eyes to become adjusted to so much light, to so many colours. The old cell seems to be cosy, familiar, and we have lived in it for lives. We have decorated it and we have furnished it according to our needs. It seems familiar; one feels good in it, just out of habit.

But we have suffered enough: it cripples us, it paralyses us. It gives a certain false sense of safety and security, but it is really a grave. It is not life, it is death. Millions of people are not alive. They only appear alive, otherwise they are dead. They don't know what life is. Just to be able to breathe is not life. Unless you start experiencing god never believe that you are alive.

Only with the experience of god does life begin. Before that all is preparation for that ultimate experience.

Grace is inner beauty, the beauty of the soul. Just as the body has a certain beauty of its own, the soul also has a beauty of its own. And just as a body can be ugly, a soul can also be ugly.

We take every care of the body to make it more beautiful. We never take any care of the soul; hence it is almost always ugly. It is very rare to find a person whose soul is beautiful, because nobody takes any care. No beauty parlours exist for the soul, no cosmetics, no beauticians. Nobody has any idea that the inner world also needs care, nourishment, nurturing.

So on the surface we go on becoming more and more beautiful, and deep inside there are only wounds, ugly wounds where flowers could have been. On the surface we have many things that help us to be beautiful, to be healthy, to be hygienic, but our inner world is completely neglected, as if we have abandoned it. We don't look at it. Only weeds grow there, no roses, It is a very upside-down situation, a very topsy-turvy world: people thinking too much of the physical, which is momentary, and not thinking at all of the soul, which is eternal.

I am not against the body. Take every care of the body -- it is a beautiful gift of god. But it only a very small fragment, it is not your real being. It is your house -- decorate it, clean it -- but it is not you. You also need a bath. And only when you start becoming beautiful inside does grace arise.

The inner world is full of jealousy, hatred, anger, violence, ego -- and these are poisons. These keep you ill. They never allow your soul to be healthy and whole.

One has to uproot all these weeds. This is what sannyas is all about, uprooting all these poisonous weeds from the inner world and preparing the inner world for roses.

And the miracle is that the moment you have uprooted all the weeds, roses start growing on their own. God starts descending in you. You become worthy, you start deserving god. You become a host and he becomes the guest. And then there is great grace overflowing.

To be graceful is to be blissful, because one has come home. One has achieved the unachievable, one has fulfilled one's destiny; hence one can rejoice and celebrate.

Man is also a flower, a flower of consciousness; hence it is invisible. It is not an ordinary rose, not an objective rose, but something that belongs to subjectivity. It is something inward, it consists of consciousness. But very few people become flowers. Many remain buds, they never open up; hence they never become aware of the meaning of life.

Only when a flower opens, blooms, releases its fragrance, is the meaning of life realised. Then one knows one's significance. Then one comes to feel that one is not accidental, that one is very intrinsic to existence. And the moment it is felt there is great rejoicing.

From now onwards you have to be a farmer of the inner world. You have to cultivate your own heart. You have to sow the seeds of bliss so that one day you can reap the crop of bliss.

It happened that Buddha was passing by the side of a farm. The farmer was sitting just near the fence. Buddha was also tired so he sat by the side of the farmer. The farmer said 'I cannot understand you people. You never do a thing, you simply go on wandering from here to there. All that you do is sit with closed eyes under trees. What kind of work is this? What are you doing? We are working from the morning till evening. You people are just lazy!'

Buddha laughed and he said 'That's not right. I am also a farmer, but my farm is invisible to you. My own being is my farm and I saw the seeds of bliss. When you see me sitting with closed eyes underneath a tree, do you think I am being lazy? I am doing the hardest work that a man is capable of. I am working. I am doing as much as you are doing, even more, because at least you sleep at night; I am not allowing any sleep to my being. The body sleeps, but I continue to work in my consciousness. I remain aware, alert twenty-four hours a day. Even in my sleep I have to be watchful because the thing that I am growing needs constant watchfulness.'

I don't know whether the farmer understood it or not, but Buddha was saying something very significant.

How long will you be here?
-- Two days.
-- Two days? That's great! There are a few people who stay only one day! Next time come and stay for at least three days! Slowly, slowly...?

Bliss and freedom are always together, inseparably together, inevitably together. If one is blissful one is always free, and vice versa; if one is free one is bound to be blissful. They are like two sides of the same coin, achieve one and the other follows.

There have been two kinds of seekers in the world: those who seek bliss and those who seek freedom. But they both arrive at the same point, at the same space, which is both together, simultaneously. It is blissful freedom or freedom-full bliss. And that's the goal of sannyas.

These two words can help you tremendously. If you can keep alert not to create bondage for yourself and not to create misery for yourself, god is not far away. It is just around the corner.

Bliss can only come through wisdom. It is a by-product. You cannot achieve it directly. You have to be wise and then bliss comes of its own accord. But by being wise I don't mean that you have to be knowledgeable, that you have to know the scriptures, that you have to collect much information.

Knowledge is not wisdom. On the contrary knowledge is a hindrance to wisdom. Wisdom comes to the innocent ones, wisdom is a state of innocence. One who knows that he knows nothing has started moving towards wisdom, because now he will be full of wonder, full of awe; the whole existence will appear in a totally different light to him.

When you approach existence through your knowledge you demystify it, because your ego says 'I know, I know everything.' And when you know, the wonder dies; when you know, there is no awe; when you know, your life loses something immensely valuable. It cannot move in the dimension of the mysterious. Even ordinary things, the rocks, the trees, the people -- everything is simply mysterious. And to experience that mystery is to experience god. Knowledgeable people never experience god. A sinner can experience but a pundit, never...

And I feel a little apprehensive about you. Why have you shaved you head?
-- I never did it before... until my baby was born. Then I got the idea from him.
-- The baby gave you the idea?

Yes, my baby.
-- The baby also seems to be dangerous! Some ancient Hindu is born to you, it seems. he must have been a Hindu mahatma in his past life. If the idea comes from the baby, beware of the baby! He may give you more ideas! Watch out!

This happens: when people come from the West to India.... There they are in a certain bondage called Christianity. They are simply changing prisons, changing from one prison to another prison.

My sannyas is neither Christian nor Hindu not Mohammedan. It is simply freedom from all creeds and all dogmas.
So start growing your hair... otherwise you will look out of place here!

How long will you be here?
-- As long as possible.
-- Yes. You have to be here until your hair has grown!

The desire to rule is something very essential, but it can take two routes. Either it can become a desire to rule over others -- then it leads you into politics and into all kinds of violence, struggle, or it can become a desire to rule over oneself -- then it takes you into religion. It is the same desire but it can have a totally different meaning. It all depends on how you interpret it.

The majority takes an extrovert interpretation, hence the majority lives in misery and creates misery for others, because to rule over others is ugly. If you succeed you destroy others, and by destroying others you cannot create yourself. That is not the way to be creative. First you destroy others, then ultimately you will destroy yourself.

That's why the story of Adolf Hitler is very significant. First he destroyed millions of people, pushed the whole world to the very fringe of destruction, and then he committed suicide. It is the whole story of the politician. Very few politicians live the whole circle -- that is another matter. But politics is ugly.

An introvert interpretation is needed, and that's what sannyas is: a desire to rule over oneself, a desire to become a master of oneself. It has tremendous beauty. Not only are you blissful, but you create opportunities for others to be blissful also.

Man lives in defeat unless he finds bliss. He lives in failure and frustration unless he finds bliss. And bliss is not far away, it is within you, it is very close by. It can happen right now. No time is needed for it to happen because it is not a question of travelling a long distance. It is not a question of distance at all; it is your nature. You have just to relax within yourself, rest within yourself, and suddenly you start feeling it, being it. And the moment you start feeling bliss within yourself is the moment of victory. Not that you have conquered the world: you have conquered something far more valuable, you have conquered yourself. And nobody can take away this victory from you; not even death can destroy it.

But people go on searching for money, power, prestige; and everywhere they find frustration, everywhere they find failure. Their search is doomed from the very beginning because what they are searching for is inside them, and they are searching for it outside themselves. It cannot be found there because it is not there, it can only be found within. They are running hither and thither, going everywhere except in.

They go everywhere. They are ready to go to the moon, to Everest; they are ready to travel ANY distance. They have completely forgotten just one thing, and that is how to sit silently within themselves, utterly in tune with their being.

Just still, silent, doing nothing. Then each breath is such bliss, then each moment is so pregnant with beauty and benediction that one cannot imagine it. One has to feel it to know it -- there is no other way.

That's what we are trying to do here. it is an experiment in helping people to go in.

Victory is our birthright. All failure is false. We fail only in dreams; if we wake up we are victorious. And if we wake up all the failures look so ridiculous, so impossible.

It is said that when Bodhidharma became enlightened he laughed loudly. His friends asked 'What is the matter?' And he said 'I am laughing at all those thousands of lives I have been asleep thinking I am this, thinking I am that, trying to achieve this, trying to achieve that, and always failing. Now I know that it was only a long, long nightmare. My reality is totally different from that dreaming.'

Our reality is made of the same stuff as god. We are parts of god so how can we be failures? But we are trying to live as egos -- that creates the whole trouble. Then we are doomed to fail.

My effort here is to help you wake up so that you can come to know that this whole kingdom is yours and nothing is missing. From the very beginning nothing is missing, from the very beginning all is as absolutely perfect as it can be. The moment one realises it life becomes a celebration.

Bliss has no boundaries. That's why many people have decided to remain in misery -- because misery has boundaries and you feel safe with the boundaries. To move into the unbounded needs courage, it needs guts because you are taking the greatest risk of your life: moving into a vast ocean with no way, with no idea of where you will land. But once you start moving into the unknown, great joy is yours. Ecstasy is a by-product of adventure. When the adventure is for the ultimate, the ecstasy is ultimate.

And god is the ultimate adventure. |It brings great bliss, great benediction. But in the beginning it requires that you risk your total being. Less than that won't do.

Sannyas is taking a jump into the unknown. But I can assure you that without taking this jump into the unknown a man remains only a seed. He never becomes a tree, never comes to bloom, never becomes able to release his fragrance to the winds.

Bliss is an ocean, unbounded, infinite, with no beginning, no end. So don't waste your time with whatsoever begins and ends, it is not bliss. It is deceiving you, it is a false coin. You can call it pleasure, happiness, or whatsoever your like, but it is not bliss. It only appears to be bliss -- but remember that all that glitters is not gold. It is just a soap bubble shining in the sun. Maybe it looks very beautiful, all the colours of the rainbow are in the soap bubble. And it is good if children make soap bubbles, but it is very sad to see even old people playing with soap bubbles. It is a pity that people grow only in body and not in soul. Their body becomes old but their being remains childish.

Sannyas means a conscious effort to grow. And this has to be your criterion: anything that is not unbounded is not worthwhile, anything that is not eternal is not worthwhile, anything that is momentary is not worthwhile. In this way you negate the temporary and slowly slowly your consciousness starts rising towards the eternal.

Bliss is with the eternal. Bliss means a state of such peace, silence, that knows no disturbance, no suffering, no misery, that knows no darkness. All is light, and forever and forever.

Bliss has no form. It is not a thing, it is an experience like love. It is not like a flower, it is more like fragrance. You can feel it but you cannot catch hold of it. You can feel it but you cannot treasure it. You can feel it but you cannot show it to others unless they also are ready to move in the same space as you are in.

Hence it is unprovable. The sympathetic ones will feel it; they don't need any proof. The unsympathetic ones will ask for proof -- and there is no proof possible because it is not a thing. You cannot show it to them. If they ask 'What is bliss, where is it? Show it to us,' you can't show them anything.

And never try to define it, because it is indefinable. The very effort to define it destroys it. Never talk about it to unsympathetic people, because in the beginning it is very fragile. Talking about it can be destructive. They can argue against it, they can create doubt in you. It is very fragile in the beginning; hence for centuries schools have existed, mystery schools where the disciples only talk about their experience either to the master or to fellow travellers, because they will understand,. And they will help to strengthen it, they will support it, they will vouch for it. 'Yes,' they will say, 'This is how it happens. This has happened to me too.'

Sannyas is another effort to create a great mystery school on the earth again, because the old mystery schools have disappeared. Instead of those mystery schools we have bogus organised religions.

Jesus lived in the mystery school of the Essenes, he was brought up by the Essenes. That's why Christians don't have any records for eighteen years of his life: from the year he was twelve up to his thirtieth year, they don't have any records. For those eighteen years he lived secretly with the mystics.

In the past there were many mystery schools in the world. There were Egyptian mystery schools, Indian mystery schools, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Jewish. Now they have all disappeared. Instead of those beautiful schools there are hocus-pocus pseudo organisations.

Becoming a sannyasin means you are entering again into something mysterious. As you go deeper in yourself you will become more and more aware of what sannyas is, of what this communion of fellow travellers is, how a new family is being created, a universal family, a world family. Schools have never existed in this way. All other schools were local schools. There were Indian and Egyptian schools , but they were all local schools. Once in a while a few seekers travelled from one school to another: they were guests. But this is the first time an effort is being made to create a universal school.
The whole earth is going to be our field.

So be aware of the great importance, of the significance that sannyas is going to have in your life. Be alert, because this is just a beginning. Many things are going to happen to you through it.

Bliss is always perfect, it is never otherwise. It is just like a circle: a circle is always perfect, if it is not perfect it is not a circle. Perfection is intrinsic to bliss.

Don't seek perfection, seek bliss, and you will find perfection. If you seek perfection you will simply become neurotic, because perfection is a shadow of bliss and you can't seek the shadow. You can only seek the substance; the shadow comes with it inevitably.

Millions of people try to be perfect. They drive themselves crazy and others too. All perfectionists are neurotic people because they make great demands upon themselves and upon others. They are cruel. They cannot forgive. They cannot forgive themselves, hence they cannot forgive anybody else. They can't accept human limitations, they can't feel compassion for human frailty. They can;t accept the idea that to err is human. That is against their idea of perfection. Of course they remain miserable because they cannot achieve perfection. Nobody has ever achieved perfection this way, there is no direct way to perfection.

But one can find bliss. That's how a Buddha, a Jesus, a Zarathustra, become perfect: not by seeking perfection but by becoming blissful they are suddenly perfect. Nothing is missing. All suddenly fits together, the whole jigsaw puzzle suddenly fits together.

Bliss brings you a new vision of seeing, of being. Bliss away all your garbage, cleans you. It is a shower, it purifies you.

I am not teaching my people to be perfect. I am teaching my people to be blissful, to be totally blissful -- and then perfection comes of its own accord.

Pleasure is animal -- and millions know nothing more than that. They are only human animals. Happiness is human; very few people rise to that. Pleasure means exploiting the other, using the other as a means. Happiness means sharing. In pleasure you simply take, you don't give. In happiness it is both give and take; it is fifty-fifty. You give because you want -- it is a bargain.

Bliss is divine. You simply give; there is no question of getting anything back. You give for the sheer joy of giving.

Pleasure is physical, happiness is psychological, bliss is spiritual. One has to rise from pleasure into bliss. They all look alike but there are subtle difference, they are very subtle, but very important differences. If you slowly watch them within yourself then you will be able to see those differences: when it is pleasure, when it is happiness and when it is bliss.

Be alert and watchful and witness. And when you have found what is only pleasure don't hanker for it, don't desire it. Remain a little detached from it. I am not saying to repress it, just keep a little distance. Remain unco-operative, don't give energy to it. Give al little more energy to happiness -- but that too only for the time-being. When you have started feeling some glimpses of bliss then the whole energy has to be given to bliss. Then withdraw all your energy from pleasure and happiness and make it one-pointed, moving upwards. Then it becomes a peak, a very orgasmic peak.

Pleasure is momentary, happiness can last a little longer, but bliss can be forever. it is eternal.

Bliss is our home, that's why nobody can be at ease with misery. It is impossible to be at ease with misery because it is not our home, it is not our nature.

We are not meant to be miserable, hence our whole being rejects it. Our very nature is bliss, that is our home; but we have forgotten the way home, we are lost in the jungle of the world. So many things are attracting us, alluring us, fascinating us; we are running hither and thither and there is no time to come back home. The world goes on and on promising many things to us. Of course no promise is ever fulfilled, all promises are false. The goods are never delivered but we are such fools that we still go on believing. We go on being deceived again and again, still we go on believing.

Sannyas means a reconsideration of your whole life structure, a reconsideration in silence, in meditation, in contemplation.

One has to be cool enough to see what one has been doing to oneself, where one is moving. Is it possible that the world can fulfill one's desires? Has it ever been possible? Has anybody ever achieved anything in the outside world? There has not been a single person in the whole world, in the whole history of humanity, who can say that 'The world has not deceived me,' that 'I am fulfilled,' that 'I have arrived'. Not even Alexander the Great can say that. Only the few people who have moved inwards say they have found the home, they have found the ultimate resting place.

It is within you. Call it the kingdom of god, call it bliss, call it your self-nature -- these are different expressions for the same thing. But sannyas should become a radical change in your life-style. It should not be extravert any more.

Meditation is the only possibility for being joyous. Meditation is the door to a blissful life. Those who have not tasted meditation have not tasted of bliss either. They are synonymous, two sides of the same coin. You fulfil one side -- that is meditation -- and the other side comes as a reward, inevitably.

Without being meditative one can go on searching, looking everywhere, from one life into another life. One will find only frustration, misery, pain, suffering, hell. One will not find god, one will not find truth, one will not find bliss. And the irony is that if you had looked within you would have found that it has always been inside you. Meditation means looking within.

It is our nature to be blissful. We have forgotten how to commune with our won nature. We have forgotten the language the very language of being in touch with ourselves. My whole effort here is to help you to get in touch with yourself. And the moment you are in touch with yourself you are in touch with reality. That is another name for god.

Meditation is possible only through love, not through greed. Many people start meditating out of greed, they think they will get this and they will get that. They are interested in esoteric powers, in miracles, in all kinds of stupid things. But then meditation is not going to happen at all. From the very beginning they have taken a wrong step.

Meditation has to be your love affair, not your greed. Greed kills love, greed is poison to love. One loves for love's sake -- for no other reason, for no other motive. If one can meditate for the sheer joy of meditating, then something happens some day which is incalculable, immeasurable. It takes you beyond time, beyond mind. It takes you to the infinite, it takes you to the other shore. But these are all by-products.

You should not hanker for the other shore. If you meditate just to go to the other shore, meditation will never happen. If you simply meditate, meditation is going to happen and the other shore will follow as a natural course.

One should not meditate to achieve anything. Much is achieved, but that is not to be your motive. It has to be left to god. You meditate and whenever you are ready... whatsoever you are ready for, is bound to happen.

Nature is very generous. It is very just too, it is never unfair. If you are worthy of something you will get it, you are bound to get it. Not even a single moment will be lost; you will get it immediately. If you don't deserve it.

It is only in deep meditation that one becomes aware of god and also becomes aware that he is constantly watching you. Not even for a single moment are you left alone. He never abandons you. You can go astray, you can runaway from god as far as you can, but he follows you like a shadow, he remains in the deepest core of your being. And he is the only judge, so don't be bothered about what others say.

There are different kinds of moralities in the world. According to one society something is good, and according to some other society the same thing is bad. If one decides from other people's opinions then it will be impossible to know what is right and what is wrong.

The only way to decide is to face your own consciousness. Let decisions come from there. Hear your own inner voice, because that is god's voice. When your head is silent, the heart speaks -- and the heart is only a vehicle of god, god speaks through the heart. And he always guides you; his guidance is always available. And if he says something is right, it is right, even if the whole world says it is wrong. And if he says something is wrong then it is wrong, even though he whole world says it is right.

Let god be the ultimate judge, the ultimate deciding factor in your life, and then you will know that life is a bliss. Then life is a constant rejoicing.

Only a meditative person knows the difference between aloneness and loneliness. The non-meditative person knows no difference because he has no taste of aloneness. All that he knows is loneliness. Whenever he is not with somebody else, not engaged, occupied, he feels lonely, he feels suffocated in his loneliness, he feels miserable. He does not know that one's own company can also be a joy.

That's what the whole art of meditation is: to be joyous in your own company, unoccupied, unengaged, to be alone and yet utterly blissful.

Once you have understood the beauty of aloneness you will find how much you have been missing in the past, because to be together with somebody, howsoever beautiful it is, is nothing compared to the beauties of being alone. It can't have that silence, it can't have that peace, it can't have that overwhelming experience of the mysterious and the miraculous. It can't have that purity and innocence. It can't give you the sense of the eternal, the deathless, that which is beyond time.

Only when you are utterly alone do the mysteries of existence open up their doors for you. For the first time you are allowed as an insider into the mysteries of god.

Learn the art of being alone. And am not saying not to be together with people. One who knows how to be alone can be with people and yet remain alone. He can be in the crowd and yet remain alone. His aloneness remains untouched, his aloneness remains non-wavering. Then that person has a certain solidity about his being. You can feel his substantiality. You can feel his presence -- he has a presence. Ordinary people don't have any presence, they are hollow, non-substantial. They are just empty shells, containers without any content, bodies without any souls.

The soul is born only in aloneness, out of the womb of deep solitude the soul is born. And only with the birth of the soul do you start seeing that which is, experiencing that which is.
God is another name for that which is.

Bliss is bright, it is luminous, it is light. Misery is dark, misery is black. When you are miserable you are in a gloom, you are surrounded by a dark cloud. Even others can feel it. The miserable person creates a certain vibe around himself. He is walking death, a black hole. He sucks people's energy. He is destructive. He himself may not destroy anything, just his presence is destructive. And the opposite happens when you are blissful: you are creative.

You may not create anything in particular; your very presence, your vibe, your radiation, nourishes people. You are bubbling with joy. It is shining. You cannot hide bliss, it is impossible. It is such a bright sun that it shines forth and those who have eyes will be able to see it from thousands of miles away and will be pulled by it like a magnetic force.

That's how all the Buddhas down the ages have been working: in a subtle way their magnetism starts pulling people. Even unknowingly, unconsciously, people start travelling towards that light, the source of that light.

Now all kinds of communications are possible. The earth has become a small village, but in the days of Gautam Buddha or Lao Tzu it was not so. Still, from almost every part of the world people travelled to Gautam Buddha. There were no aeroplanes, no trains, no cars, no telephones, no postal system -- nothing of the sort. But in some mysterious way people travelled from all nooks and corners of the world.

Something invisible starts stirring people's heart. Those who are ready, those who for lives have been waiting for some light, for someone who is awakened, start moving towards him. They may not be alert as to why it is happening or how it is happening. They may be surprised themselves: 'What are we doing?' Many sannyasins here are surprised at what they are doing, at how they have arrived here. And they are puzzled when they become sannyasins -- they had never thought, not even dreamt about being a sannyasin ever in their life and suddenly something has possessed them.

Bliss has that magnetic energy. It is like a sun -- very invisible but very powerful. And it is impossible to hide it. Many times, many awakened ones have tried to hide it so that they are not bothered by other people, but nobody has ever been successful in that. Sooner or later people are bound to arrive.

Become blissful so that your bliss can become a blessing to the world. That's the only way we can thank god, that's the only way we can pay him back. He has given so much and we are so poor. But there is one way in which we can really show our gratitude -- and that is by becoming blissful and by sharing our bliss, by becoming luminous, by becoming alight for ourselves and for others too.

Bliss is a by-product, a by-product of the experience of inner light. Ordinarily we are full of darkness inside; hence nobody wants to go in, everybody wants to remain occupied with the outside. But that darkness is only a layer that we have accumulated, it is not our inner reality. We have to pass through that darkness to reach the centre, but the moment we reach the centre everything explodes into light. Our inner centre is full of light, full of divine light, eternal light. It is light.

To know it, to be it, brings great bliss. Then life is no longer ordinary, nothing is ordinary any more. Everything becomes suffused with the sacred, everything starts overflowing with beauty, benediction. The whole existence is transformed just by your reaching your inner core, because your vision is no more the same; you have a new vision. With the new vision the world is no more material, it becomes divine. It is full of godliness. Everything becomes simply god. That is the goal of sannyas.

It is within our reach. Because it is within our being we have not to go anywhere to seek it. We have just to be silent and still, so that we can settle inside at the centre. The more restless we are, the more on the circumference we are. The more still we are, the closer we are to the centre. When we are absolutely still, when nothing is moving, then we are centred. In that very moment you are reborn. Darkness disappears; the sunrise has happened, and bliss follows just like a shadow of the experience.

The awakening is called enlightenment because it is an experience of being full of light, overflowing with light.

Bliss happens only in innocence, in a state of not-knowing. The knowledgeable goes on missing, the knowledgeable person is the most far away from god. Even the sinners are not so far away. That's the whole meaning of the biblical story. The original sin was eating from the tree of knowledge, eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge. But the meaning is missed. It is so clear that that is the greatest sin, the original sin. But the religious people are very knowledgeable people; they go on committing the original sin.

Jesus says, 'Be like a child, only then will you enter into my kingdom of god.' That's the meaning of innocence. Drop knowledge, become a child again, full of wonder and awe, and you have taken the most important step towards god. Then everything else is easy, then everything else follows of its own accord.

Every child comes full of joy but we have created a society so pathological so miserable, that soon the child learns to be miserable, soon he starts forgetting the language of bliss. And the moment he learns the art of being miserable we think that he has become part of our society, he has become civilised, he is educated. Till we destroy his capacity to be joyous for no reason at all, we are not at ease. But every child comes with joy, brings joy, is full of joy -- and that joy has to be regained.

That's what sannyas is all about: it is an effort to attain a second childhood so that you can laugh again, so that you can dance again, so that you can wonder again, so that butterflies again become significant and life takes on a mysterious colour and everything becomes extraordinary.

The moment a person becomes a child again he is a sage, because he is again full of joy, he is again full of god. Joy is synonymous with god.

To be blissful is to be virtuous, to be miserable is to be in sin. It has been said down the ages that if you sin you will be miserable, and if you are virtuous you will be rewarded with bliss. I say to you just the opposite: if you are miserable you are in sin, if you are blissful you are virtuous.

Bliss is not a reward; bliss is a way of life, just as misery is a way of life. There are only two ways to live: to either live miserably or to live blissfully. And the choice is yours, the freedom is yours; you are free to choose. But remember you are not free not to choose, you will have to choose -- that is inevitable. But the freedom is there: one can decide to be miserable, then one can learn the whole art of being miserable. And there are so many people who can teach you how to be miserable; they are teaching already.

The whole society lives in misery and poisons every child. It teaches you ambition -- ambition is one of the causes of misery; it teaches you ego, pride -- that is one of the causes of misery; it teaches you guilt. It creates so much guilt in people that they become incapable of living, they become paralyzed. It makes you so afraid of life that you stop being alive, you somehow manage to live at the minimum. That seems safer, because if you live at the minimum, you will not commit many mistakes. The more you live, the more danger there is of committing more mistakes, of going astray. So people have become stagnant pools, dirty pools -- they stink. The whole of life is being managed by miserable people. They are the politicians and the priests and the professors, and they are the powerful people. It is very rare to find a person who has chosen to live blissfully. It needs tremendous intelligence to go alone; not with the crowd, not on the super-highway, but alone into the jungle where no path exists; where you have to create the path by walking, where you have to find your way, no map is available, where on each step there is danger and you are so alone that you cannot take shelter in somebody else. Hence very few people choose the path of bliss.

But once you have chosen the path of bliss, life starts happening to you in a multidimensional way, you start becoming richer every moment. And then danger is no more danger, it has a beauty of its own. It sharpens your sword, it sharpens your being, it gives you integrity. Then insecurity is not a question of fear -- you love it. You love it for its own sake, because the more insecure you are, the more your life is full of thrill and adventure. Then you don't hanker for safety, because you know that safety is death. Then you live dangerously because that is the only way to live.

To be a sannyasin means choosing to live blissfully, choosing to live dangerously, choosing to live not according to the crowd but according to your inner light, risking; because unless you risk you can't be an individual. You will remain just a small part in the big machine of the society, a cog in the wheel. You will not be your own self -- and not to be your own self is hell. To be your own self, to taste the joy of freedom, to open your wings to the unknown sky is the only way to know god.

It depends on us -- whether to be miserable or to be blissful. Basically it is our decision. People have decided to be miserable, that's why they are miserable. Nobody can help them unless they decide to snap out of their misery. Then it can happen in a single moment. Both possibilities are always there.

Sannyas means that from this moment onwards, you will always choose bliss instead of misery. Make it a conscious effort in every situation to find something which is blissful, and choose it. I have never come across a single situation in which bliss is not present. Of course misery is also present, in the same proportion. That's how life keeps balance, just like day and night. But it is for you to choose; there is no need to choose misery. You can let it pass. You can simply say, "I am fed up with you and I have decided to choose to be blissful."

Nobody is hindering us. We are our own enemies. We go on always choosing misery instead of bliss for a simple reason, and the reason is that the ego feeds on misery, it thrives on misery, it dies in bliss. When you are crying it is there, when you are all laughter it is no more there. When you are sad it is there, when you are rejoicing you cannot find it anymore.

All the awakened ones say, "We have looked inside ourselves but we don't find it at all," for the simple reason that it is not there, they have stopped feeding it, nourishing it.

Give it a try and you will be surprised that there is no need to analyze the misery, no need to go to its roots and causes as to why it is there. There is no point in thinking about it, about how to get out of it. All those efforts simply perpetuate it. One simply walks out of it.

Buddha used to say: It is as if your house is on fire. Then what do you do? You don't consults ancient scriptures to see what people used to do in the old days in such situations. You simply run out! Even if you are in your bathroom naked, you will forget all appropriateness. You will jump out of the window. You will forget to take even the towel with you. (laughter) This is not a time for etiquette! And I don't think anybody is going to take any note of it.

Buddha used to say that the situation is the same. We are living in misery. To live in misery is to live in a house which is on fire.

Jump out of it! And just across the road is the palace. And it is waiting for you, it belongs to you.How long will you be here?
-- For a long time.

That's very good. I don't think that you will ever go back! I know my people!