"And a youth said, speak to us of friendship.

And he answered, saying:

Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside.

For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."

And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;

For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;

For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.

If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.

For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed."

 

 

My eyes become full of tears when I see that Kahlil Gibran is only sometimes a vehicle of godliness, of truth -- but not always.

 

I would have loved him to be always on the sunlit peaks of consciousness, but he goes on down into the valleys, which are dark. Although his articulateness remains the same, and his poetry carries the same beauty, the truth is lost. He is so articulate that unless you know the truth you will not be able to make any distinction, where he goes on falling down and where he rises to the highest peaks.

 

His Zorba and his Buddha are not together; they are not an organic unity yet. So when Zorba speaks of course the language is the same as that of Buddha, but the meaning is not of Buddha. It seems he has a split personality, and I feel tears for him, that a man of such great genius could not manage to become one; he remained two -- just as every ordinary man is.

 

Kahlil Gibran is not enlightened; hence he cannot see the bird's eye view of the whole. But because he has great intelligence he manages, whenever he is falling down, to make his words hide his fall. I love the man, because it is very rare to find such a man, but I feel sorry for him too because he could not become integrated, crystallized. You will not be able to find when he is flying high like an eagle, and when he is just walking on the earth amongst you; you will not be able to recognize him. That's very unfortunate.

 

We have missed another Gautam Buddha for the simple reason that he was praised all over the world by those who knew nothing of the organic unity. He himself cannot see the contradictions, and neither will you be able to see the contradictions. But I want to be honest and sincere, because I love him, and love is a fire; it burns all that is false and saves only that which is true.

 

AND A YOUTH SAID, SPEAK TO US OF FRIENDSHIP.

 

The very word "friendship" is not of the heights -- the word "friendliness" rises to the moon, to the sun -- because the word "friendship" is just of the mind. It is confining -- you can be in friendship with only a few people. But friendliness is vast; you can be friendly to the trees, to the mountains, to the stars.

 

Friendship is hiding a bondage too. All words like "relationship," "friendship," are superficial. Lovingness, friendliness, have a totally different meaning. When you are talking about friendship it is a very small thing -- a kind of bondage, and dependence on the person with whom you feel the friendship.

 

But friendliness is freedom -- you are not dependent on anybody. Friendship is objective, and friendliness is your love shared unconditionally with the whole existence. They don't mean the same thing. Friendship can become any moment its opposite -- the so-called friend can turn into your enemy. But friendliness has no particular address. It is not for anybody, it is for the whole existence. It can never turn into its opposite.

 

Remember, that which can turn into its opposite very easily -- and you know friends become enemies, enemies become friends -- is very superficial, a false substitute. But friendliness is not addressed to anyone; it is the love overflowing within you, unconditionally. There is no possibility of it turning bitter -- you are the master of it. In friendship you are not the master. Friendship is like marriage, an artificial thing, but friendliness is your very nature.

 

AND A YOUTH SAID, SPEAK TO US OF FRIENDSHIP.

 

AND HE ANSWERED, SAYING:

 

YOUR FRIEND IS YOUR NEEDS ANSWERED.

 

This is an ugly statement, but it is a logical consequence because he has not changed the basic question. He should have told the youth that friendship is worthless; friendliness is invaluable.... your friend is your needs answered. I say it again: it is ugly, because friendship is demanding.

 

Friendliness simply gives its fragrance to all without any exception -- and it is fulfilled in giving it. It is not a need; it is an overflowing love. You can be friendly with the trees, you can be friendly with the stars, but there is no demand, no condition. Of course your needs will be fulfilled, but not because you have been demanding. Your friendliness will bring you tremendous treasures. Make a clear distinction between these two words.

 

Friendship is a prison.

 

Friendliness is absolute freedom.

 

You give out of your abundance; it is not a need. Of course, existence understands that the person who is giving without any demands is a rare being. Existence takes care of your needs, but they are not demanded. Even if it does not fulfill your needs, it simply shows that deep down in your unconscious you are clinging to the idea of friendship. Only fools can be deceived just by changing the words.

 

Existence is so abundant; just don't ask.

 

Because Kahlil Gibran remained a Christian.... Although he was a great intellectual, he was not a meditator. He is repeating Jesus Christ in different words; Jesus says, "Ask and it shall be given." He reduces you into a beggar. I say unto you, "Never ask and you will receive it. Ask and you are not going to get it." Your very asking is ugly.

 

Jesus says, "Seek and you will find." I say to you, "Just be silent, a nobody, and existence will pour into you from all directions" -- because the man who seeks is still seeking decorations for his ego, and existence does not understand the language of ego. No tree is an egoist, no mountain is an egoist, no bird is an egoist, but existence goes on and on giving them all that they need or even more than they need.

 

Jesus says, "Knock and the door shall be opened." These are superficial statements, because I know there is no door where you can knock. God is all over the place. Don't knock -- that is violence. Just wait.

 

Your waiting... you will be mature in your waiting. You will become capable of receiving, open. God always comes as a gift. God always comes to the emperors, not to the beggars. You need not go to God -- and even if you want to, where are you going to find Him? He can find you because He is the whole.

 

Neither ask nor seek nor knock on the door -- trust. If you are worthy, ripe, the spring is bound to come with thousands of flowers in your being.

 

Your friend is your needs answered.... The statement is Jewish, business-like.

 

Love is not a business.

 

Love is the song of your soul.

 

Friendship is the fragrance of that love, and winds will carry it over the seas, over the mountains to the faraway stars.

 

Love is not getting.

 

Love is giving -- and so is friendliness.

 

HE IS YOUR FIELD WHICH YOU SOW WITH LOVE AND REAP WITH THANKSGIVING.

 

Sounds good; Kahlil Gibran is a genius in finding beautiful words, but he knows nothing. Even behind his beautiful words and poetry there is darkness, unconsciousness. He is your field.... A friend is your field? You are going to exploit the field by sowing with love? It does not matter -- your love is not for the friend, your love is for reaping the crop.

 

And reap with thanksgiving.... It will be very strange to you that friends are one soul in two bodies. There is no question of thanksgiving, it is understood in silence. It is not the ugly "thank you," which is just a formality. And... SOW WITH LOVE.... You are going to exploit the friend. How can you sow with love? Your love is a facade, a bribe, a persuasion -- because of your love the friend will become a field for you. But your real interest is sowing the seeds and reaping the crop, and your thanksgiving is empty. If the friend has not given you anything, your thanksgiving will disappear.

 

Hence I say to you: Give, share with love, with no desire in your heart lurking anywhere for return, and the question of thanksgiving then takes a new dimension. You are thankful that the friend received your love, received your songs, received your abundance.

 

You should be thankful not because you have received from the friend; you should be thankful that he has not rejected. He had every right to reject. He was humble and he was understanding. Feel grateful, but for a totally different reason.

 

AND HE IS YOUR BOARD AND YOUR FIRESIDE.

 

What nonsense is he talking about? It hurts me because he is a very sensitive man. And he is your board and your fireside -- your friend? You should be a board for your friend and you should be a fireside for your friend. That is the difference between friendship and friendliness. I can forgive the youth who asked the question, but I cannot forgive Kahlil Gibran who is giving the answer.

 

WHEN YOUR FRIEND SPEAKS HIS MIND YOU FEAR NOT THE "NAY" IN YOUR OWN MIND, NOR DO YOU WITHHOLD THE "AY."

 

Why should one be afraid of a friend? -- then what are you going to do with the enemy? So when the friend speaks his mind, don't be afraid to say "no," because he will understand. And...nor do you withhold the "ay."

 

What is friendliness? If you cannot expose your heart, naked, in friendliness then you are a cunning businessman. You think of profit, you think of future, you think of the response.

 

Although you are feeling to say no, you are afraid that the friendship will be destroyed by your no. And he is your need, he is your board, he is your field... are you a cannibal?

 

It shows the secrets of a cunning mind: Say yes when you know that he will be happy, say no only when you are certain that he will be happy. You are not being honest, straightforward.

 

If you cannot be honest with a friend, with whom are you going to be honest? That's why I say: friendliness is a far greater and higher value. It can say no without any fear, because it knows the friend will understand, and he will be grateful to you that you were not deceiving him.

 

Friendliness means: standing exposed to each other, because you have a trust. Friendship is a very poor thing.

 

AND WHEN HE IS SILENT YOUR HEART CEASES NOT TO LISTEN TO HIS HEART.

 

This is the split personality of Kahlil Gibran. In the very invention of Almustafa he is being political. He is not speaking directly, he is speaking through Almustafa because Almustafa is only a fiction. But it is a good security; people will take it as poetry, a fiction, beautiful.

 

He has been praised all over the world for this small book, THE PROPHET. Perhaps I am the first one who is trying to shift and create a clear-cut division between when he is honest and when he is not honest.

 

FOR WITHOUT WORDS, IN FRIENDSHIP, ALL THOUGHTS, ALL DESIRES....

 

He never goes beyond the mind. Friendliness is beyond the mind just as love is beyond the mind; in fact, friendliness rises higher even than love.

 

In the UPANISHADS there is a tremendous statement.... It has been a tradition in the East that when somebody gets married he goes with his wife to a seer, to a sage, for his blessings. And such a strange blessing does not exist anywhere in any literature, in any tradition.

 

The sage, the man of enlightenment, blesses them with the words, "You should give birth to ten children, and after that your husband will be your eleventh child." It looks absurd -- the husband is going to be the eleventh child? -- but it has such a profundity. You have loved enough, you have given birth to ten children; now it is time to rise above love itself. Even your husband is your eleventh child. Go beyond love, and merge and melt into friendship. Refine it to the point where it becomes friendliness; then neither are you a wife nor is the husband a husband, but you are two souls living together in friendliness.

 

ALL EXPECTATIONS ARE BORN AND SHARED, WITH JOY THAT IS UNACCLAIMED.

 

Love or friendliness have no expectations.

 

That is the beauty of friendliness -- you don't expect anything, because wherever there is expectation, just behind it, like a shadow, is frustration. And you cannot dictate to the future; you don't even know what the future is going to be.

 

When I was a postgraduate in the university, one very beautiful girl was also studying the same subjects as me. For two years we remained studying the same subjects -- philosophy, religion and psychology -- and then finally we had to depart. She was a rich girl, the daughter of the collector of the city. I had gone out. Her car was waiting -- and perhaps she was also waiting; there was no need for her to sit inside the car and wait. It took two years for her to say to me, "I have been very much frustrated. I wanted you to say to me, `I love you.'"

 

I said, "Love is not an expectation; and if it is an expectation, frustration is bound to happen." Why does the whole world look so frustrated? For the simple reason that you have so many expectations. I told the girl, "What you are saying today you should have told me the first time you started feeling love towards me."

 

She said, "The gone is gone; we cannot go back to the past. But this is my last day in the city. I was staying with my father here, because he is the collector, but my whole family lives in New Delhi. By the evening I will be gone. So I gathered courage and asked you, `I love you. Can you not promise me that whenever you will love I should be given the priority?'"

 

I said, "I cannot promise about the future -- the future is absolutely unknown. I cannot even promise for tomorrow or the next moment." To me, promising shows the retardedness of the mind. Every promise is going to be a trouble because you are unaware of a simple fact: the future is absolutely unknown.

 

Where you will land tomorrow nobody knows. Any promise is irreligious, because it shows a stupid mind that cannot understand the future. A religious person can neither expect -- because that too is concerned with the future -- nor can he promise, because that too is concerned with the future. The religious person lives in the moment. But he says, "When expectations from your friend...."

 

WHEN YOU PART FROM YOUR FRIEND, YOU GRIEVE NOT;

 

FOR THAT WHICH YOU LOVE MOST IN HIM MAY BE CLEARER IN HIS ABSENCE.

 

There is some truth in it. Human mind is such that we start taking everything for granted, so only in absence do we become aware that that was our foolishness -- to take something for granted.

 

We live our whole lives without friendliness, without love, because we had taken it for granted: "It is always somebody else who dies; I'm always alive." So you can postpone living. And everybody is postponing living, not knowing what the future contains for you.

 

I again insist and emphasize:

 

Don't take anything for granted.

 

Live in the moment.

 

And living in the moment will give you the strength to live in any other moments -- if there is going to be a future. Your strength will go on growing. Otherwise... it is sad that there are many people who, when they are dying, realize for the first time, "My God, I was alive for seventy years but I went on postponing. And now there is no future to postpone to."

 

Never give any promises, because you may not be able to fulfill them. Make it clear, "I am not the owner of the future." But there are people who are promising about everything. To their lovers they are saying, "I will love you forever." These are the promises that become their imprisonments.

 

Say to your friends, to your lovers, "Only one moment is given to me at a time; not even two moments are given together. So this moment I can say absolutely that I love you, but for tomorrow it is impossible to say that I will love you. Yesterday I was not in love with you. Tomorrow perhaps the fragrance of love, just as it came without any advance notice, may leave. Then I will be in bondage to my own promise, ashamed of my own words."

 

Promising, keeping your word... the whole humanity has imprisoned itself. Live, and live totally, but now -- because that is all that you have, for certain, in your hand. But I know the stupid minds of people. If you say to a woman, "I promise that I will love you this moment, but I cannot say about the next moment. Neither do I want any expectations from you, nor will I give any expectations to you; otherwise life is going to be a continual frustration...."

 

AND LET THERE BE NO PURPOSE IN FRIENDSHIP....

 

That is the strangeness of Kahlil Gibran, his split personality. He has to be sorted out -- when he starts speaking as a Zorba, and when he starts speaking as a Buddha. He was never able to come to a synthesis between the two -- the lowest and the highest.

 

AND LET THERE BE NO PURPOSE... SAVE THE DEEPENING OF THE SPIRIT.

 

But that too is a purpose. Sometimes people who have such clear eyes about everything in the world are absolutely unconscious about what they are saying. First he says: and let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit... but that too is a purpose. In fact if there is no purpose, the deepening of the spirit will happen of its own accord. It need not be mentioned; otherwise the sentence becomes contradictory. The first part and the second part are contradictory.

 

First he says: your friend is your needs answered... and now he says, "There should be no purpose in friendship." But what are your needs except purposes? Every purpose destroys the beauty of friendliness.

 

Friendliness should have no purposes, no needs -- although this is a miracle of life, that if you have no purposes, no needs, your needs will be fulfilled, your purposes will be fulfilled. But that should not be in you mind; otherwise you don't have the friendliness, you don't have love.

 

FOR LOVE THAT SEEKS AUGHT BUT THE DISCLOSURE OF ITS OWN MYSTERY IS NOT LOVE BUT A NET CAST FORTH: AND ONLY THE UNPROFITABLE IS CAUGHT.

 

...love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love... because love is a mystery, and there is no way to make it open.

 

Love is like the roots of the trees, hidden deep in the earth. Share the fragrance, the flowers, the foliage, the greenery, but don't try to pull out the tree to see from where it is getting so many colors, so much fragrance, so much beauty, because that will be the death of the tree. The roots have to remain hidden, secret, a mystery -- not that you want... but you cannot go against the laws of nature.

 

Share your fragrance, share your flowers. Dance in the moon, in the wind, in the rain. Have you seen this morning? -- all the trees were so happy, dancing in the rain, throwing all the dust away, becoming fresh and young again. But the roots have to remain mysterious. Once you expose the roots, love is going to die. And it is unfortunate that every lover, every friend, is very curious to know your mystery, to know your secret. Lovers are fighting continually, saying, "You are hiding something."

 

Thousands of years... and man has come to conclude that it is impossible to understand the mystery of a woman, because she has deeper roots in the earth. Men's eyes are fixed towards the sky. It is idiotic -- the effort to reach the moon. Now the effort is to reach Mars.

 

You are not able to live on this beautiful earth with peace and silence, with love, without boundaries of nations, without discriminations of color, without making half of the humanity -- the woman -- just a purchased prostitute, a life-long prostitute. You have not been able to figure out how to live on the earth, and your eyes are fixed on the moon.

 

Do you know that in English there is a word "lunatic"? It comes from the root "lunar." Lunar means "the moon." Man is a lunatic. In fact, to try to find out the mystery of your lover is being just as ugly as all Peeping Toms are. Nature does not want you to be demystified, because it is in mystery that love blossoms, friendliness dances.

 

It is good that neither men understand women, nor women understand men. There is no need for knowledgeability. What is needed is enough space for each other, so that your secrets and your mysteries remain hidden. It is because of that mystery that you have fallen in love. If you demystify the woman, the love may also disappear.

 

Knowledge is so meaningless, and mystery is so profound. Wonder about the mystery, but never question what it is; your friendliness, your love will know no bounds. The closer you will be, the more the mystery will go on deepening.

 

But Kahlil Gibran seems to be continually confused -- and it is natural. Sometimes there are glimpses when he says tremendous truths, and sometimes there are moments when he falls back into darkness and starts talking like an idiot. In all the statements you can see it.

 

First he says: your friend is your needs answered... and second he says, "There should be no purpose." What are the needs if not purposes? And immediately he says, makes an exception, that the deepening of your soul should be your only purpose. In existence, in reality, there are no exceptions.

 

And look again...but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught. Purpose should not be there except the deepening of the soul -- which is a by-product. And again he forgets what he is saying. Unprofitable -- now it becomes almost the language of the businessman, not of a poet, because the unprofitable takes you to the higher realms of being. The profitable drags you down to the gravitation of the earth.

 

AND LET YOUR BEST BE FOR YOUR FRIEND.

 

He walks in a zigzag. I am not condemning him, I am simply making it clear that a man of his genius cannot see simple things in one statement. And let your best be for your friend... but tastes differ. What is best for you may be worthless for your friend. Who are you to decide what is best for him? I will not say that. I will say, "Open your heart and allow the friend; whatsoever he choses is his."

 

IF HE MUST KNOW THE EBB OF YOUR TIDE, LET HIM KNOW ITS FLOOD ALSO.

 

That is just a truism. You should open your heart totally. Ebbs or tides, all should be available for the friend.

 

FOR WHAT IS YOUR FRIEND THAT YOU SHOULD SEEK HIM WITH HOURS TO KILL?

 

All friends are doing that -- they are killing each others' hours, because they are both empty, and they don't know how to be alone, how to enjoy being alone.

 

SEEK HIM ALWAYS WITH HOURS TO LIVE.

 

Not to kill time but with hours to live. This is great, glorious. But he seems to be like a pendulum of a clock that goes on moving from one extreme to the other. Certainly he is not a man of awareness, although a man of immense capacity to express -- a man who can express with golden words.

 

SEEK HIM ALWAYS WITH HOURS TO LIVE.

 

FOR IT IS HIS TO FILL YOUR NEED, BUT NOT YOUR EMPTINESS.

 

Do you understand what I am saying... the pendulum? But Kahlil Gibran himself is not aware that one statement is contradicting the other statement immediately. For it is his to fill your need -- What happened about expectations? What happened about profit? He has forgotten, it seems -- but not your emptiness. This is something to be understood -- that man's greatest need is not to be empty, not to be dark, not to be alone. His greatest need is to be needed. If nobody needs him he becomes more and more aware of his emptiness.

 

So even this single sentence is contradictory. For it is his will...for it is his to fill your need... but is not emptiness your greatest need? For what are you continually engaged? -- just so that you don't feel empty. You are empty.

 

The East has a far more profound answer: that the emptiness need not be negative. Don't fill it with all kinds of rubbish. Emptiness can becomes you temple filled with godliness. Still it will be empty, because godliness is on a quality. Fill it with light -- still it will be empty. Fill it with silence.... Transform the negative emptiness into a positive phenomenon, and you have done a miracle to yourself.

 

AND IN THE SWEETNESS OF FRIENDSHIP LET THERE BE LAUGHTER, AND SHARING OF PLEASURES.

 

Kahlil Gibran, again and again, goes on saying things without giving you the key to how it is possible. Any idiot can come and say, "Fill your garden with greenery, with rose flowers, with ponds, with beautiful lotuses," but this is not enough. You are talking to a man who has never known greenness, who has never known roses, who has never known lotuses, and who is absolutely unaware of how he is going to do it. The key is missing.

 

This is not only with Kahlil Gibran; almost all the religions of the world are in the same boat. They say, "You should not be angry." But what is the way? Anger is there. "You should not be jealous." But what is the way to get rid of jealousy? "You should not be competitive." Bogus commandments!

 

It is beautiful to be silent, but where is the meditation that brings silence to you? "You should not be jealous" -- but where is the understanding that in jealousy you are burning your own heart? It does not harm anybody but yourself.

 

How can you get rid of competitiveness -- because they all are teaching, "Don't be competitive," and on the other hand, "Be something." They are giving ideals to you: "Be a Jesus." But there are millions of Christians; you will have to compete. They are saying, "Don't be jealous," but they are forcing people to be jealous, tying one man to one woman. When the love disappears and the spring is gone then the man starts finding backdoor ways -- and the woman too.

 

I have heard... there was a case in the court. The husband and wife wanted a divorce. The story must be old -- divorce was almost impossible, immoral, unvirtuous. The magistrate said, "Love each other. Remain together until death separates you."

 

The woman asked, "You are giving good advice, but how to love a man whom I simply hate? And I also know he cannot love me; he also hates me. So please give us some method so that the hate disappears and is transformed into love."

 

The man said, "My God, I don't know anything about it. But you will have to take an oath that you will make every effort to remain together. Don't create a precedent of immorality in the society."

 

The woman said, "I am ready to take the oath, putting my hand on my son's head."

 

It was a strange scene, because the judge became fidgety. He said, "No, not on your son. Just use your religious book."

 

The woman said, "I am a mother and to be motherly is my religion. But why are you looking so fidgety? Do you want me to expose you before the court? -- because the son is yours!"

 

What a hypocritical society we are living in. The magistrate is trying to rule that they should live together, and the magistrate is a secret lover of the woman. Not only that, even the child is his, not of the husband of the woman. That's why he is afraid.

 

She said, "Now do you understand? You are unfaithful to your wife. This son is your son, I am only his mother. My husband has his own relationships -- and you will be surprised: it is your wife! And the children that you think are yours are not yours."

 

It is such a hypocritical society. We go on and on living in misery, in untruth -- even in our courts.

 

Once I was in a court in Jabalpur.... There was a church, a very beautiful church. But when the British government left in 1947, all the worshipers of the church also left for their country. The church has remained locked for almost ten years. It has a beautiful garden, which was completely destroyed. The church belongs to the Church of England -- it is their property.

 

I had a few friends who were Christians and I said, "You are idiots. Your Christ has been in imprisonment, not in a church, for ten years, and perhaps he is going to be there for his whole life. You gather a few young Christians...." They were very much afraid because the property belongs to the Church of England. I said, "Don't be bothered. I will inaugurate the church. You just clean it, renovate it, throw out all those locks, break them. The church belongs to those who worship there. It is not a property. You worship there so it is your church."

 

They said, "You are creating trouble. Soon there will be a case in the court."

 

I said, "Don't be worried. I will fight with you. You can tell the court the truth -- that it was I who have told you."

 

It was so reasonable, so they somehow -- but reluctantly, wishy-washy -- managed to break the locks, renovate the church and clean the garden. And on one Sunday I inaugurated it.

 

Immediately other Christians informed the Church of England, "This is trespass. Not only trespass, these people have taken the property." And it was a big property, almost twenty acres of land, and the church was very beautiful.

 

The church of England had its representative bishop in Nagpur. In those days Nagpur used to be the capital of Madhya Pradesh. So he informed them, "Drag all those people" -- particularly me, because I am not even a Christian -- "to the court."

 

Standing in the witness box I asked the magistrate, "Before I take the oath for truth, a few things have to be cleared that after taking the oath will be impossible to clear."

 

He said, "This is a strange thing. First the oath has to be taken."

 

I said, "The things that I am going to say to you are about the oath, so why should I not be allowed to say some things before?"

 

He said, "Okay, you can say it, but it is not the routine way."

 

I said, "The first thing is: I have seen you visiting prostitutes. And the whole city knows you are a homosexual; hence I don't have any respect for you. I can say to a donkey, `Honorable Sir,' but I cannot say to you truthfully, `Honorable Sir,' because that will be a lie. My heart will not be with it. So allow me, if you insist on the oath, to say what my heart says is true; otherwise drop the idea of the oath. Secondly, I want to know on what I should take the oath."

 

He said, "You can take oath on the BIBLE, the Hindu GITA or any religious book."

 

I said, "They are all full of lies. Have you ever looked into them? And this is such an absurdity -- that an oath for truth has to be taken holding a book which is full of lies.

 

And thirdly: the very idea of oath is repugnant to me, because by implication I am accepting that without oath I am going to lie, that only under oath will I be saying the truth. I cannot accept this condemnation of me. I speak the truth as I feel it in my own being, and these rotten books, thousands of years old... I have no respect for these books either. Only people like you can have faith in these obscene -- but called holy -- books. But I am ready to do any formality.

 

"Just remember: once I have taken an oath holding a holy book which is full of lies I will be lying continually. I have to follow the book. First you prove that these books consist of truth, first you prove that you are worthy of being called `Honorable Sir,' and first you convince me that the very concept of oath is not ugly.

 

"It means my whole life I have been lying -- only under oath can I speak the truth. And you are an intelligent man; you can see that if a man can lie his whole life, his oath can also be a lie. Who can prevent me?"

 

I said, "I don't belong to any religion, I don't belong to any superstition -- so it is up to you."

 

He immediately said, "Call the second witness."

 

I said, "Not yet, because I have one point still to make. A temple belongs to those who worship there. A temple is not just a piece of land, is not a house. It cannot be owned by anybody. The Church of England has no right to own the church. The church belongs to those who pray there, meditate there; they are the real owners."

 

He was trembling. He said, "I have heard you, but you have raised such fundamental questions that it is better... call the second witness!"

 

This world is so full of hypocrisy. Your leaders are lying continually. Nobody is allowed to live, but to lie....

 

AND IN THE SWEETNESS OF FRIENDSHIP LET THERE BE LAUGHTER, AND SHARING OF PLEASURES.

 

But how? You have destroyed man's capacity even to smile. And if you want -- the idea is good -- then tell people how they can resurrect their life, their laughter, their dancing, their sharing of pleasures. All the religions are against pleasures. No religion has talked about sharing but: "Give to the poor, because in return you will receive one-thousandfold more after death." This is pure business! In fact, even to call it business is wrong; it is gambling. No church, no synagogue, no temple would allow people to laugh, to dance, to sing. You have crushed man's spirit so completely that he is almost a corpse.

 

The trouble with Kahlil Gibran is that he is a great intellectual power; all these statements he is making through his reason, but not through his experience. If he was talking through his own experience he would have given the keys -- how to undo all that centuries have done to man.

 

FOR IN THE DEW OF LITTLE THINGS THE HEART FINDS ITS MORNING AND IS REFRESHED.

 

He writes beautiful words -- but of what use? The highest evolved being on the earth cannot laugh. All the religions have been teaching, "Renounce the world." You should have contradicted that if you want....

 

FOR IN THE DEW OF LITTLE THINGS THE HEART FINDS ITS MORNING AND IS REFRESHED.

 

No religion allows you pleasure; no religion allows you laughter; no religion allows you to enjoy the little things of life. On the contrary, they condemn every little thing -- small things. And life consists of small things.

 

Religions talk about God, but not about flowers; they talk about paradise, but not about nourishing food; they talk about all kinds of pleasures in heaven, but not on the earth. The earth is a punishment. You have been thrown to earth the way somebody is thrown into a jail.

 

Kahlil Gibran is great in his words, but something of the coward is present in his unconscious; otherwise he should have also added, "Those who are teaching otherwise are not your friends, they are your enemies. All religions are enemies of man, all priests are enemies of man, all governments are enemies of man." But you will not find a single sentence like that. That's why he is respected all over the world -- because he has not annoyed anybody. I am saying the same things, but filling the gaps that he has left out, changing the words that he is unaware of.

 

He is a beautiful man, but not courageous. He is still a sheep, not a shepherd; a sheep, not a lion. He should have roared like a lion -- because he had the capacity. But a great man has died without even getting his books listed by the Polack pope on his black list -- that no Catholic should read these books.

 

All my books are on the black list. To read them is a direct and short-cut way to go to hell. In fact, I am perfectly happy that you will all be with me in hell. We will transform it into heaven. And one day you will find God knocking on the door, saying, "Please let me in. I am bored and tired of all kinds of idiots."

 

-Osho, "The Messiah, Vol 2, #7"