EXISTENCE IS A DIALECTICS. IT DEPENDS ON POLAR OPPOSITES: man/woman, yin/yang, life/death, daylight. But the basic polarity in all the polarities is that of positive and negative. Only positive cannot exist, neither can the negative exist alone. They depend on each other. They are opposites and yet not opposites.

 

If you understand this, you have a great key in your hands: they are opposites and yet complement Aries, because they cannot exist without the other. The other feeds them - negates them and feeds them. And the whole existence progresses. moves, flows, because of these two polar banks. No river can flow without these two banks.

 

Everything is divided into these polar opposites. They attract each other, they repel each other. Just like man and woman: they are attracted to each other and they are repelled by each other; they want to come close and they resist; they love and they hate - and it is all together. You cannot separate them. You cannot separate love and hate because you cannot separate the positive and the negative. At the most, you can emphasize one more than the other - that's all.

 

Just the other day, Yoga Chinmaya has asked a question: "Why does man have two eyes, two ears, two lungs, two kidneys, two hands, two feet - why two?" Because of the polarity. Your one kidney is male, your other kidney is female. Your one hemisphere of the mind is male, your other hemisphere is female. You cannot exist without this polarity. Your body will disappear. There is a constant opposition between the poles, and attraction.

 

One of the greatest discoveries of modern psychology is that no man is just man alone, and no woman is woman alone either. Every man has a woman within him, and every woman has a man within her.

 

This polarity is a must.

 

The mind is also divided in two parts: the left hemisphere of the mind is male, the right hemisphere of the mind is female. I am saying this so that I can explain to you why there is such a phenomenon as Zen-and-Sufism - they are polar opposites. Zen is the path of VIA NEGATIVE; it is basically male- oriented. It is the path of intelligence, meditation, awareness. Sufism is the path of VIA POSITIVE; it is feminine. It is the path of love, affirmation.

 

The Buddhist moves by negating: This is not the truth, that is not the truth - NET I, NET I - neither this nor that, says Sosan. Go on negating, eliminating. When you have eliminated all, that which remains and cannot be eliminated any more is the truth.

 

Sufism is based on positivity: Don't negate, don't use no, say yes. And don't search in a negative way; move in an absolutely positive way. Don't think of the wrong, think of the right. Don't think of illness, think of health. Don't think of thorns, think of flowers. Don't think of ugliness, misery, think of beauty and joy.

 

Both are there. And you cannot use both together - you will go mad if you use both together. That's really what happens when a man goes mad. He starts using both his polarities and both those polarities go on negating each other. That's why he becomes paralyzed in his intelligence. One has to use one; the other will be there but as a shadow, just complementary to it.

 

In Zen you use no, and, slowly slowly, all that is meaningless is cut from the very roots. But the meaning remains, because meaning cannot be cut. The significance remains; that is impos-sible to destroy, it is indestructible. So there is no problem! People who follow Zen reach. They reach to health by eliminating diseases. That is their way.

 

The Sufi way is just the opposite: it moves through the positive, through health, through yes-saying.

 

And, slowly slowly, it arrives at the same goal. And, in a way, the path of the Sufi is more full of joy, more full of songs, because it flows through the valleys and mountains of love.

 

Zen flows through a desert land. The desert also has its own beauty - the silence of it, the vastness of it, the purity of its air - the desert has its own beauty! If you are a lover of the desert, don't be worried about it. People have reached through the desert to the ultimate. But if you are not, then there is no need to torture yourself in the desert. There are green valleys too.

 

Sufism moves through green valleys. Now this too is very strange, but this is how the mind functions:

 

Sufism was born in a desert; Zen was born in a green valley. Maybe that's why it happened so. The people who live in a desert can't choose the path of Zen. They are already in a desert, tired of the desert. Outside is the expanse of desert and desert alone. They would not like to choose the inner desert too; otherwise, the polarity will be lost. Outside is desert, inside they have to create a green valley of love, of positivity. That will make things balanced. That will help the dialectical process.

 

Sufis talk about love, of paradise, of the garden of paradise. They think of God as the Beloved. They talk about wine; wine is their symbol. They talk about drunkenness; they are drunkards, drunkards of the divine. They abandon themselves in dance and song. They feast, they celebrate. That seems absolutely logical. Enough of the desert - they have to balance it by an inner garden.

 

Buddhism was born on the banks of the Ganges, one of the most fertile lands in the world, one of the most beautiful, in the shadows of the Himalayas. All was beautiful outside, all was green outside.

 

Now to think of greenery inside too will be monotonous. To think of beautiful valleys and rivers will be boring. Buddha thinks of inner emptiness, nothingness, the inner desert, the silence of the desert, the utter purity of the desert - no dance, no song. You cannot imagine Buddha dancing.

 

You cannot imagine Rumi not dancing. If Rumi is anything at all, he is nothing but a dance. He attained to his first samadhi by dancing continuously for thirty-six hours. He danced and danced...

 

and his ecstasy was such that hundreds of people started dancing. He created such a field of ecstasy that whosoever came to watch what had happened to him started dancing. By the time he reached his ultimate samadhi, thousands of people were dancing around him. That's how he attained. He fell on the ground for hours in utter drunkenness - just like a drunkard!When he opened his eyes, he had seen the other world, he had brought the beyond with him.

 

Buddha attained to his ultimate samadhi sitting silently doing nothing - so utterly silent that you could have thought that there was no man but just a marble statue. It is not just a coincidence that Buddha's statues were the first to be made, it started with Buddha's statues. His statues were the first, then others' statues followed. He was so statue-like. In his silence, sitting under the Bodhi Tree, he must have looked like a piece of marble: cool, white, still. The white marble became a metaphor for Buddha.

 

But you cannot make a statue of Rumi, because he is never for two consecutive moments in the same posture. If you want to make a statue of Rumi, you will have to make a statue of a fountain, or a willow in a strong wind. Impossible to make a statue of Rumi.

 

Buddha lived, was born, in Nepal under the shadows of the eternal Himalayas and its eternal beauty.

 

This is again a polarity. Outside is the beauty of the Himalayas, and Buddha searches for an inner desert of absolute negation. Rum I lived in a desert; outside is the infinite desert, inside he creates a small garden, a paradise, a walled garden. That is the meaning of the word 'paradise',firdaus - a walled garden, an oasis.

 

Sufism's emphasis is on the positive. And I am talking about both Zen and Sufi. You have to choose.

 

The choice should not be from the head; the choice should be from your totality. Feel both. Feel Sufi dancing, and feel vipassana. And whatsoever fits with you... and when something fits, you will know. There will be no need to ask anybody, because it fits SO absolutely - that it is meant for you and you are meant for it - suddenly everything falls in tune, a great harmony arises.

 

Don't decide from the head, because then you can move in a wrong direction. Allow it to be decided by your total being. Feel all the possibilities - that's why I am making all that is possible available to you, so everybody can find what suits him. Then that is your path.

 

And never impose your path on anybody else, never, because that may not be the path for the other. Share your joy, but never try to convert anybody to your principle. Share your experience, but never become a missionary. The word 'missionary' is dirty. Make your heart available - if somebody wants to choose, let him choose, but don't in any way, not even indirectly, try to convert him to your doctrine.

 

Your experience, your sharing of the experience, is beautiful - it is your love, it is your compassion.

 

But your principle, your doctrine, your path, is dangerous. It may not be the other's path. And when I am saying 'the other', I don't mean the stranger - it may be your child, it may be your wife, it may be your husband, it may be your brother. 'The other' includes ALL others - even your child whom you have carried in your womb for nine months, who is your bone and your blood and your marrow, who has pulsated with you for nine months, but still he will have to live his own life. He comes through you, but he is not you. He has his own indi-viduality. He has to bloom in his own way. Make available all that you have experienced, all that is good and all that is bad; make your whole life open to the child, but never indoctrinate him. Never try to make him a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan.

 

Help him to move according to HIS nature. And nobody knows what is going to bloom in him. Just help him so he grows, becomes stronger. That is love.

 

When you start indoctrinating, that is not love, that is hate. You are afraid, you are possessive, you are ambitious, you are egoistic You want to dominate the other through your doctrine. You want to kill the spirit of the other. You may think that you are helping, but you are not helping - you are hindering the growth. You are only crippling the other. He will never be able to forgive you.

 

That's why children are never able to forgive their parents - they have been indoctrinated, something has been forced on them. It is a kind of rape, and the worst kind: you have raped their consciousness. You have violated one of the MOST fundamental laws of life. You have interfered with their freedom. And the greatest freedom is the freedom to grow towards God, and everybody has to grow in his own way.

 

The rose has to offer its fragrance, and so does the marigold. The marigold need not become a rose, it cannot. The marigold has to bloom in its own way; it has to offer itself. That offering will be accepted - only that offering is accepted which comes from your innermost core, which has roots in you.

 

So Zen or Sufi, you have to feel. And there is no hurry. Go on feeling. One day, suddenly, everything falls in tune, everything comes together, and the vision opens.

 

The story:

 

A WANDERING SEEKER SAW A DERVISH IN A REST-HOUSE AND SAID TO HIM, "I HAVE BEEN IN A HUNDRED CLIMES AND HEARD THE TEACHINGS OF A MULTITUDE OF MENTORS. I HAVE LEARNT HOW TO DECIDE WHEN A TEACHER IS NOT A SPIRITUAL MAN. I CANNOT TELL A GENUINE GUIDE, OR HOW TO FIND ONE, BUT HALF THE WORK COMPLETED IS BETTER THAN NOTHING."

 

THE MAN MUST HAVE BEEN deeply rooted in negativity, in negation. He could have easily become a follower of Buddha, but not a Sufi. He had a philosophic bent of mind. Doubt was his style, skepticism was his system of thought. That is not the way of the Sufi.

 

Each word of the story has to be understood, because these are not just stories but payables. You cannot change a single word. If you do you will change the whole texture, the whole flavor, the whole meaning of the story.

 

Sufis use these stories in such a way that they have many meanings. They can be understood on many levels.

 

A WANDERING SEEKER...

 

A seeker is always a wanderer. Those who really want to seek remain with a Master, they don't wander. The one who goes on wandering is curious, greedy. He wants to know as much as he can.

 

Hence, he cannot stay with one Master. And these things are such that unless you stay with one Master, in deep intimacy, with great love, you will not grow roots. You will be a rolling stone which gathers no moss. You can go ON rolling and rolling for ever, but you will not be enriched by your wanderings. In fact, the more you wander, the more impoverished you will become because life is wasted, time is wasted.

 

This is not the way of SAT SANG. Sufism depends very much on the intimacy with the Master. If you go on transplanting a tree from one place to another place continuously, you will kill the tree. When will it grow its roots? You have to leave it in one soil for a long enough time. If it is a seasonal flower, it's okay; it comes within weeks, and then it is gone within weeks. But if it is a cedar of Lebanon which has to live for thousands of years and which has to rise high in the sky and whisper with the clouds, then transplanting it again and again is harmful, is killing it. It is murderous.

 

And the soul is a cedar of Lebanon. It is not a seasonal flower. A Master is a soil. You have to become grounded in the Master. You have to spread your roots into his being, only then will you be nourished. That's what sat sang is.

 

If you go on wandering, you may gather much information, you may become very knowledgeable, obviously, but you will remain as ignorant as ever. Maybe more so, because now you will become egoistic too. You will think "I know" - and you don't know! You have gathered unnecessary baggage.

 

You will become more and more burdened, stuffed. But this is not real growth. Real growth is totally different. It needs time, waiting, patience, love, intimacy, trust.

 

Sat sang is approaching a new birth. Being silenced. Hearing silence. Listening behind the words and forgetting them. Doing nothing, and being interior. Deeper than all expression. That is sat sang.

 

And Sufism depends on sat sang. It depends on the intimacy with the Master. One sits with the Master, deep in the night, in the silence of the night. The Master may not speak at all, or may speak one word or two. One simply sits with the Master, feeling his presence, absorbing his presence, becoming part of his energy field. Breathing with him, pulsating with him, slowly slowly, the ego dissolves. One never comes to know when it dissolved. No overt effort is made to dissolve it. It dissolves of its own accord, just as the sun rises and the snow starts melting.

 

If you come to the Master, the sun has started rising. You need not do much; you are not required to do much. The magic of the presence of the Master will do. All that is needed on the part of the disciple is great trust, surrender.

 

A WANDERING SEEKER...

 

... must have been a curious man, a superfluous seeker. Goes on wandering, goes on knocking from one door to another, is a beggar. Never gathers enough courage and patience to stick to one place, hence remains rootless.

 

A WANDERING SEEKER SAW A DERVISH IN A REST-HOUSE...

 

A dervish is one who is drunk with God. You can see from his eyes: they are red with the wine of God. You can see from the way he walks. You can SEE in a thousand and one ways that he is not just in the body - in the body, of course, but somewhere else too. He is not only the body, but more than the body, more than the sum total of his body and mind. You can feel the presence of the beyond very alive in him, almost tangible, visible to those who have eyes to see. You can see the dancing energy around him! He has bloomed - you can smell the fragrance, his delicateness, and the sweetness of his milieu. His vise is that of wine.

 

You will never find that with a Zen Master. The vise is totally different, because the Zen Master has achieved through the negative. He cannot be drunk. He is fully alert and aware. You will find a very sharp sword in a Zen Master, ready to cut you in one blow. A Zen Master is sharp! sharp because of his awareness.

 

A Sufi Master is drunk, soft, a shower of love. You will find with a Zen Master great compassion, but not love. Compassion because of his awareness, because of his enlightenment. But the Sufi is full of love. His God is love. For the Zen Master there is no God - there is only utter nothingness. For the Sufi there is nothing else but God - he breathes God, he eats God, he drinks God, he lives in God like a fish lives in the ocean. How can remain undrunk? You can see in the way he walks, the way sits, that he is completely drunk.

 

It is not accidental that wine became one of the most significant metaphors of Sufism. Oman Khayyam is a Sufi Master - totally misunderstood by the West, because the translators, particularly Fitzgerald, took every word of Omar Khayyam literally. And they are metaphors! they are not literal.

 

When Omar Khayyam talks about 'the woman' he is talking about the God, because Sufis think of God AS woman, not as man.

 

Hindus also think of God as woman sometimes, but always as 'the Mother'. Sufis think of the woman as the beloved. When the woman is your mother, the relationship is of respect, not really of love.

 

When the woman is your mother, you are full of reverence, but not full of love. When the woman is your beloved, it is a totally different relationship. Sufis are the only people on the earth who have been daring enough to call God 'the Beloved'.

 

And when Sufis talk about wine, they are talking of the love of God that flows into you if you allow, if you are ready to receive the gift. If you are in a let-go, it comes - it comes absolutely, it comes certainly. If it is not coming, that only shows that your doors are closed.

 

One learns, living with a Master, how to open one's doors. It is not a question of learning knowledge:

 

it is a question of learning a different kind of being - an open being, not a closed being.

 

A WANDERING SEEKER SAW A DERVISH IN A REST-HOUSE...

 

This word 'rest-house' is also significant, because one who is drunk with God is at home, he is at rest. He knows what rest is; nobody else knows.

 

In I905, Albert Einstein declared that there is no absolute rest, and since then there has been none.

 

Albert Einstein is right: as far as the outer world is concerned, there is no absolute rest. Things are always moving, even things which seem to be static are moving. Even the wall of your house is in a constant turmoil, in a chaos. All is change! Nothing abides and remains the same, not even the Himalayas. They are also changing, continuously changing. Maybe our lives are very short and we cannot see the change. Scientists say: If we can condense the whole history of the Himalayas into twenty-four hours, then you will see the Himalayas are nothing but like changing waves in the ocean.

 

The change is slow compared to our life span, but the change is there. There was a time when the Himalayas didn't exist.

 

You may be surprised to know that the Himalayas are the youngest mountains in the world, adolescent, and still growing, still becoming higher every year - by inches only, but change is continuous.

 

Either a thing goes on growing upwards or it starts falling downwards, but change is the only thing that never changes. And Albert Einstein is true about the outside world, but he does not know anything about the inner. If he had known anything of the inner, he could not have said this, that there is no absolute rest - there IS!

 

It is not there outside: it is in the heart, in the deepest core of your being. I KNOW it! I am in it. You can also know it. And the man is only fulfilled when he comes to know about the absolute rest in himself. Call it soul, call it God, call it Nirvana, or what you will, but there is a point, at the deepest, at the ultimate core of your being - that point is the center of the cyclone. There is rest.

 

These Sufi stories are metaphorical. The dervish is at the rest house and the seeker is a wandering seeker. The seeker is searching, the dervish has arrived. He is a SIDDHA - he has arrived. There is nowhere to go. He has come home! He is at home.

 

A WANDERING SEEKER SAW A DERVISH IN A REST-HOUSE AND SAID TO HIM, "I HAVE BEEN IN A HUNDRED CLIMES AND HEARD THE TEACHINGS OF A MULTITUDE OF MENTORS."

 

REMEMBER, ONE MASTER IS ENOUGH, and one thousand and one mentors are not enough.

 

Mentors are teachers, tutors they are. A Master is not a teacher, he is not a mentor, he is not a tutor.

 

The function of the Master is that of creating an infection - it is not a teaching, it is an infection. He does not teach you a certain thing. He simply creates an energy field around you, surrounds you, and in that surrounding energy something starts responding from within you. That is intuition. The teacher depends on tuition, he teaches you. The Master depends on intuition.

 

He creates a situation. In that situation, something that was not functioning before in you starts functioning, that's all. But he does not give you anything. He is a catalytic agent. He gives you only that which you had already, and from the very beginning, but you had become unaware of it, you had forgotten about it. He reminds you. He provokes something in you which is asleep. He digs a well in you - but the water is yours! He breaks, blasts, rocks within you, but that which comes welling up is yours, authentically yours. He gives you your own being.

 

The seeker said to the dervish:

 

"I HAVE BEEN IN A HUNDRED CLIMES AND HEARD THE TEACHINGS OF A MULTITUDE OF MENTORS."

 

He has been moving from one door to another, he has been like a beggar with a begging bowl, asking for truth, searching for truth. He has learnt much. He knows many doctrines, scriptures. He has become very very efficient in philosophizing. He says:

 

"I HEARD THE TEACHINGS OF A MULTITUDE OF MENTORS. I HAVE LEARNT HOW TO DECIDE WHEN A TEACHER IS NOT A SPIRITUAL MAN."

 

And all that he has learnt is doubt. All that he has learnt is a negative kind of mentality. All that he has learnt is worthless as far as Sufism is concerned. He has learnt how to know that a certain man is not a really spiritual man. He has learnt to detect the illness. He has learnt criticism. He has become critical.

 

That's what happens to a knowledgeable man: he becomes critical. And that is NOT the way to reach God. One has to become loving. To be critical is basically rooted in hatred, in antagonism. To be critical is part of your destructiveness.

 

Now, this man has moved, wandered, listened, learnt many things, and the total result is that he has only become capable of deciding when a certain Master is NOT really spiritual. What kind of richness is this? How are you going to be enriched by it? But this is what happens.

 

Unless you live with a Master long enough, you will learn the negative. The negative is on the surface. The positive is at the core. The negative can be on the surface because it has no value.

 

The positive is a treasure. If you go to a Master and only listen to what he says and not to what he is, you will not know the positivity of it.

 

That's what happened to this man. This calamity happens to "I HAVE BEEN IN A HUNDRED CLIMES AND HEARD THE TEACHINGS OF A MULTITUDE OF MENTORS. I HAVE LEARNT HOW TO DECIDE WHEN A TEACHER IS NOT A SPIRITUAL MAN. I CANNOT TELL A GENUINE GUIDE, OR HOW TO FIND ONE, BUT HAT THE WORK COMPLETED IS BETTER THAN NOTHING."

 

He is consoling himself. There is a famous statement of Friedrich Nietzsche. He was a madman, but sometimes mad people say beautiful things: sometimes they have glimpses of truth. He says:

 

It is better not to know at all than to know in a half-hearted way - better to know not at all than to know m part. Better to know not at all than half know. Why? The ordinary logic will say: It is better to know at least something than not to know at all. That is not so.

 

To know the useless will create great sadness in you, hopelessness in you, meaninglessness in you.

 

To know the negative will dry you of all life and life's juices. You will start freezing. You will become cold. You will become unloving. You will start losing all hope. You will be in despair, in anguish. And that's what has happened to many people.

 

For example, Sigmund Freud - he knew only the negative. He knew what is wrong with the mind of man, but he was never aware about anything that can be right. He depended on the negative side. He became very very expert on all kinds of illnesses of the mind - abnormalities, perversions, diseases, neuroses, psychoses, and all that. But he completely forgot that there have been Buddhas too. In fact, slowly slowly, the more he became accustomed to the abnormal, the perverted, the ill, the unhealthy, the more he started suspecting whether Buddhas can even exist. He started suspecting Jesus. Not only that: psychoanalysts have written books, treatises, proving that Jesus is neurotic. They have not worked so hard on Buddha, but if they work, the same will be the case with Buddha. Maybe they will use some other word for him - 'repressed'. If they think about Ramakrishna, they will say 'hysterical'. And the same they will say about Mohammed - 'neurotic', 'crazy'.

 

Why is Jesus neurotic? Because he talks with God. He is neurotic because he hears voices in the sky. He is neurotic because he feels something which we cannot see, only he can see. We cannot trust him, because whatsoever HE feels, he cannot prove objectively. He must be mad.

 

Just think of the implications of what Freud is saying. Health is impossible, health is suspect. A healthy, whole, holy man is suspect. Not only suspect - condemned. Then what is left? Then the whole of humanity has to live in despair, without hope.

 

And that's what Freud says, that there is no hope for man, that at the most man can endure but cannot enjoy. In fact, he himself never enjoyed - he endured life. He himself was neurotic in many ways. He was very much afraid of death; he had many phobias. He was a very angry person, so much so that when he would get into a rage he would fall on the floor in a swoon. He was SO afraid of death that even a mention of death was enough to make him tremble. And he was so ambitious and so political that he was continuously afraid of others conspiring against him. He was a paranoid. He destroyed many of his disciples because of suspicion, because he was not able to tolerate anybody coming closer to him - closer in the sense of intelligence, understanding. He wanted only slaves. And whenever there was an intelligent disciple - and there were people like Jung, Adler and others - the only way for them was to escape from the master. His presence was not nourishing but poisoning. And this man goes on giving judgments on Buddha and Lao Tzu and Zarathustra and Jesus and Mohammed. And these are the few people who were really healthy.

 

Just think of one thing: if illness exists, that is proof enough that health is also possible - at least possible. If darkness is there, light is possible. And if death is there, life is possible. In fact, how can death be if there is no life? How will you decide that somebody is ill if there is no health? If there is no Buddha in the world, how will you decide who is mad? Then everybody is mad! Maybe DIFFERENT kinds of madness, but everybody is mad.

 

Freud became very skillful about the negative, an expert about illness and disease. Naturally, his experience was such that he had to deny - he never came across a Buddha. That is not the way you come across a Buddha. Buddha will not come to Freud for psychoanalysis. For forty years he was only analyzing ill people suffering from a thousand and one kinds of mind projections, phobias.

 

Naturally, forty years watching, listening to people's dreams and phobias and fears and split people and schizophrenic and hysterical - naturally, after forty years if he decides that "I have never seen a single healthy person" in a way it is right. He HAS never seen a single healthy person. And forty years is enough time: he has watched thousands of people. But he has forgotten one thing: that a Buddha is not going to come and lie down on his couch and talk about his dreams, because in fact he has no dreams!

 

It happened once:

 

A man was brought to me who is a well-known psychic. His capacity to read people's thoughts is immense. Just sitting in front of you for a few moments, he will become silent and concentrate and he will start saying what thoughts are moving in your mind.

 

Somebody brought him to me and he wanted to read my mind. I said, "Okay, you read." Half an hour passed and then he opened his eyes and he said, "But there is nothing! - what can I do?" "You read nothing...?"

 

A Buddha has no dreams. A Buddha has no thoughts. A Buddha does not exist as an ego, so how can he be afraid? Even of death he is not afraid. There is no question of death. He has already died - died as an ego, and now there is only the immortality, the eternity, the timelessness.

 

For what will Buddha go to Vienna? There seems to be no reason. In fact, sooner or later, one day Freud will have to come to a Buddha. You will find many psychoanalysts here. They HAVE to come - because they are losing ALL perspective.

 

Listening to people's miseries day in, day out, they are losing all hope. A Buddha can give them hope again. A Buddha can help them to be ecstatic again. They have lived with agony too much.

 

Do you know that psychoanalysts commit suicide more than any other profession, almost double?

 

And psychoanalysts go mad more than any other profession, almost double. This should not be so!

 

A psychoanalyst should not commit suicide and should not go mad. But they go mad more and they commit suicide more.

 

But I understand. I have all compassion for them. Their whole life's work is such - agony and agony and agony - seeing people's wounds in the soul and the pus oozing day in, day out, they live in a kind of hell.

 

I have heard:

 

One psychoanalyst died. He had a ticket for heaven, but he went to hell. The Devil was surprised.

 

He said, "But you have a ticket for heaven - why have you come here?"

 

He said, "I am a psychoanalyst. I have to get accustomed slowly slowly. Heaven will be too much right now. I will not be able to BELIEVE in it. First let me live in hell for a few days, let me get accustomed to better things."

 

A psychoanalyst lives in a far worse state than hell. Naturally, he becomes blind to the healthy side. But there are good signs on the horizon: new ways of psychology are evolving. What Freud has done, Assagioli is undoing. What Freudian psycho-analysis has done, holistic psychology, humanistic psycho-logical trends, are undoing. Good signs!

 

But it happens if you go on collecting knowledge WITHOUT becoming more and more rooted in the being, you will become despair itself, you will be anguish itself.

 

The man said:

 

"I HAVE I LEARNT HOW TO DECIDE WHEN A TEACHER IS NOT A SPIRITUAL MAN. I CANNOT TELL A GENUINE GUIDE, OR HOW TO FIND ONE, BUT HALF THE WORK COMPLETED IS BETTER THAN NOTHING.' That is not so. Just to become skillful in the negative, skillful in doubting, skillful about the wrong side of things, skillful and expert about thorns, is not going to help in any way to know about flowers.

 

You can know as much as you want about thorns, but that will not help you to know anything about the flowers. In fact, if you know too much you will start disbelieving flowers. Even if they bloom, you will think they are imaginary. That's what Freud says: Buddha is imagining that he has attained - because there is no attainment! Krishna is imagining that he has arrived, and Jesus is just hallucinating, talking to God and angels.

 

I can understand why it happens. And if you also understand, it will help you tremendously.

 

Lulu Zezas, the Wyoming oil and cattle queen, tells about a ranch owner who was always complaining that his boots were too tight.

 

"Why don't you have them stretched?" suggested Lulu.

 

"Nothin' do in'," replied the rancher. "These boots are too tight and that's the way they're going to stay. Every morning I gotta get up and round up all the cattle that busted out during the night, and mend the fences they tear down, and watch my ranch blowing away in the dust, and then spend the evening listening to my wife nag me about moving to the city. When I get ready for bed and pull these tight boots off, that's the only real pleasure I get all day."

 

The negative person becomes enclosed in a prison, and the only pleasure he gets sometimes is to forget all about it. He goes and drinks too much - and the boots are off, those tight boots. Or in sex - somewhere where he can lose himself and his tightness. That is his only pleasure in life:

 

whenever he can forget himself.

 

Now, this is stupid, because there are ways you can forget yourself for ever. Sufism is one of the ways - you can drown yourself for ever. There is no need to search for drugs. Sufism gives you the ultimate drug: God himself. Once the ego is gone for ever, there is no pain, no agony, no suffering, no hell.

 

This is the way Ramana Maharshi experienced the sudden opening into ultimate consciousness, in which his individual identity was almost entirely lost. A family relation had died, and young Ramana decided to explore directly the experience of death. His motive stemmed more from curiosity than any feeling of bereavement. Ramana removed all his clothes, lay on the floor of his room, and with tremendous intensity, imagined his body dead. He closed his eyes, simulating the state of deep sleep. Suddenly there flashed into view, timeless and complete, the primal awareness that lies at the source of our being, the ultimate consciousness that is the source of being itself. And when he opened his eyes, he was totally a different man.

 

What happened? Somebody had died, a relation. Ramana was only seventeen. He was not a very extraordinary student or anything - nothing special about him, except one thing and that was his deep sleep. So deep was his sleep that it was almost impossible to wake him up. The family was tired. You could go on shouting, pulling him from the bed.... And sometimes the sleep used to come any time of the day - he might fall asleep in the school, and the children had to carry him back to his home. That was his only speciality. Other children would be playing and he would fall asleep on the ground, and they would poke, and they would pummel and they would beat him, and he would not be there at all. And they would have to carry him home.

 

That was his only speciality, but of great significance, because deep sleep is very close to samadhi, just the threshold of samadhi. That has been my speciality too.

 

It was almost a problem in my college in university - because I would fall asleep. My teachers were very angry, because who wants somebody falling asleep? And I was a student of philosophy, and there were not many people because very few people go to study philosophy. In my MA class we were only three students, Sol would be sleeping just in front of the teacher. And he would come and shake me up.

 

Sometimes it would happen that I would be the only person, the other two had not come. And just looking at me he would say, "Finished! You go home. And I will go home, I can sleep myself. What is the point?"

 

Deep sleep is the threshold. That's why this incident was possible. Somebody died; Ramana was only seventeen and he thought, "What is death? Let me experience it." He threw his clothes, simulated death, fell on the floor. He had seen the relative lying on the floor; so just the same way he fell on the floor, closed his eyes, and started thinking, "I am dying, I am dying, I am dying."

 

And he died! The ego disappeared. And here the ego disappeared and there God appeared - the primal awareness. And when he opened his eyes he was no more the same person. He left the home, immediately, without saying anything to anybody. It was not a renunciation. He simply left the home because there was no point. It was not that he was against the world or anything. There was no point any more. He went out and NEVER came back. The mother searched for him for years; finally, after ten years, she found him in Arunachal in a mountain cave. But he was a totally different man. And the mother asked him, "Why didn't you inform me?"

 

And he said, "But the thought never came to me. In fact, thoughts have stopped coming to me. I sit and sit and days pass, and there are no thoughts coming. Good that you have come! Live with me.... "

 

This primal awareness is God, thoughtless awareness is God. This is the wine Sufis talk about, and once you have drunk of this wine, nothing else is needed for you to forget yourself - because you are no more, there is no need to forget.

 

THE DERVISH RENT HIS GARMENTS AND SAID, "MISERABLE MAN! BECOMING AN EXPERT ON THE USELESS IS LIKE BEING ABLE TO DETECT ROTTEN APPLES WITHOUT LEARNING THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOUND ONES."

 

RENDING THE GARMENTS is a Sufi expression. In fact, Sufis do that. They are so passionately in love with humanity that when they see that you are trapped in a kind of misery unnecessarily they become so concerned, they become so anxious for you, yes, they rend their garments.

 

THE DERVISH RENT HIS GARMENTS AND SAID, "MISERABLE MAN!"

 

And this is how misery is created. It is doubt, it is negativity, that creates misery. It is entrust that creates misery. The root cause of all misery is there.

 

"BECOMING AN EXPERT ON THE USELESS IS LIKE BEING ABLE TO DETECT ROTTEN APPLES WITHOUT LEARNING THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOUND ONES."

 

Just the other night I was reading about a philosopher. He writes:

 

"I used to wonder why a rotten apple placed in a barrel of sound apples would make the sound apples rotten, while a sound apple placed in a barrel of rotten apples would NOT make all the rotten apples sound. I also wondered why a man infected with smallpox, when turned loose in a gathering of sound people, would by his mere presence make many of the sound people sick, while a sound man walking through a hospital of sick people would not by his mere presence make the sick people well.

 

In other words, I wondered why God, if he were a good God, had made a universe in which soundness and health seemed futile, and rottenness and sickness seemed contagious.

 

But one day I stopped wondering and examined the so-called sound apple, and I found it was NOT sound. Oh, I knew the grocer would contradict me, he would see no defect. He might even sue me for slander if I persisted in spreading the report that he was selling apples that were not perfect. But if he pressed me for proof, I could prove it. I would ask him to look beyond the apple to the stem.

 

There, in the most vital, the most crucial spot of all, he would find the mortal wound that I refer to. He would find that the apple had been torn away from its parent vine, it had been hopelessly separated from its source of life.

 

When I discovered this, I learnt one of the truest facts of life: that nothing, whether it be fruit or vegetable or man, when separated from its source of life is sound!"

 

All are ill - because all are separated from the source of life. And unless you join yourself with the source of life again, you will not be healthy. Only in God is health and wholeness and holiness. Only the presence of God heals. But we have forgotten completely about God. We have started living on our own, as if a tree has forgotten about its roots and has started living in the branches - it is going to die, it will become ill.

 

That's why the whole of humanity is ill. And Freud and company are right about ninety-nine point nine percent of people: people are ill! They are no more connected with the source of life. But that point one percent is the hope. There are people who are connected with life.

 

And I would like to say to this philosopher: there are people whose health is contagious. When a Buddha moves, his very movement heals people.

 

That is the meaning of the miracles of Jesus - the miracles that he heals blind people and suddenly eyes are there, and he heals the deaf and dumb and they start listening and tallying, and he heals the crippled and they are no more crippled. These are payables. It is not about the physical crippledness: it is something about the spiritual crippledness. And whenever a man of God moves, or people who are fortunate come and live in the company of a man of God, they ARE healed, spiritually healed. Their spiritual wounds start disappearing, they again start growing roots. And soon the roots find the sources of life, the waters of life, and all is green again, and all is blooming again. And the spring has come, and the celebration.

 

That celebration is Sufism.

 

The dervish said:

 

"BUT THERE IS A STILL WORSE POSSIBILITY BEFORE YOU. BEWARE THAT YOU DO NOT BECOME LIKE THE DOCTOR IN THE STORY.

 

"IN ORDER TO TEST A PHYSICIAN'S KNOWLEDGE, A CERTAIN KING SENT SEVERAL HEALTHY PEOPLE TO BE EXAMINED BY HIM. TO EACH THE DOCTOR GAVE MEDICINE.

 

WHEN THE KING SUMMONED HIM AND CHARGED HIM WITH THIS DECEIT, THE LEECH ANSWERED, 'GREAT KING! I HAD FOR SO LONG SEEN NOBODY BUT THE AILING THAT I HAD BEGUN TO IMAGINE THAT EVERYONE WAS ILL AND MISTOOK THE BRIGHT EYES OF GOOD HEALTH FOR THE SIGNS OF FEVER!'"

 

RAMAKRISHNA FALLING UNCONSCIOUS is a sign of great health, but the psychologist will say he has fallen into a kind of hysterical fit. And the hysterical fit and Ramakrishna's going into unconsciousness look alike from the outside. From the inside they are not alike.

 

Ramakrishna has moved from the small tiny consciousness to the primal consciousness. He is no more there as an 'I', as an individual. He is there as the source, as the goal. He is there as existence itself. He is one with the whole. When somebody falls into a fit, into a hysterical fit, he loses the consciousness that he has but he does not attain any other consciousness. From the outside it is the same.

 

If you see Buddha asleep and somebody else asleep, from the outside what difference are you going to see? They will look alike. But they are not. The other person who is asleep by the side of Buddha is deep in dreams, and Buddha's awareness burns bright as ever. As it is in the day, so it is in the night. There is no change. But from the outside it is the same.

 

When somebody dies and Buddha dies, what is the difference? Difference is from the inside; it is an inside story. Unless you are a Buddha you will never know it, because how can you know the inside of a Buddha without becoming a Buddha yourself? That is the only way to be an insider.

 

When Buddha dies, nothing dies. There is no clinging to life, there is no problem. Buddha simply slips out of the body - just as you change your clothes, exactly like that. Do you think each time you change your clothes that you are dying? Exactly like that Buddha slips out of the old clothes, slips out of the cage, and his soul is free and the whole sky is available. He is utterly thrilled. He is blissful in his death, because his death is not an end but really a new birth. He is moving into a far greater life than there was before it. It is from life to more life.

 

When you die you are moving from life to no life. From the outside it is all the same. From the inside it is not.

 

This story is beautiful:

 

"IN ORDER TO TEST A PHYSICIAN'S KNOWLEDGE, A CERTAIN KING SENT SEVERAL HEALTHY PEOPLE TO BE EXAMINED BY HIM."

 

Strange this king must have been. But this is the way, this is the Eastern way to judge. The real doctor is not one who knows what disease is: the real doctor is one who knows what health is.

 

Disease even quacks can know. Disease is not such a great phenomenon; it is on the surface.

 

Anybody can learn about it. But health is very deep; it is not easily available. Only a wise physician knows what health is about.

 

Do you know? In ancient China this was a rule: that the physician was paid not for curing illness but for keeping people healthy. People had their own private physicians, just as they have now. But the physician was paid I this client did not fall ill. Each year the client would pay the physician because he had not been ill. Now we pay the physician when we are ill and he cures us. This is a totally different thing. The Chinese idea was far superior.

 

And our idea is dangerous too, because to pay the physician when you are ill and he cures you makes him interested in your illness, his investment becomes in your illness. He wants you to be ill so that he can cure you. The Chinese idea is far superior. His investment SHOULD be in your health, not in your disease, so he remains concerned that you should not fall ill - because if a person falls ill he will not pay. The physician has to cure him without any fee; that is his responsibility. It is his fault!What was he doing the whole year?

 

And the Chinese have remained one of the healthiest races in the world, particularly in the past.

 

Sooner or later this is going to be the case again. In Soviet Russia they are thing about it, to make it a rule: the physician has to be paid only when you remain healthy - for the health.

 

"IN ORDER TO TEST A PHYSICIAN'S KNOWLEDGE, A CERTAIN KING SENT SEVERAL HEALTHY PEOPLE TO BE EXAMINED BY HIM."

 

As if a Buddha is sent to Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud will prescribe whatsoever he has been prescribing to others. He will talk about repression and he will talk about paranoia and he will talk about this and that - then he has failed. Then he is not yet aware of what he is doing. Only confronting a Buddha can Ben the test for Sigmund Freud. If he can declare Buddha healthy, then he knows something about health. But how can you recognize a Buddha if you are not a Buddha yourself?

 

"TO EACH THE DOCTOR GAVE MEDICINE."

 

When you go to the doctor, he has to find something or other wrong. Try it: when you are feeling perfectly healthy, go to a doctor and he will make you feel very unhealthy. He will find a thousand and one things wrong with you. His investment is there. But this is cheating.

 

"TO EACH THE DOCTOR GAVE MEDICINE. WHEN THE KING SUMMONED HIM AND CHARGED HIM WITH THIS DECEIT, THE LEECH ANSWERED, 'GREAT KING! I HAD FOR SO LONG SEEN NOBODY BUT THE AILING THAT I HAD BEGUN TO IMAGINE THAT EVERYONE WAS ILL AND MISTOOK THE BRIGHT EYES OF GOOD HEALTH FOR THE SIGNS OF FEVER!'"

 

This happens every day. When you are dancing here and an outsider comes and watches you dancing, he thinks, "These people have gone mad. What is happening?"

 

That's why it is very difficult to find a sympathetic journalist, very difficult - because he comes for one or two days and he looks around and he sees all kinds of things which he has never seen anywhere. He becomes worried. He has his prejudices that these are the things only mad people do. How can sane people do these things? So this is a mad place. When he sees you SO happy, he cant lot believe it, because happiness is impossible. Then you must be hypnotized; somebody has hypnotized you. That's why you are feeling happy - this is a hallucination. You have fallen into an illusion.

 

These are logical conclusions for him, because he comes with a prejudice. And people have prejudices AND prejudices, layers upon layers of prejudices. That's why it is VERY difficult to make them understand. They have always been misunderstanding people like me and their work. And the reason is what the doctor says:

 

"GREAT KING! I HAD FOR SO LONG SEEN NOBODY BUT THE AILING THAT I HAD BEGUN TO IMAGINE THAT EVERYONE WAS ILL AND MISTOOK THE BRIGHT EYES OF GOOD HEALTH FOR THE SIGNS OF FEVER!"

 

The dervish said to the seeker, "You have fallen into the first trap of being negative. Now there is a worse possibility for you - don't become like this doctor! You say, 'I can know who is not spiritual.' This is the first step. The second step will be a logical conclusion. Slowly slowly, seeing everybody as NOT spiritual, the natural conclusion will arise that there is NOBODY who is spiritual - all are fake, all are pseudo, deceivers, hypocrites, charlatans.

 

"If that decision is taken you are doomed, because then there is no hope. Because when you say NOBODY IS spiritual, you have denied your own possibility of becoming spiritual. When you say, 'NO Buddha has ever existed,' you have cut your whole future. If you say there has never been any flowering in the world, then, of course, how can you allow you self to flower? That is a worse possibility."

 

The dervish is right. Remember these two things from this story. One: look positively - rather than finding who is not spiritual try to find who IS spiritual. Rather than looking for thorns, look for roses.

 

And rather than looking for the darkness, look for the stars; rather than looking for diseases, look for health. Always move positively. Then there is a possibility that out of a hundred you may be able to find that one, that oasis in the desert. And with that oasis your life will be transformed. That is your Master. Being with him you will also become an oasis.

 

Sufism is the path of via positiva. Zen transcends mind through the negative; Sufism transcends mind through the positive. Both transcend mind, both go beyond it, so both reach to the same goal.

 

But, let me repeat, Zen moves through a desert land; Sufism moves into dark, shadowy, but green flowering valleys. You choose! but not from the head. Feel... pulsate with both. And wherever you feel that your inner music starts flowing, then that is it. You have found your key.

 

-Osho, "The Perfect Master, Vol 1, #3"