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Zen brings creativity. And remember, if you want to be one with the creator, you will have to learn some ways of creativity. The only way to be one with the creator is to be in some moment of creativity, when you are lost. The potter is lost in making his pottery; the potter is lost while working on the wheel. The painter is lost while painting. The dancer is lost; there is no dancer, only the dance remains. Those are the peak moments, where you touch God, where God touches you.
Relaxation means allowing yourself to fall into a state where you are not doing anything, because if you are doing something, tension will continue. It is a state of non-doing. You simply relax and you enjoy the feeling of relaxation. Relax into yourself, just close your eyes, and listen to all that is happening all around. No need to feel anything as distraction. The moment you feel it is a distraction, you are denying God. This moment God has come to you as a bird. Don't deny.
There are many kinds of richness, and the man who is rich because of money is the lowest as far as the categories of richness are concerned. Let me say it in this way: the man of wealth is the poorest rich man. Looked at from the side of the poor, he is the richest poor man. Looked at from the side of a creative artist, of a dancer, of a musician, of a scientist, he is the poorest rich man. And as far as the world of ultimate awakening is concerned he cannot even be called rich.
Guilt is imposed by others on you. It is a strategy of the priests to exploit. It is a conspiracy between the priest and the politician to keep humanity in deep slavery forever. They create guilt in you, they create great fear of sin. They condemn you, they make you afraid, they poison your very roots with the idea of guilt. They destroy all possibilities of laughter, joy, celebration. Their condemnation is such that to laugh seems to be a sin, to be joyous means you are worldly.
Poetry has an indirect way of hinting at things. Poetry is feminine. Prose is masculine. Prose, the very structure of it, is logical; poetry is basically illogical. Prose has to be clear-cut; poetry has to be vague - that's its beauty, its quality. Prose simply says what it says; poetry says many things. Prose is needed in the day-to-day world, in the marketplace. But whenever something of the heart has to be said, prose is always found inadequate - one has to fall back to poetry.
And whatsoever is repressed has to be repressed again because victory is never complete. There is no way to destroy sex by force, by violence. There is no way to control and discipline it. The people who have tried to control and discipline it have made the world very pornographic. Your so-called saints have a very pornographic mind. If a window can be created and a hole can be made in their heads, you will be able to see just sex, pornography. it is bound to be so. It is natural.
People are falling in love because a certain man has a certain type of nose. People are falling in love with fragments! Nobody is bothered about the totality of the person -- and it is a vast thing. The nose does not count for much --- after two days you won't look at it at all. Or the color, or the shape, or the proportion of the body -- all these things are very minor. The real thing is the total functioning of the person, and that can be experienced only when you live together.
Any judgment is past oriented, and existence is always herenow, life is always herenow. All judgments are coming from your past experiences, your education, your religion, your parents - which may be dead, but their judgments are being carried by your mind and they will be given as a heritage to your children. Generation after generation, every disease is being transferred as a heritage. Only a non-judgmental mind has intelligence, because it is spontaneously responding to reality.
If he loves, he wants to make a relationship out of it immediately! He wants to get married. He wants to create a certain conditioning. He wants to make it a contract. Or he enters a church, or he enters a political party, or he enters into any club and he wants to be structured, he wants to know where he stands in the hierarchy, in what relationship. He wants to have an identity - that 'I am this.' He does not want to remain uncertain. And life is uncertain. Only death is certain.
"The first awareness of the child comes with his ego. He becomes aware of the "I", not of the Self. Really, he becomes aware first of the "thou". The child first becomes aware of his mother. Then, reflectively, he becomes aware of himself. First he becomes aware of objects around him. Then, by and by, he begins to feel that he is separate. This feeling of separation gives the feeling of ego, and because the child first becomes aware of the ego, ego becomes a covering on the Self. "
Once you become more and more watchful of your inner workings things become simple. Then a few things have to be dropped. One has not to be jealous if one wants to be loving. It becomes so clear that there is no question about it; one can simply see the point that if you are jealous, love is impossible. Jealousy is bound to create misery. Jealousy is part of ego, the shadow of the ego, the shadow of a shadow - and love needs egolessness. They can't go together, they can't co-exist.
A Jesus had to be crucified because he was an alive man. He must have called in his childhood, "Jesus, don't be befooled by others." And he was not befooled, so others had to crucify him, because he was not part of the game. Socrates had to be poisoned and killed, Mansoor had to be murdered. These are people who have escaped from the prison, and whatsoever you say you cannot persuade them to come back. They will not come into the prison. They have known the freedom of the open sky.
Greed arises only because your present moment is empty, and to live in an empty moment hurts very much. To forget it you project greed into the future, thinking that tomorrow things are going to be better, a lottery is going to open in your name. But of course you have to wait for tomorrow, it cannot be just now - and tomorrow never comes. All that comes is always the present moment, which is empty. Greed is because we don't know how to live the present moment in its total richness.
As far as your ego is concerned and your jealousy is concerned, my whole work here is to help you become so loving that the energy that becomes jealousy is transformed into love. And you know perfectly well that jealousy always follows your love. You are not jealous without love. A man who does not love is not jealous. Jealousy is almost like a shadow of love. If we can grow our love, it takes over the whole energy of jealousy and transforms it into love. It is an alchemical change.
Egolessness is contentment. Egoless, you don't expect anything, and just a small child smiles at you, but it is so beautiful. What else could you need? Suddenly you see a flower and the flower sends its perfume to you. What else could you need? What more could you want? The whole sky goes on filling with stars, the whole life becomes a celebration because now everything is beautiful. Without expectation everything fulfills - just to breathe is enough, just to breathe is such a bliss.
Buddha says: Life should be simple, not complex. Life should be based on needs, not on desires. Needs are perfectly okay: you need food, you need clothes, you need a shelter, you need love, you need relationship. Perfectly good, nothing wrong in it. Needs can be fulfilled; desires are basically unfulfillable. Desires create complexity. They create complexity because they can never be fulfilled. You go on and on working hard for them, and they remain unfulfilled, and you remain empty.
It is the other way round: food cannot make you spiritual, but if you are spiritual your food habits will change. Eating anything will not make much difference. You can be a vegetarian and cruel to the extreme, and violent; you can be a non-vegetarian and kind and loving. Food will not make much difference. In India there are communities who have lived totally with vegetarian food; many Brahmins have lived totally with vegetarian food. They are non-violent but they are not spiritual.
If you meditate long enough, deep enough, it is impossible for you to hurt anybody for food; it is impossible. It is not a question of argument, it is not a question of scriptures, it is not who says what, it is not a question of calculating that if you take vegetarian food you will become spiritual; it is automatic. It is not a question of cunningness, you simply become spiritual. The whole thing seems so absurd. Just for food, killing animals, birds, seems so absurd, it falls down.
True celebration should come from your life, in your life. And true celebration cannot be according to the calendar, that on the first of November you will celebrate. Strange, the whole year you are miserable and on the first of November suddenly you come out of misery, dancing. Either, the misery is false, or the first of November is false; both cannot be true. And once the first of November has gone, you are back in your dark hole, everybody in his misery, everybody in his anxiety.
Be passive. In your passivity, God comes. Be feminine. In your femininity, God comes. Have you not watched it? Buddha looks very feminine, Krishna looks very feminine. Why? - because it is simply a metaphor. They have been depicted as feminine, graceful, to show that that is their inner quality - receptivity. When you are doing something you are being aggressive. When you are not doing anything you are non-aggressive. And God cannot be conquered; you can only allow him to conquer you.
In love, for example - the so-called love - we are 'related.' We appear to be related. We create the fallacy of a relationship, but in fact we are just deceiving ourselves. The two will remain two. Howsoever near, the two will remain two. Even in sexual communion they will be two. This two-ness, this duality will never last. So a relationship is only creating a fallacious oneness. It is not there. Oneness can never exist between two selves. Oneness can only exist between two no-selves.
All power is God`s power; we are only vehicles. He pulsates in our hearts. He breathes through us. He sings a thousand and one songs through us. Sannyas means to let this understanding become the foundation of your life: We are not, God is. Let the ego disappear, evaporate, and you will find infinite contentment. With the ego there is only misery; without the ego there is only God; and God is bliss, and God is benediction, and God is ecstasy. Die to the ego so that God can live in you.
That's why we cannot love, because with the ego, love is impossible. That's why we go on talking so much about love, but we never are in love. And whatsoever we call love is more or less sex, it is not love; because you cannot lose your ego, and love cannot exist unless the ego has disappeared. Love, meditation, godliness, they all require one thing - the ego must not be there. That's why Jesus is right in saying that God is love, because both phenomena happen only when the ego is not.
Drop jealousy and love wells up. Jealousy means that I am the owner. It is an ego trip, and wherever there is ego there is poison, and the poison kills the very source of love. One has to become aware of just these few things and discard them and one's life becomes a lotus of love. And then there is no need to go in any search of god, god will come in search of you. This is my observation, that god always comes seeking the true seeker. Whenever the disciple is ready the master appears.
I teach you that there is no other aim than to live with such totality that each moment becomes a celebration. The very idea of "aim" brings future into the mind, because any aim, any end, any goal, needs future. All your goals deprive you of your present, which is the only reality you have. The future is only your imagination, and the past is just footprints left in the sands of your memory. Neither is the past real anymore, nor is the future real yet. This moment is the only reality.
This is what meditation is all about, just becoming a watcher. Failure comes, success comes, you are praised, you are condemned, you are respected, you are insulted - all kinds of things come, they are all dualities. And you go on watching. Watching the duality, a third force arises in you; a third dimension arises in you. The duality means two dimensions: one dimension is happiness; another is unhappiness. Watching both, a depth arises in you: the third dimension, witnessing, sakshin.
Meditation is totally different. When you concentrate you close your mind to everything else. Meditation means just an openness, a relaxed openness. It is not concentration. While listening to me you are listening to the birds singing in the trees too. The wind passing through the trees singing its song - you are open to it too. The aeroplane passing by, or the train - you are open to it too. This is meditation - you are simply open, available, conscious, available, all doors are open.
Anger is active sadness; sadness is inactive anger. They are not two things. Watch your own behaviour. When do you find yourself sad? You find yourself sad only in situations where you cannot be angry. The boss in the office says something and you cannot be angry; it is uneconomical. You cannot be angry and you have to go on smiling - then you become sad. The energy has become inactive. You come home, and with your wife you find a small thing, anything irrelevant, and you become angry.
Humanity needs a new soil - the soil of freedom. Bohemianism was a reaction, a necessary reaction, but if my vision succeeds then there will be no bohemianism because there will be no so-called collective mind trying to dominate people. Then everybody will be at ease with himself. Of course, you have not to interfere with anybody, but as far as your life is concerned you have to live it on your own terms. Then only is there creativity. Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.
Buddha says this is how one should be - no desire, because all desires are futile. They are about the future; life is in the present. All desires distract you from the present, all desires distract you from life, all desires are destructive of life, all desires are postponements of life. Life is now and the desire takes you away, farther and farther away from now. And when we see that our life is misery we go on throwing the responsibility on others, and nobody is responsible except us.
When someone is dancing madly in a blissful state, in ecstasy after meditation, he is creating vibrations around him. They may penetrate into anyone. They can become infectious; they do become infectious. This ecstasy can go to others also; this ecstasy can be felt. Others hearts will be touched by it. And if you can create ripples around you, vibrations, you have served the world, and there is no other way to serve it - you have served the divine, and there is no other way to serve it.
Life consists of sadness too. And sadness is also beautiful; it has its own depth, its own delicacy, its own deliciousness, its own taste. A man is poorer if he has not known sadness; he is impoverished, very much impoverished. His laughter will be shallow, his laughter will not have depth, because depth comes only through sadness. A man who knows sadness, if he laughs, his laughter will have depth. His laughter will have something of his sadness too, his laughter will be more colorful.
As the ego becomes strong it starts surrounding intelligence like a thick layer of darkness. Intelligence is light, ego is darkness. Intelligence is very delicate, ego is very hard. Intelligence is like a roseflower, ego is like a rock. And if you want to survive, they say - the so-called knowers - then you have to become rock-like, you have to be strong, invulnerable. You have to become a citadel, a closed citadel, so you cannot be attacked from outside. You have to become impenetrable.
Thoughts can create such a barrier that even if you are standing before a beautiful flower, you will not be able to see it. Your eyes are covered with layers of thought. To experience the beauty of the flower you have to be in a state of meditation, not in a state of mentation. You have to be silent, utterly silent, not even a flicker of thought - and the beauty explodes, reaches to you from all directions. You are drowned in the beauty of a sunrise, of a starry night, of beautiful trees.
One moment it was there, another moment it is gone. One moment we are here, and another moment we have gone. And for this simple moment, how much fuss we make! How much violence, ambition, struggle, conflict, anger, hatred, just for this small moment! Just waiting for the train in a waiting room on a station, and creating so much fuss: fighting, hurting each other, trying to possess, trying to boss, trying to dominate - all that politics. And then the train comes and you are gone forever.
God is the creativity, so if you really want to enter into the world of God you will have to learn the ways of creativity - and that has disappeared. Instead of creativity we value productivity: we talk about how to produce more. Production can give you things but cannot give you values. Production can make you rich outwardly but it will impoverish you inwardly. Production is not creation. Production is very mediocre; any stupid person can do it, one simply needs to learn the knack of it.
Awareness means that whatsoever is happening in the moment is happening with complete consciousness; you are present there. If you are present when anger is happening, anger cannot happen. It can happen only when you are fast asleep. When you are present, immediate, transformation starts in your being, because when you are present, aware, many things are simply not possible. All that is called sin is not possible if you are aware. So, in fact, there is only one sin and that is unawareness.
My meditation techniques ARE dangerous. In fact there cannot be any meditation techniques which are not dangerous. If they are not dangerous, they are not meditation techniques, they are tricks. Just like Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. They are mental tricks. Just consolatory. No danger. At the most they can give you good sleep, that's all. If you miss, you don't miss anything, you remain the same. If you attain, you attain to good sleep, that's all. No danger involved.
Go deep into meditation. and be meditation I mean silence, awareness, witnessing. You can meditate any time of the day, you can meditate working, walking, doing things. Meditation is not something separate from life; it should not be separate, otherwise it remains a little artificial. Meditation should be spread all over life. You should walk in meditation, you should sit in meditation; that means silently, fully aware. Slowly slowly it becomes your very flavour, then the bridge is created.
People have a very limited idea of what being creative is - playing the guitar or the flute or writing poetry - so people go on writing rubbish in the name of poetry. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything. You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark, I know. It is not very clear-cut what your destiny is, but that's how life is. And it is good that one has to search for it - in the very search, something grows.
There have been many poets who have lived at the fifth center of creativity and never gone ahead - many painters, many dancers, many singers who created great art, but never moved to the third eye. And there have been mystics who have remained with the third eye, knowing their own inner beauty; it is so fulfilling that they thought they had arrived. Somebody is needed to tell you that there is still something more ahead; otherwise, in your ignorance, what you will do is almost unpredictable.
Future arises out of your misery, not out of your celebration. A really celebrating person has no future; he lives this moment, he lives it totally. Out of that total living arises the next moment, but it is not out of any lust. Of course, when out of celebration the next moment arises, it has more capacity to bless you. When out of celebration the future arises, it goes on becoming more and more rich. And a moment comes when the moment is so total, so whole, that time completely disappears.
Whenever you drop something by fight, it is never dropped. You can drop smoking by fighting, and then you will start doing something else which will become a substitute. You may start chewing gum, it is the same; You may start chewing pan, it is the same, there is no difference. You need something to do with your mouth - smoking, chewing, anything. When your mouth goes on working, you feel at ease because through the mouth tensions are released. So whenever a man feels tense he starts smoking.
This is the fear: death will come and we have not lived yet. We are just preparing to live. Nothing is ready; life has not happened. We have not known the ecstasy which life is; we have not known the bliss life is; we have not known anything. We have just been breathing in and out. We have been just existing. Life has been just a hope and death is coming near. And if life has not yet happened and death happens before it, of course, obviously, we will be afraid because we would not like to die.
You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don’t know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it – whatsoever it is
When two persons open up to each other just as they are, friendship grows. When two persons are ready to drop their masks, they have taken a tremendous step towards religiousness. So love, friendship, anything that helps you to drop the mask, is taking you towards religion. But the pseudo-religions have done just the opposite. They are against love. You can understand now, why they are against love: because love will destroy the personality, and the pseudo-religion depends on your personality.
For that, one has to drop all the masks, one has to risk many things, particularly respectability. That is a bribe by the society. It will give you a Nobel prize and it will give you many honours; it will do everything to make you feel great, if you can fulfil one condition: if you are obedient, obedient like a robot, then all respect is for you. Then the society will make you a great hero, but there will be no grace, no beauty, no freedom, no truth, no being; you have committed a real suicide.
"When you accept your life - when you take your breakfast, and when you sleep and when you walk and when you take your bath - how can you create an ego out of these things? Sleeping when feeling sleepy, eating when feeling hungry, how can you create your ego? No, if you fast, you can create ego. If you are on a vigilance for the whole night, and you say, "I am not going to sleep," you can create the ego. By the morning, the person who has slept well will have no ego, you will have a great ego."
Each child is poisoned by the society through teaching him ambition. Ambition is a poison far more dangerous than any alcohol can ever be, far more dangerous than marijuana or LSD, because ambition destroys your whole life. It keeps you moving in a false direction. It keeps you imagining, desiring, dreaming, it keeps you wasting your life. Ambition means a subtle creation of the ego, and once the ego is created you are in the grip of darkness. And the whole social structure depends on ambition.
When I use the words 'inner journey', I simply mean that you have looked at one aspect of the journey in your life called 'outer', now try to look at another aspect of the journey called 'inner'. You have been running after money, now run after meditation. You have been running after power, now run after God. Both are running. Once you start running after meditation then one day I will tell you, 'Now drop meditation too. Now stop running.' And when you stop running then real meditation happens.