The first question:

Question 1

YOU, THE FOUNTAIN OF LOVE,

OUR SOURCE IS IN THEE.

LOVING THY WILL OUR

SPIRIT IS FREE.

THIS BEAUTIFUL DAY

THAT ALL OF US SEE.

THE HOPE OF THE WORLD

IS LOVE.

Gyan Nirmal,

LOVE is not only the hope af the world, but the only hope. Up to now man has lived an absolutely loveless life. All the societies and the cultures and the religions that have existed on the earth have talked about love, but lived a very loveless existence. Much talk about love has happened in the past, but the structure that societies have created is basically against love. The society is geared for war, and a society that is geared for war can only talk about love but cannot live it.

We have come now to the peak of this ugly, stupid structure of hatred. We have come to the point where either man is to change totally or will have to die.

The new man can be born only with a new heart, with a new soul -- and the flavor of that soul will be love, and the poetry of that heart will be love. A society that lives lovelessly is competitive, ambitious, obsessed with money, power, prestige. A society that lives without love lives through beliefs. Beliefs divide people, and all divisions breed war. A society that lives without love lives a very lusterless existence, because without love there is no splendor in life, no significance. Without love no song arises in the heart of man.

We have come to the point or we are coming to it, approaching it every day: by the end of this century man will have to choose either total destruction or a revolution -- a revolution not political, not social, but a revolution of the heart. A turning-point is coming closer every day; you have to be prepared for it.

Sannyas has to become a herald for a new world, the first ray of the dawn. Man is reaching towards total war; all preparations are there to commit a global suicide. This is what your history has brought you to. All the Alexanders and all the Napoleons and all the Stalins and all the Hitlers and all the Maos have been working for centuries and centuries; now their dream is going to be fulfilled: we can destroy this whole earth within seconds. Destruction has reached its peak; unless creativity also reaches to its peak man cannot be saved.

And to me, love is nothing but the birth of creativity in you. By love I mean an overflowing heart. Love to me is not only a relationship. The relationship that we call love is a faraway, distant echo of the real thing.

The real thing is not a relationship but a state; one is not in love but one IS love. Whenever I talk about love remember this: I am talking about the state of love. Yes, relationship is perfectly good, but the relationship is going to be false if you have not attained to the state of love. Then the relationship is not only a pretension, it is a dangerous pretension, because it can go on befooling you; it can go on giving you the sense that you know what love is, and you don't know. Love basically is a state of being; one is not in love, one IS love.

And that love arises not by falling in love with somebody. That love arises by going in -- not by falling but by rising, soaring upwards, higher than you. It is a kind of surpassing. A man is love when his being is silent; it is the song of silence. A Buddha is love, a Jesus is love -- not in love with a particular person, but simply love. Their very climate is love. It is not addressed to anybody in particular, it is spreading in all directions. Whosoever comes close to a Buddha will feel it, will be showered by it, will be bathed in it. And it is unconditionally so.

Love makes no conditions, no ifs, no buts. Love never says, "Fulfill these requirements, then I will love you." Love is like breathing: when it happens you are simply love. It does not matter who comes close to you, the sinner or the saint. Whosoever comes close to you starts feeling the vibe of love, is rejoiced. Love is unconditional giving -- but only those are capable of giving who HAVE.

One of the most mysterious things about man is that he goes on giving things which he doesn't have. You go on giving love and you don't have it in the first place, and you go on asking love from others who don't have it in the first place. Beggars begging from beggars!

Love first has to happen in the deepest core of your being. It is the quality of being alone, happily alone, joyously alone. It is the quality of being a no-mind, of being silent. Contentless consciousness is the space, the context in which love arises in you.

And when it arises in you it is so much, it is unbearable. Its pleasure is so unbearable that it becomes almost pain. It is heavy like the clouds which are full of rain; they HAVE to shower, they HAVE to rain, they HAVE to unburden themselves. When love arises in the silent heart, it has to be shared, it has to be given; you are helpless.

And the person you give your love to is not obliged to you in any way. In fact, you are obliged to the person because he helped you unburden, he shared something that was too much in you. And the economics of love is: the more you give, the more you have, because in your silent being you are joined with the oceanic, the divine source of all. And you can go on sharing... more and more goes on flowing in you, it goes on welling up.

Gyan Nirmal, yes, you are right, love is the only hope of the world. And we are coming close to that turning point: either total war or total love. And this is a question of either/or, there is no third alternative. There is nothing like a compromise now, you cannot be in the middle. Man has to choose. And it is a question of life and death: war is death, love is life.

By creating you here, by creating sannyasins here, I am creating a new kind of space. This is the beginning of a totally new man. Hence the old traditions will be unable to understand what is happening here; they don't have any criterion. The experiment is so new! Yes, once in a while men like Buddha, Kabir, Krishna, Christ, Zarathustra, have happened in the past, but only individuals. Now only individuals won't do; only a Buddha here and there won't be of much help. The world has gone too much into hate. The world is so full of hate that it is almost like an ocean of hatred, and a Buddha will be just a spoonful of sugar -- it won't change the taste of the ocean. We will need THOUSANDS of Buddhas.

Hence I am not interested in Christians, I am interested only in Christs. I am not interested in Jains, I am interested only in Mahavirs. I am not interested in Buddhists, I am interested only in Buddhas. My effort here is not to create a following, not to create believers, but to create individuals, lovers, meditators who can stand on their own, and each one can become a light. And we will need... the night is going to become darker and darker every day... we will need millions of lights around the world, millions of people who are capable of love, unconditionally, without asking anything in return, and who are so silent and who are so blissful that wherever they are they will be able to dissipate darkness.