Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY THAT THE ENLIGHTENED ONES, LIKE BIRDS, LEAVE NO FOOTPRINTS BEHIND THEM. YET PEOPLE LIKE ISAN TOUCH OUR CONSCIOUSNESS HUNDREDS OF YEARS AFTER THEY HAVE DIED. COULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

Maneesha, touching your consciousness is another matter. To the open consciousness, all the buddhas are available this very moment to celebrate you, to take you into the new space that you have been avoiding for centuries. But that is not making footprints. It is beyond the capacity of a bird to make footprints in the sky.

The inner world is almost like the sky -- it is the inner sky. And the people who have entered into the inner world cannot leave footprints either. It is just to say that you cannot follow them from the outside, through their words, through their scriptures. You have to go into yourself, and suddenly you will be surprised that you have disappeared and a buddha has appeared. You were not following Buddha's footprints -- he cannot make any. In the sky you cannot write anything.

All the scriptures and all the great religions are befooling and exploiting the masses. One has to go within, and all the religions are supporting you to go out -- towards Jesus, towards Moses, towards Mohammed, towards Buddha, but go outwards. Follow their teachings, follow their commandments. That is what Buddha says is going astray.

No buddha can leave any footprints, so how can you follow him? Following is simply impossible. You can only go within yourself. You can understand a living buddha, you can absorb his energy; you can hear his song, you can understand his silence; you can be filled by his presence -- but this is not following. This is simply the alchemy of being with a master. You can simply disappear in the silences of the master. But you are not following footprints; you are going within yourself, you have your own path from the circumference to the center.

Now comes the time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. The poor fellow has to wait so long, and he brings his rainbow turban with such care. He used to be just an old hippie. Suddenly he has become a mini-guru! And he is enjoying it so much, and directing many.... This is called transformation.

Ronald Reagan and George Bush go hiking together in the Montana mountains. They have been walking all day, discussing the forthcoming presidential election, and Ronald is giving George lots of advice about how to wear his make-up and look good on TV.

Suddenly they look up and see a huge grizzly bear coming over the hill towards them. Immediately, Bush reaches into his pack and pulls out a pair of running shoes. Then he starts taking off his hiking boots, and putting on the sneakers.

"Hey," says Ronald, nervously. "You don't think you can outrun that grizzly bear, do you?"

"I don't have to," says Bush, with a grin. "I just have to outrun you!"

Kowalski is returning home from a morning's hunting, with his shotgun in one hand and his hunting bag slung over his shoulder.

His friend, Slobovski, sees him across the road and calls out, "Hi, Kowalski! Been hunting?"

"That's right," replies Kowalski. "Been hunting ducks."

"Far out!" says Slobovski. "How many did you get?"

"Well," replies Kowalski, "if you can guess how many ducks I've got in my bag -- I'll give you them both!"

"Ah!" says Slobovski, scratching his head. "Three?"

Harry and Harriet are a very devoutly religious couple. They observe all the Christian religious festivals by remaining strictly celibate until the festival is over.

During Lent, which lasts for a whole month, they decide to give up sex. They are especially careful -- they even sleep in separate rooms, to make sure they won't be tempted.

Lent finishes at six o'clock in the morning on Sunday, and sure enough, at exactly six o'clock, Harriet hears a sharp knocking on her bedroom door.

"Is that you, Harry?" asks Harriet.

"Yes!" he cries. "This is your ever-loving husband!"

"Ah, Harry!" giggles Harriet. "I know why you are knocking!"

"You know why I am knocking!" cries Harry, "but you should see with what!"

... This joke was given to me; somebody must have made it up. And when Nirvano told me about the joke, the person had made it a Jaina couple. The husband's name was Halvabhai and the wife's name was Mevabhai. And the Jainas have a religious festival, Paryushan, so the festival in the joke was Paryushan. The rest of the joke has remained the same.

But as I told Nirvano, jokes have their roots. You cannot change their context. Now, a Jaina couple will not be fitting. About Jews you can tell any kind of joke; their appetite is big enough, everything fits. But about Hindus, about Jainas, about Buddhists, you cannot just change the names. They will be absolutely unfitting, because they will not have any natural context.

India has no jokes of its own. All the jokes are imported -- fortunately there is no taxation on importing jokes! You can just change the names to Indian names, but it will not be right; it will not sound right. Even a joke has a certain context, a certain reference. It is not just a joke. You cannot implant it anywhere you like, it has a climate of its own. For example, a Jewish joke cannot be transplanted to another race because that joke has a history of its own.

Nobody writes jokes, you know. There are no joke writers. From where do jokes come? From the wisdom of the folk, hundreds of years... they pass through many hands, many situations and then they come to a refinement. Nobody can claim that he is the writer. And never try to change the names, because they will look absolutely out of context.

If you cannot find out to whom the joke should belong, just put some Jewish names in it. They are the only people rich enough, and it is for a particular reason that they can absorb any joke. They have suffered so much since Moses brought them out of Egypt in search of Israel. Their whole life for these four thousand years has been that of suffering and suffering and suffering.

I have heard about an old Jew dying, praying to God. His family was surprised at what he was saying. He was saying to God, "God, enough is enough! Now you should choose somebody else as your chosen people."

This stupid idea that Jews are the chosen people has been the cause of all their suffering. But suffering has to be somehow consoled -- some ointment for so many wounds. Jokes have grown in the Jewish context. They had to laugh; otherwise how to forget the agony? How to forget all the suffering that they have passed through? They lost their land....

They have got it back just now, forty years ago; now it is a struggle to keep it. All around they are surrounded by the Mohammedans. And there is no way, I can't see any possibility of their survival there. It is the ugliest and most criminal act of American politicians to give them back Israel, which has been in the hands of Mohammedans. But it was a clever strategy. This way they could get rid of many Jews without killing them. They were doing exactly what Adolf Hitler did. He killed six million Jews because the problem was that if Jews are the chosen people, then who are the Germans? This was the conflict. Adolf Hitler thought that his people, the Nordic Germans, were the chosen people of God, and Jews would not agree to that. He finished off six million Jews.

America did the same, but in a more diplomatic way. After the second world war they gave the Jews Palestine, which was once Israel and had fallen into the hands of Mohammedans. For centuries, Jews had lived without any land of their own -- and I don't think there is any need. "Lands" should disappear, boundaries should disappear; everybody should be living on the planet. But because after the second world war Palestine was in the hands of America, Americans played a very ugly trick. They gave it back not to the Mohammedans, but to the Jews. It is true, it used to belong to the Jews centuries before. But now it had been in the hands of the Mohammedans for so long that even the name had changed. It was no longer called Israel, it had become Palestine. Under the enforcement of the Americans who were holding Palestine, they made it Israel.

Nations are not made like that. Now thousands of Jews from other countries, particularly America, have moved to Israel. And they are surrounded from all sides by Mohammedans. For forty years they have been continuously fighting and being killed.

This is the fundamentalist Christian mind, which played a very clever trick. And I cannot see any future for Israel. Any day America stops giving arms to them -- they are a small island, surrounded by millions of Mohammedans -- they will all be killed. But America played a game, forced the Jews, and the Jews thought that they were being favored by America. They had a great hope some day to have their own land, so they rushed there with all their money. And they are still sending money -- the other Jews who have remained behind -- so all their money is being destroyed in Israel.

Now they are in such a difficult position: neither can they go back -- they have brought everything they had -- nor can they see any future when they can live in peace. Every day it is continuous war, terrorists of all kinds; nobody is secure.

This situation is very rare. Four thousand years ago on some unfortunate day, Moses brought the Jews to Israel. Forty years it took him to find this barren land that he used to call "the holy land." He had to call it holy land, otherwise his followers would have killed him! In forty years' search in the desert, two thirds of the original members who had come with him had died. And he passed up Saudi Arabia and Iran -- Jews can never forgive him. If he had stopped at Saudi Arabia, they would have been the richest people in the world today. But at that time nobody knew about the petrol or the oil, so it is not his fault. But one thing is certain, that he is not a great prophet. He could not see that just there, below the earth, there was so much petrol and oil. What kind of prophet...?

Then, finding that it was getting late -- he was now eighty, and the holy land seemed to be nowhere -- in utter desperation, he simply declared Israel, which is just a barren land, to be the holy place of God, the holy land. Just to satisfy his followers... although the followers were not very satisfied. Looking at the holy land they said, "My God! And we are the chosen people of God and this is the holy land?"

Moses escaped on the excuse that a small tribe of the Jews had got lost in the desert -- "So I am going to find them and bring them back." And he never came back. He found them -- they were here in Kashmir. And Kashmir looks like a holy land: it is so beautiful, incomparable to any place on the whole earth; its beauty is superb. If Moses had just brought all the Jews to Kashmir, they would have been satisfied: "We are certainly the chosen people of God and this is the holy land."

That one small tribe that had wandered away from the main caravan of the Jews found themselves in Kashmir, and they thought that they had arrived! They remained in Kashmir, and when Moses came -- his grave is in Kashmir -- he lived with them. It is a strange coincidence that Jesus also died in Kashmir, and both graves are at the same place.

Jesus never knew that he was a Christian. He was born a Jew, he lived as a Jew, he proclaimed himself as the last prophet of the Jews. And that was the reason that the Jews crucified him, because they did not want to accept a donkey-riding carpenter's son as their last prophet. It was irritating.

So the resurrection is just a story. Jesus was brought down from the cross after six hours, because Jews observe Saturday as a holy day; no work is to be done. So on Friday evening -- it was only six hours that Jesus had been on the cross -- they had to bring him down before sunset, because that would be work.

And the Jewish cross is a very primitive, old type of mechanism. If you want to die you need to hang on it at least forty-eight hours. Within forty-eight hours you can change your mind; that's why nobody ever commits suicide on a Jewish cross, because who can maintain for forty-eight hours the idea of committing suicide? Just within one minute or two he will say, "Let us think it over again. What is the hurry? And anyway I am feeling hungry."

So after six hours -- Jesus was a young man, only thirty-three, robust and healthy -- he escaped. It was a pure conspiracy with the Roman governor. Judea was under the Roman empire. The Romans were not interested in Jews' problems, that Jesus is or is not the prophet. It was irrelevant to them. Pontius Pilate, the governor, had an interview with Jesus before the crucifixion to see whether this man needs to be crucified. He found that the man is absolutely innocent -- maybe a little nuisance, because he is just riding on the donkey, followed by twelve idiots who believe that he is the only begotten son of God, and he has promised those idiots, "You will have a special place in the kingdom of God."

Naturally, other Jews thought that this was very annoying and irritating. Everybody laughs at the whole thing -- "This is your last prophet?" It is even suspected that his father was not his father.

After six hours Jesus was taken down, and the Roman governor and his soldiers were keeping guard on the cave in which he was put when he was brought down from the cross. He allowed Jesus' followers to take him out of Judea. No resurrection happened, because even death did not happen. He was perfectly alive; just a few days it took for healing his hands and feet which had been nailed.

Seeing the situation, any intelligent man will not go back to Judea. He also went in search of the one lost tribe and ended up in Kashmir. Moses died in Kashmir, and two thousand years later Jesus died there. Both their graves are together there. Neither Jews want to recognize it nor Christians want to recognize it, but it is so evident: on both the graves the writing is in Hebrew, and on both the gravestones the names of the persons, Moses and Jesus, are engraved. The family that protects the graves is still Jewish; that is the only family in the whole of Kashmir which Mohammedans did not convert to Mohammedanism. All other Jews were forced to become Mohammedans, but this family they left alone because they were protecting and taking care of Moses' and Jesus' graves, and because Mohammedanism also accepts Moses and Jesus as prophets. So this family is the only family. But no pope goes there to look at poor Jesus' grave, and neither do Christians talk about it, nor do Jews ever bother what happened to Moses.

And Christians have no answer: even if Jesus was resurrected, he must have died sometime afterwards. Where has he gone? Do they mean that he goes on resurrecting? Then he must be somewhere here!

Because of all this suffering, Jews have found a way of laughing, even in misery, and that way is the joke. The joke is purely a Jewish invention.

And you should never make any change of names, because just changing the names won't help. A Jaina couple... it is impossible for them to say what the joke says. "You know why I am knocking," cries Harry, "but you should see with what!" No Indian will say that. It is just impossible.

So I told Nirvano, "Change the names. Put in some Christian names"... because Jews are being hit so much. And I love them. Half of my sannyasins are Jews, and most of them are my sannyasins because I am the only person who loves Jewish jokes. They have a flavor which is their own. Countries like India are very serious. To tell a joke... Indians will feel very much hurt, they are such a repressed people. Here there are a few of my old friends who are Jainas. I told Nirvano, "Do you want them also to go?" Hearing the joke about Halvabhai and Mevabhai, then they are not going to stay!

The people who are translating my books from English to Hindi continuously send me notes: "What to do about the jokes?" And the people who are translating my Hindi books into English -- they again and again ask me, "What to do with the poetry?"

So I tell them, "If you can manage, translate the poetry into prose. If you cannot, then just leave it out." And to the people who are translating from English to Hindi I say simply, "You cannot do anything except leave out those jokes." Indians will get absolutely mad -- they are already mad about me. Such a seriousness has been a long sickness, a wound that has not healed.

Jews have certainly proved their mettle. In all their agony they have maintained their laughter, they have not lost it. But it is a strange psychology that the people who are in suffering will always love laughter. That gives at least some time to forget the misery. People who have lived peacefully, with no suffering, don't know what laughter is.

I have been thinking many times that I should speak on the psychology of jokes. It has so many implications, why a certain joke is a joke and why it arose; who were the people, who must have been the people who managed that joke? In what background has the joke flowered, and was it refined? -- because it is centuries of work. A single joke can be traced back for centuries, and you will find little differences happening and finally it comes to perfection. It is a work of art. But it needs a certain climate and a certain understanding and a certain openness, a certain unrepressed joyfulness; otherwise it can backfire.

This is a beautiful joke -- but Nirvano is not a Jew. She thought it better to make it Christian because she knows the Christian names better and she knows the festival of Lent. In a Jewish context it would have been even better, because they are the most unrepressed people in the world. It is not a coincidence that Sigmund Freud -- a Jew -- started a new science: psychoanalysis. The whole science is against repression.

Every joke has a long history and background. It will be good sometime to give the whole series to Sardar Gurudayal Singh, and find the roots of these jokes -- their psychology, the people, because there are many people. For example, Jews tell jokes about themselves; they are intelligent people. Other people tell jokes about the Polacks, who are very unintelligent people. They cannot make a joke themselves, that is impossible. But they are good in a way; they allow the whole world to make jokes about them. Nice guys!

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen.

Now, look inwards.

Gather all your consciousness as a spear, piercing towards the very center of your being. Deeper and deeper, and you are bound to find the fire of life.

This fire does not burn, this fire is cool. This fire is like flowers. These flames are your eternal, divine sources.

At this moment you are the buddha.

Take care of the buddha twenty-four hours; cultivate the buddha twenty-four hours. Not for a single moment forget to remember your buddhahood.

As your remembrance deepens, as your awareness becomes clear, as you dissolve into your witnessing, the buddha spontaneously arises -- in your actions, in your words, in your silences.

He becomes your whole life, and a life of great joy, a life of blessings, a life which is pure poetry, essential music, an eternal dance.

But keep the witness clear, because in your whole body only the witness is eternal; everything else is mortal. Sooner or later it will be in some grave. It has come from the earth, it will go back to the earth.

Only the witness will fly, without leaving its footprints in the blue sky, to become part of the cosmos.

Buddha is simply a name for your witnessing.

To make it clear,

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax. Witness the body lying there almost dead. The mind is there -- maybe chattering a little bit -- but you are not it. You are simply a watcher.

In this moment you are at the greatest peak of your consciousness, and also the greatest depth.

Thousands of flowers are showering on you.

In this silence, in this serenity, the evening has become tremendously beautiful.      Before Nivedano calls you back, collect as many flowers, as much fragrance, as much juice of your life as possible. And persuade the buddha to come with you. He has been hiding in the center for centuries -- bring him to the circumference, the world needs it.

This is the right moment for every buddha to come out. That is the only hope for the whole planet. If buddhas can come out to their circumference, in their daily activities, we can change the very fabric of human life on the earth. It can become a benediction.

Man has lived uncivilized for a single reason: he never went deep into himself.

I call only those people civilized who have reached their center, and who have seen themselves as buddhas.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, but show even in your coming back the grace, the silence, the joy, the blissfulness of this moment.

Sit for a few moments, just to recollect the golden path you have traveled and the strange man, the buddha, that you have found -- not as a separate entity from you, but just as your innermost being, your very soul.

Okay, Maneesha?