From the book: The Mustard Seed
CHAPTER 3
The Marvel of Marvels
23 August 1974 am in Buddha Hall
THE THIRD SAYING
JESUS SAID: I TOOK MY STAND IN THE MIDST OF THE WORLD AND IN FLESH I APPEARED TO THEM.
I FOUND THEM ALL DRUNK, I FOUND NONE OF THEM ATHIRST.
AND MY SOUL WAS AFFLICTED FOR THE SONS OF MEN, BECAUSE THEY ARE BLIND IN THEIR HEART AND THEY DO NOT SEE THAT EMPTY THEY HAVE COME INTO THE WORLD, AND EMPTY THEY SEEK TO GO OUT OF THE WORLD AGAIN.
BUT NOW THEY ARE DRUNK. WHEN THEY HAVE SHAKEN OFF THEIR WINE, THEN THEY WILL REPENT.
JESUS SAID: IF THE FLESH HAS COME INTO EXISTENCE BECAUSE OF THE SPIRIT, IT IS A MARVEL; BUT IF THE SPIRIT HAS COME INTO EXISTENCE BECAUSE OF THE BODY, IT IS A MARVEL OF MARVELS. BUT I MARVEL AT HOW THIS GREAT WEALTH HAS MADE ITS HOME IN THIS POVERTY.
Jesus, or Buddha, or anybody who is awakened, will find you all drunk. The drunkenness is of many types, but the drunkenness is there. You are not alert, you are not awake: you simply think that you are awake and alert. Your sleep continues from birth to death.
Gurdjieff used to tell a small story. There was a man who owned thousands of sheep, and he was always in trouble because the sheep would go astray and they would become the victims of wild animals. So he asked a wise man, and the wise man suggested, “Keep watchdogs.” So he had a hundred dogs to keep watch on the sheep. They would not allow the sheep to go out, and if any sheep tried to go out they would kill it.
By and by, they became so addicted to killing that they started to murder the sheep – they became dangerous. So again the man came to the wise man and said, “It has become dangerous, the protectors have become murderers.” It always happens – look at your politicians: they are the protectors, the watchdogs, but once they are powerful they start killing.
The wise man said, “Then there is only one way. I will come.” So he came, and he hypnotized all the sheep and told them, “You are awake, alert, completely free. Nobody is your owner.” Then those sheep remained in that hypnotic state, and they would not go anywhere. They would not escape because this was not a prison, and they all believed that they were the owners, masters of their own selves. Even if some sheep was killed by the master, they would think, “This is her fate, not mine. Nobody can kill me. I have an immortal self and I am totally free, so there is no need to escape.” Then there was no need for watchdogs, and the master was at ease because the sheep were hypnotized, they lived in a semi-sleep. And that is the state in which you are – in which Jesus finds you, in which I find you. But nobody has hypnotized you -this is an autohypnosis. You are both the wise man who hypnotized the sheep and the sheep who was hypnotized – you have autohypnotized yourself.
There is a certain method of autohypnotizing yourself: if you think a particular thought continuously you will be hypnotized by it; if you look at a thing continuously you will be hypnotized by it; if you brood on something continuously you will be hypnotized by it.
It happened that one French poet went to the United States. He was shown around New York and the guide brought him to the Empire State Building. The poet looked amazed. He looked again and again, and then said, “It reminds me of sex.”
The guide was puzzled. He had heard many types of reactions, but this was something new. Nobody had ever commented, looking at the Empire State Building, that it reminded them of sex. So he asked, “If you don’t feel offended, please tell me why it reminds you of sex?”
The Frenchman said, “Everything does!”
If you continuously think of sex you become hypnotized – then everything is sexual to you. Even if you go into the temple, the temple reminds you of sex. Where you move is not the question, because you carry your mind with you and your mind goes on creating a world around you. Somebody is hypnotized through sex, somebody is hypnotized through wealth, somebody is hypnotized through power – but everybody is hypnotized. And nobody has done this to you – you have been doing this yourself, it is your work. But you have been doing it so long that you have completely forgotten that you are both the magician and the sheep.
Once a man realizes, “I am the magician and I am the sheep,” then things start changing, because then the first spark of transformation has entered. Now you can never be the same again, because the hypnosis has started dropping. A breaking point has come – something of awareness has entered you.
You may have different objects of hypnosis; find out which is the object of your hypnosis, which one attracts you most, which one has become the focal point of your being, and then look at it, at how you got hypnotized by it. Repetition is the method of hypnosis: looking at anything continuously, or thinking about it continuously. If you go to a hypnotist he will say, “You are falling asleep, falling asleep, falling asleep, falling asleep.” He will go on repeating the same thing in a monotonous voice, and soon you will be fast asleep. He was not doing anything but simply repeating something. Hearing it again and again and again, you will fall asleep – you have hypnotized yourself.
Remember this, because you are doing this continuously, and this is being done by society continuously. The whole mechanism of propaganda consists of repetitions. Politicians go on repeating certain things. They go on repeating them, and they don’t bother whether you listen or not. Listening is not the point, because if they just go on repeating, by and by you are convinced, persuaded; not logically, not rationally – they never argue with you – but just through repetition you are hypnotized.
Hitler went on repeating that the Jews are the reason for the misery and fall of Germany: “Once the Jews are destroyed, there will be no problem. You are the owners of the whole world, you are a special race; you have come here to dominate – you are the master race.”
Even his friends never believed it in the beginning, and he himself never believed it in the beginning, because this was such a patent lie. But as he continued, by and by people started believing in it – they were hypnotized. And when other people were hypnotized by it, he too was hypnotized into thinking that there must be some truth in it: “When millions of people believe it, there must be something true in it.” Then his friends started believing it, then it became a mutual hypnosis, and then the whole of Germany got into it.
One of the most intelligent races behaved very foolishly. Why? What happened to the German mind? Just repetition, propaganda.
Hitler has written in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, that there is a simple process for transforming a lie into a truth: just go on repeating it – and he knew from his own experience. If you go on repeating a particular thing – you smoke, you go on smoking every day – it becomes a hypnosis. Then, even if you come to know that it is useless, futile, foolish, dangerous to health, nothing can be done, because now it is an autohypnosis.
Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was reading an article to him against smoking. Experts were quoted as saying that cancer and tuberculosis and other diseases are possible through smoking. He heard it and then said, “Stop this nonsense! This is all silly, and I tell you, I intend to continue smoking till I die!”
His weary wife said, “Okay then, have it your own way. But what makes you think that even then you will stop? What makes you think that even then, when you die, you will stop?”
Really, if you are under hypnosis, it never stops. Death doesn’t make much difference: in the next life you start again the same way, because the next life starts from where the last was discontinued; it is a continuity. So when a child is born, he is not really a child, he is very, very old, very ancient. He brings all his ancient karmas with him, all the samskaras and conditionings. He starts as an old man – he already has his hypnosis. This is what Hindus call samskaras, karmas.
What are karmas? What is the deepest meaning of the theory of karma? Karma is a method of autohypnosis. If you repeat an action continuously you become hypnotized by it; then the karma, the action, becomes the master and you are just a slave. What have you gained through sex? Have you gained anything or is it just a repetition? But you have repeated it for so long that now if you stop you feel you are missing something. If you continue you feel nothing is gained. If nothing is gained by continuing it, then you are not missing anything by stopping it. Then why do you feel something is missing? It is just the old habit – a samskara, a conditioning, a karma. You have repeated it too many times and you have become hypnotized by it. Now you have to repeat it, it has become an obsession, it is compulsive.
A person goes on overeating. He knows it is bad, he suffers because of it, he is ill continuously; but still, when he sits down to eat he cannot help it. It is compulsive. What is compulsion? Because he has been doing it so long he has become hypnotized by it. He is drunk.
Mulla Nasruddin came home one night very late, it must have been three in the morning. He knocked; his wife was very angry, but Mulla said, “Wait! First give me one minute to explain, then you can start. I was sitting with a very sick friend.”
His wife said, “A very likely story- but tell me the name of the friend.”
Mulla Nasruddin thought and thought and thought, and then he said triumphantly, “He was so sick he couldn’t tell me!”
The mind, if it is drunk, may find excuses but all those excuses are false, just like this one: “The friend was so sick that he couldn’t tell me.” For sex you will find excuses, for smoking you will find excuses, for your lust for power you will find excuses, but all excuses are lame. The real fact is that you are not ready to recognize that it has become compulsive, that you are under an obsession, you are under a hypnosis.
This is what a Jesus finds: everyone drunk and fast asleep. You cannot find it because you yourself are asleep. Unless you are awake you cannot become aware of what is happening all around. The whole world is moving in a somnambulism. That’s why there is so much misery, so much violence, so much war. It is unnecessary, but it has to be so because people who are asleep and drunk cannot be responsible for anything. If somebody came to Jesus to ask what he should do to change, Jesus would say: You cannot do anything to change unless you become awake. What can you do? What can a man who is fast asleep do to change his dreams? What can he do?
People would come with the same question to Gurdjieff – and Gurdjieff is the man most representative of Jesus in this age, not the pope of the Vatican. Gurdjieff is the most representative because he believed in, and worked out, the same method of friction that Jesus was working with. He created many types of crosses for people to hang themselves on and be transformed. Gurdjieff also used to say that you cannot do anything unless you are. And if you are not awake, you are not there, you simply believe that you are. This belief won’t help.
Now look at these sayings. They are all very profound, deep, very significant, and can become guidelights on your path. Remember them.
JESUS SAID: I TOOK MY STAND IN THE MIDST OF THE WORLD AND IN FLESH I APPEARED TO THEM. I FOUND THEM ALL DRUNK; I FOUND NONE OF THEM ATHIRST.
Jesus never renounced the world, he was standing in the midst of us all. He was not an escapist; he moved in the marketplace, he lived with the crowd. He talked to prostitutes, laborers, farmers, fishermen. He didn’t go out of the world, he remained here amidst you. He knew the world better than anybody who has escaped from it.
It is no wonder that Christ’s message became so powerful; Mahavira’s message never became so powerful, but Jesus converted almost half of the world. Why? – because he remained in the world, he understood the world… its ways, the people, the mind. He moved with them, he came to know how they function – asleep, drunk – and he started to find ways and means to awaken them.
On the last night, when Jesus was caught – or managed to be caught – when the last drama was enacted, one disciple was with him. And Jesus said, “This is my last night, so I will go into deep prayer. I have to pray, and you are to keep vigil. Don’t fall asleep! I will come and see… and this is my last night, remember!”
Jesus went and after half an hour he came again. The disciple was fast asleep. He awakened him and told him, “You are fast asleep, and I told you to keep vigil because this is my last night. Remain alert, because I will not be here again! Then you can sleep for ever and ever. But with me… at least on my last night remain alert!”
The disciple said, “Excuse me, I was feeling so sleepy that I couldn’t help it. But I will try now.”
Jesus went again into prayer. After half an hour he was back and that disciple was fast asleep. He awakened him again and said, “What are you doing? The morning is coming near and I will be caught!”
The disciple said, “Excuse me, forgive me, but the flesh is very strong and the will is very weak; and the body was so heavy, and I thought, ‘What is wrong in taking a little sleep? By the time you come, I will be awake again.'”
A third time Jesus came and the disciple was fast asleep….
But this is the situation of all disciples. Many times I have come to you and I have found you fast asleep. Whenever I came to you I found you were fast asleep. Sleepiness has become just second nature. What does sleepiness mean? It means that you are not aware that you are – then whatsoever you do is irresponsible. You are mad, and whatsoever you do you are doing just like a drunkard.
Mulla Nasruddin was caught. When he came out of court he said to a friend, “It has been very hard: the judge first fined me fifty rupees” – because he had kissed a woman, a stranger, on the road. So he was telling his friend, “The judge first fined me fifty rupees for kissing her – and then when he looked at the woman he fined me fifty more for being drunk!”… Because the woman was almost no woman at all – she was so ugly that nobody could kiss her if he was in his senses!
You have all been kissing the ugliest things possible. That is possible only because you are drunk and asleep. Have you ever thought about things that obsess you? How ugly! Can you find anything more ugly than power? Can you find a more ugly man than Hitler, Napoleon, Alexander? But that’s your ambition also; deep down you would like to be like Napoleon, Alexander, Hitler – successful in the world, powerful in the world. But can you find anything more ugly than them?
Power is the ugliest thing, but everybody wants power, to dominate. Have you seen the ugliness of wealth? It has to be ugly, it cannot be beautiful, because it depends on exploitation. Blood is there, death is there, and many have been deprived of their lives… only then does your bank balance go on increasing. You cannot find anything more ugly than that, but deep down, everybody is in search of wealth.
Whenever the last judgment day comes, you will be fined fifty rupees first, and when God looks at the things you have been kissing you will be fined fifty more… because you have been drunk, otherwise this would not be possible.
Says Jesus:
I TOOK MY STAND IN THE MIDST OF THE WORLD AND IN FLESH I APPEARED TO THEM.
And he was not a spirit. Many masters go on continuously visiting you in their spirits. Buddha still knocks at your door, but in the spirit. And if you cannot see a person who has come in the flesh, how can you recognize Buddha?
In this century, when H.P.Blavatsky discovered – or rediscovered – the existence of masters who go on working and helping people who are on the path, in spirit, nobody believed her. They thought she had gone crazy, and people would say, “Give us proof – where are those masters?” One of the greatest things that Theosophy achieved was the rediscovery of masters, because anyone who has become enlightened remains in the world, for there is nowhere else to go. This is the only existence there is. So he remains, but without the body, and his being goes on functioning, helping, because that is his nature – it is not something he has to do.
It is just like a light: a light is there, and it goes on and on lighting everything that is around it. Even if the path is lonely and nobody passes, the light still goes on burning because that is its nature. If somebody comes to the path, then the light is there and the light guides him; not that it is something to be done on his part – it is just his nature. Whenever a being becomes enlightened he remains a guide. But you cannot recognize a guide in the spirit if you cannot recognize a guide in the body.
Jesus says: I appeared in the flesh to them – I was in the body, they could see me, they could hear me, they could feel me, but still they missed. They missed because… I FOUND THEM ALL DRUNK. They were not there really, no consciousness at all. I knocked at their doors, but they were not at home.
If Jesus comes to your home and knocks, will you be there to receive him? You will be somewhere else; you are never at home. You go on wandering all over the world, except to your home. Where is your home? Inside you, where the center of consciousness is, is your home. You are never there, because only in deep meditation are you there. And when you are deep in meditation you can recognize Jesus immediately – whether he comes in the body or bodiless makes no difference. If you are at home you will recognize the knock. But if you are not at home, what can be done? Jesus will knock and you will not be there. That is the meaning of the word drunk: not at home.
Really, whenever you want to forget yourself you take alcohol, drugs; whenever you want to forget yourself you drink. Drinking means forgetfulness, and the whole of religion consists of remembering; hence, all the religions insist against drinking. Not that there is something wrong in drinking in itself – if you are not moving on the path there is nothing wrong in it. But if you are moving on the path, then there cannot be anything more wrong than that, because the whole path consists of self-remembering, and drinking is forgetfulness.
But why do you want to forget yourself? Why are you so bored with yourself? Why can’t you live with yourself? Why can’t you be alert and at ease? What is the problem? The problem is that whenever you are alert, alone, you feel empty; you feel as if you are nobody. You feel a nothingness inside and that nothingness becomes the abyss. You get scared, you start running from it.
Deep inside you, you are an abyss, and that’s why you go on escaping. Buddha called that abyss no-self, anatta. There is nobody inside. When you look it is a vast expansion, but nobody is there – just inner sky, an infinite abyss, endless, beginningless. The moment you look you get dizzy, you start running, you immediately escape. But where can you escape to? Wherever you go that emptiness will be with you because it is you. It is your Tao, your nature. One has to come to terms with it.
Meditation is nothing but coming to terms with your inner emptiness: recognizing it, not escaping; living through it, not escaping; being through it, not escaping. Then suddenly the emptiness becomes the fullness of life. When you don’t escape from it, it is the most beautiful thing, the purest, because only emptiness can be pure. If something is there, dirt has entered; if something is there, then death has entered; if something is there, then limitation has entered. If something is there, then God cannot be there. God means the great abyss, the ultimate abyss. It is there, but you are never trained to look into it.
It is just like when you go to the hills and look into the valley: you get dizzy. Then you don’t want to look because a fear grips you – you may fall. But no hill is so high and no valley so deep as the valley that exists inside you. And whenever you look inside you feel a dizziness, nausea – you immediately escape, you close your eyes and start running. You have been running for millions of lives, but you have not reached anywhere, because you cannot.
One has to come to terms with the inner emptiness. And once you come to terms with it, suddenly the emptiness changes its nature – it becomes the all. Then it is not empty, not negative; it is the most positive thing in existence. But acceptance is the door.
That’s why there is so much attraction for alcohol, LSD, marijuana – drugs. And there are many types of drugs: physical, chemical, mental; wealth, power, politics – everything is a drug.
Look at a politician: he is drugged, he is drunk with power; he does not walk on the earth. Look at a man of wealth: you think he walks on the earth? No, his feet never touch the earth, he is very high, he has wealth. Only poor men walk on the earth, only beggars; a rich man flies in the sky. When you fall in love with a woman, suddenly you are on high; suddenly you never walk again on the earth – a romance has entered. The whole quality of your being is different, because now you are drunk. Sex is the deepest alcohol that nature has given to you.
Jesus said:
I FOUND THEM ALL DRUNK; I FOUND NONE OF THEM ATHIRST.
This has to be understood, a very delicate point: if you are drunk with this world, you cannot be thirsty for the other. If you are drunk with ordinary alcohol, with ordinary wine, you cannot be thirsty for the divine wine – impossible! When a man is not drunk with this world, a thirst arises. And that thirst cannot be fulfilled by anything that belongs to this world. Only the unknown can fulfill it, only the invisible can fulfill it.
So Jesus says a very contradictory thing: I FOUND THEM ALL DRUNK; I FOUND NONE OF THEM ATHIRST. Nobody was thirsty because they thought they had already found the key, the treasure, the kingdom. So then there was no search.
God is a drunkenness of a different type. Kabir has said: “Aisi tari lagi – I have fallen into such a drunkenness that nothing now can disturb it, it is eternal.” Ask Omar Khayyam – he knows, he talks about the wine of the other world. And Fitzgerald totally misunderstood him, because he is not talking of the wine that you can get here; he is talking of the divine wine, which is the Sufi symbol for God. Once you are drunk with God, then there will be no thirst at all.
But this world and its wine can give you only temporary relief, can give you only temporary gaps of forgetfulness. And the difference is diametrical: when someone is drunk with God’s wine he is totally alert, aware, fully conscious; when somebody is drunk with this world and its wines he is hypnotized, asleep, moves in a slumber, lives in a sleep – his whole life is a long dream.
I FOUND THEM ALL DRUNK; I FOUND NONE OF THEM ATHIRST.
AND MY SOUL WAS AFFLICTED FOR THE SONS OF MEN, BECAUSE THEY ARE BLIND IN THEIR HEART AND THEY DO NOT SEE THAT EMPTY THEY HAVE COME INTO THE WORLD, AND EMPTY THEY SEEK TO GO OUT OF THE WORLD AGAIN.
AND MY SOUL WAS AFFLICTED…. You cannot understand what suffering happens to a Jesus or a Buddha when he looks at you, drunk with this world, not thirsty at all for the divine, for the truth; living in lies, and believing in lies as if they were truths – and missing for nothing, missing all for nothing. Then it happens that the smallest things can become barriers.
Once it happened that a man was very ill. The illness was that he continually felt that his eyes were popping out and his ears were ringing – continually. By and by, he became crazy because it went on twenty-four hours a day. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t do his work.
So he consulted doctors. One doctor suggested, “Remove the appendix,” so the appendix was removed, but nothing happened. Another suggested, “Remove all the teeth,” so all his teeth were removed. Nothing happened; the man simply became old, that’s all. Then somebody suggested that the tonsils should be removed. There are millions of advisers, and if you start listening to them they will kill you. So his tonsils were removed, but nothing happened. Then he consulted the greatest doctor known.
The doctor diagnosed and he said, “Nothing can be done because the cause cannot be found. At the most you can live six months more. And I must be frank with you, because all that could be done has been done. Now nothing can be done.”
The man came out of the doctor’s office and thought, “If I only have six months to live, then why not live well?” He was a miser and he had never lived, so he ordered the latest and biggest car; he purchased a beautiful bungalow, he ordered thirty suits, he even ordered shirts to be made to order.
He went to the tailor who measured him and said, “Thirty-six sleeves, sixteen collar.” The man said, “No, fifteen, because I always use fifteen.”
The tailor measured again and said, “Sixteen!”
The man said, “But I have always used fifteen!”
The tailor said, “Okay then, have it your own way, but I tell you, you will have popping eyes and ringing in the ears!” And that was the whole cause of his illness!
You are missing the divine not for very great causes – no! Just a fifteen collar – and the eyes cannot see, they are popping; and the ears cannot hear, they are ringing. The cause of man’s illness is simple, because he is addicted to small things.
The things of this world are very small. Even if you get a kingdom, what is it? A very small thing. Where are the kingdoms that existed in history? Where is Babylon? Where is Assyria? Where is the kingdom of Pharaoh? They all disappeared, just ruins – and the kingdoms were great. But what was attained by them? What did Genghis Khan attain? What did Alexander attain? All kingdoms are just trivial things.
And you don’t know what you are missing – you are missing the kingdom of God. Even if you become successful, what will you get through it? Where will you get through it? Look at successful people, diagnose them: where have they reached? Look at people who sit on thrones of success: where have they reached? They are also in search of mental peace – more than you. They are also afraid of death, and trembling, just like you.
If you look at your successful people minutely, you will find that those ‘gods’ also have clay feet. Death will take them, and with death all success disappears, all fame disappears. The whole thing seems to be a nightmare: so much effort, so much misery, so much hardship – and nothing is gained. In the end death comes and everything disappears like a bubble. And because of this bubble, that which is eternal is lost.
AND MY SOUL WAS AFFLICTED FOR THE SONS OF MEN, BECAUSE THEY ARE BLIND IN THEIR HEART, AND THEY DO NOT SEE THAT EMPTY THEY HAVE COME INTO THE WORLD, AND EMPTY THEY SEEK TO GO OUT OF THE WORLD AGAIN.
Empty you have come, but not exactly empty: filled with desires. Empty you will go, but not exactly empty: again filled with desires. But desires are dreams – you remain empty – they have nothing substantial in them. You are born empty, and then you move in the world and accumulate things, just believing that these things will give you a fulfillment. You remain empty. Death snatches everything, you move again into the grave, again empty.
To what point does this whole life come? To what meaning and conclusion? What do you achieve through it? This is the affliction of a Jesus or a Buddha looking at men. They are blind – and why are they blind? Where is their blindness? It is not that they are not clever – they are too clever, more than they need, more than they can afford, more than is good for them. They are very clever, cunning. They think they are wise. It is not that they cannot see – they can see, but they can see only something that belongs to this world. Their heart is blind, their heart cannot see.
Can you see with your heart? Have you ever seen anything with your heart? Many times you may have thought, “The sun is rising and the morning is beautiful,” and think it is from the heart. No… because your mind is still chattering, “The sun is beautiful, the morning is beautiful,” and you may be simply repeating others’ ideas. Have you really realized that the morning is beautiful – this morning, the phenomenon that is happening here? Or are you repeating words?
You go to a flower: have you really gone? Has the flower touched your heart? Has it reached to your deepest core of being? Or do you just look at the flower and say, “Good, it is beautiful, nice.” These are words and almost dead, because they are not coming from the heart. From the heart no word ever comes; feeling comes, but not words. Words come from the head, feeling comes from the heart. But we are blind there. Why are we blind there? – because the heart leads into dangerous paths.
So nobody is allowed to live with the heart. Your parents have taken care that you should live with the head, not with the heart, because the heart may lead you to failure in this world. It does lead, and unless you fail in this world you will not be athirst for the other. The head leads to success in this world. It is cunning, calculating, it is a manipulator – it leads you to success. So every school, every college and university teaches you how to be more ‘heady’, how to be more ‘headful’. And those who are headful, they get the gold medals. They are successful and then they have the keys to enter into this world.
But a man with heart will be a failure, because he cannot exploit. He will be so loving that he cannot exploit. He will be so loving that he cannot be a miser, an accumulator. He will be so loving that he will go and share, and whatsoever he has he will give, rather than snatching things from people. He will be a failure. And he will be so true that he cannot deceive you. He will be sincere and honest, authentic; but then he will be a stranger in this world where only cunning people can succeed. That is why every parent takes care that before the child moves into the world the heart of the child should become blind, completely closed. You cannot pray, you cannot love. Can you? Can you pray?
You can pray – go into a church on Sunday: people are praying, but everything is false, even their prayer comes from their heads. They have learned it, it is not from the heart. Their hearts are empty, dead, they don’t feel a thing. People ‘love’, they get married and children are born to them – not out of love. Everything is out of calculation, everything is out of arithmetic. You are afraid of love, because no one knows where love will lead you. No one knows the ways of the heart, they are mysterious. With the head you are on the right path, on the highway; with the heart you move into the jungle. There are no roads, no road signs; you have to find the path yourself.
With the heart you are individual, solitary; with the head you are part of the society. The head has been trained by the society, it is part of the society. With the heart you become a solitary, an outsider. So every society takes care to kill the heart, and Jesus says:
… BECAUSE THEY ARE BLIND IN THEIR HEARTS AND DO NOT SEE THAT EMPTY THEY HAVE COME INTO THE WORLD, AND EMPTY THEY SEEK TO GO OUT OF THE WORLD AGAIN.
Only the heart can see how empty you are! What have you gained? What maturity, what growth has happened to you? What ecstasy has come to you? – no benediction yet? The whole past has been a rotten thing. And in the future you are going to repeat the past: what else can you do? This is the affliction of a Jesus, of a Buddha. He feels miserable for you.
BUT NOW THEY ARE DRUNK. WHEN THEY HAVE SHAKEN OFF THEIR WINE, THEN THEY WILL REPENT.
This is about you. Don’t think ‘they’ – they means you: when you are shaken out of your drunkenness, you will repent. This word repent became very meaningful. The whole of Christianity depends on repentance; no other religion has depended so much on repentance. Repentance is beautiful if it comes through the heart, if you realize that, “Yes, Jesus is right, we have wasted our lives.”
This wasting is the sin – not that Adam committed the sin – this wasting of your life, of the possibility, the potentiality, the opportunity to grow and become God-like or become gods; wasting this time, wasting it with futile things, collecting useless junk. And when you become aware you will repent. And if this repentance comes through the heart it will cleanse you. Nothing cleanses like repentance. And this is one of the most beautiful things in Christianity.
In Hinduism there is no secret about repentance. They have not worked out that key at all. This is unique to Christianity. If you repent totally, if it comes from the heart, if you cry and weep, if your whole being feels and repents that you have been wasting God’s given opportunity – you have not been grateful, you have misbehaved, you have mistreated your own being… you feel the sin. This is the sin! – not that you have murdered somebody or that you have stolen; that is nothing. Those are minor sins which are born out of this original sin: that you have been drunk. You open your eyes, your heart is filled with repentance, and then a scream, a cry, comes out of your being. There is no need for words, you need not say to God, “I repent, forgive me.” No need. Your whole being becomes a repentance. Suddenly, you are cleansed of all the past. This is one of the most secret keys Jesus delivered to the world.
Jainas say that you have to work it out, it is a long process: whatsoever you have done in the past has to be undone. If you have done a wrong in the past, it has to be undone. It is mathematical: if you have committed a sin, you have to do something to balance it. And Hindus say that you have committed such sin, that you are in such ignorance – so many actions out of ignorance, and the past is so vast that it is not easy to get out of it. Many more works will be needed, only then can you clean the past.
But Jesus has given a beautiful key. He says: “Just repent and the whole past is washed clean!” It seems to be a very unbelievable thing, because how can it happen? And that is the difference between Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas and Christianity. Hindus, Buddhists and Jainas can never believe that can happen just by repentance, because they don’t know what repentance is. Jesus worked it out. It is one of the oldest keys.
But understand what repentance is. Just saying the words won’t do, and saying them halfheartedly won’t do. When your whole being repents, your whole being throbs and you feel it in every pore, every fiber, that you have done wrong, and you have done wrong because you have been drunk and now you repent – suddenly there is a transformation. The past disappears and the projection of the future from the past disappears; you are thrown to here and now, you are thrown to your own being. And for the first time you feel the inner nothingness. It is not empty negatively, it is just that the temple is so vast, like space…. You are forgiven, Jesus says, you are forgiven if you repent.
Jesus’ master was John the Baptist. His whole teaching was, “Repent, because the day of judgment is near!” This was his whole teaching. He was a very wild man, a great revolutionary, and he went from one corner of his country to another, just with one message: “Repent, because the last judgment is very near!” That is why Christians completely dropped the theory of rebirth. Not that Jesus was not aware of rebirth – he knew, he knew well that there is a cycle of continuous rebirths. But he completely dropped the idea just to give repentance totality.
If there are many lives your repentance cannot be total. You can wait, you can postpone. You can think, “If in this life I have missed, nothing is wrong. The next life….” That’s what Hindus have been doing. They are the laziest people in the world, because of this theory. And the theory is right, this is the problem; they can always postpone, there is no hurry. Why be in such a hurry? That’s why Hindus have never bothered about time. They never invented watches, and, left to themselves, they would not invent them. So a watch, for a Hindu mind, is really a foreign element: a clock in a Hindu house doesn’t suit. The clock is a Christian invention, because time is short, running fast; it is not a clock, it is life running fast out of your hands. This death is going to be the final one, you cannot postpone.
Just to avoid postponement Jesus and John the Baptist – who was his master, who initiated Jesus into the mysteries – their whole teaching depends on: Repent! For there is no more time left, don’t postpone any further, because you will then be lost. They bring the whole thing to an intensity.
If I suddenly say that this is going to be the last day, and tomorrow the world is going to disappear, the H-bomb is to be dropped, and then I say: Repent! – then your total being will be focused, centered, you will be here and now. And then there will come a scream, a cry, a wild scream from your being. It will not be in words – it will be more existential than that – it will be from the heart. Not only will your eyes weep, but your heart will be filled with tears, your whole being will be filled with tears: you have missed.
If this repentance happens – this is an intensity of becoming alert – all the past is cleaned. No need to undo it – no, because it has never been a reality. It was a dream, no need to undo it – just become alert. And with the sleep, all the dreams and nightmares disappear. They have never been there in reality in the first place, they have been your thoughts. And don’t be lazy about it – because you have been postponing for many lives. You can postpone for many more: postponement is such an attraction for the mind. The mind always says, “Tomorrow” – always. Tomorrow is the shelter. Tomorrow is the shelter of all sin, and virtue arises at this moment.
I have heard: In a school, a Christian missionary school, but with a few non-Christian boys as well, who were also taught the Bible, the parables and the stories – and they had to learn…. One day, the inspector of schools came and he asked a small kid, “Who was the first man, and who was the first woman?”
The kid replied, “Adam and Eve.”
The inspector was pleased and he said, “To what nationality did they belong?” And the kid said, “Indian!”
The inspector was a little bit disturbed, but he still asked, “Why do you think they belonged to the Indian nationality? Why do you think they were Indians?”
And the kid said, “Easy! They had no shelter over their heads, no clothes to wear, nothing to eat except one apple between the two of them – and still they believed this was paradise! They were Indians!”
The Indians are at ease with whatsoever is. They are not worried about doing anything, because they think, “Life is such a long affair, why worry? Why get in a hurry? There is no need to run.”
Christianity created an intensity by the idea that there is only one life. And remember well: Hindus are right, as far as the theory is concerned, and Christians are wrong, as far as the theory is concerned. But theory is never a question for a Jesus. The problem is the human mind and its transformation – and sometimes truth can be poisonous, sometimes truth can make you lazy.
I will give you another example which will be helpful: Gurdjieff used to say that you don’t have any eternal soul, remember. You can attain it, but you don’t have it – you can miss. And if you don’t attain it you will simply die, nothing is going to survive. And Gurdjieff said that only one in millions attains to the soul, and then the soul goes on moving. The body is left and the soul moves on. But this does not happen for everybody. The soul is not given to you, it has to be worked out, it is a crystallization. When they work it out, then a Mahavira, a Buddha, a Jesus – they become eternal. Not you! – Gurdjieff used to say you are just vegetables! You will be eaten, you will dissolve; you don’t have any center, so who can survive?
He was again using the Jesus tactics. He was not right because you do have a soul, an eternal soul. But the theory is dangerous, because when you hear that you have an eternal soul, that you are the Brahman, you go to sleep. This becomes a hypnotic thing: if you are already that, why worry? What need is there of sadhana? What need is there to meditate? “Aham brahmasmi – I am God already.” So you go to sleep because nothing is left to be done. Theories can kill, even true theories can kill. Gurdjieff is not right, but he is more compassionate. And you are such liars that only lies can help you. Only lies can bring you out of your lies, just as when a thorn is in your flesh, another thorn is needed to bring it out.
Jesus knew well, he knew about reincarnation – nobody else knew so well. But he simply dropped the idea because he had been to India! He looked at the Indian mind, saw that the whole mind had become a postponement because of the theory of reincarnation, and he dropped that theory. Gurdjieff also went to India and Tibet, and he looked at the whole nonsense that has happened because of the belief that you already have within you all that is needed. You are divine already, there is no need to do anything. So beggars think they are emperors – then why bother?
Gurdjieff started teaching on the same lines, the essential note is the same: he said nobody has a soul already; you can create it, you may miss it, so don’t take it for granted – work it out! If you make much effort, only then will a center be born, and that center will live; but not you as you are, because you are just vegetables. And to say that you are just vegetables, he created a new myth. He said, “You are vegetables for the moon, food for the moon.” He joked, but it is a very beautiful joke, and very meaningful. He said everything in the world is food for something else: this animal eats that, that animal eats something else. Everything is food for something else, so how can man be an exception? Man must be a food for something and Gurdjieff said, “Man is the food for the moon, and when the moon is very hungry there are wars. When the moon is very hungry, there are wars because many people are needed. But he was joking about the moon, he was not serious. And followers are always blind, so they have taken even this joke as a truth. Gurdjieff’s followers go on saying that this is one of the greatest truths he discovered – if he were to come back he would laugh.
He was joking, but when Gurdjieff jokes he jokes meaningfully. And the insistence was, the emphasis was, that you are vegetables – as you are. Only this much can be done with you: the moon can eat you. Can you find anything more stupid than the moon? Difficult to find! When the astronauts reached it, they thought that they were going to fulfill all the dreams and all the poetry of the world, because man has always been thinking about reaching the moon. But when they reached it, there was nothing. The moon is nothing – you are food for nothing. The moon is just a dead planet. And you are food for a dead planet, because you are dead!
Remember this: Christianity, particularly Jesus, knows well that there is incarnation, reincarnation, rebirth. Life is a long continuity, this death is not going to be the ultimate death. But once this is said, you relax. And the whole method of Jesus depends on friction: you are not allowed to relax, you have to fight, create friction, so that you can become crystallized.
BUT NOW THEY ARE DRUNK. WHEN THEY HAVE SHAKEN OFF THEIR WINE, THEN THEY WILL REPENT.
JESUS SAID: IF THE FLESH HAS COME INTO EXISTENCE BECAUSE OF THE SPIRIT, IT IS A MARVEL; BUT IF THE SPIRIT HAS COME INTO EXISTENCE BECAUSE OF THE BODY, IT IS A MARVEL OF MARVELS.
I think Karl Marx missed this! I wonder what he would have thought if he had come to these saying of Jesus. Jesus says:… FLESH HAS COME INTO EXISTENCE BECAUSE OF THE SPIRIT… as all religions say – God created the world. That means flesh has come out of the spirit, matter has come out of the mind; consciousness is the source, the world is just a byproduct. Then, Jesus says: … IT IS A MARVEL – it is a mystery.
BUT IF THE SPIRIT HAS COME INTO EXISTENCE BECAUSE OF THE BODY… as atheists say, materialists say, Karl Marx, Charvak and others say…. Marx says that consciousness is a byproduct of matter. This is what all atheists say, that the world is not created out of the spirit, but the spirit is just a ‘by-phenomenon’, an epiphenomenon of matter; it comes out of matter, it is just a byproduct. Then Jesus says:… IF THE SPIRIT HAS COME INTO EXISTENCE BECAUSE OF THE BODY, IT IS A MARVEL OF MARVELS. The first is just a marvel: that God created the world. But the second is a marvel of marvels – if the world created God. To believe the first is difficult; to believe the second is almost impossible.
It is possible that the lower is born out of the higher, just as a man can paint a picture. We can say the painting has come from the painter, it is a marvel, a beautiful painting. But if somebody says the painter has come out of the painting, it is a marvel of marvels. How can spirit come out of matter if it is not already there? How can a flower come if it is not already in the seed? But Jesus says, anyway, both are marvels. But the third thing is the greatest marvel, and that third thing is:
I MARVEL AT HOW THIS GREAT WEALTH HAS MADE ITS HOME IN THIS POVERTY.
You are poor, a beggar, because you are always desiring, always asking to be given more. Desire is begging, and a desiring mind is a beggar’s mind. You may be an emperor, it makes no difference – you just become a big beggar, that’s all, a great beggar, that’s all. But you go on demanding.
It happened that a Mohammedan mystic, Farid, lived near Delhi in a small village. The emperor Akbar was one of Farid’s followers. Akbar used to come to him, and Farid was a poor fakir. Once, when the town came to know that Akbar comes to Farid, the villagers gathered and said to Farid, “Akbar comes to you, so ask for something for us. At least a school is needed, a hospital is needed. And just by your saying it will be fulfilled, because the emperor himself comes to you.”
The village was poor, uneducated, and there was no hospital, so Farid said, “Okay, but I am not very efficient at asking for anything because I have not asked for so long. But if you say so, I will go.” So he went.
In the morning he reached the palace. Everybody knew that Akbar was his follower, so he was allowed to enter immediately. Akbar was in his shrine – he had made a small shrine where he used to pray – and he was praying, he was in prayer, so Farid stood just at the back. When the prayer was finished he would ask.
Akbar was not aware that Farid was standing behind him. He said the prayer, and at the end he said, “God almighty, make my empire still greater, give me more wealth.”
Farid listened and he turned away. When Akbar had finished his prayer, he looked behind – Farid was going down the stairs. He called, “How did you come? And why are you leaving?”
Farid said, “I had come to meet an emperor, but I find here also a beggar. So it’s useless! And if you are asking God, why shouldn’t I ask him directly? Why an in-between? And Akbar, I thought you were an emperor, but I was wrong.”
Akbar has related the story in his autobiography, and he says, “At that moment I understood: whatsoever one gets makes no difference, because the mind goes on asking for more and more.”
Jesus says this is the marvel of all marvels:… HOW THIS GREAT WEALTH – of divine beingness, of divinity of God – HAS MADE ITS HOME IN SUCH POVERTY. Drunken people, asleep, poor, begging continuously all their lives; asking for ugly things, fighting for ugly things, obsessed with disease and illness – and God has made it his temple, and God has made it his abode, his abode in you! Jesus says this is the best – impossible, incomprehensible – mystery. Marvel of all marvels! Nothing can transcend this.
This is the affliction of a Buddha, of a Jesus: looking at you – emperors, who have the kingdom of God, begging; asking for worthless things, wasting your time, your life, energy, opportunity.
Repent! Look at what you have been doing. It will look so foolish, you will not even be able to believe that you have been doing this. The whole thing will look nonsense!
Look at what you have been doing with your life, look at what you have done to yourself. You are just a ruin, and the ruin is growing every day. In the end you will be just a ruin, totally ruined. And in your begging heart, in your begging mind, there lives the king, the supreme. This is a marvel!
And a Jesus feels very much, hence he is so sad, he cannot laugh. Not that laughter is difficult for him – he cannot laugh because of you. He is so sad, he feels so much for you that he goes on devising methods, devising keys to unlock you, to make you that which you already are, to make you realize who you are.
Go through these words and remember one key word: Repent. And if you can come to realize that repentance is the key, it will cleanse all your past. You will suddenly be fresh and virgin again.
And when you are fresh, God is there, because God is nothing but your freshness, your virginity. Enough for today.