IT WOULD NOT BE BETTER

IF THINGS HAPPENED TO MEN

JUST AS THEY WISH.

UNLESS YOU EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

YOU WILL NEVER FIND THE TRUTH,

FOR IT IS HARD TO DISCOVER

AND HARD TO ATTAIN.

NATURE LOVES TO HIDE.

THE LORD WHOSE ORACLE IS AT DELPHI

NEITHER SPEAKS NOR CONCEALS --

BUT GIVES SIGNS.

Existence has no language... and if you depend on language there can be no communication with existence. Existence is a mystery, you cannot interpret it. If you interpret, you miss. Existence can be lived, but not thought about. It is more like poetry, less like philosophy. It is a sign, it is a door. It shows, but it says nothing.

That's why, through mind, there is no approach to existence. If you think about it, you can go on thinking and thinking, about and about, but you will never reach it -- because it is precisely thinking that is the barrier.

Look! See! Feel! Touch! -- you will be nearer. But don't think. The moment thinking enters, you are thrown off the track -- then you live in a private world. Thinking is a private world; it belongs to you. Then you are enclosed, encapsulated, imprisoned within yourself. Nonthinking, you are no more, you are enclosed no more. Nonthinking, you open, you become porous; existence flows in you and you flow into existence.

But the tendency of the mind is to interpret. Before you see something you have already interpreted it. You hear me: even before I have said anything you are already thinking about it. That's how listening becomes impossible. You will have to learn to listen. Listening means you are open, vulnerable, receptive, but you are not in any way thinking. Thinking is a positive action. Listening is passivity: you become like a valley and receive; you become like a womb and you receive. If you can listen, then nature speaks -- but it is not a language. Nature doesn't use words. Then what does nature use? Says Heraclitus, it uses signs. A flower is there: what is the sign in it? It is not saying anything, but can you say it is not saying anything really? It is saying much, but it is not using any words -- a wordless message.

To hear the wordless you will have to become wordless, because only the same can hear the same, only the same can relate to the same.

Sitting by a flower, don't be a man, be a flower. Sitting by the tree, don't be a man, be a tree. Taking a bath in a river, don't be a man, be a river. And then millions of signs are given to you. And it is not a communication -- it is a communion. Then nature speaks, speaks in thousands of tongues, but not in language. It speaks through millions of directions, but you cannot consult a dictionary about it and you cannot ask a philosopher what it means. The moment you start thinking what it means you are already on the path of going astray.

Somebody who had come to visit Picasso, a very learned man, a critic, he looked at Picasso's paintings and then he said, "They look beautiful, but what do they mean? For example this painting" -- the painting just before which they were standing -- "what does it mean?"

Picasso shrugged his shoulders and said, "Look outside the window -- what does this tree mean? And that bird who is singing? And what is the meaning of the sun rising? And if this whole exists without meaning anything, why can't my painting exist without any meaning?"

Why do you ask what it means? You want to interpret it. You want to give it a linguistic pattern. You want to communicate, not commune. No, it doesn't mean anything. It is there in its total glory. It is a meaning but it doesn't mean anything. The meaning is existential. Look, watch, feel, move into it; allow it to move into you -- but don't ask questions. If you ask questions, enter a university -- you cannot enter the universe. If you want to enter the universe, don't ask... there is nobody to reply to you. You will have a totally different quality of being; only then will you be in contact with it.

It is reported of a Zen master -- a very rare phenomenon, unbelievable because the mind boggles -- that he had done a painting in the king's palace, and the king was asking again and again, "Is it complete?"

And he would say, "Wait a little more, wait a little more."

Years passed and the king said, "It is taking too much time. You don't allow me even to enter the room" -- because he would lock the room and then paint -- "and I am getting old. And I am getting more and more excited as to what you are doing inside the room. Is not the painting ready yet?"

The master said, "The painting is ready, but I am watching for you -- you are not ready. The painting was ready long ago, but that is not the point. Unless YOU are ready, to whom will I show it?"

Existence is there, always waiting, ready. At every moment, at every turn of the road, just by the corner, it is always and always waiting. It is an infinite patience, waiting -- but you are not ready.

Then it is said that the king became ready and the painter said, "Okay, the time has come."

They entered the room -- nobody else was allowed in the room. The painting was really wonderful. It was difficult to say that it was a painting -- it looked real. The painter had done a painting of hills, valleys, and they looked almost three-dimensional, as if they existed. And by the hills there was a small path going somewhere inside. Now comes the most difficult part of the story. The king asked, "Where does this road lead?"

The painter said, "I have not myself traveled yet on this road, but you wait, I will go and see." And he entered the path, and disappeared beyond the hills, and never came back.

This is what a mystery means.

It says many things without saying anything.

If you move into nature to find where it leads, don't stand outside it and ask because then nothing can be done; you have to move into it. If you move you will never come back, because the very movement into existence... and you are losing your ego, you are disappearing. You will reach to the goal, but you will never come back to relate the story about it. The painter never came back. Nobody comes back. Nobody can come back, because the more existential you become, the more you are lost.

Existence opens millions of doors for you, but you stand outside and you would like to know something about it from the outside. There is no outside in nature. I would like to repeat these words: there is no outside to nature, everything is inside... because how can anything exist outside nature? The whole is the inner. And the mind is trying the impossible; it is trying to stand outside, to watch, to see what it means. No, you have to participate. You have to move into it and become one, and disperse like a cloud -- whereabouts unknown.

Now listen to these words of Heraclitus:

IT WOULD NOT BE BETTER

IF THINGS HAPPENED TO MEN

JUST AS THEY WISH.

Why? Why would it not be better? -- because whatsoever you wish will be wrong because YOU are wrong! How can you wish, desire, something right? To desire something right, you have to be right in the first place. Out of ignorance, whatsoever is desired will lead you to a deeper and deeper hell -- because a desire is part of you, it comes out of you. How can anything else come? All that will come will be you. That's why your desires create problems, more and more. The more you desire, the more problems you create. The more you achieve your desires, the more you are in difficulty. But there is no going back, you have to go on and on and on. Hence the insistence of all the knowers that to meet the existence, the first point is to become desireless.

Nothing is wrong in desiring; desiring in itself is beautiful... if a buddha desires. But you desiring, how can you desire something which will lead you towards bliss? No -- because desire comes out of you, it is part of you, it is a continuity. And if you are wrong, the desire is going to be wrong. It will repeat you again and again; in different situations, of course, in different worlds, on different planets, in different lives, but your desire will repeat you. Your desire cannot transform you. That's why I say to people, "If you want to take sannyas, if you want to take a jump into the unknown, don't think about it -- leave it to me!" Why the emphasis on leaving it to me? Just so that you don't desire it. Let it be something which has not come from you, because whatsoever comes out of you will be you -- modified, colored in different ways, but it will be you.

If you are a businessman and desire MOKSHA, it will be a business; it cannot be otherwise. You will be looking for profit -- in the other world, of course, but whatsoever comes out of your mind will be out of your past. And a break is needed, a complete rift is needed, a rift which is unbridgeable.

That is the meaning of going to a master and surrendering. What do you surrender? You surrender your desiring -- what else can you surrender? Nothing else have you got. You say, "Now I will not desire. Now you say something and I will do it." You are allowing something else to enter in your past. If you say, "Yes, I'm convinced. I'm ready to take sannyas," the sannyas will be futile. If out of your conviction a sannyas happens, it is meaningless. But this is the trouble: you would like to be convinced first; you would like to argue about it first. Your mind would like to settle for it.

People come to me and they say, "Unless the desire comes to us, how can we take the jump?" But precisely this is the problem. You have been desiring out of yourself continuously for many lives. It leads nowhere -- it cannot. Can you see the point? You are wrong, you desire, the desire goes wrong. You are wrong, you believe, the belief goes wrong. You have heard about King Midas? Whatsoever he touches becomes gold. Whatsoever you touch, even if it is gold, it is immediately turned into dust. The question is not of a right desire or a wrong desire, the question is of a right being or a wrong being. The question is not of a right act or a wrong act. There are no right acts and no wrong acts, there are no right desires or wrong desires. There is only a desiring being. If it is ignorant, whatsoever comes out of it is going to be wrong. And if the desiring being is not ignorant, then something totally different is born out of him.

Remember: Being matters and only being matters -- nothing else.

IT WOULD NOT BE BETTER

IF THINGS HAPPENED TO MEN

JUST AS THEY WISH.

Stop wishing! You have been living in hells because you have been wishing. Stop desiring! Stop desiring and the doors are open. Desiring is bringing your mind into existence. Try to understand the nature of desire. Desiring means projecting your past into the future, and the future is unknown, and whatsoever you ask will be from the past. All desiring will repeat the past again and again. How can you desire the unknown? That which is in the future, how can you desire it? You don't know it. The future is the unknown, the past is the known. If you desire, it will be from the past.

Mulla Nasruddin was on his deathbed. Somebody asked him, "If you were born again, would you like to make any change or would you like to live the same life again?"

Mulla brooded long. Then he opened his eyes; he said, "One thing: I always wanted to part my hair in the middle -- and that would be the only change. I have been parting my hair on the right and I always wanted to part it in the middle. Otherwise, everything would be repeated as it is." It looks stupid but this is how it is. If you think, if another chance is given to you, what will you do? All the changes that you will want to make will not be more than Mulla is asking: they will be just a parting of the hair in the middle. You would like to have another woman, but what difference does it make? You would like another profession. What difference does it make? It will not be more than parting the hair in the middle.

You cannot ask from the past, and the future is unknown. Because you go on asking from the past, you move in a vicious circle. That circle is the world, the SANSAR, the coming and going, being born again and dying again. Again and again you do the same. Not a single basic change! There cannot be because whatsoever you think, you think out of the known. The known is your past. Then what to do? Don't desire. Let the future come without you desiring it. The future WILL come -- it need not be desired. It is already coming. You need not force your projections on it. Be passive, don't be active about it. Let it come! Don't ask anything about it -- that's what the meaning of desirelessness is. It is not moving from the world, renouncing the world and going to the Himalayas -- all those things are immature.

Leaving, renouncing, means not desiring, and waiting without any desire. Just waiting: "Whatsoever happens we will be a witness to it." If you can wait without desiring, everything will happen to you -- and then it happens from the totality, from the whole, from God itself. If you ask, desire, it will happen, but it will happen out of you. And then you move within yourself, never allowing existence to happen to you -- enclosed.

IT WOULD NOT BE BETTER

IF THINGS HAPPENED TO MEN

JUST AS THEY WISH.

Says Heraclitus, "It is good that things don't happen as you wish them." That is the only possibility of your awakening. That's why he says it is good -- because if every desire is fulfilled you will be completely in a coma because there will be no disturbance. You wanted riches, and riches are there. You wanted beautiful women, and beautiful women are there. You wanted success and success is there. You wanted a ladder to reach to heaven and the ladder is there. You will be in a coma, you will be in a dream. If everything is fulfilled you will never try to seek the truth, there will be no gap for you... because only misery, DUKKHA, unhappiness, the hell that you create around you, helps you to wake. It shocks you towards waking.

In Hindu mythology they say that in heaven, where gods exist, every wish is fulfilled immediately, with no time gap. In the Hindu conception of heaven, there are wishfulfilling trees, KALPTARUS. You just sit under them and wish anything, and without a time gap -- here you wish and there it is. Not even a single moment is lost: you ask for a beautiful woman and she is there. But these gods must be living in a dream, they must be living in a drugged, stoned state.

Hindus say that from heaven there is no way towards truth. This is very beautiful. They say if a god wishes to be liberated completely, he will have to come to the earth. Why? -- because in heaven there is no unhappiness, there is no misery to wake anyone. It is a long peaceful sleep where dreams are continuously fulfilled. When every dream is fulfilled, why should one open the eyes? Even gods have to come to earth; only then can they be liberated. This is a rare conception. Christians don't have that type of conception; their heaven is the last thing. But Hindus say it is not the last thing -- it is just a beautiful, good dreamstate. Good, beautiful, long, very long, for thousands of years it can last, but it is a dreamstate. If gods are to be liberated they have to fall back to earth. Why to earth? -- because on the earth there is misery, pain, anguish... and only anguish is needed. Only that can shock you out of your slumber.

Heraclitus is right:

IT WOULD NOT BE BETTER

IF THINGS HAPPENED TO MEN

JUST AS THEY WISH.

Something or other always goes wrong. That's beautiful! If nothing goes wrong, if everything as it is, is as you would like it to be, then who wants truth? Then who seeks existence? Then who wants freedom, total freedom, moksha? Nobody!

Through drugs, man is trying to be like gods in the Hindu heaven. You take marijuana, or hashish, or LSD, and you are in a dreamstate, a beautiful dreamstate; you are under a wishfulfilling tree. Drugs are against truth because truth needs an awakening: awakening from the past, awakening from the dreams, awakening from your desires -- to see the whole fallacy that you have created around you and to drop it. And to drop it without any effort -- just to see that it is wrong and to drop it.

Remember, if you make much effort to drop it, the very effort makes you ugly. Understanding needs, really, no effort. You understand a thing, you see the reality, and you drop it! Can't you see that you are miserable because of your desires? Is it something to be argued? Something to be convinced of? Can't you see it -- it is so clear that out of desires you have created a hell; then why make an effort? In a sheer, intense moment of understanding, why not drop it immediately? And if you can drop it immediately, then you have a beauty, a grace. This grace you will not find in so-called monks. All over the world, in Catholic, Hindu, Jaina monks, you will not find this grace because they are TRYING to drop it. The very effort to drop it shows that they are still clinging; otherwise, why make any effort? They would like to stop desiring, but this is again a desiring. That's why there is effort. They cling and they would like to drop it. They have not come to a moment of understanding, a moment of truth.

My whole effort with you is to bring you to a moment of understanding where effort is useless. The understanding is so intense, so fiery, that, simply, everything burns. You see and your very seeing becomes the dropping.

This is possible -- this has happened to me, this can happen to you. I am in no way exceptional, just an ordinary man. If it happens to me, just an ordinary man, why not to you? Just make an intense search towards understanding. Understanding is transformation, mutation, a revelation. Understanding liberates.

Listen to these words:

IT WOULD NOT BE BETTER

IF THINGS HAPPENED TO MEN

JUST AS THEY WISH.

UNLESS YOU EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

YOU WILL NEVER FIND THE TRUTH,

FOR IT IS HARD TO DISCOVER

AND HARD TO ATTAIN.

Let these words enter your heart:

UNLESS YOU EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED,

YOU WILL NEVER FIND THE TRUTH...

... Because the truth cannot be your expectation.

Whatsoever you expect will be a lie. Whatsoever you expect will be a projection. Whatsoever you expect will be a part of your mind. No, truth cannot be expected. It takes you unawares. In fact, it comes when you were not even waiting for it. It is a sudden enlightenment.

Expectation means your known projecting itself into the future, into the unknown. That's why I say if you are a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist, or a Jaina, you will miss -- because what does to be a Christian mean? It means a Christian expectation. It means a god seen through Christian eyes. It means a conception, a philosophy. What does it mean to be a Hindu? It means a system of belief. It gives an expectation: you expect a god, you expect the truth; the truth will be like this, the god will be like this -- the face, the figure, the form, the name you expect.

Your expectation is the barrier because God is the unexpected, the truth is the unexpected. It has never been theorized about, it has never been brought into language, it cannot be forced into words; nobody has ever been able to and nobody ever will. It remains the unexpected! It is a stranger. Whenever God knocks at your door you will not find a familiar face, no. It is the unfamiliar, the stranger. You never thought about it, you never heard about it, you never read about it. Just the stranger.... And if you cannot accept the stranger, if you ask for the familiar, truth is not for you.

Truth is a stranger.

It comes without giving any intimation that it is coming. It comes when you are not expecting, not waiting.

Remember this, that people meditate and meditate and meditate -- that's a must -- but truth never happens in meditation. It happens outside. But meditation helps: it makes you alert, it makes you watchful, it makes you more aware and conscious. And then suddenly somewhere -- it happens in such unexpected moments, you cannot believe why God chooses such unexpected moments.

A nun is carrying water, and the bamboo breaks, and the earthen pot falls on the ground, and the water flows... and suddenly she is awakened. What happened? For forty, fifty years she was meditating and it never knocked -- because meditation means you are expecting, you are watching for something that is going to happen. Your mind is there, working -- very subtly, very, very subtly; you may not even be able to detect where it is. You may think that now everything is silent, no thought, but this is also a thought. You feel absolute silence, but even this feeling that now there is absolute silence, now soon the door is going to open -- this is a thought. When you become absolutely silent, even this thought is not there, that "I am silent," but that means you must not be meditating. And this is the paradox: meditate as much as you can to bring a moment of a nonmeditative meditation.

That happened to that nun. Carrying water, she was not worried about God; the bamboo was old, and she was worried about the bamboo. She was holding it this way and that, worried that it may break any moment. And the pot was earthen, and it would break! She was not at all at the door, and the door was open because she had meditated for forty years. So the door was open and she was not there at all... suddenly the bamboo breaks, the pot falls, breaks, and the water flows. It is a shock! For a moment even this worry dissolves. Now whatsoever was to happen has happened. Now she is in a nonmeditative moment -- and God is there. And it happened.

It has been happening that way always -- in such moments one never expected. When you expect, you miss, because you are there in your expectation. When you don't expect, it happens, because you are not there, nobody is there. When your house is totally empty, so empty that you are not even aware that "I am empty" -- because that much will be enough disturbance, when even emptiness is thrown, he comes.

UNLESS YOU EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED....

Drop all your notions about God. All notions are false. You may have heard Hindus say Christian notions are false, Christians say Hindu notions are false, Jainas say Christians and Hindus are false, Buddhists say Jainas, Hindus, Christians are false -- I say all notions are false. Not that my notion is right -- no! Notion as such is false, because it makes a theory out of the unknown, which is not possible. All theories are false -- without any exception. All theories are false -- absolutely, categorically, mine included -- because the unexpected remains the unexpected.

UNLESS YOU EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

YOU WILL NEVER FIND THE TRUTH,

FOR IT IS HARD TO DISCOVER

AND HARD TO ATTAIN.

In fact, it is not hard to attain and not hard to discover. It is because of you that it is hard to attain and hard to discover -- because how to put this mind aside? Mind is subtle: even in putting it aside it remains. The mind says, "Okay, I will not be here," but this is also mind. The mind says, "Now, let God knock at the door. I am not," but this is also the mind. The mind says, "I will meditate." The mind says, "I will drop all thoughts." The mind says, "Look! I have dropped all thoughts. Look! I am empty." But this is also mind. This is the problem: whatsoever you do the mind stands there.

See the point -- no effort will help. Just seeing the point -- mind exists through claims.... See the point! Why do I say see the point? -- because if you see the point then there is no claim. If you don't see the point, then the mind can claim, "I am here without any claim." See the point! Emptiness is needed, not the claim, "I am empty." Awareness is needed, not the claim, "I am awareness" -- because wherever comes the "I" you have entered the dark night of the mind. When the "I" is not there, it is light, everything is clear -- a clarity, a perception, infinite. You can see far and wide, you can see the whole.

So the only thing that can be done is to watch the trickiness of the mind -- and don't try to do the opposite. For example: your mind is filled with thoughts. Don't try to fight with the thoughts, because this fighter is the mind. And if you fight, the mind will claim the opposite. "Look!" he will say, "I have dropped all the thoughts. Now, where is your God? Where is enlightenment?" Don't do the opposite, don't create a fight, because with fight comes the claim. You simply watch and relax. You simply watch and enjoy the trickiness of the mind. Just enjoy it. So beautiful! How deceptive! How elusive! How it comes and comes and comes, again and again! Hindus have always been saying it is just like the tail of the dog. For even twelve years you keep it straight, but the moment you stop the effort it is crooked again.

One small child was talking to me one day and he was saying, "We are making many efforts to straighten out a friend -- because he doesn't believe in Santa Claus." Then one day he said, "After seven days' effort, now he has yielded and he has said, `Okay, I believe.' But next day again the boy said, "Now more efforts have to be made."

So I asked, "What is the matter? -- because just the other day you said you had straightened him out. Now what is the need?"

He said, "But he is crooked again -- we straighten him out, he becomes crooked again and again."

This is the nature of the mind. You cannot do anything about it -- this is the nature of the mind. Understand it, that's all. Understanding is enough. Otherwise it is a hard thing to attain. You can go on and on and the mind will go with you like a shadow, and whatsoever you claim will be the mind's claim. That's why all the knowers have said: "Those who claim that they have known, they have not known. Those who say that they have achieved, they have not achieved." Why? -- because the very claim is dangerous.

UNLESS YOU EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

YOU WILL NEVER FIND THE TRUTH,

FOR IT IS HARD TO DISCOVER

AND HARD TO ATTAIN.

NATURE LOVES TO HIDE.

It is a hide-and-seek game. It is beautiful as it is! Nature is not on the surface, it is hidden in the center. Nature is like the roots of the trees, deep underground -- the most essential is hidden. Never think that the tree is the most essential. The tree is just the periphery where flowers and leaves and fruits come; it is the periphery. The real tree exists underground in the dark. In the dark womb of the earth it is hidden. You can cut the tree; a new tree will come out. But cut the roots and everything disappears.

You are not on the surface of your skin; that is the periphery. You are deep, hidden underground. And God is not on the surface. Science goes on learning more and more about the surface, learning more and more about the skin. Howsoever deep science goes, it never really goes deep because it learns from the outside. From the outside you can learn only about the skin. The real is hidden in the inside, in the innermost shrine. In you also it is hidden in the innermost shrine. You live on the periphery, you miss it. And existence has a center -- that center is hidden.

NATURE LOVES TO HIDE.

Why? Why does nature love to hide? -- because it is a game. In your childhood you must have played the game of hide-and-seek. For Heraclitus, existence is a game; it is a LEELA, a play. It hides, and it is beautiful! -- and you have to discover. And in the very effort to discover, you grow.

There are two types of people. One I call nondiscoverers: they remain on the periphery; and discoverers: they move towards the center. People who live on the periphery are the worldly people. The market is the periphery; politics is the periphery; success, achievement is the periphery. They are nondiscoverers, nonadventurers. Even if they go to the moon it is not an adventure because they remain on the periphery. The real adventure is religious. It is to move to the very center of being. First you have to move in yourself, because you are a miniature world. You move to your center, and from that center you have the first glimpse of how things are.

The real is hidden.

On the periphery are waves, on the periphery are dreams, on the periphery is just a show. Deep inside, in the innermost core of existence, is the hidden one. That Heraclitus calls the hidden harmony.

Move towards the being, the center, the very ground. Always seek the roots. Don't be befooled by the foliage. But you ARE befooled by the foliage. If a woman is beautiful on the surface, you fall in love; you have fallen in love with the foliage. But the woman may not be beautiful inside; she may be absolutely ugly -- then you are trapped. There is an inner grace when the light burns inside, when the light comes to the periphery also; you cannot see from where it is coming. You can see a beautiful woman and yet ugly. And you can see just the opposite also happening: an ugly woman and yet beautiful. When an ugly woman is beautiful, you cannot find the source, where the source is, because the skin on the surface, the structure, the physiology, is not attractive, but something inner attracts you. When it happens that the woman is beautiful on the surface and in the inner being also, then it is very mysterious. Then what happens is charisma. Sometimes you feel a charisma around a person. Charisma means now there is some hidden harmony between the surface and the center, and then the personality has a magnetism, something of the divine.

This meeting of the periphery with the center is a hidden harmony.

NATURE LOVES TO HIDE.

Why? -- because only through hiding can the play go on and on; otherwise, the play will stop. The game continues, it is an eternal game.

And remember this also: even if you have found, the game continues, but the game then has a different quality. Never think at any moment that when you have found the innermost core, the game stops. No, the game continues. Now, knowingly, many times you move away from the hidden center, knowingly you give a chance to nature to hide again -- but now it is knowingly. It is just like two children playing, and the one knows where the other is hiding. Except that place he seeks everywhere, runs around and around to give the game a quality. He knows where you are hiding, he can simply go and catch you, but he will go around and around.

Buddhas continue to play, but the game changes. Now they know, now there is no anxiety. Now there is no desire, now nothing to be achieved. Now it is a simple game. There is no goal to it... it continues.

So there are two possibilities: an ignorant game, that is what is happening to you.... And because you are ignorant you take the game very seriously. Seriousness becomes a disease. You become sad about it. People come to me: if they meditate and they are not attaining, they are very serious, they feel frustrated. I say: Don't be frustrated, because that is the whole point to be understood -- it is a game! There is no hurry to finish it. It is not a business. Let it go on as long as possible. Why be in such a hurry? Why be so tense? Infinity is there, eternal time is there, there is no hurry. You will always be there, and the game will always be there -- it has always been there, and will always be there.

Take it easily! Take it easy!

It is always by the corner, any moment it can be discovered. But why be in such a hurry? Relax -- if you can relax, you reach to the center sooner. If you are in a hurry you remain on the surface, because a hurried, a tense state of mind, cannot move to the deeper realms of being. Only patience helps you to settle to the bottom, to the very bottom.

NATURE LOVES TO HIDE.

It is beautiful that nature loves to hide. Nature is NOT an exhibitionist. Nature is not an exhibitionist. The expression that is all the foliage is just a way to hide. In a flower God is hiding in a subtle way. If you simply see the flower you will miss.

One English poet, Tennyson, has said, and said absolutely rightly, "If I can understand a flower in its totality, I will understand God." He is right! If you can understand a pebble on the shore in its totality you will understand God, because these are all hiding-places. A flower is a hiding-place. A pebble is also a hiding-place. He is hiding everywhere -- millions of forms. Wherever you are, he is there in all the forms around you. Any form can become a door. Once you have the readiness to enter, once you are not expecting, once you are not desiring, once you are not asking for something, projecting something, suddenly the door is open.

THE LORD WHOSE ORACLE IS AT DELPHI

NEITHER SPEAKS NOR CONCEALS --

BUT GIVES SIGNS.

At Delphi there is an old Greek shrine, and people used to go to the oracle of Delphi to ask. But the oracle of Delphi never said anything, it simply gave signs. Heraclitus is using that as a parable. He says that God, the total, the whole, never speaks in terms of yes or no -- he simply gives signs. He is poetic. He gives you symbols. Don't try to interpret them. If you interpret, you will miss. Just watch, and let the sign go deeper in you and be imprinted on the heart. Don't try to find the meaning immediately, because who will find the meaning? If you find the meaning, it will be your meaning. Just let the sign, the symbol, be imprinted on your heart and some day life will reveal the meaning. You simply live with it, you simply let it be there.

For example, you come to me and you ask, "How is my meditation going on?" You ask me, I smile; I have given you a sign. Now what will you do about it? You can interpret. That is the first tendency of the mind. You will think, "Okay, so he smiles; that means I am achieving; he says yes, so everything is okay. I am going on the right path." Your ego feels fulfilled. If you are in a positive mood, this will be the interpretation. If you are in a negative mood, you will think, "He smiles -- he doesn't say yes, was polite, but I am going nowhere."

You missed either way, because if there was a yes to be said, I would have said it. I would not have put you to such trouble to find the interpretation. If there was a yes to be said, I would have said it. If there was a no to be said, I would have said it. But I have simply smiled. I have neither said yes nor no. In fact, I have not said anything -- I have given you a sign. Don't interpret it. Let this smile move deeper into your heart. Let this smile be there. Remember it sometimes, put it back into the heart. Let it dissolve into you, don't try to find the meaning -- and this will help your meditation. Suddenly, one day, in a deep meditative state, you will start smiling the same way I smiled, because that moment will be the moment of understanding. Then you can laugh, because you will know what the meaning was .

Life is subtle. Yes and no cannot be used. Life is so subtle that if you say yes you falsify it, if you say no you falsify it. Language is very poor. It knows only two things: yes or no. And life is very rich: it knows infinite postures, positions, between yes and no -- infinite gradations. It is a spectrum of many, many millions of colors. Yes and no are very poor -- you say nothing. Yes and no means you have divided life into black and white; but life has millions of colors, it is a rainbow.

Black and white, in fact, are not colors. Except for black and white, all colors exist. You must understand this. Black is the absence of all colors; it is not a color. When no color is present, the emptiness is blackness. It is not a color in itself. That's why in nature you don't find black. It is not much. It is an absence. And white is not a color either, it is a mixture of all colors. If you mix all the colors it becomes white. It is not a color. White is one pole, black is the other. The presence of all colors is white, the absence of all colors is black. Between these two polarities real colors exist -- green and red and yellow and all the shades of them, millions of shades.

When I smile, I am not saying black or white, yes or no -- I am giving you a color in the spectrum, a real color. Don't try to interpret, because if you interpret you will either say it is black or white, and it is neither. It is somewhere in between and it is so subtle that words cannot express it. If words could express it I would have given you a word. I would not put you in trouble unnecessarily.

You come to me and you say something and I don't answer. Sometimes it happens that you come to see me and I don't even ask; I simply forget about you. I ask others and simply drop you out of the count. You will interpret it. Why? Don't interpret. Just let this gesture be deep in you. Some day, in a very, very meditative mood, the meaning will flower. I am sowing seeds in you, not giving you words and theories.

When I am gone, please remember me as a poet, not as a philosopher.

Poetry has to be understood in a different way -- you have to love poetry, not interpret. You have to repeat the poetry many times so it mixes with your blood, with your bones, with your very marrow. You have to chant poetry many times so that you can feel all the nuances, subtle shades of it. You have to simply sit and let the poetry move within you so it becomes a live force. You digest it, and then you forget about it; it moves deeper and deeper and deeper and changes you.

Let me be remembered as a poet. Of course, I am not writing poetry in words. I am writing poetry in a more alive medium -- in you. And that's what the whole existence is doing.

Says Heraclitus:

THE LORD WHOSE ORACLE IS AT DELPHI

NEITHER SPEAKS NOR CONCEALS --

BUT GIVES SIGNS.

A sign is not to be interpreted. A sign is to be lived through. Your mind will have the temptation to interpret. Don't be tempted by the mind. Just say to the mind, "This is not your field, this is not for you. You play with other things. Let this go deeper in my being." And that's what I am doing while I am talking to you.

I am not talking to your minds -- I am talking to you as beings, as luminous beings, as gods incarnate, as possibilities, as infinite potentialities. I am talking to your future, not to your past. Your past is rubbish, throw it! Don't carry it! I am talking to your future -- the unexpected, the unknown. By and by you will become capable of listening to this music, the music of the unknown, the music in which all the opposites disappear and a hidden harmony arises.

Yes, nature loves to hide, because nature is a mystery. It is not a question, it is not a puzzle to be solved. It is a mystery to be lived, enjoyed, celebrated.