The third question:

Question 3

AS A COMPARATIVELY NEW SANNYASIN I AM A LITTLE WORRIED ABOUT THE NUMBER OF VERY SERIOUS, WORRIED LOOKING SANNYASINS AROUND YOU. COULD YOU REASSURE ME ABOUT THIS PLEASE?

Yes, many things have to be understood. First, religious people are always serious. I am not a religious person, but many religious persons, misunderstanding me, come to me. Religious persons are always serious; they are ill. They are frustrated with life, so much frustrated, failed completely, that they have lost the quality to enjoy. In life nothing but anguish they have come across. In life they have never been able to celebrate. They become religious out of the frustration of life; then they are serious, and they have the attitude that they are doing something very great. They are trying to console their egos, that you may have failed in life, but you are succeeding in religion; you may have failed in the outer world, but in the inner you have become a paragon. In the world of things you may have failed, but your kundalini is rising, chakras are opening. And then they compensate: they start looking at others with a condemnatory eye. "Holier than thou" is their attitude; all are sinners. Only they are going to be saved, everybody else is going to be thrown into hell. These religious people have created hell for others, created even for themselves. They are living a compensatory life -- not real, but of imagination. These people will be serious.

I have nothing to do with them. But thinking that I am also that sort of religious man, sometimes they become hooked with me. I am a totally different type of religious man, if at all you can call me religious. To me, religion is fun. To me, religiousness is celebration. To me, religion is festive. I call religion "the festive dimension". It is not for religious people, for serious people. For serious people there is psychotherapy; they are ill, and they are deceiving nobody but themselves.

To me, religion has totally a different quality. Not that you have failed in life, that's why you have come to religion, but because you have become matured through life. Even your failures... There are failures, but the failures are not because of life; the failures are because of your desires. You have become frustrated-not that life is frustrating, but because you hoped too much. Life is beautiful; your mind created the trouble. Your ambition was too much. Even this beautiful and vast life could not fulfill it.

The ordinary religious man leaves the world; the really religious man leaves ambition, leaves hoping, leaves imagination. Knowing through experience that every hope comes to a point where it becomes hopelessness, and every dream comes to a point where it becomes a nightmare, and every desire comes to a point where nothing but discontent is left by it in you -- knowing this through experience, one becomes seasoned, mature. A growth happens into consciousness. Out of this growth one drops ambition, or the ambition drops by itself out of this growth. Then a person becomes religious.

Not that he renounces the world the world is beautiful! There is nothing to renounce -- but he renounces all expectations. And when there is no expectation, how can there be frustration? And when there is no demand, how can there be unfulfillment? And when there is no ambition, how can be there any nightmare? One simply becomes loose and natural. One lives the moment and does not worry for the tomorrow. One lives the moment, and lives it so totally because there is no hope and no desire in the future. One brings his whole being to the moment, and then the whole life is transformed. It is fun, it is a feast, it is a celebration. Then you can dance and you can laugh and you can sing, and to me this is how a religious consciousness should be -- a dancing consciousness, more like children, less like dead corpses. Your churches, your temples, your mosques are just like graveyards -- too much serious.

So of course there are many people around me who are serious; they have not understood me at all. They may be projecting their minds on me, they may be interpreting whatsoever I am saying according to their own minds, but they have not understood me. They are wrong people. Either they will have to change or they will have to leave. Finally, only those people will be with me who can celebrate life so totally, with no complaint, with no grudge. Others will go; sooner they go, the better. But this happens: thinking that I am religious, old religious-type people also sometimes come to me, and once they come they bring their own minds with them and they try to be serious here also.

One man came to me, old man. He was a very famous Indian leader. Once he attended a camp, and he saw a few sannyasins playing cards. Immediately he came to me and he said, "This is too much! Sannyasins playing cards?" I said, "What is wrong in it? Cards are beautiful, and they are not doing anybody any harm -- just enjoying playing cards." And this man was a politician, and he is playing cards in politics and gambling, but that he cannot understand. Just people playing cards is simple -- just celebrating the moment. And this man in his whole life was playing cards, very dangerous cards, violent, stepping on people's heads, doing everything that a politician has to do. But he was thinking himself religious. And poor sannyasins, just playing cards, they are condemned. He said, "I never expected." I told him that to me there is nothing wrong in it.

There is nothing wrong when you are not harming anybody. When you harm somebody, then it is wrong. Sometimes things which have been thought to be wrong are not so wrong. For example: you are talking nonsense to a person and throwing rubbish in his head -- and only rubbish you can throw; you don't have anything else -- that's okay. But a person sitting in the corner and smoking a cigarette -- that is wrong? He is at least not throwing rubbish on anybody's head or in anybody's head. He has found a substitute for the lips: he doesn't talk, he smokes. He may be harming himself, but he is not harming anybody. He may be a fool, but he is not a sinner.

Always try to think on the lines that if you are harming somebody, only then is something wrong. If you are not harming anybody and if you are a little aware-in the "anybody", you will also be included -- if you are not harming anybody, included you, everything is beautiful. Then you can do your thing.

Sannyas to me is not a serious thing. In fact it is just the opposite: it is a jump into non-seriousness. Seriously you have lived for many lives. What you have gained? The whole world teaches you to be serious, to do your duty, to be moral, to be this and that. I teach you fun; I teach you being festive. I teach you nothing but celebration. Just remember only one thing: your celebration should not be harmful to anybody else, that's all.

But the ego is the problem. If you take life as fun, and you celebrate it like a feast, then your ego will disappear. The ego can exist only when you are serious. childlike, then the ego disappears. So you have a haughty look, you walk uptight; you are doing something very serious nobody else is doing: you are trying to help the whole world and reform. You take on your shoulders the burden of the whole world. Everybody is immoral; only you are moral. And everybody is committing sin; only you are virtuous. Then the ego feels very good.

In a celebrating mood, ego cannot exist. If celebration becomes your very climate of being, ego will disappear. How can you maintain your ego laughing, dancing, enjoying? -- it is difficult. You can maintain your ego when you are doing shirshasan, standing on your head, or doing difficult, foolish postures. Then you can maintain the ego: you are a great yogi! Or sitting in a temple or in the church with all other dead bodies around you, you can feel very, very big, great, super.

Remember, my sannyas is not for this type of people, but they come. Nothing is wrong in coming. Either they will change, or they will have to leave. You don't be worried about them. I assure you that I am not serious.

I am sincere, but not serious, and sincerity is a totally different quality. Seriousness is the disease of the ego, and sincerity is a quality of the heart. To be sincere means to be true, not serious. To be sincere means to be authentic. Whatsoever you are doing, you are doing full of your heart. Whatsoever you are doing, you are doing it not as a duty but as your love. Sannyas is not a duty, it is your love. If you take the jump, you take out of your love, out of your authenticity. You will be sincere to it, but not serious. Seriousness is sad, sincerity is gay. A sincere person is always gay. Only a false person becomes sad, because he gets into a mess. If you are false, each falsehood will lead you into another falsehood. If you depend on lies, you will have to depend on more lies. By and by, a crowd of lies is around you. You are suffocated with your own false faces: then you become sad. Then life looks like a mess. Then you cannot enjoy it because you have destroyed the whole beauty of it. Except your false mind, nothing is ugly in the existence; everything is beautiful.

Be sincere, be authentic and true, and whatsoever you do, do it out of love. Otherwise, don't do it. If you want to be a sannyasin, be out of love. Otherwise, don't take the jump -- wait, let the right moment come. But don't get serious about it. It is nothing; it is nothing like seriousness. To me, seriousness is a disease, a disease of the mediocre mind who has failed in life. And he has failed because he is mediocre. Sannyas should be the culmination of your maturity: of failures, successes, everything that you have seen and lived and you have grown through it. Now you understand more, and when you understand more you can enjoy more.

Jesus is religious; Christians, no. Jesus can be festive; Christians, they cannot be. In the church you have to carry a very serious face, gloomy. Why? because the cross has become the symbol of the religion. Cross should not be the symbol; death should not be the concern. A religious person lives so deeply that he knows no death: there is no energy left to know death; there is nobody to know death. When you live life so deeply, death disappears. Death exists only if you live on the surface. When you live deeply, even death becomes life. When you live on the surface, even life becomes death. Cross should not be a symbol.

In India we have never made cross-like things symbols. We have Krishna's flute or Shiva's dance as symbols. If ever you want to understand how a religious consciousness should grow, then try to understand Krishna. He is festive, celebrating, dancing. He is a lover of life, with the flute on his lips and a song. Christ was really a man like Krishna. In fact, the very word Christ comes from Krishna. Jesus is his name: Jesus the Krishna, Jesus the Christ. Krishna has many forms. In Bengal, in India, it has a form which is christo. From Christo, in Greek it becomes christos, and from there it moves and becomes Christ. Jesus must have been a man like Krishna, but Christians say he never laughed. This seems absurd. If Jesus cannot laugh, then who will laugh? They have painted him in such seriousness. He must have laughed! In fact he loved women, wine: that was the problem; that's why Jews crucified him. He loved women, Mary Magdalene and others, and Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. He must have been a rare man, a very rarely religious man. He loved eating; he always enjoyed feasts. And eating with Christ must have been something of the other world.

It happened: Christ died on the cross. Then it is said that after three days he resurrected -- and a very beautiful story. He resurrected: Mary Magdalene saw him first. Why? -- because only the eyes of love can understand resurrection, because the eyes of love can see the inner, the immortal. Men followers passed by the side of Jesus who was standing there, and they won't see. The symbol is beautiful: only love can see that innermost deathless. And when Mary Magdalene came into the town and told people, they thought she has gone mad. Who believes a woman? -- people say love is mad, love is blind -- nobody will believe. Even the apostles, Jesus' closest disciples, even they laughed and said, "Have you gone mad? We will believe only when we see."

And then it happened that two disciples were going to another town and Jesus followed them, with them talked, and they talked about Jesus' crucifixion and what has happened. And they were very much troubled, and Jesus is walking with them and talking with them, and they didn't recognize. Then they reached the town. They invited the stranger to take food with them, and when Jesus was breaking the bread then suddenly they recognized him, because nobody could have broken the bread that way -- only Jesus.

This story I have loved tremendously. They talked and couldn't recognize; they walked for miles together and couldn't recognize, but the very gesture of Jesus breaking the bread, suddenly... because they had never known any man to break bread with such a festive mood, to celebrate food -- they had never known any man. Suddenly, they recognized and said, "Why didn't you say that you are Jesus resurrected?" The gesture...

And Christians say this man never laughed. Christians have completely destroyed Jesus, distorted, and if he ever comes back -- and I am afraid he will not come because of these Christians -- they won't allow him in the churches.

The same is possible around me also. Once I am gone, the serious people are dangerous. They can take possession, because they are always in search of taking possession of things. They can become my successors, and then they will destroy. So remember this: even an ignorant person can become my successor, but he must be able to laugh and celebrate. Even if somebody claims that he is enlightened, just see his face: if he is serious, he is not going to be successor to me! Let this be the criterion: even a fool will do, but he should be able to laugh and enjoy and celebrate life. But serious people are always in search of power. People who can laugh are not worried about power -- that is the problem. Life is so good, who bothers to become a pope? Simple people, happy in their simple ways, don't bother about politics.

Immediately, when an enlightened person disappears from the body, the people who are serious are fighting to become the successors. And they have always destroyed, because they are the wrong people, but the wrong people are always ambitious. Only right people are not ambitious, because life is giving so much, there is no need for ambition to become a successor, or to become a pope, or to become this and that. Life is so beautiful that more is not asked. But people who have no enjoyment, they enjoy power; people who have missed love, they enjoy prestige; people who have somehow missed the celebration of life and the dance, they would like to be popes -- high powered, controlling people. Beware of them; they have been always the destroyers, the poisoners. They destroyed Buddha, they destroyed Christ, they destroyed Mohammed. And they are always around, and it is difficult to get rid of them, very, very difficult, because they are so seriously there... you cannot get rid of them.

But I assure you that I am always for happiness, joy, a life of dance and song, enjoyment, because to me that is the only prayer. When you are happy, overflowing with happiness, there is prayer. And there is no other prayer. Existence listens only to your existential response, not your verbal communication. What you say doesn't matter: what you are... If you really feel that God is, then celebrate. Then there is no point in losing a single moment. Dance if you feel God is, with your whole being, because only when you dance and sing and you are happy -- or even if you sit silently -- the very climate of your being gives such a peaceful, deep contentment with life. That is prayer; you are thanking. Your thankfulness is your prayer. Serious people? -- I have never heard that serious people ever enter heaven. They cannot.

Once it happened that a sinner died and reached heaven. A saint died on the same day, and the messengers started taking him towards hell. The saint said, "Wait! Something has gone somewhere wrong. You are taking that sinner, and I know him well! And I have been twenty-four hours meditating and praying to God, and I am taken to the hell? I would like to ask God himself. What is this? Is this justice?" So he was brought to God himself, and the man complained and said, "This is simply unbelievable! -- that this sinner... I know him well; he has been my neighbor. He has never prayed; he has never taken your name once in life, and I have been twenty-four hours praying... Even in my sleep I go on repeating, Ram, Ram, Ram -- and what is happening?n It is said God said, "Because you killed me with your boring continuous Ram. You almost killed me, and I would not like you to be nearabout. Just think, twenty-four hours! You won't give me a single moment of rest. This man is good. At least he never troubled me, and I know he never prayed, because his whole life was a prayer. He looks like a sinner to you because you think just in praying and verbal nonsense there is virtue. He lived and lived happily. He may not have been always good, but he was always happy and he was always blissful. He may have erred here and there, because it is human to err, but he was not an egotist. He never prayed, but from his deepest core of being there was always a thankfulness. He enjoyed life and he thanked for it."

Remember: serious people are all in hell; devil loves seriousness very much. Heaven is not like a church, and if it is, then nobody who has any senses will ever go to heaven. Then it is better to go to hell. Heaven is life, life millionfold.

Jesus says to his disciples, "Come to me and I will give you life in abundance." Heaven is a poetry, a continuous song, like a river flowing, a continuous celebration with no break. When you are here with me, remember, you will miss me if you are serious, because there will be no contact. Only when you are happy you can be near me. Through happiness a bridge is built. Through seriousness all bridges are broken; you become like an island, unapproachable.