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Question 4

IT IS AN UNIMPORTANT POINT IN A VERY INTERESTING INSPIRING DISCOURSE, BUT WHY DO YOU SAY THAT THE SUN WILL BE FINISHED IN FOUR THOUSAND YEARS? MY ATLASES OF THE EARTH AND THE UNIVERSE GIVE A FIGURE FOR THE NEXT MAJOR CHANGE IN THE SUN'S PRESENT OUTPUT -- TO A RED GIANT STAGE -- TO BE ABOUT FIVE BILLION YEARS OR SO -- WHICH WOULD ANNIHILATE LIFE ON EARTH. ARE YOU TRYING TO START A STAMPEDE? OR IS THIS AN 'INTENTIONAL IMPERFECTION' INSERTED INTO YOUR DISCOURSE AS IN A PERSIAN RUG?

The questioner says: IT IS AN UNIMPORTANT POINT IN A VERY INSPIRING DISCOURSE -- but nothing else has inspired the questioner to ask. So this must have been the most important thing.

There are people who are interested in non-essential things and they make much fuss about them. And they forget that because of that fuss much is being missed.

If it makes you happy, you can make it five billion years -- or why five billion? Why not five hundred billion? If it makes you happy you can make as big a figure as you can.

I have heard one anecdote.

A scientist was speaking about the same truth and he said, 'In five billion years the sun will cool down.'

A woman sitting in front of the audience started trembling, perspiring, was almost going to faint. So the scientist had to stop his talking.

He said, 'What is going on? Why are you becoming so afraid? You need not be afraid, it is five billion years.'

The woman said, 'Thank God! I thought you said five million.'

What difference does it make? You will be dead within fifty years. Whether the earth continues or the sun continues for five billion or five million years makes no difference. These are irrelevant things.

My point was that if the sun becomes cold someday, we will not be able to live. I was trying to explain to you that you don't end at your skin. I am not a scientist and I am very happy that I am not. I was simply saying that the skin is not your boundary. It is difficult to say where your boundary is because it is, in fact, nowhere.

The sun is there -- without the sun you will not be able to live. Your skin will simply wither away and you will die. That was the whole point.

And I am not trying to create a stampede. If a stampede is to be created, four thousand years won't help. Tomorrow... and that too is doubtful. Even if I said that tomorrow the sun is going to cool down completely then too it is difficult to see that a stampede will be created. You are so lazy you will say, 'Tomorrow? Tomorrow never comes.' And you may start living even more madly because, 'Tomorrow? Maybe this man is right.' So whatsoever you have not done up to now, do it. You were thinking about murdering a man -- murder. Or you were thinking about kidnapping a woman -- kidnap; because 'tommorrow? Who knows? Maybe this man is right.'

No I am not creating, or trying to create, any stampede. To me it is an irrelevant thing: four thousand years, four million years, four billion years, four trillion years -- whatsoever.

But you missed my point. And you showed your mind by raising a very unimportant question. If such questions are meaningful to you, you will go on missing me. Then you are simply watching for something absolutely meaningless.

I have heard.

Junior was in the habit of coming to the table with a dirty face and, of course, had to be sent to wash every day.

One time his mother, losing her patience, said to him, 'Junior, why do you persist in coming to the table without washing? You know I always send you away.'

'Well,' replied Junior, 'once you forgot.'

Just once, and, who knows, you may forget again.

There are minds who go on watching for such things. Be alert about this tendency.

I am not a scientist, neither was Jesus or Buddha. There are many people now who deny Jesus because he was not a scientist because he said the world was created four thousand years before. Now look. This four thousand seems to be very meaningful. I said, 'After four thousand years it is going to drop,' and Jesus said, 'Just four thousand years ago the world was created.'

Now scientists find fault. It is faulty. The world was not created four thousand years before. Then why was this man saying it? This man was not a scientist; this man was saying something not as a fact but as a parable. He was not talking about a scientific theory for the creation, he was not interested in any scientific theory -- he was simply talking in parables. He was emphasising one fact: that the world is not going to be forever and it has not been there forever. It is dreamlike. It has been created and it will disappear. So don't be too involved in it, it is not the real thing -- seek the creator, find out who is the creator. Don't waste too much time with the creation.

But now there are scientists who will prove that he is wrong and there are Christians who will try to prove that he is right. And both do the same foolishness: you must take a parable for a fact, you can't understand a beautiful story, you can't understand poetry. Now I have come across scientists who have written great treatises proving that Jesus is wrong. And I have come across treatises which have tried to refute him.

For example, scientists say that now there are proofs -- and there are proofs -- that the world has existed for millions of years. We have found bones in the earth, skulls in the earth which are at least fifty thousand years old. So not only the world but man has existed for at least fifty thousand years and Jesus says that the world was created only four thousand years before. Now how to answer it?

I was reading a Christian theologian. He says, 'God is Almighty. When he created the world, he created skulls fifty thousand years old, just to test the faith of people.' Now what to do with these people? He has put fifty thousand-year-old skulls inside the earth. He created the earth four thousand years ago just to see who the doubters are and who the real believers are!