Mulla Nasruddin is a Sufi figure, one of the oldest figures of Sufi anecdotes, and he shows whatsoever I have been saying here: that the world is a cosmic joke -- he represents that. He is a very serious joker, and if you can penetrate him and understand him, then many mysteries will be revealed to you.

Mulla Nasruddin illustrates that the world is not a tragedy but a comedy. And the world is a place where if you can learn how to laugh you have learned everything. If your prayer cannot become a deep laughter which comes from all over your being, if your prayer is sad and if you cannot joke with your god, then you are not really religious.

Sufis are very playful; they created Mulla Nasruddin. And Mulla Nasruddin is an alive figure, you can go on adding to him -- I go on adding. If some day he meets me there is bound to be difficulty, because I go on creating around him.

To me he is a constantly alive figure, in many ways symbolic -- symbolic of human stupidity. But he knows it and he laughs at it, and whenever he behaves like a stupid man he is just joking at you, at human beings at large.

And he is subtle enough. He will not hit you directly, he hits himself; but if you can penetrate him then you can look at the reality. And sometimes even great scriptures cannot go as deep as a joke can go, because the joke directly touches the heart. A scripture goes into the head, into the intellect; a joke directly touches the heart. Immediately something explodes within you and becomes your smile and your laughter.

Some jokes:

Mulla Nasrudin and his wife went to Israel for their holidays and visited a nightclub in Tel Aviv. A comedian was on the bill who did his whole act in Hebrew. Nasrudin's wife sat through the comic's act in silence, but Nasrudin roared with laughter at the end of each joke.
"I did not know you understood Hebrew," she said to the Mulla when the comedian had concluded his act.
"I don't," replied Nasrudin.
"Well, how come you laughed so much at his jokes?"
"Oh," said Nasrudin, "I trusted him."


A friend of Mulla Nasruddin was talking to him. He said, 'My wife is an angel.'
Mulla said,'But mine is still alive.'

Mulla Nasruddin was brought to court. He was accused of telling a joke to his wife. When she heard the joke, said the police report, she exploded into laughter and laughed so hard that she died.
"I don't believe it," said the judge, who was a proper Englishman. "Tell the joke!"
Mulla tried to refuse, but the Englishman insisted "Tell the joke! I order you!"
So he told the joke and everybody exploded into laughter, and one by one they all died laughing -- except the Englishman, who died one week later!

Read Mulla Nasrudin as much as you can and try to understand him. He can be a great blessing to you because he teaches through humor. Each of his anecdotes is pregnant with tremendous meaning, but you will have to uncover it. That's why I say there are people who think him a fool. They simply read an anecdote and they laugh and they are finished. They think it is just a joke. It is not. No joke is just a joke. If you are wise you will look into it, exactly what is happening. And once you catch the glimpse of the inside meaning of it, you will be tremendously happy. You will become alert to a new dimension.

Mulla Nasrudin is now read in the Western countries also, but people are missing. They think these are just jokes. They are not. They are a device to teach you the sacred-most through humor. And it can be taught only through humor -- only through humor because only humor can relax you, and God can be known only in deep relaxation. When you laugh you disappear as an ego. When the laughter is really authentic, a belly laughter, when your whole body throbs with his orgasmic energy, when the laughter spreads on all of your being, when you are simply lost in it, you are open to God.

Serious people have never reached to God. They cannot. God won't take that risk. Hmm?... they will bore him to death.

 

Henri, the gallant Frenchman, has a new girlfriend called Sylvie and he is crazy about her.
One afternoon Sylvie is waiting for him in bed in het Paris apartment, when Henri comes in. He is overcome by passion, takes off his hat and throws it out of the open window. Then he takes off his new coat and throws that out too. Sylvie shrieks with delight. Then Henri takes off his shoes and throws them out too.
'Henri, cherie,' cries Sylvie, ''what are you doing? Don't throw away your beautiful new clothes!' '
Do not worry, my darling,' replies Henri. 'By the time I am finished they will have gone out of fashion!'

 

Remember that the following quotes are just quotes, they are not in their context.

What Osho said about himself and his teaching:

" I am nobody's disciple. I don't belong to any belief system. I love people from all over the world and I never compare them. They are all unique: a Zarathustra is a Zarathustra, a Mahavira is a Mahavira, a Buddha is a Buddha, a Jesus is a Jesus, a Moses is a Moses... they are so unique that you should not make one of them a criterion that everybody else has to fit with. "

" I am not interested at all to convert anybody to my ideology - I don't have any. Secondly, I believe that the very effort to convert anybody is violence, it is interfering in his individuality, in his uniqueness, into his freedom. "

" The buddhas of the past were not concerned with any social revolution. Their whole concern was with their own achievement, with their own spiritual attainment. In a certain way they were very self-centered. And because of their self-centeredness, the East has not known any revolution at all. When all the geniuses became so self-centered, who was going to give the masses the idea of a revolution? At the most they can teach charity to the poor, but they cannot conceive of a world without poverty. I conceive of a world without poverty, without classes, without nations, without religions, without any kind of discrimination. I conceive of a world which is one, a humanity which is one, a humanity which shares everything -- outer and inner -- a deep spiritual brotherhood. "

" I am neither for this nor for that. I would like you to become so capable that you can remain in the marketplace and yet meditative. I would like you to relate with people, to love, to move in millions of relationships -- because they enrich -- and yet remain capable of closing your doors and sometimes having a holiday from all relationship... so that you can relate with your own being also. "

" My vision of a real humanity is of pure individuals relating to each other, but not tied in any relationship. They will be loving to each other, but not being possessive of each other. They will be sharing with each other all their joys and all their blessings, but never even in their dreams thinking of dominating, thinking of enslaving the other person. My vision of a real humanity is of a world consisting not of families, not of nations, not of races, but only of individuals. "

" I am jobless. I'm not doing anything: all desires have gone, all doing has left. I'm just here. I'm just being to you. If you love, you will receive me with great welcome, and you will be tremendously benefited. If you hate you will miss, and the responsibility will be yours. Now it is for you to choose. But I don't do anything. "

 

Satchidanand and Devi at the Taj Mahal, India

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Vivekananda asked Ramakrishna, What proofs are there of God's existence?

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A COW. IN ALL THE WORLD THERE WAS NO ANIMAL WHICH SO REGULARLY GAVE SO MUCH MILK OF SUCH HIGH QUALITY.

 PEOPLE CAME FROM FAR AND WIDE TO SEE THIS WONDER. THE COW WAS EXTOLLED BY ALL. FATHERS TOLD THEIR CHILDREN OF ITS DEDICATION TO ITS APPOINTED TALKS. MINISTERS OF RELIGION ADJURED THEIR FLOCKS TO EMULATE IT IN THEIR OWN WAY. GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS REFERRED TO IT AS A PARAGON WHICH RIGHT BEHAVIOUR, PLANNING AND THINKING COULD DUPLICATE IN THE HUMAN COMMUNITY. EVERYONE WAS, IN SHORT, ABLE TO BENEFIT FROM THE EXISTENCE OF THIS WONDERFUL ANIMAL.

 THERE WAS, HOWEVER, ONE FEATURE WHICH MOST PEOPLE, ABSORBED AS THEY WERE BY THE OBVIOUS ADVANTAGES OF THE COW, FAILED TO OBSERVE. IT HAS A LITTLE HABIT, YOU SEE. AND THIS HABIT WAS THAT AS SOON AS A PAIL HAD BEEN FILLED WITH ITS ADMITTEDLY UNPARALLELED MILK -- IT KICKED IT OVER.

 

 Sufism is not speculation -- it is utterly practical. It is not a philosophy -- it is very down-to-earth. Its roots are in the earth. It is not abstract, wholly thinking -- it means business. It wants to transform people, not just to stuff their minds with futile, impotent ideas. And all ideas as such are impotent. They pretend much, but when  you go deep into them, you will always find them empty of all reality. They promise, but they never deliver the goods. They cheat.

 Philosophers have been the greatest cheats in the world.  They create beautiful mansions in the air. They are artists in creating dreams. And those who become enchanted with those dreams are very unfortunate, because their lives will be wasted. And by the time they become aware that they have been chasing dreams, it will be too late.

 And there are a few people who never become aware of it. Their whole lives they remain engrossed in ideas, and they die engrossed in the ideas. They never come face to face with reality. And it is only reality that liberates.

 Truth liberates, not ideas. And truth is not an idea: truth is a experience.

 Sufism is not an 'I'm' as such. It is a practical methodology It is alchemy. If you understand its ways, it is going to transmute you from lower metal to higher metal. It can take you to another reality. It can open doors to the ultimate. It is not interested in giving you great ideas. Its basic emphasis is how to give you a little more awareness. Even an ounce of awareness is far more valuable than the whole Himalayas of philosophy. An inch of becoming more conscious is far better than traveling thousands of miles in your dreams.

 Philosophy is a very articulate dream -- non-pictorial, conceptual, but still it is a dream, a very sophisticated dream. Unsophisticated people dream in pictures; sophisticated people dream in concepts -- but the quality remains the same.

 The dream is that which prevents you from knowing the reality. All dreaming has to stop, has to cease. When your eyes are no more full of dreams, you will be able to see that which is. And that liberates, that uplifts, that transmutes!

 A few things about the Sufi approach:

 First, that it is more scientific than philosophic -- scientific in the sense that the criterion of truth has to be a practical result. If your religion is true, it will nourish you, it will strengthen you, it will expand you. The truth is not in the proofs -- only you can be the proof.

 

 Vivekananda asked Ramakrishna, "What proofs are there of God's existence?"

 And Ramakrishna said, "I am."

 

 A strange answer. Vivekananda had not expected that answer. You also would not have expected it, because when somebody is asking for a proof of God, then there are traditional, philosophical proofs. One expects those proofs. Vivekananda must have been thinking Ramakrishna would say, "Everything needs a creator. The world is, therefore there must be a creator. We may be able to see him or not, but the creator must be there because the world is."

 But no, Ramakrishna didn't say anything like that. He was not a philosopher: he was a Sufi. He said, "I am! Look at me. feel me! Go into me! I can take you into that reality that you are calling God. What name you give to it is irrelevant. I have been to those heights -- I can lead the way for you too. Are you ready to come with me?"

 Vivekananda was not prepared. He had come to argue. But this is not an argument. This is going to be risky, to follow this madman. One can never be certain where he will lead you.

 Vivekananda hesitated. And Ramakrishna said, "Before you ask a question, you should be ready to receive the answer! Are you a coward or something? Why did you ask in the first place?" And Ramakrishna jumped -- he was that kind of madman, like Zusya -- and he touched Vivekananda with his feet on his chest, and Vivekananda fell into a kind of trance.

 When after one hour he woke up, he was a transformed man. He bowed down, touched the feet of Ramakrishna, and said, "Excuse me, I am sorry. It was so childish of me to ask such a question. It is not a question -- it is an adventure. And thank you! You have given me a taste of something of which I was not aware at all."

 

 This is the way of the Sufi. He creates a situation. The situation is his lab. In that situation he slowly slowly persuades you, seduces you, really, to go into the beyond. Yes, it is a seduction -- because who will be ready to go into the beyond? The mind wants to cling to the known; the known is familiar. With the known we are skillful, efficient; vie can tackle it. To go into the unknown is certainly risky. And we will be like children. All our expertise will be left behind. All our knowledge will be of no use there. Who wants to go into the unknown? But God is not only unknown but unknowable. God is available only to those who gather courage and go into the unknown.

 The Sufi Master helps you to gather courage. The Sufi Master, by HIS example, by his being, by his presence, creates the longing for the impossible. Stirs your heart. Gives a new life release to your breathing. Pulsates you with a new passion for God. But this is not philosophy. He does not solve a question at all. Yes, he helps you to dissolve all questions, but he never solves a question.

 So the first thing to be understood is: Sufism is practical, very very down-to-earth. Sufism likes people like Zorba the Greek, because they are the people who can become Zorba the Buddha -- only they are the people who can become. The people who have become very very clever in playing with words, philosophizing, abstraction, rationalizations, explanations, they are not the people to go into that journey. They are cowards. All their philosophization is nothing but an escape from the truth. To escape from the truth they create theories about truth, and then they cling to those theories believing that this is what truth is all about.

 Hence, there are Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians and Jains, but not Sufis. A Sufi has nothing to do with Hinduism or Mohammedanism, or Christianity. A Sufi can happen anywhere! in any religion, or in no religion. A Sufi is a wanderer, a Sufi is universal. A Sufi belongs to the whole world and the whole world belongs to the Sufi. All is his, and he uses all situations to transcend.

 The Sufi agrees perfectly with the Buddha as far as the definition of truth is concerned. Buddha is reported to have said to his disciples: Truth is that which works. A very pragmatic definition of truth. Never surpassed. Even modern science cannot give a better definition of truth than Buddha has given: Truth is that which works. If it doesn't work, it is not true. The lie is that which doesn't work, it cannot work. It cannot work because it goes against the universal law. Truth works because it is in harmony with the universal law.

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