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Question 4

I FEEL AS IF I HAD NO CHOICE IN COMING TO YOU. DO WE REALLY EVER CHOOSE THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN OUR LIVES?

Ordinarily, no. Ordinarily you move like a robot, a mechanical thing, accidental. Unless you become perfectly aware you cannot choose. And there comes the paradox: you can become aware only if you become choiceless: and if you become aware, you become capable of choice. You can choose -- because when you are aware, you can decide what to do and what not to do. Ordinarily, you live almost in a state of drunkenness. A somnambulist, that's what you are.

Let me tell you a few anecdotes.

A minister was bemoaning to a friend that he had had his bicycle stolen.

And the friend said, "Well, next Sunday, why don't you use the Ten Commandments as your text and recite them to the congregation? When you reach the one that says 'Thou shalt not steal', have a look at the congregation, and if the thief is present he will probably give himself away by the expression on his face."

The following week the same friend saw the minister cycling through the village and stopped him. "I see that you got your bike back. My idea worked then?"

"Well, not exactly," said the minister. "I started on the Ten Commandments, but when I got to the one that says 'Thou shalt not commit adultery', I remembered where I had left my bike."

Another anecdote.

An eminent businessman went to the doctor. "Doctor," he said, "I wish to consult you about my son. I believe he has got measles."

"There is a great deal of it about at the moment," said the doctor. "No family seems to be safe from it."

"But doctor," he went on, "the boy said he got it from kissing the maid, and to tell the truth, I'm afraid I'm also in danger from the same disease. And what is worse, every night I kiss my wife, so she may be in danger."

"Good heavens!" said the doctor. "Excuse me, I must go and get my throat examined at once!"

Get it?

Everybody is moving in an unconscious circle, and people are exchanging their illnesses, diseases, their unconscious, sharing only their unconsciousness with each other.

Ordinarily you live as if you are asleep. You cannot decide while you are asleep. How can you decide?

A man came to Buddha and said, "I would like to serve humanity." He must have been a great philanthropist. Buddha looked at him, and it is said that tears came to Buddha's eyes. It was strange. Buddha crying? -- for what? The man also felt very uncomfortable. He said, "Why are you crying? Have I said anything wrong?" Buddha said, "No, not anything wrong. But how can you serve humanity? -- you are not yet. I see you fast asleep; I can hear your snoring. That's why I am crying. And you want to serve humanity? The first thing is to become aware, alert. The first thing is, to be."

The beautiful but dumb secretary got away with murder as far as her boss was concerned. But one

etween you ae really lost his temper with her. "You are late again!" he thundered. "Why don't you use the alarm clock that I bought for you?"

"But I do use it," she pouted prettily. "Every night."

"Well," said the boss, "why don't you get up when it goes off?"

"But it always goes off when I'm asleep!"

This is what's happening. You are asleep, and when you are asleep even an alarm clock cannot help much. Have you sometimes observed the fact that if you are asleep and the alarm clock goes off, you start dreaming some dream: a dream that you are in a temple and the temple bells are ringing? To avoid the fact that the alarm clock is ringing, you create a dream around it. Then, of course, you continue asleep; now there is no alarm clock. That's what is happening continuously to you. You go on listening to me, but I know that you will create a dream around it. If you listen to me you are bound to awake, but the problem is, will you listen to me? Will you create some dream around what I say?

And you create dreams. You can create a dream about enlightenment. You can start dreaming about enlightenment; you have missed me. And people go on missing. The message has to be interpreted by you; that's the trouble.

I have heard: The owner of a large company bought a sign which said "Do it now", and hung it up in the office hoping it would inspire his staff with promptness. A few days later a friend asked him if the notice had had any effect. "Well, not in the way I had hoped," admitted the boss. "The cashier absconded with $10,000 -- Do it now -- the head bookkeeper eloped with my private secretary -- Do it now -- three clerks asked for a raise, a typist threw her typewriter out of the window -- Do it now -- and the office boy has... just... aah... poisoned my coffee... aaah!"

You listen through your sleepiness; you will interpret it in your own way. So if you really want to listen to me, don't interpret.

Just the other night, a new young man became a sannyasin. I told him, "Be here for a few days." He said, "But I am going, just within two or three days." I said, "But that is not right. Much has to be done, and you have just come. You have not had even any contact with me yet. So at least be here for the camp and a few days more." He said, "I will think it over." Then I told him, "Then there is no need to think; you go. Because whatsoever you will think is going to be wrong. And the whole point of sannyas is that you start listening to me without thinking about it. The whole point is that I say something to you, and it becomes more important than your own mind. That is the whole meaning of sannyas. Now if there is a conflict between what I say and your mind, you will drop the mind and you will listen to me. That's the risk. If you continuously go on using your mind to decide even whether what I say has to be done or not, then you remain yourself. You don't come out. You don't bring your hand close to me so that I can hold it."

Ordinarily, everything is happening to you; you have not done anything.

"I feel as if I had no choice in coming to you."

That's perfectly true. You must have drifted in some way. A friend was coming to me and he told you, or you just went to a bookstall and you found a book of mine.

One sannyasin came and I asked him, "How did you come to see me? How in the first place did you become interested?" He said, "I was sitting in Goa, on the beach, and just in the sand I found a sannyas magazine that somebody must have left. So, nothing to do, I started reading it. That's how I have come here." Accidental....

You have come to me accidentally, but now there is an opportunity to be alertly with me, to be with me with full awareness. It is good that accidentally you have come to me, but don't remain here accidentally. Now drop that accidental-ness. Now, take charge of your awareness. Otherwise, somebody will take you again, accidentally, somewhere else. Again you will drift away from me -- because one who has come drifting cannot be relied upon. He will drift; something else will happen. Somebody is going to Nepal and the idea occurs to you, "Why not go to Nepal?" and you go to Nepal. And there you meet a girlfriend who is against sannyas, so what to do? You have to drop your sannyas.

Now that you are here, use this opportunity. People also use opportunities only in a very unconscious way. Use it consciously.

The magistrate said, "What induced you to strike your wife?" The husband said, "Well, your Honour, she had her back to me, the frying pan was handy, the back door was open, and I was slightly drunk, so I thought I would take a chance."

People use their opportunities also in an unconscious way. Use this opportunity in a conscious way, because this opportunity is such that it can be used only consciously.