Chapter 16

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only. The interviewer's remarks have been omitted where not relevant to Osho's words]

ANSWER:* I know*... it is going to be difficult for you.

QUESTION:* BEFORE I ASK YOU THESE QUESTIONS I JUST, I JUST WANNA SAY THANK YOU. I AM SO HAPPY....

A:* I know. Just the moment this morning I entered, I saw your tears and I knew how much happy you are. You can ask your questions.

Q:* WHEN I WORK WITH PEOPLE IN DEPTH IN THERAPY THREE FEARS CONTINUOUSLY COME UP IN THEM. IT'S THE FEAR OF GOING CRAZY, IT'S THE FEAR OF LETTING GO IN SEXUAL ORGASM AND THE FEAR OF DYING. THESE THREE FEARS COME UP OVER AND OVER AGAIN IN MY WORK. CAN YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON THIS?

A:* It is really very significant an existential question. In these three fears humanity has lived for thousands of years. They are not personal, they are collective. They come from the collective unconscious.

The fear of going crazy is in everyone, for the simple reason, because their intelligence has not been allowed to develop. Intelligence is dangerous to the vested interest. So for thousands of years they have been cutting the very roots of intelligence.

In Japan they have a certain tree which is thought to be a great art, but it is simply murder. The trees are four hundred, five hundred years old and six inches high. Generations of gardeners have taken care of them. The technique is the trees are put in a pot without any bottom. So they go on cutting their roots.

They don't allow their roots to go into the earth. And when you don't allow the roots to go deeper, the tree simply grows old, it never grows up. It is a strange phenomenon to see that tree. It looks ancient, but it has only grown old, old, old, but it has never grown up. It has never blossomed, it has never given any fruits.

And that is exactly the situation of man. His roots are cut. Man lives almost uprooted. He has to be made uprooted, so that he can become dependent on the society, on the culture, on the religion, on the state, on the parents, on everybody.

He has to depend. He himself has no roots. The moment he becomes aware that he has no roots, he feels he is going crazy, he is going insane. He is losing every support, he is falling into a dark ditch... because the knowledge is borrowed, it is not his own. The respectability is borrowed. He himself has no respect for his own being. His whole personality is borrowed from some source -- the university, the church, the state. He himself has nothing of his own.

Just think of a man who lives in a grand palace with everything conceivable for his luxuries. And one day suddenly you make him aware that the palace does not belong to him, neither this luxuries belong to him. They belong to somebody else who is coming and you will be thrown out. He will go crazy.

So in deep therapy you will come across this point and the person has to face it and allow it. Go crazy. Allow in the therapy the situation that the person can go crazy. Ones he goes crazy, he will drop the fear. Now he knows what craziness is. The fear is always of the unknown. Let him go crazy and he will soon calm down, because there is no real base to his fear. It is a fear projected by the society.

The parents say if you don't follow us, if you disobey, you will be condemned.

The Jewish God says in Talmud "I am a very jealous God, very angry God.

Remember that I am not nice, I am not your uncle." And all the religions have been doing it.

So just go off the way which is followed by the mob and they will declare you crazy. So everybody goes on clinging to the crowd, remaining part of a religion, a church, a party, a nation, a race. He's afraid to be alone, and that's what you are doing when you bring him to his own depths. All that crowd, all those connections, disappear. He's left alone and there is nobody else on whom he has always depended.

He has not of his own intelligence -- that is the problem. Unless he starts growing his own intelligence, he will always remain afraid of being crazy. Not only that, the society can make him crazy any moment. If the society wants to make him crazy, if that is in their favor, they will make him crazy.

In Soviet Union it happens almost everyday. I am taking the example of Soviet Union because they do it more scientifically, methodologically. It happens everywhere all over the world, but their methods are very primitive. For example, in India if a person behaves in a way which is not approved, he is made an outcast. He cannot get any support from anyone in the town. People will not even speak to him. His own family will close the doors upon his face. The man is bound to go crazy. You are driving him crazy.

But in Soviet Russia they do it more methodologically and they have done it to such people who were Nobel prize winners, who had intelligence, but an intelligence which was always under control, under the obedience of the state.

And just a single disobedience... because they got the Nobel prize, and Russian government did not want them to have it, because it comes from a capitalist world, and to the government of Russia it seems like a bribery. This is how they purchase people, and these are the people who have all the secrets of science.

They don't want to be world*-known, they don't want to be in contact with other scientists, they don't allow them to accept Nobel prize. But if the person insists, then the result is he is put into a hospital.

He goes on saying, that "I am perfectly healthy; why I am being put in the hospital?" They say, "Because the doctors feel you are going to be sick. The early symptoms are there, you may not be aware." And they go on injecting the person, he knows nothing of, and within fifteen days he is mad. They have made him through their chemicals mad. And when he is perfectly mad, then they produce him in the court that this man is insane, that he should be removed from his job, and that he should be sent into a mental asylum. And then nobody ever hears what happened to those people.

This is doing it scientifically. But every society has been doing it, and the fear has entered into to very deep realms of unconsciousness. And the work of therapy is to make the person free of that fear. If he is free of that fear, he is free of society, free of culture, free of religion, free of God, heaven, hell, and all nonsense. All that nonsense is significant because of this fear, and to make that nonsense significant the fear has been created.

It is the ugliest crime one can think of. It is being done to every child around the world every moment, and the people who are doing have no bad intentions.

They think they are doing something for the best of the child. They have been conditioned by their parents. They are transferring the same conditioning to their children.

But basically the whole humanity stands on the verge of madness. In deep therapy the fear grips suddenly, because the person is losing all the props, supports; the crowd is disappearing farther and farther away; he is being left alone. And suddenly there is darkness and there is fear. He has never been trained, disciplined for being alone and that is the function of meditation. No therapy is complete without meditation, because only meditation can give him his lost roots, his strength of being an individual. There is nothing to fear. But the conditioning is that you have to be afraid on each moment, each step.

The whole humanity lives in a paranoia. This humanity could have lived in paradise; it is living in hell. So help the person to understand that this is nothing to be worried, there is nothing to be afraid. It is a created fear. Every child is born fearless. He can play with the snakes with no fear. He has no idea of fear or death or anything. Meditation brings the person back to his childhood. He is reborn.

So help the person to understand why the fear is. Make it clear that it is a phony phenomenon, imposed upon him. So there is no need to be worried: in this situation you can go crazy. Don't be afraid. Enjoy for the first time you have got a situation in which you can be crazy and yet not condemned, loved, respected.

And the group has to respect the person, love the person -- he needs it, and he will cool down. And he will come out of the fear with a great freedom, with great stamina, strength, integrity.

The second fear is of sexual orgasm. That too is created by religions. All religions are existing because they have turned man against his own energies. Sex is man's whole energy, his life energy, and religious prophets and messiahs, messengers of God, they all are doing the same work in different words, different languages, but their work is the same... to make man an enemy of himself.

And the basic strategy is -- because sex is the most powerful energy in you -- sex should be condemned, a guilt should be created. Then arises a problem for the individual. His nature is sensuous, sexual, and his mind is full of garbage against it. He is in a split. Neither he can drop the mind, because dropping the mind means dropping the society, the religion, the prophet, Jesus Christ, and God, everything. He's not capable to do that unless he has become an individual and is able to be alone without any fear.

So man is afraid of sex as far as his mind is concerned, but his biology has nothing to do with the mind. The biology has not received any information from the mind. There is no communication. The biology has its own way of functioning, so the biology will draw him towards sex and his mind will be standing there continuously condemning him. So he makes love, but in a hurry.

That hurry has a very psychological reason. The hurry is he is doing something wrong. He is doing something against God, against religion. He is feeling guilty and he cannot manage not to do it, so the only compromise is: do it, but be quick.

That avoids the orgasm.

Now there are implications upon implications. A man who has not known orgasm feels unfulfilled, frustrated, angry, because he had never been in a state which nature provides freely, where he could have relaxed totally and become one with the existence, at least for few moments.

Because of his hurry he cannot manage the orgasm. Sex has become equivalent to ejaculation. That is not true as far as nature is concerned. Ejaculation is only a part, which you can manage without orgasm. You can reproduce children, so biology is not worried about your orgasm. Your biology is satisfied if you reproduce children, and they can be reproduced only by ejaculation, there is no need for orgasm.

Orgasm is a tremendous gift of nature. Man is deprived and because he is so quick in making love that the woman is deprived. The woman needs time to warm up. Her whole body is erotic, and unless her whole body is throbbing with joy, she will not be able to experience orgasm. For that there is no time.

So for millions of years women have been completely denied their birthright.

That's why they have become so bitchy, so continuously nagging, always ready to fight. There is no possibility of having a conversation with a woman. You are living with a woman for years, but there is not a single conversation that you can recall when you both were sitting together talking about great things of life. No.

All that you will remember will be fighting, throwing things, being nasty, but the woman is not responsible for it. She's being deprived of her whole possibility of blissfulness. Then she becomes negative.

And this has given chance to the priests. All the churches and the temples are filled up with women because they are the losers, more than men. Because more man's* orgasm is local; his whole body is not erotic. So his whole body does not suffer any damage if there is no orgasmic experience, but the woman's whole body suffers.

But it is good business for religions. Unless people are psychologically suffering, they will not come to the churches. They will not listen to all kinds of idiotic theologies. And because they are suffering, they want some consolation, they want some hope, at least after death. In life they know there is no hope; it is finished. And this gives a chance to religions to show to men and women both that sex is absolutely futile. It has no meaning, no significance. You are unnecessarily losing your energy, wasting your energy, and their argument seems to be correct because you have never experienced anything.

So by preventing the orgasmic experience religions have made men and women slaves. Now the same slavery functions for other vested interests. The latest priest is the psychoanalyst. Now he's exploiting the same thing. And I was amazed to know that almost all new priests, particularly Christians, study psychology in their theological colleges. Psychology, psychoanalysis have become their necessary part of education. Now what psychology has to do with Bible? What psychoanalysis has to do with Jesus Christ? They are being trained in psychology and psychoanalysis, because it is clear that the old priest is disappearing, losing his grip over people. The priest has to be made up-to-date, so he can function not only as a religious priest, but also as a psychoanalyst, psychologist. Naturally the psychologist cannot compete with him. He has something more: religion.

But this whole thing has happened through a simple device of condemning sex.

So when in your groups you find people fearing of orgasm, help them to understand that orgasm is going to make you more sane, more intelligent, less angry, less violent, more loving. Orgasm is going to give you your roots which have been taken away from you. So don't be worried. And mixed will be the fear in orgasm that one may go crazy. If in orgasm one goes crazy, help him to go crazy. Only then he will be able to have it in its totality. But the orgasm relaxes every fiber of your mind, your heart, your body.

It is immensely important for meditation that a person has the experience of orgasm. Then you can make him understand what meditation is. It is an orgasmic experience with the whole existence. If the orgasm can be so beautiful and so beneficial, so healthy with a single human being, meditation is getting into oneness with the whole that surrounds you, from the smallest blade of grass to the biggest star, millions of years away.

This... once he experiences.... The question is always the first experience. Once he knows it, that that craziness was not craziness, but a kind of explosion of joy, and that cools down and leaves him behind, healthier, more whole, more intelligent, then the fear of orgasm is disappeared. And with it he is finished with the religion, with the psychoanalysis and all kinds of nonsense for which he is paying so tremendously.

And the third fear you say is of death. The first is of being alone. Much of the fear of death will be destroyed by the first experience of being alone and having no fear. The remaining much of the fear of death will be immediately destroyed by the experience of orgasm, because in the orgasm the person disappears. The ego is no more. There is an experiencing, but the experiencer is no more.

These first two steps will help to solve the third step very easily. And with each step you have to go on deepening his meditativeness. Any therapy without meditation cannot help much. It is just super fear*, touching here and there, and soon the man will be same again. A real transformation has never happened without meditation, and these are beautiful situations as far as meditation is concerned.

So use the first to make him alone. Use the second to give him courage and tell him to drop all thoughts, just go crazily orgasmic. Don't bother what happens.

We are here to take care of you. With these two steps the third will be very easy.

That is the easiest. It looks the biggest fear of man. It is not true. You don't know death; how can you be afraid of it? You have always seen other people dying.

You have never seen yourself dying. Who knows, you are maybe the exception, because there is no proof that you are going to die. Those who have died have given proof that they were mortals.

When I was in the university and learning logic from my professor, in every logic book, in every university around the world, the same Aristotelian syllogism is being taught. Man is mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal. And when I was taught that syllogism* for the first time, I stood up and I said, "Wait. I may be the exception. Up to now I have been the exception. Why not tomorrow?

About Socrates I accept the syllogism is true because he is dead, but what about me? What about you? What about all these people who are living? They have not died yet."

Experiencing death -- people dying in disgust, in misery, in suffering, in all kinds of pain, old age -- that gives you the fear of death. Because nobody has known the death of an enlightened man, how beautifully he dies, how joyously he dies.

The moment of his death is of tremendous luminosity, silence, as if joy is radiating from every pore of his being. Those who are near him, those who have been fortunate to be near him, will be simply surprised that death is far more glorious than life has ever been.

But this kind of death happens only to people who have lived totally, without fear, who have lived orgasmically, without bothering about idiots what they are saying. They know nothing about it, and they go on saying about it.

The fear of death will be the simplest out of the three. You have to solve the first two, and then you tell the person that death is not the end of life. If you meditate deeply and reach to your innermost center you will suddenly find an eternal life current. The bodies... there have been many. There have been many forms to your being, but you are just the same. But it has to be not just a belief -- it has to be made their experience.

So remember one thing: your therapy groups should not be ordinary therapy -- just somehow whitewashing and giving a man a feeling that he has learned something, he has experienced something and after a week or two he is the same.

There is not a single person in the whole world who is totally psychoanalyzed.

And there are thousands of psychoanalysts doing psychoanalysis, and not a single case they have been able to complete yet, for the simple reason because they have nothing to do with meditation. And without meditation you can go on painting on the surface, but the inner reality remains the same.

My therapists have to introduce meditation as the very center of therapy, and everything else should revolve around it. Then we have made therapy something really valuable. Then it is not only the need those who are sick or of those who are somehow mentally unbalanced, or of those who feel fears, jealousies, violence. This is a negative part of therapy.

Our therapies should be that we give the person his individuality back. We give him his childhood and innocence back. That we give him integrity, crystallization, so that he never fears death. And once the fear of death disappears all other fears are very small, they will follow it, they will simply disappear.

And we have to teach people how to live totally and wholly, against the teachings of all the religions. They teach renounce. I teach rejoice.

Q:* MANY PEOPLE ARE COMING TO MY PROGRAMS WITH ADDICTION PROBLEMS. IN MY OPINION THEY ARE NOT READY FOR MEDITATION. I HAVE TO TEACH THEM, TEACH THEM TO TAKE THE NEEDLE OUT OF THEIR ARMS, TO STOP STEALING, TO STOP DESTROYING THEIR ENVIRONMENT, TO CHANGE THEIR NEGATIVE BEHAVIOR. HOW CAN I HELP THEM? I THINK YOU ALMOST.... I WOULD LIKE TO TEACH THEM MEDITATION, BUT FIRST IT'S LIKE JUST TRYING TO STOP THEM FROM ACTING CRAZY FIRST (INAUDIBLE) A:* No. You should not ask them to drop all these things. They cannot do it. You are asking the impossible. Because if a person is addicted to drugs, the problem is not the drugs, the problem is why he is addicted to drugs. Because life gives no joy, life gives nothing. Life is so empty, so meaningless. The drugs make at least few hours very colorful, psychedelic, there is great joy. One forgets this whole madhouse, this world.

You cannot tell them that we will teach you meditation only if you drop all these things first. They cannot drop. You have to be more compassionate to them. Let them be on drugs; there is no problem. You teach them meditation.

Meditation will help them to drop the drugs, not vice versa. Meditation can give them better experiences, far more superior and real. Drugs are only giving them hallucinations. And when somebody has to choose between a dream and a reality -- and a reality which is far more golden and far more beautiful than the dream -- I don't think anybody is going to choose the dream. But first let him have something to choose, to fall upon. He was empty, he was disgusted with the whole life.

Drugs have supported him. They are killing him. They are destroying him, but they have at least shown him beautiful dreams. Life cannot give any beautiful dreams either. The politicians, the priests, the pedagogues, altogether have made life so ugly, so difficult to live, so worthless, that any intelligent person is bound to find something or other. And meditation is not for sale. There are no meditation dealers from whom you can get an injection. You will have to learn it, that is the difficulty. You will have to go through a certain discipline.

So tell them that whatever you are doing is absolutely accepted. You are doing it not without reason, so you continue it. We give you a better drug which is not chemical. We give you meditation. Try it, and you will be surprised, the people who have been on drugs can enter into meditation more easily than other people.

This is unfortunate that drugs are illegal all over the world. In India for centuries seekers of truth have used drugs, all kinds of drugs. Even in my childhood there was no prohibition of any drugs. Just by my side of the house was a shop, all kinds of drugs were available. Only the shopkeeper needed a license, and that was only five rupees per year. The customers had nothing to do with law.

And for centuries India has experimented with drugs and found it immensely helpful, because the drug at least give you a certain hallucinatory experience.

You become aware of something that you have never been aware. And the drug opens chemically doors into your being which are closed. The drug is not the last thing, but in the beginning it can be of immense help under right supervision. It will not make you a drug addict, it will lead you to meditation.

Because the Master can say to you, "This is only a dream and now I want you to introduce to a reality which is far more superior. And now you can believe me, because if just a chemical can give you such a beautiful experience.... I know both, you know only the drug. I say to you that now you try meditation techniques."

So before he becomes addicted to any drug, he starts experiencing tremendous ecstasies within himself. The drug is left far behind. Now he can himself say that it was stupid to go on hanging around the drug. It was giving you only a hallucination, an illusion. What does it matter if in your dream you become the king of the whole world? In the morning you wake up in the same wretched hut.

Then the more and more you need the drug, so you need not wake up. That's how drugs go on killing people.

But anything that is so destructive can be used in a constructive way. It has been used for thousands of years. But British government had no idea about it, that it can be used for some religious purposes, that it can be used for making man more peaceful, more silent, more aware.

In the West meditation has never existed. The West has known only prayer, and prayer is even more false than the drugs. Drugs at least have a chemical reality.

The prayer has no reality at all. It is addressed to the ultimate lie; the god, who does not exist anywhere. You are simply wasting your time, your energy, and hoping that the answer will be coming. It never came, it never comes, it never can come.

The West does not know anything about drugs. So it is the responsibility of all the governments in the world to make more experiments on drugs. Make them more sophisticated so they don't have any side effects, bad effects. This can be so easily done, that not to do it there must be some great reason.

Why all the governments are prohibiting drugs? Because a man who goes into drugs cannot be sent to Viet Nam to kill innocent people. The man who goes into drugs forgets all about Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism. He doesn't care a bit. A man who goes into drugs becomes in many ways useless for the society, a burden. So the society is not interested; otherwise it is such a simple thing to make drugs so medically wholesome that anybody can use it as a preparation for meditation.

And there is no need to force millions of young people into jails. And not a single one from there is ever... drops the drugs. He manages even to get it in the prisons. And out of the prison he is again back, because you have nothing to offer in comparison.

If you take something away from people, at least you should offer in its place something better. Then nobody is going to feel hurt, feel imprisoned. So tell those people that you are simply victims of a stupid society, victims of a science who has become a slave of the governments. Otherwise man can reach to the moon.

Man is capable to make nuclear weapons to destroy the whole earth seven hundred times. And man cannot make something better than LSD?

LSD is already better than alcohol, but alcohol is legal because two thousand years before Jesus was alcoholic. It is unfortunate that LSD was not available.

Otherwise he and his twelve idiots would all be on needles; and then no government will prohibit it. It will be something religious -- you should not interfere in religion. But the difficulty is LSD is developed now.

But our therapists have to be compassionate to these people -- they are victims of a society. So don't ask them to drop it. They cannot because they don't have anything to fall upon. Why they should drop it?

So first tell them that this is good. Use every opportunity in such a way that it leads to meditation. Tell them, "You are perfectly right. What you did, any intelligent man would have done in your place. But there are better spaces available, which you are missing. And you being intelligent, your very drug addiction is an indication of your intelligence, of your rebellion."

Give them some juice that they are better individuals than the society has. And they certainly are! And then you can explain them meditation. Tell them to meditate. And never mention their drugs. You just insist on meditation. Tell them you can take the drug and do the meditation in the same moment. So the drug takes you into hallucinations, opens doors of your inner chemistry. And that is the most vulnerable moment. You can meditate easily.

I am not against drugs. I am not against anything in the world, because everything can be used in a creative way. Every poison can become a medicine, so why not drugs? But I cannot allow drugs in the commune, because that will become a trouble for the whole commune against the government. I would like to change the laws, but before the laws are changed -- of course, knowing perfectly well drugs can be of immense help -- they cannot be allowed in the commune.

All over the world intelligent people should raise their voices, protest, that why drugs are not being purified. When millions of young people are in it, they have every right to have it. And if you are afraid for the bad effects, then do something. It is so easy to do. You can make some things really so miraculously helpful to meditation and so superior to any drug that is available in the world, that nobody is going to choose any other drug against your drug. And once he gets into your drug, he is bound to find meditation. But till it happens, we have to do something.

If somebody comes into your group who has this addiction, don't say anything against the drug, rather make the person feel less guilty. He is not committing a crime. He is doing the right thing in a wrong society. But this will destroy his health, this will destroy his whole life. And we have something which can give you better experiences, more authentic, more real. Experiences will automatically help the person out of the drugs.

Q:* MANY TIMES WHEN I WORK WITH PEOPLE I FEEL VERY FRUSTRATED IF THEY WALK OUT BEFORE I BELIEVE THEY ARE READY TO LEAVE.

DOES BEING A THERAPIST MEAN LEARNING TO LIVE WITH THIS? AM I TRYING TO PLAY GOD AND INTERFERE WITH THE WAY PEOPLE WANT TO LIVE THEIR LIVES?

A:* There is no need to be afraid that you are playing God. Many are doing it.

Nobody is entitled to do it. The best that you can be is not playing the role of God, but being a real friend.

The therapist has to be a real friend. He has to show his compassion, his love, his understanding. He has to make the patient feel that for the first time he is being respected as an individual, as a human being. If you start playing the God, he is again humiliated. That's what he has been suffering his whole life in the world.

The priest is playing the God, the politician is playing the God, and there are small gods, the whole hierarchy. Hindu religion have thirty-three million gods.

Perhaps they need so many for a hierarchy to run this whole universe, the whole bureaucracy. And then there are small gods everywhere.

A therapist has to be humble, has to be a friend. He is not a priest. He is not there to dictate your life. He is there simply to stand on your feet. He is not going to walk on your behalf. If you fall he will help you to get up again, but you have to walk on your own. Everybody has to walk on his own.

But it is very easy for people to play God, particularly in a therapeutic situation where there are people who are available to you and whatever you want to do, they are ready to do it. Their trust should not be in any way misused. Their trust is of immense value. You can pay it only by friendliness.

Make it clear from the very beginning that I have nothing to do with running your life. Your life is your life. I can help you to be clear, to be more alert, to be more conscious, and then it is up to you. It is your life: whatever you want to do, do it! Do it more intelligently, more lovingly, more creatively. I can teach you how to be more creative, but I am not going to tell you that you start painting.

Just teaching how to be more creative is not running anybody's life. The person may start painting, the person may start sculpture, the person may start playing a flute, a guitar. The person may start dancing, or the person may find some other way of creativity. That is up to them. What they make out of their life is none of your business. Your business is that whatever they do....

I'm reminded of one great mystic, Nagarjuna. He was one of the rarest men who have ever walked on the earth. People like Aristotle and great logicians of the West stand nowhere in his comparison. His reasoning, his logic, is just so immense, so complex, so penetrating. Yet the man was such a humble man.

Naked, he roamed around India as a beggar. Kings were his followers.

One queen gave him a begging bowl, because that was his only possession. She insisted that she wants to change the begging bowl. He should give his wooden begging bowl which was rotting, old. And she said I have made a begging bowl for you. So he changed it.

When he opened the cover of the begging bowl he said, "This is going to create unnecessary difficulty." It was a golden bowl, studded with diamonds. He said, "I am a naked man, and this begging bowl studded with diamonds, so precious, I cannot manage to keep it, even for a few hours. Because just now after my lunch I am going to sleep and I sleep in the ruins outside the city in the temples, anywhere I can find a shelter. Who is going to take care of this bowl?" But he said, "Let us see what happens."

As he was going back to his ruins where he was staying, a thief saw the bowl in the hands of a naked man. He could not believe his eyes. He had never seen such a precious thing, and he was o studded with diamonds, so precious, I cannot manage to keep it, even for a few hours. Because just now after my lunch I am going to sleep and I sleep in the ruins outside the city in the temples, anywhere I can find a shelter. Who is going to take care of this bowl?" But he said, "Let us see what happens."

As he was going back to his ruins where he was staying, a thief saw the bowl in the hands of a naked man. He could not believe his eyes. He had never seen such a precious thing, and he was o studded with diamonds, so precious, I cannot manage to keep it, even for a few hours. Because just now after my lunch I am going to sleep and I sleep in the ruins outside the city in the temples, anywhere I can find a shelter. Who is going to take care of this bowl?" But he said, "Let us see what happens."

As he was going back to his ruins where he was staying, a thief saw the bowl in the hands of a naked man. He could not believe his eyes. He had never seen such a precious thing, and he was one of the greatest thieves around. He said, "How this man can manage? At least in the night he will sleep." He dropped all other businesses. He said, "For twenty-four hours I will not be available. I have to follow this man. Who knows where he is going, and he seems to be a little strange type. Where he got this begging bowl?"

Nagarjuna reached inside the ruins of the temple. The thief was hiding behind a wall, near a window. Nagarjuna laughed loudly and he said, j"Don't sit there unnecessarily. Just come in." The thief became very much afraid that how he managed to know? He knew because that man was following him out of the town, went on following him, and as he entered the temple, he watched where he is going. Because it was a ruin, so he could see. He has gone at the back and sitting behind a wall. He said, "Don't unnecessarily... that doesn't look good. I am your host. You are my guest. Come in."

The poor thief has to come in, nervous, that who knows what this man is going to do. He said, "Don't be nervous at all. Just take the bowl for which you have come. You have not come for me. So it is none of my business to interfere between you and the bowl. You take it, but be careful. It is a gift from the queen.

Don't get into unnecessary trouble. So be careful, and just run away before anybody sees you."

The thief could not believe this man. He is giving him such a precious thing, and even suggesting ways how he can protect himself. And finally Nagarjuna said, "If you are caught, don t be worried, just tell I have given it to you. And this is the truth. You have not stolen. I have given it to you, and I have every right over my begging bowl. So don't be worried if you are caught -- and I cannot think that you will not be caught.

Where you are going to sell this begging bowl? Where you are going to sell these precious stones? Everybody knows those precious stones belong to the queen. Be careful. And I will be here two, three days more. If any trouble arises, you can always send a message to me."

The thief listened to Nagarjuna and said, that "In my life I have never seen such a man. Now that you have given me such a precious gift, can I ask you one thing:

how you became so courageous, so non-greedy, so beautiful? What has made you the man you are?"

Nagarjuna said, "You can try it. It is a simple method of meditation. Do everything with consciousness, awareness. Anything done in awareness is right; anything done in unawareness is wrong. That is my whole philosophy."

The thief said, "I will try. I have never tried anything in my life, but whatever you are saying I can believe in it. I can trust you."

The next day the thief came back. He said, "You are really dangerous. Last night I entered into the richest man's house. I opened the lock of the room where he is preserving tremendously valuable things. But a trouble arose: I could not enter the room. The door was open, the things were available, the man was fast asleep.

Such an opportunity has never happened before. It must have been your blessing, just that I came to you. This fortune came on me from nowhere.

But the trouble was whenever I will take my step up I lose my consciousness. I became interested into things what to take, what not to take. Can I manage everything in one time, or I will have to come twice? I started thinking and forgot being aware. And as I remembered it, I had to pull my feet back because I had promised you. And I cannot go against the promise of such a man. So I had to return empty-handed.

I have brought your begging bowl; you take it back. And initiate me into your disciple. Now I cannot steal any more -- my awareness prevents me."

Nagarjuna said, "It is your life. If you want to become a disciple, perfectly good.

But you are deciding it. I never decide anybody's life."

There will be people who may be on drugs, who may be thieves, who may be doing all kinds of crimes. And it is human to tell them not to do this, not to do that. And then strangely you start playing the God, you start managing other people's life. Don't ever do that, because that is simply inhuman. It is worse than his stealing, than his drugs, than his wrong kind of life. Playing God is worse than all of that.

Remember to be a friend. And you will be able to help many, many people, just by being friend.

Q: WHAT IS YOUR VISION OF THERAPY IN THE FUTURE?

A: It has a tremendous potential to replace all the religions of the world, but it is not going to become a religion itself. Its function is to destroy all that religions have done to man.

It is a very suicidal work. Once you have destroyed all that religions have done to man, and man is healthy and whole, therapy is needed no more. But it has to be done. It is just like a medicine. You are sick, you need a medicine, and when you are healthy, you throw the bottle out of the window.

Therapy has to do something very great, but if it succeeds, that will mean the end of therapy too. And therapists should be proud of the phenomenon that they are not replacing any parasites, they are simply deprogramming humanity. Their work that of a cleaner who has cleaned the place and now his work is finished.

There is no need.

Humanity can be absolutely spiritually, psychologically healthy. Just we have to destroy all the hindrances that are preventing man to be healthy and whole. So therapy has a great future in the sense that it can destroy all the religions. It can deprogram people. But it has also to remember that there is a temptation always of reprogramming people. That has not to be done.

If people are reprogrammed, then some other therapy will be needed. Then you have replaced the priests; you have not changed the course of human evolution.

You have not brought a revolution in the world, but just a small change. Now the priest is replaced by the therapist.

I don't want my therapist to replace these ugly monsters who have destroyed, for millions of years, all joy, all life, all love, that every human being is born with.

Cut their roots. Make man free. And feel blessed that you are not getting tempted to take their place.

So may therapists particularly have to remember that other therapists are going to take the place of the priest. They have already taken. The psychoanalyst is the new priest, and he is safeguarding the vested interests. He is already doing that.

And he can do it better than any priest because he is more aware of the workings of mind.

But my therapists' work is really great and dangerous. Great, because we have to destroy all. We have to undo everything that religions have done to humanity.

And then, your work done, you feel contented, relaxed. You can become a gardener, you can become a farmer, you can become a woodcutter.

If my therapists succeed around the world, then soon there will be no religion, and then there is no need of any therapy.

Okay, Veeresh?

Q: AMAZING, AMAZING.