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Not at all – it is a confession.

The ashram is not conservative. But you are all conservative, and you make the ashram. The ashram is not mine, it is yours. If it were mine, it wouldn’t be conservative. But I am alone and I cannot make it. I am a stranger here. It consists of you, and you are conservative. The ashram becomes conservative: it cannot go beyond you because you are the constituent parts. It is the total of your conservatisms.

But who bothers? If you are really in a state of dance, who bothers? Then you can dance, even on the road. Maybe the police will come and take you to prison, but that’s okay. What can you do? If you can stop the dance, then it is not worth doing. It must have been a mind game; it must have been just an idea, an idea in the mind that you would like to dance – but not really.

When dance happens, it is not an idea in the mind, not at all. It is a tremendous energy in the body. It has its own force. You are possessed, you cannot do anything. You forget this ashram, you forget the society, you forget the world. You are helpless, you are possessed by dance. Then something from the beyond enters.

It must have been just an idea in the mind. That’s why you stopped it. Ideas can be stopped, but when you are possessed, you cannot do anything about it. It happens; it is not done. And then it is divine when it happens. When you do it, it is human and ordinary.

It is not a question. It is a confession.

And you say you love Kazantzakis. That too may be just an idea in the mind, because people love things that they lack in their life. Reading Zorba the Greek you may love Zorba, but if you met Zorba, you might not like him because he will be such a totally different, altogether different, being than you. Even Kazantzakis was never at ease with Zorba. They were friends. Zorba was a real person: he is not just in a novel. Even Kazantzakis was very uneasy with him because he was a totally different type of man – absolutely hedonistic, absolutely in the moment. Nothing else mattered except happiness.

Of course it looks very selfish. Only sad people look unselfish. Happy people always look selfish, and happy people are always condemned because the whole society is unhappy. “How do you dare to be happy? When everybody is so unhappy, you must be very selfish to be happy. Don’t smile when everybody is weeping and crying, and don’t laugh. Life is very miserable, and it looks unmannerly.”

A man like Zorba will never be accepted in any home. You will not allow him to stay with you because his very presence will be a disturbance. He does not believe in any morality. He knows only one morality: happiness. And I say to you, that is the only morality there is. All else is rubbish because only a happy person can be moral, only a happy person is not interested in making others unhappy, only a happy person creates an atmosphere around him where others can also be happy. But those others will not like the idea of your being happy when they are miserable.

You may have loved Zorba, but you won’t allow Zorba to become a guest in your home. He is unreliable. Such happy people are dangerous. You can rely on sad, dead people: they will not escape with your wife! Zorba can. He lives in the moment. He has no future, no past, no heaven, no hell. He is very true to the real moment.

But you may have loved him. This happens, this has to be understood. You always love the opposite. The opposite attracts you – but only in fantasy. In reality it will be troublesome. People who have never loved go on reading poetry about love. Sometimes they even try to write poetry about love. This has been my observation. I have come across many poets; they have missed love in life so they go on writing poetry about it. That’s a substitute: very pale, useless, but still a little satisfying. At least something is here. Plastic flowers, but they look like flowers. Love is dangerous. To write poetry about love has no danger in it.

Watch: if somebody is reciting a poem on love you may welcome him, but if the man really moves into love then the society will condemn him. Read the story of Laila and Majnu, or Shiri and Farhad, and you will love it. But the people who were alive in the days of Majnu hated the man – because who loves a lover? Try to be a lover and you will be condemned by the society. Write poetry about it and maybe the president will give you an award; you may get the Nobel Prize. No lover ever gets a Nobel Prize. People who write poetry about love get Nobel Prizes.

Man has become afraid of the real; but about the phony, there is no danger in it. Have you watched this? Sometimes you are sitting in your room or in your house and reading or doing something, and somebody knocks at the door. You feel very bad. Now somebody has come to disturb you. You don’t even like to answer; you would like to avoid it. You don’t go yourself: you send the servant to the door, or your child, to tell the person: “Daddy is not at home.” But if somebody gives you a call on the phone, then you are not disturbed. Then you immediately take the phone in your hand because the reality is so far away.

Sometimes it has happened that a thief has entered somebody’s house and has been caught, and caught because of an old habit. The phone was ringing and he could not resist it. He had to answer: a phone has to be answered! So he took the phone in his hand and he was caught. And when he was asked, “Why did you bother?” he said, “I completely forgot I was a thief in the house. When the phone rings, one has to answer.”

A man was doing some research work on this phenomenon. He called twenty public phones and somebody or the other answered. Then he inquired of a man: “Why did you answer? It was not for you.” He said, “I was just passing.” “Then why did you answer?” He said, “But the phone was ringing!”

It has a certain power. When the phone rings you have to answer. It is a certain quality, something like hypnosis. It is not your concern, and it is certain it is not ringing for you. It is a public phone: you are passing by the way, you are going to your office. It is certainly not ringing for you – so why?

When the reality is far away, it is very easy to answer. When the reality comes nearer, it becomes more and more difficult. The greatest difficulties of life are concerned with the people who are very real to you and very near to you: your wife, your children, your husband – very close. They are real. There is the trouble.

You may have liked Zorba. Even Kazantzakis liked the man – when he was not with him! But when they lived together, it was really difficult because sometimes he will come drunk and will start dancing and will dance the whole night. And he was a powerful man, very strong. When you live with such a man, it will be difficult unless you yourself are such a man.

Don’t create substitutes. That’s a trick of the mind to deceive you. Love the real, don’t love the phony. It is better to love than to write poetry on love because love will transform you, love will give you insight. Love will give you insight into the human heart: into your own and the other’s. Through love there will be many unhappy moments, anguish, but there will be peaks of joy also. And that’s how one grows: through the night of anguish, then through the day of joy. One moves through the duality. It is a dialectical process.

Just reading poetry about love is so convenient, but don’t think that you really love. It is very easy because nothing is at stake.

Leo Tolstoy has written in one of his memoirs that when he was a small child his mother used to go to the theater. They were very rich people: they belonged to the royal family. In Moscow the snow would be falling – a winter’s night – and the mother and her child would be in the theater. And Tolstoy remembers that whenever there was a tragedy his mother would weep and cry and sob, and tears would flow down. Tolstoy used to think, “What deep compassion she has!”

But later on, by and by, he became aware she had no compassion at all. This was a substitute. Then they came out of the theater, and the driver sitting on the buggy and waiting for them was dead, frozen in the ice. He could not leave the buggy. He had to be there: any moment they might come. He was dead, frozen in ice, and Tolstoy’s mother wouldn’t pay even a single bit of attention to him. The man would be thrown out, thrown away, another man would be called and they would move. And she would not weep or cry. Tolstoy says, “Then I became aware her compassion was phony. It was a trick.”

It is very easy to cry in the theater because nothing is involved. It is very easy to cry while looking at a movie: everybody cries at the movies. But to cry in life is difficult because then something is involved. If you cry for this man who is dead, your driver, then next time you will have to change your lifestyle. Then, if it is snowing too much, you will not go to the theater. Or you will make arrangements for the driver to sit somewhere, or you will make arrangements for better clothing. But that will affect your style of life.

Who bothers about the real man? People cry when they read novels, when they see a movie, when they go to the theater. But in real life their eyes are simply vacant, empty. No tears come.

Remember this: if you really love Zorba, you will become a Zorba; if you love Jesus, you will become Jesus. This is one of the fundamental laws of life. If you love somebody, if you love something, by and by the object of your love transforms you and you become alike.

Have you observed it? Sometimes you come across a couple, a wife and husband, who look alike. They talk in the same way, they walk in the same way, they smile in the same way – a deep affinity. What has happened? They are not brother and sister, so why are they so alike? They love each other and they love deeply. When you love somebody you are vulnerable. Then the other changes you and you go on changing the other. If wives and husbands really love each other, by the time life comes to an end they will be almost alike. It has to be so. Love transforms.

The theater and movies and novels and poetry will not transform you much. In fact, they are ways of avoiding the transformation. They are ways of how not to look at life and live in fantasy.

This is not a question. This is a confession.

If you had really wanted to dance, who can prevent you? And when that type of dance happens, who would like to prevent you? When you are possessed and it is not a mind thing…

Next time you are possessed, don’t be worried about the ashram. Let them do whatever they want to do. It is not your business to be worried about it. Dance, but remember, this should not be a mind thing –otherwise you will simply create a disturbance.

Be possessed. When you are possessed, the dance is holy.