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I have nothing to offer to you – only nothing. But that is the greatest thing that can be given as a gift.

My only advice to my people is to be nothing, to be nobodies, to be utterly nude of all the clothes that society has given to you – of thought, religion, philosophy – utterly empty of all the conditionings that have been forced on you by others; utterly devoid of all the inhibitions and taboos that time has gathered around you like dust. If you can be an empty mirror, then God is. In that empty mirror, God reflects – and there is no other way.

I have nothing substantial to give to you because all that is substantial is mundane. I have something intangible to give you, non-substantial, something that you cannot grasp with your hand, something that cannot be measured or weighed. It is called nothing, it is called meditation, it is called a state of consciousness without content.

But I can only point the way. I cannot give it to you. It is untransferable. It is not a thing, so how can it be transferred? You cannot purchase it, you cannot steal it – you can only allow it to happen. I am just a certain space, a certain context in which this immensely potential 'nothing' can happen. But it all depends on you, not on me. It all depends on you. If you allow it to happen, it will open doors to the divine, it will reveal to you the mysteries of life. It is not going to answer your questions because life is not a question–answer thing; it is not a problem. It will dissolve your questions, certainly, although it will not solve them – but you will be transformed. It is not knowledge that you will gain, but knowing, eyes, insight.

But you say: [“I am only here on a very short visit…”]

In such a hurry it is not possible. In such a hurry, you will not be able to relax, to imbibe.

An ancient Zen story says…

A young man came to a Zen master to learn about meditation. The Zen master said, “Are you capable of waiting?” The young man, of course, asked, “How long?” The Zen master said, “That is enough for me to reject you. To ask ‘How long?’ means you are not ready to wait. If you can simply wait without asking ‘How long?’ then you are capable of waiting.”

The young man understood the point. He bowed down and remained with the master. One year passed and not a single word was said to the disciple. Two years passed… Three years passed… “Now it is too much. Nothing has even been started, not a single lesson. How long can one wait?” Again the question became very prominent in his consciousness: “How long?”

He went to the master and said, “I have waited three years.” The master said, “So you have been counting? That simply shows you don’t know how to wait. Counting? Counting days with the master? In one sense, each moment is an eternity; in another sense, eternity is just a moment. You are unworthy! You will have to wait. You will have to learn how to wait. Be alert – from tomorrow the lessons will start.”

And the lesson was very strange. The young man was sweeping the floor when the master came from behind and hit him hard with his staff on his back. Shocked, the young man said, “Is this the beginning of meditation after three years of waiting?” The master replied, “Yes – now be alert. I will hit you any moment, any time. Be watchful, be alert, be on your guard.” It continued for months. His whole body would ache in the night because it would happen many times in the day that the master would suddenly jump from anywhere… He was very old, but he was really a cat.

But, slowly, slowly a strange awareness started arising in the young man. Just when the master would be on the verge of hitting him, he would dodge – even from the back. And although he was occupied in his work, a subtle awareness remained there.

It was bound to be so; he was suffering so much. Pain is a must for growth, suffering is absolutely necessary for growth. Unless you suffer you cannot be aware. Suffering brings awareness and voluntary suffering brings tremendous awareness. Willingly he was suffering. He could have escaped, no one was preventing him. It was his own choice. He had chosen the master. Now he started to understand why: “This is his teaching. This is how he is teaching meditation.”Now it dawned in his consciousness. He was immensely grateful.

The day came when the master came from behind and just before he was going to hit him, the young man jumped, dodged. The master’s stick fell on the ground and the young man was immensely happy. Something new had happened in his being. The master blessed him.

But from that day, things became even more difficult. The master started hitting him while he was asleep. Now, this was too much. In the night, any time… And the master was very old; naturally, he didn’t sleep much, so whenever he woke, he would go and hit the young man. But the young man knew. “I may not understand the process of it, but the master’s hitting in the day has been of such immense benediction, has been such a transformation, that without any question, I accept this too.” He didn’t say, “This is absurd, this is ridiculous. It is okay that you hit me in the day – I can at least protect myself, run away, escape, dodge – but what can I do when I am asleep?” He didn’t say it.

The master said, “This is a good sign. For the first time you are learning trust. You have not asked the question.”

After two, three months of being hit in the night, his body would ache the whole day. In the day he was able to protect himself. But one night it happened. The master entered the room and he opened his eyes and said, “Wait! I am awake.”It happened more and more. It became impossible to hit him. Immediately the master entered the room, he would open his eyes – as if he was not asleep at all. That was not so. He was fast asleep, but a part of his being was released from the metaphysical sleep, the tip of the iceberg, just a small part. But it went on like a lit candle inside – watching, waiting.

The master was very happy. The next morning, the master was sitting underneath a tree reading some old sutras, some old scripture. Suddenly – the young man was sweeping the garden and an idea arose in him. “This old man has been hitting me for almost one year, day in, day out. How will it be if I try once to hit him? It will be worth seeing how he reacts.” The master closed his sutras and said, “You stupid man! I am an old man. Don’t have such ideas.”

Yes, the ultimate state of awareness where even the footprints, the step sounds of thoughts are heard.

You are in such a hurry that you cannot relax. Meditation is not a hit-or-miss affair. It needs tremendous waiting; it needs love, trust. It needs a very unhurried approach. In fact, it needs a mind which is not goal-oriented at all. But if you are in a hurry, it will be impossible.

You ask me, [“I have come to try to understand…”]

Understanding is not something that you can try, it is not an effort. It is not something that you can concentrate, contemplate upon. Understanding is not of the mind; it is of the heart. You will have to fall in love. That’s what sannyas is all about: falling in love with a master, for no reason at all. Just for the sheer joy of falling in love with someone who has disappeared, who is no more, who has become a great nothing, who has become a silence. Of course, that silence is full of songs and that silence is music, celestial music. That silence is not negatively empty. It is empty of noise, but full of melodies. It is empty of thoughts, but full of awareness. It is empty of darkness and death, but full of light and life.

Unless one falls in love, the process of understanding cannot be triggered. You can be here, you can listen to me, but only words will reach you. Those words will become part of your memory; they will make you more knowledgeable. But to be knowledgeable is utterly futile; it doesn’t help.

To know about God is not to know God because the word God is not God. To know about love is not to know love because the word love is not love.

You will have to move in an experiential space. For that, waiting is needed, a relaxed, non-goal-oriented attitude is needed; otherwise you will not understand a thing. You will only misunderstand. The head only knows how to misunderstand. It is only the heart which knows how to understand. Love is the only way to know. Logic is a pretend. It only pretends that it knows. It befools you, it deceives you. It is only love that opens the eyes of knowing.

But see: the head goes on condemning love. The head says, “Love is blind.” Only love has eyes. Without love, everything is blind. But the head condemns the heart and the head is really very skillful in creating counterfeit phenomena. Instead of understanding, it spins and weaves knowledgeability. And knowledgeability is a false coin. It is not understanding. Understanding means you have tasted, lived, loved, been in a totally different space. You have visited the innermost core of your being.

Knowledge simply means that you have heard someone talk about it. Knowledge only goes on adding to your memory, not to your being. Understanding helps your being to grow, to mature.

If you are here to understand, forget about going so quickly. Just look; so many people here had come only for a few days. Then a few years have passed. I am happy about my people. They don’t even count and they don’t go on asking me “How long is it going to take?” They know that it is not a question of “How long?” It can happen any moment. It is only a question of your own openness, your own intensity, your own passionate desire to know, your own love.

It is unpredictable. It is not a commodity. If it had been a thing, I would have given it to you very joyously. I am helpless – I cannot give it to you. I am creating the space in which it can happen, but it happens indirectly. Understanding is not direct, it is very indirect. If you approach understanding directly, it is very shy, it escapes. It is very elusive.

When you start moving toward understanding you have to be very, very alert and watchful – in indirect ways. All that is great in life happens only indirectly. It may be understanding, or happiness, poetry, painting, sculpture; it may be art, it may even be a discovery of science. All that is great happens indirectly.

Now it is a well-known fact that scientists go on struggling to understand something. They fail again and again and again. One day suddenly, when they are not struggling at all – maybe smoking a cigar, or just resting in their bathtub, or digging in the garden – it pops up. And they have been struggling so long and it was not coming.

There is a certain secret to it. When you are too intent, too direct, you are aggressive, and life reveals its secrets only to people who are nonagressive. When you are too intent, too aggressive, too violent and are trying to conquer some secret of life, you become very narrow. Your consciousness closes and you are no longer wide open. And truth is so big that it cannot enter a narrow consciousness.

When you are relaxed, the narrowness disappears; you are open from all sides – maybe just playing with soap bubbles in your bathtub… That’s exactly what Albert Einstein used to do. All his great discoveries happened while he was playing with soap bubbles in his bathtub. You will be surprised to know that for many hours, he would remain in his bathtub playing with soap bubbles. His wife was very embarrassed to tell people.

One of my friends went to see him and he had to wait for six hours – because he wouldn’t come out of the bathroom. Finally his wife had to tell him the truth. “He can never be disturbed when he is in the bathroom. He can be disturbed when he is in his lab, but not when he is in his bathroom – because he becomes so utterly relaxed that all the great insights happen to him there. So nothing can be done. He may be playing with soap bubbles, but from playing with soap bubbles he has come to know about stars, faraway, faraway stars.” Playing with soap bubbles… Even stars which are so far away that their light has not reached since the earth came into existence – for millions of years the earth has been in existence; their light has not reached the earth yet. And light travels with terrific speed; a greater speed is inconceivable.

Light travels 186,000 miles per second. Light has been traveling from those stars since the earth came into existence. And still it has not reached the earth. Einstein became aware of those stars playing with soap bubbles. He became aware of the greatest discovery of this age – the theory of relativity – in his bathtub.

This is simply to say that life is ready to reveal itself when you are nonaggressive, when you are like a child playing with reality. All that is great happens in fun, in playfulness.

You are too intent. You say: [“I am only here on a very short visit. I have come to try to understand what you have here that the rest of the world does not.”]

What I have here is everywhere, but maybe you cannot see it somewhere else. You need a certain space in which you can relax – that space is nowhere else. Religion is very serious all over the world. Here with me religion is a nonserious phenomenon. Elsewhere, life is taken as a great problem, a theological problem. Here it is thought to be a beautiful joke. Prayer is thought to be very sacred in other places. Here, just to be celebrating, anything… The whole question is just to be celebrating. If you are eating your food with celebration, it is prayer; if you are taking your bath with celebration, it is prayer. If you have joy in the heart, it is prayer. Prayer is not a ritual here. You need not repeat certain words, you need not move through certain gestures. Prayer is a quality here, not an activity – a flavor, a subtle dance of your inner energy.

Listening to the birds – and it is prayer. Seeing the trees, with all their green, red, gold – and it is prayer. A bird on the wing and you are simply watching with great joy, with a certain relatedness to the bird, a certain affinity, empathy, as if you are on the wing – it is prayer.

Prayer is not something special here. It is the day-to-day ordinary life, with a new quality – the quality of joy added to it, the quality of surrender and offering added to it. Any act offered to God is sacred. If you can offer all your acts to God, everything is sacred.

There are thousands of churches and temples in the world; there are thousands of teachers, great teachers, very learned teachers. I am not a learned man and I am not a teacher because I have no teaching to impart. I am just a silent stillness; I am just love in my heart, a playfulness. If you can be here, without any idea of when you are leaving, if you can just be here and imbibe the spirit of this buddhafield, this energy field, something is possible – something impossible is possible, which may not be possible anywhere else. And as far as I know, right now, there exists no buddhafield in the world except this.

Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas, Buddhists – there are three hundred religious on the earth, but all are hangovers of the past. Their masters are long dead. They are traditions not religions, conventions not religions, conformities not revolutions.

Here it is not a tradition that I am making available to you. It has nothing to do with the past. It is a new beginning. And it is very fortunate to be at the beginning of something, to be at the very source of something. The people who walked with Jesus were immensely fortunate – they were at the very source, at the purest source. The people who walked and lived with Buddha were immensely blessed, but now to be Buddhist is just meaningless. Twenty-five centuries have passed and in these twenty-five centuries Buddhism has been corrupted so much. Now it is almost impossible to sort out what Buddha said; what has been added, deleted from it. It is almost impossible to say what has come from Buddha and what these twenty-five centuries have gathered around it.

It is like a snowball rolling. More and more snow goes on collecting around it; the original face is lost. You will even be surprised that the Buddhist statues have nothing to do with the real face of Buddha. The Buddhist statues have something more to do with the face of Alexander the Great – because with the arrival of Alexander the Great, for the first time Indians became aware of Greek beauty and particularly of Greek male beauty. Greeks were not interested in female beauty at all, remember, their whole idea was of male beauty. If you look at ancient statues that the Greek culture left, you will not find statues of women. You will find statues of men, statues of nude men. They were tremendously in love with male beauty, the male body. The female body was not thought to be beautiful in Greece.

They created beautiful statues of nude male bodies. Those statues, and those Greeks who came to India with Alexander the Great, gave the idea of how the Buddha’s face should be made. Buddha’s statues do not correspond with his real face – they are Greek in origin. And everything like that has been changed.

The day Buddha died, the monks started quarreling about each and everything. Thirty-six schools immediately arose, thirty-six sects. This one man they have all loved, this one man they all have heard – but they have heard according to their own minds. And when a man like Buddha is there, he releases great power. There are power-hungry people who immediately jump on it, exploit it. These power-hungry people are really politicians.

St. Paul, who created Christianity, is a politician. Christianity has nothing to do with Christ, and Buddhism has nothing to do with Buddha. Buddhism was created by King Ashoka, the great emperor. He spread Buddhism all over Asia. It was he – and I don’t think that he was a man of any great understanding or enlightenment; politicians never are. It became a new power trip. Someone can spread his worldly riches more and more and more, someone can spread his empire of political domination, someone else can spread his religious empire – but it is all the same. The desire is to dominate more and more people. Politicians are not very intelligent people.

Those thirty-six people who started quarreling must have been politicians. And this is something that is always going to happen. It is something in the nature of things; it cannot be avoided. Those who were really in tune with Buddha remained silent. The shock was such – Buddha’s leaving the body – that they were shattered, they were crying and weeping. They were missing their master; their hearts were no longer in their right place. They were not interested at all in creating schisms, sects, divisions, politics. But there were idiots and they are always around – seek one and you will find a thousand and one. They are always around. When one idiot goes, immediately another idiot takes his place.

Just the other day I was reading that in Uganda, Idi Amin is gone. He was known as “Idiot Amin.” Now, do you know who has succeeded him? – a man called Lulu. One idiot goes, another lulu comes. It is a very strange world. You cannot get rid of idiots and lulus.

Once the master is gone, the politicians are there immediately, ready to grab the power. And politics remains as long as the ego remains; politics is the shadow of the ego. So you can go to a Christian church or a Hindu temple; you go empty-handed and you will come back empty-handed. Unless you can find an alive buddhafield, pulsating, streaming with life – this is what is happening here…

Something is possible. I cannot promise you that I can give it to you. I can only say that the space is here and the space is becoming richer and richer every day, more and more dimensional every day. If you are ready to dive deep into the world that we are creating here – it is an invisible world – something of great value is possible.

You ask me: [“Can you help me?”]

That’s what I am here for. That is not the real question. Can you take my help? That is the real question. Are you ready to take my help? Will you allow me to help you? Will you resist? Will you open your heart for me to come in? And my coming into your heart is great surgery. It is painful in the beginning with agony on the way, ecstasy only in the end.