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Siddhartha, why are you worried about the society, its rejecting me or accepting me? Forget about the society! It has always accepted people like me only when they are gone; it always accepts buddhas when they are dead. It accepts only when buddhas cannot do anything; it accepts only when buddhas become just theories. The flame is gone; it is only a memory now. Then they accept, and not only do they accept, they worship. That is what they have always done and what they will always do in the future too.

Nothing has changed fundamentally. The unenlightened remain unenlightened. Why do they reject? They reject out of fear. Just listen to me: just now I was saying something about boredom. Now the ordinary person can’t accept it, that one has to go deep into boredom. He will be afraid. He will say, “What nonsense is this man talking about?” He will become afraid even to listen to it, because who knows? The idea may get into his mind that life is boring. Then all his joys that he was going along so happy with and all those small toys that so delighted him will all be gone. Those toys will be broken! He does not want to do that; he is too obsessed with his toys. He does not want to listen to such things. When I am gone, then he can worship me, because I will not be shouting at him.

Worship is cheap. To be with a living master is hard, arduous; it needs guts. Worship is a polite gesture. Worship says, “You may be right, but we are not ready for it. You must be right; we are not even ready to argue about it, because who knows? If we argue about it, you may prove right. So we don’t argue; we will worship you. You must be right. How can you be wrong? But we don’t want to follow you, yet. We will make a beautiful image of you in the temple. We will bring flowers to your feet, we will repeat your name, and we will go on doing the same stupid things we have been doing before. You will be just decor, a decoration. We will put a beautiful picture of you in the home; it makes the drawing room look so pretty. But that’s all. And once in a while we will even garland your picture, but that’s all.”

This is a polite way of avoiding, a very polite way of saying, “No, we can’t come with you, at least, not yet. Ultimately you may be right, but we are not worried about the ultimate. For the moment, forgive us, and let us live our joys. Life is so enchanting, who cares about enlightenment?”

And any person who comes and throws a stone in your glass house looks like an enemy. Any person who comes and disturbs your sleep and destroys your dreams looks like an enemy. So when a buddha is alive he has to be rejected. If he is not rejected, then he is not a buddha. When he is dead, he has to be worshipped. If he is not worshipped when he is dead, then he is not a buddha.

That’s how we have always been behaving with Buddhas, Krishnas, Christs – that has been our usual procedure. We have found a very, very cunning, clever way. We don’t want to say no, because then we have to enter into the argument with these people – and these people are argumentative. To face them is dangerous because they may convince you, their very being is convincing. One does not want to come close to them. When they are dead, then it is perfectly okay. When Christ is alive, crucify him – and these same people who crucified him now go to the church. The same people! If he comes again, these same people will crucify him. People are people; they are not Jews and not Christians and not Hindus and not Mohammedans. They are just the same people.

There are only two possible categories: the enlightened and the unenlightened. The unenlightened are all the same, and the enlightened are all the same. Their tastes are not different.

It was not that Jews crucified Jesus – it was the mediocre mind, the mind that is afraid, afraid to face reality; the mind that is afraid to go into utter boredom. And utter boredom is a passage: it leads to the temple of celebration.

But don’t be worried about people. Why should you be worried? Is there some doubt in your mind? Are you searching, seeking support from the people? It must be creating a certain restlessness in you: “How can Bhagwan be right if so many people are against him?” You feel a little shaky, afraid, a little trembling arises in you. When you are here with my orange people, it feels good: “Bhagwan must be right because there are so many orange people.” When you go to M.G. Road, naturally you start thinking. “What am I doing here? These are not orange people, and not only are they not orange, they are dead against all orange people.”

Fear arises in you, doubt arises in you: “Maybe I have fallen in the trap of a magician, of a hypnotist? An intelligent person like me, what am I doing here? Why did I get caught into these meditations? Nobody else is meditating. And I am coming from so far away, and the people who live in Pune don’t care a bit.” Something seems to be unsettled; you become shaky, you tremble. Now, deep in your mind you would like to be with me, but what to do with this crowd that is against me?

Now you are creating consolations for yourself. You ask:
[It seems that though the society is at present rejecting you, by and by it will accept you.]

You are not really concerned with the society. You want to hear from me that “Yes, don’t be worried, these people are going to follow me,” so you can feel good. “These people will accept me, wait. All these people are going to become orange, just wait, just time is needed.” You want an assurance from me so the presence of those people who are against me does not disturb you.

Look into these things: become very alert to what happens in your mind when you ask a question, why you ask a question. The question may not show anything of the reality of you, but you cannot hide, not from me. I don’t answer your questions as much as I answer the reason why the question has arisen in you. So sometimes it feels that I am not directly answering your question; sometimes you may even be surprised that I am going a little roundabout, not direct. Sometimes you may even think that I am avoiding the question that has been asked – it is not so. My whole effort here is not to answer the question on the surface, but in the depth, from where it has arisen, why it has arisen.

There are people who ask questions, and then they make a note that “This is not really my question, I am asking it for others.” But why can’t the others ask it?Why should you be worried about others? Now, this person wants to ask but does not want to show that the question is his.

One day a man came to me and he said, “One of my friends has suddenly become impotent. I have come for him. Is there some help?”
I told the man, “Why didn’t you tell your friend that he could have come himself and told me that one of his friends has become impotent, because I see perfectly well that you are your friend.”
He became very worried; he started perspiring. I said, “Don’t perspire! But why can’t you face it? If you have become impotent, don’t be so impotent that you cannot even ask the question. At least save that much potency, face the problem.”

There are a few people who go on thinking… And it is not just that they are deceiving, they really think that they are asking to help others. Yoga Chinmaya often asks questions saying that “This is to help others.” Deep down the question is his, but he cannot accept that “It is my question.” That hurts: “I am asking such a question? I should not be asking such a question. I have lived with Bhagwan so long, I should not be asking such a question.” But the question is there and it has to be asked, so one finds a clever way to ask it.

Now, on the surface it seems Siddhartha is worried about the society. Deep down, he is worried about himself. He wants an absolute promise that “You are on the right track, and the others are wrong. Just wait! They will not only worship me, they are going to worship you, too. You are going to be my apostles; you are my Luke and Thomas and Mark. Wait, just wait! You have done such a great work by becoming a disciple to a madman. Just wait – these foolish people will not only worship your master, they are going to worship you too. Then they will recognize; then they will see what a great opportunity they have missed.”

Just go deep into your own fear and let the fear be expressed clearly in your question. At least find the cause of your questions. If you can find the cause of your questions, out of one hundred, ninety-nine questions will simply disappear because in the very cause you will find the answer. To go deeply into a question, to its very roots, is to find its answer. And the one question that will not find an answer from yourself…asking it will be of great import – that will become a bridge between me and you. Always go into the unconscious roots of your question.

❂ ❂ ❂

There is another question on similar lines:

In your last lecture (Pearl 549) you called Yudhishthira, the Dharmaraj, an irreligious person simply because he lost his wife in gambling. But what about one of your own followers who is mad after wine and women? Not only this but he smokes charas and ganja freely. In what sense is he following a religion superior to that of Yudhishthira? Please explain.

The question is from Sohan Bharti. He is a new sannyasin; he took sannyas just a few days ago. He must be having a very, very strong Indian mind, deeply conditioned.

Now, staking a woman in gambling – and he says, “Simply because he lost his wife in gambling!”

A wife in India is just a thing, furniture, so what is wrong in it? In fact, Yudhishthira and his brothers were behaving with the wife with that attitude that “she is property.” There were five brothers and the five had divided the wife; the wife had five husbands. You can’t divide a person like a property. This is such a horrible thing to think about: a woman has been divided by five men as if she is a piece of land!

And then, finally, he staked her as a bet in gambling and lost her. Can you think of any woman staking her husband in gambling? Would you say, “So what, it’s just a husband – why not?” But there is no such story in India. You would never have forgiven that; you could not have conceived of it.

The husband in India is called swami – master. And the wife is called dasi – servant, a slave. This is ugly. But Sohan Bharti’s Indian mind must have been hurt when I said it, because this man, Yudhishthira, is thought to be a great religious man, one of the great religious leaders of the Hindus. To me he is not even human! What to say about his being religious? He is not even human, he is inhuman.

And he asks:
[But what about one of your own followers who is mad after wine and women?]

Then he is perfectly human; nothing inhuman about it. What is wrong in being mad after a woman? It is natural. Yes, one can go beyond it, but one goes beyond only when one has gone through. And everybody is in search of some kind of wine, some kind of intoxicant, to drown one’s miseries, one’s anxieties. Morarji Desai is trying to create prohibition in India. Now, he himself is intoxicated with power. That is a far more dangerous intoxication than ordinary wine; when you drink alcohol you harm only yourself, nobody else, but when you drink the alcohol of power, you harm millions.

If a person is smoking charas and ganja freely, he is simply harming himself. Yes, he is doing harm, but he is simply harming himself. That is his birthright, to harm himself. He is committing a slow suicide, but that is his birthright. He is not harming anybody; he is not trying to force his ganja on you or his charas on you.

Now, Morarji Desai is trying to force his idea on the whole country! That is bossy, that is irreligious. Who are you to direct everybody’s life? Nobody should be so arrogant. You can say what you feel, but it should not be imposed as a law. I also know that alcohol is not good, but you should go and teach people, tell people that alcohol is not good. Nobody should try to impose it by violence. To make it a law is violence: it means now the police will be behind it, bullets will be behind it.

What does it mean when you make a law? It means now you are not capable of converting people, persuading people; now you are trying to do things by force, by power, by violence. This is undemocratic, this is absolutely undemocratic. And nobody sees the power trip, the alcoholic, intoxicating state of power. Whenever somebody gets into power, he is drunk!

I am not saying that people should drink alcohol or use charas and ganja, but I am saying that it is everybody’s birthright. One has to be allowed at least one thing: to do harm to oneself if one wants to, if one decides that way. You make it clear that this is harmful, that’s all. Nothing else can be done; you cannot be the deciding factor.

So, if you ask me:
[What higher religion is your follower following?]

I will still say that he is better than Yudhishthira because at least he is not staking his wife in gambling. He may be staking himself, he may be foolish, but I cannot say that he is harming anybody else. Yudhishthira had no respect for the woman. And if you don’t have any respect, how can you have any love? Love and respect go together.

Don’t pretend that you love your woman if you don’t respect her. If you respect, only then do you love. If you don’t respect, you only exploit her; your relationship is that of lust, not of love. Yudhishthira had to be exploiting this poor woman. Just think of the idea, of the horrible idea, using her like a thing. She was being used like a thing, and now she was being staked like a thing. And that’s what happened: Yudhishthira lost her. The others who had won immediately tried to undress her then and there. And then Yudhishthira and the four brothers were all sitting silently there, watching: “Now you cannot do anything, now she is somebody else’s property. Whatsoever they want to do, they can do.” What kind of respect? What kind of love? It is ugly, irreligious, and inhuman.

Remember, I am not saying that my follower – I don’t know who this follower is, may be just a figment of your imagination – is doing very well if he is doing these things, but still if you compare him with Yudhishthira he is far better, he is just harming himself.

The other has to be respected as an end, is never to be used as a means. The woman is equal to man. But for the Indian mind it is very difficult to accept the equality of the woman. So many so-called saints of India have been condemning the woman, down the ages, in such words that it seems unbelievable that these people had any sense of respect, of love, of sympathy, of compassion.

The Indian saints have been saying that the woman is the door to hell. The woman is not the door to hell; it depends on you. She can be a door to hell if you decide to go to hell, and she can be a door to heaven if you decide to go to heaven. Don’t forget that the same is also true about you. If women are the door to hell, only men must go there – then where do women go? And how can they go? They will not find any door. Men must be functioning as a door for them, too. Nobody is a door to heaven or hell. You create your heaven and hell. But these so-called saints were so afraid of woman and their fear shows in their condemnation.

I have heard a story that a rabbi used to go around the famous condemned city, Sodom, shouting to people from every corner of every street, “Stop your sins! Don’t do this! Don’t do that! Avoid sex, avoid this, avoid that…” for years.
One day, one of the disciples of the rabbi asked, “You never become tired? Nobody listens to you, nobody has ever listened or paid any attention to you, but you continually go on shouting around the town. People are tired of you, but are you not tired? From where do you get this energy? Do you still think, do you hope, that you will be able to convert these sinners?”
He said, “What are you talking about? I am not worried about them. If I go on shouting against them, at least I can save myself. If I don’t shout, there is every possibility they will convert me. I may start doing the same things that they are doing, that is my fear. So I go on shouting! The more I shout, the more I become convinced. I am not worried about whether they are convinced or not. The more I shout, the more I convince myself that I am on the right track. And then I can easily repress those desires which are also in me. And if I don’t say anything against them, there is every possibility I may become just like these people.”

Your so-called saints who have been talking against women are afraid. They know if they don’t talk, if they don’t go on condemning, they will fall into some kind of relationship with women. They are afraid of their desires, they are afraid of their own sexuality. By condemning women they are simply creating an atmosphere around themselves, they are simply trying to repress their sexuality and nothing else.

But the Indian mind has become accustomed to this, that’s why you can ask such a question:
[In your last lecture you called Yudhishthira, the Dharmaraj, an irreligious person simply because he lost his wife gambling.]

Now, Sohan Bharti must not be behaving humanly with his own wife. How can he behave respectfully with his own wife if he has this idea? Look deep into your question. If you cannot respect women, you cannot respect anybody else. It is from women you come; the woman mothered you for nine months, then she took every care, she loved you for years. And then again you can’t live without a woman; she is your solace, your warmth. Life is very cold; the woman becomes your warmth. Life is very uninspiring; the woman becomes your inspiration. Life is very, very arithmetical; the woman becomes your poetry. She gives grace to your life. She takes care of you. She loves you, she goes on loving you, tremendously, totally.

And you say:
[…simply because he lost his wife gambling?]

He must have been a man without heart. Instead of a heart, there must have been a hard rock.