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One can be total only when one is not. Only emptiness can be total. If you are, you can’t be total. Your very presence will be a disturbance in your totality; your very presence will continue interfering with your totality.

That’s why Buddha says: become a nothingness. Just look deep into yourself and let the cloud of the ego disperse. Let there be empty sky; in that empty sky there is no division. Clouds divide; when there are no clouds, the sky is undivided, one. Thoughts divide; when there are no thoughts in you, there is totality. And remember, even the thought of totality will be a divisive factor.

Now you ask: “How to be total?”

This is an idea. Listening to me, seeing the grandeur of totality again and again, greed arises in you: “How to be total?” But you have missed the whole point. How can you ask such a question? Totality is not something that you have to do. If you do something, you will remain partial. Doing can never be total, only non-doing can be total. When you are a non-doer, when there is nobody doing anything, there is totality. Totality is absence of all doing, all thinking, all that divides. Totality is silence, utter stillness.

Don’t ask: How to be total? Just ask: How to see why I am not total?

Remember, that’s why Buddha’s path is known as “via negativa“ – via the negation. It does not talk about positive things; it simply talks about the negative. Don’t ask how to be natural; ask how not to be unnatural. Don’t ask how to be total; ask how not to be non-total. Just seeing is the question.

Sometimes you are total; just watch what happens in those moments. Making love, sometimes it happens, you are total. That totality is called orgasm. Mind stops for a moment. The frenzy of love, the madness of two energies meeting, merging, and the mind is surpassed, transcended. The mind is pushed aside; the mind is no longer needed in that space. All thoughts disappear, time stops, and suddenly you are total.

That’s why people are so much in love with love, in spite of all the saints. They don’t bother about the saints. People go on loving – they pay lip service to the saints but they go on living and loving; they don’t follow them. They know that they have only one moment of ecstasy, and that is love.

If you have gone to (the statues of) Khajuraho you must have seen the ecstatic expression on the faces of maithun figures – lovers in deep ecstasy. Even the stone has become ecstatic. Those stone statues, that sculpture, has great poetry, has great softness. Those creators must have been of immense experience; to turn stone into loving ecstasy is great art. I have seen many things, but nothing compared to Khajuraho. Khajuraho remains the greatest wonder on the earth: transforming stone into ecstasy. The faces show something of the transcendental; time has stopped. There are no thoughts in the heads; all division has disappeared. These moments are holy moments, because they come from the whole.

You ask me how to be total. Just look in some moments when you are total, just to see the taste of totality. Sometimes is happens listening to music, or watching a sunset. It can happen listening to me. If you are deep in love with me, it happens; it happens again and again every day. I can see on your faces the same expression as is there on Khajuraho statues. You disappear; something stops deep down in you. There is no movement, everything is utterly quiet, and you are total.

I give you the taste of totality every day, and you ask me how to be total! Just allow these moments more and more; don’t miss a single opportunity. Looking at the trees, look so deeply that you disappear in the look. Listening to the birds, forget yourself completely, and so on and so forth.

Every moment there is a possibility to be total. Whatsoever you are doing, be absorbed in it so utterly that the mind does not think, is just there, is just a presence. More and more, totality will be coming, and the taste of totality will make you more capable of being total.

Try to see when you are not total. Those are the moments which have to be dropped slowly, slowly. When you are not total, whenever you are in the head –thinking, brooding, calculating, cunning, clever – you are not total. Slowly, slowly, slip out of those moments. It is just an old habit; habits die hard. But they die, certainly, if one persists, they die.

I have heard about a man whose wife died. And he was sitting late, very late, in the pub. Somebody asked, “Why do you still go on sitting late? You used to tell me that it is because of the wife that you sit in the pub so long. But now the wife is dead!” The man suddenly stood up. He said, “Thank you! I had completely forgotten – just old habit!”

Just a few months ago, it happened: the defense minister of India, Jagjivan Ram, spoke somewhere in the south. For one hour he criticized the Congress party and Indira Gandhi. He himself has been in the Congress his whole life; he was a defense minister in Indira’s government too. Then he changed his party, became part of the Janata party. For one hour he spoke against the Congress party, and in the end he asked the audience: “Please vote Congress.” Just old habit – must have been doing this for fifty years: “Vote Congress!”

Habits die hard; to be untotal is just a habit. And sometimes, in spite of yourself, totality happens. So just watch those moments: when it happens, how it happens. Learn some secrets from those moments and move in those moments more and more. Then see when it is not happening and get out of those moments, slip out. It is not a science; it is a knack, a very, very subtle art.

You ask: “How to be total? How to give everything?”

It is not a question of giving everything. On the contrary, it is a question of recognizing the fact that you have nothing. This idea of “How to give everything?” is again egoistic. What have you got to give? You are all beggars; you have nothing to give. And you ask: “How to give everything?”

The very idea of giving is meaningless. When you have something to give, it gives itself, it shares itself. When you are happy, happiness spreads. When you are blissful, it overflows. One never asks “How to give?” One simply gives! One cannot do otherwise. That state finds its own way of expression and sharing. When you have a song it sings itself; you don’t have to ask how to sing it. It bursts forth in jubilation, in a great shout of joy. The shout may be wordless, may be meaningless, but that is not the point.

What is the meaning of hallelujah? There is no meaning in it. It is not a word at all; it is just a shout of joy. You are saying that you have something which cannot be said. You are saying something which has never been said and cannot be said.

But when it is there it happens. When the clouds come and they are full of rain they don’t ask, “How can I give everything?” They simply start giving, they start showering. When the flower opens it does not ask, “How can I share my fragrance?” In fact, what can the flower do? There is no question of doing. The fragrance is already on the way, on the wing; it has started moving.

When you have, sharing happens. When you don’t have, only then do these questions arise: “How do I give? How do I share?” Every evening, people come to ask me how to share. And my problem is that I don’t see anything that they are going to share; there is nothing. When you don’t have anything, this question arises: “How to share?” This question keeps you happy that you have something to share but you don’t know how to share. This keeps you unaware of the fact that you don’t have anything to share. When you have, it happens spontaneously; you cannot resist it, it has to be given forth. There is no way to avoid, it is inevitable.

So first you ask: “How to be total?” Not to be, is to be total. Secondly, you ask: “How to give everything?” Know that you have nothing, and wait in silence, in patience. Something will start flowing out of your being. It will take you unaware; it will be a great surprise that you have started sharing.

The most difficult thing in the world is to see that you don’t have anything. It is the most difficult, because it feels so bad that you are empty, that you are a beggar. People go on pretending that they have something.

Just the other night, Prem’s mother came to see me. She has been here for many months. Now, within two or three weeks she will be leaving, so she came to see me for the first time. For many months she has been here, but avoiding me, protecting herself, defending. Listening to me, and yet not listening to me, seeing me, yet with closed eyes. Being here with my people, but keeping aloof.

Last night she was there to see me, and I asked her to become a sannyasin – now it is time. And she said, “I cannot become, because I am a Roman Catholic. And I believe in God, and you are against beliefs, and I cannot leave my belief. And God has been very good to me.”

Just the idea of becoming a sannyasin disturbed her deeply. She immediately became defensive. That’s why I had asked – to bring her whole defense mechanism to the surface. Now she says, “I believe in God, and I cannot drop this belief.”
I asked her, “Do you believe in your belief more than you want to know God? God is not so very significant, it seems. Your belief in God is more significant. I am saying to you that if you drop your beliefs you will be able to see God!”
But she said, “No. I cannot drop my belief. How can I drop my belief? Why should I drop my belief? God has been very good to me.”

As if God has not been good to everybody else. God is simply good! That is the meaning of the word God – unconditionally good. It is not so that it is good only when you believe in God. Then what kind of God will it be? If you believe, he is good; if you don’t believe, he is bad. If you believe, he brings blessings to you; if you don’t believe, he brings curses to you.

Josephine thinks that God has been good to her because she believes in him. God is simply good. Believing or not believing makes no difference. The sun shines on both the theist and the atheist. When the moon comes it shares its joy with everybody, Communist and Capitalist. There is no distinction. God is good! But people think this way.

Really she is saying, “If I drop my belief then I am afraid God will not be good.” What kind of trust is this?

She said, “I cannot drop my belief.” I said to her, “Your hands are empty; I see your hands are empty. You don’t have anything in your hands.” But she wouldn’t listen. God is not important to her, her belief is important to her. And what is “my belief”? It is just hiding your ignorance, pretending that you know.

It is very difficult to know that you don’t know. It is very difficult to see that you don’t have anything, that your hands are empty. This is the courage that I am trying to create in you: to see that you don’t have anything, that your hands are empty, and that you are empty, that there is no being inside, that all beliefs are just tricks to create the feeling that you have something.

When one becomes utterly naked and nude and empty, and all disappears and all is dropped from the hands, then the great, radical change comes. One is transformed. In your emptiness, one day you become full. Out of emptiness, fullness is born. The sharing is inevitable; nobody can stop it, there is nobody to stop it.