820

You ask why? Just observe yourself and you will find all these things there– lameness– A man is lame if he has not yet reached God. What use are your legs if they have not led you to God? What use are they?– you are lame. A man is deaf if he has not yet heard the song, the music of God. It is all around, and you have not heard it yet?

Jesus has to say again and again 'If you have ears, listen! If you have eyes, see!' To whom is he talking? To you! Don't think that he is visiting some institution where only blind people live, or only deaf people live. He is talking to people just like you who have eyes and ears, but who have not seen the real and who have not heard the real; and who go on seeing dreams, and who go on hearing whatsoever they want to hear– not that which is.

Man is deaf, man is blind. What have you seen? You have not seen the real, you have not seen the miraculous, the mysterious. And the irony is that the mysterious surrounds you from everywhere– day in, day out, year in, year out. You will live in the mysterious like a fish lives in the ocean, and the fish has not seen the ocean yet!

Kabir says: I wonder and I laugh why the fish is thirsty living in the ocean. And there is an old Hindu parable that a fish became philosophic and started inquiring 'Where is the ocean?' And she moved in the ocean all the time: And she went from one place to another in search of enlightenment– she wanted to know where the ocean was– because she had heard that in the ocean we are born and into the ocean we disappear, and the ocean is our source and our goal: ocean is God. So she started searching for the ocean, and she asked many people and they said 'We have heard also, but we have never known.'

They were all living in the ocean, those philosophers, those professors– they were all fish. How do you know the ocean if you have never been out if it? To know, a little distance is needed. The fish sometimes comes to know when she is thrown out of the ocean. When somebody catches her in a net and takes her onto the hot sands, then she knows what the ocean is. That is possible with a fish– for a fish, but what about man? Man cannot be taken out of God. There is no place which is outside God.

So we are born in him, we breathe in him. We breathe him, we eat him, we love him, we are loved by him, we fight with him, we quarrel with him; we are young in him and we become old in him. And one day we die in him as one day we were born in him. You must be blind because you don't see him and you go on asking 'Where is God?'

And you ask: Why does the Bible talk about man's state with metaphors such as lameness, deafness, blindness, drunkenness, sleep and death?

This life is not life. It cannot be called life yet because joy has not happened. What kind of life is this? Maybe just a preparation, a rehearsal for the real life, but the real has not happened because it does not show in the glow of your being. That splendour is not there, present within you, that aura does not surround you. Yes, you go on dragging, hoping that some day life will happen, but it has not happened yet.

So Jesus is right, the Bible is right that you are dead, that you are asleep. Jesus goes on saying again and again 'Awake! Be wakeful because one never knows when the Beloved will come. Don't fall asleep. He may come and you may be asleep. But there is no need for you to fall asleep, people are asleep! Only with conscious meditation, only with awareness, living moment to moment with absolute alertness does one come to be out of sleep.

And you are drunk– drunk with money, drunk with ego, drunk with power, prestige. And there are a thousand kinds of alcoholic beverages available: money is alcohol, power is alcohol, politics is alcohol. Beware of these things.

And people are so clever, they can turn anything into alcohol. Work becomes alcohol; there are 'workoholics' who cannot remain without work. They have to do something. They feel good when they are involved in doing something. When they have a little gap and they don't know what to do, they start getting crazy. They have to do! They will read the same newspaper again that they have read. They will rush to the TV or the radio and listen to the same news that they had listened to before. Or they may go to the same movie to see it again. Or they will start talking about the things that they have talked about a thousand and one times; and nobody listens, and they know it! They are bored, others are bored– but what to do? 'Workoholics'... a great organisation, greater than Alcoholics Anonymous is needed: 'Workoholics Anonymous'. Politicians will be there, scientists will be there, artists will be there, millionaires will be there– all kinds of people will be there.

Anything that possesses you so much so that you cannot be without it is alcohol. Mind is very cunning. Your mantra may become your alcohol; your TM may become your alcohol. Every morning you have to do your mantra for twenty minutes, you have to repeat in a stupid way 'Ram, Ram, Ram'. If you repeat, you don't get anything; if you don't repeat, you feel lost. If you repeat you know nothing is happening, but if you don't repeat then you feel you are missing something. Then a great urge arises to repeat the mantra– the same kind of urge that comes to a smoker. He knows that by smoking cigarettes he is not getting anything– there is no need to say that he is not getting anything. And if he is getting something, that is wrong– maybe tuberculosis, asthma, great things like that he is getting; otherwise he is not getting anything. He also knows it. But the problem is that if he does not smoke, he starts feeling a great urge. That urge becomes more and more powerful; it possesses him. He has to smoke. He knows it is not good, he has decided not to smoke, he has taken a vow, but it doesn't help. He has to go and smoke, otherwise he feels very nervous, tense. Smoking helps him. Just an old habit...

Habits are very relaxing. You feel comfortable, cosy in them. Your mantra can become your alcohol. Beware. One has to be very conscious, otherwise anything can become your alcohol. And man is drunk. Man is ordinarily like a person living in a trance induced by post-hypnotic suggestions. Jesus says there is only one cure: metanoia– turning backwards, turning into yourself, turning your consciousness towards your inner being. Unless you start looking into your being and become very very alert...

And you can. You know there are moments when you are more alert and there are moments when you are less alert. There is the key! Why are you more alert in a certain moment? A beautiful woman passes by and you become more alert. What has happened? You wanted to see her well, you wanted not to miss the opportunity, that's why you became more alert. If you can look at a tree in the same way... Because an opportunity may be missed– you may never come across this rose bush again. Who knows? The rose bush may not be there tomorrow, you may not be tomorrow. Who knows? This may be your last meeting– the first and the last. Have a look, a total look at the rose and you will be alert.

The bird is singing. This may be the last time. You may never listen to the song of a bird again; you will be lying down in your grave tomorrow. It is not worth missing. It is so precious. How can you be unalert? Be alert. A friend has come to your home. Be alert. Each moment has to be taken as if this were the last moment. And there is every possibility this may be the last moment! So use it totally. Squeeze the juices out of it totally. In that very totality you will be alert and the drunkenness will be gone. This is what Jesus calls metanoia.

A drunk staggered up to a policeman, and said 'Officer, Officer, where am I?'
'You are in front of the Shree Rajneesh Ashram' said the policeman. 'It is Koregaon Park.'
'Never mind the details' said the drunk. 'What town am I in?'

A drunk is drunk. He is not interested in details. He is not even aware what town this is. Are you aware of where you are? Are you aware of what planet this is? Are you aware of what life you have got which is slipping by through your hands without being used at all? Are you aware of the opportunity? Are you aware of who you are?

So if Jesus says you are drunk, he is perfectly right. Don't feel offended.

A fire-engine, with its siren screaming, tore up St. Martin's Lane towards New Oxford Street. At the same moment, a drunk staggered out of the Salisbury and immediately set off in hot pursuit. He was soon outdistanced, and collapsed, panting on the pavement. As the fire-engine receded into the distance, he shook his fist at it and shouted 'All right then! Keep your rotten old ice-cream!'

What are you running after? Please, first have a look, then start running. Your desire is not enough proof that things exist there to satisfy your desires. They may not exist, and then your whole life will prove a futile effort, in vain. That's how it proves to millions of people. Rarely does a man come to fulfilment. You can also be that rare man. You can be a Jesus or a Buddha, but that is possible only if you drop your drunkenness.

During the match, the batsman heard a cry from the crowd: 'Smith! Smith! Your house is on fire!'
He dropped his bat and ran off the field, through the crowd and into the road. Breathlessly he pounded along and then stopped. 'Why am I running?' he said. 'My name is not Smith.'

Have a look again at who you are, and why you are running. Is your house really on fire? Where are you going so fast? And people are going very fast. If they don't reach, they think they have not been fast enough. So they develop, invent more speedy ways to reach, without knowing where exactly they want to reach! Man becomes more and more powerful to reach, without knowing where he is going, without knowing where he really wants to reach.

Three drunks rushed onto the platform at Cannon Street Station just as the last train to Greenwich was pulling out. With great difficulty, and with much shoving and pushing, two of them managed to get a door open and tumble in before the train picked up speed and disappeared. The man who was left behind collapsed on the platform, roared with laughter.
'Your friends just managed to catch the train, sir,' said a porter who was watching.
'Yes, they did' said the drunk, still laughing. 'And the funny thing is they came to see me off!'

And you ask why the Bible calls you drunk and asleep?
You are, that's why.