I am sorry folk, I am really sorry because I don’t know what life is and why it is so mysterious. I can only give you absurd answers, confusing answers, and then you will begin to ask more absurd questions. It is like asking me why hole is empty. The answer is because there is nothing in it. Are you satisfied? No, I am sure you are not satisfied. How the hell am I supposed to know what life is? I cannot talk about theories and the versions which your religious books present before you.

If we are humans, we are humans. Why we are humans and not rats is absurd. Similarly, how can you tell you anything about the process which is happening differently in me and differently in you? Life is happening to me and it is happening to you too. It can be experienced but it can’t be described. If I try to explain it, I won’t be telling the truth because I am as much unknown to it as you all are.

Why life is mysterious cannot be answered because if the mystery is revealed to us there won’t be why. Life is a mystery because no why is relevant in this case. It is not something which man has created so the mystery can’t be explained and I don’t want to know that mystery because I am living with that mystery. I am experiencing it.

Sometimes you ask me why life has neither beginning nor end. I am really ashamed because every drama I teach, every story I explain has a beginning and an end but I can’t answer this question about life. Dramas and stories are our own creations and we can end them in any way we please but life is not in our hands. Yes, you are right in thinking that life ought to have a beginning and an end because your mind has been conditioned and trained to think like that. I have kept my mind a little away when it comes to understanding the mysteries of nature and the world.

One day a scholar friend of mine was saying to one of his disciples that life is like a woman.

I was naturally surprised and I began to listen to him very attentively because I was as curious about life as his disciple was.

My scholar friend saying, “The person who declares that he understands women is exhibiting self importance. The man who thinks he understands women is easily deceived. The man who pretends to understand them is ambiguous. The man who wants to understand them is wistful. On the other hand, the man who does not say he understands them, does not think he understands them, does not pretend to understand them, does not even want to understand them – he understands them!”

Yes, I agree with my scholar friend and conclude that life is like a woman. Don’t ever try to understand either of them-life and woman. Try to understand life and you will become a mess. Forget all about understanding. Just live it and you will understand it. The understanding is not going to be intellectual, theoretical; the understanding is going to be total. The understanding is not going to be verbal; it is going to be non-verbal. That is the meaning when we say life is a mystery. It can be lived but it cannot be solved.

With your own experience you can know what life is but you can never say what it is. That is the meaning of mystery. Mystery is definitely not a problem, so please never confound the two. A problem can be solved. A mystery is that which cannot be solved; insolubility is inbuilt. And it is good that life cannot be solved, otherwise what would you do then? Just think of it. If life is not a mystery and somebody comes and explains it to you – then what will you do? There will be nothing left except to commit suicide. Even that will look meaningless.

Life is a subtle mystery because the more you know it, the more beautiful it becomes. If you learn the art of flowing with life, you don’t need to understand it, you don’t want to solve the mystery, you simply flow with it. An orgasmic relationship evolves between you and life, but you cannot figure out what it is. That’s the beauty of it, that’s its infinite depth.

There is no beginning and no end. Such is life and let it be so. You can never think of a narrowed life by creating a beginning and putting an end. Beginning will mean that something came out of nothing, and end will mean that something was there and went into nothing. That will be an even bigger mystery. When we say life has no beginning, we simply say it has always been there. How can there be a beginning? Can you mark a line and say that at this moment life started, as Christian theologians used to say? Just four thousand years before Jesus Christ, they say, life started on a certain Monday. Of course, it must have been in the morning. But how can you call it Monday if there was no Sunday before it? And how can you call it morning if there was no night before it? Just think of it.

It will be foolish to make a mark somewhere. Where will you mark? There is no point to mark. It is not possible to mark a line because even to mark a line something is needed. Something is needed to precede it, otherwise demarcation is not possible. You can mark a line if there are two things, but if there is only one thing how can you mark a line? The fence around your house is possible because there is a neighbor. If there is no neighbor, nothing beyond your fence, the fence cannot exist. Just think of it. If there is absolutely nothing beyond your fence, your fence will fall down into nothing. How can it exist? Something is needed beyond the fence to hold it.

Simply putting, let’s assume for a second that on a certain Monday life started, a Sunday is needed to precede it. Otherwise the Monday will fall, topple down and disappear. And in the same way there is no possibility of any end. Life is, life simply is. It has been, it will be. It is eternity.

This mind of yours is so cunning that it has alternatives for every situation. If you tell your mind not to do this, it will be ready to do that. You tell it not to think about Suzan, it will begin to think about her younger sister Gloria. You tell your mind not to cling to money; your mind will answer that it will cling to meditation. Don’t rely on mind solely because it will continue to beguile you. You tell your mind to renounce everything; the mind will say that it will follow the way to God. But I say that God and godliness are quite different from each other. The word God is an impediment in the way to godliness.

Your mind is stuffed with the ideas of God. First of all you will have to drop all such ideas if you aspire to attain to godliness. The ideas of God are paved with thorns planted by religions and you will be confused whether you should follow the way to a Hindu God or a Christian God or any other available in the society.

If you ask me anything about God, I can only smile because I am as ignorant as you are. When there is no clue, not even a hint, not even a nudge, not even a whisper, how can you tell you about God? Yes, I do have accumulated ideas of God, and that is why I tell you to discard all that is accumulated. I want to make you quite ignorant once again, so l will have to confuse you. Whenever I see that some knowledge is being gathered, I immediately jump on it and destroy it. By and by you will learn – being close to me you are bound to learn – that it is futile to accumulate because this man will not leave you in peace. If you cling to something he is going to take it away, so what is the point?

You can read all that I have written here but please don’t cling to it, don’t make a belief out of it, don’t ever try to create a philosophy, or a theology out of it. Just read it, enjoy it, and then forget it. Simply read these lines, and then act as if nothing has happened. You are ready for a new experience, alive and fresh, without any kind of accumulation.

I am not a philosopher or a teacher who is trying to impose upon you. I don’t want you to follow me. Take me like a bird you had seen chirping on a tree, or like passing gust of wind. If you can’t do all this, then at least accept that you are reading a few lines of literature which sounds stupid and unconventional. Yes, I am unconventional because I am not old, I am born just now, in fact, I am dying with every full stop after a sentence and I am taking birth again at the beginning of a new sentence.

All I am trying to bring into light is the points which are beyond knowledge. I teach my students their course of study and they do succeed. Having received their degrees they come to me to thank me. Generally, they visit me on many occasions. They often say that all that they have studied in the course books appears to be unsuitable in the real life situation. While teaching them, I teach from the point of view that they should pass their exams but when they visit me after their success in their exams, I give them different interpretations of all that I had taught them. They are confused and almost at their wits end. They ask me why I am teaching them something else, quite opposite to all that I had taught them before taking their exams. I smile and answer that you make your houses and I will destroy them. I see freshness in every new second before me. While teaching them I was a few days younger but after their exam I was a different man. I had died many times and reborn many times before their next visit.

I can understand the confusion of my students. They get confused because they cling to the old and they are not ready to come out of the cocoon. I present new ideas of the same subject and they are amazed and confused. Yes, confusing them is my art and I know that this is the only art which brings new joy and experiences in life.

All the confusion which you have created is the result of your own doing. Don’t make the houses of confusion and I won’t be able to destroy them. What I mean to say is that don’t read my ideas if your mind is already crammed with stale and orthodox ideas. If you create, I am going to destroy. If you stop creating houses – card-houses, they are – if you stop creating houses, if you say, “This man will come and destroy,” if you simply wait and listen and you don’t bother to make any house to live in, then I cannot confuse you. And the day I cannot confuse you will be a great day of rejoicing for you. That very moment you will be able to understand me – not by your intellect but by your being. It will be a communion, not a communication. It will be a transfer of energy, not of words. You will have entered into my house.

You have created the barrier of God, and it stops godliness. You can’t attain to the divine state if you have existing ideas in your mind. You will have to be pure in spirit to attain to the truth. Then you will start living in that house and I am trying to bring you into my house. Jesus says to his disciples, “In my God’s house there are many mansions.” I also say to you, “I am taking you on a journey where a great palace is waiting for you.” But I see you making houses by the side of the road and I have to destroy them, otherwise your journey will be destroyed and you will never reach the goal. You start worshipping anything. You are in such a hurry, you are so impatient, that whatsoever I tell you, you simply grab it.

This something is very important and it can only be experienced in true company. In Hindu Vedic culture, there is a very beautiful word “Satsang”. It is derived from Sanskrit language. Sat means true and Sanga means company. Indian philosophy deals extensively with the virtues and values of Satsang.

To me Satsang has a wider meaning because I feel that without the presence of the master, Satsang is incomplete. I have already defined the word Satsang in the first paragraph but it can’t be described because it is an experience. In English there has never been such a thing as Satsang so it can’t be translated into English. It is something which can be experienced.

Satsang is a highly precious thing in Eastern world, especially in India and Nepal. You are there in the presence of the master; you are not doing anything, you are just being there, like the many others like you who are there in the company. The presence of the master is magical, just like a catalyst. Neither you nor the master is doing anything, or is going to do anything but things begin to happen, you feel something inexpressible happening to you. There is the meeting of the different energies and the result can’t be expressed through words.

This very Satsang can be your meditation, you Sadhana. You are surrounded by the energies emanating from the master and the others like you who are present there. You don’t do anything but something highly significant is happening to you. You are almost drowned in that feeling, it is like being in stupor, intoxicated, and you don’t want to come out of that state.

You might ask what will happen to you. I can’t explain it because there is no vocabulary in my possession which can explain it. You are confused, and you ought to be confused. Yes, this very confusion is essential. The more you go deeper into the mystery, the more you are confused. You find your answers somewhere and you feel that things are clearing a bit but this very clarity of the things is going to bring more confusion. I call it the blessed confusion. Have you ever experienced it? If you are confused by the subtle, you have closed your eyes to the physical world that confronts you; you are there but still you are away, your energies are the new spring of your joy and it results from the Satsang, the true company.

Deep meditation means a lot to me because I am physically present there but my eyes are closed and mind is not responding to the external digressions. You might say that you are disturbed if someone makes even a little noise. This is just the beginning of your new experience, and you are prone to be disturbed by the external noises. You are very sensitive in deep meditation but the more you meditate, the more insensitive you become to the external clamour. Then finally a time comes, you are present in the company of others but you are actually not present there. You are not even touched by the external forces. You have submerged yourself into infinite, the inexpressible, the subtle, the beautiful, the experience of the bliss which is your personal and you can’t share it with others.

When you have enabled yourself to touch the abysmal depth, the bottomless, the infinite, the depth of your existence, the depth of your being, you will not be disturbed, rather, you will be in such a blissful state that you will be existing physically but still you will not be feeling anything that disturbs you. Then disturbance or no disturbance are the same, sound and silence are the same. Then opposites are no longer opposites – they have become complementary. Then there is no contradiction in life, and you remain a witness of everything that happens. Much will happen and nothing will happen to you. It will always be happening somewhere else, and you will be a watcher.

There might be times in your life when you are disturbed by the noise, something which is annoying, and something which is really very disturbing. Don’t panic; just let it come to you. There will be little jolt but it will finally settle down.

My friend lived in a single room apartment in a tall building in Mumbai. Behind the building there were railway tracks and every night hundreds of trains passed by. I was surprised that he was sleeping soundly but I was highly disturbed by the noises made by the passing trains. I was not in love with the noise of the trains. He seemed to have been deeply in love with the noise made by the trains.

One evening, it was raining heavily and my blessed friend was in my house, a very peaceful house, away from the clamour of the big city. My little house overlooks the vast ocean and cool breeze continues to flow continuously.

That night my friend could not go back to his house so I arranged a bed for him to sleep in my room. Soon I was sound asleep but my friend was restless. At midnight I opened my eyes and found him standing in front of the window.

I smiled and went back to sleep. I understood that he was missing the noise of the trains. He had mastered the art of sleeping in the presence of noises. That was the incident which provided me with a method. It was essential for him to fall in love with the noises but everybody can’t do the same, but at least the very art can be practised.

Yes, I am telling you to fall in love with noises because you will never find a place in this world that guarantees you zero disturbance. Whenever a disturbance comes just accept it, allow it. If you try not to allow it then it really becomes a disturbance, but if a sound is there and you jerk, then the sound passes through you and you will fall deeper into silence than before. Then each disturbance becomes an opening of a new door.

It is an art and you will feel that you are gradually acquiring the art. You are beginning to be in love with even disturbances. It is a good indication, and you should feel grateful and blessed. And this is going to happen many times – this is just the beginning. It will settle after a few days and you will see that there is no problem. Then the new sensitivity is no longer new, and you are rooted in the new ground. It has become common to you, an ordinary reality – no longer a separate reality.

When you begin your meditation, even in the company of many others, it is a separate reality because your soul is going deep, and your body feels somewhere else, far away. Soon the body will follow. It is a little slow; it is a gross thing so it drags, lags behind. Soon it will come to the same point of sensitivity and things will settle. You will feel more capable of being. Many nuances will reveal themselves to you…you will see green as greener; you will see flowers more beautiful. The world will remain the same but as if vast, clean, as if your perceptivity has come to a different clarity, has become more transparent. You can see better, you can love better, you can be better.

This is the birth of love, and the key to success is to accept the disturbance and not to fight with it. If you start fighting with it, it becomes a disturbance. If there are birds around you, chirping and making all sorts of sounds, they are not aware that you are there because they have no plan to disturb you; they are simply doing their routine tasks. You will have to accept it, and when I say accept it, you will have to accept it willingly and with deep gratitude. Don’t ever think that you have been compelled to carry a burden and never feel any reluctance. If you are ready now, you will find something beautiful happening to you. You are getting close to the house of existence, just one step and you will be home.

You will see that even while sleeping, you will have beautiful dreams and your nightmares will cease to be nightmares. Your nightmares will be transformed into something very beautiful. With ordinary people, who live a life of borrowed ideas and traditions, it is very difficult. Their nightmares are the part of their everyday ordinary life. They have nightmares even when they are not asleep. They have not learned the art of accepting the disturbances in a beautiful way. To do all this you need to be filled with positive energy. I don’t have room for negative energy because I have already accepted death as something very beautiful thing. So, you see there can’t be anything worse in life.

Begin to enjoy this life like a dream and believe that everything is going to pass and nothing is going to remain constant because the plan has already been made by the unknown, the divine, the nature. You don’t lose anything in your dreams, do you? If you are ready to accept the negative as something positive, believe me, you have taken the first step towards godliness. The more you cultivate the more yields you will get.

If you, one beautiful blessed day, begin to believe that all that you see with your eyes open is a dream, you will have become the source of infinite love and joy. You will be unable to hate anyone, you will not be annoyed by the chirping of the birds around you, and the presence of negative energies around you will be transformed into positive, a really blissful state of being. Then there are no worries because everything around you will be a dream.

I am not concerned about your happiness that is momentary, the result of something which is in the form of material. I am going to talk about the happiness which is a state. Your happiness depends on you, and your state of consciousness, or unconsciousness. It can be everlasting, without decreasing even when you are asleep.

You must be thinking what a foolish idea it is! How can a person be happy in his sleep? Have you never been happy in your sleep? If not, then you have not been acquainted with the real happiness, the state of happiness, which begins to dwell permanently in your mind and existence if you are ready to open the doors.

Some scholars and philosophers divide people in types and there are some who do not divide at all. Osho divided people in two types: the sleeping ones and the awakened ones, and, of course, a small part in between. I am not in favour of this division because I can’t divide people in types, I can never find two similar minds in this world. If I begin to believe that one million people are really awake and six million people are sleeping because they have not experienced something divine happening to them, then I will be wrong because I will be befooling you. How can there be division? No two minds are similar and if we try to make two minds similar, it will be like training or conditioning them. I am against any kind of conditioning when it comes to dealing with the terms like happiness.

Happiness, your very personal happiness, is the result of your state of consciousness. You are very tired and you want to sleep, but there is a phone call and the caller informs you that you have won a lottery of one million dollars and you can collect the amount the following morning from the office of the caller, your sleep disappear. You forget about your sleep and the whole night passes in making plans with your wife, calculating and making the list of the things which you are going to buy with the amount you are going to get the following morning. A few hours before you had not even dreamed of that money but suddenly that call came and you became more conscious. You have become the owner of one million dollars.

If you are looking for the happiness which results from such material rewards, you don’t need to continue to read because I am leading you towards the state where momentary happiness transcends to be permanent happiness. During your sleep, pleasure is happiness. It is a sensation, achieved through body or physicality. You can’t achieve your happiness through your body or the external forces, or the material rewards which you get from time to time. As I told you earlier that your happiness depends on your state of consciousness or unconsciousness, so body becomes irrelevant here.

All physical pleasures are momentary, and likewise all physical pains are momentary. They follow each other in circles because your body exists in duality: life and death exist together in you. You are living and you are dying. You are very happy while having sex with your girlfriend or wife but the moment it is over you are tired, all your energy drained out. You say you are happy but actually you are not. You were definitely happy while you were performing the act but the moment it ended your happiness disappeared. You are lying without a movement, you are too lazy to move, you are in a physical state that can be compared to near to pain.

All your pleasure is always followed by pain and all your pain is followed by pleasure. Mind it, we are only talking about the pleasure and pain that is the result of your body’s involvement. In your physical pleasure, you are never comfortable because there is a fear lurking behind that you are going to lose this pleasure in a few moments. The sense of fear poisons your existence. You fall into pain and you want to get the pleasure back. This is the cycle of birth and death. Neither your pleasure nor your pain remains constant. They come and go in their turns.

People who are not awake, I mean, conscious of the existence in it infinity, only know about a few sensations of the body. They know nothing else. Their pleasure is mostly derived from food, sex, and money. They live in a very confined world, a world of bodily incited sensations. Some people limit their pleasure and pain to only two things: food and sex, but I say that there are many other things in their physical form which can be responsible for their momentary pleasure and pain. 

You are hungry, you are deprived of energy, and you want to eat something. Delicious food does wonders to you and you are momentarily happy. When one aspect of the bodily pleasure is complete, you want the release of the sexual energy. You want to perform sex to get the ultimate pleasure which you think is ultimate. You perform the sexual act with your partner and you feel momentary relief and satisfaction. Then you fall asleep. In the morning you begin to work but you don’t get enough customers in your shop and the business is not good. Now money is required, urgently required, because you have to pay the rent tomorrow. You are in pain, you have forgotten food, you have forgotten sex, and only one thing how to arrange money is in your mind. This is just an example to tell you that your pleasures and pains are so cheaply bought. There are more people in this world who live to eat than the people who eat to live. The latter don’t pawn their pleasure or pain to food.

Having seen the shores of the American land, Columbus must have felt the momentary happiness but at the same time he must have felt renewed pain of surviving in that unknown world. Secondly he must have been worried about going back to his own country. He had seen the hardships of the one way voyage and that discovery of America was definitely not going to tell the ocean to be calm like a lake to let Columbus go back without any difficulty.

I am trying to give you as many examples I can just to convince you that all that makes you happy in this world is essentially physical and it is momentary but some of you might be there who have attained to the state of consciousness or unconsciousness where they feel infinite happiness which is never going to end. They are able to easily convert their pains into happiness because they have learned the art of understanding and seeing the world as if they were seeing a dream. They have disillusioned themselves and they realize that bodily pleasures and pains are transitory. There can be unending happy state of mind but there cannot be unending pain. Once you have reached the highest rung of happiness, you see the pain taking last breaths at the lowest rung. It has stopped following you and you are a blessed person.

A young man was in the company of a young lady. She was his first date and he want to make his first date memorable. The young man was inexperienced in such matters so he tried to make his partner happy by suggesting different plans. He cautiously asked the young lady if she would like to go bowling. She replied that she did not care to go bowling. He then suggested a movie, but she answered that she did not care for them. While trying to think of something else he offered her a cigarette which she declined. He then asked if she would like to dance and drink at the new disco. She again declined by saying she did not care for those things. In desperation he asked her to come to his apartment for a night of lovemaking. To his surprise she happily agreed, kissed him passionately and said, “You see, you don’t need any of those things to have a good time!”

Your happiness depends on you. The people who are not awake, I mean who are not conscious of the existence, the world, the universe, the nature, only pleasant sensations mean happiness. They begin to live from one pleasure to another. They begin to rush from one sensation to another. They are thrilled with small sensations. Their life is very superficial and they never experience depths. They live the world in quantity and not the quality.

I have heard a Sufi telling a flower, “I would willingly give away all the worldly riches and pleasures just to learn how to develop everlasting fragrance which you have. I would like to live like you, smiling in wind and rain, though existing for a much shorter span than we human beings!”

I was really touched by the words of that Sufi. I concluded that the man who could talk to flowers could only be mad and a mad man is always happy because your small sensations and pleasures don’t even touch him.

Then there are those people who are neither asleep nor awake, I mean who oscillate between sleep and wakefulness. The world has a very large number of such people. They begin many things in their life but they rarely complete their adventures. They are thrilled when they begin something but with the progression of time, they realize the difficulties in the way, and as a result they drop their project and begin to look for something else. Even in their sleep they are worried about the money they have kept in their locker. They are very much present at the breakfast table but instead of concentrating at their toast and butter, they are thinking whether they are going to be reprimanded by their boss in the office.

I know many people who have all the modern gadgets like TV, computers, refrigerators, washing machines in their houses but I have never seen them updated with news items or the popular TV shows, they hardly know anything about their computers, their washing machines have never been switched on because they send their clothes to the laundry, and their kitchen remains spick and span because they rarely eat at home. They are happy with the accumulation of things because their ego is satisfied  and they don’t want to be left behind.

My wife is a very simple woman and she is highly susceptible to outside influence. She wants that our daughter should be a doctor, engineer, beautician, or someone with academic degree to easily get a job. I try to convince her that life is not only jobs and appointments. After a while, she answers that not all the people in this world are stupid, otherwise they would not pursue such career.

I had an interesting question answer session with her:

My Wife: You have three Masters’ degrees but you are involved in this small business of selling cosmetics and teaching students. Why?

Raja: I am a writer, a philosopher, and above all a human being who is totally alive.

My Wife: Why do they become doctors then?

Raja: To cure me when I am sick.

My Wife: Engineers?

Raja: To make my life better.

My Wife: Beauticians?

Raja: To make me look more handsome and you more beautiful.

My Wife: Accountants and Chartered Accountants?

Raja: To keep the records of how I earn and how I spend.

My Wife: Scientists?

Raja: To invent more things to make my life more comfortable.

My Wife: Job holders?

Raja: To do the works which I don’t have time to do.

My Wife: Film producers, directors, and actors?

Raja: To entertain me when I feel like being entertained.

My Wife: Then, what are you?

Raja: I am a writer.

My Wife: You don’t know anything about any other field except for reading and writing.

Raja: I know A to Z about cars, their repairing, their maintenance, and I know everything about electricity and electrical gadgets and I can easily repair them.

My Wife: Then, why do you call electricians and mechanics for repair works?

Raja: Because I hardly get time from being alive to take care of such trivial issues. They come and do it for me.

My Wife: What should our daughter do now after her graduation from college?

Raja: I don’t know.

My Wife: It is very difficult to understand you and your ideas.

Raja: That is why I am a writer.

I know the source of my happiness but she is not at the same state of consciousness and I don’t expect her to reach there at least until our daughters begin to live away from us. I am sure that one day she is going to come out of the illusion of this material prosperity and see the world the way I see. I don’t mean that she does not love me, on the contrary, she is the most loving creature in this world. I am not saying this because she is my wife, I am saying this because I have been unfaithful to her, if you call it, and have been close to at least two other women, not in the manner you might be thinking. My closeness was more on the level of mind and not because I wanted physical pleasure.

Real happiness can be achieved when you begin to live the life of quality, and not the quantity. Quality to me is psychological and quantity is physiological.

The person, who begins to understand quality, begins to enjoy music more; he enjoys poetry more, he enjoys creating something. He enjoys nature, its beauty. He enjoys silence. He enjoys what he had never enjoyed before, and this is far more lasting. Even if the music stops, something goes on lingering in you. And it is not a relief.