Flight From The Shadow from When the Shoe Fits, Stories of the Taoist Mystic Chuang Tzu

2 October 1974 am in Buddha Hall

THE SPIRIT HAS AN IMPREGNABLE TOWER WHICH NO DANGER CAN DISTURB AS LONG AS THE TOWER IS GUARDED BY THE INVISIBLE PROTECTOR WHO ACTS UNCONSCIOUSLY, AND WHOSE ACTIONS GO ASTRAY WHEN THEY BECOME DELIBERATE, REFLEXIVE AND INTENTIONAL.

THE UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND ENTIRE SINCERITY OF TAO ARE DISTURBED BY ANY EFFORT AT SELF-CONSCIOUS DEMONSTRATION. ALL SUCH DEMONSTRATIONS ARE LIES.

WHEN ONE DISPLAYS HIMSELF IN THIS AMBIGUOUS WAY THE WORLD OUTSIDE STORMS IN AND IMPRISONS HIM.

HE IS NO LONGER PROTECTED BY THE SINCERITY OF TAO. EACH NEW ACT IS A NEW FAILURE. IF HIS ACTS ARE DONE IN PUBLIC, IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, HE WILL BE PUNISHED BY MEN. IF THEY ARE DONE IN PRIVATE AND IN SECRET, THEY WILL BE PUNISHED BY SPIRITS.

LET EACH ONE UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF SINCERITY AND GUARD AGAINST DISPLAY! HE WILL BE AT PEACE WITH MEN AND SPIRITS AND WILL ACT RIGHTLY, UNSEEN, IN HIS OWN SOLITUDE, IN THE TOWER OF HIS SPIRIT.

Only man is in suffering. Suffering exists nowhere else than in the heart of man.

The whole of nature is joyous; the whole of nature is always celebrating without any fear, without any anxiety. Existence goes on existing, but man is a problem. Why is this so? And every man is a problem. If only a few were problems we could call them ill, abnormal, but just the contrary is the case – only a few are not problems. Rarely is there a man like Buddha, Jesus, or Chuang Tzu – one who is at home, whose life is an ecstasy and not a suffering and an anxiety. Otherwise everybody lives in suffering and in hell.

Somewhere man has gone wrong – not any particular man, but human society as such has gone wrong. And this has gone to the roots. Whenever a child is born, the society starts changing the child to the abnormal pattern – the unnatural pattern through which everybody else is suffering. Psychologists have been trying hard to probe the mystery of where a child goes wrong and they have stumbled upon the age of four. Somewhere near that age the child becomes part of society; somewhere around that age he is no longer natural. Before the age of four he is still part of the great world of trees, flowers, birds and animals; before the age of four he is still wild. After that he is domesticated. Then the society takes over. Then he lives according to rules, morality, right and wrong. Then he is not total. Then everything is divided. Now before he moves he has to decide deliberately how to move, what to do, and what not to do. The ’ought’ has entered and that ’ought’ is the disease. Discrimination has come in. Now the child is no longer part of the Divine – he has fallen from that grace.

This is the meaning of the biblical story of Adam’s fall. Before he ate from the Tree of Knowledge he was natural, he lived in the garden of Eden. That garden of Eden is here. These trees are still living in it; animals are still part of it; the sun and moon and stars are still moving in it; here and now is the garden of Eden – but you are out of it. Why was Adam turned out? He ate the fruit of knowledge. And at the age of four every Adam and every Eve are turned out again. It is not something that happened in the past it happens every time a child is born – again the Adam comes into being, again the Eve comes into being. Up to the age of four there is no knowledge. By the age of four the child starts understanding what is what. Then he misses the path, then he is no longer natural, then the spontaneity is lost. Now he will live according to the rules.

Once you start living according to the rules you will suffer. You will suffer because you cannot love spontaneously, you cannot enjoy, you cannot dance, you cannot sing. Once you start living according to the rules you have to move in a fixed pattern – and life is never a fixed pattern, it is a fluidity, it is a liquid flexible flow. And nobody knows where it is moving. Once you start living through rules then you know where you are moving. But deep down the movement has stopped. Now you are simply vegetating, now you are simply dying – because you are imprisoned. And the imprisonment is very subtle – unless you become absolutely alert you will not be able to see it, it is like an unseen armour around you.

One of the greatest revolutionary thinkers of this age, Wilhelm Reich, stumbled upon this armour. But he was proved by society to be mad and was thrown in jail. He died in jail in deep anguish. The anguish was this: whatsoever he said was true but nobody was ready to even listen to him. He came upon the same thing about which Chuang Tzu talks about in this sutra – the imprisonment. Wilhelm Reich found that every mental disease has a bodily part to it, a parallel part in the body; in the body something has gone dead, solid. And unless that part of the body is released, that block dispersed, and again your body energy becomes a flow is impossible to make your spirit free. The imprisonment must be broken; the armour must be thrown.

For example, look how the child is prohibited from the age of two. He is not allowed to play with his genital organs: Don’t touch your penis. Don’t touch your vagina. There seems to be a natural enjoyment in playing with one’s own body. There seems to be an ecstasy, a natural ecstasy. Look at a small child, boy or girl, enjoying his own body and you will see what ecstasy is. Tremors of ecstasy move all over the body. You can see the waves passing all over the body. The child is madly ecstatic. But this looks animalistic to us – because we have forgotten how to be wild and natural We will stop the child.

This stopping is for two reasons. One reason is that deep down we feel jealous. The second reason is that we were also stopped in our childhood and man’s mind is a repetitive mechanism. Whatsoever has been done to us by our parents we will do to our children. We feel guilt. Something is wrong. The child is happy and we feel something is wrong. Remember, whenever a child is happy don’t make the association that something is wrong, otherwise deep down happiness will become something wrong.

That is what has happened. Whenever you feel happy you feel guilty, and whenever you feel sad you feel happy. What nonsense – whenever you feel happy you feel something somewhere is wrong! ’I am doing something wrong.’ Whenever you are sad everything is okay, it is as it should be. This is because whenever a child is happy, immediately, from somewhere, society enters and says no. The child has no conception of what is wrong and what is right. He has no morality. A child is amoral. He knows only happiness and unhappiness – he is wild. And when you say stop, what will the child do? Waves of happiness were moving all over the body from the head to the toe; from the first centre of sex, to the seventh centre of SAHASRAR – the kundalini was awake.

Every child comes into this world with his kundalini functioning. But you say stop, and what will the child do? He will hold his breath. Whenever something has to be stopped, breathing has to be stopped. He will not breathe, he will pull in his stomach because that is the only way to stop those waves. His diaphragm will become rock like. Again and again he will pull in his stomach and not allow deep breathing. His diaphragm will become an armour. Now, beyond that block, breathing will never pass. If breathing goes deep, it hits the sex centre, and when it hits the sex centre, waves start moving, energy flows. That is why nobody breathes deeply.

When I tell people to breathe chaotically, they come to me and say that it is very dangerous. They feel afraid. What is the fear? The fear is that if you breathe chaotically, you will become wild again. The armour will be broken and the breath will hit the sex centre again. This is how society suppresses you – it creates a gap between the sex centre and the breathing. And if breathing does not reach the sex centre, then all sources of happiness are blocked. Your stomach becomes rock like. It does not allow anything to move down and your body is divided into two. You never identify yourself with the lower body. To you, lower is really something lower. Evaluation has entered. Upper means something higher, something good; lower means something bad. You never feel identified with your lower body, it is something bad – the Devil, the Devil is there.

Adam was turned out, and every Adam and Eve are turned out of the garden. Why? Because they have eaten the fruit of knowledge, and the fruit of knowledge is the most poisonous. If you want to throw out discrimination, deliberate intentional division, you will have to throw out knowledge; you will have to become children again. Only then can the armour be broken. But there is going to be anguish if you want to try and break this armour because this armour is your whole ego. You feel good because of it, because you are moral you feel that you have something superior to others because you are moral.

If you break this armour a chaos will follow. First you have to go mad and then fear comes, and if you are afraid you will again suppress, you will again put on the armour – you will even make it stronger. And now you have become afraid to come out of it. It protects you.

I have heard that in a small school, a primary school, the teacher was lecturing to her pupils about the law of gravitation. She said in conclusion that because of the law of gravitation we are able to be on the earth. One small child was very puzzled. He stood up and said that he didn’t understand – how did we manage to stick to the earth before the law was passed?

You think you are here because of the society; you think you are here because of morality – and all the nonsense that goes with it; you think you are here because of your Bible, Koran, Gita. No! Nature exists without any laws. It has its own intrinsic laws but they are not laws passed by men. They don’t need your sanction, they are there, and life goes on following them. If you don’t interfere you will reach the goal immediately; if you interfere then you will be in trouble. So if you are in trouble, anguish and suffering, then know well that you have been interfering with nature. Nothing is possible unless you stop interfering.

This is the whole message of Chuang Tzu – don’t interfere with nature, allow it, move with it, trust it. You come out of it; it is your mother; it is the source; and one day you will go back to it – it is the ultimate goal. And in the meantime, why create interference, why fight?

You will have to go back to your childhood, you have to regress. You will have to relive those moments when society entered and forced you to interfere. So remember one basic thing: whenever something wrong happens on the path of life, you cannot just dissolve it by intellectual understanding – it is not so easy. It has become your life pattern. It is in your body and in your bones. You will have to go back. If you really want to become natural you will have to relive the past – move backwards.

All meditative methods help you to go back. Lie down in your bed at night and make it a one hour effort every day. In the beginning it will be an effort, but soon effortlessness will happen and you will enjoy it. The more you go back, the more you will feel free and great.

Nature is vast, and all man created laws are narrow. They are like funnels – the more you move into them the narrower they become, and a moment comes of cul-de-sac, you cannot move anywhere, and the tunnel becomes your grave. That is how everyone is stuck.

If you really want to get unstuck, at night, before falling asleep, close your eyes and just go back and try to relive the past. Move slowly, there is no hurry, you cannot do it in one day – it will take almost three months. Move slowly. Relive – do not just remember. Remembering will not help because remembering is intellectual, you remain aloof, it doesn’t touch you. Relive.

What do I mean when I say relive? Just go back as if it is happening again. In the beginning it will be ’as if’, but soon it becomes real. Incomplete, your suppressed being is there, struggling to become free. Just go back, and soon, within three weeks, you will reach the point where you will know this barrier. Beyond this barrier you will know you were free, natural, and this barrier created the whole trouble. Since this you have never been natural. Somewhere you will find your mother, your father, standing at the barrier – that is why you have forgotten so completely.

If you remember, you will not be able to remember beyond the age of four because the barrier is so big. It has completely blocked things out. Otherwise, why can’t you remember beyond the age of four? Why have you forgotten it so deeply? Your mind was there. You enjoyed, you suffered, you passed through many experiences – so why have you forgotten them all? You have not forgotten. Because of this barrier you have repressed everything deep down in the unconscious. That is why people go on saying that their childhood was very beautiful. You go on thinking that childhood was paradise. It was – but it appears so to you because you can’t remember.

Go slowly. By and by more things will come up. The whole dust of the past has to be stirred up. You will perspire; you will be scared; your whole mind will say: What are you doing? Come back, go to the future! The mind always says go to the future because then the mind can stay intact.

If you really want to become a meditator, first go to the past. If you have taken a wrong route somewhere at some cross-road, the only way is to go back to the cross-roads and move again on the right path. There is no other way. Wherever you are now, from here you cannot suddenly take the right path – you have to go back.

And when I say relive, I mean allow it to happen in the body. Remember the first day you touched your sex centre and your father or mother told you take away your hand. Remember their eyes, their face – everything that condemned you. Just see your father standing there again, the same face, the same eyes, the gesture, the condemnation, the whole thing. And not only this, but feel how you felt on that day – the shrinking, the narrowing of your consciousness, the wound they created, the condemnation.

A child is so helpless he has to follow your orders; whatever you say, he has to follow you. Even if it is against his nature he has to obey you. He is so helpless he cannot live without you. He depends on you.

See the whole helplessness. Feel it in your body. You may start crying, weeping. You may start kicking. Maybe you would like to hit your father – you didn’t do it then and that is the incompletion. You will not be able to forgive your father unless you hit him in this reliving moment. That is why no child can forgive and forget his parents. They are always there because something happened with them. Go back, relive those moments, and by and by you will be able to go deeper and deeper. Then suddenly the tunnel is no more – you have passed the barrier. You are under a wide infinite sky. You are a child again. Only then Chuang Tzu will be understood by you, not before.

And Wilhelm Reich and his therapy can be helpful; you can use Wilhelm Reich beautifully on the path of Chuang Tzu.

Now the sutra:
THE TOWER OF THE SPIRIT.

THE SPIRIT HAS AN IMPREGNABLE TOWER WHICH NO DANGER CAN DISTURB AS LONG AS THE TOWER IS GUARDED BY THE INVISIBLE PROTECTOR WHO ACTS UNCONSCIOUSLY, AND WHOSE ACTIONS GO ASTRAY WHEN THEY BECOME DELIBERATE, REFLEXIVE, AND INTENTIONAL.

Your spirit is protected by nature itself, you need not be afraid for it. You need not be afraid and insecure because your being is protected by the whole of existence; the whole cosmos helps you. But the help is unconscious. It is not deliberate, and you cannot manipulate it – you have to be in a let go so that the cosmic force can work through you. If you become deliberate, you become tense. If you become tense, you become narrow. If you become narrow, the infinite cannot work through you. And whenever you become afraid, you shrink – physical shrinking happens.

Chuang Tzu says that inside you is the eternal, the immortal. No death can destroy it. There is no need to fear for it. You are afraid because you are not there in the tower – the invisible tower of the spirit. You have moved into the laws and regulations of the society and those laws and regulations cannot protect you, they only give you a feeling of protection. But nothing protects. The laws cannot make you secure, they only give a feeling of security which is false. Death ultimately comes and shatters all your securities. You will stay trembling, fear-filled, unless you come back to the source – the inner tower of the spirit.

What is that tower? How does it function? It functions unconsciously.

A child is born. How does the child know that the nine months are over and he has to come out of the womb? How does the child know? He has no calendar, no watch, nothing of the sort. But when the nine months are over the child is ready to be born. He actually struggles to be born. That is why pain is felt by the mother. There is a real struggle. Conflict has started, and the mother shrinks – afraid of the pain that is going to happen to her body. So she resists. That resistance and the child trying to come out of the womb creates the pain. If the mother allows, if she is not resistant, there will be no pain. In primitive societies there is never pain. The more civilised a woman, the more pain she feels. This is because she now lives according to laws and rules; now everything has become false and unnatural.

How does the child know when the time is ripe? How does a seed know when it is time to sprout? The seed may wait for the whole year until the night time comes. The seed never goes to ask an astrologer or palmist; at the right moment the seed simply breaks down and loses itself in the earth. It just drops its protection and sprouts. How do the trees flower at the right season? How do the stars move? Look at this cosmos – so mysterious, so complicated, so complex, but moving so easily, so simply, so effortlessly. It is protected by Tao, by nature, by the spirit of nature itself. Man is foolish because he thinks himself very wise.

Then the child grows. And have you ever observed that every child is beautiful? It is very difficult to find an ugly child. Every child is beautiful. From where does the grace come? Later on it is difficult to find one beautiful person in one hundred. In the beginning all the hundred were beautiful – so what happened to the other ninety-nine? How did they become so ugly? Why is every child beautiful? He is beautiful because of the movement; the flow is natural. Nature is beautiful. Artificial, unnatural, then you become ugly; deliberate, then ugliness enters.

A child lives unconsciously. When he feels hungry, he cries; when he feels sleepy, he sleeps. But we force rules and regulations on him. Now there are instruction books on how to raise a child, how to be a mother, how to be a father. And every instruction is given. One wonders how children were born before these instruction books. When the law was not passed, how did we manage to get born at all?

The guide books give particular, specific rules. After every four hours milk is to be given to the child. The child is crying but the mother is to watch the clock, not the child, and the four hours have not passed. Now you are destroying the unconscious nature. Soon the child will follow your example – he will also look at the clock and when the four hours are up he will start crying – whether he feels hungry or not! Early in the morning he has to go to the toilet. Toilet training is such a nuisance. How is the child supposed to have a bowel movement when he doesn’t feel one? And his mother is standing there with a very condemnatory look on her face telling him to do it – on order. And the child is crying and weeping, and he doesn’t know how to satisfy this mother – and she is simply mad! But sooner or later he will force himself.

Psychologists have unearthed the fact that fifty per cent of neurosis in humanity is because of toilet training. Fifty per cent! The child starts forcing because he has to obey, and he feels guilty if he cannot do it right on time. And whenever he does it naturally, then too he feels guilty because guests were there – and he did it in the drawing room. And how is the child to know that the drawing room is not the right place? He lives unconsciously. He does not know which is the toilet and which is the drawing room. He does not know when guests are there and when they are not, and when he is allowed and when he is not. He does not live according to the rules but he will obey because he has to follow. He is so helpless, and you are so strong.

Look what happens when a child forces himself to go to the toilet. By and by the whole body becomes an artificial mechanism to be manipulated. Then nothing is natural. Then, somehow, he forces himself – just to satisfy his parents. When he is not feeling hungry he starts weeping and crying. You can see it happening. Go to any house. Small children are sitting at tables, tears pouring from their eyes, and eating. They don’t feel the hunger right now – and they are right and the mother is wrong. This is how the child will move on a wrong path. Then, when it is the ’right’ time, he will ask for food – and he is not hungry! When he is hungry he will control because he is not allowed to ask.

This is the way he will lose contact with nature – and to be out of contact with nature is to be neurotic.

A child is feeling alive, active; he wants to run and dance. The mother tries to force him to go to sleep. Have you ever thought that this is asking the impossible? Can you deliberately go to sleep – even you? Can even the mother deliberately go to sleep? When there is no sleep, what can be done? The child will pretend, he will close his eyes and pretend, only to open them as soon as the mother has gone. This is training him for pretensions and making him a hypocrite all for absolutely useless things. Sleep cannot be forced – there is no way to do it. Otherwise why is there so much insomnia? Why are so many tranquillisers needed? Why do people spend the whole night tossing and turning in bed? And a child is expected to go to sleep on order, and get up on order, in order to be a good child – a goody-goody – otherwise he is a bad guy. All those who are natural are bad guys, and all those who are artificial are goody-goody. Now the whole life of this being will suffer. He will go to this priest and that, this swami and that, from this master to that, and they will go on giving him things to do – this and that – but nothing will be of much help because his whole life style is wrong, nothing can be added because the whole structure is wrong. The whole structure has to be dropped and a fresh start made.

But this seems too much. You have lived for forty, fifty years, and you have much invested in your life-style. And you come to me and I tell you to drop it completely. This is what I mean by SANNYAS – it is just a decision to drop the whole life style; to change so completely that the past is dropped. And because you no longer identify with it, you drop all the investments you had there and all the profits that you were getting through them. There are profits, otherwise why should you carry such a burden? It pays. Society respects you – you are a respectable person. Society honours you when you follow society.

So when I say take a jump into SANNYAS, I mean change your whole life-style. Nothing less will do. I cannot change fragments because you are such a disease. Even if I try to change the fragment, there is no point, because this fragment cannot change the whole the disease is so big. It is more likely that the disease will re-change the fragment. Unless you are ready to drop totally, nothing can be done. You can meditate, you can do T.M., you can close your eyes and do a mantra for ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the evening – you can go on befooling yourself in many ways, hoping that something will happen without spoiling your life-style.

That is how Mahesh Yogi is so influential in the West. He never touches your life style. He never says change yourself. He says you are okay whatsoever you are. Just a little injection of T.M. and everything will be okay. It is just like taking a pill; your life-style is not touched, not at all. Whoever you are, wrong or right, just add this much more mantra, to be done for ten minutes in the morning and evening – then everything is okay because the doors of paradise are open and just waiting for you. And man is so foolish that he goes on believing in such tricks – these are just tricks. They can help just like tranquillisers. They may help you to adjust to your wrong life-style – and that is the problem, they may help. They may give you an adjustment to your life-style, but your life style is basically wrong. So it is better not to be adjusted to it than to be adjusted. They may give consolations but those consolations are poisonous – because then you will never change. You will be consoled in your life-style, and you will think that everything is okay because you are doing something – T.M.

You will sleep a little better – I know a mantra can give you better sleep. You may become less prone to disease – that too is possible because you will be more adjusted to a wrong life-style. But this is not going to give you bliss. You may be less unhealthy, but this is not going to give you ecstasy. You may be able to prolong the suffering a little more. You will be less mal-adjusted, but you will never become an ecstatic being, a blissful being. You can become a blissful being only when you are ready to drop the whole life-style. Nothing less than sannyas can help.

THE SPIRIT HAS AN IMPREGNABLE TOWER WHICH NO DANGER CAN DISTURB AS LONG AS THE TOWER IS GUARDED BY THE INVISIBLE PROTECTOR WHO ACTS UNCONSCIOUSLY, AND WHOSE ACTIONS GO ASTRAY WHEN THEY BECOME DELIBERATE, REFLEXIVE, AND INTENTIONAL.

Avoid deliberateness, avoid will, avoid intentions – move like a child, trusting nature. When you feel hungry, eat. When you don’t feel hungry, don’t eat. Nature guides you. When you feel sleepy, go to sleep. If you don’t feel sleepy there is no need – just drop the idea. Move unintentionally and soon this neurotic style of life will be dropped and you will fall back to the source. That source is Tao.

THE UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND ENTIRE SINCERITY OF TAO ARE DISTURBED BY ANY EFFORT AT SELF CONSCIOUS DEMONSTRATION. ALL SUCH DEMONSTRATIONS ARE LIES.

Live, but don’t make your life a demonstration. All such demonstrations are lies. Live, but don’t make your life a demonstration. Live, but don’t become a showman. Don’t allow showmanship – there is no need. What others say is useless, irrelevant; what you are is the only relevant thing. Live according to your nature. Whatsoever others think about you is their problem, you need not worry about it. Don’t make your life a piece of showmanship. Once you start there is no end to it, then you will always be making yourself false, and if people pay respect to a falsity, you will become false. If they think that it is good and respectable you will do a thing even when there is no natural reason.

If you want to become a painter and this is an unconscious desire, become a painter and remain poor. Don’t become a doctor and become rich. You may become rich by being a doctor, but if you didn’t become a doctor because of an unconscious desire, if you have only done it to satisfy your parents, society, friends, then although you may become very, very rich, you will remain unfulfilled – and the ultimate thing is fulfillment.

I have heard about a doctor who became the greatest surgeon in his country. He was made president of the National Society of Surgeons. The day he was made president there was a great celebration in his honour. But he was sad.

A friend asked him: Why are you looking so sad? You should be very, very happy. You have become the greatest surgeon and nobody can compete with you now. The greatest honour that a surgeon can have is to become president of the National Society. Why are you so sad? The surgeon replied: I never wanted to become a surgeon. I have succeeded in something I never wanted. And now there is no escape from it. If I had been a failure then there would have been a chance, but now I am stuck. His friend said: You must be kidding. What are you saying? Your family is happy, your wife is happy, your children are happy, everybody is happy – and everybody has great respect for you. The surgeon said: But I cannot respect myself, and that is the basic thing. I wanted to become a dancer but my father and mother wouldn’t allow it, and I had to obey them. I was a weakling. And I am not happy that I have become the greatest surgeon. I am unhappy because I am the lousiest dancer in the world. I cannot dance, and that is the trouble.

Fulfillment comes through nature – not through society. You carry your destiny within yourself but it is an unconscious thing. Follow it. Nobody else will know that you have reached but you will be aware. You may not get a Nobel prize because it has never been awarded to a fulfilled person. Nobody fulfilled has yet received a Nobel prize, no Buddha, no Jesus, and it won’t happen in the future either, because the Nobel prize is given to somebody who has obeyed society very sincerely, and who has achieved society’s aims – not his own. Look at the Nobel prize-winners and you will not find sadder men than those. Most of them commit suicide, and this is not accidental, it has deep meaning in it. Most of them feel unfulfilled. Prizes cannot fulfill you. Allow the conscious nature, don’t force it consciously.

THE UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND ENTIRE SINCERITY OF TAO ARE DISTURBED BY ANY EFFORT AT SELF-CONSCIOUS DEMONSTRATION. ALL SUCH DEMONSTRATIONS ARE LIES.

Mulla Nasrudin was ill, so he went to the doctor. The doctor said to him: Nasrudin, do you drink alcoholic beverages? Nasrudin said no. And his hands were trembling. Even at that moment he was drunk – you could smell it on his breath. So the doctor said: All right then. Do you chase after women? Nasrudin said no. And he had just come from a prostitute – you could see the lipstick on his face. ’Do you smoke, Nasrudin?’ said the doctor.’No never,’ said Nasrudin – and you could see a packet of cigarettes in his pocket, and his fingers were brown. ’What do you do then?’ said the doctor. ’I tell lies,’ said Mulla Nasrudin.

And this is how all your successful men are: the greater liar you are, the greater will be your success. To succeed in this world you have to be a liar. But then you miss yourself. You succeed in this world but you become a failure in the other. And, finally, the other counts.

ALL SUCH DEMONSTRATIONS ARE LIES. WHEN ONE DISPLAYS HIMSELF IN THIS AMBIGUOUS WAY THE WORLD OUTSIDE STORMS IN AND IMPRISONS HIM.

Once you show the inclination towards demonstration and showmanship, the world comes in and imprisons you immediately. You have become a victim.

HE IS NO LONGER PROTECTED BY THE SINCERITY OF TAO.

EACH NEW ACT IS A NEW FAILURE.

Once you become interested in what others say about you, each new act of yours will be a failure. Here it may succeed but this success is absolutely useless because you are never fulfilled by it. You never flow through it. You never come to the fulfillment of your destiny. Your seed remains a seed. You may accumulate cuttings from newspapers about yourself, but those dead cuttings, certificates, that you put on the wall of your sitting room, are not life. Faces that you carry with you when you go out, smiles that are false, are not life. And by and by, with every new act, you go deeper into lies. How do you think you can be blissful through these lies? You may attain much of the rubbish of this world but you will lose all of the real.

Says Chuang Tzu: Be in Tao, authentically in it, sincerely in it. There is only one sincerity needed of you, and that sincerity is towards Tao – your inner nature, your authentic being. No other sincerity is needed – let the whole world say you are insincere.

That is what Buddha’s father said to him – because Buddha deserted his parents. That is what Buddha’s wife said to him because he deserted her. That is what his whole kingdom said to him because he deserted the whole kingdom. But he was happy, and he remained sincere to his Tao, his nature. And he said: No other way is possible. If you suffer, you suffer because of your expectations – not because of me.

You are here to fulfill yourself. Others are here to fulfill themselves. If they expect something from you this is their problem; they will suffer. But you need not become false because of it.

Be sincere to your inner nature and help others to be sincere to their inner nature. This is what I call a religious man. A religious man is one who is sincere to his inner nature and helps others to be sincere to their inner nature. You are here to fulfill your destiny, and others are here to fulfill theirs. Don’t expect anything from them, otherwise you will turn them into showmen, you will turn them into liars. Don’t expect anything from anybody, and don’t fulfill others’ expectations of you.

This is arduous, but this is what SANNYAS is – this is what it is all about. Don’t help anybody’s expectation of you to grow. Don’t even give them a hint that you will fulfill it. Whatsoever suffering you pass through, be ready to pass through it, but don’t allow others to have expectations about you. Otherwise the world will close you in and there will be imprisonment. Once you nod yes to doing something, then you are closed in. You are in the tunnel already, and now with every step, every new act, you will fall into a new misery, new unfulfillment, new lies, new failures. Drop fulfilling others’ expectations, and drop expecting others to fulfill yours. Remember, if you suffer, you suffer because of you; if others suffer, they suffer because of them. Nobody suffers because of others – remember that deeply. Only then will you be able to be really sincere to your inner self; and that sincerity is religiousness.

Hindus have called this RIT. Jesus calls it the Kingdom of God. Chuang Tzu calls it Tao. Whatsoever the word used, it means to stay close to one’s unconsciousness, and to flow with it without any conditions. It means to flow unconditionally with the unconscious, wherever it leads – and to trust it.

This is what trust is. It is not a belief in a God, not a belief in a heaven or hell, not a belief in concepts, theories or philosophies. Trust means trusting nature from whence you came and to which finally you return. Trusting that nature you will return fulfilled, and each moment of your life will be a new and deeper fulfillment. Otherwise each new act is a new failure.

IF HIS ACTS ARE DONE IN PUBLIC, IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, HE WILL BE PUNISHED BY MEN. IF THEY ARE DONE IN PRIVATE AND IN SECRET, THEY WILL BE PUNISHED BY SPIRITS.

Don’t demonstrate yourself. If you demonstrate in public, in broad daylight, you will be punished by man. This has to be understood. When you become a demonstrator, a showman, when your life becomes a circus, an exhibition, people will appreciate you because you are falling victim to their whims, to their expectations. They will applaud you, but this is not going to last very long. Sooner or later they will start feeling your lies, because how long can you carry a lie? It shows, and when they start feeling your lies they will punish you. Look at Richard Nixon. That happens to everybody who becomes a showman. First they applaud you. Now you have become a victim. Just to get their applause you will lie more and more. You will start filling their expectations and you will become more and more unreal. This is a vicious circle. And the more unreal you become, the more they will be able to see that you are lying. Then they will start punishing you. Whenever others appreciate you – beware, you are moving on a dangerous path. Sooner or later they will punish you. When people talk about your success – beware, now failure is not far off. When they put you on the throne, escape, because sooner or later they will throw you off. But you are so foolish and stupid, that you never see the fact that somebody else was there on the throne before you. They put him there, and now, for you, they have thrown him off. Now they are garlanding and welcoming you, but sooner or later they will find another showman and they will throw you out. This happens to everybody who lives through public opinion. Don’t ask for any success in the outside world and you will not have any failure. Don’t ask people to respect you, then there will be no insult.

Chuang Tzu says be the last, so nobody can push you further back. Don’t move to the front of the queue because then everybody will be your enemy and sooner or later they will punish you. Everything has its opposite with it. If they appreciate you they will punish you; if they respect you they will insult you.

What is the mechanism of it? When somebody respects you, he feels insulted deep down – deep down he has become inferior to you. So how can he forgive? He cannot. Someday the accounts will have to be put right. When he bowed down and touched your feet, that very moment a deep wound happened within him. He was lower than you. Now he will have to prove that he is not. Someday he will prove that he is higher than you. Try to understand the inner mechanism: accounts have to be settled, you cannot go on with an imbalance Whenever you appreciate somebody, at that very moment, if you are alert, you can find inside that you would also like to insult him. Only a time gap is needed. Sooner or later it will come up. A man who is wise never asks for your appreciation. When you come with garlands for him, he says: Stop here and now, because later I will have to pay.

IF HIS ACTS ARE DONE IN PUBLIC, IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, HE WILL BE PUNISHED BY MEN. IF THEY ARE DONE IN PRIVATE AND IN SECRET, WILL BE PUNISHED BY SPIRITS.

It may be that you are not doing your showmanship in public but in private. People have become so false, that even in their bathroom, when they are alone, they are liars. Even there they are not real and authentic. Lies have become so ingrained that you cannot easily put them aside – they follow you. Even in your dreams you lie, even in your dreams. Lies have become so deep-rooted that even there they follow you. If you want to kill your father, you will kill your uncle in your dream. This is how lies follow. Your uncle has not done anything to you but he is the nearest, and he looks just like your father. Even in your dream it is difficult to kill your father. That is why dreams become complex and Freuds and Jungs are needed to interpret them. You bring up the uncle, and Freud will read the father. The uncle is just the symbol – nearest to the father.

If you do in private then by nature itself you will be punished. Showmanship has to be punished. That is what Chuang Tzu means by the spirit: he means by nature itself you will be punished.

If you don’t want to be punished then don’t be a showman. remain natural whatsoever others say. Just because they say such and such, don’t change yourself. Even if they say you are rebellious, criminal, bad, evil, let them think it. Even if they put you on the cross, let them do it, but you remain true to yourself. When Jesus was crucified he could have escaped. Pontius Pilate was ready to forgive him but Jesus had to ask for it. He would not ask because he was authentically true towards his own nature.

When Socrates was punished by Athens there was a condition. They said: If you will promise the court that you will not talk around the town, and you will not discuss things and philosophies, if you will keep silent, then we can forgive you. Socrates laughed and said: That is impossible because I cannot be untrue to my own true nature. That is how I am. I will continue my business of talking. You can kill me, that is for you to decide. He accepted poison but he would not accept silence; he would not accept to keep quiet.

Be true to yourself, and don’t look at what others are saying. This is the only way to reach to the Divine, because it is the only way to be natural.

LET EACH ONE UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF SINCERITY AND GUARD AGAINST DISPLAY.

HE WILL BE AT PEACE WITH MEN AND SPIRITS AND WILL ACT RIGHTLY, UNSEEN, IN HIS OWN SOLITUDE, IN THE TOWER OF HIS SPIRIT.

He will be at peace with men and spirits. If you are not in any way interested in showing who you are, you will be at peace with nature and people. Even if they kill you, you will be at peace. Jesus was at peace when he was crucified. Socrates was as peaceful as ever even when the poison was given. You will be at peace. What does it maKer what they do? It does not touch you, you remain aloof, detached in your tower of the spirit. In your inner nature you are protected. Nothing reaches and penetrates you.

HE WILL BE AT PEACE WITH MEN AND SPIRITS AND WILL ACT RIGHTLY, UNSEEN, IN HIS OWN SOLITUDE, IN THE TOWER OF HIS SPIRIT.

And when Chuang Tzu says he will act rightly, he does not mean right against wrong. No. He does not mean the opposite of wrong, he means the natural. The natural is right. The easy is right. To be yourself is right. To be yourself is all that you can really be. Anything else is to go astray.