l. 103. naco re mero man, matta hoy

DANCE, MY HEART! DANCE TODAY WITH JOY.

THE STRAINS OF LOVE FILL THE DAYS AND THE NIGHTS WITH MUSIC, AND THE WORLD IS LISTENING TO ITS MELODIES.

MAD WITH JOY, LIFE AND DEATH DANCE TO THE RHYTHM OF THIS MUSIC. THE HILLS AND THE SEA AND THE EARTH DANCE. THE WORLD OF MAN DANCES IN LAUGHTER AND TEARS.

WHY PUT ON THE ROBE OF THE MONK, AND LIVE ALOOF FROM THE WORLD IN LONELY PRIDE?

BEHOLD! MY HEART DANCES IN THE DELIGHT OF A HUNDRED ARTS; AND THE CREATOR IS WELL PLEASED.

I. 105. man mast hua tab kyon bole

WHERE IS THE NEED OF WORDS, WHEN LOVE HAS MADE DRUNKEN THE HEART?

I HAVE WRAPPED THE DIAMOND IN MY CLOAK; WHY OPEN IT AGAIN AND AGAIN?

WHEN ITS LOAD WAS LIGHT, THE PAN OF THE BALANCE WENT UP: NOW IT IS FULL, WHERE IS THE NEED FOR WEIGHING?

THE SWAN HAS TAKEN ITS FLIGHT TO THE LAKE BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS; WHY SHOULD IT SEARCH FOR THE POOLS AND DITCHES ANYMORE?

YOUR LORD DWELLS WITHIN YOU: WHY NEED YOUR OUTWARD EYES BE OPENED?

KABIR SAYS: "LISTEN, MY BROTHER! MY LORD, WHO RAVISHES MY EYES, HAS UNITED HIMSELF WITH ME."

ECSTASY IS A LANGUAGE that man has completely forgotten. He has been forced to forget it; he has been compelled to forget it. The society is against it, the civilization is against it. The society has a tremendous investment in misery. It depends on misery, it feeds on misery, it survives on misery. The society is not for human beings. The society is using human beings as a means for itself. The society has become more important than humanity. The culture, the civilization, the church, they all have become more important. They were meant to be for man, but now they are not for man. They have almost reversed the whole process; now man exists for them.

Every child is born ecstatic. Ecstasy is natural. It is not something that happens only to great sages. It is something that everybody brings with him into the world; everybody comes with it. It is life's innermost core. It is part of being alive. Life is ecstasy. Every child brings it into the world, but then the society jumps on the child, starts destroying the possibility of ecstasy, starts making the child miserable, starts conditioning the child.

The society is neurotic, and it cannot allow ecstatic people to be here. They are dangerous for it. Try to understand.the mechanism; then things will be easier.

You cannot control an ecstatic man; it is impossible. You can only control a miserable man. An ecstatic man is bound to be free. Ecstasy is freedom. He cannot be reduced to being a slave. You cannot destroy him so easily; you cannot persuade him to live in a prison. He would like to dance under the stars and he would like to walk with the wind and he would like to talk with the sun and the moon. He will need the vast, the infinite, the huge, the enormous. He cannot be seduced into living in a dark cell. You cannot make a slave out of him. He will live his own life and he will do his thing. This is very difficult for the society. If there are many ecstatic people, the society will feel it is falling apart, its structure will not hold anymore.

Those ecstatic people will be the rebels. Remember, I don't call an ecstatic person "revolutionary"; I call him a "rebel." A revolutionary is one who wants to change the society, but he wants to replace it with another society. A rebel is one who wants to live as an individual and would like there to exist no rigid social structure in the world. A rebel is one who does not want to replace this society with another society -- because all the societies have proved the same The capitalist and the communist and the fascist and the socialist, they are all cousin-brothers; it doesn't make much difference. The society is society. All the churches have proved the same -- the Hindu, the Christian, the Mohammedan.

Once a structure becomes powerful, it does not want anybody to be ecstatic, because ecstasy is against structure. Listen to it and meditate over it: ecstasy is against structure Ecstasy is rebellious. It is not revolutionary.

A revolutionary is a political man; a rebel is a religious man. A revolutionary wants another structure, of his own desire, of his own utopia, but a structure all the same. He wants to be in power. He wants to be the oppressor and not the oppressed; he wants to be the exploiter and not the exploited

he wants to rule and not be ruled. A rebel is one who neither wants to be ruled nor wants to rule. A rebel is one who wants no rule in the world. A rebel is anarchic. A rebel is one who trusts nature, not man-made structures, who trusts that if nature is left alone, everything will be beautiful. It is!

Such a vast universe goes on without any government. Animals, birds, trees, everything goes on without any government. Why does man need government? Something must have gone wrong. Why is man so neurotic that he cannot live without rulers?

Now there is a vicious circle. Man can live without rulers, but he has never been given any opportunity -- the rulers won't give you any opportunity. Once you know you can live without the rulers, who would like them to be there? Who will support them? Right now you are supporting your own enemies. You go on voting for your own enemies. Two enemies stand in a presidential contest; and you choose. Both are the same. It is as if you are given freedom to choose the prison, which prison you want to go in. And you vote happily -- that I would like to go to prison A or B, that I believe in the Republican prison, I believe in the Democratic prison. But both are prisons. And once you support a prison, the prison has its own investment. Then it will not allow you to have a taste of freedom.

So from the very childhood the child is not allowed to taste freedom, because once he knows what freedom is, then he will not concede, he will not compromise -- then he will not be ready to live in any dark cell. He would like to die, but he will not allow anybody to reduce him to being a slave. He will be assertive. Of course he will not be interested in becoming powerful over other people. These are neurotic trends, when you are too interested in becoming powerful over people. That simply shows that deep down you are powerless and you are afraid that if you don't become powerful others are going to overpower you.

Machiavelli says that the best way of defense is to attack. The best way to protect yourself is to attack first. These so-called politicians all over the world -- in the East, in the West -- are all deep down very weak people, suffering from inferiority, afraid that if they don't become powerful politically then somebody is going to exploit them, so why not exploit rather than be exploited? The exploited and the exploiter, both are sailing in the same boat -- and both are helping the boat, protecting the boat.

Once the child knows the taste of freedom, he will never become part of any society, any church, any club, any political party. He will remain an individual, he will remain free and he will create pulsations of freedom around him. His very being will become a door to freedom.

The child is not allowed to taste freedom. If the child asks the mother, "Mom, can I go outside? The sun is beautiful and the air is very crisp and I would like to run around the block," immediately -- obsessively, compulsively -- the mother says, "No!" The child has not asked much. He just wanted to go out into the morning sun, into the brisk air, he wanted to enjoy the sunlight and the air and the company of the trees -- he has not asked for anything! -- but compulsively, out of some deep compulsion, the mother says no. It is very difficult to hear a mother saying yes, very difficult to hear a father saying yes. Even if they say yes, they say so very reluctantly. Even if they say yes, they make the child feel that he is guilty, that he is forcing them, that he is doing something wrong.

Whenever the child feels happy, doing whatsoever, somebody or other is bound to come and stop him -- "Don't do this!" By and by the child understands, "Whatsoever

feel happy in is wrong." And of course he never feels happy doing whatsoever others tell him to do, because it is not a spontaneous urge in him. So he comes to know that to be miserable is right, to be happy is wrong. That becomes the deep association.

If he wants to open the clock and see inside, the whole family jumps on him -- "Stop! You will destroy the clock. This is not good." He was just looking into the clock; it was a scientific curiosity. He wanted to see what makes it tick. It was perfectly okay. And the clock is not so valuable as his curiosity, as his inquiring mind. The clock is worthless -- even if it is destroyed nothing is destroyed -- but once the inquiring mind is destroyed much is destroyed; then he will never inquire for truth.

Or it is a beautiful night and the sky is full of stars and the child wants to sit outside, but it is time to go to sleep. He is not feeling sleepy at all; he is wide awake, very, very much awake. The child is puzzled. In the morning when he feels sleepy, everybody is after him -- "Get up!" When he was enjoying, when it was so beautiful to be in the bed, when he wanted to take another turn and have a little more sleep and dream a little more, then everybody was against him"Get up! It is time to get up." Now he is wide awake and he wants to enjoy the stars. It is very poetic, this moment, very romantic. He feels thrilled. How can he go to sleep in such a thrill? He is so excited, he wants to sing and dance, and they are forcing him to go to sleep -- "It is nine o'clock. It is time to go to sleep."

Now, he was happy being awake but he is forced to go to sleep. When he is playing he is forced to come to the dining table. He is not hungry. When he is hungry, the mother says, "This is not the time." This way we go on destroying all possibility of being ecstatic, all possibility of being happy, joyful, delighted. Whatsoever the child feels spontaneously happy with seems to be wrong, and whatsoever he does not feel at all seems to be right.

In the school a bird suddenly starts singing outside the classroom, and the child is all attention towards the bird, of course -- not towards the mathematics teacher who is standing at the board with his ugly chalk. But the teacher is more powerful, politically more powerful than the bird. Certainly, the bird has no power, but it has beauty. The bird attracts the child without hammering on his head, "Be attentive! Concentrate towards me!" No, simply, spontaneously, naturally, the consciousness of the child starts flowing out of the window. It goes to the bird. His heart is there, but he has to look at the blackboard. There is nothing to look at, but he has to pretend.

Happiness is wrong. Wherever there is happiness the child starts becoming afraid something is going to be wrong.

If the child is playing with his own body, it is wrong. If the child is playing with his own sexual organs, it is wrong. And that is one of the most ecstatic moments in the life of a child. He enjoys his body; it is thrilling. But all thrill has to be cut, all joy has to be destroyed. It is neurotic, but the society is neurotic.

The same was done to the parents by their parents; the same they are doing to their children. This way one generation goes on destroying another. This way we transfer our neurosis from one generation to another. The whole earth has become a madhouse. Nobody seems to know what ecstasy is. It is lost. Barriers upon barriers have been created.

It is a daily observation here that when people start meditating and they start feeling the upsurge of energy and when they start feeling happy, they immediately come to me and say, "A very strange thing is happening. I am feeling happy, and I am also feeling guilty, for no reason at all." Guilty? They are also puzzled. Why should one feel guilty? They know that there is nothing -- they have not done anything wrong. From where does this guilt arise? It is coming from that deep-rooted conditioning: that joy is wrong. To be sad is okay, but to be happy is not allowed.

Once I used to live in a town. The police commissioner was my friend; we were friends from the university student days. He used to come to me, and he would say, "I am so miserable. Help me to come out of it." I would say, "You talk about coming out of it, but I don't see that you really want to come out of it. In the first place, why have you chosen to work in this police department? You must be miserable, and you want others also to be miserable."

One day I asked three of my disciples to go around the town and dance in different parts of the town and be happy. They said, "For what?" I said, "You simply go." Within one hour, of course, they were caught by the police. I called the police commissioner; I said, "Why have you caught these people of mine?" He said, "These people seem to be mad." I asked him, "Have they done anything wrong? Have they harmed anybody?" He said, "No, nothing. Really, they have not done anything wrong." "Then why have you caught them?" He said, "But they were dancing on the streets! And they were laughing." "But if they have not done anything harmful to anybody, why should you interfere? Why should you come in? They have not attacked anybody, they have not entered anybody's territory. They were just dancing. Innocent people, laughing." He said, "You are right, but it is dangerous." "Why is it dangerous? To be happy is dangerous? To be ecstatic is dangerous?" He got the point; he immediately released them. He came running to me; he said, "You may be right. I cannot allow myself to be happy -- and I cannot allow anybody else to be happy."

These are your politicians, these are your police commissioners, these are your magistrates. the juries, your leaders, your so-called saints, your priests, your popes -- these are the people. They all have a great investment in your misery. They depend on your misery. If you are miserable they are happy.

Only a miserable person will go to the temple to pray. A happy person will go to a temple? For what? A happy person is so happy that he feels God everywhere! That's what happiness is all about. He's so ecstatically in love with existence that wherever he looks he finds God. Everywhere is his temple. And wherever he bows down, suddenly he finds God's feet, nothing else. His awe, his reverence, need not be so narrow that he has to go to a Hindu temple or a Christian church. That is silly; that is meaningless. Only miserable people who cannot see God, who cannot see God in a blooming flower, who cannot see God in a singing bird, who cannot see God in a psychedelic rainbow, who cannot see God in the floating clouds, who cannot see God in the rivers and in the ocean, who cannot see God in the beautiful eyes of a child, they go to the church, they go to the mosque, they go to the temple, they go to the priest, and they ask, "Where is God? Please show us."

Only miserable people become available to religions. Yes, Bertrand Russell was almost right when he said that if someday the world becomes happy, religion will disappear. I say ALMOST right, ninety-nine percent right. I cannot say a hundred percent right because I know of another type of religion which Bertrand Russell is not aware of. Yes, these religions will disappear -- he is right about these religions: the Hindu, the Christian, the Mohammedan, the Jain, the Buddhist, these will disappear -- certainly they will disappear. If the world becomes happy, they are bound to disappear, because who will bother? But he is only ninety-nine percent right; he is one percent wrong. And that one percent is more important than the ninety-nine percent because another type of religion, REAL religion, ecstatic religion, religion which has no name, religion which has no code, no Bible, no Koran, no Vedas, a religion which has no scripture, no adjective to it, just a religion of dance, a religion of love, a religion of reverence, a religion of benediction, PURE religion, will arise in the world when people are happy.

In fact these religions that exist, they are not religions. They are just sedatives, tranquilizers. Marx is also right of course, only ninety-nine percent -- that religion is the opium of the masses. He is right. These religions help you to tolerate your misery. They help you, they console you, they give you hope that "Yes, today you are miserable; tomorrow you will be happy." And that tomorrow never comes. They say, "In this life you are miserable, but in the next life.... Be good, be moral, follow the rules of the society -- be a slave, be obedient -- and in the next life you will be happy." And nobody knows about the next life. Nobody ever comes and says anything about it. Or if they don't believe in the next life, they say, "When you have gone to the other shore, to heaven, there is your reward." But be obedient to the priest and the politician.

There is a conspiracy between the priest and the politician. They are two sides of the same coin. They help each other. And they all are interested in you remaining miserable -- so the priest can have a congregation and the priest can exploit you; and the politician can force you to go to wars in the name of the nation, in the name of the state, in the name of this and that -- and it is all nonsense, but he can send you to war. Only miserable people can be enlisted for war; only deeply miserable people can be ready to fight, can be ready to kill and to be killed. They are so miserable that even death seems to be better than their life.

I have heard Adolf Hitler was talking to a British diplomat. They were standing on the thirtieth floor of a skyscraper, and to impress him, he ordered one German soldier to jump off. And the soldier simply jumped without even hesitating, and of course died. The British diplomat could not believe it; it was unbelievable. He was very much shocked. This wastage? For no reason at all. And to impress him more, Hitler ordered another soldier, "Jump!" and the other jumped. And to impress him even more, he ordered a third soldier.

By this time, the diplomat had come to his senses. He rushed and stopped the soldier and said, "What are you doing, destroying your life for no reason at all?" He said, "Who wants to live, sir, in this country and under this madman? Who wants to live with this Adolf Hitler? It is better to die! It is freedom."

When people are miserable, death seems to be freedom. And when people are miserable, they are so full of rage, anger, that they want to kill -- even if the risk is that they may be killed. The politician exists because you are miserable. So Vietnam can continue, Bangladesh, the Arab countries. War continues. Somewhere or other, war continues.

This state of affairs has to be understood -- why it exists and how you can drop out of it. Unless you drop out of it, unless you understand the whole mechanism, the conditioning -- the hypnosis in which you are living -- unless you take hold of it, watch it, and drop it, you will never become ecstatic, and you will never be able to sing the song that you have come to sing. Then you will die without singing your song. Then you will die without dancing your dance. Then you will die without having ever lived.

Your life is just a hope; it is not a reality. It can be a reality.

This neurosis that you call society, civilization, culture, education, this neurosis has a subtle structure. The structure is this: it gives you symbolic ideas so that reality by and by is clouded, becomes clouded, you can't see the real, and you start becoming attached to the unreal. For example, the society tells you to be ambitious; it helps you to become ambitious. Ambition means living in hope, living in the tomorrow. Ambition means today has to be sacrificed for tomorrow.

Today is all that is there; now is the only time you are, you ever will be. If you want to live, it is now or never.

Society makes you ambitious. From the very childhood when you go to school and ambition is put into you, you are poisoned: grow rich, become powerful, become somebody. Nobody tells you that you already have the capacity to be happy. Everybody says that you can have the capacity to be happy only if you fulfill certain conditions -- that you have enough money, a big house, a big car, and this and that -- only then can you be happy.

Happiness has nothing to do with these things. Happiness is not an achievement. It is your nature. Animals are happy without any money. They are not Rockefellers. And no Rockefeller is as happy as a deer or a dog. Animals have no political power -- they are not prime ministers and presidents -- but they are happy. The trees are happy; otherwise they would have stopped blooming. They still bloom; the spring still comes. They still dance, they still sing, they still pour their being into the feet of the divine. Their prayer is continuous, their worship is always happening. And they don't go to any church; there is no need. God comes to them. In the wind, in the rain, in the sun, God comes to them.

Only man is not happy, because man lives in ambition and not in reality. Ambition is a trick. It is a trick to distract your mind. Symbolic life has been substituted for real life.

Watch it in life. The mother cannot love the child as much as the child wants the mother to love him, because the mother is hung up in her head. Her life has not been one of fulfillment. Her love life has been a disaster. She has not been able to flower. She has lived in ambition. She has tried to control her man, possess him. She has been jealous. She has not been a loving woman. If she has not been a loving woman, how can she suddenly be loving to the child?

I was just reading a book of R.D. Laing. He sent me his new book just two, three days ago, THE FACTS OF LIFE. In the book he refers to an experiment in which a psychoanalyst asked many mothers, "When your child was going to be born, were you really in a welcome mood, were you ready to accept the child?" He had made a questionnaire. First question: "Was the child accidental, or did you desire the child?" Ninety percent of the women said, "It was accidental; we did not desire it." Then, "When the pregnancy happened, were you hesitant? Did you want the child, or did you want an abortion? Were you clear about it?" Many of them said that they hesistated for months whether to have an abortion or have the child. Then the child was born -- they could not decide. Maybe other considerations -- maybe the religious consideration: it may create sin for them, it may create hell for them. They may have been Catholics or Hindus or Jainas, and the idea of violence, that abortion is violence, prevented them from getting an abortion. Or social considerations. Or the husband wanted it. Or they would like to have a child as a continuity of their ego. But the child was not liked. Rarely was there a mother who said, "Yes, the child was welcome. I was waiting for him and I was happy." And even of those who said this, the psychiatrist writes, "We were not certain whether they were being honest. They may have been just saying so."

Now a child is born who is unwelcome. From the very beginning the mother has been hesitating whether to have it or not to have it. There must be repercussions. The child must feel these tensions. When the mother would think to abort the child, the child must have felt hurt. The child is part of the mother's body; every vibe will reach the child. Or when the mother thinks and hesitates and is just in a limbo of what to do or what not to do, the child will also feel a trembling, shaking -- he is hanging between death and life. And then somehow the child is born and the mother thinks it is just accidental -- they had tried birth control, they had tried this and that, and everything failed and the child is there -- so one has to tolerate. That tolerance is not love.

The child misses love from the very beginning. And the mother also feels guilty because she is not giving as much love as there would have been naturally. So she starts substituting. She forces the child to eat too much. She cannot fill the child's soul with love; she tries to stuff his body with food. It is a substitute. You can go and see. Mothers are so obsessive. The child says, "I am not hungry," and the mothers go on forcing. They have nothing to do with the child, they don't listen to the child. They are substituting: they cannot give love, so they give food. Then the child grows: they cannot love; they give money. Money becomes a substitute for love.

And the child also learns that money is more important than love. If you don't have love, nothing to be worried about, but you must have money. In life he will become greedy. He will go after money like a maniac. He will not bother about love. He will say, "First things first. I should first have a big balance in the bank. I must have this much money; only then can I afford love."

Now, love needs no money; you can love as you are. And if you think love needs money and you go after money, one day you may have money, and then suddenly you will feel empty because all the years were wasted in accumulating money. And they are not only wasted! All those years were years of no love, so you have practiced no love. Now the money is there, but you don't know how to love. You have forgotten the very language of feeling, the language Or love, the language of ecstasy.

Yes, you can purchase a beautiful woman, but that is not love. You can purchase the most beautiful woman of the world, but that is not love. And she will be coming to you not because she loves you; she will be coming to you because of your bank balance.

Mulla Nasrudin was in love with a woman -- very homely and ordinary, but she had much money and she was the only child of her father, and the father was old and dying. Mulla was deeply in love with the woman, and one day he went to her very excitedly because the father was approaching death very fast -- and he said, "I am dying." Mulla said to the woman, "I am dying; I cannot live without you a single moment." She said, "That's okay, but I have bad news for you. My father has made a will, and he has given all his money to a trust and I am not going to get any money. Mulla, do you love me still?" Mulla said, "I love you, and I will always love you -- though I will never see you again. But I will always love you and I will always remember you!"

All love disappears. This is symbolic; money is a symbol. Power, political power, is a symbol. Respectability is a symbol. These are not realities; these are human projections. These are not objectives; they have no objectivity. They are not there. They are just dreams projected by a miserable mind. If you want to be ecstatic you will have to drop out of the symbolic. To be freed of the symbolic is to be freed of the society. To be freed of the symbolic is to become a sannyasin. To be freed of the symbolic you have taken courage to enter into the real. And only the real is real. The symbolic is not real.

The third thing before we enter into these beautiful sutras of Kabir: What is ecstasy? Something to be achieved? No. Something that you have to earn? No. Something that you have to become? No. Ecstasy is being; and becoming is misery. If you want to become something you will be miserable. Becoming is the very root cause of misery. If you want to be ecstatic -- then it is just now, here-now, this very moment. Look at me. This very moment -- nobody is barring the path -- you can be happy. Happiness is so obvious and so easy. Its your nature. You are already carrying it. Just give it a chance to flower, to bloom.

Ecstasy is not of the head, remember. Ecstasy is of the heart. Ecstasy is not of thought; it is of feeling. And you have been deprived of feeling. You have been cut away from feeling. You don't know what feeling is. Even when you say "I feel," you only think you feel. When you say, "I am feeling happy," watch, analyze, and you will find you THINK you are feeling happy. Even feeling has to pass through thinking. It has to pass through the censor of thinking; only when thinking approves of it is it allowed. If thinking does not approve of it, it is thrown into the unconscious, into the basement of your being, and forgotten.

Become more of the heart, less of the head. Head is just a part; heart is your whole being. Heart is your totality. So whenever you are total in anything, you function from feeling. Whenever you are partial in anything, you function from the head.

Watch a painter painting -- and that is the difference between a real artist and a technician. If the painter is just a technician who knows the technique of how to paint, who knows the know-how, who knows all about colors and the brushes and the canvas and who has gone through the training, he will function through the head. He will be a technician. He will paint, but he will not be totally in it. Then watch a real artist who is not a technician. He will be absorbed in it, drunk. He will not only paint with his hand, and he will not only paint from his head. He will paint with his whole being; his guts will be involved in it -- his feet as much, his blood and bones as much, his marrow. Everything will be involved in it. You can watch it, you can see, you can feel he is totally in it, lost. Nothing else exists. He is drunk. In that moment, he is no more. He is not a doer. The head is a doer. In that moment of total absorption, he is not a doer; he is just a passage, as if God is painting through him.

When you come across a dancer -- a REAL dancer, not one who is a performer -- then you will see that he is not dancing, no Something of the beyond is dancing in him. He is totally in It.

It is said about the great dancer Nijinsky that there were moments when he would take such a leap that it was physically impossible -- gravitation does not allow that big a leap. He was asked again and again, "How do you do it?" and he would say, "I am surprised as much as you are surprised. And I cannot MANAGE to do it. When I try to do it it never happens, I fall very short, but when I am in the dance and I am completely lost -- when I am not! -- it happens, as if gravitation suddenly is no more. I become weightless, I don't feel any weight -- as if something starts pulling me upwards rather than downwards."

This pull upwards is known in yoga as levitation. Yes, it happens in meditation too. Nijinsky was unknowingly moving into deep meditation. The dance was so total that he became a meditator and levitation happened.

Whenever you are totally into something, you are ecstatic. When you are partially into something, you will remain miserable, because a part will be moving separately from the whole. There will be a division -- a split, a tension, anxiety.

If you love from the head, your love is not going to give any ecstatic experience. If you meditate from your head....

Just the other night, one woman from the West was saying to me that she has come here because she has seen many people coming here, becoming sannyasins, whose lives have been transformed and who have become so happy. That's why she has also come here -- to become happy. She is meditating, but nothing is happening. She is trying hard, but nothing is happening. I told her,''Nothing is going to happen. You start from a very wrong place. Your motivation is the barrier: you have come from the head. Those people who have become sannyasins, they had not come with a motive, with greed. You have come with a motive, with greed. Your mind is already poisoned; you have come with an idea, and you are watching for when it is going to happen. It will never happen, because you will never allow yourself to be totally in it. A watcher will stand by the side and will see, has it happened yet or not?"

I used to go to a river to swim, and I loved it. Whenever I would come back, one of my neighbors always used to watch me, and he would see that I was very ecstatic. One day he asked, "What is happening? I always see you going to the river, and for hours you swim in the river and you remain in the river. I am also coming, because you look so happy." I said, "Please don't come. You will miss, and the river will be very sad. No, don't come, because your very motivation will be a barrier. You can swim, but you will be watching for when that happiness is going to happen. It will never happen -- because it happens only when you are not."

Swimming can become a meditation, running can become a meditation -- anything can become a meditation -- if you are not. Ecstasy is of the heart, is of the total.

DANCE, MY HEART! DANCE TODAY WITH JOY.

Says Kabir, "DANCE MY HEART!" -- by "heart" is meant your total organic unity -- "DANCE TODAY WITH JOY." And dance today, not tomorrow. Let the dance be here and now, and let it come from your totality. You abandon yourself; you become a drunkard.

THE STRAINS OF LOVE FILL THE DAYS AND THE NIGHTS WITH MUSIC, AND THE WORLD IS LISTENING TO ITS MELODIES:

MAD WITH JOY, LIFE AND DEATH DANCE TO THE RHYTHM OF THIS MUSIC.

Yes, joy is mad. And only mad people can afford it. The ordinary sane person is so clever, so cunning, calculating, he cannot afford joy, because you cannot control joy. Just as I said a joyful man cannot be controlled by the society, let me say this also to you: that you cannot control your joy, you cannot control your ecstasy. If you want to remain in control, you will never be joyful; then you can only be miserable. Only misery can be controlled -- by the society or even by you!

Many people come to me, and they say they would like to get out of their miseries, but they are not ready to move into a state of uncontrol. They want to control joy too. They always want to remain in control. They always want to remain the master, the boss. That is not possible. The boss has to go. The joy can erupt into your being only when all control has been removed. Joy knows no control. It is wild.

And I say to you God is wild, and joy is the first step towards God. Ecstasy is wild. You cannot control it. You have to lose all control. You have to drop into it, into the very abyss of it -- and it is a bottomless abyss. You go on dropping and dropping and dropping and you never arrive to the bottom because there is no end to joy. It is a nonending process, it is eternal. And it so huge, how can you control it? The very idea is stupid.

"MAD WITH JOY, LIFE AND DEATH DANCE TO THE RHYTHM OF THIS MUSIC." And when you are madly dancing, madly singing, when you are joyful without any control, without your presence, when the joy is so full, overflowing -- you are flooded with it and all control is abandoned -- then you will see a miracle: death and life dancing together. Because then all duality disappears. If you are dual, duality appears. If you are nondual, duality disappears. When you are split, the whole world is split. It is your own split that is projected onto the screen of the universe. When you are in a nonsplit state, integrated, one, organic, orgasmic, then all duality disappears.

Then life and death are not two, not opposites, but complementaries dancing with each other hand in hand. Then bad and good are not two -- they are dancing with each other hand in hand. Then matter and consciousness are not two. This is what is happening inside you: the soul is dancing with the body; the body is dancing with the soul. They are not two. They are one, they are absolutely one, manifestations of one. The body is nothing but visible soul, and the soul is nothing but invisible body.

And God is not somewhere above in the heavens. He is here-now in the trees, in the rocks, in you, in me, in everything. God is the soul of existence, the invisible the innermost core. And the inner is dancing with the outer. And the sublime is dancing with the profane. And the holy is dancing with the unholy. And the sinner is dancing with the saint

Once you have become one, suddenly all duality disappears. That's why I say a really wise man is also a fool, has to be, because foolishness and wisdom dance together. And a really sage person, a saint, is also a rascal, has to be, it cannot be avoided. God and devil are not two. Have you ever thought about the word "devil"? It comes from the same root as "divine"; they belong to the same root. They both come from a Sanskrit root, DIVA; from it comes DEVA, from it comes "divine," from it comes "devil."

Deep down, the tree is one. Branches are many, moving in different dimensions, directions; leaves are millions; but the deeper you go, you come to one, one tree.

Mad with joy, life and death dance to the rhythm of this music.

... THE HILLS AND THE SEA AND THE EARTH DANCE.

When you are in a dance, everything dances with you. Yes, the old saying is true: when you weep, you weep alone; when you laugh, the whole world laughs with you. When you are miserable, you are separate.

Now look at this. Misery separates you; separation makes you miserable. They are together, they are one package. Whenever you are miserable you suddenly become separate. That's why the ego cannot afford to be happy, because if you become happy the ego cannot exist -- you are no longer separate. The egoist cannot afford to be ecstatic. How can he afford to be ecstatic, because in ecstasy the ego will not be there? That is too much. He would like to remain miserable. He will create a thousand and one miseries around him just to help the ego to be there.

Have you watched it? When you are really happy, your ego disappears. When you are really happy, suddenly you feel a deep atonement with the whole. When you are miserable you want to be alone; when you are happy you want to share.

When Buddha was miserable he went to the forest, escaped from the world. What happened after six years? When he became ecstatic he came back, back to the marketplace. When Mahavir was unhappy, miserable, he escaped from the world, he renounced the world. When he became happy he came back to the world.

Now, Jainas don't talk about Mahavir coming back to the world; they only talk about the renunciation. Their scriptures only say that he renounced the world. That is only half the story -- and not the peak, just the beginning of the story. Yes, for twelve years he lived alone in the forest, not uttering a single word. He was so miserable, he separated himself from the whole world. He remained Lonely. Then one day came the spring, and the flowers started blooming, and he was full of ecstasy; he came back to the world. The Jaina scriptures don't talk about it -- and that is the real part of the story, the more significant part that he comes back to the world that he moves amidst people, that then again he starts talking, then again he starts singing, then again he conveys, shares. Whatsoever he has attained has to be shared.

In misery you are like a seed. In ecstasy you become a flower, and your fragrance, of course, has to be released to the winds.

You can watch it in your life also, in a small way of course. When you are unhappy you close your doors, you don't want to see your friends, you don't want to go anywhere, you don't want to participate in anything. You say,' Leave me alone. Please leave me alone." When somebody becomes very, very unhappy, he commits suicide. What is the meaning of it? What is suicide? Suicide is just an effort to go so far away from the world that one cannot come back. It is moving into loneliness ABSOLUTELY, irrevocably, so that you cannot come back. That's what suicide is.

Have you ever heard about any man committing suicide when he was happy, when he was ecstatic, when he was dancing? No, when the dance arises, you burst forth, you throw your doors open, you call your friends, you call your neighbors, and you say,''Come. I am going to give a feast and let us dance and let us have a little fun. I have much to share and I would like to give it to you." And whosoever comes to your door, you greet him, you welcome him. Anybody is welcome in the moment when you are happy. When you are unhappy, even those who have always been welcome are no longer welcome.

"THE HILLS AND THE SEA AND THE EARTH DANCE." With you that happens. If you dance the whole existence becomes a dance. It is already a dance. Hindus say it is a RAS-LEELA, God is dancing, and around God the stars and the moon and the sun and the earths and the whole existence. The whole existence is dancing around God. God is Krishna and the whole existence is his GOPIS, his girlfriends. This is the RAS that is continuously going on, but you will know it only when you learn the ways of dance, the language of ecstasy.

... THE WORLD OF MAN DANCES IN LAUGHTER AND TEARS.

Beautiful is Kabir. His sayings are of tremendous significance.

"THE WORLD OF MAN DANCES IN LAUGHTER AND TEARS." When you dance sometimes you will laugh and sometimes you will weep too, but now your tears will have a totally different quality to them. They will not be of sadness. They will come out of your depth, out of your overflowing heart. They will be of joy and cheer, they will show your rejoicing.

You have known only one sort of tears, and those are that of sadness and sorrow, because you have known only one thing that overfills you sometimes, and that is sadness, depression, sorrow, and that flows through your tears. You have not known the other quality -- the rich tears. These are the poor tears, ill, neurotic. You don't know the healthy tears, the tears of well-being -- when you are full of love and you don't know how to express, when you are full of joy and you don't know how to express and you are so overflooded that tears start flowing.

Tears are just an overflow, and Kabir says, "THE WORLD OF MAN DANCES IN LAUGHTER AND TEARS."

You may have seen it happening sometimes to a madman; a madman sometimes laughs and weeps together. Sometimes it happens to my sannyasins, and they come to me very much scared and they say, What is happening? Laughter is okay, tears are okay, but both together? That simply shows I am going crazy.'' You are not going crazy. You are becoming one, your duality is disappearing. Your tears and laughter are becoming joined together. Hand in hand they are going to dance together. Your schizophrenia is over. Your division has fallen away. Now you are becoming undivided. Now you are becoming a unison, a UNIO MYSTIEA is happening. So everything is joining together; the polar opposites are coming closer and becoming one -- tears and laughter together.

WHY PUT ON THE ROBE OF THE MONK, AND LIVE ALOOF FROM  THE WORLD IN LONELY PRIDE?

Yes, Kabir is right. Up to now this has been so. The monk has lived in a lonely pride. He has separated himself from the world: he has put on the robe of the monk; he has shaved his head; he has declared to the world,''I don't belong to you and you don't belong to me; I am no longer a part. I am going away," and has become very egoistic. That is one of the ways to feel pride, to become proud.

The psychology of pride has to be understood. A man becomes rich. The richer he becomes, the more aloof and distant he becomes. He is not easily approachable; it is impossible. Even to his intimates he is not available. And in America it is happening that even his wife, his children, are not very close now. He is so far away, aloof. His richness has become a pyramid, and he is sitting on the top, very, very far away. A man who achieves political power, like Adolf Hitler, becomes very aloof. He had not a single friend. It was said about Hitler,' Either you are a follower or you are an enemy but he has no friend." There was not a single person who could have put his hand on his shoulder and talked with him intimately. Impossible. He would never allow anybody that intimacy, that closeness.

With richness, with power, with knowledge, with asceticism, the same thing happens again and again. And the monk is also another way of living in a lonely pride. Kabir is right.

That's why I have changed the total concept of sannyas. I tell my people to live in the world, to be in the world, to be in the crowd, to live the ordinary life -- in a very extraordinary consciousness. Join them together: the world of the householder and the world of the monk -- bring them close. Let the marketplace become your monastery; let your monastery become a marketplace. No more dualism -- no more of the pride of the monk.

My sannyasins feel very much puzzled -- particularly the Indian sannyasins, because they have lived in a lonely pride for thousands of years. They come and they say to me, "This doesn't look good. I am still a householder; I live with my wife and with my children. How to wear orange? It is very difficult."

Women have come to me crying and weeping, and they say, "What have you done? You have given sannyas to my husband; now what will.happen to me and my children?" I say, "Don't be worried. Nothing is going to happen. Your husband will be with you." They say, "We cannot accept that." One woman came to me and she said, "What have you done? You have made my husband a sannyasin; now I cannot make love to him." How to make love to a sannyasin? This is simply absurd; never has been heard of before. No, that is not possible.

The world of the monk and the world of the householder have existed up to now, hitherto, as enemies, separate. I have tried to bring them together. If Kabir comes back, he will not write this line again. He will not say, "Why put on the robe of the monk?" He will say, "If you belong to this guy Rajneesh, okay."

"... AND LIVE ALOOF FROM THE WORLD IN LONELY PRIDE?" No, my sannyasins are not living in lonely pride, Kabir. I can assure you!

BEHOLD! MY HEART DANCES IN THE DELIGHT OF A HUNDRED ARTS; AND THE CREATOR IS WELL PLEASED.

This is a beautiful sutra. Try to understand it. God is the creator: all the religions of the world have been talking about it, but nobody seems to have understood rightly what it means, what is its implication.

God is the creator. If it is true, then only through creation can you arrive close to him; there is no other way. If God is the creator, then become creative, and creativeness will be your prayer. Paint, sing, dance, compose poetry, make a statue -- anything -- but become creative. Plant a garden. Anything -- small, big, whatsoever. The proportion is not the question -- anything, but be creative.

If you are cooking in the kitchen, then cook creatively; then make it more and more artful. Then don't just go on doing it in a routine way. Let it be your poetry, your sculpture, let it be your song. Whatsoever you are doing, be creative, bring the new in. Go on exploring the unknown. Innovate, invent, discover, create something -- because if God is the creator then whenever you become creative, you come close to him. Whenever you are creative, God is the creator in you.

But up to now the religious people have lived very uncreatively; they don't create. They simply remove themselves from the world. They don't compose poems, they don't paint pictures, they don't carve statues. They simply become aloof; they become uncreative. To become uncreative is to go against God.

BEHOLD! MY HEART DANCES IN THE DELIGHT OF A HUNDRED ARTS; AND THE CREATOR IS WELL PLEASED."

WHERE IS THE NEED OF WORDS, WHEN LOVE HAS MADE DRUNKEN THE HEART?

Kabir says, "Now there is nothing to say. I can only dance. I can sing, and my song will also be wild and mad, because I don't know logic anymore, I don't believe in words anymore. The language, the ordinary language, is not enough to hold what I am to express."

"WHERE IS THE NEED OF WORDS" -- now words are not needed; even silence will do -- will do better -- "WHEN LOVE HAS MADE DRUNKEN THE HEART?"

I HAVE WRAPPED THE DIAMOND IN MY CLOAK; WHY OPEN IT AGAIN AND AGAIN?

Now God has become a part of my heart, and I cannot go on exhibiting him again and again. Those who want to see him, let them come close, let them inquire, but I am not going to convince anybody and I am not going to talk about my God to anybody. If somebody wants, he should come to me, he should inquire -- he should surrender, he should open his heart.

WHEN ITS LOAD WAS LIGHT, THE PAN OF THE BALANCE WENT UP: NOW IT IS FULL, WHERE IS THE NEED FOR WEIGHING?

And I don't argue anymore and I don't judge anymore and I don't philosophize anymore. I don't theorize anymore there is no question of weighing. God has already happened; truth is known. There is no longer any groping.

THE SWAN HAS TAKEN ITS FLIGHT TO THE LAKE BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS; WHY SHOULD IT SEARCH FOR THE POOLS AND DITCHES ANYMORE?

Listen to this. It is not that you have to drop the world. It is that you have to know what God is. Then all that is ugly drops on its own accord. I am not teaching you to drop anything, to renounce anything. I am saying realize something that is already within you, that is your innermost core. Once realized, many things will disappear.

"THE SWAN HAS TAKEN ITS FLIGHT TO THE LAKE BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS, WHY SHOULD IT SEARCH FOR THE POOLS AND DITCHES ANYMORE?" You go on looking for ecstasy in sex, you go on looking in money, in power, only because you don't know real ecstasy. If you have known once, you will stop. All these dirty places are of no meaning to you. Not that you renounce them! Simply they become irrelevant.

YOUR LORD DWELLS WITHIN YOU. WHY NEED YOUR OUTWARD EYES BE OPENED?

KABIR SAYS: "LISTEN, MY BROTHER! MY LORD, WHO RAVISHES MY EYES, HAS UNITED HIMSELF WITH ME."

That meeting place is within you. There happens the ultimate union, the ultimate marriage, where you and the whole meet and dissolve into each other, and disappear into each other. That disappearance of the two into one is what ecstasy is.

I have heard about a soldier in the Second World War who would drop his rifle on the battlefield and run to pick up any little scrap of paper, would examine it eagerly, then sorrowfully shake his head as the paper fluttered to the ground. Hospitalized, he remained mute, his compulsion obscure and intractable. He wandered forlornly about the psychiatric ward, picking up scraps of paper, each time with discernable hope followed by inevitable dejection. Pronounced unfit for service  he received one day his discharge from the army, whereupon, receiving the discharge form, he found his voice. "This is it!" he cried in ecstasy. "This it!"

Ecstasy is the ultimate freedom, and then one simply shouts in joy, "This is it! This is it! Eureka! I have found it."