WITH DEEPENING MEDITATION, ONE BECOMES MORE AND MORE SENSITIVE TO OBJECTS, EVENTS AND PERSONS. BUT DUE TO THIS HEIGHTENED SENSITIVITY ONE FEELS A SORT OF DEEP INTIMACY WITH EVERYTHING, AND THIS USUALLY BECOMES A CAUSE OF SUBTLE ATTACHMENTS. HOW TO BE SENSITIVE AND YET DETACHED?

How to be sensitive and yet detached? These two things are not contraries, they are not opposites. If you are more sensitive, you will be detached; or, if you are detached, you will become more and more sensitive. Sensitivity is not attachment, sensitivity is awareness. Only an aware person can be sensitive. If you are not aware you will be insensitive. When you are unconscious you are totally insensitive -- the more consciousness, the more sensitivity. A Buddha is totally sensitive, he has optimum sensitivity, because he will feel and he will be aware to his total capacity. But when you are sensitive and aware you will not be attached. You will be detached, because the very phenomenon of awareness breaks the bridge, destroys the bridge, between you and things, between you and persons, between you and the world. Unconsciousness, unawareness, is the cause of attachment.

If you are alert, the bridge suddenly disappears. When you are alert there is nothing to relate you to the world. The world is there, you are there, but between the two the bridge has disappeared. The bridge is made of your unconsciousness. So don't think and feel that you become attached because you are more sensitive. No. If you are more sensitive you will not be attached. Attachment is a very gross quality, it is not subtle.

For attachment you need not be aware and alert. There is no need. Even animals can be attached very easily, rather, more easily. A dog is more attached to his master than any man can be. The dog is completely unconscious so attachment happens. That is why in the countries where human relationship has become poor, such as in the West, man goes on seeking relationship with animals, with dogs, with other animals, because the human relationship is no longer there. Human society is disappearing and every man feels isolated, alienated, alone. The crowd is there but you are not related to it. You are alone in the crowd and this aloneness scares. One becomes afraid and fearful.

When you are related, attached to someone, and someone is attached to you, you feel you are not alone in this world, in this strange world. Someone is with you. That feeling of belonging gives you a sort of security. When human relationship becomes impossible then men and women try to make relationships with animals. In the West they are very deeply related to dogs and other animals, but here in the East, although you may be worshipping cows you are not related to them. You may go on saying that you worship the cow as a divine animal, but your cruelty has no end.

In the East you are so cruel with your animals that the West cannot even conceive of how you can go on thinking that you are non-violent. All over the world, particularly in the West, there are many societies to protect animals from the cruelty of men. You cannot beat a dog in the West. If you beat it, it will be a criminal act and you will be punished for it. What is happening really, is that human relationship is dissolving -- but man cannot live alone. He must have a relationship, a belonging, a feeling that someone is with him. Animals can be very good friends because they get so attached; no one, no man, can get that attached.

For attachment, awareness is not necessary; rather, awareness is the barrier. The more aware you become the less you will be attached, because the need for attachment disappears. Why do you want to be attached to someone? Because alone you feel you are not enough. You lack something. Something is incomplete in you. You are not a whole. You need someone to complete you. Hence, attachment. If you are aware, you are complete, you are a whole; the circle is now complete, nothing is lacking in you -- you don't need anyone. You, alone, feel a total independence, a feeling of wholeness.

That doesn't mean that you will not love persons; rather, on the contrary, only you can love. A person who is dependent on you cannot love you: he will hate you. A person who needs you cannot love you. He will hate you because you become the bondage. He feels that without you he cannot live, without you he cannot be happy, so you are the cause of both his happiness and unhappiness. He cannot afford to lose you. This will give a feeling of imprisonment: he is imprisoned by you and he will resent it, he will fight against it. Persons hate and love together, but this love cannot be very deep. Only a person who is aware can love, because he doesn't need you. But then love has a totally different dimension: it is not attachment, it is not dependence. He is not dependent on you and he will not make you dependent on him; he will remain a freedom and he will allow you to remain a freedom. You will be two free agents, two total, whole beings, meeting. That meeting will be a festivity, a celebration -- not a dependence. That meeting will be a fun, a play.

That is why we have called Krishna's life KRISHNA-LEELA, the play of Krishna. He loves so many persons but there is no attachment. The same is not true on the part of the GOPIS and the GOPALS, the friends and the girl friends of Krishna. The same is not true. They have become attached, so when Krishna moves from Brindavan to Dwaraka, they weep and cry and suffer. Their anguish is great because they think that Krishna has forgotten them. He has not forgotten, but there is no pain because there was no dependence; he is as whole and happy in Dwaraka as he was in Brindavan and his love is flowing as much in Dwaraka as it was in Brindavan. The objects of love have changed but the source of love remains the same. So whosoever comes near him receives the gift. And this gift is unconditional: nothing is required as a return, nothing is asked as a return.

When love comes through an aware consciousness it is just a pure gift with no condition, and the person who is giving it is happy because he is giving it. The very act of giving is his bliss, his ecstasy.

So remember that if you feel that through meditation you have become more sensitive, then automatically you will become less attached, more detached. Because you will be more grounded in yourself, you will be more centered in yourself, you will not use somebody else as your center. What does attachment mean? Attachment means that you are using someone else as your center of being, Majanu is attached to Laila: he says he cannot live without Laila. That means the center of being has been transferred. If you say that you cannot live without this or that, then your soul is not within you. Then you are not existing as an independent unit, your center has moved somewhere else.

This movement of the center from yourself to something else, to the other, is attachment. If you are sensitive, you will feel the other, but the other will not become the center of your life. You will remain the center and out of this centering the other will receive many gifts from you. But they will be gifts, they will not be bargains. You will simply give because you have too much, you are an overflowing. And you will be thankful that the other has received it. That will be enough and that will be the end.

That is why I go on saying that the mind is a great deceiver. You think that you are meditating and that that is why you have become sensitive. Then the question of why you get attached arises. If you get attached, that is a clear symptom that the sensitivity is not because of awareness. Really, it is not sensitivity at all. It may be sentimentalism: that is a totally different thing. You can be sentimental: you can cry and weep over small things, you can be touched, and a storm can be created very easily within you -- but that is sentimentalism, not sensitivity.

Let me tell you a story. Buddha was staying in a village. A woman came to him, weeping and crying and screaming. Her child, her only child, had suddenly died. Because Buddha was in the village, people said, "Don't weep. Go to this man. People say he is infinite compassion. If he wills it, the child can revive. So don't weep. Go to this Buddha." The woman came with the dead child, crying, weeping, and the whole village followed her -- the whole village was affected. Buddha's disciples were also affected; they started praying in their minds that Buddha would have compassion. He must bless the child so that he will be revived, resurrected.

Many disciples of Buddha started weeping. The scene was so touching, deeply moving. Everybody was still. Buddha remained silent. He looked at the dead child, then he looked at the weeping, crying mother and he said to the mother, "Don't weep, just do one thing and your child will be alive again. Leave this dead child here, go back to the town, go to every house and ask every family if someone has ever died in their family, in their house. And if you can find a house where no one has ever died, then from them beg something to be eaten, some bread, some rice, or anything -- but from the house where no one has ever died. And that bread or that rice will revive the child immediately. You go. Don't waste time."

The woman became happy. She felt that now the miracle was going to happen. She touched Buddha's feet and ran to the village which was not a very big one, very few cottages, a few families. She moved from one family to another, asking. But every family said, "This is impossible. There is not a single house -- not only in this village but all over the earth -- there is not a single house where no one has ever died, where people have not suffered death and the misery and the pain and the anguish that comes out of it."

By and by the woman realized that Buddha had been playing a trick. This was impossible. But still the hope was there. She went on asking until she had gone around the whole village. Her tears dried, her hope died, but suddenly she felt a new tranquility, a serenity, coming to her. Now she realized that whosoever is born will have to die. It is only a question of years. Someone will die sooner, someone later, but death is inevitable. She came back and touched Buddha's feet again and said to him, "As people say, you really do have a deep compassion for people." No one could understand what had happened. Buddha initiated her into SANNYAS, she became a BHIKKHUNI, a SANNYASIN. She was initiated.

Anand asked Buddha, "You could have revived the boy. He was such a beautiful child and the mother was in such anguish." But Buddha said, "Even if the child was resurrected, he would have had to die. Death is inevitable." Anand said, "But you don't seem to be very sensitive to people, to their misery and anguish." Buddha replied, "I am sensitive; you are sentimental. Just because you start weeping, do you think you are sensitive? You are childish. You don't understand life. You are not aware of the phenomenon."

This is the difference between Christianity and Buddhism. Christ was reported to have done many miracles of reviving people. When Lazarus was dead, Jesus touched him and he came back to life. We in the East cannot conceive of Buddha touching a dead man and bringing him back to life. To ordinary persons, to the ordinary mind, Jesus would look more loving and compassionate than Buddha. But I say to you that Buddha is more sensitive, more compassionate, because even if Lazarus was revived, it made no difference. He still had to die. Finally Lazarus had to die. So this miracle was of no use, of no ultimate value. One cannot conceive of Buddha doing such a thing.

Jesus had to because he was bringing something new, a new message to Israel. And the message was so deep that people would not understand it so he had to create miracles around it -- because people can understand miracles but they cannot understand the deep message, the esoteric message. They can understand miracles, so through miracles they might become open and able to be receptive to the message. Jesus was carrying a Buddhist message to a land which was not Buddhist; an Eastern message to a country which had no tradition of enlightenment, of many Buddhas.

We can conceive that Buddha was more sensitive than his disciples who were weeping and crying. They were sentimental.

Don't misunderstand your sentimentality for sensitivity. Sentimentality is ordinary; sensitivity is extraordinary. It happens through effort. It is an achievement. You have to earn it. Sentimentality is not to be earned; you are born with it. It is an animal inheritance which you already have in the cells of your body and your mind. Sensitivity is a possibility. You don't have it already. You can create it, you can work for it -- then it will happen to you. And whenever it happens, you will be detached.

Buddha was totally detached. The dead child was there but he didn't seem to be affected at all. The woman, the mother, was miserable and he was playing a trick on her. This man seems to be cruel and this playing of a trick seems to be too much for a mother whose child has died. He gave her a riddle, and he knew well that she would come back empty-handed. But I say again that he has real compassion because he was helping this woman to grow, to be mature. Unless you can understand death you are not mature; and unless you can accept death, you don't have a center within your being. When you accept death as a reality, you have transcended it.

Buddha used the situation. He was less concerned with the dead child and more concerned with the alive mother because he knew that the dead child would come back to life again -- there was no need for the miracle. But if the child was revived the mother might have lost an opportunity. For lives together she might not again have a meeting with a Buddha. So in the East only third-rate SADDHUS have been doing miracles; the first-rate have never done any -- they work on a higher level. Buddha is also doing a miracle but the miracle is being done on a very high level. The mother is being transformed.

But it is difficult to understand because our minds are gross and we only understand sentimentality, we cannot understand sensitivity. Sensitivity means an alertness which feels everything that happens around. And you can feel only when you are not attached. Remember this: if you are attached you are no longer there to feel, you have moved out of you. So if you want to know the truth about someone don't ask his friends. They are attached. And don't ask his enemies. They are also attached, in the reverse order. Ask someone who is neutral, neither a friend nor an enemy. Only he can say the truth.

Friends cannot be believed, enemies cannot be believed; but we believe either the friends or the enemies. Both are bound to be wrong because they don't have a neutral witnessing, they don't have a detached view. They cannot stand aloof and look because they have an investment in the person. Friends have an investment and enemies have an investment. They see according to particular viewpoints, and with those viewpoints they are attached. The moment you feel you are attached, you have taken a viewpoint. The totality is lost; only a fragmentary thing is in your hands. And fragments are always lies because only the whole is true.

Meditate, become more sensitive, and take it as a criterion that you will go on becoming more and more detached. If you feel that attachment is growing, then you are erring somewhere in your meditation. These are the criteria. And to me, attachment cannot be destroyed and detachment cannot be practised. You can only practise meditation -- and detachment will follow as a consequence, as a by-product. If meditation really flowers within you, you will have a feeling of detachment. Then you can move anywhere and you will remain untouched, unafraid. Then when you leave your body, you will leave it unscratched. Your consciousness will be absolutely pure, nothing foreign has entered into it. When you are attached, impurities enter into you. This is the basic impurity: that you are losing your center and somebody else or something else is becoming your center of being.

The second question:

IF FAITH CAN MOVE THE MOUNTAINS, WHY CAN YOU NOT HEAL YOUR OWN BODY?

I don't have any body.

This feeling that you have a body is absolutely wrong. The body belongs to the universe; you don't have it, it is not yours. So if the body is ill or if the body is healthy the universe will take care of it. And a person who is in meditation should remain a witness, whether the body is healthy or ill.

The desire to be healthy is part of ignorance. The desire not to be ill is also part of ignorance. And this is not a new question -- this is one of the oldest questions. It has been asked of Buddha; it has been asked of Mahavir. Ever since there have been enlightened persons, the unenlightened have always asked this question.

Look... Jesus said faith can move mountains, but he died on the cross. He couldn't move the cross. You or someone like you must have been present there waiting. The disciples were waiting because they knew Jesus, and he had been saying again and again that faith could move mountains. So they were waiting for some miracle to happen -- and Jesus simply died on the cross. But this was the miracle: he could be a witness to his own death. And the moment of witnessing one's own death is the greatest moment of being alive.

Buddha died of food poisoning. He suffered for six months continuously. And there were many disciples who were waiting for him to do a miracle. But he suffered silently and died silently. He accepted death. There were disciples there who were trying to cure him, many medicines were given to him.

A great physician of those days, Jeevak, was Buddha's personal physician. He used to move with him wherever he went. Many times people must have asked, "Why does this Jeevak go with you?" But it was Jeevak's own attachment. Jeevak was moving with Buddha because of his own attachment, and the disciples who were trying to help Buddha's body remain alive longer in this world, even if only for a few days more, were also attached.

For Buddha himself, illness and health were the same. That doesn't mean that illness will not give pain. It will! Pain is a physical phenomenon, it will happen. But it will not disturb the inner consciousness. The inner consciousness will remain undisturbed, it will remain as balanced as ever. The body will suffer, but the inner being will remain just a witness of the whole suffering.

There will be no identification -- and this I call the miracle. This is possible through faith. And no mountain is bigger than identification -- remember. The Himalayas are nothing; your identification with your body is a greater mountain. The Himalayas may be moved or not moved through faith, that is irrelevant, but your identification can be destroyed.

But we cannot conceive of anything which we do not know, we can think only according to our minds. We think according to where we are; the pattern remains the same.

Sometimes my body is ill, and people come to me and they say, "Why are you ill? You should not be ill; an enlightened person should not be ill." But who told you that it is so? I have never heard about any enlightened person who was not ill. Illness belongs to the body. It has no concern with your consciousness or whether you are enlightened or not.

And sometimes it happens that enlightened persons are more ill than unenlightened ones. There are reasons.... Now that they don't belong to the body, they don't co-operate with the body; deep down they have broken themselves from the body. So the body remains but the attachment and the bridge is broken.

Many illnesses happen because of the separation that has happened. They are in the body but their co-operation is no longer there. That is why we say an enlightened person will never be born again -- because now he cannot make any bridge with any body again. The bridge is broken. While he is in the body, then too, really, he is dead.

Buddha attained enlightenment when he was near about forty. He died when he was eighty so he lived forty years more. On the day he was dying, Anand started crying and said, "What will happen to us? Without you we will fall into darkness. You are dying and we have not yet become enlightened. Our own light is not yet lit and you are dying. Do not leave us!"

Buddha is reported to have said, "What? What are you saying, Anand? I died forty years before. This existence was just a phantom existence, a shadow existence. It was running along somehow, but the force was not there. It was just a momentum from the past."

If you are pedalling a bicycle, and then you stop and there is no pedalling, you are not giving any co-operation to the cycle, it will go on moving for a little whole just because of the momentum, the energy that you gave it in the past.

The moment someone becomes enlightened, the co-operation is broken. Now the body will take its own course. It has a momentum. From many lives in the past, momentum has been given to it. It has a life span of its own which will be completed, but now, because the inner force is no longer with it, the body is prone to be more ill than ordinarily. Ramakrishna died of cancer; Raman died of cancer. To the disciples it was a great shock, but because of their ignorance they could not understand.

One thing more has to be understood. When a person becomes enlightened, this is going to be his last life. So all the past karmas and the whole continuum has to be fulfilled in this life. The suffering -- if he has anything to suffer -- will become intense. For you there is no hurry, your suffering will be spread out over many lives. But for a Raman this is the last. All that is there from the past has to be completed. There will be an intensity of everything, of all karmas. This life will become a condensed life.

Sometimes it is possible -- this is difficult to understand -- to suffer in a single moment the sufferings of many lives. In a single moment, the intensity becomes much because time can be condensed or spread out.

You know already that sometimes when you sleep you see a dream, and when you are awake again you know that you have been asleep for only a few seconds. But you have seen such a long dream. It is possible that even a whole life can be seen in a single dream.

What has happened? In such a small period of time how could you see such a long dream? There is not a single layer of time as we ordinarily understand -- there are many layers of time. Dream time has its own existence. Even while awake time goes on changing. It may not change according to the clock because a clock is a mechanical thing, but psychological time goes on changing.

When you are happy, the time flows fast. When you are unhappy, the time slows down. A single night can be eternity if you are in suffering, and a whole life can become a single moment if you are happy and blissful.

When a person becomes enlightened, everything has to be closed: this is a closing time. Many millions of lives have to be closed and all the accounts have to be cleared, because there will be no chance any more. After his enlightenment and enlightened person lives in a different time altogether and whatsoever happens to him is qualitatively different. But he remains a witness.

Mahavir died of stomach pain, something like an ulcer -- for many years he suffered. His disciples must have been in difficulty because they have created a story around it. They could not understand why Mahavir should suffer, so they have created a story which shows something about the disciples, not about Mahavir.

They say that a person who had a very evil spirit, Goshalak, was the cause of Mahavir's suffering. He threw his evil force on Mahavir and Mahavir absorbed it only because of his compassion -- and that is why he suffered. This shows nothing about Mahavir but something about the difficulty of the disciples. They cannot conceive of Mahavir suffering so they had to find a cause somewhere else.

One day I was suffering from a cold -- it is my constant companion. So somebody came and he said, "You must have taken somebody else's cold." That doesn't show anything about me, it shows something about him. It is difficult for him to conceive of me suffering. So he said, "You must have somebody else's cold." I tried to convince him, but it is impossible to convince disciples. The more you try to convince them, the more they believe that they are right. In the end he said to me, "Whatsoever you say I am not going to listen. I know! You have taken somebody else's illness."

What to do? The body's health and illness is its own affair. If you want to do something about it, you are still attached to it. It will take its own course; you need not be much worried about it.

I am only a witness. The body is born, the body will die; only the witnessing will be there. It will remain forever. Only witnessing is something absolutely eternal -- everything else goes on changing, everything else is a flux.

The third question:

LAST NIGHT YOU EXPLAINED IN DETAIL ABOUT HOW SEEKERS DECEIVE THEMSELVES BY NOT MAKING EARNEST AND SINCERE EFFORTS TOWARD MEDITATION. BUT WITH MANY OF THE SEEKERS WHO EARNESTLY ASK YOU FOR MEDITATION TECHNIQUES, YOU SIMPLY SAY TO THEM TO LEAVE EVERYTHING TO YOU AND THAT YOU WILL LOOK AFTER THEIR SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. BUT MANY SEEKERS FEEL DISSATISFACTION ABOUT THEIR SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION THAT WAY. IN THIS CASE, PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW THESE SEEKERS ARE DECEIVING THEMSELVES.

Firstly, when they ask for a technique, I give them a technique. This is a technique: LEAVE EVERYTHING TO ME. This is one of the most powerful techniques possible. And don't think that it is easy; it is very difficult, sometimes impossible. It is difficult to leave everything to somebody, but if you can, in that very surrender your ego has disappeared; in that very surrender, your past has disappeared; in that very surrender a new point is born -- you are different. Up to now you were living with your own ego; from now onwards you will be living without the ego, you will be following a path of surrender.

So don't think that this is not a technique! It is a technique -- one of the very basic techniques. And I don't give it to any and everybody. I give it only to particular persons who are very egoistic, because for them any technique will create trouble. Their ego will exploit it. They will become more egoistic through it. They can practise anything else except this, but by that practise their ego is not going to be destroyed; rather, it will be more fulfilled. They will become great `meditators'. They can renounce the world, but their ego will be strengthened whatsoever they do. Whenever I feel that this seeker has such a subtle ego that any method will be poisonous to him, then only do I say, "Leave everything to me." Not that this is going to be the end, but this is going to be the beginning. And this is going to be the right beginning for all those who are ego-centered. If they can leave everything to me, then I will start giving them other techniques -- but only then. Then other techniques will not prove poisonous. Once the ego is not there those techniques will transform them. And if their surrender is so total that nothing is left to be transformed, then there will be no need for any other technique. This too is possible, and this is possible only for those who are very egoistic; only they can surrender totally.

This will look confusing, paradoxical -- but remember, you can leave something only if you have it. If you don't have a very strong ego, what can you leave? What can you surrender? It is just like asking a beggar to surrender all his riches. He will be ready, he will say, `Okay,' but his okay means nothing. It is absolutely futile because he has nothing to lose. And if you have a very strong ego, that means a very concentrated ego, crystallized, you can leave it totally because it will be difficult to leave it in parts. It is so concentrated and crystalized that it will be difficult to leave it in fragments. Either you can leave it or not. It is one of the paradoxes of life that for surrender a very authentic ego is needed to be there in the first place. So to me, a right education will consist in creating strong egos, to the very extreme, where a great suffering is born out of them, and then -- surrender. Only the is surrender possible.

This has been my experience. Persons coming from the West have stronger egos than the Eastern persons because in the West there is no concept of surrender, no concept of obedience, no concept of guru and disciple. Really, the Western mind cannot conceive of what a guru is. And they cannot conceive of someone surrendering to anybody. The whole Western education, culture and civilization is based on ego, ego-fulfillment. And Western psychologists say that to be mentally healthy, you must have a strong ego. So all the Western psychologies help the ego to be strong: a child's ego must be strengthened in every way otherwise he will become mentally ill. But Eastern religions say that unless you leave the ego you cannot know the ultimate truth, you cannot know what life's mystery is. Both seem to be contradictory, but they are not. To me, the Western training must be there in the beginning with every person all over the world. Every person should be given a strong ego. By the age of thirty-five you should reach to the peak of your ego; at the age of thirty-five it should be at its peak, strong, as strong as possible. Only then will surrendering happen. So whenever Western seekers come to me and I tell them to leave things to me, they are very hesitant, resistant. And it seems impossible, but sometimes, when surrender happens, they achieve a much deeper realization.

With Eastern persons surrender is not very difficult. They are ready. You say, `Surrender,' they say, `Yes.' There is not a single hesitation on their part. They don't have very strong, developed egos. They can surrender it -- but that surrender is impotent. It will not help. So it almost always happens that with the Eastern person I immediately give him a technique to work on, so that it helps his ego. With Western persons I immediately say, `Surrender.' They have already reached that point within them so they can surrender; their very hesitancy shows that they can surrender. But their surrender is going to be a struggle, and when it is a struggle it is a SADHANA. When it is a struggle it means something; it is going to transform them.

So firstly, when I say, "leave everything to me," this is a technique; and I say it only to persons who have very developed egos. Secondly... BUT MANY SEEKERS FEEL DISSATISFACTION ABOUT THEIR SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION THAT WAY. Right, these are the people to whom I say, `Surrender.' They feel very dissatisfied. They want something to do, they don't want to surrender. I know they will feel dissatisfied because their ego will resist; it will try in every way not to surrender. But that cannot be helped. They will have to pass through this dissatisfaction, and they will have to understand that leaving everything to me is just the beginning. If they cannot do that, I am not going to give them any technique right now. They can leave me, or leave everything to me. There is no other alternative. Once I say to someone, "Leave everything to me," I am not going to give any technique to him. I know that it will be difficult and arduous -- but it has to be so. The more difficult, the more arduous, the better, because that means he has a more evolved ego, and it is struggling. He will have to come some day -- to me or to someone else, it is irrelevant -- and he will have to surrender it.

The master is not so relevant; the surrendering is relevant. Where you surrender is of no significance. You can surrender to a stone Buddha. That will do. Surrendering transforms you. It is putting your ego aside, unburdening yourself; living for the first time not out of the past but moving into the present, fresh and young, unburdened.

And the third thing: IN THIS CASE, PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW THESE SEEKERS ARE DECEIVING THEMSELVES. They can deceive themselves. They can say to me, "Yes, we leave everything to you," and go on withholding everything. They can deceive themselves that they have surrendered and they can go on insisting on their own ways. Surrender cannot be partial, it can be only total -- and then you cannot set your conditions, your likes and dislikes.

It happened just a few days ago. A man came to me and he said, "I will leave everything to you. Whatsoever you say, I will do." I told him, "Repeat it again slowly, "Whatsoever you say, I will do."' He repeated it. I told him to repeat it again and go more slowly. He became a little disturbed and said, `Why?' And he also became aware of why I was saying go slowly. He said, "You may be right. I should not say this, because it is very difficult to leave everything to you and it will be difficult to follow whatsoever you say." So I told him to make it conditional, to be exact so that he could not change. He said, "Right, Whatsoever I like -- give me the freedom to choose."

This is how you can deceive. Inside YOU remain the master; you go on choosing what to do and what not to do. And as it happens, whatsoever you choose is going to be wrong because the mind that is choosing is wrong, otherwise there would have been no need to come to me. When I say surrender it means that now you will not choose, now I will choose and you will follow. And if you can follow totally, the day is not far away when I will say, "Now there is no need. Now you can choose."

You must disappear: the surface, the superficial ego must disappear. Then your own being comes into being. I am not going to keep you following me forever and ever. That is not a very happy business. When your ego is no longer there, your own guru, the inside master, has come into being. The outer guru is nothing but a representative of the inner one. Once the inner is there, the outer is not needed. And your own guru will say to you, "Now follow yourself. Move alone. Now you don't need anybody to guide you, the inner guide has come into being. Now you have your own inner light. You can see through it. It will show you the path."

But right now, as you are, it is not possible. You don't have any light. You cannot see. And wherever your mind leads you it will be wrong. This mind has been leading you for lives and it always leads you into particular patterns. It has old habits and it leads you accordingly. It is a mechanical thing. Just to create a break, surrender is needed. If you surrender to something, even for a few days, there will be a gap between now and your past. A new force has entered within you. Now you cannot continue with the past; your way, as it has always been, cannot be any more. A turning will happen. This gap is what is meant by surrender.

But you can deceive. You can say, "Yes, I surrender," and you may not have surrendered. Or you may think that you have surrendered but unconsciously you are fighting. Not only in surrender, but in everything where a `let-go' is needed, we fight.

In the West much research is going on about the phenomenon of sex, because people are becoming less and less capable of deep orgasms. They have sex but no ecstasy comes out of it. It has become a boring affair. They feel only frustrated, only weakened through it. And then it becomes a routine. They don't know what to do. A deep ecstasy through the orgasm is its significance. If it doesn't happen it is futile and useless and even harmful. Many schools of psychology go on working on the questions: "What has happened to man? Why is he not achieving orgasm through sex? Why is there so much dissatisfaction?" All the researches indicate that the reason is that man cannot surrender -- that is why he cannot achieve orgasm. Even while making love, while deep in sex, your mind remains in control. You go on controlling. You are not in a `let-go'. You are afraid to let go because if you allow the sex energy to move uncontrolled you don't know where it will lead. You may go mad, you may even die. That is the fear. So you remain in control.

You go on manipulating your body. This manipulation from the mind doesn't allow the whole body to become a flow of energy. Then sex becomes a local affair, the whole body is not involved, the whole body is not in an inner dance; the ecstasy is missed. You lose energy and you don't gain anything -- there is bound to be frustration. So psychologists say that you will not achieve a deep ecstasy unless you are in a deep `let-go', unless the mind is not there and the ego is not there; unless the body has taken over with its own force, its own momentum, and is moving by its own unconscious sources; unless YOU are not there. That ecstasy can give you a first glimpse of the ultimate ecstasy that happens in a total `let-go' of your ego with the Divine, with the universe.

Samadhi, the ultimate goal of all yoga and Tantra, is a deep orgasm with the universe itself, with the existence itself. The guru is just trying to help you, to bring you to a point where you can at least surrender the ego. Then a deep ecstasy will happen between you and your master. Wherever there is a `let-go', ecstasy happens -- that is the law.

So if you can surrender to a guru, don't listen to anybody. Even if the whole world says that this guru is wrong, don't listen to it. If you can surrender, this guru is right. You will achieve an ecstatic moment through him. And if the whole world says that this guru is right, and you cannot surrender, he is useless for you. So wherever you have the feeling of surrendering, there is your guru, your master.

Search for the place, search for the person in whose presence you can allow a `let-go', in whose presence you can drop your mind even for a time. Once this force from the outside enters into you, your path will be different, your life will have taken a new turning.

You can deceive yourself: you can go on thinking that you have surrendered but you know well inside that you have not surrendered. And remember: you cannot deceive a master -- he knows. And he will go on insisting unless the `let-go' really happens. You can manoeuvre, you can play a game, but you cannot deceive a master. You can put your head to his feet but that gesture means nothing. It may be just a superficial gesture, you are not bowing down at all. But if bowing down really happens, the master can work.

So whenever I say, "Surrender," or "Leave it to me and I will take care," I mean it. Exactly whatsoever I say I mean it. I want to create a gap within you, a discontinuity with the past. Once the gap is there, you will sooner or later become capable of going on your own. But before that, if you go on your own, you will continue the past story. Nothing new is possible. For the new, something from the outside must enter you, must push you onto a new path.

The last question:

YOU SAID THAT JESUS DIDN'T KNOW THAT THE EARTH IS ROUND. SO FOR CHRISTIANS WHO BELIEVE THAT JESUS WAS GOD, THIS SEEMS VERY STRANGE. ISN'T IT IMPLIED THAT AN ENLIGHTENED ONE LIKE JESUS, WHO KNEW DEEP OCCULT SCIENCES, MUST ALSO KNOW MANY ASTRONOMICAL AND ASTROLOGICAL FACTS ABOUT PLANETS, THE UNIVERSE, AND THE INTER-RELATIONSHIP OF CELESTIAL BODIES? PLEASE EXPLAIN.

No, Jesus was not concerned. When Jesus said that the world was flat, he was using the knowledge that was prevalent in those days. He was not concerned about whether the world was round or flat; it was meaningless to him. He was more concerned about those persons who were living on this `flat' or `round' earth.

The concern has to be understood. It is absolutely futile for Jesus to discuss these things. What difference does it make? For example, you know from the geography books that the world is round. If your geography books were teaching that the world is flat, as they were teaching in the past, what difference will it make to you? Will you be a better man? Will you be more meditative on a `flat' world or on a `round' earth? What difference will it make to your being and the quality of your consciousness? It is irrelevant.

Jesus was concerned with your consciousness, and he will not unnecessarily argue about things which are useless. Only unenlightened persons are dragged into unnecessary things. If you had told Jesus that the world was round, he would have said yes. It makes no difference to him because that was not his concern. The prevalent idea was that the world was flat. And really, to the ordinary mind, the world is still flat. It looks flat. The roundness is a scientific fact, but Jesus was not a scientist.

For example, I know that it is a scientific fact that the sun never rises and never sets. The earth is moving around, the sun is not moving. But still I sue the words `sunset' and `sunrise'. Sunrise is basically wrong. The very word is wrong, because the sun never rises. Sunset is wrong, the sun never `sets'. So after two thousand years, someone can say that this man was unenlightened because he said `the sun rises', `sunrise', `sunset'. Didn't he know these small things?

But if I am to change every word then I will be fighting unnecessarily and that is not going to help anybody. Jesus simply used the prevalent knowledge -- and the prevalent idea was that the earth was flat. He was not concerned about it. If he were here today, he would say that the earth is round. But even that is not exactly scientific, because the earth is not exactly round. Now they say it is like an egg, not exactly round. The shape is like an egg. But who knows? -- the next day they may change and say that this is not so. Science goes on changing, because as it becomes more accurate, as it attains to more knowledge, as more facts are known, as more experiments are done, things change. But a person like Jesus or Buddha is not concerned about these facts.

Remember one thing: science is concerned with facts, religion is concerned with truth. Facts are not its concern, truth is its concern. Facts are about objects, truth is about you, your consciousness. So every enlightened person has to use the prevalent knowledge about facts. But you should not judge Jesus or Buddha by that -- you are judging wrongly. They can be judged only by what they have said about the truth, about the intrinsic truth of human consciousness. About that they are always absolutely right although their language differs.

A Buddha speaks in one language, Jesus in a different one, Krishna in another. They use different factual knowledge, they use different techniques, devices, but the central core of their teaching is the same. And that, if you allow me to say it, is how to attain to total awareness.

Awareness is the basic teaching of all the enlightened ones. They use many parables, techniques, devices, symbols, myths, but those are irrelevant. You can cut them away, you can put them aside and just bring out the basic core. The basic core of all the awakened persons is awareness. So Jesus goes on telling his disciples how to be more awake -- not to be sleeping, not to move in dreams, but to be alert, awake.

He used to tell a parable. He said that it happened once that a great lord, a great master, a very rich man, went on a far-away journey. He told his servants that they had to be always alert because he would be back any moment, ANY moment. And whenever he came back, the house should be ready to receive him. He could come back, any moment. The servants had to be alert, they couldn't even sleep. Even at night they had to be ready because the master could come any moment.

Jesus used to say that you have to be alert every moment because any moment the Divine can descend into you. You may miss. If the Divine knocks at your door and you are fast asleep, you will miss. You have to be alert. The guest can come at any moment, and the guest is not going to inform you beforehand that he is coming.

Jesus said just like the servants of that master, remain alert continuously, remain aware, waiting, watchful because any moment the Divine can penetrate you. And if you are not alert, he will come, knock and go back. And that moment may not repeated soon; no one knows how many lives it may take before the Divine will again knock at your door. And if you have become habitually asleep, you may have missed that knock many times already and you may miss it again and again.

Be alert. That is the basic core. All else is only to be used to reach it. So just because Jesus says the earth is flat, he doesn't become unenlightened. And just because you know the earth is round, you don't become enlightened. It is not so easy!