Don't say goodbye, say good morning

The Osho Upnishad

Question 1:

BELOVED OSHO,

BESIDE YOU NOW, I FEEL LIKE A HAPPY BUBBLE NEWLY CREATED AT THE BOTTOM OF
A WATERFALL, LAUGHING AND DANCING ITS WAY DOWNSTREAM TO THE OCEAN. IF I
SHOULD MAKE IT IN THIS LIFE TO REACH THE OCEAN, DOES IT REALLY MEAN THAT
YOU AND I MUST SAY GOODBYE?I FIND MYSELF HERE NOW IN LOVING GRATEFULNESS
TOYOU. IT SEEMS I HAVE NO MORE QUESTIONS, BUT A DEEP NEED - BORN OUT OF MY
GRATEFULNESS TO YOU, BELOVED OSHO, FOR ALL THAT YOU HAVE DONE FOR ME, FOR
ALL THAT YOU ARE.

THE WORLD HAS NOTHING LEFT NOW BUT YOU. I WOULD LIKE TO BE
NEAR YOU NOW AND UNTIL I LEAVE THIS EARTHLY BODY, EVEN IF IT MEANS THAT THIS
LITTLE BUBBLE HAS TO HOLD BACK A LITTLE BIT.

IS IT ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO SAY GOODBYE WHEN ONE HAS REACHED THE OCEAN
OF BLISS?

Jivan Mary, the moment you meet the ocean you will meet me.

The question of saying goodbye does not arise at all; you will have to say good morning!

And don't be worried whether you will be able to make it in this life or not. Once you have started flowing, you have already made it.

Every river is constantly moving to be the ocean. The problem is only with those who have become ponds, closed, not open to flow, having forgotten that this is not their destiny, this is death. To be a pond is to commit suicide, because there is no growth anymore, no new spaces, no new experiences, no new skies - just the old pond, rotting in itself, becoming more and more muddy.

To be a seeker means dropping this static state and becoming a changing, moving, flowing river.

It does not matter when you reach the ocean.

The beginning is the end.

The whole beauty is in the beginning, because once you have started moving, the end, falling into the ocean, is absolutely determined. The beginning was in your hands; it was your freedom, hence the beauty of the beginning.

Falling into the ocean will be tremendously ecstatic, but it is not in your hands. What was in your hands was the beginning, and you gathered courage; you jumped out of a static, dead situation into a living being... alive, singing and dancing.

Who cares when the ocean comes?

The beginning is enough, more than enough - because falling into the ocean is bound to happen.

Jivan Mary, you have started flowing. Rejoice in it. Don't think of the tomorrow. Today is enough unto itself, a blessing, a benediction.

And you are the ocean - what more are you going to gain when you fall into the ocean? It is simply the realization that the water, whether in a dewdrop or in the biggest ocean, is of the same nature; every dewdrop contains oceans in it, and all the oceans are made only of dewdrops.

So the real seeker is not concerned about the goal.

The real seeker is concerned about the right beginning, and you are blessed because the right beginning has happened.

Question 2:

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU ARE AGAINST SERIOUSNESS. YOU HAVE LAUGHED
ABOUT EVERYTHING, INCLUDING GODS, GODMEN AND
SCRIPTURES. HOW COME YOU THINK THAT PEOPLE
SHOULD TAKE YOU AND YOUR TEACHING SERIOUSLY?

Anand Maitreya, who has told you that I expect people to take me and my teachings seriously? I want to be understood joyously, not seriously.

I want to be taken playfully, not seriously - not with a long British face, but with beautiful laughter.

Your laughter, your playfulness is the recognition that you have understood me. Your seriousness shows that you have misunderstood me, you have missed it - because seriousness is nothing but sickness. It is another name of sadness; it is a shadow of death.

And I am all for life. If it is needed for your laughter, your dance, even to reject me, then reject me - but don't reject the dance and the song and the life, because that is my teaching.

Why should you take me seriously?

And that's why I am not taking anybody seriously. Still you don't understand: I am not taking anybody seriously simply to make it clear that you are not supposed to take me seriously either. Laugh about me, enjoy me, rejoice in me - but for God's sake, don't be serious!

Seriousness has killed humanity. It has proved to be the very cancer of the soul.

My only contribution to human evolution is a sense of humor. No other religion, no other philosophy has accepted humor as something religious; it seems to them that it is something profane.

To me, humor is the most sacred experience in life.

And there is enough to prove it: except man, no animal in the whole existence has a sense of humor. Can you expect a buffalo to laugh? Can you expect a donkey to have a sense of humor?

The moment your saints become serious, they fall into the category of buffaloes and donkeys: they are no longer human, because this is the only special quality that human consciousness has. It shows that only at a certain point of evolution does humor manifest itself.

And the higher you go, the more playful will be your approach towards life and its problems. It will not be a burden, it will be a joy to solve them. Life will not be a sin - these are the serious people who have made life a sin - life will be a reward, a gift.

And those who are wasting life in seriousness are being ungrateful to existence.

Learn to laugh with the flowers and the stars, and you will feel a strange weightlessness coming into your being... as if you have grown wings and you can fly.

Question 3:

BELOVED OSHO,

IN A BOOK I READ ABOUT GURDJIEFF, IT WAS SAID THAT TWO OF HIS DISCIPLES, WHO
HAD BEEN WITH HIM FOR A LONG TIME AND IN A VERY INTIMATE WAY - FOR EXAMPLE, DE
HARTMANN, WHO PLAYED HIS MUSIC - SUDDENLY LEFT HIM.

CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHY THIS SEEMS TO HAPPEN AGAIN AND AGAIN IN THE MASTER-
DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP?

Turiya, the question is something of deep significance and with profound implications.

It is something in the very nature of things that this kind of thing happens again and again, and will continue to happen again and again; it cannot be stopped.

De Hartmann lived with George Gurdjieff for perhaps the longest period of any of his other disciples, perhaps forty years or more. He was a great genius as far as music is concerned, and he was playing music for special meditations which Gurdjieff had devised. The music was also devised by Gurdjieff; de Hartmann had to bring the device into reality.

Gurdjieff was a strange master, everything about him had the quality of strangeness. He himself was not a musician, but he understood what kind of vibrations could create certain states in man.

His understanding was about man, his meditation, his mind, the possibility of his receiving certain vibrations and being affected by them.

He would explain his whole program to de Hartmann, and de Hartmann had become such an expert that he would make it a reality. But de Hartmann was not a disciple - this was where the trouble arose. He had come to George Gurdjieff to be a disciple, but his genius about music took him on a different route: rather than being a disciple, he became an associate. He started working for Gurdjieff insofar as he needed music for his special dances, and he forgot completely why he had come.

Gurdjieff reminded him many times: "de Hartmann, you are a perfect master as far as music is concerned, but you had not come here to play music. And now your ego is feeling so fulfilled and contented that you don't want to sit among the disciples. You have forgotten that your basic motive was not to play music here."

The separation was bound to happen one day, because finally Gurdjieff became very hard. And he said to de Hartmann, "You have to stop music completely, because music has become a barrier.

Your music has helped others tremendously, but for yourself it has become a barrier. You stop music completely! Burn all your musical instruments." This was too much for de Hartmann. He was not an ordinary musician.

He left Gurdjieff rather than leave music.

And because he had lived for forty years with George Gurdjieff, and had remained in a very intimate relationship... but not as a disciple, remember - that was forgotten; that was why the problem arose.

The intimacy was because of the music; Gurdjieff needed a musician. He was taking his disciples around the world, showing people the immense effect of vibrations.

In New York, in one of his shows, the disciples were dancing...

They have to dance intensely and totally; they have to forget the whole world. But if the music stops, then they have to stop in whatever position they are in - if the hand is up, it remains up; if their eyes are open, they remain open, they don't blink - a total stop. If one leg is up in dancing, it remains where it is.

And when the dance came to its climax, he gave the indication to de Hartmann to stop. As the music stopped, every dancer had to stop - just like statues, as if suddenly they had become marble statues, no movement.

It is a tremendous experience. In that gap, when all movement has stopped, you simply feel your existence, your isness.

But when he said to de Hartmann to stop... the dancers were moving in a certain round and they were so close to the edge of the stage that with the sudden stop, one dancer fell from the stage.

Because there was no way, you could not do anything - whatever happened, happened, you had to stop. On top of him, another dancer fell. A whole line of dancers went on falling from the stage, as if they were dead bodies.

The people who had seen that show could not believe... the silence of the disciples, their becoming centered, created a new vibration. Even the people in the audience who had no idea of any meditation certainly felt a new breeze, a silence surrounding them, and a peacefulness.

For years, the intelligentsia of New York talked about the dance. They could not believe what had happened; it was simply sheer magic.

But nothing happened to de Hartmann. He was just a technician: he played the music - he was an expert - and when the indication was given he stopped it.

But he remained in close proximity to Gurdjieff for forty years, and people naturally thought that he was a disciple, and a very close disciple. And when he left Gurdjieff, he maintained the illusion - perhaps he himself was in the illusion - that he was a disciple, that he had learned everything that Gurdjieff knows... forty years is enough. That's why he went to America to open his own school.

A desire to become a master is a simple ego number.

His statement, Turiya, when he said to people, "You are more important to me than Mr. Gurdjieff," is simply shameful - but this is the category of the Judas.

In every master's life there are bound to be Judases. It seems to be the law of nature that the people who come to a master don't come with the same motivation. A few come to seek the truth, a few come to learn how to be a master.

In the life of Basho, one of the great mystics of Japan, there is a beautiful incident.

He was sitting with his disciples and a man came and he said, "I also want to join."

Basho said, "There is no barrier; the doors are open, you can join. But let me tell you: disciplehood is an arduous thing. Are you ready for it, or is it just curiosity? If it is just curiosity then don't waste your time, because soon you will have to leave. If it is a sincere search that you are ready to stake everything - life included - only then can you be a disciple."

The man said, "I am not prepared. I never thought that to be a disciple costs so much." And then he said, "Then what about the master? - I can become the master. If it is easier, then I can drop the idea of being a disciple; I can become the master."

Basho said, "We will not prevent you from being a master, but unless one has passed through the arduous path of disciplehood, one cannot be a master - although it is very easy. If there was some back door, I would have allowed you in. But there is no back door; you will have to come through the right channel of being a disciple."

The man said, "Then I will think it over, and I will come again," and he never came again.

A few people simply come to the masters because they see a certain dimension of fulfillment for their ego, their ambition. To them, it is the same: to have power, prestige, respectability, richness, or to be a great master with thousands of disciples. They have no desire to know the truth, no search for knowing oneself. To them, to be a master is just like any other ambitious project of the world - to be a rich man, to be a politician, to be a prime minister, to be a governor. And you cannot prevent them, because sometimes when they come and they try to understand, they change. They see that when they came they had come with a wrong motive, but now that motive has been dropped. So they cannot be prevented from the very beginning... and one never knows when they will change; it may take years.

The master has to be patient. But these people are in a hurry, because life is slipping out of their hands.

Judas betrayed Jesus not for any other reason. It was not for thirty silver coins that he betrayed Jesus; he betrayed Jesus because he was the only educated disciple. He was more educated and cultured than Jesus himself. Moving with Jesus, seeing his teachings, he could easily visualize himself as a great master, greater than Jesus: "Because this man is simply a carpenter's son, knows nothing much; still he has created a great stir in the country."

It was a very simple arithmetic: Judas could see that if this man is removed, he can prove himself to be a great master; but if this man is alive he will always remain a disciple. Either he had to revolt against him and create a totally different following, which is more arduous... This was far better, if Jesus could be removed in some way. And Judas was bound to be the leader, with an established following.

It is just like a shop with a credibility of hundreds of years - rather than opening a new shop... You may be offering better things to the world, but still, the old name has a credibility, an established credibility. The competition is going to be tough and very difficult. The best way is somehow get the name of the old shop - just old bottles filled with new wine. Nobody bothers about the wine, everybody looks at the bottle - but the bottle has to be old. The old bottle is the proof of old wine.

Simple logic...

And to remove Jesus was easy, because the Jews were after him and things could be done in such a way that nobody would ever know that Judas had done it.

But he forgot one thing: nobody would ever know that Judas had done it, but how can Judas forget it? That realization came only later on. That realization came only when Jesus was crucified. Judas was in the crowd. He could not believe that he had done this - just to become a master, he had betrayed a friend, a master who loved him, trusted him. And now he forgot all about the old ego trip.

Something new that he had never thought about, a great repentance, a guilt... within twenty-four hours he committed suicide.

De Hartmann was not a disciple at all, but he knew certain techniques that Gurdjieff was practicing with disciples. He had become a technician. Because he had to supply the music to every technique, he knew the techniques in every detail - but he had never practiced them; his work was to supply the music.

But this is how the mind deceives you. Your own mind leads you astray.

De Hartmann could not prove himself to be a master - without Gurdjieff, the music fell flat. He knew the technique, he knew the music, but he was not aware that the technique, the music, all were alive because of the living presence of a master. He was only a technician.

That is the difference between a technician and a master.

Now if something goes wrong with the electricity any technician can come and fix it, but that does not mean that he is Edison who discovered electricity. Although he knows everything, he is not Edison.

That master touch will be missing.

It took three years for Edison to discover electricity. He started with many colleagues and students - he was a professor. And by and by, because every experiment went on failing, people started deserting him: "He seems to be mad, he is trying to do something impossible. Hundreds of experiments have failed, but that man seems to be strange... every day, early in the morning, he comes back to the lab with the same enthusiasm, the same zest." All his colleagues were feeling that it would be better to do something else - "We are wasting our time." They were all frustrated. Except for Edison, nobody had any enthusiasm, and within three years all his colleagues and students had left.

But Edison continued, and one night at three o'clock... the whole night he had been working, because he was coming so close. And that was his logic - he was saying to his colleagues, "Don't desert me; you are deserting at the wrong time. We have tried hundreds of experiments and they have all failed. That means that the one experiment which is going to succeed is coming closer.

Finally we will sort it out. We are dropping those which are going to fail, they are not on our list anymore. The list is becoming shorter - soon we will be able to find the right method."

They said, "Three years have been wasted, and we cannot imagine how long this 'soon' is going to take."

And that night he started to feel from the very beginning of the evening that he was coming closer:

"Things are fitting; the puzzle is to be settled tonight." He went on and on and on, and by three o'clock he saw the first electric bulb. It was so much light! No human eye had ever seen it before; people had seen only candles.

His wife was sleeping in the other room. She had been calling him again and again - "It is time to go to sleep."

He said, "Not tonight; you just go to sleep and don't disturb me. I am so close, and I don't want to miss. Tomorrow things may be different, I may have forgotten something. Today I cannot leave it."

At three o'clock, suddenly the light... It was almost like lightning in the house.

The wife said, "You idiot, put that light out! Neither are you going to sleep nor will you allow me to sleep. And from where did you get this light?"

And he was sitting with unblinking eyes in a state of awe... unbelievable! It has happened!

And the poor woman was saying, "Turn the light off."

He said, "This light is never going to be turned off. Now it is going to be on forever and ever."

Now every electrician knows - but he is only a technician, he is not an Edison. He can fall into the illusion that he is also as knowledgeable as Edison himself, but the charisma is not there, the genius is not there. Those miracle-making hands are not there.

De Hartmann tried hard in America, because in America Gurdjieff had been such a success. He went through the same cities giving the same shows, but everything fell flat. He could not figure out what was wrong - because the songs were the same, the dances were the same, the music was the same, the musician was the same... "And that man Gurdjieff was not doing anything, he was simply standing there. All that he used to do was to tell me, 'Stop!' Just that much, anybody can do. And I myself know at what point he used to say stop, so I stop myself at those points, exactly at those points - but the magic is not there."

He forgot that he had never been a disciple - and he had become a master! He forgot that he had been only a musician. If he had remembered that he was only a musician - and in that too, he was brought to such refinement by Gurdjieff, not by himself - things would have been different.

Turiya, the same thing happened with Ouspensky, who was really a disciple.

De Hartmann can be simply cancelled; he was never a disciple.

But Ouspensky was a disciple, and one of the foremost disciples. But again, something took him away, and that something was similar to de Hartmann's music - that was Ouspensky's intelligence.

He was a world-famous mathematician, a great writer. Even before meeting Gurdjieff he was known all over the world. Nobody knew Gurdjieff.

In fact, it was Ouspensky who made Gurdjieff's name known to the world; the whole credit goes to Ouspensky. In this whole century there has not been another writer of the same caliber. He writes with such authority, with such beauty - and that became his fall, because Gurdjieff became famous through his books.

Gurdjieff was not a writer; he had no special talent which is recognized by the world. He was purely a master. He could transform human beings, their consciousness, but that is not an art recognized by the world.

And when Ouspensky saw that he had made Gurdjieff world-famous, why should he bother? He knew everything about what Gurdjieff was teaching, he had written everything; through him the whole world knew about the teaching of Gurdjieff... "I myself can teach." He started a school in London. And such ungratefulness... he would not use Gurdjieff's full name; he would simply call him "G". Just to avoid the full name, Gurdjieff, he would use only the first letter, G.

And he made it clear to his students, that "Gurdjieff was right as long as I was with him. I left him because he started going wrong. So his teaching is valid till I left him - beyond that, it has no significance."

But he was just a school teacher, a professor, with no aura of a master. It was really ridiculous to see him pretending to be a master, because even in teaching higher principles of consciousness he was using a blackboard. Just the old habit of being a mathematician... So he would write on the blackboard, as if the people who had gathered were students. He would not look into anybody's eyes. He was not an impressive personality. He would have been perfectly good as a professor in a university, but to be a master, to belong to the category of Gautam Buddha, Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti, is a totally different matter. He tried hard, but he could not manage anything; nothing happened.

And you will be surprised to know that the whole world condemned Gurdjieff, nobody condemned Ouspensky, nobody condemned de Hartmann. In fact, they had nothing worth condemning either.

Gurdjieff had a teaching, a methodology to transform humanity.

But these persons wanted to be masters. Seeing the power of Gurdjieff, they became power hungry.

Seeing his influence, they started feeling inferior; they wanted to move away and create their own sphere of influence. They all failed.

So it seems to be in the very nature of things that this will go on happening. Wherever there will be a master, there will be Judases, Ouspenskys, de Hartmanns.

With Mahavira there was Goshalak.

With each great teacher, these people have followed like shadows - hungry for power.

But to be a master is not an ego game. The power of the master is not of the power of the ego; it is the power of his humbleness, it is the power of his nothingness.

So these people will continue to happen, but they don't make even a dent in human evolution. They simply spoil their own life and a great opportunity that was given to them.

Question 4:

BELOVED OSHO,

FULL WITH THE SWEETNESS OF YOUR FRAGRANCE AS I WALK THIS PATH WITH YOU, I
FEEL THAT TO TRUST AND WAIT IS ALL THAT IS NEEDED OF ME.A WONDERING COMES
UP IN ME AS TO WHETHER SOME KNOWLEDGE ABOUT ESOTERIC SUBJECTS - FOR
EXAMPLE, CHAKRAS, COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUSNESS, ENERGY FIELDS - COULD BE
HELPFUL ALONG THE WAY OR NOT.

OSHO, IS SUCH KNOWLEDGE USEFUL? OR WILL WHATEVER IS NEEDED COME TO ME
THROUGHEXPERIENCE, IN ITS OWN TIME?

Anything that is needed will come of its own accord, in its own time.

All this so-called esoteric knowledge about chakras, energy fields, kundalini, astral bodies, is dangerous as knowledge.

As experience it is a totally different thing. Don't acquire it as knowledge. If it is needed for your spiritual growth, it will come to you in its right time, and then it will be an experience.

And if you have an acquired knowledge, borrowed knowledge, it is going to be a hindrance.

For example, Hindu yoga believes in seven chakras, Jaina scriptures mention nine chakras. And Buddhist scriptures say that there are dozens of chakras, that these are only the important ones which have been chosen by different schools. They don't give any fixed number. Acquired knowledge will be confusing: how many chakras? And what are you going to do with that knowledge, whether there are seven or nine or dozens? Your knowledge is not going to help; it can only hinder.

My own experience is that perhaps Buddha's experience is correct - and that does not make the Hindu yoga or Jaina yoga incorrect. Buddha is saying that there are energy fields, whirling energy fields, from the lowest point in your spine up to the very peak of your head. There are many; now it is only a question of a particular teaching which ones are important for it. That particular teaching will choose those... Hindus have chosen seven, Jainas have chosen nine. They don't contradict each other, it is simply that the emphasis is on whatever chakra the teaching feels to emphasize.

As far as I am concerned, you will come across only four chakras which are the most important.

One you know is your sex center.

The second, just above it, which is not recognized in any Indian school of thought but has been recognized in Japan alone, is called the hara. It is between your navel and the sex center. The hara is the death chakra.

My own experience is that life - that is the sex center, and death - that is the hara, should be very close, and they are.

In Japan when somebody commits suicide it is called hara-kiri. Nowhere in the world does such a thing happen except in Japan. Suicide is committed everywhere but with a knife... just two inches below the navel, the Japanese forces a knife - and this is the most miraculous death; no blood, no pain - and death is instantaneous.

So the first chakra is the life chakra; it is a whirling energy. Chakra means wheel, moving. Just above the life chakra is the death chakra.

The third important chakra is the heart chakra. You can call it the love chakra, because between life and death the most important thing that can happen to a man or to a woman is love. And love has many manifestations: meditation is one of the manifestations of love; prayer is one of the manifestations of love. This is the third important chakra.

The fourth important chakra is what Hindu yoga calls agna chakra, just on your forehead between the two eyes.

These four chakras are the most important.

The fourth is from where your energy moves beyond humanity into divinity. There is one chakra more which is at the top part of your head, but you will not come across it in your life journey. That's why I am not counting it.

After the fourth, you have transcended body, mind, heart, all that is not you - only your being remains. And when death happens to such a person...

That's why in India the hara has not been taken note of; because in the Hindu or Jaina or Buddhist yoga, they were not considering people who commit suicide. They were thinking about people who were transforming their energy from the physical to the immaterial.

So the fifth chakra is the sahasrar. Jainas count it, Hindus count it - because when you have transcended the fourth chakra, sometime you will die. And a person who dies after transcending the fourth chakra... his energy, his being leaves the body, cracking the skull into two parts; that is the sahasrar chakra.

Because it is not part of your life experience, that's why I am not counting it. The four are your life experience.

This one is the death of a person who is enlightened. He does not die from the hara.

That's why in India no school has taken note of the hara chakra. But in Japan they had to take note of it, because in Japan suicide was a form of etiquette.

You will be puzzled: the Japanese have such a totally different culture from the whole world; from small things to big things, they have their own approach.

I am reminded of one incident...

For small things a Japanese can commit suicide, because he cannot live a life of shame. If he feels ashamed, that is enough to finish his life - and you will not be able to conceive of what small things are thought to be so important that life is nothing.

One master, who was the greatest archer of Japan, was called by the king. The king wanted his son to become exactly as great an archer as the master was.

Now, it is Japanese etiquette that even when two persons are going to fight with each other, first they will bow down to each other's divinity with folded hands. Even though they are going to kill...

but before killing, they will respect each other. So in ordinary life, in Japan you will find people everywhere bowing down to each other - on the road, in the restaurants. It is disappearing as the modern Western influence is changing the whole world.

But the master archer was such an egoist that even in front of the king he waited: first the king should fold his hands, and then...

The court of the king condemned the man and said, "You have committed such a shameful act. Just go back and commit hara-kiri." It was not such a big thing, but when the whole court had said it, the whole country would know about it. The man went directly to his home and committed hara-kiri.

He had three hundred students. When they heard that their master had committed a shameful act, all three hundred students committed hara-kiri, because it was so shameful that their master should have behaved like this.

Now this cannot happen anywhere else in the world. If the master has done something shameful - although it was not much of a shameful act, but even if it were - the students are completely innocent. But because they were the students of that master, it was enough to feel ashamed - you had followed such a man.

People have been committing hara-kiri in Japan for centuries.

So when Buddhism reached for the first time, nearabout fourteen hundred years ago, and they started meditating, they were the first people to discover the hara center - because they had been using that center for centuries, so that center was very much throbbing and vibrating and alive.

It all depends. In different cultures it may be a little bit different where the center is.

For example, when Japanese started coming to me for sannyas I was a little bit puzzled - because all over the whole world when you want to say yes, you move your head up and down. And the Japanese, when they want to say yes, move the head from side to side - which means "no." All over the world that is the sign for no - but that is their sign for yes, and the head moving up and down is their sign for no.

So when I would ask them something I would be very much puzzled; I could not believe that...

They had come to take sannyas. They were sitting before me and I was asking "Are you ready for sannyas?" and they would shake... "Then why have you come? You have traveled here from Japan unnecessarily and you are sitting here in front of me just for that purpose, and you are saying no?"

Then my interpreter said to me, "You are not understanding; that person is saying yes. In Japan, the head moving from side to side is yes; the head moving up and down is no." So you have to remember it when you are talking with the Japanese. Otherwise there is going to be great confusion - you will say something, they will understand something else. They cannot speak but they can understand.

In the Caucasus, where Gurdjieff was born, they have a system of chakras which is slightly different.

It seems to be the difference between the people of the Caucasus and the other people.

In India, three religions, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, all have exactly the same points. They may count five or seven or nine, but the places are exactly the same. Centuries have affected their bodies in different ways.

In the Caucasus, there are thousands of people who are older than one hundred fifty years. The Caucasus is the place in the whole world which has the oldest people - and they are not old; at the age of one hundred eighty the person is still young. He is working on the farm just like any young man.

In the Caucasus, people always die young; they don't grow old. Naturally their bodies have developed in a different way. Their food has something to do with it, their climate, their geography, their land. It has created a different psychology.

Throughout the whole world it is thought that seventy years is the time for everybody to die - that is the average; you can be five years earlier or five years later, but the average is seventy.

When George Bernard Shaw became seventy he started looking in the small villages around London at the stones which are put on the graves, in their cemeteries, to see how long people in that village had lived. His friend said, "You are mad. Why are you wasting your time?"

He said, "I don't want to die at seventy. I have never been average in anything, and I cannot be average in death. So I am looking for a place where people don't believe that seventy is the average age to die, because that place will have a psychology of its own."

And finally he found a village where, on many stones in the graveyard, he found that it was written:

This man lived one hundred and eight years, and died untimely.

He said, "This is the right place - where a man lives one hundred and eight years and still people think the poor fellow has died 'untimely,' that it was not yet time to die."

After seventy years he moved from London - he had lived seventy years in London - to a village, after checking the cemetery. And he lived a hundred years. He proved it - that village had the psychology, that village had the vibe, that village had the idea that one hundred years is nothing.

When he would ask people if he could live to be one hundred, they would say, "One hundred is nothing; everybody lives to be one hundred. You can go to the cemetery and see - one hundred forty, one hundred thirty; people live that long very easily. A hundred? - that is too early."

He lived one hundred years.

Certainly he proved one fact: that your psychology, your mind, your body, are impressed by the vibrations in which you live.

So you will come to experience chakras, you will come to experience energy fields, but it is better not to be knowledgeable, because that is a difficult problem. You may read a book written five thousand years ago by a certain kind of people and you may not be of the same category. You may not find that chakra at the same place, and you will feel unnecessarily frustrated. And you will find a chakra in a place where the books don't mention it; then you will feel that you are abnormal, something is wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you.

Energy fields, chakras and all esoteric things should be experienced. And keep your mind clean of all knowledge, so that you don't have any expectations; wherever the experience happens, you are ready to accept it.

And each individual has differences, and differences come in such small things that you cannot conceive.

For example, in the East people sit on the floor. In cold countries people cannot sit on the floor; the chair is absolutely necessary. Naturally, their backbones, their spines will have a different shape than those of the people who sit on the floor, and the experiences of their kundalini will be different.

There are people who eat only one time a day. For thousands of years they have never eaten more often than that. In South Africa there are tribes which eat only one time in twenty-four hours. When they came across American missionaries, there was such laughter... "These idiots are eating five times! Breakfast - and there is no fast at all, and they are having 'break-fast.' And the whole day, something or other, and then coffee break and tea break, and they go on... and in between they are chewing gum. These mad people have come to teach religion to us, they are simply mad!"

And in a way they are right, because they have beautiful bodies, they live longer, their bodies are not fat. Their bodies are like deer's; they can run like deer - they have to, because they are hunters.

Their eyes are very clear, very perceptive; their bodies are very proportionate.

I am reminded...

There is a small tribe in Africa even today who are cannibals, who eat men too. In the beginning of this century they had a population of three thousand; now they have only three hundred left, because when they cannot find somebody else then they have to eat from their own stock. So that is the only place where the population is falling down: from three thousand, in fifty years there are only three hundred left. By the end of this century they will be finished, without any war, without anything - they will have eaten themselves.

The first Christian missionary came, really fat - and when they caught hold of him they were so happy and dancing, and the Christian missionary thought they were happy because they had found a religious man. And he said, "I have brought you good news, gospels."

They said, "Yes!"

And they carried him on their shoulders, and he was very happy. He was not expecting that these people would give him such a great reception. And they then put him in a big pot. And he said, "What are you doing?"

They said, "You wait, you will see."

And then he understood what was happening; they were going to boil him! He tried somehow to convince them, "Don't do it, this is not good. I have come here to give you some taste of the Christian religion."

They said, "Don't be worried; soon we will have your soup, and that will give us a real taste of Christianity!"

Now, these people will have a totally different experience of their physiology. The meat-eaters and the vegetarians will find differences.

So it is better not to memorize from scriptures. Those scriptures are the experiences of certain people, of certain times, of certain circumstances; they were not written for you.

The scripture that is for you can be written only by you, by your own experience.