Taoblog

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh started to become known as the „sex guru“. In „Tantra, Spirituality & Sex“, he said: „While making love to a woman, you are really making love to Existence itself. The woman is just a door; the man is just a door. Really, it happens that the whole of Existence becomes the other – your beloved, your lover. One can remain in constant communion with the Existence. And you can do it in other dimensions also. Walking in the morning, you can do it. Looking at the moon you can do it. You can be in a sex act with the whole universe once you know how it happens.“ The locals were scandalized by the freewheeling air of the camps, where people in various stages of dress jumped around in cathartic meditations. Despite the moniker, however, only a few of his 650 books have the word „sex“ in the title, and Rajneesh´s countless and brilliant talks incorporated just about every subject under the sun, including the world´s various religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism, etc., as well as assorted other gurus and philosophers, such as Gurdjieff, Socrates, Sartre, Freud, Jung, Lao Tzu and Wilhelm Reich. In the early ´70s, an ashram was established for him at Poona, and many Westerners started to come. Rajneesh had begun devouring books in English at an early age, so he was well equipped to teach English-speaking Westerners, telling them „your books are the mirrors of your mind.“ The list of books he read was enormous, spanning all subjects and amounting to tens of thousands. During these years, people form all over the world arrived and created various self-growth therapies under his guidance. These included, of course, sex therapies, some of which got out of control. In addition, the locals were incensed by the half-naked women running around. Rajneesh continued to get a bad name. The CIA began sending agents to infiltrate and spy on him, but at least a couple of them found the atmosphere so enjoyable that they stayed or returned there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liumLWd_B7g

It is not a question of your accidental birth. You may be born a Mohammedan and you may not feel any affinity with Mohammed. There is no necessity. Birth is accidental. You may be born a Hindu and you may not feel ANY affinity with Krishna, or you may even feel a certain antagonism. You may not be the type! So don’t be too much identified with your birth. Roam around. Have a little more freedom. Look around. Whichever flower attracts you, follow that. Whichever fragrance calls you, follow that fragrance. So you may be a Hindu by birth, but if you feel that the Koran simply rings bells in your heart, then the Koran is your scripture. Forget all about Hinduism! Then Mohammed is your man — forget all about Krishna! You may be born a Mohammedan, but if seeing the statue of Buddha something immediately settles in you, becomes serene, calm and cool; just the SAME of Buddha and you feel great love arising in you for this unknown mysterious person — then forget all about Mohammedanism and the Koran and Mohammed Then create the climate of Buddha around you, because that will be helpful, that will nourish you, that will strengthen you.

http://www.truveo.com/A-Question-of-Taste-Steve-Jobs-and-Bill-Gates/id/1476475167

Die Beatles haben das sehr gut ausgedrückt: „Can´t buy me love“. Das Leben ist ein Spielplatz für uns Seelen, damit wir wachsen und die Lektionen lernen können, die wir brauchen und für die wir uns entschieden haben. Wir sind hier, um zu lernen. A haiku reads: IF YOU DO NOT BELIEVE, LOOK AT SEPTEMBER, LOOK AT OCTOBER; HOW THE YELLOW LEAVES FALL, AND FILL MOUNTAIN AND RIVER. A man of awakening just drops like a dry leaf when the time comes. There is no grudge, no clinging, no desire to go on living in this body, but an absolute trust that life will continue. But this is possible only if you enter yourself and experience the continuum of existence.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1416954694878235092&ei=FXtbSbLGFoj22gLG-pS8DA&q=

Three guys are sitting in the pub one evening, talking about their dogs. The first guy, a car salesman, says, “My dog is incredible, I have trained him as my assistant. Watch this!” He whistles, and his dog jumps up and races out of the door. Five minutes later, he is back. In his mouth are all the papers, signed and sealed, of a brand new Cadillac car he has just sold. The salesman pulls out a box of biscuits and gives one to his dog. “That’s nothing,” says the next guy, a doctor. Just then, there is a screech of brakes and a crash of metal outside the pub. The doctor whistles and his dog jumps up and races out of the door. Within five minutes the dog has bandaged up all the casualties, called an ambulance and comes running back into the pub. So the doctor gives his dog a biscuit. “That’s nothing,” says the third guy, a lawyer. He gives a whistle and his dog jumps up, eats all the biscuits, screws the other two dogs and then goes out to lunch.

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=uhSoltnuEV4

A great mystic was dying. He called his disciple, the chief disciple. The disciple rejoiced very much that the master is calling him. There is a great crowd and he is calling only him; he must be giving some secret key that he has not given to anybody up to now. “This is the way he is choosing me as his successor!” He came close. The master said, “I have only one thing to tell you. I didn’t listen to my master — he had also told me when he was dying, but I was just a fool and I didn’t listen, and I didn’t even understand what he meant. But I am telling you from my own experience he is right, although it had looked very absurd when he said it to me.” The disciple asked, “What is it? Please tell me. I will try to follow it word by word.” The master said, “It is a very simple thing: never, never in your life keep a cat in your house!” And before the disciple could have asked why, the master died! Now he was at a loss — what a stupid kind of thing! And now whom to ask? He inquired of some old people in the village, “Is there any clue to this message? There must be something mysterious in this!” One old man said, “Yes, I know, because his master — your master’s master — had also told him, ‘Never, never keep a cat in your house!’ but he didn’t listen. I know the whole story.” The disciple said, “Please tell me so I can understand. What is the secret hidden behind it? I want it to be decoded for me so I can follow it.” The old man laughed. He said, “It is a simple thing, it is not absurd. Your master’s master had given him a great message, but he never inquired, ‘What is the meaning of it?’ You are at least intelligent enough to inquire about it. He simply forgot about it. Your master was young when the message was given; he used to live in the forest. He had only just two clothes with him; that was all that he possessed. But there were big rats in the house and they would destroy his clothes, and again and again he would have to ask the villagers for new clothes. “The villagers said, ‘Why don’t you keep a cat? You just keep a cat and the cat will eat the rats and there will be no problem. Otherwise — we are poor people — how can we go on supplying you new clothes every month?’ “It was so logical that he asked somebody for a cat. He got a cat, but then the problems started. The cat certainly saved his clothes, but the cat needed milk because once the rats were finished the cat was starving. And the poor man could not meditate because the cat was always there, crying, weeping, going round and round and round him. “He went to the villagers and they said, ‘This is a difficult thing — now we will have to supply milk for you. We can give you a cow. You be finished, you keep the cow. You can drink, and your cat can also survive. That way you need not come every day for your food either.’ “The idea was perfectly right. He took the cow… now the world started. That’s how the world starts. The cow needed grass, and the people said, ‘We will come in the coming holidays and we will clear the forest, prepare the ground. You start growing a little wheat, other things, and leave a part for the grass.’ “And the villagers came according to their promise. They cleared the forest, they cleaned the soil, they planted wheat. But now it was such a problem: you have to water…. And the whole day the poor man was engaged in looking after the field. No time to meditate, no time to read the scriptures! “He again went to the villagers. He said, ‘I am getting deeper and deeper into difficulties. Now the question is, when to meditate — no time is left.’ “They said, ‘You wait. One woman has just become a widow, and she is young and we are afraid that she will tempt the young people in the town. You please take her with you. And she is healthy enough — she will take care of your field, the cow, the cat, and she will prepare food for you, and she is very religious too. And don’t be worried, she will not disturb you.’ “That’s how things move to their logical conclusion. Now from the cat, how far the man had moved! “And the woman came and she started looking after him, and he was very happy for a few days. And she would massage his feet… and slowly slowly, what was going to happen happened: they got married. And when you get married in India, at least one dozen children — one dozen is the minimum! So all meditation, all sannyas, disappeared. “He remembered only when he was dying. He remembered again that when HIS master was dying he had told him, ‘Beware of the cats.’ That’s why he has told you. Now you be aware of the cats! Just one step in the wrong direction and you have to go the wrong way; and your mind is with you wherever you go.”

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh7hI-qchZw

Children never ask foolish questions. If you want to gather very foolish stories, you should approach the old people, because their foolishness has been ripened and seasoned. They have experienced ignorance in all its strength and heaviness. They are familiar with all the scriptures. They know all that has been said. They have become ‘knowers of the self.’ There is no harm in having become so. It is very good, very praiseworthy. If someone becomes a knower of the self, it is cause for celebration. They are so busy with this activity. You can argue for the whole of your life. I am not eager for any debates, I am not anxious for any isms. I am eager about this one small matter — that I may be able to decide clearly whether I am a killer of the self or a knower of the self. If you are a knower of the self, you are beyond consideration. The matter is over! If you are a killer of the self then something can be done. You will not know it in any way until you have translated it into action. Know it after putting it into practice — after its execution. Religion is experimentation, not thought. Religion is a method of acting, not of thinking. Religion is science, not philosophy. It is certainly a laboratory, but not a sophisticated one where we go and collect materials and instruments, and start performing experiments. You yourself are the laboratory. The whole experiment is conducted within yourself.

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=l1l-xALTO30

Life is like an ocean — wild. Waves upon waves come and go and nobody knows. And that’s the beauty of it. A real man is wild; he has no character. Not that he is not good, he is characterless, that does not mean he is evil. You say that a person is characterless when he is immoral; that is wrong. He also has a character, an immoral character. Don’t call him characterless. ‘Characterless’ is a tremendously beautiful word — only for a Buddha, or a Jesus, or a Krishna can you use that. Don’t use it for ordinary people. Just ordinary people you call characterless. They have their character, they have their fixity, they have their routine of life. They may be bad, their characters may be bad, but they are not characterless. Only a Buddha is characterless. Characterlessness is the profoundest beauty possible because it means: a totally new response each moment. Each moment a Buddha faces life, a Jesus faces life. He does not carry ready-made answers. What he is going to say, nobody knows; what he is going to do, nobody knows; how he is going to act, nobody knows, not even he himself. If he himself knows, then he is just telling himself funny stories. Then it is all foolish.

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=-gf3OIEcHE8

MATTHEW 21 12 AND JESUS WENT INTO THE TEMPLE OF GOD, AND CAST OUT ALL THEM THAT SOLD AND BOUGHT IN THE TEMPLE, AND OVERTHREW THE TABLES OF THE MONEY-CHANGERS, AND THE SEATS OF THEM THAT SOLD DOVES, 13 AND SAID UNTO THEM, IT IS WRITTEN, MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED THE HOUSE OF PRAYER; BUT YE HAVE MADE IT A DEN OF THIEVES. 23 AND WHEN HE WAS COME INTO THE TEMPLE, THE CHIEF PRIESTS AND THE ELDERS OF THE PEOPLE CAME UNTO HIM AS HE WAS TEACHING, AND SAID, BY WHAT AUTHORITY DOEST THOU THESE THINGS? AND WHO GAVE THEE THIS AUTHORITY? 24 AND JESUS ANSWERED AND SAID UNTO THEM… 25… A CERTAIN MAN HAD TWO SONS; AND HE CAME TO THE FIRST, AND SAID, SON, GO WORK TODAY IN MY VINEYARD. 29 HE ANSWERED AND SAID, I WILL NOT: BUT AFTERWARD HE REPENTED, AND WENT. 30 AND HE CAME TO THE SECOND, AND SAID LIKEWISE. AND HE ANSWERED AND SAID, I GO, SIR: AND WENT NOT. 31 WHETHER OF THEM TWAIN DID THE WILL OF HIS FATHER. THEY SAY UNTO HIM, THE FIRST. JESUS SAITH UNTO THEM, VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, THAT THE PUBLICANS AND THE HARLOTS GO INTO THE KINGDOM OF GOD BEFORE YOU. 32 AND WHEN THE CHIEF PRIESTS AND THE PHARISEES HAD HEARD HIS PARABLES, THEY PERCEIVED THAT HE SPAKE OF THEM. 33 BUT WHEN THEY SOUGHT TO LAY HANDS ON HIM, THEY FEARED THE MULTITUDE, BECAUSE THEY TOOK HIM FOR A PROPHET.

ALL REVOLUTIONS have failed. And it really means all. The very concept of revolution proved absolutely futile, a mirage. Revolution means a rebellion organized. But you cannot organize a rebellion — that’s impossible — because in the very organization, the rebellion dies. Organization is against rebellion; so all revolutions fail because they try to succeed. To be successful they have to be organized. The moment they are organized they become another establishment. They may be anti-establishment but still, they have their own establishment. They cannot be non-establishment — that is impossible. Organize a revolution and you have killed it. An organized revolution is aborted already.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7953653817285708950&ei=IIKtSPjXCI6W2AKR89GWDA&q=

The Taoism has endured because its principles are as real today as they were 25 centuries ago, for they reveal the patterns of living systems — the flow of energy that occurs in the natural world as well as in individuals, families, relationships, institutions and nations. In using the Tao, we can all become leaders, courageous and resourceful individuals who challenge and inspire people to fulfill their highest potential. Each of the principles — including vision, timing, respect, building community, empowerment and growth, communication, conflict resolution and harmony — that have stood the test of time, is a dynamic answer for facing the challenges of today’s world. Many people of the past attained wisdom, for honesty was a part of their nature. In today’s world who worries about honesty? If you can put forth your arguments impressively, it doesn’t matter whether you really know what you are talking about, because people are bound to flock around you. It is a matter of how you advertise yourself, like any marketable commodity. If you advertise well, if you succeed in awakening the passion and the greed of the people, you are bound to attract a formidable clientele.

One of the mathematicians in the beginning part of the last century — a very famous mathematician, one of the greatest in the whole history of mathematics – Freger had his whole life devoted to creating a mathematical system which dissolves all paradoxes, all mysteries, all puzzles, and solves everything — the ultimate solution. And he was just going to publish it — it is published now and it is a tremendous task that he has done…. But Bertrand Russell — a young man at that time, and not very famous, just a little bit known as a philosopher in philosophical circles — was also interested in mathematics. Knowing that Freger was going to publish a book which was going to solve all paradoxes, mysteries, and mathematical problems, he sent a paradox to this great mathematician who was trying to solve all great mysteries — a simple paradox. Freger was devastated, he felt all enthusiasm gone. The books were ready — two volumes, his whole life’s work — and this man sends a brief letter with a small paradox saying, “Before you publish your book, please think about this paradox.” That paradox has become famous as Bertrand Russell’s paradox. It is very simple, but Freger had no answer for it He did not publish his books in his life; they were published after his death. They are monumental, but he failed in the purpose of solving all paradoxes. He could not solve the single paradox that Russell had sent him. The paradox is very simple: All the libraries in the country are ordered to make a catalogue of all the books in the library and send the catalogue to the national library. One librarian made the whole catalogue, and as he was going to pack and send the catalogue to the national library, a question arose in his mind: “Should I also include this catalogue inside or not? — because this too is a book in the library. And the order is clear that all the books in the library should be catalogued. “Now, what am I to do about this catalogue? This is a book in the library, so to include it seems to be right according to the order.” This problem must have arisen in many a librarian’s mind. What happened was that two types of catalogues arrived in the national library. The national librarian made two piles, one which included the catalogue also in it, and another pile which did not include the catalogue in it. The national librarian was ordered to make a catalogue of all the catalogues that didn’t include the catalogue in themselves. So he made a catalogue of all those catalogues which did not include the catalogue in themselves. But when he was finishing he was puzzled what to do about his own catalogue. If he did not include it, then one catalogue which did not include itself would be left out of his catalogue. If he included it then this would not be a catalogue of only those catalogues which did not include themselves. So Russell sent this simple paradox: “What is this librarian supposed to do? Before you go on solving other, bigger problems, please solve this problem! This librarian is in a difficulty.” Now, whatever you do is wrong. If you don’t include this catalogue, then one catalogue which does not include itself is out of your catalogue: all catalogues which do not include themselves are not included in it. If you include it then this is not a catalogue of only those which do not include…. Freger was finished; Russell also had no answer for it Why has God been created? — just to solve an unresolved question: Who created the universe? From that question all the religions take the plunge into some hypothesis — God created the world…. But the question is exactly the same as Bertrand Russell’s paradox. It is nothing different, it is just that that is mathematics and this is religion — but the problem is the same. The axiom is that anything that exists has to be created by somebody. How can it come into existence by itself? This is the problem.

A man who lives at his SAHASRAR, lives in a totally different world. You may think that Buddha is walking with you on the road — he is walking on a different road, he is walking in a different world. He may be just walking with you, but that doesn’t mean anything — because his vision is different. His energy is at a different altitude. He looks at the world from a different clarity. BUDDHA SAYS THAT LUST IS THE MOST POWERFUL THING in man’s life, because it is the reservoir of all his energies. But there is no need to feel despondent: “THERE IS NOTHING LIKE LUST. LUST MAY BE SAID TO BE THE MOST POWERFUL PASSION. FORTUNATELY, WE HAVE BUT ONE THING WHICH IS MORE POWERFUL. IF THE THIRST FOR TRUTH WERE WEAKER THAN PASSION, HOW MANY OF US IN THE WORLD WOULD BE ABLE TO FOLLOW THE WAY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS?” He says there is one thing which is higher than lust, that is the thirst for truth. There is one thing which is higher than life and that is the search for truth. People can sacrifice their life for it. They can sacrifice their passion for it. The highest passion is for truth; Buddha calls it the passion for truth — you can call it the passion for Tao — it means the same thing.

Enlightenment is not something that is going to come to you from somewhere else. Desire dropped, and you are a buddha. The only difference between you and a buddha is desire. It happened to Gautam Siddhartha exactly the same way. For six years he was also continuously hankering for enlightenment and could not attain it. For six years he tried hard, harder than any man has ever done. He risked all. He was a warrior, a kshatriya — a man who knew only how to fight. He fought with God, with existence. He wanted to conquer truth, he wanted to become a conqueror. And after six years of arduous effort he was reaching nowhere, not even a single inch closer to truth than when he started. One full-moon night sitting under the tree, he started looking backwards. Six years have passed since he renounced his family, his palace, his kingdom. All that is written in the scriptures he has done and all that the teachers he came across told him to do he has done — and he has done it with totality. Now there is nothing more to do. This whole project has failed. Then suddenly he became aware that “Although I was searching for truth, I was searching for God, I was still the same person — the same ego, the same desire, the same ambition: the ambition to conquer, to be victorious. I was the same old man; these six years nothing has changed. Objects of desires have changed — they are no longer worldly, they are otherworldly — but what difference does it make? Desire is desire, worldly or otherworldly, it doesn’t matter. Desire is desire; its nature is the same.” Seeing it and seeing the futility of it, that evening he dropped… or it will be better to say, desire dropped itself. That evening as the moon rose, a totally new being arose in him: a desireless consciousness, a nonambitious being, not asking for anything. His eyes were clear for the first time, unclouded, no smoke of desire. His flame was burning bright. That night he slept for the first time in his life without dreams, because once desires disappear, dreams disappear. Dreams are reflections of your desires. And early morning just before the sun was to rise, he opened his eyes. There was nothing to do that day, all is finished. He is no longer interested in the world, he is no longer interested in the other world. He remained in the moment; there were no projects to do. He was utterly empty. He looked at the rising sun… and that was the moment when he became enlightened. What is enlightenment? — the insight that desire is futile, that ambition is illness. Then suddenly you are thrown back to the present moment. To be in the present is to be enlightened. To be now and to be here is to be enlightened.

He who knows does not blog; he who blogs does not know To be a Taoist means many things to many people. To be a practitioner of contemporary Taoism simply means to have realised that we are all minute parts of an indescribably large Whole (the Tao), and to choose therefore to ‘Flow Like Water’ and live in a spontaneous, natural manner. Personal growth and spiritual development is guided by the principles of eastern Philosophy, particularly modern philosophical Taoism developing constructive habits and achieving success with minimal effort, meditating - Taoist, Zen or otherwise. So the man who is meditating forgets all the past, drops all longings for the future. It is enough to know the present. By knowing it, by entering into its complexities, you will know the whole universe. And when you reach to your life source… that too is atomic, an individual life source. But it has to be connected with the universe in some way; otherwise you cannot live. So once you find your life source, you have found the way. Just in the blink of an eye, you are on the other shore. You have entered into the universal existence. By becoming a taoist you are not becoming part of a creed, because there is none; you are not becoming part of a sect, because this is not a sect at all. Taoism believes in the individual, its belief in the individual is absolute. It is not an organization. The relationship is personal and intimate; each taoist is related to Tao directly — there is no via. But Taoism can only indicate, it can become a finger pointing to the moon: then you have to make the whole journey. It is a long, arduous journey but tremendously ecstatic too, with many thrills and adventures. It is not a boring journey — arduous certainly but tremendously interesting: there is nothing more mysterious than the path of spiritual growth. Many worlds exist within this one world. There are as many worlds as there are individuals in each of the different species. And on an even more minute level of examination, there are as many worlds as there are living organisms. In this one world the number of individual worlds is countless because the number of beings who know, perceive and experience are countless as well. The universe is subdivided into as many imaginary worlds as there are separate cogs in a wheel. On a lower level than man there are quite a large number of animals whose sense faculties are far inferior to those of men. We know that many of them cannot see or hear. Some cannot taste; some cannot smell. These creatures do not have the total experience of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell that man has. The realm of a man’s experience extends only as far as his senses allow, and it would be sheer ignorance to try to restrict the real world to that which our limited knowledge is able to perceive. Remember, unless Tao is achieved, nothing is achieved. Unless Tao is realised, we are failures, utter failures. It is only with the realisation of Tao that victory arrives; there is no other victory. All are cover-ups for defeats. One can have all the money of the world and all the power and all the prestige and fame, but they are all cover-ups, cover-ups to hide the wounds — wounds of continuous defeats, wounds that every desire and its disillusionment have left behind. When Tao is there, then creativity is simply a consequence of its presence, just its presence. You can attain to its presence through love or awareness, it doesn’t matter. How you annihilate yourself is irrelevant; the only thing is that you should be annihilated, that you should not be. Do it through love, that will do. How you commit suicide does not matter, with what kind of poison. Whether you jump from a cliff, or you lie down in front of a railway train, or you shoot yourself, or you hang yourself, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you should have committed the suicide of the ego: through love, through awareness; through Yoga, through Tantra, Taoism, Zen, Sufism, Hassidism. It doesn’t matter; these are different ways of committing suicide. I don’t mean the physical, I mean the metaphysical. Once you are not there, all that is left is Tao.

Jesus says that “Unless you are like a child, you will not enter into my kingdom of God.” But remember, he does not mean childishness. Childishness is just the opposite of being like a child. A childish person is never like a child. He pretends to be a grown-up; he is a pretender. A childlike person is one who has become so mature, so alive, so aware, that he drops all pretensions. He is nude and naked, he is true, he is innocent. Drop childishness, and become a child; and you will be mature. And you will be ready, ready to take the jump into yourself. It is good to help others, because there is nobody really who is other. Helping others, you are helping yourself because we are parts of each other, members of one another. We are joined together. If I help you to be happy, I become happy. If I help you to be miserable, I become miserable. Our life is together here; it is a togetherness; we are not separate. On the periphery we may be separate; at the center we are one. Nothing to be worried about. If you have the feeling that you enjoy sharing whatsoever you have understood, howsoever little it is, if you have the feeling that you enjoy, you feel blissful, you feel joyful — and no ego arises out of it…. Let that be the criterion: if ego arises out of it, then you are not helping others, and you are destroying yourself meanwhile. If no ego arises — you simply feel peaceful and silent and happy that you shared something with somebody, a grace descends on you — then you are perfectly right. Then go on the housetops and shout. When you have, share it. And there is no need to wait, that when you have the whole of it, then you will share it. Then you will not have the whole, ever. Share it, and you will get more. Give it, and you will get more. But remember only one thing: the ego should not enter in. The moment you see ego arising, the moment you see you are feeling great, superior to others, holier than others, then something is going wrong. Then it is better to wait. You are not to wait for the whole of God to happen to you, but you are to wait for the whole of the ego to go. And the water is very soft, so the rock never feels worried, but the water goes on falling, goes on falling, goes on falling, and by and by, unaware what is happening, the rock slowly, slowly disappears, becomes sand, and is taken far away. Here are two ancient rules, very fundamental rules for the seekers, very ancient: First, that you must be like a man who has been bitten by a snake and knows he has not a moment to lose. And second, that you must be like a man who has awakened to find that his horse has been stolen and it is too late to lock the door and there is no hurry. But the first principle cannot be told. If it would be told to you, it would become the second principle.

The basis-democratic, alternative political and cultural centre named ‘Ungdomshuset’, an occupied house in Copenhagen, Denmark has functioned as a very important political and social cultural centre since 1982. It had been involved in a long political and legal battle for its existence. But it was forcefully evicted by riot police and airborne anti-terror squads. Danish police made an end to this by entering the roof of the building using a helicopter and started an unannouced full scale eviction. Riot-police sealed off nearby streets quickly and attacked the building using teargas. As the whole area was closed off, so documenting the action and police-behaviour was difficult. Some witnesses say that teargas and police violence was plentiful, although the eviction happened swiftly and according to police in a “relatively calm manner”. After serious social conflicts and uprisings by the autonomist and squatting movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the subsequent ‘Ungdomshuset’ was offered as part of a political compromise to the activists. The mainly young activists dubbed it “Ungdomshuset” (”The Youth House”), and started running various cultural and political activities out of there. It has for many years served as one of the only multicultural, basis-democratic collectives/community centres in Copenhagen, with the exception of the Freetown Christiania. Property rights remained in the hands of the local council, which in 1999 decided to disregard the previous political compromise and sell the house to the highest bidder. In 2003 the fundamentalist Christian sect “Faderhuset”, which had bought the property in 2001 prompted the authorities to evict the “Ungdomshuset” and its users. Despite many demonstrations in support of “Ungdomshuset” Faderhuset won the ensuing courtcase and the politicians avoided serious involvement in the conflict, despite the political nature of the case. Many domestic demonstrations saw alleged police brutality and in December an “Ungdomshuset” demonstration turned into a major confrontation between activists from all over Europe and the police. Subsequently the “Ungdomshuset” was fortified in order to avoid an eviction and return the issue to the political arena. Now the anti-terror squad landed on the roof of the “Ungdomshuset” via helicopters, while later in the day activists from all over Copenhagen rushed to protest the eviction of “Ungdomshuset”, they were met by aggressive policemen in riot gear blocking the street arresting suspected troublemakers with many resulting injuries. The demonstrators fought back and tried to reclaim the “Ungdomshuset”, but were repelled and activists took to the nearby streets and started building barricades, while engaging police in skirmishes. The neighbourhoods had been entirely shut down by local residents and activists. While sympathisers from all over Europe had been rushing in, although police was attempting to detain suspected activists at the borders. The house has functioned as a political and cultural centre, home to political demonstrations, political debates, concerts and many more cultural events since 1982. It has served as a basis-democratic remainder that ‘another world is possible’ until this morning. The homepage of “Ungdomshuset” had been shot down but a mirror had been set up (in English). Also there was a short video-introduction produced before the eviction. Danish police were coming in from all over the country to defend the Christian sect ‘Faderhuset’ (not related to the Danish Church) and their newly acquired Ungdomshus. There had been several fires and barricades all over Copenhagen, but mainly concentrated in the burrough called Nørrebro. Though actual fights have been limited, it seems that “task teams” of protesters were starting fires all over the city to keep the police occupied. As soon one fire was put out, another was started somewhere else. The fires were mainly comprimised of cars drawn out on the streets, large garbage containers, bicycles and construction parts such as wood. Due to the riots there had been several black outs in kopenhagen - activists seem to have cut eletricity cables. The danish state asked swedish police for help.

If somebody is crying, help him to cry well, and soon he will laugh. If somebody is miserable don’t try to bring him out of it; help him to sink in. Soon he will come out of it completely freed. If somebody is dying, help him die. He will resurrect. Just let life work. Simply understand the law and don’t go against it, that’s all. This is the law: never enforce and don’t be bothered about the opposite. The opposite is coming on its own. It is just like a swinging pendulum. And the circle has to be complete — both yin and yang — and then a person is at peace. One should be capable of being negative totally, of being positive totally. Ordinarily the whole humanity has been taught to be positive and not to be negative. The result is that humanity has become negative. People don’t know what joy is. They have forgotten the very language. You talk about bliss, and they simply listen to the word; they don’t have any experience of it. And they have been taught continuously to be blissful, joyful. They only know what anger and sadness is. They have been taught to cling to just one polarity and have not been allowed to move to the other polarity. Life exists between these two poles… in the movement is life. And a real life implies both. A real life is so comprehensive that day and night, summer and winter, god and devil, all are in it. A god who is without the devil is not much of a god; he will be a very poor god. And a devil that has no divinity in him will simply be worth nothing. The day is rich because you have rested deeply in the night… the darkness allowed you rest. There are joys of work, but if you have worked hard, only then is the night beautiful. Otherwise you just go on changing from side to side the whole night and there is no sleep. This is what it means to be a whole person. Nothing should be excluded… nothing should be excluded. Everything should be included, and in that inclusion of everything, you start soaring. Otherwise every human being is crippled because something has been excluded. Somebody has excluded his anger, somebody has excluded his sex, somebody has excluded something else No human being seems to be whole, but wounded, cut, fragmented. Whatsoever is in you has to be included in your higher synthesis… it has its role to play. In the higher orchestra of your being, nothing should be left behind. All notes have to fall in tune, in harmony. Then something arises which is more than the total of all — and that is the whole. The whole is more than the total. Whole and total do not mean the same thing.

An emperor’s procession was moving down a road. As one crossroad a man began hurling stones and insults. The emperor’s soldiers immediately took him into custody and threw him into prison. But while the man was throwing rocks and shouting abuses the emperor had simply laughed. His soldiers had been quite surprised and his chief minister had asked, “My Lord, why are you laughing?” The emperor had replied, “I don’t think that man knows what he’s doing. He must be drunk. In any case, bring him to me tomorrow morning.” The man was accordingly brought before the monarch the next morning. The emperor inquired, “Why did you insult me and throw stones at me yesterday?” Very subdued, the man said, “My Lord, what are you saying? Me? Abusing you? Impossible! If I insulted you I could not have been myself. I was drunk and not in my right senses. It was not the real me at all, Really, Your Majesty, I have no idea what I said at all.” We are not ourselves either. We walk, talk, love hate and wage war — all in sleep. If someone from another planet were to see us he would most certainly conclude that the whole human race was is some kind of deep sleep. In three thousand years mankind has fought some fifteen thousand wars. Does this sound like a humanity that is wide awake and aware of itself? From the moment he is born until be breaths his last the whole story of a man’s life is one of death, anxiety, sorrow and pain. Not a single moment of real happiness does he experience. What joy is, what delight is, remains totally unknown to him. A man lives his whole life without a single glimpse of joy. You cannot say such a man is in his right senses. Worry, suffering, sorrow, despair and madness seem to be the story of his life. But we do not notice this because all around us everyone else is asleep too. Once in a while a conscious, wide-awake man is born, and those who are asleep cannot tolerate him. They lose their tempers and they kill him. We crucified Jesus Christ because he was awake. People in deep sleep cannot bear the presence of such a man. He is a symbol of disrespect to those who are not awake. Such men disturb our sleep, and so we give a cup of poison to a Socrates. We behave toward conscious, awakened men as madmen would were they to find a sane man in their midst. We move among people who are spiritually asleep and so we fail to realize that we ourselves are also asleep. We destroy those who are spiritually awake because such men disturb and plague us. We cannot possibly understand the full meaning of life because all around us everyone is asleep. We only know the physical form of life; we never try to move inside the spiritual. We bed down on the parapet and think we are guests in the palace.

Borrowed knowledge creates great deception because you start feeling as if you know — and that “as if” is a big “as if.” Truth liberates, belief binds. Truth liberates because it has to be yours; it has to be an inner experience, an encounter with that which is. Buddha is a nonbeliever. He is not an atheist like Karl Marx or Friedrich Nietzsche; neither is he a theist like all the priests of all the religions. He is an agnostic. He neither believes nor disbelieves; he is open. That is his great gift to the world: to be open to truth. Go utterly naked, without any conclusions, without any ideology, any prejudice. Otherwise there is every possibility that you will project your own idea. You will not see that which is, you will see only that which you want to see. You will be creating your own reality which is bound to be false. Reality has not to be invented, it has to be discovered. It is already there. And remember, it is not the reality which is hidden; it is your eyes which are covered with layers of dust. Buddha gave to the world a nonmetaphysical religion, a psychological religion. He simply helps you to go beyond mind. He helps you to understand the mind because it is only through understanding that transcendence happens. But when Buddha has given the most psychological religion to the world, don’t misunderstand it. He has not given a psychology; he has given a psychological religion which is a totally different phenomenon. He has not given a psychology like Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Adler, Pavlov, Skinner, etcetera. These people are confined to the mind; they think mind is all. There is nothing beyond the mind, so analyze the mind. If you have found the truth of the mind you have found the truth, according to them. That is beginning with a wrong attitude. Man is neither the body nor the mind. Man is the awareness within which can look at the body, which can look at the mind, which is capable of witnessing all. You are the witness. Hence Buddha has not given a psychology. A psychology is a very ordinary phenomenon. It does not bring transformation to your life because it cannot bring any transcendence. At the most it helps you to be a little more adjusted to yourself and to the world that surrounds you, to the society, to the people with whom you have to live. It helps you to become a little more adjusted. Psychology is basically orthodox; it is not revolutionary, it cannot be. It serves the status quo, it serves the establishment. It keeps you within the boundaries; it does not help you to go beyond the boundaries. It is not in your service. It is controlled by those who are in power — by the state, by the church, by the society. In a very disguised way it keeps you tethered to the collective mind. It does not help you to become an individual.

If murder is wrong, then whether it is committed by the man or by the society and its court, makes no difference. Killing certainly is a crime. The death penalty is a crime committed by the society against a single individual, who is helpless. I cannot call it a penalty, it is a crime. And you can understand why it is committed: it is revenge. Society is taking revenge because the man did not follow the rules of the society; the society is ready to kill him. But nobody bothers that when somebody murders, it shows that man is psychologically sick. Rather than sending him to imprisonment or to be executed, he should be sent into a nursing home where he can be taken care of — physically, psychologically, and spiritually. He is sick. He needs all the compassion of the society; there is no question of penalty, punishment. Yes, it is true, one man is murdered; but we cannot do anything about it. By murdering this man do you think the other will come back to life? If that were possible, I would be all in support of this man being removed — he is not worth being part of the society — and the other should be revived. But that does not happen. The other is gone forever; there is no way to revive him. Yes, you can do one thing; you can kill this man too. You are trying to wash blood with blood, mud with mud. You are not aware of what has happened in history in many cases. Three hundred years ago, in many cultures the madman was thought to be pretending. In many other cultures he was thought to be possessed by ghosts. In other cultures he was thought to be mad, but treatable by punishment. And these were the three ways mad people were taken care of. They were treated by beatings — strange treatment! — and by taking their blood out. Now you give blood transfusions; they used to do just the opposite — they used to take the blood out of the man. It was thought that he had too much energy. Naturally when his blood was taken out he became weak; he started showing signs of weakness because so much blood was taken out, and it was thought they had cured him of his madness. By beating a man, naturally once in a while it used to happen that the man came to his senses. It is almost as if a man is asleep and you start beating him and he wakes up. A madman has fallen out of his conscious mind. If you beat him too hard, once in a while it may happen that he wakes up into his consciousness again. That became a proof that beating is the right treatment. But is used to happen only once in a while; ninety-nine percent of the cases were unnecessarily beaten. But that one exception was the rule. It was thought that he was possessed by spirits, ghosts; then too beat him, because if he is possessed by ghosts the beating will reach the ghost, not him. You are not beating him, you are really beating the ghosts who are possessing him, and because of the beating they will escape.

Nobody can be an authority to anybody else. This whole idea of authority has to disappear from the world. Yes, people can share their experience, but that is not authority. Beware of all authorities. And the moment you see there is some authority hanging around your being, throw it out. Be finished with all that has been given to you, forced upon you, and the original face will start showing up. You never know, you cannot even imagine what your original face will be, what your true being will be. You will know only when you know, when you are face to face with yourself, when there is no hindrance of any kind and you are left totally alone. In that aloneness have flowered all the beings that have flowered. Not many have flowered. Only once in a while…. It is a strange tragedy that millions of people are born and only once in a while a person blossoms. That’s why there is no gardener, no God looking around, watching, caring, otherwise millions of trees and only one tree comes to flower…? Spring comes and goes and only one tree blossoms; millions of trees simply remain barren, unproductive. What kind of gardener is looking after the garden? This is enough proof that there is no gardener, no God; but that does not mean that you have to become pessimistic. In fact that gives you a new dimension — that you have to be your own gardener. It is good that there is no God, because you can be your own gardener. But then the whole responsibility is yours, you cannot blame anybody. Taking the God away you cannot blame the poor old man. Enough He has been blamed for everything: He created the world, He created this, He created that…. Take all that blame away from Him — He does not exist. You have created Him just to throw your responsibility on Him. Take your responsibility back. Accept your aloneness. Accept your ignorance. Accept your responsibility, and then see the miracle happening. One day suddenly you see yourself in a totally new light, as you have never seen yourself before. That day you are really born. Before that it was only a pre-birth process.

A man, who was a Christian Scientist, met a young man. He asked the young man, “Any news about your father?” The young man said, “He is very ill.” The Christian Scientist said, “All nonsense! Tell him, ‘Mind over matter.’ He believes he is ill, that’s all; it is his belief that is creating illness. Don’t believe in illness and you will be healthy.” After a few days again the young man came across this Christian Scientist, and the Christian Scientist asked, “How are things now with your old man? How is he?” And the young man said, “Now he believes that he is dead.”

In fact, body and mind are not two things: the body is the outer side of the mind; the mind is the inner side of the body. To use the phrase ‘body and mind’ is not right; you are bodymind, not even a hyphen in between. We should use it as a single word ‘bodymind’, ‘psychosomatic’. So of course, your inner affects your outer, your outer affects your inner — you are bodymind — but you are not finished with the bodymind. There is a witness also. Get in touch with your witnessing soul which watches the body and mind both. It watches life, it watches death; hence it transcends life and death both. Only this witness is immortal because it is never born and it never dies. The Zen people call it the original face. This witnessing is your original face. And meditation is nothing but an art to discover your original face. You are immortal, but not physically; just in your awareness, in your consciousness you are immortal, you are universal.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF AN ORDINARY GOD is a beautiful film. A man starts seeing a very ordinary God, just like an old hobo, with a hat cricketers use. Now, God in a hat which cricketers use! And he looks also like a cricket player. He is very old, but must have been in His young days a cricket player. And when God declared to this man, “You don’t recognize me: I am God, I created the world,” the man said, “My God! You created the world! Don’t say it to anybody otherwise people will think you are mad.” But the old man insisted, He said, “You want some proof?” The young man said, “I don’t want any proof. Just seeing you is enough to know that you are no God. This is not the way — that God suddenly stops you on the way; that you are going somewhere and He wants a lift! This is a strange meeting. I have heard about the God Moses met on the mountain and Jesus heard from the sky, and Mohammed… but God asking for a lift?” But the old man was stubborn, He said, “I will give you proof” And He gives him proof: He simply disappears. The young man looks all around — He was in the car sitting by his side — He is not there! He says, “My God!, perhaps He really was God, but what a funny God! And I missed the opportunity.” The old man appeared again, He said, “Look, when I was gone you started thinking you had missed an opportunity.” But seeing Him again the young man said, “You did some trick, you must know some magic. But I cannot accept you as God. Your clothes seem to be purchased from a second-hand place, or you have stolen them. They don’t fit you; they are too loose and too dirty — as if you have not taken a bath for many years.” But the old man said, “God is so pure that He does not need any bath or anything. And of course the clothes are very old, because I am very old. I have told you that I created the world; at that time I created these clothes. Since then I have not created anything, so they are very ancient.” The young man said, “What to do about you? Where do you want to get out?” He said, “Anywhere, because I am everywhere. The young man said, “Then why did you want a lift?” He said, “Just because I see a potential in you that you can become my messenger.” The young man said, “My God! Your messenger? If I say to anybody that you are God they will think I am mad!” But God said, “You try,” gave His picture to him and disappeared. The young man looked at the picture and said, “It is better to keep silent about the whole thing. Either I am hallucinating, dreaming….” He came home. His wife looked at him and said, “You look very worried.” He said, “No, nothing, there is nothing.” She said, “But you look very worried and pale and afraid, as if you have seen some ghost or something.” He said, “My God! You think I have seen something?” He took out the picture and showed the wife: “Can you recognize this man?” She said, “He looks like a hobo — perhaps an old cricket player, or maybe he just got a hat from some old clothes store. And what kind of dress…? Where did you find this picture, and why did you bring it home? He said, “Can you keep this thing secret? I have something to tell you. Close the door. This man is God. He asked for a lift.” His wife looked at her husband and said, “Wait, I will phone the doctor. What are you saying? — God asking for a lift in your car? And He has given this picture to you?” He said, “Yes, He has given this picture to me so that I can become His messenger. He wants me to become His messenger” The wife said, “The first thing is, you meet the doctor.” He tried hard: “I am perfectly sane, there is no problem.” But the wife said, “If you think this man is God, it is certain that there is some problem!” So she takes him to the doctor, and the doctor is also puzzled. He said, “I have seen many ideas about God but this is an absolutely novel idea. Where did you get this picture?” He said, “From God Himself He Himself gave it to me by His own hand; and He has shown a miracle too.” And he told them about the miracle. The wife, the doctor, the nurses, they all laughed; they said, “This is…!” So he said, “Wait.” He raised his eyes upwards and said, “God, now please help me… because these are all my friends. The doctor is my friend, the family doctor; my wife, the nurse — there is nobody from the outside, we are all like family. Please appear; otherwise they are all going to think that I am mad.” And suddenly the man came out from the ceiling! They all looked at Him, and He said, “Wherever you need me I will be present; you just go on spreading the word.” But he said, “This is a very difficult word, just because of your picture. Can’t you dress a little better? But He said, “No, this is my dress, and this is the way I am.” Now, four or five people had seen Him and they were all shocked: “This man is not mad, there is something in it.” The whole town became agog with the rumour that five people had seen God. And the thing became so hot that the church became immediately annoyed and irritated thinking that this was a joke…. “This man, and God!” The picture was printed in the newspapers and everybody was laughing: “If this is God, then everything is finished.” The problem became so much that the church had to call a meeting of the elders and force this man who was the messenger to appear before the council and prove that this was God. He tried, he told them, “Many times He has showed me miracles. Just this morning when I was shaving in my bathroom, a doubt arose in me that perhaps something was wrong with me; it was possible that I was simply fantasizing. And He immediately looked at me from the mirror. My picture disappeared and his picture was there in the mirror, and He said, ‘Again I go on giving you proofs, and you are again doubting.’” And then at the church, the young man appeared before the church council. The high priest was there, and they were determined to punish this man if… and they said, “You say that this man is God?” He said, “I have to say it. I have seen Him many times. He has shown me many miracles. This morning He appeared in my mirror.” Everybody laughed, and this poor man said, “He has chosen me as His messenger.” They said, “This time He has really chosen a great messenger! Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Jesus — they were some people — but this man is just a clerk in a railway station. Now what qualities have you got that He would choose you as the messenger?” He said, “I don’t know. I don’t have any qualities, and I have never dreamed in my life that God would choose me. But He has chosen me and He has promised that if there is a need He will come to support me.” So the church council asked, “Then let Him appear.” And they all were amazed that the door behind the priest opened, and God appeared. There was silence for a moment. Seeing God, the priest gathered courage and said, “You think you are God?” He said, “I don’t think, I am. And this is my messenger. But,” He said, “You can understand the difficulties of an ordinary God. I am an ordinary God, that’s why I have chosen an ordinary messenger, because to find an extraordinary messenger would be very difficult for me. You can see I am an ordinary, poor God. So don’t be angry with this poor clerk; what he is saying is absolutely right.” How are you going to recognize God if He meets you in a cricketer’s hat? — and of course He will be wearing some kind of hat — or without a hat. If He is bald, then He will be using a hat, some kind of hat.

We are all uncertain. So when somebody asks, ‘… is there a God?’ you become afraid deep down: he is making you uncertain again! Somehow you were managing to believe that there is a God and everything is okay — God in heaven and we on the earth, and everything is going well and He is taking care of this whole mess, this chaos, and things eventually will be right. And if there comes a man, a small child, and says, ‘Is there a God? Does God really exist?’ And he is asking so innocently — again he is provoking your uncertainty. You shout loudly, ‘Yes, there is a God!’ Against whom are you shouting? Against this child or against your own fear? Just as you are trying to make this child keep quiet, your parents had made you keep quiet. Your childhood is still there… uncertain. This is all absurd! There is no need to carry such self-confidence. If you know, you know — there is no need for self-confidence. If you don’t know, you don’t know. What is the need for self-confidence? You see the point? If you know, you know. There is no need for self-confidence. If you don’t know, you don’t know. What will self-confidence do? So in either case, it is not needed — it is an unnecessary burden. Forget about it! And just go free. Let the spontaneity decide. Of course then you will become very inconsis-tent, because then you cannot be consistent. Each moment has its own spontaneity… each moment has its own say. Deep down there will be a consistency, but that will not be on the surface. Your freedom will be consistently there, but your statements will all be different. A real man of understanding is bound to be contradictory, because a real man of understanding only lives the moment. One can simply be oneself — there is no need for any self-confidence. And when self-confidence disappears, you will not have an unself-confidence — that disappears with it too. It is its shadow. How can you be unself-confident when there is no self-confidence? They both go together. You are simply there then — naturally there… responsive. And your response is authentic, not authoritative. An authoritative response is never authentic, and an authentic response is never authoritative. But to be authentic is more valuable. To be authentic carries its own authority — but it is not authoritative. It is sincere. And sincerity has its own weight, it goes deeper… touches the very core of your being. Authority is very superficial, authority is borrowed — sincerity is your own flowering. So forget about it! There is no need.

It is not Buddha who is the founder of Buddhism, but the priests who followed. And it is so with every religion. Whenever a truth has entered into somebody’s being, whenever somebody has received God, priests gather together around him. They never miss the opportunity; they are the most cunning people. They start exploiting the situation. And once the enlightened person is gone, and then the priests become the masters, the owners. The past has been created by the priests. It is a negative past: life-denying, anti-life, anti-love, anti-joy, anti-celebration. It has created only two kinds of people in the world: those who are sincere, they are suffering from negativity, anguish, despair; and those who are not sincere, they have become hypocrites. They go on talking about the anti-life religious teachings, and from the backdoor they live a totally different life. On the surface they are spiritualists, deep down they are materialists. And, remember, you are both body and soul, because Tao is both: God and the universe. The universe is its manifestation. Your body is the manifestation of your soul. In the past, because the religions talked in terms of anti-materialism they created two kinds of people: sincere people who had to declare that they were materialists, and that is not good; because of that declaration they became closed to the spiritual dimension, and then there were insincere, cunning people who talked about spiritualism and remained materialists. You can see it in India. Indians are the most materialistic. They talk about spiritualism, they brag about spiritualism, but all that bragging and all that talking is just to hide, to cover their reality. They are hypocrites. The more religious a country pretends to be, the more hypocritical it is. And then man is split. Either the spiritual dimension becomes closed, or you become a split person. And both alternatives are wrong. A new man is needed who will affirm life, who will love life, who will love love, who will love this existence as it is, who will not make demands that first it has to be perfect, who will celebrate life with all its limitations. Love your body, live your body to its totality. Love your instincts, your desires, and live them in their totality. And you will be surprised: if you love your life, life starts opening its doors to you. If you love, mysteries are revealed to you, secrets are handed over to you. If you love your body, sooner or later you will become aware of the soul that resides in it. If you love the trees and the mountains and the rivers, sooner or later you will see the invisible hands of God behind everything. His signature is on every leaf. You just need eyes to see, and only positive eyes can see; negative eyes cannot see. Negative eyes are blind! Negative eyes only see the wrong.