... shot. And the story he is telling is just to make me aware that he is awake: it will not be easy to steal anything." So finally he had to declare himself He said, "I am here, and suffering. Now stop and let me go!" My grandfather was such a good man and always nice and helpful to everybody; whoever came to him, he was helping. He would give money to people. If they had come for a loan...

..., and they wanted to put something down as mortgage, he never accepted it. He said, "I don't know - tomorrow I may die, then who will give you this mortgage back? You take the money. If you can manage to give it back, good. If you cannot manage, nothing to be worried about - I have enough." He never took those people's signatures as proof that they had taken money. I told him, "You...

... should have their signatures as proof that they have been lent money." He said, "It is not a loan, it is their money. They may be thinking it is a loan, but I am not thinking of it as a loan. So if they return it, good; if they don't return it, there is no loss because I was never expecting them to. And they are so poor; how are they going to return it?" Such a good man, a beautiful man...

... repress in everybody's mind the idea of dropping out of life. It is a well- known, well-established fact that anybody with a little intelligence thinks in his life - at least one time certainly, that is the minimum - of committing suicide. Why? Because life seems to be just boredom. Marriage has failed. Religion has failed. Politics leads nowhere. You can have all the money in the world, still you are...

... said, "You did something original. Every year somebody needs to do something original." The manager said, "You are supporting him! We are going to give him to the police because he has destroyed the whole thing. Now tomorrow from where are we going to start the story? Tickets have been sold; and people will ask for their money back if the story is finished. It was just the opening day...

... height of point of no return; then one is simply lost. One never comes back. When I say live dangerously, I mean don't live the life of ordinary respectability - - that you are a mayor in a town, or a member of the cooperation. This is not life. Or you are a minister, or you have a good profession and are earning well and money goes on accumulating in the bank and everything is going perfectly well...

... life for ordinary, mundane things. To be spiritual means to understand that these small things should not be given too much importance. I am not saying that they are meaningless. I am saying that they are meaningful, but not as meaningful as you think. Money is needed. It is a need. But money is not the goal and cannot be the goal. A house is needed, certainly. It is a need. I am not an ascetic and I...

... don't want you to destroy your houses and escape to the Himalayas. The house is needed - but the house is needed for you. Don't misunderstand it. As I see people, the whole thing has gone topsy-turvy. They exist as if they are needed for the house. They go on working for the house. As if they are needed for the bank balance - they simply go on collecting money and then they die. And they had never...

... and money, and suddenly you see - you are just empty and your whole life has been a wastage. Things have accumulated and you have disappeared. Things are there, possessions are there, but the master is missing. This is the nature of desire. Everybody feels stuck. I FEEL STUCK. I FEEL I HAVE AN ESSENTIAL BEING INSIDE WHICH WANTS TO GET OUT. That is not your essential being. Because the essential...

.... IT WANTS TO GRAB GIRLS AND SEXUALLY ENJOY. First thing to remember - if you grab a woman, you will never enjoy. Because enjoyment cannot be forced. It is a subtle rhythm. When a woman also loves you, only then this music arises between the two which gives joy, delight. You can grab a woman - and that's what people are doing. Somebody is doing just by physical force, somebody is doing by money-force...

...... because he has money so he can purchase any woman... somebody is doing by some other means. As I see, out of a hundred, ninety-nine people have grabbed women and men. Rarely it happens that a person is in love. When you are in love, you don't grab the woman and the woman does not grab you. When you are in love, love possesses you both. When you are in love, you don't possess each other. You possess not...

... - because that which does not correspond to your inner reality cannot be real. It is just like money: if you go to the market, it has value. If you simply sit alone with your money, it has no value. The value comes only when you relate with others, because the value is just an agreement between you and the others. That's why money has a beautiful name: it is called currency.'Currency' means: when money...

... moves it has value; when it does not move it has no value. If you go on keeping it in your pocket always and always, it is meaningless. You can keep anything else instead of it; it will be the same. Money has value when it changes hands. From one hand to another - then there is value. Value is in its being a currency, a moving force. When it moves from you to somebody else it has value. Again, if it...

... is stuck there it loses value. That's why miserly people are the poorest in the world: they have money but they don't know that money has value only when it is a currency. You can hide it in your treasure chest; you will remain poor. Time is also a currency between two people, between relationships, between societies. But in the inner world, when you are alone, it is simply meaningless. All the...

..., he is a slave. We want slaves here, we don't want masters and rebellions. We want to run our business, our industries, our whole empire for earning money - we want people here who are always obedient. Husbands have proved the best people because they are trained, tamed, they are not wild. Their wives have done a great service to all the vested interests." He told me, "I had this encounter...

..., that only our people are not allowed illegal activities. What about others? And we are a small minority. But perhaps he has not been conscious of what he is demanding. He will become a laughingstock in the court. And in the court, we are going to demand that all these police people be given salaries from public money to teach people illegal activities. They should open a college in Poona: whoever...

... mother is dying and nobody is bothering about it. He has not even enough money for medicine or to call a doctor. What do you want him to do? He was sentenced to three years in jail, and when he entered the jail cell there was one person resting on his bed, and two other criminals were giving him a massage. The man asked, "For how many years are you going to be here?" He said, "Three...

... humiliated by anything. He had no money. As he was released from jail he hired a tonga, a horse-driven vehicle. The driver asked, "Where do you want to go? because you don't have a home...." He said, "I have a home, and I am coming out of there. Three-fourths of the time I rest in my home, one-fourth of the time I come out in the world to see what is happening - just for a change. You take...

... me to Mr. Mody's shop" - that was the place where he was caught stealing, and Mody was the person who had managed to send him for five years into jail. The driver said, "You are really a unique person...." He said, "Where else can I go? He has destroyed my home, he sent me to jail. I don't even have money to pay you; he will have to pay you. He will have to pay money to you and...

... said, "Good morning," and Mr. Mody was trembling. He entered the shop, sat on a chair and told him, "Pay the driver, because I don't have any money. And now find me a place to stay and give me a job - or a salary without a job, I don't mind." I was present. I said, "Bartak, there are limits. That man is in such a situation, he may have a heart attack! You could have come to...

... the very choice that you did something - many things will be good and many things will be wrong after that. You think of any action: you go and you give some money to a beggar - you are doing good; but the beggar goes and purchases some poison and commits suicide. Now, your intention was good but the total result is bad. You help a man - he is ill - you serve him; you take him to the hospital. And...

..., "No! because painting is not going to give you enough money, and painting is not going to give you any respect in society. You will become a hobo, and you will be a beggar. So don't bother about painting. Become a magistrate!" So you have become a magistrate. Now you don't feel any happiness. It is a plastic thing, this being a magistrate. And deep down you still want to paint. While sitting...

..., you are happy. Or, you are a lover of money and you have found a bag full of hundred rupee notes by the side of the road - and there is happiness. Or, you are an egoist and a Nobel Prize is awarded to you - and you dance, there is happiness. These are conditional, you have to arrange for them. And they are momentary. How long can you be happy with a conditional happiness? How long can the happiness...

... remain? It comes only like a glimpse, for a moment, and then it is gone. Yes, when you find a bag full of hundred rupee notes you are happy, but how long will you be happy? Not too long. In fact, for a moment there will be a surge of energy and you will feel happy and the next moment you will become afraid - are you going to be caught? Whose money is this? Has somebody seen? And the conscience will say...

..., "This is not right. It is a sort of stealing. You should go to the court! You should go to the police - you should surrender the money to the police! What are you doing? You are a moral man..." and anxiety and guilt. But you have brought it home; now you are hiding it. Now you are afraid: maybe the wife will discover it; maybe somebody has really seen; somebody may have looked - who knows...

...? Somebody may have reported to the police. Now the anxiety. AND even if nobody has reported and nobody has seen, what are you going to do with this money? Whatsoever you are going to do will again and again give you a moment of happiness. You purchase a car, and the car is in your porch, and for a moment you are happy. Then...? Then the car is old; next day it is the same car. After a few days you don't...

... all over the forest; wherever he goes, there is the smell. It is said that sometimes he becomes almost mad, not knowing that the musk is within him. And so is the case with man: man goes mad seeking and searching - sometimes in money, sometimes in respect, this and that, but the musk is within you, the honey is in your mouth. And look at what Saraha is saying: THE HONEY IN THEIR MOUTHS, AND TO THEM...

... manages the money - that is his power. Muscularly, he is more strong. Down the centuries he has conditioned the mind of the woman that he is more powerful and she is not powerful. In every way he has always tried to find a woman who is in every way lesser than him. A man does not want to be married to a woman who is more educated than him, because then the power is at stake. He does not want to marry a...

... without any taboo and without any inhibition, politics will disappear and there will be no revolutionaries there will be no need. When a man represses sex, he becomes too attached to money; he has to put his sexual energy somewhere. Have you not seen people holding their hundred rupee notes as if they were touching their beloved? Can't you see in their eyes the same lust? But this is ugly. To hold a...

... come that is certain; if you give them money they will not come. They will say 'Keep your money. The love season is on! Keep your money.' And if you say 'We can make you President of India', they will say 'You keep your presidency. The love season is on!' But man, if you make him a president, can kill his beloved. If that is the stake, he can do that. These are substitutes. You cannot befool animals...

... parrot. 'Ooo-Ooo' said the lady owl. 'Not you, you goggle-eyed freak!' said the parrot 'I can't stand women who wear glasses!' Substitutes won't do. Man is living with substitutes. Sex is natural, money is unnatural. Sex is natural; power, prestige, respectability, are unnatural. If you really want to hate something, hate money, hate power, hate prestige. Why hate love? Sex is one of the most beautiful...

... our face and the look in our eyes when we play betrays the fact 'that it is a task' for us and not a play. Those who play cards do not enjoy the game unless there is some money at stake. When money is involved, the play becomes a task, it has a goal. Even a rich person enjoys cards only if there is money involved, be it a single rupee. This one rupee makes no difference to him, but it sets up a goal...

.... Now the game becomes interesting and exciting. The game in itself is not enough. One rupee brings about such a change! Money has penetrated so deep within us that it needs be included in our sports also. Everything must become a business in order for man to enjoy. To work for an aim means that each work carried out is for something other than work itself. The pleasure is in attaining the end, the...

... me. They say: "We have to fulfil our duties as householders." If you are doing your duty, then it is not a household you are looking after but a shop! A house should mean a haven of bliss for you. If the husband earns money because he has to support a wife, or if a mother brings up her child for the simple reason that he has been born to her and so she has to rear him, then these are just...

... something, acquire something!" If a shopkeeper talks in this manner, it is understandable. All business firms declare, Time is money." But here comes a Muni who speaks the same language! He says, "Time is money. Do not lose it. Utilise it to attain moksha; utilise it to seek the atman. Time never returns, so do something, acquire something. If you do not, you will have lost it." What...

... the fundamental. Hence, Buddha says, "You can drop desiring money, wealth, power, prestige - that's nothing. You can stop desiring the world - that's nothing - because those are secondary desires. The basic desire is to be." So people who renounce the world start desiring liberation, but liberation is also their liberation. They will remain in moksha, in a liberated state. They desire that...

... even towards the most exalted states of enlightenment..." Patanjali calls it paravairagya: the ultimate renunciation. You have renounced the world: you have renounced greed, you have renounced money, you have renounced power; you have renounced everything of the outside. You have even renounced your body, you have even renounced your mind, but the last renunciation is the kaivalya renunciation...

... of kaivalya itself, of moksha itself, of nirvana itself. Now you renounce even the idea of liberation, because that too is a desire. And desire, whatsoever its object, is the same. You desire money, I desire moksha. Of course, my object is better than your object, but still my desire is the same as yours. Desire says, "I am not content as I am. More money is needed; then I will be contented...

.... More liberation is needed; then I will be contented." The quality of desire is the same, the problem of desire is the same. The problem is that the future is needed: "As I am, it is not enough; something more is needed. Whatsoever has happened to me is not enough. Something still has to happen to me; only then can I be happy." This is the nature of desire: you need more money, somebody...

..., Bayazid, was going on a pilgrimage to Mecca. It was difficult. He was poor and somehow he had managed the travelling expenses by begging for years. Now he was very happy. He had almost the necessary money to go to Mecca, and then he travelled. By the time he reached near Mecca, just outside the town he met a fakir, his Master. He was sitting there just under a tree, and he said, "Oh fool, where are...

..., around me. I am Mecca." And Bayazid was so filled with this person's magnetism that he gave all his money, he worshipped. Then the old man said, "Now go back home"; and he went back home. When he went into his town people gathered and said, "Something seems to have happened to you. So really it works, going to Mecca works? You are looking luminous, so full of light." He said...

... started feeling guilty. My father went on writing to me, "Forgive us and accept." I went on returning their money orders, and one day he himself came and he said, "Can't you forget, can't you forgive?" I said, "I can forgive but I cannot forget, because you were forcing me into something just because of finances, just because of money" - money was more important to them...

.... "You thought more of money than you thought of me, and you threatened me. I had not asked for money. You can keep your money. I am managing perfectly well." In fact, things turned out so beautifully, because the work in the newspaper was negligible. You have just to invent events that don't happen, things that nobody has said. My chief editor called me and said, "Since you have come our...

... fundamental question is all philosophy, all religion, all poetry, all art - different ways of raising the question: Who am l? different ways of answering it. But the question is one: Who am l? If you try to understand man's life, you will see this single question persisting. Yes, the man who is mad after money is also trying to answer the question: Who am l? By having money, he thinks that he will know who...

.... Even when you have become very rich, your intelligence will go on persisting, asking, "Who are you? Yes, you have money, but who are you? You are not the money - you cannot be that which you possess. Who is this possessor? Yes, you have become the prime minister of a country, but that is just a function, that is not your being. Who are you? Who is this person who was not a prime minister and is...

... they are outside! They can't define you. You remain undefined by them. One day the house is on fire and all your identity is burnt, and. you are standing on the road, again puzzled: "Who am I?" That's why people commit suicide. If their money is gone, if they become bankrupt, they commit suicide. Why do they commit suicide? One wonders - why? Money can be earned again.... Look deep into...