... understand me at all, who must be a newcomer. The Indians think they are the most religious people in the world; all bullshit. They are the most irreligious people in the world - they just have an egoistic idea that they are very religious. If you are really religious, you will be ready to pay for your meditation with everything, even with your life. What is money? If you pay five rupees for something, and...

... if you earn ten rupees a day, then you have paid with half the day. Money is just a symbol that you have devoted half your day's labor for it. You go to the movie and you pay ten rupees for a ticket; you earn ten rupees per day. You are saying that this movie is worth it - "I can stake one day's labor for it." But you are not ready to stake anything for your meditation, prayer, for...

... life. Those few rupees that you have to pay are very symbolic, just symbolic, just token - they indicate something. If you are ready to pay something, then I know you will be persuaded to pay more. By and by, one day you will be able to stake your whole life for it. If you are not ready to even pay five rupees, it is impossible for you to stake your whole life. Gurdjieff used to ask much money for...

... his lectures; and not only money, he would create all sorts of obstacles. For example: no lecture would be declared beforehand. If the lecture was going to be this morning at eight o'clock, early - in the wee hours, at five o'clock - you would receive a phone call: "At eight o'clock reach a certain place" - and the place would be twenty miles or thirty miles or fifty miles away - "and...

... interested only in the few sincere seekers. They have to show their mettle. And, the money that you have to pay is just the beginning. It is just the alpha; by and by I will persuade you to pay with your life. Unless you have that much courage, nothing is going to happen. Religion is not cheap, certainly not free. But the Indian mind is very money-minded: they talk about being religious but they are very...

... money-minded people. Their whole outlook about things is money. No westerner has ever asked this; they understand: the ashram has to be maintained, the place has to be ready for you, some musician has to prepare for the music, somebody has to conduct the meditation, the gardens have to be looked after, the buildings have to be built. All needs money - from where is it going to come? And you know well...

... that I don't do any miracles. There are only two ways. One is: somebody else should donate for you. But why should somebody else donate for you? You will meditate and somebody else will donate for you? Why? If you want to meditate, you pay for it. And if you really want to meditate you will be ready to pay for it; there should be no hitch about it. If you don't have money, go and earn it. If it is...

... mean much. You have to show that you are sincere, you have to show that you are not just here out of curiosity. What is the way to check a person? The easiest way is money... because the greatest greed is for money. The greatest greed is for money, so whenever you have to lose your money you have to lose a little part of your greed. When you pay five rupees for entry, you are paying by dropping a...

... little greed. The money is not the problem, the problem is greed; you are dropping a little greed. And this is just a beginning - because meditation can happen only when all greed disappears. A slight greed inside you and meditation is not possible. For a greedy mind there is no meditation; meditation happens only in a non-greedy mind. If you don't have money, then work. Pay by your work and show your...

... sincerity. But the person who has asked must have money, otherwise he would not have been allowed to enter here. He must have paid... must be greedy, must want to have everything free - at least about God. Because nobody bothers about God. I have been moving in the masses for years. I have not decided in a hurried way to drop out of the mob - I saw that it was absolutely absurd: you go on talking to...

... it ends in death. And there is nothing else to do. You have become aware. the fourth question: Question 4: MY GREED FOR MONEY, TO HAVE MONEY AND TO SEE THAT I AM ABLE TO MAKE MONEY, WHAT DOES IT MEAN? It simply means that you are greedy. There is no need to go into great philosophy about it. It does not mean anything else than what it means: you are greedy. And greed says that you must be empty, so...

... you want to stuff yourself with something or other. Money is a way to stuff oneself with things. Money can purchase everything, so money becomes very important. Then you can stuff your emptiness with everything: you can have as many women as you want, you can have as many palaces as you want, as many cars, airplanes - whatsoever you want. You can go on stuffing yourself with things. You are empty...

... will not increase. In fact it may start decreasing - because each time you run after money you lose some soul. It is a great risk. By losing your soul you earn money; by destroying your inner purity, your inner virginity, you go on selling your inner for the outer. You go on exchanging. In the end you have piled up much money and many things, but suddenly you realize that inside you are a beggar. The...

... inner can be fulfilled only by the inner. I am not saying to renounce your money; that too is foolish. To continuously run after money is foolish, to renounce money is also foolish - because nobody can fulfill his inner emptiness with money, and nobody can fulfill it by renouncing money... because both are outside. Whether you accumulate any money or renounce, both are outside. That is not looking...

... into the problem directly. You are empty inside: something has to be done there. A prayer has to fill it, a meditation has to flower there - only God's fragrance will be able to give you a fulfillment. So I am neither for money nor against money. Money can purchase many things: all that is outside can be purchased with money, there is no problem about it. But money cannot lead you to the inner...

... contentment... and that is the problem. You have to work for that. My own observation is this: that the more money you have, the more is the possibility of becoming aware of the inner emptiness, because the contrast makes things very clear. A person who is poor inside and poor outside does not know his inner poverty. That's why poor people look more happy, beggars look more happy than rich people, than...

.... So I am not against money. In fact, my whole approach is that only rich people can be religious. A poor person cannot be. It is very difficult for a poor person to be religious. To be poor and to be religious needs great intelligence, very great intelligence, unique intelligence. Only then can you be religious. To read something written with white chalk on a white wall you need very penetrating...

... they remain greedy; even DEATH does not make them aware. Solomon and Irving were both partners in the dress business. They had the worst season of their careers, and were at a complete loss as to what to make that would sell. There was not a dress to be cut in their cutting-room. They both decided: the only way out to leave their families any money was to agree to a suicide pact. They drew straws and...

... kicked him and pushed him into the gutter. Finally he got up, brushed himself off, and said to a man at the end of the line, "If they do that once more, I am not going to open the store." Still he is ready to open the store! They have thrown him in the gutter! But people go on rushing, almost insane. Greed is a sort of insanity. Use money, but never be greedy. As a means money is perfectly...

... suffering brings sympathy from people - which they cannot purchase with their money. Although sympathy is not love but a very poor substitute, something is better than nothing. These people have never been loved by anyone. Those who have loved them have loved their money; those who have been friends with them have been friends because of their money. I was a professor in a university and in the whole...

...;Although he has so much money, he is suffering. We don't have that much money but we are not suffering, we are still in a higher state of mind than him." There is no harm in sympathizing with the person... but the person cannot leave his suffering because the moment he leaves his suffering all those sympathizers will be gone. He is caught in a net. And his life has not been a total lie - he has only...

... been an earning machine. He has earned enough - at the cost of everything that is valuable, at the cost of everything which cannot be purchased with money. You cannot purchase love with money, you cannot purchase truth with money, you cannot purchase beauty with money, you cannot purchase understanding with money; you cannot purchase anything that has real value with money. He has wasted his whole...

... life in earning money and now he is at a dead end. Money is there and he is just a beggar. His whole life he has learned only one art: how to earn more and more. He has never paid any attention to great music, to great art, to great paintings, to great architecture, although there was time. His whole life was devoted to one thing - he had only one god: money. Now the money is there but he remains a...

... very primitive barbarous being - uncivilized, uncultured, unsophisticated. I have heard a small story which will help you.... Mulla Nasruddin was very rich - it is a Sufi story - and he had devoted his whole life to earning money. One day a friend said, "Mulla, you are getting old but you have never seen a movie." Mulla said, "I don't have any time." The man said, "I have...

... brought a ticket for you too. You don't have to waste money, just a little time." Mulla goes with him to the movie. In the movie there is a classical singer, and the whole movie is around the life of that classical singer. Indian classical music is totally different from that of the West; it is far more scientific. Each scale is played in a different way, and for each time of day there are...

... music! This is not classical music, I tell you. I had a goat which cried 'ahhhh, ahhhh, ahhhh,' the whole night and finally died. This man is certain to die. Do something!" He had all the money, but only the money. The man was empty, no sensitivity for anything, no understanding for anything. The people you are asking about in Switzerland have beautiful houses, a beautiful land, all the money...

... that they need or perhaps more than they need, but they are stuck. From where is their misery coming? Their misery is coming because they have never learned anything else than accumulating money. Their being is hollow, empty. From that emptiness their misery is coming. And now they have lived with that misery their whole lives; that is their only companion, and that misery is the only thing that they...

... are not worthy to be an emperor. But that was the feudal world; in a capitalist world things have changed. You have to earn money, and you have to earn it fast because life is small and competition is hard. In earning money you forget that there is much more to life than money. Money is nothing; it is a good means of exchange, but more than that it has no value, no spiritual value. Somebody has to...

... point out to the rich people of Switzerland, "You are not rich, you are utterly poor." They have to be made aware that they have lost themselves and found money, they have sold themselves and gathered junk. Unless a rich man realizes his emptiness, there is no way for him to start working to gain the things that he has missed in his life. And it is never too late - because it is only a...

... nonsignificant things, who is busy about the trivial, who is busy about the outside, who is busy about things, commodities, but not about himself. He has completely forgotten himself, he is lost in the world. He thinks of money, possessions, but never of consciousness, because consciousness is not a commodity, it can neither be sold nor purchased, it is useless. A businessman is one who is a utilitarian...

...: poetry is meaningless, religion is meaningless, God is meaningless, because they cannot be converted into saleable objects, you cannot earn money through them. And money is the most significant thing for this type. He can sell himself, he can lose himself, he can destroy his whole life, just to accumulate money. This is the first characteristic of the type. I have heard that two businessmen met in a...

... market. It was the peak of the season, of the year. And one said to the other, "Have you heard that Sheik Fakhruddin, the clothier, died this morning?" The other said, "What! In the middle of the season?" Neither is life meaningful, nor death, only the season. His measurement is money, he measures a man with money; how much you have got, not who you are - that is meaningless. If you...

... have money you are significant, if you don't have money you are nobody. If he pays respect to you, he pays respect to your possessions, never to you. If you lose your possessions he will not even look at you. Once it happened: A rich man became poor. He was in misery and he was saying to his wife, "I believed that I had so many friends. Fifty percent of them have already left me, and the other...

... fifty percent do not yet know that I have become poor." All of them are going to leave, they were never with you. You cannot have a friendship with a businessman. No, he is only friendly with the money that you have. The moment money is not there, the friendship disappears - it was never with you. You cannot relate to a businessman, that is impossible: you cannot be a wife, you cannot be a...

... husband, you cannot be a son, you cannot be a father to a businessman, because he relates only to money. Everything else is beside the point, his target is money. If your son starts earning money, the son is valuable; if your father is rich, then he is your father; if he is poor, you would not like people to know that he is your father. This actually happens every day in life: you will recognize a...

... father who is rich; if he is a poor man or a beggar, you will not recognize him - you recognize only the money. The businessman - the type - cannot love, because love is the most anti-money phenomenon in the world. Love is concerned with being. Love is a sharing, it is a giving away - not only what you possess, but what you are. A businessman can never be a lover, and a businessman always thinks that...

... lovers are a little crazy, they have gone nuts, they are not in their senses, they are doing nonsense. "Why are you wasting your time? Time is money!" - that's what a businessman says. I have heard about one businessman who purchased one hundred clocks and put them all around his house. Somebody asked, "What are you doing?" He said, "I have heard that time is money, so the more...

... of it the better!" His whole concern is about things, not about persons. Love is concerned with persons, the money- oriented mind is concerned with things. And this type of man is continuously busy; he is never at rest, he cannot be, because there is always more and more to be accumulated. There is no end to it. A man of love can rest. There is a fulfillment when you can rest. But a man after...

... money can never rest because there is no end to it. And there is never fulfillment because money cannot fulfill the soul; the soul remains empty, the inner remains a void. You go on throwing things into it but they never touch your inner emptiness. The more you accumulate, the more you become aware that you are empty, your hands are empty; money is with you but you have lost yourself. Your whole...

... effort is not to look at this fact, because this is very painful. The businessman runs after money more and more. He wants to completely forget himself in the money; money becomes an intoxicant. He is always busy, a businessman is always busy about nothing. I say about nothing, because in the end it proves nothing. All that you possess proves to be as if you were making drawings on water: they...

... moment it would crash. So the minister said, "Okay, there is no time left now. So you just behave as if you are in a church." The businessman walked down the aisle and collected money from people. The type - even at the moment of death he knows only one way to behave in a church: to collect money. At the last moment money still remains the focus. This is the first thing to be understood, then...

... achieve out of it?" And if I say, "Nothing," they simply cannot understand. Why are people coming to me? To learn nothing? To attain nothing? The businessman needs something visible, tangible. If he meditates and money starts falling on him, then it is worthwhile; if he meditates and he becomes successful in the world, then it is worthwhile; if he meditates and the illness disappears from...

..., "Why?" This 'why' cannot be understood by a businessman. He said, "Why? To earn some money!" The primitive started smiling and again asked, "Why?" This was impossible. The businessman became annoyed and he said, "Why? To have a bank balance so that you can retire and rest, and then there is no need to work." The primitive closed his eyes and said, "I am...

...; A businessman remains a businessman because the type cannot change so easily - unless you become aware of the whole fallacy of postponing, future, money, possessions; unless you become so intense in your awareness that the very intensity burns your type. And if you are not a businessman then you become a religious man. The invitation comes every day, it knocks at your door every day - every moment...

... man has so much time to enjoy and dance and sing that you cannot conceive of it. An ambitious man has no time. Even to love he has no time, because there is always the future, the bank balance, the money that he can get out of this time if this time is used. A businessman even dreams only of business, thinks only of business. HE CAME TO ANOTHER, HE SAID TO HIM: 'MY MASTER INVITES THEE.' HE SAID TO...

... working out of love. While I was in Poona, thousands of centers around the world were working without any order, without any structure. Each had its own uniqueness its own individuality, and it was upon themselves what to make of it, how to make it. She dissolved all those small, beautiful centers and created big communes simply so that more money can be generated. My interest is not money. My interest...

... is how more consciousness can be generated. But her whole effort and her whole clique was concentratedly working at one goal: how to create more money. And this was necessary, that small centers should be dissolved, people should move into bigger communes, and there should be strict discipline, strict orders, and everybody should be dependent on the commune for everything. Naturally, more money can...

... be produced. But what we are going to do with the money? Money is not a value. It is useful, but it is not something that has to be worshipped, that you have to make a goal of it. So my situation now is that if you feel bigger communes are difficult to maintain -- they will be difficult -- without structures, without somebody dictating everything from higher up and you have simply to follow... now...

... there will be nobody else to do it. I have never ordered anybody to do anything and I have never dictated anybody -- that is against human dignity. So I would like that if your bigger communes are becoming difficult to run disperse them, let your small communes sprout up again in different places. And we have nothing to do by generating money. We have to generate more consciousness and more living and...

... thinking that she has been very clever because she has accumulated money in Switzerland -- that's why in Germany she has created these six communes, destroyed all small communes. And Germany has a tendency -- you have to be aware of that -- Adolf Hitler does not happen from nowhere. It comes from your consciousness, it is something in your unconscious that creates that monster. Why she concentrated on...

... Germany? She could see that Germany can be structured, people can be enslaved, disciplined... they love me. In the name of my love they will be ready to do anything. And all the money she was siphoning into Switzerland and it is just a guess -- American government thinks twenty million dollars she has in one bank account. Her own secretary who left her two years before because she had cancer and had to...

... go for treatment in California remembers that at the time she left she had forty-three million dollars in two bank accounts. And she left two years before. So there is every possibility that she may be having something nearabout sixty, seventy or eighty million dollars in her own name. But this is what I was saying. That money is not a value. Now she will rot in a jail her whole life and the money...

... will rot in a bank. And you all worked for that money and for Sheela unnecessarily. It was a sheer wastage. So now make it a point that no more of anything that Sheela may have left in your minds should remain in the communes, in the sannyasins -- it has to be cleaned. So if big communes can be run without destroying people's freedom, individuality -- good. If you feel it is difficult, make smaller...

... communes, smaller centers and let people live according to their own ideas. That's my whole message to the sannyasins. Now whatever Sheela has done has to be undone. And it has been in a way a blessing in disguise. It has been a good learning. It should not happen again. BHAGWAN, I KNOW THE MONEY SOURCE OF THE COMMUNES -- OF COLOGNE AND MANY OF THE OTHER COMMUNES -- TWO OF THE BIG COMMUNES, AND I KNOW...

... THAT THEY WERE HARDLY, OR WE WERE HARDLY ABLE TO GATHER THE MONEY FOR GOING TO THE FESTIVALS. SO JUST FROM THIS FACTUAL SIDE, I KNOW THAT THIS MONEY SHEELA HAS IS NOT COMING FROM THE BIG COMMUNES. JUST THE FACTUAL INFORMATION, I DON'T KNOW WHICH INFORMATION YOU GET. BUT KNOWING THE COLOGNE BUSINESS AND THE MONEY FLOW IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE FOR HER OR FOR ANYBODY TO TAKE OUR MONEY BECAUSE WE WERE REALLY...

... WORKING HARD TO GET THE MONEY TOGETHER TO GO TO THE FESTIVAL. IT'S LIKE A COMMUNE OF THREE HUNDRED PEOPLE, WE COULD TAKE ABOUT ONE POINT FOUR MILLION DEUTSCHE MARKS TO BRING EVERYBODY OVER TO THE FESTIVAL. I can understand it may not be coming from the communes, then it must be coming from rich sannyasins directly of which you were not aware and you cannot be aware that, and she will not make anybody...

... aware. Money must have been coming because even in my case the government raised again and again the question that twenty million are there in Swiss accounts, in Sheela's name. And Sheela's old secretary says there were forty-three when she left. And it is possible because in the commune in Rajneeshpuram we have invested almost more than two hundred million dollars. So it is possible that from...

... individual sources... and more informations are coming that Sheela was also dealing in heavy drugs. These were just known to few people who were partners in it. That she was also dealing in gold and this dealing was continuing from Poona days and now everything that people who have been participants in those dealings are going to be witnesses in the court. So the money may have come from drugs, from gold...

..., from individual people -- it is difficult for us to figure out. It may not have come from the communes. But the effort was to structure communes in such a way that soon they can become sources of money. Money was some kind of phobia in her mind but now you have to start fresh from the scratch and don't expect anything that you have become accustomed with Sheela and her group. I will not be giving you...

... directions how to run your communes, how to make more money... I will not be dictating anything because I trust in your intelligence -- you should function out of your intelligence. It is better to fail, but work through your own intelligence. Rather than to succeed on somebody else guidance. That success is not of any value. So spread the idea that sannyas is reborn, it was a nightmare that is ended and...

... the power of the world, you have all the money of the world -- we don't have anything. If we can make a society for four years where there has never been a rape, a murder, a theft, any other kind of crime... why can't you make such a society? There is nobody unemployed, not a single beggar. America has thirty million beggars on the streets dying. We had accept two hundred street people and they...

... the world of crime, did not commit a single crime. We proved a far better communism in the commune because we stopped the circulation of money in the commune -- nobody should use money in the commune. You can donate to the commune but you cannot purchase by money. So you may have million dollars and somebody may not have a single dollar, but you are not rich by having a million dollars because you...

..., in the ultimate analysis, ordinary success proves to be a failure -- utter failure. I always say: Nothing fails like success. You may have accumulated much money, then one day suddenly you find life is gone. Money is there, but you are gone -- so what is the point of this success? You indulge with many women, with many men: energy is wasted, and suddenly there you are -- a desert land, a wasteland...

... Ganges into their mouths -- but they themselves are still thinking of sex, or money, or power. This is a very stupid way of living life. Kabir says: I don't live by sense, and I don't live by law. Then there is another way which is also stupid in the same way, but more respectable -- stupid, but more respectable: people who live by law, who always follow the authority -- the state, the priest, the...

...: I AM NEITHER BOND NOR FREE, I AM NEITHER DETACHED NOR ATTACHED. Both are wrong -- both are extremists. People are attached to money, and then they become detached from money. To have any attitude of attachment or detachment means you are still obsessed with the money. Somebody says, "I am detached from money" -- but why? What is the point of being detached from money? Is there still some...

... fear of attachment lurking in your consciousness? -- because the idea of detachment arises only when you are attached. When you are not attached it is perfectly okay... money is money! There are people who think that money is the only god: these are the people who are attached with money -- their only god is money. Then there are people who say that money is dirt; not much difference -- the have...

... moved to another polarity: money is dirt. They won't touch money. There are such mad people in India -- they are worshiped by people as sages. They are simply perverted people; they won't touch money. Once it happened: I was staying in a village and a man came and he gave me nearabout five thousand rupees. A very rich man -- but very traditional. I told him, "Right now I don't need the money, but...

... if I need it sometime, I will ask you." He had come to examine me -- whether I would take the money or not. But this statement was puzzling for him because I had not said that I would not take it; I said, "When I need, I will ask you." And I had not taken and not accepted because I was in no need. So he was very much puzzled. He said, "You have confused me again. I had come here...

... with this money because my guru said, "You go, and you will see: take the money to this man -- that is the only criterion to know whether somebody has achieved or not. If he has achieved, he will say: Keep it away, don't bring it close to me, money is dirt. He will not touch it." You have not taken -- that's okay -- but you say that if you need, you will take it?" I said, "Yes...

... -- because money is neither God nor dirt; money is simply money. And money is a utilitarian thing -- when you need, money is valuable; when you don't need, there is no value in it. The value is not in the money; money in itself is not valuable. It is just a simple means of exchange -- and a perfectly good means of exchange. Nothing is wrong in it." He said, "You always puzzle. Why can't you give...

... me a certainty? -- either you take it or you refuse it." In India there are saints whose whole sainthood depends on this phenomenon -- that they don't accept money. If you bring money to them they will be very angry. They will be enraged, they will start shouting at you: "What do you think about me? Do you think that I am so low that I will accept your money?" And you will come back...

... full of deep respect for them. These are mad people, perverted people. They are the same people, now standing on their heads -- first they thought that money is God, now they think that money is dirt. But they cannot accept a simple phenomenon -- that money is money. It is neither God nor dirt; it is not the greatest value nor the lowest -- it is just a utilitarian means of exchange. Kabir says: I AM...

.... The arithmetic has no appeal. But we are not born here to be mathematicians. There are a few children who will not be interested in the cuckoo. The cuckoo may go on getting madder and madder, and they will be attentive to the blackboard. Then arithmetic is for them. Then they have a meditation, a natural meditative state. We have been distracted into unnatural motivations: money, prestige, power...

.... Listening to the cuckoo is not going to give you money. Listening to the cuckoo is not going to give you power, prestige. Watching the butterfly is not going to help you economically, politically, socially. These things are not paying, but these things make you happy. A real person takes the courage to move with things that make him happy. If he remains poor, he remains poor; he has no complaint about it...

.... A small boy had been watching the proceedings with interest. As the man struggled to get out of the water, he turned to his father and asked, "Dad, is that man catching a fish or is that fish catching a man?" Man has gone completely topsy-turvy. The fish is catching you and dragging you; you are not catching the fish. Wherever you see money, you are no more yourself. Wherever you see...

... meditation going to do? what is it supposed to do? He will remain the same man: accumulating money, competitive in the market. The meditation may help in this way: it may make him a little more relaxed to do this nonsense even better. That's what TM is doing to many people in the West -- and that is the appeal of transcendental meditation, because Maharishi Mahesh Yogi goes on saying, "It will make...

.... You have to drop all those patterns that have been forced on you, and you have to find your own inner flame. Don't be too much concerned about money, because that is the greatest distraction against happiness. And the irony of ironies is that people think they will be happy when they have money. Money has nothing to do with happiness. If you are happy and you have money, you can use it for happiness...

.... If you are unhappy and you have money, you will use that money for more unhappiness. Because money is simply a neutral force. I am not against money, remember. Don't misinterpret me: I am not against money -- I am not against anything. Money is a means. If you are happy and you have money, you will become more happy. If you are unhappy and you have money, you will become more unhappy because what...

... will you do with your money? Your money will enhance your pattern, whatsoever it is. If you are miserable and you have power, what will you do with your power? You will poison yourself more with your power, you will become more miserable. But people go on looking for money as if money is going to bring happiness. People go on looking for respectability as if respectability is going to give you...

... happiness. People are ready, at any moment, to change their pattern, to change their ways, if more money is available somewhere else. I have heard: The treasurer of a black civil rights organization picked up the phone and heard a Southern voice drawling on the other end of the line, "Hey there, boy, I want to talk to the head nigger." Shocked and outraged, the treasurer said, "My dear sir...

....." "I want to contribute $50,000 to your cause, so let me talk to the head nigger," the redneck said. "Hold the line there, brother," the treasurer said. "I think I see that ugly jigaboo coming in the door right now." Once money is there immediately everything changes. I have heard: Mulla Nasrudin's daughter came home and she said she was pregnant and the richest man...

... -- but if a boy is born I have kept one lakh rupees in the bank for the boy. If a daughter is born I have kept fifty thousand rupees in the bank for the daughter." Mulla took his gun away and said, "Sir, if something goes wrong, if there is a miscarriage or something, are you ready to give her another chance?" Once the money is there, then suddenly you are no more yourself; you are ready...

... to change. This is the way of the worldly man. I don't call those people worldly who have money -- I call those people worldly who change their motives for money. I don't call those people unworldly who have no money -- they may be simply poor. I call those people unworldly who don't change their motives for money. Just being poor is not equivalent to being spiritual; and just being rich is not...

... equivalent to being a materialist. The materialistic pattern of life is that where money predominates over everything. The non-materialistic life is that where money is just a means -- happiness predominates, joy predominates; your own individuality predominates. You know who you are and where you are going, and you are not distracted. Then suddenly you will see your life has a meditative quality to it...

...-three lakh rupees are in the bank for your work whenever you want. Whatever the work, that money is there." I asked him, "Is there any involvement with the family? Have you settled with your brother?" He said to me, "Yes, the money is absolutely free now, just for your work." After three days I told Neelam, who was working from Bombay as my secretary, to ask Govind Siddharth...

... to transfer the money to one of the trusts, because I was going to move to Poona and tremendous forces were going to gather there. In three days his greed took over his great desire to work for me. He said, "Thirty-three lakhs is too much. I can only afford three lakhs." Neelam told me that in just three days he has reduced it from thirty-three lakhs to three lakhs. I said, "Don't be...

... worried. Just go and get the three lakhs." And when she reached him Govind Siddharth said, "It is very difficult. My whole family is involved in it" - I had asked him that before, and he had denied it. And I know for sure that the money has nothing to do with his family. Neelam was shocked. She came running to me and said, "It is unbelievable that a man can turn about like this."...

...; I said, "Forget about that. You have another account of three lakh rupees, which has been donated from simple and loving people from all over the country. It is in your name and Govind Siddharth's name. It is not his money; please just take that money out of his hands." She said, "Do you think he will change his mind about that money also, which is not his?" I said, "Man's...

... blindness, his unconscious greed is vast enough. You just go, and be quick!" And Govind Siddharth started playing games, saying, "I cannot allow you to take all of the three lakhs, because while Bhagwan was not here I gave thirty-five thousand rupees for his work to the Bombay center. I will have to deduct that much money." I told Neelam, "Let him deduct it, if thirty-five thousand can...

... satisfy him" - which was not his money! Then too, it took almost one month to get the money out, leaving behind the thirty-five thousand without any reason except that his signature was needed. This money was paid for his signature. And now I don't see him here. Perhaps he is afraid to look into my eyes, straight. I will not ask him about the money. I have never asked anybody about money, but I...

...; (MEANING WISDOM PERVASION). AND FOR HIS STUPA, for his memorial, THE EPIGRAPH - given by the emperor himself - was MIAO KUANG (WONDERFUL LIGHT). That wonderful light brings me back.... You are full of wonderful light. You are made of it! But you wander around the world. The world is vast and life is short. Don't waste your time wandering around the world for small positions, for gathering some money...

... Father Finger, "I dreamt that I was in Jewish heaven. Man, Jewish heaven was a mess! Everybody was yelling and screaming, and eating, and waving their arms in the air; people were fighting about money - all kinds of chaos, and the noise was deafening." "Well," replies Rabbi Horowitz, "that's strange. Last night I had a dream that I went to Christian heaven, but it was very...

... the wedding to begin, he thinks of all the music played at his previous marriages. The first time, he had been twenty years old. The band played: "There'll Be A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight!" When he got married the second time, at the age of thirty, it was to the tune: "If You've Got The Money, Honey, I've Got The Time." At forty, they played the song: "Now and Then...

... - unless you don't want to pay the rent and only for that you want to disappear. That is another matter. Otherwise, what is the problem? You disappear and still pay the rent! IF I DISAPPEAR, WHO WILL PAY THE RENT? YESTERDAY YOU TALKED OF NATURAL AND UNNATURAL. MONEY, IT SEEMS, MUST COME INTO THE UNNATURAL CATEGORY. WITH THE EGO AND THE MIND, IT IS RELATIVELY EASY TO DEAL WITH IT. BUT IF WE ARE TO LIVE IN...

... THE MARKETPLACE AND TO LIVE NATURALLY, WILL MONEY NOT BECOME PROBLEM? Money is not a problem at all - unless you want to make it a problem. Down the ages, the so-called religious people have been very much worried about money. Such a foolish thing like money! and so much worried. Play with it! If you have it, enjoy; if you don't have it, enjoy. What else can you do when you don't have it? Enjoy...

...! When you have it, what else can you do? Enjoy! Don't make unnecessary problems about it. Money is a toy. Sometimes you have it - play with it. But my feeling is: people who can't play with money, they renounce money - they are very serious about it. Then they become very much afraid about money, because deep down clinging is there. Do you know? The chief disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave...

..., can't look at money. If you bring a one rupee note - which is worthless, which has no money in it, not at all - he closes his eyes. Now what kind of attitude is this? And this is thought to be very saintly; it is praised all over the country, that he is so free of money. If you are really free of money, why do you close the eyes? Is that one rupee note so attractive that you have to close your eyes...

...? Is there some fear that if you don't close your eyes you may jump upon the man? Something must be there. This looks a little obsessive. There is great fear - otherwise why close your eyes? So many things are passing and you don't close your eyes - just poor money. And money is nothing - just a device to exchange things. But people who are really misers deep down, clingers, because of their clinging...

..., their miserliness, they are very much in despair, in misery. Finally, one day, they think that it is money that is causing their misery. It is not money that is causing your misery. How can money cause your misery? It is miserliness that is causing your misery. Thinking that it is money that is causing misery, they renounce money, they escape from the world of money. Then they are continuously afraid...

...; then in their dreams they must be entering into banks and opening treasures and things like that - and making love to money. That is bound to happen. Money is not a problem! It can be used! If you have it, use it; if you don't have it, then use that freedom that comes when you don't have the money. This is my approach. If you are rich, enjoy; richness has a few things which no poor person can enjoy...

... nothing. Enjoy poverty when you are poor, and enjoy richness? then become a JANAKA, an emperor, and enjoy all the beauties that become available through money. My approach is total. I don't teach you to choose. I simply say: whatsoever is the case, the intelligent person will make something beautiful out of it. The unintelligent person suffers. If he has money he suffers because money brings worries; he...

... does not enjoy the music that money can bring, the dance that money can bring, the painting. If he has money, he does not go to the Himalayas for a rest, to meditate and to sing and to shout in the valleys and to talk with the stars. He worries, loses his sleep, loses his appetite - he chooses the wrong when he has money. And this man, if somehow he becomes poor, by God's grace if he becomes poor...

... use that as a great opportunity. And there are people who are under the sky, free, and not using that opportunity. Money or no money, house or no house... the question is not what you should have: the question is what you should do, whatsoever you have. See, my emphasis is totally different. You disappear... and then let things happen. If you feel good to be in the marketplace, then that is natural...

... quality to it - you will enjoy it. It is God's world! a beautiful dream. You will know those customers are dream customers, and the thing? that you are giving to them are just dream, and the money that you are collecting is just dream - but why not enjoy it? That enjoyment is not dream. Let me remind you again: everything is dream, but if you can consciously enjoy it, that joy is not dream - that joy is...

...: BELOVED OSHO, CAN YOU TALK ABOUT MONEY? WHAT ARE ALL THESE FEELINGS WHICH ARE AROUND MONEY? WHAT MAKES IT SO POWERFUL THAT PEOPLE SACRIFICE THEIR LIVES FOR IT? This is a very significant question. All the religions have been against wealth because wealth can give you all that can be purchased in life. And almost everything can be purchased except those spiritual values - love, compassion, enlightenment...

..., freedom. But these few things are exceptions, and exceptions always prove the rule. Everything else you can purchase with money. Because all the religions have been against life, they were bound to be against money. That is a natural corollary. Life needs money because life needs comforts, life needs good food, life needs good clothes, good houses. Life needs beautiful literature, music, art, poetry...

..., but they have all been cutting man's richness. And the most basic teaching is that you should renounce money. You can see the logic. If you don't have money, you can't have anything else. Rather than cutting branches, they were cutting the very roots. A man without money is hungry, is a beggar, has no clothes. You cannot expect him to understand Dostoevsky, Nijinsky, Bertrand Russell, Albert...

... Einstein, no; that is impossible. All the religions together have made man as poor as possible. They have condemned money so much, and praised poverty so much that as far as I am concerned, they are the greatest criminals the world has known. Look what Jesus says: A camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of heaven. Do you think this man is sane? He is...

... ready to allow a camel to pass through the eye of a needle - which is absolutely impossible, but even that impossibility he accepts may be made possible. But a rich man entering into paradise? That is a far bigger impossibility; there is no way to make it possible. Wealth is condemned. Richness is condemned. Money is condemned. The world is left in two camps. Ninety-eight percent of the people live in...

.... They want to find some way, some yoga, some exercises, as a compensation. This whole world has been turned against itself. Perhaps I am the first person who is respectful of money, of wealth, because it can make you multi- dimensionally rich. A poor man cannot understand Mozart. A hungry man cannot understand Michelangelo. A beggar will not even look at the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. And these...

..., born painters, I would like you to remember there are born wealth- creators. They have never been appreciated. Everybody is not a Henry Ford, and cannot be. Henry Ford was born poor, and became the richest man in the world. He must have had some talent, some genius for creating money, for creating wealth. And that is far more difficult than to create a painting, or music, or poetry. To create wealth...

... is not an easy job. Henry Ford should be praised just as any master musician, novelist, poet. In fact, he should be praised more, because with his money all the poetry and all the music and all the sculptures of the world can be purchased. I respect money. Money is one of the greatest inventions of man. It is just a means. Only idiots have been condemning it; perhaps they were jealous that others...

... have money and they don't. Their jealousy became their condemnation. Money is nothing but a scientific way of exchanging things. Before there was money, people were in real difficulty. All over the world there was a barter system. You have a cow and you want to purchase a horse. Now it is going to be your whole lifelong task.... You have to find a man who wants to sell a horse and wants to purchase a...

... cow. It is so difficult a job! You may find people who have horses but they are not interested in buying cows. You may find people who are interested in buying cows but they don't have horses. That was the situation before money came into existence. Naturally, people were bound to be poor: they could not sell things, they could not buy things. It was such a difficult job. Money made it so simple...

.... The man who wants to sell the cow need not search for the man who wants to sell his horse. He can simply sell the cow, take the money and find the man who wants to sell the horse, but is not interested in a cow. Money became the medium of exchange; the barter system disappeared from the world. Money did a great service to humanity. And because people became capable of purchasing, selling, naturally...

... they became more and more rich. This has to be understood. The more money moves, the more money you have. For example, if I have one dollar with me.... It is just for example, I don't have one; I don't have even a cent with me. I don't even have pockets! Sometimes I get worried that if I get a dollar, where am I going to keep it? For example, if I have a dollar and I go on keeping it to myself, then...

... why money is called currency. It should be a current. That's my meaning. I don't know about others' meanings. One should not keep it. The moment you get it, spend it. Don't waste time, because that much time you are preventing the dollar from growing, from becoming more and more. Money is a tremendous invention. It makes people richer, it makes people capable of having things that they don't have...

... upon you about money. Be respectful to it. Create wealth, because only after creating wealth do many other dimensions open for you. For the poor man all doors are closed. I want my sannyasins to be as rich as possible, as comfortable as possible. This is the first commune in the whole history of man where every house is centrally air-conditioned. Never before has any commune happened with air...

... comes through a balance: you simply possess a thing to share it, then possession is not ugly. Then you are simply waiting to share it. It happened: Two monks were travelling. One monk believed in renunciation of everything, so he would not carry a single PAISE. He was against money, absolutely against - he would not touch it. By the evening they came near a river, and they had to cross the river; the...

... river was very vast. They had to ask the ferry-boatman to take them. He asked for money. The other monk was a hoarder; whatsoever he could get he would hoard. He was a miser. And there had always been an argument, a continuous argument between them about what is right. One would say: Money is useless. It is dirt - as all the ascetics have always said, which is nonsense. The other would say: Money...

...? - money is life. Without money you cannot even live. It is not dirt. And there was no end to their argument. The ferryman asked for money. The money-hoarder, the miser said: Now, what will you do? I have money. I will go to the other shore, to the town, and you will have to stay here. This is a wild and dangerous area. Now what do you say? The other monk simply smiled and didn't say anything. Of course...

..., the friend paid for him also. When they had crossed, the man who had smiled, who has against money said: Now see what has happened. Because you gave the money to the ferry-boatman, that's why we could pass. If you had been miserly about it, we would have died on the other shore. You renounced money that's why we have come to this bank. Now we are safe. And I always say, money has to be renounced...

.... Miserly people are wrong, and people who renounce are wrong. People who possess are wrong, and people who renounce are wrong. Somewhere there is a mid-point where you simply see that money is necessary and to renounce the money is also necessary. To hoard money is necessary, and to share it is just as necessary. If you can create a balance between hoarding and sharing, then you have come to the point...

... were doing within the house. They never married, because misers never want to fall in love. A woman can be dangerous. And when a woman enters, you never know what she will do with your money. She is bound to waste it. So they never married, they never fell in love. And they hoarded and hoarded things, every type of thing. Just a few days ago, just two or three months ago, they both died from an...

... how many dollars they had left behind. They had never put any money in the bank, because nobody knows, banks can go bankrupt. And they lived like poor beggars. They could have lived rich lives, but a miser always lives a poor beggar's life. A miser is really a beggar, the ultimate in beggary. You cannot find a greater beggar than a miser. He has it and he cannot use it. Then there are other types of...

... people. They are just the reverse image of a miser. They renounce everything - they escape. It was said of Vinoba Bhave, that if you brought money to him he would simply close his eyes. He would not touch, he would not look at the money. This seems to be another extreme. Why be so afraid of money? Why this fear? Why close your eyes? What is wrong with money? Nothing is wrong with money, but you are...

... afraid. This is the reverse image of the miser, because the man is afraid that if he looks at the money then the desire for it will arise. Remember, if you are afraid of looking at money, at a beautiful woman, if you are afraid to look, what does it show? It shows that a fear is there that if you look at a beautiful woman, the desire for her will arise. You are afraid of the desire and you have...

... can move from one extreme to another. One can hoard money or one can throw it to the dogs and escape from it to the Himalayas. But both types are the same. Twice is enough, once is not enough, thrice is too much. Why can't you remain in the middle? Because in the middle, mind disappears. It is just like the pendulum; the pendulum goes on moving to the right and to the left. You know that if the...

... gain balance. Then when he feels that the opposite is happening, that he has leaned too much to the right, he moves immediately to the left. With every single step, one has to attain balance. It is not something that you have attained and finished with. It is a process. Be more aware. Be more aware when you exhale, be more aware when you inhale. And don't cling to either of them. Earn money - share...