JESUS
I Say Unto You Vol 2 01
First Discourse from the series of 9 discourses - I Say Unto You Vol 2 by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
John 8
Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.
And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down and taught them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst,
They said unto him: Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned. What sayest thou?
This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her: Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her: Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.
Religion always deteriorates into morality. Morality is dead religion and religion is alive morality; they never meet, they cannot meet because life and death never meet, light and darkness never meet. But the problem is that they look very alike – the corpse looks very similar to the living man. Everything is similar to when the man was alive: the same face, the same eyes, the same nose, hair, and body. Just one thing is missing, and that one thing is invisible. Life is missing, but life is not tangible and not visible. So when a man is dead, he looks as if he is still alive. And with the problem of morality, it becomes more complex.
Morality looks exactly like religion, but it is not. It is a corpse; it stinks of death. Religion is youth, religion is freshness – the freshness of flowers and the freshness of the morning dew. Religion is splendor – the splendor of the stars, of life, of existence itself. When there is religion, there is no morality at all and yet the person is moral. But there is no morality; there is no idea of what morality is. It is just natural; it follows you as your shadow follows you. You need not carry your shadow, you need not think about your shadow. You need not look back again and again and see whether the shadow is still following you or not. It follows. Just like that, morality follows a religious person. He never considers it, he never deliberately thinks about it; it is his natural flavor. But when religion is dead, when life has disappeared, then one starts thinking continuously about morality. Consciousness has disappeared, and conscience becomes the only shelter.
Conscience is a pseudo phenomenon. Consciousness is yours, conscience is borrowed. Conscience is of the society, of the collective mind; it does not arise in your own being. When you are conscious, you act rightly because your act is conscious, and the conscious act can never go wrong. When your eyes are fully open and there is light, you don’t try to go through the wall, you go through the door. When there is no light and your eyes are not functioning well, naturally you will grope in the dark. You will have to think a thousand and one times where the door is: “To the left, to the right? Am I moving in the right direction?” You stumble on the furniture, and you try to get out through the wall.
A religious person is one who has eyes to see, who has awareness. In that awareness, actions are naturally good. Let me repeat: naturally good. Not that you make them good. Managed goodness is not goodness at all. It is pseudo, it is pretentious, it is hypocrisy. When goodness is natural, spontaneous, just as trees are green and the sky is blue, so is the religious man moral – completely unaware of his morality. Aware of himself, but unaware of his morality. He has no idea that he is moral, that he is good, that what he is doing is right. Out of his awareness comes innocence, out of his awareness comes the right act – of its own accord. It has not to be brought, it has not to be cultivated, it has not to be practiced. Then morality has a beauty, but it is no longer morality; it is simply moral. In fact, it is just a religious way of living. But when religion has disappeared, then you have to manage it. Then you have to constantly think about what is right and what is wrong. How are you going to decide what is right and what is wrong? You don’t have your own eyes to see, you don’t have your own heart to feel. You are dead and dull. You don’t have your own intelligence to go into things; you have to depend on the collective mind that surrounds you.
Religiousness has one flavor – whether you are Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan does not make any difference. A religious person is simply religious. He is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian. But a moral person is not just moral. Either he is Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan or Buddhist, because morality has to be learned from the outside. If you are born in a Buddhist country, in a Buddhist society, you will learn the Buddhist morality. If you are born in a Christian world, you will learn the Christian morality. You will learn from others, and you have to learn from others because you don’t have your own insight. So morality is borrowed; it is social, it is mob – it comes from the masses. It comes to the masses from where? – from tradition. They have heard what is right and what is wrong, and they have carried it down the ages. It is being given from one generation to another. Nobody bothers whether it is a corpse, nobody bothers whether the heart still beats; it goes on being given from one generation to another. It is dull, dead, heavy; it kills joy, it is a killjoy. It kills celebration, it kills laughter, it makes people ugly, it makes people heavy, monotonous, boring. But it has a long tradition.
Another thing to be remembered: religion is always born anew. In Jesus, religion is born again. It is not the same religion that was with Moses. It has not come from Moses. It has no continuity with the past; it is utterly discontinuous with the past. It arises again and again just like a flower comes on the rosebush. It has nothing to do with the flowers that have come before; it is discontinuous. It comes on its own; it has no past, no history, no biography. For the moment it is there, and for the moment it is so beautifully there, so authentically there. For the moment it is so strong, so alive, and yet so fragile. In the morning sun it was so young… By the evening it will be gone, the petals will start falling onto the earth from which they had come in the first place. It will not leave any trace behind; if you come the next day, it is no longer there. It has not left any marks; it has simply disappeared. As it has come out of nothingness, so it has gone back to nothingness, to the original source.
Religion is just like that. When it happens in a Buddha, it is fresh, young, like a roseflower; it disappears, it leaves no traces. Buddha has said: “Religion is like a bird flying in the sky, it leaves no footprints.” It happens in a Moses – it is fresh, young again, then in Jesus – it is fresh and young again. When it happens to you, it will not have any continuity, it will not come from somebody else – Christ, Buddha, me; it will not come from anybody else. It will arise in you, it will bloom in you. It will be a flowering of your being and then it will be gone. You cannot give it to anybody; it is not transferable. It cannot be given, cannot be borrowed; it is not a thing. Yes, if somebody wants to learn, it can be learned. If somebody wants to imbibe it, it can be imbibed. When a disciple learns from being around a master, absorbs the vibes of the master, then too it is something that is happening within him. Maybe he gets the challenge, the provocation, the call from the outside, but that which arises, arises in him, utterly in him. It does not come from the outside.
It is as if you are not aware that you can sing; you have never tried, you have never thought about the possibility. One day you see a singer, and suddenly his song starts pulsating around you. In a moment of awakening, you become aware that you have also got a throat and a heart. Now, suddenly, for the first time, you become aware that there has been a song hidden in you, and you release it. But the song comes from your innermost core; it arises from your being. Maybe the provocation, the call came from the outside, but not the song. So the master is a catalytic agent. His presence provokes something in you, his presence does not function as a cause.
C. G. Jung is right in bringing a new concept to the Western world. It has existed in the East for centuries – the concept of synchronicity. There are things which happen as cause and effect, and there are things which don’t happen as cause and effect, but just by synchronicity. This idea has to be understood because it will help you to understand the difference between morality and religion. Morality is cause and effect. Your father, your mother, have taught you something; they function as the cause, and then the effect continues in you. You will teach your children; you will become the cause, and the effect will continue in your children. But listening to a singer, suddenly you start humming a tune. There is no cause-and-effect relationship. The singer is not the cause and you are not the effect. You have caused the effect yourself – you are both the cause and the effect. The singer functioned only as a remembrance, the singer functioned only as a catalytic agent.
What has happened to me I cannot give to you. Not that I don’t want to give it to you, no – because it cannot be given, its very nature is such that it cannot be given – but I can present it to you, I can make it available to you. Seeing that it is possible, seeing that it has happened to another man, “Why not to me?” Suddenly something clicks inside you, you become alert to a possibility, alert to a door that is in you but you were never looking at, you had forgotten it. Something starts sprouting in you.
I function as a catalytic agent, not as a cause. The concept of synchronicity simply says that one thing can start something somewhere without it being a cause. It says that if somebody plays a sitar in a room where another sitar has been placed in the corner, and if the player is really a master, a maestro, the sitar that is just sitting there in the corner will start throbbing – because of the other sitar being played in the room, the vibe, the whole milieu. The sitar that is just sitting there in the corner – nobody is playing it, nobody is touching it – you can see its strings vibrating, whispering. Something that was hidden is surfacing, something that was not manifest is manifesting.
Religion is synchronicity; morality is causal. Morality comes from the outside, religion arises in you. When religion disappears, there is only morality and morality is very dangerous. First, you don’t know what is right yourself, but you start pretending; the hypocrite is created. You start pretending, you start showing that whatsoever you are doing is right. You don’t know what right is, and naturally, because you don’t know you can only pretend. You will continue doing the same as you were from the back door – that you know is right. From the back door you will have one life, from the front door, another. From the front door you may be smiling, and from the back door you may be crying and weeping. From the front door you will pretend to be a saint, and from the back door you will be as much of a sinner as anybody else. Your life will become split. This is what is creating schizophrenia in the whole human consciousness. You become two, or many. Naturally when you are two, there is constant conflict. Naturally when you are many, there is a crowd, and a lot of noise, and you can never settle in silence, you can never rest in silence. Silence is possible only when you are one, when there is nobody else within you, when you are one piece – not fragmented.
Morality creates schizophrenia, split personalities, divisions. A moral person is not an individual because he is divided. Only a religious person is an individual. The moral person has a personality, but no individuality. Personality means a persona, a mask. He has many personalities, not just one, because he has to have many personalities around him. In different situations, different personalities are needed. With different people, different personalities are needed. To one he shows one face, to another he shows another face. One goes on changing faces. Watch, and you will see how you go on changing faces every moment. Alone you have one face. In your bathroom you have one face, in the office you have another. Have you observed the fact that in your bathroom you become more childish? Sometimes you can stick out your tongue in front of the mirror, or you can make faces, or you can hum a tune, sing a song, or you can even have a little dance in the bathroom. But if you become aware that your child is looking through the keyhole while you are dancing or sticking out your tongue in front of the mirror, you change – immediate change! The old face comes back – the father personality. “This cannot be done in front of the child, otherwise what will he think?” – that you are also like him? So what about that seriousness that you always show him? You immediately put on another face; you become serious. The song disappears, the dance disappears, the tongue disappears. You are back into your so-called front-door personality. Morality creates conflict in you because it creates many faces. The problem is that when you have many faces, you tend to forget which is your original one. With so many faces, how can you remember which is your original one?
The Zen masters say that the first thing for a seeker to know is his original face because only then can something start. Only the original face can grow, a mask cannot grow. A false face can have no growth. Growth is possible only for the original face because only the original has life. So the first thing to know is: “What is my original face?” And it is arduous because there is a long queue of false faces, and you are lost in your false faces. Sometimes you may think, “This is my original face.” If you go deeply into it, you will find that again this is a false face, maybe it is more ancient than the others, so it looks more original.
The Zen masters say that if you really want to see your original face, you will have to go back before birth; you will have to conceive of what your face was before you were born, or what your face will be when you are dead. Between birth and death you have all kinds of false faces. Even a small child starts learning the pseudo tricks, diplomacies. Just a small child – maybe one day old, just out of the womb – starts learning, because he sees that if he smiles, his mother feels very good. If he smiles, his mother immediately gives him her breast. If he smiles, his mother comes close, hugs him, pats him. He has learned a trick, that if he wants to be close to his mother, if he wants to be hugged and kissed and talked to, he has to smile. Now the diplomat is born, the politician is born. Whenever he wants his mother to pull him close… He cannot call, he cannot talk, but he can wait until she looks at him then he can smile. The moment he smiles, his mother comes running. Now whether he feels like smiling in this moment or not is not the point, he wants his mother, he wants to manipulate his mother. He has a trick, a strategy, a technique which he has learned: smile and mother will come. He will go on smiling, and whenever he wants somebody to come close to him, he will smile. This face will not be the true face. Your smiles are not true. Your tears are also not true. Your whole personality is synthetic, plastic. The moral person, the so-called moralist, has many personalities, but no individuality. The religious person has individuality, but no personality. He is one. His taste is always one.
Buddha is reported to have said: “Taste me from anywhere and you will find the same taste as when you taste the sea. From this side, from that side, from this shore, from that shore – taste the sea from anywhere and it is salty.” Buddha says: “So is my taste. Taste me while I am asleep, taste me while I am awake, taste me when somebody is insulting me, taste me when somebody is praising me – you will always find the same taste, the taste of a buddha.”
The religious person is an individual.
The second thing to be remembered: for many reasons the moralist is always making efforts to impose his morality on others. First he uses his morality to manipulate himself. And then naturally, he does the same to others; he starts using his morality to manipulate others. He uses morality for his own strategies, diplomacies. Naturally, he learns a trick, that if he can enforce his morality on others, things will be easier. For example, if the moralist speaks the truth, his truth is not very deep. Deep down there are only lies and lies. But at least he pretends to speak the truth in society. He will also try to impose his truth on others. He would like everybody to speak the truth because he will be very afraid in case somebody lies and tricks him, deceives him – and he knows that he himself is lying and deceiving people in subtle ways, but on the surface he keeps the truth. He goes on shouting that everybody should be true. He is very afraid. He knows that just as he is deceiving others, others may be deceiving him.
Bertrand Russell has said that thieves are always against stealing. A thief has to be against stealing, otherwise somebody will steal things from him. He has been making so much effort to steal things from others that if others steal things from him, then what will be the point? A thief will always shout, “Stealing is bad. Never steal. You will be thrown into hell!” So nobody steals, and the thief is free to steal.
If nobody speaks untruths, then you can speak untruths and exploit people easily. If everybody speaks untruths, how can you exploit them? Just imagine a society where everybody speaks untruths, and it is an accepted phenomenon that everybody tells lies. You will be at a loss; you will not be able to cheat people. Whatsoever you say, people will think you are a liar: “Everybody tells lies here”; nobody can be deceived. So, in his own interest, the liar has to go on preaching morality. “Speak the truth, never steal, do this, do that” – and from the back door he goes on doing just the opposite. This has to be understood. If somebody’s pocket is picked right now – somebody steals – many will be there shouting, “Catch the thief! Kill the thief! Who is there?” And many will shout. Remember, the shouters are just showing one thing: that they are also thieves. By shouting they are showing many things. One thing is: “Remember, I am not the thief because I am so much against it. Nobody could ever think or suspect me because I am against all these kind of things. I am a moral person.” Those who are pickpockets will shout more, and if the real pickpocket is caught, the pickpockets will beat him to show everybody that they are very much against it.
This is a very, very complex phenomenon. A religious person is a totally different person. He will be able to forgive, he will be able to understand. He will be able to see the limitations of man and the problems of man. He will not be so hard and so cruel – he cannot be. His compassion will be infinite.
Before we enter these sutras, a few things have to be understood. First: the concept of sin; the concept of the immoral act. What is immoral? How should we define immorality? What is the criterion? One thing is immoral in India, another thing is immoral in China. That which is immoral in India may be moral in Iran, and that which is moral in Russia may be immoral in India. There are a thousand and one moralities. How to decide? – because now that the world has become a global village, there is a lot of confusion. What is right? To eat meat is right? Is it moral or immoral? The vegetarian says it is immoral. Many Jainas have come to me and said, “What about Jesus eating meat? How can Jesus be an enlightened person – and you say that he is enlightened. How can he be an enlightened person? He eats meat.” For a Jaina it is impossible to conceive that Jesus can be enlightened because he eats meat. Jainas have come to me and asked, “How can Ramakrishna be enlightened? He eats fish. He cannot be.” Now they have a very definite criterion with them – vegetarianism.
A Jaina monk was talking to me and he said, “I cannot believe that Jesus or Ramakrishna are enlightened. They eat meat.”
I said to him, “Do you know that there are people in the world who think that to drink milk is almost like eating meat? – because it is an animal food. Blood consists of two kinds of particles, two kinds of cells – red and white. Those red particles are separated from the white ones in the mother’s breast; the white particles become milk. Now, milk is fifty percent blood. There are people in the world, real fanatics, who take things to the very extreme. They say that milk, cheese, and butter are all animal foods – they have to be avoided.”
I said to the Jaina monk, “Mahavira used to drink milk. What do you say – he was drinking blood? Was he enlightened or not? Now Indian scriptures say milk is the purest food – sattvika – the purest food is milk. It is not. It is blood!”
The Jaina monk started perspiring when he heard me say that milk is blood. He said, “What are you talking about? Milk is the sattvik food, the purest food!”
But I said, “This is the analysis, the scientific analysis. Prove it wrong. That’s why when you drink too much milk, blood comes to your face and it becomes red. That’s why milk is so vital. Milk is a hundred percent food, that’s why children only live on milk. It supplies everything; it supplies the blood. It becomes your flesh, it becomes your skin, your bone, your marrow; it becomes everything. It is pure blood. Now, how to decide who is right?”
There are a thousand and one moralities. If you go on trying to decide, you will be in difficulty; it will be impossible for you. You will go mad, you will not be able to eat, you will not be able to sleep, you will not be able to do anything. Now, there is a Jaina sect which is afraid of breathing. To breathe is immoral because with each breath you will kill many small cells living in the air around you. They are right. That’s why the doctor has to use a mask, so that he does not go on inhaling things which are moving around – infections. That Jaina sect is afraid to breathe. Breathing becomes immoral. Walking becomes immoral – there are Jainas who don’t walk in the night because they may kill something in the darkness, an ant or something else. Mahavira never moved at night time, and never moved in the rainy season because there are many more insects around then. Movement becomes difficult, breathing becomes difficult. If you go on looking around at all the moralities, you will simply go crazy or you will have to commit suicide. But to commit suicide is immoral!
If you listen to all kinds of moralities, that seems to be the logical thing – just commit suicide. That seems to be the least immoral thing. One act and you are finished, there will be no immorality. But that too is immoral. When you commit suicide you are not dying alone, remember. It is not killing one person. You have millions of cells in the body which are alive, millions of lives inside you, which will die with you. So you have killed millions of people. When you fast, is it moral or immoral? There are people who say to fast is moral, and there are people who say to fast is immoral. Why? – because when you fast, you kill many cells inside yourself; they die of starvation. If you fast, a kilo of weight disappears every day. You are killing many things inside you. Every day a kilo of weight disappears. Within a month you will be just a structure of bones. All those people who used to live inside you – small people – have all died. You have killed all of them. Or there are people who say to fast is like eating meat. Now, very strange. And that is true, there is a logic to it. When a kilo of weight disappears, where has it gone? You have eaten it! Your body needs that kind of food every day. You go on replacing it with food from the outside. If you don’t replace it with food from the outside… The body goes on eating because the body needs food every twenty-four hours; the body has to live. It needs a certain fuel; it starts eating its own flesh. To be on a fast is to be a cannibal.
These moralities can drive you mad. There is no way to choose. What is moral to me? – to be aware is moral. What you are doing is not the question. If you are doing it in full awareness, whatsoever it is – it is irrelevant what it is – irrespective of the fact of what it is, if you are doing it in full awareness, it is moral. If you are doing it in unawareness, in unconsciousness, then it is immoral.
To me, morality means awareness.
The French language seems to be the only language which has only one word for two words: conscience and consciousness. That seems to be very, very beautiful. Consciousness is conscience. Ordinarily, consciousness is one thing and conscience is another thing. Consciousness is yours. Conscience is given to you by others; it is a conditioning. Live by consciousness, become more and more conscious, and you will become more and more moral – you will not become a moralist. You will become moral and you will not become a moralist. The moralist is an ugly phenomenon.
Now the sutras:
Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.
He always used to go to the mountains whenever he felt that his consciousness was becoming dusty; his mirror was covered with dust. He would go to the mountains in aloneness to cleanse his being, to cleanse his consciousness. It is like when you take a bath, and after the bath you feel your body is fresh, young.
Meditation is like an inner bath.
To be alone for a few moments every day is a must; otherwise you will gather too much dust, and because of that dust your mirror will not reflect any more, or will not reflect rightly. It may start distorting things. Haven’t you noticed? – a single particle of dust enters your eye, and your vision becomes distorted. The same is true about the inner vision – the inner eye – so much dust goes on collecting there, and the dust comes from relationship. Just like when you travel on a dusty road, you collect dust; when you move with people who are dusty, you collect dust. They are all throwing their dust around, they are all throwing the wrong vibes – and they cannot do anything, they are helpless. I am not saying that you condemn them. What can they do?
If you go to a hospital and everybody is ill, and if they are throwing their infections all around… They can’t help it. They breathe out and the infection is released. Haven’t you noticed when you go to a hospital to visit somebody? – after just one hour in the hospital, you start feeling a kind of sickness and you were perfectly healthy when you entered. Just the smell of the hospital, just the faces of the nurses and the doctors, and the medical instruments, and that particular hospital smell, and all the people who are ill, and the whole vibe of illness and death always there… Somebody is always dying. Just being there for one hour and you feel very low; a kind of nausea arises in you.
Coming out of the hospital, you feel a great relief. The same is the situation in the world. You don’t know because you live in the world. The nurse who goes on working in the hospital, and the doctor who goes on working in the hospital – they have to become insensitive, otherwise they would die. They would not be able to live there. They have become insensitive; they go on moving. That’s why you often see doctors looking very, very insensitive – that is their protection. The patient goes on saying that this is wrong and that is wrong, and the doctor stands there almost not listening. The relatives of the patient go on running after the doctor and go on telling him that this is going wrong and that is… And he says, “Everything will be okay. I will come tomorrow morning. I will see when I come on my rounds.” Now you are feeling so concerned, and he seems to be absolutely unconcerned. This is just to protect himself. If he becomes too sensitive, he will not be able to survive. He has to become hard, he has to create a kind of stoniness around himself. That stoniness will protect him – will protect him from the hospital and the patients and the whole atmosphere. Doctors become hard, insensitive; nurses become hard, insensitive. The same is happening in the world at large. It is a kind of big hospital because everybody is ill here and everybody is on his deathbed. Everybody is full of anger and violence, aggression, jealousy, possessiveness; everybody is false, pseudo, and everybody is a hypocrite – this is the world. You don’t feel it, but when a Jesus moves among you, he feels it because he comes from the heights. He descends from the mountains.
If you go to the Himalayas and then after living in the Himalayan freshness for a few days you come back to the plains, you feel how dusty, how ugly, how heavy the vibe is. Now you have a comparison. You have seen the fresh waters of the Himalayas – those fresh fountains running forever, and the crystal-clear water – and then the municipal tap water! You have the comparison. Only a meditator knows that the world is ill, only a meditator feels that everything is wrong here. When a meditator moves among you, naturally he feels much more dust collecting on him than you can feel – because you have lost all sensitivity. You have forgotten that you are a mirror. You know that you are just a dust collector. Only a meditator knows that he is a mirror.
So Jesus goes again and again to the mountains.
Jesus went, unto the mountains, unto the Mount of Olives.
And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down, and taught them.
And early in the morning he came…into the temple… Only when you have been to the mountains – and that does not mean that you really have to go to the mountains. It is not an outer phenomenon. The mount is within you. If you can be alone, if you can forget the whole world for a few seconds, you will regain your freshness; only then can you go to the temple because only then you are a temple. Only then will your presence in the temple be a real presence; there will be a harmony between you and the temple. Remember, unless you bring your temple to the temple, there is no temple. If you simply go to the temple and don’t bring your temple there within you, it is just a house. When Jesus goes into a house, it becomes a temple. When you go into a temple, it becomes a house – because we carry our own temples inside. Wherever Jesus goes it becomes a temple, his presence creates that sacred quality. Only when you bring the temple and the freshness of the mountains, and the virginity of the mountains, only then can you teach. You can teach only then, when you have it.
And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down, and taught them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst,
They said unto him: Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou?
This is one of the most important parables in Jesus’ life. Go into it slowly, delicately, carefully.
And the scribes and Pharisees… Now for that you can read “the moralists and the puritans.” In those days those were the names of the moralists, the pundits, the scholars: …the scribes and the Pharisees… The Pharisees were the people who were very respectable. On the surface, very moral, pretentious, with great egos. “We are moral and everybody else is immoral” – and always searching and looking into people’s faults. Their whole life was concerned with how to exaggerate their own qualities and how to reduce others’ qualities to nil.
The puritans, the moralists …brought unto him a woman taken in adultery… Now when you come to a man like Jesus, you have to come there in humbleness, you have to come there to learn something, you have to come there to imbibe something; it is a rare opportunity. And now here come these fools and they bring a woman. They bring their ordinary mind, their mediocre mind, their stupidities with them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery… They have not even learned the simple lesson that when you go to a man like Jesus or Buddha, you go to partake, to participate in his consciousness; you go to become intimate with him. You don’t bring the ordinary problems of life there, they are irrelevant. That will be wasting a great opportunity, that will be wasting Jesus’ time, and he didn’t have much time, as I told you before – only three years of ministry. These fools were wasting time like this… But they had a certain strategy in it; it was a trap. They were not really concerned about the woman. They were creating a trap for Jesus. It was a very diplomatic act.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst, they said unto him, master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now what is adultery? A conscious mind will say that if you don’t love a man – maybe the man is your own husband. If you don’t love the man and you sleep with the man, it is adultery. If you don’t love the woman – and she may be your own wife… If you don’t love her and you sleep with her, you are exploiting her, you are deceiving her. It is adultery. But that is not the definition of the Pharisees and the puritans, the scribes and the pundits. Their definition is legal, their definition does not arise out of consciousness or love. Their definition arises out of the court. If the woman is not your wife and you have been found sleeping with her, it is adultery. It is just a legal matter, technical. The heart is not taken into account, only the law. You may be deeply in love with the man or with the woman, but that is not to be taken into account. The unconscious mind cannot take higher things into account. It can only take the lowest into account.
The problem is always legal. Is it your woman? Your wife? Are you legally wed to her? Then it is good, it is no longer a sin. If she is not your woman, you are not legally wed to her… You may be deeply in love and you may have immense respect for the woman – you may almost be a worshipper of her – but it is a sin, it is adultery. Those people brought this woman to Jesus, and… They said unto him: Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Just the other day I was reading the memoirs of an English Christian missionary who went to Japan in the early days of this century. He was taken around Tokyo. His host had taken him around to show him the city. In one public bath there were men and women bathing in the nude. The missionary was very shocked.
He stood there for five minutes, watched everything, and then said to his host, “Isn’t it immoral – women and men bathing naked in a public place?”
The host said, “Sir, this is not immoral in our country, but sorry to say, to stand here and watch is immoral. I am feeling very guilty standing with you because it is their business if they want to take a bath naked. That is their freedom. But why are you standing here? This is ugly, immoral.”
Now the missionary’s standpoint is very ordinary, and the host’s standpoint is extraordinary.
These people say: …Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. And what were you doing there? Were they Peeping Toms or… What type of people were they? What were you doing there? Why should you be concerned? This woman’s life is her life. How she wants to spend her life is her concern. Who are you to interfere? But the puritan and the moralist have always interfered in other people’s lives. They are not democratic, they are very dictatorial. They want to manipulate people, condemn people. Now, what were those people doing there?
And they say: …Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. They have caught the woman while she was making love.
One more thing: where is the man? Was she committing adultery alone…? Nobody has ever asked this question about this parable. I have read many Christian books, but nobody has ever asked, “Where is the man?”
But it is a man’s society. It is always the woman who is wrong, not the man. The man will just go free. He may be a Pharisee himself, he may be a respectable man – but the woman has to be condemned. Haven’t you observed? – prostitutes are condemned, but where are the prostituters? Where are those people? They may be the same people who condemn.
Now Morarji Desai wants to bring prohibition to the country. In his own ministry, out of seventeen, twelve are drunkards. Twelve! And he does not drink himself, that is true, but he drinks his own urine. That is a far worse case! But he wants to bring prohibition to the country. He wants to force it through. Maybe because he has not been drinking… He wants to take revenge on others, or what? Puritans are always ugly people. They don’t live and they don’t allow anybody else to live. Their only joy is how to kill other people’s joy, how to kill everybody’s celebration.
Now, what were those people doing there? Didn’t they have anything else to do? Didn’t they have their own women to love? What kind of people were they? They must have been a little perverted to go out searching and seeking someone who was committing adultery. Where was the man? The woman just always has to be condemned. Why does the woman have to be condemned? – because the woman is a woman and the man is the dominant one, and all the legal codes have been made by men. They are very prejudicial, biased. All the legal courts say what should be done to a woman if she is found committing adultery, but they don’t say anything about what should be done to the man. No, they say, “Boys are boys. And boys will be boys.” It is always a question about the woman. Even if a man rapes a woman, the woman is condemned; she loses respect, not the rapist. This is an ugly state of affairs. This can’t be called religious, it is very political – basically in men’s favor and against women. All your so-called moralities have been that way.
In India, when a husband died, the wife had to go with him to the funeral pyre, only then was she thought to be virtuous. She had to become a sati, she had to die with her husband. If she did not die, that meant she was not virtuous. That simply meant she wanted to live without the husband, or maybe she wanted the husband to die. Now she wanted freedom, now she could fall in love with somebody else. In India, it has been thought that there is no life for the woman once the husband has died. Her husband has been her whole life. If the husband goes, she has to go. But nothing is said about the man if his woman dies – no prescription for him that he should die with the woman. No, that isn’t a problem. Immediately after the woman has died… In India it happens every day, the people burn the woman and coming back home, they start thinking about a new marriage – where and how can the man find a new woman? Not a single day is to be lost.
For the man there is one morality, for the woman it is different. It is a very unconscious morality and a very immoral one. My definition of morality is that of consciousness, and consciousness is neither man nor woman. Consciousness is just consciousness. Only when something is decided by your being conscious will it be classless, will it be beyond the distinctions of body, caste, creed. Only then is it moral.
Master, they say, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou?
This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
This was the trap. They wanted to trap Jesus: “Moses has said that such a woman should be stoned.” Nothing is said about the man. Such a woman should be stoned to death; Moses has said this. Now they are creating a problem for Jesus. If Jesus says, “Yes, do as Moses says,” they can accuse him because he has always been talking about love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness. They can say, “What about your compassion? What about your forgiveness? What about your love? You say this woman has to be killed by stoning? This is hard and cruel and violent.”
Tricky fellows. If Jesus says, “This is not right. Moses is not right,” they can say, “So you have come to destroy Moses? So you have come to destroy and corrupt our religion? And you have been saying to people, ‘I have not come to destroy but to fulfill.’ What about that? If you have come to fulfill, then follow Moses’ law.” Now they are creating a dilemma. This is the trap. They are not concerned about the woman, remember, their real target is Jesus; the woman is just an excuse. And they have brought such a case… That’s why they say …in the very act, red-handed. So it is not a question of deciding whether the woman has really committed adultery. Otherwise, Jesus would have an excuse to get out. He would say, “First, try to find out whether it really has happened. Bring the witnesses. Let it first be decided.” It would take years. So they say, “Red-handed! We have caught her in the very act. We are all witnesses, so there is no question of deciding anything else. The law is clear; Moses has said that such a woman should be stoned.”
…what sayest thou? “Do you agree with Moses? If you agree, then what about your love and compassion – your whole message? If you don’t agree, what do you mean when you say ‘I have come to fulfill’? Then you have come to destroy the law of Moses. So do you think you are higher than Moses? Do you think that you know more than Moses?”
…what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. Why? Why did Jesus stoop down? Why did he start writing on the ground? They were just on the bank of a river. Jesus was sitting on the sand. Why did he start writing in the sand? What had happened?
There is one thing to be understood; it is always a delicate problem. For example, if I see that something stated by Buddha as wrong, there is a great hesitation to say that he is wrong. He cannot be wrong. Tradition must have misinterpreted him. Something must have been wrongly put into his mouth. Buddha cannot be wrong. But now there is no way to decide because the scriptures say this clearly… Jesus hesitating… Jesus is concerned. He does not want to say a single word against Moses, but he has to, hence the hesitation. He does not want to say anything against Moses because Moses could not have said it that way. It is his inner feeling that Moses could not have said it that way. But the inner feeling cannot be decisive. These people will say, “Who are you? Why should we care about your inner feeling? We have the written code with us, given by our forefathers. It is there written clearly!”
Jesus does not want to say anything against Moses because he really has come to fulfill Moses. Anybody who becomes enlightened in the world is always fulfilling all the enlightened ones that have preceded him. Even if sometimes he says something against them, then, too, he is fulfilling them, because he cannot say anything against them. If you feel that he is saying something against them, then he is saying something against the tradition, against the scripture. But that looks as if he is saying something against Moses, against Buddha, against Abraham. Hence, he stoops down. He starts looking at the sand and starts writing. He is puzzled as what to do. He has to find a way out. He has to find a way out, in such a way that he does not say anything against Moses and yet he cancels the whole law. He really comes with a very miraculous answer, a magical answer.
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
It is really incredible, it is beautiful – that was his hesitation. He has found a golden mean. He has not said a single word against Moses and he has not supported Moses either. This is the delicate point to understand. Jesus was really utterly intelligent – uneducated, but utterly intelligent, a man of immense awareness. That’s why he could find the way out.
He says: …He that is without sin among you… He says, “Perfectly right” – does not say directly that Moses is right, but he says, “Perfectly right. If Moses says so, then it must be so. But then, who should start throwing stones at this woman?”
…He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. “So start, but only those who are without sin…” Now this is something new that Jesus brings in. You can judge only if you are without sin. You can punish only if you are without sin. If you are also in the same boat, what is the point? Who is going to punish whom?
And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
Why did he stoop down again? – because he must have been afraid that there is always the possibility of some foolish person… He knows that everybody has committed one sin or another. If they have not committed one, they have been thinking to commit one – which is almost the same. Whether you think or you act makes no difference. Remember, the difference between sin and crime is this: crime has to be acted out, only then is it crime. You can go on thinking, but if you don’t commit it to action, no court can punish you because it never becomes a crime. Only crime is within the jurisdiction of the court, not sin. Then what is sin? Sin is if you think, “I would like to murder this man.” No court can do anything. You can say, “Yes, I have been thinking about it my whole life.” But thinking is beyond the court’s jurisdiction. You are allowed to think. No court can punish you because you dreamt that you killed somebody. You can dream every day and go on killing as many people as you want. No court can hold you unless it comes to actuality, unless thought becomes deed, unless thought is translated into reality. If it comes out of you and affects society, it becomes a crime. But it is sin because God can go on reading your thoughts. There is no need for him to read your acts. The magistrate has to read your acts, he cannot read your thoughts; he is not a thought reader or a mind reader. But for God there is no difference; whether you think or you do, it is all the same. The moment you think, you have done it.
So Jesus says: …He that is without sin among you… not without crime. He says: …He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. That distinction was known down the ages – that if you think it, you have committed a sin already.
And again he stooped down… Why this time? – because if he goes on looking at the people, his very look may be provocative. If he goes on looking at the people – somebody, just from his look, and out of offense, may throw a stone at the poor woman. He does not want to offend; he withdraws. He simply stoops down, starts writing in the sand – again as if he is not there. He becomes absent because his presence can be dangerous. If they have come just to trap him, and he is there and they feel his presence, it will be difficult for them to feel their own consciences, their own consciousnesses. He withdraws into himself, he allows them total freedom to think about it. He does not interfere. His presence can be an interference; if he goes on looking at them, that will offend their egos. It will also be difficult for them to escape, because it will feel bad to them that somebody was standing just in front of the mayor of the town or somebody else – the respectable people… How can the mayor escape when Jesus is looking at him? If he escapes and does not throw the stone at the woman, it will be proof that he is a sinner.
He stoops down again, starts writing in the sand, gives them a chance – if they want to escape, they can.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience…
Jesus leaves them alone. That is the beauty of the man. He does not even interfere by his presence; he is simply no longer there. Their own consciences start pricking. They know. Maybe they have lusted after this woman many times, or maybe in the past they themselves have participated with this woman. Maybe the woman is a prostitute and all these respectable people in their turn have made love to her. Because one prostitute means that almost the whole town can become involved.
In India, in the ancient days, prostitutes were called nagarvadhu, the wife of the town. That is the right name. All of those people must have been involved in some way or other with this woman or with other women – if not in acts, then in thoughts. My feeling is, it must have been evening and the sun was setting; it was becoming dark and Jesus was stooping down writing in the sand, and as it became dark, by and by the people started disappearing.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest – the mayor – even unto the last…
First the eldest disappeared, because of course, they have lived the longest, so they have sinned the longest. The young people may not have been such great sinners; they haven’t had enough time yet. But the eldest disappeared first. Those who were standing in front must have moved slowly to the back and escaped – because this man had really created a great problem; he had changed the whole situation. They had come to trap him and now they were trapped! You cannot trap a Jesus or a Buddha; it is impossible – you will be trapped. You exist at a lower state of mind. How can you trap a higher state of mind? That is just foolish. The higher state can trap you immediately because from that higher state your whole being is available.
Now, Jesus must have looked into those people’s consciences – that was possible for him – he must have seen all kinds of sins raising their heads. In fact, even standing there, they were thinking about the woman: how to catch her. Maybe they were angry because somebody else had committed the sin and they were not given the opportunity. Maybe they were only jealous; maybe they wanted to be there instead of the man who had not been brought. Jesus must have looked from his height into their hearts. He had trapped them. They had forgotten their trap completely, they had forgotten about Moses and the law etcetera. In fact, they were never worried about Moses and the law. This also has to be understood. They were really more interested in stoning the woman, enjoying this murder. Not that they were interested in punishing somebody who had committed a sin – that was just an excuse. They could not leave this opportunity of murdering her. Now, Moses can be used…
There are a thousand and one things said by Moses. They are not worried about them. They are not interested in all those sayings and all those statements. They are interested in this: “Moses says you can stone a woman if you catch her committing adultery.” They can’t miss this great opportunity of murder, of violence. When violence can be committed according to the law, who would like to miss it? Not only will they enjoy the violence, they will enjoy that they are very, very legal people, virtuous followers of Moses. But they have forgotten all about it. Just a little turning by Jesus and they have forgotten about Moses… He has changed the whole point. He has changed their minds from the woman to themselves. He has converted them, he has turned them backward – a one hundred and eighty degree turn. They were thinking about the woman and Moses and Jesus, and he has changed their whole attitude. He has made them their own target. He has turned their consciousness.
Now he says, “Look into yourself. If you have never committed a sin, then… Then you are allowed, then you can kill this woman.”
When Jesus had lifted up himself…
he saw that they had all gone
…even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
…and he saw none but the woman, he said unto her: Woman, where are those thine accusers?
Now he is not saying, “I am accusing you.” …where are those thine accusers? He is not for a single moment a participant in it. He has not judged, he has not condemned. He has not said a single thing to the woman. He simply says:
Woman where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?
Have they all gone? Has any man thrown a stone at you?
She said, No man, Lord.
She must have felt a deep respect, reverence, for this man who has not only saved her physically, but who has not even accused her in any way. Spiritually he has also saved her. She must have looked into those eyes which have only love and compassion and nothing else. This is the religious man. The moralist is always condemning, accusing; the religious man, always accepting, forgiving.
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her: Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.
Jesus says, “There is nothing to be worried about – the past. The past is past, gone is gone. Forget about it. But take some lessons from this situation. Don’t go on making the same mistakes in the future – if you think they are mistakes. I am not accusing you.”
…Neither do I condemn thee… “But if you feel that you have done something wrong, then it is up to you. Don’t do it again. Forget the past, and don’t go on repeating it.”
That is the whole message of all the buddhas and all the christs and all the krishnas: forget the past and if you understand, don’t do it again. That’s enough. There is no punishment, there is no judgment. If you have been doing something, you were helpless. You are unconscious, you have your limitations. You have your desires, unfulfilled desires. Whatsoever you have been doing was the only thing you could have done. So what is the point of accusing and condemning you? The only thing that can be done is that your consciousness can be raised high.
That woman must have moved into a higher consciousness. She must have been afraid that she was going to be killed. This man, by a single statement, saved her from death. Not only that, the accusers disappeared. This man did a miracle. Not only did they not kill her, they simply became ashamed and escaped like thieves into the darkness of the night. This man is a magician.
Now, he is saying, “I don’t condemn you. If you feel you have been doing something wrong, don’t do it again. That’s enough.” He has converted her.
This is what people on acid call a “contact high.” Jesus is high; if you come in close affinity with him, you will start moving higher. This is synchronicity – non-causal. The woman must have come there almost condemning herself, ashamed of herself, thinking of committing suicide. He has raised that woman, transformed that woman.
She said, No man, Lord… Jesus becomes Lord, Jesus becomes God to her. She has never seen such a godly man before. With no condemnation, a man becomes a god. With no judgment a man becomes a god. Just his presence, a single statement, and those people disappeared and she was saved. Not only saved physically, but spiritually intact. Jesus has not interfered at all. He has not condemned, he has not said a single word. He simply said, “Don’t repeat your past” – not a single word more. “Let the past be past and the gone, gone. You become new. All is good, and you are forgiven.”
Jesus transformed many people by forgiving them. That was one of the accusations against him: “He forgives people. Who is he to forgive? Somebody has committed a sin – the society has to punish him! If society cannot punish him and he escapes, then society has prepared a punishment through God – he should be thrown into hell.”
Hindus are also very much against the idea that Jesus can forgive you. The Christian idea is immense, tremendous, very great and full of potential. Hindus say that you will have to suffer for your past karmas; whatsoever you have done, you will have to undo. If you have done a bad thing, you will have to do something good. The bad thing and its result are going to come; you will have to suffer the consequence. Hindus will not agree with Jesus. Neither the Buddhists, nor the Jainas will agree, nor were the Jews agreeing with Jesus. How can he forgive?
But I say to you – a man of that understanding can forgive. Not that by his forgiveness you are forgiven, but just that consciousness, that great consciousness can give you a feeling of well-being: “Nothing is wrong, don’t be worried; you can just shake off the past like dust and get out of it.” That very thing will give you such courage, such enthusiasm, will open new possibilities and new doors. You are freed from it. You immediately move beyond it. From this came the idea of the Christian confession. It does not work that way because the man you go to confess to is an ordinary man just like you. When you are confessing, the priest is not really forgiving you, deep down he may be condemning you. His forgiveness is just a show. He is an ordinary man, his consciousness is no higher than yours.
Only from the higher can forgiveness flow. Only from the high mountains can the rivers flow toward the plains. Only from a Jesus or a Buddha, can forgiveness flow. And when there is a man like Jesus or Buddha, just his touch, just his look is enough to forgive you your whole past and all your karmas.
I totally agree with Jesus. He brings a new vision to humanity – to attain to freedom. The Hindu, Jaina, and Buddhist concept is very ordinary and mathematical. It has no magic in it. It is very logical but it has no love in it. Jesus brings love to the world.
Enough for today.
Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.
And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down and taught them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst,
They said unto him: Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned. What sayest thou?
This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her: Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her: Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.
Religion always deteriorates into morality. Morality is dead religion and religion is alive morality; they never meet, they cannot meet because life and death never meet, light and darkness never meet. But the problem is that they look very alike – the corpse looks very similar to the living man. Everything is similar to when the man was alive: the same face, the same eyes, the same nose, hair, and body. Just one thing is missing, and that one thing is invisible. Life is missing, but life is not tangible and not visible. So when a man is dead, he looks as if he is still alive. And with the problem of morality, it becomes more complex.
Morality looks exactly like religion, but it is not. It is a corpse; it stinks of death. Religion is youth, religion is freshness – the freshness of flowers and the freshness of the morning dew. Religion is splendor – the splendor of the stars, of life, of existence itself. When there is religion, there is no morality at all and yet the person is moral. But there is no morality; there is no idea of what morality is. It is just natural; it follows you as your shadow follows you. You need not carry your shadow, you need not think about your shadow. You need not look back again and again and see whether the shadow is still following you or not. It follows. Just like that, morality follows a religious person. He never considers it, he never deliberately thinks about it; it is his natural flavor. But when religion is dead, when life has disappeared, then one starts thinking continuously about morality. Consciousness has disappeared, and conscience becomes the only shelter.
Conscience is a pseudo phenomenon. Consciousness is yours, conscience is borrowed. Conscience is of the society, of the collective mind; it does not arise in your own being. When you are conscious, you act rightly because your act is conscious, and the conscious act can never go wrong. When your eyes are fully open and there is light, you don’t try to go through the wall, you go through the door. When there is no light and your eyes are not functioning well, naturally you will grope in the dark. You will have to think a thousand and one times where the door is: “To the left, to the right? Am I moving in the right direction?” You stumble on the furniture, and you try to get out through the wall.
A religious person is one who has eyes to see, who has awareness. In that awareness, actions are naturally good. Let me repeat: naturally good. Not that you make them good. Managed goodness is not goodness at all. It is pseudo, it is pretentious, it is hypocrisy. When goodness is natural, spontaneous, just as trees are green and the sky is blue, so is the religious man moral – completely unaware of his morality. Aware of himself, but unaware of his morality. He has no idea that he is moral, that he is good, that what he is doing is right. Out of his awareness comes innocence, out of his awareness comes the right act – of its own accord. It has not to be brought, it has not to be cultivated, it has not to be practiced. Then morality has a beauty, but it is no longer morality; it is simply moral. In fact, it is just a religious way of living. But when religion has disappeared, then you have to manage it. Then you have to constantly think about what is right and what is wrong. How are you going to decide what is right and what is wrong? You don’t have your own eyes to see, you don’t have your own heart to feel. You are dead and dull. You don’t have your own intelligence to go into things; you have to depend on the collective mind that surrounds you.
Religiousness has one flavor – whether you are Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan does not make any difference. A religious person is simply religious. He is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian. But a moral person is not just moral. Either he is Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan or Buddhist, because morality has to be learned from the outside. If you are born in a Buddhist country, in a Buddhist society, you will learn the Buddhist morality. If you are born in a Christian world, you will learn the Christian morality. You will learn from others, and you have to learn from others because you don’t have your own insight. So morality is borrowed; it is social, it is mob – it comes from the masses. It comes to the masses from where? – from tradition. They have heard what is right and what is wrong, and they have carried it down the ages. It is being given from one generation to another. Nobody bothers whether it is a corpse, nobody bothers whether the heart still beats; it goes on being given from one generation to another. It is dull, dead, heavy; it kills joy, it is a killjoy. It kills celebration, it kills laughter, it makes people ugly, it makes people heavy, monotonous, boring. But it has a long tradition.
Another thing to be remembered: religion is always born anew. In Jesus, religion is born again. It is not the same religion that was with Moses. It has not come from Moses. It has no continuity with the past; it is utterly discontinuous with the past. It arises again and again just like a flower comes on the rosebush. It has nothing to do with the flowers that have come before; it is discontinuous. It comes on its own; it has no past, no history, no biography. For the moment it is there, and for the moment it is so beautifully there, so authentically there. For the moment it is so strong, so alive, and yet so fragile. In the morning sun it was so young… By the evening it will be gone, the petals will start falling onto the earth from which they had come in the first place. It will not leave any trace behind; if you come the next day, it is no longer there. It has not left any marks; it has simply disappeared. As it has come out of nothingness, so it has gone back to nothingness, to the original source.
Religion is just like that. When it happens in a Buddha, it is fresh, young, like a roseflower; it disappears, it leaves no traces. Buddha has said: “Religion is like a bird flying in the sky, it leaves no footprints.” It happens in a Moses – it is fresh, young again, then in Jesus – it is fresh and young again. When it happens to you, it will not have any continuity, it will not come from somebody else – Christ, Buddha, me; it will not come from anybody else. It will arise in you, it will bloom in you. It will be a flowering of your being and then it will be gone. You cannot give it to anybody; it is not transferable. It cannot be given, cannot be borrowed; it is not a thing. Yes, if somebody wants to learn, it can be learned. If somebody wants to imbibe it, it can be imbibed. When a disciple learns from being around a master, absorbs the vibes of the master, then too it is something that is happening within him. Maybe he gets the challenge, the provocation, the call from the outside, but that which arises, arises in him, utterly in him. It does not come from the outside.
It is as if you are not aware that you can sing; you have never tried, you have never thought about the possibility. One day you see a singer, and suddenly his song starts pulsating around you. In a moment of awakening, you become aware that you have also got a throat and a heart. Now, suddenly, for the first time, you become aware that there has been a song hidden in you, and you release it. But the song comes from your innermost core; it arises from your being. Maybe the provocation, the call came from the outside, but not the song. So the master is a catalytic agent. His presence provokes something in you, his presence does not function as a cause.
C. G. Jung is right in bringing a new concept to the Western world. It has existed in the East for centuries – the concept of synchronicity. There are things which happen as cause and effect, and there are things which don’t happen as cause and effect, but just by synchronicity. This idea has to be understood because it will help you to understand the difference between morality and religion. Morality is cause and effect. Your father, your mother, have taught you something; they function as the cause, and then the effect continues in you. You will teach your children; you will become the cause, and the effect will continue in your children. But listening to a singer, suddenly you start humming a tune. There is no cause-and-effect relationship. The singer is not the cause and you are not the effect. You have caused the effect yourself – you are both the cause and the effect. The singer functioned only as a remembrance, the singer functioned only as a catalytic agent.
What has happened to me I cannot give to you. Not that I don’t want to give it to you, no – because it cannot be given, its very nature is such that it cannot be given – but I can present it to you, I can make it available to you. Seeing that it is possible, seeing that it has happened to another man, “Why not to me?” Suddenly something clicks inside you, you become alert to a possibility, alert to a door that is in you but you were never looking at, you had forgotten it. Something starts sprouting in you.
I function as a catalytic agent, not as a cause. The concept of synchronicity simply says that one thing can start something somewhere without it being a cause. It says that if somebody plays a sitar in a room where another sitar has been placed in the corner, and if the player is really a master, a maestro, the sitar that is just sitting there in the corner will start throbbing – because of the other sitar being played in the room, the vibe, the whole milieu. The sitar that is just sitting there in the corner – nobody is playing it, nobody is touching it – you can see its strings vibrating, whispering. Something that was hidden is surfacing, something that was not manifest is manifesting.
Religion is synchronicity; morality is causal. Morality comes from the outside, religion arises in you. When religion disappears, there is only morality and morality is very dangerous. First, you don’t know what is right yourself, but you start pretending; the hypocrite is created. You start pretending, you start showing that whatsoever you are doing is right. You don’t know what right is, and naturally, because you don’t know you can only pretend. You will continue doing the same as you were from the back door – that you know is right. From the back door you will have one life, from the front door, another. From the front door you may be smiling, and from the back door you may be crying and weeping. From the front door you will pretend to be a saint, and from the back door you will be as much of a sinner as anybody else. Your life will become split. This is what is creating schizophrenia in the whole human consciousness. You become two, or many. Naturally when you are two, there is constant conflict. Naturally when you are many, there is a crowd, and a lot of noise, and you can never settle in silence, you can never rest in silence. Silence is possible only when you are one, when there is nobody else within you, when you are one piece – not fragmented.
Morality creates schizophrenia, split personalities, divisions. A moral person is not an individual because he is divided. Only a religious person is an individual. The moral person has a personality, but no individuality. Personality means a persona, a mask. He has many personalities, not just one, because he has to have many personalities around him. In different situations, different personalities are needed. With different people, different personalities are needed. To one he shows one face, to another he shows another face. One goes on changing faces. Watch, and you will see how you go on changing faces every moment. Alone you have one face. In your bathroom you have one face, in the office you have another. Have you observed the fact that in your bathroom you become more childish? Sometimes you can stick out your tongue in front of the mirror, or you can make faces, or you can hum a tune, sing a song, or you can even have a little dance in the bathroom. But if you become aware that your child is looking through the keyhole while you are dancing or sticking out your tongue in front of the mirror, you change – immediate change! The old face comes back – the father personality. “This cannot be done in front of the child, otherwise what will he think?” – that you are also like him? So what about that seriousness that you always show him? You immediately put on another face; you become serious. The song disappears, the dance disappears, the tongue disappears. You are back into your so-called front-door personality. Morality creates conflict in you because it creates many faces. The problem is that when you have many faces, you tend to forget which is your original one. With so many faces, how can you remember which is your original one?
The Zen masters say that the first thing for a seeker to know is his original face because only then can something start. Only the original face can grow, a mask cannot grow. A false face can have no growth. Growth is possible only for the original face because only the original has life. So the first thing to know is: “What is my original face?” And it is arduous because there is a long queue of false faces, and you are lost in your false faces. Sometimes you may think, “This is my original face.” If you go deeply into it, you will find that again this is a false face, maybe it is more ancient than the others, so it looks more original.
The Zen masters say that if you really want to see your original face, you will have to go back before birth; you will have to conceive of what your face was before you were born, or what your face will be when you are dead. Between birth and death you have all kinds of false faces. Even a small child starts learning the pseudo tricks, diplomacies. Just a small child – maybe one day old, just out of the womb – starts learning, because he sees that if he smiles, his mother feels very good. If he smiles, his mother immediately gives him her breast. If he smiles, his mother comes close, hugs him, pats him. He has learned a trick, that if he wants to be close to his mother, if he wants to be hugged and kissed and talked to, he has to smile. Now the diplomat is born, the politician is born. Whenever he wants his mother to pull him close… He cannot call, he cannot talk, but he can wait until she looks at him then he can smile. The moment he smiles, his mother comes running. Now whether he feels like smiling in this moment or not is not the point, he wants his mother, he wants to manipulate his mother. He has a trick, a strategy, a technique which he has learned: smile and mother will come. He will go on smiling, and whenever he wants somebody to come close to him, he will smile. This face will not be the true face. Your smiles are not true. Your tears are also not true. Your whole personality is synthetic, plastic. The moral person, the so-called moralist, has many personalities, but no individuality. The religious person has individuality, but no personality. He is one. His taste is always one.
Buddha is reported to have said: “Taste me from anywhere and you will find the same taste as when you taste the sea. From this side, from that side, from this shore, from that shore – taste the sea from anywhere and it is salty.” Buddha says: “So is my taste. Taste me while I am asleep, taste me while I am awake, taste me when somebody is insulting me, taste me when somebody is praising me – you will always find the same taste, the taste of a buddha.”
The religious person is an individual.
The second thing to be remembered: for many reasons the moralist is always making efforts to impose his morality on others. First he uses his morality to manipulate himself. And then naturally, he does the same to others; he starts using his morality to manipulate others. He uses morality for his own strategies, diplomacies. Naturally, he learns a trick, that if he can enforce his morality on others, things will be easier. For example, if the moralist speaks the truth, his truth is not very deep. Deep down there are only lies and lies. But at least he pretends to speak the truth in society. He will also try to impose his truth on others. He would like everybody to speak the truth because he will be very afraid in case somebody lies and tricks him, deceives him – and he knows that he himself is lying and deceiving people in subtle ways, but on the surface he keeps the truth. He goes on shouting that everybody should be true. He is very afraid. He knows that just as he is deceiving others, others may be deceiving him.
Bertrand Russell has said that thieves are always against stealing. A thief has to be against stealing, otherwise somebody will steal things from him. He has been making so much effort to steal things from others that if others steal things from him, then what will be the point? A thief will always shout, “Stealing is bad. Never steal. You will be thrown into hell!” So nobody steals, and the thief is free to steal.
If nobody speaks untruths, then you can speak untruths and exploit people easily. If everybody speaks untruths, how can you exploit them? Just imagine a society where everybody speaks untruths, and it is an accepted phenomenon that everybody tells lies. You will be at a loss; you will not be able to cheat people. Whatsoever you say, people will think you are a liar: “Everybody tells lies here”; nobody can be deceived. So, in his own interest, the liar has to go on preaching morality. “Speak the truth, never steal, do this, do that” – and from the back door he goes on doing just the opposite. This has to be understood. If somebody’s pocket is picked right now – somebody steals – many will be there shouting, “Catch the thief! Kill the thief! Who is there?” And many will shout. Remember, the shouters are just showing one thing: that they are also thieves. By shouting they are showing many things. One thing is: “Remember, I am not the thief because I am so much against it. Nobody could ever think or suspect me because I am against all these kind of things. I am a moral person.” Those who are pickpockets will shout more, and if the real pickpocket is caught, the pickpockets will beat him to show everybody that they are very much against it.
This is a very, very complex phenomenon. A religious person is a totally different person. He will be able to forgive, he will be able to understand. He will be able to see the limitations of man and the problems of man. He will not be so hard and so cruel – he cannot be. His compassion will be infinite.
Before we enter these sutras, a few things have to be understood. First: the concept of sin; the concept of the immoral act. What is immoral? How should we define immorality? What is the criterion? One thing is immoral in India, another thing is immoral in China. That which is immoral in India may be moral in Iran, and that which is moral in Russia may be immoral in India. There are a thousand and one moralities. How to decide? – because now that the world has become a global village, there is a lot of confusion. What is right? To eat meat is right? Is it moral or immoral? The vegetarian says it is immoral. Many Jainas have come to me and said, “What about Jesus eating meat? How can Jesus be an enlightened person – and you say that he is enlightened. How can he be an enlightened person? He eats meat.” For a Jaina it is impossible to conceive that Jesus can be enlightened because he eats meat. Jainas have come to me and asked, “How can Ramakrishna be enlightened? He eats fish. He cannot be.” Now they have a very definite criterion with them – vegetarianism.
A Jaina monk was talking to me and he said, “I cannot believe that Jesus or Ramakrishna are enlightened. They eat meat.”
I said to him, “Do you know that there are people in the world who think that to drink milk is almost like eating meat? – because it is an animal food. Blood consists of two kinds of particles, two kinds of cells – red and white. Those red particles are separated from the white ones in the mother’s breast; the white particles become milk. Now, milk is fifty percent blood. There are people in the world, real fanatics, who take things to the very extreme. They say that milk, cheese, and butter are all animal foods – they have to be avoided.”
I said to the Jaina monk, “Mahavira used to drink milk. What do you say – he was drinking blood? Was he enlightened or not? Now Indian scriptures say milk is the purest food – sattvika – the purest food is milk. It is not. It is blood!”
The Jaina monk started perspiring when he heard me say that milk is blood. He said, “What are you talking about? Milk is the sattvik food, the purest food!”
But I said, “This is the analysis, the scientific analysis. Prove it wrong. That’s why when you drink too much milk, blood comes to your face and it becomes red. That’s why milk is so vital. Milk is a hundred percent food, that’s why children only live on milk. It supplies everything; it supplies the blood. It becomes your flesh, it becomes your skin, your bone, your marrow; it becomes everything. It is pure blood. Now, how to decide who is right?”
There are a thousand and one moralities. If you go on trying to decide, you will be in difficulty; it will be impossible for you. You will go mad, you will not be able to eat, you will not be able to sleep, you will not be able to do anything. Now, there is a Jaina sect which is afraid of breathing. To breathe is immoral because with each breath you will kill many small cells living in the air around you. They are right. That’s why the doctor has to use a mask, so that he does not go on inhaling things which are moving around – infections. That Jaina sect is afraid to breathe. Breathing becomes immoral. Walking becomes immoral – there are Jainas who don’t walk in the night because they may kill something in the darkness, an ant or something else. Mahavira never moved at night time, and never moved in the rainy season because there are many more insects around then. Movement becomes difficult, breathing becomes difficult. If you go on looking around at all the moralities, you will simply go crazy or you will have to commit suicide. But to commit suicide is immoral!
If you listen to all kinds of moralities, that seems to be the logical thing – just commit suicide. That seems to be the least immoral thing. One act and you are finished, there will be no immorality. But that too is immoral. When you commit suicide you are not dying alone, remember. It is not killing one person. You have millions of cells in the body which are alive, millions of lives inside you, which will die with you. So you have killed millions of people. When you fast, is it moral or immoral? There are people who say to fast is moral, and there are people who say to fast is immoral. Why? – because when you fast, you kill many cells inside yourself; they die of starvation. If you fast, a kilo of weight disappears every day. You are killing many things inside you. Every day a kilo of weight disappears. Within a month you will be just a structure of bones. All those people who used to live inside you – small people – have all died. You have killed all of them. Or there are people who say to fast is like eating meat. Now, very strange. And that is true, there is a logic to it. When a kilo of weight disappears, where has it gone? You have eaten it! Your body needs that kind of food every day. You go on replacing it with food from the outside. If you don’t replace it with food from the outside… The body goes on eating because the body needs food every twenty-four hours; the body has to live. It needs a certain fuel; it starts eating its own flesh. To be on a fast is to be a cannibal.
These moralities can drive you mad. There is no way to choose. What is moral to me? – to be aware is moral. What you are doing is not the question. If you are doing it in full awareness, whatsoever it is – it is irrelevant what it is – irrespective of the fact of what it is, if you are doing it in full awareness, it is moral. If you are doing it in unawareness, in unconsciousness, then it is immoral.
To me, morality means awareness.
The French language seems to be the only language which has only one word for two words: conscience and consciousness. That seems to be very, very beautiful. Consciousness is conscience. Ordinarily, consciousness is one thing and conscience is another thing. Consciousness is yours. Conscience is given to you by others; it is a conditioning. Live by consciousness, become more and more conscious, and you will become more and more moral – you will not become a moralist. You will become moral and you will not become a moralist. The moralist is an ugly phenomenon.
Now the sutras:
Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.
He always used to go to the mountains whenever he felt that his consciousness was becoming dusty; his mirror was covered with dust. He would go to the mountains in aloneness to cleanse his being, to cleanse his consciousness. It is like when you take a bath, and after the bath you feel your body is fresh, young.
Meditation is like an inner bath.
To be alone for a few moments every day is a must; otherwise you will gather too much dust, and because of that dust your mirror will not reflect any more, or will not reflect rightly. It may start distorting things. Haven’t you noticed? – a single particle of dust enters your eye, and your vision becomes distorted. The same is true about the inner vision – the inner eye – so much dust goes on collecting there, and the dust comes from relationship. Just like when you travel on a dusty road, you collect dust; when you move with people who are dusty, you collect dust. They are all throwing their dust around, they are all throwing the wrong vibes – and they cannot do anything, they are helpless. I am not saying that you condemn them. What can they do?
If you go to a hospital and everybody is ill, and if they are throwing their infections all around… They can’t help it. They breathe out and the infection is released. Haven’t you noticed when you go to a hospital to visit somebody? – after just one hour in the hospital, you start feeling a kind of sickness and you were perfectly healthy when you entered. Just the smell of the hospital, just the faces of the nurses and the doctors, and the medical instruments, and that particular hospital smell, and all the people who are ill, and the whole vibe of illness and death always there… Somebody is always dying. Just being there for one hour and you feel very low; a kind of nausea arises in you.
Coming out of the hospital, you feel a great relief. The same is the situation in the world. You don’t know because you live in the world. The nurse who goes on working in the hospital, and the doctor who goes on working in the hospital – they have to become insensitive, otherwise they would die. They would not be able to live there. They have become insensitive; they go on moving. That’s why you often see doctors looking very, very insensitive – that is their protection. The patient goes on saying that this is wrong and that is wrong, and the doctor stands there almost not listening. The relatives of the patient go on running after the doctor and go on telling him that this is going wrong and that is… And he says, “Everything will be okay. I will come tomorrow morning. I will see when I come on my rounds.” Now you are feeling so concerned, and he seems to be absolutely unconcerned. This is just to protect himself. If he becomes too sensitive, he will not be able to survive. He has to become hard, he has to create a kind of stoniness around himself. That stoniness will protect him – will protect him from the hospital and the patients and the whole atmosphere. Doctors become hard, insensitive; nurses become hard, insensitive. The same is happening in the world at large. It is a kind of big hospital because everybody is ill here and everybody is on his deathbed. Everybody is full of anger and violence, aggression, jealousy, possessiveness; everybody is false, pseudo, and everybody is a hypocrite – this is the world. You don’t feel it, but when a Jesus moves among you, he feels it because he comes from the heights. He descends from the mountains.
If you go to the Himalayas and then after living in the Himalayan freshness for a few days you come back to the plains, you feel how dusty, how ugly, how heavy the vibe is. Now you have a comparison. You have seen the fresh waters of the Himalayas – those fresh fountains running forever, and the crystal-clear water – and then the municipal tap water! You have the comparison. Only a meditator knows that the world is ill, only a meditator feels that everything is wrong here. When a meditator moves among you, naturally he feels much more dust collecting on him than you can feel – because you have lost all sensitivity. You have forgotten that you are a mirror. You know that you are just a dust collector. Only a meditator knows that he is a mirror.
So Jesus goes again and again to the mountains.
Jesus went, unto the mountains, unto the Mount of Olives.
And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down, and taught them.
And early in the morning he came…into the temple… Only when you have been to the mountains – and that does not mean that you really have to go to the mountains. It is not an outer phenomenon. The mount is within you. If you can be alone, if you can forget the whole world for a few seconds, you will regain your freshness; only then can you go to the temple because only then you are a temple. Only then will your presence in the temple be a real presence; there will be a harmony between you and the temple. Remember, unless you bring your temple to the temple, there is no temple. If you simply go to the temple and don’t bring your temple there within you, it is just a house. When Jesus goes into a house, it becomes a temple. When you go into a temple, it becomes a house – because we carry our own temples inside. Wherever Jesus goes it becomes a temple, his presence creates that sacred quality. Only when you bring the temple and the freshness of the mountains, and the virginity of the mountains, only then can you teach. You can teach only then, when you have it.
And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down, and taught them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst,
They said unto him: Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou?
This is one of the most important parables in Jesus’ life. Go into it slowly, delicately, carefully.
And the scribes and Pharisees… Now for that you can read “the moralists and the puritans.” In those days those were the names of the moralists, the pundits, the scholars: …the scribes and the Pharisees… The Pharisees were the people who were very respectable. On the surface, very moral, pretentious, with great egos. “We are moral and everybody else is immoral” – and always searching and looking into people’s faults. Their whole life was concerned with how to exaggerate their own qualities and how to reduce others’ qualities to nil.
The puritans, the moralists …brought unto him a woman taken in adultery… Now when you come to a man like Jesus, you have to come there in humbleness, you have to come there to learn something, you have to come there to imbibe something; it is a rare opportunity. And now here come these fools and they bring a woman. They bring their ordinary mind, their mediocre mind, their stupidities with them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery… They have not even learned the simple lesson that when you go to a man like Jesus or Buddha, you go to partake, to participate in his consciousness; you go to become intimate with him. You don’t bring the ordinary problems of life there, they are irrelevant. That will be wasting a great opportunity, that will be wasting Jesus’ time, and he didn’t have much time, as I told you before – only three years of ministry. These fools were wasting time like this… But they had a certain strategy in it; it was a trap. They were not really concerned about the woman. They were creating a trap for Jesus. It was a very diplomatic act.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst, they said unto him, master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now what is adultery? A conscious mind will say that if you don’t love a man – maybe the man is your own husband. If you don’t love the man and you sleep with the man, it is adultery. If you don’t love the woman – and she may be your own wife… If you don’t love her and you sleep with her, you are exploiting her, you are deceiving her. It is adultery. But that is not the definition of the Pharisees and the puritans, the scribes and the pundits. Their definition is legal, their definition does not arise out of consciousness or love. Their definition arises out of the court. If the woman is not your wife and you have been found sleeping with her, it is adultery. It is just a legal matter, technical. The heart is not taken into account, only the law. You may be deeply in love with the man or with the woman, but that is not to be taken into account. The unconscious mind cannot take higher things into account. It can only take the lowest into account.
The problem is always legal. Is it your woman? Your wife? Are you legally wed to her? Then it is good, it is no longer a sin. If she is not your woman, you are not legally wed to her… You may be deeply in love and you may have immense respect for the woman – you may almost be a worshipper of her – but it is a sin, it is adultery. Those people brought this woman to Jesus, and… They said unto him: Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Just the other day I was reading the memoirs of an English Christian missionary who went to Japan in the early days of this century. He was taken around Tokyo. His host had taken him around to show him the city. In one public bath there were men and women bathing in the nude. The missionary was very shocked.
He stood there for five minutes, watched everything, and then said to his host, “Isn’t it immoral – women and men bathing naked in a public place?”
The host said, “Sir, this is not immoral in our country, but sorry to say, to stand here and watch is immoral. I am feeling very guilty standing with you because it is their business if they want to take a bath naked. That is their freedom. But why are you standing here? This is ugly, immoral.”
Now the missionary’s standpoint is very ordinary, and the host’s standpoint is extraordinary.
These people say: …Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. And what were you doing there? Were they Peeping Toms or… What type of people were they? What were you doing there? Why should you be concerned? This woman’s life is her life. How she wants to spend her life is her concern. Who are you to interfere? But the puritan and the moralist have always interfered in other people’s lives. They are not democratic, they are very dictatorial. They want to manipulate people, condemn people. Now, what were those people doing there?
And they say: …Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. They have caught the woman while she was making love.
One more thing: where is the man? Was she committing adultery alone…? Nobody has ever asked this question about this parable. I have read many Christian books, but nobody has ever asked, “Where is the man?”
But it is a man’s society. It is always the woman who is wrong, not the man. The man will just go free. He may be a Pharisee himself, he may be a respectable man – but the woman has to be condemned. Haven’t you observed? – prostitutes are condemned, but where are the prostituters? Where are those people? They may be the same people who condemn.
Now Morarji Desai wants to bring prohibition to the country. In his own ministry, out of seventeen, twelve are drunkards. Twelve! And he does not drink himself, that is true, but he drinks his own urine. That is a far worse case! But he wants to bring prohibition to the country. He wants to force it through. Maybe because he has not been drinking… He wants to take revenge on others, or what? Puritans are always ugly people. They don’t live and they don’t allow anybody else to live. Their only joy is how to kill other people’s joy, how to kill everybody’s celebration.
Now, what were those people doing there? Didn’t they have anything else to do? Didn’t they have their own women to love? What kind of people were they? They must have been a little perverted to go out searching and seeking someone who was committing adultery. Where was the man? The woman just always has to be condemned. Why does the woman have to be condemned? – because the woman is a woman and the man is the dominant one, and all the legal codes have been made by men. They are very prejudicial, biased. All the legal courts say what should be done to a woman if she is found committing adultery, but they don’t say anything about what should be done to the man. No, they say, “Boys are boys. And boys will be boys.” It is always a question about the woman. Even if a man rapes a woman, the woman is condemned; she loses respect, not the rapist. This is an ugly state of affairs. This can’t be called religious, it is very political – basically in men’s favor and against women. All your so-called moralities have been that way.
In India, when a husband died, the wife had to go with him to the funeral pyre, only then was she thought to be virtuous. She had to become a sati, she had to die with her husband. If she did not die, that meant she was not virtuous. That simply meant she wanted to live without the husband, or maybe she wanted the husband to die. Now she wanted freedom, now she could fall in love with somebody else. In India, it has been thought that there is no life for the woman once the husband has died. Her husband has been her whole life. If the husband goes, she has to go. But nothing is said about the man if his woman dies – no prescription for him that he should die with the woman. No, that isn’t a problem. Immediately after the woman has died… In India it happens every day, the people burn the woman and coming back home, they start thinking about a new marriage – where and how can the man find a new woman? Not a single day is to be lost.
For the man there is one morality, for the woman it is different. It is a very unconscious morality and a very immoral one. My definition of morality is that of consciousness, and consciousness is neither man nor woman. Consciousness is just consciousness. Only when something is decided by your being conscious will it be classless, will it be beyond the distinctions of body, caste, creed. Only then is it moral.
Master, they say, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou?
This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
This was the trap. They wanted to trap Jesus: “Moses has said that such a woman should be stoned.” Nothing is said about the man. Such a woman should be stoned to death; Moses has said this. Now they are creating a problem for Jesus. If Jesus says, “Yes, do as Moses says,” they can accuse him because he has always been talking about love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness. They can say, “What about your compassion? What about your forgiveness? What about your love? You say this woman has to be killed by stoning? This is hard and cruel and violent.”
Tricky fellows. If Jesus says, “This is not right. Moses is not right,” they can say, “So you have come to destroy Moses? So you have come to destroy and corrupt our religion? And you have been saying to people, ‘I have not come to destroy but to fulfill.’ What about that? If you have come to fulfill, then follow Moses’ law.” Now they are creating a dilemma. This is the trap. They are not concerned about the woman, remember, their real target is Jesus; the woman is just an excuse. And they have brought such a case… That’s why they say …in the very act, red-handed. So it is not a question of deciding whether the woman has really committed adultery. Otherwise, Jesus would have an excuse to get out. He would say, “First, try to find out whether it really has happened. Bring the witnesses. Let it first be decided.” It would take years. So they say, “Red-handed! We have caught her in the very act. We are all witnesses, so there is no question of deciding anything else. The law is clear; Moses has said that such a woman should be stoned.”
…what sayest thou? “Do you agree with Moses? If you agree, then what about your love and compassion – your whole message? If you don’t agree, what do you mean when you say ‘I have come to fulfill’? Then you have come to destroy the law of Moses. So do you think you are higher than Moses? Do you think that you know more than Moses?”
…what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. Why? Why did Jesus stoop down? Why did he start writing on the ground? They were just on the bank of a river. Jesus was sitting on the sand. Why did he start writing in the sand? What had happened?
There is one thing to be understood; it is always a delicate problem. For example, if I see that something stated by Buddha as wrong, there is a great hesitation to say that he is wrong. He cannot be wrong. Tradition must have misinterpreted him. Something must have been wrongly put into his mouth. Buddha cannot be wrong. But now there is no way to decide because the scriptures say this clearly… Jesus hesitating… Jesus is concerned. He does not want to say a single word against Moses, but he has to, hence the hesitation. He does not want to say anything against Moses because Moses could not have said it that way. It is his inner feeling that Moses could not have said it that way. But the inner feeling cannot be decisive. These people will say, “Who are you? Why should we care about your inner feeling? We have the written code with us, given by our forefathers. It is there written clearly!”
Jesus does not want to say anything against Moses because he really has come to fulfill Moses. Anybody who becomes enlightened in the world is always fulfilling all the enlightened ones that have preceded him. Even if sometimes he says something against them, then, too, he is fulfilling them, because he cannot say anything against them. If you feel that he is saying something against them, then he is saying something against the tradition, against the scripture. But that looks as if he is saying something against Moses, against Buddha, against Abraham. Hence, he stoops down. He starts looking at the sand and starts writing. He is puzzled as what to do. He has to find a way out. He has to find a way out, in such a way that he does not say anything against Moses and yet he cancels the whole law. He really comes with a very miraculous answer, a magical answer.
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
It is really incredible, it is beautiful – that was his hesitation. He has found a golden mean. He has not said a single word against Moses and he has not supported Moses either. This is the delicate point to understand. Jesus was really utterly intelligent – uneducated, but utterly intelligent, a man of immense awareness. That’s why he could find the way out.
He says: …He that is without sin among you… He says, “Perfectly right” – does not say directly that Moses is right, but he says, “Perfectly right. If Moses says so, then it must be so. But then, who should start throwing stones at this woman?”
…He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. “So start, but only those who are without sin…” Now this is something new that Jesus brings in. You can judge only if you are without sin. You can punish only if you are without sin. If you are also in the same boat, what is the point? Who is going to punish whom?
And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
Why did he stoop down again? – because he must have been afraid that there is always the possibility of some foolish person… He knows that everybody has committed one sin or another. If they have not committed one, they have been thinking to commit one – which is almost the same. Whether you think or you act makes no difference. Remember, the difference between sin and crime is this: crime has to be acted out, only then is it crime. You can go on thinking, but if you don’t commit it to action, no court can punish you because it never becomes a crime. Only crime is within the jurisdiction of the court, not sin. Then what is sin? Sin is if you think, “I would like to murder this man.” No court can do anything. You can say, “Yes, I have been thinking about it my whole life.” But thinking is beyond the court’s jurisdiction. You are allowed to think. No court can punish you because you dreamt that you killed somebody. You can dream every day and go on killing as many people as you want. No court can hold you unless it comes to actuality, unless thought becomes deed, unless thought is translated into reality. If it comes out of you and affects society, it becomes a crime. But it is sin because God can go on reading your thoughts. There is no need for him to read your acts. The magistrate has to read your acts, he cannot read your thoughts; he is not a thought reader or a mind reader. But for God there is no difference; whether you think or you do, it is all the same. The moment you think, you have done it.
So Jesus says: …He that is without sin among you… not without crime. He says: …He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. That distinction was known down the ages – that if you think it, you have committed a sin already.
And again he stooped down… Why this time? – because if he goes on looking at the people, his very look may be provocative. If he goes on looking at the people – somebody, just from his look, and out of offense, may throw a stone at the poor woman. He does not want to offend; he withdraws. He simply stoops down, starts writing in the sand – again as if he is not there. He becomes absent because his presence can be dangerous. If they have come just to trap him, and he is there and they feel his presence, it will be difficult for them to feel their own consciences, their own consciousnesses. He withdraws into himself, he allows them total freedom to think about it. He does not interfere. His presence can be an interference; if he goes on looking at them, that will offend their egos. It will also be difficult for them to escape, because it will feel bad to them that somebody was standing just in front of the mayor of the town or somebody else – the respectable people… How can the mayor escape when Jesus is looking at him? If he escapes and does not throw the stone at the woman, it will be proof that he is a sinner.
He stoops down again, starts writing in the sand, gives them a chance – if they want to escape, they can.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience…
Jesus leaves them alone. That is the beauty of the man. He does not even interfere by his presence; he is simply no longer there. Their own consciences start pricking. They know. Maybe they have lusted after this woman many times, or maybe in the past they themselves have participated with this woman. Maybe the woman is a prostitute and all these respectable people in their turn have made love to her. Because one prostitute means that almost the whole town can become involved.
In India, in the ancient days, prostitutes were called nagarvadhu, the wife of the town. That is the right name. All of those people must have been involved in some way or other with this woman or with other women – if not in acts, then in thoughts. My feeling is, it must have been evening and the sun was setting; it was becoming dark and Jesus was stooping down writing in the sand, and as it became dark, by and by the people started disappearing.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest – the mayor – even unto the last…
First the eldest disappeared, because of course, they have lived the longest, so they have sinned the longest. The young people may not have been such great sinners; they haven’t had enough time yet. But the eldest disappeared first. Those who were standing in front must have moved slowly to the back and escaped – because this man had really created a great problem; he had changed the whole situation. They had come to trap him and now they were trapped! You cannot trap a Jesus or a Buddha; it is impossible – you will be trapped. You exist at a lower state of mind. How can you trap a higher state of mind? That is just foolish. The higher state can trap you immediately because from that higher state your whole being is available.
Now, Jesus must have looked into those people’s consciences – that was possible for him – he must have seen all kinds of sins raising their heads. In fact, even standing there, they were thinking about the woman: how to catch her. Maybe they were angry because somebody else had committed the sin and they were not given the opportunity. Maybe they were only jealous; maybe they wanted to be there instead of the man who had not been brought. Jesus must have looked from his height into their hearts. He had trapped them. They had forgotten their trap completely, they had forgotten about Moses and the law etcetera. In fact, they were never worried about Moses and the law. This also has to be understood. They were really more interested in stoning the woman, enjoying this murder. Not that they were interested in punishing somebody who had committed a sin – that was just an excuse. They could not leave this opportunity of murdering her. Now, Moses can be used…
There are a thousand and one things said by Moses. They are not worried about them. They are not interested in all those sayings and all those statements. They are interested in this: “Moses says you can stone a woman if you catch her committing adultery.” They can’t miss this great opportunity of murder, of violence. When violence can be committed according to the law, who would like to miss it? Not only will they enjoy the violence, they will enjoy that they are very, very legal people, virtuous followers of Moses. But they have forgotten all about it. Just a little turning by Jesus and they have forgotten about Moses… He has changed the whole point. He has changed their minds from the woman to themselves. He has converted them, he has turned them backward – a one hundred and eighty degree turn. They were thinking about the woman and Moses and Jesus, and he has changed their whole attitude. He has made them their own target. He has turned their consciousness.
Now he says, “Look into yourself. If you have never committed a sin, then… Then you are allowed, then you can kill this woman.”
When Jesus had lifted up himself…
he saw that they had all gone
…even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
…and he saw none but the woman, he said unto her: Woman, where are those thine accusers?
Now he is not saying, “I am accusing you.” …where are those thine accusers? He is not for a single moment a participant in it. He has not judged, he has not condemned. He has not said a single thing to the woman. He simply says:
Woman where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?
Have they all gone? Has any man thrown a stone at you?
She said, No man, Lord.
She must have felt a deep respect, reverence, for this man who has not only saved her physically, but who has not even accused her in any way. Spiritually he has also saved her. She must have looked into those eyes which have only love and compassion and nothing else. This is the religious man. The moralist is always condemning, accusing; the religious man, always accepting, forgiving.
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her: Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.
Jesus says, “There is nothing to be worried about – the past. The past is past, gone is gone. Forget about it. But take some lessons from this situation. Don’t go on making the same mistakes in the future – if you think they are mistakes. I am not accusing you.”
…Neither do I condemn thee… “But if you feel that you have done something wrong, then it is up to you. Don’t do it again. Forget the past, and don’t go on repeating it.”
That is the whole message of all the buddhas and all the christs and all the krishnas: forget the past and if you understand, don’t do it again. That’s enough. There is no punishment, there is no judgment. If you have been doing something, you were helpless. You are unconscious, you have your limitations. You have your desires, unfulfilled desires. Whatsoever you have been doing was the only thing you could have done. So what is the point of accusing and condemning you? The only thing that can be done is that your consciousness can be raised high.
That woman must have moved into a higher consciousness. She must have been afraid that she was going to be killed. This man, by a single statement, saved her from death. Not only that, the accusers disappeared. This man did a miracle. Not only did they not kill her, they simply became ashamed and escaped like thieves into the darkness of the night. This man is a magician.
Now, he is saying, “I don’t condemn you. If you feel you have been doing something wrong, don’t do it again. That’s enough.” He has converted her.
This is what people on acid call a “contact high.” Jesus is high; if you come in close affinity with him, you will start moving higher. This is synchronicity – non-causal. The woman must have come there almost condemning herself, ashamed of herself, thinking of committing suicide. He has raised that woman, transformed that woman.
She said, No man, Lord… Jesus becomes Lord, Jesus becomes God to her. She has never seen such a godly man before. With no condemnation, a man becomes a god. With no judgment a man becomes a god. Just his presence, a single statement, and those people disappeared and she was saved. Not only saved physically, but spiritually intact. Jesus has not interfered at all. He has not condemned, he has not said a single word. He simply said, “Don’t repeat your past” – not a single word more. “Let the past be past and the gone, gone. You become new. All is good, and you are forgiven.”
Jesus transformed many people by forgiving them. That was one of the accusations against him: “He forgives people. Who is he to forgive? Somebody has committed a sin – the society has to punish him! If society cannot punish him and he escapes, then society has prepared a punishment through God – he should be thrown into hell.”
Hindus are also very much against the idea that Jesus can forgive you. The Christian idea is immense, tremendous, very great and full of potential. Hindus say that you will have to suffer for your past karmas; whatsoever you have done, you will have to undo. If you have done a bad thing, you will have to do something good. The bad thing and its result are going to come; you will have to suffer the consequence. Hindus will not agree with Jesus. Neither the Buddhists, nor the Jainas will agree, nor were the Jews agreeing with Jesus. How can he forgive?
But I say to you – a man of that understanding can forgive. Not that by his forgiveness you are forgiven, but just that consciousness, that great consciousness can give you a feeling of well-being: “Nothing is wrong, don’t be worried; you can just shake off the past like dust and get out of it.” That very thing will give you such courage, such enthusiasm, will open new possibilities and new doors. You are freed from it. You immediately move beyond it. From this came the idea of the Christian confession. It does not work that way because the man you go to confess to is an ordinary man just like you. When you are confessing, the priest is not really forgiving you, deep down he may be condemning you. His forgiveness is just a show. He is an ordinary man, his consciousness is no higher than yours.
Only from the higher can forgiveness flow. Only from the high mountains can the rivers flow toward the plains. Only from a Jesus or a Buddha, can forgiveness flow. And when there is a man like Jesus or Buddha, just his touch, just his look is enough to forgive you your whole past and all your karmas.
I totally agree with Jesus. He brings a new vision to humanity – to attain to freedom. The Hindu, Jaina, and Buddhist concept is very ordinary and mathematical. It has no magic in it. It is very logical but it has no love in it. Jesus brings love to the world.
Enough for today.