Is there any existential question in existence?

Existence knows no questions. All questions are man-made. And not only questions, but all answers also are man-made.

It is a very stupid game. First you create the question, then you have to create the answer; otherwise the question tortures you. It goes on knocking in your head, "Find the answer!" So you look in the holy scriptures, in the philosophical treatises. You go to your so-called wise people -- whom I call `other wise.' And they supply you with answers -- with a condition: you have to believe them.

All the religions are called faiths. Why? Science is not called a faith. But why are religions called faiths? -- because the answers are man-made. And if you are not repressed in the very beginning, there is no end to the questions.

You bring one question, you ask, "Who created the world?" The priest says, "God the father who lives in heaven, he created the world. Believe it. Doubt is a sin!" Why is he insisting on belief? -- because he knows soon you will come and ask, "Who created God?"... the same question.

And the priest does not have the guts to say that God needs no creator. If he says that, then what is the need of God? Existence can exist without any creator. If God can exist without being created, then where is the problem? Why bring God in? Their answers are all invented. And to prevent you asking more and more, their insistence is that doubt is sin, and belief is virtue.

Just the opposite is the reality: belief is the sin, and doubt is the virtue.

In three hundred years, science has progressed so much because it accepted doubt as its method. In thousands of years, religions have not contributed anything to the world, because their very foundation is fictitious. From belief you can never reach to the truth. In fact the moment you believe in something, your inquiry dies; now there is no need, you already know the answer. This is killing man's enquiry, the adventure of becoming acquainted with life's mysteries.

All the religions have been doing one thing: they are de-mystifying existence by forcing belief on you, playing on your greed and fear that if you don't believe you will fall into eternal hell. If you believe, you will have an eternal life of rejoicings. In paradise there is no work except playing on your harp, "Alleluia, alleluia." That's the only work, all seven days are holidays.

I am sometimes surprised that all your saints, mahatmas, the great souls, have been doing this stupid thing continuously for eternity now: playing on the harp, "Alleluia, alleluia." They must be bored to death! In fact, hell seems to be more exciting. At least there is much to be done. And you will find all the colorful people in hell.

In heaven, you will find only long faces, carrying their crosses on their shoulders. You will not find a Picasso, a Van Gogh, a Byron, a Mozart. All the beautiful people you will find in hell, because they never believed. They lived their life spontaneously, without ordering it according to a certain religion or dogma.

If there is a heaven and hell -- just for argument's sake I am saying that; there is no heaven, no hell. But if there is heaven and hell, please choose hell! All the great painters, all the great poets, all the great artists, all the great sculptors you will find there.

Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Kalidas, Rabindranath, Albert Einstein.... What a great joy to say, "Hi, Socrates! Here comes Plato!" They are bound to be there, because both were homosexual.

In heaven you cannot even say "Hi" to Saint Francis. That will look profane. You cannot say, "Hello, Mahatma Gandhi!" That is not acceptable. You have to fall at their feet and kiss their feet.

So if by chance I am wrong and heaven is there, before going there please catch the disease, AIDS. Touch the feet, kiss the feet of all the sages. Don't leave anybody out, because through kissing AIDS is transferred. There is no need to have any sexual intercourse with those saints. Existence has no question.

It is man's monkey mind. Monkeys cannot sit silently. They go on jumping from one tree to another for no reason. Man's mind has come from the monkeys. Now it cannot jump from one tree to another tree, but it can jump from one thought to another thought, from one question to another question.

D.H. Lawrence, one of the most beautiful men of this century, was having a morning walk with a neighbor's little boy. They had become very friendly. The boy asked Lawrence, "Why are the trees green?" Now this is how the monkey-mind starts. Now what business is it of yours why the trees are green? Let them be, it is none of your concern. But the little boy asked why the trees are green.

Fortunately, there was no pope the polack; otherwise he would have said, "Because God made them green -- and believe in it. You cannot question God, why he made them green; that will be sacrilegious."

But Lawrence was a beautiful man, very authentic. He looked at the trees and he said to the boy, "The trees are green because they are green."

The boy said, "Aha! Trying to cheat me? Is this an answer: The trees are green because they are green? I also know that -- I am asking WHY!"

Lawrence said, "I don't know. I have always seen they are green. You can ask the trees."

Now Lawrence is ready to accept his ignorance; and that is one of the most significant things about a wise man. He said, "I don't know. All that I know is that they are green."

But philosophers, religious preachers, thinkers-they cannot accept Lawrence's statement. They have to find why they are green. No tree is bothering. No tree is asking the question, "Why am I green?"

In existence there is no question. It is whatever it is. The question comes from the monkey-mind. Monkeys are very curious and very imitative. These two things you should remember, because these two things are deep-rooted in your mind too.

Monkeys are very curious -- always looking all around. Never for a moment sitting in silence, doing nothing and letting the grass grow by itself, no. And they are very imitative. If you laugh at them, they will laugh at you. If you show an angry face to them, they will show an angry face to you.

I have heard.... An old man used to sell Gandhi caps in India; and particularly at election time, there is great demand for Gandhi caps, because unless you are a follower of Gandhi, nobody is going to give you their vote.

The elections were coming near, but the old man was sick and he told his son, "I will not be able to go and sell the caps. You will have to go this time."

The boy said, "I will go. Any instructions to be followed?"

The old man said, "There is nothing. The price is written on the caps. If you can sell them at a higher price, good, but don't sell them at a lower price. The price is written in a code language so nobody will understand except you."

The boy went. It was a hot day, he was feeling tired. He found a big bo tree with great shadow, coolness, underneath it. He thought, it will be good to have a little afternoon nap. He put his bag of caps by the side and lay down on the roots of the bo tree, using them as the pillow. He was not aware that the bo tree had hundreds of monkeys in it, and he was so tired that he fell asleep immediately.

Now, the monkeys saw the man wearing a white Gandhi cap. They also saw that in the bag there were hundreds of caps exactly like that. Slowly slowly, the monkeys came down, took a cap, one by one, put it on his head and went back up. By the time the young man woke up the bag was empty. He could not believe -- where had all the caps gone? At that moment he heard great laughter. He looked up: hundreds of monkeys were wearing his caps!

He said, "My God! Now what am I going to do? How am I going to explain this to my father? And it is impossible to get the caps from these monkeys. They don't understand my language, I don't understand their language. They don't have any money to pay." He was in a real fix.

He ran back to his home and asked his father, "What has to be done, because I had never expected such an experience?"

The father said, "Don't be worried, I have also experienced it. But it is very simple. You just go back, sit under the tree and throw your cap!"

The boy said, "What is that going to do? Only one cap is left and you are saying throw it?"

His father said, "You simply go and do what I am saying." The boy threw his cap, and all the monkeys threw their caps. They are imitative.

All these religions are teaching you to imitate. Imitate Jesus Christ, imitate Gautam Buddha, imitate this, imitate that. By imitation you will become a saint, a holy man.

I would like to say to you, "You will only become a monkey again." All your saints and all your holy men have fallen backwards in the Darwinian evolution. Darwin says monkeys became man, but he was not aware that all the religions are trying to make monkeys out of man. They have succeeded! "Just imitate. Believe without doubt and follow."

My work is just the opposite. Doubt is the most precious thing you have got. Don't lose it. No belief is worth anything.

Doubt everything with your totality, and doubt will take you to the point where you discover the indubitable, that which even if you want to doubt, you cannot doubt: it is there!

And then of course the question of belief does not arise -- neither before nor afterwards. Before, it was dangerous; it will kill your doubting capacity. Afterwards, it is futile; you know, there is no need to believe.

Do you believe in the sun? Do you believe in the moon? Do you believe that I am here? You know it -- there is no question of belief. You believe only in fictions. So whenever somebody says, "Believe it," he is keeping you retarded, he is destroying your intelligence. Doubt, and doubt with intensity and totality. It is everybody's right to discover the truth. Existence has the answer. It has no questions. The mind has only questions. It has no answer.

To summarize: put the mind aside so all questions are put aside, and encounter the reality -- and you will know the answer. Not that somebody will give you a statement about the answer. It will be not explained to you, it will not come as a linguistic statement. It will come as love comes to you. You will feel it, your heart will start dancing with it. You will be able to see the luminosity of it. And all monkey questions, the monkey-mind, you will have transcended.

Darwin says a few monkeys became man. Certainly there are still millions of monkeys, only a few monkeys became man. They dared, they tried to walk on two feet. All the monkeys must have laughed, must have thought these monkeys have gone mad. And those monkeys gave birth to the whole of humanity.

But the mind of the monkey is still there. If you can drop that too, then you reach to the ultimate flowering of your being.

I call it enlightenment. It is simple -- just a little courage....