When your whole being seems to be unconscious, even then a witnessing part always remains conscious. Even while asleep, a part is witnessing. That's why in the morning you sometimes say the sleep was beautiful. Sometimes you say the sleep was disturbed, nightmarish; sometimes you say, "I slept so deeply, so peacefully, it was such great happiness." Who knows this? You were asleep -- who knows that you were so happy? A part has witnessed; a part was continuously alert, knowing. Who knows that you were disturbed, uneasy, uncomfortable? You were asleep -- even in sleep a part of you knows.

You cannot become completely unconscious. Once achieved, consciousness cannot be lost, you cannot reverse the process. You cannot be eternally in hell -- this Christian doctrine is absolutely false -- but you can be eternally in heaven. This is the Hindu doctrine: hell can only be temporary, it can be only for the time being; it is temporal. Heaven can be eternal.

-Rajneesh

Your mind is thinking, your body is working, you are occupied. Your whole energy is moving in activity, is being dissipated into the world. When you think, you are dissipating energy; each thought takes energy, needs energy. You are continuously thinking and dissipating energy for nothing -- just dissipating energy. Activity needs energy, and your infinite source of energy is continuously being dissipated. You are leaking from everywhere. That's why you feel so weak, so frustrated, so impotent. This impotence feels like helplessness; you are omnipotent and you feel impotent. You have all the sources of infinite energy within you, you are related to the cosmic source, but you feel impotent because you are continuously dissipating energy. If thought stops even for a single moment and activity is no more, if you have become like a statue, unmoving within or without, if there is no movement, either of body or of mind, then tremendous energy is released. Where will it go now there is no activity? It cannot go without. You become a pillar of energy, a flame of energy. Everything becomes conscious inside, everything is lighted; your whole being is filled with light.

-Rajneesh

A WARRIOR CAME TO THE ZEN MASTER HAKUIN AND ASKED "IS THERE SUCH A THING AS HEAVEN AND HELL?"

HAKUIN SAID "WHO ARE YOU?"

THE WARRIOR REPLIED "I AM CHIEF SAMURAI TO THE EMPEROR."

HAKUIN SAID "YOU, A SAMURAI? WITH A FACE LIKE THAT, YOU LOOK MORE LIKE A BEGGAR."

AT THIS THE WARRIOR BECAME SO ANGRY HE DREW HIS SWORD.

STANDING CALMLY IN FRONT OF HIM, HAKUIN SAID "HERE OPEN THE GATES OF HELL."

PERCEIVING THE MASTER'S COMPOSURE, THE SOLDIER SHEATHED HIS SWORD AND BOWED.

HAKUIN THEN SAID "AND HERE OPEN THE GATES OF HEAVEN."

Heaven and hell are not geographical. If you go in search of them you will never find them anywhere. They are within you, they are psychological. The mind is heaven, the mind is hell, and the mind has the capacity to become either. But people go on thinking everything is somewhere outside. We always go on looking for everything outside because to be inwards is very difficult. We are outgoing. If somebody says there is a god, we look at the sky. Somewhere, sitting there, will be the divine person.

One psychologist in an American school asked small children what they thought about God. Children have clearer perception: they are less cunning, more truthful. They are more representative of the human mind, they are unperverted. So he asked the children and the answers were collected. The conclusions were very ridiculous. Almost all the children depicted God something like this -- an old man, very tall, bearded and very dangerous. He created fear. If you didn't follow him he would throw you into hell; if you prayed and followed him he would give you paradise and all the pleasures. He was sitting on a throne in the sky watching everybody. You couldn't escape him; even in your bathroom he was looking.

The outgoing mind projects everything outside. This is YOUR God too. Don't laugh, don't think this is a child's conception -- no, this is you. This is how you think about God -- as a cosmic spy, always searching to condemn, to punish, to throw you into hell... as very ferocious, revengeful. That's why all religions are based on fear. Religions say if you do this you will be appreciated, rewarded; if you don't do this, you will be punished. The base seems to be fear. God just seems to be a very powerful emperor sitting on a throne in heaven. The whole concept is foolish but human; the human mind is foolish. The whole concept is anthropocentric.

-Rajneesh

I will tell you one story Jesus used to say. He repeated it many times- he must have loved this story. He said, "Once it happened, a very rich man needed some laborers in his garden to work, so he sent a man to the marketplace. All the laborers who were available were called and they started working in the garden. Then others heard and they came in the afternoon. Then others heard and they came just when the sun was setting. But he employed them. And when the sun went down, he gathered all of them and paid them equally. Obviously those who had come in the morning became disappointed and said, "What injustice! What type of injustice is this? What are you doing? We came in the morning and we worked the whole day and these fellows came in the afternoon; just for two hours they worked. And a few have just come, they have not worked at all. This is injustice!"

The rich man laughed and said, "Don't think of others. Whatever I have given to you is it not enough?" They said, "It is more than enough, but it is injustice. Why are these people getting when they have just come?"

The rich man said, "I give them because I have got too much, out of my abundance I give them. You need not be worried about this. You have got more than you expected so don't compare. I am not giving them because of their work, I am giving them because I have got too much... out of my abundance."

Jesus said some work very hard to achieve the divine, some come just in the afternoon and some when the sun is setting, and they all get the same divine. Those who had come in the morning must object: "this is too much!"

You just see: you have been meditating so much and suddenly someone comes just at evening and becomes enlightened. And you have been such a great ascetic. Just look: if all the ascetics reach and see that sinners are sitting just by the side of the throne of God, what will happen? They will become so sad: "What is happening?- these sinners never disciplined their lives, they never worked and they are here; and we were thinking they would be in hell!" There is no hell; there cannot be. How can hell exist? Out of God's abundance everything is heaven. It should be so, it must be so, it has to be so. Out of his abundance is heaven, there can be no hell. Hell was created by these ascetics because they cannot conceive of sinners in heaven. They have to make compartments; they cannot think that you will be there.

-Rajneesh