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There will not be misery and poverty and illness and paralysis and blindness and deafness. Things that you don't like here will not be there, and things that you like will be there and in abundance, but it is not going to be anything new.
Mind cannot conceive of anything new. Mind is incapable of conceiving the new. Mind lives in the old, mind IS the old. The new never happens through the mind. The new happens only when mind is not functioning, when mind is not controlling you, when mind has been put aside. The new happens only when the mind is not interfering.
But all your scriptures talk about the heaven -- and the heaven or the paradise or FIRDAUS or SWARGA, is nothing but the same story. It may be printed on a better art paper, with better ink, in a more improved press, with more colorful illustrations, but the story is the same; it cannot be otherwise.
Buddha does not talk of otherworldliness or the other world. He simply teaches you how to be here in this world; how to be here alert, conscious, mindful, so that nothing impinges upon your emptiness; so that your inner emptiness is not contaminated, poisoned; so that you can live here and yet remain uncontaminated, unpolluted; so that you can be in the world and the world will not be in you.
The otherworldly spirituality is bound to be oppressive, destructive, sado-masochistic -- in short, pathological. Buddha's spirituality has a different flavor to it -- the flavor of no ideal, the flavor of no future, the flavor of no other world. It is a flower here and now. It asks for nothing. All is already given. It simply becomes more alert so you can see more, you can hear more, you can be more.
Remember, you are only in the same proportion as you are conscious. If you want to be more, be more conscious. Consciousness imparts being. Unconsciousness takes being away. When you are drunk you lose being. When you are fast asleep you lose being. Have you not watched it? When you are alert you have a different quality -- you are centered, rooted. When you are alert you feel the solidity of your being, it is almost tangible. When you are unconscious, just dragging by, sleepy, your sense
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