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for hell. Life has to be lived in a very very undeliberate way or it is better to say, in a very unselfconscious way... not unconscious but unselfconscious.
I have heard about a man who had a very magnificent beard. Somebody, just a stranger on the street, looked at him and said, 'Sir, I am not known to you, you are not known to me, but I am fascinated with your beard; it is such a beautiful beard. Just one question, one curiosity arises in me: where do you put it when you go to sleep? On the blanket or under the blanket?'
The man had never thought about it. He said, 'Sorry. I will have to see. I have never deliberately thought about it and I have never looked into the matter. Come tomorrow and I will answer your question.'
So that night first he puts his beard on top of the blanket and tries to go to sleep and cannot. He tries hard but sleep eludes him. Then he tries it under the blanket; now he is becoming more awake and alert, because for the first time he is trying to sleep self-consciously. Then again on top, then again.... He cannot sleep for the whole night and he is tired! He cannot understand what has happened. He has never suffered from insomnia, never in his life; what has gone wrong? And it doesn't work either way. It must have been somewhere but what has happened today? The morning is coming and the sunrays come from the windows.... He became so tired and so puzzled and worried that he went into the bathroom and cut off his beard, otherwise now there would be no possibility of sleeping!
This is what is actually happening in life: people are trying to live it deliberately, people are planning to live. They go on planning and planning and planning and they never live. Either you can live or you can plan. You cannot do both things. Either you can live or you can think. You can't do both together. They are antagonistic, they are enemies.
So drop one thing today.... It will take a long time but let it sink into your heart that the search for meaning is the most absurd search, the maddening search of man. Once it is dropped, you have a totally new kind of life. You are a new man; you are born again. That's what Jesus meant
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