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here, and you will be eternally here. You are part of this whole existence. You cannot be separated from it.
Sometimes you may have been in the trees, you may have been a tree. Sometimes in the birds, and you may have been a bird. And sometimes a rock, and sometimes a stream falling from the Himalayas. Millions of ways. Millions of forms. Millions of names. Yes, you have existed in many many ways. It was never that you were not; it will be never that you will not be. The form changes; the formless goes on and on and on.
There is nothing to be serious about. But the ego is afraid, apprehensive. Death is coming. The ego is a weight. The ego cannot laugh.
My whole effort is to create such a deep laughter in you that the laughter remains but you disappear. The dance remains but the dancer disappears. Then life is tremendously beautiful -- and only then life is beautiful.
So don't think about me like other religious people who are very serious. If they are serious they cannot be religious: that is my criterion. If your saints cannot laugh, they may be suppressed sinners at the most. Because a suppressed person cannot laugh, he is always afraid. With laughter many other things may escape. He has to suppress everything: the anger, the sex, the greed, the hatred, the love. Now he cannot allow only laughter to escape. And this is a deep secret: either you are totally expressive or you are not. You cannot be partially expressive.
Your so-called saints have to suppress themselves totally. And to me, a saint is one who has no suppression in his being. When he laughs, he laughs. His whole being is involved -- ripples of laughter.
Remember this -- and this will be very very meaningful to remember in reference to Hassidism. Hassidism has created the greatest tradition of laughing saints; that is one of the most beautiful contributions of Hassidism.
A Hassidic sage is not one who has renounced the world. He lives in the world, because to renounce it looks too serious. He does not go away from the marketplace -- he goes above. He lives where you live, but he lives in a different way. He exists by your side, but simultaneously exists
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