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to break these stone walls. And they are not made of stone -- they are made of thoughts. And nothing is more like rock than a thought. They are made of dogmas, scriptures. They surround you. And wherever you go, you carry them with you. Your imprisonment you carry with you. Your prison is always hanging around you. How to break them?
The breaking of the walls will appear to you like a death. It is in a way, because your present identity will be lost. Whosoever you are, that identity will be lost. You will be that no more. Suddenly something else.... It was always hidden within you, but you were not aware. Suddenly a discontinuity. The old is no more there, and something utterly new has entered. It is not continuous with your past. That's why we call it a death. It is not continuous: a gap exists.
And if you look backwards, you will not feel that whatsoever existed before this resurrection was real. No, it will appear as if you saw it in a dream; or it will appear as if you read it somewhere in a fiction; or, as if somebody else related his own story and it was never yours -- somebody else's. The old completely disappears. That's why we call it a death. An absolutely new phenomenon comes into existence. And remember the word `absolutely'. It is not a modified form of the old; it has no connection with the old. It is resurrection. But resurrection is possible only when you are capable of dying.
Sufism is a death and a resurrection. And I call it the religion.
Let us now enter into this beautiful story.
THERE WAS A RICH AND GENEROUS MAN OF BOKHARA. BECAUSE HE HAD A HIGH RANK IN THE INVISIBLE HIERARCHY, HE WAS KNOWN AS THE PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD.
EVERY DAY HE GAVE GOLD TO ONE CATEGORY OF PEOPLE -- THE SICK, WIDOWS, AND SO ON. BUT NOTHING WAS GIVEN TO ANYONE WHO OPENED HIS MOUTH.
NOT ALL COULD KEEP SILENT.
Go slowly with me:
THERE WAS A RICH AND GENEROUS MAN OF BOKHARA.
It is a difficult combination: `rich and generous'. The poor are always generous, the rich never. That's how they become rich. If a rich man is generous, a revolution has happened. A rich man becomes generous only when he has attained
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