I said, “It is in answer to your introduction today. It was the first day of your class. I am a student and I need as many holidays as I want. A headache is one of the best excuses, or a stomachache, and you have blocked those doors. You say, ‘You can have a holiday if you show me your fever; I can check it. If you have a wound, I can check it. If you have broken your leg, I can check it. But headaches and stomachaches, and like things, I don’t believe, so never ask for a holiday.’”

I said, “Now, can you prove that your head is hurting? I know it must be hurting; you know it is hurting, but can you prove it?”

He looked at me and he said, “Listen. It is a compromise with you. You need not say that you have a headache because that will give the idea to others. You simply raise your hand. If you raise your hand I will give you the day free.”

I said, “There is no problem. You could have said that before. You could have saved your head from being unnecessarily hit by a mango.”

The other students were very troubled, because whenever I would raise my hand, he would tell me to go home and rest. The students thought, What is the communication? A few others tried raising their hands and he asked, “What do you mean by raising your hand?”

They said, “We don’t know. But why do you allow one student when he raises his hand? And he raises it almost every day!”

Because the students were continually asking me what was the secret, I said, “That is not possible for me to say, because that is a commitment between me and him. And he is keeping his promise so I will keep my promise.”

If you start thinking about this special question of how Buddha became aware of the insect he removed unconsciously by waving his hand…How do you become aware of your headache? How do you become aware of the headache that you had yesterday? Right now maybe, but about yesterday’s? – you may be imagining. Do you have any proof that yesterday you really had what you are talking about today? But you know and everybody else knows, because a headache is a common experience.

Awareness, watchfulness, is not a common experience. It can be common; it should be common because that is the only possibility for the liberation of human consciousness. But don’t make it a mind problem; otherwise, it will become like the famous puzzle of Bertrand Russell.

I have told you the puzzle…

Once in England, a great mathematician, Godel, was writing a great treatise on mathematics, on the foundations of mathematics. And his assumption was that there is no problem that cannot be solved by mathematics. He had worked almost thirty years for that great book; it was very comprehensive.

Bertrand Russell was also working in collaboration with another mathematician, Whitehead, on a book – Principia Mathematica, the fundamental principles of mathematics – which would be all-inclusive; there would not be any need for any other book as far as mathematics is concerned.