When I look at language, I cannot believe it…. Because of these words, so many people get onto wrong tracks. When you hear the word “honeymoon,” the moon seems to be very real. Honey becomes secondary, moon becomes primary – and the moon has nothing to do with it. Even on a dark night you can have a honeymoon; no moon in the sky and you can have a honeymoon. All that you need is your honey!

I have heard about a Jew who was going to a hill station. A friend met him in the train. He asked, “Where are you going?”

He said, “I am going to enjoy my honeymoon.”

His friend said, “But I don’t see your wife.”

He said, “She will go next year. Together it is too expensive. She will tend the business while I am away enjoying my honeymoon. And when she goes I will tend the business.”

A perfect Jewish solution of not closing the business and still managing the honeymoon – without the honey!

Drop that idea completely, that whatever you felt had any reality in it. You imagined it. Reality is hard. Imagination is in your hands; you can make anything out of it. Real work starts from your reality, whatsoever it is.

Your negativity is yours; you have not trained yourself for it. Your despair is yours; you have not managed to imagine it. Who is going to imagine despair? Nobody has ever done it. People imagine beautiful things.

They think, they dream of marrying some beautiful woman. They don’t imagine that they are going to marry a dragon. The dragon they are married to already. Just to avoid her – at least for a few moments – they imagine some beautiful woman. If they cannot imagine, they can at least look at the pornographic magazines like Playboy. They don’t exist without any reason, people need them. They fulfill a certain purpose: they help you to go on living with the dragon you are married to.

I would not like you to start with imagination. Howsoever sad, howsoever terrible the reality is, if you want to get to the real truth you have to start from real despair.

So you are now at the point from where the journey can begin. These two-and-a-half years you simply wasted. You should have at least asked me in these two-and-a-half years, “Is this a real honeymoon, or am I imagining it?” But when one is enjoying a honeymoon, one does not ask questions – somebody may create a doubt, somebody may disturb your imagination, your projection. Now it is perfectly good to ask the question.

Despair is in the heart of every man.

Despair simply means that one has not been able to achieve one’s potential.

Despair means that the tree is there, but it is not flowering; there is no fragrance. The wind comes, but the tree cannot contribute to the beauty of the world, it cannot give color and fragrance. It is barren. That is despair.