The first question:

Question 1:

Faith is afraid of doubt - afraid because it has repressed it. And whatsoever you repress you will remain afraid of, because it is always there deep inside you, waiting to take revenge, and whenever the opportunity arises it is going to explode in you with vengeance. Your faith sits on an earth-quake and every day the doubt becomes stronger, because every day you have to repress it.

Sooner or later it is more than you can repress, it is more than your faith. Then it simply throws your faith away.

But trust is not afraid of doubt because trust is not against doubt. Trust uses doubt, trust knows how to use the energy contained in doubt itself. That's the difference between faith and trust. Faith is false; it creates a pseudo kind of religion, it creates hypocrites. Trust has a sublime beauty and truth about it. It grows through doubt, it uses doubt as manure, it transforms doubt. Doubt is a friend, doubt is not the enemy.

And unless your trust has moved through many doubts it will remain impotent. From where will it gather strength, from where will it gather integration? If there is no challenge it is bound to remain weak. Doubt is a challenge. If your trust can respond to the challenge, can befriend your doubt, it will grow through it. And you will not be a split person - deep down doubting and just on the surface faithful, believing - you will have a kind of unity, you will be an individual, undivided. And that individuality is what is called 'soul' in the old religions.

The soul is arrived at through doubt, not through believing. Belief is just a mask: you are hiding your original face. Trust is a transformation: you are becoming more illumined. And because you are using doubt as a challenge, as an opportunity, there is never any repression. Slowly slowly doubt disappears, because its energy has been taken by trust.

Doubt, in fact, is nothing but trust growing. Doubt is trust on the way. Always think of doubt in such a way: that doubt is trust on the way. Doubt is inquiry and trust is the fulfillment of the inquiry. Doubt is the question and trust is the answer. The answer is not against the question - there will be no possibility of any answer if there is no question - the question has created the occasion for the answer to happen.

So, please, never feel guilty around me. I am utterly against any kind of guilt. Guilt is absolutely wrong. But it has been used by the priests and the politicians and the puritans down the ages - for centuries. Guilt is a strategy, a strategy to exploit people, to make them feel guilty. Once you have succeeded in making them feel guilty, they will be your slaves. Because of the guilt they will never be integrated enough. Because of the guilt they will remain divided. Because of the guilt they will never be able to accept themselves, they will be always condemning. Because of the guilt they will be ready to believe in anything, just to get rid of guilt. They will do anything - any nonsense, any nonsense ritual they will perform - just to get rid of the guilt. Down the centuries the priest has made people guilty.

All the so-called religions exist on your guilt, they don't exist on the existence of God. They have nothing to do with God and God has nothing to do with them. They exist on your guilt.

You are afraid, you know that you are wrong: you have to seek the help of somebody who is not wrong. You know that you are unworthy: you have to bow down, you have to serve those who are worthy. You know that you cannot trust your-self, because you are divided. Only an undivided person can trust himself, his feeling, his intuition. You are always shaking, trembling inside; you need somebody to lean on. And once you lean on somebody, once you become dependent on somebody, you remain childish, you never grow. Your mind age remains that of a child. You never attain to any maturity, you never become independent. And the priest does not want you to become independent.

Independent, and you are lost to him; dependent, and you are his whole market-place, his whole business.

I am utterly against any kind of guilt. Remember it always: if you start feeling guilty about something around me, then you are doing it on your own, then you are still carrying the voices of your parents, the priests within you; you have not yet heard me, you have not yet listened to me. I want you to be totally free of all guilt.

Once you are free of guilt you are a religious person. That's my definition of a religious person. Use doubt - doubt is beautiful - because it is only through doubt that the trust attains to maturity. How can it be otherwise? It has to be beautiful - it is only through doubt that the trust becomes centered. It is only through doubt that the trust flowers, blooms. It is the dark night of doubt that brings the golden morning closer to you. The dark night is not against the dawn, the dark night is the womb for the dawn. The dawn is getting ready in the very being of the dark night.

Think of doubt and trust as complementary: just as man and woman are, just as night and day, summer and winter, life and death. Always think of those pairs in terms of inevitable complementariness, never think in terms of opposition. Even though on the surface they seem to be opposed, deep down they are friends, helping each other. Think of a person who has no trust: he will not have any doubt either, because he has nothing to doubt about. Just think of a person who has no trust at all - how can he doubt, what has he to doubt? Only a man of trust has something to doubt. Because you trust, hence you doubt. Your doubt proves your trust, not otherwise. Think of a man who cannot doubt - how can he trust? If he is even incapable of doubt, how can he be capable of trust?

Trust is the highest form of the same energy; doubt is the lowest rung of the same ladder and trust is the highest rung of the same ladder. Use doubt, use it joyfully. There is no need to feel guilty at all.

It is perfectly human and natural to feel great doubts about me sometimes and great doubts about what is going on here. It is perfectly human - there is nothing extraordinary in it. If it doesn't happen, then something seems to be abnormal. But remember that one has to reach to the trust. Use doubt, but don't forget the goal, don't forget the highest rung of the ladder. Even if you are standing on the lowest, look at the highest. You have to reach there. In fact, doubt is pushing you towards that because nobody can feel at ease with doubt.

Have you not watched it? When there is doubt there is uneasiness. Don't change that uneasiness, don't interpret that uneasiness as guilt. Yes, uneasiness is there, because doubt means you are uncertain of the ground you are standing on, doubt means you are ambiguous, doubt means you are not yet a unity. How can you be at ease? You are a crowd, you are not one person, you are many persons. How can you be at ease? There must be great noise inside you, one part pulling you in this direction and another part in that direction. How can you grow if you are pulled in so many directions simultaneously? There is bound to be unease, tension, anguish, anxiety.

Nobody can live with doubt and in doubt. Doubt pushes you towards trust, doubt says, 'Go and find a place where you can relax, where you can be totally.' Doubt is your friend. It simply says, 'This is not the home. Go ahead, search, seek, inquire.' It creates the urge to inquire, to explore.

Once you start seeing doubt as a friend, as an occasion, not against trust but pushing you towards it, suddenly, guilt disappears. There is great joy. Even when you doubt, you doubt joyously, you doubt consciously, and you use doubt to find trust. It is absolutely normal.

You say, 'I do not know if you are enlightened.'

How can you know it? There is no way to know it unless you become enlightened. How can you know what has happened to me unless it happens to you too? It is absolutely right to feel that you cannot trust me sometimes. The miracle is that sometimes you can trust. Just those few moments will be enough. Don't be worried. Trust has such infinite power. Trust is just like light and doubt is like darkness.

Just a small candle of trust is enough to destroy the darkness of ages. The darkness cannot say, 'I have lived in this place for so long, I cannot leave so easily and I cannot leave only because of this small candle.' Even a small candle is more potential than the darkness of ages, of centuries, of thousands of lives. But it will have to go... once the light is there it has to go.

Those few moments of trust - let them be far and few in between, don't be worried - they are enough to destroy all your doubts, slowly slowly. And by 'destroying' I mean just releasing the energy contained in doubt. Just breaking the shell called doubt... and deep inside you will find the pure energy to trust. Once it is released more and more trust will be available to you.

You say, 'I do not know if you are enlightened.'

Good that you don't believe. If you start believing you will stop seeking. A believer never moves - he has already believed. That's why there are millions of people worshipping in the churches, temples, mosques, GURUDWARA... But their worship is out of belief; because it is out of belief, those millions of people remain irreligious. They don't search for God, they don't seek God - they have already accepted. Their acceptance is lame; they have not struggled for it, they have not earned it. You have to fight, you have to struggle, you have to earn. Nothing is without a price in life; you have to pay the price. They have not paid the price. And they think that just by worshipping in a temple they will attain? They are utter fools, they are wasting their time! All their worship is just an illusion.

The really religious person cannot believe; he searches. Because he cannot believe, he remains in doubt, and nobody can be at rest with doubt. One has to seek and search and to find. Doubt goes on gnawing at your being, goes on goading you: 'Search, seek, find, and don't be contented before you have found.'

Good that you cannot believe. Only remember: there is no need to believe and there is no need to disbelieve. And that's happening. And I am happy.

You say, 'I can only feel your beauty and trust.'

That's all that is needed. That's enough, more than enough; that will become the boat to the other shore. If you can feel my love, if you can feel my trust in you, if you can feel my hope in you, if you can see that something beautiful has happened although you don't know what exactly it is - you cannot define it and you cannot explain it - but you can even feel that something of the beyond...

That's what beauty is: beauty is always of the beyond. Whenever you see a rose flower and you say, 'It is beautiful,' what do you mean? You say you have seen something of the beyond. Something invisible has become visible to you; you cannot prove it. If somebody else standing by your side denies seeing any beauty in the rose, you cannot prove it to him - there is no way. You will just have to shrug your shoulders. You will say, 'Then nothing can be done about it. I see and you don't see, and that is that.'

You cannot go to the scientist to dissect the rose and find whether it contains beauty or not. It does not contain it; the beauty is not contained in the rose. The beauty is from the beyond, it simply dances on the rose. Those who have eyes, they will see; those who don't have eyes, they will not see. You can take the rose to the chemist; he will dissect it, he will find everything that is in the rose - but beauty is not in the rose. The rose was just an occasion for beauty to descend from the beyond.

The rose was just a screen for the beauty to play upon. The rose was just a stage for the drama to happen; it is not the drama itself. You take the rose away, you dissect the rose, you cut it into pieces, you find all the constituents - but beauty is not a constituent of the rose, although without the rose the beauty cannot descend.

It is just like the sun rises in the morning and the rays are dancing on the lotus pond. You don't see the rays themselves, you can't see. That's what THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER says: you can't see essence, you can't see life, all that you see are only consequences .

Have you ever seen the light itself? No, you have never seen it. If you think you have seen light itself, you have not thought about it, you have not pondered over it. You have seen lighted things, you have not seen light itself. You have seen the lighted pond, you have seen the lighted lotus, you have seen the lighted face of your woman or man or your child, you have seen the lighted world, but have you seen the light itself? If there is nothing for the light to play upon, you will not be able to see it.

That's why the moment the astronauts go away from the earth, even in the daytime, the sky is dark, utterly dark, because you cannot see light itself and there is nothing there for the light to play upon. Hence the infinite sky is dark. You see light on the stars because stars become the playground for the light, but surrounding the stars it is all darkness because there is nothing to obstruct the light.

And unless light is obstructed you cannot see it.

You cannot see enlightenment, you can see only the consequence of it. You cannot see what has happened to me, but you can see something has happened, something like x. There is no need to call it enlightenment either, just x will do. Something mysterious has happened. And the more you feel me, the more you will become aware of it; and when you become more aware of it, something inside you will start responding to it. What has happened to me can trigger a process in you. It cannot be the cause of your enlightenment, remember; your enlightenment will not be the effect of my enlightenment. There is no cause/effect relationship between the Master and the disciple, there is a totally different kind of relationship.

Just in this century Carl Gustav Jung was able to penetrate into the mystery of that different kind of relationship. He calls it 'synchronicity'. Cause and effect is a scientific relationship; synchronicity is a poetic relationship. By 'synchronicity' what is meant is that if something has happened somewhere and you become available to it, you remain vulnerable to it, something can start responding in you parallel to it. But it has not been the cause of it, it cannot cause it.

It is just like somebody is playing beautiful music and a great desire arises in you to dance. It is not caused by the music, it is a parallel response in you. Something that was fast asleep in you - the energy to dance - has been hit; not caused, just hit, provoked, inspired. It is synchronicity. If it is a cause then it will happen to everybody.

For example, you are here, three thousand sannyasins are present. I am available to all of you, but you are not all available to me or, even if you are available to me, you are available in different ways.

The quality differs, the quantity differs. If I can be a cause of your enlightenment, then all three thousand of you will become enlightened. But I am not the cause, I can only become a catalytic agent. But for that, you have to be open towards me. If I were a cause, there would be no need for you to be open to me. Fire burns whether the wood is open to it or not; it is a cause. Water evaporates at hundred-degree heat; whether it is open to the heat or not doesn't matter.

Cause and effect is a blind relationship, it is materialistic: it is between matter and matter. But synchronicity is not material, it is spiritual, it is poetic, it is a love affair. If you become open to me, something will start happening to you. And remember, I am not the cause of it. You need not thank me, you need not be grateful to me. I am not the cause of it. If anybody is the cause of it, it is you, because you opened towards me. I could not have done it alone. There is no doing on my part. I am present, all that is needed is that you also be present here and something will start happening. And nobody is doing it, neither I am doing it nor are you doing it. I am available, you become available, and these two energies fall into a love affair, they start dancing together.

So don't be worried that you cannot know about my enlightenment. You say, 'I can only feel your beauty and trust.' This is enough. This will do. And once it has happened in you, you will know. To know a Buddha, one has to become a Buddha, to know a Christ one has to be a Christ.

 

The second question:

Question 2:

Maitri, one is alone - aloneness is ultimate - but aloneness is not loneliness. You are not lonely.

And that's where the whole misunderstanding lies and that's what makes you so terrified. To be lonely means you are missing the other. To be lonely is a negative state. To be lonely means you are feeling empty: you are searching for the other - you believe in the other, you depend on the other - and the other is not there. And because the other is not there, there is great nothingness, but that nothingness is a kind of negative nothingness. You are groping for the other, and you cannot find the other, and everything starts disappearing. And when everything starts disappearing the real problem is that you cannot remain yourself.

When everything else has disappeared, you will have to disappear too, because you depend on others, you are just a reflection of the others. You have seen your face in the eyes of others; they have been mirrors. Now there are no longer any mirrors, who are you? All has disappeared, then how can you remain in this loneliness? You also start evaporating and that creates great fear, the fear of death.

The ego starts dying and the ego starts searching somewhere for somebody to cling to. And that's why soon you start interacting with people. Out of the fear of death you start getting occupied with others again. And then great confusion is bound to be there because your natural being was moving into a deep nothingness but you became frightened and you pulled yourself out of it. You created a contradiction in the energy: the energy was going in and you jumped out, hence the confusion. But aloneness is ultimate. And when I say aloneness is ultimate, I mean that there is only one, there are not many. You are not separate from existence.

Nobody is separate from anybody else, existence is utterly one. The very idea of separation is our misery, the very idea that 'I am an island' creates hell. Nobody is an island, we belong to the continent, we are part of this oceanic existence, past, present, future. In all directions and all dimensions, it is all one. In fact, the word alone means 'all-oneness' - that is alone-ness. 'All one' is alone.

But for that, Maitri, you will have to go a little more into this nothingness. First the nothingness is negative; its outermost core, the shell part is negative. If you go a little deeper you will find the positive negativeness. The positive negativeness is what Buddha calls NIRVANA, enlightenment, SHUNYA. When you move deeper and you have crossed the shell part, the hard negative part, the dark part, suddenly there is light. The night is over.

And then you feel a totally new kind of aloneness which you have never felt before, and then you know the distinction between loneliness and aloneness. In loneliness you were searching for the other, in aloneness the other has disappeared and so has disappeared the ego. Now there is nobody inside and nobody outside, and all is one. This unity, this absolute oneness brings benediction.

Then there is no fear, there cannot be, because now there can be no death - how can there be fear? The death has already happened, that which could die has died. Now you are in the world of immortality, you have found the elixir. This is the nectar we will be talking about again and again in these sutras of THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. This is the nectar, AMRIT. This is the elixir, the philosopher's stone. Once you have tasted of it, all death has disappeared, all time has disappeared, all distinctions have disappeared. Now you will see the tree as your extension, the cloud as your extension, or you as the extension of the tree. Now the centre is everywhere and nowhere. The 'I' does not exist anywhere anymore. The very word has become utterly false.

Once a Christian missionary asked a Zen Master, 'Isn't the end-point of man's journey the union with God?'

The Zen Master said, 'The end-point of man's journey is NOT union with God, because there has never been a separation. All that is needed is the flash of insight that makes one see it.'

Tao, Zen, Tantra - their insight is far more deep than the so-called market-place religion. Christianity thinks in terms of joining with God, of being one with God, but the Zen Master's insight is far more penetrating, and deeper. He says: But where has there been a separation? When? It has not happened at all, you have been dreaming that you are separate. Just come out of the dream! There is no union, you have ALWAYS been one with existence. Not for a single moment has there been a separation, there is no possibility of separation.

Maitri, you are coming to a very very important, significant insight. If you don't get frightened and run out of this experience, you may attain the flash of insight that makes one see it: that all is one.

But fear always comes. It is not new - each seeker has to go through it. And it is really so much that before you have thought about it you have already run out of it. It is so frightening that it does not give you time, space, to ponder over it - what to do. It is like the house is on fire. You don't think anymore: 'Should I get out or not?' There are no more alternatives left; you simply run out of the house without thinking. There is no time to think. Later on you can think. When you are outside the house, sitting under a tree, you can think and ponder in luxury. But when the house is on fire, how can you think? Action is needed immediately and thought is never immediate.

That's the problem: when you go into your aloneness, at first it is very lonely, because you have lived with the idea of the other. It was a dream idea; the other is not there. 'I' and 'thou' - both are false.

Martin Buber says that the ultimate quality of prayer is a dialogue between 'I' and 'thou'. That's where Judaism got stuck. The ultimate prayer is not a dialogue at all, the ultimate prayer is a monologue, because the other is not there.

A Zen Master used to call his own name in the morning; every morning he would shout his own name, and say, 'How are you?' And he would answer, 'I am perfectly well, sir.'

You will think he is mad, but this is prayer. There is no 'I', there is no 'thou'. You have to play the part of both. It is a game, it is a play. Prayer is a play: playing with your own self. There is no 'other'.

But Judaism got stuck there, with the idea of 'I' and 'thou'. That's why they were so much against Jesus, because he declared - although not in such a drastic way as a Zen Master declares... It was not possible to be more drastic than he was in his situations. But still he said, 'I and my Father are one.' But that was enough to infuriate people. People were mad. 'What is he saying? Declaring himself God?' He is not saying anything, he is not declaring himself God, he is simply saying there is no God and no devotee, there is only One. You can call it 'devotee' in a certain situation, you can call it 'God' in another situation. That's why he says, 'I and my Father are one. If you look at my body I am the son, if you look at my soul I am the Father. If you look at my form I am a man, son of man, if you look at my essence I am son of God.'

That's why he goes on repeating it again and again. Sometimes he says: I am son of man, and sometimes he says: I am son of God. Looks contradictory, it is not.

Maitri, you say:

All that you see is a projection of your eyes. The world as it Is you have not seen yet. What you have seen is just a projection, so when you start moving inwards, everything that you have projected on the world will come closer and closer and closer to the eyes and will disappear into your eyes. This world is a projection of your eyes. You don't see that which is, you project a dream upon it.

For example, there is a great diamond, the Kohinoor. Now, it is just a stone like any other stone, but we have projected so much value on it. Many people have died because of the Kohinoor; whosoever possessed it was killed. Now see the whole nonsense of it: just that stone has proved very murderous because of the projections of people. It is one of the most precious things in the world, the costliest thing in the world, but if man disappears from the earth will it be anything more than any other pebble? It will be just lying there with other pebbles in the same way. There will be no distinction, no difference.

From where does the difference come? Our eyes project, we make it special. We go on pouring our desire, greed, onto it. It becomes very precious, and very dangerous too. If you are meditating on the Kohinoor, silently seeing it, seeing it, one moment will come when you see that something from the Kohinoor is coming closer and closer to your eyes and then it disappears into the eyes. Then you open your eyes - the Kohinoor has disappeared. There is something, but you had not known it before and the one that you had known before is no more there.

A beautiful experience, tremendously significant. Go into it, go deeper and deeper into it. Let the whole world disappear. Yes, I will also disappear into that, because that which I am you have not seen yet and that which you see is your projection. Your projection will disappear, and when all your projections have disappeared, then the world comes in its nakedness, as it is.

And the wonder of it! Then small things are so wonderful then ordinary pebbles are so wonderful.

Because of the Kohinoor they cannot be wonderful; you have projected all on the Kohinoor, you have not left any love for anything else. Once the projection disappears and you open your eyes, EMPTY EYES, not projecting anything at all, just seeing whatsoever it is, with no idea what it is, with no names, no labels, no interpretations, just seeing, emptied, passive, the world comes to have a totally different meaning, significance.

Perfectly good and perfectly right. This is the way one moves deeper into meditation.

The only problem is that you are still there, that's why you feel so alone. You mean lonely. The 'I' remains alone; 'thou' has disappeared, and without the 'thou' the 'I' is lonely. The 'I' exists only in relationship; the 'I' is not an entity but a relationship - it cannot exist without the 'thou', it needs the 'thou'. How can the lover exist without the beloved? Once the beloved is not there the lover starts disappearing. You need the beloved. Love is a relationship, so is the 'I' a relationship. And because you are still protecting the 'I' somehow, you have not yet been courageous enough to let it go too.

Just as the whole world has disappeared, let this 'I' also disappear. It will be frightening in the beginning; it will be a death process - it is a death process. It will look like you are committing suicide, it will look... Who knows where you are going, whether you will be coming back again or not? It will look as if madness is exploding in you. And great fear will arise and in that fear you will be thrown out again and again. It will happen many times. Slowly, slowly you will have to learn not to be so afraid; there is nothing to fear. You are very close to the treasure.

These are the moments when a Master is needed to help you, to give you courage, to hold your hand, to say to you, 'Maitri, all is perfectly right. Go in!'

I had to pass through the same and I was also as much afraid as you are. And many times I came out just as you are coming out. And you are more fortunate than me because I had no Master - nobody to give me courage, nobody to hold my hand. I was simply struggling by myself. There was nobody who could tell me what was going to happen ahead. I had to grope and go into it - and it was dangerous, it was maddening. And the people who were around me in those days had already started believing that I had gone mad. Everybody who loved me was worried - my friends were worried, my teachers, my professors in the university were worried, my parents were worried, everybody was worried. But I had to go. Many times I went out, the fear was so much. I am perfectly acquainted with the fear.

But one day, one has to face it and go through it, because again and again you fall upon it and you rush out. And the out is not meaningful anymore: the out is all empty. And you come inside... and the fear. You have to choose between the two. The outside is no more relevant. You can go on making empty gestures, but how long can you deceive yourself? You know the screen is empty and all your projections are dead. And you go inside... and the fear, a great storm of fear arises.

But there is no other way - one has to go through it to know exactly what happens after this death.

The sooner you gather courage the better. And I say again you are more fortunate, because I am standing ahead of you in that utter emptiness, calling you forth again and again 'Come on! Come ye all! Come!' And I go on calling you forth just as Christ called Lazarus from the grave 'Lazarus, come out!'

In fact, that parable is not a historical fact, it is a parable. It is a parable of moving from the outside to the inside. The outside becomes a grave when it loses meaning. The outside becomes just futility, a wasteland, a grave. Nothing grows in it anymore, nothing flowers in it anymore - no possibility of any song and dance - and you live only in empty motions, empty gestures.

But the Master is standing where you are afraid to go and he calls from there. I am not only standing outside you; you will meet me in that innermost nothingness - not as me, of course, not as a person but as a presence; not separate from you but one with you.

That's why I insist so much on sannyas. Unless you are a sannyasin it will be difficult for me to call you from the inside. I can call you from the outside, but then you remain just a student. I can teach you a few things - that will become knowledge - but I cannot call you from your inside, from your very heart. And the need is there. That is possible only if you become a disciple, if you are a sannyasin, if you are ready to go with me, if you are ready to trust me, at least in some moments. I will use those 'some moments' and sooner or later they will become your very state of being.

So go on. Let this 'me', this 'I' also disappear. And once this 'I' disappears there is no loneliness, there is aloneness. And aloneness is beautiful, aloneness is freedom, it is a very positive feeling of well-being, a positive feeling of great joy. It is a very great, festive moment, it is celebration.

Yes, if 'I' remains you will remain lonely.

Allow me to become part of the painting on the outside, only then can I start working from the inside.

Let me disappear from the outside so that you can see me inside. And that will be my truth. And that is the truth of Christ and that is the truth of the Buddha and Krishna. That is the truth of all the Masters, of all those who have become awakened.

It is natural, but gather courage. I am with you. Go in.

No, not at all. Mind creates the fear, not this experience. Mind is playing when it creates the fear. It is not mind when you see all your projections coming closer and closer and disappearing into your eyes. It is not mind when everything becomes a white empty screen. It is not mind, it is meditation: it is movement towards no-mind. MIND creates the fear. When it comes very close to the no-mind, it becomes so afraid of death that it creates fear. And in that fear you rush out again.

Next time it happens, Maitri, go in, in spite of the fear. Just be like the elephant who goes on moving although the dogs go on barking. Let the dogs of the mind bark. Go on moving like an elephant.

Don't care at all about the mind - what it is saying.

Question 3:

Fallen flowers don't jump back to the branches. That is not possible. The enlightened person cannot slide back into illusion. There is no way; for many reasons there is no way.

The first reason: the enlightened man is no more - who will slide back? Enlightenment is. There is nothing like an 'enlightened person'. Enlightenment is perfectly there, but there is nobody who is enlightened. That is just a way of speaking, a linguistic fallacy. Who will slide back? The one who could have slid back has disappeared. And where can one slide back? Once you have found it is illusion, it is no more there. When once you have seen it is no more there, it is finished! Where can you go back? It is not possible.

But the idea arises in our mind because in life we have never seen anything like that. We attain one thing and we fall back; we are in love and then we fall back out of it. We fall in love and we fall out of it. We are happy and then we become unhappy, we are feeling good and then we start feeling very bad. We know the duality, the duality never disappears, so we naturally think about enlightenment also as if one can slide back. Enlightenment is the realization of the non-dual. That's why Zen Masters say SAMSARA IS NIRVANA: the very WORLD is NIRVANA, the very illusion is truth; there is no distinction left. It is not that this is truth and that is illusion; all is truth, only truth is. Where can you fall back? You have gone beyond the point of no return. Nobody has ever fallen back.

And don't be worried about these people - you should worry about yourself. First become enlightened and then try to slide back, and then you will see - it is easier to become enlightened! It is very difficult to slide back. I have tried, but I have not been successful.

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The fourth question:

Question 4:

Suparna, you have been told again and again, you have been taught again and again, that to be joyous is wrong and to be miserable is right. You may not have been told so directly, but indirectly you have been conditioned and hypnotized for misery. You have started believing that misery is natural. You see misery all around, misery abounds, everybody is miserable. It seems to be the way things are.

When you were born, you were a happy child - as every child is happy. It has not happened otherwise, never. Whenever a child is born, s/he is happy, utterly happy. And that's why children look very selfish: they only think of themselves, they are not worried about the world. And they are happy about small things. A butterfly in the garden, and the utter joy and their wonder - at small things, at nothings; but they are happy, they are naturally happy.

But slowly slowly we cripple their happiness, we destroy it. We cannot tolerate so much happiness.

The world is very miserable and we have to prepare them for the world. So indirectly we start indoctrinating them that 'The world is misery', and that 'You cannot afford to be happy,' that 'Happiness is just a hope, how can you be happy? Don't be so selfish! There is so much misery all around - feel for others, consider others.' Slowly, slowly the child gets the feeling that to be happy is a kind of sin. How can you be happy when the world is in such misery?

People write letters to me asking: 'How can you teach people meditation when the world is in such a misery? How can one be happy when people are starving?' As if by being unhappy you will help them! As if by not being meditative you will be of any kind of service to them! As if wars will disappear. If you don't meditate, and poverty will disappear, if you are not happy!

But misery has been put on a pedestal, misery has been worshipped. I always suspect that Christianity became the greatest religion because of the cross. It represents misery, suffering. Krishna could not become a great religion because of his flute because of his dance. Even those who worship him feel a little guilty about him. How can you be so happy and dancing with girlfriends?

And not just one - thousands! And singing and playing on the flute! And people are dying and there is death and starvation and war and violence and all kinds of things are going around. It is hell, and you are playing on your flute! It seems callous, it seems cruel. Jesus seems to be more suitable, dying on the cross. Look at the face of Jesus! The way Christians have painted him his face is very long, sad. He is carrying the whole burden of the earth. He has come to take all the sins of all the people on himself. He seems to be the greatest servant - very unselfish.

But my feeling is that Christians have depicted Christ wrongly. This Christ is a myth, the real Christ was more like Krishna. In fact, if you go deep down into the word 'Christ' you will be surprised: it comes from 'Krishna'; its root is 'Krishna'. He must have been a very joyous man, otherwise how can you think of him eating, drinking, making merry? There are so many scenes where friends have gathered and they are eating and drinking and gossipping. He is not always 'gospelling', sometimes he is gossipping too! And he seems to be the only messenger from God who drinks and eats well and enjoys the small pleasures of life.

My feeling is that if Zen Masters were to create a religion out of Jesus, they would make him laugh on the cross - a belly laugh. Jesus would have as big a belly as Bodhidharma! And the belly would be shaking like an earthquake with great laughter! And that would have been more true, far more truer.

Even in Japan and China the statue of the Buddha is made with a big belly. In India they don't make that big belly, no, not at all. The Indian concept, the yogic concept is that the belly has to be very small and the chest has to be big, because the yogic breathing is a false breathing, it is not natural. It can make a Mohammed Ali out of you but not a Buddha. It will give you the shape of a Mr Universe, but have you seen any other kinds of people in the world who are more ugly? Mr Universe seems to be the ugliest. I don't think any woman can fall in love with a Mr Universe. He looks so animalistic - all muscles and no man, just a kind of mechanism. Just see his muscles moving - just a kind of mechanism, a machine, but no soul! The Indian statue of Buddha is the yogic statue. When they made Buddha's statue in China, they made it with a big belly.

When one laughs and when one breathes naturally, the belly becomes slowly bigger, because then one breathes from the belly and not from the chest - the breath goes the whole way down. If Zen were to make a religion out of Christianity Jesus would be on the cross, but with laughter, such laughter that it would resound down the centuries. But that may not have been a successful religion, because how would it suit the people who know only crying and weeping? He would look completely eccentric, outlandish. To be on the cross and sad looks perfectly right, because everybody is on a certain cross and sad.

And you must have been taught from your very childhood that the world is a wrong place. How can you be happy in this place? We are suffering a kind of punishment. God ordered Adam and Eve to leave paradise because they disobeyed, and humanity is under that curse. How can you be happy?

To be a Christian and happy will be a contradiction in terms.

So, Suparna, you must have been taught that the world is a miserable place; misery is perfectly right in it, in tune with it. And everybody is miserable; it will be very hard and cruel on your part to be happy and joyous. That's why people feel guilty and hold back even when there are moments to enjoy.

Larson took Charlotte for a drive way out in the country and parked the car in a desolate stretch. 'If you try to molest me,' said Charlotte, 'I'll scream.'

'What good would that do?' asked Larson. 'There's not a soul around for miles.'

'I know,' said Charlotte, 'but I want to satisfy my conscience before I start having a good time.'

People even make love with sad faces as if they are on the cross - serious, doing a duty. And even if they want to enjoy, they hide it, it 'doesn't look right'; they feel guilty.

If people really make love with joy, they will scream, they will shout, they will cry, they will weep, they will laugh. One never knows what kind of emotions will surface, so it is better to keep yourself in control, otherwise you will look so foolish. And then what will the neighbours think? And modern walls are so thin that you even have to make love in a yoga posture - SHAVASANA, the dead-body posture. 'And be finished with it as soon as possible, don't let it become ogasmic. What are you doing? And Jesus suffered for you on the cross! And you are shouting with joy? Think of Jesus, poor Jesus, what will he think of you? And think of God - who is a kind of peeping Torn who always looks through keyholes - what will he think?'

If you think of all the gods and then the angels and the Christs and the saints - and they are all watching you making love, and with such relish - you will suffer in hell! It is better to keep control, it is good to feel guilty. That's why after making love people feel a kind of sadness, a kind of frustration, as if they have done something criminal. Again they enjoyed themselves and 'that is not right'.

Just see. Whenever you are feeling miserable something feels good. It will look like a contradiction, but it is like this: whenever you are miserable you feel blissful and whenever you are blissful you feel miserable.

You say:

You will not be able to understand this at all because your whole understanding has been poisoned.

You will have to drop the whole mind! There is no need to understand. You have to go into it with innocence, not with understanding, because that understanding is again a kind of calculation. That understanding is again the knowledge that has been given by the society, and that knowledge is creating the whole trouble. You have to become a child again, innocent.

But you want to understand. Forget all about understanding! Understanding is again calculation, cunningness.

I have heard...

An elderly couple went to a doctor. The man said, 'We want to know if we are making love properly. Will you look at us?'

'Go ahead,' said the doctor. And they made love.

'You are making love perfectly,' the doctor said. 'That will be $50.'

They came back six weeks in a row and did the same thing. On the seventh visit the doctor said, 'What are you coming here like this for - I told you you are making love properly!'

'She can't come to my house,' said the man, 'and I can't go to her house. A motel costs more...'

Don't be calculating, don't be cunning with life. Now what kind of love will this be? Business and business and business... Knowledge is needed for business, innocence is needed for life.

Knowledge is a must in the market-place, but not needed at all when you are moving into the mysteries. You cannot know, you can only be. Drop this mind, drop all this conditioning, and start moving. When you feel joyous, Feel joyous, help yourself to feel joyous, dance, sing. The old habits will pull you back - don't listen to them.

You will have to get rid of the old habits slowly slowly. It will be a kind of struggle, because no habit leaves you easily. But these habits are against you and against God, because anything that is against joy is against God. If God can be defined by any word, that word is 'bliss' and nothing else.

Suparna, whenever you feel something beautiful and the pain arises in you, that pain is not in your being, that pain is in your mind. Your being is trying to go into the beautiful, but your mind is pulling you back. Whenever you feel love arising, bliss arising, and pain also, choose the bliss. Neglect the pain, ignore it. Ignoring it, it will die; if you go on paying attention to it you will feed it. Attention is food. Never pay attention to anything that is wrong, otherwise you are helping it to be there, you are giving it more and more strength. Ignore it - there is nothing better than ignoring it. Yes, let it be there, just say, 'Okay, you be there. You are just a hangover from my past. You be there. I am going ahead, I am not going to listen to you.'

Listen to blissful provocations, always go with them, and you are moving in the right direction - you are moving towards God. Never listen to anything that gives you guilt, pain, misery - you are moving away from God. Whenever you are miserable, you are in hell - farthest away from God - and whenever you are utterly joyous, you ARE in God, you are in heaven.

You say:

Misery is unnatural, bliss is your nature. Misery is taught by others, bliss is given by God. Misery is a conditioning, bliss is your inner soul, your essence. Misery is personality, just the structure around you; bliss is your freedom, it is unstructured.

Don't try to understand this at all. Just leave the pain there, accept it for a few days, and go into love - go into love madly. Go into beauty, dance around a tree, and you will feel something of the shape of the tree has started reaching you. Dance under the stars. In the beginning you may feel that your legs are not moving and you have to move - because you have been forced to live without dance for so long, your legs have forgotten the language of dance. But soon they will learn, because it is a natural language.

Each child knows how to dance, each child knows how to be joyous. You will have to learn it again.

VIDEO

But because it is natural, it comes fast. Just a few efforts and, suddenly, one day you are out of the trap. Your crutches have to be thrown away. Even if sometimes you fall, it is perfectly good, but you have to stand on your own feet. The crutches of the society, of the organized religion, of the priests, have to be thrown even if for d few days you will feel impoverished. It is natural to feel impoverished for a few days; you have to accept it. But if you go on moving towards the natural, you will find Tao in your life.

Tao is a natural flowering. Follow nature. Nobody wants to be miserable and everybody is. They are not following nature. Nobody wants to be anything other than blissful and nobody is blissful. Listen to the desire - the deepest desire indicates the right path. Your longing is for bliss, for beauty, for something that will overwhelm you, for something that will take you to the other shore, for something which will be so tremendous and incredible that the past and the future will be washed away and you will be just herenow.

But don't try to understand. If you start trying to understand, you will become a victim of psychoanalysis. And the analysis is a process AD INFINITUM. It never ends. You can go on analyzing and analyzing and it is never finished. There is not a single person in the world who is totally psychoanalyzed, there can never be.

This is where I differ from psychoanalysis. Don't go into analysis. Put the whole mind aside. Jump out of it! There is no need to understand. All that is needed is to live, authentically live. All that is needed is to be.

The first question:

  Question 1:

Hamid, the problem is that man is NOT a river, man is very much frozen. There is no flow in man's being. Man is like ice, not like water. If man is a river, there is no need to push it, it will reach ultimately to the ocean. It HAS already reached: in that very flow it has become part of the ocean. To be flowing is to be oceanic.

But man is not flowing, hence the urge. The ice wants to melt, hence the effort. Once the ice has melted, then there is no need to push anything, then everything happens of its own accord.

Man has become a rock. And the reason why man has become a non-flowing rock is the Mind. The body is perfectly flowing, so is the soul. But between the two, the link, the mind, is frozen ice. Once the mind goes deeper into meditation it starts melting. That's what meditation is all about: an effort to melt the mind.

You say:

That's true, but first become a river.

You say:

True, but between the body and the soul there is a mind clinging to you, or you clinging to it. The body goes, but you don't become the infinite because you are not only surrounded by a body - that is your physical limitation - there is psychological limitation inside it. Through the death of the body, mind will not die, it will take rebirth. It will move into another womb, because it will carry so many desires which are to be fulfilled. It will again seek another womb, another body with which to fulfil those desires. That is the very foundation of the theory of reincarnation.

Mind desires, and if desires are there, then opportunities will arise in which those desires will be fulfilled. God cooperates with you. If you have desires like a dog, you will become a dog, you will have the body of a dog. Your mind creates the blueprint, and then the body follows. The body is a projection of the mind, not vice versa. Unless mind disappears completely you will be born again and again. Once the mind is gone, then it is perfectly true, Hamid: the body disappears and you are the infinite. In fact, if the mind is not there, you are the infinite without the disappearance of the body, without the death of the body. There is no need to wait for that.

Buddha is infinite even when he is in the body because he knows he is not the body. Buddha is infinite when he leaves the body. There is no difference for him: living in the body or leaving the body is the same. You live in a house, but you don't think that you are the house. Exactly like that, an awakened consciousness lives in the body; it uses the body just as you use a car. You sit in the car, you drive the car; you know that you are not the car. You can get out of it any moment. You need not wait for an accident to happen when the car is destroyed to feel that you are not the car.

And if you don't know it when the car is there and you are in it, how are you going to know it when the car is not there? Just through the death of the body, you will not know that you are infinite. Either you are infinite herenow, or you will never be. Infinity is your nature.

The real problem is not the body. The body is not the culprit as the so-called religions have been telling you, 'The body is the culprit!' The body is not the culprit at all. The body is utterly innocent and beautiful. The culprit is the mind, the MIND IS the devil. You will have to dissolve the mind, hence the urge, hence the purpose of all the methodologies that have been developed down the ages: Tao, Yoga, Tantra, Zen, Hassidism.

Become a river and then nothing is needed. That's what THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER says: Achieve inaction through action, achieve effortlessness through effort. But first comes the effort, the action. It will melt you, and then the river starts flowing. In that very flow it has reached the ocean.

The second question:

Question 2:

Sagarpriya, the ego is neither male nor female. The ego is simply the ego. The one who becomes resistant to the male ego is the female ego. You are aware of the male ego, but you are not aware of your own ego. Who is resistant to surrender?

Become more aware of your own ego, and then things will be easier. Everybody is aware of the ego of the other, but nothing can be done about the ego of the other. All that can be done is only with yourself.

You say:

Who is this who finds it almost impossible? Find out! And then you will be surprised: ego is ego; it is neither male nor female. Don't divide it. Egos have no sex, no gender; it is the same disease. If a woman has cancer, it is cancer. If a man has cancer, it is cancer. It is not male and female. Exactly like that is the ego: the cancer of the mind.

And who is telling you to surrender to the male ego? Surrender is never to the other. When two persons fall in love, both surrender to love; nobody surrenders to the other. If there is an effort from the other that you should surrender to him, avoid him - this is not love. Love never demands surrender. Surrender happens naturally in love, there is no demand for it.

If the man demands surrender from your side, he does not love you. Don't get entangled into such an unloving affair. He hates you, otherwise why should he demand surrender? He wants to possess you, he wants to reduce you into a thing. He wants to use you, exploit you. He thinks of you only as a body, as a mechanism. He does not respect you as a person, as a presence. This is humiliating, this is not love. Avoid it.

But surrender happens when there is love. And nobody demands, and nobody surrenders to the other - neither the man to the woman, nor the woman to the man. They both surrender to the god of love. They both surrender to this new opening in their being. And when both surrender to love there is beauty and there is freedom. You are not reduced to being a slave. In fact, only in love do you attain dignity, only in love do you attain to your grandeur. Only in love is your splendour released.

This is the indication of real love: that you become more than you were before, not less, and you are freer than you ever were. Love gives freedom. That is the very taste of love. If it is missing, if it is anti-freedom, then avoid it as one avoids the plague. Don't get into it - it is something else masquerading as love. But when love is there, you will find surrender has already happened; it is simultaneous. The moment you feel love for somebody, the surrender has happened. That is what love is. Not surrender - let me repeat again - to the other, but surrender to an unknown force that has taken possession of you two. But that is totally different from you and totally different from the other - you both have bowed down to an unknown energy. You become two pillars separate from each other, still supporting the same roof. You support something that is beyond you, above you, that transcends you, but you remain separate.

Love makes you more of an individual. It does not efface your individuality, it gives you individuality, it gives you uniqueness. Love is very respectful.

Sagarpriya, you say:

These are the ways of the ego. The other may have the ego, may not have the ego - I don't know about the other, who is that other? - but one thing is certain: you have a very subtle ego. That ego becomes competitive. Ego is competitive, intrinsically competitive. The ego becomes resistant or frightened, and in the fear, in the resistance, in the struggle, in the competitiveness, love is destroyed.

One thing is certain: you have to become aware of your subtle egoistic approach towards life. Drop it. At least from your side let it disappear. And then you will be surprised: maybe the other was not demanding any surrender; it was just your ego that projected it on the other. If it is so, now you can surrender to love. If it is not so and the other is still demanding... And you will be able to know rightly only when there is no resistance in you, when there is no fear in you, no competition in you.

Then you will have clarity, you will have a transparency, you will be able to see through and through.

And immediately you will know whether the other is demanding a surrender to him, or the demand is coming from something which is beyond you both. If it is from beyond you both, surrender. If it is coming from the other, avoid it. That other person is mad; he needs all compassion. Pity him, but don't fall in love, because to fall in love with an ego-maniac is dangerous; he will destroy you.

This much you owe to yourself. 

Question 3:

Kavita, this place is a market-place. Can you find any other place which is more like the market?

I could have made the ashram somewhere in the Himalayas. I love the Himalayas. For me it is a great sacrifice not to be in the Himalayas. But for a certain purpose I have not made my ashram in the Himalayas.

I want to remain part of the market-place. And this ashram is run almost as part of the market-place.

That's why Indians are very annoyed - they cannot understand. They have known ashrams for centuries, but this ashram is beyond their comprehension. They cannot think that you have to pay to listen to a religious discourse. They have always listened free of charge - not only free of charge, but after the discourse the ashram distributes PRASAD too. Many go to listen to the discourses not because of the discourse but for the PRASAD.

Here you have to pay. What am I doing? I want it to be absolutely a part of the market-place because I want my sannyasins not to move into the monasteries. They have to remain in the world. Their meditation should grow in the world, their meditation should not become escapist. So whatsoever peace you are finding here, you will be able to retain anywhere you go. There will be no problem, not at all. I have been managing things in such a way that all that can disturb you anywhere else is present here. So you need not be afraid.

Meditators have always been afraid of a few things. For example, they have been afraid of women. Can you find more beautiful women anywhere in India than here? more alive? Living here, being here, you will become completely oblivious of the fact of who is a man and who is a woman. How long can you go on persisting in making the distinction? The future belongs neither to man nor to woman. The future will be a kind of androgyny. The distinction between man and woman is going to disappear more and more.

In the past the distinction was very much created, culture-oriented. A girl had to be brought up in a different way than a boy - in an utterly different way. I am not saying that there is no difference, there is a difference between man and woman, but that difference is only biological. But the society creates a psychological difference: 'These things are allowed for boys only, because "boys are boys" and these things are not allowed for girls.' A psychological difference is created from the very beginning. The difference that you see between men and women in the world is ninety-nine percent created, nurtured; it is not natural. There is a one percent difference that is biological; that doesn't matter. Living here you live in such a togetherness that you will become oblivious of the fact of who is a man and who is a woman.

In the old days, with the old-style sannyas, people had to go away from women to the caves, to the monasteries. There are Christian monasteries where no woman has ever entered, has ever been allowed to enter. On Mount Athos there is a monastery - for twelve hundred years not a single woman has been allowed to enter. And what to say of a woman? - not even a girl of the age of six months, not even a six-month-old girl has been allowed. Just see the fear. And what kind of people must be living there if they cannot even allow a six-month-old girl? - maniacs called monks or monkeys, but not men. Must be mad. And it is in the monasteries that all kinds of monstrosities have arisen.

Homosexuality was first born in the monasteries; it is a religious phenomenon. It was bound to be so. If you force men to live together in a place where no woman is ever allowed, sooner or later homosexuality will come. self-gratification is a monastic practice, it came out of monasteries. All kinds of perversions are bound to be there.

There are monasteries for women too - only women are allowed, no men ever. And their whole fantasy world consists of men. They cannot get magazineS like PLAYBOY, but who needs them when you have enough time to fantasize? Their fantasy is so p 0 r n o g r a p h i c that magazines like PLAYBOY are nothing. Their fantasies are more psychedelic.

These people who have lived in such a monastery, if they are allowed to come back to the world, naturally their meditation, their prayer, their religion - all will be disturbed.

Monks have been very afraid of money. Naturally, if they come into the world, money has to be tackled. You cannot live in the world without money. And monks have been so afraid that they will not even touch money. See the fear, the obsession.

Acharya Vinoba Bhave, the chief disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, does not touch money. But what kind of obsession is this? Touching a ten-rupee note - how can it harm you? And if it can harm you, what kind of spirituality is this? Such an impotent spirituality. Not only that he cannot touch it, but if you bring money in front of him, he closes his eyes. He cannot even look. His guru, Mahatma Gandhi, used to keep three monkeys - somebody had given him a present. Knowing him, the present was

exactly the right present. One monkey is sitting with both his hands over his eyes, not looking: 'Don't look at many things in life because it is dangerous.' Another monkey is sitting with his hands over his ears: 'Don't listen to many things because it is dangerous.' And the third monkey is sitting with his hands over his mouth: 'Don't say many things because it is dangerous.'

And the monk has to do all three things together. That's why I say a monk is a monkey three times over.

Such a person - who cannot open his eyes, cannot open his ears, cannot open his mouth - if he comes into the world, will be in difficulties, naturally. He will find that all is disturbed, all is destroyed.

And in India the calamity is that these monkeys have become the leaders of this country - perverted people, suffering from abnormalities, not natural, not flowing, not in Tao.

My whole effort here is to create a miniature world where money is absolutely accepted, where women and men live together in joy, in celebration, without fear, where all that goes on in the world also continues and, alongside, the meditation grows. It becomes stronger and stronger because all the challenges are there.

You can go, Kavita, anywhere you like. Nobody can take your peace away. Your silence is yours! It is not because of me. You have earned it, you have gained it.

And a related question:

Question 4:

The question is from Sucheta.

I have not been hard on her yet, hence the question. But from now onwards she will know. I have been really nice to her, and I am rarely nice to people.

This place has more rules than any other place. Those rules are a device to create a certain situation in you - a challenge. The question has arisen in her mind because she wants to work with children, and I have said 'no'. I have told her to work somewhere else.

If I go with your likes and dislikes, your choices, I am 'Bhagwan'. In this question she has not written 'Bhagwan'; otherwise she always writes 'Beloved Bhagwan', 'Beloved Master'. The question directly starts: 'So what!'

I cannot leave you to yourself, otherwise I will not be of any help. Just BECAUSE Sucheta wants to work with children I cannot allow her, because I have to take care of children too. I cannot spoil their life. Sucheta, you are spoiled by your parents, by your family, by your society. I cannot send you to the children; you are not yet capable of that. Just because you choose... Anybody can choose anything, but here things have to go according to me, not according to you. Remember it! If you cannot be patient enough, then this is not the place for you, then you can leave. Guards are at every gate to prevent people from coming in, but I have not put any guards there to prevent people from going out. You can leave immediately.

If you have to be here, you have to be according to me, only then can I be of any help. I know what is needed . It is not always that which you like, which is your need. What you like comes out of your mind. And your mind has to be destroyed. I cannot listen to your likes and dislikes. All these rules are made by me. The moment you become a sannyasin, you give this much authority to me: that I will decide a few things for you. And if you want to become an ashramite, then you have to give one hundred percent authority to me - that is the meaning of becoming an inmate of the ashram.

She wanted to be in the ashram and I have put her outside because she is not yet capable of it. Just listen to the question and you will see. You will have to earn it. And this is not the way to earn it, remember.

It is very easy to lose this opportunity that is available to you. Your ego can become a problem, can create problems for you. Either you have to listen to your ego or you have to listen to me. You will have to change your whole pattern of thinking. You will have to change your very language of life; otherwise you will misunderstand.

These rules are for a certain purpose.

Madhuri was living in Lao Tzu House, and suddenly I sent her to live in Jesus House. She cried, but accepted. And she has come closer to me - closer than she ever was - in that very acceptance.

More love will be showering on her from my side. You can live physically very close to me, that is one thing... She could have resisted, she could have written me an angry letter, but she has not done anything, she has not even uttered a single angry word. She cried, she was sad - and that is natural - but no anger. To live with me in the same house and then to be sent to live in another house is hard, I know. But she survived the shock, and something immensely valuable has happened through it. Only later on will she understand that this was a blessing.

It takes time for you to understand things. But I live in a totally different reality, and I decide from there. And I know you live in a different reality. Misinterpretations are bound to be there from your side, but try to understand me. Even if you cannot understand sometimes, silently, patiently do what I say.

It happened...

The teacher asked the student, 'Do you like Kipling?'

The student said, 'I don't know. I have never kipled.'

Again...

Marriage counsellor to wife, 'Do you usually wake up grumpy in the morning?'

Wife, 'No, he gets up before I do.'

And again...

'How did you get on with your date last night?' one hippie was asked by an elderly neighbour.

'Just great,' was the reply. 'I finally persuaded her to say yes.'

'Oh, congratulations! When is the wedding to be?'

'Wedding? What wedding?'

To a hippie it is a different world. 'Yes' does not mean marriage.

'Vicar, you told me I must have Faith, Hope and Charity.'

'That's right.'

'Well. when I tried, they called the police.'

And the last:

'Are you sure that it was a marriage licence you gave me last month?'

'Yes, sir. What's the matter?'

'I thought there might be some mistake, seeing that I have lived a dog's life ever since.'

Sucheta, if you want to be here, you will have to learn my language, my way of seeing things, and you have to come with me; otherwise this is not the place for you. Then don't waste your time here.

Then it is better to leave this place soon - the sooner the better, because if you don't go with me, one day or other you will have to leave. And then you will feel very miserable because all those days that you stayed here will look like a wastage. If you want to be with me, then be with me totally, as totally as possible, then only something can happen. This happening is difficult because from your side there are so many hindrances.

The Rape of a Sabine Woman

The fifth question:

      Question 5:

Then why have you not signed the question?

First: I did not say that ALL the women who are raped were desiring it, I said 'in the majority of cases'. Remember it; it makes a lot of difference. And it is only an example. There of people who go through a car accident & wanted it, were accident-prone, were hoping somehow that something would happen, were desiring it deep down, were suicidal.

The mind that you know is not all. Below it there is a greater unconscious mind. In that unconscious mind you harbour many things of which you are not aware. There may be a person who is suicidal but not courageous enough to commit suicide. He will seek ways and means to commit suicide in a vicarious way: a car accident - he will not be responsible at all. Nobody will say that he committed suicide. Nobody will say later on that he was a coward, that he could not face life. It is easier to have a car accident than to commit suicide.

And, as far as rape is concerned, just look into your unconscious, look into your dreams. It is very rare to find a woman who has not dreamt of being raped. There is a certain attraction in it. What is the attraction? The attraction is that you are so irresistible that a person is ready to commit rape, you are so irresistible that a person is ready to go to jail for ten years or, if it is a Mohammedan country, is ready to die. If a rape is committed in a Mohammedan country and the person is caught, death is the penalty. And you will be surprised: more rapes are committed in Mohammedan countries than anywhere else.

Maybe the person who commits the rape wants to commit suicide. And this is a beautiful way to commit suicide. Can you find a better way of committing suicide? - a brave way too. And dying for love... so poetic, so romantic. There is some violence involved in sex. Even in ordinary sex when no rape is committed, something of rape is involved. The woman always says no. Why? - because if she says yes too easily, then there is no longer that feeling that 'I am needed, utterly needed'. She goes on saying no, and goes on meaning yes. She goes on saying no: she is provoking the man, she wants the man to be after her, she wants the man to force her. The very effort to force her, the very effort to drag her into love-making makes her feel good: she is 'needed'. This is a poor state of mind, but it is how people are.

So first I said 'in the majority of cases'. There are accidents also. You may not be thinking of rape at all, and a madman comes and rapes you. I am not excluding those cases, that's why I didn't say 'a hundred percent'. In the majority of cases whatsoever happens to you - rape, murder, disease - is somehow, somewhere, desired by you. But I am not saying in ALL cases.

Now psychologists are aware that when people are prone to certain diseases... For example, nearabout the age of forty-two people have heart attacks. Why near the age of forty-two? - because that is the time when people start succeeding or have succeeded. They have the money they always wanted, and now they don't know what to do. SUCCESS is there, and they are shocked by success.

They have always lived in the hope that they will have this much money, this woman, this house, this car - and they have it. Now what? Suddenly the heart stops beating. Now what? All direction seems to be lost. If they don't have the heart attack they will be very miserable. The heart attack relieves them. Now they can say to the world, 'I have to rest. The doctors have suggested rest. I cannot do any hard work.'

They cannot rest without an excuse. The heart attack becomes the excuse. If they simply rest, people will say, 'What are you doing? At the prime of your life, on the last rung of your SUCCESS, what are you doing? You can have more money. This is the time, because when you have money more money comes. When you have SUCCESS, more SUCCESS comes. What are you doing - 'relaxing', 'retiring'? And they will not have any excuse. The heart attack is a beautiful excuse. Nobody will say they have escaped from the world. Nobody will throw the responsibility on them.

What can they do? The whole responsibility goes to the heart attack. People are not conscious of all that goes on deep inside them.

You say:

But why are they so offensive? and only to one person? Nobody else has written, nobody has felt any offense. If you are a lady - and I hope that you are a lady, because if you are a gentleman then things will be more complicated, so I trust that you are a lady - why are you feeling so offended? You must be carrying the desire inside you, hence the offense; otherwise there is no offense.

I am a madman, I go on saying things. Why should you be offended? I am not a scientist, I am not a psychologist, I am nobody. I just like gossipping. Why should you be offended? I am not a consistent man, I go on contradicting myself. You can just wait for a few days and I will contradict myself. I will say, 'It has never happened. Whenever a woman is raped she is not responsible. It is the male ego, male violence.' Just wait. You have to be patient with me, I contradict myself!

But why are you offended? I must have touched a sore spot in you; something like a wound must be there. Deep down somewhere in the unconscious you want to be raped. That's why there is so much anger, so much offense. And you are afraid too - naturally. That's why you have not signed the question.

Always remember to sign it. And if you are very much afraid, you can write somebody else's name - but sign it! Then you can enjoy, and the other will be beaten! No need to be worried about it!

And you say:

Do you know that nothing is ever proven ABSOLUTELY? Nothing! Man has not proved anything absolutely. There is no possibility of proving anything absolutely. New discoveries, new facts, new data... and changes have to be made. Even scientific discoveries are not absolute, so how can psychological discoveries be absolute? Psychology is not yet a science, it is still fictitious. At most you can call it... if you like the word 'scientific', you can call it science fiction. But it has nothing to do with science yet. It is struggling to be scientific, but I don't think that it ever will be, because man's mind is like mercury - you cannot make a science out of it.

And man's mind is not a single phenomenon. There are as many minds as there are people. All that psychology can hope for is to think about the average mind. But you never come across 'the average', you always come across the unique. No scientific explanation is possible about the unique mind.

Psychology is not yet a science, and even science cannot claim absoluteness. What Newton did is no longer right. It looked so absolute in those days - it is no longer right. Do you think what Einstein has done will remain right for long? It cannot; it is not in the very nature of things. Life is such a mystery that the more you know about it, the more you will have to create new hypotheses to include the new facts. Have you known man and woman totally? Have you fathomed the feminine mind so totally that you know absolutely that it is incorrect? Nothing is absolutely correct, nothing is absolutely incorrect. All are guesses. ALL are guesses - one may be a little more close to the truth, another may not be so close.

But what I said has not to be taken as a general statement. It has to be taken as an object for meditation. You just meditate over it. I am not concerned about general truths. I am talking to disciples! You have to look into yourself. If you are a woman disciple just look into yourself. Is there not somewhere a lurking desire to be raped? And if it is there, it is better to know about it.

It is better to bring it to the conscious completely, because once something becomes conscious, it disappears. It can exist only in the unconscious. In the unconscious it is dangerous. If you bring it to the conscious, it evaporates. It is like pulling a tree out of the earth, bringing its roots to the light, then the tree dies. And that's exactly what happens: anything that goes on lurking in the unconscious, in the dark chamber of your soul - which is nine times bigger than your conscious mind - bring it into the conscious mind, bring it into sunlight and, if it comes there, it withers away.

What I am saying here is meant for you to meditate on. If you felt offended, then this is very good for you to meditate over. Go into it. Search into yourself, and don't conclude from the very beginning, don't say, 'This is wrong and has been proved absolutely wrong.' First meditate, and don't try to prove it wrong or right. Just go with an open mind into your own being and search for it. And you will be surprised that the desire is lurking there. It has a kind of charm in it.

One woman went to the priest to confess. She confessed that she had been raped. And she confessed that she had come to the priest because she enjoyed it. That's why she was feeling guilty: if she had not enjoyed it, there would be no question of coming to confess.

Then she came next time and again confessed. And then she came again.

And when she came for the fourth time, the priest said, 'But this is too much! Are you being raped every week?'

She said, 'No, this is the same rape.'

'But then why do you go on coming?'

She said, 'I enjoy telling it. It feels so good.'

Just go into yourself, and you will find all kinds of desires lurking in you. You will find something of the sadist: that you want to torture others. You will find something of the masochist: that you want to torture yourself. You will find all kinds of things in you because man is vast. And the unconscious is not an ordered place, it is a chaos, it is a madhouse. But we go on repressing all that. We are so afraid to see. That's why you felt so offended. I must have touched the right spot in you, hence the offense. It is not a question of whether it is proved right or wrong.

And I am not interested in that at all. My interest is in making you more and more meditative, more and more aware of your intrinsic, innermost desires, longings, perversions, obsessions. If they can be brought to light, they will disappear. And if the unconscious can be emptied completely, you will become a Buddha.

So don't simply go on arguing with me, because that is a waste of time and energy. Go in. If you cannot find any desire like that in you, very good. If you find it, that too is very good - you can bring it into the light and it will disappear.

The sixth question:

    Question 6:

Sir, go on losing your interest! That's perfectly good. Nothing is wrong in it. And be perfectly assured that no woman is going to miss you. On the contrary, they will all be very happy.

But in the West, particularly since Freud opened the Pandora's box, the idea has arisen that you have to remain sexual to the very end, because sex is synonymous with life. So even if you are seventy or eighty, you have to remain interested in sex. If you lose interest in sex, that means you are losing interest in life, that means you are no more needed, that means you are useless now. You can drop dead or go to the parliament, but you are useless.

This idea that sex and life are synonymous is utterly baseless. Sex and life are synonymous at a certain stage. In childhood they are not synonymous; in youth they are synonymous; in old age they are again not synonymous. There are phases. The child is not interested, the young man is interested - and the only interest is in sex.

But in the West there is an effort going on to remain young; you should not get old. People go on befooling themselves in many ways that they are still young. New panaceas have been found again and again, new kinds of elixirs that will keep you young forever. And people are so foolish that they are always ready to accept any nonsense to remain young. Old age is thought to be a kind of disease. To be old means you are ill - in the West. That is not right.

Old age has its own beauties, its own treasures, just as youth has its own beauties and treasures. And certainly the treasures that an old man comes upon are far more valuable than the treasures of youth. Because the old man has lived his youth, he has known all that, he has seen that, he has gone through it. He has lived the illusion and he has known the disillusionment of it all. Now he is wiser than he ever was; he is becoming innocent again. When sex disappears you attain to a kind of innocence. You become a child again, and a mature child.

In the East we have a totally different vision of life. In the East we have respected the old men, not the young, because the old are at the peak - life's journey reaching to its goal. In the West the old are just something to be discarded, the old are just to be thrown on some junkyard. You make houses - retirement centers - for the old where you go on piling them up, or hospitals. Nobody wants anything to do with old people - as if they were meaningless, worthless. And they have lived their whole life, and they have learnt many secrets of life. They can be great teachers - only they can be teachers.

In the East this has been the traditional way: that the old person should become the teacher of the young, because he has lived, grown, understood. He can give you a better direction, with more maturity, with more clarity. Old age is the age to prepare for death. And that is the greatest preparation because you will be going on the longest journey - into the unknown. If you remain interested in sex, it will keep you diverted from death. That's what is happening in the West.

In the West people have not accepted death yet as part of life. Death is a taboo, just as sex was a taboo just a hundred years ago. Nobody talked about sex a hundred years ago. It was impossible to talk about it or to write about it. It was such a taboo that in the Victorian age ladies used to cover the legs of their chairs too - because they are legs, and legs should not be shown.

Freud introduced a great revolution The world is waiting for another Freud to destroy the greater taboo of death. He destroyed the taboo of sex, and the world is far better because of it. Freud is one of the greatest benefactors. Another Freud is needed to destroy the other taboo - which is greater.

Death has to be accepted. With the acceptance of death you start accepting old age. And in acceptance there is relaxation. And once you are no more interested in sex, your whole attention can be focused on death. Remember, sex and death are polar opposites. If you remain interested in sex, when will you prepare for death? Your attention will remain focused on sex, and you will die without any preparation.

Meditation is a preparation for death. Now prepare for death. Meditate. You are no more interested in women - good. Now become interested in your own self. The woman is outside you; that is the interest in the other. Or, if you are a woman, then the man is outside you, and that is interest in the other. Now become interested in yourself. Now go into the discovery of the self, now go on an inward journey.

You ask:

Lose interest. Allow it to happen. Don't try to create it unnecessarily. If it is going on its own, it is beautiful.

I have heard...

Max, aged seventy-six, upon returning to his apartment late one night, was startled to find a girl of about eighteen ran-sacking the place.

'Young woman, you are a thief!' he said. 'I'm going to call the police.'

'Mister,' she pleaded, 'if I'm arrested again, I'll be sent away for years. Please don't call the police.'

'I'm sorry, but I have to do it!' Max replied.

'Look,' she cried, 'I'll do anything. I'll give you my body.'

'Okay,' said the senior citizen, 'take off your clothes and get in bed.'

The girl did and Max quickly followed. He tried and tried and tried for about twenty minutes.

Exhausted and in defeat, he finally gave up.

'It's no use,' sighed Max. 'I just can't make it. I'll have to call the police.'

And you ask me what to do...? 'What should I do?'

Do you want to call the police? Enough is enough. Now let that nonsense go. Let that obsession go. Now turn your energy towards death. Now look into death face to face. Now encounter death.

And to encounter death is the greatest experience in life. And if you can encounter death, you will come to know that you are deathless. To face death is the only way to know that you are deathless, that only the body dies, and you never die. And once you have known it, you are ready, ready for the journey, and when death comes, you will go laughing and dancing and singing into it.

And a man who can go laughing, dancing, and singing into death, prayerfully, meditatively, comes to know the greatest 0rgasm that is in the world. Sexual 0rgasm is nothing, because in sexual 0rgasm only a small, minute part of your life energy leaves your body, and you feel a great relaxation. In death your whole life energy leaves the body. No sexual 0rgasm can be compared with that cosmic 0rgasm, that total 0rgasm that death brings to you.

Don't miss death. Death is going to give you the greatest gift in life, the parting gift. But only a few people come to it because nobody is ready for it. Death takes you unawares. And you are so frightened, and you are so concerned with sex that you cling to life.

Do you know that it almost always happens...? In the East it has been one of the secrets to know about a man. When a man dies, if he is clinging too much to life and is still interested in sex, he will die with an erection. That shows that the poor fellow died without any readiness - even in death he was full of sex fantasies. It happens almost always. Unless you have become a great meditator, it is going to happen to you too - that while dying, you will fantasize about sex, you will be making love - at least in your imagination.

This is no way to die. This is very insulting to death, and insulting to God, and very insulting to yourself. Let sex disappear - it is time. Relax into non-sexuality. Non-sexuality will make you centred. Stop chasing women, and start chasing yourself. You cannot do both. And get ready.

Death may knock you down any moment; one never knows when it is coming. Prepare. Allow yourself to enjoy meditation as much as possible. Transform your sexual energy into meditative energy; it is the same energy, just the direction changes: it no longer flows downward and outward, it starts flowing inward and upward. And this same energy opens the bud of the Golden Flower in you. This is the whole secret.

Now you have come naturally to the right point, and you are asking me, 'What should I do?' You are asking for some recipes to again create the sexuality which is disappearing. You are asking for some props, you are asking for some help so that you can go on playing the same foolish game even in your old age.

It is good when you are young, because then you are foolish. It is very rare to become alert and aware and meditative when you are young. If you can become, you have a rare genius. But if you cannot become meditative even in old age, then you are just stupid, utterly stupid.

It is good to fool around when you are young. That foolishness is part of growth; it helps you. The woman or the man outside becomes the mirror; they reflect you, they help you to see who you are.

Love is very revealing. But finally one has to come to see oneself within, not in a mirror. Even the mirror has to be dropped. One has to be alone. And the purity of aloneness is infinite. And the bliss of aloneness is eternal.

Now the moment has come. Just let this interest in women go, and suddenly you will find another interest arising in you - it is almost simultaneous - the interest in meditation. And then you can have the last gift that life can give to you: a meditative death, a death in SATORI, in SAMADHI, in ecstasy. And you will know the total ogasmic experience. That experience is enough; then you will never be coming back into life, into the body, into this prison.

In the East this has been our goal: how not to be born again, because this whole process of being born and dying again and again is a boring process; it is utterly futile. In the final analysis it is just a dream, and not even a nice dream but a nightmare.

My suggestion to you is: you have lived your life, you have seen the pleasures of the body, you have looked into relationship and you have learned whatsoever was to be learned from it, now it is time to turn inwards.

The last question:

Question 7:

I don't know, and I don't think that anybody else knows either.

Philosophy is a useless passion. I am using Jean-Paul Sartre's words, he says 'Man is a useless passion.' I say man is NOT a useless passion but philosophy is.

You ask me:

Nobody has ever defined it. It has remained vague. Not that definitions have not been given to it, millions of definitions have been given; but THE definition is still missing. Each philosopher gives a definition, and others contradict it. It is a game, enjoying the gymnastics of logic, it is logic-chopping.

It is like chess - a very intellectual game, very absorbing - but there is no conclusion in it; it is non- conclusive. The game continues from generation to generation. Slowly slowly, out of this game two things have arisen: one is science, the other is religion. Science is objective, religion is subjective.

Science is experimental, religion is experiential. Philosophy is neither. It is just hanging in a limbo between the two. And slowly, slowly it is disappearing because that which is objective is being taken by science every day, and that which is subjective has already been taken by religion. Nothing is left for philosophy. So now modern philosophy only goes on thinking about language - language analysis.

The philosophers are asking the most absurd questions because they have lost all the meaningful questions. Either those questions have been covered by science or by religion. Philosophy is becoming more and more empty. They cannot find even their own questions now, so either they take questions from science and they think about them, or they take questions from religion and they think about them. Their questions are borrowed. Philosophy is a dying phenomenon. It will not be a surprise that one day you suddenly come to know that philosophy has died. It is on its deathbed. And you can go to any university and you can see philosophy on its deathbed.

But why have you asked the question? That is more relevant, more important to think about.

I am not teaching philosophy here. What I am saying has nothing to do with philosophy, it is absolutely experimental and experiential. My effort is to create a scientific religion - the psychology of the Buddhas. So I am giving you experiments and I am giving you possibilities to experience something that you have not experienced yet. This is a lab, a workshop. We are bent upon doing something. I mean business here! Philosophy is not the concern at all. I am very anti-philosophic and I avoid philosophy because it is playing with shadows, thoughts, speculation. And you can go on playing infinitely, AD INFINITUM, AD NAUSEAM; there is no end to it. One word creates another word, one theory creates another theory, and you can go on and on and on. In five thousand years much philosophy has existed in the world, and to no purpose at all.

But there are people who have the philosophic attitude. And if you are one of them, please drop it; otherwise you and your energy will be lost in a desert.

I will tell you about the four stages of philosophy in four stories.

The first stage of philosophy, the first story:

One of my favourite stories is that of a boy and girl in New England where sleigh riding is popular during the cold winters. While riding one Sunday afternoon, bundled up in their blankets, the girl snuggled up to the boy and said, 'Johnny, I'm cold.'

Johnny looked over to her and said, 'I'm cold, too, Jane. Why not tuck in the blankets?'

So Jane pulled the blankets closer, but pretty soon she moved even closer to Johnny and said, 'My hands are still cold.'

He didn't pay much attention to her and soon she nudged him with her elbow and said, 'Johnny, did you hear me? My hands are cold... and besides nobody loves me.'

This time he looked over to her and said, 'Jane, remember that God loves you, and you can always sit on your hands to keep them warm.'

This is the first stage of being philosophic.

The second stage, the second story:

A study group of philosophers had been meeting for years to study the Talmud. One member of the group had a pernicious habit of sipping a little brandy during the meeting. One night he drank just a little more than usual and became quite tipsy. His companions decided to teach him a lesson. While he was in his drunken stupor, they carried him off to the cemetery and laid him prone among the tombstones.

After a while the philosopher woke up. He looked about him, frightened and aghast. Then he started to reason, 'Am I alive? Or am I dead? If I'm alive, what could I be doing here in the graveyard on top of the graves? And if I'm dead, then why do I feel that I must go to the bathroom immediately?'

This is the second stage of philosophy.

And the third stage, the third story:

Professor Steinberg had been having his lunch in the same Lower East Side restaurant for twenty years. Every day he left his office at noon, went to the restaurant and ordered a bowl of chicken soup - never a change.

But one day the professor called the waiter back after receiving his soup.

'Yes, professor?' enquired the waiter. 'Waiter, please taste the soup.'

'What do you mean, taste the soup? For twenty years you've been eating the same chicken soup here, every day, yes? Has it ever been any different?'

The professor ignored the waiter's comments. 'Please, taste this soup,' he repeated.

'Professor, what's the matter with you? I know what the chicken soup tastes like.'

'Taste the soup,' the professor demanded.

'All right, all right, I'll taste. Where's the spoon?'

'Aha!' cried the professor.

This is the third stage.

And the fourth stage, the fourth story:

A woman went to a philosophic psychologist for treatment of her delusion that she was covered with feathers. After a few sessions the philosopher said to her, 'I feel that we have gotten to the root of this problem through our discussions and analysis, and it is now behind us. What do you think, Mrs Smith?'

'Oh,' said Mrs Smith, 'I think we have had some wonderful sessions and I do feel that the problem has been taken care of. But,' she added, 'the only thing that bothers me now is what I'm going to do with these feathers.'

She raised her hand to her shoulders and began to brush, and the psychologist, the philosopher, suddenly jumped back.

'Now, hold on just a minute, Mrs Smith, don't brush those feathers onto me.'

This is the fourth stage.

Slowly, slowly philosophy becomes a kind of madness. It leads you into neurosis because philosophy is a mind phenomenon. Science has taken the body, religion has taken the soul, only the mind is left for philosophy. And mind is potential madness. If you go on too much into the mind, you will be moving slowly slowly towards madness. It is very rare to find a philosopher who is sane. And vice versa is also true: it is very rare to find a madman who is not a philosopher.

I am not teaching philosophy here, because I am teaching no-mind. And if you become a no-mind all philosophy disappears: Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist - all philosophies disappear; Hegelian, Kantian, Russellian - all philosophies disappear. If the mind disappears, where can the philosophy exist? where can it grow? Mind is the breeding ground of philosophy.

Let the mind disappear. And the beauty is: when there is no mind and nobody to philosophize and nothing to philosophize about, one comes to know. Philosophy is the blind man's effort. It is said:

Philosophy is a blind man in a dark room on a dark night, searching for a black cat which is not there...

Question 1:

Rani, it is difficult to enjoy because you will have to disappear. Joy is possible if you are not. You and joy cannot coexist: when joy is there you are absent, when you are there joy is absent. They are like light and darkness - they can't exist together in the same place.

Hence, to enjoy is difficult; it is not easy because to die is difficult, to die is not easy. And only those who know how to die moment-to-moment know how to enjoy. The more capable you are of dying, the deeper will be your joy. Intense will be the flame of it, and great will be the flowering of it.

It is also difficult to enjoy, Rani, because you have so many investments in remaining miserable.

Unless you see it, you can go on trying to enjoy, but you will never enjoy. Those investments in misery have to be dropped. And from their very childhood everybody learns that misery pays. If you are miserable, the parents are more loving. If you are ill, the parents are more caring. If you are happy, healthy, nobody cares, you don't get attention. And attention is food for the ego. Without the attention the ego cannot live; it is its very breath. Just as the body needs oxygen, the ego needs attention.

Whenever you are healthy, happy, the parents don't pay any attention to you; there is no need. But when you are ill, miserable, crying, weeping, the whole family becomes attentive to your needs, as if you have created a kind of emergency. They drop all their work: the mother runs from the kitchen, the father drops his newspaper, and everybody is focused on you. It gives you great ego-fulfilment.

And slowly slowly you learn the way of the ego: remain miserable and people will pay attention to you, remain miserable and they will sympathize with you. And whenever you are enjoying nobody sympathizes with you. That's why people pay so much respect to ascetic people. Somebody is fasting and people say, 'Look, what a great saint!' He is simply being miserable.

If you are feasting, nobody is going to sympathize with you, but fast, and people sympathize. If you are in love with a woman, who is going to sympathize with you? On the contrary, people will be jealous. You are a competitor. They wanted the same woman for themselves. So, you are an enemy.

Renounce sex, become celibate, move to a cave, and people will come from faraway places to pay their respects: 'Here is a great ascetic!' And you are simply being miserable. But misery pays: misery can make you a MAHATMA. That has been the whole history of humanity: misery has always paid, you have respected miserable people. And if the misery is self-inflicted, of course, you gain more respect; it is voluntary.

Gandhi begins fast in protest of caste separation

Mahatma Gandhi became such a great name in the world because he was voluntarily miserable, inflicting misery upon himself. How can you not be attentive to him? If he had been enjoying and living a total life, a whole and healthy life, you would have been jealous, you would have been antagonistic.

See these tricks and strategies of the mind and you will be able to drop them. Don't ask for attention, otherwise you will remain miserable. Attention can only be given when you are miserable; that is part of a natural mechanism.

It happens in your body, too. If you have a headache, your attention moves to the head; you forget the whole body. If you have a pain in the leg, then the whole attention moves towards the leg, you forget the whole body; then the leg becomes very important. It is good that legs and heads and hands are not politicians, otherwise they would constantly be in pain, they would remain constantly in pain. It is good that they don't have any egos. If the leg had some kind of ego, then the leg would continuously create trouble, because only when there is trouble do you pay attention: you massage the leg, you take care of it.

This is the inner mechanism, too: attention goes to the part which is in pain. And this is the mechanism of the family, of the society, of the world at large. Once you have learned the trick it becomes unconscious, it becomes autonomous; you simply go on using the trick. The husband comes home and the wife immediately starts being miserable. This I have watched.

I used to stay in many families when I was travelling around this country. The wife is laughing and is happy, and suddenly the husband comes - and I am watching - and her face changes. Not that she is doing it, no; it is not needed to be done anymore, it is automatic. Seeing the husband coming, seeing the key move in the keyhole, suddenly an automatic change happens in her, her face becomes miserable because the husband will only pay attention to her if she is in misery, otherwise not.

This mechanism has to be made conscious. Watch out for it, otherwise it will destroy all possibilities of joy in life. It has destroyed - millions of people live in misery and hell because they hanker for attention. It is stupid to hanker for attention; it does not give you anything, it only strengthens the ego, which is not you. It is not your essence, it is only your personality, your pseudo-self. It goes on nourishing the pseudo-self, and the essential self goes on starving.

The essential self need not have any attention. The essential self can live without any attention because it is not dependent on anybody else. And the essential self is capable of rejoicing in its aloneness. It does not even need the other, so what to say about attention? It does not even need the other. Its real bliss is inner, it does not come from the outside, it does not depend on any condition; it is unconditional. It is a spontaneous, inner, intrinsic phenomenon.

Watch and see how you are profiting from misery, and then you will know why it is so difficult to enjoy. Stop these investments in misery, arid the joy will flow again.

We are born with joy. Joy is our very being. It does not need anything to be joyous. One can simply be joyous sitting by oneself. Joy is natural, misery is unnatural. But misery is profitable, and joy is purposeless - it will not bring you any profit.

So one has to decide. If you want to be joyous, you have to be a nobody. This is the decision. If you want to be joyous, you will have to be a nobody because you will not get any attention. On the contrary, people will feel jealous, people will be antagonistic to you, people will not like you. People will like you only if you are in misery, then they will sympathize. In sympathy your ego is fulfilled and their ego is fulfilled. Whenever they sympathize with somebody, they are higher and you are lower. They have the upper hand.

They are enjoying the trip of sympathy. Sympathy is violent. They are seeing the fact that you are miserable and they are not. They are in a position to sympathize, and you are in a position to be sympathized with. Their ego is fulfilled and your ego is fulfilled because 'Look,' you say to yourself, 'how important you are. Everybody is sympathizing with you.'

So ego fulfils from both sides. It is profitable. Nobody loses. When you are joyous, rejoicing, dancing, singing, just being happy for no reason at all, your ego will disappear because it will not get attention. And others will not feel good because you are not giving them an opportunity to fulfil their egos.

That's the reason why people were against Jesus and against Buddha, and why they are against me. They would like me also to be fasting, living under a tree like a beggar, then they would be very happy. They would come in thousands, they would worship me. But if I live in my own way - and my way is the way of the feast, my way is the way of festivity - then they are shocked. They are perfectly happy if somebody leaves the palace and becomes a beggar. They are perfectly happy - they love the man. But if a beggar moves into the palace, they will all be against him. They will not like the idea at all.

Just watch. You also do such things.

If a man is Lying on a bed of thorns, immediately you prostrate yourself as if he were doing something great, as if he were bringing some bliss to humanity. He is just being a masochist, but you love, you respect him. Your respect seems to be morbid. Your respect seems to be ill, sick. And because of your respect he is Lying there on the thorns: he wants your attention and this is the most simple way to get your attention and your respect. His ego is fulfilled. He is ready to lie down on those thorns and suffer.

This thing is happening on a smaller scale or a bigger scale everywhere. Be aware of it; it is a very ancient trap. And then you can enjoy, there is nothing else but to enjoy. If you are ready to become a nobody, if you are not in need of others' attention, there is no problem at all. You can enjoy, small things you can enjoy. Very small things can give you the greatest joy possible.

Just see Jesus with his friends, eating, drinking... People could not tolerate it. They would have loved him if he had been an ascetic; but he was not.

One day he came into a town and Mary Magdalene came to see this man for the first time. And she fell in love with this man. This man was worth loving. How can you avoid it? How can you manage not to fall in love with such a man? She brought very precious perfume and poured it on Jesus' feet, and washed Jesus' feet with that precious perfume. And she was crying with joy. And Judas said to Jesus, 'This is wrong. You should have prevented the woman. The perfume was very precious. It could have been sold. It could have fed a few poor people in the town.'

Now with whom are you going to agree? - with Judas or with Jesus? If you are honest you will agree with Judas. If you are honest with yourself you will agree with Judas. He seems to be the beginning of socialism, communism, Gandhism. He seems to be very logically right. He was the most intellectual disciple of Jesus, the only educated disciple of Jesus, and his logic is flawless.

But what did Jesus say? Jesus said something absurd. He said, 'You can feed the poor when I am gone. The poor will always be there, you need not worry. But while I am here, rejoice.'

Do you agree with Jesus? If you agree, you can be joyous. If you don't agree, you are going to remain miserable. 'But look!' your head will say, 'Judas seems to be right.' Jesus seems to be utterly absurd. What is he saying? 'The poor will always be there, but right now you are with the bridegroom. Enjoy! Celebrate!' This is celebration.

Now if the people were against Jesus it seems to be absolutely fitting with our so-called intellect.

Jesus says, 'I cannot prevent the woman because she is in such joy. I cannot destroy her joy. Look at her tears, look at her being. She is in such a festive mood. This is just symbolic. This pouring of the precious perfume on my feet is just symbolic that she is utterly happy. She is celebrating. I cannot stop anybody from celebrating.' Then, if you agree with Jesus, you can be joyous.

So it depends on you, Rani, whether you agree with Judas or you agree with Jesus.

Question 2:

Andreas, I never asked anybody any such question. To ask the question is to search for guidance, is to seek for guidance. A question is always a need for an answer from somebody else. If you have questions to ask, you will have to choose a Master.

A Master is one who is ready to answer you. A disciple is one who is not only asking from curiosity but is ready to stake his whole being on his questioning, is ready to transform his life according to the answer given. If you really ask the question you have already become a disciple. That is the meaning of being a disciple: to ask.

Jesus says, 'Ask, and it shall be given to you. Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you. Seek, and ye shall find.'

'Ask, and it shall be given unto you...' Asking is the beginning of disciplehood. And unless you are a disciple, the Master will not take much note of you, because many come just as curiosity seekers - out of curiosity but not really ready to inquire.

Inquiry needs commitment, inquiry needs involvement, inquiry is risky, dangerous. It is not only intellectual, it is existential. So if you really want to ask, remember, let me make you alert, you are already becoming a disciple. And if you think that to choose a Master is to prevent one's enlightenment, please don't ask questions.

And I was surprised, because Andreas has asked at least seven questions today. The largest number of questions is from him.

Secondly, you say, 'You had no Master.'

That is true, I had no Master. That does not mean that I was not a disciple. I accepted the whole existence as my Master. It needs more courage to accept the whole existence as your Master. If you cannot accept even a single man as your Master, how can you accept the whole existence as your Master - the trees and rocks and the rivers and the clouds? If you cannot love a single human being, how can you love the whole? It is true I had no Master, but that does not mean that I was not a disciple. My disciplehood was a greater involvement than your disciplehood is. I trusted the clouds - which is very difficult. I trusted the trees - which is almost impossible. I trusted existence as such.

If that is possible then you need not have any Master in particular, because then everything is your Master.

When a great Sufi mystic, Hassan, was dying, somebody asked, 'Hassan, who was your Master?'

He said, 'Now it is too late to ask. Time is short, I am dying.' But the inquirer asked, 'You can simply say the name. You are still alive, you are still breathing and talking, you can simply tell me the name.'

He said, 'It will be difficult because I had thousands of Masters. If I just relate their names it will take months and years. It is too late. But three Masters I will certainly tell you about.

'One was a thief. Once I got lost in the desert, and when I reached the village it was very late. Half the night was already gone; shops were closed, caravanserais were closed. There was not a single human being on the roads. I searched for somebody to inquire of. I found one man who was trying to make a hole in the wall of a house. I asked him where I could stay, and he said, "I am a thief, and you look like a Sufi mystic to me."' His robe, his aura. 'And the thief said, "Right now it will be very difficult to find any place to stay, but you can come to my home. You can stay with me - if you can stay with a thief."'

Hassan said, 'I hesitated a little bit. Then I remembered. If the thief is not afraid of a Sufi, then why should the Sufi be afraid of a thief? In fact, he should be afraid of me. So I said, "Yes, I will come."

And I went, and I stayed with the thief. And the man was so lovely, so beautiful, I stayed for one month! And each night he would say to me, "Now I am going to my work. You rest, you pray, you do your work." And when he would come back I would ask, "Could you get anything?" He said, "Not tonight. But tomorrow I will try again." And he was never in a state of hopelessness.

'For one month continuously he came empty-handed, but he was always happy. And he said, "I will try tomorrow. God willing, tomorrow it is going to happen. And you also pray for me. At least you can say to God, 'Help this poor man.'"

And then Hassan said, 'When I was meditating and meditating for years on end, nothing was happening, and many times the moment came when I was so desperate, so hopeless that I thought to stop all this nonsense. There is no God, and all this prayer is just madness, all this meditation is false - and suddenly I would remember the thief who would say every night, "God willing, tomorrow it is going to happen."

'So I tried one day more. If the thief was so hopeful, with such hope and trust, I should try at least one day more. And many times it happened, but the thief and the memory of him helped me to wait one day more. And one day, it happened, it DID happen! I bowed down. I was thousands of miles away from the thief and his house, but I bowed down in his direction. He was my first Master.

'And my second Master was a dog. I was thirsty and I was going towards the river, and a dog came. He was also thirsty. He looked into the river, he saw another dog there - his own image - and became afraid. He barked and the other dog barked, too. But his thirst was so much that he would hesitate and go back. He would come again and look into the water and find the dog there. But the thirst was so much that he suddenly jumped into the water, and the image disappeared. He drank the water, he swam in the water - it was a hot summer. And I was watching. I knew that a message had come to me from God. One has to jump in spite of all fears.

'When I was on the verge of jumping into the unknown, the same fear was there. I would go to the very edge, hesitate, and come back. And I would remember the dog. If the dog could manage, why not I? And then one day I jumped into the unknown. I disappeared and only the unknown was left behind. The dog was my second Master.

'And the third Master was a small child. I entered into a town and a small child was bringing a candle, a lit candle, hiding it in his hands and going to the mosque to put the candle there. Just joking, I asked the boy, "Have you lit the candle yourself?" He said, "Yes, sir." And I asked, jokingly, "Can you tell me from where the light came? There was a moment when the candle was unlit, then there was a moment when the candle was lit, can you show me the source from which the light came? And you have lit it, so you must have seen the light coming - from where?" And the boy laughed and blew out the candle, and said, "Now you have seen the light going, where has it gone? You tell me!"

And my ego was shattered, and my whole knowledge was shattered. And that moment I felt my own stupidity. Since then I dropped all knowledgeability.'

Hassan talked about three Masters. And he said, 'There have been many, and no time is left for me to talk about them all.'

Yes, this is true, I had no Master because I had millions of Masters. I have learnt from every possible source. If you can be that kind of disciple you need not have a Master. But remember, it is not that you do not have a Master. Either you choose one or you choose all, but in any case you have to be a disciple.

To be a disciple is a must on the path. What does it mean to be a disciple? It means to be able to learn, to be available to learn, to be vulnerable to existence. What actually happens when you choose a Master? You start learning how to learn. And with one Master, slowly slowly you get in tune, and slowly slowly you see the point that in the same way you can get in tune with the whole existence.

The Master is just a miniature of the whole. Coming closer to the Master you start becoming aware of the beatitude, of closeness, of love, of intimacy, of involvement, of commitment. And slowly slowly you see the point that if just being so close to one single person can be such a tremendous joy, how much more it will be when you are close to the whole. The Master is just the beginning, the Master is not the end. And the true Master is only a door - through him you pass and go beyond. The true Master helps you to go beyond him.

You say:

Enlightenment is simply enlightenment; it is neither mine nor yours. The ego is separate, the essence is not separate. To think in terms of your own enlightenment is to be caught in the net, in the trap of the ego again. You miss the whole point. If you think of 'your own' enlightenment, just as you think of your own car, your own house, your own wife, you are starting to think of enlightenment also as something that you will possess. You will not be there to possess it. You will be possessed by it.

And to surrender to a Master simply means an experiment in being possessed by somebody. You drop yourself and the other enters you and fills you. You learn surrender. It is just the 'ABC' [beginning] of surrender. But you cannot learn the 'XYZ' if you have not even learned the 'ABC' of it. When you go to learn how to swim you don't go directly to the ocean, you don't go to deep waters, you learn in shallow water near the bank or you learn in a swimming pool.

The Master is like a swimming pool where you can learn how to swim. Once you have learned, all the oceans are yours, then you can go anywhere. Then this whole existence belongs to you. But you are no more there. In fact, it will be better to say you belong to the whole existence - not that you possess enlightenment, enlightenment possesses you.

You don't have a Master yet, so who has prevented you from becoming enlightened? Why are you not enlightened yet? Then those who don't have Masters must be enlightened. If choosing a Master prevents enlightenment, then those who don't have Masters must be enlightened. Choosing the Master does not prevent enlightenment. Getting caught by the Master and getting caught into the Master - which prevents enlightenment - these are two different things. That is why Buddha says, 'If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately.' And I say to you too: If you see me on the way, kill me immediately.

The Master is a ladder. You have to use it and you have to go beyond it. The Master is a boat. You have to use it, and when you have reached the other shore you have to leave it. You need not carry it on your head. If you carry it on your head you are stupid.

And you have not reached anywhere. You must be dreaming, because such stupid people never reach to the other shore.

Choosing the Master does not prevent enlightenment; but a moment comes when you have to go beyond the Master, then don't cling - clinging to the Master will prevent you. But if there is a real Master he will not allow you to cling to him. That is the definition of a real Master. He teaches you to get involved, he teaches you to become committed, and one day he teaches you to become uncommitted again, to become uninvolved again. Then the Master is perfect.

The ordinary so-called masters just teach you one thing: how to become attached to them and then to remain attached to them. That's the definition of a pseudo master. Avoid the pseudo masters.

But to find a true Master is not going to prevent your enlightenment. You will not become enlightened without him. It is a paradoxical phenomenon. You have to choose the Master and you have to go beyond the Master. If you understand this paradox, my answer will be clear to you.

Pune, India 1977

The fourth question:

It is nothing new. It has always been so. It has not only to do with Christians, this is so with Hindus, this is so with Buddhists, and this has always been so. They were thinking in the same way about Christ, too. These are the same people. They were thinking in the same way about Buddha, too, and these are the same people. Man is a very strange animal. The most strange thing about man is that he never learns; he goes on doing the same thing again and again.

Why did they crucify Jesus? What was wrong with this man? They thought him wicked, they thought him a representative of evil, a personification of the devil. They were angry. And, of course, the people who were interested in Jesus were younger people, because only young people can be interested in the new. The older generation has too much of an investment with the established, is too involved with the status quo. Do you think Jesus' followers were old people? He himself was young, and the people that surrounded him were young people. Parents were angry, very angry.

Rabbis were angry, priests were angry, because he was bringing a revolution. If Jesus is right, then the whole established religion is wrong. If Jesus is right, then what about the priests? Jesus and the priests can't both be right - either Jesus or the priests. The priests became organized against this man. They had to kill him. And the older generation was with them, naturally. The mind always feels comfortable with the old because it is familiar, one is accustomed to it. The new always feels dangerous, one feels suspicious of it. And religion is always new. True religion is always new, true religion is always rebellious. Whenever there is a man like Jesus or Buddha, there is bound to be great trouble.

But Jesus is crucified, and then slowly slowly,Jesus' life becomes the foundation of a new, established religion. Once Christianity becomes an established religion supported by the state and supported by the elders and Christianity itself has its own priesthood, then there is no problem. Then if a man like me comes, problems arise.

You say,

In a way they are true. What they call religion is not religion, and I am certainly in favour of destroying it. What I call religion they cannot understand; it is impossible for them to conceive. They have become too stereotyped in their thinking, their minds are too conditioned, fixed. They are no longer fluid, flexible, they are rigid. The older a person becomes the more rigid he becomes.

Let me tell you a few things that were said about Christians in the early days of Christianity, and then you will understand what your parents are saying about me.

Tacitus says, 'There is a group, hated for their abominations, called Christians.'

And Suetonius says, 'The Christians are a class of men given to a new and wicked superstition.'

And Celcius says, 'They worship to an extravagant degree this man who appeared recently. They are like frogs holding a symposium round a swamp, debating which of them is the most sinful.'

And Lucian says, 'The poor wretches have convinced themselves that they are going to be immortal and live for all time by worshipping that crucified sophist and living under his laws... They receive their doctrines by tradition, without any definite evidence.'

And Pliny the Younger says, 'It is their habit, on a fixed day, to assemble before daylight and recite by turns a form of words to Christ as a god. The contagion of this perverse and extravagant superstition has penetrated not only the cities but the villages and the country too. Yet it seems possible to stop it and set it right.'

These things were not said about me, these things were said about Christ. And similar things have been said about Buddha. Hindus have created a beautiful story about Buddha. They say that he was an incarnation of God. They had to say it. Hindus are more polite and, of course, more cunning, more sophisticated, and they know how to play with words. Buddha was an incarnation of God, they say, but not a good incarnation.

But how can an incarnation of God be bad? They have a beautiful story to illustrate it.

They say,

When God created the world he created hell and heaven and earth, the three worlds. Then millions of years passed and nobody went to hell; it remained empty. And the devil and all his disciples were very angry, and they were waiting and waiting and nobody would come. And every arrangement was ready: the fire was burning, and nobody was coming. Finally they had to go to God, and the devil said, 'This is nonsense. Why did you create hell if nobody is going to come there? And what are we doing there? - just waiting and waiting! And how long do we have to wait? Not even a single soul has entered. The whole thing is pointless. Either send a few people so we become occupied...

And we have rehearsed and we have trained ourselves and made ourselves so skillful that we are hankering... we have to do something! You are driving us mad! Either send a few people there, or drop the whole project!'

God said, 'You wait. Then I will have to come to the earth. I will be born as Gautam the Buddha, and I will mislead people and misguide people. Then they will start falling into hell automatically.'

Then God came as Gautam the Buddha, and he misguided people because hell needs people. And since Buddha misguided people, hell has been overcrowded.

Now, see the beauty of the story and the cunningness of it. Buddha is accepted as an incarnation of God, but it is just to send people to hell. So beware of Buddha, don't follow him; otherwise you will go to hell. Buddha was here to help the devil, to give him some occupation. Since then hell has been overcrowded, there is no space: people have to wait for years outside the gate.

This has always been so, and this is going to remain being so. Religion, whenever it comes fresh from the beyond, is very shattering to tradition. And the traditional people become afraid. Not that they are worried about religion being destroyed - they are not religious at all, otherwise they would not be afraid of it - their religion is only a social formality. They talk about God because it is convenient to talk about God. They go to the church, too, because it makes things easier. The church functions as a lubricant. It is a Sunday religion. It is good, it keeps you in good company, and everybody knows that you are religious. That helps in many ways.

The church is no more than a Rotary Club or a Lions' Club. If you are a Rotarian, it helps you. People know that you must be good if you belong to the Rotary Club. And in the Rotary Club you become acquainted with all the topmost people of the town. Friendship arises: it helps in your business, in your day-to-day life. The church is nothing but a kind of religious club: it is convenient. Nobody is sincerely there, people are just showing respect to Christ, paying service - but that service is lip service. They don't bother a bit about Christ, Christianity, and all his teachings.

Who bothers about Christ's teachings? Who follows them? If you had followed Christ the world would have been totally different: there would not have been any wars. And half of the world is Christian. If Christians really follow Jesus... Jesus says, 'Love your enemies,' and Christians go on bombing the enemy. It is Christians who bombed Japan, who used the first atomic bomb. Now think of Jesus watching from his place - what will be happening to him? Christians dropping atom bombs? And he has said to these people, 'Love your enemy as yourself.'

Who has followed Jesus? There is no question of following. People just go to the church. It is a good feeling to go to the church, to remain religious.

I have heard...

The airplane was going through some especially turbulent weather, but the pilot knew he had everything under control. He tried to calm the passengers with soothing words spoken over the loudspeaker system. He also asked the stewardesses to reassure the people that everything would be all right.

One very religious little old lady, however, would not be comforted. The stewardess told her how capable the pilot was and how reliable the plane's technology was, but the woman was still sure she'd never see the ground again.

At a loss, the stewardess finally called on the highest court of appeal, 'Just trust in providence,' she said soothingly.

The little old lady's eyes opened even wider, 'Is it as bad as that?' she asked.

A religious old lady... But to really think of God means that death is certain. 'Is it as bad as that?'

People have double faces. Their original face is not even known to themselves. People have split personalities. Your parents will be thinking they are Christian and religious. They are neither Christian nor religious. If they are really religious, they will understand me because whatsoever I am saying is the same - exactly the same, precisely the same. My language may be different from Jesus' - it has to be, twenty centuries have passed - but what I am doing is exactly the same work, the continuity of the same work.

But I can understand their problem, too. They are losing their hold on you, and they are afraid.

Just the other night I was reading an article. In Germany, parents have formed a certain society to prevent young people from going into new religions, particularly Eastern mystic experiences. In America they are creating a lot of trouble for the young people, too.

You will be surprised that parents are hiring kidnappers. Young people are being kidnapped by their own parents and then they are being given to psychologists. Certain psychologists are trying to deprogramme them, they are called deprogrammers. They think the young people have been conditioned.

For example, if you really become too involved with me, and your parents become very afraid, and you don't want to go back to your country, you can be kidnapped. Your own parents can do it. 'For your own sake, because you have fallen in the trap of a devil, of some evil force.' And it looks to them...'What are you doing with orange clothes and a beard and long hair and the mala? And who is this man... very evil-looking? And what is wrong with wearing a cross? having a picture of Jesus?

What are you doing there?' And if they come and see the Dynamic Meditation, Kundalini, they will go crazy. They will become very concerned.

Yes, you can be kidnapped, and then you can be forced into what they call deprogramming to uncondition you. They think you have been hypnotized, so you have to be dehypnotized. So they will teach you Christianity and the Christian catechism again. And they will force you day in, day out, for months, so that you can again become a Christian, and you can again say, 'Yes I believe in God and the Son and the Holy Ghost,' and then they are at ease. When you believe in the Holy Ghost, then all is okay. And when you start reading the Bible again, all is okay. 'Now you have come back, you have become religious.' When you start making atom bombs again, you are really Christian, Catholic. When you go to the army and they cut your long hair and make you a soldier, then you are a perfect Christian, a Catholic. When you start a cut-throat competition in the world for money, for power, for prestige, when you start destroying others so that you can reach higher and higher for worldly possessions, you are perfect, you are a religious person.

Even politicians are thought to be religious persons because they go to the church, they listen to the sermon of the priest. Politicians are 'religious', and my sannyasins are 'not religious'!

You will have to understand it. You will have to be very very patient with your parents. You will have to be very kind, too. They need compassion. They are encaged in a certain ideology and they cannot look outside it. They are incapable of feeling anything new, of being anything new. They are incapable of understanding, they have become too rigid. Their whole ideology has become a settled phenomenon, and they are afraid. If they see you happy, they can only think you have gone mad, because they have lived an unhappy life and a very religious life.

And they know religious people are unhappy people - sad, with long faces. They cannot believe that you can be religious and dancing, and you can be religious and laughing, and you can be religious and yet happy. Then what about all their saints? Were they fools? They lived with long faces the whole of their lives. They carried their life as a burden, as if a mountain were being carried on their head, and you are so lightfooted, so weightless, with no burden, with no seriousness around you.

You are such a laughter, how can they believe you are religious? The only thing possible is that you have been hypnotized. How can you be so happy in such an unhappy world? It is not possible. You must be living in a kind of illusion. Hence they say, 'This man is an evil force, he has hypnotized you. The laughter that you are going through is false, the joy that you are experiencing is false. Our misery is right and true, and your joy is false.'

When they will be able to make you miserable again they will be at ease. Their son has come back home, or their daughter has come back home.

You will have to be understanding. They cannot understand me, they cannot understand you, but they are your parents and you owe something to them. Be loving to them. Don't be antagonistic.

Don't resent them. Don't start arguing and fighting with them because that will make them more convinced that they are right and you are wrong. Be more loving. Nobody has loved them; they have lived in a false world where all is pretension. Nobody has loved them. If you love them, it will be more convincing than logic.

Listen to them. Don't start arguing. Listen patiently. Nobody has ever listened to them. That's why psychoanalysis has become so important in the world. Psychoanalysis is nothing but just finding a patient listener, the psychoanalyst, to whom you can talk to your heart's content, and say whatsoever you want - sense, nonsense, whatsoever you want.

People are feeling suffocated, boiling, within. They want to say something but nobody is there to hear. The world has turned deaf. The man cannot talk to his woman, because the moment you talk conflict starts. You say something, she understands something else. The woman cannot talk to the man because talking is always risky. It is better to keep quiet and to remain silent. At least it gives you a feeling of peace, that all is quiet. Say a single word, and the argument starts. Sooner or later people learn that it is better to remain silent, not to say anything.

Nobody has listened to them. Just see the misery of the fact that they have to go and find a person to listen... But they have to pay for it, and the costs are really very high. Psychoanalysis is one of the highly paying professions. It is a Jewish concern and Jews know how to do business. Freud founded the greatest empire, and his followers are just looting, just enjoying. And what are they doing? They simply listen. No other help is needed. If you listen to the person for months together, years together, he loses steam. And once he has thrown his steam out he feels calm and quiet. And he thinks this is because of psychoanalysis.

In older societies, more primitive societies, this is not needed because people are very willing to listen. Go to an Indian village - people are very willing to listen. They have enough time to listen, nobody is in a hurry. People are sitting and talking and listening to each other. You cannot convince Indian villagers that there is any need for psychoanalysis, they are psychoanalyzing each other already; they need not pay for it.

But in a highly sophisticated, cultured, civilized society, people are in such a hurry that nobody is available to talk to anybody else. Parents never see their children, or even if they see them, then just polite words: 'Hello, how are you?' and they are gone. Or a pat on the head which is almost mechanical, or a hug which is false, or even a kiss which is just an empty gesture. But nobody talks, nobody faces the other.

There is no friendship, no love. Parents live in one world, the children live in another. Parents are so suffocated by their own misery, helplessness, turmoil, that they have to drown themselves in alcohol. Children are getting drowned in drugs. And the strange thing is that the people who drown themselves in alcohol are very much against drugs. And they are doing the same thing; it is not different, it is the same thing. Somehow to drown oneself, to forget all about oneself and the world and the problems... Even children have so many problems because we teach them competition, ambition. We send them to the school and the competition starts: 'You have to be first. You have to bring an A grade.' Now you have made them anxious. They are continuously in turmoil, anxiety:

whether they will be able to make it or not.

Small children have ulcers. Young people are having heart attacks. Young people are going mad, committing suicide - this has not happened ever before - or if you don't want to commit suicide, you don't want to go mad, you don't want to have ulcers, cancer, heart attacks, then drown yourself in drugs. But then the state is against you, then the society is against you, and you feel guilty. You are doing something illegal, you are a criminal; they will throw you into gaol.

The only possibility of getting out of this whole nonsense is to find a new space in your being through prayer, through meditation; to find your original source of life and energy. And that's what you are doing here with me. If you really go into meditation you will not need alcohol, you will not need drugs.

If you really go into meditation, your life will be a life of love, of sharing, of joy - non-competitive, non-ambitious. You will not become a politician, you will live as a nobody. You will not suffer from an inferiority complex because you will not compare yourself with anybody else. And you will live in great gratitude because your life will have joy. You will not be attached to misery because you will not have any investment in misery. If you don't have any ego, you need not have any investment in misery. Then you can feast and your life can be a festival. That's what I am teaching And to me this is religion: to make life a feast, a festival; to transform energy in such a way that you become a celebration.

But your parents will find it difficult. Help them to understand. Be loving. Listen patiently to their arguments, and don't argue, rather, love. Just show by your being, by your integrity, by your patience, by your caring about them that you are moving on the right path. It is up to you: if you can prove by your love that you are moving on the right path, only then will they think that the man you are with is not evil. If you argue and fight and become antagonistic - which seems to be very natural, because they will be antagonistic and in a fighting mood, and the natural reaction is to be the same: tit for tat - if you do that, then you will be proving that your Master is evil and you will be proving that you have moved on a wrong path.

What I am going to be proved to be in the world depends on sanyasins like you.

The last question:

Question 5:

Then what is the need to transcend it?

The need of transcendence arises only because you are in it. You are born in it, you are born out of it. You are a sexual phenomenon.

Except for Jesus, nobody has been born of a virgin. And Christians insist too much on the theory that Mary was a virgin so that they can condemn sex. If Jesus is also born of sex, then it will be difficult to condemn sex. In fact, Jesus was born out of sex as much as anybody else.

The body has to be constituted from male and female energy, otherwise the body cannot be constituted. To say that Mary was virgin is to say that you have electricity in your house with only one pole: positive or negative. That will be just as nonsensical. Electricity needs to have both poles, positive and negative. Without those two poles electricity cannot exist, cannot come into existence - not even in Jesus' house; the electricity will need two poles. The electricity does not care who you are - even in my house it needs two poles.

You can ask Haridas. He tries, the whole day he tries, continuously working to make electricity virgin. But up to now he has not succeeded. But later on you can write stories about me that in Osho's house the electricity had only one pole. These stories are always created later on, because you have to prove that your Master was exceptional.

Jainas say that Mahavir never perspired. Now, what kind of foolishness...? He missed the joy of perspiring in the sun. And he lived naked and moved naked. In fact, he must have perspired more than anybody else. If you say I don't perspire it may be right because I live in an air-conditioned room, but Mahavir, moving naked, never perspired? Something seems to be suspicious, fishy. He must have been stinking. To hide the fact you have to cover it and say that he never perspired, so the whole root is cut.

He never defecated, never urinated. How can you think of Mahavir pissing? That does not look right at all.

These stories are created. These stories simply prove that the followers are stupid. They don't say anything about Mahavir or Christ or Mohammed, they simply prove that the followers that came in their wake are neurotic.

Jesus was born out of two sexes just as everybody else is.

You come out of sex, each cell of your body is a sexual cell. Each cell of your body has two poles: the feminine and the masculine, yin and yang.

You ask me,

The only possibility is not to be born. Once you are born you are already a sexual being. Whether you make love to a woman or man doesn't matter. You can be a celibate, but to be a celibate does not mean to go beyond sexuality. Sexuality has already penetrated. The moment you were in the womb of your mother you became a sexual being. There is no way to avoid it. So all that you can do is repress it. You will become unnatural, and your whole life will be a perverted life. Repression is possible, but transcendence is not possible in the way you are asking about.

I have heard...

Ellen and Dolph had been married thirty years and never missed a night of connubial bliss. One day Ellen visited her doctor and was told that she must have complete rest and quiet for six months or she would not live.

Ellen and Dolph decided they should stay completely apart during this period. She moved into an upstairs bedroom and he remained downstairs.

After three months of complete abstinence and solitude, his will-power collapsed, and Dolph started for her bedroom. As he started to climb the stairs, he saw her coming down.

'Dear,' she said, 'I was just coming down to die.'

'I'm glad, honey,' he said, 'because I was just going up to kill you.'

Don't be mad, let things be simple. There is no need to kill or die. Repression will make things very complicated in your life; you will become split, schizophrenic - just celibate on the surface, and deep down just the opposite of it.

Transcendence means the disappearance of the need for the other, the disappearance of the desire to get lost into a woman or into a man. And this is possible only if you have understood. And understanding comes only through experience. So I don't say drop out of your relationships, rather, become more meditative in your relationships.

Making love, let it be a meditation too. And you will be surprised: if while making love you also move in a meditative state you will have great insights into what is happening, and the whole urge called sex will become conscious. And once it has become conscious it can disappear.

And it disappears on its own; you need not cultivate, you need not practise anything for it. When it goes on its own it is beautiful. Yes, sex disappears - one transcends it - but not by fighting it, not by avoiding it.

This is true, and because of this truth much misunderstanding has happened in the world. Sex disappeared in Buddha's life, sex disappeared in Christ's life. People have seen sex disappearing, and people have seen that when sex disappears there is great splendour. Something of the sky dances on the earth. The beyond reaches to the earth. The mundane becomes suffused with the sacred. And because people have seen these things, great desire has arisen in them too to transcend sex. But then the whole thing goes wrong: they start fighting with it, fighting with their own nature.

It is a secret science, and if you don't move rightly, everything will go wrong.

A man is told by a friend that he should pick a wife who is 'an economist in the kitchen, a lady in the parlour, and a prostitute in bed'.

They meet sometime after the wedding and the friend asks if he is satisfied with his choice.

'Well,' says the newly-wed, 'I did what you said, but I guess I made a mistake somewhere. The woman I married turned out to be a prostitute in the parlour, a lady in the kitchen, and an economist in bed!'

Just a little mismanagement, just a thing here and a thing there misplaced, and everything goes wrong.

Transcendence is never through repression, transcendence is through understanding, transcendence is through awareness.

Just the other night I was giving sannyas to a psychoanalyst - a beautiful man. I have given him the name: Anand Veetkam. It means bliss beyond sex. And to him I said that if you become meditative while making love you will come to know a few immensely significant things.

The first and the most significant thing is that when you are going into a deep org@sm, when the clim@x is happening, there is great joy because in that moment sex disappears. Sex brings you to the org@smic state, and once its purpose is fulfilled, sex disappears. In the org@smic state there is no sexuality left in you. You are simply throbbing and there is no desire. You are utterly herenow, there is no future, no fantasy, no imagination, nothing. And when the org@sm happens, the man is alone - the woman may be there but he is not aware of the woman. And the woman is alone - the man is there but she is not aware of the mall.

0rgasm is individual: it is happening inside the man, it is happening inside the woman. The other has triggered it, but then the function of the other is finished; you are no more interested in the other. In deep org@sm you are simply inside yourself. There is no sex in it, hence the bliss. And after a good org@sm, for hours you will feel very very blissful. And for hours you will not think of sex again.

The desire has left you. What has happened?

If you are feeling blissful, the desire cannot be there. If the desire is there, bliss cannot be there. Desire and bliss are never together.

And if you meditate deeply while making love, you will become aware that time disappears. At the peak there is no time, suddenly you are herenow. Only then do you know the meaning of here and now, otherwise you are in the past or in the future. And when time disappears, mind disappears, because mind is another aspect of time, another name for time. Mind is past plus future. When there is no time there is no mind. Just think: no mind, no time, no sexual desire - and there is great bliss.

But people miss it because they are not alert about it. People go into love-making unconsciously, mechanically. Go consciously, mindfully, remembering what is happening, watching, remaining a witness, and that will release understanding in you. That will release awareness in you. And awareness is transcendence. Awareness is freedom.