From the Body to the Soul

Question 1:

Bernd, Jesus was in a very unfortunate situation: he had learned all the secrets in the East and he was introducing something that had never existed in the Jewish tradition before -- that was his crime. The orthodox, the traditional, the conventional mind could not understand him.

Lao Tzu was far more fortunate -- he had the right people to talk to. Buddha was blessed -- he could say things in as subtle a way as possible. In that sense Jesus was hoping against hope. It was a great challenge and he took the risk -- he sacrificed his life. But he was misunderstood: it was bound to happen, it was inevitable. Whenever you introduce a new truth, you have to suffer for it, but it is a joy to suffer in the service of truth.

Jesus could not even say the whole truth -- that would have been too much. So whatsoever statements have come down in the name of Jesus are only half the story; the other half has never been told. Jesus could not say it because of the Jews he was surrounded with, and Christians have been clinging to those half-truths for two thousand years.

For example, this statement is only a half-truth: "Seek and ye shall find." The other half, which has been said by Lao Tzu, is far more important; without it the first half becomes not only meaningless but dangerous. Lao Tzu says, "Do not seek and you will find. Do not seek and you have found it already." Both statements will look contradictory to each other; they are not.

The beginning of the pilgrimage starts with searching, seeking, inquiring; there is no other way to begin. Unless you inquire what is the meaning of life, unless you go in search of the essential core of existence, you will never move, you will not even take the first step. Hence, the search has to begin. But if you continue searching forever and ever, if your search never comes to an end, you will remain in the mind. It is the mind which searches.

Search is also a subtle desire. Even the inquiry into knowing is ambitious. The very desire to achieve something -- money, power, prestige, meditation, God, whatsoever it is, any desire, any ambition -- leads you into the future; it distracts you from the present.

And the present is the only reality, the only truth there is.

The person who never begins the search will remain unconscious; the person who always remains in the search will go crazy. The search has to begin so that you become a little more alert, a little more observant, vigilant, aware. And then the search has to be dropped so that you become silent, so that the mind disappears, so that the future evaporates and you are simply herenow, neither seeking nor searching. In that stillness of no-search, truth is found.

And Lao Tzu is right when he says, "Seek and ye shall miss. Seek not and find immediately." But his statement is the second part of the journey. Jesus was speaking to the beginners; he is like a primary school teacher. Lao Tzu is talking to the adepts, to those who have come a long way; he is talking to the initiates. He is talking to people who can understand the joy of not searching, the stillness, the tranquility, the calmness of simply being -- no ambition, no desire, no future, no time, no mind.

Bernd, Jesus' statement is only half of the truth, and the beginning half. It is good for those who have not started the journey. It is meaningless, and not only that but harmful, for those who have started the journey and who are coming to realize the utter futility of all search.

The truth is within you, and every search means going out, going somewhere else, leaving your home. When you drop searching you will come back home naturally, spontaneously; you will settle at the very core of your being.

You also ask, "Does a desireless search exist?"

No. All search is a manifestation of desire. But there is something like a state of consciousness which can be called non-searching, non-seeking, a state of total rest. In that total rest is samadhi. In that absolute tranquility is realization.

Sylvia Moses has asked a similar question.... She says, "For many years I have been wondering what the difference is between spirituality and religiousness. Until now I have been unsuccessful in obtaining an answer. Can you tell me?"

Sylvia, the statement of Jesus, "Seek and ye shall find, ask and it shall be given to you, knock and the doors shall be opened unto you," contains religiousness. Lao Tzu's statement: "Seek not and find immediately," or Rabiya al-Adabiya's statement to Hassan....

Hassan was a Sufi seeker; Rabiya was a Sufi master. Every day Rabiya used to pass through the marketplace, and she would see Hassan kneeling down in front of the mosque and praying to God with raised hands: "My Lord, how long have I to ask you? Open thy doors so that I can enter!"

Rabiya had heard this prayer thousands of times. One day she came up to Hassan, shook him out of his prayer and shouted at him, "Stop all this nonsense. The doors are always open! Why don't you enter?"

And it was a great revelation to Hassan. Suddenly he realized what he had been asking:

"Lord, open thy doors so that I can enter!" And Rabiya was saying, "The doors are always open, God has never closed them. If you want to enter, enter, but don't go on playing with this stupid prayer again and again. Don't waste your time and don't waste his time! If you want to enter, enter; otherwise go home! I don't want to see you sitting here in front of the mosque again!"

Hassan was shocked, bewildered. But it was the right moment, because when a person like Rabiya says something to somebody it is always at the right moment -- when the person is ready to understand. He understood, he followed Rabiya. He touched her feet and thanked her, and told her, "You are right. I was just being a fool! I wasted my life!"

Rabiya said, "Stop! Don't talk nonsense again! It has not been a wastage. If you had not prayed all these years here you would not have understood me. It has helped. It has not helped God to open the doors because the doors are open, but it has helped you to understand my statement that the doors are open for you to enter. I cannot say this thing to anybody else in this town; only you were ripe. The spring has come only to you, that's why the flower has blossomed."

Sylvia, religiousness means the circumference, and spirituality means the center.

Religiousness has something of spirituality, but only something -- a vague radiation, something like a reflection in the lake of the starry night, of the full moon. Spirituality is the real thing; religiousness is just a by-product.

And one of the greatest misfortunes that has happened to humanity is that people are being told to be religious not spiritual. Hence they start decorating their circumference, they cultivate character. Character is your circumference. By painting your circumference, the center is not changed. But if you change the center, the circumference automatically goes through a transformation.

Change the center -- that is spirituality. Spirituality is an inner revolution. It certainly affects your behavior, but only as a by-product. Because you are more alert, more aware, so naturally your action is different, your behavior has a different quality, a different flavor, a different beauty. But vice versa does not.... If your body is healthy then your lips are red, but you can paint them with lipstick and they will look red -- and ugly. A woman with lipstick is the ugliest woman possible. I sometimes wonder who she is trying to deceive! Her whole face is saying something else, her whole body is saying something else, and her lips are so red.... Such redness does not happen naturally; they are painted.

But there are fools in the world -- she will find some fool to kiss those painted lips too!

I cannot believe it! -- just try tasting lipstick and you will understand what I mean when I say I cannot believe it! And layers and layers of lipstick, old, rotten!

People are living with painted faces, wearing masks. These people are called religious.

Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas -- these are religious people. Buddha, Jesus, Zarathustra, Krishna, Lao Tzu -- these people are spiritual.

Spirituality belongs to your essential being, and religiousness only to the outermost:

actions, behavior, morality. Religiousness is formal; going to the church every Sunday is a social affair. The church is nothing but a kind of club, a Rotary Club, a Lions Club -- and there are many clubs. The church is also a club, but with religious pretensions.

The spiritual person belongs to no creed, to no dogma. He cannot belong to any church, Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan...it is impossible for him to belong to any.

Spirituality is one; religions are many.

My insistence here is on inner transformation.

I don't teach you religion, I teach you spirituality.

I can understand, Sylvia, why you were unable to find any answer. You must have been asking the religious people -- the Christians, the bishops, the popes, the priests, or the rabbis. They will give you answers because they are supposed to know. They know nothing; they are just supposed to know.

"Rabbi," asked Little Saul one day, "why do coachmen have brown, white, red or black beards, but never green ones?"

"I have to ponder on this," replied the rabbi.

"Rabbi," asked Little Saul again, "why do you always chain the horse with its tail towards the carriage instead of its head?"

"I have to think about this," replied the rabbi.

Next day the rabbi saw Little Saul and told him, "I have found the solution to both your questions: if the beard of a coachman were green and you put the horse with its head towards the carriage, the horse might think the beard was grass and eat it!"

The rabbis, the priests, the bishops -- they are supposed to know everything. You can ask any question, sensible or not so sensible, making some sense or making no sense at all, but they will answer. It is their business to answer all kinds of stupid questions.

You must have been asking these people, Sylvia, that's why you have not been successful in obtaining an answer. They don't have the answer. Only a Jesus can answer your question, or a Buddha or a Kabir or a Nanak -- somebody who knows life from his innermost being, who has come to know the eternal in himself.

Spirituality belongs to the eternal, and religion belongs to the temporal. Religion belongs to people's behavior. It is really what Pavlov, Skinner, Delgado and others call a conditioning of the behavior. The child is brought up by Christians -- then he is conditioned in one way, he becomes a Christian. Or he is brought up by Hindus -- he is conditioned in another way, he becomes a Hindu. His conditioning is an imprisonment; he will remain a Hindu. He will think like a Hindu or a Christian his whole life. And those thoughts are not his own, they have been put into his head by others -- by the vested interests, by the establishment, by the state, by the church. They have their own interests:

they want to dominate you. And the best way to dominate you is to condition you from the very beginning so deeply that you start thinking that this conditioning is what you are.

You are not a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan. You are born as a spiritual being and then you become a victim of your parents, teachers and priests. And of course these parents, these teachers and these priests go on telling you, "Respect your parents, respect your teachers, respect your priests." If you don't respect them you will fall into hell; if you respect them, then all the pleasures of heaven are yours. This is a simple psychological strategy to make you afraid and to make you greedy. These are the two things people are ruled by: fear and greed. And the spiritual person is one who is free of both.

Just a few days ago I talked about one friend, Ajai Krishna Lakanpal. He wanted to take sannyas one month ago, but he wrote to me saying, "I am ready to take sannyas today if you say so; otherwise, I will feel happier taking sannyas on the twenty-fifth of October, on my birthday. I want to ask my mother. I know she will allow it, she will not prevent me."

So I said, "Okay, ask your mother." And his mother has not prevented him, she has permitted him to take sannyas. Of course she said, "I will not feel very happy, but if you are feeling good about it you can take sannyas."

Now he has written to me: "My mother will not feel happy, that's why I cannot take sannyas." First it was the permission of the mother; now the permission is there but the mother will not feel happy.

Just a few days ago I discussed it, and he became very angry. He wrote an angry letter to me. A few points which he has written are worth considering -- it shows how people are being conditioned. The first thing he was angry about was that I told you he is forty-five years old. He was angry because he is only thirty-six. It does not matter -- forty-five or thirty-six, how does it matter? But the anger is caused by something else; this is just an excuse to find some fault.

I was informed wrongly, so now I am putting it right. Ajai Krishna, you are not forty- five, you are twenty-seven...forty-five plus twenty-seven divided by two, and you will be thirty-six -- exactly thirty-six!

And again he goes on rationalizing. He says, "My old master, Kamu Baba, has said, `Never hurt the feelings of your parents. If you hurt the feelings of your parents, then no master can ever help you.'" True. But are you sure, Ajai Krishna, that you are not hurting the feelings of your parents?

He himself writes in his letter: "My father died and I feel guilty because I am an alcoholic and I did not listen to him. I continued to drink too much, and he died. And now I feel guilty that I was not up to his standards."

Did you not remember your Kamu Baba's statement? Now, do you think, Ajai Krishna, your mother is happy with your alcoholism? Are you not hurting your mother by drinking too much? But that problem does not arise. The father has died, the son feels guilty and still he continues to drink -- maybe a little more so that he does not feel guilty. The mother is old, sixty-eight, or maybe seventy-eight -- because again it is my secretary who has informed me! Is your mother very happy with your alcoholism? Are you not hurting her? Do you think alcohol can help when you hurt your mother? A master cannot help, that is true -- Kamu Baba must be right. But can alcohol help?

And not only that, he quotes the KORAN. He says, "In the KORAN it is said, `Don't hurt your parents. To be surrendered to your parents, to sit at their feet, is to be in paradise.'" And do you think, Ajai Krishna, that the KORAN says to go on drinking as much as you want? The KORAN also says that if you drink you will fall into hell! So you choose only that part of the Koran which helps you to do what you want to do.

He also quotes Jewish scriptures, that they too say to respect your parents. But they are all against alcohol. If you really respect your mother, then give one proof: stop drinking.

If you really want to make her happy, stop drinking. That will be proof; otherwise this is sheer playing with words, rationalization. Neither are you interested in Kamu Baba, nor are you interested in your father, nor are you interested in your mother. Your whole interest is: you are afraid of sannyas.

And the last thing which he says in his letter is: "It is not true that I am afraid of sannyas.

It is because of compassion for my mother." And by being an alcoholic you are being very compassionate to your mother...?

But all the religions down the ages have been teaching you to respect your parents. Why?

Why do the religions teach that? It is a subtle strategy of exploitation. Your religion has been given to you by your parents, and if you go against your religion, they will be hurt.

If a Hindu declares, "I am simply a human being, no longer a Hindu," the parents will be hurt. So the parents have also taught him to respect them and believe in whatsoever they have said -- they cannot be wrong. As if your parents are enlightened people! As if your parents know what they are doing! Their parents did the same thing to them, they have done it to you, and you will do it to your children. This is how diseases go on being transferred from one generation to another generation.

Of course the priests will say, "Respect your parents," because there is a conspiracy. The conspiracy is that all their interests are involved together in keeping hold of you.

To be my sannyasin means to be a rebel. I am not saying to hurt the feelings of your parents, I am saying to be yourself. Be lovingly yourself, be respectfully yourself. There is no need to go out of your way to hurt your parents, but if they don't allow you to be yourself then it is their responsibility. If they feel hurt, that is their responsibility, not yours. Don't harm them, but don't harm yourself either, because your first responsibility is towards your own self; everything else is secondary.

But man's mind is very cunning: he will hide his cowardice in the beautiful word "compassion"; he will rationalize everything.

Sylvia, your religions are nothing but the rationalizations of fear, of greed. They are conspiracies against you by the establishment, by the people who are ruling you politically, religiously, philosophically, in every way -- by the people who have reduced humanity to a great concentration camp.

And you must have asked these people, "What is the difference between spirituality and religiousness?" They cannot say -- they don't know themselves.

Spirituality is rebellion; religiousness is orthodoxy. Spirituality is individuality; religiousness is just remaining part of the crowd psychology. Religiousness keeps you a sheep, and spirituality is a lion's roar.

The second question:

Question 2:

Paul, you have heard rightly! My sannyasins celebrate everything. Celebration is the foundation of my sannyas -- not renunciation but rejoicing; rejoicing in all the beauties, all the joys, all that life offers, because this whole life is a gift of God.

The old religions have taught you to renounce life. They are all life negative; their whole approach is pessimistic. They are all against life and its joys. To me, life and God are synonymous. In fact, life is a far better word than God itself, because God is only a philosophical term, while life is real, existential. The word "God" exists only in scriptures; it is a word, a mere word. Life is within you and without you -- in the trees, in the clouds, in the stars. This whole existence is a dance of life.

I teach love for life.

I teach the art of living your life totally, of being drunk with the divine THROUGH life. I am not an escapist. All your old religions have been teaching you escapism -- they were all in a certain sense hip. The word "hippie" has to be understood. It simply means one who escapes from the battle of life, who shows his hips...! All your old religions are hippie! They have shown their hips. They could not accept the challenge of life, they could not confront and encounter life. They were cowards; they escaped to the mountains, to the monasteries.

But even if you escape to the mountains and to the monasteries, how can you leave yourself behind? You are part of life. Life pulsates in your blood, life breathes in you, life is your very being! Where can you escape? And all those efforts to escape, considered correctly, are suicidal. Your monks, your nuns, your mahatmas, your so-called saints, were all suicidal people; they were trying gradual suicide. Not only were they suicidal, they were cowards too -- cowards because they could not even commit suicide in a single blow. They were committing suicide gradually, in installments; by and by, slowly they were dying. And we have respected these unhealthy people, these unwholesome people, these insane people. They were against God because they were against life.

I am in tremendous love with life, hence I teach celebration. Everything has to be celebrated, everything has to be lived, loved. To me nothing is mundane and nothing is sacred. To me all is sacred, from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest rung. It is the same ladder: from the body to the soul, from the physical to the spiritual, from sex to SAMADHI -- everything is divine!

An old neo-sannyasin told an actor playing Hamlet that he himself had once played the part.

"What was your interpretation of the role?" asked the actor. "Did Hamlet really make love to Ophelia?"

"I don't know if Hamlet did," replied the sannyasin, "but I certainly did!"

Celebration has to be total, only then can you be multidimensionally rich. And to be multidimensionally rich is the only thing we can offer to God.

If there is a God, and someday you have to face him, he will ask you only one question:

"Have you lived your life totally or not?" -- because this opportunity is given to you to live, not to renounce.

Paul, my sannyasins celebrate death too, because to me death is not the end of life but the very crescendo of life, the very climax. It is the ultimate of life. If you have lived rightly, if you have lived moment to moment totally, if you have squeezed out the whole juice of life, your death will be the ultimate orgasm.

The sexual orgasm is nothing compared to the orgasm that death brings, but it brings it only to the person who knows the art of being total. The sexual orgasm is a very faint thing compared to the orgasm that death brings. What happens in sexual orgasm? For a moment you forget that you are a body, for a moment two lovers become merged into one unity, into one organic union. For a moment they are not separate entities; they have melted into each other like two clouds which have become one.

But it is only for a single moment, then they are again separate. Hence all sexual orgasms bring in their wake a kind of depression, because you fall from the height. You reached a crescendo, and for only a fragment of a moment you remained on the peak and then the peak disappeared. And when you fall from that height, you fall into the depth of depression.

This is one of the contradictions of sex: it gives you the greatest pleasure and also the greatest agony. It gives you ecstasy and agony -- both. And each time you reach an orgasmic state, you know that soon it will disappear. Then there is disillusionment, disappointment.

Death gives you the ultimate in orgasmic joy: the body is left behind forever and your being becomes one with the whole. It is immeasurable. If to become one with a single person gives you so much joy, just think how much joy will happen in becoming one with the infinite! But it does not happen to everybody who dies, because the people who have not lived rightly cannot die rightly either. The people who have lived in deep unconsciousness will die in deep unconsciousness. Death will give you only that which you have lived all your life; it is the essence of your whole life.

If your life was of meditativeness, awareness, witnessing, then you will be able to witness death too. If your whole life you remained cool, centered in different situations, death will give you the ultimate challenge, the ultimate test. And if you can remain centered, calm and cool and watching, then you will not die an unconscious death, your death will bring you to the ultimate peak of consciousness. And then, certainly, it HAS to be celebrated.

So whenever one of my sannyasins dies, we celebrate, we dance, we sing. We give him a good farewell.

A midget had died and left a widow. Friends came to pay their condolences and look at the body lying in an upstairs room of the house. After one friend came down he was asked by the widow whether he had shut the door of the room where the body lay.

"No," said the visitor, "I didn't think it was necessary."

"Then I'd better go upstairs and shut it," replied the widow. "The cat has had him downstairs twice already. You know, my cat is a neo-sannyasin and he wants to celebrate the occasion!"

Little Pierino goes camping with his parents. A little while after, at the end of a day doing many things, they bed down for the evening. Pierino cries, "Mummy, I can't sleep. There is a dead ant on my belly!"

"Shhh, Pierino," says his mother, "be a good boy, just go to sleep -- it is nothing to worry about."

After a few minutes Pierino's voice is heard again, "Mummy, Mummy, I can't go to sleep -- I've got a dead ant on my belly!"

"Pierino," scolds his mother, "come on now, don't tell me that a small dead ant stops you from sleeping!"

"Well," replies Pierino, "it is not the dead ant really, it is all his orange sannyasin friends that have come to celebrate his death!"

Yes, Paul, my sannyasins celebrate death because they celebrate life. And death is not against life; it does not end life, it only brings life to a beautiful peak. Life continues even after death. It was there before birth, it is going to continue after death. Life is not confined to the small space that exists between birth and death; on the contrary, births and deaths are small episodes in the eternity of life.

We celebrate everything. Celebration is our way to receive all the gifts from God. Life is his gift, death is his gift; the body is his gift, the soul is his gift. We celebrate everything.

We love the body, we love the soul. We are materialist spiritualists. Nothing like this has ever happened in the world. This is a new experiment, a new beginning, and it has a great future.

In the past there have been materialists who denied the soul, and there have been spiritualists who denied the body. Both were agreed on one point: that only one can be accepted, either the body or the soul. They were either/or people. They were not ready to accept the whole as it is; they were choosers.

My sannyasins live in choiceless awareness. We are not choosers; we simply accept whatsoever is the case. The materialists -- the Charvakas in India and the Epicureans in Greece -- denied the soul. They said, "There is no soul. The soul is just imagination. The soul is illusion." And the spiritualists -- Shankaracharya in India and Berkeley in Europe - - these people said that matter is illusory, maya. The body does not exist really, it is only your imagination. It is a dream, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of; you are a soul. But both are agreeing on one point: that they cannot accept reality as it is, they have to choose.

It is as if one electrician chooses the positive pole and another electrician chooses the negative pole, and each denies the other pole. There will be no electricity, no light in the world.

That's what has happened: the spiritualist has not been able to transform the world, the materialist has failed also -- because the world exists with polar opposites. Without polarity there is no world at all. The day is needed as much as the night; the body is needed as much as the soul; the world is needed as much as God. There can be no circumference without a center and there can be no center without a circumference. This is a simple fact.

My sannyas is the acceptance of that which is. We are not choosers. Who are we to choose? And what difference is our choice going to make? You can choose whatsoever you like, but whatsoever you don't like is going to remain there. Just by not choosing it, it is not going to disappear. And because you have not chosen it, you will remain half, lopsided.

The East has remained lopsided because of so-called spirituality. It has remained poor, unscientific -- without any technology, without industry. It has become lousy, lazy, lethargic; it has lost all joy in existence because "this is all a dream, why bother about it?"

It is hungry, ill, poor, but "this is all illusion. You are simply dreaming that you are poor, you are not really poor. You are simply dreaming that you are starving, you are not starving."

And the West has chosen materialism, so there is great technology, beautiful houses, better roads, better cars, better airplanes, but man is very empty and meaningless.

Without spirituality there is no center; man falls apart. The Western man is half; the Eastern man is half.

My effort here is to create the whole man. To me the whole man is the only holy man.

The East and the West have to meet; they have to become complementaries, not antagonists. But this is possible only if we change the whole philosophical background.

Hence I teach a very contradictory philosophy. Spiritual materialism is the name that I give to my philosophy.

I want you to be materialists and spiritualists simultaneously, in a balanced way. I would love society to have all the facilities, all the comforts and conveniences that science and technology can provide, and I would also love people to have a great awareness inside them so that they can enjoy whatsoever science provides. I would like everybody to be a buddha, but at the same time I would also like the world to become more and more comfortable, more and more loving, more and more beautiful.

We can transform this world into a paradise, but then we have to stop choosing. We have simply to accept the whole as it is, with all its contradictions. Those contradictions are contradictions only because of our logical obsession; otherwise they are complementaries. Life and death -- both are beautiful.

The last question:

Question 3:

Anand Prageet, if you had asked me what it means when a man says that he is afraid of a woman, I would have answered you very accurately. But your question is such that it is almost unanswerable. It is very difficult to say what it means when a woman says she is afraid of a man -- the woman says one thing and means another thing! She may simply be making you feel at ease, Prageet -- "Don't be afraid, I myself am afraid of you!" She must see that you are trembling! She must be aware of your fear.

Every man is afraid of the woman -- he has to be. From the very beginning he is in the hands of a woman, the mother, and the fear is created from those very early days. Your first impression of a woman is that of a mother, and the mother has made you immensely afraid. And you have seen that not only were you afraid, but your father was also afraid of your mother. Outside the house he was like a lion, and whenever he came home he started wagging his tail!

You have seen this. Children are very perceptive; they go on looking at what is happening. They understand perfectly well who is really the master of the house. They are afraid of the mother, the father is afraid of the mother, everybody seems to be afraid of the mother, and naturally they become accustomed to the fear.

And then man is capable of tackling any problem intellectually. He is afraid of the woman because her ways of tackling a problem are very intuitive, instinctive. No woman is intellectual -- intelligent of course, but not intellectual. Man's intelligence is of one kind, and hers, the woman's intelligence, is of a totally different kind. Man's intelligence is the essence of his intellect, and woman's intelligence arises out of her intuitiveness.

There is no meeting ground -- there is no possibility of it. They are polar opposites, that's why they are attracted to each other. Because they cannot understand each other there is mystery between them; that mystery is of great appeal.

A frustrated man was staring hopelessly down the platform at the departing train. "If you hadn't taken so long getting ready," he accused his wife, "we would have caught it."

"Yes," she replied, "and if you hadn't hurried me we wouldn't have so long to wait for the next one!"

"Is this supposed to be art? Why on earth did they hang this picture here?" one woman asked another in an art gallery.

"Maybe they couldn't find the painter," the other replied.

A beautiful blonde filled in the job application.

The personnel director looked it over, then said, "Miss Johnson, under `Experience' could you be a little more specific than just `Oh, boy!'?"

A girl in a whorehouse of a red-light district told the madam one day that she was quitting.

"You can't do that," protested the madam, "you're the best girl I've got. Why, I've seen you go upstairs thirty and more times a night."

"That's right," the girl agreed. "That's why I'm quitting. My feet are killing me, and it's on account of those damn stairs!"

It is very difficult for me, Prageet, to answer your question. You will have to ask your woman yourself.

Schumann, the postman, was retiring. On his last day, as usual, he delivered to Mrs. Katz, who invited him in for a fine breakfast.

When he finished and was about to leave, she beckoned him into the bedroom where they made love for an hour. When he was getting ready to leave, she handed him an envelope with a dollar bill in it.

Schumann was overwhelmed. "Look, Mrs. Katz," he said finally, "I've been delivering your mail for the past twenty years and you have never so much as offered me a cup of coffee. So why today did all this happen?"

"Well," she said, "I told my husband Sol that you were retiring today and he said, `Fuck him! Give him a buck!' -- the breakfast was my idea!"

Enough for today.

Come, Come, Yet Again Come