Without Women - No Buddhas

The first question:

Question 1:

Prem Parivartan,

LOVE IS THE HARDEST THING in the world, the most arduous. It needs really guts to be in love.

That's why for thousands of years people have escaped from the world in the name of religion. They were not really escaping from the world, they were escaping from love. It was the fear of love that drove them away to the deserts, to the mountains, to the monasteries. But they were not even courageous enough to accept the fact that they are afraid of love; they covered it up with beautiful religious words. They condemned the world rather than condemning their own cowardliness.

And humanity has worshipped these people as saints - cowards have been worshipped! And naturally, if you worship cowards you will also become a coward. One should choose very carefully and cautiously whom to adore, because whomsoever you adore you start becoming like him - unconsciously, unknowingly. If a man escapes from the war we call him a coward, we condemn him - he has betrayed. But the people who escape from the battle of life are thought to be heroes, are thought to be doing something great. Their basic fear is of love - and why there is so much fear of love?

The first thing that love requires is dropping of the ego. It is easy to protect your ego in the name of religion, in the name of virtue, morality, puritanism, character - beautiful words to decorate the ego, to nourish and feed it. Hence your so-called saints are the most egoistic people in the world, and you can see it. The facts are so immense, so self-evident, that there is no way to deny them. Your saints have caused more bloodshed on the earth than anybody else, for the simple reason because wherever there is ego there is going to be bloodshed. But when you hide behind beautiful facades you not only deceive others, ultimately you yourself are deceived.

Love is one of the most dangerous phenomena. You have to put aside your ego, only then it can blossom. Love is real spirituality, but when I use the word "love" you can again misunderstand on the other extreme - you can start thinking in terms of lust. Love is not lust either. It is not the so-called religion and it is not the so-called worldly life. Love is different from both.

Love is a transcendence of lust and ego Religious life gives you ego and destroys love, and the irreligious life gives you lust and destroys love. These are the two extremes: ego and lust. Exactly in the middle of the two is love; it is neither ego nor lust, it is transcendence of both.

Lust means you are trying to exploit the other, and naturally there will be fear. The fear will be that the other may exploit you. To get into a relationship means getting into a space where you are thinking to exploit and the other is also thinking to exploit. Both are going to use the other as a means. Hence there is great attraction - the opportunity to exploit the other - and great fear because you may be exploited.

Lust can never be free of fear, the ego can never be free of fear. Hence the people who have escaped into the deserts, into the mountains, into the monasteries, are still afraid, trembling, because you can escape from the world but how you will escape from your nature?

Love is a basic need. You can escape from the world, but you will still need food. You can escape from the world; that doesn't mean that now there is no need for food. And love IS food for the soul, just as food is food for the body. One cannot avoid love. If one avoids love one is avoiding life. To avoid love means to commit suicide.

Your saints have committed suicide, your sinners have committed suicide. In a way they both are same because they exist on the polar opposites.

My sannyasin has to transcend the polarity, the opposition. He has to go beyond both. Beyond lust means never be cunning, never try to use the other. That is ugly, that is inhuman, that is irreligious.

That is violence, pure violence. To respect the other as an end unto himself or herself is the way of the sannyasin. Avoid being cunning.

A few who had won the first prize in a state lottery was suddenly besieged by relatives and friends who had previously ignored him. But he refused to give or lend them any money.

"You now have more money than you will ever spend," said one. "Why are you so unkind?" I have two good reasons," explained the lucky winner. "First, I hate my relatives, and second, I love my money!"

To love somebody means to respect; it means not to exploit. To love somebody means to give love and all that you have without any idea of getting anything in return. If there is even a slight idea, a slight motivation, it is cunningness, it is lust. Even to ask for gratitude is wrong. Love is possible only when you love for love's sake.

A rich widower invited his three sons and their wives to a birthday dinner at his house. As they sat down at the table he explained why he had brought them all together.

"This is my fifty-eighth birthday, as you know, and I am about to change my will. Because of my disappointment at not being a grandfather, I am going to give

When he looked up he found himself alone at the table.

This is how people are behaving with each other! Their minds are full of lust, greed a thousand and one motives. and they go on calling all this love.

Prem Parivartan, it is not anything personal to you to be afraid of love or to feel, "Why it is so hard?"

It is everybody's problem, but it has been created by a long, stupid conditioning. Instead of helping you to become clear about what love is, instead of helping you to love without any motivation, you have been taught to love with motivation. You have been taught to love in an artificial way.

The mother says to you, "Love me because I am your mother," as if love is a logical proposition:

"Because I am your mother, therefore you have to love me." And the poor child feels at a loss; he cannot understand - how to love? You may be the mother or the father; that does not mean that love will arise inevitably. If it was arising inevitably towards the mother and towards the father and the brothers and the sisters and the relatives, then there would have been no need to tell anybody to love your mother, your father! It does not arise naturally; it has to be cultivated.

And the child is certainly helpless; he starts pretending. He becomes a politician from the very beginning - he starts learning diplomacy. He becomes a follower of Machiavelli. He starts pretending to love the mother because he needs the mother; he cannot survive without the mother.

He smiles at the father. That smile is false; it is not coming from his heart. But this is how from the very beginning his love is poisoned.

Later on we say, "Love - it is your wife. Love - this is your husband." We go saying this stupid thing to everybody: "Love - BECAUSE... THEREFORE..."

Love is not a logical proposition; either it is there or it is not there. If it is there, help to grow it; if it is not there, accept it. There is no other way. But don't create an artificial phenomenon.

But the mother has lived without love; she has not been loved by the husband. He was loving her because she was his wife, because he had to love; it was a social duty that he had to perform, it was a formality. So she is hankering for love; she starts exploiting the child.

Many women are interested in children not because they want to be mothers but just because it is easier to exploit the child for love than anybody else, because he will be absolutely dependent on you. To be a mother is a rare phenomenon. To hanker for children is a totally different thing; it has nothing to do with being a mother. That hankering comes from a totally different source.

To be a father is even more difficult than to be a mother, because to be a mother is at least instinctive, biological. Father is a social invention, a social institution. A father has been created, he does not exist in nature; hence it is even more difficult to be an authentic father. But everybody wants to be a father - to prove his manhood, to prove that he loves his wife, to prove that he is reproductive, that he is really a man. But these are not things that have anything to do with love.

And then there is the need to dominate the children. He cannot dominate the wife - the wife dominates him. The wife allows him to show to the world that he is the master; she allows it because she is so self-confident about her mastery over him that she does not bother. At the outside he can play the game of being the husband. He knows, she knows, everybody else knows, who is the real master.

The father is hankering to be a master; he wants to dominate somebody. He cannot dominate the wife, he cannot dominate the boss in the office, he cannot dominate anybody. Children are needed; it is a desire to dominate. And then he starts asking the children, "Love me - I am your father. You have to love!" As if love can be managed. Everything goes false. By the time you are young your love is almost plastic, it has lost all spontaneity. It has become very cunning, very calculating.

Two women met for the first time since graduating from high school. Asked the first one, "Have you managed to live a well-planned life?"

"Oh yes!" said her friend. "First I married a millionaire, then an actor. My third marriage was to a preacher and now I am married to an undertaker."

"What do all these marriages have to do with a well planned life?"

"One for the money, two for the show, three to make ready and four to go!"

This is a well-planned life! Remember this sutra: "One for the money, two for the show, three to make ready, and four to go!" This is how people are living!

You ask me, Parivartan: I WOULD LIKE TO FALL IN LOVE...

It is not a question of liking. One simply falls or one does not fall! You would like to fall in love - then it is not going to happen. Falls don't happen through liking - you simply stumble and you fall! You are trying to manage a fall. You can manage, but it will not be a real fall - no fracture, nothing! You can put a Dunlop mattress and you fall on it, but you will simply look stupid and nothing else. A little bit embarrassed, that's all.

You ask: I WOULD LIKE TO FALL IN LOVE, BUT I AM AFRAID OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN...

Only that thing seems to be a little bit intelligent! Beautiful women are dangerous, ugly women are good - they have to be good. Fall in love with an ugly woman... This is one of the observations of thousands of years... whenever a woman is beautiful she need not care about being nice. It is enough to be beautiful, why she should be nice too? She will be nasty! Ugly women are very nice, they have to, otherwise who is going to fall in love with them? Their faces, their bodies make you feel like running away to the very end of the world and never look back - they have to compensate.

They compensate by being nice, by being very loving. They become your mamas; they take care as if you are a small child, they breastfeed you. They become absolutely necessary, they make you utterly dependent, so that you can tolerate their ugliness.

Parivartan, that thing you are certainly saying with some intelligence. And when you are thinking and planning a well planned life, then fall in love with an ugly woman. It will be difficult in the beginning, but then it is sweet all the way! And always think of the future - that's how calculating people do.

What it is? Just a bitter pill in the beginning, it's okay, but then it is very health-giving. Ugly women are medicinal, but beautiful women are sweet in the beginning and very bitter in the end.

And this is not my advice to you; Gautam Buddha also says the same thing - in a different context, of course. He cannot be so truthful as I am. He says: The world is sweet in the beginning but very bitter in the end, and the other world is very bitter in the beginning but very sweet in the end. It is a totally different context, but it is significant - in your context too.

The beautiful woman looks beautiful and you are tempted, but remember the great philosophers who say that beauty is illusory; it is nothing but just on the surface. When you see a beautiful woman always remember the great philosophers: that inside she is nothing but bones, blood, pus, et cetera, et cetera. Keep in your bedroom a skeleton, meditate over it, and whenever you see a beautiful woman project the skeleton. That will scare you! And whenever you see an ugly woman feel compassion - compassion is good, it is great service. In fact it is conquering the world! To fall in love with an ugly woman is to be a saint, and your rewards will be great. She will be nice to you, and always nice to you.

The only problem is, Parivartan, here you will not find an ugly woman. Somehow ugly women don't fall in love with me, that's the trouble! So you are in a wrong place.

A traveling salesman once found himself in a howling storm near a washed-out bridge somewhere in the hinter-lands. Since he could drive no further he got out of his car and went to the nearest farmhouse. An old man answered the door.

"Can you put me up for the night?" asked the salesman.

"Yes, you can stay here," said the farmer, "but you will have to sleep with my son."

"Your son?"

"That's right."

"Excuse me, said the salesman, "I must be in the wrong joke!"

Parivartan, you are here in a wrong joke; you will have to find the right joke for yourself. Here you will not find an ugly woman; that will be difficult.

You say: I WOULD LIKE TO FALL IN LOVE, BUT I AM AFRAID OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN, AND SO AFRAID OF LOVE, AND I DON'T KNOW WHY.

There is not much to know in it; it is very simple and obvious. It is not something great to contemplate upon.

He: "Have you ever loved anyone as much as you love me, Mary?"

She: "No, John. I have sometimes admired men for their looks or intelligence or money. But with you, John, it is all love - nothing else."

At lunch one woman said to her friend, "I don't know what to do. The other night I dreamed that John was having lunch with some blonde, and they were laughing together."

"Oh, for God's sake, Helen!" protested her friend. "It was only a silly dream."

"Only a dream," repeated the other. "But if he does such things in MY dreams, can you imagine what he must do in his?"

Fear is natural because the woman means the beginning of the world; the woman means the beginning of the trouble. Before the woman there is no world and after the woman is no world.

Before the woman there is all darkness, after the woman there is all light. But between the two is the problem, and everybody has to pass through it.

The aggressive wife was raking her husband over the coals for having said something tactless when some friends called. "And don't sit there," she continued sharply, "making fists at me in your pockets, either!"

Among the objects displayed in the Vatican Library are two Bibles close together: a huge one about two feet thick, the other a tiny one less than one inch square.

One of the guides tells visitors: "This big Bible contains everything Eve said to Adam, and this little one contains everything Adam said to Eve."

I can't see why you don't understand - it is so obvious! People have always been afraid of the woman for the simple reason that man functions through the head and the woman functions intuitively. They can't agree on anything; there is no possibility of agreement. The woman jumps on conclusions, and the trouble is she is almost always right! And the man goes through a very long, arduous, logical process to reach a conclusion, and, again, almost always he is wrong.

So to fight with a woman - that means to love a woman - you are doomed, you are bound to fail.

You cannot win a single argument because her ways of arguing are so puzzling. You want her to sit down calmly at the table and discuss, and she starts crying and throwing things. Now you don't know what to do! It is your money she is destroying so you cannot throw other things because that will be simply foolish. And the whole day you come home tortured by the world, you want some moments of peace, and the whole day she has been getting ready, exercising. She is ready for a fight! You come home completely defeated, and she is fresh and ready to fight. Now how can you win? And you don't want to fight at all, you want to be left alone to read your newspaper, and she throws your newspaper.

She cannot tolerate anything that you do - except Dynamic Meditation. That comes very close - that makes women afraid. I invented the Dynamic Meditation for poor men: at least one defense!

You can simply shout and jump and start hoo-hooing, and that she will understand. She will calm down and she will start agreeing with you; otherwise she is going to create trouble. That is one of the ancient feminine methods - of course she has never called it meditation. I call it meditation, to give it a religious color!

Prem Parivartan, so these are a few clues for you. If you want a peaceful life, find a homely woman and your life will be peaceful - of course without joy. You can't have both together. It will be peaceful, completely peaceful, but there will be no ecstasy in it. It will be as if you are already dead; there will be no excitement. It will be flat, like a flat tire, stuck in one place, sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass does not grow by itself. How can the grass grow under a flat tire? It is impossible! You can go on sitting and waiting, springs will come and go... That is the first possibility.

The second is: take the risk, fall in love with a beautiful woman. There will be great excitement, ecstasy, but there will be trouble too. Heaven and hell come in the same package. You will have a few heavenly moments, but they are worth - for all the hell that will follow, they are worth. And they will teach you a lesson. That's how one becomes finally a Buddha. Without the women there would have been no Buddhas; about that I am absolutely certain. There would have been no religion, no Buddhas, no Mahaviras. It is because of the woman.

Many women ask me the question, "Why women have not become enlightened?" How they can become enlightened? Who will drive them to become enlightened? That is the point. They drive men to become enlightened. Finding no other way in life, he becomes enlightened. It is simple!

I have not answered it yet, but today I thought better to say it and settle it forever. Never ask me again, "Why women don't become enlightened?" There is no need! Their function is to make people enlightened - to drive them crazy - so sooner or later they start meditating, sooner or later they want to be left alone. They are finished! Their dreams are shattered, they are disillusioned. It is the great work of woman; the whole credit goes to women.

The Buddha, the Mahavira, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, they were possible only because the woman was continuously forcing them: either become enlightened or go crazy! And they decided to become enlightened. they said, "It is better to become enlightened." It is good to pass through the experience.

So, Parivartan, choose a beautiful woman and fall whole-heartedly... don't hold anything back. The deeper you love, the sooner you will get free of it. The more passionately you go in, the more quickly you come out.

The second question:

Question 2:

Deva Sambuddha,

I ALSO SAY THIS IS IT, but when I say this is it, it has a totally different meaning. It is not the same statement as it is being made in the West. The statement in itself has no meaning of its own; the meaning comes through your experience.

Man can live on different planes. When Gautam the Buddha says "This is it!" he is using the same words as you use. The words are exactly the same and the dictionary meaning is the same, but the existential meaning is totally different; it may be even diametrically opposed to your meaning.

In the West it has become fashionable to say that this is all, to live right now is all there is. But the people who are saying it have no idea of meditativeness, have no idea of absolute silence, thoughtless awareness, they have not experienced witnessing. Hence what they are saying - "This is it" - is nothing more significant than their mind.

So if your mind is full of lust, your "this is it" will be only lust and nothing else. If your mind is full of greed, full of anger, full of jealousy, then how it can have the same meaning as it has when Chuang Tzu says "This is it"? It is not possible to have the same meaning. Meaning comes from the person, his presence, his realization.

The West has got cliches from the East. Now Zen has become very fashionable in the West, not that the West is capable yet to understand Zen. Zen, the very word "Zen", comes from dhyana. Buddha never used himself Sanskrit language; he was the first enlightened person in India who used the language of the people. That was one of the things that made the priesthood, the brahmins of India, to be antagonistic to Buddha. Amongst many things that was one of the major, because the priests of India have always used Sanskrit as their language, it was their property. And only the scholarly people could understand it; the masses were absolutely ignorant about it. Hence what was written in the scriptures was known only to the few priests, and of course through that knowledge they were powerful. And they never wanted it to be known by the masses, otherwise their power will be lost, their vested interests will be destroyed.

Buddha was the first man who dynamited their whole establishment. He used the language of the people; the language of the people in Buddha's time was Pali. In Pali, dhyana is pronounced as jhana. Because Buddha used the word jhana it changed its color. When it reached China through Bodhidharma it became CH'AN, because in Chinese jhana cannot be written; in Chinese there is no alphabet. The Chinese is a pictorial language, so the closest picture that they had which could express the word JHANA was CH'AN or CH'ANA.

And from China it reached Japan. They use the same pictorial language, but their pronunciations are different. In Japan it became Zen; in a way it came back to the original place. It came closer to Buddha's JHANA; it became Zen.

Now the West has not yet understood what it is all about, but Zen has an appeal for the simple reason because it is very absurd, illogical, paradoxical. And the West has become fed up with logical philosophies - with Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein - it has become fed up. From Aristotle to Wittgenstein, two thousand years of logical thinking has not led anywhere except to a point where West feels that life is absolutely meaningless and accidental. Now this is the right situation for any illogical philosophy to become fashionable.

The western painting has become illogical. You can see it in Picasso, Dali, Cezanne and other painters: the painting has become absolutely illogical, absurd. The poetry has become illogical - Ezra Pound and others. You can read it, but you will not find any meaning in it. The novels, the plays, all other art forms have taken a turn; they have become very illogical. This illogicalness is the outcome of two thousand years of logical effort which has completely failed: it has not provided any significance and meaning to man's life.

In the same flood of illogicalness, Zen also has become influential, but the reasons for its influence are totally different. It is not that the West has experienced meditation - it is simply a reaction against logic that Zen has become a great appeal. The absurd anecdotes. the absurd lives of the Zen Masters - seems to be appealing because it has no logical construction.

A great Zen Master, Ryokan, is known in Japan as the Great Fool - a great Master, of the same caliber as Buddha, is known as the Great Fool for the simple reason because his whole life was absurd, unpredictable. If you ask him a question he may hit you on the head; if you don't ask him a question he may hit you on the head. He used to say, "Ask me a question and I will beat you; don't ask me a question and I will beat you!" He used to throw his disciples...

Once he cut one of his disciples' finger with a knife, and when the finger was cut and the disciple was in deep agony, he said, "This is it!" And in that moment the disciple became enlightened - because he was meditating for twenty years. Don't forget those twenty years! In the West those twenty years are completely forgotten. Those twenty years have brought this climax. At the right moment the Master gave the last push. He wanted to bring him to the present, and cutting the finger is so painful that you cannot think of the past, you cannot think of the future, you cannot fantasize any more.

For a moment everything stops. It is like an electric shock - you are suddenly herenow. But those twenty years of meditation had created a different quality: the shock became a satori. Just by cutting somebody's finger, you cannot make him enlightened, but Ryokan did the miracle.

Ryokan lived in such a way that anybody will call him a fool, an idiot, and he enjoyed the word "idiot" very much; he himself used to call himself an idiot. He will forget his robe, will reach to the marketplace naked - with his shoes on! He will forget about everything.

He had written a list of things that he has to take when he goes out, and he has pasted the list on the door so that he can look at the list, that what things he had to carry: his staff, his robes, the shoes, the cap. And even this was written: "Where you have to put the cap - on the head." Otherwise he will forget, he may put the shoes on the head! But still the same thing continued - because he will forget to read the list.

This Ryokan helped many people to become enlightened. His illogical ways, his absurd methods proved of tremendous help. Now in the West people will love Ryokan; they will feel at ease with him.

They are fed up with Aristotle. Aristotle has become "Aristotlitis" - a great disease! They don't want to do anything with Aristotle; they want something more alive, something more paradoxical because life is paradox; it is not logic.

Remember it, that life is not logical and cannot be understood by just logic. Life is far more than logic, far bigger than logic. It is not arithmetic. So there are planes to understand.

The West is not yet capable of being herenow; he has only heard the word. And there are different motives why the western youth, particularly the new generation, has become infatuated with Zen-like things. The Third World War is gathering around. Life seems to be very fragile; it had never been so before. Wars have always been there - in three thousand years we have fought five thousand wars - so war is not a new thing, but something new has happened. The Third World War will be the last war, it will be a total war. It will destroy not only humanity but all life from the earth. And the clouds are becoming darker and coming closer every day. It is creating a great fear. The western new generation is freaking out.

And now because the world can end, the whole future Zen seems to be appealing: Live here and live now because there is no future. Tomorrow may never arrive. This is a totally different reason why West has become interested in right now.

Sambuddha, this has to be remembered: the motive is different. The eastern mystics, from Buddha to Ryokan, were talking about the beauty of now-here for totally different reasons. Not that there is no future - there is infinite future, eternity - but the future never comes. All that comes is now; now is the only reality. When future comes, it also comes in the form of now. When tomorrow comes it will come as today, so you have to learn the art of being here, living today, because tomorrow will come but it will also be another today. And if you know how to live THIS day you will know how to live that day which will be coming. This was a totally different vision.

These are the four planes which have to be understood. First is the body. On the bodily plane, the man who lives identified with the body, if he says, "This is it," he will only mean food and sex and nothing else. His "this is it" will contain only of two things, food and sex, which are not very different either. Food is nourishment for you; you cannot survive without food. And sex is nourishment for the coming generations; they cannot survive without sex. Your parents' sex has created you, your sex will create your children. The society needs sex as food; it is food, it is survival for the society, just as food is your survival.

Food and sex are deeply connected. Hence it always happens if somebody starts controlling sex, becomes a celibate, he will start eating more; he will substitute his sexuality by food. It almost always happens when women get married they start becoming fatter, for the simple reason that before marriage they are interested in sex, after marriage they become fed up with it. They start feeling as if the man is exploiting their bodies. Reluctantly they go into it, but they are fed up. Then their interest changes towards food.

And the people who starve themselves for any reason - maybe naturopathy, dieting, or some religious reason, fasting - the people who will starve themselves will become full of sexual fantasies.

Hence Jain monks are more full of sexual fantasies than anybody else, because of the fasting. It is a natural change: their energy starts moving from one pole to another.

Sambuddha, anybody who knows only his body, his "this is it" simply means food and sex. That's what is happening in institutes like Esalen - food and sex. That's what is happening all over America.

Sambuddha comes from America.

The second plane is mind. With food and sex you can have pleasure and pain. On the body level, if your body is satisfied, you will have a pleasant feeling; if it is not satisfied you will feel pain. The second phenomenon above the body is mind. Mind goes a little higher than pleasure; it starts experiencing happiness and unhappiness. With body there is only duality, food and sex, only two dimensions; with mind there are many dimensions. Mind opens up a greater world: music, poetry, painting, dance, et cetera, et cetera. It opens up many dimensions; you can enjoy more.

With the first you are just like an animal; your "this is it" will be nothing but animalistic. With the second, if you know that you are more than the body, higher than the body, you will have many dimensions, more richness. You become human, you rise above animals. When you say, "This is it," now it will be music, poetry, painting, dance; it will have a totally different meaning.

On the third plane is the soul, the self. With the body the duality; with the mind, manyness, multitude; with soul only oneness, and that is meditation. You will know the real meaning of "this is it" only when you arrive at the third point.

And with the fourth... In the East we have called it the fourth, simply "the fourth", TURIYA; we have not given it any name because no name is possible, it is inexpressible. With the fourth, TURIYA, there is neither two nor many nor one. You can call it either wholeness or nothingness. Buddha used the word "nothingness", Isa Upanishad uses the word "wholeness"; they mean the same thing.

The zero symbolizes both, nothing and the whole. This is the state of bliss, ecstasy.

On the body level pleasure is opposed by pain; on the mind level happiness is opposed by unhappiness; on the soul level joy is opposed by misery. But on the fourth, bliss is not opposed by anything; bliss has no polar opposite to it.

Where you are on these four planes will make the difference. When I say, "This is it," I am talking from the fourth plane. And when in America, in the institutes like Esalen, people are talking about "this is it," they are talking about the first plane, the body.

You ask me, IN THE WEST, MUCH IS MADE OF THE EXPERIENCE THAT "THIS IS IT," THAT NOTHING CAN BE DIFFERENT THAN IT IS - RIGHT NOW!

Yes, nothing can be different than it is, but you can be different. The world is the same - to the Buddha, to the enlightened, to the unenlightened - but you are different and that makes the difference. That's the difference that makes the difference. The world is the same - Buddha moves here, you move here, gods live here, dogs live here - it is the same world. But because their awareness is different, their depth and height is different, their "this is it" will be different too, their now will also be different.

So when I am talking about now, my "now" contains THIS and THAT both. When in the West people are talking about now, their now only contains "this".

Remember what the Isa Upanishad says: This is whole. That is whole. The whole comes from the whole, still the whole remains behind.

This is the fourth state, TURIYA, the ultimate state beyond which nothing happens. Unless you have reached to it, Sambuddha, you are living at the copper mine. You have to move to the silver mine, then to the gold mine, and then to the diamond mine, and then to the beyond.

The third question:

Question 3:

Virendra,

CHANGE your mind!

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Swami Nityananda Giri,

IT is NATURAL - it is because of your vow. Nobody can change one's life by force. The vow simply is a violent act against yourself. It will only repress your sex, and the repressed will take revenge; it will come on again and again and again. You will push it from one door, it will enter from another door. You cannot get rid of it so easily, so cheaply.

Just the other day, Morarji Desai revealed that when he was the prime minister he had visited a nightclub in Canada, just to find out what was going on there. Now, why he should be interested in a nightclub? And whatsoever is going on there, why he is interested in it? At the age of eighty-two!

And he had kept it a secret up to now; he never revealed it before.

A repressed sexuality will haunt you to the very end of your life. Even when you will be dying you will be having sexual fantasies.

Swami Nityananda Giri, it is still time - beware! Life is never changed by vows, life is changed by awareness. Never take a vow; the vow simply means that you are forcing something upon yourself.

Try to understand. When there is understanding there is no need to take a vow; your understanding is enough. You see something is wrong and it drops.

Seeing is enough, understanding is enough; no other discipline is ever needed. Whenever you need some other discipline it means your understanding is lacking, something is missing in your understanding. You are trying to compensate your understanding by taking a vow, but the very taking of the vow shows that you are afraid of your sexuality. Then it will come, then it is bound to come.

And now you are asking me: WHY DO I STILL SUFFER FROM SEXUAL THOUGHTS, FANTASIES AND DREAMS?

You must be hoping that by taking a vow all this will stop. It is your vow that is causing it! If you have lived a natural life, if you have gone through the world and all its experiences of good and bad, pleasure and pain, you would have learned something; you would have come out of the world with understanding.

But for centuries the so-called saints have depended on violence. They talk about non-violence, but they go on doing violence to themselves.

"I am sick and tired of being left alone every weekend," growled the golf widow at breakfast one Saturday. "If you think you are going out to play today..."

"Nonsense, dear," the husband interrupted, reaching for the toast. "Golf is the furthest thing from my mind. Please pass the putter."

If you just force things they will erupt, they will come back.

A seventy year-old man went to see the doctor.

"I have been in practice for twenty-five years," the doctor told him, "and I have never heard of such a complaint What do you mean, your virility is too high?"

The septuagenarian sighed. Pointing to his head, he said, "It is all in my mind."

"The virility has gone too high - it's all in my mind."

Now, Nityananda Giri, you have taken a vow. Your sexuality is repressed at its natural center: it has reached in your head, and that is far more dangerous because it will poison your head. Now in dreams, in thoughts, in fantasies it will come.

Just go for a fast one day and you will see what I mean - you will think of food the whole day.

Ordinarily you don't think about the food at all; the food is not a problem. When you feel hungry you eat, and then all is forgotten. But go for a fast, and suddenly food becomes your obsession. It is a simple psychological fact.

But religious people have been really stupid: simple facts they go on denying, and they can always rationalize. They will say, "It is because of your past lives' bad karmas that, Nityananda Gin, you are still suffering from sexual thoughts." They will tell you to practice yoga, stand on your head, and all kinds of nonsense.

Just the last week I was reading about one yogi, Dhirendra Brahmachari, who goes on showing his yoga postures on the television. And he was telling the last week to his audience that, "Do you know how I remain so healthy? I am pulling my anus upwards right now, but you cannot see it because I am wearing clothes." And then he told that his disciple, one girl who sits by his side to show yoga postures, "She is also holding her anus upwards, but you cannot see because she is wearing the clothes."

The girl must have gone red! It is good that India has not yet gone for color TV - in black and white you cannot see whether the girl is blushing or not. But then you have to do all kinds of nonsense things. Now pulling your anus upwards will simply force your sexual energy to go into your head; that's what its purpose is. It is trying to bring the sexuality towards the head, and you will be more in a danger.

And that's the purpose of SIRSHASANA, headstand. Standing on your head, the basic purpose is to force your sexual energy to go towards your head. Because of gravitation, if you stand on your head naturally your sexual energy starts moving towards the head. But how long you can stand on your head? Sooner or later you will have to stand on your feet.

And this messing around with centers is one of the problems all the religions have been facing.

Gurdjieff, one of the great Masters of this age, used to say that man has become so ugly for the simple reason because none of his centers is functioning in a natural way; every center is being interfered with by other centers, they have all become entangled. His whole effort was how to disentangle them, how to bring the energy to each center that belongs to it.

And that's my effort here too: to bring the energy to the right center, where it belongs. When all your centers are functioning naturally you will have a deep silence in you, you will have a subtle harmony in your being; a joy will surround you.

Nityananda Giri, you must have lived according to the old, traditional way; your name shows that.

Gin is one of the most ancient traditions of Hindu sannyasins; you will have to come out of it. You will have to come out of your orthodoxy, out of your superstitions.

An elderly spinster went to see her doctor and complained that her sleep was being disturbed by dreams of a young man who was constantly following her and flirting with her.

The doctor prescribed some pills, but a couple of weeks later she was back.

"What is the matter now?" he asked gently. "You are sleeping better now, aren't you?"

"No," she said, "Now I can't sleep because I miss that young man so much!"

Life cannot be avoided easily. The only way to go beyond is to go through. Life is an opportunity to grow - don't avoid it. If you avoid it you will remain retarded.

Now what is happening to you cannot happen to any of my sannyasins, it is impossible - because my sannyasins are living naturally, accepting whatsoever God has given. He knows better than you.

If he has given you a sexuality, then it means that there is something to be learned through it. It is your creative energy - don't repress it. Refine it, certainly, make it as pure as possible, because it is your sexual energy which will create many things in your life.

This is a well known fact, that great poets naturally find that they are transcending their sexuality.

Great painters, great dancers, great musicians have always found it to go beyond sex very easily - but not the so-called monks and the saints. They have found just the opposite: the more they have tried, the more they were disillusioned, the more they got deeper into the mess.

This fact has to be meditated upon. A musician creates music, hence his sexual energy is used in a non-sexual way. A dancer creates dance, he need not create children. He becomes a creator of something higher - what is the need to create the lower? Even animals can create children; that is nothing special to man. In fact, animals are far more productive - even mosquitoes can defeat you!

That is nothing special to you.

Now there are two ways: either repress sex - as has been done by all the so-called religious traditions of the world - or transform it.

I am for transformation, hence I teach my sannyasins to be creative. Create music, create poetry, create painting, create pottery, sculpture - create something! Whatsoever you do, do it with great creativeness, bring something new into existence, and your sex will be fulfilled on a higher plane and there will be no repression. Let your sex become more and more love and less and less lust.

And then finally let your love also become a little higher - that is prayer. Lust is the lowest form of sex, love higher than sex, and prayer is the ultimate transformation.

The meditative person can transform his sexuality without any antagonism. without any conflict. He is in deep friendship with all his energies, sexual or others; he is not in any fight. Why fight with your own energies? Love them, rejoice in them, and help them to transcend the lower forms, the animal forms. Let them move from the body towards the turiya, the fourth.

This is a total!y different process. That's why I am so much opposed, because I am against all the repressive traditions, all the so-called moral, puritanistic stupidities. I simply call them stupid. I am not a polite person. If a spade is there I call it a spade - in fact, a fucking spade! I want to be clear and straightforward. Two plus two is four to me, neither more nor less.

A Rajneesh sannyasin went to visit an old friend living in a big town. The only lodging he could find was in a very dilapidated hotel. The receptionist told him he would have to share a double bed and take his breakfast - toast, jam and coffee - upstairs with him that night.

He entered the room and was surprised to find a gorgeous blonde lying naked on the bed, fast asleep. He prepared himself for bed, said his prayers and lay down to sleep.

Fifteen minutes later, he turned over and looked in the direction of the beautiful girl. "Should I or shouldn't l? No! I must not!" he said to himself, and turned over and tried to sleep.

Half an hour later he turned around again, looked towards the girl and said to himself, "No, I must not! I won't! It is not proper!" So he turned over again and went back to sleep.

But after half an hour he sat up and said out loud, "I just can't resist any more. I don't care whether I am breaking any rules or not." So he got up, walked over to the foot of the bed, then poured his coffee, buttered his toast... and ate his breakfast!

This is possible only to a Rajneesh sannyasin.

Nityananda Giri, to you it will be very difficult, impossible!

Once a Zen Master was asked, "What sort of sex life do monks get?"

The Zen Master said, "Nun!"

Don't repress, try to understand your sexual energy. And you will be surprised, immensely surprised, that it is not your enemy, it is your friend. It is not a curse, it is a blessing, because it is the source of all your creativity. Have you known any impotent person to be creative? Have you known any impotent person to create great music, painting. poetry? And why the so-called monks down the ages have not been creative? They have not contributed anything to the earth, they have not enriched the earth. They have not been a blessing; on the contrary, they have proved a curse. Why? - because being repressive of their sexuality they became uncreative, they cannot create.

Creativity is sexual, basically sexual. When the painter gets lost into his painting it is the same orgasmic joy that two lovers have when they meet and merge into each other; for a moment they are no more separate. The painter gets the same joy, longer, deeper, far more profound, when he is lost with the painting. A dancer comes to the highest point...

Hence my emphasis on dance and music here in my commune. I want everybody to be a dancer, a singer, for the simple reason because that is the most natural, spontaneous way of transforming your sex. When the dancer is completely lost, when there is only dance and no dancer left, he experiences the greatest orgasm, more total than any sexual orgasm can ever be.

Nityananda Giri, if you accept your sexuality, if you embrace it with deep love and gratitude towards God, knowing that it his gift so that there must be something in it which has to be discovered... it is not to be rejected. Rejecting it will make you uncreative, and the uncreative person remains a miserable life. That's why your saints look so sad, with such long faces, almost dead and stinking.

Look again - look again into your own being, into your own existence, and you are in for a great surprise.

A man was asked by his wife to bring home a live chicken for a special meal she was going to prepare. He bought the chicken after work and was on his way home when he realized that he had forgotten his front door key. He knew his wife would not be home for a few more hours, so he decided to pass the time by going to the cinema.

He could not carry the chicken inside so he stuffed it down the front of his trousers, then bought a ticket and went in. He sat down towards the front of the cinema, next to two old ladies. He soon became very engrossed in the film and did not notice that the chicken had poked its head through his fly buttons.

"Winifred," whispered one of the old ladies, nudging her friend. "Look at that big thing poking through this guy's fly!"

Winifred grunted, "Ah, Millie, when you've seen one, you've seen them all!"

"I know that," replied Millie, "but have you ever seen one that eats popcorn?"