Zorba The Buddha

The first question

Question 1:

Rashid,

THE MOST DIFFICULT THING IN LIFE IS TO DROP THE past - because to drop the past means to drop the whole identity, to drop the whole personality. It is to drop yourself. You are nothing but your past, you are nothing but your conditionings.

It is not like dropping clothes - it is as if one's skin is being peeled off. Your past is all that you know you are. Dropping is difficult, arduous - the most difficult thing in life.

But those who can dare to drop it, only they live. Others simply pretend to live, others simply go on dragging themselves somehow. They don't have any vitality - they can't have. They live at the minimum. And to live at the minimum is to miss the whole thing.

It is only when you live at the optimum of your potential that blossoming happens. It is only at the optimum expression of your being, of your truth, that God arrives - that you start feeling the presence of the divine.

The more you disappear, the more you feel the presence of the divine. But the presence will be felt only later on. The first condition to be fulfilled is disappearing. It is a kind of death.

Hence, Rashid, it is difficult. And conditioning has gone very deep - because you have been conditioned from the very beginning; from the first moment you were born, conditioning started. By the time you became alert, a little aware, it had already reached to the deepest core of your being. Unless you penetrate yourself to this deepest core that was not conditioned at all, that was before conditioning started, unless you become that silent and that innocent, you will never know who you are.

You will know you are a Hindu, a Christian, a communist. You will know you are an Indian, a Chinese, a Japanese, and you will know many things - but those things are just con-ditionings imposed upon you. You had come into the world utterly silent, pure, innocent. Your innocence was absolute.

Meditation means to penetrate to that core, to that innermost core. Zen people call it KNOWING THE ORIGINAL FACE.

This conditioning has to be understood first. Because of this conditioning you have lost something essential, something natural, something spontaneous in you. You are no more a human being, you only appear to be one. You have become a humanoid.

The humanoid is a being who is incapable of knowing himself, who has no idea who he is. A,l his ideas about himself are borrowed; they are given to him by other humanoids.

The humanoid is incapable of mobilizing his own intentions; he has no more capacity to will, to be. He is a dependent phenomenon; he has lost his freedom. This in essence is his psychopathology.

And the whole of humanity today is psychopathological. The people who look normal to you are not normal at all. This whole earth has become a great madhouse. But because the whole earth is a madhouse, it is difficult to see. People everywhere are just like you, so you think you are normal and they are normal.

It is very rare that a normal person happens in this world - this world does not allow the normal to happen. Buddha is normal, Jesus is normal, Mohammed is normal. But they look abnormal because they are such a small minority.

The majority is pathological. And this majority is very decisive. It crucifies Jesus, it poisons Socrates, it kills Mansoor.

The humanoid is one who cannot will for himself, who is always looking for authorities, who always needs somebody ELSE to tell him what to do. He is ready to obey: he is never ready to choose. That's what Pythagoras wants you to do, and all the great Masters of the world: choose, will, be a light unto yourself.

The humanoid cannot will for himself because he has never learnt to do so. That's why, Rashid, you say:

RIGHT NOW, HERE, I COULD DRINK YOU, SHARE IN YOUR BUDDHAHOOD.

BUT I DON'T.

Because you cannot will on your own, you cannot choose on your own. You have become utterly dependent. The humanoid cannot will for himself because he has never been taught to do so. The incapacity to will for oneself is not a genetic trait. It is not in the least an inherited inability; rather, it is an achieved inability.

You were born to see the truth, you were capable. Each child is able to see God, to communicate with existence, to will - but we hinder him. Slowly slowly, all the doors are closed. Slowly slowly, he achieves a kind of inability, a kind of impotence. And then even when he sees the doors of the prison are open, he cannot come out. He clings to the bars.

It is like a parrot who has lived so long in the cage that he has forgotten that he has wings. Leave the door open... he will not come out of it. If you try to bring him out he will cling to the bars.

That's what is happening to you, Rashid. This is your achieved inability. Especially, this inability means that the earlier rearing and education of a human being either discouraged or never gave the chance for this active willing to take place.

Parents don't allow the children to will. Then there are teachers, and those teachers are employed by the parents and the society. They are in the service of the past. The whole educational system serves the past, it does not serve you - remember it. From the kindergarten to the college, all the teachers and the professors are in the service of the past; they are there to maintain the past. They are not for you, they are not to help you, they are to condition you.

And then the priest and the politicians... they are ALL trying to condition you. Nobody wants you to be a free man, everybody wants you to be a slave - because the more you are a slave, the more easily you can be exploited. The leader will need followers. From where is he going to find followers? Unless people are slaves and in constant need of somebody to dominate them, from where is he going to find followers?

And stupid politicians dominate millions of people. The only reason is that millions of people have been reduced to such psychological slavery that they cannot move on their own. Even if they have to follow a blind person, it is better to follow him than to be alone. They have become sheep - they are no longer people, they are no longer human beings. A humanoid is a sheep, a humanoid is a herd animal.

Have you seen sheep walking? Huddling with each other, keeping themselves in the herd? Everybody is afraid. The humanoid's BASIC conditioning is that of fear. From the very beginning you have been poisoned through fear - all kinds of fear. The fear of hell, the fear of disrespectability, the fear of being a failure in the world... fears and fears and fears.

And if you follow the leaders and the priests and the pedagogues, then you have been promised all kinds of carrots. You have been promised all kinds of rewards - here and hereafter too.

The humanoid simply shows that during a person's formative years he became habituated to having someone else frame his projects, directions and purposes. Somebody did his willing for him, and did it so effectively and convincingly that he never learnt to do it for himself. A humanoid is a human being who has been intentionally denied the God-given birthright to his full human possibilities. And now this person will remain a tyrant- needing, tyrant-seeking humanoid for the remainder of his life - unless he becomes part of a Buddhafield and is awakened from his sleep.

That awakening is satori, that awakening is samadhi, that awakening is enlightenment.

The Master cannot give you anything that you don't already have. The Master simply takes the conditionings away from you and leaves you alone as you were born. He makes you a child again: that is the whole purpose of a Master.

But this cannot be imposed on you, Rashid. You will have to be courageous enough to drop the conditioning. Great guts will be needed. But you have shown courage already by becoming a sannyasin. You have shown courage already by being here in my presence, to be with me.

Just a little more.... And once you start dropping your conditionings you will become aware of your wings. And those wings can take you to the ultimate reality: the flight of the alone to the alone. But there you can go only as an innocent being - unconditioned, utterly disidentified from the past.

I know you CAN drink me right now. Nobody is preventing you. I am inviting you. The whole situation is supportive.

Still you say: I DON'T. DAY AFTER DAY, I DON'T.

Only you can do it. It cannot be done on your behalf - because to do it on your behalf will again help your humanoid to remain. This thing you have to do! You have not done a thing before: this thing you have to do, however long it takes. But I am not going to do it for you. I will make it more and more tempting, seductive, but you will have to act.

That will be the first act of freedom in your life. And the first step is half the journey - the other half is very easy, it comes of its own accord.

Once the devils were having a conference on how to destroy the world fast but easily.

They put their heads and tails together to think.

At last there was a stir in the assembly and all eyes were turned to Anger who stood up to speak. "Let me go and destroy the world," he said. "I will set brother against brother. I will make men angry with each other and they will destroy themselves."

But the leader of the devils was not satisfied. Lust stood up to speak next: 'I will defile men's minds. I will make love disappear and men will be turned into beasts."

Shaking his head disgustedly at the answer, Greed spoke up: "Allow me to go and I will instill in men's hearts the most destructive of all passions. Man's own uncontrolled desires will destroy him."

The twins, Gluttony and Drunkenness, told how they could make men's bodies diseased and their minds besotted. Envy, Jealousy and Hate each told how he could destroy man.

Idleness claimed he could do the job.

But with none of these was the leader satisfied. Finally, his last assistant spoke up. This one said, "I shall talk to man persuasively in terms of all that God wants him to be. I shall tell him how fine his plans are to be honest, clean and brave. I shall encourage him in the good purpose of his life."

The leader was aghast at such a talk, but the assistant continued, "However, I shall tell man there is no hurry, he can do all of these things tomorrow. I shall advise him to wait until conditions become more favourable before he starts."

The leader of the devils was pleased. He said, "You are the one who shall go on earth to destroy man."

Whenever your mind says "Tomorrow..." remember, the mind is functioning as the devil.

The moment is now and here. Never postpone it - postponement becomes an addiction.

And the most destructive thing in life is the idea of tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes.

One goes on postponing... and instead of tomorrow, death comes one day. And then it is too late.

Rashid, no more postponing. This is the only moment you have CERTAINLY got - the next moment is not certain. This moment has to be lived in its totality.

The second question

Question 2:

Krishna Prem,

I TEACH A NEW MAN, a new humanity, a new concept of being in the world. I proclaim HOMO NOVUS. The old man is dying, and there is no need to help it survive any more. The old man is on the deathbed: don't mourn for it - help it to die. Because only with the death of the old can the new be born. The cessation of the old is the beginning of the new.

My message to humanity is a new man. Less than that won't do. Not something modified, not something continuous with the past, but utterly discontinuous.

Man has lived up to now not truly, not authentically; man has lived a very pseudo life.

Man has lived in great pathology, man has lived in great disease. And there is no need to live in this pathology - we can come out of the prison, because the prison is made by our own hands. We are in the prison because we have decided to be in the prison - because we have believed that the prison is not a prison but our home.

My message to humanity is: Enough is enough. Awake! See what man has done to man himself. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars. You cannot call this humanity healthy. And only once in a while has a Buddha bloomed. If in the garden only once in a while a plant brings a flower, and otherwise the whole garden remains without flowers, will you call it a garden? Something very basic has gone wrong. Each person is born to be a Buddha: less than that is not going to fulfill you.

I declare to you your Buddhahood.

But what has gone wrong? Why has man lived for thousands of years in a kind of hell?

For thousands of years we have lived with an either/or concept of man as a kind of battleground between the lower and the higher, the material and the spiritual, the worldly and the other-worldly, between good and evil, between God and the Devil. The consequences of such have severely limited human potential.

To destroy man, to destroy his power, a great strategy has been used - and that is to divide man in two. Man has lived with the concept of either/or: either be a materialist or be a spiritualist. You have been told you cannot be both. Either be the body or be the soul - you have been taught you cannot be both.

This has been the root cause of man's misery. A man divided against himself is going to remain in hell. Heaven is born when man is no more divided against himself. Man split means misery and man integrated means bliss.

Up to now, humanity has been schizophrenic - because you have been told to repress, to reject, to deny, many parts of your natural being. And by rejecting them, by denying them, you cannot destroy them - they simply go underground. They go on functioning from your unconsCious; they become really more dangerous.

Man is an organic whole. And all that God has given to man has to be used; nothing has to be denied. Man can become an orchestra; all that is needed is the art of creating a harmony within oneself.

But your so-called religions have been teaching you ways of disharmony, ways of discord, ways of conflict. And when you are fighting with yourself you go on dissipating your energy. You remain dull, unintelligent, stupid - because without great energy nobody is ever intelligent. When energy overflows there is intelligence. Energy overflowing is what causes intelligence to grow. And man has lived in an inward poverty.

My message to humanity is: Create a new man - unsplit, integrated, whole.

Buddha is not whole, neither is Zorba the Greek. Both are half and half. I love Zorba, I love Buddha. But when I look into the deepest core of Zorba something is missing: he has no soul. When I look into Buddha something again is missing: he has no body.

A great meeting I teach: the meeting of Zorba and Buddha. I teach ZORBA THE BUDDHA - a new synthesis. The meeting of the earth and the sky, the meeting of the visible and the invisible, the meeting of all the polarities - of man and woman, of day and night, of summer and winter, of sex and samadhi. Only in that meeting will a new man arrive on the earth.

My sannyasins, my people, are the first rays of that new man, of that HOMO NOVUS.

The inner division has led humanity into a state of suicide. It has created only slaves - and slaves CAN'T really live, they have nothing to live for. They are living for others.

They have been reduced to machines - skillful, efficient, but a machine is a machine.

And the machine cannot have the joy of living. It cannot celebrate, it can only suffer.

The old religions believed in renunciation. Renunciation has been a curse. I bring a blessing to you: I teach rejoicing, not renunciation. The world has not to be renounced, because God has not renounced it - why should you? God IS... why should you be out of it?

Live it in its totality - and living life in totality brings transcendence. Then the meeting of the earth and the sky is tremendously beautiful; there is nothing wrong. Then the polarities disappear into each other and the polar opposites become complementaries.

But the old man was not really human. He was a humanoid, a HOMO MECHANICUS - a man who is not really whole. And the man who is not whole can never be holy.

The new man is coming, arriving, every day. He is in a minority, it is natural - but the new mutants have arrived, the new seeds have arrived. And this century, the end of this century, is going to see either the death of all humanity or the birth of a new human being.

And it all depends on you. If you remain clinging to the old, then the old man has prepared in every way to commit a great suicide, a universal suicide. The old man is ready to die; the old man has lost the zest to live.

That's why all the countries are preparing for war. And the Third World War will be a total war. Nobody is going to be a winner, because nobody is going to survive it. Not only is man going to be destroyed but all life on earth.

Beware! Beware of your politicians - they are all suicidal. Beware of the old conditioning which divides you as Indians, as Germans, as Japanese, as Americans. The new man has to be universal. He will transcend all barriers of race, religion, sex, colour.

The new man will not be of the East or of the West; the new man will claim the whole earth as his home.

Only then can humanity survive - and not only survive - with the coming of a new concept of man.... The old is the concept of either/or: the new will be both/and. Man has to live a rich life outwards and a rich life inwards; there is no need to choose. The inner life is not against the outer life; they are part of one rhythm.

YOU need not be poor on the outside just to be rich in the inside. And you need not be rich on the outside and drop being rich in the inside. That's how it has been up to now - the West has chosen one way: Be rich on the outside! The East has chosen another: Be rich on the inside! Both are lopsided. Both have suffered, both are suffering.

I teach you total richness. Be rich on the outside through science, and be rich in your innermost core through religion. And that's what will make you one, organic, individuals.

The new man is no battle ground, no split personality, but an image of man unified, unique, fully synergic with life in its totality. The new man embodies a more viable, mutant image of man, a new way of being in the cosmos, a qualitatively different way of perceiving and experiencing reality. So please don't mourn the passing of the old. Rejoice that the old is dying, the night is dying, and the dawn is on the horizon.

I am glad, utterly glad, that the traditional man is disappearing - that the old churches are becoming ruins, that the old temples are deserted. I am IMMENSELY glad that the old morality is falling flat on the ground.

This is a very great crisis. If we take the challenge, this is an opportunity to create the new. It has never been so ripe at any time in the past. You are living in one of the MOST beautiful ages - because the old is disappearing, or has disappeared, and a chaos is created. And it is only out of chaos that great stars are born.

You have the opportunity to create a cosmos again. This is an opportunity that comes only once in a while - very rare. You are fortunate to be alive in these critical times. Use the opportunity to create the new man.

And to create the new man you have to begin with yourself.

The new man will be a mystic, a poet, a scientist, all together. He will not look at life through old rotten divisions. He will be a mystic, because he will feel the presence of God. He will be a poet, because he will celebrate the presence of God. And he will be a scientist, because he will search into this presence through scientific methodology. When a man is all these three together, the man is whole.

That is my concept of a holy man.

The old man was repressive, aggressive. The old man was bound to be aggressive because repression always brings aggression. The new man will be spontaneous, creative.

The old man lived through ideologies. The new man will live not through ideologies, not through moralities, but through consciousness. The new man will live through awareness.

The new man will be responsible - responsible to himself and to existence. The new man will not be moral in the old sense; he will be amoral.

The new man brings a new world with him. Right now the new man is bound to be a mutant minority - but he is the carrier of a new culture, the seed. Help him. Announce his arrival from the housetops: that is my message to you.

The new man is open and honest. He is transparently real, authentic and self-disclosing.

He will not be a hypocrite. He will not live through goals: he will live herenow. He will know only one time, now, and only one space, here. And through that presence he will know what God is.

Rejoice! The new man is coming, the old is going. The old is already on the cross, and the new is already on the horizon. Rejoice! I say again and again, Rejoice!

The third question

Question 3:

Sir,

DO YOU SEE ANYBODY NUDE HERE? Are you utterly blind? I teach truth - truth is bound to be nude. Truth cannot hide itself. I don't teach nudity: I certainly teach nude souls. And your clothes sometimes become a hindrance; they hide, they become defences.

Once in a while, whenever the opportunity is possible and nobody is disturbed by your being nude, be nude. I am not telling you to go nude in the marketplace, but whenever the opportunity arrives and whenever you can be nude in the sun and in the wind and in the rain, be. Just by dropping the clothes you will feel a tremendous liberation - because your clothes are representative of your civilization, of your conditionings.

Your clothes are not just clothes - they are hiding you from everybody else's eyes. And it is good sometimes to be with the birds and with the animals and with the trees, just as they are, utterly nude. I am not saying go to your office nude or sit in your shop nude. But I certainly say to you that if once in a while you cannot be nude and natural, you will miss something of immense value.

But why has the question arisen in you? You should ask God why he creates nude people.

He does not send you with clothes. He has not learnt yet that man is afraid of being nude.

Miss Winklethrop was a sweet old lady, but marriage had passed her by and she lived alone except for her friends the fishes. All over the house in bowls and tanks, they flipped and swished and glittered in and out of the rocks and weed. Even the bathtub was alive with hundreds of her delicate friends.

One day, the vicar came to call and, upon seeing the exotic bathtub, he exclaimed, "But, Miss Winklethrop, what do you do when you want a bath?"

She coloured slightly and said, "Oh, Vicar, it is all right. I blindfold them!"

I have heard about a nun who used to take her baths with her clothes on. Somebody asked her, "What is the matter with you?"

She said, "It is simple. I have heard that God goes on looking at you wherever you go - and I can't be nude before God."

If you can't be nude even before God, then what kind of ugliness are you carrying within yourself?

But please don't misunderstand me. I am not telling you to be nude twenty-four hours a day; that will be an extreme. Mahavira did that - he lived nude twenty-four hours a day for forty years. I don't teach that kind of extremism - because when it is cold, don't be nude. And when you are functioning in the society where clothes are respected, don't be nude. But I cannot tell you to take your bath with clothes on - that is another extreme.

I teach simplicity and I teach the golden mean. But you must be hearing something else.

You must have seen some nude pictures from the ashram. A few people come here and they look all around... particularly Indians because they are very much interested in nude bodies. They have not seen - they are poor people - they have not seen the beauty of a nude body, the beautiful contours of a nude body. They are too much obsessed. They come here, they look all around, and they feel a little frustrated because they don't see anybody nude.

You must have come with that idea. Yes, nudity sometimes happens in the therapy groups, because therapy groups are meant to destroy all your hypocrisy. And dropping your clothes is a great step in dropping your hypocrisy. Dropping your clothes is a great step in accepting your body as it is.

Why are you so much afraid of dropping your clothes?

Many people have ugly bodies. And the reason why they have ugly bodies is because they have never allowed their bodies natural growth. And clothes are a good strategy to hide your ugly bodies behind. People are afraid of being nude because they know their bodies don't look good. They don't accept their bodies.

Dropping your clothes sometimes gives you a great acceptance of your body. And dropping your clothes will help you to have a beautiful body too - because then you will start contemplating about it. You have not even seen your own body in total nudity, so you are not aware of what you are doing with your body - that you are eating too much or that you are not eating enough, that your ways of life are unhealthy.

It is perfectly good to be nude - perfectly good to be nude with friends, perfectly good to be nude in your family with your children, because if small children know the bodies of their parents from the very beginning they will never become obsessed. They will never become obsessed with anybody's body; they will have a totally different kind of approach. They KNOW what bodies are - they have known their mother, they have known their father, their brothers. But even that is impossible.

In deep love relationships one should be nude! - with friends, with family. Once in a while it is tremendously helpful; it brings you closer to nature.

But when I say these things you are there with your minds to interpret. You don't listen to what I say - you have your prejudices and you go on listening through your prejudices.

You are deaf. Your prejudices and your old ideas are clamouring in your mind.

Three nuns were walking along the street and one was describing with her hands the tremendous grapefruit she'd seen in Florida.

The second one, also with her hands, described the huge bananas she'd seen in Jamaica.

The third nun, a little deaf, asked, "Father who?"

I say one thing, I talk about the grapefruit, and you ask, "Father who?" Your mind is full of garbage. Although you call that garbage very sacred, maybe - but cowdung is cow- dung. Whether you call it holy cowdung or not does not matter. Your minds are full of cowdung.

And it is because of these minds that you cannot understand me, what I am saying. What I am saying is very simple! If you drop your prejudices, if you put your ideas a little bit aside and you listen silently, the truth of what I am saying will be self-evident.

The whole of nature is nude except man. And by your clothes you have become disconnected from nature. It is of tremendous significance sometimes to be nude on the beach and to lie down in the sand under the sun, and feel the sand with your whole body and the sun with your whole body. Sometimes it is utterly beautiful to dance nude under the stars, so that you can again feel the cosmic rhythm that surrounds you, the cosmic vibe.

But we have made a totally plastic world. We are surrounded not by God's nature but by man-made clothes. We live not with trees but great huge ugly cement structures. We move not on the naked earth but on coal-tar roads, cement roads.

We have created a world around ourselves and we have cut ourselves off from nature. We have become uprooted - and this uprootedness is one of the basic causes of your misery.

Become rooted again into the soil.

The future of humanity will depend on it. We should bring nature BACK into our lives.

When you are sitting by the side of a river, it is a totally different phenomenon from when you are sitting by a swimming pool. The swimming pool has no life in it, it has no flow, it is dull, it is dead. When you are in the mountains it is a totally different world.

It will be easier for you to understand Pythagoras and Buddha and Zorba and me if you go to the mountains, to the rivers, to the trees. But the trees won't understand your clothes - the trees will laugh at you.

I have heard about a great Zen Master. The emperor of Japan went to see him - he had heard that the Master lived totally nude. The emperor thought maybe he had no clothes, so he prepared, ordered the best clothes possible. He took beautiful velvet clothes and gowns studded with diamonds as a present to the naked fakir.

The Master started laughing. He said, "Thank you for your present, but you will have to take it back."

The emperor said, "Why?"

The Master said, "You know, I am the only human being here. All my friends are trees and birds and animals - they will laugh at me, they will think I have gone mad. They are all nude, they understand nudity. They won't understand these beautiful clothes, they won't understand these diamonds, they won't understand at all. And if I wear these clothes they will not only laugh at me and they will not only ridicule me - they will start going away from me. We will lose contact. You please take your clothes back."

If you live in the mountains and if the weather allows you, be nude. And that will give you a tremendously new thrill. A new life will surge up in you.

In a better world, we will learn more and more to be nude. Clothes should be used for comfort, not for any other reason. Clothes should be used for convenience, not for any other reason. Clothes have no morality in them!

The fourth question

Question 4:

Vivarto,

WILLIAM BLAKE is RIGHT. He is one of the greatest mystic poets of the world - he cannot be wrong. He is right when he says, "The way of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." But the name of the palace of wisdom is 'the golden mean'. The way of excess LEADS to the golden mean.

And I am not saying, neither is Pythagoras saying, to be cunning and cowards. All that is meant is: remember that the goal is the golden mean. In excess you are already living, and this is not your first life either. You have lived long, many many lives, in the ways of excess. You have lived long enough - when are you going to awaken?

Have you not lived in the ways of excess? Sometimes eating too much, sometimes fasting; sometimes indulging, sometimes renouncing - everybody has been doing that. If you had stopped doing that, you would have become enlightened already. Why are you still unenlightened? Because of the excess.

You go on moving like a pendulum of an old clock - from right to left, from left to right - and you go on moving. Remember, when you go to one extreme, you are getting momentum, gathering momentum, to go to the other extreme. And this goes on and on...

this is a vicious circle.

Pythagoras is talking to the seekers; Pythagoras is talking to the disciples, as I am talking to the disciples. A disciple is one who has become tired of the ways of the world and wants to have a new perspective, wants to have a new insight.

Yes, Blake is right - but Pythagoras is not wrong! You have been living according to Blake up to now. Now don't go on moving in the same vicious circle for ever and for ever. "The way of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." Where is the palace of wisdom?

And you have lived on the way of excess long enough! You must have arrived by now.

Maybe your life is of extremes, but it is unaware.

Become aware of your extremes. Bring awareness to your life and your acts, and slowly slowly you will see the extremes are disappearing. The pendulum is not moving so fast, is slowing down. Its swings are not as big as before - smaller swings. And, slowly slowly, one day the pendulum has stopped exactly in the middle. And when the pendulum stops in the middle, you enter into eternity. When the pendulum stops, the clock stops, time stops: you enter into eternity.

William Blake is right, but Pythagoras is far more right. William Blake talks only about the path: Pythagoras is telling you something about the goal.

And Blake says, "Man never knows what is enough before he knows what is too much."

But have you not known yet what is too much? Contemplate over it. Don't make Blake an excuse - otherwise you are being cunning. Have you not lived in the extremes, continuously moving from one polarity to the other? How long do you want to live in it to know? And just by living it, do you think you will know? You will have to introduce something: you will have to introduce contemplation, meditation. And then only will you be able to know what is too much and what is too little.

Meditation brings balance. And balance is beauty, and balance is music, and balance is God.

In the East, all the great words that we have used for the ultimate are made from a root meaning 'balance'. Samadhi: it comes from SAM - SAM means balance. SANGEET, music - again it comes from sam, balance. SAMBODHI, enlightenment - it comes from SAM. SAM means balance. Balance is samadhi, balance ' is enlightenment.

You have lived enough to know what is enough and what is too much. But, Vivarto, you want to find some excuse to continue the way you have been living up to now.

YOU SAY: I BELIEVE THAT THE GOLDEN MEAN IS THE WAY FOR THOSE WHO ARE ALREADY IN THE TRUTH.

Those who are already in the truth, they don't need any way. They have arrived. Don't be clever, don't be diplomatic with me. Don't try to find ways to escape from the truth. The way is not for those who have arrived - obviously. They don't need any way. The way is for those who have not yet arrived.

And you say: BUT FOR A SEEKER IT SEEMS TO BE THE WAY OF CUNNINGNESS AND COWARDICE.

It is not. It is the way of consciousness, not of cunningness and cowardice - because to be cowardly is again one extreme. The so-called brave and the so-called coward are extremes. And so is cunningness an extreme - the other extreme of simplicity.

The golden mean is neither bravery nor cowardice - it is awareness. It is neither cunningness nor simplicity - it is awareness. It is always awareness: the taste of the golden mean is that of awareness.

Pythagoras is not saying to you, "Impose some character upon yourself." He is simply saying, "Be watchful. See how you go on moving from one extreme to another." Watch...

and watching, you will find the golden mean of your own accord. It has not to be learnt from somebody else. It will arise in your own being, it will be a discovery.

The fifth question

Question 5:

OUR LOVE is ALWAYS CONTAMINATED BY FEAR. The wife is afraid of the husband, the husband is afraid of the wife. The children are afraid of the parents, the parents are afraid of the children. We live in fear. Even in love, fear continues to poison our relationships.

You ask: I AM VERY MUCH AFRAID OF MY WIFE. WHY?

Who is not? Have you come across a person who is not afraid of his wife? Everybody is - - because we don't know how to love without fear.

Love has to be learnt, it is an art. It needs great intelligence. You don't love; that's why there is fear. If love is there, love dispels all fear. If fear is there, that simply shows your love is bogus - it must be something else pretending to be love. It may be lust pretending to be love. Yes, lust is bound to remain afraid, because lust means you are exploiting the woman, you are using the woman. And the fear is always there: she may leave you. She may deny you, she may say no. And because it is only lust, a sexual lust, you are always afraid that if she says no then your sexual needs will not be fulfilled And women become very very clever about it. The moment they see that the husband is sexually interested they start withdrawing. Because they don't want to be used as means; they don't want to be reduced to commodities! They resist, they fight.

I have heard:

One eighty-year-old man met in a summer resort with a woman of the same age. They fell in love. It can't happen in India - it must have happened in America. In India even young people don't fall in love. In America even eighty-year-olds fall in love. Both situations are ugly. A young man not falling in love is ugly, an eighty-year-old man falling in love is ugly. The young man not falling in love shows that he is not young, and the old man falling in love, an eighty-year-old, simply shows he is not yet a grown-up.

They fell in love, they got married. The first night, the old man took the old woman's hand, pressed it lovingly; for a few minutes they were holding each other's hands and pressing, and then they went to sleep. That was their honeymoon.

Next day, the old man pressed, but not so long.

The third day, when he. was just going to press the old woman's hand, she said, "But today I have a headache."

Even pressing hands.... Nobody wants to be used. The greatest humiliation in life is to be used. And because you are using your women, that's why you are afraid. And they keep you in fear. If you use them, you will remain in fear. If you use them, they will torture you in every possible way. They will take revenge.

This is how it has been up to now. You will have to understand more about love. Love never uses the other. Love shares - but the other is not used, never. And then fear disappears.

Love is not really a need, but an overflowing. When you need somebody, you cling.

When you cling you are afraid. Clinging is always out of fear - and the other knows that you are clinging, and the other starts exploiting the situation. And the other is also clinging. The woman is afraid the husband may leave, the husband is afraid the woman may leave. They are both in constant fear, in jealousy, watching, guarding each other.

Husbands and wives turn into enemies rather than friends.

Mulla Nasruddin was talking to his doctor. The doctor said, "Nasruddin, you confess that you are bad-tempered. I suppose I need not tell you that science has discovered that your bad temper is caused by an ugly little microbe."

Mulla Nasruddin said, "For heaven's sake, speak quietly. She's sitting in the next room."

Husbands and wives live in fear, and the whole relationship has gone poisonous. And because this is one of the most fundamental relationships of life, the whole life is poisoned by its poison. Children will come out of your marriage, and your marriage is already bitter, sour. The children will come out of it and from the very beginning they will carry the shadows.

Marriage is the most fundamental institution. Out of it everything grows. It is the centralmost one of the society, the central core. It has to be transformed. It is ugly. It is not yet out of love that people get married, but for other reasons - financial, social, religious - and there are a thousand and one reasons.

If you are in love with somebody then the basic requirement is: make the other as free as possible - because if you make the other free, only then can you have freedom. And in freedom, fear disappears. Fear is part of bondage.

Desk attendant to man checking into hospital with a black eye and several other minor injuries: "Married?"

"No, automobile accident."

The marriage that happens to be here on the earth today is almost an automobile accident.

It is not yet a flowering of two beings in togetherness. It is almost a calamity. We have to change the whole foundation. People should not get married too early; they should experience as many love relationships as possible BEFORE they decide to get married.

The first love is really great, because it is the first - otherwise it is very dangerous. It is the first so it is very romantic, but the romance will disappear soon. It is not going to become a stable foundation; it is not going to become your true marriage.

A man, before he decides to get married, should have known many women. And the woman should have known many men. Only then can you choose, only then can you feel with whom you are in tune. Only then can you understand with whom you start soaring high. But, down the ages, we have not allowed this.

A great experience of other people is needed before you can become committed. But now our ideology is still pretechnological. It was dangerous in the past, because the woman may have got pregnant and there would have been trouble for the woman, for the family, for her whole life. That's why there has never been a question of the man remaining virgin before he gets married. But for the woman it has been an absolute requirement all over the world to be a virgin.

Why this double standard? Why should the woman be a virgin? And why not the man?

They say, "Boys are boys..." And girls are not girls?

It was simply because there was no technological protection for the woman. Now the protection is there. After the invention of fire, the pill is the greatest invention in the world. And the greatest revolutionaries are nothing compared to the revolution that the pill has brought into the world. You may not be aware but the pill has changed the whole world - because it has changed the whole sexual code.

You are living in a post-technological age. You need not carry pre-technological ideologies; they are all harmful. They were needed once, they are no more needed. They are hampering your progress; they are unnecessary burdens. You are carrying them for NO reason and getting disturbed in your life.

Men and women should meet, know each other, and there should be no hurry to get married. Slowly slowly, you will learn the art of love, and you will learn the ways of being with people, and you will also learn with whom there is a spiritual affinity .

Marriage is a spiritual affair, not a physical phenomenon - no, not at all. It is a spiritual at-one-ment. When you start feeling with some woman or with some man that a great music is arising something of the beyond penetrates. only then get settled. Otherwise there should be no hurry.

You ask me: AND NOTHING IS WRONG WITH HER.

Nothing is wrong with anybody else in the world. I see a beautiful man and a beautiful woman, and both are beautiful separately. Together, both are ugly. Something goes wrong; they don't fit. The man is beautiful, the woman is beautiful, but the marriage is ugly. They don't fit; they are not meant for each other.

And when the marriage goes ugly, they both start becoming ugly, slowly slowly. I have never come across an ugly person - all persons are beautiful. But they need beautiful relationships to go on growing in their beauty, to go on bringing new flowers, new songs.

You say; SHE IS ONE OF THE MOST PERFECT WOMEN THAT ONE COULD EVER FIND.

That may be so - if you say it, I believe you. Otherwise, perfect people are nowhere to be found. Perfect people don't exist. Imperfection is part of life, a very essential part of life.

The moment somebody becomes perfect, he starts disappearing from life.

That's why we say Buddhas are never born again - they became perfect, they need not come back. They have learnt all that was to be learnt here on the earth; they need not become embodied again.

You say your wife is as perfect a woman as one can ever find. She may be a moralist, she may be a perfectionist - but a perfectionist is a totally different thing from one who is perfect. A perfectionist is a neurotic person - and neurosis can hide behind perfectionism very easily. And women tend to become perfectionists, because they are not allowed any other kind of domination.

For centuries, man has dominated in every other way - economically, socially, politically, religiously. Everywhere he is in domination. He has not left any way for the woman to dominate; she had to invent her own ways.

Every woman becomes a moralist, a perfectionist. That is her strategy, her politics, to dominate you. She will not allow you to smoke cigarettes because it is wrong; she will not allow you to drink - it is wrong. She will not allow you to eat this and that - it is wrong. She will not allow you anything! That is her way of dominating you.

If women are allowed all the other possible ways to compete with men in the world, they will not be perfectionists any more. That's what is happening in the West: the women have started smoking themselves. They had never done it before; they were always against the husband smoking. Now they are smoking themselves. What has happened?

That was the only possible way for them to be in control.

And remember, that may be the reason why you are afraid - because she is a perfectionist. She may be creating great guilt in you that you are not worthy of her. That is her strategy: beware of it. That is a very subtle trick to dominate and possess.

Two young men were discussing the usual subject: girls. "I'm looking for a girl," said one, "who does not drink, smoke or have any bad habits."

And when you find her," asked the other guy, "what in the hell are you going to do with her?"

If you can find a perfect woman you will be in trouble. She will not be human; she will be very inhuman in her demands. And you will look like a worm, ugly, compared to her.

That is the whole joy of the puritan, the moralist.

Your so-called saints are enjoying ego trips. They are ready to sacrifice everything and go through any asceticism just to torture you, to show you that you are ugly, that you are immoral, that you are sinners. Their whole joy consists in one thing: how to prove that they are saints. And whatsoever you demand, they are ready to do it. Just go on fulfilling one thing: go on believing that they are saints. They are ready to do ANY stupid thing you demand.

There was a Christian saint, and then a great sect arose behind him. The saint use to beat himself every day in the morning for his sins. Of course, he was respected very much, and many followers gathered. And BEATING oneself became the most important thing in that sect. And the greatest person was the one who would beat himself the most, who would make wounds on his body, who would torture himself. He would be the greatest saint. Now, look at the stupidity.

But people are ready to go on a fast, to starve themselves. to be naked in the cold - to do ANYTHING! - if you give them respect, if you fulfill their egos.

This is very cunning politics. And because women have no other way to dominate, they dominate through perfectionism. But the basic thing is that you have not loved the woman yet, and you have not allowed the woman to love you either. The relationship is of fear. And you also must be making her afraid: this is your side of the story. I don't know the other story - her side. You must be making her afraid, also, in subtle ways threatening her.

Drop all these games. Life is short, and love is valuable. Don't miss the opportunity of being in deep intimate love - because it is only love that opens the doors to prayer.

The last question

Question 6:

Geetam,

UP TO NOW THAT HAS BEEN THE CASE. Remember it - it should not happen after me. It has been the case and there is every possibility that it will be the case.

Why does it happen? Why, always, does every life-affirmative religion turn into a life- negative religion? There is a deep cause for it.

When the Master is alive he lives a life of yes - because he is not in any need of dominating you. He is a Master of himself; he needs nobody else as a support for his Mastery. Even if he is alone he is a Master, he is an emperor. He does not need followers.

He has the treasure, the kingdom of God. He lives affirmatively, he rejoices, he celebrates. His life is a dance, a song; his life is poetic. His life has the fragrance of the flowers, and the beauty of the trees, and the silence of the mountains, and the joy of the lovers.

He has accepted himself. He has known his wholeness - and in knowing your wholeness, all that is destructive and negative disappears, is absorbed by the positive. Even noes become yes. The Master is numinous: God has nodded yes to him, God is with him.

Once the Master is gone, the problem will arise. Somebody will become the successor:

unless the successor himself is enlightened, which is not always the case.... It happened with Jesus - the successors were not enlightened people. They were great scholars, very erudite ones. They did great work in creating the church. But the church was not created by enlightened people; the church was created after three hundred years had passed.

In these three hundred years the light has disappeared completely. Now the only way to dominate people is to create life-negative religion. The priest can dominate only by creating a life-negative religion. Tell people this is wrong, that is wrong - and the more DON'TS you say, the more you make them afraid, guilty. And whenever somebody is guilty it is easy to dominate him.

Celibacy enters into almost all religions for a single reason: sex is such a tremendous power that nobody can really succeed in repressing it. You can succeed in transcending it.

But you cannot succeed in repressing it. So that has been the trick: teach people celibacy, and you know they will never be able to succeed. And when they fail, again and again they will feel guilty. When they fail again and again, they will lose self-confidence; when they fail again and again, they will become hypocrites. And they will know how ugly they are, what great sinners they are. They will know that they are one thing from the outside, and just the opposite from the inside.

And the priest can also be certain that the people who are trying to be celibates must be finding some vicarious way to fulfill their sex desire - if not in actuality then at least in fantasy. The priest can be certain that you cannot raise your eyes in front of him. You will feel ashamed - and your very shame is his power.

Celibacy is life-negative. It is saying NO to life. because sex is the source of life. And when you say no to life it is almost impossible to repress the desire. It goes on coming, and again. again - from this side to that side, it finds its ways. It creates perversions. But a perverted person becomes more and more self-condemnatory.

The parish priest couldn't resist the pretty young girl. She was reciting her confession, and it was all too much for him. He told her to come with him to his room. There, he placed his arm around her.

"Did the young man do this to you." he asked. "Yes. Father, and worse," the girl replied.

"Hmm," said the priest. He kissed her. ' Did he do this?" "Yes, Father, and worse," the girl said.

"Did he do this?" the priest passionately hugged the girl.

"Yes, Father, and worse," said the girl.

By this time, the priest was thoroughly aroused. He pulled the girl down onto the rug and made love. to her, breathing heavily as he asked, "Did he manage to do this?"

"Yes, Father, and worse," said the girl.

When the priest had finished with the girl, he asked, "He did this too, and worse? My dear daughter, what worse could he have done?"

"Well," the shy young girl said, "I think, Father, that he's given me gonorrhea."

Your so-called celibates and your so-called monks and priests and Fathers, they are bound to find some backdoors to life. And I am not saying that anything is wrong in finding the backdoors. The wrong thing is that they have closed their front door - there is no need. Their hypocrisy is absolutely unnecessary. They should be authentic - and only an authentic person can transcend.

Sex can be transcended. And then there comes a totally different quality in your life. A CELIBACY ARISES but it is not imposed. It is not your effort, it is God's gift. It comes out of deep experience of life - you become more and more ripe, and one day suddenly sex looks like a childish phenomenon. It is. It appears that it is possible only when you are unaware. when you live in the darkness of unconsciousness.

When some light has arisen in you and your heart is enkindled, it starts disappearing just as darkness disappears when you bring light in. But that is a totally different phenomenon.

We have given it a beautiful name in the East, we call it BRAHMACHARYA.

BRAHMACHARYA cannot be translated by the world 'celibacy'. Celibacy is repression of sex - sex is there boiling within you. Brahmacharya is transcendence of sex: you have become so mature that the toys that you used to play with are no more relevant to your consciousness - they have dropped of their own accord.

The word 'BRAHMACHARYA' means living like God. Literally it means 'behaving like God', 'living as God's grace'. It is a totally different phenomenon.

The Master lives in that grace. But when the Master is gone, politicians arrive on the scene - competitors who want to succeed, who want to dominate the disciples, who want power. And they can have power only if they start destroying your natural flow. Destroy the natural flow of a person and he will always be in your power, under your domination; he will always be a slave to you.

Pervert any person's natural being, and then he can never assert his freedom. The priest has known it, down the ages, and he has used it. It is a very ugly device.

Geetam, it is true that only after three centuries was celibacy introduced amongst the followers of Jesus. It was not possible for three centuries because people had remembered Jesus - something of his fragrance was still around. He was still alive in a few people's hearts. But, slowly slowly, the fragrance disappears. It happens after each Master, And a very strange thing happens then. After Christ, a Christianity arises which is absolutely against Christ. After Buddha, a Buddhism is born which is absolutely against Buddha. This is the strangest phenomenon in the world.

You can decide: whatsoever Christianity teaches, you can decide a PRIORI that Jesus must have taught just the opposite of it. The priest is bound to go against the enlightened person, even though he claims that he follows him. The priest is a totally different kind of person - his whole desire is to dominate. He is a politician in disguise.

This can happen here too, Geetam - unless my sannyasins are very alert, very aware.

Unless you go on persisting in being life-affirmative. It was more possible with Jesus because whatsoever he said was only aurally remembered - to change it was easy.

Whatsoever I am saying will not be remembered aurally. It will be there. And I am saying it so clearly that to pervert it will be almost impossible. It is not that you can drop one sentence here and there. You will have to burn all my books - only then will you be able to pervert my life-affirmative teaching.

I affirm life in its totality. The whole of life is good, the whole of life is holy, sacred.