Love is Always Virgin

The first question

Question 1:

Deva Yachana,

MAN IS A THREE-STOREYED BUILDING: one body, the mind and the soul. The body contains only the body. The mind contains body and mind both. And the soul contains all the three. The higher implies the lower, but not vice versa: the lower does not imply the higher.

This is one of the fundamental laws to be remembered. If you work on the higher, the lower will be automatically solved. If you work on the lower, the higher will not be automatically solved.

Spirit contains all the three dimensions of your being. That's why I say my concern is your spiritual growth - because it contains your totality. To be concerned with your psychological growth will leave the most essential and the highest part of you outside.

And then there are many more problems.

Mind is a multiplicity; mind means the many. Millions of problems are there. If you start solving each single problem it will take millions of lives - even then you cannot be certain that you have solved the mind problems.

Greed is there, anger is there, lust is there, jealousy is there... and so on and so forth. If you solve one it will take years and years; and even then nothing is solved. If you try to solve your anger, if you want to grow beyond your anger, at the psychological stage what can you do? At the most you can repress it - because awareness belongs to the spiritual realm. At the psychological level you can only fight. You can choose: you can repress one part against the other, but the repressed part is not dying. In fact, the more it is repressed, the more alive it will become - because it will be going closer and closer to the source of your energies and it will be getting more nourishment. And you can repress anger, but it will find some outlet from the backdoor. You cannot transform this way.

That's where Western psychology is lost - lost in a chaos. Small problems are not being solved, very small problems. It takes years and years of psychoanalysis... then too nothing is solved. At the most you can do only a kind of window-dressing, a whitewashing. You give the patient a better mask to wear, but his original face remains the same.

Western psychology has failed.

The Eastern approach goes far deeper. It does not try to cut the foliage of a tree: it cuts the very roots. And to cut the very roots is to destroy the tree. If you go on pruning the leaves - that's what psychological work means: pruning the leaves - you are not going to destroy the tree at all. On the contrary, the more you prune it, the thicker the foliage will become. You cut one branch and three branches will come - because the tree will take the challenge that you are going to destroy it. Each and everything tries to survive. And when there is danger, the tree will make every effort to survive. That's what happens.

If you want to drop your anger, you become angrier than before. If you want to drop your sexuality, you become more and more sexual than before. That's what has happened to millions of people. They want to get out of the prison of sex; they make all kinds of efforts. Their desire is good; they are sincere people, but misguided. They start fighting with sex, and sexuality retaliates with a vengeance. These people become more sexual than ordinary people, their whole mind becomes full of sex. They think of sex, they dream of sex, and they are continuously fighting. The more they fight, the more they give energy to the enemy - because the more and more they become focussed on the enemy.

They cannot be off-guard.

This has happened down the centuries. You can see the monks, your so-called mahatmas, your so-called saints - their minds are ugly. And the reason is not that they are not sincere people; the reason is that they have started from a wrong end.

"I think we should treat not the symptoms but the real problem." This was the approach of the Southern planter just after the Civil War. This gentleman of the old school found his wife in the arms of her lover and, mad with rage, killed her with his revolver.

A jury of his Southern peers had brought in a verdict of justifiable homicide, and he was about to leave the courtroom a free man when the judge stopped him. "Just a point of personal curiosity, sir, if you are willing to clear it up."

In reply, the gentleman bowed.

"Why did you shoot your wife instead of her lover?"

"Sir," he replied, "I decided it was better to shoot a woman once than a different man each week."

If you try to change your mind, you will have to shoot a different man each week. It is better to shoot the woman and be finished with it.

That's why I say my concern is not your psychological growth but your spiritual growth.

Spiritual growth means growth of awareness; it means nothing else. Becoming more and more alert. Becoming a light unto yourself. And when you are a light unto yourself, darkness starts disappearing of its own accord.

The man of awareness cannot be angry - that is impossible, because to be angry the basic requirement is to be unaware. Try it, and you will be very much surprised. Try to be angry AND aware - you will not be able to manage; nobody has ever been able to manage it. It is impossible. It is not in the very nature of things.

When you are aware, anger will disappear. If you lose awareness, anger will appear. Both are not possible - just as light and darkness cannot exist together; they cannot have a co- existence. Why can light and darkness not exist together? Because darkness has no substance in it; darkness has no existence in it. It is nothing but the absence of light, so how can absence and presence exist together? If light is there then absence cannot exist.

If absence exists, light cannot be present there.

Awareness is a single solution to all the problems.

Greed cannot exist when you are aware - why? Because when you are aware, you are aware that you are the ultimate bliss, that you have the whole kingdom of God within you. What more can you desire, what greed? It will be utterly stupid. Greed exists in the person when he is not aware of his own kingdom. when he is not aware that he is a born emperor, and lives like a beggar.

The moment that you become aware that you have all the treasures of the world in you, that nothing is missing, how can greed exist? Greed means you know your inner poverty and you go on accumulating. Greed means you know that you are poor and you have to be rich.

The man of awareness becomes alert that he is rich already! and there is no possibility of becoming richer. He is divine! Greed cannot exist when you know that you are divine.

How can anger exist with a man who is aware? From where does anger come? Anger is a wound in the ego. When your ego is hurt, you become angry. But the man of awareness knows there is no ego at all - now, how can wounds happen to something which is found no more?

You escape from a rope in the night thinking it is a snake; you run, you are frightened to death. And then somebody laughs, takes hold of you - tells you, "It is not a snake, it is a rope! Come with me and we will take a lamp and we will see." You go with the person, still afraid, still ready to escape in case it is not a rope but a snake. But the closer you come, the better you see... yoU start laughing. Now, can you be afraid when you have seen that it is a rope?

And it is not that when you had thought it was a snake your fear was unreal - it was absolutely real. It was almost like a heart attack. You were trembling, suffocating, out of breath. You might have died of fear, it was so real. But there was no real snake!

An unreal snake can create real fear. And that's how it is happening: an unreal ego can create real anger. You feel offended and anger arises. When the light of awareness is inside you, you know there is no ego - there is no snake. Simply anger disappears. And how can you be afraid when you are aware? In awareness it is known that you will never die because you were never born, that birth and death are just on the surface, at the deepest core of your being you are deathless. Then fear disappears.

Yachana, you became worried when I said that I am not concerned with your psychological growth - because what is psychological growth? Helping you not to be angry, helping you not to be an egoist, helping you not to be afraid - that is psychological growth.

Spiritual growth means: helping you to be aware. And a single medicine cures all the illnesses.

And if we go on working on the surface, it may appear that you are changing, but deep down you remain unchanging. It may appear that you are attaining to some psychological maturity, but it will be only skin-deep. Scratch a little and you will find the same old man there.

Once a patient was treated by a psychoanalyst because he thought he was a popcorn.

Finally, after years of intensive analytic work, success was there. In the final session, the psychoanalyst asked him once who he was and he replied, "A man, of course!"

Five minutes after he had left the office, the patient came rushing in, terrified. "Doctor, doctor, you should have told me that there are chickens outside. I barely escaped them!

"But you know you are not a popcorn, don't you?"

"Sure I do - but what about the chickens?"

All your psychological work will be just on the surface. You will appear as if you have changed. but that will be only an appearance. Any real situation will bring your real face Lack again. This is not transformation: this is just consolation. And I am not concerned with consoling you.

My effort here is to transmute you to let you become some thing utterly new that you have never dreamt about yourself. Something immensely valuable is hidden in you - that has to be discovered. That is your soul.

And unless you discover that hidden source of all life, you will only be playing games - psychological games. physiological games. Yoga got lost in physiological games. Your so-called yogis are only doing physiological exercises. They have their own benefits, I cannot deny it. They will make you healthier, but that health remains of the body. And the body will be gone when death comes, and with the body all your yoga postures too!

And the whole effort that you had made will be lost.

Psychology and psychoanalysis have become too much focussed on the mind of man.

Mind is not your real core. It is just a bridge between the body and the soul, and a very fragile bridge it is. It is a very non-substantial phenomenon, because it consists only of thoughts. Behind the mind there is your reality - you can call it soul spirit, God or whatsoever you will.

My concern here is to help you to penetrate to that core. Once you have known that everything will settle in your life - because with that awareness you will be watchful of the body and you will be watchful of the mind, and all that is ugly will simply disappear.

That is the miracle of spiritual experiences: all that is ugly simply disappears, and all that is beautiful is enhanced. The evil disappears and the good is enhanced. The world and the worldly desires are no more relevant to you - a totally new dimension opens up.

The second question

Question 2:

Shivanand,

MEDITATION is A STATE OF NO-MIND. Meditation is a state of pure consciousness with no content. Ordinarily, your consciousness is too much full of rubbish, just like a mirror covered with dust. The mind is a constant traffic: thoughts are moving, desires are moving, memories are moving, ambitions are moving - it is a constant traffic! day in, day out. Even when you are asleep the mind is functioning, it is dreaming. It is still thinking; it is still in worries and anxieties. It is preparing for the next day; an underground preparation is going on.

This is the state of no meditation - just the opposite is meditation. When there is no traffic and thinking has ceased, no thought moves, no desire stirs, you are utterly silent - that silence is meditation. And in that silence truth is known, and never otherwise.

Meditation is a state of no-mind.

And you cannot find meditation through the mind because mind will perpetuate itself.

You can find meditation only by putting the mind aside, by being cool, indifferent, unidentified with the mind; by seeing the mind pass, but not getting identified with it, not thinking that "I am it."

Meditation is the awareness that "I am not the mind." When the awareness goes deeper and deeper in you, slowly slowly, a few moments arrive - moments of silence, moments of pure space, moments of transparency, moments when nothing stirs in you and everything is still. In those still moments you will know who you are, and you will know what the mystery of this existence is.

And once you have tasted those few dewdrops of nectar, great longing will arise in you to go deeper and deeper into it. Irresistible longing will arise in you, a great thirst. You will become afire!

That's what sannyas is all about. When you have tasted a few moments of silence, of joy, of meditativeness, you will like this state to become your CONSTANT state, a continuum. The desire to make meditation your whole lifestyle is what sannyas is all about.

And if a few moments are possible, then there is no problem. Slowly slowly, more and more moments will be coming. As you become skillful, as you learn the knack of not getting involved in the mind, as you learn the art of remaining aloof, away from the mind, as you learn the science of creating a distance between you and your own thoughts, more and more meditation will be showering on you. And the more it showers, the more it transforms you.

A day comes, a day of great blessings, when meditation becomes your natural state.

Mind is something unnatural; it never becomes your natural state. But meditation is a natural state - which we have lost. It is a paradise lost, but the paradise can be regained.

Look into the child's eyes, look and you will see tremendous silence, innocence. Each child comes with a meditative state, but he has to be initiated into the ways of the society - he has to be taught how to think, how to calculate, how to reason. how to argue; he has to be taught words, language, concepts. And, slowly slowly, he loses contact with his own innocence. He becomes contaminated, polluted by the society. He becomes an efficient mechanism; he is no more a man.

All that is needed is to regain that space once more. You had known it before, so when for the first time you know meditation, you will be surprised - because a great feeling will arise in you as if you have known it before. And that feeling is true: YOU HAVE known it before. You have forgotten. The diamond is lost in piles of rubbish. But if you can uncover it, you will find the diamond again - it is yours.

It cannot really be lost: it can only be forgotten. We are born as meditators, then we learn the ways of the mind. But our real nature remains hidden somewhere deep down like an undercurrent. Any day, a little digging, and you will find the source still flowing, the source of fresh waters. And the greatest joy in life is to find it.

"Buried in the deepest stratum of his unconscious, at the wellspring of man's existence, lies an immense psychological force. In pure form, it is experienced as a longing, the object of which is constantly receding from him as the horizons of his world widen throughout his growth. It begins perhaps with the infant's amazing discovery that the breast which brings it comfort is not part of himself. From that moment, longing drives the human organism to relate himself to, to comprehend, in the deepest sense to love, that which lies beyond him. This longing can become attached to many kinds of objects and pursuits. But to know it in its purity, without any object, is to know life itself. This longing is God, and to be this longing, pure and simple, without any content, is meditation."

A child is born; the child comes ready with great energy. The child is nothing but pure energy embodied. And the first thing the child has to seek and search for is the mother's breast obviously. The child is hungry. For nine months in the mother's womb the child was fed automatically; the child lived as part of the mother. Now he is cut from the mother; he has become a separate entity in himself - and the first thing, the first necessity, is to search for food. And that's how the outward journey begins.

The energy is there; the energy starts reaching outwards. And the first thing that the child wants to find is some source of food. He finds the mother's breast. It is not an accident that the woman's breast has become one of the greatest symbols to humanity. In art you will find it, in sculpture you will find it, in poetry you will find it - everywhere you will find it!

The female breast has become a focal point. Why? For what reason? Basically it is nothing but a gland, nothing but a mechanism to feed the child. But why does it haunt people? Men are interested in it; women are interested in it - why so much obsession with the breast? The reason is simple: that was the first contact of the child with the world, the first experience, the most fundamental experience. Everything else is secondary.

The first experience was that of the breast. That's why it has dominated the world of art, poetry, sculpture. Man has become obsessed with it. And so have women! They may be hiding their breasts, or they may be showing their breasts - and in fact both the processes are not very different. Hiding is a way of showing; hiding is a way of making it more interesting, more intriguing. Hiding the breast provokes the desire in the man to know how it is, what it is. The hidden breast becomes more beautiful than the naked breast. The naked breast is just a part of the body. But why has so much obsession existed about the breast? The reason is simple: it is the most fundamental experience, the first experience.

The entry into the world is through the breast. And the breast did two things: it nourished the child - and the first thing was to survive, and the breast was the food, the breast was life. And the second thing: the breast gave warmth to the child, shelter to the child, love to the child. That's why food and love have become so much associated.

Whenever a woman loves you, she prepares beautiful food for you. That is a symbolic invitation. Whenever somebody loves you, he invites you for food. Why? The food, in a subtle way, represents the breast. Food and love became associated because both were flowing for the child from the breast.

And there are very few people who are really grown-ups. Childishness remains there.

That's why the bigger the breast, the more you are interested in it. Why? A simple biological reason: because the bigger breast is a bigger source of food for the child. If the breast is very small, that simply shows the child will not survive. That's why the flat- breasted woman is unattractive - not that there is really any aesthetic reason for her unattractiveness, but there is some biological reason. She cannot be a mother to your children; that is the reason. The bigger the breast, the more motherlike she seems, the more motherly she will be. She seems to be able to give birth to children and will be able to help them to survive, and in a healthy way.

That's why whenever you are not feeling loved, you start eating too much. The people who become addicted to food are the people who are missing love. They start substituting with food. If you are really loved, you cannot eat too much. You will be surprised by this psychological discovery: that the people who are loved and are in love eat less. they eat al ways in a proportionate way. People who are not loved or are not in love eat too much, because food can do two things.

It can fill them, can give them a feeling of being full, and they are feeling very empty because love is missed. Have you not watched it? Girls when they are unmarried are not fat; once they get married, they start getting fatter and fatter, and uglier and uglier. Why?

Now there is no problem - they have attained. And once they are married, the desire for love disappears. They become settled in the routine of life, they start taking everything for granted. And familiarity breeds contempt. Husbands and wives hate each other; although they go on saying, "We love each other," they hate each other. Deep down they feel imprisoned by each other. Love disappears and people start eating too much.

Remember the relationship between love and food. But the reason is because that was the child's first experience and he was getting both the things from the same source. They became associated: a simple case of conditioned reflex.

And once the child starts groping for the mother's breast, now the journey outwards begins. He has come to know one thing: that the source of his life is outside him. That is the original fall. Now he will always think of having more money, of having more power, of having more prestige... of getting more and more people's attention, because the source of life is outside. And in fact the source of life is inside.

MEDITATION MEANS BECOMING AWARE that the source of life is inside. The body depends on the outside, true - but you are not the body alone. You don't depend on the outside. You depend on the inner world. These are the two directions: to move outwards or to move inwards. Mind is a process of moving outwards, and mind starts the day the child finds the mother's breast. That is the beginning of the mind. And mind takes you farther and farther away from yourself.

Meditation is the recognition that "There is an inner world too, and I have to search for it."

Mind is focussed on some goal, some object. Meditation is the search to know the pure longing - not the object, but the longing for the object. "What is this longing in me that wants to have much money, that wants to have great power, that wants to become famous... what is this longing in me? Who is this longing in me? What is its nature?"

To know this longing is meditation. And to know it in its purity is to know God. Longing without any content, pure longing, just the flame without any smoke, is God. Meditation brings you to God, because it brings you to your innermost core. And when you start moving inwards, the circle is complete.

You become mature only when meditation has started; otherwise you remain childish.

Your toys may go on changing - small children are playing with small toys, and big children, aged children, elderly children, are playing with big toys - but there is no qualitative difference.

You can see... sometimes your child will do it. He will stand on the table when you are sitting at the side on the chair, and he will say, "Look, Daddy, I am bigger than you." He is standing higher, on the table, and he says, "Look, I am bigger than you," and you laugh at him. But what are you doing? When you have more money, just watch how you walk.

You are saying to all the neighbours, "Look! I am bigger than you." Or when you become a president of a country, or a prime minister, look how you walk, with what haughtiness, with what ego. You are telling everybody, "I have defeated you all. I am sitting on the biggest chair." These are the same games! From your childhood to your old age, you go on playing the same games. You can play the game of Monopoly, or you can go and play the real game of monopoly in the sharemarket - it makes no difference, it is the same game just played on a bigger scale.

Once you understand it, that this is the root of your childishness, the outgoing mind....

Small children start reaching for the moon, and even the biggest scientists are trying to reach the moon - they have reached. There is not much difference.

Reaching outside, you may reach other stars but you will remain childish. Even if you reach the moon, what are you going to do there? You will be the same! With the same rubbish in your head, with all the holy cow dung that you go on carrying in your heart, you will be standing on the moon. There will be no difference at all! You can be a poor man, you can be very rich; you can be absolutely anonymous, you can be world-famous - - it makes no difference at all. Unless the mind takes a turn and starts moving inwards, unless mind takes a totally new dimension and becomes meditation....

Meditation is mind turning towards its own source.

Meditation makes you mature; meditation makes you really a grown-up. Growing in age is not really becoming a grown-up, because I see people eighty years old and still playing games, ugly games of power politics - even at the age of eighty-two, eighty-three, eighty-four! The sleep seems to be so deep. When are they going to awaken? When will they think of the inner world?

And death will take all that you have accumulated - your power, your money, your prestige. Nothing will be left. not even a trace. Your whole life will be nullified. Death will come and destroy all that you have made; death will come and prove that all your palaces were nothing but palaces made of playing cards.

Maturity is to know something in you which is deathless, to know something in you which will  transcend death - that is meditation. Mind knows the world: meditation knows God.

Mind is a way to understand the object: meditation is a way to understand the subject.

Mind is a concern with the contents, and meditation is a concern with the container - the consciousness. Mind becomes obsessed with the clouds, and meditation searches for the sky. Clouds come and go: sky remains, abides.

Search for the inner sky. And if you have found it, then you will never die. The body will die, the mind will die, but you will never die. And to know it is to know life. What you call life is not real life because it is going to die. Only a meditator knows what life is because he has reached the very source of eternity.

The third question

Question 3:

ONE THING HAS TO BE UNDERSTOOD: the ancients used to talk in metaphors, the ancients used to talk in poetic ways - and that has been misunderstood very much. We talk in scientific ways; our language has gone totally different from the ancients. The difference is as much as when you think you think in concepts, but when you dream you cannot dream in concepts - you dream in pictures. And if you are a poet, a painter, you dream not in black and white but in colour.

Ordinary people dream in black and white - poets, painters, those who know what colour is, those who are really in tune with the world of colour, are very sensitive, they dream in colour.

But in dreams you don't use logical concepts: you use pictures. That's why you need a psychoanalyst to interpret your dream, because you have completely forgotten the language of metaphor.

For example: a man dreams continuously that in the night he becomes a bird and starts flying into the sky. And he is puzzled - why? What does this dream mean? When he is awake he cannot make any sense of it. He will have to go to the psychoanalyst. In fact, there is no need to go anywhere - it is so simple.

Becoming a bird in the dream is nothing but a translation of your ambitious desires into the language of pictures. You want to rise high - simple! And you can rise high only when you have wings. There is a great desire to rise high in the world. In the dream you become a bird; the dream is simply using a poetic language.

The dream is more ancient, more primitive. The ancients have used not logical concepts but pictorial concepts. And because of this, great misunderstanding is happening. We are trained to think scientifically, mathematically, historically. The ancients were not concerned at all about these things. Their thinking was not historical: their thinking was mythological.

For example, in the East we don't know when Rama was born; whether he was really born or not - even that is not certain. We have written such beautiful stories about Rama; if we could write such beautiful stories, could we not simply note his birth-date? Was it so impossible to note his birthdate?

We don't know when Krishna was really born. And there are many many others who look almost non-historical. Why did this happen? The people who could write the Vedas and the tremendously splendrous Upanishads, the people who could compose diamonds like the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, the Bible, why could they not write historically?

They were not concerned. They had a totally different approach towards life. History is mundane, history is very ordinary - it is the concern of the newspapers. Mythology is sacred; it is not the concern of the newspapers. It is not really something that belongs to time but something that penetrates from the beyond into time. It is something miraculous.

Go into a Jaina temple and you will be surprised: the twenty-four teerthankaras, their twenty-four great Masters, great enlightened people, you will see - they all look alike!

Now, not even two persons in the world are alike, so how can twenty-four persons be so alike, exactly alike? Even Jainas cannot make any distinction, unless they look at the symbol at the bottom. The symbols were made so that you can know who is Mahavira and who is Neminath and who is Parshwanath - just to know, symbols were made.

Otherwise, the statues are exactly the same.

You will see their ears are very long, touching their shoulders - ALL twenty-four teerthankaras. What happened? It is possible, once in a while, a man may have such long ears - but twenty-four persons all having long ears? same kind of nose, same kind of eyes, same kind of body?

We are not concerned with the historical persons. We are concerned with the essential; we are concerned with the inner. These twenty-four teerthankaras were certainly different in their body forms - somebody may have been tall and somebody may have been short, and somebody may have been white and somebody may have been dark - they must have all been different, that is absolutely certain, but we are not concerned about their differences. We are concerned about something which is essential, similar in all of them - - their meditativeness .

Why the long ears? It is a symbol - a symbol of the man who has the art of listening, a symbol of the art of listening - as if the man is all ears. He is capable of listening so silently that he has heard truth, he has heard the voice of God, the still small voice within.

This is my interpretation. Jainas have their own stupid explanations.

They say a teerthankara is always born with a long ear - as if a teerthankara is a donkey or something. That is just a stupid explanation. My explanation is this: that a teerthankara is one who has heard the truth; a teerthankara is one who is so silent that he has become all ears. For example, for a moment... and you can hear all - this crow crowing, the train passing by. When all is silent, you become all ears.

How to say it? And how to say it through marble? They did well: they have made very very long ears. It is very symbolic, but it is not historical.

You will see their eyes are half closed, half open. That is symbolic: they are neither out nor in; or, the outer and the inner, the difference between the outer and the inner, has disappeared; they have transcended both. These are the three possibilities: to be out - that means mind; to be in - that means meditation, DHYANA, and to be beyond both - that means samadhi, ecstasy. That is the ultimate.

Patanjali has three words for it: DHARANA, that means to be out; DHYANA, that means to be in; and samadhi, that means to be beyond both, to be transcendental. You will find those teerthankaras with half closed eyes. Not that they were always sitting like that with half closed eyes. Walking on the road, they must have opened their eyes. Sometimes sitting silently, they must have closed their eyes. That's why there is a great conflict between the two sects of the Jainas.

DIGAMBARAS think that their eyes were closed. SWETAMBARAS think their eyes were open. And both may be right! because sometimes they must have seen Mahavira with closed eyes and sometimes with open eyes. But the artist is far truer, who has sculpted Mahavira with half open, half closed eyes - just to give an indication that now the outer and the inner have disappeared, they have transcended.

REMEMBER THIS is THE CASE with all the religions. Now, 'virgin birth' has nothing to do with biological virginity; that is utter nonsense. Jesus is not born of a biological virgin mother, but then what is meant by saying that Mary was virgin? 'Virgin' simply means utterly pure, so pure that there is no sexuality in the mind. It is not a question of the body but a question of the mind - so pure that there is no idea of sexuality.

And at the deepest core everybody is a virgin. Virginity means purity of love. Jesus must have been born out of great love. Love is always virgin. Love transcends sex - that is the meaning of virginity.

But there are foolish people everywhere; they go on insisting that "No, he WAS born of a virgin mother." They make him a laughing-stock. And because of THEIR foolishness, a great parable, a great metaphor, loses all meaning.

A mother and her daughter came to the doctor's office. The mother asked the doctor to examine her daughter. "She has been having some strange symptoms and I am worried about her," the mother said.

The doctor examined the daughter carefully, then he announced, "Madam, I believe your daughter is pregnant."

The mother gasped. "That's nonsense!" she said. "Why, my little girl has nothing whatsoever to do with men." She turned to the girl, "You don't, do you, dear?"

"No, Mumsy," said the girl. "Why, you know that I have never so much as kissed a man."

The doctor looked from mother to daughter and back again, then silently he stood up and walked to the window. He started out; he continued staring until the mother felt compelled to ask, "Doctor, is there something wrong out there?"

"No, madam," said the doctor. "It is just that the last time anything like this happened, a star appeared in the East - and I was looking to see if another one was going to show up."

Mary must have been in tremendous love; that's why she is virgin. Mary must have been so deep in love that sex was not the point at all.

Remember, you can make love to a woman without any love in your heart - then it is pure sexuality, animality; it is prostitution. You can make love to a woman with no idea of sex, then love is just a pure communication of two energies, a sharing, a dance, a celebration. No idea of sex in the mind and you can make love to a woman, and the woman can make love to you not thinking of sex at all. The whole point is where your mind is. If you are thinking of sex, if your mind is obsessed with sex, you simply want to use the woman, the woman simply wants to use you, it is ugly. It has no aesthetics in it, no poetry in it. There is nothing of the beyond in it - it is very muddy.

But the same act.... Remember, the act will be the same: when two lovers make love and when a man goes to a prostitute biologically the act is the same, but spiritually there is a tremendous difference. The man who goes to the prostitute is thinking only of sex, and the lover when he makes love to the woman has no idea of sex. It is simply a communion, coming closer and closer. Then sex happens only as a gesture of communion. It is virgin.

That's my idea of virginity. The lover always remains virgin; the lover cannot lose his virginity. And Jesus, a man like Jesus, can only come out of great love. But please try to understand the language of the ancients. It is very simple to misunderstand, because centuries have passed, words have changed their meanings. And we have forgotten that the old days were not days of scientific language but of poetic language.

For example, in the Vedas it is said that the sun comes every morning riding on his chariot, a golden chariot - of course, it is a golden chariot. Where can you find more pure gold? Early morning, and the sun rising - it is a gold chariot! the light is golden. And the Vedas say the chariot has seven horses. Now, in Sanskrit, ASHVA, the word for 'horse'

has two meanings. One meaning is the horse, the other meaning is the ray.

Sanskrit is a poetic language; each word has many meanings. In a scientific language, each word has to have only one meaning. The scientific language has to be exact. A poetic language has to be ambiguous, vague, so that one can play with words, because poetry is a play with words. If everything is fixed, then poetry will never be born.

Everything has to be liquid.

So words in Sanskrit, or old languages - Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic - all have many meanings. In fact, the word AHSVA has eleven meanings: one is the horse, another is the ray. The sun has seven rays - it is said in a poetic way that the chariot has seven horses.

Now we know, each ray has seven colours; each ray has seven rays in it. This will be a scientific explanation, but the Vedas were not written by scientists but visionaries, poets.

Poets also stumble upon the same truths, but when they express them they are expressed in a different way. In fact, poets always arrive before the scientists ever arrive, because scientists move very cautiously and poets move in a drunken way. Poets don't care about logic; poets don't move in a logical, syllogistic way - they simply jump from one point to another. And they are not afraid to be laughed at, and they are not afraid even if people think they are mad. So they always discover things before scientists discover them - almost thousands of years before. Because the scientist moves so cautiously, so slowly, step by step... he has to look into details; he has to prove something. The poet has to prove nothing: he simply asserts. Nobody asks any proof. Whatsoever happens in his intuition, he simply goes on singing it. Nobody wants any consistency, nobody wants any objective proof, nobody wants him to go and prove it in a lab. Naturally, he goes on saying things long before the scientist comes to know about it.

These are poetic expressions. You will have to understand the language of the poets.

A newly-married couple decided to spend their honeymoon as guests in a farmhouse.

When they arrived, they instructed the farmer and his wife not to disturb them, and went straight to their room.

Two days passed and they had not yet emerged, even though the farmer's wife had repeatedly offered them their meals. After one week, the amazed and exasperated farmer demanded that they should open the door and take their meal.

At this the husband replied that food would not be necessary as they were living from the fruits of love.

"Fruits of love?! " exclaimed the farmer. "That is the problem: you had better stop throwing the skins out of the window - my chickens are eating them and two have died already! " Remember always to whom you are talking, from whom the words are reaching you. The people who wrote the gospels about Jesus were more poets than scientists; they were not logicians, they were lovers. And if you try to prove everything scientifically, all that will result will be: Christ will become an unhistorical figure. Because the story says a star arose in the East, and three wise men from the East followed the star, and the star guided them to the place where Jesus was born. Now, stars don't move that way. Stars go round and round; stars cannot go in a line. If you try to prove it, scientists will laugh at you.

And stars are not born that way either.

The birth of a star takes millions and millions of years. The stars that look so small to you are not so small . They are huge, very huge; you cannot even imagine their hugeness. The earth is nothing, just a dust particle compared to the stars. Our sun is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth, and our sun is a very mediocre star. There are stars which are a million times bigger than the sun; they look small because they are very very far away, so far away that the distance cannot be measured in miles.

Scientists had to discover a new way of measuring the distance - they call it 'light year'.

In one second, light travels one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles - in ONE second.

So, if you want to know what a light year is, you will have to figure it out: one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles multiplied by sixty, then it will be one minute; multiplied again by sixty, then it will be one hour; multiplied by twenty-four, then it will be one day; multiplied by three hundred and sixty-five days, then it will be one year. One light year means that is the distance that light travels at such tremendous speed. The closest star is four light years away from us - the closest! Then there are farther and farther stars.

Up to now, millions of stars have been discovered, and that is not the end of the story but only the beginning. Scientists say that there seems to be no possibility that we will ever be able to know the exact number - because the better instruments we evolve, more and more stars go on.... And this is going on and on and on. There is no end to it.

Stars are not born like that - just to show the three wise men the way. And who are these three wise men from the East? These are just symbols. And why from the East? Again a symbol.

One day somebody asked me, "Why was Jesus not born in America today?"

I said, "For two reasons: one, you cannot find a virgin in America; second, where will you find three wise men there?"

It will be very difficult - he had chosen a right time; there were still virgins and still wise people. Three wise people from the East means that the East has always been the source of all wisdom, as far as the inner world is concerned. Why three? To represent man's three dimensionality - a trinity, trimurti, three faces of God. That's why the number three.

And why did a star show them the way? Only something mysterious, intuitive... the star is not born there in the sky; the star is born in their being. They have felt a great attraction. How have you come here? - from thousands of miles away. A star is born in you; you have felt a stirring somewhere deep down in your unconscious, of which you yourself may not be aware. A star is born! And that has guided you and has brought you here. It is not a logical process; it is a very intuitive process. The star was not born in the outer sky but the inner sky. They intuitively felt that something of tremendous importance had happened. And whenever there is born a man like Jesus, seekers from everywhere start moving.

WHEN BUDDHA WAS BORN it is said a great sage, very old, one hundred and twenty years old, immediately rushed from the Himalayas. His disciples asked, "Where are you going?" He ran! They had not even seen him WALK, because he was very old. And he didn't answer them because there was no time; he said, "No time to answer."

And the disciples followed, and he went down onto the plains. Buddha was born just very close to the Himalayas, on the border of Nepal and India. He immediately reached the king's palace. The king could not believe his eyes, because this man was not known to go anywhere. For at least fifty years he had lived in one single cave. He must have been a man like me! I have made a cave of my own - of course, it is a twentieth century cave, air-conditioned - but I go on living there, year in, year out.

Buddha's father could not believe it. He touched his feet and he said, "Why have you come? What has happened?"

And he said, "I don't have much time, because my death is approaching. That's why I had to run. Where is your child? I have come to see him."

And Buddha was just ONE day old. The moment Buddha was born, this old man started running; it took twenty-four hours for him to reach the plains. The king could not believe it, because this old man was very famous, a Master of Masters - why should he become interested in his child?

The child was brought immediately, one-day-old Buddha was brought immediately. And that old man, one hundred and twenty years old, touched Buddha's feet and started crying. The father was puzzled, the mother was shocked - "Why is he crying? Is there something wrong?" They asked him, "Why are you crying? Isn't the child going to survive? Or is there some calamity? Say it clearly - why are you crying?"

He said, "No, I am not crying because of any calamity. I am crying out of joy because I have seen; and I am crying also because I will not be able to live to see the full flowering of this man. I have seen him only in the bud - but that too is too much, to see a Buddha in the bud. I am crying out of joy, because God is born to you! And I am also crying in misery because I will not be able to see him; my days are numbered. Soon I will be leaving my body. I will not be able to see what flowering he brings to the world, what fragrance he brings to the world. And I will not be able to see that he will turn the wheel of DHAMMA - the wheel of the ultimate law. And millions and millions of people will become enlightened because of him. He has brought a light; he has brought a revolution into world. That's also why I am crying.

"But don't you be worried - be happy, rejoice!"

Now, these are parables. It may not have happened historically, but history is not our concern at all. Our concern is something MORE important, something MORE essential, something MORE eternal. History is just a procession of events in time; even if it did not happen historically, that doesn't matter. The parable is beautiful: a one-hundred-and- twenty-year-old saint bowing down to one-day-old Buddha. Age does not matter.

Awareness has no age. Ordinary formalities have to be dropped. The old man touching the feet of a child, a one-day-old child; crying out of joy - those who understand will always cry out of joy whenever they see something of immense value happening in the world. But very few will be able to see - even the father had not seen, the mother had not seen. Only those who have eyes will be able to see.

The three wise men from the East had to travel thousands of miles to see, but the people of Jesus' own country could not see. Jesus' parents had to escape from Jerusalem; they had to escape to Egypt. And Jesus could not appear back in Jerusalem. After thirty years we hear of him again, and then too he could survive only three years. The people of his own country killed him; blind people killed the man who had eyes; mad people killed one of the sanest men.

Even parents... Jesus' parents were not aware of what had happened. Three men from the East were needed to recognize him. Only those who have learnt something of meditation will be able to recognize a Buddha. When you come across a Buddha it is not easy to recognize him. It is very easy to be antagonized, it is very easy to be angered; it is very easy to be offended by his presence, because his presence makes you feel so small that it offends. His presence makes you feel so empty that it humiliates - not that he means any humiliation, but it is because of your ego that you start feeling humiliated. Your mind wants to take revenge! That's why Socrates is poisoned, Mansoor is killed, Jesus is crucified - and it has always been so. Whenever there has been a Buddha, the society has been very very inimical towards him. Even in India, even in the East, the same thing happened.

Buddha lived here, preached here, transformed thousands of people into the world of light, but Buddhism disappeared from India; it was destroyed. After Buddha died, within five hundred years, the religion was uprooted from here. The brahmins did not like the idea; the pundits, the scholars, did not like the idea - it was dangerous to their profession.

If Buddha is right, then all the priests are wrong.

If I am right, then all the priests are wrong. If I am right, then millions will be offended, because my being in the right puts them into being in a wrong space. Naturally, they cannot forgive me.

But, remember, these beautiful metaphors have to be understood with great sympathy, with great intuitiveness, with love, poetry, not with logic; otherwise, you will destroy them, you will kill them. Sometimes beautiful metaphors have been used and the religions, the so-called religions, the followers, have killed them themselves.

It is said that whenever Mohammed moved in the desert, a cloud would move just over his head to shelter him. Now, to be in the Arabian deserts is to be in fire. It is not a historical fact. No cloud will move... even men don't understand Mohammed - how will the cloud, poor cloud, understand Mohammed? Men were after Mohammed; his whole life he was escaping from one town to another town; his whole life he was always in danger, his survival was always in danger. When men were not able to understand him, how could a poor cloud understand him? So it can't be historical. But still I love it - the metaphor is beautiful.

The metaphor simply says that clouds are far more intelligent than men; it simply says even clouds understood the beauty of the man and protected him, even against the law of nature. Wherever Mohammed was going they would go - even if the wind was not going there, the cloud would go on sheltering him. It simply shows the stupidity of man is so great that even a cloud is far more intelligent.

It is said whenever Buddha came and he moved, trees would bloom out of season, trees which had been dead for long would again start sprouting green leaves. Beautiful poetry, significant poetry, lovely poetry, to be meditated upon. I don't think it is historical, but it is still significant. It may not be a fact, but it is a truth.

Facts belong to the ordinary events. The fact is that Buddha's own cousin-brother, Devadatta, tried to kill him in many ways. Once when Buddha was meditating, he threw a rock at him from the top of a hill; a great rock started rolling downwards. This is a fact, that Devadatta tried to kill Buddha, because he could not believe it: "How can Buddha become enlightened? We have played together; we have always been together in our childhood; we were educated together. If I am not enlightened how is he enlightened?"

And he declared himself enlightened, although he was not. And he would have been accepted as enlightened - if Buddha had not been there. But the presence of Buddha...

how can you declare your unenlightened being in the presence of a Buddha? It was impossible. The only problem was: how to destroy Buddha?

He released a rock. But the story is: the rock came very close to Buddha, and then changed its course. That cannot be a fact - but it is a truth. Truth is a very much higher phenomenon.

Devadatta released a mad elephant to kill Buddha. The mad elephant came ferociously, but when he reached Buddha, he looked at the Buddha, he bowed down, touched his feet.... Now, that Devadatta released a mad elephant is a fact; the other thing is not a fact.

The other thing is poetry, sheer poetry~ but of immense truth.

Remember: scriptures talk about truth; they are not history books. History books talk about facts. That's why in history books you will find Alexander the Great, and Ivan the Terrible and Adolf Hitler, and all kinds of neurotics. But Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, they are not part of the history books. For them we need a totally different approach. And it is good they are not part of history books - they are NOT part of history; they come from the beyond, they belong to the beyond. They are only for those who are ready to rise and soar to the beyond.

Meditate over this beautiful truth that Jesus is born of a virgin mother - but it is not a fact. It is certainly a truth: he is born of a mother who is utterly innocent. He is born of a mother who is in tremendous love - and love is virgin, and love is always virgin.