The poetry of the feminine

Question 1:

It is the long condemnation of feminine qualities that has gone deep into the blood and the bones of women. It is man's conspiracy to prove himself superior to women - which he is not.

Man is deep down aware of the fact that the woman has something which he does not have. In the first place the woman is attractive to him, she looks beautiful. He falls in love with the woman, the woman becomes almost an addiction to him - and that's where the trouble arises.

The feeling of dependence on women which every man feels, makes him react in such a way that he tries to manage the woman as a slave - spiritually a slave. He's also afraid because she is beautiful; ... she is beautiful not only to him - she is beautiful to whomever looks at her, to whomever comes in contact with her. Great jealousy arises in the egoist, male chauvinist mind. He has done with women what Machiavelli suggests to the politicians - marriage is politics too. Machiavelli suggests that the best way of defense is offense, and man has used the idea for centuries - centuries before Machiavelli recognized it as a basic fact in all political spheres.

Wherever there is some kind of domination, offense is certainly the best way of defense. In defense, you are already losing ground; you have already accepted yourself as the defeated side. You are just protecting yourself.

In India, hundreds of invaders have come - small groups of invaders but they conquered this vast country, which is a subcontinent, it is a world in itself. By the end of this century, one man in every four will be Indian. It is one-fourth of humanity.

In this country, there are religious scriptures like manusmriti, five-thousand years old, and they suggest that if you want to have peace in your house, giving a good beating to the woman once in a while is absolutely necessary. She should be kept almost imprisoned. And that's how she has lived - in different cultures, different countries, but her imprisonment has been almost the same.

And because man wanted to prove himself superior.... Remember, whenever you want to prove something that means you are not that thing.

A real superiority needs no proof, no evidence, no witness, no argument. A real superiority is immediately recognized by anybody who has even a small amount of intelligence.

The real superiority has its own magnetic force. Because men condemned woman - and they had to condemn her to keep her in control - they reduced her almost to a subhuman category. What fear must have led man to do this? - because it is sheer paranoia....

Man continuously compares and finds the woman superior. For example, in making love to a woman, a man is very inferior because he can have only one orgasm at a time while the woman can have at least half a dozen, a chain - multiple orgasm. Man simply feels utterly helpless. He cannot give those orgasms to the woman. And this has created one of the most miserable things in the world:

because he cannot give a multiple orgasm, he has tried not to give her even the first orgasm. The taste of the orgasm can create danger for him.

If the woman knows what orgasm is, she is bound to become aware that one orgasm is not satisfying; on the contrary, she is more thirsty. But the man is spent. So the most cunning way is not to let the woman know that anything like orgasm exists in the world.

It is only in this century that we have given recognition to a certain orgasmic state while making love. No sex manual, no treatise written on sex in the East or in the West even mentions the word orgasm. It seems to be a conspiracy. Vatsyayana, the first man in the history to write about sex energy, to explore it in a scientific way, wrote the first treatise on sexology five-thousand years ago - KAMASUTRAS, aphorisms on sex. He has gone into the subject as deeply as possible from all directions. He has not ignored the smallest detail. He describes eighty-four postures of lovemaking.

You cannot improve on it; you cannot find an eighty-fifth posture, he has done exhaustive work. But even Vatsyayana does not mention orgasm. That is simply unbelievable - that a man who inquired so deeply into sex did not come across the fact of orgasm.

No, my feeling is that he is hiding a fact - and to hide any fact is a crime, because that means you allow the false to continue as if it is the truth. And it is not an ordinary fact concerning chemistry or geography; it is something which is the most important in human life.

The experience of orgasm not only gives you the ultimate pleasure that the body is capable of, it also gives you the insight that this is not all. It opens a door. It makes you aware that you have been unnecessarily looking outside, your real treasure is within.

Meditation has been found by people who had deep orgasmic experiences. Meditation is a byproduct of orgasmic experience. There is no other way to find meditation. But orgasm brings you naturally into a state of meditation: time stops, thinking disappears, the ego is no more. You are pure energy. For the first time you understand: you are not the body and you are not the mind; you are something that transcends both - a conscious energy.

And once you enter into the realm of conscious energy, you start having the most beautiful experiences of life, the lightest, the most colorful, the most poetic, the most creative. They give you fulfillment and contentment on the one hand - as far as the body, the mind and the world are concerned.

On the other hand, they create a tremendous, divine discontentment. Because what you have experienced is great, but the very experience of it makes you certain, for no reason at all, that there must be greater experiences ahead. Before you knew anything about orgasm, you had never dreamed about it; now you know it. This is going to become an incentive to seek and search: Is there anything more juicy, more blissful, more psychedelic than any psychedelics can deliver to you?

This search led man toward meditation.

It was a simple insight into the orgasmic experience.

What happens? - time stops, thinking disappears. The feeling of I is no more there. There is a feeling of isness - pure, existential - but there is no ego attached to it. I, me, mine - they have all been left far behind. This gives you the clue for meditation. If you can manage a transcendence of time, a transcendence of mind, you will be entering into a orgasmic space alone - without a woman, without a man.

To be exactly true, meditation is non-sexual orgasm. But half of humanity has not known orgasm for centuries. And because the woman has not known orgasm, you should not think that man has been in a better position. Not giving orgasm to the woman, he has to lose his own orgasm too.

Something significant has to be understood: Man's sexuality is local, it is confined to the genitals and a sex center in the brain. But with the woman, it is different. Her sexuality is all over her body. Her whole body is sensitive, is erotic. Because man's sexuality is local, it is tiny. The woman's sexuality is something very great. Man is finished within a few seconds; the woman is not even warmed up.

Man is in such a hurry - as if he is doing some duty for which he is paid and wants to finish it quickly - making love is the same.

Why, in fact, does man bother to make love I wonder? - just two or three seconds and he is finished.

The woman was warming up and the man is finished - not that he has attained orgasm; ejaculation is not orgasm. The man turns on his side and goes to sleep. And the woman - not one woman but millions of women are crying tears after men have made love to them because they have been left in a limbo. You have encouraged them and before they can come to a conclusion, you are out of the game.

But this fact of the man finishing quickly has a very significant background; that's what I have been bringing you to. In not allowing the woman the first orgasm, he has to learn to finish as quickly as possible. So the woman has lost something tremendously beautiful, something sacred on the earth - and the man has lost.

Orgasm is not the only thing in which the woman is powerful. Everywhere in the world the woman lives five years longer than the man; her average age is five years more than the man's. That means she has more resistance, more stamina. Women are sick less than men. Women, even if they are sick, heal themselves more quickly than men. These are scientific facts.

One hundred and fifteen boys are born while one hundred girls are born. One wonders: why one and hundred fifteen? But nature knows better. By the time they are marriageable, fifteen boys will have popped off! Only one hundred boys and one hundred girls will be left. Girls don't die easily.

Women don't commit suicide as much as men; men's suicide rate is double. Although women talk about suicide more than men - man ordinarily never talks - women make much fuss about suicide but they always choose to survive because they don't use any drastic methods to kill themselves.

They choose the most comfortable and most scientific and most contemporary - sleeping pills. And strangely enough, no woman takes so many pills that it becomes impossible for her to be revived. So her suicide is not suicide but a kind of protest, a threat, a blackmail to make the husband understand that this is a warning for the future. Everybody is condemning him - the doctors, the neighbors, the relatives, the police officers. He has unnecessarily become a criminal, and everybody's sympathy is for the woman - although she was going to commit suicide.

As far as murder is concerned, the difference is vast. Man commits murder almost twenty times more; a woman, very rarely.

Women go mad less than men. Again, the proportion is the same: men go mad twice as often as women. And still, after all these facts established by science, the superstition continues that man is stronger. Only in one thing is he stronger and that is that he has a muscular body. He is a good manual worker.

Otherwise, on every point he feels - and he has felt for centuries - a deep inferiority complex. To avoid that complex, the only way is to force the woman into an inferior position. And that is the only thing that is more powerful in man: he can force the woman. He is more cruel, he is more violent, and he has forced the woman to accept an idea which is absolutely false: that she is weak.

And to prove that the woman is weak, he has to condemn all the feminine qualities. He has to say that they are all weak, and all those qualities together make the woman weak.

In fact, the woman has all the great qualities in her. And whenever a man becomes awakened, he attains to the same qualities which he has been condemning in women. The qualities that are thought to be weak are all the feminine qualities. And it is a strange fact that all the great qualities come into that category. What is left are only the brutal qualities, animal qualities.

The woman is more loving. The man has not shown greater love than the woman. Millions of women have died - they have jumped alive into the funeral pyre with their beloveds because they could not conceive of a life without their husband or friend. But don't you think it is a little weird that in ten- thousand years not a single man has dared to jump into a funeral pyre with his wife? Enough time, enough opportunity... and you are stronger. The delicate woman, the fragile woman, jumps into the funeral pyre and the stronger Mohammed Ali goes on doing his push-ups. And he is still stronger!

Strength has many dimensions. Love has its own strength. For example, to carry a child in the womb for nine months needs strength, stamina, love. No man could manage it. An artificial womb could be placed in man - now scientific technology has come to the point where man could have a plastic womb implanted but I don't think he could survive nine months! - they are both going to jump into the ocean.

It is difficult to give life to another soul, to give a body to another soul, to give a brain and mind to another soul. The woman shares wholeheartedly in giving to the child whatever she can manage.

And even after the child is born, it is not easy to bring up children. To me, it seems to be the most difficult thing in the world.

Astronauts and Edmund Hillary... these people should first try to bring up children. Then only can we accept that they have done something by going to Everest; otherwise it is pointless. Even if you have reached the moon and walked on the moon, it does not matter. It doesn't show that you are stronger.

A living child - so volatile, such an energy overflowing that he will tire you within hours. Nine months in the womb and then a few years.... Just try one night to sleep with a small baby in your bed. During that night, in your house, something is going to happen. Either the child will kill you or you will kill the child. Most probably, you will kill the child, because children are the nastiest people in the world.

They are so fresh and they want to do so many things and you are dead tired. You want to go to sleep, and the child is fully awake and he wants to do all kinds of things and he wants your advice, and questions, and if nothing works then he wants to go to the bathroom! He's feeling thirsty. He's feeling hungry in the middle of the night....

It happened... A great saint was delivering a religious discourse and one of the richest women in his congregation was sitting in front of him with her small child. But the child disturbed the whole discourse - because people started laughing... and the reason was the child.

The child asked, "Mom, I want to piss." In the middle, when he is talking about God, this idiot thinks about.... After the meeting, he took the woman aside and told her, "You should teach manners to the child. In a religious discourse, such words... and in the middle, and everybody starts laughing and I feel awkward. And you went on pushing him away and he went on again and again after two minutes - 'Mom....' And slowly there was no need for him to say the full sentence. Just 'Mom' and the whole hall was laughing. You should train him that there are situations where you cannot use such words."

The woman said, "Then what should be done?"

He said, "Just tell him, for example, that if he wants to go to the toilet he can say, 'Mom, I want to sing.' You will understand... just a code word that nobody else will understand. Then you can simply take him out."

The woman said, "I will try."

After six months, the saint was staying in the woman's house and suddenly one of her relatives died.

In the middle of the night she and her husband had to go to the place of the person who had died.

So they brought the child to the saint and asked him: "It will be a great kindness if you can let him sleep with you. It may take a few hours for us to get back."

The saint said, "There is no problem. Let him sleep here with me."

But there was a problem. After just half an hour, the child said to the saint, "Swamiji, I want to sing."

The old fellow was tired. The whole day long he was in religious meetings and he wanted to sleep.

So he said, "This is stupid. This is no time to sing; keep quiet and go to sleep. You can sing as much as you want in the morning, but not now."

For a moment, the boy became afraid. He's alone, the father and mother are gone and this man seems... he used to look very loving, very compassionate. "But his behavior now that I am alone is very rude." But he could not contain it. He had to go to the bathroom.

He said, "Swamiji...."

Swamiji said, "Again? Will you let me sleep or not?"

He said, "Unless you allow me to sing, I cannot allow you to sleep - because I cannot sleep without singing."

He said, "I have never in my life heard... you are a born singer. You cannot sleep without singing?"

The boy said, "No."

The saint said, "But what will the neighbors think? In the middle of the night... please be understanding. And your father and mother will be coming, they can take care of you. Don't disturb my sleep. I am an old man, tired."

He said, "You may be tired, you may be old. I am neither old nor delivering spiritual discourses but what to do about singing? Everyday I sing at this time."

The saint decided that this is not going to be. He said, "Remain silent. No more a single word; otherwise I am going to give you a good beating. Singing and singing... just go to sleep."

But how can the boy go to sleep? For two minutes he closed his eyes, and then he said, "Swamiji, now if you don't allow me, it is going to sing on its own."

The saint could not understand what the boy was saying - "It is going to sing on its own?"

"Then don't tell me... I am warning you. Now I am at the last point of control."

The swami said, "If it is such a necessity, then you can sing slowly, just like whispering in my ear."

The boy said, "I have no problem, but it will be a little warm."

The saint said, "You are an idiot! How can singing be warm?"

The boy said, "I know because every day I am singing. Perhaps you are too old and it has gone cold, but mine is real hot. Don't say anything to me - that's why I am making things clear."

He said, "I am not going to say anything. You sing, hot or cold as you want; just finish so I can go to sleep."

And it was too late to do anything. The boy pissed all over the saint, his whole bed... and the saint jumped out of the bed, the old man fell on the ground and he said, "You idiot! This is singing? You call this singing?"

The boy said, "You have forgotten, it is your advice. Six months ago you advised my mother that 'pissing' is not a good word. Now you know - this is a good word!"

The child sleeps the whole day. In the mother's womb he sleeps twenty-four hours; then, slowly slowly... twenty-three, twenty-two, twenty... but he is almost always asleep. And in the night, he wakes up. The whole day he will be asleep and in the night he will wake up to torture you.

I don't think there is any man who can have a pregnancy or who can bring up children. It is the strength of the woman. But it is a different strength. There is one strength which is destructive, there is another strength which is creative. There is one strength which is of hatred and there is another strength which is of love.

Love, trust, beauty, sincerity, truthfulness, authenticity - these are all feminine qualities, and they are far greater than any qualities that man has. But the whole past has been dominated by man and his qualities.

Naturally in war, love is of no use, truth is of no use, beauty is of no use, aesthetic sensibility is no use. In war, you need a heart which is more stony than stones. In war, you need simply hate, anger, a madness to destroy.

In three thousand years, man has fought five thousand wars. Yes, this is also strength but not worthy of human beings. This is strength derived from our animal inheritance. It belongs to the past, which is gone, and the feminine qualities belong to the future, which is coming. There is no need to feel yourself weak because of your feminine qualities. You should feel grateful to existence that what man has to earn, you have been given by nature as a gift.

Man has to learn how to love. Man has to learn how to let the heart be the master and the mind be just an obedient servant. Man has to learn these things. The woman brings these things with her, but we condemn all these qualities as weaknesses. Even if you have chosen women as great individuals, you can see what you have chosen - you have chosen a man. Because you have chosen the qualities of man that were in the woman. For example, Joan of Arc had all the qualities of man. The Queen of Jhansi in India had all the qualities of man: she could fight with a naked sword, could kill people without any problem. Such women have been chosen in history and great tribute is paid to them by the historians. And they don't represent women. In fact, that is the reason why they have been chosen, because they are just carbon copies of men.

The women's liberation movement has to learn one fundamental thing: that is not to imitate man and not to listen what he says about feminine qualities, the feminine personality. The feminine qualities are clear.

Friedrich Nietzsche has a great insight into many areas of life, but he could not create a coherent, comprehensive system of philosophy. And the reason was not that he was not capable - he was the most capable of all Western philosophers. The problem was, he had so much to give that it was not possible for him to make a whole system; otherwise, much would not be part of it. Hence, he chose an aphoristic style of writing. Just as you can write in a very condensed form, many things which ordinarily you would write in an essay, Friedrich Nietzsche would write in four lines or at the most in a paragraph. But that has created great misunderstanding about the poor man. Because it is too condensed - unless you have the clarity to see into the density of his insight, into the far-reaching effects of his insights, into all the implications which are not said but are there... you will have to search for them and then you will be surprised.

Nietzsche is going to come back. Now is the time that he should be understood perfectly well. Adolf Hitler misunderstood him. His followers misunderstood him, his enemies misunderstood him. But to be misunderstood is a seal from human beings, that you had something really important. Otherwise, who cares to understand or misunderstand?

Nietzsche had this insight: that men have to suppress women. Otherwise, if things had gone naturally, it would be more possible that the woman would be the master and the man would be the servant, because his qualities are those of a servant - of a soldier at the most. And the feminine qualities are almost divine. They have a royalty about them.

Drop all the ideas of man that he has been putting in your heads. And also drop the ideas of the women's liberation movement, because they are also putting nonsense into your minds. Their nonsense is that they are trying to prove that men and women are equal. They are not - and when I say they are not, I don't mean that someone is superior and someone is inferior. I mean that they are unique.

Women are women and men are men; there is no question of comparison.

Equality is out of the question. They are not unequal and neither can they be equal. They are unique.

Rejoice in your feminine qualities, make a poetry of your feminine qualities. That is your great inheritance from nature. Don't throw it away, because the man does not have them. To be equal, you may start doing idiotic things.

And that's what is happening in the women's liberation movement. The women are smoking cigarettes or, if there is an opportunity, then a joint. Now in the East, the woman cannot even think - neither can the man think... if you go home and find your wife relaxing on the sofa with a cigarette, you will not be able to believe what has happened.

We have a deep respect for feminine qualities and those qualities prohibit many things, encourage many other things. The woman should not try to imitate man, because even if you succeed.... It is difficult to succeed. Imitation is always imitation, it is never equal. But for argument's sake, if we accept that you can become exactly like a man, you will lose all that you have and you will not gain anything. Because even in the eyes of man, you will not be beautiful anymore, and in your own eyes, you will be shattered. It was better to be unequal than to be equal, because now the man takes no interest.

A woman should keep her separateness, should save all her feminine qualities and purify them.

In this way she is going, according to her nature, towards enlightenment. Of course once you are enlightened, you have gone beyond the discrimination of sexes. Beyond enlightenment, you are simply human beings. But before that....

Nor should man try to imitate woman, which he has been doing.

I entered the university, and I entered the university without having any money with me, because my parents wanted me to become a doctor, an engineer, a scientist but they were all against the idea that I should go to study philosophy, religion, psychology. They said, "You will be a beggar on the streets, and we cannot support you to become a beggar. So either you choose something which will make you somebody - respectable, powerful - or we are not going to support you financially. Then you can study anything you want."

I said, "This is very clear. Agreed."

They were simply threatening me. They were not the kind of people to refuse to give me financial help. They loved me. In fact, because they loved me, they wanted me to become somebody in the world. And because nothing was working, their arguments and persuasion were not working, they threatened me. So I had to go to the university on the train without a ticket.

It was eighty miles from my village. I went to the ticket collector and told him, "This is the situation.

If you can help me... and I will remember. Whenever I have money, the ticket will be paid."

But he said, "Don't be worried. So many people are traveling without a ticket, but you are at least truthful. You yourself came to me, you have not been hiding." He said, "You rest and I will meet you at the station where you have to get down and help you to go out."

And he helped me; I reached the university. I had no money for the taxi that I picked up from the railway station so I went directly to the vice-chancellor's office. The pune at the gate tried to prevent me.

I said, "Forget it. As far as I am concerned, remember not to prevent me, because that will create chaos."

The vice-chancellor heard: "What kind of talk is going on?" He was looking from the window and he saw this new, young man. He said, "Let him come in." He asked, "What do you want?"

I put before him all the applications for fellowships, for food, scholarship, for university fees.

He said, "But you have not graduated from this university. And this has been the convention: If somebody has graduated from this university, he will have the first preference.

I said, "Even though he does not have the same marks and the same qualifications?"

He said, "No, your case will be considered, but I'm becoming curious about something else... you sit down. Would you like to have some coffee or some tea?"

I said, "No, you just first tell me what your curiosity is."

He said, "My curiosity is about your small beard" - it was just starting to grow - "Why you are growing a beard and moustache and long hair?"

I said, "You are asking a wrong question. I'M not growing them, they are growing. In fact, I should ask you why you have been shaving your beard and your moustache, because that is a positive act, and you have to be responsible for it and answerable. Nature has not given beards to women - just think of a woman who starts growing beard and a moustache! And it is not impossible; she just needs a few injections, a few of the hormones that grow the hair of the beard and the moustache."

I said, "Just imagine - would that woman look like a woman? Could you fall in love with her if, by some magic, you can again be given your youth?"

He said, "My God! A woman with a beard?"

"But," I said, "yours is a similar case; a man without a beard is no different. You have been imitating women."

And there is an unconscious reasoning, because the man feels women are beautiful - perhaps if he also takes away the beard and the moustache, he may look more beautiful. He's a hundred percent wrong. It is one thing that women go on tolerating, him because it is a man's society and he develops ideas and enforces them on everybody else who is in some way dependent on him. But if women are free to express their feelings, a beard is as natural, a moustache is as natural as your nose. You don't shave it.

Be proud of your qualities. Increase them, refine them because they are the path towards godliness.

Man is not in a better position than woman as far as religious experience is concerned. But he has one quality and that is of the warrior. Once he gets a challenge, then he can grow any kind of qualities. Even the feminine qualities, he can grow better than any woman can. His fighting spirit balances things.

Women have qualities inborn. Man needs only to be provoked, given a challenge: these qualities have not been given to you - you have to earn them. And if men and women both can live these qualities, the day is not far away when we can transform this world into a paradise.

Again, I remember Friedrich Nietzsche. He said that Jesus Christ, Gautam Buddha... these were not real men, because their qualities are feminine. Nobody else has said that; no follower, no enemy.

But Nietzsche certainly has a knack of finding absolutely fresh insights. He is against Jesus and against Gautam Buddha, because if people follow them, everybody will become feminine. He loves the qualities of man - particularly of the warrior. He says that in his life, the most remarkable, unforgettable experience happened in a strange way... and perhaps nobody will believe it.

He was sitting on the terrace of his house and a group of soldiers marched on the road by the side of the house with naked swords, their shining boots, walking in rhythm... a beautiful morning with the sun, no clouds.

Nietzsche said, "Those shining swords, that music of the soldiers' boots was the greatest aesthetic experience to me. I have never seen anything more beautiful, more musical."

He is for the qualities of man: the naked sword moving in the sun gives him the most beautiful experience. The sound of the boots gives him the greatest music. He is for the qualities of man.

I am for the qualities of women. Because of Nietzsche's insistence for man's qualities, Adolf Hitler was born. Adolf Hitler, Goebbels, and the whole bunch of criminals who surrounded him, are pygmies compared to Friedrich Nietzsche as far as intelligence is concerned. They misunderstood him completely. They took out portions that supported fascism, murder, invading innocent people, killing innocent people.

I am here to counter Nietzsche. I love the man, I love his insights, but that does not mean that I agree with him. I disagree with him.

I would like the whole world to be full of feminine qualities. Then only can wars disappear. Then only can marriage disappear. Then only can nations disappear. Then only can we have one world:

a loving, a peaceful, a silent and beautiful world.

So drop all the conditionings man has given to you. Find your own qualities and develop them. You are not to imitate the man; neither is the man to imitate you. When I say he has to grow feminine qualities, I don't mean that he has to imitate women.

Every person, whether man or woman, is born of a father and of a mother. Half of his being is contributed by man and half by woman, so everybody is both. If you are a man, then the man is on top and underneath it, hidden, are all the feminine qualities, the contribution from your mother.

If you are a woman, then your feminine qualities are on top and your male qualities are underneath it; that is the contribution of your father. And there is no need of any conflict between you, because you are man and woman together, simultaneously.

Rather than creating a conflict, my whole work is to indicate to you the path, how you can create an orchestra of all your qualities together. That will be your wholeness as a human being.

Question 2:

The question indicates one thing very clearly, and that is that you don't know what devotion is.

Devotion and the feeling of dependence cannot exist together. The feeling of dependence arises in you when somebody enforces in a subtle slavery, particularly psychological and spiritual. Then it hurts, because these are the realms of freedom; nobody can force them upon another.

Devotion is a flower of another world.

It is not forced on you. Devotion is totally your act. You have responded to someone who has played on the guitar of your being.

It is a love affair, and love of the highest quality.

It cannot feel dependence, because nobody is making you dependent. It can make you feel relaxed, because you have found a hand and the warmth of the hand and the love of the hand and the strength of the hand... although it is all dark all around.

Finding this hand, finding the master, you can relax. Now the journey is almost over. To have found the master - I repeat - the journey is almost over. And the master can only shower you with his love - there is no question of any power number; you cannot feel dependence.

And you are free at any moment to withdraw your devotion. Nobody is going to prevent you except the experience of devotion itself, because you have never known so many stars in your life. You have never known so many colors in your life, you have never danced, you have never been in such an ecstasy that the dance arises out of it; not out of technological knowledge, not because you know dancing. Ecstasy brings a dance which is fresh, beyond technique, beyond learning.

I have never heard that anybody who has reached the point of devotion has ever fallen back - it is impossible. For what will you fall back? What have you left behind, except misery and darkness?

What was your life before devotion? - nothing but hell.

Your question is only intellectual. Intellectually, you thought that in devotion there must be dependence; you are devoted, you have to be obedient. But there is a great surprise for you....

The greatest master never gives orders. That belongs to the very lowest categories of teachers, not masters. A master simply creates a certain energy field in which you start changing, transforming.

One day suddenly your old life is dropped, like a snake slipping out of its old skin. He does not even look back.

Devotion will transform you - from a thousand and one dependencies in your life towards an independent individual. Devotion can become the door for the highest liberation possible.

But people get into trouble because they're always thinking rather than experimenting.

Experiment. Experience; then your question will have a reality about it. About such questions you can have a good conversation, but these questions are not going to help you in any way. That's why I told you from the very beginning that you don't have any experience of devotion. You know only the experience of dependence. In love, you have found dependence. In friendship, you have found dependence. In all your relationships, sooner or later you find you are caged.

In devotion you will find freedom - freedom not only from darkness, from death, but freedom from everything that you have known up to now - so that you can fly into the fresh sky, enjoying the exhilaration, the ecstasy of the new, of the novel, of the mysterious.