The "Other"... Hell? Or the door to the divine?

Question 1:

Surabhi, the other is one of the most significant questions to be solved in life. Millions of people with great intelligence have escaped from life, renounced life, just because they could not solve the problem of the other - and these were the giants of humanity.

Even in the twentieth century, a man like Jean Paul Sartre could say, "The other is hell." This assertion is an acceptance of failure: you have not been able to solve the problem; now you are calling names - "the other is hell." But who are you? - because for others, you are the other.

First see the real situation, because any solution that is going to work out has to arise out of the real. The other has become a problem - particularly, the more intimate the relationship is, the more problematic it is. The husband and wife, the children and the parents, the students and the teachers... wherever there are two wings, rather than having a beautiful flight under the stars, your wings are fighting with each other.

A man is a failure if he has not come to dissolve the other completely into himself or, in other words, dissolve himself into the other completely. But it has to be complete, entire, total.... If this is not the situation, then people are going to suffer in a hundred and one ways, because they are connected with so many others. And each 'other' is a problem for the simple reason that everybody is trying to dominate everybody else.

We have been raised as politicians. We have been filled with ambitions, desires - to possess, to become powerful, to have as much money as you desire, as you dream of. These are the problems, not the other - the other only reflects your problems because he's so intimate and close by.

The husband, if he is a human being, should stop calling himself a "husband." A wife, if she understands, should stop calling herself a "wife." More than friendship, you are bound to fall into a ditch; more than friendship, it becomes a bondage. Then both are fighting tooth and nail, directly and indirectly, with a single aim: to dominate the other, to reduce the other to the status of second.

It is not possible. If it were possible, people would have solved the problem - although the solution would not have brought blessings. It would have stopped the continuous fight for monopoloy - although even if the fight stops, you will not be blissful. You will be almost dead, sad. At least before, there were excuses for your fight; now even those excuses are gone.

The very word 'husband' is ugly; it means a farmer. It was thought that the man is the farmer and the woman is the earth, so he sows his seeds in the woman and she goes on reproducing. He created the myth that he is the real producer, the farmer; and he pushed the woman - who is the real creative force - to a status that is almost to the point where it becomes inhuman and starts hurting.

In many countries, the woman has never been given voting rights. In many countries, the woman is not accepted as having a soul; she is just to serve nature. In almost all countries, the woman is not expected to enter certain temples, certain sacred holy places, because she is unholy.

For thousands of years continuously, the woman has been crippled, crushed, exploited - almost murdered. And yet, she is still the backbone of humanity. Without her, there is no humanity. Without man, there is a possibility for humanity to exist, because the function of man biologically is negligible.

It is the function of a doctor's syringe. And the syringe can do it more hygienically than you could ever do it.

This situation for thousands of years has gathered too much revolt in the unconscious of the woman.

That revolt comes out in small matters - in nagging, in fighting. The matters are almost immaterial, and people are continuously fighting for them. It seems the fighting is material. They need any excuse to fight, it doesn't matter what the excuse is.

It is a painful stage, because half of humanity is not even accepted as human.

The remaining half cannot be free, either.

One Sufi mystic, Junnaid, was going to the mosque with his disciples. On the road, they saw a man who was trying to move his cow. It was apparent, clear that the man was absolutely new at the job. He was doing hard work, pulling the cow with the rope, but the cow was stronger. She was backwards. He would manage somehow to pull her one foot, and she would back up two feet.

Junnaid and his disciples stood there... because that was the method of Junnaid, to use actual situations in life for teaching. He said, "This man has done no harm to the cow. He is taking her home, where food will be ready, shelter will be ready; a cozier, warmer place will be ready - but why is the cow reluctant? Why is she feeling annoyed, irritated, humiliated? Rather than going home with him, she's FIGHTING!"

Junnaid said this to his disciples and the servant who was taking the cow was also listening. Junnaid said, "There is an art that, even in the smallest job like this, is needed. This man has good intentions but has no understanding of how the mind of man or animals functions. He's creating a reaction.

He's making the cow an enemy."

He said to the man: "This is not the way. You are new; you just stand aside and I will show you what has to be done."

And he went into his house, brought out a bundle of green grass, and just walked ahead of the cow - not even a rope on the neck of the cow. He simply walked. Sometimes he went slowly, and when the cow would come too close he would go fast, almost running. The cow would start running.

When he came back, he said, "This is the situation of every human being. Society has created so many reactionary attitudes that he goes on doing things which are harmful to himself, and he goes on doing them the wrong way."

Each relationship first has to be based not on the choice of the parents, not by the situation of the stars when you were born, not by the lines of your hand... and there is no writing on your forehead!

You come into the world completely clean, unburdened, ready to learn. You come with a self-respect.

If your self-respect is crushed, your whole joy in learning and living and loving disappears.

Women have lost the joy of life, and man is responsible for it. And he has already suffered, because if the woman is miserable, in suffering, the man cannot be blissful - it is impossible.

The woman is spread all over the house; she is the home. Without her, you cannot call it home, it remains only a house. It is the woman, with her song and dance and love, who transforms the quality of the house. From a material thing, it becomes something romantic, something poetic, something spiritual. It becomes, if everything goes right, a Kaaba, a Mecca, a holy land.

But things start going wrong. Perhaps they are wrong from the very beginning. Already when you meet a woman, you are wrong; the woman is wrong - both have been taught all kinds of superstitions and stupidities. Both have lived in a family, in a society, in a crowd which is almost insane. So naturally, one starts accepting one's life and its hell. One becomes tolerant, patient. One drops all great hopes of living in a beautiful way. One forgets all utopias. One accepts the desert of a life with not a single flower in it, not a single bird in it, not a single green plant in it.

But man is capable of adjusting to any situation. That is one of the great qualities in man. There is only one competitor, and that is the cockroach. She has the same qualities of surviving in any situation, anywhere. You may understand or you may not understand, but you are cousins, because wherever man is found, the cockroach is found. And wherever you can find a cockroach, man is not far away. This partnership in life is millions of years old, and scientists say perhaps it will remain forever, because something in their nature is similar.

I don't know much about cockroaches, but I know much about man and I agree: there must be much which is similar. I am saying it from the side of man. Those who understand cockroaches can say it from the side of cockroaches.

A man grows with dreams. He has a vision of his future, his life, the way he wants to live. But once he has found a woman... the woman also has her own dreams, her own hopes. The first problem is, their dreams and their hopes clash; they are not the same. They cannot be the same, they are two different individuals.

Now, to keep peace, there are only two possibilities: either one becomes so dominant, so threatening, that the other simply becomes, out of fear, enslaved... that's what has happened with women. The other way is to see the situation and to change it completely.

Our life is valuable and it is not to be wasted. And if you try to understand your life and the problems that arise with the other, you will find it hilarious, because all your problems are so tiny that to fight for them is possible only if you have a retarded head.

If the man has the right to fulfill his dreams, the woman has also the same right to fulfill her dreams.

And when you have decided to be together, now it becomes something of a sacred duty to be careful that you don't trample on the dreams of the other.

Nothing hurts more than when a dream is crushed, when a hope dies, when the future becomes dark, when all the great ideas that you have been thinking your life to be made of seem to be impossible because this woman, or this man, is continuously destroying your mood, destroying your peace, destroying your silence. And when these things are destroyed, you cannot be creative. You can only be destructive, you can only be violent.

Life has immense treasures, which remain unknown to people because they don't have time. Their whole time is engaged in some kind of fight with someone - the other. The other contains the whole world. And the greatest calamity that happens is that when you are fighting with the other, you slowly slowly forget yourself. Your whole focus becomes the other, and when the focus becomes the other, you are lost. Then when are you going to remember yourself? When are you going to find your innermost source of life? When you are going to search for beauty and truth and poetry and art?

You will miss everything, just quarreling with a woman or with a man! Are you together to quarrel?

Perhaps... because to be alone and without anybody to fight is very difficult.

In madhouses, I have seen people fighting with themselves, boxing in the air! I have asked the superintendent, "What is happening?" And he said, "These people used to fight. They were brought into the madhouse thinking that when there was nobody to fight, they would stop fighting. But logic goes one way, life goes another. Instead of stopping fighting, they have started fighting with themselves. Now they don't need the other. They have divided themselves into two persons: they are themselves and the other."

In a way, in a very roundabout way, they have come very close to reality. Surabhi, your desire for the other, your longing that without the other you will never be complete, is absolutely true. And this is the insight of every human being; they are all right about this fact: that without the other you are not going to have a feeling of wholeness, of completion, of arriving home. This feeling is all over the world.

But why doesn't it happen? Because man needs a new psychology to understand himself. The old psychology does not give him much understanding.

The new psychology will be based on the experiences of a certain, most ancient school - tantra.

There are very few great discoveries in the world. Tantra can claim the greatest discovery. Even after nuclear weapons, tantra's discovery has been standing there for ten thousand years unused; an insight of such great value.

The insight is that man and woman are not just one - man just man, woman just woman - no. They are are both together: man is half man and half woman, and the same is true about women. And this seems to be very logical and very scientific, because every child is born of a father and a mother.

The father contributes something, the mother contributes something, and that's how the child is - a combination, a synthesis between man and woman. If the child is a boy, then the man is on the top and the woman is in the unconscious layers of the mind. If the child is a woman, then the woman is on the top and the man is hidden just underneath.

And this is the great contribution of tantra: that unless the man and woman inside you become one whole, you will remain discontented, with something always missing. And because you always look outside, you feel that feminine qualities are missing; you don't know that there is a world within you too. You know only one world, and that is outside you.

You start looking on the outside, finding a woman or a man who can make a certain organic whole, a unity in your life, so that this constant gap, this something missing, this heavy incompleteness in your being will be removed. You go on looking for women outside, for men outside. But nobody has ever found any woman outside, or any man outside, to fulfill the desire, the longing to become one complete whole.

But the basic understanding is right, that somehow man and woman have to merge their energies into one. Just one thing is missing: that miracle can only happen within you, it is not something outside. It is something that as you become silent and peaceful and joyous, as you enter deeper into meditative states, as your intelligence becomes more sharp, you will see: the other that you have been searching for is within you.

And there is no problem with the inner woman, with the inner man. Once you recognize them, they start melting into each other without any effort on your part. Just your recognition is enough to trigger the process of merger.

Surabhi, you are too young perhaps for this experiment. It needs a certain background of frustration with the other who is outside. When you are utterly frustrated, when you have lost all hope - only then you close your doors and you close your eyes and you go in. Frustration also plays a tremendously valuable part in man's spiritual growth.

But meanwhile, before you meet your inner woman or man, find a man or a woman. You will learn much. This is not going to be the end; all men are experimental for women and all women are experimental for men.

Experimenting with a few relationships, you will be mature enough to recognize your own woman or your own man.

And that day is the day of great celebration, because you are free from the other. You have found the other within yourself; now there is no need to be dependent on anyone. The man is free, the woman is free - and this does not mean that you cannot love, you cannot have friends on the outside.

In fact, now you can very easily have very smooth-going friendships, very beautiful love affairs, because it is no more a necessity for you. As far as you are concerned, you are fulfilled. Now it is not a need such that you have to be dependent.

And remember: anybody who is dependent on somebody hates that person. Nobody likes dependence. Even though it is hidden behind the beautiful garb of love, obedience, belief, respect for the ancient, respect for the old, but behind everything is slavery. Once you are free from the slavery of the other, once you can live alone and joyously, you have entered into the world for the first time. Before it, you were only dreaming; now you will be facing the reality.

And the reality is just ecstasy. Now you can love, but love will have a totally different quality. It will be simply sharing because you have too much, an abundance, overflowing, and you would like to share it. And sharing is always unconditional. You are not giving it as a deal, as a business. You are not giving it to get something in return - you are simply giving it because your hands are too full. If you don't give it, it will fall by itself.

The day you are capable of sharing love, and being alone and absolutely blissful, the slavery of women is finished. And the bigger slavery of man is finished too.

It is strange that women are fighting for liberation and man is just standing, looking awkward. Do something! You also have to become free. A men's liberation movement is as much a necessity as a women's liberation movement.

In fact, both movements should be two wings of one movement for freedom.

Question 2:

Purna, there is no need to fear, because no hard days are ahead; the hard days are behind.

The masters in the past were working on their disciples, but at the same time they were making every effort so that their teachings, their disciples, their lifestyles, didn't come in conflict with the old society, with the old religion, with the conventions.

The journey to truth becomes very difficult if you are prepared to live a life which is unnatural. Truth is simply the experience of the purest nature. But if you are trained from the very beginning to be unnatural, then by the time you start your search for truth, you are in a dilemma: if you follow truth, you are going against your conditioning. And that is very difficult, because your conditioning is the conditioning of your society.

If you follow truth without any fear of the consequences, then you will be crucified; then you will be given poison, like Socrates. Seeing this, most of the people forget all about truth. It seems to be very abstract, and the troubles and the antagonism of the society seem to be very real.

Very few people have the courage to go after truth even if life is in danger, because truth is a higher value than life. Truth means eternal life.

All the old religions have tried to make the path of the pilgrim as arduous as possible. Their whole scholarship has been devoted to a single point: that the path to truth should be very roundabout, full of difficulties, dark nights of the soul, ups and downs which drive you crazy. And you are alone. The society, the crowd, which has been a shelter for you - a subtle shelter which you may not have noted - the very feeling that so many people..."seven hundred million Catholics are with me"... one starts feeling that seven hundred million people, for two thousand years, cannot be wrong. The weight of tradition, the weight of time, the weight of conventions, the weight of your conditioning, is so heavy that to drop it, one feels afraid. You will be cut off from the society, from the parents, from the family.

You will not be getting any more warmth from people; on the contrary, they will all become cold.

They will suspect that you have gone crazy; they may even say it to you.

Why has this been done? because I see that the path to truth is just a single step. There is no question of any arduousness, any austerities, because they are absolutely irrelevant. You are fasting - what has your fasting to do with truth? Your fasting has nothing to do with love. Your fasting will not make you a better man, because your fasting is a psychological sickness, it is masochism.

You are enjoying torturing yourself. And once a person starts enjoying torturing himself, it is very difficult to pull him out of the sickness in which he is caught. When somebody tortures somebody else, naturally, the other person defends himself, fights, and the whole society condemns it: "Why did you attack the person?" The police are there, the lawyers are there, the court is there, so that nobody is harmed.

The man who tortures himself is full of violence, but he starts attacking himself. One finds wonders and wonders in the history of man. I have been looking into books of law and books about laws

and their evolution and I was surprised: there is not a single law that prevents a man from torturing himself. It is strange, because it does not matter who you are torturing - torture is torture. Whether I am torturing you or I am torturing myself, in the eyes of the law we should be equally criminal.

In fact, I am a greater criminal because I am torturing my own body which is dumb, cannot say anything, cannot go to the police station to report against me, cannot go to the court to appeal.

On the contrary, the more I torture myself in the name of religion, the more people worship me.

That's how your saints are manufactured. These people are psychologically sick people, but they are worshipped by the society. They are part of the society, they support everything of the society.

They support the whole past, without exception - remember my words: without exception. And they are not only saying those things, they are practicing those things.

People have the maxim that "Whatever you say, do it!" And the saints are doing things which look almost impossible to you. To avoid the feeling that you are inferior... just watch the delicate strategy of the mind. To avoid the fact of feeling yourself as inferior, you have raised these people to incarnations of God, sons of God, messengers of God; they are not ordinary human beings.

Do you understand the strategy? The strategy is that man is saying, "If we cannot do such things - lying down on a thorn bed, fasting for months, standing naked for years, not sitting, not sleeping"...

because you cannot do it you certainly feel these people are superior. And as you respect them more, as you worship them more, and you call them saints and divine, their ego becomes bigger and bigger.

They enjoy only one thing: their ego. And they start torturing themselves more and more because they see that the more they torture, the more respectable they become. They are becoming almost part of history.

Sick people have ruled over humanity.

Politicians are sick because they are nothing but the will to power - and the very idea of having power over somebody is mean, and it happens only in a very sick mind.

The religious saints are sick people - they are masochists, they are torturing themselves, and they are receiving so much respect and honor that they are ready to torture themselves as much as possible. Here, the ego is fulfilled - and in the other world God is waiting, with all the pleasures for them.

I am not a part of this old company of dodos. I am not psychologically sick. I have never felt myself inferior because I have never compared myself to anyone. I have never felt myself superior for the same reason. You can feel superior and inferior only when you compare. But how can I compare?

I don't see another person who is like me. I see every person as unique. And if every person is unique then there is no question of comparison; then there is no question of equality either.

These people who have been torturing themselves... naturally, the question arises in your mind:

with me, there is no self-torture. You are not told to stay awake for nights together, you are not told not to eat for weeks together, you are not given any discipline, any certain character.

I cannot impose any character or discipline on you. I am not your enemy. I can only help your being to blossom. And unless it blossoms, we don't know whether it is a rose or a lotus. We will have to wait and see when it blossoms.

In the past, nobody had the patience to wait and see what happens when a person blossoms. They were all trying to force things - with all good wishes, but they have created this crippled humanity.

Nobody is blossoming because nobody is accepted in his nature, whatever it is. You are told how you have to be to be accepted, to be respected, to be honorable in this society - how you have to be.

But then, you may be the chief justice of the Supreme Court or the president or the prime minister, but you will never be happy. You will never smile with the heart, you will not have the quality of laughter and love and life. You can have all the money in the world and all the power in the world and still you will be only a beggar.

My effort here is totally different: I want you to be just yourself, and allow your hidden treasures to surface. It will be a surprise to others and it will be a surprise to you, too. And one of the most significant things is that whatever you have brought to the world, nobody else has brought and nobody else will bring it again.

It is the only worship which I can call religious - that whatever you have brought in your being, make sure that it blossoms, and you can shower those flowers in deep gratitude to existence. You have prayed, you have worshipped - remember, just once and it is enough.

Three or four hundred years ago, there was a great grammarian.... And Sanskrit is absolute grammar - it is just mathematics. There is no other science, no other language which can claim such qualities.

It is very flexible. One word may have twelve meanings. Because it is so flexible, the flexibility gives it a potentiality for being the best language for poetry, because poetry needs a flexibility of meanings, vagueness of meanings.

Very solid meanings can only make prose.

Sanskrit has the perfect grammar because for five thousand years at least, scholars have not been able to find any loophole, any way to improve upon it.

The grammarian looks at the same poem with a different eye than you look at it. And when a musician looks at it, he looks at it from a very different angle. If a dancer looks at it... certainly their visions cannot coincide.

Each individual has a unique individuality.

Once this is accepted, you will be able to be compassionate, to be human.

Whenever you are looking at the other, you will not be judgmental. Jean Paul Sartre is, when he says the other is hell. If you have experienced your inner, orgasmic unity, you may even say that the other is the door to the divine.

It all depends on you.

Question 3:

Milarepa, you are a hypochondriac!

Just now you are not here because others in your bungalow have a cold. You are a very superior category of hypochondriac because I have heard about hypochondriacs who are continually having this trouble and that trouble. But I have never heard that just because others have a cold... what are you doing there?

He has raised a significant question, because hypnotherapy has come to the conclusion that thirty- three percent of people are very vulnerable, very suggestible. Thirty-three percent is not a small percentage - it is one-third of all the masses. One person in three is suggestible: somebody just says that you are looking very pale. You deny it immediately because you are not looking pale.

You have seen in the mirror; you are not looking pale. You have met many people; nobody has mentioned it - this guy seems to be strange. You say to the person, "Perhaps you are suffering from jaundice, I am not pale. I am perfectly healthy."

The man says, "It is up to you. If you are feeling perfectly healthy, there is no problem," but he goes on looking back and starts creating doubts. Perhaps others did not say anything out of politeness.

And then another man comes and he looks and he says, "My God! What happened? You look like a ghost." Now you don't have the same courage to deny it, to say, "I am perfectly good; something must be wrong with you." That courage is gone.

Now you say, "Yes, I have not been feeling well for a few days... looking pale. I think I must go home and not to the office, because if I am looking like a ghost...."

The man says, "I will call a taxi, don't walk. Or if you are feeling too much difficulty, I can phone for an ambulance."

And you say, "That will be better; an ambulance will be better, because it seems I am at the last stage. Looking like a ghost and being a ghost is not very much different. You just call an ambulance because going home looking like a ghost... what will the children think? What will my wife think? It is better in the hospital, and if I can manage just to give some baksheesh to the doctors and to the nurses and to the pharmacist..."

And they all go on emphasizing: "You are finished!" And then the doctor says, "Listen, nothing can be done now; you are dead."

"I am dead? and I did not even feel it when I died."

The doctor says, "Nobody feels it."

You say, "Then where am I to go from here?"

The doctor says, "That is not my business. You go to the temple that is just nearby here and ask the priest where to go now. You are dead."

You go two, three steps, and think again: "Dead? And I am walking!"

You come back, you say, "Listen, I want a second opinion. Is there another doctor in the hospital?"

They say, "There are many; you can have as many opinions as you want.

But about you, there is no problem. It is very simple: You are dead! Now, no sickness is possible for you, no infection, no tuberculosis, no cancer, not even death is possible. Everything has happened!"

You ask the other doctor but they are all ready, so the other doctor looks at you and tries to escape from the room.

"Where are you going?"

The other doctor says, "Listen. I am not an expert about ghosts. You have come to the wrong place.

You go to some other doctor. Find out from the inquiry office, who the doctor is who deals with ghosts."

You say, "My God! I have never heard that in any hospital there is a department that deals with ghosts. I think it is better that I go to the priest and ask, 'Now show me the way: where is hell, where is heaven and where am I supposed to go? - some address? some phone number?'"

Thirty-three percent of his people are that type. Any disease, any epidemic and these thirty-three percent are the first to catch hold of it. They can't miss. These thirty-three percent of people are continuously having diseases, illnesses, and they are torturing doctors all over the world because you cannot cure them. They don't have any disease, so the question of curing them simply does not arise. And every doctor becomes fed up, because they go on and on... somehow you manage one disease and another disease starts....

There are many "pathies" in the world: allopathy, naturopathy, homeopathy, acupuncture; Chinese medicine and Greek medicine; ayurveda, Indian medicine, and they all work. I was puzzled... all cannot work; because their prognosis is different, their medicines are different.

Still, every medicine succeeds with seventy percent of people. It is a shock that allopathy also succeeds only with seventy percent; homeopathy also succeeds only with seventy percent.

It has been found that seventy percent of illnesses are only in the head. They don't have anything to do with your physiology, with your biology, with your reality. They are hallucinations. But once you have them, once it has been emphasized again and again, then you are going to suffer.

There are millions of hypochondriacs. They need all these medicines and they need all the miracle mongers because ordinary allopathy, which is the only scientific medicine, cannot help them. They don't have a real disease. They need as imaginary a medicine as their disease is imaginary.

Milarepa, it is not only you, but almost everybody who suffers once in a while from imaginary sicknesses.

In my university, I had one student with me who had been in the same class for almost five years. I said to him, "It is too long and the course is too short."

He said, "What to do? I am constantly sick - and particularly at the time of the examination, I always fall sick."

And when examination time came, he fell sick.

I went to the warden and I said, "This sickness seems to be just in his mind, because for five years he has been falling sick exactly on the date the examination begins. And I don't say that he is befooling anybody or that he's trying to cheat. He's really sick. If you show him to a doctor, he will find that he has fever, and that is enough proof. But for five years, exactly on the same day as the examination begins.... Yesterday he was perfectly okay, and now he's suffering from fever.

"I don't believe in this fever," I said to the warden, "and I don't want the doctor to be called. I am going to treat him. The doctors have treated him for five years, and what is the result?"

The old man said, "But you may put me into difficulty sooner or later, because if it is known that I have allowed you to treat him.... You are not a doctor - you are not even a student of medical science."

I said, "I am not a doctor and I am not a student of medical science, but I know man. And this disease is not a disease, this is only imagination. So you don't be worried. If we have to go to the court, I will manage to fight the case, so don't be worried. I am not treating the disease, I am treating the man; nobody can prevent me from that. And I am treating only an illusion. Is this criminal?"

That old man slipped away. He thought, "It is better to go from this place so nobody else sees him."

I gave the boy a good cold bath. He shouted, he tried to escape, but I said, "You are too sick, you cannot. You just get into the bathtub."

He said, "What are you doing? By morning I will be finished!"

I said, "By morning you will be in the examination hall."

He said, "But what about today's paper?"

I said, "I will manage everything, don't be worried. First, you get better. Either you get better, or you get into the bathtub."

It was ice cold. He touched it and he took his finger out. He said, "I think it's better I should leave this fever."

I said, "It is up to you; I have no preference. You can forget the fever and go to sleep. Tomorrow morning, go to the examination. I am going to the vice-chancellor to make arrangements for the one paper you have missed, so that this paper can be arranged at the end."

I told the vice-chancellor, "Five years is long enough. Now don't do anything that will force him to remain in the same class."

The vice-chancellor agreed. He said, "I was worried how it was going to happen, because every examination he is sick. I was always wondering how to get rid of him, and you have brought a beautiful plan. So he's not getting into the bathtub?"

I said, "He's not getting in."

He asked me, "Do you need some ice cubes?"

I said, "That's a good idea! You send some."

When I was pouring the ice cubes in, the boy asked, "What are you doing?"

I said, "Preparing your whole night's rest in the bathtub."

He said, "I will die!"

I said, "You are ready to die but you are not ready to drop your fever?"

He said, "I have dropped it - just look! When you were gone, I tried a few times, dipped my hand into the water... it is too much! It is better to to drop the fever. I don't have any fever."

I said, "Do you have any other disease?"

He said, "What do you mean by other disease?"

I said, "I mean the same treatment. I'm not interested in your diseases - my treatment! I am determined to send you tomorrow morning to the examination, so if any disease happens, this is the cure!"

He said, "No, no disease will happen." And then he told me, "It is the fear of the examination" - he becomes paranoid, he starts having fever. "Now you have created a more dangerous thing." So now he will go to the examination. He cannot remain in this bathtub for a whole night. He will die.

Certainly, he will die. "And I am too young," he said. "This is not the time for me to die."

I said, "This is time for you to pass the examination!"

Seventy percent of sicknesses can be cured by anybody who has your trust. It is your trust that cures. Only thirty percent of diseases - which are true diseases - need medicine, need surgery.

Seventy percent simply need a doctor you trust.

One thing not to be forgotten: your sicknesses, your failures in life, your undeveloped intelligence, your messed up situation about everything is simply your doing.

If you can understand just a simple thing: your life has an abundance of energy. You only need to know how to provoke that energy to function in your favor, how to make that energy a dance, not a destructive lifestyle.

Meditating, watching your mind, you can get free of much that is only your imagination. The moment you are aware inside, no imagination can survive. It is bound to die.

And Milarepa, the second question you are asking... before I answer the second, I have remembered a small incident.

A doctor was tortured by a hypochondriac, moreso because he was very rich and he could not say to him, "Get lost!" For months he was treating him, but he could not find any sickness. But now it was becoming boring and the man was there every day.

Finally, the doctor decided to bring things to a head - something has to be done, because this is not going to be a lifelong boring relationship with this man. So when the rich man came in, he asked, "Is there some trouble?"

He said, "Some? There are many, because they go on increasing and you have not been able to treat ANY."

The doctor said, "I have found the treatment. See that cup there? Urinate in it."

The man looked around... because there were other patients, nurses, doctors... but what to do? If the doctor says.... He closed his eyes and urinated, somehow managed. And he was feeling very happy. At least he had done it!

The doctor said, "Now defecate in the same cup."

It was a little difficult, but he did that too.

And the doctor took a wooden ladle out of the drawer, mixed the concoction in the cup, and told to the man: "Open your mouth."

The man said, "My God! For what?"

He said, "Don't speak! Just open your mouth!"

And he poured the whole cup into his mouth. The man vomited.

The doctor said, "Ah ha! So now we know what the disease is! Upset stomach! For six months I have been trying and trying to find out what the disease is. Now there is no problem, you will be cured. Your medicine is ready."

The man said, "Now there is no need of any medicine. That shock was so much that I cannot afford to be sick anymore. You can keep your medicine for somebody else. But I have never heard," the rich man said, "that this kind of concoction is made."

The doctor said, "Finally, for a hypochondriac, that is the only medicine."

So Milarepa, be aware!

The second question is: you are worried about your sex life in old age. First, I will tell you one story.

And old man, must have been nearabout eighty-five years old, entered a reception room and said to the girl, with trembling hands: "Is this not Joe's Famous Mustang Ranch?"

The woman at the counter said, "Yes. What do you want? What are you looking for?"

He said, "Isn't this the place which has fifty beautiful girls, ready and able?"

The woman could not understand what... she said, "I don't understand. What do you want exactly?"

He said, "You don't understand what I want? I want a girl! I wanna be laid."

The woman could not believe it. She said to the old man, "Pop, how old are you?"

He said, "How old? Must be eighty-five."

The woman said, "Pop, you have had it."

The old man said, "Had it? My God! So quick?"

And he pulled out his wallet with trembling fingers....

I can imagine Milarepa opening his wallet, asking the woman, "How much do I owe you?"

In old age, Milarepa, you will forget all this nonsense - long before old age.

People who are with me are going to become, before old age, mature enough so that sex becomes to them just a wastage. And the people who are meditating... their sexual energy starts moving in new dimensions. Up to old age, do you want to remain stuck where you are? If you go on growing, by the time you are eighty-five, you will have forgotten all about sex.

People remember sex in their old age only if while they were young, their sexual urge was inhibited.

About another old man, I have heard that he went to his doctor and said, "You have to do something now. You have to bring my sexual urge a little lower."

The doctor said, "There is no sexual urge, nothing. It is all in your mind."

The old man said, "That's what I mean! Bring it a little lower - what the hell is it doing in the head?"

Either you remain in the dark bondage of biological energies... then sex continues to the very last breath. The last idea in most people when they die is of sex, and that is the great contribution your society has made to you!

The last moments should be of peace, it should be of remembrance of one's own being. It should be of a deep experience with existence, so that death does not look like death but only a changing of the house.

And Milarepa's sex urge will disappear soon, so be quick! But don't complain to me later on that I did not warn you. Be quick! Your sexual urge will be gone nearabout the age of forty-two.

If you want the exact date, I can give it to you.