Charisma: a taste of the divine

Question 1:

Sudha, charisma is a mystery. It happens only to those people who have centered their being, concentrated their energies, who are no longer falling apart, who are consolidated, who have become one - the very meaning of the word, "individual."

Every individual has charisma. But individual means that which is indivisible. You cannot divide that person into fragments; you cannot say to that person that "this part is wrong in you, this part is right in you." You cannot create a schizophrenic psychology in that person; he's one and whole. This very phenemonon of being one, centered and whole, creates a magnetic pull.

Now, you cannot see a magnetic pull. You can see the magnet, you can see the small pieces of metal which are moving towards the magnet, but you cannot see magnetism, you cannot see any power.

All power is invisible. All energy is invisible.

Charisma is the energy of the consciousness which is settled in itself - at ease, at home - which has arrived. Now there is nowhere to go. Utterly relaxed, with no tensions, with no anxieties, with no desires - in short, with no bickering, torturing the mind - one has arrived at the point called Being with a capital B. The moment you touch your Being, you are no more a separate entity from the universe - you have become part and parcel of this tremendously alive existence.

But the problem arises... if you see it in a Gautam Buddha, there is no problem. You can understand - the man has blossomed. You can see it. In his eyes you can see the depth; you can see in his gestures, the grace. You can see in his words an authority which can come only through experience, not through knowledge.

The problem arises when you find some charismatic qualities in an ordinary man who has never meditated, who has never gone inwards, who is as ordinary as everybody else. But sometimes it happens - you feel a magnetic pull. And because you have not arrived at your own center, it is very difficult for you to make a distinction between the man who is centered - hence, has a magnetic pull - and the man who is not so centered and yet you still feel a certain pull. You cannot make the distinction, for the simple reason that you have not experienced it in your own being.

The ordinary man sometimes has something similar to charismatic power, but you will be surprised to know it is not charismatic power at all. It is something just the opposite - it is overflowing sexual energy. In a charismatic experience, the energy in the person is at the highest center. It is at the seventh center, sahastrara, beyond which you enter into the infinite, beyond which you are no more and you are all. It is the same energy.

Man has seven centers, prominent centers. The energy is stored as a reservoir at the lowest center - naturally, because of gravitation. Water goes downwards because of gravitation; it pulls somewhere, but it is always the lowest place. Water cannot go upwards unless some effort is made. Unless some device is created to cancel the effect of gravitation, water is bound to go down and down and down.

The sex center is the lowest point in your being. All energy accumulates at the sex center. The moment the child is born, he brings all his life energy, stored at the sex center. But the sad thing is that 99.9 percent of people also die in the same situation - the energy is still at the sex center, although it is no more that overflowing energy of a child; it is the dying energy of an old man. But it is still at the lowest center.

The whole science of religion is nothing but an effort to create methods, devices, techniques to cancel the effect of gravitation and allow the energy a freedom to rise upwards. As the energy starts rising upwards, you will see changes happening on their own accord. Your behavior will change, your actions will change, your directions in life will change. You will be surprised, and others will be surprised, too. What has happened? - they have seen your anger, they have seen your rage, they have seen your jealousy, they have seen your hate - suddenly you are radiating love.

If the energy reaches to the heart center, which is the fourth, your whole life becomes so sweet, so fragrant, and so beautiful - and you have only moved half way. If the energy moves still higher, and as the energy goes on moving higher, your charismatic power will become more and more apparent - even to those who are deaf and cannot hear, even to those who are blind and cannot see, even to those who are heartless and cannot feel. But the charismatic energy is so powerful that the blind has to see it and the deaf has to hear it and the heartless has to feel it. It all depends how high the energy has reached.

After the heart center, the charisma will be felt by many but not by all.

The fifth center is in the throat. When the energy moves to the throat center, your words start having something of the charisma of your being because they arise out of your heart, they come from your interiority, they bring with them some fragrance from your innermost being.

It was said about Jesus by his contemporaries.... Jesus was not educated, was not cultured - he was a poor man, a carpenter's son. His father could not afford to educate him. But people were amazed: he could not read, he could not write, but when he spoke there was no comparison. Then the greatest rabbis of that day, the great scholars, great orators, great religious leaders, even the arch priest of the great Jewish temple of Jerusalem - they were all pygmies before this young man.

He was only thirty years of age when he started teaching and he was crucified when he was only thirty-three. He had not even reached the prime of his life. But whoever heard him, whether he agreed with him or not, had an absolute sense that when he speaks, you cannot disagree, at least in his presence. The idea of disagreeing does not arise. You cannot have doubts in his presence; something deeper convinces you. It is not logical. It is not his reason, it is his authority. It is the charisma that his words are carrying.

It was known all over Judea that no man had ever spoken like Jesus. It was said even by his enemies, that no man had ever spoken like Jesus. And he is saying nothing special - but the way he is saying it is certainly special, the state in which he is saying it is certainly special.

I have come across thousands of articles around the world in different languages, written for and against me - mostly against, but they all have recognized one thing which I was surprised that they all should recognize and yet not give a second thought to it.... And these are our intelligentsia. They all have mentioned - almost without fail - two things. One, that "You should not go to hear Osho.

Because it does not matter what he's saying, when you are in his presence, it seems to be right. By the time you have reached home it may look suspicious, doubts may arise." A few have suggested:

"You have been hypnotized." Only very few have suggested - and none of them has heard me - that the words have a charismatic influence.

I know only one thing - that I am not a speaker, that I don't know the art of oratory. All that I know is that if I have experienced something, I can convey it to you with my total authority, with my whole being behind it. And if you are open and available, perhaps the word may reach to your innermost shrine of being. And it may reach there with something of a charismatic energy.

As the energy goes on moving, the sixth center is the third eye - between the two eyebrows, exactly in the middle. It is when the energy is at the sixth center that the presence of the person... It is not just that he is here; it is not just a physical presence. There is no word for it, but we can manage...

it is spiritual presence that you start feeling. His body becomes less important, his words become faraway echoes, but his presence, pure presence becomes such a tremendous pull that you know only one experience which can give you some idea of it, and that experience is falling in love - irrationally. You cannot give any explanation, but you know. You cannot say but you feel.

And if the energy reaches the seventh, that is the point where one becomes awakened. The energy has come to the highest peak of evolution. Then that person is pure charisma.

Whatever he touches becomes gold.

Wherever he sits becomes a holy place.

Whatever he says becomes scripture. His actions take on a tremendous beauty. His inactions also open doors to the miraculous. He speaks the truth and even when he is silent, his silence also speaks. Those who can understand the language of silence rejoice, are blissful, know perfectly well that this is the man they have been searching for centuries, for many lives.

Charismatic power is the same sexual energy transformed, purified. It was poison at the lowest center; it has become nectar at the highest center. But at the lowest center also, it has a tremendous power. And you know that sometimes you feel a great attraction to an ordinary man. Remember, that attraction is sexual, and sexual attraction is blind. But ordinarily people only know that attraction, so when by chance they come across a man who has some charisma, they don't have any way to distinguish between the two.

That's why Sudha is asking why sometimes in people who are awakened, and sometimes in people who are not awakened, this power is felt. It is not the same power - although it arises from the same energy. But from the lowest center it is crude, primitive, animal. Its influence will drag you into lower realms of being.

But if you find really a charismatic person, you are fortunate. Just to sit at his feet is enough, because he's showering his energy whether anybody is there or not. If you are receptive, open, available, just being close to a charismatic person is the first taste of religion. I am calling it taste; I am not calling it understanding, I am not calling it knowledge. It is actually a taste. Your whole being feels it. Each fiber feels it - a nourishment, a nourishment which is divine.

Let us summarize:

The charismatic energy is divine nourishment flowing from those who have arrived home.

Question 2:

The urge to create anything is the first ray of light in the dark night of your soul. The urge to create is the urge to participate in the work of God.

There is no God as a person, but there is tremendous creativity going all over the place. God is not a creator to me, God is all this creativity - and whenever you feel some urge to create, it is an urge to meet God. It is an urge to be a small God in your own right. Only by creating something, you can feel fulfilled.

You write songs - it is beautiful. You want to sing. For whose permission are you waiting? - sing and sing madly! But remember only one thing, creativity has two possibilities. One is that it arises out of your silence, love, understanding, your clarity of vision, your intimate friendliness with existence - then creativity is healthy. But if it does not arise out of meditation, out of silence and peace and understanding and love, then there is a danger. It may be arising out of your confused mind. It may be arising out of your insanity.

Anything that comes out of your tense mind, helps you anyway. It gives a relief. Something that was going round and round inside you - you have released it, but it will torture somebody else. It may torture many... because the song that was imprisoned within you was a personal matter; you have made it public. And if the song has come out of some kind of madness, some kind of confusion, you will certainly feel good, but at a cost which is too big. Millions of people for thousands of years can be affected by it. You are relieved but you have not behaved responsibly. You have not behaved sanely, you have not behaved humanely. Your songs, your paintings, your dance will have all the qualities of your mind, from which they came.

Look at the paintings of Picasso. That poor fellow does not need worldwide recognition as a painter, as a creator - he needs psychiatric treatment. His paintings are like vomitings, he's sick. He is a genius; he has great insight into color. But he is not at ease. He is not feeling joyful. He's not feeling life as a gift. His paintings show his rejection of life. His paintings show his utter frustration, despair, anguish, confusion - you cannot figure out what the painting is all about. But because he is a genius, even though his creativity is not that of a Gautam Buddha, he has a great artistic, aesthetic sensibility.

He has everything except a little meditation. Instead of a little meditation, there is a little madness.

Almost all the great painters of the contemporary world have been, one or two times at least, sent into psychiatric hospitals, and they lived - all of them - one year, two years, three years in madhouses. Great poets have been in madhouses. Great dancers, like Nijinksy, have been in madhouses.

It is strange that the West is not yet aware that something is wrong.

Why do your scientists, your artists, your painters, your singers, your poets, your dancers - all creative geniuses - fall victim to madness? This has never happened in the East. And it is not that we have not created - we have created more than any other country in the world. But there has not been a single instance of a great artist, a great novelist, a great poet, a great mystic going mad.

This is absolutely unknown in the East.

On the contrary, you will be surprised that in the Far East, particularly in Japan, mad people are brought into the Zen monasteries to be treated. They are given a beautiful place, a small cottage by the side of a pond, with swans in the pond, birds, flowers, trees, rocks, rock gardens - which is especially Japanese. Nobody has ever thought that rocks can make a garden. People throw away rocks to create a garden. In Japan, they collect rocks to create a garden! Unless you can create a garden out of rocks, what kind of an artist are you?

They put the madman in the most comfortable place. If he's a painter, they give him all facilities to paint... but he's not allowed to talk to anybody, he is not allowed to show his paintings to anybody.

There is a fireplace - after painting, he has to put it into the fireplace. For three weeks he has to remain silent, and the master in the Zen monastery goes every day to look at his paintings - whether the paintings are changing, whether they are becoming more and more sane. The day he sees that a painting is perfectly sane, the man is released. They have used paintings to release his madness, but the paintings have all gone into the fireplace. They are not to go to the public - you are mad and you would be spreading your madness.

Before you start making your songs and singing and dancing, create the right consciousness, the right awareness, so whatever comes out of you is a blessing for humanity, not a curse. That is the criterion. Unless it can be a blessing, throw it into a fireplace. You are released, but don't burden somebody else.

I used to live in a city across from a homeopathic doctor. He was a Bengali. In India, Bengalis are addicted with homeopathy - strangely enough, because there seems to be no reason why Bengalis should be so interested in homeopathy.

Homeopathy was discovered in Germany by a German scientist. So if in Punjab people are interested in homeopathy, we can understand - but Bengalis? They could not even run if somebody were going to kill them. They cannot run, their dress is such, their dhoti would fall down - it is so loose that how they manage is a miracle. Now these are not the people who fight.

This doctor was opposite me, so we became friends. But he was a torture. Usually, homeopaths don't get many patients, so he was torturing me as much as possible. But I used to take my revenge, and my revenge was: whenever my father would come to visit me, I would take him to the doctor.

He would say, "I am perfectly okay. Why do you always drag me to that idiot? I know more homeopathy than he knows."

He was also a homeopathy addict.

But I would say, "No. Now you have come here, it is good just to have a check-up."

He said, "This is strange. I go on postponing coming to see you because of this doctor! Because I know you will leave me with the doctor and you will escape."

But that was my revenge. In homeopathy, they ask you... if you have a headache they will start asking you what diseases you have had since childhood, in what side of the body all your diseases were.

My father was a lover of homeopathy, and the doctor, seeing my father, would almost go through a nervous breakdown - because my father used to start from his grandfather's diseases. It took almost the whole day. And he may have had just a slight headache and the doctor would tell him, 'Wait, I have listened to all these things. I know! Three generations - I know everything. And you just have a slight headache? Take the medicine!"

But my father would say, "That is not right. Follow your science. First listen to the whole thing, because everything is connected."

That's what homeopathy believes: that everything, every disease is connected with another disease; there is a pattern. A headache cannot come just from the sky, it must be coming from your grandfather! Although he is in the sky too....

But somehow it has to be connected. And after three or four hours describing it... and the doctor just pulling at his hair because he has heard all this so many times, naturally he will start having a headache. By the time my father had completed his story, he would tell me, "Now we can go."

I said, "But what about your headache?"

He said, "My headache is gone."

And the doctor said one day, "It is not gone, it has come to me! Whole hours listening to you - the same story! And I know no medicine can work because it has not come from my grandfather it has come from your grandfather, and in the whole literature of homeopathy, there is no mention of what to do if some disease from somebody else's grandfather comes to you. Now I have to suffer. How long will you be staying here?"

I said, "As long as you want," because he was free and there would have been no problem. But the next morning the doctor had left to a nearby hill station.

After seven days, he phoned. "Is your father still there? Because I am a poor doctor and I cannot manage to stay in this hill station, it is too costly."

I said, "He has gone, you can come back."

Life is an interconnected whole. Everything is interconnected. If you want to sing, just look into yourself - why? If you want to dance, just watch within yourself - from where is the urge coming and why?

I am not preventing you. You can dance, you can sing, you can do whatever you want, but remember not to interfere in anybody's life - even with a song, even with a dance.

Life is very delicate and very fragile.

A small thing can become a great disturbance.

My suggestion is, your urge is beautiful. Just now, what you need is a little more silence, a little more peace, a little more relaxation, a little more no-mind, so that you can become just a hollow bamboo.

And the song that wants to come out of you can come, and the dance can come, but they are not your creations. Your mind has not contributed anything to them, they are coming from the beyond.

You have put the mind aside.

Meditation simply means putting the mind aside, opening the door to your consciousness, an immediate relatedness to existence.

Out of this, let the songs come, let the dances happen. They will be blessings to you and they will be blessings to the whole world. Share them.

But share only when it has come out of silence, out of health, out of an integrated being.

Question 3:

The old mother is waiting for you and she's so old that she may die if you don't return home. The woman you love is waiting for you. Your whole family, your friends, your job - you will be a coward if you don't return.

But I can understand your longing to be here.

You are not a coward in that sense, because if I say to you "Be here," you will be here. Mothers, after all, die - you cannot help it. Whether you go or not, the mother will die at exactly the same time, on the same day. Although if you do not go, you will feel guilty your whole life that you killed her. Do you think those people who never leave their parents... that their parents live forever?

Everybody dies. I am just trying to make it clear so that you are not burdened with guilt. Mothers will die, fathers will die. Everybody has to die. To me, the more important thing is that you are clean of guilt.

Your girlfriend is waiting there. If you stay here, you will feel guilty - you must have promised her you will be coming back soon, and you will going against your word.

No, I will not suggest that.

I will tell you: go back home, don't be a coward. Now... and it is not certain that you will find your girlfriend there. She may have already moved on. If she is intelligent, she will be enjoying her time there - with somebody, of course, hoping that you don't come back!

Staying here will be very cowardly at this juncture. You have to go and see what is happening.

Where is the girlfriend?

My feeling is, even if she has not left you yet, she will leave you. The average time for intelligent human beings to be together is three years. I don't know how many years you have been with her...

in three years, you start getting utterly bored.

Go back.

I have another suggestion to you: I am coming with you! This way, it is simple. Just your love for me, just your trust in me and your determination, your commitment to find out what this life is all about....

You can practice meditation anywhere you are. You need not be here. In fact, it is far better to go back into the world, and once in a while just come for a refresher course.

In this way, you will avoid the feeling of guilt. If you reach home and the girl has eloped, you will not feel guilty. You will feel unburdened, relieved, free to move to another girlfriend.

You will find your mother also. Whatever has transpired within you here, if you love your mother, this is the time to be close to her. And just being close will not help. This is the time to help her to be silent, to be meditative, so that she can understand the beauty of death. So that she can disperse herself into existence without any resistance, without any fight, without any struggle.

If she can welcome death, there is no death. Death is in your resistance. The moment you allow it, you are surprised: death has no reality. You are simply changing the house, from one body into another body.

So go and share your meditation with your mother. That is the greatest gift and present you can give to her before she leaves the world. And share your meditation with your girlfriend too, before she moves to another boyfriend. She is going to move, even meditation cannot stop that. On the contrary, meditation helps because meditation makes you clearly aware of things.

I have seen people living together for years, their whole life, thinking only of divorce - just thinking, but never being courageous enough to be alone without the wife. Because she is your whole misery - how are you going to live without misery? When you come home, it will look so empty, with nobody there to nag you.

I have heard, one man entered a restaurant and ordered lunch. The waitress was puzzled because the order was strange. The order was: "Four chappattis, all burnt."

The woman looked at him.

"And two vegetables with no salt, finishing with a cup of coffee, completely cold, with no sugar, no milk."

The waitress said, "It is a strange order. I have been here...."

He said, "It is not a strange order. Look at the front of your restaurant, what you have written on the board outside" - on the board was written: Here you will feel completely at home. "I am trying to feel completely at home!"

The woman said, "It is up to you." She prepared his lunch, brought it, put it before him, stood nearby in case he needed anything more.

He said, "Why you are standing there? Sit in front of me!"

She said, "Why?"

He said, "Nag me! Unless you nag me I will not enjoy my food!"

Just lifelong habits... it is not so easy to divorce. Rather, people become accustomed. That's why meditation is dangerous; it does not allow you to become accustomed. It keeps your intelligence always sharp and you can see when something has gone sour.

It is stupid to bother about the spilled milk. That which has lost its joy, its beauty, its romance, its poetry - now why drag each other and torture each other? Most probably, the girl will have moved.

Man is not an unmoving property. Man is a movable, intelligent animal. You are meditating here.

What will the poor girl be doing there? She must be eating, she must be drinking, she must be sleeping, she must be taking a shower. So what is wrong in having a boyfriend too? just to continue the old habits, just to continue the routine smoothly.

But if she has not moved on yet, afraid that you may be coming any day, share with her also your meditation. That will help immensely to make both of you absolutely free.

Then love is a free gift with no conditions attached to it.

Teach your mother, teach your girl, teach your friends, and next time, those who can come, bring them.

But if you stay here, then I will certainly call you a coward because you have not faced the reality.

Learn whatever is available here. Practice it anywhere. And whenever you feel that you need to be reminded of many things you are forgetting, come back - and next time don't come alone. It is not right that you have left your girlfriend there. If you love her and you have come in search of meditation here, you would have brought her because it would be a shared adventure.

Next time, this girl or another girl. Just remember one thing: that girls don't ask me whether it is courageous to stay here or to go away. They simply remain here!

So be careful. If you want freedom from any woman, bring her here. No problem for you, she will make you free on her own accord. And a miracle is also possible, that your girlfriend and you may be able to enter into meditation together. And that will be the real meeting. Otherwise, only bodies meet - which is not a meeting. That is only a hit-and-run affair.

If you can also be consciously together in silence, in meditation, in peace, then you are putting down the right foundations of a friendship that can last - not only this life, but that can last for lives together.

And you can be immensely helpful to each other in understanding problems, hindrances.

So my suggestion is: be here, learn meditation. Go home, share your meditation, and whenever you can come, come back. This will be real courage: facing life, not escaping from life, and also making every effort to evolve your consciousness - not allowing life to create obstructions. You were thinking that courage is a simple matter - whether to stay here or go home. It is a little complex.

Go home but don't forget me. I am coming in your heart with you. So whenever you start forgetting me, put your hand on your heart, close your eyes, and immediately you will be connected with me.

My sannyasins are all over the world. It is impossible to bring them together in one place. It would have been great to bring all of them into one place, one million sannyasins in one place, but all the governments consist of cowards. They are afraid of people. If they see one million people listening to one person, loving him to such an extent that even if their life is needed, they will give it.... Around the world this is the fear in the minds of all politicians: I have such a great strength around the world that it should not in any way be allowed to be in one place, because then it can become dangerous to the vested interests, to the governments, to the churches.

And they are right!

But they are cowards. They should face it, they should allow me. They should help me to create an alternative society. They have failed - ten thousand years of continuous failure; what more do they want? They have failed, and now there is no possibility that their system can succeed. It can succeed only in destroying life on the earth.

They should think that if an alternative society can be created, then a chance should be given to it.

People can live in a different way that perhaps is better. And perhaps other people would also like to live in this different way. But then again: the fear that in the new life, they will not be powerful. In the alternative life, everything would be so different that right now the people who are presidents, prime ministers, governors, senators, and are enjoying their egos, will be simply nobodies.

In my vision, I don't see any place for these people. I see singers, dancers, musicians. I see painters, poets. I see all kinds of beautiful people living, loving and having a good laugh about everything in life - because everything is hilarious, we have just forgotten our sense of humor.

And these politicians, these priests, teachers... these are the people who have crushed man's sense of humor. To the people who are in power, humor seems to be against them - people are laughing at them, so it is better that laughter should be destroyed. And they have destroyed laughter. They have made man a long face, sad, and they have convinced humanity that this is what life is.

Go into a church. It looks like a graveyard. In fact, it is a graveyard, because worshipping Jesus on the cross... and have you observed that people - from the pope to the smallest priest - have crosses, golden crosses, hanging around their necks, but Jesus is missing. It is very strange. That cross is there because of Jesus, but where is Jesus and why should the cross be given preference over Jesus?

You could have a beautiful, smiling Jesus. But the society does not want any smiles anywhere.

Hence Jesus has been removed, only the cross has been chosen. Now the cross is a symbol of death, not of life. And crosses are not made of gold, and when you are crucified the cross is not hanging around your neck, your neck is hanging on the cross. What have these people been doing - cheating the whole of humanity?

Question 4:

You are born man and woman together - aradhanishwar. We have the statues, five to seven thousand years old, of Shiva - half-man, half-woman. When the West came to know about those statues for the first time, they laughed. In fact, any idiot would laugh. But strangely enough, just in the beginning of this century, Carl Gustav Jung discovered that psychologically man is both, has to be both, because he is born of a man and a woman. Your father has contributed something, your mother has contributed something; you cannot be just a woman or just a man.

You are both. But all the societies have been trying to enforce the idea that man is man, woman is woman, and they are separate.

Why are they insisting on this separateness? They insist on this separateness because unless the woman is separate, she cannot be enslaved. She cannot be exploited. She cannot be forced into prostitution. But because they were so concerned to keep the society in the hands of men, all power in the hands of men and no power in the hands of women, they did not allow a deeper search: What is in a woman that attracts a man - or vice versa, what is in a man that attracts a woman?

Carl Gustav Jung discovered that everybody is carrying the opposite sex in himself; half his being is made of the opposite sex. And it is this half of the opposite sex which creates the phenomenon of love - the love you are acquainted with.

Every man has his mother, her contribution, in his blood, in his bones, in his marrow. He is still carrying in the unconscious the idea of a woman: his mother. And whenever he finds a woman that in some way resembles his mother, he falls in love. That's why he cannot say why he has fallen in love. He does not know. In the unconscious is the ideal of the mother, but falling in love is a conscious thing. The unconscious knows the ideal, the conscious knows the woman he has fallen in love with.

And the unconscious and conscious are not on speaking terms. They don't talk with each other, they cannot - one is conscious, one is unconscious. While somebody is asleep, you may be sitting by his side but you cannot talk with him.

The woman within you and the man within you are already meeting. It is not that there is a partitioned wall; you are both together - every inch, every atom, every cell. So the question is not how to create the merger, the question is just to remember: the merger is already happening, you cannot live without the merger.

Sitting silently, just watch inside yourself and you will be surprised to see that feminine qualities, male qualities are all mixing without any effort on your part. In fact, their mixing is the very dialectic of life. You go on living a healthy life... it is healthier if the merger is close to perfection; it is not that healthy if the merger has been disturbed by your social upbringing.

Have you watched? The societies that are opposed to sex - their life span is small, their average life is not long. Societies which are not opposed to sex, their life is longer. And societies which are aboriginal, which have not yet heard of your great preachers and priests and philosophers, and are still living naturally - they live the longest.

There are even thousands of people who have passed the line of one hundred and eighty years.

There are even more who have passed the line of one hundred and fifty years.

I may not have come to know about it, but a friend from Caucasus just sent me a picture. One man was going to marry a woman. The man was one hundred and eighty and the woman was one hundred and seventy-two - marrying! I love the idea. This is the time, the right time to marry! In life, there are so many other things to do - do everything, and when you are one hundred and eighty, get married! Prepare the grave and get married, because after marriage there is nothing. So have a good honeymoon. And because after the honeymoon is the grave, it is bound to be total, intense.

Why do people who don't have any condemnation of sex, live longer? Because the merger of their feminine and male qualities is more natural - unhindered, unobstructed, not condemned, not repressed.

You don't have to do anything. Your chemistry is doing it. All that you have to do is be watchful, peaceful, and just see the miracles of nature that are happening in your body.

You have the most miraculous thing in you - life, consciousness, love, and finally God - and you are searching here and there like beggars.

Each man is born an emperor; he just has to claim it.

I want my sannyasins to be emperors, not beggars. And once you remember your glory, you can claim it - it is already there. It is within you. Nobody can prevent you.

So it is not a question of doing anything for the male and female within you to mix. You don't need a mixture, you need just a silent awareness of whatever goes on happening in you. And you will be surprised that everything is right, nothing wrong happens unless you interfere.

Except for your interference, there is no sin.

Question 5:

Nobody is dependent on me. I am not creating a mob of slaves. My whole effort is just the opposite:

to drag you out of the crowd of the slaves and to make you independent individuals.

But from your side, I can understand. From your side, you may be thinking you are dependent on me. That is a misunderstanding.

You are absolutely free. Free to be with me, free not to be with me, free to be for me, free to be against me - it is your joy.

Don't make it heavy. Keep it light and playful.

You love me; hence the fear has arisen that one day you may fall into the opposite and you may start hating me. Don't be worried, because your love is not just love. You love me not for any biological reason, you love me for some spiritual growth. Your love is part of your meditation. Your love is nothing but a gratitude for someone who has opened a door to the beyond.

I don't think there is any necessity for your love to change into hate. I am ready to make you free at any moment without creating the whole drama of hate.

The drama of hate is a necessity - you love someone, then the natural process happens: you start getting bored, you start feeling stuck, you start looking all around. There are so many beautiful people and you are sitting with this woman, this man. You are the most unfortunate man on earth.

Now, how to separate?

And you have been giving promises to the woman - "I will love you. Others love people only in life but I will love you even after life." Now what to do with all those promises? You cannot suddenly change. You cannot say, "I take my promises back." What about all those love letters? "I will die without you. I cannot live a single moment without you. You are my life, you are my soul."

So now you have to go back, step by step, from love to hate. Only when hate is ripe, will you be able to separate. Otherwise, how to separate from a woman without whom you cannot live a single moment? First you have to create just the opposite situation, that "I cannot live with you anymore, even for a single moment - enough is enough!"

But with me there is no problem, there is no need to create hate. You can love, that is your joy. You can turn off the switch, that is your joy.

As far as I am concerned, neither your love affects me nor your hate affects me, it is just the same.

So drop that idea completely.

Don't get into unnecessary problems, because they take energy, they take time. That is the time, that is the energy that has to be put into meditation. And you are throwing it away all over the place.

Remember only one word: if you love me, your love has to be for meditation. If you love me, that means you have fallen in love with yourself; for the first time you are making an effort to realize your potential. How can you hate yourself?

And if you are meditating then it becomes more and more difficult to hate. You cannot hate even your enemies; you will feel a deep compassion. So everything else is going perfectly right - just drop this idea that love may turn into hate.

These are hypothetical questions, sheer wastage of time.

Love while love is there. And when the hate comes, if you cannot manage to avoid it, then hate! But hate totally and intensely and you will still be following me, because my teaching is for totality and intensity.

Who cares about love or hate?