Death in the Ego is Life in Love

The first question

Question 1:

THE BRIDGE IS POSSIBLE - AND THE BRIDGE IS POSSIBLE only because they are diametrically opposite. The gap exists, so the gap can be bridged.

Opposites can meet, and they can meet only because they are opposites. Opposites attract each other. That's how the whole life moves, has dynamism. It is through polar opposites: man/woman, yin/yang, matter/mind, the earth and the sky, this and that. There is a constant bridging, but the bridging is possible only because they are opposites. If they are not opposites there is no need for any bridge.

So the first thing to be understood: science and religion ARE diametrically opposite, but to bridge them is possible. That bridge will not make them the same. In fact, that bridge will make their diametrical opposition more loud, more clear.

Religion can have a scientific flavour, it can be systematic, but it never becomes science, it remains mysticism. It takes the garb of a science, the methodology, the terminology of a science, but it remains mysticism, it remains poetry.

You can translate poetry into prose; the prose can be translated into poetry. Just by translating prose into poetry you will not make it poetry - it will remain prose. And just by translating poetry into prose, it will NOT become prose, it will remain poetry. Buddha speaks in prose, but what he speaks is poetic.

I am not a poet. I speak prose, but what I speak is poetic, its soul is poetic. And it remains poetic.

Religion can use scientific systematization - that's what Tantra and Yoga have done. Science can also use mysticism as a method to inquire into reality, and all the great scientists HAVE used it, but still it remains science. Its basic trust is in reason. Religion's basic trust is not in reason. On the periphery religion can become scientific, but at the core it remains irrational. And science, on the periphery, can become very very poetic, but at the core it remains rational.

Albert Einstein, or other great scientists, great explorers, are very much like mystics. Their search into reality is almost the same as the search of William Blake into reality. Einstein's eyes are full of mysticism, but deep down his trust is in reason. Even if he stumbles upon something through his poetic feelings, through his intuition, he will immediately translate it into reason. He will trust it only when it becomes rational.

And just the opposite is the case with a mystic: even if he comes to know something about reality which is very rational, he will transform it into the irrational, he will turn and change it into poetry.

They ARE opposites, but they can be bridged - and they are always bridged wherever you can find a contradictory person. But then that man is going to be contradictory. He will speak two languages together and he will speak in contradictions, in paradoxes. All the great scientists are paradoxical, and all the great mystics also.

A master, whether of science or of religion, is bound to be paradoxical. He cannot be one- dimensional, he has to be in tune with both the realities - but then he becomes very very difficult to understand.

That is your problem with me: I talk about the irrational, but I talk rationally about the irrational. I am ALL for the illogical, but my approach? - I slowly slowly persuade you towards the illogical through logic. I ARGUE for it. My argument for the illogical is bound to be logical, because no argument can be illogical in itself - it has to be logical.

The other day I mentioned that in old scriptures it has been said that each temple should have at least one maithuna figure on the threshold of the temple - at least one. If it can have many, good.

A master is a threshold, a door, an opening. His feet are rooted in the earth and his hands are reaching towards the sky - the master is the bridge between reason and irreason. The master is the bridge between religion and science, between love and logic. A master is a threshold - hence he can convince you, he can use all logical argumentation, and yet his goal remains illogical. Once you are convinced, he throws you into the mysterious. It is a quantum leap.

I would like to say something more about that ancient tradition:

Mediaeval architects' manuals, all the manuals in India, make it a rule that all temples must bear maithuna sculpture s on their doorways. 'Maithuna' is a Sanskrit word - very pregnant. It does not mean ordinary intercourse, it does not mean an ordinary couple in love - it means UNIO MYSTICA.

It means two persons so deeply dissolved into each other that they are no longer two. It is not just a couple making love - it is LOVE, and the couple has disappeared into it. It is a state of being lost into each other, of oneness.

Other architects' manuals say that the temple has to be a meeting of the sky and the earth. The earth is visible, logical, material. The sky is vague, nebulous, undefined. The temple has to be a place where the defined meets the undefined. The temple has to be a place where the known meets with the unknown.

Man is logic, man represents logic, mathematics, sys-tematization, science. Woman is illogic, intuition, feeling, emotion, poetry; vague, undefined and indefinable. The maithuna figure represents this meeting of logic and illogic, of mind and heart, of body and soul - of ALL the pairs of opposites of yin and yang. And when yin and yang meet and merge and become one, a temple is created.

Love is the temple: orgasm, that state of orgasmic flow where you don't know who you are - man or woman - where you don't know any identity, all identity is lost, when you are in an utter state of forgetfulness AND remembrance... forgetfulness of all that you had known about yourself and remembrance of ALL THAT YOU REALLY ARE, forgetfulness as an ego and remembrance as a whole. That is the meaning of maithuna.

Maithuna means lovers in a deep state of oneness, in a state of inner marriage - not just the outer marriage. You will be surprised to know that only man can come to that inner marriage - animals can't. Have you ever seen animals making love? You will never find any ecstasy on their faces, in their eyes, never. Love-making is done as a matter of fact, as a biological phenomenon. They do it almost as a drag.

Biologists, physiologists, have agreed upon the fact that the female, except in human beings, has not known orgasm at all; no animal female knows orgasm. It is man's privilege to know orgasm.

Orgasm means the inner marriage, even in man....

Ninety percent of women in the past have not known orgasm - that means they never knew anything about the inner marriage. Their love remained biological. They were used by nature to reproduce, but there was no meditativeness in it. My own observation is this: because of this phenomenon, all the old religions were against sex - because sex represented the animal. But they were not aware that man can transcend sex - and the transcendence can happen only through sex - that man can attain to something inner through the outer. That which is not possible for animals is possible for man. Man can move in an orgasmic state, in an ecstasy, where sex becomes irrelevant, is left behind. Bodies become irrelevant, minds become irrelevant. One plunges into the very depth of being - for a single moment, of course, but God becomes available.

Maithuna means: love so deep, so tremendously deep, that a glimpse of God becomes available.

Maithuna means a couple which is no more a couple, a state of being a couple from the outside, but from the inside there is only one - it exists all alone. For a moment the duality is surpassed, for a moment the harmony attained, the accord has happened - hence, orgasm is so relaxing. And Wilhelm Reich is right: if man can become capable of orgasmic joy, then madness, all kinds of neurosis, psychosis, will disappear from the earth.

That is the experience of Tantra too. But to put a maithuna figure on the threshold of a temple took great courage. The very step was of deep revolution. Those people must have been courageous; they declared something by it. They said: It is only through love that the polar opposites can be bridged.

A master is love. A master is in a state of orgasm continuously. He is oneness. His duality is gone.

He knows that only one exists. In that state, opposites can be bridged.

The couple entwined in deep love stands there on the threshold of the temple in a great ecstasy of oneness: lost, merged: one with something deeper and higher than both.

You have to fall in love with a master. The master is a threshold to God. You have to learn how to merge with the master, how to become one with the master. Only through that will you know the bridging.

They stand there possessed by the God called Love. And that's exactly the relationship between a disciple and a master: possessed by deep, immense love. It is non-sexual, it is non-physical - but it is the same that is attained by two lovers. It is the same! The peak is the same. Two lovers move through physiology, through biology; they go through a long way to reach the peak. A disciple and a master reach to that peak immediately. They don't go roundabout; they don't pass through the body or the mind. That is the meaning of surrender, or SHRADDHA, or trust.

Their love opens the doors of a new perception, a new way of looking at reality. That new way of looking at reality bridges the polar opposites. They are passing from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from prose to poetry, from logic to love, from separation to unity, from the ego to the state of egolessness.

Have you not seen it happen? Deep in love, the ego disappears. You cannot find it. Hence I insist:

while making love, remember always to look once at least when you are reaching to the peak - look in. Is there any ego? And that experience can become a satori.

Ordinarily you don't look within. You become so engrossed with the fun of love, with the joy of love, that you forget meditation. If you can remember in that moment when you are dissolving, if you can remember to have a look within, you will never be the same man again. Coming out of love, you will come a totally new man. A new being is born. You will have new ways of perception and new ways of seeing reality.

Once seen, that the ego does not exist, you cannot gather that ego again. And even if you gather it, you will know it is false, it is pseudo. Now that understanding has penetrated deep into you.

The lovers move from time to timelessness. Observe: when the peak happens, time disappears. For one moment, time stops, the whole world stops, all movement stops. That stopping of all movement and time is what we mean by 'peak', the climax, the orgasm.

Time can stop with a master too. And it stops! - it stops every day here to many people. For moments. You are just in tune with me. You are no more there, I am no more here We both have disappeared. Something exists which is beyond both. You have entered the temple, you have bridged the polar opposite.

The reality cannot really be divided; it cannot be divided into logic and love, into time and eternity, into body and soul, into God and matter - it cannot be divided. Although the polar opposites exist, they are not enemies, they are complementaries. They support each other: without the one, the other will not be possible.

Can you think of poetry if there is no logic left? Or can you think of logic if no love is left? They look opposite, yet deep down somewhere they support, they feed each other, they strengthen each other.

So, bridging IS possible, but it always happens through love. It always happens through a threshold.

I call the master the threshold.

In a moment of love or trust... you are just here and now! the eternal now, the absolute here. You are on the doorway.

Remember, doorways are openings. Porphyrus wrote: "A threshold is a sacred thing." A threshold is that which joins the opposites. What is a temple really? A threshold. It joins the world with the beyond; it joins the marketplace with meditation. That's why the temple exists in the marketplace - it has to exist there.

That's why I insist: Don't renounce the world - be there! And remaining there, search for the other and you will find it. It is hidden somewhere there in the marketplace. If you listen attentively, to the market noise, you will be surprised - there is hidden music in it! Great music in it! Just drop liking and disliking. Listen attentively. Be en rapport with it. And everywhere in the known you will find the unknown, in the visible the invisible.

Porphyrus is right when he says a threshold is a sacred thing. A threshold is the boundary between this and that, between two worlds, ordinary, profane space and the sacred world beyond.

The threshold is the point where we pass from one mode of being to another, from one level of consciousness to another, from one reality to another kind of reality, from one life to another kind of life. To enter into a temple is symbolic of entering into one's own depths - or heights. Existentially they mean the same thing. You can call it depth or you can call it height - they mean the same thing.

It is the vertical dimension.

There are two dimensions: the horizontal and the vertical. The threshold joins these two dimensions.

The ordinary profane life is horizontal; the religious life is vertical. Let me remind you about the Christian cross: it is simply a representation of these two dimensions, the horizontal and the vertical.

The cross is a beautiful symbol; the cross is a threshold. The cross is a bridge where the horizontal and the vertical meet, where the ordinary and the extraordinary meet.

And obviously, the most natural metaphor for opening and opener can only be the state of love- making. According to another ancient text: "Where cows have sported with bulls, accompanied by their young ones, or where beautiful women have dallied with their lovers, that place is a appropriate place for a temple."

A strange statement. Listen again. You will be shocked, particularly Hindus and Christians and Buddhists - all will be shocked. But this comes from an old Eastern text. It says: "Where cows have sported with bulls, accompanied by their young ones, or where beautiful women have dallied with their lovers, that place is an appropriate site for a temple."

Strange, but tremendously significant. That's how it should be. A temple has to be a meeting, a bridging.

You ask: You SAID YESTERDAY THAT SCIENCE AND RELIGION ARE DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE.

YES, THEY ARE DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE, hence they are attracted towards each other as man and woman. They call fall in love. They are complementaries too - all opposites are complementaries too.

IN THE WEST THERE ARE MANY SCHOOLS TEACHING SCIENTIFIC MYSTICISM, AND THE PATHS OF TANTRA AND YOGA ARE ALSO VERY SYSTEMATIC.

True, there is a way to teach scientific mysticism, but mysticism is always going beyond science.

That's what I am doing here! I am teaching you logical illogicalness, scientific mysticism, worldly religiousness.

Remember it: whenever there is really something happening, there will be the paradox - because the bridge will be needed. But still, mysticism is mysticism, science can be used as a device, but mysticism never becomes scientific. The ultimate flight remains unscientific, transcendental.

And Tantra and Yoga ARE very systematic - but just on the way they are systematic. Once you have followed them long enough, they push you into the chaos, they push you into the chaos of existence where all systems have to be abandoned - because all systems are tiny, because all systems are small prisons made by the mind.

A prison is very systematic. Have you not seen it? Have you ever gone to a prison? Just go to see... that's the MOST systematic thing in the world. Your house is not so systematic as the prison - everything is systematic, every-thing follows certain rules, and absolutely. People get up early in the morning at exactly a certain hour, they take their breakfasts, they take their baths, they move almost like robots - everything is systematic.

In fact, when everything is too systematic you are imprisoned, freedom is crushed. Freedom needs chaos.

A strange thing has been observed by psychologists. The strange thing is that in the army people are taught to be very systematic and their goal is to create war, their goal is to create chaos, their goal is death, to kill and to be killed. Their goal is to destroy - their goal is Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

But army people are absolutely systematic. The army lives in order to create disorder.Just see the complementariness: the army lives in order to create disorder.

And have you seen another polarity? Artists create order out of disorder, but they live very sloppy, lazy lives, very disorderly lives. If you see an artist living, you will start thinking of committing suicide.

Just lousy! No system at all. You can go and see Chaitanya Hari - when he goes to sleep, when he gets up - there is no order. And he creates beautiful music, he creates order.

Artists create order, hence they have to complement it by disorder in their lives. And army people create disorder, hence they have to complement it by order in their lives. Things move in balance.

Buddhas talk VERY logically because their goal is illogic. And you can see modern physicists talking very illogically: the theory of relativity is illogic. The theory of uncertainty is illogic. Non-Euclidean geometry is illogic. Higher mathematics is illogic. They talk VERY illogically and they create logic, their goal is logic. They are moving towards order.

You will always find this balance happening. Life cannot be one-sided, otherwise it disappears. It needs day and night. summer and winter, birth and death; it needs love and hate So I say: science and religion are diametrically opposite, but I am not saying that bridging is not possible - bridging always happens, continuously is happening. It happens from the side of science, it happens from the side of religion too. And when it happens, you have a great master, a Buddha or an Einstein. Whenever it happens you have the super phenomenon.

The second question

Question 2:

SAVITA, WHETHER YOU ARE DREAMING or not dreaming, you are dreaming. Whether you are dreaming with closed eyes or open eyes makes no difference. You dream in the night, you dream in the day. There are night-dreams and there are day-dreams. You simply go on changing from one dream to another dream, one kind of dream to another kind of dream.

Listen.... You dream in the night, and then abruptly the sleep is broken, then you feel horror - that too is a dream. Now you are dreaming of horror, of vulnerability, fear. Then you fall asleep again and you start dreaming. And in the morning you open your eyes and you start dreaming with open eyes. Dreams are a continuum. Your mind is made of dreams. Your mind consists of dreams.

Remember the one who is seeing the dreams. Awake to that witness. Don't pay much attention to the dreams.

That is where the East and West differ. The Western psychology is too much addicted to dreams, dream analysis; one has to go deep into dreams.

Savita is a therapist, a psychoanalyst, so obviously she must be feeling offended when I put down or play down your dreamlife. Don't feel offended - this is a totally different approach. By analyzing dreams you will never come to end them. By analyzing dreams you may become a little more understanding about dreams, but awareness is not going to happen through it. By analyzing dreams you may even start dreaming better dreams, but better dreams are just dreams all the same. By analyzing dreams you may start feeling your motivations hidden behind the dreams, your repressed desires, your ambitions, but you will never come to know who you are. How can one come to know who one is by analyzing dreams? Dreams are objects and you are the subject. You have to take a PARAVRITTI - a conversion; you have to move a hundred and eighty degrees. You have to stop paying attention to the dreams; you have to pay attention to the one who has been dreaming.

The East is concerned with the witness, not with what it witnesses. You may be seeing a real tree or you may be seeing a dream tree - it makes no difference. For the Eastern approach it makes no difference whether the tree is real or just a dream tree. In both the cases it is the object, in both the cases you are not it. So what difference does it make whether it is there really or you have just imagined it?

The only thing that makes any difference is the one, the mirror, in which the tree is reflected - true or untrue, that is irrelevant. But the pool of pure water in you where it is reflected... pay attention, emphasize the witness, go deeper into the witness.

And that's my purpose here in order to help you - not to analyze your dreams. That you can do in the West in a far more scientific way. The West has become very very skillful in analyzing dreams.

But the East was never worried because the East says ALL IS DREAM, SO what is the point of analyzing?

And there is no end. If you go on analyzing and the source that creates the dreams is there, it will go on creating new dreams. They will be coming and coming and coming.... That's why nobody is ever totally psychoanalyzed; there exists not a single person on the earth who is really and totally psychoanalyzed, because the goal of total psychoanalysis is that dreams should disappear. That docs not happen. It didn't happen even to Freud or Jung. They continued to dream. That means they continued to remain suppressed; that means they continued to remain the same as they were before. Dreams were still coming, because the source had not been radically changed.

The projector is working and you go on analyzing the film on the screen, and you go on thinking how to analyze it. And then you differ, your analysis differs; and then there are schools of psychoanalysis.

Freud says something, Jung says another thing, Adler still another, and so on and so forth. Now there are as many psychoanalyses as there are psychoanalysts, and everybody has his own opinion, and nobody can really be refuted - because all is dream work, Whatsoever you say, if you can say it loudly, convincingly, with authority, with argument, with logic, it appeals TO people - it must be true. And they all seem to be true. ALL those interpretations seem to be true, because no interpretation is of any worth. All interpretations are wrong!

The East has a totally different kind of approach: witness - don't analyze. In analysis you become too much interested, focussed on the dream. Forget the dream: just look at the watcher. That watcher is constant. In the night IT sees dreams; in the day it sees dreams. First you see the dream, Savita, and then you are awakened abruptly and you see horror. Then you fall asleep again and you may see a sweet dream, a beautiful dream, a happy dream, or a nightmare again... and this goes on and on. One thing is constant: the seer, the watcher, the witness.

Turn upon the witness. And that's what I am trying to say to you - while you are dreaming in the day and when you are dreaming in the night, only one good point about dreams is that you say:

That's good. At least one thing is constantly there which will help you to fall upon yourself.

Emphasize that presence.

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, "Make one thing constant in your dreams and sooner or later you will get rid of dreams." And small things he used to give, small techniques, devices - and they work! To one person he said, "Whenever you dream, just in the dream see that you are raising your hands above your head. And in the daytime also, practise this many times so you become very accustomed and habituated to it, so it becomes almost mechanical, so even in dreams you can raise your hand above your head."

And the man said, "What will happen?"

Gurdjieff said, "That, when you have become capable, come and tell me."

Three months passed and the man continued, day in, day out, walking, eating, whenever he would remember, he would raise his hand, and would remember also, "Tonight am going to raise my hAnd in the dream."

And then it happened after three months: one night he was dreaming that he was walking on a road and there was much traffic and noise, and suddenly he realized, and he raised his hand above his head - and the dream was broken. And in THAT moment of dream gone, he suddenly saw himself for the first time - the turning, the conversion. It was in the middle of the night. He danced, he was so joyous. And since that day, dreams disappeared.

And when dreams disappear, reality comes closer and closer every day. It is the dreams that are hindering you from seeing that which is.

When he came in the morning to see Gurdjieff, before he had told anything Gurdjieff said, "So it has happened - because I see your eyes have a different, shine, a different light. They have clarity. That dream stuff that used to move behind your eyes is no more there. So it has happened! So you were capable of raising the hand! Now don't be worried: whenever it comes, again raise the hand.

Every possibility is that it may not come again, because at least you have done one thing consciously.

Even in y our dream, just a small thing of raising your hand, you remembered a small thing. It was very small, but remembrance is great. You remembered, even in your dream. So the witness has reached there - now no need to worry."

I would like to say to Savita: Invite me more and more in your dreams. Let me also enjoy your dreams. Go every night with a very conscious feeling that I will be there in your dreams. Make it an alert effort, deliberate, and one day it is going to happen. It will not be just a dreamlike phenomenon.

I will be really as present as I am now, or even more, because right now I can see there are dreams in Savita's eyes. If in your dream you can see me as I am even for a single moment, all dreaming will disappear.

Analysis is to no point. Dreams have to go. When dreams are gone, reality comes in. By one door, dreams go out; from another door the reality enters in. And reality is silent, quiet, peaceful, blissful....

The third question

Question 3:

LOVE is DEATH, but the one who dies in love has never existed really. It is the unreal self, the idea of an ego, that dies.

So love is death, it is suicide, it is dangerous. That's why millions of people have decided against love. They live a loveless life. They have decided in favour of the ego - but ego is false. And you can go on clinging to the false and the false will never become real. So the life of an egoist always remains in insecurity. How can you make something unreal real? It is always disappearing. You have to cling to it, you have to constantly create it again and again. It is a self-deception. And it creates misery.

Misery is the function of the unreal. The real is blissful - SATCHITANAND. The truth is blissful, and the truth is awareness. SAT means truth, CHIT means consciousness, ANAND means bliss. These three things are the qualities of truth. It is so, it is alert, and it is blissful.

Unreality is misery. Hell is that which does not exist but you create, and heaven is that which exists but you don't accept. Paradise is where you really are, but you are not courageous enough to move into it. And hell is your private creation. But because it is your creation, you cling to it.

Man has never left God. He lives in God, but still suffers because he creates a small hell around himself. Heaven need not be created - it is already there; you have to relax and enjoy it. Hell has to be created.

Take life in a relaxed mood. There is no need to create anything, and there is no need to protect anything, and there is no need to cling to anything. That which is will whether you cling to it or not, and that which is not cannot remain whether you cling to it or not. That which is not is not, and that which is is.

You ask: WHY DOES IT FEEL LIKE YOU ARE DYING WHEN YOU ARE IN LOVE?

Because the ego, the unreal, dies. Love opens the door to the real. Love is the threshold of the temple. Love opens you towards God. It brings great joy, but simultaneously it brings great fear:

your ego is disappearing. And you have invested so much in the ego. You have LIVED for it, you have been taught and conditioned for it. Your parents, your priests, your politicians, your education, your school, college, university, they have all been creating your ego. They have been creating ambition; they are factories to create ambition. And one day you find yourself crippled by your own ambitions, caged by your own ego. You suffer much, but the whole life you have been taught that this is valuable, so you cling to it - you suffer and you cling to it. And the more you cling, the more you suffer.

There are moments when God comes and knocks at your door. That's what love is - God knocking at your door. Maybe through a woman, through a man, through a child, through a love, through a flower, through sunset, sunrise... God can knock in millions of ways. But wherever God knocks, you become afraid. The priest, the politician, the parent, and the created ego - it is at stake. It starts feeling that it is dying. You pull back. You hold back. You close your eyes, you close your ears; you don't hear the knock. You disappear back into your hole. You close your doors.

Love feels like death - it is. And those who want to be really blissful have to go through that death, because the resurrection is possible only through death.

Jesus is right when he says you will have to carry your cross on your shoulders. You will have to die.

He says, "Unless you are reborn, you will not see my Kingdom, you will not see what I am teaching to you." And he says, "Love is God." He is right because love is the threshold.

Die in love. It is far more beautiful than to live in ego. It is far more true than to live in the ego. Life in the ego is death in love. Death in the ego is life in love. Remember: when you choose ego, you are choosing real death - because it is death in love. And when you choose love you are only choosing unreal death, because to die in ego you are not losing anything - you had nothing from the very beginning.

That is the whole emphasis of Ikkyu's DOKA yesterday. You are not, so why be afraid? Who is going to die? There is nobody to die! To whom are you clinging? Whom do you want to make safe? Whom do you want to protect and armour? There is nobody. There is only emptiness... emptiness... utter emptiness.

Listen to Ikkyu's song. Accept this emptiness and the fear will disappear. Be a moth when you find the flame of love burning bright - be a moth! Jump into it... and you will lose the false and you will gain the real; and you will lose dreams and you will gain the ultimate. You will lose something which was not there and you will gain something which has always been there.

The fourth question

Question 4:

VEDANT BHARTI, all relationships break at some point - have to break. You cannot make your house on the threshold, you should not. Love is a door: pass through it. Pass, certainly, don't avoid it. If you avoid it you will miss the deity in the temple. But you should not make your house on the threshold, at the door. Don't remain there.

The door is just an opening. You have to move!

Love relationship is a must, but not the destiny, not the end - only the beginning. I am all for love.

But remember: love is something that has to be transcended too.

There are two types of people - both go neurotic. One type is those who are so much afraid of love because they are afraid of dying. They cling to the ego. They avoid love. They may call it religion, but it can't be religion - it is just sheer ego and nothing else. That's why the monks - the Catholic, the Hindu, the Buddhist - they have such stronger egos, subtle but very strong, hidden but very strong. The humbleness is only superficial, is just a sugar coating on the poisonous ego. They have pious egos, but egos are there. And a pious ego is more dangerous than an ordinary ego - because the ordinary ego is apparent, you can't hide it. But the pious ego is very hidden and you can carry it in subtle ways for ever and ever.

So this creates one kind of neurosis: people avoid love and they think they are going towards God.

You can't go because you have avoided the door itself.

Then there is another kind of neurosis: seeing the beauty of love, taking the courage to jump into it, dissolving the ego for a few moments... because in love it can only be for a few moments. The ecstasy of love cannot be eternal, because it is ecstasy between two parts meeting, dissolving into each other. Unless you dissolve with the whole you can't have eternal ecstasy. Dissolving with the part - with a man, with a woman - you will be dissolving only in a very small drop of God. It can't be oceanic. Yes, for a moment you will have the taste, and then the taste disappears. This creates another kind of neurosis: people cling to love affairs. If love dies with one woman, they change to another woman, another man; they go on and on. They start living on the threshold. They have forgotten the deity, they have forgotten about the temple. Love has to be transcended into prayer.

Never be in the neurosis of the first kind, and never cling to the second kind of neurosis. Go on...

move on.

A great emperor, Akbar, created a small, beautiful capital in India. It was never used because before it was completed Akbar died. So his capital was never transferred to it from Delhi. The place's name is Fatehpur Sikri. It is one of the most beautiful towns ever planned - and never used by any man.

Every small detail was looked into. Great architects of those days were consulted, great masters were consulted. Akbar asked all the great teachers in India of those days to give him a small sentence which could be written on the door, the passage. A bridge led to Fatehpur Sikri - a river had to be crossed and Akbar had made a beautiful gate on the bridge. Some Sufi suggested a saying of Jesus, and he loved it. Many sayings were suggested, but He loved it and that saying was written on the door. That saying is beautiful. It doesn't exist in the Bible; it has come from another oral source. It says: Life is a bridge - pass through it, but don't make your house on it.

Love is also a bridge - pass through it.

So no love affair EVER succeeds. Gives you hope, gives you great hope, but always ends in frustration. That frustration is in-built; just as the ecstasy is in-built, so is the frustration. In the beginning it is ecstasy, in the end it is frustration. That frustration will lead you to go beyond, otherwise how will you go beyond? When will you search for the real deity in the temple if you cling to the door? If you think, "The door is enough and I am contented," then nobody will ever move.

Jesus says man reaches to God through love, love is God - but this is only half of the truth. The other half is: man never reaches through love - man reaches only by transcending love. When both are understood together, you have understood the phenomenon of love. Love is God and love is not God. In the beginning it is, in the end it is not. In the beginning it brings ecstasy, those honeymoon days, and then the frustration, the boredom that every marriage ends in.

Just think of two persons sitting together, bored. All has been explored and there is nothing to explore any more. This is the moment! Either you can start looking for another man, another woman, or you can start looking beyond love.

You have lived love, you have seen its beauties and you have seen its uglinesses; you have seen its joy, you have seen its misery; you have seen its heaven and its hell. It is not pure heaven, no; otherwise nobody will ever go to God. t is pure heaven and pure hell - it is both. Hell and heaven are two aspects of it. In the beginning hope and in the end frustration.

Passing through that hope and that frustration again and again, one day the understanding arises, "What am I doing on the threshold? I have to go beyond!" And not out of anger but out of understanding one goes beyond.

So the first thing: no relationship ever succeeds. And it is fortunate that no relationship ever succeeds - otherwise, when will you relate to God? Why should you think of God? Man thinks of God because love gives a glimpse. Man thinks of God because love gives hope. And man HAS to think about God because love gives frustration. All hopes turn into hopelessness.

Without love there will be no search for God because man will not have any experience of hope and meaning and significance and grandeur. Love gives you a glimpse of the beyond... don't cling to it.

Take the hint of it, and search for something more, go on searching. Use love as a stepping-stone.

You ask:

So first thing: no relationship is successful, whether between Indian man and Western woman, or Western man and Western woman, or Indian man and Indian woman. It can't succeed; its very nature prohibits it. It feels it is succeeding, but it never succeeds. It comes very very close to success, but it never comes exactly to the point. It takes you on great journeys, but it never supplies the goal. It keeps your hope aflame, but just hope. But good, at least it takes you to the threshold.

One step has been taken; half the journey is complete, but half the journey still remains.

And the second thing: it is more difficult between an Indian man and a Western woman, or a Western man and an Indian woman. The problem is not between man and woman, the problem is between Eastern and Western. Man and woman are just man and Woman; East and West make no difference. But the minds are there. Those minds create trouble.

The Indian has one kind of mind and the West has evolved a different kind of mind. So when an Indian man is with a Western woman, or vice versa, there is no communication. They don't speak the same language. It is not only that they don't speak the same language - English, German or French or Italian - they may speak the same language, still they don't speak the same language, because they have different kinds of minds. Their expectations are different, their conditioning is different. The Indian man says one thing and the Western woman understands another thing. The woman says one thing and the Indian man understands something else. Unless they drop the minds, unless they become pure man and woman, there will be great difficulty.

And Vedant Bharti must be asking this question out of his own experience. One night, eavesdropping on Vedant Bharti, I heard this dialogue:

Vedant Bharti: "Oh, my gorgeous, sweetest darling! Am I the first man you've ever been to bed with?"

And the American girl: "Of course you are! Why do all you Indians always ask the same stupid question?"

Different minds.... The Indian mind is very male chauvinistic. The Western woman is now a liberated woman; she lives in a totally different kind of milieu. She is not the woman you have lived with for centuries in India. It can't be possible now to possess a Western woman; she is no longer property - she is as free as you are.

In India, the woman has been taken as property; man can possess her. Not only ordinary man - even great men in India think of woman as a possession. You may have heard the famous story of Mahabharata. Yudhishthira, one of the very famous men in Indian history - and has been thought to be very religious, he is known as DHARMARAJ, a religious king, or a king of religion - playing, gambling, he even staked his wife. He gambled her, because it was thought that your wife is your property. He staked his kingdom, he staked his treasury, he staked everything; then only the wife was left - he staked the wife too. And still in India he is thought to be one of the greatest religious men. What kind of religious man is this? Just to think of staking an alive person, gambling? But in India the woman has been thought of as property; you are the possessor, and the whole and sole possessor.

In the West that slavery is no more, it has disappeared. It is good. It has to disappear from India too. Nobody can possess anybody, man or woman. NO person can be possessed; no person can be reduced to property! This is ugly, this is sin! What can be a greater sin than this?

You can love a person, but you cannot possess. The love that possesses is not love - it is ego.

In India, the man is very male chauvinistic. And the Indian woman has not yet asserted her freedom.

There exists nothing like the lib movement in India. The woman still goes on living in the same way.

So when an Indian falls in love with a Western woman, the problem arises - he starts possessing.

And the Indian mind is very much obsessed with sex; that too creates a problem. You will be surprised when I say the Indian mind is very much obsessed with sex, because you think India is very religious and moral. Yes, it is, but its morality and religion are all so much based on repression that deep down is the obsession with sex.

If your woman just holds somebody else's hands, the husband is mad. Just holding hands! Holding hands can be just a simple gesture of friendship. There is no need to give any sexual colour to it, but the Indian man cannot think that. If his woman is holding hands with somebody else, that means she is sexually relating to somebody else. He will be in a rage. He will not be able to sleep. He would like to kill the man or the woman or himself. Something has gone very wrong.

In the West things are looked at in a different way. One can hold somebody's hand just as a sheer gesture of friendship, of lovingness, of sharing. It need not have any sexual overtone to it. Or, even if it has, it is nobody else's business. It is the person's freedom. A person has to decide his life, how to live, with whom to live. Nobody else can be the decisive factor, but that creates problems.

Just listen to this: in the West sex is not so important as people in the East think it is. Sex has almost become a sharing of energy, a loving play with each other, a fun. It no longer has that seriousness that it used to have in the past. In India it is still very very serious. And when something is serious, remember, ego must be involved in it. Ego is always serious; it makes everything serious. And whenever something is playful, that simply shows ego is no more involved in it. And ALL playfulness is good because it is liberation.

When you fall in love... if all Indian falls in love - and here it is going to happen again and again - when an Indian falls in love, he is falling very seriously. That is the trouble. And the woman may not think it serious at all. She may think it is for the moment. You appeal to her - for the moment. There is no commitment in it; there is no tomorrow to it. But the Indian mind is bringing not only tomorrow - the whole life. Or there are people who even think of other lives in the future. Those are hidden sources; you don't talk about them, but the clash is going to happen.

She has fallen in love with you because she enjoys loving; it is a beautiful experience. She has not fallen in love with you in particular - she is in love with love itself. That is the difference. You are not in love with love itself - you are falling in love with this particular woman. It is a life-death problem for you. If tomorrow she starts moving with somebody else, you will be mad. But you misunderstood. It was a gesture of the moment.

The American girl had just returned to New York from a holiday in England and was talking to her best friend.

"Mabel, I've been thinking about Keith ever since I left England. Now I'm back home and I don't think I should write to him as our friendship was only slight."

"But, Wendy, you promised to marry him!"

"I know, but that was all."

Marriage no longer has that seriousness that it has in the East. Marriage is just a kind of friendship - nothing special about it.

If you don't understand these different minds it is going to be a difficult problem, communication will not be possible. Man in the East has always enjoyed freedom - mm? - they say "Boys are boys."

But the woman has not been given any freedom. In the West now there is no discrimination. Man or woman - both are free. And whatsoever man has been doing, now woman is also doing, it; she has every right to do it.

In the East we played a trick. The trick was that we placed woman very high on a great pedestal; we worshipped woman. That was a trick to imprison her. We satisfied her ego through worship. We said, "A woman is a goddess, a woman is purity. A woman is not of this earth. A woman has to be virgin before marriage and then she has to remain monogamous for the whole of her life." And we gave to much respect for this, and we conditioned the women so much for this, that they became addicted to the ego, and they remained on the pedestal. Imprisoned there, chains there! And man was enjoying all kinds of freedom. Boys are boys....

The woman in the West has come down from the pedestal. She says, "Either you also come up on the pedestal or I am coming down. We both have to exist on the same ground." And that's how it should be.

"I say, old man," said Clive to the host of the party, 'there's this rather delectable young chick whom I'm getting along with really well, if you know what I mean."

He walked and continued, "And I wondered if I might use your spare bedroom for a short while."

"No, I don't mind," replied the host. "But what about your wife?"

"Oh, don't bother about her," said Clive. "I'll only be gone a short time and I'm sure she won't miss me."

"I KNOW she won't miss you," stated the host. "It's only five minutes ago that SHE borrowed the spare bedroom!"

The male ego has never allowed that to happen. It has allowed itself all kinds of freedom; it has not allowed that freedom to the woman. Now things have changed in the West. Man and woman are standing on the same plane as human beings. The woman is no more a goddess, and she does not pretend and she does not WANT to pretend.

But the Indian mind is very much clouded by the past.

If you drop these minds, if you are just a man and a woman, then there is no problem. The problems arise out of the Indian mind and the Chinese mind and the American mind - if you drop the minds then there are no problems. Then love can flow, and you can grow through it.

But still remember: no love can be ultimate satisfying. It can go a LONG way but it cannot go the whole way. Finally you have to go beyond it. Learn how to love by loving people, then one day use that learning to fall in love with the whole, with existence itself. Only that day have you come home.

The last question

Question 5:

THERE IS NONE. The Zen Buddhist knows it, the Epicurean hedonist does not know it. That's the only difference - otherwise there is none.

Between the enlightened person and the unenlightened person there is no difference at all, not even a single inch's difference. The enlightened person KNOWS it, the un-enlightened person does not know about it - that's all. The unenlightened person believes in the distance, in the difference, hence he creates IT. The enlightened person has come to know there is no difference. The belief has disappeared.