It Ain't Easy!

The first question

Question 1:

The child is utterly happy in the mother's womb; that memory persists. It is not just a memory in the brain, it is in every cell of the body, every fiber of the body. It is all over you.

That memory persists. Those nine months have been of such eternal joy, of such relaxation and let-go, it is not easy to forget it. Even though consciously you have forgotten about it - because of the birth trauma you became disconnected consciously from it - yet the unconscious still hankers for it. It tries in every way to reach to that lost paradise again.

The whole of religion consists of that search, and the whole of science too consists of that search.

The scientific endeavour is to create that womb outside - with central heating, with central air- conditioning, with better clothes, with better technology - the whole effort is to create the womb outside.

And religion tries to create the womb inside - with prayer, with meditation techniques, with love, with God. But the effort is one: how to be again in those beautiful days. That lost womb is the source of the parable of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden.

You ask: WHAT IS THE DESIRE FOR PERFECTION?

The desire for perfection is that whatsoever is the case with you, it is never up to the mark. It is never as it should be, there is a gap. You can still imagine things being better; you can still imagine better days, better possibilities. One goes on hankering for those better possibilities.

You can drop this search for perfection only if you move back through the birth trauma again. If you live it consciously and you remember consciously those days in the womb, immediately the desire for perfection will disappear; it disappears immediately. And the disappearance of this desire is a great relief, because only then can you start living moment-to-moment - how can you live with this desire for perfection? It is the source of all neurosis.

The man who wants to become perfect is bound to become neurotic, because he can't be here. He is in the future, which is not. He cannot enjoy this moment, he can only condemn it. He cannot love THIS woman because he has the idea of a perfect woman. He cannot love THIS man because this man is not perfect. He cannot enjoy this food, this breakfast, this morning - nothing is ever fulfilling to him, can't be. His expectation is there and he is continuously comparing, and continuously falling short.

The man who lives in the desire for perfection, lives a condemned life. And the society helps it too.

The parents, the schools, the colleges, the universities, the mahatmas, the priests, the politicians, they all help to make you neurotic.

From the very childhood, you have not been accepted as you are. You have been told, "Be like this, only then are you acceptable." If you want to live a life of your own you will be condemned by everybody, everybody will be against you. Your parents will not be able to tolerate you. They have to mould you, form you, change you, manipulate you - they have to MANUFACTURE you according to their hearts' desire.

And what is the problem with them? They are also suffering from the birth trauma. They have tried their whole life to become perfect, and they have failed. Nobody can ever succeed; the desire is such that it is bound to fail. Failure is inevitable - because you can go on succeeding, but with you the idea of perfection starts becoming more and more sophisticated. As you succeed, the idea starts receding further ahead into the future. It becomes more sophisticated: more expectations...

The distance between you and the idea of perfection remains the same. If you have ten thousand rupees, you need one hundred thousand to be happy. When you have one hundred thousand, the desire has moved ahead; now that is not enough. And so is the case in everything.

The parents are living their own traumas. They have tried their whole life and they have failed; now they want to live through the child. Hence they start turning the child into a neurotic being, now they start teaching the child. This is a vicarious way of living. They have failed; now they know that death is coming, now their days are finished, now they are losing hope. A new hope arises, they can live through the child. If they were not perfect, at least their children can be perfect. And they say a tree is known by the fruit: if the children are perfect then the parents must have been perfect.

This is how the whole neurosis continues, from one generation to another generation. The parents are continuously trying to improve upon the child in every way. And all that they succeed in doing is,

they make the child feel condemned as he is. They make it impossible for the child to love himself, to respect himself. And once that love and respect for oneself is lost, one IS lost.

The world suffers so much - from madness, all kinds of mental illnesses, physical diseases. And ninety-nine percent of the causes of all these mind-body problems come from this approach, that the child has to be perfect.

A family was seated in a restaurant. The waitress took the order of the adults and then turned to their young son.

"What will you have, sonny?" she asked.

"I want a hot dog," the boy began timidly.

Before the waitress could write down the order, the mother interrupted. "No, no hot dog," she said.

"Give him potatoes, beef, and some carrots."

But the waitress ignored her completely. "Do you want some ketchup or mustard on your hot dog?"

she asked of the boy.

"Ketchup," he replied with a happy smile on his face.

"Coming up," the waitress said, starting for the kitchen.

There was stunned silence upon her departure. Finally, the boy turned to his parents. "Know what?"

he said. "She thinks I'm real."

That is from where the problem is arising, you DON'T allow your children to be real. You make them feel unreal, you force them to feel phony, rejected, worthless. And once this idea is created in their minds, that they are worthless as they are, naturally a great desire to become perfect arises. And with that arise all sorts of neuroses.

My effort here is to help you, not to be perfect, but to drop the whole nonsense. In dropping that, you will become for the first time real.

Reality is never perfect, remember. Reality is always growing - how can it be perfect? Once something is perfect, growth is not possible. Only imperfection can have the joy of growing.

Do you want to remain a flower, growing, opening? Or do you want to become just a dead stone - perfect, no opening, no growing, no change? Remain imperfect and respect your imperfections, and you will be able to enjoy, celebrate, and you will be able to be healthy and whole. And you will not need to go to a psychiatrist or a psychoanalyst and lie down stupidly on the couch for five years talking nonsense. And there will be no need for any shock treatments either. In fact, if your mental stress disappears, your body will feel immediately relieved.

Many diseases will automatically disappear from the earth if this foolish idea to become perfect disappears. But this has been taught from every nook and corner - from the church, from the temple,

from the mosque, from the university. Everywhere, everyone seems to be part of the conspiracy.

Everyone seems to be utterly determined to make every person perfect. And not even a single perfect human being has ever existed - cannot exist. Imperfection is the way things are. Imperfection is beautiful, because it has the potential to grow and flow. Perfection is simply death and nothing else.

Life is imperfect. And life enjoys imperfection.

I teach you totality, not perfection. And these are two different goals. Perfection is a neurotic goal, totality is a sane goal. Perfection is in the future, totality is herenow. You can be total THIS moment.

You can be total in your anger, you can be total in your sex, you can be total in whatsoever you are doing - cleaning the floor or cooking food or writing poetry. You can be total! THIS moment! It needs no preparation, it needs no cultivation.

And by being total you will enter into God, into nirvana. When you are total, the self disappears - that is the beauty of totality. Just try to understand - this is subtle, and of immense significance:

when you are total, the self disappears.

Have you ever seen any total moments? Then you know, the self immediately disappears. If you are totally in love with a woman or a man, the self disappears. When you are making love the self disappears, if you are total in it. If you have gone for a morning walk and you are TOTAL in it, nothing else matters in those beautiful moments - just the morning and you, you and the morning, the birds and the trees and the sun, and you are completely drowned, utterly drowned in the moment - the self disappears.

The disappearance of the self is benediction. You will know what Buddha means by "no-self". He means utter bliss. He never uses the words "utter bliss" because he knows you - you can make a goal out of it, you can start striving to utter bliss. YOU can make a goal of the perfectionist - you can say, "I cannot rest unless I become perfectly blissful." Now you have missed the whole point.

If you are total, bliss happens as a by-product, because self disappears. Dancing, singing, listening to music - or just here, being with me, sometimes it happens. I can see it happening to many people.

I know when I look at your face whether there is self or not. Your face immediately has a different quality. When I look at you and the self is not there, you are just an opening, a window, I can see God clearly in you. In those moments, God is there, you are not. All clouds have disappeared and the sky is clear, transparent, and the sun is shining.

Whenever your self disappears for a moment, suddenly I can see the luminousness that comes to your face, that quality of magic that arises around you.

But we have been taught to live in a non-total way, through the idea of perfection.

I teach you totality. In totality, self disappears. And just the contrary is the case with perfection. With the idea of perfection the self is strengthened. It is an egoist ideal: "I want to be perfect." "I" cannot be total, because in totality no "I" is ever found. Hence it appeals to the ego too, to become perfect, to be the most perfect man or woman in the world. The ego feels very good, the ego starts striving for it. The ego is involved with the idea of perfection.

With the experience of totality, the ego is simply non-existential. If you learn how to be herenow, slowly slowly you will see that life is beautiful as it is. Life is beautiful in its suchness, in its as-it-is- ness. It needs no improvement.

This can be helped through the birth trauma - if you go through the birth trauma, if you live it consciously again, then the whole significance of birth changes.

Right now the womb experience remains in your unconscious - so important that you are striving for it unknowingly. That's why people go on thinking that in the past, everything was good. This is nothing but a projection because of the womb experience. In all the societies of the world, in all the religions of the world, the idea persists that the golden age was there somewhere in the past. When Adam lived in the Garden of Eden, it was paradise. In India, they say the golden age was very very prehistoric. Then things started falling down - the original sin. We were in a state of bliss and then we started falling. Then we lost it.

This is nothing but the same story, woven philosophically. The original fall is nothing but the fall from the womb. And the memory that before, some time before, far away in the past, everything was golden and beautiful, is nothing but a memory projected on history. Individual memory projected on collective history. And we have to attain to it again, so we become interested in the future.

The past is important, the future is important, only the present is not important. Because we have lost the past - and only in the future, trying, striving, reaching it, some day we will find it.

So there are two types of people, and both are not different basically. Religious people say the golden age was in the past. And the non-religious say the golden age is going to be in the future, the utopia is coming. Hindus say the golden age - SATYAYUGA, the age of truth - was in the past.

And communists say the age, the golden age - SAMYUGA, the age of equality - is going to come in the future.

They are not different. They look different, because one talks about the past, another talks about the future. But the mechanism is the same: they both want to avoid the present. Communists and anti-communists are not very different.

Real spirituality begins with the present and ends with the present. It has no past, it has no future.

This moment is all.

So, Adheera, try to get consciously into your unconscious. Try to penetrate to where this desire for perfection is arising. Go into your childhood. YOU have been taught, you have been conditioned layer upon layer, you will have to peel yom onion of the mind. And then finally you will come to the birth trauma, the day you were born.

You can live it again. That is the whole process of rebirthing: you can live it again. And once you live it again, it disappears. And what happens? The total perspective changes. If you can live it again consciously - if you can move back, become a child, a small child, a baby, just coming out of the womb - you will go through a great suffering and agony. You will suffer the same birth pain; you will feel suffocated, your breathing will become hectic. Sometimes the breathing may stop completely, your body will become paralyzed. You may feel you are dying, because that's what you felt when you were coming out of the womb.

You will feel you are passing through a very narrow tunnel, suffocating, dark. Great fear will arise in your being, you will be shaken and rocked by the fear. You will need somebody to help you.

Hence the need for a master. You will need somebody to protect you, you will need somebody to support you - to tell you, "DON'T be afraid, go into it. Let it pass, DON'T escape from it." Once you have passed through it and once you have seen consciously what happened in your birth unconsciously, it is wiped out. This is the process of the mind. Anything lived consciously is wiped out; it has no more grip on your unconscious being.

And then for the first time you open your eyes and you see that the world is beautiful. The willow is green and the rose is red. And then for the first time you see that the womb was good but it is not the goal. The womb was convenient but it was only a preparation. It was not real life; it was a sucker's life, it was pure exploitation. It was dependence. It knew nothing of freedom - how can it be beautiful? Yes, it was convenient and comfortable, but you were simply vegetating, you were not really alive. You were a contented pig. It has no worth in itself.

And then you start seeing that life has beauties which no womb can ever give to you.

All wombs are confined. That's why after nine months a child HAS to come out of it, because of the confinement. All wombs are prisons - comfortable, warm, but a prison is a prison. Even if it is comfortable, even if it is warm, IT does not make it anything else; it is prison.

You are coming out of the womb into freedom. The whole sky opens up, and the sun and the moon and the trees and the stars - they were not available to you. And the songs of the birds and the music and all the poetry and love - they were not available to you. Your paradise was not much of a paradise, your paradise was just a very stupid paradise.

Once you have seen that it was nothing of worth.... It was needed in those moments because you were growing and you were very tender and delicate and you needed the protection. Once the child is nine months he hankers to come out, he wants to come out, he wants to be free of the womb. He is ready to go into the world and see the joys and the miseries of the world. He is ready to go deep into experiences and into existence.

Once you have lived the birth trauma consciously and you have erased the pain memory, you will be surprised that something like a mist from yom eyes has disappeared. And when you open your eyes the trees will be greener than they had ever been, and everything will be totally different. You will see the world in psychedelic colours - you will not need any drug trip for it.

People are taking drugs just to create something which is very natural. There is no need to destroy your body chemically for it. You can just go through the birth trauma, and you can come back, and the whole world and the whole experience of the world becomes psychedelic.

It is more colourful. It is a constant jubilation. There is no end to this jubilation - from beginningless beginning to endless end, it continues. It is a song ad infinitum.

Once you start seeing this, life begins. That's what Jesus means when he says, "Unless you are born again, you will not enter into my kingdom of God." He is talking about rebirthing!

In the East, we have a name for a man who has become alert and total, we call him DWIJA - twice- born. He has attained to a second birth. The first birth is BOUND to be unconscious. And if you live only with the first birth, you will remain a perfectionist. Once you are twice-born, consciously born, and have erased all the pain-memory of the first birth, you will live the life of totality. Not with the desire for perfection - all desire for perfection disappears, because you see this is the most perfect world, and you are the most perfect person, and everybody is perfect, and all is as it should be.

When you see all is as it should be, great gratitude arises. Prayer is natural. You bow down to the earth, you bow down to the sun, you bow down to existence. That is the religious quality - not that you go to church and think you are religious, and you bow down to Christ and think you are religious:

you are not! Nothing of the sort. You are simply afraid; you are thinking Christ will save you.

Nobody can save you, unless you save yourself. No Christ, no Buddha, can save you. But you can save yourself. And it is your responsibility to save yourself. And the way to save yourself is to be reborn, born again.

Remember, if you suffer from the desire for perfection - and almost everybody does - then make it a point that you have to go back into your birth process and you have to erase the whole tape. And then look again with empty eyes, and you will be surprised.

I have been working on many people. And whenever they come across their birth memory, strange unbelievable things happen. I was helping a young man to go through. He came to a point when he almost started suffocating - crying, weeping, and then he became paralyzed. For a moment, everything stopped - even breathing. It was such agony. Then he opened his eyes, looked at me, and he said, "This is strange. I am smelling chloroform and the smell that surrounds a hospital."

I asked him, "Were you born in a hospital?" He said, "I DON'T know, I have never asked my mother."

We checked with the mother and she said, "Yes, he was born in a hospital. And I was in such pain that I was given a heavy dose of chloroform."

The memory of the chloroform entered into his cells. He could still smell it - after twenty-eight years!

But once you pass through all these memories they start losing their control over you. Going through the birth is the first step. If you can do it, then the second step is going through the death that preceded your birth, nine months before. If you can go through your birth, you can easily go through your death. And once you have gone through your death, your past life becomes available to you.

And then the whole stupidity of it....

That's why these Buddha sayings, these Ikkyu sutras, look so depressing to you - because they are based on a totally different understanding of life. These people have known their past lives and they see the stupidity of it. You cannot see. You think you are doing great things; you are not aware.

If you have been in love for many many lives, again and again, and always failed and failed and failed, and if you come to know about it, if you can SEE it, then the love affair that you are in today will simply become invalid, just through that experience. Now you know that these are the ways you have always been deceiving yourself. And it is a repetition, a wheel that goes on moving.

These sutras are not philosophical sutras, they DON'T propound a doctrine. They are based on a totally different experience of life, on a different vision. So sometimes you will feel disturbed.

The other day, Arup was saying to somebody, "These heavy talks, and Osho has called the series "Take It Easy"!"

That's why I have called it "Take It Easy". It ain't easy. It is difficult to take it, it is VERY difficult to take it. It is almost impossible to take it, because it will shatter your whole life pattern. It ain't easy, that's why I have called the whole series "Take It Easy".

Truth is that whose contradictory is also true.

The second question

Question 2:

NISEEMA, THE REAL MASTER NEVER FITS WITH YOUR EXPECTATIONS. And if he fits he is not a master. The real master cannot fit with your expectations, your expectations come out of your mind. Your mind is the problem: it has to go down the drain, in toto.

A real master never fits with your expectations. And those who fit with your expectations are just businessmen, not real masters. They fit, they HAVE to fit - that's how they depend on you. A real master is always a shock, a shattering. He will not in any way allow himself to fit with you. Then only can he destroy you.

A real master is not a consolation. A real master has to UNCREATE you - how can he be a consolation? He has to demolish you; he is not a renovation. He is not just patching up things, he has to uproot you from the very roots and transform you to another dimension. He is a transmutation.

Nothing will ever fit with a real master.

Do you think Jews were unnecessarily angry with Jesus? The anger was this, that he didn't fit with their expectation.

He used to move with people who were not respectable. He used to live with people who were gamblers, drunkards, thieves. He used to stay in houses where no respectable person, no rabbi, would be ready to go. He allowed this prostitute, Magdalene, to become his closest disciple. He was not fitting with their expectations. A religious person should behave in a certain way - he was behaving outrageously, he was annoying people.

Now, you ask me: SINCE I HAVE BEEN HERE THIS I HAVE BEEN FEELING INCREASINGLY UNSPIRITUAL.

That is your truth. And I am here to bring your truth to the surface. You must have been repressing what you call "unspiritual". In calling it unspiritual you simply say that you are against it; you are condemning it. Our words are significant. When you call something unspiritual you have condemned it.

You say: SINCE I HAVE BEEN HERE THIS TIME I HAVE BEEN FEELING INCREASINGLY UNSPIRITUAL.

You are becoming increasingly REAL, that's all. All your ideas of spirituality are being taken away.

They were forced, pseudo. You were just repressing your reality and calling it spirituality. You were against yourself: You were not enjoying your being; you were crippling it, poisoning it. You were a victim. Now you are gathering courage to be yourself. DON'T call it unspiritual; you are becoming real, you are becoming natural.

And how can nature be unspiritual and how can reality be unspiritual?

To be with me means first I have to take all that is pseudo in you. The false has to be known as false. And knowing it as false, it drops. The true can arrive only when the false has disappeared.

Now, your spirituality was false, Niseema. It was just a facade, it was a show-window spirituality.

Deep down, you were always that which you are finding yourself now. Now your depth is meeting with your surface; they are losing the division, the split. You are relaxing, you are dropping the conflict with yourself. The top dog and the bottom dog are meeting, for the first time there is a merger happening. This is the beginning of growth, because only the real can grow. The plastic, the synthetic, the false, cannot grow.

You can have plastic flowers, but they cannot grow. Growth happens only to the real and your spirituality was like a plastic flower. That's how people are spiritual Deep down they are absolutely the opposite, on the surface they have painted faces.

I am taking your painted face away, I am taking your mask away, the mask is slipping off. Hence this question has arisen. You must be becoming afraid: "What kind of master is this? And what am I doing here?" You must have come here expecting that you would become more spiritual, and I am making you more REAL! In your words, more "unspiritual".

SINCE I HAVE BEEN HERE THIS TIME I HAVE BEEN FEELING INCREASINGLY UNSPIRITUAL AND MORE AND MORE STUPID.

That is a good beginning. To feel that one is ignorant is the beginning of wisdom. Only stupid people never feel that they are stupid. This is how wisdom arises - when you start seeing the stupidity of it all, something has happened in you, a ray of light has entered.

To move into the world of understanding, first one has to drop all kinds of knowledge. So I am taking your pseudo-spirituality and I am also taking your borrowed knowledge. The so-called spiritual

people carry great knowledge - esoteric, occult, they go on collecting it. They consult I Ching and they consult astrology books and they read tarot cards and they go into the mysteries of kabala. And all are just mind games. They have nothing to do with spirituality, they are really meant for stupid people to play around with. And these people go on reading the Bible and the Vedas and the Gita - and they cram it, they become parrots. And the they think they know.

Knowledge is not knowing. Anything borrowed can never be your knowing.

So when you come to me, many things are going to happen. Each day you will feel poorer and poorer, and you had come to become richer and richer. So naturally, only the very courageous can stay with me, otherwise people escape. Because who wants to become poorer? You had come with so much knowledge and now you feel stupid. Now what kind of game is this? You had come to learn something, but what I am proposing here is not learning but unlearning.

You had come to accumulate a little bit more. You had already a beautiful collection of knowledge, you wanted to make it more up-to-date. You wanted to have something from a modern Buddha.

Because the old Buddha is twenty-five centuries old, and things have changed. You wanted an up- to-date version of Buddhahood. And you come here and I start taking things away from you. Your knowledge starts disappearing and you feel in a panic: what is happening? You start feeling stupid.

You have always been stupid! Just that knowledge was giving you the idea that you are not. Now this is a great revelation. Your spirituality starts looking false, plastic - and you have been thinking that you are a saint, almost on the verge of enlightenment. And all your morality starts looking meaningless, because it was just an imposition from the outside.

It was because of fear that you were moral, or because of greed that you were moral. All your character looks cheap, because I teach you a totally different kind of life: characterLESS. Only in characterlessness is there freedom. And only in characterlessness does real character arrive - character that springs from your very source, is not imposed from the outside, is not imposed by the society, is not a kind of obedience but is a growth of freedom. It is a totally different thing, it happens only to people who are rebellious enough.

I DON'T teach you obedience, I teach you rebellion.

So naturally, your spirituality gone, your morality gone, your knowledge gone, all down the drain - suddenly you are standing there looking stupid, nude, ignorant, characterless, immoral, unspiritual.

NOW, what kind of disciplehood is this? Naturally, the question arises.

But, Niseema, this is the beginning. First I have to take all that you have away - so your burdened heart is unburdened, so all the garbage that you have gathered is thrown out and you are clean, left clean. In that cleanliness, in that purity, in that unburdening, you will start growing.

And that growth I am not going to give to you, it will happen to you. You are ready for it - just the garbage is too much and it doesn't allow you to grow. It is as if a rosebush has been covered by garbage - Vedas, Gitas, Koranas, Bibles, all garbage - and the rosebush is dying. I have to take all these books away. Soon the rosebush will start growing, and the day is not far off when you will see the first roses blooming.

I FEEL TO BE ENJOYING SENSUAL PLEASURES AND IN GENERAL TO BE VERY HEDONISTIC.

Beautiful. Enjoy. Because it is only through enjoying them that you will come to see the illusoriness of them - there is no other way. If I say they are illusory, Ikkyu says they are illusory, Buddha says they are illusory, they are not going to become illusory just because these people say so. You have to see it on your own.

Buddha has said again and again: DON'T believe what I say, unless you have examined it, lived it, observed it, concluded it, on your own.

How can you know the illusoriness of these enjoyments unless you go into them? Go into them. Go into them as totally as possible, so sooner you can come out. Be a hedonist. By being a hedonist you will see that all pleasures bring pain, that each pleasure is followed by great pain. Slowly slowly, you will see that the pleasure and pain are two aspects of the same coin. You cannot get rid of pain unless you see this. Once you have seen that pleasure and pain are TOGETHER, inevitably together....

There is no way to separate them. That's what we have been doing, down the ages - just trying to separate them. We want all the pleasures and we DON'T want any pain. And they are together, they come together. We want to avoid pain and we want to enjoy pleasure. But the pain comes.

When you see this happening again and again, one day the very experience will make you capable of dropping both. And the day one drops pleasure and pain both, what happens is called bliss. Great silence, great joy arises - which is not pleasure, remember, because it has the counterpart of pain in it. It is sheer joy, eternal joy. But it arises only when pleasure and pain both have been dropped.

And if you DON'T become a hedonist, if you DON'T experience its truth, then you will become a spiritual hedonist. Then you will think of the same joys - in paradise of course, not here, but of the same joys. You will hanker after the same women, the same men, the same wine - but in paradise. You will have to postpone a little bit, that's all.

Your saints are just the same as you - in fact more greedy than you, more hedonistic than you, but they are waiting for paradise. They will take their revenge there. They will see to it that you all suffer in hell, because you enjoyed on the earth and they suffered on the earth, so now they will be rewarded. They will have beautiful women in paradise, eternally young, with no perspiration, etcetera, etcetera. And rivers of wine. Wine is not sold in pubs in paradise - rivers. And there has never ever been any effort for prohibition. You can jump into rivers of wine, you can bathe in rivers of wine, you can drink as much as you want. And all kinds of food will be available, and with no fear of becoming fat. Nobody has ever heard - have you ever seen any fat angel? They never become fat; they go on eating and eating. And all their work consists of is jubilation, singing songs in the praise of the Lord, and fooling around.

These are your saints. Once they were saints sitting with long faces, now they are fooling in paradise.

Your saints are not against pleasure, they are only against the momentariness of it; remember it.

They are only against the momentariness of it, because it is fleeting. So what is the point of running after it? They are waiting for permanent pleasure. They are REAL hedonists, more hedonistic than you.

So if you become spiritual, so-called spiritual, then you will be just waiting for your time, impatiently waiting for when paradise arrives and you can jump into all kinds of pleasures. You can explode, and you can explore all kinds of pleasures that you have denied to yourself on the earth.

This is not much different; the worldly and the other-worldly are not different, they are the same.

What I am trying to make you aware of here is not that you have to become hedonistic in the other world, or you have to become antagonistic to hedonism in this world. What I am trying here is to make you aware of the whole situation of life. If something in your unconscious hankers for pleasure, go into it - that is the only way to go beyond it. Going through is the only way to go beyond. DON'T repress.

So Niseema, be hedonistic, TOTALLY hedonistic. Enjoy all sensual pleasures - there is no fear about it, because they are all dream stuff. So if you are enjoying a dream, I am the last person to be worried about it. If your saints are against it, that simply shows that they have not yet understood that it is all a dream. Why should they be against it?

That's why my statements sometimes make you very much confused. Just the other day, I talked against love. And every night, every evening, I suggest to people to move into love. They become very puzzled. They have fallen in love with this madman - in the morning he says "All love is illusion", in the evening he says "Fall in love, go headlong."

I am saying it because it is illusion: go headlong, so soon you will be out of it. If you go in a miserly way you may take years or lives to come out of it, and I may not be here to help you. So I say go headlong - just jump into the whole turmoil of the world, so that you can come out of the illusion. If it is an illusion you WILL come out of it, there is no need to be worried about it. And even if you DON'T come out of it, so what? It is just an illusion! Enjoy it while it lasts!

Sooner or later you are bound to be awake. And my own experience is that the more you go into these experiences of life, the more the awakening comes closer. When the night is darkest the morning is the closest. When you are moving in an illusion so deeply and it looks so real that everything else looks unreal in comparison to it, that is the moment when the morning is very close.

You say: THIS DOESN'T FIT WITH MY PREVIOUS FEELINGS AND IDEAS ABOUT BEING CLOSE TO A MASTER.

How can you have any ideas without being close to a master? What expectations can you have? All those expectations will be your projections - will be your desires, your fears, your greed. They can't be based on truth.

Now you are with me. Being with me for a few years, you will know what it is to be with a master. If you can remain with me long enough to be finished totally, then you will know what it is to be with a master. It is to be with your own death, total death.

But only when you are annihilated is there a possibility of God arising in you. Only after crucifixion the door opens for resurrection.

The third question

Question 3:

THE FIRST THING TO BE UNDERSTOOD: you say, A while ago, someone who is also past the age of fifty like me, said to me: You are still a disciple?" Next time you meet him, say to him, "You are still not a disciple?"

What does being a disciple mean, in fact? It means that you have started learning. Instead of collecting knowledge, you have started learning. Disciplehood means you have found somebody who has known. You would like to meet and merge with this person's being, so you can also have some taste of reality.

There are egoistic people who would not like that, they would not like to meet and merge with anybody. They would like to remain sufficient unto themselves - even if it is hell. Even if they are suffering they will not show it to anybody. And they MUST be suffering, because ego is hell.

Disciplehood simply means that you are losing the boundaries of your ego. First you lose it with one person, and then you see the beauty of losing it. That's what happens with a master. You see the beauty of losing your boundaries, then you start losing it with everybody else too. Then one day you are capable of losing it with the whole existence.

A man who thinks that he is sufficient unto himself will never open up, will remain closed. He will live in what Soren Kierkegaard calls "a shut-upness". He will be a monad, windowless. He will suffer agonies, but he will think they are worth it because he has not to look to anybody, he is sufficient unto himself.

Once it happened, a chief minister of a state - and it will be better to call him a "mischief minister" - came to see me, and he said, "I am a self-made man." I told him, "Thank you. You have relieved God of a great responsibility."

Self-made?

You have to be born out of a mother and a father. You have to depend for your breathing on the air, you have to depend for your food on the trees, you have to depend for your warmth on the sun. You

have to depend on the seas, rivers, fire. You are dependent! From where comes this nonsense: "I am self-made"? Can you exist even for a single moment if you are disconnected from everything you are plugged into?

Just think - disconnected from the sun! Think - disconnected from the air! Think - disconnected from the earth! Can you live? Can you exist even for a single moment? Impossible.

The idea that "I am sufficient unto myself", that "I am a self-made person", is just one of the most egoistic attitudes - foolish and false. We are not independent, we are not dependent; we live in a kind of interdependence, that is the truth. These two words are just two extremes - independence and dependence are two extremes. Both are false. Just exactly in the middle of the two is the truth:

interdependence.

Because really the WHOLE exists - I DON'T exist, you DON'T exist. How can I be self-sufficient? How can you be self-sufficient? Nobody can be. Only the whole is self-sufficient, and only the whole CAN be self-sufficient. The whole exists on its own. That's why we say God is self-sufficient - God means the total. God is not a person, but the totality of all. It includes everything - so it cannot depend on anything else, because there is nothing outside it.

But if you look inside, then each part depends on another. Then we live in an ocean of interdependence. You cannot be born without a mother, without a father. You cannot be born without existence supporting you from every side, visibly, invisibly.

When you are in love you cannot be self-sufficient, you will seek a woman or a man. When you meditate you will need somebody who knows what meditation is, not through books but through his experience.

That's what Ikkyu means when he says: Ask someone, ask the awakened. Ask someone who has mercy and sincerity, truth and wisdom. Ask somebody who has known, who has become. Ask somebody who has disappeared. Ask somebody who no more exists on the plane of ego, whose ego is no more relevant. Be with him, be in his presence, imbibe his presence.

And remember, you are not becoming dependent on another human being. That's why in the East we DON'T call the master a human being. We have called Buddha "Bhagwan", Mahavira "Bhagwan", Krishna "Bhagwan", for a certain reason. We DON'T call them human beings. Not that they are not just like you - they are just like you, and yet something has happened in them that has transformed their being, has illuminated their being. Something of the beyond has penetrated them. They are openings to God, so we have called them gods.

Christians feel very offended, Mohammedans feel very offended, Jews feel very offended, when they think that Buddha is called a god. Why? He is just a human being - Buddha himself says, "I am a human being." But a human being who no more exists on the plane of the ego. Yes, just like you, he has the body. And he eats and excretes and sleeps and he is born and will die just like you.

But still, something is there which is not like you: he is absent in the deepest core of his being. And through that absence a new presence has become available there: God has descended in him. You can have a look through him into the totality of all.

To find a master does not mean that you have contacted a person, it means you have contacted a PRESENCE. Just presence, not a person.

A WHILE AGO, SOMEONE WHO IS ALSO PAST THE AGE OF FIFTY LIKE ME, SAID TO ME:

YOU ARE STILL A DISCIPLE? THE PERSON WHO SAID IT IS VERY SELF-RELIANT, SELF-SUFFICIENT.

He is missing a lot. He must be utterly bored.

HE DOES NOT LOOK TO OTHERS TO FIND OUT WHAT HE SHOULD DO. HE IS ENOUGH TO HIMSELF.

He will live a closed life. Help him to open up, help him to merge with the whole. And it is difficult to merge with the whole suddenly, it is too much to take in. You have to find a small door to enter.

When you start learning swimming you DON'T just go into the sea; you have to learn in shallow water by the banks or in a swimming pool.

A master is just a small door into the infinity of God. It is easier to enter from that door rather than jump into the sky directly. If one can jump into the sky directly it is perfectly good - but that type of man will never say, "I am self-sufficient." He cannot say it, because that type of person will know that there is no self. Jumping into the whole is losing the self. If somebody thinks, "I am self-sufficient and I never look up to anybody else," he is simply living his ego trip.

Help him to open up. And DON'T allow him to close you up. Because your ego must feel hurt - when somebody says, "You are fifty, and you are STILL a disciple?" your ego will feel hurt. You will think, "So I am looking to others."

The master is not the other. When you have fallen in tune with a master, he is not the other! He is more yourself than you are. That, only a disciple knows - he will laugh at the whole idea. If you ask Sariputra, "Is Buddha the other, someone that you look up to?" he will laugh. He will say, "There is nobody to look up to. He is more me than I am myself. He is my future, he is my potential, my possibility. He is my hope. Through him I have seen what I can be, what is my destiny. Through him I have become aware of the blooming flowers - they have bloomed in him, I am just a seed. He has given a glimpse of my own possibilities. He is ME."

When a disciple is really a disciple, not just a student, then he will say, "The master and I are not two." And if there is ever a question of choosing, the disciple will choose the master, not himself.

Because the master is closer to his being than he himself is.

I CONSTANTLY LOOK OUTSIDE AT OTHERS FOR MORE KNOWLEDGE, FOR MORE SKILLS. I AM TIMID, DIFFIDENT, AND HAVE LITTLE SELF-CONFIDENCE.

That is far better than having so-called self-confidence. Because with self-confidence, confidence is just a shadow; the real thing is the self. There is no self - how can there be self-confidence?

A real man, a man who has known, lives without self, lives without self-confidence. Not that he lives in a kind of no-confidence - with confidence disappearing, unconfidence also disappears. He simply

LIVES, not bothering about confidence or no-confidence. He simply lives. He is unworried, because the whole has taken care. He has surrendered to the whole, now the whole knows better. He simply flows with the whole - wherever it is going, he is also going. He is in a surrender.

You are in a far better state than your friend. People come to me and they ask, "How to gain more self-confidence?" For what? Just to make this self look strong? Just to compete with others, fight with others? to prove yourself, that you are greater than others? For what?

Lose the self too! Lose self-confidence, lose self. Let then go, they are all diseases. You just relax into non-being.

And remember, I am not saying that the man of non-being is un-self-confident. He simply lives, like the trees are living. Do you think any tree is self-confident? or un-self-confident? Do you think any river is self-confident or un-self-confident? The whole question is irrelevant; you cannot ask that question, it is pointless, it is meaningless.

The trees flow, grow. The rivers flow, grow. Things are happening. There is nobody taking care of everything. To surrender to this happening is to disappear as an ego. And great joy arises with that surrender.

FOR ME THERE ARE ONLY THESE TWO STAGES: THE DISCIPLE AND THE MASTER. WHAT IS THIS THIRD STAGE, THE SELF-SUFFICIENT FULLY GROWN-UP PERSON THAT DOES NOT LOOK FOR A MASTER?

The fully grown person is not a person at all. The moment you are fully grown you become a presence, not a person - the person disappears. All persons are immature; personality is immaturity.

To be a person means to be false. The word "person" comes from "persona", mask - it is a mask, it is just a face that you have put on yourself to show others. this is not your reality. No person can ever become mature or grown-up, Because no mask can ever be grown-up. The mask hinders.

Drop the mask! Forget about the person! Then presence arises. A presence with no self, with no center in it. A pure presence, just a light. And then life is lived in totality, in celebration.

You ask me: THE SELF-SUFFICIENT FULLY GROWN-UP PERSON - IS THIS A DECEPTION?

Yes. "Person" is a deception, and "fully grown-up" is an absolute deception. All personalities are ungrown-up, all personalities are childish. Presence is grown-upness, maturity. And to be with a master is to be with a presence. To be with a presence is slowly slowly moving towards the presence, and one day you will also become aflame.

One day when you come REALLY close to a master, something jumps from the master into you - a flame. Just as it happens when you bring an unlit candle very close to a lit candle. Just a moment before, the unlit candle was unlit and the lit candle was lit. And just a moment afterwards, at a certain distance the flame jumps and both the candles are lit. And the lit candle has not lost anything, and the unlit has gained all.

The master never loses anything. That's why millions of disciples can become lit through a single master. But there is nothing like a fully self-sufficient grown-up person; that is just a deception.

There is a fully grown-up presence. A flame, a light.

The last question

Question 4:

The question is from Sky Deborah.

THE FIRST THING: generalizations are generalizations. They are not applicable to every single particular human being, that's why they are called generalizations. The average man does not exist, you cannot find the average man anywhere. But the idea is good, it helps clarity. You cannot find, absolutely corresponding to the generalized idea, a single human being. Human beings come in all sizes and shapes and colours, they are unique. But still, generalization has its own point....

For example, only one single woman has asked the question - there are thousands of women here.

Secondly, the very question shows me that Deborah must be very good at making shopping lists.

And I am afraid about her poetry too. You can write a shopping list in poetry form. I would have to have a look at her poetry, only then can I say anything.

My own experience is that out of a hundred poetries ninety-nine are shopping lists. It does not matter whether they are written by men or women. It is very rare to find poetry.

It is said of a great Zen master, Lin Chi.... He had ten thousand monks, disciples, in his monastery.

The king had come to see the monastery, he was very much impressed, and Lin Chi was taking him around. And the king asked, "How many disciples do you have?" He said, "One in a hundred."

A strange answer - one in a hundred? But that's how it has always been. When you have a hundred disciples only one is really a disciple. Ninety-nine are just hangers-around.

Even a great poet, when he writes poetry, ninety-nine times writes only shopping lists. Only once in a while the poetry happens - all poetries are not poetic. And sometimes this too happens, that a shopping list may have great poetry. All shopping lists are not necessarily unpoetic.

But Deborah must belong to the new kind of woman that is arising in the world, the lib woman.

One thing has to be understood: the liberation movement that is going on in the world is a man- created phenomenon, a male-created phenomenon. You will be surprised about it, that it is again a male conspiracy. Now man wants to get rid of women. He wants to have no responsibility. He wants to enjoy women but only as fun; he does not want to take all the other responsibilities that come with it.

Now, this is a subtle conspiracy: the man is trying to persuade women all over the world that the woman has to become independent. It is a subtle trick. And the male mind is cunning and the male mind is succeeding. And now many women have become poisoned by this idea.

Do you know? The first persons who started talking about equality between man and woman were men, not women. The first persons who started talking about it, that they should have equal freedom, were men, not women. The seed comes from the male mind. And it has always been so - whenever a man feels what is in his favour, he manages it. His cunning is very subtle. And sometimes he manages it in such a way that the woman thinks she is doing it on her own.

In the past also it has been so. Man has persuaded women in the past that they are pure beings, angels. Man is dirty, boys are boys - but the woman? She is divine. Man has put woman on a high pedestal; that was his trick to control woman. Man has worshipped, and through worship he has controlled. And naturally, when the woman was on the pedestal she thought that she was something divine - she could not do those things that men are doing, she could not, because that was going against her ego. That high pedestal was very ego-satisfying. She was the mother, she was divine; she had more divine qualities than man. Man is ugly, immoral, and all that. Man has to be forgiven for that.

So man, down the ages, started remaining in his ways. And the woman was high. But this was a trick, the ego was persuaded. And once your ego is persuaded, you are caught. Then you cannot move from your posture. To ask for equality will be a kind of fall - you will have to come down to become equal. It was a strategy, and the woman followed it. She remained pure, she remained virgin up to the marriage.

It was not so for the man. If the woman died, the man was allowed to marry again - because boys are boys, they cannot live without the woman. If the man died, the woman had to remain a widow for her whole life. Or, in this country particularly - which did this strategy to the very logical end - she had to commit suicide. She had to burn herself alive with the husband. And millions of women did it. How were they persuaded? And do you think they were forced? No, nobody was forcing them.

There was no visible coercion, just a very deep seduction. By becoming SATIS, by going into the fire with the husband, their egos were fulfilled. Greatly fulfilled - people worshipped them. When

they entered into the fire, thousands of people would gather together and sing songs in praise of the purity of woman.

And if a woman did not go with the husband into the fire, did not commit suicide, she was condemned, utterly condemned. She was a bad woman. Just by trying to be alive, she was a bad woman. She was disrespected; she would fall immediately in the eyes of others, she would lose all respect. Her life would become a hell. She would be condemned everywhere, she would not be welcomed anywhere. She would be thought of as a bad omen.

In no marriage would she be able to participate. If a child was born and people were celebrating, she would not be able to participate. She would not be allowed to decorate her body, to use beautiful clothes or ornaments or have long hair - no, she had to live in an ugliness, and condemned from everywhere. It was worse than life, worse than death. So it was better to jump into the fire once and for all, and have the respect.

And temples were raised in the memory of those women. And those women were thinking that they were doing it. What I am making clear is that those women down the ages were thinking that they were doing it, on their own. And it was not so.

Now again the same is happening, in the reverse order. In the West, man has persuaded women that "Now you have to be free, you have to be equal." Because now things have changed, times have changed - a man would like to enjoy more women than just his wife. Now he wants absolute freedom. And the only way to have absolute freedom is to give absolute freedom to the woman.

And he has persuaded her again. And now the woman protesters and libbers, they are shouting with their whole heart for liberty and equality. And they DON'T know they are again in the same grip:

again man is persuading them. Now man wants to use them and throw them, with no responsibility attached to it.

If you look deeply into the whole matter of it, you will be surprised. The male mind is a cunning mind.

The woman is more innocent; she cannot be so strategic, so political, she has always believed the man. And you will be surprised: these lib women are again believing in the man! Nothing has changed. Now THIS is in favour of the man that you should be free and you should not ask for any commitment. He does not want to commit himself, he wants to have all freedom. He does not want to take the responsibility of your children. He does not want to live with you for ever, he wants to change his woman every day.

But now again he is creating beautiful words: One should live in no commitment. One should live without involvement. One should not be possessive, one should not be jealous. Now again he is creating beautiful philosophy. He has done it before too - and then too women were deceived, and again they are going to be deceived. Women trust. Trust is easy for them; love comes easier to them than logic. And they are very much concerned with the immediate. The man always thinks of strategies, tactics, what will happen, how it will happen - he thinks of the future, he plans for the future.

Now, Deborah repeats at least five times in this question: I AM A FEMALE.

Is there some worry? Is there some doubt? There must be. One thing has to be told to you: just by being in a female body one need not be a woman. Just by being in a male body one need not be

a man. Man and woman are more states of the mind. There are men who are psychologically not male but female, and there are women who are psychologically not women but men. These are the people who create many problems, because they cannot be heterosexual. Heterosexuality has no appeal for them, they have to be homosexuals or lesbians. Their psychology is different from their physiology; their biology and their psychology have a gap in them, unbridged.

And there is going to remain a problem with them. In fact in a better world, in the future world - soon, I think by the end of this century - things will be easier. Because if a man is deep down psychologically feeling himself a woman, it is better to go through an operation and become biologically also a woman. Or if a woman is feeling deep down a male, it is better to go through an operation, plastic surgery, and become a man, so it can be bridged.

Once this becomes possible, homosexuality and lesbianism will disappear from the world. Otherwise it cannot disappear, because it has a certain reason in it. The man looks a man from the outside; deep down he is not a man, he is a woman. His deeper woman wants a man - hence the homosexual.

And there is a third category also: confused people, who DON'T know who they are. In the morning they are women, by the evening they are men. The difference is so small that they shrink; they become bisexuals. One moment they are loving a woman, another moment they are falling in love with a man. Their psychology and biology is in a state of mess; they will live a very confused life.

Science can now help these people too, to make things clear.

Now, repeating again and again that "I am a female" creates suspicion. Why so much concern about being a female? Once would have been enough. Even once was not needed - your question would have said that you are a female. And not an ordinary female, a libber.

Let me read the question: YOU SAY THAT IT IS IMPORTANT TO HAVE COURAGE AND SINCERITY. THEREFORE I WILL DROP MY FEAR AND ASK YOU THE QUESTIONS DEEPEST AND MOST HONESTLY WITHIN ME...

Now, what kind of questions are deepest and honest in you? Just think of the whole crap of it.

These are the deepest questions? I am talking about Ikkyu and Buddha, and these are the deepest questions. And to ask these questions you needed great courage and sincerity!

HOW CAN THERE BE ANY GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT THE QUALITIES OF MAN AND WOMAN?

Generalizations are not possible about ANYTHING, because no individual will fit them. But still, generalizations are meaningful; they simply indicate. When I say a woman is more concerned with the immediate, I am not saying anything about a particular woman - Deborah, or anybody else. I am simply saying it about WOMANNESS, that womanness is concerned with the immediate. And if you are not concerned with the immediate then something somewhere in your womanhood is missing.

That is very essential to femininity: the concern for the immediate, the imminent.

But generalizations are generalizations, remember it. And there will be differences between individuals. But the meaning of a generalization is just to indicate a certain quality. It doesn't say anything about particular individuals, it simply says the quality of being a woman is immediateness.

I would like to see Deborah's poetry, because there is a possibility there may be that immediateness in the poetry itself. The poetry may be concerned with the imminent, the herenow; it may not be concerned with the ultimate. And the question also shows it - her whole concern is her womanhood.

She says, "This is my deepest and the most honest question arising in me."

Buddhahood, God, they are faraway questions. Her whole concern is with her body, her womanhood. It is not just an accident that women are standing before the mirror for hours. Their concern is immediate; they are more concerned with the body than with the soul. They are more materialistic than spiritualistic. They are more factual than fictitious.

I AM A FEMALE BUT I HAVE ALWAYS WRITTEN POETRY AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO GOOD AT SHOPPING LISTS. I AM FEMALE BUT I HAVE NOT BEEN SUSPICIOUS OR JEALOUS OF MAN'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH HIS ART. IN FACT, I HAVE MORE OFTEN BEEN IN THE ROLE OF CHOOSING TO BE WITH MY WRITING, THAN CHOOSING TO BE IN RELATIONSHIP LEADING TO HOME AND FAMILY.

Now, these are complex things. The atmosphere is such that a woman has to be equal with man. She has not to be interested in the home, family, children, motherhood. She has to become interested in poetry, in literature, in painting, in science, in technology, this and that. Now women's groups gather together around the world to raise their consciousness. And all their consciousness- raising sessions consist of only one thing, that they have to destroy something deep in their womanhood. Only then can they compete with men.

They are soft, naturally soft. They cannot compete with men. If they want to compete with men they will have to become hard. So whenever you come across a lib woman you can see the face loses softness. It is very difficult to say to a lib woman, "Baby" - very difficult. And she will be angry too, she will not like it. Why "Baby"? - she is equal to you. Hardness arises.

All kinds of struggle give hardness. And you may be trying not to be interested in the home, because if you become interested in the home then you cannot compete in the world. If you become interested in children you cannot compete in the world; then that becomes a distraction. And if you have to compete in the world and prove that you are as strong as men, you have to somehow become more like men.

And this will be a loss. This is a loss - because the only hope for humanity is the softness of woman, not the hardness of man. We have suffered enough from the hardness of man. What is needed is that man should become more like woman, rather than woman becoming more like man.

Nietzsche is right when he says that Buddha and Christ were a little womanish. I agree. And this is how it should be - because Buddha is the hope. Men should become a little more womanish, more soft, more waterlike. But what is happening is very unfortunate, women are trying to become like men. Naturally, with whomsoever you compete, you try to become like that. If you are antagonistic against men, sooner or later you will become more like men.

Women are pulling against themselves, trying hard to manage. But that is not natural. The natural is the womb in the woman - that womb hankers for a child, that womb hankers for a home. The home is the visible womb outside the woman, it is a projection of the inner womb.

Once a woman is no more interested in the home, she is no more interested in her womb. And that womb is there. And men and women are NOT equal, because man is missing that womb. How can they be equal? I am not saying they are unequal, but I am certainly saying they are not equal. They are so different - how can they be equal? They are polar opposites. They are so different, they cannot be compared in terms of equality or inequality. A woman is a woman, a man is a man. And they SHOULD remain man and woman. A woman should remain interested in the home, because once she stops being interested in the home she will stop being interested in the womb, in the child.

And then naturally she turns into a lesbian.

It is not accidental that libbers become lesbians. Because if you are not interested in the womb and not interested in the child, then for what be interested in men? Then it is good to be interested in women. This is a very strange phenomenon that is happening in the world.

My own understanding is this, that man has to become a little more feminine. He has gone too far away in becoming a man, he has lost track of all humanity. DON'T follow him, DON'T compete with him - otherwise you will be going on in the same rut, in the same routine. You will become warlike. And the libbers screaming and shouting and protesting on the streets are just ugly. They are showing the worst traits of the male mind.

And the last thing: YOU CAN SEE YOU HAVE MADE ME ANGRY, SO I SUPPOSE YOU HAVE BEGUN TO REACH ME.

Now I must have made you even more angry. Fall in love with me!