A hollow bamboo

Question 1:

THE STATE OF ENLIGHTENMENT is not the state of individuality. There is no person in it. One who is enlightened is enlightened only because he is not; there is nobody to function. Activity continues, but there is nobody to do it.

Functioning continues, but there is nobody to function it. Then it continues on its own... just as stars go on moving and the seasons move, and the sun rises, and the moon comes, and the tide, and the seas, and the rivers.

An enlightened person is one with the whole; the whole functions through him.

His activity is perfect because he is not there to distort it. He is just like a hollow bamboo - whatsoever song the whole chooses to sing through him, it is sung.

There is nobody to hinder, there is nobody to obstruct.

An enlightened person is an enlightened emptiness... Luminous emptiness. He has disappeared. If you believe in the concept of god, if you use that term, then you can say god functions through him. If you don't like that term, then you can say the whole functions through him. But he is not to function there.

When you function you create anxiety. All your functioning is in some way a sort of conflict with the whole. It is a struggle; there is motive, there is desire, there is ambition. When you are there, all illnesses are there. When you are there, neurosis is there - the ego is neurotic. It tries to impose its own goals on the whole - which is impossible. It tries to do that which cannot be done, hence gets more and more frustrated, enters deeper and deeper into hell and misery.

An enlightened person simply allows; whatsoever happens is a happening. It is very difficult to conceive it because it is not of the mind. It is very difficult to understand it because there is no experience. You can understand it only when you have dissolved, when you have become that.

There is no way to understand a Buddha unless you become a Buddha - because it is such a totally different dimension of existence. We have never tasted of it. It is simply impossible for the mind to conceive, because the mind functions through motive: there has to be a desire, there has to be a goal, there has to be the doer. The mind says if you don't do, how is it going to happen?

But millions of things are happening without anybody doing them. Who is doing the movement of the stars? Is not their functioning absolutely perfect? What is missing? What is lacking? Who is rushing these rivers to the ocean? Who goes on controlling the tide and the ebb? Who goes on maintaining this infinity, this immenseness? There is nobody. Because there is nobody, that's why it is so beautiful. Because there is nobody, that's why it is so absolutely perfect. If somebody is there, there is a possibility of error. If somebody is there, then there is a possibility of mistakes.

There is nobody - it is out of emptiness.

The seed goes on sprouting. Each moment is a miracle, because each moment existence comes out of nothingness. Each moment the flower happens out of the blue. Nobody is forcing it, nobody is pulling it up. There is nobody to open the bud; it opens on its own accord. This is what Buddha calls the dhamma, the law, the ultimate law of life.

The enlightened person is no more in any conflict with the ultimate law; he has surrendered. He floats, he flows with the river. He has almost become a wave in the river, he does not exist separately.

CAN ONE LIVE AND FUNCTION IN THE WORLD IN A STATE OF ENLIGHTENMENT OR NO-MIND?

Yes, one can function. One has functioned. Buddha lived forty-two years after he became enlightened. Mahavir lived forty years after he became enlightened.

They functioned perfectly well. And yet, the beauty is, the grandeur is, that there was nobody doing it.

It is a moment to moment miracle. It is absolutely unbelievable, it is incredible to function out of nothingness, to function out of no-motive, to function out of no- mind. Just to function without having a center, without having a self.

An enlightened person is natural, spontaneous. He has no explanation why he is functioning. He will shrug his shoulders if you ask the question 'Why?' He cannot explain it, he can at the most say, 'It is how it is. It is how it is happening.'

He will say, 'I don't know, because there is nobody to know it.' It is a mysterious functioning.

Of course the functioning is going to be totally different than your functioning.

Out of your activity, anxiety arises, tension. Out of your activity, fear arises. Fear - are you going to succeed or not? Tension - because there is competition, conflict; others are also rushing towards the same goal. Will you be able to become rich? Will you be able to become that which you want? It doesn't seem to be easy.

Mulla Nasrudin was saying to me one day, 'When I was fourteen I decided that I was going to become the richest man in the world, whatsoever the cost.'

Then I asked him, 'Then what happened? You never became the richest man in the world. You may be the poorest. What happened then?'

He said, 'By the time I was twenty-one I thought it is easier to change my mind than to become the richest man in the world. It is easier to change my mind.'

Everybody wants to become the richest man of the world. Everybody wants to be the most powerful man in the world. Everybody wants to be the most strong, beautiful, intelligent, famous in the world. Of course much anxiety is created. In that anxiety you are in a sort of continuous illness, dis-ease, restlessness, a fever, in which you go on, continuously trembling. And every moment there is frustration waiting for you.

Hence people say, 'Man proposes and god disposes.' God has never disposed anything. In your very proposition you are disposing god, hence you get in trouble. Because the nature has its own way, the tao has its own way; it has its own destiny. It is as if a part is trying to go on its own journey, leaving the whole behind. It is not possible - the part has to go with the whole. The tail has to go with the elephant. If the tail starts going on its own way against the elephant, separate from the elephant, then there is going to be trouble - the tail will go mad. And actually it will have to drag with the elephant; there is no other way.

So there are only two types of people in the world. One, who have private goals - - they feel they are being dragged; they feel man proposes, god disposes. Then there is another type of people in the world - very few, rare, far, far and few between, very few - who have dropped all their propositions. They don't drag, they dance. They dance, because whatsoever god proposes they accept. And they have no private propositions, they don't have any desire of their own.

That's what Jesus says on the cross, that is his last message to the world - 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done'. Just a moment before he has hesitated a little, just a moment before he shouted and said, 'Why have you forsaken me? Why?

Why are you showing me all this?'

You cannot complain against Jesus - that too is natural and human. He was only thirty-three, he was not yet old, he was just young, he had not seen the whole life yet, he had not tasted, he had not lived yet - and suddenly he finds himself on the Cross, ridiculed, insulted, rejected by his own people. And it is natural that he shouts at god, 'Why have you forsaken me? Why are you showing me all this?' - human, very human.

But immediately he became aware of it. It must have escaped - this shouting against god - in a moment of unawareness. The pain may have been too much, the misery was too much. Death was just close by; he was shocked. But he regained balance. He was going to propose something. He simply said, 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.' He surrendered. He died as Christ.

In a single moment he was no more Jesus, he was Christ. In a single moment he was no more human, he was superhuman. The gap is very small. That's why Buddha says, 'Miss it by a single inch, or by a single moment and you are thrown millions of miles away.' Just a single inch was the difference between these two sentences - there was not much gap, maybe a single breath. But he was just ordinary when he shouted against god - human, weak. Just a moment later on he was reconciled; there was no problem then. If this is the way god wants it to happen, then this is the way it has to happen. He accepted.

A smile must have come to his face, and not only to his face but to his heart also.

In that moment he must have expanded. Now there was nothing to shrink, to remain closed. Even death was accepted. When you accept death, you have accepted god. Everybody desires for life. When you accept life you don't accept much. When you accept death you have accepted all.

An enlightened person is one who has not only accepted death, who has really died. He is no more there, the house is absolutely empty. Or he is that emptiness.

That emptiness is luminous, full of light. Now he moves hand and hand with god. Now wherever god takes him, to whatsoever land - uncharted, unmapped - he runs along, dancing. He is not dragged.

If you are dragged by life, then you must be fighting with it. If you are bored by life, then you must be fighting with it. If you are frustrated by life, you must be fighting with it. These are indications that you are not reconciled to life, that you have not yet become mature enough to surrender; you are childish, you are in a childish tantrum.

A man who is really mature has no will of his own. He says, 'Thy will be done.' It is only immature minds who go on carrying their own will, and of course they suffer. Will brings suffering, will is the way to hell. You bring suffering, you are the way to hell. You create suffering.

Of course, an enlightened person functions totally differently. He himself does not know where he is going, and he is not worried about it either. He does not think about it - where he is going. He trusts: wherever he is going, it is good. His trust is total and infinite.

He trusts life, you trust yourself. He trusts the whole, you trust a tiny part. He trusts the immense, the infinite, you trust the mediocre human mind. His trust makes him wise, your trust makes you stupid. You doubt the whole and you trust yourself. He has dropped himself and he trusts the whole. He is never to be frustrated, he has no regrets. He never looks back, because whatsoever was, was - and whatsoever was, was good.

And it is not just only a mind thing. He feels it, his whole existence is radiated with 'yes!' He says 'yes' to life, you go on saying 'no'. No-saying creates ego, yea- saying drops the ego, helps the ego to drop and disappear.

The enlightened person is an absolute, unconditional 'yes'. It is very difficult to understand it unless you have tasted something of it. That is the only way to know about it.

IS AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON SELF-SUFFICIENT IN THE WORLD?

That's why I say you can understand it only if you have known it, if you have become it. Otherwise you will go on asking questions which are irrelevant. For example: IS AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON SELF-SUFFICIENT IN THE WORLD?

He has no self, so how can he be self-sufficient? He has no self, so how can he be in any way self-sufficient? I am not saying that he is discontented. I am not saying that he is unsatisfied, and I am not saying that he is not sufficient. I am simply saying that he cannot be self-sufficient because he has no self.

An enlightened person comes to know that independence is impossible, dependence also impossible. The reality is neither dependent nor independent; the reality is interdependent. We exist together. And when I say 'we', the trees are included, the mountains are included, the skies are included. When I say 'we', everything is included, nothing is excluded. We exist together. We are together.

Our very being is togetherness. Nobody is self-sufficient.

That's what ordinarily we are trying to become - self-sufficient. That is our whole struggle - so that we are no more dependent on anybody. But just think:

is it possible to be self-sufficient? And if it is possible for a man to become self- sufficient, will he be alive? He will be dead. Only when you are in your grave are you self-sufficient. Otherwise you will have to breathe - and you cannot be self- sufficient about it. You will have to take in the breath, the vitality, the PRANA.

You will have to wait for the sun to make you warm. You will have to eat the fruit of the trees so their juice becomes your blood. You will need billions of things. How can you be self-sufficient? The very idea is foolish.

But there are people, the so-called saints - who go on teaching you 'become self- sufficient'. That is an ego trip. It is not possible in the nature of things to be self- sufficient because self is a falsity. Self is just an idea, it has no reality, so how can you create sufficiency around a false idea? Self in itself is non-existential, so how can you create sufficiency around something which does not exist?

The enlightened person is one who looks into life and comes to know that 'I am not, only god is, truth is. Truth is self-sufficient, the whole is self-sufficient. How can I be self-sufficient?' We are linked with everything else, and this linking is really complex. I am not only linked to you, you are not only linked to these trees, you are not only linked to the sun today - you are linked to ALL the people who have ever lived on the earth. If your parents were not there you would not have been here. If your grandparents were not there you would not have been here. Just go back, go back - if Adam and Eve were not there you would not have been here.

So not only are we linked with the contemporary existence, we are linked with the whole past - not only of humanity, but of the whole universe. This is easy to understand - that we are linked with the whole past - otherwise how can we be? We are part of a procession, part of a river, an ongoing river. You are also linked with the future. It is a little more difficult because we think that maybe it is right - we are linked with the past - but how are we linked with the future?

A river has two banks. It cannot flow with only one bank, otherwise it will never reach the ocean. The other bank may be hidden in deep mist, you may not be able to see it, it may be very far away. You cannot see it - it is beyond the horizon - but still you can think that it has to be there. The past is one bank of the river of time, the future is another bank. Without the future the past cannot exist; and without the past and the future the present cannot exist. The present is the river, the past is one bank, the future is another bank.

We are not only linked with the past, we are linked with the future also. You are not only linked with your parents, you are linked with your children also - children who are not born yet. You are not only one with the past that has been here, but with the future that is going to be here. You are linked with the yesterday and the tomorrow - otherwise the today cannot exist. It has to exist between yesterday and the tomorrow - yesterdays and tomorrows. The today is just a middle turn.

If you look that way, then in space we are linked with everything. If the sun dies today we all will die. It is so far; the light takes ten minutes to reach to us. Ten minutes doesn't look such a big time, but for light to travel that much it is really big, because the light travels so fast - one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second.

The sun is ten minutes away. But if it dies, suddenly you will see these trees dying, suddenly you will see yourself shrinking and dying. Suddenly you will see the whole beauty disappears from the earth, because the whole warmth disappears from the earth. Warmth is life. The very throb of the heart is connected with the sun. But the scientists say the sun itself is connected to some source of light, yet not discovered. Somewhere at the very center of the whole existence there must be a source the sun is connected with.

Everything is connected. Have you watched a spider's web? Just touch it anywhere and the whole web trembles. Exactly that way is life. Touch it anywhere... touch a leaf of grass and you have touched all the stars, because everything is so interconnected. There are no boundaries - we are not islands, we are a continent. Nothing defines you. All definitions are manmade. All definitions are just like the fence around your house - it does not divide the earth. All boundaries are like lines on the map - it does not divide the earth, it does not divide the ocean, it does not divide the sky. It is only on the map.

An enlightened person is one who has dropped all demarcations; who is not a Christian, who is not a Hindu, who is not a Mohammedan, who is not a Buddhist, who is not a communist, who is not a fascist, who is not man, who is not woman, who is not young, who is not old - who has dropped all lines of demarcation, who lives without definition. To live without definition is to live infinitely, because all definition is a finitude. To define means to make finite.

An enlightened person is indefinable, infinite. He has no lines.

Somebody asked Bokuju, a zen master, 'Master, you say everything is one. Then is a dog also a Buddha?' That is a zen way of asking, 'Is a dog also god?' Bokuju did not answer verbally; he jumped on his fours and started barking. He was a Buddha, an enlightened being. He simply showed that, 'Yes. Look - here is a dog barking, and here is a Buddha too.' A dog is nothing but god in reverse. Just read it backwards; that is the only difference.

Everything is divine and everything is one.

The enlightened person is not self-sufficient. He is sufficient, certainly - but not self-sufficient. Sufficient because there is no problem for him - the whole is there available for him. The whole goes on supplying him even without asking. The whole takes care. He has dissolved into the whole; now the whole is responsible.

The whole takes care of him. He is protected by the whole, he is sheltered by the whole. He is at home in the whole. Whatsoever happens is welcome, because it is happening through the whole. How can it be wrong? 'Thy will be done, Thy kingdom come.' He is just a zero.

So I cannot say he is self-sufficient. He is tremendously sufficient, but not self- sufficient. His sufficiency comes not from his self, his sufficiency comes because he has dropped his self. He is sufficient because he is with the whole - now how can he lack anything? It is impossible to lack anything. The sun is with him, the moon is with him, the trees, the rivers, the oceans - he is no more poor.

An enlightened person is the richest person possible, but his richness comes from surrender, not from fight. He does not... he has not any conflict with the whole.

He has fallen in harmony, he is in a harmonia.

Question 2:

The question is from Parijat. This too is a dance. Listening to me, you are in a subtle dance. Being with me, you are in a dance with me. It can happen. If you are really in a dance, your age can disappear. You can again become a child, you can regain that perceptivity that was yours when you were a child. You can regain that clarity that was yours when you were a child. You can come again close to god.

A child is very close to god because he is very close to nature. A child is yet uncivilized, he is yet a primitive. A child is more close to animals than the so- called human beings. A child still lives through innocence and not through knowledge.

That is my whole effort, Parijat. That is what I am trying to do: to destroy - to destroy all that has become a blockage on you and on your childhood. Yes, that's what I am doing. I would like you to have another childhood. I would like you to enter into your innocence again, to gain that primal innocence, to be reborn.

Nicodemus asked Jesus, 'What should I do, master, to know the truth?'

Jesus looked at him and said, 'You will have to be reborn. As you are you cannot make any contact. You carry too many obstacles, you carry too many blocks. You will have to become a child again.'

Once Jesus was standing in a market place, a crowd had gathered, and somebody asked, 'Master, you continuously talk about the kingdom of god, but you never say to us who will be capable to enter into that kingdom. Who will be the worthy ones?' Jesus looked around. A small child was also there in the crowd. He took him up onto his shoulders and said, 'Whosoever is like this child.

Only those who are like children will be able to enter into the kingdom of god.'

There was one childhood which you have lost - nothing to be worried about; it is natural. It had to be lost. It is just in the natural course of things. That childhood was too unconscious; you cannot carry it forever. It had to collapse and disappear. It was like the first teeth - they are too soft. They will not be able to help for your whole life. They have to drop and give way for stronger teeth.

The first childhood is just like first teeth. They have disappeared, they are no more there, and you are living without teeth - without your childhood - hence the misery. You will have to regain your childhood again, you will have to grow your childhood again. And this childhood will be very strong, tremendously strong. Because now it will be something conscious, it will be something that you have grown to.

The first childhood was simply a gift of heaven, the second childhood will be more yours. It will be more deep-rooted. The first childhood was lost because it was unconscious, and the more you became conscious it disappeared. The second childhood has to be conscious, then there will be no problem. Then it can be with you for eternity.

Again and again you come sometimes to a moment when you can hear the birds more clearly - again as you used to hear in your childhood; when you can see the flowers more clearly - they become psychedelic, more colourful. You can see the trees and their green. It is so strong it hurts! It goes penetrating into the heart.

Everything becomes very intense when you are a child. It was intense one day.

Remember yourself running on the beach, collecting seashells, or running after butterflies in a garden. Remember again how things were totally different, how life was more colourful, how everything was a miracle and a surprise. How everything was simply amazing, how everything was just unbelievably beautiful. How everything used to catch your attention, how everything used to create a romance in you. And how you were full of energy, radiant, bubbling, joyous. How life was a totally different dimension. How you were delighted in small things, in meaningless things. How you were playful, how everything was a question mark, a mystery.

The same can happen again, should happen again. That's what all religion is about - to give you a second childhood. In India we call that man who attains to the second childhood, dwij, twice-born. He is born again - not physically, psychologically. The first birth is out of your parents, the second birth is out of your master. The first birth is only of the body, the second birth is of the soul.

Says Parijat, LISTENING TO YOU TODAY I BECAME A CHILD...

Blessed you are - now don't lose it. In the beginning it will be very fragile. It will come like a breeze and will be gone. It will be there dancing around you for a moment, and the next moment it is not there. It will be there like a window opening and closing. It will be there very fragile, very vulnerable. Allow it more and more, enjoy it more and more. Cooperate with it more and more. Wait for it more and more, pray for it more and more - and it will be coming more and more. Soon it will be like a strong wind. Soon it will not be just a glimpse, it will become more real, more solid.

In fact, when your second childhood becomes real, it has such a solidity that no matter can have that solidity. It is the most solid thing in existence. When it becomes solid, when it is always there - asleep it is there, awake it is there, eating, talking, sitting in silence it is there, walking in the market place it is there - when you are surrounded by it.... Even when you are too much active, it is always there in the background.

Whenever you are inactive it comes to the fore, whenever you are too much active it goes into the background - but it goes on murmuring. Sometimes it is a distant murmur of a waterfall, sometimes it is a very wild uproar, but it remains always.

The first glimpse has happened, the first ray has entered. Now follow it, now catch hold of this ray. It will be your first connection with innocence. Don't be frightened by it, because to get frightened is very easy. To think oneself a child again, one becomes frightened. What is happening? Because in our so-called world, so-called society and culture, all over the world, the child is not respected.

The child is not thought to be real, the child is thought to be just a growing state.

The child is thought to be just as a passage towards real life. The real life is when the childhood has disappeared - that's what we have been taught. The childhood is nothing but a preparation. Go to the school, to the college, to the university; get prepared, get ready - then begins the real life. So childhood is just like a preface, it is not the real book. That's what we have been taught.

So again when you feel childhood raising its head, one can become scared. What is happening? Am I losing my memory? Am I losing my learning? Am I losing my adulthood? Am I losing all that I have learned with such cost, with such difficulties, with such hard work? - am I relapsing back? regressing?

If you ask a freudian analyst, he will say, 'Parijat, you are regressing. Beware, don't allow this. Otherwise all you have gained with such effort will be lost.' But I will tell you, you are not regressing. This is not the same childhood that you have lost; this is something absolutely new. It resembles the childhood, but it is something absolutely new. It is a new childhood, a second childhood, it is a rebirth. So don't get scared, don't start feeling that something is wrong.

It happened to another woman... and it can happen to women more easily than to men, because women are still a little more uncivilized than men. They are closer to nature still. Because this whole society is man-oriented, women have been left behind. In a way this is very fortunate. Women are still more wild.

That's why they can scream and get angry and cry and weep and tears can flow from their eyes. Man has become very frozen; women are still more fluid, liquid.

So it is easier for women to enter the second childhood than for men. Men will have to make a little more arduous effort.

To another woman it happened. She was very old, almost seventy. She became very much afraid. She came to me and she said, 'What is happening? I feel like a child. Not only that - I feel like behaving like a child, laughing like a child, talking like a child. Not only that - I would like to tease people.' A seventy-year- old woman wants to tease people like a small child. She was afraid, naturally so.

I said, 'You don't be worried. You start playing with children.' She said, 'What?

Start playing with children? You really mean so?' I said, 'Yes.'

And she was really a good woman, a rare woman. She started playing with children - Siddhartha and Purva, and small sannyasins became her friends. And even others were puzzled and surprised. And even others felt something tremendously beautiful happening. She used to play in the ashram with small children; small children of the labourers who worked for the Buddha Hall, with them also she became friends. It was a rare phenomenon. She accepted it and something started growing in her.

When she left, she again came and said, 'Now, I am going to be in trouble. Osho, you have put me in trouble. I have enjoyed it so much. For the first time in my life there has been something significant. But how am I going to protect it in the West? People will simply put me in a madhouse. Here it is okay. Here you are, and here sannyasins are accepting, and they think that when Osho has said, then everything is okay. But who will protect me there? And I don't want to lose this dimension that has opened, I don't want to close this door. My whole life has been a wastage. These few days I have again become a child, I have loved to be, I have become so grateful to be - a benediction has happened.'

The same is possible for Parijat. She has a very soft heart. Let this first ray become more and more strong. Move with it, dance with it. Start singing again, start playing again. Even if people think it is mad, don't be bothered about those people. Because they have always been thinking that way. They thought St.

Francis was mad because he had become like a child. They thought Jesus was mad, they thought Buddha was mad. They have always been thinking in those terms.

In fact, they have lost all contact with nature. They are dead people. Whenever they see somewhere some radiance, some life arising, they start feeling humiliated. They cannot believe it - that it is possible. Because it has not happened to them, how can it happen to somebody else? 'How do you dare? It has not happened to me, how can it happen to you? Impossible! You must be imagining, or you must be in some psychological trouble.'

Don't be bothered with these people. This society is mad. In this society every sane person is thought to be mad. He looks mad. It is a society of blind people.

Suddenly your eyes open and you start talking about light, and all the blind people gather together and they say, 'What nonsense. This man has gone mad.

Light does not exist. It is written in our scriptures that light does not exist. Our prophets have proved it, our philosophers have argued about it - light does not exist. There is no god, there is no possibility of a second childhood.' They will deny.

In fact, while they are denying, they are simply protecting themselves. They are afraid. If this is true, then it will create a restlessness in them, a discontent - a divine discontent. And they are afraid of that discontent, because that will change their whole life, their whole style. It will destroy their past. For that they don't have courage enough. For that they are not brave enough. For that they will have to lose many conveniences, much comfort, a settled life, security - no, they don't want to go that far.

It is better to say 'god is dead'. It is better to say 'god never existed'. It is better to say that people who talk about god are just poets, dreamers, day-dreamers; people who talk about samadhi, ecstasy, meditation, are just navel-gazers, escapists. It is better to condemn these people. That is very protective. Then you can avoid the venture of the unknown.

People are cowards; don't be worried about them. Go on your way, go on your way dancing. Remember only one thing: whatsoever feels good is good, whatsoever feels beautiful is beautiful, and whatsoever makes you joyful, gay, delighted, is truth. Let that be your only criterion. Don't be bothered by others'

opinions. Let this be your only touchstone - whatsoever makes you happy is bound to be true. Ananda - bliss - is the only criterion of truth.

So, Parijat, if you feel good and happy, then don't be worried.

LISTENING TO YOU TODAY, I BECAME A CHILD. I WANTED TO CALL OUT 'BUT I AM ONLY THREE.'

Shout it to the trees, shout it to the world, shout it to the stars, that 'I am only three' - and be. Three is exactly the age when a child dies, nearabout three. The child loses all contact with nature and becomes part of the society. It is the time, the boundary line which he crosses, loses all contact with his own being, becomes a member of the society. Up to then he was just like animals and trees and rocks. Then he is a citizen, then he starts learning manners, language, etiquette. Then, by and by, he is growing out of childhood, going farther and farther away from god.

So if it has happened and you remember that 'I am three', be, be that age, and soon you will start going even deeper. You will be two, you will be one. One day you will suddenly see you are being born, passing through the birth canal, and one day you will see you are in the womb, surrounded by your mother's warmth.

And at that moment first satori happens, first glimpse of samadhi. Because when you are in the womb there is no worry, no responsibility. You don't breathe even, the mother does that for you. When you are in a womb you are tremendously in surrender. In the womb there is no doubt, all is trust. In the womb the child knows no mind, he is simply there without any self.

The first glimpse of enlightenment comes when one has entered again into the womb, one has come to recognize that one is again in the womb - this whole universe becomes a womb. It is a womb. The whole universe becomes your mother. The whole universe becomes suddenly warm, it is not cold. It is loving.

You are not in a strange world, you are at home. You are not an outsider, you are an insider. The first satori happens when you are again back in the womb of your mother.

So, Parijat, go backwards. And this going backwards is not really going backwards, it is going forwards. Because you don't have any other language, that's why 'childhood', 'birth', 'womb', have to be used.

Freud had a very uncanny, intuitive sense of recognizing a few things about which he was not even convinced. Sometimes he was against them, because he was not a religious person. But he had a very intuitive sense of recognizing things. Howsoever vaguely, but he recognized many things.

One of his great insights was this: that religion is a search for the womb, and a religious person is one who wants again to be a child in the mother's womb.

Exactly it is so. He was talking about it in a negative way, he was condemning it.

But it is exactly so. Then the circle is complete. You have come to the womb again; now the womb is the whole universe. Now your whole life has become circular, complete - empty and complete, nothing and all.

Question 3:

Man has three layers: the body, the mind and the soul. So whatsoever you do, you can do in three ways. Either it can be just from the body, or it can be from the mind, or it can be from the soul. Whatsoever you do, any act of yours, can have three qualities. Sex is love through the body; romantic love is sex through the mind; compassion is through the soul. But the energy is the same. Moving in a deeper way, its quality changes, but the energy is the same.

If you live your love life only through the body, you live a very poor love life, because you live very superficially. Sex, just of the body, is not even sex - it becomes sexuality. It becomes pornographic, it becomes a little obscene, it becomes a little brutal, ugly, because it has no depth in it. Then it is just a physical release of the energy. Maybe it helps you to become a little less tense, but just to become a little more relaxed you are losing tremendous energy, tremendously valuable energy.

If it can become love you will not be losing it. In the same act you will be gaining also. On the physical level there is only loss - sex is simply a loss of energy. Sex is a safety valve in the body: when the energy is too much and you don't know what to do with it, you throw it out. You feel relaxed because you are emptied of energy. A sort of rest comes, because the restless energy is thrown out - but you are poorer than before, you are emptier than before.

And again and again this will happen. Then your whole life will become just a routine of collecting energy by food, by breathing, by exercise, and then throwing it away. This looks absurd. First eat, breathe, exercise, create energy, and then you are worried what to do with it - then throw it. This is meaningless, absurd.

So sex becomes very soon meaningless. And a person who has known only sex of the body, and has not known the deeper dimension of love, becomes mechanical.

His sex is just a repetition of the same act again and again and again.

Prem Chinmaya has sent me a beautiful joke.

There was this farmer and he was having a lot of trouble with his hens. He read an advertisement in a newspaper for a Super-cock: 'Five hundred dollars: we guarantee to double the fertility of your chickens.'

Five hundred dollars is five hundred dollars, and so it took the farmer a couple of weeks to reckon that it was worth it. Finally, a week after he sent his cheque off, a truck arrived, the back doors were swung open, and the driver pulled out a large case with 'Super-cock' written all over it in red, white and blue. No sooner had the farmer opened the case than out sprang Super-cock.

'Where is the hen house?' cried Super-cock. Amazed, the farmer pointed up some steps. Super-cock immediately ran over and up the steps and disappeared into the hen-house. Fifteen minutes later Super-cock emerged, victorious.

The farmer said, 'That was fantastic, I have never seen anything like it before in my life. You just sit down here and eat your fill of this grain.'

'No, no. Do you have any ducks? I love ducks also,' said the Super-cock. The farmer tried to get Super-cock to rest, as he knew how easily these new strains of cock became exhausted, and he had, after all, cost him five hundred dollars. Ten minutes later Super-cock returned from the stream where the farmer had reluctantly told him that the ducks were.

Now the farmer was really angry at Super-cock and told him that he really had to rest or he would kill himself. 'You must have some turkeys? Which way is it to the turkeys?' cried the Super-cock. The farmer was so exasperated that he threw his arms in the air and walked off. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Super-cock strutting off in the direction of the turkey-house.

An hour later he happened to look up in the sky and saw buzzards wheeling over his nearby field. Cursing and swearing under his breath, he walked over to where he could now see, sure enough, his five hundred dollar Super-cock dead in the field - on his back with his feet raised in the air. Just as he was just about to pick Super-cock up by the legs, Super-cock opened one eye and said, whispering, 'Go away, go away. They are getting nearer.'

A man who lives a life of physical sex is nothing but a Super-cock. He lives and dies just doing one thing, and all else is centered on that one thing. And it is futile, and it is not nourishing. Sex is not nourishing, it is destructive. Unless it becomes love it has no creative energy in it.

YOU HAVE SPOKEN OF SEX, LOVE AND COMPASSION. I KNOW WHAT SEX WITHOUT LOVE IS....

It is good that you recognize that you know what sex without love is. There are many people, millions of them, who will not recognize that, who will not even accept this - they go on thinking and believing that they love. This is good - this awareness is good; then possibilities open. Because once you recognize that you have touched only one layer of your being, then the second layer can be opened, penetrated.

If you say that no, you know whatsoever there is to love, then it is very difficult to help you. So, good, the questioner is aware.... I KNOW WHAT SEX WITHOUT LOVE IS. It is miserable. It simply gives you a mechanical release.

You can become addicted to it: you don't enjoy it then, but you will miss it. If you don't go into it you will feel restless, if you go into it there is nothing in it.

That is what is happening in the West. People are going beyond sex - not towards love, not towards compassion - because that beyond is within; people are going beyond sex in a negative way - sex is becoming absurd. They are finished with it. They are searching something else. That's why drugs have become so important. Sex is finished - that was the oldest drug, the natural LSD.

Now it is finished, and people don't know what to do now. The natural drug is no more appealing, they have had enough of it. So chemicals, LSD, marijuana, psilocybin and other things are becoming more important.

In the West it is impossible now to prevent people from drugs. Unless sex starts becoming deeper and is transformed into love, there is no way: people will have to go towards drugs, helplessly. Even if they are reluctant they will have to go, because the old drug of sex is finished. It is not finished because it was futile, it is finished because people lived only on the superficial level. They never penetrated into the mystery of it.

At the most people know something about what they call romantic love - that too is not love; that is repressed sex. When you don't have the possibility of making a sexual contact, that repressed energy becomes romance. Then that repressed energy starts becoming cerebral, it starts moving into the head. When sex moves from the genital organs towards the head, it becomes romance.

Romantic love is not really love, it is pseudo, it is a false coin. It is again the same sex but the opportunity was not there.

In the past ages people lived very much in the romantic love because sex was not so easy. It was very difficult, the society created so many obstacles. Sex was so difficult that people had to repress it. That repressed energy would start moving into their heads - would become poetry, painting and romance, and they would have dreams, beautiful dreams.

Now that has disappeared, particularly in the West. In the East it is still there. In the West it has disappeared because sex has become available. Thanks to Freud there has been a great revolution in the West. The revolution has dropped all those barriers and inhibitions and repression upon sex energy. Now sex is easily available, there is no problem about it.

It is so much available, more than you need - that has created a problem.

Romantic love has disappeared. Now in the West no romantic poetry is being written. Who will write romantic poetry? Sex is so easily available in the market, who will think about it? There is no need to think about it.

Romantic love is the other side of the physical sex, the repressed side. It is not love. Both are ill. What you call sex, sexuality, and romantic love - both are ill states of affairs. When body and mind meet, there is love. Love is healthy. In sexuality only body is there, in romantic love only head is there. Both are partial.

In love, body and mind meet: you become a unity, more of a unity. You love the person and sex comes just as a shadow to it. It is not vice versa. You love the person so much, your energies meet with the person so deeply, you feel so good by the other's presence, the other's presence is so fulfilling - it completes you.

Love comes as a shadow to it.

Sex is not the center, love is the center; sex becomes the periphery. Yes, sometimes you would like to meet on the physical plane also, but there is no hankering for it. It is not an obsession, it is just a sharing of energy. The basic thing is deep. The periphery is good. With the center, the periphery is good; without the center, it becomes sexuality. Without the periphery, if it is only in the center, it becomes romantic love. When the periphery and the center are both together, there is a togetherness of body and mind. It is not only that you desire the other's body, but you desire the other's being - then there is love. Love is healthy.

Sexuality and romantic love are ill, unhealthy. They are a sort of neurosis, because they create a split in you. Love is a harmony. It is not only the body of the other, but his very being, his very presence that is loved. You don't use the other person as a means for release. You love the person. He is not, or she is not, a means, but an end unto herself or unto himself. Love is healthy.

And there is another depth still left, which I call compassion. When body, mind and soul meet, then you have become a great unity. You have become a trinity.

You have become trimurti. Then all that is in you, from the most superficial to the deepest depth, is in a meeting. Your soul also is part of your love. Of course, compassion is possible only through deep meditation.

Sexuality is possible without any understanding, without any meditation. Love is possible only with understanding. Compassion is possible only with understanding and meditation, understanding and awareness. Not only do you understand and respect the other person, but you have come to your deepest core of being. Seeing your own deepest core, you have become capable of seeing the deepest core in the other also. Now the other does not exist as a body or a mind; the other exists as a soul. And souls are not separate. Your soul and my soul are one.

When two bodies meet, they are separate. When two body-minds meet, their boundaries are overlapping. When two souls meet, they are one. Compassion is the highest form of love. It is possible only for a Buddha, or a Christ, or a Krishna to have compassion.

But love is possible for many. A little more understanding of life, a little more watchfulness about life, will help many to become lovers. But if you are completely unconscious then you have to live the rotten life of sex. In compassion, the energy is purest; love completely has become of the depth. In fact in compassion love is no more a relationship, it has become a state.

When you are in sexuality you don't bother much to whom you are making love - any body will do. You just need a woman or a man, any body will do. You just need the other's body. In love, any body won't do, anybody's body won't do. You need a person who is in deep love with you, who has a certain affinity and harmony with you, in whose presence your heart starts singing, a deep bell starts ringing... in whose presence you feel a blessing. Then only is it possible for you to make love to the other person. To make love is possible only if the meeting - the inner meeting - has happened. Otherwise it is simply impossible to think, even to imagine that you are making love to a person you don't love.

In the state of compassion, sex completely disappears. In the state of love, sex remains but becomes secondary. In the state of sexuality, sex is the only thing and the primary thing. In the second state - of love - sex is secondary, follows like a shadow. The flame is there and sex follows like smoke. In the first stage of sex, there is only smoke, there is no flame; the fuel is too wet for flame. There is only smoke and smoke and smoke. In the second state there is flame but still smoke is there, surrounding the flame. The flame is clouded by the smoke. In the third state of compassion there is only flame, no smoke - it is a smokeless flame.

Purity has attained absolutely.

You can make sex to as many people as you want because there is no discrimination. It is animalistic. In the state of love you discriminate. Love is very individualistic, it is very choosey. In the state of compassion all individuality has disappeared; there is universality. You are simply compassion, you are simply love. Love goes on falling, overflowing. Whosoever comes close to you is fulfilled. Whosoever dares to come close to you is inflamed, carries a new glow.

In compassion it is not a question between you and the other. You are not there, neither is the other - only one energy, one tremendous energy of existence, dancing. It is NATARAJ, the dancing Shiva. The energy is in love with itself. It is tremendously ecstatic and happy. It is elated for no reason at all, it is extravagant. It has so much that it goes on pouring. It is a play.

Sex is like work; you are too much worried about it. You want to do it, you want to finish it somehow. It is like a burden on you. Love is not like a burden, it is enjoyment. You cherish it, you taste it - as a connoisseur tastes the wine. There is no hurry. There is no hurry to finish it, you would like to linger in it. You are slow, unhurried, patient.

Sex is momentary, love has a longer period for it - it lingers slowly. Compassion is eternal, it is timeless. Whether somebody is there or not is not the question then. A man of compassion has compassion. Buddha sitting under his bodhi tree is as loving as when he is surrounded by his sannyasins. When he is moving in the crowd he is as loving as when he is alone. Now love is a state.

If you want to change from sex towards love, try to understand your sexuality.

Watch it, watch the mechanicalness of it. See the futility, see the whole absurdity of it - it is not leading you anywhere. Become a little more refined, become a little more subtle. Look not for the body, but somebody's being. Watch, explore.

Sooner or later you will find somebody who fits with you.

It can happen in the first sight even, because when energies fit, they fit. If they don't fit, they don't fit. You can struggle your whole life - they will not fit. If they fit they fit immediately. Marriage has made love disappear badly, marriage has made love disappear from the earth. Because for other considerations marriage is arranged - money, finance, family, prestige, astrology - all absurd. They have nothing to do with the heart of the two persons who are going to be married.

So marriage is almost always a failure; only in rare accidents it is not so - but they are accidents, exceptions. They cannot be counted. Marriage is always on the rocks, because it is for wrong reasons. Only love can become the foundation of a real marriage, there is no other way. Because there is no other way to find that your wave length is exactly the same as the other's, that you vibrate in the same way as the other. There is no other way to find it out.

Astrology is not helpful, neither somebody's prestige, family. No, nothing is important. Only one thing is important - that two persons together vibrate in such a way that their vibrations become a pattern, a harmonious pattern. Only vibe can decide.

In a better world people will be allowed to move and mingle and meet as many people as possible so they can find really somebody who gets into them and they get into him, or into her - somebody who has the same quality which fits and makes you complete and fulfills you.

Love is possible. If the society is a little more healthy and less perverted, love is possible. In a good healthy society, love should be natural. In a perverted society - the society in which we live and the whole world lives - love has become impossible; only sex has remained possible. But compassion will become possible only if you make all efforts to become meditative, otherwise not.

The last stage of compassion I call holy. The first stage I call unhealthy, ill; the second stage I call healthy, normal - society can attain to the second stage. Only when society hinders with the individual life and tries to manipulate the individual and dominate it, the first stage happens.

The third stage I call holy because it consists of the whole. That is possible only if you make individual efforts. Meditation will lead you to compassion. Buddha has said: If you meditate, compassion will arise automatically.

Question 4:

Yogananda, you are a fool. You have come home. Where else do you want to go?

It happened:

Once a drunkard came back to his home in the deep mid-night.

He was so drunk that he could not recognize his home. He knocked on the door.

His old mother opened the door and said, 'Come in.'

But he said, 'Old woman, I have knocked only just to ask - where is my home?

Just tell me. I remember faintly - my home exists somewhere in this neighbourhood. The road seems to be familiar.

The woman said, 'What are you talking? You fool! Come in! This is your home!'

Yogananda, the same is my answer to you. You have come home. To whom are you saying no, no, no? Say yes - and enter.