Chapter 09

[NOTE: This discourse will be in the book "India Coming Back Home", which has not been published, as of August 1992.]

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE ESSENCE OF YOUR RELIGION OR PHILOSOPHY? HAS IT BEEN THE SAME, OR HAS IT EVOLVED OVER THE YEARS? IS IT DIFFERENT TODAY, AFTER YOUR VAST AND TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES?

The first thing: I do not have a philosophy; but I have a totally different concept of life. I call it `philosia'.

Philosophy is not the exact translation of what for centuries in India we have called `darshan', it is a wrong translation. Philosophy means thinking, and darshan means seeing. The blind man thinks about light, and the man with eyes sees light.

In India, philosophy has never existed, because we have never believed that you can think about truth. You can realize it, you can see it, you can become it, you can blossom in a world of truth. But there is no way to think about it.

Thinking is confined to the mind, and you are far above mind. You are a soul.

Mind can think only about things which it knows; it is a vicious circle. Mind cannot think about anything which it does not know. There is no way.

This was the reason why in the East we never believed in thinking, in mind. On the contrary, our search has been for a state of no-mind, no-thinking, a state of silence. It is strange, philosophy is thinking, and philosia is no-thinking. They are just contraries.

When all thinking disappears and you are simply a knower, a witness, a witness of nothing, a knower of nothing, that is the moment of the great revolution when man becomes a Gautam Buddha. Because when there is nothing to know, your energies of knowing turn one hundred and eighty degrees upon yourself, and for the first time you realize who you are.

So this is the first thing that I would like to say: I do not have any philosophy. I have a philosia, and I teach my people how not to think and just be in a state of no-mind. In other words, be a meditator, not a thinker. And in meditation we have realized the essential of our life, and that essential is the essential of the whole existence.

The greatest difference between East and West is that the West has never realized truth because it has been moving on a wrong path. A blind man thinking about light can go on thinking for lives together. He will still not have any idea what light is. He cannot even think about darkness -- what to say about light?

Ordinarily people think that blind people must be living in constant darkness.

They are wrong, because to see darkness you need eyes, and the man who can see darkness can see light too. It is just a question of opening the eyes or closing the eyes. But the blind man has no eyes at all. He is not part of the world where darkness exists, where light exists.

There has been a tremendous mistake. It was natural for the Westerners to translate darshan as philosophy. But one feels ashamed that people like Dr.

Radhakrishna also translate darshan as philosophy. Just slave minds -- whatsoever the West is doing they will imitate it.

Secondly, I do not have a religion either, I have a religiousness. And I want to emphasize the fact that religiousness is a living quality. Religion is a dead dogma. Hinduism is a religion, Mohammedanism is a religion, Buddhism is a religion. But Gautam Buddha is only religious, not of a religion. Religiousness is just like the quality of love. When you fall in love with a person it is an experience, a quality -- a living, vibrating phenomenon. When you fall in love with the whole existence it is religiousness.

Religions can be many, religiousness is one, just like love. You don't have Mohammedan love, Christian love, Hindu love. That would be hilarious. Love is simply love without any adjectives. So is religiousness. And I do not teach religion, that's why all the religions are against me. I teach religiousness.

Religiousness means a man who is moving away from thinking to non-thinking, moving from mind to no-mind, moving from body to soul, moving from the outer to the inner. Ultimately religiousness makes you the center of a cyclone.

All around you is a cyclone but you are a silent center, and out of that silent center has come all beautiful, still, small voices.

The statements of the Upanishads are not the statements of people who belong to any religion. They are the statements of people who drown themselves in religiousness. Anything that is truthful, beautiful, good, has come out of the experience of religiousness.

Satyam, shivam, sundram: truth, good, beauty. All the religions have beliefs, and every belief simply covers your ignorance. From the very beginning it is a belief - - you don't know. It is a blind man believing in light, it is a deaf man believing in music.

Religiousness does not begin in belief, it begins in experiencing. It is an inner journey. And at the innermost core we are all one. The Korans, the Bibles, the Gitas and the Vedas are all left out. At the innermost core of your being there is only godliness, no god. I have to emphasize the fact that religions believe in god, for which they have no proof, no witness; it is their own invention. That's why there are so many gods.

There are three hundred religions on the earth. And if you go into the details you will be surprised. Hindus have thirty-three million gods, which was once the population of India -- the same population. It is indicative that each man invents his own god, his own conception of god.

I do not have a God. I do not preach about God because the implications are dangerous. If there is a God as a creator, you are only puppets. You lose your dignity, you lose your humanity; you were created out of mud. And God seems to be whimsical, because what had he been doing since eternity? Christians say he created the world only four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ. That God seems to be a crackpot. What about the time that preceded those four thousand and four years? What had he been doing? And he is a dangerous God.

He can destroy you this very moment. If he can create you, he can destroy you; you are not your own masters.

Friedrich Nietzsche was right when he said, "God is dead. Therefore I declare man is free." I go one step ahead of Friedrich Nietzsche. Even to say, "God is dead" is to accept that once he was alive. I say there has been never a God; he is the invention of the priests to exploit humanity, to destroy man's freedom. But the second part of his statement, "therefore man is free" has great insight. It says that if God is there, there is no freedom possible. And if you want freedom, then God has to be said goodbye to.

I teach man godliness. That is a totally different conception. The qualities of compassion, the qualities of service, the qualities of love, the qualities of sincerity, the qualities of truth, the qualities of meditation, all these are aspects of godliness.

You don't have to worship God. That is simply idiotic, and it is happening all over the world -- in the temples, in the mosques, in gurudwaras, in synagogues, in churches. I call it simply stupidity. God has not to be worshipped, just as love has not to be worshipped. Love has to be lived, godliness has to be lived. It is not a question of worship, it is a question of living; godliness is my way of life.

You have asked, has my way of life been evolving? Anything alive is always evolving, only dead things don't evolve. I am still alive. Unto my last breath my philosia, my religiousness, will go on evolving, will go on becoming deeper, higher, will go on reaching to the stars.

You have also asked if, after my traumatic experiences, my attitude to life has changed. No.

My way of looking at things has deepened. I love now with a great depth, and my inner godliness has become a dance, a song, a celebration. Because the traumatic experience has made it absolutely clear to me that it is not a time just to sit and enjoy my blissfulness in a cave somewhere in the Himalayas.

The time of crisis is such that the whole humanity is on the cross. It is time to reach to every heart, it is time to wake up every sleeping man. But my philosia and my religiousness are absolutely unaffected. They are evolving, becoming more and more comprehensive, but nothing is being dropped. Nothing is being edited out or inserted in. My basic standpoint remains the same but it goes on growing, just like a tree. Even when you see it is standing, it is really growing.

Gautam Buddha used to say that we should drop, from our languages, nouns and pronouns, and I agree with him. He said that life consists of only verbs.

There is no river, there is only rivering. There is no tree, there is only treeing.

Because everything is moving, moving to greater heights, reaching to greater depths.

ONE OF THE CONTROVERSIES ABOUT YOUR TEACHING WAS THAT NOTHING WAS TABOO, PARTICULARLY FREE SEX. IS THIS TRUE, AND IS THIS THE MAIN CRITICISM AGAINST YOU?

There is nothing which is taboo, except taboo itself. Life should be lived in its totality, in its intensity, in its wholeness. To me, to live life in its wholeness is to be holy, there is no other holiness.

It is true that people who are against me have made it a basic point to criticize me. But the reason is not that I am teaching the wholeness of life, teaching an uninhibited acceptance of existence, The reason is that I have been cutting the very roots of all these religions; and they don't have anything else to condemn, criticize. They don't have any answer to any of my questions. They have chosen sex, which simply shows their repression and nothing else. I have over five hundred books, and only one book talks about sex; all the rest are condemning all these religions from every angle. They are silent about it because they don't have any answer.

So sex has become their focus. They have tried all around the world, as if sex is my only teaching. And their choice simply shows not only their repressions, it also shows that for centuries they have been repressing sex in people.

It is strange that out of five hundred books that one book on sex... and that too is not really on sex. The name of the book is FROM SEX TO SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS. It is basically about how to transform sexual energy into a superconscious experience. In fact, that is the only way to go beyond sex, to transcend sex, to sublimate sex. And that book is the only one that has been translated in almost all the languages of the world. It shows the sickness of human mind.

I have heard, one night a man was with a woman in bed, and suddenly the woman said, "Get up quickly and go in the cupboard and hide; I have heard the horn of my husband's car. And keep quiet and silent, because he will not be here long. He has to go on his night duty." The man went inside the cupboard. And it was true, the husband entered. At that very moment the man heard someone else in the cupboard with him, a little boy.

And the little boy said, "It is very dark here."

The man said, "For God's sake, don't speak so loudly. Here is five dollars, keep quiet."

The boy said, "The darkness is too much."

The man said, "You can take ten dollars." The man was afraid of the husband.

The boy replied, "It won't do, the darkness is too much and I am going to scream."

The man gave fifty dollars -- all that he had. He said, "You can look into my pockets, I have nothing more. Now if you want to scream, you can scream."

The boy said, "That's okay, it will do. For today it will do. But next time remember, it is below me to accept only fifty dollars."

The man said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "This is my business. I am always in this cupboard, and at least one hundred dollars is my fee. So next time, remember, you will have to come into the cupboard, and rather than haggling about the price, simply give me one hundred dollars, and I will be silent."

The man said, "Okay, but please keep quiet. Now you have got whatever I had."

The next day the young child told his grandmother, "I want to purchase a tricycle."

The woman said, "But with what? I don't have any money."

The boy said, "Don't be worried about money, I have got fifty dollars."

The woman said, "Fifty dollars, but from where?"

The boy said, "That is a secret. You just come with me."

But the old woman was very, very religious. She said, "Unless you tell me the truth... have you stolen it? From where did you get these fifty dollars?" It was Sunday, so she said, "First you come to the church. If you don't want to tell me, go and confess to the priest. He will not say anything to anybody, so you just confess the truth."

The boy said, "Okay."

He went into the confession box with its small window; on the other side was the priest. The boy said, "It is very dark here."

And the priest said, "You son-of-a-bitch, you have started again."

Sex has been repressed, but it has not been destroyed. In fact the people who have repressed it are the people who have perverted the whole humanity into homosexuality, into lesbianism, into sodomy, into all kinds of ugliness. Sex naturally is a beautiful phenomenon between two persons who love each other.

And by simply condemning sex you cannot destroy it, it is existential. But you can poison it, and the whole humanity is living with that poison.

I want sex to be a natural, beautiful phenomenon. But that is not my basic teaching, it is simply a part of accepting the whole of life. But those sex maniacs who have repressed it, their minds are sick.

Dr. Johnson, one of the great linguists of the English language, has written a great dictionary, compiling all the English words available at that time. I am saying this because the English language is the only language that goes on evolving each year -- accepting at least eight thousand new words. It is not a dead language like Sanskrit or Arabic; it is not afraid, it goes on growing.

When the dictionary was published, after a few days, three old ladies, seventy, seventy-five, and eighty -- very old, with thick glasses -- came with the dictionary to Dr. Johnson and said, "You seem to be destroying the morality of the country."

He said, "What have I done?"

They said, "You have published this sexual book."

He said, "Sexual book? This is a dictionary."

They said, "Dictionary? There are three words in it which are obscene." And they had underlined three words in those thousands of words. Those three old women had done such a great job.

Dr. Johnson said, "You are a miracle. Just within three days.... My work is to collect words, but amongst thousands of words, how could you find these three words only? You are not concerned with the whole dictionary, you were looking for these words. And because of these three words, the dictionary has become a sex manual."

Sex is not my teaching. My teaching is to be spontaneous, to be whole. Of course, sex is a part of life, and a very basic and essential part of life. It should be given respect. It is sacred, it is not profane, because you have not created it. You would not have been here if there was no sex in the world. If your parents had listened to the so-called mahatmas, you would not have been here at all. There would be no need of a nuclear world war. Celibacy would have destroyed the world without any war, silently.

The people who say that sex is my teaching are simply showing their mind. And the books you call religious are full of sexuality. Even the Holy Bible has five hundred pages which can only be called pornographic. Look into your PURANAS; all are ugly and obscene. But you have become accustomed, you don't even think twice when you see shivalinga and offer flowers and pay your respects -- you don't know what you are doing. Shivalinga is a phallic symbol, and you are worshipping it.

Just go to Khajuraho and look at your temples. Go to Puri, to Konarak, and look at your temples. You will be surprised that, "My God, these are temples?"

Thousands of sexual, obscene, ugly statues: love being made in such strange ways that you may not have ever dreamed. Have you dreamed of making love to a woman who is standing on her head? In Khajuraho you can see that. Have you seen three men making love together to one woman? In Khajuraho you can see that. These are your temples. All over India you have more statues of Shivalinga than of anything else. It is strange.

In India there is only one temple of Brahma, who created the world according to Hindus. Who bothers about him? -- he has created the world, his work is finished, he is retired. But then Shiva has to be taken care of. He is dangerous, he is going to destroy the world. It is good to be worshipping him -- staying in his good books, so when he destroys the world at least he can save you, saying,"This is my poor follower."

And do you know how this shivalinga came into existence? I would like to tell you the story.

Brahma and Vishnu and Shiva are the trimurti, the Hindu trinity, the three faces of God. Brahma and Vishnu were arguing about something and they could not come to a conclusion. So they said, "Better we should go to Shiva and ask his advice, see what he says. With three persons, we can decide by a majority who is right. With two persons it is very difficult to agree who is right."

They went to Shiva; it was early morning. Shiva seems to be very Western, he was making love to Parvati in the morning. Hindus don't do that; they do it in the middle of the night, in the silence, without making any noise. And they do it so quick, so fast, afraid that somebody may wake up. In the morning this man is making love, and the doors are open. And these two gentlemen have not even the sense to get out and let him finish first. They stand there and look, just like every Indian. They cannot leave such an opportunity.

Shiva is so much engaged in the exercise of making love that he is not even aware who is standing there. He goes on doing push-ups! Parvati tries to stop, because she sees these two fellows standing there, but Shiva is not a person to be prevented. Six hours pass, he is still making love, and those two gentlemen are still standing. Because he did not pay any attention to them, but continued to make love, and they had other work to do, reluctantly they had to leave such a beautiful scene.

And these are your religious books! An Indian board of censors would not even allow such a scene in a film. It would be censored -- but Hindus should fight censorship. It is interfering in their religiousness -- and that is their religion. They should make a film of it which would be a super-hit. Nothing else, just three hours continuously, Shiva making love, and those two gentlemen standing, watching from every corner and every side; no story is needed.

Angry, because they had to attend to some other business, they cursed Shiva, "Because you have not paid attention to us, you have not welcomed us, you have not even seen us, we condemn you, that forever until eternity you will be remembered by a phallic symbol. Your statues will not be made." That's really why that shivalinga is worshipped, it is a curse -- but nobody bothers.

Sex is not my teaching. My teaching is vast, it comprehends your whole life. You cannot criticize me because you have sex as part of your life. I want it to be respected, to be made sacred. If you feel it is ugly, if you feel it is profane, that means you are born out of ugliness. Then how can you respect your father? How can you respect your mother? How can you dare to be respected by your children? Because the only connection between you and your parents, between you and your children, is sex. There is no other connection.

Life has moved from your parents to you, from you to your children. If you want a respectful society, where parents are loved and respected, where children are loved and respected, then you will have to respect the energy of sex too.

Otherwise, deep down in your mind your children are nothing but sin. And you are too because your parents were committing sin.

I am against these people who are poisoning life and degrading it into a sin. I want it to be a beautiful, a virtuous, a sacred phenomenon. And I am condemned for that around the world.

Very strange! To say the truth seems to be a crime. But I will go on committing that crime, because I know those who have condemned me have not thought of all the implications. They should commit suicide, they should kill their mothers and their fathers, because they have all indulged in sex. They should kill their children because they are born of sex. Do you want this kind of religion to spread on the earth?

To me, whatever existence has given to you is beautiful. To condemn me, these people have invented their own ideas, which have nothing to do with me. They go on teaching to their flocks that I am propounding free sex. I have never even used the phrase 'free sex'. And what do they mean? Should sex be sold? It should not be free? Do they want the whole world to become a world of prostitutes?

In fact you have made the world a world of prostitutes. A few prostitutes sell their bodies for one day; you have purchased your wife for your whole life. And what a strange world -- you have purchased your wife, and her parents, to get rid of her, have given money to you. And you have the right to make love to your wife or to your husband whether they are in the mood or not. I have been a guest in hundreds of houses, and I was amazed. The husband and wife are continuously quarreling, fighting, looking like enemies; and they go on producing children.

To me, a woman not loving her husband and still allowing her body to be used is functioning as a prostitute. A man not loving his wife but still making love to her because it is his duty is functioning as a male prostitute. You will be surprised with the word `male prostitute'. In the West, within these last twenty years, male prostitutes have appeared in the market. The women's liberation movement has brought them in. The woman wants equality in everything, so why should only women be prostitutes? So now there are, in London, in San Francisco, in Los Angeles, in New York, male prostitutes also available. A great liberation of women!

My effort has been to make human life a love-shrine, a temple of love. I have been condemned because they don't have any other response. I have been cutting their very roots.

But to condemn me about sex is easy, because everybody seems to agree with them. Even people who are exploiting sex repression by publishing pornographic magazines like PLAYBOY, PENTHOUSE and other ugly literature are also against me.

You can see something very strange. Priests are against me and pornographers are against me, what does it mean? It means that, if sex repression disappears, who will be interested in pornography? The whole business will flop. So there seems to be an inner conspiracy, perhaps unconscious, between the priest and the pornographer -- that the priest creates the market and the pornographer reaps the crop. And what a beauty! The priest goes on condemning pornography, but the more he condemns it, the more people are looking at ugly, obscene pictures. But they have to hide them behind The Bible, behind the Gita, so if somebody suddenly turns up, they can close The Bible and the Gita and you never know what was hidden in them.

When I was arrested in America -- when I entered the cell there was another inmate. On his side he had pasted the whole wall with naked women, ugly pictures. But every morning, every evening, he would put The Bible on his bed, kneel down on the floor, put his head on The Bible and pray for half an hour.

The first day I watched; the second day I said, "This is strange. You are a religious person, you should not have these pictures on your wall."

He said, "Nobody ever said that to me. All the walls in the jail are pasted with pornographic pictures, and everybody has a Bible. But I never saw a contradiction."

I said, "There is no contradiction. You have repressed sex, that is written on the wall. And what you do -- putting your head on The Bible, is simply hypocrisy.

By putting your head on The Bible do you think The Bible will enter into your head, change your being? -- and that is for a few minutes in the morning, a few minutes in the evening. And twenty-four hours a day, I see you looking at these pictures, finding new pictures, bringing new pictures."

Religions are responsible for pornography, religions are responsible for sexual perversions. I am simply teaching nature to those whose mind has been poisoned against nature.