The seed of blissfulness

Kahlil Gibran has posed every question in its right context. It is not a question coming out of the blue, it is a question representing the questioner. And he has made every effort to answer the questioner by answering his question. These are two different things.

The philosophical approach towards life answers only the question; it does not matter who is asking it, the question in itself is important to the philosopher. But to the mystic, the question is only a beginning of a deep exposure of the questioner; hence, the real answer is not arrowed towards the question, but towards the questioner. The question has its roots in the heart of the one who has asked, and unless you answer him, you have not answered.

Kahlil Gibran is very careful that, when he is answering the question, he should not forget the questioner. The question is superficial; the real problem is deep down in the heart of the one who has asked.

THEN A HERMIT, WHO VISITED THE CITY ONCE A YEAR, CAME FORTH AND SAID, SPEAK TO US OF PLEASURE.

Does it not look very strange that a hermit should ask about pleasure? It appears so, but in truth the hermit has renounced pleasure and is tortured by his own renunciation. He cannot forget the possibility that perhaps those who are living the life of pleasure are the right ones, perhaps by renouncing life and its pleasures he has simply gone wrong.

The feeling is not just a superficial thought, it is deep in his very being - because since he has renounced pleasure, he has lost all zest for life, all will even to breathe. Even to wake up in the morning... for what? Since he has renounced, he has died a kind of death, he is no more a living being. Although he breathes, eats, walks, speaks... I say unto you: his life is only posthumous. He is like a ghost, who has died long ago. The moment he renounced existence, he renounced life also; he committed a spiritual suicide.

But all the religions have been teaching nothing but spiritual suicide. They are all anti-life - and if you are anti-life, naturally the only way for you is to go on repressing your natural desires, longings.

The hermit, who has been praised down the ages as a saint, as holy, is nothing but a repressed soul who has not allowed himself to live, who has not allowed himself to dance, to love. He is like a tree which has renounced its own foliage, which has renounced its own flowers, and its own fruits - dry and juiceless the tree stands, just a faded memory.

All this has been done because there are vested interests in the world which want you to be just alive - but not to live; just to survive, but not in your fullness - only at the minimum, not at the maximum.

They have turned every human being into a summertime river. They don't allow you to be flooded with rain, and to have a taste of something widening, expanding, some dream of a future meeting with the ocean. A summertime river has shrunken, has become shallow, has become broken.

The hermit has died at the very center of his being. His body goes on living, but he does not know what life is, because pleasure is the only language that life understands. Although pleasure is not the end, it is certainly the beginning - and you cannot reach the end if you have missed the beginning.

The hermit needs all your compassion, not your worship. Your worship has been the cause of many people committing suicide, because you have been worshiping those who are renouncing pleasure.

You are fulfilling their egos and destroying their souls. You are partners in a great crime: they are committing suicide, but you are also murdering them by your worship.

The question - coming from a hermit asking Almustafa: speak to us of pleasure - is immensely significant. It needs courage even to ask such a question - as far as your so-called sages and saints are concerned.

It must have been twenty-five years ago, when I happened to speak in a conference.... Just before me a Jaina monk, Chandan Muni, who was very much respected by his community and religion, inaugurated the conference. He spoke about great blissfulness, great joy in renouncing life, in renouncing the mundane, profane pleasures. I was sitting by his side, watching him, but I could not see any sign that he had known what he is talking about. He appeared dry and dead, his statements were repetitions, parrot-like, from the scriptures. It was not a poetry - spontaneous, flowing like a stream from the mountains, young, fresh, singing, dancing towards the ocean.

When I spoke, after him, I said, "The man who was speaking just now is simply a hypocrite" - and he was sitting by my side - "he knows nothing of ecstasy, nothing of blissfulness, because the man who has renounced pleasure has renounced the first step - which leads to the final step of blissfulness.

It is impossible to reach to blissfulness if you are against pleasure and against life."

There was a great shock... because people don't speak what they feel; people speak only what other people appreciate. And I could feel the vibrations of Chandan Muni - it was a beautiful morning, there was a cool breeze, but he was perspiring. But he was a sincere man. He did not stand up to contradict me, on the contrary, I received a messenger in the afternoon, who said, "Chandan Muni wants to meet you, and he's very sorry that he cannot come, because his committee will not allow it."

I said, "There is no problem. I am not imprisoned, my wings are not cut. I don't care about any committee - I can come."

So he said, "First let me go and make arrangements so that you can meet in privacy."

I said, "What is the matter? Let others be there."

But he said, "You don't understand. Since this morning, Chandan Muni has been crying. He's seventy years old and he became a monk when he was only twelve years old. His father became a monk, the mother had died - now where was this child to go? This was the most convenient thing, that he also become a monk with his father; so he became a monk. He has never known what life is, he has never played with children, he has never seen anything that can be called pleasant."

So I said, "Okay, you go ahead and make arrangements - I am coming." Still, a crowd gathered.

They had been suspecting since the morning that something had happened to Chandan Muni - he's not speaking and his eyes are full of tears. He had to beg of the crowd, "Please, leave the two of us alone!"

He locked the doors, and he said to me, "It was hard to hear your words - they were like arrows going directly into my heart; but whatever you said is true. I am not as courageous as I should be, and that's why I don't want anybody else to hear this, but I have not known life. I have not known anything. I have only learnt from scriptures - they are empty. And now at the age of seventy, what do you suggest for me to do?"

I said, "I think the first thing is to open the doors and let the people come in. Of what are you afraid?

You don't have anything to lose. You have never lived - you died at the age of twelve. Now, a dead man has nothing to lose... but let them listen. They have been worshiping you; just because of their worship your ego was fulfilled, and you managed to live this torturous life, this horrible nightmare that religions have called saintliness - it is simply pathology."

He was hesitant, but still he gathered courage and opened the doors. And when the people heard that he knows nothing, rather than praising his honesty and sincerity, they all started condemning him, saying, "You have been cheating us!" They threw him out of their temple.

For truth it seems there is no home, but for hypocrisy, all worship, all respectability, is available.

This hermit reminds me of Chandan Muni. I don't know what happened to him, but whatever may have happened must have been better than what had been happening before. At least he sacrificed his respectability for being sincere, for being truthful, and this is a big step.

The hermit is asking: speak to us of pleasure.... The word "pleasure" is without any meaning for the hermit; he has heard only condemnation about it. He may have himself been condemning it, but he has never tasted it.

A beautiful story I would like to tell you: One day in paradise, in one of the ZORBA THE BUDDHA restaurants, Gautam Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tzu were sitting and chitchatting. A beautiful naked woman - it is my restaurant, nobody else's, and it is not in the territory of the Poona Police Commissioner - came with a big jug and asked the three, "Would you like to have some juice of life?"

Buddha immediately closed his eyes. He said, "Be ashamed of yourself! You are trying to degrade us. With great effort and arduous austerities, somehow we have reached here, and you have brought juice of life. Get lost!" And he said all these things with closed eyes.

But Confucius kept his eyes half open, half closed. That's his whole philosophy: the golden mean - neither this extreme nor that extreme. He said, "I would like to have a little taste, because without tasting it I cannot say anything about it." She poured into a cup some juice of life. Confucius just sipped it, gave it back to her, and said, "It is very bitter."

Lao Tzu said, "Give me the whole jug." The woman said, "The whole jug? Are you going to drink from the jug?" He said, "That's my approach to life: unless you have drunk it in its totality, you cannot say anything about it. It may be bitter in the beginning, it may be sweet in the end - who knows?"

Before the woman could say anything, he took the jug away, and just drank, in one single breath, the whole juice of life. He said, "Confucius, you are wrong. Everything needs a certain training in taste. It was bitter because it was unknown to you; it was bitter because you were already prejudiced against it. Your whole talk about the golden mean is empty philosophy. I can say that the more I drank of it, the sweeter it became. First it was only pleasant; in the end it became ecstatic."

Buddha could not stand this praise of life. He simply stood up and moved out of the ZORBA THE BUDDHA restaurant. Lao Tzu said, "What happened to this fellow? He has been sitting with closed eyes. In the first place, there is no need to close your eyes - the woman is so beautiful. If there was something ugly you can close your eyes, it is understandable, but to close your eyes to such a beautiful woman is to show insensitivity, is to show humiliation, condemnation, is to show some deep-rooted fear. Perhaps that fellow is very repressed, and he is afraid his repression may surface."

Confucius was not ready to listen to Lao Tzu, because he was going too far from the golden mean, so he left. And Lao Tzu started dancing. I have heard he is still dancing....

Life has to be lived before you decide anything about it - for or against. Those who have lived it in its intensity and totality have never been against it. Those who have been against it are the people who have never lived it in its intensity, who have never allowed it their totality; they have kept themselves aloof and closed - but that's what the religions have been teaching, and how they have been destroying humanity.

Almustafa replied:

PLEASURE IS A FREEDOM-SONG....

The statements he is going to make are very significant:

PLEASURE IS A FREEDOM-SONG, BUT IT IS NOT FREEDOM.

Pleasure is only a song, a by-product; when you know freedom, the song will arise in you. But they are not synonymous. The song may remain silent... it depends.

You feel pleasure only when you are living a moment of freedom - freedom from care, freedom from worries, freedom from concerns, freedom from jealousies, freedom from everything. In that moment of absolute freedom a song arises in you, and that song is pleasure. Freedom is the mother, the song is only one of the children; there are many other children to the mother. So they are not synonymous. Freedom brings many flowers - it is only one of those flowers. And freedom brings many treasures - it is only one of those treasures.

IT IS THE BLOSSOMING OF YOUR DESIRES, BUT IT IS NOT THEIR FRUIT.

Flowers are beautiful. You can enjoy them, appreciate them, but they cannot nourish you, they cannot become your food. You can have them for decoration but they cannot become your blood, your bones, and your marrow. This is what he means...it is the blossoming of your desires, but it is not their fruit.

So don't stop at pleasure - there is much more ahead. Enjoy the flowers, collect the flowers, make a garland of the flowers, but remember, there are fruits also. And the fruit of your ripening is not pleasure; the fruit is blissfulness.

Pleasure is only a beginning - the tree is ready. The flowers are a song to announce that the tree is pregnant, and soon the fruits will be coming.

Don't get lost in pleasures, but don't escape from them either. Enjoy them, but remember - there is much more to life than pleasure.

Life does not end with pleasure, it only begins with it; the fruit is blissfulness. But pleasure gives you some taste of what is going to be ahead. It gives you a dream, a longing for more; it is a promise, "Just wait, fruits will be coming. Don't close your eyes to the flowers; otherwise you will never find the fruits."

That's what I have been telling you again and again, in different ways. My words may be different, but my song is the same. I may enter the temple from different doors, but it is the same temple.

Zorba is only a flower, Buddha is the fruit. Unless you have both, you are not complete, something is missing; there will always remain a gap in your heart, a dark corner in your soul. Unless Buddha and Zorba dance together in your being, the flower and the fruit, the beginning and the end, you will not know the real meaning of existence.

The meaning of existence has not to be searched for by your intellect, it has to be experienced in life.

IT IS A DEPTH CALLING UNTO A HEIGHT....

Pleasure is a depth calling unto a height. Remember always that every depth is always close to a height - only sunlit tops of mountains have deep valleys by their side. Pleasure is in the valleys, but if you have known pleasure, it will create, it will stir in your being, the longing for that faraway sunlit peak. If the darkness is so beautiful, if the valley is so fulfilling, how can you contain your temptation to reach to the heights? When the depths give so much, you have to explore the heights.

Pleasure is a tremendous temptation to reach to the heights. It is not against your spiritual growth; it is a friend, not a foe. And those who have denied it have denied the heights also, because the heights and the valleys exist together. The valleys have their own beauty, there is nothing sinful about them, there is nothing evil about them - just don't get lost. Enjoy, but remain alert - because there is much more. And you should not be content with the darkness of the valley. The pleasure creates in you a spiritual discontent: if darkness can give so much, can yield so much, what about the heights?

IT IS A DEPTH CALLING UNTO A HEIGHT, BUT IT IS NOT THE DEEP NOR THE HIGH.

Pleasure itself is more like plain ground. On one side is the high peak of the mountain; because of the height of the mountain it seems to be the depth, but really it is plain ground.

There are depths and there are heights. If you fall into depths, you will be falling into a painful existence, into anguish - below pleasure is pain. Above pleasure is blissfulness, ecstasy.

It is unfortunate that millions of very nice people have renounced pleasure and fallen into the dark, bottomless hole of pain, misery, austerity; but they go on consoling themselves - because their scriptures go on telling them that the more you suffer, the more you will gain after life. Nobody tells them, "There is no need to wait for a paradise after life. Don't go against pleasure, but follow the pleasure into its totality, and it will start leading you, by and by, upwards towards the heights."

Here you can be in hell, you can be in heaven; it all depends on you - where you are moving. Don't move against pleasure; let pleasure be your arrow moving towards the stars.

IT IS THE CAGED TAKING WING....

In pleasure, the caged bird grows wings, but still it is in the cage; now it has wings, but it has not the sky available to it. It can be said, "Pleasure is caged blissfulness."

Blissfulness is pleasure on the wing, rising higher into the sky. When pleasure becomes free from all prisons, it goes through a transmutation, a transformation. It has the seed in it; somebody just has to remind it, "You are containing tremendous potential." It has wings, but is not aware of its wings.

To be with a master is not to learn something.

To be with a master is to be infected by something.

Seeing the master on the wing, in the air, suddenly you become aware, "I have also got the same wings." The master becomes a remembrance. It is not a teaching that a master transfers, it is a remembrance that he invokes.

IT IS THE CAGED TAKING WING, BUT IT IS NOT SPACE ENCOMPASSED.

So, those who know pleasure have become acquainted with their wings; now they have to find their way out of the cage. And the cage is your own, home-made. It is your jealousy, which you go on feeding; it is your competitiveness, which you go on giving energy to; it is your own ego, which you don't drop but go on carrying - howsoever heavy the burden is. The cage is not somebody else's; hence it is very easy to drop it.

It happened to one of the Sufi mystics, Al-Hillaj Mansoor.... I love the man very much. There have been many mystics, and there will be many mystics, but I don't think anybody will have the same taste as Al-Hillaj Mansoor. He was rare in every sense. For example, somebody asked him, "How to be free? You all go on talking about freedom, freedom - but how to be free?"

He said, "It is very simple, just see." They were sitting in a mosque with pillars like these. Al-Hillaj went close to a pillar, caught hold of the pillar with both hands and started shouting, "Help me! How can I be free from this pillar?"

The man said, "Don't be mad, you yourself are clinging to the pillar; nobody is doing anything, neither is the pillar doing anything. What nonsense are you doing?"

He said, "I am simply answering you. You had asked me how to be free, have you ever asked anybody the art of not being free? That you know perfectly well. You go on creating new chains, new bondages... it is your own doing. Undo it! And it is good that it is your own doing, because you can undo it without anybody else's permission."

Still, Al-Hillaj was holding the pillar. The man said, "At least now I have understood the point, but please leave that pillar because a crowd is gathering. Everybody knows you are mad, but I am feeling embarrassed to be with you!"

He said, "Only if you have really understood will I leave this pillar; otherwise, I will die with this pillar."

He said, "My God, to ask you a question is to create trouble."

And the crowd started abusing the person. They said, "Why did you disturb Al-Hillaj? What kind of question have you asked?"

He said, "It is strange, I had asked a simple question, How to be free? Rather than answering, he went to the pillar, and he's holding the pillar, and he's shouting for help. That's why you all have gathered."

And Al-Hillaj was still shouting, "Help me! How can I be free?"

Finally, the man said, "Forgive me, I will try, but don't make too much mockery of me. Leave that pillar!"

He said, "What do you think? - am I holding the pillar or is the pillar holding me?"

The man said, "Mansoor, although you have become a great mystic, we were boyhood friends, we studied in the same school; just remember our friendship before this whole crowd. Now the whole town is here, and they are all angry with me. This is not the way to answer a question - I was asking a philosophical question."

Mansoor said, "Philosophical question? Then you should not come to a man like me. Philosophy is only for fools. Those who are really in search of truth, only they should enter my house - this is the house of God. And I have answered you, 'If you want to be free, you can be free this very moment, because you are holding all your chains as if they are not chains but ornaments. Drop them! Even if they are made of gold, they are not allowing you to be free, and they are not allowing your wings to open in the air.'"

AY, IN VERY TRUTH, PLEASURE IS A FREEDOM-SONG.

AND I FAIN WOULD HAVE YOU SING IT WITH FULLNESS OF HEART....

Man has completely forgotten one thing - fullness. He loves, but there is not fullness of the heart.

He weeps, but the tears are shallow - perhaps only a formality. He smiles, because he is expected to smile.

I have heard about one boss, and he knew not more than three jokes. But every day he would collect his whole office - all the clerks, head clerks - and he would tell one of those jokes. And they all would laugh as if they had never heard it. They had to, because not to laugh was an insult to the boss.

One day one woman typist did not laugh, and the boss said, "What is the matter. Why are you not laughing?"

She said, "I am resigning; I have got another job. Why should I laugh?"

People are laughing out of formality, respectfulness, but this kind of laugh cannot be wholehearted.

None of your actions is total: that is your misery, that is your hell.

A king had come to see a Zen master. The Zen master had a beautiful garden and just in front of the gate, an old man was chopping wood. The king asked him, "Can I ask, who are you?"

He said, "Who am I? You can see - a woodcutter."

He said, "That's true, that I can see, but I have come to see your master."

He said, "My master? I don't have any master."

The king thought, this man seems to be mad. But just to complete the conversation he said, "But is this a Zen monastery?"

The man said, "Maybe."

So the king moved ahead. When he reached the house deep inside the forest, he entered the house, and he saw the same woodcutter, wearing the robe of a Zen monk, sitting in a Zen posture, looking really beautiful and graceful. The king looked at his face. He said, "What is going on? Do you have a twin brother?"

He said, "Perhaps."

The king said, "Who is cutting wood in front of the gate?"

He said, "Whoever is cutting wood, he is a woodcutter. What business is it to talk about a woodcutter? I am a master."

The king was very much puzzled, but the master said, "Don't feel puzzled. When I am cutting wood, I am a woodcutter - I don't leave any space for anything else. And when I am a master, I am a master. You have not met two persons, you have met one person who is always total. Next time you may find me fishing in the pond, then you will meet a fisherman. Whatever I do, I am my action - in my totality."

Moment to moment, living life in totality, is my whole teaching. Those who have known life and its mysteries are agreed upon one point: that you should be full of heart, whatever you are doing.

Kahlil Gibran is saying: and I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart.... When the song of freedom happens to you, let your whole heart dance, sing.

YET I WOULD NOT HAVE YOU LOSE YOUR HEARTS IN THE SINGING.

This is a very strange, but significant, statement. It seems to be contradictory. He is saying, "Sing the song with the fullness of your heart, but still remain alert. Don't get lost, don't stop witnessing."

When your action is total and the witness is silently watching it, you will not only find the song of pleasure; you will also find something far greater, which we have been calling blissfulness.

Blissfulness comes with the witness.

Pleasure needs totality - but don't get lost into it; otherwise you will have stopped at pleasure and will not move higher than that.

SOME OF YOUR YOUTH SEEK PLEASURE AS IF IT WERE ALL, AND THEY ARE JUDGED AND REBUKED....

Of course, by the old. The swift and the strong and the bold of step are always condemned by the crippled, criticized in many ways. It is a cover-up. The crippled person cannot accept that he is crippled, and he cannot accept that somebody else is not crippled. To cover his inferiority he starts condemning, criticizing.

The old people are continuously condemning the young seekers of pleasure, judging them as sinners, although deep down in their own being they would like still to be young.

Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all.... It is wrong to think that pleasure is all, but it is also wrong to judge and condemn them. The man who condemns them is deep down hankering for the same thing, but finds himself weaker, older, no longer adequate enough.

The wiser man will say, "Seek pleasure - there is no harm in it. But remember this is not all, because I have known higher things, better things. But I will not stop you from seeking. Seek with the fullness of your heart! In that very fullness of the heart and that very search and the experience of pleasure, perhaps you may start looking for something higher, something better; something more alive, more beautiful, more immortal."

The wise man never condemns - that is the criterion of a wise man - and those who condemn are simply OTHERwise, not wise.

I WOULD NOT JUDGE NOR REBUKE THEM. I WOULD HAVE THEM SEEK....

Kahlil Gibran has an immense treasure of wisdom.

I WOULD NOT JUDGE NOR REBUKE THEM. I WOULD HAVE THEM SEEK.

FOR THEY SHALL FIND PLEASURE. BUT NOT HER ALONE:

SEVEN ARE HER SISTERS, AND THE LEAST OF THEM IS MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN PLEASURE.

Here he has referred to an eastern tradition of Tantra, which talks about seven chakras - seven centers of your growth. This is something to be very carefully understood. Perhaps people who have been reading Kahlil Gibran may have never bothered about who the seven sisters are, and even if they had thought about them, I don't think.... Unless they know something about Tantra and the Eastern findings of the inner ladder of growth, they will not be able to understand.

In the university where I used to teach, there were many professors who loved Kahlil Gibran, and I have asked many of them, "Can you say something to me about the seven sisters?"

They said, "Seven sisters? I know nothing about them."

I said, "What kind of reading do you do?"

Kahlil Gibran is saying:

AND THE LEAST OF THEM IS MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN PLEASURE."

They used to say to me, "You read things in a strange way. We have passed this sentence, but the question never arose. Now that you ask, we also wonder, Who are the seven sisters?" The people in the West will certainly be unaware. If even in the East they don't know who the seven sisters are, what to say about the West?

Tantra talks about seven centers - and pleasure is not even the first center. Pleasure is below the first center. Pleasure is a biological phenomenon; it is your sexuality. It uses your energy, but it is a bondage with biology. Biology wants you to reproduce children, because biology knows you are not dependable. You can pop off any moment....

Biology has its own ways to keep the stream of life flowing. If there were no pleasure in sexual experiences, I don't think any man or any woman would reproduce children; then the whole thing would look so stupid - such strange gymnastics. All women are aware of it, only men are not so aware. While making love, women want to put the light off, but the man wants the light on. It is very strange to find a woman who keeps her eyes open while making love; she closes her eyes - let this idiot do whatsoever he feels. If there were no pleasure.... It is a trick and a strategy of biology, just like giving a chocolate to a child - a little pleasure so you can suffer the gymnastics. And slowly, slowly you become so accustomed to the chocolate....

Above the pleasure center is the first chakra, which sometimes - very rarely - is experienced by accident. People are not aware of the whole science of Tantra; otherwise everybody would be able to understand the first center very easily. Just a small pleasure of making love does not take you to the first center, but if your lovemaking brings an orgasmic explosion... but people are so quick in making love!

This quickness in making love is a by-product of your religious upbringing, because they have been condemning sex. They have not been able to destroy it, but they have certainly succeeded in making it short. They have not been able to destroy it completely, but they have poisoned it. So even when people in love are making love, both feel ashamed, as if they are doing something ugly - so the quicker it ends the better!

For biological purposes, it is perfectly okay - biology is not interested in your orgasmic experience.

But if you can prolong the process of lovemaking, if you can make it a meditation, silent, beautiful, if you make it something sacred... before making love you take a bath, and when you enter your bedroom you enter with the same feeling as you enter into the temple. It is a temple of love, but in the temple of love, people are fighting, quarreling, nagging, throwing pillows at each other, shouting, screaming; you destroy the whole atmosphere.

You should burn incense, you should play some beautiful music, you should dance. You should not be in a hurry to make love - that should be the climax of your whole game. You should meditate together, you should be silent together, you should dance together. In this dance, in this togetherness, in this singing, with the incense, you must create in your bedroom a temple - and then only....

You should not make an effort to make love; let it happen spontaneously, on its own accord. If it does not happen, there is no need to worry - you enjoyed the meditation, you enjoyed the dance, you enjoyed the music. It has been a beautiful experience, leave it.

Your love should not be an action, it should be a spontaneous phenomenon that surprises you. Only in that spontaneity can love become orgasmic. And the moment love becomes orgasmic, you have reached the first chakra, you have met the first sister - which is far more beautiful than pleasure.

The first three chakras are self-centered: The first is unconscious orgasmic pleasure; the second is half conscious, half asleep; the third is fully conscious orgasmic pleasure. In the third your love and your meditation meet.

The next three... the fourth is the heart center. Only at the fourth is the beginning of a new world - the world of love. Below the fourth it was only refinement of sexual energy; with the fourth you transcend sex completely. There is no more refinement. You have entered into a new kind of energy, qualitatively different from sex. It is the same energy, but so refined that the very refinement makes it a totally new phenomenon.

At the fourth center, when you are entering into love, you can feel it but you cannot express it. It is so new... you don't have any words. It is so unknown and so sudden that time stops, mind stops.

You are suddenly in a silence that you have never dreamt of before.

With the fifth center, expression comes into being: love becomes creativity. It may find expression in different ways in different people - it may become music, it may become poetry, it may become a sculpture, it may become dance - infinite are the possibilities. But one thing is certain: when you are at the fifth center, love becomes creative.

Below the first center love was only productive - productive of children. At the fifth center it becomes creative; you create new kinds of children. For the poet, his poetry is his child; for the musician, his music is his child. At the fifth center everybody becomes a mother, a womb.

These two centers, the fourth and the fifth, are centered on the other. The first three were centered on your own self - that's why sex is never a fulfillment and sex is always a quarrel, a fight. It creates intimate enemies, not friends, because both the partners are self-centered. They want to get more and more pleasure from the other. Both are wanting; nobody is ready to give.

The fourth and fifth change the direction: from getting, the transformation is towards giving. Hence in love there is no quarrel, no jealousy, no fight. It gives freedom. It is creative - it creates something beautiful for the other, for the beloved. It may be painting, it may be music, it may be a beautiful garden, but the center is the beloved. It is not for one's own pleasure, it is for the happiness and pleasure of the other. If the other is happy, one is happy.

With the sixth center your energy enters again into a new experience. In Tantra it is called, "the opening of the third eye." It is only a symbol. It means you have now attained a clarity of vision, you can see without any hindrance; there are no longer any curtains on your eyes - nothing hinders your vision. You can see without any projection, you can see things as they are - in their truth, in their beauty; it is not that you are projecting something. Before this center, everybody is projecting.

Of course, there are people who will not be able to enjoy classical music, because they have not been trained to project. They can only enjoy modern contemporary western music - which to the real musical person is nothing but insane noise, a kind of neurosis. People are jumping and screaming from the Beatles to the Talking Heads - it is all insanity, it is not music.... But to enjoy classical music, you need a certain discipline.

If you want to enjoy the music of the wind passing through the pine trees, you will need a clarity, a silence; you are not expecting anything, you are not projecting anything.

With the opening of the third eye, you are no longer separate from the other. At the first three centers you were self-centered; with the two other centers, you were other-oriented. With the sixth you become one with the other - there is no longer separation. Lovers start feeling a kind of synchronicity. Their heartbeat has the same rhythm, they start understanding each other without saying a single word.

With the seventh - that is the highest man can rise in the body, it is called sahastrara the seventh center of your being - you become one with the whole universe. First you become one with your beloved at the sixth center; at the seventh, you become one with the ultimate, with the whole. These are the seven sisters that Kahlil Gibran is mentioning, and this is the whole spectrum of spiritual growth.

HAVE YOU NOT HEARD OF THE MAN WHO WAS DIGGING IN THE EARTH FOR ROOTS AND FOUND A TREASURE?

It is an ancient proverb in Lebanon. A man was digging for roots; he was so hungry he could not afford even to buy fruit, so he was digging for roots to eat. But he found a treasure. Referring to it, he is saying, "We started by digging for roots - pleasure; but if you go on digging, you may find treasures beyond treasures."

It is a fact established by all the mystics of the East that with the seventh you become absolutely free from all prisons, from all thoughts, from all religions, from all ideologies; with the seventh, your cage has disappeared.

Now you can breathe in the open sky and you can fly to the stars.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes Osho.