Life is the Goal

The first question:

Question 1:

There is no need to distinguish between thoughts, dreams and reality. If you try, you will feel more confused. There is no way to distinguish, because as far as mind is concerned everything appears in the mind as a thought. It may be real, it may not be real; but the moment anything appears in the mind it appears in the form of thought.

You cannot distinguish, and there is no need. And don't go on that journey, because that journey becomes a journey of thinking, and meditation is lost. Rather, on the contrary, remain centered in your witnessing. Don't be worried by the objects in the mind; whatsoever they are, they are mind stuff. You simply remain more centered in your witnessing. Just be the watcher. Don't try to distinguish. Whatsoever appears in the mind, just watch it. Watch it appearing, watch it being there, watch it disappearing.

Sooner or later, when you are really centered... and this can happen any moment. That moment remains always unpredictable. Whenever you feel centered the whole mind disappears: thought, dreams, reality - all. Suddenly you are in emptiness; there is no object for you. In the mind there is nothing - pure emptiness. Then open your eyes and look: whatsoever there is, is real.

When you are a witness and the mind has completely dropped, then only is known that which is - call it God, the real, the truth, or whatsoever you like to call it. Mind will never allow you to know the real. Mind is the disturbance. And if you get too much caught in it, then you will be trying to solve puzzles. You can go on solving and creating and solving and creating new ones, but it never comes to any end. Thinking is not going to lead you to reality; a no-thought awareness is. So don't try to distinguish. Just watch, irrespective of what it is. Mind is the unreal.

For example: if you are standing before a mirror, something appears in the mirror. It may be real; it may be a reflection of something real outside the mirror, but in the mirror it is just a reflection; it may not be real at all. You may be seeing your own dream reflected. You may be projecting. That too is unreal. Whatsoever appears in the mirror is unreal, because the mirror simply reflects. The mind is a mirror, it only reflects. Drop the mind, drop the mirror, and then see. Whatsoever there is, is real, because now the disturbing factor is no longer there.

My whole effort here is to help you to become witnesses.

So please don't try to get into thinking, contemplation; otherwise you will become more and more confused. And there is no way to get out of thinking through thinking. It goes on creating itself endlessly. The only way is not to get into it. So watch, and remain alert. Whatsoever passes the mind, don't try to decide what it is. Watch as if everything is a dream. That is the concept of the Hindu notion of maya - illusion. Everything is unreal. So there is no need to be worried, there is no need to distinguish. Whatsoever appears in the mind, because it appears in the mind it is unreal.

Mind is the faculty of the unreal.

So drop the mind. Be more centered in the witnessing soul. Just be a watcher. By and by silence will pervade, will permeate your soul. By and by you will come closer and closer to home. By and by everything will fall in line and you will center into yourself. Any moment the centering happens.

Suddenly the mind is not there and your eyes are clear, clear of the mind. Then whatsoever you see is real. And this world that you have seen before will not be there as you have seen it before. It will be totally new. It will be something never known before. Everything will be the same and yet not the same - because you have changed. You are no more drunk with the mind. You are alert, aware.

So, let me say it in this way: the more aware you are, the more reality you can know; the less aware, the less is the possibility to know the reality. So the basic thing hangs on being aware. If you are totally aware, whatsoever you know is the reality.

The second question:

Question 2:

Then you must have misunderstood me. I am not against life. I am not against any enjoyment. In fact, what I am saying is that the way you are living, you are not enjoying life. The way you are living, you only dream that you enjoy. You simply suffer. You remain miserable. You simply hope.

Hope is not enjoyment. Hope is just a trick of the mind to console, to somehow convince oneself that today is gone but tomorrow everything is going to be good. Today one is in misery, tomorrow one will not be in misery. One dreams, hopes, projects.

A man of real enjoyment is herenow. He never thinks of the morrow, there is no need to think of the morrow. If you are really happy you never think of the past, you never think of the future.

Who bothers? for what? Your whole energy moves herenow, becomes an infinite dance of bliss, happiness, celebration.

I am not against life. I am not against enjoying it. If you have understood me that way, you have misunderstood me. My religion is of celebration. My religion is of delight. My religion is of dance.

I don't want you to worship any god who cannot dance; then he is no more a god. I want to teach you how to live life so intensely, so passionately, that you live it and yet you don't cling to it, because clinging always shows a miserable mind. You cling to things only if you are not living them well.

So the first thing: as I see you, I see you miserable. You may be thinking you are enjoying life.

Think again, meditate on the fact - are you really enjoying it? If you are enjoying it, then there is no problem. Enjoy it with my blessings. But I know you are not enjoying it. You simply believe...

because to see the naked fact of your misery will be too much, unbearable. So you go on pretending to yourself that you are enjoying life.

You go on smiling to hide your tears. You go on dressing yourself, painting yourself, to hide your wounds. You go on somehow, deceiving others and deceiving yourself that you are happy. It is not so. If you are happy, you have attained; then there is no need to meditate. If you are happy, then there is no need for any religion for you.

Religion is needed as a means; religion is not the end. It is a method for those who are not yet happy, for those who are still in misery, in darkness, who are still in anguish and anxiety.

But I know: the anxiety is so much that you need a shelter, the anguish is so much that you need a dream, so that somehow you can hope - hope for the future, the tomorrow.

Your heaven and your happiness is always somewhere else; it is never where you are. Real happiness is always here, it is always now. It knows no other time and no other space. If you are really happy, only happiness exists; you don't exist. Remember it: only in misery, you and misery - two things - exist. In happiness, only happiness.

Happiness is non-dual, what we call in India adwait. Misery is dual. In misery you are always two.

Misery is a division of your being; cut apart, you are not an organic unity. Something goes against you. Something is there you never wanted to be there, but it is there, a thorn in the flesh. You suffer it in the hope that tomorrow it will not be so. But remember your yesterday? Your yesterday was also the same, and you were waiting for today because this today was tomorrow then. Now it has come.

Nothing has happened. In the same way your other tomorrows will go on coming, but they always come as todays, they never come as tomorrow.

Tomorrow never comes. It cannot come by its very nature; it is just a dream on the horizon. You can think about it but you cannot live it. It is a falsity. You think you are enjoying it? Rethink it, because I don't see it. I look inside you and I find you miserable there - hiding it, but from whom are you hiding? And what is the point of hiding it? The more you hide it, the more it will become difficult to get rid of it; because the more you hide it, the deeper it goes. The deeper it goes, the more it poisons your very being; the very source of your life becomes more and more poisoned. Misery spreads. It becomes almost a part of you and then you don't know how to get rid of it.

So the first thing: I am for life, all for life, and all for enjoyment. I am not for somber seriousness, I am not for sadness. I am against all those religions which go on teaching people to be serious. God is not serious; otherwise flowers won't exist. God is not serious; otherwise birds won't be able to sing.

God is tremendously in fun - that's why we say in India that the creation is not a creation in fact but a play, a leela.

God is playing, he is like a child running hither and thither. Out of sheer energy, overflowing, enjoying, dancing a thousand and one dances, singing a thousand and one songs - never exhausted, he goes on innovating, goes on peopling the earth. Each person is his new way of dance and each person is his new effort to sing again, to love again, to live again. Each person is again a project, again an effort. He is never tired. Infinite is his play.

God is not serious. God is not Christian. He does not live in a church. He is festive. Look at life: it is a constant festivity. Listen to these birds... a continuous festivity. See the trees go on flowering, the sun and the moon and the stars. From the lowest to the highest, it is the same rhythm of joy. Except for man nobody seems to be serious. Except for man, nobody seems to be worried and anxious.

Except for man, the whole of life is fun.

No, I am not for seriousness. I am absolutely against it. I would like you to be playful. Listen to me well: I would like you even to pray as fun. Once seriousness enters in your prayer, it is already dead.

I would like you to meditate like love - a subtle delight, a continuous delight in just being here, in just being alive.

I am not against enjoyment, but I don't see that you are enjoying; hence meditation is needed.

Meditation is to make you clean of your seriousness. Meditation is to make you aware of your deadliness. Meditation is to help you get rid of all the hangovers of the past, and all the projections and dreams of the future, so that you can be herenow, simply, spontaneously.

Meditation is to help you to enjoy so tremendously that you disappear in that enjoyment. If you remain, misery remains. Let me say it in this way: you are the misery. If you are, seriousness continues. Wherever you are, immediately you create a serious, somber climate around you; something is already dying. You are your death. You are the disease.

When you are enjoying, dancing, loving, or just sitting doing nothing, you are simply happy for no reason at all. And happiness needs no reason. If you are looking for reasons, you will never be happy. Happiness needs no cause; it cannot be caused. You cannot make it part of the world of cause and effect. It is absolutely illogical. If you want to be happy, be happy! Don't wait, don't arrange - there is no need for any arrangement. You are capable of being happy just as you are.

Nothing is lacking. If you can learn this much from me, you have learnt all, my whole art.

Happiness needs no cause. The cause is created by your misery. The misery says, "Today I am miserable, how right now can I be happy? First, preparations have to be made. Of course, then time will be needed, so tomorrow when everything is ready I will be happy. I have to find a beautiful wife; I have to find the perfect husband. I have to find a good house, a big car... this and that. This is possible only tomorrow. Right now, how is it possible? Time will be needed." This is the trick of the miserable mind.

The miserable mind says time is needed. The miserable mind lives in time, depends on time.

Happiness has nothing to do with time. Just now, just herenow, please try to see the point. It is a question of seeing it. If you become a little alert you can see it right now. It is a realization.

Right now, who is barring your path?

And if you are thinking that before you can be happy you have to find a perfect wife... it looks logical:

how can you be happy without a perfect wife? But have you ever heard about any perfect wife?

Have you ever heard about any perfect husband, a perfect house or a perfect car? All illusions.

I have heard about one man who was searching and searching and searching. He reached seventy, and somebody asked, "Is your search not over? When are you going to get settled?"

He said, "I am in search of a perfect wife."

"Seventy years have passed. Death is already knocking on the door. When will you settle?"

He said, "What can I do? How can you be happy without a perfect wife?"

The friend asked, "But you have been searching so long, couldn't you find one?"

He said, "Yes, once I did find one woman."

Then the man said, "Then why didn't you marry her?"

And the seventy-year-old seeker became very sad. He said, "It was difficult: she was also in search of a perfect husband!"

Perfection is a mind-demand, an ego-trip. Life is beautifully imperfect. Once you understand this, you start enjoying right now. And the more you enjoy, the more you become capable of enjoying.

Let me tell you: happiness needs no cause - happiness needs only a habit of enjoying, just a natural quality, a capacity to enjoy. Nothing else is needed. And that capacity comes only by enjoying; by nothing else can it come. If you enjoy, you become more capable of enjoyment. The more you become capable, the more you enjoy. And this goes on and on; it reaches a higher and higher crescendo, a higher and higher peak.

Every moment comes out of this moment. The next moment will come out of this moment. If you have lived this moment totally, loved, delighted, the next moment will come out of this moment, and you will be born out of this moment. The next moment will open more possibilities and it will make you more capable.

Happiness is a capacity which you already have, but you have never functioned with it. It is as if a child has never been allowed to walk on his feet and he has become crippled. Not that he has not the capacity to walk, but he has never been allowed. The mother was too afraid he may fall down, so now he continues walking on all fours, because of fear. Every child is born to be happy as naturally as every child is born to walk. There is nothing else to it.

So your question is: "We like life and enjoyments" - not as much as I do; otherwise, you would be a hundred percent in it - "and think that we belong to the halfhearted."

You belong to the halfhearted because you have not loved life totally. Never think about my meditations as something other than life; never make them the opposite of life. I am not trying to give you coins other than life itself. I am not trying to make you convinced of some journey other than life. Life is the journey. Life is the goal.

Religion is not a separate journey. It is, really, to move in life so totally that life starts revealing all its secrets - God, its innermost secret. Once you love and live life, it reveals more and more. Suddenly, one day, it reveals its secretmost center: God.

Loving life, one day you love God. Living life, one day you live God.

So don't be halfhearted. Be totally in life. And I am not here to distract you from your life. It has already been done. The whole of humanity is suffering because of that. Religions have proved a calamity because they tried to make goals opposite to life, diametrically opposite to life.

George Gurdjieff used to say that all religions are against God. He seems to be absolutely right.

Just think about religions: they all seem to be against God - against life means against God.

God is not against life, this much is certain; otherwise, life would have ceased a long time ago. Your mahatmas may be against life, but God is not. Your mahatmas go on teaching you: Renounce! and God goes on creating more and more life. He doesn't seem to be an escapist, a renouncer; he seems to be tremendously and deeply involved and committed to life. His involvement is eternal.

Just think: within a life of seventy or eighty years, you are fed up and tired and you are thinking to escape and go to the Himalayas - and God has been for eternity and is not tired yet. He does not know what tiredness is; the energy is still fresh and young. It is as if it is in the beginning right now.

The past is not carried. Each moment is a new creation.

If you become religious in my sense of the term, you will not renounce life. You will renounce yourself, not life. You will drop yourself and be totally one with life, so no division exists. The 'I', the ego, has to be dropped, not life.

The third question:

Question 3:

The mind may like to follow me, but mind is impotent. Mind is a very small part, and it has no will. It dreams well, it thinks well, it plans well, but it has no will. It cannot act. As far as action is concerned, mind is a coward. In thinking, it is very brave; in action, it is absolutely cowardly. So when you listen to me, if you only think about me, and whatsoever I say you think about it, the mind will say: Perfectly true! Very good! This is what I always wanted. But you will never practice it.

So don't listen to me from the mind. There is another way of listening. Listen to me as a total being, not only from the mind; listen to me from your very guts. Only then will you practice what I am saying; otherwise, you will remain divided. The mind will think one thing and you will go on doing just the opposite. Then you will repent, and then you will feel guilty. Then it is better not to listen to me at all, because I am not here to create guilt in you. That will be a sin. To create guilt in anybody is a sin. So remember: I will not be responsible for it - you are creating it yourself.

Either listen to me as a total organic unity - your blood also listens, your heartbeats also listen, your bones, your marrow, your guts, you listen to me as a total being - then, only then will you be able to practice it. In fact, to say "you will be able" is not right - you will practice it. If you have heard me as a total unitary being, you have already started practicing it. There will be no need to make a conscious effort to practice it; you will find it. It has moved into your bloodstream, it has become part of you. You cannot do other than practice it.

So listen to me rightly, and when I say listen to me rightly I mean: don't listen to me from the head.

The head is the culprit, because the head has found techniques of listening and it doesn't allow the whole being to be aware of what is happening here. It does not expose your whole being to me.

You listen from the head, hiding behind just a narrow slit, a small hole just like a keyhole. And you go on collecting whatsoever I am saying. You are not drinking and eating me, you are not digesting me; otherwise the question of practice will never arise. You just go on thinking about me, what I am saying; you go on interpreting, making your own theories, explanations, comments, and then you are hung up in the head. Then you come to a decision. But the head has no power to implement it; the head is not the executive force in you. The head has no will, it is impotent. It can think, but it can never implement.

That's why thinkers go on thinking. If you see their lives, you will simply be surprised. It seems unbelievable! Their thinking is very rich and their lives absolutely poor. They also cannot decide about small things; their thinking remains indecisive.

It happened in the life of a great German thinker, Immanuel Kant: a woman fell in love with him and she waited and waited that some day he would ask for her hand. But he would talk of a thousand and one things, great things, philosophical speculations, but he would never ask for her hand. Finally, tired, she herself asked, "I would like to get married to you."

He became very puzzled. He said, "Let me think. I cannot do anything without thinking."

And the story goes that he started thinking. One day he knocked at the woman's house - he had decided to get married, he had decided to say yes, but when he asked the father if he could see his daughter, the father said, "But she is already married, and she has two children by now! Where have you been all this time?"

Almost seven years had passed. He was thinking and thinking and thinking. His diaries still exist; he had found three hundred and fifty-four reasons for marriage and three hundred and fifty reasons against marriage. Because there were four reasons more for marriage, he decided that now something had to be done - but it was too late.

The life of thinking is a bogus life. It has no substratum in it. It is a life of limbo: neither of the earth nor of the sky, just in between.

If you listen to me from the head, this problem is going to haunt you your whole life. The head will say yes, then the problem will arise: how to practice it? And your whole being has not heard about it, and the whole being will go on moving its own way. Your whole being will not bother about your head - it doesn't bother. In fact, your whole being never listens to your head. It gives your head the opportunity to think, but whenever a question of decision arises, your wholeness comes to a decision, not your head. You decide: Now no more anger, enough is enough! It is always bad and it poisons and leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and it simply creates more trouble and solves nothing.

Your head decides: No more anger, now I make a decision! - and then next day you are angry.

What happened? Your whole being has not even heard about the decision. Your bones, your blood, your guts, are not even aware of your decision.

It is a luxury to think. Unless you hear me from your wholeness, not as thinking beings... if you throb with me, if your heart beats with me, if you fall in rhythm with me, then there will be no need; this problem will never arise: how to practice? You will practice. Suddenly you will see you are practicing.

If something goes true to your being, if something is felt by your totality as truth, it is already on the way to being practiced. You have digested it, and then it never creates guilt.

This question of guilt has to be understood; otherwise, you will listen to me and you will not be able to follow. Then you will feel guilty. And I am here to make you happy, not to make you guilty. A guilty person is an ill person. A guilty person is a poisoned person. A guilty person is not in harmony; he is in an inner conflict. He wants to do something and is always doing something else, just the opposite. The rift grows bigger and bigger, and the bridge becomes more and more impossible.

Guilt creates schizophrenia: you become two persons, or even many. You become a crowd; you become polypsychic - you lose unity.

Listen to me from your whole heart. Absorb me. Otherwise it is better not to listen to me, to forget all about me. But please don't feel guilty.

If you have listened rightly, if you have listened at all, then the question of practice never arises. You are practicing it. It is as natural as when if you want to go out, you go out through the door, not through the wall. You see the door, you simply get out by the door. You don't even think where the door is, you don't ask: Where is the door? You don't take a decision that: This time I am going to go through the door, not through the wall; that, I am going to stick to my decision whatsoever happens; whatsoever the temptation, I am not going through the wall - I will go through the gate.

If you do such things, that simply shows that you are mad. And you will go through the wall, you will not go through the gate. The wall is much too tempting; you are fascinated, obsessed.

Understanding brings its own practice. Understanding is enough. If you understand me, then there is no problem. So if the problem of practice arises, I am not going to tell you to make more forced efforts. No. Drop all efforts. Try again to understand me. You have missed in the first place; you have missed the very thing, the very seed, which brings practice spontaneously.

Listen to me again. Listen to me very relaxed. When the head listens, one is very attentive, concentrated; there is a tension. Listen to me very relaxed. Allow me to surround you from everywhere. Let me be a climate surrounding you from everywhere. And just allow me in, soak me in; be like a sponge - not attentive, relaxed, like a sponge, so you can drink whatsoever I am saying. There is no need to think about it; drink it. Let it become a part of your being. And then you will see that you are never following me.

If the understanding is there, you always follow yourself. The guilt is not created and the follower is not created. The guilt is not created and the conflict - how to practice it - is not created. Then you are not a follower. You become my lovers but not my followers - and that is a totally different dimension. And if you find some day that there is something which the head says has to be followed and done, practiced, and you are not doing it, don't make any effort to practice it. Try to listen to it again. Go from the very first moment of understanding again; start from the very beginning.

This is a trick of the mind. First it misleads you - just verbal, intellectual understanding, and it gives you an impression that you have understood. Secondly, it says: Now practice! - and you cannot practice because you have not soaked it in; it has not yet become part of you, it is not integral to you. It is something foreign, alien. How can you practice it? It becomes a load, a burden. Then the head says: You are guilty! You understand and you don't do it. So now, whatsoever you do, you will not feel good. And this, the understanding that you think you have got, cannot be practiced, so you will feel bad. That's how so many millions of people remain in guilt, in sin, burdened, crushed under the burden.

Drop it! That dimension is wrong. Start listening to me again. There is no need to understand me intellectually. I am not an intellectual, and I am not teaching some doctrines to you. I am simply allowing you to participate in my being, to get in rapport with me, to get in tune with me.

The whole effort is so that you can find a certain harmony between me and you, so that you can become partners with me, sharers with me of something unknown that has happened to me, and is possible to happen to you. I want to hold your hand. I want to give you courage, not intellectual understanding. I want to give you life. I want to share something which is overflowing in me.

So don't listen from the head; that is the wrong point to listen from. In Zen they say: Listen from the belly. That is better. Try it sometime: listen to me from the belly. That is better than the head. In Tao they say: listen from the bottom of your feet. That is even better - because if you listen from the bottom of your feet, to travel from the feet to the head it will pass through your whole being. If you listen from the belly, that too is very good; at least it will be heard.from the middle, from the very center.

But, I tell you: listen to me as a whole. There is no need to listen from the bottom of the feet or from the belly or from the head. Just listen to me as a whole being.

For example, if you are in danger and somebody is running behind you with a sword, how will you run? Just with your head? Just with your feet? Just with your belly? No, you will run as a total unit. You will forget completely where the head is and where the feet are and where the belly is.

Everything will be forgotten. You will become a total unity. You will run as one.

That is the way to be here with me. Soak me in, absorb me, and then there is no problem of practicing me. It will start affecting you. It will start changing you. You will be surprised: suddenly you will see you have practiced it. Somebody was angry and there was no anger in you; you could remain calm and serene. Suddenly you have practiced it; not that you tried to practice it - it has become part of your being, it happened.

You will be surprised: if the understanding is true, rather than feeling guilty, you will feel many, many surprises - at your own behavior, at your own responses. In the same old situation, somebody is insulting you, and you will not feel anything at all. It is as if it goes just through you, never hits anywhere; just passes, does not leave a wound, does not even scratch you! And you can smile and you can look back... what has happened? A miracle! Understanding is miraculous. It is the only miracle there is.

If you have understood me, you will find at every point of your life, on every step, surprises waiting for you. You will not be able to believe that "this is happening to me!" - because you can expect only the old, and this is new, absolutely new. You will start falling in love with yourself.

A new being is arising.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Mind is always trying to confuse you - because in your confusion is the power of the mind. The more confused you are, the more you have to listen to the mind. If you attain clarity, then the very function of the mind is finished. That's why the mind never goes on holiday.

I know one man who is a big officer. I was going to the Himalayas once and I asked him to come with me. He said, "That's impossible! I cannot go on a holiday."

I said, "Why?" I had never seen him go on holiday. I said, "What is the matter?"

He said, "I am absolutely useless in the office and I don't want anybody to know it. I have to be there continuously to create the impression that I am needed. Once I am on holiday, everybody will become aware that I am not needed at all. I cannot go on a holiday."

That is the situation with the mind. The mind never leaves you even for a single moment. It goes on confusing you - because once you are confused, mind is at ease. You have to ask the mind what the way is. Then the mind becomes your guru. In fact, in simple matters when confusion seems to be impossible, there also it creates confusion. For example, this question:

"I am not always clear on the difference between leaking and overflowing."

Now, the phenomena are so diametrically opposite that there cannot be any confusion. There is no possibility. But the mind can create it....

When you leak, you feel tired. When you are overflowing, you feel fulfilled. Overflowing is a delight - sheer delight, just delight and nothing else. Just as trees bloom in flowers, that is overflowing. When the tree has too much, only then does it flower; otherwise it cannot flower. When it has too much and cannot contain it, it has to share. It is an unburdening. Look at the tree when it is in bloom: the whole tree seems to be relaxed, unburdened, relieved, happy.

Whenever you overflow, whenever you share, you never feel tired afterwards. In fact you feel more energetic, more in tune, more at home. Everything settles, unburdened. You grow wings, you can fly in the sky. You are so weightless, gravitation disappears. The feeling is so totally different from the feeling when you leak, dissipate, and energy is lost. It is almost impossible to confuse them. How can you confuse them? They are so totally different. But the mind can create a confusion.

The whole function of the mind is to create confusion. It creates doubts - where no doubts can exist, it creates doubts. It creates ghosts, imaginary, and it creates a puzzle. Then, of course, you have to ask the mind itself: What is the way out?

From sexual orgasm you can take an example of the difference of the feeling. If you are making love to a woman or to a man mechanically, and there is no sharing and love - there is no love in it, just a mechanical habit, or just because physicians say it is hygienic, it is needed for the body, or some other nonsense - then you will dissipate, then the energy will simply leak out of you. And afterwards you will feel simply tired, not fulfilled, frustrated. It will leave you weaker, not stronger. That's why so many people feel frustrated after making love, and so many people decide to get rid of making love - because it seems so useless.

But if you love the person and you are overflowing, and you want to share your energies with the other person.... It is not sexual at all in that moment, you don't have any idea of sex; your mind is not there at all, it happens spontaneously. You don't plan it in the head, you don't go through a rehearsal; you don't do it, in fact, it happens; you are not the doer, you become vehicles. You are possessed by something greater than you, higher than you, bigger than you. Then it is not a leakage. Then you are overflowing from all over. It is not local, it is not sexual, it is total. Then you attain to peace, serenity, calmness. Then you attain to fulfillment. That's what orgasm is. Rarely do people attain to orgasm.

This will not leave you weaker, this will make you stronger. And you will not decide in the wake of your lovemaking that you are against sex, that the so-called saints are true and right and you should have listened to them before; that now you decide to take a vow of brahmacharya, or celibacy, and you decide to become a Catholic monk and move to a monastery - no. If there has been an orgasmic flow and your energy has been simply shared and has overflowed, you will feel grateful towards God. A prayer will arise in you. You will feel so fulfilled that you would like to give thanks.

You will feel so glad, so blessed, that in that moment you can bless the whole world. Your face, your body, your mind, everything will be at a calm altitude - a new plenitude of being. A benediction will surround you.

Prayer arises in such moments of gratefulness, gratitude.

One becomes religious in such moments.

To me, religion has arisen out of deep love orgasm. Hence, to me, Tantra remains the ultimate in religion, the last word, because that is the highest peak man has attained of at-onement, the highest peak where ego disperses, disappears. One is, but one is not limited. Where one is not blocked, but one is a flow; where energy is flowing and moving, and one becomes just a center of so many crisscrossing ways, pathways of energy - the ego disappears. The ego is very solid, like a stone. In love one becomes liquid, flows, flows all over.

Leakage is frustrating - whatsoever type of leakage: sexual, non-sexual, but it is tiring. Sometimes somebody is with you and you feel tired - just being with the person, just the presence of the person.

You don't want the person, you are bored, and then you start leaking, then you start dissipating your energy. Then when the person is gone, you feel simply tired, shaken, as if he has taken too much out of you and he has not given anything in return. He simply leaves you weak. But if you love the person, if you are happy that the person has come to see you and meet you, you feel enhanced.

Energy becomes more alive, you feel more vital. You feel rejuvenated.

There can be no misunderstanding between the two.

Avoid leakages, and remain available for overflows. And by and by you will become capable of only overflow - because leakage is an attitude of the mind. If a person is boring to you and he is saying things which you don't want to listen to, you will feel dissipated, a leakage will happen. Just change your attitude.

Right in the middle of the conversation, you were just getting bored. Just change the attitude and start listening to the person. He is also a mysterious person - maybe a little boring, but he is also God. Maybe a little boring.... Listen to him with a new attitude. Shake yourself, give yourself a jerk; drop your old attitude and start listening to his story. Maybe there is something in it. And immediately you will see: energy is no more dissipating.

It is your attitude. Anything can be energy-giving and anything can be energy-destroying; it depends on the attitude. A religious person is one - that's my definition of a religious person - who is always overflowing whatsoever the situation. Even if death comes to him, death will find him in a deep orgasm.

Ordinarily, even life does not find you in deep orgasm, even love has not found you in deep orgasm.

But a man like Socrates, even death finds him in orgasm - ready, receptive, dancing, as if death is bringing so many mysteries. It is bringing! That, too, is a face of God - maybe dark, but darkness is also divine. You are going to disappear, but disappearance is as mysterious as appearance.

Birth and death are two aspects of the same coin.

Socrates is thrilled! You are not thrilled with life and he is thrilled with death. His disciples started crying and weeping, and he said, "Stop! You can do that when I am gone. Don't waste these moments. These moments are momentous. Let us receive death - it only comes once in life. It is a rare guest. It is not every day that it comes. And I am fortunate that it is coming in a predictable way; otherwise it comes unpredicted and one cannot welcome it."

He was going to be poisoned, he was sentenced to death by the Greeks. Six o'clock exactly and he will drink the poison - and he is waiting like a thrilled child. The disciples could not believe it! He took the poison and he started walking in the room, and somebody asked, "What are you doing?"

He said, "I am trying to be alert, to be awake, so death does not find me asleep."

Then it became impossible to walk. The legs were giving way. So he laid himself down on the couch, and he started saying, "Now my feet are numb; it seems the feet are dead. But I am still as much as I was before. Nothing has been taken away from me - I remain whole!" And he was happy.

And then he said, "Both my legs are gone - but listen to me: I still remain the whole. That means only the body is being taken away. My consciousness remains untouched, unscratched. It seems death is not going to kill me."

This is the attitude of a religious man... and it depends on your attitude. Your whole life can be an orgasmic flow. Not only love - each moment of your life can be an orgasmic flow. Then you are overflowing. And remember one basic, fundamental rule: the more you overflow, the more you are given. It is as if you go on taking water from a well: the more water you take out of it, the more fresh water is flowing in - constantly. If you stop taking out the water, the water will become stale, dead, and fresh sources will not be supplying more; there will be no need.

Share! Share as much as you can, and the more you will be given.

Jesus says: If you cling you will lose; if you share you will get. Don't be a miser - share! And feel grateful: whosoever accepts your energy, feel grateful to him because he could have rejected you. Feel grateful, and go on sharing. And you will see: out of your inner springs, fresh water is continuously coming in. The more you share, the younger you remain. The more you share, the more virgin you remain. The more you share, the more fresh, the more pure.

And if you don't share, then you start leaking. If you don't share, if you are not happy in sharing, you become a miser. A miser leaks. Be a spendthrift as far as life energy is concerned. A miser starts leaking and feels frustrated and always miserable, because something has been taken away from him. And in this misery he shrinks; and because of his shrinking the inner sources, the inner springs cannot refill him.

It depends on you.

The distinction is absolutely clear. Let this be the criterion, after any energy contact - and the whole of life is energy contact. When you look at the tree there is an energy contact: your eyes meeting with the greenery of the tree, you have embraced the tree in a subtle way. You touch the rock and there is contact; energy has been shared. You look into the eyes of another human being, and there has been a communication. You say something, or you remain silent, but the communion continues continuously. It is each moment happening.

Now it depends on you whether you will make it a leakage. If it is a leakage, you will die a thousand deaths every day. It depends. If you make it an overflow, a hearty sharing, that you always wanted to give, an unburdening of your heart - as a flower gives its fragrance to the winds, and the lamp gives its light to the night, and the clouds give their rains to the earth - if you go on sharing, your whole life becomes an immensely beautiful dance of energy. And each day, you will have a thousand and one new births.

Enough for today.