Transcending the Basic Duality of Sex

Life is not there at its maximum when you are born; it is at its minimum. If you do stick at that, you will have a life which is just near death - just a borderline life. By birth, only an opportunity is given, only an opening is made.

Life has to be achieved. Birth is just a beginning, not the end. But normally we stay at the point of birth. That is why death happens. If you stay at the point of birth you will die. If you can grow beyond birth you can grow beyond death. Remember this very deeply: death is not against life; death is against birth. Life is something else. In death only birth ends and in birth only death begins. Life is something totally different. You have to attain it, achieve it, actualize it. It is given to you as a seed, just as a potentiality - something which can be but which is not already there.

You have every chance of missing it. You can be alive because you are born, but that is not synonymous with really being in life. Life is your effort to actualize the potentiality. Hence, the meaning of religion; otherwise there is no meaning in religion. If life begins with birth and ends in death, then there is no meaning for religion. Then religion is futile, nonsense. If life does not begin with birth, then religion has some meaning. Then it becomes the science of how to evolve life out of birth. And the more you move away from birth in life, the more you move away from death also because death and birth are parallel, similar, the same - two ends of one process. If you move away from the one, you are simultaneously moving away from the other.

Religion is a science to achieve life. Life is beyond death. Birth dies; life, never. To achieve this life you have to do something. Birth is given to you. Your parents have done something: they have loved each other, they have been melting into each other, and out of their life force, melting into each other, a new phenomenon, a new seed - you - is born. But you have not done anything for it: it is a gift. Remember, birth is a gift. That is why all the cultures pay so much respect to parents - it is a gift, and you cannot repay it. The debt cannot be repaid. What can you do to repay it? Life has been given to you, but you have not done anything for it.

Religion can give you a new birth, a rebirth. You can be reborn. But this birth will happen through some alchemical change within you. Just as the first birth happened through two life forces meeting without you - they created an opportunity for you to enter, to be born; that is a deep alchemy - so a similar thing has to be done now within you. Your parents met - your mother and your father. Two forces, feminine and masculine, were meeting to create an opportunity for some new thing to be born. Two opposite forces were meeting, two polarities were meeting. And whenever two polarities meet, something new is born, a new synthesis is achieved. A similar thing has to happen within you.

You also have two polarities within you, the feminine and the masculine. Let me explain it a little more in detail.... Because your body is born out of two polarities: cells from your mother and cells from your father, they create your body. You have both types of cells - those which came from your mother and those which came from your father. Your body consists of two polarities, feminine and masculine. You are both, everyone is both. Whether you are man or woman it makes no difference.

If you are a man you have a woman within you: your mother is there. If you are a woman you have a man within you: your father is there. They can again meet within you. And the whole yoga, the whole tantra, the alchemy, the whole process of religion, is how to create an orgasm, a deep intercourse between the polarities within you. And when they meet within you a new type of being is born, a new life becomes alive.

If you are a man, then your conscious is masculine and your unconscious is feminine. If you are a woman your conscious is feminine and your unconscious is masculine. Your conscious and unconscious must meet so that a new birth becomes possible. What to do for their meeting to happen? Bring them nearer. You have created a separation; you have created all types of barriers.

You do not allow them to meet. You try to exist with the conscious and you go on suppressing the unconscious. You do not allow it.

If a man starts weeping and crying, someone is bound to say immediately, "What are you doing?

You are doing something womanish, feminine." The man stops immediately. The masculine is not expected to weep and cry. But you have the possibility; the unconscious is there. You have moments of feminineness, you have moments of masculineness; everyone does.

A woman can become ferocious, a male, in some moods, in some moments. But then she will suppress. She will say, "This is not womanlike." We go on creating a separation, a distance. That distance has to be thrown away; your conscious and unconscious must come nearer. Only then can they meet, only then can they have a deep intercourse. An orgasm can happen WITHIN you. That orgasm is known as spiritual bliss.

One type of orgasm is possible between your body and the body of the polar opposite sex; it can happen only for a single moment because you meet only on the periphery. The peripheries meet and then they separate. Another type, a deeper type of orgasm, can happen within. But then you meet at the center and there is no need to separate again. Sexual ecstasy can only be momentary; spiritual ecstasy can be eternal. Once attained you need not lose it. Really, once attained it is difficult to lose it - impossible to lose it. It becomes such an integration that the fragments disappear completely.

That is why when someone asked Buddha, "Who are you? A deva, a heavenly being?" he said, "No!"

And the questioner went on asking. Then the questioner became desperate because whenever he asked Buddha who he is, if he is this or that, Buddha went on saying, "No!" Then finally he asked, "At least you must say that you are male. You must say yes." Buddha said, "No!" "Then are you a female?" the man asked desperately. Buddha said, "No!" - because a new unity has come into being which is neither male nor female.

When your inner man and inner woman meet, you are neither: you transcend sex. That is the meaning of the oldest Indian image of Shiva as ARDHANARISHWAR - half man, half woman. That is the symbol of the inner meeting. Shiva is neither now: he is half man, half woman - both and neither. He transcends sex.

Remember, unless you transcend sex, you cannot transcend duality. This is a deep psychological problem - not only psychological but ontological also. If you remain a man or a woman, how can you conceive of the oneness of existence? You cannot. Being a man, you cannot conceive of yourself being one with a woman. Being a woman, you cannot conceive of yourself being one with a man. A duality persists.

Sex is the basic duality. We have been arguing about and discussing for centuries how to attain the nondual. But we go on discussing it as if it is some intellectual matter: "How to attain the nondual?"

It is not an intellectual matter; it is ontological, existential. You can attain the nondual only when the duality within you disappears. It is not a question of meditating on the nondual and thinking, "I am the Brahman." Nothing will come out of it; you are simply deluding yourself.

You cannot attain nonduality unless the basic duality of sex disappears within you, unless you come to a moment when you cannot say who you are - man or woman. And this happens only when your inner man and woman melt so much that they dissolve into each other - and all the boundaries are lost, and all the distinctions are lost, and they are one. When the inner orgasm, the spiritual ecstasy happens, you are neither. And only when you are neither is life born.

In a single moment of meeting between your parents, your mother and father, you were born - in a single moment of meeting! Remember, life is always out of meeting, never out of separation. Life comes only in a deep meeting, in a deep communion. For a single moment your father and mother were one, they were not two. They were functioning as one being. In that oneness you were born.

Life always comes out of oneness. And the life that I am talking about, or Jesus talks about and Buddha talks about, is the life which will happen inside you, within you. Again a communion, a melting, happens, and the two sexualities within you dissolve.

Remember, I say again and again that sex is the basic duality, and unless you transcend sex the Brahman cannot be achieved. All other dualities are just reflections and reflections of this basic duality. Birth and death - again a duality. They will disappear when you are neither male or female. When you have a consciousness which goes beyond both, birth and death disappear, matter and mind disappear, this world and that world disappear, heaven and hell disappear. All dualities disappear when the basic duality within you disappears, because all dualities are simply echoing and re-echoing the basic division within you.

That is why the old, ancient Indian seers have put the Brahman in the third category. He is neither male nor female. They call him NAPUNSAK - impotent. They call him the third sex, the ultimate reality of the third sex. The word brahman belongs to NAPUNSAK LING: it is neither or it is both. But one thing is certain: it transcends the duality. That is why other conceptions of God look immature, childish. Christians call him father. This is childish, because then where is the mother? And how is this son Jesus born? And they say Jesus is the only son but where is the mother? The father alone giving birth? If the father alone gives birth to Jesus, then he is both - mother and father. Then do not call him father. Then the duality comes in.

Or, some religions have called the ultimate being the mother. Then where is the father? These are just anthropomorphic feelings. Man cannot even think about the ultimate in any other terms than human, so he calls it father or mother. But those who have known and those who have transcended the anthropocentric attitude, the man-oriented attitude - they know that he is neither. He transcends both; he is a meeting of both.

In the ultimate, mother and father both are merged. Or, if you will allow me the expression, I would like to say: the Brahman is mother and father in eternal orgasm - one in an eternal ecstasy of meeting. And out of that meeting comes the whole creation, out of that meeting comes the whole play, out of that meeting all that exists is born.

Here, in this meditation camp, we will be trying to bring your unconscious and conscious nearer, your feminine and your masculine nearer. You will have to help me, to cooperate with me. In the meditation techniques you have to destroy all the barriers between your conscious mind and the unconscious. And you have to be free, as totally free as possible because suppression has created the barriers.

So do not suppress. If you feel like screaming, scream. The very scream will bring your conscious and unconscious nearer. If you feel like dancing, dance. The very dance will bring your conscious and unconscious nearer. Really, dance can be very helpful, because in dance your body and your mind are in a deep meeting. It is not only the body which is moving; within the body your consciousness is also moving. Really, a dance becomes a dance only when your body is filled with the grace of your spirit, when your spirit is flowing out of your body, when your spirit has taken a rhythm with the body.

All the old religions were dancing religions. They were more authentic. Our new modes of religion are just false. You go into a temple or into a church or into a GURUDWARA and you just verbalize there. Someone preaches and you listen. It has become cerebral. Or, you pray and you talk with God. Even with God you use language. You cannot be silent with him; you cannot believe that he can understand you without your talking. You have no faith! You do not trust him; you want to explain everything to him.

I have heard: one mother overheard her small child praying in the night to God, and he was saying, "Dear God, beloved God, stop Tommy from throwing things at me - and by the way, I have told you this before."

But this is what we all are doing: praying to God to "stop Tommy from throwing things at me." Even if you go to the Vedic RISHIS they are doing the same: "Do this; do not do that." You cannot allow him to do whatsoever is his will. You give your own program. And if he follows you, you are a believer and if he doesn't follow you you will say that he doesn't exist. He can exist only if he exists as your follower.

But existence cannot follow you. Existence is greater than you; existence is the whole. You are just a fragment, and a fragment cannot be followed - the fragment has to follow the whole. This is what a religious mind is: the fragment following the whole, the fragment surrendering to the whole, the fragment not struggling, the fragment in a letgo.

Religion has become verbal, linguistic. Here we will try to bring the authentic religion. The secretmost core of it is that you must come to it totally - with your mind, your body, your emotions, everything. Nothing is denied. You cry and you weep and you laugh and you dance, and you sit in silence. You do all the things that your inner being happens to do; you do not force it to do anything. You do not say, "This is not good; I should not do it." You allow a spontaneous flow. Then the unconscious will come nearer and nearer to the conscious.

We have created the gap through suppression: "Don't do this, don't do that," and we go on suppressing. Then the unconscious is suppressed. It becomes dark. It becomes a part where we never move in our own house. Then we are divided. And, remember, then there are perversions.

If you allow your unconscious to come nearer to your conscious, too much sex-obsession will disappear. If you are a man and you deny your unconscious, you are denying your inner woman; then you will be attracted to outer women too much. It will become a perversion because then it is a substitute. The inner femininity has been denied; now the outer femininity becomes obsessive to you. You will think and think about it; now your whole mind will become sexual. If you are a woman and you have denied the man, then 'man' will take possession of you. Then whatsoever you do or think, the basic color will remain sexual.

So much fantasy about sex is because you have denied your inner other. So now this is a compensation. Now you are compensating for something which you have denied to yourself. And look at the absurdity: the more you get obsessed with the other sex the more you feel afraid; the more you deny the inner the more you suppress it; and the more you suppress it the more you become obsessed.

Your so-called BRAHMACHARIS are totally obsessed with sex for twenty-four hours a day; they are bound to be. It is natural: nature takes revenge. To me, BRAHMACHARYA - celibacy - means you have come so near to your own feminine or your own masculine, so near that there is no substitution for it. You are not obsessed with it; you do not think about it. It disappears.

When your own unconscious is nearer to you, you need not substitute it with someone else outside.

And then a miracle happens. If your unconscious is so near, then whenever you love someone, a woman or a man, that love is not pathological. If your unconscious is so near, that love is not pathological. It is not possessive, it is not mad. It is very silent, tranquil, calm, cool. Then the other is not a substitute and you are not dependent on the other. Rather, the other becomes just a mirror.

Remember the difference: the other is not now a substitute, something which you have denied. The other becomes a mirror of your inner part, of your unconscious. Your wife, your beloved, becomes just a mirror. In that mirror you see your unconscious. Your lover, your husband, your friend, becomes a mirror. And in that mirror you can see your unconscious clearly mirrored, projected outside. Then wife and husband can help each other to bring their unconscious more and more near.

And a moment comes, and it must come if life has been a really successful effort, when wife and husband are no more wife and husband: they have become companions on the eternal journey.

They help each other; they have become mirrors to each other. They reveal the unconscious of the other and each helps the other to know himself or herself. Now there is no pathology, no dependence.

Remember one thing more: if you deny your unconscious, if you hate your unconscious, if you suppress your woman or man within, then you can go on saying that you love the outer woman but deep down you will hate her also. If you deny your own woman, you will hate the woman you love. If you deny your own man, you will hate the man you love. Your love will just be on the surface. Deep down it will be a hatred. It is bound to be so, it has to be so, because you will not allow the other to become the mirror of your unconscious. And you will be afraid also. Man is afraid of woman. Go and ask your so-called saints. They are so afraid of women. Why? They are afraid of the unconscious, and the woman becomes a mirror. Whatsoever they have hidden, she reveals.

If you have suppressed something, then the other polar opposite can reveal it immediately. If you have been suppressing sex and you are sitting in meditation in a lonely place and a beautiful woman passes by, suddenly your unconscious will assert itself. That which has been hidden will be revealed in the woman passing and you will be against that woman. You are foolish - because that woman is not doing anything at all, she is just passing there. She may not even know that you are there; she is not doing anything to you. She is a mirror, but the mirror is passing and in that mirror your unconscious is reflected.

The whole so-called spirituality is based on fear. What is the fear? The fear is that the other can reveal the unconscious and you do not want to know anything about it. But not knowing will not help, suppression will not help. It will remain there. It will become a cancer and by and by it will assert itself more and more, and ultimately you will come to feel that you have been a failure and that whatsoever you have suppressed has become victorious and you are defeated.

My whole effort is to bring your unconscious nearer to your conscious. You become so much acquainted with it so that it is not unknown. You become friendly to it, then the fear disappears - the fear of the polar opposite. And then the hatred also disappears because then the other is just a mirror, helpful. You feel gratitude. Lovers will be grateful to each other if the unconscious is not suppressed and they will be hateful to each other if the unconscious is suppressed.

Allow your whole being to come into function. Your emotions are imprisoned, encapsulated. Your body movements are imprisoned. Your body, your heart, have become just as if they are not part of you. You simply carry them along like a burden. Allow your emotions full play. In the meditations we will be doing, allow your emotions full play and enjoy the play, because many new things will be revealed to you.

You have not been screaming. You have not screamed; you cannot remember when you last screamed. When the scream comes to you and takes possession of you, you will become afraid of what is happening because then you are losing control. But lose control: your control is the poison.

Lose control completely. Allow your emotions to erupt like a volcano. You will be surprised at what is hidden in you. You may not even be able to recognize that it is your face.

Allow your body to have full play also, so that every cell of the body becomes vibrant, alive. Just as a bird alights on a branch and the branch starts wavering - becomes vibrant, alive - let your being alight on your body and allow your body to be vibrant, alive, alive with the inner force. And suddenly you will enter a new door unknown before. You will open a new dimension of your own existence and that dimension will lead you to the ultimate, to the divine.

Now the sutra:

AT WHOSE DESIRE AND BY WHOM IMPELLED DOES THE MIND ALIGHT ON ITS OBJECTS?

BY WHOM IMPELLED DOES THE CHIEF PRANA - VITAL FORCE - PROCEED TO ITS FUNCTION? BY WHOM IMPELLED DO MEN UTTER THIS SPEECH? WHAT DEVA OR GOD DIRECTS THE EYES AND THE EARS?

The master is asking what is the original source in you - of your entire life, of all your movements, of all your expressions. What force creates desire? What force impels you to be alive? What force gives you the lust for life? There must be a hidden force, in a way inexhaustible: it goes on and on; it never tires.

AT WHOSE DESIRE AND BY WHOM IMPELLED DOES THE MIND ALIGHT ON ITS OBJECTS?

When you look at a beautiful woman or a beautiful flower or a beautiful sunset, who impels you?

Who throws you outward? Who is the inner source of all your activity?

The Upanishads say that whatsoever you do, the doer is always the Brahman - WHATSOEVER you do, you are not the doer. The doer is always the Brahman. If you run after a woman filled with lust the Upanishads say it is also the Brahman. Because of this, Christian missionaries could never understand what type of religion Hinduism is. Even lust is spiritual because the original source is always the Brahman. Whatsoever you do with your energy, he is moving in it.

There is a story.... The god Brahma created the world and he fell in love with it. Christian theologians cannot understand it. Naturally, it is difficult to understand. Brahma goes on creating other beings and he goes on falling in love with them! He creates a cow and he falls in love and becomes the bull - and on and on, until the whole creation is created. He creates the cow and he becomes the bull.

He goes on dividing himself into two polar opposites.

The story is just beautiful, if you can understand it. He goes on dividing himself into two polar opposites. And remember, the reverse is the process to reach him again. Go on nondividing; go on meeting with the polar opposite. He creates the world through polar opposites. He creates the cow but he is the cow because he creates the cow out of himself. Then he creates the bull but he is the bull. He is both the feminine and the masculine.

Then he follows the cow, and the cow tries to escape the bull. The cow tries to hide and through her hiding she invites the bull. This is a hide-and-seek. That is why Hindus say the whole creation is just a play - a play of the same energy dividing itself into polar opposites and then playing hide-and-seek.

You are the Brahman. Your husband is the Brahman; your wife is the Brahman. And the Brahman is playing hide-and-seek. The whole idea is simply superb. The reverse is the process to reach the ultimate again: do not play hide-and-seek. Allow the divided parts to mingle into each other. Let them merge, and the Brahman arises again - the one.

This master asks:

AT WHOSE DESIRE AND BY WHOM IMPELLED DOES THE MIND ALIGHT ON ITS OBJECTS?

BY WHOM IMPELLED DOES THE CHIEF PRANA - VITAL FORCE - PROCEED TO ITS FUNCTION? - who breathes in you? BY WHOM IMPELLED DO MEN UTTER THIS SPEECH?

- who speaks in you? WHAT DEVA OR GOD DIRECTS THE EYES AND EARS? - who is directing your senses?

The Upanishads are not against the senses. They are spiritually sensuous; they do not deny. Denial is not their slogan at all, denial is not their attitude. They accept and they say that even in the senses the divine is moving because there is nothing else to move. They make everything sacred, they make everything holy. They do not condemn, they do not say this is sin. Sin is unknown to the Upanishads, absolutely unknown. They say there is no sin - that everything is a play. Even in sin, even in the sinner, the same energy is moving.

Everything becomes holy. And if you can say with your full heart that everything is holy, holy, holy, YOU will become holy immediately because the very feeling that everything is holy and sacred makes the sin disappear. Sin is created by condemnation and the more you condemn, the more sinners you create.

The whole world has become a great crowd of sinners because everything has been condemned - everything! There is not a single thing which you can do which has not been condemned by someone or other. With everything condemned, you become a sinner. Then guilt arises - and when there is guilt you can pray but the prayer is poisonous; it comes out of your guilt. When you are guilty you can pray but that prayer is based on fear. That prayer is not love; it cannot be. Through guilt love is impossible. Feeling yourself condemned, a sinner, how can you love?

The Upanishads say that everything is holy because he is the source of all. Whether or not the river looks dirty to you is irrelevant. He is the source of all - the dirty river and the sacred Ganges, to both he gives the energy. To the sinner to the saint, he gives the energy. Really, there is no story like this but I would like a story like this: he created the sinner, then he became the saint, just like the cow and the bull, and then the hide-and-seek. He created the saint and then he became the sinner and then the hide-and-seek....

Have total acceptance of whatsoever exists. Just by being in existence, it is holy.

IT - THE ATMAN, or the Brahman - IS THE EAR OF THE EAR, THE MIND OF THE MIND, THE SPEECH OF THE SPEECH, THE PRANA OF THE PRANA, AND THE EYE OF THE EYE. WISE MEN SEPARATING THE ATMAN FROM THESE - SENSE FUNCTIONS - RISE OUT OF SENSE LIFE AND ATTAIN TO IMMORTALITY.

Whatsoever you do it is him - it is the functioning of him, of the total. The total functions in you.

When you breathe, what do you do? You do nothing. The breathing comes in and goes out. Rather, he breathes in you; you cannot do anything. If the breath leaves you, what will you do? If it doesn't come back, what will you do? If it has left then it has left and if it does not come back you cannot do anything. Really, when it is not coming you are no more. Who is there to do anything? He breathes, not you. The emphasis is on the total, not on the individual.

This has to be constantly remembered, because we go on forgetting this. Our emphasis is on the individual, the I: "I am breathing, I am alive, I am seeing you." No! The master says he - the Brahman - is seeing through the eyes, he is the eye of the eye. When I speak, I am not speaking: he speaks.

And when you listen, YOU are not listening: he listens. He becomes the cow, he becomes the bull; he becomes the speaker, he becomes the listener. It is a mysterious hide-and-seek, a great play, a great drama, beautiful, if you can understand. He is everywhere - in the listener, in the speaker, he is EVERYWHERE! And when you are silent, he is silent within you. When you speak, he is speaking in you.

This emphasis is not only metaphysical, not only a doctrine. As a doctrine also it is superb. But it is to help you toward a new realization. While speaking, if you can feel he is speaking, all the fever in it will be lost. While fighting, if you can remember that he is fighting through you, the fight will become a drama. While being silent, feel he is silent within you. And if the silence is disturbed and thoughts start moving, you know that he is disturbed, not you. He has become the thoughts and now he is moving like clouds in your inner sky. He is both, so why be worried? He is both!

When you are healthy he is healthy in you and when you are ill he is ill in you. You are totally unworried; you need not come in. Your whole burden has been thrown upon him. That is why I say this is not only metaphysical. It is one of the deepest techniques to transform your total being.

If he is doing everything, then why do you go on carrying yourself unnecessarily? He breathes and he is born and he dies. When you die, he will die - not you. Then why be afraid of death? You become unconcerned. This unconcern relieves you of all burden. And this is the actual fact; this is not a make-believe. This is the actual fact: whatsoever is happening is happening to the total. The individual is just an illusion.

I have never been as an ego and I am not as an ego, and I cannot be; only he is. And when I say he, I mean the total. Do not try to conceive of him as a person. He is not a person; he is the total - the whole. That which breathes in you breathes in the trees and that which sings in you sings in the birds and that which dances in you dances in the rivers, in the brooks, in the springs, and that which speaks in you speaks in the breeze passing through the trees. The total!

Just change the gestalt, just change the pattern. Do not emphasize the individual; move to the total.

Then what is the problem? Then there is no problem. With YOU enters every type of problem; with YOU enters anguish and anxiety. Without any burden on you, you are liberated. You can become a MUKTA, a liberated one, you can become a SIDDHA, this very moment. Just by realizing, feeling that "I am not and he is," the past disappears and the future is no more because the future is created out of your worries, imagination, projections. Then he will take care. Then whatsoever happens will happen and whatsoever happens will be good because it is out of him.

This is what trust is. It is not that you believe in a God sitting upon some throne in heaven and guiding everyone from there, a great controller, an engineer or something like that - no! He is not the managing director. He is not! There is neither any throne nor someone sitting on it. And faith doesn't mean that you believe in a concept, in a philosophy. Faith means trust - trusting the whole.

Then everything is blissful. How can anything else be? How can anything other than bliss be? You create misery because YOU come in. Go out just as if a lamp has been put out. Go out... and then he is.

IT IS THE EAR OF THE EAR, THE MIND OF THE MIND, THE SPEECH OF THE SPEECH, THE PRANA OF THE PRANA, AND THE EYE OF THE EYE.

Whatsoever appears on the surface, whatsoever it is, makes no difference. Always, hidden, he is there. Look at me with full remembrance, with mindfulness that he is looking through you, and immediately the quality of consciousness changes. Just now look at me: he is looking, he is the eye of the eye, and immediately you are not there and a tremendous silence happens. The very quality of your being is different when you look at me as if he is looking and not you.

You are listening to me: forget that I am here; he is here - the total. The total has taken possession of me, the total has become active in me, the total has changed me into his instrument. Look at me as if he is speaking, listen to me as if he is speaking, and then everything is different. You are no more there... a sudden flash and everything changes. It is not a question of time. You are not to practice it, you can see it this very moment.

Look at me! You are not there; the total, the whole, has become the eyes; the whole has become the eyes in you. You are just an expression of the will of the whole, of the desire of the whole. The whole has become words through me, he is manipulating me, he is using me. And then, in this room, only he is. Then the totality becomes one. Then the parts are lost and the fragments are no more and there is a deep orgasm between the speaker and listener. Then you will feel the presence but the presence can come only if you forget yourself.

Remembering God is not really a remembering of his name. Remembering God is not to go on chanting "Rama, Rama, Krishna, Krishna"; that is useless, futile. Remembering him means forgetfulness of yourself. If you are not, if you are forgotten, completely forgetful of yourself, abandoned, he is. When you are not, suddenly he is - and this can happen in a single moment.

I am reminded that after the second world war it happened in a small village in England that there was a statue of Jesus just on the crossroads - a beautiful statue with raised hands. And on the statue there was a plate, and on that plate it was written: Come unto me.

In the second world war the statue was destroyed; a bomb fell upon it. And when there was restoration work and the village was again coming to be alive after the war, they remembered the statue, so they tried to find fragments of it. In the ruins the fragments were found and the statue was restored again. But the hands could not be found. They were missing.

So the village council decided to ask the artist to make new hands. But one old man in the village who was always seen sitting near the statue - both when it was there and when it was not - said, "No! Let Jesus be without hands."

The council said, "Then what will we do about the plate underneath? It is written, 'Come unto me!' and it had raised hands."

The old man said, "Change the plate and write there, 'Come unto me. I have no other hands than your own.'"

And now the statue stands there without the hands, and written underneath is: Come unto me. I have no other hands than yours.

In your hands he is moving, in your eyes he is moving, and in your heart he is beating - the total.

And he has no other hands, remember. He has no other eyes, he has no other heart to beat. He is beating all over, he is alive all over. This is the message.

IT IS THE EAR OF THE EAR, THE MIND OF THE MIND, THE SPEECH OF THE SPEECH, THE PRANA OF THE PRANA, AND THE EYE OF THE EYE. WISE MEN SEPARATING THE ATMAN FROM THESE - SENSE FUNCTIONS - RISE OUT OF SENSE LIFE AND ATTAIN TO IMMORTALITY.

All these senses are the functions and he is the functionary within. Knowing this, you are not against the senses. Knowing this, you simply change the emphasis. Then you are not obsessed with the senses; you are always looking for the inner core. And the rishis say that by knowing this transcendence they attain immortality. Remember, only YOU can die; life never dies. Because you are born, you will die; that is the natural end to every birth. Life goes on... eternally moving; life never dies. Waves in it are born and they die, and the riverlike life moves and moves and moves.

Once you come to feel the river within your wave, you are immortal. If you can realize him seeing through you, breathing through you, you are immortal. Only this shell, this vehicle of the body, will disappear. YOU will never disappear. You cannot disappear - you have always been.

Sometimes you were a tree because the tree was the vehicle - because he willed to be a tree through you. Sometimes you were a cow because he willed himself to be a cow through you.

Sometimes you were a butterfly, sometimes a flower, sometimes a rock... but you have always been here. You have ALWAYS been here! You are not a new visitor. No one is a new visitor; no one is a stranger. You have always been here and now but with different vehicles. Sometimes a rock was the vehicle; now you are a man or a woman: now this is a vehicle.

If you can understand and KNOW that the vehicle is just the vehicle, the vehicle can be changed.

It will have to be changed. But the inner one who goes on changing faces remains the same. That one is immortal, life is immortal. You are mortal. And why are you mortal? - because you become identified with the vehicle. Moving in a cart you become the cart. Riding on the train you become the train. Flying in an aircraft you become the aircraft. You go on forgetting that the aircraft, the cart, the train, the car, they are vehicles.

You are not the vehicles; you are the total, and the total goes on changing its vehicles. Then you are immortal. Remember, you cannot be immortal if you are identified with the body. You are immortal knowing, transcending the body. The consciousness is immortal, the very aliveness is immortal.

The sutra says:

WISE MEN, TRANSCENDING THESE - SENSE FUNCTIONS - RISE OUT OF SENSE LIFE AND ATTAIN TO IMMORTALITY.

And the more you feel the inner, the essential, the eternal, the immortal, the less and less you are obsessed with the sense life. You can play it but you are not obsessed.

Krishna playing on his flute is not obsessed with the flute; Krishna dancing with his girlfriends, the GOPIS, is not obsessed. It is just a play. Life becomes a play, not an obsession, when you know the immortal.

Now get ready for the meditation.