Be true to love

The first question:

Question 1:

CERTAINLY! TO BE A BEE IS EVERYBODY'S POSSIBILITY. Everybody can grow into being a bee.

An unpatterned, alive, spontaneous life, moment-to-moment life, is the gate to it, the key to it. If one can live not out of the past then one is a bee, and then there is honey all around.

I know it is difficult to explain this to a frog. The question is right: "What is honey anyway?" The frog has never known about it. And he lives just at the root of the plant where flowers bloom and bees collect honey, but he has not moved in that dimension.

By'frog' Saraha means a person who lives out of the past, encaged in the past, in the memories.

When you live through the past, you only apparently live, you don't really live. When you live through the past you live like a mechanism, not like a man. When you live through the past, it is a repetition, it is a monotonous repetition - you miss the delight, the joy of life and existence. That's what'honey' is: the joy of life, the sweetness of just being herenow, the sweetness of just being able to be. That joy is honey... and there are millions of flowers blooming all around. The whole existence is full of flowers.

If you know how to collect honey, if you know how to be joyful, you become an emperor. If you don't know, you remain a beggar.... These birds singing here - honey is showering! The bee will collect; the frog will miss. This sky, this sun, these people around you - everybody is carrying infinite sources of honey, everybody is flowing with sweetness and love. If you know how to collect it and how to taste it, it is all over the place. God is all over the place... The taste of God is what Saraha calls'honey'.

The bee has a few things and those have to be understood - and they are very dangerous things.

One: the bee is never attached to any flower. That is the most profound secret - the bee is not attached to any flower. It has no nuclear family - no wife, no husband. It simply moves wherever ANY flower invites it. It has freedom.

Man has become confined to the family. Tantra is very much against family - and the insight is great.

Tantra says it is because of family that love has been completely damaged, that the sweetness of life has completely been poisoned. People are clinging to each other. People are trying to possess each other - not to enjoy but to possess. Possession has become the enjoyment. There has happened a great shift: you are with a woman not to enjoy her, you are NOT enjoying her; you are with a man not to enjoy the man, you are NOT enjoying at all - but to possess. Politics has entered, ambition has entered, economics has entered... Love is not there.

Love knows no possession. I am not saying you cannot live with a woman for long - you can live for lives together - but there will be no family. By'family' I mean the legal possession; by'family' I mean the demand. The husband can demand from the wife; he can say, "You are obliged to give me love!"

Nobody is obliged to give anybody love. The husband can force the wife to love him. When you can force somebody to love, love disappears - then there is only pretension. Then the wife is fulfilling a duty. Then the husband is fulfilling a duty. Duty is not love! Love is honey: duty is white sugar. You will suffer from diabetes sooner or later. It is poison, it is pure poison - white sugar. Yes, it tastes similar, a little bit like the honey, but it is not honey.

The family is very possessive. The family is against man, it is against society, it is against universal brotherhood. The boundary of the family is your imprisonment. You may not feel it because you have become accustomed to it.

Crossing the boundary of a country, have you not felt humiliated? Then you know that the country was not your country - it was a great prison. Getting out and coming in you will know - at the checking post, at the airport. You will know while passing through the customs that you are a prisoner; freedom was bogus, just holy cow dung. But living in a country, if you don't cross the boundary you will never know about it. You will think you are free. You are NOT free! Yes, the rope is big, you can move around, but you are not free.

And so is the case with the family. If you start crossing the boundary then you will know you are imprisoned. If you start loving the neighbor then your family will be against you. If you are happy with some other woman, your wife is your enemy. If you are dancing with some other man, your husband is mad at you; he would like to kill you - and just the other day he was saying, "I love you so much... I can die for you."

Just cross the boundary! and you will know that you are a prisoner. Never cross the boundary, and you can live in blissful ignorance that everything is okay.

It is attachment, it is possessiveness, that has destroyed your capacity to go to many flowers, to taste all the flowers. Just think of a bee only collecting honey from one flower - that honey will not be very rich. The richness comes out of the variety. Your life is boring; it is not rich.

People come to me and they say, "I am bored! What should I do?" And they are doing everything to get bored, and they are thinking that boredom is happening from somewhere else. Now, you are living with a woman you don't love any more, but your scriptures say: once you have promised, you have to fulfill the promise - be a man of promise! Once you are committed you have to fulfill the commitment. Now, if you are bored, nothing is surprising. Love has disappeared!

It is as if you are forced to eat the same thing every day: how long will you be able to enjoy it? You may have enjoyed it on the first day; yes, the second day; the third day - but then it will start getting on your nerves. Then for ever and ever..... then you will start getting bored. And because man is bored he invents a thousand and one ways to distract his mind: sits glued to the chair before the TV for six hours - what stupidity! Or goes to the movie, or listens to the radio, or reads the newspaper, or goes to clubs where bored people just like you gather together. Somehow one is trying to distract oneself from the boredom that has happened out of the relationship.

Try to understand....

Tantra says: Be a bee - be free! Tantra is not saying that if you love a woman then don't be together with her - be together with her! - but the commitment is towards love, not towards the woman; the commitment is towards love, not towards the man. This is a BASIC difference: you are committed to love! you are committed to happiness! When love is disappearing, when happiness is gone, then say thank you and move.

And such should be the case with everything in your life. If you are a doctor and you are bored with your job, then you should be capable of dropping it any moment - whatsoever the cost. With risk, life becomes adventure. But you think, "Now I am forty, forty-five, and how can I drop out of the job? And it is going very well financially... " but spiritually, psychologically, you are dying! You are slowly committing suicide. Then it is perfectly okay: if you want to destroy yourself and save the bank-balance, then it is perfectly okay. But the moment you feel that the job is no more a satisfying job, DROP out of it! This is the Tantra revolution. The moment you see that something is no more appealing, has lost the quality of allurement, of enchantment, is no more magnetic, then don't cling to it, then say, "I am sorry." Then feel grateful for the past, for all that has happened through the person, through the job, through anything! but remain open in the future. This is the meaning of being a bee.

And Saraha says: Only the bee knows that each flower is full of honey.

But I am not saying go to the opposite extreme - there are people who can go to the opposite extreme. And man is so stupid.... Just the other day I was reading about a commune in Germany:

Action Analysis Commune. Now, there is a rule in their commune that you cannot sleep with the same woman two nights together. Now, this is again foolish. It seems man is such an idiot that you cannot help him. If you sleep two nights consecutively with one woman, the commune throws you out.

Now, the one extreme has proved wrong - this is another extreme... will prove wrong! The first extreme was repressive: you have to sleep with the same woman for years, for your whole life, with the same man - not knowing WHY, why you continue. The society says so, the state says so, the priest and the politician say so - that on the stability of your nuclear family the whole society depends. This insane society depends on the insane family; the insane family is the unit, the brick, out of which this whole prison is made.

Insane politicians depend on the insane family. Insane religions depend on the insane family. They have been repressing you; they don't allow you to move away from the woman or the man or the relationship. They say you have to be with it, otherwise you are a criminal, a sinner. They make you very afraid of hell and hell-fire.

Now, the opposite extreme, that you cannot stay with the same woman the next night again. This too is again repressive. If you want to be with her the next night also, then...? Then it will be repression.

With the first, love disappeared and boredom entered. With the second, intimacy will disappear and you will feel very alienated, like an island. You will not feel your roots anywhere.

Tantra says: Just in the middle is the way. Be in that place, be with that person, be in that job, where you are enjoying otherwise change. If you can enjoy one woman for your whole life, it is beautiful, it is tremendously beautiful. You are fortunate, because then intimacy will grow, your roots will go into each other, your beings will become intertwined. By and by, you will become ONE person, one soul, and that is a great experience! The highest peak of Tantra will be known through it. But this is not family - this is love affair. You have gone into the very depth of love.

Now these kind of people - this A.A. Commune - these kind of people are dangerous! They think they are doing something very great. They are simply reacting. The society has done something wrong, now they are reacting too much and going to the opposite extreme - which will be again wrong. Man has to be balanced somewhere, first thing.

SECOND THING: Saraha says UNSTRUCTURED, UNPATTERNED STATE OF BEING. If you live through habit, you cannot enjoy life because the habit is of the old. How can you enjoy the same thing again and again and again? Your mind remains the same, then there will be boredom. You can even change the woman and the man, but YOU are the same, so fifty percent is always the same.

There will be boredom.

So first Tantra says: Never get obsessed with any person, remain free of personalities. Second Tantra says: Remain free of your past - then you are a hundred percent free like a bee. You can fly anywhere. Nothing holds you. Your freedom is utter.

Don't persist in your past pattern. Try to be inventive, try to be innovative! Be an adventurer, a discoverer. Enjoy life through new ways; FIND new ways to enjoy it. In fact, go on finding new ways of doing the same old thing, but find new ways. There are infinite possibilities.

You can come to the same experience from many doors, and each door will give you a different vision. Then life is rich, there is sweetness, there is joy, there is celebration. That is what honey is.

Don't be confined in the pattern of a frog. Yes, the frog can hop a little, jump here and there - cannot fly and cannot know that each flower is carrying divine fragrance. What Saraha means by'honey' is a poetic metaphor for God, that each being is carrying divinity.

People come to me and they say, "We want to know God - where is God?" Now, the question is just absurd. WHERE IS HE NOT? You ask WHERE He is; you must be dead blind. Can't you see Him? Only He is! In the tree and in the bird, in the animal, in the river, in the mountain, in man, in woman... everywhere He is. He has taken so many forms to surround you, to dance around you.

From everywhere He is saying "Hello!" and you don't listen. From everywhere He is calling you.

From everywhere He is inviting you: "Come to me!" But you are somehow keeping your eyes closed, or you have got blinkers on - you don't look anywhere.

You just look in a very narrow way, in a very focussed way. If you are looking for money, you only look for money; then you don't look anywhere else. If you are looking for power, you look only for power and you don't look anywhere else. And remember: in money; God is not because money is man-made and God cannot be man-made. When I say God is everywhere, remember those things have not to be included which man has made. God cannot be man-made. God is not in money.

Money is a very cunning invention of man. And God is not in power; that too is again a madness of man. Just the very idea to dominate somebody is insane. Just the VERY idea that "I should be in power and others should be powerless" is the idea of a madman - a destructive idea.

God is not in politics and God is not in money and God is not in ambition - but God is everywhere where man has not destroyed Him, where man has not created something of his own. This is one of the most difficult things in the modern world, because you are surrounded by too many man-made things. Can't you just see the fact of it?!

When you are sitting near a tree, it is easy to feel God. When you are sitting on an asphalt road, you can go on searching on the asphalt road... you will not find God. It is too HARD. When you are in a modern city, just cement and concrete buildings all around, in the jungle of cement and concrete you will not feel God - because man-made things don't grow. That is one of the problems: man-made things don't grow - they are dead, they don't have any life. God-made things grow. Even mountains grow! The Himalayas are still growing, still getting higher and higher. A tree grows, a child grows.

Man-made things don't grow - even the greatest. Even a painting of a Picasso will never grow. So what to say about a cement, concrete building? Even the music of Beethoven will never grow, so what to say about technology, about man-made machines?

Watch! Wherever you see growth, there is God - because only God grows, nothing else. In everything only God grows. When a new leaf is coming in the tree, it is God coming out of the tree. When the bird is on the wing, it is God on the wing. When you see a small girl laughing or a small boy giggling, it is God giggling. When you see tears flowing from the eyes of a woman or a man, it is God crying.

WHEREVER you find aliveness, yes, there is God. Listen carefully. Come closer. Feel carefully. Be cautious! you are on holy ground.

Tantra says: If you drop your blinkers - mm? - that's what Tantra means by'unpatterned' life-style....

If you drop your blinkers, if you start opening your eyes as wide as they are destined to be, suddenly you will see that you can see in all directions. You have been befooled by the society to look only in certain directions. The society has converted you into a slave.

There is a great conspiracy. Each small child is damaged - immediately, the moment he is born, the society starts damaging him. So before he becomes alert' he is a slave and crippled, crippled in a thousand and one ways. When a person is crippled, he will have to depend on the family, on the society, on the state, on the government, on the police, on the army - he will have to depend on a thousand and one things. And because of that dependence he will be a slave always, he will never become a free man. So the society cripples - cripples in such subtle ways - and you don't know.

Before you are able to know anything, you are already crippled.

Tantra says: Regain health! Undo whatsoever the society has done to you! By and by, become alert and start undoing the impressions that society has forced upon you - and start living your life. It is your life, it is nobody else's business. It is utterly your life. It is God's gift to YOU, a personal gift to you, with your initials on it. You enjoy it, you live it! And even if you have to pay much for it, it is worth paying. Even if sometimes you have to pay for your life with your life, that too is perfectly good.

Tantra is very rebellious. It believes in a totally different kind of society, which will not be possessive, which will not be money-oriented, which will not be power-oriented. It believes in a different kind of family, which will not be possessive, and which will not be life-negative. Our families are life-negative.

A child is born and the whole family tries to kill all joy of life. Whenever the child is joyful, he is wrong; and whenever he is sad and long-faced and sitting in the corner, everything is okay. The father says, "Good! Very good boy." The mother is very happy because he is no trouble. Whenever the child is alive, there is danger - and everybody is trying to kill the joy of the child.

And basically all joy is related to sexuality. And the society and the family are so afraid of sex that they cannot allow the children to be sexually joyful - and that is the BASE of all joy! They are VERY restrictive: the children are not allowed even to touch their genital organs, they cannot play with them. The father is afraid, the mother is afraid... everybody is afraid! Their fear comes from their own parents; they are neurotic.

Have you not seen? A child is playing with his genital organs and immediately everybody jumps on him: "Stop! Don't do that again!" And he is not doing anything - he is simply enjoying his body, and naturally the sex organs are the most sensitive, most alive, most pleasurable. Suddenly, something is cut in the child. He becomes afraid. Something in his energy is blocked. Now, whenever he feels happy he will feel guilty too; now guilt has been put inside him. And whenever he feels guilty he will feel that he is a sinner, he is doing something wrong.

This is my observation of thousands of sannyasins: whenever they are happy, they start feeling guilty. They start looking for the parent who must be somewhere around, and who will say "Stop!

What are you doing?" Whenever they are sad, everything is okay. Sadness is accepted, misery is accepted - joy is denied.

And the children are somehow prevented from knowing the joys of life. The father and mother are making love - children know it. They hear the sounds; sometimes they feel that it is happening - but they are not allowed to participate in it, not allowed even to be there. It is ugly, it is destructive. The children should participate. When the father and mother are making love, the children should play around; they should feel happy with father and mother making love. They should know that love is a beautiful phenomenon - not anything ugly, nothing to be made private, nothing to hide, nothing to be kept secret. It is not a sin! It is a JOY.

And if the children can see their father and mother making love, thousands of sexual diseases will disappear from the world - because their joy will erupt. And they will feel respectful towards the father and the mother. Yes, one day they will also make love, and they will know that it is a great celebration. If they can see father and mother making love as if they are praying and meditating, there will be a great impact.

Tantra says that, that love should be made with such celebration, with such great religious awe, reverence, that the children can feel that something great is happening. Their joy will grow - AND there will not be any guilt in their joy. This world can be tremendously happy. But this world is not happy. It is very rare to come across a happy man, very very rare. And only the happy man is sane.

The unhappy man is insane.

Tantra has a different vision, a totally, radically different vision of life. You CAN become a bee. In freedom you become a bee. A slave, you are a frog. Free, you are a bee.

Listen to the message of freedom. Get ready to be free. About everything that creates bondage you have to be alert and beware.

The second question:

Question 2:

NO HOPE FOR THE PRIEST, FOR THE POLITICIAN, FOR THE SCHOLAR not even in the next life!

But you can drop being a priest, being a politician, being a scholar, any moment - and there is hope.

But NO hope for the priest, no hope for the politician, no hope for the scholar. I am absolute about that. Even in the next life or next to next - never. I have never heard of any priest ever reaching Nirvana, never heard about any politician ever meeting God, never heard about any scholar ever becoming aware, knowing, wise. No, it is not possible.

The scholar believes in knowledge, not in knowing. Knowledge is from the outside; knowing is from the inside. The scholar trusts information. The information goes on collecting; it becomes a heavy load, but nothing grows inside. The inner reality remains the same - as ignorant as before.

The politician seeks power - it is an ego-trip. And those who arrive are humble people, not egoists.

Egoists never arrive; by their very egoism they cannot arrive. Ego is the greatest barrier between you and God - the only barrier. So the politician cannot come.

And the priest... the priest is very cunning. He is trying to become a mediator between you and God, and he has not known God at all. He is the MOST deceptive, the most fraudulent. He is committing the greatest crime a man can commit: he is pretending that he knows God. Not only that: that he will make God available to you, that you come and follow him and he will take you to the ultimate.

And he does not know anything of the ultimate! He may know the ritual, how to do the prayer, but he does not know the ultimate. How can he lead you? He is a blind man, and when a blind man leads the blind, they both fall into the ditch.

No hope for the priest, no hope for the politician, no hope for the scholar - but there is hope, Anand Tejas, for you. The question is from Anand Tejas - there IS hope for you, EVERY hope for you.

And it is NOT a question of age. You may be fifty-six, or seventy-six, or a hundred and six - that doesn't matter. It is not a question of age because it is not a question of time. To enter into eternity, any moment is as right as any other moment - BECAUSE ONE ENTERS HERENOW! How does it make any difference how old you are? Fifty-six or sixteen - the sixteen-year-old has to enter right now, and the fifty-six-year-old has to enter right now; both have to enter right now. And the sixteen years are not helpful, neither are fifty-six years helpful. There are different problems for both; that I know. When a sixteen-year-old young man wants to enter into meditation or into God his problem is different from that of a man who is fifty-six. What is the difference? But if you weigh them finally the difference is quantitative, not qualitative.

The sixteen-year-old has only sixteen years of past; in that way he is in a better situation than the man who is fifty-six, he has a fifty-six years' past. He has a big load to drop, many attachments - fifty-six years of life, many experiences, much knowledge. The sixteen-year-old has not that much to drop. He has a little load, less luggage - a small suitcase - mm? - just a small boy's suitcase.

The fifty-six-year-old has much luggage. This way the younger is in a better situation.

But there is another thing: the old man has no more future. A fifty-six-year-old, if he is going to be alive seventy years on the earth, has only fourteen years left - no more future, no more imagination, no more dreaming. There is not much space. Death is coming. The sixteen-year-old has a long future, much imagination, many dreams.

The past is small but the future is big for the young; for the old, the past is big, the future is small - on the whole it is the same. It is seventy years: both have to drop seventy years. For the young, sixteen years in the past, remaining years in the future. The future has also to be dropped as much as the past. So finally, in the final reckoning, there is no difference.

There is every hope for you, Anand Tejas. And because you have asked the question, the work has already started. You have become alert about your priest, politician, scholar - that's good. To become aware of a disease, to know what it is, is half the treatment.

And you have become a sannyasin, you have taken a step into the unknown already. If you are going to be with me, you will have to say goodbye to your priest, your politician, your scholar. But I feel confident that you can do it, otherwise you would not have even asked. You have felt that it is meaningless, all that you have been doing up to now is meaningless - you have felt it. That feeling is of tremendous value.

So I will not say just be patient and wait for the next life, no. I am never in favour of postponement.

All postponement is dangerous and is very tricky. If you say, "I will postpone in this life - nothing can be done," you are avoiding a situation. Everything can be done! You are simply pretending. And this is a trick to save: "Now what can be done? I am so old."

Even on the deathbed, at the last moment, the change can happen. Even when the person is dying, he can open his eye for a single MOMENT... and the change can happen. And he can drop the whole past before death comes in, and he can die utterly fresh. And he is dying in a new way - he is dying as a sannyasin. He is dying in deep meditation - and to die in deep meditation is not to die at all, because he will be dying with full awareness of the deathless.

It can happen in a single moment! So please don't postpone. Don't say: "Had I best just live out the rest of this life in patience...?" No. You drop it right now - it is worthless! Why carry it? Why wait?

And if you wait, the next life is not going to be any different - that's why I say there is no hope for the priest and the politician and the scholar. The next life will start from where you end this life. Again the priest, again the politician, again the scholar. You will have the next life in continuity with this life.

How is it going to be different? It will be the same wheel turning again.

And this time I am available to you. Who knows? next time I may not be available. This time, somehow, groping in the dark, you have stumbled upon me. Next time, one never knows.... This time you took fifty-six years to come to a man through whom revolution IS possible. Who knows?

next time you may become more burdened, certainly you will become more burdened - the past life's burden, and the next life's burden... you may take seventy years to come, or to find a man.

That's why I say there is no hope for the politician and the priest and the scholar in the future either.

But for you there is every hope - because YOU ARE NOT A PRIEST, and you are not a scholar, and you are not a politician. How can you be? These are things that gather around, but the innermost core remains always free. Don't think of yourself in terms of being a frog - be a bee.....

The third question:

Question 3:

THE QUESTION IS NOT FROM A SANNYASIN - it is from Philip Martin. The first thing, Philip Martin, become a sannyasin. You should not ask questions about others; that is not gentlemanly.

You should ask questions about yourself. Be a sannyasin and then ask. But the question is meaningful so I am going to answer it anyway. And I have the feeling that sooner or later Philip Martin will be a sannyasin. Even the question shows some leaning.

First thing: all the religions of the world have emphasized charity - DHAN - too much. And the reason is that man has always felt guilty with money. Charity has been preached so much to help man feel a little less guilty. You will be surprised: in old English there is a word'gilt' - g-i-l-t - which means money. In German there is a word'Geld' - g-e-l-d - which means money. And the gold is very close by!'Gilt','guilt','Geld','gold' somehow deep down a great guilt is involved in money.

Whenever you have money you feel guilty... and it is natural because so many people don't have money. How can you avoid guilt? Whenever you have money you know somebody has become poorer because of you. Whenever you have money, you know somewhere somebody will be starving - and your bank balance goes on becoming bigger and bigger. Some child will not get the medicine needed to survive. Some woman will not get the medicine; some poor man will die because he will not have food. How can you avoid these things? They will be there. The more money you have, the more these things will be there erupting in your consciousness; you will feel guilty.

Charity is to unburden you from your guilt, so you say, "I am doing something: I going to open a hospital, going to open a college. I give money to this charity fund, to that trust...." You feel a little happier. The world has lived in poverty, the world has lived in scarcity, ninety-nine percent of people have lived a poor life, almost starving and dying, and only one percent of people have lived with richness, with money - they have always felt guilty. To help them, the religions developed the idea of charity. It is to rid them of their guilt.

So the first thing I would like to say is: Charity is not a virtue; it is just a help to keep your sanity intact, otherwise you will go insane. Charity is not a virtue - it is not a PUNYA. It is not that you have done something good when you do charity. It is only that you repent for all the bad that you have done in accumulating the money. To me, charity is not a great quality - it is repentance, you are repenting. One hundred rupees you have earned, ten rupees you give in charity - it is a repentance.

You feel a little good; you don't feel THAT bad; your ego feels a little more protected. You can say to God, "Not only was I exploiting, I was also helping poor people." But what type of help is this? On one hand you snatch one hundred rupees, and on the other hand you give ten rupees - not even the interest!

This is a trick that was invented by the so-called religious people to help NOT THE POOR BUT THE RICH. Let it be absolutely clear: this is MY attitude - it has been a trick to help the rich not the poor.

If the poor were helped, that was just a consequence of it, a by-product, but that was not the goal of it.

What do I say to my sannyasins?

I don't talk about charity. That word seems ugly to me. I talk about sharing - and with a totally different quality in it: sharing. If you have, you share. Not because by sharing you will be helping others, no, but by sharing you will be growing. The more you share, the more you grow.

And the more you share, the more you have - whatsoever it is. It is not only a question of money.

If you have knowledge, share it. If you have meditation, share it! If you have love, share it.

WHATSOEVER you have, share it, spread it all over; let it spread like the fragrance of a flower going to the winds. It has nothing to do particularly with poor people. Share with anybody that is available... and there are different types of poor people.

A rich man may be poor because he has never known any love. Share love with him. A poor man may have known love but has not known good food - share food with him. A rich man may have everything and has no understanding - share your understanding with him; he is also poor. There are a thousand and one types of poverty. Whatsoever you have, share it.

But remember, I am not saying this is a virtue and God is going to give you a special place in heaven, that you will be specially treated, that you will be thought a VIP - no. By sharing herenow you will be happier. A hoarder is never a happy man. A hoarder is basically constipated. He goes on hoarding; he cannot relax; he cannot give. He goes on hoarding; whatsoever he gets, he simply hoards it. He never enjoys it, because even in enjoying it you have to share it - because all enjoyment is a sort of sharing.

If you want to really enjoy your food, you will have to call friends. If you REALLY want to enjoy food, you will have to invite guests; otherwise you will not be able to enjoy it. If you really want to enjoy drinking, how can you enjoy it alone in your room? You will have to find friends, other drunkards.

You will have to share!

Joy is always a sharing. Joy does not exist alone.

How can you be happy alone? absolutely alone - think! HOW can you be happy, absolutely alone?

No. Joy is a relationship. It is a togetherness. In fact, even those people who have moved.to the mountains and have lived an alone life, they also share with existence - not alone. They share with the stars and the mountains and the birds and the trees - they are not alone.

Just think! For twelve years Mahavir was standing in the jungles alone - but he was not alone. I say to you, on authority, he was not alone. The birds were coming and playing around, and the animals would come and sit around, and the trees would shower their flowers on him, and the stars would come, and the sun would rise. And the day and the night, and summer and winter... and the whole year around... it was joy! Yes, he was away from human beings - he had to be, because human beings had done so much damage to him that he needed to be away from them so that he could be healed. It was just to avoid human beings for a certain period so they didn't go on damaging him. That's why sannyasins have moved sometimes into aloneness - just to heal their wounds.

Otherwise people will go on poking their knives into your wounds and they will keep them green; they will not allow you to heal, they will not give you a chance to undo what they have done.

For twelve years Mahavir was silent: standing, sitting, with the rocks and the trees, but he was not alone - he was crowded by the whole existence. The whole existence was merging upon him. Then the day came when he was healed, his wounds cured, and now he knew nobody could harm him.

He had gone beyond. No human being could hurt him any more. He came back to relate to human beings, to SHARE the joy that he had attained there.

Jain scriptures talk only about the fact that he left the world, they don't talk about the fact that he came back into the world; that is only half the story, that is not the full story.

Buddha went into the forest, but he came back. How can you go on being there when you HAVE it? You will have to come back and share it. Yes, it is good to share with trees, but trees cannot understand that much. They are very dumb. It is good to share with animals; they are beautiful - but the beauty of a human dialogue, it is impossible to find anywhere else. The response, the human response! They HAD to come back! to the world, to human beings, to share their joy, their bliss, their ecstasy.

'Charity' is not a good word. It is a very loaded word. I talk about sharing. To my sannyasins I say share. In the word'charity' there is some ugliness also: it seems that you are having the upper hand and the other is lower than you, that the other is a beggar; that you are helping the other, that he is in need. That is not good. To look at the other as if he is lower than you - you have and he has not - is not good; it is inhuman.

Sharing gives a totally different perspective. It is not a question of whether the other has it or not.

The question is that you have got it too much - you have to share. When you give charity, you expect the other to thank you. When you share, you thank him that he allowed you to pour your energy - which was getting too much upon you, it was getting heavy. You feel grateful.

Sharing is out of your abundance. Charity is for others' poverty. Sharing is out of your richness.

There is a qualitative difference.

No, I don't talk about charity, but sharing. Share! Whatsoever you have, share... and it will grow.

That is a fundamental law: the more you give, the more you get. Never be a miser in giving.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

YOUR MIND IS MIGHTY SLOW. Five hundred miles per hour, only?! And do you think this is speed?

Mighty slow you are. Mind knows no speed it goes so fast. It is faster than light. Light travels 186,000 miles is one second. Mind is faster than that. But nothing to be worried - that is the beauty of the mind, that is a great quality! Rather than taking it negatively, rather than fighting with it, befriend the mind.

You say: "During the meditations, my mind still goes five hundred miles per hour" - let it go! Let it go faster. You be a watcher. You watch the mind going around so fast, with such speed. Enjoy this!

enjoy this play of the mind.

In Sanskrit we have a special term for it; we call it CHIDVILAS - the play of consciousness. Enjoy it! this play of mind rushing towards stars, moving so fast from here and there, jumping all over existence. What is wrong in it? Let it be a beautiful dance. Accept it.

My feeling is that what you are doing is you are trying to stop it - you cannot do that. Nobody can stop the mind! Yes, mind stops one day, but nobody can stop it. Mind stops, but that is not out of your effort. Mind stops out of your understanding.

You just WATCH and try to see what is happening, why this mind is rushing. It is not rushing without any reason. You must be ambitious. Try to see WHY this mind is rushing, where it is rushing - you must be ambitious. If it thinks about money, then try to understand. Mind is not the question. You start dreaming about money, that you have won a lottery or this and that, and then you even start planning how to spend it, what to purchase and what not. Or, the mind thinks you have become a president, a prime minister, and then you start thinking what to do now, how to run the country, or the world. Just WATCH the mind! what mind is going towards. There must be a deep seed in you.

You cannot stop the mind unless that seed disappears.

The mind is simply following the order of your innermost seed. Somebody is thinking about sex; then somewhere there is repressed sexuality. Watch where mind is rushing. Look deep into yourself, find where the seeds are.

I have heard:

The parson was very much worried. "Listen," he said to his verger, "somebody has stolen my bicycle."

"Where have you been on it, Rector?" inquired that worthy.

"Only round the parish on my calls."

The verger suggested that the best plan would be for the rector to direct his Sunday sermon to the ten commandments. "When you get to'Thou shalt not steal', you and I will watch the faces - we will soon see."

Sunday came, the rector started in fine flow about the commandments, then lost his thread, changed his subject, and trailed off lamely.

"Sir," said the verger, "I thought you were going to..."

"I know, Giles, I know. But you see, when I got to'Thou shalt not commit adultery' I suddenly remembered where I had left my bicycle."

Just see where you have left your bicycle. The mind is rushing for certain reasons. The mind needs understanding, awareness. Don't try to stop it. If you try to stop it, in the first place you cannot succeed; in the second place, IF YOU CAN succeed - one can succeed if one makes perseverant effort for years - if YOU CAN succeed, you will become dull. No satori will happen out of it.

In the first place, you cannot succeed; and it is good that you cannot succeed. If you CAN succeed, if you manage to succeed, that will be very unfortunate - you will become dull, you will lose intelligence. With that speed there is intelligence, with that speed there is continuous sharpening of the sword of thinking, logic, intellect. Please don't try to stop it. I am not in favour of dullards, and I am not here to help anybody to become stupid.

In the name of religion, many people have become stupid, they have almost become idiots - just trying to stop the mind without any understanding about why it is going with such speed... why in the first place? The mind cannot go without any reason. Without going into the reason, in the layers, deep layers of the unconscious, they just try to stop. They CAN stop, but they will have to pay a price, and the price will be that their intelligence will be lost.

You can go around India, you can find thousands of sannyasins, mahatmas; look into their eyes - yes, they are good people, nice, but stupid. If you look in their eyes there is no intelligence, you will not see any lightning. They are uncreative people; they have not created anything. They just sit there. They are vegetating, they are not alive people. They have not helped the world in ANY way.

They have not even produced a painting or a poem or a song, because even to produce a poem you will need intelligence, you will need certain qualities of the mind.

I would not suggest that you stop the mind; rather, that you understand. With understanding there happens a miracle. The miracle is that with understanding, by and by, when you understand the causes and those causes are looked into deeply, and through that looking deeply into those causes, those causes disappear, mind slows down. But intelligence is not lost, because mind is not forced.

What are you doing if you don't remove the causes by understanding? You are driving a car, for example, and you go on pressing the accelerator and at the same time you try to press the brake.

You will destroy the whole mechanism of the car. And there is every possibility you will have some accident. This cannot be done together. If you are pushing the brake, then leave the accelerator; don't push it any more. If you are pushing the accelerator, then don't push the brake. DON'T do both the things together, otherwise you will destroy the whole mechanism; you are doing two contradictory things.

Ambition you carry on - and you try to stop the mind? Ambition creates the speed, so you are accelerating the speed - and putting a brake on the mind. You will destroy the whole subtle mechanism of the mind, and mind is a very delicate phenomenon, the most delicate in the whole of existence. So don't be foolish about it.

There is no need to stop it.

You say: "I never experience silence, and whatever witnessing happens is very short, like flashes."

Feel happy! Even that is something of tremendous value. Those flashes, they are not ordinary flashes. Don't just take them for granted! There are millions of people for whom even those small glimpses have not happened. They will live and die and they will never know what witnessing is - even for a single moment. You are happy, you are fortunate.

But you are not feeling grateful. If you don't feel grateful, those flashes will disappear. Feel grateful - they will grow. With gratitude, everything grows. Feel happy that you are blessed - they will grow.

With that positivity, things will grow.

"And whatever witnessing happens is very short."

Let it be very short! If it can happen for a single split moment, it is happening; you will have the taste of it. And with the taste, by and by, you will create more and more situations in which it happens more and more.

"Am I wasting my time?"

You cannot waste time, because you don't possess time. You can waste something that you possess.

Time you don't possess. Time will be wasted anyway whether you meditate or not - time will be wasted. Time is rushing by. Whatsoever you do, do anything, or don't do anything, time is going.

You cannot save time so how can you waste time? You can waste only something which you can save.

You don't possess time. Forget about it!

And the best use you can have of time is to have these small glimpses - because finally you will come to see only those moments have been saved which were moments of witnessing, and all else has gone down the drain. The money that you earned, the prestige that you earned, the respectability that you earned, is all gone down the drain. Only those few moments that you had some flashes of witnessing, only those moments are saved. Only those moments will go with you when you leave this life - only those moments can go, because those moments belong to eternity, they don't belong to time.

But feel happy it is happening. It always happens slowly, slowly. But one drop by one drop a great ocean can become full. It happens in drops. But in the drops the ocean is coming. You just receive it with gratitude, with celebration, with thankfulness.

And don't try to stop the mind. Let the mind have its speed - you watch.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

TANTRA AND YOGA HAVE A CERTAIN MAP OF THE INNER MAN. It will be good if you understand that map - it will help you, it will help you greatly.

Tantra and Yoga suppose that there are seven centers in man's physiology - the subtle physiology, not in the body. In fact, they are metaphors. But they are very very helpful to understand something of the inner man. These are the seven chakras.

First, and the most basic, is MULADHAR - that's why it is called MULADHAR: MULADHAR means the most fundamental, the basic. MUL means the basic, of the roots. The muladhar chakra is the center where sex energy is right now available, but the society has damaged that chakra very much.

This muladhar chakra has three angles to it: one is oral the mouth; the second is anal and the third is genital. These are the three angles of the muladhar. The child starts his life with the oral, and because of wrong upbringing, many people remain at the oral, they never grow. That's why so much smoking, chewing gum, continuous eating, happens. This is an oral fixation they remain in the mouth.

There are many primitive societies which don't kiss. In fact, if the child has grown well, kissing will disappear; kissing shows the man has remained oral. Otherwise, what does sex have to do with lips? When for the first time primitive societies came to know about civilized man's kissing, they laughed; they simply thought it ridiculous. Two persons kissing each other: it looks unhygienic too; just transferring all sorts of illnesses to each other, infections. And what are they doing? And for what? But humanity has remained oral.

The child is not satisfied orally. The mother does not give her breast as much as the child needs; the lips remain unsatisfied. So the child will smoke cigarettes later on, will become a great kisser.

will chew gum, or will become a great eater. continuously eating this and that. If mothers give their breasts as much as the child needs, then the muladhar is not damaged.

If you are a smoker, try a pacifier - and you will be suddenly surprised. It has helped many people.

I give it to many people. If somebody comes and asks me how to stop smoking, I say, Just have a pacifier, a false breast, and keep it in the mouth. Let it hang around your neck, and whenever you feel like smoking just put the pacifier in the mouth and enjoy it. And within three weeks you will be surprised: the urge to smoke has disappeared."

Somewhere the breast is still appealing. That's why man is so much focussed on feminine breasts.

There seems to be no reason... why'? Why is man so much interested in feminine breasts? Painting, sculpture, film, pornography - everything seems to be breast-oriented! And women are continuously trying to hide and yet show their breasts - otherwise, the bra is just foolish. It is a trick to hide and show together; it is a very contradictory trick. And now in America, where every foolish thing goes to its extreme, they are injecting chemicals into women's breasts, silicon and other things; they are stuffing breasts with silicon so they become bigger and can get the shape - the shape that ungrown-up humanity wants to see. This childish idea! But man remains somehow oral.

This is the LOWEST state of the muladhar.

Then a few people change from oral and they become stuck at the anal, because the second great damage happens with the toilet training. Children are forced to go to the toilet at a certain time.

Now, children cannot control their bowel movements; it takes time, it takes years for them to come to a control. So what do they do? They simply force, they simply close their anal mechanism, and because of this they become anal fixated.

That's why so much constipation exists in the world. It is only man who suffers from constipation. No animal suffers from constipation; in the wild state no animal suffers from constipation. Constipation is more psychological; it is a damage to the muladhar. And because of constipation many other things grow into the human mind.

A man becomes a hoarder - a hoarder of knowledge, hoarder of money, hoarder of virtue - becomes a hoarder and becomes miserly. He cannot leave anything! Whatsoever he grabs, he holds it. And with this anal emphasis, a great damage happens to muladhar because the man or the woman has to go to the genital. If they get fixated at the oral or at the anal, they never go to the genital - that is the trick the society has used up to now not to allow you to become fully sexual.

Then anal fixation becomes so important that genitals become less important. Hence, so much homosexuality. Homosexuality will not disappear from the world - until and unless anal-orientation disappears. The toilet-training is a great, dangerous training. And then, if some people become genital, somehow they are not fixated at the oral and the anal and become genital, then there is great guilt created in humanity about sex. Sex means the sin. Christianity has thought sex so much a sin that they go on pretending and proposing and trying to prove a foolish thing, that Christ was born out of a miracle: that he was not born out of a man/woman relationship, that Mary was a virgin.

Sex is such a sin that how can Jesus' mother have sex? It is okay for other ordinary people, but for Jesus' mother to have sex - then how can Jesus, such a pure man, be born out of sex?

I was reading:

There was a young woman who did not seem very well, so her mother took her to the doctor. Mother did all the talking - she was that sort.

"She's pregnant," said the doctor.

"Doctor, I must call you a fool. My daughter has never so much as kissed a man! have you darling?"

"No, mama, I have not even held a man's hand."

The doctor left his chair, walked to the window, and gazed at the sky. There was a long silence, then mother asked, "Is there anything wrong out there, doctor?"

"Not at all, not at all. Only the last time this happened, a star appeared in the east - and I don't want to miss it this time!"

Sex has been condemned so much, you cannot enjoy it. And that's why energy remains fixated somewhere: oral, anal, genital. It cannot go upwards.

Tantra says man has to be relieved, destructured from these three things. So Tantra says that the first great work has to happen in the muladhar. For oral freedom: screaming, laughing, shouting, crying, weeping, is very helpful. That's why my choice of encounter, gestalt, primal and that type of groups - they are all helpful to relieve the oral fixation. And to relieve you of the anal fixation, PRANAYAM, BASTRIKA - fast chaotic breathing - is very helpful, because it hits directly on the anal center and makes you able to relieve and relax the anal mechanism. Hence the dynamic meditation is of tremendous value.

And then the sex center: the sex center has to be relieved of the burden of guilt, condemnation. You have to start relearning about it; only then can the damaged sex center function in a healthy way.

You have to start relearning to enjoy it - without any guilt.

There are a thousand and one types of guilt. In the Hindu mind there is a fear that semen energy is great energy - even if a single drop is lost, you are lost. This is a very constipatory attitude - hoard it! Nothing is lost! You are such a dynamic force, you go on creating that energy every day. Nothing is lost.

The Hindu mind is too much obsessed with VEERYA - with semen energy. Not a single drop should be lost! They are continuously afraid. So whenever they make love, if they make love, then they feel very much frustrated, very much depressed, because they start thinking so much energy is lost.

NOTHING is lost. You don't have a dead quota of energy; you are a dynamo - you create energy, you create it EVERY day. In fact, the more you use it, the more you have it. It functions like the whole body. If you use your muscles, they will grow. If you walk, your legs will be strong. If you run, you will have more energy to run. Don't think that a person who has never run and suddenly runs will have energy - he will not have energy. He will not have even the musculature to run.

Use all that has been given to you by God and you will have MORE of it!

So there is one Hindu madness: to hoard. This is on the lines of constipation. And now there is an American madness, that is like diarrhoea: just throw, go on throwing - meaningfully, meaninglessly, go on throwing. So even a man of eighty years continuously thinks in childish ways. Sex is good, sex is beautiful, but is not the end. It is the alpha but not the omega. One has to go beyond it. But going beyond it is NOT A CONDEMNATION! One has to go through it to go beyond it.

Tantra is the most healthy attitude about sex. It says sex is good, sex is healthy. sex is natural, but sex has more possibilities than just reproduction. And sex has more possibilities than just fun. Sex is carrying something of the ultimate in it, of Samadhi.

The muladhar chakra has to be relaxed - relaxed from constipation, relaxed from diarrhoea. The muladhar chakra has to function at the optimum, one hundred percent, then energy starts moving.

The second chakra is SVADHISTHAN - that is the HARA, the death center. These two centers are very much damaged, because man has been afraid of sex and man has been afraid of death. So death has been avoided: Don't talk about death! Just forget about it! It does not exist. Even if sometimes it exists, don't notice it, don't take any note of it. Go on thinking that you are going to live for ever - avoid death!

Tantra says: Don't avoid sex and don't avoid death. That's why Saraha went to the cremation ground to meditate - not to avoid death. And he went with the arrowsmith woman to live a life of healthy, full sex, of optimum sex. On the cremation ground, living with a woman, these two centers had to be relaxed: death and sex. Once you accept death and you are not afraid of it, once you accept sex and you are not afraid of it, your two lower centers are relaxed.

And those are the two lower centers which have been damaged by the society, badly damaged.

Once they are relieved... the other five centers are not damaged; there is no need to damage them because people don't live in those other five centers. These two centers are naturally available.

Birth has happened: the sex center - muladhar. And death is going to happen: svadhisthan the second center. These two things are there in everybody's life, so society has destroyed both centers and tried to manipulate man, dominate man, through these two things.

Tantra says: Meditate while you make love, meditate while somebody dies - go, watch, see. Sit by the side of a dying man. Feel, participate in his death. Go in deep meditation with the dying man.

And when a man is dying there is a possibility to have a taste of death - because when a man is dying, he releases so much energy from the svadhisthan chakra... he has to release because he is dying. The whole repressed energy on the svadhisthan chakra will be released because he is dying; without releasing it he will not be able to die. So when a man dies or a woman dies, don't miss the opportunity. If you are close by to a dying man, sit silently, meditate silently. When the man dies, in a sudden burst the energy will be all over, and you can have a taste of death. And that will give you a great relaxation: Yes, death happens, but nobody dies. Yes, death happens, but in fact death never happens.

While making love, meditate so that you can know that something of Samadhi penetrates into sexuality. And while meditating on death, go deep into it so that you can see that something of the deathless enters into death. These two experiences will help you to go upwards very easily. The other five centers, fortunately, are not destroyed; they are perfectly in tune - just energy has to move through them. If these first two centers are helped, energy starts moving. So let death and love be your two objects of meditation.

The last question:

Question 6:

Why not...?