Allow the Heart

The first question:

Question 1:

Pradeepa, this is a complex question. A few things will have to be understood before you can have an understanding of it.

The mystic lives in the other reality, the separate reality. His abode is there. The poet only has glimpses. Only sometimes the door opens and he sees something, and the door closes. He has no understanding of what is happening, he can't figure it out himself. It remains mysterious. He has no explanation about it, from where it comes, why it comes; it is all from the blue. He's possessed by it. In some moments he's utterly possessed; in those moments he starts saying things which he will not be able to explain later on.

It is said about a great poet that once a man came to ask him the meaning of a certain poem that he had written twenty years before. The poet said, "It is too late. When I had written it, two persons knew the meaning. Now, only one knows." The man said, "Then that one must be you." And the poet said, "I am not that one. When I wrote this poetry, or, to be more true, when this poetry was written by me or this poetry wrote itself through me, God knew the meaning and I knew the meaning. Now I don't know, only God knows."

The poet is not in a state of meditation, he's not in awareness. He's vulnerable to the unknown.

He has certain openings towards the unknown, and the unknown penetrates him, stirs his heart, resounds in his being, sometimes becomes a song or a painting or a dance, but the poet is utterly unaware of what is happening from where it all comes. And it comes like lightening, and then disappears. He has to write it, he has an obligation to write it. Unless he writes it, it persists inside.

It goes on hammering him. A poet writes it because it becomes too heavy if he doesn't write. He unburdens himself by writing. The poetry is a catharsis. The poet feels good once he has written something that was persistently there asking for attention.

The mystic is enlightened - not that he has lightning experiences. The other world, the unknown - call it God, NIRVANA, or anything you like - has become his abode. It is his reality; he lives there.

It is not something from the blue: he's part of it, he vibrates with it. The separation is dropped. He knows what he is saying.

So there are two kinds of art: the ordinary art - Shakespeare, Dylan, Carroll, Eliot - this is subjective art. Much imagination is involved in it. It is not pure gold. Then there is another kind of art: the Upanishads, the Bible, the caves of Ajanta and Ellora, the pyramids, the statues of Buddha, the Taj Mahal, Khajuraho, Konarak; this is a totally different kind of art, objective art.

The people who created the caves of Ajanta and Ellora knew exactly what they were doing. They were not simply possessed by an idea, they were creating something very deliberately, for some deliberate results.

Picasso is painting in a kind of dream, and the dream is not even very beautiful - it is nightmarish, it is a nightmare. He has to paint it, otherwise it will drive him crazy. Just think! If Picasso were prevented from painting, what would happen to him? He would have gone mad. He would not have been able to contain all these nightmares. When he painted these nightmares he was finished; it was a kind of self-psychoanalysis. That is the very foundation of psychoanalysis.

What happens in psychoanalysis? You bring all that is hidden in your unconsciousness to the surface, you relate it to the psychoanalyst. He listens attentively, passively, patiently. Once you have related it from all the possible angles it evaporates from your being, you are unburdened. Now psychoanalysis has found this too - that art can be a good therapy, therapy through art. In fact, that has always been so. Picasso would have gone mad if he had not painted. That's exactly what happened to van Gogh, another great painter. He went mad, because he was so poor he could not manage to purchase canvases, colors, brushes to paint. He was given enough money from his brother so that he could live, exactly enough so that he could live, not a single pai more. And what was he doing for years? - for four days of the week he would eat and three days he would fast and save money to paint. He went mad. He could not paint all that was clamoring, boiling in his being; he was sitting on a volcano. Lightnings were happening to him, and he could not unburden himself.

They went on being accumulated inside. First he went mad, then finally he committed suicide. It was too much to live.

And that has been felt by poets, painters, sculptors down the ages - that they feel possessed by a demon, by some unknown spirit which forces them to write. They HAVe to write; they cannot deny it, they cannot escape from it. Unless they fulfill it they will not feel free. This is subjective art.

A mystic also creates. Buddha creates by speaking; he sculpts in words. He creates parables, stories, weaves stories within stories, brings insight into the world, but this is not a kind of possession. He is perfectly at ease. He can be silent if he decides so, he will not go mad. And he knows exactly what he is doing; that's why it is called objective art. He knows what he is doing, he knows what it will do to people. He knows if this particular thing is meditated upon, this will be the consequence of it. It is utterly scientific.

If you meditate on a Buddha-statue, you will suddenly feel yourself becoming cool, silent, tranquil.

You will suddenly feel a kind of balancing happening - just by meditating on the Buddha-statue. Or, if you meditate on the Taj Mahal on a full-moon night - it is a Sufi work of art, it was created by Sufis; it is a message of love - if you go on a full-moon night and simply sit there, not thinking about the Taj Mahal, not saying stupid things like "How beautiful!" just meditating, absorbing, you will feel a great insight happening to you. As the night deepens, something will deepen in you. As the moon starts rising, something will start rising in you too . As the noises of the city disappear, your noisy mind will start disappearing. You can have a great meditative experience through the Taj Mahal. And it will not be only meditative - that is the difference between the Taj Mahal and Ajanta. When meditation happens you will feel overflowing with love. In Ajanta, love will not happen, only meditation will happen. That was created by Buddhist mystics who believe in awareness and in nothing else. Sufis believe in love; meditation is part of it.

Objective art means it has been created deliberately by one who knows what he is doing, who brings something from the other dimension into this world, some form. Just watching that form, a form will arise in you, a song. Just singing that song, you will become something else, a mantra. But if you start meditating you will be surprised: many times you will find beautiful lines from the poets.

What I would like to remind you of is that sometimes you can find something in Eliot which he himself was not aware of. If you meditate, if you go deep in meditation, then even from subjective art you can find a thousand and one beautiful experiences. That may not have been so for the creator himself, because the creator was in a kind of dream-state when he created it. That's why it is always wise never to go and see the painter if you love the painting, never to go and see the poet if you love his poetry, because that may be a kind of disillusionment. You will find the poet very ordinary, because the poet is not a poet for twenty-four hours. Once in a while he is a poet, when the door opens. And he does not know how it opens and how it closes; he has no keys in his hand. He cannot open it on demand. He's utterly helpless and impotent; it happens when it happens. When it happens he shares the being of a mystic, for a moment. For a split second a drop of the unknown falls into his being, a seed sinks into his heart, then he is ordinary. Then for the remaining time he is just as ordinary, as ignorant as you - sometimes even more so. Because that glimpse gives him a very, very egoistic idea about himself, he starts thinking about himself that he's superb, something great. That's why you will find poets, painters, very vain, egoistic people. You will not find ordinary people so egoistic as you will find the artists to be. They are creators, and they have some reason to be egoistic: look what great poetry they have done, what great paintings they have done. Those paintings are not done by them, those poems are not done by them. Something mysterious has been happening to them. They have become instrumental, they have been mediums. But a mystic is not a medium, he is the source.

Sometimes in Eliot you will find words which are as beautiful as Buddha's words or Jesus' words, but there is a qualitative difference between them: Eliot is not aware of what he is doing; Jesus is fully aware of what he is doing, of what he wants to do. Each of his statements is deliberate, conscious .

But if you start meditating, then from many sources you will be able to recognize, and then even poets start looking like mystics.

Listen to these words of Octavio Paz:

Here is a long and silent street.

I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall And rise and walk blind, My feet trampling the silent stones and the dry leaves.

Someone behind me also tramples stones, leaves.

If I slow down, he slows; If I run, he runs.

I turn - nobody.

Everything dark and doorless, Only my steps aware of me Are turning and turning amongst these corners Which lead forever to the street Where nobody waits for, nobody follows me, Where I pursue a man Who stumbles and rises and says when he sees me, "Nobody".

A great insight... a great insight into the very phenomenon of the ego. If you don't look at it, it is there, it follows you like a shadow. If you look at it - nobody.

A great king asked Bodhidharma, "I have been searching and searching only for one thing: how to become egoless, because all the great Masters have been saying only one thing down through the ages - become egoless and you will find God, become egoless and nirvana will be attained. And I have tried hard. I have done all that can be done, that is humanly possible, but I cannot get rid of this ego. Sir, would you be kind enough," he said to Bodhidharma, "to help me?"

Bodhidharma looked at him - the way he used to look - those sharp, fiery eyes, penetrating. He said, "You do one thing. You have done enough, I can see it. Now you need not do any more. I will do it! Come in the morning at three o'clock, and I will finish it forever."

The king was a little puzzled: "What nonsense is this man talking about? How can he finish my ego forever? But it seems worth trying"....

When he was going away Bodhidharma again called him, while he was going down the stairs, and said, "Listen! When you come at three o'clock in the morning, don't forget to bring the ego with you!

Bring it and I will kill it! Surely I am going to finish it!"

Now the king was even more puzzled: "What does he mean? Bring the ego? When I come it will be there. This man seems to be mad. Not only does he look... he is!" He could not sleep the whole night; he thought and thought. Many times he decided it was just foolish to go to this man in the dark night. And he had said, "Come alone!" - no bodyguards, nobody is allowed. "Who knows? This man may do something nasty. He may hit me or something, because he looks so dangerous."

But he had been really working hard his whole life. It was worth trying, the risk had to be taken.

At three o'clock he could not resist the temptation - he went; afraid, frightened, but he went. The moment he reached the cave of Bodhidharma, Bodhidharma said, "Where is your ego?! And I had told you to bring it! Have you forgotten?"

The king said, "You are talking nonsense. When I am here, my ego is here. How can I leave it? That is the whole problem: I want to leave it! I can't leave it! It follows me like my shadow!"

Bodhidharma said, "Then, okay. You sit and close your eyes and try to find it, where it is. If you find, immediately tell me - because unless you find it how can I kill it? And I will sit in front of you with this stick in my hand. The moment you have found it just give me a nod, and I will finish it forever!"

The king was frightened. It was a cold winter morning, but he started perspiring. But he tried; he went in, he looked in every nook and comer of his being, looked and looked and looked, and was surprised: he could not find the ego. Three hours passed, and his face changed. A great grace started descending on him. His vibe changed, he was feeling blessed. A benediction was around.

And the sun started rising and the cave was becoming full of light.

Bodhidharma laughed and he said, "It is long enough that you have been searching. Have you not found it?"

And the king opened his eyes, fell at the feet of Bodhidharma and said, "You finished it. How did you do it?"

Bodhidharma said, "It is simple: the ego exists if you don't look at it. It exists only if you keep your back to it. The moment you turn and start looking - nobody."

Now LISTEN to this small, beautiful poem of Octavio Paz. It says exactly that:

Here is a long and silent street.

I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall, And rise and I walk blind, My feet trampling the silent stones and the dry leaves.

Someone behind me also tramples stones, leaves.

If I slow down, he slows; If I run, he runs.

I turn - nobody.

This is half, a part, of the Buddha's story. Once the ego disappears you should not think, even for a single moment, that the self will remain. When the ego has disappeared, the self also has disappeared. That's why Buddha says, "You don't have a soul, you don't have a self. You are not there at all. Nobody exists there - neither the ego nor the ATMAN. They are two aspects of the same illusion."

You are followed by a shadow: if you look, the shadow disappears. And the second part is: if you look still deeper, you also disappear. Not only does the object of your look disappear, the subject of your look also disappears. This is the second part of Paz's poem.

Everything dark and doorless, Only my steps aware of me Are turning and turning amongst these corners Which lead forever to the street Where nobody waits for, nobody follows me, Where I pursue a man Who stumbles and rises and says when he sees me, "Nobody".

From both sides - nobody. If the ego looks at the self - nobody; if the self looks at the ego - nobody.

When the look happens, simply nobody. Both have disappeared, the looked upon and the onlooker.

Now this is the whole foundation of Zen Buddhism. This is the whole foundation of Sufism: FANA, all disappears.

But Octavio Paz is not a mystic. He's not a Buddha. He's as ordinary as you are. Just one thing is special about him: your doors never open, his doors sometimes - one knows not how and why - open. Just a wind comes and flings the door open, then another wind comes and closes it. Maybe your doors are tightly shut; his doors are not so tightly shut. A poet is between you and the mystic.

A poet is a little more loose than you are, a little less frozen than you are. Sometimes he melts, sometimes he allows himself to melt.

That's what happens when you take a drug: your chemistry changes and you melt. It can happen through alcohol, it can happen through hashish. It can happen through many things: fasting, breathing, exercises; it can happen through running, swimming. The only thing is when you become a little more loose, doors open and you can see the beyond. But it can happen only for a moment.

Chemistry can only allow you a few glimpses.

Maybe the poet is born with a little more LSD in his system than you are born with, that's all, with some hormonal difference. One day or other this is going to be discovered, and you will see that hormones and chemistry make much difference.

What is the difference between a man and a woman? - the difference is of chemistry. The woman feels more than any man can ever feel. The woman loves more than any man can ever love. When the woman prays, she really is moved by it. When a man prays he is manipulating prayer, he's not moved by it; he's trying to move God through it. When a woman prays she is moved through it, she allows herself to be moved by God. The grace of a woman, the roundness of her being, is hormonal.

They say that if there is some hormonal disturbance while a child is growing in a woman's body - if the woman has some hormonal disturbance and has more male hormones in her body, and the child that is born, if he is not a boy, if the child born is a girl - then the girl will be a tomboy because those hormonal disturbances will make the girl a tomboy. She will not be an ordinary girl. She will not be that graceful, she will be more prone to fight.

A poet seems to have a slightly different chemistry from yours, but the difference is there. The mystic has a different consciousness from yours, not the chemistry. That's why I'm against drugs - because they can only change your chemistry, they can never change your consciousness. And Aldous Huxley is ABSOLUTELY wrong, that drugs can give you SAMADHI; they cannot. They may give you some poetry, that is true; they may give you some glimpses of the unknown, but you remain untransformed. Those glimpses may become beautiful experiences, but experiences. The experiencer is not transformed by them. That's why I say that when you love the poetry, don't go to see the poet. You may be disillusioned. You may find a very ordinary man, very egoistic, nothing special, because those experiences have not changed his being. You can take a drug and you can feel high, and you can see the world in psychedelic colors. The whole world seems to be different, becomes a great poetry. But when you come down, all disappears, and the world seems more dusty than ever, more gray than ever. Now you miss, you hanker for more drugs.

These are two things in you: chemistry and consciousness. Chemistry can befool you; beware of it. Don't get hooked with chemistry. Unless your consciousness is new those small experiences will not make much difference. They are immaterial.

The second question:

Question 2:

Pratipada, you must have met some male chauvinist pig. There is no difference in the consciousness of man or woman. The only difference is in the chemistry, and chemistry docs not make any difference in consciousness. Consciousness is neither male nor female, it is transcendental. It cannot be categorized in the dualities. It is beyond both, it is one.

But man has always been saying things to women. Man has always been trying to prove the woman is inferior. The reason is that man feels inferior to woman. And the basic inferiority is because the woman can give birth to a child and man cannot. Man is envious, jealous. The woman seems to be so powerful: she can give birth to a new being, she can contain a new being in her womb. And man has always felt a little inferior about that. He takes revenge, he tries to prove that the woman is inferior - she cannot do this, she cannot do that.

About enlightenment, these foolish people have been saying that woman cannot attain it. Why?

What has that to do with a man or a woman? To be a man or a woman is simply irrelevant!

When you go deeper into your being, when you are just a witness, is the witness still going to be a woman? The witnessing consciousness will simply witness outside the body of a woman or a man, but the witnessing consciousness will not be sexual; it w ill be asexual. It will simply be there, it will be a mirror.

But man tries in every way to put the woman down. He's afraid. Either he can worship the woman, he can put her very high, a goddess, or he can condemn her and put her very low, evil, but he cannot accept that she is equal to him. These are both ways of dominating the woman. You put somebody on a high pedestal, then you are capable of dominating. Man says, "Woman is holy" - that means man is forgiven if he goes to a prostitute, because he is not so holy. Woman cannot be forgiven.

That's why male prostitutes have not existed.

Man can do many things; he's allowed. They say, "Boys are boys." The woman is not allowed. Her holiness, her being a goddess, is a trick, a strategy to encage her. Worship her, give all the good qualities to her, then she is in your hands. She cannot move down because she will be afraid that she will be losing her godhood - this is one strategy. The other strategy is: declare her evil. Then you are allowed to torture her, to keep her in boundaries. Because she is evil she cannot be allowed total freedom, she cannot be allowed independence. She is dangerous. She will let hell loose in the world.

And your so-called saints ALL finally prove to be just ordinary men. You can judge it. If a saint is condemning women, you can judge it - you can know perfectly well that he has not known anything of saintlihood. He does not know anything of the whole, where men and women are transcended.

He's still concerned with his being a man and is still afraid of women. There is no reason to be worried about such things.

You say, "I HEARD THAT WOMEN DO NOT ATTAIN ENLIGHTENMENT."

Never pay much attention to such crap.

And you say, "IT DID NOT DISTURB ME...."

Very good, because if it disturbs you, then there is danger. The danger is that you may become part of the 'lib' movement. That is another polarity. Man has been ugly; through the 'lib' movement, women are turning ugly. Man's nonsense is driving women towards nonsense. Both have to be dropped.

It is good that you were not disturbed. Never be disturbed by such things. By being disturbed you allow them to enter into your being, and then their impact will change you.

"IT ONLY MADE ME WONDER IF IT IS TRUE."

It is not true. How can it be true?

A Buddha is born out of a woman. Buddha can be born out of a woman, and Buddhahood cannot be born in a woman? What kind of nonsense is this? All Buddhas are born out of a woman. It is the woman who carries the Buddha in the womb. If she can carry the Buddha in her womb, why can't she carry Buddhahood in her innermost womb of consciousness? There is no problem.

The reason is somewhere else. The reason is that in the past, religions have been against sex. And man has been afraid, very much afraid of woman, because the moment he comes close to a woman he starts feeling tempted. He's afraid of his temptations. Nothing is wrong in those temptations; they are natural. But they have been condemned. And because those temptations come only in the presence of a woman, or when he thinks of a woman - so not only the woman physically, but the idea of woman becomes an evil - he throws his responsibility on the woman. The woman becomes a scapegoat. She has nothing to do with it. She also feels tempted when she comes close to a man, but she has not been so ugly and rude as men have been. She has not said that the man is the door to hell. But the so-called saints have been saying again and again that woman is the door to hell, avoid woman if you want to avoid hell.

The whole point is based on a fallacy: that sex is something wrong. Once sex is accepted as a natural phenomenon the problem will disappear. That's what I am trying to do here.

You may not be aware of what I am trying to do here, of how I am trying to do things. You may not be aware of the implications; the implications are far-reaching.

I am trying to destroy the whole old foundation of religion and give it a totally new foundation - a foundation which is natural, a foundation which is spontaneous, a foundation which is human, a foundation which accepts a man and woman relationship in all its beauty and glory.

And this I have to say to you: that unless you accept your sexuality totally and gracefully and lovingly, you will never transcend it. The way to transcend goes THROUGH it. Those who have tried to avoid it have remained always in it. Any experience denied will persist, will hammer, will try to enter into you again and again, will go on knocking on your doors. You cannot deny any part of your being, and if you deny you will never be whole. And how can you be holy if you are not even whole?

Nothing has to be denied. All has to be accepted and transformed.

I call that man wise who accepts all that has been given by God and transforms it, with no rejection - because nothing wrong can be given by God to you. If you think something is wrong it is your prejudice, it is your idea, it is your interpretation. Anger is there: if anger becomes your meditation, you will find, out of anger, a new phenomenon arising - compassion. Only an angry person can be compassionate. If there is no anger the person will never be compassionate, he will simply be impotent. He will not have any spine, that's all.

It is out of sex that SAMADHI starts entering into your being. Sex is the lowest rung of the ladder called SAMADHI, SAMADHI is the highest rung; but you cannot move to the highest unless you have moved from the lowest. In the lowest are the roots. The highest depends on the lowest. The lowest is not low. When I am calling it 'lowest' I am not evaluating it, I am simply indicating its position. The foundation has to be lowest, only then can the building arise on it. But by being lowest it is not low.

It supports the whole building; without it the whole building would be gone.

Sex is the very fabric of life: it supports. All that happens, happens through the same energy. Yes, there are many, many new transformations of the energy - it becomes love, it becomes prayer, it becomes SAMADHI; ultimately it becomes God.

Sex is the seed of God. Sex is not God itself yet, but the seed contains the tree. Sex contains the possible, and unless you love the seed and you sow the seed in the soil of your consciousness, you will never have the tree, and you will never have those beautiful flowers, that glory. That one- thousand-petalled lotus will never arise in your being.

Women have been condemned because sex has been condemned. The condemnation of the woman is secondary; the basic condemnation is of sex. Unless sex is accepted the woman will never be accepted. Hence, I am giving a totally new vision: accept life as it is. All is good. That does not mean that you have to remain stuck where you are. All is good: it simply means that all can be used for higher and higher experiences. Everything can be used as a stepping-stone.

The third question:

Question 3:

Why are you so afraid of brainwashing? Washing is always good. Are you some kind of hippie or something?

I have heard two stories.

One:

Two hippies were sitting before a church. And then came an ambulance and the priest was brought out on a stretcher.

One hippie asked the other, "What is the matter? What has happened to this old cat?"

The other said, "When he was coming out of his bath, he slipped, fell down, and he has broken his leg."

There was silence for a few moments. Then the other asked, "But what is a bath?"

And the first one said, "How am I to know? Am I a Catholic?"

The other story:

A father was very angry with his son. In his anger he dragged him to the haircutters, he forced him.

His hair, his beard, were removed. And then the father said, "My God! So I have been bringing up somebody else's son!"

The third story:

A hippie was brought to a hospital, dragged, forced. An operation was absolutely necessary to save his life. He was shouting like anything. He wanted to escape because he said, "I don't believe in allopathy! I believe in acupuncture, I believe in homeopathy, I believe in naturopathy! I don't believe in allopathy!" But his parents forced him.

The doctors said that first he had to be given a good bath: "He stinks, and it will be difficult to operate on him." So he was taken to the bathroom and given a good rub and a good bath.

When he came out he said, "My God! I was so afraid of this operation!"

Now why are you so afraid of mind-wash? It will cleanse you! A brainwash is a good thing. You need it! You are carrying so much rubbish in your brain; don't you ever think it needs a good washing?

Yes, exactly, that's what I'm doing here.

You have been conditioned by the society and you have to be un-conditioned.... That's what a brainwash is. But there is a difference. Mao also did it, I am also doing it, but there is a great difference. Mao used brainwashing just to re-condition you. He un-conditioned you, but the goal was not un-conditioning, the goal was re-conditioning: you have to be conditioned as a communist.

Perhaps you were conditioned as a Catholic, as a Hindu: you have to be un-conditioned as a Catholic and re-conditioned as a communist. Naturally, if something has to be written on your brain, first all that is already written there has to be scrapped.

I am also using brainwash - as Buddha used, as Christ used - with a difference; it is not the same as Mao's. The difference is I simply wash your brain and leave it there. I don't write anything on it, I simply leave it clean. I Leave you un-conditioned.

In fact, that is your fear: you are not afraid of being brainwashed, you are afraid of being left clean.

You would like to be re-conditioned immediately so you have another prop, another thing to cling to, another philosophy to believe in. I don't give you any philosophy to believe in. I simply destroy all philosophies and leave you alone. That is freedom! But that is always frightening: then you have nothing to cling to, then you have nothing to lean on. Then you are left in an abyss. I call that abyss God - a bottomless abyss it is. I leave you in that state of ignorance, but ignorance is innocence.

You are not so worried, actually, about my un-conditioning you, about your brainwash. You are worried that if you are Left there in innocence, how will you act? how will you perform your life? how will you do things? You have always depended on the conditioning. That conditioning has given you a certain identity - a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. You know who you are. You know where to look when the need arises: go into the church or look into the Bible or consult the priest. You know where to go when there is some problem.

I will leave you utterly helpless. You will not know w here to go. I will take the church and the Bible and the Koran away from you, and I will not replace it.

But that is the real work always done by the Buddhas: they leave you alone. And if you are courageous enough to be alone, in that helplessness,'for the first time you start growing. In that state of innocence for the first time understanding arises. Otherwise, when you depend on knowledge, there is no need for understanding to arise; knowledge goes on playing the role of understanding.

When all knowledge is dropped you have to face life without any knowledge. You will have to respond without any past. You will not be able to go into the memory; there will be no memory. You will have to respond here now. You will have to act, immediately. In that action, understanding is born.

Take the risk.

It is risky, but take the risk. In fact, what have you got to lose? What have you got in your brain?

Why are you so worried that your brain will be washed? You don't have anything valuable there, it is all junk. And you know it perfectly well! Who else can know it so well? Just sit silently for half an hour and look inside, and you will know your brain, what goes on. It is a mad maniac - a thousand and one things going on and on, noises, a crowd. What is valuable there?

Once this is gone, your heart will open up. The pretender gone, the real will take possession. The pseudo-coin thrown away, you will search for the real coin. And it is there, inside you. That wisdom is contained by you. That enlightenment is there waiting for you to get fed-up with the head, so that you can look at it. And once you have found wisdom, then you will know what is valuable in life.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

The question is from Klaus Freitag.

There are a few things in life which can only be known from the inside. If you decide that you will fall in love only when you have understood the meaning of love, never before it, then;you will never fall in love. There is no way to know about love. There is no way to know love unless you fall in it. You can go to the libraries and you can find thousands of books written on love and you can go through them and you can write a PH.D. thesis about love, but you will still not know anything about love.

Love is a taste on the tongue; you have to experience it.

That's why I go on giving sannyas to anybody and everybody, because that is the only way to have an experience of it. It is not a philosophy that I can tell you about, it is an actual experience. You will need participation in it.

There are many people, and when they come for the first time the question is very natural - because you have been brought up that way: to first think about it. That's why you are missing millions of things, because you demand, "First I will experience!" And because the intrinsic nature of those things is such that you can only experience by experiencing, there is no way to give a sample to you, you go on missing.

People come to me and they say, "First it has to be proved that God is, only then will we go on the search." They will never go on any search, and they will never find God. Obviously, how can they find? They demand, "First God has to be proved!" Now it is not possible to prove God as an argument; God is not a syllogism.

You will have to go in search... of something you don't know at all... of something you cannot be certain of at all. In fact, that is the thrill of the search, that is the joy - that you are moving into something which may be, may not be, that you are gambling. But in that very gamble, you grow.

And in that growth, God comes closer. And if you go on searching and risking, one day suddenly you find that God is, ONLY God is.

Sannyas is a love affair. It is not something that has to be proved first, then you take it.

You ask, "WHY DO YOU GIVE SANNYAS TO ANYBODY.... "

Because to me, nobody is 'anybody'. To me, everybody is a potential Buddha. When I give you sannyas, I give it out of my respect for you, I give it out of my love for you. When I give sannyas, I am simply saying to you that I respect you, that you also should start respecting yourself.

Giving sannyas to you is simply an indication that your potential is great - a potential of which you are unaware. Don't think only that you are that which you are. You are more than that, and you will always remain more than that. That 'more' is inexhaustible.

That was the meaning of the story we were reading the other day: that treasure is inexhaustible.

That treasure is you!

Sannyas is a symbolic key. When I see the treasure in you, I am in a hurry to give the key to you.

I don't bother about whether you understand the meaning or not. How can you understand? To expect that would not be right. You have never tasted, how can you understand it? How are you going to understand it? - there is no way. It can be known only from the inside: you have to enter into it to know it.

I go on giving sannyas to each and everybody because each and everybody is divine. Each and everybody is there to become a god. That is everybody's destiny. You can delay it, but you cannot destroy it. Giving you sannyas means I am trying to hasten it. Giving you sannyas simply means I am persuading you not to postpone it any more. Giving you sannyas is nothing but helping you not to delay it any more. It can happen right now! Don't wait for tomorrow; tomorrow never comes. And tomorrow is a trick of the mind: through the tomorrows it goes on postponing.

Whenever I see a person coming to me, even if I see a SLIGHT possibility of opening, I am ready to give sannyas to him. It is out of great respect - because I see the Buddha inside. The Buddha has already waited too long, and you have not looked at it.

When I ask you to become a sannyasin I am saying: now the time has come, you take the plunge.

Try this new way of life. You have lived in the old way, nothing has happened out of it. Or whatsoever has happened has proved only superficial and futile. Try this way too.

I go on selling sannyas because I see once the key is in your hand, it will not 6e there long; sooner or later you will try it. While I am here it is more possible that you may try it. When I am gone, you will think about the beauty of the key - the diamonds on it, the gold of it, the value of it. You will create a philosophy about the key and the door will be forgotten.

I am the door!

By becoming a sannyasin you are simply showing a love towards me - that you are ready to go with me into the unknown, that you will not resist me, that you will not fight with me. If you are not a sannyasin you will remain an outsider; that is your decision. From the outside whatsoever you will know will not be the truth. These are not the things which can be known from the outside, these are the things you have to become a participant in to know. You have to fall en rapport with me; that's what sannyas is.

"WHY DO YOU GIVE SANNYAS TO ANYBODY, EVEN THOSE WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND THE MEANING?"

I have never given sannyas to anybody who understands the meaning, because that is impossible.

Where to find a man who understands the meaning? And if he understands the meaning, what is the point of giving him sannyas? He knows it already. If Buddha comes to me I will not give him sannyas. Or if Jesus comes to me, I will not give him sannyas: he understands the meaning, the journey is fulfilled. Because you don't understand - that's why I give sannyas! Now don't make it a condition.

My feeling is that Klaus Frietag must be thinking about sannyas and is afraid to take the jump without understanding it. Don't be so hung-up in the head; there are things of the heart too. And the heart has it's own reasons that the head is not aware of. Allow the heart. It is a heart phenomenon, it is not a conclusion of the head - that you think pro and con and you argue this way and that and then finally you come to a point when the mind says, "Yes, it is worth taking." It is a heart phenomenon:

you don't think pro and con, you simply look into my eyes, you sit by my side, you feel me, and you say, "Okay, it is worth risking." And you go into it. That is the right way to go into it.

I have given sannyas to those people also who have taken sannyas through a conclusion of their heads. They become sannyasins and yet they don't become. They miss, and they go on missing, because the very first step has been taken in a wrong direction. Anything that you decide with the head will not help you to go beyond the head. Let there be some decision in your life which is not of the head! Only that will be helpful.

Fall in love. Let sannyas happen through love.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

One can love the whole world. One should love. Love should not be in any way possessive. It should not be exclusive, it should be inclusive. Only when love is inclusive will you know what it is.

When love is exclusive, exclusively to one, you are narrowing it down so much that you will kill it.

You are destroying its infinity. You are trying to put the whole sky into such a small space; the small space cannot contain it.

One should be in love. Love should not be just a relationship, it should be a state of being. And whenever you love one, through the one you love the all. And if love has REALLY happened you will suddenly find that you have started loving trees and birds and the sky and people. When you have fallen in love with one man or one woman, what exactly has happened? When you fall in love with one woman you have fallen in love with all women. The one woman is just a representative, the one woman is just an example of all the women that have existed in the world, that are existing in the world and that will exist in the world. That one woman is just a door to womanhood. But the woman is not only a woman, she is a human being too. So you have fallen in love with all human beings. And the woman is not only a human being, she is a being too. So you have fallen in love with all beings. Once you fall in love you will be surprised that your love-energy is released towards all. That is true love.

Possessive love is not true love. It is so tiny, it suffocates itself and it suffocates the other too. But this has been so up to now: love has never been inclusive. You have been taught exclusive love.

Your mother says, "Love ME, I am your mother." Your father says, "Love ME, I am your father." Not only that, your father and mother sometimes - apparently in humor, but deep down not in humor - ask you whom you love more, "Me or your mother? Whom do you love more, me or your father?"

Now you are posing a wrong question to the child. To bring in the question of 'more' is stupid. Love is or love is not; there is no question of more or less. You are teaching a wrong arithmetic to the child. And the mother tries to be possessive. And then everybody tries to be possessive: "Love me, don't love anybody else." In fact, in the past the individual who could not be committed to a one- to-one relationship was considered neurotic. In fact, it is the individual committed to an exclusive relationship who is immature. To be in love only with one person is to be arrested at the infantile stage of parent fixation. One should be free to have many involvements, many relationships, many loves.

But that seems to be dangerous. It is dangerous only because it goes against our habits. And who created those habits? There is a subtle logic in those habits. Man has lived under an economy of scarcity: food has not been enough for all, houses have not been enough for all, clothes have not been enough for all. Man has lived down the ages under the economy of scarcity. Everything is scarce, and that has given the idea that love is also scarce. If you love two persons, naturally, both will be getting half and half. If you love three - more division. If you love thousands, love is spread so thin that it will be almost as if you don't love anybody.

It is not true about love. Love is inexhaustible, there is no question of scarcity. And you will be surprised that even people like Sigmund Freud think that there is scarcity even about love. Freud is against loving your neighbor or strangers. He's very much against Jesus' saying, "Love your neighbor." And his argument is the simple economic one - that if love is spread out it is spread thin.

Freud wrote: "To love thy neighbor is un-psychological." He also wrote "Such an enormous inflation of love can only lower its value." And in true Jewish and capitalist fashion, Freud assumed a scarcity- economy in the psyche: there was just so much libido, so much love, to go around, and one had to be careful where one invested it. This is utter nonsense. This is ABSOLUTELY wrong.

You don't have only so much libido, you have INFINITE libido. And because this idea has been put into your heads, you are suffering. That's why no lover seems to be satisfied, it is not possible - because love is so much that giving it to only one person will never satisfy you. You will feel unsatisfied. You could have given to the whole world. Now that which is not given remains there, and any energy that remains inside you, unexpressed, becomes destructive, turns into an enemy.

Let love flow. You are a well of love. Let people draw as much love as they can draw from you, and fresh waters will be coming in. You are joined with the infinite ocean.

Once man becomes aware of this phenomenon, that love is inexhaustible, that there is no scarcity, jealousy will disappear. Jealousy is part of the economy of scarcity.

Your wife becomes afraid if she sees you laughing with some other woman; now she knows you will not be laughing with her - so much laughter gone. There is only so much libido, so much laughter.

You have been smiling, so much smile wasted - now with her you will not be smiling. This is utter foolishness. In fact, if your husband has been smiling with other people, it is more possible that he will smile with you, because he has been practising smiling. If he remains closed to every other person that he comes across except you, he is practising closedness, so when he comes to you he is closed. It becomes habit, non-smiling becomes habit. If he cannot love anybody else other than you, then the whole day he is trying to be non-loving, remember it. He goes to the office, he is non-loving to his office colleagues. He goes with his friends, he is non-loving to his friends. He goes to the club, he is non-loving to the club people. He's practising non-love. Then he comes home full of his practise, that cultivated non-love, and he looks at you. How can he love you? He has forgotten what love means, he remains in his habit. By and by, the habit becomes a second nature.

You find people so unloving: the reason is they have all decided that love is scarce; you can't go on giving to each and everybody. But I say it to you from experience: I have been giving love to millions of people, and the more you give the more you have it.

Remember this too: that love need not always mean sexual, love need not always mean sensuous.

Love has many dimensions to it. It is a multi-faceted phenomenon. You can love music, you can love poetry. But have you seen it happening that if your wife finds that you are too much in love with music, she even becomes jealous of music? She may destroy your guitar, she may throw it out; the guitar seems to be a competitor. When you take your guitar, you touch your guitar as if the guitar is your beloved. And naturally when you love music and you love your guitar, the guitar is not just an instrument. It is not mechanical, it has a personality, it has a being. You look, you touch, with eyes full of love, with hands full of love. You hold your guitar close to your heart. It is alive! Love makes everything alive; whatsoever it touches it makes alive. Non-love makes everything dead; whatsoever it touches it makes it dead.

If you live in non-love you live in a dead world. If you live in love you live in an alive world.

But the wife will feel jealous. You never caress your wife - she will think - so lovingly as you caress your guitar. You never play on the body of your wife so lovingly as you play on your guitar; she is also carrying a music in her. Now she becomes jealous. She thinks, "This guitar is a competitor.

This guitar has to go."

If you are reading a beautiful book and. you are engrossed in it and the wife is clamoring for attention around you, she will throw your book. She will say, "This is too much! I am here, and you are reading?" Even love for a book can create jealousy. If the wife is a painter the husband feels jealous; he comes home and he sees the wife is painting.

But the whole phenomenon depends on one idea - very wrong-rooted, deep-rooted though it is, but absolutely wrong - that love is scarce. Save it, save it only for those you love, because you have only so much of it.

You don't have only so much of it. You have only as much of it as you give. By giving it you have it.

You cannot hoard love. The hoarder will not have anything. The hoarder will find he has no love. By hoarding, it dies. It lives only in sharing, it lives in communion. When it moves from one person to another person, it lives, and it gathers more and more energy. And the more flows out of you, the more capable you become of flowing it. You become a bigger and bigger channel for God to flow into the world.

You ask, "CAN ONE LOVE MORE THAN ONE PERSON?"

Now remember, if you love only one person you are not very far away from becoming a monk - just one person you have to drop. The step, a single step, and the householder becomes a monk. And when you have only so much love, why give it even to one person? Why not keep it for yourself?

The logic is the same. If you go to the logical conclusion, then the monk seems to be the right person. Why bother even with a wife or a friend or a husband? Why? Why not go to Mount Athos, to a Catholic monastery or to a Hindu monastery, and disappear behind the mountain and keep it for yourself? But do you think the monk has any love?

Why has this idea arisen in the religions? - that you have to disappear from the world? - the same concept of scarcity: that if you give love to the world, to people, how will you give to God? The same idea: if you give it to your wife, then how will you give it to your God? So disappear from the world.

Don't give it to your wife, don't give it to your child, otherwise you have only so much of it. Collect all your love and escape into a monastery and give it all to God.

It is stupid. You will not be able to give, because to give to God, the only way is to give to the world. God is hidden here. God does not live hidden there in some monastery. He is spread all over existence, in the rocks, in the rivers, in the mountains. You give! Learn to give, and you will have so many new sources opening up.

I agree with Anatole France who said, "Of all the perversions, chastity is the strangest." Chastity is a kind of miserliness: don't give love to anybody. And when you contain all, people think you are chaste; you are not. You are simply poisoned.

Chastity arises out of love, giving of love. The chaste person is one who goes on flowing in love unconditionally. The chaste person is one whose love is no more a relationship but a state of his being. Even while asleep he vibrates in love. All his life, the whole of his life is love-filled. He overflows in love. That person is chaste. Infinity of love brings chastity.

But the old concept is that if you prevent all love moving from your heart you will be chaste. You will not be chaste, you will be simply dead. You will become simply neurotic, you will be perverted.

The last question:

Question 6:

Sheela, that's precisely its purpose - to scare you to death.

To tell you the truth, to me, all people are right people. I have never come across a wrong person. I have no judgement. How can I decide who is right, who is wrong? Who am I to decide who is right, who is wrong? I am a non-judgemental consciousness. So when I talk about choosing the right people, that is just to scare you. It is a device.

That will help to make you more alert.

I frighten you many times because that is the only way I can help you to become more conscious.

Only in fear are you a little less sleepy. When I simply put a naked sword on your chest, then you open your eyes and say, "What is the matter?" Otherwise you are fast asleep and snoring.

And Sheela is one of the most asleep. Even here she goes on sleeping. One thing is good about her: she does not snore, because that is bad - that disturbs other people's sleep!