Ego's attraction

The first question:

THERE IS NO conflict, but you can create a conflict. Even where no conflict exists the mind creates the conflict, because the mind cannot exist without being in conflict.

Being loose and natural will give you a spontaneous awareness. There is no need to make any effort for awareness; it will follow like a shadow. If you are loose and natural, it will come. There is no need to make any other effort for it because being loose and natural automatically flowers in being aware. Or, if you are aware, then you will become loose and natural. They both go together. But if you try for both, then you will create the conflict. There is no need to try for both together.

What does it mean when I say: Be loose and natural? It means: make no effort. Just be whatsoever you are. If you are unaware, then be unaware because that is what you are in your loose and natural state. Be unaware. If you make any effort, then how can you be loose and natural? Simply relax, and accept whatsoever is the case, and accept your acceptance also. Don't move from there. A time will pass before things settle down. In that transitory period, you may not be aware because things are settling. Once things are settled and the flow is natural, you will be suddenly surprised. Unexpectedly, one morning you find you are aware - no need to make any effort.

Or, if you are working through awareness - and both the methods are different, they start from different standpoints - then don't think of being loose and natural. You simply work it out through your effort to be aware. It will take a long time... when awareness becomes natural and no effort is needed. Unless this point comes where no effort is needed, awareness has not been attained yet. When you can forget about all efforts and simply be aware, then only have you achieved it. Then, just by the side, you will find the phyenomenon of being loose and natural. They come together. They always happen together. They are two aspects of the same phenomenon, but you cannot work them out together.

It is just like one is climbing up a mountain. There are many paths; they all reach to the top, they all culminate in the top. But you cannot walk on two paths together. If you try, you will go mad and you will never reach to the top. How can you walk on two paths together and knowing well that they all lead to the same top? But one has to walk only one. Finally, when one reaches to the top, he will find all the paths have culminated in it. For walking choose always one path. Of course, when you reach, all the paths will reach to the4 same point, to the same peak.

To be aware is a different type of process. Buddha followed it. He called it self-remembering or right-mindfulness. In this age another Buddha, George Gurdjieff, followed it; he called it self- remembering. Another Buddha, Krishnamurti, goes on talking about awareness, alertness. This is one path. Tilopa belongs to another path, the path of being loose and natural - not even bothering about awareness - just being whatsoever you are, not making any effort for any improvement. And I tell you, Tilopa's standpoint is higher than Buddha, Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti, because he creates no conflict. He simply says,'first be whatsoever you are." Not even spiritual effort... because that too is part of the ego. Who is trying to improve? Who is trying to be aware? Who is trying to attain enlightenment? Who is this inside you? - it is again the same ego. The same ego which was trying to become the president of a country or the prime minister, now is trying to attain buddhahood.

Buddha himself has called enlightenment "the last nightmare". Enlightenment, the last nightmare, because it is again a dream... And not only is it a dream but a nightmare, because you suffer through it. Tilopa's standpoint is the ultimate standpoint. If you can understand it, then no effort is needed of any sort. You simply relax and be, and everything follows on its own accord. One has simply to be non-doing: sitting quietly, and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

The second question:

First thing: never! - nobody who knows has ever taught suppression.

Second: never anybody has attained through it.

But everywhere false coins exist. The way of being natural is very simple, but looks very difficult for you because the ego wants something difficult to struggle with, to be challenged by, to conquer it. The ego exists through constant challenge. If something is absolutely simple, the ego flops down. If you have nothing to do but sit quietly and silently and let things be, and let things move where they are moving, no activity on your part, then when and how the ego will exist? There is no possibility.

In being loose and natural, the ego flops down completely, immediately. It disappears because ego needs constant activity. Ego is just like going on a bicycle: you have to pedal it continuously. If you stop pedaling, it may go for few feet or few yards because of the past momentum, but it has to fall down. The cycle and the rider both will fall down. The cycle needs constant pedaling. Even if you pedal very slowly, you will fall down. It needs a certain continuous feeding of energy.

Ego is just like cycling - you have to feed it continuously: this challenge, that challenge, this activity, that activity - something has to be attained. The Everest has to be conquered, you have to reach to the moon - something always in the future. You have to pedal, and then the ego exists. The ego exists in activity... Inactivity, simply the cycle falls down, and the rider also. Immediately the whole activity disappears and with it the ego.

That's why simple things look difficult for the ego, and difficult things look simple. If I tell you that the path is very, very arduous, you will be immediately ready to follow. If I say it is very simple, it is so simple that you need not even take a single step, it is so simple that you need not go anywhere, just sit in your house and it will haD en. You will simply forget about me and what I am saying. You will simply move away from me as if you have not listened at all. You will go to somebody who is talking some nonsense and creating some difficulty for you. That's why suppression came into existence, because that is the most difficult thing in the world, to suppress -almost impossible because it never succeeds, it is always a failure.

How can you suppress a part of your being by another part? It is just like trying to win by your right hand trying to defeat your left hand. You can pretend. After a little activity you can pretend that the right is on top and the left is suppressed. But do you think it is suppressed or it is conquered? How can you conquer a part of your own being by another part? - just pretensions. If you suppress sex, the brahmacharya will be a pretension, a hypocrisy. It is just the right hand Lying and waiting there, helping you to pretend. Any moment it can upset everything again - and it will upset. That which you have conquered has to be conquered again and again, because it is never a real victory. And in the end, you find that you have been fighting the whole life and nothing has been achieved. In fact, only you will be defeated, nothing else. Your whole life will be defeated.

No Master who knows, no Master who is enlightened has ever preached suppression. But they have preached something which can look like suppression to people who don't know, so let me make the distinction clear. For example - the distinction is very subtle - Buddha and Mahavira both have taught about fasting, both have taught about brahmacharya, celibacy. Are they teaching suppression? They cannot, and they are not teaching.

When Buddha says, "Go on a fast," what he means? Suppress your hunger? - no. He says, "Watch your hunger." The body will say, "I am hungry." You simply sit inside your being and watch. Don't do anything either to feed the body or to suppress the hunger. You simply watch the hunger. No activity is needed on your part, and suppression is an activity. When you suppress the hunger, what you will do? You will not be able to watch it. In fact, that is the only thing that you will avoid.

A person who wants to suppress the hunger and who has gone on a fast, as Jains go every year, what they will do? They will try to distract the mind somewhere else so that the hunger is not felt. They will chant mantras, or they will go to the temple and recite sutras, or they will go to their religious leader to listen him, so that the mind is engaged, and they need not pay attention to the hunger which is there. This is suppression. Suppression means: something is there and you don't look at it and you pretend as if it is not there. So if you are occupied deeply in the mind, then the hunger cannot penetrate and cannot bring your attention to itself. The hunger will go on knocking on the door but you are reciting a mantra so loudly that you don't hear the knock. Suppression means distracting your mind from the reality of your being.

You have taken a vow of celibacy or you have taken the life of a brahmachari; now what you will do when the sex desire arises and a beautiful woman passes by? You will start chanting the mantra: Ram, Ram, Ram. You are avoiding. You are pulling a curtain over your eyes. You are pretending as if the woman is not there. But the woman is there and that's why you are chanting the name of Rama, and so loudly.

In India, people have to take a morning bath. In my village there is a very beautiful lake, a river, and people go there to take their morning bath. There, in my childhood, for the first time I became aware of the trick of suppression. The river is cold - particularly in winter - people go to take their bath... In summer also I watched them taking their bath, and they will not chant: Rama, Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna. But in winter, because the river is so cold, and they chant so loudly they forget the river. They take a dip and they are out. Their mind is engaged in chanting. Colder the morning, greater will be the chanting on the God.

In my childhood, watching people there, for the first time I became aware of the trick - what they are doing. I see the same persons taking their baths in summer and they don't bother about Rama, Hari Krishna, or anybody. But in winter suddenly they become religious? They have learned a trick - how to avoid a fact, and the fact is there knocking and kicking and alive.

Turn your mind somewhere else: have you seen people going through a lonely street in the night when it is dark? They start singing a song, or whistling, or humming. What they are doing? - the same trick. Humming, they forget the darkness. Loudly singing a song they listen to their own voice and feel that they are not alone. The voice gives a feeling that they are not alone Surrounded by their own voice, the darkness has disappeared for them. Otherwise, if they move silently into a lonely street in the night, their own footsteps create fear, as if somebody is following. This is a simple trick

Mahavira and Buddha cannot talk and cannot teach such deceptions. They teach about fasting, but their fasting is totally, qualitatively different. On the surface both the fasters will be the same, but deep down the difference exists. Deep down, a person who is following Mahavira or Buddha will fast and will not do any activity in the mind. He will watch and he will pay all attention to hunger. And then arises a very, very beautiful phenomenon: if you pay attention to hunger, it disappears. Without any food, it disappears. Why? What happens in paying attention to hunger?

When sex desire arises, one simply pays total attention to it, not judging, not saying this is good or bad not saying this is evil, not saying that this is a provocation from the devil. No - no evaluation at all because all valuation belongs to the mind and witnessing is not of the mind. Good, bad - distinctions all belong to the mind, and the witnessing is undivided, one. It is neither good nor bad, it simply is. One pays attention to hunger or to the sex desire, total attention - and total attention is such an energy, it is fire-the hunger simply is burned, the sex desire is simply burned. What happens? What is the mechanism inside?

You feel hunger. In fact, you have never been hungry. The body has been hungry, you have never been hungry. But you are identified with the body that, "I am the body." That's why you feel you are hungry. When you pay attention to hunger a distance is created, the identity breaks down. The identification is no more there. You are no more the body; the body is hungry and you are the watcher. And suddenly a blissful freedom arises in you that "I am not the body, I have never been the body. The body is hungry; I am not hungry."

The bridge is broken - you are separate.

The body has a desire for sex because the body has come out of sex. The body has a desire for sex because every cell of the body is sexual. Your mother and your father, in a deep sexual activity, have created your body. The first cells of your body came out of deep sexual passion; they carry the quality of it. And those cells have been multiplying themselves; that's how your whole body is created. Your whole body is sex passion. The desire arises. It is natural for the body, nothing is wrong in it. The body is sexual energy and nothing else.

Brahmacharya is not possible for the body. Sexuality is natural for the body. Sexuality is natural for the body, and for you, only brahmacharya is natural; sex is unnatural, absolutely unnatural. That's why we call celibacy brahmacharya. The English word celibacy is not very good. It is very ordinary, cheap. It doesn't carry the sense of brahmacharya. Brahmacharya is derived from the root brahma. The word brahmacharya means that you have come to attain, you have come to know that you are the brahma, the ultimate, the divine - God himself you are.

When one starts feeling this, that one is God himself then there is real celibacy. Because then there is no problem. And what happens, what is miraculous... when you are separate, when the bridge is broken, you are not identified with the body, you don't say, "I am the body," you say, "I am in the body, but not the body. I live in this house but I am not the house. I am in these clothes but the clothes are not me." When you have come to attain this - and I say attain because intellectually you know it already, that is not the point; you have not realized it. When you realize in deep attention to hunger, or to sex, or anything - you realize, suddenly the bridge disappears between the body and the embodied soul. When the gap is there and you have become a witness, then the body lives through your cooperation.

The body cannot live without your cooperation. That is what happens when the body dies: the body is absolutely the same, only your cooperation is no more there. You have gone out of the house, that's why the body is dead. Otherwise, nobody is ever dead. The body is the same, but the body depended on your energy. Continuously, you have to feed energy to the body. It exists with your cooperation; it has no existence of its own. It is through you it is together. Otherwise it will fall apart. You are the center and the crystallizing factor in it.

When in hunger, one watches the hunger, the cooperation is not there. It is a temporary death. You are not supporting the body. When you are not supporting the body, how the body can feel hunger? - because the body cannot feel anything; the feeling is of your being. Hunger may be there in the body but the body cannot feel, it has no feelers.

Now, just within this decade, brain surgeons have become aware of a certain very mysterious phenomenon: that the brain, which feels everything, has no feeling in its own nervous system.

You can be lying completely awake on the brain surgeon's table, and your head can be opened and he can cut your brain tissues - you will not feel. No need for any anesthesia. He can make a window in the head, he can drill a hole in the head; you will feel the drilling just on the skull, but once he reaches the inside there is no feeling at all. If he cuts your whole brain completely you would not know, and you are perfectly aware.

Many people in the West are moving with many parts cut - they don't know. Many people are moving with certain electrodes fixed in their brain - they don't know and they cannot feel... A stone can be put in your head, inside, and you will never feel that it is there, because in the brain there is no feeling. From where the feeling comes then?

The brain is the subtlest part of the body, the most delicate; even that has no feeling. The feeling comes from your being. It is borrowed by the body. The body has no feeling of its own. Once you watch hunger - and if the watching is real, authentic, and you don't avoid - hunger disappears.

The fasting of a Mahavira or a Buddha is a totally different fasting from the fasting of Jains and Buddhists. The brahmacharya of Mahavira is totally different than the brahmacharya of Jain monks. Mahavira is not avoiding it, he is simply watching it. Watching, it disappears. Witnessing, it is not found there. Avoiding, it follows you. In fact, not only follows you, it haunts you. No yoga teaches suppression - cannot teach - but there are yogis who teach. They are teachers; they have not realized their innermost being. So there exists not even a single person who can attain to buddhahood through suppression. It is not possible, it is simply not possible. Through awareness one achieves, not through suppression.

The third question:

This is what I was talking about. If you feel pain, be attentive to it, don't do anything. Attention is the great sword - it cuts everything. You simply pay attention to the pain.

For example, you are sitting in the last part of the meditation silently, unmoving, and you feel many problems in the body. You feel the leg is going dead, there is some itching in the hand, you feel ants are creeping on the body and many times you have looked - there are no ants. The creeping is inside, not outside. What you should do? You feel the leg is going dead - be watchful just give your total attention to it. You feel itching - don't itch. That will not help. You just pay your attention. Don't open even your eyes. Just pay your attention inwardly, and just wait and watch, and within seconds the itching has disappeared. Whatsoever happens - even if you feel pain, severe pain in the stomach or in the head, it is possible because in meditation the whole body changes. It changes its chemistry. New things start happening; the body is in a chaos. Sometimes the stomach will be affected, because in the stomach you have suppressed many emotions, and they are all stirred. Sometimes you will feel like vomiting, nausea. Sometimes you will feel a severe pain in the head because the meditation is changing the inner structure of your brain. You are really in a chaos passing through meditation. Soon things will settle. But for the time being, everything will be unsettled.

So what are you to do? You simply see the pain in the head; watch it. You be a watcher. You just forget that you are a doer, and by and by, everything subsides and subsides so beautifully and so gracefully that you cannot believe unless you know it. And not only that the pain disappears from the head - because the energy which was creating pain, if it is watched... pain disappears and the same energy becomes pleasure. The energy is the same.

Pain or pleasure are two dimensions of the same energy. And if you can remain silently sitting and paying attention to distractions, all distractions disappear. And when all distractions disappear, you will suddenly become aware that the whole body has disappeared.

In fact, what was happening? Why these things were happening? - and when you don't meditate they don't happen. The whole day you are there and the hand never itches, the head has no pain, and the stomach is perfect, and the legs are okay. Everything is okay. What was really happening? Why in meditation these things start suddenly?

The body has remained the master for long, and in meditation you are throwing the body out of its mastery. You are dethroning it. It clings; it tries in every way to remain the master. It will create many things to distract you so the meditation is lost. You are thrown off balance and the body is again on the throne. Up to now, the body has remained the master and you have been a slave. Through meditation, you are changing the whole thing; it is a great revolution. And of course, no ruler wants to be thrown out of his power. The body plays politics - that's what is happening. When she creates imaginary pain, itching, ants creeping, the body is trying to distract you. And it is natural, because the body has remained in rule for so long; for many lives it has been the emperor and you have been the slave. Now you are changing everything upside down. You are reclaiming your throne, and it is natural the body will try whatsoever it can do to disturb you. If you get disturbed, you are lost. Ordinarily, people suppress these things. They will start chanting a mantra; they will not look at the body.

I am not teaching you any sort of suppression. Only awareness I teach. You just watch, pay attention, and because it is false, immediately it will disappear. When all the pains and itches and ants have disappeared and the body has settled in its right place of being a slave, suddenly arises so much bliss you cannot contain it. Suddenly arises so much celebration in the being, you cannot express it; you are overflowing with a peace that passeth understanding, a bliss which is not of this world.

The fourth question:

All your attempts always end in misery. Not only attempts made towards love - all your attempts, unconditionally, end in misery, because all attempts come out of the ego. No effort is going to succeed because the doer is the cause of all misery. If you can be in love without the lover being there, then there will be no misery.

Very very difficult it seems: how to be in love without the lover being there? The lover causes misery, not love. The lover starts things which end into a hell. All lovers fail, and I make no exception, but love never fails. So you have to understand: you should not be there in your love. Love should be there, but without any ego in it. You should walk, but the walker should not be there. You should eat, but the eater should not be there. You should do whatsoever is required, but the doer should not be there.

This is the whole discipline. This is the only discipline of religion. A religious man is not one who belongs to any religion. In fact, a religious man never belongs to any religion. A religious man is one who has dropped the doer and lives naturally, and is just there.

Then love has a different quality - it is not possessive, it is not jealous. It simply gives. It is not a bargain; you don't trade in it. It is not a commodity, it is an overflowing of your being. You share it. In fact, in that state of being where love exists and not the lover, it is not that you are in love with someone and not in love with someone else, you are simply in love. It is not a question of objects.

It is just like breathing. With whom you breathe you simply breathe. Whosoever is with you is not the case, and just like that, with whom you are in love becomes irrelevant, you are simply in love - whosoever is with you! Or, there may be nobody. You may be sitting in an empty room, but the love goes on flowing. Now love is not an activity, it is your being. You cannot put it on and off - it is you. This is the paradox.

When you disappear, then love is you; when you are not, then only love is. Finally, you completely forget about love, because who is there to remember it? Then love is just like a flower blooms, the sun rises, the stars fill the night sky - just it happens. Even if you touch a rock, you touch it lovingly. That has become your being.

That is the meaning of Jesus' saying, "Love your enemies." It is not a question of loving the enemies, it is becoming love. Then you cannot do anything else. Even if the enemy comes, you have to love. There is nothing else to do. Hate is so foolish that it can exist only with the ego. Hate is foolish because you are harming the other, and harming yourself more than the other. It is foolish because all the harm that you do will come to you back. Many times more it will come back to you. You will be crushed under the fallout. It is simply foolish, idiotic. All sins are foolish and idiotic.

That's why in the East we know only one sin, and that is ignorance. All else is just a by-product. When I speak about love, I speak about that love where the lover is not. And if your love is bringing you misery, know well it is not love. It is your ego that brings the misery. Ego poisons everything, whatsoever you touch. It is just like King Midas: whatsoever he touches becomes gold. Ego is just like King Midas - whatsoever it touches becomes poison. And you know in what difficulties and trouble Midas fell! And things were turning into gold, and even then he became miserable, as miserable as any man has ever been on this earth. He touched his daughter whom he loved, and she became gold. He touched his wife and she became gold. He will touch the food and the food will become gold. He couldn't drink, he couldn't eat, he couldn't sleep, he couldn't love, he couldn't move. His own relatives escaped. Servants will stand far away, because if they come near and by chance he touches, they will be gold. King Midas must have gone absolutely crazy.

So what about you? Whatsoever you touch becomes poison. Even when everything turns into gold a hell is created. What about you? - you touch and things become poisonous. You live in misery, but you have to find the cause. The cause is within you: the doer, the ego, the "I". But you will have to pass through it. You cannot learn out of my experience.

In Zen they say that whether the water is hot or cold, only if you drink then you know. My saying that the ego transforms everything into poison will not be of much help. You have to watch. You have to be on lookout. You have to feel and understand your own ego - what it has done to you.

But ego is very tricky. It always says... whenever you are in misery it always says somebody else has caused it. That's the trick how ego protects itself. If you are in misery, you never think that it is you - it is always somebody else. Husband is in misery because the wife is creating; the wife is in misery because the husband is creating the misery - ego always throws the responsibility on the other - the father is in misery because of the son.

I have seen people who are in misery because they have children, and I have seen people - they are in misery because they don't have children. I see people in misery who are in love - their relationship is causing them much trouble, turmoil, anguish - and I see people in misery who are not in love, because without love they are miserable. It seems you are absolutely determined to be in misery. Whatsoever the case, you create misery. But you never look within. Something must be inside which causes it - that ego that you think you are, the idea of the self. Greater the idea of the self, the greater will be the misery.

Children are less in misery because their egos are yet not developed, and then, their whole life people go on thinking that life was a paradise in childhood. The only reason is simple: that the ego needs time to develop. Children don't have much egos. If you try to remember your past you will find a barrier somewhere. At the age of four or at the age of three suddenly memory stops there. Why?

Psychoanalysts have been probing the mystery and now they have come to a conclusion. They say because the ego was not there, so who will collect the memories The collector was not there. Things happened, experience happened, because a child is not a blank sheet up to the age of three. Millions of things have happened. And for a child, more things happen than for an old man, because the child is more curious, and each small thing is a great thing. Millions of things have happened in those three years, but because the ego was not there, there is no trace left. If the child is hypnotized, he can remember. He can go beyond the barrier.

In many experiments, hypnotized persons have remembered not only things that happened after birth, but things that happened before birth, when they were in the womb of the mother. The mother was ill, or had a severe stomach-ache, and the child suffered. Or, when the child was in the mother's womb, grown seven months or eight months and the mother had made love, the child remembers it. Because when a woman makes love, the child suffocates inside.

So in the East it has been completely prohibited. When the mother is pregnant love should not be made - any sexual activity is dangerous for the child, because the child depends for his breathing on the mother. The oxygen is supplied by the mother, and when the mother is in sexual activity, her rhythm of breathing is lost. The continuous rhythm is no more there; the child suffocates, not knowing what is happening. While making sex, more oxygen is absorbed by the mother - now these are scientific facts - and when more oxygen is absorbed by the mother, the child cannot get the oxygen. Sometimes even death is possible; the child may die. The child remembers all these things. You also remember all these things; they are there, but because the ego was not there, they have not become a burden on you.

An enlightened person remembers things just like this. He has no center to remember. He has accumulated memory but it is not a burden. If he wants, he can look in the memory and find a thing out of it, but he is not burdened. Memories don't come by themselves to him. He can check, he can find, but normally he remains like an empty sky. Nothing comes by itself.

You will be held by your own experience, not by what I say. Look at the misery and always try to find out the cause, and you will find the cause within yourself. Once you find the cause is inside, the point of transformation has reached to its maturity. Now you can turn over, now you can change - you are ready. While you go on throwing responsibility on others no change is possible. Once you realize that you are responsible for all the misery that you have created - you are your own hell - that every moment a great turning happens. Immediately, you become your own heaven.

That's why I tell you to move into relationship, into the world; to experience, to become mature, to ripen, to become seasoned. Only then whatsoever I am saying will be meaningful to you. Otherwise, intellectually you will understand but existentially you will miss.

The fifth question:

You don't understand me at all. You are not required to be a lover to me. I am not required to be a lover to you. But I understand your difficulty. You cannot understand that love is possible without being a lover. You can love me without being a lover to me; that is the highest kind of love, the purest love.

And this has to be understood, because between a Master and a disciple the relationship is not of this world. He is neither your father nor your brother, neither your husband nor your wife, neither your child. No, all the relationships that exist in the world are irrelevant between a Master and disciple. In a sense he is all, and in a sense none. In a certain sense he may be fatherly. In a certain sense he may be just like a child to you. When I say in a certain sense he will be fatherly to you, he may not be older than you; he may be very young, but in a certain sense he will be fatherly to you because he gives and you receive. And because he lives on a hilltop and you live in the valley, he may not be older than you in time, but he is infinitely older than you in eternity. And in a certain sense he will be just like a child to you, because he has become again a child. The relationship is very complicated, very complex. He cannot be a husband to you because he cannot possess you and he cannot be possessed by you. But in a certain sense, he is like a husband. Without his possessing you, you are possessed. Without any effort on his part, your attitude towards him is bound to be like that of a beloved. Because the relationship between a Master and a disciple is bound to be in such a way that the disciple has to be feminine, because he is the receiver and he has to be open. In fact, he has to become pregnant with the Master. Only then rebirth will be possible.

In a certain other sense a Master is like a wife because he is so soft. All corners have disappeared in his life. He has become more and more round, and round, and round. Even in his body, in his being, he is more feminine. That's why Buddha looks more feminine.

Nietzsche criticized Buddha only because of this: that he is a feminine man. Nietzsche said that he created the whole feminity of India, because for Nietzsche, the male is the powerful element - feminine means weak. And in a certain sense he is right, because Buddha is feminine, but he is not weak. Or, weakness has its own power which no power can ever have. A child is weak, but a child has power no old man can have.

A stone is very strong, and just by the side of the rock is a flower - very weak. But a flower has a power which no rock can ever have. The flower is certainly weak: in the morning it comes, by the evening it is gone. It is so transitory, it is so temporal, so momentary. But a flower has a power of a different dimension, of a different quality because it is so alive. In fact, it dies so soon because it lives so intensely. The very intensity of life in a flower exhausts it by the evening. The rock goes on living because it lives so lukewarm. The life is not intense: very sluggish, lazy, sleepy. The rock sleeps, the flower lives.

A Master is weak in a certain sense because his weakness is his own power. He is feminine in a certain sense because all aggression is gone, all violence disappeared. He is more like a mother than like a father. The thing is very complex and nobody is required to be a lover, but everybody is required to be in love.

How cold! Just right? Just right is not enough. Unless I am more than right for you, nothing will happen. Just right is too calculated; just right is less than enough. Just right means only on the periphery I meet with you, not on the center. And when you say, "You are just right for me,N this relationship cannot be of the heart. It is just of the mind - calculating, clever, cunning, safeguarding, side by side, not moving in the dangerous heart relationship, remaining on the periphery always ready to escape. That's what it means: "just right" - and just right has no energy in it, it is cold.

So if you cannot grow out of this, then it is better to leave me, because nothing will happen. You don't have enough energy. And if you are not moving fast towards me I cannot move towards you. That is not possible; you have to move. The relationship between a disciple and Master is not a calculated relationship. When the Master becomes the only Master for you - not that he is the only Master, there are many, but that is not the point - when for a disciple the Master becomes the ONLY Master, when the whole history, past and future, becomes pale before this man, everything fades away and only this man remains in your heart, only then something is possible.

Because of this, many problems arise. Somebody falls in love with Buddha. Then he says Buddha is the only enlightened man. Then he says, "Okay - Jesus is there, Krishna is there, but not like Buddha." Then Jesus and Krishna are thrown on the periphery. In the center, in the very heart of the shrine, or, in the shrine of the heart, only Buddha exists. For the disciple it is perfectly true. Then somebody falls in love with Jesus, then Jesus comes to the center; Buddha, Mahavira and Mohammed all are on the periphery. When a Master becomes like a sun and you move around him like an earth, like a planet, he becomes your center, the very center of your life. Only then something is possible, never before it.

Just right is not right at all. Just right means almost wrong. Try to get out of the trap of just right. Overflowing, if you come to me, only then will you find me. Running, if you come to me, running as fast as you can, only then will you find me. Headlong, if you jump into me, only then will you find me. It is too businesslike when you say, "Just right". Either grow out of it or move away from me. Maybe somewhere else with somebody else, you can fall in love. Because it is not a question of whether you fall in love with Master A or Master B or Master C - it is not a question. The question is you fall in love. Wheresoever it happens, move there. If the relationship is just right, then I am not your Master, then you are not my disciple.

No, it is not because of your hang-ups about men. It is because of you, your ego, and your hang-ups about men are because of your ego also; they too are because of that. If a woman cannot surrender to any man, it is not because men are lacking or men are not there. It is only because the woman has not grown, because only a grown-up can surrender because only a grown-up can be courageous enough to surrender. The woman has remained childish, retarded. Then with every man there will be problem.

And if you cannot surrender in love, it will be very difficult for you to surrender at all. With a Master also there is a surrender, and a greater surrender than any man can ever demand or any woman can ever demand. Because a man demands the surrender of your body, if he is only related to you because of sex. If he loves you also, then he demands the surrender of your mind. But a Master demands you - mind, body, soul - your total being. Less than that will not do.

There are three possibilities. Whenever you come to a Master, the first possibility is to be related with him intellectually, through the head. That is not much. You may like his ideas but that doesn't mean that you like him. Liking the ideas, his attitudes, is not liking him. You can take the ideas separate. There is no need to fall in any relationship with the Master. This is what is happening to the questioner: the relationship is intellectual; that's why it is "just right".

There is another possibility: you fall in love with the heart. Then there is no question what he says; the question is he himself. If you are intellectually related to me, sooner or later you will have to go away. Because I will go on contradicting myself - one idea suits you, another may not suit. This idea you like, that idea you don't like - and I will go on contradicting. And I contradict for a particular reason: because I want only those people around me who are in love, not those who are intellectually convinced by me. To throw them away I have to remain continuously paradoxical.

This is a screening, a very subtle screening. I never say to you that "Go away." You simply go on your own. And you feel good because this man was contradictory so you have left. Only those who are related to me with their heart will not bother about the contradictions. They will not bother what I say; they look directly to me. They know me, so I cannot deceive them. They know me directly, not through what I say - saying is not very important.

Look at the distinction: a person who is convinced by my ideas is related to me through the ideas; a person who is in love with me may be related to my ideas, but through me, and that makes a great difference.

Then there is a third type of relationship which is possible only after the second type of relationship has happened. When you are really in love, love becomes so natural, it disappears. When I say "disappears" I don't mean that it disappears, I only mean that you are no more aware that it is there. Are you aware of your breathing? When something goes wrong, yes - when you are running fast and breathing is hard and you are out of breath, yes. But when you are resting in your chair and everything is good, are you aware of the breathing? No, there is no need. When there is a headache only then you become aware of head, something goes wrong. When the head is perfectly healthy, you are headless. This is the definition of health: when the body is perfectly healthy, you don't know it... as if it is not there; you become bodiless. And this is the definition of perfect love also. Love is the ultimate, the highest health, because love makes one whole. When you love a Master, by and by, you completely forget about love. It has become so natural, like breathing.

Then a third type of relationship comes into being which is neither of the head nor of the heart, but of the being itself. Heart and head are two layers; hidden behind them is the center of your being. You may call it the atma, the self, the soul or whatsoever you like. Because there, no distinction of words is anymore meaningful. You can call it no-self, anatma - that will also do. Head is the beginning; don't get stuck there. Heart is the passage - pass through it, but don't make a house there also. Being to being - there are no boundaries then. Then in fact, the disciple and the Master are not two. They exist as two, but one consciousness flows from one shore to another.

The sixth question:

Yes, a child is in meditation. But this meditation is because of ignorance; it will have to go. That which you have not earned cannot remain with you. Only that which you have earned becomes yours. The child is meditative because he is ignorant. He has not many thoughts to distract. The child is meditative because naturally, wherever the mind finds pleasure, he allows the mind to move.

In fact, the child is still not part of the society. The child is still primitive, animal-like. But the seed is growing. Sooner or later he will be in the society. And then, all meditation will be lost, the innocence of childhood will be lost. The child is in the garden of Eden just like Adam and Eve. They will have to fall. They will have to commit sin. They will have to be thrown into the world, because only out of the experience of the world a meditation arises which is seasoned, which cannot be lost.

So there are two types of innocence: one because of ignorance, another because of awareness. Buddha is childlike, and all children are Buddha-like, but a vast difference exists. All children will be lost into the world. They need experience, they need being thrown into the world. And through their experience if they attain to meditation, innocence and childhood again, then nobody can throw them. Now it is out of experience they have learned it. It is no more through ignorance, it is through their own experiencing. Now it is their own treasure.

If everything goes right, then you will become children again at the end of your life. And that is the goal of all religions. And that is the meaning of rebirth; that is the meaning of Christian resurrection. Resurrection is not of the body, it is of the soul. Again one becomes like a child; again one is innocent, but this innocence is based, rooted in experience. If you die without becoming a child again, you lived your life in a futile way; you lived uselessly. You simply wasted the opportunity. And you will have to come back again - the whole will go on throwing again and again...

This is the whole doctrine of reincarnation: that unless you learn it by yourself, the whole is not satisfied with you. Unless you become a child in your own right - not because of your body but because of your being: if the innocence is attained by you, and the innocence is attained in spite of all distractions, in spite of all that was there to destroy it - you will have to be thrown back again and again and again.

Life is a learning; it is a discipline. So not only you, but every child has been meditative, and then it is lost. And a child is not lost because of others, but there is an intrinsic necessity; he has to lose that innocence. That is not deep enough. It cannot pass through distractions. It is shallow.

You just think about it: a child is innocent but very shallow. He has no depth. All his emotions are shallow. This moment he loves, next moment he hates. This moment he is angry, next moment he is forgiving, completely has forgotten. He lives very shallow life, uprooted - he has no depth. Depth comes through experience.

A Buddha has a depth, infinite depth. On the surface just like the child, but in the depth of his being not at all like a child. All the experience of many lives has seasoned him. Nothing can distract him, nothing can destroy his innocence - nothing, absolutely nothing. Now his innocence is so deep- rooted that storms may come - in fact, they are welcome-and the tree will not be uprooted. It will enjoy the coming of the storm. It will enjoy the very effort of the storm to uproot it, and when the storm has passed, it will be stronger for that, not weaker.

This is the difference: a childhood innocence is a gift of nature; the innocence that you attain through your own effort is not a gift of nature, you have earned it. And always remember that whatsoever you have earned is yours. No theft is possible in existence, no robbery, no stealing. And you cannot borrow it from anybody else.

The seventh question:

Many questions have been asked about dreams. Somebody has asked,

Yes, visions are dreams, not of this world, but of the other world. Sometimes you have visions, and if you meditate, you will have more and more. They will become, for the time being, the very usual phenomenon.

So, somebody has asked:

Yes, they are dreams not of this world but of the other world; they are higher dreams. They are concerned not with things, but your inner phenomena. But still they are dreams so don't cling to them. One has to go beyond them also. If you see a Buddha in your vision, remember that this Buddha is also part of the dream - of course, beautiful, spiritual, very, very helpful in your search - but don't cling to it.

Zen Masters have been saying for centuries that if you meet a Buddha kill him immediately! Don't wait for a single moment. If you don't kill him, he will kill you. And they are right.

Visions are beautiful, but if you start enjoying them too much they can be dangerous. Then you are again stuck with some experience. And when you see Buddha it is really beautiful and it looks more real than the real, and has such grace. Just by seeing the vision you feel so silent and peaceful within. When you see Krishna with his flute, singing a song, who would like not to cling? One would like to cling. One would like this vision to be repeated again and again. Then the Buddha has killed you.

Remember, this is the criterion, that whatsoever is seen has to be treated as a dream; only the seer is real. All that is seen is dream - good, bad, religious, irreligious, sexual, spiritual - it makes no difference. There is a sexual pornography in dreams, and there is a spiritual pornography in dreams also, but both are pornographic. One has to drop all. All experience is dream; only the experiencer is true. And you have to come to a point where there is nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard, nothing to be smelled, nothing to be touched - just vast space and you alone. Only the seer is left. All the visitors have gone; guests gone, only the host has remained. When this moment comes, then only is the real happening. Before it, all else is a dream.

A second question has been asked that,

Question 9

HOW TO BE ALERT IN SLEEP AND DREAM?

The person who has asked says that whenever he tries to be aware, he cannot sleep. Or, if sleep is coming and suddenly he remembers that he has to be alert, the sleep is broken, and then he cannot sleep - it is difficult.

Awareness with sleep cannot be worked out directly. First you have to work with the waking. Don't try that, otherwise your sleep will be disturbed and your whole day will be disturbed and you will feel depressed, lazy, sleepy. Don't do that.

Remember always there is a chain and one has to move from step to step. The first step is to be aware while waking. Don't think about the sleep at all. First you be awake while waking in the day. And when you will gather enough energy of awareness, then only the second step can be taken. Then there will be no effort really. The very energy that you have gathered through the day will remain alert inside. There will be no effort needed. If effort is needed, then sleep will be disturbed because effort is against sleep.

This happens all over the world: millions of people suffer from insomnia. And out of one hundred, ninety-nine cases are such that they are suffering because they make some effort to go to sleep. Effort is against sleep. They try many ways how to go into sleep and the very effort is against sleep. The effort makes you alert, and the effort makes you tense, and sleep is a no-effort phenomenon. You simply go into sleep. You need not do anything. If you do, sleep will not be possible. You simply put your head on the pillow and just don't do anything, not even wait for the sleep, because if you are waiting for the sleep you are doing something - the waiting. You simply lie down on the bed, put the light off, close your eyes and sleep comes. You cannot bring it, it happens; it is not an action.

And to understand the nature of sleep is to understand many things. Samadhi also is just like that. That's why Patanjali will say later on that sleep and samadhi have something common. This is their commonness: sleep comes, satori also; samadhi also comes, you cannot do anything to bring it. If you try, you will miss. If you don't want to miss, you simply be and it comes.

So don't make any effort to be aware while going into sleep. You will disturb the sleep and you will not gain awareness. You just work out in the day. When in the day you are more and more alert, the very current of alertness passes into sleep by its own energy. You fall asleep and still you feel a center within you, watching. A light - a small light in the beginning - burning inside, and you can watch. But don't start it. You do while waking, and it will happen while you go into sleep.

The last question:

They are not of the same type. It depends on you. Sometimes it may be just the first type of dream I call rubbish. Because you listen to me so attentively, an imprint is left in the mind. And you listen to me continuously every day and you meditate, and an imprint is left in the mind. It can become heavy. Sometimes the mind has to release it; it is rubbish.

But it can be of the second type also: that you would like me to be more closer. And I have created so many barriers; you are not allowed to be so much c oser. In the morning you can see me; that too, from a distance. In the evening you can come, and that too with difficulty. So you have to suppress. That suppression can cause the second type of dream. You may dream that I have come to you, or you have come to me and you are talking to me.

It can be of a third type: it may be a communication from the unconscious. If it is of the third type, then it is meaningful. It simply shows to you that you are trying to escape from me. Come closer. The unconscious is simply saying that, "Don't try to escape and don't remain on the periphery; come closer."

It can be of the fourth type: something from your past life, because many of you have lived with me; it may be a fragment of the past. Your mind is moving on the past track.

It can be of the fifth type also: a possibility of the future. All types are possible. These are five types of dreams. It can be a vision also, which is also a type of dream. I didn't talk about it because it has a different quality. It has the quality of the waking life; that too is a dream. The waking life is too a vast dream. But vision has the quality of the waking life. Sometimes I come to you, but rarely, because you have to earn it. If you see me a hundred times, ninety-nine times it will be something of the five types of dreams. But the hundredth time, I come to you when you have earned it. Then it is a vision.

But by and by, you will have to become aware what is what. Right now I cannot give you criteria how to judge what is what. You will have to taste them yourself.

So first become aware while you are awake, in the day. Gather more and more energy of awareness. Make it such an overflowing stream that when you fall asleep, your body falls asleep, your mind falls asleep, but the energy, the current of awareness is so forceful it continues. Then you will be able to make distinctions. And when one becomes able to make distinctions in dreams, it is a great achievement.

And then, by and by, rubbish drops. First type of dream disappears, because a man of awareness lives so completely in the day that he doesn't gather rubbish. Rubbish is incomplete experiences. You were eating; the food was delicious, but you couldn't eat it too much because you were a guest - what would people think? Incomplete experience has become rubbish now. Now, in the night you will again eat. You will have to complete the experience, otherwise the mind will go on and on.

Something incomplete mind does not like. The mind is a perfectionist: anything incomplete it doesn't like. Your one tooth falls, and then the tongue goes again and again there because something is incomplete. Now the mind continuously... absurd, because just by touching by the tongue nothing is going to happen, but the mind again and again... it never tried before when the tooth was there. Now something is incomplete.

Psychologists say that even monkeys - because they also have minds just like you - if you draw a half circle and leave the chalk there, they will complete it. Monkeys! - because they cannot tolerate an incomplete circle, they will complete it immediately.

Mind always trying to complete things... First type of dream disappears when you become aware. You live life so completely there is no need. And then, the second type of dream disappears by and by, because you don't live in desires. A man who is aware lives in needs, not in desires, so there is no need to wish-fulfill anything. He has nothing, so he never becomes a president of a country in the dream. He has no desires, no ambitions. He lives very ordinarily. The natural flow of life is enough. Eating food, feeling satiated, drinking water, feeling satiated, getting a good sleep - it is enough. More is not asked.

Then the third type of dream disappears. With the disappearance of the first two types, the conscious and unconscious have come so closer there is no need to communicate anything in the dream. In fact, the unconscious starts communicating while you are fully awake. Then things become simple, communication becomes exact. Then the fourth type of dream disappears. When you are so at ease with your life, aware perfectly satiated, the past drops completely. There is no need for it to go into the past. You live in the moment; the past disappears, and then the fifth type of dream disappears. You live so totally in the moment, so aware, so utterly aware, there is no future for you.

And when all the five types of dream disappear, the unreality has disappeared, the illusion has disappeared. Now for the first time, you attain to the realization of the real, the brahma.