The Master appears

From:
Osho
Date:
Fri, 8 March 1975 00:00:00 GMT
Book Title:
Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 3
Chapter #:
8
Location:
am in Buddha Hall
Archive Code:
N.A.
Short Title:
N.A.
Audio Available:
N.A.
Video Available:
N.A.
Length:
N.A.

The first question:

HOW IS IT THAT AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON LIKE KRISHNAMURTI CANNOT SEE THAT HE IS NOT HELPING PEOPLE? IF HE IS ENLIGHTENED SHOULD NOT HE BE ABLE TO SEE ALL? AND YOU SAY THAT YOU ARE ABLE TO HELP ALL TYPES BUT YOU ALSO SAY THAT YOU ARE CONTRADICTORY ON PURPOSE, SO THAT SOME PEOPLE WILL GO AWAY. IF YOU ARE ABLE TO HELP ALL, WHY SHOULD SOME NEED TO GO AWAY?

A PERSON LIKE Krishnamurti can see. There is no hindrance, no obstacle, and he sees everything that is happening around him. But an enlightened person cannot do anything. He has to be as he is, loose and natural. Doing brings tension, and doing makes you unnatural. Then you are floating against the current.

Krishnamurti knows what is happening but he cannot do anything. He has to allow it to happen. It is how the whole wills it. Nothing can be done about it. The doer is always in ignorance. The doer is never found when one is awakened. When one is awakened one accepts whatsoever is the case.

So don't think that Krishnamurti does not know. He knows perfectly, but this is how it has happened. This is how it is happening. And there is nobody inside to judge whether it should happen like this or otherwise. Nothing can be done. A rose flower is a rose flower, and a mango tree is a mango tree. The mango tree cannot bring roses, the rose plant cannot bring mangos. This is how it is - a total acceptance.

And when I say "total acceptance," it is just to explain to you. Otherwise, in an enlightened consciousness there is no acceptance because there is no rejection. That's why I call it total. It is utmost surrender to the whole. Everything is good. Whether I can help you or not, that is not for me to decide. The whole decides, and the whole uses me. It is up to him. If it is good that people should not be helped, then the whole will not allow me to help people, but I am nowhere in it. This is the state of enlightenment. You cannot understand it because you always think in terms of the doer. An enlightened person in fact does not exist; he is not there. It is a vast emptiness, so whatsoever happens, happens; whatsoever doesn't happen, doesn't happen.

And you ask me:

AND YOU SAY THAT YOU ARE ABLE TO HELP ALL TYPES, BUT YOU ALSO SAY THAT YOU ARE CONTRADICTORY ON PURPOSE, SO THAT SOME PEOPLE WILL GO AWAY. IF YOU ARE ABLE TO HELP ALL, WHY SHOULD SOME NEED TO GO AWAY?

Yes, it is how it is. All can be helped through me. When I say all can be helped through me, I don't mean that all should be helped, because it is not just on my part. It depends on the person who is going to be helped also. It is fifty-fifty. A river flows and I can drink out of it, but should all drink? - that is not certain; a few will go away. It may not be the right time for them and nobody can be helped when it is not right time. Everything happens in its own time.

Some may not be helped because they are closed. And you cannot force, and you cannot be violent. Spiritual phenomenon happens in a deep passivity; when a disciple is passive, only then does it happen. If I find that you are too active on your part, or if I find you are too much closed, or I find that this is not the right time for you, the best that can happen is to go away from me... because otherwise you will simply be wasting your time - not mine, because I have no time - simply your time you will be wasting.

Meanwhile, you are being distracted. You should have been somewhere else in the world, in the market. You should have been somewhere else, because there your maturity would have happened. Here you are wasting your time if it is not the right time for you. It is better you go away. You have to move in the world a little while more. You have to live through suffering a little while more. You are not yet ready, not yet ripe, and ripeness is all because a Master cannot do anything; he is not a doer. If you are ripe and the Master is present, something from the whole flows through the Master and reaches you, and the ripe fruit falls to the earth. But the unripe fruit will not fall, and it is good that it should not fall.

So when I say I am contradictory, I mean that a certain type of situation is always created, not by me, but by the whole through me. So the people who are not ready should not be in any way allowed to waste their time. They have to go and learn the lesson, pass through the suffering of life, attain to a certain maturity, and then come to me. I may not be here - then somebody else will be here. Because it is not a question of me and somebody else; all enlightened persons are the same. If I am not here, if this body is not here, some other body may be functioning for the whole, so there is no hurry. The existence can wait for eternity. But unripe, you cannot be helped.

There are teachers - I don't call them Masters because they are not awakened, they are teachers - they will not allow even an unripe person to go away. They will create all sorts of situations in which the person cannot escape. They are dangerous, because if the person is not ripe they are distracting the person. And if a person is not mature and something is given out of season, it will not be creative, it will be destructive.

It is just like a small child and you start teaching him about sex, and he doesn't know what it is, and he has no urge yet arisen: you are destroying his mind. Let the thirst arise, let the urge be there; then he will be open, ready to understand.

Spirituality is just like sex. Sex needs a certain maturity; by the fourteenth year of age the child will be ready. His own urge will be there. He will start asking, and he would like to know more and more about it. Then only there is a possibility to explain him certain things.

The same happens with spirituality: at a certain maturity the urge arises; you are looking after God. The world is already finished; you lived it through and through, you saw it through and through. It is finished; it has no attraction, it has no meaning. Now an urge has arisen to know the meaning of existence itself. You played all the games, and now you know they are games. Now no game attracts you, the world has lost its meaning - then you are mature.

Now you will need a Master, and Masters are always there, so there is no hurry. The Master may not be in this form, in this body - another body - forms don't matter, bodies are irrelevant. The inner quality of the Master is always the same, the same, the same. Buddha says again and again, "You taste the sea water from anywhere; it is always salty." Just like that, the Master is always of the same taste. The taste is of awareness. And always there are Masters; they will always be there, so there is no hurry.

And if you are not finished with the world, if a lingering desire is there to know sex, to know what money can bring, to know what power can give you, then you are not ready. The spiritual urge is not one urge in many urges, no. When all the urges have lost their meaning then it arises. The spiritual urge cannot exist with other urges - that's not possible. It takes possession of your complete being, utterly. It becomes the only one desire. Only then a Master can be of any help to you.

But teachers are there. They would like you to cling to them and they will cling to you, and they will create such a situation in which if you escape you will feel always guilty. A Master has a milieu around him in which, if you live there, you live by your own decision. If you leave, you leave by your own decision. And when you leave, a Master would not like you to feel guilty about it, so he gives such a color to the situation that you feel, "This Master is not a Master," or, "This Master is not for us," or "He is so contradictory that he is absurd." He takes the whole responsibility so you don't feel guilty. You simply go away from him, completely clean and washed of him.

That's why I am contradictory. And when I say "on purpose", that doesn't mean that I am doing it; it is just how I am. But "on purpose" has a meaning into it, and the meaning is: I would not like you, whenever you leave me, to feel guilty about it. I would like to take the whole responsibility. I would like you to feel that "This man is wrong," and that's why you are leaving. Not that you are wrong, because if that feeling goes in your being, that you are wrong and it was not good, then it will be again destructive, a destructive seed within you.

A Master never possesses you. You can be with him, you can go away, but there is no possessiveness in it. He allows you total freedom of being with or going away. That's what I mean that here you are: celebrate with me; whatsoever I am, share with me. But if you feel in a certain moment to go away, then turn your back and never look again towards me, and don't think about me, and don't feel guilty.

There are deep problems involved in it. If you feel guilty, you may go away from me, but just to balance the guilt you will go on talking against me. Otherwise how you will balance the guilt? You will go on condemning me. That means you have gone and not yet gone. Negatively you are with me, and that is more dangerous. If you have to be with me, be positively with me. Otherwise, simply forget me, that "This man doesn't exist" - why go on condemning? But if you feel guilty, you will have to balance. If you feel guilty, guilt is heavy and you would like to condemn me. If you condemn then there is a balance, and then negatively you will remain with me. With my shadow you will move. That's again wasting your time and your life, your energy. So when I say on purpose I create situations... whenever I feel a certain person is not ready, a certain person is not ripe, a certain person needs a little more ripening in the world, or a certain person is too intellectual and cannot fall into trust, needs a teacher and not a Master, or a certain person has come to me not with any decisiveness on his part, but has just drifted as an accident...

You can drift. A friend is coming to see me, and by the way you also followed. Then you got caught and hooked - and you never meant to be here; you were going somewhere else - accidentally. When I feel that you are here accidentally, I would like you to go away because this is not the right place for you. I would not like anybody to be distracted from his path. If on your path you can meet me, good. If the meeting is natural, it was going to happen, it was destined, you were getting ready and ready and ready and it was going to happen, then it is beautiful. Otherwise I would not like to waste your time. Meanwhile, you could have learned many things.

Or when I feel that somebody has come to me for some reason which is not the right reason... many people come for wrong reasons. Somebody may have come just to feel a new ego arising in him, the ego that religion can give, the ego that sannyas can give. You can feel very special, extraordinary, through religion. If I feel that somebody has come for that, then that is not the right reason to be near with me, because the egos cannot be closer to me.

Somebody may have got attracted with my ideas - that too is a wrong reason. My ideas may be appealing to your intellect, but intellect is nothing. It remains a foreign element to your whole being. Unless you are attracted towards me, not what I say, you are here for wrong reasons. I am not a philosopher and I am not teaching any doctrine.

That's why I have such freedom to be inconsistent, because if you are preaching a doctrine you cannot afford to be inconsistent. I am not preaching anything. I have no doctrine to force upon you. My talking to you is not an indoctrination. That's why I am free, completely free to contradict myself. Whatsoever I have said yesterday, I can contradict tomorrow. Whatsoever I am saying today, tomorrow I can contradict. I am like a poet, and if you understand my song then you are for the right reason here. If you understand my rhythm, then you are for the right reason here. If you understand me, not what I say - my presence - then only it is good to be here.

Otherwise move: the world is wide; why get hooked? And remember always: if you are for wrong reasons here, in any way, you will always feel hooked, as if something has happened that should not have happened. You will always feel ill at ease. I will not be coming home to you. I will become an imprisonment, and I would not like to become imprisonment for anybody. If I can give you anything, anything that is worth, it is freedom; that's why "on purpose", I say. But don't misunderstand me; it is not that something I am doing, it is the way I am. I cannot stop it even if I want to, and Krishnamurti cannot do it even if he wants to. He is, in his own way, a flowering - I am, in my own way.

It happened once: a message came from a common friend, who is my friend also and Krishnamurti's friend also... A message came from Krishnamurti that he would like to meet me. I told the messenger that it will be completely absurd; we are poles apart. Either we can sit silently - that will be okay - or we can go on discussing for eternity without reaching to any conclusion. Not that we are against each other, we are simply different. And I say Krishnamurti is one of the greatest enlightened men ever born. He has his own uniqueness.

This point has to be understood very deeply. It will be a little difficult. Unenlightened people are always almost the same. There is not much difference, cannot be. The darkness makes them same, the ignorance makes them almost the same. They are each other's copies and you cannot find the original; all are carbon copies. In ignorance persons are not much different, cannot be. Ignorance is like a black blanket that covers all. What differences are there? - maybe differences of degree, but not differences of uniqueness. Ordinarily ignorant people exist as a common crowd. Once somebody becomes enlightened he is absolutely unique. Then you cannot find another like him, not at this moment of history, ever. Not in past, not in the future, never will there be a man like Krishnamurti again, never there was. I will not be repeated again. Buddha is Buddha Mahavira is Mahavira - unique flowerings.

Enlightened persons are like peaks of mountains. Ordinary ignorant persons are like plain ground; everything is just the same. Even if differences exist they are just like this: that you have a small car and somebody has a big car, and you are uneducated and somebody is educated; you are poor, somebody is rich... These are nothing; they are not differences really. You may be in power and somebody is poor and a beggar on the street, but these are not differences, these are not uniquenesses. If all your things are taken away, and your education and your power, then your presidents and your beggars will look just alike.

One of the great psychoanalysts in the West is Victor Frankl. He has developed a new trend in psychoanalysis: he calls it logotherapy. He was in Adolf Hitler's concentration camps, and he remembers in one of his books that when they were entering into a concentration camp with hundreds of people, everything was to be taken at the gate, everything - your watch, everything. Suddenly, rich people, poor people, all became alike. And when you entered the gate you had to pass through an examination and everybody has to be completely naked. And not only that, but they shaved everybody's head and hairs. Frankl remembered that thousand people shaved, naked - suddenly all differences disappeared; it was a common mass. Your hairstyle, your car, your costly clothes, or your hippie-like dress: these are the differences.

Common humanity exists as a crowd. In fact, you don't have souls, you are just part of the crowd, a fragment of it, carbon copy of carbon copies, imitating each other. You imitate the neighbor and the neighbor imitates you, and this goes on.

Now people who have been studying trees and insects and butterflies, they say that a continuous copying is happening in nature. Butterflies copy the flower, and then the flower copies the butterfly.

Insects copy the tree, and then the tree copies the insects. So there are insects which can hide in the trees of the same color, and when the tree changes its color they also change their color. Now they say there is a continuous imitation of each other in the whole of nature.

A man who becomes enlightened is like a peak, Everest. Another enlightenment is also like a peak, another Everest. They are deep inside attained to the same, but they are unique. Nothing common exists between enlightened people - this is the paradox. They are vehicles of the same whole, but nothing common exists; they are unique vehicles.

That has created a deep problem for religious people, because Jesus is Jesus and doesn't look like Buddha at all. Buddha is Buddha and doesn't look like Krishna at all. People who are impressed by Krishna will think that Buddha is somehow lacking. People who are impressed by Buddha will always think that Krishna is somehow wrong. Because then you have an ideal and you judge by the ideal, and enlightened persons are simply individuals. You cannot make any standard; you cannot judge them by any ideals - there exists no ideal. They have a common thing within them: that is divineness, that is being a medium for the whole, but that's all. They sing their different songs.

But if you can remember this, you will be more able to understand the highest climax of evolution which an enlightened man is. And don't expect anything from him; he cannot do anything. He simply is that way. Loose and natural he lives his being. If you feel some affinity with him, move towards him and celebrate with his being, be with him. If you don't feel any affinity, don't create any antagonism; you simply move somewhere else. Somewhere else somebody must be existing for you. With someone you will feel in tune.

Then don't be bothered if you don't feel in tune with Mohammed. Why create unnecessary worries? Let Mohammed be Mohammed and let him do his thing. You don't worry about it. If you feel in tune with Buddha, Buddha is for you; drop all considerations. If you feel in tune with me then I am the only enlightened person for you. Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna... throw them into the wastepaper basket. If you don't feel in tune with me, then throw me into the wastepaper basket and move according to your nature. Somewhere, some Master must be existing for you. When one is thirsty the water exists. When one is hungry the food exists. When one has a deep urge of love, the beloved exists. When the spiritual desire arises - it cannot arise really if there is not somebody who can fulfill it.

This is the deep harmony, the ritambhara. This is the hidden harmony. In fact - if you allow me to say, because that will look absurd - if there is not an enlightened man who can fulfill your desire, the desire cannot come to you. Because the whole is one: on one part the desire arises; on another part somewhere the fulfillment is waiting. They come up together; simultaneous is the growth of the disciple and the Master... but this will be too much. When I was seeking my enlightenment, you were seeking your discipleship. Nothing can happen without the whole creating the situation for its fulfillment simultaneously. Everything is related. It is so deeply related that one can relax, there is no need to bother. If really your urge has arisen, you need not go even to seek the Master, the Master will have to come to you. Either the disciple goes or the Master comes.

Mohammed has said, "If the mountain cannot come to Mohammed, then Mohammed will have to go to the mountain." But the meeting is a must; it is destined.

In Koran it is said that a fakir, a sannyasin, a man who has renounced the world, should not go the palaces of the kings, and the powerful, and the rich. But it happened that one of the greatest Sufis, Jalaludin Rumi, used to go to the emperor's palace. Suspicion arose. People gathered and they said, "This is not good, and you are an enlightened man. Why do you go to the palace of the emperor, and while it is written in the Koran...?" And Mohammedans are just Koran addicts; you cannot find any other people so obsessed with a book. "It is written in the Koran this is wrong. You are not a Moslem. What have you to answer? What answer have you got? The Koran says a man who has renounced the world should not go to the people who are rich and powerful. If they want, they should come." Jalaludin laughed and he said, "If you can understand, then this is my answer: that whether I go to the palace or to the king, or the king comes to me, whatsoever happens, it is always the king who comes to me. Even if I go to the palace, it is always the king who comes to me. This is my answer. If you can understand, you understand. Otherwise, forget about it. And I am not here to follow the Koran, but I tell you that whatsoever is the case, whether Rumi goes to the palace or the king comes to Rumi, always it is the king who comes to Rumi, because he is thirsty and I am the water which will quench his thirst." And then he said, "Sometimes it happens the patient is so ill that the doctor has to go - and of course, kings are very, very ill, almost on their dying beds."

If you cannot come, I will come to you, but it will happen. It cannot be avoided because we both have been growing together in a subtle hidden harmony. But when it happens, when a disciple and a Master meet and they feel the tuning, it is one of the most musical moments in the whole of existence. Then their hearts beat in the same rhythm; then their consciousness flows in the same rhythm; then they become part of each other, members of each other.

Unless this happens, don't stay. Forget about me. Think of it as a dream. Escape from me as soon as you can. And I will help you in every way to escape, because then I am not for you. Somebody else somewhere is waiting for you, and you should go to him, or he will come to you. Old Egyptian tradition says: When the disciple is ready the Master appears.

One of the great Sufi mystics, Zunun, used to say that "When I achieved to the ultimate, I told the divine that 'I have been seeking for you so long, so long, for eternity.' " And the divine answered that "Before you started your search you had already achieved me, because unless you have achieved me you can not start the search."

These things look paradoxical, but if you go deeper you will find a very deep hidden truth in them. Right it is: even before you heard about me, I had reached you - not that I am trying to reach; this is how it happens. You are here not only because of yourself, I am here not only because of myself. A certain togetherness happens. A certain togetherness is there. And once you understand that togetherness, then only one Master is THE Master. Because of this, much fanaticism is created unnecessarily.

A Christian says, "Jesus is the only begotten son of God." It is perfectly true; if the tuning has happened then Jesus is the only begotten son of God - for you, not for everybody.

Ananda says again and again about Buddha, that nobody has ever attained such utter, utmost enlightenment as Buddha - anuttar samyak sambodhi - never attained before by anybody else. It is perfectly true. Not that it has not been attained by anybody else before; millions have attained before, but for Ananda it is perfectly true. For Ananda no other Master exists, only this Buddha.

In love, one woman becomes the whole of womanhood, one man becomes the whole of mankind. And in surrender, which is the highest form of love, one Master becomes the only God. That's why disciples cannot be understood by those who are outsiders. They talk in different tongues, they have different languages. If you call me "Bhagwan", it cannot be understood by those who are outsiders; they will simply laugh. For them I am not a Bhagwan, and they are perfectly true; and you are also perfectly true. If you have felt the tuning with me, in that tuning I have become a Bhagwan for you. It is a love relationship, and the deepest in-tuning.

The second question:

SOME BHAKTI SECTS TEACH MEDITATION ON HIGHER ASPECTS OF LOVE: FIRST TO LOVE AN ORDINARY PERSON, THEN THE GURU, THEN A GOD, ET CETERA. WOULD YOU TALK TO US ABOUT THIS METHOD?

Love is not a method. That is the difference between all other techniques and the path of bhakti, the path of devotion. The path of devotion has no methods. Yoga has methods; bhakti has none. Love is not a method - to call it a method is to misname it.

Love is natural; it is already there in your heart, ready to burst. The only thing that has to be done is to allow it. You are creating all sorts of hindrances and obstacles. You are not allowing it. It is already there - you simply relax a little and it will come, it will burst, it will bloom. And when it blooms for an ordinary person, immediately the ordinary has become the extraordinary. Love makes everybody extraordinary; it is such an alchemy. An ordinary woman suddenly is transfigured when you love her. She is no more ordinary; she is the most extraordinary woman that ever existed. It is not that you are blind, as others will say. In fact, you have seen the extraordinary which is always hidden in every ordinariness. Love is the only eye, the only vision, the only clarity. You have seen in the ordinary woman the whole womanhood - past, present, future - all women combined together. When you love a woman, you have realized the very feminine soul in her. Suddenly she becomes extraordinary. Love makes everybody extraordinary.

If you go deeper into your love... because there are difficulties to go deeper in love, because the more you go deeper, the more you lose yourself, a fear arises, a trembling grips you. You start avoiding the depth of love because the depth of love is just like death. You create barriers between you and your beloved, because the woman seems like an abyss - and can be absorbed into it - and she is. You come out of a woman; she can absorb you: that is the fear. She is the womb, the abyss, and when she can give birth to you, why not death? In fact, only that which gives you birth can give you death, so the fear is there. A woman is dangerous, very mysterious. You cannot live without her and you cannot live with her. You cannot go very far away from her because suddenly, the further you go the more ordinary you become. And you cannot come very close, because the closer you come... You disappear.

This is the conflict in every love. So one has to make a compromise; you don't go very far away, you don't come very close. You stand just in the middle somewhere, balancing yourself. But then love cannot go deep. Depth is attained only when you drop all fears and you jump headlong. The danger is there, and the danger is true: that love will kill your ego. Love is poison to the ego - life to you, but death to the ego. One has to take the jump. If you allow intimacy to grow, if you come closer and closer and closer and dissolve into the being of a woman, now she will not only be extraordinary, she will become divine because she will become a door to eternity. The closer you come to a woman, the more you feel she is a door of something beyond.

And the same happens to the woman with the man. She has her own problems. The problem is that if she comes closer to the man, the closer she comes, the man starts escaping. Because the closer the woman comes, the man becomes more and more afraid. The closer a woman comes, the man starts escaping her, finding a thousand and one excuses to be away. So a woman has to wait; and if she waits then again there is a problem: if she takes no initiative it looks like indifference, and indifference can kill love. Nothing is more dangerous to love than indifference. Even hatred is good, because at least you have certain type of relationship with the person you hate. Love can survive hate, but love cannot survive indifference. And the woman always in a difficulty... if she takes the initiative the man simply escapes. No man can tolerate a woman who takes initiative. That means that the abyss is coming on her own near you! - before it is too late, you escape.

That's how Don Juans are created. Then from one woman to another they go on. They live in a hit-and-run affair, because if you are too much there, then the abyss will absorb you. Don Juans are not lovers, not at all. They look like lovers because continuously they are on move - every day a new woman. But they are people deep in fear, because if they remain with one woman for long, then intimacy will grow, and they will come closer, and who knows what will happen? So they just live for a certain amount of time; before it is too late, they escape.

Byron loved almost hundreds of women in his small span of life. He is the archetype, the Don Juan. He never knew love. How can you know love when you move from one to another, and another, and another? Love needs seasoning; it needs time to settle; it needs intimacy; it needs deep trust; it needs faith. The woman is always in trouble - "What to do?" If she takes initiative, the man escapes. If she remains as if not interested, then too the man escapes because the woman is not interested. So she has to choose a mid-ground: a little initiative and a little indifference together, a mixture. And both are in a bad shape, because these compromises will not allow you to grow.

Compromise never allows anybody to grow. Compromise is a calculating, cunning thing; it is businesslike, not love-like. When lovers are really unafraid of each other and the dropping of the ego, they jump into each other headlong. They jump so deeply that they become each other. They become in fact one, and when this oneness happens then love transforms into prayer. When this oneness happens, then suddenly a religious quality comes to love.

First love has the quality of sex. If it is shallow, it will be reduced to sex; in fact it will not be love. If love becomes deeper, then it will have the quality of spirituality, the quality of divineness. So love is just a bridge between this world and that, sex and samadhi. That's why I go on calling the journey, from sex to superconsciousness. Love is just a bridge. If you don't move on the bridge, sex will be your life, your whole life, very ordinary, very ugly. Sex can be beautiful, but only with love and as part of love. Alone in itself it is ugly. It is just like this: your eyes are beautiful, but if the eyes are taken out of your sockets they will become ugly. The most beautiful eyes will become ugly if they are cut from the body.

It happened to Van Gogh: nobody loved him because he had a little ugly body. Then a prostitute, just to cheer him up, not finding anything else how to appreciate his body, appreciated his ear, that "You have most beautiful ears." Lovers never talk of ears because there are many other things to appreciate. But there was nothing - the body was very, very ugly, and so the prostitute said, "You have very beautiful ears." He came home. Nobody has ever appreciated anything in his body, nobody has ever accepted his body; this was for the first time, and he was so thrilled that he cut his own ear, and went back to the prostitute and presented the ear. Now the ear is absolutely ugly.

Sex is a part of love, of a greater whole. Love gives it the beauty, otherwise it is one of the most ugliest actions. That's why people move into sex in darkness: even they don't like themselves to see the act being performed in the night. You see all animals make love in the day, except man. No animal bothers in the night - night is for rest. All animals love in the day; only man loves in the night. A certain fear that the act of love is a little ugly... And no woman ever makes love with open eyes because they have a more aesthetic sense than man. They always love with closed eyes so nothing is seen. Women are not pornographic, only man is.

That's why so many nude pictures, paintings, of women exist: only man is interested in to see the body. Woman are not interested; they have a more aesthetic sense because body is of the animal. Unless it becomes of the divine, there is nothing to see in it. Love can give a new soul to sex. Then the sex is transfigured - it becomes beautiful; it is no more sex - it has something of the beyond in it. It has become a bridge. You can love a person because the person satisfies your sex. This is not love, just a bargain. You can make sex with a person because you love; then sex follows just like a shadow, part of love. Then it is beautiful; then it is no more of the animal world. Then something of the beyond has already entered, and if you go on loving a person deeply, by and by sex disappears. Intimacy becomes so fulfilling, then there is no need for sex; love is enough unto itself. When that moment comes then there is the possibility of prayer dawning upon you.

When two lovers are in such a deep love that love suffices and sex has simply dropped - not that it has been dropped, not that it has been suppressed, no; it has simply disappeared from your consciousness, not leaving even a scar behind - then two lovers are in such total unity... Because sex divides. The very word "sex comes from a root which means division. Love unites, sex divides. Sex is the root cause of division.

When you make sex to a person, woman or man, you think it unites you. For a moment it gives you the illusion of unity, and then a vast division suddenly comes in. That's why after every sex act, a frustration, a depression sets in. One feels that one is so far away from the beloved. Sex divides, and when love goes deeper and deeper and unites more and more, there is no need for sex. Your inner energies can meet without sex, and you live in such a unity.

You can see two lovers when their sex disappears: you can see the glow that comes to two lovers when sex disappears: they exist as two bodies in one soul. The soul surrounds them; it becomes a glow all around their bodies. But it rarely happens.

People end with sex. At the most, with living together they start being affectionate towards each other - at the most. But love is not simple affection; it is a unity of souls - two energies meeting and becoming whole. When this happens, only then is prayer possible. Then both lovers in their unity feel so fulfilled, so perfect, that a gratitude arises; they start humming prayer.

Love is the greatest thing in the whole existence. In fact, everything is in love with everything else. Whenever you will come to the peak, you will be able to see that everything loves everything else.

Even when you cannot find anything like love, you feel hate - hate simply means love gone wrong, nothing else - when you feel indifference... indifference only means love has not been courageous enough to burst. When you feel a closed person, it only means so much fear, so much insecurity he feels, that he has not been able to take the first step. But everything is love.

Even when an animal jumps on another animal and eats it - a lion jumps on a deer and eats it - it is love. It looks like violence because you don't know. It is love. The animal, the lion is absorbing deer into himself... very crude of course, very, very crude and primitive, animal-like, but still it is love. Lovers eat each other, they absorb each other. The animal is doing in a very crude way, that's all.

The whole existence is in love: trees love the earth, the earth loves the trees - otherwise, how they can exist together? Who will withhold them? There must be a common link. It is not only the roots, because if the earth is not in deep love with the tree, even roots won't help. A deep invisible love exists. The whole existence, the whole cosmos moves around love. Love is the ritambhara. That's why I said yesterday: Truth plus love is ritambhara. Truth alone is too dry.

If you can understand... Right now it can only be an intellectual understanding, but keep it in your memory. Some day it can become an existential experience. It is how I feel.

Enemies love each other, otherwise why they should bother about each other? Even a man who says there is no God loves God, because he continuously says that there is no God. He is obsessed, fascinated, otherwise why bother? An atheist his whole life tries to prove there is no God. He is in such a love, and so much afraid of God, that if he is then there will be tremendous transformation in his being. So afraid, he goes on trying - "There is no God." In his effort to prove there is no God, he is showing a deep fear that the God is calling. And if God is there, then he cannot remain the same.

It is just like a monk who moves on the street of a town with closed or half closed eyes so that he cannot see a woman. He goes on saying to himself, "There is no woman. This is all maya, illusory. This is just like a dream." But why go on trying this is just like a dream, trying to prove that there exists no love object? - otherwise the monastery will disappear, the monkhood will disappear; his whole pattern of life will be shattered.

All is love, and love is all. From the crudest to the supreme-most, from the rock to the God, it is love... many layers, many steps, many degrees, but it is love. If you can love a woman you will be able to love a Master. If you can love a Master you will be able to love God. Loving a woman is loving the body. Body is beautiful - nothing is wrong in it - a miracle really. But if you can love, then love can grow.

It happened that one of the great devotees of India, Ramanuja, was passing through a town. A man came, and the man must have been the type that ordinarily is attracted towards religion: the ascetic type, the man who tries to live without love. Nobody has ever succeeded. Nobody will ever succeed, because love is the basic energy of life and existence. Nobody can succeed against it. The man asked Ramanuja that "I would like to be initiated by you. How I can find God? I would like to be accepted as a disciple." Ramanuja looked at the man, and you can see when a man is against love; he is like a dead rock, completely dried, with no heart. Ramanuja said, "First tell me few things: have you ever loved anybody?" The man was shocked because a person like Ramanuja talking about love? - such ordinary worldly things? He said, "What are you saying? I am a religious man. I have never loved anybody." Ramanuja persisted. He said, "You just close your eyes and think a little. You may have loved, even if you are against. You may not have loved in reality, but in imagination..." The man said, "I am absolutely against love, because love is the whole pattern of maya and illusion, and I want to get out of this world, and love is the cause people cannot get out of it. No, not even in imagination!" Ramanuja persisted. He said, "Just look within. Sometimes in dream a love object may have appeared." The man said, "That's why I don't sleep much! But I am not here to be taught love, I am here to be taught prayer." Ramanuja became sad, and he said, "I cannot help you, because a man who has not known love, how can he know prayer?"

Because prayer is the most refined love, the essential love - as if the body has disappeared, only the spirit of love has remained; as if the lamp is no more there, just the flame; as if the flower has disappeared into the earth, but the fragrance is lingering in the air - that is prayer. Sex is the body of love, love is the spirit; then, love is the body of prayer, prayer is the spirit. You can draw concentric circles: first circle sex, second circle love, and the third circle, which is the center, is prayer. Through sex you discover the body of the other, and through discovering the body of the other you discover your own body.

A man who has never been in sexual relationship with someone has no sense of His own body, because who will give you the sense? Nobody touched your body with loving hands, nobody caressed your body with loving hands, nobody embraced your body; how can you feel your body? You exist like a ghost. You don't know where your body ends and the other's body starts.

Only in a loving embrace for the first time the body takes shape; the beloved gives you the shape of your body. She shapes you, she forms you, she surrounds you all around and gives you the definition of your body. Without a beloved you don't know what type of body you have got, where the oases are in your body desert, where are the flowers, where your body is most alive and where dead. You don't know; you remain unacquainted. Who will give you the acquaintance? In fact when you fall in love and somebody loves your body, for the first time you become aware of your body, that you have a body.

Lovers help each other to know their bodies. Sex helps you to understand the body of the other, and via the other to have a feeling and definition of your own body. Sex makes you embodied, rooted in the body, and then love makes you feel yourself, soul, spirit, atma - the second circle. And then prayer helps you to feel the no-self, or the brahma, or the God.

These are the three steps: from sex to love, from love to prayer. And there are many dimensions of love, because if the whole energy is love then there are going to be many dimensions of love. You love a woman or a man - you become acquainted with your body. You love a Master - you become acquainted with your self, your being, and through that acquaintance, suddenly you fall in love with the whole. The woman becomes the door for the Master, the Master becomes the door for the divine. Suddenly you fall into the whole, and you come to know the innermost core of all existence.

Jesus says rightly, "Love is God," because love is the energy that moves the stars, that moves the clouds, that allows the seeds to sprout, that allows the birds to sing, that allows you to be here. Love is the most mysterious phenomenon. It is ritambhara.

The last question:

DO MASTERS EVER YAWN?

Yes, they yawn, but they yawn totally. And that is the difference between an enlightened person and an unenlightened person. The difference is only of totality.

You do whatsoever you do partially. You love - only part of you loves; you sleep - only part of you sleeps; you eat - only part of you eats; you yawn - only part of you yawns, another part against it, controlling it. A Master lives totally, whatsoever. If he is eating, he is totally eating; there is nobody else than eating. He walks... he walks; the walker is not there. The walker doesn't exist because where the walker will exist? - the walking is so total. When you yawn, you are there. When a Master yawns only the yawn is there.

And if you are not convinced, you can ask Vivek; that will be the proof. You can ask a witness.

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Mulla Nasrudin's son was studying homework and said his father,
"Dad, what is a monologue?"

"A MONOLOGUE," said Nasrudin,
"IS A CONVERSATION BEING CARRIED ON BY YOUR MOTHER WITH ME."