Freedom and Love: The Centre and the Circumference

The first question

Question 1:

Susan Brown,

The first thing to understand is that I have no teachings. I am not teaching you anything at all, because teaching simply means conditioning your mind - in other words, programming you in a certain way. What I am doing here is just the opposite of teaching you: I am creating a space where you can unlearn whatsoever you have been taught up to now. I am not a teacher!

That's the difference between a teacher and a Master: the teacher teaches, the Master helps you to undo whatsoever the teachers have done. The function of the Master is just the opposite of that of the teacher.

The teacher serves the society, the establishment; he is the agent of the past. He works for the older generation: he tries to condition the minds of the new generation so they can be subservient, obedient to the past, to all that is old - to their parents, to the society, to the state, to the church.

The function of the teacher is anti-revolutionary, it is reactionary The Master is basically a rebel. He is not in the service of the past, he is not an agent of all that you can think of as "the establishment" - religious, political, social, economic - his whole effort is to help you to discover your individuality. It has nothing to do with tradition, convention. You have to go within, not backwards. He is not in any way interested in forcing you into a certain pattern; he makes you free.

So what I am doing here is not teaching, that is a misunderstanding on your part. But it happens because you have lived with teachers, all kinds of teachers. It is rare to come across a Master, because the society does not allow the Master to happen. The society is very afraid of the Master, otherwise why did society poison Socrates? For what? He is the Master par excellence, has never been surpassed by any other. His crime was that he was a Master, and the society wanted him to be a teacher He was helping people to discover the truth. And society is not interested in discovering the truth, it is interested in covering it more and more, because it lives through lies - it calls them beliefs.

All beliefs are lies; howsoever beautifully presented, they are lies. Truth cannot be given by one person to another, only lies can be transferred, they are transferable. Truth is untransferable.

The Master cannot hand over the truth to you, he can only create devices so that you can discover your own truth. The truth is always your own authenticity, your own being. Who can give it to you?

The teacher pretends to give you truth, but what he gives is just a decorated lie - although it may be very ancient, repeated for millions of years, so it appears like truth.

Adolf Hitler, in his autobiography, MEIN KAMPF, says, "The only difference I know between a lie and a truth is that a truth is nothing but a lie often repeated." So you become hypnotized by it - and you can see it happening everywhere.

People are worshipping stones - people with eyes, people with intelligence, worshipping stones!

They have been hypnotized from their very beginning. People are believing in all kinds of stupidities, all kinds of superstitions, but they are not aware of it. They are almost in a drunken state; they are living in hypnosis. That is the secret of all hypnosis: repeat a thing again and again and again.

If you are consulting a hypnotist for any problem, his suggestion will always be to repeat something.

If you are suffering from sleeplessness he will say, "Go on repeating, "I am falling asleep, I am falling asleep, falling asleep..." Go on repeating it and you will fall asleep." But that sleep will not be a natural sleep, it will be deliberately created, it will be false, It will be pseudo, it will not have the spontaneity of real sleep. It is an imposed mind phenomenon - you have forced yourself to fall asleep.

Mothers know it very well. When a child wants to get up and they want him to go to sleep, they start singing a lullaby A lullaby is nothing but hypnosis: a small song, maybe of one or two lines, repeated again and again, creates boredom, and boredom is one of the best tranquillizers yet discovered.

Anybody will fall asleep, tired of it.

You can go on repeating a certain lie in the same way... Adolf Hitler proved it by his propaganda. He propagated utter lies, and one of the most intelligent races on the earth, the Germans, believed him.

The most learned race, the race which has given birth to great philosophers, thinkers, professors, scholars of the calibre of Immanuel Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Feuerbach, Karl Marx, fell into a deep hypnosis - the whole race! And not only ordinary people but a great giant like Heidegger, one of the most important philosophers of this age, fell into the same trap. He started saying that Adolf Hitler was right.

And what was he saying? He was saying that the world was going to the dogs because of the Jews. Now, there is no relationship at all, no logic in it. The Jews have nothing to do with the world going to the dogs. In fact, the Jews had no country at that time, nowhere where they were in power.

They were the least responsible for the world going to the dogs because without power how can you destroy humanity? But still the Germans believed it - they started believing it simply because of repetition: it was repeated so often.

At first Adolf Hitler was laughed at - people thought, "He is crazy! This is sheer nonsense!" But he was stubborn: he went on hammering, he didn't listen to their laughter. He was idiotic - he may not have even understood their laughter. He was an imbecile! He continued hammering and finally he was victorious, he convinced people.

That's the way the whole art of advertisement exists: just through repetition. When neon lights were discovered and advertisements were put in neon lights - "Lux Toilet Soap" or "Hamam" or something else - in the beginning it was a fixed light; you could read it once. Soon psychologists suggested "Let it be flickering." It comes on, goes off, comes on, goes off, so by the time a person passes it he will have to read it at least twenty, thirty times, because it goes off, then again it comes on - you have to read it again. So it is better to put it on and off; because twenty repetitions, thirty repetitions each time a person passes by will be more effective. Repeat it on the television, on the radio, in the magazines, in the newspapers, repeat it everywhere. Wherever a person goes, let him come across "Lux Toilet Soap", and soon he is hypnotized. He goes to the market, to the shop, and he starts asking for Lux toilet soap and he believes that he is choosing it. Somebody else has chosen it for him.

All teachings are creating a certain kind of hypnotic state in you. The function of the Master is to de-hypnotize you, to de-condition you, to de-programme you, so that you can again be innocent like a child, so that you can again function from the state of not-knowing.

A drunkard staggering home kept hitting the trees which lined the pavement - once, twice, then again. Finally he stopped where he was and said to himself, "It's better... hic if I wait for the parade to finish!"

That's how Christians are, Hindus are, Mohammedans are: all drunk on certain philosophies which have been repeated continuously. They are seeing things which are not and they are not seeing things which are.

An Irishman was walking along a street pulling a brick along by a string when Police Constable O'Murray, doing his morning round, saw him and decided to humour him. "Nice dog you"ve got there, sir!" he said.

"Now, bless the Virgin Mary!" replied the Irishman. "You can see that's not a dog there, Constable, that's a brick on a string!"

"Oh, sorry, sir!" exclaimed the policeman and walked away.

The Irishman then turned to the brick and whispered, "We really fooled him, Rover, didn't we?"

Susan, I am not teaching anything here, I am taking away many things from you. The work is negative: it is not giving anything to you but taking many things away from you, so that only your natural being is left behind. That cannot be taken away. Only that which has been given to you can be taken away; that which you have brought with you at birth is intrinsic to you, it cannot be taken away.

The Master leaves you utterly naked, and in that nakedness is beauty, in that nakedness is truth, in that nakedness is freedom, in that nakedness is love and bliss and all that for which the heart longs and all that can make your life significant and meaningful.

You say: I AM VERY GRATEFUL. I CAME HERE VERY HUNGRY AND YOU ARE FEEDING ME.

That is far better than calling what I am doing a teaching. It is closer to the truth, it is more approximately true. It is a feast! I am sharing my being with you, not any teaching.

Your question is: I HAVE BEEN RAISED TO BELIEVE...

That's the whole problem of all human beings: everybody is raised to believe in something. No parents are yet capable of loving their children so much that they can leave them without conditioning them. They talk about love, but it is all false. They themselves may not be aware of it - that is true - they may not know what they are doing: they are unconscious. Their parents have done something to them, they are doing the same to their children. People go on giving things to people that have been given to them. Their intentions may be good, but they don't have enough awareness. They are not alert, so they go on giving you beliefs.

In a better world no parent will give you any belief. Certainly he will give you courage to inquire, courage to adventure. He will sharpen your intelligence so that when you come across a lie you can see it and when you come across a truth you can immediately recognize it, but he will not give you any belief. No parent, if he loves the child, can give beliefs because beliefs are poisonous. They destroy your intelligence, they destroy your courage, and they create prejudices in you.

The whole of humanity is full of prejudices, that's why we are suffering so much. There is no need for so much suffering for so much darkness. The only reason why this suffering exists is very simple:

it is because everybody is so stuffed with beliefs and everybody is looking through those beliefs, not directly.

And whenever you start looking through beliefs you cannot see the real. Eyes have to be utterly empty to see the real. Ears have to be utterly empty to hear the real, to hear the truth. If you are already preoccupied, possessed by certain ideas, then those ideas function as barriers.

A matchmaker proposed a beautiful young girl to a businessman client as a possible bride. The client was reluctant to pursue the matter because he didn't possess, in his opinion enough money for such-an attractive girl.

"Oh, you needn't worry about that," assured the matchmaker. "You"ll never have to support any of her family - the girl is an orphan."

The meeting was arranged. Several weeks later the man complained to the matchmaker. "You lied to me," he said. "The girl is not an orphan. She not only has a father who is alive and well, but he is living in prison!"

The matchmaker shrugged. "You call that living?" he asked.

If you are looking through a certain prejudice then you impose it, you project it; then everything enters you distorted.

In the beginning days of science scientists thought that our minds, our senses, were for gathering information from the outside world. They are doors; the world enters through those doors - the senses, the mind. They are bridges. But now the latest research has proved just the opposite: your senses don't function as doors, your mind does not function as a bridge. Because it is so full of beliefs, it functions in just the opposite way: it prevents the reality from reaching you.

You will be surprised to know that ninety-eight percent of reality is prevented from reaching you by your mind and senses. Only two percent of reality reaches you - only that which fits your beliefs reaches you.

Unless a man is totally free of beliefs he cannot know the immensity of truth, the ecstasy of existence.

Susan, you say: I HAVE BEEN RAISED TO BELIEVE THAT COMMITMENT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY IF A RELATIONSHIP IS TO WORK.

Now, so many things are taken for granted... you have not inquired into them. And they will look very true, they will look logical Sometimes logic can be very absurd. Sometimes your so-called learned people are the most stupid people possible.

A learned man went into his library to read, but he couldn't find his glasses. He looked and looked, but he couldn't locate the missing glasses. So he used the logic of his ancient people, reasoning thus:

"Hypothesis: Maybe someone came in and stole my glasses while I was having lunch. No! Why not? Because if it was someone who needed glasses to read with he would own his own, and if he didn't need glasses to read with, why would he steal mine?

"Second hypothesis: Maybe a thief stole my glasses, not to use but to sell. But to whom can you sell a pair of reading glasses? If the thief offers them to someone who needs glasses that man surely owns a pair already, and if the thief offers them to someone who doesn't use glasses, why should such a man buy them? No!

"So where does this take us? Clearly the glasses must have been taken by someone who needs glasses and had glasses but cannot find them. Why can't he find them? Perhaps he was so absorbed in his studies that, absent-mindedly, he pushed his glasses up from his nose to his forehead and forgetting he had done so, took mine!"

The answer began to dawn on the scholar.

"I will push this reasoning even further," he thought. "Perhaps I am that man who needs glasses, owns glasses, and moved his glasses up to his forehead and forgot that he had done so! If my reasoning is correct, that's where my spectacles ought to be right now."

And with that he moved his hand up to his forehead right on top of his glasses. So he smiled, pushed them down, and went on with his reading.

Such a long route to discover your glasses sitting just on your head! But that's how the learned fools go - round and round, about and about - and all these hypotheses they go on handing over to others.

This is just a hypothesis, it is not a truth. And, Susan, you have not inquired into it, you have simply accepted it.

You say: COMMITMENT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY...

It is absolutely unnecessary! In fact, with a commitment there is no possibility of love. Just the opposite is the truth, exactly the polar opposite, diametrically opposite to what you have been raised to believe. Your hypothesis is absolutely wrong, but then you have to inquire from the very beginning.

Why do I say that commitment is absolutely unnecessary - not only that but a positive hindrance to love? What does commitment mean? It means a promise for the future. Love iS in the present and commitment is for the future. Love is today and commitment is for tomorrows. Love is always now, here, and the commitment is always then and there; they cannot meet.

The commitment is a promise that "I will behave in the same way tomorrow as I am behaving today."

But how can you promise about tomorrow? You may not even be alive, and even if you are alive you may have changed totally; even if you have not changed, the other person may have changed totally. Tomorrow is unpredictable.

A very ancient Chinese story:

A king became very angry with his prime minister for certain reasons, and the king was a little crazy...

he sentenced him to death. It was the custom of that country that whenever a person was going to be crucified, the king himself used to come and see him, and if he wanted anything, his last wish had to be fulfilled. And certainly this man had served him his whole life - he had been his prime minister - so he came to see him the day he was going to be crucified. He was going to be crucified in the evening, so the king came in the morning. He came on his beautiful horse.

The prisoner could see the horse outside through the window. The king came in, and the prisoner started crying; tears started rolling down his cheeks.

The king was surprised. He said, "You, and crying? I would never have imagined it, not even in my dreams! You are such a man of courage, you have fought so many battles. Are you afraid of death?"

And the prime minister said, "No, I am not crying or weeping because of my death, I am crying because of the horse!"

The king said, "What do you mean? Why should you cry because of the horse? What has the horse done?"

The prime minister said, "I have never said it to anybody, not even to my wife, that when I was young I lived with an alchemist. He was a miracle man, and I learned from him the art of teaching a horse to fly. But only a certain kind of horse can be taught. I have been looking for that special kind of horse my whole life - I could not find it - and today you have brought the horse! This is the horse for which I have been looking my whole life, and this is my last day! I am crying because my whole life's search, my long long apprenticeship with the alchemist, my arduous journey to the Himalayas to learn the art - all has gone in vain! And why did you bring this horse today? You could have come on another horse. At least I could have died in peace! Now I will be dying in great turmoil."

The king became very enchanted with the idea that the horse could fly. If it were possible then he would be the only king in the whole world whose horse could fly! He said, "How long will it take to teach the horse?"

The man said, "Only one year."

The king said, "Okay, I trust you. I know you are a trustworthy man, you will not escape. One year I give you! If you can teach the horse to fly, not only will you be released from this sentence of death but you will get half my kingdom also. And if the horse cannot fly, of course, after one year you win be killed, so there is nothing for me to lose. Take the horse and go home!"

The prime minister took the horse and went home. The wife was crying because this was the last day. They were getting ready to go and see him after the king had left. The children were crying, all the relatives had gathered and his friends had gathered. They could not believe their eyes when the prime minister arrived there on the horse! They said, "What has happened? What happened? Tell us how you managed it! Have you escaped from the prison? But this horse, we know, belongs to the king! How did you get hold of this horse?"

And the prime minister laughed and he said, "Let me tell you the whole story!" He told the whole story.

The wife started crying even more loudly. She said, "I know that this is absolutely false. You don't know any art, you have never been to the Himalayas, you have never been an apprentice to any alchemist. Now this will be even harder for us. This whole year I will have to suffer now! This evening it would have been finished; after a few days I would have settled - time heals everything.

But one year... and death will be constantly hanging over our heads like a naked sword! And if you are so clever, then why did you ask for only one year? You could have said it would take twelve years!"

The prime minister said, "You don't know the king. Twelve years would have been too long - I know him perfectly well. I have asked the maximum of what was possible; more than that and I would have died today. But don't be worried - in one year anything can happen. The king can die, I can die, the horse can die! Everything is possible. One year is long enough - much is possible. And I am free. Don't be worried!"

And the end of the story is unbelievable: all three died!

Tomorrow is uncertain, absolutely uncertain. How can you promise? What commitment? One can only be committed for the moment, but that is not commitment. One can only say, "Now I love you, tomorrow we will see! Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Tomorrow will decide."

Just think of yesterday, Susan, when you had not met this particular man that you have fallen in love with. Yesterday you had not even dreamt about him, today he has met you. Yesterday there was no idea of the man, and today you are ready to commit yourself! But who knows about tomorrow? You may come across a better man - then what?

Commitment is stupid. Man can only live in the moment, and love is a flower of the moment. It is commitment that has made love false. A plastic flower will be there tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, year in, year out. You can trust that it will be there - it is a plastic flower. But the real rose opens its delicate petals early in the morning, dances in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, and by the evening the petals have withered away, and tomorrow you will not find even a trace of it.

Do you think the plastic flower is better than the real rose? If you think that way then you don't know love, you know only marriage. Marriage is a plastic flower, love is a real rose. Perhaps it may survive, perhaps it may not.

Commitment is impossible - commitment is lying! And if you make any commitment for tomorrow, then there are only two possibilities: either you will have to break it or you will have to deceive, pretend. That's what millions of people around the world are doing. Their marriages finished the day their honeymoon was finished, but they are still together, married, pretending, telling each other, convincing each other that "I still love you." In thousands of ways they are trying to prove that they are true to their commitment, but every action - and their faces and their being - shows that they are sad. Where is that joy, that dance, that celebration that love brings in its wake? But their love has been dead a long time; they are living only in the nostalgia, in the memory of it, hoping that there may be a certain resurrection of it some-day.

The whole world is living with masks, pseudo faces: pretending to be somebody that you are not, doing something which you don't mean, saying something which you don't mean. It is a very crazy world! Be aware of this craziness. And this whole craziness has come into existence because of our insistence that commitment is absolutely necessary - not only necessary, Susan, but, you say, absolutely necessary.

Man cannot live up to absolutes - don't ask the impossible from the poor man! You will destroy everything that is valuable and delicate in him if you ask for absolutes. And that's what we have been doing - asking for absolutes.

In a little town in Russia there were many more girls than boys. Consequently, the local matchmaker was having an easy time making good matches for the young men of the village, although the girls were often ending up with the poor end of the bargain.

A rather unpleasant man in the village, whose face matched his disposition, wanted a bride who possessed beauty, charm and talent.

"I have just the girl for you," said the matchmaker. "Her father is rich and she is beautiful, well- educated, charming. There is only one problem."

"And what is that?" asked the young man suspiciously.

"She has an affliction. Once a year this beautiful girl goes crazy. Not permanently, you understand.

It's just for one day and she doesn't cause any trouble. Then afterwards she's as charming as ever for another year."

The young suitor considered. "That's not so bad," he decided. "If she's as rich and beautiful as you say, let's go to see her."

"Oh, not now," cautioned the matchmaker. "You"ll have to wait to ask her to marry you."

"Wait for what?" pursued the greedy man.

"Wait for the day she goes crazy!" came back the answer.

Once in a while people go crazy and that is the time when they get married, that is the time when they commit themselves for their whole lives - but only in craziness.

And love is, in the ordinary way, something crazy. It is biological, instinctive, it is unconscious, it is hormonal. It is more chemistry than spirituality! That's why we can change the man into a woman and the woman into a man very easily. Just a few glands have to be changed, and the man becomes a woman and the woman becomes a man. It is such an easy phenomenon now, and in the future it is going to happen even more often - and then commitment will become even more difficult. Your wife may decide one day to become a man - then? Your husband may go for an operation and become a woman - then what are you going to do?

And I don't think people will miss such opportunities, because if you can live as a man for a few months or years and then as a woman and then again as a man, then you are living life multi- dimensionally; you will have a little more variety - one gets tired of being a man or a woman. So it is perfectly good - just for a change it is good - and you can see the other side of the story too.

If all men once in a while become women, then no man will ever say that woman is a mystery, that it is impossible to understand a woman, and no woman will think that man is a mystery. You can be a man and you can know the mystery from the inside, and if you can change a few times you may simply get fed up with the same game, because you will know there is nothing in being a man because you have been a man, and you will know that there is nothing in being a woman - you have been a woman. And that may bring a great transcendence in human consciousness - people will start simply becoming Buddhas easily!

A Buddha is one who goes beyond being a man and beyond being a woman; he transcends all sexuality. Very few people have been Buddhas in the past, perhaps this is the reason: because you remain intrigued with the mystery of woman and the woman remains intrigued with the mystery of man. And there is not much of a mystery, it is only chemistry!

So what you call love is an unconscious biological force - you are at the mercy of a biological force.

It comes and it goes. Neither can you bring it nor can you force it to remain, because it has nothing to do with your consciousness. But commitment is conscious, and what you are committing yourself to is unconscious! There is no link between the two.

I cannot say, Susan, that commitment is absolutely necesSary if a relationship is to work. And who has ever heard of a relationship working? No relationship ever works... only in the beginning, but by the time it really starts getting hold of you it is too late. In the beginning it is sweet, beautiful, because both partners are really possessed by the chemistry and the biology, and they are seeing things which nobody else can see.

When you fall in love with a woman, everybody laughs. They think, "This man has gone crazy!"

People start asking, "What do you see in this woman?" People start asking the woman, "What do you see in this guy?" But lovers go on seeing things - all kinds of hallucinations. In a very ordinary girl's face a lover can see the moon! And the woman can see in her lover all kinds of gods! She cannot believe that such a love has ever happened before or is going to happen again. It is happening for the first time and the last time!

That's why in every language there exists the expression "falling in love". It is really falling - it is falling from your intelligence, falling from your humanity. it is really falling into a ditch! And if you become committed, then you cannot get out of the ditch either! Commitment means, "I am falling forever," so the ditch is going to become your grave.

Marriages have become people's graves - and I have seen no relationship that works. What works is love, but love is a delicate flower; you cannot depend on it. What works is momentary, but under the impact of love you can become committed And then you will repent, but then you cannot escape from the commitment. You have been brought up with these beliefs: that you have to stick to your promise, that you have to be consistent, that you have to fulfil whatsoever word you have given. Now your whole work is wasted. What works as far as love is concerned is momentary; it certainly works for the moment, but no relationship works.

Relatedness works but not relationship, and you have to understand the difference between the two.

Love, the moment it becomes a relationship, becomes a bondage. And when you are in bondage it is impossible for you to be festive, to be joyous. You can fulfil the duty, but duty is an ugly, four-letter word. Duty means now you are caught and you have to do it. Love is not something that you do, it is something that happens; duty is something that you have to do. It is a drag! You become a martyr.

You start carrying your cross on your own shoulders, and you may think that you are becoming a Christ...

Look at all the husbands carrying crosses! Look at the wives! Nobody seems to be happy. They are continuously quarrelling, continuously fighting, continuously destroying each other, reducing each other to commodities, to means. The wife is using the husband, the husband is using the wife. It may be for different purposes - the wife uses the husband for economic purposes and the husband uses the wife for sexual purposes - but both are using each other. And how can one be happy when one is being used?

So the moment the husband says, "What about it tonight?" the wife immediately says, "I am suffering from a headache," or she goes into a tantrum or starts a quarrel. So when the husband wants to make love to the wife he has to bring ice cream and a bouquet and a sari, or something economic; then it is business, then it is simply give and take.

This is not working - you cannot say that the relationship is working. Yes, if love becomes-conscious, then there is a tremendous joy - it works.

Love ordinarily is unconscious and animal. If you make it conscious - that means love plus meditation - then there is a totally different quality to it, a different beauty, a different flavour; then it works. But it works because of consciousness not because of love. And consciousness changes love from relationship into a relatedness; it changes it more into a friendliness. It is no longer a bondage, it gives freedom.

The moment you become meditative you stop reducing the other to a thing. Then you are no longer a husband and the wife is no longer a wife, you are just two friends. There iS no legal bond. You live together out of freedom, out of joy. You want to share, that's why you live together. And if that sharing stops you simply say goodbye to each other with great respect, gratitude, because whatsoever the other has done one has to be grateful for; there is no sourness about it.

Consciousness works both ways: if you live together it iS a friendship, and friendship gives you freedom. You can be friendly with many people; there is no possessiveness in it. When love becomes friendliness there is no possessiveness in it, there is no exclusiveness in it, there is no jealousy in it. And when there is no jealousy, no possessiveness, there iS freedom.

Freedom works, friendliness works. And the moment love starts giving freedom to the other, then there comes a tremendous fulfilment out of it, because the greatest desire of man is freedom, not love. If one has to choose between love and freedom, then the conscious person will choose freedom and the unconscious one will choose love.

Why did Buddha escape from his palace? There was enough love, in fact more than a man can digest. His father had gathered all the beautiful women available in his kingdom; he was surrounded by beautiful women. He escaped - he could see the bondage. A great desire for freedom arose in him.

That's why in the East the ultimate state is called moksha: moksha means "absolute freedom" - it is a higher phenomenon. Jesus calls God "love" - it is a little bit lower. Buddha calls it nirvana, "absolute freedom", so absolute that you are even free from your self. Your self was a bondage, was a limitation. You are free from everything, even from yourself. It is pure freedom!

Freedom is the ultimate desire of man. Man comes to flowering only in freedom. Meditation will bring freedom.

And I am not against love: it is just one step lower than freedom, and it is beautiful to have love as a fragrance around you. Let freedom be your centre and love be your circumference. Let love be the circumference and freedom the centre, and you will have a total being, a whole being.

But, Susan, relationship never works.

You are asking me: HOW CAN TWO PEOPLE BE COMMITTED TO EACH OTHER?

They cannot be. Commitment is towards existence, not towards each other. Commitment can only be towards the whole, not to each other.

HOW DOES A RELATIONSHIP WORK? You ask.

It does not work - and you can see it everywhere - it only pretends to. People go on saying that everything is okay, everything is good. What is the point of showing one's misery? What is the point of showing one's wounds? One goes on hiding them - it is humiliating to show one's wounds, so people pretend that everything is going well. They go on smiling, they go on repressing their tears.

Friedrich Nietzsche is reported to have said, "I go on smiling and laughing for the simple reason that if I DOn't smile I may start crying." Smiling is a way to cover up tears: you shift your energy from the tears to the smile so that you can forget your tears. But everybody is full of tears.

I have looked into thousands of people's lives, their relationships. It is all misery, but they are covering it up, pretending everything is going okay.

A relationship does not work, cannot work.

And, Susan, you say: I AM AFRAID OF COMMITMENT, SO I AVOID RELATIONSHIPS .

You are perfectly right in being afraid of commitment and you are perfectly right in avoiding relationships, but don't avoid relatedness. Don't make any exclusive relationship, be friendly. Let love rise to the level of friendliness, let it be just your quality. Be loving. Don't make it a relationship, just be loving.

These are the three stages. Relationship is the lowest; it is animal. Love as a quality of your being - just as you breathe, you let love be, that is human. And love at its ultimate expresSion is not even a quality; you become love itself. Then it is not even like breathing, it is your very being; then it is spiritual. But the third possibility can happen only through meditation. That refinement is possible only if your energies go through the whole alchemy of meditativeness.

Susan, meditate. Become more aware of what you are doing, of what you are thinking, of what you are feeling. Become more and more aware, deeply aware, and a miracle starts happening.

When you are more aware, all kinds of beliefs start disappearing, superstitions dissolve, disperse, darkness evaporates and your inner being becomes full of light. Out of that light, love is a friendliness.

It is not a question of commitment at all; one lives moment to moment, intensely, passionately, totally.

That is commitment as far as I am concerned - commitment to the moment - because the moment is the only reality there is. The past exists no more, the future is not yet; existence knows only the present. To be committed to the present moment is to be committed to existence, and there is no other commitment necessary.

The second question

Question 2:

Sudharka,

Just meditate over a few of Murphy's sutras.

First: It is good to be married occasionally.

Second: A clever man tells a woman he understands her, a stupid man tries to prove it.

Third: Marriage is a three-ringed circus: engagement ring, wedding ring and suffer-ring.

Fourth: Marriage may make the world go round, but so does a punch in the nose.

Fifth: Saving a marriage from divorce: the only way is not to show up for the wedding.

Sixth: A woman is God's second mistake - man is the first obviously - and two wrongs together don't make a right.

And the last: A woman is entitled to life, liberty, and pursuit of man.

So beware! If you want to get married, who am I to object? I can only make you a little more aware.

Think before you jump!

"Baby, which do you prefer?" whispered Charlie to his girlfriend, "beautiful men or intelligent men?"

"Neither, darling, you know I love only you!"

The preacher at the wedding was an ardent fisherman who was forced to postpone his fishing trip for a couple of hours to conduct the ceremony.

"Do you promise to love, honour and cherish this woman?" he asked the bridegroom.

"I do," pledged the groom.

"And do you promise likewise?" he asked the bride.

"I do," she said.

"Okay," affirmed the preacher as he hastily closed the book and turned to the bride. "Reel him in!"

A subject of many Athenian jests was the self-control of Socrates in dealing with his shrewish wife, Xanthippe. Once she scolded him loudly and ended by throwing a pail of hot water at him. With philosophic calm he turned to a disciple and said, "I told you that rain always follows thunder."

Listen...!

Somebody asked Socrates, "Do you believe, as some poets do, that a man is incomplete until he is married?"

He said, "Yes, a man is incomplete until he is married, then he is finished."

A young man asked Socrates if he should get married, and Socrates replied, "By all means, young man, get married. If you find a good wife, you will be happy; if you find a poor one, you will be a philosopher."

And he was saying that out of his own experience.

So, Sudharka, if you want to get married, do it by all means - I will not prevent you. I never prevent people from making mistakes, because that is the only way they learn. It needs tremendous intelligence to learn from other people's mistakes - it is very rare. Even if you can learn from your own mistakes, that is something very great! People are so foolish that they go on making the same mistake again and again.

So do it by all means, just remain a little aware.

A circus train had derailed and the car containing the lions had broken open and ten of the animals had escaped. The sheriff quickly organized a posse to track them down. As the men were getting ready to ride off in several directions, he said, "Men, it's a bit chilly tonight so before we go, let us go across the street to the tavern and I"ll stand everybody a few drinks."

They all gathered at the bar and ordered whisky, except for one man.

"Why aren't you drinking?" the sheriff asked. "Don't you want to get warmed up before we start out?"

"I want to stay warm all right," the man said, "but I sure don't want any whisky before I start hunting a bunch of lions because whisky would give me too much courage!"

So just remain a little sober - too much courage can be dangerous!

And you also ask about children... That is going a little too far, because if you get married it is only a question of you and your wife; nobody else is involved in it. But if you start producing children then the whole world is involved in it. THAT I cannot say you should do!

And if you are here then the best thing will be to find a sannyasin and get married to a sannyasin.

Then children can be avoided very easily, because it is very difficult to persuade any of my sannyasins to have children.

Once a pot of black coffee fell desperately in love with a bottle of milk. After convincing her that he was a really great guy, they finally got married.

Some time passed and he began to dream about having children, inventing such names as "White Nescafe", "Cafe Russe", etcetera. As he told her of his longings, she immediately turned away, saying, "No... no, darling." He didn't see her point, but as he loved her he decided to wait.

After some time he again tried, but once again she didn't want to give it any juice. Knowing that he would be cooling down soon, he tried a third time.

"Why not, my love, why not?" he asked.

"Well, ahem..." she uttered, "well... you know... er... I'm a sannyasin, I'm sterilized!"

But I don't think you will be able to understand all these jokes. If you can understand all these jokes you will not get married at all! But even people who don't understand jokes have to laugh here, otherwise they look very stupid - very English!

The parents of my personal dentist, Devageet, are here - and they are proper English people. Their only complaint is that they can't get many of the jokes, but still they laugh just to be polite!

After years of working hard and saving, a New York couple finally had accumulated enough money to take a trip to Israel.

They toured the entire country and spent time in the big cities as well. One evening in Tel Aviv they decided to see what the Israeli night life was like. So they went to a night dub.

They enjoyed the singer tremendously but, unfortunately for them, the comedian did his entire act in Hebrew. The wife sat patiently in silence throughout the monologue; her husband, however, laughed uproariously at every joke. The woman was, to say the least, surprised.

"So how come you laughed so much?" she asked when the act was over. "I didn't know you knew Hebrew."

"I don't," said the husband, "but I trusted him!"