The forgotten language of the heart

Question 1:

The meeting with the master has always been a kind of death, death to all that you have been, death to your past, death to your ego, death to your personality. But it is not only death, it is also resurrection: the birth of the new, the birth of the fresh and the innocent, a new sunrise on the horizon, a new unfoldment of your being. But naturally, first you have to meet the death, you have to pass through it. Resurrection can only be afterwards.

The death is what you pay for your resurrection; hence, your question is significant.

You are feeling afraid coming closer to me. This is not new. This has nothing to do with you or me. This is as old as man.

The ancientmost scriptures in the world are the VEDAS. They describe the master as death, but a death which opens the door to the divine, certainly a death which happens only to the blessed ones.

It is no ordinary death, it is not the death of your body; it is the death that transforms you.

Everything remains the same -- the body, the world -- yet nothing remains the same because your vision, your perspective, your way of looking has gone through such a deep mutation that although superficially everything is the same, in depth everything has changed. You have entered a new dimension of life -- the dimension of eternity, the dimension of ecstasy, the dimension which is beyond time and space.

But this much courage is needed: You will have to come close to the master, you will have to go through this fire which burns only that which is false in you. Out of it, you come as twenty-four karat gold.

The function of a mystic school is to encourage you: "You need not be worried. We have passed through the test; the fire is cool and the death is a blessing."

But if you don't have any guts, then perhaps the time is not ripe for you, perhaps in some other life with some other master the death will happen.

But why postpone? What is possible right now should not be postponed for tomorrow.

Why remain in misery even for one day, even for one minute, even for one second?

The death of the ego, the death of your personality, the death of all that you have been thinking about yourself, immediately opens a door. New flowers start blossoming, new songs start stirring in your heart, new dances.

You don't walk anymore, you simply dance; you fly.

The ecstasy is such, the blissfulness is such... gather just a little bit of courage.

Question 2:

Nothing is wrong with you.

Everything is wrong with the world.

It is only the retarded people who don't feel bored.

You are intelligent. You can see that there is nothing meaningful. Life is a drag, a repetition. There seems to be no adventure in it, no challenge; there seems to be no hope.

Tomorrow will be again the same as yesterday.

It is the prerogative only of human beings to get bored; no other animal gets bored in existence.

Have you seen any animal in existence being bored?

Boredom is a high quality of intelligence. It means you are perceptive; you can see that there is nothing but -- finally -- death. Empty handed you have come, and one day empty handed you will leave, and all that happens in between birth and death is simply tedious.

So I cannot say there is anything wrong with you.

Every intelligent person thinks that perhaps what is not available in life may be available in death. Psychologists have found that almost every intelligent person at least once in his life thinks of committing suicide -- he may not commit it, but the idea comes.

Particularly in this century, the greatest philosophers -- Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, Marcel.... Almost all the topmost thinkers of the contemporary world are agreed on one thing -- they don't agree on many things, but on one thing they are all in absolute agreement -- that life is meaningless. And if this is so, then the question naturally arises, why go on living? If there is no meaning, no significance, then what is the need to be dragged from the cradle to the grave unnecessarily? This is the only contemporary philosophy: existentialism.

There have been many philosophies born in different ages, but in this age there has been only one philosophy and that is existentialism. And its basic ground is so strange that one feels that all these people are mad. If they are not mad, then we are mad -- there is no other alternative.

The whole philosophical movement called existentialism talks about life as meaningless, accidental, there is no purpose behind it; it is full of anxiety and anguish -- which are incurable. It is a nightmare.

This is such a contrast.

Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Nagarjuna, Bodhidharma, they talk of blissfulness, of tremendous possibilities of ecstasy, of growing into new dimensions of being.

What has happened? Why this diametrical opposition?

And Jean-Paul Sartre or Jaspers or Martin Heidegger are not unintelligent people; they are as intelligent as any Gautam Buddha. One thing is missing: they have depended only on reason. They are very rational people, they have completely forgotten the heart. They live in the mind and mind is a desert. Nothing grows there -- no flowers, not even an oasis.

The modern man slowly slowly has forgotten the language of the heart. The possibilities that open only through the heart are completely forgotten. Only one thing has remained, and that is your reason, your rationality.

And the trouble is, all that is beautiful belongs to the heart, all that is meaningful belongs to the heart, all that is significant is a fragrance of the heart.

Reason is perfectly good as far as objects, dead objects are concerned; for scientific research it is the best instrument. For things, reason is the right method of discovery. But the moment the question arises about anything living, reason is impotent. And if you ask reason a question concerning life, love, peace, joy, blissfulness, it simply negates, as if these things don't exist.

It is almost like a blind man. If you talk about light to the blind man, he is going to say that there is no light. Because to see light... your hands cannot do anything to see light, your ears cannot see it, you cannot taste it, you cannot smell it. All your senses are perfect, but only eyes have the capacity to see light and colors and rainbows.

Reason has a limitation. It is a perfect tool for dead things.

And this is one of the mistakes of this whole century: we have been asking blind people about light, or asking the deaf about music.

Asking reason about love, meaning, significance, ecstasy is futile. Reason will simply say these things don't exist -- because reason has never come in contact with any of these things. Reason is not intentionally denying you anything, it is just not its capacity; you are stretching it beyond its capacity.

It is good that at least in your life one thing is still significant: your love for me.

But you cannot give any reason for it. Or can you? Is it something rational? Is there some arithmetic behind it? -- some scientific evaluation? Can your mind support it?

It is not from the mind that you are related to me; it is that a part of your heart is still alive with me, is still dancing, is still singing.

And that is the great hope: your heart is not dead, you have not completely denied it.

This small loophole is enough. If I can enter through it, I can bring the whole of paradise behind me -- don't be worried.

And you are such a nice man that you are not thinking of committing suicide. So there is time, you are waiting for a natural death. Don't be worried.

Before natural death, I will give you the taste of natural life.

And once you are drunk with natural life, death disappears; you become part of an eternal flow of life which knows no end. Every moment is a new discovery, every moment a new peak. Every moment you think, what can be more than this? -- yet the next moment something more becomes possible.

This is an unending process. Just let me in. And the way to help me is to meditate.

Sit silently....

Life is boring -- so there is no harm in sitting with closed eyes, because there is nothing to see. Sit silently, peacefully. You have looked outside and you have found nothing but meaninglessness. Now give a chance to your inner world: look inwards.

And I promise you that the same eyes which have not found anything outside will find inside everything, a constant hallelujah.

Question 3:

Whatever is happening is the deepest longing of every seeker.

You are here only for this kind of happening. It is the beginning.

In the beginning it is very natural: the mind will create doubts. There is no need to be angry with the mind; mind cannot understand it, it is beyond the scope of mind. And naturally the mind wants you to remain rational, reasonable, sane.

The mind creates doubts for the simple reason that it wants to protect you. It is not against you, it is trying to protect you so that you don't get into some crazy space. But it is only in the beginning that the mind creates doubts. And this is the time when the master and the school of the master helps you not to be bothered with what your mind is saying, but to explore the new that is arising.

You are feeling light. All shadows are disappearing, and a luminous body is arising within you, a body of light.

The mind can accept a skeleton; it cannot accept a body of light.

Mind is very primitive; it still believes in matter.

Physicists have come to the conclusion that there is no matter at all; only energy exists.

But the energy particles are moving so fast that they create the illusion of solidness.

It is just like a fan moving fast: you cannot see the three wings separately, it becomes a circle. If it moved with the speed of light, the way electrons move in a pillar, then you could sit on the fan and you would not fall, and you would not feel that something is changing beneath you and there are gaps. Because before you could feel the gap, the other wing of the fan would have come in and you would not feel anything, the fastness of speed would make it a solid thing.

All that looks solid only looks solid.

But mind is very primitive.

The heart is neither primitive nor contemporary. The heart is eternal; it knows no divisions of time. So the heart can see without any doubt the body of light. In fact, that body is truer than the solid body that we see -- because the body of light means the body of electrons, pure electricity.

It happened after the second world war: a soldier came back home. He had been away from home for five years, and naturally he was in a hurry to meet his wife. As he hugged his wife he got a shock -- such an electric shock, he fell flat on the ground. He said, "My God, what has happened?"

For five years the wife had been waiting and waiting and waiting with such intensity, her electric forces had been accumulating.

Doctors were called. They could not even take her hand to check her pulse -- immediate shocks. Then the electrician was called, hoping that something... now it is no longer physical; something electrical has gone wrong. The electrician was very much afraid. He said, "First take this bulb in your hand." He gave the woman a five-candle bulb to put in her hand, and the bulb lit up.

That was the first happening of its type. The whole woman was throbbing with electricity. Because of her, research started into human electricity, and now it is an established fact that every human body has electricity.

If your eyes are very perceptive, you can see the electric aura around the body. As you have seen around the photos of Nanak, Kabir, Krishna, Rama, Buddha -- those circles around the faces are not fictions, they are not the imaginations of the painters; they have been seen by disciples, by meditators.

And now in the Soviet Union, there is a photographer who even takes photographs.... He has developed very sensitive plates. His name is Kirlian, and because of his name, his photography has become known as Kirlian photography. He has become world famous. If he takes your photo, it will not just be you but also surrounding your whole body an aura of light.

And strangely enough, if somebody's hand has been cut off in an accident and Kirlian takes a photograph, the hand is not there in the photograph but the aura of the hand is still there. The electrical body is still intact -- nothing has been disturbed, only the physical part has dropped. One of your fingers has been cut off for some reason, some accident; but in the photograph four fingers will show a darker photo of the physical finger with a lighter shade around it, and one finger will be simply the lighter electric shade. But the shade will still be there.

And this is not only with the human body. A roseflower: you can pluck a petal and Kirlian can say which petal has been taken out -- his photograph will show the missing petal's electric aura.

So what is happening to you is that as you become silent, you start becoming aware of your inner being -- which is surrounded by a light.

The ancients have called it the astral body, the body of light, the body made of starlight -- that is what `astral' means.

Just remember that it is not in the area of mind, and tell the mind, "This is none of your business. You do your thing."

And there are many more things. Existence is not limited to the mind, it is far bigger, far more mysterious.

You have all the possibilities that any mystic has ever experienced anywhere in the world, but you will have to silence your mind; otherwise those doubts can go on disturbing you.

That's why my insistence is: before entering the mysterious world, first silence the mind.

Discipline the mind for silence, for no-thinking, so that when you enter the mysterious world the mind does not come in the way, does not raise awkward questions which you cannot answer -- and which even if you answer, the mind cannot understand.

Mind has a limited scope. It is a bio-computer. It is not your whole being.

The heart is far bigger. And beyond the heart is your being, which is bigger than the heart. And beyond your being is the universal being -- which is infinite.

To enter into these mysteries you will need a silent mind that does not disturb you.

Question 4:

Milarepa, as far as you are concerned, if a buddha -- as a woman -- meets you on the way, your job is easier. You are a great ladykiller. So kill her lovingly -- what is the problem in it?

Lao Tzu has made things very easy for you.

It is true that all great qualities are feminine -- love, compassion, sympathy, kindness. All these qualities have a flavor of the feminine.

There are male qualities, qualities of the warrior, courage. They are hard qualities, one has to be like steel. Because man's qualities have developed through war, and female qualities have developed at home, in the garden of love, with the husband and children -- she has lived in a totally different world. Man has lived continuously fighting. In three thousand years there have been five thousand wars on the earth -- as if killing is man's only profession.

Just the other day, Nirvano showed me Ronald Reagan kissing his wife. The way he is kissing her, it looks as if he will kill the woman! That photograph should be enlarged and hung everywhere all over the world -- because he looks exactly like a chimpanzee.

Even kissing has some violence in it -- perhaps it is nuclear kissing.

The world has lived in two parts. Man has made his own world while the woman has lived in a shadow -- she has created her own world in the shadow. It is very unfortunate because a man or a woman, to be complete, to be whole, must have all the qualities together. Both men and women should be as soft as a rose petal and as hard as a sword -- both together. So whatever the opportunity and whenever the situation demands it.... If the situation needs you to be a sword, you are ready; if the situation needs you to be just a rose petal, you are ready. This flexibility -- between the rose petal and the sword -- will make your life richer.

And it is not only between two qualities, it is between all the qualities.

Man and woman are two parts of one whole; their world should also be one whole, and they should share all the qualities without any distinction -- no quality should be stamped as feminine or masculine.

When you make somebody masculine that person loses great things in his life. He becomes juiceless, he becomes stale, he becomes hard, almost dead.

And the woman who completely forgets how to be hard, how to be a rebel is bound to become a slave, because she has only soft qualities. Now roses cannot fight with swords, they will be crushed and killed and destroyed.

A total human being has not been born yet. There have been men and there have been women, but there have not been human beings.

My whole approach, Milarepa, is to bring the whole man to the earth -- with all the beautiful qualities of woman and with all the courageous, rebellious, adventurous qualities of man. And they should all be part of one whole.

But from the very beginning we start telling children... A small boy, if he wants to play with toys like girls, we immediately stop him -- "Be ashamed of yourself; you are a boy, you are a man, don't be girlish."

And if a girl tries to climb a tree we stop her immediately: "This is not ladylike, climbing a tree, this is for the boys -- rough. You just come down!"

From the very beginning we start dividing man and woman into parts. Both suffer -- because climbing a tree has a joy of its own, no woman should miss it. To be on top of a tree when the wind is strong, in the sun, with the birds singing... if you have not been to that point, you have missed something. And just because you are a woman. Strange...

To be adventurous -- to climb the mountains, to swim the oceans -- should not be prevented just because you are a woman, because that thrill is something spiritual.

A man should not be prevented when he wants to cry. He is prevented, he cannot bring tears -- tears are only for women: "You are a man; behave like a man!" And tears are such a beautiful experience. In deep sadness or in great joy, whenever something is overflowing, tears give expression to it. And if tears are repressed, at the same time what they were going to express -- the deep sadness or the great joy -- is also repressed.

And remember perfectly well that nature has not made any difference. It has given man and women the same tear glands, of equal size.

But if you are a man and you are crying, then everybody condemns you, as if, "You are behaving like a woman."

You should say, "What can I do? Nature itself has given me tear glands. Nature is behaving like a woman. It is not my responsibility, I am simply enjoying my nature.

Tears are my right."

All qualities should be available to everybody.

There are men who become incapable of love because they are trained for certain qualities: "You have to be hard. You have to be competitive. You are not to show emotions. You must not be sentimental."

Now how do you expect a man who is not emotional, not sentimental, who is not allowed to feel... how can you expect him to love? And when he misses love, his life becomes miserable. And the same is happening on both sides.

I would like all distinctions to disappear. Everybody should be allowed everything that is naturally possible to the person whether he is a man or a woman.

And we would have a richer world consisting of richer people.

Question 5:

First, Jayesh, the third body does not mean the mental body.

The first body is the physical body. The second body is the mental body. The third body is the astral body.

One becomes enlightened when one transcends the mental body.

The astral body consists only of pure light, just a flame with no smoke around it.

Secondly, you are right: I am ready to take all the poison in the world that is driving people crazy and to drink it -- because that poison cannot make me crazy.

I can relieve people from their poisons: their theologies, their religions, their political ideologies. These are all poisons, and since the beginning they have been driving mankind into constant madness. Christians killing Mohammedans, Mohammedans killing Hindus, Hindus killing Buddhists; it goes on and on... atheists killing theists, theists killing atheists. It seems we don't want anybody in this world to be free -- at least free to think.

In the Soviet Union, my sannyasins are being persecuted, they are being continuously harassed by the government. They have done no harm. Just their being related to something which is not communism is enough to freak the communists out: Communism should be the only religion in the Soviet Union.

They don't understand anything of what I am saying, they don't understand that my atheism is far more refined than their Karl Marx or their Engels or their Lenin, than any of their atheism is. They don't understand that I am for an authentic communism in the world.

And in the Soviet Union there is no communism.

Yes, the capitalists are no longer there and now poverty has been distributed equally.

I am not in favor of poverty. I want richness to be distributed equally -- not poverty.

And the basic idea in communism was to create a classless society -- which has not happened. There are no more capitalists, but the people who are in power have become the new class, the power elite. Capitalists have never been as powerful anywhere in the world as the power elite are in the Soviet Union.

And it is now sixty years, seventy years after the revolution. The same group of people is running the country, no new blood can enter the power class. And they want to overrule the whole world.

And America's intention is the same: to destroy freedom, to destroy individuality and to create an indirect imperialism all over the world. They have almost succeeded.

I would like to take all these ideologies away and make people free of their cages, give them their wings again, give them their sky back.

So you are right. That has been my effort my whole life. And to my last breath I will continue to do the same -- to free people from Hinduism, from Mohammedanism, from Christianity, from Judaism, from communism, from fascism, from nationalities, from distinctions and discriminations of man and woman, black and white.

How many insanities have we been carrying on our shoulders?

Because of that burden we cannot grow.

I would like everybody to be unburdened completely.

I understand Jayesh. He is saying that he is going mad... because for almost three months he has been away from me.

His has been a strange story.

He was a successful businessman; then he got tired. He heard about me, read about me and came from Canada to be with me in the commune in America with great expectations that "Now I will be sitting and meditating."

And the next day he was arrested with me, and we were behind bars.

He told me, "Bhagwan, this is too much. I came to meditate... But in a way I am fortunate that from the very beginning I am with you. Although it is jail, it does not matter."

And then he was with me all around the world, being deported from this country to that country.

For three months he has been away -- working for me. Certainly he must be going mad because he has been trying to find a headquarters for me. He works to the last -- everything is complete -- and then at the very end American pressure comes in. Because the American spies are continuously surrounding him. The American ambassador is continuously watching every move.

At the last moment, as they are going to sign an agreement that I can have a commune in their country, the phone rings and the American president himself is on the phone. And such blackmail! He threatens that "If you allow Bhagwan to remain in your country more than thirty-six hours then you will have to return all the loans that you have taken in the past" -- which means billions of dollars. "And if you cannot return them, then your interest rate will be doubled. Secondly, whatever loan agreements there are for the future" -- which are again for billions of dollars -- "are cancelled immediately. You can choose, you are free; you can choose Bhagwan or you can choose American loans."

Naturally no country is in a position.... They have to drop the whole idea.

Jayesh has been working, working, working for almost the whole year. It takes a month or two months to negotiate with the politicians and everybody, and when the final decision is about to be taken then immediately American pressure comes in. And it is not pressure, it is simply blackmail; it is threatening them that "We will kill you."

And certainly a country will be killed -- it cannot pay the loans, and it has all its future programs based on the loans that America is going to give. All those programs... bridges will remain half built, hospitals will remain half built, and there will be such a great unemployment that the whole economy will flop. This is economic imperialism: on the surface politically you are free, but deep inside you are not free, nobody is free.

Naturally he needs a joke after three months, just to give him a laugh.

Jayesh, I have heard that a certain man, Reagy -- no relation to Ronald Reagan -- worked in a circus, and he was the elephant trainer. He trained the elephant so that on his order, he would raise one of his legs up. Then he trained him to raise up two legs and then he trained him to raise up three legs. And he was such a perfectionist that he was trying to train the poor elephant to raise all four legs up. Until he realized it seemed difficult, that it was impossible, it could not happen.

So he had a great idea: he declared in the newspapers that, "Anybody who can come and make my elephant raise all four of his legs simultaneously, I will give him a ten- thousand-dollar reward. Entry fee is one hundred dollars."

Many people came and lost their one hundred dollars. How can the elephant raise.... They tried persuasion, hypnosis, meditation -- nothing worked.

And Reagy was very happy; he was collecting money.

And then one day a blue convertible car came in, and a small man came out. And he said to Reagy, "Are you the man who is going to give me ten thousand dollars if I can make your elephant raise all four legs simultaneously?"

He said, "Yes. But before that you will have to give me one hundred dollars as an entry fee."

He gave him one hundred dollars, went back. From the back of the car he pulled out a steel rod.

Reagy could not imagine what he was going to do. People had come who had tried yoga... who had tried all kinds of things. "What he is going to do?" He waited.

First the man went in front of the elephant and looked into its eyes. Then he went to the back of the elephant and gave it a good hit in the balls. The elephant jumped with all four of its legs.

Reagy was in tears. He had accumulated only eight thousand dollars! And this man cheated! He had to give him two thousand dollars from his own pocket. The man took ten thousand dollars away.

Then Reagy saw how to get those ten thousand dollars back.

Elephants are known to move their heads up and down, but they are not known to move their heads from side to side.

So he declared in another advertisement: "I will give ten thousand dollars to anybody who can make my elephant move his head from side to side."

Again people started coming for a hundred-dollar entry fee. Again Reagy was very happy: people were coming -- yogis, Taoists, Zen masters, all sorts of magicians. But nobody could manage it, he would only move his head up and down and they would lose their hundred dollars.

Then suddenly one day that blue convertible car came back again and out came out the small man. And Reagy started to tremble, that "This man.... Now let's see what he does."

He said, "Are you the man who is going to give ten thousand dollars if I can move your elephant's head from side to side?"

He said, "Yes, but first -- one hundred dollars!"

He gave one hundred dollars. Then he went behind the car and took out the rod.

Reagy said, "This idiot... with that rod again? How can he make his head move from side to side?

And the man came to the front of the elephant carrying the rod, he looked into his eyes and said, "Do you recognize me?"

And the elephant said, "Yes."

The man said, "Do you want the experience once more?"

And the elephant said, "No."

And he asked for another ten thousand dollars!

Beyond Enlightenment