It is all happening silently

Question 1:

It is good that you feel calm and quiet, rather than ecstatic, excited, because every ecstasy, every excitement is bound to come down; it cannot remain high forever. It burns your energy and burns it intensely. But you don't have an inexhaustible source; as an individual, in the body, all you have is limited.

To be with me, silently and calmly, peacefully is the right way; you can afford it. Even with limited sources of individual beings, a calm state of mind can remain forever.

I have seen both types of people coming to me. Those who come and become too much excited are soon exhausted, and when they are exhausted they are angry at me; when they are exhausted they turn into enemies rather than into friends. Obviously to them I am the cause for their breakdown, and they cannot forgive me. Deep down in their mind they carry an idea that ecstasy was given to them and now it has been taken away.

I don't give you anything and I don't take anything away. Whatever happens in you simply happens in you; I am not more than a catalytic agent. So the best that can happen to you is a deep calmness. It is more reliable because it is going to last your whole life -- maybe even beyond life.

And you are getting mixed up in your question between this happening in my presence, with me, and your intensive living. Intensive living I teach to people just so that they can transcend their desires, their turmoil, quickly. If they live very miserly, as many live, then in this life there is no hope for them to experience transcendence.

Don't mix that with your state, because your calmness is the beginning of transcendence.

That's why you are feeling that your happiness and sadness are happening together. It cannot happen -- either you can be happy, or you can be sad. You cannot be sadly happy, neither can you be happily sad. That would be a very strange situation!

What is happening is that your calmness is giving you this impression, because in your calmness you are feeling something that belongs to happiness and something that belongs to sadness. Sadness is not all wrong; happiness is not all right.

The essential part of happiness is a feeling of well-being; that you are feeling in your calmness, so you think you are happy. And the essential part of sadness is silence; that you are feeling in your calmness. These both can exist together, in fact they can only exist together.

A silent feeling of well-being... whatever is happening is perfectly right. Don't ask me to destroy it, ask me to enhance it. Don't make it a problem! It is not. It is a tremendous gift that the master never gives and the disciple always receives.

There are things the master never says and the disciple always hears. It is one of those mysterious phenomena that are not handed over by the master to you -- but you receive it, it arises within you.

It is just like the sunrise when millions of birds start singing. They are not even aware of the sunrise, but something in their heart is triggered by the presence of the sun; the sun is not aware of so many birds. Millions of flowers suddenly open their petals. The sun is not going to each single flower saying, "Wake up! It is time, and I have come." Neither are the flowers aware why they are opening their petals, why they are releasing their perfume. It all is happening silently. The presence of the sun is needed, but that presence does not do anything. Just its being there is enough.

Gurdjieff used to say that the situation of the human mind is like that of a small school class. The master is out, and all children are shouting and screaming and jumping and every kind of thing is going on, books are being thrown at each other.... And then suddenly the master appears and there is absolute silence. All screaming, all jumping, all throwing books stops. They are all leaning on their books -- although they are not reading, but pretending that they are reading.

One thing is certain, that the very presence of the master makes a difference. He does not do anything, he does not say anything. If he needs to say anything, if he needs to do anything, he is not a master; he is not respected, he is not loved. The children don't feel that he is worthy enough that they should be behaving differently in his presence than they behave in his absence.

In ancient Eastern scriptures it is again and again discussed, because it has been one of the eternal questions: should the disciple respect the master, or not? All the organized religions have decided that he should respect.

I have been talking to different religious leaders and I have said to them, "That is just wrong. The disciple should not respect. The master should be respectable." That is a totally different thing. The master should have the weight; he should be lovable, he should be respectable. Don't put the responsibility on the disciple, who is after all a disciple, a learner. It is easy for him to err.

One of my vice-chancellors said, in his convocation address, that the respect for the teacher is disappearing from the world of students, and this is dangerous. Ordinarily nobody stands up in a convocation address, because that is not a place to discuss. But I stood up and I said, "Before you say anything more, let me correct you. You are right in your observation that respect is disappearing from the student community, but you are wrong in your conclusion. The responsibility is not of the students but of the teachers.

Can you say with authority that the teachers are worthy of respect? And if you cannot say it with authority that the teachers are worthy of respect then why make a student responsible for this whole situation? If the teacher is worthy of respect, the question of respect from the students does not arise at all."

I said to him, "This I am saying to you with my own experience." For five years at that time I had been a teacher in the university and I had not come across a single student who was not respectful. "And if you come across students who are disrespectful to you, you should go home and think over it. Something must be wrong in you. Somewhere you have lost the worth."

There was immense silence in the whole auditorium. The professors were shocked, the students were shocked, the chancellor was suddenly frozen like a statue, and the vice- chancellor could not think what to say. I said, "You can see this silence -- I have not told anybody to be silent, but most of them are my students or have been my students and they know what I mean."

And the vice-chancellor had to take his words back. He said, "I can understand it. The responsibility should always be on the stronger person, not on the weaker person. The student is weak, a learner, has no power; the teacher has all the powers, all the learning, all the authority... and if he cannot manage respect, then he is responsible. You are right."

But he used the word manage. I didn't say anything, but that was a wrong word. To manage means you are thinking about it, you are using certain tactics, strategies for it. A real master simply comes amongst his disciples and there is silence, and there is calm.

And the same happens within you. You need not be worried about intensive living. If you can live this calmness, if this calmness can become your very life, where happiness and sadness contribute their essential beauty, then there is no need to think of people who talk of ecstasy. Their ecstasy will be gone in two days; your calmness will go with you beyond the grave.

Question 2:

It is a beautiful moment and a beautiful experience -- but there is much more in life.

There is much more than music, because music is after all sound, and there is silence too.

Music is beautiful but you should not forget silence. Dance is beautiful, but there is something beyond it: an absolute unmoving state of consciousness... no dance.

There are beauties and beauties... and there are categories. Music and dance are very physical. As far as they go they are beautiful, but one should not get stuck with them, one should not be stopped by them. They should open the door for the higher realm. For example, if you are really a lover of music, soon music will be forgotten and you will be entering into silence. If you are really in deep attachment with dance, soon the dance has to disappear, so that you can be in an unmoving state of being.

In China there is an ancient story. A man declared himself to be the greatest archer, and he went to the king and said, "I am ready to accept anybody's challenge. I have practiced archery for thirty years, and I know that there is nobody in the whole empire who can be a competitor to me. It should be declared... a time should be given and within this time, if there is somebody who wants to compete with me, I am ready; otherwise you have to declare me the champion of the whole empire, the master archer."

The king knew that he was the greatest archer he had seen and what he was saying was not boasting, it was really true. There was nobody in the whole empire even close to him; he had gone into the art so deeply. But an old man who was the constant companion of the king... he was a servant, but he was very respected by the king because the king's father had died early and this servant had been almost a father to him; he had protected him, he had disciplined him, he had trained him to be a king, and he managed to put him on the throne, to make him the emperor. He was sitting by his side on the ground, and he laughed.

The king said, "Why are you laughing? What he is saying is true. I know this man, I know his archery. Even with closed eyes he never misses his target; with closed eyes he can kill a flying bird. There is nobody who is in any way comparable to him."

The old man said, "You are too young. I know a man before whom this man is just an amateur. He is very ancient, very old -- older than me. He lives deep in the mountains.

Before you declare this man the champion, he has to meet that old man. Just meeting him will be enough -- competition is out of the question."

This was a great challenge... just meeting him will be enough, competition is out of the question. You cannot compete with that man. He is a master. And he showed him the way to the place where he could be found, the cave where he lived. The archer went miles into the mountains, finally found the cave and laughed, because there was the old man sitting, not even with a bow in the cave anywhere, no arrows -- what kind of master archer is he? And he was so old, maybe ninety, ninety-five or more. He could not hit the target, his hands would tremble; he was so old! But the man said, "I have been sent by the king to meet you."

The old man said, "I have received the message of the king, but before I meet you I will give a little test. I don't meet each and everybody! At least you must be capable of being an archer; you will have to do for me a little test." To be a master archer is out of question... he wanted to check whether he had any capacity for archery, any talent, any genius.

The old man came out of his cave, took the young man with him and he said, "The moment I saw you coming with your bow and with your arrows, I knew that you were an amateur, because the real master does not need these things. Have you not heard the ancient saying: when a master reaches to his ultimate genius, if he is an archer he throws away his bow and his arrows; if he is a musician he throws away his musical instruments; if he is a painter he throws away his brushes, his canvases."

He said, "I have heard it but I have never understood it."

The old man said, "Now you have come to the place where you will understand it. Come with me." There was a rock protruding into the valley, and the valley was thousands of feet deep. If you fell from the rock there was no possibility of your being alive; in fact you could not even be found as a whole body, you would be scattered. It was a dangerous valley.

The old man went onto the protruding rock; the young man was standing there trembling -- he was not going onto the rock. The old man was going and the young man was trembling. The old man said, "Stop that trembling. That is not the sign of a master archer." And the old man went to the very end of the rock, standing with half of his feet off the edge of the rock. He was standing there and he said to the young man, "Now you come and stand by my side."

The young man took one step, two steps -- and then fell flat, trembling, everything whirling. He said, "You have to forgive me. I cannot come where you are standing. Just a little mistake, a little breeze of wind, a little forgetfulness and you are gone forever! I have come here to meet you, not to commit suicide. I cannot believe how you are standing there."

The old man said, "That's what archery brings to a man -- an untrembling heart, a non- moving mind. Now I do not need the bow and the arrows. I know that you have looked around in my cave and I have seen your subtle smile, `How can this man be an archer?'

Now I will show you my archery."

He looked up and there were nine birds flying -- and as he looked up all the nine birds fell down on the earth. He said, "If you are absolutely immobile inside, even your eyes are enough; arrows are not needed. So go back, practice archery. Championship is far away. While I am alive, never think again of championship -- although I am not a competitor. Even if you were declared champion I would not have bothered to object -- who cares? Your championships, your titles are children's games.

"But the old man in the palace knows me. Now as long as I am living you cannot be a champion; you can be a champion if you really go deeper into archery, practice. And only I can make you a champion, not the king. What does he know about archery? So tell him, `You don't have any authority.' I will come in the right time if I am alive. Or I will send somebody, or I will make some arrangement, even if I am dead."

Ten years passed and the old man was dying. He called his son from the village down in the plains and told him -- he was also very old -- "Go to this certain archer and just report to me the situation."

He went there. The archer was very loving, very happy that the old man still remembered him and had sent his son. The son saw the big bow hanging on the wall. He asked, "What is it?"

And the archer said, "I used to know what it is... Now I don't know. I will have to ask; somebody must know."

But the son said, "I have heard you are an archer."

He said, "I used to be in my youth, and in youth everybody is foolish. I used to be, but your father brought me to my senses."

This was reported to the old man, that he had forgotten the name of the bow. The old man said, "That means he has proved his mettle. I will have to go down before I die to declare him the champion, the master archer."

Now he was also capable -- just looking at a bird was enough to kill it. Just those two rays going from the eyes were enough, because his inner being was so solidly immobile that those two rays became like arrows. He said, "Now I understand the meaning of the old saying: The musician breaks down his musical instruments when he really becomes a master. Then what is the use of those instruments? because they are still part of the world of sound and the real music is silence."

Even when you are listening to music, what really touches your heart is not the sound but the gap between two sounds. How to bring that gap to your heart is the whole art of music. But if a man can bring that gap just by his presence, and you fall into deep silence, you will know the real music. Then you will know that what you used to think of as music was only a preliminary training. And the same is true about dancing, the same is true about every creative art. What it appears to be is not the reality; it is just a device so that you can become aware of something intangible, hidden, beyond.

But to love music is good, to love dance is good, to play music is good, to dance is good - - but remember, that is not the end. You have to go far -- away from music, away from dance -- to understand the real beauty of any creative art. Every creative art brings you to your innermost being where there is just calmness, utter quietness, absolute silence.

Then you can say, "I have heard that which cannot be heard. And I have seen that which cannot be seen."

Question 3:

It is possible that avoiding sex for a long time and now getting interested in it you will have to go slowly towards it.

To be attracted to homosexuals is a step. Finally you will be attracted to the heterosexuals. The homosexual is half way. Nothing is wrong in it. It is good to go gradually, mature gradually. And it is also possible the homosexual person may be a person that you like, you love, that he deserves your love. His homosexuality may be a secondary thing. If it is a secondary thing, then perhaps you can stay with the homosexual person long enough, but if it is only a passing phase then moving from no sexuality or very little sexuality towards a heterosexual man, a direct jump, will be too much and can be dangerous. It may throw you back into your avoidance.

It is perfectly good that you are loving a homosexual. If he is a worthy person to be loved, that is even better; otherwise even his homosexuality is going to help you tremendously to reach to the heterosexual person.

These are the four stages: the auto-sexual person avoids sexuality. He wants to contain his sexuality within himself, he is a kind of miser, and such people suffer from constipation. It is now a well-established psychological fact. There is not a medical way to help them get rid of constipation, as their constipation has no cause in the body; their constipation has cause in their mind.

You should be reminded that the sexual center is in the mind, not in the genitals. And strangely enough, by the way, the sexual center and the food center are very close -- too close. So a person who stops his sexuality starts eating too much. The energy of the sexual center starts overflowing onto the next center, that is food. He becomes a food addict; he looks at food the way a lover looks at a beloved.

The second stage is homosexuality. It is a little better than being auto-sexual, confined to yourself -- now at least you are connecting with your same sex. But there is a confinement still -- although it is a bigger confinement -- man to man, woman to woman.

The third stage is heterosexual, which is the maturity of sex -- when you go beyond your femaleness or your maleness, where you transcend your class and move to the opposite.

And because the tension between the opposite is great, love blossoms on a grander scale.

Between two homosexuals, love is -- but there is no tension in it. It is not without any reason that homosexuals are called gay people, because there is no tension, there is no fight; they are always smiling, always looking happy. The happiness is shallow.

The heterosexuals are in a conflict, and in love. They laugh deeply, they weep deeply, they fight deeply, they feel for each other deeply; everything is deep because of the tension. They are known as intimate enemies. The intimacy is deep, the enmity is also deep.

The fourth state is asexual, when you are fed up and you have seen all that sex can provide -- its misery, its pleasure, its fights, its friendship -- and slowly, slowly you see the routine, the same wheel moving. To change that boredom of the same wheel moving you may change partners; that gives you a little energy for a few days more, but again the boredom comes back.

Once you are utterly bored with sex then the fourth stage is asexual. For the first time you are completely free. The first stage was very much confined to yourself; the second stage was confined to your class -- man to man, woman to woman. The third was better, but still it was confined -- man to woman, the same species. The fourth stage is completely free from sex: you have known it, you have understood it. Its work is finished. It is no longer a burden on you, no longer a desire on you, no more a tension. You feel light, and for the first time you can enjoy being alone.

To me this is true celibacy, not a practiced celibacy. It is through the experience of all the stages that you come to true celibacy, and the true celibacy has to be understood: it is not anti-sexual, it is only asexual. It has no antagonism, no anti-attitudes. In the fourth stage you can have sex as fun, just a biological game.

So it is not that you have to drop sex; you can drop... you can either drop it or you can keep it. But it has lost all the old meaning and all the old implications, all the old bondage, all old fights, jealousies -- all that is lost. If it drops, it drops; if it continues, then it is just casual friendship, with no strings attached to it, with no conditions attached to it.

Question 4:

It is not hard -- but man has not allowed it.

Man suffers from a deep inferiority complex, and to keep it repressed he keeps the woman in every possible way inferior to himself; otherwise if she is allowed freedom, allowed all her talents, her genius, the great fear of man is that she can prove superior in many dimensions. And she has many things which man is missing.

Naturally the only simple way was to cut all possible ways in which the woman could grow. So all women have been left retarded. Their roots have been cut: don't give education to them, don't let them have the freedom of movement in society, don't let them have friends from the other sex.

And for thousands of years it has been going on. Naturally if a woman cannot become a scientist, if a woman cannot become a poet, if a woman cannot become a great architect, a great sculptor, then the question of a woman becoming enlightened becomes very difficult. So many steps in between have been completely removed. My whole vision is to put those steps back.

And I am trying my best to put those steps back, so any woman of any quality has the full possibility, freedom and support to grow. Some of the women will grow to become enlightened, but no such possibility has ever before existed.

So it is true you have not heard of enlightened women, particularly in this century -- although there have been a few women who, in spite of all this imprisonment of their being, became enlightened. But they are not the rule, they are the exceptions. They simply prove one thing: that just to be a woman does not mean that the doors of enlightenment are closed to you.

One woman was Rabiya al-Adabiya, in Arabia, one woman was Meera in India. One woman was in the very ancient times, in the days of the RIG VEDA -- that may be five thousand years old, or ninety thousand years old; it is undecided by the scholars... but these women can be counted on less than ten fingers.

But it is enough proof that to be a woman does not mean that enlightenment is not for you. As far as I am concerned, I feel that because you have been prevented from being enlightened, or even from moving in that direction, you have more possibility now than man, for the simple reason that just as land that has not been used for many years is more fertile, just it needs seeds... That means "Okay, Maneesha!"