This is it

The first question:

Question 1:

Zareen, love is a natural state of consciousness. It is neither easy nor difficult. Those words don't apply to it at all. It is not an effort; hence, it can't be easy and it can't be difficult either. It is like breathing! It is like your heartbeat, it is like blood circulating in your body.

Love is your very being...but that love has become almost impossible. The society does not allow it. The society conditions you in such a way that love becomes impossible and hate becomes the only possible thing. Then hate is easy, and love is not only difficult but impossible. Man has been distorted. Man cannot be reduced to slavery if he is not distorted first. The politician and the priest have been in a deep conspiracy down the ages. They have been reducing humanity to a crowd of slaves. They are destroying every possibility of rebellion in man - and love IS rebellion, because love listens only to the heart and does not care a bit about anything else.

Love is dangerous because it makes you an individual, and the state and the church, they don't want individuals, not at all. They don't want human beings - they want sheep. They want people who only look like human beings, but whose souls have been crushed so utterly, damaged so deeply, that it seems almost irreparable.

And the best way to destroy man is to destroy his spontaneity of love. If man has love, there can't be nations; nations exist on hate. The Indians hate the Pakistanis, and the Pakistanis hate the Indians - only then can these two countries exist. If love appears, boundaries will disappear. If love appears, then who will be a Christian and then who will be a Jew? If love appears, religions will disappear.

If love appears, who is going to go to the temple? For what? It is because love is missing that you are searching for God. God is nothing but a substitute for your missing love.

Because you are not blissful, because you are not peaceful, because you are not ecstatic, hence you are searching for God - otherwise, who bothers? Who cares? If your life is a dance, God has been attained already. The loving heart is full of God. There is no need for any search, there is no need for any prayer, there is no need to go to any temple, to any priest.

Hence, the priest and the politician, these two are the enemies of humanity. And they are in a conspiracy, because the politician wants to rule your body and the priest wants to rule your soul. And the secret is the same: destroy love. Then a man is nothing but a hollowness, an emptiness, a meaningless existence. Then you can do whatsoever you want with humanity and nobody will rebel, nobody will have courage enough to rebel.

Love gives courage, love takes all fear away - and the oppressors depend on your fear.

They create fear in you, a thousand and one kinds of fear. You are surrounded by fears, your whole psychology is full of fears. Deep down you are trembling. Only on the surface do you keep a certain facade; otherwise, inside there are layers and layers of fear.

A man full of fear can only hate - hate is a natural outcome of fear. A man full of fear is also full of anger, and a man full of fear is more against life than for life. Death seems to be a restful state to the fear-filled man. The fearful man is suicidal, he is life-negative.

Life seems to be dangerous to him, because to live means you will have to love - how can you live? Just as the body needs breathing to live, the soul needs love to live. And love is utterly poisoned.

By poisoning your love energy they have created a split in you, they have made an enemy within you, they have divided you in two. They have created a civil war, and you are always in conflict. And in conflict your energy is dissipated; hence your life does not have zestfulness, cheerfulness. It is not overflowing with energy, it is dull, insipid, it is unintelligent.

Love sharpens intelligence, fear dulls it. Who wants you to be intelligent? Not those who are in power. How can they want you to be intelligent? - because if you are intelligent, you will start seeing the whole strategy, their games. They want you to be stupid and mediocre. They certainly want you to be efficient as far as work is concerned, but not intelligent; hence humanity lives at the lowest, at the minimum of its potential.

The scientific researchers say that the ordinary man uses only five percent of his potential intelligence in his whole life. The ordinary man, only five percent - what about the extraordinary? What about an Albert Einstein, a Mozart, a Beethoven? The researchers say that even those who are very talented, they don't use more than ten percent. And those whom we call geniuses, they use only fifteen percent.

Think of a world where everybody is using one hundred percent of his potential...then the gods will be jealous of earth, then gods would like to be born on earth. Then the earth will be a paradise, a superparadise. Right now it is a hell.

Zareen, you say that it should be easier to love than to hate. If man is left alone, unpoisoned, then love will be simple, very simple. There will be no problem. It will be just like water flowing downwards, or vapor rising upwards, trees blossoming, birds singing. It will be so natural and so spontaneous!

But man is not left alone. As the child is born, the oppressors are ready to jump on him, to crush his energies, to distort them to such an extent, to distort them so deeply, that the person will never become aware that he is living a false life, a pseudo life, that he is not living as he was meant to live, as he was born to live; that he is living something synthetic, plastic, that this is not his real soul. That's why millions of people are in such misery - because they feel somewhere that they have been distracted, that they are not their own selves, that something has gone basically wrong....

Love is simple if the child is allowed to grow, helped to grow, in natural ways - in the way of dhamma. If the child is helped to be in harmony with nature and in harmony with himself, if the child is in every way supported, nourished, encouraged to be natural and to be himself, a light unto himself, then love is simple. One will be simply loving!

Hate will be almost impossible, because before you can hate somebody else, first you have to create the poison within yourself. You can give something to somebody only if you have it. You can hate only if you are full of hate. And to be full of hate is to suffer hell. To be full of hate is to be in fire. To be full of hate means you are wounding yourself first. Before you can wound somebody else, you have to wound yourself. The other may not be wounded, it will depend on the other. But one thing is absolutely certain: that before you can hate, you have to go through long suffering and misery. The other may not accept your hatred, may reject it. The other may be a buddha - he may simply laugh at it. He may forgive you, he may not react. You may not be able to wound him if he is not ready to react. If you cannot disturb him, what can you do? You will feel impotent before him.

So it is not necessarily so, that the other is going to be wounded. But one thing is absolutely certain, that if you hate somebody, first you have to wound your own soul in so many ways; you have to be so full of poison that you can throw poison on others.

Hate is unnatural. Love is a state of health; hate is a state of illness. Just like illness it is unnatural. It happens only when you lose track of nature, when you are no longer in harmony with existence, no longer in harmony with your being, with your innermost core; then you are ill, psychologically, spiritually ill. Hatred is only a symbol of illness, and love one of health and wholeness and holiness.

Zareen, love should be one of the most natural things, but it is not. On the contrary, it has become the most difficult thing - almost the impossible thing. Hate has become easy; you are trained, you are prepared for hate. To be a Hindu is to be full of hate for Mohammedans, for Christians, for Jews; to be a Christian is to be full of hate for other religions. To be a nationalist is to be full of hate for other nations.

You know only one way of love: that is, hate others. You can show your love for your country only by hating other countries, and you can show your love for your church only by hating other churches. You are in a mess!

These so-called religions go on talking about love, and all that they do in the world is create more and more hate. Christians talk about love and they have been creating wars, crusades. Mohammedans talk about love and they have been creating JIHADS - religious wars. Hindus talk about love, but you can look into their scriptures - they are full of hate, hate for other religions. You can study Dayanand's so-called great book, SATYARTH PRAKASH, and you will find hate on each page, in each sentence. And these books are thought to be spiritual books.

And we accept all this nonsense! And we accept it without any resistance, because we have been conditioned to accept these things, we have been taught that this is how things are. And then you go on denying your own nature.

Just the other day I was reading a joke:

A woman was confessing - she was a nun - she was confessing to the mother superior, crying, tears rolling down her cheeks; she looked tremendously disturbed. And she was saying, "I have committed a sin - something unforgivable. This man entered into my room last night, and I was alone. And at the point of a revolver he made love to me. He gave me only two alternatives: 'Either die or make love to me.' I am ruined!" she was saying. "My whole life is ruined!"

The mother superior said, "Don't get so disturbed, don't get so worried - God's compassion is infinite. And it is said in the old scriptures that a man is allowed to do anything if it is a question of survival - except spitting on the Bible. A man is allowed to do anything if it is a question of survival, and it WAS a question of survival for you.

So don't be worried - you are forgiven!"

But the woman remained disturbed and started crying again and said, "No. It won't help!"

The mother superior said, "Why won't it help?"

And the nun looked up and she said, "Because I liked it."

You can deny nature but you cannot destroy it. It remains somewhere in the deepest recesses of your being, alive. And that's the only hope.

Love has been poisoned, but not destroyed. The poison can be thrown out, out of your system - you can be cleansed. You can vomit all that the society has enforced upon you.

You can drop all your beliefs and all your conditionings - you can be free. The society cannot keep you a slave forever if you decide to be free.

That's what sannyas is all about.

Zareen, it is time - now become a sannyasin. It is time to drop out of all old patterns and start a new way of life, a natural way of life, a nonrepressive way of life, a life not of renunciation but of rejoicing.

Ordinarily, if you look at human beings, love is impossible, only hate is possible. But the space that I am creating here is totally different: here love is the only possibility.

Hate will become more and more impossible. Hate is the polar opposite of love - in the sense that illness is the polar opposite of health. But you need not choose illness.

Illness has a few advantages which health cannot have; don't become attached to those advantages. Hate also has a few advantages which love cannot have. And you have to be very watchful. The ill person gets sympathy from everybody else; nobody hurts him, everybody remains careful what they say to him, he is so ill. He remains the focus, the center of everybody - the family, the friends - he becomes the central person. He becomes important. Now, if he becomes too much attached to this importance, to this ego-fulfillment, he will never want to be healthy again. He himself will cling to illness.

And psychologists say there are many people who are clinging to illnesses because of the advantages illnesses have. And they have invested in their illnesses for so long that they have completely forgotten that they are clinging to those illnesses. They are afraid if they become healthy they will be nobody again.

You teach that too. When a small child becomes ill, the whole family is so attentive. This is absolutely unscientific. When the child is ill, take care of his body but don't pay too much attention. It is dangerous, because if illness and your attention become associated...which is bound to happen if it happens again and again. Whenever the child is ill he becomes the center of the whole family: daddy comes and sits by his side and inquires about his health, and the doctor comes, and the neighbors start coming, and friends inquire, and people bring presents for him.... Now he can become too much attached to all this; it can be so nourishing to his ego that he may not like to be well again.

And if this happens, then it is impossible to be healthy. No medicine can help now. The person has become decisively committed to illness. And that's what has happened to many people - the majority.

When you hate, your ego is fulfilled. The ego can exist only if it hates, because in hating you feel superior, in hating you become separate, in hating you become defined, in hating you attain a certain identity. In love the ego has to disappear. In love you are no longer separate - love helps you to dissolve with others. It is a meeting and a merger.

If you are too much attached to the ego, then hate is easy and love is most difficult. Be alert, watchful: hate is the shadow of ego, and love needs great courage. It needs great courage because it needs the sacrifice of the ego. Only those who are ready to become nobodies are able to love. Only those who are ready to become nothing, utterly empty of themselves, are able to receive the gift of love from the beyond.

If you are watchful, Zareen, love will become very simple and hate will become impossible. And the day hate becomes impossible and love becomes natural, you have arrived home. Then there is nowhere to go - God has been achieved.

To be absolutely natural is all that is meant by finding God.

The second question:

Question 2:

Prabhati, there are two kinds of things in existence: one, that which can be explained; and the other, that which can only be experienced. The things that can be explained are mundane, ordinary, have no intrinsic value in them. And the things that cannot be explained are really significant, have intrinsic value.

For example, sex can be explained, love cannot be explained. Hence, sex becomes a commodity - it can be sold, it can be purchased. Love is not a commodity; you cannot sell it, you cannot purchase it - there is no way. Sex can be explained because it is part of physiology. Love cannot be explained - it is part of your inner mystery.

Unless your sexuality rises and reaches to love it is mundane, it has nothing sacred about it. When your sex becomes love, then it is entering into a totally different dimension - the dimension of the mysterious and the miraculous. Now it is becoming religious, sacred, it is no longer profane.

And there is an even higher stage of love - I call it prayer - which is absolutely unexplainable, which is absolutely ineffable. Nothing can be said about it.

When a disciple asked Jesus, "What is prayer?" Jesus fell on his knees and started praying. What else can you do? Prayer cannot be explained, nothing can be said about it, but it can be shown. What can you say about death, what can you say about life?

Whatsoever you say will fall short; it cannot soar to the heights of life and death. Those are experiences.

What can you say about beauty? Even if the lake is full of beautiful lotuses and it is a full-moon night, and all is benediction, somebody can ask, "What is beauty?" What can you say? You can show! You can say, "This it it!" But he will say, "I am asking for a definition."

Rabindranath, one of the greatest poets of this country, was living on a small houseboat.

He used to live for months together on that houseboat; he loved living on the houseboat. It was a full-moon night and he was reading in his room, a small cabin, just by a small candlelight, and he was reading about aesthetics - what is beauty? And the full moon outside, and the cuckoo calling from the distant shore, and the moon reflecting all over the lake, and the whole lake was silver...! It was a tremendously silent night, nobody around, except that cuckoo calling. Once in a while a bird would fly over the boat, or a fish would jump in the lake - and those sounds would deepen the silence even more. And he pondered over great books on aesthetics in search of the definition of what beauty is.

Tired, exhausted, in the middle of the night, he blew out the candle...and he was shocked, surprised. As he blew out the candle, the moonrays entered through the window, through the door, inside the cabin. That pale light of the candle had been keeping the moon out. Suddenly, he heard the cuckoo calling from the distant shore.

Suddenly, he became aware of the tremendous silence, the depth of the silence surrounding the boat. A fish jumped, and he came out.... He had never seen such a beautiful night. A few white clouds floating in the sky, and the moon and the lake and the cuckoo calling...he was transported into another world.

He wrote in his diary, "I am foolish! I have been searching in books for what beauty is, and beauty was standing outside my door, knocking on my door! I was looking for beauty, searching for beauty, with a small candle, and the small candlelight was keeping the moonlight outside." He wrote in his diary, "It seems my small ego is keeping God out - the small ego, like a pale small candlelight, keeping the light of God outside. And he is waiting outside. All that I need to do is to close the books, blow out the candle of the ego and go out - AND SEE!"

Prabhati, you ask me, "What is?"

This...thisness...this moment you are surrounded by the is. It is within you and without you. The chirping of the birds...and this silence...and you ask me what is?

It is not a question that can be answered. It is a dangerous question too, dangerous in the sense that you may find some foolish person who answers it, and then you may cling to that answer. Somebody will say, "God is," and you will cling to that answer.

And then another question will arise: "What is God?" And now you are ready to fall into an infinite regress.

A man who once did God a favor received as his reward the promise of an answer to one question, any question. But God warned him that some things can only be experienced and cannot be explained. As he pondered and then started to ask his one cosmic question, God warned him again about experience versus explanations.

The man could contain his question no longer, and demanded to know, "What is after death?" and God slew him where he stood.

What else could God do? He slew him where he stood, immediately he killed him, because if you want to know what is after death, you have to die! Be very careful. You can be given explanations about things which belong to the world, to the objective world. For that you should ask the scientist; he knows, it is his concern. Don't ask the mystic about things which can be explained; that is not his concern. His concern is with things which can be experienced.

Don't ask me any question which cannot be explained. Be in my presence, feel my presence, be open and vulnerable. We are here to experience something. All explanations about the mysteries of life are nothing but explaining away those things.

The basic, root meaning of the word 'explanation' is 'to flatten a thing' - but to flatten a thing is to destroy it. If anybody could answer, "What is God? What is love? What is prayer? What is?" he would have flattened a beautiful, tremendously beautiful, incredible experience, into ugly words. All words are inadequate.

Be and know! Be still and know! You are here not to learn more words; you are here to get deeper into silence. Use my words as hints towards a wordless existence.

This is it! What are you asking about? Feel this moment...in its totality, in all its dimensionality, and a great beauty will descend, a great beautitude, a great benediction will surround you; a grace, a very silent ecstasy will start rising in you. You will feel drunk with existence.

Be drunk with existence - that is the only way to know it.

The third question:

Question 3:

Aida, it is fantastic... I mean bullshit, utter bullshit! Be aware of such stupid things. They move in the world in the name of science because science has credit, so any kind of stupidity can pretend to be scientific. And people are very much impressed by words: 'scientology'. People are very much impressed by shining gadgets, instruments.... Man is so unaware and unconscious of himself that he falls a victim to anything! You just need to propagate it, advertise it - and our century has the most efficient media to advertise, to propagate things.

Scientology is nothing but a kind of hypnosis - it can hypnotize you. And real religion is just the opposite: it is dehypnosis. You are already hypnotized, you don't need any scientology anymore. You need a process of dehypnosis, you need deconditioning, you need to come out of all kinds of ideologies. Scientology is an ideology. It talks in terms of science, and science has great appeal. Science is the modern superstition.

The modern man is immediately impressed if you bring science in. So anything and everything has to be proved scientifically. And there are quacks who even go on proving God scientifically, and who are trying to measure states of meditation - as if meditation can be measured. Whatsoever you can measure will be mind; no-mind cannot be measured. All your alpha waves, etcetera, are not going to help. They can only go to a certain extent IN the mind. But meditation begins only where mind ends.

Mind is measurable, because mind IS a machine. But no-mind is immeasurable, it has no limits. So all the nonsense that goes on in the name of measuring...and people are very much impressed. They are sitting before very shiny gadgets - it gives an impression of science - wires attached to the head, to the hands, just like a cardiogram.

They are trying to figure out the inner silence. It is impossible! Whatsoever you come to record is mind. All waves are of the mind.

Meditation is wavelessness because it is thoughtlessness. Meditation cannot be recorded; there can be no cardiogram, there can be no machine which can record it. It is very elusive, it is very subjective, it cannot be reduced to an object. But because the Western mind is very objective, is trained in science, now there are quacks around who are cashing in on this attraction and this training.

Scientology is one of those pseudo religions. The real religion has no need of any such thing. And scientology is destroying many people's minds.

Modern man is in a special situation: the old religions have lost their grip, their credibility, and the new religion has not yet arrived - there is a gap. And man cannot live without religion, it is impossible; religion is such a need. So if the true is not available, the false becomes prevalent, the false becomes a substitute. Scientology is a false religion, and there are many like scientology.

Real religion consists of becoming utterly silent, unconditioned, unhypnotized. It is going beyond mind, beyond ideology; it is going beyond scripture and beyond knowledge. It is simply falling into your own interiority, becoming utterly silent, not knowing a thing, and functioning from that state of not knowing, from that innocence.

When you function out of innocence, your actions have a beauty of their own. That's what virtue is - AES DHAMMO SANANTANO.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Neelima, psychoanalysis is a superficial thing - helpful but very superficial. It only analyzes the surface rumblings of your mind. It is far better than scientology certainly, because at least it analyzes ACTUAL reality. It is concerned with the mind that you have got. It tries to penetrate into your unconscious, into the repressed part of your mind. It can help you, but it cannot solve all your problems because its reach is very limited. Hence, Freud could not satisfy, he could only touch a part of your mind. Adler touched another part of your mind - he could not satisfy either. Jung touched still another part of your mind - he could not satisfy, because parts are parts and the problem belongs to the whole.

Assagioli goes a little deeper than all these three. He drops psychoanalysis and starts calling his endeavor "psychosynthesis." That is a little better - he synthesizes. Freud is a fanatic; he claims that whatsoever he is saying is the truth and the only truth and the whole truth. And anybody who is against it is against truth. There can be no other possibility - this is the only way. The fanatic always claims, "This is the only way." The fanatic does not allow life its richness, its variety.

And so is Adler. They were all basically disciples of Freud, although they rejected his knowledge. But they never could reject his basic fanaticism. They rejected what he said, but they never could reject the impression that he had left on their beings.

Jung was also a follower, a disciple, then rebelled against him. But even in his rebellion he remained, deep down, the same person - the same emphasis of claiming the whole, of knowing the whole.

Assagioli is far better, because he says all these three persons are talking sense but they are partial - they have to be synthesized. A synthetic approach is needed which combines all the endeavors. But Assagioli commits a mistake which is very fundamental. You can dissect a man's body to know what is inside; once you have dissected it you will not find any soul - that is not the way to find a soul. You will find hands and legs and head and eyes and heart and kidneys, and thousands of things you will find, and you can make a long list...but you will not find the soul. And naturally you will conclude there is no soul.

That's what was done by Freud, Adler and Jung. Then came Assagioli. He said, "This is not right. Dissection is not the way, analysis is not the way - I will try synthesis." So he puts all those parts together again, stitches them together; does a good job of stitching, but still the man is not alive, the soul is not there. Once the soul has left, just by putting the body together you cannot bring it back. So now it is a corpse - better than Freud, Adler and Jung, because they were only like the proverbial blind men, the five blind men, who had gone to see the elephant. Each was claiming, "My experience of the elephant IS the elephant." The one who had touched the leg of the elephant was saying that the elephant is nothing but a pillar...and so on and so forth. Freud, Jung and Adler are all blind, feeling parts of the elephant. And the elephant of life is really huge, enormous.

Now what Assagioli has done is that he has collected the opinions of the five blind men and he has put all those opinions together, and he says, "This is the right thing. I have made the synthesis, this is the truth." This is not the way to find the truth. By putting five blind men's opinions together, you don't arrive at the real elephant.

The real elephant needs EYES to be seen. Psychoanalysis is blind and so is psychosynthesis - a little wiser but blind all the same. They cannot solve man's problems because man's basic problem is not psychological but spiritual, not psychological but existential. Man is not only the body; otherwise the physiologist would have solved all his problems. And man is not only a psyche; otherwise the psychologist would have solved his problems. Man is far more: man is an organic unity - body, mind, soul...these three plus something mysterious: the fourth. The mystics in India have called it just the fourth - TURIYA. They don't give it any name because no name can be given to it.

Body, mind, soul, these three are nameable. The body is available for objective observation. The mind is available for both objective and subjective observation - you can observe it from the outside as behavior and from the inside as ideas, thoughts, imagination, memory, instinct, feeling, and so on and so forth. The soul is available only as a subjective experience. And beyond all these three is the fourth that keeps them all together: turiya - the fourth, unnameable. That fourth has been called God, the fourth has been called nirvana, the fourth has been called enlightenment.

Man's problem is complex. If he were only the body, things would have been simple; science would have solved everything. If he were only the mind, psychology would have been enough. But he is a very complex phenomenon, four-dimensional. And unless you know the fourth, unless you enter the fourth, you don't know the man in his totality. And without knowing him in his totality, the problem cannot be solved.

Psychoanalysis can give you a philosophic approach, but not an existential transformation.

During the last days of a psychiatrists' convention, one of the doctors present at the closing lecture noticed an attractive female Ph.D. being pawed by the man seated next to her.

"Is he bothering you?" the gallant observer asked the woman.

"Why should I be bothered?" she replied. "It is HIS problem."

Psychoanalysis, psychiatry, psychology, can give you a philosophical approach towards life. They can give you the quality of being distant from life's problems, but the problems are not solved. And the psychiatrist has not even solved his own problems - how can he help others to solve theirs?

Even Sigmund Freud is not a buddha, is full of problems - in fact more than the so- called human beings. He was very much afraid of death, too much afraid of death - so much so that even the word 'death' was not uttered in front of him by his disciples, because once or twice, just hearing the word 'death' he had fainted. Just the word 'death' was enough! He would faint, he would become unconscious, he would fall down from his chair.

Freud brought sex into the light. He did a great work:he destroyed one taboo, the taboo that had remained for centuries. Sex was a taboo subject, not to be talked about. He brought it into the light. He did a great pioneer work - he should be respected for it.

But death was taboo to him; he could not even hear the word. There seems to be a connection.

This is MY observation: that there have been two kinds of societies in the world - one society which makes sex taboo, then it is not afraid of death; and the other society which drops the taboo against sex, then it immediately becomes afraid of death. We have not yet been able to create a society in which neither sex nor death are taboos.

My sannyasin has to do that.

Why does it happen so?

For example, in India, sex is taboo - you should not talk about it - but death is not taboo. You can talk about it; in fact, all the religious teachers talk about death. They make people so much afraid of death, talking again and again and again about it. They create so much fear in people that out of fear people start becoming religious. All Indian scriptures are full of the description of death. Death seems to be one of the most talked about subjects in India - not sex. Sex is taboo. Sex is life, and if you choose death you cannot choose sex - either/or.

Freud did a great service to humanity; he brought sex from the dark corners of the soul into the open world. But immediately death became taboo; he himself became afraid of death. They are polar opposites, and the total man will be able to understand both.

And the total man, the whole man, is my definition of a holy man. He will be able to talk about sex, observe, analyze, dissect, go into it, meditate - and he will be able to do the same with death. ...Because you are neither sex nor death: you are the witness of both. You are neither life nor death: you are a witness to both. This witnessing will bring you to the fourth - turiya. And only when you enter the fourth do all problems disappear, dissolve. Before that, problems remain.

You can become very very expert in analyzing problems - that is not going to help.

A beautiful woman visits a psychoanalyst. "Take off your clothes," says the psychoanalyst as soon as she enters.

"But really I was...."

"I am telling you to take off your clothes," insists the shrink without giving her time to answer.

"But, doctor, I came because I have a problem and I thought...."

"Don't think. Take off your clothes and don't waste my time," insists the shrink even more rudely.

The astonished and embarrassed woman takes off her clothes and immediately the shrink jumps on her.

After half an hour, the shrink, zipping up his trousers, looks at the woman who still does not understand what is happening and more calmly says, "Well, now that I have solved my problem, let us see if I can solve yours."

Only a buddha can help you to solve your problems - one who has no problems of his own.

Religion cannot be dropped, can never be dropped. Religion is not something superficial and accidental: it is an intrinsic need, it is absolutely needed.

Neelima, you ask me, "Cannot psychoanalysis solve man's problems?" No. It can help you to understand your problems a little bit more, and by understanding your problems you can control your life in a certain way, to a certain extent. Psychoanalysis can help you to become a little more normal than you are; it can reduce your heated, excited abnormality to a little calmer and cooler space - that's all. It can bring your temperature down a little, but it cannot solve. It can only help, it can console.

I have heard about a man who used to smoke three cigarettes at one time - that was his obsession. Now, it was very embarrassing; people would look at him, what he was doing, and he would feel very shy and ashamed. But it was impossible, he couldn't help it, he had to do it that way; otherwise he would remain very dissatisfied.

He had tried every possible way, whatsoever was suggested to him. Nothing helped.

Then somebody suggested, "You go to a psychoanalyst."

After one year of psychoanalysis and thousands of dollars wasted, a friend asked him, "Did psychoanalysis help you?"

He said, "Certainly!"

But the man could not believe it, because he saw he was still smoking three cigarettes.

So he asked, "But you are still smoking three cigarettes, so I don't understand how psychoanalysis has helped you."

He said, "Now I am no longer ashamed! My psychoanalyst has helped me to understand that this is just normal. What is wrong in it? A few people smoke one, I have heard of one person who smokes two, I smoke three! The difference is only of quantity - and what is wrong in smoking three cigarettes? For one year my psychoanalyst has persistently said that there is nothing wrong in it; now I don't feel ashamed. In fact, I am the only person in the world who smokes three cigarettes simultaneously! Now I feel very superior."

Psychoanalysis can give you many consolations. It can help you rationalize, it can help you normalize, it can help you not to feel ashamed - but it doesn't solve. It cannot.

Problems are never solved if you remain at the same plane of existence. This is something very fundamental to be understood.

If you want to solve a problem you have to rise above the plane. It can't be solved on the same plane. The moment you reach a higher plane, the lower-plane problems simply disappear. That is the way of religion: to help you go higher and higher and higher. The moment you have reached the fourth state, turiya, all problems disappear, dissolve, lose meaning. Not that you have found solutions, no, not at all - religion is not interested in solutions. No solution can ever solve a problem; it may help you to solve one problem, but it will create another. The solution itself may become the problem.

You may become so much attached and dependent on the solution....

It happens almost every day in your life: you are ill, you take a certain medicine, it helps, and then you become dependent on the medicine; then you are addicted, then you cannot leave the medicine. Now the medicine has its own side effects - now they start torturing you. Now for them you will need other medicines...and so on and so forth. There is no end to it.

No solution can really become a solution. Religion has a totally different approach. It does not give you a solution, it simply helps you to raise the level of your consciousness. Religion is consciousness-raising. It raises you higher than the problem, it gives you a bird's-eye view. Now you are standing on a hilltop looking at the valley...and the problems of the valley are simply meaningless. They don't have any significance for the man who is standing on the sunlit hilltop. They have simply lost all relevance.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

Apurna, your experience is perfectly valid, but because it is such an ecstasy, such an excitement, how long can you go on repeating it? Sooner or later a moment arrives when it becomes repetitive, the same, and then it will start losing its joy. That moment it becomes tiring.

Your experience is perfectly valid, but very limited. Life is far more. It begins in sex, but it doesn't end in it. I am perfectly happy that you are enjoying your sex - enjoy it as much as possible while it lasts. And the more you enjoy it, the sooner you will be tired of it.

But no need to worry about that. I was answering somebody else's question, who is tired of it. He has lived all these joys, he has played with all these toys. You are giving big names to those toys - these are all teddy bears. You can call your teddy bear "God," and nothing is wrong.... When a child is carrying his teddy bear and calling him "God" and cannot go to sleep without him, it is very relaxing, and if you take the teddy bear he becomes very tense! Even dirty teddy bears...and he will carry them. Even parents feel ashamed because if they are going on a holiday he is carrying his teddy bear - dirty, smelly...but the child cannot live without it. It is his very life. But one day, hopefully, he will be tired of it and he will throw it in a corner and will forget all about it forever.

It is really difficult to answer your questions, because one person's question is relevant only to him, and the answer that I give is relevant only to him. It may not be your experience.

On one day I said that homosexuality is a perversion. Immediately a few letters arrived - very angry, because there are a few homosexuals here. And they said, "What are you talking about? We have come here only because we thought that you accept all, that you don't reject, don't condemn anything." I have not condemned. But the question and the answer were for a particular person. You need not be worried about it; it may not be relevant to you.

To a homosexual, homosexuality is religion - his religion - he does not believe in heterosexuality. He thinks the heterosexuals are a little perverted, or at least very orthodox, out-of-date people...should not exist anymore, are no longer contemporaries - - what nonsense are they talking about?

To the heterosexual, the homosexual seems to be very perverted, animalistic, even below the animals. And to the homosexual, the heterosexual is animalistic, because homosexuality is the invention of man, the superior man. Animals are not homosexual - - at least not in their wild state. In zoos sometimes, yes, but there they become affected by human beings, they learn from human beings. But in the wild they are not homosexuals.

So homosexuality is something special that man has discovered. It is a defining phenomenon. Just as Aristotle says man is a rational being, the homosexual says man is a homosexual being - only man has the capacity to rise to such heights. Heterosexuality is just ordinary: dogs do it and...it is nothing special! One should not brag about it.

Two camels slowly approach each other in the desert, their riders identically dressed in excessively long Bermuda shorts and topi helmets. They pause, and the riders speak - in an exaggerated British accent:

"English?"

"Of cawss."

"Foreign Office?"

"Cinema photography."

"Oxford?"

"Cambridge."

"Homosexual?"

"Certainly not!"

"Pity!"

And the two camels continue their separate ways across the desert.

I have to talk to many kinds of people - camels are there. So if it is not your question, don't be bothered by my answer, forget all about it. It concerns somebody else, who is far more mature than you....

The last question:

Question 6:

It reminds me of a story George Gurdjieff used to tell his closest disciples. The story is about a great past master, a buddha, who had a self-appointed right-hand man who was a faithful follower for year after year. And when the master was in his room on his deathbed, all of the followers silently waited by the door not knowing what to do and incapable of believing that their mystical master was really dying.

Finally, through the sorrowful stillness, the master's voice was faintly heard to call the name of the right-hand man, and all of the followers looked at him intently as he made his way to the master's door. As he reached for the knob he glanced at the peering faces around him and imagined their envy and respect for him at being the only one to be called to the master's side during his final moments. He already imagined how after the master's death he would slowly emerge from the room as the new head of the system, a veritable Peter-of-the-Rock.

Quietly he entered the darkened room and slowly he made his way and knelt by the bed. The old master nodded for him to come nearer, and he leaned over with his awaiting ear by the old man's mouth, and the master whispered, "Fuck you."

Enough for today.