Rise in Love

Question 1:

Is there something to say? All is finished!.

Falling is always easy. You can fall in any ditch. Getting out is difficult. But you will have to get out.

Once the love disappears the ditch becomes hell. Then there is quarreling, argument, nagging, and every kind of nastiness from both sides. Nobody wants to hurt; but because he is hurting, she is hurting, unknowingly they go on dumping their hurt feelings on the other.

In the first place, when you start falling in love, when you are still not in the ditch, that is the time to ask me, because I have a totally different kind of love affair which is called rising in love. Then there is no problem. Rising in love is beautiful, and getting out of it is very easy, because that will be falling down. Falling down is easy, keep it for the next step; for the first step, always use rising. The easier step you have done, now you have to do the difficult one.

And it will happen - all these tears and conflicts, but nothing can bring the love back.

A simple thing has to be understood: love - the love that you are talking about - is not in your hands.

You have fallen into it. It was not in your power not to fall, so when it comes, it takes you with it. But it is like a breeze, it comes and goes. And it is good that it comes and goes, because if it stays it becomes stale.

A little understanding is needed on both sides, that the love is no longer there. There is no need to hate each other, because nobody has destroyed it - nobody has created it. It had come like a breeze, you enjoyed those moments; be thankful to each other and help each other to come out of the ditch. In a ditch, that is the only way. The man, to be really manly, should give his shoulders for the woman to rise up and get out of the ditch. And the man can find his own gymnastics, how to do it.

But nobody asks me before falling. This is strange! For thirty-five years I have been waiting for somebody to ask me how to fall in love. Nobody asks that, because if you had asked that I would have suggested, "Never fall in love. Try to rise." And rising in love is a totally different matter.

Rising in love means a learning, a changing, a maturity. Rising in love ultimately helps you to become grown-up. And two grown-up persons don't quarrel; they try to understand, they try to solve any problem.

Anybody who rises in love never falls from it, because rising is your effort, and the love that is grown through your effort is within your hands. But falling in love is not your effort.

Falling in love - that love is going to be disrupted somewhere, and the sooner it is understood that it is gone, the better; otherwise you become too entangled in a thousand and one things. Those are the things which make it difficult to separate.

When you fall in love, no questions arise. You are clean, the other person is clean. But when you want to separate, the days, the nights, the years that you have lived together, loved together, experienced something which is one of the most beautiful gifts of nature - you go on becoming entangled.

You go on giving promises to each other... and it is not that you are lying or deceiving; in those beautiful moments those promises seem to be absolutely coming from your heart. But when those moments are gone - and they will be gone, because it has been a fall, and nobody can remain in a fallen state for eternity. Someday he has to rise again. And the moment you start separating, all those entanglements, your promises, the other's promises, create the complexity.

Rising in love is something spiritual.

Falling in love is something biological.

Biology is blind, that's why love is called blind. But the love I am talking about is the only insight that is easily available to everyone. Just a little effort....

Love should come out of your silence, awareness, meditativeness. It is soft, it is unbinding - because how can love create fetters for the one who is loved? It is giving freedom to each other, more and more. As the love grows deeper, freedom becomes bigger. As the love grows deeper, you start accepting the person as he is. You stop trying to change the person.

It is one of the miseries of the world that lovers are continuously trying to change the other person.

They don't know that if the person really changes, their love will disappear, because they had not fallen in love with this changed person in the first place. They had fallen in love with a person who was not touched by their ideas - "Change this and that."

Rising in love, you become aware that the other has his own territorial imperative, and you are not to encroach upon it.

If love becomes freedom, then there is no need to separate. The idea of separation arises because you go on seeing that you are becoming more and more a slave, and nobody likes slavery.

But you always ask me when you are in the ditch and cannot get out. One thing is certain: I am not coming into the ditch to take you out! You two have to manage it. If I come in the ditch to help you out, you both will be out and I will be in the ditch! And I don't know anybody whom I can ask, "How to get out of here?"

I have never asked a single question of anybody about my life. It is my life, and I have to live it, I have to solve its problems. I have never taken any advice, I have never accepted anybody's advice which was not asked for in the first place. I have told those people, "You have to understand that advice is the only thing everybody gives free of charge and nobody takes."

Why bother? Advice given by a person whom you have not asked cannot be very wise.

The wise man never imposes his idea on anyone.

If somebody asks him, he simply gives his insight.

It is not a commandment, that they have to do it; there is no "should" in it.

I can say only one thing: you have given each other beautiful moments - be grateful, be thankful.

The parting should not be ugly when the meeting was so beautiful.

You owe it to existence that the parting should be made beautiful. Forget all your promises - they were right when they were given, but the time has changed, you have changed. You both are standing at a crossroads, ready to move in different directions; perhaps you may never meet again.

Make it as graceful as possible. And once you understand that it has to happen, gracefully or ungracefully, then it is better to make it graceful.

At least, your lover will live in your memory, you will live in the memory of the lover. In a certain way, those moments together will always enrich you. But part gracefully.

And it is not difficult when you have understood love - which is a very difficult phenomenon. You fell without a second thought; you can understand that very easily love has disappeared. Accept the truth of it, and don't blame each other, because nobody is responsible.

Help each other gracefully; in deep friendship, part. Lovers when they separate become enemies.

That is a strange kind of gratitude. They should become really friends. And if love can become friendship, there is no guilt, no grudge, no feeling that you have been cheated, exploited. Nobody has exploited anybody; it was just the biological energy which made you blind.

I teach a different kind of love.

It does not end in friendship but begins in friendship.

It begins in silence, in awareness. It is a love which is your own creation, which is not blind.

Such a love can last forever, can go on growing deeper and deeper.

Such a love is immensely sensitive. In this kind of relationship one starts feeling the need of the other person even before the other person has spoken.

I have known a few couples, very few couples - my acquaintance with couples is big, but I have come across only two, three couples who had not fallen in love, who have risen in love. And the most miraculous thing about them was that they started feeling each other without words.

If the man was feeling thirsty, the woman would bring water. Nothing has been said just a synchronicity. If the loved one is feeling thirsty, she must start feeling thirsty herself. A transfer is happening continuously, words are not needed. Energies can relate directly without language.

Such a love needs nothing from the other.

It is grateful that the other receives something when he offers, or she offers.

It never feels in any kind of bondage, because there is none.

In such love, sex may happen sometimes, may not happen for months, and finally will disappear completely. In this context, sex is no longer sexual, but only a way of being together, going as deeply as possible into each other, an effort to reach the depths of the other. It has nothing to do with biological reproduction.

And once they start understanding that whatsoever they do.... In sex only their bodies can meet, then sex slowly disappears. Then a different kind of meeting starts happening which is just a meeting of energies. Holding hands, sitting together looking at the stars, it is more than any sexual orgasm can give - two energies melting.

Sexual orgasm is physical, is bound to be the lowest kind. Orgasm which is not physical has tremendous beauty, and leads finally to self-realization. And if love cannot give you enlightenment, don't call it love. Love is such a beautiful word. When you say, "Falling in love," you are using the word in an ugly way. Say "falling in sex"; be true. In love one always rises, never falls. But first you have to come out of the ditch. Help each other.

Biology is not going to help. Just be human to each other, and understand the point that the love that was blinding you is no longer there. Your eyes are open. Don't try to deceive the other that you still love, you still feel, but what to do? This kind of hypocrisy is not good. Simply say, "The feeling is no longer there. I am sad and sorry about it, I would have loved the feeling to be there, but it is not there. And I know it is not there in you either."

Once it is understood that the feeling is gone, now at least, just as human beings, help each other to get out of the ditch. If you help, there is no problem. But instead of helping, each wants to get it finished but doesn't allow the other to get out of the ditch. They go on pulling each other down.

Understand. The reason is fear; the old love is gone, the new has not yet arrived. It cannot arrive in your ditch, you will have to come out first. So the fear is of the unknown.

The past was so beautiful you would like to repeat it, so you try to force it, the other tries to force it.

But these things are not within your power to force. A forced love is not love.

If you have to kiss somebody at the point of a sword - "Kiss!" - what kind of a kiss will that be?

Looking at the sword, you may kiss, but it will not be a kiss at all.

Any love enforced for any reasons, is not love. And you both know what love is, because you had been in those moments; so you can compare easily that it is not the same thing. Help each other to come out - and it is very easy if you help each other - and part in grace.

Next time try not to fall, but try to rise.

Don't let biology dominate you.

Your consciousness should be the master.

Question 2:

They are not polar opposites.

Just a little awareness.... Be disobedient to your ego - that is the meaning of surrender. If you want to be disobedient to the person you are surrendering to, then they are opposite, polar opposites.

Then why surrender?

Surrender simply means you trust the person more than your ego, you trust the person more than your own mind. Surrender happens only in a situation where you have found someone whom you can trust more than you can trust yourself. Then disobey your ego.

But people never think in that way. They never think of disobeying their ego, they are always disobeying others. And they don't understand that disobeying others may be just obeying their own ego.

This is what has happened with J. Krishnamurti. For his whole life he has been a teacher of thousands of people, telling them to disobey, to be rebellious, not to follow anyone. But he has forgotten one thing: these people will follow their egos, these people will not rebel against their egos, these people will not be disobedient to their egos.

So a strange phenomenon I have experienced: the people who have been around Krishnamurti, all have become firm egoists. They cannot surrender; surrender is wrong. They cannot trust, they cannot become a disciple. The whole teaching has backfired. Krishnamurti completely forgot that what he is saying is satisfying to the ego of the people.

What I am saying to you is absolutely against you!

You have to disappear for your real being to appear and function.

Surrender, trust, are just devices.

If you can do it without those devices, they are not needed. If you can drop your ego... it is very simple; there is no reason to go to a master.

The master is only a device.

Because he is so humble, so wise, so insightful, it is easy to put your ego at his feet. The master is only a device.

Sometimes it has happened that the master was not himself enlightened, but the disciple became enlightened - a very strange phenomenon. One cannot even conceive how an unenlightened master could help somebody to become enlightened; he has not been able to help himself. But the reason is that he cannot help anybody to be enlightened, or to remain unenlightened; he is only a device.

The question is of totality on the part of the disciple.

Let me tell you a story....

Marpa, one of Tibet's great mystics, went to a master who was well-known for his learning, his scholarship. Marpa was a very humble and simple person, very clear as to what he knows and what he does not know, never pretending, "I know it," when he knew perfectly well that he did not know.

He surrendered to the master. Seeing his great knowledge, learning, so many thousands of disciples, he surrendered totally.

After a few days the disciples became upset with Marpa, because he was walking on water, flying in the air, jumping from the high peaks of Himalayan mountains into the valleys without any trouble.

They reported to the master, "This man seems to be very strange. He must be a magician or perhaps the devil incarnate." And they were all jealous of him.

The master inquired of Marpa, "What is your secret? How do you walk on water?"

Marpa said, "you are asking me? I just use your name; and I am surrendered to you, and you make me walk on water. Just your name is enough, and I can fly in the air. Your name is enough, and I can jump from the highest mountain peak!"

The master was not an enlightened person, but certainly a great scholar. He thought to himself - which was logical - "If my name has so much magic in it, I should try it."

But the first step in the water - and he started to drown. He was shouting his name loudly, but nothing happened. His disciples saved him.

And Marpa said, "This is strange. But now I understand what has happened: It is not the master; it is my surrender, it is my egolessness. The master was only a device. It does not matter to me whether he is enlightened or not - I am grateful to him. His name helped me. I suspect that now I cannot walk on the water with his name, and I am not going to do that anymore.

"But perhaps now there is no need. I can walk without any name, because I know the secret. The secret is egolessness. The master was only a device that helped."

In life there are only two possibilities, and they are polar opposites, as you say: ego and egolessness.

That's why I don't use the word 'surrender,' because that brings the other person in, and you start thinking in polar opposites. Both the polar opposites are within you, so I talk about ego and egolessness. Then things become simple. Drop the ego and be egoless. No surrender is needed.

In egolessness, you are surrendered to existence itself.

And that is the greatest miracle that can happen to a man.

Then nothing is impossible.

Question 3:

But this is not going to be shocking.

It is fiction to you; it is reality to me. It will remain a fiction to you unless you experience it. And I don't want you to believe before you experience; and of course, after experiencing there is no need to believe.

I don't believe in past lives - I know.

I remember my own past lives, so it is not a question of belief.

When you become utterly silent and meditative, it is such an easy thing to look backwards. Your unconscious carries all the memories - not only of this life, but of your past lives too.

I was just joking with a German journalist. He became excited when I said this.... He was asking me, "Why is German youth attracted so much towards you?"

I said to him, "In one of my past lives I was a German."

He said, "Really? Then give me some details!"

I said, "I cannot give you more details, but Eva Renzi was my wife in that life. You can go and ask her."

He said, "Eva Renzi?"

I said, "Of course, because she is still behaving like a wife to me. She may have forgotten the past life, but she is still a pain in the neck. That is enough proof!"

He was just on his knees, asking "Just tell me a little more!" I said, "You go to Eva Renzi!"

Just be silent, and you will be able to turn back.... Have you observed a simple fact? You are trying to remember a name you know you know, but it is not coming. You certainly know, there is no question about it, but it is lost somewhere in your memory. And the harder you try.... People say, "It is just on the tip of the tongue." Then why don't they speak? Let it fall from the tip of the tongue! They know they know, but it is not coming.

It comes in rare moments. You are just cutting the grass of your lawn, or sitting in your easy chair and reading a newspaper, and suddenly it jumps up from nowhere. And you were trying so HARD....

When you try hard your mind becomes very narrow, almost closed. When you are relaxed and you have forgotten all about it, it jumps up.

In total relaxation, you will be surprised, the past lives come back - just like fiction, as if you have seen a movie.

And to determine whether you are really dreaming or having a past-life experience, the criterion is simple. Try it again and again in the same silent space, and the movie remains the same. You cannot have the same dream twice, on order - impossible. You don't have any control over your dreams, they go on changing. Very rarely does it happen that a person has a similar kind of dream again. If he has the same dream repeated again and again, then it is not a dream, it is something else. That dream is only symbolic.

For example, Leo Tolstoy, one of Russia's most creative writers - a thinker and a man who tried his best to live according to his thoughts - had a recurring dream almost every night.

The dream was that he sees a vast, infinite desert, not a single tree anywhere, not a single bird anywhere; the desert just goes on and on. And he sees two gumboots walking, going on and on into the desert. They are his gumboots. The man is missing, he is not in his gumboots. Just the gumboots go on walking, step by step, accurately. And he could see it the whole night, because the desert was infinite. And he always woke up perspiring.

Slowly he became concerned: What kind of dream is this?

He talked to his friends, people who understood dream symbology, and they said, "This is your whole life. This is not a dream, this is only symbolic."

And it was true, his life was a tragedy. He belonged to the royal family; he was a count, he had immense properties. He was married to a countess, but the wife was a very difficult type.

Tolstoy was a simple man, and he lived very simply, like a poor man. The wife could not stand him.

She would not take him to any party, because people would think, "From where did you get this beggar?" And she lived very luxuriously. They had enough money, enough land; they belonged to the highest the super-rich class in Russia.

She was continuously torturing him. Their life was nothing but a torture, unending torture. And he was such a simple and good-hearted man he could not even think of a divorce. It would be too hard for the children, it would be too hard for the poor woman - although she was immensely difficult. But he had more compassion than she had cruelty.

So the dream analyst told him, "The dream is symbolic. You are not really living; just the boots are walking, you are not in them. And the desert is your life, where there is not a single tree, not a single flower, not a single bird, no signs of any life anywhere. And it is infinite; it goes on and on and on. And you are simply waiting for your death, not for divorce. Your dream is a reality. Your whole unconscious is telling you what you are doing with yourself." And the moment he understood the symbology of the dream, the dream disappeared.

So two things.... If you see your past life, and it does not change - that is the first criterion, it is always the same, exactly the same. The second criterion is, bring it to full consciousness. Try to analyze it.

If you cannot analyze it, any psychoanalyst can analyze it. If after the analysis it disappears, then it was not your past life. It was just a dream projected by your unconscious to say something to you.

The analysis has made it clear to you, now there is no need for it.

But if even after the analysis and understanding of it, it goes on the same, again and again, then it is certainly your past life. And you can go farther, into more of the past, another life, another life - there is no end to it. You have been here forever.

And I do not believe in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Once in a while I mention him, but that is simply a kind of joke and nothing else; I don't believe in the theory of evolution. No monkey can become man, because thousands of years have passed and only a few monkeys became man.

What are the other monkeys doing?

In these thousands of years the other monkeys even seeing that their children have become great Ronald Reagans, presidents of countries, and they are still hanging in the trees.... They should have jumped on the ground and become man. All that they have to do is to lose their tails!

No monkey has been known to turn into a man. At some point somebody must have seen a monkey turning into a man. And there must be a link between the two: while the monkey is becoming man there will be some place where he is half monkey, half man. That too has not happened.

So when I mention Charles Darwin, it is always joking. I don't believe that you have been anything other than human beings the whole of eternity. Monkeys have been monkeys in their past lives, and donkeys have been donkeys, and Yankees have been Yankees. Evolution has happened, but that evolution is the by-product of human consciousness. No other animal has evolved; they are the same.

A twentieth-century monkey and a ten-thousand-year-old monkey will not have any difficulty in chitchatting, being friendly or falling in love. They will not feel the distance of time at all, because no evolution has happened.

But if you meet a man from ten thousand years ago, neither will you be able to understand his language, nor will he be able to understand your language. Nor will his clothes be similar to yours - and of course his mind will be far behind. He will not even have a child's mind; he will be more primitive; and there will be no possibility of communication. He will behave almost like an animal, though he is man.

Only man has evolved. Evolution has happened, but it has happened only in human beings. And a few rare people have reached to the very Everest of consciousness.

To me, that reaching to the Everest of consciousness is religion.

Religion has nothing to do with Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism.

Religion has something to do with your consciousness flowering totally, releasing its whole fragrance to existence.

It is in your hands to evolve as much as you want. At each evolutionary step you will find yourself more blissful, more peaceful, more silent, more rejoicing - just bubbling with joy.

At the ultimate peak you are nothing but pure bliss.

It is within your reach.

If you miss, only you are responsible for it.

Here, we are not creating a theology, a dogma.

We are creating an opportunity for the evolution of consciousness.

And it is happening!

My sannyasins are certainly more conscious than anybody else, more alert, more loving, more joyous than anybody else.

And this is my argument - and my proof.

In the past, theologians have been arguing about stupid things: how many angels can dance on the point of a safety pin? What is the point of it all? But throughout the whole Middle Ages they were discussing it. It was a great problem to be solved. It may be a problem for the safety pin, it may be a problem for the angels, but what has it to do with you? And nobody has seen the angels, nobody has seen any pin standing and angels dancing on it!

But theologians have been discussing all kinds of stupid questions: whether Jesus Christ is born of a virgin mother.... But what does it matter whether he is born of a virgin mother or Joseph is really his father and not the Holy Ghost? It makes no difference. To us, Joseph and the Holy Ghost are the same - in fact, Joseph seems to be more real than the Holy Ghost.

And anybody can see that to do such a thing and still call that guy "Holy Ghost" does not look right.

He is an unholy ghost, a criminal. He raped Mary - she was not aware when he made love to her.

But what is the point of it all? It does not matter. Religions have been wasting the whole humanity's time unnecessarily. All that time should be given to the evolution of consciousness.

And there have been people who have proved it, who have reached the peak. If it can happen to a single individual, that is enough proof it can happen to all human beings. And it should happen to all human beings; only then can we have a beautiful planet.

Just to imagine that the whole humanity is conscious, meditative, aware... just to imagine it is so exhilarating, so ecstatic!

But remember one thing. I will not say to you to believe in me, or in anyone else. To me, an infinite series of lives is a reality. It is my experience. So if you ask me, I say yes, it is a very fundamental truth. But for you, it is only a fiction. You can turn the fiction into a reality - but before turning it into reality, don't believe.

That's why I don't touch these subjects; I bypass them, because I will have to say something which is my experience, but for you it will be only a belief. And you love me, you trust me; you may start trusting my words.

Love me, but don't love my words.

Trust me, my presence, but don't trust my experiences.

Trusting my presence will encourage you to realize all those things that I have been telling you. But if you trust those things already, you will stop inquiring.

The trouble is, you wanted a shock - and your question is such that I am in a difficulty, how to shock you.

Find another question!

Question 4:

Yes.

Pleasure and pain are not two things; happiness and sadness - just two sides of the same coin.

That's why every happiness can turn into sadness, every pleasure can turn into pain.

One Mohammedan emperor - who was a little bit crazy - loved a young woman and wanted her consent to marry him.

In Mohammedan marriages the priest asks the woman three times, "Are you, of your own accord, without being forced, ready to marry this man?" And the woman has to say yes three times. If she does not say it, the marriage is not possible. So even the Mohammedan emperor could not force any woman to marry him. He was persuading this woman, but she was not willing.

One day he went to see the woman and he found her in the arms of a young man. They were hugging each other with a great joy. I told you he was a little crazy.... He brought both of them to the court and ordered that they should be tied to a pole in a hugging position, and for twenty-four hours they had to hug each other.

Now, hugging for a few minutes is okay but twenty-four hours of hugging - and that too, while tied to a pole, no way to get away.... The pleasure changed into pain, into such intense pain - because in twenty-four hours' time they pissed over each other, defecated. It was stinking. And after twenty-four hours they were released, but it is said that the young man escaped from the city and never came to see the woman.

The prime minister of the emperor said to him, "This is a strange kind of punishment, we have never heard of it." The king said, "This is real punishment. Those two people are not going to see each other again. These twenty-four hours have been almost twenty-four lives for them!" Stinking and tied together, hugging was forgotten long ago. Now the only question was how to get free from the hands of this woman, and the woman was also thinking how to get free. But they were tied and they could not. Pleasure can be changed into pain.

This story has always reminded me why all the couples - almost all the couples in the world are in pain, in misery. They are tied together by marriage, which is for a longer period than twenty-four hours, and soon they start being fed up with each other.

How long can you look at the same nose, and how long can you praise it? Soon, very soon, all the beauty of the woman disappears, all the greatness of the man, the heroship disappears. And they suddenly find that now they are tied together and the society makes it impossible to be free again.

Their pleasure has turned into a lifelong misery.

So these opposites are not opposites.

The vice versa also happens: the miserable man by and by starts having a certain pleasure in his misery.

When I was a lecturer in the university, one woman was also a lecturer there, and her house was just in the middle between my house and the university campus. So I was forced to give her a lift every day. She was standing just at the door waiting for me.

In just a fifteen-minute drive, she would talk all about her miseries, pain, diseases; it was a daily routine. And I was wondering - she must have some imaginative power! One could not have so many diseases and so many sicknesses - and every day new?

Her husband was an advocate of the high court. One day I went to him and I asked, "Can you help me to understand your wife?"

He said, "You are asking me? She is only with you for fifteen minutes, and I have to live with her twenty-four hours a day!

"A small scratch and it is cancer.... And to argue with her....," he said. "I am tired of arguing the whole day in the high court. But it is better in the high court: at least the other advocate is not going to scream and weep and make so much fuss that the whole neighborhood gathers. It is better to accept that it is cancer, knowing perfectly well that it is just that she has scratched her hand."

He said to me, "Don't listen to any of her diseases. I have taken her, I have been forced to take her to all kinds of specialists, and they all say that she has no disease, nothing; she is perfectly healthy.

"So I simply listen and accept whatsoever she says. And I know tomorrow she is going to change, so there is no hurry, no problem. I say to her, 'Tomorrow we will go to the specialist; make the appointment.' She just has to be postponed two, three days, and she will have another kind of disease."

In the university library I always found her in the medical section of the library, always looking there. I told her, "Your subject is to teach music. I don't think that there is any connection between medicine and music. I never see you in the music section of the library, you are always in the medical section."

She said, "The reason is, I have to find the right names for my diseases." She would find big Latin, Greek names of diseases, very impressive names. And if you did not believe her, she was very much hurt. If you believed her, supported her, you could see a smile on her face. Her misery, just imagined misery, had become a pleasure to her.

Now this woman is really a mental case. I told her husband, "All her diseases are false, that is true, but one disease I tell you: she is a mental case. You take her to some psychiatrist."

He said, "You are right. We both will go, because living with her for twenty years I am also a psychiatric case. I suspect myself - have I gone mad, or what?"

All polar opposites are parts of each other. They are complementary and can change into each other. So your feeling is perfectly right: there is something beyond the polarities. And that's what I call enlightenment.

Enlightenment has no polar opposite to it.

Unenlightenment is not the polar opposite of enlightenment; it is only the absence of enlightenment.

It is just like darkness and light. You ordinarily think they are opposites, but that is not true. Darkness simply does not exist, it is only the absence of light.

If darkness has its own existence, then first you will have to bring the light in the room and then push the darkness out of the room; but it has no existence. The moment you bring the light in, the darkness is not found.

Enlightenment is the light of your innermost core. Once you experience it, all darkness in your life disappears.

Blissfulness also has no opposite to it.

Truth also has no opposite to it.

Anything that has not any opposite to it is part of the experience of enlightenment. It is beyond the polarities, far away from the polarities. You cannot change it into anything else. It is what it is.

Now, just don't go on longing for it, because just longing will not help. Start the first step towards it, and the first step automatically leads you to the second step, the third step, and you are home.

I call these three steps the whole science of meditation.

The first step is, become aware of your body.

See it as if it is covering you like clothes. It is around you, but it is not you. That is the first step: to disidentify yourself with the body.

The second step is to disidentify with your mind.

Your thoughts are not you. There is a constant traffic. On the screen of the mind so many thoughts are moving, but you are not one of them. You are a witness, you are outside; you are seeing those thoughts moving.

Anything that you can see is not you.

That should be the criterion: anything you can witness is not you. You are the witness.

And the third step is witnessing, watching your feelings, your moods.

These three steps, and you are home.

Then there is only the witness, and nothing to be witnessed.

You are there in your total glory, luminosity, and all around you there is pure nothingness. This is the state of the awakened one, the enlightened one.

So when you do your gachchhamis and you say, "I go to the feet of the awakened one, His commune, His truth," it is not a prayer, it is simply a reminder to yourself. And you are not going to the feet of anyone else: you are going to your own awakened self.

If your master is awakened, he simply represents you. He is just a mirror in which you can see yourself.

But you are going towards the discovery of the awakened one within yourself. And when the disciple finds the master within himself, the journey is complete.

Question 5:

There is no space between.... The tears, when they come with the laughter, rejoicing, celebrating, those tears have a totally different quality. They are not tears of sadness, sorrow, misery. They are tears of joy - you are so over-full.

You have felt something: your hands start clapping.

You have felt something: you would love to dance.

You have seen something: your eyes are showering tears of joy.

There is no space between the laughter and the tears. To ordinary people you will look mad, crying and laughing together, because ordinarily it is thought that laughter and tears are poles apart: tears are for misery and laughter is for joy. But people have known only one quality of tears.

Tears can join themselves with sadness. If it is too much, then it overflows through your tears.

Tears help you to wash away the sadness.

Tears always do something good to you.

It is because of tears that men are more miserable than women, because from the very childhood they have been told, "Crying and weeping is for girls, not for you. Be manly."

You have stopped a source of immense significance. The man cannot openly - without feeling that he is doing something unmanly - allow tears to come from his eyes. He goes on repressing them.

By repressing them he is repressing his sadness too, because the tears would have taken it away.

The woman always looks fresher after she has wept, and more beautiful, healthier.

Man unnecessarily has lost something given by nature.

My sannyasins should understand it clearly, that if tears are only for women, then nature would not have given tear glands to men. It is such a simple fact. Why should men be given tear glands if they are not to be used?

My sannyasins have to allow tears - in pain, in misery, in suffering - without feeling embarrassed.

In fact, everybody around the person should help him to cry. The tears help take away the sadness, the darkness, and leave a more silent space behind.

A greater problem is that, because you have repressed your tears of sadness, misery, pain - when you are joyful, rejoicing, then too your old repression continues; you go on holding your tears. You don't allow your eyes to participate in your joy.

And do you know, your eyes are eighty percent of your energy? Your other four senses only have twenty percent. Not allowing your eyes also to take part in the dance of joy is keeping eighty percent of your energy out of it; this is unfortunate. But you will have to start from sadness, sorrow, which are common experiences: cry heartfully, let the tears flow.

It will unburden you, it will clean you, and it will break the repressive structure. Then you will be able, while laughter is there and dance is there and joy is there and love is there - tears will also participate. Eyes are of immense value; they are eighty percent energy. That's why those who have attained to the ultimate truth, we call seers.

Why have you chosen the word "seer"? Why have you chosen the eye to represent the ultimate experience? Why not the ears? Why not the nose? Because they are poor people; the nose, the ear, the mouth, they are poor people.

The richest part of your being is your eyes. That's why when you see a blind man you feel more compassion than when you see a deaf man or a man who cannot smell anything - you don't feel any compassion at all for them. Perhaps you may feel even jealous, that it is good that he cannot smell anything; it is perfectly good in this stinking world.

But a man without eyes immediately creates compassion in you. The reason is because without the eyes the man is only twenty percent alive, eighty percent dead. He does not know any color, he does not know the sunrise, he does not know the clouds. He cannot see a bird on the wing. He cannot see a beautiful face. All that is of immense importance, all that poetry - he is completely blind to it. He lives only twenty percent of life.

So don't prevent your tears.

And there is no space. The idea of space has arisen because in your mind tears are associated with sadness; and laughter and joy? - they are just the polar opposites of sadness, so how come tears are flowing from your eyes? Allow them.

You say your heart was bursting in those silent moments; tears started flowing from your eyes, and there was laughter too. So you must have got puzzled later on, thinking, Am I going mad or something? No, you have been mad; now you are coming back to sanity.

Question 6:

I don't see people for the simple reason that I don't have any charisma! I keep you away so you don't discover it. I keep myself closed in my room. I don't have any charisma, so you need not take the trouble of coming for five minutes. You will not find anything.

I am just as ordinary as you are.

My only charisma is that I accept that I am ordinary and you do not accept it. Deep down you go on believing you are extraordinary, special - the only begotten son of God!

Question 7:

I had said the homosexuals have to become natural, I had not said anything about lesbians. They are perfectly okay - because whatever they are doing is really silly. Okay? Go on doing it!