Marriage - the Coffin of Love

Question 1:

It is unique, for the simple reason that it is not a relationship at all. We will have to go deep into the very idea of relationship, then only will we be able to understand what is transpiring between me and you.

The old religions, all of them, accepted the relationship of master and disciple in the same way as they accepted the relationship between father and son, brother and sister, husband and wife. The relationship between master and disciple was a relationship of the same nature. The relationship between a father and a son, a brother and a sister, is a static phenomenon. It remains the same, it does not change. It is in a way a dead relationship.

You can see it when you compare it with the relationship between two lovers, the lover and the beloved. Their relationship is very fragile, every moment changing, unpredictable; one cannot say what is going to happen tomorrow, or even the next moment. This creates fear. The unpredictability, the unknown future naturally destroys the relationship between lovers, and creates something similar to father-mother, brother-sister: marriage.

Marriage is to avoid the fear of change; marriage is to make the relationship solid. But love is such a phenomenon that the moment you make it solid, it dies. The moment you make it static, it is no more there.

Love is just like a spring breeze; it comes, and when it comes it brings tremendous fragrance, beauty - but it goes. When it comes it gives you the feeling that it is going to remain forever. And the feeling is so strong that you cannot doubt it, there is no way to doubt it. Under that intense, doubtless certainty, you give promises, the beloved gives promises, not knowing at all that it is a spring breeze. It comes when it comes, it goes when it goes. It is not within your hands. You cannot capture it in your fist. You can feel it when your hand is open, its coolness, but the moment your fist is closed there is no breeze there, there is no coolness there, no fragrance there.

But out of fear man turned love into the same category as the relationship with your father, with your mother, with your sister, with your brother. Man forgot completely that the mother is not your choice, the father is not your choice, the brother or sister is not your choice. They are given factors. But the woman you have fallen in love with is the only thing in your life which is not given by birth, which is not determined by birth, which needs a conscious choice. That too creates fear.

Just think: if you had had to choose your mother and your father and your brothers and your sisters, your life would have been so burdened with anxiety - whom to choose, whom not to choose? But these things are just given by your birth, nature provides for you; they are biological.

Love is psychological. It depends totally on you. And because it depends totally on you it creates fear - you can commit a mistake. You cannot commit a mistake by being a son to a mother; what can you do? Every mother is beautiful, every son is beautiful. Every father is great, every son is special. You have not been asked, you have not even thought about it: it all happened to you. You were simply a victim of all these relationships - the mother, the father, the brother, the sister. It was not in your hands, within your capacity, to do anything about it.

But when you fall in love then there is tremendous fear, uncertainty, hesitation, anxiety... whether you are taking the right step or the wrong step; whether this woman is made for you or you are made for this woman. Is it simply infatuation? or is there certainly something more than infatuation? Is there love? or it is only biological attraction? A thousand and one problems arise in you. And the most difficult problem is, whether this love is going to last.

So before it disappears, before it is beyond your reach, you need some support from the law, from the state, from the society - some guarantee. You cannot depend on this woman, on this man only.

It is too risky. You don't know the person, who he is, who she is; and what the future has for you in its womb, you don't know. You have to take some measures to make love a stable thing. In fact what you are saying is, it would have been good if you were born with your wife.

You will be surprised that Jainism has that idea, that in the beginning everybody was born with a partner. No single boy, no single girl was born, only twins were born: one was a boy, the other was a girl. Hence in Sanskrit the word for wife and for sister is the same, bagni; it is a very strange thing that the same word is used for both. It is a very ancient use. Slowly slowly the meaning has become sister, but originally it meant both wife and sister. In fact it was the same person: wife and sister.

This idea is not truth, is not historical. It is a projection of a deep desire in you, that it would have been far better if you were not put into this fire test of choice - if God, nature, existence, XYZ...

anybody, had decided it. And people have tried in every possible way that it is decided by others, not by you. Hence all old societies are not in favor of love affairs. They know, they have experienced; for millions of years they have seen what can happen to a love affair. So it is better that the father chooses, the parents choose....

In India it still happens. In ninety-eight percent of cases in India, the choice is of the parents, not of the people who are going to be married. Just a few years ago it was not even possible for the boy to see the girl, or the girl to see the boy whom she is going to marry. It was disrespectful; you didn't trust your elders. They have much more experience, they have known life. What do you know? And how are you going to choose? What criteria are you going to use? Just a beautiful face? Good color? A shapely nose? A good figure? How are you going to decide? These things don't mean anything after you are married.

Once you are married, who bothers about the wife's nose or the husband's eyes? In fact nobody looks at each other. The elders know far better; there are other criteria to be thought of, considered.

And they have to be considered by the elders of both the parties - only these two persons are not to be asked even. Yes, a few other people may be asked; the palmist may be asked, the astrologers may be asked.

Do you see my point? The point is, they are taking the burden off you - putting it on the stars, on the lines of your hand, on your birth chart, on the astronomer, astrologer - and they are taking the whole responsibility on themselves. The father, the grandfather, the mother, the grandmother, the uncles, the whole family, the relatives - they all will discuss and decide and consider every aspect of it. What do you know?

This was the practice for the whole world up to now. And the reason was that love is fragile, not dependable. So if nature has not given you a wife, a husband, with your birth, then society should decide, take the place of nature. But you should not choose because your choice can change tomorrow. In fact it is going to change.

Love is a changing relationship, it is not stable. Hence marriage came into existence. Marriage is the death of love. Yes, you make a beautiful samadhi, a marble samadhi, a beautiful memorial, but it is a grave whatever you call it.

But why did every society around the world decide in favor of it? It can't be just coincidence. They decided to unburden the individual of turmoil, tension, anxiety, anguish - to protect the family, the children, their future. Millions of people have followed that, and for thousands of years nobody has raised a question. Nobody has even worked out in depth why marriage is needed at all.

It is needed because love alone won't do. Today it is there; it is a guest. Yes, when it is there it is too much there, overflowingly there. But just the same, when it goes it goes completely - as if it has never been there. It comes with great ado, fills your whole being, gives you the feeling that all is achieved. But when it goes, it slips away so silently that it does not make even a sound that it is going; you don't hear even the footsteps when it is has gone. You come to know only when it is no longer there. And the same way when it goes: you feel all is lost.

If you are intelligent - which very few people are - if you are intelligent you will be grateful for those beautiful moments that came, and are gone. You will be tremendously grateful, because there was no necessity even for those few moments to come. They had come on their own, not asking whether you were worthy of them or not. They gave you a tremendous experience, a taste of life, a feeling of flowering.

If you are intelligent, those moments will remain always with you - young, fresh, still fragrant - and will make your capacity to love deeper, more intense. But very few people are intelligent. Ninety-nine percent will be in despair, angry; they will forget all those beautiful moments immediately, because love has deceived them. Now, this is your own idea. Love has never said to you, "I am going to remain here forever." It was your assumption.

You have assumed - for which love is not responsible. You were not the master of its coming; how can you be the master and force it to stay, not to go? But ninety-nine percent of people are unintelligent. Still, that's where evolution has reached. Those ninety-nine percent of people will turn those moments of love into moments of hate. They will hate the person, they will throw all responsibility onto the person. They will try in every way to make the other person feel guilty: "You deceived, cheated." And the other person is going to do the same because he also belongs to the ninety-nine percent. So those who were lovers will become enemies. Where there was love will now be hate, revengefulness.

To avoid all this, all the societies have tried to arrange that before you are caught in the whirlwind of a love affair you should be married. Hence child marriage was the general rule all over the world.

You should not be allowed to be adult, because then it is beyond you: love may strike you, so it is good to be on the safe side. All the societies have tried it: love has to be kept as far away from your life as possible. And the best way was child marriage.

You will be surprised: in India marriages even used to happen when the children were in the womb.

People would make the agreement, "If a boy is born to me and a girl to you, or a boy to you and a girl to me, they will get married." Neitherof them are born yet so they are not certain who is going to be a boy or who is going to be a girl, whether both are going to be boys - then of course, the contract fails - or both are going to be girls... the contract fails.

But people were making contracts, and those contracts were followed. It was a prestigious thing, a question of promise, of giving your word. Nobody bothers who the beings are in the wombs, what type - no, it is not necessary. In fact the society has found it is better the quicker you do it; if not in the womb, then as soon as the children are born.

My mother got married when she was only seven years of age. Now, what can a seven-year-old think? My father was eleven years old. Now what does an eleven-year-old boy know about love and its problems? My mother used to tell me that the whole village was agog with the ceremony, and all the people gathered in front of the house and a big band came from the capital. Only she was not allowed to go and see. All the children were outside and she could not understand what was the matter, what was wrong with her. They had to tie her to a pole inside the house because she was running outside - so much was happening out there. The whole house was outside, nobody was inside; only she was not allowed.

Now what can a seven-year-old girl understand? She could not understand what marriage is. But the strategy was, "Let the small children get married. Once they start living together they will start loving the same way as you love your sister, as you love your mother." It is not the love that takes you, possesses you from nowhere, changes you, makes you capable of risking even your life. It is not that mad kind of love.

No, it is simply a companionship. Two persons living together, sleeping together, eating together, being together; in pain, in pleasure, in health, in sickness, caring about each other. This creates a companionship. Millions of people on the earth have thought that this is love, this companionship.

And the society had made it absolutely certain that there is no possibility of any love happening after marriage.

Women were not allowed to move about outside. In Mohammedan countries they are not allowed to show their faces. The first thing the Mohammedan wife has to ask the husband is, "Who are the people before whom I can open my veil?" - because that is the greatest crime, if she opens her veil before somebody who is not okay by her husband. So the husband tells her, "These are the people you can show your face to; otherwise nobody is going to see you."

The Hindu wife is almost in the same position - she even cannot open her ghoonghat, her veil, before her husband if some elder is present. That is disrespectful. The wife does not move in society, does not go to the club, does not go to do the shopping. She remains confined to the house, her whole world is within those four walls. There is no possibility of meeting somebody and falling in love.

Those who were powerful, they had even better arrangements. For example, kings had many queens, many wives. Naturally the kings were afraid - to have one thousand wives is dangerous.

The king may be getting old, and he continually goes on marrying any new, young, beautiful woman whom he comes across in his kingdom. If he asks for her hand it cannot be refused; his is the first right. So he goes on making a big campus of wives.

Naturally servants will be coming in. That's dangerous - so those servants have to be made eunuchs so they are no longer dangerous. Hundreds of servants were made eunuchs, just by a single king, because they had to go into the palace; they could not be allowed as men. Women could be allowed in, but there were certain kinds of work which women are not capable of doing. Men had to be forced to be eunuchs, and then they could be allowed in.

Strictly, society tried to protect you from love. And one cannot say that it was absolutely wrong.... In this century, in the Western countries and in the East to a few people who are Westernized, child marriage is a crime. And of course they have made it constitutionally a crime because that is being absolutely ugly to children: not even knowing what marriage is, they are going to be married. They have to live with the other person their whole life, and somebody else - who will not have anything to do with their life - is deciding on it.

But even though the constitution, for example, the Indian constitution, declares child marriage to be a crime, to be severely punished... because it is written by people educated in the West, they don't know their own people. They have been studying in London; they know London, they know Paris, they know the modern ideas, but they don't know their people. And those people don't care a bit about your constitution: still child marriages continue. And who is going to punish them? Because the constable believes in it, the tehsildar believes in it, the deputy collector believes in it, the whole village... everybody believes in it. On whom are you going to impose it, through whom are you going to impose it? So the constitution is good: keep it in Delhi and worship it. But people depend on their ancient experience.

So I would like it to be understood that it is not just stupidity, what they are doing, because the experience of this century, from the countries where love has become a common phenomenon - the experience is not good. It has driven people into deep anxiety, anguish, despair, suicide. It has not given them what poets had always promised.

You should read the poetry, enjoy the poetry; but please don't follow it, because those poets are not writing out of real experience. The poets who are writing about love are the poets who have not experienced love. It is a substitute, this writing poetry about love, a substitute for the experience that they have missed. Certainly in their mind love becomes so big, takes on multidimensional proportions - they are good poets, they can bring in their imagination, in beautiful words - but don't try to love like it, don't try to live it. You will be in a ditch, because those poets don't know that love is very fragile.

They all say that love is eternal, love is permanent; that real love never dies. Absolutely wrong. The real love dies sooner than the unreal love. Unreal love can live long; it is unreal, how can it die? It is a plastic flower. If you are pretending, you can go on pretending as long as you want.

But if something happens to you, and then one day it disappears, evaporates - what can you do?

You may have tears in your eyes but what can you do? It is no longer there. Nothing can be done about it. You had not brought it into being; you cannot keep hold of it forever. You cannot prevent it. It is something beyond you... just passes you like a wind, perhaps not even aware of you. You just came in the way, and the wind passed by, touching you, playing with your hair, playing with your body - and went on.

The idiot goes on turning his love into hate because again and again it fails, and again and again he hopes that it is going to be permanent. When it goes on turning into revengefulness, into a feeling of being deceived by everybody, cheated by everybody, exploited by everybody - and they all had promised, and nobody kept his promise - naturally, you start boiling within. Your whole love energy becomes hate. This is the experience of the people who have followed love according to the poets.

These are the two kinds of relationships. One is stable: with your father, with your mother, with your sister. The other is a love affair, which is fragile; and the relationship with the master is almost the same kind of phenomenon.

As I have been telling you again and again, sexual energy turning downwards serves biology, and sexual energy turning upwards serves spirituality. But it is the same energy; what name you want to give to it does not matter. Let us call it x-energy, because if you call it sex energy then immediately some condemnation, deep down, arises. So let us call it x-energy. That will remind you of sex too, but x is cleaner, not condemned by anybody.

This x-energy, if it moves downwards, can become a love affair which is sexual. If this x-energy turns upwards, it can become spiritual. A man falling in love with a woman is really falling. A woman falling in love with a man is really falling. The expression is absolutely accurate - love is a fall.

But if sometimes you feel you are rising in love, then you have found the master - with whom you have the same kind of affair, but on a different plane. It is not biology, it is not of the body; it is nothing to do with physiology, nature. But something in the master pulls you up, just as something in a woman pulls you down.

I have been asked many times why there have never been women masters. I have never said the truth. The truth is, it is very difficult for a man to feel the rising of energy towards a woman. The biological reversal... it is very difficult. Once in a while it has happened. There have been a few women masters, but rare. The difficulty is, with a woman you immediately feel your energy moving down. You can fall in love with a woman and you may think that it is a master-disciple relationship.

Very rare is the possibility; you can count it out, the possibility is so rare.

The same can happen, happens: a woman can fall in love with a master - a man - and may not be able to understand whether her energy is moving downwards or upwards. It needs a little understanding, clarity, awareness; otherwise the woman's energy can start falling. She can become infatuated with the master. Then the master is no longer of any help to that woman. And if he is no longer of any help, she is going to become revengeful. Her love is going to become hate immediately.

So this thing has to be very clearly understood, that it is the same energy, x. If it starts moving upwards in somebody's presence - man or woman, it doesn't matter - then the phenomenon of master and disciple comes into being.

The old religions have stopped it from happening. In every possible way, they have done the same with this energy moving upwards as they have done with the love energy going downwards. Just as they have invented child marriage, they have invented child conversion. It is the same thing. Taking a child for baptism, what are you doing? The child is helpless, knows nothing, and you are taking him for baptism? You are trying to make him a Christian, you are giving him a master.

Or you are taking him for circumcision and you are making him a Jew and giving him a rabbi. Hindus are doing the same, Mohammedans are doing the same, Jainas are doing the same, Buddhists are doing the same. Every religion is trying: the child should be converted to the religion of his family, parents, grandparents, before he starts inquiring, before he starts asking questions. Once he starts inquiring, "What is truth? What is God? Who am I?" - then it won't be easy to baptize him. He will ask, "First answer my questions. Only then can I become your disciple."

Once he is capable of inquiring, do you think you will be able to circumcise him? He will circumcise you all: "What nonsense is this? Are you mad or something?" So do it before he can create trouble for you. By the time he can create trouble for you, he is already conditioned, full of bullshit. He thinks he is Jewish, he thinks he is Hindu, he thinks he is Christian. He believes in it. He goes to the rabbi if he has some problem, he goes to the priest, to the minister. He goes to the Catholic church to confess his sins.

What they have done with love, they have done with meditation too. If the x-energy moving downwards is love, x-energy moving upwards is meditation. They have crippled both.

First, they had to cripple you because they were afraid that you would be in trouble, and they wanted to protect you. Second, they were afraid you may be lost - because only their religion can save you, only their religion is the right path; you will be lost. In both ways I can understand their anxiety, and I can understand what they are doing to you is out of concern. But it is not really good. Even with love, although it may bring troubles, anxiety, anguish... it is worth it, because any challenge in life is worth taking. You should not be protected, otherwise you will remain crippled.

A mother can be afraid that if a child starts walking, he may fall. And he is bound to fall many times before he will be able to walk rightly. If she is too protective and does not allow him to walk because there is a possibility of falling - not a possibility, a certainty of falling - then this child is going to be a cripple his whole life. The concern was right, but what she did cannot be accepted. The child has to be allowed carefully. The mother has to be watchful, available in case of need, but the child has to be given the freedom to walk, to fall, to rise, to walk again - to learn walking.

The same is true about love. Marriage is one of the ugliest institutions man has invented. But it has been invented with deep concern, goodwill. I do not suspect the goodwill, I only suspect people's wisdom. Their intention is right, but their intelligence is very mediocre. If with their good intention they also had intelligence, then they would have made every possible way for the child to know about love, about their love, their anxieties, their problems, their failures, their despairs. They would have made him aware that these things are there, and sooner or later, one day you will be caught by the whirlwind of love. It is natural. Don't be afraid. But remember, what poets say is not true.

Love is not something permanent, eternal. Don't take their criterion, that the true love is eternal, and untrue love is momentary - no! Just the opposite is the case. The true love is very momentary - but what a moment!... such that one can lose the whole of eternity for it, can risk the whole of eternity for it. Who wants that moment to be permanent? And why should permanency be valued so much?... because life is change, flow; only death is permanent. Only in death the watch stops and remains where it has stopped. Then it does not move. But in life it goes on moving, and moving into new paths every day.

And why be confined to one love? Why force yourself to be confined to one love? - because nature does not intend it so. Nature intends you to know love in as many ways as possible, because what you can know from one woman you cannot know from another woman. What you can know and experience through one man will not be experienced through another man. Each love is unique.

There is no competition. There is no quarrel. And the more you love, the more enriched your being is.

So I am for all the trouble, the anguish, the anxiety, the despair. Only one thing I want to add: be intelligent. These troubles are not because love has gone, these are because you are idiotic. So if you have to leave something, leave your idiocy. But people leave loving, and cling to their idiotic mind.

Be intelligent, and then love will give you all the colors of the rainbow, and you will be fulfilled by many people, in many ways, because a woman will touch one aspect of your being, and other aspects will remain hungry, starved. One man may touch one part of your heart, but other parts will remain without growth. If you cling, then one part becomes a monster and all other parts shrink.

If I'm allowed to give my advice to the world, my advice will be: Help people to experience as much love as possible. Let them go into the turmoil, into the cyclone, and let them find, in the cyclone, their rootedness. Don't try to hide them in the house, don't close the windows and the doors. Of course they will be more comfortable in the house, but dead. Then the best comfort is in the grave - no worry, no problem, nobody can harm you any more; even death is impotent now. What more security, what more comfort, what more luxury can you expect? A marble grave and your name written in golden letters on it. But you are dead.

No, this is not the way to live and to experience life and to experience what I call godliness.

And the same is true about meditation - even more true, because if they have destroyed your love, they have not destroyed your spirituality. They have only destroyed your biology, your lower being. But they have been trying to destroy your higher being too. By taking a child to the rabbi, to the pundit, to the imam, they are destroying your higher possibility too, for the same reason - the reason is the same, but now it is even more dangerous.

In the first, you may have been in trouble, but that trouble was not much of a trouble. People get into such trouble and get out of it, it is not much of a problem. But the spiritual part of your being is vast, enormous, infinite. If you are lost in it, then you may never be able to find the way back home. You may go on and on, farther and farther away from home.

And what is home? In their mind, a Jew thinks the Torah is the home, a Christian thinks The Bible is the home, a Hindu thinks the Gita is the home. And the people who become bridges to the Torah, to The Bible, to the Gita - they are the masters. They are not. They are only teachers. They teach you whatsoever they have been taught, they have not experienced anything.

Hence the difference and the unique relationship between me and my disciples.

I am not a teacher. I am not teaching you anything at all. I am not a bridge between you and The Bible, between you and the Gita, between you and the Koran. I am not even a bridge between you and God - no. I am not giving you a teaching, a dogma, a creed, a philosophy, a theology. So understand the difference between a teacher and a master.

In the old religions teachers are called masters. They are simply teachers, they know the teaching.

They have been handed down that teaching by other teachers; they will hand it over to you. They have not experienced anything, and through their teaching you are not going to experience anything either. Those are just beautiful words, and they can give you consolation - as if you know.

A master is not a teacher in the first place. A master shares his being with you, not his philosophy.

A master exposes himself to you, allows you closeness so that you can see your face in his mirror.

A master is exactly a mirror.

He never does anything to the disciple. Let me emphasize it. A master is not a doer... because if I start doing something to you I may spoil your being. I may give you a mask, a discipline, and I may change you into something else that you are not. The master cannot do that.

The teacher does that. He gives you a teaching; he teaches you discipline and then he enforces it through greed, persuasion, fear, in every possible way. He tries to fit you into a mold: how a Christian should be, how a Buddhist should be. There are thirty-three thousand rules for a Buddhist monk. I do not think that I can remember thirty-three thousand rules - what to say about following them, I cannot remember them! And anybody doing that will be in the same situation as it happened in one of Aesop's fables.

A centipede is just going for a morning walk. Now, a centipede has one hundred legs. A frog looks at him, cannot believe his eyes, blinks his eyes, looks again... a hundred feet! How does he manage?

Which one to raise first, then the second, then the third, then the fourth...? One hundred legs! If you forget the number you will be caught in your own legs and fall down.

He rushes up to him, jumps, stops the centipede and asks him, "Uncle, I should not stop you on your morning walk, but a very philosophical question has arisen in my mind, which I cannot solve - I am just a frog, you know. Only you can help."

The centipede says, "What is the problem?"

The frog explains to him, "This is the problem. I saw your hundred legs, I counted them; and the problem is, how do you manage?"

The centipede said, "I had never thought about it. I will try and see how I have been managing. I have never thought about it - I really have never looked down and counted the legs. You are great; you are a mathematician and a philosopher!"

The centipede tried, and you can visualize what must have happened. He fell immediately, all his hundred legs entangled in each other. He was very angry at the frog and said, "Never again ask anybody such questions. Keep your philosophy to yourself! You idiot - I have been managing my whole life, and not only I, millions of centipedes are managing perfectly well. Nobody has fallen like me. But now I am afraid: you have created such a question in my mind that if I don't get rid of this question I may not be able to walk at all. Now tell me how to get rid of this question."

The frog said, "I don't know. I am myself puzzled. I asked you because you are an experienced person, an old centipede, and you go every day for a morning walk; if you cannot solve it, how can I? I am just a poor frog." I don't know what happened to that centipede afterwards, but I can imagine that his whole life must have become a mess. Again and again the question would have come to him, "A hundred legs! Am I putting the right leg in the right place?"

Life has its own ways. The moment you start managing everything, you spoil it.

Allow life its freedom.

About love, allow freedom, and don't be guided by fixed ideas.

Experience - don't go with the idea that love is permanent or not permanent. Experience, and you will know it, what it is.

Don't take the criterion from others about what is true and what is not true. These are the teachers who have been spoiling the whole of humanity. They tell you how to walk, which leg first and which leg second, and if you put them in some other order you are a sinner, you will fall into hell. Hell is far away; you will fall here! You may not be able even to reach hell, because one needs legs. It is a long journey. Only very expert teachers, professors, philosophers, have been able to reach there. It is no ordinary person's business to reach hell. It is a long, long journey, and very complicated.

The master's function is not to mold you into a certain idea, but to withdraw all the crutches, all the supports that the society has given to you. Of course in the beginning you will feel very much afraid - all supports gone, crutches gone, the very earth you were standing on is no longer there.

There will be great fear, but it has to be faced. Only by facing it, going through it, will you be able to overcome it.

Love will give you troubles, anxieties, anguishes, but it is lack of intelligence that is making the whole problem. Just be a little intelligent and see that love has done nothing. It has simply given you a few beautiful, tremendously ecstatic moments. And it has not asked anything in return. It was not a bargain, it was a sheer gift. And what kind of person are you - you don't feel even grateful? You feel revengeful?

The person who made it possible for you to have those few moments, the woman, the man - be grateful, immensely grateful to the person. Yes, those moments are no more there. Nothing can be done about it. They cannot be pulled back, and even if there was some way to pull them back, they would not be the same. It would be a repetition. It wouldn't bring you the same joy, the same ecstasy. It is good that they cannot be pulled back, otherwise even the memory of those cherished moments would be spoiled.

Respect the person, be grateful to the person that, for no reason at all - she is a stranger, you are a stranger - for no reason at all, for no bargain, there was no business... mysteriously the universe managed; something transpired between you. And it was nourishing to both of you. It has made you more mature.

Perhaps tomorrow again some spring breeze may move towards you. But never ask the return of the past. It is not possible, and it is not possible for your good. Keep the future open, available.

Don't carry any grudges, because those will close the future. If you are angry at one woman, or one man, you are angry at all women and all men - because a woman is nothing but a representative of womanhood, a man is nothing but a representative of manhood. If you start feeling hatred, anger, you are closing the doors and the windows. Now no spring breeze will be able to enter your house.

For the higher level, I am not a teacher. I don't want to make something of you resembling some of my ideas. I don't have any idea about you. I don't carry any image that everybody should fit into.

My whole approach is that each individual is unique, and nobody can predict what you are going to be. Even the master cannot predict what you are going to be, because predictions are possible only about things, not about consciousnesses. Consciousness is unpredictable. What is going to blossom in you can be known only when it blossoms.

So the master can do only one thing: he can remove everything that can stop your blossoming.

Hence the master will look very hard.

The teacher will look very compassionate, because he will be giving you every guideline, he will be taking all responsibility. He will be showing you the path; he will be leading you on the path, and you have just to follow.

The master is not interested in you following him. No, just the contrary; you should not follow him, otherwise you will miss becoming yourself. Then what does he do? In fact, all his functioning is negative. He destroys your crutches, your supports. He makes you vulnerable to all kinds of fears, anxieties, challenges. This is all negative. As far as positivity is concerned, he does nothing. He is just a mirror.

He allows you to come close and see your face in his mirror. He does not want you to imitate and become his face. He wants you to look into him. He has no ideas. That means all the dust from the mirror is gone. His mirror is clean. You can come close and look, and you will find your face. The mirror simply mirrors; it is not a doing, it is not an act.

Certainly my relationship with you is unique. In the first place it is not a relationship, because what relationship can you have with a mirror? You can see your face and be thankful, be grateful - but that is not a relationship. What relationship can the mirror have with you? There is no possibility.

The mirror is simply there. It does not relate in any possible way, it simply exists.

So the relationship is unique because if you go to other religions, the master - who is not really a master in the first place, but they call him the master - the master, the so-called master, will have a thousand and one demands to be fulfilled because he is going to do a great job for you. I'm not doing anything for you, so I cannot demand anything from you. The 'master' will have conditions to be fulfilled. If you fail to fulfill the conditions, then the condemnation; if you fulfill the conditions, then the praise, the reward.

I cannot condemn you, I cannot reward you - because I don't have any conditions that you have to fulfill. To be my disciple is your decision. It has nothing to do with me. To accept me as your master is your decision, it has nothing to do with me. I am not seeking converts; I am not a Christian missionary. I am not striving so that people should be converted to my way of thinking, my way of life. No, not at all. Otherwise in these thirty-five years I would have converted millions of people, with no trouble. They were ready to be converted; I was not ready to convert.

It is your decision. Always remember, whatsoever happens here is your decision.

If you are a sannyasin, it is your decision.

If you drop sannyas, it is your decision.

If you take it again, it is your decision.

I leave everything to you.

So it is a unique relationship: it is absolutely onesided; from my side there is no relationship. It has to be absolutely clear: from my side there is no relationship. From your side... and that is continually changing. When you first come, you come as a student. It is a different kind of relationship from your side. Then you just want to learn something. Being near me, slowly you understand that learning is not enough. Some experience is needed. You become a disciple, you become a sannyasin. That is your decision. You simply indicate that you want to come closer to me. What else is sannyas?

Just your declaration that you would love and like to be closer to me. From your side, the student is disappearing and the disciple is appearing. And then the last stage comes, when you feel even experiencing is not enough: being.

Now see the three points. Teaching is a very faraway thing, borrowed: experience - but it is outside you. You are the experiencer, and the experience is there: beautiful, ecstatic, blissful, but you know it is there, an object; inside, but still an object. No, you want to be at the center of your being. Then you come even closer: the disciple disappears into the devotee. Now, the devotee means from your side also the relationship has disappeared. Now you are absolutely happy just to be the way you are. You understand now why there was no relationship from my side. I am enjoying my aloneness, and you start enjoying your aloneness.

So the relationship is not static like father and son, brother and sister; it is not static. It is not like marriage. There is no law that prevents you from dropping sannyas or that forces you to be a sannyasin. Slowly you understand that your relationship also is disappearing. When you were a student there was a very strong relationship with the teacher, with the master. When you are a disciple the relationship is fragile, like a lover. When you are a devotee you have come... arrived.

Now you can blossom in your aloneness.

Gratitude is there; gratefulness is there, thankfulness is there, and infinite gratitude - but no relationship, no demand from your side or from my side. Then it is just as if two candles are burning side by side, so close that their flames become one.

Okay Sheela?