All promise for tomorrow are lies

Question 1:

You must be crazy! Why should it disturb you if it does not disturb me? It is true I have no respect for facts, for the simple reason that the fact is not the truth. The fact is our opinion about the truth. And what opinion can you have? - unconscious, blind, conditioned by centuries of rubbish. Why should I pay any respect to all this nonsense?

Something was a fact yesterday, today it is not. It was a fact for Jesus, Moses, Abraham, that the sun goes around the earth. It is no longer a fact, it is just the opposite: the earth goes around the sun. So why should you be disturbed? As man progresses and becomes more intelligent, has more scientific methods to probe into reality, facts go on changing every day.

I have immense respect for truth, because truth is not man's opinion. Truth is a revelation. You are not, when the truth is there.

You cannot make an opinion about the truth. You can experience it, you can taste it, you can be it, but you cannot have an opinion about it, because the moment truth faces you, you are no more. The ego that used to make opinions simply disappears, just as when you bring light into a dark room the darkness disappears. In fact it was never there it was only the absence of light. The moment the light is present, how can the light and the darkness exist together?

And your opinion is simply a barrier in finding the truth. You somehow have got the idea that fact and truth are synonymous; they are not. Sometimes the fiction is more true than the fact. Just look at the three hundred years' growth of science. Everything has changed. Aristotle's logic was a great discovery, accepted by all for almost thousand years. Now it is just garbage. Non-Aristotelian logic has taken its place; someday it will also be in the garbage.

Man's truth - what he calls fact - has no validity. It is the blind man's idea of light. Why should I have any respect for it? And the most amazing part is: why are you disturbed? The psychology of it is very clear. When I don't pay any respect to the so-called facts, your knowledgeable mind gets disturbed. You want me to be infallible, you want me to be the greatest master in the world. Not that you are interested in me, your interest is in being the disciple of the greatest master in the world.

Your desire is to belong to a master who is always respectful of facts.

Remember, in many different contexts this will happen to you. I have said again and again, I am a fallible, ordinary man. And to be a disciple of a fallible, ordinary man is disturbing. But that simply shows your ego and its longing. You would like to make me a God, because then you become also God's disciple. Then there is a direct communication line between God and you.

Forgive me, I am not God, and there is no one who is, no one who has ever been. It is your psychology that has created the prophets, the messiahs, the avataras. They fulfilled your desire.

And naturally, it was good business: they became messiahs, and you became the special apostles of the messiah. Unless man drops this stupid psychology, it is very difficult to get rid of messiahs, prophets, great masters, because you are so insistent on being a great disciple. How can you be a great disciple if the master is fallible?

I am trying in every way to destroy your psychology, which has dominated humanity for centuries. It has made you almost unintelligent, but the balloon of your ego goes on becoming bigger and bigger.

You, your individuality, your consciousness, go on diminishing in the same proportion.

What do you want? Should I say things which satisfy you? Or should I say things as they are, whether they satisfy you or hurt you? It is your responsibility, it is not my concern. Listening to your question, I said, "Aha! Back to zero again!" Are you ever going to grow or not?

The geometric philosophy of Euclid dominated for centuries; no one ever objected. Just within a hundred years the whole Euclidean geometry has become a fiction; a non-Euclidean geometry has taken its place. I say to you, the non-Euclidean geometry is also a fiction. It is not going to remain there forever as a fact. Nothing that man creates out of his sleep can become the eternal truth. To know the eternal truth, man has to disappear completely. He is the hindrance.

I am going to continue hammering your psychological slavery. I am not concerned about facts, I am concerned with your freedom. You have to be freed from all that is not your experience.

And remember, your experience is not yours, it is only experiencing. I have immense respect for experiencing. The facts, at the most, may be useful in the ordinary world of objects, but they have no basis in reality.

Experiencing may not be of any use in the outside world - perhaps it may create trouble for you, but flowers will start showering on you, your being will be contented. You will feel an absolute certainty that you have come home.

Question 2:

Yes, you were missing the point when you were feeling blissful. Now you are getting it! All that blissfulness was just bullshit; you projected it. Now you are disturbed: that blissfulness has disappeared and doubts, enquiries, questions are arising. And I say, this is what should happen to everybody.

If your blissfulness was existential, true, then there would have been no way for doubts to arise. It was a hallucination. You were on a honeymoon trip, and now the honeymoon is finished. You are back home unpacking the same suitcases which just seven days before you were packing with such great joy. And now, look in the mirror and see your face again. What happened to that bliss? What happened to that expectation? What happened to your sweet dreams?

A dream is a dream, whether it is sweet or bitter, and sooner or later you have to drop it; you cannot carry it forever. Only truth can remain with you forever. That's why I say feel blessed, not blissful, that for the first time your intelligence has started functioning, that some kind of awakening is happening, that the morning is very close by. Those questions, enquiries, doubts, are of immense value; your blissfulness was not worth a penny. I say so because these doubts, these enquiries, these questions, are the beginning of the pilgrimage to truth.

I am against drugs for this reason - because the drugs can give you a false blissfulness, and can stop you questioning, enquiring, doubting. Even a man like Aldous Huxley fell into the same ditch.

When he took LSD he thought, "This is what Buddha was experiencing, Kabir was experiencing, and all the great masters of the world were experiencing." He thought, "We have found, for the first time, the shortcut to paradise." But within hours the effect of the LSD disappears, and you are back again, the same man, the same miserable creature. LSD has not transformed you.

Any hallucination - either created by drugs, or created by programming your mind, or created by your hidden desires of being great - is a hindrance to realizing the truth.

Let me repeat: now you are in the right state of mind. It is painful, bitter, but this is the nature of existence. Truth in the beginning is bitter, in the end, tremendously sweet - and sweet forever. The untruth is very sweet in the beginning, but ultimately leads you into hellfire. And then it is too late to come back to your original state and start again. Very few people have that courage.

Frederick Nietzsche, although a madman, had many beautiful flashes of light, love, truth. He says man passes through three stages of consciousness. The first stage he calls the camel, the second stage the lion, and the third stage - the ultimate - the child. He has chosen strange names for these stages.

You are all camels, the ugliest animal on the earth! - nothing is straight. Have you ever ridden on a camel? Then you will know. I have suffered much, because in India in the desert of Rajasthan, the camel is the only way to go from one place to another. Sitting on a camel for a few hours, one starts believing that hell is real.

The second stage Nietzsche calls the lion... a strange coincidence, because Buddha used to call his words "the lion's roar." The lion is one of the most beautiful animals on the earth; strong, and capable of being alone. The lion doesn't live like a sheep, in crowds. He lives alone, without fear.

He is ready to take any risk.

You have to become a lion to be alone. That does not mean that you have to leave your family, your friends, your society, your commune - no. You can be alone in the crowd, there is no problem.

In fact, you are alone. The crowd may be big - you can forget your aloneness in the crowd, but forgetting makes no difference. Here, you are thousands of sannyasins.... Just become a little alert, and you will find you are alone. I am talking to each of you separately. Nobody can talk to a crowd.

And the third stage Nietzsche calls the child. He has chosen a beautiful name for the third stage - the newborn baby, fresh, no ego, no desire to be somebody special in the world, no programmed mind, no conditioning. He is neither Christian nor American, neither Hindu nor Indian; he is simply himself. And there is utter silence in his being. He has not yet read all kinds of things - which are useless, but they clutter your mind; a moment comes when you are just a junkyard. The child's consciousness is just a mirror. It reflects whatsoever comes in front of it.

The child does not know names. Do you think if you bring a red roseflower before the child he will be thinking in his mind, "This is a red rose, a very beautiful flower"? No, he will be seeing the flower, as you never have. The fragrance will be reaching him as it cannot reach you because there are so many barriers. He does not know the name of the color, of the flower. He does not know that it is beautiful. As far as his mind is concerned, it is silent, but he experiences the flower in its totality.

Words are not needed.

A rose is a rose is a rose.

Names and labels are not needed.

What is needed is clarity, innocence.

The third stage, the ultimate stage , Nietzsche calls the child. And that's what I am trying to do: to make you a child again - fresh, uncluttered, with no ideology, so that you can encounter existence directly. But if you want to experience it directly, you will have to cut out all that prevents you from experiencing directly. Doubt is a great instrument, questioning is of tremendous help, because without them there is no enquiry.

Remember that doubt, enquiry, questions, are not negative. They are a search for the positive. They become negative only when you get stuck with them, when you make your doubt your belief - then they are negative. When your enquiry becomes an addiction, and you forget completely what you are enquiring for, then you are in bad shape. Otherwise, it is a blessing that your hallucinations are over.

What has actually been happening with my people in these thirty years? I have been in contact with thousands. I was speaking on Mahavira - only the followers of Mahavira felt blissful. I was speaking on Jesus - Christians felt blissful, because they thought I was supporting their ego, their programmed mind, their Christianity, their Jesus. So this has been happening again and again. First, to gain your confidence, I say beautiful things about Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha. The moment I see that now it is time - you cannot go back, you have come too close to me - then I start speaking the truth.

It hurts, but this hurting is healthy. It hurts because it uncovers your wound. A covered wound you may forget, but it is there and growing, and may become a cancer. Open it to the air, to the sun, to the moon, to existence. The whole existence is a healing force. If it can give you life, can't it heal small wounds created by your parents, your teachers, your politicians? It is a very small job for existence. You just have to open your wounds. And in the beginning it will hurt.

You are asking me, "Am I missing the point?" No, sir! This is the point, you are getting it. Now it is up to you: you can escape and hide again in your illusory blissfulness, or you can give a lion's roar and take the quantum leap into reality, knowing perfectly well it is going to hurt.

But that is not the end. It hurts only because of your clinging to your past blissfulness. Once your past blissfulness is dropped, understood as a dream, the hurting disappears, the despair disappears.

On the contrary, for the first time you have risen as a man; you are no longer an animal. For the first time the night is over and the sun has risen. And you have learned a great secret.

Go on using that secret, and the third state of consciousness is not far away. It is within your reach.

The lion's roar breaks you away from your past, and joins you with your future.

To become a child again is the greatest joy, and the greatest achievement, because it gives you innocence, freedom, clarity to see things as they are.

I am reminded of a story I have loved always. A great king conquered almost all the known world of his time, and then there was frustration - what to do next? He had everything, and he was stuck.

The old habit, the old greed of gaining more and more, - and now he found suddenly that now there was no more. His whole life's training was for more and more and more, and now he had everything, there was nothing more.

He was very sad. His wives, his advisors, all tried to cheer him up, but he said, "It is futile. Unless I have something more to conquer, what is the point of living any longer?"

Then a very cunning priest - in fact, I should not say both the words together, because the priest means the cunning - appeared in the court. And he said, "Don't be worried, I have heard about your anguish - there is still much more. For example," he said, "I can bring you divine clothes from God, which have never come to the earth. You will be the first man, and perhaps the last to have them."

There was silence, there was doubt. But the king said, "What can he do?" He asked, "What is going to be the cost?"

The priest said, "Then forget all about it. One who asks the cost is not worthy of receiving them.

They are priceless. But just to satisfy your enquiry I will say that a few billion dollars will be needed."

The king said, "There is one condition. You will remain in one of my palaces, guarded inside, and do whatsoever ritual, prayer you want to do. And the moment you bring the clothes here, the money will be delivered."

The man said, "There is no problem; as far as I am concerned it is perfectly good. But I will have to deliver the money when I get those clothes from God - and I am a poor priest, you have to give me money now. And I will remain in your palace. Keep all the doors closed, keep the palace fully surrounded by your military, so that you can feel comfortable. And the moment I bring the clothes, I will knock on the door; then the guards have to take me to the place where you live."

After three days he knocked on the door. Nobody believed it, everybody was thinking that he seemed to be either very cunning or just insane. Who has ever heard of the clothes of God coming to the earth? But they all waited. The king could not even sleep, he was so thrilled. He was again blissful:

a new horizon to be achieved, a new dimension opening - and for the first time! These moments were historic.

After three days the man came with a beautiful box to the court of the king. He put the box down and said to the king, "God was very pleased, because you are the bravest man ever. He has sent the divine clothes. Just two things have to be remembered. One, the clothes are invisible, just like God. Secondly, you have to take your clothes off. Give me your cap and I will give you the divine cap; put it on your head.

"Just as I was coming I said to God, 'This is a little hard, that the clothes will be invisible.' God said, 'I will make one exception: the man who is truly born out of his own father - one who is not a bastard - will be able to see them.' This is a special concession."

The box was opened. The king looked into it: it was empty - of course, the clothes were invisible.

His intimates in the court looked into the box, and they all started cheering and clapping, and they said, "What beauty!"

The king thought, "Strange! Now if I say that the box is empty I will be condemned by my own people. They will say that I am not the son of my father, that my mother was flirting with somebody else. It is better to keep quiet and save my prestige." He also said, "Great! You have done something impossible."

All the people in the court saw that the box was empty, but the same question was in their minds:

"All the others are seeing them, only I am not; something is wrong with me. It is better to keep silent - not only silent, but to praise the clothes more than the others, to prove that I am the son of my own father."

If things had stopped there, the king would have been happy. But the man was really a priest. He took the clothes out one by one and gave those invisible clothes to the king to wear, and he acted as if he was putting a new robe on him. At the end it became difficult, because he asked about the underwear.

The king hesitated. He knew that there was nothing, that he was standing almost naked, only the underwear was left. But now it was too late. If he said, "You cheat! You have taken so much money,"

that wouldn't be right because the whole court was dancing with joy: "You look so beautiful, just like God!"

The poor king had to part with his underwear too. Now he was standing completely naked. And the priest said, "Because the clothes from paradise have come for the first time on the earth, the whole capital is standing outside the palace; they want to see their king in divine clothes."

Again the king thought, "What to do? If I say no, it is too late." He had to say yes. On a beautiful chariot the naked king was standing, and the crowd lined the road on both sides - millions of people shouting, dancing, clapping, saying to each other, "This is the greatest moment in our lives! We have not seen God, but we have seen his clothes. This is not a small thing." And they were all seeing that the king was standing naked, but they had heard the condition - that only those who are born out of their own fathers will be able to see the clothes.

So everybody was seeing them, except a little child who had come with his father. Sitting on his father's shoulder, he said, "Daddy, the king is naked!"

The father simply said, "Shut up, you idiot! When you become my age you will not see the king naked. You don't understand anything. And if you say it again, I will beat you! Keep your mouth closed."

But the child said, "It is strange! Everybody is seeing the clothes except me." Only the child was seeing the truth, and the crowd was pretending to see. And if you pretend anything long enough, it starts becoming a fact to you, you start believing in it. But it is poisoning your whole potentiality.

Forget all those blissful moments that you had felt before here. Now I am in a hurry, and I am going to open all your wounds. So only those who have the courage of a lion will remain my sannyasins.

The camels have already left for Santa Fe!

And if you are courageous enough, like a lion, your beautiful childhood innocence is not far away. It is yours just to take. Be thankful to your doubts, your enquiries, your questions. They will lead you to the truth.

Question 3:

It is very simple to understand. Marriage is the ugliest institution invented by man. It is not natural; it has been invented so that you can monopolize a woman. You have been treating women as if they were a piece of land, or some currency notes. You have reduced the woman to a thing.

Remember that if you reduce any human being to a thing - unaware, unconscious - you are also being reduced to the same status; otherwise, you will not be able to communicate. If you can talk with a chair, you must be a chair.

Marriage is against nature.

You can be certain only of this moment that is in your hands. All promises for tomorrow are lies - and marriage is a promise for your whole life, that you will remain together, that you will love each other, that you will respect each other till your last breath.

And these priests, who are the inventors of many ugly things, say to you that marriages are made in heaven. Nothing is made in heaven; there is no heaven.

If you listen to nature, your problems, your questions will simply evaporate. The problem is:

biologically man is attracted to woman, women are attracted to men, but that attraction cannot remain the same forever. You are attracted to something which is a challenge to get. You see a beautiful man, a beautiful woman; you are attracted. Nothing is wrong in it. You feel your heart beating faster. You would like to be with this woman or man, and the attraction is so tremendous that in that moment you think you would like to live with this woman forever.

Lovers don't deceive each other, they are saying the truth - but that truth belongs to the moment.

When lovers say to each other, "I cannot live without you," it is not that he is deceiving or she is deceiving, they mean it. But they don't know the nature of life. Tomorrow this same woman will not look so beautiful. As days pass, the man and the woman both will feel that they are imprisoned.

They have know each other's geography completely. First it was an unknown territory to be discovered, now there is nothing to be discovered.

And to go on repeating the same words and the same acts looks mechanical, ugly. That's why passion turns into hate. The woman hates you, because you are going to do the same thing again.

To prevent you, the moment the husband enters the house she goes to bed, she has a headache.

She wants somehow not to get into the same rut. And the man is flirting with his secretary in the office; now she is an unknown territory.

To me, it is all nature. What is unnatural is binding people in the name of religion, in the name of God, for their whole life.

In a better, more intelligent world, people will love, but will not make any contracts. It is not a business! They will understand each other, and they will understand the changing flux of life. They will be true to each other. The moment the man feels that now his beloved holds no joy for him, he will say that the time has come to part. There is no need for marriage, there is no need for divorce.

Then friendship will be possible.

You ask me why friendship is not possible between men and women.... Friendship is not possible between the jailer and the imprisoned. Friendship is possible between equal human beings, totally free from all bondage of society, culture, civilization, only living true to their authentic nature.

It is not an insult to the woman to say, "Honey, the honeymoon is over." It is not an insult to the man if the woman says, "Now things cannot be beautiful. The wind that has blown is no longer there. The season has changed, it is no longer spring between us; no flowers blossom, no fragrance arises.

It is time to part." And because there is no legal bondage of marriage, there is no question of any divorce.

It is ugly that the court and the law and the state interfere in your private life - you have to ask their permission. Who are they? It is a question between two individuals, their private affair.

There will be only friends - no husbands, no wives. Of course, if there is only friendship, passion will never turn into hate. The moment you feel passion disappearing, you will say good-bye, and it will be understood. Even if it hurts, nothing can be done about it - it is the way of life.

But man has created societies, cultures, civilizations, rules, regulations, and made the whole humanity unnatural. That's why men and women cannot be friends. And men and women either become husbands and wives - which is something absolutely ugly; they start owning each other....

People are not things, you cannot have ownership. If I feel your wife is beautiful, and approach her, you are angry, you are ready to fight because I am approaching your property. No wife is anybody's property, no husband is anybody's property. What kind of world have you created? People are reduced to properties; then there is jealousy, hatred.

You yourself know that you are attracted to the neighbor's wife; naturally, you can guess about your wife too. Your wife knows perfectly well she is attracted to somebody else, but she cannot approach that person because of the husband: he is standing there with a gun! Love is bound to turn into hate, and for the whole life the hate goes on accumulating. And out of this hatred do you think beautiful children are going to be born? They are not born out of love, but out of duty. It is the wife's duty to allow you to use her.

To tell the truth, there is no difference between wives and prostitutes. The difference is just like the difference between having your own car or going in a taxi.

You go to a prostitute - it is for a few hours, it is beautiful. After a few hours it is finished; you have paid the woman. And now there are male prostitutes also, particularly in California; California seems to be not part of this world. A few hours of relationship is purchased, and when you pay the woman or the man, everything is goody-goody. You will not recognize each other the next day when you meet on the street; there is no need, there has been no contract. You will not even say hello, not even "Hi." There is no need.

A prostitute is purchased only for a few hours; wives are a long-term affair, it is economical. Royal families are not allowed to marry outside royal blood: status, money, power.... Nobody can love anybody in such circumstances, where the relationship is financial.

The woman is dependent on you because you earn. And for centuries men have not allowed women to be educated, to be in business, to have jobs, for the simple reason that if the woman has her own financial status, her own bank account, you cannot reduce her to a thing. She has to be dependent on you. And do you think anybody who has to be dependent on you will love you?

Every woman wants to kill the husband. It is another matter that she does not kill him - because if she kills him, what will she do? She is not educated, she has no experience of the society, she has no way of earning. The husband - every husband, I don't make any exceptions - wants to get rid of the woman. But he cannot get rid of her. There are children, and he himself has promised the woman thousands of times that he loves her. When he goes to his job he kisses the woman; there is no love in it, just skeletons touching each other. Nobody is present.

Man has created a society in which friendship between man and woman is impossible.

I would like my people to remember - even though you have to follow the laws of the society; otherwise they will imprison you and punish you and kill you... but remember, friendship is so valuable that whatsoever the consequence, remain friends even with your wife, even with your husband, and allow absolute and total freedom to each other.

I don't see any problem. If I love a woman, and one day she says that she has fallen in love with somebody else and feels very happy, I will be happy. I love her, and I would like her to be happy - where is the problem? I will help her in every way so that she can be more happy. If she can be more happy with somebody else, what hurts me?

It is your ego that hurts: she has found somebody else who is better than you. It is not a question of better, it may be just your chauffeur - it is just a question of a little change. And if you give full freedom to each other, perhaps you can remain together for your whole life, or for the whole eternity, because there is no need to get rid of each other.

Marriage creates the need to get rid of each other, because it means freedom is taken away - and freedom is the highest value in human life. Make all the couples free, and you will be surprised, this very world becomes paradise.

There are other problems. You have children - what to do with children? My answer is that children should not belong to their parents, they should belong to the commune. Then there is no problem.

The parents can meet the children, they can invite the children, they can be friends with their children; and yet the children are not dependent on them, they belong to the commune. And it will destroy many psychological problems.

If a boy knows only his mother, the mother's personality becomes an imprint on him. Now, his whole life he will be trying to find a woman who is like his mother - and he will never find such a woman.

A girl will never find another man who is exactly a copy of her father. Then you cannot be satisfied with any woman, any man.

But if the children belong to the commune, they will come in contact with so many uncles and so many aunts - they will not carry a single picture in their minds. They will have a vague idea of womanhood or manhood, and to that idea, many people of the commune will have contributed; it will be multidimensional. There is a possibility of finding somebody, because you only have a vague idea. You can find somebody, and that person will make your vague idea solid, a reality.

Right now you have a solid idea within you, and you meet a vague person. Sooner or later there is disappointment.

And children belonging to the commune will learn much, will be more friendly, will be more available to all kinds of influences. They will be richer. A child being brought up by a couple is very poor. He does not know that there are millions of people with different minds, different kinds of beauty. If a child moves in the commune, naturally he will be far richer. And he will have known so much before he decides to be with someone that there is a possibility of a long friendship.

What happens now? You see a girl on the beach and you fall in love. You know nothing about the girl, you know only her make-up. Tomorrow morning when you get up and the make-up is gone, you will say, "My God! What have I done? This is not the woman I married, this is someone else!" But you cannot go against your word either. And if you do, then the government is there, the courts are there to put you back into your right place. This is a very ugly situation, sick.

People should be given freedom to know each other, to know as many people as possible, because each person is so unique, there is no question of comparison. Let the child drink from many sources, and he will have some insight into who is going to be the right person to live with.

Nobody will fall in love; everybody will decide consciously that "This is the one." He has known so many people, he understands that this is the one who has those characteristics, those qualities that he has loved. And then too it is only going to be a friendship. There is no fear; if tomorrow things change there is no harm.

The society should not live in a routine way, in a fixed way - static, dormant - it should be a moving flux. One woman can give you a certain kind of joy, another woman can give you another kind of joy.

A third woman will be a surprise. So why remain poor"? - just because Jesus has said, "Blessed are the poor"?

Be richer in every dimension, and keep yourself open and available. And whoever you are with, let the other person understand clearly that "It is freedom between us, not a marriage license. Out of freedom we meet, with no promises for the future - because who knows the future?"

When I was a student in the university in my final master's course, one girl was very much interested in me. She was a beautiful girl, but my interest was not in women at that time. I was crazy in search of God!

After the examinations, when she was leaving the university.... She had waited - I knew it - she had waited and waited for me to approach her. That is the usual way, that the man approaches the woman; it is graceful for the woman not to approach the man. Strange idea... I don't understand.

Whoever approaches, it is graceful. If fact, whoever initiates is courageous.

When we were leaving the university she said, "Now there is no chance." She took me aside and said, "For two years continuously I have been waiting. Can't we be together for our whole lives? I love you."

I said, "If you love me, then please leave me alone. I also love you, that's why I am leaving you alone - because I know what has been happening in the name of love. People are becoming imprisoned, chained; they lose all their joy, life becomes a drag. So this is my parting advice to you," I said, "Never try to cling to a person for your whole life."

If two persons are willingly together today, it is more than enough. If tomorrow again they feel like being together, good. If they don't, it is their personal affair; nobody has to interfere.

Up to now, the problem of the children has always been raised. My answer is that children should belong to the commune. They can go to their parents, whether their parents are together or separate.

And they should learn from their parents that love is no slavery, it is freedom. And they should move in the commune, tasting, enjoying different qualities of different people.

So by the time they decide, their decision will be not just a foolish type of "falling in love"; it will be a very considered, contemplated, meditated phenomenon. There is a possibility they may remain together for their whole lives. In fact, if there is freedom, there is more possibility; more people will remain together.

If marriage disappears, divorce disappears automatically. This is a by-product of marriage. Nobody takes note of the simple fact: why for centuries have there been prostitutes? Who created them?

Who is responsible for these poor women? It is the institution of marriage.

You are bored with your wife; just for a change you go to a woman who is not going to be a bondage - because one is enough, two will be too much. It is just a temporary, few hours' meeting. You can keep yourself lovely for a few hours, loving for a few hours. She can keep herself lovely and loving for a few hours. And moreover, she has been paid for it.

Around the world millions of women are reduced to selling their bodies. Who has done it? Your political leaders, your religious leaders. I consider these people criminals. And not ordinary criminals, because for centuries the whole humanity has been suffering because of these few idiots.

But you have to start with yourself, there is no other way. If you love somebody, then freedom should be the connecting link between you. And if you see your woman tomorrow hugging somebody else, there is no need to be jealous. She is being enriched, she is tasting a little newness - just the way you go sometimes to a Chinese restaurant! It is good. You will come back to your own food, but the Chinese restaurant has helped you; you may relish your own food more.

But after a few days, again - that's how the mind is - you are moving towards an Italian restaurant...

spaghetti. I cannot even tolerate somebody eating spaghetti in front of me! But that is my problem Life is so simple and so beautiful, just one thing is missing: freedom. If your wife is being with some other people, soon she will come back to you enriched, with new insight. And she will find something in you she had never found before. And meanwhile, you need not just sit down in your chair and beat your head. You also gain experience, so that by the time your woman is back you are also new.

You have also been to the Chinese restaurant.

Life should be a joy, a rejoicing. And then only can there be friendship between men and women; otherwise, they are going to remain intimate enemies.