Make Work a Celebration

Question 1:

I say marriage is immoral, but I don't say marrying is immoral. A man and a woman in love with each other would like to live together, so a marriage stemming from love will not be immoral. But we are doing just the contrary; we are trying to squeeze love from marriage, which is not possible. Marriage is a bondage, and love is freedom. But a couple in love would like to live together, which is natural.

This togetherness will flow from love. Marriage should be the shadow of love and not otherwise.

I don't say that after the abolition of marriage a man and a woman will not live together. The truth is, only then will they really live together. At the moment they only seem to be living together, they really don't live together. Mere physical togetherness is not togetherness. Living in close proximity in space is not living together. And just to be coupled in marriage is not really coupling, not true union.

It is the institution of marriage which I call immoral. The institution of marriage would like love to be banished from the world. As such, every institution is unnatural: it is against man's natural feelings and emotions; it cannot exist without suppressing them. When any two people fall in love with each other, their love is unique and incomparable; no other two people have ever loved each other the same way. But when two persons get married, that marriage is very ordinary, commonplace, millions of people have known marriage the same way. Love is an original and unique phenomenon, while marriage is just a tradition, a repetition. A marriage strangles and kills love. As the institution of marriage becomes dominant and powerful, it thwarts and throttles love to the same degree.

The day we accord love its priority in our lives; the day a man and a woman live together not by way of a contract and compromise but out of love and love alone, marriage as we know it will cease to exist. And with marriage will go today's system of divorce. Then a couple will live together for the sake of their love and happiness. and for no other consideration, and they will part company and separate when the love between them dries up and disappears. Society will not come in their way in any manner.

I repeat: marriage as an institution is immoral, and marriage that comes in the wake of love is quite natural. There is nothing immoral about it.

Question 2:

So many problems seem to loom up if love becomes the basis of marriage. But they loom up only because we see things through the screen of our old concepts and beliefs. The day we accord love its highest value, the idea that children belong to individuals, to parents, will become meaningless.

Really, children don't belong to individuals; they really never belong to them. There was a time when the father was un. known, only the mother was known. That was the age of matriarchy, when the mother was the head of the family and descent was reckoned through the female line.

You will be surprised to know the word "father" is not that old; the word "uncle" is much older.

"Mother" is an ancient word, while "father" is very new. The father really appeared on the scene when we institutionalized marriage; he was not known before. The whole male population of a tribe was father-like; only the mother of a child was known. The whole tribe was loving to its children, and since they belonged to none they belonged to all.

It is not right to say that ownership of children by individuals, by parents, has been good for children.

True good will happen when children belong to a whole commune or society.

You ask what the position of children will be when we will make love the basis of marriage. Will not they become a social problem? No, they will not be a social problem then. They are a social problem tight now, when we have left them at the mercy of a few individuals, be they parents or relations.

And in view of the new vista of future possibilities opening up before us, it is certain that the old foundations of our society are not going to last any longer.

For instance, in the old world a father was a must for a child to be born, it will not be so in the future.

In fact, he has already become redundant. Now my sperm can be preserved for thousands of years after my death. and it can give birth to a chill even ten thousand years after me.

Then in the future, even the mother, who has so far been so indispensable, will not be needed for the birth of a child. Soon science is going to find ways and means - we are at the doorstep of its consummation - when a mother will not need to carry the burden of a baby in her womb for nine months. A machine, an instrument like the test tube will do the job better. All the facilities that are available to a baby in the mother's womb will be provided to him, and he will be better provided for in a test tube or whatever we will call it. And then it will be difficult to know the parentage of a child.

Then the whole social structure will have to be changed. Then all women will play mothers and all men will play fathers to children who will grow up under the collective care of the community. For sure, everything is going to change.

What I am saying has become necessary because of the way science is currently developing throughout the world. But we don't understand it because we continue to think in out old ways, which are out of date. Now when a child is born to you, you consult the best possible physician about his health and upkeep; you don't think that, being his father or mother, you can treat your child medically too. In the same way you go to a good tailor to have clothes made for him; you don't sew them yourself because you happen to be his parent. Likewise, with the deepening of your understanding you will want your child to be born with the help of much healthier sperm than your own, so that he is not retarded physically or mentally, so that he is endowed with a healthy body and an intelligent mind. So you would want to secure the best sperm available for the birth of your child.

On her part, a would-be mother would not like to drag on for nine months with a baby in her womb when facilities will be made available to grow a child externally in a better and healthier manner. The function of parents, as it is today, will then cease to be necessary. And with the cessation of the function of parents, how will marriage itself exist? Then the very basis of marriage will disappear.

Technology on one hand and the science of man's mind on the other, are heading towards a point when individual claim on children will come to an end.

This does not mean that all man's problems will end with this radical change in the social structure.

Every new experiment, every change we make brings its own problems with it. It is not a great question that problems as such should cease to be - man will always have problems - the great question is that we should have newer and greater problems to deal with than what we now have.

The real question is that our problems of today should be better than those we had yesterday.

It is not that with the abolition of marriage every conflict between man and man, between man and woman will disappear for good. But, for sure, the conflicts that arise from marriage - and they are more than enough - will go. However, newer conflicts and newer problems will arise and it will be a joy to deal with them. To live on this planet problems will always be needed, because it is through our struggle with problems that we grow and mature.

In this connection it is necessary to take notice of a particular problem which comes our way again and again. The problem is that we get used to putting up with the problems of the social system we are given to live in. And so we are afraid of facing those new and unfamiliar problems that are likely to come with a better and higher social system - even if such a system becomes necessary and feasible. And thus we get stuck with a decadent and dying system, and that is what makes for our real difficulty, our real problem. But it is the task of intelligence to understand that if newer and better problems are available, in the wake of change, it is right to go for the change and to grapple with those problems and solve them.

I hold that so long as love does not bloom fully in a man's life he will not attain to the glory and grandeur of life, he will remain lackluster. A life devoid of love is dull and dreary; it is a veritable desert. And I think that a life full of problems, full of energy and glow, is far more preferable to a life that is dull, dreary and dead. I would like to conclude this discussion with a small anecdote.

A little bunch of wildflowers lived sheltered in the crevices of an old city wall. Winds and storms failed to disturb them since they were well protected by the high wall and its crevices. For the same reason, the sun's rays could not burn them nor could the rains ruin them.

There was a rosebush in the neighborhood of this little bunch of wildflowers. The presence of gorgeous roses made the wildflowers feel inferior and ashamed of their own existence. So one fine morning the wildflowers prayed to God, "So long we have lived as faceless flowers; now please turn us into roses."

God said in answer, "Why get into unnecessary troubles? The life of a rose is very hard. When there is a storm, it shakes it to its roots. And when it blooms, there is already someone around to pluck it.

You live a well-protected life, don't forsake it."

But the wildflowers insisted, "We have long lived a sheltered life; we now want to live dangerously.

Please make us roses for twenty-four hours."

Other wildflowers pleaded, "Don't be crazy. We have heard that a few of our ancestors had to suffer terribly because of this very craze to become a rose. Our racial experience says we are okay as we are, we should not try to be roses.'l But the little plant again said, "I want to gossip with the stars; I want to fight with the storms; I W Int to bathe in the rains. I am determined to become a rose."

At long last God yielded and one fine morning the little bunch of wildflowers became a rose. And immediately its saga of trials and tribulations began. Storms came and shook its roots. Rains came and it was drowned in water. The midday sun burned its petals and made it suffer immeasurably. At all times it was exposed to dangers from all sides. Once again other elderly wildflowers gathered round the newborn rose and said, "We had told you so; you did not listen. Don't you see how secure you were in your old life? Granted it had its problems, but they were old and familiar problems, and we were used to them. It was okay. Do you see what a mess you have made of your life?"

To this the new rose said, "You are fools. I say that it is far better to be a rose just for twenty-four hours and live dangerously than to live in lifelong security as little wildflowers protected by a high wall. It was great to breathe with the storms and fight with the winds. I was in contact with the sun and I had a dialogue with the stars. I have achieved my soul and I am so fulfilled. I lived fully and I am going to die fully. As far as you are concerned you live a life of living death."

But going back to the world does not make any difference to Krishna: he can easily go back if it becomes necessary. He will remain himself in every situation - in love and attachment, in anger and hostility. Nothing will disturb his emptiness, his calm. He will find no difficulty whatsoever is coming and going. His emptiness is positive and complete, alive and dynamic.

But so far as experiencing it is concerned it is the same whether you come to Buddha's emptiness or Krishna's. Both will take you into bliss. But where Buddha's emptiness will bring you relaxation and rest, maybe Krishna's emptiness will lead you to immense action. If we can coin a phrase like "active void", it will appropriately describe Krishna's emptiness. And the emptiness of Buddha and Mahavira should be called "passive void". Bliss is common to both but with one difference: the bliss of the active void will be creative and the other kind of bliss will dissolve itself in the great void.

You can ask one more question, after which we will sit for meditation.

Question 3:

It is true Buddha lives for forty to forty-two years after he becomes Buddha. Mahavira also lives about the same period of time. But Buddha makes a difference between nirvana and nirvana. Just before leaving his body he says that what he had attained under the bodhi tree was just nirvana, emptiness, and what he is now going to attain will be mahanirvana or supreme emptiness. In his first nirvana Buddha achieves the emptiness we can see, but his second emptiness, his mahanirvana, is such that we cannot see it. Of course men like Krishna and Buddha can see it.

It is true that Buddha lives for forty years after his first nirvana, but this is not a period of supreme emptiness. Buddha finds a little difficulty, a little obstruction in living after nirvana, and it is one of being, still there in its subtlest form. So if Buddha moves from town to town, he does so out of compassion and not out of bliss. It is his compassion that takes him to people to tell them that they too can long for, strive for and attain what he himself has attained.

But when Krishna goes to the people he does so out of his bliss and not out of compassion.

Compassion is not his forte.

Compassion is the ruling theme in the life of Buddha. It is out of sheer compassion that he moves from place to place for forty years. But he awaits the moment when this movement will come to an end and he will be free of it all. That is why he says that there are two kinds of nirvana, one which comes with samadhi and the other with the death of the body. With nirvana the mind ceases to be, and with Mahanirvana the body too ceases to be. This he calls sovereign nirvana, that which brings supreme emptiness with it.

It is not so with Krishna. With him, nirvana and mahanirvana go hand in hand.

If we want to be fully alive, if we want to live a rich and full life, we should be ready to invite and face any number of new and living problems. And we will live a morbid and dead life if we try to be finished with all our problems for good. Problems are necessary, but they must always be new and live problems, and man should have will, confidence and courage to meet them squarely and solve them. That is what makes for real life. And there is no reason why man should not solve them.

Our present social setup is based wholly on fear - fear of all kinds. There is fear in its very foundation; it is fear-oriented from A to Z. We are afraid of everything around us and this fear inhibits us, does not allow us to step out of our age-old limitations. And we never think of what a mess we have made of our life and living. Fear of what is going to happen prevents us from taking any new steps forward, and so we refuse to see the actual state of our affairs. Because if we see what really is, we will be compelled to change the old for the new; the old is so rotten. But our fear of the new fetters our feet and we go on dragging with the old.

I have had occasion to come into contact with hundreds of thousands of people and I observed them very closely, I really peeked into their hearts and minds. And I say I did not find a single person, man or woman, who is satisfied with his or her marriage and who is not steeped in misery on account of it. But if you point out their reality to them, they will immediately enumerate the various problems that will arise if they try to do something about it. The irony is that they are already ridden with problems, but they are not aware of them because they have become so used to them.

It is as if we ask a bird in a cage to fly into the open sky and it says that it is so secure in its cage, whereas the freedom of the sky will create so many problems for it. If you make a change, problems are bound to arise. And so far as the caged bird is concerned, its difficulties will be enormous, because it has no experience of flying in the vast sky. Yet a choice has to be made.

Granted that there is security in the cage, but what worth is this security in comparison with the freedom and ecstasy of flying in the open sky? If you think only of security then the grave is the most secure place on the earth.

Question 4:

There is yet another question arising from the same source.

Question 5:

Firstly, let us find out whether life is a schedule of duties and works to be performed, or it is a celebration. If life is work, a duty, then it is bound to turn into a burden, a drag, and we will have to go through it, as we do, with a heavy heart. Krishna does not take life as work, as duty; he takes it as a celebration, a festivity. Life is really a great feast, a blissful festivity. It is not homework, not a task that has to be performed willy nilly.

It is not that someone will cease to work if he takes life as a celebration. He will certainly work, but his work will be a part of the festivity, it will have the flavor of celebration. Then work will happen in the company of singing and dancing. It is true there will not be too much work, it will be less in quantity, but in quality it will be superb. Quantitatively the work will be less, but qualitatively it is going to be immeasurable.

You must have noticed how people who are addicted to work, who turn everything into work, have filled life with tension and only tension. All anxieties of life are the handiwork of the workoholics; they have turned life into a workshop. Their slogan is, do or die. They say, "Do something as long as you are alive, or die if you cannot do anything." They have no other vision of life except work. And they don't have even a right perspective of work. Work for what? Why does man work?

Man works so he can live. And what does living mean? To live means to celebrate life. We work so that we can have a moment of dance in our lives. Really, work is just a means to celebrate life.

But the irony is that the way we live there is no leisure left to sing and dance and celebrate life.

We turn means into an end; we make work the be-all and end-all of life. And then life is confined between two places, our home and the office. Home to office and back home is all we know of life.

In fact, home ceases to be a home, we bring our office home with us after we leave it in the evening.

Then psychologically we are in a mess; we live an entangled life, a confused and listless life. Then we keep running for the rest of our lives in the hope that someday we will have time to relax, rest and enjoy life. But that day really never comes; it will never come. Really, workoholics will never know that there is rest and joy and bliss in life.

Krishna takes life as festivity, as a play, fun. It is how flowers, birds and stars take life. Except man, the whole world takes life as play, fun. Ask a flower why it blooms. For what? It blooms without a purpose. A star moves across the sky without a purpose. And purposelessly the wind blows, and keeps blowing. Except man, everything under the sun is a play, a carnival. Only man works and toils and sheds copious tears. Except man, the whole cosmos is celebrating. Every moment of it is celebration.

Krishna brings this celebration into the life of man. He says, let man be one with this cosmic celebration.

It does not mean that there will be no work if we turn life into a celebration. It is not that the wind does not work; it is always moving, blowing. It is not that the stars are idle; they are constantly moving. It is not that flowers don't do anything when they bloom; really, they do a lot. But for them, doing it is not that important; what is important is being. Being is primary and doing is secondary for them. Celebration comes first and work takes a back seat in their lives. Work is preparatory to celebration.

If you go and watch the way the primitive tribes live, you will know what work is in relation to celebration. They work the whole day so they can sing and dance with abandon at night. But the civilized man works not only in the day, but also at night. He takes pride in working day and night. And if you ask him why he works, he will say that he works today so he can relax tomorrow.

He postpones relaxation and continues to work in the hope that he will relax some day. But that day never comes for him.

I am in complete agreement with Krishna's vision of life, which is one of celebration. I am a celebrationist. May I ask what man has achieved by working day in and day out? It is different if he works for the love of work, but I would like to know what he has achieved so far by working meaninglessly?

There is the story of Sisyphus in Greek mythology. He was a king who was condemned by the gods to push a heavy stone uphill and, when it rolled down the hill, to begin again. Time and again Sisyphus had to carry the stone from the base of the hill to its top; this is what "an uphill task"

means. A workoholic is a Sisyphus endlessly pushing a stone uphill and beginning again when it rolls down. He is now engaged in pushing the stone uphill and then chasing it when it rolls down and then beginning to push it up again. And he never comes to know a moment of leisure and joy in all his life.

These workoholics have turned the whole world into a madhouse. Everyone is mad with running and reaching somewhere. And no man knows where this "somewhere" is. I have heard that a man got into a taxi and asked the driver to drive fast. And the taxi sped. After a little while the driver inquired where he had to go, and the man said, "That is not the question, I have to go fast."

Everyone in the world is running like him, everyone is hurrying through life. "Hurry up," has become our watchword. But no one asks, "Where are we going?" We work hard, but we don't know why we work so hard. One does not even have time to think why he is toiling day in and day out. He is running just because his neighbor is running, his friends are running, the whole world is running.

Everyone is running for fear of being left behind the other runners.

His son said, "It is true, as I learned from your life, that wealth is not happiness, but I also learned from your life that if one has wealth, one can have the suffering of his choice, one can choose between one suffering and another. And this freedom of choice is beautiful. I know that you were never happy, but you always chose your own kind of suffering. A poor man does not have this freedom, this choice; his suffering is determined by circumstances. Except this, there is no difference between a rich man and a poor man in the matter of suffering. A poor man has to suffer with a woman who comes his way as his wife, but the rich man can afford women with whom he wants to suffer. And this choice is not an insignificant happiness. "

If you examine it deeply, you will find that happiness and suffering are two aspects of the same thing, two sides of the same coin, or, perhaps, they are different densities of the same phenomenon.

The workoholics have done immense harm to the world. And the greatest harm they have done is that they have deprived life of its moments of celebration and festivity. It is because of them that there is so little festivity in the world, and every day it is becoming more and more dull and dreary and miserable.

In fact, entertainment has taken the place of celebration in the present world. But entertainment is quite different from celebration; entertainment and celebration are never the same. In celebration you are a participant; in entertainment you are only a spectator. In entertainment you watch others playing for you. So while celebration is active, entertainment is passive. In celebration you dance, while in entertainment you watch someone dancing, for which you pay him. But there is a world of difference between dancing and watching a dance performed by a group of professionals who are paid for it. You work hard during the day, and when you are tired in the evening you go to a concert to watch others dancing. It is all you can do, but it is not even an apology for celebration.

Albert Camus has said that the time is very near when we will have servants to make love on our behalf, because we don't have time for love. We are so busy we don't have time for love; we will employ others to do this job for us. Love is a celebration, but for workoholics it has become a superfluous thing. It does not yield any profits; it does not add to their bank balances. Love is an end unto itself; it cannot be turned into a business. So those who are addicted to work think it a waste of time to indulge in love. A kind of secretary can be asked to deal with it and dispose of it.

Obsession with work has taken away the moments of celebration from our life, and we have been deprived of the excitement and thrill that comes with celebration. That is why nobody is happy, nobody is cheerful, nobody is blossoming. That is why suffering has become the badge of mankind.

We had to find a substitute for celebration, and entertainment is that substitute, because we do need a few moments of relaxation, a brief spell of diversion. But entertainment is a very poor substitute, because others do it and we are only spectators. It is like the vicarious pleasure we derive from watching someone in love. This is precisely what you do when you watch a movie. You watch a man and woman loving each other and you enjoy it vicariously. It is a false substitute; it is utterly useless.

It is not going to give you a taste of love; it is not going to satiate your thirst for love. On the other hand, your disaffection and torment will deepen and land you in still greater misery.

For God's sake, know love directly, enter into it, and only then you will be satiated and happy. Real love alone can make life festive, entertainment won't.

Krishna is all for celebration; he takes life as a great play, a mighty drama. The work-addicts have, instead of doing any good to the world, only created confusion and complication in the life of man.

They have made life so complex that living has become extremely hard and painful.

It is true that devotees of Rama, like Hanumana, seem to be strong, active and sincere people, the devotees of Krishna are not so. Meera goes about dancing and singing, but she does not seem to be as dynamic as Hanumana. She cannot be. The reason is that while Rama takes life seriously, believes life is all work, Krishna is non-serious and takes life as a dance, a celebration. And life as celebration is a different thing altogether. Life as work pales in insignificance before it. If you are asked to spend twenty-four hours in the company of Hanumana you will think twice. You would want to run away from him if you were made to live in the same room with him for a long while. But you can live with Meera joyfully for any length of time.

It is true that Krishna's lovers gradually withdrew themselves from the world of outer activity, from the world of extroversion. They dived deep into the interiority of life and drank at the fountain of its bliss.

This is as it should be, because Krishna knows how, when you lose yourself in its outer activities, you are missing life itself.

It will be a peaceful and happy world that will abound with Meeras. And a world full of Hanumanas will be a restless and warring world, a sorry world. If it comes into being, wrestling rings will appear all over and society will be ridden with conflict and strife. We can accommodate one or two Hanumanas; more than that would be too much. But any number of Meeras will be welcome. Meera is in contact with life at its deeper levels; Hanumana lives at the surface. Hanumana is nothing more than a faithful servant, a volunteer; he is just serving his master. He is, of course, sincere, persevering and hard-working. Meera is a class by herself; she is rare. Her bliss, her ecstasy comes from being, not from doing. For her, just being is festive and joyous. Her song, her dance, is not a piece of work for her, it is an expression of her bliss, her ecstasy. She is so blissful that she is bursting into song and dance.

I would like this world to be more and more filled with song and dance, with music and festivity. And so far as the external world, the world of extroversion and action is concerned, we should go into it only to the extent needed for our inward journey. More than that is not necessary. We need bread, but bread is not everything. We need bread to live, but there are people who go on stockpiling bread and, in the meantime, forget all about eating and living. By the time they succeed in making a mountain of bread their appetite is gone and they don't know what to do with the huge stock.

When Alexander was leaving for India he went to see Diogenes, a great sage of the times. Diogenes asked Alexander, "Where are you going and for what?"

Alexander said, "I am going to conquer Asia Minor first."

Then Diogenes queried, "And what will you do after conquering Asia Minor?"

"I will then go to conquer India," said the would-be conqueror.

"And what then?" asked the sage.

And the answer was, "I have to conquer the whole world."

Diogenes was Lying on the sandy bank of a river; he was completely naked and enjoying the morning sunshine. He asked again, "What will you do after you have conquered the world?"

Alexander said, "Then I will rest and relax."

This reply of Alexander's sent Diogenes into loud laughter, and he called his companion, his dog, who was sitting some distance from him. When the dog came to him Diogenes said, addressing the dog, "Listen to what this mad king is saying. This man says that he will rest after he conquers the world. And here we are resting right now without conquering a single place." And he said to Alexander, "If rest is your ultimate objective, why not join me and my dog right now on this beautiful river bank? There is enough space here for us all. I am already resting. Why ate you going to create so much trouble and disturbance around the world just to rest at the end of it all? You can rest right here and now."

An embarrassed Alexander then said, "What you say seems to be very sensible, but I cannot rest right now. Let me first conquer the world."

And then the sage said, "There is no connection whatsoever between world conquest and rest. Here I am, resting well, without having to go in conquest of the world."

What Diogenes told Alexander at the end of their dialogue proved to be prophetic. He said, "You will in fact, turn back mid-journey. Who has ever returned after completing his journey?" On his way back from India the conqueror died; he could not reach Greece.

All Alexanders die, and die mid journey. They gather wealth but don't have the time to enjoy it. They do everything to collect all the instruments of an orchestra, and when everything is ready they find to their despair that they have lost the capacity to play them. Their hands are empty and they can't do anything but weep. Alexander died empty handed.

No, life is meant to be a celebration; celebration is its central note. If someone asks you, better ask this question of yourself: "Do I live to work or work to live?" Then the answer will become very clear to you, and you will move much closer to Krishna. You do everything so you live, and not so you live to work and work meaninglessly. And to live you don't need to do much; too much doing has no meaning.

If this attitude that we work to live gains ground, much of our trouble and misery will disappear. Most of our troubles arise from our madness to do too much, and if this madness goes, there will be much more peace and joy and cheer in the world than we have at the moment. With the disappearance of overdoing, many things will disappear - tension and anxiety will disappear, mental diseases and madhouses will disappear. This much harm it will do, if you take it as harm. It will be a sane world indeed.

Therefore I say that I am in complete accord with Krishna's festive vision of life.

You also want to know why all the avataras and Tirthankaras of this country, like Rama, Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha, have been portrayed without beards. What may the reasons be?

I don't think all of them were without beards; one or two might have been exceptions to the rule. It is not factual that they did not have beards, yet it is true that not one of them has been portrayed with a beard. There must be reasons for it.

Firstly, the time before one grows a beard is the freshest and finest time of his life. That is the peak moment of life's freshness; after that it begins to decline. But as far as men like Krishna are concerned we saw them as the very picture of that freshness, of that infinite freshness, and saw that they retained this freshness through their whole lives. There is never a point of decline in their freshness; they are always young and new. Not that they don't age and grow old. They all age, but as far as their consciousness is concerned it is always in the adolescent state. Their consciousness is eternally young, eternally new, eternally fresh.

These paintings and portraits of Rama, Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha that we see without beards, do not represent their persons; they represent their spirit, their soul, their consciousness. We saw a constant freshness, youthfulness, accompanying them through their childhood, their youth and old age, and we captured that freshness in our paintings and pictures of them.

We can never think of Krishna as an old man leaning on a cane. He must have grown to old age, for he lived long, but we fail to imagine how he looked as an old man. There is something in him which is eternally young and alive.

On the other hand there are children who seem to be born old. Recently I visited a town where a young girl met me - she was hardly thirteen or fourteen years old - and she said that she wanted moksha, liberation. Now this girl is already an old woman, and I told her so. She has yet to live life and she talks of liberation. She has yet to be in bondage and she wants to be free of it. She told me that she belongs to a family where everyone is religious. I even visited her family, which was really a religious family - sad, somber and dead. Everyone in that family was waiting for moksha; no one had time to live. Her father looked dead, her mother looked dead; even the youngsters of the family looked anemic and ill. It seemed to me they were living in the shadow of fasting and starvation; they were dissipated and dead.

Naturally this girl has grown old, and if an artist paints a picture of her he would not want to show her as a young woman. That would be an inauthentic picture. The artist will have to show her as a seventy or eighty year-old woman. That would be her correct mental age.

Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna and Rama are ever young, really adolescent. We could have painted them as twenty-five years old as well. That is the age of youth, but then they would have to be shown with beards. But we portrayed them as teenagers without beards and mustaches. 'Why?

There is a reason for this too. It was not proper to portray them as twenty five year-olds with beards and mustaches, because that would have shown they were on their way to Qld age. Once a thing begins, it necessarily has to come to an end. You cannot portray the eternally young with beard and mustache; that would defeat the very purpose. So adolescence is the right age in which to show them, because it is the prime time of newness.

There is yet another reason why men like Krishna are shown without beards. Man's concept of beauty is feminine; it is derived from the beauty of women. For him, woman, and not man, is the image of beauty. And most of our painters and sculptors, our poets and our writers of scriptures have been men. Naturally if they have to depict someone as handsome, beautiful, they will do so in terms of feminine beauty. So if Krishna has to be portrayed as a beautiful person - and he is superb; who can be more beautiful than him? - he will certainly be shown in exquisite feminine beauty. That is why statues and portraits of Buddha, Krishna and others like him have feminine faces. Their images are distinctly feminine; they are fat from masculine, because man's understanding of beauty comes from his appreciation of woman's beauty.

It is for this reason that with the growth of man's aesthetic sense, all the world over, he began to shave his beard and mustache. First, he removed them from the faces of Krishna and Buddha, and then from his own. Because he believes that woman's face is much more beautiful than his own, he has been trying to imitate her in various ways.

But woman's concept of beauty is quite different; her concept of beauty is masculine, is based on her appreciation of man's beauty. A woman is not attracted by another woman's beauty, she is always attracted by the beauty of man. Her image of beauty comes from the man's face. So I think if women had painted pictures of Krishna and Buddha they would definitely have shown them with beards and mustaches.

I don't think that even today women like men with shaved faces; they look feminine to them. The beard and mustache are symbols of masculinity for women. Just think how you would react to a woman who appears before you with a beard and mustache on her face; she will be repelling. In the same way a man without a beard and mustache should repel a woman. Whether she says so or not is another thing, because women don't have even this much freedom. that they can express their likes and dislikes. Even their ways of thinking are determined by men; they cannot assert their own preferences.

Remember, whenever and wherever masculine beauty manifests itself in its full grandeur, beards and mustaches return to men's faces. It has always been that masculine beauty gains its peak with the return of the beard and mustache. But when man begins to imitate women, he shaves his beard and thus loses a part of his masculinity.

It is ironic that women are out to imitate men on a very large scale. This craze has become almost worldwide. Women now want to dress in jeans like men, because their concept of beauty is based on their appreciation of the male look. They like to wear watches on their wrists exactly as men do. They are taking to men's professions for the same reason. They think that man is the picture of beauty and strength. Their whole lib movement is moving in the direction of imitating man. And if someday they win - there is every likelihood that they will win, because men have dominated long, and they must now quit so that women take center stage - it will not be surprising to see women wearing beards and mustaches. Today we cannot even think of it; it seems quite unthinkable. But they have already started wearing beards and mus taches in subtler ways; they are doing their very best to imitate men in every way. They want to look like men; they are out to become carbon copies.

But whether men imitate women or women imitate men, it is ugly and absurd. It is utterly stupid.

Imitation itself is stupid.

Painters and sculptors who portrayed Krishna, Rama and Buddha, were men, admirers of feminine beauty, and for this very reason none of these portraits can be said to be authentic. If you see the statues of the twenty four Jaina tirthankaras you will be surprised to find that they are all alike, that there is not the least difference between one and another. If you remove the different signs engraved at the bottom of their statues, you cannot tell one from the other; they are exactly the same. Similarly, there is no difference between the statues of Mahavira and Buddha other than of clothes. While Mahavira is naked, Buddha is in clothes. Do you think all of them really looked alike?

No, it is impossible they all looked alike. It rarely happens that two persons have exactly the same face, not even twins. But the painters and sculptors have achieved the miracle. How? The painter engaged in portraying Buddha is doing his best to make his portrait the most beautiful even. The sculptor of Mahavira's statue works with the same objective in mind. And the net result of this effort of theirs to achieve perfection in beauty is that their images turn out alike.

Question 6:

It is worth considering whether Meera's tanpoora is the handiwork of work addicts or of those who take celebration as a way of life. Work-addicts don't produce a tanpoora, they produce a spade. The tanpoora has no connection with work; the exponents of work produce a hammer, a hatchet and a sword. The tanpoora is the creation of those who take life as play, fun. Whatever is superb in human creation, be it a tanpoora of a Taj Mahal, is the gift of those whose way of life is celebration. These things of beauty arise from their dreams and fantasies.

It is natural that men and women who take life as celebration should accept the help of those who take life as work and toil. But the work-addicts can also take their work as a play, and then the quality of their work will be very different, and so will be the quality of their lives and ways of living. I think the laborers who put the marble of the Taj Mahal together never knew the joy that a mere look at this marvelous piece of architecture brings to you. For the laborers who built the Taj it was merely work, a means of livelihood. But was it not possible that the same marble could have been put together in a celebrative way?

I love to tell this story again and again. A temple is under construction on the outskirts of a town and a few laborers are busy cutting stones for it. A passerby stops to see what is being built. He goes to one of the laborers and asks, "What are you doing?"

The man was sad and serious, even looked angry with himself. Without raising his gaze to the visitor the laborer said, "Don't you see I am cutting stones?"

The visitor moved to another laborer, and put the same question to him, "What are you doing?"

This man looked sad too, but was not angry. He put down his hammer and chisel, raised his eyes to the visitor, said glumly, "I am earning my bread," and resumed his work.

The visitor moved to a third workman who was engaged in the same kind of work near the main gate of the temple. He was in a happy mood, singing. "What are you doing, my friend?" the passerby asked of him too.

And the man said in a very pleasant voice, "I am constructing a temple." And then he resumed his stone cutting and his singing.

All three workmen are engaged in the same job, stone-cutting, but their attitude to work is quite different from one another. As far as the third workman is concerned he has turned work into a celebration; he can work and sing together.

I don't say don't abolish poverty, don't have technology and affluence. All I say is that you can create technology and wealth by way of celebration; It is not necessary to treat them as duty and work.

The affluence that comes with celebration has a beauty of its own You can abolish poverty through hard and painful work, but you will remain poor in spite of your wealth. Poverty of the spirit cannot go until you turn work into a celebration. Maybe the way of celebration will take more time, but it will abolish both kinds of poverty - material and spiritual.

It is really a question of our attitude towards what we do. And with the change of attitude, with work turning into a celebration, the whole milieu of life changes.

A gardener works in your garden; it is his livelihood. He does not take his work as celebration.

But he can no one can prevent him if he chooses to change his attitude. Granted that he has to earn his bread, that he must earn his bread, but at the same time he can enjoy his work, he can celebrate with the blossoming flowers, he can sway and sing with them. Who comes in his way except himself, except his attitude towards work? And curiously, he does not earn a lot by taking his work as a means to an end. But if he takes his work joyfully, if he rejoices with the blooming flowers, if celebration becomes primary and work secondary, he will attain to a richness of life he has never known. Then the same gardening will bring him a blissfulness he will never know otherwise.

Poverty should go, suffering should go, but they should go to enable man to take part in the celebration of life As long as a man remains poor, it is hard for him to celebrate life, to participate in its festival. That is why I stand for the abolition of poverty. To me, elimination of poverty does not mean merely providing the poor with food, clothes and shelter. It is necessary, but it is not all. In my view, unless man's physical needs are fulfilled, he cannot raise his sights to the higher need of life, to the fulfillment of spirit, soul, call it what you may. Bread can only fill his belly; to fulfill his spirit he badly needs the milieu of joy and festivity in his life.

And if we direct our attention to the higher realms of life, to soul or spirit, then we can turn all work into celebration. Then we will plough a field and sing a song together; we will sow and dance together. Until recently, this was the way of life all over. The farmer worked on his farm and also sang a song. The worker in a modern factory has lost that magic, and consequently his work has ceased to be joyful, it is dull and listless. The factory is only a workshop; it knows nothing but seven hours of work for which the worker is paid adequately or inadequately. That is why, when a worker returns home in the evening after a day's toil, he is dead tired, broken and unhealed.

But I tell you, sooner or later song is going to enter the precincts of the factory. Great studies are underway in many advanced countries and this realization is dawning on them, that work should cease to be work alone, that it has to be pleasant and joyful. The day is not far off when factories will resound with music, because without it man will be more and more empty and unhappy. And the introduction of music in factories will not only bring some joy to their work men, it will add to the quality of their work.

A housewife cooks in her home. She can cook in the way a cook in some hotel does. But then it will be work, dull and tiring. But she can also cook as a woman cooks for her lover who is to visit her.

Then cooking is a celebration which never tires you. Really, such work is highly fulfilling. But mere work is going to tire you, exhaust you, leave you utterly empty.

It is really a matter of our attitude towards what we do.

Question 7:

When I say Krishna has gone beyond mind it does not mean that he is not left with a mind. To go beyond the mind means that one has known that which is beyond mind. Mind remains even after you have transcended it, but it is a different mind altogether, it is a mind cleansed and stilled and saturated with the beyond. Krishna is larger than his mind, but the mind has a place in him.

Transcendence of mind can be attempted in two ways. If you try to transcend it through suppression, through fight, the mind will be divided and torn, it will degenerate into a schizophrenic mind. But if you transcend it in a friendly way, through love and understanding, the mind will be integrated and settled in wisdom.

When I say that I have transcended my body it does not mean that I am not my body, or that my body has ceased to be, it only means that I am now not only my body, but much more than it. I am body plus something, something has been added to it. Until yesterday I thought I was only the body, but now I know that I am something more than the body. I remain the body; that "something plus"

has not eliminated it, rather it has highly enhanced and enriched it. Now I have also a soul; I am both body and soul.

In the same way, when I come to know God it does not mean that my soul or spirit has ceased to be, it only means that I am now body, spirit and God all together. Then mind and soul are absorbed in that which is immense, which is infinite. It is not a matter of losing something, it is gaining more and more all the way up.

So when I say that Krishna has gone beyond mind I mean to say that he has known that which is beyond the mind, he has known the immense, the eternal. But he continues to have a mind, a mind with heightened sensitivity and awareness. Krishna is not inimical to mind; he has not transcended it by way of fight and suppression, he has gone beyond it by living with it in a very friendly way. Therefore I say that whatever happens between him and his girlfriends is the spontaneous outpouring of his exceedingly innocent mind; he cannot but act naturally, innocently and spontaneously.

Mind is unnatural when it is in conflict, when it is fighting with itself. Mind is unnatural when one of its fragments says do this and another says don't do this. And when the whole mind is together, integrated and one, then everything it does becomes natural, then whatever happens or does not happen is natural and spontaneous. Then there is nothing unnatural about it. And what is natural is right. But you have rightly asked: If it is so what is the difference between man and animal?

In one respect there is no difference whatsoever between man and animal, and in another respect the difference is great. The animal is natural and innocent, but it is not aware of it. Krishna is natural and innocent, but he is also aware of it. In respect to their naturalness and innocence Krishna and the animal are very similar, but with regard to their consciousness there is a tremendous difference.

An animal moves and acts instinctively, spontaneously and naturally, lives in a state of let-go, but has no awareness of it, all its acts are mechanical. Krishna also lives in a state of let-go, allows his nature free and full play, but he is fully aware of it. His witnessing center is always alert and aware of everything that happens in and around him. The animal has no witnessing center.

While Krishna has gone beyond mind, the animal is below the level of mind. The animal does not have a mind, it has only a body and instincts and it functions mechanically. So there is a kind of similarity between one who is above mind and one who is below it.

There is an old saying prevalent among sages that when one attains to the highest wisdom he becomes like the most ignorant person on the earth. There is some truth in this saying.

One of the sages of ancient India is known as Jarbharat, which literally means Bharat the Ignorant.

Really, he was one of the wisest sages of this country, but he was named Jarbharat, Bharat the Ignorant, because he looked like an extremely ignorant person. In a way perfect wisdom looks like perfect ignorance; at least in perfection they are similar. A man of wisdom is at rest, because he has known everything, nothing remains to be known. An ignorant person is also at rest, because he does not know a thing. To be restless it is necessary to know a little. An animal functions very unconsciously; Krishna functions with full awareness. Nothing happens to him in unawareness.

That is why we say when someone attains to the highest wisdom he becomes like a child. Somebody asks Jesus, "How is your kingdom of God? How is one who attains to God?"

Jesus says, "One who attains to God becomes like a child." But Jesus does not say that a child attains to God. If it were so all children would attain to God. He does not say that one who attains to God becomes a child, he says he becomes like a child. If he says that a sage becomes a child, it would mean that a child has perfect wisdom, which is not the case. If children were perfect we need not do anything with them. No, the child is below the level of the developed mind, while the sage has gone beyond. The child will have to pass through a phase of conflict, tension and struggle; the sage has outlived all conflicts and tensions. The child potentially carries with him all the sicknesses man is heir to; the wise man has outlived such sicknesses. In the course of evolution even the animal will have to pass through all the sicknesses of man. But here is Krishna who has outlived them, transcended them, gone beyond them.

The similarity and difference between man and animal are well-defined.

Question 8:

Let it be the last question for this discourse, and then we will sit for meditation.

You ask how one's self-nature or the innate individuality can be inferior in quality. In this connection two things have to be considered.

The first. Everything in its origin is without any attribute, quality; it gathers attributes only after it takes a form and grows. There is a seed; it has no attributes whatsoever. The seed has just potentiality; it has no quality other than this. It can give birth to a flower which is not yet there. Tomorrow it will turn into a flower, and then this flower will have certain attributes, qualities. It will be red in color, it will be fragrant; then it will have an individuality of its own. But right now, as a seed, there is nothing in it. It will take on attributes only after it comes to express itself, after it sprouts, grows and blossoms into a flower.

The world has many attributes; God has none. God is seed-like; he is unmanifest. When God manifests himself in the form of the world he acquires attributes, and these attributes disappear when he again becomes unmanifest. Someone is a saint and another person is a thief. As saint and thief they have certain attributes, but when they, the saint and the thief, go to sleep, they are without any attributes. Neither does the saint remain a saint nor the thief remain a thief. In sleep all attributes disappear; sleep is a state without attributes. Attributes appear with the waking state; with sleep they go to sleep too. When they wake up the saint will become a saint and the thief will become a thief again. In sleep we are very close to our individuality, our innate nature; rather, we are closest to it. And in samadhi, in ecstasy, we actually attain to our supreme nature, which is of the highest.

So the experiencing of the pristine nature has no attributes, no traits whatsoever. But when self- nature manifests itself it acquires attributes. Attribute and non-attribute are not two things; they are not contradictory. They are just the ways of the manifest and the unmanifest.

Self-nature, supreme nature, has two states. One is the unmanifest state when it is in seed form, asleep, absorbed in itself. And the other is the manifest state when it takes form and attributes.

Really, no manifestation can be without form and attributes; it has to have a form, a shape, a color and a speciality.

A small story comes to mind, a Zen story. A Zen Master teaches his disciples how to paint.

Painting is the medium through which he really leads his disciples into meditation. One can travel to meditation from anywhere and everywhere. There is no point in the world from where you cannot make a start for meditation. This Master has ten disciples who are gathered round him one morning.

He tells them, "Go and make a picture whose broad outlines should be like this. There is a cow in a grassy land, and the cow is grazing. You have to paint it, but remember, the painting has to have no form, no attributes."

The disciples find themselves in great difficulty. It is the job of a Master to put his disciples in difficulty, in crisis, because only in crisis can they become aware of themselves. The disciples find it extremely hard to paint a picture without form and attributes; it seems an impossible task. They have to use lines and colors. They have to give the cow some form; they have to show the grass all over the field.

Nine of the ten disciples attempt to paint and the next day return with some sort of paintings which don't have any clearcut outlines, everything is hazy and unclear. But a sort of cow is there in each painting. In drawing the grass they certainly made use of abstract art so it is formless as much as possible. Nevertheless, they have to use colors of some sort.

Inspecting each other's paintings, a disciple asks one of his friends, "Where is the cow?"

The other says, "I had some idea of a cow when I was in the process of painting, but now I cannot say where the cow is."

And the Master rejects all nine pictures saying, "How can you have color and a cow in a painting that has to be without form and attributes?"

The tenth disciple has just a blank sheet of paper in his hand, and the Master says, "Yes, this is it."

The nine disciples who have attempted to paint feel disappointed and they protest, "Where is the cow?"

The Master says, "The cow went home after grazing."

"And where is the grass?" they protest further.

The Master says, "The cow ate it up. So things have gone back to their original places. Things have returned to their unmanifest state. This is really painting without form and attributes. It shows a cow who is finished grazing and a plot of grass the cow has eaten up. Empty space, just space is there."

At its deepest level self nature is without any form, without any attributes; it is utter emptiness. It becomes manifest with the grass appearing and the cow coming to graze on it. Then the play of attributes happens. And it all becomes unmanifest once again after the cow has eaten up the grass.

This vast expanse of our world was born out of emptiness, which is without form, and it will return to the same emptiness. Everything appears and disappears, but the source is the same emptiness, the immense void. And the whole is hidden in that emptiness which by its nature cannot have a name, a shape and an adjective.

In this sense, self-nature, like everything else, has two states: the manifest and the unmanifest.

While the manifest has a name and form, attributes, the unmanifest has none whatsoever.

In the same way we have to see Krishna from two sides, because he has two sides. His one side is visible and his other side is invisible. The skeptic will see only the visible, the manifest form of Krishna, but one who has faith, who is trusting will see the other side too, the invisible, the unmanifest. Thought, contemplation and logic cannot go beyond the form, the manifest; but trust, prayer and meditation can enter the reality, the unseen, the unmanifest. But one who fails to grasp even the form, the manifest, the gross, can hardly be expected to reach the formless, the unmanifest, the subtle.

But thought and logic, rightly used, can take you to the point where the seen, the manifest ends and the unseen, the unmanifest begins. Beyond it thought is absolutely useless; beyond it a jump, a leap is a must. Beyond it you have to get out of your intellect, your mind; you have to go beyond your own mind, beyond self. Actually you have to transcend yourself.

But this transcendence of the mind does not mean that one will cease to know everything that he has known before. Now all that he has known before will be absorbed and assimilated in the newly acquired knowledge of the beyond. The day the manifest and the unmanifest meet and merge into each other, the ultimate truth comes into being.