Chapter 12

[NOTE: This is a translation from the Hindi discourses: Nahim Ram Bin Thaon. It is being edited for publication, and this version is for reference only.]

Question

Whether it is anger or sex or whatever other impulse, the need for the other is not a must. And whatever impulse will be released through the other, it creates a chain. You are angry, you expressed it upon the other; that other too will react with anger, and that will create more anger in you. Where will this end? So whenever we connect with the other through any of the impulses, we are falling in an endless chain of troubles.

The very meaning of sannyas is that from now onwards I will not connect my emotions with the other. Now my emotions and impulses will be expressed and released only in aloneness. Only this limitless sky will be their receiver; now I will not give them to persons. The very meaning of giving

them to the other is that I am creating a relationship, a chain. The other is also a human being, as weak and needy as I am, so there will be reactions in the other.

The other is not like the sky that will absorb you, assimilate you, without replying. He or she will undoubtedly echo you, and the chain reaction will go on and on. You have been doing this for life after life. Numerous webs you have created for yourself. With countless people you have expressed your anger, your greed, and with countless others you have created attachment and sexual relationships.

All this load you have been carrying through many lives. There is only one way to abandon the load:

stop relating your emotional impulses to others - express them all in your aloneness. This needs to be understood; it is a difficult matter.

Perhaps you may understand to throw out your anger in your aloneness - but what about sex? Even with anger it is difficult at first to cathart without having someone else there to be angry at. This is why I told you to use a pillow. It is only an aid, and has to be put aside after a while because it too becomes the other; but in the initial stages it is very useful. And if you can pour your anger onto a pillow, there is no reason why you should not be able to pour your loving feelings onto it. If you can beat a pillow, why can you not embrace it?

Even when you create a relationship of love or of anger with a person, still it is all a play of the mind. How can the other help? When you take someone in your embrace, what your hands hold is only flesh and bones. Is that any more valuable than a pillow? In the final analysis, how can flesh and bones and skin be regarded as more valuable than a pillow? It is just your idea that the other is present which makes it possible for you to spread your love over someone. What is the difference between hitting on somebody's head and hitting a pillow? You find a difference only because you assume that the other is there and the pillow is nobody. The only difference is that the other responds, and the pillow does not - that's all!

If you embrace somebody with love and they return the embrace, you find it convenient to love that person, because the response is exciting and enlivens you. So a chain is created. As far as you are concerned, the problem with the pillow is that you remain alone. The pillow will not respond; you will have to create everything yourself. But this difficulty is not confined to sexual feelings, it applies equally to anger or to any other feeling. Within a short time - just a few days - you will not be hampered by this problem, and then you will laugh because you will come to see that all the people you have up to now embraced were really no more than pillows for you. They too were just mediums.

There are several difficulties in love becoming your meditation in your own aloneness. The difficulties are of conditionings. There are things you have been taught ever since you were a child, and they will create a hindrance. For example, if a man expresses his sexual passion on a pillow it is quite possible that he will ejaculate. So there is fear. You have been taught to regard the spilling of semen as dangerous. Since childhood you have been taught that even to let fall a single drop of semen is a great loss of life energy. Hindus believe that a single drop of semen is equivalent to forty days' meals! This is simply a lie. There is not even a trace of truth in it - it is just a trick to frighten children, and sure enough, children become afraid.

But of course, the adults are also afraid. In a lifetime of seventy years, a normal man can easily have sex four thousand times, and with each ejaculation anything between ten million and a hundred

million sperms are ejected from his body. So if each and every sperm were to find its way into the womb, the result could equal the population of the world. A single man and woman could produce four billion people! This semen is not accumulated within your body, it is not stored so that the balance of semen is reduced if some is consumed. It is constantly in the process of being created.

As your body takes in food and oxygen the semen is created.

The findings of modern Western medical science will certainly astonish you; they are very different and opposite to what you have been told. They maintain that the more a man uses his semen, the longer his manhood remains. If a man stops using his semen, if he stops having intercourse, his semen will gradually disappear. Because as long as you are using the semen your whole organism will be involved in producing more. If the body no longer needs to be engaged in this process because you stop ejaculating semen, the body's capacity to produce semen will gradually decline.

This will look quite contradictory: the more one goes into intercourse the longer he remains capable of intercourse; the less one goes into intercourse the sooner his capacity to go into it is finished. So the Western doctors say that there is a higher probability of living a longer life if you continue having sex even up to your old age, your sixties and seventies - even in your nineties! - because then your body will remain fresh. If some semen leaves your body new semen is created, and the new semen is fresh, vigorous. The old semen grows stale and inert, and the body too falls into a state of inertia.

We always find it amazing when we read in the Western newspaper that such-and-such a ninety- year-old man is getting married. We cannot understand what fun there is in getting married at this age. But ninety years is not too old for a Western man to enjoy sex, and the only reason that this is so because in the West they have a different concept - and one that is much closer to the truth - about semen, than we have.

And this concept applies to all aspects of life. The body organs you want to keep in good condition, keep using them. If a man goes on walking right into his old age his legs will remain strong; it is only when he stops using them that they grow weak. If a man uses his head right up till his last breath, then his intelligence will remain as fresh as ever; but if he stops using it, then his brain will become inert.

The life of all organs depends on their usage, on their being active. The organs you use will stay functional longer, and the seminal organs are no exception. The law of the body is that the more you use it the longer it will live. But when you become afraid and stop using your body, then it begins to die. And there is a vicious circle in this, because the man who is afraid will use his body less, and so his body will become weaker. And because it is weak the man will become even more afraid and contract even further, until in the end he extinguishes his very life.

Fear stops us and by stopping we start dying. "Burn like a candle burning at both the ends!" says Rosa Luxemburg, a German woman. Use life fearlessly! Don't be afraid: you will burn longer; life is vast, there is plenty of oil in your lamp. But if you don't turn the wick up, if you stay afraid, you will flicker out!

The ancient cultures and civilizations all over the world have made people very afraid of semen.

There are reasons for it. It is easy to enslave a person who has fears about his semen. You have caught him at his very roots. Semen is the root. If a man is full of guilt regarding sex, he cannot be powerful, he cannot rebel. His sense of guilt will keep him always down.

It is very easy to suppress a guilty person. Your country, your society, needs you to feel guilty.

Whosoever is in power desires that every person born should grow up afraid, because afraid they can be mastered. But if a man grows up fearlessly he will break all bonds, all fixed paths, rebel, and live in freedom.

So from their very childhood we teach children not to lose semen; they should withhold and preserve it. About semen we teach them miserliness - and this we call celibacy. This is not celibacy; miserliness is not celibacy, nor has the enforced prevention of ejaculation anything to do with celibacy. Celibacy is a blissful state which happens when you have entered into loving intercourse with the whole of existence, so that there is simply no need for physical intercourse with another person.

This is a little difficult to understand and it may create a kind of restlessness in you to hear it. A mystic is one who has entered into intercourse with the whole of existence. He hears a cuckoo singing, and his whole body is in a state of blissful orgasm. He sees a flower blooming and every cell of his body dances in sexual bliss. The sun rises in the morning, the moon shines out of the night sky, and every moment he is in orgasmic ecstasy. You have only this one sexual organ with which to enjoy sex, the mystic enjoys sex with every cell of his body.

There is a point to be understood in this context that may never have occurred to you. In the name of Shiva's statue we have created the shivalinga - a phallic symbol of Shiva. Thus Shiva is represented as a phallus. This means Shiva has neither eyes nor hands nor legs - that he is only the phallus.

When the whole body becomes a genital organ, this is the final state of saintliness. It symbolically means that that person is making love with existence with his whole body. This intercourse is no longer a local phenomenon; it is not the meeting of one sexual organ with another, it is the meeting of existence with existence.

In the Shivalinga we have offered the world a concept that defies the imagination. Its meaning is quite clear, but even the Hindu refuses to see it. We are so afraid that we will never acknowledge its real meaning. We choose to be blind; we try to conceal the meaning.

Carl Gustav Jung, the great Western psychologist, came to travel in India. He went to see the temples at Puri, Konarak and Khajuraho. The pundit who was showing him around the temple at Konarak was very agitated because of the statues of nude couples making love, and he was feeling very guilty. But Jung was completely fascinated. He was one of those rare individuals of this century who have penetrated very deep into human consciousness. And the deeper one penetrates in human consciousness, the more meaningful is the sexual intercourse, because there is nothing else that enters you as deeply as sex. Perhaps this is because ordinarily you are never in any deeper state than the state you are in at the time of sexual intercourse. Only on attaining samadhi, enlightenment, will you transcend sex, because only in samadhi will you attain a deeper state.

So Jung was ecstatic seeing these statues, but the pundit was very troubled that he should be showing his guest such an exhibition of obscenity.What would Westerners think of Indian civilization if Jung were to tell them what he had seen at Konarak? And it was not just this one particular pundit who thought this way; even Mahatma Gandhi used to say that Konarak and Khajuraho temples should be buried under the ground so that people did not get a poor impression of Indian culture.

There was a time when there were people in this country who created Konarak and Khajuraho, and

they were created under the guidance of saints and mystics... because they are temples. Then came happening such great mahatmas in our country who wished to bury them or tear them down.

I cannot regard Mahatma Gandhi as a Hindu. He is a Christian; his outlook, his whole education, his concepts, are all Christian. Christians are very afraid of things like this. A Christian cannot even think that there could be a statue of sexual intercourse or a Shivalinga in a church.

As Jung was leaving this pundit mumbled, "Please excuse us! These perversions are the reflections of a few sick minds from the distant past; this is not our national character. And do not think that the things you have seen here are representative of our religion or philosophy. These are just the products of some perverted minds."

Jung has written in his memoirs, "I was astonished to come across statues of such depth and such significance!" But the modern day Hindu has such a view about them.... The Hindu has gone weak.

The Shivalinga symbolizes a state in which your whole body can experience sexual ecstasy through every fiber of it. And it is only then that you would be free of genital sex and would have attained to celibacy.

So celibacy is not renunciation of sexual enjoyment but the taste of ultimate enjoyment. The enjoyment becomes so absolute that to experience it you do not need to do anything separately.

A breeze passes and your every cell is thrilled by its touch as when the lover is caressed by his beloved.

But we have frightened our children so much that the fear of sex stays with them and they never attain to the deep intercourse that is possible in sex. The miserliness remains with them, the fear of losing energy hovers over them. It is a fear that does not diminish even when one has become the father or mother of a dozen children. An atheist can have the fear of losing energy, but it should not be so with a theist. The whole concept of a theist is that he is connected to the infinite source of energy. So for an atheist to be miserly about his semen is understandable, but it is beyond understanding in the case of a theist.

You will find it very difficult to express your love in your aloneness because of this fear. But I say to you, drop your fear and express your love onto a pillow just as you have expressed your anger onto it. Don't worry about the outcome, don't be in a hurry to judge the outcome. It may happen that in the beginning you get so excited that you may ejaculate. Take that ejaculation as an offering in the feet of the divine. The energy went to the source it comes from; don't be fearful about it. Before long a moment will come in practicing this love meditation when there will be no ejaculation of semen.

And as your meditation deepens and there is no ejaculation you will attain to a new experience - that of orgasm without ejaculation, without losing energy, when your energy races madly within you and you are a typhoon of energy, you are a tide of energy, but you don't pour this tidal energy out of your body; rather this tide is assimilated within you, and becomes an inner dance.

Try to understand this difference rightly. One is the ordinary way of life - what we call sexual enjoyment. A small tide catches hold of you, at the most a storm in a teacup! It is a local event related only to the genital organs. All the waves of energy arising anywhere in the body get centered at the genitals. And the tide passes in a few moments.... Yes, you were caught by a wind, you were swayed a little by it, but then all the energy was taken and thrown by the genitals. It is as though all

the air were let out of a balloon; you become like a corpse and fall asleep. You have mistaken this momentary tide, which comes and is then lost, for sexual enjoyment, and it is not even the abc of sexual enjoyment.

Tantra's definition of sexual enjoyment is: Let your whole body be filled up with the tide, let your every cell vibrate with its thrill, so much so that in this state of trembling vibration you forget yourself utterly, you forget even that you exist - only the dance remains, not the dancer; only the song remains not the singer. Let your whole being become ecstatic, in deep meditation, and you will touch a height.

And each day you will rise higher.

And remember, this experience of rising high is experienced by your whole body. The way you feel the thrill and awakening now is all localized as far as the genitals, but in the other experience your whole body will become a Shivalinga, the phallic symbol, and you will feel that the form of your body has dissolved.

The Shivalinga is not a poetry, it is an experience. When the tidal flood of energy fills your whole body and your each and every cell is thrilled, then you will see around you a circle of light in the shape of Shivalinga and you will experience the substance of your entire body disappearing into that lightform. Only an egg-shaped form of light will remain. No eyes, no nose, no hands... all will disappear. This is the shape of your soul - this shining egg-shaped form.

The day you entered your mother's womb it was a shivalinga-shaped point of light that actually entered; the body you acquired afterwards in the womb. When you leave the body, death happens - it has happened earlier also - the body, your form, will be left lying behind here and shivalinga, the lustrous point of light, will arise from it and set out on a new journey. What happened at the moment of conception, and happens again when you die, happens also at the ultimate state of sexual intercourse.

But you were not conscious at the moment of your conception, and in the moment of your death you will again be unconscious. In the moment of this sex I am talking about - and remember, this sex has nothing to do with the other, this has to do with your becoming a shivalinga of consciousness, breaking all barriers of the body within you - you will for the first time experience the form of your own self. And the bliss this self-form experiences with the existence, Tantra has called sexual intercourse.

This can happen in your aloneness as well as with someone else.

But I tell you, rather choose to experience it in your aloneness, because with the other the troubles are bound to erupt. If this happens in aloneness you have become liberated. Then if the same happens with the other also you will still know that it has nothing to do with the other; it is a free happening in itself. Light radiates from each and every pore, and within you the tide arises. And the difference is, there is no leaking of your energy in this total tide. How can it leak? The egg-shaped form prevents the leaking. There are no gaps in it from where your energy can leak. The energy starts moving in a circle, it does not leak. An inner circle is created and the energy begins to revolve in it until slowly slowly it merges back within you, it does not go out of you. It arises within you and it merges back in you like a tidal wave rising up in the ocean and merging back into it. Nothing is lost.

When for the first time you experience that the capability of orgasm touches the highest peak and merges back into you again, then your orgasm becomes stable in you, and then each moment you

are in the ecstasy that a sexual person experiences just for a brief moment. This truly is the bliss of sainthood. The saints could drop sexual intercourse not because they had achieved control over semen; they could drop it because they had discovered the art of supreme intercourse. They have achieved a vast kingdom; they are no longer interested in rubbish and all the trouble that goes with it.

This is an achievement of the higher; the lower drops by itself. One who begins with dropping the lower, without having achieved the higher, falls into difficulty. The vast has not been found, and in dropping the lower he becomes very sad. This is why your so-called saints are unhappy, troubled, melancholy, defeated, and distressed, just existing somehow. From their eyes, from their bodies, the melody of the ultimate does not seem to be arising, and it does not appear that the veena of their hearts is making any music.

You also can become sad by going near them, you can also feel guilty going near them; going near them you can also feel that you are an absolute sinner. Going to them you can take some vows and penances on yourself, but you can never feel filled with inner gratitude and grace. You can attain some disease from them, but not ultimate health. What I call ultimate health is the moment when you are able to create a circle of your peak energy. This will happen only in aloneness.

And what I am telling you is full of dangers - all significant things are full of danger. The things which cannot harm you cannot offer you any benefits either. The things which can benefit you are the things which can harm you as well. The doors of loss and gain always open equally.

So what I am telling you is full of danger. Because in it is hidden the door to ultimate bliss, it is also possible that your love in aloneness and filling yourself up with sexual energy may turn just into something like masturbation. Then you have fallen into the danger. And this certainly is a danger, and it is through making you afraid of this danger that society has brought you to a state where all fragrance of sex and love has disappeared from your life. I warn you of that danger. But this danger is only there when you do not enter into this experiment with awareness and start deceiving yourself. If you are not deceiving yourself then this self-indulgence in aloneness, this raising of the whole lovemaking process within yourself, can become the supreme attainment.

There will be stages to it. At the first stage there is a possibility of ejaculation. For women, a masturbation like situation can arise. But don't be afraid of it, and don't pay much attention to it.

Let your attention be focused on what is happening within you, and direct your energy towards the excitement of your whole body. Don't just keep it localized, let your whole body be taken over. Your whole body has to become a trembling, quaking tempest. No part of your body has to be kept from participating. Let every cell dance and share in the delight and joy. If you allow the whole body to participate, the centralization at the genitals will diffuse through your whole body.

Psychologists call this state Polymorphus, of the whole body. They say that a new-born child enjoys sexual pleasure with the whole body, but slowly slowly we localize this energy. The whole body is erotic; this is why children can derive so much pleasure just from sucking their thumbs. Just watch a child sucking his thumb and it appears as if he is enjoying sex! Look... you may not have ever really looked - there are some things to which we keep ourselves blind. So look at a child sucking his thumb, and you will see that his whole body is vibrating with pleasure as if a joyous shriek is spreading all over his body. He has fallen into that erotic dance. But it is beyond your tolerance,

and you pull immediately the thumb out of his mouth - and you think you are teaching the child something.

Yes, you are teaching him one thing, and that is that his whole body does not remain erotic anymore.

And the child's whole body is erotic. For him, the sex organ is not yet distinctive; his whole body is the state of the sex organ, so he can taste the thrill through any part of his body. Just turning over in his cradle he goes on tasting. Right now his whole body experiences the pleasure; soon we are going to convert this flowing river of delight into a canal. Then it will no longer flow all over the body, it will enter into the sex organ alone and from then on, all the moments of sexual happiness in his life will be localized - and momentary - at the genitals. Through the genitals the energy belonging to his whole body will be expelled, and his body will feel light.

The pleasure that we derive from sex is more a relief - a relief from a weight - than pleasure. The accumulation of energy creates tension, and when this energy is released you feel light. So often people use their sexuality as a drug to go to sleep. When your body is full of energy you feel restless and unable to sleep; once that energy has been discharged from the body you become light, tired, and you fall asleep. Other than this there is no great pleasure happening for you in the sexual act.

So when some monk argues that there is no pleasure in sex, you agree, because he is actually giving voice to your own experience. Or you nod agreement with him when he says, "Why indulge in this petty pleasure?" because for you sex is no more than a petty pleasure. It hardly seems to be giving any pleasure; it is not much more than a habit.

Habits have a certain trick to them. If, for example, a man is addicted to smoking cigarettes, he no longer gets much satisfaction out of smoking a cigarette; but if he does not smoke, he feels deprived and restless, he feels a craving for it. This is exactly the nature of habit. If you watch closely, you will see that if you do it you don't get anything from it, but if you don't do it you feel as if you are losing something. And this is just the way it is with sex for you: this too is only a habit, you just go on doing it. So when the priests and saints declare that there is nothing in it, you find yourself agreeing, because in your experience too there is no substance to your sexual act.

But I am telling you, if sex surges all over your body and becomes the Shivalinga.... It is a good idea if you keep a Shivalinga statue in the room you meditate in; no more important statue than Shivalinga was ever created on this earth. It embodies the shape of your soul, and it also secretly symbolizes that the energy of your soul can move in a circle within you. The day your energy moves in a circle within you and merges back in you, is the day when you don't lose energy and attain to bliss. And the more the energy goes on accumulating, the more bliss goes on growing. Soon a time comes when without losing anything, without staking anything, you are in bliss.

When bliss starts happening without any cause - and this state of uncaused bliss is called satchitanand - the intercourse with the whole existence begins. Your very being is a lovemaking, and even to breathe is orgasmic. You breathe in and you are filled with bliss; you breathe out and you are filled with bliss! You don't need any special arrangements for your bliss. Whatever is happening becomes your bliss. You are sitting in the sun, the rays falling on your face, and this becomes bliss - and a bliss like sexual orgasm. All bliss in its very nature is like sexual orgasm.

We have created the image of Shiva as ardhanarishwar, half male and half female. This is a unique phenomenon, and those who want to enter into the ultimate mystery of life will have to understand

the personality of Shiva well. All other deities we have called deva,-god,-but Shiva we have called mahadeva - the great god. We have not placed anyone higher than him. There are reasons for it.

In the concept of Shiva we have hidden all the essence and keys of life.

Ardhanarishwar means that the day ultimate intercourse starts happening your own body becomes one half the wife and the other half the husband; half of your own energy is feminine and the other half masculine. It is just so, and the juice and attainment that happens between these two does not allow any dissipation of energy. If you ask any biologist today, he will agree. They say everybody is both male and female, is bisexual. And it should be so, because you are born out of the mating of a man and a woman. If you were to be created out of the mother alone, then you could be only female; or out of the father alone then you could be only male. But you are fifty percent of your mother and fifty percent of your father, you are half-half - man and woman. You can be neither man nor woman; you are Ardhanarishwar!

Only recently has biology discovered the concept of Ardhanarishwar. We in the East established this concept at least fifty thousand years ago. And we did not discover this concept on the basis of biology, but on the basis of the experiences of yogis - the meditators. When the yogi moves within he finds that he is both - woman and man, yin and yang, matter and consciousness - that both are meeting in him, that his inner man is merging in his inner woman and vice versa; that both are in a continual unhindered embrace, the circle has become complete. Psychologists too say that you are half man and half woman. If your conscious is male, then your unconscious is female; if your conscious is woman, then your unconscious is male - and between the two a meeting is continually happening.

The world is created of duality, so you have to be the two. You are searching for the woman outside yourself because you do not know your inner woman; and you search for the man outside yourself because you do not know your inner man. And no man and no woman that you can find outside yourself will ever bring you fulfillment, because no man or woman as beautiful as the ones within you exist anywhere else. And you all have an inner blueprint of your inner being, and since birth you have been wandering around carrying that blueprint with you. So no matter how beautiful a woman you find, no matter how beautiful a man you find, after a short time you will begin to feel restless; you will begin to feel that there is no harmony.

All love affairs are unsuccessful, because to harmonize is almost impossible. If you find a woman who matches your inner blueprint, then perhaps there will be fulfillment. But you won't find such a woman! It is impossible, because any woman you find must come from some mother and father; she is created in their images, and the blueprint you carry is your own, born within your own heart.

When you suddenly find yourself in love with someone, it only means that in this person you have found some echo of the image you carry in your heart. This is what makes it possible to fall in love at first sight - the fact that you find in someone that which you most desire. You find in them a reflection of the inner man or woman you desire - you find in them something of the person you are carrying within but searching outside.

In China there is an old story that when God first created man and woman, they were created together, joined together as a true couple - they were Ardhanarishwar. But this caused much inconvenience, because whenever there was any work to be done, they had both to go, two bodies together. So they prayed, "Let us be separated to make our lives easier and more convenient!" So

God separated them, but in being separated during lives upon lives on this vast earth, they lost each other. Love is nothing but the search for that lost twin, the Chinese say and there can only be fulfillment only when you find him or her.

The earth is so vast - and four billion men and women to search among! Life after life the search continues. You are looking for your woman, she is looking for her man, and there is no fulfillment. It seems an impossible task. It will be sheer coincidence if you find your partner - the one who can bring you fulfillment.

This is a lovely story... only a story, but very beautiful and meaningful. In my view that meeting will never happen until you turn your eyes inwards. The woman or man you are seeking is within you, and the art of creating that meeting of your inner man and woman is what yoga is. The day that meeting happens your energy never dissipates and celibacy is born. So my understanding of celibacy is not a concept of rejection or renunciation, it is a concept of ultimate indulgence.

It is the easiest thing in the world to misunderstand what I am saying. It is so easy to think that I am talking about bhoga, indulgence, rather than about yoga. This is why I am being criticized every day that all I am doing is preaching indulgence. And in a sense they are right: I am preaching indulgence - but the ultimate indulgence. All of yoga, all of tantra, and all of religion preaches the same!

I call God the ultimate indulgence - God is the experience of ultimate intercourse. Within oneself duality disappears, the duet comes to an end, nonduality has arisen. The embrace is of nonduality, where the two disappear and only the One remains. Such nonduality, such a union, can never be attained through the outer man or outer woman; the two will always remain. It is possible that you may for a moment forget the other, but only for a moment, and then the other will reappear.

Even in the moments of intercourse you are you and your wife is your wife; somewhere you meet, somewhere you touch, but the union does not happen. So after every act of lovemaking you are left with a bitter taste, as if something has failed - as if you were about to reach, but what you were reaching for disappeared. This is why the desire for intercourse is re-aroused again and again.

But no intercourse will fulfill you, because no intercourse can become samadhi; it only creates a hankering. The matter only comes to an end when the meeting of inner man and inner woman happens. Then all search outside is finished. Now there is no other, the duality has disappeared, and you are unified. Nonduality is an ultimate embrace, and such a person becomes like the Shivalinga - a full circle within. A man who has entered self-communion, self-orgasm... such a person loses no energy.

Do you know that to lose energy sharp points are needed? The electricity of your body can be dissipated through your fingers, for example, but not through your head, because anything circular provides no exit for your energy, no place through which it can be dissipated. Energy can be discharged through the genitals; in fact, the genitals are the special arrangement for losing energy.

You have to understand that the body has two parts: one is from where the body takes energy in, the other is from where the body lets energy out. All the receiving parts are situated in the head; that is one end. This is why the head is round in shape; it is designed to take energy in, and not to lose it. You take in food through the mouth, air through the nose, light through the eyes, and sound through the ears. These are the receiving parts, receiving doors that allow things in but not out. At

the other end, at the lower end of the body, are the organs for excreting and urinating, and here too are the genitals, which are also an exit point. So those who know have never regarded semen to be any more valuable than urine or excrements, and indeed it is so. Through it you let your energy out.

At this end the body expels what it had collected. It wants to get rid of it, - it is excretion.

The head is round, it accumulates; the genital organ is pointed, it dissipates. This is why nature has so arranged the genitals that when a man is sexually aroused it becomes erect and pointed - because the more pointed, the faster will be the discharge of energy. In the case of the Shivalinga, which is round, there is no possibility of any energy dissipation. The energy can revolve at its periphery, it can go on racing round and round, but it cannot escape.

We have built round domes on the tops of temples so that the mantras chanted and prayers sung inside the temples do not escape but get echoed back onto the worshippers, showering on them and creating a circuit, a circle. This is the speciality of the temple and is not to be found in the mosque or the church. We created the temple exactly like the head, to gather and shower energy, so that anybody going under it gets suffused with energy, gathers strength. When the meeting of your inner man and woman happens, your head becomes like a temple.

If you understand rightly the architecture of the temple, you will see that it is created in the shape of the human body. Your body is rectangular; so is the temple. At the top of the temple is the headlike dome. When the yogi sits in padmasana, the lotus posture, he is exactly like a temple. It is this padmasana of the yogi that is the secret of temple architecture; exactly like it we have designed the temple, as a symbol, and just like this, in the moment of the inner meeting you will become a temple.

So don't be afraid of being alone. In the first stage it is possible you may ejaculate, but this is also nothing to be afraid of. After all, your semen is also given by God; you offered it back to him. Why be a miser? And don't hinder the process by putting your fear in the way; no need to be uneasy about it. What is yours anyway? If not today then tomorrow, this body will be gone, and with it the semen.

Now where are you going to take it? It is interesting to note how the priests and monks tell us not to store up wealth because we will only have to leave it behind when we die, and yet they suggest that we accumulate our semen. For what? This too you will have to leave here; it is part of the body and you cannot take it with you - you cannot take it anywhere!

So even if ejaculation happens, don't be afraid, and don't feel guilty about it, because the moment you feel guilty your meditation will be blocked. The semen was given by God and he took it! Thank him and move into your meditation. The ejaculations will soon come to an end - they only happen because you have suppressed them forcibly. Once you have stopped suppressing the ejaculation will vanish, and before long the moment will come when you will meet your beloved within.

So whether it is sex or anger or whatever impulse, the meditator has not to link it up with the other.

This is the meaning of the world: the other is necessary for my impulses to be expressed. And the meaning of sannyas is: I alone am responsible for my impulses. This becoming alone is the very meaning of sannyas. And if you need the other for impulses, how are you ever going to enter into sannyas? Nor is there any need to leave home and go to the forest or to run away from your wife; all you need to do is to cast off your dependency on the other for your impulses. You alone become your own master. You can be just by yourself, the other is not necessary for you to be. This does not mean that you will not be able to love your wife any longer. You will certainly be able to love her, but now your love will be the gift of a free individual. It will have its own beauty, its own glory.

The love that you give now is given under obligation - it is a feature of your dependency. This is why lovers are always in anger about each other. I know hundreds of couples, but I have not seen a single couple where each lover is not in anger with the other. There is a reason for this and it is only natural that it is so. It is because on whomsoever we are dependent, that person seems to be the master and we feel like a mere slave, - and this is how they both feel, because both are dependent.

There is no master, both are slaves! Enslaved to a slave - because both depend on the other, and because of this dependency they exploit each other.

When controversy arises in the home, it is often the wife who wins - whether she is right or wrong - because the husband is dependent on her for sex. He is afraid that if he gets into arguments with her she will sexually reject him; and since he needs this sex, bargaining has to be done. So the husbands often lose! -and the wives know it. So the wives create trouble only on two occasions:

either when he is at his meal or when he is feeling horny. These are the two things for which he is dependent on her; he is a slave to these two. So just as the husband sits at the dining table the wife raises the problems and the trouble begins. Now the husband is afraid - somehow he must make sure that he can eat his meal in peace, so halfheartedly he says yes to whatever his wife is demanding.

Remember, food and sex have a connection. Food is necessary for your existence - the existence of the individual; and sex is also a kind of food, food for the society. The husband is dependent on both. So even the mightiest of men in the world become soft and pliable in their homes. Even Napoleon was afraid of Josephine when he came home from the wars. Back home, the warfare, the battlefield and the bravery are all forgotten, because here one is dependent. Now he is dependent on Josephine; now he has to get something from her, and she may refuse him. Don't think it is only prostitutes who sell their bodies - wives do just the same,... because this too is a bargaining: if you agree to such and such things you can have the body; if not you can't have the body. So husbands are constantly in anger over the wives and the wives are constantly in anger over the husband, because she too is as dependent on him over this matter.

Wherever there is dependency there will be anger, not love. Only when you are no longer dependent will you be able to love. The day you have become self-dependent in the dimension of love, you can be alone then and there will not be even a dent in your bliss. Yes, only from that day on you will be able to love, and only then will your wife cease to bother you, because now she will know that to nag you has no meaning, that manipulation will no longer work, because your dependency has come to an end.

As things are the home is the scene of great warfare, because we have to battle against the person on whom we feel dependent. It is a scene of perpetual conflict, a tug of war. To become a sannyasin does not mean that now you will no longer love; it means that now love will be your gift, not your dependency. Now you know how to give; now you will share, but this now is the gift of a free person.

And you will ask for nothing in return; you will only give because giving is your joy now.

And if ever two individuals are able to give love to each other in such a way that giving is their joy and not any kind of dependency or bargaining, only that day will the phenomenon of husband and wife happen in this world. Everything else is just a formal institution. Only then some personalities occur like Rama and Sita, or Radhakrishna or Gaurishankar... Radhakrishna, Gaurishankar or Sitarama are not even remembered separately; it is not appropriate to remember them separately, they are

no more separate. Between them there was not the slightest conflict, so they cannot be separated from each other.

Remember this: conflict separates, love unites. So there is not even a hyphen in Sitarama - even that much separation is not right. So Gaurishankar, Radhakrishna and Sitarama have become singular names; it is not even right to call them a pair of names. Such an inner unity has taken birth.

If you do not get afraid and you can experience your love, your anger, your sex, on your own, you will become a free individual. And all the joys of life are for those who are free. And life showers all its treasures on those who are free. It is entirely in your hands that you can own those treasures.

Question

You may be unable to ask, you may find it difficult to ask, but in the mind that you have nothing else but questions can grow. This is a catharsis for you. I tell you to ask so that you get catharted. Mind asks. you may not find courage to ask, to expose your question, you may feel shy or afraid, but the mind constantly asks. Only questions grow in the mind, not answers. Mind is nothing but a system for giving birth to questions.

Mind raises questions about everything. So it is possible that you may not ask because it is not your way, because of your reserved nature, or your feeling that the question is trivial or irrelevant or absurd, not worth asking; or your feeling that you may look so ignorant asking such a simple question - all these fears may prevent you from asking. But then you will only sit tight with the question suppressed within you, and these suppressed questions will go on haunting your mind constantly.

I am utterly against suppression in any form. There should be no suppression of your questions either, otherwise the question will haunt you through life after life. All that you suppress in yourself remains in you. Go on asking so that it is catharted out. Don't think that the answer I will give to your question will satisfy you: that is not going to happen. My answers are not going to bring your questioning to an end either; my answers are going to create thousands more questions in you! This is why I look at you after I have answered your question - because the answer must have created new questions in you. Just in the time I have been answering your question you must have created thousands of new questions. No, my answer is never going to become your answer, it will only raise new questions in you.

Then why am I answering? To make you aware of certain things. Every answer will create further questions. Slowly slowly you will become aware - you will come to experience certain things. The first thing you will experience is that the answer is not going to answer you - for that you will have to search somewhere else. You will never find the answer from anyone else; you will have to search it for yourself. Even if the question gets solved intellectually, it does not bring the solution to you.

So this question-and-answer race, which is an intellectual race, leads nowhere. You will have to go on a race of the heart. So much asking, so much answering, and in the end you will see that far

from getting less your confusion has grown more; that your questions have increased rather than becoming less. Only then, perhaps, you may become aware that the answer to the questions is not in answers; the answer to the questions is in meditation.

Answers are given from outside, meditation has to be cultivated from within. The answers to the questions are not in the scriptures. Because it is in the nature of mind to create questions, reading the scriptures will only generate more questions. The answer lies in getting free from your mind.

Until the mind drops, the questioning will continue. You are in your minds, and so I ask you to go on asking. This is not going to solve anything for you directly, but an indirect solution can become available. Slowly slowly you will become aware that this asking and this answering are just games, that this is not going to help, that how long am I going to go on pushing these chess pieces around the board? And finally, one day, you will throw the whole chess set away!

In Japan there is a tradition: whenever someone comes to a Zen master, he brings his sitting mat with him. He unrolls the mat, sits on it, and asks his question. Then he has to leave his mat there, and each day, whenever he has a question to ask, he comes and sits on his mat and asks the question. This sometimes continues for years together. Then a day comes when he becomes tired of this asking and being answered, and he realizes that all this is just nonsense. He rolls up his mat, puts it under his arm, and leaves. The day he rolls up his mat, the master says, "Have you rolled up your mat? Good! My blessings to you!"

Rolling up the mat is symbolic of getting tired of asking questions and getting answers to them, of asking and listening. Now he stops both, and from that day his meditation begins.

So the day you will roll up your mat and start to run away, and I will stop you and tell you to ask me more questions, and you will say "No!" - that is the day I shall bless you.

You want to ask, but are afraid to. So I tell you to ask, and I answer you so that you may ask more.

You have to be made tired, you have to be made thoroughly tired; you have to be made so tired that you fall down and say, "That's enough! No more questions, no more answers!" In that moment the first ray of meditation will descend on you. In that moment you will be tired of your mind, and you will be able to throw it into a corner and say, "Now I want experience, not answers; now I want the solution, not answers!" And the solution is only in samadhi.

Enough for today.