Laughter - as sacred as prayer

Question 1:

Woman is what man has made of her.

It is a vicious circle.

Man has deprived woman of education and other social institutions, of economic freedom. And then you ask why women are unintelligent? You are the cause.

Women have as much intelligence as any man - because intelligence has no concern with sexual hormones. Do you think if you changed Albert Einstein into a woman with plastic surgery, he would lose his intelligence? He would still remain Albert Einstein, but in a woman's body. The difference is only of bodies; the difference is not of consciousness, not of intelligence.

But unfortunately man decided to repress woman.

For centuries it has not been clear to historians why it had to happen in such a way. But the latest psychological research makes it very clear why it happened: it happened because man feels a deep inferiority complex in comparison to woman.

And the basic root of that feeling comes from the woman's capacity to become a mother. She is the source of life, she creates life. Man is incapable of it. This became the reason to cut the wings of all women - of freedom, of education - and confine her to a prison-like home and reduce her to just a factory of reproduction so that he can forget that he is inferior.

The woman had to be made inferior so that man could feel at ease, so that his ego could feel that now there is no competition with women at all.

The woman is not the cause of all her bitchiness.

You have been torturing her for thousands of years.

No society in the world has accepted her as equal to man. No culture of the past has given the woman the same respect as it gives to the man. On the contrary, they have all tried to force her into a subhuman existence.

And the reason why the woman did not revolt against such things is simple: again, the same motherhood. For nine months when she is pregnant, she becomes absolutely dependent - particularly in a society which lived by hunting.

And by the way, I would like you to remember that the society in which you are living now - where houses exist, cities exist - is a contribution of women, not of men. The house is the woman's contribution.

Man was hunting. The woman was confined to a small space; naturally she started decorating it, cleaning it, making it beautiful, liveable - and she became attached. In a hunting society, the nomads had to go on changing... because when hunting was not giving them enough food, they had to move to where the animals were. They could not have permanent cities; they could have only tents, not houses.

And you can see it: when a man lives alone, his house is almost like a tent, it is not like a house.

Without a woman, it remains a tent, a temporary place - just a shelter with nothing sacred about it.

As the woman enters, the tent starts transforming into a house and finally into a home.

In hunting societies, the woman's function was nothing but reproduction. She was continuously pregnant. This became her failure: she could not fight, she could not rebel, she had to submit, she had to surrender - of course unwillingly. Nobody becomes a slave willingly.

When somebody becomes a slave willingly, there is no problem.

But millions of women have been forced to become slaves unwillingly. Naturally they try to take revenge in indirect ways. All those ways combined make them cats, their behavior becomes bitchy.

But remember: a woman can be bitchy only with a dog, and a woman can be a cat only with a mouse - and that's why you are angry. Seeing a woman, you are reminded that you are a dog, you are a mouse.

Your male chauvinist attitude hurts.

It is simply an unconscious reaction, and you have to be watchful of the reaction so that it can disappear.

It is undignified of you. It shows something about you - not about the woman. It is your anger, it is your hate.

If you will look at the history....

In many villages, the women cannot enter the temples. In some religions she can enter, but she has a separate section - not the same as the men. In all religions, the woman is not accepted as a candidate for the ultimate growth of consciousness. She is unworthy, not for any other reason - just because she is a woman; her crime is that she is a woman. And she can evolve but she will have to fulfill a condition: first she will have to be born as a man.

So in religions like Jainism, there are methods, rituals, religious disciplines for women, specifically intended for them to enter a man's body in their next life.

Now the whole Jaina attitude and philosophy can be disturbed because with plastic surgery a woman can become a man with no difficulty. There is no need for all those disciplines and rituals and arduous hostilities. Just a very small amount of plastic surgery and you are capable of entering the ultimate state of consciousness. Strange, that plastic surgery is needed for spiritual growth!

But this has been one way to condemn the woman.

Another reason why man has condemned the woman is the power of the woman over the man. You can never forgive someone who has so much power over you. The woman is beautiful, attractive...

her beauty, her body, her attraction and you become just a beggar - and you are going to take revenge for that too.

But everything is going on in an unconscious state. You are not aware of what you are doing and why.

Man is almost magnetically pulled by the woman. He can see that he is just a puppet. How can he forgive the woman who has forced him to be just a puppet? - whatever he can do, he tries to do.

Women everywhere are not allowed to read the holy scriptures. In many countries the woman is not even allowed to show her face in the society. It used to be so in India; it is still so in all the Mohammedan countries.

I have heard, when Mulla Nasruddin got married according to the tradition, his wife asked him, "To whom am I allowed to show my face?"

Mulla Nasruddin said, "First let me have a look, only then can I say anything." So he looked at her face, closed his eyes and said, "Enough! Except for me, you are allowed to show your face to everybody."

These are subtle ways of humiliation, of cutting women off from the world of power, from the world where everything is happening. The woman is not part of it. She is not part of your wars, she is not part of your businesses, she is not part of your religions.

And there are countries like China - not a small country....

A woman was reading in the newspaper that of every four men, one is Chinese. She came very much worried and concerned. She said to her husband, "This paper says that every fourth person is Chinese. Now you have to be careful; we already have three boys, and I don't want any Chinese in this house."

In this vast one-fourth of humanity, for ten thousand years it was believed that the woman had no soul, she was as soulless as your furniture. Hence, if a husband killed his wife, there was no crime, he had simply destroyed his property. It was nobody else's concern to come into it. Thousands of women were killed by their husbands, but the court, the law, did not accept it as killing, because how can you kill somebody who has no soul?

In India millions of women have been burned alive simply because of the male ego: "My wife is beautiful, young. If I am dead, she may get married again." This jealousy was the reason for deciding that every woman should jump into the burning funeral pyre with her husband. The husband is dead; the living woman has to jump into the fire. And we have practiced this for ten thousand years. It still happens once in a while, although now there is a law against it.

One feels as if we don't give any attention to our social mores, our behavior mores. In the whole of Indian literature I have not come across a single statement saying that if women are required to die with their husbands to show their faith, their love, then why are men not required to do the same?

What kind of game is this in which the rule applies only to the woman, not the man?

The society is made by men. Women are living in a society which is not made for them, not made by them; it has not considered them at all.

Your anger towards women is worth understanding. Perhaps it is really your anger against yourself, your anger against men - what men have done to women.

Women have been victims. You cannot be angry at them.

In the home, the husband is the victim; and it can be said without any doubt that every husband is henpecked. In fact, every intelligent husband has to be - only some idiot may not be. But this is the price that every man has to pay for what mankind has been doing to womankind for thousands of years.

If you want to get free from your anger against women, you will have to go through a very deep inner spring cleaning and see that the woman is the victim. And because she is the victim and has no positive way to resist, to fight, she finds indirect ways: of nagging, of screaming, of throwing tantrums. These are simply hopeless efforts. And naturally her rage against the whole of humanity becomes focused on one man, the husband.

The freedom of women is going to be the freedom of men too. The day the woman is accepted as equal, given equal opportunity to grow, man will find himself suddenly free from the bitchiness that he used to feel from the women. And he will be surprised that neither is she a cat nor is he a dog - both are human beings.

It is time.

Man has come to a certain maturity. We can create a world together, with men and women sharing their insight, their visions, their dreams. Because they are different, their dreams are different, their contributions to the society will be different. And if a society can be created in which men and women have participated equally, that will be for the first time the richest society in the world - and without all this bitchiness and nagging and fighting.

This is a strange and stupid way of living. But just because your father used to live this way it is accepted almost as if it is something religious. Your forefathers did it, you have to do it, your children will learn it from you.

Every generation goes on giving its diseases to the coming generation.

My people have to be aware and alert not to pass on any sickness which they may have received from the past generation. Let this be the dead end. Don't pass it to the new generation. Let the new people grow - the new earth, the new man.

The old has failed so badly that there is no point in renovating it. It is all ruins. It simply needs to be written in the history books, pieces of it preserved in the museums - but from life it has to disappear.

Question 2:

Kahlil Gibran has a small story.

One full moon night, a few people came to his small pub and drank and drank. He was very happy, earning great. And when they were leaving, he asked the man who was paying: "Will you be coming again? We will do everything better."

The man said, "We are happy as things are, you have done them as beautifully as possible. Just pray for my business to run well and we will be coming every night."

He said, "There is no problem in it. I will pray for you every morning, every evening, every night. But just out of curiosity, I want to ask, what is your business?"

He said, "It is better if you don't ask. But I can understand, it will be difficult for you to resist the temptation. My business is to sell wood for funeral pyres. So when more people die, my business goes well; when less people die, of course it is unfortunate and I have to suffer it. So if you want your business to go well, you have to pray for my business to go well - our interests are the same."

In this whole society, as an intelligent and alert person, you are bound to be surprised: Why do things go on happening the way they should not? Wars are not needed, riots are not needed, bloodshed is not needed, nuclear weapons are not needed. Half of the earth is dying from starvation and you are preparing more destructive weapons. It is simply insane.

But the trouble is that all these insane people have the same interest. The presidents and the prime ministers of all the nations, all the countries have the same interest. If nations disappear, they will disappear - what about their power trip?

The head priests of all religions are worried that if all religions disappear and there is only a religiousness, priests will not be needed, churches will not be needed. They have the same interest, that this society should remain as it is - miserable, in anxiety, in continuous fear, in deep anguish...

a meaningless existence, carrying one's own dead bodies on one's shoulders from cradle to grave.

And it is all desert - flowers appear only in dreams; in reality it is burning sun and hot sand, nothing green grows.

If we see this, why don't we change? Why do we go on and on in the same rut for thousands of years? The same misery, the same anguish, the same war - nothing seems to change. It seems as if we are caught in a wheel and the wheel goes on moving, fast - again and again the same thing.

Yes, history repeats. And that it repeats in such detail is possible only because man functions like a machine.

These people are not going to support any change because every change means a disappearance of the old structure in which they are important.

With a silent, sincere, loving, compassionate, human being appearing on the world stage - with joy, these few moments of being alive.... And you cannot purchase life; the gift is invaluable.

Alexander the Great threatened one Hindu sannyasin, "My master, Aristotle, wants to see a sannyasin. If you don't come with me to Athens I will kill you."

The sannyasin said, "There is no problem in it. You simply cut off my head. You will see it falling on the ground and I will see it falling on the ground, because I am not the body. And I am no longer interested in carrying this body to my grave. If you are ready to do it, I would be thankful to you."

"In fact," the sannyasin said, "if you understand, you should not only cut off my head, you should cut yours too - because it is just a meaningless existence. As far as I am concerned, it is meaningless because I have achieved that which is significant, which is a higher quality than meaning. I have known, seen, felt. I have been in that wonderland, nothing more can be added to it. So going on living in the body is meaningless for me. It is also meaningless to you, but for different reasons: to you it is meaningless because you have not found anything, and time is running out of your hands."

And just after thirteen days, Alexander died - and he was only thirty-three years of age.

And that old saint who had offered his head with such grace, with such joy... with so much fearlessness that Alexander for the first time felt it would be difficult to cut off the head of this man.

He had cut off millions of heads and had never bothered about it, but with this man he hesitated, he pushed his sword back into the sheath.

And in thirteen days, he was dead.

He wanted, after conquering the world, to rest, relax, and to know what this life is all about.

But the condition that he had put on it was very idiotic - "after conquering the world."

We have a small time. The world is big, and its problems are such that all the powerful people would not like any kind of change.

That's the reason why they are annoyed with me - not that I am wrong and they are right. They know perfectly well they are wrong.

Because my whole life I have been challenging them on every single point of significance. No answer - because they don't have the answer.

But your misery and their power are interdependent.

If you want to get out of the misery, you will have to drop these vested interests and the people who are powerful because of them. And certainly because they have power, they will do everything to prevent any revolution from happening. And if it happens, then too they will try in every possible way to sabotage it.

Up to now they have been successful. Either they don't let it happen, or if it happens in spite of them, they sabotage it so beautifully and they are again in power - only the names change.

In Russia, those people who were in power before the revolution were the capitalists - just a word.

There are still people in power - more in power than the previous ones. They are not called capitalists, they are called communists. They are more dangerous, they have more power and they are more aware how revolutions can throw out people who are in power - because they have come by throwing out the powerful people. So they are protecting their power number with every scientific, psychological, para-psychological device.

Russia is certainly in a strange position in this. It is the only country where revolution cannot happen.

All the possibilities of revolution have been destroyed by the revolutionaries who have come into power. They know perfectly well how they have come into power. So they have broken all the bridges, all the ladders have been burned. In Russia, the powerful group and the masses are absolutely without any bridge between them.

It is true that every sannyasin of mine is working in different ways - not as a missionary but as a living mission, not trying to convert people by teaching them but challenging people for transformation by presenting their own life, by presenting their own joy, their love, their song, their dance.

This is no ordinary conversion - like a Hindu becoming a Christian.

It is true conversion: a fast asleep person becomes fully awake, and goes from darkness to light, from untruth to truth, from death to immortality.

But I don't want you to deliberately become my missions.

I want you to be absolutely selfish so that you can blossom in your full glory. Your blossoming will trigger blossomings in others; your flame will bring light, life and fire to many.

But this has not to be done directly, it is not your business. It is simply the impact of your transformed life.

Question 3:

Sarjano, superficially there is no difference.

Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri, Ajanta, Ellora, Elephanta - they are full of erotic art, just like the contemporary erotic culture where the repressed sexuality of thousands of years has become such a burden that it has to be dropped. And suddenly a great erotic revolution is taking place.

Pornography is nothing but erotic and obscene - in paintings, in films, in dances. They don't create in you a longing for the beyond; they simply create in you more sensuality, more sexuality. But on the surface they look alike.

And in India and in the outside world, they are being misunderstood.

After the country became independent, Mahatma Gandhi proposed that all these sculptures, all these temples should be sunk into mud. They would not be destroyed, so if Ronald Reagan comes to see, then you can clean it and show him - just for special people....

But for ordinary people they would be closed. Because Mahatma Gandhi thought, in the same way as it is thought all over the world, that they are erotic, they are obscene.

But I want to declare emphatically that there is a vast difference between the Eastern art in Ajanta, Ellora, Puri, Konarak, Khajuraho, and the modern Western erotic, pornographic photography, painting, music. The difference is that all these temples....

For example, there are thirty temples in Khajuraho. There were one hundred temples originally - Mohammedans have destroyed seventy temples, which are now ruins. The city was a city only of temples; people just used to come to see the art. One hundred temples must have been built in thousands of years by thousands of artists continuously working on stone - generation after generation may have died working on it.

And they have created the most beautiful bodies in stone. In Khajuraho stone speaks, sings, dances; it is not dead. You can see that the artist has succeeded in transforming the dead stone into a living form. It looks so alive that any moment the statue may walk towards you and say, "Hello." And hundreds of statues....

These statues were not to satisfy your repressed sexuality. On the contrary, they were used as a tantrica method to release the repressed sexuality just by meditating on these naked statues. The method was simply to sit there in silence - only a dim light reaches there, and hundreds of statues surround you.

Just watching them, you will be surprised to find that many of those dreams have occurred to you, many are such that they have been condemned in every society - sexual orgies, but they have happened in your dreams; they are part of your unconscious. And these places like Khajuraho were kinds of universities where people were coming to release, to cathart repressed sexuality.

And all these statutes are outside the temple. Inside the temple there is no erotic sculpture. In fact, inside most of the temples there is nothing - just silence, a cool peaceful milieu, with the vibes of thousands of years of people meditating there.

The rule was when you feel, or your master feels, that now the erotic sculpture outside the temple no longer affects you, it does not create any sexuality in you, any sensuality in you, that it has cleaned your whole repressed sex....

It is the greatest psychological method invented by the East. Nobody is told what is happening, and for years there is no need. Once the master sees, and once you see that you are sitting there and nothing happens, it is as if the walls are empty - when you are absolutely certain that they don't affect you - that is a signal: "Now it is time, you can go inside. Now the door for the inner, for the interior is open." All that was rubbish has been dropped - a cleanliness, a weightlessness, and a silence which is full of beauty and song....

Khajuraho or Konarak... these are not pornographic. They are devices for meditation.

What is happening in the West is simply pornography, obscene. It does not help man to get rid of it, but simply gives him a temporary relief. The pornographic literature, photography, are all helping you to stay normal; otherwise, you will go mad.

So I don't think there is any harm when somebody reads PLAYBOY hiding it inside the BIBLE. What he is seeing in a pornographic magazine brings up his own unconscious.

This was used as a meditation technique in Khajuraho. In the West it is used to create more thirst for the same sexuality which has been aroused by the pornographic magazine, by blue films, by naked dances and striptease.

The same method was used to transform your energy into spirituality.

In the West it is used to provoke more sexuality, more sensuality.

And then there is a kind of insatiation - almost all painting has gone pornographic, all the movies repeating almost the same stories, the same plot, the same triangle: two women, one man; or two men, one woman, a simple structure - the same story. What attracts people to it? It is not great appreciation for literature!

What attracts is that in the story - needed for the story or not needed - they go on putting your suppressed needs, desires. It is a kind of relief. But tomorrow you will be repressing again, and again you will need the same kind of photography, the same dance.

This way you will never be able to enter into the temple. In fact, pornography in the West has no idea that it is the outer wall of the temple.

The East has used every fragment of human nature for a greater change, a mutation, to bring something higher in you of which you are capable but unconscious.

Question 4:

There is no problem.

Everybody has these two sides; that is the man and the woman syndrome - half of you is man, and the other half is woman. And it has to be that way because one half has come from your father and the other half has come from your mother.

So you are the contribution of two different kinds of persons, two different psychologies. Naturally they create two sides in you: the vulnerable, loving, trusting - that is your woman. And the strong, competitive, efficient - that is your man.

And naturally when you go out of your home, you have to change your personality. You have to hide your vulnerable part, and you have to put on a harder, steel mask. You are going into a world of competition.

It becomes a problem when you start thinking that this dialectics should not be in you; that is the time when it becomes a problem. If you understand that this dialectics is very necessary... they are complementaries. They are both needed, just like day and night, life and death - they are both needed.

So one need not be worried that there are two sides.

They are your two doors, and you have to start witnessing yourself as the third. You are not this, you are not that - because you can change them, they are clothes. You put on the clothes of a woman, you put on the clothes of a warrior - they are clothes. Certainly they are not you.

Those two parts in you are really two parts of your mind, two hemispheres of your mind, and they are as absolutely necessary as two wings or two hands.

The bird cannot rise into the sky with one wing. Those two wings are absolutely necessary; they are not against each other. Even though their movements are against each other, they are supporting each other, they are helping each other. And more fundamentally, they are helping the bird, which is the third.

It is perfectly good: outside be a Don Quixote, always keep a sword. Even if it is a false sword, no harm, because a real one could be dangerous - how to hold it? - and you may harm yourself. Have a big moustache and find some good German glue to make the moustache stand out like Ranak Pratap's.

But when you come back home, put this whole makeup aside - with care, because tomorrow you will need it again. And this has to be done without any seriousness. It is simply the ordinary business of life - different things are needed at different places.

There is a story that in Rajasthan... Rajasthan is the province of the warriors. The Rana of the town, the head of the town, the chief of the warriors... there was something crazy about him: he would not allow anybody to have his moustache grow upwards, it should grow downwards - that was the rule.

He was a very dangerous man. He would cut your head off immediately if you didn't appear with your moustache growing downwards.

So the whole town by and by had started growing their moustaches downwards, because it was dangerous - you might forget and come across that man and your life would be at risk, because he was just crazy, he simply cut people's heads. Only his moustache could be turned upwards - of course he was the chief.

A young businessman came to settle in the town. He also had a big moustache turning upwards.

People said, "You are settling in this town? Then remember, either cut your moustache or turn it downwards; otherwise, you will soon be in unnecessary danger."

The young man said, "Don't be worried. I will see about that...."

And the next day he went with his moustache turned up to see the warrior.

But as he was coming out of his house, the warrior was there. Somebody had told him that one person in the city had his moustache turned upwards. So he came to see who the man was: "Finish him, because there is no need to make unnecessary long stories when a shortcut is possible."

Seeing him, he immediately took out his sword.

The young man said, "Wait! I cannot turn down my moustache. And it is not easy to cut off my head because I challenge you to a fight. But before that, I would like you to go and tell your friends - meet with your friends, your family, your children - because although I do the work of a businessman, I am up to now an unconquered warrior. Bring your sword and I will be waiting for you here.

"And while you are gone, I will go and cut off my wife's head and my children's heads, because after I am gone who will take care of them? - unnecessary trouble. After you are gone, who will take care of your children? - unnecessary trouble. Finish them! So we go from the world without any burden."

The warrior said, "It sounds logical." He went back, he finished off his wife, his children.

Everybody said, "What are you doing? Have you gone really mad? Just about the moustache was okay, we have accepted it - it is not much, just eccentric. But you have killed your wife, your children - what are you doing?"

He said, "Not only have I killed mine, another man has also killed his. It is a question of prestige; in this town only one man can live with his moustache turned upwards, not everybody. So this was the condition: that I can meet with my people, he can meet with his people, and he will be coming and I am going. We will face each other on the crossroad. The rumor is that he is a great warrior, but that is not a problem - being a warrior is in our BLOOD."

He arrived at the crossroads and could not believe what he saw: the young man had turned his moustache downwards, just glued it down. You just need good glue - don't use Indian glue; otherwise, somebody may cut off your head unnecessarily. The warrior said, "What have you done?"

The young man said, "I just thought... why kill your wife, your children? Those poor people have not done anything to me, and I should become a cause of their death? Of course my wife and children are mine, I can kill them, but not yours. So I thought, just because of the moustache...? And it is not a big job; in two minutes I just turned it downwards."

The warrior said, "This is dangerous! What did you do with your wife, your children?"

The young man said, "There was no need to do anything, because when I'd turned my moustache down, why should I cut off my wife and children's heads?"

The warrior said, "You are dangerous. I have finished off my whole family!"

There are these people with different names, in different cultures, whose function is to fight and to destroy.

And naturally when you come out of your house, you are coming into a battlefield, where everybody is competing with others - a thousand and one types of fight are going on which you cannot see.

They are all invisibly joined in fighting each other; over small things these fights are going on.

One couple were just signing in the registrar's office - they were getting married. And as the man signed, the woman said to the registrar, "I want a divorce immediately, right now!"

He said, "Are you mad? You are just signing for marriage, and immediately you want a divorce?"

She said, "Seeing my signature, he has signed his signature three times - in big letters. It is better to have this fight here and now and say goodbye to this fellow. Everything three times for our whole life?"

Over small things, people are continuously fighting.

Naturally you come with no love, no trust, a defense, hardness, doubt, suspicion, skepticism, taking everybody as your competitor, everybody as your enemy.

But it is the game.

Don't become too much attached to this part of the play. When you go home, just put it aside completely and be the other part which has been denied.

And once you start moving from one part to another easily, the more and more clearly it starts coming to you that you are separate, you are just a witness, a watcher; this is your mind, but this is not your being.

The one who is aware of this whole game is the being.

And to realize the being is to realize all that is worth realizing.

Question 5:

It is.

Maitreya, it is hilarious but somebody has to begin it.

We want the world to be less serious and more sensitive. Sincere of course, but serious never.

We want the world to learn that the sense of humor is one of the most fundamental qualities of a religious man.

If you cannot laugh, you will miss many things in life, you will miss many mysteries.

Your laughter makes you a small innocent child, your laughter joins you with existence - with the roaring ocean, with the stars and their silence.

Your laughter makes you the lonely part of the world which has become intelligent, because only intelligent people can laugh. That's why animals cannot afford to laugh - they don't have that much intelligence.

You can try - you can tell a joke to your buffalo and see what happens.

And because seriousness has always been taught to be almost necessary for respectability, it has made everybody serious. It is not that they are serious for any reason, but it has now become their second nature; they have forgotten completely that seriousness is a sickness, it means the sense of humor is dead in you.

Otherwise the whole of life all around is so full of hilarious things.

If you have a sense of humor, you will be surprised that there is no time to be sad - every moment something or other is happening everywhere.

My mission certainly is to bring laughter to the whole of humanity - which has forgotten it. And when you forget laughter, you always forget songs, you forget love, you forget dance - it is not that you only forget laughter. Laughter has its own combination of qualities, just as seriousness has its own combination of qualities.

Forget laughter and you will forget love.

With a sad face, how to say to a woman "I love you"? You will have to smile a little bit.

With a serious face you cannot say even the smallest thing.

People are taking everything so seriously that it becomes a burden on them.

Learn to laugh more.

To me, laughter is as sacred as prayer.