Behind the Master's Hands

The first question:

Anand Pravesh, the observer and the observed are two aspects of the witness. When they disappear into each other, when they melt into each other, when they are one, the witness for the first time arises in its totality.

But this question arises in many people; the reason is that they think the witness is the observer. In their minds, the observer and the witness are synonymous. It is fallacious; the observer is not the witness, but only a part of it. And whenever the part thinks of itself as the whole, error arises.

The observer means the subjective, and the observed means the objective. The observer means that which is outside the observed, and the observer also means that which is inside.

The inside and the outside can't be separate; they are together, they can only be together.

When this togetherness, or rather oneness, is experienced, the witness arises. You cannot practice the witness. If you practice the witness you will be practicing only the observer, and the observer is not the witness.

Then what has to be done? Melting has to be done, merging has to be done. Seeing a roseflower, forget completely that there is an object seen and a subject as a seer. Let the beauty of the moment, the benediction of the moment, overwhelm you both, so the rose and you are no more separate, but you become one rhythm, one song, one ecstasy.

Loving, experiencing music, looking at the sunset, let it happen again and again. The more it happens the better, because it is not an art but a knack. You have to get the knack of it; once you have got it, you can trigger it anywhere, any moment.

When the witness arises, there is nobody who is witnessing and there is nothing to be witnessed. It is a pure mirror, mirroring nothing. Even to say it is a mirror is not right; it will be better to say it is a mirroring. It is more a dynamic process of melting and merging; it is not a static phenomenon, it is a flow. The rose reaching you, you reaching into the rose: it is a sharing of being.

Forget that idea that the witness is the observer; it is not. The observer can be practiced, the witness happens. The observer is a kind of concentration, and the observer keeps you separate. The observer will enhance, strengthen your ego. The more you become an observer, the more you will feel like an island -- separate, aloof, distant.

Down the ages, the monks all over the world have been practicing the observer. They may have called it the witness, but it is not the witness. The witness is something totally different, qualitatively different. The observer can be practiced, cultivated; you can become a better observer through practicing it.

The scientist observes, the mystic witnesses. The whole process of science is that of observation; very keen, acute, sharp observation, so nothing is missed. But the scientist does not come to know God. Although his observation is very very expert, yet he remains unaware of God. He never comes across God; on the contrary, he denies that God is, because the more he observes -- and his whole process is that of observation -- the more he becomes separate from existence. The bridges are broken and walls arise; he becomes imprisoned in his own ego.

The mystic witnesses. But remember, witnessing is a happening, a by-product -- a by- product of being total in any moment, in any situation, in any experience. Totality is the key: out of totality arises the benediction of witnessing. Forget all about observing. It will give you more accurate information about the observed object, but you will remain absolutely oblivious of your own consciousness.

Science is objective, art is subjective, religion is neither -- neti neti, neither this nor that.

Then what is religion? Religion is the meeting of the object and the subject, religion is the meeting of the lover and the beloved. Religion is the disappearance of the separation, of the duality. And in that separation energy is released; energy that was confined by the dual, that was kept separate, simply dances in utter unity.

That unity is witnessing. It happens only once in a while to you, and even then you don't take much note of it, because it comes like a flash and it is gone. And because you don't understand it, you don't preserve the experience. In fact you neglect it, you ignore it; it seems to be dangerous.

It happens when you are in a deep orgasmic state, when the woman and man meet and merge and disappear into each other. It happens only for a single moment at the highest peak. When their energies are no more two, when the energies have penetrated into each other so deeply that you cannot call them two at all... that orgasmic peak is the moment where witnessing arises. This is the whole secret of Tantra. Tantra discovered that in orgasmic ecstasy witnessing arises on its own accord. It is a gift from God, a natural gift to enter into samadhi.

But it happens in all creative experiences, because all creative experiences are orgasmic; in a subtle sense, there is something of the sexual and the sensuous in them. When a painter looks at the trees, then the green and the red and the gold of the trees is not the same as when you look at the trees. His experience is orgasmic, he is utterly lost in it. He is not there as an observer, he falls in deep rapport. He becomes one with the green and the red and the gold of the trees.

The painter knows that looking at the beautiful existence is an orgasmic experience.

Hence, while the painter is painting, he becomes absolutely nonsexual; he becomes celibate. He is already experiencing orgasmic joy, he need not go into sex at all. Celibacy comes naturally to him.

Thousands of poets and painters and musicians have remained celibate, and with no effort. Monks remain celibate with great effort. Why? The monk is uncreative; in his life there is no orgasmic experience, his mind hankers for the sexual experience. The poet, the musician, the artist, the dancer who is capable of being lost into whatsoever he is doing, is having orgasmic experiences on a higher plane; sex is not a necessity. If once in a while such a person moves into sex, it is not out of need, it is just playfulness, it is simple playfulness. And when sex has the quality of playfulness it is sacred. When it is out of need it is a little bit ugly, because out of need you exploit the other, and out of need it can never take you to the highest orgasmic peak. You remain always discontented somewhere or other, because out of need means there is a motive, there is goal- orientation. There is manipulation, exploitation, an effort to use the other as a means.

When you are simply playful, it is totally different.

D.H. Lawrence is right when he says that he experienced God in sexual orgasm. But his sexuality is totally different from the sexuality of the monks. They will not be able to understand Lawrence.

Lawrence was one of the most misunderstood men of this century -- one of the most beautiful, one of the most creative, one of the most precious, but the most misunderstood.

And the reason is that his experience has a totally different quality. When he is talking about sexual orgasm, he is not talking about your sexual orgasm, he is talking about his sexual orgasm. Only very rare people will be able to understand him. He is a natural tantrika -- unaware of the science of Tantra, but he stumbled upon it. Somehow a window has opened in his life; his sensuality is spiritual.

It is not a question of what you do, it is a question of how you do it. And ultimately it is a question whether you do it or you allow it to happen. If you allow it to happen, then whenever there is a creative meeting you will suddenly become a witness. The observer and the observed become one in it -- in fact it happens only when they become one.

The second question:

Prem Naren, modern physics has discovered one of the greatest things ever discovered, and that is: matter is energy. That is the greatest contribution of Albert Einstein to humanity: e is equal to mc2, matter is energy. Matter only appears... otherwise there is no such thing as matter, nothing is solid. Even the solid rock is a pulsating energy, even the solid rock is as much energy as the roaring ocean. The waves that are arising in the solid rock cannot be seen because they are very subtle, but the rock is waving, pulsating, breathing; it is alive.

Friedrich Nietzsche has declared that God is dead. God is not dead -- on the contrary, what has happened is that matter is dead. Matter has been found not to exist at all. This insight into matter brings modern physics very close to mysticism, very close. For the first time the scientist and the mystic are coming very close, almost holding hands.

Eddington, one of the greatest scientists of this age, has said, "We used to think that matter is a thing; now it is no more so. Matter is more like a thought than like a thing."

Existence is energy. Science has discovered that the observed is energy, the object is energy. Down the ages, at least for five thousand years, it has been known that the other polarity -- the subject, the observer, consciousness -- is energy.

Your body is energy, your mind is energy, your soul is energy. Then what is the difference between these three? The difference is only of a different rhythm, different wavelengths, that's all. The body is gross -- energy functioning in a gross way, in a visible way.

Mind is a little more subtle, but still not too subtle, because you can close your eyes and you can see the thoughts moving; they can be seen. They are not as visible as your body; your body is visible to everybody else, it is publicly visible. Your thoughts are privately visible. Nobody else can see your thoughts; only you can see them -- or people who have worked very deeply into seeing thoughts. But ordinarily they are not visible to others.

And the third, the ultimate layer inside you, is that of consciousness. It is not even visible to you. It cannot be reduced into an object, it remains subject.

If all these three energies function in harmony, you are healthy and whole. If these energies don't function in harmony and accord you are ill, unhealthy; you are no more whole. And to be whole is to be holy.

The effort that we are making here is how to help you so that your body, your mind, your consciousness, can all dance in one rhythm, in a togetherness, in a deep harmony -- not in conflict at all, but in cooperation. The moment your body, mind and consciousness function together, you have become the trinity, and in that experience is God.

Your question is significant, Naren. You ask, "Please say something about the relationship of consciousness and energy."

There is no relationship of consciousness and energy. Consciousness is energy, purest energy; mind is not so pure, body is still less pure. Body is much too mixed, and mind is also not totally pure. Consciousness is total pure energy. But you can know this consciousness only if you make a cosmos out of the three, and not a chaos. People are living in chaos: their bodies say one thing, their bodies want to go in one direction; their minds are completely oblivious of the body -- because for centuries you have been taught that you are not the body, for centuries you have been told that the body is your enemy, that you have to fight with it, that you have to destroy it, that the body is sin.

Because of all these ideas -- silly and stupid they are, harmful and poisonous they are, but they have been taught for so long that they have become part of your collective mind, they are there -- you don't experience your body in a rhythmic dance with yourself.

Hence my insistence on dancing and music, because it is only in dance that you will feel that your body, your mind and you are functioning together. And the joy is infinite when all these function together; the richness is great.

Consciousness is the highest form of energy. And when all these three energies function together, the fourth arrives. The fourth is always present when these three function together. When these three function in an organic unity, the fourth is always there; the fourth is nothing but that organic unity.

In the East, we have called that fourth simply "the fourth" -- turiya; we have not given it any name. The three have names, the fourth is nameless. To know the fourth is to know God. Let us say it in this way: God is when you are an organic orgasmic unity. God is not when you are a chaos, a disunity, a conflict. When you are a house divided against yourself there is no God.

When you are tremendously happy with yourself, happy as you are, blissful as you are, grateful as you are, and all your energies are dancing together, when you are an orchestra of all your energies, God is. That feeling of total unity is what God is. God is not a person somewhere, God is the experience of the three falling in such unity that the fourth arises.

And the fourth is more than the sum total of the parts.

If you dissect a painting, you will find the canvas and the colors, but the painting is not simply the sum total of the canvas and the colors; it is something more. That "something more" is expressed through the painting, color, canvas, the artist, but that "something more" is the beauty. Dissect the roseflower, and you will find all the chemicals and things it is constituted of, but the beauty will disappear. It was not just the sum total of the parts, it was more.

The whole is more than the sum total of the parts; it expresses through the parts, but it is more. To understand that it is more is to understand God. God is that more, that plus. It is not a question of theology, it cannot be decided by logical argumentation. You have to feel beauty, you have to feel music, you have to feel dance. And ultimately you have to feel the dance in your body, mind, soul.

You have to learn how to play on these three energies so that they all become an orchestra. Then God is -- not that you see God, there is nothing to be seen; God is the ultimate seer, it is witnessing. Learn to melt your body, mind, soul; find out ways when you can function as a unity.

It happens many times that runners.... You will not think of running as a meditation, but runners sometimes have felt a tremendous experience of meditation. They were surprised, because they were not looking for it -- who thinks that a runner is going to experience God? -- but it has happened, and now running is becoming more and more a new kind of meditation. It can happen in running. If you have ever been a runner, if you have enjoyed running in the early morning when the air is fresh and young and the whole world is coming back out of sleep, awakening, and you were running and your body was functioning beautifully, and the fresh air, and the new world again born out of the darkness of the night, and everything singing all around, and you were feeling so alive....

A moment comes when the runner disappears, there is only running. The body, mind and soul start functioning together; suddenly an inner orgasm is released.

Runners have sometimes come accidentally on the experience of the fourth, turiya, although they will miss it because they will think it was just because of running that they enjoyed the moment; that it was a beautiful day, that the body was healthy and the world was beautiful, and it was just a certain mood. They will not take note of it. But if they take note of it, my own observation is that a runner can more easily come close to meditation than anybody else. Jogging can be of immense help, swimming can be of immense help. All these things have to be transformed into meditations.

Drop old ideas of meditations, that just sitting underneath a tree with a yoga posture is meditation. That is only one of the ways, and may be suitable for a few people but is not suitable for all. For a small child it is not meditation, it is torture. For a young man who is alive, vibrant, it is repression, it is not meditation. Maybe for an old man who has lived, whose energies are declining, it may be meditation.

People differ, there are many types of people. To someone who has a low kind of energy, sitting underneath a tree in a yoga posture may be the best meditation, because the yoga posture is the least energy-expensive -- the least. When the spine is erect, making a ninety-degree angle with the earth, your body expends the least energy possible. If you are leaning towards the left or towards the front, then your body starts spending more energy, because the gravitation starts pulling you downwards and you have to keep yourself, you have to hold yourself so that you don't fall. This is expenditure. An erect spine was found to need the least spending of energy.

Then sitting with your hands together in the lap is also very very useful for low-energy people, because when both the hands are touching each other, your body electricity starts moving in a circle. It does not go out of your body; it becomes an inner circle, the energy moves inside you.

You must know that energy is always released through the fingers, energy is never released from round-shaped things. For example, your head cannot release energy, it contains it. Energy is released through the fingers, the toes of the feet and the hands. In a certain yoga posture the feet are together, so one foot releases energy and it enters into the other foot; one hand releases energy and it enters into the other hand. You go on taking your own energy, you become an inner circle of energy. It is very resting, it is very relaxing.

The yoga posture is the most relaxed posture possible. It is more relaxing than even sleep, because when you are asleep your whole body is being pulled by gravitation. When you are horizontal it is relaxing in a totally different way. It is relaxing because it brings you back to the ancient days when man was an animal, horizontal. It is relaxing because it is regressive; it helps you to become an animal again.

That's why in a lying posture you cannot think clearly, it becomes difficult to think. Try it. You can dream easily but you cannot think easily; for thinking you have to sit. The more erect you sit, the better is the possibility to think. Thinking is a late arrival; when man became vertical, thinking arrived. When man used to be horizontal, dreaming was there but thinking was not there. So when you lie down you start dreaming, thinking disappears. It is a kind of relaxation, because thinking stops; you regress.

The yoga posture is a good meditation for those who have low energy, for those who are ill, for those who are old, for those who have lived the whole life and now are coming closer and closer to death.

Thousands of Buddhist monks have died in the sitting lotus posture, because the best way to receive death is in the lotus posture -- because in the lotus posture you will be fully alert, and because energies will be disappearing, they will be becoming less and less every moment. Death is coming. In a lotus posture you can keep alertness to the very end.

And to be alert while you are dying is one of the greatest experiences, the ultimate in orgasm.

And if you are awake while you are dying you will have a totally different kind of birth:

you will be born awake. One who dies awake is born awake. One who dies unconscious is born unconscious. One who dies with awareness can choose the right womb for himself; he has a choice, he has earned it. The man who dies unconsciously has no right to choose the womb; the womb happens unconsciously, accidentally.

The man who dies perfectly alert in this life will be coming only once more, because next time there will be no need to come. Just a little work is left: the other life will do that work. For one who is dying with awareness, only one thing is left now: he has had no time to radiate his awareness into compassion. Next time he can radiate his awareness into compassion. And unless awareness becomes compassion, something remains incomplete, something remains imperfect.

Running can be a meditation -- jogging, dancing, swimming, anything can be a meditation. My definition of meditation is: whenever your body, mind, soul are functioning together in rhythm it is meditation, because it will bring the fourth in. And if you are alert that you are doing it as a meditation -- not to take part in the Olympics, but doing it as a meditation -- then it is tremendously beautiful.

In the new commune we are going to introduce all kinds of meditations. Those who enjoy swimming, they will have opportunities to go for a swimming meditation. Those who enjoy running, they will have their group to run for miles. Each according to his need -- only then this world can be full of meditation; otherwise not.

If we give only a fixed pattern of meditation, then it will be applicable only to a few people. That has been one of the problems in the past: fixed patterns of meditation, not fluid -- fixed, so they fit certain types and all others are left in the darkness.

My effort is to make meditation available to each and everybody; whosoever wants to meditate, meditation should be made available according to his type. If he needs rest, then rest should be his meditation. Then "sitting silently doing nothing, and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself" -- that will be his meditation. We have to find as many dimensions to meditation as there are people in the world. And the pattern has not to be very rigid, because no two individuals are alike. The pattern has to be very liquid so that it can fit with the individual. In the past, the practice was that the individual had to fit with the pattern.

I bring a revolution. The individual has not to fit with the pattern, the pattern has to fit with the individual. My respect for the individual is absolute. I am not much concerned with means; means can be changed, arranged in different ways.

That's why you find so many meditations going on here. We don't have enough opportunities here, otherwise you would be surprised how many doors God's temple has.

And you would be surprised also that there is a special door only for you and for nobody else. That's God's love for you, his respect for you. You will be received through a special door, not through the public gate; you will be received as a special guest.

But the basic fundamental is, whatsoever the meditation, it has to fill this requirement:

that the body, mind, consciousness, all three should function in unity. Then suddenly one day the fourth has arrived: the witnessing. Or if you want to, call it God; call it God or nirvana or Tao or whatsoever you will.

The third question:

Darshan, that's what is already happening to you. Every day you are disappearing -- and it is so obvious. Every day something of you is evaporating: more and more, I am becoming your being. Soon Darshan will not be found there at all.

And that is the moment of great blessings -- when the disciple disappears, when the disciple is only a vehicle of the master. And the master is nobody except the whole. The master is one who is not, the master is one who has already disappeared into God. The master is already a hollow bamboo and God is using him as a flute.

When the disappearance also has happened to the disciple, the first experience is that of meeting and merger with the master -- because the disciple does not know what God is, he knows only the master. The master is his or her God. Once the disciple disappears into the master and allows the master to enter into the innermost core of his being, the second experience is that the master has never been there.

Hidden behind the master's hands were God's hands, hidden behind the master's words were God's messages. The master was only a singer, singing the songs of the infinite and the eternal.

Darshan, it is happening to you. I am utterly happy with you, all my blessings are for you.

You say: "In a deep embrace with you, in orgasmic play with existence, little more of you, little less of me."

This is happening, this will go on happening. Your prayer is going to be fulfilled in this life. I can guarantee only for a very few people; it is very difficult to guarantee, but for Darshan I can guarantee: in this very life it is going to be fulfilled.

The fifth question:

Prem Kavita, it is so, not only with you but with everybody who has a little intelligence.

It is not detected by the stupid people, but the intelligent person is bound to stumble upon the fact sooner or later -- and the more intelligent you are, the sooner it will be -- that no relationship can satisfy.

Why? -- because every relationship is only an arrow towards the ultimate relationship; it is a milestone, it is not a goal. Every love affair is just an indication of a bigger love affair ahead -- just a little taste, but that little taste is not going to quench your thirst or satisfy your hunger. On the contrary, that little taste will make you more thirsty, will make you more hungry.

That's what happens in every relationship. Rather than giving you contentment, it gives you a tremendous discontentment. Each relationship fails in this world -- and it is good that it fails; it would have been a curse if it was not so. It is a blessing that it fails.

Because each relationship fails, that's why you start searching for the ultimate relationship with God, with existence, with the cosmos. You see the futility again and again, that it is not going to be satisfied by any man, by any woman; that each experience ends in tremendous frustration, begins in great hope and leaves you in great hopelessness.

It is always so, it comes with great romance and ends in a bitter taste. When it happens again and again, one has to learn something -- that each relationship is only an experimentation to prepare you for the ultimate relationship, for the ultimate love affair.

That's what religion is all about.

You say: "What is this longing in me that no relationship can satisfy?"

That is the longing for God. You may know it, you may not know it. You may not be able yet to articulate it, exactly what it is, because in the beginning it is very vague, cloudy, surrounded by great mist. But it is the longing for God, it is the longing to merge with the whole, so there is no separation any longer.

You cannot merge with a man or a woman forever, the separation is bound to happen.

The merger can only be momentary, and after that moment is gone you will be left in great darkness. After that flash, that lightning, is gone, the darkness is going to be even more than it was before. That's why millions of people decide not to go into any love relationship -- because at least one is accustomed to one's darkness, one has not known anything else. There is a kind of satisfaction: one knows that this is what life is, that there is no more to it, so there is no discontent.

Once you have tasted love, once you have seen a few moments of joy, of that tremendous throbbing when two persons are no longer two.... But you fall again and again from that peak; and each time you fall the darkness is far darker than before, because now you know that light is. Now you know that there are peaks, now you know that life has much more to offer to you, that this mundane existence of going to the office every day and coming home and eating and sleeping -- that this mundane existence is not all, that this mundane existence is only the porch of the palace.

If you have never been invited in and you have lived always in the porch, then you think this is what life is, this is your home. Once a window opens and you can see inside the palace -- the beauty of it, the grandeur of it, the splendor of it -- or once you are invited in for a moment and then thrown out again, now the porch can never satisfy you. Now this porch is going to be a heavy burden on your heart. Now you are going to suffer, your agony is going to be great.

This is my observation, that the people who are very uncreative are more satisfied than the people who are creative. The creative person is very much unsatisfied, because he knows much more is possible and it is not happening. Why is it not happening?

The creative person is constantly searching; he cannot rest, because he has seen a few glimpses. Once in a while a window has opened and he has seen beyond. How can he rest? How can he feel comfortable and cozy in that stupid porch? He knows about the palace, he has seen the king too, and he knows, "That palace belongs to me; it is my birthright." All that is needed is how to enter into the palace, how to become a permanent resident in it. Yes, momentarily he has been inside, and he has been thrown out again and again.

The more sensitive a person is, the more you will find him in discontent. The more intelligent, the more discontent will be found there. It has always been so.

You come from the West to the East; you see the beggar on the road, the laborer carrying mud on his head, and you feel a little bit surprised: their faces don't show discontentment.

They have nothing to be contented with, but somehow they are satisfied. And the so- called Indian religious people think it is because of religion that they are satisfied. And the so-called Indian saints go on bragging about it: "Look! the West has everything, science and technology has provided the West with every possible comfort, and yet nobody is contented. And in our country people are so religious that they have nothing, yet they are contented." The saints of this country go on bragging about it, but their whole bragging is based on a fallacy. The people of this country -- the poor people, the uneducated people, the starving people -- are not contented because they are religious, they are contented because they have no sensitiveness. They are contented because they are not creative, they are contented because they have never seen any glimpse.

The West is becoming discontented because the comfort, the convenience, all that science has provided for them, has given them so much time to explore, to meditate, to pray, to play music, to dance, that a few glimpses have started happening. They are becoming aware that there is much more to life than appears on the surface; one has to dive deep.

The East is simply poor -- and poverty makes people insensitive, remember. A poor person has to be insensitive, otherwise he will not be able to survive at all. If he is very sensitive, the poverty will be too much. He has to grow a thick skin around himself as a protection, otherwise how will he survive? He has to become very blind, only then can he live in a poor country. Otherwise the beggar is there, the ill people are there on the street, dying: if he is not insensitive, how is he going to work at all? Those beggars will haunt him. He has to close his doors.

You can see it happening on the Indian streets. The Western visitor for the first time becomes very puzzled: a man is dying on the street and no Indian takes any note of it, people go on passing. This happens every day.

If they start taking note of it, they will not be able to live at all; they have not any time for such luxuries. This is a luxury! They cannot take the person to the hospital, they have no time. If they start being so compassionate they will start dying themselves, because who is going to earn for their family? They have to become utterly blind and deaf. They go on moving like zombies, seeing nothing. Whatsoever is happening by the side is nothing to do with them, it is none of their business; everybody is suffering his own karma.

The beggar dying on the street is suffering from his own karma -- maybe he was a murderer in the past life. You need not worry about him, in fact you should be happy that he is suffering from his karma; now his karma is finished. Next birth he will be born a king, or something like that -- beautiful rationalizations to keep yourself blind, insensitive.

It is very difficult for the poor person to have some aesthetic sense, he cannot afford it. If he has aesthetic sense then he will feel his poverty too much, it will become unbearable.

He cannot have a sense for cleanliness, he cannot have a sense for beauty. He cannot afford these things -- what is the point of having the sensitivity for them? It will be a torture, constant torture. He will not be able to sleep in his ugly house with all kinds of dirt, with all kind of rotten things -- they are his only possessions! He seems to be very satisfied -- he has to be; he cannot afford dissatisfaction.

It has nothing to do with religion, remember. All poor people are satisfied, without any exception. You can go to Africa and you will find the poor people satisfied; they are even poorer than Indians and their satisfaction is far deeper. You can go to Indian aboriginal tribes, which are the poorest in the world, but you will see on their faces a kind of satisfaction, as if nothing is wrong, all is right. They have to believe that all is right, they have to constantly autohypnotize themselves that all is right; otherwise how will they be able to sleep and how will they be able to eat?

Once a country becomes rich, it becomes sensitive. Once a country becomes rich, affluent, it becomes aware of many, many dimensions of life that have always been there but one had no time to look at. The rich country starts thinking of music, painting, poetry, and ultimately meditation -- because meditation is the last luxury. There is no greater luxury than meditation. Meditation is the last luxury, because it is the ultimate love affair.

It is good, Kavita, that you are not satisfied with your relationships. Indians are very satisfied, because in fact there is no relationship at all. It is marriage, it has nothing to do with relationship. Parents decide it, and astrologers and palmists. It has nothing to do with the persons who are going to get married; they are not even asked, they are simply put into a certain situation where they start living together. It is not a relationship. They may produce children, but it is not love; there is nothing of romance in it. But one thing is good about it: it is very stable. When there is no relationship there is no possibility of divorce. Divorce is possible only if there is love. Try to understand me. Love means great hope, love means "I have arrived." Love means "I have found the woman or the man."

Love means the feeling that "We are made for each other." Love means now there is no need to search any more.

If you start with such great hope, by the time the honeymoon is over the relationship will be over. These great hopes cannot be fulfilled by human beings. You are hoping that the woman is a goddess; she is not. She is hoping the man is a god; he is not. Now, how long can they go on deceiving each other? Sooner or later they will start seeing the actual.

They will see the fact, and the fiction will start evaporating.

No relationship can satisfy, because every relationship begins with great hope, and that is not possible to be fulfilled. Yes, that hope can be fulfilled, but it can be fulfilled only when you have fallen in love with the whole. No part can fulfill it. When you have fallen in love with the total, when the merger happens with the total, only then will there be contentment. There will be nobody who is contented, there will be simply contentment.

And then there is no end to it.

I am all for love, because love fails. You will be surprised -- I have my own logic. I am all for love, because love fails. I am not for marriage, because marriage succeeds; it gives you a permanent settlement. And that is the danger: you become satisfied with a toy, you become satisfied with something plastic, artificial, manmade.

That's why in the East, particularly in India.... It is a very ancient country, and ancient countries become cunning just as old people become cunning. Out of cunningness this country decided for child marriage, because once somebody is adolescent hope starts arising -- longing, romance, poetry; now it will be difficult. The best way that India found was child marriage, marriage of children. They don't know what marriage is, they don't know what relationship is, they don't know what love is -- they are not even hungry for it -- sex has not yet become a mature thing in them. Let them get married.

Just think -- a three-year-old girl being married to a five-year-old boy. Now they will grow together, just as brothers and sisters grow together. Have you ever felt any desire to divorce your sister? I don't think anybody ever divorces one's own sister, there is no need.

You take it for granted. Everybody thinks his mother is good, beautiful; his sister is beautiful, his brother is beautiful. You take these things for granted.

There was only one relationship which was available for you to choose out of your own freedom: your spouse, your woman, your man. In India we destroyed even that freedom.

Husbands and wives were as much given as brothers and sisters. And when you have grown together for years a certain kind of friendship, a certain kind of association, arises.

You become accustomed to each other.

This is not relationship, this is not love. But India had decided for stability -- and an ancient country knows perfectly well love can never be stable. Choose love and you choose trouble.

In the West love has become more and more important, and with it all kinds of troubles have arisen. The family is falling apart, disappearing really. People are changing their wives and husbands so many times that everything seems to be just in a chaos.

I have heard about one Hollywood actress, that she married for the thirty-first time. After three days she became aware that this man had once also been her husband before. Now even to remember for so many times.... People change, their faces change. Now, this cannot happen in India. Even after lives your wife will remember you; even after lives you cannot escape, there is no escape.

But I am all for love, and I am against marriage, particularly the arranged kind, because the arranged marriage gives you satisfaction. And love? -- love can never satisfy you. It gives you more and more thirst for a better and better love, it makes you more and more long for it, it gives you tremendous discontentment. And that discontent is the beginning of the search for God. When love fails many times, you start looking for a new kind of lover, a new kind of love, a new quality of love. That love affair is prayer, meditation, sannyas.

Kavita, it is good that no longing for ordinary love affairs is ever going to be satisfied.

The longing will be intensified more; no relationship is going to fulfill you. They will make you more frustrated, and no tears will relieve it, they cannot. They may help for the moment, but again you will be full of pain and agony. Nothing is changed by many and beautiful dreams and adventures, nothing is changed. Yet I say go through them. Nothing is changed, but you are changed by going through all those dreams and beautiful adventures. Nothing is changed in the world.

Just think, Kavita, this question has arisen in you. This is a change. How many people are there who ask this type of question? This question is not an ordinary question; it is not out of curiosity. I can feel the pain, the agony; I can feel your tears, I can see your frustrations in it, I can see all that misery and suffering you must have gone through. It is almost tangible.

Nothing changes in the world. But, falling again and again, something changes in you -- and that is revolution. Even to ask such a question means you are on the verge of a revolution. Then a new adventure is needed. Old adventures failed, and a new one -- not in the sense that you have to search for a new man or a new woman -- a new one in the sense that you have to search in a new dimension is needed.

That dimension is the dimension of the divine.

I say to you: I am fulfilled and contented. Atisha is fulfilled and contented, not by any relationship of the world, not by any love affair of the world, but having a love affair with the whole existence is utterly fulfilling.

And when one is fulfilled, one starts overflowing. He cannot contain his own contentment. He is blessed, and so much is he blessed that he starts blessing others. He is so much blessed that he becomes a blessing to the world.

The sixth question:

Contemporary mind is a contradiction in terms. Mind is never contemporary, it is always old. Mind is past -- past and past and nothing else; mind means memory. There can be no contemporary mind; to be contemporary is to be without mind.

If you are herenow, then you are contemporary with me. But then, don't you see, your mind disappears; no thought moves, no desire arises: you become disconnected with the past and disconnected with the future.

Mind is never original, cannot be. No-mind is original, fresh, young; mind is always old, rotten, stale.

But those words are used -- they are used in a totally different sense. I can understand your question -- in that sense, those words are meaningful. The mind of the nineteenth century was a different mind; the questions they were asking, you are not asking. The questions that were very important in the eighteenth century are now stupid questions.

"How many angels can dance on the point of a needle?" was one of the greatest theological questions in the middle ages. Now can you find such a stupid person who will think that this is an important question? And this was discussed by the greatest theologians; not small people, great professors were writing treatises on it, conferences were arranged. How many angels? Now who cares? It is simply irrelevant.

In Buddha's time, a great question was: "Who created the world?" It has persisted for centuries, but now fewer and fewer people are worried about who created the world. Yes, there are some old-fashioned people, but very rarely such questions are asked of me. But Buddha was encountered every day. Not a single day must have passed when somebody did not ask the question, "Who created the world?" Buddha had to say again and again that the world has always been there, nobody has created it; but people were not satisfied.

Now nobody cares. Very rarely somebody asks me the question, "Who created the world?" In that sense, the mind goes on changing as time goes on changing. In that sense, the contemporary mind is a reality.

Husband to wife: "I said we are not going out tonight, and that is semi-final."

Now this is a contemporary mind. No husband in the past would have said that. It was always final; the last word was his.

Two high-class English ladies met each other by accident while out shopping in London.

One noticed the other was pregnant and asked, "Why, darling, what a surprise! You obviously got married since I last saw you! " The second said, "Yes. He's a wonderful man; he's an officer in the Ghurka rifles."

The questioner was horrified. "A Ghurka! Darling, are not they all black?"

"Oh no," she said. "Only the privates."

The questioner exclaimed, "Darling, how contemporary!"

In that sense, there is a contemporary mind....

Have you heard about the latest family game? It is called incest.

Little sister to brother in bed: "Hey, you are better at this than Daddy."

"Yes, Mummy says so too!"

Otherwise, there is no contemporary mind. Fashions come and go; if you think of fashions then there are changes. But basically all mind is old. Mind as such is old, and there can be no modern mind; the most modern mind is still of the past.

The really alive person is a herenow person. He does not live out of the past, he does not live for the future; he lives only in the moment, for the moment. The moment is all. He is spontaneous; that spontaneity is the fragrance of no-mind. Mind is repetitive, mind always moves in circles. Mind is a mechanism: you feed it with knowledge, it repeats the same knowledge, it goes on chewing the same knowledge again and again.

No-mind is clarity, purity, innocence. No-mind is the real way to live, the real way to know, the real way to be.

And the last question:

Prem Christo, they are mean because they are stupid. Stupidity has always the shadow of meanness. The more intelligent you are, the less mean you are. The utterly intelligent person cannot have any meanness; it is impossible. He can have only love and compassion.

The stupid person has to be mean because that is the only way he thinks he can win. The intelligent person has no desire to win, the intelligent person is already victorious in his intelligence. The intelligent person is already superior in his intelligence, he has not to compete for it. The stupid person has to continuously compete. And because he is stupid, he cannot rely on his intelligence, he has to rely on something else: he becomes mean, cunning, deceptive, a hypocrite.

To me, stupidity is the only sin, and everything else is just a by-product of it. And intelligence is the only virtue; everything else that we have known as virtue follows it like a shadow.

Two politicians are returning home from the bar, late at night, drunk as usual. As they are making their way down the sidewalk one of them spots a heap of dung in front of them just as they are walking into it.

"Stop!" he yells.

"What is it?" asks the other.

"Look!" says the first. "Shit!"

Getting nearer to take a good look at it, the second drunkard examines the dung carefully and says, "No, it isn't, it's mud."

"I tell you, it's shit," repeats the first.

"No, it isn't," says the other.

"It's shit!"

"No!"

So finally the first angrily sticks his finger in the dung and puts it to his mouth. After having tasted it, he says, "I tell you, it is shit."

So the second politician does the same, and slowly savoring it, says, "Maybe you are right. Hmm."

The first politician takes another try to prove his point. "It's shit!" he declares.

"Hmm, yes, maybe it is," answers the second, after his second try.

Finally, after having had enough of the dung to be sure that it is, they both happily hug each other in friendship, and exclaim, "Wow, I'm certainly glad we didn't step on it!"

Enough for today.

The Book of Wisdom