You will awake praying

Question 1:

Each chakra has a sleep part, except the last -- the SAHASRAR. At the seventh chakra, awareness is total: it is pure awareness. That's why Krishna says in the Gita: The yogi never sleeps. "The yogi" means one who has come to the last center of his being, to the ultimate flowering; one who has become a lotus. He never sleeps. His body sleeps, his mind sleeps: he never sleeps. Even when a Buddha is sleeping, deep in the innermost core of his being a light goes on burning bright.

The seventh chakra has no sleep part to it, otherwise all the six chakras have both: yin, yang. Sometimes they sleep and sometimes they are awake: day, night -- they have both aspects. When you feel hungry, the center for hunger is awake. If you have ever tried fasting, you would be surprised. If you try fasting, then for two, three days in the beginning you will feel hunger, and then sometimes hunger will disappear completely. It will come again, it will disappear again, it will come again... and you are not eating at all, so you cannot say, "The hunger disappears because I have eaten." You are fasting:

sometimes hunger comes with great power, tries to overpower you -- and if you remain undisturbed by it, the hunger goes. The chakra has fallen asleep -- it will awake again in its turn when the day will come; it will fall back into sleep again.

The same happens with the sex center. You feel so hungry for love, then you have made love -- and then suddenly all desire for love disappears. The chakra has fallen asleep. If you try celibacy, without repression, then you will be surprised. If you don't repress your sexual desire, you simply watch it.... Try it for three months -- just be watchful. When the desire comes, sit silently, let it be there, let it knock on your doors, listen to it, be attentive -- but don't be carried away by it. Let it be there: don't repress it, and don't indulge in it. Be a witness -- and you will be surprised again. Sometimes the desire comes with such intensity that one feels one may go crazy. And then automatically on its own accord it disappears, and sex becomes irrelevant. Again it comes, again it disappears. The chakra goes on moving: sometimes it is day, then sex arises; sometimes it is night, then sex goes to sleep.

And so is true about all the six chakras below the seventh. Sleep does not have a separate chakra; sleep has a counterpart with each chakra, except SAHASRAR. So one thing more to be understood: as you grow higher and higher in your chakras, you will have a better quality of sleep because a higher chakra has a deeper quality of relaxation. The man who lives with the first -- MULADHAR -- will not have a deep sleep. His sleep will be very superficial because he lives with the physical, the material.

I can describe these chakras in this way too. First, the material -- MULADHAR. Second, the vital -- SVADHISTHAN. Third, the sexual, the electrical -- MANIPURA. Fourth, the moral, aesthetic -- ANAHATA. Fifth, the religious -- VISUDDHI. Sixth, the spiritual -- AJNA. And seventh, the divine -- SAHASRAR.

As you move higher, your sleep will go deeper and will have a new quality to it. The man who is food-obsessed and lives only to eat and eat and eat, his sleep will be very disturbed. His sleep will not have silence, peace to it; his sleep will not have music in it.

His sleep will be nightmarish. the man who is a little higher than the food-addict, a man who is more interested in persons that in things and wants to absorb people, will have a deeper sleep -- but not very deep. The sexual person will have the deepest, in the lower realm. That's why sex is used almost as a tranquillizer. If you cannot fall asleep, make love -- and immediately you will be falling asleep. Love relieves you of tensions. In the West, doctors go on prescribing sex for those who suffer from sleeplessness. Now they even prescribe sex for people who are prone to heart-attacks, because sex relaxes, gives you deep sleep.

On the lowest plane, sex gives you the deepest sleep. Then if you move still higher, with the fourth -- ANAHATA -- sleep becomes tremendously tranquil, silent, very purifying and refined. When you love somebody, your relaxation is tremendous, immense. Just the idea that somebody loves you and you love somebody, relaxes you; all tensions are gone.

The world is no longer alien, it is a home. With love, the house is transformed into a home and the alien world becomes a community, and nothing is far away. Through the person you love, God has come very much closer. A loving person knows a deep sleep.

Hate, and you will miss your sleep. Be angry, and you will miss your sleep -- you will fall lower. Love, have compassion, and you will have a deep sleep.

With the fifth, sleep becomes almost prayerful. Hence, all the religions of the world have been insisting that before you go into sleep, pray. Let prayer be associated with sleep.

Never fall into sleep without prayer, so the rhythm goes on vibrating in your sleep. The reverberations of the prayer will transform your sleep. The fifth is the center of prayer -- and if you can pray, and if you can fall asleep praying, you will be surprised in the morning: you will awake, and you will awake praying. Your very wakefulness will be a sort of prayer. With the fifth, sleep becomes prayer. It is no longer ordinary sleep. You are not only going into sleep, you are going in a subtle way into God.

Sleep is a door when you forget your ego; and it is easier to drop into God than while you are awake, because when you are awake the ego is very strong. When you fall deep into sleep your healing powers function to their total optimum capacity. Hence the physicians say that if a person is ill and cannot sleep then there is no possibility for his being healed -- because healing comes from within. Healing comes when the ego is absolutely nonexistential: when the ego is not, then the healing power flows from the within -- it wells up. The man who has moved to the fifth, the VISUDDHI chakra -- to the chakra of prayer -- his life becomes a benediction. You can see: even if he walks you will feel the quality of relaxation in his gestures, in his movements.

The sixth chakra -- AJNA -- is the last, where sleep becomes perfect, beyond which sleep is not needed: the work is finished. Up to the sixth, sleep is needed. With the sixth, sleep becomes meditative -- not even prayerful but meditative -- because in prayer there is a duality: I and Thou, the devotee and the deity. With the sixth, even that duality disappears. Sleep is profound... as profound as death. In fact, death is nothing but a great sleep, and sleep is nothing but a small death. With the sixth, sleep penetrates to your deepest core... and then the work is finished. When you come out of the sixth to the seventh, sleep is no more needed. You have gone beyond duality. Then you are never tired, so sleep is not needed.

This state of the seventh is the state of pure absolute awareness -- call it the state of Christ, Buddha, God.

The same person has asked another question, related to the first: IF SEX CHANGES INTO LOVE, DOES THE URGE TO DOMINATE BECOME WILL, OR THE EFFORT TO BE CONSCIOUS?

This too has to be understood. The first three lower centers are deeply related with the second part -- the three higher centers. First, MULADHAR, SVADHISTHAN, MANIPURA: these are the first three. The second three are: ANAHATA, VISUDDHI, AJNA. These are the two pairs. They are joined together deeply, and it has to be understood -- it will be helpful for you, for your journey.

The first chakra is concerned with food and the fourth chakra is concerned with love.

Love and food are deeply related, joined together. Hence it happens that whenever somebody loves you, you don't eat much. If a woman is loved she remains lean, thin and beautiful. If she is not loved she starts becoming fat, ugly, goes on accumulating; she starts eating too much. Or, vice versa too: if a woman does not want to be loved, she starts eating too much. That becomes a protection -- then nobody will be attracted towards her.

Have you watched it? If a beloved comes to your home, a friend has come, and you are so happy, and so full of love -- that day, appetite disappears. You don't feel like eating -- as if something more subtle than food has fulfilled you, something more subtle than food is inside you and the emptiness is not there. You are full, you feel full. Miserable people eat too much, happy people don't eat too much. The more happy a person, the less he is addicted to food -- because he has a higher food available: love. Love is food on a higher plane. If food is food for the body, love is food for the spirit.

Now even scientists are suspecting it. When a child is born, the mother can give just milk, bodily food. She may not give love -- then the child will suffer; his body will grow but his spirit will suffer. Just bodily nourishment is not enough: spiritual nourishment is needed. If a mother only gives food and not love then she is not a mother, she is only a nurse. And the child will suffer for his whole life -- something will remain stuck, ungrown, retarded. The child needs food, the child needs love: love is needed even more than food.

Have you watched it? If a child is given love he does not bother about food much. If the mother loves the child she is always worried that the child is not drinking as much milk as he should. But if the mother is nonloving then the child drinks too much milk. In fact it is difficult to take him away from the breast because the child becomes afraid: love is not there, he has to depend only on physical food -- the subtle food is missing.

And this goes on happening in your whole life. Whenever you feel that you are missing love, you go on stuffing your body with food -- it becomes a substitute. Whenever people feel empty and they don't have that thrill that love brings, that zest that love brings, that energy that love releases, they start stuffing their body with food. They have fallen back to their childhood; they are in a regressed state.

Children who are given enough love are never addicted much to food. Their spirit is so full: the higher is available -- who bothers about the lower?

Remember, all the religions have talked about fasting for a certain reason. Unless you are taken out of your food obsession prayer will not happen. Hence, fasting gives a great possibility to pray. I am not telling you to become a fast-addict. I am not telling you to start torturing yourself. But if you are a food-addict then fasting is the medicine. If you have been eating too much ten bring a balance. Eating too much you remain too attached to the physical... and you cannot fly into the sky. You are too burdened: a little fasting will be helpful. And in fasting people have observed that their prayer becomes very easy, simple; it is no more a problem. Because when you are not burdened too much by food and the body, the spirit is weightless, can fly: the spirit has wings....

The first and the fourth are related. And my experience is this: that if people are helped to be more loving they forget about food by and by. The old religions insist for fasting, I insist for love -- and you can see the connection. The old religions insist for fasting, so that you can be taken away from your too-much-food obsession. I insist for love -- my technique is more subtle. Then, without even becoming aware, if you are loving you will be taken away from your food obsession. The old religions sometimes can be dangerous, because the food-addict can turn into a fast-addict. He can become another sort of neurotic person: first he was eating too much, now he may start starving himself. In both the cases he remains concerned with food.

I have watched many Jaina monks: they continuously think about food. They believe in fasting, they do fasting, but they are continuously thinking about food -- what to eat, what not to eat, how to eat, when to eat -- their whole psychology is based on food. Food becomes too much of a problem. Hence, I don't insist on fasting, I insist on love -- and fasting comes as a shadow. If you are tremendously in love, one day you will find you don't want to eat today. The love is so much, and you don't want to destroy it. You are flowing so high, you don't want to stuff yourself and bring yourself low... you don't want to move on earth today. And the fasting comes naturally -- you don't think about it, you don't take a vow about it, you don't take a decision about it: suddenly you feel that higher food is available and the lower is not needed... and the fasting happens. Then fasting is beautiful.

The second chakra is related to the fifth. The second chakra is political -- domination, domination over others -- and the fifth chakra is spiritual power -- domination over oneself. With the second chakra you try to overpower people, with the fifth you try to overpower yourself. With the second you try to conquer others, with the fifth you try to conquer yourself. With the second you become a politician, with the fifth you become a priest. And priests and politicians have always remained together: there is a conspiracy between the priest and the politician. The kings and the priests, the politicians and the popes -- they are joined together. They may not be aware, but this is the basic cause behind it: the politician needs the support of the priest, and the priest feels somehow in tune with the politician, because both hanker for power -- one over others, the other over oneself, but the goal is power.

Remember it. I would not like you to become a politician and I would not like you to become a priest either. In fact there is no need to dominate others and there is no need to dominate oneself. Domination as such should be dropped: one should simply be. The very idea to dominate is egoistic -- whether you dominate others or yourself makes no difference. Have you not observed it? -- a person who feels that he has great self-control becomes a great egoist. He goes on declaring that he has tremendous control over himself. His ego is strengthened -- there is danger.

Domination as such has to be dropped. You should not become a priest. Become religious -- don't become a priest. To become religious is one thing, to become a priest is another.

The priest by and by starts declaring that he not only has power over himself, he has power over God. The priest by and by starts declaring that he has power over spiritual forces, psychic forces, occult, esoteric... he becomes more and more obsessed with inner powers. But ALL power is an ego-trip.

Be aware of the second, and be aware of the fifth too: there are pitfalls, there are dangerous possibilities. And once a person becomes a priest he stops; his growth is no more going on. Once you have become a priest you are no more religious; your whole energy has become stagnant. The religious person is always flowing: from first to second, from second to third, from third to fourth, he is always flowing. Up to the seventh he knows no stopping -- there is no station on the way. And with the seventh he also does not stop, because with the seventh he disappears... there is nobody to stop.

Up to the sixth you can stop and become stagnant. With each center there is a possibility that you may fall and become stagnant. If you become stagnant with the first, you will know only the material. If you become stagnant with the third, you will know only the sexual -- and so on and so forth. The second and fifth are joined together, and so are the third and sixth. The third is the sex center and the sixth is the tantra center.

Now, one thing to be remembered always: if you are not very alert you may go on believing that you are moving into tantra, and you may be simply rationalizing your sexuality -- it may be nothing but sex, rationalized in the terminology of tantra. If you move into sex with awareness, it can turn into tantra. If you move into tantra with unawareness, it can fall and become ordinary sex. It has happened in India -- because only India has tried it.

All tantra schools in India, sooner or later, were reduced to sex orgies. It is very difficult to keep aware... it is almost impossible to keep aware. If from the very beginning the discipline has not gone very deep in you, there is every possibility that you will start deceiving yourself. Tantra schools arose in India with great energy, with great insight.

And they had something -- because that is the last center humanly available: the seventh is superhuman, the seventh is divine. The sixth is the spiritual center.

From sex to tantra: a great revolution, a mutation, is possible in man. And in the Eat, people became aware that if you become meditative while making love, the quality of sex changes and something new enters into it -- it becomes tantric, it becomes prayerful, it becomes meditative... it becomes SAMADHI. And a natural flow happens: from the third you can jump to the sixth -- you can bypass the fourth and the fifth. It is a great temptation, a great leap -- you can bypass, a shortcut -- but dangerous too, because you may be simply deceiving yourself... and man is very clever -- very clever in finding rationalizations.

I have heard...

From the diary of a globe-trotting young cinema queen:

MONDAY: The Captain saw me on deck and was kind enough to ask me to sit at his table for the rest of the trip.

TUESDAY: I spent the morning on the bridge with the Captain. He took my picture leaning against the "Passengers not allowed on this bridge" sign.

WEDNESDAY: The Captain made proposals to me, unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.

THURSDAY: The Captain threatened to sink the ship unless I agreed to his proposals.

FRIDAY: I saved eight hundred lives today.

You can find rationalizations. The temptation is always there -- you can find good reasons for wrong motives.

Tantra can any moment become just a garbed sexuality; just in the guise of tantra, nothing but sexuality. Then it is dangerous, more dangerous than ordinary sex -- ordinary sex is at least honest. You don't pretend, you don't claim something higher; you simply say it is ordinary sex. But tantra can be dangerous: you start pretending that this is something higher, something superhuman, something not of this world. Keep this in mind. The third and the sixth are very deeply related. The third can become the sixth, the sixth can fall into the third. A great awareness is needed.

These first three and the last three are two balancing forces. The seventh is beyond. When the first three have been balanced by the second three -- when the lower has been balanced by the higher, when the lower has been cancelled by the higher, when the lower and the higher are of the same weight -- then the seventh happens. Then suddenly the duality disappears. Then there is nothing lower, nothing higher; nothing outer, nothing inner; nothing worldly, nothing otherworldly: then only one is. That one is the goal of all search.

Question 2:

I said it deliberately -- that the master is ninety-nine percent alcohol -- and I was aware that somebody was going to ask the question: Why not one hundred percent? But I said it deliberately, for a certain reason.

The moment the master becomes one hundred percent alcohol he disappears. He cannot exist here; that much purity cannot exist here... he becomes invisible. That one percent impurity is a must -- otherwise there will be no difference between the master and God himself. God is one hundred percent alcohol, a master is ninety-nine percent alcohol: that one percent is the bridge. That one percent makes the master visible; God is invisible.

And that is the whole purpose of a master -- that he brings you something that you cannot see by your own eyes. He becomes the vehicle, he becomes the medium, the passage.

Once the master is also one hundred percent alcohol then there is no difference between the master and God himself. Then he will become as absent as God is: he will be here...

but he cannot be a master.

It is said about Gautam Buddha -- a beautiful parable -- that when he reached the door of the ultimate the doors were opened, there was great celebration, great rejoicing: Buddha has come home. Rarely somebody comes back. The world is so vast, and people go astray in a thousand and one ways... rarely somebody returns back. One soul has returned back.

But Buddha stopped at the gate and he would not enter. And the gatekeeper said: "Sir, why are you standing there? Come in."

Buddha said, "I will not come. I have to stand outside. Unless everybody else enters in, I will cling outside, I will not come in."

The gatekeeper said, "You have attained: now disappear into the absolute."

And Buddha said, "No. I will cling to this bank, outside the absolute, as long as I can, to help those who are still stumbling. I can see millions of souls stumbling on the way. If I disappear into the absolute, then my contact is broken."

The parable is beautiful. This is one percent which is not alcohol: one hundred percent...

Buddha disappears. In the Jaina mythology they say that a person becomes a master if he has one desire still left in his being. If all desires disappear then a person disappears. If there is one desire still left then a person becomes a master -- and not pure alcohol. Jainas call it "a bondage." This too is a bondage: with this bondage the master clings to this shore. If he leaves this desire too he will be gone; he will be not of any help to you.

Millions of people down the ages have attained the truth, but very few of them have become masters. All enlightened people don't become masters, remember. Very rarely an enlightened person becomes a master -- because to become a master you have to be capable of allowing at least one percent impurity in your being. Great compassion is needed. Who bothers? When you have attained, who bothers? who wants to cling? One wants to disappear into the other... great compassion is needed.

It is reported in Ramakrishna's life that he was very much attached to food -- too much:

his attachment was really unbelievable. He would be discussing about God and MOKSHA and meditation, he would be doing his SATSANGA... and just in the middle of it he would say, "Wait. I am coming." And he would go into the kitchen to see what was being prepared. His wife, Sharada, would tell him, "Paramahansa Deva, this doesn't look good. People laugh and they know where you are going. Just in the middle of such a great discussion, talking about God, suddenly you remember food. This doesn't suit you.

People laugh about it, they joke about it."

But Ramakrishna would laugh and he would not change his habit. One day Vivekananda caught hold of him, mm? -- his greatest disciple -- and of course he was feeling very much offended because people were asking, "What is this about your guru? Is he mad?

Why does he go to the kitchen to ask?" And when Sharada his wife would bring his thali, his food, he would simply jump! He would uncover the thali and look into it -- "What have you made?" -- and the disciples were there! It was unbecoming.

So Vivekananda closed the door, locked the door, and said, "Now you have to decide something." Ramakrishna said, "If you insist, then I will tell you the truth: the day I become indifferent to food, I will disappear. This is just an effort to cling to something.

And food seems to be innocent enough -- one has to cling to something. This is my only way to remain on this shore. But you insist, so now you remember: the day I am indifferent to food, remember, Ramakrishna is here only for three more days."

They laughed; they didn't believe him. Who believes the master? They laughed. They said, "He must be joking, or he must be finding an explanation to explain it to us -- otherwise, this is not so." Even Sharada his wife wouldn't believe it. But this happened.

One day Sharada brought his food, and rather than jumping and looking at the food he turned his face towards the wall. Sharada remembered what he had said a few years before... the thali fell from her hands. But Ramakrishna said, "Now it is too late. Now no need to make much fuss about it. You all always wanted me to turn away from food: I have turned. Now three more days..." And within three days he was gone; on the third day he was dead. That was one percent....

You ask me: "If you are ninety-nine percent alcohol, what about the one percent?" I am clinging to that one percent for you. It is possible for me, right this moment, to become one hundred percent -- but then I will be beyond your reach. In this world absolute purity cannot exist; it is not the nature of things. A little impurity is needed.

Once something becomes absolutely pure it simply disappears from the world -- from the world of things, from the world of visible phenomena, it simply disappears. If beauty is one hundred percent pure it will disappear. If truth is one hundred percent pure it will disappear. Purity cannot exist. Purity exists only in God. The master remains, at the most, ninety-nine percent... so that you can drink out of him.

Question 3:

That's true. I cheat sometimes. The question is obviously from Arup. She gathers the questions, so sometimes she comes to hear me answering a question that she has not put in. There are reasons.

There are two types of people: one I call the question-type and the other I call the answer- type. The question-type is one who goes on asking -- he is not worried whether his question is answered or not. He is not concerned what answer is given to his question; his basic concerns it the question. When I am answering him, then too he is preparing some other question. He is not interested in the answer as such -- he is a question-type. He creates questions, he enjoys creating questions. Sometimes he asks absurd questions -- meaningless, irrelevant. Sometimes he asks meaningful questions -- that too, accidentally.

He goes on asking: sometimes by coincidence it is a meaningful question, sometimes it is not.

The other type is the answer-type -- who never asks anything, who simply waits for the answer. For this answer-type, even the questions that the first type asks are meaningful, because he listens to the answer. He never asks the question, but he is very attentive to the answer. Now it happens, sometimes the question-type has to ask a question which is irrelevant to himself but may be relevant to somebody else who is an answer-type. And that too is happening: I continuously watch you, mm? -- somebody is sitting there, a question-type, and just by the side an answer-type, and I see a question from the answer- type jumping into the head of the question-type.

The answer-type cannot ask directly; he has to ask through the question-type -- that is the only way. And the question-type feels very good; whenever he can manage a question he is very happy. He is not worried whether it is his question or not -- it may be somebody else's. It is almost always somebody else's; you don't really ask your questions. Many times you ask other people's questions -- not that they have told you; just sitting by your side they are full of a quest, inquiry: that inquiry pulsates in you, creates a question.

I depend on the question-type for those people who are also answer-types. But sometimes it happens... I go on watching: a person has a question and he is not asking, and nobody else is asking for him. Then sometimes I have to cheat: I put a question in. I have to take care of all of you, of all types.

For example, if Arup had not asked this question I was going to insert it. She was a little impatient -- if she had waited just one week more... because it was hovering on her head.

At least for two, three weeks she was puzzled by this: to ask or not to ask?

My whole process is to make available all that is needed for you. It does not matter whether you have asked or not -- you ask many questions, I never answer them. I choose -- that too is a cheating. Then I never answer the whole question, I choose parts -- that too is a cheating. But I am not a teacher. I am not here to answer your questions, I am here to create a situation in which you can become more and more aware, alert. I am not to satisfy your questions, I am to satisfy your being -- and that is a totally different matter.

Sometimes I see that a question is needed and nobody is asking: I insert it.

You have to ask many questions. Not that just by asking questions you will be able to know the answers; but just by asking questions there is a possibility... the door opens.

Just by asking a question something in your being surfaces: it becomes the most important thing. You make it possible for me to tackle that question. It is not an intellectual thing; I am not going to inform you more. Just by tackling that question something deep in your being will be changed -- because that question is a symptom.

That question has arisen because you are in a certain state of being.

For example, Arup has asked this question. Somewhere deep in her mind a distrust goes on lurking -- otherwise she would not have asked, the question would not have arisen.

She would have said, "Okay, if our Beloved Master feels it right that he has to insert a question, he inserts it." But deep down somewhere, a shadow of doubt: "Why did he insert the question? -- it was not asked. Why?" Somewhere deep, a shadow.... She may not even be aware of it -- that's why she waited for two, three weeks. She could not manage courage; she thought and thought and thought.

Whatsoever you ask is symptomatic: it shows something, it gives an indication. And I am not much concerned about the question; I am much concerned about the real disease about which the question is a symptom. I don't deal with symptoms, I don't treat symptoms -- symptoms are only indications. Somebody has a fever: fever is a symptom, it is not a disease. The disease must be somewhere else. Because of the disease the body is hot: somewhere deep in the body there is a turmoil, a fight going on. Because of that fight, friction, the body has become hot and is feeling feverish. Fever is not the disease; fever is a symptom of some disease inside.

Now if you treat fever directly, you can kill the patient. You can put the patient under a cold shower to make his body cool: you can kill the patient -- this is not treatment. You have to look deep into his body: where is the turmoil? Where is the conflict, the friction?

Why has the body become hot? Why has it lost its normal temperature? A normal temperature means the body is moving without any inner friction. With friction the body becomes hot.

Questions are symptoms. Ask them. I would like you to come to a state where no question arises -- but that cannot come by just not asking. That will come by asking, by asking and dissolving. Those people who are not question-types, they too have to make an effort. It is difficult for them because they are not articulate. Try it: whatsoever you feel -- maybe it is vague, nebulous -- try to fix it into words. Just by bringing it into the conscious mind, becoming articulate about it, you have changed something deep in you.

That's the whole of psychoanalysis -- that the patient goes on talking. The psychoanalyst does not do anything in fact, he simply waits and listens. But just by talking the patient becomes more and more articulate about his unconscious feelings, and once those feelings have been expressed the burden is dissolved -- one is unburdened.

So don't be shy about asking questions. Try. And don't feel that they are foolish -- all questions are foolish. But if one is a fool, one is a fool; and just by hiding it nothing is going to change. Express it. When you don't ask a question and I feel it hovering on you, I have to insert it. If you start asking there will be no need for me to insert.

The whole thing to be remembered is: I am here to help you. I am a physician, I am not a professor. The whole focus is how to help you mutate. so ask as many questions as you can. One day you will find that, by and by, those questions have disappeared. Not that I have answered them -- but just that you asked them, became aware of it; I discussed about it, analyzed it. I really don't answer a question, rather, I try to destroy it. Once it is destroyed, dismantled, it disappears. Not that you will get the answer, but one day you will come to a point where there are no questions in your being. A questionless consciousness is the goal: not a consciousness full of answers, but a questionless consciousness. When there is nothing to be asked, you have arrived.

I have heard...

A young woman went to a fortune-teller. The fortune-teller charged her twenty dollars and said she would answer two questions.

The young woman, after considerable hesitation, finally paid the money and then she said to the fortune-teller, "Isn't that a lot of money for only two questions?"

"Yes, it is," answered the fortune-teller. "Now, what is your second question?"

Don't be afraid of such a thing with me. You can ask a s many questions as you want.

Ask -- and don't be shy. And remember, all questions are foolish, so there is no need to feel awkward. And one thing more: the people who don't ask have more important questions to ask; and the people who ask go on asking for asking's sake -- they don't have many important questions to ask. They ask because they can ask; they may not have the right question. And the people who don't ask may have the right question -- and I have to answer for those too. So if you don't ask I will have to insert questions for you.

A few more things about questions: one, whenever it arises don't wait for tomorrow, write it immediately -- because no question is going to be relevant tomorrow. If you wait for tomorrow you may not ever ask it, and something very much needed may be missed.

The mind goes on changing continuously. the moment you feel the question is there, write it. Don't be worried whether it is relevant or not relevant, whether it will be relevant tomorrow -- "Should I wait? Should I see whether it remains there or simply disappears?"

It WILL disappear -- not because it has become irrelevant; it will disappear because you have a mind which is continuously changing. Even a question cannot be retained: your mind is a flux. Write the question -- and sometimes it may be that it is no more relevant for you, but it may be relevant for somebody else.

All questions are human questions. Maybe you are not in any way anxious to know about it anymore -- somebody else may be. And our thoughts are not individual properties; it is a collective mass. Thoughts go on entering into your head and going out -- it is a continuous exchange between you and others. No thoughts is yours: it comes for a while, stays there, and is gone... and enters into somebody else's head. It is almost like breathing: I breathe in -- it is the same breath that was within your chest just a moment before. Now you have breathed it out, I breathe it in. I breathe it out, somebody else is going to breathe it in. Exactly the same is true about thoughts. You breathe in, breathe out: it is a continuous exchange.

So don't be worried. Let questions be asked. Just one thing to remember: questions should not be asked only for asking's sake. They should be asked because somewhere it is hurting you; somewhere in your being, it has some relationship, some relevance, something to do. Something is like a knot in your being, and this question will help it to open, to dissolve. The question should not be just intellectual, it should be existential.

An elderly lady and gentleman who were obviously from the upper crust, found themselves obliged to travel by train one day, and moreover, had to travel second-class as there were no first-class carriages on the train. The compartment was almost full, and the couple sat stiffly in silence for a while. But soon the atmosphere improved and they found themselves exchanging conversation and pleasantries with the other men in the carriage.

The stories became more and more risque, and finally one of the men told a real beauty.

"How dare you!" said the elderly gentleman indignantly. "How dare you tell that story before my wife!"

"Sorry, guv," apologized the man. "I didn't know she wanted to tell it herself."

Remember, if you don't ask, somebody else is going to ask; if you don't tell, somebody else is going to tell. If it is there, it is going to come. If it is there at all, it is going to erupt from somewhere or other. And if nobody is going to tell, then I am going to insert it. You cannot escape it. Any existential question that is really significant and meaningful and is going to help you, has to be asked. And don't be ashamed of asking.

Question 4:

The path of the masculine is that of awareness, and awareness brings you to a point where you become master of your own being. That is the meaning of SWAMI. The feminine path is that of love, and love brings you to an ultimate point where you can mother the whole existence. And that is the meaning of MA.

A woman in her ultimate flowering becomes a mothering energy... she can mother the whole existence. She feels blessed, and she can bless the whole existence. When a man arrives at the ultimate point he does not become a father, he does not become a mother, he simply becomes a master: master of his own being.

Love and awareness -- these are two paths. And when I say masculine I don't mean that all males are masculine, and when I say feminine I don't mean that all females are feminine. There are women who will have to pass through the path of awareness -- I would like to call them swamis too, but that would be a little more confusing. As it is, it is already too crazy... so I resist that temptation. But sometimes it comes to me that I see a woman taking sannyas and I feel like calling her swami not ma. And then sometimes a man comes, very effeminate, and looks more feminine than any woman. Sometimes it even happens that Mukta sits by my side and she has to tell me, "Beloved, Master, he is a man." She has to remind me, otherwise I may give him a ma name.

But remember, some women are there -- nothing wrong in it -- and some men are there -- and nothing wrong in that either -- who will pass through the opposite path, the contrary path. There was a very famous saint in Kashmir: Lallah was her name. She remained naked. She is the only woman, enlightened woman, who remained naked. Many enlightened men have remained naked, but she is the only woman. It is very easy for a man to remain naked, it is very difficult for a woman to remain naked -- the very feminine quality is to hide. The female is not an exhibitionist. But Lallah remained naked and she became such a famous saint in Kashmir that Kashmir says, "We know only two names: Allah and Lallah. We respect only two names: Allah and Lallah." She was a swami; I cannot call her a ma.

And there is another precedent: in the Jaina tradition, one woman, Mallibai, became a master -- a TIRTHANKARA. But Jainas have changed her name from female to male.

Instead of calling her Mallibai they cal her Mallinath -- the name is changed from a woman's to a man's. And the reason seems to be right, because to be a Jaina TIRTHANKARA is impossible for a woman unless the woman is a woman only in the body. The path is of will and awareness, it is not of love and devotion. The path is of struggle, the path is not of surrender. so I absolutely agree. They have done right when they changed the woman's name into a man's name. She must have been a woman only for the name's sake: deep down, she had that male energy.

I call a woman "ma" because if she flowers and comes to the seventh -- SAHASRAR -- she will become a mothering force. I call the man-sannyasins "swami" because when they come to their ultimate flowering they will simply feel that they have become masters of their own being. Both are the same -- but one is a male interpretation of the same experience, another is a female interpretation of the same experience.

Question 5:

Prayer is wonder, reverence. Prayer is receptivity for the miracle that surrounds you.

Prayer is surrender to the beauty, to the grandeur to this fantastic existence. Prayer is non- argumentative dialogue with existence. It is not a discussion... it is a love-dialogue. You don't argue... you simply whisper sweet nothings.

When a man falls in love with a woman he whispers sweet nothings into her ear. When a man falls into love with existence... the same romance: prayer IS romance. It is fantasy; it is becoming available to the miraculous. Many people have lost the capacity to pray, because many people have lost the capacity to wonder. They have lost the capacity to be surprised. You go on seeing millions of wonders every day but you are not surprised at all. Your eyes are so full of dust and knowledge that you don't see anything. A seed is sprouting, and you don't see any wonder. A new leaf coming out of the tree, and you don't see any wonder. A bird singing, and nothing happens inside you. A peacock dances, and nothing dances inside you. A white cloud floats in the sky, and you remain untouched. Then prayer is impossible.

Prayer needs a poetic heart, a loving heart. Approach reality more poetically -- don't be too much of a scientist, don't be too much of a rationalist. don't think that you know; nothing is really known -- ignorance is absolute, ignorance is ultimate. Once you understand that nothing is known, and ignorance is ultimate, you will again be full of those beautiful eyes you had when you were small children.

I have heard...

The husband was one of those cynical, sour guys whom nothing moved or impressed. To him, everything was just a big "so what?" He visited a psychiatrist, and after a short examination was given this diagnosis: "You are cold and blase. To you, everything means a big nothing. You are married, eh? Well, here's what you do. Ringling's circus is in the town: take your wife and see the show. Take a look at how red-blooded people live and act. Watch the performers who live dangerously; see how they pulsate and glow."

The schnook took his wife to the circus. Out into the ring came the roaring lions and tigers. The wife was thrilled by the excitement, but the husband yawned and replied, "Yeah? So what?" Finally there came the grand finale where the daredevil was shot out of a cannon three hundred feet into the air, turned several somersaults, and then, pulling out a clarinet, began playing before hitting the net. The crowd roared its appreciation for the act, but the husband, after a few minutes of thought, turned to his wife and grunted in a bored manner, "A Benny Goodman he's not!"

Prayer is the capacity to be amazed. prayer is the capacity that you had as children, and you have lost. Claim it -- reclaim it -- because with prayer you have lost all. The day your wondering eyes closed, God became nonexistential to you. Open your wondering eyes again, and you will find him pulsating again. He's very close by... he's all around you... he is within and without.

Question 6:

Far out, Devadas.

The Divine Melody