A play with the devil

The first question:

Question 1:

Gyan Nirmal,

LOVE is not only the hope af the world, but the only hope. Up to now man has lived an absolutely loveless life. All the societies and the cultures and the religions that have existed on the earth have talked about love, but lived a very loveless existence. Much talk about love has happened in the past, but the structure that societies have created is basically against love. The society is geared for war, and a society that is geared for war can only talk about love but cannot live it.

We have come now to the peak of this ugly, stupid structure of hatred. We have come to the point where either man is to change totally or will have to die.

The new man can be born only with a new heart, with a new soul - and the flavor of that soul will be love, and the poetry of that heart will be love. A society that lives lovelessly is competitive, ambitious, obsessed with money, power, prestige. A society that lives without love lives through beliefs. Beliefs divide people, and all divisions breed war. A society that lives without love lives a very lusterless existence, because without love there is no splendor in life, no significance. Without love no song arises in the heart of man.

We have come to the point or we are coming to it, approaching it every day: by the end of this century man will have to choose either total destruction or a revolution - a revolution not political, not social, but a revolution of the heart. A turning-point is coming closer every day; you have to be prepared for it.

Sannyas has to become a herald for a new world, the first ray of the dawn. Man is reaching towards total war; all preparations are there to commit a global suicide. This is what your history has brought you to. All the Alexanders and all the Napoleons and all the Stalins and all the Hitlers and all the Maos have been working for centuries and centuries; now their dream is going to be fulfilled: we can destroy this whole earth within seconds. Destruction has reached its peak; unless creativity also reaches to its peak man cannot be saved.

And to me, love is nothing but the birth of creativity in you. By love I mean an overflowing heart.

Love to me is not only a relationship. The relationship that we call love is a faraway, distant echo of the real thing.

The real thing is not a relationship but a state; one is not in love but one IS love. Whenever I talk about love remember this: I am talking about the state of love. Yes, relationship is perfectly good, but the relationship is going to be false if you have not attained to the state of love. Then the relationship is not only a pretension, it is a dangerous pretension, because it can go on befooling you; it can go on giving you the sense that you know what love is, and you don't know. Love basically is a state of being; one is not in love, one IS love.

And that love arises not by falling in love with somebody. That love arises by going in - not by falling but by rising, soaring upwards, higher than you. It is a kind of surpassing. A man is love when his being is silent; it is the song of silence. A Buddha is love, a Jesus is love - not in love with a particular person, but simply love. Their very climate is love. It is not addressed to anybody in particular, it is spreading in all directions. Whosoever comes close to a Buddha will feel it, will be showered by it, will be bathed in it. And it is unconditionally so.

Love makes no conditions, no ifs, no buts. Love never says, "Fulfill these requirements, then I will love you." Love is like breathing: when it happens you are simply love. It does not matter who comes close to you, the sinner or the saint. Whosoever comes close to you starts feeling the vibe of love, is rejoiced. Love is unconditional giving - but only those are capable of giving who HAVE.

One of the most mysterious things about man is that he goes on giving things which he doesn't have. You go on giving love and you don't have it in the first place, and you go on asking love from others who don't have it in the first place. Beggars begging from beggars!

Love first has to happen in the deepest core of your being. It is the quality of being alone, happily alone, joyously alone. It is the quality of being a no-mind, of being silent. Contentless consciousness is the space, the context in which love arises in you.

And when it arises in you it is so much, it is unbearable. Its pleasure is so unbearable that it becomes almost pain. It is heavy like the clouds which are full of rain; they HAVE to shower, they HAVE to rain, they HAVE to unburden themselves. When love arises in the silent heart, it has to be shared, it has to be given; you are helpless.

And the person you give your love to is not obliged to you in any way. In fact, you are obliged to the person because he helped you unburden, he shared something that was too much in you. And the economics of love is: the more you give, the more you have, because in your silent being you are joined with the oceanic, the divine source of all. And you can go on sharing... more and more goes on flowing in you, it goes on welling up.

Gyan Nirmal, yes, you are right, love is the only hope of the world. And we are coming close to that turning point: either total war or total love. And this is a question of either/or, there is no third alternative. There is nothing like a compromise now, you cannot be in the middle. Man has to choose. And it is a question of life and death: war is death, love is life.

By creating you here, by creating sannyasins here, I am creating a new kind of space. This is the beginning of a totally new man. Hence the old traditions will be unable to understand what is happening here; they don't have any criterion. The experiment is so new! Yes, once in a while men like Buddha, Kabir, Krishna, Christ, Zarathustra, have happened in the past, but only individuals.

Now only individuals won't do; only a Buddha here and there won't be of much help. The world has gone too much into hate. The world is so full of hate that it is almost like an ocean of hatred, and a Buddha will be just a spoonful of sugar - it won't change the taste of the ocean. We will need THOUSANDS of Buddhas.

Hence I am not interested in Christians, I am interested only in Christs. I am not interested in Jains, I am interested only in Mahavirs. I am not interested in Buddhists, I am interested only in Buddhas.

My effort here is not to create a following, not to create believers, but to create individuals, lovers, meditators who can stand on their own, and each one can become a light. And we will need... the night is going to become darker and darker every day... we will need millions of lights around the world, millions of people who are capable of love, unconditionally, without asking anything in return, and who are so silent and who are so blissful that wherever they are they will be able to dissipate darkness.

Yes Gyan Nirmal, love is the hope of the world, the only hope.

The second question:

Question 2:

Anand Sunno,

MEDITATE first over this small anecdote....

The young man had been keeping company with a girl for over two years, but still had given no indication of serious intentions.

"I had a strange dream last night," he remarked one day. "I dreamt I proposed to you. I wonder what that is a sign of?"

"It is a sign that you have got more sense asleep than awake."

And that's exactly my answer to you, Sunno: you have got more sense asleep than awake.

In fact, the whole movement of psychoanalysis is based on this understanding: that people are more intelligent while dreaming than while they are awake. Why has this strange thing happened?

People should be more intelligent when they are awake rather than when they are dreaming. There is a reason: the society has impressed your waking mind; it has not yet been able to impress your dreaming mind. The society has destroyed your waking mind, distorted it, polluted it, disfigured it.

It is almost unrecognizable now from what it could have been naturally. So much has been pruned, cut, so much has been repressed, so much has been imposed from the outside, that you don't know what you would have been if society had not interfered with you so much.

But your unconscious, your dreaming mind is still out of the grabbing society. It will not be for long, remember! There are people who are working to grab your unconscious mind too. Particularly in Russia they have been experimenting for at least twenty years on how to influence your dreaming, sleeping mind, and they HAVE succeeded. They have succeeded enough for you to be alert, to beware.

Now in Soviet Russia they have found that a person can be taught even while he is asleep and dreaming. Earphones are put on the person, and in a very, very silent way, so that his sleep is not disturbed, in a subliminal way, messages are given. He continues to sleep yet his mind goes on receiving messages. You can teach new languages, mathematics, history, philosophy, anything, and he will remember in the morning. In fact, it seems to work far better than ordinary schooling, because in ordinary schooling you have to go on repeating the same thing again and again; when it is repeated too much, only then does it go a little deeper. But when you are asleep the depth of your mind is available.

It is okay if you teach mathematics and science and history - but politicians cannot stop there. They will teach communism, fascism - it is bound to happen; they will teach Gandhism - it is bound to happen. They will teach Christianity, Hinduism, Islam - it is bound to happen. Once the politician has got the means to influence your sleeping mind he cannot leave you alone.

At least right now you are free to dream; soon the danger is that you will not even be free to dream.

The government will go on influencing your dreams; it will allow you only to dream certain dreams, it will create dreams in you. In a communist country you cannot dream a capitalist dream - even in a dream you cannot have a car of your own, that won't be allowed.

And if your unconscious becomes available to the politicians, man is utterly destroyed. It should not be allowed! This is far more dangerous than atomic bombs, because the atom and the hydrogen bomb can only destroy your body, but these new techniques of Behaviorist psychology can destroy you in your psychology. Right now at least you have some privacy. Politicians are not even willing to give you that much privacy; they want to interfere, they want to poke into your dreams. But up to now it has not happened much; they have succeeded in experimentation, but it has not yet been used on a wide scale.

Sunno, you say, "WHILE DREAMING, SOMETHING IS CONSTANTLY TELLING ME THAT I HAVE TO DIE." That is the voice of your inner being. It has nothing to do with your physical death, it has something to do with your psychological death. It has something to do with the death of the ego.

It happens to every meditator: the more you meditate the more your inner voice says, "Let the ego die." The more you meditate, the more you become aware that a certain death is going to happen.

And you know only one kind of death, so naturally you misinterpret; you think, "I am going to die."

You are not going to die, only the 'I', the ego, the personality is going to die, is going to disappear.

Your dream is giving you a very significant message.

And you say, "I REMEMBER NO OTHER DREAMS. WHAT IS HAPPEN ING?"

Then this dream is not an ordinary dream, it is something extraordinary. It is not just the rubbish of the mind. Ninety-nine percent of your dreams consist of the rubbish, rubbish that you gather in the day, rubbish that you go on chewing over in the night. It is the reflection of your day, it has nothing special in it.

That's why psychoanalysis takes so many years - to find a gem in the rubbish takes time. The rubbish is really so much that it takes two years, three years for the psychoanalyst to find something significant, to sort it out, to figure out where you are, what you are.

But in meditation it can happen very quickly, because in meditation you go directly. You don't search in the rubbish, you simply dive deep into your being to where the diamond is, where the Lotus Paradise is.

Sunno, you are hearing something of your inner voice. It is not really a dream, it is far more true than any truth that you have yet known. It is the voice of your soul, it is God speaking to you. Listen, follow - help the ego to die. Become absolutely non-existent as far as the ego is concerned.

And in the death of the ego love is born, God is born, light is born. In the death of the ego you are transformed; all misery disappears as if it had never existed. Your life right now is a nightmare.

When the ego dies nightmares disappear and a great sweetness arises in your being, and a subtle joy, for no reason at all. You cannot explain it to anybody, you cannot explain it to yourself either. It is unexplainable, mysterious. But who cares for the explanation? When you are bathed, when you are in rejoicing, when the being is in a dance, who cares?

People ask why only when they are in suffering. You ask why when you are ill, you never ask why when you are healthy. You never ask your physician, "Why am I healthy?" You certainly ask when you are ill, "Why am I ill? Why this headache, why this stomach-ache?" But when you are perfectly healthy you don't go to the physician to ask, "Why am I healthy?" Health is natural, so is bliss; misery is unnatural. Misery is pathology, illness, dis-ease.

Let the ego die, Sunno. The time has come, and your inner voice is saying, "Don't cling to it. Let go!"

The third question:

Question 3:

Barry Letts,

CERTAINLY! You know, that s why I never walk down the road!

But you don't understand; you have asked the question, but you don't understand the meaning of it at all. This is a message only for the disciples, and you are not yet a disciple, you are not yet a sannyasin.

This is a Zen way of saying something of immense value. It is a Zen saying: If you meet the Buddha on the Way, kill him! But Buddha is dead, has been dead for twenty-five centuries. Where can you meet him, on what way? And how can you... can you kill one who has been dead for twenty-five centuries?

It has a totally different meaning: it is a message to the disciple who LOVES Buddha, who loves Buddha so much that there is a possibility that Buddha may become his last barrier - because of his love, because he is a disciple, because he is a sannyasin, because he meditates, goes deeper and deeper into his being and will feel more and more grateful towards Buddha.

And at the last moment even the Master has to be left behind... at the last moment. At the very last you have to say goodbye to the Master too. This is something inner, remember; it has nothing to do with the outer. This is something inner. All thoughts disappear, then only one thought remains - the thought of your Master.

And it is very difficult to say goodbye. You owe so much to the Master - he has been your source, your transformation; he has been your nourishment, your life; he has brought you along the long way. And now to say goodbye to the person who has been your guide, your friend? And now to say goodbye to him who has been a constant companion in the dark night of the soul; when the dawn is coming to say goodbye to him? It seems impossible! And the disciple, at the last moment, starts clinging to the idea of the Master.

But that becomes a barrier. The Master will himself give him a push, and if you don't listen to the push then he will give you a kick in the pants! - because you have to go, you have to go into the unknown.

The Master himself says - I say to you - "If you meet me on the Way, kill me." But what way is implied? You will not meet me on M.G. Road! What way? If you go inwards, on the inner Way, on the inward journey, at the last check-post I am waiting for you.

And it will be difficult to say goodbye, it has always been difficult to say goodbye. Hence the statement to just KILL the Master, so there is no need even to say goodbye; kill the Master so there is no need to look back; kill the Master so you can now be left TOTALLY alone, with not even the shadow of the Master with you. And this is done in great gratefulness, in great gratitude.

But Barry Letts, this is not for you. First become a sannyasin, a disciple, start moving inwards; only then can you meet me. You have not yet even met me outwardly, how can you meet me inwardly?

You have not yet come closer to me, how can you be in a state of clinging to me? You are far away, you are distant, you are avoiding. You have not even said good morning so what is the point of saying goodbye?

First become a disciple. Move on the inward Way, let me help you to the ultimate point, and then certainly if you meet me on the inner Way, kill me.

But it happens that people understand only according to THEIR idea. You have not understood this Zen koan. And remember again, it is not that the disciple kills the Master in anger. He kills him in gratitude. In fact he kills him because the Master orders him to kill him; he simply followed the commandment - crying, weeping, with tears in his eyes. And even when he has killed, the gratitude remains.

You know the story of the famous Zen Master, Ikkyu? He was staying in a temple on a very cold night. There were many wooden Buddhas in the temple, so he brought two, three Buddhas and made a good fire, and enjoyed.

In the middle of the night, with the fire and the crackling of the wood and the smoke, the priest awoke: "What is happening? What is going on?" He saw this monk who was a stranger, who had asked for shelter and was given shelter, and what had he done? Three Buddhas gone! Naturally he was in a rage. He said, "Are you mad or something? You have burnt three Buddhas!"

Ikkyu took his staff and started searching. Now there was nothing left, just ashes; he was searching for something in the ashes. And the priest asked, "What are you searching for?"

He said, "For Buddha's bones."

In India, in the East, the bones are called flowers, symbolically. So he said, "I am searching for the flowers, for the bones of Buddha."

Now it was the priest's turn to laugh. He said, "You are really mad! How can you find flowers, bones, in the wooden Buddhas?"

Ikkyu said, "Then you too are not as stupid as you look. Then bring a few more Buddhas, because the night is long and it is too cold. If you know that these are only wooden Buddhas, then what is the fear? We can enjoy! My Buddha inside is feeling cold. And what do you think - should I care about the living Buddha or the wooden Buddha?"

It was too dangerous to keep this man inside the temple, and the priest had to go to sleep too, so he said, "You please get out, otherwise you may burn other Buddhas. You simply get out! I don't want anything of this nonsense!"

He threw him out into the cold night. When he was being thrown out Ikkyu again said, "What are you doing? Throwing a Buddha, a living Buddha, out on such a cold night to protect the wooden Buddhas?"

But the priest wouldn't listen, he closed the doors in his face. And in the morning when the priest went out of the temple he saw another miracle happening. Just by the side of the road there was a milestone. Ikkyu had gathered a few flowers from the roadside. He had offered the flowers to the milestone, was bowing down and was saying, "BUDDHAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI, SANGHAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI, DHAMMAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI :" I take shelter at the feet of the Buddha, I take shelter in your commune, my Lord, I take shelter in the DHAMMA, the Law that you have taught to us."

The priest said, "What are you doing? In the night you burnt a Buddha, and now you are worshipping the milestone as a Buddha?"

And Ikkyu said, "If you have gratitude you can show it anywhere. If you don't have it even thousands of wooden Buddhas cannot create it." If you have gratitude you can show it anywhere.... Now this is the man of Zen.

Barry Letts, if you understand Ikkyu then you will understand this statement. On the one hand he burned, on the other hand he worshipped.

The Masters who were telling their disciples, "If you meet the Buddha on the Way, kill him!" were worshipping the Buddha every day, morning, afternoon, evening. They were prostrating themselves before the Buddha. And many times it had been asked by the disciples, "Sir, you say 'If you meet the Buddha on the Way, kill him!' Then why do you worship?"

And he would say, "Because he is the only Master in the world... Buddha is the only Master in the world who helps you to get rid of him too; hence the gratitude."

You have not understood the statement. These statements have a very different meaning than is apparent. To understand these statements you will have to become a little grown-up. As far as these statements are concerned, you are like children.

A teacher explained to her class that the four basic elements of successful fiction were religion, royalty, sex and mystery. Then she assigned her class to write their first novel. After about five minutes little Peter walked up to the teacher's desk and said, "Teacher, I have finished."

"In five minutes?" asked the teacher. "Are you sure you included the four basic elements, religion, royalty, sex, and mystery?"

"Yes, I did," said the boy. "I will read it to you:'Holy Moses!' said the princess, 'Pregnant again?

Wonder who done it this time.... "'

The novel was finished, and all the four basic elements were there: "HOLY Moses!" said the PRINCESS. "PREGNANT again? I WONDER who done it this time.... "

To understand these great statements you will need a little more grown-up mind.

Yes certainly, Barry Letts, if you meet me on the Way, kill me. But first please, be on the Way - where I am waiting for you, to be killed by you!

But you don't know another thing which is not really ever said. This statement is only half of it; the other half, the first half, is missing. Before you can ever kill me, I will kill you. That's how you will enter the Way!

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Christiane,

IT IS a beautiful statement and of great significance. You cannot fight against the devil, because if you fight with the devil you take the devil very seriously, and to take the devil very seriously is to believe in him. The devil is created by your seriousness about him, your seriousness is his nourishment. It is by your being serious about him that you pay respects, that you feed him. And the more serious you become about him, the more frightened you are; the more frightened you are the more he will scare you. The devil has not to be taken seriously at all, and if you fight you cannot avoid taking him seriously.

And how are you going to fight with the devil? Where will you find him? You will find him within yourself - you will condemn some part of your being as the devil and you will fight with it. And that is like your right hand fighting with your left hand, condemning, condemning the left as the devil. And that's how people think: right is right and left is wrong.

The left hand is as much you as your right hand. You will divide yourself: your head will start fighting with your heart, your mind will start fighting with your body. You will become fragmentary, you will become divided, and there will be a great civil war within you. You will condemn sex, you will condemn anger, greed, and you will condemn a thousand and one things, but they are part of you. The more you condemn them the more power you give to them, because whenever you condemn something you become focused on it - and to be attentive to something is to give power to it. Whenever you become too attentive towards something you become hypnotized by it.

The person who is against sex becomes obsessed with it. He CONTINUOUSLY thinks about it because he has to be alert, on guard; otherwise the enemy will defeat him. And for twenty-four hours on guard against whom? - against your own energy! So you are split; and to be split is to be in misery, and to be split is to be poor because the energy dissipates. And to be in inner conflict is to be in anguish, agony. Bliss means to be integrated.

Where is the devil? It is some condemned part of you. And you cannot cut it out because it is so deeply a part of you that there is no possibility of separating it from your self. So you can go on fighting, but you will never win.

The statement is beautiful: you cannot fight against the devil, you can only play with him.

And that's what I am teaching you here: be playful, non-serious. Yes, even with sex, anger, greed, everything that has been condemned down the ages, be playful with it. And then the miracle happens: if you are playful the devil starts evaporating, because it is seriousness that gives him shape and form and solidity. When you become playful about him, when you are not on guard, when you are not fighting, he is being starved; and when you are playful you take the very earth from underneath his feet.

Try to be playful with anything and you will see the miracle happening. Be playful with sex and soon you will be beyond sex. That's the whole secret of Tantra: just be playful about it, don't take it so seriously, it is nothing to be worried about. It is not a problem to be solved, it is your energy to be understood - and not only understood but re-absorbed.

If you can absorb your own sexual energy you will be far richer than you are, stronger than you are. If you can absorb your anger into yourself, your greed into yourself, you will no longer be a schizophrenic; your whole pathology will disappear. You will be whole and healthy, and you will have a totally different feeling of well-being. You will be surrounded by sunlight. You will be sunlit! And wherever you go you will carry peace - very tangible, very substantial - around you, because there will be no conflict in you.

Being playful is one of the great secrets of inner transformation.

Christiane, learn to be playful. If all seriousness disappears from your life, you are religious.

But this is not what is ordinarily understood by a religious person. A religious person becomes very, very serious. He looks at you as if you are sinners condemned to go to hell, doomed. He walks erect, with great pride. You can see in his eyes that he knows that he is 'holier than thou', higher than thou, that he is saved and you are condemned. And of course he becomes very serious; his going to the church, to the temple, his prayer, his ritual, all are very serious affairs. He does not take it non-seriously, playfully. And you cannot know what prayer is if you don't know what playfulness is.

Real religion teaches you playfulness - sincerity of course, but seriousness no, authenticity of course, but seriousness no.

You have come to the right place, Christiane, that's what we are doing here. This whole space that is being created here is that of playfulness. People are working, but the work has no seriousness about it, no tension about it. They are enjoying it; that is prayer, that is worship. They are continuously working - nowhere else can you find so much work going on, and with such non-seriousness, with such playfulness.

Just a few days ago I told you that there are three hundred people working. It was wrong - about information I am not very reliable, even about my own ashram, because I never go out I am afraid...

somebody may kill me, because fools are everywhere!

It is perfectly okay with Buddha if you kill him, because he is already dead!

Laxmi told me that there are not three hundred, but seven hundred people working, and one hundred are waiting because there is no space for them to work. How can there be space in such a small, six-acre piece of land? Seven hundred people working - per acre there are more than a hundred!

But you don't feel crowded... because there are no serious people around. Otherwise one serious person is enough to make the place crowded. A hundred playful persons don't make a crowd; they remain individuals, they don't create a crowd. And you can see the joy and the celebrating mood.

This I call true religion - playfulness, lovingness, cheerfulness.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

Sukh Deva,

SEX has nothing to do with age; you can be six hundred and it will still be there. It has something to do with awareness, not with age. Remember, just by growing old you don't grow up. You may be sixty physiologically, and you may be just nearabout twelve, thirteen, or at the most fourteen psychologically, hence this hang-up. A person who is psychologically fourteen is bound to be haunted by sex, and people are stuck at somewhere near thirteen, fourteen.

The average mental age of humanity is twelve. It is unbelievable that people get stuck so early.

What happens, and why at just nearabout twelve, thirteen, fourteen? - because that is the time when sex ripens in you, and no society wants you to go beyond that point. Every society wants you to remain sexually starved, because a sexually starved person is very useful for the society - for this ill society. A sexually starved person can be channelized in any direction very easily because he is boiling within. You can make him go after money: then money will be his sex, then his whole sexual energy which is starved will move towards money. Then money will be his beloved, his God, and for his whole life he will run after money. And naturally, sex will haunt him because money cannot satisfy it. You can gather as much money as you want, but how can it satisfy your basic urge? The society has diverted your urge, has given you a diversion; it has given you a toy.

And that's how we start from the very beginning: the child is crying, he wants milk, and he is given a pacifier! And the poor child starts sucking the pacifier and thinks that it is the mother's breast.

How mean can we be? This is sheer meanness! You are being very political with the poor child, diplomatic, cunning. The poor child has no understanding yet to make a distinction between the pacifier and the breast; he has been deceived. Now if later on this child one day disrespects his mother, hates his mother, there is no wonder in it.

You can go to any psychoanalyst and ask him, "What is the fundamental problem of every person?"

and you will be surprised to know that he will not give you some name: neurosis, psychosis, schizophrenia, hysteria, et cetera, et cetera. If you ask him, "What is the fundamental problem of every psychologically disturbed person?" he will say, "the mother." But why the mother? - because she was the first one who started deceiving the child. She was the first acquaintance of the child with the world, and he cannot trust anybody now. He cannot even trust his own mother, how can he trust anybody else? And when the child was crying and he wanted to be hugged... because a child needs warmth as much as milk, it is a very deep physiological need of the child.

Now it is a proven scientific fact that if a child is given all nourishment but no warmth of the body, he will shrink and die. Or even if he survives he will remain retarded, unhealthy for his whole life; something will be missing in him. He not only needs mother's milk, he needs the warmth of the mother's bosom, the warmth of the mother's body. That warmth is now understood to be absolutely fundamental, absolutely necessary.

But when the child is crying he cannot say, "Mum, I want to be hugged," because he has no language yet. But by crying he is saying, "Hug me, kiss me, caress me, let me come close to you." And he is given a teddy bear, or he is given some toy to be engaged with. He is being deceived from the very beginning: he wants something, he gets something else. That's how we go on distorting.

By the time a child is coming to sexual maturity we start giving him ambitions. We start telling him, "Come first in the university, come first in school - come first! Wherever you are, whatsoever you are doing, you have to be the first." We start a great desire in his mind to be first anywhere he is; this is giving a new direction to his sexual energy.

The society is trying to divert his natural energies. We start telling him, "Unless you have a big car, a big house, much money in the bank, you are a failure." He starts running after big things. He may not need a big house. In fact a smaller house may be far more beautiful because it can be kept more clean, and his needs are not that much that he should have a big house of many, many rooms.

But the idea has been implanted in his mind that "Unless you have a big house, very imposing, you are a failure." Now the big house becomes his symbol of fulfillment, money in the bank becomes his symbol of fulfillment - but only symbols, empty. Deep down he is unfulfilled, deep down he is hankering. The deep consciousness is continuously telling him, "Be natural, let your natural energies flow in a natural, spontaneous way."

You ask me, Sukh Deva, "HOW LONG DOES THIS STUPID SEX CONTINUE TO HAUNT ONE?"

Why do you call it stupid? You are angry at it. Sex is not stupid - you may be stupid! Sex is simply sex. You can be stupid with it, you can be intelligent with it; that is something about you, not about sex. And if you call it names, if you condemn, it will persist. You will be sixty, you will be seventy, you will be eighty - it won't make any difference. In fact, the more weak your body will become, the more the repressed sex will explode on your conscious- The big burly rapist broke into a Texas homestead when all the men were out on a cattle drive and raped all ten women living there - all except an eighty-five-year-old great granma.

The victims lay around groaning in a state of chaos. The rapist lay in the corner exhausted and naked.

Old granny took her spectacles off her nose, put them on the nose of the rapist and cried, "Look around, big fella, and see if you missed anybody!"

Sukh Deva, it will persist; don't call it stupid. You are being stupid with it.

Accept it. It is a natural desire, a natural energy, the very fountain-source of all life. Yes, there are things beyond it, beautiful spaces beyond it. Sex brings joy and sex brings misery too. They are mixed with sex because sex is a mixture of the sky and the earth, body and soul; hence it brings both - it gives you wings one moment, it cuts your wings another moment. One moment it is a great ecstasy, another moment you have fallen into a deep agony. One moment you are on the peak, the sunlit peak, another moment you are groaning in a dark valley. Sex is both.

But one has to learn the valleys and the peaks. And one has to learn by one's own experience, not by what others say, not by what I say. Your own experience of sex will make you free of it. I am not saying be free of it; and don't try to be free of it, otherwise you will never be free of it.

What I am saying is simply: freedom from sex is a consequence, a by-product. You cannot achieve it directly, it comes indirectly. You live it with deep playfulness, meditativeness, as a gift of God, and slowly slowly, seeing the peaks and the valleys again and again, a third point will arise in your being:

the witness who witnesses the peak, who witnesses the valley. Slowly, slowly neither peaks are important nor valleys are important. Your consciousness has gone through a revolution, you have become more centered in the witnessing soul. That witnessing is BRAHMACHARYA, that witnessing brings real celibacy. It is not against sex, it is beyond sex.

Otherwise, it will go on haunting you to the very last moment. You will be dying and you will not be thinking of God, you will be thinking of sex. That's why the moment you die, immediately you are born - not even minutes are lost, because you die with the idea of sex in your head. Here you immediately leave this body, and the desire to' enter into another body arises, because sex can be fulfilled r only through the body.

Down in sunny Mexico there lived an old aunt with four very pretty nieces.

One day Pancho Villa and his gang of revolutionary bandits broke into their house. Accosting them on the patio the brigand said, "This place is in our possession and you are in our power."

"We are helpless!" one of the girls exclaimed, "and we must submit, but please spare poor old aunt."

"Shut up!" snapped the aunt, "War is war!"

It has nothing to do with age, it-has something to do with gaining a higher awareness, a deeper awareness.

Become a witness, Sukh Deva, and don't call it stupid. Become intelligent, see, watch, observe.

Whatsoever is given to you must have a reason, a rhyme in it. Whatsoever you have got must have something of the beyond in it. You are only able to see the lower part of the ladder because your eyes are not open and your being is not conscious; hence you see only the lower part of the ladder, sex. The higher part of the ladder is SAMADHI. If you can see the whole ladder, all the rungs of it, you will be surprised: that sex is the door to SAMADHI.

The very idea of SAMADHI was born because of those few rare people who were able to attain to total orgasmic joy through sex. They became aware that there is something in sex which is not sexual at all. In a deep orgasmic state time disappears, mind disappears, ego disappears. Now these things have nothing to do with sex. And because these three things disappear, great joy arises. That arising of joy has nothing to do with sex either: it is because sex helped, became a context for the disappearance of the ego, mind and time.

The first experimenters - their names are lost, it must have been thousands of years before - the first tantrikas, the first people who attained to SAMADHI through sex, they watched, meditated, and they saw one thing: sex is only a physiological triggering of a certain process which can be triggered without sex too, which can be triggered only by meditation. There is no need to go into sex. Once they had known that the process could be triggered by other means also - by Yoga methods, by Tao methods, by Tantra methods, by Sufi methods - once they knew that the same state could be attained, of no ego, no mind, no time, without going into sex, they had found the key. But the key was found only through groping in sex.

Sex has been the very source of religion, and the sexual experience has been the first experience of SAMADHI. Don't call it stupid, please. Go into it lovingly, playfully, meditatively. Try to understand, because liberation comes through understanding and in no other way.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

Prem Deva,

LISTEN, but don't follow. Listen well, but follow your own insight, don't follow others' advice.

Listen certainly, very meditatively, try to understand what they are wanting to convey to you. They may REALLY be well-wishers, but if you start following blindly you will never attain to your own intelligence. You will remain dependent on crutches, you will always look up to others to tell you what to do, what not to do. You will always need leaders - which is a very unhealthy state, to need leaders.

Listen, because people have great experiences, and if they are sharing, willing to share, it will be foolish on your part not to listen. Sharing their experience may give you great insight - it will help you to become more aware - but don't follow.

People follow literally and then they become just blind. When others are giving you all that you need, what is the need to have your own eyes? And when others are chewing for you, what is the need to chew on your own? Slowly, slowly you become more and more weak, more and more impoverished, more and more starved.

A man who had recently opened a shop had a large notice overhead which read FRESH FISH SOLD HERE. Along came a friend and said, "Why have you got 'HERE' on the board?" So he cut out the word 'HERE'. Then another friend came along and said, "'SOLD'? Of course it is sold. You are not giving it away, are you?" So out came the word 'SOLD'.

A third came along and said, "'FRESH FISH'? It has to be fresh. Who will buy stale fish from you?

Cut out the word FRESH.

The shopkeeper obliged. Now only the word 'FISH' remained on the board when a fourth man arrived and said, "'FISH'? Fancy having that up! You can smell it a mile away." The shopkeeper erased this last word on the board.

A fifth man arrived and said, "What's the idea of hanging a blank board over the shop?" The shopkeeper removed the board.

A sixth man came on the scene and said, "You have opened such a big shop. Can't you hang a board on it with a notice saying, 'FRESH FISH SOLD HERE?'"

Now if you go on listening to people you will become more and more confused; that's how you have become confused. Your confusion is this: that you have been listening to many kinds of people and they are all giving different advice. And I am not saying that they are not well-wishers; they are well-wishers, but not very conscious well-wishers, otherwise they would not give you advice. They would give you an insight, not advice. They would not tell you what to do and what not to do. They would help you to become more aware so that you can see yourself what has to be done and what has not to be done.

The real friend is one who does not advise you, but helps you to become more alert, more aware, more conscious of life - its problems, its challenges, its mysteries, and helps you to go on your own voyage, gives you courage to experiment, gives you courage to seek and search, gives you courage to commit many mistakes... because one who is not ready to commit mistakes will never learn anything at all.

Commit as many mistakes as you can, but don't commit the same mistake twice because that makes you stupid. Commit new mistakes, invent new mistakes, and you will be learning all the time, and your intelligence will be growing all the time. Your intelligence needs sharpening.

The real friends help you to sharpen your intelligence. They don't give you fixed advice, because fixed advice is of no use. What is true today may not be true tomorrow, and what is right in one situation may be wrong in another. And situations are changing all the time, so what you need is not a fixed pattern of living but a way of seeing, so wherever you are, in whatsoever situation you find yourself, you know how to behave spontaneously, how to depend on your own being.

The seventh question:

Question 7:

Krishna Kant,

I HAVE not been telling you to believe in God. Why should you be worried about it? If you can't believe, you can't believe - forget all about it! Now it is God's problem that Krishna Kant does not believe in Him; if He is anxious, worried, He will take care. But why are you worried? Deep down somewhere you must be wanting to believe, otherwise why the question at all? I am not telling you to believe in God; there is no need.

Buddha attained to the ultimate without believing in God, why can't you? Mahavir attained to truth, to enlightenment, without believing in any God, why can't you?

In that sense Eastern religions are far more rich than the Western religions. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, all the three religions that were born outside of India, are in that way a little poor, unsophisticated, crude. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, the three religions that were born in India, have a tremendous sophistication about them. They don't make such unnecessary demands on you.

Buddhism is the ultimate in sophistication. Buddha says there is no need to believe in God, there is no need even to believe in the soul. There is no need to believe at all. Belief is not a necessity in being religious. Then what is necessary? Meditation is necessary, not belief. And one can meditate without belief because meditation is a scientific method.

It happens many times: an atheist comes to me and he asks, "Can I also meditate?" - because the idea has become prevalent that unless you believe in God you cannot meditate. Now that is a very foolish notion. Meditation has nothing to do with God. In fact the truth is that if you believe in God, it will be difficult to meditate. Your very belief will become a disturbance.

The person who does not believe in anything can simply move beyond thoughts; the person who believes clings to thinking, because his belief is a thought. Belief is part of the mind! If you believe too much in God you cannot leave the mind, because leaving the mind will mean, obviously, leaving your belief The man who cannot believe is in a better situation.

Krishna Kant, you should be happy that you cannot believe in God. So far, so good! Now meditate.

And remember, the English word 'meditate' gives a wrong connotation. In English there is no word really which can translate the word DHYANA. From DHYANA the word arose in China, CH'AN, and that CH'AN moved to Japan and became Zen, but the root is DHYANA.

When we use the word 'meditation' it gives a feeling that you are meditating UPON something. To meditate means... on what? You have to have some object. And that is the problem. DHYANA simply means it is not a question of focusing, concentrating on something; rather, it is dropping all contents of the mind and just being. Meditation in the sense of DHYANA needs no object; it is an objectless, contentless state of consciousness. You go on dropping - NETI, NETI, neither this nor that - you go on rejecting all thoughts, good and bad. When all thoughts are eliminated what is left?

- that is you, and that is God.

But what you call it does not matter. You can call it God if the word appeals to you; if it doesn't appeal to you you can call it NIRVANA, YOU can call it Tao, or whatever. But don't be worried about it, that you can't believe in God. It is good. This is my approach: if somebody says, "I believe in God," I say, "It is good. Now let us start from there, that will do." If somebody says, "I don't believe in God," I say, "It is good. Now let us start from there."

You have to start from the point where you are. And all points are good, because all points are on the circumference and from every point on the circumference the center is available. So move towards the center, don't be worried about where you are.

One afternoon Mulla Nasrudin was getting a haircut in a barber's shop. He noticed a price list on the wall of the shop and on the list was, "SINGE - Rs 5". He asked the barber why it cost so much.

"Every hair on your head," said the barber, "is a little hollow tube, open at the ends, so the body's energy sort of bleeds out of it. After you get a haircut it is a good idea to get a singe because it closes up the hole at the end of each hair and seals in the energy. Otherwise the hair and your whole body just keep getting weaker and weaker every time you get it cut."

"Now, wait a minute," said the Mulla, "what about the hair on my chin? I shave it every day and cut off the ends and it just keeps getting thicker and stronger. How do you explain that?"

"Easy!" said the barber. "You just ain't the kind of a fella this story was made up to tell to!"

These are all just stories. If it appeals, good, if it doesn't appeal, very good!

Krishna Kant, forget about God. There is no need to believe; you need not do anything about it.

Don't waste your time with God. Just because of this word so many people go on wasting time.

Somebody is trying to prove, somebody is trying to disprove, great treatises are being written. As many books are written about God as about anything else - millions of books, libraries are full. Don't be wasting your time. If you can't believe then that story is not for you. But we have other stories too, so why be worried? For Godless people too there is a way.

And my way is for all. Whosoever comes is accepted. The Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Christian, the Jain, the Sikh, the Buddhist, the Parsee - whosoever comes is accepted. I love all kinds of stories!

Any kind of beginning is good, but begin. Don't remain stuck where you are, move towards the center. Meditate, and that will bring you home. And then you can call it whatsoever you like; that is none of my business what you call it. You can give it any name of your own fancy.

The last question:

Question 8:

Govinddas,

IT HAS always been a problem down the ages - what to tell children and what not to tell. Parents have been very much concerned. In the past the strategy was not to tell about the facts of life, to avoid it as far as possible, because people were very much afraid about the facts of life.

The very phrase 'facts of life' is a euphemism; it simply hides a simple thing. Not to say anything about sex, even to avoid the word 'sex' they have made this metaphor, 'facts of life'. What facts of life? - it is just not to say anything about sex.

The whole past of humanity has lived with that deception, but the children discover sooner or later.

And in fact they discover sooner than later, and they discover in a very wrong way. Because no right person is ready to tell them, they have to do their work on their own. They collect, they become peeping Toms - and you are responsible for reducing them to peeping Toms. They collect from all wrong sources, from ugly people. They will carry those wrong notions their whole lives, and you are the cause of it. Their whole sex life may be affected by that wrong information that they have gathered.

Now there is as much wrong information prevalent in the world about sex as is possible. Even in this twentieth century people are living with immense ignorance about sex, even people who you would think should know better. Even your doctor does not really know what sex is, does not know its complexity. He should know, but even doctors live very superstitiously; they also know things from the marketplace. In no medical college is sex taught as a separate subject - such an immense, powerful subject and yet nothing is taught about it. Yes, the physiology of sex is known by the physician, but the physiology is not all; there are deeper layers: there is psychology, there is spirituality. There is a psychology to sex and there is a spirituality to sex; the physiology is only the surface. Much research has been done there, and in this century we know more than ever before, but the knowledge is not becoming prevalent.

People are afraid, because their parents were afraid and that fear has become infectious. And you are afraid, Govinddas, and you don't want to tell your children about it.

You have to tell your children about it, you owe it to them. And you have to be truthful. Don't shirk from truth - in the long run truth always pays - and don't lie.

"Mom, do we get our food from God?"

"Yes, we do, Barbara."

"And at Christmas time does Santa bring all our presents?"

"That's right."

"And on my birthday the good fairy brings presents?"

"Hmm... "

"And did the stork bring little brother?"

"True."

"Then what the heck does Pop hang around here for?"

It is better to be truthful! But I am not saying to jump upon your children and start being truthful whether they want it or not. Now that is happening - the other extreme - particularly in the West, because the psychologists go on saying that the truth has to be told. People go on telling the truth whether the children are enquiring about it or not. That too is wrong. Wait! If the child enquires, be truthful; if he does not enquire there is no need, he is not interested yet.

At the dinner table the old man almost choked when his little eight-year-old boy asked, "Daddy, where do I come from?"

Reddening, Pop said, "Well, I guess the time has come for you and I to have a man-to-man talk.

After dinner I will tell you about the birds and the bees."

The kid said, "What birds and bees? Little Frankie down the block told me he came from Chicago.

All I want to know is where I come from!"

So wait a little. They themselves will ask, you are not to be in such a hurry. And remember, whatsoever is the case, be truthful, howsoever hard it seems to you. It will be hard for you because truth was not told to you by your parents; for centuries it has not been told. Everybody gathers it from rumors, nobody ever tells it to his own children. People feel embarrassed, afraid that the children may discover.

Drop all these fears, and don't try in any way to deceive the children. It can be dangerous.

The six-year-old Luigino comes back from school where he has learned three new words without knowing their meaning, so he asks his mother, "Mom, what do prick, puss and balls mean?"

The mother, extremely embarrassed, answers, "Well, dear, prick means cheese, puss means chair, and balls mean boots."

After a few days the grandmother, a pious, prudish country lady, visits her daughter and nephew.

She rings the bell and Luigino opens the door. The old woman hugs the child and Luigino, proud of his new vocabulary, says, "Granny, you must be tired. Sit down on this puss." The woman almost faints, but Luigino goes on without hesitating. "And if you are hungry eat this piece of prick."

Shocked and horrified the grandmother finally asks, "Luigino, where is your mum?"

"Ah, she is in the room polishing daddy's balls!"