I Mean Business Here!

The first question:

Question 1:

Hamid, the problem is that man is NOT a river, man is very much frozen. There is no flow in man's being. Man is like ice, not like water.

If man is a river, there is no need to push it, it will reach ultimately to the ocean. It HAS already reached: in that very flow it has become part of the ocean. To be flowing is to be oceanic.

But man is not flowing, hence the urge. The ice wants to melt, hence the effort. Once the ice has melted, then there is no need to push anything, then everything happens of its own accord.

Man has become a rock. And the reason why man has become a non-flowing rock is the mind. The body is perfectly flowing, so is the soul. But between the two, the link, the mind, is frozen ice. Once the mind goes deeper into meditation it starts melting. That's what meditation is all about: an effort to melt the mind.

You say, 'The river ultimately reaches the sea.'

That's true, but first become a river.

You say, 'The body goes and there remains only existence, the infinite.'

True, but between the body and the soul there is a mind clinging to you, or you clinging to it. The body goes, but you don't become the infinite because you are not only surrounded by a body - that is your physical limitation - there is psychological limitation inside it. Through the death of the body, mind will not die, it will take rebirth. It will move into another womb, because it will carry so many desires which are to be fulfilled. It will again seek another womb, another body with which to fulfil those desires. That is the very foundation of the theory of reincarnation.

Mind desires, and if desires are there, then opportunities will arise in which those desires will be fulfilled. God cooperates with you. If you have desires like a dog, you will become a dog, you will have the body of a dog. Your mind creates the blueprint, and then the body follows. The body is a projection of the mind, not vice versa. Unless mind disappears completely you will be born again and again. Once the mind is gone, then it is perfectly true, Hamid: the body disappears and you are the infinite. In fact, if the mind is not there, you are the infinite without the disappearance of the body, without the death of the body. There is no need to wait for that.

Buddha is infinite even when he is in the body because he knows he is not the body. Buddha is infinite when he leaves the body. There is no difference for him: living in the body or leaving the body is the same. You live in a house, but you don't think that you are the house. Exactly like that, an awakened consciousness lives in the body; it uses the body just as you use a car. You sit in the car, you drive the car; you know that you are not the car. You can get out of it any moment. You need not wait for an accident to happen when the car is destroyed to feel that you are not the car.

And if you don't know it when the car is there and you are in it, how are you going to know it when the car is not there? Just through the death of the body, you will not know that you are infinite.

Either you are infinite herenow, or you will never be. Infinity is your nature.

The real problem is not the body. The body is not the culprit as the so-called religions have been telling you, 'The body is the culprit!' The body is not the culprit at all. The body is utterly innocent and beautiful. The culprit is the mind, the MIND IS the devil. You will have to dissolve the mind, hence the urge, hence the purpose of all the methodologies that have been developed down the ages: Tao, Yoga, Tantra, Zen, Hassidism.

Become a river and then nothing is needed. That's what THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER says: Achieve inaction through action, achieve effortlessness through effort. But first comes the effort, the action. It will melt you, and then the river starts flowing. In that very flow it has reached the ocean.

The second question:

Question 2:

Sagarpriya, the ego is neither male nor female. The ego is simply the ego. The one who becomes resistant to the male ego is the female ego.

You are aware of the male ego, but you are not aware of your own ego. Who is resistant to surrender?

Become more aware of your own ego, and then things will be easier. Everybody is aware of the ego of the other, but nothing can be done about the ego of the other. All that can be done is only with yourself.

You say, 'I find it almost impossible to surrender to the male ego.'

Who is this who finds it almost impossible? Find out! And then you will be surprised: ego is ego; it is neither male nor female. Don't divide it. Egos have no sex, no gender; it is the same disease. If a woman has cancer, it is cancer. If a man has cancer, it is cancer. It is not male and female. Exactly like that is the ego: the cancer of the mind.

And who is telling you to surrender to the male ego? Surrender is never to the other. When two persons fall in love, both surrender to love; nobody surrenders to the other. If there is an effort from the other that you should surrender to him, avoid him - this is not love. Love never demands surrender. Surrender happens naturally in love, there is no demand for it.

If the man demands surrender from your side, he does not love you. Don't get entangled into such an unloving affair. He hates you, otherwise why should he demand surrender? He wants to possess you, he wants to reduce you into a thing. He wants to use you, exploit you. He thinks of you only as a body, as a mechanism. He does not respect you as a person, as a presence. This is humiliating, this is not love. Avoid it.

But surrender happens when there is love. And nobody demands, and nobody surrenders to the other - neither the man to the woman, nor the woman to the man. They both surrender to the god of love. They both surrender to this new opening in their being. And when both surrender to love there is beauty and there is freedom. You are not reduced to being a slave. In fact, only in love do you attain dignity, only in love do you attain to your grandeur. Only in love is your splendour released.

This is the indication of real love: that you become more than you were before, not less, and you are freer than you ever were. Love gives freedom.

That is the very taste of love. If it is missing, if it is anti-freedom, then avoid it as one avoids the plague. Don't get into it - it is something else masquerading as love. But when love is there, you will find surrender has already happened; it is simultaneous. The moment you feel love for somebody, the surrender has happened. That is what love is. Not surrender - let me repeat again - to the other, but surrender to an unknown force that has taken possession of you two. But that is totally different from you and totally different from the other - you both have bowed down to an unknown energy. You become two pillars separate from each other, still supporting the same roof. You support something that is beyond you, above you, that transcends you, but you remain separate.

Love makes you more of an individual. It does not efface your individuality, it gives you individuality, it gives you uniqueness. Love is very respectful.

Sagarpriya, you say, 'I find it almost impossible to surrender to the male ego. Instead I become competitive, resistant or frightened.'

These are the ways of the ego. The other may have the ego, may not have the ego - I don't know about the other, who is that other? - but one thing is certain: you have a very subtle ego. That ego becomes competitive. Ego is competitive, intrinsically competitive. The ego becomes resistant or frightened, and in the fear, in the resistance, in the struggle, in the competitiveness, love is destroyed.

One thing is certain: you have to become aware of your subtle egoistic approach towards life. Drop it. At least from your side let it disappear. And then you will be surprised: maybe the other was not demanding any surrender; it was just your ego that projected it on the other. If it is so, now you can surrender to love. If it is not so and the other is still demanding... And you will be able to know rightly only when there is no resistance in you, when there is no fear in you, no competition in you.

Then you will have clarity, you will have a transparency, you will be able to see through and through.

And immediately you will know whether the other is demanding a surrender to him, or the demand is coming from something which is beyond you both. If it is from beyond you both, surrender. If it is coming from the other, avoid it. That other person is mad; he needs all compassion. Pity him, but don't fall in love, because to fall in love with an ego-maniac is dangerous; he will destroy you.

This much you owe to yourself.

The third question:

Question 3:

IS THIS TRUE OF THE SILENCE I AM FINDING IN YOUR PRESENCE? IS IT BORROWED? WILL IT DISAPPEAR WHEN I LEAVE FROM HERE?

Kavita, this place is a market-place. Can you find any other place which is more like the market?

I could have made the ashram somewhere in the Himalayas. I love the Himalayas. For me it is a great sacrifice not to be in the Himalayas. But for a certain purpose I have not made my ashram in the Himalayas.

I want to remain part of the market-place. And this ashram is run almost as part of the market-place.

That's why Indians are very annoyed - they cannot understand. They have known ashrams for centuries, but this ashram is beyond their comprehension. They cannot think that you have to pay to listen to a religious discourse. They have always listened free of charge - not only free of charge, but after the discourse the ashram distributes PRASAD too. Many go to listen to the discourses not because of the discourse but for the PRASAD.

Here you have to pay. What am I doing? I want it to be absolutely a part of the market-place because I want my sannyasins not to move into the monasteries. They have to remain in the world. Their meditation should grow in the world, their meditation should not become escapist. So whatsoever peace you are finding here, you will be able to retain anywhere you go. There will be no problem, not at all. I have been managing things in such a way that all that can disturb you anywhere else is present here. So you need not be afraid.

Meditators have always been afraid of a few things. For example, they have been afraid of women.

Can you find more beautiful women anywhere in India than here? more alive? Living here, being

here, you will become completely oblivious of the fact of who is a man and who is a woman. How long can you go on persisting in making the distinction?

The future belongs neither to man nor to woman. The future will be a kind of androgyny. The distinction between man and woman is going to disappear more and more.

In the past the distinction was very much created, culture-oriented. A girl had to be brought up in a different way than a boy - in an utterly different way. I am not saying that there is no difference, there is a difference between man and woman, but that difference is only biological. But the society creates a psychological difference: 'These things are allowed for boys only, because "boys are boys" and these things are not allowed for girls.' A psychological difference is created from the very beginning. The difference that you see between men and women in the world is ninety-nine percent created, nurtured; it is not natural. There is a one percent difference that is biological; that doesn't matter. Living here you live in such a togetherness that you will become oblivious of the fact of who is a man and who is a woman.

In the old days, with the old-style sannyas, people had to go away from women to the caves, to the monasteries. There are Christian monasteries where no woman has ever entered, has ever been allowed to enter. On Mount Athos there is a monastery - for twelve hundred years not a single woman has been allowed to enter. And what to say of a woman? - not even a girl of the age of six months, not even a six-month-old girl has been allowed. Just see the fear. And what kind of people must be living there if they cannot even allow a six-month-old girl? - maniacs called monks or monkeys, but not men. Must be mad. And it is in the monasteries that all kinds of monstrosities have arisen.

Homosexuality was first born in the monasteries; it is a religious phenomenon. It was bound to be so. If you force men to live together in a place where no woman is ever allowed, sooner or later homosexuality will come. Masturbation is a monastic practice, it came out of monasteries. All kinds of perversions are bound to be there.

There are monasteries for women too - only women are allowed, no men ever. And their whole fantasy world consists of men. They cannot get magazineS like PLAYBOY, but who needs them when you have enough time to fantasize? Their fantasy is so pornographic that magazines like PLAYBOY are nothing. Their fantasies are more psychedelic.

These people who have lived in such a monastery, if they are allowed to come back to the world, naturally their meditation, their prayer, their religion - all will be disturbed.

Monks have been very afraid of money. Naturally, if they come into the world, money has to be tackled. You cannot live in the world without money. And monks have been so afraid that they will not even touch money. See the fear, the obsession.

Acharya Vinoba Bhave, the chief disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, does not touch money. But what kind of obsession is this? Touching a ten-rupee note - how can it harm you? And if it can harm you, what kind of spirituality is this? Such an impotent spirituality. Not only that he cannot touch it, but if you bring money in front of him, he closes his eyes. He cannot even look. His guru, Mahatma Gandhi, used to keep three monkeys - somebody had given him a present. Knowing him, the present was

exactly the right present. One monkey is sitting with both his hands over his eyes, not looking: 'Don't look at many things in life because it is dangerous.' Another monkey is sitting with his hands over his ears: 'Don't listen to many things because it is dangerous.' And the third monkey is sitting with his hands over his mouth: 'Don't say many things because it is dangerous.'

And the monk has to do all three things together. That's why I say a monk is a monkey three times over.

Such a person - who cannot open his eyes, cannot open his ears, cannot open his mouth - if he comes into the world, will be in difficulties, naturally. He will find that all is disturbed, all is destroyed.

And in India the calamity is that these monkeys have become the leaders of this country - perverted people, suffering from abnormalities, not natural, not flowing, not in Tao.

My whole effort here is to create a miniature world where money is absolutely accepted, where women and men live together in joy, in celebration, without fear, where all that goes on in the world also continues and, alongside, the meditation grows. It becomes stronger and stronger because all the challenges are there.

You can go, Kavita, anywhere you like. Nobody can take your peace away. Your silence is yours! It is not because of me. You have earned it, you have gained it.

And a related question:

Question 4:

The question is from Sucheta.

I have not been hard on her yet, hence the question. But from now onwards she will know. I have been really nice to her, and I am rarely nice to people.

This place has more rules than any other place. Those rules are a device to create a certain situation in you - a challenge.

The question has arisen in her mind because she wants to work with children, and I have said no. I have told her to work somewhere else.

If I go with your likes and dislikes, your choices, I am 'Bhagwan'. In this question she has not written 'Bhagwan'; otherwise she always writes 'Beloved Bhagwan', 'Beloved Master'. The question directly starts: 'So what!'

I cannot leave you to yourself, otherwise I will not be of any help. Just BECAUSE Sucheta wants to work with children I cannot allow her, because I have to take care of children too. I cannot spoil their life. Sucheta, you are spoiled by your parents, by your family, by your society. I cannot send you to the children; you are not yet capable of that. Just because you choose... Anybody can choose anything, but here things have to go according to me, not according to you. Remember it! If you cannot be patient enough, then this is not the place for you, then you can leave. Guards are at every gate to prevent people from coming in, but I have not put any guards there to prevent people from going out. You can leave immediately.

If you have to be here, you have to be according to me, only then can I be of any help. I know what is needed . It is not always that which you like which is your need. Your like comes out of your mind.

And your mind has to be destroyed. I cannot listen to your likes and dislikes. All these rules are made by me. The moment you become a sannyasin, you give this much authority to me: that I will decide a few things for you. And if you want to become an ashramite, then you have to give one hundred percent authority to me - that is the meaning of becoming an inmate of the ashram.

She wanted to be in the ashram and I have put her outside because she is not yet capable of it. Just listen to the question and you will see. You will have to earn it. And this is not the way to earn it, remember.

It is very easy to lose this opportunity that is available to you. Your ego can become a problem, can create problems for you. Either you have to listen to your ego or you have to listen to me. You will have to change your whole pattern of thinking. You will have to change your very language of life; otherwise you will misunderstand.

These rules are for a certain purpose.

Madhuri was living in Lao Tzu House, and suddenly I sent her to live in Jesus House. She cried, but accepted. And she has come closer to me - closer than she ever was - in that very acceptance.

More love will be showering on her from my side. You can live physically very close to me, that is one thing... She could have resisted, she could have written me an angry letter, but she has not done anything, she has not even uttered a single angry word. She cried, she was sad - and that is natural - but no anger. To live with me in the same house and then to be sent to live in another house is hard, I know. But she survived the shock, and something immensely valuable has happened through it. Only later on will she understand that this was a blessing.

It takes time for you to understand things. But I live in a totally different reality, and I decide from there. And I know you live in a different reality. Misinterpretations are bound to be there from your side, but try to understand me. Even if you cannot understand sometimes, silently, patiently do what I say.

It happened. .

The teacher asked the student, 'Do you like Kipling?' The student said, 'I don't know. I have never kipled.'

Marriage counsellor to wife, 'Do you usually wake up grumpy in the morning?'

Wife, 'No, he gets up before I do.'

'How did you get on with your date last night?' one hippie was asked by an elderly neighbour.

'Just great,' was the reply. 'I finally persuaded her to say yes.'

'Oh, congratulations! When is the wedding to be?'

'Wedding? What wedding?'

To a hippie it is a different world. Yes does not mean marriage.

'Vicar, you told me I must have Faith, Hope and Charity.'

'That's right.'

'Well. when I tried, they called the police.'

And the last:

'Are you sure that it was a marriage licence you gave me last month?'

'Yes, sir. What's the matter?'

'I thought there might be some mistake, seeing that I have lived a dog's life ever since.'

Sucheta, if you want to be here, you will have to learn my language, my way of seeing things, and you have to come with me; otherwise this is not the place for you. Then don't waste your time here.

Then it is better to leave this place soon - the sooner the better, because if you don't go with me, one day or other you will have to leave. And then you will feel very miserable because all those days that you stayed here will look like a wastage. If you want to be with me, then be with me totally, as totally as possible, then only something can happen. This happening is difficult because from your side there are so many hindrances.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

Then why have you not signed the question?

First: I did not say that ALL the women who are raped were desiring it, I said 'in the majority of cases'. Remember it; it makes a lot of difference. And it is only an example. There of people who go through a car accident wanted it, were accident-prone, were hoping somehow that something would happen, were desiring it deep down, were suicidal.

The mind that you know is not all. Below it there is a greater unconscious mind. In that unconscious mind you harbour many things of which you are not aware. There may be a person who is suicidal but not courageous enough to commit suicide. He will seek ways and means to commit suicide in a vicarious way: a car accident - he will not be responsible at all. Nobody will say that he committed suicide. Nobody will say later on that he was a coward, that he could not face life. It is easier to have a car accident than to commit suicide.

And, as far as rape is concerned, just look into your unconscious, look into your dreams. It is very rare to find a woman who has not dreamt of being raped. There is a certain attraction in it. What is the attraction? The attraction is that you are so irresistible that a person is ready to commit rape, you are so irresistible that a person is ready to go to jail for ten years or, if it is a Mohammedan country, is ready to die. If a rape is committed in a Mohammedan country and the person is caught, death is the penalty. And you will be surprised: more rapes are committed in Mohammedan countries than anywhere else.

Maybe the person who commits the rape wants to commit suicide. And this is a beautiful way to commit suicide. Can you find a better way of committing suicide? - a brave way too. And dying for love... so poetic, so romantic. There is some violence involved in sex. Even in ordinary sex when no rape is committed, something of rape is involved. The woman always says no. Why? - because if she says yes too easily, then there is no longer that feeling that 'I am needed, utterly needed'. She goes on saying no, and goes on meaning yes. She goes on saying no: she is provoking the man, she wants the man to be after her, she wants the man to force her. The very effort to force her, the very effort to drag her into love-making makes her feel good: she is 'needed'. This is a poor state of mind, but it is how people are.

So first I said 'in the majority of cases'. There are accidents also. You may not be thinking of rape at all, and a madman comes and rapes you. I am not excluding those cases, that's why I didn't say 'a hundred percent'. In the majority of cases whatsoever happens to you - rape, murder, disease - is somehow, somewhere, desired by you. But I am not saying in ALL cases.

Now psychologists are aware that when people are prone to certain diseases... For example, nearabout the age of forty-two people have heart attacks. Why near the age of forty-two? - because that is the time when people start succeeding or have succeeded. They have the money they always wanted, and now they don't know what to do. SUCCESS IS there, and they are shocked by success.

They have always lived in the hope that they will have this much money, this woman, this house, this car - and they have it. Now what? Suddenly the heart stops beating. Now what? All direction seems to be lost. If they don't have the heart attack they will be very miserable. The heart attack relieves them. Now they can say to the world, 'I have to rest. The doctors have suggested rest. I cannot do any hard work.'

They cannot rest without an excuse. The heart attack becomes the excuse. If they simply rest, people will say, 'What are you doing? At the prime of your life, on the last rung of your SUCCESS, what are you doing? You can have more money. This is the time, because when you have money more money comes. When you have SUCCESS, more SUCCESS comes. What are you doing - 'relaxing', 'retiring'? And they will not have any excuse. The heart attack is a beautiful excuse.

Nobody will say they have escaped from the world. Nobody will throw the responsibility on them.

What can they do? The whole responsibility goes to the heart attack.

People are not conscious of all that goes on deep inside them.

You say, 'I found the comments on rape in yesterday's discourse very offensive...'

But why are they so offensive? and only to one person? Nobody else has written, nobody has felt any offense. If you are a lady - and I hope that you are a lady, because if you are a gentleman then things will be more complicated, so I trust that you are a lady - why are you feeling so offended?

You must be carrying the desire inside you, hence the offense; otherwise there is no offense.

I am a madman, I go on saying things. Why should you be offended? I am not a scientist, I am not a psychologist, I am nobody. I just like gossipping. Why should you be offended? I am not a consistent man, I go on contradicting myself. You can just wait for a few days and I will contradict myself. I will say, 'It has never happened. Whenever a woman is raped she is not responsible. It is the male ego, male violence.' Just wait. You have to be patient with me, I contradict myself!

But why are you offended? I must have touched a sore spot in you; something like a wound must be there. Deep down somewhere in the unconscious you want to be raped. That's why there is so much anger, so much offense. And you are afraid too - naturally. That's why you have not signed the question.

Always remember to sign it. And if you are very much afraid, you can write somebody else's name - but sign it! Then you can enjoy, and the other will be beaten! No need to be worried about it!

And you say, 'This has been proven to be absolutely incorrect.'

Do you know that nothing is ever proven ABSOLUTELY? Nothing! Man has not proved anything absolutely. There is no possibility of proving anything absolutely. New discoveries, new facts, new data... and changes have to be made. Even scientific discoveries are not absolute, so how can psychological discoveries be absolute? Psychology is not yet a science, it is still fictitious. At most you can call it... if you like the word 'scientific', you can call it science fiction. But it has nothing to do with science yet. It is struggling to be scientific, but I don't think that it ever will be, because man's mind is like mercury - you cannot make a science out of it.

And man's mind is not a single phenomenon. There are as many minds as there are people. All that psychology can hope for is to think about the average mind. But you never come across 'the average', you always come across the unique. No scientific explanation is possible about the unique mind.

Psychology is not yet a science, and even science cannot claim absoluteness. What Newton did is no longer right. It looked so absolute in those days - it is no longer right. Do you think what Einstein has done will remain right for long? It cannot; it is not in the very nature of things. Life is such a mystery that the more you know about it, the more you will have to create new hypotheses to include the new facts. Have you known man and woman totally? Have you fathomed the feminine mind so totally that you know absolutely that it is incorrect? Nothing is absolutely correct, nothing is absolutely incorrect. All are guesses. ALL are guesses - one may be a little more close to the truth, another may not be so close.

But what I said has not to be taken as a general statement. It has to be taken as an object for meditation. You just meditate over it. I am not concerned about general truths. I am talking to disciples! You have to look into yourself. If you are a woman disciple just look into yourself. Is there not somewhere a lurking desire to be raped? And if it is there, it is better to know about it.

It is better to bring it to the conscious completely, because once something becomes conscious, it disappears. It can exist only in the unconscious. In the unconscious it is dangerous. If you bring it to the conscious, it evaporates. It is like pulling a tree out of the earth, bringing its roots to the light, then the tree dies. And that's exactly what happens: anything that goes on lurking in the unconscious, in the dark chamber of your soul - which is nine times bigger than your conscious mind - bring it into the conscious mind, bring it into sunlight and, if it comes there, it withers away.

What I am saying here is meant for you to meditate on. If you felt offended, then this is very good for you to meditate over. Go into it. Search into yourself, and don't conclude from the very beginning, don't say, 'This is wrong and has been proved absolutely wrong.' First meditate, and don't try to prove it wrong or right. Just go with an open mind into your own being and search for it. And you will be surprised that the desire is lurking there. It has a kind of charm in it.

One woman went to the priest to confess. She confessed that she had been raped. And she confessed that she had come to the priest because she enjoyed it. That's why she was feeling guilty: if she had not enjoyed it, there would be no question of coming to confess.

Then she came next time and again confessed. And then she came again.

And when she came for the fourth time, the priest said, 'But this is too much! Are you being raped every week?'

She said, 'No, this is the same rape.'

'But then why do you go on coming?'

She said, 'I enjoy telling it. It feels so good.'

Just go into yourself, and you will find all kinds of desires lurking in you. You will find something of the sadist: that you want to torture others. You will find something of the masochist: that you want to torture yourself. You will find all kinds of things in you because man is vast. And the unconscious is not an ordered place, it is a chaos, it is a madhouse. But we go on repressing all that. We are so afraid to see. That's why you felt so offended. I must have touched the right spot in you, hence the offense. It is not a question of whether it is proved right or wrong.

And I am not interested in that at all. My interest is in making you more and more meditative, more and more aware of your intrinsic, innermost desires, longings, perversions, obsessions. If they can be brought to light, they will disappear. And if the unconscious can be emptied completely, you will become a Buddha.

So don't simply go on arguing with me, because that is a waste of time and energy. Go in. If you cannot find any desire like that in you, very good. If you find it, that too is very good - you can bring it into the light and it will disappear.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

Sir, go on losing your interest! That's perfectly good. Nothing is wrong in it. And be perfectly assured that no woman is going to miss you. On the contrary, they will all be very happy.

But in the West, particularly since Freud opened the Pandora's box the idea has arisen that you have to remain sexual to the very end, because sex is synonymous with life. So even if you are seventy or eighty, you have to remain interested in sex. If you lose interest in sex, that means you are losing interest in life, that means you are no more needed, that means you are useless now. You can drop dead or go to the parliament, but you are useless.

This idea that sex and life are synonymous is utterly baseless. Sex and life are synonymous at a certain stage. In childhood they are not synonymous; in youth they are synonymous; in old age they are again not synonymous. There are phases. The child is not interested, the young man is interested - and the only interest is in sex.

But in the West there is an effort going on to remain young; you should not get old. People go on befooling themselves in many ways that they are still young. New panaceas have been found again and again, new kinds of elixirs that will keep you young forever. And people are so foolish that they are always ready to accept any nonsense to remain young. Old age is thought to be a kind of disease. To be old means you are ill - in the West. That is not right.

Old age has its own beauties, its own treasures, just as youth has its own beauties and treasures.

And certainly the treasures that an old man comes upon are far more valuable than the treasures of youth. Because the old man has lived his youth, he has known all that, he has seen that, he has gone through it. He has lived the illusion and he has known the disillusionment of it all. Now he is wiser than he ever was; he is becoming innocent again. When sex disappears you attain to a kind of innocence. You become a child again, and a mature child.

In the East we have a totally different vision of life. In the East we have respected the old men, not the young, because the old are at the peak - life's journey reaching to its goal. In the West the old are just something to be discarded, the old are just to be thrown on some junkyard. You make houses for the old where you go on piling them up, or hospitals. Nobody wants anything to do with old people - as if they were meaningless, worthless. And they have lived their whole life, and they have learnt many secrets of life. They can be great teachers - only they can be teachers.

In the East this has been the traditional way: that the old person should become the teacher of the young, because he has lived, grown, understood. He can give you a better direction, with more maturity, with more clarity. Old age is the age to prepare for death. And that is the greatest preparation because you will be going on the longest journey - into the unknown. If you remain interested in sex, it will keep you diverted from death. That's what is happening in the West.

In the West people have not accepted death yet as part of life. Death is a taboo, just as sex was a taboo just a hundred years ago. Nobody talked about sex a hundred years ago. It was impossible

to talk about it or to write about it. It was such a taboo that in the Victorian age ladies used to cover the legs of their chairs too - because they are legs, and legs should not be shown.

Freud introduced a great revolution The world is waiting for another Freud to destroy the greater taboo of death. He destroyed the taboo of sex, and the world is far better because of it. Freud is one of the greatest benefactors. Another Freud is needed to destroy the other taboo - which is greater.

Death has to be accepted. With the acceptance of death you start accepting old age. And in acceptance there is relaxation. And once you are no more interested in sex, your whole attention can be focused on death. Remember, sex and death are polar opposites. If you remain interested in sex, when will you prepare for death? Your attention will remain focused on sex, and you will die without any preparation.

Meditation is a preparation for death. Now prepare for death. Meditate. You are no more interested in women - good. Now become interested in your own self. The woman is outside you; that is the interest in the other. Or, if you are a woman, then the man is outside you, and that is interest in the other. Now become interested in yourself. Now go into the discovery of the self, now go on an inward journey.

You ask, 'I am getting old and losing all interest in women. What should I do?'

Lose interest. Allow it to happen. Don't try to create it unnecessarily. If it is going on its own, it is beautiful.

I have heard...

Max, aged seventy-six, upon returning to his apartment late one night, was startled to find a girl of about eighteen ran-sacking the place.

'Young woman, you are a thief!' he said. 'I'm going to call the police.'

'Mister,' she pleaded, 'if I'm arrested again, I'll be sent away for years. Please don't call the police.'

'I'm sorry, but I have to do it!' Max replied.

'Look,' she cried, 'I'll do anything. I'll give you my body.'

'Okay,' said the senior citizen, 'take off your clothes and get in bed.'

The girl did and Max quickly followed. He tried and tried and tried for about twenty minutes.

Exhausted and in defeat, he finally gave up.

'It's no use,' sighed Max. 'I just can't make it. I'll have to call the police.'

And you ask me what to do...? 'What should I do?'

Do you want to call the police? Enough is enough. Now let that nonsense go. Let that obsession go. Now turn your energy towards death. Now look into death face to face. Now encounter death.

And to encounter death is the greatest experience in life. And if you can encounter death, you will come to know that you are deathless. To face death is the only way to know that you are deathless, that only the body dies, and you never die. And once you have known it, you are ready, ready for the journey, and when death comes, you will go laughing and dancing and singing into it.

And a man who can go laughing, dancing, and singing into death, prayerfully, meditatively, comes to know the greatest orgasm that is in the world. Sexual orgasm is nothing, because in sexual orgasm only a small, minute part of your life energy leaves your body, and you feel a great relaxation. In death your whole life energy leaves the body. No sexual orgasm can be compared with that cosmic orgasm, that total orgasm that death brings to you.

Don't miss death. Death is going to give you the greatest gift in life, the parting gift. But only a few people come to it because nobody is ready for it. Death takes you unawares. And you are so frightened, and you are so concerned with sex that you cling to life.

Do you know that it almost always happens...? In the East it has been one of the secrets to know about a man. When a man dies, if he is clinging too much to life and is still interested in sex, he will die with an erection. That shows that the poor fellow died without any readiness - even in death he was full of sex fantasies. It happens almost always. Unless you have become a great meditator, it is going to happen to you too that while dying you will fantasize about sex, you will be making love - at least in your imagination.

This is no way to die. This is very insulting to death, and insulting to God, and very insulting to yourself. Let sex disappear - it is time. Relax into non-sexuality. Non-sexuality will make you centred. Stop chasing women, and start chasing yourself. You cannot do both. And get ready.

Death may knock you down any moment; one never knows when it is coming. Prepare. Allow yourself to enjoy meditation as much as possible. Transform your sexual energy into meditative energy; it is the same energy, just the direction changes: it no longer flows downward and outward, it starts flowing inward and upward. And this same energy opens the bud of the Golden Flower in you. This is the whole secret.

Now you have come naturally to the right point, and you are asking me, 'What should I do?' You are asking for some recipes to again create the sexuality which is disappearing. You are asking for some props, you are asking for some help so that you can go on playing the same foolish game even in your old age.

It is good when you are young, because then you are foolish. It is very rare to become alert and aware and meditative when you are young. If you can become, you have a rare genius. But if you cannot become meditative even in old age, then you are just stupid, utterly stupid.

It is good to fool around when you are young. That foolishness is part of growth; it helps you. The woman or the man outside becomes the mirror; they reflect you, they help you to see who you are.

Love is very revealing. But finally one has to come to see oneself within, not in a mirror. Even the mirror has to be dropped. One has to be alone. And the purity of aloneness is infinite. And the bliss of aloneness is eternal.

Now the moment has come. Just let this interest in women go, and suddenly you will find another interest arising in you - it is almost simultaneous - the interest in meditation. And then you can have

the last gift that life can give to you: a meditative death, a death in SATORI, in SAMADHI, in ecstasy.

And you will know the total orgasmic experience. That experience is enough; then you will never be coming back into life, into the body, into this prison.

In the East this has been our goal: how not to be born again, because this whole process of being born and dying again and again is a boring process; it is utterly futile. In the final analysis it is just a dream, and not even a nice dream but a nightmare.

My suggestion to you is: you have lived your life, you have seen the pleasures of the body, you have looked into relationship and you have learned whatsoever was to be learned from it, now it is time to turn inwards.

The last question:

Question 7:

I don't know, and I don't think that anybody else knows either.

Philosophy is a useless passion. I am using Jean-Paul Sartre's words, he says 'Man is a useless passion.' I say man is NOT a useless passion but philosophy is.

You ask me, 'What is philosophy?'

Nobody has ever defined it. It has remained vague. Not that definitions have not been given to it, millions of definitions have been given; but THE definition is still missing. Each philosopher gives a definition, and others contradict it. It is a game, enjoying the gymnastics of logic, it is logic-chopping.

It is like chess - a very intellectual game, very absorbing - but there is no conclusion in it; it is non- conclusive. The game continues from generation to generation. Slowly slowly, out of this game two things have arisen: one is science, the other is religion. Science is objective, religion is subjective.

Science is experimental, religion is experiential. Philosophy is neither. It is just hanging in a limbo between the two. And slowly slowly it is disappearing because that which is objective is being taken by science every day, and that which is subjective has already been taken by religion. Nothing is left for philosophy. So now modern philosophy only goes on thinking about language - language analysis.

The philosophers are asking the most absurd questions because they have lost all the meaningful questions. Either those questions have been covered by science or by religion. Philosophy is becoming more and more empty. They cannot find even their own questions now, so either they take questions from science and they think about them, or they take questions from religion and they think about them. Their questions are borrowed. Philosophy is a dying phenomenon. It will not be a surprise that one day you suddenly come to know that philosophy has died. It is on its deathbed. And you can go to any university and you can see philosophy on its deathbed.

But why have you asked the question? That is more relevant, more important to think about.

I am not teaching philosophy here. What I am saying has nothing to do with philosophy, it is absolutely experimental and experiential. My effort is to create a scientific religion - the psychology of the Buddhas. So I am giving you experiments and I am giving you possibilities to experience something that you have not experienced yet. This is a lab, a workshop. We are bent upon doing something. I mean business here! Philosophy is not the concern at all. I am very anti-philosophic and I avoid philosophy because it is playing with shadows, thoughts, speculation. And you can go on playing infinitely, AD INFINITUM, AD NAUSEAM; there is no end to it. One word creates another word, one theory creates another theory, and you can go on and on and on. In five thousand years much philosophy has existed in the world, and to no purpose at all.

But there are people who have the philosophic attitude. And if you are one of them, please drop it; otherwise you and your energy will be lost in a desert.

I will tell you about the four stages of philosophy in four stories.

The first stage of philosophy, the first story:

One of my favourite stories is that of a boy and girl in New England where sleigh riding is popular during the cold winters. While riding one Sunday afternoon, bundled up in their blankets, the girl snuggled up to the boy and said, 'Johnny, I'm cold.'

Johnny looked over to her and said, 'I'm cold, too, Jane. Why not tuck in the blankets?'

So Jane pulled the blankets closer, but pretty soon she moved even closer to Johnny and said, 'My hands are still cold.'

He didn't pay much attention to her and soon she nudged him with her elbow and said, 'Johnny, did you hear me? My hands are cold... and besides nobody loves me.'

This time he looked over to her and said, 'Jane, remember that God loves you, and you can always sit on your hands to keep them warm.'

This is the first stage of being philosophic.

The second stage, the second story:

A study group of philosophers had been meeting for years to study the Talmud. One member of the group had a pernicious habit of sipping a little brandy during the meeting. One night he drank just a little more than usual and became quite tipsy. His companions decided to teach him a lesson. While he was in his drunken stupor, they carried him off to the cemetery and laid him prone among the tombstones.

After a while the philosopher woke up. He looked about him, frightened and aghast. Then he started to reason, 'Am I alive? Or am I dead? If I'm alive, what could I be doing here in the graveyard on top of the graves? And if I'm dead, then why do I feel that I must go to the bathroom immediately?'

This is the second stage of philosophy.

And the third stage, the third story:

Professor Steinberg had been having his lunch in the same Lower East Side restaurant for twenty years. Every day he left his office at noon, went to the restaurant and ordered a bowl of chicken soup - never a change.

But one day the professor called the waiter back after receiving his soup.

'Yes, professor?' enquired the waiter. 'Waiter, please taste the soup.'

'What do you mean, taste the soup? For twenty years you've been eating the same chicken soup here, every day, yes? Has it ever been any different?'

The professor ignored the waiter's comments. 'Please, taste this soup,' he repeated.

'Professor, what's the matter with you? I know what the chicken soup tastes like.'

'Taste the soup,' the professor demanded.

'All right, all right, I'll taste. Where's the spoon?'

'Aha!' cried the professor.

This is the third stage.

And the fourth stage, the fourth story:

A woman went to a philosophic psychologist for treatment of her delusion that she was covered with feathers. After a few sessions the philosopher said to her, 'I feel that we have gotten to the root of this problem through our discussions and analysis, and it is now behind us. What do you think, Mrs Smith?'

'Oh,' said Mrs Smith, 'I think we have had some wonderful sessions and I do feel that the problem has been taken care of. But,' she added, 'the only thing that bothers me now is what I'm going to do with these feathers.'

She raised her hand to her shoulders and began to brush, and the psychologist, the philosopher, suddenly jumped back.

'Now, hold on just a minute, Mrs Smith, don't brush those feathers onto me.'

This is the fourth stage.

Slowly slowly, philosophy becomes a kind of madness. It leads you into neurosis because philosophy is a mind phenomenon. Science has taken the body, religion has taken the soul, only the mind is left for philosophy. And mind is potential madness. If you go on too much into the mind, you will be moving slowly slowly towards madness. It is very rare to find a philosopher who is sane. And vice versa is also true: it is very rare to find a madman who is not a philosopher.

I am not teaching philosophy here, because I am teaching no-mind. And if you become a no-mind all philosophy disappears: Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist - all philosophies disappear; Hegelian, Kantian, Russellian - all philosophies disappear. If the mind disappears, where can the philosophy exist? where can it grow? Mind is the breeding ground of philosophy.

Let the mind disappear. And the beauty is: when there is no mind and nobody to philosophize and nothing to philosophize about, one comes to know. Philosophy is the blind man's effort. It is said:

Philosophy is a blind man in a dark room on a dark night, searching for a black cat which is not there...