The science of the inner soul

Question 1:

It is one of the most significant questions that can be asked, but you will have to understand some deeper implications, which you may not be aware of.

The politicians and the priests have a vested interest in keeping the people of the world unaware of the future. The reason is very simple: if the people are aware of the future and the darkness ahead, the death that is coming every moment closer, there is going to be a tremendous upheaval in the consciousness of man all around the world. And the politicians and the priests, who have dominated humanity for millennia, know perfectly well they cannot solve any problem that is going to be faced by humanity in the future. They are absolutely impotent. The problems are too big and they are too small. The only way for them to save their faces is not to let the people become aware of what is happening tomorrow.

I have to make it clear also that politics attracts only the most mediocre minds in the world. It does not attract Albert Einsteins, Bertrand Russells, Jean-Paul Sartres, Rabindranath Tagores... No, it attracts a certain kind of people. Psychologists are aware of the fact that people who are suffering from some inferiority complex are the people to be attracted towards politics, because politics can give them power. And through power they can convince themselves and others that they are not inferior, that they are not mediocre.

But just attaining power makes no difference to their intelligence. So the whole world is ruled by mediocre people when we have a large number of intelligent people - scientists, artists, musicians, poets, dancers, painters - all kinds of sensitive, creative people, the very cream of humanity, but they are not in power. They can change the whole fabric of human history, they can change the darkness of the future into a beautiful morning, a sunrise. But the misfortune is that power is in the hands of the wrong people, and the people of intelligence are devoid of power.

I will tell you a small story to make it clear....

A great mystic heard that one of his friends, a childhood friend - they had played together, studied together - had become the prime minister of the country. Just to congratulate him, the mystic came down from the mountains. It was a long journey, tiring. By the time he reached the prime minister's palace, the prime minister was getting ready to go somewhere.

He recognized the mystic, but he said, "I'm sorry, I have some appointments. I have to go to three places, and I would love it if you can come with me. On the way we can talk and remember the golden old days."

The mystic said, "I would love to come with you, but you can see my rags are full of dust. It would not look right to sit by your side on a golden chariot."

The prime minister said, "Don't be worried. The king has presented me with a very costly overcoat.

I have never used it; I have been keeping it for some special occasion. I will give you the coat. You just put it on; it will cover your clothes, the dust and everything."

The coat was given to him. They reached the first house. They entered the house. The prime minister introduced his friend: "He is a great mystic. He lives in the mountains. Everything that he has is his own, except the coat - that is mine."

The mystic could not believe it: "What kind of stupidity is this?"

Even the family was shocked, to insult the mystic in such a way.

Outside the house the mystic said, "It is better I do not accompany you. You insulted me. What was the need to say that it is your coat? They were not asking."

He said, "I am sorry, forgive me. And if you don't come with me to the next appointment, I will think you have not forgiven me."

The mystic was a simple-hearted man. He said, "Then it is okay, I am coming."

Entering the second house, the prime minister introduced him: "He is a great mystic who lives in the mountains. Everything is his - even the coat is his!"

The mystic could not believe that this man had any intelligence at all. Outside he simply refused: "I cannot go to your third appointment. This is too much."

But the politician said, "I have said that the coat is yours!"

The mystic said, "It is unbelievable how unintelligent a man can be. Your assertion, emphasis, that the coat is mine, creates suspicion: there is something you are hiding. What is the need to mention the coat at all? I don't see the point that in any introduction coats need to be introduced."

And the politician said, "Forgive me, but if you don't come to the third appointment I will never forget that I have hurt you. Please, there is only one more appointment, and I will not say that the coat is yours or the coat is mine. Don't be worried about it."

The simple mystic, innocent, agreed to go with him. At the third house he introduced the mystic in the same way, "He is a great mystic from the mountains. All the clothes are his, but as far as the coat is concerned, it is better not to say anything!"

The politician is not the most intelligent part of humanity. Otherwise there would not have been five thousand wars in three thousand years. The politician has destroyed, but has not created anything.

It is the politician who is creating the atomic weapons, the nuclear missiles. With what face can he make the people of the world aware that the future is dark, dismal? Perhaps there is no future anymore, perhaps we are sitting on a volcano which can erupt any moment. Already we have so many nuclear weapons that we can destroy seven hundred planets of the size of our earth. In other words, we can kill every man seven hundred times over.

Can you think of the stupidity of it? A poor man simply dies one time. There is no need to kill him seven hundred times. For what is all this nuclear arrangement being made?

There is a certain madness behind it. The madness is that the politician can live only if there is war.

In his autobiography, Adolf Hitler has made many significant statements. One of the statements is that if a politician wants to be a great hero, a great historical figure, then the only way is to create a great war. Without war you don't have heroes.

Just think of all your heroes, they have been created by war: Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Nadirshah, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill... And what have these people got, except that they lived at the time of a great war? The war brings them to the pinnacle of their glory. And your whole history is full of these idiots.

If we have any sense we should completely stop studying this kind of history in the schools and universities.

Can't you study beautiful people, creative people? We have produced great musicians. We have produced great scientists. We have produced great poets. We have produced great painters. Our history should remember them. Our history should remind us that they are our real forefathers, not Genghis Khan, not Tamerlane, not Nadirshah. These are accidents, and they should not even have a place in the footnotes of history books. They should be simply ignored. They were mad people and there is no need to go on studying them and creating the same kind of desire in the new generation.

The priests are also in a deep conspiracy with the politicians. It is a thousands-of-years-old conspiracy: the priest protects the politician; the politician protects the priest. It has to be understood.

For example, in the East the priest has been telling the people, "You are poor because in your past life you have been doing evil acts." He has convinced people. When you go on saying the same thing again and again for thousands of years, it leaves an impression deep in the minds of people.

Not only does it impress the people, it even impresses the priest himself!

It is a very strange psychological phenomenon.

I am reminded of an anecdote....

A journalist died. He reached directly to the door of paradise and knocked on the door. A small window opened and the doorkeeper said, "Forgive me, we have a certain quota for journalists which is complete. We need only one dozen journalists in paradise. In fact, even they are useless, because nothing happens here - no news."

Just remember the definition of news: when a dog bites a man, it is not news; when a man bites a dog, it is news. And naturally in paradise there is no news.

"Even the twelve journalists are getting bored, so you, please, go to the other door, in front."

But journalists are stubborn people, you cannot get rid of them so easily....

He said, "Just listen to this one thing. I will go to the other door after twenty-four hours, but not now."

The doorkeeper said, "What will you do for twenty-four hours, standing here?"

He said, "I am not going to stand here, you let me in. If I can convince one of the twelve journalists to go to hell, then you can give me his place. The quota will remain complete."

Even the doorkeeper thought that was sensible. He said, "Okay, come in. Have a try."

After twenty-four hours he managed to tell everybody, journalists, non-journalists, "In hell there is going to be a new newspaper published which will be the largest and the most important. They need editors, subeditors, reporters, all kinds of journalists - with great salaries!"

After twenty-four hours he went back to the gate. The gatekeeper said, "You cannot get out."

He said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "All the twelve have escaped. You convinced them, and they were creating so much fuss that I finally allowed them to go. Now you cannot leave, at least we should have one journalist."

But the journalist said, "I cannot stay."

The doorkeeper said, "You created the lie. There is no newspaper. There are no great salaries."

He said, "Yes, I created the lie, but if twelve people have believed it there must be something to it! I don't want to be here. You open the door, otherwise I am going to complain. I don't belong here, I'm not supposed to be here."

Seeing the point that it was true, the doorkeeper allowed him to go without permission from any higher authority.

What had happened to the journalist? He had invented a lie, and he succeeded in convincing twelve people. Whenever you convince somebody, you are also being convinced simultaneously.

For centuries in the East the priesthood has been convincing people that it is your past evil acts which have made you poor. All you need to do is to remain contented with your poverty, with your sickness, with your death. This is a test of your trust. And if you can pass through this fire test, in the next life, after death, you will be rewarded enormously.

This is the reason that in the East science has not progressed, technology has not been born. If poor people are contented, if the poor people don't want to be anything other than poor, then what is the need of technology, of science, of progress, of evolution, of creating more wealth, of creating a better society, of distributing the wealth in a more human way? There is no need.

The politician is happy, because there is no possibility of revolution. The priest protects the politician against the revolution. And the politician, on his part, goes on praising the priest, that he is a great saint. He touches the feet of the priest, particularly at the time of elections. He gives respect; he goes to all kinds of saints, shankaracharyas, imams, popes....

Soon the pope is going to come to India, and you will see all the politicians running to welcome him - now in India, Christianity is the third greatest religion. Now the pope has to be persuaded.

Mohammedan saints, dead or alive, have to be worshipped. Hindu saints, whether saints or simply idiots, have to be raised to the highest spirituality.

This is a conspiracy to exploit the people. The priests cannot say what is going to happen in the future, for the simple reason that the priest lives out of the past. He lives out of the Shrimad Bhagavadgita, which happened five thousand years ago. He lives by the Koran Sharif, he lives by The Holy Bible. His whole world is in the past; he is a worshipper of the dead. He has no eyes for the future, and no intelligence either. I don't think any man of intelligence can be a priest, because the priest is continuously lying, and no man of integrity can do that.

The priest is lying on every count. He knows nothing of God. He has not experienced, he has not encountered, but he goes on lying to the people - pretending to be a representative of God, a mediator between you and God. He does not allow you to be in direct contact with existence. He always wants you to write your love letters "care of" the priest. Your prayers can reach to God only through the priest. Strange, on what authority...?

Just a few days ago, the head of the Christians, the pope, declared that one of the greatest sins is to confess directly to God - confession has to be to the priest. Do you understand this cunning strategy? The Catholic priest is always there to listen to your confession, and you have to tell him everything about your sins, your private life. That gives him power. Do you understand? He has a file on you. You cannot leave the Catholic fold.

He can expose you. He can destroy your respectability. He knows that you have had a love affair with your neighbor's wife.... You can hide from everybody but not from the priest, because he is the only one who can manage forgiveness from God for your sins. But strange, why can you not confess to God directly? This is politics; this is not religion.

I have come across priests of all the religions, and I have never seen any one of them that has any intelligence. If they had any intelligence they would compose music, they would create some beauty, they would invent something to enhance humanity. They would find some way to destroy poverty in the world.

But the priest goes on doing just the contrary. All the priests of all the religions, without exception, are against birth control, they are against abortion. I was talking to a bishop and I told him that if there are abortions, he was responsible for them.

He said, "What are you saying? We are against abortions."

I said, "Yes, I know it, but you are also against birth control. If you were in favor of birth control there would be no need for abortions."

Seeing the whole world growing in population and poverty, these priests go on teaching that children are produced by God, and that to prevent more births by any scientific method is against religion.

I cannot think that these people are intelligent. They want to turn the whole earth into an Ethiopia.

Millions of people will die by the end of this century without any nuclear weapons being used. Almost half of the earth will die out of starvation. And when fifty percent of the people are dying in the streets and you cannot do anything to help - no medicine, no food, you cannot even arrange for their bodies to be carried to the graveyard or to the funeral pyre - the people who are left alive will be in a far more miserable condition than those who are dead. The dead will be the fortunate ones. Who will be responsible for all this? All these priests.

I have been saying to all these priests, "You just look! If God, according to you, according to all religions, is omnipotent, all powerful, he can do anything. He can create the world, he can destroy the world. So what is the problem? The woman has just taken a pill - he cannot destroy a pill! If he wants the child to be born, the pill will be destroyed. The pill seems to be more powerful than your omnipotent God. You should go to your churches and temples and mosques and synagogues, and pray to God to destroy all the pills. You trust and believe in prayer - why are you harassing the poor people and telling them to continue to produce children?"

Religions are interested in increasing their population, because population is power. They are not worried about the death that is coming closer every moment. Politicians are interested in having more and more powerful weapons, because without nuclear weapons they are not going to be historical heroes.

Even poor countries who need food are trying to make atomic plants, nuclear plants. It seems to be an utterly insane state of affairs.

Your question has raised many things: nuclear weapons, the most dangerous disease that man has ever encountered, AIDS. But you are not aware that the disease AIDS is created by your religions.

You will be surprised and shocked.

AIDS is the most dangerous disease ever because it has no cure. And scientists are coming to an agreement that there is no possibility of finding a cure. This is not a disease, but a slow death. Once you have got it, at the most you can live for two years. Mostly you will not live more than six months; your death is certain.

And the disease is really ugly, because even your family will reject you. Your wife will reject you, your husband will reject you, your children will close the doors to you. Your parents will say, "Forgive us.

Don't come this way." Your friends will turn into enemies. You will not be allowed into any restaurant because the disease is such that it spreads not only by sexual contact. It is a sexual disease but it spreads in many other ways: by your saliva...

If you kiss a woman, your wife, you can give her the disease - just by kissing. Even your tears carry the virus. A small child is crying, and just out of compassion you wipe his tears with your hands....

You may not know the child, he may be just a stranger, but you don't know what you have done to yourself. The child may be carrying the virus in his tears. Now it is a known fact that children can be born with the disease. If their parents have it, the children are already born with the disease. And if there are tears on your hands and you eat something, you have fallen into the trap.

But the most surprising and shocking thing will be that this disease, AIDS, is created by homosexuality. And who has created homosexuality? In the forests, in the wild, no animal is found to be homosexual. But in zoos, where females are not available, then male animals start making love to other male animals. That is just an emergency measure.

Who has converted humanity into a zoo? It is not a natural thing. And I want to say to you emphatically that homosexuality first appeared in the religious monasteries. It is the religions who separated men from women. They put the monks into one monastery and the nuns into another monastery. Even today, in Europe, there is a thousand-year-old monastery in Athos, where no woman has ever entered. Three thousand monks live in the monastery, and any monk who enters the monastery enters forever. Only his dead body will come out.

I have inquired about all the details of the monastery and I have found that even a six-month-old baby girl cannot be allowed into it. I could not believe it: a six-month-old baby girl cannot be allowed into the monastery? What does it mean? In the monastery are there monks living or monsters?

But sexual repression, homosexuality, happen because religions have insisted on celibacy as something spiritual - it is not spiritual. Celibacy is unnatural, and anything against nature is going to take its revenge sooner or later.

AIDS is the revenge of nature, and all the priests and all the religions are responsible for it. There is still time. Celibacy should be made a crime in every land, in every country. Man should be allowed to be natural, man should be allowed to accept himself without rejecting any part of his being. AIDS will disappear, but homosexuality has to disappear first. But as I said to you, we are living in an insane world.

In Texas, in America, they have passed a law against homosexuality - that it is a crime. Nobody ever dreamed that in Texas there would be one million homosexuals, but one million homosexuals protested to the legislature of Texas against the law. If this is the situation in Texas - which is just a desert - what will be the situation in California? Perhaps everybody is homosexual. Perhaps not permanently, but once in a while...

To make homosexuality a crime is simply stupid because now homosexuals will go underground.

No law can prevent them, it can only make them say that they are not homosexuals. That is very dangerous. That means they can spread the disease to people who are absolutely unaware, unconscious.

If we want a sane world, if we want to save the world, my humble suggestion is that there should be a world academy of scientists, of painters, of poets, of dancers, of sculptors, of architects, of professors, of mystics, and they should create public opinion. The intelligentsia of the world, from all dimensions and all sections, together should create a great public opinion: "We want to know exactly the truth. What is our future? What are the politicians going to do about changing it? What are the priests going to do? And if they are impotent, then they should simply say that, because there are people of merit who can do something."

Just a few days ago, twenty American scientists, their best nuclear experts, protested to the government saying, "If you don't listen to us, we are going to stop working. We cannot work against the whole of humanity."

Now this is a good beginning. The same should be done in every country. The same should be done in every part of the world, and why should you do it separately? It should be done together. All the intelligent scientists and creative people of the world should be together, because the question is very big. And unless every intelligent person is standing up to save humanity it seems to be an impossible task. But I am not a pessimist, I hope even against hope. I feel that in times of challenge there is always a possibility of the best coming up, of people joining hands together across the foolish boundaries of politics which do not exist on the earth, against the boundaries of religions which are not religious at all.

To be religious you need not be a Christian, you need not be a Hindu, you need not be a Mohammedan. To be a scientist, do you need to be a Hindu? Do you need to be a Christian?

Religion is the science of the inner soul. There is no need for any adjective. Just as science explores the objective existence, religion explores the interiority of man, his subjectivity. A man can be religious without being in any fold, and this is the time to declare, "I do not belong to any religion and yet I am religious. I do not belong to any nation and yet I am a human being. The whole earth is mine."

It is time that the whole humanity stands together against all conspiracies of the priests and the politicians. And I guarantee you that we can save humanity - not only save it, we can transform it into a higher form, into a better consciousness.

We can give birth to a new man.

The old man is finished.

Question 2:

The experience of truth happens in the absolute silence of your being, where there is no ripple of thought, where no word can enter, where there is absolute silence and nothing else. The problem is that you can experience the truth in silence, but you cannot express it in silence. Expression will need words, and the moment you use words something of the truth is lost. Some beauty of it, some fragrance of it, is destroyed. The experience of truth is vast, and the words are very small.

One father was teaching his son, "There is nothing impossible, my son, in the world."

The son said, "Wait." He ran into the bathroom.

The father said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "I am going to prove that there is something which is impossible."

The father followed him. The son squeezed out some toothpaste and said to his father, "Please put it back! And if you need any advice you can go to Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte, the people who have said that there is nothing in the world which is impossible. This is impossible, I have tried it."

You can see light, but how can you explain it to a blind man? There seems to be no way. Whatever you say about light, will not be light. Whatever you say about light, will not be meaningful to the blind man.

Hence, always remember, truth cannot be said, it can be shown. It is a finger pointing to the moon.

All words are just fingers pointing to the moon, but don't accept the fingers as the moon. The moment you start clinging to the fingers - that's where doctrines, cults, creeds, dogmas, are born - then you have missed the whole point. The fingers were not the point; the point was the moon.

That's why I say, don't get lost in words, don't get lost in doctrines. Rather, find a living master whose very being is a finger pointing to the moon. In his presence maybe something transpires in you. Not in his words, but perhaps in his silence. Not in his theories, but perhaps in his eyes. There you may find a certain inspiration, a glimpse, a door opening into the mysteries of life.

Books cannot do that; only a living master can. And this is the misery, that people go on carrying dead books, dead words. Perhaps those words were once alive when the master who had spoken them was there.

When I am speaking to you, do you think it is only the words that reach to you? No, my tone, my emphasis on certain words, my silence between two words, my gestures of the hands, my eyes - which I forget completely to blink! My doctors are after me to continue to blink - but I forget! When I am really speaking to you, then it is not only my words, but my whole being that is involved in it. It is a total expression... and one never knows what will reach to your heart.

You can write these words. They will be the same - but yet not the same, because the living reality behind them will be missing. My emphasis has always been - while I'm alive do not bother about what I say. Don't listen to what I say, listen to what I am! And when I am gone, just say a goodbye to me. Don't cling to the memories, don't cling to that which is no more. Find another living master - the earth is never empty.

Existence is very compassionate. I don't want you to cling to me. That is one of the faults all the old religions have committed, and I don't want you to do it. They have all seen to it that after the master is dead there is a succession. Now the pope is not enlightened. Now your eight shankaracharyas have nothing to do with the original shankaracharya; they are not enlightened people. You are unnecessarily wasting your time and their time.

Search and you will always find, because the earth is not barren, it always produces. Whoever is thirsty will find the well somewhere.

Rather than getting lost into words, use your time in finding a charismatic personality, a living mystery, a man who has become a legend while he is alive. And when he is gone, be grateful for those moments that you lived with him. Be grateful for all that you have learned from him, but don't get stuck there. Find out, and now it will be easier for you to find out because you have tasted one mystic, you know the taste, you know the vibe. You will be easily pulled towards the direction where you will find another awakened being. Only bodies differ, the experience of awakening is the same.

So I don't want anybody to remember me, even when I am gone. If you have really loved me, I would like you to find someone of the same quality, so that your love goes on growing, your being goes on maturing, so that one day you are also in a state where you can help thirsty people to quench their thirst.

Question 3:

There are no outside characteristics of an enlightened man. People have been searching for them for centuries. If you go to a Jaina temple, you will see statues of the twenty-four tirthankaras. The most striking thing about them is that their earlobes are touching their shoulders. According to Jainism, a characteristic of an enlightened man is that his earlobes touch his shoulders - a very strange kind of characteristic.

Then Krishna is not enlightened, Jesus is not enlightened. And unless you try some plastic surgery, you cannot hope to be enlightened. But this is sheer nonsense, because what does the earlobe have to do with enlightenment? Have you seen Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira? - all are clean- shaven. That is strange. All twenty-four tirthankaras are clean-shaven. They were far more Western than you are! Far ahead of their times!

But the idea is that the hairs of their beard and their mustache don't grow, that that is a characteristic of an enlightened being - very strange, because that means you are missing some hormones. This is not good! This is not healthy! And if this is so, then all the Vedic seers and the people who wrote the most beautiful literature in the world, the Upanishads, were not enlightened because they all had long beards.

Don't try to find out from the outside, otherwise you will fall into some stupidity or other. I will try to describe it to you from within, as an insider. Enlightenment simply means a man who has no longer any questions left in his life, everything is solved. Enlightenment means a man who is constantly in the same state of silence, peace and contentment whatsoever happens on the outside, success or failure, pain or pleasure, life or death.

Enlightenment means a man who has experienced something that you are also capable of, but you have not tried it. He is full of light, full of joy, full of ecstasy, twenty-four hours a day. He is almost a drunkard, drunk with the divine. His life is a song, his life is a dance, his life is a rejoicing. His presence is a blessing.

And if you want to know him, you have to be with him. You cannot watch him from the outside, you have to come close. You have to come in a state of intimacy. You have to join his caravan, you have to hold his hand. You have to feed on him, and you have to allow, to let him enter your heart. But from the outside, please don't try to find any characteristic; these are all inner experiences.

But some indications can always be given. In the proximity of the enlightened being you will feel a certain magnetic force, a tremendous attraction, a charismatic center. Out of your fear you may not come close. It is dangerous to come close to an enlightened man, because you can come close but then you cannot go away. Coming close is risky. It is only for gamblers, not for businessmen.

Question 4:

There is only one path. What you decide to call it does not matter. The word 'surrender' and the word 'will' appear to be diametrically opposite, but in reality they are complementary. They are not contradictory. It is a little subtle.

Only a man of will can surrender, because surrender needs tremendous courage. Never think that surrender is for those who are weak. Surrender is for those who are tremendously strong, so strong that they can even surrender their ego to the master. It needs tremendous courage, guts. It needs will, will to surrender. If you don't have a will you cannot surrender. Who will surrender?

But will alone will not help. Will alone will enhance your ego and will take you away from the path.

Will as a master is dangerous, harmful; will as a servant to surrender is beautiful. Use will to serve surrender and you will be on the right path. They appear to be two, but they can help each other.

You have heard the story....

A forest was on fire, and in the forest lived two beggars. One was blind, he could not see. The other was lame, he could not walk. And because they were both in the same business, competitors, they were enemies. But this was not a time for enmity or competition. The blind man could walk, but could not see where to go; the whole forest was on fire. The lame man could see that there was still a possibility to get out, but he could not move because he had no legs.

Finally, they compromised. They said, "For the time being let us forget our differences and help each other." The blind man said, "I will take you on my shoulders. You watch and I will walk." And they both came out of the forest alive, without being burned.

This is the situation with will and surrender. Will is blind, but it can walk fast. It is very speedy, it has tremendous power. Surrender has eyes and no legs, but it can see. If you can manage a friendship between will and surrender, and if surrender sits on the shoulders of your will, you have managed one of the greatest things in life. Then the path is very easy and the home is very close.

There were a few questions that I rejected. I would like to answer those questions briefly.

One was: Why am I condemned all around the world, and condemned especially for my teachings as far as sex is concerned? It is simple. Sex does not have much place in my teachings. Hearing me for so many days, even you can witness that sex is a very unimportant thing in my teachings.

But the yellow journalist and the repressed mind of the whole of humanity takes anything I say about sex out of context - makes it into a big thing.

I have four hundred books in my name, translated into all the major languages of the world, and there is only one book on sex. But nobody talks about the three hundred and ninety-nine books. They only talk about one book - that too without understanding it! The name of the book is FROM SEX TO SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS. It is not about sex, it is about the transformation of sexual energy into consciousness. I am the only man who is against sex. But this whole world is full of repressed sexuality.

I am reminded of a story....

Three old men used to meet in a garden every evening. One was seventy, the other was eighty and the third was ninety. They were really ancient people.

It was Sunday evening. They met on their bench - it had become their bench. They had been meeting on that bench for as long as anybody could remember. The first old man, seventy years old, said, "I am feeling very embarrassed. The very memory makes me feel like committing suicide."

The other two were very much shocked. They said, "What happened?"

He said, "What happened? The memory is haunting me. I cannot forget it. It was a beautiful morning and a beautiful lady was a guest in our house and I could not contain my temptation. When she was taking a bath, I went to the bathroom door, looked through the keyhole, and was caught red-handed by my mother. She created so much fuss that the whole neighborhood gathered. Everybody was lecturing me and everybody was being wise, and they all forced me to go to church and confess to the priest the sin I had committed. It was all so embarrassing. I don't want to remember it, but it keeps on coming up again and again."

The other two men giggled. They said, "You are stupid. This happens to everybody in childhood. I don't think there is a single boy who has not looked through the keyhole of the bathroom."

The seventy-year-old man said, "My God, it is not a question of childhood, it happened today!"

There was silence. The second old man, eighty years old, said, "Something has happened to me too. You have started the subject and I have to tell it, to be honest. For three days I have not made love to my wife."

Both the old men said, "What happened?"

He said, "What happened? Whenever I started making love to her, she stopped. She said she had a headache, she turned to the other side... and this is insulting."

The seventy-year-old man said, "But you told me you have stopped making love."

The man said, "Yes, I have said that to you, but I have simply changed the technique. Now my technique is that for three seconds I hold my wife's hand and press it as hard as I can, and then say good night to her and then we go to sleep. This is my love. This is all the sex that is left - three seconds pressing her hand. But for three days continuously, she has been pretending to have a headache and I have not made love."

The third old man, the most ancient of them all, giggled. He said, "You are an idiot. You don't know what a real problem is. Now the subject has come up, I have to tell you what my problem is. This morning when I started making love to my wife, she said, 'Oh, you idiot, what are you doing?' I said, 'I am trying to make love.' She said, 'But you have made love twice in the night!' I said, 'It seems I am losing my memory...'

"I am in a real mess. You are talking about stupid things - peeping in the bathroom, not being able to press your wife's hand. Just think of me, I have lost my memory."

Even at the time of death, sexual repression is such that people go on thinking about it. And that is the reason why they enter again into another womb - that is, another sexual body.

I am not teaching sex. I am teaching you not to repress it so that you can transform it, not to repress it so that you can get free of it. Anything repressed will remain with you in your unconscious as a bondage. Don't repress anything, and you will feel a tremendous freedom.

Experience everything, and you will start becoming more and more mature, you will not have to wait until the age of ninety. My own experience with my sannyasins is that just as a man becomes sexually mature at the age of fourteen, if he lives his sexual life without any guilt, without any idea of sin but simply as a natural phenomenon, by the age of forty-two he will have gone beyond it.

Every seven years there comes a change. Just as fourteen is the time when you become ripe for sexual experience, able to produce children, at the age of forty-two you start a new phase of your life. At fourteen you were entering into the world of living. At forty-two you are entering into the world of death. Just as at fourteen life needed reproduction, at forty-two life needs not sexuality but meditation.

And if you have lived your sex, you have had enough time to see that it is a child's game. There is no question of repressing it, it simply drops of its own accord, the way it came on its own accord. You did not produce it; it was not your creation at the age of fourteen. In the same way as the breeze came at the age of fourteen, the breeze passes you by at the age of forty-two. That is the time when something more significant, something more valuable, has to be experienced. You have loved, you have seen the reality of the world, experienced all kinds of relationships - now is the time to know yourself, to be yourself, because death will be coming soon. Before death you have to be ready to meet it.

The last story....

A king dreamed in the night that a big, very ferocious shadow was standing in front of him. He asked, "Who are you and what is the purpose of your coming into my dream?"

The shadow said, "I am your death, and I am coming tomorrow evening at sunset. Remember, at the time of sunset meet me at the right place."

And before he could ask, "Where is the right place?" - not that he was going to be at the right place, he wanted to know so that he could avoid the right place - the shadow disappeared, and out of fear the dream was broken.

It was the middle of the night. Immediately he asked all the wise men, astrologers, palmists, prophets, to gather because they had to decipher the meaning of the dream. They discussed, and as are the ways of the so-called knowledgeable, they couldn't agree. They were all talking, discussing, everybody had his own explanation - and the king was more and more confused.

The king's old servant was watching all this, and the sun was rising; half the night had passed. He whispered to the king, "Sir, these people are never going to come to any conclusion. All they know is fighting, quarreling, arguing. You don't have time for that, the sun has already risen, and how long will it take for it to set? There is not much time. My suggestion is, let them discuss. You take your fastest horse and escape far away from this capital and this palace."

The advice appeared to be very relevant. The king picked the best horse he had, and by the evening he had moved hundreds of miles away from the palace.

To rest for the night, he entered into a mango grove. He stroked the horse and said to the horse, "You really proved your mettle. I had no idea that you could run so fast. You risked everything, as if you understood my problem that death is close and you have to risk all your energy. I am thankful to you."

At that very time the sun was setting, and suddenly he became aware of a hand on his shoulder.

He looked back. The old shadow that he had seen in the dream was standing there and said, "I have also to thank your horse, because without him I was worried how you were going to manage to reach the right place at the right time. But you managed. The whole credit goes to your horse."

Whether death is a few hours away, or a few days or few years, it makes no difference. Just as one prepares for life, one has to prepare for death too. And the preparation for death I call religiousness.

The art of religiousness is the art of preparing for death and dying in such a way that nothing dies - only the body is left behind and you move into eternity.

Okay?