The sword and the lotus

Question 1:

The question asks one of the most important things about man's totality. In this century Carl Gustav Jung, one of the most ingenious psychological researchers, found out that man is not only man, and woman is not only woman. The man is both and so is the woman.

Man and woman are two parts of one whole. If you are a man that means your unconscious will be a woman. If you are a woman your unconscious will be a man. It was a revolutionary thought in the Western world but not in the East. The East has known it for at least five thousand years. There are statues in the East symbolizing the same concept of totality - Shiva, Nataraj the dancer, and Ardhanarishwar, half woman and half man.

In tantra it has been accepted for centuries that it is impossible to have man just be man for the simple reason that everybody is born out of a father and a mother. Both contribute to the being of the child. Whether the child turns out to be a man or a woman, it doesn't matter; his basic constituents came from both sides, man and woman. Something in the child will remain of both.

But society has not been so cultured, so civilized, so psychologically sane as to understand the implications of it; they are vast. If every man is carrying a woman within him, society has not taken care of it - no society in the world.

If every woman is carrying a man within, nobody has taken note of it. The truth has been known for centuries, but societies have ignored that truth. And the result is this whole humanity is in tremendous suffering, misery, divisions, splits, and nobody feels at rest because half of him is always ignored, half remains undernourished. How can you feel contented?

On the contrary, every society of the world has insisted from very childhood that a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl. In small details they are reminded again and again... If the boy is climbing a tree it is okay, but this is not right for a girl.

In my childhood, just beside me, there lived a neighbor who was principal of a school. He had a daughter of my age, and because she saw me climbing trees, naturally she also followed. Her father came out and said to her, "Never do it again. This is against womanhood. You are a GIRL."

The girl said, "But you are not saying anything to the boy who is climbing."

He said, "It is not a question of climbing. Boys are allowed to do many things that girls are not allowed to do. The boys are also not allowed to do many things." A boy playing with dolls is not allowed. Everybody laughs at him: "What are you doing? Are you a girl?" Girls play with dolls; it is not manly.

We have created such a division and a split - the man is some different species and the woman is some different species.

In my childhood I loved to have long hair....

My house and my father's shop were together, so each time I was coming in and going out, I passed through his shop.

And the people would ask him, "Whose girl is this?"

And my father felt so embarrassed that finally he took hold of me and said, "This cannot be continued.

To every customer I have to give the explanation: he is not a girl, he is my boy. But it is embarrassing.

Don't you feel embarrassed?"

I said, "It doesn't matter. I love long hair, and if they think I am a girl, that is their problem. It doesn't make any difference to me."

He took out his scissors and cut my hair. I said, "You be careful, you will repent it."

He said, "Don't try to frighten me. That's what you always do."

I said, "Then you can do it, and see."

And he had to repent it his whole life. He cut my hair and I immediately went... and just on the other side of the road were the shops of the barbers. And I loved one barber - he was an opium addict, so whenever I had time I used to sit with him. He talked about great things. Nobody was ready to listen to him, and he loved me because I listened to him. I said, "These things are great and these people are simply idiots, they don't understand."

He said, "You are the only man who understands me and I wait for you, because these people don't know how to appreciate great things."

He would recite songs when he was really deep into his intoxication, and it was a joy to listen to those songs. One line from one song, another line from another song, something from a bhajan, a religious song, something from a film... and in between he would go on composing his own ideas.

So I went to him and I said, "Today I need your help."

He said, "Whatever it is I will do."

I said, "You just shave my head."

He said, "That is a really difficult thing. If your father comes to know I will be in trouble" - because in India a boy's head is shaved only when his father dies.

But I said to him, "I have never asked anything. If you are not going to shave my head, I am not going to come again to your shop."

He said, "No, wait, you are my only customer who appreciates me."

He shaved my whole head, and I went back.

My father saw me coming into the shop. He said, "What has happened?"

And his customers said, "What has happened to the boy? It seems his father is dead."

Now my father was in a more embarrassing situation. He said, "He is not dead, I am his father. But he was right when he told me that I would repent. Now I am going to have to answer to the whole town that I am still alive!"

People started coming. Because I was going around the town, everybody saw me and they thought that my father was dead. People started coming to show their sympathy, and when they saw my father sitting in the shop they said, "What is the matter? Who has died? We have seen your boy completely shaved."

And my father said, "It is all my doing. In anger I cut his hair, knowing perfectly well that he would do something, but this is the last thing... I will never do anything to him again because he is unpredictable."

He said to me, "You can do one kindness to me - until your hair grows a little, can you come from the back door?"

I said, "You are again asking me to do something against my will. I can come, I can always come my whole life from the back door, but don't tell me, because I will create some trouble."

So he said, "It is okay, don't come from the back door. Let me face the town. Anyway you have already moved around the town. Everybody knows - people are coming to sympathize and they find me alive. So it is only a question of a few days and they will all know that I am alive and you have done... And that opium addict - what to do with him? You cannot even communicate with him. You say something - he answers something else."

He said to me, "I wonder how you manage to talk with him. For hours I see you sitting in his shop."

I said, "He is one of the most lovely men. It doesn't matter what he says, it doesn't matter whether it relates to what I have said... I enjoy what I am saying, he enjoys what he is saying. We both enjoy - there is no question of communication. It is not a business, it is pure enjoyment. And he says such beautiful things that nobody can say when he is in his senses. Just the other day he was shaving the head of the great wrestler of the town and I whispered in his ear, 'Just shave half the hair and leave half.'

"He said, 'But he will be very angry, and he is a wrestler and I am an old opium addict.'

"I said, 'You don't be worried. I am here.'"

... He shaved half of his head and then he said, "I have remembered something and I have to go immediately home. You sit, I will be coming."

That was his way to escape from the shop.

The wrestler waited for a few minutes... then half an hour.... Then he asked me, "Is this man going to come back or not?"

I said, "I don't think... because that man is an opium addict one never knows where he gets caught - discussing with somebody, he may not have reached his home yet. It is better you go."

He said, "This is strange. With half my head shaved I will look like a fool!"

I said, "But he has not taken any money from you. You can go to another barbershop and you can save half the money."

He said, "You are his partner or what?"

I said, "We are just friends. And unless you go, he will not come. So the faster you go, the better."

He had to go to another barbershop where people laughed at him. And they said, "In the first place why did you go to that madman?"

So my father tried to persuade the opium addict, "Never do this thing to my child" - but he would talk about something else.

And the embarrassing part for him was somebody thinking me his daughter, not his son.

And this continues your whole life.... A man is a man and many things are forbidden to him. A woman should remain graceful, should remain within limits, should follow certain ideas that make her feminine.

Society has not listened to the great tantra philosophers, nor are they listening to Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical psychology. But I want it to be emphatically understood that unless we accept all the qualities in man and all the qualities in woman, we will not be able to make humanity liberated.

Half a being is always in bondage.

For example, no man is allowed to cry and weep; he has to be strong. Even if somebody dies and his heart is full of tears, he has to keep himself strong. He has not to show his weakness - as if tears are weakness.

Women are allowed to weep, to say things in their sadness, in their anguish, and have tears rolling down from their eyes. But perhaps you don't understand that because women can cry and scream and shout, and it is acceptable, they don't go so easily mad as the man does. They don't commit murders, they don't commit suicide. The proportion of suicides for men is double that of women.

What makes it that way?

The reason is man goes on accumulating his anguish. Society has taught him to repress feelings, emotions, sentiments - he has to be just a thinker. He will not show emotions even to his friends, to his wife, to his children, to his parents. No, everywhere he has to remain aloof, detached - he is a man.

The woman cries very easily - any small hurt and tears come to her eyes. But you don't know the healing force of the tears. Every man has to learn that tears should be allowed, because if nature meant that man should not weep, then nature would not have given man's eyes glands for tears.

Men and women have the same size glands for tears - nature cannot be unwise.

There are moments when you want to cry, and it is good to cry - it is a relief. It removes a burden from your heart. If you go on accumulating all this, one day it is going to explode. That's why you come across cases where people, whom you had always thought so nice, have murdered - you cannot believe it - or have committed suicide. You cannot believe that a man who was so religious, reading the Gita every morning, going to the temple, doing all the rituals - how could he commit suicide? But you have never seen tears in his eyes, you have never seen his sentiments, emotions, his heart feelings, his wounds. He was covering them.

There is a limit to everything. A moment comes when he cannot contain it anymore, and rather than being exposed, he would like to commit suicide. That seems to be more manly than everybody knowing that this man cries, weeps.

The women - if they were allowed to play the same games as boys are playing, to cross the rivers as the boys are doing, to climb the trees and the mountains as boys are doing - it would be very difficult or even impossible for anybody to rape them.

Our society is responsible for making the woman so fragile, so submissive, that when somebody rapes her she cannot do anything. She has never been allowed to do anything - no exercise, nothing that could have made her stronger. We have created a strange society of split people.

Your question is that listening to me, being near to me, you feel so full of love that a strange thing happens to you: you see your so-called manliness falling into parts, and suddenly your "woman" is taking you over.

Love is not of the mind but of the heart - it is womanly. Whenever love takes over, your man feels upset, unwilling, afraid. Whenever there is love the woman blossoms. Without love, the woman shrinks. The men who love power never fall in love. Even if they fall in love they keep themselves at a distance.

For example, Adolf Hitler... you cannot conceive what kind of love this was. He loved a woman, but he behaved with her almost as if she was a soldier and he was the commander. Going out of his home he told her, "While I am out you are not to go to your mother's house" - which was just in the neighborhood. There was no reason in it - why? She had not seen the mother for many days - she was sick, old, and there was no reason why she should not go. But you cannot ask a man like Adolf Hitler, "Why?" He will immediately shoot you: that is his answer; he does not believe in giving answers.

But the woman thought that he had gone.... She inquired of his secretary. He said, "He will not be back for at least eight hours."

She said, "That is enough time. I will be back within half an hour."

She went to see her mother. She came back before Adolf Hitler was back, but when he came back the first thing he inquired of his secretary was, "Has the woman gone to see her mother?"

And the secretary had to say, "Yes, but it was only for half an hour, and there was no harm..."

Adolf Hitler said, "I am not asking your advice and I am not asking whether there was harm or not."

He went in and shot the woman immediately, then and there, without even asking her whether she had gone or not.

Do you think this is love? Can love do such a thing? Can love be such an unforgiving... so hard, so stonehard, so mechanical? - it is not a love relationship. Then another woman came into his life, but he never allowed her to sleep in his room. The reason, he writes in his own autobiography, was, "I don't trust anybody while I am asleep, not even a woman who thinks she loves me. She may be a detective, she may be from the enemies. She may simply shoot me, kill me, poison me... do anything."

He never allowed the woman, and for ten years they were in love. But what kind of love was this?

The day Germany was defeated, the bombs were falling on Berlin and he was hiding in an underground safe place. He asked his secretary to call a priest immediately because he wanted to get married.

The secretary said, "What a time you have chosen. We are finished. It is only a few minutes more before Berlin will be taken by the enemy. For ten years that woman has been asking you to get married to her and you have been postponing. Now what is the urgency?"

He said, "Don't waste time. Catch hold of a priest and force him to come here. I don't have much time, and before I die I want to get married."

And he got married - just to die together. Then both poisoned themselves and allowed their people to burn their bodies. That was the only time they were ever alone together in the same room.

Why had he chosen this moment? Because now there was no fear. Death was going to happen anyway; there was no need to distrust.

Man thinks he loves. Woman loves.

She does not think that she loves.

For man, thinking comes first; love is secondary. Hence his love has not the beauty, the same divine flavor that a woman's love has. He could have it. Nature has made you both alive, but your woman is repressed, you don't allow her to raise her head. And this has created so many problems that you are always in need of a woman - a woman is always in need of a man.

But if a right kind of psychology prevails in the world and every child is brought up with both his sides growing together, he will have the strength of a man and he will also have the softness, the lovingness of a woman.

Somebody from Japan, a Zen master who has fallen in love with me so much that in his monastery he teaches Zen through my books... And when I was in jail in America he went round the monasteries in Japan to get signatures of Zen masters, in protest.

I don't belong to any religion, but if there is really a religious man, he belongs to me.

He sent me a statue of Gautam Buddha, but a very strange statue, more representing Gautam Buddha truly than I have seen in any other statue. In one hand there was a lotus flower and in the other hand there was a sword. And the strangest thing was that if you looked from one side, if you looked from the sword side, the face looked like that of a warrior. If you looked from the lotus side, the face looked so feminine, so beautiful that you could not conceive that this man could fight.

A buddha has to be both together - a sword and a lotus flower. He has to be a man and he has to be a woman - in their ultimate flowering.

If the right psychology is prevalent, every man and every woman will feel a certain independence.

The need for the man, or the need for the woman, will disappear, because you have the woman within you and you have the man within you.

One thing, you will have a certain independence which you don't have right now. And this is one of the causes: husbands and wives are continuously fighting because you cannot love a person totally on whom you are dependent. Nobody likes dependence.

The man cannot love the woman totally because he is so dependent on her.

I used to be a teacher in the university, and next to my quarters was a Bengali family, a professor of mathematics, a very simple man. The first day I entered my quarters - and the walls were so thin you could hear everything that was going on in the neighbor's house - it must have been in the middle of the night, one o'clock, that the professor shouted, "I am going to commit suicide. It is enough!"

And the woman said, "Who is preventing you? This is your umbrella, get out!"

Bengalis cannot go anywhere without an umbrella.

I was a little puzzled what to do, whether I should interfere. I had not even been introduced to these people, but not to interfere did not seem right. And this was strange! I was puzzled whether he was going to commit suicide, and the woman giving him his umbrella...? This was simply ludicrous. But I went out, and the professor had gone fast with his umbrella towards the railway station which was very close.

I asked the woman, "I am new and I don't know what is going on here. I am not supposed to interfere, but in the middle of the night your husband has gone to commit suicide and you don't seem to be worried - you have even given him his umbrella. At least you should have kept his umbrella, then he would not have gone - because Bengalis cannot move without the umbrella."

She said, "You don't be worried; you are new. He cannot commit suicide without me! I am absolutely needed in everything. You just wait - he will be coming back soon."

Within fifteen or twenty minutes he was back. And the woman said, "What happened?"

He said, "What happened? You gave me the wrong umbrella! It does not open!" - and there was no rain and there was no need for it to open. "I have told you always to give me the right umbrella whenever I am going out. But you don't take me seriously - and I was going to commit suicide, absolutely decided. I had even reached the station, but when I tried to open the umbrella, it wouldn't open. And just to teach you a lesson I had to come back."

Then I felt relieved and I went to sleep. I said, "These people are not going to commit suicide."

The woman was perfectly right: "He cannot do anything alone - he will need me even in suicide.

Without me he cannot do anything. So don't be worried, you just go to sleep. Within half an hour he will be back. And this is almost an everyday routine; it is not new. The first time I also had got really worried, but when it started happening every day...! At any time he would go to commit suicide - for any single mood, reason. Then I thought, 'This is just... he does not mean it; he does not understand the meaning of suicide.'"

Why are men and women constantly fighting? They are fighting because they feel a certain dependence on each other. And nobody likes dependence - everybody hates it. That hate is there that poisons your love. That hate is there that creates constant conflict.

What I am proposing is that if every man and woman is brought up with the idea that you have both the wings, you are not alone, that hidden within you is your opposite pole, then you will have a certain balance and your need will change into something new. You will love a woman, but it will not be a need, it will be a joy, it will be a sharing.

You will love a woman who resembles your inner woman; there will be a certain deep connection.

You will love a man who resembles your inner man. And if you are not fighting with your inner man, you cannot fight with your outer resemblance.

And it is stupid to ask the astrologers and the palmists and the tarot card readers, and all kinds of idiots around the world, to decide your marriage.

In one town I lived for a few years....

Just in front of me there was a brahmin who used to read people's birth charts and decide whether the marriage would be a happy marriage or not.

One day a man came to me and he said, "I am a very poor man and that astrologer is the best in the city and he is asking ten rupees - I can pay at the most two rupees. I am really very poor. It is the question of my son's marriage and I want the best astrologer to decide whether the couple will be happy."

I said, "You don't be worried. You just wait here, let me go to the astrologer and when I am there then you come."

I went to the astrologer and I said, "I have been living in front of you for two years and I see you every day fighting with your wife. Could you not manage to figure out your birth charts? I am going to expose you unless you listen to me."

He said, "I will listen to you but don't expose me."

And at that moment that man came. I said, "The first thing is: do his job free."

He said, "But I have refused him before; my fee is ten rupees minimum."

I said, "This man's chart has to be done free, otherwise I am going to expose you."

He said, "Wait! Don't say a single word more. I will do whatever you say. And whenever you want somebody to be done free, just send a note to me and I will do it. Don't talk so loudly if my wife comes in, because then you will not be needed to expose, she will expose the whole thing. She even beats me. All this astrology is bogus! But what to do? - this is the only profession I know and it is going very well."

No astrologer can decide. It has nothing to do with your birth and the stars. It has nothing to do with the lines on your hand.

And all the marriages are being made according to the astrologers - particularly in this part of the world. Every marriage is almost an arranged marriage, and they are all failures, without exception.

I have lived amongst many, many families; traveling, I have been a guest to thousands of families, and I was surprised, it is the same story - they are quarreling.

The reason is that we have not yet found the right way of matching a couple. You cannot do it if the man and woman are brought up in such a way that both their sides are fully grown up; they will find their own man, their own woman.

There is no need for any arranged marriage. An arranged marriage is simply a fake; it is deception.

And deceiving your own children for their whole life - to suffer, to go into misery, to fight and still to go on keeping a smiling face to the world... they cannot say what is happening inside. Everybody thinks everybody else is living a beautiful life, and everybody is in the same boat.

Your question is significant - that finding a love arising, your manliness is fallen, shattered. Suddenly your woman, of which you were not aware, has arisen. All the qualities of the woman - the softness, the beauty, the music, the poetry... allow it; don't be worried. What has fallen is not your real man. What has fallen is the man cultivated by the society. Once you accept your woman, you will soon discover by the side, your real man, which cannot fall down, which cannot be shattered on the ground. The shattered one was just imposed on you.

People are telling you that this is the way a man should be, and nobody is bothering whether this is human or not. You may start crying and weeping when tears are coming to you, you will be surprised that it is the woman part of you which is crying and weeping. But suddenly there comes a tremendous strength which is not the woman, which is the man. Your tears have cleaned all the rubbish that the society has imposed on you.

So what has fallen down on the ground, scattered, is not your reality; it is just a pseudo-reality which has been imposed on you - that you have to be like this, that this is the way a man should be, this is the way a woman should be.

Nobody has looked into your nature, nobody has respected you in your totality. You know now perfectly well that surgery has succeeded in changing a man into a woman, a woman into a man. If both are not present in you, the surgery cannot succeed. Both are present in you: one is showing itself; the other is hiding behind. Surgery can change it. The other can show, and the one that was showing itself can be hidden. That is a very simple process.

One of my sannyasins, Leeladhar, is one of the best plastic surgeons, who has changed many men into women, and many women into men. He was worried whether he was doing right or wrong, so he asked me.

I said, "Whatever you are doing is perfectly good. If a man is tired of being a man he should be given a chance to be a woman. If a woman is tired of being a woman she should be given a chance to be a man. And if this is possible in this life, why wait for death? Death does it."

I have met many small children who remember their past life, but one strange thing I became aware of was that if the child is a boy, in his past life he was a woman; and if the child is a girl, in her past life she was a man.

This was so universal that it gave me a certain clue, that every man gets tired by the end of his life and starts thinking that perhaps women are enjoying more. And every woman gets tired, because you don't know the other person's inner world, you only see the outer side.

There is a Sufi story....

A man was very miserable and he was a mystic, just praying the whole day. Finally, he said to God, "I have never asked you anything. I thought you yourself must understand, but it seems you are not looking at me. I have to make it clear to you, that it seems I am the most miserable man in the whole world, but I don't want you to take all my misery. All I want is to please let me change my misery with anybody else - I am ready. Can't you even do that?"

That night he slept, and had a dream that God called the whole town and told everybody to collect all their miseries into a bag and carry it to the mosque.

The mystic was surprised. He thought, "Perhaps he has heard my prayer."

He immediately took all his miseries in his bag and rushed toward the mosque. And he was surprised, because the whole city was running towards the mosque, and all were carrying bags far bigger than he had. His bag was the smallest!

He said, "My God. Now I am in trouble. I never knew that these people were hiding so many miseries. Their bags are touching the ground; they are just dragging them." And he had just a small bag hanging over his arm. He said, "This is going to be just absolutely foolish. These are my miseries, and now I have to change with any of these..." And he looked around - everybody had a bigger bag. Naturally, that's why they were lagging behind and others had reached the mosque.

Finally, when everybody reached the mosque, the voice of God said, "Hang your bags around the mosque. I will put the light off, and then you can choose any one that you want. Everybody is free to choose - the misery of your own choice."

And before the lights went out the mystic rushed to his own bag. But he was surprised that he was not the only one who was rushing towards his own bag, everybody was rushing towards his own bag.

He said, "This is strange."

He asked his neighbors, "Why are you rushing? Why are you in such a hurry?"

They said, "Whatever we have in our bags, at least we know. And we have lived with these miseries our whole life, so we are well acquainted. In fact, now we have lived so long that they don't matter much. We have become accustomed.... Choosing somebody else's bag, one does not know what is in it. At least one thing is certain, that you would have to begin to be acquainted with new miseries that nobody wants."

Everybody, without exception, was holding his own bag, so that somebody would not come in the darkness and snatch it. But nobody was ready, everybody was with his own bag. So God said, "It seems there is no need to put the light off - you can go home. You have chosen."

And they were immensely happy. everybody was happy that he had got his own bag back.

The mystic woke up smiling. He said, "This has been a great dream and it has revealed a truth, that you see the other faces but you don't know what they are carrying inside... what suffering, what anguish."

So it happens, by the time of death, everybody wishes to be changed to the unknown part of himself that he has repressed. If he had known both he would have died not asking to be a man or a woman, but asking something more - something higher, something concerning consciousness, meditation.

He would have asked, "In ignorance I have lived long; now give me light. Now let me live in light and consciousness."

If he had been aware of both these sides he would have asked, "Enough is enough. I have known man, I have known woman. I have been both, and I am perfectly satisfied. Now I want to go beyond, beyond man and beyond woman." And that is the state of enlightenment....

So don't be worried. Whatever falls down and gets shattered does not belong to you. Let your woman come up, and soon you will find your man also coming up. Allow them both equal respect, allow them both unity. It will make you an individual for the first time - undivided. That is the meaning of the word 'individual'.

And an individual man loving an individual woman will have a totally different flavor of love. It will not be just physical, it will not be just biological, it will have something of the spiritual in it. It will grow towards spirituality. They will help each other towards spirituality, they will become partners in a pilgrimage towards godliness.

Question 2:

Tears have a language of their own. The language is: anything that cannot be expressed through words overflows through tears.

If you are in immense pain, tears may come. If you are in immense ecstasy, tears may come. If you are deep in love, tears may come. If you are in profound silence, tears may come.

Tears can come on many occasions, but one thing will be similar on each occasion: whatever is happening within you is something that cannot be expressed through words.

Children weep because they want their parents to fulfill some of their demands which they are afraid to say. They are afraid that the answer may be no. They cannot bring their demand into words because they don't want to be rejected, they don't want to be ignored.

Tears come to their eyes, and the parents understand their tears better than their words. And the tears create a bridge of communication. The parents become more soft, available, open... they want to know what the reason is, what they want: "Why are you crying?"

Now it is a better situation to get a yes from the parents.

You will sometimes find sannyasins full of tears - they don't make any demand on me; their tears are of gratefulness. But there are experiences you cannot talk about; in fact, saying them seems to be profane.

If you really love someone it seems so difficult to say, "I love you," because the word 'love' is so small and the feeling is so big, that when you hear yourself saying, "I love you," you yourself feel frustrated - it is not what you wanted to say. It was something alive and so big, and this word 'love' is just dead.

It is not breathing; it has no heartbeat. Your love was your totality, and this word carries nothing of your totality.

Then tears become the language of expressing... whatever is inexpressible.

Tears have a beauty of their own, a poetry... wordless, a song which only can be heard from heart to heart.

The tears of the sannyasins are not to demand something, but to thank because they have got something already.

Question 3:

They are not two things. Women's liberation will also be men's liberation. It may sound strange, but if you go into the sources it will be very easy to understand.

One fundamental thing: you cannot make anybody a slave unless you are ready to become enslaved by your slave. Slavery is always two-sided.

Sometimes it happens that the master is a bigger slave than the slave. The master becomes dependent on the slave for everything. And the second thing: when you make somebody a slave, you are creating trouble for yourself, because the person will always hate you. He may show love, he may show reverence, but that is superficial. Deep inside he is boiling with hate and fire.

Man has made woman a slave, but you can see what I am saying to you, the truth of it. Have you seen any husband who is not henpecked? Strange...

In a small school a teacher was asking students puzzles. And he asked, "Have you seen somebody who when he goes out of the house is one thing and when he comes back to the house he is something else?"

One child immediately started waving his hand frantically. The teacher said, "What is the matter?

Do you know?"

He said, "Everybody knows it, but is not courageous enough to say. I can say it. It is my father.

When he goes out of the house he looks like a lion, and when he comes back into the house he looks like a rat. And all these boys know it, but they are afraid to say it. I do not bother, because my father and mother are so constantly in a fight that they don't have any time for me. I am completely free to do anything, to go anywhere."

What has made the woman bitchy? It is not a natural quality. What has made the woman continuously nag the husband? It is not natural.

It is a revenge, the feminine way of revenge. You have reduced her into a slave. You have taken away all her freedom, you have made her just a possession.

My sister was being married and I told my father, "If the word kanyadan, donation of the daughter, is being used, I will never come back to this family again. Then you can think I am dead."

He said, "But this is strange. That word has been used for centuries."

I said, "I don't care about the centuries, I care about the meaning of the word. You can donate things, you can donate money - you cannot donate people! And I will not allow it, even if the marriage party goes back. Let them go to hell!"

He said, "I was worried that you might create some trouble, but I had not thought about this kind of trouble. The marriage party is coming - you can hear the band, and the people are coming closer - and you ask me not to use the word 'kanyadan'...! But what about the brahmin priest who will say, 'Where is the father? He has to come and do kanyadan.'"

I said, "I have made arrangements with the priest before I talked to you."

The priest used to live just behind my house. There used to be a big neem tree in the middle - and it was a very narrow street - and I had spread the gossip around the town that the tree was full of ghosts. And the brahmin was very much afraid, because he had to pass through that street. He was the only person who lived behind our house, the only person who had to go through that street. And he used to ask me, "Is it true?"

I said, "Do you want to experience? I have some acquaintance with those people because I live in the house..."

And one day I managed to give him some experience....

He used to almost run in the street. From the main street he would start running saying, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama..." just to avoid the ghosts which were there. And he had just begun with, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama..." when I gave him the experience.

I had just done a simple thing. As he was coming from his work in the town - some worship, some marriage or whatever - it must have been ten o'clock in the night, it was a dark night... I had a drum with me and a big blanket. As he came under the tree, I threw the blanket over him so he could not see what was happening, and I just banged the drum and threw the drum also over him. He got so confused at what was happening, he ran away, back down the street. And by chance, the drum fell over his head. I had not thought that it would go that way - that his head was completely covered by the drum, and underneath the drum was the blanket covering his whole body. So by the time he reached the road, people started running, thinking that the ghost had come onto the road!

He had to shout and struggle, "I am the brahmin who lives behind! I am not the ghost! It is the work of the ghost that I am in such a situation." But there was no other way. So he was always very polite and respectful of me after the experience. Whatever I said he always said, "Yes, I will do it."

I told him, "My sister is going to be married. You are not to use the word 'kanyadan', because no person can be donated. It is not a gift - a human being given as a donation? If you use 'kanyadan', then remember, from this day you will never be able to reach your home... EVERY day those ghosts will trouble you."

He said, "I will do everything, but please no more blankets, no more drums."

So I told my father, "He is willing."

From the very beginning we try to create the woman to be a slave in life. Naturally, she goes on gathering anger, and in her husband's house millions of women - because almost half of humanity are women... Half of humanity is simply wasting its life in kitchens, routine work, looking after children - terrible jobs, and the whole day waiting for the husband to say something soothing, something beautiful.

But the husband has his own problems: his boss in the office; his files gathering on the table; everybody is after him to "finish it." He is working hard, but he comes home with a lot of files. And the moment the woman sees him coming with all the files, that means the office is coming home.

She bursts forth, she explodes... her life is simply ruined. The whole day cooking, taking care of the children. And in the end she was thinking that the husband would be back and they would have a few moments of loving communication, and he is coming with the whole office. Naturally, she gets mad and she throws those files. And while he is eating she goes on nagging him for this, for that...

she does not allow him to eat well.

One man saw on a restaurant a sign saying, "Come at least one time and you will find everything just like your home."

He came in and sat at a table. A waitress came by and she asked, "What would you like?"

He said, "First bring me a cup of cold tea."

And she said, "Cold tea? If you like I will bring it."

"Then bring my food - burned chapati, vegetables so hot with so much spice that tears come out of my eyes... that is the proof. And thirdly, sit in front of me and nag me!"

The woman said, "But this is a restaurant."

He said, "Look at your sign! Only then will I feel at home."

This is the "home" where everybody is living. And you call this life?

The man is harassed in the office, the woman is harassed the whole day by children and neighbors - and then the husband comes.... Both are not in a normal state; they start quarreling about everything, arguing about everything, and soon dishes are being thrown. The woman is hitting him with the pillows; he is shouting and trying to keep her cool because what will the neighbors say?

Children may wake up.... But how long can one keep cool?

Man's liberation is possible only if the woman is liberated. The woman should be educated, should have financial independence, should be an earning member of the family, should not be dependent on the husband. The woman should have as free movement in society as man has. The woman should have time to be creative, to play music, to paint, to read, to write. And you will be surprised - all her nagging will disappear, all her bitchiness will go, because that is the energy that has become creative now.

You cannot condemn the woman, because if you want to have an experience, then just take her job for twenty-four hours. First cook the food - then you will know! At least I know that I cannot even make a cup of tea. It is a miracle for me how a chapati is made.

Then taking care of the children, who are the real devils - either you will kill them or you will kill yourself. Just twenty-four hours! And children have their own ways: the whole day they sleep, and in the night they make every effort to wake everybody.

Sometimes they say they want to go to the bathroom, and somehow you drag them to the bathroom.

And just a few minutes afterwards they are waking you up again - they need water... They have been sleeping the whole day and now they are awake. And you want to force them to sleep; sleep is not something that you can enforce.

And if the child goes on waking you up again and again, you are going to hold him by the neck and tell him, "For the last time: either you or me - decide! We both cannot exist in the same bed!"

It is very natural that the woman has become nagging and bitchy and fighting. And you can see she doesn't mean it. When she throws the pillow at you, you can see it - it never hits you. It is not that she cannot hit you, she does not want to hit you. It is simply anger somehow being expressed. She never throws heavy things at you that you may go blind or your nose may fall off or your head may get broken... she never does. Even if a pillow hits you, it is not much of a hit.

And if you watch carefully, she always throws those plates which are worthless - she wanted to get rid of them! Either they were broken or chipped or something. They are not the real ones; they were useless plates. She is careful; she knows - because whom is she going to hurt?

But the anger is there and it needs some expression. Unless you give it a creative dimension... and the only possible way is that man and woman should both be liberated from each other.

The liberation movement should not be only women's liberation, it should be men's and women's liberation - together, because they both are in slavery. It is interdependent. One cannot become free; they both can become free or they both will remain slaves. The women's liberation movement has not understood it yet and it needs a whole psychological change of atmosphere.

Marriage should be dissolved. People should not live according to the law, they should live only according to love. The only problem has always been children. And my solution is that every small village should become a commune. Bigger villages should become two or three communes, big cities should divide into dozens of communes, and the children are the responsibility of the commune.

Every member of the commune should donate to the commune for the health of the children, for the education of the children, for the care of the children. The children can come to the home - the father and mother can meet the children - but the children basically live in commune hostels and do not belong to private parties, to families. Then there is no problem. If two persons find that their love has disappeared, then there is no need to remain together: it is ugly, disgusting.

The moment you see that the love has disappeared, you have to say goodbye to each other with gratefulness, with friendliness, with thankfulness for all those moments that you lived together. You will always relish those beautiful moments. But what can you do? - it is beyond you. Love comes like a season and goes like a season. As long as it remains, good; it is immensely beautiful. But when it has gone, then to go on hanging onto something dead is going to make you also dead.

It was because of children that the old societies decided that you should remain together - because you have to take care of the children; otherwise what will happen to the children?

A simple solution is that every commune of one thousand people, two thousand people - that means two thousand couples, four thousand people - gives the whole responsibility for the children to the commune. And the commune can take care of the children more responsibly, more carefully. More educated nurses can be put to take care; doctors can be there to take care; teachers can be there to teach. And children will not be spoiled the way they are spoiled now.

They will have a wider vision than our children have. Our children have a very small vision because they are attached to a family. Five persons, seven persons - that is their whole world.

It happened....

By the side of my house there was a temple, and between the temple and my house there was some land which technically my father could win a case in the court and take. But actually, the land belonged to the temple. It was a legal and technical matter.

I told my father, "If you go against the temple - I have nothing to do with the temple, but if you go against the temple then I am going to be a witness against you, because you are taking advantage of a technical mistake. The land does not belong to you and you know it. And not only am I going to be against you, I have convinced your father, my grandfather. He is going with me because they may not take any note of me. I am so small" - I must have been ten years old - "they may not take any note of me, so I have convinced my grandfather. He is going with me. So two generations on each side against you. You have to decide."

He said, "You have talked with my father?"

I said, "Certainly. Because it is a simple matter. The land does not belong to us. Just in the papers of the temple, technically it is not written that it belongs to them. But don't take advantage of a technical mistake."

He said, "But I have never heard of anybody's son being a witness against his own father."

I said, "My loyalty is not to the family. My loyalty is towards truth. If you are on the side of truth I will be with you, but in this case I cannot be with you."

Children living in a family are bound to become loyal to the family. Then they don't care whether they are fair, just, or not, they just fight. People go on fighting for generations.

One of the families in front of my house was the enemy of my family for generations. I was the first to enter into their house....

The man was shocked. He said, "Where are you going?"

I said, "I am coming to your family with a message of friendship. I don't know who the people were who fought. I don't know even the names of the people who fought. I know my grandfather and I know my grandfather's name, his father's name. Beyond that I have no knowledge. And this has been going on for ten generations. How many generations do you remember? Can you tell me all the names? Can you tell me who began all this nonsense? And we have not been on talking terms.

I have come with friendship. I am inviting myself for dinner today in your house."

He said, "This is strange, but perhaps you are right. You are welcome, but have you asked your father?"

I said, "I don't need to. Whatever I want to do, I do it and then I inform him. Then he can express his opinion. It does not make any difference, I have done what I wanted to do. I know he will ask, 'Why did you not ask me?' But that is my problem, you don't be worried."

And they were very happy. The children were very happy, because it was such a strange thing. They were just living in front, and we saw each other, but we could not talk to their children; they could not talk to us. We were going to the same school, but we were not talking to each other, we were enemies. And you don't have any idea why. The children were happy; it was a celebration.

My father came home and he was informed that I had gone inside that house and I had not come out for almost two hours. He said, "This is unbelievable. For ten generations we have not talked to each other. Now he has gone beyond the boundaries, let him come."

When I came back home he was really angry and he said, "Why did you not ask me?"

I said, "It is simple, because I wanted to do it. And now you are free to express your opinion. I knew that you would say no, so what is the point of asking? And I have not done anything wrong. I have made a beautiful friendship, I have opened the door for you too. I have invited the man and his children for dinner tomorrow in this house."

He said, "What?"

I said, "Yes. I have eaten there - I invited myself into their house. Now, in return what do you want?

I should at least be this much courteous."

He said, "My God, then I have to go out of this house tomorrow."

I said, "You have not to go anywhere. You have to be here and you have to receive them, because this is foolish - ten generations ago, and who knows who was right and who was wrong? Those idiots are dead. Why should we go on clinging to the dead, just because we belong to their family?"

The family creates a very small commitment to a very small number of people. A commune frees you from commitment. And psychologists say that if children can be freed from the family then ninety percent of mental diseases will be simply finished. You will be surprised to know that these two things are related.

Ninety percent of psychological diseases will disappear if children are no longer part of the family, because it is the family that creates all kinds of trouble. It makes the children Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist; it makes the children communist, socialist; it gives the children all kinds of beliefs which divide people. And most basically, every boy carries an image of the mother in his heart, and every girl carries the image of the father. And for her whole life the girl will look to the husband for her image of her father to be fulfilled - which is not possible. And the boy will look to his wife for his image of his mother to be fulfilled.

His mother is the most perfect woman he has known. His wife should be as perfect. Now the wife has not come there to be your mother, nor are you there to be her father. But these ideas can be destroyed only if children are living together - not in the family, but under the supervision of the whole commune. They will not have any image and then they won't be expecting their wife to be this way, their husband to behave this way... and thousands of conflicts will disappear.

The future of the family is gone. The commune has the future, and only the commune can make you so free that marriage becomes non-essential. Two persons decide to live together - they live together. They decide to separate - they separate.

The law does not come into it; the government has nothing to do with it, nor has society anything to do with it. It is two persons' personal affair! And they are contributing to the commune for the care of their children. Even those who don't have children - they are also contributing to the commune, because all the children are their children. A feeling of vastness... every child is loved by the whole commune.... Every person of the age of his father becomes his uncle; every woman of the age of his mother becomes his aunt. We are giving him a bigger, richer experience. And with this richer experience he will be a man of multidimensional capacities.

Man's liberation is absolutely necessary just as is woman's liberation. And they both should be together to figure out how they can be free. There is no need to fight, because anything that comes out of fighting has some ugliness in it.

The liberation should come out of understanding. All intelligent men and women should get together, and try to understand the problems all over the world and how they can be solved. And I don't see that there are many problems. There are very few problems - which can easily be solved.

The last question....

Question 4:

Existence is very compassionate. It is not indifferent, it is not just a spectator. But you have to perceive the depth of everything. For example, you love me, and you love me because I am not a savior or a prophet or a god but just a human being like you. You are worried because there are people who oppose me - don't be worried. This is the way existence functions.

The way of existence is always to create antithesis to every thesis. Only then does something become important. If nobody opposes me, then what I am saying will not have any effect. I would like that the people who love me and the people who oppose me are equally divided - and that's what existence does - that they are equally powerful, equally divided, and there is not a single human being who remains indifferent: either he is my friend or he is my enemy.

And I am grateful to both, because both work for me. The friend works in a way; the enemy works in another way. You have just to see the depth - that opposites are complementary. The enemies also work - in fact, more than the friends. The friends may remain silent in their love, in their peace, in their silence, in their meditation, but the enemies cannot sit silently. They have to talk about me day and night; they have to dream about me day and night; they have to oppose me whether anybody listens to them or not. They are my advertising agency.

Okay, Arun?