If you live totally, once is enough

Question

Vivek, it has been a very meaningful experience for you, one of the key experiences which can help one to change one's energy totally.

George Gurdjieff used to find the first thing in his disciples - the characteristic that was their number one enemy because their number one enemy contains the key which either can destroy them if they don't understand it or can bring a transformation.

You faced jealousy. Jealousy is one of the most dangerous elements in human consciousness, particularly in the female mind. To face your number one enemy without hiding it, without whitewashing it, without trying to interpret it favorably - that you are right, the situation is such that of course you have to be jealous - without in any way satisfying yourself by explanations that the jealousy was right.

If you satisfy yourself that it is right, it is going to remain and it will become more powerful; then the energy that you are feeling now, you would not feel, this energy would have been absorbed by jealousy, it would have remained contained in jealousy, and would have remained looking for a moment when it could explode - to find some excuse. But because you faced it without bringing any explanation to explain it away... you did not justify it, you simply faced it as a fact, that you have this jealousy... and you accepted it, that it has something to do with you, not with anyone else, that nobody else in the whole world is responsible for it.

All those are excuses to protect it.

You did a good job, and the result is that just being watchful the jealousy disappeared.

And that's what I have been telling you continually for years, that nothing has to be done; simply face a problem the way a mirror reflects something, with no judgment.

And because it was your number one enemy, it contained a lot of energy. Now it is gone, and the energy is free. That's why you are feeling more alive, more loving, more sensuous.

Remember one thing: again you can commit the same mistake. Don't condemn sensuality. It has been condemned by the whole world, and because of their condemnation the energy that can flower in sensuality moves into perversions, jealousy, anger, hatred - a kind of life which is dry, with no juice.

Sensuousness is your very life. That is the difference between you and a stone - because the stone is not sensuous. The more sensuous you are, you more alive you are. And if your whole energy is released in loving, in being playfully sensuous without holding yourself back, without any fear - there is nothing to be afraid of. Sensuousness is one of the greatest blessings to humanity; it is your sensitivity, it is your consciousness; consciousness filtering through the body is what sensuousness is.

Remember never to compromise. Compromise is absolutely against my whole vision.

You see the people. They are miserable because they have compromised on every point, and they cannot forgive themselves because they have compromised. They know that they could have dared, but they proved cowards. In their own eyes they have fallen, they have lost self-respect; that's what compromise does.

Why should one compromise? What have we got to lose? In this small life, live as totally as possible.

Don't be afraid of going to the extreme, you cannot go more than total, that is the last line; and don't compromise. Your whole mind will go for compromise because that's how we have been brought up, conditioned.

Compromise is one of the most ugly words in our language. It means, "I give half, you give half; I settle for half, you settle for half." But why? When you can have the whole, when you can eat the cake and have it too, then why compromise?

Just a little courage, just a little daring - and only in the beginning. Once you have experienced the beauty of non-compromising and the dignity that it brings, and the joy, and the integrity, and the individuality, for the first time you feel that you have roots, that you have a center, that you live out of your own, you don't live like a businessman - living life like a businessman is prostitution.

Live like a warrior.

This way or that, but never compromising. It is better to be defeated, but totally, than to be victorious through a compromise; that victory will not give you anything except humiliation, and the defeat without compromise will still give you dignity.

Life is mysterious.

Here sometimes victory is just shameful and defeat is a dignity because one would not compromise.

So whatever sensuality you feel, whatever love you feel, just don't keep them in your mind; otherwise, they get sour, they get bitter. Express them.

And remember one thing, that expression is always a tremendous release of your own energy; otherwise, your energy goes on accumulating and becomes a burden. And when it becomes a burden, you start throwing the responsibility on other people because you are sad, you are heavy, somebody must be doing something wrong. If you are sad, you are wrong; if you are joyful, you are right.

It has been almost a criterion to me that anybody who is sad, complaining, grumpy, is wrong, is bound to be wrong. He may find a thousand and one reasons why he is sad. I don't accept it. He is sad because he has not allowed his life to blossom. He has been holding back. Even when people want to love each other, they are holding back - because all the religions have poisoned love. They have not been able to destroy it, but they have succeeded in poisoning it.

And sensuality is so much condemned, and if you condemn sensuality then what is to remain? Then man remains like a marble statue - you touch his hand and you feel like you are shaking hands with a dead branch. All his energy has shrunken in himself - rather than blossoming in flowers, it has become complexes within himself which are making him sad.

At least my people should never think of compromise. Compromise for what? Be true. Be honest.

Be sincere. Love as much as you can. Enjoy your sensuality - it is a gift of nature. And be watchful, because what you are enjoying is everybody else's right too. Otherwise there will be conflict. Because of that conflict people compromise.

If you enjoy intense living, you should appreciate everybody who is living intensely. With whom he is living does not matter - because we are all one life, one life force.

All the traditions have been against expressiveness because a person who is expressive attains a certain kind of solidity, a freedom. You cannot enslave him. He lives according to his own nature.

You cannot force him. You cannot make him a husband or a wife. That's why the society has tried hard to repress, because the repressed person is so much reduced - he's almost like the castrated bull.

You cannot use a bull in a bullock cart. The bull is too powerful. He can take your bullock cart and you anywhere, where you never wanted to go. You cannot control him. And if he comes across a beautiful female, he will simply jump out of your bullock cart. What happens to you and your bullock cart, that is your business. He will start a love affair immediately, not bothering at all that you are under the bullock cart, the bullock cart is upside down.

Man must have learned very early that bulls cannot be used, they are useless.

But they found the idea of why they are useless, because they are so full of energy, and so sensuous, and so loving.

People started castrating them, and once a bull is castrated you have reduced him to a totally different being that he was not destined to be. Now you can use him in a bullock cart. You can enslave him. You can use him in farms, and wherever you want. You have destroyed his possibility of regenerative forces. You have done a crime against nature. Now the cow may be passing by his side, he will not even look at her, he doesn't have energy.

In my childhood when I saw the farmers castrating the bulls, I inquired what is the matter. My father said, "When you are old enough you will understand."

I said, "I don't want to wait. I want to understand now, why these poor creatures are being tortured."

He said, "You just wait."

And when I understood, I told him that, "You have not only been doing that to bulls, you have been doing that to human beings too - in a different way, not physiologically but psychologically."

All the religions are castrating human beings. For example, all over the world ladies are told that while making love they should not show any sign of joy. What nonsense. Even while making love they are not allowed to show any signs of joy because that is what prostitutes do, not ladies - and this is compromise. Being ladies they compromised. So when the man is making love to them, they are lying down with closed eyes, because even to open their eyes is not right for a lady - to see such an ugly scene, that the beast on top of them is doing push-ups. It is not lady-like. It is better to keep your eyes closed. And don't move.

For thousands of years women had no knowledge of orgasm - and even today in the East, almost ninety-nine percent of women don't know what orgasm is. And the same was the story all over the world because they never moved, they never enjoyed, they never allowed their body to dance.

There is a difference between man's and woman's sexuality. Man's sex is local, it is genital. Woman's sexuality is more sensuality than sexuality, it is all over her body. Unless her whole body participates, she will not experience the orgasmic joy - which is the greatest gift nature has given.

And it is really shocking and surprising, that because man destroyed the woman, because she was not allowed to enjoy lovingness, he himself was alone making the push-ups. There was no other.

I have heard of a drunkard who was walking on the beach... and then he saw a man doing push-ups.

The drunkard looked down, looked from this side and that side, went around, tapped the man, and said, "Boy, your girl is gone. Why are you unnecessarily tiring your body? Go home."

But this is really the situation, and the by-product is that these same so-called gentlemen who produced this ugly situation - that they made their own wives non-sensuous, dry - created many things because these women became angry, nagging, fighting. These were just perversions of the energy that could have become flowers, fragrance. And on the other hand, these gentlemen had to go to prostitutes; they created prostitutes - which was another ugliness. To force women just for money, to sell their bodies - because with their own wives they themselves could not get the orgasm.

Ejaculation is not orgasm. They could produce children but they could not produce orgasm.

Orgasm needs both the partners in a sensuous dance.

To create the ladies, they had to reduce other poor women into prostitutes. It is such an ugly society, so nauseating, if you look into its structure and the way it has behaved and destroyed man.

At least my people should be totally free. They should love. And there is no lady here, and there is no gentleman here; here are only men and women, real men and real women.

And be sensuous. Enjoy life to its fullest, and help others also to enjoy the life to its fullest. And you will find, strangely, that because of your love, your sensuousness, all your ugly traits have disappeared because they no more get any energy - they were perversions, they were by-products of your compromises. No compromise for any reason - respectability, honor, all are nonsense.

How many million people have lived before you? And do you remember a few names who were very respectable, very honorable, and they had sacrificed their whole life for their honor and their respectability, and now even their names?... Nobody knows whether they ever happened or not.

In Jaina mythology there is a very beautiful story. I have loved it very much. In Jaina mythology if a king conquers the whole world he's called the chakravartin. chakra means wheel, as if the world is a wheel - it is a wheel - and he has conquered it completely. And the mythology is that in heaven only chakravartins are allowed to make their signatures on a golden mountain.

One man became a chakravartin, and he was very happy that now he will be able to write his name on the golden mountain. Very few people - once in a while - have been able to write their names.

The mountain is enormous. As he died and entered the gates of heaven, the doorkeeper said, "You have to sign your signature on the golden mountain, but go alone. Don't take anybody with you."

He said, "Why? I would like a few of my friends who have died before me and who must be here to be with me; otherwise, what is the joy of signing on the golden mountain? Nobody is watching you, nobody will ever know that you have signed there."

The doorkeeper said, "Listen to me. I have been on this post... before me was my father, and this is our heritage. For centuries our family has kept this post. And to everybody who has gone to sign, this was suggested; and everybody wanted the same that you are wanting. And afterwards, everybody thanked us, 'It was so kind of you to have prevented me from taking anybody.' So please go alone."

Reluctantly he went in, and the mountain keeper opened the doors and said, "There is a difficulty.

The mountain is full of names. There is no space. And this is not only with you; before me my father was here, before him his father was here. This is our family post. And I have heard that since centuries this has been the case, that the mountain is full. So every time a new person comes, first you have to erase one name and then sign your name. There is no other way; there is no space."

Then he recognized that it is good that he has not brought his friends to see. A great mountain and there is not even a small space for his signature.

But he was - he must have been - a man of understanding. He said, "I will not erase, because what is the point? Somebody will come tomorrow and erase my name and will sign his. This is all futile. So my being chakravartin, a world conqueror, is useless and I was thinking that it happens only once in a while. I was wrong. This whole mountain is full of signatures."

Just a small life you have. Don't bother about any respectability, don't bother about any honor, don't bother about what others will say. Simply listen to your own energy and follow it. I call it courage.

Be sensuous, be loving, and if you can be totally loving and sensuous there is a possibility one day to transcend, to come to a point of awareness where all your energy turns into just a flame of awareness - all your sensuality, all your sexuality, all your love, everything in you - turns into a flame that has been called enlightenment, awakening; a flame that remains forever in the universe without taking another form again, because it has used the whole potential of forms. People are being born to the same class again and again. It is not dignified.

If you live totally, once is enough.

So Vivek, you did perfectly well with your jealousy. Now the energy is released - because you did not get into jealousy; otherwise that energy would have burned you, wounded you, made you sad, harmed you, and poisoned others - because we are not so separate as we think.

We are very deeply connected, and particularly here with me. You become more and more connected with each other. The differences drop, nobody bothers what is your religion, what is your nation, no barrier remains. People come closer and closer. That means they are affected also.

If one person gets sick, becomes sad, feels nauseous, then everybody else will be affected in some measure or other. If one is joyous - dancing, singing, playing on his guitar - then everybody else also feels a certain song in his heart.

And I want you to become more and more close, almost like one soul in different bodies.

You have been struggling with jealousy for years. Now you have found the key.

Next time if jealousy comes, immediately catch hold of it; and the same that you have done with enemy number one, you can do with all the enemies that come into your mind. They are smaller enemies, they will disappear even sooner, they don't have that much energy.

But when energy is left then this problem is bound to arise - what to do with this energy. Up to now it was used by, sucked by, jealousy. Now it is all over your body. You feel more sensuous, you feel more loving. And you, up to now, have remained in a rigid way, always keeping yourself a little off from people. It is not your fault; it is the misery of all England! So drop this England too. Just be human.

And don't wait, because that energy unexpressed can create problems. Express it - dance, sing, love, whatever comes to your mind to do.

Question 1:

The creative people - whether painters, musicians, poets or dancers - reach to a place once in a while that can be called "a glimpse of enlightenment" but it is only a glimpse. It is not a realization.

They have not prepared themselves for it. It has come accidentally.

The painter was absorbed in painting. He was so absorbed in painting that he forgot himself, forgot the ego, forgot his thoughts, and without knowing it he was in a state of meditation, and accidentally a door opened and he saw the beauty of the beyond.

But because he is not prepared, he cannot remain in meditation. He does not even know the ABC of meditation; he may never have heard the word. He was doing something else. It was just because he got lost in his work - in dance, in music, in singing - he fulfilled the condition for a glimpse.

Soon he will be back - when the dance is over, when the painting is complete, he will be back in the desert of daily life. And he will be worse than the ordinary man because he has known something which the ordinary man has not even dreamt of. His misery is more. He has seen the door open, he has seen the door closed, and he feels utterly helpless.

Now a great problem has arisen for him, that there is something far more beautiful than any painting, far more musical than any music, far more poetic than any poetry. There is a dance beyond dance, but how to reach there? All that he can manage is his ordinary dance. In his ordinary dance, if he becomes conscious that he's doing it to get the glimpse back, he will not get the glimpse because the condition will not be fulfilled, he will not be lost in the dance. Technically he will be doing the dance but his ego will remain watching for the window to open; it will not open. It will open only when he forgets himself.

The problem is that this situation has been only in the West, not in the East.

The East is poor, immensely poor, but in a way tremendously rich. In the East if the poet or the painter or the musician had the glimpse, he would not bother about the dance or the painting, he would look for a master, because it is understood - it is in the atmosphere, and it has been there for thousands of years - that creativity can give you a glimpse but not more than that. If you want something that becomes part and parcel of you, then you have to find a master, a path; you have to change yourself, your ways of living. You have to bring awareness to everything that you do, and you need somebody to tell you - not only to tell you, but somebody whose presence becomes a proof that you are not chasing some shadow, some hallucination.

The West is poor. It has created great artists, but unfortunately in the West there has been no atmosphere for enlightenment, no masters who could show you the way. The Western artists have suffered more than anybody else - they have gone mad, they have committed suicide, they have drowned themselves in drugs. The Western artist suffered more than anybody else in the West, because he had a glimpse of the beyond and he could not manage to make that glimpse a reality which remained twenty-four hours with him like the heartbeat. His anguish is tremendous.

In the East I have not found the name of any painter, any sculptor, any musician, any poet, who has gone mad, who has committed suicide, who has drowned himself in drugs, for the simple reason that in the very air it was possible to find a master. And if you had a glimpse, you were fortunate because you would know that something exists beyond, you had just to find the bridge to go there, to just be there.

The division of East and West has been one of the greatest tragedies. It should be dissolved.

The Eastern science of inner being should be brought to each Western seeker or potential seeker or possible seeker.

And Western science and technology should reach to every nook and corner of the East to destroy the poverty, the uneducatedness.

Both have something and both are missing something. And this is really amazing, that what the East is missing the West has, and what the West is missing the East has.

It is a simple question of understanding, to let there be a meeting of East and West so that the outer poverty disappears from the East and the inner poverty disappears from the West. The whole earth can be rich, rich in both ways. There is no need for choice, no need to choose; both can be ours, and both should be ours. There is no conflict.

My whole work is basically this, but neither is the East ready to listen to me nor the West. It seems to be really an insane situation.

Just the other day Anando was giving me information that millions of tons of butter and other foodstuffs have again accumulated in the European market. And just a few months before they had destroyed so much foodstuff that in destroying it they had to spend four million dollars. And again it has accumulated - the surplus. They cannot stop the farmer because then the farmer will fall economically low, so the farmer has to be helped to go on producing; and the market is already overfull, so every three months they have to destroy food.

And in the East people are dying every day because there is no food.

This is strange and stupid, inhuman too - that every three or four months you have to destroy huge mountains of butter and other foodstuff - and by just drowning them in the ocean you waste millions of dollars. Those millions of dollars can be used to transport those things to the poor countries.

But they will not do that.

In the East there was Shri Raman. He would not come to the West, and I can understand why - because I have come and I have suffered and seen. Many times he was asked, invited, and he refused. He simply said, "I will not be understood; I will be misunderstood. Just leave me alone."

And now I can understand him. He was right. I have tried my best and the result is a tremendous antagonism. Even in the countries where I have never gone, even in the countries where there is not even a single sannyasin there is so much fear, and absolutely unfounded fear.

The man who created all kinds of lies against me has been rewarded; today he has been rewarded by the United States government as a great researcher, investigator; he has been given a gold medal. And whatever he has investigated was absolute lies. But they managed to destroy the commune.

The commune could have become a meeting place for East and West. That was my idea.

But it seems the East is satisfied with its poverty but will not lose its superstitions - which it has to lose if science and technology are to be introduced. And the West seems to be satisfied with its inner poverty, because if it wants to be inwardly rich it will have to lose all kinds of superstitions that it has been carrying for thousands of years - and it is not willing to do that.

Just the other day the secretary of the Dutch parliament, answering the questions of journalists, said that I have not been allowed in Holland and I will not be allowed in Holland because I have said something in praise of Adolf Hitler. And the journalist pointed out that I have contradicted it - and it was the German magazine SPIEGEL which had misquoted me. And the secretary accepted that that was true, it was a misrepresentation, but still..."His coming may create a disorder." And the journalist said that when the pope came there was tremendous protest against him and great disorder, and yet he was allowed, and he was a guest of the government.

And, as far as I am concerned, in no country have I been protested against by the people. There is no precedent for it, it is just their assumption.

And Holland has thousands of sannyasins, the reporter said, who would welcome him.

And I am ready to face those protests. I would really love to see who are those people who want to protest against me, on what grounds.

And I don't even want government security. I don't even want them to be responsible if anything happens to me, it is my responsibility.

But the fear is somewhere else. All others are excuses. The fear is that I can change the mind of the younger generation. That's what the American president has sent in a message here to Uruguay, "The man is dangerous for the simple reason that he is extremely intelligent and is capable of changing the minds of the younger people."

You don't have anybody else to contradict me? There are six hundred fifty million Catholics - you don't have a single Catholic who can argue against me?

What is the problem? It should be simple and human. I am ready for any public discussion. I am ready to come to all these parliaments who are talking about me. In fact, if they have any guts they should invite me to their parliament - and I am ready to face their whole parliament. But the fear is - they themselves know - they have no future, their death is so certain that they are afraid that I will expose them.

But they are not concerned that I am not exposing them in a destructive way. I am exposing your fallacies so that I can substitute the positive, the right dimension which can help the West, its creative people, its intelligent people, to have a transformation.

In the West, enlightenment is an unknown factor. There have been great saints like Francis of Assisi - a beautiful man, a very loving man. You cannot find anything wrong in him, but that is not enough; he does not have the experience of the ultimate reality, and that is proved by small incidents. The pope became jealous that Francis was attracting followers and he was not even accepted yet as a saint. He was called to Rome. Now, you cannot call Gautam Buddha like this. And he came, kissed the feet of the pope, who was just an idiot. And he was very happy; he conferred the title of 'saint' on Francis of Assisi. He was a good man, but not an enlightened man; otherwise, there would have been a rebellion - he would not have cared a bit about the degree of 'saint' given by the pope, and he would not have kissed his feet. He would not have bothered to come to Rome as a servant, having to present himself to the court of the pope. A nice man, a good man - everything is right about him, just there is no light, the room is dark.

The West has not known the experience of enlightenment.

But I am insistent that we are going to make hundreds of Western people, for the first time in history, enlightened.

All these governments and their opposition are not going to stop me. It is not a question of my idea; it is now an existential necessity - that the West must have enlightened people. Only those enlightened people of the West will be able to help the West to be generous towards the poverty of East, only they will be able to create an atmosphere where it is simply inhuman and ugly to go on destroying food when people are dying, just to keep your prices high, so your economy remains the same and does not suffer.

It seems economics is more important than love, than compassion; but it is possible only if we can manage - and we will manage.

My people are trying to find the place.

My other people are trying to find the ships - to create a city in the ocean. And it seems most practical and probable to create a beautiful city of five thousand resident sannyasins, with the capacity of twenty thousand more who will be coming and going. And we can move the city from one place to another place. We can go around the earth.

This is how blessings come in disguise.

I'm really excited about it!