A Pearl of Exceeding Beauty

The first question:

Question 1:

Devamo, because you are not yet capable of allowing life to be your master. Because you don't know how to listen, how to learn. Because you are incapable of learning, that's why you need a master.

The need arises out of your insensitivity, out of your unintelligence. If you are intelligent then life is enough. Then there are sermons in the stones, and every leaf of a tree is a message, and the river going to the ocean carries all the scriptures with it. You need not go to the Vedas and to the Koran and to the Bible, there is no need. The whole existence is every moment singing the song of the divine.

But you are not able to listen to it, you are not yet capable of opening yourself to it. Hence the need of a master. The master is only a beginning. He will teach you how to listen, he will teach you how to be open. He will give you love so that you can warm up - you have become too cold. Once you are warmed up a little, there is no need for a master, then the whole of life is the master. The master simply becomes a jumping-board.

You say: BUDDHA DID NOT HAVE A MASTER.

That is wrong - Buddha had many masters. His last master was Alar Kalam, a very rare man.

You say: JESUS DID NOT HAVE A MASTER.

You don't know. He was a disciple of a great master, John the Baptist; he was initiated by him.

Buddha had many, Jesus had one, and I had millions. I have been learning from all possible sources - from men, from women, from trees, from mountains. I cannot show you a particular master, because there have been so many. I have been constantly learning and listening.

And you ask: "Why do we need a master?" Your very question shows the need. If you cannot answer this simple question you will need a master. Why do you ask me? Why can't you answer it yourself?

Even this question has to be answered by somebody else: the need is there.

But why has this question arisen? the need is certainly there, otherwise why should you be here?

The need is there, but the reluctance to surrender is also there. Although you have become a sannyasin, still, deep down you are not yet surrendered. Hence the question.

You would like not to be a disciple. It hurts the ego, it is humiliating. You would like to be the master yourself; that is ego-satisfying. The question has not arisen because you don't need a master; the need is there, the very question says the need is there, but somewhere deep down there is resistance. You don't like it; you don't like surrendering yourself, you don't like to be bowing in trust to somebody. That hurts, that is painful.

To be a disciple needs guts. To be a disciple means one is courageous enough to dissolve oneself.

It is no ordinary matter. And unless you are capable of becoming a disciple, you will never become a master.

The very word 'disciple' is beautiful; it comes from a root which means 'learning'. The disciple is one who is courageous enough to accept the fact that "I don't know, so I am ready to learn. Then from wherever the light comes, I am open to it. I will not close my windows and my doors, I will allow the wind and the sun and the rain to come in. I am ready to go on this voyage into the unknown; it is uncharted territory."

A disciple simply means one who has decided to learn. It is a great commitment to learning. And it is natural that one should start from somewhere; from some point the journey has to start - from A, from B, from C.

Let me be the point from where the journey starts. The master is not the point where the journey ends, the master is the point from where you start the journey into the unknown. He will go with you only to the point where he feels now you can go alone. Then he will leave you of his own accord.

And that is the criterion of a true master. You will not need him to leave, he will leave you of his own accord. If you leave, it will be a wrong step. If the desire to leave arises in you, that simply means you have not yet learned, you have not yet known the master. When you know the master there is no question of leaving him, because there is nobody FOUND whom you can leave. There has never been anybody, from the very beginning.

When you enter into the being of the master you will find utter emptiness - a presence, certainly, but not a person whom you can leave.

The disciple can never leave the master. First he cannot leave because he is not yet capable of walking on his own, of being on his own. Secondly, he cannot leave; even when he becomes capable of going on his own he cannot leave, because there is nobody to leave. Now he knows.

But the master leaves of his own accord. He starts dropping out of your existence, he starts disappearing more and more and more, because now you are ready to go on your own.

The mother is happy when the child can walk without her support. If the mother tries to go on supporting the child forever, then that mother does not love the child. Then that mother is pathological and neurotic. She is crippling the child, she will be a paralysis to the child.

So is the case with a master. If a master wants you to always remain dependent on him then he is not a true master, he is pseudo and phoney. The master does not need you. If he needs you in some way, if he depends on you depending on him, that means he needs you. That means somewhere your dependence on him is fulfilling his ego. He feels good: "Look how many disciples I have got."

He goes on counting his disciples: "I have so many disciples, I am a great master."

Certainly he will not allow you to leave. He will prevent you from leaving, because your going means one prop to his ego disappearing. He will be dependent on you. And the master who is dependent on you, how can he help you? He himself needs the help. he himself is in confusion, in darkness.

He himself is not yet capable of being alone. He has not arrived home.

But the true master will always watch when to leave you. He will be always ready, whenever you are ready to be on your own, to leave you. He will not leave you before you are ready, that is true. And only HE can know when you are ready; you cannot know it.

Just the other day, one sannyasin wrote me a letter saying that now he feels he is capable of being on his own, that now he can go on all alone. And he wants to drop out of sannyas. I said, "That's perfectly okay."

Now he wants to see me. I said, "Why?" He wrote a letter to get last instructions from me. Now, what kind of readiness is this? If you still need instructions from me, then what kind of readiness is this to be on your own?

When you are ready I will tell you that you are ready. And the paradox is, I will tell you, "Drop the sannyas!" and you will not drop it. How can you drop it? It is the sannyas that has brought you so far.

When Sariputta became an enlightened person in his own right, Buddha told him, "Now there is no need to bow down to me. You are in the same exalted state as I am." but Sariputta continued to bow down just the same, with no difference. Just as on the first day he had come, years before, and touched Buddha's feet, he continued to touch them. And Buddha would say to him again and again, "Sariputta, now there is no need!" And he wouldn't listen.

One day Buddha asked him, "Why don't you listen to me?" Sariputta said, "Now I am a Buddha in my own right. why should I listen to you? This is something tremendously beautiful. And how can I stop bowing to you and touching your feet? It is a sweet nostalgia, it is sweet memory. It is through these feet I have come to this point; it is sheer gratitude."

Buddha sent Sariputta away. He told him, "Now go. There are millions of people stumbling in darkness: help them." and Sariputta was crying and he said, "No, don't tell me to go anywhere."

And Buddha said, "Now you are a buddha in your own right, and it doesn't suit a buddha to cry. You are capable of going on your own."

And Sariputta said, "There are no conditions on a buddha; he can cry, he can laugh. There are no conditions on a buddha, his existence is unconditional."

But he had to go, the master was insistent. He went. But every day, wherever he was, he would bow down in the direction where Buddha was. Every morning, every evening, his disciples would ask, "To whom are you bowing down?"

He said, "Buddha must be there in the east. I have information that he must be in a certain town today, so I am bowing down in that direction where he is."

This is becoming a buddha in your own right. Now here you are, and you write to me saying, "I have arrived; now I can move on my own."

So I said, "Okay, move!" Now why should you need last instructions from me? If you still need instructions then dropping the sannyas is not because you are ready but just because you are going back. For four months you were here; it is easy to be in orange here.

Now the sannyasin is going back to Germany; it will be difficult there. And there must have been a cunning strategy behind it. You must have planned it already, before you took sannyas, that for four months while you are here you will be a sannyasin. And when you are leaving you can always say, "Now I am ready to be on my own, so I can leave."

Then why the need for last instructions?

When a disciple is ready I will tell you, "Now you can move on your own." You need not tell me; your telling me is pointless.

You ask me, WHY DO WE NEED A MASTER?

There must be some pain inside. Just the idea that you are a disciple, that you have to be in somebody else's hands, totally surrendered, is against the ego.

And that's why you need a master. The master is a device so that you can drop your ego. The master is just a strategy, a situation. It will be very difficult to drop the ego on your own. Who will drop whom? How will you drop your ego on your own? It will be almost impossible.

The master is just a device: you can trust the master in deep love, and you can put the ego aside.

Otherwise you don't have anything else but the ego - if you put that aside, you will fall into utter emptiness. And you will not be able to fall into that abysmal, bottomless emptiness. You will become very much afraid, you will again cling to anything that you can find around you. And the ego is the closest.

It will be impossible for you to go into nothingness unless somebody is there calling you forth - from your very nothingness, somebody calling you forth, "Come on! Don't be afraid."

Once you have learned that dropping the ego is not death, once you have learned and tasted that dropping the ego is real life, that real life begins only when the ego is dropped - when you have tasted that, there will be no need of the master. but it will not be so easy to leave the master.

How can you leave somebody who has been such a transformation to you? The very idea is stupid.

And there is nobody to leave; nobody is clinging to you. In fact between the master and the disciple, the relationship is one-way. The master has no relationship with you.

Listen well: don't be shocked. The master has no relationship with you. It is only YOU who need a relationship; it is just in your mind that the master exists. Otherwise there is nobody there. One day when you know the truth, the master will have disappeared.

The disciple disappears when he surrenders to the master. And when he knows nothingness, the master disappears. There's nobody leaving and nobody to be left. In that utter purity is nirvana, is enlightenment.

But it is painful. Growth is painful, and the greatest pain comes when you have to drop your idea of the self.

A parable:

Said one oyster to a neighboring oyster, "I have a very great pain within me. It is heavy and round and I am in distress."

And the other oyster replied with haughty complacence, "Praise be to the heavens and to the sea, I have no pain within me. I am well and whole both within and without."

At that moment a crab was passing by and heard the two oysters, and he said to the one who was well and whole both within and without, "Yes, you are well and whole; but the pain that your neighbor bears is a pearl of exceeding beauty."

The disciple is in a deep pain, because the ego is to be dropped and it is not easy. The ego is not like a garment that you can put off easily. The ego is like your skin, it has to be peeled and it is painful.

You have lived with the ego for so many many lives. You have changed bodies many times, but the ego is the same. It has persisted as a continuous thing in you, it is very ancient. To drop it is not easy; it is arduous, it is great agony. But only out of this agony is ecstasy born - a pearl of exceeding beauty, a state of consciousness of utter benediction. But in the beginning you will feel, "I have a very great pain within me. It is heavy and round and I am in distress."

And those who don't know the pain of disciplehood will tell you, "Praise be to the heavens and to the sea, I have no pain within me. I am well and whole both within and without."

You can go and look around: there are millions of people who have no idea what it means to be a disciple, who have never tasted anything of disciplehood, who have never surrendered to anybody, who have never loved somebody so deeply that they are ready to die form him, who have never loved anybody so intimately that they disappear into that intimacy, that they melt into that intimacy.

They will tell you that you are a little bit abnormal: "There is no need to be a disciple, and there is no need to be a master. Look at us! We are whole, within and without. We don't need a master, so why should you need a master?"

And yes, they are whole within and without, and healthy. But their health is valueless and their wholeness is of a very low order, their wholeness is very mundane. And one who wants to attain to the sacred realm will have to pass through pain - the pain of losing the mundane, the pain of being nowhere, the pain of being in limbo, the pain of losing that which you know and yet not gaining that which you desire to know. When you are just in the middle, that's where the disciple is. He is dropping that which is known, perfectly known, and trying to enter into something of which he is absolutely unaware what exactly it is.

He is going into the unknown: dropping the secure for the insecure, dropping the safe for the unsafe, dropping the so-called sanity and becoming insane.

That's what the Sufis say: Unless you become mad for God, you will not attain to him. Madness is a must.

The disciple is mad. He has fallen in love with a master, and love makes one mad. Now nobody is going to understand you; you will be utterly incapable of logically p roving to somebody what you are doing. And it is not that you don't know logic.

My sannyasins are from the most educated classes of the world. We have all kinds of people - artists, painters, professors, scientists, psychologists, therapists, doctors, engineers - all well educated. It is not that they don't know how to argue; they are very clever in arguing. But now something has happened which is beyond argument.

And talking about your master and about the love that has arisen in you, you will look almost foolish before anybody. It is painful.

But only through this pain does growth happen. This is a growth pain, and a growth pain is far more valuable than the health which does not allow growth. To be abnormal and mad is far better if growth comes through it than to be normal and sane if no growth comes through it.

The whole point is growth: you should not remain what you are. You should not remain the seed, you should burst forth into thousands of flowers. But before that the seed has to die in the soil.

The master is just a climate, a soil, in which the disciple dies. Trusting, he falls into the soil and dies.

There is no way of guaranteeing your future, what will happen. How can you guarantee a seed that "It is absolutely certain that a sprout will come when you are gone. There will be great foliage and greenery and red flowers, and there will be grat joy when you have died."

But the seed will say, "How can I be convinced about it? Because I will not be there to witness it.

What guarantee is there? Who knows? I may simply die and nothing may happen."

What can be said to the seed? It is impossible to convince the seed. But the seed falls in love with a tree which has already grown - that which was hidden has become manifest. The seed falls in love with the flowers and the fragrance of the tree, and the seed asks, "What is the way? How can I become like you?"

That's what the meaning of being a disciple is. You come close to a Buddha and you see the flowers and the fragrance and you ask the Buddha, "How can I become like you?"

And Buddha says, "I died, that's how I became like this. You must also die."

And seeing the Buddha and the fragrance and the silence and the calmness, a trust arises, a love arises. And the seed risks: the seed dies by the side of the great tree. And one day there is a sprout. But there is no logical way to convince anybody, unless you are already convinced through your love.

So it is not a question of my convincing you to become disciples; there is no way to do it. It is by your being convinced through your own love that you become a disciple. And yes, it is painful, Devamo.

But all growth is painful.

Go through this pain. Let this ego be gone completely, howsoever painful it is. It is better to be miserable in insecurity than to be miserable in security, because one who is miserable in security will not grow. And growth is the highest value there is. Man is potential God: the God has to be realized.

And much will have to be dropped. You will have to be unburdened of much, only then can you reach to that sunlit peak. The higher you go, the more will have to be dropped, because everything will become a weight on you and a hindrance on the journey. You can reach to the peak only when all that you were has been dropped on the way.

You will reach to the peak only as a nothingness, a nobody. And it is painful, I know it. And I'm trying to create a climate here, an energyfield, so that you can go through the pain as joyously as possible.

The second question:

Question 2:

Amit Prem, sex is beautiful, sexuality ugly. And the difference has to be understood. Sex is a natural phenomenon; sexuality is unnatural, abnormal and pathological. When sex becomes cerebral, when sex enters into your head, it becomes sexuality.

Now, the head is not the center for sex. That is getting into a confusion, it is getting upside-down, it is getting deranged. Sex is not the function of the head. But when sex enters in through the head it becomes sexuality. Then you THINK about sex, then you fantasize about sex. And the more you think, the more you fantasize about it, the more you will get into trouble. Then nothing real will ever satisfy you, because there is no limitation on fantasy, and reality IS limited.

For example, if you start thinking too much about sex you can create beautiful women, women which exist only in your fantasy; you will never find them anywhere in the world. Or men: you will never come across them. No real woman or man will ever satisfy you, because of the fantasy. No real man or woman can fulfill your expectations of fantasy. Fantasy is fantasy; it is a dream.

You can fantasize a woman who does not perspire, whose body has no body smell. You can fantasize a woman who is always sweet and never bitter. You can fantasize a woman who is always loving and warm and welcoming and never nags you and is never angry, never throws pillows at you.

You can fantasize a woman who never ages, who remains always stuck at eighteen years of age - who is always fresh, always young, always beautiful, never falls ill, never makes any demands on you, never betrays you, never looks at any other man with longing, with desire.

You can fantasize to no limit, but you will not find this woman anywhere. Now you have created a problem: you are no more naturally attuned to your sex.

Nature is perfectly capable of being fulfilled, but fantasy cannot be fulfilled. You may find your woman in girly magazines, in pornographic books, but you will not find her in reality. And whosoever you do find in reality will fall short.

That is the problem the West is facing; it has fantasized too much about sex. The West has become sexual through fantasy, the East has become sexual through repression. Both have become sexual and both have lost the natural capacities of enjoying sex. Both have become pathological, through different routes. The West has become pathological by fantasizing sex to be the ultimate goal of life, and the East has become pathological by thinking that sex is the ultimate barrier between God and man.

Sex is neither. Neither is it the ultimate goal nor the ultimate barrier. Sex is a simple phenomenon like hunger or thirst; there is nothing more to it. It is not what the Eastern mind has been thinking about it. The Eastern mind is too afraid of sex. Out of fear, sex has moved into the head; through the door of fear it has entered into the head.

So the Eastern so-called saints are simply fantasizing about sex, because they have repressed it.

And that which you repress goes on coming up again and again. It cannot be destroyed; nothing can ever be destroyed by repression. Repression makes sex pathological sexuality. This is one extreme.

The West has moved to another extreme. The other extreme is, fantasize about it. Sex is all, everything else is secondary, so have as much sex as you can. You cannot really have too much sex, there are limitations to the body. But you can fantasize as much as you want, there is no limitation to it.

So pornography exists, blue films exist, girly magazines exist. And people are being fed on these illusory mirages. Then no real woman, no real man, will ever satisfy you.

These are both pathological states. Sexuality is pathological, whether you come to it through fear or greed does not matter. The East has become ill through fear, the West has become ill through greed. Greed and fear are two aspects of the same coin. So on the surface it looks very different, as if the Eat and the West are poles apart. They are not. Those who know, those who can see, they can see that it is the same foolishness, the same stupidity. They have arrived at the same stupidity from different doors, that is true, but they have entered into the same place.

And both have to be awakened, and both have to be made more enlightened about sex.

Don't make much fuss about sex EITHER way. That is the first fundamental. If you want sex to become love, the first fundamental is: accept sex as an absolutely natural phenomenon. Don't bring your metaphysics to it, don't bring your religion to it. It has nothing to do with religion or metaphysics, it is a simple fact of life. It is a way that life reproduces itself. It is as simple as the trees bringing flowers and fruits: you don't condemn the flowers. Flowers are sex energy; it is through the flowers that the tree is sending its seeds, its potentiality, to reproduce other trees.

When a peacock dances you don't condemn it. But the dance is sex; it is to attract the female. When the cuckoo calls you don't condemn it; it is sex. The cuckoo is simply declaring, "I am ready." The cuckoo is simply calling forth the woman. The sound, the beautiful sound, is just a seduction; it is courtship.

If you watch life you will be surprised. The whole of life is through sex. Life reproduces itself through sex, it is a natural phenomenon. Don't drag unnecessary rationalizations into it.

This is the first thing to be understood if you ever want any transformation of sex energy. The first thing is: don't deny it, don't reject it, don't repress it. Don't be too greedy about it, don't think that this is all - this is not. There is much more to life. And sex is beautiful, yet there is still much more to life. Sex is only the foundation, it is not the whole temple.

Repressed, it becomes sexuality. Fantasized, it becomes sexuality. One is an Eastern way of transforming sex into pathology, the other is a Western way. But nobody, either in the East or in the West, accepts that sex is a simple natural phenomenon. Neither the saints nor the sinners, nobody accepts sex to be a simple natural phenomenon. Both are obsessed with it, hence I say both are not different.

Sex accepted, respected, lived, becomes love.

Just as I was saying to you the other day, when sadness is there, accept it: it is you. Don't say, "I am sad." Say, "I am sadness." Don't say, "I have sadness" - it is as if you are separate and sadness is something that you have. Simply say, "I am sadness." In that moment there is no division between you and what you call sadness. In that moment you ARE sadness. The next moment you may be peace, and still the next moment you may be joy.

Life is change. Life knows only one thing as permanent, and that is change. Only change is unchanging; everything else changes except change. That means only change has eternity. It is a continuum; you are not a fixed thing. And it is good that you are not fixed, otherwise you would have been a thing, a commodity in the marketplace. You are a no-thing. You are not a fixed phenomenon; you are a constant opening, you are change.

One moment there is sadness, and the river takes a turn. Another moment there is joy, and the river takes still another turn and there is peace. And it goes on and on. The moment has to be accepted in its totality: it is you. When there is sex, there is sex: it is you. Don't say, "I have a sexual desire."

That is a way of dividing yourself, that is a way of creating a split.

If you have a sexual desire then there are two possibilities. If you are against it repress it: that is the Eastern way of becoming mad, insane and pathological. The other way is, "I have the sex desire:

how to enhance it? How to make it more intense? How to enjoy it to the optimum?" That is the way of greed, the Western way. But the end is the same, the end-product is the same: both become obsessed with it.

Just let it be, whatsoever it is. It is you. You don't have a sex desire; if you have a sex desire then something can be done to the sex desire. If you are it, nothing can be done about it, because there is nobody else to do anything: you ARE it.

This has to become the meditation of all my sannyasins: you are it, there is no division. Just see the beauty of it. When there is no division there is no conflict. When there is no division there is no fear, no greed. It is division that brings fear and greed. Greed and fear are your interpretations of the division, but the division is first and then come your interpretations.

The sex desire is there, you take it as something separate that is happening to you. It is like a thing in your hands: now you have to decide whether you want more or less of it, as if it is something of which you can have more or less. It is as it is; there is no more, no less.

Simply live it, be it, love it. This is your moment, this is the truth of the moment. And never compare, because one moment ago it was not there. So don't start comparing, because comparison again brings a split. Next moment it may be gone again. Don't compare. Life is change.

That's what Buddha said: Life is change.

That's what Heraclitus said: You cannot step in the same river twice. Life, the river, is constantly moving.

Deep down you want life to be static. Why? Because with a static and dormant life you will be more safe, more secure. But life is not dormant, only death is dormant. Life is dynamic, flowing - the more flowing it is, the more alive you are. Life is not a stagnant pool, it is a river. It is the Ganges, coming from the Himalayas, going to the ocean, coming from the heights, going to the depths. And again from the ocean the Ganges will evaporate from the depths to the heights, and again the clouds will gather on the Himalayas and again the river will be born. It is a beautiful perfect circle.

That's how you move. Each moment has to be accepted as it is, with no condemnation, with no evaluation. And when you can accept sex as natural, it stops being cerebral. It drops from the head, it goes to the sex center where it belongs. If sex remains in the sex center it is beautiful. If it goes to the head it is ugly.

Eating is beautiful. You are hungry and you eat and it is needed; it is nourishment. But then there are two types of people. A few people eat too much: eating too much means the head has entered into it. When you are eating, the body is always sane. The body always says to you, "Stop now."

It immediately gives you an indication, a signal: "It is enough, now stop! No more is needed, my needs are fulfilled."

But the head says, "It is so tasty, it is so delicious - have one plate more." It is the head, it is not the body. The body is recoiling, the body is saying, "No!" The body is always sane.

And this is one of the fundamentals I would like to tell you about. Down the ages, your so-called saints have been telling you that the body is your enemy. It is not; the body is always your friend. If there is some enemy it is the head, never the body. The body is always sane.

Watch it. I am not talking philosophy, I am simply stating a fact. See for yourself: if you are ill the body says, "Don't eat." But the head says, "If you don't eat you will become weak. So many vitamins are absolutely needed; you will become pale, you will not be strong." This is the head. The body is saying, "You are ill, and to eat will be unnecessarily burdening the system. The system needs rest; it is better not to eat."

And that's what animals do. No animal will eat when he is ill; he simply stops eating. That's what children do, no children will eat. But grown-ups will force them: they will say, "Eat, otherwise you will become ill, you will become more weak. You need it." They force them. You can see small children crying and their mothers forcing them: "Eat a little more."

It is the head that creates the trouble.

And then there are people who will fast when there is no need for fasting. The body is hungry, but if you ar a Jaina and the PARUSHANA, your religious days, have come, you have to fast. The body is hungry and the body wants food, but you cannot eat because unfortunately you are a Jaina and the religious days are there and if you eat you will be thrown into hellfire.

It is the head interfering. The body says, "Eat," but unfortunately you are a Mohammedan and it is the month of RAMADAN and you have to fast. Now this is the head interfering.

The head interferes in two ways: either it makes you indulgent or it makes you repressive. Again, one is the Eastern way, another is the Western way. Eat more than is needed: this is indulgence.

Don't eat when the body needs food: this is fasting, this is repression.

It is always the head that interferes. It interferes in your food, it interferes in your sex, it interferes in your sleep, it goes on interfering in everything!

Remember the Zen master, the great Zen master, Bokuju. Somebody asked him, "What is your discipline?" He said, "No discipline at all. When I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel sleepy I sleep.

And no other discipline."

The man said, "But this is what we all do." And Bokuju said, "No. It is very rare to find a person who does it, because one who does it becomes a buddha. Only a buddha can do it truly."

You don't eat according to the needs of the body, you don't sleep according to the needs of the body.

You go on imposing your head needs on the body. That interference makes everything pathological.

That's how sex is disturbed and becomes sexuality. If sex is accepted, respected, lived, it becomes love.

Amit Prem, you ask: TELL ME THE WAY FROM SEXUALITY TO LOVE.

The way is: first sexuality has to come back to sex. Directly, there is no way, no route; from sexuality to love there is no route. There is simply no route, nothing can be done about it. From sexuality to love there is no route, because sexuality is in the head, and love is a heart phenomenon.

From sexuality come back to the sex center. From sex to love there is a direct route; they are bridged.

In fact nothing needs to be done. Just live your sex moments with utter joy, silence, peacefulness, with celebration. Live your sex moments meditatively, and meditation transforms sex into love.

Not only does sex become love: one day it becomes prayer, worship. It goes higher and higher.

The highest form is prayer, the lowest form is sex. Between the two is love, love is the bridge.

And sexuality is abnormal, it is pathological, it is ill. So whether you have chosen a path of being pathological like the Eastern people or like the Western people, it doesn't matter.

Accept your life a sit is, and let the acceptance be as total as possible. When you don't fight with yourself your energy starts falling into a subtle harmony. And that harmony brings you t love. And when the harmony becomes more and more refined, it brings you to prayer.

And unless sex has become prayer, remember, the goal has not been achieved.

The third question:

Question 3:

Man is a machine, that's why. Man as he is is utterly unconscious. He is nothing but his habits, the sum total of his habits. Man is a robot. Man is not yet man: unless consciousness enters into your being, you will remain a machine.

That's why the Sufis say man is a machine. It is from the Sufis that Gurdjieff introduced the idea to the West that man is a machine. It is very rarely that you are conscious. In your whole seventy years' life, if you live the ordinary so-called life - healthy and whole within and without, with no pain of growth, with no pain within you of a growing pearl of exceeding beauty - then you will not know even seven moments of awareness in your whole life.

And even if you know those seven moments or less, they will be only accidental. For example, you may know a moment of awareness if somebody suddenly comes and puts a revolver on your heart.

In that moment, your thinking, your habitual thinking, stops. For a moment you become aware, because it is so dangerous, you cannot remain ordinarily asleep.

In some dangerous situation you become aware. Otherwise you remain fast asleep. You are perfectly skillful at doing your things mechanically.

Just stand by the side of the road and watch people, and you will be able to see that they are all walking in their sleep. All are sleep-walkers, somnambulists. And so are you.

Two bums were arrested and charged with a murder that had been committed in the neighborhood.

The jury found them guilty and the judge sentenced them to hang by their necks until dead and God have mercy on their souls.

The two bore up pretty well until the morning of the day set for the execution arrived. As they were being prepared for the gallows, one turned to the other and said, "Dam' me if I ain't about off my nut.

I can't get my thoughts together. Why, I don't even know what the day of the week is."

"This is a Monday," said the other bum.

"Monday? My Gawd! What a rotten way to start the week!"

Just watch yourself. Even to the very point of death, people go on repeating old habitual patterns.

Now there is going to be no week; the morning has come when they are to be hanged. But just the old habit - somebody says it is Monday, and you say, "Monday? My God! What a rotten way to start the week!"

Man reacts. That's why the Sufis say man is a machine. Unless you start responding, unless you become responsible... Reaction comes out of the past, responses comes out of the present moment.

Response is spontaneous, reaction is just old habit.

Just watch yourself. Your woman says something to you: then whatsoever you say, watch, ponder over it. Is it just a reaction? And you will be surprised: ninety-nine percent of your acts are not acts, because they are not responses, they are just mechanical. Just mechanical.

It has been happening again and again: you say the same thing and your woman reacts the same way, and then you react, and it ends in the same thing again and again. You know it, she knows it, everything is predictable.

I have heard:

"Pop," said a boy of then, "how do wars get started?"

"Well, son," began Pop, "let's say America quarreled with England..."

"America's not quarreling with England," interrupted Mother.

"Who said she was?" said Pop, visibly irritated. "I merely was giving the boy a hypothetical instance."

"Ridiculous!" snorted Mother. "You'll put all sorts of wrong ideas in his head."

"Ridiculous, nothing!" countered Pop. "If he listens to you he'll never have any ideas at all in his head."

Just as the dish-throwing stage approached, the son spoke up again. "Thanks Mom, thanks Pop. I'll never have to ask how wars get started again."

Just watch yourself. The things that you are doing, you have done so many times. The ways you react, you have been reacting always. In the same situation you always do the same thing. You are feeling nervous and you take out your cigarette and you start smoking. It is a reaction; whenever you have felt nervous you have done it.

You are a machine. It is just a built-in program in you now: you feel nervous, your hand goes into the pocket, the packet comes out. It is almost like a machine doing things. You take the cigarette out, you put the cigarette in your mouth, you light the cigarette, and this is all going on mechanically.

This has been done millions of times, and you are doing it again.

And each time you do this it is strengthened; the machine becomes more mechanical, the machine becomes more skillful. The more you do it, the less awareness is needed to do it.

This is why the Sufis say man functions as a machine. Unless you start destroying these mechanical habits... Sufis have many methods to destroy them. For example, they teach many devices. They say: Do something just contrary to what you have always done.

Try it. You come home, you are afraid, you are as late as ever, and the wife will be there ready to quarrel with you. And you are planning how to answer, what to say - that there was too much work in the office, and this and that. And she knows all that you are planning, and she knows what you are going to say if she asks why you are late. And you know if you say that you ar elate because there was too much work she is not going to believe it either. She has never believed it. She may have already checked; she may have phoned the office, she may have already enquired where you are.

But, still, this is just a pattern. The Sufis say: Today go home and behave totally differently. The wife asks you, "Where have you been?" And you say, "I was with a woman making love." And then see what happens. She will be shocked! She will not know what to say, she will not even have any way to find words to express it. For a moment she will be completely lost, because no reaction, no old pattern, is applicable.

Or maybe, if she has become too much of a machine, she will say, "I don't believe you!" - just as she has never believed you. "You must be joking!"

Every day you come home...

I have heard about a psychoanalyst who was telling his patient - must have been giving him a Sufi device - "Today when you go home..." because the patient was complaining again and again. "I am always afraid of going home. My wife looks so miserable, so sad, always in despair, that my heart starts sinking. I want to escape from the home."

The psychologist said, "Maybe you are the cause of it. Do something: today take flowers and ice cream and sweets for the woman, and when she opens the door hug her, give her a good kiss.

And then immediately start helping her: clean the table and the pots and the floor. Do something absolutely new that you have never done before."

The idea was appealing and the man tried it. He went home. The moment the wife opened the door and saw flowers and ice cream and sweets, and this beaming man who had never been laughing hugged her, she could not believe what was happening! She was in an utter shock, she could not believe her eyes: maybe this is somebody else! She had to look again.

And then when he kissed her and immediately just started cleaning the table and went to the sink and started washing the pots, the woman started crying. When he came out he said, "Why are you crying?" She said, "Have you gone mad? I always suspected one day or other you would go mad.

Now it has happened. Why don't you go and see a psychiatrist?"

Sufis have such devices. They say: Act totally differently, and not only will others be surprised, YOU will be surprised. And just in small things. For example, when you are nervous you walk fast. Don't walk fast, go very slow and see. You will be surprised that it doesn't fit, that your whole mechanical mind immediately says, "What are you doing? You have never done this!" And if you walk slowly you will be surprised: nervousness disappears, because you have brought in something new.

These are the methods of vipassana and zazen. If you go deep into them the fundamentals are the same. When you are doing vipassana walking, you have to walk more slowly than you have ever walked before, so slowly that it is absolutely new. The whole feeling is new, and the reactive mind cannot function. It cannot function because it has no program for it; it simply stops functioning.

That's why in vipassana you feel so silent watching the breath. You have always breathed but you have never watched it; this is something new. When you sit silently and just watch you breath - coming in, going out, coming in, going out - the mind feels puzzled: what are you doing? Because you have never done it. It is so new that the mind cannot supply an immediate reaction to it. Hence it falls silent.

The fundamental is the same. Whether Sufi or Buddhist or Hindu or Mohammedan is not the question. If you go deep into meditation's fundamentals then the essential thing is one: how to de-automatize you.

Gurdjieff used to do very bizarre things to his disciples. Somebody would come who had always been a vegetarian, and he would say, "Eat meat." Now, it is the same fundamental - this man is just a little too much of himself, a little eccentric. He would say, "Eat meat." Now, watch a vegetarian eating meat. The whole body wants to throw it out and he wants to vomit, and the whole mind is puzzled and disturbed and he starts perspiring, because the mind has no way to cope with it.

That's what Gurdjieff wanted to see, how you would react to a new situation. To the man who had never taken any alcohol Gurdjieff would say, "Drink. Drink as much as you can."

And to the man who had been drinking alcohol Gurdjieff would say, "Stop for one month. Completely stop."

He wanted to create some situation which is so new for the mind that the mind simply falls silent; it has no answer for it, no ready-made answer for it.

The mind functions in a parrot-like way.

That's why Zen masters will hit the disciple sometimes. That is again the same fundamental. Now, when you go to a master you don't expect a buddha to hit you, or do you? When you go to Buddha you go with expectations that he will be compassionate and loving, that he will shower love and put his hand on your head. And this buddha gives you a hit - takes his staff and hits you hard on the head. Now, it is so shocking: a buddha, hitting you? For a moment the mind stops; it has no idea what to do, it does not function.

And that nonfunctioning is the beginning. Sometimes a person has become enlightened just because the master did something absurd.

People have expectations, people live through expectations. They don't know that masters don't fit with any kind of expectations.

India was accustomed to Krishna and Rama and people like that. Then came Mahavira, he stood naked. You cannot think of Krishna standing naked; he was always wearing beautiful clothes, as beautiful as possible. He was one of the most beautiful persons ever; he used to wear ornaments made of gold and diamonds.

And then suddenly there is Mahavira. What did Mahavira mean by being naked? He shocked the whole country: he helped many people because of that shock.

Each master has to decide how to shock. Now, in India they have not known a man like me for centuries. So whatsoever I do, whatsoever I say, is a shock. The whole country goes into shock; a great shiver runs through the spine of the whole country. I really enjoy it, because they cannot think....

I have just received a letter saying, "We always thought that you were above politics. Then why have you started speaking on politics?"

That's why, because I am above it. Who else can speak about it? Those who are in it, they cannot speak about it - they are partisans.

The man who is on the hilltop has a far better vision of the valley down below. The bird who is on the wing can see all that is happening on the earth; he has more perspective, more vision.

I can see in a better way, because I am no more part of the valley. I can see what is happening in the valley, I can see what is happening in New Delhi, because I am far above it. But the Indian mind has its accustomed expectations. A saint is not supposed to speak about politics. But a saint in fact never follows anybody's expectations.

I am not here to fulfill your expectations. If I fulfill your expectations I will never be able to transform you. I am here to destroy all your expectations, I am here to shock you. And in those shocking experiences your mind will stop. You will not be able to figure it out: and that is the point where something new enters you.

So once in a while I say something which Indians think should not be said. But who are you to decide what I should say and what I should not say? And naturally, when something goes against their expectations they immediately react according to their old conditionings.

Those who react according to their old conditionings miss the point. Those who don't react according to the old conditionings fall silent, get into a new space.

I am talking to my disciples: I am trying to hit them, this way and that. It is all deliberate. When I criticize Morarji Desai it is not so much about Morarji Desai. It is much more about the Morarji Desai in YOU, because everybody has the politician within them. Hitting Morarji Desai I have hit the Morarji Desai in you, the politician within you.

Everybody has the politician in them. The politician means the desire to dominate, the desire to be number one. The politician means ambition, the ambitious mind. And when I hit Morarji Desai, if you feel hit and you start thinking, "This man cannot be a really enlightened person, otherwise why should he be hitting Morarji Desai so hard?" you are simply rationalizing. You have nothing to do with Morarji Desai: you are saving your own Morarji Desai inside, you are trying to protect your own politician.

I have nothing to do with Morarji Desai. What can I have to do with poor Morarji Desai? But I have everything to do with the politician within you.

The Sufis say man is a machine because man only reacts according to the programs that have been fed to him. Start behaving responsively, and then you are not a machine. And when you are not a machine you are a man: then the man is born.

Watch, become alert, observe, and go on dropping all the reactive patterns in you. Each moment try to respond to the reality - not according to the ready-made idea in you but according to the reality as it is there outside. Respond to the reality! Respond with your total consciousness but not with your mind.

And then when you respond spontaneously and you don't react, action is born. Action is beautiful, reaction is ugly. Only a man of awareness acts, the man of unawareness REACTS. Action liberates.

Reaction goes on creating the same chains, goes on making them thicker and harder and stronger.

Live a life of response and not of reaction.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Become a politician! Just the other day, Subhuti sent me the report of a survey done in a London school of researchers, the London Polytechnic. The survey says that ugly and stupid-looking people have more poll appeal. They have researched into it, and this is a very strange conclusion - strange but true.

Ugly, stupid-looking, unintelligent people have poll appeal. why? Because they look so like the masses, the masses think they belong to them. The beautiful person, the intelligent-looking person, immediately is felt as belonging to the aristocracy. Naturally - he is not of the masses, he belongs to the leisured class. The masses feel him as the enemy.

Now, you ask: I AM SO TERRIBLY UGLY...

Use it, this is a great opportunity: become a politician. And particularly in India, you can see all kinds of ugly people. It is very rare to find a politician who is intelligent-looking, beautiful, handsome, who has some grace and charm. No - the uglier you are, the more is the possibility of your becoming the representative of the masses, because the masses will feel some affinity with you, a deep affinity and accord. You belong to them, they belong to you. You are one of them.

Maybe that is one of the causes of why Indira Gandhi lost the last elections. She has a subtle beauty and grace. She was the only politician in India who looked graceful and intelligent; she has been replaced by very ugly people. But this may be the psychological reason: she is aristocratic.

And the revolt that has happened in India may be a proof for this survey being done in the London Polytechnic.

Her father was a beautiful man, one of the most beautiful men in the world. He dominated Indian politics; then she came into power. She is aristocratic. And, slowly slowly, the masses started feeling as if the country is still not ruled by them, by their people. Now they have chosen very dull, placid people, old and rotten. And they have chosen them for a certain reason: they fit perfectly well with the masses, they are exactly like the masses. Now they are not going to help this country, because a country can be helped only by intelligent people.

But remember always: in the world, the more socialism has been talked about, the more all kinds of aristocratic people have lost their grip on world affairs. They could have helped. Remember, there are many kinds of aristocracies. It is not only a question of riches and birth, the person who has a higher IQ belongs to an aristocracy of intelligence. And if the idea spreads that everybody is equal, when in truth nobody is equal... There are people who have very low IQs and there are people who have high IQs and they are not equal, they are as far apart as people can be.

There are ugly people and there are beautiful people: these again are aristocracies. And if the idea spreads... which it HAS; it has gone into the world. Marx created one of the greatest myths, the myth of equality. People are not equal. But once the idea has spread then there is great jealousy.

Whoever is above you has to be pulled own, he has to be made equal, because all are equal. And if they are not, they have to be made equal.

The world is, by and by, slowly slowly, becoming dominated by the lower intelligence. It is happening all over the world. And the lower intelligence cannot solve the problems. The lower intelligence is incapable of solving the problems, the problems are too big. It needs intelligence to solve them, it needs great intelligence to solve them; the problems are very complicated. It is not a question of equality. The world will have to listen to the intelligent people, the world will have to listen to the people who have vision, who can create a future.

But whenever somebody wants to create a new future, it goes against the habits of the masses, their old traditions, their old superstitions. So whosoever is ready and willing to accept those superstitions and traditions will easily become the dominant politician, will become powerful.

That's how it has happened in India, that's how it is happening all over the world. The people who can easily accommodate themselves to the superstitious masses and who LOOK like the masses, they will have more power. That is very dangerous, but that seems to be happening more and more and the world is coming closer and closer to a catastrophe. It can be avoided only if intelligent people are listened to. If people who have some grace, who have some silence in them, who have tasted something of the no-mind, if they are heard the world can be saved, humanity can be saved.

Otherwise it cannot be saved.

This is really a difficult problem. How to tackle it? Because they will not be heard; the masses will feel that they are against them.

For example, I cannot be listened to in this country. what I am saying can open doors of great riches to this country. What I am saying can transform all its miseries and problems into opportunities. But what I am saying goes against the superstitions, what I am saying goes against the traditions. If they listen to me they will have to go against their superstitions, which is difficult. If they listen to their traditions and their superstitions they will follow Morarji Desai and people like that. But they cannot solve the problems.

That's where Indira got into trouble, she tried to solve the problems. She DARED to do something drastic to change the situation of this country. But then it was too much against the people and their tradition and their superstitions. It was too much against their old mind: they rebelled against her.

You ask me: I AM SO TERRIBLY UGLY AND I HAVE SUFFERED MUCH BECAUSE OF THAT.

WHAT SHOULD I DO?

What I have been saying, I was just joking - please don't become a politician! There are ugly people, so many ugly people, enough; you need not worry about them.

You ask me: WHAT SHOULD I DO?

Ugliness has nothing to do with your body. Neither has beauty much to do with the body. The beauty or the ugliness of the body is very superficial; the real thing comes from within. If you can become beautiful within, you will become luminous. It has happened many times: even an ugly person, when he becomes meditative, starts looking beautiful.

This I have watched continuously, hear in and year out. When people come here they have totally different faces. When they start meditating, when they start dancing, when they start singing, their faces relax. Their tensions drop. Their misery, which had become part of their face, slowly slowly wars off. They become relaxed like children. Their faces start gleaming with a new inner joy, they become luminous.

Physical beauty and ugliness is not very important. The real thing is the inner. I can teach you how to be beautiful from within, and that is real beauty. Once it is there, your physical form won't matter much. Your eyes will start shining with joy; your face will have a gleam, a glory. The form will become immaterial. When something starts flowing from within you, some grace, then the outer form is just put aside. Comparatively it loses all significance: don't be worried about it.

And whatsoever I have been saying was just a joke. Don't become a politician, because if you become a politician you will become more ugly. It works both ways: ugly people become politicians, and politicians become more ugly. It will be impossible for you not to become more ugly, because the whole world of politics is one of continuous quarrel, continuous violence, continuous competition. It will make you more tense, it will make you more graceless, it will make you more and more insipid and dull. Because only dullards can succeed in the world of politics.

I would suggest to the researchers of the London Polytechnic that this is only half the story: please work to find the other half too. This is the half which finds that political success is more possible for ugly and unintelligent-looking people. The other half is that those who become politicians become more and more ugly, more and more unintelligent-looking. They have to, because whatsoever makes you successful, you have to practice it more - naturally, obviously. whatsoever helps you to succeed will become your very style of life. That is the other half of the story, that politicians become ugly.

Meditate, love, dance, sing, celebrate here with me, and the ugliness will disappear. Bring something higher into yourself, and the lower will be forgotten, because it is all comparative, it is all relative. If you can bring something higher into yourself...

It is as if there is a small candle burning in the room: bring a bigger light into the room and the small candle simply loses all significance.

Bring the beauty of the within, which is easier. With the other beauty I cannot help much; I am not a plastic surgeon. You can find some plastic surgeon who can help you, but that will not help in any way. You may have a little longer nose, better shaped, but that will not help anything much. If you remain the same inside, your outer beauty will simply show your inner ugliness; it will become a contrast.

Bring some inner beauty.

That's what we are doing here. Sannyas is the science of bringing inner beauty, inner beautitude, inner benediction. Let God shower on you, and the body is completely forgotten. The body becomes compost and your whole life becomes a garden and great flowers, golden flowers, bloom in you.