Everything about homosexuality

Question 1

Certainly. They are going to be harmful because you have misunderstood the whole point of religion. The first thing: life is unpredictable; that's why it is beautiful. If it was predictable, who would like to live it? If everything was charted beforehand and the day you were born you were given your whole life, like a railway timetable, so you can consult and see what is going to happen and when and how; who would like to live such a life? It will not have any poetry. It will not have any dangers. It will not have any risk. It will not have any opportunity to grow. It will be absolutely futile. Then you will be just a robot, a mechanical thing.

The life of a mechanism can be predicted but not of man, because man is not a machine.

Not of a tree, not of a bird. The more alive you are, the more unpredictable you become.

The life of the tree is more predictable than the life of a bird. The life of a bird is less predictable than the life of a man. And the life of a Buddha is absolutely more unpredictable than your life.

Unpredictability means freedom. Predictability will mean determinism. If you can be predicted, then you are not a soul; then you are not. Predictability will mean that you are simply a biological mechanism.

But there are many people who think that life is not worth living because it is not predictable. These are the people who go to the astrologers. These are the people who go on finding fortune-tellers. These people are foolish; and the astrologer and the fortune- teller, they live on your foolishness.

In the first place, the very idea that tomorrow is fixed and can be known will destroy the very aliveness of it. Then you will be as if you are seeing a movie for the second time.

You know everything - now what is going to happen, now what is going to happen. Why do you get bored seeing a movie the second time and the third time and the fourth time ?

If you are forced to see the movie many times, the same movie, you will go mad. For the first time you are curious, alive. You are wondering what is going to happen. You don't know what is going to happen; that's why you are interested, the flame of interest remains burning.

Life is a mystery; it cannot be predicted. But there are many people who would like to have a predictable life, because then there will be no fear. Everything will be certain; there will be no doubt about anything.

But will there be any opportunity to grow? Without risk has anybody ever grown?

Without danger has anybody ever sharpened his consciousness? Without the possibility of going astray, is there any point in being on the right path? Without the alternative of the devil, is there any possibility of achieving to God?

The alternative is needed; the opposite has to attract and distract you. Choice arises. You have to become more sensitive, more alive, more aware. But if everything is determined and everything can be known beforehand, then what is the point of being aware? Whether you are aware or not will not make any difference. Right now it makes tremendous difference.

Let me tell you, the more aware you become, the less predictable, because you move higher and higher and farther and farther from matter, which is predictable. We know if you heat water to a certain degree of heat, the water evaporates. It is predictable. But it is not the same with a man. You cannot fix a degree of insult where a man becomes angry.

Each man is so unique. A Buddha may not become angry at all, whatsoever the degree of your insult.

And you know this: sometimes you may become angry by a slight provocation - or even without provocation you may start evaporating in anger, without any heat - and sometimes even a great provocation may not disturb you. It depends how good you are feeling in the moment, how alert you are feeling in the moment.

Beggars come in the morning to beg, not in the evening, because they have understood a simple fact of psychology that in the morning people are more in the mood of sharing - they are more alive, alert, rested By the evening they are tired and exhausted and fed up with the world; to hope to get something from them is impossible. When people are feeling good themselves, then they share. It depends on their inner feeling.

Remember that life is beautiful because you are capable of becoming more and more alive. No need to be bothered by tomorrow. Live today. And don't allow tomorrow to destroy you today. And move so freely today that tomorrow brings more freedom to you.

Never ask for predictions. Remain open. Whatsoever happens, let it happen, allow it to happen; pass through it. It is a gift of God. It must have some deep significance.

"The days of life ahead, if any, are so unknown and unpredictable. These days a deep feeling is arising in me that one has to just live the remaining years of life." "Just live?"

Then your life will become a boredom. And you may interpret that this is a religious life; this is not. A bored man is not a religious man. A blissful man is a religious man.

But I know, many bored people have pretended to be religious. Many people who were impotent in life - uncreative, were not capable of any happiness - have turned against life, have become life-negative; and they have created a long tradition of condemning life, of saying that it is worthless, that there is no meaning in it, that it is just accidental, that it is a chaos_drop out of it, destroy it. These people you have called mahatmas; you have called them great saints. They were simply neurotic. They needed medical care.

They needed to be hospitalized. Ninety-nine percent of your so-called saints are perverted, but they are hiding their perversion in such terms that you cannot see the point.

There is a fable from Aesop:

A fox is trying to jump to get grapes. They are ripe and alluring, and their smell is making the fox almost crazy, but the bunch of grapes is too far away. The fox tries and tries, fails, cannot reach; then she looks around - has somebody seen the failure?

A small hare is hiding under a bush, and he says, "Auntie, what has happened? You couldn't reach them?"

She says, "No, that's not the point. The grapes are not ripe yet; they are sour."

This is what you have known as religion up to now - "The grapes are sour" - because these people could not get to them, could not reach them. These people were failures.

Religion has nothing to do with failure. It is a fulfillment, a fruition, a flowering, a climax, a peak. Abraham Maslow is right when he says that religion is concerned with "peak experiences.

But look at your religious people in the churches, in the monasteries, in the temples: fed up, bored, long faces, just waiting for death to come and "deliver" them. Antilife, against life, fanatically against life; and wherever they see any sign of life, they jump upon it to kill and destroy it. They will not allow you to laugh in the church, they will not allow you to dance in the church, because any sign of life and they become troubled - because any sign of life and they become aware that they have missed it, they could not reach it.

Religion is not for the failures. It is for those who have succeeded in life, who have lived life to its deepest core, to its depth and height, in all dimensions, and who have become so enriched by the experience that they are ready to transcend it. These people will never be antilife; they will be life-affirmative. They will say life is divine. In fact they will say, "Forget all about God. Life is God." They will not be against love, because love is the very juice of life. They will say, "Love is like blood circulating in the divine body of God." Love is to life exactly as blood is to your body. How can they be against it?

If you become antilove, you start shrinking. A really religious person is expanding, expanding. It is an expansion of consciousness, not a shrinking.

In India we have called the ultimate truth brahman. The word "brahman" means "who goes on expanding" - on and on and on, and knows no end. The very word is beautiful, has a tremendous significance. This ongoing expansion, this endless expansion of life, love, consciousness, this is what God is.

Beware, because the life-negative religion is very cheap; you can get it by just being bored. It is very cheap because you can get it just by being a failure, just by being uncreative, just by being lazy, desperate, sad. It is really cheap. But real religion, authentic religion, is at a great cost: you have to lose yourself in life. You have to pay the cost. It is earned, and it is earned the hard way. One has to move through life, to know its sadnesses, its happinesses, to know its failures, its successes, to know sunny days and cloudy ones, to know poverty and richness, to know love and to know hate - to touch the very rock bottom of life, the hell, and to soar high and touch the highest peak, heaven.

One has to move in all the directions, in all the dimensions; nothing should remain covered. Religion is a discovery; it is to unveil life.

And of course pain is part of it. Never think only in terms of pleasure; otherwise soon you will get out of life, out of touch. Life is both pain and pleasure. In fact it will be better to call it "pain-pleasure"; even "and" is not good, because that divides. Pain-pleasure, hell- heaven, night-day, summer-winter, God-devil - life is this tremendous opportunity of polar opposites. Live it, be courageous, risk, move in danger; and then you will attain to a totally different kind of religious understanding, which comes out of bitter and sweet experiences.

A man who has known only sweet experiences and has never known bitter experiences is not man enough, is still poor not rich. One who has not known love, its beauty and its terror, one who has not known love, its ecstasy and its agony, one who has not known the meeting and also the divorce, one who has not known arrival and also the departure, has not known much. He has lived on goodies and will become ill sooner or later and will be fed up and bored.

Life is a tremendous challenge. So if you say that "one has to just live the remaining years of life," then these remaining years will not be of life. You will have died before your death.

I have heard, a beautiful woman reached the Pearly Gates. Even St. Peter felt a tremor.

The woman was really beautiful; even St. Peter could not look at her eye to eye. He started looking in his files, and he said, "Where have you been? What have you been doing? Have you done any sin on earth?"

The woman said, "No, never."

St. Peter could not believe it. "Were you married?"

She said, "No, I have never been interested in sex."

"Have you been with any man?"

She said, "No, I am a virgin."

And so on, and so forth. St. Peter looked into the records; they were all empty. She has not committed any sin, but how can you do something virtuous if you have not committed any sin? He became worried.

The woman asked, "What is the matter? I am a virtuous woman.

St. Peter said, "You have lived under a wrong notion. To become a saint, one has to become a sinner. The record is completely empty. Now I have only one question to ask:

Where have you been for these thirty years?"

She said, "What do you mean?"

St. Peter said, "You have been dead for thirty years - you should have reported earlier!

You have not lived."

Your so-called saints will have to face the same thing. They have not lived - and that I call irreligious. To deny the opportunity that God has given to you is to be irreligious.

Not to live it in its totality is to be irreligious. If God has made you in such a way that the sin arises in you, don't be worried too much. There must be a significance in it; it must be part of your growth.

The Bible story is beautiful. God said to Adam, "Don't cat the fruit of the tree of knowledge." He played a trick on Adam. That was a way to provoke him, certainly. You cannot find a better way of provoking. The garden of God was very big. Left to himself Adam would not yet have discovered the tree. Just think. Such is the infinity of God's garden that Adam, left to his own wits, would not have been able to discover the tree.

God must have known it. Christians don't interpret it that way, but I know God played a trick. He befooled Adam. Immediately he said, "Remember, never eat the fruit of this tree," this tree became a constant obsession. Now Adam will not be able to sleep well; in the night he will dream of the tree. And when God has said so, there must be something in it. And God himself eats from that tree! This is impossible. This is like a father who smokes and goes on telling the child, "Never smoke. This is very bad, and you will suffer."

Of course Adam had to cat it, but God is the culprit. He has to be because he is the foundation of all. So if sin happens he has to be the criminal; if virtue happens he has to be the cause of it. All is his. Deepest, you will always find him there. And he must be laughing since then.

Adam could not understand; a little psychology was needed. It is not a religious question; it is a psychological question. And even then God was not sitting silently and waiting, because may be Adam may be very obedient and may not eat; so he had to make other arrangements - the snake. God must have felt that Adam seems to be too docile, obedient, a good boy; so he had to bring in a girl, Eve, and a snake. The snake provokes Eve and Eve provokes Adam. Now the thing becomes simple. Adam can throw the responsibility on Eve, Eve can throw the responsibility on the snake. And of course snakes don't speak they cannot write bibles and they cannot throw the responsibility on God. But the responsibility is his.

There is only one irreligion and that is to deny life, to deny love. And there is only one religion: to accept it in its totality and to move in it unafraid.

So this attitude is harmful.

"How? Why? What for? - nothing is clear." But why should it be clear? Why in the first place do you want it to be dear? And if it is absolutely clear, the whole point will be lost, the whole game will be lost. If everything is absolutely clear, then there is no alternative.

Then you cannot go astray. Then you will always do the right thing, if everything is absolutely dear. Then you cannot stumble, then you cannot move in the darkness and go far away from God.

But he wants you to go far away because only when you have gone very, very far away does a thirst arise to come back home.

In fact now modern psychology exactly says this: that every child has to go away from the mother. First the child is in the womb, then one day he has to come out of the womb.

That is the beginning of going far away from the mother. Now he is no longer part of the mother. Then the cord is cut; he starts functioning independently. But still he will cling to the mother, to the breast, because she is his whole being, still - out of the womb, but still he will go on clinging to the mother, he will remain in the motherly atmosphere. But then that too has to go. The child is growing. One day milk is stopped, the breast is taken away, and the mother forces the child to become more independent. Now he has to choose his own food and he has to chew his own food. Then still more - he has to go to the school or the boarding house. Then far away, far away he moves. Then one day he falls in love with a woman; that is the last step.

That's why mothers can never forgive daughters-in-law. Impossible, because they are the last straw - they have taken their son completely. Now the son has become completely independent. He has his own family; he has started his Own unit. Now he is no longer attached to the mother.

Exactly the same thing is happening in the world of consciousness. Man has to go away from the mother. And God is more a mother than a father, remember. Man is born out of the womb of God, then he takes care.

Just watch. He is taking more care of the trees, more care of the animals, more care of the birds - that is the womb. These people are inside the womb yet. He is not so careful about man; man has to become independent. Have you not observed that man is born the most helpless animal in the world? Because God is taking his help away, withdrawing himself. The trees exist in his womb, the birds exist in his womb, the animals exist in his womb. They are prehuman.

That is the whole theory of rebirth, of evolution. In the East we say that every man has passed through all these stages. Once you were a lion, once you were a dog, once you were a tree, and once you were a rock also. Then you became man. "Man" means you came out of the womb. The garden of Eden is the womb of God.

Adam was "expelled." Hmm?... the word "expulsion" is not good. If we in the East had written the story of the Bible, we would have said, "God sent man farther away from himself - to grow." Because it is difficult to grow if you continuously go on hanging around your mother. If you continuously go on living on her milk, it will be impossible to grow. You will remain childish.

And you have to fall in love with some woman, so much so that if the woman says, "Kill yom mother," you will start thinking of killing your mother. That's how Eve persuaded Adam, "Eat this fruit." What is the significance of the story ? The significance is Adam chose Eve's advice against God's commandment. Simple. He said, "Okay, drop that old fellow. Don't be worried." He chooses foolish Eve's advice.

And of course women are not very rational; they live by hunches. She has been advised - by a snake. Hmm?... just look at the absurdity of it - just a hunch. But when a wife insists, the husband has to follow.

Adam is sent forth into the world, not expelled. How can God expel anybody? It is impossible; the compassion will not allow it. And this is part of your growth that you should go away and you should commit mistakes, because only then by and by will you become aware, alert. And with your own awareness, mistakes will start dropping. You will come back home. And you will always find God ready to welcome you.

God is your source, and is the source of all that happens to you.

Don't ask, "How? Why? What for? - nothing is clear." Yes, it has to be that way. If everything is clear, there is no need to grow. Because nothing is clear, you have to grow in awareness, so things become clear.

Mulla Nasrudin was in the hospital; he had some eye trouble. After a week the doctor asked him, "Are the medicines helping you, Nasrudin?"

He said, "Certainly. I can see clearly, more dearly. For example, the nurse becomes plainer and plainer every day."

When you can see clearly, of course the nurse becomes plainer and plainer. When you cannot see clearly, every woman is beautiful.

If everything is clear, then there will be no need to make your eyes clear. The whole thing is this, the whole game is this: things are not clear. So you have to bring more clarity to your mind so you can choose your path. Things are in a chaos. You have to bring awareness within you so you can choose and move rightly into the chaos. Chaos is consideredly there; it is meant to be there. It is not because of the devil the chaos is there; it is because of God.

It is like a jigsaw puzzle. Hmm?... if everything is clear then what is the point of the puzzle? You give a jigsaw puzzle to a small child, you mix all the parts, you confuse the child and then you tell him, "Now you work it out." Working it out, he is really becoming more alert, absorbed, contemplative, meditative. If you give him a solved puzzle, what is the point of giving the puzzle to him ?

The world is a jigsaw puzzle and God goes on mixing and confusing it.

That's what I am doing here with you. Somehow you try to fix your jigsaw puzzle, I again do something and mix you and confuse you. Because the more you have to work on the puzzle, the more aware you will become. You would like me to give you a certain catechism, like Christians give to their followers. A few people come to me - foolish people they are - they say, "It is very difficult, Osho, to find out from your books what you want. Just make a small book like Mao T'se-tung's RED BOOK, just a small, handy book, which can be kept in a pocket - and that tells exactly what you want, in short."

I am not going to give you a RED BOOK, because then what is the point? You like it, so finished. There is no need for any awareness. You just look into the RED BOOK and everything is clear. All RED BOOKS are worth being burned. Anything that solves your life's puzzle is your enemy because the puzzle solved, you will plop into unconsciousness. The puzzle has to be made more complicated. That's why if Lao Tzu cannot do, I bring Patanjali. If Patanjali cannot do, I bring Bud&a. If he fails, Jesus, Mahavir. And then I find people - Tilopa, Naropa - nobody has bothered much about them. And I will go on puzzling you.

If amidst this confusion you become clear, not the things around you.... The clarity has to be inner. There are two types of clarities. One is just in the arrangement of things around you - the furniture arranged by an interior decorator, everything in its place - but then you are not clear. Things are systematic and they take the very opportunity to be clear from your hands. Then there is another clarity - things remain as they are, but you attain to an intensity of awareness. You become more and more alert. You look at things deeply, you start seeing more clearly. Things are the same, but you are different. The change has happened to you, not in the world.

And that's the difference between the communist, the socialist, the politician, and the religious man. They all are sorting out in the world - Marx, Mao, Stalin. They are all trying to fix the world, the puzzle, so you need not be worried. They are chewing food for you and they are trying to make you small babies so you can live on the breasts of the state - and everything is made clear by the government, everything nationalized, and everything is put in its right place. So you simply move without any worry on your part.

I am not in favor of any of that type of systematization in the outer world. The outer world has to remain a beautiful chaos so that you have to struggle for inner awareness. I hope you can see the point. If you are moving in a dark night alone, you move more alert, more cautious. If you are moving on a superhighway in full daylight, of course there is no need for awareness and alertness.

Have you ever been in a haunted house in the night, alone? You will not be able to sleep.

Just a small noise - a dead leaf falls from the tree in the courtyard - and you will jump.

A cat jumps on the rat and you will jump. Just a breeze passes and you are standing with the torch in hand.

I have heard about one man who took a challenge and stayed in a haunted house. Just at the time when he was going to retire, sitting on the bed, he asked the waiter who had brought his milk, "Tell me one thing. Has anything exceptional happened here in the past few years?"

The man said, "Not for twenty years."

The man felt relieved - twenty years before, something had happened. Then the waiter was leaving. He said, "Wait. Just tell me, what had happened twenty years ago?"

The waiter said, "twenty years before, a very exceptional thing happened. One man stayed in the same bed you are staying in - and the next morning he came down for breakfast. Never again has it happened, and never before. We were not even waiting for him, but he came down the stairs."

Now can you think of this man remaining unalert? Can you think of this man falling asleep? Even tranquilizers won't help. Even if you give him morphia it may not work. His awareness will become a very crystallized thing.

Buddha used to send his disciples to the cemetery, to stay there overnight - just to become more aware. Because when you are alone in a cemetery, you cannot fall asleep.

In fact there is no need to make any effort to be aware. Awareness comes easy. It is really beautiful; you should try it sometimes.

The clarity has to come to you in your inner quality of consciousness. "How? Why? What for? - nothing is clear." Absolutely beautiful. That's how it should be.

And let me tell you one thing more, life exists for itself. It has no extrinsic value to it; it is intrinsic. Never ask the purpose of life, because you ask a wrong question, you ask an irrelevant question. Life is the ultimate; beyond it there is nothing. Life lives for itself. A rose is a rose is a rose - life lives for more life, more life lives for still more life. But there is no extrinsic value; you cannot answer why.

And you can see the point: if you can answer the "why" then again the question will arise.

If you say, "Life exists for God" - then why does God exist? What is the purpose of his being? And when the query has to stop somewhere, why start it in the first place? You say, "God created life"? - then who created God? No, I don't say that. I say God is life.

He has not created life; he is life.

So if you are an atheist there is no problem with me. Hmm?... you can drop the word "God." It is only a linguistic question. If you like the word "God," good. If you don't like, very good. "Life" will do. Because I am not worried about words. I don't argue about words. Who bothers about what you call that ultimate truth? Life, God, Allah, Ram, Krishna - or whatsoever catches your fancy - Jehovah, Tao; all these are words, indicating something so subtle that it is impossible to express it.

But if you ask me, "life" seems to be very, very beautiful. With "God" somehow you feel the smell of the church - and it is a bad odor; it is not good. With "life" suddenly the flowers, the trees, the birds.... Have you ever watched the reaction, the response in your mind? I say "God" - cathedrals arise, man-made things - priests, popes. Of course very dramatic, but a little ridiculous too - in their long, pretentious robes, crowns, hypocrisies.

I say "life" - no cathedral arises in your consciousness, no temple. Rivers flowing, flowers flowering, birds singing, the sun shining, children laughing and running, people making love, the sky, the earth. "Life" is really more beautiful, less corrupted. It has not fallen in the hands of priests; they have not been able to corrupt and destroy its beauty.

They have not been able to cut it into a shape - it has not yet been tailored. Life remains wild.

But I tell you, that's what God is: absolutely wild.

Never ask why life is, because who is going to answer? There is nobody else other than life.

And don't think that you have to live only when there is a purpose, otherwise how can you live. I don't see the point. Flowers flower; they don't know any "why." And they flower beautifully. And I cannot conceive how if they are taught, "There is a purpose in your flowering," they will flower better; I can't see it. They will just flower the same way.

They have been doing their uttermost. Can you think cuckoos will be singing better if they are told what is the purpose of singing?

I always think that animals must be laughing at man. There must be many jokes about man prevalent among animals. Man must be a very odd, ridiculous phenomenon on the earth.

A flower goes on flowering - needs no purpose to flower - but you need a purpose. You can love somebody, but what is the purpose? Love needs any purpose? Then you will miss the whole thing. There are people who love also purposefully.

Life is not economics. It is intrinsically valuable. And once you understand this, a great, immense mutation happens to you. Then you simply breathe and breathing is so beautiful, so peaceful, so graceful. Then each moment becomes its own meaning; the meaning is not outgoing. Then you live this moment for itself. You sing because you love singing. You dance because it is so beautiful to dance. You love because there is nothing like love. If you ask the purpose, then you have a prostitute's mind. The prostitute can love, but there is a purpose in it.

People who are always asking,"What is the purpose of life?" have a prostitute's mind.

They cannot accept life as it is. They need something else to make it meaningful.

Just try to understand: each moment is enough unto itself; and each act is total unto itself; and whatsoever you do, the doing itself has a grandeur. Nothing else is needed.

And then suddenly you become free. Because a man who is purpose-oriented can never be free. Purpose is always in the future. You live today for something which is going to happen tomorrow. Who knows? You may die. Then you will live an unfulfilled life; and tomorrow again you will live for a future tomorrow because each tomorrow comes as a today and you have learned the wrong way, of sacrificing today for tomorrow.

If you have become addicted to the question of purpose, you will go on asking - whatsoever happens you will ask"What is the purpose of it?" People come to me and they say, "You tell us to meditate, but what is the purpose of it?" What purpose is needed to meditate? Meditation is so silent, so overflowing with bliss, no other purpose is needed. It is not a means to something else. It is an end unto itself.

"Hence what I am eating, what I am doing, what is happening all around - nothing seems to bother me." You are becoming insensitive and dull. Don't think this is religion. This is just slow suicide. You are poisoning your being. Become more alert, become more aware, become more sensitive. Because if you are not sensitive, life will go on passing you by and you will not be able to live it. You will remain untouched. Life will go on showering on you, and you will remain closed, you will not be open for it. God will go on giving to you, but you will not receive. Become more sensitive, more responsive. Be like a string of a veena. Hmm?... somebody just touches it, and what response. The string is alive. Don't be loose, otherwise there will be no response. Of course don't be too tight, otherwise you will be broken.

This is the whole art of religion: how to be balanced; how not to become lopsided. The strings of a veena have to remain in a perfect poise, in a perfect equanimity, in perfect balance - neither this way or nor that - just in the middle, exactly in the middle. You touch it - you have not even touched it - and it responds.

They say that if a veena has been fixed correctly, rightly by a master, and you put the veena in the comer of the room and you play on another veena, the veena in the corner will start responding to the other veena's music. It responds because the throbbing, the vibration, the pulsation reaches to it also. When one veena starts a tremendously beautiful vibration, it reaches, it fills the whole room; and the other veena is waiting there, perfectly ready - neither too loose nor too tight - just in the middle; immediately those subtle vibrations hit it, without even being touched by a human hand it starts responding, it becomes alive. That's the way to live.

Meditation is just to make you balanced, in the middle, tranquil, silent, happy; so when life comes to you.... And it is coming every moment. Millions are its gifts; you go on missing them because you are not ready. You are like a deaf person who is sitting and somebody is playing on the veena. You go on missing it.

I have heard about a great musician who had heard of Tansen, another great musician, that when Tansen used to play on his veena, animals would gather together to listen to him. He wanted to know the facticity of it. He went to the forest, and he started playing on his veena; by and by, animals started coming. A great crowd gathered - the elephant, the zebra, the tiger, the leopard, the foxes, the wolves - all sorts of animals, small and big; and they were enchanted, hypnotized. And then suddenly came a crocodile and jumped on the musician and gulped him in one bite. All the animals were very angry; they said "What is this nonsense?" The crocodile cupped his ear and said, "What? What are you saying?"

The crocodile was deaf. Don't be deaf, don't be blind. Be alive, responsive.

God is knocking on your door every moment. If you become insensitive you will not hear the knock. Jesus says, "Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you." I say to you there is no need for you to knock - God is knocking on the door. Listen. In fact God is seeking you from everywhere. The search is not onesided, that only you are searching; he is also seeking you. But you have to become available.

And this is no way to become available.

"Since my very childhood, whenever I saw a dead body, always the thought flashed to me that if death is to come then what is the sense in living." That's why there is sense in living - because death is to come. If there was going to be no death and you were going to be here forever, forever, and forever, just think what will happen. You will be bored to death. You will start praying for death.

There is a beautiful story about Alexander the Great. When he came to India, he came for many reasons - to conquer India, to meet the wise men of India; and to find a certain well about which he had heard that if you drink the water of it, you become immortal. I don't know how far the story is true, I cannot vouch for it, but it is beautiful. And a story has to be beautiful to be true; there is no other truth except beauty. He travelled and he asked many wise men, and finally he found the well. But he was surprised because the people who guided him were not much interested in it. That was something unbelievable.

And the last man, who took him exactly to the well, was not even interested to wait there.

Alexander asked, "Are you not interested in eternal life? Don't you want to be immortal?"

The man laughed; he said, "I have learned much about life. The desire arises in childish minds. But fulfill it."

There was a staircase going into the well. He went inside. He was just going to drink the water when a crow who was sitting there said, "Wait! Listen a minute. Don't do that foolishness. I have done it. Now I am suffering because I cannot die. I have lived for many thousands of years. Now the only prayer in my heart is: God, help me to die. And I have been seeking wise men and asking them,'Is there some well which can function as an antidote to this foolishness?' I am a foolish crow, so I committed this thing. Please, you think again: you will never be able to die then."

It is said Alexander thought it over and escaped from the well immediately because there was every possibility that he may get tempted. He didn't drink.

Just think if there was no death. Life will lose much. Without the polarity, everything becomes dull, hopeless. It is as if there is just the day and there is no night to rest - and the day, and the day, and the day... and scorching heat, and nowhere to hide, nowhere to dissolve into the darkness, nowhere to forget oneself into oblivion. It will be difficult, it will be very arduous, and pointless. Rest is needed. Death is rest.

So if you have seen dead bodies being taken to the cemetery or off to the funeral ground, you have not seen much. And if you thought that now life is meaningless, then you have missed the point. Seeing a dead body, remember, death is coming. Use this opportunity to be alive as intensely as possible. Then there is rest. Earn the rest!

And this is one of the things I would like to tell you: if you don't live well, you will not die well. Your death will also be just dull. It will not have any flame in it, it will not be beautiful. If you live intensely, you die intensely. If you live happily, you die happily.

The taste of your life is carried to the peak by your death. Death is a culmination, crescendo. If you have been singing a beautiful song, then death is the crescendo, the highest peak.

Death is not against life. Death is a background. It makes life richer. It makes life more alive. It gives contrast.

"Since those very days of my childhood, a sort of noninterest has surrounded my whole pattern of life, and probably that might be the reason why I got interested in religion and could reach you." Maybe. That may be the reason why you could reach me, but now that will be the reason you will not be able to understand me. It has brought you to my door, but it will not bring you to my heart.

Now please drop that, because here I am teaching life. Of course I am teaching death also, but my death is a beautiful truth and your life is an ugly fact. I am teaching you an alchemical magic: how to transform even death into a beautiful experience. Of course life will become more beautiful when even death has become beautiful. How to transmute baser metals into gold, that's what I am teaching here.

Maybe you have come here because of these ideas of yours, but now drop them; otherwise they will be barriers between me and you.

Question 2

Just the other way round: a god who got lost and has found himself again; a god who rested and slept deeply and dreamt of being a man and is now awake. And the same is true about you. You are not just men. You are gods - dreaming that you are men. It is not that men have to become God. It is only that gods have to become a little awake; then the dream of "man" disappears.

This is the difference between the Eastern attitude and the Western. The West tries to explain the highest by the lowest. If you attain to samadhi - for example, Ramkrishna attains to samadhi, is lost in the infinite - ask Freud. He will say this is a sort of repressed sex. Samadhi is to be explained by sex. Ask me about sex, and I will say this is a first glimpse of samadhi.

The highest is not to be reduced to the lowest. The lowest has to be raised to the highest.

Ask Marx and he will say consciousness is nothing but a by-product of matter. Ask me; I will say matter is nothing but an illusion of consciousness.

In the East we have tried to explain the mud, the dirty mud, by the lotus. In the West you have tried to explain the lotus by the dirty mud it comes out of. And it makes a great difference. When you try to explain the lotus by the dirty mud it comes out of, the lotus disappears; only dirty mud in your hands. All beauty, all greatness, all truth disappears; only dirtiness in your hands. Everything can be reduced to the lowest because the highest and the lowest are joined together. The highest rung of the ladder is joined to the lowest rung of the ladder, so nothing seems to be wrong in it, but there is much which is important to be understood.

If you explain the dirty mud by the lotus and you say, "When the lotus has arisen out of this dirty mud, even this dirty mud is not really dirty; otherwise how can the lotus arise out of it ? The lotus is hiding in it. We may not have been able to see the lotus in it - that is our limitation" - if you explain the dirty mud by the lotus, the dirty mud disappears:

your hands are full of lotuses.

Now it is for you to choose. The East makes you suddenly rich, superb, divine. The West makes you suddenly very ordinary, material, it reduces you to things, and all that is grand in human beings becomes suspicious, suspected.

Remember, you are an evolution from God to God. In between is the world; that's why we call it a dream. Maya, a dream: a god dreaming he is lost. Enjoy it, nothing wrong in it. Sooner or later you will awake and you will laugh; it was a dream.

If you ask psychoanalysts about God, they say it is something in your imagination. You ask Shankara, you ask Eastern sages, and they say you are something in God's imagination. Tremendously beautiful. You are something in God's imagination, God imagining you, dreaming you. Ask Freud; he says, "God ? You are dreaming; you are imagining something."

Both are true! And it is for you to choose. If you want to be in despair, anguish, agony, for ever and ever, choose the Western attitude. If you want to Flower and be happy - unconditionally - choose the Eastern attitude.

Question 3

Let that be the divine's worry. Why should you be worried? You just be yourself He will find the way.

And you are right: I am a killer - almost a murderer.

One man was dying in a hospital, and he said to the doctor, "Doctor, I am very much worried. It seems I am dying."

The doctor said, "Don't worry, leave it to me."

That's what I say to you, "Don't worry, leave it to me. I will kill you." Because that is the only way to give you a new release, a new lease of life. I will give you the cross so that you can be reborn.

Question 4

The first thing, the questioner has not signed his question. That shows that he is also feeling guilty about it. He does not want his name to be known. In not signing the question, he has already condemned homosexuality.

I am not against anything, but I am for many things. Let me repeat: I am not against anything, but I am for many things. I am not against the mud, but I am for the lotus. Sex has to be transformed. If it is not transformed, you remain at the lowest rung of your being. So the first thing to be understood: I talk about sex so that you can understand it and transcend it.

Homosexuality is even lower than heterosexuality. Nothing wrong in it - you still have a lower rung in your ladder. That has to be transcended. So the first thing, sex has to be transcended. The second thing to be remembered: homosexuality is a lower rung.

Every child is born autosexual, every child is masturbatory. That's a stage; the child has to go beyond it. Every child likes to play with his genital organs. And it is pleasurable, nothing wrong in it, but it is childish. It is the first learning of sex rehearsal, a getting ready, preparation. But if you are thirty-five, forty, sixty, and still masturbatory, then something is wrong.

When I say something is wrong, I only mean you have not been able to grow; your mental age has remained retarded.

After the masturbatory period I call "autosexual," the child becomes homosexual. Near the age of ten, the child becomes homosexual. He becomes more interested in bodies similar to the body he has. This is natural growth. First he is interested in his own body; then he becomes interested in others' bodies which are like his - a boy is interested in boys, a girl is interested in girls. That's a natural stage. But the boy is going away from himself, moving his sexual energy, his libido, to other boys. And this seems natural because other boys look more similar to him than do other girls. But he has taken a step; he has become homosexual. Good, nothing wrong in it, but at the age of sixty if you are still homosexual, then you are retarded - you are "boyish." That's why homosexuals retain the boyish attitude and they look "gay." They look more happy than the heterosexual, that's certain. Even in their faces they retain the boyishness. It is very difficult to hide your homosexuality; your face, your eyes, everything shows it. You remain boyish. It is good to pass through it, but it is bad to cling to it.

Then comes the third stage, heterosexual. A boy becomes interested in a girl, a girl becomes interested in a boy. That is the highest stage as far as sex goes, but that too up to a point. If you are still interested in sex after the age of forty-two, something is missing.

Then you have not lived it rightly; otherwise by the time you become forty-two.... At the age of fourteen, you become really sexual, ready to give birth to a child, to become a mother or a father. It takes fourteen years to prepare you. After another fourteen years, by the age of twenty-eight, you are at the peak of your sexuality-. After another fourteen years, at the age of forty-two, you are moving back. The circle is complete. Jung has said, "After the age of forty, whosoever comes to me has a religious problem." If after the age of forty-two you are still sexually puzzled and in a problem, something in your life has missed.

After another fourteen years, by the age of fifty-six, one is simply freed of sex. Another fourteen years, from fifty-six, to seventy, again the next childhood. Before death you have to reach to the same point as when you were born. The circle is complete: a child.

That's what Jesus means when he says, "Unless you become like children, you will not enter into my kingdom of God."

This is the seventy-year cycle, more or less. It will differ if you live eighty years or a hundred years; then you can divide.

I am not against anything, but I will not help you to cling to any place. Go on, go on, never cling to any place. I am not condemning anything. Use that opportunity, but go on.

A few anecdotes:

An obviously distressed gent staggered into a psychiatrist's office and said, "Doctor, you have got to help me. Every night I dream I am marooned on a desert island with a dozen blondes, a dozen brunettes, and a dozen redheads, each more beautiful than all the rest."

"You must be the luckiest man alive," said the doctor. "What do you need my help for?"

"My problem," said the patient, "is that in my dreams I am a man."

You get it? Otherwise let me tell you another joke.

Two retired army colonels were talking in their club.

"Did you hear about old Carstairs?" asked one.

"No, what about him?" said the other.

"Got posted to India as military adviser to one of these maharajah chappies. One day, he went off his chump, ran off into the jungle, and turned native. Now he is living up a tree with a monkey!"

"Good Lord!" exclaimed the second colonel. "Is it a male monkey or a female monkey?"

"Oh, female monkey, of course, old chap. Nothing bent about old Carstairs."

Homosexuality is a retarded state, but in the West it is becoming more and more prevalent. There are reasons. I would like to tell you a few.

Animals, in their wild state, are never homosexual; but in zoos they turn. In their wild states animals are never homosexual, but in zoos, where they are not free and don't have enough space and are crowded too much, they become homosexual. The world is getting too crowded; it is becoming more like a zoo. All natural growths are disappearing and people are becoming too tense. That is one of the causes of homosexuality growing.

The second thing. In the West sex is thought to be more like fun than a commitment. One wants to have casual affairs. To get involved with a woman is to get into troubled waters.

To get involved with a woman means a great involvement children, family, job, house, car, and a thousand and one things. Once the woman enters in, the whole world enters in.

The Western mind is becoming more and more afraid of getting involved; people would like to remain uninvolved. It is easier to be uninvolved in a homosexual relationship than in a heterosexual relationship. No children, and immediately the commitment becomes almost none.

The third reason. Women are becoming lesbians in the West because of the lib movement, the idea that man has oppressed women up to now. And man has oppressed; it has been one of the greatest slaveries ever. No other class has been oppressed as much as women. Now the revolt, the reaction. There are organizations of Western women which promote lesbianism, homosexuality - get out of all relationships with men. Forget loving the enemy. Man is the enemy; get out of all relationships with men. It is better to love a woman; a woman loves a woman.

Women are getting more and more aggressive. Man is getting more and more afraid of getting into relationship.

These situations are creating homosexuality, but it is a perversion. If you are in it, I don't condemn you. I simply say get deeper into your feelings, meditate more, and by and by you will see that your homosexuality is turning into heterosexuality. If you are masturbatory, I would like you to become homosexuals; that is better. If you are homosexuals, I would like you to become heterosexuals; that is better. rf you are already heterosexual, I would like you to become celibates; that is better. But go on.

I don't condemn anything.

The questioner says, "... homosexuality did and does exist in the world." Right.

Tuberculosis also did exist and exists, cancer also, but that is no reason for it. A really better world will become more and more heterosexual.Why? Because men and women, or yin and yang, when they meet, the circle becomes complete, as negative electricity and positive electricity meet and the circle becomes complete.When a man meets man, it is negative electricity meeting negative, or positive electricity meeting positive. It will not create the inner energy circle. It will leave you incomplete. It will never be fulfilling. It can be convenient, mind. It can be convenient, but it can never be fulfilling, and fulfillment is the goal, not convenience.

Remember that if inside you are going to become asexual one day, the brahmacharya has to arise, the purest celibacy has to arise; then it is better to move on the natural way. It is my understanding that it is simpler for a heterosexual to go beyond sex than for a homosexual. Because one rung is missing, it will take more effort for a homosexual, and unnecessary effort.

But still I am not against anything. If you feel good, you have to decide it. I don't call it a sin, and I am not saying that if you are homosexuals you are going to be thrown into hell.

All nonsense. If you are homosexual you will miss something, the feeling when yin meets yang, the feeling where negative meets positive, night meets day. You will miss something. Not that you will be thrown in hell, but you will miss something of heaven in your life.

But still you have to decide. I am not giving you a commandment.

In fact the religious commandments have created the situation in which homosexuality was born for the first time. This you will be surprised to know, that religions are the cause of homosexuality in the world, because they insisted that men monks should live in one monastery, women nuns should live in another monastery, and they should not meet.

Buddhists, Jains, Christians, all forced thousands of men into one herd and thousands of women into another herd, and broke all the bridges between the two. They were the first breeding grounds of homosexuality. They have created the situation because love is such a deep desire that if you don't allow the natural outlet it becomes perverted. It finds ways and means somehow to express itself.

In the army, people become homosexual easily. In boys' boarding houses and girls'

boarding houses people turn homosexual easily. If homosexuality is to disappear from the world, then all segregation between man and woman should disappear. Hostels should be for both the sexes together. And the army should not be only of men; women should be allowed there. And clubs should not be only of boys; that is dangerous. And monasteries should be bisexual; otherwise homosexuality is natural.

But it is a perversion, a disease.When I say "disease" I don't condemn it. I call it "disease" with compassion. When somebody is suffering from tuberculosis, we don't condemn him.

We help him to get out of it. So when people come to me and confess that they are homosexuals, I say don't be worried. I am here. I will bring you out of it.

Sex continues to be important to the very end of life - if you are not alert, if you are not transforming it. And to die sexual is an ugly death. One should come to a point when sex has been dropped far back.

Three very ancient members of the Army and Navy Club were discussing the subject of embarrassing moments over brandy and cigars.

The first two related incidents in their lives which they looked back on with shame; and when it came to the turn of the third old codger, he told of how he had been caught out peeping through the keyhole of the maid's bedroom.

"Ah yes," said one of the others with a chuckle. "We certainly got up to some pranks in our younger days."

"Younger days, nothing!" said the third old boy. "This was last night."

But this is ugly. An old man should become again like a small child. Because when sex disappears, all desires disappear. When sex disappears, the interest in the other disappears. Sex is the link with the society, with the world, with matter.When sex disappears, suddenly you start floating like a white cloud. You are uprooted; your roots are no longer here in this world.

And when your energy is not moving lower, low-wards, downwards, then it starts rising higher and reaches to sahasrar, where the ultimate lotus is waiting for the energy to come and to help it flower.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 9