Now you can jump off Waterloo Bridge

Question 1

Once you take anything as a problem, it becomes impossible to solve it. No problem as such can be solved. If you see deeply in any problem - without accepting it as a problem - the solution surfaces itself. So the first thing to be learned is drop the old habit of looking at things as if they are problems. You make them problems.

For example, sex. It is not a problem at all. If it is a problem, then you can turn anything into a problem. You can turn breathing into a problem. Once you look at breathing as a problem, you will start asking how to get rid of it. You will become afraid of breathing.

Sex is not a problem. Sex is a simple, pure energy. But living with some teacher you have been conditionedj because almost ninety-nine percent of teachers take sex as a problem.

They are not teachers in fact. They have not solved anything in their own life. They are as much in trouble as you are. They have as much neurosis as you have.

A man of insight has no problems; and a man of insight never helps anybody else to have a problem.

I cannot solve your problem if you have the mechanism to create it, but I can give you my insight to see through and through, to see more transparently, with more clarity and perception.

So the first thing to be considered: why you call sex a problem. What is problematic in it?

If sex is a problem, then why isn't food a problem? If sex is a problem, then why isn't breathing a problem? If sex is a problem, then why, anything can be converted into a problem. You just need to look that way, and it becomes a problem.

In different cultures, different societies, different things are thought to be problematic. If you have been brought up under the influence of Freud, then sex is not a problem at all.

Then not to be sexual will become a problem. That has become a problem to many Westerners.

One woman came to me, must be about sixty-five, and she said, "Osho, my sex desire is disappearing. Help me." Because if you have been influenced by Freud too much, then sex is almost equivalent to life. If the sex desire is disappearing, you are dying, then death is very dose by. So to the very end, on the death bed also, you have to remain sexual beings, you have to force yourself to be sexual beings.

This is altogether a new problem - particularly for Indians, who cannot think of it as a problem. If it happens to them, they will go to the temple and thank God. Even when they are young, if the sex desire disappears, they will be very, very happy, tremendously happy. God has been very helpful; the problem is solved. But the problem may not be solved; they may be simply getting impotent.

The problem arises because of a certain outlook. The problem is not a problem in itself; it depends on your outlook. If you are a Westerner, then drinking alcoholic beverages is not a problem. Simple, like any drink - Coca-Cola or Fanta. If you are a German, beer is simply water. No problem in it. But if you are an Indian, then the difficulty arises. Even COCA-COLA is a problem. Gandhi will not allow you to drink COCA-COLA. He had prohibited tea in his ashram. Tea! It became a problem to him because it has some quantity of caffeine in it. For Buddhists tea has never been a problem. It has been almost a religious ritual in Japan, in China.

A Buddhist monk starts his life with tea. In the early morning, before he goes to meditate, he takes tea. After he has meditated he takes tea, and takes it in such a religious way, with such grace and dignity. It has never been thought of as a problem; in fact Buddhists discovered it. Legendarily it is connected with Bodhidharma.

Bodhidharma is thought to have discovered tea. He used to live on a hillside. The mountain's name was Ta, and because the tea was first discovered there, that's why it is called ta, tea, cha, chai - they are all derivations from Ta. And why did Bodhidharma discover it, and how did he discover it?

He was trying to attain to a point of absolute awareness. It is difficult. You can live without food for many days, but without sleep? - and he was trying not to allow any sleep. After a period - seven, eight days - suddenly he felt sleep coming. He tore away his eyelids and threw them, so there would be no problem anymore. It is said those eyelids fell into the ground, sprouted as tea. That's why tea helps awareness; if you drink too much tea in the night you will not be able to sleep. And because the whole Buddhist mind is how to attain to a point where sleep does not interfere and you can remain perfectly aware, of course tea became almost a sacred thing, the holiest of the holies.

In Japan they have small houses in the monasteries - teahouses. When they go to a tea- house, they go as if somebody is going to church or to the temple. They take a bath; they wear new fresh clothes; they leave their shoes outside; they move in silence, in grace; they sit.... And it is a long ritual. It is not just that you go and take a cup of tea and drink and you are gone, not in such a hurry. Gods have to be treated well, and tea is a god, god of awareness. So they will sit silently, and the kettle will go on singing its song, and first they will listen to it. Now they are preparing. They will meditate on the singing kettle.

Then the cups and saucers will be given to them. They will touch the cups and saucers, look at them, because they are pieces of art. And nobody likes to use cups and saucers purchased from the market. Every monastery makes its own. Rich people make their own. Poor people, if they cannot afford to make their own, purchase them from the market, break them, reglue them; they become perfectly unique then.

Then the tea is poured. And everybody is in a deep, receptive, meditative mood, breathing slow and deep. And then the tea is drunk, as if something divine is descending in you.

Now Mahatma Gandhi cannot think of this. In his ashram tea was not allowed; tea was on the blacklist. It depends on your attitude.

What I would like to tell you is that it is up to you how many problems you want to create. Drop as many as possible. The fewer problems you have, the better, because then, if you cannot drop those few, if they are not really because of your attitude but are intrinsic to life; then they can be solved.

I have heard, one man went to his psychiatrist:

The poor man had big bags under his eyes; he looked very tired. "I dream every single night, doctor," he told his physician. "Last night it was terrible! I was in a big plane, I had my parachute on, we were climbing up to forty thousand feet from where I was going to jump to establish a new altitude record. We got to forty thousand feet - I opened the door - I took one step forward - I pulled the rip cord - what do you think happened?"

The doctor said, "I have no idea."

The man said, "My pajamas fell down!"

Now is this a problem? When you are forty thousand feet above the earth, is this a problem? The whole life is at stake? And that too in a dream!

And one is feeling tired. I have heard, on a park bench two beggars were sitting and talking. I was just passing by. One beggar said, "I dreamt that I got a good job." The other said, "Yes, you look tired."

Drop nonsense. Sex is not a problem. Sex is your life energy. Accept it. If you accept, it can be transformed. If you reject, you will be in a mess. If you fight with it, with whom are you fighting? Just think: with yourself - half/half, divided. You are fighting with yourself; of course you will be more and more crippled. Never fight with yourself.

Sadhana is not a conflict, it is not a struggle. Sadhana is a deep understanding, a transformation, an awareness, in which you start loving, accepting yourself, and getting higher and higher - through understanding. Nothing is tO be excluded from your being.

Everything is as it should be. It has to be used for a higher harmony, that's all. The veena is not to be thrown. If you cannot play it, learn how to play. Nothing is wrong with the veena. If you cannot play and you do play on the veena, of course you create mad noise.

The neighbors will go and report you to the police station. Your wife will immediately give you a divorce. Your children will become nervous. And you yourself will be in a mess because if you don't know how to play a veena, how to play on a musical instrument, hmm? you will get more and more discordant in yourself But nothing is wrong with the veena, remember. You don't know how to play it.

Sex energy is a tremendous energy. You don't know how to play with it. And you have been taught for centuries to be against it. Just see what yom religious people have done to the world. They have been teaching against sex and sex becomes more and more important because of their teachings. The whole world is almost neurotically sexual. A few are indulging in it as if there is nothing else in life, and a few are escaping from it as if there is nothing else in life. A few are just escaping and a few are just fighting. Both are wasting their lives.

This is some great energy, a gift of God. Many treasures are hidden in it. It has to be learned, the book has to be opened, one has to go into it, it has to be studied deeply, understood deeply. The key of infinite life is there.

Now that you have come to me, I go on insisting for understanding. A certain intellectual understanding arises. But the old conditioning goes on and on. It is not that only in this life you have been conditioned; for centuries, for many lives, you have been conditioned.

That conditioning has become almost second nature to you. The very word "sex," and something gets restless within you. The very word creates a reaction inside you. It is difficult to talk about it without any passion. Difficult to talk about it objectively.

Difficult to talk about it scientifically. Either this way or that you become passionately involved in it.

Drop all ideas, prejudices. Just look at the facticity of it. You are born of sex energy.

Your mother and father were not praying when you were born. They were making love.

And they were not in a church or in a temple. You never think about it; people avoid such things. It will be difficult for you to conceive that your father and mother were making love. Impossible. It is other people - dirty people - who make love. Your father and mother? Never. That's why so many stories have been prevalent all over the world. A child is born, and other children ask, "From where?" You have to give them false answers - the stork, or the bush, or gods have dropped it from the kitchen chimney.

I have heard, the mother was pregnant and the grandmother was worried about the little child because sooner or later he will ask. So she wanted to prepare him. She took him aside and told him, "Do you know, your mother is going to be presented again with a great gift from God. It will come in a bundle and it will be dropped from the chimney hole in the night when everybody will be asleep."

The boy said, "It's okay, but let me tell you one thing. Don't let God drop the bundle too loudly because my mother is pregnant. She may be disturbed in the night too much. Let it be with the least noise possible."

Stories have been invented tO avoid sex. It is difficult to talk to children about how a child is born, and this is the beginning of falsity, beginning of hypocrisy. Sooner or later the child will discover it, and then he will also discover that the mother and the father have been telling lies. For what? Why have they been hiding such a vital fact? And if they are untrue about such a vital fact, what about other things? Once the doubt arises in the mind of a small child, that he has been deceived, he loses the capacity to trust.

And then you go on telling him to trust in God the Father who has made us all, who is there in heaven - and he cannot believe in the real father who is in the house, who is a deceiver. How can he believe in the Father, God the Father? Impossible?

No, here listening to me you will have to come to an understanding of life as it is. I am not theorizing about it. I am not interested in any speculative business. I am simply giving you facts. And those are simple because you can listen to them.

Whatsoever you do in life.... If you are a great poet, it is sex energy transformed in poetry, nothing else, because that is the only energy available to you. If you are a great painter, it is sex energy moving into colors, to the canvas. If you are a great sculptor, then it is sex energy creating beautiful pieces out of marble and stone. If you are a singer, it is sex energy becoming a song. A dancer, it is sex energy. Whatsoever you are, it is in some way or other a transformation, transmutation of sex energy - your prayer also, your meditation also.

Sex is the beginning, samadhi is the end. But the energy is the same. Samadhi is sex at its highest peak, and sex is samadhi at its lowest. Once you understand that, then you know how one has to evolve higher.

Nothing is to be rejected; everything has to be used. Every rung of the ladder, even the lowest rung of the ladder, has to be used because the ladder will not exist without it. The whole ladder is based on it. If you cut anything out of your life, you will never be whole - - and you will never be holy. That part which has been denied will always remain there tO be reaccepted, and that part will go on rebelling against you and fighting against you.

I have heard:

Comrade Cohen was a member of a Russian trade mission to an English industrial town.

One evening the Russians were guests at the local workingmen's club. One of the club members was Joe Chubb, an earnest young socialist, who eventually maneuvered Comrade Cohen into a corner by himself.

"Comrade Cohen," said young Chubb, "I understand you are a good Jew; I understand you are a man of integrity; I understand you possess considerable political acumen. Now because you have all these fine qualities, it would be of great interest to me to have your opinion of the Soviet attitude to the Arab-Israeli conflict - and why the Russians support the Egyptian fascists against the democratic Israelis."

From Comrade Cohen, silence. Just a slight shrug.

"But, come, Comrad Cohen," the young man persisted, "after all, you are a Jew. Despite the official attitude of your country, of your party, you must have your own view as to where justice lies - of whose cause is the right one."

But Comrade Cohen would say nothing, not a word.

Joe Chubb leant nearer. In a tone almost of pleading he urged, "But surely, Comrade Cohen, you must have an opinion."

Comrade Cohen stirred in his chair and regarded the young man with a steady gaze, and he broke his silence. "Comrade Chubb," he said, "I have an opinion." He paused, "But I do not agree with it."

Now this is the situation of most of the people. You know the fact but you don't agree with it because you have been prepared not to agree with it. You know the truth as it is, but you have been conditioned to have a prejudice about it.

Just put aside all prejudices. Simply watch life. Let life reveal itself to you as if you have never been conditioned, as if you have just come from another planet to this earth. And you simply watch, with no ideology behind it - Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan. With no past, look at the present. Don't allow the past to interfere with the present. That which is, let it reveal itself to you.

Then where is the problem? Why is sex the problem? There is nothing more lovely than it. You go on praising the flowers, but you never have thought that they arc sexual efforts of the tree. They are carrying sexual germs, sexual cells. That is a trick of the tree to deceive butterflies and bees into taking their sperms to the feminine plant. You praise them, not knowing that you are praising sex energy. All flowers are so beautiful, but all are sexual energy. You praise the songs of the birds, but do you know? They are nothing but seductions. The boy bird goes on calling to the girl, tries in every way to allure her, through sound, through song. You must have seen a peacock dancing. Nothing like it - but it is nothing but a magical trick to seduce the other sex. If you look around, you will be surprised. All that is beautiful is sexual.

And your saints go on praising the flowers. They are just against the flowering of human sex. They may not have observed well what they are doing. You go with flowers, many flowers to the temple, and you put your flowers at your god's feet, without knowing what you are doing. It is a sexual gift.

All that is beautiful - flowers, singing, dancing - is sexual. Wherever you have any experience of beauty, it is sexual. All beauty is sexual. It has to be that way.

But just in human beings, a dichotomy has been created. Drop that dichotomy. I am not going to solve your problem. I am simply saying your problem is foolish, stupid. And don't think that you are bringing a very great spiritual problem to me. You are simply bringing a foolish thing which has nothing to do with spirituality. Drop that.

I am not saying remain satisfied with yom sex. I am saying accept it. There are greater possibilities hidden in it. But the first door opens with acceptance; then another door becomes available. It is sex energy which moves into other wheels of energy, goes higher and higher and higher.

Sex can become a problem if you are stuck somewhere, but then too the problem is not sex but being stuck. Let this emphasis be absolutely clear to you. Sex is never a problem, but your being stuck somewhere is a problem. That is a totally different thing. So don't get stuck anywhere, don't freeze. Remain fluid and go on moving.

Intellectually you understand this, but your past interferes. Now you will have to make a great choice, a great decision: to listen to the past or to listen to your present, fresh understanding. With whom are you going to be? With your past, dull and dead, or with your fresh understanding which has happened just now to you?

There were once two friends, one of whom was very fond of playing practical jokes on the other. One evening, the joker hid behind a gravestone in a dark cemetery, knowing that his friend would be taking a shortcut through the churchyard. After a short while, he heard his friend approaching; and as he drew near, the joker let out a bloodcurdling shriek. The first man started and froze in his tracks.

"Is that you, John?" he said. There was no reply. "I know that is you, John," said his friend. "I know that is you, John, but I am going to run anyway."

If you know, then why are you going to run anyway? Live with the fresh understanding.

Live with this moment. Don't be distracted by the past. Always be with the fresh and the new and that which is just dawning on the horizon of your consciousness; then you will grow. If you are always with the old, the withered away, you will wither away; you will never grow.

Growth is in the present; growth is of the fresh, young; growth is of the new. So every day, drop the dust that ordinarily collects on the mirror of your consciousness. Keep your mirror clean so that whatsoever comes in front of you is mirrored perfectly. And live out of that mirroring, live out of that fresh reflection.

"I was doing sadhana under the guidance of some other teacher. At that time I had no problem of sex." You will not have if you are being taught how to suppress it. It can be suppressed so deeply that you will start feeling as if it is not there.

"But tensions existed there in my mind." Tensions will come up because no suppression can be without tensions. In fact the tense state of your mind is nothing but a reflection of subtle suppressions. You can relax only if you have no suppressions whatsoever. A man who has no repressions is relaxed. A man who has repressions cannot relax, because relaxation will go against his repressions. Try to understand the mechanism.

When you repress something, you have to be constantly alert, constantly repressing it.

Repressing is not something that you have done once and for all. It has to be done every moment of your life. If you don't do it, those things that you have repressed will surface.

You have to be constantly sitting on their chest, holding them there. If you leave them even for a single moment, the enemy will be up and again there will be the same struggle and the same fight.

That's why your saints cannot take any holiday. Impossible. How can you take a holiday, because the holiday will disturb everything? Your saint has to be constantly on guard.

That's the tension. Constantly alert. A woman is coming: shrink your energy continuously, hold it there, let the woman pass. But they are passing continuously. Or if they are not passing, then it is something else and something else. The whole of life is sexual.

If you somehow avoid women and escape to the Himalayas, birds will be there making love to each other.What will you do? Animals will come and disturb you. The whole of life is sexual; you cannot escape anywhere. The whole ocean is of sexual energy.

And nothing wrong in it. It is beautifully so.

God has manifested in the world as sex. If you go to the old scriptures you will find it so - - particularly in Hindu scriptures.Why did God create the world? Hindu scriptures say, "Because desire arose in him - sex arose in him - he created the world." All creation is out of sexual energy, desire - kama. But Hindus have been in a way very courageous.

They say God created the world; then he started creating animals, trees. How did he create so many trees? How did he create so many animals? What was his plan, blueprint?

How did he start working on such a complex world? Hindus say it is very simple. First he created a cow.... Hindus love the cow, so of course God has to create the cow first. And the cow looks so divine, so silent and graceful. He created the cow, and then he fell in love with the cow. No other religion is so daring - the father falling in love with the daughter. The cow is his daughter; he has created it. He fell in love; now what to do? He was in a mess himself. So he became a bull because that is the only way to love a cow; otherwise how will you love? To escape from that - as women are always escaping....

Female energy escapes. That is the game. Not really that a woman wants to escape; she plays the game of escaping. Hmm?... if a man approaches the woman and she simply is ready to go to bed with him, the man will start feeling a little worried. W12at is wrong with the woman? Because the game was not played. The whole beauty of love is not so much in the love as in the foreplay. You make so many efforts - the courtship? But the courtship is possible only if the woman is receding. Just see. Whenever you are talking to a woman, if you are interested in her, she will be moving back and you will be moving forward. But there is always a wall, so the woman goes against the wall; then she is caught. She always moves towards the wall - that too is intentional! It is all intentional.

It is the whole game, and a beautiful game.

So the cow started running to escape from the bull. She became a tigress. Then God has to become a tiger. She became a lioness - just to escape. God has to become a lion. And that's how the whole world was created: the woman escaping; the man chasing. A beautiful story, and very true.

That's how the whole world has been created: one energy escaping; another chasing.

Hide-and-seek - the woman hiding and hiding and hiding - and the beauty of it - and God finding her again and again, and she again hiding, and God finding her again - in new forms, in new flowers, in new birds, in new animals. And the game goes on...

infinite is the leela. Hindus say God's play is infinite.

But all play is sexual. Play as such is sexual because it is not work. You play it for its own sake. That's why the Hindu conception of God is far superior to the Christian and Mohammedan and Jewish conceptions of God. The Jewish God looks like a worker, almost proletarian, a sudra. The Hindu God is not worried about work; he does not belong to any union of workers. He is a player, an actor. The whole world is his play. He enjoys, and there is no end to it. In itself it is the end; it is not a means.

That's the difference between work and play: work is always end-oriented. In itself it is useless, in itself you would not like to do it. You go to the office, to the factory, to the shop, and you work the whole day because something that you want - a car, a good house, a beautiful woman - is possible only if you earn money. You are not working in the factory because you love it, you are not in the office because you love it. You love certain other things, but they are not available without the work, so you have to fulfill the condition somehow. So you carry the work. The goal is somewhere else.

Play is totally different. You are playing; there is no goal to it. In itself it is the goal. You are enjoying the very activity in itself.

I have heard:

Lords Carnforth, Yewley, and Donnington were taking tea on the lawn one Sunday afternoon. The conversation turned to the subject of making love. Lord Carnforth maintained that it was ninety percent pleasure and ten percent work; Lord Yewley said it was fifty percent pleasure and fifty percent work; Lord Donnington, the eldest of the three, said it was ten percent pleasure and ninety percent work.

To settle the argument, they called over an old gardener who was working on the flower beds. When they put the question to him, he said, "Why it is one hundred percent pleasure, of course, your Lordships. If there was any work involved, you would have us servants doing it for you."

Play is a hundred percent pleasure. The Hindu concept of God is that of a player, and the whole creation is out of play. And sex is the energy involved in the play.

Don't get stuck there, because there are higher games, subtler games to be played with.

First you play with a woman outside; that is the lowest possibility. Then you start playing with the woman inside. That's what yoga calls meeting of sun and moon, of pingala and ida. You start playing with the inner woman if you are a man, or if you are a woman, with the inner man.

And you have both in you: no man is just a man, he has a woman inside him; no woman is just a woman, she has a man inside her. Has to be so, because you come out of the meeting of both. Your father gives something to you; your mother also gives something to you. Whether you are a man or a woman makes no difference. You are a meeting of two energies - male, female. Both contribute fifty percent to you.

So what is the difference between a man and a woman? The difference is like this: two coins are there, both are exactly the same, but one coin is heads up, another coin is tails up. Both are exactly the same. The difference is of emphasis. The difference is not of quality, the difference is not of energy; the difference is only of emphasis. A man is consciously man, unconsciously woman; a woman is consciously woman, unconsciously man.

Once you know how to play the game with the outer woman - and that's what my insistence is, that you have to learn the game outside first - then you can start playing the game with the subtle inner woman and man. First you have to seduce the outer woman and man and play the game there because it is very gross and can be learned easily. It is just a preparation for some greater play. Then you move within. Then you start seeking the other who is hiding somewhere in your being, you find it, and then a deep orgasm happens within you.

That orgasm goes on becoming higher and higher and bigger and bigger, and the ultimate orgasm happens at sahasrar, at the crown, in your last center of being; where God the ultimate meets nature the ultimate, where two ultimates meet and mingle and merge into each other, where consciousness meets matter, purusha meets prakriti, where the visible meets the invisible, and the ultimate ecstasy happens.

This is a game. You have to go on playing it, as beautifully as possible. And you have to learn the art of it.

So if you repress, you have to repress continuously. If you repress, you have to be continuously on guard and you cannot relax. Relaxation is possible only when you don't have any enemy within; only then can you relax. How can you relax otherwise?

Relaxation is a state of mind where there is no repression, not even a trace.

A small child relaxes. The older you grow, the more difficult it becomes to let go. The small child relaxes so deeply. Just see. A small child may fall asleep while eating at the dining table. He may fall asleep while playing with his toys. He can fall asleep anywhere.

And it becomes more and more difficult for grown-up people to sleep, to relax, to love, to merge. So many repressions. And you are all carrying the load; you are loaded very much.

And this load is very complex also; it is not simple. If you suppress sex - try to understand it - you will have to suppress many other things side by side, because everything is interrelated. Inside, it is a very complicated thing. If you suppress sex, you will have to suppress your breathing also. You cannot breathe well, deep, because deep breathing goes on and massages the inner center of sex. If you really breathe well, you will feel sexual. You will have to suppress breathing; you cannot breathe deeply. If you suppress sex, you will have to suppress many things in your food because there are a few foods which give you more sexual energy than others. Then you will have to change your foods. If you suppress sex, you cannot sleep well because if you sleep well and you relax perfectly, you will have sexual dreams. You can have ejaculations in your sleep. The fear will be there. You will not be able to sleep well. Now your whole life will become an entangled thing, a complexity, a knot.

You can repress sex, but then you will have to become very, very tense, almost maddeningly tense. That's what must have happened: "But tensions existed there in my mind."

"After coming to your shelter, tensions have disappeared...." Very good. Of course when tensions disappear, then the sex that you have been repressing through those tensions will come up, bubble up again.

"... but a new problem of sex has arisen." Don't call it a "problem." Just call it: "now sexual energy is flowing again." Now your sexual energy is no longer a solid thing; it has become liquid and flowing. Now your sex is alive again, not crippled and dead. You have become young again.

My whole effort is how to uncondition you from the teachers you have been with and the scriptures you have been reading and all the nonsense that you have gone through - how to uncondition you. Ninety percent of my work is because you have learned something wrong and you have to unlearn it. Now, again, if you call it a problem, it is not you. Your so-called teacher's voice is again working through you; he is sitting thereon the throne of your heart and saying, "Look. The problem is arising again. Stop it! Repress it!" You will have to be indifferent to this voice.

If you want to be with me, you have to be alive - so totally alive that nothing is excluded from it, everything is included. That is the beginning of the work.

If you can relax, you can reach God. It is not an effort to reach God. It is effortless relaxation, it is a let-go.

Question 2

Then you will have to ask through void. If you want my silent answer, you will have to ask silently. If you cannot ask silently, I can answer silently, still, but you will not understand it. First you have to learn the language of silence. So if you want to receive something from me in silence, then prepare for yourself - and ask the question in silence.

No need to write it. Because I can give you only as much as you are capable of receiving.

And don't ask crazy questions, because I can answer in a very crazy way.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

A mother thought her little girl should be examined for any possible abnormal tendencies, so she took the tot along to the psychologist. Among other questions the doctor asked were: "Are you a boy or a girl?"

The little girl answered, "A boy."

Somewhat taken aback, the doctor asked, "When you grow up are you going to be a man or a woman?"

"A man," she answered.

Afterwards as they were returning home the mother said, "Why did you give those strange answers to the questions that man asked you?"

The little girl drew herself up with dignity and said, "If he was going to ask me crazy questions, I was going to give him crazy answers - he could not kid me."

Remember this. If you want to receive an answer in total silence, then learn how to be silent. Then you need not ask, you need not even formulate the question inside you, you need not even come to me because then physical closeness is not needed. Wherever you are you will be able to receive my answer. And that answer is not going to be mine or anybody else's; it will be your own heart's answer.

I have to give you answers because you don't know how to ask. I have to give you answers because you have not yet become capable of receiving the answer from your own being. Once you learn silence, you become tremendously capable. Just be silent and all questions disappear. Not that you receive an answer: simply, questions disappear, you don't have any questions to ask.

Buddha used to say to his disciples, "For one year, just keep quiet and be silent. After one year, whatsoever you want to ask you can ask." But after one year, they will not ask because questions wither away.

The more silent you become, the less questions arise because questions are part of a noisy mind. Questions are not coming out of your life, out of your existence and being. They are coming out of a mad mind. When the maddening drops a little, noise stops a little, and the traffic disappears in the mind - along with the traffic and the noise - questions also disappear. Suddenly there is silence.

Silence is the answer.

Question 3

It is from Swami Maitreya. A beautiful question, and a beautiful and significant dream. It shows much about him.

First thing, in his past he was a politician, and he had much promise. He had been a colleague of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Jaiprakash Narayan, and Ramdhari Singh Dinkat.

For many years he was a Member of Parliament. Somehow he got hooked with me, and all his dreams of becoming a great politician, a great political force, disappeared. But the past still clings.

These dreams, in which Nehru, Jaiprakash, and Dinkar appear, are very indicative. They show that the political ambition is still lurking somewhere inside the unconscious. He has not yet been able to get rid of it totally. He is sincerely with me, he is authentically with me, but the past still clings. He wants to get rid of it; that's why the past docs not come in the day. It comes in the night when he is fast asleep and helpless. Then the mind starts playing old tricks again and again and again.

I don't come much in his dreams, because I am already here. I am here in reality, so what is the point of creating a dream about me? Remember, dreams arc only about things which are not present; either they were in the past or you would like them to be in the future. Whosoever is part of your reality in the present will never come in your dreams.

Your own wife will never come in your dreams; neighborhood wives, they will enter.

Your own husband will not come in your dreams; there is no point; but other people will appear.

A dream is a substitute for reality. It is complementary. If you have eaten well, enjoyed your food, loved it, and you are satisfied, you will not think and dream of eating again in the night; the dream will not come. Fast one day, and then you will have dreams of food, beautiful, delicious food you are being invited by the Royal Family to the palace, and you are eating and eating and eating.

A dream simply indicates that which is missing in your life; that which is already there is never part of a dream. That's why an enlightened person never dreams, because he is not missing anything. Whatsoever he wanted has happened and there is no more to it. He has no past, no future, to interfere with the present. His present is total. Whatsoever he is doing, he is enjoying it utterly. He is so contented that there is no need for any complementary dream.

Your dreams are your dissatisfactions; your dreams are your discontents; your dreams are your unfulfilled desires.

Maitreya has been a politician, and the mind still carries. And that's why: "... and that mischievous train which each time goes away with my luggage but leaves me behind."

That too Comes in his dreams many times; that is part of many people's dreams. A train:

somehow you reach the train - willy-nilly, running, anyhow you manage to reach the platform - and the train leaves. And his difficulty is more: his luggage is also in the train, and he is left alone standing on the platform without any luggage. That's what has happened to him. Nehru has gone into the train, Dinkar has gone into the train,J.P. has gone into the train; and they have taken his luggage also and he is standing on the platform, empty. Those ambitions, political ambitions, are still lurking in the unconscious.

That's why I am not coming in his dreams. I am already here. I am not an ambition. I may come into his dreams when I am gone - when he has missed another train. One he has missed, and he has missed it absolutely. There is no way of going back, because a certain understanding has arisen in him. He cannot go back, he cannot become a politician again.

There is no going back, but the past can cling; and the more it clings, he may miss another train.

And of course "Once you drove me in your jeep along a bumpy riverside." It is a jeep, and along a bumpy riverside - it is very bumpy. To be with me is to be always in danger, in insecurity. I don't give you any security; in fact I take all your securities away from you. I make you almost empty - nothing to hold, nothing to cling to. I leave you alone.

Fear arises.

Now Maitreya is completely left alone - no money, no power, no prestige? no political status. Everything gone, he is just a bhikkhu. I have made a beggar of him; and he was rising high. He was rising higher and higher. He would have been a Chief Minister somewhere by now, or he may have been in the Central Cabinet. He was very promising.

All those dreams disappeared. Now they go on being created and haunting him; they arc ghosts.

He will have to recognize the fact that going back is not possible. He has reached the point of no return. So now it is unnecessary to carry that load. Out of habit the mind goes on carrying it. Drop it. Recognize, see deeply into it. Don't be deceived by it.

I have heard:

Mulla Nasrudin's wife was very worried about her husband's heavy drinking and one night she decided to give him a fright. She draped herself in a white sheet and went down to the local cemetery, knowing that her husband was in the habit of taking a shortcut through it on his way home from the pub. It was not long before he came staggering along, and out she jumped from behind a headstone.

"Ooooooo!" she screamed, "I am the Devil!"

Mulla Nasrudin stuck out his hand, "Put it there, pal," he said. "I am married to your sister."

Recognize! These ghosts of Nehru and Dinkar and J. P., recognize them. Your past has been married to their sister: politics. Don't be deceived by these ghosts. They have left a mark; it has to be washed clean.

And I know it is very difficult. It is very difficult when you were just on the point of succeeding and suddenly you turned and changed your path. When he met me he was an MP, but that accident changed his life. By and by he drifted away, became more and more interested in me and less and less interested in his political career. And he was just on the point of success. If he had succeeded - and suffered the pains of success - and the failure of success - then it would have been easier for him to drop the old ghosts. He was just at the point of succeeding. Just at the gate when he was entering the palace, he met me. Now the gate and the dream of the palace and the dream of living there continues.

It would have been easier if he had lived in the palace a little while and had known that there is nothing in it; then it would have been much easier. That's why I say if you arc in some career, it is better to succeed in it and then renounce. If you want to become wealthy, become wealthy. Be finished with this. Once wealth is there, you will come to know it is frustrating, it is nothing. But if you leave it before you have succceded, then there will be a problem. Many times the idea will again and again arise: "Maybe there was something. Otherwise why is the whole world interested in wealth and politics and power? There may be something. Maybe I missed the train. I should have continued; I should have seen, experienced the whole thing."

If you have succeeded in a certain desire, the desire itself makes you desireless. The success kills the desire automatically. Then even with less awareness one can renounce.

But if you renounce something when you were just reaching, touching, and everything was possible and you turn away, more intense awareness will be needed. So Maitreya will need a more intense awareness.

But that too was to happen, because once you come in contact with certain influences which take you out of the world, once you come in contact - and you come in contact unawares....

I was a guest at another politician's house and he had invited Maitreya also. So because an old politician, a senior politician, had invited him, he must have come by the way, just to see what the matter was. But once you come in contact with some influence that can take you out of the world of ambition - and if you are a little sensitive and understanding - and he is - he understood the point immediately.... That old politician with whom I was staying remained with me for many years but never understood me. Now he is gone and dead, but he died a politician and he died a member of Parliament. He was one of the longest-standing members in the whole world. He remained a member of Parliament for fifty years. But he never could understand me. He liked me very much, almost to the point of loving me, but understanding was not possible. He was very dull, a dullard.

Maitreya came to me through him, but he is a very sensitive soul. And I say to him that he was not only promising in his political career, he is very promising as a candidate for the ultimate also. You have missed one train; don't miss another. If you miss this time, not only your luggage, your clothes arc also going. You will be left naked.

Once a great politician died and his ghost decided to go along to the funeral - to his own funeral. During the interment he met the ghost of another politician he had known years ago.

"Hello, old chap," said the second ghost. "I say quite an audience, what?"

"Yes," said the first ghost. "If I had known I would pull this big a crowd, I would have died a long time ago."

The politician's desire is a very childish desire: to look big and great in the eyes of others.

Easy to achieve because the masses are simply mad. You just have to know how to manipulate their madness. You just have to know how to provoke their appreciation. You just have to be a little cunning. That's all; nothing else is needed. The masses are foolish.

But to become really great is a totally different thing. To become really great, one has to go within, one has to become crystallized, conscious, desireless, unattached, one has to reach to the point of para, the beyond, the transcendental. It has nothing to do with others.

Others are almost as mad as you are. You can manipulate them, you can provoke their clapping for you and their appreciation, but what is the point?

Just think about it ill this way, be a little arithmetical. If one fool claps his hands in appreciation for you, will you be very gratified? You will not be. But what is the difference if one fool or one thousand fools or one million fools clap?

If one wise man looks at you with love and blessing, that's enough.

Two lions escaped from the zoo on the same day. After three weeks of liberty, they ran into one another. One of the lions was thin and emaciated, while the other was sleek, fat, and obviously well-fed.

"I am thinking of going back to the zoo," said the thin one. "I have not had a bite to eat in nearly a fortnight."

"Heavens," said the fat lion, "you had better come with me. I am living in the gentlemen's washroom in the House of Parliament. I eat a politician every day of the week - and the beauty of it is this: they are never missed."

All your so-called important people, who misses them? They think without them the whole world is going to collapse. Nothing collapses; everything continues as it was.

Don't be worried that you have missed the train of ambition. It was not worth taking. If you had caught the train, you would have felt very frustrated and you would have repented. But this is how the mind functions. If you succeed, you repent; if you fail, you repent. Look. The mind creates misery somehow or other. Whatsoever happens, the mind creates misery out of it. That train was not worth it. Don't look at it in this way, that only your luggage has gone in the train and you are left. Be happy that only yom luggage has gone and you are left.

One day I was walking around a garden and I saw a beggar, with only one shoe on one of his feet. So I asked him, "Poor man, have you lost your other shoe?" He said, "No, I have found one." Be positive.

A man undertook to stay the night in a haunted cottage for a bet. In order to ensure that he did not leave the cottage during the night, the front and back doors were locked and the windows sealed. The next morning when the cottage was opened up, there was no sign of the man, but there was a large hole in the roof, and it was obvious that he had made a speedy exit during that night. It was not until two days later that he arrived back in the village.

"Where on earth have you been for the past forty-eight hours?" his friends asked.

"Coming back," he said. "Coming back!"

In fear he must have run so fast that it took forty-eight hours to come back to the same village.

It is good Maitreya that you missed the train; otherwise it would have taken forty-eight lives to come back.

And the other part of the question: "And last night I saw you marrying a number of women, good ones, together and said to myself that you would manage them with ease and grace." Can't you see that I am managing them with ease and grace? Each disciple is a woman - man or woman, that doesn't matter - because a disciple has to be feminine; only then can he learn. There is no other way because a disciple has to be receptive like a womb. He has to receive me so totally... he has to be a passive receptor.

In India we have the myth that Krishna had sixteen thousand wives, or girlfriends. It is not right to say "wives," because he was really a revolutionary. He didn't believe in being a husband or a wife. He created the whole idea of the boyfriend or the girlfriend - gopis, girlfriends. Sixteen thousand girlfriends? Seems to be a little too much to manage. But the myth is symbolic; it simply says "sixteen thousand disciples." They may have been men, they may have been women - that is not the point - but a disciple is feminine. A disciple is a gopi, is a girlfriend; otherwise he is not a disciple.

I have also got sixteen thousand sannyasins, the number has reached that exactly - and good ones, too. And you can see I am managing well. In fact it is not that I am managing it well; it is love that manages well. Love always manages well - with grace and ease.

Love knows no tension.

You cannot manage even a single woman because you don't know love yet. You cannot manage a single love affair because love is missing. Only the affair is there and love is missing, so of course it creates much trouble.

On my side, love is there and there is no affair. Love manages.

Question 4

Let me tell you one anecdote, and that is my answer.

A man lost all his savings at a race meeting, and he was so heart-broken that he went to Waterloo Bridge and prepared to throw himself off. Suddenly a ghostly voice whispered in his ear, "Don't jump. Go to the racecourse again tomorrow and I will tell you what to bet on." The man went home and the next day he managed to borrow a few pounds and proceeded to the racecourse. Sure enough, as he queued at the window the ghostly voice said, "Put everything you have on Blue Peter in the first race." He did so and Blue Peter won. As he waited to bet on the second race, the voice said, "Liberty Belle is the horse to bet on." Sure enough, Liberty Belle won and the man made a packet. This went on through the meeting, and by the time the last race came around, the man had won one million pounds. As he queued for the last time, the voice whispered, "Don't bet at all on the last race." However, the man was feeling lucky, so he put all his money on the favorite in the last race. It lost.

"Oh, no!" he said as the result was announced. "What do I do now?"

"Now you can jump off Waterloo Bridge," said the voice.

That is my answer. Now you decide.