Sannyas: A Decision from the Guts

The first question:

THE QUESTION is from Richard Lee.

My answer is, Richard Lee, don't be cowardly!

Mind is very cunning, very rationalising. It can find ways to protect itself; it is very defensive. Sannyas is a death to the mind. The mind will do everything to prevent you from taking the jump. And if you wait for co-operation from the mind you wait forever.

The mind never co-operates.

The decision to take sannyas never comes from the mind, the decision to take sannyas comes from somewhere else, from somewhere deeper or higher. It comes from the guts, from your being. It is not a mind phenomenon. You cannot take sannyas through a decision, through the mind. If you take it that way you will miss it. Even if you have taken it, you will miss it. Mind has to be dropped. And when I say mind has to be dropped I mean in toto.

The Fischer-Hoffman Process can't be of much help to you here. The Process is good, goes so far, is helpful, but here you are creating a hindrance through the Process. So first let me tell you what the Process exactly is and how far it can be helpful. There comes a moment when it can become very destructive, very inhibiting.

The Fischer-Hoffman Process remains confined to the conscious mind. The mind has three layers. That which is known to us is the conscious mind. There are two layers one below it, one above it -- which are not known to us. Below it is the unconscious, above it is the superconscious. The conscious mind is a very small figment of the totality but it is conscious so it can pretend to be the master. The conscious mind is divided into two parts as the other two minds are also divided into two parts -- because to exist everything needs to have two parts to it: the male and the female, yin and yang, day and night. To exist at all everything has to exist through paradox, through the opposite. But the opposite is not really the opposite, the opposite is the complementary.

So first remember there are three minds and all the three are divided into two minds. So in all you have six minds.

The conscious mind is divided into two: thinking, feeling. The thinking part is very much developed at the cost of the feeling part. The reason part is very much developed at the cost of the intuition part. If you are a man then your male part is very much developed, your female part is not developed at all. And without the female part you are never whole.

The Fischer-Hoffman Process is to shift your focus from the thinking part to the feeling part -- a move from logic to dreaming, a move from the day part to the night part. It is very simple. If you become passive, if you relax, if you start visualising, if you start looking for a dream, if you start living a reverie, you change shifts. It is just like changing a gear in the car. The thinking part is tired too because it is the very much used part, so when you want to change it to the non-thinking part it is always ready. That's why to dream much in the night gives you a balance. In the day you use the thinking part, it becomes tired, it goes to sleep in the night and the dreaming part -- which has not become tired at all, you have not used it starts functioning. What exists in dreams is used in Fischer-Hoffman therapy. It is beautiful, it is scientific.

If you start looking for a guide, you will find a guide in the intuition part. Richard Lee has found a guide and he calls the guide 'she'. Naturally, when men look for the guide, the guide will come in the form of the woman -- and when a woman looks for the guide, the guide will come in the form of a man. The denied part will assert. So the guide is nothing but your feminine part.

But the Process is confined to the conscious mind. From conscious thinking you have moved towards conscious dreaming, but remember, it is as much in the conscious as the thinking was. It supplements, it complements, but there is no radical change. And deep down it will follow the same pattern that the thinking part has laid down -- it will follow the same map. Maybe on the surface you think it is not following the same map but it will follow the same map. There is no other map.

Your thinking mind is afraid of taking sannyas. This fear has been communicated to the feeling mind. The feeling mind is just behind it. Any vibration that goes deep into you reaches to the other part too. If you are doing a mathematical problem it may not -- but even that can go if you are very much concerned about it. If it is a life-and-death question then the problem will go deeper into the intuitive part and sometimes the answer will come from there. If you are in love, the love will sink into the deeper part. If you are afraid, the same will happen with the fear.

Richard Lee is a professor, a very rational man. His fear has entered into the feminine part. Now he asks his guide. He will close his eyes, he will move from the active to the passive, from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere. He will even visualise the guide, he will call forth the guide and he will follow the guide and ask the guide. This guide is nothing but your shadow, Richard Lee. It is your fear, it is your love, it is your life, it is your death. It is you reflected very deeply.

Only the language changes. If the reasoning mind says 'Don't take sannyas' it will give you rationalisations, very clear-cut; it will give you logic, it will give you arguments. If you ask the feminine part it will not give you any logic, it will simply say 'No, don't take it' -- just as all women do. They don't argue, they simply conclude. Argument is not feminine, the process of argument is not appealing to them. They simply jump to a conclusion. They conclude. Intuition is conclusive, reason goes into the details of it, thinks for and against, then decides after a long process of thinking. But the intuitive part simply says yes and no.

You ask 'Should I take sannyas?' and your feminine part, what you are calling 'guide', says no. Your fear has entered into the deeper realm of your right hemisphere too. You are really a coward.

Fischer-Hoffman therapy can go only this far. Yes, it gives a certain balance, it is a balance in polarity -- listen to both the minds, the other part is also yours, and live your life in a more balanced way. Good, nothing wrong about it. That's what happens in dreaming, that's what happens when you drink alcohol, that's what happens when you take drugs -- a shift. Reason is dropped, logic is dropped, the argument is dropped -- suddenly you are gliding into the world of dreams. But this is not going to help you grow spiritually.

The second, the deeper mind, the unconscious mind, is also divided into two -- the thinking and the intuitive. But Fischer-Hoffman therapy never reaches to the unconscious, it floats in the conscious, it is very solid. The conscious is very solid, there is a clear-cut demarcation between the thinking and the feeling part. In the unconscious the state is very liquid. The thinking and the intuitive are not very demarked, they overlap, just like any liquid.

And in the third, the superconscious mind, the state is vaporous -- it is not only overlapping, there is a unison. The feeling and the thinking part are one, there is no division. In the superconscious there is no division -- feeling and reason exist as one. You feel, you think, together, simultaneously; you think, you feel, together, simultaneously.

There is no duality. In the unconscious the duality is there but less distinct, more ambiguous. It is not solid, it is liquid. In the conscious mind the duality is very, very clear, mapped, fenced -- a China Wall exists between the thinking and the feeling part.

Fischer-Hoffman therapy goes only to this solid wall of the unconscious. If you want to reach deeper you will have to follow some other things -- yoga, tai-chi, tantra, karate, akido, etc. They take you deeper than Fischer-Hoffman, they take you to the unconscious.

When you are in the unconscious you will have glimpses of being one for the first time -- but they will be only glimpses. A subtle division will still persist. It is just as if you have mixed water and oil -- no wall separates them, both are liquid, but still the water remains a little separate from the oil, mixing and yet not mixing.

In the Fischer-Hoffman therapy nothing much is needed. You can do it alone. It is very simple. You can relax in a chair and shift. With the second, the unconscious, you cannot do it just alone, you will need great methodology, yoga -- yeats of training. Or tai-chi or akido or karate -- you will need years of training. Method is a must. In the first, just a shift from thinking to feeling... it is so easy, anybody can do it. In fact, the moment you relax in a chair it already starts happening, you start dreaming day-dreams. Fischer- Hoffman has come in. The first is very simple -- the poets are always doing it, the painters are doing it, the artists are doing it, the children are always in that process. You can do it. And it is good, I am not against it, it is good. Rather than remaining confined to the thinking part it is good to allow the feeling part also to have a say. You will have a bigger being. But the conscious mind is a very small figment. It will be bigger than the thinking but not big enough. Good as far as it goes but it does not go far enough.

In the second, methods will be needed. Without methods you will not be able to do the second -- because the shift from the thinking to the feeling in the conscious is on one plane but the shift from conscious to unconscious is in depth. It is a difficult phenomenon. It is like diving deep into water. You will need to know how to swim, you will need to know how to accumulate oxygen inside your lungs for a longer time and you will have to become more courageous. You are taking a risk. Nobody knows what is going to happen underneath the water, nobody knows what is there. You are moving in darkness, you are moving beyond the boundaries of human society, culture.

All kinds of possibilities are there. You may go mad. You will need a great method to protect you, you will need a great method to keep you alert. You are moving into wilderness, you are moving into a desert land. All kinds of repressions are there and the whole past of humanity is there. It is a great reservoir -- what Buddhists call ALE VIGYAN. It is the reservoir of consciousness. All that you have known, consciously, unconsciously, is contained there. You are moving in an ocean of information, feeling, knowing, intuition, sexuality, repressions. Nobody knows how much is accumulated there in the unconscious. You will need a great method to lead you there.

Methods will do. You need not find a Master, you need not find an enlightened person.

Methods will do. You can find a teacher, that will be enough. The teacher can teach you the method, you can depend on the method. The method will be the help.

But as far as the third is concerned it is even more difficult -- because in the first you move on the same plane, in the second you go into depth, in the third you go into height.

You start falling upwards, you grow wings. That is certainly more difficult because the task is uphill. You will need a Master, you will need someone very alive to hold your hand on that journey.

Hence sannyas. If you are not interested in going to the super-consciousness there is no need for sannyas. If you are not interested in going into the unconscious then there is no need for any method -- tai-chi or yoga or tantra. If you are not interested in going from the thinking part to the feeling then there is no need for even Fischer-Hoffman therapy. It depends what you want to do.

Are you really interested in growing? Then first you can do a few things alone. You can do a few things with only a methodology. But you can do the last thing only in deep love with somebody who has arrived, who knows that uphill path. You can hold his hand.

Trust will be needed. For the first, only knowledge; for the second, methodology; for the third, a Master.

Sannyas is the science of synactics. This word has been coined by a few people. I love this word -- synactics. It means the science of connections. Sannyas is synactic; it connects you with somebody who has arrived. By getting connected with somebody who has arrived, your journey starts. The Master is never going to do anything really, he is a catalytic agent. But his presence gives you confidence, his presence gives you courage, his presence gives you trust. His presence becomes a proof that something more than the known exists -- that the beyond exists.

Says D. T. Suzuki, one of the most significant persons of this age: 'There is no transference of secrets from Master to disciple. Teaching is not difficult, listening is not difficult either, but what is truly difficult is to become conscious of what you have in yourself and be able to use it as your own. This self-realisation is known as seeing into one's own being, which is satori. Satori is an awakening from a dream.'

But unless you are close to someone who has become awakened it is very difficult. You can even dream that you have become awakened -- that's the most difficult part of it. You can even dream that you have become awakened if somebody is not there who is already awakened. You will have no way to judge whether you have become awakened or you are still dreaming. Don't you remember dreams when you dream that you are awake? You must have all dreamed dreams when you feel you are awake -- and then when you become awake you laugh. Then you know it was just a dream.

But who knows? This may also be a dream. One can dream in a dream in a dream and go on in and in. You can dream that you are going to sleep, preparing your bed. Then you fall on the bed and you can dream that now you have fallen asleep and then you start dreaming in your sleep.... And you can dream that you are going to sleep and preparing a bed and falling and you fall and you start dreaming -- and so on and so forth. You call go on AD INFINITUM.

One who is already awakened is a must for those who have decided to go on the ultimate journey.

In Japan the Zen people have a saying:

Kokoro koso,

kokokar mayowasi,

kokoro nare;

kokoro ni,

kokoro,

kokoro yurusu na.

'It is mind that deludes mind for there is no other mind. Oh mind, do not let yourself be misled by mind.'

You can deceive yourself. It is your own mind which goes on deceiving your mind. Your small mind goes on deceiving, your big mind. Your mind with a lower case 'm' goes on deceiving your Mind with a capital 'M'. And there is nobody else.

So, Richard Lee, if you are afraid, there is no need to take sannyas but then be clear that you are afraid. Don't throw the responsibility on the poor Hoffman Process. Don't throw the responsibility on this poor woman inside you who you call your guide.

And you say: MY GUIDE IS DIRECT, OPEN, TAKES NO BULLSHIT, NO AMBIGUITY.... Certainly, because it is YOUR guide -- how can it take any bullshit? It is your guide. Now your ego has become part of your guide too. If your reason can take bullshit your feeling can take even more -- because reason can judge a little way what is bullshit and what is not. Feelings has no way to judge. Feeling is simply blind. If your logic can become a victim, remember, your love is far more blind. If your rationality cannot be trusted there is no way to trust your irrationality.

Becoming a sannyasin simply means you have come to realise one fact at least -- that alone you can go on deceiving yourself. So if you can find somebody with whom you will not be able to deceive yourself any more, you have found your Master.

But I am not saying take sannyas, no. Sannyas cannot be forced. I am not trying to convince you either. I am simply saying to become clear in yourself. Don't play games with yourself.

You say: SHE TELLS ME NOT TO TAKE SANNYAS. MY QUESTION: ARE THERE SOME PEOPLE WHO SHOULD NOT OR NEED NOT TAKE SANNYAS? Yes, there are a few people who should not. These are the people whom I call cowards. They should not because it is a dangerous journey; it is not meant for them. They will repent if they go into it. It is arduous. I can only promise one thing: it is very, very dangerous.

Just the other day I was reading about a guide who proposed to the government of a certain country that children should be taken to the mountains for climbing, skiing. They should be taken to the seas for diving, swimming, and there should be a national program -- each child should go to the seas and each child should go to the mountains to become acquainted with what adventure is.

He was called before a committee, the committee of the parents, and they all enquired about one thing: Can you guarantee that our children will be safe? Can you guarantee that no child will die in these dangerous things? The guide looked directly into their faces and said, 'No. I cannot guarantee that no child will ever die in these dangerous pursuits but I can guarantee one thing' -- and there was great compassion in his eyes -- 'that if you go on protecting these children they will live, but they will live dead lives. If you go on protecting these children they will never be born spiritually. They will die a spiritual death. On the surface they will be living but deep down there will be no life flowing in them, there will be no juice flowing in them.'

And that's what I can promise to you. I can guarantee only one thing; if you come with me your death is certain. If you come with me there is danger. Risk I promise to you. I am not here to promise any security, any safety -- only one thing: that you will die as you are and something new will be born. You will become twice born. I am not trying to convince you to take sannyas, I am simply trying to make you clear so that if you take it you take it, if you don't take it you don't take it, but don't bring these guides in. This is all bullshit. Don't avoid. Don't shirk responsibility in such subtle ways.

I FEEL THERE IS NOTHING IN ME THAT CONTRADICTS ANYTHING IN YOU YET.... That 'yet' contradicts everything in me.

Richard Lee is a knowledgeable person -- he is a professor, he is a therapist, and he knows much. So knowledge-wise he may be agreeing with me but that is no agreement, sir, not at all. If you agree being-wise with me only then do you agree with me; knowledge-wise it is just meaningless because I am not a man of knowledge.

If you want to learn something here it is not knowledge that is offered, it is life itself. So knowledge-wise you may be nodding and agreeing and saying yes -- you already know it so you agree with me -- but that won't do, that won't help. Being-wise, that's what sannyas is all about. If you agree being-wise only then do you agree with me, otherwise the 'yet' cancels everything.

I will repeat my answer: Richard Lee, don't be cowardly.

The second question:

There is no contradiction. The desire is the path. You have to go through it, you have to go into it, you have to go into it utterly, totally. Only by going into it, to the very bottom of it, do you start rising above it. Desire is the way to become desireless.

So such a contradiction does not exist for me. You ask: WHEN ONE ACTS SPONTANEOUSLY DOES ONE FOLLOW THE PATH OR DOES ONE FULFIL LATENT DESIRE? To me there is no difference. Desire is the path. In following the desire you are following the path. That's the revolution I bring to you, that's the radical standpoint I want you to understand. In following your desire you are not going astray, you are going God-wards. The desire is given by God, you have not created it. You have found it, it is a given thing, it is a gift. There is some great meaning in it -- go into it, find out the weaning. 'The moment you have discovered the meaning, desire disappears, and suddenly you will find that desire has brought 'you to a state of desirelessness.

The Zen Master, Yagyu, says, 'Let yourself go with the desire. Be with it, keep company with it. This is the way to get rid of it.'

The third question:

It is not a sex obsession, sir, it is a BRAHMACHARYA OBSESSION.

And who told you that sex is dirty? All life exists through sex, all life grows out of it. All that is beautiful is sexual. The cuckoo crying is not saying a prayer, it is a sexual call.

And the flowers Flowering are not flowering for your dead so-called gods in your temples, it is a sexual flowering. All that is beautiful in existence is sexual.

And it seems you have not even heard my name. You are asking such a question! what seems you must be an absolute stranger here. Have you ever heard my name or not?

You say: I WANT TO ATTAIN TO BRAHMACHARYA. But why should you want to attain to BRAHMACHARYA? You should try to understand your sexuality.

BRAHMACHARYA comes as a consequence. It is not some thing that you attain or that you can attain. The sex obsession is created by you because you want to attain to BRAHMACHARYA. So you go on repressing your sex.

Obviously you will be repressing sex -- because you call it dirty, you call it impure. You think that when you have gone beyond it then you will be pure. You are pure. I declare you pure. As you are, you are perfect. From perfection to more perfection... the journey is not from imperfection to perfection, the journey is from perfection to more perfection.

The journey is not from the Devil to God, the journey is from God to more God. You are perfect you are divine, you are pure.

In fact there is nothing more pure than sex. Sex is one of the purest experiences. If it looks impure that is your interpretation. You make it dirty by interpreting it. It is your mahatmas hanging around you who are creating the trouble, it is not the sex that is creating trouble for you. And when you repress it, naturally it waits there waiting for the right moment to bubble up. And whenever you start meditating, feeling that now you are relaxed, you are in a good mood, it starts coming into your fantasies. Seeing that a meditator will be more understanding it asserts itself before you. Feeling that now you will be a little more kind and compassionate the fantasy arises.

It is just your unconsciousness crying before you -- 'Don't try to destroy me, don't try to poison me. I am not your enemy, I am your friend. Befriend me. And I will lead you to the ultimate.'

By understanding sex one attains BRAHMACHARYA, not by denying it. So listen to it.

Those fantasies are very, very meaningful. Listen to the message otherwise you will remain obsessed.

People are obsessed. They are obsessed because of so much conditioning by the religious people, by the priests. The priests have found one of the most powerful techniques to repress people -- that is to make them feel guilty about sex. Once you feel guilty about your sex you will always remain guilty about everything. Once you start feeling guilty about sex -- that something is wrong -- you will never be a Master, you will always remain a slave. A guilty person tends to become a slave; a guilty person always feels shaky, always feels that he is wrong.

And when you are wrong how can you love yourself? When you are wrong how can you assert yourself? When you are wrong how can you give freedom to yourself? How can you treat yourself with freedoms Impossible. You are afraid. If you give freedom.... Just see. You sit in meditation -- there is a little freedom -- and the sex starts coming up. How can you become free? Repression creates fear, fear creates slavery.

And when the fear comes and the sex fantasies start surfacing, where will you go? You will go to the priest to ask what to do. In the first place he creates the disease; in the second place you go to him to be diagnosed and to be helped. And whatsoever help he provides will create the disease more. So you are in an imprisonment; very deep down you have been imprisoned.

A man and his wife were lying in bed. 'All you ever want to do is talk about sex,'

complained the wife. 'For heaven's sake, can't you talk about anything else? And you are a priest!'

'Like what, for examples' asked the priest, the husband.

'Why don't you talk about politics for a change!'

She must have been tired of religion too. Religion, politics and sex are the only three things to talk about -- or, if you are an Englishman, the weather!

'Why don't you talk about politics for a change?'

'All right,' he replied. 'How often do you think the president has intercourse?'

Now he is talking about politics!

If you repress, it will assert. It cannot go. No repressed instinct ever goes. It becomes more and more rotten, it becomes more and more dangerous, it becomes more and more mad. You are sitting on a volcano -- so when you relax in meditation the volcano starts smoking.

The professor asked a girl in his physiology class, 'What part of the body expands to ten times its natural size under an emotional impact?'

Blushing, the girl said, 'I'd rather not answer that.'

The professor called on the boy sitting next to her, who promptly replied, 'The pupil of the eye.'

The professor turned back to the girl and said, 'Your confusion shows: one, that you didn't study your lesson; two, that you have a dirty mind; and three, that you will be badly and sadly disappointed.'

Please drop this obsession with BRAHMACHARYA. By dropping the obsession with BRAHMACHARYA the obsession With sex will disappear. It is a by-product.

By thinking sex dirty you are making it dirty; by thinking sex; dirty you are making it even more interesting too. And your mind will find ways because the mind is basically for your welfare. It tries to help you. Seeing that you are destroying your natural energies it brings in fantasies, messages from the unconscious.

The newlyweds were suffering from exhaustion and after an examination their doctor advised, 'It's not unusual for young couple to overdo things during the first weeks of marriage. What you both need is rest. For the next month I want you to limit your sex to those days of the week with an 'r' in them. That is, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.'

Since the end of the week was approaching, the newlyweds had no immediate difficulty following the doctor's orders. But on the first night of scheduled rest the young bride found herself eager as a beaver. Hubby fell asleep, but she tossed and turned and finally nudged her spouse into partial wakefulness.

Expecting daylight, and confused with the darkness, he asked, 'What day is its'

'Mondray,' she said, cuddling against him.

Monday becomes Mondray -- beware! The 'r' will enter from somewhere. Your meditation becomes a sexual fantasy -- the 'r' enters. The denied asserts, the denied asserts with vengeance. Never deny anything to yourself. Don't be unkind to yourself.

All is beautiful, all is divine. And I say it unconditionally. Nothing can go wrong, nothing ever goes wrong. Wrong are all your mahatmas who go on telling you that this will go wrong, this is wrong, that is wrong. Nothing ever goes wrong. Nothing can ever go wrong. This world is a perfect world -- a better one you cannot imagine, better is not possible. This world cannot be improved upon. This I call trust, this I call SHRADDHA in life -- trust in life, trust in God.

You don't trust. You don't trust in anger, you don't trust in sex, you don't trust in this and that, and wherever you distrust you create enmity. And enmity creates problems.

Sex rightly lived, rightly understood, becomes BRAHMACHARYA, becomes celibacy.

It comes so naturally, so silently, without any noise. It flowers like a flower. It comes in the sky like a star, with no noise, with no thunder, with no lightning. Just a moment before it was not there, just a moment after suddenly it is there shining in the sky like a star.

BRAHMACHARYA is not out of effort, it is out of understanding. If you understand anger and go into it with awareness, anger releases energy that becomes compassion. If you deny anger you will never become compassionate and if you deny sex you will never attain to BRAHMACHARYA.

So please don't talk in terms of attaining BRAHMACHARYA. Forget about BRAHMACHARYA, right now you are not ripe for it -- that's what your meditation is showing. Your meditation is showing you the right path. You follow your sex, you go into it whole-heartedly. Soon you will go beyond it too. But that beyond is not against it, that beyond is a further shore to it. It is a growth of the same phenomenon.

You will be surprised at my statement: BRAHMACHARYA IS the growth of your sexuality, the ultimate growth. BRAHMACHARYA is not anti sex, it is the fragrance of sex -- when the flower has bloomed and disappeared and only fragrance is left.

That's why impotent people cannot become BRAHMACHARYAS. Impotent people should become BRAHMACHARYAS immediately -- they are -- but they cannot because they cannot flower. Whenever I come across a person who is impotent.... It is very rare, it happens very rarely. There are many who think they are impotent but it is very rare that there is an impotent person. For him I really feel compassion -- because he has no energy to be trans-formed, no energy to be transformed with. Something is missing. He will never become that fragrance I call BRAHMACHARYA. He will miss that joy. He will miss that joy that comes through sex and he will miss that joy that comes by going beyond it. He is really pitiable.

But it is very rare. Out of a hundred impotent people ninety nine per cent simply believe that they are impotent. Certain things may have caused their belief. Maybe they were too much against sex, too repressive. Repression has gone so deep in the system that it does not allow the system to feel sexuality. Their body has become disconnected with their energy. Then they become impotent. Or, they may be impotent because they go on living with a woman or a man with whom there is no love. Then by and by they start feeling there is no interest, it is all boring. The body does not respond any more. Many married people become impotent. It is marriage that creates impotence. And many repressed people become impotent. But these are false impotencies, they call be transformed, easily changed. And they should be changed before time is lost. One should live life in all its dimensions.

The other day I was talking about three dimensions: intellectuality , emotionality, sexuality. These are the three dimensions of your inner being. And there is a fourth dimension -- that is BRAHMACHARYA. The word 'BRAHMACHARYA' is so profound that there is no way to translate it. It does not mean just celibacy; celibacy is a very poor word. Celibacy is negative, it simply says: no sex. BRAHMACHARYA is positive. It says: a divine life. The meat g of BRAHMACHARYA is to behave like a god, to live like a god. BRAHMA means god and CHARYA means living -- living like a god, being like a god, behaving like a god. To be godly is BRAHMACHARYA.

BRAHMACHARYA is the fourth dimension of your being. Three dimensions are available to everybody. When all these dimensions function in tune, in step, in a dance, then arises the fourth, as a fragrance. The fourth is a song that arises out of these three dancing together, embracing each other, melting, merging into each other. Then arises the fourth -- the fourth is the beyond, the transcendental.

Now another question of the same kind from the other extreme:

It is even more difficult than the first question. Listening to me he must have misunderstood me. Listening to me praising sexuality so highly he must have started feeling a little restless. He says, 'I am only sixty-five'. Only? When do you think you are going to drop sex -- six hundred and fifty? Enough is enough. Let young people be foolish. It is time now.

Remember, one very, very secret Moe of yoga is that whenever all interest disappears naturally, is lot repressed, when all interest in sex disappears naturally, that is the time you can become alert that you can be alive for only fourteen years more on this earth, not more than that.

Sex becomes mature when you are fourteen. It takes fourteen years from birth to sex.

And it is exactly the same at the other end. It takes fourteen years from sex to death. So if you are sixty-five and the interest in sex is naturally going away -- beautiful, very good!

Now you have to prepare for the other journey, for the further shore. Maybe only fourteen, fifteen years are left. By the time you are eighty you will be gone.

By going, sex gives the hint -- now start getting ready for death. It is a circle, life is a circle. Sex appears at a certain time, it disappears at a curtain time, and if people live naturally then there still be no confusion ever. In fact, a man can know how much more he is going to live just by knowing that sex is disappearing.

But we are confused because we don't know if sex; is disappearing naturally or if our repressions -- Christianity, Hinduism, this and that -- have done it. We are confused because we have lost track of nature -- otherwise nature ii very clear.

Sixty-five is more than enough. You let it go now. There are other things to do.

A college celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its first commencement invited a senator, its most prominent son, to make a speech.

'It was fifty years ago that our class had its commencement,' he began. 'Those fifty years have flown on eagles' wings. But on this occasion, with old friends around me, the hands of the clock are turned back, and I see myself on a moonlit night, sitting out on yonder college wall, the same wall that is out there now. I believe it was the same apple tree which still stands there, like myself now grown a little older. That night fifty years ago, I sat up on that wall beside a pretty girl with the moon full and the apple blossoms overhead. Under the inspiration of the time and place, I kissed that girl. If that young lady, now grown a little older in years, should happen to be in this audience and is no more ashamed of the occasion than I am, I wish she would rise.'

Nineteen gray-haired ladies stood up!

Another anecdote....

After a town hall meeting in a mid-western city a woman saw Alexander Woolcott standing alone in the lobby. Impulsively she went up to tell him of the pleasures his lecture had given her and said -- this lady who had grown-up grandchildren and admitted having passed seventy -- 'I was encouraged to speak to you because you said you loved old ladies.'

'Yes,' replied Woolcott, 'I do, but I also like them your age!'

You say only sixty-five. And Woolcott said, 'Yes, I love old ladies and I also like them your age!' Because there are people who never think that they are old -- seventy, just seventy; eighty, only eighty. How we go on postponing death. How we go on forgetting that death comes, that death is coming.

And you ask me: What should I do? Sir, let it go. It is time.

Meditate on this small joke.

An elderly couple down in New Mexico were listening to one of those faith healers on the radio. 'I will heal you,' he intoned. 'You out there in radio land, I will heal all of you.

Just keep those checks and money orders coming, folks. And now for our healing period.... Put one hand on the radio and one hand on the part of your body that needs help, and I shall heal the sick.' The old lady put one hand on the radio and one hand on her heart. The old man put one hand on the radio and the other in his lap.

'Paw,' the old lady said, 'he said he'd heal the sick... not raise the dead.'

The fourth question:

The question is from Satprem.

That's what I'm doing HERE. I don't see any little birds here -- all are sea lions.

But it is as difficult, even with little birds, as it is with sea lions. The difficulty is the same because the fear is the same -- the fear of the unknown. A little bird is as much afraid as a sea lion. Just having a huge body does not make much difference. The fear is there.

Everybody is afraid to go into the unknown. And it is natural. I am not saying that there is something perverted about it or that it is unnatural -- it is natural to feel afraid of the unknown because one does not know where one is going.

A child is afraid to come out of the womb of the mother because for nine months he has lived in such security, such safety, and who knows where he is going, where he will land.

To the small child, if he can think or if he can feel in some way, the birth must appear like death. He is going to die. He is being uprooted from his home where he has been so happy, so protected, so comfortable. Scientists say that we have not yet been able to create anything more comfortable than the mother's womb. Those nine months are a paradise. The child is going to lose the paradise -- there is no responsibility, no worry in the womb not even the worry about breathing. The mother is doing everything . The mother breathes and he gets the oxygen; the mother eats and he gets the food. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do -- just being there.

Sigmund Freud had the idea that the idea of nirvana comes from that deep-rooted experience of the mother's womb and its comfort and the joy and the blissfulness of it.

And he had something there. Yes, man searches his whole life to again find the same kind of bliss -- and he never finds it anywhere here unless he himself becomes a womb to himself.

The child is afraid must be afraid. What is going to happen to him? If a child clings to the womb it is natural. If the seed is afraid to sprout, it is natural -- because a seed cannot conceive of what is going to happen to the sprout. The seed is dying and there will be no meeting. The seed will never meet the sprout. The seed will die and then the sprout will come, so there will be no meeting. No sprout will ever say to its old seed, 'Look, there was no need to fear.' The seed is gone. And no seed can trust absolutely because it is dying.

When a river is going to fall into an ocean a natural hesitation must be there. She will disappear into this vastness, she will no more be the Ganges, she will no more have her own identity. She must hesitate, must look backwards, must think of those valleys and the Himalayas and the people and the markets and the bazaars and the temples and the festivals and all that has happened. She must look backwards, must try to linger on a little, a little more. The vastness, the infinity of the ocean creates fear. And how can the poor river know that by falling into the ocean, by disappearing into it, she will not die, she will live a million-fold greater life? She with live in abundance. She will become the ocean. How can she know? How can this poor river conceive of it? It is inconceivable, hence the fear.

Whether you are a little bird or a sea lion makes no difference -- the resistance is there.

But I deal basically in sea lions.

The fifth question:

The question is from Somendra.

'Getting it' means coming to know that there is nothing to get. 'Getting it' means getting rid of all greed, of all ambition, of all goals. The day you get that the way things are is the perfect way, you have attained. The day you recognise the fact that things cannot be better than this, suddenly you have exploded into a new light, into a new being, into a new consciousness. 'Getting it' is getting that there is nowhere to get to. Then one lives moment to moment. This is samadhi.

But many times you get it and it gets lost. You get it again and again you lose it. Then it is a mini-satori. Mini-satori means a glimpse. The possibility is you may lose it.

Somendra had such a glimpse a few days before, hence the question. When he came to me I told him it was a mini-satori so he must have been wondering what a mini-satori is and what a satori is and what a samadhi is.

A mini-satori is a guarded statement about satori. It means, Somendra, that you can lose it. If you are not very alert you are bound to lose it. If you are very alert it can turn into a satori. A satori is an experience which has become established and there is no way to lose it. A mini-satori is an experience which has just come like a glimpse, like a breeze.

Suddenly you see that all perception is available. The aperture opens. But it closes like a camera. Before a satori many mini-satoris happen, it depends -- sometimes thousands of mini-satoris, sometimes hundreds, sometimes a few, sometimes one. It depends on the person. Sometimes the first satori can become the satori, there is no need for it to be a mini -- it depends on you.

But whenever it happens to any of you I an icing to call it mini for a certain reason. The reason is I want to make you alert so that you don't lose it. It can become a satori but if I call it a satori immediately you will lose it and it can become a mini. You follow me? I call it mini so that it can become a satori. Sometimes you will think that Osho is being very miserly. Why does he call it mini? Why can he not call it satori? It is a very guarded statement -- I have to protect you against you in many ways. Even if it is satori I will call it mini -- remember. In fact, 'mini' is my invention; the Zen people don't call any satori mini.

I call it mini and the reason is very, very meaningful. I want you to be very, very alert and careful. A man who attains to a mini-satori has become pregnant. Now he should be as careful as a pregnant woman. He is carrying something valuable in him. There is every possibility of miscarriage. To avoid miscarriage I call it a mini-satori. If I say it is satori you can become too confident, you can become too egoistic. And in that very confidence and egotism it is lost.

A mini-satori is a glimpse. It will depend on you. If you nourish it, nurture it, protect it, if you care about it, it can grow into a satori. But it is a very soft and tender and fragile sprout. It can be destroyed very easily. Any accident can undo it. Remember, all that is great is fragile. The lower existence is more hard, the higher existence is more soft. A rock is hard, a rose slower is soft. The rock will be there if you don't even care about it but a rose flower needs great care. Uncared for there is every possibility that it will disappear. A satori is a rose flower.

And the day the glimpse happens you have to be very, very responsible from that moment. You are answerable. Then you owe something. The existence has given you something, you are not to throw it away. It can be thrown away very easily. It is very difficult to get it, it is very easy to lose it. That's how higher things are. They are so subtle. Hence I call it mini.

And sometimes hundreds of mini-satoris happen . Only by and by do you become alert and the thing gets established in you. A mini-satori is a vision; with a satori the vision has become your very style.

And then what is a samadhi? A satori is when you have become full of light inside you but still there is a separation between you and the whole. A satori is a person becoming enlightened; a samadhi is when the whole existence has become enlightened through the person. Now the person is no more separate. That is the meaning of the very strange statement of Buddha that the day he became enlightened the whole existence became enlightened. It is very strange because we know that we have not become enlightened yet and he says that the whole existence became enlightened that day. He is right. As far as he is concerned, the whole existence did become enlightened that day. And I repeat it again: the day I became enlightened the whole existence became enlightened.

Samadhi means that you are no more an individual. Satori gives you great individuation.

Now listen to it.... Before satori you are a person, not an individual. 'Person' comes from a root which means persona, a mask. Before satori you are just a person, a personality, but not an individuality.

And in fact, a person is never a person, a person is many persons -- because you can't keep only one mask, you have to keep many masks. In different situations you need different faces. With your wife you need a different face, with Your mistress you have a different face, with your servant another, with your boss another. You have to go on changing your faces. You have many personalities. Personality is never singular, it is always plural. You are a crowd. When you are a person you are a crowd, you are many.

Satori makes you one. By and by it brings Unity in your being. Those many faces disappear, the original face appears -- individuality. The word 'individuality' means India Bible -- that which cannot be divided. Undivided you become.

Satori Intakes you individual and samadhi makes you universal. Then you are no longer individual either. First you were not all individual because you were a crowd, now again you are not an individual because you are the whole. These are the three stages:

personality, individuality, universality.

A mini satori is a glimpse of your unity for a moment and then you lose the glimpse and again you are many. Yes, the original face appears as if in a dream. You see it, you recognise it, yes, it is there, you feel happy, you feel tremendously blessed -- and suddenly it is gone, it was a vision. Again you fall back to your old pattern. The old gestalt again gathers around you. You will carry the memory, you will carry the fragrance, you will remember it -- but it is not a reality ally longer, it is just part of your memory.

When satori has become established then it never leaves you, it is always there; just like your shadow it follows you. The n you have become an individual. Then the individuality has also to be lost. Become one from many and then become zero from one. This is the whole mathematics of spirituality -- from many to one and from one to nothingness.

Plotinus says about his own samadhi -- he is one of the most important mystics in the West, can be compared to a Buddha -- 'There were not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. One has become unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity. No movement now. All being calmed, one turns neither to this nor to that, not even to the without or to the within.

Utterly resting one has become the very rest.'

The Plotinian rest is no other than samadhi itself. One has become the rest.

Ordinarily, when you are a person, you are in tremendous unrest. Restlessness is what you are. When you come to satori you have become very, very restful. You are and you are rested, deeply rested. In samadhi you have disappeared, there is only rest, nobody resting... eternal rest.

The sixth question:

WHY?

Just good luck, sir. You must have been brought up by very good parents, hence the guilt.

You must have had the opportunity of being close to religious parents, church, temple, priests -- hence the guilt. You are a victim of the mahatmas. you suffer from the so-called saints.

They have created tremendous guilt in everybody -- and they have created so much guilt that now you don't need any particular cause to be guilty, you are simply guilty.

Everything has been condemned, nothing has been appreciated. And particularly when you are joyful, cheerful, happy, you will feel more guilty. Miserable you may not feel so guilty but happy you will always feel guilty.

And this happens to many people here because my whole approach is to declare happiness as virtue and misery as sin. My whole point is that a religious person is a celebrating person. But when you start celebrating, your past holds you back. It cries loudly, it shouts at you, it scolds you, it insults you, it calls you names -- 'What are you doing? Don't be happy. Remain miserable.'

Somehow the idea got into human mind that saints are always miserable and sinners are happy. That's why you don't find saints laughing. Christians say Jesus never laughed. It must be wrong because I know Jesus. But the Christians say he never laughed. You cannot believe in Mahavir laughing -- even a smile will be too much. You cannot conceive of your saints laughing, they are expected to be very, very sober, serious, dull and dead.

One Sunday after Mr. Coolidge had returned to the White House from church, which he had attended without her, Mrs. Coolidge enquire -- Coolidge was one of the very, very silent presidents of America, a man of few words.

-- Mrs. Coolidge enquired, 'Was the sermon Good?'

'Yes,' he answered.

'What was it about?'

'Sin.'

'What did the minister say?'

'He was against it.'

That is all he said. That's all that your so-called priests and the ministers and the bishops and the popes have been doing. Their whole preaching is one: joy somehow has to be condemned. They have made this miserable earth, this anguished, mad earth. They have destroyed all kinds of possibilities in man. They have created a very pathological humanity. Guilt creates pathology. Drop your guilt. And don't bother about the causes.

But if you really want to drop the guilt you will have to drop your parental voices within, the priestly voices within. You will have to get rid of your parents and your conditioning.

Life has been in such a trap up to now that even a small child starts feeling guilty. We have not yet been able to develop an education which can help people to grow without feeling guilty. And unless that education happens man will remain ill, ill at ease.

Sometimes guilt is created for unnecessary reasons. Sometimes there is no point. The child is asking the mother, 'Can I go out and play?' It is sunny and the flowers and the birds are singing and the child asks, 'Can I go outside and play?' and the mother says no.

Mothers are so efficient at saying no. Yes seems so hard, yes seems to be so difficult to say.

Have you not watched it yourself? Yes is so difficult to say. I have been watching. I have lived in many families with many people and I have been watching continuously. People are so skillful in saying no, they will find ways of saying no. And if they have to say yes they say it very reluctantly, very uncomfortably. Why? When you say no you will feel powerful -- that's the 'why' in it. Say no and you will feel powerful, you have the power, the way to power.

It may be a small child who just wanted to go outside to catch some flying butterfly or to collect a few flowers or just to be there outside with the air and with the rain and with the sun. He's not asking for much. But the mother says no because only by saying no does she feel powerful. She is on a power trip.

And she has created guilt. The child will go but now she will be creating guilt in the child. See, the child will go, and I'm all for the child, he should go, such mothers should not be listened to -- but now a problem will be created. The child will go outside as a thief, feeling guilty, heart palpitating, perspiring, always afraid that somebody might see.

And he is not doing any sin, he is just playing in the sun.

By and by this guilt will settle. Whenever he asked to go out he was told no and whenever he went out it was a crime against the mother. Now the guilt settles. Now suddenly, when you are forty years old, one day sitting outside on the lawn you feel guilty for no reason at all -- for no apparent reason. The sun is there and the butterflies are around and the green grass has been freshly cut and the smell of it -- and again those smells those sounds that greenery the sun, the warmth remind you of your childhood.

Many many guilt feelings arise for no reason at all -- you are not doing wrong to anybody. If you get up and go inside your house you will feel good.

Drop these things otherwise you will never enjoy anything. You are no more a child.

Once Mulla was told lay his wife to take junior for a ride in the park. On the way Mulla was met by his friends who wanted loin to play poker with them. Mulla refused and said that he had promised his wife to take junior to the park.

Mulla's friends looked at junior and remarked I hope he it satisfied. The other friend said Yes depriving us of a partner just before our last crucial poker game and all because junior has to ride around in his old stroller. I just hope he is satisfied.

Mulla junior looked sadly at the sky and to ought My first year in this world and I am already feeling guilty.

That's how guilt arises. Small incidents go on collecting, go on collecting -- then guilt becomes your natural style. People are simply guilty. Don't ask why. Your whole past is the why. And you will have to drop the whole past otherwise you will never be able to get rid of guilt. And unless you get rid of guilt you cannot find God. A guilty heart cannot pulsate with God.

That's exactly what has been denied by your priests. They always say that a guilty person, a repentant person, a person who confesses his sin and this and that comics closer to God.

No a person who drops all guilty ideas and starts enjoying life as it is, has no guilty conscience in him, comes close to God. Don't confess. Drop the very idea of guilt and start living.

In the beginning you will be very afraid. In the beginning the parents will pull, but if you persist you can get freedom. This freedom is a must. If you really want to be religious this freedom has to be really foundational.

There was a spinster who had a parrot, and it swore and used some terrible expressions.

When the Vicar called she covered it up for shame, and the Vicar enquire the reason.

'I couldn't repeat it,' she said, but the Vicar pulled the cover off, and that wicked bird let out a mouthful.

'I'll have to have his neck pulled, the villain!' said the spinster.

'Certainly not, Miss Tavvinitt,' he said, 'I have a lady parrot, a parrot of the utmost virtue, who prays by day and night. I'm sure that if we put them together she will reform him.'

This was agreed upon, and the following day Miss Tavvinitt took her bird round to the Vicarage, and he was put in the cage with the devout lady parrot.

Immediately he misbehaved, shouting, 'Lift your tail up, come on, I want to make love to you, what are we waiting for!'

Before the Vicar and the spinster could do a thing about it, the lady parrot replied, 'What the bloody hell d'you think I've been praying for all these years?'

Don't go on praying -- live life. Live it as God gives it to you, live it without guilt, live it courageously.

And the last question:

How can I answer this question? -- because before I answer I must know if it is an enquiry or an invitation!