.... Kundalini is the focused energy of the human body and human psyche. Energy can exist either manifested or unmanifested. It can remain in the seed, or it can come up in a manifested form. Every energy is either in the seed or in the manifested form. Kundalini means your total potential, your total possibility. But it is a seed; it is the potential. The ways to awaken kundalini are ways to make your...

.... The energy will rush from the center. Because a great quantity of energy is thrown off from your body during the sex act, you feel exhausted afterward. And after anger, too, you will feel exhausted. But after a loving moment, you will not feel exhausted. You will feel fresh. After prayer, you will feel fresh. Why has the contrary happened? When you are in a loving moment, energy is not needed on the...

... systematically awakened. It can also be tapped through asanas, yogic postures, because your body is connected at every point to the source of energy. So every posture has a corresponding effect on the energy source. The posture that Buddha used is called padmasan, the lotus posture. It is one of the postures in which the least amount of energy is needed. If you sit up straight, sitting is so balanced that you...

... more resistant to illness than men, and why they live longer. The rounder the body is, the less energy flows outward. Women are not so exhausted after the sex act because the shape of their sexual organ is round and absorbing. Men will be more exhausted. Because of the shape of their sexual organ, more energy is thrown out. Not only biological energy, but psychic energy also. All the energy outlets...

... are joined together in padmasan, so no energy can move outward. Both feet are crossed, the hands touch the feet and the feet touch the sex center. And the posture is so erect that there is no gravitational pull. In this posture, one can forget the body completely because life energy is not flowing outward. The eyes are also to be closed or half closed and the eyeballs still, because eyes are also a...

... pranayama are bodily helps. They are important, but they are only physical helps. If your mind is in conflict then they will not be of much help, because body and mind are not two things really. They are two parts of one thing. You are not body and mind; you are body/mind. You are psycho/somatic or somato/psychic. We talk about the body as one thing and the mind as something different, but body and mind...

... are two poles of one energy. The body is gross and the mind is subtle, but the energy is the same. One has to work from both polarities. For the body there is hatha yoga: asanas, pranayama, etcetera; and for the mind there is raga yoga and other yogas that are basically concerned with your mental attitudes. Body and mind are one energy. For example, if you can control your breath when you are angry...

... much that you yourself will not even be aware of it. But the anger or sex will still be there. The body has suppressed it, but it remains inside, untouched. One has to work with both the body and the mind. The body should be trained through yogic methodology, and the mind through awareness. You will require more awareness if you practice yoga because things will become more subtle. If you are angry...

..., you can ordinarily become aware of it because it is so gross. But if you practice pranayama, you will need more awareness, more acute sensitivity to be aware of anger, because now the anger will become more subtle. The body is not cooperating with it so there will be no physical expression of it at all. If people practice awareness techniques and simultaneously practice yogic methods, they will know...

... deeper realms of awareness. Otherwise they will be aware only of the gross. If you change the gross but do not change the subtle, you will be in a dilemma. Now conflict will assert itself in a new way. Yoga is helpful, but it is only one part. The other part is what Buddha calls mindfulness. Practice yoga so that the body becomes rhythmic and cooperative with your inner movements, and simultaneously...

... from here." And that is the correct beginning. One should begin from breathing and never from the thought process itself. When you can feel the subtle movements of breath, only then will you be able to feel the subtle movements of thought. Awareness of the thought process will change the quality of the mind; asanas and pranayama will change the quality of the body. Then the moment comes when...

... your body and mind are one, without any conflict at all. When they are synchronized, you are neither body nor mind. For the first time, you know yourself as the Self. You transcend. You can transcend only when there is no conflict. In this harmonious moment when body and mind are one, with no conflict, you transcend both. You are neither. Now you are nothing in a sense: no-thing. You are simple...

... is chaotic. Traditional methods are systematic because the people in earlier times for whom they were developed were different. Modern man is a very new phenomenon. No traditional method can be used exactly as it exists, because modern man never existed before. So in a way, all traditional methods have become irrelevant. For example, the body has changed so much. It is not as natural now as it was...

... off suppressions, to make the heart open. If the heart becomes light and unburdened, then the center of consciousness is pushed still lower; it comes to the navel. The navel is the source of vitality, the seed source from which everything else comes: the body and the mind and everything. I use this chaotic method very considerately. Systematic methodology will not help now, because the brain will...

... the Zen reply is meaningful. Consciousness can use any center of the body, and the center that is nearest to the original source is the navel. The brain is furthest away from the original source, so if life energy is moving outward, the center of consciousness will become the brain. And if life energy is moving inward, ultimately the navel will become the center. Chaotic methods are needed to push...

... will die through it. One has to come back to the roots. But coming back is difficult, arduous. Kundalini yoga is concerned with life energy and its inward flow. It is concerned with techniques to bring the body and mind to a point where transcendence is possible. Then, everything is changed. The body is different; the mind is different; the living is different. It is just life. A bullock cart is...

... because the modern mind is, itself, chaotic. This chaos, this rebelliousness in modern man is, in fact, a rebellion of other things: of the body against the mind and against its suppressions. If we talk about it in yogic terms we can say that it is the rebellion of the heart center and the navel center against the brain. These centers are against the brain because the brain has monopolized the whole...

... territory of the human soul. This cannot be tolerated any further. That is why universities have become centers of rebellion. It is not accidental. If the whole society is thought of as an organic body, then the university is the head, the brain. Because of the rebelliousness of the modern mind, it is bound to be lenient toward loose and chaotic methods. Dynamic Meditation will help to move the center of...

... misconception that you are incomplete? It arises out of the identity with the body. The body is the other. Once you have taken the first wrong step, then you will go on and on, and then there is no end to it. By viveka Patanjali means: to discriminate yourself as separate from the body - to realize that you are in the body but you are not the body, to realize that you are in the mind but you are not the mind...

... separate from you, they start disappearing. They exist through your cooperation. If you think you are the body, then the body continues. It needs your help, your energy. If you think you are the mind, the mind functions. It needs your help, your cooperation, your energy. This is one of the inner mechanisms: that just by your presence nature becomes alive. Just by your presence the body functions as alive...

... just there doing nothing - seeing everything, but doing nothing; watching everything, but getting involved in nothing. By the sheer presence of the purusha; the prakriti, nature - the mind, the body, everything - starts functioning. But we get identified with the body, we get identified with the mind: we slip out of the witnesser and become a doer. That's the whole disease of man. Viveka is the...

... involved too much in many things because you were thinking you are the body, because you were thinking you are the mind. Now you know that you are neither the body nor the mind, so many activities that you were following and chasing and getting mad about simply drop. That dropping is vairagya; that is sannyas, renunciation. Your vision, your viveka, your understanding, brings a transformation: that is...

... witness, just a consciousness - neither an act nor a thought." If this remembrance becomes a crystallized phenomenon in you, you have attained to viveka, discrimination; then spontaneously follows vairagya. If you don't become discriminate, spontaneously follows samsar, the world. If you be come identified with the body and the mind, you move out - you go into the world. You are expelled from the...

... garden of Eden. If you discriminate and you remember that you are in the body and the body is an abode and you are the owner and the mind is just a biocomputer, you are the master and the mind is just a slave; then, a turning in. Then you are not moving into the world, because the first step has been removed. Now you are no longer bridged with the world, suddenly you start falling in. This is what...

..., "I am feeling very good and healthy" - all experience is an error, is a misunderstanding. When you say, "I am hungry," what do you really mean? You should say, "I am conscious that the body is hungry." You should not say, "I am hungry." You are not hungry. The body is hungry; you are the knower of the fact. The experience is not yours; only the awareness. The...

... experience is of the body; the awareness is yours. When you feel miserable, again, the experience may be of the body or of the mind - which are not two. Body and mind are one mechanism. The body is the gross mechanism of the same entity; the mind is the subtle mechanism. But both are the same. It is not good to say "body and mind"; we should say "body mind." The body is nothing but mind...

... in a gross way, and if you watch your body you will see that the body also functions as a mind. You are fast asleep, and a fly comes and hangs around your face - you remove it with your hand without in any way getting up or waking up. The body functioned, very mindfully. Or something starts crawling on your feet - you throw it away. Fast asleep. You will not remember in the morning. The body...

... functions as a mind - very gross, but it functions as a mind. So body-mind has all the experience - good or bad, happy, unhappy, it makes no difference. You are never the experiencer; you are always the awareness of the experience. So Patanjali says in a very bold statement, "Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate...." All experience is an error. The error arises because you...

... - the body is hungry. You feel pain, but you are not in pain - the body is in pain; you are only alert. Next time something happens to you - and every moment something or other is happening - just watch. Just try to keep hold of this remembrance that "I am the witness," and see how much things change. Once you can realize you are the witness, many things simply disappear, start disappearing...

.... And one day comes which is the final day, the day of enlightenment, when all experience falls flat. Suddenly you are beyond experience: you are not in the body, you are not in the mind; you are beyond both. Suddenly you start floating like a cloud, above all, beyond all. That state of no-experience is the state of kaivalya. Now one thing more about it. There are people who think that spirituality is...

... line had brought the grammarian to such ecstasy, the sheikh said again, "Indeed, we are from Him and to Him we will return." And again the grammarian tore his clothes, stomped his feet, and groaned and yelled. When the session was over and the grammarian had not a piece of clothing left on his body, the sheikh took him into a comer, splashed water on his face, and said, "Tell me, sir...

... people who are outside you are the others. They are others, but your body is also the other. It will return to the earth one day; it is part of the earth. Your breath, ing is also the other; it will return to the air. It is just given to you for a time being. You have borrowed it; it will have to be returned. You will not be here, but your breath will be here in the air. You will not be here, but your...

... body will lie down in deep sleep in the earth - dust unto dust. That which you think of as your blood will be flowing into rivers. Everything will go back. But one thing you have not borrowed from anybody: that's your witnessing, that's your sakshi bhaw, the awareness. Intellect will disappear, reasoning will disappear. All these things are like formations of clouds in the sky: they come together...

... fantasy. And remember, you all don't live in the same world. Every. body has his own world because his fantasies are different from the others. The truth is one; fantasies are as many as there are minds. If you are in a fantasy you cannot meet the other person, you cannot communicate with the other. He is in his fantasy. That is what is happening: when people want to relate they cannot relate. Somehow...

... call it "extrasensory," they don't call it "parapsychological." They say, "This is also sensory, only refined." Eyes can become more refined and they can see things which ordinarily cannot be seen. For example, eyes can see your inner body just as an X-ray can see it. If the X-ray can see it, then the eye can also see it; one just needs to train the eyes. And in a way...

... you to see, but this hole is not the cause of seeing - seeing is your quality. You are seeing through the hole; the hole is not seeing. You are the seer. You are looking through the eyes into the world; you are looking at me. Your eyes are just the holes in the body, but you are the seer inside. If you can get out of the body, the same will happen as will happen if you can open the door and can come...

... sky: you can see all around. The same is the standpoint of yoga, and true. The body is giving only small holes to you: from the ears you can hear, from the eyes you can see, from the tongue you can taste, from the nose you can smell. Small holes, and you are hiding behind. Yoga says come out, get out, go beyond. Get out of these holes, and you will become all-knowing, omniscient, omnipotent...

... renounced, only they have indulged." Very paradoxical: "Those who have renounced, only they have known and experienced and enjoyed, indulged." Your limitation in the body is making you impoverished. Getting up beyond the body, you will become richer. One who has attained is not poorer - he becomes tremendously rich. He becomes a god. So yoga is not against the world. In fact you are against...

... according to it. That's what creates misery and neurosis. Here with me you have to learn the ways of the energy, the way of the body, and you have to unlearn the way of the mind. I am with the body, with energy, with everything - except the mind, because the mind is not in a right state. There comes a state of mind when I am for it. That is thoughtless - when the mind is simple, pure energy itself... just...

... is something which you can carry anywhere and everywhere. Even in a sexual act you can remain alone and you can remain far away - millions of miles away. [The sannyasin replies: That feels wrong somehow.] No. You just try it. For you it will be tremendously helpful. Don't judge it from the very beginning. Let the body be totally involved. I' m not saying to make the body rigid; let the body be...

... totally involved. Let the mind be involved, because the sexual urge only reaches up to the mind, not beyond it. It has a body part and a mind part. The body part needs the involvement of the body, certainly. If the body is not involved you will miss the whole point of it. The body has to be involved. If the mind part is not involved the sexual act will be very very dry. It will be like prostitution. If...

... the mind part is not involved.... That's what the prostitute goes on doing - she keeps the mind away. Just the body is available like a mechanical thing, and she simply keeps herself away from the body. She does not bother what you are doing to the body; she is separate. If the mind part is not involved there will be sex but there will be no love. So let the body be involved, let the mind be...

... involved, but there is still something left - and that is your awareness. It is not the mind - not at all. It is not the body. Let that awareness be there - sharp, alert. That has nothing to do with sex and sex has nothing to do with it. Sex does not reach up to that point. Awareness has no sexuality in it; it is neither of man nor of woman. It is simply beyond the gender. In fact it is beyond desire...

... body and the mind. In fact they are not two; it is better to say bodymind rather than saying body and mind. They are one. Let it be involved - let it be totally involved. In fact if the bodymind is totally involved there will be a context In this involvement you can see your aloneness more purified because the contrast will be there. Two opposite polarities will be there. That is the whole message of...

... on seeing what is happening - what the body is doing, what the mind is doing. Not that you have to verbalise it. You are not to evaluate it, you are not to judge it. You are not even to label what it is. Simply go on seeing whatsoever is. You remain with it and yet you remain far away. This experience can grow slowly, slowly. Just think - one day you were a child, then the body changed; you became...

.... In that awareness you never grow. It is not that when you were a child the awareness was small and when you became older the awareness became a little bigger or became more grown up - no. The body has grown up, the mind has grown up, but the awareness is just the same. It never grows... it never accumulates anything. When you become old, the mind becomes even more burdened with experience. The body...

... will get tired but the awareness will still remain fresh and the same. Even when you are dying, if you have learned how to be aware, only the body will die, only the mind will disappear, but the awareness will still be there. You will see your own mind and body disappearing like smoke. Everything changes... everything is in flux. Only one thing remains, and that one thing is you. The Upanishads say...

... say you remain alert, I don't mean the mind, I don't mean the body. I simply mean you: this unchanging, this eternal... this is what we call atma - the real self So always remain alone there - and that aloneness has to be tasted more and more. Through that aloneness you will become able by and by to forget about sex. I' m not saying forget about it; it happens on its own. So I'm not creating any...

... mind will again create the same armature, because it was the mind that created it in the first place. The body follows the mind, it takes its instructions from the mind. The mind is the computer that goes on feeding instructions. Unless the mind is changed, unless it is completely washed away and renewed, unless there is a psychological breakthrough, the physical work can only help so far. EST work...

....] So continue Kundalini in the morning, and in the night before going to sleep, start a death meditation. Just lie down, put the light off, and start feeling that you are dying. Relax the body and feel that you are dying, so you cannot even move the body - even if you want to move the hand, you cannot. Just go on feeling that you are dying - a four or five-minute feeling that you are dying, dying...

..., and that the body is dead. And through this five-minute experience of dying you will feel a totally different quality of life. The body is almost dead - it is a corpse - but you are more alive than ever! And when the body is dead, the mind by and by stops thinking - because all thinking is associated with life. When you are dying, the mind starts dropping. After two or three months you will be able...

... to die within five minutes. The body will be dead and you will have just a pure awareness, a luminous awareness. Just something like a blue light, that's all. You will feel a blue light just near the third-eye centre, just a small blue flame. That is the purest form of life. And when that blue flame starts being felt there, just fall asleep. So your whole night will be transformed into a death...

... to the body, it seems like death; because we think the body is our life, we think it is terrible. And this is one of the greatest preparations for death. One day death will come: before it comes, you will be ready, you will be ready to die! When buddha was dying, he asked permission from his disciples. He said, 'Now I am ready to die. Within a few minutes I will disappear into myself. If you have...

... turning in.' Then he sat in his posture, closed his eyes, and it is said that people could see that his body started dying. They could see that the body was becoming a corpse - and he was alive! The body turns into a corpse: that is the first phase, buddhists say, of death. In the second phase, his thoughts started disappearing. Those who were very very aware, those disciples who were real meditators...

... with the river silently, then you can be with the wind silently. Then you can be with anything silently, because devotion creates silence. And meditation is nothing else but silence. Then yoga, and the last, the fourth. Ordinarily, we start with yoga; in this sequence it is put last. If the mind is silent then the body is integrated. If the mind is in meditation then the body becomes tranquil and...

... quiet itself. Then every gesture of the body, every posture of the body, just reflects what is happening deep down in the mind. What is happening to the center is reflected by the periphery and the body is just the periphery. This is the right sequence: to begin with the cosmic, then to come to the self, then to the mind, then to the body. The cosmic, the brahman, is the absolute center of existence...

.... Second comes the individual soul, the self; then the third circle. The third concentric circle is the mind, the thinking soul, and the fourth concentric circle is the body, the embodied soul - from the cosmic to the material. Begin from the within and then come to the without; start from the center towards the periphery and then everything becomes easy. Everything becomes so easy and so spontaneous...

... that one begins to feel that it is effortless. Effort is felt because we begin from the without towards the within, we begin from the body. But there is a problem because we exist in the body, and we don't know anything else; we know only the body, and not even that. We know it only in a very illusory way. We are not even aware of our body, because we are so asleep. That's why we have to begin with...

... the body. This sequence cannot be told to anyone; it was told to a very extraordinary disciple. Ordinarily one has to begin with the body, then go to meditation, to devotion, and then to faith, because ordinarily we are so asleep that only at the body are we a bit aware. Everything else is in darkness, deep darkness. And then it is difficult, very difficult. It becomes difficult because to begin...

... with the body is the most gross instrument. If you can begin with faith, then you have begun with the most subtle, most powerful, most potential instrument. If you can begin with faith, it is okay. If you cannot being with faith, then it is better to begin with the body than not to begin at all. THE MORNING MEDITATION The morning meditation is divided into four parts. The first part is ten minutes of...

... vigorous breathing, chaotic, violent - just be nothing. Just be a breathing instrument for ten minutes - mad breathing. Then for ten minutes, body movements used as catharsis. So whatsoever happens to your body, cooperate with it. The body begins to dance, to jump, to cry - anything. Whatsoever happens with the body, allow it; cooperate with the body. And third, go on dancing and jumping, but use "...

... Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THEIR POWER OF COGNITION, REAL NATURE, EGOISM, ALL-PERVASIVENESS, AND FUNCTIONS BRINGS MASTERY OVER THE SENSE ORGANS. FROM THIS FOLLOWS INSTANTANEOUS COGNITION WITHOUT THE USE OF THE BODY, AND COMPLETE MASTERY OVER PRADHANA, THE MATERIAL WORLD. ONLY AFTER THE AWARENESS OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SATTVA AND...

..., split moment, where the outer and inner meet and mingle and merge into each other. That's the beauty of sex, the orgasm, that two energies, the complementary energies, meet and become one whole. But it is going to be momentary because the meeting is through the most gross element, the body. The body can touch the surfaces but it cannot really enter into the other. It is like ice cubes. If you put two...

... reach to the second center, the hara. If they are trained in the deep mechanism of breathing, prana, then they reach the navel center. And if they are trained how to look beyond earth and how to see beyond the body and how to look so deeply and so sensitively that you are no longer confined to the gross, and the subtle can penetrate its first rays into you, only then, the heart center. All paths of...

... alive limbs of your being. Something has deadened within you, has become cold, blocked. It has happened to the whole of humanity because of thousands of years of repression. And thousands of years of conditioning and ideologies which are against the body have crippled you. You live only in name's sake. So the first thing to be done is: your senses should become really alive and sensitive. Only then...

...; it doesn't help a flowering, an unfolding within you. These senses have to be rejuvenated. Yoga is not against the body, remember. Yoga says go beyond the body, but it is not against the body. Yoga says use the body, don't be used by it; but it is not against the body. Yoga says the body is your temple. You are in the body, and the body is so beautiful an organism, so complex and so subtle, so...

..., intelligence, is so much clouded and confused. Only a streaming love can become a source of blissfulness, of joy, of delight. But for that you will need senses streaming. Sometimes you have that glimpse also; and everybody had it when he was a child. Watch a child running after a butterfly. He is streaming, as if any moment he can jump out of his body. Watch a child when he is looking at a rose flower. See...

... can kill, and you are the master. You can sit on the corpse. But what is the point of being a master? But this looked easier: first to kill them, and then you can master. If the body feels too strong, fast. Make it weak, and then you start feeling that you are the master. But you have killed the body. Remember, life has to be mastered, not dead things. They will not be of any use. But this has been...

... found to be a shortcut, so all the religions of the world have been using it. Destroy your body by and by. Disconnect yourself from the body. Don't be in contact. Remove yourself away. Become indifferent. When your body is almost a dead tree; no longer do leaves come to it, no longer does it flower, no longer do birds come to rest. It is just a dead stump. Of course you can master it, but now what are...

... means being active. Power means your eyes going and almost touching the flowers, your ears going and almost touching the songs of the birds, your hands going with the total energy in you, focused there and touching your beloved. Or you are lying down on the grass, your whole body, full of power, meeting in a contact with the grass, having a dialogue with the grass. Or you are swimming in the river and...

... almost become deaf and almost become blind. You see and yet you don't see. You hear yet you don't hear. It is not a power, it is not energy, it is not vital. "Performing samyana on their power of cognition, real nature...." Then you will be able to see what is the real nature of your senses. It is divine. Your body embodies the divine. It is God who has looked through your eyes! I remember...

... eyes don't have any ego; your hands don't have any ego. They have a certain amness. That's why if your skin has to be replaced and somebody else's skin is planted on you, your body will reject it, because the body knows "it is not mine." So your own skin has to be replaced from some other part of the body, from your thighs. Your own skin has to be replaced; otherwise the body will reject...

.... The body will not accept it: "It is not mine." The body has no I but it has an amness. If you need blood, anybody's blood won't do. The body will not accept all sorts of blood, only a particular blood. It has its own amness. That will be accepted; some other blood will be rejected. The body has its own feel of its being. Very unconscious, very subtle and pure, but it is there. Yom eyes are...

... happily for sixty years. But that happiness cannot be real happiness. Easy to repress at the point of a gun, but then what sort of love will happen between these two people? The gun will always stand in between, and the wife will always be afraid now any moment he is going to say, "Now this is two! Now this is three!" and finished. That's what you have done with your senses, with your body...

... now first you have to become alive. FROM THIS FOLLOWS INSTANTANEOUS COGNITION WITHOUT THE USE OF THE BODY, AND COMPLETE MASTERY OVER PRADHANA (PRAKRITI), THE MATERIAL WORLD. If you can see tanmatras, the subtle energies of your senses, you will become-capable of using your cognition without the grosser instruments. If you know that behind the eye there is an accumulated pool of energy, you can close...

... so that he could give the appearance to all who looked upon his body that he was deceased. The next day the man followed instructions and his body was besieged with the wailings and sobbings of his wife and family. The guru appeared at the door in the guise of a magician and told the family that if they loved this man so much he could bring him back to life. He said that the man would live if...

... the unknown. Then try to find out a new way of life. "From this follows instantaneous cognition without the use of the body, and complete mastery over prakriti, the material world." Up to now you have been possessed by the material world. Once you know that you have yom own energy, totally independent from the material world, you become a master. The world possesses you no more; you...

... possess it. Only those who renounce become the real masters. ONLY AFTER THE AWARENESS OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SATTVA AND PURUSHA DOES SUPREMACY AND KNOWLEDGE ARISE OVER ALL STATES OF EXISTENCE. And the subtlest discrimination has to be made between sattva and purusha - intelligence and awareness. It is very easy to separate yourself from the body. The body is so gross you can feel it; you cannot be...

... intelligence. Your power to think, your power of intellect, understanding, that is the subtlest thing. It is very difficult to discriminate between awareness and intelligence. But it can be discriminated. By and by, step by step, first, know that you are not the body. Let that understanding grow deep, crystallize. Then know that you are not the senses. Let that understanding grow, crystallize. Then know that...

... believed - even in his dream he could remember that, "I don't believe in God." But the old man looked so forgotten by everybody, abandoned by everybody; his clothes were tattered, dirt had gathered on his face and body; he looked so out-of-date - almost like a faded painting in which you cannot see clearly what is happening - Russell felt much pity for him. Just to cheer him up he said, "...

... aware of your head; otherwise nobody is aware of their head. You become aware of the body only when something is wrong. In Sanskrit, they have a beautiful word for suffering. They call it vedana, and vedana has two meanings: one, suffering; the other, knowledge. Vedana comes from the same root as veda. Veda means the source of knowledge. Those who coined this word vedana came to know a fact, that...

... suffering is knowledge. Hence they used the same root word for both. If you suffer, immediately you become aware. The stomach comes into existence only with a stomachache. Before, it may have been there but it was not in your consciousness. That's why medical science, particularly Ayurveda, defines health as bodilessness: if you don't know the body you are healthy; if you know the body something is wrong...

... suffering, as if suffering belongs to somebody else: you are not identified. Then a headache is there, but it is not painful to you; it is painful to the body and you are simply aware. The body becomes the object and you become the subject - there is a gap. In awareness all bridges are broken, the gap is immediately present there. You can see: the body suffers, but the identification is broken. Suffering...

..., make it a meditation. Look at it as if it is an object. When you look at your suffering as an object you are separate, you are no longer identified with it, the bridge is broken. And then the energy which was going to move into suffering will not move, because the bridge is no longer there. The bridge is identification: you feel you are the body, then the energy moves into the body. Wherever you feel...

...: OTHERWISE HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DO IT. HE SAID TO THEM: YOU YOURSELVES, SEEK A PLACE FOR YOURSELVES IN REPOSE LEST YOU BECOME A CORPSE AND BE EATEN. Your body is going to become food for worms, for birds. Your body is food, it is nothing else, it cannot be anything else - your body comes out of food. That's why if you don't eat, your body will start disappearing. If you go on a fast, two pounds of the...

... body will disappear every day. Where is that body going? Every day you have to fill it with food - it is a byproduct of food. So when you die, what will happen to your body? The world will use it as food: the worms of the earth will eat you, or the birds of the sky will eat you. It just gives you a fear, you become apprehensive that, "I will be eaten." Because of this, all the world over...

..., people have created ways in order not to be eaten. But they are foolish! Hindus burn the dead body just to avoid one thing, that you should not be eaten. Mohammedans put the dead body inside a casket and put it into a grave just to protect it. Christians do the same. Only Zoroastrians have not done that: they leave the body to become food. They are the most natural about it, and the most scientific too...

..., because you should not destroy food. You have been eating birds, animals, fruits, your whole life, and now you have accumulated a two-hundred-pound body and you destroy it, burn it. This is not good, you are not grateful to the world. You should return it back to the world of food - it is food! And why do you think that burning is better, throwing it into a fire is better than letting it be eaten by a...

... worm or by a bird or by an animal. Why?... because there too fire is burning - in the stomach of the bird, in the stomach of the lion - and that fire will dissolve your body. But that is natural fire, and at least it will fulfill some hunger somewhere. Only Parsees have remained natural about it, but even they have become wavering now because everybody says, "That is wrong - leaving your father...

... intoxicant. So if you eat too much you immediately feel sleepy, it is alcoholic; whenever you eat you have to go to sleep. If you ever fast, you will find it is difficult to sleep that night. Do you think it is because of hunger? No, it is because without food, more awareness happens. And if you go on a long fast, after the third, fourth or fifth day, hunger disappears, because the body insists for three...

..., four, five days - the body has not got a very long memory - it insists on the old habit for a few days, and then if you don't listen the body makes its arrangement in a different way. The body has a double arrangement, it is needed as a security measure. Every day you have to eat to give the body its daily quota. If you don't give it food for five to seven days, then the body has an emergency measure...

...: the accumulated flesh in the body, the accumulated fat - it accumulates.... Every ordinary, healthy person accumulates enough fat for at least three months; that is a reservoir. When the body thinks that you are not going to give food, the body starts eating its own reservoir. When the body starts eating its own reservoir, then the consciousness is not involved in it at all. You need not go and earn...

... and work, and get tired and then give the body food. And when you give it food, to absorb the food, to digest it, your whole energy is needed. That's why, immediately you eat food, your head feels sleepy: because the energy that was working as consciousness is required in the stomach to work as a digestive force; it immediately moves. So people who eat too much cannot meditate well, impossible! They...

... can sleep well, but they cannot be aware, they cannot be very conscious. They are food and nothing more - and they will be eaten; their whole life is a food-circle. All the religions became aware that if you fast, awareness increases, because the energy is released when there is nothing to digest. Nothing to be taken in and thrown out, all work stops. The work at the factory of the body is not there...

..., the factory is locked. Then the whole energy that you have got becomes awareness. That's why it is difficult to sleep when you are on a fast. And if you have been on a fast for at least twenty, thirty days, forty days, you will have a new type of sleep: your body will sleep and you will remain alert. That's what Krishna said to Arjuna: "When everybody is asleep, a yogi remains awake."...

...; That's what Buddha said: "Even while I am asleep, I am not asleep - only the body sleeps." That's why, when Mahavira slept, he never moved in his sleep - not even a single movement. He never changed sides because he remained alert. And he said, "Changing sides won't be good; some insect may have crawled underneath" - because he used to sleep on the floor or under a tree - "and...

... branch, is in repose. He is so silent, as if he is not. He has no desires, no dreams happen to him. He has no needs to fulfill, as if everything is fulfilled, as if he has attained, nowhere to go. He simply sits, enjoying himself, and he watches the bird who is on the lower branch. These are the two dimensions in you. You are the tree. And the lower is always disturbed. The lower is your body and the...

.... Whenever you can find a peaceful moment close your eyes, leave the body behind and the bodily affairs and the world of death; the market, the office, the wife, the children - leave them all. The first time you will not feel anything inside. Hume has said, "Many people have talked about going in and looking there. Whenever I look, I find nothing - just thoughts, desires, dreams, floating here and...

... that he has gone to see a naked man. But when he saw Diogenes, the first thing he said was, "I have never seen such a beautiful body. And looking at you, it is absolutely plain and clear to me that clothes were invented by the unbeautiful." Almustafa says, your clothes conceal much of your beauty - not "much," but almost ninety-nine percent. Even you are not aware of your body. If...

... your body without the head is brought to you, you will not be able to recognize it as your body. You have never looked at it. We know people only by their faces. But the whole body is an organic unity, and unless the whole body is beautiful... just the face can be very deceptive. It is such a small part. And the whole East laughs and feels very proud when they hear about Western beauty contests...

..., naked women allowing thousands of people and judges to decide whether their bodies are beautiful or not. The East thinks it is very much cultured. The reality is that you are not able to see a naked body - not because the naked body has some obscenity it; you cannot see the naked body because you are full of repressions. In your dreams you have seen naked bodies; in your desires you have longed for...

..., and the audience and the judges will consist of women." And I am sure if they insist, the beauty competitions for women will disappear. Man is not going expose his nudeness, because he's not so beautiful in his body as a woman. Once he was even more beautiful. If you go back before Christianity corrupted Italy and its innocence you will be surprised. The Roman civilization was at its peak. All...

... the statues of those days are of beautiful young men; you will not find a single Roman statue of a woman. But clothes have destroyed the beauties of both - more of the man, less of the woman, because the woman is more body oriented. She takes the care of her body. The reason is biological. Man's sexuality is local; it is confined to his genitals. And man's mind is egoistic and very competitive...

.... Certainly I have come across many people who have asked me, because they could not ask anybody else - their genitals are very small, and they are afraid somebody may see it; there are people who have really big genitals. His whole mind is concentrated on the genitals. But the woman's sexuality is not local, it is all over her body. This is one of the greatest mistakes that the god who created the world...

... has committed. Men and women are going to live together, are going to love each other. The woman is far richer as far as sexual energy is concerned - far richer because her whole body vibrates, every cell of her body dances. And because man has only a genital sexuality, his whole body as far as sex is concerned, is just dead. This creates one of the greatest problems. It can be solved, but if I...

... suggest the solution, I'm condemned all over the world for making such suggestions. Nobody has the guts to condemn or criticize my suggestions - they condemn me. They cannot criticize what I'm saying. Because man's sexuality is only genital, while making love he is finished within two minutes. And he is not interested in foreplay with his beloved's body, nor he is interested in the afterplay. To him the...

... woman is just a wastepaper basket. So whatever burden of sexual energy is torturing him, he uses the woman as a sexual object in a very inhuman way. If you really understand the thing, first make the woman's whole body vibrate. Put on beautiful music, incense; dance together. Let her be prepared. Her whole body has to be in a certain position, in a certain excitement, afire with desire and longing to...

... meet and merge. But man is afraid, because the woman is capable of multiple orgasms, and man is finished with one ejaculation. I will not call it orgasm. Orgasm is something spiritual. If he provokes the woman's whole body, then she will demand that she be satisfied. And she is unsatisfied; that is why she is continuously irritated, annoyed, angry, nagging the man. These problems are the by-products...

..., because she is not satisfied. There are millions of women who have never known what an orgasm is. A woman can know orgasm only when her whole body functions like a musical instrument. When her whole body starts dancing within - each nerve, each cell - only then she is capable of having an orgasm. To make her whole body orgasmic is the function of the foreplay. But man is always in a hurry. What is the...

... bicycle tires, tubes, footballs - and fill it. And this is a rare kind of woman: no nagging, no trouble, no expenses, no food. You can carry the packet just in your pocket - so whenever you feel the need, just pump the air in and the woman comes alive. And you may not have seen such a beautiful body" - obviously, when it is manufactured by man, it cannot become fat, it cannot become thin, it cannot...

... the box, filled the woman with air. And he was so hungry for sex, so repressed for months - and the woman was exactly how a world beauty queen has to be; those exact proportions of the body. He enjoyed loving her immensely. But then an accident happened - and the accident was that he was playing with the breasts of the woman and a tremendous desire arose in him to take the nipples in his mouth. And...

..., corrupted, he does not deserve to live on the earth." But man has been doing the same with the real women. They are not plastic. And because they don't have any orgasmic experience, their life becomes more and more frustrated, full of anger and rage. It is a simple question, but the solution is very difficult. If a man really plays with the woman's body, and wakes up the sleeping cells all over the...

... body, he will not be able to satisfy her. The most scientific suggestion will be that he should always invite at least five friends. Then you will see a totally different woman in the world - joyous, never nagging, never angry. But man's ego... rather than taking a scientific attitude - towards a thing for which he is not responsible; it is God's fault, he should have made them equal. If women can...

... with yourself. If you have not been naked in the sun and allowed your whole body to be nourished by the vitamins that the sun is showering on you, if you have not been naked in the wind, you are a prisoner. I am not saying to you, go in a public square, or on the streets which are filled with all kinds of idiots, to be naked. Because they are blind and deaf, they are retarded and heartless, and they...

... with past and have not the courage even to understand me, you behave so that they don't have any opportunity. Let me fight alone, because I am alone enough. WOULD THAT YOU COULD MEET THE SUN AND THE WIND WITH MORE OF YOUR SKIN AND LESS OF YOUR RAIMENT. It is a simple physiological fact that your whole skin breathes - inhales, exhales - not just your nose. If a thick paint is put on your body so that...

... all possibilities of inhaling and exhaling are stopped, and your nose is left open - you will still die in three hours. Just the nose is not enough. It is the most important part, but it is not enough. Your whole body consists of almost seven billion living cells. They all need oxygen and they all need to throw out carbon dioxide. Your clothes are preventing it. Your clothes are not your friends...

... enemies. But now, because you have become weak - man is today the weakest animal in existence - you will have to use clothes. Use clothes... but once in a while, give a chance to the body to have its natural right. FOR THE BREATH OF LIFE IS IN THE SUNLIGHT AND THE HAND OF LIFE IS IN THE WIND. SOME OF YOU SAY, "IT IS THE NORTH WIND WHO HAS WOVEN THE CLOTHES WE WEAR." AND I SAY, AY, IT WAS THE...

... naked, all the birds are naked. What is shame? And the clothes have done immense harm to your health, to your beauty, for the simple reason that they have become a barrier between you and life. The whole existence is naked except man. And why should one be ashamed? It is your body, it is your temple, it is the place God is dwelling in. There is no question of shame. But this is how religions have been...

... exploiting you, politicians have been exploiting you. Your so- called leaders are not leaders but murderers. They have murdered the whole of humankind in many ways - enslaved, weakened you. A truly religious person cannot be ashamed of his body because it is a gift. And feeling ashamed of your body, you are condemning existence. AND WHEN HIS WORK WAS DONE, HE LAUGHED IN THE FOREST. He's saying when the...

... not on the body, it is deep in their minds. I have heard.... Three old retired men were sitting on a bench in a garden - that was their usual habit; every day they used to come. The whole day there was nothing to do. This was their only enjoyment, their only entertainment, to discuss and tell each other about the golden memories of the past. One day it happened... all the three were sitting. One was...

... this climate around you, with this vision. Let it be declared to your every cell of the body and every thought of your mind; let it be declared to every nook and corner of your existence, that "I am a Buddha!" And don't be worried about the 'I'... we will take care of it. 'I' and buddhahood cannot exist together. Once the buddhahood becomes revealed the 'I' disappears, just like darkness...

... started in search of the innermost core of the human being. It will be good to understand how far modern efforts lead us. Pavlov, B.F. Skinner and the other behaviorists, go on circling around the physical, the muladhar. They think man is only the body. They get too much involved in the first temple, they get too much involved with the physical, they forget everything else. These people are trying to...

... explain man only through the physical, the material. This attitude becomes a hindrance because they are not open. When from the very beginning you deny that there is nothing other than the body, then you deny the exploration itself. This becomes a prejudice. A communist, a Marxist, a behaviorist, an atheist - people who believe that man is only the body - their very belief closes doors to higher...

... realities. They become blind. And the physical is there, the physical is the most apparent; it needs no proof. The physical body is there, you need not prove it. Because it need not be proved, it becomes the only reality. That is nonsense. Then man loses all dignity. If there is nothing to grow in or to grow towards, there cannot be any dignity in life. Then man becomes a thing. Then you are not an...

... opening, then nothing more is going to happen to you - you are a body: you will eat, and you will defecate, and you will eat and you will make love and produce children, and this will go on and on, and one day you die. A mechanical repetition of the mundane, the trivia - how can there be any significance, any meaning, any poetry? How can there be any dance? Skinner has written a book, Beyond Freedom and...

... Dignity. It should be called Below Freedom and Dignity, not beyond. It is below, it is the lowest standpoint about man, the ugliest. There is nothing wrong about the body, remember. I am not against the body, it is a beautiful temple. The ugliness enters when you think this is all. Man can be conceived of as a ladder with seven rungs, and you get identified with the first rung. Then you are not going...

... anywhere. And the ladder is there, and the ladder bridges this world and the other; the ladder bridges matter with God. The first rung is perfectly good if it is used in relationship to the whole ladder. If it functions as a first step it is immensely beautiful: one should be thankful to the body. But if you start worshipping the first rung and you forget the remaining six, you forget that the whole...

...; again you get fed up, again you are bored, and again they go on searching for new toys for you to play with. This state of affairs is ridiculous. It is so absurd that it seems almost inconceivable how we go on living in it. We have got caught at the first rung. Remember that you are in the body, but you are not the body; let that be a continuous awareness in you. You live in the body, and the body is...

... a beautiful abode. Remember, I am not for a single moment hinting that you become anti-body, that you start denying the body as the so-called spiritualists have done down the ages. The materialists go on thinking that the body is all that is, and there are people who move to the opposite extreme, and they start saying that the body is illusory, the body is not! "Destroy the body so the...

... illusion is destroyed, and you can become really real." This other extreme is a reaction. The materialist creates his own reaction in the spiritualist, but they are partners in the same business; they are not very different people. The body is beautiful, the body is real, the body has to be lived, the body has to be loved. The body is a great gift of God. Not for a single moment be against it, and...

... not for a single moment think that you are only it. You are far bigger. Use the body as a jumping board. The second is: psychosomatic, svadisthan. Freudian psychoanalysis functions there. It goes a little higher than Skinner and Pavlov. Freud enters into the mysteries of the psychological a little bit more. He's not just a behaviorist, but he never goes beyond dreams. He goes on analyzing the dreams...

... not dogmatic but are more experiential. You have to do something with your body and mind; you have to create a certain harmony within yourself so that you can ride on that harmony, you can ride on that cloud of harmony and go far away from your ordinary reality. Yoga can comprehend all that; that is the sixth. And the seventh is transcendental: Tantra, Tao, Zen. Buddha's attitude is of the seventh...

... remain the same. These sutras can become a revolution. The first thing, the beginning, is always the question, "Who am I?" And one has to go on asking. When first you ask, "Who am I?" the muladhar will answer, "You are a body! What nonsense! There is no need to ask, you know it already." Then the second will say, "You are sexuality." Then the third will say...

... who looks from above, one who stands at the seventh center, sahasrar, the transcendental, and looks from there. Naturally, whatsoever you see is contaminated by your standpoint, is contaminated by the space you are in. If a man who lives at the first rung - the physical body - looks at anything, he looks from that standpoint. A man who lives at the physical only looks to your body when he looks at...

... body and heal your body. He can become a body, but that is his freedom. He can become a mind and he can talk to you and explain things to you, but he is never the mind. He comes and stands behind the mind, uses it, just as you drive your car - you never become the car. He uses all these rungs, he is the whole ladder. But his ultimate standpoint remains the transcendental. That is his nature...

... disappear, is ready to go into nirvana. Nothing remains to be solved, all his problems are solved. There is no need for him to be here, but he is still here. There is nothing else to be learned here, but he is still here. And he is keeping himself in body-form, in mind-form - he is keeping the whole ladder. He has gone beyond, but he is keeping the whole ladder - to help, out of compassion. A story is...

... but still is holding - in body, in mind, in the world, in time and space - to help others. Buddha says: Meditation is enough to solve your problems, but something is missing in it - compassion. If compassion is also there, then you can help others solve their problems. He says: Meditation is pure gold; it has a perfection of its own. But if there is compassion then the gold has a fragrance too...

... the body you become dislocated from there. You can come sometimes, with effort. You can use the body, with effort, but you are no longer settled there. When you are no longer in the mind you can use it sometimes, but it no longer functions as well as it used to function before. You are no longer flowing in it. When you are not using it, it is lying there: it is a mechanism, it starts gathering rust...

.... When a man has reached to the seventh, for a few days, for a few years, he can use the six rungs. He can go back and use them, but by and by they start breaking. By and by, they start dying. A bodhisattva can be here only for one life, at the most. Then he has to disappear, because the mechanism disappears. But all those who have attained have tried, as far as they can, to use the body-mind to help...

... those who are in body and mind, to help those who can understand only the language of the body and the mind, to help the disciples. AVALOKITA, THE HOLY LORD AND BODHISATTVA, WAS MOVING IN THE DEEP COURSE OF THE WISDOM WHICH HAS GONE BEYOND. HE LOOKED DOWN FROM ON HIGH, HE BEHELD BUT FIVE HEAPS, AND HE SAW THAT IN THEIR OWN BEING THEY WERE EMPTY. When you look from that point... For example, I was just...

... telling you that I salute the Buddha in you. That is one vision from the beyond: that I see you as potential Buddhas. And another vision is just that I see you as empty shells. What you think you are is nothing but an empty shell. Somebody thinks he is a man; that is an empty idea. Consciousness is neither male nor female. Somebody thinks he has a very beautiful body, he is beautiful, strong, this and...

... the spiritual - this world and that world, body and soul, matter and spirit. Nobody has yet recognized that this division in existence is the basis of all schizophrenia in humanity. Every person is split, he is not one. To be split is to be sick, and to be one and whole is to be healthy and holy. I am against the split. I want you to know that your body is your visible spirit, and your spirit is...

... your invisible body. The universe that you can see is the visible body of existence, and the universe that you can only feel - the beauty of a flower, the blissfulness of silence, the ecstasy of one's own being - that is the invisible part of the universe. They are one, there is no dividing line anywhere. Certainly they are not opposed to each other. It is so simple to understand that your body and...

... your soul are not opposed to each other; otherwise, how can they live together? How can they live in such harmony? But religions had to make the split; their whole business was dependent on the split: God is separate from existence, the soul is separate from the body. That opens the doors to all kinds of exploitation in the name of religion, because then they can say, "Your body is dragging you...

... towards hell, and unless you fight with your body, its nature, its instincts, its hunger, its sensuality, its sexuality - everything that makes up your body - unless you conquer it, you will not enter into the kingdom of God. Only pure souls who have transcended their bodies enter there." Naturally, millions of people have been torturing their bodies to attain spirituality. All that they attain is...

... stupidity. The more they torture their body, the more unintelligent they become, because the body gives everything needed for their intelligence. And if they start fighting the body, those resources stop flowing towards their intelligence. I have never come across a single so-called saint in my life - and I have seen thousands - who had any gleam of intelligence in his eyes, who had any aura of beauty...

... around him; who had any magnetism that made you feel pulled towards him. On the contrary: in India, there are Jaina saints.... Because they are against the body, perhaps their religion is the most antilife religion. They don't take a bath, they don't wash their teeth, because that is all serving the devil, decorating the devil. They stink, because they have not taken a bath for years. Their...

... perspiration has gathered on their body in layers - dust and perspiration. And they live naked, so the whole body is available to the dust. They don't wash their mouth. You cannot talk to them sitting closely, because every word that they speak comes as a shock: their breath is unbearable. But they are respected immensely because they have been torturing their body. They have lost the balance of their body...

... completely. Because they eat only one time a day, naturally they eat too much - to make up for the two other times. So their bellies become too big, and the rest of the body becomes thin. Rather than becoming beautiful, they become ugly. And this is thought to be a great attainment. A really spiritual person will live life as an art, will create a deep harmony between the body and the consciousness. And...

... this is the greatest art there is. His life will be a joy to see. And he will be fragrant, for the sheer reason that there is no split in his being. The very unity makes him organic; the wound of division is healed. So people who go on asking questions about how to control the body, how to control sex, how to control this, how to control that, don't understand me at all. I am not for control, I am...

... all for understanding. Understanding brings its own balance; it is not control, you live in sheer balance. Nobody is controlling - neither is the body controlling the soul, nor is the soul controlling the body. They have merged, and a new entity, the organic unity, has arisen in you. I have called that unity Zorba the Buddha, for the simple reason that Zorba lived according to the body, forgetting...

... the spiritual needs; Buddha lived according to the spiritual needs, forgetting the body. Both are incomplete - they have to be bridged. In each man, in each woman, they have to be bridged. There has not to be any conflict, but a deep musical unity. And when I say this, I say it from my own experience. There is no question of any conflict. I have lived in a tremendous togetherness, and I have not...