SEX GURU Q: It has been written, and people have talked about you as a “free sex guru,” believing in promiscuous sex with violent encounter sessions and mind control. True or false? A: Do you think sex should be charged for? Should it not be free? Should it be paid for? To me, sex is a simple, beautiful, natural phenomenon. If two persons want to share energy with each other, it is nobody’s business to interfere. And to say “free sex” implies that you want sex also to be a commodity, that is has to be purchased—either from a prostitute for one night, or from a wife for the whole life, but it has to be purchased and paid for. Yes, I believe in free sex. I believe that sex is everybody’s birthright to share, to enjoy. It is fun. There is nothing serious about it. The people who have been talking about me as teaching “free sex” are really pathetic. They are sexually repressed people. from an interview with Ken Kashiwahara, Good Mooning America
SEXUAL ORGASM. ACCORDING TO ME, GIVES YOU THE FIRST GLIMPSE of meditation—because the mind stops, time stops. For those few moments there is no time and there is no mind, you are just utterly silent and blissful. I say it—it is my scientific approach to the subject, because there was no other way for man to find out that if there is no mind and no time, you enter into a blissful state. Except for sex there was no other possibility for the mind to understand that there is some way of going beyond mind, beyond time. It was certainly sex that gave the first glimpse of meditativeness. And I am being condemned all over the world because I am telling people the truth. Nobody has come up with any other idea to explain how you have found meditation. You cannot find it by just walking on the side of the road—it is lying there and you go over and pick up meditation. Where have you found meditation?
The opponents can be forgiven, but the supporters cannot be forgiven. Because I have said that sex is stupid, many angry questions have come to me. One of my sannyasins has written to me, “You have some nerve to say that sex is stupid!” She must have felt hurt. And I can understand: when you are living in a certain way you don’t want it to be described as stupid. Nobody wants to be called stupid. It is not over the question of sex that you are disturbed—it is your life; if it is stupid and you are living it, then you are being stupid. That hurts. But I have to say it even if it hurts, because that is the only way to make you aware that there is something more in life, something higher, something greater, something far more blissful, far more orgasmic. Sex is only a beginning—not the end. And nothing is wrong if you take it as a beginning. If you start clinging to it, then things start going wrong. After making love, at least for one hour sit in zazen and you will see what I am saying. You will understand what I mean when I say sex is stupid. After making love, make it a point to sit in zazen for one hour just watching what has happened. Were you the master of it or just a slave? If you were the master of it, then it is not stupid. If you were a slave, it is stupid—because by repeating it you are making your slavery stronger and stronger, you are feeding your slavery.
I HAVE NEVER TAUGHT “FREE SEX.” WHAT I HAVE BEEN TEACHING IS the sacredness of sex. I have been teaching that sex should not be degraded from the realm of love to the realm of law. The moment you have to love a woman because she is your wife, and not because you simply love her, it is prostitution, legalized prostitution. I have been against prostitution, whether it has been legalized or illegalized. I believe in love. If two persons love each other they can live together as long as they love. The moment love is gone, they should gracefully separate.
All the literature of Tantra is my proof. And this is the only country where something like Tantra has existed. Nowhere else in the world has any effort been made to transform sexual energy into spiritual energy—and that’s what I was doing. But the journalists are not interested in reality; they are interested in sensationalism.
YOU ARE CERTAINLY BRAINWASHED. I USE A DRY CLEANING MACHINE, I am not old-fashioned. And naturally you are addicted. Who will not be? Addiction is not always bad. If you are addicted to beauty, to poetry, to drama, to sculpture, to painting, nobody tells you to drop the addiction. Addiction has to be dropped only when it makes you unconscious. Alcoholics are told to drop the addiction, but here my teaching is of consciousness—be addicted to it more and more. And what is wrong in being brainwashed? Wash it every day, keep it clean. Do you like cockroaches? When I brainwash people, I find cockroaches. Cockroaches are very special animals. It has been found scientifically that wherever you find man you find cockroaches, and wherever you find cockroaches you find man. They are always together, they are the oldest companions.
I am a brainwasher. And those who come to me should come with the clear conception that they are going to a man who is bound to brainwash, to clean their minds of all kinds of cockroaches. Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian—they are all against me for the simple reason that they go on putting in their cockroaches, and I go on washing people’s minds. It is just an up-to-date religious laundry.
MY EFFORT IS TO TAKE AWAY ALL TRADITIONS, ORTHODOXIES, SUPERSTITIONS, and beliefs from your mind, so that you can attain a state of no-mind, the ultimate state of silence, where not even a thought moves—not even a ripple in the lake of your consciousness. And the whole thing has to be done by you. I am not saying, “Just follow me, I am the savior. I will save you.” All that is crap. Nobody can save you, except yourself. And spiritual independence is the only independence worth calling independence. All other independences—political, economic—are just so-so, superficial. The real and authentic independence is that you are not dependent on anybody for your inner growth.
Those who have come to me have become more and more independent, more and more themselves. That’s why they love me. I am not making them a crowd, I am making them absolutely individuals. I am not even giving them ideologies to be practiced, disciplines to be practiced—I am simply sharing my own experience. Out of that experience they have to find their own discipline. This is a company, not of a master and disciples, this is a company of a master and potential masters.
CON MAN I have to work on two levels: one is the level where you live, where you are, and one is the level where I am and I want you also to be. From the top of a hill I have to come into the valley where you are; otherwise you won’t listen, you won’t believe the sunlit top. I have to take your hand in my hand and persuade you—and on the way, tell stories that are not true! But they keep you engaged, and you don’t create any trouble in walking; you go on, engaged with the story. And when you have reached the hilltop, you will know why I was telling long stories, and you will feel grateful that I told those stories; otherwise you would not have been able to travel that long, that far uphill. It is something to be remembered: All the masters of the world have been telling stories, parables—why? The truth can be simply said, there is no need to give you so many stories. But the night is long, and you have to be kept awake; without stories you are going to fall asleep. Till the morning comes there is an absolute necessity to keep you engaged, and the stories the masters have been telling are the most intriguing things possible. The truth cannot be said, but you can be led to the point from where you can see it.
“SELF-APPOINTED” BHAGWAN The critics who have been writing against me have always made it a point that I am a “self-appointed” bhagwan. And I have always wondered, do they know of anybody—Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed—who was appointed by somebody else? If Rama is appointed by somebody else as bhagwan, then certainly the appointing authority is higher—and if you can be appointed, you can be disappointed too! This is absolutely stupid. Basically, they have not understood the idea: bhagwan is a state of experience—nothing to do with an appointment, an election, a title, or a degree. It is the experience of bhagwatta, of godliness, that the whole existence is full of godliness, that there is nothing other than godliness.
Actually it means the person who says only that which he lives, one whose actions and thoughts are absolutely in harmony. So for almost twenty years people called me “acharya.” This was before I started initiating people. For years people had been telling me that they would like to be initiated into sannyas by me, and I said to them, “Wait. Let the moment come when I feel it is right.” The day came. I was holding a meditation camp deep in the Himalayas, in Kulu-Manali—it is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It is called the Valley of the Gods, it is so beautiful, so otherworldly. Once you enter Kulu-Manah you start feeling you are entering into another world.
They asked me. I said, “That’s perfectly good, because that’s a very meaningful word for me: the blessed one.” It does not mean God to me, it does not mean the creator, it simply means the blessed one—one who is at home, has arrived; one who has found, one who has encountered himself. Then there is nothing else but blessings, and blessings go on raining over him. Day in, day out, the blessing goes on showering. So remember, bhagwan has nothing to do with God. It has certainly something to do with godliness, because that is what arriving is: coming home. That is what makes you the blessed one.
Not that one has to become God; one is God, one has simply to recognize it.
If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirrors will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored. Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other. But if you have some idea, then you ill see your own idea in me.
Many people have asked me why I kept silent about the fact that I became enlightened in 1953. For almost twenty years I never said anything about it to anybody, unless somebody suspected it himself, unless somebody said to me on his own, “We feel that something has happened to you.” In those years not more than ten people asked me, and even then I avoided them as much as I could unless I felt that their desire was genuine. I told them only when they had promised to keep it a secret. Greece, 1986
My mother came to me; she was a little worried. She said, “It is beautiful to see you dancing, but now you have started dancing with girls!” She was concerned that if people in India see this, in the pictures, on the video, they will be very much shocked. I said, “So far, so good.” But I am free—more free than Gautam Buddha, more free than Mahavira. Gautam Buddha did not have the guts to dance with a girl. Rajneeshpuram, 1985
I am a terrific driver. And I don’t believe in any rules—I may drive right, I may drive left, I may drive in the middle—so my poor people had to create a road just for me so I could drive anywhere, any way, at any speed. Rajneeshpuram, 1983
I want the world to know that we have ninety-three Rolls Royces because that is the only way to make any bridge. And then I can talk about truth and enlightenment, too, on the side. Without Rolls Royces there is no communication at all. I know my business perfectly well.
Millions of people miss meditation because meditation has taken on a wrong connotation. It looks very serious, looks gloomy, has something of the church in it, looks as if it is only for people who are dead, or almost dead. A really meditative person is playful: Life is fun for him, life is a play. He enjoys it tremendously. He is not serious. He is relaxed.
After enlightenment, nothing happens. All happening stops, disappears. Once simply is. Not that the sun does not rise, not that the night is not full of stars, not that the flowers, don’t bloom anymore—all this goes on. But nothing happens in you. All remains calm and quiet. After enlightenment there is no biography.
Only that which cannot be taken away by death is real. Everything else is unreal it is made of the same stuff dreams are made of.
I chose it for a specific purpose and it has been serving well, because people who used to come to me to gather knowledge, stopped coming. The day I called myself bhagwan, they stopped. It was too much for them, it was too much for their egos. Somebody calling himself bhagwan? It hurts the ego. They stopped. They were coming to me to gather knowledge. Now I’ve changed my function absolutely. I started working on a different level, in a different dimension. Now I give you being, not knowledge. I was an acharya and they were students; they were learning. Now I am no longer a teacher and you are not here as students. If you are here as students, sooner or later you will have to leave, because you will find yourself in a wrong place; you will not fit here. Only if you are a disciple, then you can fit with me. Because now I am giving something more. If you are here for knowledge, then sooner or later you will see—you have to go somewhere else.
I am here to impart being. I am here to make you awake. I am not going to give you knowledge, I am going to give you knowing—and that is a totally different dimension.
Calling myself bhagwan is a device. Sooner or later, when you have grown up and you have understood the point, and when your presence here has created a different quality of vibrations, I will stop calling myself bhagwan. Then there will be no need. Then the whole atmosphere will be throbbing with godliness. Then people who will come, it will shower on them. It will penetrate into their hearts. There will be no need to call me anything—you will know. But in the beginning it was needed, and it has been of tremendous help. The last thing about it: I am not a philosopher. Always remember me as a poet. My approach toward life is that of poetry, is that of romance. It is romantic, it is imaginative. I would like you all to be gods and goddesses. I would like you to reveal your true being.
One day you will also be a god, a goddess. Accepting me as God is in fact deep down accepting the possibility that you can also be a god, that’s all. The very acceptance that this man can be a god stirs something that has been fast asleep within you. Then you cannot remain as you are; something has to be done. Something has to be transformed, something has to be known … If you decide to go with me, you will become more and more watchful. And the more watchful you will become, the more you will be able to understand me, the more you will be able to understand what has happened, what has transpired within my soul. You will become more and more a participant in this happening, in this dance, in this singing.
The only question is of becoming a watcher on the hills. Become a witness—alert, observing—and you will be fulfilled.
Is Krishna elected by the people as bhagwan? Is it an election matter? Who has appointed these people? No Hindu has the answer. And a man like Krishna has stolen sixteen thousand women from different people—they were mothers, they were married, unmarried, with no discrimination—and yet no Hindu has the courage to object that a man with such a character has no right to be called bhagwan.
The word bhagwan is a very ugly word. But the Hindus are not even aware of it. They think that it is something very special. Its root meaning—bhag means a woman’s genital organs. And wan means a man’s genital organs. The meaning of the word bhagwan is symbolically that he brings about, in the feminine energy of existence, through his male chauvinistic energy, the creation. I hate the word! I have been waiting for some Hindu idiot to come forward, but they think that it is something very dignified and I have no right to call myself bhagwan. Today I say absolutely, “Yes, but I have every right to denounce the word.” Nobody can prevent me. I don’t want to be called bhagwan again. Enough is enough! The joke is over!
THE RICH MAN’S GURU I always spend before I get. Just the idea that some money is coming, and I tell my people: Spend! Because who knows about tomorrow? Spend today. We don’t have any money, but we are perfectly sufficient. Nothing is missing, everything is perfectly okay. And money goes on coming. I have lived thirty-five years without any money. It has always been coming. Somebody somewhere feels to send, and it comes. And now I have started believing that existence takes care, even of an expensive man like me. YOU ASK, “ARE YOU NOT A RICH MAN’S GURU?” I AM-BECAUSE ONLY a rich man can come to me. But when I say a rich man I mean one who is very poor inside. When I say a rich man I mean one who is rich in intelligence, I mean one who has everything that the world can give to him and has found that it is futile.
Yes, sometimes a poor man can also be religious, but for that very great intelligence is needed. A rich man, if he is not religious, is stupid. A poor man, if he is religious, is tremendously intelligent. If a poor man is not religious, he has to be forgiven. If a rich man is not religious, his sin is unpardonable. I am a rich man’s guru. Absolutely it is so.
If it were not for your money, you would not have been here. You are here because you are frustrated with your money. You are here because you are frustrated with your success. You are here because you are frustrated with your life. A beggar cannot come because he is not yet frustrated.
Religion is a luxury—the ultimate luxury I call it, because it is the highest
value. When a man is hungry, he does not bother about music—he cannot. And if you start playing the sitar before him, he will kill you! He will say, “You are insulting me! I am hungry and you are playing a sitar—is this the time to play the sitar?
When your bodily needs are fulfilled, psychological needs arise. When your psychological needs are also fulfilled, then your spiritual needs arise. When a person has listened to all the music that is available in the world, and has seen all the beauty, and has found that it is all dream—has listened to all the great poets and has found that poetry is just a way to forget yourself, to intoxicate yourself, but it does not lead you anywhere—has seen all the paintings and the great art, amusing, entertaining … then what? The hands remain empty, more empty than they ever were before.
Unless you know what the secretmost truth of this existence is, nothing can satisfy. All else you have tried and it has failed.
THE JOKER Q: Who is the better showman—in metaphysical terms, if you like—you or President Ronald Reagan? A: Nobody can beat me! I am the best showman in the whole history of man. Q: if that is true, what kind of show do you enjoy? Is this theater, or circus? A: This is my circus, my carnival. And I enjoy it immensely! •from an interview with Jeff McMullen, 60 Minutes, Australia
Q: And you are a serious teacher? A: I am a very nonserious teacher! And I have already forgotten what news conference you are talking about! I just respond to you. Why drag the dead unnecessarily out of their graves? Let them sleep silently. You are alive, I am alive, we can have an existential encounter. And I see the potentiality in you, that’s why I am saying that. I would not have said it to another person. I have been interviewed every evening for weeks, but I would not have said that to another journalist. I don’t see you just as a journalist, I see you more as a seeker. I see you more as a human being. And I see your heart throbbing with me, in tune with me, that’s why I am saying it. Otherwise, I can go on answering about the past, anything that comes to my mind, there is no problem about it.
At two o’clock I wake up, and for one hour I go for a ride. I love driving, and I have certainly one of the most beautiful roads because it is made by my sannyasins only for me. There is no traffic, so I need not bother whether I am driving on the right or on the left. The whole road belongs to me. One hour there and back home.
I HAVE TO TELL JOKES BECAUSE, I AM AFRAID, YOU ARE ALL RELIGIOUS people. You tend to be serious. I have to tickle you so that sometimes you forget your religiousness, you forget all your philosophies, theories, systems, and you fall down to earth. I have to bring you back to the earth again and again; otherwise you will tend to become more and more serious. And seriousness is a cancerous growth.
Laughter brings some energy from your inner source to your surface. Energy starts flowing, it follows laughter like a shadow. Have you watched it? When you really laugh, for those few moments you are in a deep meditative state. Thinking stops. It is impossible to laugh and think together. They are diametrically opposite: either you can laugh or you can think. If you really laugh, thinking stops. If you are still thinking, laughter will be just so-so, lagging behind. It will be a crippled laughter.
As far as I know, dancing and laughter are the best, most natural, easily approachable doors. If you really dance, thinking stops. You go on and on, you whirl and whirl, and you become a whirlpool—all boundaries, all divisions are lost.
And if you are really dancing—not managing it but allowing it to manage you, allowing it to possess you—if you are possessed by dance, thinking stops.
AND I HAVE TO TELL JOKES, BECAUSE THE THINGS THAT I AM SAYING are so subtle, so deep and profound, that if I simply go on telling you those things you will fall asleep and you will not be able to listen or to understand. You will remain almost deaf. The more profound the truth I have to tell you, the worse joke I choose for it. The highest truth I am trying to relate, then the lowest I have to go in search of a joke. That’s why even dirty jokes … I don’t bother. Even a dirty joke can be helpful—more so because it can shock you to the very roots, to the very guts. And that’s the whole point! It helps you to come again and again to your alertness. When I see you are alert, I again go relating that which I would like to relate to you. When I see again that you are slipping into your sleep, I have to bring in a joke again.
And they are very worried, and editorials have been written on the car. They ask, “Why? Why can’t you live a simple life?” My life is absolutely simple—so simple, really, that I am always satisfied with the best kinds of things. It is absolutely simple, what more simplicity is possible? In a single sentence it can be said: the best kinds of things. There is no complexity about it. I like quality. I’m not interested in how much it costs but in the quality.
But their puzzle, why they can’t understand it, is that they pretend to be religious but deep down their whole obsession is materialistic. They carry a hypocrisy, and to fulfill their hypocrisy the whole Indian religious world has to
compromise. If somebody wants to become a saint he has to live in utter poverty. It is almost a kind of masochism; he has to torture himself. The more he tortures himself, the more people think he is religious: “See how religiously he is living!”
The Indian mind has become materialistic, grossly materialistic. A spiritual mind makes no distinctions between matter and spirit; it is undivided. The whole existence is one—that is the spiritual mind. The materialist, even if he loves a woman, reduces her to a thing. Then who is a spiritualist? A spiritualist is a person who, even if he touches a thing, transforms it into a person.
One clergyman in Wasco County, every Sunday may have forgotten Jesus
Christ completely but he could not forget ninety-three Rolls-Royces.
PEOPLE ARE SAD, JEALOUS, AND THINKING THAT ROLLS-ROYCES DON’T fit with spirituality. I don’t see that there is any contradiction. Sitting in a Rolls-Royce I have been as meditative … In fact, sitting in a bullock cart it is very difficult to be meditative; a Rolls-Royce is the best for spiritual growth.
The Master
MASTERS DO NOT TELL THE TRUTH. EVEN IF THEY WANT TO THEY cannot; it is impossible. Then what is their function? What do they go on doing? They cannot tell the truth, but they can call forth the truth that is fast asleep in you. They can provoke it, they can challenge it. They can shake you up, they can wake you up. They cannot give you God, truth, nirvana, because in the first place you already have it all with you. You are born with it. It is innate, it is intrinsic. It is your very nature. So anybody who pretends to give you the truth is simply exploiting your stupidity, your gullibility. He is cunning—cunning and utterly ignorant too. He knows nothing; not even a glimpse of truth has happened to him. He is a pseudo master. Truth cannot be given; it is already in you. It can be called forth, it can be provoked. A context can be created, a certain space can be created in which it arises in you and is no longer asleep, becomes awakened. The function of the master is far more complex than you think. It would have been far easier, simpler, if truth could be conveyed. It cannot be conveyed; hence indirect ways and means have to be devised.
The village people are saying, “You are fools! Jesus cannot do anything. When somebody is dead, somebody is dead!”
Jesus comes. He goes to the cave—he does not enter into the cave—he stands outside and calls Lazarus forth. The people have gathered. They must be laughing: “This man seems to be crazy!” Somebody says to him, “What are you doing? He is dead! He has been dead for four days. In fact, to enter into the cave is difficult—his body is stinking. It is impossible! Whom are you calling?” But, unperturbed, Jesus shouts again and again, “Lazarus, come out!” And the crowd is in for a great surprise: Lazarus walks out of the cave—shaken, shocked, as if out of a great slumber, as if he had fallen into a coma. He himself cannot believe what has happened, why he was in the cave. This, in fact, is just a way of saying what the function of a master is. Whether Lazarus was really dead or not is not the point. Whether Jesus was capable of raising the dead or not is not the point. To get involved in those stupid questions is absurd. Only scholars can be so foolish.
You are all dead. You are all in the same situation as Lazarus. You are all living in your dark caves. You are all stinking and deteriorating … because death is not something that comes one day suddenly. You are dying every day; since the day of your birth you have been dying. It is a long process; it takes seventy, eighty, ninety years to complete it.
The master cannot give you the truth but he can call forth the truth. He can stir something in you. He can trigger a process in you that will ignite a fire, a flame. Truth you are—just so much dust has gathered around you. The function of the master is negative: he has to give you a bath, a shower, so the dust disappears.
The great Zen master Daie says, “All the teachings of the sages, of the saints, of the masters, have expounded no more than this: they are commentaries on your sudden cry, Ah, This!” When suddenly you are clear, and a great joy and rejoicing arises in you and your whole being, every fiber of your body, mind, and soul dances and you say, “Ah, this! Alleluia!”—a great shout of joy arises in your being—that is enlightenment. Suddenly stars come down from the rafters. You become part of the eternal dance of existence.
Auden says: Dance till the stars come down from the rafters! Dance, dance, dance till you drop!
Masters don’t teach the truth; there is no way to teach it. It is a transmission beyond scriptures, beyond words. It is a transmission. It is energy provoking energy in you. It is a kind of synchronicity. The master has disappeared as an ego; he is pure joy. And the disciple sits by the side of the master slowly, slowly partaking of his joy, of his being.
You have to approach the master with great love, with great trust, with an open heart. You are not aware who you are. He is aware who he is, and he is aware who you are. The caterpillar might be said to be unaware that it may become a butterfly. You are caterpillars—bodhisattvas. All caterpillars are bodhisattvas and all bodhisattvas are caterpillars. A bodhisattva means one who can become a butterfly who can become a buddha, who is a buddha in the seed, in essence. But how can the caterpillar be aware that he can become a butterfly? The only way is to commune with butterflies, to see butterflies moving in the wind, in the sun. Seeing them soaring high, seeing them moving from one flower to another flower, seeing their beauty, their color, maybe a deep desire, a longing arises in the caterpillar: “Can I also be the same?” In that very moment the caterpillar has started awakening, a process has been triggered.
The master helps you to reach your own experience. He does not give you the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible; he throws you to yourself. He makes you aware of your inner sources. He makes you aware of your own juice, of your own godliness.
You become so much obsessed with the word love that you forget that love is an experience, not a word. You become so obsessed with the word God that you forget that God is an experience, not a word. The word God is not God, and the word fire is not fire, and the word love is not love either. The master liberates you from words, he liberates you from all kinds of imaginative philosophies. He brings you to a state of wordless silence.
THE WISE MAN WANTS YOU ONLY TO HAVE INSIGHT INTO THINGS, so that you have your own light. But you don’t want insight, you want clear-cut instructions. You don’t want to see yourself, you want to be guided. You don’t want to accept your responsibility toward yourself, you want to throw the whole responsibility on the shoulders of the master, on the shoulders of the wise man. Then you feel at ease. Now he is responsible; if something goes wrong, he is responsible. And everything is going to be wrong, because unless you take your responsibility, nothing is ever going to be right. Nobody can put you right except you yourself. A real religious person is born the moment you accept your responsibility for yourself, the moment you say “Whatsoever I am is my choice—not of the past but of the present. It is my choice of this moment, and if I want to change it I
am absolutely free to change it. Nobody can hinder me—no social force, no state, no history, no economics, no unconscious, can hinder me. If I am determined to change it, I can change it.”
teach you not to be responsible to anybody—the father, the mother, the country, the religion, the party line, don’t be responsible to anybody. You are not! Just be responsible to yourself. Do whatsoever you feel like doing. If it is wrong, the punishment will immediately follow. If it is right, the reward will follow immediately, instantly; there is no other way In this way you will start finding what is wrong, what is right, on your own. You will grow a new sensitivity—Indians call it the third eye. You will start seeing with a new vision, a new eye. Instantly you will know what is wrong, because in the past so many times you have done it and always suffered in consequence. You will know what is right, because whenever you did existence showered great blessings on you. Cause and effect are together, they are not separated by years and lives ….
The only way to grow is to accept all the good, the bad, the joyful, the sorrowful. Everything that happens to you, you are responsible for. That gives you great freedom. If I am responsible for something, then the key to your actions is in my hands. Then you are a slave to me. Then you are a puppet and the strings are in my hand. I say dance, you dance; I say stop, you stop.
The puppeteer, who is behind the screen, is always responsible. God is the great puppeteer. The moment I say there is no puppeteer, no God, no saint, it is all rubbish, I am trying to give you total freedom. I am making you absolutely responsible for everything that happens to you or does not happen.
Religions are like the dead flowers you can find in Bibles, in Gitas …. When they were put in the Bible they were living, they were fragrant, but now it is only a corpse. All holy books are corpses, dead flowers and nothing else. Truth, the living truth, has to be discovered by each individual by himself. Nobody can give it to you. Yes, somebody who has achieved it can trigger a thirst in you, a tremendous desire for it. I cannot give you the truth but I can give you the desire for it.
PART THREE The legacy
I am talking to you ….In this moment something is transpiring between me and you. I will be gone, you will be gone, but that which is transpiring will abide. So these words will go on echoing, reechoing. The speaker will not be there, the listener will not be there, but what is transpiring between the two in this moment has become part of eternity. And there is no shore, so these ripples will go on and on and on.
SCIENCE IS THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH IN THE OBJECTIVE WORLD AND RELIGION is the search for truth in the subjective world. In fact, they are two wings of one bird, of one inquiry—two sides. Ultimately there is no need to have two names.
Science is perfectly good—and it is the same search, just the directions are different. And it will be good that we make one supreme science, which is a synthesis, a synchronicity of the outer science and the inner science.
Desire is desire, whether you want to make a house or become the prime minister or create the world. God cannot be conceived as having desires, so the only thing that remains is that he is whimsical, eccentric. Then there is no need for a cause and no need for desire—just a whim.
But if this whole existence is just created out of a whim it loses all meaning, all significance. And tomorrow another whim may arise in God to destroy, to dissolve the whole universe. So we are simply puppets in the hands of a dictatorial God who has all the powers but who has not a sane mind, who is whimsical. Adinatha must have been a very deep meditator, contemplative, and he must have come to the conclusion that with a God, there is no meaning in the world. If we want meaning in the world then God has to be disposed of. He must have been a man of tremendous courage.
When you depose God you cannot have any ritual, you cannot have worship, you cannot have prayer; something has to be substituted. He substituted austerities, because man became the center of his religion and man has to purify himself. Purity in his conception was that man has to detach himself from the world, has to detach himself from his own body. This distorted the whole thing. He had come to a very significant conclusion, but it remained only a philosophical concept.
My effort is to leave you alone with meditation, with no mediator between you and existence. When you are not in meditation you are separated from existence, and that is your suffering. It’s the same as when you take a fish out of the ocean and throw it on the bank—the misery and the suffering and the torture he goes through, the hankering and the effort to reach back to the ocean because it is where he belongs, he is part of the ocean and he cannot remain apart. Any suffering is simply indicative that you are not in communion with existence, that the fish is not in the ocean. Meditation is nothing but withdrawing all the barriers—thoughts, emotions, sentiments—that create a wall between you and existence. The moment they drop, you suddenly find yourself in tune with the whole; not only in tune, you
really find you are the whole. When a dewdrop slips from a lotus leaf into the ocean it does not find that it is part of the ocean, it finds it is the ocean. And to find it is the ultimate goal, the ultimate realization. There is nothing beyond it.
utter silence. The word meditation makes it look heavier. It is better to call it just a simple, innocent silence and existence opens all its beauties to you. And as it goes on growing, you go on growing, and there comes a moment when you have reached the very peak of your potentiality-you can call it buddhahood, enlightenment, bhagwatta, godliness, whatever—it has no name, so any name will do.
MEDITATION FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY I was working for ten years continuously, teaching direct relaxation. It was simple for me, so I thought it would be simple for everyone. Then, by and by, I became aware that it is impossible. I was in a fallacy, it was not possible. I would say, “Relax,” to those I was teaching. They would appear to understand the meaning of the word, but they could not relax. Then I had to devise new methods for meditation, which create tension first—more tension. They create such tension that you become just mad. And then I say, “Relax.” When you have come up to the climax, your whole body, your whole mind, becomes hungry for relaxation. With so much tension you want to stop, and I go on pushing you to continue, continue to the very end. Do whatsoever you can do to create tensions, and then, when you stop you just fall down from the peak into a deep abyss. The abyss is the end, the effortlessness is the end, but you can use tension as the means.
“Scientists say that even metal gets tired; it also needs rest. The mind is a very sophisticated phenomenon, the most sophisticated thing in the whole universe, and you have used it so much that finding a chance to become silent it immediately became silent. You should be happy.” He said, “But will it start again or not?” I said, “It will, whenever you want.” He said, “I became afraid that if it does not start again … then Nityananda Chatterji, your life is finished. You will be in a madhouse—why, in the first place, did you ask this man about meditation!” And I said, “I was also asking myself why you want to meditate.”
I said, “Don’t be worried. You will not lose your mind.” And you will be surprised: that man progressed in meditation better than anyone else. That gave me the idea of a special meditation, and I started using a new technique, gibberish. It was not absolutely new, but nobody had used it as a device for many people to meditate …. I told Nityananda Chatterji, “You don’t be worried. You have been doing gibberish so much that you are going to certainly attain a deep silence.” And he became very silent. The whole university was shocked. They could not believe it—what had I done to him? Now people would approach him, want him to talk, and he would say, “No, enough. When I used to talk, you all used to escape. I am finished. Just leave me alone.”
And remember, the English word meditate gives a wrong connotation. When we use the word meditation it gives a feeling that you are meditating upon something. You have to have some object to meditate upon—and that is the problem. In the East we have another word, dhyana. Dhyana simply means there is no question of focusing, concentrating on something; rather, it is dropping all contents of the mind and just being.
You have to start from the point where you are. And all points are good, because all points are on the circumference and from every point on the circumference the center is available. So move toward the center, don’t be worried about where you are.
These are all just stories. If it appeals, good; if it doesn’t appeal, very good! There is no need to believe; you need not do anything about it. Don’t waste your time with God. Just because of this word so many people go on wasting time. Somebody is trying to prove, somebody is trying to disprove, great treatises are being written.
Buddhist, the Parsee—whosoever comes is accepted. I love all kinds of stories! Any kind of beginning is good, but begin. Don’t remain stuck where you are; move toward the center. Meditate, and that will bring you home. And then you can call it whatsoever you like; that is none of my business what you call it. You can give it any name of your own fancy.
So I have created new methods that are cathartic, so that you can throw out all repressions, all garbage out of your being, and can become clean, a tabula rasa. Then those one hundred and twelve methods—any one method that appeals to you will be enough to transform your being.
FOR SIXTY MINUTES EVERY DAY, JUST FORGET ABOUT THE WORLD. LET the world disappear from you, and you disappear from the world. Take an about-turn, a 180-degree turn, and just look inside. In the beginning you will see only clouds. Don’t be worried about them; those clouds are created by your repressions. You will come across anger, hatred, greed, and all kinds of black holes. You have repressed them, so they are there. And your so-called religions have taught you to repress them, so they are there like wounds. You have been hiding them. That’s why my emphasis is first on catharsis. Unless you go through great catharsis you will have to pass through many clouds. It will be tiring, and you may be so impatient that you may turn back into the world. And you will say, “There is nothing. There is no lotus and no fragrance, there is only stink, rubbish.” You know it. When you close your eyes and you start moving in, what do you come across? You don’t come across those beautiful lands buddhas talk about. You come across hells, agonies, repressed there, waiting for you. Anger of many lives, accumulating—it is all a mess there, so one wants to remain outside. One wants to go to the movie, to the club, to meet people and gossip. One wants to remain occupied till one is tired and falls asleep. That’s the way you are living, that’s your style of life. So when one starts looking in, naturally one is very much puzzled. Buddhas say that there is great benediction, great fragrance—you come across lotus flowers blooming and such fragrance that it is eternal. They talk about this paradise, they talk about this kingdom of God that is within you. And when you go in, you only come across hell.
But catharsis helps. If you cathart, if you go through chaotic meditations—you throw all these clouds outside, all these darknesses outside—then mindfulness becomes easier. That is my reason why I emphasize first chaotic meditations and then silent meditations. First active meditations, then passive meditations. You can move into passivity only when all that is there like junk has been thrown out. Anger has been thrown out, greed has been thrown out … layer upon layer, these things are there. But once you have thrown them out, you can easily…
1972: MEDITATION CAMP, MT. ABU, RAJASTHAN, INDIA The morning meditation is in four stages. For the first ten minutes you are to do fast breathing. You are to enter into existence through breathing, you are to give vigor and energy to breathing. You are to put your very life into breathing—so much so that when the breath goes out, your very soul goes out with it, and when the breath comes in, the whole existence comes in with it. You have to breathe so intensely that you forget everything else, only the breathing remains—as if you yourself have become the breathing. This intense breathing for ten minutes will awaken all the energies that are asleep within you. It will arouse and activate all those energies that you have never even touched. But miserliness won’t do. Don’t think along the lines, “I will breathe slowly. After all, if not much at least some energy will awaken.” No, not at all—because the process of awakening begins only after a certain limit has been reached. It is the same as when you heat…
With man, there is a difficulty because he has a personality, an individuality. Each individual turns into steam at individual temperatures—or, in other words, the one hundred degrees of every person is different. Man also turns into steam only at one hundred degrees, but every man’s one hundred degrees is different. So it is difficult to tell you at what point you will turn into steam. One thing is certain: You can judge your own hundred-degree point. The criterion is that if you did not withhold yourself at all, then you are at one hundred degrees—if you stake yourself totally in your effort, if you are absolutely certain that you are not withholding yourself at all. And the other person has nothing to do with it—it is your own thing. Hence, others may or may not know about it, that is not the point. Only you have to know that you are not withholding yourself and that you are putting yourself totally into it. If you are putting yourself totally into it, you are at one hundred degrees. Then there is nothing to worry about.
And it is also possible that someone else may be making less effort than you are and may be at one hundred degrees—he has put himself completely on the line. Hence, you are not to be concerned about others; you be clear within yourself whether you are putting yourself at stake completely or not.
Meditation is a gamble. In all other gambling we put some thing at stake, and in meditation we put ourselves at stake. It certainly is an act for a gambler and not for a businessman, because a businessman’s concern is that there be the least risk, even if the gains are small. A gambler’s concern is that the gains be great even if there is a risk of losing everything. This is the difference between a gambler and a businessman. Meditation is not at all an…
The inner gambling is just the opposite: Even a defeat is only a beginning for some win that is to come. A meditator never loses ultimately—he loses many times, but finally he wins. Don’t think that a Mahavira or a Buddha wins the very first day that a Mohammed or a Christ wins the very first day. No, nobody wins the first day. They lose badly! But finally…
Then, after ten minutes of intense breathing, when the energy is awakened, it is to be thrown out—from whatever route it wants to go out. Your body may jump, leap, dance, weep, shout, make sounds, may appear to have gone completely insane; you are not to stop it. You are to give it a completely…
Why? Because there are endless numbers of madnesses accumulated within us. You are to let it go mad completely. Completely mad means you don’t carry any fear—“What am I doing? Me shouting? I’m a professor in the college and what is this I’m doing?” Or “I’m a doctor and I’m doing this…
A doctor remains in fear of his patient, a teacher remains in fear of his student, and a shopkeeper remains in fear of his customer. No matter who you are afraid of, to go mad means you drop each of those fears—no matter with whom the fear is concerned. The husband is in fear of the wife and the wife of the husband. The father is in fear of the son and the son of the father—whatever fears you may have, to go mad means, “Now I drop all fears.” Fearlessly, you will have to let whatsoever wants to happen, happen. We accumulate madnesses day by day. It is as if there is rubbish in the house and you go on hiding and piling it in a corner. This will…
Slowly, slowly this accumulation becomes so big that our lives pass only in somehow managing it, lest it come out, lest it fall out, is exposed—lest someone sees it. We then become so afraid of it that we stop looking within ourselves completely. Because the fear has gotten so big, and there is so much rubbish. We fear it will be exposed. Only those can enter meditation who are ready to throw out all this rubbish. As it is thrown out, everything becomes light in you. The second stage is that of catharsis, of throwing everything out so that a cleanliness descends within. Until you gather courage, you won’t be able to throw the rubbish out. But once you are able to do that, you will be a totally different man. The second stage is that of completely going mad. The third stage is that of making the sound “Hoo.” One has to make this sound “Hoo” while continuously jumping up and down for ten minutes. The sound of “Hoo” is like a hammer—you have to hammer with it. In your body, there is energy that resides right near your sex center and which yoga calls kundalini—or one can give it any other name one wants to; scientists now call it bioelectricity. It is hidden there, and if a deep and strong sound of “Hoo” is made, that dormant energy, that sleeping energy gets activated. The analogy that the ancient sages have used for it is that of a snake sitting coiled up—and when the snake is hit upon, it rises with an open hood and its coil disappears. If a snake is sufficiently aroused, it stands almost on its tail. Exactly like that, this energy is lying dormant within us. If it is hit, it starts rising up.
But this hitting should be done only when you have had the opportunity to throw out your madness from within. Otherwise, if it rises in the middle of all your madness, you can actually go mad. Hence, many times seekers go mad. The reason for it is that they start arousing their kundalini without any deep cleaning. The reason for that madness is that they do not have a scientific attitude. It is necessary to do this cleansing first.
And then in the fourth stage you are to lie down like a corpse, as if you are not there at all—absolutely quiet. You are to leave your body completely relaxed, just as if you are dead. With closed eyes, you are to be in a waiting, quietly within. Much will happen. In that inner awaiting, much will happen. 3
WHEN A PERSON MEDITATES, HE LOSES ALL RESTLESSNESS. HIS THINKING stops, his body movements stop; he becomes like a marble statue … totally still, unmoving. In that moment he is a pool of energy. He is tremendously powerful. If you see somebody meditating, sit by his side and you will be benefited. Sitting by the side of someone who is in a meditative mood, you will move into meditation also. His energy will pull you out of your mess. Meditation is nothing but absolute rest.
There are a thousand and one methods to create that rest. My own methods are such that first I would like you to become as restless as possible, so nothing is hanging inside you; restlessness has been thrown out—then move into rest. And there will be no disturbance, it will be easier. In Buddha’s time, such dynamic methods were not needed. People were more simple, more authentic. They lived a more real life. Now people are living a very repressed life, a very unreal life. When they don’t want to smile, they smile. When they want to be angry they show compassion. People are false, the whole life pattern is false. The whole culture is like a great falsity. People are just acting, not living. Much is left hanging, many incomplete experiences go on being collected, piled up, inside their minds.
But real meditation starts only when you are in rest.
MEDITATION IS NOT “MEDITATING UPON” SOMETHING BUT JUST BEING oneself—no movement away from the center, no movement at all … just being yourself so totally that there is not even a flickering. The inner flame remains unmoving. The other has disappeared; only you are. Not a single thought is there. The whole world has disappeared. The mind is no longer there; only you are, in your absolute purity.
with people, they cannot work, they have become shattered. Psychotherapy provides them a certain togetherness—not integrity, mind you, but only a certain togetherness. It binds them into a bundle. They remain still fragmentary; nothing becomes crystallized in them, no soul is born. They don’t become blissful, they are only less unhappy, less miserable. Psychology helps them to accept the misery. It helps them to accept that this is all that life can give to you, so don’t ask for more. In a way it is dangerous to their inner growth—because the inner growth happens only when there is a divine discontent. When you are absolutely unsatisfied with things as they are, only then do you go in search; only then do you start rising higher, only then do you make efforts to pull yourself out of the mud.
The psychology of the buddhas is neither analysis nor synthesis; it is transcendence, it is going beyond the mind. It is not work within the mind, it is work that takes you outside the mind. That’s exactly the meaning of the English word ecstasy—to stand out.
The psychology of the buddhas cuts the very roots of the tree, which create all kinds of neuroses, psychoses, which create the fragmentary man, the mechanical man, the robotlike man.
The psychology of the buddhas does not work within the mind. It has no interest in analyzing or synthesizing. It simply helps you to get out of the mind so that you can have a look from the outside. And that very look is a transformation. The moment you can look at your mind as an object you become detached from it, you become disidentified from it; a distance is created, and roots are cut.
How are roots cut in this way?—because it is you who goes on feeding the mind. If you are identified you feed the mind; if you are not identified you stop feeding it. It drops dead on its own accord.
Meditation, awareness, watchfulness, witnessing—that is the uniqueness of the third psychology. No psychoanalyst is needed. You can do it on your own—in fact, you have to do it on your own. No guidelines are needed, it is such a simple process—simple if you do it. If you don’t do it, it looks very complicated. Even the word meditation scares many people. They think it something very difficult, arduous. Yes, if you don’t do it, it is difficult and arduous. It is like swimming. It is very difficult if you don’t know how to swim. But if you know, you know it is so simple a process. Nothing can be more simple than swimming. It is not an art at all; it is so spontaneous and so natural. Be more aware of your mind. And in being aware of your mind you will become aware of the fact that you are not the mind, and that is the beginning of the revolution. You have started flowing higher and higher. You are no longer tethered to the mind. Mind functions like a rock and keeps you down. It keeps you within the field of gravitation. The moment you are no longer attached to the mind, you enter the buddhafield. When gravitation loses its power over you, you enter into the buddhafield. Entering the buddhafield means entering into the world of levitation. You start floating upward. Mind goes on dragging you downward.
Group methods can exist only if your ego has come to a point where it is a burden to carry it. When the ego has become so burdensome that to be alone is to be in anguish, then group methods become meaningful—because in a group you can dissolve your ego. If the ego is not very evolved, then individual methods can help you. You can move to a mountain, you can be isolated, or even living in an ashram with a master you can work alone: you do your meditation, others do their meditation. You never work together.
The Western mind is very speedy, fast, because the conditioning is for only one life—seventy years—and so much to do. One third of your life goes into sleep, one third of your life goes into education, training—what is left? Much of it goes into earning your livelihood. If you count everything, you will be surprised: out of seventy years you cannot even have seven years left for something that you want to do. Naturally there is hurry, a mad rush, so mad that one forgets where one is going. All that you remember is whether you are going with speed or not. The means becomes the end.
You have to throw out all the junk that your mind is full of. Unless you are unloaded you cannot sit silently. It is just as if you tell a child to sit silently in the corner of the room. It is very difficult, he is so full of energy. You are repressing a volcano! The best way is, first tell him, “Go run outside around the house ten times; then come and sit down in the corner.”
ZORBA THE BUDDHA: THE WHOLE HUMAN BEING Take life very playfully—then you can have both the worlds together. You can have the cake and eat it too. And that is a real art! This world and that, sound and silence, love and meditation, being with people, relating, and being alone. All these things have to be lived together in a kind of simultaneity; only then will you know the uttermost depth of your being and the uttermost height of your being.