Before you can Love yourself you have to know yourself

One has to begin not by loving oneself, because you don't know who you are. Who are you going to love? If you start by loving yourself, you will love only your ego, which is not your self, which is your false personality. Almost everybody loves his personality; everybody loves his ego. Even the ugliest woman, if you say to her, "How beautiful you are," will not refuse to accept it. I have heard... Two old men meet on a street corner. "Where have you been for the past eight weeks?""In jail," says the second man."In jail? How come?" says the first man.The second old man replies, "Well, about eight weeks ago I was standing on a street corner and this beautiful young girl rushes up with a policeman and says, `He is the man, officer. He is the one who attacked me.' And you know, I felt so flattered, I admitted it."How many things you have admitted that you know perfectly well are not true. People say you are so loving, so sincere, so truthful, so beautiful, so honest -- and you never deny. This is not the love I have been talking about. Yes, I would like you to love yourself, because unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else. You don't know what love is if you have not loved yourself. But before you can love yourself you have to know yourself; hence love is secondary, meditation is primary. And the miracle is, if you meditate and slowly, slowly get out of the ego and out of your personality and realize your real self, love will come on its own. You don't have to do anything, it is a spontaneous flowering. But it blossoms only in a certain climate, and that climate I call meditation. In the climate of silence -- no-mind, no disturbance inside, absolute clarity, peace and silence -- suddenly, you will see thousands of flowers have opened within you, and their fragrance is love. Naturally, first you will love yourself, because that will be your first encounter. First you will become aware of the fragrance that is arising in you and the light that has been born in you, and the blissfulness that is showering on you. Then loving will become your nature. Then you will love many; then you will love all. In fact, what we know in our ignorance is a relationship, and what we know in our awareness is no longer a relationship. It is not that I love you; it is that I am love.And you have to understand the difference. When you say, "I love you," what about others? What about the whole existence? The more narrow your love is, the more imprisoned. Its wings are cut; it cannot fly in the sky across the sun. It does not have freedom; it is almost in a golden cage. The cage is beautiful, but inside the cage the bird is not the same bird that you see in the sky opening its wings. Love has to become not a relationship, not a narrowing, but a broadening. Love has to become your very quality, your very character, your very being, your radiance. Just as the sun radiates light not for anyone in particular, unaddressed, meditation radiates love unaddressed. Of course, first it is felt within oneself, for oneself, and then it starts radiating all around. Then you love not only human beings, you love trees, you love birds; you simply love, you are love. You are asking, Prem Kabir, "What does it mean to love myself?" It means meditation. It means to be yourself. And nature will bring love as a reward. Just don't listen to the priests. They are the enemies of love. They have been teaching the world to hate yourself and to hate the world, because they have been teaching either it is a sin that you were born or it is because of the evil acts of your past life that you are suffering in this life. But no religion accepts this life with joy and rejoicing, as a gift, as a reward of which you are not worthy, of which you don't claim any right. You have not earned it. So the first thing is, avoid the priests. They have taught you life-negative values. And my effort here is to bring back life-affirmation. That's what I call loving yourself, accepting yourself not as a sinner. How can you accept yourself if you think you are a sinner? How can you love yourself if you think you are nothing but full of guilt, nothing but an accumulated past of evil acts of millions of lives? You will hate yourself. And that's what your priests have been saying: renounce life, hate life, hate pleasure, hate everything, and sacrifice everything if you want to enter into paradise. Nobody has ever returned from paradise, so there is no evidence of any paradise anywhere, no proof, it is just a futile exercise which has never been able to come to a conclusion.The old priest was warning his congregation about sin."Sin," he said, "is like a big dog. There is the big dog of pride, and the big dog of envy, and the big dog of greed, and finally, there is the big dog of sex. And you have to kill those big dogs before they kill you and prevent you from getting to heaven. It can be done. I know, because over the years I have done it. I killed the big dog of envy, the big dog of pride, the big dog of greed -- and yes, my children, I killed the big dog of sex.""Father," came a voice from the back of the church, "are you sure that last dog did not die a natural death?"You cannot change nature. If you can simply live naturally, transformations come. If they come, then sex disappears -- but not by your efforts. By your efforts it goes on hanging around you. The more you repress it, the more you have it. The more you live it, the more is the possibility to go beyond it.An old couple were sitting at home one evening listening to the faith healer on the radio."Okay folks," he began, "God wants to heal you all. All you have to do is put one hand on the radio and the other hand on the part that is sick."The old lady got up, shuffled over to the radio and put her hand on her arthritic hip. Then the old man put one hand on the radio and the other hand on his fly. His wife looked at him with contempt and said, "You old idiot. The man said he would heal the sick, not raise the dead!"Live naturally. Live peacefully. Live inwardly. Just give a little time to yourself, being alone, being silent, just watching the inner scene of your mind. Slowly, slowly thoughts disappear. Slowly, slowly one day the mind is so still, so silent as if it is not there. Just this silence... in this moment you are not here, as if the whole Buddha Hall is empty.In this silence within you, you will find a new dimension of life. In this dimension greed does not exist, sex does not exist, anger does not exist, violence does not exist. It is not a credit to you; it is the new dimension beyond mind where love exists, pure, unpolluted by any biological urge; where compassion exists for no other reason -- not to get any reward in heaven -- because compassion is a reward unto itself. A deep longing exists to share all that treasure that you have discovered within yourself, and to shout from the housetops to the people, "You are not poor! Paradise is within you.You need not be beggars, you are born emperors." You just have to discover your empire, and your empire is not of the outside world; your empire is of your own interiority. It is within you and it has always been there, just waiting for you to come home. Love will come, and will come in abundance -- so much that you cannot contain it. You will find it is overflowing you, it is reaching all directions. Just discover your hidden splendor. Life can be simply a song, a song of joy. Life can be simply a dance, a celebration, a continuous celebration. All that you have to learn is a life-affirmative lifestyle. I call only that man religious who is life-affirmative. All those who are life-negative may think they are religious; they are not. Their sadness shows they are not. Their seriousness shows they are not. A man of authentic religion will have a sense of humor. It is our universe, it is our home. We are not orphans. This earth is our mother. This sky is our father. This whole vast universe is for us, and we are for it. In fact, there is no division between us and the whole. We are organically joined with it, we are part of one orchestra. To feel this music of existence is the only religion that I can accept as authentic, as valid. It does not have any scriptures, it need not have. It does not have any statues of God, because it does not believe in any hypotheses. It has nothing to worship, it has only to be silent, and out of that silence comes gratitude, prayer, and the whole existence turns into a godliness. There is no God as a person. God is spread all over: in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in humanity, in the wise, in the otherwise. All that is alive is nothing but godliness ready to open its wings, ready to fly into the freedom, ultimate freedom of consciousness. Yes, you will love yourself and you will love the whole existence too.

Take Your Mind into a State of Peace and Benevolence

Learning to turn my thoughts away from all my responsibilities at the day's end and take my mind into a state of peace and benevolence enables me to carry greater and greater loads without feeling the burden. When my inner landscape is full of beautiful thoughts, everything I do is a pleasure. Gently, I calm down chaotic situations and offer solace to troubled minds.

True Fortune Follows Honest Heart

True fortune comes to the one who recognises and uses his treasures with an honest heart. Sometimes we might be faced with certain situations where we find that we are not very fortunate. We find ourselves thinking about all those things that we need to have in order for us to be able to bring a positive outcome. Because of this kind of thinking, we tend to miss out on perceiving those treasures that we can make use of. There are a lot of treasures within us that we can use in our practical life. These treasures could be our talents, skills, or some specialities of ours. Under all circumstances we need to have an awareness of these treasures. When we are aware of them we will begin to use them in our daily life instead of just expecting things to happen right. This is what will create a good fortune for us.

Osho

Osho is a very well known Indian spiritual master, who started the Osho movement. This Osho movement paved way for a new way of living life that is spiritual, philosophical as well as controversial. Well, in this article, I have provided some famous quotes by Osho. Check out Osho quotations.

-Only those who are ready to become nobodies are able to love.

-Nobody is here to fulfill your dream. Everybody is here to fulfill his own destiny, his own reality.

-If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinion for or against.

-Don't choose. Accept life as it is in its totality.

-When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised.

-Life is a balance between rest and movement.

-Fools laugh at others. Wisdom laughs at itself.

-Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars. and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.

"Truth cannot be defined, although it can certainly be experienced. But experience is not a definition. A definition is made by the mind, experience comes through participating. If somebody asks, "What is a dance?" how can you define it? But you can dance and you can know the inner feel of it. God is the ultimate dance."

"To be alone in the only real revolution. To accept that you are alone is the greatest transformation that can happen to you."

"The perfectionist is bound to be aneurotic, he cannot enjoy life, until he is perfect. And perfection as such never happens, it is not in the nature of things. Totality is possible, perfection is not possible."

"The heart knows nothing of the past, nothing of the future; it knows only of the present. The heart has no time concept."

"Seriousness is a sickness; your sense of humor makes you more human, more humble. The sense of humor -- according to me -- is one of the most essential parts of religiousness."

"My purpose is to deprogram you, to clean you, to uncondition you and leave you fresh, young, innocent. And from there you can grow into a real, authentic individual."

"Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other . But if you have some idea, then you will see your own idea in me."

"If you really want to know who I am, you will have to be absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirrors will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored."

"Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Notthat you are in love - now you are love"

"Experience life in all possible ways --good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light,summer-winter. Experience all the dualities. Don't be afraid of experience, becausethe more experience you have, the more mature you become."

"The heart is always right-- if there's aquestion of choosing between the mind and the heart-- because mind is a creation of the society. It has been educated. You have been given it by the society, not by existence. The heart is unpolluted."

"The best teacher is one who can help the last person hearing him, the lowest in intelligence, to understand. Of course the best ones will understand easily, but you have to keep aware of those who are not that intelligent."

बघ माझी आठवण येते का?

मुसळधार पाऊस खिडकीत उभं राहून पहा
बघ माझी आठवण येते का?
हात लांबव, तळहातांवर झेल पावसाचं पाणी
इवलसं तळं होईल
बघ माझी आठवण येते का?

वार्‍याने उडणारे पावसाचे थेंब चेहर्‍यावर घे
डोळे मिटून घे, तल्लीन हो
नाहिच जाणवलं काही तर बाहेर पड, समुद्रावर ये
तो उधाणलेला असेलच, पाण्यात पाय बुडवून उभी रहा
वाळू सरकेल पायाखाली, बघ माझी आठवण येते का?

मग चालू लाग, पावसाच्या अगणित सुया टोचून घे
चालत रहा पाऊस थांबेपर्यत, तो थांबणार नाहिच, शेवटी घरी ये
साडी बदलू नकोस, केस पुसू नकोस, पुन्हा त्याच खिडकीत ये
आता नवर्‍याची वाट बघ, बघ माझी आठवण येते का?

दारावर बेल वाजेल, दार उघड, नवरा असेल
त्याच्या हातातली बॅग घे, रेनकोट तो स्वतःच काढ़ेल
तो विचारेल तूला तुझ्या भिजण्याचं कारण, तू म्हणं घर गळतयं
मग चहा कर, तूही घे
तो उठून पंकज उधास लावेल, तो तू बंद कर
किशोरीचं सहेलारे लाव, बघ माझी आठवण येते का?

मग रात्र होईल तो तुला कुशीत घेईल, म्हणेल तू मला आवडतेस
पण तुही तसचं म्हणं
विजांचा कडकडात होईल, ढ़गांचा गडगडाट होईल
तो त्या कुशीवर वळेल, त्याच्या पाठमोर्‍या शरीराकडे बघ
बघ माझी आठवण येते का?

यानंतर सताड डोळ्यांनी छप्पर पहायला विसरू नकोस
यानंतर बाहेरचा पाऊस नुसता ऐकण्याचा प्रयत्न कर
यानंतर उशीखाली सुरी घे, झोपी जाण्याचा प्रयत्न कर
येत्या पावसाळ्यात एक दिवसतरी, बघ माझी आठवण येते का?

What does Love mean?

Love has different meanings for all. To writers, love is words. To artists, love is color. To a comic, love is laughter. To a baby, it is mother. To bees, it's nectar. To flowers, it is sunshine. And to cows, it is a lot of bull.
It all depends on you what love is going to mean. Love is a ladder with many rungs. At the lowest it is physiology, biology, chemistry. It is nothing but a play of hormones. A man is attracted towards a woman, a woman is attracted towards a man. They think they are falling in love, but if hormones could laugh they must be laughing inside you -- you are befooled. What you are calling love is nothing but attraction between male and female hormones. It is pure chemistry; at the lowest point it is not more than that. It is animal, it is lust.
And millions of people know only love at its lowest. Because of these people there has arisen a great tradition of renouncing love. The people who think that lust is love have created great religions in which love has to be renounced. Both are wrong, because both have accepted the lowest rung as if it is the all. It is not so. If you go a little higher, a man's love for music is not chemistry, it is not hormonal, it is not physiology; it is psychological. A man's love for flowers cannot be reduced to sexuality. A man's love for painting... there have been painters who have sacrificed their whole lives just to paint.
Vincent van Gogh, one of the greatest painters, sacrificed himself totally just to paint: painting was far more important than life itself. Because of the painting he could not work; he was continuously painting so there was no time to work. His brother used to give him just enough money to live by, because nobody was interested in his being a painter. And he was a strange painter too, a very great genius. Whenever there is a genius it takes hundreds of years to recognize him. He was not a traditional painter. He was bringing to painting something new, a new vision.
So nobody was able to appreciate his paintings, they were not selling. You will be surprised to know that not even a single painting was sold while Van Gogh was alive; now each of his paintings is worth millions of dollars. Only a few paintings have survived, two hundred at the most -- he painted thousands. All are lost, because nobody cared to preserve them.
He used to give his paintings to friends just free, because nobody was interested in his paintings; not only were they not interested, they were not even courageous enough to put his paintings in their sitting rooms because people would laugh at them. His approach towards life and nature was so new. His brother used to give him enough money weekly just to live on. He would eat for only three days in the week; four days he would save money to paint. Now how long can you live in this way?
By the time he was thirty-seven, only thirty-seven, he committed suicide. And the note that he has left is of tremendous significance. He has written that "I am committing suicide not against anybody -- I have no complaint against anybody or life -- life has been a great fulfillment to me. I am committing suicide because all that I wanted to paint I have painted; now there is no point in living. I have done what I had come to do; my work is finished."
He wanted to paint the sun in all its possible faces. For one year he was continuously painting the sun. He was continuously standing in the open under the sun. His stomach was empty, he was hungry, and the hot sun... and he was continuously painting because there was not much time left. The sun drove him mad, it was too much. And then he committed suicide, because he had painted the sun from the sunrise to the sunset, all the faces, all the colors, all possible clouds. He had done his work. He died contentedly.Now, this love for painting, this love for art, is something higher -- higher than biology, higher than chemistry, higher than physiology. It is not lust, you can't call it lust. It is as passionate as lust or more so, because very few people die for a woman and very few people die for a man. But this man died for his paintings. This is psychological; this is far better.
But there is still a higher state: the spiritual love, the love of a Buddha, the love of a Jesus, the love of a Krishna. It is totally different. It is not even aesthetic, psychological; it is spiritual. Now love has the expression of compassion -- passion has turned into compassion. Buddha loves the whole of existence, because he has too much and he has to share it. He is burdened by the love released in him; the love has to be shared with the trees, with the birds, with people, with animals, with whosoever comes by.
At the lowest when love is just lust, physiological, it is an exploitation of the other, it is using the other as a means. Soon it is finished. Once you have exploited the woman or the man you lose interest; the interest was only for the moment. The moment the woman is well-known to you you are finished with her. You have used the other human being as a means -- which is ugly, which is immoral. To use another human being as a means is the most immoral act in existence, because each human being is an end unto himself.
Psychological love knows how to sacrifice. The art, the poetry, the painting, the music, the dance, becomes the end, they are no more means. YOU become a means. The biological love reduces the other to a means; the psychological love raises the other as the end.
But in the spiritual world there is no question of means and ends, there is no question of the other; there are not two. Buddha loves the existence because Buddha has become the existence itself. There is no question of 'I' and 'thou'; it is not a dialogue. At the point of the ultimate consciousness love is not a dialogue; there is no I/thou relationship, it is not a relationship. It is pure overflowing of love.
Prem Jyoti, that is the meaning of your name: PREM means love, JYOTI means flame. A buddha is a flame of love, just pure flame with no smoke. The smoke comes from lust. When there is no lust, when you don't want to get anything out of your love, when you simply want to give, when you feel obliged because others accept your love, the flame is without smoke. It is pure, it is pure gold.
And do you know? -- love rises always upwards, just like the flame always rises upwards. The flame never goes downwards. Lust is like water, it goes downwards; love is like a flame, fire, it always goes upwards. And between the two is the psychological phenomenon: something of lust in it, passion, and something of compassion in it. It is just in the middle. It has some quality of the lower and some quality of the higher to it.
Hence when the poet is in his poetic mood he is almost like the mystic, but it is only a question of mood. When he is not in his poetic mood he is just as ordinary or maybe more ordinary than the so-called ordinary people. You may have observed it: when a musician drowns himself in his music he rises to such peaks, such ephemeral peaks, that you can feel the presence of great mystery. And the same musician you can see sitting in some hotel drinking tea, talking all kinds of nonsense. He looks too ordinary; you cannot believe that this man was creating such beautiful music, such celestial music!
If you read the poetry, the poet seems to be like a seer, a Kahlil Gibran. If you read THE PROPHET it is almost like a prophet, but if you meet Kahlil Gibran and see him in his ordinary moods you will be surprised: he is a very angry person, jealous, quarrelsome. He goes into very childish tantrums, throws things, is very possessive. If you meet Kahlil Gibran you will be surprised... how could this man write a book like THE PROPHET? -- because the book rises to the same heights as the Bible, as the Koran.
But the man is not abiding on those heights; only once in a while clouds are not there and the poet can see the sun, the ocean, can see the open sky and can give you a glimpse of it in his poetry, in his music. But soon the clouds are there again and the sun is no longer available... and the poet is as ordinary as you are or even more ordinary, because when you fall from a glimpse you fall into depths, just to keep balance.
So you can find a poet drunk, lying down in the gutter like a dog, shouting nonsense, and the same poet brings such beautiful flowers from the unknown. So in the middle both things will be together; it is a mixed phenomenon. Rise from the lower, but don't stop in the middle. Go on rising to the highest.
When I talk about love I always mean the highest, with one difference: when others speak of the highest they deny the lowest; I don't deny it, I accept it. I want to use it as a stepping-stone. The lower has to be purified by the higher. The lower has to be transformed by the higher, not denied, not rejected. If you reject it, it persists. If you reject it, if you repress it, it takes revenge. It makes you more ugly than you ever were before.A woman with a baby, next in line in the crowded anteroom of a station of the Infant Welfare Society, was shown into the doctor's office by the nurse in charge.The doctor examined the baby, and then asked the woman, "Is he breast-fed or bottle-fed?""Breast-fed," she replied."Strip down to you waist," he ordered. She did, and he examined her. He pressed each breast, increasing and decreasing pressure. He squeezed and pulled on each nipple. Suddenly he remarked, "No wonder this child is suffering from malnutrition -- you don't have any milk.""Naturally," she replied. "I am his aunt. But I'm glad I came."If you go on repressing things, then on the surface you may look like a saint, but only on the surface. It is better to be a sinner on the surface and a saint in the center than vice versa.The old maid was walking down a dimly lit street when a holdup man jumped out of the bushes. "Give me your money!" he demanded."I don't have any," she managed to reply.He proceeded to search her thoroughly. Every possible place of concealment was explored."I guess you were telling me the truth," he finally muttered angrily. "You don't have any money on you.""For heaven's sake," she wailed, "don't stop now! I'll write you a check!"I am not in favor of repressing the lower. The lower has to be raised to the heights, the lower has to be given wings. With insight, with understanding, it is possible. If you deny the lower you will never be able to reach the higher, because the lower rung is a necessary step. Yes, go beyond it, but you can go beyond it only if you don't reject it. Use it, but remember not to become obsessed with it. These two things have to be remembered: one is, not to be obsessed with it, not to stop at it, and the second is, not to reject and deny it but to use it as a stepping-stone.
Be skillful. Buddha's word is UPAYA -- skill. And when he says "upaya," he means be very artful in transforming your life. It is only a potential, a seed, but it can become a great tree and it can blossom in its own time. And when a tree blossoms, when thousands of flowers have arisen on the tree branches, there is great joy in the being of the tree, great ecstasy.
You are also a seed -- become a tree. The seed may be ugly -- seeds almost always are; the roots may be ugly, but remember, it is on the roots that the tree has to grow. The roots have to be used; without roots there will be no flowering. Without physiological attraction there will be no psychological growth. And without psychological love affairs with art, music, sculpture, there is no possibility of spiritual love. Poets and painters and dancers and musicians are a necessary step towards becoming a buddha.

Am I in Love?

Question: During my whole life, I always thought that I loved Somebody. Now, being here for the first time with you, I Ask myself: have I ever really been in Love? Am I even able To love? Am I able to Love you?

:The basic fallacy that you are carrying within you is that you always loved somebody. This is one of the most significant things about all human beings; their love is always for somebody, it is addressed -- and the moment you address your love, you destroy it. It is as if you are saying, "I will breathe only for you -- and when you are not there, then how can I breathe?"Love should be like breathing. It should be just a quality in you -- wherever you are, with whomsoever you are, or even if you are alone, love goes on overflowing from you. It is not a question of being in love with someone -- it is a question of being love. People are frustrated in their love experiences, not because something is wrong with love... they narrow down love to such a point that the ocean of love cannot remain there. You cannot contain the ocean -- it is not a small stream; love is your whole being -- love is your godliness. One should think in terms of whether one is loving or not. The question of the object of love does not arise. With your wife, you love your wife; with your children, you love your children; with your servants, you love your servants; with your friends, you love your friends; with the trees, you love the trees; with the ocean, you love the ocean. You are love. Love is not dependent on the object, but is a radiation of your subjectivity -- a radiation of your soul. And the vaster the radiation, the greater is your soul. The wider spread are the wings of your love, the bigger is the sky of your being. You have lived under a common fallacy of all human beings. Now you are asking, "Am I able to love You?" -- again, the same fallacy. Just ask: Am I able to become love? When you are in my presence, you need not think of loving me; otherwise, you have not come out of your ordinary fallacies. Here, you have to learn... just being loving. Of course your love will reach me too; it will reach others too. It will be a vibe surrounding you, spreading all over; and if so many people are simply broadcasting their love, their song, their ecstasy, the whole place becomes a temple. There is no other way of making a temple. Then the whole area is filled with a new kind of energy, and nobody is at a loss -- because on you is showering the love of so many people: on each single person, so many people's love is showering.Drop that fallacy. And because of that fallacy, another question arises in you: "... or has life brought me to the point where happiness in love does not happen anymore?" Life is nothing but an opportunity for love to blossom. If you are alive, the opportunity is there -- even to the last breath. You may have missed your whole life: just the last breath, the last moment on the earth, if you can be love, you have not missed anything -- because a single moment of love is equal to the whole eternity of love.

Mystery of Women

it is one of the ancientmost questions. Man has always puzzled about women, and the real problem is neither man nor woman. Reduced to the factual, to the existential, the problem is between the head and the heart.
The head cannot understand the mystery of the heart. The head is logical, rational, mathematical, scientific; the heart knows nothing of reason, nothing of logic. The heart functions in a totally different way. Its functioning creates in the head the idea of the mystery. It is not a question about women; it is a question that arises because women function through the heart and man functions through the head. Have you ever heard any women asking, "What is the mystery of man?" They simply know it.
The problem arises out of logical reasoning. It is a very superficial phenomenon. It is good with objects, with dead things; it deals with them perfectly because a dead thing has no interiority, a dead thing has no inner being, it has no life. The scientist is perfectly right about objects, but the moment he comes to think about subjectivity -- the interiority -- he is baffled, because reason cannot function there.
The heart knows without any process of knowing, without any syllogism, without any argument. How do you know that the rose is beautiful? Is it a rational conclusion? If you bring reason in, you will not be able to prove that the rose is beautiful, because reason cannot fathom the phenomenon of beauty.
When you say the rose is beautiful, you are functioning from the heart. When you say the starry night overwhelms you, it is not a rational statement; if you are forced to prove it rationally, you will be at a loss. Then suddenly you will become aware that it was the heart that has spoken, and the head is absolutely incapable of figuring out how the heart functions.
But the heart is not in the same difficulty about the head, because the head is superficial and the heart is deep down within you. The lower cannot understand the higher. The higher simply understands the lower, there is no need of any reasoning. Your heart is both higher than your head and deeper than your head. The woman can be a poet, but cannot really be a mathematician. Mathematics is purely a game of the mind. Poetry is a totally different phenomenon.
I am reminded of Frau Einstein, Albert Einstein's wife. She was a poet, and Albert Einstein was perhaps the greatest scientific thinker of all the ages. Naturally Frau Einstein wanted her husband to know about her poetry. Einstein tried to avoid the subject as much as he could, but finally one night, the full moon in the sky, Frau Einstein could not resist the temptation. She had composed a beautiful poem about the full moon, and she recited the poem.
Albert Einstein looked at her with great surprise, almost shocked. She could not understand, "Why is he looking at me in this weird manner? At the most he can say that the poetry is not great... but he is looking at me as if I am insane!" After the recital of the poem she asked Albert Einstein, "What do you think?"
He said, "I had never thought that you are so crazy. You talk about the moon as beautiful, you talk about the moon reminding you of your beloved. It is sheer nonsense! The moon is too big, it cannot be substituted for your beloved. And the moon is not at all beautiful! It is just as ordinary as the earth, even more ordinary because there is no greenery, no water, just barren land. And the light that you see reflected from the moon is not its own. That light is borrowed from the sun, it is not coming from the moon. The sunlight falls on the moon and the rays are reflected back, and those reflected rays are coming to your eyes; the moon is not the source of them. I had always thought that you are well educated, but you don't know even the ABC of physics!"
Now was the chance for Frau Einstein to look at him as if he is insane, because for centuries poets have sung songs about the moon -- its beauty, its tremendous magnetic force, its cool light. It has a certain hypnotic spell on the heart... and it is now also proved by facts that it has a certain hypnotic spell.
More people -- in fact all except Mahavira -- have become enlightened on a full-moon night. Mahavira is the only exception; he became enlightened on a no-moon night. Gautam Buddha was born on a full-moon night, became enlightened on a full-moon night, died on a full-moon night. He is a perfect example of the hypnotic spell of the moon. Many more people go mad on the full-moon night -- these are approved statistics -- and more people commit suicide on full-moon nights.
The full moon somehow drives man's mind into dimensions beyond reasoning. And it is not only man that is affected by the full moon; even the ocean is affected. But a physicist, a mathematician will not be able to understand it -- and Frau Einstein never again mentioned poetry to Albert Einstein in her whole life. Although she went on composing, she was not publishing them. It was decided on the first recital that that kind of dialogue is not possible between her and her husband -- but it is not any exceptional case.
No husband and no wife are in the situation of understanding each other. Misunderstanding is the natural situation. The man says something, the woman immediately understands something else. The man cannot believe how she has come to this conclusion -- and to the woman that conclusion is absolutely clear, there is no doubt about it. And whatever she says, the man is at a loss to figure it out. Psychologists have started calling couples intimate enemies. They are... because no one understands each other. But the reason is not the woman and the man. The reason is far deeper. It is the head and the heart.
So I would like to emphasize the point, Devageet, that the question from the very beginning has been formed in a wrong way. It is not the mystery of women, it is the mystery of the heart -- which the head is incapable of figuring out. The heart has no problem about the head;it is a lower, more superficial layer, and the heart understands it. So when men say that women are mysteries, women simply smile amongst themselves: Look at these idiots! Have you ever heard any woman saying that women are mysteries? They know each other perfectly well. There is no mystery.
It will be better to understand in a different dimension too. Forget about man and woman; just think about your own head and your own heart. Do they have a communion? Are they capable of understanding each other? I have not met Albert Einstein, but I would have loved to meet him for the simple reason that I wanted to ask him how he fell in love with Frau Einstein. What physics, what mathematics, what science is behind the experience of falling in love?
But perhaps he never thought about it. Love is coming from the heart; it cannot come from the head. Even the greatest scientist once in a while goes astray from the head. One beautiful sunset and he is overwhelmed. He forgets that he is a scientist and he is not allowed to do such things, feminine things; he is a male mind. And every scientist falls in love with a woman without ever thinking what love is. It is a mystery... even your own heart is a mystery to you.
My own understanding is that Mahavira at first denied any women to be initiated into sannyas. The same was the case with Gautam Buddha; he denied women to be initiated into sannyas. And the same is the case with other religions; they have all put woman in a secondary place. And the reason, according to me, is that all our so-called religions are head-oriented... too much head. Their God is not their love, their God is their idea. It is a hypothesis. They have created a system -- rational, logical, flawless -- but it is their own mind which is creating the system. It is not a discovery. It is not unveiling the mystery of existence.
And why have all these religions been so afraid of women? There were other reasons, but the most fundamental reason is that all the founders of religions were male, and their theologies were from the head. To allow women among their fellow travelers was to create unnecessary trouble, because they speak different languages, they understand different languages. They are coming from different spaces. At the most, they can tolerate each other.
That is what is happening between every wife and every husband: they are just tolerating each other. There seems to be no possibility of a sane conversation. Any conversation between a wife and husband immediately leads to conflict, and the woman starts behaving, according to man, in such a crazy way... throwing things, breaking things. He cannot understand -- what argument is this? But the woman knows perfectly well that only this argument will decide the thing -- and it decides! The man simply agrees, "You are right, but just don't destroy more things!" In every argument with a woman, the woman is the winner, although she knows nothing about argumentation.The day he initiated the first woman into sannyas, Gautam Buddha said, "My religion was going to last for five thousand years. Now it will last only five hundred years" -- not a great welcome to the poor woman!
Asked why he was saying so, he said, "It is impossible to include both women and men without them coming into conflict. The religion will destroy itself from within. If it had remained just confined to males there was a possibility for it to continue at least for five thousand years, because they can understand each other."
You have to be very alert about it.... I am the first man who makes no difference between initiating men and women, and my feeling is -- if I were to reply to Gautam Buddha, I would say, "If it was only males it would last for only five hundred years. Now it is men and women together it can last for eternity."
When heart and head are together, you are more complete and more whole. Heart is a part, head is a part, but together... if a communion is possible, your strength is not doubled, it is multiplied. How can the head and the heart come to a point of meeting? And it is a multidimensional question:It is between the woman and the man.It is between the heart and the head.It is between the East and the West.
One of the royal poets of England, Rudyard Kipling, has written two famous lines which have become better known than anything else that he wrote. Those lines are, "East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." Nobody has argued against it... and he was the royal poet of the British Empire.
But I disagree absolutely, without any conditions and reservations, because wherever you are standing East and West are meeting. Bombay is West to Calcutta, Calcutta is East to Bombay;Tokyo is East to Calcutta, and Calcutta is West to Tokyo. Wherever you are, you cannot say you are in the East or in the West. They are relative terms;they are not fixed territories. Wherever you are, in every man, in every tree, in every bird, East and West are meeting.
Rudyard Kipling is simply talking nonsense! But he has a point in his ridiculous statement -- and the point is the same. The West is head-oriented and the East is heart-oriented. It is the same question in different directions: How can they meet? How can there be an intimate love between the head and the heart, not intimate enmity? -- it is a contradiction in terms.
They meet in meditation, because in meditation the head is empty and the heart is empty: the head is empty of thoughts and the heart is empty of feelings. When there are two emptinesses you cannot keep them separate, because there is nothing between them to keep them separate. Two zeros become one zero... Two nothingnesses cannot exist separately; they are bound to become one because there is not even a fence between them.
But Rudyard Kipling, although he lived in India almost his whole life, has never heard about meditation. It is meditation in which the head and heart lose each other, melt into each other. It is meditation in which man and woman melt into each other.
In India we have an ancient, very ancient statue -- one of the most beautiful pieces of art -- a statue of Ardhanarishwar. The statue is half man and half woman. It is the statue of Shiva, the Hindu God, and half of the body is of the woman and the other half of the body is of the man. Up to the time of Carl Gustav Jung it was thought that it is only a mythology, metaphor, poetry -- but this cannot be true. The whole credit goes to Carl Gustav Jung for introducing to the world that this is not a metaphor, this is a reality.
Every man and every woman are both, because every child is born of a father and a mother. So something of the mother and something of the father is present in every child, whether the child is a girl or the child is a boy. The only difference can be that the man is a little more man, perhaps fifty-one percent man and forty-nine percent woman, and the woman is fifty-one percent woman and forty-nine percent man. But the difference is not much.
That's why it has become scientifically possible to change the sexes -- because the other sex is also present, just the percentage of hormones has to be changed. What was fifty-one percent has to be made forty-nine, or what was forty-nine has to be made fifty-one... then the man becomes woman and the woman becomes man.
But even within you, you are not at ease. There is a conflict, continuous conflict between the head and the heart, between the man and the woman. This conflict can be dissolved only if the head drops its thinking and the heart drops its feeling and both are just pure empty spaces. In that emptiness there is a great meeting and a great understanding.
I don't see any woman as a mystery. I have looked hard, and perhaps there will not be another man in the whole world who has come in contact with so many men and so many women. But neither the man seems to be a mystery nor the woman seems to be a mystery, because within myself the head and heart have melted into each other, and that has given me a new perspective and has changed the whole vision around me.Devageet, if you really want to understand the mystery of women you will have to understand the art of melting your head into your heart. That will not only help you to know the mystery of women, it will also help you to know the mystery of men. Not only that, it will help you to know the mystery of the whole existence.A shy young girl was about to get married, so she went to see her very experienced friend for some advice."Doris," she began, "it may sound silly, but there are a few things I just have to ask you.""That's okay," said Doris. "Just go ahead.""Okay," said the shy girl, "is it all right to talk to your husband while making love?""Well," said Doris, "I must admit that I have never done that, but I suppose there is nothing wrong in it -- as long as there is a telephone within reach."There is mystery but it is not confined only to women. The whole existence is mysterious. This beautiful rain... this music of the falling rain... the joy of the trees. Don't you think there is great mystery?
There was a hill station in the state where I was a professor for many years, and on that hill station was a resthouse far away deep in the hills, absolutely lonely. For miles there was nobody... even the servant who used to take care of the resthouse used to leave by the evening for his own home. I used to go to that resthouse whenever I could find time and sometimes it used to rain just like this... and I was alone in that resthouse and for miles there was nobody. Just the music of rain, just the dance of the trees... I have never forgotten the beauty of it. Whenever it rains I again remember it. It has left such a beautiful impact.
If you look, then each flower is a mystery. From where do those colors come? Every rainbow is a mystery, every moment of life is a mystery. Just to be here... is it not a mystery that you are nowhere else but here? Once your eyes are clear and your head and heart are no more in conflict, everything starts becoming mysterious. Then you don't want to de-mystify it -- that is absolutely ugly and criminal! The mystery of existence has to be welcomed as it is. Dissecting it, demystifying it, is a violation, aggression, violence.
A man of meditation simply enjoys the flowers, the birds, the trees, the rain, the sun, the moon, the people. It is good that we are all engulfed in a mysterious whole. Life will be utterly boring if every mystery is decoded. Science's whole effort is to demystify existence. Poetry and art are concerned in rejoicing, in welcoming the mystery of existence. And the mystic, the religious man, lives the mystery -- not from the outside as a poet, but from the very inside of it. He becomes himself mystery.
There is a beautiful story. Unfortunately it cannot be true. I would have loved it to have been true...! In the East there have been many lovers, very famous lovers -- Heer and Ranjha, Sheeri and Farhad -- and the most famous is the third couple, Laila and Majnu.None of them could meet and live with each other. That is their great fortune; hence they remained loving each other for their whole life.
Majnu was a poor man. Laila was a very rich, super-rich girl, and the parents were not willing to give their only girl into the hands of Majnu, who was nobody at all, just a beggar. Just to avoid him, and to avoid any slander, the parents left the town for another city; they had businesses in many cities and houses in many cities.
The day they left, Majnu was standing outside the city by the side of a tree, hiding himself in the foliage of the tree, just to see for the last time his beloved Laila moving away. He saw Laila on her camel, and the whole caravan was moving away. He went on looking and looking as far as he could, and in a desert you can see very far, there are no obstructions.
Finally, beyond the horizon, they disappeared... but Majnu went on looking. This is where the story becomes a myth, but of tremendous significance. He never left that place. He trusted his love, and he hoped that one day Laila will return from the same route. There was no other route going out from the town.After twelve years, Laila returned. The father was dead and now she was free at last. She never married anyone else; she had insisted that if she was going to marry anyone, she would marry Majnu. Her father had said, "If that is your decision, then my decision is that you will never marry." But when the father died, Laila came.
Now twelve years is a long time. In these twelve years Majnu had been standing by the side of the tree. The foliage had grown much; he had not eaten, he had not drunk water, and by and by he had become joined with the tree. Standing for twelve years was so long... slowly, slowly he became part of the tree.
Laila came and she enquired about Majnu in the town. The people said, "It is a very sad story. He had gone to say goodbye to you, but he never came back. Only once in a while in the deep silences of the night, from a certain tree, a sound comes calling your name: `Laila, it is too long. When are you going to come back?' -- and people have become afraid of the tree because it seems the tree is haunted by ghosts or something. Nobody comes close to the tree."
Laila went to the tree. She heard the voice, she heard the joyful welcome, but she could not see where Majnu was hiding. She entered into the foliage of the tree. With great difficulty she could figure out that Majnu had become part of the tree. It cannot be factual... but the mystic becomes part of the mystery of existence. And the story of Laila and Majnu is a Sufi story. Perhaps it is symbolic of the ultimate union with existence.Not trying to demystify it, but becoming a part of the mystery yourself, that is the only true understanding. The mystery will remain a mystery, but by becoming yourself a mystery, you will understand. That is the only true understanding. All other understandings are only knowledge borrowed from others.

Right way to help a Child grow without interfering in his natural potentiality

Every way to help a child is wrong. The very idea of helping is not right.The child needs your love, not your help. The child needs nourishment, support, but not your help. The natural potential of the child is unknown, so there is no way to help him rightly to attain to his natural potential. You cannot help when the goal is unknown; all that you can do is not interfere. And in fact, in the name of help everybody is interfering with everybody else; and because the name is beautiful, nobody objects.
Of course the child is so small, so dependent on you, he cannot object. And the people around are just like you: they have also been helped by their parents, the way you have been helped. Neither they have attained their natural potential, nor have you. The whole world is missing out in spite of all the help from the parents, from the family, from the relatives, from the neighbors, from the teachers, from the priests. In fact everybody is so burdened with help that under its weight ... what to say of attaining natural potential -- one cannot even attain unnatural potential! One cannot move; the weight on everybody's shoulders is Himalayan.
And it is one of the most difficult things, not to interfere. It is not the nature of the mind. Mind is basically continuously, persistently, tempted to interfere. It lives on interference. The more you can interfere, the more powerful you are. How do you measure power? It is not something material, you cannot weigh it -- but it is measured, weighed. The way to measure it is by how much you can interfere in how many people's lives. Adolf Hitler is powerful because he can interfere in millions of people's lives. You are not Adolf Hitler, but still you can interfere in a few people's lives ... a little, miniature Adolf Hitler.
At least the husband can interfere in the wife's life, the wife can interfere in the husband's life. It is a mutual game; in this way both become powerful. The husband goes on interfering in his own way, without being aware why they are interfering. They were supposed to be together to enhance each other's life but ....
The husband will come late every day -- not that it is essential to come late, but it is a question of power, ego: if he comes home on time that means he has surrendered. I know husbands who go on sitting in offices doing nothing, gossiping, knowing perfectly well that their wives will be boiling. They can reach home in time, but that's what she wants. Just because she wants, it is impossible for the man, against his manliness, to be on time; he will come late. And the same scene is repeated every day.
Nor is the wife ready to drop asking him why he is late, knowing perfectly well that whatsoever he says is a lie. She knows it is a lie, he knows that she knows that it is a lie -- and it is a lie, but it is a good beginning to a fight, a good start, a good excuse. And then the wife goes on doing the same ....
I have sat with a husband in his car, and he is honking his horn because he is worried; he has to take me to a particular meeting and I have to be there in time. And I don't like to waste people's time; I am not a political leader. A political leader is supposed to come late. Again, the same power -- you have to wait. And he is not just a nobody; he is so occupied, so busy, that he is bound to be late.
I know political leaders who were just sitting and gossiping, and I have told them, "We have to go to your meeting."They said, "You don't understand. A politician should not arrive on time. That means he is not a big shot, just a small fry."
I am not a politician. I am neither a big shot nor a small fry. I am just a human being, neither anything more nor anything less. I have been particular about arriving in time.So the husband is worried, and the wife leans out of the window and says, "Stop honking your horn! I have told you one thousand times that I am coming in one minute."
I looked at the husband and said, "This is something, `one thousand times' and `I am coming in one minute'! Where did she get the time to say it one thousand times in one minute?"
But it is a power trip. The wife wants it to be known who is the boss. You can go on honking the horn, but without the boss coming down the car cannot move. I have a certain rapport with women, so whomsoever I was staying with, soon I became very close to their mothers, to their wives, sisters.
And I asked, "What is the matter? Every day it happens; the poor man goes on honking." And they would say, "Nothing is the matter. We are not busy, but he goes on coming home late every day and pays no attention to what we are saying. So whenever we have the chance .... It is simple give and take."
All the people around you have been helped, greatly helped, to be what they are. You have been helped; now you want to help your children too.
All that you can do is be loving, be nourishing, be warm, be accepting. The child brings an unknown potential, and there is no way to figure out what he is going to be. So no procedure can be suggested: "This way you should help the child." And each child is unique so there cannot be a general discipline for every child.
People like this Miss Judith Martin are suggesting measures for every child, as if children are produced on an assembly line in a factory. No two children are the same. How can you suggest, how can you have even the nerve to suggest a generalized program, that this should be done? But Miss Judith Martin .... I don't know how many times she has become "Miss." I think at least a dozen times certainly, because no husband can survive her; either he will escape or commit suicide, but he will have to do something to make her Miss again. And she must be now very old.
Perhaps finally when she became famous and the most well-known authority on child-rearing, nobody dared to marry her again, because such a woman, who has no compassion on children -- do you think she will have some compassion on husbands? She will train them exactly the way animals are trained in a circus. She will make them dance to her tune; and her being a world-famous authority, what can the poor husband do except dance?
This kind of person has existed down the ages around the world everywhere. They have prescriptions, recipes, disciplines for everybody, not only for their contemporaries but for all future generations, as to what is right. They are so idiotic -- although they are known as great sages who have given you religions, disciplines, moralities, ethics, codes of conduct: great law-givers. But I say again to you, these people are idiots. Only an idiot can think in a generalized way when human beings are concerned. There is no average human being; you will never come across the average man. And all these authorities are concerned with the average man, who does not exist! The average man is just like God -- omnipresent, yet you cannot find him anywhere. God is so omnipresent that ....I have heard about one nun ... the whole nunnery became concerned about her. Is she sick or something? -- because she was taking her bath with her clothes on! And the doors were closed in the bathroom. And when they asked, "What is the matter? -- why don't you undress when the doors are closed and nobody is there?" she said, "Nobody? God is omnipresent. Yes, there is none of you, but God is there, and to undress before God does not look right."
They all must have thought her a crackpot, but she really, literally had accepted the idea of the omnipresence of God. Exactly like omnipresent God is the average man: he exists nowhere and is supposed to exist everywhere. And all the principles are addressed to the average man. You ask me how to help the child in the right way.
The right way is not to help the child at all. If you have real courage then please don't help the child. Love him, nourish him. Let him do what he wants to do. Let him go where he wants to go. Your mind will be tempted again and again to interfere, and with good excuses. The mind is very clever in rationalizing: "If you don't interfere there may be danger; the child may fall into the well if you don't stop him." But I say to you, it is better to let him fall into the well than to help him and destroy him.
It is a very rare possibility that the child falls into the well -- and then too, it does not mean death; he can be taken out of the well. And if you are really so concerned, the well can be covered; but don't help the child, and don't interfere with the child. The well can be removed, but don't interfere with the child. Your real concern should be to remove all dangers but don't interfere with the child; let him go on his way.
You will have to understand some significant growth patterns. Life has seven-year circles, it moves in seven-year circles just as the earth makes one rotation on its axis in twenty-four hours. Now nobody knows why not twenty-five, why not twenty-three. There is no way to answer it; it is simply a fact. The earth takes three hundred and sixty-five days to make one round of the sun. Why three hundred and sixty-five? Nobody knows, nobody needs to know. And it does not make any difference. If it were taking four hundred days, what difference would it have made to you? ... or three hundred days ...? The question would have remained the same: Why?
So remember one thing: any question is absurd if with every answer the question still remains standing the same. In twenty-four hours the earth makes one turn on its own axis. Why? Make it twenty-five, make it twenty-six, make it thirty, sixty -- as much as you want -- the question still stands the same: why? Hence I call the question absurd; it will always remain the same.
So don't ask me why life moves in seven-year circles. I don't know. This much I know, that it moves in seven-year circles. And if you understand those seven-year circles, you will understand a great deal about human growth. The first seven years are the most important because the foundation of life is being laid. That's why all the religions are very much concerned about grabbing children as quickly as possible.
The Jews will circumcise the child. What nonsense! But they are stamping the child as a Jew; that is a primitive way of stamping. You still do it on the cattle around here; I have seen stamps. Every owner stamps the cattle, otherwise they can get mixed up. It is a cruel thing. Red-hot steel has to be used to stamp the cattle's leather, skin; it burns the skin. But then it becomes your possession; it cannot be lost, it cannot be stolen.What is circumcision? It is stamping cattle. But these cattle are Jews.
Hindus have their own ways. All religions have their own ways. But it should be known whose cattle you are, who your shepherd is -- Jesus? Moses? Mohammed? You are not your own master. Those first seven years are the years when you are conditioned, stuffed with all kinds of ideas which will go on haunting you your whole life, which will go on distracting you from your potentiality, which will corrupt you, which will never allow you to see clearly. They will always come like clouds before your eyes, they will make everything confused.
Things are clear, very clear -- existence is absolutely clear -- but your eyes have layers upon layers of dust. And all that dust has been arranged in the first seven years of your life when you were so innocent, so trusting, that whatsoever was told to you you accepted as truth. And whatsoever has gone into your foundation, later on it will be very difficult for you to find: it has become almost part of your blood, bones, your very marrow. You will ask a thousand other questions but you will never ask about the basic foundations of your belief.
The first expression of love towards the child is to leave his first seven years absolutely innocent, unconditioned, to leave him for seven years completely wild, a pagan. He should not be converted to Hinduism, to Mohammedanism, to Christianity. Anybody who is trying to convert the child is not compassionate, he is cruel: he is contaminating the very soul of a new, fresh arrival. Before the child has even asked questions he has been answered with ready-made philosophies, dogmas, ideologies. This is a very strange situation. The child has not asked about God, and you go on teaching him about God. Why so much impatience? Wait!
If the child someday shows interest in God and starts asking about God, then try to tell him not only your idea of God -- because nobody has any monopoly: put before him all the ideas of God that have been presented to different people by different ages, by different religions, cultures, civilizations. Put before him all the ideas about God, and tell him, "You can choose between these, whichever appeals to you. Or you can invent your own, if nothing suits. If everything seems to be with a flaw, and you think you can have a better idea, then invent your own. Or if you find that there is no way to invent an idea without loopholes, then drop the whole thing; there is no need. A man can live without God; there is no intrinsic necessity.
"Millions of people have lived without God. God is nothing that is inevitably needed by you. Yes, I have my idea; that too is in the combination of all these ideals in this collection. You can choose that, but I am not saying that my idea is the right idea. It appeals to me; it may not appeal to you."There is no inner necessity that the son should agree with the father. In fact it seems far better that he should not agree. That's how evolution happens. If every child agrees with the father then there will be no evolution, because the father will agree with his own father, so everybody will be where God left Adam and Eve -- naked, outside the gate of the garden of Eden. Everybody will be there. Because sons have disagreed with their fathers, forefathers, with their whole tradition, man has evolved.
This whole evolution is a tremendous disagreement with the past. The more intelligent you are, the more you are going to disagree. But parents appreciate the child who agrees; they condemn the child who disagrees. It was the practice in my family to produce me in front of anybody to condemn me. Any visitor to the family, any guest of the family ... and I would be called. And I knew for what, but I enjoyed it. I was called to be condemned: "And this boy is in disagreement with everything." In Hindi there is a phrase for it: ulti khopdi -- it means upside-down skull. So that was the phrase used for me.
I said, "It is true, but the reality is, I look upside down to all these people because they are standing on their heads. They are doing yoga asanas, shirshasana -- headstand posture. I am simply standing on my feet. I am the only one here who does not believe in any kind of nonsense. They are right, because to them it must appear that I am standing upside down. And they are in the majority -- perhaps you also belong to them.
"But this is the usual procedure: they don't answer my questions, they only condemn my disagreement. Now this is inhuman. If you answer my question, and still I disagree, then certainly I am stubborn. But have you answered a single question of mine? Have you satisfied me? Have you any right to condemn me because I disagree?"
In India, at the end of the monsoon there is a festival of lights, diwali, when the whole country becomes very festive and every house has thousands of small earthen lamps decorating all the walls, balconies. The whole town becomes a fairyland, the whole country turns into a fairyland, with firecrackers and great rejoicing. That day they worship money.
The goddess of money is Laxmi. Laxmi is the wife of the Hindu god, Narayana, and of course a god's wife should be the goddess of wealth. In fact one of the Indian words for god, iswar, means "one who has all the wealth of the world." His wife is the goddess of wealth. And on the night of the festival of lights they worship money.
Before paper currency came into being they used to make a pile of silver rupees and worship them. Now they put paper money and worship it. Before silver rupees there were golden rupees. The word rupee simply means gold; it comes from Sanskrit. It is an Indian word ... because in the beginning the coin was gold, pure gold, so the word rupia, which became in English, rupee, was meaningful.
They used to worship gold, then came silver, then came paper currency. And they went on ... the question is of worshiping money. I never participated in their worship. I simply hated the whole idea and I told them, "This is one of the ugliest things you can do. Money is something to be used, not worshipped. On the one hand your religions teach that money is nothing but dust. On the one hand it is dust, on the other hand it becomes a goddess. And you cannot see your split mind?
"On the one hand you praise a man as a sage if he renounces money; then he becomes synonymous with God because he renounced money and everything. And on the other hand you worship money. Can you in some way help me to understand? Is there not a clear-cut contradiction?
"If money is God's wife then in the first place the person who renounces God's wife is a criminal. In the first place why did he possess God's wife? -- that seems to be absolutely illegal. He should be caught and imprisoned. In the first place was he pretending to be God's wife's husband?"
My father would say, "You just keep quiet; at least let us finish our worship."I would say, "No, first I want my answer."
And I had a big stool in my house -- they used to use it as a ladder for taking things up or down -- so wherever they would be worshiping, in the main hall of the house, I would sit on that stool. And they would say, "At least please come down. You are sitting on that stool."
I said, "No, I want my answers. I see so much stupidity in it, because I have seen you touching people's feet who have renounced money. Then you tell me that this man is great, a sage: he has kicked all that is thought to be valuable and that needs courage and guts. But what are you doing? If that man is right to renounce all this money, at least stop worshiping it. And you have to answer me; otherwise my disagreement continues."
My mother would say to me, "On such days you should be out of the house because you don't know -- if the goddess Laxmi becomes angry we will all starve and be hungry and die poor."
I said, "I have been doing this year after year, sitting on my stool. I don't see that your goddess can do anything. If she can, I challenge her -- let her, because at least that will give me some answer." And when they were all finished with their worship I would go and kick their rupees, and spit on their rupees, and I would say, "Now this is what I wanted to do; now let us see who is rewarded." They could not prevent me, although they tried hard.
I said, "You cannot prevent me. I will do what I want to do, unless you prove me wrong. And you call me in front of everybody saying that I am in disagreement about everything. I have to be in disagreement about everything, for the simple reason that you go on doing things that any intelligent person would see the contradiction in."
For example, in India, if somebody has smallpox it is not thought to be a physical disease. Smallpox is called in India, mata; mata means mother goddess. And in every town there is a temple for the mother goddess, or many temples ... the mother goddess is angry, that's why poor little children are suffering from smallpox.
People like Mahatma Gandhi were against vaccination because it was unnatural. Smallpox is natural. It destroys so many beautiful children's faces, their eyes, and it kills many. And the prophet of non-violence was against vaccination because he was against anything scientific -- and moreover it was thought the disease is not a physiological disease, it is a spiritual anger.
One of my sisters died of smallpox, and I was very angry because I loved that sister more than any of my brothers or my sisters. I told them, "You have killed her. I have been telling you that she needs vaccination.
"I have suffered from smallpox, but at that time I could not say anything to you; I don't even remember it, it happened just in my first year. And every child suffers. When this girl was born I was insisting that she should be vaccinated. But you are all followers of Mahatma Gandhi: Vaccination is against nature. And to prevent ... the anger of the mother goddess will be dangerous. It will come in some other form."
And when the girl became sick with smallpox they were doing both things: they were taking medicine from the doctor and they were continuously going to worship the mother goddess.
I said, "Then please do one thing at least; either take the medicine, or go and worship your mother. But you are being cunning; you are even deceiving the mother goddess. I am honest, I spit on your mother goddess every day" -- because I used to go to the river and the temple was just on the way so there was no harm; coming and going I would spit.
And I said, "Whatsoever you do ... but it is strange -- I am spitting, I should suffer. Why should she suffer? And I cannot understand that the mother goddess becomes angry and small children suffer -- who have not committed any crime, who have just arrived, who have not had time enough to do anything, nor are capable of doing anything. Others should suffer, but they are not suffering.
"And mother goddess you call her! You should call her a witch, because what kind of mother is she who makes small children suffer? And then you are cunning. You are also not certain; otherwise don't take the medicine. Throw all the medicines; depend completely on your mother goddess. There too you are afraid. You are trying to ride on two horses. This is sheer stupidity. Either depend on the mother and let the girl die, or depend on the medicine, and forget about that mother."
They would say, "We can understand that there is a contradiction, but please don't bring it to our notice, because it hurts."
I said, "Do you think it hurts only you, and it does not hurt me seeing my parents being stupid, silly? It does not hurt me? It hurts me more. There is still time, you can change; but on the contrary, you are trying to change me, and you call it help. You think without your help I am going to be lost. Please let me be lost. At least I will have one satisfaction, that nobody else is responsible for my being lost; it is my own doing. I will be proud of it."
Up to seven years, if a child can be left innocent, uncorrupted by the ideas of others, then to distract him from his potential growth becomes impossible. The child's first seven years are the most vulnerable. And they are in the hands of parents, teachers, priests .... How to save children from parents, priests, teachers is a question of such enormous proportion that it seems almost impossible to find how to do it.
It is not a question of helping the child. It is a question of protecting the child. If you have a child, protect the child from yourself. Protect the child from others who can influence him: at least up to seven years, protect him. The child is just like a small plant, weak, soft: just a strong wind can destroy it, any animal can eat it up. You put a protective wiring around it, but that is not imprisoning, you are simply protecting. When the plant is bigger, the wires will be removed.
Protect the child from every kind of influence so that he can remain himself -- and it is only a question of seven years, because then the first circle will be complete. By seven years he will be well-grounded, centered, strong enough. You don't know how strong a seven-year-old child can be because you have not seen uncorrupted children, you have seen only corrupted children. They carry the fears, the cowardliness, of their fathers, mothers, their families. They are not their own selves.
If a child remains uncorrupted for seven years .... You will be surprised to meet such a child. He will be as sharp as a sword. His eyes will be clear, his insight will be clear. And you will see a tremendous strength in him which you cannot find even in a seventy-year-old adult, because the foundations are shaky. So in fact as the building goes on becoming higher and higher, the more and more shaky it becomes.
So you will see, the older a person becomes, the more afraid. When he is young he may be an atheist; when he becomes old he starts believing in God. Why is that? When he is below thirty he is a hippie. He has courage to go against the society, to behave in his own way: to have long hair, to have a beard, to roam around the world, to take all kinds of risks. But by the time he is forty, all that has disappeared. You will see him in some office in a gray suit, clean shaven, well groomed. You will not even be able to recognize that he is an ex-hippie.
Where have all the hippies disappeared to? Suddenly you see them with a great force; then, just like used bullet cases, empty cartridges, impotent, defeated, depressed -- trying to make something out of life, feeling that all those years of hippiedom were a wastage. Others have gone far ahead; somebody has become the president, somebody has become the governor, and "we were stupid; we were just playing the guitar and the whole world passed us by." They repent.
It is really difficult to find an old hippie. Just one I have found; that is Bapuji, Sheela's father. He will die a hippie. At his age -- he must be near about seventy -- he was living with hippies in northern New York State. Some photographer took a photograph of him; he was sitting naked on a hill ... snow, ice, all around. And he was sitting naked there. Somebody took his photo, and those photos have been coming to me. People think Bapuji is me!
It is printed now, because he looks really beautiful -- naked, sitting on the top. The sun is rising, and all around snow, and he is looking really beautiful. Many people who have found that photo -- it is a postcard now -- go on sending it to me saying, "Osho, it was a surprise to find you sitting here."I told Sheela, "Tell Bapuji, `don't do such things, because nobody knows you.'" But he will die a hippie.
He brought all his children to me, which no father has done except him. It was he who brought Sheela to me ... forcibly, because she was not interested. But he is not a man to listen to anybody. He said, "Once, you have to come; twice I will not ask, then it is your business. But once I have to force you because you don't know what you are refusing. So forgive me for forcing you, but one time I have to force you."
He brought all his children by and by, and almost all his children are now sannyasins. And once Sheela came she never left me. He asked Sheela, teased her, "Now what about going back to America?"She said, "I am not going anywhere.""But," Bapuji said, "I had brought you just to meet him, not to stay."Sheela said, "But I have to -- this is the place I have been searching for."He said, "I am happy because I have brought you to the right place: now I am freed of my responsibility. Now whatsoever becomes of you, it will be right."If you are a parent you will need this much courage -- not to interfere. Open doors of unknown directions to the child so he can explore. He does not know what he has in him, nobody knows.He has to grope in the dark. Don't make him afraid of darkness, don't make him afraid of failure, don't make him afraid of the unknown. Give him support. When he is going on an unknown journey, send him with all your support, with all your love, with all your blessings.Don't let him be affected by your fears. You may have fears, but keep them to yourself. Don't unload those fears on the child because that will be interfering. After seven years, the next circle of seven years, from seven to fourteen, is a new addition to life: the child's first stirring of sexual energies. But they are only a kind of rehearsal.
To be a parent is a difficult job, so unless you are ready to take that difficult job, don't become a parent. People simply go on becoming fathers and mothers not knowing what they are doing. You are bringing a life into existence; all the care in the world will be needed. Now when the child starts playing his sexual rehearsals, that is the time when parents interfere the most, because they have been interfered with. All that they know is what has been done to them, so they simply go on doing that to their children.
Societies don't allow sexual rehearsal, at least have not allowed it up to this century -- only within the last two, three decades, and that too only in very advanced countries. Now children are having co-education. But in a country like India, even now co-education starts only at the university level.
The seven-year-old boy and the seven-year-old girl cannot be in the same boarding school. And this is the time for them -- without any risk, without the girl getting pregnant, without any problems arising for their families -- this is the time when they should be allowed all playfulness.
Yes, it will have a sexual color to it, but it is rehearsal; it is not the real drama. And if you don't allow them even the rehearsal and then suddenly one day the curtain opens, and the real drama starts .... And those people don't know what is going on; even a prompter is not there to tell them what to do. You have messed up their life completely.Those seven years, the second circle in life, is significant as a rehearsal. They will meet, mix, play, become acquainted. And that will help humanity to drop almost ninety percent of perversions.
If the children from seven to fourteen are allowed to be together; to swim together, to be naked before each other, ninety percent of perversions and ninety percent of pornography will simply disappear. Who will bother about it? When a boy has known so many girls naked, what interest can a magazine like PLAYBOY have for him? When a girl has seen so many boys naked, I don't see that there is any possibility of curiosity about the other; it will simply disappear. They will grow together naturally, not as two different species of animals.
Right now that's how they grow: two different species of animals. They don't belong to one mankind; they are kept separate. A thousand and one barriers are created between them so they cannot have any rehearsal of their sexual life which is going to come.Because this rehearsal is missing, that's why in people's actual sex life foreplay is missing; and foreplay is so important -- far more important than actual sexual contact, because actual sexual contact lasts only for seconds. It is not nourishment. It simply leaves you in a limbo. You were hoping for so much, and nothing comes out of it.
In Hindi we have a proverb: kheela pahad nikli chuhia. `You dug out the whole mountain and you found one rat.' After all the effort -- going to the movies and going to the disco and going to the restaurant, and talking all kinds on nonsense which neither you want nor the other wants to do, but both are talking -- digging the mountain, and in the end, just a rat! Nothing is so frustrating as sex.
Just the other day Vivek brought me one advertisement about a new car, Lagonda; in the advertisement they had a beautiful sentence that I liked. The sentence is: "It is better than sex." I don't care about the car -- the advertisement is beautiful. Certainly if you look around you, you will find a thousand and one things better than sex. Sex is just a rat, and that too after so much huffing and puffing, so much perspiration ... and in the end both feel cheated.
The reason is that you don't know the art of sex; you know only the middle point. It is as if you see a film just in the middle for a few seconds. Naturally you can't make any sense of it; the beginning is missing, the end is missing. Perhaps you simply saw the interval ... where there was nothing. Man feels ashamed after sex; he turns over and goes to sleep. He simply cannot face the woman. He feels ashamed, that's why he turns to his side and goes to sleep. The woman weeps and cries because this was not what she was hoping for. This is all? Then what is this whole drama all about? But the reason is because the rehearsal part in your life has been canceled by your society. You don't know what foreplay is.
Foreplay is really the most satisfying part in sex. Foreplay is more loving. Sex is simply a biological climax, but the climax of what? -- you have missed everything that could have made it a climax. Do you think you suddenly reach to the climax, missing all the rungs of the ladder? You have to move up the ladder, rung by rung, only then can you reach the climax. Everybody wants the climax.
Now the foolish psychoanalysts and their kind have put an idea in people's minds of orgasm. Now, orgasm is even a higher stage than climax; it needs much more than climax. People are missing climax -- their sexual life is nothing but a kind of relief. Yes, for a moment you feel relieved of a burden, just like a good sneeze. How good it feels afterwards! -- but for how long? How long can you feel good after a sneeze? How many seconds, how many minutes can you brag that "I had such a sneeze, it was great." As the sneeze is gone, with it goes all the joy too.
It was simply something bothering you. You are finished with that botheration, there is a little relaxation. That's the sexual life of most of the people in the world. Some energy was bothering you, was making you heavy; it was turning into a headache. Sex gives you a relief. But the way children are brought up is almost butchering their whole life. Those seven years of sexual rehearsal are absolutely essential. Girls and boys should be together in schools, in hostels, in swimming pools and beds. They should rehearse for the life which is going to come; they have to get ready for it. And there is no danger, there is no problem, if a child is given total freedom about his growing sexual energy and is not condemned, repressed -- which is being done.
A very strange world it is in which you are living. You are born of sex, you will live for sex, your children will be born out of sex -- and sex is the most condemned thing, the greatest sin. And all the religions go on putting this crap in your mind. They have made you almost brown bags. Only in New Jersey did I come to know what brown bags are. Strange, I don't know whether it happens all over America or only in New Jersey because I have not seen anything else, only New Jersey. In New Jersey when I used to go to drive in the morning, everybody was coming with a brown bag full of all crap, putting it by the side of the road.
I enquired, "What is the matter? Couldn't they have found any other color? A brown bag?" But then I thought perhaps that's exactly right. Most of the people are simply brown bags. Never open anybody.
It happened in my childhood: India became independent but the British government had left some Indian states. India was in two separate sections; only one was under British rule. There were small pockets all over India of Indian states which were still ruled by Indian kings. They were under British government -- their foreign policy was ruled by the British government, but otherwise in their internal policy they were completely free.
When the Britishers left India they left it in a mess, in a real mess. First, they divided India and Pakistan; second they left the Indian states absolutely in a limbo, without making any decision about them. The idea was to create a chaos, and they had already created a chaos because there were so many Indian states. Now the question was, were they independent nations? Were they part of India and would their foreign policy be ruled by India, or were they part of Pakistan and would their foreign policy be ruled by Pakistan?
Nothing was decided, the whole question was not decided. And the Indian states constituted almost half of India. The trouble was more complicated because in some Indian states the major population was Hindu and the king was Mohammedan; in some Indian states the major population was Mohammedan and the king was Hindu. Kashmir was ninety percent Mohammedan, but the king was Hindu. Hyderabad was ninety percent Hindu, but the king was Mohammedan.
Just close to my town, beyond the river, was a small state, Bhopal. The king was Mohammedan, the population was Hindu, so everywhere there were riots because the population wanted the state to merge with India, and the king wanted to merge it with Pakistan because he was Mohammedan. But it was in the middle of India so it was not easy to merge with Pakistan. There was a great fight between the king's forces and the population, and we were just on the other side of the river. We could see from this side people being killed on the other side.
We caught four dead people who were killed by the forces of the king; somehow they must have fallen in the river, and they came to our side so we caught hold of them. Naturally, I had to persuade people, "This is not good. They have been fighting for the freedom of the country; they wanted the country to merge into India -- you should not leave them like that."
They wanted to throw them into the river and be finished: who could be bothered with them? But somehow I gathered a few young people, and then a few old people felt ashamed and they came. But first, before we could do anything they had to be postmortemed, so we took them to the hospital. The postmortem place was almost two furlongs away behind the hospital, in the jungle. One can understand that they were cutting up bodies ... the smell and everything, so they had made the place that far away outside the city. But we had to carry these four corpses.
That was the first time I saw a brown bag open. The doctor was the father of one of my friends so he allowed me in. He said, "You can see how man looks inside," and he opened the bodies. It was really shocking to see how man looks inside. And this was only the body: later on I saw the postmortem of the mind also. Compared to that it is nothing, this is only the poor body. Your mind is so rich in crap .... That day one thing happened that I have to tell you, although it is not concerned with what I was going to tell you -- but it must be concerned in some way, otherwise why should I remember it?
When we were carrying out the bodies after they were postmortemed .... They put them together again and covered them. One of the leaders of my town, Shri Nath Batt, had always felt as if I was his enemy, for the simple reason that I was a friend of his son and he thought I was corrupting him -- and in a way he was right. By chance it happened that we were carrying a corpse together; I was ahead, holding both the poles at the front of the stretcher, and Shri Nath Batt was behind me holding the end of the two poles.
The head of the man, the dead man, was at my end, and the legs at his end. I had just read somewhere that when a man dies of course he loses all control -- control over the bladder also, so if you put his head upwards and his legs downwards .... I thought, "This is a good chance to see whether that idea is right or wrong," so I just raised the poles .... And you should have seen what happened -- because that corpse pissed and Shri Nath Batt ran away!
And we could not persuade him to come back. He said, "I cannot. Have you ever heard of a dead man pissing? It is a ghost!"I told him, "You are the leader."He said, "To hell with the leader! I don't want to be the leader if this is the kind of work I have to do. And I've always known you -- from the very beginning. Why did you raise those poles?"I said, "I don't know, it must have been the ghost. I suddenly felt like somebody was raising my hands up; I am not at all responsible." I had to drag that body alone, for two furlongs, to the hospital.
Shri Nath Batt was in the town telling everybody, "This boy is going to kill somebody someday. Today just by God's grace I am saved. That ghost just pissed over me, on my clothes. And that boy persuaded me: `You have to come because you are the leader; otherwise what will people think? -- a leader in times of need, missing. Then remember, at voting time I will not be of any help.' So I went there, but I never thought that he would do such a thing to me."
These people all around the world are really brown bags, full of everything rotten that you can conceive, for the simple reason that they have not been allowed to grow in the natural way. They have not been allowed to accept themselves. They all have become ghosts. They are not authentically real people, they are only shadows of someone they could have been; they are only shadows.
The second circle of seven years is immensely important because it will prepare you for the coming seven years. If you have done the homework rightly, if you have played with your sexual energy just in the spirit of a sportsman -- and at that time, that is the only spirit you will have -- you will not become a pervert, a homosexual. All kinds of strange things will not come to your mind because you are moving naturally with the other sex, the other sex is moving with you; there is no hindrance, and you are not doing anything wrong against anybody.
Your conscience is clear because nobody has put into your conscience ideas of what is right, what is wrong: you are simply being whatever you are. Then from fourteen to twenty-one your sex matures. And this is significant to understand: if the rehearsal has gone well, in the seven years when your sex matures a very strange thing happens that you may not have ever thought about, because you have not been given the chance. I said to you that the second seven years, from seven to fourteen, give you a glimpse of foreplay. The third seven years give you a glimpse of afterplay. You are still together with girls or boys, but now a new phase starts in your being: you start falling in love.
It is still not a biological interest. You are not interested in producing children, you are not interested in becoming husbands and wives, no. These are the years of romantic play. You are more interested in beauty, in love, in poetry, in sculpture -- which are all different phases of romanticism. And unless a man has some romantic quality he will never know what afterplay is. Sex is just in the middle. The longer the foreplay, the better the possibility of reaching the climax; the better the possibility of reaching the climax, the better opening for afterplay. And unless a couple knows afterplay they will never know what sex in its completion is.
Now there are sexologists who are teaching foreplay. A taught foreplay is not the real thing, but they are teaching it -- at least they have recognized the fact that without foreplay sex cannot reach the climax. But they are at a loss how to teach afterplay because when a person has reached the climax he is no longer interested: he is finished, the job is done. For that it needs a romantic mind, a poetic mind, a mind that knows how to be thankful, how to be grateful.
The person, the woman or the man who has brought you to such a climax, needs some gratitude -- afterplay is your gratitude. And unless there is afterplay it simply means your sex is incomplete; and incomplete sex is the cause of all the troubles that man goes through. Sex can become orgasmic only when afterplay and foreplay are completely balanced. Just in their balance the climax turns into orgasm.
And the word "orgasm" has to be understood. It means that your whole being -- body, mind, soul, everything -- becomes involved, organically involved. Then it becomes a moment of meditation. To me, if your sex does not become finally a moment of meditation, you have not known what sex is. You have only heard about it, you have read about it; and the people who have been writing about it know nothing about it.
I have read hundreds of books on sexology by people who are thought to be great experts, and they are experts, but they know nothing about the innermost shrine where meditation blossoms. Just as children are born by ordinary sex, meditation is born by extraordinary sex. Animals can produce children; there is nothing special about it. It is only man who can produce the experience of meditation as the center of his orgasmic feeling. This is possible only if from fourteen to twenty-one young people are allowed to have romantic freedom.
From twenty-one to twenty-eight is the time when they can settle. They can choose a partner. And they are capable of choosing now; through all the experience of the past two circles they can choose the right partner. There is nobody else who can do it for you. It is something that is more like a hunch -- not arithmetic, not astrology, not palmistry, not I-Ching, nothing is going to do. It is a hunch: coming in contact with many, many people suddenly something clicks which had never clicked with anybody else. And it clicks with so much certainty and so absolutely, that you cannot even doubt it. Even if you try to doubt it, you cannot, the certainty is so tremendous. With this click you settle.
Between twenty-one and twenty-eight somewhere, if everything goes smoothly the way I am saying, without interference from others, then you settle. And the most pleasant period of life comes from twenty-eight to thirty-five -- the most joyous, the most peaceful and harmonious because two persons start melting and merging into each other.From thirty-five to forty-two, a new step, a new door opens. If up to thirty-five you have felt deep harmony, an orgasmic feeling, and you have discovered meditation through it, then from thirty-five to forty-two you will help each other go more and more into that meditation without sex, because sex at this point starts looking childish, juvenile.
Forty-two is the right time when a person should be able to know exactly who he is. From forty-two to forty-nine he gets deeper and deeper into meditation, more and more into himself, and helps the partner in the same way. They become friends. There is no more husband and there is no more wife; that time has passed. It has given its richness to your life; now there is something higher, higher than love.
That is friendliness, a compassionate relationship to help the other to go deeper into himself, to become more independent, to become more alone -- just like two tall trees standing separate but still close to each other, or two pillars in a temple supporting the same roof -- standing so close, but so separate and so independent and so alone.From forty-nine to fifty-six this aloneness becomes your focus of being. Everything in the world loses meaning. The only thing meaningful that remains is this aloneness.
From fifty-six to sixty-three you become absolutely what you are going to become: the potential blossoms. From sixty-three to seventy you start getting ready to drop the body. Now you know you are not the body, you know you are not the mind either. The body was known as separate from you somewhere when you were thirty-five. That the mind is separate from you was known somewhere when you were forty-nine. Now, everything else drops except the witnessing self. Just the pure awareness, the flame of awareness remains with you, and this is the preparation for death.
Seventy is the natural life span for man. And if things move in this natural course then he dies with tremendous joy, with great ecstasy, feeling immensely blessed that his life has not been meaningless, that at least he has found his home. And because of this richness, this fulfillment, he is capable of blessing the whole existence. Just to be near such a person when he is dying is a great opportunity. You will feel, as he leaves his body, some invisible flowers falling upon you. Although you cannot see them, you can feel them.
It has been always a great moment in the lives of disciples when the Master leaves the body. And it is possible because the Master can know when he is going to leave the body -- he can collect all those who have been his fellow travelers moving in the same way. Now that he is leaving he would like to give you his last gift. As the Master opens his wings towards the other world you will feel the breeze which is incomparable. There is nothing in life to which it can be compared. It is sheer joy, so pure that even to have a little taste of it is enough to transform your whole life.

Birth of a Mother

Whenever a child is born, not only is the child born -- that is one part of it -- the mother is also born. Before that she was an ordinary woman; through the birth she becomes a mother. On one side the child is born, on the other side the mother is born. And a mother is totally different from a woman: a gap exists, her whole existence becomes qualitatively different. Before that she may have been a wife, a beloved, but suddenly that is no longer so important. A child is born, a new life has entered: she becomes a mother.That's why husbands are always afraid of children. Basically they never like children because a third party enters into the relationship -- not only enters, but the third party becomes the center. And after that the woman is never the same wife, she is different. After that, if a husband really wants love he has to become just like a son, because this woman who has become a mother can never be an ordinary wife again. She has become a mother, you cannot do anything about it now. The only thing left is that you become a son to her. That is the only way you can get her love again, otherwise the love will be moving towards her son. When a woman becomes a mother, something tremendously meaningful has happened to her. For a woman it is almost a new birth. It is something which is very difficult for a man to understand unless he is creative . If he has given birth to a poem, he feels tremendously happy. Nobody can understand what has happened just by composing a poem. But its not just a poem. Much was in turmoil in him, and the poem has settled many things.But it is nothing compared to a woman when she becomes a mother -- nothing. A poem is a poem. The moment it is born it is already dead. When it is inside the poet it has life. The moment it is expressed it is a dead piece of furniture. You can hang it on the wall. You can throw it on the rubbish heap, or whatsoever you want, but it is no more alive. When a woman gives birth to a child, it is life. When she looks into the eyes of the child, she looks into her own being. When the child starts growing, she grows with the child.