Tantric Meditation For Being in Oneness

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. In reality it is so, but it is not felt so. You feel your consciousness as yours, and others' consciousnesses you never feel. At the most you infer that others are also conscious. You infer because you think that because you are conscious, other beings like you must be conscious. This is a logical inference; you don't feel them as conscious. It is just like when you have a headache you feel your headache, you have a consciousness of it. But if someone else has a headache, you infer -- you cannot feel the other's headache. You simply infer that whatsoever he is saying must be true and he must have something like you. But you cannot feel it.The feeling can come only if you become conscious about others' consciousnesses -- otherwise it is a logical inference. You believe, you trust, that others are saying something honestly, and whatsoever they are saying is worth believing because you also have similar types of experiences.There is a logical school which says that nothing can be known about the other, it is impossible. At the most there can be an inference but nothing certain can be known about others. How can you know that others have pain like you, that others have anxieties like you? Others are there but we cannot penetrate them, we can only just touch their surface. Their inner being remains unknown. We remain closed in ourselves.The world around us is not a felt world, it is just inferred -- logically, rationally. The mind says it is there but the heart is not touched by it. That is why we behave with others as if they are things not persons. Our relationship with persons is also as it is with things. A husband behaves towards his wife as if she is a thing: he possesses her. The wife possesses the husband just like a thing. If we behaved with the other as if they were persons then we would not try to possess them, because only things can be possessed.A person means freedom. A person cannot be possessed. If you try to possess them, you will kill them, they will become things. Our relationship with others is really not an `I-thou' relationship, deep down it is just an `I-it' relationship. The other is just a thing to be manipulated, to be used, exploited. That is why love becomes more and more impossible, because love means taking the other as a person, as a conscious being, as a freedom, as something as valuable as you are.If you behave as if everything is a thing, then you are the center and things are just to be used. The relationship becomes utilitarian. Things have no value in themselves -- the value is that you can use them, they exist for you. You can be related to your house -- the house exists for you. It is a utility. The car exists for you, but the wife doesn't exist for you and the husband doesn't exist for you. The husband exists for himself and the wife exists for herself. A person exists for himself; that is what being a person means. And if you allow the person to be a person and don't reduce him to being a thing, you will by and by start feeling him. Otherwise you cannot feel. Your relationship will remain conceptual, intellectual, mind to mind, head to head -- but not heart to heart.This technique says, FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. This will be difficult because first you have to feel the person as a person, as a conscious being. Even that is difficult.Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." This is the same thing -- but the other must first become a person for you. He must exist in his own right, not to be exploited, manipulated, utilized, not as a means but an end in himself. First, the other must become a person; the other must become a `thou', as valuable as you are. Only then can this technique be applied. FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. First feel that the other is conscious, and then this can happen -- you can feel that the other has the same consciousness that you have. Really, the `other' disappears, only a consciousness flows between you and him. You become two poles of one consciousness flowing, of one current.In deep love it happens that the two persons are not two. Something between the two has come into being and they have just become two poles. Something is flowing between the two. When this flow is there you will feel blissful. If love gives bliss, it gives bliss only because of this: that two persons, just for a single moment, lose their egos -- the `other' is lost and oneness comes into being just for as ingle moment. If it happens, it is ecstatic, it is blissful, you have entered paradise. Just a single moment, and it can be transforming.This technique says that you can do this with every person. In love you can do it with one person, but in meditation you have to do it with every person. Whosoever comes near you, simply dissolve into him and feel that you are not two lives, but one life, flowing. This is just changing the gestalt. Once you know how, once you have done it, it is very easy. In the beginning it seems impossible because we are so stuck in our own egos. It is difficult to lose it, difficult to become a flow. So it will be good if in the beginning you try with something that you are not very scared or afraid of.You will be less afraid of a tree so it will be easier. Sitting near a tree, just feel the tree and feel that you have become one with it, that there is a flow within you, a communication, a dialogue, a melting. Sitting near a flowing river just feel the flow, feel that you and the river have become one. Lying under the sky, just feel that you and the sky have become one. In the beginning it will be just imagination but by and by you will feel that you are touching reality through imagination.And then try it with persons. This is difficult in the beginning because there is a fear. Because you have been reducing persons to things, you are afraid that if you allow someone to be so intimate he will also reduce you to a thing. That is the fear. So no one allows much intimacy: a gap is always to be kept and guarded. Too much closeness is dangerous because the other can convert you into a thing, he can try to possess you. That is the fear. You are trying to convert others into things, and others are trying to convert you -- and no one wants to be a thing, no one wants to become a means, no one wants to be used. It is the most degrading phenomenon to be reduced to just a means to something, not valuable in yourself. But everyone is trying. Because of this there is a deep fear and it will be difficult to start this technique with persons.So start with a river, with a hill, with the stars, with the sky, with trees.Once you come to know the feeling of what happens when you become one with the tree; once you come to know how blissful you become when you become one with the river, how without losing anything you gain the whole existence -- then you can try it with persons. And if it is so blissful with a tree, with a river, you cannot imagine how much more blissful it will be with a person, because a person is a higher phenomenon, a more highly evolved being. Through a person you can reach higher peaks of experience. If you can become ecstatic with even a rock, with a person you can feel a Divine ecstasy happening to you.But start with something that you are not much afraid of, or, if there is a person you love, a friend, a beloved, a lover, of whom you are not afraid, with whom you can be really intimate and close without any fear, with whom you can lose yourself without getting scared deep down that he may turn you into a thing -- if you have someone like that, then try this technique. Lose yourself consciously into him. When you lose yourself consciously into someone, that someone will lose himself into you; when you are open and you flow into the other, the other starts flowing into you and there is a deep meeting, a communion. Two energies melt into each other. In that state there is no ego, no individual -- simply consciousness. And if this is possible with one individual, it is possible with the whole universe. What saints have called ecstasy, samadhi, is just a deep love phenomenon between a person and the whole universe.FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. SO,LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING. We are always concerned with our own self. Even while we are in love, we are concerned with our own self, that is why love becomes a misery. It can become heaven but it becomes a hell, because even lovers are concerned with their own selves. The other is loved because he gives you happiness, the other is loved because you feel good with him, but the other is still not loved as if he is something valuable in himself or herself. The value comes through your enjoyment. You are gratified, you are satisfied in some way, that is why the other has become significant. This is also using the other.Concern for the self means exploitation of the other. And religious consciousness can come into existence only when the concern for the self is lost, because then you become non-exploitive. With existence your relationship becomes one, not of exploitation, but of sheer sharing, sheer bliss.You are not using, you are not being used -- it becomes a sheer celebration of being.But concern for the self has to be thrown away... and it is very deep-rooted. It is so deep-rooted that you are not even aware of it. In one of the Upanishads it is said that the husband loves his wife, not for the wife, but for himself; and the mother loves the child, not for the child, but for herself. The concern for the self is so deep-rooted that whatsoever you do, you do for yourself. This means that you are always gratifying the ego, feeding the ego, feeding a false center which has become a barrier between you and the universe.Lose the concern for the self. If even sometimes, even for a few moments, you can lose concern for the self and can become concerned with the other, with the other's self, you will be entering a different reality, a different dimension. Hence so much emphasis on service, love, compassion. Because compassion, love, service, mean concern for the other's self, not your own.But look... human mind is so cunning that it has converted service, compassion and love into concerns for the self. A Christian missionary serves, and his service is sincere. Really, no one else can serve so deeply and intensely as a Christian missionary. No Hindu can do that, no Mohammedan can do that, because Jesus has emphasized service so much. A Christian missionary is serving poor people, ill people, diseased people, but deep down he is concerned with himself not with them. This service is just a method to reach heaven. He is not concerned with them, he is not really concerned with them at all, he is concerned with his own self. Through service he can achieve a greater self, so he is doing service. But he has missed the basic point, because service means the concern for the other -- the other is the center and you have become the periphery.Try it some time. Make someone the center -- then his happiness becomes your happiness, his misery becomes your misery. Whatsoever happens, happens to him and flows to you. But he is the center. If once, even once, you can feel that the other is the center and you have become just a periphery to him, you have entered a different type of existence, a different dimension of experience. Because in that moment you will feel a deep bliss, unknown before, unexperienced before. Just by making the other the concern, you will lose all misery. In that moment there will be no hell for you; you have entered paradise.Why does it happen? It happens because the ego is the root of all misery. If you can forget it, if you can dissolve it, all misery dissolves with it.FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING. Become the tree, become the river, become the wife, become the husband, become the child, become the mother, become the friend -- it can be practiced every moment of life. But in the beginning it will be difficult. so do it for a least one hour every day. In that hour, whatsoever passes around you, become that. You will wonder how it can happen. There is no other way to know how it can happen -- you have to practice it.Sit with the tree and feel that you have become the tree. And when the wind comes and the whole tree starts shaking and trembling, feel that shaking and trembling in you; when the sun rises and the whole tree becomes alive, feel that aliveness in you; when a shower of rain comes and the whole tree is satisfied and content, a long thirst, a long awaiting has disappeared and the tree is completely satisfied and content, feel satisfied and content with the tree. and then you will become aware of the subtle moods, of the nuances of a tree.You have seen that tree for many years, but you don't know its moods. Sometimes it is happy; sometimes it is unhappy. Sometimes it is sad, dead, worried, frustrated; sometimes it is very blissful, ecstatic. There are moods. The tree is alive and it feels. And if you become one with it, then you will feel it. Then you will feel whether the tree is young or old; whether the tree is dissatisfied with its life or satisfied; whether the tree is in love with existence or not -- is anti, against, furious, angry; whether the tree is violent or there is a deep compassion in it. As you are changing every moment, the tree is also changing -- if you can feel a deep affinity with it, what they call empathy.Empathy means you have become so sympathetic that really you become one. The moods of the tree become your moods. And then, if this goes deeper and deeper and deeper, you can talk, you can have a communication with the tree. Once you know its moods you start understanding its language, and the tree will share its mind with you. It will share its agonies and ecstasies.And this can happen with the whole universe.For at least one hour every day try to be in empathy with something. In the beginning you will look foolish to yourself. You will think,"What kind of stupidity am I doing?" You will look around and you will feel that if someone looks or someone sees or someone comes to know, they will think you have gone crazy. But only in the beginning. Once you enter this world of empathy the whole world will look crazy to you. They are missing so much unnecessarily. Life gives in such abundance and they are missing it. They are missing because they are closed: they don't allow life to enter into them. And life can enter you only if you enter life through many, many ways, through many paths, through multi-dimensions. Be in empathy for at least one hour every day.This was the meaning of prayer in the beginning of every religion. The meaning of prayer was to be in an affinity with the universe, to be in a deep communication with the universe. In prayer you are talking to God -- God means the totality. Sometimes you may be angry with God, sometimes thankful, but one thing is certain -- you are in communication. God is not a mental concept, it has become a deep, intimate relationship. That is what prayer means.But our prayers have gone rotten because we don't know how to communicate with beings. And if you cannot communicate with beings, you cannot communicate with the Being -- Being with a capital `B' -- it is impossible. If you cannot communicate with a tree, how can you communicate with the total existence? And if you feel foolish talking to a tree, you will feel more foolish talking to God.Leave one hour aside every day for a prayerful state of mind, and don't make your prayer a verbal affair. Make it a feeling thing. Rather than talking with the head, feel it. Go and touch the tree, hug the tree, kiss the tree; close your eyes and be with the tree as if you are with your beloved. Feel it. And soon you will come to a deep understanding of what it means to put the self aside, of what it means to become the other.FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING.

The Pinnacle Of Meditation

FROM SEX TO SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS - PINNACLE OF MEDITATION



LET ME START THIS WITH A SMALL STORY..............



Let me proceed this with a small interesting tale. Many, many years ago, in a certain country, there was a young and famous painter. He decided to create a truly great portrait, a lively portrait full of the joy of God, a portrait of a man whose eyes radiated eternal peace. And so, he set out to find someone whose face reflected that eternal, ethereal light.
The artist roamed from village to village, from jungle to jungle, in search of his subject, and at long last he came across a shepherd with shining eyes, with a face and features that held the promise of some celestial home. One look was enough to convince him that God was present in this young man.
The artist painted a portrait of the young shepherd. Millions of copies of the portrait were made and it sold far and wide. People felt great gratitude, just being able to hang the picture on their walls.
After a spell of some twenty years, when the artist had grown old, he decided to paint another portrait. His experience had shown him that life is not all goodness, that Satan also exists in man. The idea of painting a picture of Satan persisted; were he to fulfill the project, then the two pictures would complement each other, would show the complete man. He had already done a painting of godliness; now he wanted to portray evil incarnate.
He sought a man who was not a man but Satan. He went to gambling dens, to bars and to madhouses.

This subject had to be full of hell's fire; his face had to show all that is evil, ugly and sadistic.
After a long search, the artist finally met a prisoner in a jail. The man had committed seven murders and had been sentenced to be hanged in a few days. Hell was evident in the man's eyes; they spouted hate. His face was the ugliest one could possibly hope to find. The artist began to paint him.

When he had completed the portrait he brought out his earlier picture and set it by the side of the new painting for contrast. It was difficult to assess which was better from an artistic point of view; both were marvelous. He stood, staring at both of them. And then he heard a sob. He turned and saw the chained prisoner, crying. The artist was bewildered. He asked, "My friend, why are you crying? Do these pictures disturb you?"
The prisoner said, "I have been trying to hide something from you all this time, but today I am lost. You obviously do not know that the first picture is also of me. Both portraits are of me. I am the same shepherd you met twenty years ago in the hills. I cry for my downfall in the last twenty years. I have fallen from heaven to hell, from God to Satan."
I do not know how true this story is, but one thing is for certain: each man's life has two converse sides; two portraits of everyone are possible. In every man both God and Satan exist; in every man there is the possibility of heaven, and the possibility of hell.


LIFE AS ROSES

A bouquet of beautiful roses can grow in man; a heap of mud can also pile up in him. Every man swings between these two extremes. Man can attain to either of these extremes, but most people are inclined towards the infernal. Those fortunate few who aspire to the eternal, who let godliness grow in them, are rare. Can we succeed in making our lives temples of God? Can we also become like the portrait that had the glimpse of God in it?
With this question I resume today's talk. How can man become the reflection of God? How is it possible to make man's life heaven, to make it fragrant, beautiful, harmonious? How is it possible for man to know that which is deathless? How is it possible for man to enter the temple of God?
In this context, the facts of life indicate that all our progress, so far, has been in the opposite direction. In childhood we are in heaven, but as we grow older, by and by we land in hell. The world of childhood is full of innocence and purity, but we gradually begin traveling a road paved with lies and treachery and by the time we are mature we are old -- not only physically but also spiritually. Not only does the body become weak and infirm, but the soul falls into a ruinous state as well. But we simply accept this; we simply let the matter finish there. But we also finish ourselves.
Religion is fatalistic about this question, about this downfall, about this journey from heaven to hell.

But this journey ought to be reversed. This journey should be a rewarding one -- from sorrow to joy, from darkness to light, from mortality to immortality. Man's inner urge is to reach the deathless from the deathbound; this is the thirst of man's innermost soul. The soul's only search is to reach from the darkness to the light. The basic drive of our primal energy is to reach from untruth to truth.
But for that voyage, man needs to conserve his energy; he needs to allow his energy to grow. To scale truth, to reach to the soul, man must strive to become a reservoir of limitless strength; only then can he reach to the eternal. Heaven is not for the weak.
I repeat, heaven is not for the weak. The truth of life is not for those who dissipate their energy, who allow themselves to become feeble and frail. Those who squander life's energies, who become insipid and impotent within, cannot undertake this expedition. It requires great energy to scale the heights.
Conservation of energy is a prime requisite of religion. But we are a weak, sick generation, and through this loss of energy we are progressively sinking to weaker and weaker levels. Our vitality is being drained away and all that is left inside is a honeycomb of dry cells; nothing is left but a terrible emptiness. Our lives are one sad continuous story of loss; our lives are not productive at all.
Why does this unattractive situation exist? And how do we lose our energy?
The biggest outlet for man's energy is sex.

Sex is a continuous drain, and it should be stopped. No one likes to lose anything, but as I told you earlier, there is an irresistible reason why man overdraws on his energy so much. Because of the blissful glimpse in sex, man is dragged, willy-nilly, into losing energy time and time again. The luminescent but transient rapture that comes with sex has such a great attraction for him that man is falling headlong into losing the very thing that is the basis of everything.
If the same ecstasy were available by some other means, would one not stop wasting one's energy through sex? Is there any other way to obtain that same experience? Isn't there any other way to realize the very same exalted experience where we fathom the deeper-than-deep recesses of the soul, where we touch the highest peak of existence, where we are given a revitalizing glimpse of subtle bliss and pure joy, where all definitions and all limitations evaporate? Is there any other way? Is there any technique for plunging into that serene abyss within ourselves? Is there any other process for uniting with the eternal source of peace and joy that exists in us all?
This knowledge will spark a transformation in man. Then he will turn his back on Kama and will turn towards Rama; then his journey will be "from lust to the Lord." Then an inner revolution will take place; then a new door will open.
If man is not shown a new door, he will continue to revolve in the same repetitive circle and will eventually destroy himself.

But man's backward idea of sex has prevented him from even thinking about any other door, about any superior outlet. And a great and disruptive chaos has been created in his life.
Nature has endowed man with one door only, that of sex, but the teachings down the centuries have slammed that door shut, have jammed that release. In the absence of an adequate outlet, the swirling energy in man travels around and around, vainly pushing upwards: disintegrating his personality, degenerating him, turning him into a neurotic.
Moreover, this disintegrated, neurotic man cannot even utilize the natural door of sex, and the onrush of energy from within shatters the walls and the windows of his being. As a consequence it erupts, and man falls and cracks his head, stumbles and breaks his arms and legs. Because it is confined by the closed, natural door, and because the supernatural door is not yet open, man's sex energy flows out through unnatural outlets. This is man's greatest misfortune. No new door has been opened yet, and the old door is already closed.
This is why I am firmly against the traditional teachings of enmity for, and suppression of, sex. It is because of the old teachings that sexuality has not only grown in man but has also become perverted. What is the remedy? Is there no other alternative?
Let us look at the situation carefully. The realization that comes in the moment of orgasm consists of two elements: egolessness and timelessness.

Time freezes and the ego evaporates. Because of the absence of the ego and the stoppage of time, one has a clear vision of one's own self -- of one's real self. But that glory is momentary, and then we are back in the same old rut. And in the meantime we have lost a considerable amount of energy.
The mind pines for that illumination; the mind yearns to grasp it again, but that light, that realization, is so transitory that we have scarcely glimpsed it when it disappears. What remains then is an urge, an obsession, a deep anxiety to achieve that experience again. Throughout the full span of his life, again and again man tries to grasp that glimpse, that exhilarating experience, but it never lingers.
There are two ways to attain superconsciousness, to reach the essence of the inner self: sex and meditation. Sex is the door provided by nature. Sex is the natural course: animals have it; birds have it; plants have it; man has it. So long as man avails himself of nature's door, he is not above the animals; he cannot rise above the animals. That door is also accessible to them. The day man finds a new door can be considered as the dawning of human-ness in him. Prior to that, we are not men; prior to that, our center coincides with the animals' center, with nature's center. Until we rise above this, until we transcend this, we are truly at the level of the animals. In appearance we are men.

We clothe ourselves like men; we speak the language of men, but inside, at the core, at the center, we are like animals. And we can be no more than that. That is the reason the animal in us bursts forth at the first available opportunity.
During the commotion at the time of the formation of India and Pakistan, we came to know that a carnivorous animal lurks behind the mask of man. We came to know of what the people who pray in the mosques and recite the Gita in the temples are capable: they loot; they slaughter; they rape. The very people who were seen praying in the temples and mosques the day before were seen raping in the streets. What had happened to them?
A man takes a holiday from being human whenever there's the slightest opportunity to let his obligations go -- and the animal, ever ready in him, springs forth. The animal is always anxious for free rein. And man is always tense -- curbing this animal, chaining it.
In a crowd, in a group, a man finds the opportunity to throw off his adopted garb of humanity and to forget himself. In a crowd, he develops the courage to forget himself, to forget the real identity he has been restraining. The animal is released. As an individual, no man has committed as many sins as he has in a crowd. A solitary man is a bit afraid someone may recognize him; he worries about what he is wearing. A solitary man will think first about what he is going to do; he is afraid others may call him an animal.

But in the midst of a big crowd of people a man loses his identity; he is not worried about being spotted at all. Then he is part and parcel of the mass; then he does what the people around him are doing.
And what does he do? He hurls stones, he starts fires, he commits rape. As part of the mob, he seizes the opportunity to set his animal free. And that is why, every five to ten years, man is anxious for war, why he is always lying in wait, hoping for a riot to break out. If it is under the pretext of a Hindu-Moslem problem it is fine with him. If not, a Gujarati-Marathi cause will also suit his purpose. If the Gujaratis and Marathis are not ripe for rioting, then a conflict between Hindi-speaking and non-Hindi speaking people will satisfy him. He needs an excuse, any excuse, to free the insatiable beast within.
The animal in man is frustrated by constant bondage; it is howling to get out. But unless this animal is vanquished, destroyed, man's consciousness can never rise above bestiality.
Our nature, our life-force, our energy, has only one easy outlet, and that outlet is sex. Sealing that channel will create problems, so before sealing it, it is very important to throw open a new door so that the energy can be diverted in a new direction. This is possible, but it has not yet happened for the simple reason that repression is much easier than transformation.

It is easier to cover a thing, to sit upon it, than to tackle it, than to transform it -- because the latter demands the effort of a sadhana, of a steady course of meditative action. Hence, we have chosen the internal repression of sex.
At the same time, we are unaware that nothing can be destroyed by suppression; on the contrary, it is strengthened as a reaction. We also forget that repressing something intensifies our attraction for it. That which we repress not only becomes the center of our consciousness but also sinks into the deeper layers of our subconscious. We may repress it during our waking hours, but at night it flashes across our dreams. Inside it waits, anxious to lash out at the slightest opportunity.
Repression will not free man from anything; on the contrary, its roots will go deep into his subconscious and trap him as a consequence. In the process of trying to stamp out sex, man has entangled himself; he has become trapped.
Although animals have their limits and their periods, man has neither. Man is sexual each hour throughout the year. Without exception, no animal in the animal kingdom is sexual to this degree. Animals have a specific time for it, a period, a season; it comes and it goes. And afterwards an animal doesn't think about it again. But look at what has happened to man. The thing which man has tried to repress, has tried to suppress, shoots up throughout his life.

It is an ever-active volcano.
Have you ever observed that no animal is sexual all the time, but that man leans toward sex in each and every situation? Sexuality fumes inside man, as if sex were all and everything in life. How has this perversion come about? How has this disaster occurred? Why hasn't it happened to any animal? There is only one cause: man has done his utmost to suppress sex. And it has erupted throughout his personality in equal measure.
And think of what we have done to suppress sex! We have had to develop an insulting attitude toward it; we have had to degrade it; we have had to abuse it. We have had to call it sin; we have had to shout from the rooftops, "Sex is sin!" We have had to proclaim that those who indulge in sex are contemptible, are to be despised. We have had to invent countless degrading names for sex in order to justify our suppression of it. But we have never worried for a moment that these abuses and objections would eventually poison our entire beings.
Nietzsche once made a very meaningful statement. He said that although religion had tried to kill sex by poisoning it, that sex was not dead, but still alive and full of poison. It would have been better had it died, but it was not to be; it was poisoned but yet it lived on. The device misfired. The sexuality we see around us today -- is the epitome of poisoned sex.
Sex also exists in animals because sex is the source of life, but sexuality only exists in man.


There is no sexuality in animals. Look into the eyes of an animal; you will not find lust there. But if you look into a man's eyes you will see nothing but lust; nothing but the gross desire for sex. And so, today, animals are beautiful in a way, but there is no limit to the ugliness and stench of man, the mad repressor.
As a first step in freeing man from sexuality, children -- both boys and girls -- should, as I told you yesterday, receive instruction in the subject of sex. In addition to their being given this knowledge, the ugly and unnatural distance between them should be erased. As a matter of fact, they should be brought much nearer; this segregation is completely unnatural.
Men and women have become altogether different species. By looking at the separation, at the man-made compartments between them, it is difficult to believe that men and women are of the same kind, that they are both part of mankind. If boys and girls were free to move about the house without clothes, as and when they liked, it would nip in the bud the obscene and unnatural curiosity that develops at a later age. We already know full well how this ignorance of each other's bodies shows up in the inquisitiveness of children: look how all children of civilized men love to play "doctor."
Furthermore, I wonder if you know about a new movement initiated by a segment of American society, all so-called religious people.

Their aim is to stop dogs, cats, horses and other animals being taken out unclothed; they want them to be dressed before they are taken into the streets. The idea behind it is that children may become corrupted if they look at naked animals. How funny it is to think of a child being corrupted by seeing a naked animal! But anyway, they are forming an association to ban unclothed animals from the streets. See how many things are being done to save mankind!
These so-called saviors are the very people who are destroying man. Have you never noticed just how wonderful and how beautiful the animals are, even unclothed? Even in their nakedness they are innocent, simple and plain. You rarely ever think of an animal as being naked, and you will never see animals as naked unless you are hiding your own nakedness inside you! But those who are afraid and those who are cowards will try anything and everything to compensate for their own fear of nakedness. Because of the invention of such remedies, mankind is degenerating, day by day.
Man ought to be so simple that he can stand up naked, unclad, innocent and full of bliss. A person like Mahavir undertook to stand up unclothed and, likewise, every man should cultivate a mentality whereby he could also stand up unclothed. People, so-called religious people, say that Mahavir discarded clothes, that he abandoned wearing garments.

But I deny this. His chitta, his consciousness, became so clear, so innocent -- as pure as that of a child -- that he rose up, nude, to face the world. When there is nothing at all left to conceal, a man can lay himself bare.
Man covers himself because he feels there is something inside that needs to be hushed up. But when there is nothing to hide, one need not even put up with clothes. There is a great need for the kind of world where every individual will be so guiltless, so pure of mind and so serene that he will be able to discard his clothes.
Where is the crime? What is the danger in being naked?
It is a different matter if clothes are worn for other reasons, but if they are worn solely out of one's fear of nakedness then this is contemptuous. Wearing clothes because of a dread of nakedness is indicative of a greater nakedness, is proof of a contaminated mind. But today we feel guilty even wearing clothes, as if we still haven't been able to scrub away the existence of our inner nudity.
Ah! God is so childish! He could so easily have created man with clothes.
By the way, please do not conclude that I am against the wearing of clothes. But I make no bones about stating that clothes worn out of sheer fear of nakedness do not cover nakedness; rather, they uncover it. This unnatural awareness of nakedness is contemptible, and degenerating.

And this awareness has been decreed by a long social tradition.
A person can seem naked wearing clothes and a nude person can appear to be clothed. Is it necessary to elaborate further on this point after seeing the modern, skin-tight clothes for both men and women? This is the outcome of an unsatisfied desire to leer at and to display the body. If men and women were familiar with each other's bodies, clothes would automatically serve no other purpose than to protect the body. But alas, nowadays, clothes are designed to arouse sexuality.
Where is man's civilization going when clothes are no longer clothes but aids to sexuality? This is why I advocate letting children remain nude up to a certain age. They should understand that the necessity for clothes has to do with something other than sex!
Moreover, the concept of nakedness is a subjective one. To a simple mind, to an innocent mind, nudity is not offensive; it has its own beauty. But up to now, man has been fed on poison, and gradually, with the passage of time, this poison has spread from one pole of his existence to the other. Consequently, our attitude to nakedness is completely unnatural.
When I spoke on this topic at the first meeting, at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Auditorium, a lady came to me and said, "I am very upset. I am very angry with you. Sex is a scandalous subject. Sex is sin.


Why did you speak about it at such length? I really despise sex."
Now, you see, this lady despises sex although she is a married woman with sons and daughters. How can she love the husband who leads her into sex? How can she love those children who have been born out of sex? Her attitude to life is permeated with poison; her love will remain poisonous. And so there is bound to be a basic and deep rift between this woman and her husband. There will also be a fence of thorns between her and her children because the latter, to her, are the fruits of sin. The relationship between her and her husband is sin-oriented; she is haunted by an unconscious guilt complex where sex is concerned. Can one live in harmony with sin?
Those who slander sex have disturbed everyone's marital life. Instead of affording any kind of deliverance, this disruptive attitude against sex has had deeply injurious effects. The man who meets with an invisible barrier between himself and his wife can never feel content with her: he will look around for other women; he will go to prostitutes. All the women in the world could have been like sisters and mothers to him had he received full gratification at home, but because of its absence, he will now see all women as potential wives, always after something. It is but natural; it had to be so. He finds poison, repulsion, and talk of sin where he ought to have been blessed with bliss, with ecstasy and serenity.

His basic needs are not met at home and so he roams everywhere, searching for satisfaction in every nook and corner. And what has man not invented to meet those basic needs! You would be amazed if we tried to list all the devices he has come up with.
Man has gone out of his way to devise many, many tricks but he has never thought carefully about the basic drawback. Now that which was a lagoon of love has become a pool of sex, and the pool is poisoned. And when there is an acute sense of sin, of poison; when there is a feeling of hesitation between husband and wife, this guilty approach ends the possibility of any growth in their lives together.
As I understand it, if a husband and wife can try to appreciate sex in harmony and with an understanding love towards each other, with a feeling of pure joy and without any sense of gloom, then their relationship can be transformed, elevated. And after this, it is possible that the wife, the same wife, will be there, but she will be in the form of a mother!


-------------------- ENOUGH FOR NOW ( WILL BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK)

Jokes Corner

Jokes of Mulla Nasrudeen

1. Mulla Nasrudin constantly irritated his friends with his eternal optimism. No matter how bad the situation, he would always say, "It could have been worse." To cure him of this annoying habit, his friends decided to invent a situation so completely black, so dreadful, that even Nasrudin could find no hope in it. Approaching him at the club bar one day, one of them said, "Mulla, Did you hear what happened to George? He came home last night, found his wife in bed with another man, shot them both, then turned the gun on himself!" "Terrible," said the Mulla "But it could have been worse." "How in hell," asked his dumbfounded friend, "could it possibly have been worse?" "Well," said Nasrudin, "IF IT HAD HAPPENED THE NIGHT BEFORE! I WOULD BE DEAD NOW."

2. Mulla Nasrudin was round at his fiancee's home, having a serious talk with her father. "Sir, I'd like to marry your daughter," he announced . His girl's father looked at him. "Have you seen my wife yet?" he asked. "OH, YES SIR," replied Nasrudin. "BUT IF YOU DON'T MIND, I WOULD STILL PREFER YOUR DAUGHTER, SIR."

3. "Do you believe that the moonlight makes people silly, Mulla?" asked the bride after the honeymoon. "Yes Dear," remarked Mulla Nasrudin from behind his evening paper. "I PROPOSED TO YOU IN THE MOONLIGHT."

4. Mulla Nasrudin had just got into bed and was ready for a good night's sleep. But it was not to be. Just as he closed his eyes, his wife said, "It's cold outside. Get out of bed and close the window." The Mulla ignored her and pretended to be asleep, but it didn't work. "Mulla get out of bed and close the window; it's cold outside." Once again he ignored her but, after the fourth time, he realized that he was not going to win and he reluctantly got out of bed. Shuffling over to the window, he slammed it shut. got back into bed, closed his eyes and said, "SO NOW IT'S WARM OUTSIDE?"

Tantric Meditation for woman: The Third Type

From the Discourses Of The Book Of Secrets

ABIDE IN SOME PLACE ENDLESSLY SPACIOUS, CLEAR OF TREES, HILLS, HABITATIONS. THENCE COMES THE END OF MIND PRESSURES


Before we enter this technique three other points about loneliness must be understood. One: to be alone is basic, foundational -- that is how your being is. In the mother;s womb you are alone, totally alone, and psychologists say that the hankering for nirvana, for enlightenment, for salvation, for paradise, is really a deep imprinted memory of the experience of the mother;s womb. You have known it -- the total aloneness -- and the bliss of it. You were alone, you were God. No one else was there. No one disturbed you, no one interfered. Alone, you were the master. With no conflict the peace was intrinsic. Silence was there, no language. You were deep in yourself. You are not consciously aware of the fact but it is deeply imprinted, it is there hidden in the unconscious.

Because of this, psychologists say that everyone thinks that life in childhood was beautiful. And ever country and every race thinks that somewhere in the past was the Golden Age -- somewhere in the past, life was blissful. Hindus call it SATYA-YUG, age of truth. In the past, somewhere, the very, very past, before history began, everything was beautiful and blissful. There was no conflict, no strife, no violence. Only love prevailed. That was the Golden Age. Christians say that Adam and Eve lived in Eden, in the garden, in absolute innocence and blissfulness. Then came the fall. So the Golden Age is before the fall. Every country, every race, every religion, believes that the Golden Age was somewhere in the past. And the strangeness is that howsoever deeply into the past you move, this was always believed to be so, always.

In Mesopotamia a stone has been found which is six thousand years old. There is an inscription on it. If you read it you will feel that it is the editorial of today's morning newspaper. The inscription says that this age is the age of sin. Everything has gone wrong. The son doesn't believe in the father, the wife doesn't believe in the husband. Darkness has set. Where are those days, the days of the past, those golden days? This is a six thousand-year-old inscription! Lao Tzu says that in the days of the past, in the days of the ancients, everything was beautiful. Then Tao prevailed, then there was nothing wrong, and because there was nothing wrong, no one preached. There was nothing wrong to be changed, transformed, and there was no priest, no preacher, no moral leaders, because everything was so right. Lao Tzu says that in those days, those old days, there was no religion. There was no need because Tao prevailed. Everyone was so religious that there was no need for religion. There were no sages then, because there were no sinners. Everyone was such a sage that, naturally, no one was aware of who was a sage and who was a sinner.

Psychologists say that this past never existed. This past is just the deep memory within every individual of the womb. It existed. Really, Tao was in the womb, and everything was beautiful, everything was as it should be. Completely unaware of the world, the child is moving in bliss. The situation of the child in the womb is just as it is for Vishnu on his SHESHNAGA. Hindus believe that Vishnu is lying on his couch, a serpent couch, floating on the ocean of bliss. Really, that is the child's position in the womb. The child floats. The mother's womb is just like the ocean. And you may be surprised to know that the water in which the child floats in the mother's womb has the same constituents as the ocean water -- very similar, the same salts, everything. It is ocean water, soothing. And the womb always keeps the right temperature for the child. The mother may be shivering with cold, that makes no difference. For the child it is always the same temperature in the womb. He is warm, blissfully floating, with no worries, no anxieties, no responsibilities, alone. He is not aware of the mother; mother doesn't exist for him. This SANSKAR, this imprint, is carried on by you. This is the basic reality, how you were before you entered society, and this will be the reality again when you go out of society and die. You will again be alone.

And between these two points of loneliness your life is filled with many events. But those events are accidental. Deep down you remain alone because that is your basic reality. Around that aloneness many things happen: you get married, you become two, then you have children and you become many. Everything goes on happening -- but just on the periphery. The deep stratum remains totally alone. That is your reality. You may call this your ATMA, your essence.

In deep solitude this essence has to be recaptured. So when Buddha says that he has achieved nirvana, really he has achieved this loneliness, this basic reality. Mahavir says he has achieved KAIVALYA. The very word KAIVALYA, means loneliness, the alone. Just below the turmoil of events that aloneness is there. It runs through you like a thread running in a mala. The beads are apparent, but the thread is not. But the beads are hanging on the thread, and the beads are many and the thread is one. Really, the mala is a symbol of this reality. The thread is the reality and the beads are just the events which go on hanging on it. And unless you penetrate and come to the basic thread, you will be in anguish, you will be in suffering.

You have a history -- that history is accidental. And you have a nature -- that nature is non-historical. You are born on a certain date, to certain parents, in a certain society, in a certain age. You are educated in a certain way. Then you enter a particular profession, you fall in love with a woman, you have children. These dramas are beads, events, history, but deep down you are always alone. And if you forget yourself completely because of these events you have missed the very purpose of being here. Then you have lost yourself in the drama and you have forgotten the actor who was not part of it, who was just playing the role. All these things are roles.

Because of this India does not have written histories. Really, it is very difficult to be certain about when Krishna was born, when he died; when Ram was born, when he died -- or whether he was ever born or not or is just a myth. We have not written his history, and this is the reason: we in India are concerned with the thread and not with the beads. Really, in the religious world, Christ is the first historical person, but had he been born in India he would not have been historical. We in India are always looking for the thread, the beads are irrelevant. But the West is more oriented towards events, facts -- temporal things -- than to the essential and the eternal. History is the drama. In India, we say that Ramas and Krishnas go on being born in every age. They have been repeated many times before and they will be repeated many times afterwards. So there is no need to carry on the records. When they are born is irrelevant. What their being is -- the thread -- that is the meaningful. So we are not concerned if they were really historical persons or not, we are not concerned with outer things that happen to a being, we are concerned with the being itself and whether anything happens to it or not.

When you move into solitude you are moving to the thread; when you move into solitude, you are moving into nature. If you are really alone, not even thinking of others, you will feel the world of nature around you for the first time. You will become attuned to it. Right now you are attuned to society. If you fall from this attunement to society, you will be attuned to nature. When the rains come -- they are always coming but you cannot understand the language of the rains -- they don't say anything to you, they don't mean anything to you; at the most some utilitarian thing about water being needed is realized. So there is some use, but you don't have any dialogue, you cannot understand the language of the rains, the rain has no personality for you. But if you leave society for a time and remain in aloneness, you will start feeling a new phenomenon: the rains will come and they will talk to you. Then you will feel their moods -- some day the rain is very angry and some day it is very soothing and loving. Some day the whole sky is depressed, and some day it is dancing. Some day the sun rises as if without any will of its own, forced, doing the work; and some day on its own -- now it is not a work but a play.

You will feel all the moods around you. Nature has its own language but it is silent, and unless you are silent you cannot understand it.

The first layer of attunement is with society, the second layer of attunement is with nature, and the third layer, the deepest, is with Tao or DHARMA. That is the pure existence. Then the tree, then the rains, then the clouds, they are also left behind. Then, just existence.... Existence has no moods. Existence is always the same. Existence is always the same: always festive, exploding with energy. But one has first to move from society to nature -- then from nature to existence. When you are attuned with existence you are totally alone, but this aloneness is different from that of the child in the womb. The child is alone, but it is not that he is really alone, he is unaware of anything else. He is enclosed in darkness, that's why he feels alone. The whole world exists around him but he is not aware of it. His aloneness is that of ignorance. When you become consciously silent, one with existence, your aloneness will not be surrounded by darkness, it will be surrounded by light.

For the child in the womb the world is not, because he is unaware. For you the world will not be, because the world and you have become one.

When you reach the deepest being you are alone again because the ego is lost. The ego is given by society. It can persist a little even when you are in nature although it will not be as much as it is in society. When you move alone, your ego starts disappearing -- because it is always in relationship. Look at this phenomenon: with every individual your ego changes. If you are talking to your servant, look inside, look at the ego, see how it is. If you are talking to your friend, look within, see how the ego is. You are talking to your beloved, look within, see whether the ego is or is not. If you are talking to an innocent child, look within -- the ego will not be there because it will be stupid to be an egoist with an innocent child. You will feel that this would be stupid, so while playing with children you become a child. The child doesn't know the language of ego. And being egoistic with a child you will look awkward. So when you play with children they pull you down. They bring you back to your own childhood. When you are talking with a dog, or playing with a dog, the ego that the society has given to you cannot exist because with a dog there is no question of ego. If you are walking with your dog -- a very beautiful and costly dog -- and someone crosses the street, even the dog seems to give you ego. But the dog is not giving you ego, it is the man who is passing. You become straight, you feel elated because you have a very beautiful dog and the man looks jealous.

The ego is there. If you move into a forest the ego disappears. Hence the insistence of all religions to move, at least for a time, into the world of nature.

This sutra is simple: ABIDE IN SOME PLACE ENDLESSLY SPACIOUS -- on some hilltop from where you can see endlessly, from where the vision never comes to any end. If you can see endlessly and there is no end to your vision, the ego will dissolve. Ego needs limits, boundaries. The more defined the boundaries, the easier it is for the ego to exist.

ABIDE IN SOME PLACE ENDLESSLY SPACIOUS, CLEAR OF TREES, HILLS, HABITATIONS. THENCE COMES THE END OF MIND PRESSURES.

Mind is very subtle. You can live on a hilltop where there is no one, but if you can see a cottage deep down in the valley you will start talking with that cottage, you will be in relationship with it -- the society has come. You don't know who lives there, but someone lives there, and that becomes the boundary -- you will start dreaming about who lives there and your eyes will search each day to see who lives there. The cottage will become a symbol of humanity. So the sutra says WITHOUT HABITATIONS -- even without trees, because it has been known that people who live alone start talking with trees. They make friendships, they create a dialogue. You cannot understand the difficulty of a man who has gone to be lonely. He wants someone so he will say "Hello" to the tree and "How are you?" And trees are beings. If you are really honest, they will start replying, there will be a response. So you can create a society.

The meaning is this: be in some place and be alert that you don't create a society again. You may start tending a tree, loving a tree. You may feel that the tree is feeling thirsty so you should bring some water -- you have started a relationship and with a relationship you are not alone. So this is the emphasis: move to such a place but have it in your mind that you are not going to create any relationship. Leave all relationship and the world of relationship behind, and be alone there. In the beginning it is going to be very difficult because your mind is created by society. You can leave society but where will you leave the mind? The mind will follow you like a shadow. The mind will haunt you. The mind will start torturing you. Faces will come in your dreams -- they will try to pull you. You will try to meditate but thoughts will not cease. You will start thinking of your house, you will start thinking of your wife, of your children. It is human.

And it does not happen to you only -- it has happened to Buddha and to Mahavir. It has happened to everyone. Even a Buddha is bound to think of Yashodhara during six long years of loneliness. In the beginning, when the mind was following him, he must have been sitting under a tree pretending to meditate, and Yashodhara must have followed him. He loved that woman. And he must have felt guilty because he had left her -- and without saying anything to her. Nowhere is it mentioned that he thought about Yashodhara, but I say he must have thought of her. It is so human; it is so natural. To think that he never thought again of Yashodhara would be very inhuman and would not be fair to Buddha. Only by and by, after a long struggle, would he have been able to throw off the mind.

But mind will persist because it is nothing but society -- society internalized. Society has entered into you -- that is your mind. You can escape from society, the outer reality, but the inner will follow you.

Many times Buddha must have been talking with Yashodhara, with his father, with the small child he left behind. The face of his child must have followed him. It was there in his mind when he left. The night he left he went into Yashodhara's room, just to see the child for the last time. The child was only one day old. Yashodhara was sleeping and the child was clinging to her breast. He looked at the child. He wanted to take the child into his hands because this was his last opportunity. He had not touched him yet and now he might never return so there would be no meeting. He was leaving the world. He wanted to touch and kiss the child but then he became afraid because if he took the child up in his hands, Yashodhara might be awakened. Then it would be very difficult for him to leave -- she would start weeping and crying. He had a human heart. It was beautiful that he thought of it: that if she started crying it would be very difficult for him to leave. Then all that he had created in his mind -- that this world was useless and futile -- would disappear. He would not be able to see Yashodhara crying. He loved that woman. So he left. He moved out of the room without making any noise.

This man could not leave Yashodhara and the child easily. No one could. When he was begging it was bound to come to his mind -- his palace and everything. He was a beggar of his own accord. The past would persist, it would hammer the mind again and again, "Come back." Many times he would think, "I have made a mistake." It is bound to be so. Nowhere is this recorded and sometimes I think about making a diary about what happened to Buddha's mind during those six years -- a diary about what happened to his mind, what was going on.

Mind will follow like a shadow wherever you go. So it is not going to be easy. It has never been easy for anyone. It will be a long struggle to make yourself again and again alert; again and again to be a witness; again and again not to fall a victim. And to the very last the mind follows. Unless you are desperate, unless you feel that you are incurable, that nothing can be done, the mind will go on haunting you. It will try in every way. It will create fantasies, reveries, dreams; it will create all types of allurements, seductions. It is written in the lives of all the seers that Satan comes, the Devil comes, to seduce. No one comes -- only your mind. Your mind is the only Devil and no one else. It will try in every way. It will say to you, "I will give you the whole world, come back." It will make you depressed, "You are a fool -- the whole world is enjoying and you have come to this hilltop. You are mad. All this religious stuff is humbug, come back. Look, the whole world is not insane and they are enjoying." And the mind will give such beautiful pictures of everyone who is enjoying and the whole world will be more attractive to you than ever. All that you have left behind will pull you backwards.

This is the basic struggle. And this is just because the mind is a mechanism of habits, of mechanical persistence. On the hilltop the mind will feel like hell -- nothing is good there, everything is wrong. The mind will create negativity all around you, "What are you doing here? Have you gone mad?" The world that you have left behind will become more and more beautiful to your eyes and the place that you are in will become more and more ugly. But if you persist and you remain aware that this is what the mind is doing, this is what the mind is bound to do, and if you don't get identified with the mind, a moment comes when the mind leaves you, and with it all the pressures. When the mind leaves you, you are unburdened, because it is the only burden. Then there is no worry, no thought, no anxiety, you have entered the womb of existence. Unworried, you float. A deep silence explodes within you.

The sutra says, THENCE COMES THE END OF MIND PRESSURES. In such solitude, in such loneliness, one thing more has to be remembered: the crowd exerts a deep pressure on you, whether you know it or not.

Now, after working on animals, scientists have come to a very basic law. They say that every animal has a certain space as his territory. If you enter that space then the animal becomes tense and he will attack you, Every animal has a certain space around him. He will not allow anybody to enter, because the moment someone enters, he feels the pressure. You hear many birds singing in the trees. You don't know what they are doing. Scientists say now, after years of study, that whenever a bird is singing in the trees he is doing many things. One, he is calling for his girlfriend. Another, he is alerting all the male competitors that this is his territory -- don't enter it. And if someone enters the territory a fight will ensue. And the girlfriend will just wait and see who wins, because whoever gets the territory will get her/ She will just wait, and the one who wins will stay there and the one who is defeated will have to leave. By many means every animal creates territory: by sound, by singing, by body odor. No other competitor should enter that territory.

You may have seen dogs pissing all around. Scientists say that they create their territory by pissing. The dog will go and piss on this pole and on that pole. He will not piss on one place -- why? You can do it on one place, why move so much? He is creating territory. His urine has a particular odor and with it he creates a territory. No one should enter, it is dangerous. He lives secluded in his own territory, master of it.

There are many studies going on. They have tried putting many animals in one cage with all their needs fulfilled -- better than they can fulfil them themselves in a forest. But they go mad because they don't have space. When someone is always around they are tense, afraid, ready to fight. This constant readiness to fight gives such tensions that there heart failures or they go mad. Animals even commit suicide because the pressure becomes so much. And many abnormalities develop which are never found in the wild state. Monkeys in the wild are totally different. When caged in a zoo they start behaving abnormally. In the beginning it was thought that it was the bondage that was creating the problem. Now it is known that it is not the bondage. If you give them the proper space that they need in a cage they are happy. Then there is no problem. But they have an intrinsic feeling of space. When someone enters that space, pressure comes to their minds. Their minds start to be tense, strained; they cannot sleep right, they cannot feed right, they cannot love right.

Because of these studies, scientists now say that the whole of humanity is going crazy and mad because of too much over-population. The pressure is so great. You are never left alone: in the train, in the bus, in the office, everywhere, crowds and crowds. Man also has a need of space, to be left alone. But there is no place, you are never alone. When you come to your home, your wife is there, the children are there, and the relatives keep on coming. And they still think that the guest is God! You are already crazy because the pressure is too much all around you. You cannot say to anyone, "Leave me alone." If you say to your wife, "Leave me alone," she will get angry, "What do you mean?" She has been waiting for you the whole day. Mind needs space to be relaxed.

This sutra is really beautiful and very scientific. THENCE COMES THE END OF MIND PRESSURES.

When you move alone on a solitary hilltop you have space all around you, endless space. The pressure of the crowd, the pressure of others around you, leaves you. You will sleep more deeply. You will have a different quality of awakening in the morning. You will feel free. An inner pressure circle is not there. You will feel unimprisoned, unfettered.

This is good. But we have become so addicted to crowds that only for a few days -- three or four days -- will you feel good, then the desire will arise to go again to the crowd. Every holiday you go on, you want to come back after three days. Because of the pattern, the habit, you feel useless. Alone, you feel useless, alone you cannot do anything, and even if you do something, no one will know about it, no one will see you doing it, no one will appreciate it. You cannot do anything alone because all your life you have been doing something for others. You feel useless.

So remember, if you ever try this solitary madness, drop the idea of utility. Be useless. Only then can you be alone. Because really, utility has been forced on your mind by society. Society says, "Be of some utility. Don't be useless." Society want you to be an economic unit, a thing, efficient, utilitarian. Society doesn't want you to be just a flower. No, even if you are a flower then you must be worth being sold. Society needs you to be in the market, you must have some utility. Only then are you of use, otherwise not. Society goes on preaching that use is the goal of life, the purpose of life. This is nonsense.

I am not saying be useless. I am saying that this use is not the goal. You have to live in society, to be useful to it, but to remain capable of being useless at any moment. That capacity must be retained otherwise you become a thing and not a person. When you move into solitariness, aloneness, this will become a problem. You will feel yourself useless.

I have been working with many people. Sometimes I suggest that they go for three weeks or three months into total loneliness, silence. And I tell them that after seven days they will want to come back and their mind will find all the reasons for not being there so that they can come back. I tell them not to listen to those arguments and to make it a point that for the time they have decided upon they will not leave. They say to me that they are going of their own will, so why should they leave? I tell them that they don't know themselves. This will not be there for more than three to seven days; afterwards they will long to return, because society has become alcoholic, it is an intoxicant. In sober moments you can think about being alone, but when you are alone, within three days you will think, "What am I doing?" Remember, use is for society. Society uses you and you use society. This is a reciprocal relationship.

But life is not for use. It is non-utilitarian, purposeless, it is a play, a celebration. So when you move into solitariness to do this technique, be prepared from the very beginning that you are going to be useless, and enjoy it, don't feel sad about it. You cannot conceive of what arguments the mind will bring. You will say, "The world is in such trouble and you are sitting in silence here. Look what is happening in Vietnam and what is happening in Pakistan and what is happening in China; and your country is dying, there is no food, there is no water. What are you doing here meditation? What is the use? Will it bring socialism to the country?" Mind will bring beautiful arguments; mind is the great arguer. It is the Devil -- it will try to persuade you, it will convince you that you are wasting time. But don't listen to it. From the very beginning be prepared, "I am going to waste time. I will not be of any use. I will simply enjoy being here."

And don't be concerned with the world. The world goes on. It is always in trouble. It has been always in trouble and it will remain always in trouble. That is the way of the world. You cannot do anything so don't try to be a great world reformer, a revolutionary, a messiah. Don't try.

You simply be yourself and enjoy your solitariness, just like a rock or a tree or a river. Useless! What is the use of a rock just lying there under the rains, under the sun, under the stars? What is the use of this rock? No use -- the rock enjoys itself being that way. Just be a rock. There are rock gardens in Japan, in Zen monasteries; they make rock gardens particularly for this. There are no trees in the garden, just sand and rock. A solitary rock, just sits there, and the master says to the disciple, "Go, and be just a rock, just like that rock. Don't be bothered about the world. That rock remains there whatsoever happens to the world. It is not worried. It is always in meditation."

Unless you are really prepared to be useless, you cannot be solitary, you cannot be in solitude. And once you know the depth of it you can come back to society. You must come back because solitariness is not a style of life -- it is just a training. It is not a way of life, it is just a deep relaxation to change the perspective. It is just falling out of step with society to have a look at yourself, who you are, alone. So don't think that this is a style of life. Many have made it a style of life. They are in error. They are absolutely in error. They have made a medicine food. It is not a style of life, it is just medicinal. You fall out for a time being just to have a perspective, a distance, to see what you are and what society is doing to you. When you are out of it, you can have a better look. You can observe. Without being concerned, without being in it, you can become an observer from the hilltop, you can become a witness. You are so far away. Unprejudiced, undisturbed, you can look.

So note it, this is not a way of life. I am not saying leave the world and become hermits somewhere in the Himalayas -- no. But sometimes leave, relax, be useless, be alone, exist like a rock, be independent, free from the world, be a part of nature -- and you will be rejuvenated, reborn. Then come back and move in society and in the crowd again. And try to carry that beauty, that silence that happened to you when you were alone. Now carry it, don't lose contact with it. Move deep into the crowd but don't become a part of it. Let the crowd be there outside you -- you remain alone.

And when you become capable of being alone in the crowd, you have achieved real aloneness. It is easy to be alone on a hilltop. The whole of nature helps you, and nothing is a barrier. To be back in the market-place, in the shop, in the office, in the family, and to remain alone -- that is an achievement. Then it is something you have achieved and it is not just accidental, something that happened because of the hills. Now the quality of consciousness has changed. So remain alone in the crowd. The crowd will be there outside but don't allow it to enter in. Protect whatsoever you have gained. Defend it, don't allow it to be disturbed. And whenever you feel that the feeling has become dull, that you are missing it, that society has disturbed it, that the dust has gathered around, that the fresh spring is no longer fresh, that it is polluted -- move again. Fall out of society to renew it, to make it alive again. Then come back and move in the crowd. And then a moment will come when that original spring will remain fresh and no one will be able to pollute it or contaminate it. Then there is no need to move anywhere.

So this is just a technique, not a style of life. Don't become a monk, don't become a nun, don't move to a monastery to live there forever. That is nonsense. If you live forever in a monastery you will never be able to know whether you have attained what you have attained, or whether the monastery has just given it to you. It may be accidental, not essential. The essential has to be tested. The essential has to be set against society; it has to be brought to the touch-stone. And when it never breaks, when you can depend on it, when nothing can change it, then it has become a crystallization.

Tantric Meditation for Woman: The Second Type

From the Discourses Of The Book Of Secrets

BELIEVE OMNISCIENT, OMNIPOTENT, PERVADING

This too is based on inner power, inner strength. It is very seed-like. Believe that you are omniscient, all-knowing; believe that you are omnipotent, all-powerful; believe that you are pervading, all-pervading.... How can you believe it? It is impossible. You know you are not all-knowing, you are ignorant. You know you are not all-potent, you are absolutely powerless, helpless. You know you are not all-pervading, you are confined in a small body. So how can you believe it? And if you believe it, knowing well that this is not the case, the belief will be useless. You cannot believe against yourself. You can force a belief, but it will be useless, meaningless. You know it is not so. A belief becomes useful only when you know that it is so.

This has to be understood. A belief becomes powerful if you know that this is the case. True or untrue is not the point. If you know that this is the case, a belief becomes truth. If you know that this is not the case, then even a truth cannot become a belief. Why? Many things have to be understood.

Firstly, whatsoever you are is your belief: you believe in that way, you have been brought up in that way; you have been conditioned in that way, so you believe in that way. And your belief influences you. It becomes a vicious circle. For example, there are races where man is less powerful than woman, because those races believe that a woman is stronger, more powerful, than man. Their belief has become a fact. In those races, man is weaker and woman is stronger. The women do all the work that ordinarily, in other countries, men would do, and men do the work that in other countries women would do. Not only that, their bodies are weak, their structure is weak. They have come to believe that this is so. The belief creates the phenomenon. Belief is creative.

Why does this happen? Because mind is more powerful than matter. If mind really believes something, matter has to follow. Matter cannot do anything against the mind because matter is dead. Even impossibilities happen. Jesus says, "Faith can move mountains." Faith CAN move mountains. If it cannot, it only means that you don't have faith -- not that faith cannot move mountains. Your faith cannot move them because you don't have the faith.

Now much research is going on on this phenomenon of belief, and science is coming to many unbelievable conclusions. Religion always believed in them but science is finally coming to the same conclusions. It has to because many phenomena are being investigated for the first time. For example, you may have heard about placebo medicines. There are hundreds and hundreds of `pathies' in the world -- allopathy, ayurvedic, unani, homeopathy, naturopathy -- hundreds, and they all claim that they can cure. And they do cure. Their claims are not false. This is the rare thing -- their diagnosis is different, their treatment is different. There is one illness and there are a hundred and one diagnoses, and a hundred and one treatments, and every treatment helps. So the question is bound to be raised whether it is really the treatment that helps or the belief of the patient. This is possible.

In many ways, in many countries, in many universities, in many hospitals, they are working. Just water or something non-medicinal is given but the patient believes that a medicine has been given. And not only the patient, the doctor also believes it, because he also is not aware. If the doctor is aware whether it is medicine or not, it will have an effect, because the doctor gives a belief to the patient more that a medicine. So when you pay more and you have a greater doctor, you get well better and sooner. It is a question of belief. If the doctor gives you a four-penny medicine, just four pennies, you know well that nothing is going to happen. How can such a big patient with such a disease, such a great phenomenon, be cured by four pennies? Impossible! The belief cannot be created. Every doctor has to create around him an aura of belief. It helps. So if the doctor knows that it is just water that he is giving, he will not give his belief with faith. His face will show, his hands will show, his whole attitude and behavior will show that he is giving just water, and the unconscious of the patient will be affected. The doctor must believe. The more he believes the better, because his belief is infectious. The patient looks at the doctor. If the doctor feels confident -- "Don't worry, this is a new treatment, a new medicine and this is going to help you. It is a hundred per cent certain. There is no doubt about it" -- if the whole personality of the doctor gives the impression of a hundred per cent hope, then already, even before taking the medicine, the patient is being cured. The cure has already started. Now they say that whatsoever you use, thirty per cent of the patients will be cured almost immediately; whatsoever you use -- allopathy, naturopathy, homeopathy, or any `pathy' -- whatsoever you do, thirty per cent of the patients will be cured immediately.

Those thirty per cent are believers. That's the ratio. If I look at you, into you, thirty per cent are potential, are ones who can immediately be transformed. Once they get the belief, it will immediately start working. One third of humanity can be immediately transformed, changed, to new orders of being without any difficulty. The question is only how to create the belief in them. Once the belief is there, nothing can debar them. You may be one of those fortunate ones, one of the thirty per cent. But a great misfortune has happened to humanity, and that is that those thirty per cent are condemned. Society, education, civilization, all condemn them. They are thought to be stupid people. No, they are more potential people. They have a great power but they are condemned, and impotent intellectual people are praised -- because they can praise with language, words, reason, they are praised. Really, they are simply impotent. They cannot do anything in the real world of inner being, they can just go on with their mind. But they possess the universities, they possess the news media, they are the masters in a way. And they are artists in condemnation. They can condemn anything. And this thirty per cent of potential humanity, those who can believe and can get transformed, they are not so articulate -- they cannot be. They cannot reason, they cannot argue, that's why they can believe. But because they cannot argue their case they have themselves become self-condemning. They think something is wrong. If you can believe, you start feeling that something is wrong with you; if you can doubt, you think something is great with you. But doubt is not a force. Through doubt no one ever got to the innermost being, to the ultimate ecstasy, no one, ever.

If you can believe, then this sutra will be helpful. BELIEVE OMNISCIENT, OMNIPOTENT, PERVADING. You are that already so just by believing it, all that is hiding you, all that is covering you, will fall down immediately. But even for those thirty per cent it will be difficult because they are also conditioned to believe in something which is not the case. They are also conditioned to doubt; they are also trained to be skeptical; and they know their limitations, so how can they believe? Or, if they believe, people will think they are mad. If you say that you believe that inside you is the all-pervading, the omnipotent, the Divine, the all-powerful, then people will look at you and think you have gone crazy. How can you believe such things unless you are mad?

But try something. Start from the very beginning. Get a little feeling of this phenomenon, then belief will follow. If you want to use this technique, do this. Close your eyes and just feel that you have no body, feel as if the body has disappeared, melted away. Then you can feel your all-pervadingness. With the body it is difficult. That's why many traditions go on teaching that you are not the body because with the body, limitation comes in. It is not difficult to feel that you are not the body, because you are not the body. It is just a conditioning, it is just a thought that has been forced upon your mind. Your mind has been impregnated with the thought that you are the body.

There are phenomena which demonstrate this. In Ceylon, Buddhist monks walk on fire. They do in India also, but the Ceylonese phenomenon is very rare -- they walk for hours and they are not burned.

It happened once, just a few years ago, that a Christian missionary went to see the fire-walk. They do it on the night when Buddha became enlightened, a full moon night -- because they say that on that day it was revealed to the world that the body is nothing, matter is nothing; that the inner being is all-pervading and the fire cannot burn it. But to do this for one year the monks who walk on the fire purify their bodies, through PRANAYAMA, breathing processes, and fasting. They meditate to purify their minds, empty their minds. For one year continuously they prepare. They live in isolated cells just feeling that they are not in their bodies. For one year continuously a group of fifty or sixty monks goes on thinking that they are not their bodies. A year is a long time. Thinking every moment only one thing -- that they are not their bodies -- continuously hammering that the body is illusory, they come to believe it. Then too they are not forced to walk on the fire. They are brought to the fire and then whosoever thinks that he will not be burned, jumps into it. A few remain doubting, hesitating -- they are not allowed to jump because this is not a question of fire burning or not, this is a question of their doubt. If they hesitate a little they are stopped. So sixty are prepared and sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty people jump into the fire and they dance in it for hours together without getting burned.

A missionary came to see it in nineteen-fifty. He was very surprised but he thought that if belief in Buddha could do this miracle, then why not belief in Jesus? So he thought for a while, hesitated a little, but then, with the idea that if Buddha could help, Jesus would also help, he jumped. He got burned, badly burned; he had to be hospitalized for six months. And he couldn't understand the phenomenon. It was not a question of Jesus or Buddha, it was not a question of belief in someone, it was a question of belief. And that belief has to be hammered into the mind. Unless it reaches to the very core of your being, it will not start working.

That Christian missionary went back to England to study about hypnosis, mesmerism, and allied phenomena, and what happens during fire-walking. Then they invited two monks to Oxford University to give a demonstration. The monks went. They walked on fire. The experiment was tried many times. Then the two monks saw that one professor was looking at them, and he was looking so deeply and he was so involved that his eyes, his face, were ecstatic. The two monks went to the professor and said to him, "You can also come with us." Immediately he ran with them, jumped into the fire, and nothing happened. he was not burned. The Christian missionary was also present, and he knew well that this professor was a professor of logic, a man who is professionally doubtful, whose profession is based on doubt. So he said to the man, "What! You have done a miracle. I couldn't do it, and I am a believer." The professor said, "In that moment I was a believer. The phenomenon was so real, so fantastically real, it gripped me. It was so clear that body is nothing and mind is everything and I felt so ecstatically in tune with the two monks that when they invited me, there was not a single hesitation. It was simple to walk, it was just as if there was no fire."

There was no hesitation, no doubt -- that is the key.

So first try this experiment. Sit with closed eyes for a few days just thinking that you are not your body -- not only thinking but feeling that you are not your body. And if you sit with closed eyes a distance is created. Your body goes on moving away and away. You go on moving inwards. A great distance is created. Soon you can feel that you are not the body. If you feel you are not the body, then you can believe you are all-pervading, omnipotent, omniscient, all-knowing, all-powerful. This all-powerfulness or this all-knowingness is not concerned with so-called knowledge: it is a feeling, an explosion of feeling -- that you KNOW. This has to be understood, particularly in the West, because whenever you say that you know, they will say, "What? What do you know?" Knowledge must be objective. You must know something. And if it is a question of knowing something you cannot be all-pervading, no one can be, because there are infinite facts to be known. No one can be all-knowing in that sense.

That's why in the West they laugh when Jains claim that Mahavir was SARVAGYA, all-knowing. They laugh, because if Mahavir was all-knowing, then he must have known all that science is discovering now and even that which science will discover in future. But that doesn't seem to be the case. He says many things which are obviously contradictory to science, which cannot be true, which are not factual. His knowledge, if it is all-pervading, should never be erroneous. But there are errors.

Christians believe that Jesus was all-knowing. But the modern mind will laugh because he was not all-knowing -- all-knowing in the sense of knowing all about the facts of the world. He didn't know that the earth was circular, that the earth was a globe -- he didn't know. He knew that the earth was flat ground. He didn't know that the earth had been in existence for millions and millions of years, he believed that God created it just four thousand years before him. As far as facts, objective facts are concerned, he was not all-knowing.

But this word `all-knowing' is totally different. When the Eastern sages say `all-knowing', they don't mean knowing all about the facts -- they mean all-conscious, all-aware, fully inside, fully conscious, enlightened. They are not concerned with knowing something, they are concerned only with the pure phenomenon of knowing -- not knowledge, but the very quality of knowing. When we say that Buddha knows we don't mean that he knows what Einstein knows. He doesn't know that. He is a knower. He knows his own being and that being is all-pervading. That feeling of isness is all-pervading. And in that knowing nothing remains to be known, that is the point. Now there is no curiosity to know anything. All questions have dropped. Not that all answers have been achieved, all questions have dropped. Now there is no question to be asked. All curiosity has gone. There is no problem to be solved. This inner quietness, this inner silence, filled with inner light, is infinite knowing. This is what is meant by omniscient. It is subjective awakening.

This you can do. But it will not happen if you go on adding more knowledge to your mind. You can go on adding knowledge for lives together -- you will know something but you will never know all. The all is infinite; it cannot be known in that way. Science will always remain incomplete, it can never be complete -- that's impossible. It is inconceivable that it can be complete. Really, the more science knows, the more it comes to know that more has to be known.

This all-knowingness is an inner quality of awakening. Meditate, and drop your thoughts. When you don't have any thoughts you will feel what this omniscience is, what this all-knowledge is. When there is no thought, consciousness becomes pure, purified; in that purified consciousness you don't have any problem. All questions have dropped. You know yourself, your being, and when you know your being, you have known all, because your being is the center of everybody's being. Really your being is everybody's being. Your center is the center of the universe. In this sense, Upanishads have declared, "AHAM BRAHMASMI -- I am the Brahman, I am the Absolute." Once you know this little phenomenon of your being you have known the infinite. You are just like a drop of the ocean: if even one drop is known, all the secrets of the ocean become revealed.

BELIEVE OMNISCIENT, OMNIPOTENT, PERVADING. But this will come through faith, this you cannot argue with yourself. You cannot convince yourself with some argument, you will have to dig deep within you for such feelings, for sources of such feelings.

This word `believe' is very significant. It doesn't mean that you have a conviction, because conviction means a rational thing: you are convinced, you have argued it over, you have proofs for it. Belief means you don't have any doubts about it, not that you have proofs. Conviction means you have proofs. You can prove, you can argue. You can say, "This is so." You can reason it out. Belief means you don't have any doubts. You cannot argue it, you cannot rationalize, you will be defeated if you are asked. But you have an inner grounding -- you feel it is so. It is a feeling, not a reasoning.

But remember that such techniques can work only if you work with your feeling, not with your reasoning. So it has happened many times that very ignorant people, uneducated, uncultured, reach heights of human consciousness and those who are very cultured, educated, reasonable, rational, miss.

Jesus was just a carpenter. Friedrich Nietzsche writes somewhere that in the whole New Testament there was only one person really worth something, who was cultured, educated, philosophically knowledgeable, wise -- that man was Pilate, the Roman governor who ordered Jesus to be crucified. Really he was the most cultured man, the governor-general, the viceroy. And he knew what philosophy was: at the last moment, when Jesus was going to be crucified, he asked, "What is truth?" It was a very philosophical question. Jesus remained silent -- not because this puzzle was not worth answering, Pilate was the only person who could have understood deep philosophy -- Jesus remained silent because he could speak only to those who could feel. Thinking was not of any use. He was asking a philosophical question. It would have been good if he had asked in a university, in an academy, but asking Jesus a philosophical question was meaningless. He remained silent because it was futile to answer. No communication was possible. But Nietzsche, himself a man of reason, condemns Jesus. He said he was uneducated, uncultured, unphilosophical -- and he couldn't answer, that's why he remained silent. Pilate asked a beautiful question. If he had asked it of Nietzsche, Nietzsche would have talked about it for years together. "What is truth?" This one question is enough to talk about and discuss for years. All of philosophy is just this business: "What is truth?" One question and all the philosophers are involved in it.

Nietzsche's criticism is really a criticism by reason, a condemnation by reason. Reason has always condemned the dimension of feeling because feeling is so vague, so mysterious. It is there, and you cannot say anything about it. Either you have got it or you haven't got it; either it is there or it is not there. You cannot do anything about it and you cannot discuss it. You also have many beliefs but those beliefs are just convictions; they are not beliefs because you have doubts about them. You have crushed those doubts by your arguments, but they are there. You are sitting on top of them, but they are there. You go on fighting with them, but they are not dead. They cannot be. That's why your life may be that of a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Christian, or a Jain, but it is only because of conviction. Faith is not there.

I will tell you an anecdote. Jesus told his disciples to go by boat to the other bank of a lake where they were staying. And he said, "I will be coming later." They went. When they were just in the middle of the lake a great wind came and there was much turmoil and they were afraid. The boat was rocking and they started crying and screaming. They started crying, "Jesus, save us!" The bank where Jesus was was very far away, but Jesus came. It is said that he came running on the water. And the first thing he said to his disciples was, "Men of little faith, why are you crying? Don't you believe?" They were scared. Jesus said, "If you believe, then come out of the boat and walk towards me." He was standing on the water. They saw with their own eyes that he was standing on the water, but still it was difficult to believe. They must have thought in their minds that it was a trick, or it was maybe just an illusion, or this was not Jesus. Maybe it was just the Devil, luring them or something. So they started looking at each other, "Who will walk?" Then one disciple got out of the boat and walked. Really, he could walk. He couldn't believe his own eyes. He was walking on the water. When he came close to Jesus he said, "How? How is it happening?" Immediately the whole miracle disappeared. The "How?" -- and he was under water. Jesus pulled him out and said, "Man of little faith, why do you ask how?"

But reason asks "Why?" and "How?" Reason asks, reason questions. Faith is the dropping of all questions. If you can drop all questions and believe, then this technique can work miracles for you.