Mati Kahe Kumhar Su #3

Not only between man and God—between us and every experience of life, scriptures and words become obstacles. Whatever we have already learned becomes a barrier to any living experience. You stand before a flower. All you “know” about that flower—its species, whether it is small or large, beautiful or ugly, whether it resembles flowers you have seen before—everything you know about it comes and stands between you and the flower. The flower present before you gets eclipsed; what you carry from the past about flowers comes in front of your eyes. Because of that knowledge, a direct seeing, a direct encounter with the flower does not happen. There is no face-to-face meeting, no direct communion.

If yesterday I formed an understanding about you, and today I meet you while yesterday’s memory comes in between, I will not be able to see who you are today; what will stand before me is yesterday’s image.

A man spat on Buddha one morning—full of rage, he spat in Buddha’s face. Buddha wiped the spit with his shawl and said to him, “My friend, do you have anything more to say?”

He had not expected that after spitting such a response would come—“Do you have anything more to say?” Even the monks sitting with Buddha had not expected it. One monk, Ananda, said, “He is spitting, and you ask, ‘Anything more to say?’”

Buddha said, “As I understand it, he is so full of anger that words are inadequate to express it; so he has expressed his anger by spitting. Am I wrong, my friend?” Buddha asked the man.

The man was stunned and went away. He could not sleep all night—restless, disturbed! He thought, What kind of man did I spit upon? I have blundered. Filled with remorse, at dawn he rushed back, lay his head at Buddha’s feet, and said, “Forgive me. Yesterday I spat—by mistake. I wept all night, repenting. It occurred to me that the love I had received from Buddha would now cease. With my own hands I have lost that stream of love. I have lost that treasure.”

Buddha laughed. He said, “You madman! Yesterday you spat. That man was yesterday—where is he today? The one on whom you spat was also yesterday. The one who spat has also passed. Much water has flowed down the Ganges since then. Where is that ‘you’ now? Where is that ‘me’ now? Am I the one I was yesterday? Are you the one you were yesterday?

“At night we light a lamp. By morning how many streams of flame have flowed, turned to smoke! In the morning we say the same flame is burning that we lit at night. We are wrong. That flame has flowed away—flowed and flowed. Now an entirely new stream is burning. You saw the Ganges last year; it is not the same now, all has flowed on. Man too is flowing every moment. Life too is flowing every moment.

“If I cling to yesterday, I won’t be able to see you. If I keep in mind that this is the same man who spat, and that feeling stands between us, then I will not be able to see you at all. I will only see the man who spat. And today you are not that man, for yesterday you came full of anger; today you have come to ask forgiveness. Today you are full of love, full of repentance. You are not the same man. Then why do you ask for forgiveness?”

The man said, “Because I felt that the love I used to receive from you might no longer be given.”

Buddha laughed. He said, “Fool! Do you think I loved you because you did not spit on me? If I loved you for that, then your spitting would stop my love. I love because I can only love; I cannot do otherwise. As light radiates from a lamp, as fragrance flows from a flower, so love flows from me. Whether you spit or not, whatever you do makes no difference.”

These two points that Buddha made—first, that all we learn each day, all that becomes our “knowledge,” must not be placed before a new experience of life; otherwise it becomes a barrier.

I have heard of a very great devotee—I will not take his name, because names create needless unrest; old wounds get touched. Yesterday I mentioned one or two names and it created much trouble; very angry letters arrived. So I leave the name—perhaps you will guess it anyway. Why would I wish to hurt anyone? And what quarrel do I have with anyone’s name?

This great saint—whose book is read in every household—was taken to a Krishna temple. He refused to fold his hands to Krishna. He said, “Until you take a bow and arrows in your hands, I will not salute you!” He is a devotee of Rama; how can he bow to Krishna? Only if Rama’s image is in the middle can even God be acceptable—otherwise even God is rejected! If my Rama is in front, fine—otherwise everything is spoiled.

If we always look at life carrying what we clutched until yesterday, life will not be seen at all; only the lens of our insistence will appear. Only those colors will show, those shapes will appear.

This is not seeing life; this is not a vision of life; this is not a longing for truth. This is imposing oneself upon life, forcing oneself upon it. And we all see this way. This seeing is wrong.

To behold life, go empty—without doctrines, without words, without scriptures. Let life come face-to-face, and then look. Then whatever appears is what is. So long as you say, “I will see in this manner, through this knowledge,” you are seeing what you want to see; not what is.

Let me explain with an incident.

In a large village in China there was a big fair. Thousands upon thousands had gathered. There was a small well without a parapet. A man fell into it amid the crowd. From the well he cried, “Save me! I am dying!” But the marketplace was so noisy—who would hear?

Just then a Buddhist monk stopped at the well to drink water. He looked down; the man was shouting, “Save me!” Seeing the monk he folded his hands, “Please get me out quickly. I am dying. I don’t know how to swim. My hands are trembling; I am somehow clinging to the bricks.”

The monk said, “My friend! Don’t you know what Lord Buddha has said? Buddha has said life is suffering. Even if you are saved, what will you do? Life is sorrow, life is insubstantial, life is futile. One must try to be free of life. So even if you are saved, where will you go except into more suffering? Life itself is a great well. Therefore drop this useless craving, drop this lust for life. This intense desire to live—that is the root of sin. Long for liberation; why long for life?”

The man shouted, “This is no time for sermons. Please get me out first, then I will listen to your words.”

But the monk said, “You have not understood. The scriptures also say that whatever a man must suffer is because of his past deeds. You must have once pushed someone into a well; thus you have fallen. Naturally, you are reaping what you sowed. Do the scriptures not say so? Then why try to get out now? Suffer it. If you exhaust this karma completely, you will be freed from it. And why should I get into trouble by pulling you out? The Lord has also said: Whatever you do, consider the consequences; otherwise you too may become a partner in sin. If I pull you out today and tomorrow you steal, then I too am responsible! If I save you and the day after you murder someone, I too become a sinner! Forgive me; I am engaged in the pursuit of liberation. I don’t want entanglements, any involvement, any upheaval. Farewell! May God protect you!”

The monk went on. The man was left astonished. But everything the monk said is written in the scriptures. Do not laugh. If you laugh, you are laughing at the scriptures, not at the monk. He spoke not a single word of his own; the scriptures were by heart, and he merely recited them!

As he left, another ascetic came—a follower of Confucius. He too peered down. The man cried, “Save me! I have little chance left of holding on. If you don’t pull me out quickly, I will die!”

The man said, “What are you saying—‘Don’t worry’? I will die. When will those parapets be built? And I have already fallen—what use will parapets be now? Please have mercy and pull me out first.”

He replied, “Where is there time to worry about individuals one by one? I want the transformation of the whole society. We need a social revolution. What difference does one person’s making or unmaking make? Become a martyr. Don’t worry—your name will be written in books. And fairs gather at the tombs of martyrs! Do not fear; fairs gather at the tombs of martyrs—fairs will gather at yours too. People will remember for thousands of years that one man fell into a well and thereby got parapets built on all wells! Be carefree; I am going right now to launch the movement.”

The man kept shouting; the monk went into the crowd, climbed a platform, and started addressing people: “Look, until Confucius’ word is heeded, such sufferings will continue in the world. See—there lies a man in the well!” That man became another piece of proof to validate Confucius’ teaching—one more exhibit, one more demonstration!

Do not laugh at him. He is doing what all social reformers of the world do. But the man in the well is dying, he is terrified, his life is ebbing away. Today for the first time he understands what these ‘good talkers’ can do!

Just then a Christian missionary also came to the well. He looked down. Before the man could even speak, he said, “Don’t worry.” He took a rope from his bag—he always kept one ready, in case someone fell into a well and an opportunity arose to save them. He threw the rope down, climbed into the well, and pulled the man out.

The man said, “Blessed are you! At last I have met a true man. Two monks came; they gave me sermons. You have been gracious; you saved me!”

The missionary said, “Forgive me. Do not misunderstand. I did not save you. Jesus Christ has said that one who serves becomes dear to God. So we serve in order to become dear to God. What have we to do with you! We are seeking heaven. And we rejoice when someone falls into a well, because we get the chance to serve! We are on the lookout for opportunities—if a house catches fire, we rush in; if someone is drowning, we jump in. You are very good—you have given us one more rung on the ladder to heaven. Teach your children too to keep falling into wells, so we can keep saving them. Service! There must be opportunities for service!”

Those who provide opportunities for service become ladders to heaven. Placing feet on their shoulders, a few people ascend to heaven—having served the sick, the poor, the one who fell into the well!

Why do you laugh at these three men? What is their mistake? All three put their books in between. The living man who is dying, the fact, what is actually happening right before them, is not as valuable in their eyes as the book they have read. So they do not see the dying man, the breaking breath, the lamp of a life about to be extinguished. They see their book.

This is what happens to all of us. We see a man poor, starving, begging on the street—what do we say? “It is each one’s own karma, his own fruit.” A book has come in between. How do you know it is karma? Perhaps it is social exploitation, dishonesty, cunning.

But the book intrudes. It makes us forget the poor man. We bring in an explanation, a verbal doctrine: each his own fruit; one is born rich, another poor; each his own karma, his own result!

For four thousand years in India, because of this very interpretation, poverty has not been eradicated. And until this interpretation is gone, poverty cannot be removed. Poverty stands upon this interpretation. But the scripture comes in between. And then everything stops there, because doubting scripture is a sin, removing scripture from before your eyes is a sin. The scripture must always be bound to your chest—even if a man drowns under the weight of the scriptures! Let him drown, but never let go of the scriptures on your chest.

So I am not an opponent of scriptures. I am only saying that a direct, immediate encounter with life is possible only for those who remove words and doctrines from in between, who can see directly, whose eyes are not covered by words and doctrines.

But man? Man does not look at anyone without words. He sees a woman and at once thinks, “Woman is the gateway to hell,” as such-and-such saints have said! He does not see the woman; he sees the “gateway to hell”—a doctrine, a hollow and empty doctrine. This is how we look at life—life behind, doctrine in front.

This vision is fundamentally wrong. Life is first—life is primary. And for one who becomes capable of seeing life, truth reveals itself; for such a one, doctrines are no longer a question. Someone once asked Sri Aurobindo, “Do you believe in God?” Sri Aurobindo said, “No, I do not believe—I know.”

When someone sees life directly, he does not say, “I believe in God.” He says, “I know God.” When one looks directly at life, the testimony of scriptures is no longer needed; then the testimony of one’s own experience stands. One becomes a witness to a truth. But this testimony comes from seeing life.

Yet we do not see life. Our way of seeing is stale and borrowed.

That is why I say: read scriptures, read books—but do not let any book become a burden upon your eyes. Put it aside; read and forget. Know and forget. Let the eyes remain always fresh and new; do not let dust gather on them. Remain capable of seeing. And I say this not only about the books of others; the same is true of my own books.

A friend has also asked that…

When I say, “Drop all books,” that includes mine. My books are not some special exception. All books means all books. All words means my words too. And all doctrines means my doctrines as well. Your eyes must be utterly free, so they can come face to face with the real, directly.

They have no place at all; that is why I do not speak of them.
But this will create great alarm. If restraint and rules have no place, then what? What will we do?
A blind man walks with the support of a stick. He goes to a physician who is about to cure his eyes. The blind man asks, “Once my eyes are cured, will this stick have any place in my life?” The physician says, “Then the stick has no place. When the eyes are fine, what need is there for a crutch? Because there are no eyes, the stick has a place; when there are eyes, the stick has no place in the hand.”
But the blind man is very afraid. He says, “How will I walk without the stick? Without it there will be great chaos—I will bump into anything.” It doesn’t occur to him that the stick is only a poor substitute for weak eyes. And the day eyes are present, that day there is no need for the stick.
Restraint (samyam) and rules (niyam) are crutches for a blind consciousness. The day consciousness has its own clear, calm eyes, that day there remains no scope, no place for restraint and rules. Because man lacks consciousness, awareness, wakefulness, meditation, we keep him bound in restraint and rules. Though by being bound to restraint and rules, eyes do not grow—only a makeshift arrangement keeps life somehow going.
What is all restraint and rule? What basic meaning can restraint and rules have except suppression and repression? What do restraint and rules produce except hypocrisy? What results except deception and self-deception? When we say, “A man has restrained his anger,” what does it mean? It means he has pushed his anger down within; he has swallowed it; he has sat on it; he has forced it down and mounted his chest.
But do you know what it means to sit on the chest of anger? It means that man begins living in anger within, twenty-four hours a day. Outward expression of anger has stopped, the outlet is closed, he won’t let it flow out; so anger begins to seep through his consciousness within.
Therefore those whom you call “respectable,” “good men,” “restrained people”—have you noticed how their lives are filled with anger round the clock? Those you call temple-goers, worshipers, people of prayer—have you noticed how their lives are lives of anger?
Suppressing anger does not mean you are free of anger. Suppressing anger means the poison that could have been thrown out has begun to spread in your own blood.
A man is in the office. His boss, his owner, abuses him. What can the poor employee do? He swallows his anger, represses it. He smiles at the lips and says, “You are absolutely right!” Inside he knows that if he gets a chance he will throttle the boss. The impulse to throttle gains strength within; the fist clenches—but he goes on smiling outwardly.
Then he returns home. Anger, like a river, does not climb upward; it searches for a downhill flow. It cannot rise toward the boss, so it comes home. Within five or ten minutes a pretext is found to pounce on the wife: the bread is burnt today, or the clothes were not ironed properly, or the house is dirty, or the tea is cold—or twenty-five other excuses. Yesterday the tea was the same, the bread the same, but there was no anger. Today anger is ready inside, present, seeking a way out—let a weak one be found and it will burst forth. So he falls upon his wife.
The wife is baffled—nothing special has happened. She cannot understand what’s going on. The repressed anger seeks other routes. She swallows her anger—“Husband is god,” so the books written by husbands say. How to be angry with this “husband-god”? She waits till the little child comes home from school. The moment he arrives, a pretext is found—“Your book is torn, your bag is broken, your clothes are dirty, you were playing with bad boys”—and the beating begins. She doesn’t realize the repressed anger is finding another path.
The child takes the beating—what can he do? He waits; when his parents are old he will take revenge. It is a long wait. Meanwhile he must do something immediate, because swallowed anger torments, spins within. He breaks his doll’s leg, tears his book—what else can he do!
The education of suppressing anger, which we call restraint and rules… Similarly, there is the teaching of suppressing sex, which we call brahmacharya (celibacy). And the one who suppresses sexual desire is the most unchaste of all—his mind is filled with nothing but sex and sexuality twenty-four hours a day. Breath by breath, the so-called “celibate” has nothing but lust circling in his consciousness.
I have met hundreds and thousands of monks across the land. When these monks ask me questions in public, they ask about soul and God. When they ask in private, they ask about nothing but sex!
What has been repressed is gnawing at their very life. The mind has certain laws, certain sutras; there is a science of the mind. The first principle of the mind’s science is this: whatever you forbid, the mind will be drawn toward it. Prohibition is invitation. Refusal is a call.
Write on a house in Junagadh: “Do not peep here.” Then you know—would there be even one restrained person in Junagadh who would pass without peeping? And if someone passes by without peeping—because an election is near, or he’s wearing ochre and fears being seen—if he passes without peeping, you don’t know his plight. He will go on, but his mind will run back. He’ll reach home absent, downcast. His mind is at that doorway where it says, “Do not peep.” If he is daring, he will find some way to sneak back and peep. If he is truly timid and cannot muster courage, his life is ruined—he will dream all night that he is standing at the same door, lifting the curtain to see what’s inside. All his dreams will show the very house he left unseen!
When we prohibit the mind, it begins to hover right there. Those countries that have condemned sex—and among those unfortunate lands ours is in the lead—those that have condemned eros and sexuality have become that much more sexual. Do we need to ask anyone to see this? Just open your eyes around you: from childhood to old age the mind circles the same thing. The reason is not that sex is something that must seize you twenty-four hours a day; the reason is that we have made it an obsession. The very effort at restraint, the force and struggle to block it, has created wounds in the psyche—so the mind keeps circling, circling there.
There was a fakir, Nasruddin. One evening as he was stepping out, a friend arrived at his door from a long journey. Nasruddin said, “Wait. I must go meet people at three places—I’ve promised them time and it’s important. You came unannounced. You stay; I’ll be right back.”
The friend said, “Better I come along. We can talk on the way—I must return soon. But do me a favor: my clothes are dusty from the road. If you have good clothes, lend me some.”
Nasruddin said, “All right.”
His heart didn’t want to. Fakirs only look as if they have few clothes; their minds are more attached to clothes than those who own many. The effort to have less also fixates you on clothes—just as the effort to have more does.
He had one fine set, kept carefully—he wore it for meetings and gatherings. Reluctantly, after much hemming and hawing, he brought it out. A splendid coat, a turban. The friend put them on. They set out. All along the way, though talking, Nasruddin kept eyeing his clothes—today he wore the ordinary, and his friend, in Nasruddin’s fine clothes, looked grand. “Big mistake,” he thought.
At the first house he introduced him: “This is my friend Jamal, from such-and-such village. And as for the clothes—well, the clothes are mine!”
Jamal was bewildered—what was the need to mention the clothes? Nasruddin too was flustered—he realized it was a mistake, something that should not have been said. But what roams in the mind finds a way to the tongue.
Outside, he apologized: “Forgive me, forgive me.” The friend said, “Forgive? Have you gone mad? Was there any need to say whose clothes these are!” Nasruddin said, “I erred—please forgive!”
They went to the second house. Again he introduced: “This is my friend Jamal, from such-and-such village. And as for the clothes—these are his. Who says they’re mine?”
The friend was aghast. Now the thought seized Nasruddin that he had really blundered by raising the clothes. He kept thinking how to atone. So he inverted it: since it had slipped out once, he now said, “Who says they’re mine? They are his!” The hosts, who knew nothing of the backstory, were baffled.
Outside, the friend said, “I’m leaving. Going with you seems dangerous.”
“No,” said Nasruddin, “forgive me—now I won’t bring the matter up at all. I’ll drop the thought completely.”
But what you try to drop is what clings most. Try dropping any thought—you fall into its loop.
They went to the third house. Jamal was now assured the blunder would not recur again and again. Nasruddin introduced: “Here is my friend Jamal, from such-and-such village. As for the clothes—that is a pointless topic; it should not be discussed. Who discusses it? No one should! I do not wish to speak about clothes. Whoever’s they are—what has that to do with anything? Clothes are clothes.”
I don’t know if they went to a fourth house. The friend said, “Enough—pardon me. What has happened to you?”
Ask yourself: whatever keeps circling in your mind—have you made some similar mistake? This is what has happened in the name of celibacy: a three or four thousand-year chant—“woman is hell, she is the gate of sin”—all this foolishness has sunk deep into the psyche.
And we make children sick from the start; we raise walls and distance between woman and man. We sow poison among little boys and girls, and that poison pursues them for life. Men try to avoid women; women try to avoid men. In this whole avoidance, they fall into the “clothes” predicament—trying to avoid, yet the man keeps seeing woman everywhere, the woman keeps seeing man. The more they flee, the sooner they meet again around the corner. What has created this disease?
A fundamental error has arisen in our psychology, in the folk-mind.
That error is this: there is no fact in existence more sacred, more divine, more godly than sex. For from it life is born, by it life unfolds, through it the flowers of existence bloom and the world is woven. That which is the center and basis of life, the very process by which the divine gives birth to life—we condemn that process! The fruit of that condemnation can only be that we are entangled, obsessed, sick, and the mind spins only around sex.
This mistake will not end until a reverence for sex arises—respect, awe.
Lovers of the divine cannot be opposed to the divine’s process of life. I say to you: only the person who has respect for the sexual, which is the key to the divine process, the secret of creativity—only one who holds it with respect, with honor, with a temple-like sacredness—only such a person can become free of sex. The one who condemns can never be free. The respectful person can be free.
But condemnation is deep within us; it eats at us, troubles us. Repressed from all sides, it emerges in countless forms. Movies become vulgar; then the country’s leaders, gurus, thinkers shout, “Obscene films must not be made!” No one asks, why are obscene films made? Who watches them, and why? “Obscene posters must not be put up!” Movements arise to tear them down. No one asks why people are ready to look at obscene posters—somewhere a basic error has occurred in their minds. Otherwise who would be ready to look?
Are obscene posters only a thing of today? Are films new? The oldest books of the world are obscene, and on the walls of the oldest temples there are images that no film today could dare to show. Go see Khajuraho! Go see Puri and Konark! Ask yourself: are the films obscene, or were the builders of these temples obscene? Who is obscene, and why?
Erasing posters will achieve nothing; even tearing down Khajuraho would achieve nothing. Man will create anew. If the mind demands, you cannot stop it. The works of great poets like Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti are full of eros—what will you do? Obscene to the core!
Why has this entire sickness arisen—this literature, music, dance, painting, sculpture all clustering around sex? Because a basic error has occurred in man’s life.
If a village is kept hungry for some days, do you know what they’ll dream of—women? No—bread, feasts, palaces where the king has invited them to dine. If a village is kept chronically hungry, what will its poets sing of—women? No—bread. The whole village will circle around bread; its consciousness will be seized by bread.
The German poet Heine wrote: once I had to go hungry for three days. As long as my belly was full, the moon looked to me like my beloved’s face. After three days of hunger, the moon seemed like a loaf of bread hanging in the sky. Then I realized for the first time that the moon is neither a beloved’s face nor bread; what is in the mind appears out there.
Regarding sex, the greatest error has been committed in human consciousness. And good people—rishis, sages—have been responsible for it. If anyone bears the burden of this sin, it is they. Till now man has not received a healthy, scientific view of sex. We remain frightened and fleeing—and we will remain so.
I want to say to you: a religious person is one who accepts all the facts of life, understands their value, and tries to see what place each thing has in life.
Sex is the central fact of life. Your condemnation will not remove it from the center. It will only make you sick. Sex is the central element. Who has placed it at the center—Satan? Western scientists? Film magnates? Writers of obscene books? Who has set it in the middle?
It is. In this entire creation—flowers, birds, plants—all are born through the sexual process. Life flows from that source, from that Ganges. If you condemn the very source from which life emerges, you will become sick, unwell, tormented. Repression will then seek other, newer channels.
What do I want to say to you? First: there must be a profound sense of respect and reverence toward sex—not condemnation and hostility. Take sex just as you take God—with equal sacredness. We call the creator “God.” Sex is creation. With equal respect and honor! And when your wife, whom you love, becomes worthy of such respect—not “the gate of hell,” for those who said that were irreligious—when she is held in such reverence, then sex will no longer be a frivolity. What we behold with reverence and devotion becomes grave and deep; it stops being a game, a mere indulgence. It becomes the most sacred happening—a participation in the divine process. It requires preparation: a pure, silent, meditative heart.
The event of lovemaking is as valuable as meditation, as samadhi, as prayer. One who enters the process of union with the same peace and sacredness as he enters a temple will come to know what sex is. And one who truly knows sex can be free of it any day he wishes—there is no need to wait even a moment.
And remember: despite so much condemnation, sex does not disappear. And despite so much condemnation, children are born from sex; if these children are born poor in spirit, ugly, unhealthy, sick, mentally unbalanced, it is no wonder—for both parents have condemned the process of birth, approached it as enemies. Had both mother and father approached sex with sacredness, with a sense of worship, perhaps the children would be of a totally different quality.
This humanity is becoming sick—ill, troubled, restless, deranged. The root cause is nothing else: the feeling of insult toward sex. A new human being can be born the day we adopt a sacred, prayerful view toward eros. A prayerful mood is needed. In condemnation, repression is born; in sacredness, liberation is born. Seeing with such sacredness, a transformation happens within—a fundamental alchemy: the whole energy of sex transforms into love. The whole energy of sex becomes love.
Like this: a man has piled garbage—manure—near his house; stench pervades everywhere; passersby are repelled. If he spreads that manure in his garden and sows seeds, within days the garden will be green, full of dancing flowers, and fragrance will spread along the road. That fragrance is the transformed form of that very stench. Keep the manure by the house and it becomes stench; let it become flowers and it becomes perfume. The same manure diffuses as fragrance. Whoever passes, offers thanks for so much scent!
Brahmacharya is not the enemy of sex; it is transformation. When sex becomes supremely sacred—respected, prayerful, suffused with meditation—then a revolution happens within: sex turns into love. The great lovers of the world—Buddha, Christ—what happened to them? The sex energy within them was transformed. The stronger the sex energy in a person, the greater the possibility of its transformation into love.
Sex is a treasure. Do not destroy it by fighting it. There is an alchemy to change it gently and lovingly. Find its chemistry—how it changes. I say there are two sutras of that alchemy. First: a feeling of reverence. Second: the continual growth of love. As love grows, the energy of sex begins to flow along love’s pathways. Slowly you will find: all the energy of sex has become flowers of love, and life is filled with them. Only the person who attains love attains brahmacharya. The greater the love, the greater the brahmacharya.
But those we call “celibates” run from love as if from a wild beast or a ghost.
A small incident, then I will conclude.
Ramanuja was staying in a village. A man came and said, “I want to attain God. What practice should I do?”
Ramanuja looked him up and down—perhaps he understood—and said, “Before I tell you anything, let me ask: have you ever loved anyone?”
The man said, “What irrelevant talk! Leave all that. I want God—what has love to do with it? I have never loved anyone.”
He must have thought that confessing to love would disqualify him in religion’s eyes. There they prefer dry, stone-like people in whose lives no sprout of love has ever bloomed.
He said, “No, I’ve had nothing to do with love. Show me the path to God.”
Ramanuja said, “I ask again—have you ever loved anyone at all?”
He said, “No, truly, I have never loved anyone. Show me God’s path.”
Ramanuja said, “I ask a third time: if not love, have you ever even felt a stir of feeling toward anyone?”
He said, “No. I seek God.”
Ramanuja grew sad and said, “Then go elsewhere. If you had loved anyone, that love could be expanded—to become prayer, a journey toward the divine. But you say you have never loved anyone—then you have no seed; how can a tree grow? Forgive me—I am helpless. If you had loved even a single person, that love could be made bigger, vaster, limitless. But you say there is no love within—then nothing can be done.”
He who loves even one person, however insignificant, has taken the first step toward God. Yes, if he stops there, no journey is completed with one step. Having loved one, that love should slowly spread to many, to the infinite. The more love becomes vast, the more sex and desire are transformed within. Gradually you will find: the day the fragrance of love begins to shower all around you, that day no lust remains within.
Brahmacharya is not attained by gouging out the eyes. It is not attained by running to the forests. It is not attained by turning your back on women—or women turning their backs on men. Brahmacharya is not attained by chanting “Ram-Ram.” Do not try to forget yourself.
A man bathing in a cold river chants “Hare Ram, Hare Ram”—he is trying to forget the cold. A man afraid in a dark lane chants “Jai Hanuman!”—he is trying to forget fear. Those who chant “Ram-Ram” to forget sex are merely trying to forget; they can reach nowhere. Nowhere at all.
One last thing, which many friends have asked—I will say it, then we shall sit for meditation. It came to mind from that talk of chanting “Ram-Ram.”

There is no real use in them, and the hindrance they create is very great. The repetition of any word—repeating any sound over and over—breeds inertia in the mind; not knowledge but stupidity; unintelligence; dullness. It weakens and slackens the mind’s conscious energy.

We have all experienced this, though we don’t notice it. If I sit here and repeat one word for an hour, what will happen inside you? Two things:
- Some will get very bored, stand up, and leave.
- Some will also get bored but, out of courtesy, won’t get up—so they will fall asleep.
Only these two can happen; there is no third.

When a mother wants to put her child to sleep, she sits by him and says, “Go to sleep, little prince, go to sleep, little prince, go to sleep...” She’s practicing her own Gayatri! After a while the little prince gets jittery—“What is this nonsense—go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep!” He can’t get up and leave—he’s a small child, where can he run? There’s only one escape: run into sleep, so the babble stops and he gets relief. The mother thinks he’s drifted off because of the sweetness of her lullaby. He has fallen asleep from boredom. Not only the little prince—do the same to the little prince’s father and he too will doze off.

Repetition bores us. Repetition produces boredom, agitation, restlessness—and then sleep. A person sits muttering, “Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram...” He is only seeking sleep, auto-hypnosis, self-hypnosis, a trick to knock himself out. For a short while a trance-like drowsiness will arise, and if you keep at it for two, four, six months, it will deepen. But trance is not meditation, and trance is not a path to the Divine. That is why, in those countries where rote repetition became a process, intelligence waned.

No real science could arise in India—because of such practices as Ram-Ram japa. The country’s creative brilliance was squandered; repetition diminishes creativity. Repeat, and your genius withers. Genius longs for the new; it thirsts for the fresh. Repeating the old, the old, the old breeds anxiety, boredom—and sleep.

No japa can take you anywhere. Silence can; japa is not silence. Emptiness of mind, the feeling of silence, simply becoming quiet leads to the Divine. All this japa and such is nonsense. Whether you repeat one word again and again or many words in turn, in no case does silence happen; in every case silence is broken. Silence will carry you. Silence is prayer, silence is the door, silence is the path—not japa.

And now the whole world is recognizing this. New psychology is making new discoveries, and among the most important is this: repetition dulls human consciousness—it makes it blunt, slack; it does not develop it. That is why “religious” people seldom show signs of true genius in the world. It ought to be that a religious person gives birth to such brilliance that the whole world is illumined. But it doesn’t happen—and this is the reason.

I am not opposing any particular Name. I have no quarrel with Ram. Don’t think that because I speak against chanting Ram-Ram I am against Ram. No—any word: Ram, Allah, Omkar, Om, anything. Any word will produce the same result. If you sit and say, “Chair, chair, chair, chair,” the effect will be the same as saying “Ram-Ram.” Whatever impact there is on consciousness comes from the act of repetition, not from the sacredness of the word. So repeat any word you like—Allah-Allah, Ram-Ram, whatever—and the same result will come. That result is not meditative awareness, not prayer, not a path to liberation.

For me, meditation or prayer means silence.

So for half an hour or an hour in the course of a day, become utterly silent, and quietly feel your oneness with life—that is remembrance of the Divine. This name-chanting and so forth is not remembrance.

And then, does the Divine have a “name” for you to chant?

Even human names are fictitious. You were born, and then a name was given to you. You came without a name—nameless. For convenience, parents stick on a label: this one is Ram, this one Vishnu, this one Krishna. These names are makeshift, false, pasted on from outside. No person truly has a name.

That tree standing there—does it have a name? A tree has no name. All names are human givings. If humans were to vanish from the earth, would anything have a name? Nothing would. The trees would still be there, the mango would still be there; the moon and stars would still be there—but there would be no names. Even now, they have no names of their own. Names do not exist in existence; they are a human invention. And we are so clever we have not only named things—we have named God as well.

Names are a pure myth, sheer imagining. So the Divine has no name. Except through silence, through emptiness, there can be no meeting with That. Therefore I call the empty, silent state meditation.

Many questions remain. Questions always remain. I have no wish to answer them all. My wish is only this: that you become capable of thinking and inquiring on your own. The fact that I have answered so many questions does not mean that what I say is the answer. It is not. These are my answers. It is not necessary that they become yours. It is not at all necessary that you believe them. If you reflect on them, then through your own thinking discernment will arise within you—a lamp for your path that will guide you.

My answer is not the point; it has no special value. Your question is valuable. And the day your own answer arises within you, that answer too will be valuable.

How will that answer come? As long as you keep clutching others’ answers, your own cannot arise. The day you drop all borrowed answers and, in quiet and emptiness, search for your own, that day the answer will come that becomes the solution of your life.

So there is no need to believe my words. There is no need to get angry at them either. Let my words serve only as material for your thinking, your reflection, your contemplation—if they seem useless, throw them away. And if, by your own inquiry, something in them seems right to you, then it is no longer mine—it has become yours. What proves true by your own seeing becomes your own. Only that truth has value which is your own; what is borrowed and second-hand is worthless. May the Divine lead you in the search for your own truth—that is my final wish. After this, we will sit in meditation.

In these three days you have listened to so much, with such love, such peace—I am deeply grateful. And in the end I bow to the Divine seated within each of you. Please accept my salutations.