I would like to begin with a small story. Long years passed, many centuries; in some country there lived a great painter. When he was young he thought, Let me paint such a picture that the bliss of God shines through it. Let me paint a pair of eyes in which infinite peace is reflected. Let me find such a person whose portrait might bring news from beyond life, from far beyond the world.
And he wandered village to village, combed the forests, searching for that man whose likeness he could paint. At last, upon a mountain, he found a shepherd grazing his cows. There was a certain gleam in his eyes. The contours of his face carried some message from afar. Just to look at him was to feel that within man too dwells the Divine. The painter made his portrait. Millions of copies of that picture were sold in villages and in distant lands. People hung it in their homes and felt blessed.
Twenty years later, the painter had grown old. Another thought arose in him. Through a lifetime of experience he had seen that if only God were present in man, it would be well—but the devil too is visible in man. He thought, Let me paint one more picture in which the image of the devil within man is revealed; then the two paintings together will be the portrait of the whole human being.
So in his old age he went again—to gambling dens, to taverns, to madhouses—seeking that man who was scarcely a man, who was devil; whose eyes burned with the flames of hell; whose facial outline evoked all that is inauspicious, ugly, unlovely. He went in search of a statue of sin. He had created a portrait of the Divine; now he wanted one of sin as well.
After much searching he found in a prison a convict who had committed seven murders and who was awaiting death to be hanged in a few days. In that man’s eyes one could behold hell; aversion stood there incarnate. The lines of his face were such that it would be hard to find a more hideous man.
He painted his portrait. The day the painting was completed, he brought his first portrait to the prison as well and placed the two side by side, to see which work of art was superior. It was hard to decide. The painter himself was enthralled. Both paintings were astonishing. From the standpoint of art, it was impossible to choose which was greater.
Just then he heard someone sobbing behind him. He turned and saw—the prisoner in chains, whose picture he had just painted, was weeping. The painter was surprised. He said, My friend, why are you crying? What trouble have these pictures caused you?
The man said, I tried to hide this for so long, but today I am defeated. Perhaps you do not know—your first picture too was of me. These two portraits are both mine. Twenty years ago, the man you met on that mountain—that was me. And I weep because in twenty years what a journey I have made—from heaven to hell! From God to sin!
Who knows how far this story is true. True or not, in every human life there are two pictures. Within each person is the devil, and within each person is the Divine. Within each person lies the possibility of hell and also of heaven. Within each person flowers of beauty may bloom, and marshes of ugliness may form. Each person sways continuously between these two journeys. These are the two poles, of which man may touch either. Most touch the pole of hell, and very few, most fortunate, unveil the Divine within.
Can we succeed in unveiling the Divine within us? Can we become that image in which a glimpse of God shines? How can this be—this is the question with which I wish to begin today’s second talk. How can man become the living image of God? How can his life become a heaven—a fragrance, an aroma, a beauty? How can man come to know That which never dies? How can man enter the temple of the Divine?
What happens is just the reverse. In childhood we are somewhere in heaven, and by old age we arrive in hell. The reverse happens. It seems that each day after childhood, our fall continues. In childhood we experience an innocence, a guileless world; then slowly, slowly, we move along a path filled with deception and hypocrisy. And by old age we are not only old in body; we are old in soul. Not only does the body become poor and worn, but the soul too becomes fallen, tattered, decayed. And we call this life—and finish!
Religion wishes to raise a doubt here. Religion is a great doubt with regard to this—that man’s journey should not be such that from heaven we end up in hell. It ought to be the opposite. The journey of life should be a journey of attainment—that we move from sorrow to bliss, from darkness to light, from death to the immortal. The innermost longing of life is just this. Within our very breath there is but one thirst: How to reach from death to the deathless? Within our very life there is but one yearning: How to move from darkness into illumination? There is but one demand in the heart: How to go from the untrue to the True?
Certainly, for the journey to truth, for the search for the Divine within oneself, a person needs a reservoir of energy—a conservation, an enhancement of power. Strength must gather within so that he becomes a source of energy; only then can the personality be carried into heaven. Heaven is not for the weak. The truths of life are not for those who become poor and feeble, having squandered their power. Those who lose all their life-energy and become inwardly weak and beggarly—such people cannot journey. To ascend those heights, to climb those mountains, strength is needed. The enhancement of energy is the formula of religion—conservation of energy: how to gather such power that we become a boiling reservoir of force.
But we are a feeble folk. Having lost our energy, we grow weaker and weaker. All is lost within; what remains is an emptiness, a hollow. Inside there is nothing but a void. How do we lose our energy?
The greatest door through which man’s energy is lost is sex. Sex is the largest gateway through which man’s power drains away. And, as I told you yesterday, there is a reason why energy is lost there. No one wants to lose energy—who would? But there is a certain glimpse of attainment, and for that glimpse man becomes ready to expend his power. In the moments of sex there is a certain experience; for that experience man is prepared to lose all. If that experience could be had by another path, man would never be willing to waste his energy through sex.
Is there another door to that experience? Is there another way to attain that realization—where we descend into the deepest depths of our life-breath, where we touch the highest summit of life, where we catch a glimpse of peace and bliss? Is there another path? Is there another way to reach within? Is there any other stairway to the source of peace and bliss within?
If that stair becomes visible, a revolution takes place in life. Man turns away from kam and turns toward Ram. A revolution happens; a new door opens.
If we cannot give humanity a new door, man revolves in a repetitive circle, a vicious cycle, and perishes. But up to now, the prevailing attitudes toward sex have not been able to open a new door beyond sex. Rather, a disastrous inversion occurred. Nature gives man one natural door—the door of sex. The teachings so far closed even that door, and opened no new one. Then energy began circling within and spinning round and round. If energy finds no new outlet, its ceaseless circling makes man deranged, insane. And a deranged man will then try not merely to exit through that natural door of sex, he will break walls and windows—the energy will pour out. Sexual energy will begin to leak through unnatural routes as well.
This calamity has occurred. It is among the greatest misfortunes of humanity. No new door was opened; the old door was locked. Therefore I stand in clear opposition to all the teachings given till now that preach enmity with sex, condemnation, repression. Because of them, man’s sexuality has increased, not diminished—rather, it has become perverted.
But what to do? Can another door be opened?
Yesterday I said to you: the taste experienced in the moment of intercourse is a taste of two things—timelessness and egolessness. Time drops to zero and the ego dissolves. Through time becoming void and ego vanishing, we have a glimpse of our real life. But it is only a momentary glimpse—and we find ourselves back where we were. And in it we lose a great quantum of energy, an electrical surge. Then the memory of that glimpse haunts the mind with pain. We want that taste again and again. And that glimpse is so brief it disappears in a flash. Not even a clear memory remains of what it was we knew—only a fixation, an urge, a mad longing to regain that experience. All life long man labors for it, but cannot obtain that glimpse for more than a second.
The same glimpse is available through meditation. There are two ways to reach the very core of human consciousness—sex and meditation. Sex is the natural door given by nature—to animals, to birds, to plants, to humans. As long as man uses only nature’s door, he cannot rise above the animals—he cannot. That door is equally available to the beasts.
Humanity begins on the day man opens a new door beyond sex. Before that, we are not truly human—human in name only. Before that, the center of our life is the animal’s center, nature’s center. Until we rise above it, transcend it, go beyond it, we live like animals. We wear human clothes, we speak a human tongue, we create a human surface—but in the deepest layers of the mind we are no more than animals. And that is why, given the slightest opportunity and the least slackening of our ‘humanity’, we immediately become beasts.
At the time of the India–Pakistan partition, we saw clearly that an animal sits inside the human attire. Those who yesterday prayed in mosques and read the Gita in temples—what were they doing? They were killing, they were raping, they were doing everything. The very people who were seen in temples and mosques were seen committing rape. What happened to them?
Let a riot break out here and now, and a man will seize the chance to take leave of his humanity. The beast hidden within will manifest. It is always ready—waiting for a chance. In the crowd it finds its moment. He quickly drops his restraint—he forgets himself.
Therefore, till today individuals have not committed as many sins as crowds have. Alone a man hesitates—someone may see me. Alone he wonders, What am I doing? Alone he is a little concerned about his clothing—that people will say, You are a beast! But in a large crowd he says, Who sees now? Who recognizes? He becomes one with the crowd. His identity melts. He is no longer so-and-so; there is a gigantic crowd. And he does what the crowd does—kills, sets fires, rapes. In the crowd he finds the chance to set free the beast hidden within.
That is why every five or ten years man waits for war, for riots. If the excuse of Hindu–Muslim comes, fine; if not, Gujarati–Marathi will do. If not that, then Hindi-speaking and non-Hindi-speaking will do. Any excuse will do—what the beast within wants is leave. It grows restless, shut inside. It says, Let me show myself.
The beast within man will not disappear until human consciousness rises above that natural route of animality. The natural route of animality—the one door for our energy to flow out—is sex. And if we close that door, a difficulty arises. Before shutting that gate, the inauguration of a new one is necessary—so that life-consciousness can flow in a new direction.
This can be done; it simply has not been done. It was not done because repression seemed easy, transformation difficult. To suppress something is easy; to change it requires method and sadhana. So we chose the easy route—push it down.
We forgot that by repression nothing is annihilated; by repression it becomes more powerful. We also forgot that repression deepens our fascination. What we push down slips into deeper layers of consciousness. We suppress it by day; it swings before our eyes in dreams. We press it down daily; it waits within for a chance to erupt. What we repress does not liberate us; it sends its roots deeper—into the unconscious—and shackles us.
It is because of repression that man became bound and fettered by sex. This is also why animals have a season for sex, a period in the year; man no longer has any season or period. Man is sexual twenty-four hours, twelve months! Among all animals there is none that is sexually charged twenty-four hours and twelve months. There is a season; it comes and goes—and the remembrance even fades. What has happened to man? By repressing, he has spread it over all twenty-four hours and twelve months of his life.
Have you reflected that no animal is sexual under every condition and at every time—but man is, always and everywhere, as if sexuality is boiling, as if sexuality is all. How did this come to pass? This calamity has happened only to man on the earth, to no animal—why?
There is but one reason: only man tried to repress. And what is repressed spreads like poison everywhere. And to repress, what did we do? We had to vilify, to insult; we had to generate degrading feelings. We had to say sex is sin. We had to say sex is hell. We had to say whoever is in sex is contemptible, condemnable. We had to invent all these abuses—only then could we succeed in repressing. And we do not realize that because of this condemnation and abuse our whole life became filled with poison.
Nietzsche spoke a very meaningful sentence: religions tried to kill sex by feeding it poison. Sex did not die—it survived, only now poisonous. Better had it died. It did not die. Worse happened—it became poisonous and yet lives.
This sexuality is poisoned sex. Sex is in animals as well—kam is in animals too, for kam is life-energy; but sexuality, sexualization, is only in man. There is no sexuality in animals. Look into an animal’s eyes—you will not see sexuality. Look into a man’s eyes—you will see a sap of lust shimmering. Therefore an animal is, even today, in a way, beautiful. But the madness of the repressors knows no bounds.
Yesterday I told you, if we want to free the world from sex, then boys and girls must be brought near each other. Before sex awakens—before fourteen—they should become so clear about each other’s bodies that the craving dissolves.
But in America a new movement has begun—launched by very religious people. Perhaps you have not heard; it is astonishing. The movement is that cows, buffaloes, horses, dogs, cats should not be taken on the streets without clothing—they should be dressed. Animals should be clothed, because seeing naked animals, children may be corrupted. Strange indeed—naked animals might spoil children! Some moralists are forming organizations and associations to see that animals are not brought naked into the streets. So many efforts to save man—and those who try to save him are the very ones who destroy him.
Have you noticed: the animal is wondrous and beautiful even in its nakedness—innocent, simple, straightforward. You hardly ever think that an animal is naked—unless great nudity is hidden within you. The fearful, the frightened have done everything out of fear—and by all they have done, man descends daily lower and lower.
What is needed is that one day man too become so simple that he can stand naked—guiltless and full of joy. That is needed. As a person like Mahavira stood naked. People say he renounced clothing. I say he neither renounced clothes nor practiced renunciation; rather, his consciousness became so pure, so innocent—like that of small children—that he could stand naked. When there remains nothing to cover, one can be naked. So long as there is something to hide, man will conceal himself. When there is nothing to hide, one can be naked. We need a world where even nakedness would carry no remorse, no pain, no crime.
Today we seem guilty even with clothes on. We are naked even when clothed—and there have been those who, naked, were not naked.
Nakedness is a tendency of the mind.
Simplicity, an innocent heart—then even nakedness becomes meaningful, it takes on beauty.
But up till now man has been fed poison. The result is that our entire life, from one end to the other, stands contaminated.
We tell women, regard your husband as God! And those very women have been taught from childhood that sex is sin, sex is hell. They will be married tomorrow. How will they be able to regard as God that husband who takes them into sex and into hell? On one side we teach that the husband is God; the wife’s experience says, This is the first sinner who drags me into hell.
A sister came to me. In the last meeting at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, after I spoke, she came and said, I am very angry, very furious. Sex is utterly filthy. Sex is sin. Why did you speak so much about sex? I hate sex.
Now this is a wife—she has a husband, children, daughters; and she hates sex! How can she love the husband who takes her into sex? How can she love the children who are born out of sex? Her love will remain poisoned. Poison will hide in it. A foundational wall will stand between her and her husband, and between her and her children—because the wall of sex and condemnation stands between. These children come from sin. Between me and my husband there is a sinful relation. And toward those with whom one has a sinful relation—can one be friendly? Can one be friendly with sin?
Those who abuse and condemn sex have destroyed the whole domestic life of the world. And the dire result is not that people have become free of sex. A husband who finds a wall of sin between himself and his wife never attains fulfillment with her; then he looks for other women, for prostitutes. He will search. Had he found fulfillment with his wife, perhaps all women in the world would have become his mothers and sisters. But lacking fulfillment even with his wife, all women appear to him as potential candidates to be made into wives.
This was bound to happen. Where fulfillment could be, there is poison, there is sin—and fulfillment is not found. So he wanders and seeks. And what inventions he makes in that search! If we were to list them all, we would be horrified at what man has devised. But no one reflects on the fundamental point: the well of love—of kam—has been poisoned.
When poison, fear, and sin exist between husband and wife, this very feeling of sin will not allow transformation. Otherwise, my understanding is this: if a husband and wife, filled with mutual understanding and love, joyfully and without condemnation seek to understand sex, then sooner or later their relationship will be transformed. It may be that that very wife begins to appear like a mother.
Around 1930, Gandhi went to Sri Lanka with Kasturba. The organizers thought perhaps Gandhi’s mother had come along—because Gandhi himself called Kasturba ‘Ba’ (mother). They introduced him saying, Gandhi has come, and we are very fortunate that his mother has also come; she is seated beside him.
Gandhi’s secretary was alarmed. This was our fault; we should have told them who was with him. But it was too late. Gandhi had already gone to the dais and begun to speak. The secretary, anxious, wondered what Gandhi would say afterward. He could not imagine that Gandhi would not be angry—few are the men who can transform the wife into a mother. Gandhi said, Fortunately, the friend who introduced me made a true statement by mistake. For some years now, Kasturba has become my mother. Once she was my wife. But now she is my mother.
This possibility exists—that if husband and wife, regarding sex and intercourse, seek understanding, they can become each other’s friends and companions in the transformation of sex. On the day a husband and wife succeed in transforming their sexual relationship, for the first time a feeling of gratitude toward each other is born—before that, never. Before that they are filled with anger toward one another, they remain each other’s basic enemies; there is conflict, not friendship.
Friendship begins the day they become fellow voyagers, helping one another to transform sexual energy. That day a grace, a gratitude is felt. That day the man is filled with reverence for the woman—because she has helped free him from lust. That day the woman is grateful to the man—because he has supported her and freed her from craving. That day they are bound in true friendship—not of sex, of love. That day their life moves in the right direction—where for the wife the husband becomes Paramatma, and for the husband the wife becomes Paramatma—that day!
But that well has been poisoned. Therefore, as I said yesterday, it is hard to find a greater enemy of sex than I am. But my enmity does not mean I abuse or condemn sex. It means I indicate the direction for transforming sex. I tell you how it can be transformed. I am an enemy of coal, because I want to make it into a diamond. I want to transform sex. How will it be transformed? What will be the method?
I told you, a new door must be opened.
When children are born, sex does not arrive in their lives immediately. There is time yet. The body must gather power; its cells must strengthen. It waits for the day the body is fully ready, when energy accumulates; then the door, closed for fourteen years, will be pushed open by the pressure of energy, and the world of sex will begin. Once that door opens, opening a new door becomes difficult—because the law of all energies is this: once they find a channel to flow, they prefer to move through it.
The Ganges flows toward the ocean; once it has found a path, it keeps to that path. New waters come daily and flow along the same course. The Ganges does not seek a new path each day.
Life-energy too finds a channel, and then flows through it. If we are to free the earth from obsession with sex, then before the gate of sex opens, a new gate must be broken open—the gate of meditation. Every child must receive essential teaching and initiation in meditation.
But we initiate them into opposition to sex—utter foolishness. Not initiation into opposition to sex—we must give positive education in meditation: how to become available to it. Children can come to meditation quickly, because as yet none of their energy-gates has opened. The gates are closed; energy is conserved. New doors can be nudged and opened. The same children, when old, will find it extremely difficult to enter meditation.
It is like a tender sapling; its branches can be bent any which way. Later it becomes an old tree. Try to bend its branches then—they break, they will not bend.
Old people attempt meditation in the world—this is entirely wrong. All effort in meditation should be with the young. But man grows interested in meditation when he is close to death. He asks, What is meditation? What is yoga? How can I become peaceful? When all life’s energy has been squandered, when all pathways are rigid and hard, when bending and changing are nearly impossible, then he asks, How can I change now? One foot in the grave and with the other still outside, he asks, Is there a way to meditate?
Strange indeed—sheer madness. This earth will never be peaceful and meditative until meditation is connected with the newborn—cannot be tied to the dying. In later days, we must take tremendous pains to become quiet—what could have been done at once in the beginning.
Initiation into meditation for small children is the first step in the transformation of sex—initiation into silence, into thoughtlessness, into stillness. Children are already silent, already peaceful. If a little direction is given, if they are taught for a few moments how to be silent and still, then by the time they reach fourteen, when sex stirs, one door will already have opened. Energy will gather and will begin to move through the door already opened. They will attain the taste of peace, of bliss, of timelessness and egolessness before ever tasting sex. That very taste will restrain their energy from wrong paths and lead it onto the right ones.
But we do not teach children meditation; we teach them opposition to sex—Sin! Filth! Ugliness! Evil! Hell! We say all this. Nothing changes—nothing at all. Rather, our warnings attract them all the more. They seek, What is this filth, this hell, that frightens the elders so much?
And in a few days they discover that those elders who try to restrain them are themselves immersed in it day and night. On the day they see this, all reverence for their parents ends.
It is not education that destroys reverence for parents; it is parents themselves. The very things for which you call children dirty—they quickly discover you are deeply engrossed in. Your day-life is one thing and your night-life another. Children are acute observers. They watch intently what goes on at home. They see that what mother calls dirty, what father calls dirty, goes on day and night in the house. They grasp this very soon. Their reverence dissolves—these parents are deceivers! Hypocrites! They say one thing, do another.
And children who lose faith in their parents will never be able to trust in God—remember this. For children, the first experience of God is parents. If that is fractured, the children will become atheists. The child’s first taste of God comes through the sanctity of mother and father. If that breaks, it will be difficult to bring them back to the path of God even at the hour of death—because the first God betrayed them. The mother, the father, proved false.
The reason boys around the world today say there is no God, no soul, no moksha, religion is nonsense—is not that they have discovered there is no God. The reason is they have discovered their parents are deceivers. And this whole deceit revolves around sex. Sex is the very center on which this deception stands.
We need not teach children that sex is sin; rather, with honesty we must teach that sex is a part of life, that you were born of sex, that it is present in our lives. Then the child can understand his parents with simplicity; and when he learns life, he can be filled with respect—that father and mother were truthful and honest. Nothing will support their future theism more than experiencing their parents as true and honest.
But today all children know that parents are dishonest and deceptive. This becomes a cause of quarrel between children and parents. The repression of sex has broken husband and wife. It has broken parents and children.
No—no opposition, no condemnation of sex; rather sex education should be given. As soon as children are ready to ask, tell them whatever seems necessary, whatever they can understand—so that they are not excessively curious, so that they do not become obsessed, so that they do not run after wrong sources for information.
Today children pick up all information from here and there—from wrong routes, from wrong people—knowledge that torments them throughout life. And a silent wall stands between parents and children, as if parents know nothing and children know nothing! They must be given right education about sex.
And secondly, they must be initiated into meditation—how to be silent, how to be peaceful, how to be thoughtless. Children can instantly be thoughtless, silent, still. If in the home there is provision for one hour of silence each day—surely they will be able to be silent only if you sit silently with them. In every home one hour of silence should be mandatory. A house can miss a meal for a day and still manage; but without one hour of silence, the house cannot be called a household. That home is false; it is wrong to call it a family if there is no initiation into an hour of silence.
Over fourteen years, that one hour of silence will knock daily upon the door and break it open—the door called meditation, through which man experiences timelessness and egolessness, where a glimpse of the soul is had. That glimpse must be attained before the experience of sex. If it is attained, the excessive rush toward sex will end. Energy will begin to flow through this new channel.
This I call the first step. In sadhana for brahmacharya, in rising above sex, in the transformation of sexual energy—the first step is meditation. The second is love. From childhood, initiation into love must be given.
We have always thought that the teaching of love will lead man into sex. This is a great delusion. Sex education can lead man into love, but the education of love never leads anyone into sex. In fact, the truth is the reverse: as love develops, sexual energy becomes transformed and begins to be distributed as love.
The less love one has, the more sexual one will be.
The less love in one’s life, the more hatred there will be.
The less love, the more enmity.
The less love, the more jealousy.
The less love, the more competition.
The less love, the more anxiety and sorrow.
The more a man is surrounded by sorrow, anxiety, jealousy, hatred, enmity, the more all his energies gather inside with no outlet. Only one outlet remains—sex.
Love becomes the outlet of energies. Love is a flow. Love is creative; thus it flows and brings fulfillment. That fulfillment is far more precious and deeper than the fulfillment of sex. To one who has found that fulfillment—he no longer picks pebbles when diamonds have begun to be found.
A man filled with hatred never finds fulfillment. In hatred he breaks things—but breaking brings no fulfillment. Fulfillment comes from creating. A man full of enmity struggles—but struggle brings no fulfillment. Fulfillment comes from giving, from donation—not from snatching. The one who struggles snatches away—he never attains the fulfillment that arises from giving.
The ambitious man travels from one post to another, yet never finds peace. Peace is for those who journey not through posts but through the pilgrimages of love—who move from one shrine of love to another.
The more loving a man is, the more fulfillment there is—a contentment, a deep satisfaction, a feeling of attainment, flowing through every vein. From his whole body a sap shines—the sap of fulfillment, the sap of bliss. Such a fulfilled person does not go in sexual directions. There is no need to restrain; he simply does not go—because that same fulfillment which sex brought for a fleeting instant, love brings for twenty-four hours.
So the second direction is: the maximal development of personality on the paths of love. Let us love, let us give love, let us live in love. And it is not necessary that we give love only to humans for love to be learned. Initiation into love is the initiation of the whole personality into lovingness—to be loving. We may lift a stone as if lifting a friend; and we may hold a person’s hand as if grasping an enemy’s. A man can behave lovingly even with things, and another man behaves with humans in a way he should not behave even with things. A man filled with hatred treats humans as objects; a man filled with love gives even objects a personality.
A German traveler once went to meet a fakir. He must have been in anger—he removed his shoes at the door with force, flung them; he shoved the door open harshly.
In anger a man removes his shoes as if they were enemies, opens doors as if he had a quarrel with them.
He slammed the door and entered. He bowed to the fakir. The fakir said, Not yet—I cannot return your greeting yet. First go and ask forgiveness of the door and the shoes.
The man said, Are you mad? Ask forgiveness of doors and shoes? Do they have a personality?
The fakir said, While angry, you never wondered if they had a personality. You threw the shoes as if they were alive, as if at fault; you opened the door as if it were your enemy. No—since in anger you assumed their personality, first go, apologize; then I will speak with you, otherwise I will not.
He had come from far-off Germany to meet the fakir; over such a small matter the meeting would fail. He had no choice. He went to the door, folded his hands and said, Friend, forgive me. He said to the shoes, Pardon me; I erred to open you in such anger.
That German traveler wrote: When I began to apologize, at first I felt like laughing—what foolishness is this! But once I had asked forgiveness, I was astonished—a peace arose in me beyond imagination. Who could believe peace would come by apologizing to a door and shoes! I returned and sat by the fakir. He began to laugh. Now it is right; now something can happen. You have expressed a little love—now you can relate, you can understand, because now you are blossoming, now you are filled with joy.
The question is not to be loving only with people; it is to be loving. It is not, Love your mother. Such statements are wrong. When a mother says to her child, Love me because I am your mother—she gives wrong education. Because love that carries a ‘because’ is false. When one says, Love me because I am your father—he gives wrong education. He is giving a cause for love. Love is causeless; it is not with reasons. A mother says, I am your mother; I have raised you, so love me! She gives reasons—love is finished. If love comes it too will be a pretence—the child will try to show love because she is mother.
No—education in love means: not a cause, but the facility and arrangement that the child may become loving.
The mother who says, Love me because I am mother, is not teaching love. She should say: It concerns your personality, your future, your joy—that whoever comes upon your path, you be loving—stone, flower, man, animal. It is not about giving love to an animal, or to a flower, or to me; it is about you being loving. Your future depends on how loving you are; the more love in your personality, the greater the possibility of joy in your life.
If man is taught to be loving, he can be freed of lust.
But we give no education in love. We create no feeling for love. Even in the name of love, what we teach is falsehood.
Do you know, can a man be loving toward one and hateful toward another? Impossible. A loving man is loving—people are irrelevant. Sitting alone he is loving. With no one there he is loving. Lovingness is his nature. It is not a question of relating to you.
An angry man is angry even when alone. A man filled with hatred is filled with hatred even when alone. He sits alone and yet you can see he is angry—though he is not angry at anyone. His whole personality is angry. A loving man, even if sitting alone, you will say, How full of love he sits.
Flowers bloom in solitude in the forest yet they pour out fragrance whether or not there is anyone to smell. Whether someone passes or not, the flower remains fragrant. Fragrance is the flower’s nature. Do not fall into the error of thinking it is fragrant for you.
We must make lovingness our personality. It is not about toward whom.
But those who love think: be loving toward me, and toward no one else. They do not know that one who is not loving toward all cannot be loving toward anyone. A wife says to the husband: Love me, and that is all! Then comes a stop; do not look here or there; not a drop of your love must flow anywhere else; love—this side only. She does not know she is making this love false with her own hands. A husband who is not loving in every situation, toward everyone—how will he be loving toward his wife? Lovingness is a quality of the twenty-four hours, not a special performance for someone.
Humanity has not yet been able to understand this. A father says, Be loving toward me! What about the peon in the house? He is a servant! The father does not realize: a son who cannot be loving toward an old servant—who too is someone’s father—when his own father becomes old he will not be loving toward him either. The father will regret that his son is not loving to him. He does not see that had the son been taught to be loving toward all around him, he would have been loving toward him too.
Love is a matter of nature, not of relationship.
Love is not a relationship; love is a state of mind. It is an inner part of personality.
So the second initiation we need is into lovingness—toward each and every thing. If a child places a book wrongly, it is a fault; he should be corrected at once: This does not befit your personality—that you place a book like this. Someone will see, hear, find that you have mistreated a book. You have behaved badly with a dog—this is a fault of your personality.
A fakir comes to mind. He had a small hut. Night had fallen; rain poured. It must have been midnight. The fakir and his wife were asleep. Someone knocked. It was a tiny hut—perhaps a traveler needed shelter. The fakir said to his wife, Open the door; a traveler, an unfamiliar friend stands at the door.
Do you hear? he said. An unfamiliar friend! Even those we know are not friends. He said, An unfamiliar friend—that is the feeling of love.
An unfamiliar friend stands at the door—open it!
His wife said, But there is so little space—barely enough for the two of us. If a third comes, what will we do?
The fakir said, Foolish one, this is not a rich man’s palace to run short. A palace always runs short when a guest arrives. This is a poor man’s hut.
The wife said, What have hut and palace to do with it? There is limited space.
The fakir said, Where the heart has much space, the hut appears like a palace; where the heart is cramped, even a palace becomes a hut. Open the door! How can we send someone back into the rain? We were both lying down; now the three of us will not be able to lie—we will sit. There is space enough to sit.
She had to open the door. A friend came in, drenched. They changed his clothes. The three sat chatting; the door was closed again.
Soon two more knocked. The fakir said to the first friend near the door, Open it—someone has come.
He said, How can I open it? There is no space.
He had himself arrived two hours earlier and had already forgotten: the love that made room for me did not make room for me alone; there was love in the heart, so space was made. Now others have come; space must be made again. He said, No, do not open it—we three are barely sitting.
The fakir laughed, You are crazy! I did not make space for you; there was love, so space happened. That love is not used up on you. Open the door! We are sitting far apart; we will sit closer. There is space enough to sit closer. The night is cold; sitting close will be a joy.
They had to open the door. Two men entered. They sat closer and chatted. A little later, in the deepening night and pouring rain, a donkey knocked his head against the door. He too sought refuge. The fakir said, Friends—the two at the door—open up! Another unfamiliar friend has come.
They said, This is no friend; it is a donkey. No need to open for him.
The fakir said, You do not know: at a rich man’s door, even men are treated like donkeys. This is a poor man’s hut; we are used to treating even donkeys like men. Open the door!
They said, Space?
The fakir said, There is plenty; we are sitting—now we will stand. There is space enough to stand. And do not worry; if the need arises, I am always ready to be outside. Love can go this far.
We need to cultivate a loving attitude, a loving heart. When a loving heart arises, in the personality there is a sense of fulfillment, a nectarous satisfaction. Have you noticed—whenever you have been even a little loving toward anyone, a wave of fulfillment follows behind? Have you seen that the moments of fulfillment in life have been those when love was unconditional—when there was no condition? When, walking along the road, you smiled at a stranger—have you known the fulfillment left behind? A feeling of peace came along. A wave of joy moved in the life-breath—when, walking along, you lifted someone up, steadied someone who was falling, handed a flower to someone ill—not because she is your mother, not because he is your father. No—he is no one of yours. But to give a flower to an ailing person is joyful.
The possibility of love in the personality should keep increasing—to plants, to birds, to animals, to humans, to strangers, to unknown people, to foreigners, to those far away, to the moon and stars—our love should expand.
As our love expands, the possibility of sex in life keeps diminishing.
Love and meditation together open the door that is the door of God.
Love plus meditation equals God. Where love and meditation join, Paramatma is attained.
And from that attainment, brahmacharya flowers in life. Then all energy rises upon a new path. It no longer drains outward; it is no longer wasted flowing out of life. It begins to move along inner pathways. An ascent begins, a journey upward.
Right now our journey is downward. Sex is the downward flow of energy. Brahmacharya is the upward flow of energy.
Love and meditation are the formulas of brahmacharya.
Tomorrow I will speak of the third thing: when brahmacharya is attained, what is the fruit? What becomes available? What is received?
These two points I have told you today—love and meditation. I have said their education should begin from childhood. Do not think, then, that since we are no longer children there is nothing left for us to do. Do not go away thinking thus—otherwise my effort has been in vain. Whatever your age, this work can begin. It can begin at any time—though the older we grow, the harder it becomes. With children—fortunate! With anyone, at any time—fortunate! It is never so late that nothing can be done. We can begin today.
Those who are ready to learn remain childlike even in old age; they can begin even then—if they retain the capacity to learn, a learning attitude, if they are not filled with the knowledge that they have known and attained all. They can learn, like small children, to commence a new journey.
A bhikshu had been ordained with Buddha for some years. One day Buddha asked him, Monk, what is your age? He said, My age? Five years. Buddha said, Five? You look seventy! Why do you lie?
The monk said, Only five years ago the ray of meditation dawned in my life. Only five years ago the shower of love began. Before that I lived—but it was a life in dreams, in sleep. I do not count it. How can I? Life began five years ago—therefore I say, I am five years old.
Buddha said to his monks, Remember this: from today count your ages likewise. This is the way to gauge age.
If love and meditation have not been born, your years have gone to waste. You have not truly been born yet. And it is never so late that with effort and labor we cannot attain our new birth.
So do not conclude from my words that you have passed childhood and these words are for children to come. No one has gone so far that he cannot return. No one has walked so many wrong roads that the right one cannot appear. One may have lived in darkness for thousands of years; it does not mean that when a lamp is lit, darkness will say, I am a thousand years old, I will not vanish! Whether one day or a thousand years old, darkness vanishes the same when a lamp is lit. Lighting the lamp can easily be done in childhood; later it is a little harder.
Harder does not mean impossible. Harder means a little more labor. Harder means a little more resolve. Harder means we will have to break the fixed grooves of personality with more persistence, and open new channels.
But when even the faintest ray of that joy, that truth, that light begins to dawn, all the labor seems as nothing—and we have received so much. When even one ray comes, it seems we have gotten it for free, because what we did has no value; what has come to hand is priceless.
Therefore do not let such a mood arise—this is my request.
You have listened to my words with such peace and love—for that I am very grateful. And in the end I bow to the Paramatma seated within each of you. Please accept my pranam.
Osho's Commentary
I would like to begin with a small story. Long years passed, many centuries; in some country there lived a great painter. When he was young he thought, Let me paint such a picture that the bliss of God shines through it. Let me paint a pair of eyes in which infinite peace is reflected. Let me find such a person whose portrait might bring news from beyond life, from far beyond the world.
And he wandered village to village, combed the forests, searching for that man whose likeness he could paint. At last, upon a mountain, he found a shepherd grazing his cows. There was a certain gleam in his eyes. The contours of his face carried some message from afar. Just to look at him was to feel that within man too dwells the Divine. The painter made his portrait. Millions of copies of that picture were sold in villages and in distant lands. People hung it in their homes and felt blessed.
Twenty years later, the painter had grown old. Another thought arose in him. Through a lifetime of experience he had seen that if only God were present in man, it would be well—but the devil too is visible in man. He thought, Let me paint one more picture in which the image of the devil within man is revealed; then the two paintings together will be the portrait of the whole human being.
So in his old age he went again—to gambling dens, to taverns, to madhouses—seeking that man who was scarcely a man, who was devil; whose eyes burned with the flames of hell; whose facial outline evoked all that is inauspicious, ugly, unlovely. He went in search of a statue of sin. He had created a portrait of the Divine; now he wanted one of sin as well.
After much searching he found in a prison a convict who had committed seven murders and who was awaiting death to be hanged in a few days. In that man’s eyes one could behold hell; aversion stood there incarnate. The lines of his face were such that it would be hard to find a more hideous man.
He painted his portrait. The day the painting was completed, he brought his first portrait to the prison as well and placed the two side by side, to see which work of art was superior. It was hard to decide. The painter himself was enthralled. Both paintings were astonishing. From the standpoint of art, it was impossible to choose which was greater.
Just then he heard someone sobbing behind him. He turned and saw—the prisoner in chains, whose picture he had just painted, was weeping. The painter was surprised. He said, My friend, why are you crying? What trouble have these pictures caused you?
The man said, I tried to hide this for so long, but today I am defeated. Perhaps you do not know—your first picture too was of me. These two portraits are both mine. Twenty years ago, the man you met on that mountain—that was me. And I weep because in twenty years what a journey I have made—from heaven to hell! From God to sin!
Who knows how far this story is true. True or not, in every human life there are two pictures. Within each person is the devil, and within each person is the Divine. Within each person lies the possibility of hell and also of heaven. Within each person flowers of beauty may bloom, and marshes of ugliness may form. Each person sways continuously between these two journeys. These are the two poles, of which man may touch either. Most touch the pole of hell, and very few, most fortunate, unveil the Divine within.
Can we succeed in unveiling the Divine within us? Can we become that image in which a glimpse of God shines? How can this be—this is the question with which I wish to begin today’s second talk. How can man become the living image of God? How can his life become a heaven—a fragrance, an aroma, a beauty? How can man come to know That which never dies? How can man enter the temple of the Divine?
What happens is just the reverse. In childhood we are somewhere in heaven, and by old age we arrive in hell. The reverse happens. It seems that each day after childhood, our fall continues. In childhood we experience an innocence, a guileless world; then slowly, slowly, we move along a path filled with deception and hypocrisy. And by old age we are not only old in body; we are old in soul. Not only does the body become poor and worn, but the soul too becomes fallen, tattered, decayed. And we call this life—and finish!
Religion wishes to raise a doubt here. Religion is a great doubt with regard to this—that man’s journey should not be such that from heaven we end up in hell. It ought to be the opposite. The journey of life should be a journey of attainment—that we move from sorrow to bliss, from darkness to light, from death to the immortal. The innermost longing of life is just this. Within our very breath there is but one thirst: How to reach from death to the deathless? Within our very life there is but one yearning: How to move from darkness into illumination? There is but one demand in the heart: How to go from the untrue to the True?
Certainly, for the journey to truth, for the search for the Divine within oneself, a person needs a reservoir of energy—a conservation, an enhancement of power. Strength must gather within so that he becomes a source of energy; only then can the personality be carried into heaven. Heaven is not for the weak. The truths of life are not for those who become poor and feeble, having squandered their power. Those who lose all their life-energy and become inwardly weak and beggarly—such people cannot journey. To ascend those heights, to climb those mountains, strength is needed. The enhancement of energy is the formula of religion—conservation of energy: how to gather such power that we become a boiling reservoir of force.
But we are a feeble folk. Having lost our energy, we grow weaker and weaker. All is lost within; what remains is an emptiness, a hollow. Inside there is nothing but a void. How do we lose our energy?
The greatest door through which man’s energy is lost is sex. Sex is the largest gateway through which man’s power drains away. And, as I told you yesterday, there is a reason why energy is lost there. No one wants to lose energy—who would? But there is a certain glimpse of attainment, and for that glimpse man becomes ready to expend his power. In the moments of sex there is a certain experience; for that experience man is prepared to lose all. If that experience could be had by another path, man would never be willing to waste his energy through sex.
Is there another door to that experience? Is there another way to attain that realization—where we descend into the deepest depths of our life-breath, where we touch the highest summit of life, where we catch a glimpse of peace and bliss? Is there another path? Is there another way to reach within? Is there any other stairway to the source of peace and bliss within?
If that stair becomes visible, a revolution takes place in life. Man turns away from kam and turns toward Ram. A revolution happens; a new door opens.
If we cannot give humanity a new door, man revolves in a repetitive circle, a vicious cycle, and perishes. But up to now, the prevailing attitudes toward sex have not been able to open a new door beyond sex. Rather, a disastrous inversion occurred. Nature gives man one natural door—the door of sex. The teachings so far closed even that door, and opened no new one. Then energy began circling within and spinning round and round. If energy finds no new outlet, its ceaseless circling makes man deranged, insane. And a deranged man will then try not merely to exit through that natural door of sex, he will break walls and windows—the energy will pour out. Sexual energy will begin to leak through unnatural routes as well.
This calamity has occurred. It is among the greatest misfortunes of humanity. No new door was opened; the old door was locked. Therefore I stand in clear opposition to all the teachings given till now that preach enmity with sex, condemnation, repression. Because of them, man’s sexuality has increased, not diminished—rather, it has become perverted.
But what to do? Can another door be opened?
Yesterday I said to you: the taste experienced in the moment of intercourse is a taste of two things—timelessness and egolessness. Time drops to zero and the ego dissolves. Through time becoming void and ego vanishing, we have a glimpse of our real life. But it is only a momentary glimpse—and we find ourselves back where we were. And in it we lose a great quantum of energy, an electrical surge. Then the memory of that glimpse haunts the mind with pain. We want that taste again and again. And that glimpse is so brief it disappears in a flash. Not even a clear memory remains of what it was we knew—only a fixation, an urge, a mad longing to regain that experience. All life long man labors for it, but cannot obtain that glimpse for more than a second.
The same glimpse is available through meditation. There are two ways to reach the very core of human consciousness—sex and meditation. Sex is the natural door given by nature—to animals, to birds, to plants, to humans. As long as man uses only nature’s door, he cannot rise above the animals—he cannot. That door is equally available to the beasts.
Humanity begins on the day man opens a new door beyond sex. Before that, we are not truly human—human in name only. Before that, the center of our life is the animal’s center, nature’s center. Until we rise above it, transcend it, go beyond it, we live like animals. We wear human clothes, we speak a human tongue, we create a human surface—but in the deepest layers of the mind we are no more than animals. And that is why, given the slightest opportunity and the least slackening of our ‘humanity’, we immediately become beasts.
At the time of the India–Pakistan partition, we saw clearly that an animal sits inside the human attire. Those who yesterday prayed in mosques and read the Gita in temples—what were they doing? They were killing, they were raping, they were doing everything. The very people who were seen in temples and mosques were seen committing rape. What happened to them?
Let a riot break out here and now, and a man will seize the chance to take leave of his humanity. The beast hidden within will manifest. It is always ready—waiting for a chance. In the crowd it finds its moment. He quickly drops his restraint—he forgets himself.
Therefore, till today individuals have not committed as many sins as crowds have. Alone a man hesitates—someone may see me. Alone he wonders, What am I doing? Alone he is a little concerned about his clothing—that people will say, You are a beast! But in a large crowd he says, Who sees now? Who recognizes? He becomes one with the crowd. His identity melts. He is no longer so-and-so; there is a gigantic crowd. And he does what the crowd does—kills, sets fires, rapes. In the crowd he finds the chance to set free the beast hidden within.
That is why every five or ten years man waits for war, for riots. If the excuse of Hindu–Muslim comes, fine; if not, Gujarati–Marathi will do. If not that, then Hindi-speaking and non-Hindi-speaking will do. Any excuse will do—what the beast within wants is leave. It grows restless, shut inside. It says, Let me show myself.
The beast within man will not disappear until human consciousness rises above that natural route of animality. The natural route of animality—the one door for our energy to flow out—is sex. And if we close that door, a difficulty arises. Before shutting that gate, the inauguration of a new one is necessary—so that life-consciousness can flow in a new direction.
This can be done; it simply has not been done. It was not done because repression seemed easy, transformation difficult. To suppress something is easy; to change it requires method and sadhana. So we chose the easy route—push it down.
We forgot that by repression nothing is annihilated; by repression it becomes more powerful. We also forgot that repression deepens our fascination. What we push down slips into deeper layers of consciousness. We suppress it by day; it swings before our eyes in dreams. We press it down daily; it waits within for a chance to erupt. What we repress does not liberate us; it sends its roots deeper—into the unconscious—and shackles us.
It is because of repression that man became bound and fettered by sex. This is also why animals have a season for sex, a period in the year; man no longer has any season or period. Man is sexual twenty-four hours, twelve months! Among all animals there is none that is sexually charged twenty-four hours and twelve months. There is a season; it comes and goes—and the remembrance even fades. What has happened to man? By repressing, he has spread it over all twenty-four hours and twelve months of his life.
Have you reflected that no animal is sexual under every condition and at every time—but man is, always and everywhere, as if sexuality is boiling, as if sexuality is all. How did this come to pass? This calamity has happened only to man on the earth, to no animal—why?
There is but one reason: only man tried to repress. And what is repressed spreads like poison everywhere. And to repress, what did we do? We had to vilify, to insult; we had to generate degrading feelings. We had to say sex is sin. We had to say sex is hell. We had to say whoever is in sex is contemptible, condemnable. We had to invent all these abuses—only then could we succeed in repressing. And we do not realize that because of this condemnation and abuse our whole life became filled with poison.
Nietzsche spoke a very meaningful sentence: religions tried to kill sex by feeding it poison. Sex did not die—it survived, only now poisonous. Better had it died. It did not die. Worse happened—it became poisonous and yet lives.
This sexuality is poisoned sex. Sex is in animals as well—kam is in animals too, for kam is life-energy; but sexuality, sexualization, is only in man. There is no sexuality in animals. Look into an animal’s eyes—you will not see sexuality. Look into a man’s eyes—you will see a sap of lust shimmering. Therefore an animal is, even today, in a way, beautiful. But the madness of the repressors knows no bounds.
Yesterday I told you, if we want to free the world from sex, then boys and girls must be brought near each other. Before sex awakens—before fourteen—they should become so clear about each other’s bodies that the craving dissolves.
But in America a new movement has begun—launched by very religious people. Perhaps you have not heard; it is astonishing. The movement is that cows, buffaloes, horses, dogs, cats should not be taken on the streets without clothing—they should be dressed. Animals should be clothed, because seeing naked animals, children may be corrupted. Strange indeed—naked animals might spoil children! Some moralists are forming organizations and associations to see that animals are not brought naked into the streets. So many efforts to save man—and those who try to save him are the very ones who destroy him.
Have you noticed: the animal is wondrous and beautiful even in its nakedness—innocent, simple, straightforward. You hardly ever think that an animal is naked—unless great nudity is hidden within you. The fearful, the frightened have done everything out of fear—and by all they have done, man descends daily lower and lower.
What is needed is that one day man too become so simple that he can stand naked—guiltless and full of joy. That is needed. As a person like Mahavira stood naked. People say he renounced clothing. I say he neither renounced clothes nor practiced renunciation; rather, his consciousness became so pure, so innocent—like that of small children—that he could stand naked. When there remains nothing to cover, one can be naked. So long as there is something to hide, man will conceal himself. When there is nothing to hide, one can be naked. We need a world where even nakedness would carry no remorse, no pain, no crime.
Today we seem guilty even with clothes on. We are naked even when clothed—and there have been those who, naked, were not naked.
Nakedness is a tendency of the mind.
Simplicity, an innocent heart—then even nakedness becomes meaningful, it takes on beauty.
But up till now man has been fed poison. The result is that our entire life, from one end to the other, stands contaminated.
We tell women, regard your husband as God! And those very women have been taught from childhood that sex is sin, sex is hell. They will be married tomorrow. How will they be able to regard as God that husband who takes them into sex and into hell? On one side we teach that the husband is God; the wife’s experience says, This is the first sinner who drags me into hell.
A sister came to me. In the last meeting at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, after I spoke, she came and said, I am very angry, very furious. Sex is utterly filthy. Sex is sin. Why did you speak so much about sex? I hate sex.
Now this is a wife—she has a husband, children, daughters; and she hates sex! How can she love the husband who takes her into sex? How can she love the children who are born out of sex? Her love will remain poisoned. Poison will hide in it. A foundational wall will stand between her and her husband, and between her and her children—because the wall of sex and condemnation stands between. These children come from sin. Between me and my husband there is a sinful relation. And toward those with whom one has a sinful relation—can one be friendly? Can one be friendly with sin?
Those who abuse and condemn sex have destroyed the whole domestic life of the world. And the dire result is not that people have become free of sex. A husband who finds a wall of sin between himself and his wife never attains fulfillment with her; then he looks for other women, for prostitutes. He will search. Had he found fulfillment with his wife, perhaps all women in the world would have become his mothers and sisters. But lacking fulfillment even with his wife, all women appear to him as potential candidates to be made into wives.
This was bound to happen. Where fulfillment could be, there is poison, there is sin—and fulfillment is not found. So he wanders and seeks. And what inventions he makes in that search! If we were to list them all, we would be horrified at what man has devised. But no one reflects on the fundamental point: the well of love—of kam—has been poisoned.
When poison, fear, and sin exist between husband and wife, this very feeling of sin will not allow transformation. Otherwise, my understanding is this: if a husband and wife, filled with mutual understanding and love, joyfully and without condemnation seek to understand sex, then sooner or later their relationship will be transformed. It may be that that very wife begins to appear like a mother.
Around 1930, Gandhi went to Sri Lanka with Kasturba. The organizers thought perhaps Gandhi’s mother had come along—because Gandhi himself called Kasturba ‘Ba’ (mother). They introduced him saying, Gandhi has come, and we are very fortunate that his mother has also come; she is seated beside him.
Gandhi’s secretary was alarmed. This was our fault; we should have told them who was with him. But it was too late. Gandhi had already gone to the dais and begun to speak. The secretary, anxious, wondered what Gandhi would say afterward. He could not imagine that Gandhi would not be angry—few are the men who can transform the wife into a mother. Gandhi said, Fortunately, the friend who introduced me made a true statement by mistake. For some years now, Kasturba has become my mother. Once she was my wife. But now she is my mother.
This possibility exists—that if husband and wife, regarding sex and intercourse, seek understanding, they can become each other’s friends and companions in the transformation of sex. On the day a husband and wife succeed in transforming their sexual relationship, for the first time a feeling of gratitude toward each other is born—before that, never. Before that they are filled with anger toward one another, they remain each other’s basic enemies; there is conflict, not friendship.
Friendship begins the day they become fellow voyagers, helping one another to transform sexual energy. That day a grace, a gratitude is felt. That day the man is filled with reverence for the woman—because she has helped free him from lust. That day the woman is grateful to the man—because he has supported her and freed her from craving. That day they are bound in true friendship—not of sex, of love. That day their life moves in the right direction—where for the wife the husband becomes Paramatma, and for the husband the wife becomes Paramatma—that day!
But that well has been poisoned. Therefore, as I said yesterday, it is hard to find a greater enemy of sex than I am. But my enmity does not mean I abuse or condemn sex. It means I indicate the direction for transforming sex. I tell you how it can be transformed. I am an enemy of coal, because I want to make it into a diamond. I want to transform sex. How will it be transformed? What will be the method?
I told you, a new door must be opened.
When children are born, sex does not arrive in their lives immediately. There is time yet. The body must gather power; its cells must strengthen. It waits for the day the body is fully ready, when energy accumulates; then the door, closed for fourteen years, will be pushed open by the pressure of energy, and the world of sex will begin. Once that door opens, opening a new door becomes difficult—because the law of all energies is this: once they find a channel to flow, they prefer to move through it.
The Ganges flows toward the ocean; once it has found a path, it keeps to that path. New waters come daily and flow along the same course. The Ganges does not seek a new path each day.
Life-energy too finds a channel, and then flows through it. If we are to free the earth from obsession with sex, then before the gate of sex opens, a new gate must be broken open—the gate of meditation. Every child must receive essential teaching and initiation in meditation.
But we initiate them into opposition to sex—utter foolishness. Not initiation into opposition to sex—we must give positive education in meditation: how to become available to it. Children can come to meditation quickly, because as yet none of their energy-gates has opened. The gates are closed; energy is conserved. New doors can be nudged and opened. The same children, when old, will find it extremely difficult to enter meditation.
It is like a tender sapling; its branches can be bent any which way. Later it becomes an old tree. Try to bend its branches then—they break, they will not bend.
Old people attempt meditation in the world—this is entirely wrong. All effort in meditation should be with the young. But man grows interested in meditation when he is close to death. He asks, What is meditation? What is yoga? How can I become peaceful? When all life’s energy has been squandered, when all pathways are rigid and hard, when bending and changing are nearly impossible, then he asks, How can I change now? One foot in the grave and with the other still outside, he asks, Is there a way to meditate?
Strange indeed—sheer madness. This earth will never be peaceful and meditative until meditation is connected with the newborn—cannot be tied to the dying. In later days, we must take tremendous pains to become quiet—what could have been done at once in the beginning.
Initiation into meditation for small children is the first step in the transformation of sex—initiation into silence, into thoughtlessness, into stillness. Children are already silent, already peaceful. If a little direction is given, if they are taught for a few moments how to be silent and still, then by the time they reach fourteen, when sex stirs, one door will already have opened. Energy will gather and will begin to move through the door already opened. They will attain the taste of peace, of bliss, of timelessness and egolessness before ever tasting sex. That very taste will restrain their energy from wrong paths and lead it onto the right ones.
But we do not teach children meditation; we teach them opposition to sex—Sin! Filth! Ugliness! Evil! Hell! We say all this. Nothing changes—nothing at all. Rather, our warnings attract them all the more. They seek, What is this filth, this hell, that frightens the elders so much?
And in a few days they discover that those elders who try to restrain them are themselves immersed in it day and night. On the day they see this, all reverence for their parents ends.
It is not education that destroys reverence for parents; it is parents themselves. The very things for which you call children dirty—they quickly discover you are deeply engrossed in. Your day-life is one thing and your night-life another. Children are acute observers. They watch intently what goes on at home. They see that what mother calls dirty, what father calls dirty, goes on day and night in the house. They grasp this very soon. Their reverence dissolves—these parents are deceivers! Hypocrites! They say one thing, do another.
And children who lose faith in their parents will never be able to trust in God—remember this. For children, the first experience of God is parents. If that is fractured, the children will become atheists. The child’s first taste of God comes through the sanctity of mother and father. If that breaks, it will be difficult to bring them back to the path of God even at the hour of death—because the first God betrayed them. The mother, the father, proved false.
The reason boys around the world today say there is no God, no soul, no moksha, religion is nonsense—is not that they have discovered there is no God. The reason is they have discovered their parents are deceivers. And this whole deceit revolves around sex. Sex is the very center on which this deception stands.
We need not teach children that sex is sin; rather, with honesty we must teach that sex is a part of life, that you were born of sex, that it is present in our lives. Then the child can understand his parents with simplicity; and when he learns life, he can be filled with respect—that father and mother were truthful and honest. Nothing will support their future theism more than experiencing their parents as true and honest.
But today all children know that parents are dishonest and deceptive. This becomes a cause of quarrel between children and parents. The repression of sex has broken husband and wife. It has broken parents and children.
No—no opposition, no condemnation of sex; rather sex education should be given. As soon as children are ready to ask, tell them whatever seems necessary, whatever they can understand—so that they are not excessively curious, so that they do not become obsessed, so that they do not run after wrong sources for information.
Today children pick up all information from here and there—from wrong routes, from wrong people—knowledge that torments them throughout life. And a silent wall stands between parents and children, as if parents know nothing and children know nothing! They must be given right education about sex.
And secondly, they must be initiated into meditation—how to be silent, how to be peaceful, how to be thoughtless. Children can instantly be thoughtless, silent, still. If in the home there is provision for one hour of silence each day—surely they will be able to be silent only if you sit silently with them. In every home one hour of silence should be mandatory. A house can miss a meal for a day and still manage; but without one hour of silence, the house cannot be called a household. That home is false; it is wrong to call it a family if there is no initiation into an hour of silence.
Over fourteen years, that one hour of silence will knock daily upon the door and break it open—the door called meditation, through which man experiences timelessness and egolessness, where a glimpse of the soul is had. That glimpse must be attained before the experience of sex. If it is attained, the excessive rush toward sex will end. Energy will begin to flow through this new channel.
This I call the first step. In sadhana for brahmacharya, in rising above sex, in the transformation of sexual energy—the first step is meditation. The second is love. From childhood, initiation into love must be given.
We have always thought that the teaching of love will lead man into sex. This is a great delusion. Sex education can lead man into love, but the education of love never leads anyone into sex. In fact, the truth is the reverse: as love develops, sexual energy becomes transformed and begins to be distributed as love.
The less love one has, the more sexual one will be.
The less love in one’s life, the more hatred there will be.
The less love, the more enmity.
The less love, the more jealousy.
The less love, the more competition.
The less love, the more anxiety and sorrow.
The more a man is surrounded by sorrow, anxiety, jealousy, hatred, enmity, the more all his energies gather inside with no outlet. Only one outlet remains—sex.
Love becomes the outlet of energies. Love is a flow. Love is creative; thus it flows and brings fulfillment. That fulfillment is far more precious and deeper than the fulfillment of sex. To one who has found that fulfillment—he no longer picks pebbles when diamonds have begun to be found.
A man filled with hatred never finds fulfillment. In hatred he breaks things—but breaking brings no fulfillment. Fulfillment comes from creating. A man full of enmity struggles—but struggle brings no fulfillment. Fulfillment comes from giving, from donation—not from snatching. The one who struggles snatches away—he never attains the fulfillment that arises from giving.
The ambitious man travels from one post to another, yet never finds peace. Peace is for those who journey not through posts but through the pilgrimages of love—who move from one shrine of love to another.
The more loving a man is, the more fulfillment there is—a contentment, a deep satisfaction, a feeling of attainment, flowing through every vein. From his whole body a sap shines—the sap of fulfillment, the sap of bliss. Such a fulfilled person does not go in sexual directions. There is no need to restrain; he simply does not go—because that same fulfillment which sex brought for a fleeting instant, love brings for twenty-four hours.
So the second direction is: the maximal development of personality on the paths of love. Let us love, let us give love, let us live in love. And it is not necessary that we give love only to humans for love to be learned. Initiation into love is the initiation of the whole personality into lovingness—to be loving. We may lift a stone as if lifting a friend; and we may hold a person’s hand as if grasping an enemy’s. A man can behave lovingly even with things, and another man behaves with humans in a way he should not behave even with things. A man filled with hatred treats humans as objects; a man filled with love gives even objects a personality.
A German traveler once went to meet a fakir. He must have been in anger—he removed his shoes at the door with force, flung them; he shoved the door open harshly.
In anger a man removes his shoes as if they were enemies, opens doors as if he had a quarrel with them.
He slammed the door and entered. He bowed to the fakir. The fakir said, Not yet—I cannot return your greeting yet. First go and ask forgiveness of the door and the shoes.
The man said, Are you mad? Ask forgiveness of doors and shoes? Do they have a personality?
The fakir said, While angry, you never wondered if they had a personality. You threw the shoes as if they were alive, as if at fault; you opened the door as if it were your enemy. No—since in anger you assumed their personality, first go, apologize; then I will speak with you, otherwise I will not.
He had come from far-off Germany to meet the fakir; over such a small matter the meeting would fail. He had no choice. He went to the door, folded his hands and said, Friend, forgive me. He said to the shoes, Pardon me; I erred to open you in such anger.
That German traveler wrote: When I began to apologize, at first I felt like laughing—what foolishness is this! But once I had asked forgiveness, I was astonished—a peace arose in me beyond imagination. Who could believe peace would come by apologizing to a door and shoes! I returned and sat by the fakir. He began to laugh. Now it is right; now something can happen. You have expressed a little love—now you can relate, you can understand, because now you are blossoming, now you are filled with joy.
The question is not to be loving only with people; it is to be loving. It is not, Love your mother. Such statements are wrong. When a mother says to her child, Love me because I am your mother—she gives wrong education. Because love that carries a ‘because’ is false. When one says, Love me because I am your father—he gives wrong education. He is giving a cause for love. Love is causeless; it is not with reasons. A mother says, I am your mother; I have raised you, so love me! She gives reasons—love is finished. If love comes it too will be a pretence—the child will try to show love because she is mother.
No—education in love means: not a cause, but the facility and arrangement that the child may become loving.
The mother who says, Love me because I am mother, is not teaching love. She should say: It concerns your personality, your future, your joy—that whoever comes upon your path, you be loving—stone, flower, man, animal. It is not about giving love to an animal, or to a flower, or to me; it is about you being loving. Your future depends on how loving you are; the more love in your personality, the greater the possibility of joy in your life.
If man is taught to be loving, he can be freed of lust.
But we give no education in love. We create no feeling for love. Even in the name of love, what we teach is falsehood.
Do you know, can a man be loving toward one and hateful toward another? Impossible. A loving man is loving—people are irrelevant. Sitting alone he is loving. With no one there he is loving. Lovingness is his nature. It is not a question of relating to you.
An angry man is angry even when alone. A man filled with hatred is filled with hatred even when alone. He sits alone and yet you can see he is angry—though he is not angry at anyone. His whole personality is angry. A loving man, even if sitting alone, you will say, How full of love he sits.
Flowers bloom in solitude in the forest yet they pour out fragrance whether or not there is anyone to smell. Whether someone passes or not, the flower remains fragrant. Fragrance is the flower’s nature. Do not fall into the error of thinking it is fragrant for you.
We must make lovingness our personality. It is not about toward whom.
But those who love think: be loving toward me, and toward no one else. They do not know that one who is not loving toward all cannot be loving toward anyone. A wife says to the husband: Love me, and that is all! Then comes a stop; do not look here or there; not a drop of your love must flow anywhere else; love—this side only. She does not know she is making this love false with her own hands. A husband who is not loving in every situation, toward everyone—how will he be loving toward his wife? Lovingness is a quality of the twenty-four hours, not a special performance for someone.
Humanity has not yet been able to understand this. A father says, Be loving toward me! What about the peon in the house? He is a servant! The father does not realize: a son who cannot be loving toward an old servant—who too is someone’s father—when his own father becomes old he will not be loving toward him either. The father will regret that his son is not loving to him. He does not see that had the son been taught to be loving toward all around him, he would have been loving toward him too.
Love is a matter of nature, not of relationship.
Love is not a relationship; love is a state of mind. It is an inner part of personality.
So the second initiation we need is into lovingness—toward each and every thing. If a child places a book wrongly, it is a fault; he should be corrected at once: This does not befit your personality—that you place a book like this. Someone will see, hear, find that you have mistreated a book. You have behaved badly with a dog—this is a fault of your personality.
A fakir comes to mind. He had a small hut. Night had fallen; rain poured. It must have been midnight. The fakir and his wife were asleep. Someone knocked. It was a tiny hut—perhaps a traveler needed shelter. The fakir said to his wife, Open the door; a traveler, an unfamiliar friend stands at the door.
Do you hear? he said. An unfamiliar friend! Even those we know are not friends. He said, An unfamiliar friend—that is the feeling of love.
An unfamiliar friend stands at the door—open it!
His wife said, But there is so little space—barely enough for the two of us. If a third comes, what will we do?
The fakir said, Foolish one, this is not a rich man’s palace to run short. A palace always runs short when a guest arrives. This is a poor man’s hut.
The wife said, What have hut and palace to do with it? There is limited space.
The fakir said, Where the heart has much space, the hut appears like a palace; where the heart is cramped, even a palace becomes a hut. Open the door! How can we send someone back into the rain? We were both lying down; now the three of us will not be able to lie—we will sit. There is space enough to sit.
She had to open the door. A friend came in, drenched. They changed his clothes. The three sat chatting; the door was closed again.
Soon two more knocked. The fakir said to the first friend near the door, Open it—someone has come.
He said, How can I open it? There is no space.
He had himself arrived two hours earlier and had already forgotten: the love that made room for me did not make room for me alone; there was love in the heart, so space was made. Now others have come; space must be made again. He said, No, do not open it—we three are barely sitting.
The fakir laughed, You are crazy! I did not make space for you; there was love, so space happened. That love is not used up on you. Open the door! We are sitting far apart; we will sit closer. There is space enough to sit closer. The night is cold; sitting close will be a joy.
They had to open the door. Two men entered. They sat closer and chatted. A little later, in the deepening night and pouring rain, a donkey knocked his head against the door. He too sought refuge. The fakir said, Friends—the two at the door—open up! Another unfamiliar friend has come.
They said, This is no friend; it is a donkey. No need to open for him.
The fakir said, You do not know: at a rich man’s door, even men are treated like donkeys. This is a poor man’s hut; we are used to treating even donkeys like men. Open the door!
They said, Space?
The fakir said, There is plenty; we are sitting—now we will stand. There is space enough to stand. And do not worry; if the need arises, I am always ready to be outside. Love can go this far.
We need to cultivate a loving attitude, a loving heart. When a loving heart arises, in the personality there is a sense of fulfillment, a nectarous satisfaction. Have you noticed—whenever you have been even a little loving toward anyone, a wave of fulfillment follows behind? Have you seen that the moments of fulfillment in life have been those when love was unconditional—when there was no condition? When, walking along the road, you smiled at a stranger—have you known the fulfillment left behind? A feeling of peace came along. A wave of joy moved in the life-breath—when, walking along, you lifted someone up, steadied someone who was falling, handed a flower to someone ill—not because she is your mother, not because he is your father. No—he is no one of yours. But to give a flower to an ailing person is joyful.
The possibility of love in the personality should keep increasing—to plants, to birds, to animals, to humans, to strangers, to unknown people, to foreigners, to those far away, to the moon and stars—our love should expand.
As our love expands, the possibility of sex in life keeps diminishing.
Love and meditation together open the door that is the door of God.
Love plus meditation equals God. Where love and meditation join, Paramatma is attained.
And from that attainment, brahmacharya flowers in life. Then all energy rises upon a new path. It no longer drains outward; it is no longer wasted flowing out of life. It begins to move along inner pathways. An ascent begins, a journey upward.
Right now our journey is downward. Sex is the downward flow of energy. Brahmacharya is the upward flow of energy.
Love and meditation are the formulas of brahmacharya.
Tomorrow I will speak of the third thing: when brahmacharya is attained, what is the fruit? What becomes available? What is received?
These two points I have told you today—love and meditation. I have said their education should begin from childhood. Do not think, then, that since we are no longer children there is nothing left for us to do. Do not go away thinking thus—otherwise my effort has been in vain. Whatever your age, this work can begin. It can begin at any time—though the older we grow, the harder it becomes. With children—fortunate! With anyone, at any time—fortunate! It is never so late that nothing can be done. We can begin today.
Those who are ready to learn remain childlike even in old age; they can begin even then—if they retain the capacity to learn, a learning attitude, if they are not filled with the knowledge that they have known and attained all. They can learn, like small children, to commence a new journey.
A bhikshu had been ordained with Buddha for some years. One day Buddha asked him, Monk, what is your age? He said, My age? Five years. Buddha said, Five? You look seventy! Why do you lie?
The monk said, Only five years ago the ray of meditation dawned in my life. Only five years ago the shower of love began. Before that I lived—but it was a life in dreams, in sleep. I do not count it. How can I? Life began five years ago—therefore I say, I am five years old.
Buddha said to his monks, Remember this: from today count your ages likewise. This is the way to gauge age.
If love and meditation have not been born, your years have gone to waste. You have not truly been born yet. And it is never so late that with effort and labor we cannot attain our new birth.
So do not conclude from my words that you have passed childhood and these words are for children to come. No one has gone so far that he cannot return. No one has walked so many wrong roads that the right one cannot appear. One may have lived in darkness for thousands of years; it does not mean that when a lamp is lit, darkness will say, I am a thousand years old, I will not vanish! Whether one day or a thousand years old, darkness vanishes the same when a lamp is lit. Lighting the lamp can easily be done in childhood; later it is a little harder.
Harder does not mean impossible. Harder means a little more labor. Harder means a little more resolve. Harder means we will have to break the fixed grooves of personality with more persistence, and open new channels.
But when even the faintest ray of that joy, that truth, that light begins to dawn, all the labor seems as nothing—and we have received so much. When even one ray comes, it seems we have gotten it for free, because what we did has no value; what has come to hand is priceless.
Therefore do not let such a mood arise—this is my request.
You have listened to my words with such peace and love—for that I am very grateful. And in the end I bow to the Paramatma seated within each of you. Please accept my pranam.