Sambhog Se Samadhi Ki Oar #5

There’s a little story behind it. There is a big marketplace. Some people call that big market Bombay. In that big market there was a gathering, and in that gathering a pundit was speaking about what Kabir says. He quoted a line of Kabir and explained its meaning: “Kabira khada bazaar mein, liye lukathi haath; jo ghar baarai apna, chale hamare saath.” He said Kabir stood in the marketplace and shouted to people: with a firebrand in my hand I call those who have the courage to burn down their house—let them come with me.

In that meeting I saw people were very pleased to hear this. I was quite surprised! What surprised me was that none of the people who were rejoicing would ever be ready to burn down their own house. But seeing their delight I thought, poor Kabir—how happy he would have been today! Three hundred years ago, when he stood in some marketplace and shouted this, not a single person would have been pleased. The human race is very strange: we are delighted to hear the words of the dead, and we threaten to kill the living.

I thought, if Kabir were in this great market of Bombay today, how happy he would be to see people so pleased to hear what Kabir says. They were never pleased hearing Kabir himself. Seeing their pleasure, it seemed to me that those who even nod at the idea of burning their house and feel happy about it—let me say a few heart-to-heart things to them today. So I too fell into the same delusion into which Kabir, Christ, and all others have always fallen.

I wanted to say something about truth. And if one is to speak of truth, first it is necessary to break the untruths that people have been taking as truth. As long as what we take to be true is not broken—and it is not true—no step toward knowing what truth is can be taken.

I had been asked in that meeting to say something about love. It seemed to me that nothing about love can be understood so long as we sit with wrong notions about kama and sex. If there are wrong notions about sex, then whatever we discuss about love will be incomplete, false; it cannot be true.

So in that gathering I spoke about kama and sex, and I said: it is the same energy of sex which, transformed, becomes the expression of love.

A man brings home manure—filthy and foul-smelling. If he heaps it near his house, it will become hard to walk past; such a stench will spread. But another man puts that very manure into a garden and sows seeds. The seeds grow, plants arise, and flowers bloom. The fragrance of those flowers becomes an invitation wafting into the neighboring houses. Passersby are touched by that fragrance; they sense the rippling music of those plants. Yet perhaps it never occurs to you that the fragrance emerging from the flowers is the very stench that once arose from the manure. Passing through the seeds, the stench of manure becomes the fragrance of flowers.

Stench can become fragrance. Sex can become love.

But one who turns against sex—how will he make it into love? One who becomes the enemy of sex—how will he transform it? Therefore, it is necessary to understand kama, to understand sex—that’s what I said there—and it is necessary to transform it.

I had thought that those who had been nodding when the house was to be burned would be delighted to hear me. But I was mistaken. When I stepped down from the stage, all the leaders and organizers had fled. None of them were there as I descended. They had probably run home to make sure no fire would break out there, to arrange for the extinguishers. Not even the organizer was there to thank me. All the white caps, all the khadi-wearers—none of them remained on the stage; they had gone. A leader is very weak; he runs away before the followers do.

But some courageous people did come up. Some boys came, some girls; some old, some young. And they told me, “You have said to us what no one has ever said. You have opened our eyes. We have felt great light.”

So I thought it would be proper to say this more clearly and completely; that is why I chose this subject here today. Over these four days I wanted to complete the story that remained unfinished there, because people asked me to. And it was asked by those who have a heartfelt striving to understand life. They wanted me to say the whole thing. That was one reason.

The second reason was that those who had fled from the stage began going around declaring that I had said such things as would destroy religion! That I had said such things as would make people irreligious! It seemed necessary to make it clear to them as well: people do not become irreligious by understanding sex. It is because they have not understood it till now that they have become irreligious. Ignorance can make one irreligious; knowledge can never make one irreligious. And if knowledge were to make one irreligious, I would still say such knowledge is preferable to the ignorance that makes one “religious.” For any religion that stands on the foundation of ignorance is not worth a penny. Religion is that truth which stands on the basis of knowledge.

And I do not see how knowledge could ever harm a human being. Harm always comes from darkness and from ignorance.

So if humanity has become corrupt, perverted and deranged in matters of sex, the responsibility does not lie with those who have sought knowledge about sex. The responsibility lies with those moralists, religionists, and hollow sadhus and saints who have tried for thousands of years to keep human beings in ignorance. Humanity would long ago have become free of sex. But it did not happen—because of those who strive to keep darkness intact.

So I felt: if a mere ray of light caused so much uneasiness, then it is proper to speak of the full light—so it becomes clear whether knowledge makes a human being religious or irreligious. That was the reason I chose this subject. And had that reason not been there, perhaps it would not have occurred to me suddenly to choose it; perhaps I would not have said anything on it.

In that sense, thanks are due to those who created the opportunity and compelled me to choose this subject. And if you wish to offer thanks, do not give them to me. Give them to those at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan who organized that meeting. They are the ones who had this topic chosen. I had no hand in it.

Others have asked similar questions. It will be useful to understand this a little.

If you have listened carefully, I said that the experience of sex has depths most people never reach. Let me tell you: there are three levels to the experience of sex.

- One level is the body—the purely physiological. A man goes to a prostitute. The experience of sex he has there cannot go deeper than the body. A prostitute can sell her body; the mind cannot be sold. And there is no way to sell the soul. The body can be obtained. A man commits rape: even in rape, neither the other’s mind nor soul is involved. You can violate a body; no one has found a way—and no one can—to violate the soul. So even the experience there remains at the level of the body.

The primary experience of sex does not go deeper than the body. Those who stop at the body never access the whole of sex’s possibilities. They have no taste of the depths I spoke of. Most people stop at the bodily plane.

In this context it is also necessary to understand that wherever marriage takes place without love, sex remains stuck at the bodily level; it cannot go deeper. A marriage can be of two bodies; the marriage of two souls is not possible. Two souls can love. If marriage flowers out of love, then marriage acquires a deeper meaning. But if marriage is arranged by pundits and astrologers, by caste calculations, by considerations of money, such a marriage can never go deeper than the body.

There is, however, one “advantage” to such marriages. The body is more stable than the mind. So in societies where the body is the basis of marriage, marriage will be stable; it will last a lifetime. The body is not a fickle thing; it is very stable. It changes very slowly and almost imperceptibly. The body is the plane of inertia. Societies that decided marriage must be made stable—one marriage should suffice, no need for change—had to keep love out, because love belongs to the mind, and mind is restless.

Societies that build marriage on love will inevitably have divorce. In such societies marriage will keep changing; it cannot be a permanent arrangement. Because love is fluid. The mind is restless; the body is fixed and inert.

There is a stone lying in your courtyard. It lies there in the morning, it will lie there unchanged in the evening. A flower blossoms in the morning; by evening it will wither and fall. The flower is alive—born, living, dying. The stone is dead—what it was in the morning, it remains in the evening. The stone is very stable. Marriage is like a stone. A marriage based on the body brings stability; it serves society’s interest. But it harms the individual. Because that stability is brought at the level of the body and love is avoided, the sex of husband and wife never goes deeper than the body. It becomes a mechanical routine. Sex becomes a life lived like a machine—repeating the same experience, growing dull. No deeper depth is ever touched.

Where marriage happens without love, there is no fundamental difference between that marriage and going to a prostitute—only a small difference, not a basic one. You buy a prostitute for a day; you “buy” a wife for a lifetime. Not much else differs. Where there is no love, there is only buying—be it for a day or for a lifetime. By living together, a certain association arises—people mistake that for love. It is not love. Love is something else entirely. When marriage is bodily, a deeper connection never arises. This is the first level.

- The second level of sex is the mind—the psychological. From Vatsyayana to Pandit Koka, those who wrote treatises on sex do not go deeper than the body. The second level is mental. Those who love and then marry find that their sex goes a little deeper than the body—it reaches the mind. Its depth is psychological. But even that, through daily repetition, sinks back to the bodily level and becomes mechanical.

In the past two centuries the West developed the institution of love-marriage, which carries sex to the psychological level. And therefore Western society has become disordered, because the mind is unreliable. It says one thing today, another tomorrow; one thing in the morning, something else in the evening; one thing a moment ago, something different the next.

You may have heard: when Byron married, it is said he had already been involved with sixty or seventy women. One woman finally compelled him to marry, so he did. As he came down the church steps, hand in hand with his bride—the bells were ringing; candles just lit were burning; friends who had congratulated them were taking their leave; he was leading his wife to the carriage—right then he saw a woman passing by in front of the church. For a moment he forgot his wife, forgot her hand, forgot his marriage. His whole being started following that woman. He sat in the carriage and, being an honest man, said to his wife, “Did you notice? A strange thing has happened. Until today, when I had not yet married you, I wondered whether I would get you or not; I could see no one but you. And now, today, when I have married you and am walking down holding your hand, I see a woman crossing by—and I forget you, and my mind runs after that woman. For a moment I felt, ‘Ah, if only I could have her!’”

Such is the fickleness of mind. Those who wanted to keep society orderly did not allow sex to go to the plane of mind; they arrested it at the body. “Marry; do not love.” If love happens after marriage, fine; if not, so be it. On the bodily level, stability is possible; at the mental level, stability is very difficult.

Yet the experience of sex at the mental level is deeper than at the body. Compared with the East, the West’s experience of sex is deeper. Thus Western psychologists—from Freud to Jung—have written about sex at this second depth: the mind.

- But the sex I am speaking of is the third level. It has not arisen in the East or the West. The third level is spiritual.

There is stability at the bodily level because the body is inert; there is stability at the level of the soul because there change never happens—there all is calm, eternal. Between the two is the mind—liquid like mercury, changing in an instant.

The West is experimenting with the mind; hence marriage breaks, the family dissolves. With mind, marriage and family cannot stand. Today divorce after two years; tomorrow, divorce in two hours—because mind changes in an hour. So Western society has become chaotic. The East kept society orderly, but the deeper experience of sex remained unavailable to it.

There is another stability, another clock—the spiritual. At that level, when husband and wife meet once, or two beings meet once, they feel united for endless births. There, no change remains. That level needs stability; it needs to be experienced.

So the experience I am speaking of, the sex I am speaking of, is spiritual sex. I want to give a spiritual orientation to the energy of kama, the sexual desire. And if you understand me rightly, you will see that a mother’s love for her son is spiritual kama; it is part of spiritual sex.

You will say, “This is a very upside-down statement! What has a mother’s relationship to her son to do with sex?” But as I said: man and woman, husband and wife, meet for a moment; for a moment their souls become one. And the bliss they taste in that moment becomes the binding force. Have you ever reflected that a child remains in the mother’s womb for nine months, utterly joined with her being? The husband meets for a moment; the son is one with her for nine months. That is why the bond a mother has with her son is deeper than what she can ever have with her husband—cannot be otherwise. The husband meets on the existential plane for a moment—where there is existence, where there is being; then they separate. They come close for a moment and again miles of distance open up. But the son breathes with the mother’s breath for nine months; his heart beats with her heart; his blood with her blood, his life with her life. He has no separate existence; he is a part of the mother.

That is why a woman is never fully fulfilled until she becomes a mother. No husband can ever give a woman the fulfillment that her child gives her. No husband can give as deep a contentment as her son gives. Without becoming a mother, a woman does not become complete. Her personality’s full flowering and beauty emerges when she becomes a mother. Her inner bond with her child is profoundly spiritual.

And understand this too: as soon as a woman becomes a mother, her interest in sex diminishes. Have you noticed? Once she becomes a mother, sex no longer tastes the same. She has drunk a deeper nectar—the nectar of motherhood. She has lived with a life for nine months; now sex has less charm.

Husbands are often perplexed. Fatherhood does not make a basic difference in men. But motherhood makes a radical difference in women. The father’s relationship is not very deep; the new being has little deep tie with the father. “Father” is a social institution. The world could go on without fathers. Hence a son’s bond with the father is not deep.

With the mother it is very deep. And the mother becomes fulfilled, and a certain spiritual dignity dawns in her. Look at a woman who has not been a mother, and look at one who has—there is a different radiance, a different energy, a different personality. In the mother a quiet glow appears—serene. As a river, when it comes to the plains, becomes calm. In the woman who has not yet become a mother you will see a rush, a surge—like a river on the mountain, leaping like a waterfall, shouting, roaring, rushing. Becoming a mother, she becomes utterly calm.

Therefore I also want to say: women who have become obsessed with sex—as in the West—do not want to become mothers precisely because after motherhood the relish for sex wanes. The Western woman refuses motherhood, because with it the taste for sex fades. That taste survives only as long as she does not become a mother.

So many Western governments are alarmed: if this trend continues, what will happen to their population? Here we are worried that our numbers will not stop growing; there they are worried their numbers may dwindle! If women deeply feel that motherhood reduces sexual enjoyment and therefore they avoid becoming mothers, what can be done? Can there be legal compulsion? You can legally compel contraception; you cannot legally compel procreation.

The West faces a bigger question than we do. Ours is not so big. We can curtail numbers by law, but there is no way to increase numbers by law. You cannot force a person to have children. Within the next two hundred years this may become a pressing issue for the West. The East’s population will keep increasing; it could overrun the world. The West’s may keep shrinking. They will have to persuade women again to become mothers.

Some of their psychologists have even suggested reviving child marriage—otherwise there is danger. Because once a woman comes to her senses, she prefers sexual enjoyment and does not want motherhood. So marry her off in childhood; she won’t even know when she became a mother.

In the East, one reason child marriage existed was this: the more a woman matures and becomes self-knowing and the more she begins to savor sex, the less she will want to become a mother. Though she has no idea what motherhood will bring—this can only be known by becoming a mother.

A woman begins to be fulfilled as a mother—why? Because she has tasted sex at a spiritual level with the child. Hence the intimacy between mother and son. A mother can give her life for her child; she cannot even imagine taking his life. A wife can take her husband’s life—many have. And even if not literally, she can create conditions for a lifelong slow death. But for the son, she cannot even imagine such a thing. That bond is very deep.

And let me say this too: when her relationship with her husband also grows that deep, the husband begins to appear to her like a son rather than a husband. So many women and men are sitting here; I ask you: when you have loved your wife very deeply, have you not behaved at times like a small child with his mother? Have you noticed why a man’s hands reach for a woman’s breasts? They are the hands of the little child reaching for his mother’s breast. As soon as a man is filled with deep love for a woman, his hands go to her breasts—why? What has sex to do with breasts? Sex has nothing to do with breasts; breasts belong to the relationship of mother and child. From infancy he has known it. The son’s relation is with the breast. And as soon as a man is filled with deep love, he becomes a son.

And where does the woman’s hand go? To the man’s head. Her fingers move into his hair. It is the old memory of the child—the head she has stroked. Therefore, if love develops rightly to the spiritual plane, the husband finally becomes the son. And he should become the son. Then know that sex has been experienced on the third plane—the plane of spirit, of spirituality. There is a relationship at this level we do not even suspect! The relationship of husband and wife is a preparation, not the culmination. It is the start of a journey, not its completion.

That is why husband and wife are always in some suffering; a journey is always arduous—peace is at the destination. Husband and wife can never be perfectly at peace; theirs is an in-between journey. Most people end their lives in the journey and never arrive.

Hence an inner conflict continues between husband and wife—twenty-four hours a day there is friction. With the very one we love, there is friction round the clock! But neither husband nor wife understands the cause. The husband thinks perhaps with another woman it would be all right; the wife thinks perhaps with another man it would be all right—this pair is wrong. I tell you, this is the experience of couples the world over. And if you are given the chance to change, the difference will be only this: like those carrying a bier to the cremation ground—one shoulder starts aching, so they shift the load to the other shoulder; relief for a while, then the same burden again.

In the West there are so many divorces; their experience is that the second woman proves to be the first again within ten or fifteen days, and the second man becomes the first again. The reasons are deeper—they do not lie in this particular woman or that particular man. The reason is that the relationship of man and woman, husband and wife, belongs to the middle of the journey; it is not the destination, not the end. The end is where the woman becomes a mother and the man becomes a son again.

So I say to you: the relationship of mother and son is the relationship of spiritual sex. And the day such a relationship of spiritual sex arises between man and woman, husband and wife, the mother–son quality will be established there too. When that is established, a certain fulfillment—contentment—arises. Out of that experience, brahmacharya, celibacy, blossoms.

So do not think that there is no sex in the relationship of mother and son. There is spiritual sex. If we speak precisely, we can call spiritual sex by another name: love. When sex becomes spiritual, it becomes love.

He probably does not realize that if we cannot consider someone an authority even on sex, it is futile to ask him about God. If a person knows nothing about the first step, do you want to ask him about the last? If what I have said about sex is unacceptable, then forget about ever coming to ask me about God. That matter is finished. If I have not proved fit even for the first grade, how could I be qualified for the final class?

But there is a reason for his question. Until now, kama and Ram have been viewed as enemies—sex and the Divine as adversaries. It has been assumed that seekers of Ram must have nothing to do with kama, and those who journey in kama have nothing to do with spirituality.

Both notions are foolish. Man’s journey through kama is itself a search for Ram. The intense attraction of sex is a search for the Divine—and that is why sex never truly satisfies, never feels utterly complete. Until Ram is found, it cannot feel complete. And those who pose as enemies of sex while “seeking Ram” are not really seeking Ram; they are only escaping from sex under the name of Ram—running away. The breath trembles, fear arises, so they pull Ram’s blanket over themselves, hide under it, and go on chanting “Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram,” so that the thought of sex won’t arise. Whenever you find someone chanting “Ram-Ram,” look a little closely. Behind the Ram-chant is the chant of kama, the chant of sex. He sees a woman and starts turning his rosary, “Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram.” The moment he sees a woman, the rosary moves faster, the “Ram-Ram” gets louder. Why?

Because the kama sitting inside is pushing from within. By taking Ram’s name he tries to forget it. But if life could be transformed by such easy tricks, the world would have changed long ago. The path is not that simple.

So I want to tell you: to understand kama is essential if you also wish to understand your search for Ram, for God. Why? Because if a man wants to travel from Bombay to Calcutta, he may inquire where Calcutta is and in which direction. But if he does not even know where Bombay is, and still wants to travel to Calcutta, can he succeed?

To go to Calcutta, the first thing is to know where Bombay is—where I am. In which direction does it lie? Then one can discuss the direction toward Calcutta. But if I don’t even know where Bombay is, then all information about Calcutta is useless, because the journey must begin from Bombay. The beginning comes first; the end comes later.

Where are you standing? You want to journey toward Ram—fine. You want to reach God—fine. But where are you standing now? You stand in kama, in desire, in sex. That is your dwelling, from where you must take your first step and begin the journey. So first it is necessary to understand the place where we are. What is the actuality must be understood first; only then can we understand the possibility. To know what we can become, we must first know what we are. Before understanding the final step, we must understand the first step, because the first step becomes the path to the last. And if the first step is wrong, the last will never be right.

More important than Ram is to understand kama; more important than God is to understand sex. Why so important? Because if one is to reach God, one cannot do so without understanding sex.

So don’t ask whether I am an authority or not—how will that be decided? If I say it myself, it proves nothing, because the decision concerns me. If I say, “I am an authority,” it has no meaning; if I say, “I am not an authority,” that too has no meaning, because in either case the statement itself would have to be authoritative or not. Whatever I say about myself is futile. Whether I am an authority or not—experiment a little in the world of sex and see. When experience comes, you will know whether what I have said is authoritative. There is no other way.

If I tell you, “This is the way to swim,” and you say, “But how can we believe you are authentic about swimming?”—then I say, fine, let’s step into the river together. If what I have told you helps you move your hands and feet and cross over, then know that I spoke with some knowing.

He also says Freud could be an authority.

But I tell you, about what I am saying, Freud did not know two pennies’ worth. Freud never rose above the mental plane. He had no inkling of spiritual sex. All his knowledge is of pathological sex—hysteria, homosexuality, masturbation—investigations into all this. It is research into diseased, distorted sex. It is pathological, the medicine of the sick. Freud is a doctor. And the people he studied in the West were those for whom sex remains on the mental plane. He has not a single study, not a single case history, that can be called spiritual sex.

So if you want to inquire how far what I am saying is true, there is only one direction: Tantra. And about Tantra, we have stopped thinking for thousands of years. Tantra made the world’s first and foremost effort to spiritualize sex. The temples standing in Khajuraho, the temples of Puri and Konark, are evidence.

Have you ever been to Khajuraho? Have you seen the sculptures there?

You will have two astonishing experiences. First, even while looking at nude, copulating figures, you won’t feel that there is anything dirty in them, anything ugly whatsoever. Nowhere will you feel there is something grotesque or bad. Rather, looking at those coupling figures, you will feel a peace, a sacredness—an amazement! Those images were carved by sculptors who had known spiritual sex. On the faces of those figures…

Look at a man full of sex: see his eyes, his face. He appears repulsive, agitated, ugly. A certain glint comes from his eyes that makes you uneasy, even afraid. The dearest man, the closest beloved—when a woman sees him approaching filled with sex, he appears an enemy, not a friend. And to a man, when a most beautiful woman approaches filled with sex, he sees hell within her, not heaven.

But look at the figures of Khajuraho—their faces look like those of Buddha, like those of Mahavira. The expressions on the faces of the coupling pairs are those of samadhi. See all the images, and behind them a faint fragrance of peace remains—nothing else. And you will feel a surprise. You may think that seeing naked pictures and statues will arouse lust in you. Then I say: don’t delay, go straight to Khajuraho. Khajuraho is unique on the earth today.

Yet some of our moralists—Purushottam Das Tandon and some of his companions—suggested that the walls of Khajuraho’s temples should be plastered over with mud and sealed, because seeing them might arouse desire. I was astonished!

Those who built Khajuraho thought that if one sits and gazes at these images for an hour, one becomes empty of lust. For thousands of years those images served as objects for meditation. For very lustful people, they were used as meditative objects. They were sent to the temples of Khajuraho and told: meditate—look at these images and become absorbed in them.

And it is surprising—though it is within our experience, we just haven’t noticed. You know how, if two people start fighting in the street while you’re passing by, you feel like stopping to watch? Why? Have you ever thought? What benefit do you get from watching a fight? You can leave a thousand important tasks and stand there for half an hour watching two men box—what’s the benefit? Perhaps you don’t know: there is one benefit. Seeing two men fight, the fighting tendency within you is discharged, it finds an outlet, it evaporates.

If someone sits quietly for an hour and meditates on a copulating image, the mad urge within to copulate dissolves.

A man was taken to a psychologist. He worked in an office, and he was very upset with his boss. Whatever the boss said felt like an insult, and he felt like taking off his shoe and hitting him. But how can you hit the boss with a shoe? Though it would be hard to find a servant who never thought, “Let me take off my shoe and hit him.” Such a servant is rare. If you are a boss, you know it; if you are an employee, you also know it—that being a servant hurts deeply, and one feels like taking revenge. But if the servant could take revenge, he wouldn’t be a servant.

So the poor fellow keeps suppressing and suppressing. His condition became so bad that he feared, “Someday, in a fit, I may actually hit him.” So he started leaving his shoes at home. But all day at the office he’d remember the shoes; whenever the boss appeared, he’d feel for his feet—“Shoes?” But he’d left them at home, and he’d be relieved: good I left them—if in a moment of passion they slipped off, I’d be in trouble.

But leaving the shoes at home did not free him from the shoe. The shoe began to haunt him. Whatever he drew on paper turned into a shoe. He’d be writing in the register and find that a shoe had started taking shape. His very breath was filling with the shoe. He became very frightened; slowly he felt he might attack any day.

He said at home, “I shouldn’t go to work; I want to take leave. The situation is such that I might even take someone else’s shoe to hit him. I don’t need my own anymore. My hands are reaching toward other people’s feet.”

His family thought he had gone mad and took him to a psychologist. The psychologist said, “The illness is not big; it’s small. Hang a picture of the boss at home, and tell him to hit it five times with a shoe every morning—religiously. Five shoe-strikes, then go to the office—exactly like a ritual. Not to be missed even a day. Just as people meditate or chant—at the set time, five shoe-strikes. When he returns from the office, five more.”

At first the man said, “What nonsense!” But inwardly he felt pleased. He was surprised: “I feel a happiness inside.”

They hung the picture, and he went to the office after giving it five good shoe-strikes. The very first day he had a strange experience—he felt much less anger toward the boss. Within fifteen days he became extremely humble toward him. The boss too was puzzled. Not knowing what was going on, he asked, “These days you are very obedient, very humble. What has happened?” He replied, “Please don’t ask, or everything will get spoiled.”

Can anything happen by hitting a picture with a shoe? Yes. By hitting the picture, that very impulse to hit evaporates, disperses, vaporizes.

Temples like Khajuraho or Konark and Puri should exist in every village. The rest of the temples are not needed—they are proofs of foolishness; there is nothing in them, neither any scientific element, nor meaning, nor purpose. They are sheer evidence of rustic ignorance. But Khajuraho’s temples are meaningful. Whoever is very full of sex should go and meditate on them; he will return lighter, calmer.

Tantra indeed tried to spiritualize sex. But the moralists of this land, the preachers of morality—those fellows—did not allow their message to reach society. They don’t want my message to reach either.

After speaking at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan here, when I returned to Jabalpur, on the third day I received a letter: if you do not stop speaking like this, why shouldn’t we shoot you?

I wanted to reply, but the gentlemen who want to shoot seem very cowardly—they neither wrote their name nor their address. Perhaps they feared I would give it to the police. But if they are here somewhere—if they are here, they’ll be hiding behind some bush or wall—if they are here, I want to tell them there’s no need to go to the police. Send me your name and address so I can answer you. If you don’t have the courage, I will answer here so you can hear.

First, don’t be in such a hurry to shoot. Because the moment you shoot, what I am saying will become the supreme truth—remember that.

The world would have forgotten Jesus Christ long ago if he had not been nailed to the cross. The world would have forgotten him if he had not been crucified. The one who crucified him did a great kindness.

And I have heard—within certain inner circles, seekers into life’s depths—that Jesus himself planned and conspired to be crucified. He wanted to be crucified. Because the moment he was nailed to the cross, what he had said would become immortal for millions of years and serve thousands, millions.

This is very possible. Judas, who “sold” Jesus for thirty coins, was among his dearest disciples. And it is unlikely that someone who had been with Jesus for years would sell him for thirty coins—unless Jesus had told him, “Try—meet the enemies and entangle me somehow so I get crucified! So that what I am saying takes the place of nectar and becomes the liberation of millions.”

Had Mahavira been crucified, there would not be only thirty lakh Jains—there could have been three hundred million. But Mahavira died peacefully; he knew nothing of the cross. No one crucified him, nor did he make arrangements to be. Today half the world is Christian—only because Jesus alone hangs upon a cross, not Buddha, not Mohammed, not Mahavira, not Krishna, not Ram. The cross brought this result.

So I tell them: don’t be hasty, or you will incur a loss.

Second, don’t worry. I have no intention of dying on a bed. I will make every effort that someone or other does shoot! I myself will try; they need not hurry. When the time comes, I will prefer someone to shoot! Life is useful—and if a bullet comes, so is death—more useful than life. What life cannot do, a bullet-struck death can do.

Enemies have always made this mistake—this foolishness. They hanged Socrates on the cross, gave him poison; they crucified Mansoor; and recently Godse shot Gandhi. Godse did not know that Gandhi’s devotees and followers could never have made him as memorable as Godse alone has done. And if, at the moment of death, when the bullet struck, Gandhi joined his hands in namaste to Godse, it was very meaningful. Meaningful as: my final disciple has appeared—the one who will make me forever immortal. God has sent the very man I needed.

The drama of life is very intricate. It is not so simple. Those who die on the bed die forever; those who die by a bullet are very hard to kill.

Socrates’ friends asked him, “Now that they will give you poison and you will die, how should we arrange your burial? Shall we cremate you, make a tomb—what shall we do?”

Socrates said, “Fools! Don’t you know? You will not be able to bury me. When you all have turned to dust, I will still be alive. The way I have chosen to die is one that lives forever.”

So if those friends are here somewhere, they should know: don’t be in a hurry. You will incur a loss. Nothing can happen to me. The one who can be hit by a bullet is not me; and the one who remains after the bullet—that is what I am. So don’t hurry. And secondly, don’t fear signing your name or writing your address. If I feel someone is ready to kill me, wherever he calls me, I am always ready to come quietly without informing anyone, so that no trouble comes upon him afterward.

But such madness arises. The poor fellow who wrote it thinks he is protecting religion. He thinks I am trying to destroy religion and he is defending it. There is no bad intention in him; his feelings are very good, very religious. It is such “religious” people who bring the world into trouble. Their intentions are good, but their intelligence is foolish.

For thousands of years the so-called moralists have prevented life’s truths from being fully revealed. Because they were not revealed, ignorance has become widespread. In that dark night of ignorance we grope, wander, fall. And those moral teachers, those preachers of ethics, set up platforms in the midst of our darkness and go on preaching!

It is also true that the day we become good, the day a ray of truth appears in our life, the day some glimpse of samadhi dawns, the day our ordinary life begins to be transformed into God-life, that day preachers will be useless; there will be no place for them. The preacher is relevant only so long as people wander in darkness.

A village needs a physician only so long as people fall ill. The day people stop falling ill, the physician will have to be sent away. Outwardly the doctor seems to treat the sick, but inwardly his life’s wish is that people keep falling ill. It is very paradoxical! Because the doctor lives off people’s illnesses. His profession is contradictory. His hidden desire is that people keep getting sick. When malaria spreads or waves of flu come, in private he thanks God: the season for business has arrived!

I have heard: one night, late at a tavern, some friends ate and drank and made merry. As they were leaving at midnight, the tavern-keeper said to his wife, “Thank God—very good people came. If such people came every day, in a few days we would be rich.” The departing guests heard this. The one who had paid said, “Friend, pray to God that our business runs well too—then we will come every day.”

As they left, the tavern-keeper asked, “Brother, what is your business?”

He said, “You ask my business? I sell firewood at the cremation ground for corpses. When more people die, business is good; then we are a little happy. If our business runs every day, we will come here every day.”

A physician’s business is to make people well. But his profit and advantage lie in people’s remaining ill. So with one hand he treats, and in his heart he prays that the patient not get well too quickly.

That is why the rich patient takes a long time to get well; the poor patient recovers quickly—because keeping a poor patient sick longer is of no benefit; there is benefit in the rich patient! So the rich remain sick longer. The truth is, the rich are often ill—the doctor’s prayers are working. His inner desire restrains his hand, lest the patient recover at once.

The preacher’s situation is the same. The more depraved society becomes, the more adultery and wrongdoing spread, the higher the preacher’s platform rises. Then there is a need to say: practice nonviolence, practice truth, be honest; take this vow and that vow. If people were vow-bound, self-restrained, peaceful, honest, the preacher would be finished. He would have no place.

And why are there more preachers in India than anywhere else? Why gurus in every village, swamis and sannyasins in every house? Why such a throng of “mahatmas”?

Not because you are a very religious country where saints blossom, but because at this time you are the most irreligious and immoral land on earth—therefore so many preachers get the contract and the trade to be maintained. It has become our national disease.

I have heard of an article written in America—someone sent it to me and asked my advice; there was a gap in it. It was a humorous piece: one can determine the basic character of every person and every nation by giving them alcohol and observing what happens. He wrote: give a Dutchman drink and he immediately falls upon food; he won’t leave the kitchen, won’t get up from the dining table for hours. Give a Frenchman drink and he becomes ready for song and dance. Give an Englishman drink and he becomes utterly silent, sits alone in a corner; having drunk, his character is to grow even more silent. There were such traits for people all over the world. But by mistake or ignorance nothing was written about India. A friend sent me the piece and asked: what do you say about the Indian character? If an Indian drinks, what happens?

I said: it is known to all. The Indian drinks and immediately starts giving a sermon. That is his characteristic—his national trait.

This society of preachers and this long line of saints and “mahatmas”—these are symptoms of disease, of immorality. And the irony is, none of them inwardly wants immorality and illness to end, because with their ending, they end too. Their soul’s call is that the disease remain and keep increasing.

And the easiest way to increase that disease is to prevent comprehensive knowledge of life. Especially to keep people from knowing the deepest centers—those from whose ignorance immorality, adultery, and corruption spread. Because once those centers are known, immorality can depart at once.

And I want to tell you: sex is the central point of man’s immorality. It is the most fundamental center of man’s adultery and distortion. That is precisely why the religious leaders do not want to talk about it at all!

A friend has sent word: no saint talks about sex. And since you have spoken about sex, our respect for you has greatly diminished.

I told him: there is no mistake in that. The earlier respect was the mistake. What mistake is there now? What is the use of respecting me? Why should you give me respect? When did I ask for it? If you were giving it, that was your mistake; if you no longer give it, that is your kindness. I am not a “mahatma.” Had I ever desired to be a mahatma, I would have been greatly pained and would have said, forgive me, I spoke these things by mistake.

I was not a mahatma, I am not a mahatma, I do not wish to be a mahatma. In a world where so many are poor and lowly, a person desiring to be a “great soul” could hardly be more base and self-centered. Where there are so many lowly souls, the very idea of being a mahatma is sin.

I want great humanity. I want a great human being. I have no wish or longing to be a mahatma. The days of “mahatmas” should pass. We do not need mahatmas; we need great human beings. We need great humanity. Not great men—great humanity! There have been plenty of “great men.” What have they yielded? Now we need not great men, but great humaneness.

So I was very pleased that at least one person’s illusion broke. At least one got disillusioned. At least one realized: this man is not a mahatma. One person’s delusion broke—that too is a big thing.

They must have thought that by saying such things they could tempt me—that I could be made a maharshi or a mahatma if only I would not speak like this.

Till now “maharshis” and “mahatmas” have been made just like that. And that is why those weak people did not speak the things that could have snatched away their halo of holiness. To preserve their “mahatma-hood”—under that temptation—they never considered how much harm could come to life.

I have no concern, no thought, no care! I actually get uneasy when someone wants to regard me as a mahatma. And in today’s world to become a mahatma or a maharshi is so easy it defies calculation. It has always been easy. That is not the question. The question is: how can great human beings be born—what can we do for that? What can we think, what can we discover? And it seems to me that what I have said to you on the fundamental question can help break open a direction in your life. A path can reveal itself. And gradually your lust can be transformed toward the soul. Right now we are lust, not soul. Tomorrow we can be soul. How? By the total transformation of this very energy—by continually raising this power higher and higher.

As I said yesterday, there are many questions about this; I will say one thing about it.

I told you: in intercourse, keep the remembrance of the glimpse of samadhi—remember, and try to catch that point which flashes like lightning in the midst of love—just for a moment, a flash appears and is gone. Try to catch that point: what is it? Try to know it. Hold it completely—what is it?

Once you grasp it, you will see that in that moment you cease to be the body—bodilessness. In that instant you are not the body. In that flash, for a moment you become something else—you become the soul.

If that glimpse becomes visible to you, then you can work through meditation to hold it. Through meditation you can fully know and live that glimpse. And if it becomes part of our knowing and living, then sex will have no place in your life.

Certainly, children will not be born the way they are born today. That way may be fine for dogs, cats, and caterpillars, but it is not fitting for human beings. Is this any way—to keep lining up children, meaningless, purposeless, without awareness—just producing crowds? How big has this crowd become? So big that scientists say if children keep being born like this for a hundred more years without any check, there won’t even be elbow room left on the earth. You will always feel as if you’re standing in a public meeting. Wherever you go, it will seem like a gathering. To hold a gathering would itself become difficult. Within a hundred years, if this continues, there will be no space left even to move your elbows.

Those friends ask rightly: If brahmacharya becomes so available, how will children be born?

I want to add something—meaningful, and you should be able to see it. Children can be born through brahmacharya too, but with brahmacharya the entire purpose and meaning of having children changes. Through kama, through sex, children are born.

Children born of sex—no one goes into sex to have children. Children happen incidentally, accidentally. You go into sex for something else; children come in between. You never go into sex for the sake of children. Children are uninvited guests. And that is why you cannot have that love for children which you feel for invited guests. When someone shows up at your home uninvited, of course you spread a bed, you feed them, you fold your hands in courtesy—but you know what the inner state of the house becomes with an uninvited guest! Outwardly everything happens; inwardly, nothing. All the while the wish is: when will you take your leave?

With uninvited children, too, there will be mistreatment; true well-treatment cannot happen. We never wanted them, they were never the longing of our very life-breath. We were headed in another direction; they are by-products, not the product. Today’s children are not the product; they are by-products. They are not the essential issue of creation; like chaff that appears alongside the wheat. Your intention, your desire, was something else; the children are entirely accidental.

And that is why, throughout the world, from Vatsyayana to today, there has been a continuous effort to separate sex from children. From that came birth control, family planning, artificial means—so that we might avoid children and still enjoy sex. The urge to avoid children has been going on for thousands of years. In Ayurvedic texts there are references to medicines that prevent conception. Ayurveda’s three, four, five-thousand-year-old treatises discuss this. And today’s most modern health minister says the same thing. Why? Why did humanity try to invent this?

Children became a great disturbance. They arrive in the middle and bring responsibilities. And another danger—the very arrival of children changes the woman. Men too do not want children.

If they don’t have any, they want them—not out of love for children but out of love for their property—who will own it tomorrow? It is not love for the child. When a father says, “A child should be born in this house—there is no son,” don’t think his soul is pining for a boy. No; his anxiety is: I am earning money endlessly—who knows who will grab it? There must be an heir of my blood to safeguard it.

No one ever truly wants children for the children’s sake. We have constantly tried to avoid them. But the children keep getting born. We made love and they appeared in the middle. It was a linked consequence. This is progeny born of lust—of sexuality. And that is why human beings are so sick, so wretched, so depressed, so anxious.

Through brahmacharya, too, children will come—but they will not be by-products of sex. For those children, sex will be a vehicle, a mere medium. Sex itself will have no other role. As when a man travels somewhere in a bullock cart—does he have any real concern with the cart? Or he flies by airplane—do you have any bond with the plane? You board here and land in Delhi. Do you have any relationship to the airplane? None. Your relationship is with going to Delhi. The airplane is only a vehicle, only a means.

When people attain to brahmacharya and the journey of intercourse reaches samadhi, they can still desire children. But the birth of those children will be true creation; they will be the product, the srijan, the creative act. Sex will be only the medium. And in the same way that until now we have tried—listen carefully—to avoid children and still enjoy sex, the new humanity can attempt to avoid sex and still bring children.

Do you understand me?

If brahmacharya becomes widespread in the world, we will make a new discovery. Just as we made the old discovery—how to avoid children while fulfilling the experience of sex—in the coming world, when brahmacharya is widespread, the reverse experiment can be done: avoid sex, and yet have children. And it is possible; there is no difficulty in it at all. Not the least.

Brahmacharya has nothing to do with the end of the world. The end of the world has arisen out of sexuality. Keep producing children and the world will end. No atom bomb is needed, no hydrogen bomb is needed. This sheer multitude of children, this queue, this humanity spawned by lust like insects and worms—it will destroy itself.

Through brahmacharya, a different kind of human being will be born. His lifespan could be very long—so long we cannot even imagine it. His health could be so extraordinary that disease does not arise. His brain will be of the order we occasionally glimpse in a rare genius. His personality will carry a different fragrance, a different strength, a different truth, a different dharma. He will be born already carrying dharma.

We are born carrying adharma, live in adharma, and die in adharma—and so we discuss dharma day and night. Perhaps in that humanity there will be no talk of dharma, because dharma will be their very life. We talk only about what is not our life; what is our life, we do not discuss. We do not talk about sex, because it is our life. We talk about God, because God is not our life. In truth, what we fail to attain in life, we try to complete by talking.

You may have noticed—women quarrel more than men. Women keep at it: little frictions with neighbors, everywhere. They say two women sitting together peacefully for long is very difficult.

I have heard that once, in China, there was a great competition. The greatest liars of China gathered—there was a contest for lying: whoever told the biggest lie would get the first prize.

One man won the first prize. And all he said was: “I went to a garden. Two women sat on the same bench silently for five minutes.” People said, “There can be no bigger lie! This is the ultimate untruth.” Others told even bigger lies, but the judges said, “All useless—give the prize to him. He takes the cake.”

But have you ever thought why women talk so much? Men work; women have no work. And when there is no work, there is talk.

Why does India talk so much? The same feminine vice. There is nothing to do—only talk, talk.

Through brahmacharya, a new human being will be born—not a talker, but a liver. He will not talk dharma; he will live dharma. People will even forget that there is something called dharma—because it will be so natural. Such human beings have been born from time to time, but their birth was accidental.

Once in a while a Mahavira is born. A man so beautiful that if he wears clothes he does not appear as beautiful; when he stands naked, the fragrance of his beauty spreads in all directions. People come to see Mahavira. He seems like a statue of marble. So much virya, vital force, manifests in him that—though his name was Vardhaman—people begin to call him Mahavira, the Great Hero. The radiance of his brahmacharya shines so strongly that people are awed—this is a different kind of man.

Sometimes a Buddha is born, sometimes a Christ, sometimes a Confucius. In the whole history of humanity we can count perhaps a couple dozen such names.

The day children are born through brahmacharya—and even the phrase will sound strange to you: children through brahmacharya! I am speaking of an entirely new concept—on that day the people of the world will all be like that: so beautiful, so powerful, so intelligent, so thoughtful. How long will it take such people to know the Divine? They will know God as naturally as we fall asleep at night.

But to a man who cannot sleep, if someone says, “I just put my head on the pillow and I fall asleep,” he will say, “This is absolutely wrong, a lie. I turn and toss, get up, sit down, finger my rosary, count cows and buffaloes, but nothing works. Sleep doesn’t come. You are lying. How can it be that you put your head on the pillow and sleep? Put your head and sleep? You are blatantly lying! I have tried so many experiments; sleep never comes, nights pass.”

In America, in cities like New York, thirty to forty percent of people sleep by taking pills. And American psychologists say that within a hundred years, in a city like New York, not a single person will be able to sleep naturally—everyone will need a drug. So it may happen that after a hundred years in New York, after two hundred in India—because Indian leaders are bent on keeping up: “We will compete! We cannot lag behind!” They say, “We cannot lag behind; in all their diseases we will compete, too!”

So it may be that after five hundred years the whole world sleeps only by taking a drug. And when a baby is born from his mother’s womb, he won’t ask for milk; he will say, “Tranquilizer! I couldn’t sleep for nine months in your belly—where is the tranquilizer?” Then it will be hard to convince such people that five hundred years earlier humanity simply closed its eyes and went to sleep. They will say, “Impossible! It cannot be.”

I tell you, for the life born of brahmacharya it will be just as hard to believe that people were thieves, people were dishonest, people were murderers, people committed suicide, people took poison, people drank alcohol, people stabbed one another, people waged wars. It will be difficult for them to believe—how could such things be?

Until now life has been born of sex—and that too of sex that is no more than physiological. A spiritual sex can be born, and a new life can begin. For the beginning of that new life, I have said these few things to you in these four days.

You have listened to my words with so much love and so much peace—and to such words that are very difficult to hear with love and peace; it must have felt hard.

One friend came to me and said he was afraid that ten or twenty people might stand up and say, “Stop! This should not be said!”

I said, “Even if such brave people existed, it would be good. Where are such brave people who would tell someone, ‘Stop this talk!’ If there were even that many courageous people in this country, the queues of fools and all they are saying would have been stopped long ago. But they cannot be stopped.” I said, “I am waiting for the day when some brave person will stand up and say, ‘Stop this talk.’ It would be a joy to converse with such a man.”

To such things—which my friend feared someone might stand up against—you kept listening with such love. You are very good people, and whatever debt I acknowledge is less than I owe. In the end I pray to the Divine that the kam within each person may become the staircase leading to the temple of Ram. Many, many thanks! And at the end I bow to the Divine seated within all. Please accept my pranam.