---
section: Library
booktitle: "Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "SOCRAT"
dategiven: "01 March 1986 pm"
place: " in"
chapternum: "Chapter #21"
chaptertitle: "The fear of tomorrow destroys your today"
acode: "8603015"
shorttitle: "SOCRAT21"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "126mins"
displaytitle: "Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries: Chapter #21"
---

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<p class="question">YOU ARE SUCH AN OUTRAGEOUSLY BEAUTIFUL MAN. IS THAT THE REASON WHY MORE WOMEN BECOME SANNYASINS THAN MEN? IS THERE ANYTHING YOU'D LIKE TO SAY ESPECIALLY TO GERMAN WOMEN?</p>


Perhaps you are right. Only one thing I would like to say to German women: they should be attracted to the outrageous and the most beautiful men a little more.
<p class="question">ARE WOMEN MORE COURAGEOUS THAN MEN?</p>


They certainly are. These are men just feeling jealous... nothing courageous.


The woman is more loving because she does not live by logic, by reason, but by pure emotion and heart.
The way of the heart is beautiful but dangerous.
The way of the mind is ordinary but safe.


The man has chosen the safest and the most shortcut way of life. The woman has chosen the most beautiful, but the most mountainous, dangerous path of emotions, sentiments, moods. And because up to now the world has been ruled by man, woman has suffered immensely. She has not been able to fit with the society that man has created because the society is created according to reason and logic.
The woman wants a world of the heart.


In the society created by man there is no place for heart. Man has to learn to be more heartful because reason has led the whole humanity towards a global suicide. Reason has destroyed the harmony of nature, the ecology. Reason has given beautiful machines, but it has destroyed the beautiful humanity. A little more heart is needed in everything.


As far as I am concerned, the way to your innermost being is closer from the heart than from the mind. Mind is a shortcut if you are going outward, and heart is a very long way. If you are going inward, the whole thing changes into its opposite -- heart is the shortcut to being, and mind is the longest way you can think of.


That's why I am all for love, because from love it is very easy to take you to meditation, to take you to the eternity of your life, to take you to your godliness; it is very difficult from the head. First the man has to come to the heart, and then only he can move towards the being.


My emphasis on love has a basic spiritual reason. From the heart the woman can immediately move, and the man can move towards the heart without any difficulty. He has just been wrongly trained; it is only a conditioning. He has been told to be hard, to be strong, to be manly, and all this is nonsense. No man cries and lets his sadness or his joy flow through the tears because he has been told since he was a child that tears are for women, it is girlish. Men never cry and weep.


Looking to nature, the whole thing seems to be absurd. If it was so, if that was the intention of nature, then man's eyes would have been made in a different way, they would not have tear glands. They have tear glands just as women have.


What is the purpose of those tears? They are needed; they are a tremendously significant language. There are moments when you cannot say, but your tears can show. You may be so full of joy, and tears come to your eyes. Tears are always the symbol of overflowing experience. You may be so sad that words cannot contain it; tears help you. It is one of the reasons why women go less mad than men, because they are ready to weep and cry and throw things any moment; temporarily they can go mad every day.


Man goes on accumulating, and then one day he explodes -- wholesale. Women go mad retail, and that is a wiser way, to be finished every day. Why collect?


Men commit suicide more than women. This is very strange. Women talk of committing suicide more than men, but they never commit it. Men never talk about committing suicide but commit more suicide; the quantity is double. Man goes on and on repressing, goes on and on keeping a certain face which is fake. And there is a limit to everything: a point comes where he cannot hold it anymore and everything falls apart.


Man has to be taught to be more heartful because from the heart goes the way to being. You cannot bypass the heart. The woman is in a better position, she can go directly towards being from the heart. But instead of recognizing this immense quality in women, man has been condemning women. Perhaps there is a reason; perhaps he was aware of some superiority in woman -- the superiority of love. No logic can be higher than love, and no mind can be higher than the heart. But the mind can be very murderous; the mind can be very violent, and that's what the mind has done for centuries.


Man has been beating women, repressing women, condemning women. And not knowing that condemning women, repressing women is making them inferior, half of humanity is deprived of raising its consciousness. And you are deprived, because you could also have learned the art of moving upwards from half of the universe. You could also have moved on the same way, on the same path; hence I always say, the liberation of women is also the liberation of man. It is more the liberation of man than the liberation of women.


Yes, women have more love, but they should also be made aware of the other side of the coin. Man has logic. The other side can be illogical. It is not dangerous, it is just a mistake; it can be corrected. That's why I said the way of the heart is beautiful but dangerous.


The other side of love is hate; the other side of love is jealousy. So if a woman gets caught into hate and jealousy, all the beauty of love dies and she is left only with poisons in her hands. She will poison herself and she will poison everybody who is around.


To be loving one has to be more alert because you can fall into the ditch of hate which is just very close by. Every peak of love is very close; the dark valley of hate is surrounding the peak from everywhere -- you can slip very easily.


Perhaps that is the reason many women decide not to love. Perhaps that is the reason man has decided to live in the head and forget all about the heart... because it is so sensitive, it feels hurt very easily, its moods change just like the climate changing.


One who really wants to learn the art of love has to remember all of these things, and has to save his love from falling into all these ditches of hatred, jealously; otherwise, going to the being will become impossible -- more impossible than it is from the head.


The woman has to drop jealousy, she has to drop hatred.


The man has to drop logic and be a little more loving.


Logic can be used; it is utilitarian. In scientific work it is useful, but not in human relationships. Man has to be careful that logic does not become his only way, that it remains just an instrument he uses and puts aside. The woman has to be aware that she does not fall into hatred, into jealousy, into anger, because they will destroy her most precious treasure of love. And both have to move deeper in love; the deeper they move in love, the closer they will reach to the being.


Being is not very far away; it is the deepest part of love, a love which is absolutely pure, unconditional. A love which is absolutely alert, aware, conscious, immediately turns into a tremendous revolution; it opens the doors of the innermost shrine of being.


To reach to your very center is to gain all that life can give to you -- all the fragrance, all the beauty, all the joy, all the benedictions.
<p class="question">ZORBA THE BUDDHA IS A MAN. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR VISION OF A WOMAN?</p>


Zorba the Buddha describes humanity.
But your question is relevant, I can name a woman in place of Zorba. Buddha, of course, is a quality. It simply means the enlightened one; it has nothing to do with man and woman.


In place of Zorba I would like to give you a name, Irene Pappas. She will be here next weekend, so I will introduce you. Zorba is just a fiction, but she is not. She is a reality, but she has all the qualities of Zorba. In the film ZORBA THE GREEK she played the role of the widow who was stoned by people because she was not behaving according to the traditional orthodox ways. She was still loving.


Tradition thinks that the moment your husband is dead you are also dead. It was better in India -- at least they used to burn the woman with the husband. Ugly, inhuman, utterly primitive, but looked at from a different angle, very compassionate; otherwise, she was going to suffer perhaps fifty years or sixty years, a living death.


And that was the situation of the widow in ZORBA THE GREEK. She was a rebellious woman; Pappas played the part of the widow and she continued to have love affairs. Life means love. If you cannot love, you are not allowed to breath.


Love is to your inner being, exactly what breathing is to your body.


Irene Pappas has never met me, but she feels a deep communion with me, and she is going to be here amongst you. She is not yet a buddha, but I hope that she will be a buddha before she dies.
<p class="question">WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WOMEN GOING ON A SEX STRIKE TO PREVENT ALL THE STUPID NONSENSE MEN ARE CREATING?</p>


A great idea; but the problem is that sex is not only the need of man, it is the need of the woman too. The strike will not be only against man, it will be against women also. Now why go on a sex strike when the pill is available? Instead of making sex a struggle, a strike, why not make it a playfulness, a fun?


We have all the methods, medicines, so that the woman need not get pregnant. That was creating the whole problem. It is really a strange arrangement of existence that only the woman gets pregnant. If I was to decide, it should be rotation -- one time the man gets pregnant, one time the woman gets pregnant and the world becomes a rotary club!


But the pill has made almost what was missing in nature. Now no woman can be made pregnant against her own will, and if there is no pregnancy, sex is only fun, and you don't go on strike against fun.


Take it nonseriously, take it playfully. Sex can become a beautiful phenomenon if pregnancy is not involved in it, and that can be avoided.


So I don't think there is any need for going on strike; that will make the whole world very sad. All men will become British, all women will become German, and existence will be in a very troubled situation. And a thirty-year strike cannot be broken easily, it will become your second nature; thirty years is almost half of your life -- it will become your habit.


No, I will not suggest it to you -- although the idea is great, but just as an idea -- don't practice it. In practice, use the pill and let sex become a casual fun between friends. A nonserious affair.
<p class="question">IN MY OPINION, YOU ARE THE GREATEST HUMORIST OF ALL TIMES. IS THAT TRUE?</p>


At least for you it is true. About others, I don't know what they think, people have different ideas about me. I enjoy all kinds of ideas. Perhaps you are right; that's why I can even enjoy people calling me the world's most notorious man. I enjoy that too; at least I am still the world's MOST notorious man. Who cares whether it is notorious, famous, respected or disrespected? One thing one is certain, that it has to be the world's MOST -- then you can put anything behind it! I am absolutely in agreement.
<p class="question">ARE YOUR SANNYASINS THE WITCHES OF TODAY'S TIME?</p>


That's true! Everybody can see it. The word 'witch' means a wise woman, and where can you find wise women other than my place? I have added something more....


In the old days the witches were all old -- my witches are all young! They were all dirty and disgusting looking -- my witches are beautiful. I have improved upon the idea.
<p class="question">IS IT POSSIBLE TO LIVE WITHOUT JEALOUSY UNLESS ONE IS ENLIGHTENED?</p>


It is possible. If you are enlightened then the question of jealousy does not arise at all; then it is impossible to have jealousy. Before enlightenment it is possible to live without jealousy. You just have to look into the causes of jealousy.


What makes you jealous? -- possessiveness. Jealousy itself is not the root. You love a woman, you love a man; you want to possess the man or the woman just out of fear that perhaps tomorrow he may move with somebody else. The fear of tomorrow destroys your today, and it is a vicious circle. If every day is destroyed because of the fear of tomorrow, sooner or later the man is going to look for some other woman because you are just a pain in the neck. And when he starts looking for another woman or starts moving with another woman, you think your jealousy has proved right. In fact it is your jealousy that has created the whole thing.


So the first thing to remember is: Don't be bothered about tomorrows; today is enough. Somebody loves you... let this be a day of joy, a day of celebration. Be so totally in love today that your totality and your love will be enough for the man not to move away from you. Your jealousy will move him away; only your love can keep him with you. His jealousy will move you away; his love can keep you with him.


Don't think of tomorrow. The moment you think of tomorrow your living today remains half-hearted. Just live today, and leave tomorrow, it will take its own course. And remember one thing, that if today has been such a beauty of experience, such a blessing -- out of today is born tomorrow, so why be worried about it?


If some day the man you have loved, the woman you have loved finds somebody else -- it is simply human to be happy, but your woman is happy with somebody else -- it does not make any difference whether she is happy with you or happy with somebody else, she is happy. And if you love her so much how can you destroy her happiness?


A real love will always be happy if the partner feels joyous with somebody else. In this situation -- when a woman is with somebody else, and you are still happy and you are still grateful to the woman and you still tell the woman, "You have absolute freedom; just be totally happy, that is my happiness. With whom you are happy is insignificant, what is significant is your happiness" -- my feeling is that she cannot remain away from you for long, she will be back. Who can leave such a man or such a woman?
Your jealousy destroys everything.
Your possessiveness destroys everything.


Before enlightenment you have to understand that what you are gaining out of jealousy you are burning in the fire: the more you become jealous and angry and hateful, the more you are throwing the other person far away from you. It is simple arithmetic that it is not going to help; you are destroying the same thing that you want to preserve. It is simply idiotic -- it is German!


Just try to understand a simple fact that human beings are human beings. Everybody gets bored with the same person once in a while. Be factual; don't live in fictions. Everybody gets fed up with the same person once in a while. That does not mean that his love has stopped; it simply means a little change is needed. It is good for his health, it is good for your health. You both need a little holiday from each other. Why not do it consciously, "We are feeling stuck. What about having a one-week holiday? I love you, you love me; that is so certain that there is no fear."


My own experience is that after one day's holiday you will fall in love with each other on a higher and deeper level, because now you will see how much you love each other: you cannot even see the sadness that comes naturally by living together. Don't possess each other. Keep the freedom intact so that you don't interfere in each other's private world and you respect the dignity of the other person.


Once this is felt, once in a while you may go on separate holidays, come back again and there will be no need to be worried. You will be surprised that when your woman comes back to you after living with some other man for seven days, and you come back to your woman after living with some other woman for seven days, you both have learned some new things. You can have another honeymoon again. You are new and fresh, and you have learned new tricks. And it is always good to have fresh experiences, enrichment.


It is not that you need enlightenment and only then jealousy will disappear; you only need human understanding, intelligence, and jealousy will disappear.


So don't wait for enlightenment! I know many sannyasins are waiting for enlightenment, and meanwhile being as much jealous as possible, because after enlightenment you cannot!
<p class="question">CAN WOMEN DO MORE FOR PEACE IN THE WORLD THAN MEN?</p>


She certainly can do more for peace in the world, because all the wars are fought by men but suffered by women. Somebody's son dies, somebody's husband dies, somebody's father dies, somebody's brother dies... Men fight the war, but the woman is the real sufferer.


You will be surprised to know that whenever an army invades a country, they kill men and they rape women. That is very strange. Even then, there is a difference. They kill the man... But they are full of sexuality, repressed sexuality; all soldiers are repressed sexually. Soldiers and monks, these two are the most sexually repressed people in the world.


The woman is the victim: she is raped. And for thousands of years it has been going on.


The woman can do much if she is allowed to have an equal part in all the decisions that are made about life, war or anything. The woman cannot be for war, and there should be a movement of women against war -- it may be man's game but why should woman suffer for it?


And half of humanity consists of women, remember. If half of humanity is against war, it is impossible to bring another war into the world. And woman can fight all efforts against peace in many ways; every woman should try to prevent war.


In the old days man has taught woman that when he goes to war she should not cry, she should not weep; on the contrary, she should send her husband with joy, with a prayer in her heart that he becomes a winner. But on the other hand, some other woman is sending her husband with the same prayer to the same God.


If the women decide, "We will not allow our sons to go to war, we will not allow our husbands to go to war, we will not allow our brothers to go to war, we will fight every inch that nobody who is related to us goes to war" -- if all the women decide that, then nobody can go to war. It is a simple idea, it just has to be spread.


Right now you have been told to do just the opposite. In the second world war women were preparing clothes, sweaters, woollen coats for the soldiers. Not only that, women were even offering their bodies to strange soldiers because they were fighting for the country -- and this was thought to be virtuous.
Man is very cunning.


He can call anything virtue whenever it is serving his purposes, otherwise it becomes vice -- the same thing! For murdering a single man there is a death penalty. For murdering hundreds of people... For the murdering of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, President Truman should have been hanged immediately so no other politician ever tries any ugly thing like that again. Two hundred thousand people died within five minutes -- and for no reason at all, just that President Truman wanted to experiment with the atomic bombs. Using two hundred thousand people as guinea pigs...?


The woman just has to fight it in her family. If every woman fights it in the family and does not allow anybody in the family to go to war, all armies will be dispersed. Force people to come back home, to retire from the army. "We don't want you to get gold medals, we want you to live a human life amongst human beings."


Woman has never been for war. Her whole life is destroyed by war, she can blossom only in peace. The consciousness of women has to be raised. Millions of men will be in support, millions of my sannyasins will be in support and millions of other people who have just a little bit of intelligence will be in support.


Just leave the politicians. If they want they can have a wrestling match, a boxing match, do to each other whatsoever they want to do. "Kill each other, we don't care!" Let their fighting instinct be satisfied. The president of America can have a wrestling match with the president of the Soviet Union, and the whole world can watch on the television and enjoy. It would be such a great entertainment. And who cares who wins or who is defeated? It harms nobody.


The real thing is that the people who create war don't go to war; all the great generals remain behind. Only the poor soldiers are fighting and are being killed. And when the victory is declared, then the victory is of the generals -- General Eisenhower becomes victorious, or General MacArthur becomes victorious -- and these are the people who have not gone to fight at all. They have been hiding behind, and behind them were their presidents and prime ministers. It is a very strange game. You want to fight, and unnecessarily other people who don't want to fight are being sent to fight and destroy each other.


A world consciousness has to be aroused, so that soldiers -- even if they are SOLDIERS -- should go to war just to have a chit-chat with the other party and come back... and let us see what happens. There is no need to shoot anybody, there is no need to kill anybody. You can play cards, you can do anything for the whole day and come back by the evening.


Man has to become alert that war is so ugly, that it does not suit intelligence -- it shows a very retarded mind; it is animalistic.
Woman can certainly help immensely.
<p class="question">WHY ARE MOST PEOPLE SO AFRAID OF GETTING OLD?</p>


The reason most people are afraid of getting old is that they have missed life. It is not death... You cannot be afraid of something that you have never met, that you know nothing about. You cannot be afraid of death because you cannot even imagine what death is.


Ordinarily it is thought that people becoming old start getting afraid, fearful because of death. That is not right. The truth is that the people coming closer and closer to death realize they have missed living, that they have not lived totally, they have not loved totally, they have not done anything totally. They have always been so-so, wishy-washy, and they have been always waiting for tomorrow -- that they are going to do something really great -- and that tomorrow never came. Now there is no tomorrow, there is only death.


My people will not be afraid of death because they are living life as totally as possible, they are burning their torches of life from both the ends together. And before death comes they will have tasted every flavor of life, they will have reached every depth of life, they would have discovered the ultimate of life -- the eternal existence. Then who worries about death?


Once you have come to know your own being, there is no death.
Death is a lie.


There are a few great lies in the world: God is a great lie -- nobody has seen God -- but you need somebody to protect you. You have got father-fixated, so you need a father in the sky and you need a father to represent him on the earth. The pope is the father, and then there are smaller fathers, archbishops and bishops and priests.


Two small boys were playing -- one was a Jew and the other was a Catholic -- and a Catholic bishop passed by. The Catholic boy said, "Good morning, father."


The Jewish boy was standing silently. When the bishop had gone, he said, "One thing I cannot understand... I am absolutely certain this man is unmarried. How did he became a father?"


Nobody bothers about what that little boy said. Everybody goes on calling him father, and he is not a father at all. But that little boy does not know that they even call God father -- who has a son but who has no wife!
These are great lies.


Death is also one of the great lies, but about death there are a few differences. Everybody has seen death -- at least everybody believes so. You have never seen death, you have only seen a certain person was breathing and now is no longer breathing -- that's all you have seen. He was talking, now he is no longer talking... It simply proves that death does not need breathing, that dead people don't like talking...


How can you conclude that you have seen death? -- only that the man who is no longer breathing perhaps has experienced what death is. I say perhaps because most of the people, out of fear, become unconscious before they die.


Only a few people who have been experiencing something of meditation, something of awareness, who have experienced in some way the distance between themselves and their body and mind, remain alert when death comes. They simply laugh within themselves -- which you cannot hear, because the body is no longer functioning. They cannot say to you, "It is just a great joke; death does not happen. That which was really alive remains alive."


The body was only alive because of something present in it, and that presence is moving out of it. That presence, if it has died with a desire will take another birth; if it has died without any desire it will dissolve into the universal consciousness, will become one with existence.


There is no question of fearing death, but the fear arises only because you are not living. You want to love a woman but you are not even courageous enough to say to the woman, "I love you."


When I was a student, one of the students was my roommate in the hostel room. He was very puzzled, because in the university everybody was talking about who was in love with whom, great romances were going on. He was worried that nothing was happening to him. I said, "Nothing is going to happen to you. You will have to do something."


He said, "What should I do? I am so afraid. When a girl comes near to me I start trembling and perspiring, I feel as if I am dying."


I said, "Don't be worried. They are human beings; they are not monsters or some evil spirits. Why should you be so nervous?"


He said, "Well, what can I do? I have tried hard. The thing is, the harder I try the more nervous I feel."
I said, "Do you have some girl in mind?"


He said, "Yes, I have one girl in mind, but I don't know how to write a love letter either."


I said, "You don't be worried. I will write the letter for you. You simply sign it and post it, and let us see what happens."


I knew the girl. She was the daughter of the collector of the city, a really beautiful girl, a Kashmiri girl. She was studying philosophy with me.


I told the girl, "A letter will be coming to you... Don't be hard on that boy. He is in anguish because everybody is telling stories about their love affairs, and he is really in misery. So don't be hard. His letter will come, and you have to write a letter in return."


She said, "This is too much. If my father comes to know, it will create great difficulty."


I said, "Nobody will come to know -- neither your father will know, nor will you two ever meet. I am the only person who will know. You simply go on writing letters. Write beautiful letters -- make him happy."


And for three or four days the man was so afraid. "Her father is a collector, you have created trouble for me. He will send the police and I will be arrested. Now who is going to give bail to me?"


I said, "I will arrange everything, you don't be worried. When I have written the letter for you, I will do everything."


Even in the middle of the night he would wake me up saying, "I am feeling very afraid."


I said, "You can sleep with me in my bed. Don't be worried, nobody..."


He said, "I just heard boots. It seems that policemen are coming."


I said, "Nobody is coming. Those guards are always there. You are just being silly."


Then the letter came and you could have seen the joy on that boy's face. He ran to show me the letter. He said, "My God, I was thinking that I would be in jail, but she loves me. Now what am I supposed to do?"


I said, "Write another letter, and this time ask for a photograph."


He said, "That's great, because I need her photograph on my table. But people may see it."


I said, "You can hide it in a book. But you need, once in a while, just to keep it on your heart and feel great love."


But he said, "You will have to write the letter again."


I said, "Now you should start. I have started. My whole life I am not going to write letters for you."
He said, "But I don't know how. Just once."
I wrote the letter.


And the girl told me, "Now don't tell me to write to him again because that idiot has written to me again, and now he is asking for a photograph."


I said, "Don't be so hard. What harm is there if you give a photograph with your autograph on it?"


She said, "Autograph too? If my father comes to know..."


I said, "Nobody is going to know. He will hide it in a book, and I will tell him to "keep the book in the suitcase so there is no possibility..."


She said, "You are creating this whole thing. I don't love him."


I said, "But compassion, kindness... I am not asking you to love him. Just write a love letter. In this way you will be trained in writing love letters. Some day you will need them, and you will remember me."


She said, "That's right. Some day I will have to write love letters and this is a good chance."
So she wrote another letter, and this went on.


After a few letters the boy said, "Now, arrange a meeting."
I said, "That is difficult."
He said, "Why?"


I said, "You are such a nervous person. I cannot introduce you to the girl because it will be embarrassing for me too."
He said, "I will keep my hands in my pockets."


I said, "That won't help because I have seen you. Even in your pockets your hands make your whole pants quiver. I'm not going to do it. First you train yourself."


He said, "That means I am never going to meet... just love letters?"


I said, "To tell you the truth, this girl does not love you. I have been telling her to write letters to you just as a training."


He said, "My God. So you have been befooling both of us?"


I said, "I was not befooling either, I was just giving you some satisfaction at least, and she was also enjoying."


He was afraid to meet the girl. But next day, without asking me, he went to the girl and said, "Give all my letters to me. And these are your letters and your picture."


The girl said, "But what will you do with those letters?


He said, "What will I do? Because I cannot write such good letters, and I will have to write to some other girl... you just give me my letters; I have to use those letters again. And this time I am not going to tell anybody or take anybody's help, I am going to do it on my own."


The girl told me, "That boy was very angry, and he was not nervous as you were saying; he was trembling with fear, anger. He would have killed me. He has taken all his letters, and he has given back all my letters to me."


I said, "What else? -- because a meeting was not possible. But this is a good sign, he has gathered some courage."


He didn't say anything to me, and he started sending those letters to some other girl. Now they are married and they have children. The last time I had been in their town was almost twenty years ago, and he said, "You are a troublemaker."


I said, "What happened? I have never done any wrong thing to you."


He said, "Wrong thing, you say! Those letters that you had written, I sent to this girl and I got caught; now I am living in such misery."


I said, "That's what happens to everybody. You know me; I can write beautiful letters, but I have not got any problem around me. You should have learnt. Just because you had those letters you got into trouble; now suffer. How many children have you got?"
He said, "Five."
I said, "You are producing fast enough."


He said, "What else can I do? The woman I have got is really terrible. I don't make love to her, she makes love to me. I am simply a puppet around the house, taking care of the children. In the morning first I have to make the tea and prepare breakfast, then she gets up. That is the only period of silence in the house -- while she is asleep and I am preparing the breakfast. After that there is trouble after trouble, and you are responsible for all that. I was a simple person. I was miserable, I know, but you should not have suggested such a remedy."


I said, "I had no idea to which girl you were going to write those letters. You should have asked me, I would have suggested to you the right girl. Certainly not this girl -- I know this girl. She was in the same university and she was in the same trouble as you were -- nobody was looking at her. You unnecessarily got into trouble. Everybody was avoiding her! She was going after many people, and they were simply saying, 'Just leave me alone.' And you started writing letters to her."


He said, "What else should I have done? -- because everybody else was engaged. She was the only one who was not engaged to anyone."


I said, "That would have been enough of a sign to avoid her, but you were stupid and stupidity has its own results. You suffer; otherwise, if you listen to me you can become a sannyasin."
He said, "Will that help?"


I said, "I don't know. But if you become a sannyasin that will be at least a rebellion against that woman; it will establish some credibility, some dignity."


He said, "No, I will not do that without asking her."
I said, "Then see you next life."


Women are certainly more courageous. In all the cultures all over the world, it is the woman who leaves her family and goes to the family of the husband. She leaves her mother, her father, her friends, her town, everything that she has loved, she has grown up with; for love's sake she sacrifices all that. The man will not be able to do that.


In fact, because the man has been pretending to be superior, he should have done it; he should have gone to the girl's house rather than bringing the woman to his own house. But in no culture, in no society in the whole of history, has man taken that step -- to drop out of his family, out of his grounding, out of his atmosphere, to sacrifice everything and to become part of a totally new atmosphere, a new land, to be replanted in a new garden, in a new soil, and to blossom there. The woman has done it, and done it gracefully.
She is certainly more courageous.


In love, and in different phases... She loves as a mother, which no father can do; she loves as a wife, which no husband can do. Even as a small child she loves as a daughter, which no boy can do.
A woman's whole life is love.


For the man, life is a big thing; love is only a small part in it. He can sacrifice love for money, for power, for prestige -- for anything he can sacrifice love. The woman cannot sacrifice love for anything; everything is below love. Everything can be sacrificed, but not love. Certainly she has courage, and man should learn much from women.


If we make our relationship a learning phenomenon of experiencing the other person -- not just a superficial sexual relationship, but something deep, intimate, learning of each other's mysteries -- then each relationship becomes a spiritual phenomenon. Both will be enriched by it and, as a result, the whole of society.
<p class="question">WHY ARE ALL THE GOVERNMENTS SO AFRAID OF YOU?</p>


They are afraid because whatever I am saying, whatever I am doing, is cutting their very roots. I am against all traditions.


I am against all religions because I don't think that religion can be organized, it is an individual affair. I am against governments because I don't want governments to be in the hands of politicians. I want governments to be in the hands of the geniuses, talented people, the cream of the society. I would like man in politics, but not political man. Their humanity should remain untouched by their politics. Politics is a dirty game; very few people in the whole history of politics have been able to remain men in politics.


I consider the present president of Greece as one of the men who is not a politician, but a man in politics. While every government in Europe has been afraid to give me a tourist visa, he invited me to Greece on his own, seeing that what the politicians are doing is a world-wide conspiracy against me. America is creating the whole network of conspiracy against a single man who has no power except his love and his understanding. But they are afraid, more afraid of me than they are afraid of nuclear weapons.


The president of Greece is certainly a man of courage, intelligence. I will not consider him as a politician, just a man in politics; his humanity remains above it. He invited me, and he was simply surprised that all the governments should be behaving in such a cowardly way.


Italy has been postponing my visa for two months continuously, because the pope's pressure is there that I should not be allowed to enter. Germany has made an order to all the embassies that I am not to be allowed to enter Germany. I have never been to Germany; I have never been to Italy.


Why should these people be so afraid? The question naturally arises to everyone, but the answer is not difficult. They are afraid because they cannot answer me. I am raising all kinds of questions against their society, against their government bureaucracy, against their culture, and they don't have any answer. Their fear is that they cannot answer me, they cannot face me, they cannot encounter me. And their fear is that people who have intelligence are bound to be influenced by me. But they are being stupid. It makes no difference.


In Germany I have thousands of sannyasins. I can change the whole of Germany into a sannyas land without ever going to Germany, because I know one thing about the German personality: you can trust; they will never betray you. Thousands of sannyasins have come to me from Germany but not a single sannyasin has dropped out. And they have to face the most difficult situations; in their jobs they have been thrown out, from schools they have been thrown out, from universities they have been thrown out. They have been fighting in the courts, and they have been winning in the courts; their discos, their restaurants have been closed forcibly and they have been fighting in the courts.
In Germany it seems I am the only problem.


Naturally they are afraid, if I am there, then many more people who have been hearing about me continually -- for and against -- are going to listen to me. I don't see that anybody listening to me can be against me. Only people who have not listened to me, people who have not been in any intimate contact with me, can be against. Those who come to me are bound to fall in love, because I fall in love with them. And believe me, it is irresistable!
<p class="question">A WOMAN POET FROM AUSTRIA, MARIA VON ESCHENBACH, ONCE SAID, "ONE INTELLIGENT WOMAN HAS MILLIONS OF BORN ENEMIES -- ALL STUPID MEN. CAN YOU PLEASE COMMENT?</p>


She is right. It does not need any more comment.
<p class="question">MY LAST QUESTION IS PERSONAL. I HAVE BEEN DOING MY JOB FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. WHEN I TOOK SANNYAS, MY COLLEAGUES AND MY CHIEF EDITOR DECLARED ME CRAZY. BUT I GO TO MY OFFICE IN RED CLOTHES AND WITH THE MALA, AND I ENJOY THEIR REACTION. I AM PROUD OF BEING A SANNYASIN. AM I BEING VAIN?</p>


No. You are simply crazy! Just enjoy it. This whole world is insane.
In this insane world only crazy people are sane.


In this blind world, if you have eyes you will be thought to be sick, something is wrong with your eyes.
I will tell you one actual incident...


In South America, in the mountains, in the beginning of this century there was discovered a small community of three hundred people, all blind. It was very strange. What happened to these people -- three hundred people all blind? People were afraid to go near the community because there must be something that drives people blind; otherwise, how could three hundred people...? Not a single person had eyes.


One daring young man went there to study, and he found that every child is born with eyes, but within three months, or at the most four months, he becomes blind. Then he started looking for the reason. What happens in those three or four months? He found a common fly in that area that was poisonous, particularly to the eyes. It has a certain attraction towards eyes, and once it has spread its poison into the blood of the child, soon the child will become blind.


Now, a three or four-month-old child cannot remember later on that once he had eyes. People remember their past after four years; if you go back, you will remember only after four years, or at the most three years, but not before that. A four-month-old child going blind will remember for his whole life that he was born blind.


The second special thing about the fly was that its bite could only affect a child of three or four months. After that, its poison does not affect; the child has enough resistance at six months old or eight months old. So he was there and the fly was biting him, but it didn't affect his eyes.


While studying this whole thing, he fell in love with a young blind woman, a really beautiful woman, just missing the eyes. He asked the permission of the community, "Can I get married to the woman?"


The community was not willing, was very resistant. They said, "We don't belong to the same world; you have this false idea that you have eyes. Unless you drop this idea that you have eyes, unless you become one of us, we will not allow you to be married. And it is not only a question of idea; we have our own physicians who will look into your eyes and find out. If they find that you have eyes, then your eyes have to be taken out, because that is an abnormality."


The young man thought the whole night of what to do; this seemed to be a very difficult decision -- he really loved the girl. She was blind and if he also went blind then life was going to be very difficult, particularly for him. Because they had been raised blind they could go on, even in blindness working, doing things; they were accustomed to it. They farmed, they milked their cows -- they went on doing their work just robotlike -- they found the way to their houses...


He thought, "I will be in absolute difficulty. To lose my eyes -- I love that girl because of her beauty, and the moment my eyes are gone her beauty is gone. Then any woman is the same."


Next morning he was going to be examined and his eyes taken out, but in the middle of the night he escaped.


You are amongst people who have a certain prejudice, a certain blindness, a certain conditioning, and you don't belong to them any more. They are bound to think of you as crazy. Enjoy it; don't feel offended, it is natural. In fact, let them start thinking that you are happier than they are, you are more peaceful than they are, you are more together than they are; let them think, "Who is crazy?"


All of my sannyasins are facing the same problem everywhere, but they are facing it courageously. And I can say with absolute conviction that the victory is going to be yours because truth is with you, you are not living according to a bogus ideology. You are living according to nature, simplicity, according to love, sensitivity. You are living out of meditation, and nobody has ever gone mad out of meditation.


Meditation is the only safeguard; otherwise everybody is on the brink of madness. So let them call you crazy, it is perfectly beautiful.
I am crazy. My people are all crazy.
			

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