---
section: Library
booktitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "YOGA4"
dategiven: "26 April 1975 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #6"
chaptertitle: "The existentialist cul-de-sac"
acode: "7504260"
shorttitle: "YOGA406"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "90mins"
displaytitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4: Chapter #6"
---

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  font-style: italic;
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```
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The first question:
<p class="question">PATANJALI SAYS, 'DO NOT CLING TO LIFE,' AND THIS IS EASY TO UNDER STAND AND FOLLOW. BUT HE ALSO SAYS, 'DO NOT LUST FOR LIFE.' ARE WE NOT TO ENJOY IN THE PRESENT ALL THAT NATURE HAS TO OFFER US: FOOD, LOVE, BEAUTY, SEX ETC? AND IF THIS IS SO, IS IT NOT LUST FOR LIFE?</p>


PATANJALI SAYS that lust for life is a barrier, a barrier to enjoying life, a barrier to being really alive, because lust is always for the future; it is never for the present. He is not against enjoyment. When you are in the moment enjoying something, there is no lust in it. Lust is a hankering for the future, and this has to be understood.


People who are not enjoying their lives in the present have lust for life in the future. Lust for life is always in the future. It is a postponement. They are saying, 'We cannot enjoy today so we will enjoy tomorrow.' They are saying, 'Right this moment we cannot celebrate, so let there be a tomorrow so that we can celebrate.'


Future arises out of your misery, not out of your celebration. A really celebrating person has no future; he lives this moment, he lives it totally. Out of that total living arises the next moment, but it is not out of any lust. Of course, when out of celebration the next moment arises, it has more capacity to bless you. When out of celebration the future arises, it goes on becoming more and more rich. A moment comes when the moment is so total, so whole, that time completely disappears.


Time is a need of the miserable mind. Time is a creation of misery. If you are happy there is no time -- time disappears.


Watch it..from another dimension: have you observed that whenever you are in misery, time moves very slowly? Somebody is dying, somebody you love, somebody you would like to be alive, and you are sitting by the side. The whole night you sit by the side of the bed and the night looks as if it is an eternity. It seems not to be ending at all; it goes on, and on, and on. The clock on the wall seems to be moving very, very slowly. In misery, time moves slowly. When you are happy -- you are with your beloved, your friend, you are cherishing the moment  -- time goes fast. The whole night has passed and it seems that it has been only a few moments or a few minutes. Why does this happen? -- because the clock on the wall doesn't bother about whether you are happy or unhappy; it moves on its own. k never goes slow, never goes fast with your moods. It is always moving with the same pace, but your interpretation differs. In misery time becomes bigger, in happiness time becomes smaller. When somebody is in a blissful mood time simply disappears.


Christianity says that when you are thrown into hell, the hell is going to be eternal, never-ending. Bertrand Russell has written a book, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN -- he gives many reasons. One of them is this:'Whatsoever sins I have committed, it is impossible to think that eternal punishment can be just. I may have committed many sins. You throw me in hell for fifty years, a hundred years, fifty lives, a hundred lives, one thousand lives, but eternal punishment cannot be just.' Eternal punishment seems to be simply unjust, and Christianity believes in only one life. How can a man commit so many sins in one life, a life of just sixty or seventy years, so that he becomes worthy of being punished for eternity? It looks simply absurd! Russell says, 'Whatsoever sins I have committed and whatsoever I have been thinking to commit but have not committed yet; if I confess all my sins, committed, uncommitted, imagined, dreamed, then too the hardest judge cannot send me to jail for more than five years.'


And he is right, but he misses the point. Christian theologians have not been able to answer. Hell is eternal not because it is eternal, but because it is the greatest misery -- time moves not. It appears that it is eternal. If in bliss time disappears, then in the deepest misery, which is hell, time continues so slowly, as if not moving it all. A single moment of hell is eternal. It will appear to you that it is not ending, not ending, not ending.


The theory of eternal hell is beautiful, very psychological. It shows simply that time depends on the mind; time is a mind-oriented phenomenon. You are in misery, there is time; you are happy, there is no time. The lust for life is lust for more time. It shows that whatsoever you have gained is not enough, you are not satiated yet.'Give me more time so that I can be satiated. Give me more life, more future, more space to move, because all my desires are yet unfulfilled.' That's what a man who is lusting for life goes on praying for, 'Lord, give me more time, because all my desires are still there. Nothing has been a fulfillment, I am not contented, I am not satiated and time is flowing fast. Give me more time.' This is the meaning of lust for life: lust for more time.


What do you mean by life? -- life means more time in the future. What do you mean by death? -- death means no future. If death comes right now, future ends, time ends. That's why you are afraid of death, because it will not give you space and all your desires are unfulfilled. Patanjali is not against life. In fact, because he is not against life he is against lust for life. If you live life to its totality, enjoy it to the deepest possibility, allow it to happen, then there will be no lust for life.


Be more sensitive, alive, aware, and then you will not hanker for more time. In fact, for a man who is satiated with life, death looks like rest, great relaxation, not the ending of life. He is not afraid of it, he welcomes it; a full rich life lived, then death comes in the night, as the night. The whole day you worked, now you prepare the bed and go to rest.


There are people who are afraid of night. I used to stay in Calcutta with a very rich man who was as afraid of night as people are afraid of death. He could not sleep, and he could not sleep because he was resting the whole day. Then how could he expect sleep? He was rich, he had everything, so he didn't do anything. Only poor people walk on their legs, only poor people do things.


Somewhere, Camus writes that a time will come in future when, really, people will be so rich that they will not even love. They will send their servants to do it. In fact a rich man should not have. Why bother about the whole effort? -- you can send a servant. That's what rich men are doing: servants have to be sent to live life, and they rest.


When you rest the whole day, how can you sleep in the night? The need is not created. A man works the whole day, lives, and by the evening-time he is ready to fall into oblivion, into darkness. The same happens if you have lived a true life, an authentic life. If you have really lived it, death is a rest. Evening comes, night falls, and you are ready; you lie down and wait. When you live rightly you don't ask for more life because more is already there, more than you can ask is already there, more than you can imagine has already been given to you. If you live every moment to its total intensity, you are always ready to die.


If death comes right now to me I am ready, because nothing is incomplete. I have not postponed anything. I have taken my morning bath and enjoyed it. I have not postponed anything at all for the future, so if death comes there is no problem. Death can come and take me right now. There will not even be a slight idea of future because nothing is incomplete.


And you? -- everything is incomplete. Even the morning bath you could not take well because you had to come to listen to me; you missed it. You move according to the future and then you go on missing. If this missing becomes a habit, and it be comes one, then you will miss my talk also because you are the same man who missed the morning bath, who missed the morning tea, who somehow finished it but remained incomplete. It is hovering around your head. All that you have left incomplete is still like buzzing bees around you. Now this becomes a habit. You will listen to me but you are getting ready to go to the office, or to the shop, or to the market; you have already moved. You are only physically sitting here. Your mind has moved in the future. You will never be anywhere. Wherever you are, you are already moving somewhere else. This incomplete life creates lust for life. You have to complete many things.


How can you afford to die right this moment? I can afford to, I can enjoy -- everything is complete! Remember this, Patanjali, Buddha, Jesus -- nobody is against life. They are for life, all for life, but they are against lust for life because lust for life is a symptom of a man who has been missing life.

The second question:
<p class="question">MANY OF THE EXISTENTIALIST THINKERS OF THE WEST -- SARTRE, CAMUS ETC. -- HAVE COME TO REALIZE THE FRUSTRATION, HOPELESSNESS AND MEANINGLESSNESS OF LIFE, BUT THEY HAVE NOT KNOWN THE ECSTASY OF A PATANJALI. WHY? WHAT IS MISSING? WHAT WOULD PATANJALI HAVE TO SAY TO THE WEST AT THIS POINT?</p>


Yes, a few things are missing in the West which were not missing for Buddha in India. Buddha also reached to a point where Sartre is: the existentialist despair, the anguish, the feeling that all is futile, that life is meaningless. But when Buddha reached this point, that everything is meaningless, there was an opening in India; it was not the end of the road. In fact, it was only the end of one road but another opened immediately; the closing of one door but the opening of another.


That is the difference between a culture which is spiritual and a culture which is materialist. A materialist says, 'This is all; there is nothing else to life.' A materialist says that all that you see, that is all that reality is. If that becomes meaningless, then there is no door open. A spiritualist says, 'This is not all, the visible is not all, the tangible is not all.' When this is finished, suddenly a new door opens and this is not the end. When it is finished, it is only a beginning to another dimension.


This is the only difference between a materialist conception of life and a spiritualist conception of life -- the difference of world views. Buddha was born into a spiritualist world view. He also realized the meaninglessness of all that we do, because death is there and death will finish everything, so what is the point of doing or not doing? Whether you do or don't do, death comes and finishes everything. Whether you love or not, old age comes and you become a ruin, a skeleton. Whether you live a poor life or a rich life, death annihilates both; it does not bother about who you are. You may have been a saint, you may have been a sinner -- for death it makes no difference. Death is absolutely communist; it treats everybody equally. The saint and the sinner both fall down into the dust -- dust unto dust. Buddha came to realize this, but the spiritual world view was there, the milieu was different.


I have told you the story of Buddha: He comes to see an old man; he realizes that youth is just a passing phase, a momentary phenomenon; a wave in the ocean rising and falling, nothing of permanence in it, nothing of the eternal in it; just like a dream, a bubble ready to burst any moment. Then he sees a dead man being carried. In the West the story would have stopped here: the old man, the dead man. But in the Indian story, after the dead man he sees a sannyasin -- that is the door. And then he asks his driver, 'Who is this man, and why is he in ochre robes? What has happened to him? What type of man is he?' The driver says, 'This man has also realized that life leads to death and he is in search of a life which is deathless.'


This was the milieu: life doesn't end with death. Buddha's story shows that after seeing death, when life feels meaningless, suddenly a new dimension arises, a new vision -- sannyas: the effort to penetrate into the deeper mystery of life, to penetrate deeper into the visible to reach the invisible, to penetrate matter so deeply that matter disappears and you come to the basic reality, the reality of spiritual energy, the Brahma. With Sartre, Camus, Heidegger, the story ends with the dead man. The sannyasi is missing, that is the missing link.


If you can understand me, that is what I am doing: creating so many sannyasis, sending them to the whole world, so that whenever there is a man who comes to understand, like Sartre, that life is meaningless, a sannyasi must be there to follow, to give a new vision that life doesn't end with death. A phase ends, but not life itself.


In fact, life starts only when death has come because death ends only your body, not your innermost being. The life of the body is only a part, and a very peripheral part, a superficial part.


In the West, materialism has become the world-view. Even so-called religious people in the West are all materialists. They may go to church, they may believe in Christianity, but that belief is not even skin deep. It is a social formality. One has to go to church on Sunday; it is the thing to do, the right thing to do to remain 'the right people' in the opinion of others. You are the right people doing the right things -- a social formality. But inside, everybody has become a materialist.


The materialist world-view says that with death everything ends. If this is true, then there is no possibility of any transformation. And if everything ends with death then there is no point in continuing to live. Then suicide is the right answer.


It is simply wonderful to see Sartre going on living. He should have committed suicide a long time ago because if he had really realized that life is meaningless, then what is the point? Either he has realized it or he is still hoping against it and has not realized it. What is the point of carrying the whole thing again and again every day, of getting up out of bed? If you have really felt that life is meaningless, how can you get out of bed the next morning, for what? To repeat the same old nonsense again? -- meaningless. Why should you breathe at all?


This is my understanding: if you have really realized that life is meaningless, breathing will stop immediately. What is the point? You will lose interest in breathing, you will not make any effort. But Sartre goes on living and living and doing millions of things. The meaninglessness has not really penetrated very deeply. It is a philosophy; not yet a life, not yet an intimate happening inside, just a philosophy. Otherwise, the East is open; why shouldn't Sartre come? The East says, 'Yes, life is meaningless, but a door then opens.' Then let him come to the East and try to find the door.


And it is not only that somebody has said it; for almost ten thousand years many have come to realize this point, and you cannot delude yourself about it. Buddha lived for forty years in ecstasy with not a single moment of misery. How can you pretend? How can you live a forty year life acting as if you are ecstatic? And what is the point of acting? And not only one Buddha -- thousands of Buddhas are born in the East, and they have lived the most blissful of lives with not a single ripple of misery arising.


What Patanjali is saying is not a philosophy, it is a realized fact, it is an experience. Sartre is not courageous enough, other wise there would be two alternatives: either commit suicide, be true to your philosophy, or seek a way to life, a new life. In both ways, you leave the old. That's why I insist that whenever a person comes to the point of suicide, only then does the door open. There there are two alternatives: suicide or self transformation.


Sartre is not courageous. He talks about courage, sincerity, authenticity, but is none of these. If you are authentic, then either commit suicide or seek a way out of the misery. If the misery is final and total, then why do you go on living? Then be true to your philosophy. It seems that this despair, anguish, meaninglessness, is also verbal, logical, but not existential.


It is my feeling that the existentialism of the West is not really existentialist; it is again a philosophy. To be existentialist means it must be a feeling, not a thinking. Sartre may be a great thinker -- he is, but he has not felt the thing, he has not lived it. If you live despair, you are bound to come to a point where something has to be done, radically done, immediately done. A transformation becomes urgent, becomes your only concern.


You have also asked what is missing. The world view, the spiritual world view is missing in the West. Otherwise, many Buddhas could be born. The season is ripe -- despair, meaninglessness is felt; it is in the air. The society has achieved affluence and found it lacking. Money is there, power is there, and man feels deep down totally impotent. The situation is ripe, but the world view is lacking.


Go to the West and give the message. Spread the word, the world-view of spirituality, so that those who have come to the end of their travels in this life should not feel that it is the end  -- a new door opens. Life is eternal. Many times you will feel that everything has ended and suddenly something again starts. A world view of spirituality is lacking. Once that world-view is there, many will start moving into it.


The trouble is that many so called religious teachers from the East are moving in the West, and they are more materialist than you. They are there simply for the money. They cannot give you the world view of spirituality. They are salesmen. They have found the market because the season is ripe.


People are hankering for something, not knowing what. People are finished with this so-called life, frustrated, ready to take a jump into something unknown, unlived yet. The market is ready for people to exploit, and there are many merchants from the East. They may be called Maharishis, that makes no difference. Many merchants, salesmen, are moving in the West. They are just there for the money.


With a real Master, you have to come to him, you have to seek him, you have to find him, you have to make efforts. A real Master cannot go to the West because just by going the whole point will be lost; the West has to come to him. And it will be easier for Western people to come to the East to learn the inner discipline, the awakening, and then go to the West and spread the new milieu. It will be easier for Western people to learn in the East, to be here in the atmosphere of a spiritual Master, and then carry back the message -- because you will not be materialist if you go and spread the news in the West. You will not be materialist because you have been enough, you are finished with it.


When poor people from the East go to the West, of course they start accumulating money. That's simple. The East is poor and now the East is not hankering for spirituality, it is hankering for more money, more material gadgets, more engineering and atomic science. Even if a Buddha were to be born, nobody will talk about him in the East, but a small toy sputnik is released by India and the whole country goes mad and happy. What stupidity! A small atomic explosion, and India feels very happy and proud because she has become the fifth atomic power.


The East is poor, and the East is now thinking in terms of matter. A poor mind always thinks about matter and all that matter can give. The East is not in search of spirituality. The West is rich and now the West is ready to seek.


But whenever there is a Master, one has to seek him. Through the very seeking many things happen. If I come to you, you will miss me. If I come and knock at your door, you will think I have come to seek something from you; that will become the closing of your heart. No, I will not come to your house and knock. I will wait for you to come and knock, and not only knock, I will also force you to wait -- because that is the only way that your heart can be opened.


I don't know what Patanjali would have said to the West. How can I know? Patanjali is Patanjali; I am not Patanjali. But this is what I would like to say: the West has come to a point where either suicide or a spiritual revolution will happen. These are the only two alternatives. I'm not saying this only about individual people, individual persons. This is so for the West as a whole. Either the West will commit suicide through atomic war for which it is preparing, or there will be a spiritual awakening. And there is not very much time left. Within this century, in just twenty five years more, the West will either commit suicide or the West will know the greatest spiritual awakening that has ever happened in the history of man. Much is at stake.


People come to me and they say, 'You go on giving sannyas without considering whether the person is worthy or not.' I tell them that time is short, and I don't bother about it. If I give sannyas to fifty thousand people and only fifty prove to be true, that will be enough.


The West needs sannyasis. The story there has gone to the point where the dead man is being carried. Now a sannyasi has to appear in the West. And the sannyasi should be Western, not Eastern, because the Eastern sannyasi will become a victim, sooner or later, of all that you can give to him. He will start selling; he will become a salesman because he comes from the starved East. Money is his god.


The sannyasi should be Western: one who comes from the roots of the West, who realizes the meaninglessness of life, who realizes the frustration of the whole effort towards materialism, who realizes the futility of all Marxism, communism, and all materialist philosophies. This frustration is in the blood of Western man now, in the very bones.


That's why my whole interest is to make as many Western people sannyasis as possible and send them back home. Many Sartres are waiting there. They have seen the death. They are waiting to see the ochre robe, and with the ochre robe, the ecstasy that follows.

The third question:
<p class="question">A BUDDHA LIVES WITH THE HIGHEST SENSITIVITY AND SO HE ENJOYS ALL HIS BODILY NEEDS. IS NOT SEX ALSO A BODILY NEED? THEN WHY DOES IT DISAPPEAR IN A BUDDHA?</p>


Many things will have to be understood.First: sex is not an ordinary need, like food. It is very extra ordinary. If food is not given to you, you will die, but without sex you can live. If water is not given to you, the body will die, but without sex you can live. If air is not given to you, you will die within seconds, but without sex you can live your whole life.


This is the first difference, and why is it so? Because sex is basically not the need of the individual, it is the need of the race. The race will die if sex is not allowed, but you will not die. Man will die; it is not individual, but collective. Sex is a racial need, not individual. If everybody becomes a brahmachari, a celibate, then humanity will disappear, but you will live. You will live for seventy years or even more, because you will save much energy. A man who was going to live seventy years may be able to live a hundred years without sex, because his energies will be conserved. But without sex the race will die.


This is the first difference: food is needed for you, sex is needed for others. Sex is needed for the future generations to come. You have already come so there is no problem. Your parents needed sex for you to come. If they had remained celibates, you would not be here, but they would have lived, it would have been no problem for them. They would have lived even better because you created many troubles for them.


That's why nature has given you such a deep hypnosis about sex, otherwise humanity will disappear. Nature has made you completely obsessive about sex -- it forces you. You try to escape from the trap, and you feel trapped -- whatsoever you do, wherever you go, sex follows you. Nature cannot afford k. Otherwise, sex in itself is such an ugly act that if you were a11owed freedom, then I don't think anybody would choose it. It is enforced.


Have you ever thought about yourself copulating? -- how ugly it looks! That's why people hide themselves when they copulate; they want privacy so that nobody looks at them. But just think, imagine yourself copulating. The whole thing seems to be absurd, foolish. What are you doing? If there were no obsession inside you to do it, nobody would do it. But nature cannot afford not to let you do it, so nature has given you a deep inner hypnosis about it. It is chemical, it is hormonal. In the bloodstream  particular hormones are flowing which force you.


Now biologists say that if those hormones can be taken out of you, sex will disappear. Injections can be given to you of those hormones and sex becomes very powerful. Even in an old man of seventy or eighty years old whose body is no longer capable of moving into sex, the hormones can be injected and he will start behaving like a foolish young man. He will start chasing women. He may even be in a wheelchair but he will chase women. It is not that one is chasing, it is the hormonal chemical system in the body.


A child is born, the hormones are not ripe; they will take time to ripen. He will become capable of the sexual urge at about fourteen. Up to that time there is no problem. The sex hormones are getting ripe, the glands are getting ready. Suddenly, at fourteen, they explode and the child goes crazy. He cannot understand what is happening.


The age between fourteen and eighteen is one of the most awkward. The child cannot understand:'What is happening?' Something has taken possession of him. It is a possession! Nature has taken possession -- now you are ready, now the body is ready, now nature forces you to reproduce. Fantasies arise, dreams; you cannot escape. Wherever you look, if you are a man you can see only woman, if you are a woman, only man. k is a sort of madness. Of course, nature has to create it, otherwise there would be no reproduction.


Your individual life is not at stake if you become celibate. No, nothing is at stake. On the contrary, you will live more deeply, more easily because energy will be conserved.


That is why in the East people discovered this: they discovered that sex brings death sooner. So those who wanted to live longer, for their own reasons, they dropped sex completely. For example, Hatha yogis who want to live longer because they have very slow moving methods, bullock cart methods -- they need a very long time to finish them, they need tong life to finish their yoga, to come to the final Enlightenment -- they dropped sex completely. And how did they drop it? They created particular postures which change the hormonal flow in the body. They created certain bodily exercises in which the semen is reabsorbed back into the blood. They did tremendous things with the body; even discharged semen could be reabsorbed back into the body.


They created many methods to absorb the sex energy because sex energy is life energy; a child is born out of it. If you can absorb the energy back into your own system, you will be very, very strong. You can live longer. In fact, old age can be simply dropped. You can be young to the very end.


There are differences. Food is an individual need. If you stop it you will die. Sex is not an individual need, it is a possession. If you can stop, you will gain much out of it. But stopping can be of three types: you can suppress the desire; that will not help -- your sex energy will become perverted. That's why I say it is better to be natural than to be perverted. Jain monks, Buddhist monks, Christian, Catholic monks, who have all lived in exclusively male societies, male groups -- out of a hundred monks, ninety percent are either masturbatory or homosexual. That has to be so, because where will the energy go? And they have only been suppressing, they have not transformed the hormonal system, the chemistry of the body. They don't know what to do so they simply suppress. Suppression becomes perversion. I am against methods of the first type. It is better to be natural than to be perverted, because perversion is falling below nature, it is not going beyond.


Then there is the second type which has tried to change the hormonal system of the body: Hatha yogis, yoga asanas. And there are many ways to change the chemistry of the body. The second methods are better than the first, but still I am not in favor of them. Why? Because if you change the body, you are not changed. An impotent man is celibate, but it is useless. Through Hatha Yoga methods you will become impotent; the hormones will not be there functioning, or the glands will be damaged and they cannot function, but this is not a spiritual growth. You have destroyed the mechanism, you have not gone beyond it.


And this too can lead to other types of problems in life. You will become afraid of many things. You will be afraid of woman because the moment she comes near, your changed chemistry will again take the old pattern, a flow. A woman has a certain energy: the feminine energy, which is magnetic and changes your body-energy. So Hatha yogis became afraid of women. They escaped to the Himalayas and the caves. Fear is not a good thing, and if you are afraid, you are in it. It is as if a man becomes blind so that he cannot see woman, but that won't help much.


The third type of method is to become more aware. Don't change the body -- as it is, it is good. Let it remain natural; you become more aware. Whatsoever happens in the mind and in the body, become aware. On gross and subtle layers become more and more conscious. Just by being conscious, by being a witness, you rise higher and higher and higher -- and a moment comes when just because of your height, just because of your peak consciousness, the valley remains there but you are no more part of the valley; you have transcended it. The body remains sexual, but you are not there to cooperate with it. The body remains absolutely natural, but you have gone beyond it. k cannot function without your cooperation. This happens in a Buddha.


The word 'buddha' means one who has awakened. It does not belong to Gautam Buddha alone.'Buddha' is not a personal name, it is a quality of being. Christ is a Buddha, Krishna is a Buddha, and thousands of Buddhas have existed. k is a quality of being -- and what is that quality? -- awareness. The flame of awareness goes higher and higher and a moment comes when the body is there, fully functioning and natural, sensitive, sensual, alive, but your cooperation is not there. You are a witness now, not a doer -- sex disappears.


Food will not disappear; even a Buddha will need food because it is a personal need, not a social need a racial need. Sleep will not disappear, it is a personal need. All that is personal will be there, all that is racial will disappear -- and this disappearance has a beauty of its own.


If you look at a Hatha yogi you will see a crippled being. You cannot see any grace coming from his face. He has destroyed his chemistry, he is not beautiful. If you see a repressed monk, he is even more ugly because from his eyes and face you will see all sorts of lust falling all around. He wi]l have a sexual atmosphere around him -- ugly and dirty. A natural man is better; at least he is natural. But a perverted man is ill and he carries illness around him.


I am in favor of the third, but for the meantime you remain natural. No need to suppress, no need to try any methods to cripple the body -- no need. Be natural and go on working for your Buddhahood. Be natural and become more and more alert and aware. A moment will come when sex simply disappears. When it disappears on its own, it leaves behind it such a glow, such grace, such beauty. Don't force it to disappear otherwise it will leave behind many wounds and you will always remain with those wounds. Let it go by itself. Simply be a watcher and don't be in a hurry. Nature is good, nature is beautiful; you be natural. Unless you become supernatural, don't fight with nature. Let the higher come in.


And this is my attitude about everything: don't fight with the lower, pray for the higher. Work for the higher and let the lower be left untouched. If you start fighting with the lower you will have to remain there with the lower; you cannot move from there. Be natural so that nature does not disturb you and you are left alone to rise higher. Pray for the higher, meditate for the higher, try for the higher and leave nature as it is. Soon the supernature will arise. Out of nature comes the supernature, and then there is grace, then there is beauty, then there is incomparable beatitude.


From another dimension it will be good for you to know: sex belongs to the body, love belongs to the subtle body, prayer belongs to the center, to the very ground of your being. Sex belongs to the periphery, prayer belongs to the center, and between the center and the periphery is love. Buddha is prayerful compassion; he has reached the center. Before you reach the center, just moving in between from the periphery to the center, you will be loveful, very, very deeply loving. On the periphery you will be lustful, you will be sexual. And it is the same energy. On the periphery sex is a need, between the periphery and the center love is the need. The energy is the same but you have changed, so the need changes. At the center, prayer, compassion is the need -- the energy is the same. So Buddha is not starved of sex; the same energy has become compassion. A man of love is not starved of sex, the same energy has become love. So the question of needs has to be understood.


The need exists in the body, but if you move from the body, deeper, the need changes. The need follows you. If you are filled too much with sexual imagery, fantasy, that shows only that you exist on the periphery. Move from there. You go on working on the periphery. For millions of lives you have been working there and the need has not been fulfilled. It cannot be fulfilled. No need can be fulfilled -- remember this. You eat; after eight hours, six hours, you are again hungry. No need can be fulfilled. It is a temporary fulfillment. You have sex -- after a few hours again you are ready. Needs cannot be fulfilled because they move in a circle.


Move higher than your needs. I am not saying fight with the needs; allow them, enjoy them while you are there. Why fight?  -- enjoy. Don't create guilt because the more guilt you create, the more suppression, the more difficult it will be for you to move from there. Enjoy it while you are there. If you love, you have sex, enjoy it. Don't feel guilty, and don't feel a sinner. Sin well! If you are sinning then at least be efficient.


I am reminded of Luther. Pecca Fortiler, a disciple, asked Luther, What to do? I cannot stop sinning.' Luther said, 'Sin stronger.' Absolutely right. I have never felt very much sympathy with Luther's thoughts, but about this I am absolutely with him: stronger, sin stronger. If you cannot stop then why bother? Sin stronger because only at the extreme is transformation possible. Lukewarm people are never transformed.


Never be lukewarm. That is the only stupidity you can go on committing. Because when you are boiling one hundred percent, only then does the evaporation happen. Lukewarm, you can remain lukewarm for many, many lives and nothing will happen. Move to the extreme. If you are in sex, move into it totally. Don't create any conflict, don't withhold anything. And meanwhile go on working. Let sex be there on its own. You go on working for awareness. Meditate more and more and by and by you will see that the same energy is changing, transforming.


When you change, the energy changes because energy belongs to you. When your standpoint changes, the energy has to change its level. When your plane of being changes, then energy has to follow you. It is your energy.


When you move towards the center, by and by, you will suddenly realize that sex is disappearing and love is gaining strength. You are becoming more and more loving. Now the love is not a lust. Love is not like fire, it is a very cool light. Sex is fiery, it is fire. It is like hot sun. Love is like cool moon; it gives you light, but very cool, calm. A silence pervades love. Then, by and by, sex will become more distant, more distant, more distant, and the same energy will be moving in love. You will not feel starved. Rather, on the contrary, you will feel more fulfilled, because love fulfills more. It is the higher form of sex, and every time you go higher, you feel more fulfilled because higher forms are more subtle energies. They are not gross, they are more subtle. They fulfill, they give you more. Then go on rising into awareness. A day comes when suddenly you are rooted in the center, centered. Now love also takes a new dimension; it becomes compassion.


What is the difference? In sex you are concerned with yourself, not concerned with the other at all. You simply use the other. That's why sexual partners continuously fight, because an inner feeling is there, 'The other is using me.' Sexual partners cannot come to a point of harmony. They will have to fight again and again, because the woman thinks the man is using her -- and she is right! Nothing is wrong in it. And the man thinks the woman is using him. And whenever somebody uses you as a means you feel hurt; it seems like an exploitation. The man is concerned with his own sex, the woman is concerned with her own sex -- neither is moving towards the other. The movement is not there. They are two selfish people, self centered, exploiting each other. If they have to talk about love and sing and be poetic, that is just allurement, persuasion, seduction -- but they arc not concerned with the other. Once the man has used the woman, he turns over and goes to sleep, finished -- a thing to be used and thrown away.


In America they have made plastic women and plastic men. They work perfectly well. A plastic woman, if you play with her breasts, the breasts get an erection, they become warm. You can make love to a plastic woman and it is as fulfilling as any woman; even more because there is no fight, no conflict. Finished, you can throw the woman and go to sleep. That's all that people are doing. Whether the woman is plastic or real makes no difference. And the woman goes on using the man.


Whenever you use another as a means it is immoral. The other is an end in himself, but the other becomes an end in himself only in the second stage of your being, when you love. Then you love for the other. Then you are not using. Then the other is important, significant. The other is an end in himself or herself. You are grateful. No exploitation is possible in love; you help the other. It is not a bargain. You enjoy helping, you enjoy sharing and you are grateful that the other gives you an opportunity to share.


Love is subtle. The grosser realm of sex is left. The other has become an end but still there is a need, a subtle need. Because when you love a person a subtle expectation is hidden somewhere that the other should love you, even though un consciously. It follows like a shadow that the other should love you. There is still a need to be loved -- better than sex but still an expectation. And that expectation will be the jarring note in love. k is not yet perfect.


Compassion is the highest quality of love, the highest purity. Now expectation is also not there. The other is not a means, the other is an end. And now you don't expect anything, you simply give whatsoever you can give. Expectation has completely gone. A Buddha is a total giver. He goes on giving, he enjoys giving. k is simple sharing. Now it has become compassion -- the same energy and the same need on different planes of being. That's why sex disappears in a Buddha, because it reappears as compassion.

The fourth question:
<p class="question">YOU SPOKE OF THE LIVES OF JUNG AND FREUD, AND I HAVE HEARD THAT JANOV HAS NOT TRIED HIS OWN METHODS, AND HE SEEMS TO BE A VERY, VERY AMBITIOUS MAN. CAN YOU COMMENT ON HIS METHODS AND WHETHER HE HAS HEALED HIMSELF AT ALL?</p>


That's the problem in the West with all the thinkers -- they have not tried their own methods. In fact, they have stumbled upon those methods not as part of their spiritual search. They have stumbled upon those methods working on their patients.


Freud stumbled upon psychoanalysis, and I say 'stumbled' because it was accidental. It was just groping in the dark. He was working on patients -- he was a doctor, trying to help. By and by he became aware that there are many illnesses which are not physical, so you go on treating them physically and nothing happens. Then he became interested in hypnosis because something could be done through hypnosis. Through hypnosis he started working. For many years he was a hypnotist working with his teacher and helping people. Then, by and by, he be came aware that in fact hypnosis was not helping. There was no need to hypnotize a person and make him unconscious. Even if a person, fully conscious, started relating whatsoever came to his mind, whatsoever floated from the unconscious to the conscious mind, if he went on saying it, that would give a release. He started trying that. That's how psychoanalysis was born: free association of thoughts. He had never tried anything on himself. He remained the same man, he attained to no maturity.


The same has happened with others, and with Janov also. He had been working with patients and he stumbled upon the fact that if a patient can live backwards to the very trauma of birth, when the child is born and he screams for the first time -- that is the primal scream -- if a person can go backwards to the very point when he comes out of the womb and takes his first breath, then many things are simply resolved, many problems disappear. Just by living them again, they disappear. He has not tried it on himself. He is not a healed person.


Freud was very ambitious. He thought himself to be a pro. phet inaugurating a great world movement. And he was jealous, as political leaders are always jealous, conspiratorial, spying on his own disciples and associates, continuously afraid that somebody was going to destroy his movement, take possession of the movement, become the leader; always afraid.


And it was the same with Jung. If you look into Jung's eyes.... Get a picture of Jung, it is worth studying. Hidden behind his glasses are very cunning eyes; the very face is egoistic. Janov is very ambitious and his new books show his ambition clearly. He has stumbled accidentally upon a small method which is not a system, just a fragment, but now he thinks he has discovered the whole truth. Now he thinks this Primal Therapy is all that is needed, that this will lead everyone to the ultimate nirvana. This is foolish. This is ambition.


The second thing to remember about all the Western thinkers who have become influential there is that they have been working with ill people, patients. They have not come across healthy people, so whatsoever their findings, their findings are based on pathology. A healthy person is absolutely different from a pathological person. Freud never came across a healthy man. There is no question of it because the healthy man never goes to the physician or the doctor. Why should he go? Unless you are mentally ill, why should you go to a headshrinker? There is no need. You go only because you are ill, so only ill humanity goes to these people: Freud, Jung, Adler, Janov. On these ill people they base their philosophies.


This is bound to be unbalanced, and not only unbalanced, but also in a certain way very dangerous because these ill specimens of humanity are not the real representatives. They are ill. It is just as if you come to know only blind men because you are a doctor of eyes, so only blind people come to you and then you think about man as blind. Mentally ill people come to you, then you think of man as mentally ill. That is wrong be cause unless healthy people exist, is illness possible?


All the Western psychologies are based on pathology, and a real psychology is needed that is based on the healthy person. The perfect psychology has to be based on Buddha like people, not just healthy people.


So there are three types of psychologies. One, pathological: all Western psychologies are pathological. Only very recently some wholistic trends which think about the healthy person are gaining strength, but they are just at the beginning. Even the first steps have not been taken. There are psychologies of the second type which think about the healthy person, which are based on the healthy mind -- those are the Eastern psychologies. Buddhism has a very, very penetrating psychology; Patanjali has his own psychology. They are based on healthy people: to help a healthy person become more healthy, to help a healthy person attain to greater health. Pathological psychologies help m people to become healthy.


Then there is a third type. What Gurdjieff used to call the ultimate psychology is as yet undeveloped. That type has to depend on Buddha. It has not been developed yet, because where to go to study a Buddha, and how to study a Buddha? And only one Buddha won't do, you will have to study many. Then only can you come to conclusions. But some day that psychology will happen, it is a must. It must be there because only that can give you the total perception into human consciousness.


Freud, Jung, Janov, they all remain ill. They have never worked it out on themselves. Stumbling in the dark, groping in the dark, they come to some fragments and then they think that those fragments are complete systems. Whenever a fragment is claimed as a complete system it becomes a lie. A fragment is a fragment.


Eastern psychologies are for healthy people, to help you to become more whole. And my effort will be to work out a psychology of the third type, the psychology of Buddhas, be cause that will give you the perfect penetration into the whole of human consciousness.


Psychologies based on pathologies are good; they help ill people. But that can never be the goal. It is good, but just to become healthy, normal, is nothing much. Just to be normal is nothing much because everybody else is normal. It is bad to be ill because you suffer, but it is not much good to be normal because normal people are suffering in millions of ways. In fact, to be normal means only to adjust to the society. The society itself may be abnormal, the whole society may be itself ill. To adjust to it only means you are normally abnormal, that's all. That's not much of a gain. You have to go beyond social normality. You have to go beyond the social madness. Then only, for the first time do you become healthy.


Eastern psychologies: Yoga, Zen, Sufism, all help healthy people to become more healthy and holy. The third type of psychology is needed, urgently needed, because without it you don't have the goal, the perception of the very end. That has to bP worked out. Gurdjieff tried his best but couldn't succeed. The climate was not ripe. I am trying towards that again. It is difficult to succeed in it, but the possibility is there and one has to go on trying. If even a little more light is thrown on the perfect, the last, the ultimate psychology of man, even that is good, very helpful.
			

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