---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 3"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "DHAM3"
dategiven: "17 August 1979 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #6"
chaptertitle: "There is no evolution"
acode: "7908170"
shorttitle: "DHAM306"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "100mins"
displaytitle: "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 3: Chapter #6"
---

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The first question:
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
COULD THERE BE AN ULTIMATE GOAL OF THE PHYSICAL EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS? IF SO, WHAT IS IT?</p>


Digvijay, there is no goal of life. Life itself is its goal. It is not moving towards some target. It is herenow, it has no future. Life is always in the present. But the mind cannot live in the present: mind dies in the present. Hence, down the ages, mystics have invented devices to bring the mind to the present. The moment the mind comes to the present, it melts as snow, melts in the hot sun; it disappears, evaporates.


And the disappearance of the mind is the greatest experience possible to human beings, because in that disappearance is the appearance of God.


Mind lives in the future; future is its territory, its kingdom. And future is possible only through goal orientation. So mind makes goals out of everything; life must have a goal -- not only a goal but an ultimate goal. Then mind is perfectly happy, then it can protect itself: how to achieve that goal, how to reach to that ultimate?


The moment you can ask, "How?" mind is perfectly at ease. It is very clever, cunning, skillful in inventing ways and means to achieve something, whatsoever it is -- but it has to be there in the future. Mind lives through creating goals: political, social, evolutionary, spiritual, and so on and so forth; but the mind needs some goal to exist, it feeds on it.


In truth, all is and nothing is going to happen. Tomorrow never comes. It is always now and here.


The mystic approach is totally different from the goal-oriented mind. The mystic says, "Live the moment in its totality, love the moment in its totality, drown yourself in this overwhelming existence, and you will come closer and closer to God." By "God" I don't mean some person; by "God" I simply mean the essential core of existence, the center of the cyclone.


The universe is the circumference and God is the center. If you dive deep in the now, in the here, you are bound to encounter the center. And the miracle is that the center of all is also your center too. To become aware of it, to live that center, from that center, into full awareness, is to be a buddha, is to be enlightened.


But remember, buddhahood is not an ultimate goal. It is not something which has to be achieved somewhere else. It is available right now -- immediately it is available, not ultimately. Remember these two words: the ultimate and the immediate. The ultimate brings the mind in, the immediate helps the mind to disappear.


To me, the immediate is the ultimate. There is no goal, physical, psychological, spiritual. All is as it should be... it already is. Drop your tensions, anxieties for the future, what is going to happen. All has already happened! Live it! Don't be ambitious. Goals make you ambitious, and they drive you crazy. The more goal-oriented a person is, the crazier he becomes -- because ambition is nothing but ego. You can go on inventing new goals; there will always be the horizon beyond. And with those new goals your ego can go on and on having new trips.


The mystic and the world of the mystic is a totally different dimension. What I am talking about here has nothing to do with goal orientation -- that is the way of the mind. I am teaching you the way of no-mind.


Digvijay, I know your tremendous interest in the evolutionary process. I am perfectly aware that you have devoted your whole life in that search. And you will be shocked when you hear me say that you have been wasting your life -- wasting because the present is being sacrificed for the future. And unless you drop this idea of an ultimate goal you will never be able to come down to the earth, to the present, to the moment. And without that there is no meditation, and without meditation there is no God.


The immediate is the ultimate -- I teach you the immediate, living moment to moment, without carrying the past. Buddha says, not hoarding the past, not accumulating the past; I would like to add, not projecting in the future either. If the past and the future disappear, what is left? A great silence, a profound presence of something utterly unknown. A mystery overwhelms you. And that mystery is immediate. I will not say "ultimate," because 'ultimate' means you can postpone for tomorrow. 'Immediate' shocks you, shakes you into awareness right now.


A goal is possible if we divide life into means and ends. That's how it has been down the ages. But life is one, it cannot be divided. It is indivisible, whole; it is an organic unity. Nothing is a means, nothing is an end. The whole life is one. You cannot categorize means and ends.


But the moment you think about evolution, goal, you have to divide life, then something becomes a means and something else becomes the end. Adolf Hitler believed in evolution, hence he could convince the intelligentsia of Germany, which is one of the most sophisticated intelligentsia of the world. In the name of evolution he could preach his Nazi philosophy that superman is the goal, that man has to be sacrificed for the superman. It appealed, it looked logical.


Who is the superman? And who is going to become the superman? Of course, the Nordics, the Germans. It enhanced the German ego tremendously. "Even if the whole humanity has to be destroyed, it is worth destroying because the great goal of superhumanity is looming large on the horizon. Everything can be sacrificed for it." That's how he could convince his country to drag the whole world into a world war.


Sri Aurobindo also talks in the same language -- the language of evolution. Not the superman but the supermind is the goal. And you have to sacrifice your present for that supermind; again the same idea of sacrifice. Man has remained dominated by the idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Be a martyr! That's the only way to create a golden future.


My effort here is just the opposite. Avoid Adolf Hitlers and Sri Aurobindos. No sacrifice! Don't try to be a martyr! There is no other goal than this moment, and existence is as perfect as is ever possible. Existence is as perfect as it ever will be. Existence IS perfection.


But because of the idea of a goal, we start comparing: then man is higher than the monkeys and the monkeys are higher than the dogs, and so on and so forth. But who is going to decide? Have you ever asked the monkeys? As far as I know, they still laugh at Charles Darwin, because they can't believe this poor man is higher than the monkeys. Have you ever fought with any monkey? Fight with a monkey barehanded and you will know who is more powerful. Can you jump like the monkeys on the trees? And then you will know whose body is more athletic. Monkeys live on the trees and you live on the earth: you are the fallen monkeys! But Charles Darwin never asked the monkeys.


Man himself goes on deciding. So if Germans decide then Germans are the highest race, obviously. And if Indians decide then they are the Aryans, the real Aryans, the pure blood. And if Jews decide then they are the chosen people of God. But who is going to decide? And if man decides then man is higher than all the animals. In fact, there is nobody higher and nobody lower. All these categories are stupid -- there is no hierarchy.


Existence is absolutely communist. Everybody is equal, participating in the same life, breathing the same air, getting warmed by the same sun, dancing under the same sky. Even trees are not lower than you, even rocks are not lower than you. The very language of lower and higher is utterly wrong. But the word 'evolution' brings that language in; it becomes the "in" thing. Then you have to make a hierarchy: then you are above animals and below angels. And then the whole journey starts: how to go higher and higher and higher? And there is no roof, there is no ceiling; you can go on projecting.


But if you ask the bees they won't think that you are higher than them. The intelligentsia of the bees must be watching a thousand and one stupidities of human beings -- because the bees are the most organized phenomenon in existence. Man and his society must look like chaos compared to the society of the bees. Everything is so organized -- even Adolf Hitler would have felt a little inferior. And so willingly, so voluntarily -- the bees are not forced, they are not living in a concentration camp. Willingly, joyously, they are part of an organization, so deeply involved with the organization that they have lost their individuality totally; they live as an organic part, they are not separate. Or if you watch the society of the ants, it is fixed, systematic; it has a tremendous order.


Now, how are you going to decide who is higher? This chaotic society of man? In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars -- constantly killing each other, murdering, butchering, in the name of politics, in the name of religion... and this man you think is the highest evolved being on the earth? There are people like Arthur Koestler who think that something in the very beginning has gone wrong in the human mind, some nuts and bolts are missing -- man is born crazy.


If you watch man, it appears so. His whole life seems to be that of violence, struggle, destruction. No other animal is so destructive. No other animal kills its own species; the tigers don't kill other tigers and the dogs don't kill other dogs. Even if they fight, their fights are mock fights; they fight only to decide who is powerful. Once it is decided, the fight stops -- because to attack somebody who is weaker than you is not only wrong, it is utterly destructive and stupid too.


Two dogs will fight: they will show their teeth, they will bark, they will jump at each other, but they are simply watching who is more powerful. Once they have taken note who is more powerful, one dog will stop barking, will put his tail between his legs, and it is finished! He has given the sign that "I am weaker and you are stronger." And there is no shame, he is not ashamed -- what can he do if he is weaker and the other is stronger? How is he responsible for that? One tree is taller, another tree is not taller. Do you think the rosebushes are feeling ashamed because the mango trees and the neem trees and other trees are going so high? The roses are not worried at all: "So what? You are taller and we are not taller -- that's the way you are, this is the way we are."


See the sanity of the point: except human beings nobody is so insane as to fight with someone who is weaker. Once it is decided.... And don't you have even that much consciousness as dogs and tigers have -- that they can see, it is so apparent that the other is stronger? Then what is the point of fighting at all? The game is finished -- the other is the winner. Hence no destruction happens, hence no killing happens. And animals don't kill even other animals unless they are hungry -- except man. Only man goes for hunting.


And Digvijay is a former prince: he must know what hunting is, he must have animal heads in his palace, trophies. The more tigers and lions you have killed, the greater you are. And for what? Just to exhibit! Whenever I have visited the palace of a king, I have felt very sorry for the king. He seems to be utterly insensitive; showing these dead heads and dead bodies and skins of animals, he thinks he is exhibiting his power, his vitality. He is simply exhibiting his utter stupidity, inhumanity.


Animals kill only when they are hungry; then it can be forgiven. No animal ever kills without hunger; no animal ever kills as a play. Killing somebody in a game, can you think this hunter is more evolved than other beings? Just destroying a life for sheer play -- and the play is also unjust, because you are sitting in a treetop and the animal is on the ground, and from high on the top where the animal cannot reach you shoot him. The animal has no weapons to protect himself, and you think you are being very brave? You are simply showing your cowardliness.


If we look at man it does not appear at all that he is the most evolved animal on the earth -- just the opposite. No other animal goes insane except man. Yes, a few animals go insane, but they only go into insanity when they are put in zoos, not in their wild state. And a zoo is a human phenomenon.


Just think of yourself: if the elephants created a zoo and put you into a zoo -- how long would you remain sane? It will be impossible for you to remain sane; it will be just natural to go insane. Animals don't become homosexuals -- unless they are put in a zoo. In a zoo they turn into homosexuals; in a zoo they are bound to because they can't get their females. In a zoo they are confined in such small spaces; those small spaces are bound to drive them crazy.


You must have seen tigers walking up and down in their cages, because they used to live and run for miles. The whole wild world was theirs, and now just a small cage... and surrounded by the tourists and the visitors and foolish people looking at them. Just think of yourself being in a zoo made by the elephants or the tigers or the monkeys, and all kinds of monkeys looking at you, day in, day out, the whole situation unnatural.


Now scientists say that there is a certain territory that is needed by every animal, a certain space; if that is not given to that animal it is bound to go insane. Wild animals need an area of miles and miles to remain free and to remain sane. Yes, in a zoo they go insane, they go crazy. They attack even their own species; they become destructive. Even sometimes they have been known to commit suicide, but never in their natural state. It is only man who commits suicide, goes insane, becomes sexually perverted -- and still man goes on thinking that he is the highest peak!


As far as I am concerned, I don't believe in hierarchy. The monkey is a monkey, the man is a man. Nobody is higher and nobody is lower. The rocks are rocks and the trees are trees. And we all participate in one God. Yes, there are great changes happening, but it is not evolution; evolution means we are going higher. Changes are there, certainly; life is constantly moving, it is a river. But change does not mean evolution, remember. You can change without your being evolving -- and that's what is happening.


And that change, constant change, gives you grounds to impose your theory of evolution on it. Things are changing, life is always in a flux; nothing is permanent, all is fluid. Man has not been like this before, and man will never again be like this. Everything is in a process, but the process is not goal-oriented; it is not moving towards a certain goal. It is a very playful process.


Children playing, you cannot say that they are evolving; children playing, you cannot say they are achieving something. They are not achieving anything. That's exactly the concept of LEELA in the East. Leela means play -- the world is God's play, and in play there is no question of evolution.


The idea of evolution is really Western; the East has never believed in evolution. The East believes in playfulness. In playfulness there is no evolution at all. Nothing is means and nothing is taken as ends. It is a dance of energies, not moving into any particular direction, not meant to achieve something; the joy is in the play itself, the value is intrinsic, not extrinsic. When you start thinking of evolution, the value is extrinsic; the value depends on what you are going to achieve, what you are going to become.


If a man becomes a great scientist, a Nobel Prize winner, he has evolved, but the man who remains a woodcutter, he has not evolved. Why? What is there so significant in doing mathematics? And what is there so insignificant in chopping wood? One likes to chop wood, another likes to play with figures, arithmetic, geometry or something else -- these are likes, different likes. One loves to swim, somebody else loves to philosophize... there is nothing higher and nothing lower.


But we have made a society on a hierarchical pattern. The brahmin is at the top -- the brahmin means the professor, the academician, the Nobel Prize winner, the famous doctor, the famous engineer, the scholar. That is the meaning of the brahmin -- he is the highest. Why? Why is not the woodcutter the highest? If the woodcutter enjoys his chopping of wood more than the professor enjoys his teaching, who is higher? The professor may be simply dragging, repeating every time, every year, the same thing.


I used to know a professor who was repeating the same lectures at least for thirty years. I had heard it, and his other students had told me that exactly the same lectures, word for word.... So one day, when the professor was asleep in the afternoon, I went into his house. I looked into his books, found the book in which he had collected all the lectures, and stole it.


You cannot believe what happened to the professor! He didn't turn up the next day. I inquired after him; he said, "I am shattered, my life is finished -- somebody has stolen my book, and I cannot speak without it. I have been using the same notes for thirty years! Now I cannot make again new notes."


I could see the poor man; he was just functioning like a gramophone record. There was no need of him. I gave him the book and I said, "Why do you bother to come to the university at all? You can simply send this book, one of us can read it, and others can take notes. Why do you bother in your old age to come to the university again and again? This book will do! You can die in peace. This book is enough. You don't have to live at all -- there is no need."


Now, this professor is a brahmin; he is the highest because the head is thought to be the highest. It IS on the top, maybe that's why the idea has arisen that the head and the head people are the topmost people. The bosses are called "heads" and the servants are called "hands"! Why? Just because physically the head is on top...?


We have created hierarchy in society. The lowest are those poor people who are chopping wood or cleaning the roads. Why are they the lowest? -- because they are doing the most essential things. The professors can be discarded, the society can exist without them; but the society cannot exist without the street cleaners, the toilet cleaners, the woodchoppers -- the society cannot exist without them. They are far more essential, far more fundamental, but they are the lowest.


The whole idea is wrong. There is no hierarchy. The professor is doing his work, and the woodcutter is doing his work, and both are needed. Neither is there a hierarchy between men and other animals, nor is there a hierarchy between men and men. I am against the whole idea of hierarchy.
And that's my vision of a new commune.


In the new commune there is going to be nobody higher and nobody lower. In this ashram, there is nobody higher, nobody lower. There are toilet cleaners and there are professors, therapists, and they are all the same -- they are all doing some useful work, some essential work. The vice-chancellor here, in this commune, is on the same ground as the woodchopper. The great therapist has no more prestige, power, than the toilet cleaner. Hence, there is no problem. A Ph.D. can choose toilet cleaning -- one Ph.D. IS doing that; another Ph.D. is just cleaning the streets of the ashram.


If there is no hierarchy, there is no problem; otherwise, the Ph.D. will think, "How can I do this work, this menial job? I am not a hand, I am a head." In this commune there are no heads, no hands -- people, whole people, respected, loved, for whatsoever they are doing, or whatsoever they can do, or whatsoever they LIKE doing.


This whole existence is a commune. God is the center and we are all its circumference.


There is no evolution, Digvijay, no ultimate goal. It is a play. Enjoy it, celebrate it! If this idea of ultimate goal and evolution can drop from your mind, I KNOW your potential; you can become one of the great sannyasins. You can be a new man. But you are going crazy because of this idea; your whole life is being devoted to it. And if it is fundamentally wrong then you will repent one day. Forget all about it! Start meditating more and more about your own inner being. Don't be worried what is going to happen; rather, be involved with what is already happening. God is a presence, God is a being, not a becoming, and so is this whole existence.


The day we drop the idea of evolution and ultimate goal, the world will be freed from its bondage of future. It is the future that is keeping us in a bondage, and the past -- and both are in conspiracy against man.


Future and past dropped, you attain to freedom -- freedom, Buddha says, which has no bounds.

The second question:
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
HOW DO YOU KNOW SO MANY JOKES?</p>


Viramo, first, in none of my past lives have I been an Englishman. Secondly, in many of my past lives I have been a Jew.


Sir Reginald, riding in a New York taxi, was challenged by the driver to solve a riddle: "This person I am thinking of has the same father that I have and the same mother, but it is not my sister and it is not my brother. Who is it?"


The Britisher thought for a moment, and then gave up. "It is me," the cabdriver told him.
"By Jove! That's jolly good. I must try that on the chaps at my club!"


A month later he was sitting in London with his cigar-smoking cronies. He said, "Gentlemen, this individual I have in mind is not my brother and not my sister, yet this person has the same parents as I have -- who is it?"


After several thoughtful minutes, all the members conceded defeat. "Who is it?" one of them inquired. "Come, Reggie, give us the answer."


Reggie slapped his knees in triumph. "It is a taxicab driver in New York City!" he roared.

And the second story:


Morton and Fogel were discussing humor over lunch. "Do Jews react differently when they hear a joke?" asked Morton.
"What a question!" replied Fogel. "If you tell an Englishman a joke he will laugh at it three times: once when you tell it, again when you explain it and a third time when he understands the point. Tell a German the same joke: he will laugh twice -- both times to be polite -- there won't be a third time because he will never get the point. Tell the same joke to an American: he will laugh once, immediately, because he will get it right away. But," said Fogel, "when you tell the joke to a Jew...."
"Yes?" asked Morton.
"When you tell the same joke to a Jew, he won't laugh at all. Instead he will say, 'It is an old joke -- and besides, you told it all wrong!'"

The third question:
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
I HEARD YOU SAY THAT BEING A SANNYASIN MEANS TO BE READY TO LIVE A VERY LONELY LIFE. BUT SINCE I'M A SANNYASIN I FEEL THAT I CAN'T BE LONELY ANYMORE, AS YOU ARE ALWAYS AROUND. DO I UNDERSTAND YOU WRONG?</p>


Deva Maya, you do not understand me at all. It is not a question of understanding right or wrong -- you don't understand me at all.


I have NOT told you that a sannyasin has to be ready to live a lonely life. What I had told you was: a sannyasin knows how to live alone. And to be lonely is totally different from being alone. Not only different, they are opposites. They are as far away from each other as the sky and the earth; the distance is infinite between them.


To be lonely means a negative state: you are hankering for the other, you are longing for company, you are missing the crowd. You cannot tolerate yourself; you feel yourself intolerable. You are bored with yourself -- that's what being lonely means -- utterly bored.


To be alone is totally different: it is utterly ecstatic. To be alone means a positive state. You are not missing the other, you are enjoying yourself. You are not bored by yourself, you are intrigued. A great challenge comes from your innermost core. You start a journey of interiority. When there are others you are occupied with them, your consciousness remains focused on them. When you are alone, your consciousness moves inwards. When you are with others you have to be an extrovert -- your consciousness turning upon itself, showering upon itself. When you are with others your light shows their faces; when you are alone your light shows your own original face.


Maya, you have not understood me. I had not told you that to be a sannyasin means "to be ready to live a very lonely life." From where did you get this idea of living a very lonely life? Certainly one has to be able to live alone, but to live alone does not mean that you cannot relate; on the contrary, a man who can live alone becomes so full of joy, becomes so brimful, that he HAS to relate. He becomes a raincloud -- he has to shower. He becomes a flower so full of fragrance that he has to open its petals and allow its fragrance to be released to the winds.


A person who knows how to be alone becomes so full of song that he has to sing it. And where can you sing a song? You can sing a song only in love, in relating, in sharing with people. But you can share only if you have in the first place.


The problem is that people don't have any joy in their being and they are bent upon sharing it. Now, two miserable people bent upon sharing their joys with each other -- what is going to happen? The misery will not be doubled, it will be multiplied.


That's what people are doing to each other: husbands to wives and wives to husbands, and parents to children and children to parents, and friends to friends. In fact enemies are not so inimical as friends prove finally: torturing each other, unloading their miseries on each other, throwing their dirt on each other. They are stinking -- what can they do? When they come close to you, you have to suffer their stink. And you have to suffer if you want them to suffer YOUR stink. So it is a bargain.


You cannot live alone, they cannot live alone -- you have to be together. Even if it stinks, at least there is the consolation that "I am not alone."


A man who knows how to be alone knows how to be meditative. Aloneness means meditation -- just relishing your own being, celebrating your own being.


Walt Whitman says: I celebrate myself, I sing myself. That is aloneness. This man Whitman is really a mystic, not just a poet. He should be counted with the ancient RISHIS of the Upanishads. America has not given birth to many great mystics; Whitman is really one of the most precious gifts of America to the world. He says: I celebrate myself, I sing myself. That's what a mystic has always been supposed to do, that's what a mystic's function is: to celebrate himself. But how will you celebrate? You will have to invite others. You will have to ask others to come and participate.


Meditation gives you the insight of your own inner treasure, and in love you share it. That's what I mean when I say that a sannyasin has to be ready to be alone -- so that one day he can be ready to love. Only a man who knows the beauties of solitude can love. But just a slight difference and you can miss the whole point.


Now, the difference between aloneness and loneliness is not much; as far as language is concerned there is no difference at all, they are synonyms. In the dictionaries you will find aloneness described as loneliness, loneliness as aloneness -- but that is only in the dictionaries, not in life itself. In life itself it is totally different.


Don't live through language, don't become too much obsessed with language, because language is only utilitarian. It can mislead you -- it misleads. It can't help it; it has been invented by people who know nothing. I am saying "aloneness" and your mind hears "loneliness." Once you translate aloneness as loneliness you are millions of miles away -- not only miles but millions of light-years away from me.


Potter saw a store with a sign reading: "Hans Schmidt's Chinese Laundry." Being curious he entered and was greeted by a Chinese who identified himself as Hans Schmidt.
"How come you have a name like that?" asked Potter.
"When I land in America I stand in immigration line behind German," explained the oriental. "When they ask German his name, he say, 'Hans Schmidt.' When official ask me my name I say, 'Sam Ting.'"

It is very easy to understand.


P.F.C. Perkins refused to go and fight in Korea. He was told that if he would not bear arms, the provost marshal would shoot him. "Are you a conscientious objector?" asked the first sergeant.
"I ain't objectin' to nothin'," said Perkins, "but I had the gonorrhea and the diarrhea both, and if this 'Korea' is anything like it -- go ahead and shoot!"


Maya, I said something, you heard totally something else.


A London chap sees a good-looking girl sitting alone at another table and says, "Would you care for a cigarette?"
She said, "Sorry, I don't smoke."


He waited for a few moments and then said, "Would you care for a drink?"
"Sorry, I don't drink."


He waited another ten minutes and asked, "Would you care to have dinner with me?"
"I am sorry," she replied, "I don't eat dinner."
"Well, for heaven's sake! If you don't smoke or drink or eat dinner, what in heaven's name do you do about sex?"
"Oh, along about six I have a cup of tea and a biscuit."


You change that word 'loneliness'; drop it completely from your mind. Learn what aloneness is -- and aloneness is a beautiful phenomenon, the most beautiful. Then my presence will not disturb your aloneness, my presence will enhance it. My presence, my remembrance, feeling me around yourself, engulfing you, will enhance it, will make it richer, will make it more crystal-clear. And not only my presence but the presence of my sannyasins will also be absolutely nondisturbing to aloneness.


In fact, aloneness cannot be disturbed at all. It is such a crystallized state of consciousness, nothing can distract you away from it, and everything helps to make it stronger. Have you watched this paradoxical phenomenon? For example, right now we are sitting here in silence... the chirping of the birds -- is it disturbing the silence or enriching it? The crow -- is he disturbing your silence, or helping and giving it a contrast? If you are really silent, then even in the marketplace you will be surprised that your silence deepens. If your silence is disturbed by the marketplace, that simply means it was not silence in the first place. It was just forced, cultivated, practiced, plastic -- it was not true.


If true silence is there, nothing can disturb it. Each disturbance comes to enhance it. It is like in a dark night you are walking on a street and a car passes by with full headlights on. For a moment you are dazed by the light, and then the car is gone by. Do you think the darkness is less than before? It is deeper than before, it is denser than before. The car and its headlights have not disturbed it at all; rather, they helped tremendously.


And this is how it is with aloneness: your aloneness will not be disturbed by the commune, and certainly not by me -- because I am not a noise. I am a melody, a music -- a music that cannot be heard by the ears but can only be heard by the heart.


It is good that you have started feeling me. It is good that you say, "Since I am a sannyasin I feel that I can't be lonely anymore, as You are always around."


Yes, you cannot be lonely anymore, but you will be more alone now that I am always with you. And aloneness is a precious treasure, the door to the kingdom of God. But forget that word 'loneliness'; it is ugly, it is pathological.


And a man who seeks friendship, love, companionship, out of loneliness is not going to find it. In fact, with whomsoever he will associate he will feel cheated and he will make the other feel cheated. He will feel tired and bored, and he will make the other feel tired and bored. He will feel sucked and he will make the other feel sucked, because both will be sucking on each other's energies. And they don't have much in the first place. Their streams are running very thin; they are like summer streams in a desertland. You cannot take any water out of them. But if you seek friendship and love and companionship out of aloneness, you are a flooded river, a river in the rains. You can share as much as you want. And the more you share, the more you will have.


This is the inner economics: the more you give, the more you get from God. Once you have known the knack of it you become a spendthrift, you are no longer a miser.


A spiritual person cannot be a miser, and a miser cannot be a spiritual person.

The fourth question:
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE NEW INDIAN GOVERNMENT OF PRIME MINISTER, CHOWDHRY CHARAN SINGH?</p>


Narendra, I have nothing to say about such rubbish things, but because you have asked, just to be polite to you and to your question, just to pay my respects for your question, I will tell you three stories.
First:


A man took a cab to the palace of the prime minister where he asked the driver to wait for him.


The driver refused saying he did not have time. "But you will wait for me," said the passenger. "I am the new prime minister."
"In that case," replied the driver, "I will wait -- you won't be in there long!"

And the second:

Work schedule of the Indian cabinet:
Monday: Conference with leading personalities.
Tuesday: Formation of new cabinet.
Wednesday:First meeting of the new cabinet.
Thursday: First announcements of new cabinet.
Friday: Withdrawal of announcements.
Saturday: Resignation of new cabinet.
Sunday: Holiday.
Monday: See above.

And the third:


It is an historical fact that Diogenes went all around the known world, lamp in hand, trying to find an honest man.
When he got to New Delhi, they stole his lamp.

The fifth question:
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
SEX AND DEATH SEEM TO BE THE MAIN ATTRACTIONS FOR ME. WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT THESE POLES TO HELP ME GO BEYOND?</p>


Saguna, sex and death are really one energy. Sex is one side of the coin, death the other side. Hence, anybody who is interested in sex is bound to be interested in death -- although he would like to avoid it. Anybody who is interested in death is bound to be interested in sex -- although he would like to avoid it. Why? -- because the popular conception is that sex and death are opposites. They are not. And because of this popular conception there have existed two kinds of cultures in the world: sex-oriented and death-oriented.


For example, India has remained for centuries a death-oriented culture. Because it is death-oriented it represses sex. Thinking that sex is against, it represses sex, it avoids sex; it pretends sex does not exist. You can talk about death with no problem, but you cannot talk about sex.


Just the other day a sannyasin had asked, "I was almost caught and imprisoned by the police because I was saying goodbye to my girlfriend and we kissed each other before the police station." It was very difficult to get rid of the police. They caught hold of them; they had to wait there for two hours. Somehow they persuaded them, apologized.


The sannyasin had asked, "I am puzzled. What wrong had I done there? I was saying goodbye to my girlfriend, she was leaving; we may see each other, we may not, because who knows about tomorrow? She will be away for six months, and who knows what is going to happen in these six months? So what was wrong with my kissing the girl and her kissing me, just a goodbye? Why is it objectionable? People are pissing on the streets and nobody objects!"


Now, that sannyasin does not know that since Morarji Desai became prime minister of this country pissing has become a holy thing. You can piss anywhere -- that is something sacred. In fact it is a sacred duty. Do as much as you can, because it is not pissing: it is the water of life. You are nourishing the earth; you are doing a great public service.

I have heard:


When Morarji Desai went to America, he was very much puzzled because in the parties, in the gatherings, in meetings, ladies would always keep to the other side of the room. Finally, he had to ask; he was curious why ladies wouldn't come close to him. He was informed, "We are sorry to say, but ladies are afraid that you may feel thirsty any time, and if you do your thing in public it will be embarrassing. So they keep to the other side. In case something like that happens, they can escape; at least they can turn their backs towards you."


In India, kissing is something like a sin, a crime. And in a public place, and that too before a police station! India is a death-oriented culture. You can talk about death; dead bodies of beggars can lie down by the side of the road and nobody will pay any attention. People will go on passing. It is accepted; death is accepted. In fact, not only accepted, but magnified -- to create fear in people so that they become religious.


If death is magnified, it really scares you. And out of fear you can start going to the temple, to the mosque, to the priest, because death is coming -- sooner or later you will have to die. Some arrangements have to be made, arrangements for that long journey. Who knows what will be needed? The priests pretend that they know.


And all the so-called saints of India will be talking about death. They will bring up the subject of death again and again and again. Their whole business depends on death; if people forget about death, people start forgetting about God, people start forgetting about temples, people start forgetting about saints. So saints cannot leave you alone; they will go on bringing the subject of death in your mind so they can go on keeping you trembling. Your fear is the secret of their trade: if you are afraid, you will remain slaves to them. If you become unafraid, then you will get out of their folds; then you cannot be exploited. Death is not bad for them, it is good. It helps their business.


But sex... that is a danger for them. India is not a sex-oriented country. Kissing, hugging, love, the very phenomenon of love, makes you more earthbound, makes you less afraid of death. Lovers are the people who are the least afraid of death. When you are in love you don't care about death. If it comes, it comes. So what? If you are in love, you can die smilingly. With a kiss on your lips you can say goodbye. You loved, you lived; there is nothing to repent. Your life has not been a wastage. You bloomed! You danced in the sun, in the wind, in the rain -- what more can you expect? Immense was the gift of life: love was its gift. You are grateful! Why should you go to the priest? You may go to the poet, you may go to the painter, you may go to the musician, but you will not go to the priest.


That's why you will be surprised: in my commune you will find musicians and you will find poets and you will find dancers and you will find singers, but you will not find any priest at all. The priest seems to be the center of all religious activity, and he is missing here, absolutely missing -- because my approach is that first you have to know what love is, you have to go deep into love. Dive as deep as possible into love!


If you can dive really deep into love you will be surprised that you have arrived at death. That's my own experience -- I am not propounding a theory, I am simply stating my own existential state, my own experience. I am only stating a fact: if you love deeply you are bound to come to the phenomenon of death. And when you come through love to death, even death is beautiful, because love makes everything beautiful. When you come through love to death, love glorifies death, love beautifies death; even death becomes a blessing. Those who have known love will know death as the ultimate in orgasm.


Now there are sex-oriented cultures, for example, America. There, death is taboo; you should not talk about death. If you start talking about death, people will avoid you. You will not be invited to parties anymore. You are not supposed to talk about death; death has not to be mentioned. Death is still one of the unmentionables. That's why even if somebody dies we have euphemisms, words to cover up the fact of death. We say, "He has passed away." We don't say, "He has died." We say, "He has become God's beloved." We don't know about God, we don't know what it means to become God's beloved, because we have never been beloved to anybody. Even if God wants to hug you, the police will catch hold of him. If he kisses you, even you will feel a little disturbed -- God? and kissing me? Is he really a God or just a fraud? How can God kiss? Kissing has never been thought a spiritual activity. Even in public places it is prohibited, and he is doing it on a universal plane -- not only public but universal, at the very center of the cosmos! But we have these ways of avoiding death; it has to be somehow avoided. The word itself is taboo.


It is because of Sigmund Freud that the taboo against the word 'sex' was removed -- the whole credit goes to this man. He is one of the greatest benefactors of humanity. Although he himself was not enlightened, he has done a great service, a pioneer work: he removed one great taboo. Now you can talk about sex without feeling ashamed, without feeling guilty.


Another Freud is needed -- a Freud who will remove the taboo against death. The West is sex-oriented, the East is death-oriented; hence in the East people are repressive of sex and in the West people are repressive of death. Both are wrong because sex and death are two sides of the same coin. If you repress one, you cannot experience the other in its totality, because to experience the one in its totality is to experience the other too, and both have to be experienced. Life is an opportunity to experience sex and death. If you experience these two and if you can come to your own authentic experience that they both are one, you have transcended. Knowing that both are one is transcendence.


Saguna, you ask me, "What can you say about these poles to help me go beyond?"


Experience both. But right now death is not there; right now you have to experience love, sex -- all the delicacies of love, intricacies of love, complexities of love, all the nuances of love. Right now, go deep into love, Saguna. And then when death comes you will be able to go deep into death too.


In fact, while making love, at the highest peak of orgasm a small death happens, because mind disappears, ego disappears, time disappears, as if the clock suddenly stops. You are transported into another world. You are not a body anymore, not a mind anymore, not an ego anymore... you are pure existence. That's the beauty of orgasm. To know orgasm is to experience a little bit of death, a small death.


First go deep into love so you can have a few tastes of death. Then death will come one day -- then go dancingly into it, because you know it is going to be the greatest orgasm that you have ever known, that it is going to be the deepest of love. And that's how one transcends -- knowing that both are one. That very knowing is transcendence.

The last question:
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
I WANT TO BECOME A SANNYASIN, BUT GRADUALLY. IS IT OKAY WITH YOU? OR IS A SUDDEN JUMP A NECESSITY?

Girish Chandra, you remind me of a story:</p>


During World War I, RAF Captain Bainsby shot down the German ace Baron von Ribstein over English territory. The next day Bainsby visited the baron in the hospital.
"Old chap," said the Britisher, "is there anything I can do for you?"
"Yes," replied Von Ribstein. "They are amputating my right arm. Would you drop it over Germany?" Captain Bainsby did as he was requested and a week later returned for a visit.
"My friend," said the baron, "they are taking off my right leg. Would you drop it over the fatherland?"


Bainsby fulfilled the request and went back to see his air nemesis once again.
"Captain," said Von Ribstein, "they are going to remove my left leg. Once more, can I get you to drop it behind the German lines?"
"Of course, old bean," replied Bainsby. "But I say, you are not trying to escape, are you?"

Enough for today.
			

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