Prabhaker

When meditating, just meditate; the rest then happens by itself. The way to God does not lie in our hands, So leave yourself in his. Surrender, surrender, surrender! Remember always, surrender! Sleeping or waking, remember! Surrender is the only door to God. Emptiness is the only boat that sails to him.

Mind is not your intelligence. Intelligence means the capability to respond to new situations. It comes from your being - mind is only a vehicle It may sound strange but this is a truth, that mind is not your intelligence. Mind can be intellectual, which is a very poor substitute for intelligence. Intellectuality is mechanical. You can become a great scholar, a great professor, a great philosopher – just playing with words which are all borrowed, arranging and rearranging thoughts, none of which are your own. The mind is a mechanism, it has no intelligence. The mind is a bio-computer. How can it have any intelligence? It has skill, but it has no intelligence; it has a functional utility, but it has no awareness. It is a robot. Not a single thought in the mind is ever original, it is always a repetition. Watch: whenever mind says something, see that it is again putting you into a routine. Try to do something new and the mind will have less grip on you. Intelligence is the capacity to respond moment-to-moment to life as it happens, not according to a program. Intelligence is: to relate with reality, unprepared. An intelligent person does not function out of his past experience; he functions in the present. He does not react, he responds. Hence he is always unpredictable; one can never be certain what he is going to do. A Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew were talking to a friend who said he had just been given six months to live. "What would you do," he asked the Catholic, "if your doctor gave you six months to live?" "Ah!" said the Catholic. "I would give all my belongings to the Church, take communion every Sunday, and say my 'Hail Marys' regularly." "And you?" he asked the Protestant. "I would sell up everything and go on a world cruise and have a great time!" "And you?" he said to the Jew. "Me? I would see another doctor." That is intelligence! Machines can't be creative.

It will be easier if we understand few about the interval between the giving up of one body and the taking of another. First, the fact is that the experiences of that interval are like dreams. Whenever one experiences something, at that moment the experience is that of a real happening. But when one recalls it in memory, it becomes like a dream; it is dreamlike because there is no use of the senses. Your feeling and your conviction that a happening is real come through your senses and your body. After the giving up of one body and before the taking of another we do not have senses. The body itself is not there, so whatever you might experience in that state is like a dream, as if you are seeing a dream. When we see dreams, we do not doubt their reality. This is very interesting. After some time we come to doubt its reality, but we never doubt it while in the dream. The dream seems real. That which is real sometimes causes us to doubt whether what is seen is real or not, but in a dream such a doubt is never created. Why? Because a dream will not tolerate the slightest doubt; otherwise it will immediately break. Just similar to this condition is the interval between two bodies. Whatever happens during that period seems absolutely real – so real that we can never know such a reality with our eyes and senses. The heavenly damsels they encounter are so real to them – real such as no woman seen through our senses can ever be. That is also why there is no end to the miseries of spirits. Their miseries befall them so realistically, such as they never do in real life. So what we call heaven and hell are just deep dream lives. The intensity of the fire burning in hell can never be found in real life, though it is a very inconsistent fire. In scriptures, there are descriptions of the fires of hell, into which you are thrown without being burned. But one is never aware of this inconsistency – that if you were thrown into an intense fire you would not be able to withstand the heat; yet you are not in any way being burned. This inconsistency, that ”I am being burned in the fire,” that the fire is terrible, that the burning is unbearable and yet ”I am not burned at all,” is realized only after one is out of this dreamlike experience. In the interval between two births, there are two types of souls. One type is of evil souls. For them it is difficult to find a womb for another birth. The other type consists of good souls. For such souls also it is difficult to find suitable wombs for taking another birth. Between these two are the majority of souls in which there is no fundamental difference, but only a difference of character, personality and mental make-up. They are born immediately. During that interval, there is no clear awareness of the duration of time. Because of this, Christianity has said that there is hell forever. This is said on the basis of the memory of those who have seen a very long dream. It was such a long dream that when they returned they had no memory of any relationship between this body and the previous one. That is why they said that hell is eternal and it is very difficult to get out of it. Good souls see happy dreams and evil souls see unhappy dreams. Only because of their dreams are they feeling unhappy and miserable. Heaven and hell are also memories of a dream period. Descriptions can be given. It is only on such descriptions that concepts of heaven and hell have been evolved by all religions. The descriptions are different not because the places are different, but because the mental states of the individuals recalling the experiences are different. Therefore, when Christianity describes heaven, it will be different from what Hinduism will describe, because descriptions depend on different states of consciousness. Actually, every person will bring back a different story. It is more or less like when we all sleep in the same room and then get up and describe our dreams. We have slept in the same room; we are at the same place, but our dreams will be different. Everything depends upon the person.

Enlightenment is only the beginning. There is infinity…to go far. Enlightenment is only a door, and then there is an unending existence, an unending evolution, expansion. The people who are unconscious, for them enlightenment is the goal; but they are not aware of the fact that enlightenment is only a door. Once you have reached it, then a new kind of pilgrimage starts. Up to this door you were an entity; beyond this door you will not be an entity, you will be just pure consciousness without a body, without a mind. You will be just a fragrance which will go on spreading all over existence. And the fragrance is luminous. It is full of awareness. It knows itself and it knows the whole existence around it – not as separate but part, a kind of at-one-ment. It is the universe and the universe is it; there is no division, no duality. Now the observer becomes the observed, the seer becomes the seen. He is both. Just as you enter beyond enlightenment into nothingness, there must be a possibility of coming out of nothingness back into form, back into existence—renewed, refreshed, luminous—on a totally different plane. In the East we have a conception of circles of existence and non-existence, just like day and night. Creation is followed by de-creation, everything goes into nothingness, just as day is followed by night and everything goes into darkness. And the period is going to be the same: as long as the creation is, so is the resting period going to be; and again there will be a creation of a higher order. And this will go on from eternity to eternity — creation, de-creation, creation, again de-creation—but each time the morning is more beautiful. Each dawn is more colorful, more alive; the birds are singing better, the flowers are bigger, with more fragrance. And the East has a tremendous courage of accepting the idea that this will go on forever and forever. There has never been any beginning, and there will be no end. It can be out of body experience near death, death means connection between body and consciousness is broken, you can not enter in same body again after death, it no longer remains suitable.

The separation of the body and the consciousness is death. Because there is this separation, it is meaningless to call it death -- it is merely a loosening, a breaking of a connection. It is nothing more than changing clothes. So, one who dies with awareness never really dies, hence the question of death never arises for him. He won't even call death an illusion. He won't even say who dies and who does not die. He will simply state that what we called life up to yesterday was merely an association. That association has broken. Now a new life has begun which, in the former sense, is not an association. Perhaps it is a new connection, a new journey. When a man dies in perfect awareness, his next birth will be perfectly aware. If you can die in this life fully aware, not becoming unconscious when you die; you remain perfectly conscious, you see every phase of death, you hear every step and you remain perfectly aware that the body is dying; the mind is disappearing and you remain perfectly aware; then suddenly you see that you are not in the body and consciousness has left the body. You can see the dead body lying there and you are floating around the body. Whatsoever happens in death will happen in birth because death is nothing but death on this side -- on that side it is birth. It is the same door. If you enter the door consciously, you will get out of the door consciously. Death is this side of the door, birth is that side of the door. Your next life will have a totally different flavor. And a person can be born only once after he has died consciously -- only one more life. So the first and the most important thing in life is to prepare for death. And what is the way to prepare for death? Moment-to-moment awareness is the way... If you can remain moment to moment aware, you will become perfectly clear that there is something in you which is beyond death, which cannot be burned, cannot be destroyed, which is indestructible. And to know that rock of indestructibility within you is the beginning of a new life. When we die unconsciously we get reborn according to our tendencies/karma. When consciousness has dawned you act for the first time, you don’t react and that action is beyond the law of karma. The law of karma applies only to the unconscious being. The man of awareness has absolute freedom. No law binds him, no law defines him. He’s as vast as the sky, he’s as infinite as the sky. His freedom is absolute. If you are awakened, you have transcended your Karma.

Avoiding pleasure is not a virtue, remain alert , conscious in pleasures will help you to grow. Eating your delicious food in right quantity, consciously is better that stuffing too much with least delicious food unconsciously.

Death can bring full enlightenment , if a person dies consciously. Tibetans have done much work on art of dying consciously. The Bardo teachings are Tibet’s greatest contribution to humanity. There is no need to believe anything, as your meditation will ripen, you will know that entering into meditation is an experience of death, before death.

But people die unconsciously. When you die, you will not know, you will be unconscious – you will miss the opportunity of knowing death. Your life here should be the days of meditation, love, compassion, friendliness, playfulness, laughter; and if you can do that, you will be rewarded by a conscious death. That is the reward of a conscious life. An unconscious life comes to die unconsciously. You cannot manage to die consciously without a long, meditative, conscious life. Only a conscious life is rewarded with conscious death — it is a reward, but only to the conscious man.To the un conscious man, it is the end to all his efforts, ambitions, desires.There is only darkness ahead,not a single light and no possibilities left.Death simply takes away the whole future. Naturally, the unconscious man is immensely afraid and deeply trembling, knowing that death is coming closer every day.Since your birth, the only thing that has been certain is death;everything else is uncertain and accidental.Only death is not accidental; it is an absolute certainty. There is no way to avoid it or dodge it. Only a meditator is capable of passing through death as if it is a joke. He can pass through it laughing and singing, because he knows that fire cannot burn him and death cannot destroy him. There is no sword that can cut him. He belongs to eternal life. Once a small glimpse of eternity is achieved, no life can be destroyed by anything. It can be moved from one form to another, but death cannot do more than that — it is just the changing of the house. To the non-meditator, death is the end, to the meditator, death is a beginning, freed from the old rotten body, the old mind. It is a resurrection; every death is a resurrection. But if you don’t know it, you will die unconsciously without experiencing the beauty of resurrection. If you can die consciously, death is only a door into a new life on a higher plane. But to die consciously, one has to live consciously.

Don’t try to escape in any way from anything – work or family. One is to escape from nowhere – because the escapist mind can become peaceful, but it cannot become blissful; that’s the trouble. An escapist mind can become peaceful, because if you don’t work, if you avoid every situation where trouble can arise, where there is challenge, conflict, competition, then of course, naturally you become peaceful. But that peace is bogus and not worth having. The slightest disturbance, and it will be disturbed. I would like a peace that is attained amidst flames, a peace which is attained in the marketplace; a peace that is attained where there is no possibility of attaining it. Then you attain to an integration; a crystallization comes to you. Of course the way is long and hard, but the short-cut is just an escape.

‘I’m not here to take your beatings, Mohandas’ Extracted from The Secret Diary of Kasturba All my life I had looked upon the cleaning of toilet pots as the lowliest of jobs; a task that condemned those who did it as subhumans, unfit to even reside inside the city limits where decent folks lived. I knew that even their shadows were unclean and deemed you ritually impure if they were to fall upon you. These wretched cleaners were allowed into our homes only in the thick of the night, so that no one set sight on their ill-omened faces while they went about their jobs of removing night soil from the homes of the upper castes. And now Mohandas tells me to defile myself and clean my own toilet and if need be, other’s toilets as well! How dare he? I felt my unborn child kick hard at the walls of my womb. Another wave of nausea hit my throat and I ran out into the garden for a breath of fresh air. A rancid stench persisted in my breath and my heart raced uncontrollably. I sat on a low chair facing the sea, till the melody of the rising and falling waves lulled me to sleep. https://www.telegraphindia.com/1161002/jsp/7days/story_111346.jsp

Were you expecting such bitter truths in his biography ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harilal_Gandhi https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/aug/10/india http://europe.newsweek.com/ghandi-father-troubled-son-99519?rm=eu

Meditation, as such, needs no technique at all. But techniques are needed to remove the obstacles in the way of meditation. So it has to be understood very clearly: meditation itself needs no techniques, it is a simple understanding, an alertness, an awareness. Neither alertness is a technique nor is awareness a technique. But on the way to being alert, there are so many obstacles. For centuries man has been gathering those obstacles — they need to be removed. Meditation itself cannot remove them, certain techniques are needed to remove them. So the work of the techniques is just to prepare the ground, is just to prepare the way, the passage. The techniques in themselves are not meditation. If you stop at the technique, you have missed the point. J. Krishnamurti was insisting his whole life that there is no technique for meditation. And the total result was not that millions of people attained to meditation; the total result was that millions of people became convinced that no technique is needed for meditation. But they forgot all about what they were going to do with the obstructions, the hindrances. So they remained intellectually convinced that no technique is needed. No technique is needed at all as far as meditation is concerned. But what are you going to do with your mind? Your mind will create a thousand and one difficulties. Those techniques are needed to remove the mind from the way, to create a space in which the mind becomes quiet, silent, almost absent. Then meditation happens on its own accord. Meditation is your nature, is your very potential. It is another name of alertness. Meditation is simply awareness without any effort, an effortless alertness; it does not need any technique. But your mind is so full of thoughts, so full of dreams, so much of the past, so much of the future ¯ it is not here now, and awareness has to be here now. The techniques are needed to help you to cut your roots from the past, to cut your dreams from the future, and to keep you in this moment as if only this moment exists. Then there is no need of any technique. Life is a complicated affair. There is good news, and there is bad news. The good news is that there is no need of any technique; but the bad news is, without any technique you are not going to get it.

Mahatma Gandhi. He observed, cultivated non-violence; but I have looked deeply into his life and he is one of the most violent men this century has known. But his violence is very polished; his violence is so sophisticated that it looks almost like non-violence. His eldest son, Haridas, escaped. Seeing the situation — "This man is going to destroy our lives completely" — he escaped, reached a relative’s family and told the whole story, what was happening, and that "I want to go to school." Just see the situation: the boy has to escape from the home to get into school. Boys escape from school, not to go there… and Haridas had to leave his home and ask some uncle, some faraway relative, "Please help me. At least I would like to be a matriculate; then I will see later on. But up to matriculation, that much education is absolutely necessary." Gandhi was very angry. The prophet of nonviolence was angry, violently angry. What he said was, "Now this home is closed for Haridas. He should not be allowed in and nobody from my family should meet with him. Even his mother, his brothers, his sisters — nobody should see him and meet him. If anybody meets with him, he also goes with him. He has failed me." You impose such stupid ideas…. Now, what Haridas was doing was perfectly right. This man had to be disobeyed. The other children did not escape; they were weaklings. Haridas had some guts. And he showed later on that he did have some guts. Gandhi used to say, "All religions are one." That was also a political gimmick: "All religions are one — Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jaina, Buddhist, Sikh… all religions are one." But the basic politics was to capture all these people and their votes, and to keep the whole of India undivided, so that Gandhi’s party ruled over the whole of India, not only a part of India. In his prayer meetings every morning the Koran was recited, The Bible was read, and other holy books were also included. Just a few pieces read from The Bible, a few pieces read from the Torah, a few pieces read from the Koran…. And there too was great cunningness, because I have looked into those pieces that were read: they were the pieces which were synonymous with the Gita. Only those pieces were chosen from The Bible that were synonymous with Krishna, because Gandhi used to call the Gita his mother. He never called the Koran "my father" or The Bible "my uncle" at least… only the Gita his mother. And all these fragments that he had chosen were deceptive. They were simply translations, as if they were the same message so there was no problem. All that was against the Gita — or different from the Gita, not even against it — was not chosen. So he was deceiving Mohammedans, he was deceiving Christians, he was deceiving Jainas, he was deceiving Buddhists, he was deceiving Sikhs, everybody. And they all thought that this man is a super-sage — that is the meaning of mahatma: the great soul. As if souls are also small or great! Souls are simply souls, neither small nor great. But the great soul, mahatma, because he was so liberal, unprejudiced… and he was full of prejudice. Haridas knew it. So what he did was, he converted himself to Mohammedanism. He did well. I appreciate him. The doors of the home were closed. Gandhi had abandoned him, declared, "He is no longer my son. I am no longer his father. He has utterly failed me. If he had died it would have been better." And what sin had he committed? He had gone to school! But he was really an intelligent boy. As he left the school, he turned to Mohammedanism. And Mohammedans rejoiced. They enjoyed the idea that Gandhi’s eldest son found shelter in Mohammedanism. They started calling him "Mahatma Abdullah Gandhi." They kept ‘Mahatma’ and ‘Gandhi’ so people remembered who he was, and changed ‘Haridas’ into ‘Abdullah’ — which means literally ‘Haridas’. abd’allah — servant of God, and that is exactly the meaning of haridas: servant of God. It is the Arabic translation of Haridas, so it was exactly the same. But Gandhi was so shocked! You can imagine, if just his son’s going to school was enough for Gandhi to abandon him as a son, now he has become a Mohammedan! Gandhi wept. Now, this is the man who says all the religions are the same. So what is the difference? Whether he is Hindu or Mohammedan — what difference does it make? And even his name was nothing but an Arabic translation of the Sanskrit name — an exact translation. Just by coincidence, there was a meeting in Bombay. Just by coincidence, Gandhi was going into the same train from which Haridas was getting out. Kasturba, after all, was a mother; she wanted at least to have a look at her son. She knew that her husband wouldn’t allow them to talk, but Gandhi didn’t allow her even to see him. He said, "Remember, don’t look at him. He is dead for us. He has slapped me on my face by becoming a Mohammedan." He forgot all that synthesis of all the religions… and still the prayer continued the same way every day.

Postures in which you stay for longer periods comfortably. Meher Baba (Merwan Sheriar Irani was born in 1894 in Pune, India to Irani Zoroastrian parents.) for years together he was staring just at the ceiling of his room. For years together he was just lying dead on the floor, staring at the ceiling without moving an eyelash, without moving his eyes. He would lie down for hours together, just staring, not doing anything. Meher Baba stared and stared and stared. By and by thoughts ceased, movement ceased, and he became just a consciousness, he became just a staring.

I was not talking about Buddhism, I was talking about Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama).

Buddha had chosen: he had chosen to escape from the world, he had chosen to leave his wife and child and old father, he had chosen to run away instead of encountering the world and facing the reality. It was a clear-cut choice against the world, against the material, in favor of the spiritual. A man of totality has nothing to choose. His life is a life of choicelessness. Nothing to choose, nothing to discard; they are two sides of the same coin. If you choose something, you will have to discard something. Buddha cannot laugh, cannot dance, cannot sing, cannot love. Now what kind of life will it be? Hollow! Where Buddha Ends Krishna Begins. Krishna is utterly incomparable, he is so unique. Firstly, his uniqueness lies in the fact that although Krishna happened in the ancient past he belongs to the future, is really of the future. Man has yet to grow to that height where he can be a contemporary of Krishna's.

Patanjali’s Yoga has been very misunderstood, misinterpreted. Patanjali is not a gymnast, but Yoga looks like it is a gymnastics of the body. Patanjali is not against the body. He is not a teacher to teach you contortions of the body. He teaches you the grace of the body, because he knows only in a graceful body a graceful mind exists; and only in a graceful mind does a graceful self becomes possible; and only in a graceful self, the divine. Step by step, deeper and higher grace has to be attained. Grace of the body is what he calls asan, posture. He’s not a masochist. He is not teaching you to torture your body. He is not a bit against the body. How can he be? He knows the body is going to be the very foundation-stone. He knows if you miss the body, if you don’t train the body, then higher training will not be possible. The body is just like a musical instrument. It has to be rightly tuned; only then will the higher music arise out of it. If the very instrument is somehow not in right shape and order, then how can you imagine, hope, that the great harmony will arise out of it? Only discordance will arise. Body is a veena, a musical instrument. The posture should be steady and should be very, very blissful, comfortable. So never try to distort your body, and never try to achieve postures which are uncomfortable. For the Westerners, sitting on the ground, sitting in padmasan, lotus posture, is difficult; their bodies have not been trained for it. There is no need to bother about it. Patanjali will not force that posture on you. In the East people are sitting from their very birth, small children sitting on the ground. In the West, in all cold countries, chairs are needed; the ground is too cold. But there is no need to be worried about it. If you look at Patanjali’s definition, what a posture is, you will understand: it should be steady and comfortable. If you can be steady and comfortable in a chair, it is perfectly okay – no need to try a lotus posture and force your body unnecessarily. In fact, if a Western person tries to attain to lotus posture it takes six months to force the body; and it is a torture. There is no need.

No, Mystics in the east have categorized the evolution of consciousness is in seven centers. Kundalini awakening belong to the fourth center, the heart. It is one of the most important centers, because it is exactly in the middle. Three centers are below it and three centers are above it. With the fourth, your journey becomes certain; it can be guaranteed that you will reach the seventh. Before the fourth, there is a possibility you may go astray. There are three centers above the heart. One is in your throat, which is the center of creativity; one is between your two eyebrows, exactly in the middle, which is called the third eye. Just as you have two eyes to know the outside world… the third eye is only a metaphor, but the experience is knowing oneself, seeing oneself. The last center is sahasrara, the seventh; that is at the top of your head. As consciousness goes on moving upwards, first you know yourself, and in the second step you know the whole universe; you know the whole and yourself as part of it. In the old language, the seventh is “knowing God,” the sixth is “knowing yourself,” the fifth is “being creative,” and the fourth is “being loving, sharing and knowing others.” The first center is the sex center, which is for reproduction — so that life continues. Just above it… the sex energy can be moved upwards, and it is a great experience; for the first time you find yourself self-sufficient. Sex always needs the other. The second center is the center of contentment, self- sufficiency: you are enough unto yourself. At the third center you start exploring — who are you? who is this self-sufficient being? These centers are all significant…. The moment you find who you are, the fourth center opens and you find you are love. Before the fourth the journey has started, but there is a possibility you may not be able to complete it. You can go astray. For example, finding yourself self-sufficient, contented, you can remain there; there is no need to do anything anymore. You may not even ask the question, “Who am I?” The sufficiency is so much that all questions disappear. The third eye center is the center of willpower. People whose agya chakra is not activated in this life will remain slaves in thousands of ways. Without this center there is no freedom. We know about political and economic freedom, but these freedoms are not real – because a person who has no willpower, whose agya chakra is not activated, will always remain a slave in one way or another. He may become free from one slavery but will become a slave to something else. He does not have a center of will to make him an owner of anything, he does not have anything like will. He does not have the power to command himself; his body and senses command him. If his stomach says it is hungry, he is hungry. If his body says it is sick, he becomes sick. If his sex center says he needs sex, the sexual desire arises. If his body says it has become old, he becomes old. The body commands and he obeys. But as soon as this center of willpower becomes active, the body stops giving orders and instead it starts to obey; the whole arrangement is reversed. If such a person asks his blood to stop flowing, it will; if he asks his heart to stop beating, it will. He can ask his pulse to stop throbbing and it will. Such a person becomes the master of his body, mind and senses. But without the activation of the agya chakra, he cannot be. The more you remember this center, the more you become the master of yourself. If you want to direct the energy to higher levels, then the direction of sex energy will have to be reversed. The complete direction of the flow has to be changed. You have to make an about turn, and shift your entire attention to an upward direction. There must be an upward vertical movement – and this will be a great moral spiritual discipline. At every step there will be confrontation and a need for sacrifices. You will have to lose all that is inferior, lower, to gain that which is immense and sublime. This price has to be paid.

The modern Indian is not Indian at all. It is very difficult to find Indians in India, almost impossible. Only once in a while do I come across an Indian. Sometimes it happens that people who are coming from faraway countries are far more Indian than the so-called Indians. Three hundred years of Western domination and Western education have made the Indian mind completely disoriented. The modern Indian is more materialistic than the people of any other country. Yes, there have been a few spiritual people in India, as there have been everywhere. To be an Indian has nothing to do with geography, it has something to do with an inner approach towards reality. Modern India has forgotten the ways of the Buddha, and has forgotten how to live with Buddhas.

Without ego there is no extreme, it cannot exist; extreme exists as an ego effort. Ego always goes for extremes, chooses extremes. It jumps from one extreme to the other. The ego never stays in the middle. It cannot afford to - because to remain in the middle will be its death. Meditate, become more sensitive, and take it as a criterion that you will go on becoming more and more detached. If you feel that attachment is growing, then you are erring somewhere in your meditation. These are the criteria. And to me, attachment cannot be destroyed and detachment cannot be practiced. You can only practice meditation – and detachment will follow as a consequence, as a by-product. So remember that if you feel that through meditation you have become more sensitive, then automatically you will become less attached, more detached. Because you will be more grounded in yourself, you will be more centered in yourself, you will not use somebody else as your center. What does attachment mean? Attachment means that you are using someone else as your center of being. That means the center of being has been transferred. If you say that you cannot live without this or that, then your soul is not within you. Then you are not existing as an independent unit, your center has moved somewhere else. This movement of the center from yourself to something else, to the other, is attachment. If you are sensitive, you will feel the other, but the other will not become the center of your life. If you get attached, that is a clear symptom that the sensitivity is not because of awareness. Really, it is not sensitivity at all. It may be sentimentalism: that is a totally different thing. You can be sentimental: you can cry and weep over small things, you can be touched, and a storm can be created very easily within you – but that is sentimentalism, not sensitivity.

The Master’s presence can be felt only by those people whose hearts are opened towards him, those who are connected through surrender. The Master is a presence; the Master is not a doer. The real Master never does a thing but his presence functions as a catalytic agent. Much happens through his non-doing. That is the paradox of the existence of a Master: without doing, much happens. So the whole thing depends really on the disciple: if he is receptive things start happening; if he is not receptive nothing happens. When nothing happens he throws the responsibility on the Master. The Master cannot do anything against you. In fact he cannot do anything because it is not a question of doing at all; it is simply a question of receiving, of taking it in. In the East for thousands of years this special phenomenon has been in existence: the disciple sits by the side of the Master, just imbibing. Just being with him is enough.

From time to time, unconscious emotions – anger, fear, hate, jealousy, greed, lust, cowardice, etc, run our life. Or it might be more appropriate to say they ruin our life. They are unconscious because they take possession of us often for no rational reason, or with a strength that is out of proportion to the situation that provoked them. For sex, for anger, for greed, unawareness is a basic requirement. If you repress sex you will become angry; the whole energy that was becoming sex will become anger. If you repress anger too you will become greedy; the whole energy that was becoming anger will become greedy. If you repress greed too, arises ego, pride. That’s why you will find the most crystallized egos in the monks and the nuns. You will not find such crystallized egos anywhere else. The more a person renounces, the more he represses, the more egoistic he becomes. They have done impossible things!” Now a great ‘I’ arises, the ego becomes strengthened. The transformation can happen only if first you accept your natural being. Whatsoever is natural is good. Yes, more is possible, but the more will be possible only if you accept your nature with totality — if you welcome it, if you have no guilt about it. To be guilty, to feel guilty, is to be irreligious. In the past you have been told just the opposite: Feel guilty and you are religious. I say to you: Feel guilty and you will never be religious. Drop all guilt! A non-repressed person becomes a non-egoist; he cannot carry the ego. There is no prop to support it. He becomes humble, he becomes simple, he becomes ordinary, he has no claim — he knows he is nothing.

It is a growth: a growth of your total living, out of your total living. Meditation is not something that can be added to you as you are. It can come to you only through a basic transformation, a mutation. It is a flowering, a growth. Growth is always out of the total; it is not an addition. You must grow toward meditation. This total flowering of the personality must be understood correctly. Otherwise one can play games with oneself; one can occupy oneself with mental tricks. And there are so many tricks! Not only can you be fooled by them, not only will you not gain anything, but in a real sense you will be harmed. The very attitude that there is some trick to meditation – to conceive of meditation in terms of method – is basically wrong. And when one begins to play with mental tricks, the very quality of the mind begins to deteriorate. Meditation comes to you. It always comes; you cannot bring it. But one has to be in search of it, because only when you are in search will you be open to it, vulnerable to it. You are a host to it. Meditation is a guest. You can invite it and wait for it. It comes to everybody who is ready, who is open and seeking.

People here are either making their career or working to earn money. They live in a society where they have to do mental work, they have to use their mind a lot to adjust in society. They can't afford to spend all their time and energy to become a mystic on a long and arduous journey.

Yoga’s emphasis on celibacy is not because it is against sex: it is simply making a different use of it, a positive use of sex energy. So yoga works on energy directly, it does not worry about awareness. It says that as the energy increases, you will start becoming more aware. Yoga means that now there is no hope, now there is no future, now there are no desires. So many become interested, but very few enter because your interest may be just because of your mind. Total despair is needed.Become totally hopeless – no future, no hope. Difficult. Needs courage to face the real. But such a moment comes to everyone, some time or other. A moment comes to every human being when he feels total hopelessness. Absolute meaninglessness happens to him. When he becomes aware that whatsoever he is doing is useless, wheresoever he is going, he is going to nowhere, all life is meaningless – suddenly hopes drop, future drops, and for the first time you are in tune with the present, for the first time you are face to face with reality. Unless this moment comes to you... You can go on doing asanas, postures; that is not yoga. Yoga is an inward turning. It is a total about-turn. When you are not moving into the future, not moving toward the past, then you start moving within yourself – because your being is here and now, it is not in the future. You are present here and now, you can enter this reality. Most of the Indians are hypocrites. It is very difficult to repress sexual energy for a person who is living a life in which he is well adjusted in society. If you repress sex you will become angry; the whole energy that was becoming sex will become anger. And it is better to be sexual than to be angry. In sex at least there is something of love; in anger there is only pure violence and nothing else. If sex is repressed, the person becomes violent — either to others he will be violent, or to himself. These are the two possibilities: either he will become a sadist and will torture others, or he will become a masochist and will torture himself. But torture he will. You repress sex, anger bubbles up; you repress anger.The moment you repress anger you become greedy. Mahavira taught non-violence, and the result has been that all the followers of Mahavira became the most greedy people in the world. Repression is not the way: transformation is the way. Don’t repress anything. If sexuality is there, don’t repress it otherwise you will create a new complexity — which will be more difficult to tackle. And if you repress anger, greed is even more difficult then, and if you repress greed, arises ego, pride, which is the most difficult thing to drop. Meditation is way of transforming sexual energy.