Surrender and I Will Transform You

The first question:

Question 1:

There is no role as such. The role is possible only if the master exists as a person. If he exists as somebody, then he can play a role. Really, our personality consists of nothing but roles. Your personality is the many roles you go on playing and those roles are your faces. In the morning you have a different face, a different role to play; in the office you have a different face; back home again you change your face. You go on changing the whole day, moment to moment. Whenever you have to play a role, you create a face, you become an actor.

The master is one who has stopped playing roles. He is not playing anything, he is not doing anything. Really, he has come to understand that the doer is the total. The individual is in illusion if he thinks that he is doing something. The master cannot think that he is helping the disciple or that he is endeavoring for his transformation. All this happens of course: the transformation happens, the disciple changes, is reborn, but this is not something done on the part of the master.

The master has become a nobody. He exists not as a presence but as an absence. Within him there is no mind, within him there is no ego, within him there is no center. The center has been given back to the divine; the ego has been surrendered. He has become a vehicle, he has become a passage - just a flute. Now the divine sings through it. Now no song belongs to the master - nothing. How can he play a role? How can he endeavor? How can he do something?

All these words - do, role, endeavor, help - are egocentric. They mean that the master is DOING something. No, the master cannot do anything. He is not, but things HAPPEN around him. I am not saying that the disciple will not be transformed: he WILL be transformed but he can only be transformed through a master who is not doing anything. If the master is doing something, the disciple cannot be transformed. The very effort on the part of the master shows that the master is not there yet. There is no question of effort.

The master exists as an absence, as a nobody. And this very fact becomes a tremendous force.

This very fact, this existence of a void, creates mysterious happenings around it. But the master is not doing them. Remember, the river is flowing toward the sea but the river is not really flowing, not doing anything. This flow is just nature. It is natural for the river to flow. There is no effort on the river's part. The tree is growing; the tree is not doing anything - there is no effort, no center, no ego to do. It is HAPPENING.

Life is a happening, and a man becomes a master when he has come to realize this. The total is doing, and we are unnecessarily bothered and we unnecessarily interfere and we unnecessarily bring in our own illusory centers - because no individual can have any center.

One of the greatest Christian mystics, Meister Eckhart, has said that only God can say 'I'. No individual can really say 'I' because the 'I belongs to the total. My hand cannot say 'I' because the I belongs to me. My leg cannot say 'I' because the leg belongs to me and the I belongs to me.

My leg, my hand, my eyes, they cannot assert 'I' because they are fragments, parts of a great unity.

In the same way you are not an entity in yourself, you are just part of a great organic whole. You are just a fragment, an atomic cell in it. You cannot say 'I'.

That is why all the religions say that the I is the only barrier because the I is the most fallacious thing possible. It cannot belong to you. You do not know why you are born, you do not know who forces you into life. No one asked you, no one asked about your choice. You simply find that one day you are alive. Then who goes on breathing within you? You do not know.

Then suddenly one day you are no more. No one asked you. It is not your decision to be born and to die. But something happens and goes on happening. Something happens and you are born, and something happens... you are no more, you disappear again. How can you say 'I'? No decision of yours has been used - NO DECISION! The I can belong only to the divine.

Then there is a problem and the problem is this: if the master cannot help, if the master cannot do, how can the master promise? Now someone is showing me the wall hanging (OSHO INDICATES THE BLUE BANNER SUSPENDED BEHIND HIM ON THE PODIUM) which states, "I have come not to teach, but to awaken. Surrender and I will transform you. This is my promise."

Then how can I promise you? Then how can I say that I will transform you? Really, this is a trick. I am not going to transform you - I am no more there! But if you surrender you will be transformed.

If you surrender you WILL be transformed - not that I will transform you, the very surrender brings you to the point where transformation happens. And when it has happened, then you will know and you will laugh because it has been a great joke...!

I cannot do anything. The very concept of doing is irrelevant: I am no more there. But you will not understand that language. You can understand only the language of the I; hence, I have said, "I will transform you." And it is true that you will be transformed. It is true that once you surrender there is no barrier for your transformation: you will be reborn. And I am not doing anything; I cannot do anything. Nothing is needed to transform you. You are enough.

But you have lost confidence and this trick is just to give you your confidence back. You have forgotten your own possibility. You have forgotten who exists within you; that tremendous energy is hidden within you, you have forgotten. Someone else is needed to tell you. You have the treasure and you have forgotten it. I cannot give you the treasure: YOU ARE the treasure! I can simply show it to you, just give you an indication.

When Jesus says, "I will deliver you, I will liberate you," or Buddha says, "I am your path, your way," when Krishna says to Arjuna, "Surrender to me and I will do everything for you," these are all tricks to help those who have forgotten themselves. But the promise is true because it happens. Not that someone helps you - your own energy comes into being, your own energy becomes vital, your own sources are tapped, your own being becomes active.

But you cannot understand the language of no-I. Hence, I have spoken in terms of I: "I have come not to teach but to awaken." No one has come, no one can come. We have always been here, you and I. I cannot come, I cannot go. There is nowhere to go and nowhere to come from. We have been in existence, we have existed always. And who am I to teach you or awaken you? But you have forgotten your own potentiality, your own possibility and some trick is needed to throw you back to yourself.

And remember, I am not doing this because I have much compassion for you. No, I have nothing of the sort. I have no compassion at all for you. You do not need compassion. You are not slaves, you are not poor, you are not beggars. You are divine in your own right; you are as divine as any Krishna or any Buddha. Nothing is lacking there. Everything is present and you are fast asleep. And when I speak or when I teach or when I appear to do something, it is not that I feel compassion for you - no! This is just how it happens within me to play this.

This again is just a play. I enjoy doing it; you need not be grateful toward me. I enjoy it. You need not be at all in any debt toward me. I enjoy it, I love it! It is just as if a flower flowers and you pass nearby and the flower gives you a gift of its perfume. Just like that something has flowered within me and you pass near me and I present you a gift. If you take it I am grateful toward you; if you refuse it, you are your own master.

Really, if this attitude can penetrate deep within you, then there is no master and no disciple. Then relationship disappears. It must disappear! Only when there is no master and no disciple and the relationship disappears does the divine start functioning.

When I am the master and you are the disciple, a duality exists. And there are so-called masters who go on forcing upon you that you are the disciple and they are the masters, that they are higher and you are lower, and they create a hierarchy. Really, they create a politics around it. That type of master will not be of much help. They may be harmful, because they are not giving you that which already belongs to you. They are again creating an illusion.

What I am doing here is not creating a relationship, really. Rather, on the contrary, I am trying to dissolve the relationship. If we can be here without thinking in terms of master and disciple, if we can just be here, present, alert, alive, the thing will happen. Wife and husband: it is a relationship.

Father and son: it is a relationship. Master and disciple? - it is not a relationship at all. It only appears so but it is not a relationship because the whole effort is to dissolve duality, and relationship exists in duality.

So a master is really trying not to be a master, and the master is trying for you not to be a disciple.

The whole effort is to bring you to a point where relationship disappears, where there are not two but simply a presence. And when there is no relationship but you are alert and I am alert... remember, if you are alert and I am alert, then I am not and you are not, and in that alertness the I is dissolved and the flames of two lamps become one. Only in that oneness does the divine start working.

The divine works only in oneness; that is his mode of function. The more divided you are, the less he can function; the more divided you are, the farther you move away from the divine. That is what I have meant.

So two things about this question: one, the master is not doing anything, not playing any role. He is not making any endeavor. It is not in any way an effort on his part. He has become alert, awakened, and now something goes flowing through him. This flow is riverlike. Whenever this river moves it will make people more alert. It is not that there is any effort on its part: this is its nature. So a master is by nature a master, not by any effort. Wheresoever he moves he will be a master.

I remember one story about an Egyptian mystic, Dhun-Nun. Dhun-Nun always moved hidden in the garb of a beggar, and he had even emperors as his disciples. One disciple asked him, one very rich disciple, "Why do you move as a beggar? Why do you mix with the common masses and crowds?

This is not good, because you are a great master."

Dhun-Nun is reported to have said, "A master is by his nature a master, so wherever he moves he is a master - WHEREVER; it makes no difference. If he is standing in a crowd, there also he is a master. He is the master and he is functioning and the crowd is being transformed by his presence, just by his presence."

It is said that in the Koran Mohammed says that no master should go to a rich man's house. If the rich man wants to meet him, he should go to the master. Then one Sufi mystic, Bayazid, who was going to rich men's houses and to the emperor's palace to teach there, was asked, "Why are you going against the prophet? Mohammed says that no master should go to a rich man's house. There is no need. If the rich man desires, then he should come to the master's feet. But you are moving even to the palace, so what is the matter? Are you against the prophet, or don't you believe in the saying?"

Bayazid said, "You don't know the real thing. Mohammed is right, and I follow his teachings and his saying. But whether the master goes to an emperor's house or an emperor comes to the master's hut, it is always the master who changes the other. It makes no difference."

Basically, it is always the master to whom YOU come. Whether the master goes to the palace or the emperor comes to the master's hut, it makes no difference. It is always the emperor who is coming to the master because he is to be changed. HE will be changed.

Bayazid says that it is the nature of the master to change others; it is not an effort. Nothing is being done by the master, simply his presence.... And if he appears to do something, that appearance is just a trick because you cannot understand the language of nondoing. You can only understand the language of effort. So he creates a language for you. Even if you cannot understand his language, he can understand your language very well. Even if you cannot understand him, he can understand you very well.

So he gives whatsoever you can understand and by and by your understanding grows. And one day when you really come to the point when you can understand a master, you will start laughing - because he has not done anything! But you will feel grateful in that moment, because without doing anything he has totally transformed you.

Really, if something is done it is a violence. If in transforming you, changing you, I do something, it is going to be aggressive, it is going to be violence. Every effort is violent. But if just by my presence, just by your being around me, something starts happening in you and I am not doing anything, only then is it love, it is not violence.

And a very peculiar phenomenon happens: if someone tries to change you, you will resist him - because instinctively you become aware of the violence, instinctively you will start defending yourself. If someone tries to change you and make you good, religious, moral, and all that nonsense, you will resist. Your ego will be hurt, and you will start defying him. You will start doing things which you never meant to do, just to defy him.

Good fathers are the cause of bad generations. So-called saints and sages are the cause of the degeneration, of the immorality, that exists all over the world - because they go on forcing. And whenever someone forces you, even if he is forcing you toward heaven, you will refuse. And it is good to refuse, because he is killing you, your spirit. If you are forced into heaven you will be a dead man there. It is better to go to hell but by one's own choice. You will at least be free. You will at least be a soul.

A real master never forces anything upon you, not in the least, not even indirectly - no! Because if a master cannot know the working of the mind, then who will know? If he cannot understand this working of the human mind and consciousness - that it becomes rebellious and resistant if you force something upon it - then who will know? A master knows; that is why he never does anything. He simply allows you to be near him. He may create tricks so that you can be near him. For example, I say to you, "Meditate!" You are meditating but the basic thing is that you are just near me. And while you are meditating, without my doing anything, something is happening to you.

I am talking to you: that is a trick. There is no need to talk. If you can understand, you can simply sit here near me. There is no need to say anything. But then you will get bored. You will say, "What am I doing here - sitting and sitting?" Your mind needs some toys to play with, so I give you toys with which to play and your mind goes on playing with the toys. And all the time, all the while something is happening which is the basic thing. You are not aware of that, but one day you will become aware.

Then you will see what the trick was, what the technique was. The technique is to engage your mind somewhere else so that you are available to me and to my presence. Then I can meet you without any interference from your mind.

The second question:

Question 2:

It happens in the active meditation you are doing here because all that is hidden and suppressed is brought out by it. It is a catharsis, an expression. It is just the reverse process of suppression. So you will have to understand the process of suppression.

Someone has died: you feel very sad, but you think in your mind that it is not manly to weep or to cry.

It will look like a weakness, and you have always maintained a strong image of yourself. Everyone knows that you are a very strong-willed man, so how can you weep? This is womanish, so you suppress the tears. They want to come out, they want to be released and relieved, but you suppress them. Those tears will become poison, because the system was trying to throw them out and you have suppressed them. You go on smiling. Your heart is weeping and crying, but you go on smiling.

You are trying to maintain an image. You cannot be natural; you cannot allow your heart, your body, your mind, to function naturally. You go on manipulating them. You choose: something has to be expressed and something has to be repressed. That repressed part becomes the unconscious.

Really, there exists no unconscious. You repress something and you repress it very deeply because you yourself do not want to be aware of it, you do not want to be conscious of it. It will be a heavy burden on the mind, so you go on forgetting it. You go on being unconscious about the fact that it exists there. You forget its existence, and you yourself create an unconsciousness within.

This is the way you become divided, you become two. The rejected part becomes the unconscious and the accepted part becomes the conscious. If you are a man, then you are rejecting the woman, because no culture has yet existed on earth which accepts the bisexuality. All the cultures that have existed up to now were not really aware of the fact that to be a man or to be a woman is not something absolute. It is relative, it is a question of degrees.

If you are a man, it doesn't mean that you are a hundred percent man. No one can be, because to be a hundred percent man you will have to be born out of your father with the mother not contributing anything. That is impossible! Or to be a hundred percent woman, the father would have not to be there at all; only the mother would be involved. If the father contributes something, the male element has entered; if the mother contributes something, then the female element has entered. This is a new fact brought out by depth psychology - a new fact for the West, but tantra in the East has always been aware of it.

Man is only in relative terms a man: he may be sixty percent man and forty percent woman; or a woman may be sixty percent woman and forty percent man. That is why many things happen.

Sometimes the degrees are so near that someone may be fifty-one percent man and forty-nine percent woman, so you cannot decide really whether he is a man or a woman. He will walk, he will talk, he will move, in a feminine way, forty-nine percent. And this difference is of hormones.

New hormones can be injected. This is a borderline case - forty-nine percent woman and fifty-one percent man. You can inject a few more female hormones, and the balance will change and the man will become a woman.

There have been many accidents when suddenly a boy becomes a girl or a girl becomes a boy.

Then scientists became aware about this phenomenon. Then they came to understand that there are borderline cases. Now there are hormones available, and I think that the time is not very far off, it will happen even before this century ends, that the alternatives will be available to everyone: you will be able to change your sex.

And it is a good idea - because if a man has remained for thirty years a man, it will be a good change. Really, to become a woman is to move into another world, and this is a greater change than going to the moon. There is nothing much there; it is just like the earth. But a man moving to be a woman or a woman becoming a man is moving to a completely opposite pole.

Really, whenever the alternative becomes possible, only foolish people will not use it. Those who are wise will use it, because then you can become aware and you can live in two totally different worlds. That will give a new light to the human mind, because man has never really understood what woman is, neither are women capable of understanding men, because their psychologies differ so absolutely, they exist on such extreme poles.

Freud has said, "I have been working for forty years with human psychology, but still I cannot say what a woman desires, what a woman wants, what her mind is." It is difficult, because a man cannot understand a woman. Whatsoever he understands will be a point of view, as he is standing at the other pole. He will be looking at a woman as a man, and that changes everything. A woman cannot understand man because she is always looking from the standpoint of being a woman. And we cannot change places. If biology helps us, then the old controversy between man and woman will disappear.

I am saying that you are a man only relatively or a woman only relatively. And if you are a man, then the other part which is a woman, which your mother contributes, you will have to suppress. Why?

What is the need to suppress it? We suppress it because we have been trying to live according to logic. That is the greatest fallacy man has committed. We have been trying to live according to logic, and life is illogical.

Life is both man and woman together, and logic is always either feminine or masculine. Your logic says you are a man, so cut all those qualities which do not belong to a man. And that suppressed part becomes your unconscious. You are a woman, so everyone says you must be kind, loving, sympathetic. You must not be cruel, you must not hate, you must not be aggressive, because that is not how a woman is conceived to be.

This is nonsense! Really, if a woman becomes aggressive, she is incomparable. No man can compete with her, because your aggression is exhausted already - you have used it too much. But she has not used her man, so that man is still fresh and young. If she becomes aggressive, there is no man who can compete with her. If she is angry and violent, you will look just pale before her.

And similar is the case with man. They say that a man must be aggressive, violent, powerful.

He must have willpower, must not be weak, must not show sympathy or love: these things are womanish. But if a man can love, no woman can compete with him - no woman, because his 'woman' remains always virgin and fresh, unexhausted, unused. What I am saying is this: that your other is illogical, so you deny it in order to have a clear-cut image, a logical image.

I have heard that once it happened that a very great Zen mystic and master died. His disciple Rinzai was very well known, more known than his master. Really, this master was known because of Rinzai.

Rinzai was a great man, famous all over Japan. When the master died, thousands and thousands of people gathered to pay their respects. They were surprised because Rinzai was weeping and crying, and tears were rolling down his cheeks.

Many friends said, "What are you doing? These people who have gathered are talking about you, and they say, 'We cannot conceive of Rinzai weeping. We thought that he is a man who is totally unattached; we thought that he is a man who has renounced all attachments, and now he is weeping.

This man Rinzai has been teaching us that the soul is immortal - that only the body dies, and the body is nothing: dust returns unto dust. So why is he weeping now?' "

They demanded an answer. They were logical, because if a man says that the soul is immortal, then death should have no meaning. "Then why are you weeping?" they said. "You say that no attachment is the key, so why are you attached to your master? Only the body has died, and you have been always teaching that the body is just dead matter. So why be worried about it? A dead thing has become dead."

They demanded an answer, and they were logical. But what did Rinzai say? Rinzai said, "Your question is logical, but what can I do? The tears are coming down. I am weeping. I find myself weeping. Not only are you surprised: I am surprised. What can I do? This is how life is happening in me, and life is illogical."

Rinzai said, "It is good that my master has died, as he has made me aware of my total life. Without him I was thinking that I was unattached. If he had not died, I could never have stumbled upon the fact that I have a heart and that I have tears and that I can weep.

"So, people, you are not the only ones who are surprised. Rinzai himself is surprised. But I will not suppress life. I have been accepting life totally, and I still say the soul is immortal and only the body has died. Only the body is dead, but the body was also so beautiful! I am weeping for the body. Dust unto dust: really, I still say that dust has gone back to dust, but that dust had taken such a beautiful form that I am weeping for it."

It is recorded in Zen chronicles that Rinzai proved to be real to life, not to logic.

Be real to life, not to logic, and then whatsoever you have suppressed will come up, will explode. This is what the active meditation is doing: bringing the suppressed up to be expressed; bringing your tears back to life, bringing your anger, your laughter, your sadness, back to life; throwing everything out of your system so that your system becomes purified, so that your system becomes innocent again. With that innocent system you can contact the divine. This poisoned system cannot have any contact.

Active meditation is catharsis. It is to purify you. And when you are purified and the unconscious has been acted out, the barrier between the unconscious and the conscious falls - because the barrier is created by suppression. When you are not suppressing the barrier disappears and then there is no boundary between the conscious and the unconscious.

Then you are both: you are bisexual - man and woman both. And when you are both, you will have a new feeling of being, a new unity within you. You will not feel disrupted, divided. You will become organic, one. This oneness can lead you to the ultimate oneness; this oneness is the first step.

The third question and the last:

Question 3:

So let them be permissive and indulgent. Why be afraid? What is wrong in it? The fear comes from a long tradition of suppression. Why be afraid of your senses being permissive? Why not permit them? Who are you not to permit them and what has happened to you? Do you think that you have enslaved your senses? Quite the contrary is the case: your senses have enslaved you, and you cannot be free unless your senses are free. Unless your total being is free, you cannot be free. This is one of the deepest problems for the human mind. You will have to understand it.

First you say something is wrong, then you become afraid of it. Then you try to suppress it, not to do it. And the more you suppress it, the more your mind is filled with it.

For example, if you suppress sex then your mind will become sexual. Really, no animal is sexual except human beings. Sex exists for animals, but they are not sexual. For animals sex exists, but they are not sexual because they never think about it. They do not go on brooding about it, they do not create nude films, they do not publish nude magazines. They do not do anything about sex.

Whenever the desire arises they move; whenever the desire is not you cannot move them. They simply follow their nature.

But man, he creates a sexual mind by suppressing sex. And the more he suppresses, the more he becomes sexual, because whatsoever you suppress goes into your blood, into your bones. It becomes part of your being. When I say be a yea-sayer, you become afraid. Why? It is not because what I am saying is dangerous, but because the moment you think of yea-saying you become aware of all the poisons you have suppressed; if I say yes, all this poison will be released."

You think that if you say yes to sex you will become mad after it - that you will commit adultery, that you will become a maniac. The situation is just like this: if a man fasts for thirty days, then even a hint about food makes him mad. Not that a hint about food can make anybody mad - the food is not the cause. The cause is his own suppression. He has been suppressing his hunger, his desire to eat. Any hint, however indirect, and he will become mad. He will say, "Do not say such things."

A word can break his whole suppression and explode his whole being. He will become afraid; he will not look at food. He will pass through the streets and he will not look at the signboards of the restaurants, he will just look down. But whatsoever he is doing... even looking down at the road he will see food.

Really, everything will finally become an indirect invitation to food. If he looks at the moon he will think about bread - white bread floating in the sky. He cannot see his beloved's face there - impossible.

He will see bread.

Whatsoever you are starved of you will project. Really, if your beloved is not with you, only then can you see her face in the moon. If your beloved is with you, how can you see? You will see simply the moon. And when you see the moon simply as the moon, you are healthy. When you see your beloved's face you are unhealthy. Or when you see bread floating you are unhealthy, you are perverted.

A moon is a moon. Nothing else should be seen in it. Anything else that you see is a projection.

Something suppressed goes out and creates an illusion; it is a hallucination. Whatsoever you suppress becomes hallucinatory. Then you are living in it, moving in it, and, of course, you become more and more afraid and scared. So the more you get scared, the more you suppress it.

You are in a suicidal effort; that is why such questions arise: "If I say yes, the first thing that comes to the mind is whatever I have said no to." That thing will assert itself immediately. If you have been starving your body, fasting, dieting, and I say, "Say yes," the first thing that comes to your mind will be to go and eat. And then you will become afraid, because you have been dieting and now the whole thing will go to the dogs if you say yes.

If a man who has been suppressing sex thinks about saying yes to the whole of life, he will be afraid of sex. Whatsoever you have suppressed, whatsoever you have said no to, will demand. It will be the first thing that will come to your mind to say yes to, and this will create trembling. But this trembling is coming not because of yea-saying - it is coming because you have said no. This is the point to be understood: it is coming because you have said no. The questions come: "What if the society becomes permissive? What if everyone indulges?" It is because the society has been repressive. It is because everyone has said no to life energies.

Try saying yes. In the beginning it may happen that you will become permissive. In the beginning it may happen that you will become indulgent, because whenever a suppressed force is released it moves to the other pole forcibly. But wait and be a witness. Sooner or later the suppressed force will be lost, and for the first time in your life you will become healthy. And then the pendulum will come and stand in the middle.

When the pendulum comes in the middle you are healthy, but you have been keeping it to the left, pulling it to the left. Now you are afraid that if you leave it, it will go to the very right. Of course it will go, but it is going to the right not because you are leaving it; it is going to the right because you have been clinging to it and pulling it to the left. Leave it, and the sooner the better. It WILL go to the right. Allow it to go, and do not pull it to the left. Allow it to go! By and by, it will move from right to left, from left to right. The momentum that you have given it by suppressing has to be released, so it will have to move. But do not give it a new momentum; just become a witness.

By and by, the pendulum will become static in the middle. When the pendulum is in the middle of your mind and you are not afraid of indulgence or permissiveness, you have become free. Now you are healthy and natural.

My whole emphasis is to be natural. The more natural, the nearer you are to the divine. Nature is not against the divine; nature is the expression of the divine. But you have been taught again and again that nature is against the divine, so "Kill nature so that you can reach God."

You will never reach in this way because nature is not against the divine. If it is against, it cannot exist. How can it exist? How can anything exist which is against the divine? It is part of the total, part of the game. Do not be against it. And how can you be? You are part of nature. You can go on deceiving yourself, that is all.

Allow it to flow in a natural way, allow it a natural rhythm, and by and by it settles. And when it has settled you will find that suddenly you are standing in the divine. When there is no fight with nature, just an acceptance, you have moved beyond nature. But this 'beyond nature' is not against nature.

It is really a growth THROUGH it. You will come to brahmacharya - to a beautiful celibacy - but not through fighting sex. No one has come that way ever, no one can ever come that way.

When you are growing through sex, becoming more and more alert through sex, sex will be transformed. This is the way: if you suppress sex it becomes sexuality; if you express sex it becomes love. And through sexuality you cannot reach the divine. It is a perversion. But through love you can reach - it is a natural growth.

The more you accept natural instincts totally, without any condemnation at all, by and by they subside and the fever is lost. And when they subside you have tremendous energy left with you. That energy can become the arrow toward the divine. It becomes! There is a celibacy which comes through growth and there is a celibacy which comes simply through negation, denial. The celibacy that comes through denial is perverted: your mind will be filled with sexuality. The celibacy that happens gracefully, through alertness, through acceptance, becomes a grace. It has a beauty of its own, and by and by it goes beyond itself.

Then it is love. Then it is prayer. And the love that was flowing toward the opposite sex starts flowing toward the divine - the same love, the same energy.

So keep it in your mind: I am not against anything. I am for transcendence, but not against anything.

God is not against the world: it is a transcendence. It has to be achieved through the world; that is why you have been thrown into the world. But you feel, and you go on thinking, that you are more wise than God himself. He has thrown you into the world to grow, to experience, to be anguished through it. And you are so wise....

Be a little foolish; do not be so wise. Allow the divine to have its own way through you; experience life with a yea-saying heart. And when you say yes, the very life becomes divine.

Now get ready for the meditation. A few things before you get into it: for fifteen minutes you have to stand and stare at me with your hands raised above as if a divine force is to come to you, and you are receptive and welcoming. While standing, you have to stare at me without blinking the eyes.

Even if tears start flowing, do not bother - allow them to flow. And you have to go on jumping so that your energy is dynamic, not static.

I will give you indirect suggestions by my hands. I will raise my hands slowly upwards, and when I raise my hands upwards you have to bring your total energy up to jump, to dance. Be totally active when I raise my hands upwards. When I feel that now you have become a storm, that now the group soul has taken place, that now the individuals are thrown, that they have melted down and here only a group soul exists, whenever I feel this I will put my palms down this way. That means that now God can descend upon you. In that moment go completely mad so that you are totally open and something can happen within you.

For fifteen minutes, this first step. Then for fifteen minutes there will be total silence. You have to close your eyes. The light will be put off, and there will be total darkness and silence for fifteen minutes. And at the end, for ten minutes, you can celebrate; you can dance and sing and be grateful.