The first question:

"IN REFERENCE TO YOUR STATEMENT THAT TANTRA IS A LOVE TECHNIQUE, PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY MODERN MAN AND WOMAN HAVE BECOME INCAPABLE OF LOVE."

Love is spontaneous. It cannot be controlled. You cannot "make" love; you cannot do anything about it. And the more you do, the more you will miss it. You have to allow it to happen. You are not needed for it. Your presence is the hindrance. The more you are absent, the better. When you are not, love happens. Because of their inability to be absent, modern man and woman have become incapable of love.

They are capable of doing things. The whole modern mind is based on doing. Whatsoever can be done, modern man can do more efficiently than any man that has ever existed. Whatsoever can be done, we can do more efficiently. We are the most efficient century; we have turned everything into technology -- into a problem of how to "do" it. We have developed one dimension and that is the dimension of doing, but in developing this dimension we have lost much.

At the loss of being we have learned how to do things, so that which can be done we do better than anyone -- better than any society that ever existed on earth. But when the question of love comes, a problem arises because love cannot be done. And not only is this so with love; we have become incapable of all that cannot be done.

For example, meditation: we have become incapable of it; it cannot be done. Or play: we have become incapable of it; it cannot be done. Or joy, happiness: we have become incapable of them because they cannot be done. They are not acts; you cannot manipulate them. On the contrary, you have to let yourself go. Then joy happens to you, then happiness comes to you, then love enters you, then love takes possession. And because of this possession we have become afraid.

Modern man, the modern mind, wants to possess everything and not be possessed by anything. Modern man wants to be the master of everything, and you can only be the master of things -- not of happenings. You can be the master of a house, you can be the master of a mechanical device; you cannot be the master of anything which is alive. Life cannot be mastered; you cannot possess it. On the contrary, you have to be possessed by it. Only then is there contact with it.

Love is life, and it is greater than you. You cannot possess it. I would like to repeat it: love is greater than you; you cannot possess it. You can only allow yourself to be possessed by it; it cannot be controlled. The modern ego wants to control everything, and you become scared of whatsoever you cannot control. You become afraid; you close the door. You close that dimension completely because fear enters. You will not be in control. With love you cannot be in control, and the whole trend which has led to this century was one of how to control. All over the world, and particularly in the West, the trend is for how to control nature, how to control everything, how to control energies.

Man must become the master, and you have become the master -- of course, only of those things which are possible to possess, and side by side you have been developing an incapacity for those things which cannot be possessed. You can possess money; you cannot possess love. And because of this we have been turning everything into a thing. You even go on turning persons into things because then you can possess them. If you love a person, you are not the master; no one is the master. Two persons love each other, and no one is the master -- neither the lover nor the beloved. Rather, love is the master and both are possessed by a greater force than themselves, encircled by a greater force -- a whirlwind. If they try to possess each other, they will miss. Then they can possess each other. Then the lover will become the husband and the beloved will become the wife. Then they can possess, but a husband is a thing and a wife is a thing. They are not persons. You can possess them. They are dead entities, legal labels -- not alive.

We go on turning persons into things just to possess them, and then we feel frustrated -- because we wanted to possess the person and the person cannot be possessed. When you possess a person, he is no more a person; he is a dead thing, and you cannot be fulfilled by a dead thing. Look at this contradiction: you can be fulfilled only by persons, never by things, but your mind desires possessions -- so you turn them into things. Then you cannot be fulfilled. Then frustration sets in.

Possessiveness, the attitude to possess, has killed the capacity to love. Don't think in terms of possession. Rather, think in terms of being possessed. That is what surrender means -- being possessed: you allow yourself to be possessed by something greater than you. Then you will not be in control. Then a greater force will take you. Then the direction will not be yours. Then you cannot choose the goal. Then the future is unknown; you cannot be secure now. Moving with a greater force than yourself, you are insecure, afraid.

If you are afraid and insecure, it is better not to move with great forces. Just work with lower forces than you; then you can be the master, and you can decide the goal beforehand. Then you will achieve the goal, but you will not get anything out of it. You will have just wasted your life.

The secret of love and the secret of prayer and the secret of anything that can make you fulfilled is surrender -- the capacity to be possessed. The problem with love exists because this capacity is not there. There are other reasons also, but this is the base. The first reason is too much emphasis on intellect, reason. So man is lopsided. Your head has grown and your heart has remained absolutely neglected. And love is not a capacity of the intellect. It has a different center; it has a different focus, source. It is in your heart, it is your feeling; it is not reasoning. But the whole modern education consists of reasoning, logic, intellect, mind. The heart is not even talked about. It is denied, really; it is just "a poetic fiction."

It is not! It is a reality! Just look at it in this way: if from the very beginning a child is brought up without any training of the mind or the reasoning, without any intellectual training, will he have an intellect? He cannot!

There have been such cases. Sometimes it has happened that wolves have brought up a human child. Just ten years before, one child was caught in a forest. The wolves had brought him up. He was fourteen years of age. He couldn't even stand on two legs; he would run on all fours. He couldn't speak a single word; he would roar like a wolf. He was in every way a wolf, and fourteen years of age. Those who caught him named him Ram. The child took six months to learn the name. Within a year the child died, and the psychologists who worked on him suspected that he died because of too much strain on the intellect. This forcing, this training to get him to stand on two feet, this memory training to get him to remember the name, the effort to make him a human being, killed him.

He was robust in health when he was caught -- more healthy than any human being ever is. He was just like an animal. But this training killed him. Every effort was made so that if you could have asked him, "What is your name?" he would be able to say "Ram." This was his whole intellect. After six months of constant training, punishment, creating a profit motive in him, the only proof that the child could give of his intellect was this much: he would be able to say "Ram." What happened? If someone from Mars could get hold of this child, he would think that humanity has no mind, no intellect, no reason.

The same has happened to the heart. Without training it is as if it is not. It has been completely neglected, so your whole life energy has been forced towards the head, not towards the heart, and love is a functioning of the heart center. This is why modern man has become incapable of love: modern man has become incapable of the heart. He calculates, and love is not a calculation. He knows arithmetic and love is not arithmetic. He thinks in terms of logic and love is illogical. He always tries to rationalize everything. Whatsoever he is doing reason must support it, and love is not supported by reason.

Really, when you fall in love you throw your reason completely. That is why we say man "falls" in love. Falls from where? Falls from the head down into the heart. We use this term of condemnation, "falling in love," because the head, the reason, cannot look at it without condemning it. It is a fall. Is love really a fall or a rising? Do you become more with it or do you become less? Do you expand or do you shrink? With love you become more! Your consciousness is more, your feeling is more; your ecstatic sensation is more, your sensitivity is more. You are more alive, but one thing is less: reasoning is less. You cannot reason it out; it is blind. As far as reason is concerned it is blind. The heart has its own reason -- that is another thing -- and the heart has its own eyes, but that is another thing. The eyes of reason are not there, so reason says it is a fall; you have fallen.

Unless the heart center starts functioning again man will not be capable of love, and the whole misery of modern life is because unless he loves he cannot feel any meaning in his life. Life looks meaningless. Love gives it meaning; love is the only meaning. Unless you are capable of love you will be meaningless, and you will feel that you are existing without any meaning, futilely, and suicide will become attractive. Then you will like to kill yourself, to finish with yourself, to end, because what is the use of existing?

Mere existing cannot be tolerated. Existence must have a meaning; otherwise, what is the use? Why go on prolonging yourself unnecessarily? Why go on repeating the same pattern every day? Getting out of the bed and doing the same thing, and again falling asleep and the next day the same pattern: why?

You have done it so far, and what has happened? And you will do it unless death comes and relieves of you of your body. So what is the use? Love gives meaning. It is not that through love any result comes into being or any goal -- no! Through love every moment becomes of value in itself. Then you never ask this. If someone asks what is the meaning of life, know well that love is lacking. Whenever someone asks what is the meaning of life, he is asking because he has not been able to flower in a love experience. Whenever someone is in love, he never asks what is the meaning of life. He knows the meaning; there is no need to ask. He knows the meaning! The meaning is there: love is the meaning in life.

And through love prayer is possible because prayer is again a love relationship -- not between two individuals, but between one individual and existence itself. Then the whole existence becomes your beloved or lover. But it is possible only through love experience that you can grow into prayer or into meditation, and the ultimate ecstasy is just like love. That is why Jesus says that "God is love," not that "God is loving."

Christians have been interpreting it in this way -- that God is kind, loving. That is not the meaning. Jesus says that God is love. He simply equates God and love. You can say "love" or you can say "God"; they both mean the same. God is not loving; God is love itself. If you can love, you have entered the divine. And when your love grows to such an infinity that it is not concerned with anyone in particular -- rather, it has become a diffused phenomenon; when there is no lover for you -- rather, the whole existence, all that is, has become the lover or beloved -- then it has become prayer.

And tantra is a love method. So the first thing is how to love, and then the second thing is how to grow in love so that love becomes prayer. But one must start from love. And don't be afraid of love because that fear shows you are afraid of the heart. The head is cunning; the heart is innocent. With the head you feel protected; with the heart you become vulnerable, open. Anything can happen.

That is why we have become closed. The fear is there: if you are vulnerable, anything can happen to you; someone can deceive you. With the mind no one can deceive you; you can deceive others. But I tell you be ready to be deceived, but don't close the heart. Be ready to be deceived, but don't close the heart! That vulnerability to be deceived is of worth because you will not lose anything by it. And if you are ready to be deceived infinitely, only then can you believe in the heart. If you are calculative, cunning, clever, too much clever, then you will miss the heart, and modern man is so educated, so sophisticated, so clever; that is why he has become incapable of love.

Women were not like this, but they are following modern man fast, they are copying modern man fast. Sooner or later they will become just like man, or they may even overtake him. Now they are also becoming incapable because the same head orientation, the same effort to be cunning and clever, is there now. They may form a "Women's Liberation Movement" or anything like it, but it is not heart oriented. It is just a copy of the same stupidity that man has been doing with himself. You may go to the other extreme, but if you react, even in your reaction you are following.

A great crisis is there. It is difficult now to prevent women all over the world from copying man and his nonsense because man seems to be so successful. He is successful in a way; he has become the master of things. Now he possesses the whole world. Now he feels he has conquered nature, and "success succeeds; nothing succeeds like success."

Now women feel that man has succeeded and has become the master, so they must copy him. But look also at the thing in which man has failed completely. He has lost his heart; he cannot love. Reason alone is not enough, and reason in control is dangerous. The heart must be higher than reason because reason is just an instrument and the heart is you. The heart must be allowed to use reason -- not vice versa. But you have been doing that. The head is allowed to dominate; in its domination, the head has killed the heart.

And thirdly, one thing more has to be remembered as to why modern man has become incapable of love. Love is basically a sort of madness, a sort of deep participation with nature, a sort of dissolving of the ego. It is primal. You are born out of love; your every cell of the body is a love cell. Your very energy, your life energy, is a love energy. You exist in it, but there is no ego in that energy. You cannot feel "I." That energy is unconscious, and when you move in love YOU become unconscious. Only a fragment of your mind is conscious, and in that fragment of the mind exists the ego.

The mind has three layers. First is the unconscious: when you are deeply asleep with no dreams, you are in it. The child in the mother's womb is absolutely unconscious, he is just part of the mother. The child is not aware that "I am separate"; he is just part of the mother. There is no separation, no defined existence. He is undifferentiated from the mother and from the existence itself. There is no fear because fear comes only when you become aware of yourself. The child is totally at ease; he is unconscious.

And the second layer is of consciousness. It is a very small fragment. One tenth part of the unconscious has become conscious in you through training, education, society, family. It was needed for survival, so a part of you has become conscious. But that part also gets tired very soon; that is why you need sleep. In sleep you become again a child in the womb. You have fallen back, the conscious is no more there. It has become part of the unconscious. That is why sleep is so refreshing. In the morning you feel alive again, fresh, because you have fallen back into the mother's womb.

You may not have observed this.... Observe someone who is deeply asleep. More or less, he will be in the same posture in which he was in his mother's womb. And if you can be in the right posture, sleep will follow more easily. If you feel any difficulty in falling asleep, just feel your mother's womb, as if you are in it. Imagine it, and take the posture in which you would have been in your mother's womb. In that posture you will fall deeply asleep. You need the same warmth; otherwise the sleep will be disturbed. You need the same warmth as there was in your mother's womb.

That is why hot milk is good. If you sip hot milk before you go to sleep it will be good, because that again makes you a child. Milk is child's food, and if it is hot you are again at your mother's breast. Hot milk is good for sleep only because of this reason: you fall back into childhood, you are reduced into a child. Sleep refreshes you. Why? Because the conscious mind gets tired. It is just a part, and the whole is unconscious. It has to fall back to the whole to become revived. It is again resurrected. That is why in the morning you feel good and morning looks beautiful -- not only because morning is beautiful, but because again you have a child's eyes. The afternoon is not so beautiful. The world is the same, but you have lost those innocent eyes again. And the evening becomes ugly because you are tired.

You have lived too much in the conscious. This conscious has ego as the center. These are two ordinary states which we know. The third state, that with which tantra and yoga are concerned, is the superconscious. "Superconscious" means that your whole unconscious has become conscious. In the unconscious there is no ego; you are total. In the superconscious, again there is no ego; you are total. But in between the two the conscious mind has a center -- the ego. This ego is the problem, this ego creates problems. You cannot fall in love because then you will have to become unconscious, just as unconscious as you become in sleep. Or, if you want to rise to prayer, you have to become totally conscious like a Buddha or like a Meera. So love becomes impossible, prayer becomes impossible.

The ego creates the barrier. You cannot lose yourself, and love is losing, dispersing, dissolving, melting. If you melt into the unconscious, it is love; if you melt into the superconscious it is prayer -- but both are a melting. So what is to be done? Remember this: you cannot do anything about it. Let it be deeply noted: you cannot do anything about love, about prayer. Your conscious mind is impotent; it cannot do anything. It has to be lost, it has to be put aside. And then remember surrender: whenever you want to move beyond yourself, surrender is the way -- either in love or in prayer.

Whenever you long to move beyond, somewhere else where you are not, then surrender, let-go is the path. Allow something to happen to you; don't manipulate. And once you know how to allow, many things will start happening. You may not be even aware of what is possible for you, of what a great, tremendous energy you have closed within yourself which can explode and then become an ecstasy. Your whole life will be filled with consciousness, light and bliss, but you don't know it. It is just as if every atom is an atom bomb: if one atom explodes, tremendous energy is released. And every heart is also an atom bomb. If it explodes in love or prayer, tremendous energy is released.

But you have to explode and lose yourself. The seed has to lose itself; only then is the tree born. And if the seed resists and says, "No, I must survive," then the seed can survive, but the tree will never be born. And unless the tree is born the seed will feel frustrated, because the tree is the meaning. The seed will feel frustrated! The seed can feel fulfilled only when the tree is there flowering. But then the seed has to lose itself, die.

Modern man has become incapable of love because he has become incapable of death. He cannot die to anything. He clings to life; he cannot die to anything.

In old English, three or four hundred years ago, this was a usual expression. The lover would say to the beloved, "I want to die in you." This was a love expression. It is beautiful! "I want to die in you." Love is a death -- a death of the ego. Only then is your real self born, and modern man is very, very afraid of death. In every way, surrender is death, love is death, and life also is a continuous death. If you are afraid, you will miss life itself.

Be ready to die every moment. Die to the past, die to the future, and die in the present moment. Don't cling and don't resist. Don't make any effort for life, and you will have abundant life. Life will happen to you if you are ready to die. This looks paradoxical, but this is the law. Jesus says that one who is ready to lose will gain, and one who clings will lose everything.

The second question:

"YOU SAID LAST NIGHT THAT THE PERIPHERY IS ALWAYS CHANGING, WHEREAS THE INNERMOST CENTER IS ETERNALLY UNMOVING. TO REALIZE THE CENTER IS IT NECESSARY THAT THE PERIPHERAL MOVEMENT MUST CEASE? CAN THAT BE? HOW AND WHEN?"

You have missed the whole point. The whole point was not to make any effort to change the periphery. Allow the periphery to be as it is. And you cannot change it. It is the nature of the periphery to move and change. You cannot make it static. Nature is a flux. It is so; you cannot make it static. And don't waste your time and opportunity of life trying to make it static. Just know it as change. Be the witness of it, and you will come to feel the innermost center which is not change. The world is change, your personality is change, your body-mind is change, but you are not; you are not the change. What is the use of struggling with change? No need!

Tantra says please be reestablished in your center, be aware of the center which is unmoving, and allow the whole existence to move. It is not a disturbance at all. It becomes a disturbance only if you cling to it or if you try to make it unmoving. Then you are falling into absurdities, foolish efforts. They will not succeed; you will be a failure. Know well that life is a change, but somewhere within this change there is an unmoving center also. Just become aware of it. That very awareness is enough to liberate you. That very feeling that "I am unmoving" liberates. That is the truth. You know it, and you are different.

Don't fight with shadows! And the whole life is a shadow because change is nothing but a shadow. The unchanging is the real; the changing is the unreal. So don't ask whether the peripheral change and movement has to be forced to cease in order to realize the center. There is no need, and you cannot force it. It cannot cease! The world goes on; only it will not go on in you. You can remain in the world, and there is no need for the world to be in you. The world is not the disturbance. When you get involved in it, when you become the change, when you feel that you have become the change, then it creates problems.

Problems are created not by the changing periphery. They are created by the identification that "I am this change." You have fallen ill; illness is not really the disturbance. When you feel that "I have fallen ill," it is a disturbance. If you can be a witness to that illness, if you can feel that illness is a happening somewhere on the periphery -- that it is not happening to you, it is happening to someone else and you are just the witness -- then death also can happen and you will be just a witness.

Alexander was returning from India. Some friends had requested him to bring back a sannyasin from India. They said, "When you come with conquered possessions, don't forget: bring a sannyasin also. We want to see what a sannyasin is -- what type of a man renounces the world. We want to know what has happened to one who has renounced all desires, what type of bliss comes to one who leaves all hankering, thirst or hunger for the future, for possessions and things."

Just at the last moment Alexander remembered. In the last town from where he was to leave India to go back to his country, he told his soldiers to go and find a sannyasin. They went to the town, and they asked an old man of the town. He said, "Yes there is a sannyasin, a great sannyasin, but it will be difficult. It will be very difficult to persuade him to go with Alexander to Athens."

But the soldiers were soldiers, so they said, "Don't you be worried about it. We can force anyone. Just tell us where he is. We know how to force him, so there is no need to persuade. If Alexander tells even the whole town to follow him, you will have to follow, so what of a single sannyasin?"

But the old man laughed, and the soldiers couldn't understand because they had never encountered a sannyasin. They reached the sannyasin. He was standing naked on the bank of the river, and they told him, "Alexander orders that you have to come with us. Every care will be taken, there will be no inconvenience for you; you will be the royal guest. But you have to come with us to Athens."

The sannyasin laughed and he said, "It will be very difficult for your Alexander to take me with him. No force in this world can force me to follow. You will not be able to understand, but it is better that you bring your Alexander."

Alexander was disturbed. He felt insulted, but he wanted to see this man. He came with a naked sword and he said, "If you say no, then immediately you lose your life. I will cut your head." The name of the sannyasin was -- as it is reported in Alexander's records -- Dandami.

The sannyasin laughed and said, "You came a little late. You cannot kill me now because I have killed myself already. You are a little late. You can cut my head, but you cannot cut me because I have become a witness. So when this head will fall down on the earth, you will see it falling down and I will also see it falling down. But you cannot cut me; you cannot even touch me. So don't waste time, you can cut! Raise your sword and cut my head."

Alexander couldn't kill that man. It was impossible because it was useless. The man was so beyond death, it was impossible to kill him. You can only be killed if you cling to life. That clinging to the changing pattern makes you a mortal. If you don't cling, you are as you have always been -- immortal. Immortality is your birthright; it has always been there. You become a mortal only if you cling. So there is no question, there is no need to force the changing periphery to be static. There is no need, and you CANNOT make it static. It will go on, the wheel will go on. All that you can do is to know that you are not the wheel. You are the axis, not the wheel.

The third question:

"MAN BEING AS HE IS, IS IT NOT DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO DISSOLVE CHANGE THROUGH CHANGE, SEX THROUGH SEX, ETCETERA, WITHOUT ATTACHMENTS AND WITH THEIR CONSEQUENT ANXIETY AND DISAPPOINTMENT?"

Man as he is CAN do this, and this is suggested ONLY for man as he is. Tantra is a medicine for YOU -- for those who are ill. So don't think that it is not for you. It is for you and you can do it, but you will have to understand what is meant when you say that there is the possibility of falling into attachments, and then the consequences will be there and frustration. You have not understood. "Consume change through change" means that even if there is attachment don't fight with it. Be attached, but be a witness also.

Let the attachment be there; don't fight with it. Tantra is a non-fighting process. Don't fight! Frustration will come, of course, so be frustrated. But be a witness also. You were attached, and you were a witness. Now the frustration has come, and you know well that it had to come. Now be frustrated, but be a witness. Then through attachment, attachment is consumed, and through frustration, frustration is consumed.

Try this when you feel miserable. Be miserable; don't fight with it. Try this, it is wonderful. When there is misery and you feel miserable, close your doors and be miserable. Now what can you do? You are miserable, so you are miserable. Now be totally miserable. Suddenly you will become aware of the misery. And if you try to change it you will never become aware, because your effort, your energy, your consciousness is directed towards change, towards how to change this misery. Then you start thinking about how it came, and what to do now to change it. Then you are missing a very beautiful experience -- the misery itself.

Now you are thinking about the causes and you are thinking about the consequences and you are thinking about the method for how to forget it, how to go beyond it, and you are missing misery itself, and misery is there and that can be liberating. Just don't do anything. Don't analyze how the misery is created; don't think about what consequences are going to follow. They will follow, so you can see later on. There is no haste. Be miserable, simply miserable, and don't try to change it.

Try this: see for how many minutes you can remain miserable. You will start laughing about the whole thing; the whole thing will look stupid, because if you are totally miserable, suddenly your center is beyond misery. That center can never be miserable, it is impossible! If you remain with the misery, the misery becomes the background, and your center which can never be miserable suddenly rises above, and then you are miserable and you are not miserable: the "same unsame." Now you are consuming misery through misery. This is what is meant. You are not doing anything; you are simply consuming misery through misery. Misery will disappear as clouds disappear, and the sky will be open and you will be laughing, and you have not done anything. And you cannot do anything; all that you can do will create more confusion and more misery.

Who has created this misery? You, and now you are trying to change it. It will get worse. You are the creator of the misery. You have created it, you are the source, and now the source itself is trying. What can you do? Now the patient is treating himself, and he has created the whole thing. Now he is thinking of surgery. It is suicidal. Don't do anything. The inside is very deep. You have tried so many times to stop misery, to stop depression, to stop this and that, and nothing has happened. Now try this: don't do anything; allow the misery to be there in its totality. Allow it to happen in its full intensity, and remain non-doing. Just be with it and see what happens.

Life is change. Even the Himalayas are changing, so your misery cannot be unchanging. It will change by itself, and you will see that it is changing -- that it is disappearing and it is going away, and you feel unburdened and you have not done anything.

Once you know the secret you can consume anything through itself, but the secret is to be silently without doing anything. Anger is there, so be, just BE. Don't do anything. If you can do this much, this "non-doing," if you can just be there -- present, witnessing, but making no effort to change anything -- allowing things to have their own way, you will consume anything. You CAN consume anything.

The last question:

"TANTRA SAYS DO NOT STRUGGLE OR SWIM, BUT LET GO AND FLOAT IN THE RIVER OF LIFE. BUT EXPERIENCE SHOWS THAT THE MODERN CITY LIFE OF SPEED AND HEAVY TECHNOLOGY CREATES CONSTANT TENSIONS AND EXERTIONS PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY. WHAT WILL BE TANTRA'S ATTITUDE ABOUT IT? IS IT NOT GOOD TO AVOID UNNECESSARY EXERTIONS?"

Life has always been so, modern or primitive. Tensions are there, anxieties are there. Objects change, but man remains the same. Two thousand years back you were driving a bullock cart; now you are driving a car -- but the driver remains the same. The bullock cart has changed -- things are different now, you are driving a car -- but the driver remains the same. He was anxious about his cart, tense about his cart; now you are tense and anxious about your car. Objects change, but the mind remains the same.

So don't think that because of the modern life you are so much in anxiety. It is because of you, not because of modern life, and you will be in anxiety anywhere, in any type of civilization. Go to a village for a few days -- two or three days -- and you will feel good for a while because even diseases need readjustment. But within three days you will be adjusted to the village, and then anxieties will start coming, disturbances will be felt again. Now the causes will not be the same, but you are the same.

Sometimes it happens that you may be disturbed because of city traffic and noise, and you may be saying that you cannot sleep at night because there is so much traffic and noise. Then go to a village, and you will not be able to sleep because there is no traffic and no noise. You will have to come back because the village looks dead, dull -- because there is no life.

People go on reporting such feelings to me. I told one friend to go to Kashmir, to Pahalgam. He came back and said that life is dull there, that there is no life. You can enjoy for one or two days valleys and hills, and then one gets bored. He had been telling me here that city life was getting on his nerves, and now he said that those hills were getting boring and he began longing to come back home.

You are the problem; Kashmir will not be of any help. It is not Bombay that disturbs you or London or New York; it is YOU! And it is not that London has created you: you have created London. It is not the traffic and the noise and the mad rush: you have created this -- you and others like you. Look! The cause is within you. It is not that you are tense because of noise. The noise is there because you are tense, and you cannot live without it. That is why it is there. You need it, you cannot live without it. And in villages people are suffering. They want to come to Bombay or to New York or to London, and the moment they get the opportunity they run. And I have been listening to people who go on talking about the beautiful village life, but they never go to live there. They NEVER go to live there, they simply talk about it.

Who prevents you? Why not go? Go to the forest -- who prevents you? You will not like it, you cannot like it. Right now you will like it for a few days because it is a change, and then? Then you will get bored. You will find it dull, and you will like to escape from there.

This city life is created by your mad mind. You are not becoming mad because of these cities; these cities are built because of your mad mind. They are built for you and by you, and they exist for you. And unless this mad mind changes, these cities cannot disappear, they will have to remain. They are your by-product.

Remember one thing: whenever you feel that something is wrong, first find out the cause in yourself. Don't go anywhere. Out of a hundred times, ninety-nine times you will find the cause within yourself. And if you find the cause within you, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the hundredth cause will disappear by itself.

You are the cause of whatsoever is happening to you. YOU are the cause, and the world is just a mirror. But it is consolatory always to find the cause somewhere else. Then you never feel guilt, you never feel self-condemned. You can always point out that here is the cause, and unless this cause changes, "How can I change?" You can escape into it; this is a trick. So your mind always goes on projecting causes somewhere else. The wife is disturbed because of the husband; the mother is disturbed because of the children; the children are disturbed because of the father. Everyone is disturbed because of someone else, and everyone always thinks that the cause exists outside.

Mulla Nasruddin was passing down a street. It was evening, and the darkness was descending. Suddenly he became aware that the street was empty with no traffic, and he became afraid. A group of people were coming toward him, and he was reading about DACOITS, robbers, murderers. So he created fear, he started trembling. He thought, he projected, that now these murderers and dacoits were coming, and they were bound to kill him, so how to escape them? He looked all around.

There was a cemetery, so he jumped over the wall of the cemetery. There was a ready-made grave for someone, so he thought that it would be good to be dead in this grave. They will feel that he is dead, so there won't be any need to murder him.

So Mulla lay down. The group was just a marriage procession, but they saw this man trembling and jumping. Then they became afraid and wondered what was the matter and who this man was. They thought, "He seems to be up to some mischief. He is hiding there." So the whole procession stopped, and they jumped over the wall. Mulla became more afraid. Now they came near and they asked, "What are you doing here? Why are you here in this grave?"

So Mulla said, "You are asking a very difficult question. I am here because of you and you are here because of me."

And this is happening everywhere. You are disturbed because of someone else; he is disturbed because of you. And you are just creating everything around you, projecting, and then becoming afraid, scared, and making efforts to defend. And then there is misery and frustration and conflict and depression and fighting.

The whole thing is stupid, and it will remain unless you change your attitude. And always try first to find the cause within you. How can the traffic noise disturb you? How? If you are against it, it will disturb. If you have the attitude that it disturbs, it will disturb. But if you accept it, if you allow it to happen without any reaction, then you may even start enjoying it. It has its own melody, its own music. You have not heard it, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have its own music. Someday forget yourself and listen to the traffic noise. Just listen, and don't bring in your attitudes that this is disturbing, that this is not good. Don't bring in your attitudes, just listen to the melody! In the beginning it will look chaotic. That too is because of the mind. If you relax totally, sooner or later everything will fit into a harmonious whole and even the traffic noise will become music. You can enjoy it and you can dance to its tune. It depends on you.

Nothing disturbs unless you think that it disturbs. For example I will tell you that many things have disturbed humanity because there was a certain concept that they disturb. When the concept changes the things remain the same, but they don't disturb. For example, masturbation disturbed the whole world. Just half a century before, the whole world was disturbed by masturbation. Every teacher, every father, every mother was disturbed, and every child was disturbed. And still in the larger, ignorant world, the disturbance remains. And then physiologists and psychologists discovered that masturbation cannot disturb anyone; it is natural, and nothing is wrong with it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but the old teaching was that if you become mad, it was because of masturbation.

Everything was forced down, reduced to masturbation. And more or less every child was doing it, every boy was doing it, so every boy was afraid. He was doing it, and he was afraid that now he was going to be mad, inferior, crazy, eccentric, ill, and his life would be wasted. But he couldn't resist. He had to do it, and these ideas entered into the mind and had effects. They affected him, and many went mad, many remained inferior, many remained stupid because of it, and it has no relationship at all.

Modern science, modern research says that rather it is healthy. Medical science says that it is good because a boy at the age of thirteen or fourteen or a girl at the age of twelve or thirteen becomes sexually mature. If nature were allowed they would have to get married immediately. They are ready to reproduce, but civilization of necessity forces that they will have to remain unmarried for ten years at least or even more. But medicine says that fourteen to twenty, these six years, are the most sexually potent. A boy is never so potent again as he is then. The energy is bubbling up; the whole body is ready to burst into sex. But the society says no, the energy should not be allowed to move. However, the energy is moving and the child cannot do anything, and whatsoever he is going to do will have effects because of the philosophy around him. He will feel he is doing something wrong, he will feel guilt, and that guilt will follow like a shadow. And many diseases will happen because of the idea, not because of the act.

Medicine says that it is healthy because he is relieved of unnecessary energy. That unnecessary energy would create problems otherwise, so it is healthy. Now, particularly in America and England and other Western developed countries who know much more about physiology, masturbation is being propagated. Now there are films on how to masturbate to show to the children, and every teacher will be teaching sooner or later how to masturbate rightly. They say it is healthy, and now those who think it is healthy feel very healthy about it.

I don't think it is either -- it is neither healthy nor unhealthy. The idea is the thing. If it is healthy and the concept is stretched, it will become healthy. Now in the West they say not only that masturbation never affected anyone's intelligence adversely, but that the better the intelligence, the more masturbation will be there. So a boy who is masturbating more will be of higher I.Q. than the boy who is not masturbating. And they have reasons for saying this, because even for a boy to discover masturbation is a sign of intelligence: he is finding out a way.

The society has closed the door for marriage, and the nature is forcing the energy. The intelligent one will find a way and the non-intelligent one will just be blocked, he will not be able to find the way. Now the studies show that those boys who masturbate are more intelligent. If this idea is spread, and it is bound to be there, sooner or later the whole world will be having this idea. Then masturbation will be healthy, and you will feel a well-being from it.

Now every parent is afraid because the parent knows what he did when he was young. When his boy comes to the same age, he becomes afraid and he starts looking around at what the boy is doing. He is afraid, and if he catches the boy he will punish him. But the new knowledge says don't punish the boy -- no! Rather, teach him. If he is not masturbating, then go to the doctor and find out what is wrong. If this knowledge becomes well spread, then this will happen.

But both are positions. BOTH are positions! And when some boy masturbates, he is very suggestive in that moment -- because when sexual energy is being released, he becomes vulnerable, open, flexible, and his mind is silent. Any idea put in at that moment will have its effects -- so if you tell him, "You are going to be ill because of it," he will feel ill. If you tell him, "You are going to be healthy because of it," he will become healthy. If you say to him, "You will be stupid for your whole life if you do this," he will remain a dunce. If you say, "Now this is a good sign of intelligence," he may develop a higher I.Q. You are simply suggesting something to him in a very vulnerable moment. Whatsoever you think starts happening.

Buddha is reported to have said that every thought will become actual, so be aware. If you think that the traffic noise disturbs you, it will disturb you: you are ready for disturbance. If you think that a family life is a bondage, it will be a bondage for you: you are ready for this. If you think that poverty will help to make you liberated, it will help. Ultimately it is you who is creating a world around you, and whatsoever you think becomes the noosphere, the milieu, and you exist in it.

Tantra says remember this causality, it is always within you. And if you know this, then you will not cause anything. If you know this, you will not cause anything for yourself. And when someone is not causing anything, he is liberated. Then he is not in misery and not in bliss. Bliss is your creation and misery is also your creation. You can change your misery into bliss because it is your creation.

The liberated one, the enlightened one, is really in neither because he has ceased to cause anything around him. He simply is! That is why Buddha never says that the enlightened one is blissful. Whenever someone asked him, "Tell us something about someone who has gone beyond -- whether he is in perfect bliss," Buddha laughed and said, "Don't ask. I can say only this much, that he is not in misery. I cannot say anything more. He is not in misery; that is all I can say."

Why so much insistence on the negative? Because Buddha knows. When you have come to know that you were the cause of your misery, then you know well that the bliss also was caused by you. Then one ceases to cause anything. That is what NIRVANA is: a cessation of causing anything around you. Then you are, simply -- no misery, no bliss. If you can understand, only this is bliss. There is no misery and no bliss, because if there is bliss then misery is there; you are still causing something. And if you can cause bliss, then you can cause misery, and you will become bored of the bliss also.

How much can you stand it -- how much? Have you ever thought about it? Twenty-four hours in bliss: will you be able to stand it? You will become bored, and you will go on seeking teachers who can teach you how to become miserable again. If the world becomes blissful, I cannot conceive that there won't be any teachers. There will be teachers, because then people will need misery. Someone will be needed to tell them how to become miserable again, just for a change. Then you can go back to your bliss, and you will feel it more -- because only then can you feel it more, when you have missed it.

Teachers will be there! Now they are teaching how to become blissful; then they will teach how to become miserable, how to have a taste of hell. A little change will be helpful, healthy.

But you are the cause, and you will become enlightened the moment you have known that the world you are living in was caused by you. When you will not cause it, it will have disappeared. The traffic will go on, the noise will be there, and everything will be there as it is, but you will not be there because you will have disappeared with the cause.