CHAPTER 9: LOVE AND THE ART OF NON-DOING

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‌LOVE AND THE ART OF NON-DOING‌

There are things which only happen, which cannot be done.

Doing is the way of very ordinary things, mundane things. You can do something to earn money, you can do something to be powerful, you can do something to have prestige; but you cannot do anything as far as love is concerned, gratitude is concerned, silence is concerned. It is significant to understand that “doing” means the world, and non-doing means that which is beyond the world—where things happen, where only the tide brings you to the shore. If you swim, you miss. If you do something, you will undo it; because all doing is mundane.

Very few people come to know the secret of non-doing and allowing things to happen. If you want great things—things that are beyond the small reach of human hands, human mind, human abilities—then you will have to learn the art of non-doing. I call it meditation.

It is a trouble, because the moment you give a name to it, immediately people start asking how to “do” it. And you cannot say that they are wrong, because the very word “meditation” creates the idea of doing. They have their doctorate, they have done a thousand and one things; when they hear the word “meditation” they ask, “So just tell us how to do it.” And meditation basically means the beginning of non-doing, relaxing, going with the tide—just being a leaf in the breeze, or a cloud moving with the winds.

Never ask a cloud, “Where are you going?” He himself does not know; he has no address, he has no destiny. If the winds change he was going to the south, he starts moving towards the north. The cloud does not say to the winds, “This is absolutely illogical. We were moving south, now we are moving north. What is the point of it all?” No, he simply starts moving north as easily as he was moving south. To him, south, north, east, west, don’t make any difference. Just

to move with the wind, with no desire, with no goal, nowhere to reach; he is just enjoying the journey. Meditation makes you a cloud—of consciousness. Then there is no goal.

Never ask a meditator, “Why are you meditating?” because that question is irrelevant. Meditation is in itself the goal and the way together.

Lao Tzu is one of the most important figures in the history of non-doing. If history is to be written rightly then there should be two kinds of histories. The history of doers includes Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Alexander, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini; these are the people who belong to the world of doing. There should be another history, a higher history, a real history—of human consciousness, of human evolution. This is the history of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Bodhidharma; a totally different kind.

Lao Tzu became enlightened sitting under a tree. A leaf had just started falling: it was in the autumn and there was no hurry; the leaf was coming down zigzag with the wind, slowly. He watched the leaf. The leaf came down and settled on the ground, and as he watched the leaf falling and settling, something settled in him. From that moment, he became a non-doer. The winds come on their own, and existence takes care.

Lao Tzu’s whole teaching was the watercourse way: just go with the water wherever it is going, don’t swim. But the mind always wants to do something, because then the credit goes to the ego. If you just go with the tide, the credit goes to the tide, not to you. If you swim, there is a chance that you can have a greater ego: “I managed to cross the English Channel!”

But existence gives you birth, gives you life, gives you love; it gives you everything that is invaluable, everything you cannot purchase with money. Only those who are ready to give the whole credit of their lives to existence realize the beauty and the benediction of non-doing.

It is not a question of doing. It is a question of being absent as an ego, letting things happen.

Let go—just these two words contain the whole experience.

In life you are trying to do everything. Please, leave a few things for non- doing, because those are the only valuable things.

There are people who are trying to love, because from the very beginning the mother is saying to the child, “You have to love me because I am your mother.” Now she is making love also a logical syllogism—“because I am your mother.” She is not allowing love to grow on its own, it has to be forced.

The father is saying, “Love me, I am your father.” And the child is so helpless that all that he can do is pretend. What else can he do? He can smile, he can give a kiss, and he knows that it is all pretension: he does not mean it, it is all phony. It is not coming from him. But because you are his daddy, you are his mommy, you are this, you are that. They are spoiling one of the most precious experiences of life.

Then wives are telling husbands, “You have to love me, I am your wife.” Strange. Husbands are saying, “You have to love me. I am your husband, it is my birthright.” Love cannot be demanded. If it comes your way, be thankful; if it does not come, wait. Even in you’re waiting, there should be no complaint, because you don’t have any right. Love is nobody’s right, no constitution can give you the right to experience love. But they are all destroying everything, then wives are smiling, husbands are hugging.

One of America’s most famous authors, Dale Carnegie, writes that every husband should tell his wife at least three times a day, “I love you, darling.” Are you insane? But he means it, and it works; and many people, millions of people, are practicing Dale Carnegie followers. “When you come home, bring ice cream, flowers, roses, to show that you love your wife,” as if love needs to be shown, proved materially, pragmatically, linguistically, verbalized again and again so that nobody forgets it. If you don’t tell your wife for a few days that “I love you” she will count how many days have passed, and she will become more and more suspicious that you must be saying it to somebody else, because her quota is being cut. Love is a quantity. “If he is not bringing ice cream anymore, that ice cream must be going somewhere else, and this cannot be tolerated.”

We have created a society which believes only in “doings,” while the spiritual part of our being remains starved because it needs something which is not done but happens. Not that you manage to say “I love you,” but that suddenly you

find yourself saying that you love. You yourself are surprised by what you are saying. You have not rehearsed it in your mind first and then repeated it, no; it is spontaneous.

And in fact, the real moments of love remain unspoken. When you are really feeling love, that very feeling creates around you a certain radiance that says everything that you cannot say, that can never be said.

But instead we manage everything, we turn everything into a “doing” and the ultimate result is that slowly hypocrisy becomes our very characteristic. We forget completely that it is hypocrisy. And in the mind, in the being of a person who is a hypocrite, anything of the world of non-doing is impossible. You can go on doing more and more; you will become almost a robot.

So whenever you have suddenly an experience of happening, take it as a gift from existence and make that moment the herald of a new lifestyle. Just allow a few moments in twenty-four hours when you are not doing anything, just allowing existence to do something to you. And windows will start opening in you, windows that will connect you with the universal, the immortal.

It feels to me that much of my own “doing” is to avoid boredom. Can you talk about the nature of the experiences we call boredom and restlessness?

Boredom and restlessness are deeply related. Whenever you feel boredom, then you feel restlessness. Restlessness is a by-product of boredom.

Try to understand the mechanism. Whenever you feel bored you want to move away from that situation. If somebody is saying something and you are getting bored, you start becoming fidgety. This is a subtle indication that you want to move away from this place, from this person, from this nonsense talk. Your body starts moving. Of course, out of politeness you suppress it, but the body is already on the move because the body is more authentic than the mind, the body is more honest and sincere than the mind. The mind is trying to be polite, smiling. You say, “How interesting!” but inside you are saying, “How boring! I have listened to this story so many times and you are telling it again!”

I have heard a story about Albert Einstein’s wife. Friends of Albert Einstein would come to visit, and of course Einstein would always tell some anecdotes, some jokes, and they would laugh. But one friend became curious; he noticed that whenever he came, and Einstein started telling stories, Frau Einstein would immediately start knitting or doing something. So he asked her, “The moment your husband starts telling some story or some joke, why do you start knitting?”

She said, “If I don’t do anything, it will be tremendously difficult for me to tolerate because I have heard those stories and jokes a thousand and one times. You come to visit sometimes, I am always here. Whenever anybody comes he tells the same jokes, the same stories. If I didn’t do something with my hands, I would become so fidgety that it would be impolite. So I have to move my restlessness into some work. Then I can hide my fidgetiness behind the work.”

Whenever you feel bored you will feel restless. Restlessness is an indication of the body; the body is saying, “Move away from here. Go anywhere, but don’t be here.” But the mind goes on smiling, and the eyes go on sparkling, and you go on saying that you are listening and you have never heard such an interesting story. The mind is civilized; the body is still wild. The mind is human; the body is still animal. The mind is false; the body is true. The mind knows the rules and regulations, how to behave and how not to behave. So even if you meet a bore you say, “I am so happy, so glad to see you!” And deep down, if you were allowed, you would kill this man! He tempts you to murder. So you become fidgety, you feel restless.

If you listen to the body and run away, the restlessness will disappear. Try it! If somebody is boring you, simply start jumping and running around. Watch what happens—your restlessness will disappear, because restlessness simply shows that the energy does not want to be here. The energy is already on the move; the energy has already left this place. Now you are following the energy, so the restlessness disappears.

The real thing is to understand boredom, not restlessness. Boredom is a very significant phenomenon. Only man feels bored, no other animal. You cannot make a buffalo bored, impossible. Only man gets bored because only man is conscious. Consciousness is the cause. The more sensitive you are, the more alert you are, the more conscious you are, the more you will feel bored, and in more situations. A mediocre mind does not feel bored so easily. He goes on; he

accepts whatsoever is happening as okay. He is not so alert. The more alert you become, the more fresh, the more you will feel as if a given situation is just a repetition, as if some situation is just intolerable, as if some situation is just stale. The more sensitive you are the more easily you will become bored.

Boredom is an indication of sensitivity. Trees are not bored, animals are not bored, rocks are not bored because they are not sensitive enough. This has to be one of the basic understandings about your boredom: it happens because you are sensitive.

But buddhas also are not bored. You cannot bore a buddha. Animals are not bored and buddhas are not bored, so boredom exists as a middle phenomenon between the animal and the buddha. For boredom, a little more intelligence and sensitivity is needed than is given to the animals. And if you want to get beyond boredom then you have to become totally sensitive. Then again the boredom disappears. But in the middle, the boredom is there.

If you become animal-like, then too boredom disappears. So you will find that people who live a very animalistic life are less bored. Eating, drinking, marrying

—they are not very bored, but they are also not very sensitive. They live at the minimum, with only as much consciousness as is needed for a day-to-day routine life.

You will find that intellectuals, people who think too much, are more bored because they think, and in their thinking they can see that something is just repetitious.

Your life is full of repetitions. Every morning you get up in almost the same way as you have been getting up all your life. You take your breakfast in almost the same way. Then you go to the office—the same office, the same people, the same work. Then you come home—the same wife, the same husband, the same partner. If you get bored it is natural. It is very difficult for you to see any newness here; everything seems to be old, dust-covered.

I have heard an anecdote.

Mary Jane, the very good friend of a wealthy broker, opened her door cheerfully one day, then quickly attempted to close it when she discovered

the person on the threshold to be her lover’s wife.

The wife leaned against the door and said, “Oh, let me in, dear. I don’t intend to make a scene, just to have a small friendly discussion.”

With considerable nervousness Mary Jane let her enter, then said cautiously, “What do you want?”

“Nothing much,” said the wife, looking about. “I just want the answer to one question. Tell me, dear, just between us, what do you see in that dumb jerk?”

The same husband every day becomes a dumb jerk; the same wife every day, you almost forget how she looks. If you are told to close your eyes and to remember your wife’s face, you will find it impossible to remember. Many other women will come into your mind, the whole neighborhood, but not your wife. The whole relationship has become a continuous repetition. You make love, you hug your wife, you kiss your wife, but these are all empty gestures now. The glory and the glamour has disappeared long before.

A marriage is almost finished by the time the honeymoon is over, then you go on pretending. But behind those pretensions a deep boredom accumulates. Watch people walking on the street and you will see them completely bored. Everybody is bored, bored to death. Look at their faces—there is no aura of delight. Look at their eyes—they are dust-covered, no glimmer of inner happiness. They move from the office to home, from home to the office, and by and by the whole life becomes a mechanical routine, a constant repetition. And one day they die. Almost always people die without ever having been alive.

Bertrand Russell is reported to have said, “When I think back, I cannot find more than a few moments in my life when I was really alive, aflame.” Can you remember how many moments in your life you were really aflame? Rarely it happens. One dreams about those moments, one imagines those moments, one hopes for those moments, but they almost never happen. Even if they do happen, sooner or later they also become repetitive. When you fall in love with a woman or a man you feel a miracle has happened, but by and by the miracle disappears and everything settles into a routine.

Boredom is the consciousness of repetition. Because animals cannot remember the past, they cannot feel bored. They cannot remember the past, so they cannot feel the repetition. The buffalo goes on eating the same grass every

day with the same delight. You cannot. How can you eat the same grass every day with the same delight? You get fed up.

Hence, people try to change. They move into a new house, they bring a new car home, they divorce the old husband, they find a new love affair. But again, that new thing is going to become repetitive sooner or later. Changing places, changing partners, changing houses, is not going to do anything.

And whenever a society becomes very bored, people start moving from one town to another, from one job to another, from one wife to another, but sooner or later they realize that this is all nonsense. The same thing is going to happen again and again with every woman, with every man, with every house, with every car.

What to do then? Become more conscious. It is not a question of changing situations. Transform your being, become more conscious. If you become more conscious you will be able to see that each moment is new. But for that, much energy, a tremendous energy of consciousness is needed.

The wife is not the same, remember. You are in an illusion. Go back home and look again at your wife—she is not the same. Nobody can be the same; just appearances deceive. The trees are not the same as they were yesterday. How can they be? They have grown. Many leaves have fallen, new leaves have come. Look at the tree on your street—how many new leaves have come? Every day the old are falling and the new are coming. But you are not that conscious.

Either have no consciousness, then you cannot feel the repetition, or, have so much consciousness that in each repetition you can see something new. These are the two ways to get out of boredom.

Changing outside things is not going to help. It is just like rearranging the furniture in your room again and again. Whatever you do, you can put it this way or that way, it is the same furniture. There are many people who continuously think about how to manage things, where to put things, how to arrange them, where not to put them, and they go on changing things according to their ideas. But it is the same room, it is the same furniture. How long will you be able to deceive yourself in this way? By and by everything settles, the newness disappears.

You don’t have a quality of consciousness that can go on finding the new again and again. For a dull mind, everything is old; for a totally alive mind there is nothing old under the sun, cannot be. Everything is in flux. Every person is in flux, is riverlike. Persons are not dead things, how can they be the same? Are you the same? Between the time you woke up this morning and went out, and the time you went back home, a lot has happened. Some thoughts have disappeared from your mind, other thoughts have entered. You may have attained a new insight. You cannot go back home the same as you had left. The river is continuously flowing; it looks the same, but it is not the same. Old Heraclitus has said that you cannot step twice into the same river, because the river is never the same.

One thing is that you are not the same, and another thing is that everything is changing…. but then one has to live at the peak of consciousness. Either live like a buddha or live like a buffalo, then you will not be bored. Now the choice is yours.

I have never seen anybody the same. I’m always surprised by the newness that you bring every day. You may not be aware of it.

Remain capable of being surprised. Let me tell you one anecdote.

A man entered a bar, deep in private thoughts of his own. He turned to a woman just passing and said, “Pardon me, miss, do you happen to have the time?”

In a strident voice she responded, “How dare you make such a proposition to me!”

The man snapped to attention in surprise and was uncomfortably aware that every pair of eyes in the place had turned in their direction. He mumbled, “I just asked the time, miss.”

In a voice even louder the woman shrieked, “I will call the police if you say another word!”

Grabbing his drink and embarrassed very nearly to death, the man hastened to the far end of the room and huddled at a table, holding his breath and wondering how soon he could sneak out the door.

No more than half a minute had passed when the woman joined him.

In a quiet voice she said, “I’m terribly sorry, sir, to have embarrassed you, but I am a psychology student at the university and I am writing a thesis on the reaction of human beings to sudden, shocking statements.”

The man stared at her for three seconds, then he leaned back and bellowed, “You will do all that for me, all night, for just two dollars?”

And it is said that the woman fell down unconscious.

Maybe we don’t allow our consciousness to rise higher because then life would be a constant surprise. You might not be able to manage it. That’s why you have settled for a dull mind, there is some investment in it. You are not dull for no reason, you are dull for a certain purpose; if you were really alive then everything would be surprising and shocking. If you remain dull then nothing surprises you, nothing is shocking. The more dull you are, the more life seems dull to you. If you become more aware, life will also become more alive, livelier, and there is going to be difficulty.

You always live with dead expectations. Every day you come home and you expect certain behavior from your wife. Now look how you create your own misery: you expect a certain fixed behavior from your partner and then you want your partner to be new? You are asking the impossible! If you really want your wife, your husband, your partner to remain continuously new to you, don’t expect. Come home always ready to be surprised and shocked, then the other will be new.

But instead, we expect the other to fulfill certain expectations. And we ourselves never allow our total, fluxlike freshness to be known to the other. We go on hiding, we don’t expose ourselves, because the other may not be able to understand it at all. Both the husband and the wife expect the other to behave in a certain way, and, of course, each of them manages the roles. We are not living life, we are living roles. The husband comes home, he forces himself into a certain role. By the time he enters the house, he is no longer an alive person, he is just a husband.

A husband means a certain type of expected behavior. At home, the woman is a wife and the man is a husband. Now when these two persons meet there are really four persons: the husband and wife, who are not real persons but just personas, masks, false patterns, expected behavior, duties, and all that, and the real persons hiding behind the masks.

Those real persons feel bored.

But you have invested much in your persona, in your mask. If you really want a life that has no boredom in it, drop all masks, be true. Sometimes it will be difficult, I know, but it is worth it. Be true. If you feel like loving your wife, love her; otherwise say you don’t feel like it. What is happening right now is that the husband goes on making love to the wife, thinking of some actress. In his imagination he is not making love to this woman, he is making love to some other woman. And the same is true about the wife. Then things become boring because they are no longer alive. The intensity, the sharpness, is lost.

It happened on a railway platform. Mr. Johnson had weighed himself on one of those old-fashioned penny machines that delivers a card with a fortune printed on it.

The formidable Mrs. Johnson plucked it from her husband’s fingers and said, “Let me see that. Oh, it says you are firm and resolute, have a decisive personality, are a leader of men, and are attractive to women.”

Then she turned over the card, studied it for a moment, and said, “And they have got the weight wrong as well.”

And no woman can tolerate it if her husband is attracted to other women. There is the whole point, the whole crux. If he is not attracted to other women, how can she expect that he will be attracted to her? If he is attracted to other women, only then can he be attracted to her, because she is also a woman. The wife wants him to be attracted to her and not to anybody else. Now this is asking something absurd. It is as if you are saying, “You are allowed to breathe only in my presence and when you go near somebody else, you are not allowed to breathe. How dare you breathe anywhere else?” Just breathe when the wife is there, just breathe when the husband is there, and don’t breathe anywhere else. Of course, if you do that you will be dead, and you will not be able to breathe in front of your partner either.

Love has to be a way of life. You are to be loving. Only then can you love your wife or your husband. But the wife says, “No, you should not look at anybody else with a loving eye.” Of course you manage to control yourself, because if you don’t it creates such nuisance, but by and by the glimmer in your eyes disappears. If you cannot look anywhere else with love, by and by you cannot look at your own wife with love. The capacity disappears. And the same

has happened to her. The same has happened to the whole of humanity. Then life is a boredom; then everybody is just waiting for death; then there are people constantly thinking of committing suicide.

Marcel has said somewhere that the only metaphysical problem facing humanity is suicide. And it is so, because people are so bored. It is simply amazing more people don’t commit suicide, how they go on living. Life doesn’t seem to give anything, all meaning seems to be lost, but still people go on dragging somehow, hoping that some day some miracle will happen and everything will be put right.

It never happens. You have to put it right; nobody else is going to put it right for you. No Messiah is going to come, don’t wait for one. You have to be a light unto yourself.

Live more authentically. Drop the masks; they are a weight on your heart. Drop all falsities. Be exposed. Of course it is going to be troublesome, but that trouble is worth it because only after that trouble will you grow and become mature. And then nothing is holding back life. Each moment life reveals its newness, it is a constant miracle happening all around you, only you are hiding behind dead habits.

Become a buddha if you don’t want to be bored. Live each moment as fully alert as possible, because only in full alertness will you be able to drop the mask. You have completely forgotten what your original face is. Even when you stand before the mirror in your bathroom and you are alone, nobody is there. Even standing before the mirror you don’t see your original face in the mirror. There, too, you go on deceiving yourself.

Existence is available for those who are available to existence. And then, I tell you, there is no boredom. Life is infinite delight.

Would you please talk more about what you mean by intimacy? Particularly, when is staying together through difficult times in a marriage or partnership positive and when is it negative?

Marriage is a way to avoid intimacy. It is a trick to create a formal

relationship. Intimacy is informal. If marriage arises out of intimacy, it is beautiful but if you are hoping that intimacy will arise out of marriage, you are hoping in vain. Of course, I know that many people, millions of people, have settled for marriage rather than for intimacy—because intimacy is growth and it is painful.

Marriage is very secure. It is safe. There is no growth in it. One is simply stuck. Marriage is a sexual arrangement; intimacy is a search for love. Marriage is a sort of prostitution, a permanent sort. One has got married to a woman or to a man; it is a permanent prostitution. The arrangement is economical, not psychological, not of the heart.

So remember, if marriage arises out of intimacy then it is beautiful. That means that everybody should have lived together before they get married. The honeymoon should not happen after marriage, it should happen before marriage. One should have lived the dark nights, the beautiful days, the sad moments, the happy moments, together. One should have looked into each other’s eyes deeply, into each other’s being.

How to decide? If your intimacy is helping you to grow and to become mature then it is positive and good and healthy, wholesome. If it is destructive and it is not allowing you to become mature, rather, it is helping you to remain childish, immature, then it is unhealthy. Any relationship that keeps you childish is destructive. Get out of it. Any relationship that gives you challenges to grow, to go on an adventure, to go deeper and higher into life. I am not saying that a positive partnership or marriage will not have problems, it will have more problems than the negative. A positive relationship will have more problems because every day new challenges will be there. But each time a problem is solved you will have gone a little higher; each time a challenge is taken you will find something has become integrated in your being.

A negative relationship has no problems, or at the most, pseudo-problems, so- called problems—not real problems. Have you not watched it? Wives and husbands fight over trivia. They are not real problems, and even if you fight over them they don’t give you anything, they don’t help your growth Watch wives and husbands, watch yourself. You may be a husband, a wife—just watch. If you are fighting over trivia—small things which don’t mean anything anyway—then you will remain immature and childish.

Real problems, authentic problems, which really have to be faced, create great turmoil in your being; they bring a cyclone. One has to face them, and never avoid them. And the trivial questions are an escape from the real questions. A husband and wife will fight over very small things: which film to go to and which not to go to; what color car has to be purchased, what model, what make; to what restaurant they are going this evening. Such trivia! These things do not make any difference. You are making too much fuss about such problems and if you focus on them, your relationship is not going to help you, or give you any integrity, any center. I will call that relationship negative.

The positive relationship will face real problems. For example, if you are angry or sad, you will be sad in front of your wife, you will not smile a false smile. And you will say, “I am sad.” This has to be faced. If, walking on the road with your wife, you see a beautiful woman pass by and a great desire and longing arises in your heart, you will tell your wife that this woman created a great desire, stirred your heart. You will not avoid her. You will not take your eyes away or pretend that you have not seen the woman at all. Whether you pretend or not, your wife has already noticed it! It is impossible for her not to know because immediately your energy, your presence, changes. These are real problems.

Just getting married to a woman doesn’t mean that you are no longer interested in any other woman. In fact, the day you are not interested in any other women, you will not be interested in your wife either. Why? For what? What has your wife got that is special? If you are no longer interested in women you will not be interested in your wife either. You are in love with her because you are in love with women, still. Your wife is a woman. And sometimes you come across another woman who enchants you. You will say it and you will face the turmoil that will arise. It is not trivia, because it will create jealousy, it will create a struggle, it will disturb all peace and you will not be able to sleep at night. The wife will be throwing pillows at you!

To be true creates real problems. To be authentic creates real problems. And say whatsoever is the case. Never demur, never look sideways. Look straight and be true, and help your partner to be true.

Yes, there are problems in real intimacy, more problems than in a negative state. If you are really intimate with your partner, how can you avoid the fact that

you become interested in another person? You have to say it. That’s part of love, part of intimacy. You expose yourself totally and you don’t hold anything back. Even if during the night you dream a dream about another person, in the morning you can relate it to your partner.

I have heard about a film director. During the night he started talking to his girlfriend in his sleep, and he was talking aloud. He was saying such beautiful things, and his wife woke up. She started staring at him, listening hard to what he was saying. When you are married, even in your dreams you remain afraid of your wife, so suddenly he woke up and became afraid. What was he saying? He felt his wife looking at him and with great presence of mind, without opening his eyes to give any indication that he was awake, he said, “Cut! Now to the next scene,” as if he was directing a film!

If you really love the woman, in the morning you will tell her your dream, that you made love to another woman in the night in your dream. Everything has to be shared. The whole heart has to be shared.

Intimacy means that there is no privacy. You don’t carry anything private now, at least with the person you are intimate with, you drop your privacy. You are nude and naked—good, bad, whatsoever you are, you open your heart. And whatever the cost you pay for it; whatever the trouble you go through with it. That brings growth.

And you help the other person also to drop all inhibitions, screens, masks. In an intimate relationship one comes to see the original face of the other and one comes to show one’s own original face. If a relationship helps you to find your original face then it is meditative, then it is spiritual. If your relationship simply helps you to create more and more masks and hypocrisies then it is irreligious.

Try to understand my definition. If my definition is understood then out of a hundred marriages, ninety-nine are irreligious because they are simply creating more and more falsity. From the very beginning the falsity starts.

I have heard:

The minister, casting an appraising eye over the bridal couple before him and the goodly crowd come to witness the ceremony, intoned, “If

there is anyone here who knows why these two should not be joined together in wedlock, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”

“I’ve got something to say,” a voice rang out bold and clear. “You keep quiet!” snapped the minister. “You’re the groom.”

From the very beginning! They are not even married yet. And that’s how the life of a married couple starts. People keep quiet. They don’t say anything. They don’t say the truth at all. They pretend with lies. They smile when they don’t want to smile, they kiss when they don’t want to kiss. Naturally, when you kiss and you don’t want to, the kiss is poisonous. Naturally, when you don’t want to smile and you have to smile, your smile is ugly, it is political. And then somehow one gets accustomed to these things, one settles with the falsity, with the inauthenticity of life. And one consoles oneself in a thousand and one ways.

“Oh, we’re very happy,” insisted the husband. “Of course, once in a while my wife throws dishes at me. But that doesn’t change the situation one bit, because if she hits me she’s happy, and if she misses me I’m happy!”

One by and by comes to such an arrangement: both are happy.

The car in which the elderly couple were riding went over the cliff. It was an awful wreck.

“Where am I?” moaned the man when he opened his eyes. “In heaven?”

“No,” said his dazed wife. “I’m still with you.”

These settlements are hellish. What you know in the name of relationship is just a game of falseness and hypocrisy.

So remember it as a criterion: if you are growing more and becoming an individual, if life is happening more to you, if you are becoming more open, if more beauty is felt in existence, if more poetry is arising in your heart, if more love flows through you, more compassion, if you are becoming more aware, then the relationship is good. Carry on. Then it is not a marriage. Then it is intimacy.

But if the reverse is happening; if all poetry is disappearing and life is

becoming prosaic; if all love is disappearing and life is becoming just a load, a dead load; if all song is dying and you are just living as a duty, then it is better to escape from this prison. It is better for you and it is better for the partner with whom you are living.

I feel really confused. You just keep on telling me, in one way or the other, that I am a complete crackpot to be with my boyfriend; but there is still something so strong in me that wants to stay in this relationship. If it brings me closer to really and truly being myself to be alone and without relationship, I am definitely not getting it. If it means that this relationship is getting in the way, it hurts too much to even feel it. What is it that I am still not getting?

The question is not what you are not getting, but that you are getting too many ideas of your own which have nothing to do with me. So let me tell you clearly and simply, that I’m not against any relationship; and particularly you and your boyfriend, who fit together so well! He’s a nutcase, you are a crackpot—I will not disturb your relationship. Otherwise, the nutcase will disturb somebody else, the crackpot will disturb somebody else, and two more persons will be disturbed.

Just out of sheer compassion I want you to be together, to cling, whatever happens. What more can happen? He has become a nutcase; beyond that, the road comes to an end. You are a crackpot. Hang around each other, it is beautiful company! Yes, there is fighting, but there are moments of love too. You are so attached to him, and he’s also attached to you. It always happens when nuts fall in love with each other, then no matter what hell they create for each other they remain together. That hell is their heaven.

I’m not against your relationship. What I’m saying is that your boyfriend should get out of being a nut and become a human being, and that you should get out of being a crackpot to be a human being—to relate as human beings, love as human beings. I’m the last person to disturb anybody’s love. If I disturb it, I disturb it only to take you a little higher, to take your love to more juicy spaces.

You got it all wrong, but that is understandable. I was waiting for your question. I could have written the question myself, because I knew what would be going on in these two strange people’s minds. And you yourself reported to

me that since your boyfriend had gone to Goa, you enjoyed such peace and joy in those weeks.

When he informed you that he was coming back in a week, he had not yet come, but you started retraining yourself. You had to be ready to receive him, so you started becoming miserable. In those seven days while you were waiting for him to come back you again lost all joy, all peace. Now that he is here, you are again playing your old games, which are destructive to both of you.

I would not like to separate you, but I would like you to drop these ideas of being a crackpot, or being a nut. These are dangerous ideas, and if you carry a certain idea too long, it starts becoming a reality. You create your reality around yourself with your ideas—it is a projection.

Simply renounce your past and meet with each other as strangers. Say to your boyfriend, “Hello,” and don’t repeat inside your mind that, “This is that nutcase.” Avoid that. Nutcases are not bad people, but after all they are nuts. You fit together very well, but the fit should be joyous. It should be a great blessing; you should help each other for your growth.

Fighting should stop. You are soft in your heart, and he is also very soft in his heart. I know many kinds of nuts and they are all soft inside. Just drop your coverings, your personalities, and don’t clash with each other.

I am not against your relationship, but a relationship is not meant to be just for clashing with each other. Fighting is not love. Once in a while you are loving, but that is just so that you can go on fighting.

There is no need to fight at all. And whenever you are feeling too full of energy, you can do Dynamic Meditation. Why do you think I have created all these meditations for all kinds of nuts?—so they can enjoy one hour of being a nut, with a great idea that they are doing a spiritual meditation! It is simply to throw out their nuttiness without throwing it on anybody else, so that with others they can have a cooler, more peaceful, loving relationship.

I am not against any love, but if love creates hell, then I will not suggest that you go on living in misery. Then it is better for both of you—if you cannot create a beautiful space between you, then perhaps you are not born for each

other. Give it a try, and beware of the fact that if you remain grumpy, your face continuously sad, then I am going to suggest that you part from each other.

You are simply a nut. He is a very qualified person, a coconut—he will understand me.

There is no need to lose hope. Give it a try, but this time make it a point that either your life becomes peaceful and joyous, or with peace and joy, you part from one another.

We are all strangers in the world. We meet suddenly, accidentally, on the road. It is good if we can help each other to be more authentic, more sincere, more loving; to be more meditative, to be more alert, to be more aware. Then our love relationship is a spiritual phenomenon. But if we are simply destroying each other, this is not even friendship; this is sheer enmity.

So you have to decide. You both sit together, outside in the open—not in your room, because there the fight starts. Sit outside where everybody is passing by, so you cannot fight. Have a nice conversation. Lovers forget completely how to have a nice conversation; they all start speaking Marathi. Have you heard Marathi? I cannot conceive that you can love anybody, talking in Marathi; it always sounds like you are fighting. Just at the opposite pole is another language in India, Bengali—you cannot fight in it. Even if you are fighting, it looks as if you are having a beautiful conversation.

Have a good, decisive conversation, and follow a very simple rule: that we are together to help each other, not to destroy each other; to create each other, not to kill each other. Then everything is perfectly okay. Nothing is wrong in you, separately, and nothing is wrong in Om, separately. But together you suddenly both become warriors.

When I say that your love should be a let-go, a non-doing, a freedom, I mean it should not be something forced. It should not be something dependent on law, on social conventions. I mean that the only binding force between two lovers is simply love, and nothing else. This love may go a long way or it may not go a long way. This love may last for your whole life, or it may be finished tomorrow.

That’s what I mean by let-go.

There are people who want licentiousness. That is not my meaning of let-go. I am not saying you should go on changing your partners every day. Again that will be forced. That would be moving from the one extreme of marriage, where you cannot change the partner, to the other extreme that you have to change your partner.

What I have said is, let it be a freedom. If you want to be together it is perfectly beautiful. The day you want to part, part lovingly, with gratefulness to each other for all those beautiful moments that you have given to each other.

The parting should be as beautiful as your meeting. It should even be more beautiful, because you have lived for so long together, you have grown roots into each other even though now you are deciding to leave one another. But the memories will haunt you. You have loved each other; it does not matter that now you feel it is difficult to be together, there was a time you wanted to be together for lifetimes. So part without any conflict, without any quarrel. You were two strangers who met, and again you are becoming strangers but with a great treasure that happened between the two of you. You have to be grateful to each other while parting.

But if the love continues, I have not said that you have to break it. I have said that you have not to do anything against it. If it goes on for your whole life, until you are in your grave, that too is good. And if it lasts only for one night and in the morning you feel that you are not for each other, but still you gave a beautiful night to each other, you have to be thankful for it.

Many people have misunderstood me. They think that I am telling people, “Change your partners as quickly and as often as possible.” I am not saying that. I am simply saying that as long as love is the only binding force, be together. The moment you both start feeling that something has become past, that it is no longer present…you can drag on, but it will be deceiving each other. It is ugly to deceive a man you have loved; it is ugly to deceive a woman you have loved. It is better to be honest and say, “This is the time we should separate, because the love has gone and we are not capable of holding on to love.”

There are things which come and go of their own accord. When you fell in

love with someone, it was not you, you did not decide it. Suddenly it happened; you could not have given a reason for why it happened. You can simply say, “I found myself being in love.” Just remember the first meeting, and also remember the way love comes; in the same way, it goes. One day, suddenly in the morning you wake up and you find that the love has left. The husband is there, you are there, but something between you that was a bridge, a constant flow of energy, has disappeared. You are two, but you are alone and the other is alone. That “together” is no longer there, and the mystery that was keeping it together is not in your hands. You cannot force it to come back.

Millions of couples are doing that, hoping that perhaps it will come back, hoping that praying may help, going to church may help, getting somebody’s blessings may help, some marriage counselor may help—but nothing is going to help. Even if in some way you can catch hold of the same man again, you will find that he is not the same man, and he will find that you are not the same woman. It is better to become strangers again. What is wrong in it? Back when you were strangers, nothing was wrong. Back when you did not know the woman, did not know the man, everything was good. Now again that has happened and you are again strangers. It is nothing new! You should have been aware from the very beginning that something mysterious came in. You did not bring it in. Naturally, it can go any moment and you cannot hold it back.

All depends on love. If it remains a long time, good. If it remains only for a few moments, that too is good because love is good. The length of it is meaningless. It is possible to have, in just a few minutes, more intensity of love than you can have in a few years. And that intensity will give you something of the unknown, which so many years will simply dilute. So the length is irrelevant, the depth is the only thing to be thought about.

While you are in love, be totally immersed in it. And when it is gone, say good-bye and be totally finished with it. Don’t let the idea linger in your mind. There are many strangers available in the world—who knows? Love has left you simply so that you can find a better stranger.

Life’s ways are strange. Trust life. You may find somebody who proves to be a tremendous love, and then you will see that your first love was nothing compared to it.

And remember, some day this greater love can also disappear. But trust the life which has been giving you gifts again and again without your asking. Remain available.

The world is so full of beautiful people; there is no scarcity. And every individual has something unique which nobody else has. Every individual gives to his love a color, a poetry, a music that is his own, and that nobody else can give.

Trust life—that is my basic understanding, to trust life because we are born of life, we are children of life.

Trust life. Life has never betrayed anyone. Perhaps you have passed through one class and you have to enter into a second class, a higher grade, a more delicate love, a more sophisticated phenomenon—who knows? Just keep your heart open, and life never frustrates anybody.

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