Chapter 1: The Changing Seasons of Life

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‌Chapter 1: The Changing Seasons of Life

Life has an inner pattern; it is good to understand it. Every seven years, physiologists say, the body and mind go through a crisis and a change. Every seven years all the cells of the body change, are completely renewed. In fact, if you live seventy years, the average limit, your body dies ten times. Each seventh year everything changes. It is just like changing seasons. In seventy years, the circle is complete. The line that moves from birth comes to death. The circle is complete in seventy years. It has ten divisions.

In fact, man’s life should not be divided into childhood, youth, old age – that is not very scientific because every seven years a new age, a new step is taken.

For the first seven years a child is self-centered, as if he is the center of the whole world. The whole family moves around him. Whatever his needs are, they are to be fulfilled immediately, otherwise he will go into a tantrum: anger, rage… He lives like an emperor, a real emperor. His mother, his father – all are servants, and the whole family just exists for him. And of course he thinks the same is true for the wider world. The moon rises for him, the sun rises for him, the seasons change for him. A child remains absolutely egoistic, self-centered for seven years. If you ask psychologists they will say a child remains masturbatory for seven years, satisfied with himself. He does not need anything, anybody. He feels complete.

After seven years – a breakthrough. The child is no longer self-centered; he becomes eccentric, literally. Eccentric – the word means going out of the center. He moves toward others. The other becomes the important phenomenon – friends, gangs… Now he is not so interested in himself; he is interested in the other, the bigger world. He enters an adventure to know who this “other” Is. Inquiry starts.

After the seventh year, the child becomes a great questioner. He questions everything. He becomes a great skeptic because inquiry is there; he asks millions of questions. He bores the parents to death, he becomes a nuisance. He is interested in the other, and everything of the world is of interest. Why are the trees green? Why did God create the world? Why is this so? He starts becoming more philosophic; inquiry, skepticism – he insists on going into things.

He kills a butterfly to see what is inside, destroys a toy just to see how it works, throws a clock just to look into it, how it goes on ticking and chiming – what is the matter inside? He becomes interested in the other, but the other remains of the same sex. He is not interested in girls. If other boys are

interested in girls, he will think they are sissy. Girls are not interested in boys. If some girl is interested in boys and plays with them, she is a tomboy, not normal, average; something is wrong. Psychoanalysts and psychologists will say this second stage is homosexual.

After the fourteenth year, a third door opens. He is no longer interested in boys, girls are no longer interested in girls. They are polite, but not interested. That’s why any friendship that happens between the seventh year and the fourteenth is the deepest, because the mind is homosexual, and no longer in life will such friendship happen again. Those friends remain friends forever; it was such a deep tie. You will become friendly with people but it will remain acquaintance, not that deep phenomenon that happened between the seventh and the fourteenth year.

After the fourteenth year, a boy is not interested in boys. If everything goes normal, if he is not stuck somewhere, he will be interested in girls. Now he is becoming heterosexual – not only interested in the others, but really the other, because when a boy is interested in boys, the boy may be other but he is still a boy just like himself, not exactly the other. When a boy becomes interested in a girl, now he is really interested in the opposite, the real other. When a girl becomes interested in a boy, now the world enters.

The fourteenth year is a great revolutionary year. Sex becomes mature, one starts thinking in terms of sex, sex fantasies become prominent in the dreams. The boy becomes a great Don Juan, starts courting. Poetry arises, romance. He is entering the world.

By the twenty-first year – if everything goes normally, and a child is not forced by the society to do something which is not natural – by the twenty-first year, a child becomes interested more in ambition than in love. He wants a Rolls Royce, a great palace. He wants to be a success, a Rockefeller, a prime minister. Ambitions become prominent: desiring for the future, being a success. How to succeed, how to compete, how to move in the struggle is his whole concern.

Now he is not only entering the world of nature, he is entering the world of humanity, the marketplace. Now he is entering the world of madness. Now the market becomes the most prominent thing. His whole being goes toward the market: money, power, prestige.

If everything goes right – as it never goes, I am talking of the absolutely natural phenomenon – by the twenty-eighth year, a man is not in any way trying to enter an adventurous life. From twenty-one to twenty-eight, one lives in adventure; by the twenty-eighth year, one becomes more alert that not all desires can be fulfilled. There is more understanding that many desires are

impossible. If you are a fool, you can go after them. But people who are intelligent, by the twenty-eighth year enter another door. They become more interested in security and comfort, less in adventure and ambition. They start settling. The twenty-eighth year is the end of hippiedom.

At twenty-eight, hippies become squares, revolutionaries are no longer revolutionaries; they start settling, they seek a comfortable life, a little bank balance. They don’t want to be Rockefellers; finished, that urge is no longer there. They want a small house, but established, a cozy place to live in, security – so at least this much they can always have; a small bank balance. They go to the insurance company nearabout the age of twenty-eight. They start settling. Now the vagabond is no longer the vagabond. He purchases a house, starts living…he becomes civilized. The word civilization comes from the word civis, citizen. Now he becomes part of a town, a city, an establishment. He is no longer a vagabond, a wanderer. Now he is not going to Kathmandu and Goa. He is not going anywhere – finished, traveled enough, known enough; now he wants to settle and rest a little.

By the thirty-fifth year, life energy reaches its omega point. The circle is half complete and energies start declining. Now the man is not only interested in security and comfort, he becomes a Tory, orthodox. He becomes not only disinterested in revolution, he becomes an antirevolutionary. Now he is against all change. He is a conformist. He is against all revolution; he wants the status quo because now he has settled and if anything changes, the whole thing will unsettle. Now he is talking against hippies, against rebels; now he has become really a part of the establishment.

And this is natural. Unless something goes wrong, a man is not going to remain a hippie forever. That was a phase, good to pass through, but bad to be stuck in. That means you remain stuck at a certain stage. It was good to be homosexual between seven and fourteen, but if one remains homosexual for his whole life, that means he has not grown up, he is not adult. A woman has to be contacted, that is part of life. The other sex has to become important because only then will you be able to know the harmony of the opposites, the conflict, the misery, and the ecstasy: agony and ecstasy both. That is a training, a necessary training.

By the thirty-fifth year, one has become part of the conventional world. One starts believing in tradition, in the past, in the Vedas, the Koran, The Bible. One is absolutely against change because every change means your own life will be disturbed; now you have much to lose. You cannot be for revolution – you want to protect… One is for the law and the courts and the government. One is no longer an anarchist; one is all for the government, rules, regulations,

discipline.

By the forty-second year, all sorts of physical and mental illnesses erupt because now life is declining. Energy is moving toward death.

Just as in the beginning energies were coming up and you were becoming more and more vital, energetic, you were becoming stronger and stronger – now just the opposite happens, you become weaker every day.

But your habits persist. You have been eating enough up to the age of thirty- five; now you continue your habit. You will start gathering fat. Now that much food is not needed. It was needed but now it is not needed because life is moving toward death, it does not need that much food. If you go on filling your belly as you were doing before, all sorts of illnesses will happen: high blood pressure, heart attack, insomnia, ulcers – they all happen nearabout forty-two. Forty-two is one of the most dangerous points. The hair starts falling out, becoming gray. Life is turning into death.

And near the age of forty-two, religion starts becoming important for the first time. You may have dabbled a little here and there in religion before, but now religion becomes important for the first time – because religion is deeply concerned with death. Now death is approaching and the first desire for religion arises.

Carl Gustav Jung has written that his whole life he has been observing that the people who come to him at the age of forty or nearabout are always in need of religion. If they go mad, neurotic, psychotic, they cannot be helped unless they become rooted in religion. They need religion; their basic need is religion. And if the society is secular and you have never been taught religion, the greatest difficulty comes nearabout the age of forty-two – because society does not give you any avenue, any door, any dimension.

Society was good when you were fourteen, because it gives enough of sex – the whole society is sexual; sex seems to be the only commodity hidden in every commodity. If you want to sell a ten-ton truck, you have to use a naked woman, or toothpaste – then too. Truck or toothpaste, it makes no difference: a naked woman is always smiling there behind. Really the woman is sold. The truck is not sold, the toothpaste is not sold; the woman is sold. And because the woman is there – her smile comes with the toothpaste – you have to purchase the toothpaste. Everywhere sex is sold.

So this society, a secular society, is good for young people. But they are not going to remain young forever. When they become forty-two suddenly the society leaves them in limbo. They don’t know what to do now. They go neurotic because they don’t know, they have never been trained, no discipline has been given them to face death. The society has made them ready for life,

but nobody has taught them to become ready for death. They need as much education for death as they need for life.

If I was allowed my way, I would divide universities into two parts: one for young people, another for old people. Young people would come to learn the art of life – sex, ambition, struggle. Then when they became old and reached the forty-two mark, they would come back to the university to learn about death, God, meditation – because then the old universities wouldn’t be of any help to them. They need a new training, a new discipline, so that they can become anchored with the new phase that is happening to them.

This society leaves them in limbo; that’s why in the West there is so much mental illness. It is not so much in the East. Why? – because the East still gives a little training in religion. It has not disappeared completely; howsoever false, pseudo, it is still there, it exists, just around the corner. No longer in the marketplace, no longer in the thick of life, just at the side, but there is a temple. Out of the way of life, but still it is there. You have to walk a few steps and you can go there. It still exists.

In the West religion is no longer part of life. Nearabout the age of forty-two, every Westerner is going through psychic problems. Thousands of types of neuroses happen – and ulcers. Ulcers are the footprints of ambition. An ambitious man is bound to have ulcers in the stomach: ambition bites, it eats itself. An ulcer is nothing but eating yourself. You are so tense that you have started eating your own stomach lining. You are so tense, your stomach is so tense, it never relaxes. Whenever the mind is tense, the stomach is tense. Ulcers are the footprints of ambition. If you have ulcers, that shows you are a very successful man.

If you have no ulcers, you are a poor man: your life has been a failure, you failed utterly. If you have your first heart attack nearabout forty-two, you are a great success: you must be at least a cabinet minister, or a rich industrialist, or a famous actor; otherwise, how will you explain the heart attack? A heart attack is the definition of success. All successful people will have heart attacks. They have to.

The whole system is burdened with toxic elements: ambition, desire, future, tomorrow – which are never there. You lived in dreams. Now your system cannot tolerate it anymore. You remain so tense for the future that tension has become your very style of life. Now it is a deep-rooted habit.

At forty-two, again a breakthrough comes. One starts thinking about religion, the other world. Then life seems to be very short. Little time is left. How can you achieve God, nirvana, enlightenment? Hence the theory of reincarnation: don’t be afraid, again you will be born, again and again, and the

wheel of life will go on moving and moving. Don’t be afraid: there is enough time, there is enough eternity left – you can attain.

That’s why in India three religions were born – Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism – and they don’t agree on any other point except reincarnation. They don’t agree on any other point. Even about such an important theory as God there is not an agreement. Jainas say there is no God, Buddhists say there is no God. Even about a more important theory than God, the theory of the soul, atman– Buddhists say there is no atman, no soul. Such divergent theories! Not even agreeing on the basic foundations: God, self… But they all agree on the theory of reincarnation. There must be something to it.

They all need time, because to attain brahman – Hindus call it brahman – much time is needed. It is such a great ambition, and at the age of forty-two, you become interested. Only twenty-eight years are left.

And this is just the beginning of the interest. In fact, at the age of forty-two, you become again a child in the world of religion. Only twenty-eight years are left. Time seems too short, not enough at all to attain such great heights – brahman, Hindus call it. Jainas call it moksha, absolute freedom from all past karmas. Thousands and millions of lives have been there in the past; how are you going to cope within twenty-eight years? How will you undo the whole past? Such a vast past is there – bad and good karmas. How are you going to clean your sins completely within twenty-eight years? It seems unjust. God is demanding too much, it is not possible. You will feel frustrated if only twenty- eight years are given to you.

And Buddhists – who don’t believe in God, don’t believe in the soul – also believe in reincarnation, nirvana, the final emptiness, the total emptiness. When you have remained filled with so much rubbish for so many lives, how are you going to unburden within twenty-eight years? It is too much, seems an impossible task. They all agree on one thing, that more future is needed, more time is needed.

Whenever you have ambition, time is needed. And to me, a religious person is one who does not need time. He is liberated here and now, he achieves to brahman here and now, he is mukta, liberated, enlightened here and now. A religious man does not need time at all because religion happens in a timeless moment. It happens now, it always happens now. It has never happened otherwise, in no other way has it ever happened.

At the age of forty-two, the first urge arises, vague, not clear, confused. You are not even aware of what is happening, but you start looking at the temple with keen interest. Sometimes, by the way, as a casual visitor, you come to the church also. Sometimes, having time, not doing anything, you start looking in

The Bible which has always been gathering dust on the table. Vague, not exactly clear, just like the small child who is vague about sex starts playing with his own sex organ, not knowing what he is doing. A vague urge… Sometimes one sits alone silently, suddenly feels peaceful, not knowing what he is doing. Sometimes one starts a mantra heard in the childhood. The old grandmother used to do it; feeling tense, one starts repeating it. One starts seeking, searching for a guru, somebody to guide you. One takes initiation, starts learning a mantra, repeating it sometimes, then again forgetting for a few days, again repeating… A vague search, groping…

By the forty-ninth year, the search becomes clear; seven years it takes for the search to become clear. Now a determination arises. You are no longer interested in the others, particularly if everything has gone right – and I have to repeat this again and again because it never goes right. At the age of forty-nine, one becomes disinterested in women. A woman becomes disinterested in man – the menopause, the forty-ninth year… The man doesn’t feel like being sexual. The whole thing looks a little juvenile, the whole thing looks a little immature.

But society can force… In the East, they have been against sex and they have suppressed sex. When a boy is fourteen they are suppressing sex, and they want to believe that he is still a child: he doesn’t think about girls. Other boys maybe – they always belong to the neighborhood, never your boy; he is innocent, like a child, like an angel. And he looks very innocent, but that’s not true: he fantasizes. The girl has entered his consciousness, has to enter – it is natural – and he has to hide it. He starts masturbating, and he has to hide it. He has wet dreams and he has to hide it.

In the East, a boy of fourteen becomes guilty. Something wrong is happening – only to him, because he cannot know that everybody everywhere is doing the same. And much is expected of him – that he should remain an angel, a virgin, not thinking about girls, not even dreaming about girls. But he has become interested and society is suppressing.

In the West, this suppression has disappeared, but another has come – and this has to be understood, because it is my feeling that the society can never be non-suppressive. If it changes one suppression, immediately it starts another. Now the next suppression is near the age of forty-nine in the West: people are forced to remain in sex because the whole teaching says, “What are you doing? – a man can be sexually potent up to the age of ninety!” Great authorities are saying it. And if you are not potent, and you are not interested, you start feeling guilty. At the age of forty-nine, a man starts feeling guilty that he is not making as much love as he should.

There are teachers who go on teaching: “This is nonsense. You can make

love, you can make love up to the age of ninety. Go on making love.” And they say if you don’t make love you will lose potency. If you continue, then your organs continue functioning. If you stop, then they will stop. And once you stop sex, life energy will drop down, you will die soon.

If the husband stops, the wife is after him: “What are you doing?” If the wife stops the husband is after her: “This is against the psychologists and may create some perversion!”

In the East, we did one stupidity, and in the West also in the ancient days they did the same. It was against religion for a child of fourteen to become sexually potent – and he becomes so naturally. The child cannot do anything, it is beyond his control. What can he do? How can he do it? And all teaching about brahmacharya at the age of fourteen is stupid. You are suppressing. But the old authorities, traditions, gurus, rishis, old psychologists and religious people – they were all against, the whole authority was against. A child was suppressed. Guilt was created. Nature was not allowed.

Now just the opposite is happening at the other end. At the age of forty-nine, psychologists are forcing people to continue to make love; otherwise you will lose life. And at the age of forty-nine… As at the age of fourteen sex naturally arises, so at the age of forty-nine it naturally subsides. It has to, because every circle has to be complete.

That’s why in India we had decided that at the age of fifty man should start becoming a vanprasth, his eyes should move toward the forest, his back toward the marketplace. Vanprasth is a beautiful word; it means one who starts looking toward the Himalayas, toward the forest. Now his back is toward life and ambitions and desires and all that. Finished. He starts moving toward aloneness, toward being himself.

Before this, life was too much and he could not be alone; there were responsibilities to be fulfilled, children to be raised. Now they have become young people. They are married – by the time you are forty-nine your children are getting married, settling. They are no longer hippies, they must be reaching the age of twenty-eight. They will settle – now you can unsettle. Now you can move beyond the home; you can become homeless. At the age of forty-nine, one should start looking toward the forest, moving inward, becoming introvert, becoming more and more meditative and prayerful.

At the age of fifty-six, again a change comes, a revolution. Now it is not enough to look toward the Himalayas, one has to really travel, one has to go. Life is ending, death is coming nearer. At the age of forty-nine one becomes disinterested in the other sex. At the age of fifty-six one should become uninterested in others, society, social formalities, the club – Rotary and Lions.

At the age of fifty-six, one should resign from all Rotaries, all Lions; it looks foolish now, childish. Go to some Rotary Club or Lions Club and see people, dressed up with their ties and everything. It looks juvenile, childish; what are they doing? Lions – the very name looks foolish. For a small child, good. Now they have for small children Cub clubs, and for women Lioness clubs. For cubs, perfectly right, but for lions and lionesses…? It shows that the minds are mediocre. They have no intelligence, nothing at all.

At the age of fifty-six, one should be so mature as to come out of all social entanglements. Finished! One lived enough, learned enough; now one gives thanks to everybody and comes out of it. Fifty-six is the time one should naturally become a sannyasin. One should take sannyas, one should renounce. It is natural – as you enter, so you should renounce. Life should have an entrance and it should also have an exit; otherwise it will be suffocating. You enter and you never come out and then you say you are suffocated, in agony.

There is an exit, and that is sannyas. You come out. You are not even interested in others by the age of fifty-six.

By the age of sixty-three you again become like a child, only interested in yourself. That is what meditation is – to be moving inward, as if everything has fallen away. Only you exist. Again you have become a child – of course, very much enriched by life, very mature, understanding, with great intelligence. Now you again become innocent. You start moving inward. Only seven years are left, and you have to prepare for death. You have to be ready to die. And what is the readiness to die?

To die celebrating is the readiness to die. To die happy, joyfully, to die willingly, welcomingly, is to be ready. Existence gave you an opportunity to learn, and be, and you learned. Now you would like to rest. Now you would like to go to the ultimate home.

It was a sojourn. You wandered in a strange land, you lived with strange people, you loved strangers, and you learned much. Now the time has come: the prince must return to his own kingdom.

Sixty-three is the time when one becomes completely enclosed in one’s self. The whole energy moves in and in and in, turning in. You become a circle of energy, not moving anywhere. No reading, not much talking. More and more silent, more and more with one’s self, remaining totally independent of all that is around you. The energy by and by subsides.

By the age of seventy, you are ready. And if you have followed this natural pattern, just before your death, nine months before your death, you will become aware of it. As a child has to pass nine months in the mother’s womb, the same circle is totally repeated, completely repeated, utterly repeated. By the time

death comes, nine months before, you will become aware. Now you are entering the womb again. This womb is no longer outside in the mother, this womb is inside you.

Indians call the innermost shrine of a temple the garbha, the womb. When you go to a temple, the innermost part of the temple is called the womb. It is very symbolically called so, very consideredly; it is the womb one has to enter. In the last phase – nine months – one enters oneself, one’s own body becomes the womb. One moves to the innermost shrine where the flame has always been burning, where the light has always been, where the temple is, where the god has always been living.

This is the natural process. For this natural process no future is needed. You have to be living naturally this moment. The next moment will come out of it on its own accord – as a child grows and becomes a youth. There is no need to plan for it, one simply becomes; it is natural, it happens. As a river flows and comes to the ocean, the same way you flow, and you come to the final, the ocean. But one should remain natural, floating, and in the moment. Once you start thinking about the future and ambition and desire, you are missing this moment. And this moment missed will create perversion because you will always lack something; there will be a gap.

If a child has not lived his childhood well, that unlived childhood will enter his youth – because where will it go? It has to be lived. And when a child is at the age of four and dances and jumps and runs around, butterfly-catching, it is beautiful. But when a young man of twenty runs after butterflies he is crazy. Then you have to admit him to the hospital; he is a mental case. Nothing was wrong with it at the age of four; it was just natural, it was the thing to do. It was the right thing to do; if the child was not running after butterflies something was wrong, he had to be taken to the psychoanalyst.

Then it was okay; but when he is twenty and running after butterflies, you should suspect something has gone wrong, he has not grown up. The body has grown, the mind is lagging behind. It must be somewhere in his childhood – he was not allowed to live it completely. If he lives childhood completely, he will become a young man: beautiful, fresh, uncontaminated by the childhood. He will shed childhood as a snake sheds its old skin. He will come out of it fresh. He will have the intelligence of a young man, and he won’t look retarded.

Live youth completely. Don’t listen to the Eastern and ancient authorities. Just drop them out of the way. If you meet them on the way, kill them immediately. Don’t listen to them because they have killed youth, they are suppressive of youth. They are against sex, and if a society is against sex, sex will spread all over your life. It will become poison. Live it! Enjoy it!

Between the fourteenth and twenty-first year, a boy is at his highest peak of sexuality. In fact, near the age of seventeen or eighteen he reaches the peak of sexuality. Never will he be so potent. And if those moments are missed he will never achieve the beautiful orgasm that could have been achieved near the age of seventeen or eighteen.

I am in a continuous difficulty because society forces you to remain celibate, at least up to the twenty-first year. That means the greatest possibility of achieving sex, learning sex, entering sex, will be missed. By the time you reach twenty-one, twenty-two, you are already old as far as sex is concerned! Near the age of seventeen you were at the peak – so potent, so powerful, that the orgasm, the sexual orgasm, would have spread to your very cells. Your whole body would have taken a bath of eternal bliss.

And when I say sex can become samadhi, I don’t say it for people who are seventy, remember. I am saying it for people who are seventeen. Old men come to me and they say, “We have read your book, From Sex to Superconsciousness, but we never achieve anything like this.”

How can you achieve it? You have missed the time, and it cannot be replaced. And I am not responsible; society is responsible, and you listened to it.

If between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one a child is allowed to have free sex, absolutely free sex, he will never bother about sex. He will be completely free. He will not look at the magazines Playboy and Playgirl. He will not hide nude, ugly, obscene pictures in the cupboard or in The Bible. He will not go out of his way to throw things at women. He will not become a bottom-pincher. These things are ugly, simply ugly, but you go on tolerating them and not feeling what is happening, why everybody is neurotic.

Once you find a chance to rub against a woman’s body, you never miss it. What ugliness! – rubbing against a body. Something has remained unfulfilled in you. And when an old man looks with lustful eyes, there is nothing like that; it is the ugliest thing in the world when an old man looks with lust in his eyes. His eyes should be innocent now, he must be finished by now. Not that sex is something ugly; remember, I am not saying sex is ugly. Sex is beautiful at its own time and season, and it is ugly out of season, out of time. Sex is a disease when it is in a ninety-year-old man. That’s why people say “dirty old man.” It is dirty.

A young man is beautiful, sexual. He shows vitality, life. An old man, sexual, shows an unlived life, an empty life, immature. He missed the opportunity and now he cannot do anything, but he goes on thinking, rambling in the mind about sex, fantasizing.

Remember, between the fourteenth and the twenty-first year, a right society will allow absolute freedom for sex. And then society will become less sexual automatically. Beyond this time there will be no sex; the disease will not be there. Live it when the moment is ripe and forget it when the moment has gone. But that you can do only if you have lived; otherwise you cannot forget and you cannot forgive. You will cling, it will become a wound inside.

In the East, don’t listen to the authorities, whatever they say. Listen to nature. When nature says it is time to love, love. When nature says it is time to renounce, renounce. And don’t listen to the foolish psychoanalysts and psychologists in the West. Howsoever refined instruments they have – Masters and Johnson and others – and however many vaginas they have been testing and examining, they don’t know life.

In fact, I suspect that these Masters and Johnsons and Kinseys in the West are voyeurs. They themselves are ill about sex; otherwise who bothers to watch one thousand vaginas with instruments – watching what is happening inside when a woman makes love? Who bothers? What nonsense! But when things become perverted, this type of thing happens. Now Masters and Johnsons have become the experts, the final authorities. If you are having any sexual problem, they are the final authority to go to. And I suspect they have missed their youth, they have not lived their sex lives rightly. Somewhere something is lacking and they are fulfilling it through such tricks.

And when a thing is in the garb of science you can do anything. Now they have made false, electric penises, and those electric penises go on throbbing in the real vaginas, and they go on trying to find what is happening inside, whether orgasm is clitoral or vaginal, what hormones are flowing, what hormones are not flowing, and how long a woman can make love. They say: to the very end. A woman can make love on her deathbed.

In fact, their suggestion is that after menopause a woman can make better love than ever – that means after the forty-ninth year. Why do they say that? – because, they say, before the forty-ninth a woman is always afraid of getting pregnant. Even if she is on the pill, no pill is a hundred percent proof; there is a fear. By the forty-ninth year, when the menopause comes and the period stops, then there is no fear; a woman is completely free.

If their teaching spreads women are going to become vampires, and old women will chase men because they are unafraid and the authority sanctions it. In fact, they say that then is the right time to enjoy – without any responsibility. For men also they go on saying the same. And they have come across men – so now they say there is no average – they have come across a man who in his sixtieth year can make love five times a day. This man seems to be a freak.

Something is wrong with his hormones and his body. And at the age of sixty! He is not natural, because as I see it – and this I am saying out of my own experiences in many lives, I can remember them – by the forty-ninth year a natural man is not interested in women; the interest goes. As it comes, it goes.

Everything that comes has to go. Everything that arises has to fall. Every wave that arises has to disappear. There must be a time when it goes. At fourteen it comes; at forty-nine or nearabout it goes.

But a man making love five times a day at the age of sixty – something is wrong, something is very, very wrong. His body is not functioning rightly. It is the other end of impotence, the other extreme. When a boy of fourteen does not feel any sex, a young man of eighteen has no desire, something is wrong – he has to be treated. When a man of sixty needs to make love five times a day, something is wrong. His body has gone berserk. It is not functioning rightly, naturally.

If you live in the moment totally, then there is no need to worry for the future. A rightly lived childhood brings you to a right, ripe youth – flowing, vital, alive, a wild ocean of energy. A rightly lived youth brings you to the very settled calm and quiet life. A calm and quiet life brings you to a religious inquiry: What is life? Living is not enough, one has to penetrate the mystery. A calm and quiet life brings you to meditative moments. Meditation brings you to renounce all that is useless now, just junk, garbage. The whole of life becomes garbage; only one thing remains always eternally valuable, and that is your awareness.

By the time of the seventieth year, when you are ready to die – if you lived everything rightly, in the moment, never postponing for the future, never dreaming for the future, you lived in the moment totally, whatsoever it was – nine months before your death you will become aware… You have attained that much awareness, you can see: now death is coming.

Many saints have declared their deaths, but I have not come across a single instance when the death was declared earlier than nine months. Exactly nine months before, a man of awareness, uncluttered with the past – because one who never thinks of the future will never think of the past. They are together, the past and future are together, joined together. When you think of the future, it is nothing but the projection of the past; when you think of the past, it is nothing but trying to plan for the future. They are together. The present is out of them. A man who lives in this moment now and here is not cluttered with the past and not cluttered with the future. He remains unburdened. He has no burden to carry, he moves without weight. Gravitation doesn’t affect him. In fact, he doesn’t walk, he flies. He has wings.

Before he dies, exactly nine months before, he will become aware that death is coming. And he will enjoy and he will celebrate and he will tell people, “My ship is coming, and I am only on this bank a little while more. Soon I will be going to my home. This life has been beautiful, a strange experience. I loved, learned, lived much, I am enriched. I had come here with nothing and I am going with much experience, much maturity.”

He will be thankful to all that has happened – both good and bad, both right and wrong both, because he learned from everything, not only from right, from wrong also. Sages that he came across, he learned from them; and sinners, yes, from them also – they all helped. People who robbed him helped, people who helped him helped; people who were friends helped, people who were enemies helped. Everything helped. Summer and winter, satiety and hunger, everything helped. One can be thankful to all.

When one is thankful to all, and ready to die celebrating for this opportunity that was there, death becomes beautiful. Then death is not the enemy, it is the greatest friend, because it is the crescendo of life. It is the highest peak that life achieves. It is not the end of life, it is the climax. It looks like the end because you have never known life. To one who has known life it appears as the very crescendo, the very peak, the highest peak.

Death is the culmination, the fulfillment. Life does not end in it; in fact, life flowers in it, it is the flower. But to know the beauty of death, one has to be ready for it, one has to learn the art. That’s why I go on saying that I am here to teach you how to die. A master is a death. He allows you to die in him. He helps you to die every moment to the past, and he helps you to live an uncluttered moment – this moment.

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