The first question:

Question 1

WHY ARE YOU AGAINST ASCETIC PRACTICES? ARE THEY NOT RELIGIOUS? IS NOT ASCETICISM A PATH TO GOD?

It is just the opposite: it is a path to the madhouse. It is pathological. It is an expression of an ill mind, it is an expression of a violent mind. Ordinarily the violence is directed towards others, but the violence can be dirccted to oneself too. And when the violence is directed to oneself it is more dangerous, because there is nobody to defend you.

When you are violent with somebody else the other is there to defend, to protect himself, to fight with you. When the violence turns upon yourself, it is absolute; there is nobody left to defend you.

So to me, Adolf Hitler is less dangerous than Mahatma Gandhi, Adolf Hitler is less violent than Mahatma Gandhi. It may be very difficult for you to understand it, but this has been happening down the ages: the people who are masochistic have declared themselves religious. Religion is an excuse to be a masochist. Take the excuse away and the masochist is exposed.

If you go on thinking that the person who is torturing himself is a spiritual person, you are also nourishing his masochism. He's simply enjoying torturing himself. There is a joy that comes out of torturing oneself: it consists of the feeling of power. When you torture somebody else, then too it gives you the feeling of power. That's why violence exists. People simply go on doing violence to each other; that is their only way to feel powerful. They can destroy the other; that is their power. But there is a variety of violence where you can start destroying yourself, and you will feel powerful.

For example, the story is told of a Hindu saint -- I don't believe it is true, but it could be true -- that a Hindu mystic, Surdas, was passing through a street and he saw a beautiful woman, and for a moment he forgot that he had renounced the world. He forgot that he was a saint, he forgot all about religion, discipline, yoga. In that moment his heart simply moved with great passion and love towards the woman. Just a moment later he caught hold of himself. He went back to his hut and destroyed his eyes, became blind, because the scriptures say if the eyes lead you astray, destroy them. He must have felt immensely powerful while destroying his eyes: "I can do even this!" The ego must have felt very subtle nourishment. The ego must have become more strong than ever. And it was not the eyes, it was his capacity to become unconscious; the eyes had not led him astray. How can the eyes lead you astray? The eyes are just windows into the world. Standing in your room looking out of the window, you see a beautiful woman -- you don't destroy the window. And by destroying the window you will not gain anything: you will not become more spiritual, you will not become less sexual, your passion not disappear. You will only be closed in your house and your passion will get on boiling within you. Eyes are windows.

Just a few days ago. I think just seven days ago a woman in America cut off one of her hands, because the Bible says, "If thy hand offend thee, it is better to cut it off and throw it away than to fall into hell and suffer for eternity."

These people -- Surdas or this woman, and there are millions of that type -- you call them religious? You call them spiritual? They are pathological.

A religious person is a healthy, whole person. He accepts life as it is, and he accepts the joys that life brings. He dances with the dance, he sings a thousand and one songs. His approach is not antagonistic, it is not anti-life.

The ascetic approach is anti-life. It is suicidal. You may be committing suicide very slowly and partially; that doesn't make much difference. Somebody jumps from a cliff and destroys himself; and somebody slowly slowly, in installments, goes on destroying himself, takes years to destroy himself: this is slow poisoning, but there is no difference. In fact the man who jumps from the cliff is more courageous than the man who goes on committing suicide slowly.

But down the ages we have praised these insane people, we have worshipped them. Because of this worship humanity has remained immature and humanity has remained abnormal. The normal people are not normal. they are only called normal. They exist in great numbers but they are not the norm -- and they are not healthy either. They somehow manage to live their lives. The man who is destructive to his being is insane, and the people who worship him as a saint are also insane.

I am utterly against ascetic practices because those practices are against life. I am all for life. I am all for God. God is a celebration. Look around... the whole existence is continuously in a celebration, in a kind of 'alleluia'. It continues singing and dancing, and loving, and enjoying. If you watch existence you will understand what it is to be religious: to be part of this celebration is to be religious.

I have heard....

The late Aga Khan III, leader of the Ismaili Moslem sect, was partial to the pleasures of the table.When a visitor asked him how he reconciled his predilection for worldly enjoyment with his status as a religious leader, the Aga replied, "I do not think the Lord meant the good things of this world to be enjoyed only by the sinners."

I perfectly agree with the Aga. It is stupid!... that only sinners can enjoy, and saints have to live in prisons called monasteries. They cannot eat, or even if they eat they are not allowed to taste. They cannot listen to beautiful music because it is sensuous. They cannot dance because the origin of dance is in sex; the peacock dances when the peacock wants to make love. They cannot sing because the song is nothing but an expression of sex. The birds sing; they are not reciting the Koran or the Vedas or the Gita. These are love-calls! The flowers bloom -- they are not blooming there for you to cut them and take them to the temple to some altar. The flowers are the expression of the sexuality of the plant. If you watch deeply, everything is sensuous, life is sensuous; and everything is rooted in sex because life itself is born in sex.

The so-called spiritual person starts eliminating his life. One by one, all things disappear. He is left almost dead. He simply vegetates. I am not for that kind of existence.

My sannyasins have to be yea-sayers, not no-sayers. My sannyasins have to affirm life in its totality, in its multi-dimensionality, in all its possibilities and richness and variety. My sannyasin has to be rooted in existence, and my sannyasin has to live all the planes of life, from sex to SAMADHI. If something disappears on its own accord that is another thing, but that is not asceticism. I know a moment comes when your energies start moving into higher planes of being: sex disappears because it is not needed. It is not needed because you are enjoying the same energy on higher planes -- not because it is wrong, not because it was something ugly. It is not needed because the same energy is having higher orgasms. SAMADHI is the ultimate orgasm, sex is only a glimpse of it.

Sex is a momentary SAMADHI, and SAMADHI is eternal sex.

Naturally when you have attained to SAMADHI sex will disappear, but not that you have to renounce it. If you renounce it, then you are doing something wrong. You go on moving deeper and higher, and whatsoever needs to disappear will disappear. Ultimately all disappears. Only God is left, only pure joy is left, uncaused joy is left; but not that you renounce. If you renounce you will never attain to that state.

I have heard....

There was a young man who searched for greater and greater austerities, for he believed that nothing of real value is obtained easily. Finally he located an ancient monastery in the Himalayas whose monks had taken the most severe vows of poverty and austerity. This monastery was on the summit of an awesome mountain peak, and the monks had to climb and descend by hauling themselves up and down the iron chains that were hammered into the mountain-face. No heat was allowed in the monastery, and the monks slept on the cold, stone floors. For sustenance they descended the chains each day to pry up the frozen ground in search of the few lichens that grew there. The remainder of the time they meditated, chanted and made offerings. Now these practices pleased the young man and he requested, and he was granted, permission to remain with them.

The monks' form of meditation was to contemplate various riddles, and shortly after the young man's arrival the Abbot of the monastery posed this question: "How high is up?" Then he instructed the young man to meditate for one month and return with the answer. It was diff1cult to think about anything since he was constantly shivering. But the harshness was a challenge to the young man, and after a month had passed he was confident of the answer.

Again the Abbot asked: "How high is up?" and the young man replied: "As high as man's mind may imagine it to be." But the Abbot gave him a look of disdain and said: "Meditate for another month." And the young man did.

When the month had passed he met with the Abbot and his answer was: "Up is as high as God wills it to be." Again he was rejected and returned to his meditation. The next month when asked the same question he said not a word, but raised one cold, stiff finger and pointed up. And again he was sent away. Each month he became more and more convinced that no answer could ever satisfy the Abbot, and the young man's frustration increased. The next time he saw the Abbot and the question was asked, his voice was taut with suppressed anger: "This is foolishness! There is no answer!" And again he was sent away, this time with more mockery than usual, for the Abbot knew the young man was close to the truth.

As he departed from the presence of the Abbot, the young man vowed to make a last attempt to discover the answer. He ceased eating even the few lichens and maintained a vigil atop the roof that was raised over the mountains. When the long month finally ended the other monks removed him from the roof and tried to thaw him out so that he could speak with the Abbot. Then the question was asked again: "How high is up?"

The young man looked blank for a second, then suddenly he screamed and jumped violently up and down several times, and before anyone could stop him, he leaped across the room and kicked the Abbot so hard that he was thrown to the floor. The monks rushed to the aid of the Abbot and lifted him up. As soon as he had recovered, he smiled and said to the young man: "You have got it!"

Then the young man quickly gathered his few possessions and departed from the monastery. By the time he had returned home he was filled with happiness, for he had found truth and achieved enlightenment.

Or perhaps the reason he felt so good was because he was warm.

The ascetic practices give you a kind of ill, morbid joy. The more you go into them, the more you feel you are becoming a conqueror, you are conquering something. The more the body says "Don't destroy me!", the more you become adamant. You create a rift within yourself, between you and your body, and a great battle starts.

And the body is natural. The body simply asks for that which is healthy, natural, only for that which God allows and God wants to happen. The body has no unnatural desires; all its needs are natural needs, healthy needs. And the more you starve the body, the more the body prays and asks and haunts you. But you can make it a challenge: you can think that the body is trying to seduce you, that the body is in the hands of the enemy, in the hands of the Devil. And you can go on fighting more and more, with more strength, with more violence, with more aggression. You go on fighting with the body; a moment comes when you can dull the body.

If you go on fasting for a longer time the body by and by relaxes into a kind of dullness. It starts accepting, it adjusts itself; there is no point. There is nobody who takes care, so what is the point of going on crying? The body becomes dumb. You lose sensitivity, you become thick. You grow a thick skin around yourself: then the hot and the cold do not bother you, then starvation does not bother you. Rather, on the contrary, you feel very good deep inside -- that you are conquering. But you are not conquering, you are losing ground. Each moment you are losing ground, because truth can only be known through the body! Truth is known by the consciousness but known THROUGH the body. One has to remain rooted in the body.

God Himself is rooted in the world. Take a tree out of the soil and it will die. The life of the tree is intertwined with the life of the earth: it needs water, it needs manure, it needs food, it needs the sun, the air, the wind. Those are natural needs, the tree exists through them. Take the tree out of the soil -- for a few days maybe you may not notice that the tree is dying, the old water that it had contained in itself may keep it a little bit green, even a few buds may open, a few flowers may bloom, but not for long -- sooner or later the reservoirs of the tree will be finished and the tree will die.

Take yourself out of your body and you will die. Your body is your earth. Your body belongs to the earth, it has come from the earth, it is a small earth around you. It nourishes you, it is not your enemy. It is not in the hands of the Devil. There is no Devil: the Devil is a creation of the pathological mind, the Devil is the creation of the paranoid mind. It has come into the world because of fear. But your so-called God is also out of fear; so your God and your Devil are both out of your fear. You have not known the real God. The real God is not out of fear. The real God is out of love, out of joy. The real God can only be experienced by becoming more and more sensitive, by becoming more and more open.

Be in your body. Get out of your mind and get into your senses: that is the only way to be religious. It will look paradoxical, but let me say it: the only way to be religious is to be in the world, and deeply in the world -- because God is hidden in the world. There is no 'other world'. The other world is the deepest core of this world, it is not separate from it.

I'm against all ascetic practices. And in the future ascetics will be treated in mad-asylums, psychiatric hospitals. And out of a hundred of your so-called saints, ninety-nine have been neurotic, but because you believed you could not see what was really happening. Once you believe in a certain thing the belief creates the phenomenon.

If you drop all kinds of beliefs and you start looking with clarity, you will be surprised: man has not suffered through irreligious people, man has suffered in the hands of the so-called religious. Man's greatest misery has come out of the split between body and soul. Man has become schizophrenic because of your saints, your churches, your scriptures. And I'm not saying that there have never been real saints; there have been: Jesus or Diogenes, Buddha and Krishna, Zarathustra and Lao Tzu -- these people loved life. And the tradition that says something else is created by the pathological.

Now Christians say Jesus never laughed: this is utter nonsense. This nonsense is imposed by the Christians on Jesus. They have painted Jesus as a sad, long face. The Jesus in the churches is a false Jesus. The churches have created an artificial Jesus of their own. The real Jesus, the authentic Jesus, was a man of laughter, a man of celebration. In fact, it can't be otherwise.

My message to you is: enjoy life as totally as possible and you will be coming closer and closer to the Divine, you will be coming closer to home.