The body goes on supplying different places, different parts of your body, whatever their need is. You eat the same food for all your needs; out of the same Food your bones are made, your blood is made, your skin is made, your eyes are made, your brain is made; and the body knows perfectly well what is needed and where it is needed. The blood is circulating continuously, supplying particular chemicals to particular parts.

Not only that, the body also knows the priority. The first priority is your brain – hence, if there is not enough oxygen, first the body will give the oxygen to the brain.  The other parts are tougher and they can wait a little, but the brain cells are not so tough. If they don’t get oxygen for six minutes they will die, and once they are dead they cannot be revived.

It is a tremendous work of intelligence to be alert about the different functions.  When you have a wound, then the body stops supplying certain parts which can survive, but first the wound has to be healed. Immediately the white cells of the body rush towards the wound to cover it so it is not open. And then inside, the work, the very subtle work, continues.

Medical science knows that we are not yet as wise as the body is. The most prominent physicians have said that we cannot cure the body; the body cures itself -we can only help. At the most our medicines can be of some help, but the basic cure comes from the body itself. It is a wonder how it is being done. It is such a vast work.

If we want to do all those functions we will need almost one square mile of factory with many complicated mechanisms, computers. Then, too, we are not certain that we will succeed.

First, inside become one with your body, then become one with the whole existence.  The day your heartbeat has a synchronicity with the universe and its heartbeat you have found yourself.

Respect your body the same way as you respect your soul. Your body is as sacred as your soul is. In existence everything is sacred because the whole thing is throbbing with the heartbeat of the divine….

You are moving moment to moment, from one stage of consciousness to another stage of consciousness. The body may be fast asleep, but it is also conscious. You know if you are asleep and a mosquito starts disturbing you, you remain asleep and your hand removes the mosquito…. The body has its own consciousness.

Man has lost many of his senses — for example, smell. Man has almost lost smell. Just see a dog and his capacity to smell — how sensitive is his nose! Man seems to be very poor. What has happened to man’s nose? Why can’t he smell as deeply as a dog or a horse? The horse can smell for miles. The dog has an immense memory of smells. Man has no memory. Something is blocking his nose.

Those who have been working deep into these layers say that it is because of the repression of sex that smell is lost. Physically man is as sensitive as any other animal, but psychologically his nose has been corrupted. Smell is one of the most sexual doors into your body. It is though smell that animals start feeling whether a male is in tune with the female or not. The smell is a subtle hint. When the female is ready to make love to the male she releases a certain kind of smell. Only through that smell does the male understand that he is acceptable. If that smell is not released by the feminine sexual organism, the male moves away; he is not accepted.

Man has destroyed smell because it will be difficult to create a so-called cultured society if your sense of smell remains natural. You are going along the road and a woman starts smelling and gives you a hint of acceptance. She is somebody else’s wife; her husband is with her. The signal is there that you are acceptable. What will you do? It will be awkward, embarrassing! …

You don’t see people eye to eye; or, if you do see them, it is only for a few seconds. You don’t see people really; you go on avoiding. If you look, it is thought to be offensive. Just remember, do you really see people? Or do you go on avoiding their eyes? — because if you don’t avoid them then you may be able to see a few things which the person is not willing to show. It is not good manners to see something that he is not willing to show, so it is better to avoid. We listen to the words, we don’t see the face — because many times the words and the face are contradictory. A man is saying one thing and he is showing another. Gradually we have completely lost the sense of seeing the face, the eyes, the gestures. We only listen to the words. Just watch this and you will be surprised how people go on saying one thing and showing another.  And nobody detects it because you have been trained not to look directly into the face. Or, even if you look, the look is not that of awareness, not that of attention. It is empty; it is almost as if you are not looking.

We hear sounds by choice. We don’t hear all kinds of sounds — we choose. Whatsoever is useful we hear. And to different societies and different countries, different things are valuable. A man who lives in a primitive world, in a forest, in a jungle, has a different kind of receptivity for sounds. He has to be continuously alert and aware of the animals. His life is in danger. You need not be alert. You live in a cultured world where animals don’t exist anymore and there is no fear. Your survival is not at stake. Your ears don’t function perfectly because there is no need….

People don’t touch each other, they don’t hold hands, they don’t hug each other.  And when you hold somebody’s hand, you feel embarrassed, he feels embarrassed.  Even if you hug somebody, it feels as if something wrong is happening.  And you are in a hurry to get away from the other’s body, because the other’s body can open you. Even children are not allowed to hug their parents. There is great fear, and all fear is basically, deep down, rooted in the fear of sex. There is a taboo against sex. A mother cannot hug her son because the son may get sexually aroused — that is the fear. A father cannot hug his daughter — he is afraid he may get physically aroused. Warmth has its own way of working. Nothing is wrong in being physically aroused or sexually aroused. It is simply a sign that one is alive, that one is immensely alive. But the fear, the sex taboo, says keep away, keep a distance….

That is the whole effort of Yoga: to make your body alive, sensitive, young again, to give your senses their maximum functioning. Then one functions with no taboos around; then lucidity, grace, beauty flow. Warmth arises again, openness — and growth happens. One is constantly new, young, and is always on an adventure. The body becomes orgasmic. Joy surrounds you. Through joy the first corruption disappears; hence my insistence to be joyous, to be celebrating, to enjoy life, to accept the body. Not only to accept it, but to feel grateful that God has given you such a beautiful body, such a sensitive body, with so many doors to relate to reality: eyes and ears and nose and touch. Open all these windows and let life’s breezes flow in, let life’s sun shine in. Learn to be more sensitive. Use every opportunity to be sensitive so that the first filter is dropped….

TECHNIQUE TO ACTIVATE PHYSICAL SENSES

When you are sitting on the grass, close your eyes, become the grass — be grassy. Feel that you are the grass, feel the greenness of the grass, feel the wetness of the grass. Feel the subtle smell that goes on being released by the grass. Feel the dewdrops on the grass — that they are on you. Feel the sunrays playing on the grass. For a moment be lost in it, and you will have new sense of your body. And do it in all kinds of situations: in a river, in a swimming pool, lying on the beach in the sunrays, looking at the moon in the night, lying down with closed eyes on the sand and feeling the sand. Millions of opportunities are there to make your body alive again. And only you can do it. Society has done its work of corruption, you will have to undo it. And once you start hearing, seeing, touching, smelling through joy, then you hear the reality, then you see the reality, then you smell the reality.”

When the child comes out of the womb, it is the greatest shock of his life. Even death will not be this big a shock, because death will come without warning. Death will come most probably when he is unconscious. But while he is coming out of the mother’s womb, he is conscious. In fact, for the first time he is becoming conscious. His nine months’ long sleep, peaceful sleep, is disturbed — and then you cut the thread which joins him with the mother.

The moment you cut that thread that joins him with the mother, you have created a fearful individual. This is not the right way; but this is how it has been done up to now.  Unknowingly, this has helped the priest and the so-called religions to exploit man.  The child should be taken away from the mother more slowly, more gradually. There should not be that shock — and it can be arranged. A scientific arrangement is possible. There should not be glaring lights in the room, because the child has lived for nine months in absolute darkness, and he has very fragile eyes which have never seen light. And in all your hospitals there are glaring lights, tube lights, and the child suddenly faces the light…. Most people are suffering from weak eyes because of this; later on they have to use glasses. No animal needs them. Have you seen animals with glasses reading the newspaper? Their eyes are perfectly healthy their whole life, to the point of death. It is only man…and the beginning is at the very beginning. No, the child should be given birth to in darkness, or in a very soft light, candles perhaps. Darkness would be the best, but if a little light is needed, then candles will do.

And what have the doctors been doing up to now? They don’t even give a little time for the child to be acquainted with the new reality. The way they welcome the child is so ugly.  They hang the child by his feet in their hands and they slap his bottom. The idea behind this stupid ritual is that this will help the child to breathe — because in the mother’s womb he was not breathing on his own; the mother was breathing for him, eating for him, doing everything for him. But to be welcomed into the world hanging upside down, with a slap on your bottom, is not a very good beginning. But the doctor is in a hurry; otherwise the child would start breathing on his own.

He has to be left on the mother’s belly, on top of the mother’s belly; before the joining thread is cut, he should be left on the mother’s belly. He was inside the belly, beneath — now he is outside. That is not a great change. The mother is there, he can touch her, he can feel her. He knows the vibe. He is perfectly aware that this is his home. He has come out, but this is his home. Let him be with the mother a little longer, so he becomes acquainted with the mother from the outside; from the inside he knows her. And don’t cut the thread that joins him till he starts breathing on his own. Right now, what is done? We cut the thread and slap the child so he has to breathe. But this is forcing him, this is violent, and absolutely unscientific and unnatural.

Let him first breathe on his own. It will take a few minutes. Don’t be in such a hurry. It is a question of a man’s whole life. You can smoke your cigarette two or three minutes longer; you can whisper sweet nothings to your girlfriend a few minutes longer. It is not going to harm anybody. What is the rush? You can’t give him three minutes? A child needs no more than that. Just left on his own, within three minutes he starts breathing. When he starts breathing, he becomes confident that he can live on his own. Then you can cut the thread. It is useless now; it will not give a shock to the child.

Then the most significant thing is, don’t put him in blankets and in a bed. No, for nine months he was without blankets, naked, without pillows, without bed sheets, without a bed — don’t make such a change so quickly. He needs a small tub with the same solution of water that was in his mother’s womb — it is exactly ocean water: the same amount of salt, the same amount of chemicals, exactly the same. That is again proof that life must have happened first in the ocean. It still happens in the oceanic water.

That’s why when a woman is pregnant she starts eating salty things, because the womb goes on absorbing the salt — the child needs exactly the same salty water that exists in the ocean. So just make up the same water in a small tub, and let the child lie down in the tub, and he will feel perfectly welcomed. This is the situation he is acquainted with.

In Japan, one Zen monk has tried a tremendous experiment showing that a three-month- old child can swim. Slowly he has been corning down. First he tried with month-old children, then with six-month-old children, now with three-month-old children.  And I say to him that you are still far away. Even the child just born is capable of swimming, because he has been swimming in his mother’s womb. So give the child a chance, similar to the mother’s womb. He will be more confident; and no priest can exploit him so easily, telling him about hellfire, and all that nonsense.”

And then, some cells become your eyes, some cells become your ears, some cells become your genital organs, some cells become your skin, some cells your bones, some cells your brain, some cells your nails and your hair; and they all are coming out of one cell. They are all alike. They have no qualitative difference, but they function so differently. The eye can see; the ear cannot see. The ear can hear, but cannot smell. So those cells not only function in harmony, but they become experts.

They gain to a certain specialization. A few cells turn into the eyes. What has happened? What type of training is going on? Why do certain cells become eyes, and certain other cells become ears, and still certain others become your nose, and they are all alike? There must be a great training inside – some unknown power training them for a specific purpose.

And remember, when those cells are getting ready to see, they have not yet seen anything. When the child is in the womb, he remains completely blind. He has not seen any light; the eyes are closed.  A miracle: no training to see and the eyes are ready, no possibility to see and the eyes are ready.

The child does not breathe with his own lungs, he has not known what breathing is, but the lungs are ready. They are ready before the child is going to enter into the world and breathe. The eyes are ready before the child is going to enter into the world and see. Everything is ready. When the child is born he is a perfect human being of tremendous complexity, specialization, subtlety. And there has been no training, no rehearsal. The child has never taken a single breath, but immediately out of the mother’s womb, he cries and takes his first breath. The mechanism is ready before any training has been given: some tremendous power, some power which comprehends all the possibilities of the future, some power which is preparing the child to be able to face all possibilities of life for the future, is working deep within.

Even the body is not completely understood, not yet. Our whole understanding is fragmentary. The science of man does not exist yet. There are five layers of the body i.e., five bodies. You don’t have one body, you have five bodies; and behind the five bodies, your being. The same as has happened in psychology has happened in medicine.

Allopathy believes only in the physical body, the gross body. It is parallel to behaviorism. Allopathy is the grossest medicine. That’s why it has become scientific, because scientific instrumentation is only capable yet of very gross things.

Go deeper. Acupuncture, the Chinese medicine, enters one layer more. It works on the vital body, the pranamaya kosh. If something goes wrong in the physical body, acupuncture does not touch the physical body at all. It tries to work on the vital body. It tries to work on the bioenergy, the bioplasma. It settles something there, and immediately the gross body starts functioning well. If something goes wrong in the vital body, allopathy functions on the body, the gross body. Of course, for allopathy, it is an uphill task. For acupuncture, it is a downhill task. It is easier because the vital body is a little higher than the physical body. If the vital body is set right, the physical body simply follows it because the blueprint exists in the vital body. The physical body is just an implementation of the vital. Now acupuncture is gaining respect, by and by, because a certain very sensitive photography, Kirlian photography, in Soviet Russia, has come across the seven hundred vital points in the human body as they have always been predicted by acupuncturists for at least five thousand years. They had no instruments to know where the vital points in the body were. But by and by, just through trial and error, through centuries, they discovered seven hundred points. Now Kirlian has also discovered the same seven hundred points with scientific instrumentation. And Kirlian photography has proved one thing: that to try to change the vital through the physical is absurd. It is trying to change the master by changing the servant. It is almost impossible because the master won’t listen to the servant. If you want to change the servant, change the master. Immediately, the servant follows. Rather than going and changing each soldier, it is better to change the general.

The body has millions of soldiers, cells, simply working under some order, under some commandment. Change the commander, and the whole body pattern changes.

Homeopathy goes still a little deeper. It works on the manomaya kosh, the mental body. The founder of homeopathy, Hahnemann, discovered one of the greatest things ever discovered, and that was: the smaller the quantity of the medicine, the deeper it goes. He called the method of making homeopathic medicine ’potentizing’. They go on reducing the quantity of the medicine. He would work in this way: he would take a certain amount of medicine and would mix it with ten times the amount of milk sugar or with water. One quantity of medicine, nine quantities of water; he would mix them. Then he would again take one quantity of this new solution, and would again mix it with nine times more water, or milk sugar. In this way he would go on: again from the new solution he would take one quantity and would mix it with nine times more water. This he would do, and the potency would increase. By and by, the medicine reaches to the atomic level. It becomes so subtle that you cannot believe that it can work; it has almost disappeared. That is what is written on homeopathic medicines, the potency: ten potency, twenty potency, one hundred potency, one thousand potency.

The bigger the potency, the smaller is the amount. With ten thousand potency, a millionth of the original medicine has remained, almost none. It has almost disappeared, but then it enters the most deep core of manomaya. It enters into your mind body. It goes deeper than acupuncture. It is almost as if you have reached the atomic, or even the sub-atomic level. Then it does not touch your body. Then it does not touch your vital body; it simply enters. It is so subtle and so small that it comes across no barriers. It can simply slip into the manomaya kosh, into the mental body, and from there it starts working.

You have found an even bigger authority than the pranamaya. Ayurveda, the Indian medicine, is a synthesis of all three. It is one of the most synthetic of medicines.

Hypnotherapy goes still deeper. It touches the vigyanmayakos: the fourth body, the body of consciousness. It does not use medicine. It does not use anything. It simply uses suggestion, that’s all. It simply puts a suggestion in your mind call it animal magnetism, mesmerism, hypnosis or whatsoever you like – but it works through the power of thought, not the power of matter. Even homeopathy is still the power of matter in a very subtle quantity. Hypnotherapy gets rid of matter altogether, because howsoever subtle, it is matter. Ten thousand potency, but still, it is a potency of matter. It simply jumps to the thought energy, vigyanmayakos: the consciousness body. If your consciousness just accepts a certain idea, it starts functioning.

Hypnotherapy has a great future. It is going to become the future medicine, because if by just changing your thought pattern your mind can be changed, through the mind your vital body and through the vital body your gross body, then why bother with poisons, why bother with gross medicines? Why not work it through thought power? Have you watched any hypnotist working on a medium? If you have not watched, it is worth watching. It will give you a certain insight.

Trust is hypnotherapy. Without trust, you cannot enter into the subtle parts of your being, because a small doubt, and you are thrown back to the gross. Science works with doubt. Doubt is a method in science because science works with the gross. Whether you doubt or not, an allopath is not worried.  He does not ask you to trust in his medicine; he simply gives you medicine.  But a homeopath will ask whether you believe, because without your belief it will be more difficult for a homeopath to work upon you. And a hypnotherapist will ask for total surrender. Otherwise, nothing can be done.

Religion is surrender. Religion is a hypnotherapy. But, there is still one more body. That is the anandmayakos: the bliss body. Hypnotherapy goes up to the fourth. Meditation goes up to the fifth.  ’Meditation’ – the very word is beautiful because the root is the same as ’medicine’. Both come from the same root. Medicine and meditation are off-shoots of one word: that which heals, that which makes you healthy and whole is medicine; and on the deepest level, that is meditation.

Meditation does not even give you suggestions because suggestions are to be given from the outside. Somebody else has to give you suggestions. Suggestion means that you are dependent upon somebody. They cannot make you perfectly conscious because the other will be needed, and a shadow will be cast on your being. Meditation makes you perfectly conscious, without any shadow – absolute light with no darkness. Now even suggestion is thought to be a gross thing. Somebody suggests – that means something comes from the outside, and in the ultimate analysis that which comes from the outside is material. Not only matter, but that which comes from the outside is material. Even a thought is a subtle form of matter. Even hypnotherapy is materialistic.

Meditation drops all props, all supports. That’s why to understand meditation is the most difficult thing in the world, because nothing is left – just a pure understanding, a witnessing.  Yoga is balance. Yoga has to be a balance because it is going to be the path to the ultimate unity, the ultimate harmony of all that is.

Once breathing is perfect everything else falls into line. Breathing is life. But people ignore it, they don’t worry about it at all, they don’t pay it any attention. And every change that is going to happen is going to happen through the change in your breathing. If for many years you have been breathing wrongly, shallow breathing, then your musculature becomes fixed — then it is not just a question of your will. It is as if somebody has not moved for years: legs have gone dead, the muscles have shrunk, blood flows no more.

Suddenly the person decides one day to go for a long walk — it is beautiful, a sunset. But he cannot move; just by thinking it is not going to happen. Now much effort will be needed to bring those dead legs to life again.

The breathing passage has a certain musculature around it, and if you have been breathing wrongly — and almost everybody has — then the musculature has become fixed. Now it will take many years to change it by your own effort, and it will he an unnecessary waste of time.

Through deep massage, particularly through Rolfing, those muscles relax and then you can start again. But after Rolfing, once you start breathing well, don’t fall into the old habit again.

Everybody breathes wrongly because the whole society is based on very wrong conditions, notions, attitudes. For example, a small child is weeping and the mother says not to cry. What will the child do? — because crying is coming, and the mother says not to cry. He will start holding his breath because that is the only way to stop it. If you hold your breath everything stops — crying, tears, everything. Then by and by that becomes a fixed thing — don’t be angry, don’t cry, don’t do this, don’t do that.

The child learns that if he breathes shallowly then he remains in control. If he breathes perfectly and totally as every child is born breathing, then he becomes wild. So he cripples himself. Every child, boy or girl, starts playing with the genital organs because the feeling is pleasant. The child is completely unaware of the social taboos and nonsense, but if the mother or father or somebody sees you playing with your genitals they tell you to stop it immediately. And such condemnation is in their eyes you become shocked, and you become afraid of breathing deeply, because if you breathe deeply it massages your genital organs from within. That becomes troublesome, so you don’t breath deeply; just shallow breathing so you are cut off from the genital organs.

All societies that are sex-repressive are bound to be shallow-breathing societies. Only primitive people who don’t have any repressive attitude about sex breathe perfectly. Their breathing is beautiful, it is complete and whole. They breathe like animals, they breathe like children.

The breathing continuously changes with your emotions. When you are angry, your breathing is unrhythmic, asymmetrical. When you are in sexual lust, your breathing is almost insane. When you are calm and quiet, joyful, your breathing has a musical quality to it; your breathing is almost a song. When you are feeling at home in existence, when you have no desires and are feeling contented, suddenly breathing almost stops. When you are in a state of awe, wonder, breathing stops for a moment. And those are the greatest moments of life, because only in those moments when breathing almost stops are you in utter tune with existence: you are in God and God is in you.

Your experience of breathing has to be more and more profound, scrutinized, observed, watched, analyzed. See how your breathing changes with your emotions, and vice versa, how your emotions change your breathing. For example, when you are afraid, watch the change in your breath. And then, one day, try to change the breath to the same pattern as when you were afraid. And you will be surprised that if you change your breath to exactly what it was when you were afraid, fear will arise in you — immediately. Watch your breathing when you are deeply in love with somebody; holding his hand, hugging your beloved, watch your breathing. And then, one day, just sitting silently under a tree, watch yourself again breathing in the same way.

Make the pattern, fall into the same gestalt again. Breathe in the same way as if you were hugging your beloved and you will be surprised; the whole existence becomes your beloved. Again there is great love arising in you. They go together. Hence in Yoga, in Tantra, in Tao — in all these three great systems and sciences of human consciousness and the expansion of human consciousness — breathing is one of the key phenomena. They have all worked on breathing.

Buddha’s whole meditation system depends on a certain quality of breath. He says, “Simply watch your breath, without changing it. Without in any way changing it, simply watch.” But you will be surprised: the moment you watch, it changes, because watchfulness has its own rhythm. That’s why Buddha says, “You need not change it; simply watch.” Watchfulness will bring its own kind of breathing — it comes by itself. And slowly, slowly you will be surprised: the more watchful you become, the less you breathe. The breath becomes longer, deeper. For example, if in one minute you were breathing sixteen breaths, now you may breath six, or four, or three. As you become watchful, the breath goes deeper, becomes longer and you are taking less and less breaths in the same time period. Then you can do it from the other side too. Breathe slowly, quietly, deep, long breaths, and suddenly you will see watchfulness arising in you. It is as if each emotion has a polarity in your breathing system: it can be triggered by your breathing.

But the best way is to watch when you are in love, when you are sitting by the side of your friend. Watch your breath, because that loving rhythm of breath is most important: it will transform your whole being. Love is where you feel most sharply the absurdity, the falsity, of your position as a separated being. Yet by this very separation, this absurdity, you are able to express what you could not express in any other way. By your very otherness you are able to celebrate identity. Hence, the paradox of love; you are two and yet you feel one. You are one, yet you know you are two. Oneness in two-ness: that is the paradox of love. And that has to be the paradox of prayer too, and meditation too. Ultimately you have to feel as one with existence as you feel with your beloved, with your lover, with your friend, with your mother, with your child, in some rare valuable moments. By your very otherness you are able to celebrate identity.

Watch your loving moments more and more. Be alert. See how your breathing changes. See how your body vibrates… just hugging your woman or your man, make it an experiment, and you will be surprised. One day, just hugging, melting into each other, sit at least for one hour, and you will be surprised: it will be one of the most psychedelic experiences. For one hour, doing nothing, just hugging each other, falling into each other, merging, melting into each other, slowly, slowly the breathing will become one. You will breathe as if you are two bodies but one heart. You will breathe together. And when you breathe together — not by any effort of your own, but just because you are feeling so much love that the breathing follows — those will be the greatest moments, the most precious; not of this world, but of the beyond, the far out. And in those moments you will have the first glimpse of meditative energy….

You should learn to breathe very silently, as if there were no hurry to breathe, as if you were indifferent to it, aloof, far away, distant. If you can be aloof, far away and distant to your breathing, you will be able to attain to the middle. In that moment you will be neither masculine nor feminine. You will be both and neither, you will be transcendental….

When you are distracted, watch: your breathing will be distracted too. When you are not distracted, when you are sitting silently with no distraction, your breathing will be cool, silent, rhythmic; it will have the quality of subtle music. And that quality is the exact middle, because you are not doing anything, yet you are not fast asleep. You are neither active nor inactive, you are balanced. And in that moment of balance you are closest to reality, to God, to heaven.

Remember, your each breath is not just a breath, it is a thought too, an emotion too, a fantasy too. But this will be understood only if you watch your breathing for a few days.  When you are making love, watch your breathing. You will be surprised, your breathing is chaotic; because sexual energy is very rough, raw energy. Sexual fantasies are rough and raw, animalistic. There is nothing special about sexuality —every animal has it. When you are sexually aroused, you are just behaving like any other animal in the world_ And I am not saying that there is anything wrong in being an animal, all that I am saying is just a fact. I am stating a fact. So whenever you are in sexual love, watch your breath: it loses all balance.

Hence, in Tantra, love-making is allowed only when you have learnt how to make love and yet keep your breath cool, rhythmic. Then a totally different quality comes to your lovemaking: it becomes prayerful; then it is sacred. Now for the outsider there will be no difference because he will see you are making love to a woman or making love to a man, and it will be the same for the outsider. But for the insider, for those who know, there will be a great difference. In the old Tantra schools where all those secrets were developed, experimented upon, observed, this was one of the central focuses of their experimentation: if a man can make love without his breath being at all affected by it, then it is no longer sex, then it is sacred. And then it will take you to great depths of your own being; it will open doors and mysteries of life.

Your breath is not just breath, because breath is your life; it contains all that life contains.

How do you explain the process of breathing? Certainly you are not breathing, it is the body that goes on breathing. If you were breathing, you would not have been here. There are so many worries, you could have forgotten to breathe, and particularly in the night — either you can breathe or you can sleep. And it is not a simple process, because the air the body takes in consists of many elements which are dangerous to you. It sorts out only those which are nourishing to life and breathes out all that is dangerous to you, particularly carbon dioxide.

The wisdom of the body has not been appreciated by any religion of the world.  Your wisest people were no wiser than your body. Its functioning is so perfect — its understanding has been kept completely out of your control because your control could have been destructive.

So the first part of your life and being is your body. The body is real, authentic, sincere. There is no way to corrupt it, although all the religions have been trying to corrupt it. They teach you fasting which is against nature and against the needs of the body, and a man who can fast longer becomes a great saint. I will call him the greatest fool who has been dominated by the foolishness of the crowd. The religions have been teaching you to be celibate, without understanding the mechanism of the body. You eat food, you drink water, you breathe oxygen. Just as blood is created in you, your sexual energy is also created — it is beyond you. There has not been a single celibate in the whole world. And I challenge all the religions who pretend that their monks are celibates to have them examined by scientists. They will find that they have the same glands and they have the same energy as anybody else.

Celibacy is a crime — it creates perversions — just as fasting is a crime. Eating too much is a crime; not eating enough is also a crime. If you listen to the body and simply follow the body, you don’t need Gautam Buddhas to teach you, or Mahaviras or Jesus Christs to teach you what you have to do with the body. The body has an inbuilt program, and that inbuilt program you cannot change. You can pervert it…. So learn, first, a deep respect, love and gratitude for your body. That will be the fundamental of the psychology of the buddhas, of the psychology of the awakened ones.

The second thing after the body is your mind. Mind is simply a fiction. It has been used, in fact used too much, by all kinds of parasites. These are the people who will teach you to be against the body and for the mind. There is a mechanism called the brain. The brain is part of the body, but the brain has no inbuilt program. Nature is so compassionate — leaving your brain without any inbuilt program means existence is giving you freedom. Whatever you want to make of your brain, you can make.  Mind is a clean slate — whatever you write on the mind becomes your theology, your religion, your political ideology.

Life is an energy that surrounds your body. Not only your body, but flowers, trees — everything has its own aura. And that aura, that energy surrounding you shrinks and expands in different situations. Any situation where your energy shrinks should be thought bad, sick.  And every situation where your energy expands, should be respected and loved.  In love your energy reaches out, you become more alive. And when you are in fear, your energy shrinks, you become less alive.

Now, poor Wilhelm Reich was thought by Americans to be mad because he was not only magnifying that energy — he had found a few exercises in which that energy magnifies — he was even catching that energy in boxes, big boxes in which a man could enter. And if the man was sick he would come out whole and healthy. Naturally such a man should be thought mad. He was selling those boxes, empty boxes — but they were not empty.

He had found ways to collect the energy which is available in the atmosphere. Around a tree you can find that energy showering, but with your bare eyes you cannot see it.  After he was declared mad and imprisoned, another man in the Soviet Union even managed to photograph it. And now it has become a recognized psychology in the Soviet Union, that life has an aura. And the man, Kirlian, has developed a certain sensitive plate to photograph it. He would photograph the hand, and the hand would come with an aura around it. In a very strange way his photographs even showed if a man would be sick within six months: “Right now he does not show any pattern of sickness, but his aura is shrinking at a certain point….” And if at a certain point the aura is shrinking — maybe the person will become deaf or blind if the aura around the eyes is shrinking. And all his photographs proved to be right. When he said, “This man is in danger of losing his eyesight,” there was no visible sign, there was no reason to believe it, but within six months that man became blind. Now in Soviet psychology, Kirlian photography is recognized by the government. It is spreading into other countries also. A man can be cured before he becomes sick. Kirlian photography is very predictive. It shows, at least six months ahead, what is going to happen.

In the East it has been known for centuries that before your death, six months before, you stop being able to see the tip of your nose. Because your eyes start turning upwards, they cannot see the tip of your own nose. The moment you recognise you cannot see the tip of your nose means that within six months your energy will shrink, go back to its source.  And the aura, without any photographic technology, has been recognized by yoga for five thousand years. But now, it can be accepted on scientific grounds.

Wilhelm Reich was a unique genius. He could manage to see and feel what is not ordinarily possible. But if you are very meditative, you will start seeing the auras of people, even your own aura. You will see your own hand with the light rays around it, radiating. And when you are healthy you will feel your aura expanding. When you are sick you will feel your aura shrinking — something is shrinking within you.

When you are by the side of a sick person, you will have a strange feeling that he somehow makes you feel sick, because the sick person exploits the auras of the other without his knowing.  He needs more life, so whoever has life and comes around him, he takes his life. And you know by experience, without understanding, that there are people you want to avoid, because meeting them you feel sick, meeting them you feel that something has been taken away from you. And there are people you want to meet, because meeting them you feel an expanding, you feel more alive.

Wilhelm Reich was right, but unfortunately the masses never accept their own geniuses; on the contrary, they condemn them, because if Wilhelm Reich is right, then everybody else is almost blind. And in anger he wrote the book, Listen, Little Man. But that book is beautiful, and his anger can be forgiven because he was mistreated by ‘the little man’, by the masses. He was first thought to be mad, then forced into a madhouse, and he died in a madhouse. In the East he would have become a Gautam Buddha. He had the quality, the insight. But a wrong society, a society of very little men, of very small people, small-minded, who cannot conceive the vast, who cannot conceive the mysterious….

The whole atmosphere is full of life. And if you understand your own sources of life you will be suddenly aware that birds are alive, trees are alive, grasses are alive —everywhere there is life! And you can dance with this life, you can start having a dialogue with the atmosphere.  Of course, people will think you are mad, because people are still the same. The same people crucified Jesus, the same people forced Wilhelm Reich into a madhouse, the same people poisoned Socrates…but those little people are in the majority.

Wilhelm Reich’s anger is right, but still I would say, rather than anger, the little man needs compassion. He was angry because they misbehaved with him, they destroyed his whole life. Rather than understanding him — he would have opened a new door to experiencing, to loving, to living — they destroyed the man completely. Obviously, he became angry.

In the East, the same little men are there, but the Eastern genius has never been angry with them. Rather than being angry it has shown compassion, it has felt compassion for their blindness, and it has tried in every way to bring light to them, a little understanding to their hearts.

In the East the older person was always valued, respected. He was more experienced, he had seen many, many seasons coming and going; he had lived through all kinds of experiences, good and bad. He had become seasoned; he was no longer immature. He had a certain integrity that comes only with age. He was not childish, carrying his teddy bears; he was not young, still fooling around thinking that this was love.

He had passed through all these experiences, had seen that beauty fades; he had seen that everything comes to an end, that everything is moving towards the grave.  From the very moment he left the cradle, there was only one way — and it was from cradle to the grave. You cannot go anywhere else; you cannot go astray even if you try. You will reach to the grave whatever you do.

The old man was respected, loved; he had attained a certain purity of the heart because he had lived through desires, and seen that every desire leads to frustration.  Those desires are past memories. He had lived in all kinds of relationships, and had seen that every kind of relationship turns into hell. He had passed through all the dark nights of the soul. He had attained a certain aloofness — the purity of an observer. He was no longer interested in participating in any football game. Just living his life, he had come to a transcendence; hence, he was respected, his wisdom was respected.  But in the East, the idea has been that life is not just a small piece of seventy years in which youth comes only once. The idea has been that, just as in existence everything moves eternally — the summer comes, the rains come, the winter comes, and the summer again; everything moves like a wheel — life is not an exception.  Death is the end of one wheel and the beginning of another. Again you will be a child, and again you will be young, and again you will be old. It has been so since the beginning, and it is going to be so to the very end — until you become so enlightened that you can jump out of the vicious circle and can enter into a totally different law. From individuality, you can jump into the universal. So there was no hurry, and there was no clinging.

The West is based on the Judaic tradition which believes in only one life. Christianity is only a branch of the Judaism. Jesus was a Jew, born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew; he never knew that he was a Christian. If you meet him somewhere and greet him with, “Hello, Jesus Christ,” he will not recognize who you are addressing because he never knew that his name is Jesus and he never knew that he is Christ. His name was Joshua, a Hebrew name, and he was a messiah of God, not a Christ. Jesus Christ is a translation in Greek from Hebrew. Mohammedanism is also a by-product of the same tradition — the Jewish. These three religions believe in one life. To believe in one life is very dangerous because it does not give you chances to make mistakes, it does not give you chances to have enough experience of anything; you are always in a hurry.

The whole Western mind has become the mind of a tourist who is carrying two, three cameras, and rushing to photograph everything because he only has a three week visa. And in three weeks, he has to cover the whole country — all the great monuments. There is no time for him to see them directly; he will see them at home, at ease, in his album. Whenever I remember the tourists, I see the old women rushing from one place to another — from Ajanta to Ellora, from Taj Mahal to Kashmir – — in a hurry, because life is short.

It is only the Western mind which has created the proverb that time is money.  In the East things go slowly; there is no hurry — one has the whole of eternity. We have been here and we will be here again, so what is the hurry? Enjoy everything with intensity and totality.  So, one thing: because of the idea of one single life, the West has become too concerned about being young, and then everything is done to remain young as long as possible, to prolong the process. That creates hypocrisy, and that destroys an authentic growth. It does not allow you to become really wise in your old age, because you hate old age; old age reminds you only of death, nothing else. Old age means the full stop is not far away; you have come to the terminus — just one whistle more, and the train will stop.

I had an agreement with my grandfather. He loved his feet to be massaged, and had told him, “Remember, when I say ‘comma,’ that means be alert; the semicolon is coming close.  When I say ‘semicolon,’ get ready, because the full stop is coming close. And once I say ‘full stop,’ I mean it.” So he was so much afraid of “comma,” that when I would say, “Comma,” he would say, “It is okay, but let the semi colon be a little longer. Don’t make it short and quick!”

Old age simply reminds you, in the West, that a full stop is coming close —prolong the semicolon-colon. And who are you trying to deceive? If you have recognized that youth is no longer there, you can go on deceiving the whole world but you are not young, you are simply being ridiculous…. People are trying to remain young, but they don’t know that the very fear of losing youth does not allow you to live it in its totality.

And secondly, the fear of losing youth does not allow you to accept old age with grace.  You miss both youth — its joy, its intensity — and you also miss the grace, and the wisdom, and the peace that old age brings. But the whole thing is based on a false conception of life. Unless the West changes the idea that there is only one life, this hypocrisy, this clinging, and this fear cannot be changed.

In fact, one life is not all; you have lived many times, and you will live many times more.  Hence, live each moment as totally as possible; there is no hurry to jump to another moment.  Time is not money, time is inexhaustible; it is available to the poor as much as to the rich. The rich are not richer as far as time is concerned, and the poor are not poorer. Life is an eternal incarnation.

What appears on the surface is very deep-rooted in the religions of the West. They are very miserly in giving you only seventy years. If you try to work it out, almost one-third of your life will be lost in sleep, one-third of your life will have to be wasted in earning food, clothes, housing. Whatever little is left has to be given to education, football matches, movies, stupid quarrels, fights. If you can save, in seventy years’ time, seven minutes for yourself, I will count you a wise man. But it is difficult to save even seven minutes in your whole life; so how can you find yourself? How can you know the mystery of your being, of your life? How can you understand that death is not an end? Because you have missed experiencing life itself, you are going to miss the great experience of death, too; otherwise, there is nothing to be afraid of in death. It is a beautiful sleep, a dreamless sleep, a sleep that is needed for you to move into another body, silently and peacefully.  It is a surgical phenomenon; it is almost like anaesthesia.  Death is a friend, not a foe.  Once you understand death as a friend, and start living life without any fear that it is only a very small time-span of seventy years — if your perspective opens to the eternity of your life — then everything will slow down; then there is no need to be speedy. In everything, people are simply rushing. I have seen people taking their office bag, pushing things into it, kissing their wife, not seeing whether she is their wife or somebody else, and saying good-bye to their children. This is not the way of living! And where are you reaching with this speed?

I have heard about a young couple who had purchased a new car, and they were going full speed. The wife was asking the husband again and again, “Where are we going?” — because women are still old-minded: “Where are we going?” The man said, “Stop bothering me, just enjoy the speed we are going at. The real question is not where we are going; the real question is at what great speed are we going?”  Speed has become more important than the destination, and speed has become more important because life is so short. You have to do so many things, that unless you do everything with speed, you cannot manage. You cannot sit silently even for a few minutes — it seems a wastage. In those few minutes you could have earned a few bucks.

Just wasting time closing your eyes, and what is there inside you? If you really want to know, you can go to any hospital and see a skeleton. That is what is inside you. Why are you unnecessarily getting into trouble by looking in? Looking in, you will find a skeleton. And once you have seen your skeleton, life will become more difficult; kissing your wife, you know perfectly well what is happening — two skeletons. Somebody just needs to invent Xray glasses, so people can put on X-ray glasses and see all around skeletons laughing.  Most probably, he will not be alive to take his glasses off; so many skeletons laughing is enough to stop anybody’s heartbeat. “My God, this is the reality! And this is what all these mystics have been telling people, ‘Look inwards’ — avoid them!”

The West has no tradition of mysticism. It is extrovert: Look outward, there is so much to see. But they are not aware that inside there is not only the skeleton, there is something more within the skeleton. That is your consciousness. By closing your eyes you will not come across the skeleton, you will come across your very life source. The West needs a deep acquaintance with its own life source, then there will be no hurry. One will enjoy when life brings youth, one will enjoy when life brings old age and one will enjoy when life brings death. You simply know one thing — how to enjoy everything that you come across, how to transform it into a celebration. I call the authentic religion the art of transforming everything into a celebration, into a song, into a dance.

An old man walked into a health clinic and told the doctor, “You have got to do something to lower my sex drive.”

The doctor took one look at the feeble old man and said, “Now, now sir, I have got the feeling that your sex drive is all in your head.”

“That’s what I mean, sonny,” the old man said. “I have got to lower it a little.”

Even the old man is wanting to be a playboy. It shows one thing with certainty —that he has not lived his youth with totality. He has missed his youth, and he is still thinking about it.  Now he cannot do anything about it, but his whole mind is continuously thinking about the days he had in youth which have not been lived; at that time he was in a hurry.

If he had lived his youth he would be free in his old age of all repressions, sexuality; there would be no need for him to drop his sexual instinct. It disappears, it evaporates in living. One just has to live uninhibited, without any interference from your religions, from your priests, and it disappears; otherwise, when you are young you are in church, and when you are old, you are reading the Playboy by hiding it in your Holy Bible. Every Holy Bible is used only for one purpose, hiding magazines like Playboy, so you are not caught by children — it is embarrassing.

If you listen to old people, you will be surprised; they are talking only of things which they should have lived, but the time has passed when it was possible to live them. At that time they were reading the Holy Bible and listening to the priest. Those priests and those holy scriptures have corrupted people, because they have given them ideas against nature and they cannot allow them to live naturally. If we need a new humanity, we will have to erase the whole past and start everything anew. And the first basic principle will be: allow everybody, help everybody, teach everybody to live according to his nature, not according to any ideals, and live totally and intensely without any fear. Then children will enjoy their childhood, the young people will enjoy their youth and the old people will have the grace that comes naturally, out of a whole life lived naturally.

Unless your old age is graceful and wise and full of light and joy, contentment, fulfillment, a blissfulness…in your very presence, unless flowers blossom and there is a fragrance of eternity, then it is certain that you have not lived. If it is not happening that way, that means somewhere you have gone astray, somewhere you have listened to the priests, who are the corrupters, the criminals, somewhere you have gone against nature — and nature takes revenge. And its revenge is to destroy your old age and make it ugly, ugly to others and ugly in your own eyes; otherwise old age has a beauty which even youth cannot have.

Youth has a maturity, but it is unwise. It has too much foolishness in it; it is amateurish. Old age has given the last touches to the paintings of one’s own life. And when one has given the last touches, one is ready to die joyously, dancingly. One is ready to welcome death.