Man is born awake and then he falls asleep. Man is born one and then he becomes many. Man is born individual and then he falls asleep and dreams of being a crowd. This is the whole problem, the whole task, the whole challenge of life. It has to be understood.

This is the search: we are seeking that which originally we were. We are seeking that which we really are. We are seeking that which we have not lost for a single moment, only forgotten. We have only become oblivious of it. Maybe it is so obvious, that’s why we have become oblivious.

Jesus says, “Unless you become like children again, you will not enter into my Kingdom of God.” His indication is clear. Unless you regain originality, unless you move to the original source again… One night, a seeker asked Jesus, “What should I do to know God?” And Jesus said, “Unless you are born again, you will not know him.”— One has to move to that original space where we were before we were born.

Legend has it that Jesus refused to learn his alphabet, his letters. He would not allow the teachers to discuss beta – two – until they could explain to his satisfaction the meaning of alpha – one. Of course they could not explain it. One is the number upon which arithmetic rests. One is the number upon which each individual, the whole of the universe, the concept of God, of reality, rests. And the child Jesus insisted, “Unless you explain to me what the meaning of one is, I am not going to move to another letter of the alphabet. First tell me what alpha is. Only then am I ready to go to two – beta.” And because it could not be explained he refused to go to school.

This is not recorded in the Christian gospels because much is left unrecorded in Christian gospels. But it is one of the oldest Essenes traditions. This story has been handed over from master to disciple down the centuries. It is one of the most meaningful stories about Jesus. His insistence that one must be known first because it is one which is the base of all.

When you are awake, you are one. When you fall asleep, you become many. Have you watched it? In a dream you play so many roles simultaneously. In the morning when you are awake, you are one. In the dream you are the dreamer, you are the dreamed. You are the director of the dream, you are the actor, you are the story, you are the stage, and you are the audience too. You become many, you become split, you become a crowd. In a dream you are no longer one. When you are awake, suddenly the director, the actor, the story, the stage, the drama, the audience, the dreamed and the dreamer, all disappear into one unity.

Hindus call this whole world a dreamland, maya. We are fast asleep. So to search the one, or to search awareness is the same. Because by becoming aware, you become one, or by becoming one, you become aware. Now, let me explain to you how, in so many ways, in millions of ways, we are searching oneness.

The child is born. His first functioning in the world is through eating. His first functioning in the world is through absorbing matter. The search has started, matter wants to meet matter. Matter wants to have an organic unity with other matter. Matter is being pulled by matter, attracted by matter. This is the first love – food. Food gives the first orgasm to the child. When you feel satisfied after taking food or drinking water, that satisfaction is a feeling of oneness. Matter from the outside has been absorbed into the inside, the inner and the outer have met. The meeting is not very deep, it cannot be, it is of matter. It is very superficial, but still it is there.

Hindus call this the first chakra, muladhar. There are many people who live at this first chakra. They simply go on eating and defecating. Their whole life is nothing but absorbing matter and throwing matter out. Their life is very mechanical. It is very, very narrow, a small tunnel. Muladhar is the smallest aperture in your being, from where the light enters you and you enter existence. The smallest aperture is muladhar, the first center. It starts functioning because the child has to survive, he has to take food first, otherwise he will die. It is a survival measure, but one should not live to eat. If you are living only to eat, you are not living at all. You are simply waiting for death. You have chosen a very small pleasure, very ordinary pleasure. Just titillation and you will be finished with that small pleasure. And immense possibilities surround you.

Look into your own life. If you are too attached to food, become a little more aware. It is the first search toward oneness. Now even physicists, a few crazy physicists, say that atoms are together because they love each other. The word love is not good to use, it seems anthropomorphic. But now a few physicists are courageous enough to say that it explains something. And it has to be used because there seems to be no other explanation. Why are electrons, neutrons, and protons together? Why this togetherness? There must exist a certain sort of bond, a certain attraction. There must be a certain unity, a certain love affair going on – on the lowest level, but there must be a certain love affair – otherwise why don’t they fall apart? You can call it gravitation, you can call it magnetism, you can call it an electrofield, or whatsoever you choose, but love seems to be the best word because it can explain the whole spectrum, from the lowest to the highest.

Love seems to be the most economical word, the whole spectrum is included in it. When you eat and you become too obsessed with eating, you are just hanging around the first lesson of love – electrons, protons, neutrons, attracted to each other; your body attracting other body matter from the outside. Of course there is a certain satisfaction because whenever there is oneness, there is satisfaction, there is contentment, but it is of the very lower, the lowest. One should learn to go beyond it.

Hence all the religions teach the significance of fasting. Fasting does not mean starving, fasting does not mean that you have to kill your body, that you have to be destructive, no. Fasting simply means to give only as much as is needed, not more than that, so that you can become available to the second plane, you can become available to the second center. If you are too obsessed with food, you will be closed by food, you will become just material. One should not get too attached to food and one should not get too attached to fasting either. Then the balance is achieved. And only through balance is growth.

The second center is svadhishthan. When the child is healthy, happy, his body is whole, he starts dominating. A desire to dominate arises in the child, the child becomes a politician. He starts smiling at people because he comes to know that if you smile, people come under your influence. He starts crying, screaming because he comes to know that by crying and screaming you can manipulate your mother, your father, your family. Once the child’s physical needs are fulfilled, a new need arises that is a vital need: to dominate. That too is an effort to bring a unity, the unity between the dominated and the dominator.

Whenever you dominate somebody you become, in a certain way, one with him. Whenever somebody surrenders to you, or you surrender to somebody, you become one in a certain way. Hence, all over the world, people try to dominate each other. Wives trying to dominate husbands, husbands trying to dominate wives, parents trying to dominate children, children trying to dominate parents, in their own ways. The whole world tries to dominate. If you understand rightly, that too is a search for unity.

Whenever you have defeated a person and you have become the possessor, you have absorbed the person into your being. His vitality has been absorbed, his vital energy has become one with you. This aperture is a little bigger than the first, more opening. A person who is food obsessed is more closed than the person who is power obsessed, at least he moves to others. In his life he will have a certain type of relationship, not very good because the relationship of domination cannot be very good, it is violent to begin with, aggressive, ugly, but still some sort of relationship.

The politicians live in this second center. The gluttons live in the first. The politicians live in the second and then there is the third, manipura, male and female want to meet, to become one. In the Bible it is said, “God created Adam in his own image.” Now, one thing has to be understood, Adam must have been both. Adam must have been Adam and Eve, otherwise Eve could not be taken out of Adam. In the original Hebrew, the wording is such that it explains it clearly, God created Adam-Eve in one being. The original being created was neither man nor woman, he was both. He was neither he nor she, he was both, he was a unity. Only out of that unity could God make the separate woman.

If you ask the scientists, they say that when the child grows in the mother’s womb, for a few months he is neither male nor female, he is both. By and by, distinctions arise. By and by, he becomes either a male or a female. The original cell, amoeba, is both male and female, it is not yet divided. So to say that God created Adam is not good. My own suggestion is, God created Adam-Eve. I make one word out of both. God created Adam-Eve and then later on, he divided them into two. With that division, a great desire to meet with the other has arisen.

Each man is seeking a woman, each woman is seeking a man. We are seeking the opposite, the polar opposite. Without the other, it seems something is lacking. Without the other, life seems to be unfulfilled. Without the other, it seems you are half, not whole. Hence, so much hankering for love, to love and to be loved. This is the third chakra, manipura, the need for the male and the female to meet and become one.

As far as the lower nature is concerned, this is the highest center. In the lowest three centers, sex is the highest center. The gluttons only hoard, they are the ugliest people in the world. They never share – the misers, the rich, the hoarders, the exploiters. Better than them are the politicians, they at least relate. But they are dangerous too because their relationship is that of domination. They know only one thing, either be dominated or dominate. Their whole language is inhuman. They don’t know any human relationship; they know war, they know violence, they know aggression. Their whole effort is to become so dominant that everybody is absorbed in them. That’s what Alexander the Great was doing, that’s what Adolph Hitler was doing – better than the first, at least they relate. They relate wrongly, but at least they relate.

The first relates only with things, money, food, house, car. The second relates with persons. His relationship is not yet worthy, but still it is a relationship, rudimentary, the very beginning; very primitive, but still a relationship. The third is the relationship of sex, of two lovers. Poets, artists, painters, they exist at the third center – the aesthetic. The third is the highest in the lower centers, one starts sharing. And if you love a person, you don’t want to dominate. Remember, if you want to dominate, your love is contaminated by the second center, it is not yet love. If you really love, you want freedom for yourself and you want freedom for your beloved too. Love frees, gives independence because the beauty of love is only when it is out of freedom. It is not a domination, it is a sharing, a responsible sharing; you are happy in sharing your energies. But this too is not yet human. Animals can do it, are doing it very well, better than human beings. But the search is going higher.

When a man and a woman really meet and the orgasm happens, you will have the first glimpse, faraway glimpse, of the divine. Hence the attraction of sex, hence the deep desire for sexual orgasm, because the one is reflected in it – only for a moment, maybe not even for a moment, for a split second: just a passing glimpse. But God passes by.

The food addict is very far away, not even a glimpse. The power addict is very ugly, very aggressive, very much in turmoil, the glimpse is not possible. With a deep sexual love affair, God can have the first penetration into you. The first ray of samadhi enters in sexual orgasm. In fact, man came to think about samadhi only because of sexual orgasm – becoming aware of that moment of benediction, when two persons meet so deeply that they dissolve into each other. Their boundaries are no longer their boundaries; somehow in a miraculous way they start throbbing from one center, they are not two hearts, they are not two breathing bodies, they become one. A rhythm arises, they fall in tune with each other. And the rhythm is so tremendous, so powerful, that they are both lost in that rhythm, they are both surrendered into it.

Remember, with the second center you try to make somebody else surrender to you and the other tries to make you surrender to him. At the third center you both surrender to something that is beyond you both. You both surrender to the god of love. You both surrender to the orgasmic unity of sex energy. In that surrender, you are both effaced. For a single moment, you are Adam and Eve together. The Bible says, “God created in his own image.” When Adam and Eve really meet, the image of God is reflected again in the pool of your consciousness. Your lake of consciousness reflects the moon of God. Still it is far away, but the first glimpse has entered you.

Muladhar is material, the first center. Svadhishthan, the second center, is vital. The third, manipura, is psychosomatic, it is the highest unity of the lower world, momentary of course, but still of tremendous significance.

The fourth is anahat. It goes beyond sexuality, becomes pure love. When you see a flower, a roseflower, and your heart throbs with it, there is no sexuality. There is no question of man and woman, there is no polarity – you are simply thrilled by the beauty. The beauty has no reference to man and woman, the beauty is beyond man and woman. You look into the night, the whole sky full of stars and suddenly you are thrilled to your very core of being. A tremendous joy arises, you start meeting with the stars. There is no question of man and woman, there is no yin and yang – it is not a question of polarity at all.

Love goes beyond polarity, sex remains below polarity. Sex needs the opposite, love does not need the opposite. Hence, in sex there is always a subtle conflict because with the opposite the harmony can never be total. For moments maybe, but again the conflict comes in. Lovers go on fighting. In fact, psychologists say, when two lovers stop fighting, it simply shows love has disappeared. Lovers are intimate enemies. They go on quarreling, nagging. Yes, there are moments when they completely dissolve into each other, but those are rare moments, few and far between.

With love, polarity disappears. Love is more like friendship. You can love a tree, you can love a rock, you can love the stars, you can love the grass, you can love anything. Love has nothing to do with the male–female polarity. Love is beyond opposites, hence, the unity is deeper. This is the fourth chakra, anahat, the heart chakra. And with this fourth you really become human. Up to the third, you were part of the animal kingdom, one of the animals – nothing more, nothing special. With the fourth you become special, unique. Humanity is born, you have become a human being.

Remember, just to look like a human being does not mean that you are a human being. Only with the fourth center starting to function, you become a human being. Many people die as animals, they never rise above sexuality. They never come to know that there is a kind of love which is beyond opposites and which is tremendously fulfilling because there is no conflict in it. Love is unconditional, sex is conditional. In sex, there is a give and take. In love, you simply pour. You don’t ask, there is no demand. Not that you don’t get, you get a thousandfold, but that is not asked for. That simply comes on its own accord. The whole of existence showers back, echoes back.

At the fourth center there is again a unity, the lower and the higher meet. Remember these unities because by and by, we are moving toward becoming one. First plane, matter meets with matter. Second plane, vital meets with the vital. Third plane, opposites meet, the male meets the female, yin meets yang. Fourth, anahat, the lower meets the higher. Three centers are lower than the anahat and three centers are higher than the anahat. The anahat is the door in between, the bridge.

At your heart center, God meets the world, the unmanifest meets the manifest. The unknown meets the known, the host meets the guest, the mind meets no-mind. The heart is the most mysterious center in man. And unless your heart starts functioning, you will not know what the purpose of life is. With the heart, the beginning of the higher. Vast spaces open, you are getting out of the tunnel.

Anahat is a great window, it makes you available to the sky and makes the sky available to you. Or in another way you can say, at anahat, in love, unconscious and superconscious meet. Or, in still another way, you can say, in anahat, in love, sex and prayer meet. Sex is lower than love, prayer is higher than love. And love is a great mystery. Something in it is of sex certainly and something in it is of prayer. Hence, there is no mystery comparable to love. There is something of sex. If you go and love a tree, you would like to hug it, you would like to touch it in the same way as you would like to touch your beloved’s face. If you love a rock, you would like to kiss it in the same way as you would like to kiss your beloved’s lips – something of sex, something lingering from the past. And still, when you kiss a rock there is reverence, great awe, great wonder. You are full of respect, you are prayerful. It is a sort of worship.

In love, prayer and sex meet. If you are not alert, love can fall and become sexual. If you are aware enough, love can rise high and become prayerful. That has to be remembered. Love is very fragile. There is more possibility that love will descend into the lower realm and will become sex. When for the first time you fall in love with a woman or with a man, there may be nothing of sex. Sooner or later, sex enters. When first you look at a beautiful woman, there may be reverence, a great awe, as if you have seen God’s face in her face. When you look into the eyes of a woman, suddenly a door opens to the mysterious. You are not thinking in terms of sex and body and the physical, you are not concerned at all. Something of the higher has challenged you. But then you fall in love and by and by you forget the higher and you enter the lower.

Love almost always falls into the lower because we are not conscious. And that’s why, in all the languages, whenever a person moves into love, we say of him, “He has fallen in love.” People fall in love, very rarely do people rise in love. Remember, the formulation is very correct. Love starts as something very high, romantic, poetic, divine, and then by and by settles on something very ordinary, physical, rotten. Love starts as a prayer, love’s beginning is religious, but love ends in a nightmare – remember it. If you are alert you can help yourself not to fall, you can help and discipline yourself to rise. Then love can become prayer.

At anahat, the heart center, the lower and the higher meet. It is a great experience of oneness, very fragile of course, trembling, shaking, not very certain. Like a process, moving forward, going backward, but if you are alert you can use it as a stepping-stone for still higher possibilities.

The fifth chakra is visuddha. It is the chakra of prayer, the throat chakra. The chakra of prayer, chanting, communication with God. At the fifth chakra, the inner and the outer meet. Remember, at the fourth, the lower and the higher meet. At the fifth, the inner and the outer meet. “God” simply means the whole existence that is outside you. And “you,” the existence that is inside you. I–thou is the form of prayer. That’s what Martin Buber says. I–it is the experience of the world. I–thou is the experience of prayer and God and love.

At the throat chakra, visuddha… The word visuddha means “the pure, the purest.” At the fifth, love has become purest. It is simply an ecstasy, a joy. The inner and the outer meet. When the devotee bows down before his deity, the inner is bowing down toward the outer. When somebody sings a song to the sun or to the moon, the inner is singing a song to the outer. And remember, you have witnessed only one thing, you have witnessed the devotee singing a song to the deity. You have not seen another thing because that is very subtle: the deity singing a song to the devotee. That too happens, but that is very subtle. That you will come to know only when you have experienced prayer.

Sometimes you pray to God and sometimes God prays to you. Let me say it because ordinarily it is not said; it looks sacrilegious to say that God prays to you, but it happens. Just as the mother goes on singing a lullaby to the child. Yes, God also sings a lullaby. But you have to earn it. When your prayer has been heard, when you have really poured your heart, you have forgotten yourself completely, then suddenly prayer is no longer an expression on your part. You start listening, God starts praying. The inner and the outer meet.

Then there is the sixth chakra, the chakra of meditation, the third-eye chakra, agya chakra. Left and right meet, reason and intuition meet, masculine and feminine meet, yin and yang meet. Now, something has to be understood. At the third, man and woman met on a physical plane, outside. At the sixth, again the masculine and the feminine meet, but no longer on the outside, but on the inside. The third is the center of sex and the sixth is the center of Tantra. Inside, you are both. Half of your being is feminine and half your being is masculine. And at your third eye, a meeting happens. This third eye is very symbolic. It means your left and right eyes dissolve into one eye and that becomes the third eye. Right now you have two eyes, two beings. Then you will have one eye.

There is a saying of Jesus of tremendous import. Listen to it, meditate over it. Says Jesus, “If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” He is talking about the third eye, “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”

One eye is connected with the left hemisphere, the other is connected with the right hemisphere. They are a division in your being, you are not yet a symphony. Your left and right are asymmetrical. Have you looked at your face? The halves of your face, the right and the left, are not symmetrical. Look into the mirror again, watch carefully, your left face is different from your right face. Your innermost mind is divided into right and left hemispheres and they function differently. The left hemisphere reasons and the right hemisphere intuits. Poetry is born out of the right hemisphere and logic is born out of the left hemisphere. If a poet’s left hemisphere is removed, he will not lose anything, he will not even become aware of it. If a mathematician’s left hemisphere is removed, he will be completely gone, he will not know what to do. His whole expertise will disappear.

Imagination is from the right, reasoning is from the left. The right hemisphere is feminine and the left hemisphere is masculine and these two are bridged by a very small bridge, just linked. At the sixth center, agya chakra, the third-eye center, these two hemispheres meet and become one. Then your reason is not against your intuition and your imagination is not against your logic. Then your logic and your imagination both come together.

Look, whatsoever I am saying… I am always talking logically, but whatsoever I am saying is always illogical. The content is illogical, the container is very logical. If I want to argue with you, I can argue, there is no problem about it. But what I am saying to you is something beyond argument. If your faith is against logic, then you have not come to inner unity yet. Your faith should be beyond logic, but not against logic. Remember this distinction. Your faith should be beyond logic; supported by logic, but not finished by logic – something going beyond and far away. But it can be supported by logic; up to a certain point logic can go with it. It can be very rational, it can be very reasonable. There is no need for faith to be against logic. If faith is against logic then you are still divided, then that one eye has not happened yet.

The greatest mystics of the world were always the greatest logicians too. Shankara, Nagarjuna – great logicians and yet illogical. They will go as far as possible with logic and then suddenly they take a quantum leap. They say, “Up to this point, logic helps; beyond this point, logic has no go.” If you want to argue with Shankara, you will be defeated in argument.

Shankara traveled all over this country, a great mystic and he defeated thousands of scholars. His whole life work was this, to go and defeat people and still he was very illogical. In the morning you would find him arguing so logically that the greatest logicians would look childish. In the evening you would find him praying and dancing in the temple, and crying and weeping like a child. Unbelievable. He has written one of the most beautiful prayers and when somebody asked, “How can you write such beautiful prayers? You are such a logician. How can you be so emotional that you cry and weep and tears fall down?” He said, “My intuition is not against my logic, my intuition is beyond my logic. My logic has some function to fulfill: I go with it, I go with it wholeheartedly – but then there comes a moment it cannot go beyond. And I have to go beyond too.”

Remember, this is the greatest unity. And when this happens at the sixth, that your feminine and masculine, your inner yin and yang have met, you become one. This oneness has one step more. You have become one inside you. Now, the seventh chakra is sahasrar. This is the chakra of samadhi, ultimate ecstasy, total orgasm. Now, part and whole meet, the soul and God meet, you and all meet. You disappear into total orgasm.

You may not have thought of it in this way, but let me tell you, all these seven chakras are seven ways of orgasm. There is a subtle orgasm when you feel satisfied with food, a deep contentment. There is a subtle orgasm when you dominate. Politicians look very happy and healthy while they are succeeding. When they are in power, they look very radiant. Their energy seems to be overflowing, they look inexhaustible, never tired, rushing from one place to another, doing one thing and a thousand things, never tired, very radiant. Hitler had that magnetic force, that charisma. From where comes this radiance? It is power orgasm.

Have you watched it sometimes? When a politician stands and millions of people surround him and look at him, there is a subtle orgasm happening. He feels very happy, so many people giving him attention. So much vitality overflowing toward him, so much vibration flowing toward him, meets his vibe and there is a great orgasm. He becomes radiant. He explodes. When a politician is losing, is proving a failure, then all his radiance disappears, all his charisma disappears. When you see a politician in failure, for example, if you go and see Richard Nixon now, you will be simply surprised how this man who was so powerful has become so powerless. All charisma has disappeared. Poor Nixon. And the same man was so powerful – what has happened? The energy that was flowing toward him flows no more. The orgasm is no longer happening. He has lost his beloved. The beloved was the crowd; he was having a love affair with the crowd and that is lost. Politicians, when they have failed, look very empty; when they are successful, look so full.

On these seven planes, seven types of orgasm happen. And what I mean by orgasm is the experience of oneness. The ultimate happens at sahasrar, the seventh chakra, when the individual ego is completely dissolved into the cosmic whole. That is the total orgasm, the goal, the source.

Christians have made the cross their symbol. As I look at the cross, I think Christians have missed its real meaning. To me, the cross is not a symbol of death, but the arithmetical symbol of plus. I see it in that way and then it has a totally different significance – the arithmetical symbol of plus. Because Jesus joined together with the whole in that moment on the cross. Jesus became plus. Jesus disappeared in God. Jesus no longer existed, only one.

I told you about the legend that he would not learn the second letter, beta, because he said, “First I have to understand alpha, one.” No teacher could teach him. He had to be withdrawn from the school. But he learned the meaning of alpha on the cross. Only God can teach that. For that, only God can be the master.

What happened on the cross? The cross means plus. Before the cross, Jesus lived a life of minus, as everybody lives. Let me tell it in this way: the ego is a minus, because it exists not. The ego is that which is not, it is a minus thing. God is plus, God is that which is. On the cross, the plus of God met Jesus’ minus. The minus dissolved into the plus, Jesus became Christ. Jesus himself became one. Now he is no longer two or many, he has become the alpha. This is the source and this is the goal. The source is the goal because the beginning is the end. The alpha is the omega.

Atomic scientists say that each atom has a plus and minus charge. If we take the plus and minus charge apart, there is an explosion; that’s what an atomic explosion is. Each small atom, invisible atom, has two energies, positive and negative, minus and plus. They are together. Joined together in deep orgasm, in deep intercourse, the minus with the plus, the positive with the negative. If you pull them apart, if you divorce them, there is a great explosion of energy. That’s what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A small atom pulled apart can become so destructive.

The same happens at sahasrar, from the other side. The minus is joined with the plus: not pulled apart, put together; not divorced, but marriage happens. This marriage is the union, the yoga. Ordinarily we exist as a minus. God is the plus energy, the ego is the minus energy. The day you decide to drop your minus into the plus, there will be a marriage. That marriage happens at sahasrar, the seventh chakra.

These chakras are just allegories. Just to give you a map so you can understand how, from food to God, the search is one. The search is to find the one. We are lost in the many, we are lost in a crowd, we are split. And the whole search is how to find one, how to become indivisible, how to become individual. Remember this Christian symbol of the cross, not as a death symbol, but as a meeting: a symbol of yoga, a marriage symbol, a plus.

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