Love should come out of your silence, awareness, meditativeness.
In the beginning there was Love and then came the Relationship. Love was born in the human heart as an existential gift. The relationship was born in some kind of practical understanding of life; that love needs grounding, some expression, a sharing in some way on a solid ground. This sharing and commitment gave birth to a bonding with others and formation of various relationships. In these defined relationships, gift-love got transformed into need-love in the forms of husband and wife, the parents and their children, brothers-sisters and cousins, far away cousins, gurus and disciples, and friends and strangers.
This was a real grounding for love, and with it came not just the sense of natural belonging, but the loss of freedom, suffocating attachments and clinging, leading to all kind of emotional sufferings and psychological violence. This can be called falling in love — in the real meaning of the word.
Often we have been using this expression of falling in love in various romantic terms also — Laila and Majnu, Romeo and Juliet… — there are so many such examples. These stories seem to be other-worldly, but in reality, they are very worldly.
The really divine stories happen in mystic unions of Shakti and Shiva, Sita and Rama, Radha and Krishna, and so many other divine beings. These mystics existed in human forms, but they attained enlightenment through meditation and transformation of love. For them it was certainly a rising in love, and not falling in love.
In ordinary life, when people fall in love, very soon they start exploiting each other, using the other for themselves, all in the name of love. They become calculative and their love becomes conditional and full of expectations. The real love has to be an unconditional sharing to blossom in its absolute manifestation, like a rose flower that shares its fragrance without any expectation.
This rarely happens in our ordinary relationships. It does happen wherever the relationship is based on meditation. It happens between the enlightened mystics and their close disciples. It is unconditional love without any attachment and expectation. It is pure freedom. This could happen between ordinary individuals also if they evolved into this understanding of bringing a flame of meditation in their life and radiate in love.
Love should come out of your silence, awareness, meditativeness. It is soft, it is unbinding — because how can love create fetters for the one who is loved? It is giving freedom to each other, more and more. Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being… Not that you are in love — now you are love.
You have fallen in love over many years. Then it did not work. You tried to get out of it as if you were climbing out of a slippery ditch. It never worked. It is so childish. As a teenager, you fell in love. What happened? Did you get your love for ever after? Most likely, you two drifted away. Again and again. You always had a heart break, a pain that refused to go away despite the passage of time.
Rising in love means a learning, a changing, a maturity. Rising in love ultimately helps you to become grown-up. And two grown-up persons don’t quarrel; they try to understand, they try to solve any problem. Anybody who rises in love never falls from it, because rising is your effort, and the love that is grown through your effort is within your hands. But falling in love is not your effort.
In fact, a mature person does not fall in love, he rises in love. The word ‘fall’ is not right. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. They cannot manage and they cannot stand – they find a woman and they are gone, they find a man and they are gone. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don’t have the backbone, the spine; they don’t have that integrity to stand alone.
Love means giving, giving not just gifts and affection but giving total freedom to the other. Freedom to be with you or leave you. After all, he/she has his/her own being, own territory which you should not encroach upon. No matter how close you are, how deep you are in love, every person has a special virgin space which is very, very private. This space is not to be taken over or conquered by your love. Rising in love you become aware of this sacred space as you give full freedom. Then rising in love becomes spiritual.
To Fall in Love Is so Easy. Why Is It so Difficult to Fall out of Love?
After repeated discussions, fights and overwhelming flow of emotions we can’t find a resolve to the lost love. I don’t want to hurt the person i was once in love with cause its not like there aren’t any feelings left. I’m too confused. Can you say something.
Falling is always easy. You can fall in any ditch. Getting out is difficult. But you will have to get out. Once the love disappears the ditch becomes hell. Then there is quarreling, argument, nagging, and every kind of nastiness from both sides. Nobody wants to hurt; but because he is hurting, she is hurting, unknowingly they go on dumping their hurt feelings on the other.
In the first place, when you start falling in love, when you are still not in the ditch, that is the time to ask me, because I have a totally different kind of love affair which is called rising in love. Then there is no problem. Rising in love is beautiful, and getting out of it is very easy, because that will be falling down. Falling down is easy, keep it for the next step; for the first step, always use rising. The easier step you have done, now you have to do the difficult one.
And it will happen — all these tears and conflicts, but nothing can bring the love back.
A simple thing has to be understood: love — the love that you are talking about — is not in your hands. You have fallen into it. It was not in your power not to fall, so when it comes, it takes you with it. But it is like a breeze, it comes and goes. And it is good that it comes and goes, because if it stays it becomes stale.
A little understanding is needed on both sides, that the love is no longer there. There is no need to hate each other, because nobody has destroyed it — nobody has created it. It had come like a breeze, you enjoyed those moments; be thankful to each other and help each other to come out of the ditch. In a ditch, that is the only way. The man, to be really manly, should give his shoulders for the woman to rise up and get out of the ditch. And the man can find his own gymnastics, how to do it.
But nobody asks before falling. This is strange! Never fall in love. Try to rise. And rising in love is a totally different matter.
Rising in love means a learning, a changing, a maturity. Rising in love ultimately helps you to become grown-up. And two grown-up persons don’t quarrel; they try to understand, they try to solve any problem.
Anybody who rises in love never falls from it, because rising is your effort, and the love that is grown through your effort is within your hands. But falling in love is not your effort.
Falling in love — that love is going to be disrupted somewhere, and the sooner it is understood that it is gone, the better; otherwise you become too entangled in a thousand and one things. Those are the things which make it difficult to separate.
When you fall in love, no questions arise. You are clean, the other person is clean. But when you want to separate, the days, the nights, the years that you have lived together, loved together, experienced something which is one of the most beautiful gifts of nature — you go on becoming entangled.
You go on giving promises to each other… and it is not that you are lying or deceiving; in those beautiful moments those promises seem to be absolutely coming from your heart. But when those moments are gone — and they will be gone, because it has been a fall, and nobody can remain in a fallen state for eternity. Someday he has to rise again. And the moment you start separating, all those entanglements, your promises, the other’s promises, create the complexity.
Rising in love is something spiritual.
Falling in love is something biological.
Biology is blind, that’s why love is called blind. But the love I am talking about is the only insight that is easily available to everyone. Just a little effort….
Love should come out of your silence, awareness, meditativeness. It is soft, it is unbinding — because how can love create fetters for the one who is loved? It is giving freedom to each other, more and more. As the love grows deeper, freedom becomes bigger. As the love grows deeper, you start accepting the person as he is. You stop trying to change the person.
It is one of the miseries of the world that lovers are continuously trying to change the other person. They don’t know that if the person really changes, their love will disappear, because they had not fallen in love with this changed person in the first place. They had fallen in love with a person who was not touched by their ideas — “Change this and that.”
Rising in love, you become aware that the other has his own territorial imperative, and you are not to encroach upon it.
If love becomes freedom, then there is no need to separate. The idea of separation arises because you go on seeing that you are becoming more and more a slave, and nobody likes slavery.
But you always ask me when you are in the ditch and cannot get out. One thing is certain: I am not coming into the ditch to take you out! You two have to manage it. If I come in the ditch to help you out, you both will be out and I will be in the ditch! And I don’t know anybody whom I can ask, “How to get out of here?”
I have never asked a single question of anybody about my life. It is my life, and I have to live it, I have to solve its problems. I have never taken any advice, I have never accepted anybody’s advice which was not asked for in the first place. I have told those people, “You have to understand that advice is the only thing everybody gives free of charge and nobody takes.”
Why bother? Advice given by a person whom you have not asked cannot be very wise.
The wise man never imposes his idea on anyone.
If somebody asks him, he simply gives his insight.
It is not a commandment, that they have to do it; there is no “should” in it.
I can say only one thing: you have given each other beautiful moments — be grateful, be thankful. The parting should not be ugly when the meeting was so beautiful.
You owe it to existence that the parting should be made beautiful. Forget all your promises — they were right when they were given, but the time has changed, you have changed. You both are standing at a crossroads, ready to move in different directions; perhaps you may never meet again. Make it as graceful as possible. And once you understand that it has to happen, gracefully or ungracefully, then it is better to make it graceful.
At least, your lover will live in your memory, you will live in the memory of the lover. In a certain way, those moments together will always enrich you. But part gracefully.
“And it is not difficult when you have understood love — which is a very difficult phenomenon. You fell without a second thought; you can understand that very easily love has disappeared. Accept the truth of it, and don’t blame each other, because nobody is responsible.
Help each other gracefully; in deep friendship, part. Lovers when they separate become enemies. That is a strange kind of gratitude. They should become really friends. And if love can become friendship, there is no guilt, no grudge, no feeling that you have been cheated, exploited. Nobody has exploited anybody; it was just the biological energy which made you blind.
I teach a different kind of love.
It does not end in friendship but begins in friendship.
It begins in silence, in awareness. It is a love which is your own creation, which is not blind.
Such a love can last forever, can go on growing deeper and deeper.
Such a love is immensely sensitive. In this kind of relationship one starts feeling the need of the other person even before the other person has spoken.
I have known a few couples, very few couples — my acquaintance with couples is big, but I have come across only two, three couples who had not fallen in love, who have risen in love. And the most miraculous thing about them was that they started feeling each other without words.
If the man was feeling thirsty, the woman would bring water. Nothing has been said just a synchronicity. If the loved one is feeling thirsty, she must start feeling thirsty herself. A transfer is happening continuously, words are not needed. Energies can relate directly without language.
Such a love needs nothing from the other.
It is grateful that the other receives something when he offers, or she offers.
It never feels in any kind of bondage, because there is none.
In such love, sex may happen sometimes, may not happen for months, and finally will disappear completely. In this context, sex is no longer sexual, but onlya way of being together,going as deeply as possible into each other, an effort to reach the depths of the other. It has nothing to do with biological reproduction.
And once they start understanding that whatsoever they do…. In sex only their bodies can meet, then sex slowly disappears. Then a different kind of meeting starts happening which is just a meeting of energies. Holding hands, sitting together looking at the stars, it is more than any sexual orgasm can give — two energies melting.
Sexual orgasm is physical, is bound to be the lowest kind. Orgasm which is not physical has tremendous beauty, and leads finally to self-realization. And if love cannot give you enlightenment, don’t call it love. Love is such a beautiful word. When you say, “Falling in love,” you are using the word in an ugly way. Say “falling in sex”; be true. In love one always rises, never falls. But first you have to come out of the ditch. Help each other.
“Biology is not going to help. Just be human to each other, and understand the point that the love that was blinding you is no longer there. Your eyes are open. Don’t try to deceive the other that you still love, you still feel, but what to do? This kind of hypocrisy is not good. Simply say, “The feeling is no longer there. I am sad and sorry about it, I would have loved the feeling to be there, but it is not there. And I know it is not there in you either.
Once it is understood that the feeling is gone, now at least, just as human beings, help each other to get out of the ditch. If you help, there is no problem. But instead of helping, each wants to get it finished but doesn’t allow the other to get out of the ditch. They go on pulling each other down.
Understand. The reason is fear; the old love is gone, the new has not yet arrived. It cannot arrive in your ditch, you will have to come out first. So the fear is of the unknown.
The past was so beautiful you would like to repeat it, so you try to force it, the other tries to force it. But these things are not within your power to force. A forced love is not love.
If you have to kiss somebody at the point of a sword — “Kiss!” — what kind of a kiss will that be? Looking at the sword, you may kiss, but it will not be a kiss at all.
Any love enforced for any reasons, is not love. And you both know what love is, because you had been in those moments; so you can compare easily that it is not the same thing. Help each other to come out — and it is very easy if you help each other — and part in grace. Next time try not to fall, but try to rise. Don’t let biology dominate you. Your consciousness should be the master.
Man is almost a machine. Man is not yet man; he functions unconsciously, he lives in sleep. Hence everything is possible. In fact, you always fall in love with the same woman, even though apparently you fall in love with somebody else. The type is the same because your liking is the same, your mind is the same, your choice is the same.
Just watch people, watch their love affairs, and you will be surprised. It is always the same man or the same woman - yes, with a different face or with a different mask, different clothes, different shape and size. But these differences are not real differences.
Unless you are new how can you fall in love with somebody new? Who is going to choose? How is one going to choose? The same mind will like the same type of face, the same eyes, the same color, the same shape, the form, the way the woman walks, the way she talks. Again within a few days you will be tired, just as you were tired before.
Again you will find you are trapped, imprisoned, and the woman will also find the same thing. But man lives in such an unconscious state that you cannot expect more than that.
If man is conscious, then many things become impossible. In the first place, falling in love itself becomes impossible. You start rising in love, not falling in love; the very quality of your love becomes totally different. It is no more a relationship, it is more a state of your being. You are full of love, you share your love, but there is no demand on your part. It is no longer a business, it is no longer conditional, it asks nothing. It is simply thankful that somebody accepted, that somebody did not reject your love. You feel grateful. It is not a bondage for the other, it does not enslave the other. It is not possessive; it is absolutely nonpossessive, unconditional, undemanding. It gives freedom. And when love gives freedom, lovers start soaring high, they start moving towards God. Love becomes a door to the divine.
Right now love simply drags you downwards. 'Falling in love' is a meaningful phrase - you certainly fall, you gravitate downwards. In the beginning you feel great, but only in the beginning. That is just infatuation, because you are hoping something new is going to happen. In the beginning you are excited, it seems a great adventure, but soon you find it is the same old, rotten thing - nothing special, nothing new. Just the partners have changed, but the game is the same - and played with the same violence, with the same ugliness.
It is not only you who have fallen in love with the same woman; everybody is doing that. In the ordinary, unconscious state of humanity more than that cannot be hoped for. You were fortunate that you got divorced, but it is difficult to live alone unless you know the beauties of being alone.
The moment you are alone you start suffering from loneliness, you start hankering for the company of the other. And then anybody will do, even the same woman that you had divorced; it is better than being lonely. Even if it is miserable, people prefer misery for company rather than loneliness.
Unless you know the joys of meditation you cannot avoid falling in love. Once you start enjoying your own being, the joy, the space, the absolute freedom, the unhindered consciousness, nobody occupying your attention, nobody trying to catch your attention, nobody impinging on your freedom, interfering with your freedom.... When you start enjoying your aloneness you have become a meditator. Yes, love will also be possible after that, but a totally different kind of love.
You must have been suffering from loneliness and, finding the same woman again, you may have thought it is better to be with her than to be lonely. And you must have forgotten all the miseries - people's memories are very short.
And this has to be understood: the mind tends to forget the miserable part, it tends to remember the pleasurable part. That is one of the strategies of the mind to remain in control, to remain your master. It always tends to forget the misery; it goes on magnifying, enhancing, decorating the pleasurable part. Reality is totally different, but the mind lives in imagination.
And your memories are not reliable at all because your memories are fictitious. You just think how beautiful it was, you have forgotten all the misery; you have chosen only a few moments that may have been beautiful. There must have been a few moments which were beautiful, but only a few moments, few and far between. And they cannot be as beautiful as you were thinking; otherwise what was the need to divorce the woman? The misery must have been much more, the pain must have been too much, unbearable. You must have suffered too much, the woman must have suffered too much. It is not a question of the woman being at fault or you being at fault; it is simply that two unconscious people being together are bound to create misery for each other.
If you cannot be happy alone, how can you create happiness for anybody else? You yourself are not happy, how can you give happiness to the other? You can give only that which you have. You are miserable - you can pretend that you are not miserable, but for how long? The honeymoon cannot last forever. Within a week or at the most two weeks it is finished, and then you know that both are miserable people. And when two miserable people live together, misery is not only doubled, remember, it is multiplied.
But you forget all that. Later on you efface those parts which were miserable, you preserve the beautiful moments. And not only do you preserve them, you go on decorating them, painting them, again and again. Slowly slowly they have no relationship with the reality. Your past is fictitious, your future is fictitious; only your present is real. But you don't live in the present at all; either you live in the past or you live in the future.
And why has this question arisen ? Misery must have started again! That's why you are asking, "Is it possible?" You have done it, and you are asking me, "Is it possible?" You yourself cannot believe what you have done.
When people are together they want to be alone; when they are alone they want to be together. People are impossible!
When you are with someone, immediately a thousand and one problems arise which were not there before. When you are alone those problems disappear, but a new problem arises: the loneliness seems to be so empty. You feel at a loss, you don't know what to do. Soon you start forgetting all the misery that was coming out of your relationship; you start hankering for another relationship. You think, "Maybe this time it is going to be different." Maybe she has changed, maybe you have changed. Maybe both of you have learned from the experience.
Life is not logical; life is far deeper than logic, and many times life is absolutely illogical. If you try to cling to logic you will miss many things, and those many things are the most precious. You will miss love, you will miss meditation, you will miss joy, you will miss God, you will miss freedom. You will miss all that makes life significant, that gives life beauty, splendor. You will miss the presence of godliness that surrounds you. Logic is a barrier, not a bridge.
Meditation has to be experienced. If you try to figure it out, what it is, you will miss the point because it is not a question of mind at all. Meditation means a state of no-mind. I am constantly pulling you towards the state of no-mind, in every possible way.
Put your intellect aside. And remember, I am not telling you to put your intelligence aside. On the contrary, if you can put the intellect aside you will be far more intelligent because intelligence and intellectuality are not synonymous, they are antagonistic.
Intelligence is a clarity; intellectuality is nothing but a clouded state. Intellectuality means you are too knowledgeable; your knowledge goes on interfering. Your mind is continuously interpreting, your mind is judging.
Listen to me without any judgment. I am not saying agree with me - there is no question of agreement or disagreement - just listen.
When you go to the mountains and you listen to the sound of a waterfall, do you agree with it or disagree with it? You simply listen! When you listen to beautiful music, do you agree or do you disagree? There is no question of agreement or disagreement; listening is nonjudgmental.
Hence the critics go on missing many things. If a critic goes to listen to music, his listening is not total; he is constantly comparing, judging, interpreting. You have to be very noncritical. You have to be just open, vulnerable, receptive, silent; so that whatsoever is happening can penetrate to the deepest core of your being.
What I am saying is very simple, utterly simple. My statements are absolutely ordinary.
I am not a holy man, I am not a saint. I am far more ordinary than you are! I have nothing special about me. I don't exist at all, how can I be special? So my statements are very simple - a child can understand them. But you can go on missing.
Creativity is the highest peak of your consciousness; hence it is painful, it is arduous. You are going uphill. To be uncreative is very comfortable; it is a downward journey. You need not do anything, nothing is needed on your part; just the gravitational pull is enough. When you are coming down from the hill towards the plains you can just turn your car engine off, no gas is needed; the car will go on rolling down. But if you are going uphill then effort is needed, great effort is needed.
Creativity needs the greatest effort because many things have to be dropped when you are moving upwards; unnecessary weights have to be dropped. And you are carrying so much luggage; it is all unnecessary, it is useless. But people go on collecting, people are great collectors. They will collect any kind of rubbish, hoping that maybe some day it will prove of some use. They are greedy and they feel empty so they go on stuffing themselves with every kind of thing. You are so full of ego and ego is a great weight.
You cannot move upwards. You will have to put the ego aside - and that is the greatest pain.
To be a creator means you drop the very idea that "I am separate from existence."
Creation happens only when you are one with the existence. Creation happens only when you are so in tune with the creator that there is no disturbance from your side.
And the greatest disturbance comes from the ego. It nourishes itself on disturbance, it lives on disturbance. Ego means the idea that "I am separate." And if you think you are separate, you are living in a lie - and creativity flows out of the experience of truth.
You have to know the truth, that you are not separate. No man is an island, we are all part of one vast continent. The whole existence is one, it is one organic unity; hence all that is great has come out only in those moments when the creator was dissolved into the whole. Great paintings, great poems, great music, great dance, all happen only when you are dissolved, when you are no more. If you are, suddenly you become the block, you stop the flow. Then God cannot use you as a flute, he cannot sing through you. The flute has to be just a hollow bamboo, just an open space, just a vehicle. The great poets, the great musicians, the great dancers, are all vehicles. They don't dance, they are being danced. They don't sing, some unknown energy sings through them.
That's why creativity is painful, because nobody wants to melt and merge and dissolve.
We cling to our identities. In fact, we want to be creative so that we can hang a few more awards around our egos - so the ego can become more famous, so that you can say, "I am somebody special. I am a great poet or a great composer or a great author" - or something. And that's the greatest problem to be faced by any creator: that he has to drop his ego.
And in the beginning it is for the ego that you want to be creative. It is a very paradoxical process: you have to drop the very ego that was the impetus in the beginning, that wanted to be famous, that wanted to leave its name resounding down the corridors of time, that wanted to make history. That very same ego becomes the cause of stopping the flow of unknown energies in you. Otherwise God is always pouring; you have just to be open, available. You are not to be separate.
It hurts in the beginning; it hurts more if you are resisting. If you are not resisting much it hurts less; if you are not resisting at all it doesn't hurt at all. Then dropping the ego can be one of the most joyous acts.
That's what sannyas is all about. The whole message is based on this single phenomenon: dropping the ego joyously. It is not a question of surrendering your ego to me. Ego is not something that you can surrender; it is just a fiction, it is not a reality.
So when the master says, "Surrender your ego to me," he is simply giving you a device, because you live with the idea that ego is very substantial. He knows it is nothing, so he says, "Surrender it to me, give it to me, and you be free of it." Not that you are giving anything - there is nothing to give; not that he is receiving anything - there is nothing to receive. But to help you to get rid of a false notion, a device is created. Once you have dropped the idea, suddenly you see the whole thing: nothing has been given, nothing has been taken. You are the same, only the old wrong notion has disappeared. People are very reluctant to surrender.
Surrender the ego. And it is not a question of surrendering it to me - surrender it to a tree, but surrender. Surrender it to the river, go and drown it in the river. Burn it, bury it, cremate it! Do whatsoever you want to do, but be finished with it.
This is something which has to be understood: the Western education, the Western psychology, all emphasize ego; they all emphasize, "Enhance the ego, strengthen the ego." In different names the ego is strengthened. Willpower - it is nothing but another name for ego. The whole idea is that man has to have an ego of steel, unbendable, strong, rocklike, hard, because life is a constant struggle for survival. You have to fight, you have to conquer.
Even a man like Bertrand Russell writes a book on science and calls it CONQUEST OF NATURE. The whole idea, the Western idea, is how to conquer; even nature has to be conquered. And who are you? - a part of nature. A part is trying to conquer the whole.
It is like your left hand trying to conquer your whole body. Is it possible? It is ridiculous. Science has not conquered nature, but in the very effort to conquer it, it has destroyed much.
In the East we have a totally different idea: nature has to be understood. The law - what Buddha calls dhamma, the fundamental law of life - has to be understood so that you can be in tune with it. It is not a question of conquering but of being in step with it, being in harmony with it. To be harmonious with nature is to be blissful.
If the West has lost all bliss, all peace, nothing is responsible except this stupid idea of conquering nature. Nature has not to be conquered. But the same idea persists in many ways - in science, and even so-called religious people go on talking about willpower.
Hundreds of books have been written on willpower. It is a sheer wastage, and not only a wastage but it is poisoning people's minds. People like Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill go on poisoning: HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. Deep down the idea is the same: how to win, how to influence. Napoleon Hill has written a book: THINK AND GROW RICH. And what is the secret of growing rich? When you look, you will find it is willpower; the whole secret, the magic secret is willpower. But willpower is only another name for ego power - and ego is impotent, there is no power in it. So people go on struggling unnecessarily, fighting with each other, competing with each other, and the end result is that everybody is miserable. Hence for the Western mind it seems very difficult to surrender.
The situation is not better in the East either. In the East for thousands of years it has been taught that surrender is the key, so people are very easily ready to surrender, so easily ready that it has become a simple formality; it has no significance. The Eastern man can touch the feet of the master with no intention of surrender. He touches the feet of each and everybody; that is just formal. It is like shaking hands, it does not mean anything; it is like saying hello. It has no meaning in it, it is formal. It is a kind of greeting to elderly people, to anybody who is respected by others, to anybody who is known as religious, holy, saintly. People touch the feet of their fathers, their mothers, their elderly relatives; it is just a conditioning.
So the Eastern person is in a different difficulty. His difficulty is that he does not know what surrender is; he has not enough ego to surrender. And the Western man has too much ego; hence he feels resistant. But on the whole the Western man is in a better position, because if he understands the point and he consciously surrenders the ego, his surrender goes far deeper than the Eastern man's surrender.
In Zen they have an ancient tradition. They say if you want to become a painter, for twelve years learn as perfectly as possible the technique of how to paint, and then for twelve years forget all about the technique and painting; do something else. Turn your back on painting completely; forget all about it, as if you have nothing to do with it.
And then one day start painting again.
This is something significant. For twelve years you have to learn the technique, because without the technique your painting will be childish; but if it is just the technique, then technically it will be perfect but it will not have any life, it will not be creative. So you have to learn the technique, let it soak in and then forget all about it so it becomes part of your blood, of your bones, of your marrow. And then after twelve years, one day suddenly start painting again. Now you don't know the technique. In a way you know, existentially it has become part of you; it is no longer knowledge. So your painting will not be just technical and it will not be childish either.
First learn the technique and then unlearn the technique. Only then one day does creativity explode. First learn the technique of how to dance, then forget all about technique and become spontaneous. Then only....
And there are two types of people - one who will think that there is no need to learn the technique: "I want to be a creative person, not a technician." Then their painting, their music, their dance, will remain just a childish effort, amateurish; cannot be of much value. And then there are the opposite people who will learn the technique as much as they can and then they are caught in the technique. They paint perfectly but something is missing: the soul is missing, the spirit is missing; it is a dead corpse. So you have to drop all knowledgeability. You have to unlearn so again you can become fresh, innocent.
And third: if you are trying to be creative with a certain hidden motive you will never find the right direction for your energies, because if painters are famous then there will be many painters. For example, in France there are many painters. In India you will not find so many painters, but many saints - just whatsoever is the fashion. In France painting is fashionable; the people who are thought to be intelligent should be painters.
In India they should be saints - the same fools! If they were born in France they would be painting; in India the same fools have become saints.
In each country the fashion is different, and at different times. For example, in India no saint will ever think of painting, but in Japan all the saints try to paint. They learn calligraphy and painting - just the fashion.
When you are living according to a certain prevalent fashion, that simply means you want to be famous, you want to be accepted by the tradition and by the people. You are not inquiring about your real potential; you are far more interested in other people's opinions. You have to drop that too. Don't be worried about other people's opinions; simply find out what feels good for you. Nobody may ever appreciate it - so what? You may not become famous - so what? Don't be worried about it. The reward is not in being famous; the reward is in being involved, totally involved in creativity. The reward is in the act itself; it is not beyond the act, it is not after the act. It is not when you have painted the painting and people have appreciated it and it is being exhibited all over the world. No, the reward is when you are painting it, when you are utterly absorbed in it. That silence, that joy, that energy, that moment when you are not and God is: that is the reward.
Enlightenment is for others who are not Italians. You have the first prize - enlightenment is the second prize! You should not be greedy for that. To be an Italian is such a great phenomenon; that's why no Italian has ever become enlightened. And I don't think it is ever going to happen, for the simple reason that Italians are born enlightened. Drop this greed. What will you do with enlightenment? Spaghetti is enough! Enjoy it to your heart's content. Leave enlightenment to poor Indians; they don't have anything else. That's why in India so many enlightened people have happened: when you don't have anything else at least you can have enlightenment.
And enlightenment needs a few things which are basically missing in Italians. It needs intelligence. Where are you going to get it? It is not a commodity; you cannot find it in the marketplace, you cannot purchase it. It is not available in the outside world. And Italians are utterly extrovert, and enlightenment happens somewhere inside. It needs great understanding - and Italians are very skillful in misunderstanding.
It has not happened yet, but it can happen. There are so many Italians here; their surrender is deeper than anybody else's. Their commitment is also deeper than anybody else's. For the first time so many Italians are trying to move deeper into meditation; something is bound to happen out of it. But they find something in me that they cannot find anywhere else. They can find a connection with me because I am not against the body. I am not against anything. I don't think there is any problem if you love spaghetti - you can still be spiritual! There is no antagonism.
For me even sex and samadhi are related, together. For me gossiping and gospels are not different - somewhere deep down they are aspects of the same coin. I cannot be interested in any other spiritual man, but I am not a spiritual man in the ordinary sense. I am a whole man, I am not holy.
