Transcending Enlightenment
I want to explain to our readers who the sannyasins are. Is the sannyasin a sort of new man? You say that the sannyasins are innocent children. Your critics say that they are your slaves, slaves of your attitude towards work, life, love, sex. May we have your opinion of the sannyasins?
I don't care at all what the critics say. They all can go to
hell - the sooner the better. But I can tell you about my
sannyasins.
I don't have any dogma that they can follow. I have no philosophy
that they can live. I don't have any catechism that they have to
repeat and cram.
Being with me, all that happens is a very delicate deprogramming,
and once a person is deprogrammed I don't have any program for him.
In fact, my sannyasins are simply losing what they have, and I am
not going to replace it with with anything. They will lose
Christianity, they will lose Hinduism, and I will not replace it
with another program. I will leave them to themselves.
They are not my slaves; neither am I their slave. Slavery is a very
strange phenomenon, it is a double-edged sword. The master is
dependent on the slaves as much as the slaves are dependent on the
masters.
I am nobody's slave, nobody is my slave, because I know that if you
create a slave, you become a slave immediately. My sannyasins cannot
even expect anything from me for the simple reason that I never
expect anything from them. When I said that I am not celibate
because I am not unnatural, a few sannyasins were shocked. They
started writing letters to me, and I informed them that they cannot
have any expectations about me. I can do anything I want. We don't
have any contract that I will follow your expectations or you will
follow mine.
I have no contract of any kind. My sannyasins cannot expect what I
am going to do tomorrow. I can do anything, and they also are
absolutely free. They can do anything they want: they can be here,
they can leave. It is their freedom.
Out of freedom they have become sannyasins, out of freedom they can
become non-sannyasins. There is no problem. It is not a church and
it is not some contract which has always existed between the leader
and the follower, the Master and the disciple. But this delicate
thing is rarely understood - that they both become dependent on
each other.
I have no contract with my people. I have not promised them that I
should be this or that, so they can never question my behavior. I
remain individual; and that's what I want them to remain,
individual.
Now, the persons who were shocked when I said I am not celibate had
carried the idea for centuries that a religious person should be
celibate - and particularly nobody has heard that an enlightened
man had made love to any woman after his enlightenment. Naturally
they were shocked.
It is up to them. They can think that perhaps I am not enlightened.
Perhaps it is time for them to leave this place. Perhaps they have
come to a wrong person. But as far as I am concerned, I am going to
be totally free, absolutely frank, no secrecy, no privacy.
I know for certain that celibacy is unnatural unless you are
impotent; and I don't think any impotent person has ever become
enlightened. No, there is no mention of it. In fact, just the
opposite is the case. The people who became enlightened were really
too much sexual, that's why I call them Zorbas; they were really too
much sexual - so much that finally they understood that there is
nothing much in it. They experienced it through and through and
found nothing in it. And that was the point from where they started
searching for something else. That led them towards Buddhahood,
enlightenment.
But once they had become enlightened - they were fulfilling
people's expectations because they wanted to be great enlightened
Masters, prophets, messiahs - they couldn't go on fooling with women.
Buddha would not even look at a woman. What cowardliness! Buddha
would not allow any woman close to him, she had to remain eight feet
away.
Is this enlightenment? so afraid, so shaky that even a woman coming
close and you become afraid? This is repression, this is not
enlightenment.
I want to declare to the whole world that unenlightened people can
have only sexual relationships, which they call love. This is not
right. They should stop calling it making love; they are simply
making sex. Only an enlightened person can make love, because it is
no more his need. He can be without it for years and not even for a
single moment will he feel its need. But he can enjoy it as fun.
I can play cards; it is not a need. I can drink once in a while; it
does not disturb my enlightenment. I can make love. I don't see...
but it can disturb people's idea of enlightenment. That is their
business. My enlightenment is not made of such fragile matter. It
cannot be disturbed by anything. In fact, they have been asking
whether enlightened people transcend sex, and I have sent the answer
to them that the enlightened person finally transcends
enlightenment, too.
And I have transcended enlightenment, too. Now I am again the same
old ordinary man I was before all this round trip jet journey. I am
back home.
I have passed through everything, all meditation, all enlightenment,
and come back home, with new eyes, new clarity, new vision. It is
almost like living continuously on LSD.