Love and Meditation...

Every small boy has a male ego -- just a small boy, if he starts crying you immediately say, "Why are you crying like a girl? A girl is allowed to cry because she is subhuman. You are going to be a big male chauvinist; you are not supposed to cry or weep." And small boys start stopping their tears. It is very rare to find men who are as ready to cry and allow tears to flow as women are.

Remember, you both have the same size tear glands in your eyes, so nature does not make any difference. Listen to the woman. You have suppressed the woman and oppressed the woman so much, it is time that she should be listened to and things should be corrected. At least in your personal life do as much as you can to allow the woman as much freedom as possible -- the same freedom that you allow yourself. Help her to stand up so that she can blossom again.

We will have a more beautiful world if all women -- and women are half of the world -- are allowed to grow their talents, their genius. It is not a question at all... nobody is higher, nobody is lower. Women are women, men are men; they have differences, but differences don't make anybody higher or lower. Their differences create their attraction.

Just think of a world where there are only men. It will be so ugly. Life is rich because there are differences, different attitudes, different opinions. Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior. People are simply different.

Accept this, and help your woman to be free from ten thousand years of repression. Be a friend to her. Much harm has been done; she has been wounded so much that if you can do some healing with your love, you will be contributing to the whole world, to the whole world consciousness.

Don't feel bad if your woman says "this is male ego." It is there in a subtle form, unrecognizeable because it has been there for so long; you have forgotten that this is ego. Take her help so that you can recognize it and destroy it.

women and men cannot belong to the same system. The women can accumulate more fat, men cannot; that is a biological difference. The woman needs it because when she becomes pregnant and a child is growing in her womb she cannot eat well. She starts vomiting, eating becomes difficult, she feels sick and nauseous. For those emergencies the body accumulates layers of fat. Man has no need to be fat because he is not going to become pregnant; hence man's physiology is different.

Gurdjieff has said that a woman cannot attain except through a man -- and he is right. He is right because female energy differs from male energy.

It is just as if someone says that only a woman can give birth to a child. A man cannot give birth to a child -- he can give birth to a child only through a woman. The physical structure of the woman carries a womb; the physical structure of a man is without a womb -- he can have a child only through a woman. And the same in reverse order happens in spiritual birth: a woman can get enlightened only through a man. Their spiritual energy differs also, just like their physical part. Why? Why is this so?

And remember, this is not a question of equality or of inequality -- this is a question of difference. Women are not lower than men because they cannot attain directly; man is not lower than woman because he cannot give birth to a child directly. They are different. There is no question of equality or inequality, there is no question of evaluation. They are simply different, and this is a fact.

Why is it difficult for woman to attain enlightenment directly? And why for man is it possible to attain enlightenment directly?

There are two ways, only two, basically only two, which lead to enlightenment. One is meditation and the other is love. You may call them Gyana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga -- the path of wisdom and the path of devotion. The basic ways are only two.

Love needs another; meditation can be done alone. Man can achieve through meditation -- that's why he can achieve directly. He can be alone. He is alone deep down. Loneliness comes naturally to man. For a woman, to be alone is difficult, very difficult, almost impossible. Her whole being is a deep urge to love, and for love, the other is needed. How can you love if the other is not there? You can meditate if the other is not there -- there is no problem.

Woman, the female energy, reaches the meditative state through love; and the male energy reaches love through meditation.

Three things which are not religion...

Three things which are not religion but which have become religion have to be understood. The first is: ritual. Ritual is not religion at all; in fact, ritual is a way of covering up your neurotic tendencies. It is neurosis. Giving a beautiful facade to it, giving it a religious garb, does not help. Neurosis remains neurosis; you only change the name. The neurotic mind moves in habits, routines – it is repetitive. It moves in a groove, it goes on doing the same thing again and again and again. Once it becomes religion then many neurotic people are thought to be religious.

That’s why in the East there are not so many mad people as there are in the West, and the reason is that in the West the ritual has disappeared, almost disappeared. So every neurotic has come out naked into the light. In the East the ritual is a protection. If somebody is doing a ritual you respect him: you think something significant is being done. All that he is doing is hiding his anxiety, keeping himself occupied with something. He is afraid of himself. He cannot face himself; he is afraid of coming across himself, he keeps himself occupied. Maybe he goes on turning the beads of his mala or he repeats ’Ram, Ram, Ram...’, or he does something repetitively every day. His ritual is not different from other, secular, rituals.

Smoking is a ritual – it keeps you occupied. So whenever a person feels nervous he starts smoking to avoid that nervousness. It becomes a beautiful occupation, but it is a religious ritual: taking the smoke in and then throwing it out, and taking it in and throwing it out. k is a mantra, it is a repetitive process. It makes one feel good – nervousness becomes occupied. When people are happy they forget smoking; when they are unhappy they immediately remember it.

So ritual is not religion – that has to be understood – and that is almost ninety percent of religion. And once you drop all rituals you are standing naked in the sunlight, and that is the beginning of the inner journey one has to face. If one is neurotic, then that neurosis has to be faced, one has to become aware of it, because only through becoming aware of it is it going to dissolve. Hiding it, keeping it somewhere in the basement, giving it a beautiful covering, is not going to help; it is not going to change it at all. So the really religious person is non-ritualistic.

The second thing: religion is not belief. To believe is to avoid inquiry. The person who believes, believes out of fear, not out of understanding. There is no need to believe if there is understanding. Understanding needs neither belief nor disbelief. It is the fearful mind: out of fear one wants to cling to some belief system. It gives solace, consolation. It makes one feel as if one knows, and one knows not. It gives you a false notion of knowledge, and deep down remains ignorance and darkness. It hides people’s stupidity. Only stupid people believe... and disbelieve, which are the same. It doesn’t matter whether you believe or disbelieve – it is stupid.

The intelligent person inquires. He will not believe in god, he will not disbelieve in god. He will not take any standpoint. He will say ’I will inquire, I will remain open. I will not move from an already accepted conclusion because then there is no movement, no possibility of movement. If I have already accepted something as true, the inquiry is finished. It is an abortion; now there is no point in inquiry. One has already taken a conclusion, a priori.’ The intelligent person inquires, he goes into inquiry. inquiry is arduous but it is beautiful too, because it is only through inquiry and the suffering and the pain and the ecstasies that come out of it that one grows.

And thirdly: religion is not morality. That is another deception. People become do-gooders. That is not true virtue – it is a camouflage. It brings respectability, it gives you a good ego feeling. It makes you feel that you are somebody important, significant – not only in the eyes of the world but even in the eyes of god – that you can stand upright, even encountering god; you can show all the good deeds that you have done. It is egoistic, and religion cannot be egoistic.

Not that a religious person is immoral, but he is not moral; he is amoral. He has no fixed character. His character is liquid, alive, moving moment to moment. He responds to situations not according to a fixed attitude, idea, ideology; he simply responds out of his consciousness. His consciousness is his only character, there is no other character.

If these three things are understood then one can understand what religion is. Religion is sanity – going beyond the neurotic mind. Religion is inquiry – going beyond belief systems and disbelief systems. And religion is consciousness – going beyond the confinements of character.