The fifth question:

Question 5

I CANNOT SEEM TO FEEL FOR YOU AS A LOVER. IT JUST FEELS THAT YOU ARE RIGHT FOR ME. IS THIS BECAUSE OF MY HANG-UPS ABOUT MEN? DOES ONE HAVE TO BE IN LOVE WITH YOU AS A PREREQUISITE TO THE NEXT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP?

You don't understand me at all. You are not required to be a lover to me. I am not required to be a lover to you. But I understand your difficulty. You cannot understand that love is possible without being a lover. You can love me without being a lover to me; that is the highest kind of love, the purest love.

And this has to be understood, because between a Master and a disciple the relationship is not of this world. He is neither your father nor your brother, neither your husband nor your wife, neither your child. No, all the relationships that exist in the world are irrelevant between a Master and disciple. In a sense he is all, and in a sense none. In a certain sense he may be fatherly. In a certain sense he may be just like a child to you. When I say in a certain sense he will be fatherly to you, he may not be older than you; he may be very young, but in a certain sense he will be fatherly to you because he gives and you receive. And because he lives on a hilltop and you live in the valley, he may not be older than you in time, but he is infinitely older than you in eternity. And in a certain sense he will be just like a child to you, because he has become again a child. The relationship is very complicated, very complex. He cannot be a husband to you because he cannot possess you and he cannot be possessed by you. But in a certain sense, he is like a husband. Without his possessing you, you are possessed. Without any effort on his part, your attitude towards him is bound to be like that of a beloved. Because the relationship between a Master and a disciple is bound to be in such a way that the disciple has to be feminine, because he is the receiver and he has to be open. In fact, he has to become pregnant with the Master. Only then rebirth will be possible.

In a certain other sense a Master is like a wife because he is so soft. All corners have disappeared in his life. He has become more and more round, and round, and round. Even in his body, in his being, he is more feminine. That's why Buddha looks more feminine.

Nietzsche criticized Buddha only because of this: that he is a feminine man. Nietzsche said that he created the whole feminity of India, because for Nietzsche, the male is the powerful element -- feminine means weak. And in a certain sense he is right, because Buddha is feminine, but he is not weak. Or, weakness has its own power which no power can ever have. A child is weak, but a child has power no old man can have.

A stone is very strong, and just by the side of the rock is a flower -- very weak. But a flower has a power which no rock can ever have. The flower is certainly weak: in the morning it comes, by the evening it is gone. It is so transitory, it is so temporal, so momentary. But a flower has a power of a different dimension, of a different quality because it is so alive. In fact, it dies so soon because it lives so intensely. The very intensity of life in a flower exhausts it by the evening. The rock goes on living because it lives so lukewarm. The life is not intense: very sluggish, lazy, sleepy. The rock sleeps, the flower lives.

A Master is weak in a certain sense because his weakness is his own power. He is feminine in a certain sense because all aggression is gone, all violence disappeared. He is more like a mother than like a father. The thing is very complex and nobody is required to be a lover, but everybody is required to be in love.

I CANNOT SEEM TO FEEL FOR YOU AS A LOVER. IT JUST FEELS THAT YOU ARE RIGHT FOR ME.

How cold! Just right? Just right is not enough. Unless I am more than right for you, nothing will happen. Just right is too calculated; just right is less than enough. Just right means only on the periphery I meet with you, not on the center. And when you say, "You are just right for me,N this relationship cannot be of the heart. It is just of the mind -- calculating, clever, cunning, safeguarding, side by side, not moving in the dangerous heart relationship, remaining on the periphery always ready to escape. That's what it means: "just right" -- and just right has no energy in it, it is cold.

So if you cannot grow out of this, then it is better to leave me, because nothing will happen. You don't have enough energy. And if you are not moving fast towards me I cannot move towards you. That is not possible; you have to move. The relationship between a disciple and Master is not a calculated relationship. When the Master becomes the only Master for you -- not that he is the only Master, there are many, but that is not the point -- when for a disciple the Master becomes the ONLY Master, when the whole history, past and future, becomes pale before this man, everything fades away and only this man remains in your heart, only then something is possible.

Because of this, many problems arise. Somebody falls in love with Buddha. Then he says Buddha is the only enlightened man. Then he says, "Okay -- Jesus is there, Krishna is there, but not like Buddha." Then Jesus and Krishna are thrown on the periphery. In the center, in the very heart of the shrine, or, in the shrine of the heart, only Buddha exists. For the disciple it is perfectly true. Then somebody falls in love with Jesus, then Jesus comes to the center; Buddha, Mahavira and Mohammed all are on the periphery. When a Master becomes like a sun and you move around him like an earth, like a planet, he becomes your center, the very center of your life. Only then something is possible, never before it.

Just right is not right at all. Just right means almost wrong. Try to get out of the trap of just right. Overflowing, if you come to me, only then will you find me. Running, if you come to me, running as fast as you can, only then will you find me. Headlong, if you jump into me, only then will you find me. It is too businesslike when you say, "Just right". Either grow out of it or move away from me. Maybe somewhere else with somebody else, you can fall in love. Because it is not a question of whether you fall in love with Master A or Master B or Master C -- it is not a question. The question is you fall in love. Wheresoever it happens, move there. If the relationship is just right, then I am not your Master, then you are not my disciple.

IS THIS BECAUSE OF MY HANG-UPS ABOUT MEN?

No, it is not because of your hang-ups about men. It is because of you, your ego, and your hang-ups about men are because of your ego also; they too are because of that. If a woman cannot surrender to any man, it is not because men are lacking or men are not there. It is only because the woman has not grown, because only a grown-up can surrender because only a grown-up can be courageous enough to surrender. The woman has remained childish, retarded. Then with every man there will be problem.

And if you cannot surrender in love, it will be very difficult for you to surrender at all. With a Master also there is a surrender, and a greater surrender than any man can ever demand or any woman can ever demand. Because a man demands the surrender of your body, if he is only related to you because of sex. If he loves you also, then he demands the surrender of your mind. But a Master demands you -- mind, body, soul -- your total being. Less than that will not do.

There are three possibilities. Whenever you come to a Master, the first possibility is to be related with him intellectually, through the head. That is not much. You may like his ideas but that doesn't mean that you like him. Liking the ideas, his attitudes, is not liking him. You can take the ideas separate. There is no need to fall in any relationship with the Master. This is what is happening to the questioner: the relationship is intellectual; that's why it is "just right".

There is another possibility: you fall in love with the heart. Then there is no question what he says; the question is he himself. If you are intellectually related to me, sooner or later you will have to go away. Because I will go on contradicting myself -- one idea suits you, another may not suit. This idea you like, that idea you don't like -- and I will go on contradicting. And I contradict for a particular reason: because I want only those people around me who are in love, not those who are intellectually convinced by me. To throw them away I have to remain continuously paradoxical.

This is a screening, a very subtle screening. I never say to you that "Go away." You simply go on your own. And you feel good because this man was contradictory so you have left. Only those who are related to me with their heart will not bother about the contradictions. They will not bother what I say; they look directly to me. They know me, so I cannot deceive them. They know me directly, not through what I say -- saying is not very important.

Look at the distinction: a person who is convinced by my ideas is related to me through the ideas; a person who is in love with me may be related to my ideas, but through me, and that makes a great difference.

Then there is a third type of relationship which is possible only after the second type of relationship has happened. When you are really in love, love becomes so natural, it disappears. When I say "disappears" I don't mean that it disappears, I only mean that you are no more aware that it is there. Are you aware of your breathing? When something goes wrong, yes -- when you are running fast and breathing is hard and you are out of breath, yes. But when you are resting in your chair and everything is good, are you aware of the breathing? No, there is no need. When there is a headache only then you become aware of head, something goes wrong. When the head is perfectly healthy, you are headless. This is the definition of health: when the body is perfectly healthy, you don't know it... as if it is not there; you become bodiless. And this is the definition of perfect love also. Love is the ultimate, the highest health, because love makes one whole. When you love a Master, by and by, you completely forget about love. It has become so natural, like breathing.

Then a third type of relationship comes into being which is neither of the head nor of the heart, but of the being itself. Heart and head are two layers; hidden behind them is the center of your being. You may call it the atma, the self, the soul or whatsoever you like. Because there, no distinction of words is anymore meaningful. You can call it no-self, anatma -- that will also do. Head is the beginning; don't get stuck there. Heart is the passage -- pass through it, but don't make a house there also. Being to being -- there are no boundaries then. Then in fact, the disciple and the Master are not two. They exist as two, but one consciousness flows from one shore to another.