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ZEN: THE PATH OF PARADOX
VOL. 1
Chapter 2: Ignorance is Ultimate
Question 3
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Paradox, Vol. 1
The third question:
Question 3
ONE PHILOSOPHER SAID: 'KNOWLEDGE IS A VIRTUE IN THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE BUT A BORE IN THE FIRST.' SHOULDN'T SADHANA BE RESERVED FOR THOSE OVER FORTY?
Knowledge is always a bore. It is not that knowledge is a bore while you are young, knowledge is always a bore, knowledge is rubbish. Knowledge is not the real thing. So how can it be otherwise? It has to be a bore. It is not the real thing. It is as if somebody is hungry and you go on talking about recipes and food and this and that -- the person still remains hungry.
People need knowing not knowledge; people need understanding not knowledge; people need wisdom not knowledge. Knowledge is a bore. It does not matter how old you are.
And the second thing: religion has nothing to do with age. Sometimes it can happen when you are young, sometimes it may not happen when you are young. It depends on a thousand and one things. Sometimes a man is so alert that while he is young he becomes aware of the falsity of the world, and sometimes it happens that a man has become old and has not yet become alert of the falsity of the world. People are not alike. They are very different. So there can be no fixed and fast rule.
But as a general statement it can be said that people start becoming religious near about forty-two Don't take it as a fixed law, it is not. The higher the entity in existence, the less and less applicable are fixed laws. The lower the entity, the more applicable are fixed laws. You call say that water evaporates at a hundred degrees. This is fixed. Whether it is Tibet or India or Iran does not matter, water will evaporate at a hundred degrees wherever you are -- because the water is not yet individually conscious, it has no freedom.
Trees have a little more freedom so they become a little more unpredictable. Animals have a little more freedom again, they become even more unpredictable. Man is the most free agent in this existence, he is very unpredictable. But as a general statement it can be granted that near about forty-two, people start thinking of religion. There is a certain natural tendency at that time.
According to yoga and tantra, life can be divided into seven year fragments. A child enters the first change when he is seven. Then his childhood is over. A great change. When he is fourteen sex enters into life. Another great change. Now he will have a different outlook, different desires. At twenty-one ambition enters into life. He becomes more political, rebellious, protesting, fighting -- ready to fight with anybody. He becomes a revolutionary. At twenty-eight he starts settling, he becomes more interested in comfort, a bank balance, a good salary, a good home, a wife, a child, a TV, a car -- things like that. He starts becoming more square.
So hippies are right. Don't trust the man who has gone beyond thirty because after thirty everybody becomes orthodox. It is a natural trend. After twenty-eight a man becomes a house-holder. So you don't see old hippies. No, near about twenty-eight hippies disappear into the wide world against which they were fighting. By the time they are twenty-eight they start becoming more traditional, conventional, conforming. The days of revolution are gone. Now they have to settle, they have to make a nest on some tree, they start thinking of marriage, of children. And naturally, when marriage and children happen, you cannot be a revolutionary any more.
By the age of thirty-five a man becomes almost established -- whatsoever has happened he becomes established. If he has succeeded he becomes established in his success; if he has failed he becomes established in his failure. Then he knows that now nothing can be done; whatsoever has happened has happened. He becomes very, very fatalistic, he starts believing in KISMET; he says that now nothing can be done, whatsoever was written on his hand has happened. Now he is not in any way ready to fight; he relaxes.
By the age of forty-two he starts becoming a little bit aware.... What is he doing here, earning money, power, prestige? Death is coming. Death knocks at the door for the first time near about forty-two -- that is the age when you have heart attacks and blood pressure and cancer and things like that. That is the first knock. Beware of the age forty-two, it is the most dangerous age.
Then you start feeling a little shaky, then you start feeling a little trembling inside, you are no longer as certain as you used to be. You lose confidence. You have lived, you have known money, you have known wife, children, you have known sex and love, you have seen this and that, you have travelled around the world -- but nothing has satisfied you, it feels like something is missing. This is the moment when religion enters into your life. Remember, death and religion enter together. The knock of death is the knock of religion too.
Now it depends on you. If you are very anti-religious you will miss the opportunity of being a sannyasin when death knocks. If you are very anti-religious, fixed in your attitudes, in your prejudices, then you will have only heart attacks, blood pressures, TB, cancer. Then you cannot have God. This is your choice.
But if you are an open person without any prejudices, this is the moment you start looking for God. When death is there you start searching for something eternal. Death is coming, now there is no more time left. You have to look into your life, you have to settle accounts with life. And this life which you have lived up to now suddenly becomes futile, meaningless.
But it happens to people at different times. To somebody it may happen at thirty-five, to somebody it may happen at fifty. I am talking only of an average: forty-two is the average. If you are very intelligent it can happen early, if you are very stupid it will not happen even at forty-two -- it depends. It is a question of intelligence. Stupid people go on remaining unreligious to the very end.
Intelligent people start turning to religion from the very beginning. Yes, it is a question of intelligence, not a question of age. But age plays a role because a hormonal change starts happening. By the age of forty-two sex is no longer such an obsession. You are finished with it.
You are finished with it unless you are a saint, unless you have fallen a victim to some mahatma -- then you are in trouble. Then you can go on being obsessed with sex to the very end. The more sexual freedom you have, the faster sex becomes meaningless. The more experience of sex you have, the sooner it loses all significance. It becomes very ordinary. Remember this: avoid mahatmas, ascetic people, because they will never allow you to go beyond sex.
This will look very strange to you, but listen to me. These are the people who have kept sex alive on the earth. If people like me are allowed to have their say, sex will soon disappear from the earth. It will remain very biological, it will lose all romance, it will lose all the nonsense that you go on putting into it. That nonsense arises out of repression. If you repress sex then even at the age of forty-two you will not feel that sex is meaningless. In fact, the more you repress it, the more sex will attack you; it will come back with a vengeance again and again and again. It will haunt you in your dreams, it will haunt you in your fantasies.
That's why there is always the same story in the old scriptures: a great seer is sitting under a tree and APSARAS come from heaven -- beautiful women with golden bodies -- and dance naked around him. Now why? This poor old chap, he has not done anything wrong to anybody. He is sitting under his tree, doing his JAPA, turning his beads, he has left the world -- now why is heaven so interested in this poor man? Why disturb him?
But this happens in every age. This happens to Hindus, this happens to Christians, this happens to Jainas, this happens to Buddhists -- it seems to be a very, very universal phenomenon. Why does it happen? These people go on interpreting it as if it is the Devil who is trying to distract them. Nobody is trying to distract them, it is their repressed sexuality that is coming back Wit}l a vengeance. When you repress sexuality it drives you crazy. These so-called seers sitting under their trees and in their caves in the Himalayas are simply getting neurotic. They need psychiatric treatment. They don't need anything else, they need the psychiatrist's couch. They should go to some Freud, to some Jung, to some Adler. They should go into their dreams, they should be analysed.
If you don't repress sex, sex loses meaning in its own time. Just as it becomes very, very meaningful at the age of fourteen, so it becomes very, very meaningless at the age of forty-two.
Remember two things: when death knocks at the door, when death starts entering, sex starts going out. They are related. Sex is birth. Death and sex are the enemies, they cannot exist together. When death starts coming, sex starts moving out. They cannot live in the same house together. But one thing is very, very essential to understand -- sex goes only if you have lived it utterly, if you have known it, if you have experienced it, if you have not repressed it in any way, if you have been very, very expressive. Then it dies a simple death on its own accord. If you repress it then it clings. Any unlived desire clings, any unlived thing goes on hanging around you.
At the age of forty-nine again a great change happens. A man is not only interested in something greater than sex, he becomes involved, committed. At the age of forty-two he starts thinking, brooding, contemplating; by the age of forty-nine he starts being committed. He can become a sannyasin, he can become a BHIKKHU, he can become a monk, or, even if he does not take any outward form, he may start changing in his inside world. He will become a meditator, he will start praying. And this will be a commitment. Now this will not be a feeling, just a feeling, he will devote his whole life to it. Devotion arises at the age of forty-nine, commitment arises at the age of forty-nine.
And if things go right, and you are not distracted by foolish people all around, by the age of fifty-six your meditation will start flowering -- the first satoris, the first glimpses of God will happen.
And at the age of sixty-three you will be established in samadhi, you would have become enlightened -- if things go rightly. Then for at least seven years -- if you were going to be seventy, I have divided according to seventy -- for seven years you can live a divine life, imparting divinity to others. You can become a Master.
This is the right process. Up to forty-two somehow it goes okay, because up to forty-two everything is in the world. But beyond forty-two things start going wrong because beyond forty-two you start moving beyond the world. And all the commitments and involvements and investments that you have made up to forty-two become a barrier.
For example, you loved a woman, you got married, and now suddenly you start becoming a meditator. The woman will be against it because she feels afraid -- and rightly so. She feels afraid that if you become a meditator you will lose interest in her. And she is right. Now she will disturb you, she will be against you, she will not allow you to become a sannyasin. She will say, 'No, think of me, think of my children. What has happened to you? Have you gone mad? Then why did you get married to me in the first place? And why have you given birth to these children if you were going to become a sannyasin?'
That's why I say there is no need to leave the children and no need to leave the wife. You can be with them and yet you can be a sannyasin, because sannyas is an inward journey.
The wife will create trouble, the husband will create trouble, -- because a new interest is coming into your life which has never been there before. Naturally, this new interest will change your whole pattern; you will not be the same man again. If your wife comes to me and becomes interested, you will be disturbed. If you come, your wife will become disturbed, because a new interest is arising. And who knows where it will lead you? Fear, jealousy, defense, struggle... egos feel hurt. You have been earning money, you have made a great kingdom, you have made a big empire -- now suddenly at forty-two you start meditating. Now your whole empire will be against you. It is such a sudden change.
All changes are sudden. Up to forty-two the changes were within the world so there was no problem. But beyond forty-two the changes are higher than the world, they start moving towards God, closer to God. You are going back-home. It is a return journey. This world is finished.
You ask: ONE PHILOSOPHER SAID: 'KNOWLEDGE IS A VIRTUE IN THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE BUT A BORE IN THE FIRST. Knowledge is always a bore but wisdom, wisdom is a virtue. And wisdom is a virtue all through your life, it is never a bore. I have never seen a man bored with wisdom.
If you are around a wise man you will never be bored. In fact, you will be surprised how much you are not bored. A wise man is very fresh and he goes on pouring his freshness into you. He is very young -- he may be old but still he is young because his consciousness is so young. He goes on flowering in new ways. He does not carry the dust of the past, he is always fresh, his mirror is clean. You can always look into him and see your face growing; you can always look into him and find nourishment through him. Wisdom is never boring, wisdom is nourishment.
But knowledge is boredom. Knowledge immediately creates boredom -- because it is false, it is dull, it is borrowed, it is dead.
Have you seen a small child playing around you? You are not bored with him. He is so alive, so buoyant -- dancing, singing, running -- that you start feeling young with him. And have you sat with an old man? He may not do anything, he may just be sitting there, reading his newspaper but you start feeling bored. He has not said a single word, just his very being is heavy.
Next: Chapter 2: Ignorance is Ultimate, Question 4
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Paradox, Vol. 1
| ENERGY
|
GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
|
THE ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
|
THE KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS APPRENTICE LEVEL3
|
MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS TANTRA APPRENTICE LEVEL4
|
|
ENERGY ENHANCEMENT TESTIMONIALS EE LEVEL1 EE LEVEL2 EE LEVEL3 EE LEVEL4 EE FAQS |
