UPTO THE AGE OF SEVEN, CHILDREN NEED TO BE SAVED FROM THE INFLUENCE OF PARENTS, PRIESTS AND TEACHERS



THE CHILD NEEDS YOUR LOVE, NOURISHMENT, SUPPORT, BUT NOT YOUR HELP.

"Every way to help a child is wrong.
The very idea of helping is not right.
The child needs your love, not your help.
The child needs nourishment, support, but not your help.
The natural potential of the child is unknown, so there is no way to help him rightly to attain to his natural potential. You cannot help when the goal is unknown; all that you can do is not interfere. And in fact, in the name of help everybody is interfering with everybody else; and because the name is beautiful, nobody objects."

Of course the child is so small, so dependent on you, he cannot object. And the people around are just like you: they have also been helped by their parents, the way you have been helped. Neither they have attained their natural potential, nor have you."

"The whole world is missing out in spite of all the help from the parents, from the family, from the relatives, from the neighbors, from the teachers, from the priests. In fact everybody is so burdened with help that under its weight ... what to say of attaining natural potential – one cannot even attain unnatural potential! One cannot move; the weight on everybody's shoulders is Himalayan."

"And it is one of the most difficult things, not to interfere. It is not the nature of the mind. Mind is basically continuously, persistently, tempted to interfere. It lives on interference. The more you can interfere, the more powerful you are."

"How do you measure power? It is not something material, you cannot weigh it – but it is measured, weighed. The way to measure it is by how much you can interfere in how many people's lives. Adolf Hitler is powerful because he can interfere in millions of people's lives. You are not Adolf Hitler, but still you can interfere in a few people's lives ... a little, miniature Adolf Hitler.

"All the people around you have been helped, greatly helped, to be what they are. You have been helped; now you want to help your children too."

"All that you can do is be loving, be nourishing, be warm, be accepting. The child brings an unknown potential, and there is no way to figure out what he is going to be. So no procedure can be suggested: "This way you should help the child." And each child is unique so there cannot be a general discipline for every child."

"People like this Miss Judith Martin are suggesting measures for every child, as if children are produced on an assembly line in a factory. No two children are the same. How can you suggest, how can you have even the nerve to suggest a generalized program, that this should be done?"

"This kind of person has existed down the ages around the world everywhere. They have prescriptions, recipes, disciplines for everybody, not only for their contemporaries but for all future generations, as to what is right. They are so idiotic – although they are known as great sages who have given you religions, disciplines, moralities, ethics, codes of conduct: great law-givers. But I say again to you, these people are idiots. Only an idiot can think in a generalized way when human beings are concerned."

"You ask me how to help the child in the right way.
The right way is not to help the child at all. If you have real courage then please don't help the child.
Love him, nourish him.
Let him do what he wants to do.
Let him go where he wants to go.
Your mind will be tempted again and again to interfere, and with good excuses. The mind is very clever in rationalizing: "If you don't interfere there may be danger; the child may fall into the well if you don't stop him." But I say to you, it is better to let him fall into the well than to help him and destroy him. It is a very rare possibility that the child falls into the well – and then too, it does not mean death; he can be taken out of the well. And if you are really so concerned, the well can be covered; but don't help the child, and don't interfere with the child. The well can be removed, but don't interfere with the child. Your real concern should be to remove all dangers but don't interfere with the child; let him go on his way.


IN SEVEN YEARS CIRCLES OF GROWTH OF LIFE, FIRST SEVEN YEARS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT BECAUSE FOUNDATION OF LIFE IS BEING LAID.

"You will have to understand some significant growth patterns. Life has seven-year circles, it moves in seven-year circles just as the earth makes one rotation on its axis in twenty-four hours. Now nobody knows why not twenty-five, why not twenty-three. There is no way to answer it; it is simply a fact."

"So don't ask me why life moves in seven-year circles. I don't know. This much I know, that it moves in seven-year circles. And if you understand those seven-year circles, you will understand a great deal about human growth."

"The first seven years are the most important because the foundation of life is being laid. That's why all the religions are very much concerned about grabbing children as quickly as possible. The Jews will circumcise the child. What nonsense! But they are stamping the child as a Jew; that is a primitive way of stamping. You still do it on the cattle around here; I have seen stamps. Every owner stamps the cattle, otherwise they can get mixed up. It is a cruel thing. Red-hot steel has to be used to stamp the cattle's leather, skin; it burns the skin. But then it becomes your possession; it cannot be lost, it cannot be stolen."

"What is circumcision? It is stamping cattle. But these cattle are Jews.
Hindus have their own ways. All religions have their own ways. But it should be known whose cattle you are, who your shepherd is – Jesus? Moses? Mohammed? You are not your own master."

"Those first seven years are the years when you are conditioned, stuffed with all kinds of ideas which will go on haunting you your whole life, which will go on distracting you from your potentiality, which will corrupt you, which will never allow you to see clearly. They will always come like clouds before your eyes, they will make everything confused."

"Things are clear, very clear – existence is absolutely clear – but your eyes have layers upon layers of dust."

"And all that dust has been arranged in the first seven years of your life when you were so innocent, so trusting, that whatsoever was told to you you accepted as truth. And whatsoever has gone into your foundation, later on it will be very difficult for you to find: it has become almost part of your blood, bones, your very marrow. You will ask a thousand other questions but you will never ask about the basic foundations of your belief."

"The first expression of love towards the child is to leave his first seven years absolutely innocent, unconditioned, to leave him for seven years completely wild, a pagan. He should not be converted to Hinduism, to Mohammedanism, to Christianity. Anybody who is trying to convert the child is not compassionate, he is cruel: he is contaminating the very soul of a new, fresh arrival. Before the child has even asked questions he has been answered with ready-made philosophies, dogmas, ideologies. This is a very strange situation. The child has not asked about God, and you go on teaching him about God. Why so much impatience? Wait!"

"If the child someday shows interest in God and starts asking about God, then try to tell him not only your idea of God – because nobody has any monopoly: put before him all the ideas of God that have been presented to different people by different ages, by different religions, cultures, civilizations."

"Put before him all the ideas about God, and tell him, "You can choose between these, whichever appeals to you. Or you can invent your own, if nothing suits. If everything seems to be with a flaw, and you think you can have a better idea, then invent your own. Or if you find that there is no way to invent an idea without loopholes, then drop the whole thing; there is no need. A man can live without God; there is no intrinsic necessity."

""Millions of people have lived without God. God is nothing that is inevitably needed by you. Yes, I have my idea; that too is in the combination of all these ideals in this collection. You can choose that, but I am not saying that my idea is the right idea. It appeals to me; it may not appeal to you."

"There is no inner necessity that the son should agree with the father. In fact it seems far better that he should not agree. That's how evolution happens. If every child agrees with the father then there will be no evolution, because the father will agree with his own father, so everybody will be where God left Adam and Eve – naked, outside the gate of the garden of Eden. Everybody will be there. Because sons have disagreed with their fathers, forefathers, with their whole tradition, man has evolved."

"This whole evolution is a tremendous disagreement with the past.
The more intelligent you are, the more you are going to disagree.
But parents appreciate the child who agrees; they condemn the child who disagrees."


KEEP CHILDREN FREE FROM ALL KINDS OF SUPERSTITIONS

"In India, at the end of the monsoon there is a festival of lights, diwali, when the whole country becomes very festive and every house has thousands of small earthen lamps decorating all the walls, balconies. The whole town becomes a fairyland, the whole country turns into a fairyland, with firecrackers and great rejoicing. That day they worship money."

"The goddess of money is Laxmi. Laxmi is the wife of the Hindu god, Narayana, and of course a god's wife should be the goddess of wealth. In fact one of the Indian words for god, iswar, means "one who has all the wealth of the world." His wife is the goddess of wealth. And on the night of the festival of lights they worship money."

"Before paper currency came into being they used to make a pile of silver rupees and worship them. Now they put paper money and worship it. Before silver rupees there were golden rupees. The word rupee simply means gold; it comes from Sanskrit. It is an Indian word ... because in the beginning the coin was gold, pure gold, so the word rupia, which became in English, rupee, was meaningful."

"They used to worship gold, then came silver, then came paper currency. And they went on ... the question is of worshiping money. I never participated in their worship. I simply hated the whole idea and I told them, "This is one of the ugliest things you can do. Money is something to be used, not worshipped. On the one hand your religions teach that money is nothing but dust. On the one hand it is dust, on the other hand it becomes a goddess. And you cannot see your split mind?"

"On the one hand you praise a man as a sage if he renounces money; then he becomes synonymous with God because he renounced money and everything. And on the other hand you worship money. Can you in some way help me to understand? Is there not a clear-cut contradiction? "If money is God's wife then in the first place the person who renounces God's wife is a criminal. In the first place why did he possess God's wife? – that seems to be absolutely illegal. He should be caught and imprisoned. In the first place was he pretending to be God's wife's husband?"

My father would say, "You just keep quiet; at least let us finish our worship."

I would say, "No, first I want my answer."

"And I had a big stool in my house – they used to use it as a ladder for taking things up or down – so wherever they would be worshiping, in the main hall of the house, I would sit on that stool. And they would say, "At least please come down. You are sitting on that stool."

I said, "No, I want my answers. I see so much stupidity in it, because I have seen you touchingpeople's feet who have renounced money. Then you tell me that this man is great, a sage: he has kicked all that is thought to be valuable and that needs courage and guts. But what are you doing? If that man is right to renounce all this money, at least stop worshiping it. And you have to answer me; otherwise my disagreement continues."

My mother would say to me, "On such days you should be out of the house because you don't know – if the goddess Laxmi becomes angry we will all starve and be hungry and die poor."

I said, "I have been doing this year after year, sitting on my stool. I don't see that your goddess can do anything. If she can, I challenge her – let her, because at least that will give me some answer."

"And when they were all finished with their worship I would go and kick their rupees, and spit on their rupees, and I would say, "Now this is what I wanted to do; now let us see who is rewarded." They could not prevent me, although they tried hard."

I said, "You cannot prevent me. I will do what I want to do, unless you prove me wrong. And you call me in front of everybody saying that I am in disagreement about everything. I have to be in disagreement about everything, for the simple reason that you go on doing things that any intelligent person would see the contradiction in."

"For example, in India, if somebody has smallpox it is not thought to be a physical disease. Smallpox is called in India, mata; mata means mother goddess. And in every town there is a temple for themother goddess, or many temples ... the mother goddess is angry, that's why poor little children are suffering from smallpox."

"People like Mahatma Gandhi were against vaccination because it was unnatural. Smallpox is natural. It destroys so many beautiful children's faces, their eyes, and it kills many. And the prophet of non-violence was against vaccination because he was against anything scientific – and moreover it was thought the disease is not a physiological disease, it is a spiritual anger."

"One of my sisters died of smallpox, and I was very angry because I loved that sister more than any of my brothers or my sisters. I told them, "You have killed her. I have been telling you that she needs vaccination."

"I have suffered from smallpox, but at that time I could not say anything to you; I don't even remember it, it happened just in my first year. And every child suffers. When this girl was born I was insisting that she should be vaccinated. But you are all followers of Mahatma Gandhi: Vaccination is against nature. And to prevent ... the anger of the mother goddess will be dangerous. It will come in some other form."

"And when the girl became sick with smallpox they were doing both things: they were taking medicine from the doctor and they were continuously going to worship the mother goddess."

I said, "Then please do one thing at least; either take the medicine, or go and worship your mother. But you are being cunning; you are even deceiving the mother goddess. I am honest, I spit on your mother goddess every day" – because I used to go to the river and the temple was just on the way so there was no harm; coming and going I would spit.

And I said, "Whatsoever you do ... but it is strange – I am spitting, I should suffer. Why should she suffer? And I cannot understand that the mother goddess becomes angry and small children suffer – who have not committed any crime, who have just arrived, who have not had time enough to do anything, nor are capable of doing anything. Others should suffer, but they are not suffering.

"And mother goddess you call her! You should call her a witch, because what kind of mother is she who makes small children suffer? And then you are cunning. You are also not certain; otherwise don't take the medicine. Throw all the medicines; depend completely on your mother goddess. There too you are afraid. You are trying to ride on two horses. This is sheer stupidity. Either depend on the mother and let the girl die, or depend on the medicine, and forget about that mother."

They would say, "We can understand that there is a contradiction, but please don't bring it to our notice, because it hurts."

I said, "Do you think it hurts only you, and it does not hurt me seeing my parents being stupid, silly?

"It does not hurt me? It hurts me more. There is still time, you can change; but on the contrary, you are trying to change me, and you call it help. You think without your help I am going to be lost. Please let me be lost. At least I will have one satisfaction, that nobody else is responsible for my being lost; it is my own doing. I will be proud of it."

"Up to seven years, if a child can be left innocent, uncorrupted by the ideas of others, then to distract him from his potential growth becomes impossible. The child's first seven years are the most vulnerable. And they are in the hands of parents, teachers, priests ...."

"How to save children from parents, priests, teachers is a question of such enormous proportion that it seems almost impossible to find how to do it."
"It is not a question of helping the child.
It is a question of protecting the child."

"If you have a child, protect the child from yourself. Protect the child from others who can influence him: at least up to seven years, protect him."

"The child is just like a small plant, weak, soft: just a strong wind can destroy it, any animal can eat it up. You put a protective wiring around it, but that is not imprisoning, you are simply protecting. When the plant is bigger, the wires will be removed."

"Protect the child from every kind of influence so that he can remain himself – and it is only a question of seven years, because then the first circle will be complete. By seven years he will be wellgrounded, centered, strong enough."

"You don't know how strong a seven-year-old child can be because you have not seen uncorrupted children, you have seen only corrupted children. They carry the fears, the cowardliness, of their fathers, mothers, their families. They are not their own selves."

"If a child remains uncorrupted for seven years .... You will be surprised to meet such a child. He will be as sharp as a sword. His eyes will be clear, his insight will be clear. And you will see a tremendous strength in him which you cannot find even in a seventy-year-old adult, because the foundations are shaky. So in fact as the building goes on becoming higher and higher, the more and more shaky it becomes."

"So you will see, the older a person becomes, the more afraid. When he is young he may be an atheist; when he becomes old he starts believing in God. Why is that?"

"When he is below thirty he is a hippie. He has courage to go against the society, to behave in his own way: to have long hair, to have a beard, to roam around the world, to take all kinds of risks. But by the time he is forty, all that has disappeared. You will see him in some office in a gray suit, clean shaven, well groomed. You will not even be able to recognize that he is an ex-hippie."

"If you are a parent you will need this much courage – not to interfere. Open doors of unknown directions to the child so he can explore. He does not know what he has in him, nobody knows."

"He has to grope in the dark. Don't make him afraid of darkness, don't make him afraid of failure, don't make him afraid of the unknown. Give him support. When he is going on an unknown journey, send him with all your support, with all your love, with all your blessings."

"Don't let him be affected by your fears."

You may have fears, but keep them to yourself. Don't unload those fears on the child because that will be interfering."

From Darkness to Light # 3)


FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS WE HAVE BEEN TOLD, IF THE CHILD IS LEFT TO HIMSELF HE WILL BE A SAVAGE. THIS IS SEER NONSENSE.

"The original face of every child is the face of God. Of course my God is not a Christian, a Hindu, a Jew. My God is not even a person but only a presence."

"It is less like a flower and more like fragrance. You can feel it but you cannot catch hold of it. You can be overwhelmed by it but you cannot possess it."

"God is not to be understood as quantity, but as quality. You cannot measure it. You cannot make a statue of it, you cannot draw a picture of it. In that sense it is absolutely impersonal. And if you look at the faces of children when they arrive, fresh from the very source of life, you will see a certain presence which cannot be named – unnameable, indefinable."

"The child is alive. You cannot define its aliveness, but it is there, you can feel it. It is so much there that howsoever blind you are you cannot miss it. It is fresh. You can smell the freshness around a child. That fragrance slowly, slowly disappears. And if unfortunately the child becomes successful, a celebrity – a president, a prime minister, a pope – then the same child stinks."

"He had come with a tremendous fragrance, immeasurable, indefinable, unnameable. You look into the eyes of a child – you cannot find anything deeper. The eyes of a child are abysmal, there is no bottom to them. Unfortunately, the way society will destroy him, soon his eyes will be only superficial; because of layers and layers of conditioning, that depth, that immense depth will have disappeared long before. And that was his original face."

"The child has no thoughts. About what can he think? Thinking needs a past, thinking needs problems. He has no past, he has only future. He has no problems yet, he is without problems."

"There is no possibility of thinking for him. What can he think?
The child is conscious but without thoughts.
This is the original face of the child."

"Once this was your face too, and although you have forgotten it, it is still there within you, waiting someday to be rediscovered. I am saying REdiscovered because you have discovered it many times in your previous lives, and again and again you go on forgetting it."

"Perhaps even in this life there have been moments when you have come very close to knowing it, to feeling it, to being it. But the world is too much with us. Its pull is great – and there are a thousand and one directions the world is pulling you. It is pulling you in so many directions that you are falling apart. It is a miracle how people go on managing to keep themselves together. Otherwise their one hand will be going to the north, another hand to the south, their head must be going towards heaven; all their parts will be flying all over the place."

"You are asking me how, in our commune, we can save the original face of our children."

"You don't have to do anything directly."

"Anything done directly will be a disturbance.
You have to learn the art of non-doing.
That is a very difficult art."

"It is not something that you have to do to protect, to save, the original face of the child. Whatever you do will distort the original face. You have to learn non-doing; you have to learn to keep away, out of the way of the child. You have to be very courageous because it is risky to leave the child to himself."

"For thousands of years we have been told, if the child is left to himself he will be a savage. That is sheer nonsense. I am siting before you – do you think I am a savage? And I have lived without being interfered with by my parents. Yes, there was much trouble for them and there will be much trouble for you too, but it is worth it."

"The original face of the child is so valuable that any trouble is worth it. It is so priceless that whatsoever you have to pay for it, it is still cheap; you are getting it without paying anything. And the joy on the day you find your child with his original face intact, with the same beauty that he had brought into the world, the same innocence, the same clarity, the same joyfulness, cheerfulness, the same aliveness .... What more can you expect?"

"You cannot give anything to the child, you can only take. If you really want to give a gift to the child, this is the only gift possible: don't interfere. Take the risk and let the child go into the unknown, into the uncharted. It is difficult. Great fear grips the parents – who knows what will happen to the child? Out of this fear they start molding a certain pattern of life for the child. Out of fear they start directing him into a particular way, towards a particular goal, but they don't know that because of their fear they are killing the child. He will never be blissful. And he will never be grateful to you; he will always carry a grudge against you."

"Sigmund Freud has a great insight in this matter: he says, "Every culture respects the father. No culture on earth exists, or has ever existed, which has not propounded, propagated the idea that the father has to be respected." Sigmund Freud says, "This respect for the father arises because sometime back in prehistoric times the father must have been killed by the children just to save themselves from being crippled."

"It is a strange idea, but very significant. He is saying that the respect is being paid to the father out of guilt, and that guilt has been carried for thousands of years. Somewhere ... it is not a historical fact, but a meaningful myth, that young people must have killed their father and then repented – naturally, because he was their father; but he was driving them into ways where they were not happy. They killed him, but then they repented. Then they started worshipping the spirits of the ancestors, fathers, forefathers, out of fear, because the ghosts of those can take revenge. And then slowly, slowly, it became a convention to be respectful towards the elders. But why?"

"I would like you to be respectful to the children."

"The children deserve all the respect you can manage, because they are so fresh, so innocent, so close to godliness. It is time to pay respect to them, not to force them to pay respect to all kinds of corrupted people – cunning, crooked, full of shit – just because they are old."

"In my commune I would like to reverse the whole thing: respect towards the children because they are closer to the source, you are far away. They are still original, you are already a carbon copy. And do you understand what it can do if you are respectful to children? Then through love and respect you can save them from going in any wrong direction – not out of fear but out of your respect and love."

"My grandfather .... I could speak a lie to anybody – even if I met God I could speak a lie without any trouble – but I could not speak a lie to my grandfather because he respected me so much. When the whole family was against me I could at least depend on the old man. He would not bother about all the proofs that were against me. He would say, "I don't care what he has done. If he has done it, it must be right. I know him, he cannot do wrong."

"And when he was with me of course the whole family had to shrink back. I would tell him the whole thing, and he would say, "There is no need to be worried. Do whatsoever you feel is right, because who else can decide? In your situation, in your place, only you can decide. Do whatsoever you feel is right, and always remember that I am here to support you, because I not only love you, I respect you too."

"His respect towards me was the greatest treasure I could have received. When he was dying I was eighty miles away. He informed me that I should come immediately because there was not much time. I came quickly; within two hours I was there."

"It was as if he was just waiting for me. He opened his eyes and he said, "I was just trying to continue to breathe so that you could reach me. Just one thing I want to say: I will not be here now to support you, and you will need support. But remember, wherever I am, my love and my respect will remain with you. Don't be afraid of anybody, don't be afraid of the world."

Those were his last words:
"Don't be afraid of the world." Respect the children, make them fearless. But if you are yourself full of fear, how can you make them fearless?"

"Don't force respect on them towards you because you are their father, you are their daddy, their mom, this and that."

"Change this attitude and see what transformation respect can bring to your children. They will listen to you more carefully if you respect them. They will try to understand you and your mind more carefully if you respect them. They have to. And in no way are you imposing anything; so if by understanding they feel you are right and they go on that way, they will not lose their original face."

"The original face is not lost by going on a certain way. It is lost by children being forced, forced against their will."

"Love and respect can sweetly help them to be more understanding about the world, can help them to be more alert, aware, careful – because life is precious, and it is a gift from existence. We should not waste it."

"At the moment of death we should be able to say that we are leaving the world better, more beautiful, more graceful."

"But this is possible only if we leave this world with our original face, the same face with which we have come into it."

(From Darknes to Light # 6)


FROM SEVEN TO FOURTEEN, IS A NEW ADDITION TO LIFE:THE CHILD'S FIRST STIRRING OF SEXUAL ENERGIES.

"After seven years, the next circle of seven years, from seven to fourteen, is a new addition to life: the child's first stirring of sexual energies. But they are only a kind of rehearsal."

"To be a parent is a difficult job, so unless you are ready to take that difficult job, don't become a parent. People simply go on becoming fathers and mothers not knowing what they are doing. You are bringing a life into existence; all the care in the world will be needed."

"Now when the child starts playing his sexual rehearsals, that is the time when parents interfere the most, because they have been interfered with. All that they know is what has been done to them, so they simply go on doing that to their children."

"Societies don't allow sexual rehearsal, at least have not allowed it up to this century – only within the last two, three decades, and that too only in very advanced countries. Now children are having co-education. But in a country like India, even now co-education starts only at the university level."

"The seven-year-old boy and the seven-year-old girl cannot be in the same boarding school. And this is the time for them – without any risk, without the girl getting pregnant, without any problems arising for their families – this is the time when they should be allowed all playfulness."

"Yes, it will have a sexual color to it, but it is rehearsal; it is not the real drama. And if you don't allow them even the rehearsal and then suddenly one day the curtain opens, and the real drama starts .... And those people don't know what is going on; even a prompter is not there to tell them what to do. You have messed up their life completely."

"Those seven years, the second circle in life, is significant as a rehearsal. They will meet, mix, play, become acquainted. And that will help humanity to drop almost ninety percent of perversions. If the children from seven to fourteen are allowed to be together; to swim together, to be naked before each other, ninety percent of perversions and ninety percent of pornography will simply disappear. Who will bother about it?"

"When a boy has known so many girls naked, what interest can a magazine like PLAYBOY have for him? When a girl has seen so many boys naked, I don't see that there is any possibility of curiosity about the other; it will simply disappear. They will grow together naturally, not as two different species of animals."

"Right now that's how they grow: two different species of animals. They don't belong to one mankind; they are kept separate. A thousand and one barriers are created between them so they cannot have any rehearsal of their sexual life which is going to come."

"Because this rehearsal is missing, that's why in people's actual sex life foreplay is missing; and foreplay is so important – far more important than actual sexual contact, because actual sexual contact lasts only for seconds. It is not nourishment. It simply leaves you in a limbo. You were hoping for so much, and nothing comes out of it."

"In Hindi we have a proverb: kheela pahad nikli chuhia. 'You dug out the whole mountain and you found one rat.' After all the effort – going to the movies and going to the disco and going to the restaurant, and talking all kinds on nonsense which neither you want nor the other wants to do, but both are talking – digging the mountain, and in the end, just a rat! Nothing is so frustrating as sex."

"Foreplay is really the most satisfying part in sex. Foreplay is more loving. Sex is simply a biological climax, but the climax of what? – you have missed everything that could have made it a climax. Do you think you suddenly reach to the climax, missing all the rungs of the ladder? You have to move up the ladder, rung by rung, only then can you reach the climax. Everybody wants the climax."

"But the way children are brought up is almost butchering their whole life. Those seven years of sexual rehearsal are absolutely essential. Girls and boys should be together in schools, in hostels, in swimming pools and beds. They should rehearse for the life which is going to come; they have to get ready for it. And there is no danger, there is no problem, if a child is given total freedom about his growing sexual energy and is not condemned, repressed – which is being done."

"A very strange world it is in which you are living. You are born of sex, you will live for sex, your children will be born out of sex – and sex is the most condemned thing, the greatest sin. And all the religions go on putting this crap in your mind. They have made you almost brown bags."

"The second circle of seven years is immensely important because it will prepare you for the coming seven years. If you have done the homework rightly, if you have played with your sexual energy just in the spirit of a sportsman – and at that time, that is the only spirit you will have – you will not become a pervert, a homosexual."

"All kinds of strange things will not come to your mind because you are moving naturally with the other sex, the other sex is moving with you; there is no hindrance, and you are not doing anything wrong against anybody. Your conscience is clear because nobody has put into your conscience ideas of what is right, what is wrong: you are simply being whatever you are."

"Then from fourteen to twenty-one your sex matures. And this is significant to understand: if the rehearsal has gone well, in the seven years when your sex matures a very strange thing happens that you may not have ever thought about, because you have not been given the chance. I said to you that the second seven years, from seven to fourteen, give you a glimpse of foreplay. The third seven years give you a glimpse of afterplay. You are still together with girls or boys, but now a new phase starts in your being: you start falling in love."


THE MOST PLEASANT PERIOD OF LIFE COMES FROM TWENTY-EIGHT TO THIRTY-FIVE – THE MOST JOYOUS, THE MOST PEACEFUL AND HARMONIOUS BECAUSE TWO PERSONS START MELTING AND MERGING INTO EACH OTHER.

"From twenty-one to twenty-eight is the time when they can settle. They can choose a partner. And they are capable of choosing now; through all the experience of the past two circles they can choose the right partner. There is nobody else who can do it for you. It is something that is more like a hunch – not arithmetic, not astrology, not palmistry, not I-Ching, nothing is going to do."

"It is a hunch: coming in contact with many, many people suddenly something clicks which had never clicked with anybody else. And it clicks with so much certainty and so absolutely, that you cannot even doubt it. Even if you try to doubt it, you cannot, the certainty is so tremendous. With this click you settle."

"Between twenty-one and twenty-eight somewhere, if everything goes smoothly the way I am saying, without interference from others, then you settle. And the most pleasant period of life comes from twenty-eight to thirty-five – the most joyous, the most peaceful and harmonious because two persons start melting and merging into each other."

"From thirty-five to forty-two, a new step, a new door opens. If up to thirty-five you have felt deep harmony, an orgasmic feeling, and you have discovered meditation through it, then from thirty-five to forty-two you will help each other go more and more into that meditation without sex, because sex at this point starts looking childish, juvenile."

(From Darkness to Light # 3)

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