It has to be explained to you that Gautam Buddha left his palace when he was twenty-nine years old. Jesus started his teachings when he was thirty years old; Zarathustra went into the mountains when he was thirty years old. There is something significant about the age of thirty, or nearabout, just as at the age of fourteen, one becomes sexually mature. If we take life as it has been taken traditionally, that it consists of seventy years… those who have watched life very deeply have found that every seven years, there is a change, a turning.
The first seven years are innocent. The second seven years, the child is very much interested in enquiring, in questioning — curiosity. After the fourteenth up to the twenty-first year, he has the most powerful sexuality. The highest peak of sexuality, you will be surprised to know, is nearabout eighteen or nineteen years. And humanity has been trying to avoid that period by providing educational programs, colleges, universities — keeping boys and girls apart. That is the time when their sexuality and their sexual energy is at the highest point.
In those seven years, from fourteen to twenty-one, they could have experienced sexual orgasm very easily. Sexual orgasm is a glimpse which can create in you the urge to find more blissful spaces, because in sexual orgasm two things disappear: your ego disappears, your mind disappears, and time stops — just for a few seconds. But these three are the important things. Two things disappear completely; you are no more “I” — you are, but there is no sense of the ego. Your mind is there but there are no thoughts, just a deep stillness. Suddenly, because the ego disappears and the mind stops, time stops, too. To experience time, you need changing thoughts of the mind; otherwise, you cannot experience the movement of time.
Just think of two trains, moving into empty space, together, with the same speed. Whenever you look out of the window at the other train — which has the same window and the same number of compartments — you will not experience that you are moving. Neither will the passengers in the other train experience that they are moving. You experience movement because, when your train is moving, the trees are standing, the houses are standing, they are not moving. Stations come and platforms come and pass. It is because on both sides things are static, that against them, in relativity, you can feel your train moving.
Sometimes you may have experienced a very bizarre thing: your train is standing on the platform, and another train is standing by the side. Your train starts moving; you are looking at the other train, and it seems as if it has started moving; unless you look towards the platform, which is standing still. Movement is a relative experience. When mind is not having any thoughts, you are in an empty sky; time stops because you cannot judge time without movement — you are not there, mind is not there, time is not there… only a tremendous peace and a great relaxation.
My own understanding is that it was the sexual orgasm that gave the first idea to people about meditation, because a few geniuses must have tried: “If we can stop thoughts, if we can drop the ego and if the mind is not there, time disappears; then there is no need for any sexual orgasm.” You can have the same orgasmic experience alone and it is no more sexual — it becomes a spiritual experience.
Sexual orgasm must have given the first idea that the same experience is possible without sex; otherwise, there is no way how man could have found meditation. Meditation is not a natural phenomenon. Sexual orgasm is a natural phenomenon but all societies prevent their children from experiencing it. Nobody says anything about it. This is a strategy, a very dangerous strategy, a criminal act against the whole of humanity, because the children who are deprived of having sexual orgasm, will never be able to feel the urge for meditation; or their urge will be very weak; they will not risk anything for it.
So up to the age twenty-one, sex reaches to its peak, if it is allowed, as it was allowed in Gautam Buddha’s life. All the beautiful girls of his kingdom were given to him; he was surrounded by all the beautiful girls; he knew deep experiences of orgasm.
Then from twenty-one to twenty-eight, the other seven years, one searches, because sexual orgasm is biological. Soon you will lose the energy and you will not be able to have the orgasm. Secondly, it is dependent on somebody else, a woman, a man; it is destructive of your freedom; it is at a very high cost. So if a man grows very naturally — is allowed to grow naturally — from twenty-one to twenty-eight, he will search and seek ways and means, of how to transcend physiology, biology, and yet remain capable of moving into deeper orgasmic experiences.
From twenty-eight to the age thirty-five, all these people — Gautam Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Jesus — all have moved in higher planes of being. And just not to be bothered, not to be hindered by people, not to be distracted, they moved into the mountains — into aloneness. According to me, it was not against life — they were simply searching a silent space where there were no distractions and they could find the greatest orgasmic experience… what William James has called “the oceanic orgasm,” in which you completely disappear into the ocean of existence — just like a dewdrop slipping from a lotus leaf into the ocean.
So the age thirty is not just incidental. All great seekers have left in the search between twenty-eight and thirty-five. That is the period of seeking, searching — searching for something that is not of the body, but of the spirit. Cannot judge time without movement — you are not there, mind is not there, time is not there… only a tremendous peace and a great relaxation.
My own understanding is that it was the sexual orgasm that gave the first idea to people about meditation, because a few geniuses must have tried: “If we can stop thoughts, if we can drop the ego and if the mind is not there, time disappears; then there is no need for any sexual orgasm.” You can have the same orgasmic experience alone and it is no more sexual — it becomes a spiritual experience.
Sexual orgasm must have given the first idea that the same experience is possible without sex; otherwise, there is no way how man could have found meditation. Meditation is not a natural phenomenon. Sexual orgasm is a natural phenomenon but all societies prevent their children from experiencing it. Nobody says anything about it. This is a strategy, a very dangerous strategy, a criminal act against the whole of humanity, because the children who are deprived of having sexual orgasm, will never be able to feel the urge for meditation; or their urge will be very weak; they will not risk anything for it.
So up to the age twenty-one, sex reaches to its peak, if it is allowed, as it was allowed in Gautam Buddha’s life. All the beautiful girls of his kingdom were given to him; he was surrounded by all the beautiful girls; he knew deep experiences of orgasm.
Then from twenty-one to twenty-eight, the other seven years, one searches, because sexual orgasm is biological. Soon you will lose the energy and you will not be able to have the orgasm. Secondly, it is dependent on somebody else, a woman, a man; it is destructive of your freedom; it is at a very high cost. So if a man grows very naturally — is allowed to grow naturally — from twenty-one to twenty-eight, he will search and seek ways and means, of how to transcend physiology, biology, and yet remain capable of moving into deeper orgasmic experiences.
From twenty-eight to the age thirty-five, all these people — Gautam Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Jesus — all have moved in higher planes of being. And just not to be bothered, not to be hindered by people, not to be distracted, they moved into the mountains — into aloneness. According to me, it was not against life — they were simply searching a silent space where there were no distractions and they could find the greatest orgasmic experience… what William James has called “the oceanic orgasm,” in which you completely disappear into the ocean of existence — just like a dewdrop slipping from a lotus leaf into the ocean.
So the age thirty is not just incidental. All great seekers have left in the search between twenty-eight and thirty-five. That is the period of seeking, searching — searching something that is not of the body, but of the spirit.
HERE HE HAD THE ENJOYMENT OF HIS SPIRIT AND HIS SOLITUDE AND HE DID NOT WEARY OF IT FOR TEN YEARS. He remained in the mountains for ten years. His solitude, silence, peace, became deeper and deeper, and he was full of bliss; although he was alone, he was not weary of it. BUT AT LAST HIS HEART TURNED — AND ONE MORNING HE ROSE WITH THE DAWN, STEPPED BEFORE THE SUN, AND SPOKE TO IT THUS.
This is where Zarathustra takes a new path. Mahavira remained in his solitude. Buddha remained in his aloneness, and the people who were watching, saw something had happened, something beyond their conceptions. These people were transformed; they had become luminous; they were radiating joy; they had a certain fragrance; they had known something; their eyes had a depth that was not there before; and their faces had a grace that was a totally new phenomenon. A very subtle misunderstanding happened: the people who were watching thought that because these people went into the mountains, they had renounced life; hence, renouncing life became a fundamental thing in all the religions. But they had not renounced life.
I would like to write history completely from the very scratch, particularly about these people, because I know them from my own insight — I don’t have to be bothered about facts, I know the truth. These people had not gone against life: they had gone simply for solitude; they had gone for being alone; they had just gone away from distractions. But the difference between Gautam Buddha and Zarathustra is that Gautam Buddha — once he had found himself – never declared, “Now there is no need for me to be a recluse, to be a monk. I can come back and be an ordinary man in the world.”
Perhaps it needs more courage than going out of the world; coming back to the world needs more courage. Going uphill is arduous, but very gratifying. You are going higher and higher and higher, and once you have reached to the highest peak, it needs tremendous courage to come back downward into the dark valleys which you had left, just to give the message to people: “You need not remain always in darkness. You need not remain always in suffering and in hell.”
This downward journey may even be condemned by those people whom you are going to help. When you were going upward, you were a great saint, and when you are coming downward, people will think perhaps you have fallen, you have fallen from your greatness, from your height. It certainly needs the greatest courage in the world, after touching the heights of the ultimate, to be again ordinary.
Zarathustra shows that courage. He is not worried about what people will say, that he will be condemned, that they will think that he has fallen from heights, that he is no more a saint. His concern is more to share his experience with those who may be ready, receptive, available — they may be few.
