The cosmos is full of laughter

 but a laughter that is very silent, a laughter that you can feel but cannot hear, a laughter that spreads all over your being. You can feel the lightness and the benediction that it brings to you, but there is no way to hear it, and there is no way to compare it to the laughter we are aware of.

It was for this reason that all the ancient awakened ones have not talked about laughter. The danger was that you may think the laughter that you know is the laughter of the ultimate. The difference is very great. Our laughter is simply ripples on the surface of the lake. The cosmic laughter of sachchidanand is the whole lake, but without ripples -- utterly silent and serene, still, just like a sweetness, joyfulness, very delicate, very subtle. The ancient awakened ones never mentioned it, just as they have never mentioned many other things out of a certain fear of misunderstanding.

They have not mentioned that there is an orgasmic joy in the experience of enlightenment. It is sheer fear that the moment they use the word `orgasmic' you will think about sexual orgasm. It is not sexual, it is nonsexual. But as far as the orgasmic experience of utter relaxedness, of absolute stoppage of time and mind is concerned, it is the same.

I have dared to walk on paths untrodden by the ancient awakened ones because my feeling is that the fear of misunderstanding should not prevent one from saying the truth. And if one is too afraid of being misunderstood, then there is nothing to say, because everything is going to be misunderstood. You talk about truth and it will be understood as a fact. You talk about consciousness, and people will think, of course, that they are conscious. Maybe it will be a bigger consciousness, but there is not going to be any qualitative change. Yet there is going to be a qualitative change.

In fact every quantitative change at a certain point turns into a qualitative change. You heat water. Up to ninety-nine degrees it is water. The moment it reaches a hundred degrees a transformation happens. Water starts disappearing into vapor. This is a qualitative change. You can quench your thirst with the water, but not with the vapor.

Water always goes downwards, it moves towards the sea, which is the lowest level. Vapor goes upwards: it creates the clouds. Their paths are different, their qualities are different. Water is visible, vapor soon becomes invisible.

Or, from the other side, at a certain point water can become ice. The qualities are different. Water is continuously flowing, ice has lost that flow. It is static, it has become almost like a stone.

Quantity at a certain point brings a new quality. Out of fear of being misunderstood, many things have not been said to humanity. Not that they were not known to those who have come to the highest peak, but they have chosen to speak only of certain aspects. Even those certain aspects are misunderstood. And many they have left unsaid. They know that when you reach, you will experience.

I don't want to leave anything unsaid. I don't function out of fear at all. And I trust my people's intelligence more than any awakened person has ever trusted.

Mahavira never allowed his male and female sannyasins to be together -- a fear that they might fall back into their old habits. He arranged that the women sannyasins should remain separate from the men sannyasins. If you go into details you can see the fear. The women sannyasins should always bow down to the men sannyasins, even if the male sannyasin may be just one day old. He may have taken sannyas just one day before, still a sixty-year-old woman sannyasin has to bow down to this young person. She has been a sannyasin for sixty years. The reason? The reason is that whenever a woman bows down to a man there is a protection. She is paying so much respect to you, you cannot behave in any disrespectful way towards her. And according to Mahavira, even to think about sex will be disrespectful.

But all these details have a hidden psychology of fear. All male sannyasins and women sannyasins had to move in a group of five; nobody was allowed to move alone. Why? Lions move alone because they are unafraid. What is the fear? Why should five men move together? So they can keep an eye on each other, that nobody falls below the discipline, that nobody does things which are not allowed.

Five women moving together will keep alert about each other, will see that nobody falls in love, nobody becomes too much attached to anyone. Mahavira has put four against one. Their jealousy, their competitiveness, and their very nature of putting the other down will keep them alert. But this is functioning out of fear.

And I know Mahavira was not afraid as far as he himself was concerned. He was afraid about his disciples. That means he was not as respectful to the disciples and their intelligence as he should have been. My feeling is, if I am not respectful towards you and I cannot trust you, then no arrangement is going to help. And all these people in the past ... although they thought of every detail, there were always loopholes. Sannyasins have been finding ways for perverted sex.

Gautam Buddha was afraid even to initiate women in his commune as sannyasins. He remained very stubborn. But that was out of a certain fear that if women entered in the commune ... He did not believe in his own sannyasins. He knew that they would start falling back into their biological heritage.

Hence many things have not been said and many disciplines have been created which ultimately turn into fetters. And all these people were trying to help you to attain ultimate freedom. But if you want freedom, then you have to start with freedom. If you start with bondage, you cannot end with freedom. Freedom has to be the first if you want freedom to be the last, because it is a growth. They fettered their people so tightly. In Buddhism there are thirty-three thousand rules of discipline. Now, you have put almost the whole Himalayas on the chests of your sannyasins. They are small things ...

A sannyasin is going to preach in faraway places where Buddha cannot go, because he is too old. Before he leaves, Buddha says, "Remember a few things. Don't talk to a woman."

The young sannyasin must have been a man of tremendous courage. He said, "Generally, you are right. There is no need for me to talk to any woman. But there is a possibility ... at least one percent you should keep open. Ninety-nine percent of the time I will not talk, but there can be a situation in which talking becomes absolutely necessary. If I am standing on a crossroad and I don't know where to go, where the village is, and a woman comes by, should I ask her or not? Or should I remain stuck on the crossroad? Or a woman falls into a ditch and I am passing by, should I ask her if I can help?"

Buddha was silent. Then he said, "Okay, for one percent you are allowed. Remember, that is only in emergency situations. But never touch a woman." The man was again raising the same question. "There can be a situation when you have to touch a woman. A woman falls on the road, maybe sunstroke, maybe epilepsy, maybe some kind of coma ... Do you want me not to touch her? There are emergency situations when it will be very uncompassionate not to touch the woman. And I think compassion is the foundation of your philosophy."

Very reluctantly Buddha said, "Okay, in emergency situations you can touch a woman, but remember one thing, whenever you are close to a woman, speaking to her or touching her, be very alert. Don't get back to your old habits, which are tremendously powerful, because they belong to your whole past of millions of years."

But that one percent emergency becomes the loophole. Who is going to decide what is emergency and what is not? So all the rules, thirty-three thousand in all, have their loopholes. You cannot have a foolproof system. Human beings are human beings.

My approach is totally different. My approach is to bring men and women so close together that there is no need to keep arbitrary disciplines. Just their very closeness, slowly, slowly, will make them drop their differences. Their closeness and understanding about each other will help them go beyond the biological heritage.

The farther away you put them, the stronger is the magnetic force. One is more attracted towards the unknown, the unachievable. If the woman is sitting far away, first she looks immensely beautiful, just a goddess who has descended to the earth, because you cannot smell her perspiration, nor do you know that her teeth are false; you know nothing. From far away all grass looks greener.

My own understanding and approach is totally different from anyone who has lived before me. I want to bring the male and female sannyasins as close as possible, with no restrictions, with no repressions, with no inhibitions. Sooner or later they are going to be fed up. That is my hope. The whole arrangement here is to make you completely bored.

And every day somebody writes, "Sex has fallen away." That's great if it falls away! Repressed sex is bound to create a psychological sickness within you. But when sex drops on its own accord just like a dead leaf dropping from a tree, it does not leave any wound on the tree. When sex drops out of understanding, not with your effort but on its own accord and your unconscious is not carrying any repression, your whole being is purified.

So I am saying everything that has not been said. Laughter has been completely avoided, because it seemed that it destroyed your seriousness. And all the masters of the past wanted you to be serious about your search. They misunderstood one thing, that sincerity about the search is one thing, and seriousness about the search is not the same thing. I want you to be sincere and authentic about your search -- not only about your search, but about everything, because you cannot be sincere only in one dimension. If you are sincere, then all dimensions of your life are sincere.

But seriousness has been misunderstood as sincerity. Seriousness is a sickness. A serious seeker is searching for truth with sadness, with a burden on his head. He is not interested in the pilgrimage. He is only interested in the end, the goal, the paradise, the heaven, whatever name has been chosen by the master. My own understanding is: there is no heaven, and there is no paradise, there is no goal. Life is an eternal pilgrimage.

Now, making people serious is making them sick for eternity. They will lose all joy, they will shrink, all their juice will be gone. They will not see the beauty of the path and the trees and the mountains that they will be passing through, because seriousness does not allow these things. Seriousness condemns all this as mundane.

To me, there is no division like mundane and sacred. It is one universe. There are not two universes. Yes, the same universe you can look at in a mundane way, you can look at in a sacred way. The distinction is not between two universes, the distinction is only in two outlooks. And my feeling is, the more joyous you are, the more full of juice, love, laughter, music and dance, the more your journey will become a tremendously beautiful pilgrimage.

And because there is no goal ... Life is eternal, hence there cannot be any goal. All ideas of goals are contradictory to the idea of eternal life. And if life is eternal, then you have to enjoy each moment as if you have reached the goal. Each moment is a goal in itself. Don't wait to rejoice when you have reached the goal. That kind of goal does not exist. Use every moment as if you have arrived. It is always as if you have arrived. You are always arriving.

And I don't think existence wants you to be serious. I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole existence is a celebration. I teach you celebration. And laughter has certainly to be one of the major ingredients in this celebration.

You are asking, Devageet, "Is there laughter in the mysterious silence of sachchidanand?" Certainly! But a laughter which is very silent. A soundless sound.

excerpt from the video discourse The Beauty of the Path
published in: Sat Chit Anand