You wind your watch, and for twenty-four hours it goes on ticking; after twenty-four hours it stops. That does not mean that something has died. But if you believe that there was a life inside the watch which has died, because now the hands are no longer moving, then you are believing in a fallacy.

So the first thing I would like to say to you is, don’t be so certain. Never be certain about anything that you have not experienced. You have not seen anybody really dying. And even if you can see somebody dying then too you cannot be certain – unless you see yourself dying – because these things are so intimate.

You can see two persons loving – that does not help in any way for you to become certain what love is. You can seen two persons hugging each other, kissing each other, looking at each other like lunatics….

This word lunatic I like. It comes from the moon, lunar; a lunatic is one who goes on looking at the moon. Two lovers look at each other like lunatics looking at the moon. Why did it become synonymous with insanity, madness? – because of a certain fact, that the moon has an effect on the human mind: it can drive it mad.

On the full-moon night more people go mad than on any other night. On the full-moon night more people commit suicide than on any other night. On the full-moon night more people murder than on any other night. It is not coincidental; it is just as when, on the full-moon night, the ocean starts stirring, tries to rise towards the moon. Some immense force, some immense magnetism in the moon pulls the ocean.

Man also comes from the ocean. Man’s body still contains ninety percent elements of the ocean. It is very natural that when the ocean gets stirred, your little ponds also get stirred; hence, the word “lunatic” became synonymous with madness.

Literally it means moonstruck. But lovers are moonstruck – just watch two lovers. But don’t start being certain that you know what love is, because in a movie you can see two lovers even more mad, more moonstruck – but they are just acting. They may be really husband and wife, nagging before they act, and nagging after they act; just between the two naggings they have to play at being lovers. And they play it.

You cannot be certain by seeing the symptoms in others’ lives. You can infer, but your inference should be preceded by a perhaps: perhaps these people are in love. But what is love? You can watch the symptoms; they are holding hands, they are saying sweet nothings, telling each other dialogues – great dialogues that they have crammed from movies and novels.

One student was my roommate in the university. He was a simple boy and he was always worried because everybody was saying that somebody was in love with some girl, somebody was in love with some woman teacher but, “Nothing happens to me.” He would tell me, “Nothing happens to me.”