In fact there is never a way to move back; people only believe so. Nobody can go back; in time there is no possibility to go back. You cannot become a child again. You cannot go back into the womb of your mother. But the illusion, the idea that it is possible will haunt you and will not allow you to grow.

I see many men who go on seeking their mother in their love affairs, which is foolish. Out of a hundred, almost ninety-nine men are searching for their mother. The mother has been lost in the past; now they cannot enter the womb of the mother again. Have you watched yourself? Lying in the lap of your beloved, a fantasy arises in you – as if you have found your mother.

Why are men so interested in women’s breasts? The interest is basically the search for the mother because the child knew the mother through the breasts and he still hankers for the mother. So a woman who has beautiful, round, big breasts becomes more attractive to men. A flat-chested woman simply becomes unattractive. Why? What is wrong? Nothing is wrong with the woman; something is wrong with the mind. You are seeking the mother, and she cannot help your imagination. She does not fit with your illusion. How can she be your mother, she has no breasts; breasts are the basic necessity.

If you go to Indian temples in Khajuraho or in Puri and you will see such big breasts that it seems almost impossible. How were these women walking? The weight seems too much. But that simply shows the search, the search to go back, to find the mother again. Then your love life will be a disturbance because the woman who loves you is not in search of a child. She is in search of a friend, of a beloved, of a lover. She does not want to become your mother. She wants to become your friend, your companion, your consort. And you are asking her to be your mother, to take care of you as your mother used to take care. And you go on expecting the mother and she goes on frustrating it; the conflict arises.

Nobody can go back. That which is past is past. Past is past and cannot be reclaimed. This understanding makes you a grown up; then you don’t hanker for it.

And remember, if you hanker for the past, you hanker for the future. Your future is nothing but your modified, renovated past. What you desire in the future is nothing but all that was happy in the past, minus all that was not happy. Your future is nothing but your repainted past – closer to the heart’s desire, the painful accidents dropped and the pleasant exaggerated. Once you drop the past you drop the future also, because it is nothing else but the repainted past, and then suddenly you are herenow.

Then I can tell you, “Look at the cypress in the courtyard.” Or I can take a flower in my hand and just let you see it. And if you can see it just here and now, a mysterious phenomenon starts happening within you: a flower within you starts opening. Something spreads over your being – something existential. It is not a dream; it has no hallucinatory quality in it. It has no ideas, no thoughts, no pictures, nothing; just a tremendously austere emptiness – beautiful, but totally empty.