The first thing to understand is that I have no teachings. I am not teaching you anything at all, because teaching simply means conditioning your mind -- in other words, programming you in a certain way. What I am doing here is just the opposite of teaching you: I am creating a space where you can unlearn whatsoever you have been taught up to now. I am not a teacher! That's the difference between a teacher and a Master: the teacher teaches, the Master helps you to undo whatsoever the teachers have done. The function of the Master is just the opposite of that of the teacher. The teacher serves the society, the establishment; he is the agent of the past. He works for the older generation: he tries to condition the minds of the new generation so they can be subservient, obedient to the past, to all that is old -- to their parents, to the society, to the state, to the church. The function of the teacher is anti-revolutionary, it is reactionary The Master is basically a rebel. He is not in the service of the past, he is not an agent of all that you can think of as 'the establishment' -- religious, political, social, economic -- his whole effort is to help you to discover your individuality. It has nothing to do with tradition, convention. You have to go within, not backwards. He is not in any way interested in forcing you into a certain pattern; he makes you free. So what I am doing here is not teaching, that is a misunderstanding on your part. But it happens because you have lived with teachers, all kinds of teachers. It is rare to come across a Master, because the society does not allow the Master to happen. The society is very afraid of the Master, otherwise why did society poison Socrates? For what? He is the Master par excellence, has never been surpassed by any other. His crime was that he was a Master, and the society wanted him to be a teacher He was helping people to discover the truth. And society is not interested in discovering the truth, it is interested in covering it more and more, because it lives through lies -- it calls them beliefs. All beliefs are lies; howsoever beautifully presented, they are lies. Truth cannot be given by one person to another, only lies can be transferred, they are transferable. Truth is untransferable. The Master cannot hand over the truth to you, he can only create devices so that you can discover your own truth. The truth is always your own authenticity, your own being. Who can give it to you? The teacher pretends to give you truth, but what he gives is just a decorated lie -- although it may be very ancient, repeated for millions of years, so it appears like truth.

A Christian believes, because Jesus says, "Believe. Have faith," so for two thousands years they are believing and having faith, and what they have gained? What is their achievement? Just two thousand years of bloodshed -- murdering, killing, wars, burning alive people -- and that all in the name of God, in the name of Jesus Christ.... But the responsibility is of Jesus Christ himself. He was telling people to believe. That means he was telling people to be hypocrites. That's what belief means: you don't know and yet you pretend that you know. You worship God -- you don't know -- and yet you are praying to something that you don't know. Is this the way of intelligence? Is this the way to grow, mature? This is the way of remaining retarded. Jesus is responsible for millions of people who have remained retarded, because he taught belief. But this is true also of Mohammed, this is true also of other religious leaders -- the whole past is based on belief systems. And the result you can see: the whole mess in the world. My approach is based on doubt, on agnosticism, on skepticism, because these are the ways to eliminate anything that is not true.

Q:* WHAT'S THE MAJOR BELIEF THAT YOU THINK NEEDS TO BE ELIMINATED?

A:* God is the major belief that has to be eliminated, because every other thing hangs with God. God eliminated means prophets, messiahs, saviors, messengers -- all are eliminated. Heaven, hell -- all are eliminated. With God eliminated, we can clean the whole mind of man. All rubbish will simply disappear. It can exist only with God. He is the center of the madness of man. He is the greatest block against human intelligence and its evolution. Just think if there is no God -- then there are no holy scriptures, then there are no popes, no prophets. Then you cannot depend on anybody; you have to depend on yourself. In the beginning it is a little scary, but soon you will start finding strength in yourself, in your independence. How long man has been moving like blind people, following somebody who himself is blind? Blinds are leading blind people for millions of years. Jesus Christ has no experience of God, because there is no God, so how he can have the experience of God? He may have hallucinated. He may have imagined, he may have dreamt, but there is no God anywhere. Existence is all. And the very idea of God creates a split in existence: the creator and the creation -- and that is the root cause of all other splits. All the people who are suffering from schizophrenia may never know that the basic schizophrenia comes from the split between God and existence. Then you are continuously in split: your body wants to do one thing, your mind says that is wrong. Because your religion teaches you celibacy and your body wants to make love. You are torn apart. If you listen to the body you will feel guilty. If you listen to the mind you will become a pervert sexual. In both the cases you are going to be a loser. So emphatically and absolutely I say, "God is the greatest lie that has to be removed from human consciousness. And once man is free from God, hell and heaven, sin and virtue, his intelligence is free to grow. All the barriers have been removed. And it is his intelligence will be now decisive -- about his actions -- and he will be himself responsible. And each act brings its own punishment or its own reward, so there is no need to wait for the last judgement day! Each act: if you are compassionate to someone, you feel a joy of being compassionate -- that is its reward. If you are angry at someone, you are first burning inside yourself. Even before you have acted on your anger, you have suffered the punishment. In my vision every action has its intrinsic reward or punishment. So a man of intelligence soon starts finding what are the acts which bring you happiness, joy, blissfulness, and what are the actions which create misery, suffering. There is no need to wait for the last judgement day, there is no need to wait after death -- you will be thrown into hell or into heaven. Each moment completes itself. And if you are the person who is responsible, totally responsible, then certainly each of your action will show that responsibility. Right now you can dump everything on God, everything on past life, everything on devil. But if God is removed, devil is gone. Devil is God's shadow. They cannot exist separate from each other. God needs the devil, the devil needs the God. You will be surprised to know that the world devil and the word divine come from the same Sanskrit root. Divine and devil from the same Sanskrit root, which is very significant. It means they are just two branches of one tree and they can exist only together, perhaps like two sides of a coin: you cannot separate them. Once man feels free from god and devil and all nonsense, he is free from churches, free from temples, free from mosques, synagogues -- a tremendous sense of freedom. And to act responsibly, because you are going to suffer from your act or to rejoice from your act. Your act is decisive itself. Nobody else is going to decide for you. Then easily a intelligent person will sort out -- perhaps he will fall once in a while into the wrong place -- but he will not fall twice in the same place. And that is the way of learning: commit as many mistakes you can, but don't commit the same mistake again. That's how one matures, one becomes more understanding, becomes more clear. And all this ultimately leads to enlightenment, because you cannot depend on praying, you have to find something else. Prayer is addressed to a God. If there is no God, all prayers are meaningless. Meditation is not addressed to anybody. It is an inner journey of being silent, of being more and more peaceful, of being more and more alert and aware. A moment comes when your consciousness is so clear, so luminous, that time stops, that thoughts stop -- simply you are, in your utter purity -- and that experience I call religiousness. For it you need not go to any church, you need not belong to any crowd, you need not have any holy scripture; for that, all that is needed is an inward journey. And that's what I am teaching my people.

BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS

UNAWARENESS?

Shivananda, yes, the question arises and is significant too. It is like the fish asking, "What is the ocean?" Obviously the fish cannot see the ocean; it has lived in the ocean always, from the very beginning. It was born in the ocean, it opened its eyes in the ocean, it has lived as part of the ocean. The ocean is so close, the fish does not feel itself separate from it. There is no space between the fish and the ocean to know about it. And that's actually the case with unawareness. You are born in unawareness, you live in unawareness, you sleep in unawareness... you wake up in unawareness. You walk in unawareness, you talk in unawareness... you read Bibles, Korans, Gitas, in unawareness. It is so close, you are so permeated by it; it is in your every fiber and cell. There is no distance between it and you. Hence the question is very significant and one has to ask it. Only then can one move slowly out of unawareness towards awareness. Unawareness is a state of robotlike existence. You go on repeating mechanically. You go on living without any alertness in it; sleepy, a somnambulist you are. Out of ten people, one person can walk in his sleep, do you know it? That is a big number. Out of a hundred, ten people are capable of walking in their sleep. If you have ten persons in your family, that means one person is capable of walking in his sleep. People get up, they can walk in darkness, they can reach the fridge, they can eat things, they can come back to the bed. In the morning they have forgotten all -- and then they are worried why they go on becoming fatter and fatter! In the day they fast or diet and in the night they compensate as much as they can. You will have to be a little separate from your acts; then you will be able to know what unawareness is. Somebody insults you; immediately, instantly, anger arises. It is like pushing a button and the light comes on. There is no gap: you push a button and the light comes on. The light has no time to think whether to come on or not. Somebody insults you; he pushes a button and immediately you are enraged. Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, "Wait at least for five minutes. What is the hurry? Let him insult you, let him finish first. Then you close your eyes and wait for five minutes, and watch what is happening inside you -- anger boiling." Gurdjieff himself became enlightened through this simple procedure: that whatsoever is mechanical in man he tried to make it nonmechanical. And all is mechanical in you -- anger, lust, greed, jealousy -- all is mechanical. It simply is there whenever somebody pushes a button. You are functioning like a robot. Become a man. That's what meditation is all about, that's what sannyas is all about. Create a little distance. Next time somebody insults you, give it five minutes, sit silently for five minutes, and then you can become angry. I am not saying "Don't become angry" -- because that will be too much. I am saying that just for five minutes allow a gap, and you will be surprised: after five minutes it is not the same anger that it would have been five minutes before.

Dale Carnegie remembers an incident in his life. He delivered a radio broadcast on Abraham Lincoln. He mentioned a few wrong facts about Lincoln; even his birthdate was wrong. He received one letter, a very angry letter, from a woman, calling him a fool, calling him stupid. "If you don't even know the right birthdate, what right have you got to speak on Abraham Lincoln?" He became enraged, and he immediately wrote an angry answer. But it was too late in the day, so he thought, "Tomorrow morning I will post the letter." Before posting it he read the letter again. It looked too angry -- twelve hours had passed. He read the woman's letter; it was not so insulting as it had appeared at the first glance. So he changed his letter, he wrote it again. When he was writing it again he said, "Why not wait twenty-four hours more and see what happens? What is the hurry? The woman is not going to die." So he waited twenty-four hours and read his letter again. Now he was even more cool, and still the letter looked a little too strong. He changed it and thought, "Why not wait forty-eight hours? Let it be an experiment! I can always send the letter, but after twelve hours I had to change it, after twenty-four hours I had to change it much more. Let us see what happens after forty-eight hours." After forty-eight hours he had to change it totally. All anger had disappeared. He said, "Now I will wait two days more and then I will send it." And when finally he wrote the letter he apologized; he was no longer angry. The woman was right: what right has he if he does not know the facts? At least he should have checked the facts before going to broadcast. It was absolutely right on her part to get angry. So he wrote, "You are perfectly right. Next time I will not commit such a mistake. I am deeply sorry that I hurt your feelings. I apologize. If any time you happen to be in this city, please come to see me, or, if I come to your town, I will come to see you. I would like to know more about Lincoln -- because I feel you know more than I know." Naturally, the woman was tremendously impressed by the humbleness of the man; she was not expecting that he would be so humble. Next time she came to that town where Dale Carnegie lived she phoned him. He went, received her, invited her for a dinner. And finally the woman and he became so friendly, they fell in love!

It looks like a fairy tale -- does not happen in real life! In real life only tragedies happen. But we are responsible for all those tragedies because of our unawareness. So the first thing I will suggest, Shivananda, is that if you want to know what unawareness is, allow a gap. This is the process of de-automatization. You have become automatic, you function automatically. You have to reverse the whole process, de-automatize it, slowly slowly, in small matters. For example, you have gone for a walk. Don't walk the same way as you walk every day. Go slow or go fast, but don't just repeat the same routine. And you will be surprised: if you go slow you are more aware, if you go faster you are more aware; if you go exactly the same speed as you follow every day, you lose all awareness. Buddha told his disciples to walk very slowly, as slowly as possible. Try it and you will be surprised. A great awareness arises if you walk very slowly. You speak in a certain way; one day try to speak in some other way. Speak slowly, and you will be surprised that the slowness of the speech makes you alert. Suddenly something is changed, because you are not functioning according to the robot. Mind has two parts: one is the learning part, the other is the robot part. The learning part learns; whenever you are learning something you are more aware. For example, if you are learning driving you are more aware -- you have to be. The moment you have learned it, the learning part gives its information to the robot part. Once you have learned driving, then you don't need any awareness; you simply go on doing it mechanically. You turn towards your house, you arrive in your garage, you lock the car. You are doing everything like a robot. And this is the story of your life, twenty-four hours a day. Change it! Gurdjieff's method was this: if some vegetarian had come to him as a disciple, the first thing he would insist was, "Eat meat!" Now this is a very shocking thing for a vegetarian -- to be told to eat meat. And Gurdjieff was a tough master; he would throw you out if you didn't listen to him, if you didn't follow the command, if you didn't follow the discipline. He would force you to eat meat. Now, when a vegetarian eats meat he becomes very conscious -- he has to. He has no idea in the past, no experience in the past, of eating meat. Just think of Mahatma Gandhi eating meat... he will become tremendously aware! And if there was a meat-eater, then Gurdjieff would say, "For a few weeks you be just vegetarian. Don't eat meat at all -- no eggs, no meat, no milk, no animal food of any kind. Just go on eating vegetables." The whole body system had become accustomed to a certain pattern. He would change people's eating hours. If you were eating every day at one o'clock, he would say, "Eat at nine." If you were going to sleep every day at twelve, he would say to go at two or at ten. He would change everything. A man who had never been drinking wine, he would force to drink wine just to change and shatter his pattern. The man who had been a drunkard, he would stop him from drinking. Gurdjieff was puzzling to people, but the method is simple: he was trying to de-automatize. He was one of the greatest masters of this age, very much misunderstood. Naturally, everybody was against him. Who has ever heard of religious masters forcing their disciples to drink? -- FORCING, actually forcing. And he would sit there.... The greatest thing in his commune was the dinner. It used to last four, five, six, seven hours. Every evening it would start... and it would end in the middle of the night. And he himself would take care of everybody, of what was being eaten, of what was given to them -- and he would go on forcing. People would become so drunk they would fall on the ground, and they would start saying things in their drunkenness -- and he would sit by the side and listen. He also used to drink with them, but he had worked hard on the way. He was a tantra master. He had been to India and to Tibet too, just to learn tantra. Tantra has special methods how to go on drinking and yet remain aware. YOU cannot be aware even without drinking. Tantra has methods to slowly slowly drink, and keep awareness, not to lose track of your awareness. Slowly slowly, the quantity of your drug has to be increased as you increase in your awareness. A moment comes when -- you will be surprised to know, still there are people in the East who practice it -- a moment comes, when no drug can affect your consciousness at all. Then the last thing they try is this: they keep poisonous snakes and they allow the snake to bite them on their tongue; that is the last method. Ordinarily a man will die.... These snakes are absolutely poisonous. Three percent of the snakes in India are dangerous; you cannot survive their bite -- once bitten you are gone. But these tantra masters will remain alert even in that moment and they will not die. Their bodies have become accustomed to all kinds of poisons and they have become alert, so alert that no drug can affect them. Gurdjieff used to use that method with his disciples, simply to shatter your settled habits. My approach here is to send you to this group, then to another group, then to still another group. When you go to different groups for two, three months, each group has its own structure and pattern and each group destroys other groups' patterns and structures. And finally I send you to Zazen or to Vipassana. They are beyond all ordinary structures. Those are the methods given by Buddha himself. Then you are in a very simple state, watching your own breath -- the breath going in, the breath going out, and you are simply watching. This watchfulness will make you aware of what unawareness is and what awareness is, both. You become aware of both simultaneously.

If you can float between being angry and being sad, both become similarly easy. You will have a transcendence and then you will be able to watch, and escape.

Anger and sadness are both the same. Sadness is passive anger and anger is active sadness. Because sadness comes easy, anger seems to be difficult. Because you are too much in tune with the passive.

It is difficult for a sad person to be angry. If you can make a sad person angry, his sadness will disappear immediately. It will be very difficult for an angry person to be sad. If you can make him sad, his anger will disappear immediately.

In all our emotions the basic polarity continues — of man and woman, yin and yang, the male and the female. Anger is male, sadness is female. So if you are in tune with sadness, it is difficult to shift to anger, but I would like you to shift. Just exploding it within won’t help much because again you are seeking some way of being passive. No. Bring it out, act it out. Even if it looks nonsense, then too. Be a buffoon in your own eyes, but bring it out.

If you can float between anger and sadness, both become similarly easy. You will have a transcendence and then you will be able to watch. You can stand behind the screen and watch these games, and then you can go beyond both. But first you have to be moving easily between these two. Otherwise you tend to be sad and when one is heavy, transcendence is difficult.

Remember, when two energies, opposite energies, are exactly alike, fifty-fifty, then it is very easy to get out of them, because they are fighting and cancelling each other and you are not in anybody’s grip. Your sadness and your anger are fifty-fifty, equal energies, so they cancel each other. Suddenly you have freedom and you can slip out. But if sadness is seventy percent and anger thirty percent, then it is very difficult. Thirty percent anger in contrast with seventy percent sadness means forty percent sadness will still be there and it will not be possible; you will not be capable of easily slipping out. That forty percent will hang over you.

So this is one of the basic laws of inner energies — to always let the opposite polarities come to an equal status, and then you are able to slip out of them. It is as if two persons are fighting and you can escape. They are so engaged with themselves that you need not worry, and you can escape. Don’t bring the mind in. Just make it an exercise.

You can make it an everyday exercise; forget about waiting for it to come. Every day you have to be angry — that will be easier. So jump, jog. scream, and bring it. Once you can bring it for no reason at all, you will be very happy because now you have a freedom. Otherwise even anger is dominated by situations. You are not a master of it. If you cannot bring it, how can you drop it?

Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples never to start by dropping anything. First start by bringing it in, because only a person who can create anger on demand can be capable of dropping it on demand — simple mathematics. So Gurdjieff would tell his disciples to first learn how to be angry. Everybody would be sitting and suddenly he would say, “Number One, stand up and be angry!” It looks so absurd.

But if you can bring it…. And it is always available, just by the corner, you just have to pull it in. It comes easily when anybody provides an excuse. Somebody insults you — it is there. So why wait for the insult? Why be dominated by the other? Why can’t you bring it yourself? Bring it yourself!

In the beginning it looks a little awkward, strange, unbelievable, because you have always believed in the theory that it is somebody else whose insult has created the anger. That’s not true. Anger has always been there; somebody has just given an excuse for it to come up. You can give yourself an excuse. Imagine a situation in which you would have been angry, and become angry. Talk to the wall and say things, and soon the wall will be talking to you. Just go completely crazy. You have to bring anger and sadness to a similar status, where they are exactly proportionate to each other. They will cancel each other out and you can slip away.

Gurdjieff used to call this “the way of the sly man” — to bring inner energies to such a conflict that they are engaged together cancelling each other, and you have the opportunity to escape. Try it, mm?

Osho, Get Out of Your Own Way, Talk #4 Osho, Why do these people like you so much? Why are you so appealing?

"I also wonder."

Is it the beard or the money or the prestige?

"I don't have any money. I don't have any prestige. I am notorious all over the world – what prestige can I have? To be with me needs the courage to be with a notorious man… You will lose your prestige if you are with me."

All that is needed is better planning, better crossbreeding. It is a known and applied fact about animals. Do you see the many kinds of beautiful dogs around the earth? -- small, big, powerful, or just beautiful. Just to see them jump around you is such a joy. Do you think they came out of blind nature? No, for centuries we have been crossbreeding dogs. You know it as a fact -- the whole world accepts it -- that a man should not get married to his own sister. Why? That should be the most simple thing, to get married to your own sister. You love her already, you have been together since birth, you know each other. But why have all cultures prohibited it? All cultures have said that marriage should be with distant people, people who don't come from the same family tree, because the bigger the distance, the better the product. If a white American marries a Negro, the child will be far better than a white American marrying another white American, or a Negro marrying another Negro, because the distance between those two is immense -- different centuries. They have grown in different atmospheres, their programming is totally different from each other. So when these two totally different cultures, traditions, conventions, lifestyles meet, they give birth to a better man, who has a double heritage: the heritage of the Negroes and the heritage of the white Americans. In a scientific lab it will be possible to find eggs and semen cells as distant as possible. And we can create through that crossbreeding a totally new man. There is nothing scary about it. It is not mass production. The couple has to say what kind of person they would like to have as their child. It avoids all accidents. And we will be creating the universal man -- not the Chinese, not the Indian, not the English, but the universal man. So please, just feel fascinated, don't feel scared and afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of. You have seen the way children have been produced in the past. For millions of years you have been doing the same thing -- what is the outcome? The outcome decides the value of what you have been doing. Once in a while there is an Albert Einstein or a Bertrand Russell -- once in a while! This is not right. It should be the ordinary phenomenon, usual. Once in a while, perhaps there will be a person who is born out of some unawareness, unalertness on the part of the scientist; otherwise, everybody should be a genius. Just think: the whole world full of people like Rabindranath, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Heidegger! And we can prevent people like Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Joseph Stalin from being born, because they have been calamities here. We can close the door completely on all Genghis Khans, Tamerlanes, Nadir Shahs -- all those ugly monsters whose whole life consisted of killing people, destroying people, burning people. The way we have lived has not proved right. We have only a crowd of pygmies all around -- this is what you should be scared of! But having a garden of geniuses, creative people, a garden from where we have removed all fanatics, idiots, politicians -- in short, we have taken out all that was poisonous, all pollution.... There is so much in the idea. Now, how many people are suffering because they have a snubbed nose? Their whole life they feel inferior. How many people are suffering because they have only nose? If you look at them, everything else is so small and the nose is so big.... I have heard... one millionaire had a very big nose and very small eyes, but he was the richest man in the community. People used to laugh behind him, but nobody ever dared.... He was invited by a family for dinner. The family was concerned about only one thing: their child, who was a born philosopher, asked about everything. From the morning they were teaching him, "You can ask anything, but when the rich man comes, you are not to ask about his nose." They told him so many times that he became immensely interested, "What is so great about the nose?" They had never prevented him from asking any question. Why was this nose so important? And he was really excited, eagerly waiting for the millionaire to come. When he came in, the child laughed. He said to his parents, "He has only nose, nothing else! And why were you preventing me...? He is a rare specimen!" He destroyed the whole effort. But people... almost everyone is suffering from something or other. Somebody is suffering from his color, somebody is suffering from his tallness; somebody is too tall, somebody is too small. What have you produced? This is mass production -- accidental, produced in darkness. At least human beings -- who are the crown in existence -- should not suffer anymore from an inferiority complex. The only way is scientific production of children. And there are immense possibilities in it. For example, if the child is produced in a scientific lab, they can produce a similar child simultaneously. The other child will be kept in the lab growing simultaneously; exactly as the one who has gone out to be adopted by a family, the other will be growing in the scientific lab. Just the existence of the other gives great opportunities. For example, you get a fractured leg. Now no need to bother to fix the fracture -- the leg from the other fellow can be taken and given to you. Something goes wrong, berserk, in your head -- now there is no need for all the psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists. Your head is just removed, you get a fresh head. The other person will remain in anesthesia his whole life, in a deep freeze. He will not know anything of what is happening. He is just there in case something goes wrong with you -- and many things go wrong in life, even with every precaution. Something can always go wrong; life is a long affair. You may have a car accident... now, that cannot be prevented by scientific reproduction of children. In fact, those children will not believe in the fifty-five miles per hour limit; that will be sheer stupidity. The people who are going to live three hundred years will change everything around. Rather than keeping to fifty-five miles per hour for millions of people, why not create better and straighter roads where you can move at two hundred miles per hour? Your roads are just ugly, so many turns -- their roads will be totally different. In fact, in Japan one scientist has proved that if a car moves at four hundred miles per hour -- and a car can -- at four hundred miles per hour the cars, just because of that great speed, rise one foot above the road. No bumps, no troubles from the road. There may be snow, and there may be ice; let it be there -- you will be simply going one foot above. In fact, that possibility makes it a great opportunity. If you can move four hundred miles per hour one foot above the road, the road is not really needed! You need only launching roads. The moment you pick up speed, then you can go anywhere; roads or no roads make no difference. But all depends on whether we have courage enough to rise over our fearful selves. We have to rise above the scary feeling. Be fascinated with the New Man! The New Man must have a new kind of birth. The New Man must have a new kind of life, a new kind of love, a new kind of death. He will be new in every possible way. He will replace the old models who are overcrowding the earth -- junkyards. They are not needed. It is a simple process of programming the first cell. And only the first cell can be programmed, because then it goes on reproducing itself -- that is an autonomous process. You can program it for everything. Right now it is difficult; it is programmed for all kinds of diseases, it is programmed for death, old age. You can't have any control over it. There is no way to change the program now, because all the cells have the same program. If they are programmed for a particular disease that you get by inheritance, you will suffer from that disease. It could have been changed, but only in the first meeting of the male and the female cells. Everything can be programmed, and an exact copy of you can be kept in the lab. If your heart is not functioning well, the new heart is available -- which will fit you exactly, because it comes from your copy, your twin. Any new thing scares, but it scares only cowards. Any new thing fascinates, but it fascinates only the brave ones. Be brave, because we nee a new, brave world.

BELOVED OSHO, YOU SPOKE OF TRANSPLANTING THE BRAIN OF GENIUSES LIKE EINSTEIN INTO THE BODY OF A YOUNG MAN. BUT IF EINSTEIN WANTED TO BE A PLUMBER INSTEAD OF A SCIENTIST, AND WE TRANSPLANTED HIS BRAIN, HAVE WE NOT DONE SOMETHING AGAINST HIS WISHES? HE COULD BE STUCK ON EARTH FOR ANOTHER SEVENTY YEARS, POSSIBLY AGAINST HIS CHOICE. CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?

It is so simple that I wonder, cannot you figure out small things yourself? The brain is a mechanism, it is not Einstein's soul. The brain is just a computer. We will transplant Einstein's brain; that does not make any difference to the journey of his soul. His soul will go on moving, and if he wants to be a plumber and really desires to be a plumber, he may become a plumber. But this brain he has developed, which is unique.... You may not be aware that he himself donated his brain to Harvard University: "When I die, my brain should be studied as carefully as possible to find what the difference is between my brain and other people's brain." And there is a great distance. He himself was curious. He said, "Of course, I will not be able to know, because I will be dead, but it may help you, humanity, to know what the difference is." After four years of research the difference has been found. It is very small. That small difference can be introduced into any brain and it will start functioning on a far higher level. But you will be again scared that science introduced something into your brain. It is just a little difference, but it makes a great difference: Einstein had proportionately more of certain cells than any other brain. Now, those cells can be cultivated and introduced into any brain. But nobody is interested. The research is finished, the findings are at hand. Nobody is interested, because the whole world is interested in how to destroy each other. They are so much occupied with war, day in and day out, that many beautiful things that go on happening in scientific research are just lying by the side. Nobody is using them. So don't be afraid that Einstein will be stuck for seventy years against his will, no. Einstein is a totally different phenomenon than the brain. The brain is just a thing attached to the soul of Einstein. The same brain can be attached to another soul. It will function the same, because it is an attachment; it has nothing to do with the soul. The soul will only supply the energy for the brain to function. If an idiot's brain is attached to you, your soul will supply energy to the idiot's brain; you will function like an idiot. And you know small things change your behavior. You drink alcohol -- although it is called spirits, it is not a spirit. Your spirit is absolutely unaffected by the alcohol. Alcohol goes into your brain, into your body, and creates all kinds of disturbances -- pleasant, unpleasant. There are other drugs, such as LSD, which can change your whole mind at least for a few hours or a few days. When Aldous Huxley for the first time -- he was a pioneer in that sense -- took LSD, he could not believe it: everything looked more beautiful, luminous. Even the chair in front of him was radiant, had an aura of light around it. What had happened? The LSD had tricked his mind, influenced his mind. He saw the beauty of the flowers -- those flowers he had seen before, but not the way they were appearing today. The fragrance was overpowering. His soul was the same, but the attached brain now had LSD in it, and was magnifying everything. Aldous Huxley was a beautiful man of immense intelligence; hence, through LSD he saw only paradise. He started experimenting with other people. Then he became aware that it is not LSD that creates paradise; for some people it creates hell. It depends on the person's mind -- LSD only magnifies, multiplies. If you are a miserable person, LSD will make you a million times more miserable. If you are a man of joy, LSD will magnify your joy a thousand times. He became aware that it is not LSD that creates paradise. LSD does not create anything, it is simply a magnifying glass. So the same flower looks more beautiful, a thousand times more beautiful; the same fragrance is now so dense and overpowering. But a man who is miserable, a man who is continuously down in the dumps, will find himself in the darkest hole ever. That's why Aldous Huxley wrote a book and named it HEAVEN AND HELL. It is a book about LSD. Your soul remains unaffected. When LSD has run out of your physical system, you are back home, the same miserable person you have been before, or the same joyous person you have been before. But the experience of two or three days under LSD changes many of your ideas. Aldous Huxley himself was so much impressed that he thought all the mystics who have experienced heaven must have been creating something like LSD by their exercises, prayer, meditation and other methods. That's not true. He was so much impressed that he thought this is the ultimate panacea. But soon he became aware that it not true, because a few people go into hell. Your brain is a separate thing from your soul, so don't be worried about Einstein. His brain is already in the Harvard University, resting in alcohol. Do you think Albert Einstein is caged there in that bottle? Albert Einstein must be a plumber somewhere -- perhaps here, because where else can he find a place where plumbers are as much respected as professors? where plumbers are not lower than presidents? This is the only place where nobody is higher or lower. Everybody is doing something essential, something which is needed. I am reminded of a phenomenon that has happened in India. Jainism is the oldest religion in India. In one of the conferences of the Jainas, I challenged them. I told them, "If you are really a religion, you should create a commune consisting only of Jainas. And then you will know that you don't have a complete philosophy. "Who is going to make the shoes? Jainas cannot do it. Who is going to be a plumber? Jainas cannot do that. Who is going to clean the toilets? Jainas cannot do it. Then what kind of religion is this?" I told them -- and made many enemies. That has been my life's work. I am going to write a book like Dale Carnegie: "How to Influence People and Make Enemies." I told them, "You are parasites. You are living amongst Hindus, exploiting Hindus; you are parasites. Why should anybody else clean your toilets?" This is the first commune in the whole world which is not in any way parasitical. Here everybody is doing everything. In fact, there is so much movement -- professors become plumbers. One day you see the professor teaching in the university and another day you find him plumbing. And you are surprised -- what has happened? He says, "I got bored teaching, teaching, teaching. I am on holiday from teaching, and plumbing is beautiful." In this commune we make holidays by changing your job, we don't have any other holidays. But changing the job, scientifically, is a holiday, because when you are functioning as a professor, a certain part of your brain functions -- only a certain part, not the whole brain. When you are a plumber, another part of your brain functions; the professor is on holiday. This way we don't lose time, we don't lose days, and still we enjoy holidays as much as we want! Don't be afraid about Einstein. Just remember, your body is not you.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO, WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT CHRISTIANITY, YOU USUALLY TALK ABOUT CATHOLICISM. PLEASE, WILL YOU SPEAK ABOUT PROTESTANT CHURCHES? WE DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THE POPE.

I certainly have avoided speaking on Protestantism, for the simple reason that the man who created it, Martin Luther, is not worth considering at all. Jesus Christ may be crazy, nuts, but Martin Luther was just a politician. There is no difference between the Catholic's basic doctrine and the Protestant's. Why did he create so much fuss and divide Christianity into two parts? -- because he himself wanted to become the pope. Finding it difficult... and remember, he was a German, and Germans have something in them that drives them to become Adolf Hitlers; they want to be always on the top. Just the other day one Germany journalist was asking me, "Why don't you use Mercedes-Benz?" I asked, "Why should I use Mercedes-Benz? I have tried all the models of Mercedes-Benz, I have the latest Mercedes 500, but they don't come even close to a Rolls Royce." He said, "This will make Germans feel very bad. The Mercedes-Benz has to be the topmost car." Why? It is a good car; my secretary uses it. But the Rolls Royce is simply unique, no other car comes close to it. But to the Germans, it hurts. Strange, what kind of psychology is there? It very much hurt Martin Luther that he was just a bishop. And no German has ever been chosen as a pope. Perhaps they were afraid that once a German becomes the pope, no one knows what he will do.... He tried hard in the beginning to be chosen a pope. It is a good thing about popes, that by the time a person becomes a pope he is almost on his deathbed. Only this Polack who is now the pope has deceived -- Polacks are Polacks. Perhaps he has forgotten to die! Otherwise, popes have been dying after one year, two years, three years at the most. So it gave chances to other people. Martin Luther tried many times, but he was never chosen. Then he rebelled. That's why his religion is called Protestantism. It is a protest -- the protest of a politician, the protest of a German, the protest of a man who wanted to be on the top but could not be. But there is no difference of any significance in their theologies. They both believe in Jesus Christ, they both believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, and they both believe in his resurrection after the crucifixion. The only difference is that Catholics also worship Jesus' mother, Mary. For this much difference, why should I bother about these people? I am hitting at the very roots. These small matters don't matter. So when I am speaking against Christianity, remember, I am not speaking only against Catholicism. I am speaking against all the sects and cults -- and there are many. I am speaking against Christianity as a whole. Martin Luther was against the pope because he could not become the pope. You can see he was not really against the pope; he himself wanted to be the pope. It was just the old story of Aesop.... A fox was trying to catch hold of beautiful grapes, ripe, inviting. But her jump was not enough to catch hold of the grapes. She tried many times. She was not aware that a small rabbit was watching, hiding in a bush. The moment she saw the rabbit, she walked away with dignity. The rabbit said, "Auntie, what is the matter?" The fox said, "The grapes are not ripe." That's what Martin Luther said, "The grapes are sour." If he was really against the pope, then why did he want to become the pope? I will not accept -- even if all the Christians of the world ask me to become the pope, I will not accept it. I will not accept even if the whole world asks me to become God, the creator, the father who is... (A noise is heard on the roof of Rajneesh Mandir)... above the roof of Rajneesh Mandir. Those are just two electricians! I will not accept it. Anything that is wrong, howsoever powerful it makes you, I am not going to accept. I am fulfilled, and I am absolutely contented with myself. I have no protest, no complaint, no grudge against anybody. It was for this simple reason that I have not talked about the Protestant section of Christianity separately. There is nothing separate about it. It is just the German mind that makes it separate and I am not in favor of this kind of German mind. I have more sannyasins in Germany than anywhere else, for the simple reason that they have seen the ugliness of Adolf Hitler and what he did. The younger generation does not want to carry that German mind any more, and this is the only place where we can deprogram them. We have one dozen communes in Germany. It takes a little hard work to break down the German mind, but it is worth trying, because once it breaks down the breakthrough is not far away. And once a German drops the German mind -- it takes longer for him to drop his mind, but once he drops it, he drops it forever. Those people have guts. I love them. Sooner or later the whole of Germany is going to be red. We cannot leave Germany, for the simple reason that they are the strongest people in the world. If they can alone fight the whole world, and go on winning for five years under the leadership of a crackpot, these people are of immense value. If we can change Germany, we can change the whole world. That is the criterion: Germany in our hands, the whole world is in our hands, because nobody can have as much resistance as the Germans. I have been experimenting, and I have been successful. Once a German has fallen in love with me, it is forever. You ask Haridas. He came to me somewhere around fifteen years ago; since then he has not left for a single moment. His old mother wanted to see him -- she had to come, he would not go. He will not leave me for a single moment. And when his mother saw the flowering of her son, the transformation, she did not wait; she immediately became a sannyasin. I have given her the name Haridasi. She is old, but a beautiful woman, very loving. Martin Luther was the same type as Adolf Hitler. He created this schism in Christianity, but he has not contributed anything to the world -- that's why I don't criticize him. I simply ignore the fellow. He is just below me.

But because atomic energy, after its invention, went into the hands of the politicians, it became a servant of death. Now there are even more advanced nuclear weapons which can destroy the whole earth. The already existing weapons are enough to destroy this earth seven times. One simply wonders why nations are going to develop more and more nuclear power. Seven times destroying the earth is not enough? In fact, you can destroy the earth only once. But scientific progress falls into the hands of the politicians because only they can provide enough finance to make these discoveries possible. The scientists of the whole world should think it over: their genius is being used by idiots! The scientists should disconnect themselves from any nation -- whether it is the Soviet Union or America. They should create an international academy of sciences. And it is not difficult. If all the scientists of the world are together, finances can be made available, and these discoveries can help man tremendously. The international academy of scientists can be in this international city. We can give them land, and every possible support. But they should be the decisive factors in what is going to happen through their experiments. And it is time the scientists should recognize their great responsibility. If a third world war happens then the scientists will be the greatest criminals, because they supplied all kinds of inventions to the politicians. Science should not be the monopoly of any nation, any country. The whole idea is stupid. How can science be monopolized? And every country is trying to monopolize the scientists, keep their inventions secret. This is against humanity, against nature, against existence. Whatever a genius discovers should be in the service of the whole. You are asking whether discoveries like changing human hearts or human brains are progressive steps. They are of great importance to bring a new humanity on the earth. If Einstein's body is no longer capable of living, do you think it would not be good if his whole brain is transplanted into a young, healthy man? The new man will become an Einstein, because all the genius of Einstein is transplanted to a younger body. This way bodies may go on changing, but we can keep the genius of Albert Einstein growing for centuries. And if a man in a seventy-year life can give so much, you can imagine if his brain continues for centuries how much benefit it will be for humanity, for the whole universe. This is really a wastage: the container gets rotten, and you throw the content also. The body is only a container. If the container has become dirty, old, unusable, change the container, but don't throw away the content. The genius mind can live for eternity in different bodies; that is nothing against nature. You heart, if it starts failing, and if you are of immense value to humanity... what is the fear of exchanging the heart? Somebody may be dying from cancer, but his heart is perfectly healthy; that heart can be planted in a man who is talented, a genius, and is healthy, but whose heart is not strong. This is simple; there is nothing in it against nature. But with politicians and the power in their hands, of course every advance has gone against nature. Everything that human genius has discovered, invented, finally is in the service of death. So are the priests. Now science is no longer a child, that it has to depend on others. Science is now grown-up enough, it is adult. Just a little courage.... I give the invitation to all the scientists of the world; we have the place, we have intelligent people here to help you in every possible way. And if you want to make an international academy here, we are capable of managing finances for you. It will be a great revolution in the history of man. The whole power will be in the hands of the scientists, who have never done any harm to anybody. And once all the power is in the hands of the scientists, politicians will fade away of their own accord. They have been exploiting scientists for their own purposes, and to be exploited by anybody is not an act of dignity. The scientists should recognize their dignity, they should recognize their individuality. They should recognize that they have been exploited down the ages by the priests and the politicians. Now it is time to declare that science is going to stand on its own feet. This will be a great freedom. Then all these experiments, such as laboratory babies, will be of a different caliber, because you can arrange what kind of genius you want. Up to now it has been just accidental, and because it has been accidental, ninety-nine percent of the people have nothing to contribute. They contribute only problems to the world. Now, what has Ethiopia contributed to the world? What have the poor countries contributed to the world -- or even the rich countries? Except problems, wars, there is no contribution on their part. But if you can give birth to a child in a scientific lab.... It is possible, there is no problem in it. The male semen and the woman's egg can meet in a tube. There is no need to go on in the old bullock cart way. We can look and we can have the whole picture of what this child is going to be. If we want more poets, we can create more poets. If we want more musicians, we can create more musicians. And we can create only geniuses; there is no need for mediocre people -- they have had their day. We can give the child strength, long life. We can make sure that he never becomes sick, that he will never becomes old. It is just a question of managing and finding the right egg and the right male contribution to the egg. What we have been doing is just utterly unintelligent. And this will free man also from guilt, possessiveness, jealousy, because you will not be producing children. Sex, for the first time, will be simply fun! Children will be produced in the lab. They will belong to all. And because you are not going to produce children in the old way -- it should be illegal and criminal to do so, you will be behind bars if you do it -- then many problems of your life will be simply dissolved. Why is the man so insistent...? Throughout the ages the insistence has remained there: he wants to be certain that the child born out of his wife's womb is his. Why? Who are you anyway? It is a question of property, because your child will become the inheritor of all that you have accumulated. You want to be certain that it is your child, not your neighbor's child. Women have been kept almost imprisoned, for the simple fear that if they start mixing with people it will be difficult to decide whose child it is. Only the mother will know, or even she may not know. Once production of life goes into the hands of science, sex will be transformed. Then you are not jealous, then you are not a monopolist, then monogamy is absurd. Then sex is just fun, the way you enjoy tennis. And you don't bother that the partners should remain monogamous -- two bodies enjoying each other.... And there will be no fear that the wife may get pregnant and there will be problems, financial and other. Sex will no longer be a problem for the world population; it will no longer be a problem for the priest. In fact, if children are produced in the scientific lab, many of the troubles of the world will dissolve. And we can create the best people: beautiful, healthy, capable of living as long as we want. Old age is not necessary -- a man can remain young, healthy, without sickness. All these hospitals and so many people, so much money involved.... Do you know? America spends more money on laxatives than on education. Great idea! Who cares about education? The question is laxatives! But the basic thing should be remembered. Scientists have to be courageous enough and declare that they don't belong to any nation, to any religion, that whatsoever they will be doing will be for the whole humanity. And I don't see that there is anything impossible in it. I am absolutely for those progressive inventions which can make man happier, live longer, be younger, healthier, and which make his life more of a play, fun, and less of a torturous journey from the cradle to the grave. I am not a man of etiquette, I don't know manners. I simply call a spade a fucking spade, because that's what it is. I have made the spade actually what it is. The old proverb is, a spade is a spade. That doesn't sound of any import. Of course a spade is a spade -- so what! It does not say anything about the spade. So I simply say that these are all idiots. But there is still hope for humanity. The hope is not that religious people will become politicians, or that religious people will start taking an interest in politics, no. But religious people can become, should become, rebellious against all political stupidity. There is the hope. The religious person should not remain just contented with his blissfulness and allow all these idiots to go on doing harm to innocent humanity. To me this is the only compassion: To rebel against the whole history of humanity. The religious person should rebel. In the past he has not done that. That's why I say, in the past religion has been just immature. Even the greatest religious personalities in the past will look like pygmies compared to the authentic religious person who is going to be born, because the authentic religion is basically rebellion -- rebellion against all superstition, rebellion against all stupidity, rebellion against all the nonsense that goes on being imposed on the human mind continuously. A rebellious religious man is a fire; his words will be words on fire. His silence is not going to be the silence of a cemetery. His silence will be the silence of a song, of a dance. His silence will be the silence of two lovers meeting, and not capable to find words to convey their love. Their love makes them wordless. The moment lovers start talking too much you can understand; love has disappeared. Conversation has started; conflict is not very far away. Conversation is the beginning, soon there will be argument. Where else can conversation lead except to controversy? But two lovers when they are really in love, throbbing with a new energy, feel themselves stuck, suddenly wordless. Even to say "I love you" seems to be difficult, seems to be far below the fact of love. It seems somehow to be sacrilegious to bring words into something which is so silent, and so glowing in silence, and so alive in silence. The religious person is silent, but it is not the silence of a cemetery, not the silence of a dead man. It is the silence of one who is really alive, fully alive, intensely alive. This intense aliveness is going to become his rebellion. What have I been doing for thirty years continuously? -- fighting every kind of nonsense. Was there any reward, was I seeking any reward out of all this fight? No, it was not for any reward. It was just the way my aliveness was asserting itself. It was not goal-oriented, there was no motivation; I was simply being myself. I enjoyed all that fight. In fact the people who came in conflict with me were very much surprised because it was an agony for them. To me it was an ecstasy. They could not understand how I was enjoying it. And I was surrounded on all sides with enemies. Alone, single-handedly I was moving among millions of people and against them, saying things which were very hurtful to their beliefs. One shankaracharya even asked me, "What are you going to get out of it? You are simply making so many enemies. Politicians are your enemies, all kinds of religious people are your enemies. The rich are your enemies, the poor are your enemies, the capitalists are your enemies, the communists are your enemies." He said, "This is strange; Mohammedans, Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists, Parsees, Sikhs, Christians -- they are all your enemies." I said to him, "I am going to write a book, How to Impress People and Create Enemies. This is just an experience for it.

When I say accept yourself, I am not saying accept your pattern of life -- don't try to misunderstand me.

When I say accept yourself, I am saying reject everything else -- ACCEPT YOURSELF.

But you must have interpreted it in your own way.

Reject all that has been imposed upon you -- I am not saying accept it.

Accept your innermost core which you have brought from the beyond and then you will not feel that you are missing something.

The moment you accept yourself without any conditions, suddenly an outburst of joy happens. Your juices start flowing, life really becomes ecstatic.

A wise person moves through his unhappiness alone, and whenever he is happy, comes and shares it with people. A fool shares his unhappiness with people, and when he is happy he sits alone...

Question 7 HORSESHIT, HORSESHIT, HORSESHIT. WHY DON'T YOU SHUT UP? I AM BORED WITH YOUR LECTURES, UTTERLY BORED.

Oh! Another angel from Munich? This time his name is not Alois, his name is Swami Deva Bhanu. If you are bored don't listen to me! Who is forcing you to listen? You are free. If you want to be bored then it is perfectly okay, listen. But the decision is yours. You cannot tell me 'Shut up.' Who are you to tell me? Even if nobody is here, if I want to speak I will go on speaking. That is my joy! There have been masters like that. A great master happened in Greece, Pyrrho, who used to talk even when there were no disciples. A disciple would be sitting there and the disciple would feel that it is too long and he is going on and on. And the disciple would leave. And he would continue. Who bothers about disciples? Pyrrho was really a master. It was a song he was singing -- if you want to participate, participate, otherwise you are free. Unless you are a masochist and you want to torture yourself, then it is your decision. Don't listen to me! And your feeling bored may not have anything to do with what I am saying. It may be just that you cannot understand it, that it goes above your head. So raise your head a little higher! Or maybe you are expecting something else, maybe you are here for some kind of entertainment. Then you are in a wrong place. But to be here or not to be here is your decision. You are completely free not to be here. And I don't know -- others may not be bored. Let us see. Where is Deva Bhanu? Can you stand, sir, so all can see? Good. And now I will ask others: Those who don't agree with Deva Bhanu, raise your hands. Now, sir, what can I do? I agree with you -- but what are we two against so many?

"Better to die than to live in sleep." - Gurdjieff

"The word 'awareness' is the master key. We will come across many situations in the gospel where Jesus goes on saying: "Awake! Be alert! Be conscious! Remember! " Buddha goes on saying to his disciples: "Right mindfulness is needed"; Krishnamurti goes on saying: "Awareness"; Gurdjieff's whole teaching is based on one word: 'self- remembering'." - Osho

"Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up! Get out!" - Aleister Crowley

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Three_Dangerous_Magi.html? id=C6nUWy4UYocC§ And the second part of the question is: "WHAT DOES IT EXACTLY MEAN TO TRANSCEND SEX?" Sex is a subtle subject, delicate, because centuries of exploitation, corruption, centuries of perverted ideas, conditioning, are associated with the word 'sex'. The word is very loaded. It is one of the most loaded words in existence. You say 'God'; it seems empty. You say 'sex'; it seems too loaded. A thousand and one things arise in the mind: fear, perversion, attraction, a tremendous desire, and a tremendous anti-desire also. They all arise together. Sex -- the very word creates confusion, a chaos. It is as if somebody has thrown a rock in a silent pool; millions of ripples arise -- just the word 'sex'! Humanity has lived under very wrong ideas. So the first thing: why do you ask how to transcend sex? Why do you want in the first place to transcend sex? You are using a beautiful word, 'transcend', but out of a hundred, ninety-nine are the possibilities that you mean, 'How to repress sex?' A person who has understood that sex has to be transcended is not even worried about transcending it, because transcendence comes through experience. You cannot manage it. It is not something that you have to do. You simply pass through many experiences, and those experiences make you more and more mature. Have you watched that at a certain age, sex becomes important? Not that you make it important. It is not something that you make happen; it happens. At the age of fourteen, somewhere near there, suddenly the energy is flooded with sex. It happens as if the flood-gates have been opened in you. Subtle sources of energy which were not yet open have become open, and your whole energy becomes sexual, colored with sex. You think sex, you sing sex, you walk sex -- everything becomes sexual. Every act is colored. This happens; you have not done anything about it. It is natural; transcendence is also natural. If sex is lived totally, with no condemnation, with no idea of getting rid of it, then at the age of forty-two -- just as at the age of fourteen sex gets opened and the whole energy becomes sexual, at the age of forty-two or near about -- those flood-gates close again. And that too is as natural as sex becoming alive; it starts disappearing. Sex is transcended not by any effort on your part. If you make any effort that will be repressive, because it has nothing to do with you. It is in-built in your body, in your biology. You are born as sexual beings; nothing is wrong in it. That is the only way to be born. To be human is to be sexual. When you were conceived, your mother and your father were not praying, they were not listening to a priest's sermon. They were not in the church, they were making love. Even to think that your mother and father were making love when you were conceived seems to be difficult. They were making love; their sexual energies were meeting and merging into each other. Then you were conceived; in a deep sexual act you were conceived. The first cell was a sex cell, and then out of that cell other cells have arisen. But each cell remains sexual, basically. Your whole body is sexual, made of sex cells. Now they are millions. Remember it: you exist as a sexual being. Once you accept it, the conflict that has been created down through the centuries dissolves. Once you accept it deeply, with no ideas in between, when sex is thought of as simply natural, you live it. You don't ask me how to transcend eating, you don't ask me how to transcend breathing -- because no religion has taught you to transcend breathing, that's why. Otherwise, you would be asking, "How to transcend breathing?" You breathe! You are a breathing animal; you are a sexual animal also. But there is a difference. Fourteen years of your life, in the beginning, are almost non-sexual, or at the most, just rudimentary sexual play which is not really sexual -- just preparing, rehearsing, that's all. At the age of fourteen, suddenly the energy is ripe. Watch...a child is born -- immediately, within three seconds the child has to breathe, otherwise he will die. Then breathing is to remain the whole of his life, because it has come at the first step of life. It cannot be transcended. Maybe before you die then, just three seconds before, it will stop, but not before it. Always remember: both ends of life, the beginning and end, are exactly similar, symmetrical. The child is born, he starts breathing in three seconds. When the child is old and dying, the moment he stops breathing, within three seconds he will be dead. Sex enters at a very late stage: for fourteen years the child has lived without sex. And if the society is not too repressed and hence obsessed with sex, a child can live completely oblivious to the fact that sex, or that anything like sex, exists. The child can remain absolutely innocent. That innocence is also not possible, because people are so repressed. When repression happens, then side by side, obsession also happens. So priests go on repressing; and there are anti-priests, Hefners and others -- they go on creating more and more pornography. So on one side there are priests who go on repressing, and then there are others, anti-priests, who go on making sexuality more and more glamorous. They both exist together -- aspects of the same coin. When churches disappear, only then Playboy magazines will disappear, not before it. They are partners in the business. They look enemies, but don't be deceived by that. They talk against each other, but that's how things work. I have heard about two men who were out of business, had gone broke, so they decided for a business, a very simple business. They started journeying, touring from one town to another town. First one would enter, and in the night he would throw coal tar on people's windows and doors. After two or three days the other would come to clean. He would advise that he could clean any coal tar, or anything that had gone wrong, and he would clean the windows. In that time the other would be doing half of the business in another town. This way, they started earning much money. This is what is happening between the church and Hugh Hefners and people who are continuously creating pornography. I have heard.... Pretty Miss Keneen sat in the confessional. "Father," she said, "I want to confess that I let my boyfriend kiss me." "Is that all you did?" asked the priest, very interested. "Well, no. I let him put his hand on my leg too." "And then what?" "And then I let him pull down my panties." "And then, and then...?" "And then me mother walked into the room." "Oh shit," sighed the priest. It is together; they are partners in a conspiracy. Whenever you are too repressed, you start finding a perverse interest. A perverted interest is the problem, not sex. Now this priest is neurotic. Sex is not the problem, but this man is in trouble. Sisters Margaret Alice and Francis Catherine were out walking along a side-street. Suddenly they were grabbed by two men, dragged into a dark alley, and raped. "Father, forgive them," said Sister Margaret Alice, "for they know not what they do." "Shut up!" cried Sister Catherine," this one does." This is bound to be so. So never carry a single idea against sex in your mind, otherwise you will never be able to transcend it. People who transcend sex are people who accept it very naturally. It is difficult, I know, because you are born in a society which is neurotic about sex. Either this way or that, but it is neurotic all the same. It is very difficult to get out of this neurosis, but if you are a little alert, you can get out of it. So the real thing is not how to transcend sex, but how to transcend this perverted ideology of the society: this fear of sex, this repression of sex, this obsession with sex. Sex is beautiful. Sex in itself is a natural rhythmic phenomenon. It happens when the child is ready to be conceived, and it is good that it happens -- otherwise life would not exist. Life exists through sex; sex is its medium. If you understand life, if you love life, you will know sex is sacred, holy. Then you live it, then you delight in it; and as naturally as it has come it goes, on its own accord. By the age of forty-two, or somewhere near there, sex starts disappearing as naturally as it had come into being. But it doesn't happen that way. You will be surprised when I say near about forty two. You know people who are seventy, eighty, and yet they have not gone beyond. You know 'dirty old people'. They are victims of the society. Because they could not be natural, it is a hangover -- because they repressed when they should have enjoyed and delighted. In those moments of delight they were not totally in it. They were not orgasmic, they were half-hearted. So whenever you are half-hearted in anything, it lingers longer. If you are sitting at your table and eating, and if you eat only half-heartedly and your hunger remains, then you will continue to think about food the whole day. You can try fasting and you will see: you will continuously think about food. But if you have eaten well -- and when I say eaten well, I don't mean only that you have stuffed your stomach. Then it is not necessarily so that you have eaten well. You could have stuffed yourself, but eating well is an art. It is not just stuffing. It is great art: to taste the food, to smell the food, to touch the food, to chew the food, to digest the food, and to digest it as divine. It is divine; it is God's gift. Hindus say, ANAM BRAHMA: food is divine. So with deep respect you eat, and while eating you forget everything, because it is prayer. It is existential prayer. You are eating God, and God is going to give you nourishment. It is a gift to be accepted with deep love and gratitude. And you don't stuff the body, because stuffing the body is being anti-body. It is the other pole. There are people who are obsessed with fasting, and there are people who are obsessed with stuffing themselves. Both are wrong because in both the ways the body loses balance. A real lover of the body eats only to the point where body feels perfectly quiet, balanced, tranquil; where body feels to be neither leaning to the left nor to the right, but just in the middle. It is an art to understand the language of the body, to understand the language of your stomach, to understand what is needed, to give only that which is needed, and to give that in an artistic way, in an aesthetic way. Animals eat, man eats. Then what is the difference? Man makes a great aesthetic experience out of eating. What is the point of having a beautiful dining table? What is the point of having candles burning there? What is the point of incense? What is the point of asking friends to come and participate? It is to make it an art, not just stuffing. But these are outward signs of the art; the inward signs are to understand the language of your body: to listen to it, to be sensitive to its needs. And then you eat, and then the whole day you will not remember food at all. Only when the body is hungry again will the remembrance come. Then it is natural. With sex the same happens. If you have no anti-attitude about it, you take it as a natural, divine gift, with great gratitude. You enjoy it; with prayer you enjoy it. Tantra says that before you make love to a woman or to a man, first pray -- because it is going to be a divine meeting of energies. God will surround you. Wherever two lovers are, there is God. Wherever two lovers' energies are meeting and mingling, there is life, alive, at its best; God surrounds you. Churches are empty; love-chambers are full of God. If you have tasted love the way Tantra says to taste it, if you have known love the way Tao says to know it, then by the time you reach forty-two, love starts disappearing on its own accord. And you say goodbye to it with deep gratitude, because you are fulfilled. It has been delightful, it has been a blessing; you say good-bye to it. And forty-two is the age for meditation, the right age. Sex disappears; that overflowing energy is no more there. One becomes more tranquil. Passion has gone, compassion arises. Now there is no more fever; one is not interested in the other. With sex disappearing, the other is no more the focus. One starts returning towards one's own source -- the return journey starts. Sex is transcended not by your effort. It happens if you have lived it totally. So my suggestion is, drop all anti-attitudes, anti-life attitudes and accept the facticity: sex is, so who are you to drop it? And who is trying to drop it? -- it is just the ego. Remember, sex creates the greatest problem for the ego. So there are two types of people: very egoistic people are always against sex; humble people are never against sex. But who listens to humble people? In fact, humble people don't go preaching, only egoists. Why is there a conflict between sex and ego? -- because sex is something in your life where you cannot be egoistic, where the other becomes more important than you. Your woman, your man, becomes more important than you. In every other case, you remain the most important. In a love relationship the other becomes very, very important, tremendously important. You become a satellite and the other becomes the nucleus; and the same is happening for the other: you become the nucleus and he becomes a satellite. It is a reciprocal surrender. Both are surrendering to the God of love, and both become humble. Sex is the only energy that gives you hints that there is something which you cannot control. Money you can control, politics you can control, the market you can control, knowledge you can control, science you can control, morality you can control. Somewhere, sex brings in a totally different world: you cannot control it. And the ego is the great controller. It is happy if it can control; it is unhappy if it cannot control. So there starts a conflict between ego and sex. Remember, it is a losing battle. The ego cannot win it because ego is just superficial. Sex is very deep-rooted. Sex is your life; ego is just your mind, your head. Sex has roots all over you; ego has roots only in your ideas -- very superficial, just in the head. So who is trying to transcend sex? -- the head is trying to transcend sex. If you are too much in the head then you want to transcend sex, because sex brings you down to the guts. It does not allow you to remain hanging in the head. Everything else you can manage from there; sex you cannot manage from there. You cannot make love with your heads. You have to come down, you have to descend from your heights, you have to come closer to earth. Sex is humiliating to the ego, so egoist people are against, always against sex. They go on finding ways and means to transcend it. They can never transcend it. They can, at the most, become perverted. Their whole effort from the very beginning is doomed to failure.

Obedience has a certain dumbness about it, disobedience a sharp intelligence about it. But obedience is respected because obedience gives less inconvenience. Of course that's right -- disobedience creates inconvenience. You would like a dead child because he will not create any inconvenience. You would not like an alive child -- the more alive, the more danger there is. Parents, societies, schools, they all force obedience, they dull you; and then they respect those people. That's why in life you never see people who stand first in schools, universities; in life they are simply lost. You never find them in life, where they go... they prove themselves very talented in school, but somehow in life they are lost. It seems that the ways of school are different from the ways of life. Somehow life loves lively people -- the more lively, the more rebellious: people with their own consciousness, being, and personality; people who have their own ways to fulfill; people who are not dead. Schools prefer just the opposite. The whole society helps you to become dumb, deaf, blind, dead. ------Life is awareness. The clock is not aware -- you can listen to the tick-tick, the clock has never listened to it. You can listen to your own heartbeat. Who is this listener? If only the heartbeat is life, then who is this listener? If breath is the only life, how can you be aware of your breath? That's why all Eastern techniques of meditation use breath awareness as a subtle technique -- because if you become aware of the breathing, then who is this awareness? It must be something beyond breath because you can look at it and the looker cannot be the object. You can witness it; you can close your eyes and you can see your breath going in and coming out. Who is this seer, the witnessing? It must be a separate force that does not depend on breathing. When the breathing disappears it is the stopping of a clock, but where does this awareness go? Where does this awareness move to? ------"How to start the journey?" -- become more alert about your actions, about your relationships, about your movements. Whatsoever you do -- even an ordinary thing like walking on the street -- try to become alert, try to take steps with full awareness. Buddha used to say to his disciples, "When you take a step with the right foot, remember, now this is the right foot; when you take a step with the left, remember, now this is the left. When you breathe in, remember, "Now I am breathing in"; when you breathe out, remember, "Now I am breathing out." Not that you have to verbalize it. Not that you have to say in words "I am breathing in", but just becoming alert that now the breath is going in. I am saying it to you so I have to use words, but when you are becoming alert you need not use words because words are like smoke. Don't use words -- just feel the breath going in and filling your lungs then being emptied. Just watch, and soon you will come to a recognition, a great recognition. that it is not simply breathing that goes in and out, it is life itself. Each breath in is life infusing its energy into you. Each breath out is a short death. With each breath, you die and you are reborn. Each breath is a crucifixion and a resurrection. And when you watch it, you will come to know a beautiful feeling of trust. When you breathe out, there is no certainty that you wiil ever be able to breathe in again. What is the certainty? Who has guaranteed it? Who CAN guarantee that you will be able to breathe in again? But somehow, a deep trust; you know that "I will breathe again". Otherwise breathing would become impossible. If you become so afraid that, "Who knows if I let my breath out, and if I go through this small death, what is the certainty that I will be able to breathe in again? If I can't breathe, then it is better not to breathe out", then you will die immediately. If you stop breathing out, you will die. But a deep trust exists -- that trust is part of life. Nobody has taught you. When a child starts walking for the first time, tremendous trust exists in him that he will be able to walk. Nobody has taught him. He has just seen other people walk, that's all. But how can he come to a conclusion that "I will be able to walk"? He is so tiny. People are so big, giants compared to him, and he knows that whenever he stands he falls down -- but still he tries. Trust is in-built. It is in your every cell of life. He tries, many times he will fall; he will try again and again and again. And one day, trust wins over and he starts walking. If you watch your breath you will become aware of a deep layer of trust, a subtle trust in life -- no doubt, no hesitation. If you walk, and walk alert, by and by you will become aware that you are not walking, you are 'being walked by'. That's a very subtle feeling: that life is moving through you, not that you are moving. When you feel hungry, if you are aware you will see life is feeling hungry within you, not you. Becoming more alert will make you conscious of the fact that there is only one thing you have got that you can call yours and that is witnessing. Everything else belongs to the universe; only witnessing belongs to you. But when you become aware of witnessing, even the idea of being I is dissolved. That too does not belong to you. That was part of darkness, part of the clouds that had gathered around you. In the clear light, when the sky is open and the clouds have disappeared and the sun is bright, there is no possibility of any idea of being I. Then simply witnessing is; nothing belongs to you. That witnessing is the goal of the journey. How to start the journey? -- start becoming more and more a witness. Whatsoever you do, do it with deep alertness; then even small things become sacred. Then cooking or cleaning become sacred; they become worship. It is not a question of what you are doing, the question is how you are doing it. You can clean the floor like a robot, a mechanical thing; you have to clean it, so you clean it. Then you miss something beautiful. Then you waste those moments in only cleaning the floor. Cleaning the floor could have been a great experience; you missed it. The floor is cleaned but something that could have happened within you has not happened. If you were aware, not only the floor but YOU would have felt a deep cleansing. Clean the floor full of awareness, luminous with awareness. Work or sit or walk, but one thing has to be a continuous thread: make more and more moments of your life luminous with awareness. Let the candle of awareness burn in each moment, in each act. The cumulative effect is what enlightenment is. The cumulative effect, all the moments together, all small candles together, become a great source of light.

According to me, the function of the parents is not how to help the children grow. They will grow without you. Your function is to support, to nourish, to help what is already growing. Don´t give directions and don´t give ideals. Don´t tell them what is right and what is wrong — let them find it by their own experience.

The function of the parents is not how to help the children grow. They will grow without you. Your function is to support, to nourish, to help what is already growing. Don´t give directions and don´t give ideals. Don´t tell them what is right and what is wrong — let them find it by their own experience.

Wherever there is a desire to have power over another person, it is politics. Power is always political, even on small children. The parents think they love, but it is only in their mind; otherwise they want the children to be obedient. And what does obedience mean? It means all the power is in the hands of the parents.

The father’s relationship to the children, the mother’s relationship to the children or children’s relationship to their father – are all possessive relationships. We don’t yet know how to relate and not possess. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA6YM-hDrqs§

BELOVED OSHO, YOU SAY THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE SIN, AND THAT IS UNAWARENESS. I TRIED FOR YEARS TO LOOK FOR THE GOOD IN EVERY SITUATION, HOWEVER PAINFUL IT SEEMED, BUT I STILL HAVE NOT COME TO UNDERSTAND HOW THERE IS NO WRONG. TO ME, THINGS LIKE THE ABUSE OF A CHILD -- EITHER PHYSICALLY OR PSYCHOLOGICALLY -- AND THE RAPE OF A WOMAN ARE WRONG. HOW CAN THEY BE CALLED GOOD? CAN YOU TELL ME ANYTHING TO HELP MY UNDERSTANDING OF THESE THINGS?

I have said that awareness is the only virtue, and unawareness is the only sin. Now I am in a difficulty. Who has told you to look for good in everything? How did you translate my statement about awareness to mean that you have to see the good in everything? And you say you have tried long to see good in everything, but there are children abused psychologically, sexually; woman are raped -- how can these things be good? But you seem to be just stupid. Being aware means not to make any judgment. And all this time you have been making judgments about what is good and what is not good. Then you are bound to be confused. And awareness will not arise out of this discrimination. Awareness simply means witnessing anything just like a mirror, giving no judgment about it. And as your awareness grows, things that looked sinful to you will look only pathological. People are sick. And they are sick as victims of thousands of years of teaching them what is good and what is not good. With awareness there is no decision about any act. Awareness simply sees it whether it is good or not; it has no criterion. But the first thing is to attain to awareness. And then the same things may not look the same. For example, the rape of a woman is certainly ugly. But who is responsible for it? The society, the culture, the religion -- they have been trying to keep men and women apart. Your biology knows nothing of it, and when you see a beautiful woman on a dark night, alone, your biology takes over your so-called morality and religion. But then too, it is not certain that raping the woman is certainly bad. Perhaps she was also waiting for it. Perhaps she was getting frustrated that nobody is raping her. There is a deep desire in every woman to be longed for, and the more drastically you long for her the more satisfied she feels. And rape is the ultimate in longing for a woman. You are ready to commit a crime just to have her. You may be imprisoned for years in a jail, you don't care. In most of the cases you and the woman are both brought up by the same idiotic society. They have told the woman to remain away from men, they have given her a certain psychology to avoid men. Even if somebody is attractive to her, she has to say no. In all the languages the poets have been saying for centuries that when a woman says no she means yes. But this is not true in Rajneeshpuram. Here when a woman says no she means no, and when she says yes she means yes. You are fortunate if she says no! But there is no confusion about the meanings of the words. No woman has been raped in four years' time in the commune here -- but a few swamis have been raped! This is something new that is happening. The swamis are in such a fear, and wherever they turn there is somebody ready to rape them! We are writing human history from the very beginning again. But you cannot decide these things superficially. All psychologists agree that a woman is raped because deep down she desires it. It gives her a great ego, that she is so beautiful, so lovable, that people are ready even to commit suicide -- there are countries where for rape you will be sentenced for your whole life or you may be crucified; still the man wanted her. There is a great satisfaction -- he risked his whole life! So don't take things superficially. But an unaware man is bound to take things superficially. My emphasis is not to determine which act is wrong and which act is right. In one situation the same act may be wrong; in other situations, right. Just a few days ago, one sannyasin wrote me a letter saying, "Osho, You have created a trouble" -- because I had said some time ago that many people, almost the majority of people in the world, men and women both, are untrained lovers. No training has been given to them. In fact everything has been kept from them, they have been kept ignorant. What does a virgin mean? Someone who has been kept absolutely ignorant. So I had said that the best way to introduce your children to love will be that, while you are making love, children should be playing around. Let them be there. And in fact it is one of the most significant things because every child sooner or later discovers what you are doing to his mother. First he thinks that this father seems to be a barbarian, doing pushups on the poor woman. He wants to kill this man, but the child is so small... so he represses the desire, and he is not even allowed to admit that he has seen it. And the child will never be able to forgive you, that you were secretive about things. You were not open, even with him. You talked about love, but love means many things: openness, honesty, sincerity. And about one of the most basic things in life you kept the child absolutely unaware. Children are very intelligent, every child is born with a tremendous energy of intelligence. It is the society and the education and the religion-they start destroying his intelligence, so by the time he is a young man, he is just a fool. But the small children are very perceptive, you cannot deceive them. So I had said that it is perfectly good -- because the child has to learn and it is better he learns from the very beginning. Now this woman wrote to me, "A problem has arisen: we allowed our child to be present while we were making love; now the child wants to make love to me. He says, `If father can do it, why can't I do it?' Now we cannot say that this is sin, because if it is sin, then why is his father doing it, and why is he being allowed to commit sin?" In a really human society there will be no sexual abuse of children. Such abuse exists only because children are kept in the dark; and they are curious, very curious, "What is it all about?" Then they get caught in somebody's net. But children are very understanding too. The mother, the father, both should make him understand, "This is your training to see how love is made. The time will come when you will be a young man and you will be making love -- then don't make the same mistakes that we have made." Make your lovemaking a deep understanding for the child. Make him also aware that he is not your age. Make the place of your lovemaking a temple, so that the child from the very beginning starts feeling love is something sacred. And if he knows everything about it nobody can abuse him. Now the question arises: who is responsible for sexual abuse of the child? You are responsible. You are keeping your children in darkness, and they are feeling that there is something that is being kept secret. They become curious; the more you hide it, the more curious they are. If it is open and is made available so the child can understand it -- yes, there will be a few problems, like the child wanting to make love to the mother. The mother can hug the child, the mother can help the child to understand: "Just look at my size and your size. Just grow up and you will find a beautiful woman, far more beautiful than me." But every mother wants the child to feel that she is the greatest and the most beautiful woman in the world, not knowing that she is creating a tragedy for the child for his whole life because now he will be looking for her all around the world and he will not find her. No woman will come up to the standard of his mother. No woman is going to give him satisfaction. The same is true about small girls. They should be made absolutely aware -- not just verbally in a classroom. That does not help, they become even more curious. Make it very honest. And when the experiment is happening every day in the house, where is the problem? Let your girl, your boy, be present. Let them see the beauty of it. Make the whole phenomenon as sacred as possible. And these children will always respect you because you were so honest with them, so sincere with them; you never kept anything secret from them. And any problems like this -- boys asking to make love to their mother -- can be explained to them, that they are not yet ripe. One day they will be ripe; for that day we are preparing them. And children are very receptive, very understanding. There is sexual abuse of children because they are kept in darkness by their parents, by their teachers. Love is something like a sin which has to be done in darkness, and nobody is to know about it. You are doing something ugly. In your own mind it is something ugly, something that should not be done. You are not rejoicing in it. Rejoice! Make love a festive moment. And of course, your children have to take part in it. They can at least dance around you while you are making love, sing beautiful songs around you, play on their small guitars, drums. They can make it really festive! And they will understand that they are children and they are not of age, and soon they will get their own lovers. And if this experience has been part of their growing up, their love life will have a totally different flavor. So in child abuse, the person who has abused the child is only a victim of a very neurotic society. Why should there be rapes? I do not understand, because there are as many women as there are men, equal in numbers. Why should there be rapes? And while you are raping a woman against her will, it cannot be a joyful experience. It is more like a fight, it is not like love. But people are doing that for the simple reason that the society has completely destroyed any possibility for them to have any love relationship. And society can keep you in such darkness that it is unbelievable. In the Middle Ages it was thought that the queen of England did not have her legs separate, they were joined -- because the way of dressing was such you could not figure out whether the legs were joined or separate. It was all over England an accepted fact that queens are different and unique. And no queen or king had the guts to say this is nonsense. Now nobody will fall into such a stupid belief, because the skirts are becoming smaller and smaller and smaller, and soon they are going to disappear. You can see the legs of the queen, and you will be really shocked that they are separate. They are just like your legs, everybody's legs. But this was not told to people. Joined legs gave queens uniqueness, a speciality: they are royal, you are common people. The same is being done in many things, on many levels all around the world. You don't want your children to know that you make love. You will be surprised: in India, the father cannot play with his small boy or girl in front of the elders, that is thought to be very unmannerly. No husband can talk to his wife in the day... because in India there are joint families. There are so many people in one family -- fifty, sixty -- and houses are small and overcrowded. The husband and wife sometimes have to wait for years to see each other's faces, because they meet only in the darkness of the night without whispering a word, because all others are sleeping. The house is small and overcrowded; in the same room other people are sleeping. It is no wonder that in India divorce is a very late development, and that too happens only in a few well-educated, rich cities like Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta. But ninety-nine percent of India cannot think of divorce, for the simple reason that at least you have to see your wife before you can divorce her! You have to talk to her before you know what a bitch she is! She has to talk with you to know, "My God! What a macho fellow I have got!" But these things don't happen. Husbands and wives have no time, no space, no secrecy, no privacy. They meet deep in the darkness of the night when everybody has fallen asleep. And they make love as quickly as possible, because somebody may wake up. When my uncle got married... I used to sleep in the same room, and I wouldn't let him make love to his wife. Whenever he would get up from his bed and move towards his wife, I would start coughing. He would go back to his bed. After a few days he told me, "This seems to be strange, that the moment I get out of bed -- the whole night you don't cough, only exactly at that time. What happens? Why do you start coughing?" I said, "I don't know. I was also thinking that there must be some connection -- your getting out of bed and my coughing. I have been thinking, `What connection can there be?'" But finally he had to open his heart. He said, "I know you. We have been married for five months and I have not even touched my wife's body. And we cannot say that you should be removed from the room to some other room, because no other room is ready to receive you. And they will ask me why, and I cannot tell the true story, that for five months this boy has been torturing me!" I said, "I have been doing that simply to make you aware -- why make it such a secrecy? Why make it something ugly that you have to hide behind darkness? I have never stopped you, you can make love to your wife; I will be there just to see that everything is going right! And someday I am going to be married, then...? Who is going to teach me? You be my teachers, you both be my teachers." He said, "You are impossible. If you see us making love, you will spread the rumor all over the city. And the truth is I myself don't know much about love, because it is never talked about, never taught. You simply get married -- an arranged marriage, you have not seen the girl." In India, for ninety-nine percent of the people, marriage is still just fate; the astrologer decides it. They don't even see the other's photograph, they don't know whom they are going to live their whole life with. This kind of state causes many problems. Sexual abuse of children will be there; rapes will be there -- because there are women who have not been able to find a husband, perhaps they have lost all hope of finding a husband. There are men who cannot afford to be married, who are somehow managing to survive, but what to do with the biology? They cannot even go to a prostitute, they don't have the money. So rape remains the only possible outlet for their biological instinct. Don't be hard on the rapist. And don't be hard on the woman who has been raped. These are problems created by the society. Be hard on it! In my commune it is absolutely impossible that anybody should rape. I receive letters every day from my women sannyasins: "What is happening to the swamis? They don't seem to be interested in us at all. They avoid, they escape, they make an appointment and never turn up. Is there something wrong?" There is nothing wrong. This small section of humanity has made love, for the first time, a simple thing. And there is a saturation point. Now a male sannyasin has made love to many women; he feels simply tired. He wants to be left alone, he wants to meditate. Who is going to rape? Impossible! In the outside world, men have been chasing women for thousands of years and it was thought that it is natural. It is not. In my commune, women are chasing men and men are escaping and hiding, finding excuses. This commune has proved your thousands of years were simply managed. It was not true, because man is sexually the weaker person; the woman is very strong sexually. That's why for centuries there have been only female prostitutes. Only just now, in very sophisticated areas like London, Tokyo, have there appeared a few male prostitutes. But a male prostitute is finished in one love affair; then the whole night there is no business! The woman can do business the whole night. She can finish many men very easily. Strange, that man was chasing her; it was absolutely against the reality. But man is an egoist -- macho. He becomes interested only in things which are difficult, when things are a challenge. The woman has understood it from the very beginning -- that the man is interested only if she keeps herself far away and becomes a challenge to him, becomes a problem to his ego. But always remember, the woman was very clever: she kept away, but not too far away. Because if you are too far away, the man may lose interest, may start moving in some other direction. She has to be within reach, and yet beyond. It is a delicate territory. So the woman has been playing with the man. Sometimes she will come closer and the man will feel, "Now, the moment is coming!" -- and she will start moving away. This way man has been chasing woman. Otherwise, if we accept our realities and our nature, the woman will be the chaser and the man will be the chased. Just the other day somebody sent me a question. A woman sannyasin asked me, "When I surrender to my man, something happens. I do not find him there, he is somewhere else in his mind." No, man does not like the woman to surrender. You are doing wrong, you are going against the male psychology. He wants to force you to surrender; that gives him great egoistic joy. But you simply surrender.... I am reminded of my school days.... There used to be every year a wrestling competition. Somehow we persuaded a very strong boy in our class that he should enter the competition, and we would make every arrangement that he should win. He was very reluctant, but we praised him, his muscles and his body and his exercises. And we said, "This is the time! When are you going to use all your muscles that you have developed in the gym? -- this is the time. And everybody in the class is agreed that you will come out on top." But what happened on the wrestling ground was amazing and something really remarkable.... He had come into the semifinals, now he was facing students from other schools. The other school had hired a professional wrestler, and they pretended that he was a student, that "His age is a little more because he goes on failing." And everybody could understand -- wrestlers are not great intellectuals. But we were afraid for the boy that we had put forward. He looked a pygmy in front of that giant. But he did something immensely beautiful: As the drum started beating and the wrestling was to start, the boy that we had put there lay down on the ground, flat. That's the way Indian wrestling is: one party has to sit on the chest of the other party, and the other party's whole body has to touch the ground, his back has to touch the ground. He lay down. The wrestler stood there; he could not figure out what was happening. And the student said, "Sit on my chest!" The wrestler could not get the idea. He was still standing there looking very silly, and the whole crowd was clapping: this kind of wrestling nobody has seen! Our principal called the boy in and asked, "Why did you do that?" He said, "What else to do? To be beaten unnecessarily... that man is a professional wrestler. I came to know just before the match that the other school is deceiving, so I thought the best way is not to give him a chance to be victorious. On my own I surrendered." But the other man could not gather courage to sit on his chest. What is the point? -- the man is lying down already. You sit on his chest and you are declared victorious? What kind of victory is this? Never surrender. Pretend that you are not going to surrender, and that creates challenge. For the time being, please stop chasing men in the commune. Just forget all about them, let them meditate a little, and soon they will be after you. Then remember that the old strategy, which has worked for thousands of years, is still in the psychology of everybody. Remain a challenge, and then the man becomes interested. He is not so much interested in the woman, he is much more interested in the challenge. And you will not find only one swami chasing you, you will find many swamis chasing you -- if you create the challenge. That is the whole secret of it. But all this stupidity should stop. People should accept the reality, that the man is sexually not so strong as the woman. Although he has been calling her the fair sex, the fact is just the opposite: he is the fair sex. The woman is very strong. But once things are accepted in their reality, and when no means no and yes means yes, you have sorted out a puzzle that has been going on for centuries. For centuries, poets have been singing songs that the woman is mysterious; even if you live with her your whole life, her mystery remains intact. Somebody wrote a letter to me: "I also feel that the woman is very mysterious. I have lived with a woman for five years, but she is still unpredictable. When she will start fighting, and when she will start throwing things, and when she will be very loving, there is no way to know." I said, "Now, there is no difficulty. Just go to our plastic surgeon, Leeladhar, and he will make you a woman. So you will know the mystery -- both the male mystery and the female mystery." It is so easy now for a man to become a woman, for a woman to become a man, that both can know each other's difficulties and each other's mysteries. And all those poets will be discarded, all those mysteries will be forgotten. There is no mystery. That's why you cannot find it -- because it does not exist! It is simply your polar opposite. Man and woman are polar opposites, that's why they attract each other. And only through polar opposition is creation possible. Only through polar opposition does life happen. Homosexuality has ended in AIDS. It could have been predicted very easily, because similar energies meeting cannot create life, they can only create death. That's what AIDS is. It has not happened to lesbians, for the simple reason that there is no transfer between negative polarities. Both are negative, both are receptive; neither of them is a donor. So lesbians are the safest in the world now. And if women are intelligent they will turn more and more to lesbianism. The man is gone, he is finished. AIDS has come out of homosexuality. AIDS is nothing but death. So learn a simple principle: similar energies create death, opposite energies have the tension to create life. That's why I say homosexuality is unnatural -- unless you want to commit a slow suicide, then it is perfectly good. Lesbians will not create death because no transfer of energy happens between them. But they will not have the joy, the orgasmic experience which is possible only with the opposite pole. From the very childhood every child has to be made aware of all possibilities of love, sex, and all deviations, perversions. Then there will be no sexual abuse of children. And if everybody is aware of the reality, I don't think there is going to be any rape. There is no need, the man can simply ask the woman. It is far more cultured and human. If the woman has the desire, no rape is happening. And if the woman hasn't, then it is just human to leave her. Let her find her man, you start finding your woman. There are so many women and so many men that it is a very rare possibility you will not get a woman. So why commit something like rape? You are not going to gain anything from it. In fact, you will feel guilty, you have done something inhuman. You have trespassed somebody's territory. I don't say that rape is good, I don't say that child abuse is good. How did you manage to translate my statement about awareness and start looking into everything, making a hard effort to see good in it? You seem to be a strange fellow. I had said, "Be aware without judgment," and what you are doing is just the opposite. You are trying to judge a situation. Of course you want to judge it as good -- it is not possible. There are bad things, there are good things; there is no need to force yourself to accept a bad thing as good. But the man of awareness has a different perception. Perhaps something that you think in your unawareness is bad may turn out to be good, or vice versa. But the man of awareness is not in search of judgments, condemnation, appraisal. He is simply witnessing, with clarity. His clarity tells him what is right, without any effort -- your hard effort is not needed. It is the easiest thing for the man of awareness to know what is right and what is wrong. And also he will be able to see why something wrong goes on happening. There must be roots somewhere in the culture, in the society, in the world, that poisonous flowers go on flowering. And somebody must be taking care of those plants, watering them. Your priests are doing it, your politicians are doing it, your psychoanalysts are doing it, your professors are doing it -- because these people live on your misery. They live on your being somewhere wrong. If you are perfectly right, they are useless. Just the other night, one of my topmost therapists, Veeresh from Holland, asked me, "What is the future of our therapeutic efforts?" I said to him, "Our therapy is just to destroy all that has made man miserable, split, schizophrenic, insane, sick. But once our therapy has destroyed all this poison in the world, then there is no future for our therapy. It has done its work and there is no need for it to exist anymore. "That has to be understood very clearly, because once you start doing something, it becomes your vested interest. Then on the one hand you go on doing what you are supposed to do, destroying sickness -- and on the other hand you go on creating it, because without it you will be nobody." So my therapists have to understand from the very beginning that what they are doing is not something that is to be permanently there. It is only in the transitory period of humanity that therapy is needed. Therapy is needed because people have been made sick. Their sickness is not real, that's why it can be cured very easily, very simply. But remember always that you are not to become a permanent phenomenon, because that means you will have to create sickness. You will have to create the same old game -- perhaps under a new name. You have to be courageous enough, when the work is done, to retire from the work. Become a gardener, become a farmer, a plumber or anything you can manage to do. But therapy should not be your profession. These are ugly professions. We have to have them because in the past man has suffered so many wounds, they have to be healed. But just heal them, and once they are healed you move to some creative work. It was compassionate of you to help human beings to be psychologically healthy. And this will be even more compassionate, not to become a permanent source of dependence for all those people you have helped to be healthy. You have to know when the time is ripe for you to become farmers, gardeners -- anything that you love, but be creative. Therapy is not creative, therapy is destructive. It is destroying sickness which has been imposed on humanity. A better human world will simply accept realities and will not ask for fictions. I have heard that a newly married couple came to a holiday resort to have their honeymoon, but both were looking a little afraid of each other. Both were sitting and talking and the night had almost half passed. The woman finally said, "We have come here for a honeymoon, not to talk about the weather; that we can do anywhere." The man said, "That is true. But the problem is that I have a deep-rooted, lifelong habit: I undress only in darkness. So first you put the lights off so I can undress and go to bed." The woman said, "This is a very strange idea. You could have said it before." He said, "I knew that I would have to say it sometime. And I have to say one thing more -- better to be finished with it. One of my legs is false, artificial; that's why I cannot undress in the light -- you will see my leg." The woman giggled. She said, "It is perfectly good, because my breasts are false, one of my eyes is false, my teeth are false. You opened the door, now everything is honest. We can undress in the light or darkness, whatever you prefer; it will not make any difference. I was also waiting... thinking, how to start, from where to start? This way the whole night will be lost, and this is supposed to be our greatest night, our honeymoon night." This is the situation. Everybody is hiding something from everybody else -- a false leg, a false breast, false teeth, a glass eye -- everybody is trying to hide something. It is better to be honest and sincere. If humanity decides to be honest and sincere, life can be a rejoicing. Life can be all that you need. Life has given you the opportunity to live it totally, and you are getting caught in stupid things and wasting the opportunity. And life is going by continuously, it is not going to wait for you. Now what business is this of yours, to find good in everything? Who told you to? Now, how are you going to find good in the false breasts? What good? Just a beautiful flat chest? What good are you going to find in false teeth? Naturally, you will be in trouble -- making hard effort to believe that there must be something good in it. Don't waste your time in unnecessary inquiries. Life is short -- rejoice in it, dance it, sing it. My statement was totally different. That's why I say to you continually, don't just hear me, listen to me. You heard a certain statement and translated it in your mind, that you have to see good in everything. Even I was puzzled -- the translation seems to be so far away, absolutely unconnected. But I have the feeling that because I said, "Awareness is good, unawareness is bad," that created the trouble for you. I have said awareness is good -- so rather than being aware, you started being good and seeing good. It does not happen that way. Awareness has to be there first, only then can you be good. Awareness has to happen first, then everything else follows. And being aware does not mean that everything becomes good. If everything becomes good, the very word `good' will become meaningless. Awareness will make you aware of what is good and what is not good. And awareness will give you the direction to move towards the good and not towards the bad. excerpt from OSHO Christianity: The Deadliest Poison and Zen: The Antidote to All Poisons Chapter #8 Chapter title: Fictitious father, crackpot son

Christianity, I have been told by the Christian friends, is based on family: family is its foundation stone. But family is also the foundation stone of all neurosis, of all psychosis, of all kinds of mental sicknesses, of all kinds of social problems. It is also the base of races, of nations, of wars. Family has to be understood. It has no future; it has already outlived its usefulness, its necessity. But we have been conditioned -- not only Christians, but everybody -- that the family is a great contribution to the world. The reality is totally different. I have to go point by point, in detail, because the problem of family is one of the most serious problems. The first thing ... The family is a prison, it wants to keep control of the children, of the wife. It is a very tight group of people, and they have made this prison sacred. But the results are very ugly. Every kind of imprisonment prevents spiritual growth. What do you think ... why did Buddha renounce the world? Why did Mahavira renounce the world? In fact they were not renouncing the world, they were simply renouncing the family -- nobody has said this before -- because how can you renounce the world? Wherever you are, the world is. You can only renounce the family. But all religious scriptures, including Christian scriptures, are continuously lying to the people: they talk of renouncing the world. It distracts you completely from the fact that all these people were renouncing the family, because the family was such that they could not grow within it. The family is programming every child according to its prejudices. If you are born in a Christian family you will be continuously programmed for Christianity, and you will not ever suspect that your conditioning may be wrong, your conditioning may be preventing you from going beyond. Just the other night, when the wife and the son of the sannyasin who has died arrived, the son was very much excited the whole day. He told the sannyasins he would like to come here and live forever. But when he heard me, he freaked out. He told the sannyasins, "I am a Christian and I believe in God -- and I am not a homosexual!" His prejudiced mind could not see that I have not said that all Christians are homosexuals. I have said only that the monks and the nuns are homosexuals, are lesbians. This is how people go on missing points. He heard in his mind, through his interpretation of the programming, that I am calling all Christians homosexuals. And he proudly says, "I believe in God" -- without understanding a single word. What does belief mean? Belief means you don't know. It is utterly in ignorance that people have forced the idea on you, and you carry it as if you know God. A man who believes in God should be ashamed, not proud. Believing is hiding your ignorance. Knowing is a totally different matter. But Christianity and all other religions go on confusing people's minds. They never make the distinction between believing and knowing. A blind man can believe in light, but that is not going to help. One needs eyes to see the light, and then there is no need to believe. When you know something, is there any need to believe in it? Do you believe in light? Do you believe in the moon? Do you believe in the stars? You simply know, there is no question of belief. Belief arises only for fictions, for lies, not for truth. Every belief system is a hindrance for spirituality. But that young man, I could see in his face, I could see in his eyes ... And I immediately inquired, "What is wrong with him? So young and he has already become dead?" His father who had come here to meditate and who wanted to be a sannyasin was younger than him. He wanted to live here his whole life after hearing me and everything I said about Christianity. His mother is far younger than him. She wants to come here and stay for a few days, to meditate. She loved the place, she loved the people. She was touched very much by your ceremony for her husband. Nowhere in the world would she have got that ceremony for her husband. Death, according to Christianity, is a taboo: you should not talk about it. Death is taboo ... And life is also taboo, you should not live it! Death you should not talk about, and life you should not live! They don't leave you any alternative -- neither can you live, nor can you die. They keep you hanging in the middle, half-dead, half-alive. This creates schizophrenia. You are not allowed to be total in anything: in life, in death, in love -- only partially involved. A man who is partially involved is only partially alive. The deeper your involvement in existence, the deeper your life. When you are involved totally in life, in death, in love, in meditation, in any kind of thing that you want to do -- painting, music, poetry, dance -- unless you are totally involved in it you will never know the maximum, the optimum pleasure, the optimum blissfulness. People are living only at the minimum, just surviving, or, to be absolutely truthful, just vegetating -- just waiting ... and waiting, and nothing happens in their life. No flowers blossom in their life, no festivals happen in their life. And their death is as ugly as their life was, because death is the ultimate culmination of your life. If you have lived totally, death is not the end. Death is only an episode, a small episode in an eternal life. You have died many times, but because you have never lived totally, you became unconscious at the moment of death; the fear brought you into a coma. That's why you don't remember your past lives, because the coma stands as a barrier for the past lives and their remembrance. And because you don't know your past lives, you cannot understand that there is going to be life after death, that life is eternal. Birth and death are mere episodes; thousands of times you have been into birth, into death. But when you are not allowed to live totally, when everywhere there is interference from religion ...

One small boy in the school -- of course a Christian boy -- was asked by the teacher the first day he entered the school, "What is your name?" He said, "Don't." The teacher said, "Strange, I have never heard such a name." He said, "Everything, whatever I do, I only hear this: `Don't' -- so I think it is my name."

But the whole of Christianity is doing that to everybody. It is a life-negative religion, it does not allow you to live joyously. And the family is the root, because obviously the programming starts from the family. Christianity says that it is founded on family. And I know perfectly well that unless family disappears from the world these religions, these nations, these wars will not disappear, because they are all based on family. The family teaches you that you are a Hindu, and the Hindu religion is the best religion of all; other religions are so-so. Christianity continues the programming of children: "You can be saved only through Jesus Christ. Nobody else can save you. All other religions are just moralities, very superficial, they are not going to help you." And when a child, alongside his breast feeding, is continuously fed with all kinds of superstitions -- God, and the Holy Ghost, and the only begotten son of God, Jesus, heaven and hell ... Children are very vulnerable, because they are born as a tabula rasa -- nothing is written on them, their minds are pure. You can write anything you want on the child, and every family commits the crime: they destroy the individual and create a slave. Obedience is virtue, disobedience is the original sin. When a child starts being programmed from the very birth, when he is very vulnerable and very soft, you can write anything. It will go on in his unconscious. You can tell him that "Our nation is the greatest nation in the world"; every nation is telling that. "Our religion is the greatest religion, our scripture is written by God himself" -- Hindus are saying that, Christians are saying that, Jews are saying that. Everybody is doing the same crime. Christianity, of course, is doing it more efficiently, more cunningly, because it is the greatest religion in the world. It uses ultra-modern techniques of programming. It sends its missionaries to learn psychoanalysis, to learn how to program people, how to deprogram people. If a Hindu has to be converted into Christianity, first he has to be deprogrammed of Hinduism. Again the tabula rasa appears; what was written is erased. Now you can write again, "Christianity is the highest religion in the world, and there has been no man like Jesus Christ, and will never be again, because he is the only begotten son of God." All wars depend on the family. It has been a tradition in many nations in the past that you should contribute at least one son to the army, to protect the nation, to protect the dignity and the pride of the nation. In Tibet, every family has to contribute the eldest son to the monasteries. This has been done for thousands of years, as if the children are just commodities you can contribute, as if the children are money you can give in charity. This divided the world into different camps because of religion, because of politics, because of nationalities, because of races. They all depend on family. Family is the root cause of mankind's thousands of wounds. To go deeper, in more detail, psychologists have discovered a certain phenomenon they call "imprinting." When a child is born, he gets the first imprint of the mother, the father, because they are there. You may not be aware what imprinting can do .... When a scientist was exploring the phenomenon of imprinting, he was standing by the side of a hen's egg, and it was time for the egg to break open and allow the small bird to come out. Ordinarily, the hen is sitting on the egg, so the first imprint is of the mother. But this scientist was standing there, so when the baby came out from the egg he saw the scientist's shoe. That was his first imprint. The scientist could not believe his eyes. When the baby became older, rather than falling in love with any female, he was continuously trying to make love to the scientist's shoe! The scientist could not believe what was happening! But he had discovered a great phenomenon: that whatever comes first in the vision of the child is his first imprint. The mother is his first imprint, the father is his second imprint. And if the child is a boy, then he falls in love with his mother, and his whole life he will suffer. ... The husband is looking for his mother, and the wife is looking for her father. Both are in a tremendous dilemma: "How did it happen? Now how to get rid of each other?" And the problem becomes more difficult because the church does not allow divorce. Christianity says -- I am quoting the Bible -- "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder." God has joined wives and husbands together; let no man put them asunder. This is interpreted as the basis for forbidding divorce. Whatever the suffering, all the old stories end up with marriage, all ancient stories end up with marriage, with the last statement after the marriage, "and they lived in happiness forever." The truth is, after the marriage is the deluge, after the marriage is the hellfire. So as not to disturb people, every story stops at the marriage. In fact this is the beginning of the story, and they have made it the end. Meeting a girl on the sea beach is not the real thing. Neither is the girl real, nor are you real. You are pretending to be a great man, a hero, Alexander the Great. She is pretending to be Sophia Loren. You both are hypocrites -- but hypocrisy is good on the sea beach. You see each other only for a few seconds, or a few hours at the most. Hypocrisy can be maintained for a few hours, but it cannot be maintained for your whole life. Once you get married, the hypocrisy becomes a burden, you cannot carry it.

Two persons got married and entered a sea resort honeymoon hotel. The wife immediately started moving towards the bathroom, and told the husband, "Put the light off. When I come to bed I don't like lights on." The husband said, "This is a strange thing, because I have to go to the bathroom also. The lights should remain on!" The wife said, "Do you hear me or not? Put the lights off!" The husband said, "It is better to say the truth. The truth is that one of my legs is false!" -- and he took the leg off and put it aside. He said, "I cannot walk in the darkness. It is very difficult for me to walk even in the light!" The wife said, "If that is the case, then it is better to be friends." She pulled off both her breasts and threw them down. The husband looked at the breasts lying on the floor, and he said, "It is okay." He took his teeth out and threw them. The wife said, "You think you are going to win?" She took off her hair, she was baldheaded, and threw the hair on top of everything. It was becoming a big heap!

Actually something like this happens. By and by you start dropping your hypocrisy, your falseness, your pretensions. And when all pretensions are gone, then the woman you thought was a Juliet is so ordinary -- and not even ordinary, but worse than ordinary. And the man you were thinking of as a Romeo -- all the Romeo and the romance are finished. He turns out to be just a chicken. And then the story begins. Then it is constant frustration, and constant effort to find someone else. But religion prohibits adultery, you should remain confined in your family. When Jesus said, "Love your neighbor ..." And if the neighbor happens to be a woman? I sometimes wonder, perhaps he never thought about the implications. Love thine enemy -- but if the enemy happens to be a woman? He was not a great thinker or philosopher, just a poor carpenter's son. What does he know of logic and its implications? And because every family is in conflict -- the husband and wife are continuously fighting -- the children are growing up with this constant fight; this is becoming their imprint. The boy will repeat his father's structure, and the girl will repeat her mother's behavior, when they get married. It is a constant repetition, generation after generation, because from where will they learn how to be a husband, how to be a wife? From the mother, from the father -- those are the only people who are available in childhood. And that is the most vulnerable time. The children learn that the parents fight, they use ugly words to each other. Every night there is a pillow fight, every day the wife is nagging. The father feels the wife is just a pain in the neck and nothing else. The father tries to remain as long as possible in the office, and then he goes to the pub. The boy is learning. The girl is also learning: when the husband comes home, the wife is going to beat him. ... What kind of love is this? You don't allow the woman to move; if she moves she is a prostitute. If she enjoys making love to you, that means she is not a virtuous woman. You want the woman not to move. That's why the missionary posture is used -- the woman underneath and the beast on top of her. And Christianity says it has brought culture to the world! In the East, for thousands of years, this has been taken for granted, that the man should be under the woman, not on top of her. He is more weighty, he has more muscles. The woman is smaller and more fragile; she should be on top of the man. But on top of the man she will be enjoying movement. Her real pleasure does not come from the vagina. The vagina is absolutely insensitive. It has to be insensitive because the birth of the child will happen through it. If it is too sensitive, the woman will go crazy when the child comes out. The vagina is absolutely insensitive, there is no feeling. It is the small clitoris on top of the vagina which gives her pleasure, but that is possible only if she is allowed to move. So every woman hates love, and man understood very early on, in primitive days, that he is not really as competent sexually as the woman. A man can have only one orgasm. For the second orgasm he will have to wait according to his age. The woman is capable at any age of having multiple orgasms. It was a very cunning strategy to keep the woman underneath, unmoving, with closed eyes, so you can have the orgasm and the woman knows nothing of pleasure in it. She simply feels exploited, used, just like any commodity. It hurts. And the man is finished within two minutes -- at the most three minutes, but that is the record. The woman has not even started to get into it and the man is out! Naturally she hates it. Naturally she goes to listen to the monks talking about celibacy. She touches the feet of the saints, saying that "You are great people who live in celibacy, brahmacharya, and there is my husband, an idiot, every day ... I am tired after working the whole day, taking care of the children, taking care of the kitchen, taking care of the clothes, taking care of the house, of the servants. I am continuously tired, and he comes home and all that he wants is to make love. After making love -- that is two minutes, average -- he turns to the other side and goes to sleep and starts snoring." When the man is snoring the woman is crying and has tears, because what kind of life is this? He has no respect for her. She is simply being used, and when she has been used she is of no more importance. And Christians say this is culture. The Eastern scriptures of Tantra know what culture is. They make it a point that the man should always be under the woman so he can remain static. If he remains unmoving, then he can remain without ejaculation for as long as he wants -- not two minutes, not three minutes. The woman should be on top and allowed to have as much joy of movement as possible so her clitoris gives her great orgasms -- multiple, one after another. She starts groaning, moaning, shouting, all kinds of gibberish. Only then is she happy. Seeing this disparity, that the man can have only one orgasm and the woman is capable of having multiple orgasms, man simply dropped the idea, because multiple orgasm is dangerous, he cannot cope with it. Keep the woman static so she never comes to know that there is anything like orgasm. I don't think in India you can find one percent of women who have known orgasm. I have asked hundreds of women; they don't know what orgasm is. Even in the West, only within these last thirty years, twenty percent of women have started having orgasms; still eighty percent are old-fashioned. They still belong to the church and they still believe in the Bible, they still listen to all kinds of nonsense called sermons. If a woman is satisfied, having multiple orgasms, she will never be a pain in the neck. She will love you, she will rejoice in you, she will celebrate you, she will wait for you; she will prepare better food, better clothes. But you have destroyed all her joy, and you still want her to respect you and to love you -- for what? And because she is not happy the children become miserable from the very beginning. The mother's impact on the children is immense. She is unhappy, frustrated, always tired. The children start learning all these things and they will repeat them in their lives. Now it is a well- established psychological fact that every boy loves his mother; every girl loves her father. That is absolutely natural, the other sex is attractive. But because the girl loves the father, she starts hating her mother -- because she is keeping control, complete control, of the father. And as the girl grows older the mother does not allow any intimacy between the father and the girl. She is standing in between, she is afraid -- and she is not wrong, because the father remembers for the first time, when his daughter becomes sixteen or seventeen years old, how his wife used to look. This was the woman he had fallen in love with; the daughter looks almost like his wife when she was seventeen, when he had fallen in love with her. The same is true with the boys. They love their mothers, but there is no possibility of any love affair between the boy and the mother. The second opportunity for love is the sisters, who look like the mother and are younger, but Christianity and all other religions prohibit it absolutely: no love affair between the brother and the sister. So every child, whether girl or boy, grows up in a miserable situation, and the misery deepens at the age of fourteen. The girls become capable of giving birth at the age of thirteen. They are always one year ahead of the boys. They grow in intelligence one year ahead of the boys. Boys become sexually mature at fourteen. Once they are sexually mature they are prohibited by the Christian church, and by all other religions, from having any contact with any girl. So boys have their hostels, girls have their hostels -- guarded, so that no boy can enter into girls' hostels, and no girl can enter into boys' hostels. Naturally this creates perversion, the same perversion that is created in monasteries and nunneries. On a wider scale, boys become homosexuals, girls start becoming lesbians, because the energy is now arising to such a peak. By the time the boys and girls are seventeen and a half they have reached to the ultimate peak of their sexual energy; now there will be a decline. That is the best period to make love. That is the best period to reach to the greatest orgasmic experiences. And this you call society? This you call civilization? It is cutting human beings from their very roots, from all kinds of joys. If it was for me to decide, at seventeen and a half every boy and every girl should be allowed to make love, and particularly now when pregnancy is not necessary. There is the pill -- the greatest revolution in the whole history of man, which has made the woman equal. Pregnancy was her slavery, pregnancy was her dependence on the man. But the pill for the woman was not one hundred percent safe, because the woman may not be thinking to make love that night; she may not be taking the pills. The husband may be away and he suddenly comes back ... and the human mind is such that it always takes chances: "Just one night without the pill ... you are not going to get pregnant. You don't always get pregnant, it is only once in a while." But people do get pregnant, even though they were hoping they would not .... The Christian church is against abortion. Just a few days ago some Christians marched in America to the Senate, because the Supreme Court of America has allowed abortion to be legal. Against that legalization of abortion, thousands and thousands of fundamentalist Christians had a long procession in protest to the Senate. What was more puzzling to me was that President George Bush immediately, before the procession started, sent a message to the people who were going to protest -- missionaries, bishops, archbishops, priests and all kinds of fanatics. He sent the message that "I am with you. I am against the abortion bill, so don't think that your president is not with you. I am amongst you and I will support you, and I would like the Supreme Court to remove the law that has made abortion legal." Such fear of the crowd ... That's why I always say your politicians are not leaders. They don't create a revolutionary mind in the people. On the contrary, they are followers of the followers. Immediately the president sent the message that "I am with you" -- just to gain the favor of the voters, but with no consideration for the poor woman who cannot afford a child, or an unmarried woman who cannot say, "It was the Holy Ghost who made me pregnant!" Nobody is going to believe her. If a woman gives birth to a child while she is not married, her chances for marriage become almost nil, because the male chauvinist mind always wants a virgin. You will be surprised to know ... there are doctors who make women virgins. Their whole expertise is to put a small thin skin inside the woman's vagina; that is the proof that her vagina has not been penetrated by any male, otherwise the skin is broken. But the skin can be broken just by riding on a bicycle, the skin can be broken just by riding in a rickshaw in Poona! It does not need any male partner, the road will do the thing. In the Middle Ages, these so-called Christians, who think they have civilized the world, arranged that not only the skin has to be intact but blood should come out. So the doctors used to fix the skin and a little blood behind the skin, and the man who has married the woman would proudly show the next day the bedsheet with blood on it. Friends gathered, families gathered, to see whether the woman was a virgin or not, and it was a great pride for the man to see that "I have got a virgin woman." What is great in being a virgin? It simply means inexperienced. You will be better if you marry an experienced woman, if you marry an experienced man. Experience has a value. Inexperience cannot be supported in any argument.

This family that Christians think is their foundation is their foundation only because it programs the children according to the church. It makes them slaves, it takes their dignity of individuality, it makes them hypocrites. It forces on them all kinds of lies -- and the greatest lie is God. From God arise all kinds of lies. The only begotten son Jesus Christ would not be there if there were no God fiction; hell and heaven would not be there if there were no God who is going to give punishment and reward. Creating this program in the child's mind is preventing him from going beyond the mind in search, in exploration. It is against truth. Every family stands against truth. Every family stands against enlightenment. That's why I say, for the first time in the whole of history, that Buddha and Mahavira had not renounced the world, they had simply renounced the family. It is a lie to say they renounced the world. They lived in the world, they moved with thousands of disciples. That was their world. They moved in the cities, they preached and taught meditation to people. They had not renounced the world. They were trying in every way to help humanity evolve into consciousness. They were not against humanity; they were not against human consciousness growing as high as the stars, as deep as the Pacific Ocean. All that they renounced was the family, because the family was not going to help them meditate. Many sannyasins have been reporting to me that, "Our families don't allow us to meditate. They say this is simply wasting time. `Closing your eyes and sitting in a lotus posture, whom are you deceiving? Just do some good work. Serve the poor, serve the sick.'" If one wants to meditate one needs seclusion, one needs no interference, in the beginning at least. When meditation becomes a ripe fruit in you then there is no problem. Then you can meditate in the marketplace, you can meditate anywhere, once you know the secret. But before you have known the secret, every disturbance brings you out. But Christianity is not interested in meditation at all. It is interested in prayer. Prayer to whom? -- to a fictitious God. Prayer to whom? -- to Jesus who is a crackpot. And no prayer is ever heard, because there is nobody to hear it. It is not the fault of somebody above the clouds who is not hearing your prayer. There is nobody. Prayer is not the right kind of religion. Any religion that is based on prayer is a wrong religion. Only religions which are based on meditation have some quality of religiousness, because meditation takes you inwards to your very foundation of life, to the source of your consciousness. Prayer is simply insane. Raising your hands upwards -- and there is nobody. When people talk to nobody you call them mad. If somebody is talking to nobody you will immediately take him to the hospital: something is wrong with this man, he was standing under a tree and there was nobody and he was talking and having a good dialogue! What is Christianity doing? And what are other prayer religions doing? Talking to nobody. These are insane people who need psychiatric help. And because every family teaches you hypocrisy, you become schizophrenic. You have your individuality repressed by a personality given by your family -- you are divided into two. You will remain always in conflict, fighting within yourself, with yourself. You will become two. You can become many, it depends ....

I was staying with a family. They had only one child, a beautiful child. I was sitting on the lawn, and the child came and sat by my side. I asked him, "What are you going to become in life?" He said, "I don't know. My father wants me to become a doctor, my mother wants me to become an engineer, my uncle wants me to become an actor, my second uncle wants me to become a politician. They are all driving me crazy and they are all fighting and nobody is asking me, `What do you want to become?' You are the first person who is asking me." I said, "What do you want? -- just tell me." He said, "I have not figured it out." I said, "Then don't listen to anybody -- your father, your mother, your uncles, your brothers. Don't listen to anybody. Wait till the time comes when you have to choose. Go into the library and look into different subjects, see which attracts you more, which seems to be having a certain harmony with you. Only decide then -- not according to anybody else but simply according to you." The boy stood up, smiled. He said, "I really want to become a guitarist -- in my neighborhood there is a man who plays the guitar -- but don't tell anybody." I said, "That's perfectly good. Forget all about being a doctor, there are enough -- enough doctors to kill people, don't be worried! And there are enough engineers whose bridges go on falling down. To be a guitarist is absolutely innocent; I will not tell anybody, but you remain firm. Those people will manipulate you in every way." My father loved me too much -- but it was what they think is love. He wanted me to go to a science college. "Either become a doctor or become a scientist or become an engineer, but first go to the science college. First graduate in science and then move into a specialization." I refused. I said, "I know your love, but I also know your love is unconscious. You simply want your ambition to be fulfilled, that your son is a great doctor, a great scientist or engineer. I am going to study religion, philosophy, logic, psychology." He said, "Then" -- it was just a threat and later he repented very much. He said, "Then I am not going to support you financially." I said, "That's settled. It is obvious: I am not following your idea, why should you support me? In fact, even if you change your mind, I am not going to take any support from you." He was wondering how I would manage, thinking perhaps I would drop my idea. He said, "Philosophy ...!" India has one hundred universities, one hundred philosophical departments, and there are many universities where the whole department is empty -- four professors and not a single student. " ... So what are you going to do?" I said, "I understand. I am not going to do anything. I am not going to use my education for any career, because I have decided to be good for nothing. I am going to relax and enjoy life!" He said, "But who is going to support you?" I said, "You don't be worried. You will see." So I left my house after matriculation, and entered into a department of philosophy. My father thought, "How will he manage?" But I entered into a night class. The whole day I was working in a newspaper, and in the night I would go to the university class. After six months he thought, "He must have managed somehow ...." He came to see me. The village was almost a hundred miles away. He came to see me and he found me perfectly well. I had managed. I had found a family who simply loved me. They were not my relatives; just the man had met me in the public park where I was discussing with a few students, my colleagues. Sitting by the side on a bench, he heard me discuss and he was immensely impressed. He took me to the side, and he said, "Where do you live?" I said, "I don't have any place to live." He said, "I have a big house. You just come with me." And when he saw the situation, what I was doing -- the whole day I was working in a press and the whole night, the first part of the night in the university, and the second part with my own books, not the textbooks -- he said, "You will fall sick. Don't be worried, I have enough money." I told him, "Remember one thing: I am not going to return it." He said, "That is settled." I said, "Think twice. It is a question of six years. You can have time to think. I will not return a single rupee because I will not have any money anytime in my whole life. If you are giving me out of your abundance, I will accept with gratitude, but no obligation. And no bragging about it, that you have helped me." He said, "No, that's not at all the question. In fact you have helped me. Since you have come in my house, a strange peace has come, a silence has come. I have never been so happy and so joyous. I have all the amenities, all that the world can provide, but there was a certain emptiness inside me. You have fulfilled it by teaching me meditation. I cannot repay it. Whatever money I spend on you is not even the interest on what you have given to me and what you are giving to me every day." My father came, and he wanted to help me. I said, "We have settled it. I did not follow your idea, and you simply did not arrange the financing. There is no bitterness about it. Our relationship remains the same. It was simply a disagreement, and I was at fault to disagree with you. You are just unnecessarily feeling guilty." But he said, "I will give you money, whatever you want to do with it." I said, "If you want to give without any condition, I can take as much money as you can give. I alone can use all the money in the world without any trouble." He used to send me money, and that money helped me to purchase as many books as possible. Now, the library you see -- it has one hundred and fifty thousand books. Most of them were purchased with his money. All the money he gave me went into purchasing books, and soon I was receiving scholarships -- and all that money went into books. Soon I had friends all over India, and I was purchasing everywhere -- in Poona, in Bombay, in New Delhi, in Amritsar, in Ludhiana, in Calcutta, in Allahabad, in Varanasi, in Madras. All over the country I was purchasing as many books as possible -- as many as the friend with whom I was staying could manage.

The family gives you ambition, and ambition is one of the hindrances for enlightenment. It gives you desires, it gives you a longing to be successful, and all these things create your tensions, your anxieties: how to be a celebrity? The family wants you to be a celebrity. The family wants you to be known all over the world. The family wants you to be the richest person. The family wants you to be the president of the country .... All these ambitions the family creates, without knowing that all these ambitions are creating a mind which will remain continuously in anguish, suffering. Only one man can become the president of the country. What about the nine hundred million people in this country? -- they are all failures. This is an ugly situation, to keep people feeling they are failures, unsuccessful, inferior to others. Family is the base for all pathology. I would love a world where the family is replaced by the commune. Psychologically it is more healthy to have a commune, where children are not possessed by the parents, they belong to the commune; where children are not given the imprint of the mother and father only, they have many uncles in the commune, many aunts in the commune. Sometimes they sleep with this family, sometimes with that family. In my commune every child belongs to everybody; he does not have a single imprint. Because so many people love him, sometimes he will sleep with somebody, sometimes with somebody else. And they are invited ... Now Siddhartha has come back with a girlfriend. When he came for the first time he was so small, but so intelligent, that he rarely stayed with his mother or father. I would ask the mother, and she would say, "I have not seen him for fifteen days. He stays everywhere, he goes with anybody who invites him." He used to get money from anybody: "Just give me ten rupees!" Now he has become grown-up, is training to become an actor, has got a beautiful girlfriend who is a model. She has also become a sannyasin. I want the family to be replaced by the commune, and in a commune there is no need for marriage. You love a woman, you live with her. Love disappears, you say goodbye in deep gratitude: "All these days that I spent with you were memorable. I will carry these days in my mind, in my memory, as a beautiful fragrance. They will haunt me like a dream, a beautiful dream. But now it is time for us to depart, joyously. From now onwards we will be friends" -- there is no need to become enemies. And both get tired, it is simply human. The family is inhuman. It forces you to live with a woman you hate. It forces you to lie with a man you want to kill. It is prostitution, it is not family! My definition of prostitution is, making love to a woman you don't love, making love to a man you don't love. Then it is simply a long-term prostitution. A prostitute is available to you only for one night; you pay for it. Your wife is available to you for your whole life, and you pay for it. It is an economic arrangement, financial. You have purchased the woman for the whole life. In a commune there is no need of marriage. Marriage creates the family. People should be together out of love, sheer love. And the moment they feel the love is no more there, and now hanging around each other is creating tension and anxiety, it is better to say goodbye to each other before things become too bitter. At the first sign of frustration, boredom, depart. Find new friends. And if you have children ... you can have children only if the commune allows you. The commune has to take care of the population; the commune is responsible not to expand the population so much that everybody becomes poor. So you can have a child only with the permission of the commune, and you can have the child only with the permission of the medical board of the commune. If the medical board suggests that your child will not be healthy, will not be very intelligent, that it is better to have a child through insemination, then have the child by insemination. Your love remains with your friend; insemination does not disturb you. People will be proud and say that "I have got the best insemination for my child, the best semen." You can even ask the medical board for the kind of child you want. A genius? -- a healthy child who will not suffer from unnecessary diseases his whole life? A child who will be able to live beyond the ordinary span of seventy years -- one hundred years, two hundred years, three hundred years ...? Three hundred years is a possibility; just the right semen is needed. Just as there are blood banks, every commune should have semen banks. And medical experts should find out different qualities of different semen cells, categorize them, keep them deep-frozen. And whenever somebody wants a mathematician, somebody wants a scientist, somebody wants a musician, somebody wants a mystic, just give the right insemination. The child will belong to the commune, so you need not be worried what will happen to the child. Children are keeping people together, although their love was finished a long time back.

I have told you the story of a man who was ninety-five and a woman who was ninety-three .... They went to the court, they wanted a divorce. The judge looked at them and he said, "Your one foot is in the grave and you want a divorce? If you wanted a divorce why did you not come before? How long have you been married?" They said, "We don't exactly know, but maybe sixty years, seventy years." The judge said, "Strange. I have been dealing with these matters for years, and this is the first case .... Why did you remain married so long if you did not like each other?" They said, "Yes, from the very first day we did not like each other, but we had to remain married because of the children." So the magistrate asked, "What happened to the children?" They said, "They all died. Now we are free, and we want the divorce immediately! Just two, three years maybe, but to live in freedom ... Just even three years is enough, a taste of freedom at the last moment. Fortunately, all the children have died."

It is the children who are keeping the family together, because where will the children go? What will happen to the children? If the commune takes responsibility for the children ... From the very beginning the children should move to the commune's hostel. On holidays they can come to be with their parents, or to be with their uncles or with their aunts, who will be thousands. They can choose. I want a new man in the world without any imprint. When a child lives with many women, if he is a boy, he will not have a single imprint. He will have so many imprints that they will become fuzzy. He will not be able to figure out what kind of woman ... Then any woman can be a tremendous satisfaction. Then a love affair can last far beyond the honeymoon; otherwise, by the time the honeymoon is finished, love is finished. Just watch when people are going on honeymoon with their suitcases -- "Just married." See how fast they are going. And when they come back, just look at their faces -- punctured. Look at their suitcases. Just in seven days, what catastrophe has happened? I am against the family, and I am for the commune. Family dispersed, the church will die automatically. Nations will disappear automatically. Races will disappear automatically. The world can become one only if there are communes, not families. And the last thing that I want to say about Christianity -- because this is the last lecture of this series -- is about a man I have loved very much through his writings, Thomas Merton. He was a Trappist Christian. He studied in many seminaries, in different theological sects of Christianity, and finally ended up with a Trappist monastery in America. It is the most arduous self-torturing kind of sect, it is really a trap. Once you get into the trap, it is very difficult to get out of it. Thomas Merton was a world-famous writer. The chief abbot of the Trappist monastery was very jealous of him. He wanted somehow to prevent his writings. Thomas Merton lived for many years in the Trappist monastery, but could not find any way to his inner world, which was his interest. Everything was just outward discipline, and a strange kind of torture. ... Thomas Merton was an intelligent man, a genius. Because he was world-famous and he was writing books on Zen, I have looked at his books. For fifteen years I have not read anything, so it was fifteen years ago when I used to read his books. I always thought that sooner or later this man was going to land up in Japan. His understanding about Zen was purely intellectual. Beautiful ... he was writing beautiful sentences, beautiful poems, but it was all intellectual, he had no understanding of meditation. Christianity does not allow meditation. And just now I have heard ... Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk and a world-famous author. He wanted to go to Japan to study Zen, but again and again his superiors in the monastery refused him permission. Do you see the comparison with Zen masters? If a disciple asks to go to another monastery, he is welcomed by the master, "Be richer, find the truth anywhere. The question is truth, not me, or the monastery." But again and again he was refused permission to go to Japan, without being given any reason. There was no reason not to give it. All that he wanted was to know Zen directly, straight, by living in a Zen monastery for a few months or a few years, because he had not found anything in Christianity. A letter from Rome, confirming the refusal, stated that, "His requested visit to Japan cannot possibly be the will of God." In the name of God, so many crimes ... In the name of God, people are being enslaved. Now, how does Rome know what the will of God is? If Thomas Merton's whole being wants to go to Japan to learn Zen, that may perhaps be the will of God. But Rome decides for a faraway monk in America .... But the reason is not exactly that it cannot possibly be the will of God -- that's why the refusal to allow him to go to Japan. The refusal is for the reason that anybody who will understand Zen will drop Christianity -- immediately. Christianity will look like a disease, a poison, in comparison to Zen. But finally it happened, not that they allowed him to go to Japan, but that he became decisive in his mind. There was going to be a Catholic conference in Thailand, so he asked permission to read some papers on the Catholic religion in the conference. The deep desire was that from Thailand he would reach to Japan, not bothering about the permission. At the most they can expel him from the church -- and the church has not given him anything, so there is nothing to lose. Finally, he was allowed to visit Thailand to address a Catholic conference. At the end of his speech he said, "And thus I fade off into the night." He had some suspicions ... some suspicions that they may poison him, they may kill him if he tries to go to Japan. The whole conference consisted of Catholic monks, and they were all informed, "Keep an eye on Thomas Merton. He should not escape from Thailand to Japan" -- which is very close. At the end of his speech he said to the conference, "And thus I fade off into the night." A few hours later he was found dead in suspicious circumstances in his room. There is every reason to believe that he was killed by the Catholics. There were rumors that he was killed so that he could not travel on to Japan to study Zen. Circumstantial evidence shows that the rumors may be true. No autopsy was done on the body -- which is a regular process, and particularly in a suspicious case. He was perfectly healthy, he addressed the meeting; and just within two hours he was dead. And he had made the indication that "Perhaps I may fade off into the night." No autopsy was done on the body, and it was not embalmed -- which is a regular procedure for Catholic monks, Trappist monks. Their bodies have to be embalmed. It took seven days for the body to reach his monastery in the U.S. It is only a question of, at the most, twenty hours from Thailand to the U.S. -- and it took seven days. They wanted the body to decompose. Once the body starts decomposing, no autopsy is possible; you cannot know the reason why the person died. That's why it took seven days to reach his monastery in the U.S. He had to be buried in a special casket because the body was so decomposed, completely decomposed; there was no question of finding anything in it. In his last book, not published until twenty years after his death, Merton wrote, "I have a real sense that my own vocation demands a deepened and experiential study from within, as well as Japanese and particularly Zen experiences." He also wrote, "I cannot go to Asia to seek all their sources, some of the things I see to be vitally important -- the Zen ground of all the dimensions of expression and mystery. This is an imprisonment and confinement."

Be whole, be total. Don't be fragmentary, don't be divided. Be an individual, literally: indivisible, one piece.

People are not one piece; they are many fragments, somehow holding themselves together. They can fall apart at any moment.

Any new situation, any new danger, any insecurity, and they can fall apart. Your wife dies or you go bankrupt or you are unemployed -- any small thing can prove the last straw on the camel's back. The difference is only of degrees. Somebody is boiling at ninety-eight degrees, somebody at ninety-nine; somebody may be ninety-nine point nine degrees, but the difference is only of degrees, and any small thing can change the balance. You can go insane at any moment, because inside you are already a crowd.

So many desires, so many dreams, so many people are living in you. If you watch carefully, you will not find one person there but many faces, changing every moment. It is as if you are just a marketplace where so many people are going and coming, so much noise, and nothing makes sense. It is very difficult to see one's own faults; only a man who loves himself can see them. Don't listen to others, what they say about you. See yourself, who you are, where you are, what your faults are. And the miracle is that seeing a fault, through your own awareness, dissolves it。

OSHO, WHAT IS YOUR IDEA OF TRUE EDUCTION?

THE EDUCATION THAT HAS EXISTED up to now has not been true. It has not served humanity; on the contrary, it has served the vested interests. It has served the past. The teacher has been an agent of the past. He functions as a mediator to give past beliefs, orientations, assumptions to the coming generation -- to contaminate, to pollute the new consciousness that is arising on the horizon. That's why the teacher has been respected by all the societies. It serves the establishment. It reduces people to skillful robots, it reduces people to efficient machines. That's what education has been up to now. And because of education, man's evolution has been very haphazard, zig-zag. But up to now there was no other way, because there was one thing in the past: knowledge grew SO slowly that it was almost the same for centuries. So the teacher was very very efficient in doing his job. Whatsoever was known was almost static; it was not growing. But now there is a knowledge explosion. Things are changing so fast that the whole education system has become outdated, outmoded. It has to be dropped, and a totally new education system has to come into existence. Only now is it possible -- up to now it was not possible. You will have to understand what I mean by 'the knowledge explosion'. Imagine a clock face with sixty minutes on it. These sixty minutes represent three thousand years of human history; or each minute, fifty years; or each second, approximately one year. On this scale there were no significant media changes until about nine minutes ago. At that time the printing press came in. About three minutes ago, the telegraph, photograph, and the locomotive. Two minutes ago, the telephone, rotary press, motion pictures, automobile, airplane and radio. One minute ago, the talking picture. Television has appeared in the last ten seconds, the computer in the last five, and the communication satellites in the last second. The laser beam appeared only a fraction of a second ago. This is what some people call 'the knowledge explosion'. Change is not new; what is new is the DEGREE of change. And that makes all the difference, because at a certain point quantitative changes become qualitative changes. If you heat water, up to ninety-nine point nine degrees it is still water -- maybe hot, but still water. Just point one degree more is needed and the water starts evaporating, and there happens a qualitative change. Just a few seconds before, the water was visible, now it is invisible. Just a few seconds before, the water was flowing downwards, now it is rising upwards. It has transcended the pull of gravitation, it is no more under the law of gravitation. Remember, at a certain point the quantitative change becomes qualitative. And that's what has happened. Change is not new, it is not news; change has always been happening. But the RATE of change is immensely new; it has not happened like this before. The difference between a fatal and a therapeutic dose of strychnine is only a matter of degree -- that's what Norbert Wiener says. The poison can function as a medicine in a smaller dose, but the same medicine will become fatal if you give a bigger dose. At a certain point it is no more medicine, it is poison. Change is so tremendous now that the teacher cannot serve any more in the past style, education cannot serve any more in the past way. The past way was to help people to memorize. Education up to now has not been education in intelligence but only in memory, in remembrance. The past generation transferred all its knowledge to the new generation, and the new generation was to remember it. So people who had good memories were thought to be intelligent. That is not necessarily so. There have been geniuses whose memory was almost nil. Albert Einstein didn't have a good memory. There have been people whose memory was miraculous, but they had no intelligence at all. Memory is a mechanical thing in your mind. Intelligence is the consciousness. Intelligence is part of your spirit, memory is part of your brain. Memory belongs to the body, intelligence belongs to you. Intelligence has to be taught now, because change is so fast that memory won't do. By the time you have memorized something it is already out of date. And that is what is happening: the education is failing, universities are failing, because they still go on persisting in the old way. They have learnt a trick; for three thousand years they have been doing this, and now they have learnt it so deeply that they don't know what else they can do. Now, just giving old information to the children, which will not make them capable of living in the future but will hamper their growth, is dangerous. Now they need intelligence to live with the fast change that is happening. Just one hundred years ago, there were millions of people who had never gone outside of their town, or never went more than fifty miles away from their town. Millions lived in the same place for ever, from birth to death. Now everything is changing. In America the average person lives only three years in one place, and that is exactly the time limit for marriage too -- three years. Then one starts changing one's town, one's job, one's wife, one's husband. This is a totally new world that you are living in. And your education simply makes you walking encyclopaedias, but outdated. The difference is not new -- what is new is the degree of change. On our clock face about three minutes ago there developed a qualitative difference in the character of change: change changed. We have to teach intelligence now, so that we can make the children capable of living with the new things which will be happening every day. Don't burden them with that which is not going to be of any use in the future. The old generation has not to teach what it has learnt; the old generation has to help the child to be more intelligent so that he can be capable of spontaneously responding to the new realities which will be coming. The old generation cannot even dream about them, what those realities will be. Your children may be living on the moon; they will have a totally different atmosphere to live in. Your children may be living in the sky, because the earth is becoming too populated. Your children may have to live underground or under the sea. Nobody knows how your children will have to live. They may live only on tablets, vitamin pills... they will be living in a totally different world. So it is of no use just to go on giving them encyclopaedic knowledge from the past. We have to prepare them to face new realities. We have to prepare them in awareness, in meditativeness. Then education will be true. Then it will not serve the past and the dead; it will serve the future. It will serve the living. In my vision, to be true the education has to be subversive, rebellious. Up to now it has been orthodox, up to now it has been part of the establishment. True education has to teach things which NO other institution does. It has to become the anti-entropy business. The state, the establishment and all the institutions of the society, all prevent growth -- remember it. Why do they prevent growth? Because every growth brings challenge, and they are settled. And who wants to be unsettled? Those who are in power would not like anything new to happen, because that will change the power balance. Those who are in power would not like any new thing to be released, because the new thing will make new people powerful. Each new knowledge brings new power into the world. And the older generation would not like to lose its grip, its domination. Education has to serve revolution. But ordinarily it serves the government and the priest and the church. In a very subtle way, it prepares slaves -- slaves for the state, slaves for the church. The real purpose of education should be to subvert outmoded attitudes, beliefs and assumptions which no more serve growth and man, and are positively harmful and suicidal.

An interviewer once asked Ernest Hemingway, "Isn't there any one essential ingredient you can identify which makes a great writer?" Hemingway replied, "Yes, there is. In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in shockproof, crap detector."

And that's what my idea of true education is. The children should be trained, disciplined, so that they can detect crap. A really intelligent person is a crap detector. He immediately knows, the moment he says something, whether it is significant or just holy cowdung. The evolution of human consciousness is nothing but a long history of struggle against the veneration of crap. People go on worshipping, venerating crap. Ninety-nine percent of their beliefs are just lies. Ninety-nine percent of their beliefs are anti-human, anti-life. Ninety-nine percent of their beliefs are so primitive, so barbarous, so utterly ignorant, that it is unbelievable how people go on believing in them. The true education will help you to drop all nonsense -- howsoever ancient, respectable, revered. It will teach you the real. It will not teach you any superstition but how to live more joyously. It will teach you life-affirmation. It will teach you reverence for life and for nothing else. It will teach you how to be deeply in love with existence. It will not be only of the mind, it will be also of the heart. It will also help you to become a no-mind. That is the dimension that is missing from education. It simply teaches you to become more and more entangled in mental concepts, lost in mind. M;nd is good, useful, but it is not your wholeness. There is heart too, which is in fact far more important than the mind -- because the mind can create better technology, can give you better machines, better roads, better houses, but cannot make you a better man. It cannot make you more loving, more poetic, more graceful. It cannot give you the joy of life, the celebration. It cannot help you to become a song and a dance. The true education has to teach you the ways of the heart too. And the true education has also to teach you the transcendental. Mind is for science, heart for art, poetry, music, and the transcendental for religion. Unless an education serves all these things, it is not true. And no educational system has yet done it. It is not surprising that many young people are dropping out of your colleges, your universities -- because they can see it is all crap, they can see it is all stupid. No other institution can do it, only education can do it: universities should sow the seeds of revolution. They should sow the seeds of mutation -- because a NEW man has to arrive on the earth. The first rays have already reached. The new man is arriving every day and we have to prepare the earth to receive him -- and with the new man, a new humanity and a new world. And there is no other possibility except education to receive the new man, to prepare the ground for him. And if we cannot prepare the ground for him, we are doomed. The experiments we are doing here are really an effort to create the new kind of university. The government is against it, the society is against it, the churches -- Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian -- all are against it. The priests, the politicians, all are against it. The herd, the crowd mind is against it. But this is natural; one should not be surprised about it. We are doing something subversive, we are doing something very rebellious. But this has to be done, and this has to be done all over the earth in many places. This experiment has to be done in every country. And only a few will take the challenge, but those few will be the heralds. Those few will declare the new age, the new man, the new humanity, the new earth: brave new world. Walt Whitman has written:

When I heard the learn'd astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

The new education, the true education, has not only to teach you mathematics, history, geography, science; it also has to teach you the real morality: aesthetics. I call aesthetics the real morality: sensitivity to feel the beautiful, because God comes as beauty. In a roseflower or in a lotus, in the sunrise or in the sunset, in the stars, the birds singing in the early morning, or the dewdrops, a bird on the wing.... True education has to bring you closer and closer to nature because only by coming closer and closer to nature will you be coming closer and closer to God. God is not separate from this world: God has become the world. You have heard it said again and again that God created the world. I say to you: God became the world. Now there is no other God except the world. The creator is in his creativity. God is just a creative force; he is creativity. Drop the idea that he is a creator. Think of him, contemplate on him, as creativity itself. He is spread all over: Where two lovers meet, he is. And where your eyes see beauty, he is. And when you are simply overwhelmed by the starry night, he is. When you look deep into the eyes of a woman or a man, he is. The true education will also be true religion. Science is the lowest form of consciousness; art, higher than science; religion, the highest peak. Religion is the philosophia PERENNIS -- the perennial philosophy. A Buddha has not conditioned anybody, a Jesus has never conditioned anybody. If people are Christians and have become conditioned, that is their choice - you cannot throw the responsibility on Jesus. If people have become Buddhists and have completely forgotten about Buddha, and go on talking only about Buddhist doctrines and dogmas, that is their responsibility - otherwise, Buddha has not conditioned anybody. These people come to free you. They bring freedom, they bring purity, they bring innocence. But the ultimate result depends on you.. The moment you start thinking how to help children to grow without any competitive spirit you are already on the wrong track, because whatever you are going to do is going to give the children a certain program. It may be different from the one that you received, but you are conditioning the children -- with all the best intentions in the world. The trees go on growing without anybody teaching them how to grow. The animals, the birds, the whole existence, needs no programming. The very idea of programming is basically creating slavery -- and man has been creating slaves for thousands of years in different names. When people become fed up with one name, another name immediately replaces it. A few modified programs, a few changes here and there in the conditioning, but the fundamental thing remains the same -- that the parents, the older generation, want their children to be in a certain way. That's why you are asking "How?". According to me, the function of the parents is not how to help the children grow -- they will grow without you. Your function is to support, to nourish, to help what is already growing. Don't give directions and don't give ideals. Don't tell them what is right and what is wrong: let them find it by their own experience. Only one thing you can do, and that is share your own life. Tell them that you have been conditioned by your parents, that you have lived within certain limits, according to certain ideals, and because of these limits and ideals you have missed life completely, and you don't want to destroy your children's life. You want them to be totally free -- free of you, because to them you represent the whole past. It needs guts and it needs immense love in a father, in a mother, to tell the children, "You need to be free of us. Don't obey us -- depend on your own intelligence. Even if you go astray it is far better than to remain a slave and always remain right. It is better to commit mistakes on your own and learn from them, rather than follow somebody else and not commit mistakes. But then you are never going to learn anything except following -- and that is poison, pure poison." It is very easy if you love. Don't ask "how", because "how" means you are asking for a method, a methodology, a technique -- and love is not a technique. Love your children, enjoy their freedom. Let them commit mistakes, help them to see where they have committed a mistake. Tell them, "To commit mistakes is not wrong -- commit as many mistakes as possible, because that is the way you will be learning more. But don't commit the same mistake again and again, because that makes you stupid." So it is not going to be a simple answer from me. You will have to figure it out living with your children moment to moment, allowing them every possible freedom in small things. For example, in my childhood... and it has been the same for centuries, the children are being taught, "Go to bed early, and get up early in the morning. That makes you wise." I told my father, "It seems to be strange: when I am not feeling sleepy, you force me to sleep early in the evening." And in Jaina houses early in the evening is really early, because supper is at five o'clock, at the most six. And then there is nothing else to do -- the children should go to sleep. I said to him, "When my energy is not ready to go to sleep, you force me to go to sleep. And when, in the morning, I am feeling sleepy, you drag me out of the bed. This seems to be a strange way of making me wise! And I don't see the connection -- how am I going to become wise by being forced to sleep when I am not feeling sleepy? And for hours I lie down in the bed, in the darkness... time which would have in some way been used, would have been creative, and you force me to sleep. But sleep is not something in your hands. You cannot just close your eyes and go to sleep. Sleep comes when it comes; it does not follow your order or my order, so for hours I am wasting my time. "And then in the morning when I am really feeling sleepy, you force me to wake up -- five o'clock, early in the morning -- and you drag me out for a morning walk towards the forest. I am feeling sleepy and you are dragging me. And I don't see how all this is going to make me wise. You please explain it to me! "And how many people have become wise through this process? You just show me a few wise people -- I don't see anybody around. And I have been talking to my grandfather, and he said that it is all nonsense. Of the whole household, that old man is the only sincere man. He does not care what others will say, but he has told me that it is all nonsense: `Wisdom does not come by going early to bed. I have been going early to bed my whole life -- seventy years -- and wisdom has not come yet, and I don't think it is going to come! Now it is time for death to come, not for wisdom. So don't be befooled by these proverbs.'" I told my father, "You think it over, and please be authentic and true. Give me this much freedom -- that I can go to sleep when I feel sleep is coming, and I can get up when I feel that it is time, and sleep is no longer there." He thought for one day, and the next day he said, "Okay, perhaps you are right. You do it according to yourself. Listen to your body rather than listening to me." This should be the principle: children should be helped to listen to their bodies, to listen to their own needs. The basic thing for parents is to guard the children from falling into a ditch. The function of their discipline is negative. Remember the word "negative"... no positive programming but only a negative guarding -- because children are children, and they can get into something which will harm them, cripple them. Then too don't order them not to go, but explain to them. Don't make it a point of obedience; still let them choose. You simply explain the whole situation. Children are very receptive, and if you are respectful towards them they are ready to listen, ready to understand; then leave them with their understanding. And it is a question only of a few years in the beginning; soon they will be getting settled in their intelligence, and your guarding will not be needed at all. Soon they will be able to move on their own. I can understand the fear of the parents that the children may go in a direction which they don't like -- but that is your problem. Your children are not born for your likings and your dislikings. They have to live their life, and you should rejoice that they are living their life -- whatever it is. They may become a poor musician.... I used to know a very rich man in the town who wanted his son, after matriculation, to become a doctor. But the son was interested only in music. He was already no longer an amateur; he was well known in the area, and wherever there was any function, he was playing the sitar and was becoming more and more famous. He wanted to go to a university which is basically devoted to music. Perhaps it is the only university in the world which is devoted completely to music, and has all the different departments -- dance, different instruments -- but the whole world of the university is musical. The father was absolutely against it. He called me -- because I was very close to his son -- and he said, "He will be a beggar all his life," because musicians in India cannot earn much. "At the most he can become a music teacher in a school. What will he be earning? That much we pay to many servants in our house. And he will be associating with the wrong people," because in India, music has remained very deeply connected with the prostitutes. The Indian prostitute is different from any prostitute in the rest of the world. The word "prostitute" does not do justice to the Indian counterpart, because the Indian prostitute is really well versed in music, in dance -- and India has so much variety. If you really want to learn the deeper layers of music, of singing, of dancing, you have to be with some famous prostitute. There are famous families -- they are called gharanas. Gharana means family. It is nothing to do with the ordinary family; it is the family of the master-disciple. So there are famous gharanas which have a certain way of their own. Presenting the same instrument, the same dance, different gharanas will produce it in different ways, with subtle nuances. So, if someone really wants to get into the world of music, he has to become part of some gharana -- and that is not good company. According to a rich man it is certainly not a good company. But the son was not interested in the company. Not following his father, he went to the music university. And his father disowned him -- he was so angry. And because his father disowned him, and because he had no other ways -- because the university was in a very remote mountaineous area where you cannot find any job or anything -- he came back and had to become exactly what his father was predicting, just a school teacher. His father called me and told me, "Look, it is just as I have said. My other sons -- somebody is an engineer, somebody is a professor, but this idiot did not listen to me. I have disowned him; he will not inherit a single cent from me. And now he will remain in just the poorest profession -- a school master." But my friend himself was immensely happy... not worried that he had been abandoned by his family, that he was going to live a poor man's life, that he would not be receiving any inheritance. These things did not bother him; he was happy, "It is good they have done all this -- now I can become part of some gharana. I was worried about them, that they would feel humiliated. But now they have abandoned me, and I am no longer part of them, I can become part of some gharana." Teaching in a school, he became part of a gharana, and is now one of the best musicians in India. It is not a question of his being one of the best musicians; what is important is that he became what he felt was his potential. And whenever you follow your potential, you always become the best. Whenever you go astray from the potential, you remain mediocre. The whole society consists of mediocre people for the simple reason that nobody is what he was destined to be -- he is something else. And whatever he will do, he cannot be the best, and he cannot feel a fulfillment; he cannot rejoice. So the work of the parents is very delicate, and it is precious, because the whole life of the child depends on it. Don't give any positive program -- help him in every possible way that he wants. For example, I used to climb trees. Now, there are a few trees which are safe to climb; their branches are strong, their trunk is strong. You can go even to the very top, and still there is no need to be afraid that a branch will break. But there are a few trees which are very soft. Because I used to climb on the trees to get mangoes, jamuns -- another beautiful fruit -- my family was very much worried, and they would always send somebody to prevent me. I told my father, "Rather than preventing me, please explain to me which trees are dangerous -- so that I can avoid them -- and which trees are not dangerous, so that I can climb them. "But if you try to prevent me from climbing, there is a danger: I may climb a wrong tree, and the responsibility will be yours. Climbing I am not going to stop, I love it." It is really one of the most beautiful experiences to be on the top of the tree in the sun with the high wind, and the whole tree is dancing -- a very nourishing experience. I said, "I am not going to stop it. Your work is to tell me exactly which trees I should not climb -- because I can fall from them, can have fractures, can damage my body. But don't give me a blank order: `Stop climbing.' That I am not going to do." And he had to come with me and go around the town to show me which trees are dangerous. Then I asked him the second question, "Do you know any good climber in the city who can teach me even to climb the dangerous trees?" He said, "You are too much! Now this is going too far. You had told me, I understood it..." I said, "I will follow it, because I have myself proposed it. But the trees that you are saying are dangerous are irresistible, because JAMUN" -- an Indian fruit -- "grows on them. It is really delicious, and when it is ripe I may not be able to resist the temptation. You are my father, it is your duty... you must know somebody who can help me." He said, "If I had known that to be a father was going to be so difficult, I would have never been a father -- at least of you! Yes, I know one man" -- and he introduced me to an old man who was a rare climber, the best. He was a woodcutter, and he was so old that you could not believe that he could do woodcutting. He did only rare jobs, which nobody else was ready to do... big trees which were spreading on the houses -- he would cut off the branches. He was just an expert, and he did it without damaging their roots or the houses. First he would tie the branches to other branches with ropes. Then he would cut these branches and then with the ropes pull the other branches away from the house and let them fall on the ground. And he was so old! But whenever there was some situation like that, when no other woodcutter was ready, he was ready. So my father told him, "Teach him something, particularly about trees which are dangerous, which can break." Branches can break... and I had fallen already two, three times -- I still carry the marks on my legs. That old man looked at me and he said, "Nobody has ever come, particularly a father bringing a boy...! It is a dangerous thing, but if he loves it, I would love to teach him." And he was teaching me how to manage to climb trees which were dangerous. He showed me all kinds of strategies of how to protect yourself: If you want to go high up the tree and you don't want to fall onto the ground, then first tie yourself with a rope to a point where you feel the tree is strong enough, and then go up. If you fall, you will be hanging from the rope, but you will not fall to the ground. And that really helped me; since then I have not fallen! The function of a father or a mother is great, because they are bringing a new guest into the world -- who knows nothing, but who brings some potential in him. And unless his potential grows, he will remain unhappy. No parents like to think of their children remaining unhappy; they want them to be happy. It is just that their thinking is wrong. They think if they become doctors, if they become professors, engineers, scientists, then they will be happy. They don't know! They can only be happy if they become what they have come to become. They can only become the seed that they are carrying within themselves. So help in every possible way to give freedom, to give opportunities. Ordinarily, if a child asks a mother anything, without even listening to the child, to what he is asking, the mother simply says no. "No" is an authoritative word; "yes" is not. So neither father nor mother or anybody else who is in authority wants to say yes -- to any ordinary thing. The child wants to play outside the house: "No!" The child wants to go out while it is raining and wants to dance in the rain: "No! You will get a cold." A cold is not a cancer, but a child who has been prevented from dancing in the rain, and has never been able again to dance, has missed something great, something really beautiful. A cold would have been worthwhile -- and it is not that he will necessarily have a cold. In fact the more you protect him, the more he becomes vulnerable. The more you allow him, the more he becomes immune. Parents have to learn to say yes. In ninety-nine times when they ordinarily say no, it is for no other reason than simply to show authority. Everybody cannot become the president of the country, cannot have authority over millions of people. But everybody can become a husband, can have authority over his wife; every wife can become a mother, can have authority over the child; every child can have a teddy bear, and have authority over the teddy bear... kick him from this corner to the other corner, give him good slaps, slaps that he really wanted to give to the mother or to father. And the poor teddy bear has nobody below him. This is an authoritarian society. What I am saying is in creating children who have freedom, who have heard "yes" and have rarely heard "no", the authoritarian society will disappear. We will have a more human society. So it is not only a question of the children. Those children are going to become tomorrow's society: the child is the father of man.

OSHO Beyond Psychology Chapter #23 Chapter title: Trees grow without being taught

Q: BHAGWAN, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SAY SOMETHING TO THOSE INNOCENT PEOPLE WHO HAVE KNOWN YOU ONLY THROUGH NEWSPAPERS AND NEVER CARE TO READ AND UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ACTUALLY HAVE SAID. WHAT IS YOUR BASIC MESSAGE FOR THEM?

My basic message to all the people is: always remember that if you are really a seeker of truth, then go to the source. It is not right just to depend on the news media. The news media has its own limitations. First: it cannot give my whole message, it has no space for it. Second: if it tries to give my whole message it will not find audience for it. The whole news media looks at the audience, follows the audience what you need, what you like... it is a very strange thing but one never thinks about it, that your leaders are followers of their own followers. They always look what the followers like -- that has to be said. Do whatever you want to do but say only that which your followers want to listen. And the same is the case with the newspapers, television, radio. Say what the people are asking for. And people are asking for wrong things. They are asking for sex, pornography. They are asking for violence. They are asking for all kinds of sensations. They are not interested in the higher values of life for the simple reason because for centuries your religious people have repressed their lower instincts so much that now their lower instincts have immense power and those lower instincts demand some kind of fulfillment. You have been told to murder is wrong, so naturally you cannot murder. But seeing in a film a murder scene you can see the change in yourself. You may have been sitting relaxedly with your back to the chair -- as the murder scene comes you become more alert, you leave the back of the chair, you come closer to the murder, you don't want to miss a single thing, you are identifying yourself in that scene. This is what your religious people have done to you. Your films are full of violence, full of sex, full of murder, rape, suicide... these are your demands. And the people who are producing those films or magazines or newspapers are just businessmen. I myself have been once a journalist but I could not go more than few weeks. The owner called me, he said, "You should have born in SATYUG." I said, "What has happened?" He said, "You will destroy my paper. You have already reduced my readership to half." I said, "It does not matter if your paper is finished, that is not the point. But right things should reach to people." But he said, "They don't want the right thing, and I am not here for charity purposes. I am a businessman and I am in a trouble because we have made a contract for one year. In one year you will make me bankrupt!" Because I changed all politicians to the last page, I reduced their speeches to small articles not covering the whole first page, I removed their pictures, there is no need for their pictures every day to be insisted on people's mind. Because there are so many beautiful people and the world knows nothing about them. I would like a big picture of Ravi Shankar playing on his sitar on the front page. People should know.... I would like some sculptor, some poet... the first page should be for the creators. And I reduced completely all news about suicide and murder, violence... and I said, that "It helps nobody. It really creates an atmosphere that violence is the way of life, everywhere it is happening, every newspaper is talking about it, everywhere there is rape. So why you are lagging behind, you also have a woman in your mind that you would like to rape. When everybody is doing it, then why not join?" I told him a story: two men are going to the market and one says, that "There is a riot between Mohammedans and Hindus and the Hindus are destroying the mosque. And as Hindus we should go and help." The other man said, that "That does not seem to be a right thing. The mosque has done no harm to us and even Mohammedans who go to the mosque simply pray there. That is the only place where they are prayerful and you are destroying it! That is illogical." Next day the man who was persuading that "We should go and destroy the mosque" was surprised. The first man was destroying it. He asked, "What has happened?" He said, "When I saw everybody is doing it then it must be right." When you read every day from every corner: the radio is saying the same thing, the television is saying the same thing, the newspaper is saying the same thing, the films are saying the same thing... you are surrounded by a very subtle mind atmosphere in which you are going to be drowned. I told my owner, that "I have been publishing because there are good things also happening in the world. It is not that everybody is raping, it is not that everybody is committing suicide, there are people who are doing some good work, beautifying life, helping people and I am trying to find those people and their work." Just that day I had published an article on Baba Amtay(*). Very few people know about the man that he has devoted his whole life to the lepers, he has made a beautiful place for the lepers in Maharashtra. Thousands of lepers and he has proved it wrong that just by remaining in touch with lepers you will be infected. He lives with them, his wife lives with them, his children live with them and they all serve them and he has made all those thousands of lepers again human beings because they are all producing something. If their hands cannot do, then their feet can do something. If their feet cannot do, their hands can do something. Not a single leper is unproductive. And he has given them dignity. Otherwise they were thrown out of their towns, they were not allowed in the towns, nobody was ready even to talk to them, nobody was ready to give them any work. Now this man should be talked.... There may be many people who may become Baba Amtay(*). There may be many people who may be lepers somewhere suffering, may go to his beautiful place. He calls it `Anandvan'(*) -- the forest of bliss. And it is a beautiful forest and something worth seeing, that how people which have been for centuries condemned can be raised back to dignity, to self-respect... now they are earning their own food, their own clothes and they are not dependent on anybody. You will be surprised that Baba Amtay's(*) colony donates to many charitable institutions. And when I used to go to his colony the people were so happy that we can help other people who are helpless just as we were helpless some day. "So let your circulation drop. I know that Baba Amtay(*) will not increase your circulation... Ravi Shankar will not increase your circulation. But don't be worried, I will not be heavy on you. I can force to remain for one year here to finish your firm, but I will not be heavy on you, I can understand you. So I can withdraw myself. You raise your circulation." So they have limitations. So the people who are interested... at the most what news media can do is to create curiosity, interest. From there you have to go to the deeper sources: to my books, to my tapes, to my videos. If you think that just the newspaper's information is enough then you will be misguided. So this is my message to the man around: that from the newspapers and other news media take the hint.... Now almost all over the world every newspaper is talking about me, every radio, every television. There are few who have the intelligence and courage to represent me rightly, even risking their jobs. There are few who are intelligent enough but don't have courage, they cannot risk their jobs but they can at least be factual. They need not distort. But the majority will be there which will try to distort everything so it becomes sensational. It will take things out of context to make it sensational. But there is no problem just the people have to understand their limitations. And they have to take the hint that if the whole world media is interested in this man... they may be making famous or notorious, they may be condemning me or praising me -- does not matter. What matters is that the whole world news media is interested in this man, it is worth searching a little bit on your own. You will not be at a loss.

I am not here to perpetuate the past; hence I am against all knowledge.

I am all for learning, but learning means innocence, learning means openness, learning means receptivity.

Learning means a non-egoistic approach towards reality. Learning means: "I don't know and I am ready -- ready to know."

Knowledge means: "I know already." Knowledge is the greatest deception that society creates in people's minds.

My function is to serve the future, not the past.

The past is no more, but the future is coming every moment.

I want you to become innocent, seers, knowers -- not knowledgeable -- alert, aware, not unconsciously clinging to conclusions. The moment before I came in I was listening to one of the greatest flutists, Hari Prasad. It stirred many memories in me. There are many types of flute in the world. The most important is the Arabic; the most beautiful, the Japanese; and there are many others. But there is nothing comparable to the small Indian bamboo flute for its sweetness. And Hari Prasad is certainly a master as far as the flute is concerned. He played before me, not just once but many times. Whenever he felt he had to play really to his utmost, he would rush to me wherever I was, sometimes even thousands of miles, just to play his flute for one hour alone with me. I asked him, "Hari Prasad, you could have played anywhere -- why make such a long journey?" And in India, one thousand miles is almost like twenty thousand miles in the West. The Indian trains -- they still walk, not run. In Japan the trains run at four hundred miles per hour; and in India forty miles an hour is a great speed; and the buses, and the rickshaws. Just to play the flute for one hour alone in my bedroom... I asked him, "Why?" He said, "Because I have thousands of admirers but nobody understands particularly the soundless sound. Unless one understands the soundless sound he cannot really appreciate.... So I come to you; and just that one hour is enough to enable me to play my flute for months before all kinds of idiots -- governors, chief ministers, and the so-called ` great ones.' When I feel utterly tired and exhausted and fed up with the idiots, I run to you. Please don't deny me just this one hour." I said, "It is a joy to hear you, your flute, your song. In themselves they are great, but particularly so because they remind me of the man who introduced us. Do you remember that man?" He had completely forgotten who had introduced him to me, and I can understand... it must have been forty years before. I was a small child, he was a young man. He tried hard to remember but could not, and said, "Excuse me but it seems my memory is not functioning well. I cannot even remember the man who introduced me to you. Even if I forget everything else, at least I should remember him." I reminded him of the man, and he became just tears. That is the man I would like to talk to you about today. Pagal Baba was one of those remarkable men whom I am going to talk about. He was of the same category as Magga Baba. He was known just as Pagal Baba. Pagal means "the mad." He came like a wind, always suddenly, and then disappeared as suddenly as he had come.... I did not discover him, he discovered me. By that I mean I was just swimming in the river when he passed by: he looked at me, I looked at him, and he jumped in the river and we swam together. I don't know how long we swam but I was not the one to say "enough." He was already an established saint. I had seen him before, but not so closely, at a gathering, doing bhajan, and singing songs of God. I had seen him, and had a certain feeling towards him, but I had kept it to myself. I had not even uttered a single word about it. There are things which are better kept in the heart; there they grow faster, that's the right soil. At this time he was an old man; I was not more than twelve. Obviously he was the one to say, "Let us stop. I am feeling tired." I said, "You could have told me any time and I would have stopped, but as far as I am concerned I am a fish in the river." Yes, that's how I was known in my town. Who else swims six hours every morning from four till ten? When everybody was asleep, fast asleep, I would be already in the river. And when everybody had gone to work I would still be in the river. Of course at ten o'clock every day my grandmother would come, and then I would have to come out of the water because it was school time, I had to go to school. But immediately after school I was back in the river. When I first came across SIDDHARTHA, Herman Hesse's novel, I could not believe that what he had written about the river I had known so many times. And I knew perfectly well that Hesse was only imagining... a good imagination, because he died without being a Buddha. He was able to create SIDDHARTHA, but could not become a Siddhartha. But when I came across his description of the river, and the moods, and the changes, and the feelings of the river, I was overwhelmed. I was more impressed by his description of the river than anything else. I cannot recall how long I had loved the river -- it seemed as if I had been born in its waters. In my Nani's village I was continuously either in the lake or in the river. The river was a little too far away, perhaps two miles, so I had to choose the lake more often. But once in a while I used to go to the river, because the quality of a river and a lake are totally different. A lake, in a certain way, is dead, closed, not flowing, not going anywhere at all, static. That's the meaning of death. It is not dynamic. The river is always on the go, rushing to some unknown goal, perhaps not knowing at all what that goal is; but it reaches, knowing or unknowing, it reaches the goal. The lake never moves. It remains where it is, dormant, simply dying, everyday dying; there is no resurrection. But the river howsoever small, is as big as the ocean, because sooner or later it is going to become the ocean. I have always loved the feel of the flow; just going, that flux, that continuous movement... aliveness. So, even though the river was two miles away, I used once in a while to go, just to have the taste. But in my father's town the river was very close. It was just two minutes walk from my Nani's house. Standing on the top floor you could see it; it was there with all its grandeur and invitation... irresistible. I used to rush back from school to the river. Yes, just for a moment I would stop to throw my books in at my Nani's house. She would persuade me to at least have a cup of tea, saying, "Don't be in such a hurry. The river is not going to leave, it's not a train." That's exactly what she used to say again and again: "Remember, it is not a train. You cannot miss it. So please drink your cup of tea, then go. And don't throw your books down like that." I didn't say anything because that would have meant further delay. She was always amazed, saying, "At any other time you are ready to argue; but when you are going to the river, even if I say anything -- whether it is nonsense, illogical, absurd -- you simply listen as if you were such an obedient child. What happens to you when you are going to the river?" I said, "Nani, you know me. You know perfectly well that I don't want to waste time. The river is calling. I can even hear the sound of its waves while I am drinking my tea." I have burned my lips many times just by drinking tea which was too hot. But I was in a hurry, and the cup had to be emptied. My Nani was there; she wouldn't allow me to go before I drank my tea. She was not like Gudia. Gudia is special in that way; she always tells me, "Wait. The tea is too hot." Perhaps it is my old habit. I again start taking the cup and so she says, "Wait! It's too hot." I know she is right, so I wait until she does not object, then I drink the tea. Perhaps the old habit of just drinking tea and rushing to the river is still there. Although my grandmother knew that I wanted to reach the waters as soon as possible, she would try to persuade me to have a little something to eat -- this or that. I would say to her, "Just give everything to me. I will keep it in my pockets and eat it on the way." I have always liked cashew nuts, particularly salted ones, and for years I used to fill all my pockets with them. All my pockets meant two in my pants, meaning shorts, because I never liked long trousers -- perhaps because all my teachers wore them, and I hated teachers, and a certain association must have arisen. So I only wore shorts. In India shorts are far better, climatically, than long trousers. Both my pants pockets were full of cashew nuts; and you will be surprised: just because of those cashew nuts I had to tell the tailor to make two pockets in my shirts. I always had two pockets in my shirts. I never understood the reason why just one pocket was put on shirts. Why not only one pocket in trousers too? Or just one pocket in shorts? Why only one in shirts? The reason is not obvious, but I know why. The single shirt pocket is always on the left side so that the right hand can take things out and put things in, and naturally no pocket is needed for the poor left hand. What would a poor man do with a pocket? The left hand is one of the repressed parts of the human body; and if you try, you will understand what I am saying. You can do everything with the left hand that you can do with the right, even writing, and perhaps better. After thirty or forty years of habit, in the beginning you would certainly find it difficult to use your left hand, because the left hand has been ignored and kept ignorant. The left hand is really the most important part of your body because it represents the right side of your brain. Your left hand is connected to your right brain, and your right hand with the left brain, just like a cross. The right is really left, and the left is really right. To ignore the left hand is to ignore the right side of your brain -- and the right side of your brain contains all that is valuable, all the diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies... all that is valuable -- all the rainbows and the flowers, and the stars. The right side of the brain contains the intuition, the instincts; in short it contains the feminine. The right hand is a male chauvinist. You will be surprised to know that when I started writing, being such a nuisance, I started writing with my left hand. Of course everybody was against me; again, of course, except my Nani. She was the only one who said, "If he wants to write with his left hand what is wrong with it?" She went on, "The question is to write. Why are you all so concerned which hand he uses? He can hold the pen in his left hand, and you can hold the pen in your right hand. What is the problem?" But nobody would allow me to use my left hand, and she could not be everywhere with me. In school, every teacher and every student was against me using my left hand. Right is right, and left is wrong; even now I cannot understand why. Why should the left side of the body be denied and kept imprisoned? And do you know that ten percent of people would love to write with their left hand; in fact they had started writing like that but were stopped. It is one of the most ancient calamities that has happened to man, that half of his being is not even available to him. A strange kind of man we have created! It is like a bullock cart with only one wheel: the other wheel is there but kept invisible; used, but only in an underground way. It is ugly. I resisted from the very beginning. I asked the teacher and the headmaster, "Show me the reason why I should write with my right hand." They just shrugged their shoulders. I then said, "Your shrugging will not help, you have to answer me. You would not accept me if I shrugged my shoulders; then why should I accept you? I don't take any notice of it. Please explain properly." I was sent to the school board because the teachers would not understand me, or explain to me. In fact they understood me perfectly. What I was saying was plain: "What was wrong in writing with the left hand? And if I write the right answer with my left hand, can that answer be wrong -- just because it has been written with the left hand?" They said, "You are crazy and you will drive everybody else crazy. It is better that you go to see the school board." The board was the municipal committee which directed all the schools. In the town there were four primary schools and two high schools, one for girls and one for boys. What a town -- where boys and girls are kept so absolutely apart. It was this board that made decisions about almost everything, so naturally I was sent there. The board members listened to me very seriously, as if I were a murderer and they were sitting like judges, to hang me. I said to them, "Don't be so serious, relax. Just tell me what is wrong if I write with my left hand?" They looked at each other. I then said, "That won't help. You have to answer me, and I am not easy to deal with. You will have to give it in writing because I don't trust you. The way you are looking at each other appears so cunning and political that it is better to have your answer in writing. Write what is wrong in writing a right answer with the left hand." They sat there almost like statues. Nobody even tried to say anything to me. Nobody was ready to write either, they simply said, "We will have to consider it." I said, "Consider. I am standing here. Who is preventing you from considering in front of me? Is it something private like a love affair? And you are all respected citizens: at least six people should not be in a love affair -- that would be like group sex." They shouted at me, "Shut up! Don't use such words!" I said, "I have to use such words just to provoke you, otherwise you would just sit there like statues. At least now you have moved and said something. Now, consider, and I will help you, and not hinder you at all." They said, "Please go out. We cannot consider it in front of you; you are bound to interfere. We know about you, and so does everybody else in the town. If you don't leave then we will leave." I said, "You can leave first, that is gentlemanly." They had to leave their own committee room before me. The decision came the next day. The decision was simply that "The teachers were right, and everybody should write with their right hand." This phoniness is dominant everywhere. I cannot even comprehend what kind of stupidity it is. And these are the people who are in power! The rightists! They are powerful, the male chauvinists are powerful. The poets are not powerful, nor the musicians.... Now look at this man Hari Prasad Chaurasia -- such a beautiful bamboo flute player, but he lived his whole life in utter poverty. He could not remember Pagal Baba, who had introduced him to me-or is it better to say, ` me to him' -- because I was only a child, and Hari Prasad was a world-recognized authority as far as the bamboo flute is concerned. There were other flutists also introduced to me by Pagal Baba, particularly Pannalal Ghosh. But I had heard his playing and he was nothing compared to Hari Prasad. Why did Pagal Baba introduce me to these people? He himself was the greatest flutist, but he would not play before the crowd. Yes, he played before me, a child, or before Hari Prasad, or before Pannalal Ghosh, but he made it a point that we should not mention it to anyone. He kept his flute hidden in his bag. The last time I saw him he gave me his flute and said, "We will not meet again. Not that I don't want to meet you, but because this body is not capable of carrying itself any longer." He must have been about ninety. "But as a memento I give you this flute, and I say to you, if you practice you can become one of the greatest flutists." I said, "But I don't want to become even the greatest flutist. To be a flutist is not what can fulfill me. It is one-dimensional." He understood and said, "Then it is up to you." I asked him many times why he tried to contact me whenever he came to the village, because that was the first thing he would do. He said, "Why? You should ask it the other way around -- why do I come to the village? Just to contact you... I don't come to this village for any other reason." For a moment I could not say a word, not even "thank you." In fact in Hindi there is no word which is really equivalent to "thank you." Yes, there is a word which is used, but it has a totally different flavor, dhanyavad: it means "God bless you." Now, a child cannot say "God bless you" to a ninety-year-old man. I said, "Baba, don't give me trouble. I cannot even thank you." To say that I had to use an Urdu word, shukriya, which comes closer to the English, but it is still not exactly the same. Shukriya means "gratitude," but it comes very close. I said to him, "You have given me this flute. I will keep it in your memory, and I will try to practice too. Who knows? You, you know better than me; perhaps that is my future, but I don't see any future in it." He laughed and said, "It is difficult to talk to you. Keep the flute with you and try to play with it. If something happens, good; if nothing happens then just keep it in my memory." I started playing on it, and I loved it. I played it for years and became really proficient. I used to play the flute, and one of my friends -- not really a friend, but an acquaintance -- used to play on the tabla. We both came to know each other because we both loved swimming. One year when the river was in flood, and we were both trying to swim across -- that was my joy, to cross the river in the rainy season when it used to become really enlarged; flowing with such force that it used to carry us at least two or three miles downstream. Just crossing meant we had to be ready to travel three miles back, and to cross back meant traveling three miles further, so it was a six-mile journey! And in the rainy season...! But that was one of my joys. This boy, Hari was his name too. Hari is a very common name in India; it means "God," but it is a very strange name. I don't think any language has a name for God like Hari because it really means "the thief" -- God the thief! Why should God be called a thief? Because sooner or later He steals your heart... and the sooner the better. The boy's name was Hari. We were both trying to cross the river in full flood. It must have been almost a mile wide. He did not survive; he drowned somewhere on the way across. I searched and looked, but it was impossible: the river was flooding too fast. If he had drowned, it would have been impossible to find him; perhaps someone further down the river would find his body. I called as loudly as I could, but the river was roaring. I went to the river every day, and tried the best that a child could do. The police tried, the fishermen's association tried, but not even a trace was found. He must have been taken by the river long before they heard about it. In his memory I threw the bamboo flute that Pagal Baba had given me into the river. I said, "I would have liked to throw myself but I have other work to do. This is the most precious thing that I have, next to myself, so I throw it. I will never play this flute again without Hari playing on the tabla. I cannot conceive of myself ever playing again. Take it, please!" It was a beautiful flute, perhaps carved by a very skillful flutemaker. Perhaps it had been made specially for Pagal Baba by one of his devotees. I will talk more about Pagal Baba because so many things have to be said about him.... What is the time? "Ten twenty-three, Osho." Good. The time today will not suffice, so we will have to leave Pagal Baba for some other time. But one thing perhaps I may forget later on, that is about the boy Hari, who died.... Nobody knows whether he died or escaped from his home, because his dead body was never found. But I think for certain that he died, because I was swimming with him, and suddenly at a certain point in the middle of the river I saw him disappearing. I shouted, "Hari! What's the problem?" but there was nobody to answer. To me, India itself is dead. I don't think of India as a living part of humanity. It is a dead land, dead for so many centuries that even the dead have forgotten that they are dead. They have been dead so long, somebody has to remind them. That's what I am trying to do, but it is a very thankless task, reminding somebody, saying, "Sir, you are dead. Don't believe that you are alive." That's what I have been doing continuously for these twenty-five years, day in, day out. It hurts that a country that has given birth to Buddha, Mahavira and Nagarjuna is dead. Poor Devageet -- just to hide his giggle, he had to cough. Sometimes I wonder who is taking the notes. Coughing is okay, giggling is also forgiven, but what about the notes? I used to deceive my teachers by just scribbling, pretending that I was taking notes, and fast. And I used to laugh when they were deceived. But it is impossible to deceive me, and it is good that you cannot. I am watching you, even though you think my eyes are closed. Yes, they are closed, but open enough to see what you are writing. This is beautiful. I hit you so hard and yet you...... Stop it now.

Glimpses of a Golden Childhood Chapter #27

Why should one be a Christian? It is ugly. Be a christ if you can be, but don't be a Christian. Be a buddha if you have any respect for yourself, but don't be a Buddhist. The Buddhist believes. Buddha knows. When you can know, when knowing is possible, why settle for believing? But again, the society would like you to believe, because believers are good people, obedient, law-abiding. They follow all formalities and etiquette, they are never trouble-makers. They simply follow the crowd, whichever crowd they happen to be in; they simply go with the crowd. They are not real men, they are sheep. Humanity has not yet arrived. Somebody once said to George Bernard Shaw, "What do you think about civilization?" He said, "It is a good idea. Somebody should try it." It has not yet been tried. Humanity is still arriving; we are still groping between animality and humanity. We are in limbo: man has to be born, man has to be given birth to; we have to prepare the ground for man to appear. And the most significant thing that will help that man to come will be if we can drop believing -- if we can drop being Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas, Buddhists, communists. If you can drop believing, immediately your energy will take a new turn: it will start inquiring. And to inquire is beautiful. Your life will become a pilgrimage to truth, and in that very pilgrimage you grow. Growth is a by-product of the inquiry into truth. Believers never grow, they remain childish. And remember, to be childlike and to be childish are poles apart, they are not the same thing. It is beautiful to be childlike. The man of trust is childlike and the man of belief is childish. To be childlike is the ultimate in growth; that is the very culmination -- consciousness has come to the ultimate peak. To be childlike means to be a sage, and to be childish means to be just un-grownup. The average mental age of human beings on the earth today is not more than twelve years. When for the first time this was discovered, it was such a shock. Nobody had ever thought about it; it was just by accident that it became known. In the First World War, for the first time in human history, the people who were candidates, who wanted to enter the army, were examined. Their mental age was inquired into, their IQ was determined. This was a great revelation -- that they were not more than twelve years; the average age was just twelve years. This is childishness. The body goes on growing, and the mind has stopped at the age of twelve. What kind of humanity have we created on this earth? Why does the mind stop at twelve? Because by the time one is twelve, one has gathered all kinds of beliefs; one is already a believer, one already "knows" what truth is. One is a Christian, another is a communist; one believes in God, one does not believe in God; one believes in The Bible and the other believes in Das Kapital; one believes in the Bhagavad Gita, another believes in the Red Book of Mao Zedong. We have drilled concepts and ideologies into the innocent minds of poor children. They are already becoming knowers. Do you know -- by the age of seven, a child already knows fifty percent of all that he will ever know. And by the time he is fourteen he has almost arrived; now there is nowhere to go, he has only to vegetate. Now he will exist as a cabbage. If he goes to college then, as they say, he may become a cauliflower. A cabbage with a college education is a cauliflower. But there is not much difference, just labels change. The cabbage becomes an M.A., a Ph.D., this and that, and just to show respect we call it a cauliflower. But the mental age is twelve. The real man grows to the very end. Even while he is dying, he is growing. Even the last moment of his life will still be an inquiry, a search, a learning. He will still be inquiring -- now inquiring into death. He will be fascinated: death is such an unknown phenomenon, such a mystery, far more mysterious than life itself -- how can an intelligent man be afraid? If in life he has not been afraid to go into the uncharted and the unknown, at the moment of death he will be thrilled, ecstatic. Now the last moment has come: he will be entering into the darkness, the dark tunnel of death. This is the greatest adventure one can ever go on; he will be learning. A real man never believes; he learns. A real man never becomes knowledgeable; he always remains open, open to truth. And he always remembers that "It is not that truth has to adjust to me, but just vice versa: I have to adjust to truth." The believer tries to adjust truth to himself, the seeker adjusts himself to truth. Remember the difference; the difference is tremendous. One who believes, he says, "Truth should be like this, this is my belief." Just think of a Christian.... If God appears not like Jesus Christ but like Krishna, not on the cross but with a flute and girlfriends dancing around him, the Christian will close his eyes; he will say, "This is not my cup of tea." Girlfriends? Can you think of Jesus with girlfriends? The cross and girlfriends can't go together. Jesus hanging on the cross and girlfriends dancing around? It won't fit, it will be very bizarre. He was waiting for Christ to appear, and instead of Christ this guy, Krishna, appears: he seems to be debauched. And the flute? The world is suffering and people are hungry and they need bread -- and this man is playing on the flute? He seems to be utterly uncompassionate, he seems to be indulgent. The Christian cannot believe in Krishna: if God appears as Krishna, then the Christian will say, "This is not God." And the same will be the case with the Hindu who was waiting for Krishna: if Christ appears, that will not be his idea of God -- so sad, such a long face, so gloomy, with such suffering on his face. Christians say Jesus never laughed. I don't think they are right, and I don't think they are representing the real Christ, but that's what they have managed to propagate. The Hindu cannot accept the revelation; he must think this is some kind of nightmare. Jesus will not appeal to him. The believer cannot even trust his own experience. Even if truth is revealed, he will reject it, unless it fits with him. He is more important than truth itself: truth has an obligation to fit with him. He is the criterion, he is the decisive factor. This kind of man can never know truth; he is already prejudiced, poisoned. The man who wants to know truth has to be capable of dropping all concepts about truth. Everything about truth has to be dropped. Only then can you know truth. Know well: to know about truth is not to know truth. Whatsoever you know may be utter nonsense; there is every possibility that it is utter nonsense. In fact people can be conditioned to believe any kind of nonsense; they can be convinced.

Once I went to address a conference of theosophists. Now, theosophists are people who will believe any bullshit -- ANY! The more shitty it is, the more believable. So I just played a joke on them. I simply invented something; I invented a society called "Sitnalta." They were all dozing, they became alert. "Sitnalta?" I made the word by just reading "Atlantis" backwards. And then I told them, "This knowledge comes from Atlantis, the continent that disappeared in the Atlantic ocean." And then I talked about it: "There are really not seven chakras but seventeen. That great ancient esoteric knowledge is lost, but a society of enlightened masters still exists, and it still works. It is a very very esoteric society, very few people are allowed to have any contact with it; its knowledge is kept utterly secret." And I talked all kinds of nonsense that I could manage. And then the president of the society said, "I have heard about this society." Now it was my turn to be surprised. And about whatsoever I had said, he said that it was the first time that the knowledge of this secret society had been revealed so exactly. And then letters started coming to me. One man even wrote saying, "I thank you very much for introducing this inner esoteric circle to the theosophists, because I am a member of the society, and I can vouch that whatsoever you have said is absolutely true."

There are people like these who are just waiting to believe in anything, because the more nonsensical a belief is, the more important it appears to be. The more absurd it is, the more believable -- because if something is logical, then there is no question of believing in it. You don't believe in the sun, you don't believe in the moon. You don't believe in the theory of relativity: either you understand it or you don't understand it; there is no question of belief. You don't believe in gravitation; there is no need. Nobody believes in a scientific theory -- it is logical. Belief is needed only when something illogical, something utterly absurd, is propounded. Tertullian said, "I believe in God because it is absurd: CREDO QUIA ABSURDUM, my creed is the absurd." All beliefs are absurd. If a belief is very logical, it will not create belief in you. So people go on inventing things. Man is basically a coward, he does not want to inquire. And he does not want to say "I don't know" either. Now, that president of the theosophical society who said, "I have heard about this society" -- he cannot say that he does not know, he does not have even that much courage. To accept one's ignorance needs courage. To accept that you don't know is the beginning of real knowledge. You go on believing, because there are holes in your life which have to be filled, and belief is easily available. There are three hundred religions on the earth. One truth, and three hundred religions? One God, and three hundred religions? One existence, and three hundred religions? And I am not talking about sects -- because each religion has dozens of sects, and then there are sub-sects of sects, and it goes on and on. If you count all the sects and all the sub-sects, then there will be three thousand or even more. How can so many beliefs, contradictory to each other, go on? People have a certain need -- the need not to appear ignorant. How to fulfill this need? Gather a few beliefs. And the more absurd the belief is, the more knowledgeable you appear, because nobody else knows about it. There are people who believe in a hollow earth, and that inside the earth there is a civilization. Now, if somebody says so you cannot deny it; you cannot accept it, but at least you have to listen attentively. And that serves a purpose: everybody wants to be listened to attentively. And one thing is certain, this man knows more than you. You don't know whether the earth is hollow or not; this man knows. And who knows? He may be right. He can gather a thousand and one proofs; he can argue for it, he can propound it in such a way that you at least have to be silent if you don't agree. Believers and believers and believers -- but where is truth? There are so many believers, but where is truth? If John Lilly is right, then the world would be full of truth, you would come across it everywhere. Everybody would have truth, because everybody is a believer. No, it is all nonsense. He says, "What the mind believes is true or becomes true." No. What the mind believes is never true, because truth needs no belief. Belief is a barrier to truth. And what the mind believes never becomes true, because truth is not becoming, truth is being; it is already the case. You have to see it -- or you can go on avoiding seeing it, but it is there. Nothing has to be added to it, it is eternally there. And the best way to avoid truth is to believe. Then you need not look at it. Your eyes become full of belief; belief functions as dust on the eyes. You become closed into yourself, the belief becomes a prison around you. Belief closes you: then you are living within yourself in a windowless existence, and you can go on believing whatsoever you want to believe. But remember, it is belief, and belief is a lie. Let me say that even when the truth is told to you, don't believe in it! Explore, inquire, search, experiment, experience: don't believe in it. Even when truth is conveyed to you, if you believe in it, you turn it into a lie. A truth believed is a lie, belief turns truth into a lie. Believe in Buddha and you believe in a lie. Believe in Christ and you believe in a lie. Don't believe in Christ, don't believe in Buddha, don't believe in me. What I say, listen to it attentively, intelligently; experiment, experience. And when you have experienced, will you need to believe in it? There will be no doubt left, so what will be the point of belief? Belief is a way of repressing doubt: you doubt, hence you need belief. The rock of belief represses the spring of doubt. When you know, you know! You know it is so; there is no doubt left. Your experience has expelled all darkness and all doubt. Truth is: you are full of it. Truth never creates belief. How to attain to truth? By dropping all kinds of beliefs. And remember, I am saying all kinds -- belief in me is included. Experience me, come along with me, let me share what I have seen, but don't believe, don't be in a hurry. Don't say, "Now what is the point? Now Osho has seen it, all that is left for me is to believe it." What I have seen cannot become your experience unless you see it. And it is the experience of truth that delivers you from ignorance, from bondage, from misery. It is not the belief that delivers you, it is truth. Jesus says, "Truth liberates." But how to attain to truth? It is not a question of belief, but a question of meditativeness. And what is meditation? Meditation is emptying your mind completely of all belief, ideology, concept, thought. Only in an empty mind, when there is no dust left on the mirror, truth reflects. That reflection is a benediction. I teach the individual, I teach the unique individual. Respect yourself, love yourself, because there has never been a person like you and there never will be again. God never repeats. You are utterly unique, incomparably unique. You need not be like somebody else, you need not be an imitator, you have to be authentically yourself, your own being. You have to do your own thing. The moment you start accepting and respecting yourself you start becoming whole. Then there is nothing to divide you, then there is nothing to create the split. Hitherto, man has been schizophrenic. And I am not saying that a few people have been schizophrenic: the whole humanity has been schizophrenic. Leave a few exceptions -- a Krishna, a Lao Tzu here and there -- you can count them on your fingers. They don't constitute humanity, they are exceptions, and the exceptions only prove the rule. But the greater part of humanity has lived a schizophrenic life, a divided life, fragmentary. And how did man become so split? First thing: you are not acceptable as you are, so reject yourself. Rather than respecting yourself, reject yourself; rather than respecting yourself, respect some idea, some imaginary idea, of how you should be. Don't live the real, try to live the "should" -- and then you are split, you have become two. You are that which you are, but that you reject, repress. And you want to be that which you are not, and that which you are not you love and you respect and you worship. You have become two. Not only that you have been split in two, you have been made many -- because you were taught that the body is your enemy, that you have to get rid of the body. You were taught that many things in you have to be cut off, that you are not as you should be, that great changes have to be done. Naturally you started rejecting your sex, you started rejecting your desires, you started rejecting your anger. And all these rejected parts are energies to be transformed. They are not your enemies, they are friends in disguise. Anger transformed becomes compassion, sex transformed becomes prayer, greed transformed becomes sharing. But in the past it was told again and again, repeated down the ages, that you had to reject this, reject that. If you listen to the old teachings you will be surprised -- you are rejected almost ninety-nine percent. Only one percent, some imaginary soul of which you are not aware at all, is accepted in you. And all that you are aware of is rejected. These fragments do not allow you to become one piece, and unless you become one piece there is no peace possible. Unless you are a togetherness, integrated, crystallized, you will not know what God is -- because God speaks only to those who are real, God speaks only to those who are not a crowd, not noisy. When there are many in you, you are a crowd, and the crowd is noisy. When you become one, there is silence. Only by becoming one will you attain to silence, and in that silence you can hear the voice of God, in that silence you can start feeling the presence of the divine. And when you are one, you will be able to have a communion with the whole. By being a whole yourself, you become capable of having a communion with the whole. Man has lived very partially -- in fragments, in guilt, in fear. A new man is needed, urgently needed. Enough is enough: say goodbye to the old man. The old has created only wars, violence; it has created sadists, masochists, it has created a very ugly human being. It has made people pathological, it has not allowed a natural, healthy, sane humanity to be born. Just the other day, somebody asked, "Who is a masochist and who is a sadist?" A masochist is a person who loves to have a cold shower every morning, but takes instead a warm one. And the sadist is a person who, if asked by a masochist, "Please, please, hit my head hard," says "No!" People are torturing themselves and torturing others in every possible way. In the name of religion, in the name of morality, in the name of nationality, people are torturing each other, killing each other. Beautiful names have been found for very pathological, insane things. Insanities are called "nationalities," insanities are called "moralities" -- beautiful labels on very ugly things. But it is time that we get rid of it all. And if we don't get rid of it all soon enough, then the cup will be full. Man is going to die if the new does not arrive; the old cannot survive. There is no possibility for the old to survive, it has come to its tether's end. It has lived more than expected. I teach you a new man, a new humanity, which will not think of the future and which will not live with shoulds and oughts, which will not deny any natural instinct, which will accept its body, which will accept all that is given by God with deep gratitude. Your body is your temple, it is sacred. Your body is not your enemy. It is not irreligious to love your body, to take care of your body -- it is religious. It is irreligious to torture your body and to destroy it. The religious person will love his body because it is the temple where God lives. You and your body are not really two, but the manifestation of one. Your soul is your invisible body, and your body is your visible soul. I teach this unity, and with this unity, man becomes whole. I teach you joy, not sadness. I teach you playfulness, not seriousness. I teach you love and laughter, because to me there is nothing more sacred than love and laughter, and there is nothing more prayerful than playfulness. I don't teach you renunciation, as it has been taught down the ages. I teach you: Rejoice, rejoice, and rejoice again! Rejoicing should be the essential core of my sannyasins. Yes, Krishna Prem, my approach to life is holistic, because to me, to be whole is to be holy. IN THE TANG DYNASTY THERE WAS A STOUT FELLOW WHO WAS CALLED THE HAPPY CHINAMAN, OR THE LAUGHING BUDDHA. THIS HOTEI HAD NO DESIRE TO CALL HIMSELF A ZEN MASTER, OR TO GATHER DISCIPLES AROUND HIM. INSTEAD HE WALKED THE STREETS WITH A SACK ON HIS BACK FULL OF CANDY, FRUIT AND DOUGHNUTS -- WHICH HE GAVE OUT TO THE CHILDREN WHO GATHERED AND PLAYED AROUND HIM. WHENEVER HE MET A ZEN DEVOTEE HE WOULD EXTEND HIS HAND AND SAY: "GIVE ME ONE PENNY." AND IF ANYONE ASKED HIM TO RETURN TO THE TEMPLE TO TEACH OTHERS, AGAIN HE WOULD REPLY: "GIVE ME ONE PENNY." ONCE WHEN HE WAS AT HIS PLAY-WORK ANOTHER ZEN MASTER HAPPENED TO ALONG AND INQUIRED: "WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ZEN?" HOTEI IMMEDIATELY PLOPPED HIS SACK DOWN ON THE GROUND IN SILENT ANSWER. "THEN," ASKED THE OTHER, "WHAT IS THE ACTUALIZATION OF ZEN?" AT ONCE THE HAPPY CHINAMAN SWUNG THE SACK OVER HIS SHOULDER AND CONTINUED ON HIS WAY.

LAUGHTER is the very essence of religion. Seriousness is never religious, cannot be religious. Seriousness is of the ego, part of the very disease. Laughter is egolessness. Yes, there is a difference between when you laugh and when a religious man laughs. The difference is that you laugh always about others -- the religious man laughs at himself, or at the whole ridiculousness of man's being. Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life. And the serious person becomes handicapped: he creates barriers. He cannot dance, he cannot sing, he cannot celebrate. The very dimension of celebration disappears from his life. He becomes desert-like. And if you are a desert, you can go on thinking and pretending that you are religious but you are not. You may be a sectarian, but not religious. You can be a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jain, a Mohammedan, but you cannot be religious. You believe in something, but you don't know anything. You believe in theories. A man too much burdened by theories becomes serious. A man who is unburdened, has no burden of theories over his being, starts laughing. The whole play of existence is so beautiful that laughter can be the only response to it. Only laughter can be the real prayer, gratitude. This Hotei is tremendously significant. Rarely has a man like Hotei walked on the earth. It is unfortunate -- more people should be like Hotei; more temples should be full of laughter, dancing, singing. If seriousness is lost, nothing is lost -- in fact, one becomes more healthy and whole. But if laughter is lost, everything is lost. Suddenly you lose the festivity of your being; you become colorless, monotonous, in a way dead. Then you energy is not streaming any more. Laughter is a flowering. If Buddha was the seed, then Hotei is the flower on the same tree. If Buddha is the roots, then Hotei is the flower on the same tree. And if you want to understand Buddha, try to understand Hotei. And it is right that people used to call him the Laughing Buddha. Buddha has come of age in Hotei. Buddha has laughed in Hotei. Enlightenment has come to its very crescendo. But it is difficult to understand Hotei. To understand him you will have to be in that festive dimension. If you are too much burdened with theories, concepts, notions, ideologies, theologies, philosophies, you will not be able to see what this Hotei is, what his significance is -- because he will laugh looking at you. He will laugh because he will not be able to believe that a man can be so foolish and so ridiculous. It is as if a man is just trying to live on a cookery book and has forgotten to cook food; just goes on studying books about food and how to prepare it and how not to prepare it, and argues this way and that -- and is all the time hungry, all the time dying, and has forgotten completely that one cannot live on books. That's what has happened: people are living on Bibles, Korans, Dhammapadas, Gitas -- they have completely forgotten that religion has to be lived. It is something that has to be digested. It is something that has to circulate in your blood, become your bones, your very marrow. You cannot just think about it. Thinking is the most superficial part of your being. You have to absorb it!

This story has to be understood very deeply. IN THE T'ANG DYNASTY THERE WAS A STOUT FELLOW WHO WAS CALLED THE HAPPY CHINAMAN, OR THE LAUGHING BUDDHA.

WHEN for the first time you hear the phrase 'laughing Buddha' it looks a little contradictory, a contradiction in terms. A Buddha and laughing? Not a single statue exists, not a single painting, not a single description, of Buddha as laughing. But that is not because Buddha never laughed -- that is because Indians are much too serious about religion. Maybe that is one of the basic reasons why Buddhism disappeared from India. India was too serious, too intellectual, too full of theorizing. Buddha was very simple. His approach was not of the mind; his approach was of the existential being. And this country is the country of the pundits, the scholars, the learned men, the knowledgeable. If Buddha disappeared from this country, it seems natural. He was bringing a totally different dimension -- something very original; something very natural yet very original because man has forgotten it. He was doing a tremendous service to humanity. He was not a pundit, not a philosopher, not a metaphysician. He was a very simple being -- silent, happy, fully alive, living moment-to-moment. If you want to understand Buddha, go via Hotei. Hotei is his true disciple. It is very difficult, because whenever a man like Buddha happens immediately pundits and scholars gather around. because they get new material for their theorizing. Intellectuals immediately gather around. They have something new to philosophize about, to write about, to make scriptures of. It is said -- a very old story -- that once it happened:

A man became Enlightened. The disciples of the Devil immediately went to the Devil, their master, and they said, "What are you doing sitting here? Run fast! Rush fast! One man has become Enlightened -- and we have to destroy his truth before it reaches to people, otherwise Hell will become empty, nobody will be coming to Hell. Everybody will go to Heaven, to Paradise, or to Moksha!" It is said that the Devil sitting there smiled silently. He said, "Don't be worried -- there is no hurry and no worry. Scholars have already reached there. They will destroy the truth. They do our work so perfectly that we need not be worried."

Whenever a truth is born, a ray of light, suddenly scholars gather together -- intellectuals, professors, philosophers. theoreticians -- and they jump upon the truth, they crush it; they mould it into dead theories and scriptures. That which was alive becomes just a paper thing. The real rose disappears. Once I was staying in a Christian friend's house. I started looking into his Bible: there was a rose. He must have kept it in the Bible. Many years old -- dry, dead, crushed between the pages of the Bible. I started laughing. He came rushing from his bathroom. He said, "What! For what are you laughing? What has happened?" I said, "The same has happened to truth as has happened to this rose. Between the pages of your Bible, the rose has died. Now it is just a memory of something which was alive one day. Just a remembrance. All fragrance gone, all aliveness gone. It is as dead as a plastic flower or a paper flower. It has a history but it has no future. It has a past but it has no possibility. And the same has happened to truth. In the pages of the scriptures it has died." The Devil said, "Don't be worried. Take it easy -- If people have already reached there: the scholars, the professors; they will immediately crush it." When truth happens it is non-verbal, it is silent. It is so profound it cannot be expressed through words. Then sooner or later people will come who will put it into words, who will systematize it. And in their very systematization it is killed. Hotei lived a totally different life from an ordinary religious man. His whole life was nothing but a continuous laughter. It is said about Hotei that even sometimes in sleep he would start laughing. He had a big belly, and the belly would shake. Sardar Gurdayal Singh would have enjoyed meeting him, and Hotei would have enjoyed Sardar Gurdayal Singh. People would ask him, "Why are you laughing? and even in sleep!" Laughter was so natural to him that any and everything would help him to laugh. Then the w hole life, awake or asleep, is a comedy. You have turned life into a tragedy. You have made a tragic mess of your life. Even when you laugh, you don't laugh. Even when you pretend to laugh, the laughter is just forced, manipulated, managed. It is not coming from the heart, not at all from the belly. It is not something coming from your center; it is just something painted on the periphery. You laugh for reasons -- which have nothing to do with laughter. I have heard: In a small office, the boss was telling some old stale anecdote, which he had told many times. And everybody was laughing -- one has to laugh! They were all bored by it, but the boss is the boss, and when the boss tells a joke you have to laugh -- it is part of duty. Just one woman typist was not laughing, was sitting straight, serious. The boss said, "What is the matter with you? Why are you not laughing?" She said, "I am leaving this month" -- then there is no point! It happened:

Mulla Nasrudin listened very attentively while a stranger told a long story in the coffee-house. But the man spoke so indistinctly and muffed his punchline so badly that the story was not funny at all, and except for the Mulla no one laughed. But the Mulla laughed heartily. "Why did you laugh, Nasrudin?" I asked him afterwards when the stranger had left. "I always do," replied Nasrudin. "If you don't laugh, there is always the danger of their telling it over again."

People have their own reasons. Even laughter is businesslike; even laughter is economic, political. Even laughter is not just laughter. All purity is lost. You cannot even laugh in a pure way, in a simple way, childlike. And if you cannot laugh in a pure way, you are losing something tremendously valuable. You are losing your virginity, your purity, your innocence. Watch a small child; watch his laughter -- so profound, comes from the very center. When a child is born, the first social activity that the child learns -- or maybe it is not right to say 'learns', because he brings it with himself -- is smiling. The first social activity. By smiling he becomes part of society. It seems very natural, spontaneous. Other things will come later on -- that is his first spark of being in the world, when he smiles. When a mother sees her child smiling, she becomes tremendously happy -- because that smile shows health, that smile shows intelligence, that smile shows that the child is not stupid, not retarded. That smile shows that the child is going to live, love, be happy. The mother is simply thrilled. Smiling is the first social activity, and should remain the basic social activity. One should go on laughing the whole of one's life. If you can laugh in all sorts of situations, you will become so capable of encountering them -- and that encounter will bring maturity to you. I am not saying don't weep. In fact, if you cannot laugh, you cannot weep. They go together; they are part of one phenomenon: of being true and authentic. There are millions of people whose tears have dried; their eyes have lost luster, depth; their eyes have lost water -- because they cannot weep, they cannot cry; tears cannot flow naturally. If laughter is crippled, tears are also crippled. Only a person who laughs well can weep well. And if you can weep and laugh well, you are alive. The dead man cannot laugh and cannot weep. The dead man can be serious. Watch: go and look at a corpse -- the dead man can be serious in a more skillful way than you can be. Only an alive man can laugh and weep and cry. These are moods of your inner being, these are climates -- enriching. But, by and by, everybody forgets. That which was natural in the beginning becomes unnatural. You need somebody to poke you into laughter, tickle you into laughter -- only then do you laugh. That's why so many jokes exist in the world. You may not have observed, but Jews have the best jokes in the world. And the reason is because they have lived in deeper misery than any other race. They had to create jokes, otherwise they would have been dead long before. They have passed through so much misery, they have been tortured down the centuries so much, they have been crushed, murdered -- they had to create a sense of the ridiculous. That has been a saving device. Hence, they have the most beautiful jokes. the funniest, the profoundest. What I am trying to show you is this: that we laugh only when there is some reason which is forcing us to laugh. A joke is told, and you laugh -- because a joke creates a certain excitement in you. The whole mechanism of a joke is: the story goes in one direction, and suddenly it takes a turn; the turn is so sudden, so drastic, that you could not have imagined it. Excitement grows and you are waiting for the punchline. And then suddenly, whatsoever you were expecting is never there -- something absolutely different, something very absurd and ridiculous, never fulfilling your expectation. A joke is never logical. If a joke is logical it will lose all its sense of laughter, the quality of laughter, because then you will be able to predict. Then by the time the joke is being said, you will have reached the punchline because it will be a syllogism, it will be simple arithmetic. But then it will not have any laughter. A joke takes a sudden turn, so sudden that it was almost impossible for you to imagine it, to infer it. It takes a jump, a leap, a quantum leap -- and that's why it releases so much laughter. It is a subtle psychological way to tickle you. I have to tell jokes because I am afraid -- you are all religious people. You tend to be serious. I have to tickle you so sometimes you forget your religiousness, you forget all your philosophies, theories, systems, and you fall down to earth. I have to bring you back to the earth again and again, otherwise you will tend to become serious, more and more serious. And seriousness is a canceric growth. Much you can learn from Hotei. Buddha used to call his meditation ZAN. ZAN IS a Pali term for the Sanskrit DHYANA. From ZAN came the Chinese CHAN and the Japanese ZEN. In Japan Zen became the crescendo; what Buddha had planted as a seed flowered in Japan, came to its climax. What Buddha had started came to a conclusion. And Zen people say: Meditation is nothing but sitting silently, doing nothing. Neither the religious leader nor the politician is interested in the people whom they pretend to lead. They are interested in being leaders ― and of course the leader cannot be without the led, so it is a necessity to go on promising the people things. Politicians promise them things of this world; religious leaders promise them things of the other world. But do you see any difference in what they are doing? Both are promising so that you go on following them, afraid to get lost somewhere else, because if you lose the path then you will miss the promise.

The promise keeps you with the crowd ― and promises don´t cost anything. You can promise anything. Promises are always for tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes.

From Darkness to Light, chapter 5 With Buddha totally different phenomena happened. He was one of the most fortunate masters of human history, because what he found has been going on higher and higher in its expression, in its poetry, in its rhythm. In Zen it has come to its uttermost flowering. Zen is pure essence, just fragrance. Only those who are REALLY intelligent will be able to understand it; otherwise, the mediocre will feel offended -- even mediocre Buddhists feel very offended. Just listen to Ikkyu's words.... The mediocre man cannot find any security in them. He lives through goals -- the mediocre sinner and the mediocre saint, both live through goals. Only an absolutely intelligent person can live without goals; only intelligence can live herenow. Only intelligence can live in the moment, without bringing anything from the outside. Jesus says: Look at the lilies in the field -- they think not of the tomorrow, they toil not. And yet even Solomon, attired in all his costly clothes, was not so beautiful as these poor lily-flowers. What is so beautiful in these lily-flowers? Solomon is not so beautiful with all his kingdom and riches. Even he was not attired in such grandeur, in such splendour as these poor lily-flowers. What is SO beautiful in these flowers? They live in the moment, they think not of the morrow. A man of absolute intelligence becomes a flower. He lives herenow. He has no past and he has no future. And because he has no past and he has no future, you cannot say that he lives in the present either, because present is just a midway station between the movement that happens from past to future. The present is just a station on the way. When past and future disappear, present also disappears. What is left is a timelessness. Now is a timeless moment. It is eternity -- and Buddha calls it meditation. If guilt disappears, religion disappears. And guilt disappears if goal disappears. Guilt is a shadow of the goal. Now, Christianity won't like it, Islam won't like it, Hindus won't like it -- they all live on the goal. They will not like this flight to the beyond; they will not like this poetic, aesthetic religion. They have become accustomed to a very ordinary religion, businesslike; it is part of their marketplace . Buddha is very wide-winged. He goes to the farthest sky. And he wants you to come to those heights of being, depth of being. AND THEY ARE ALL AVAILABLE NOW! So remember again and again: he is not giving you a goal somewhere in the future -- he is simply making you aware that all that you need is available now. Nothing more is needed. Nothing more will EVER happen, nothing more can ever happen. If you want to live, all is happening now -- become part of it, dissolve into it. And to help you dissolve into it he emphasizes that there is no self, because if there is a self you cannot dissolve. You can dissolve only if there is no self. With ONE stroke of his sword, Buddha makes all religions disappear -- the priest, the saint, the sinner, the commandments, Adam and Eve, the disobedience, the original sin. With one stroke of his sword they all disappear, they are annihilated Man is left alone -- and nature. And because there is no self inside you, there is no division between inside and outside; there is no boundary between outside and inside. Outside is inside, inside is outside. That's why a strange paradoxical statement has been made by Zen people: samsara is nirvana -- THIS very world is enlightenment, this very earth is the lotus-land of Buddhas, and this very body the Buddha.

SECOND THING: this understanding has not to be practised. You cannot practise it, because practice implies the goal. This understanding either is there or is not there. There is no methodology to practise it. Practising means you are again thinking to do something tomorrow, or at least you can do it tomorrow and you can reap the results tomorrow. But the tomorrow has entered somewhere deep in your unconscious, it has come back. No practice can give you this understanding. THIS understanding is not a question of practice -- this understanding is only a question of understanding. So it was not accidental that Buddha and his teaching were destroyed in India, because the mediocre mind could not tolerate him, his insight: it was too much. They could not understand it. They wanted some methodology to be given, to be practised, and Buddha was talking of pure essence. And he says right now is deliverance. And a very strange phenomenon happens: if there is no sin and no saintliness, whatsoever you have been doing starts changing -- not that you change it. In fact, to commit a sin, first it has to be a sin. Go deep into it.... The temptation of a sin is because of the denial. The joy of committing it comes because it is a sin. If it is no more a sin, the very temptation disappears. If Adam had not been told: Don't eat from this Tree of Knowledge, he would never have bothered about it. The very commandment created the temptation. Watch your own mind, how it functions. If it is said about something, "Don't do it!" a great desire to do it arises. One feels offended by the commandment. One wants to rebel; one wants to assert oneself. One wants to say, "I am myself, and I will do my own thing, and I am not going to listen to anybody." Each child passes through that stage, and each man and woman is stuck in that stage. Whatsoever your parents have been telling you not to do you have been doing. In fact, by their telling you constantly not to do they are creating temptations. Freedom is very non-tempting, remember it. If the world has freedom to do things, sins will disappear of their own accord; there will be no need to make them disappear. And man has tried down the ages to make them disappear and has not succeeded. But the same stupid, vicious circle continues. Again and again man has tried to force laws on people, and the more those laws are enforced, the more people become rebellious. They have to become rebellious, because that seems to be the only way to protect their freedom, their being. Otherwise, they will be turned and reduced to slaves. Adam did well; otherwise he would have been in paradise, but a slave. What is the point of being in a paradise AND a slave? That doesn't appeal to the dignity of your inner consciousness. It is better to be in hell but to be oneself; it is better to suffer but to be. It is better to suffer and to go to the very end of suffering, but not to lose one's ground, one's freedom, one's dignity. Adam did well. If he had lived in paradise and had nor rebelled and had not eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he would have been an impotent person, he would have been spineless, he would have been bloodless, he would have been dead. He did well. He came out; he risked, he was courageous. It was worth losing that paradise for freedom's sake. And this happens to everybody, and the society has not yet understood this simple phenomenon. People go on prohibiting: Don't do this! Don't do that! And the same commandment creates a great urge to go against it. Sins exist because of the saints. I have heard:

A small boy saw a small girl carrying an apple. He told the girl, "Would you like to play a game with me?" The girl asked, "What game?" He said, "Adam and Eve." The girl said, "Good -- what has to be done then? ' The boy said, "You tempt me, you say, 'Don't eat this apple!' and I will eat it."

The human mind functions that way. Buddha says: If goals disappear, virtues and sins will automatically disappear. And people will be transformed! because there will be no temptation to do anything, because there will be no commandment. Just see the point of it. Just watch that inside you. What have you been doing? My own observation of thousands of sannyasins is that they are still fighting with their parents, continuously. Their deep problem is: their parents have told them not to do something if they do it, they feel guilty; if they don't do it, they feel they are not free. Either way they are in a trap, and they go on fighting. A man becomes free only when he is no longer reacting to his parents, when those parental voices have disappeared from consciousness, when they have no more impact this way or that, when they no more create for or against in you. When you are almost able to ignore them, to be indifferent to them, you have become a mature person. People ask me: "What is the definition of a mature person?" The person who is free of his parents is a mature person. Jesus is right when he says to his disciples: Unless you hate your parents, you will not be able to follow me. Now, a man who preaches love saying that looks very absurd -- but he is right. My own feeling is that the word 'hate' is a mistranslation from the Hebrew. I don't know the Hebrew, but I know Jesus. That's why I say it MUST be a mistranslation. He must have said: Be indifferent, ignore. Don't be attached any more. He must have used some term which means 'be detached' from your parents, because the word 'hate' cannot be used for many reasons. One thing: if you hate your parents, you are not yet detached, you are not free. Hate means you are against, so they will control you still. They will control in a subtle way: you will go on doing things that they wanted you NOT to do. because you hate them. Your parents were saying;, "Don't smoke," and you will go on smoking because you hate them. This is the way you show your hatred. But you are attached, you are still connected. You have not been able to disconnect yourself. You are still tethered; you are still holding the apron string of your mother. You are still childish. Neither love nor hate -- the parental voice has to disappear. You have to just watch it disappearing. Buddha goes even further. He says: Unless you kill your parents... unless you KILL your parents.... He does not mean that you have to murder them actually, but deep inside you have to murder them. You have to drop them. You have to forgive and forget. Don't react to your parents' voice inside you. And a modern trend in psychoanalysis -- transpersonal psychoanalysis, transpersonal psychotherapy -- will agree perfectly with Buddha and Jesus. Once you are free from the goal, the guilt, the ego, you suddenly lose all temptation. A child is like a tree. Parents can help them grow by preparing the soil and nurturing them with love. The trees go on growing without anybody teaching them how to grow. The animals, the birds, the whole existence, needs no programming. According to me, the function of the parents is not how to help the children grow -- they will grow without you. Your function is to support, to nourish, to help what is already growing. Don't give directions and don't give ideals. Don't tell them what is right and what is wrong: let them find it by their own experience. Only one thing you can do, and that is share your own life. Tell them that you have been conditioned by your parents, that you have lived within certain limits, according to certain ideals, and because of these limits and ideals you have missed life completely, and you don't want to destroy your children's life. You want them to be totally free -- free of you, because to them you represent the whole past. It needs guts and it needs immense love in a father, in a mother, to tell the children, "You need to be free of us. Don't obey us -- depend on your own intelligence.

When you are too much future-oriented, you start becoming forgetful about the present -- which is the only reality. These birds chattering... that faraway cuckoo... THIS moment!... this herenow... is forgotten when you start thinking in terms of achieving something. When the achieving mind arises, you lose contact with the paradise you are in. This is one of the most liberating approaches: it liberates you right now! Forget all about sin and forget all about saintliness; both are stupid. Both together have destroyed all the joys of humanity. The sinner is feeling guilty, hence his joy is lost. How can you enjoy life if you are continuously feeling guilty? if you are continuously going to the church to confess that you have done this wrong and that wrong? And wrong and wrong and wrong... your whole life seems to be made of sins. How can you live joyously? It becomes impossible to delight in life. You become heavy, loaded. Guilt sits on your chest like a rock, it crushes you; it does not allow you to dance. How can you dance? How can guilt dance? How can guilt sing? How can guilt love? How can guilt live? So the one who thinks he is doing something wrong is guilty, burdened, dead before death, has already entered into the grave. And the person who thinks he is a saint, he cannot live either, he cannot delight either. Because he is afraid: if he delights he may lose his saintliness, if he laughs he may fall from his high posture. Laughter is mundane, joy is ordinary -- the saint has to be serious, utterly serious; he has to be a long face. He cannot dance, because dance may distract him. He cannot hold the hand of anybody; he may fall in love and attachment may arise. He cannot look at a beautiful woman or a man -- who knows, somewhere lurking in the deeper layers of unconsciousness there may be a desire, a lust. He cannot relax, because if you relax, your repressed desires will start surfacing. He has to repress them continuously! A saint is never on a holiday, cannot be, because the holiday means he will have to allow all that he has been controlling. A saint cannot relax, and if you cannot relax, how can you enjoy? how can you celebrate? how can you be grateful? The sinner loses because of guilt and the saint loses because of the ego, the pious ego -- both are losers. And both are parts of the same game, partners in the same game, and the game is created by the goal. Give a goal to humanity and humanity will remain in misery. Goals are misery-creating. The achieving mind, the constantly achieving mind, is the original source of all illness, of all disease. Buddha says: There is nowhere to go -- relax. You can't miss in the first place -- relax. How can you miss? There is no target! Wrong has never been done. And so is right -- right has never been done. There is nothing right, nothing wrong. In fact, there is no doer -- how can you do wrong or right? There is no doer -- how can you be a sinner or a saint? Deep inside you are just a hollow bamboo and existence flows through you for no other motive than the sheer delight in flow. Existence flows because it delights in flow. There is no utilitarian goal. That's why I say religion can only speak the language of poetry. It cannot speak the language of arithmetic, it cannot speak the language of logic -- it can only speak the language of love. Logic is always goal-oriented; arithmetic is always goal-oriented. Watch the roseflowers and the grass leaves and the rivers and the mountains, live with nature, and slowly slowly you will see nothing is going anywhere. Everything is moving, but not in any particular direction to a particular goal. Movement is delight. That's what William Blake, one of the great mystic poets of the West, says: Energy is delight. If there is no way to lose yourself, no way to sin, no way to become a saint and no way to feel guilt, the so-called religion disappears, the church becomes meaningless, the dogmas and the rituals lose all significance. Then LIFE becomes religion, and then there is no other religion beyond life, other than life. Then life becomes the only scripture. Then life becomes all that is there. Live and know, live and feel, live and be. The religion of Buddha is a religionless religion, and Zen is its culmination. Zen is its fragrance. What was seed in Buddha has become a fragrance in Zen. Zen is the pure essence of Buddha's heart. What this man, Gautam Siddhartha, realized, what this man came to see, has been expressed by Zen in its uttermost beauty. It rarely happens。 OSHO, The world seems to be getting more and more crazy from day to day. Nobody knows what is going on and everything is upside down and confused. This is what is told in the newspapers. Is it real? And if so, is there any intrinsic balance in life which is keeping everything stable?

The world is the same; it has always been the same -- upside down, crazy, insane. In fact, only one thing new has happened in the world, and that is the awareness that we are crazy, that we are upside down, that something is basically wrong with us. And this is a great blessing -- this awareness. Of course it is only a beginning, just the abc of a long process, just a seed, but immensely pregnant.

The world was never so aware of its insane ways as it is today. It has always been the same. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars. Can you say this humanity is sane? One cannot remember a time in human history when people were not destroying each other either in the name of religion or in the name of God or even in the name of peace, humanity, universal brotherhood. Great words hiding ugly realities! Christians have been killing Mohammedans, Mohammedans have been killing Christians, Mohammedans have been killing Hindus, Hindus have been killing Mohammedans. Political ideologies, religious ideologies, philosophical ideologies are just facades for murder -- to murder in a justified way.

And all these religions were promising the people, "If you die in a religious war, your heaven is absolutely certain. Killing in war is not sin; being killed in war is a great virtue." This is sheer stupidity!

But ten thousand years of conditioning has seeped deep into the blood, into the bones, in the very marrow of humanity.

Each religion, each country, each race was claiming, "We are the chosen people of God. We are the highest; everyone is lower than us." This is insanity, and everybody has suffered because of it. Jews have suffered immensely for one single folly that they committed: the idea that "We are the chosen people of God." Once you have the idea that you are the chosen people of God, then you cannot be forgiven by others because they are also the chosen people of God, and how to decide it? No argument can be conclusive, and nobody knows where God is hiding so you cannot ask him either; he cannot be brought in the court to be a witness. Then only the sword is going to decide. Whosoever is mighty is going to be right. Might has been right.

Jews really suffered for centuries, but the suffering has not changed them. In fact it has strengthened the idea that they are the chosen people of God. The same people who tell them, "You are the chosen people," also tell them that the chosen people have to go through many tests, many fires to prove their mettle.

I have heard about an old rabbi -- he must have been a very sane man -- praying to God. He was praying for years and years and never asking for anything -- and you know, prayer is a kind of nagging: you go on nagging God every day, morning, afternoon, evening, night, five times every day. God must be getting tired, utterly bored....

And the rabbi was not asking for anything; otherwise there was a way out. If he had been asking for something it would have been given and the rabbi would have been told, "Get lost!" But he was not asking for anything, just praying.

Finally God asked him, "Why do you go on torturing me? What do you want?"

And the old rabbi said, "Just one thing. Is it not time for you to choose some other people? Please, make some other people your chosen people. We have suffered enough!"

But this is not only so with the Christians, Jews, Mohammedans and Hindus; it is exactly the same with all the people that have existed up to now.

The racial ego, the religious ego, the spiritual ego is far more dangerous than the individual ego, because the individual ego is gross.

You can see it -- everybody can see it, it is so visible on the surface. But when the ego becomes racial -- "Hinduism is great" -- you don't think you are claiming anything for yourself. Indirectly you are claiming, "I am great because I am a Hindu, and Hinduism is great." This is an indirect way, a subtle, cunning way: "I am great because I am a Japanese, because Japanese are the direct descendants of the sun God"; or, "I am a Chinese and the Chinese are the most civilized people, the most cultured."

When the Westerners reached China for the first time, looking at the Chinese, they laughed. They looked more like caricatures; cartoons rather than men -- just four or five hairs sticking out of your face and that's your whole beard! What kind of people are these? The first Europeans wrote in their diaries, "It seems we have discovered the missing link between the monkeys and man."

And what were the Chinese writing in their journals? Even the emperor of China was very much interested in seeing the Europeans because he had heard many stories about them. They were invited to his court, not because he respected the Europeans, but just to see what kind of people these were. Never before...! And he could not contain his laughter; he started laughing when he saw the Europeans.

The Europeans were very much embarrassed: "Why is he laughing?" They were told, "That is his way of appreciating. He always laughs, enjoys; that is his way of welcoming the guests." But the reality was that he could not believe that these are human beings! He asked his people, "Have you brought them from African jungles? They look like monkeys!"

That's how the ego functions: the other is always reduced to the lowest possible; and compared to the other, one raises oneself higher.

You say, "The world seems to be getting more and more crazy from day to day." That is not right; it has always been so. Only one thing new is happening, and that is a blessing, not a curse at all. For the first time in the whole history of humanity, a few people are becoming aware that the way we have existed up to now is somehow wrong; something basically is missing in our very foundation. There is something which does not allow us to grow into sane human beings. In our very conditioning are the seeds of insanity.

Every child is born sane, and then, slowly slowly, we civilize him -- we call it the process of civilization. We prepare him to become part of the great culture, the great church, the great state to which we belong. Our whole politics is stupid, and then he becomes stupid. Our whole education is ugly. Our politics means nothing but ambition, naked ambition -- ambition for power. And only the lowest kind of people become interested in power. Only the people who are suffering from a deep inferiority complex become politicians. They want to prove that they are not inferior; they want to prove it to others, they want to prove to themselves that they are not inferior, they are superior.

But what is the need to prove it if you are superior? The superior man does not try to prove anything, he is so at ease with his superiority. That's what Lao Tzu says: The superior man is not even conscious of his superiority; there is no need at all. It is only the ill person who starts thinking of health; the healthy person never thinks about health. The healthy person is not self-conscious about his health; only the sick, only the ill. The beautiful person, the really beautiful person is not self-conscious about his or her beauty. It is only the ugly person who is constantly worried and making every effort to prove that it is not so.

In fact, in proving to others that "I am not inferior, I am not ugly," he is trying to prove it to himself. The others function as a mirror. If the others can say, "Yes, you are great...." But they will say it only when you are powerful, when you are rich; otherwise they are not going to say anything. Who is interested in your ego? They are interested in their egos, but reluctantly, when you have power to destroy, they have to accept.

Adolf Hitler was mad, but nobody in Germany dared to say it. Many felt that he was mad, but the moment he was defeated and committed suicide, many people started writing that they had always felt it. Even his own physicians who had never dared to tell the person himself -- at least they were supposed to say the truth, they were the physicians -- they had not said that he was sick, badly sick, and not only physiologically but psychologically too.

He suffered from many nightmares, he was constantly afraid of being killed. He was obsessed with the idea that he was going to be killed, so much so that he never got married. He got married only when he had decided to commit suicide, just three hours before. To avoid having a woman in the same room, he never got married -- because who knows, the woman may be a spy, an enemy, and while he is asleep she may kill him, poison him. He never trusted even the woman he pretended to love. He had no friends, because to be friendly with someone means to trust, and he was so doubtful.

The politicians are insane, but we teach our children to be politicians.

We teach our children the same culture that has tortured us, the same values that have been heavy on us, that have only proved to be subtle chains, imprisonment. But we go on conditioning our children. The same education that has destroyed our grace, our innocence -- we go on stuffing the same knowledge into our children's heads. And we go on lying to our children as our parents lied to us.

And this has been going on and on for centuries. How can humanity be healthy, wholesome, relaxed? It is bound to be crazy. Just look what lies you go on telling your children.

A little boy rushed into his mother's room and said, "Mommy, I had always wanted to ask one question, but today it is very urgent -- I want the answer right now." The mother was changing her clothes, getting ready to go out, and the son asked, "What are these two things on your chest?" The mother felt a little embarrassed: How to explain to the child about the breasts? Now, it is a simple thing to explain, and children are very understanding. It could easily have been explained that they are meant for small children to get their nourishment, and the thing would have been finished then and there. But we have become accustomed to such lies -- and the mother immediately invented a lie. She said, "These are balloons. When a woman dies, God puffs up these balloons. They become bigger and bigger and bigger, and then the woman's body starts rising towards heaven." The child said, "Now I know what is happening." The mother said, "What is happening?" He said, "Our maid servant is dying, but poor daddy is trying hard to prevent her. He is lying on top of the servant, holding her down, sucking her balloons to pull the air out, and the maid servant is saying, 'God, I am coming!'"

Now, these stupid lies -- and you think humanity is going to be sane? It has always been insane. It has always remained upside down and confused, because you have been brought up on lies.

But one thing good is happening today: at least a few intelligent young people are becoming aware that our whole past has been wrong and it needs a radical change. "We need a discontinuity from our past. We want to start afresh, we need to start afresh. The whole past has been an experiment in utter futility!"

Once we accept the truth as it is, man can become sane. Man is born sane; we drive him crazy. Once we accept that there are no nations and no races, man will become very calm and quiet. All this continuous violence and aggression will disappear. If we accept man's body, its sexuality, naturally, then all kinds of stupidities preached in the name of religion will evaporate. Ninety-nine percent of psychological diseases exist because of man's sexual repression.

We have to make man free of his past. That's my whole work here: to help you to get rid of the past. Whatsoever the society has done to you has to be undone. Your consciousness has to be cleaned, emptied so that you can become like a pure mirror reflecting reality. To be able to reflect reality is to know God. God is just another name for reality: that which is. And a man is really sane when he knows the truth.

Truth brings liberation, truth brings sanity.

Truth brings intelligence, truth brings innocence.

Truth brings bliss, truth brings celebration.

We have to change this whole earth into a tremendous festival, and it is possible because man brings all that is needed to transform this earth into a paradise.

Osho Come, come, yet again come Chapter 12 " Whenever you live in total awareness you live moment to moment. You cannot plan, even for the next moment you cannot plan — because who knows, the next moment may never come! And how can you plan it beforehand, because who knows what the situation will be in the next moment? And if you plan too much you may miss it, the freshness of it. Life is such a flux, nothing remains the same, everything moves.

Live when life is there. Be committed to the earth while on the earth; die when death comes. Move with life and move with death. Dying, don’t cling to life. Dying, don’t resist death; dying, die. Living, live; dying, die. Let the moment be total. Float with it, be committed to it. When death comes, then don’t be sad. Then accept death. Then accept it with such totality that even death cannot kill you. A total person cannot be killed, and a divided person never lives. A total person is already beyond death. " - Osho, You have defined yourself as the rich man’s guru. Don’t the other people interest you? Are the rich particularly in need of a guru? Or are you their guru because they have money?

- The first thing to be understood: I have not defined myself as the rich man’s guru. It is the yellow journalism, which dominates the mind of the masses around the world, which came up with the definition. I simply accepted it with my own meanings. They were saying it to be derogatory, but my meaning is totally different.

A Vincent van Gogh is far more rich than Henry Ford. Richness does not mean only wealth or money; richness is a multidimensional phenomenon. A poet may be poor, but he has a sensitivity that no money can purchase. He is richer than any rich man. A musician may not be rich, but as far as his music is concerned, no wealth is richer than his music.

To me the rich man is one who has sensitivity, creativity, receptivity. The man of wealth is only one of the dimensions. According to me the man of wealth is also a creative artist: he creates wealth. Not everybody can be a Henry Ford. His talents should be respected, although what he creates is mundane. It cannot be compared to Mozart’s music or Nijinsky’s dance, or Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy. But still, he creates something which is valuable, utilitarian, and the world would be better if there were many more Henry Fords.

So when I accepted the definition, my meaning was richness in any dimension. Only a rich being can have some connection with me. A certain sensitivity is absolutely needed, a certain vision is needed.

A poor man is one whose mind is retarded – he may have immense wealth; that does not matter – who cannot understand classical music, who cannot understand poetry, who cannot understand philosophy, who cannot understand the high flights of human spirit. Yes, one of the dimensions of poverty is a man who cannot even produce money. He is the poorest of the poor, because money is such a mundane thing. If you cannot create it, you simply show that you don’t have intelligence enough.

The poor people of the world are responsible for their poverty. Who is telling them to go on producing children – and each child makes them more poor. Who is telling them to go on living superstitiously? – and each superstition hinders their growth towards wealth. Who is telling them that they should believe that they are poor because in their past lives they had been doing evil acts? And why should they accept all this nonsense?

Why should they not listen to intelligence? – that a poor man should not produce children, he should produce wealth. But he produces children, he does not produce wealth. It is a strange phenomenon that the wealthier countries are losing population, and the poorer countries are increasing so fast that there is a danger for the whole world. Right now there are five billion people. It was thought just five years ago that by the end of this century there will be five billion people. The estimate of the economists and the mathematicians is far behind people’s productivity. We are already five billion. By the end of the century we will be six billion.

And if you say to these people to use birth control, to use the pill, that you don’t need children, they don’t listen to you. You are against their religion; you are against their tradition!

Now, how can I have contact with these people? Even on mundane affairs there is no possibility of communication. So when I said that I accept the definition, my meaning was clear. Only somebody who has a richness of mind, of being, is capable of understanding something about meditation, something about the flight of the ultimate, of the universal.

People who are hungry, starving… Do you think if you go to Ethiopia and start teaching meditation, people are going to listen to you? They will kill you. They will eat you rather than listen to your meditation techniques!

There are certain basic necessities which should be fulfilled; there is a hierarchy. First your bodily needs should be fulfilled; then your psychological needs should be fulfilled. Only then for the first time you become hungry for spiritual experiences. Now what can I do about it? – that is the nature of things. If water evaporates at one hundred degrees heat, what can I do? I cannot persuade it to evaporate at ninety-nine degrees. It is the nature of things.

And this is the hierarchy: bodily needs first, then psychological needs second, and only then spiritual needs. What I can give to you concerns your hunger for spiritual growth. If it is not there, I cannot create it. If it is there, I can show you the path.

You can see it. I have not been seeking out and going to the rich people. Those who have come to me have come on their own. Their thirst has brought them to me. I have not been going after people, persuading them – like Christian missionaries, “Become a Christian,” – promising them all kinds of goods in the future life.

When I was a professor, one day a woman stopped my car and gave me a pamphlet with a beautiful house on the front page, a river passing by, beautiful trees, mountains. And the pamphlet said, “Are you interested in this house?”

I said, “I have never seen such a house in this city, but perhaps somebody has made it and perhaps he is wanting to sell it.” So I opened the pamphlet and looked into it, and I found that if you follow Jesus Christ, then in the coming life after death you will have such a house in paradise.

I have not been giving any promises to anybody. I have not been going after anybody. Millions of people – those who have come to me – have come on their own.

And now you can see for yourself. Those who have come have a certain richness of some kind or other; it is not only the money. I have around me people of all talents, people of different kinds of genius. Somehow my very approach prevents those people who will not be benefited from coming close to me. Even if they come accidentally, they disappear; they don’t stay. They don’t become part of my world. They don’t share the vision with me.

Nobody is sorting out who are the rich and who are the poor, and that the poor should be sent back and the rich should be retained. No scrutiny is going on. But by some existential arrangement I can attract only those people who are very talented, immensely intelligent, very rich in some quality of life. Only from that angle of richness will they have a connection with me.

And the yellow journalists go on saying sensational things to people, meaningless, false, ugly – because I am not a guru. If I have to define it I will say, “I am only a friend, a friend of all those who have talents, intelligence and some urge for spiritual growth.” To me they are the rich people.

"Experience life in all possible ways -- good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light, summer-winter. Experience all the dualities. Don't be afraid of experience, because the more experience you have, the more mature you become.”

You are trained from the very beginning to feel ashamed of this, ashamed of that; you are never accepted in your simple naturalness. That's why shame exists, and with it the fear that you may do something wrong, you may go astray, you may miss the train -- although there is no train and the question of missing it does not arise. In India, all the trains run so late, and for twenty years I was continually traveling all over the country. I was surprised that one day in Allahabad the train came exactly at the right time. It was almost a wonder. I went to the driver to thank him: "This is something of a great feat," but he looked very ashamed. I said, "What is the matter? You have done a great job, bringing the train, exactly to the second, at the right time on the platform. In twenty years this is the first time that I have seen a train coming to the platform at the right time." He said, "Don't make me more ashamed." I said, "You are a strange person. I have come to show my gratitude to you." He said, "Don't show your gratitude, because this is yesterday's train; I am twenty-four hours late. So just go away, don't make me feel so ashamed." I said, "I was not trying to make you ashamed; I had not even imagined that it is yesterday's train. But anyway I have got in it at the right time, who cares which day's train it is!" All the religions live on fear; they make every child fearful. And the fear becomes the psychological atmosphere of your being. So you are never total in doing anything, you are always hesitating -- whether it is right: what you are doing, is it going to lead you towards reward or towards punishment; are you coming closer to God or going farther away? Each step is full of fear. And because of this, religions have been able to exploit you. A man who has no fear cannot be exploited. He lives his life according to his own light. He has a lifestyle which is his, not borrowed, not given by somebody else. Nobody has ever accepted you as you are. And because everybody wanted you to be somebody else other than who you are, slowly, slowly you have also become self-condemnatory: I am always a failure; my arrow always falls short, it never reaches the target. ... This society is utterly condemnatory. Whoever you are it is not acceptable, something better.... Slowly, slowly you become infected with the disease of self-condemnation. But love is a miracle. If it happens, and you are totally involved in it, then it takes all the energy from fear, from self-condemnation, from doubt, from sadness, from misery, from anxiety. And once the energy is taken away, all those concepts are only corpses; they lose their grip on you. Hence I say to you: Love is the golden key to transformation. But it should not be a superficial, ordinary love. It should not be so small that doubt can also exist by the side, self-condemnation can also exist, misery can also exist, hate can also exist, because your love needs only very small energy. It has to be life-absorbing. The moment your love is almost your very life, it becomes prayer. To me there is no other prayer than love possessing you so totally that nothing else can remain inside you; love needs all the space and you have to throw all junk out of your being. A great love is the only prayer, the only true prayer.

You don't allow children to vote ;for political ideology they have to wait for eighteen years,then you think they are ripe enough to vote. And for religious ideology they are ripe enough when they are four or five! Do you think religious education is of lower grade than the political education? Do you think to belong to a political party needs higher intelligence, more maturity, than to belong to a religion? If eighteen years is the age for political maturity, then atleast thirty six years should be the age for religious maturity. Before thirty six years nobody should choose any religion. Inquire, search, explore and explore all over the place, explore in every possible direction. And when you decide your religion on your own it has significance :when it is imposed on you, it is slavery. When you choose it, it is a commitment, it is involvement.

"You will be surprised to know that all that you see has been invented by playful people, not by the serious people. The serious people are too much past-oriented -- they go on repeating the past, because they know it works. They are never inventive." A Meditator Needs No Personal Guidance

"If you can become just your own self, if you can blossom into your intrinsic nature, then only you will have blissfulness – a peace which cannot be expressed in words, and a certain poetry to your being; a certain dance to your being, because you will be in tune with existence. To be in tune with yourself is the only way to be in tune with existence. Nobody needs personal guidance, because all personal guidance is a beautiful name for dependence on somebody and he is going to distort you."

"A meditator needs no personal guidance. A meditator, on the contrary, needs only one thing: the atmosphere of meditation. He needs other meditators; he needs to be surrounded by other meditators. Because whatever goes on happening within us is not only within us, it affects people who are close by. In this communion people are at different stages of meditation. To meditate with these people, just to sit silently with these people, and you will be pulled more and more towards your own intrinsic potentiality."

Osho, The Invitation, Talk #12 " Love is the rock, the only rock on which we can build the temple of life, the temple of God. Everything else is just sand; except love nothing can become the foundation of life. And to make a house on anything else is to waste your time, energy; ultimately you will have only frustration in your hands and nothing else. "

I am all for the rich man. I am the rich man's guru.

I simply help you to uncover your rebelliousness, because to me to be a rebel is to be religious. Yes, I corrupt people. And I am going to corrupt people. And my people are going to spread all over the world the same corruption. I am not going to be poisoned as easily as Socrates. In these twenty-five centuries people like me have learned much. I am not going to be crucified as easily as Jesus. They told him to carry his cross, and the poor man carried it. My cross will go on my Rolls Royce. And one hundred Rolls Royces will follow it!

I said to you I am not a saint. To me the word "saint" is more obscene than "Fuck you all," because fucking is natural. Everybody is doing it -- even the clergyman. What everybody is doing, how can it be obscene? When the whole of nature is doing it, how can it be obscene? When even your God was doing it, what is obscene in it? But the word "saint" is obscene. You may not be aware of where it comes from. It comes from "sanction" -- the pope gives the sanction to somebody, and makes him a saint. This is simply absurd. Who can make me a saint? I don't accept anybody's authority. And a pope giving the sanction -- then sainthood becomes something like a certificate. It happened to Joan of Arc; Christians burned her alive. Christians have committed so many sins in the world that if there is any hell, it will be full of Christians: clergymen, bishops, archbishops, popes, Jesus Christ. Burning living people, and particularly women -- it seems to be a certain psychological revenge, because the priests of Christian communities were prohibited from any relationship with a woman. They were really enraged. They wanted to do something to hurt the woman, because the woman was very attractive. Remember, whenever you are attracted to somebody immensely, you also feel to destroy that person or that thing. Why? -- because your being attracted to it makes you a slave. That's why men and women cannot live together harmoniously. Both are attracted to each other, and both are destructive to each other. All these husbands and wives are continuously fighting, nagging, harming each other in every possible way. The reason is, they are attracted to each other. They cannot leave each other, and they cannot live together. They are in a fix. The priest, the clergyman, is in an even more difficult situation. The woman attracts -- attracts him more than anybody else, because others have some experience of woman and he has none. He would like somehow to force the woman to be destroyed, because deep in his heart is not Jesus Christ -- it is Mary Magdalene. He goes on repressing Mary Magdalene by repeating some stupid prayer. But he knows perfectly well she is there, so he wants to destroy the woman. In the Middle Ages, Christians burned thousands of innocent women -- they just had to find an excuse. And the excuse was that the women were in a conspiracy with the devil. Christians have been taught that the woman has been an agent of the devil from the days of Adam and Eve. The serpent did not approach Adam, he approached Eve. Since then the woman has been somehow in connection with the devil. In the Middle Ages the Christians accused thousands of women of having sexual relationships with the devil: "They are witches, and they are dangerous to the society. They should be burned." They declared Joan of Arc also a witch. Of course she is one of the most significant persons who has ever walked on this earth. Single-handedly she fought for the freedom of her country, and attained freedom for her country. Certainly it gave the clue to the clergymen that she must be deriving all her power from the devil; otherwise a fragile woman, a young woman -- how can she be so powerful? This was the reward that they gave to her: they condemned her as a witch and burned her alive. This was the judgment of an infallible pope. After three hundred years another infallible pope reconsidered the case -- because people were not agreeing with it. It was such an ugly act in the name of God. You rewarded the woman who brought freedom to the country by burning her alive? To keep these people on the side of the church, after three hundred years another infallible pope -- remember the word "infallible" -- declared that she is a saint. Nobody asks, if both the popes were infallible.... Then it seems to be impossible -- how are you going to manage? One declares her a witch to be burned alive; another declares, after three hundred years, that she is a saint. Her bones were dug out from her grave and worshipped. Many nuns were burned alive, many priests and monks were burned alive, but ninety percent of those who were burned alive were women. Even nuns -- they were forced to confess, they were tortured to confess that they had had intercourse with the devil. Can you see how the mind becomes perverted when you go against nature? And they were tortured so much that they had to confess. The same tactics have been used by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, but the whole credit goes to Christianity. Torture a person -- there is a limit, and then the person thinks, that there is no point in being tortured and again and again with the same question. It is better to accept it and be finished with it. They were tortured and asked, "Have you had any intercourse with the devil?" Now nobody today can even imagine that there is a devil and women are having intercourse with him. Of course because the devil is a man -- and he is not a homosexual -- that's why women were tortured. And they were told, "You have to confess the reality." Finally they confessed; and their confessions are very significant to remember. Mr. Clergyman, please remember what those nuns confessed. After the confession they were burned, because they had admitted, they had confessed that they had had intercourse many times with the devil. But what was the proof? And Christian priests have been giving them proof: the proof was that the woman said that the devil has a forked prick, so that he can enter the woman's body from both holes. Great holy people! And the women -- thousands in number -- confessed. They were nuns. And they were burned. Now the devil has disappeared completely. After Sigmund Freud, he thought it was better to leave this earth. The few men -- monks -- who were burned, were burned because they were making sexual approaches or contacts with nuns. You call this a religion? And if these clergymen, priests, reach heaven, where beautiful men, beautiful women, are all living in absolute freedom, with no fear of sin, with no guilt.... I have not come across a single reference that in heaven there are churches, and there are clergymen, and there are congregations. All that stupidity happens only on this poor earth. All the priests of all the religions are looking after the poor, exploiting them, exploiting their poverty to convert them to their religion. I am taking care of the rich. Blessed are the rich, for theirs is the kingdom of God. And of course, in heaven you will get a Rolls Royce. Anything less than that would be a humiliation of paradise, of your God himself. What do you think -- which car does your God use? I think it must be a Rolls Royce. Why is this clergyman so worried about it? It is my problem. If I have to suffer for being in a Rolls Royce and go to hell, I am perfectly happy. In fact I don't want to go to your heaven, because the best people of the earth will be found in hell, if it is there. Where will you find Gautam Buddha? He denied God; he must be in hell. Where will you find Mahavira? He denied God; he must be in hell. Where will you find all your great painters, singers, dancers, poets, musicians? They cannot enter heaven. They have committed so much sin in the eyes of the Christian priests, they must be in hell. You will find all the geniuses in hell -- if there is any hell. Of course, there is none. This priest, this clergyman, must have forgotten my watches, thinking that the letter is becoming too long. But what is the problem? There are a few people who write to me, but they don't know at all about my watches. This is the cheapest watch in the world. These are not diamonds, these are stones, ordinary stones. It is made by my own sannyasins, it is not a Piaget. My own sannyasins, Ajito and Bodhi, out of their love make watches for me. And I love everything beautiful. Look at this watch! I don't make any difference between a beautiful diamond or a beautiful stone. The criterion is beauty. Yes, a few of my sannyasins allow me to use real diamond watches. I have no objection. In Jainism, which is one of the most ancient religions of the world, in their heaven, mountains are made of diamonds, gold, silver. If in your heaven you can have mountains of diamonds, can't I have a small watch? This seems to be absolutely consistent. Be rich, be luxurious, be comfortable, because whatever you are here, wherever you go you will be able to adjust to more luxury, to a higher standard of living. Don't listen to these idiot clergymen. If you live in a poor way.... And that`s what all the religions teach -- live in poverty; if you are not poor you will miss everything after life. I can't see the logic. Here you practice poverty.... Mahatma Gandhi was practicing poverty. In his ashram even mosquito nets were not allowed; it is luxurious. And in India everywhere there are mosquitos, and particularly in Gandhi's ashram they had a great gathering -- naturally, so much food, so easily available. What did Gandhi invent to prevent the mosquitoes? He cannot allow them to be killed by Flit, because he is a non-violent man, he believes in non-violence. Mosquitoes are not to be killed, and a mosquito net is also not good, because it is a luxury. I cannot conceive, a mosquito net is a luxury? So he told his disciples: "Before you go to sleep, put kerosene oil on your face, on your hands, or any part of your body that is exposed." Kerosene oil.... Mahatma Gandhi's son, Ramdas, used to be my friend. I asked Ramdas, "If even mosquitoes have enough sensibility not to come close to a person who is painted with kerosene oil -- it stinks, even a mosquito is not ready, even though he may die without food -- what about the man? How can he sleep with this smell?" But those who did that were great saints. You will be surprised to know -- particularly this clergyman -- that in Mahatma Gandhi's ashram there was a man, Professor Bhonsali, who lived for six years eating only bullshit. And he was worshipped like a god. He had done a great act of austerity -- just eating bullshit for six months. This clergyman should try. At least for six days, eat bullshit, and you will forget all your Mother Teresas and all your Jesuses. And then you will remember me!

HE FURTHER STATES, "OSHO, YOU HAVE GIVEN ME PIECES OF HELL AND HEAVEN HERE IN RAJNEESHPURAM." 7 7

On one thing I can agree with you: I may have given you pieces of hell, that is my business. The other part I cannot agree with. I cannot give you pieces of heaven, you must have been hallucinating. I know what is actually the case. Whenever I said something which was in agreement with his conditioned mind, he felt euphoric. It was not me, it was your conditioned mind feeling nourished, supported. Those were the pieces of heaven. And whenever I said something which gave you an electric shock, of course those were the pieces of hell. You cannot hallucinate and imagine shocks, electric shocks -- that's why I must have given them to you. You are hallucinating, imagining, projecting heaven. So whenever I say something which falls in tune with your conditioning, you feel great. You feel great that you are right, that your religion is right, that your BIBLE is right. You are certain that your religion is right. You are looking for certainty, for guarantee. And strange -- you are more blissful than me, and you are asking for my authority? I have never asked for anybody's authority, I have never asked for anybody's support. I have simply lived on my own. I don't belong to any religion, I don't belong to any philosophy. It simply shows that whenever your belief system is supported, you will feel good, great; and whenever hammered, you will feel bad. But in fact, those moments that you feel I have given you of heaven are poisonous, because they are making you cling more tightly to your conditioning. The moments that you call "of hell" are the real thing. Only those moments, if you are courageous enough, if you have guts -- which is very rare in clergymen, because why should a man who has guts become a clergyman? -- if you have any guts, then forget all those moments of heaven, and remember those moments of hell. They are going to help you. My work is surgical. I have to cut so much crap which is clinging to you, and you are clinging to it. It hurts, I know. It hurts. You can forgive me for hurting you -- but don't forget that this hurting is being caused by your clinging. If you really listen to me, and you see that something is so and drop it instantly, you will not feel any pieces of hell, moments of hell. And the moment you drop all that is painful to part with, a new phenomenon will happen to you. The moments of hell disappearing will make you able to see that your moments of heaven are only hallucination. You have been drugged from your very childhood. All religions are nothing but opium. And if you can drop both, you will be free for the first time.

Have you ever seen night going? Very few people even become aware of things which are happening every day. Have you ever seen the evening coming? The midnight and its song? The sunrise and its beauty? We are behaving almost like blind people. In such a beautiful world we are living in small ponds of our own misery. It is familiar, so even if somebody wants to pull you out, you struggle. You don't want to be pulled out of your misery, of your suffering. Otherwise there is so much joy all around, you have just to be aware of it and to become a participant, not a spectator. Philosophy is speculation, Zen is participation. Participate in the night leaving, participate in the evening coming, participate in the stars and participate in the clouds; make participation your lifestyle and the whole existence becomes such a joy, such an ecstasy. You could not have dreamed of a better universe.

Zen: The Miracle Chapter 2

- Osho, WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO BE RICH?

- When one is rich, one does not have to be smart. And that's a big relief. That's why people want to be rich.

Nobody wants to be intelligent; richness can afford to be stupid. You can see the faces of rich people -- you will always find a kind of subtle stupidity.

The more rich a person is, the more you will find that he does not live, he vegetates. You will not find the sign of life in his eyes.

People want to be rich so they can afford to be stupid -- it is a great relief.

If you really want to be intelligent, who cares about being rich?

If richness comes as a consequence of being intelligent, that's another matter -- but who bothers about it? It is not a direct goal.

And the difference is great. Intelligent people also become rich. Intelligence is real richness -- whatsoever they do, they succeed.

So they become rich, but their richness has a different quality to it: they enjoy their richness, they use their richness.

A person who just wants to be rich will become rich but will not be able to use it -- he will not have enough intelligence to use it. In fact he was trying to become rich so that he need not be intelligent.

If an intelligent person becomes rich then richness opens great doors -- of music, of literature, of science, of art, of sculpture, of poetry. All these things become available.

But the goal should not be richness. The goal should always be more life, intelligent life, abundant life.

Just your laughter will be enough to prevent the war. Your celebration, your dance, will be enough to prevent the war. Your ecstasy, your meditation, will create a tremendous force which will be far higher because it is life-affirmative.” I attract crazy people; I am crazy, that's why. But crazy people are Beautiful people. They are the only sane people is the world. That is the meaning of the word 'Baul'. Baul means crazy, mad. I am a Baul, and I attract Bauls -- that's why. Just a few days ago one Japanese scientist was here to attend a world science conference. He became aware about me only at the last moment, but before rushing to the airport he came here. He had not more than fifteen minutes, and I was asleep. He wrote a letter stating many important things: the first one was that nobody understands him. He has been around the earth in search of a man who can understand him. Looking at his letter I could not contain myself from laughing... because this is a much lower stage, when nobody understands you. I have also been around the world -- everybody MISunderstands me. I have invited the scientist, his name is Fukuora. (SOMEBODY GIGGLES AT THE NAME, AND THE JOKE BECOMES CONTAGIOUS. THE MASTER, POKER-FACED, WAITS FOR IT TO SUBSIDE...) ... You can laugh in English, but not in Japanese! I have written to him, saying, "Most of the things that you are saying cannot be understood because you yourself don't understand that they are based on a dual conception of reality. On one hand you condemn the famous philosopher Descartes, saying that he is responsible for dividing science from religion, and his division has created tremendous trouble for the whole humanity...." I can understand. But Fukuora himself goes on continuously talking in his letter about the inner man and the outer man. Man is not divided into the inner and the outer. You are both. You can open your eyes and you are outside, and you can close your eyes and you are inside. Just small eyelids -- that is the only division. Not much of a division. But the blindness of man is such that although Fukuora understands that Descartes is wrong, he himself goes on doing the same thing without being alert at all. The materialist, the spiritualist... he wants the whole world to become spiritual. He goes on praising Gautam Buddha.... And that makes me laugh because if you go on dividing man into lower and higher, into material, into spiritual, you may have changed the direction of division but division is there. I stand for the whole man -- to be accepted, appreciated, loved in its total organicity. Your question is, what is the difference between "being withdrawn, being introverted and turning in?" All belong to the extrovert man. There is not much qualitative difference. Being withdrawn means simply being indifferent, aloof, uncaring. But you are still outside. Being introverted simply means you have closed all your doors and windows; you will not receive the fresh breeze and you will not receive the sun and the moon and the stars; you have become closed to reality. An introverted man is just vegetating, not living. Because life needs both -- a tremendous balance between the inner and the outer, between the day and the night, between life and death. They are not separate. Nowhere is there a demarcation. The introverted man is a dead man, a corpse. And the third -- turning in. There is no need to turn in. It is the philosophers, the people who are too much concerned with words, language, and not at all concerned with experience, who go on creating such ideas as "turning in." You have never been out -- how can you turn in? You have always been there; from there you can radiate outwards, but there is no question of turning in. "Turning in" means you had gone out of the house, roamed around and finally came back home. But you have never left the home -- you cannot, because you are the home. Wherever you go, it will be the same: your inner and your outer will be balancing wherever you are. You cannot leave one behind and go ahead with the half; that's an impossibility. But the professors and the philosophers are more concerned with words, never bothering to look into reality and existence itself.

I have heard, there is a commune in Poland which has only four members. Their names are Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. One day there is an important job to be done and Everybody is sure that Somebody will do it. Anybody could do it but Nobody does it. Somebody gets angry about that because it is Everybody's job. Everybody thinks that Anybody can do it but Nobody realizes that Everybody won't do it. It ends up that Everybody blames Somebody when Nobody does what Anybody could have done.

Here in this place, all those four are present -- and enjoying immensely! There is no need to condemn anybody. Everybody is what he is supposed to be. But man has been dominated by the idea of condemning this, condemning that: this is right, that is wrong. It has created so many layers, so many categories, that somewhere or other it has made everybody guilty... in so many ways guilty. It has wounded everybody's psyche and destroyed man's dignity, his individuality. Fukuora is not understood because he is asking things which are only symbolic, symptoms. He is not raising questions about the roots -- he himself believes in the roots. He was here attending an international conference. Naturally, just out of etiquette, he praised India too much -- "this is the only land which can save humanity." It is not capable of saving itself! And you are putting the responsibility on the poor human beings of this devastated, destroyed, enslaved, hungry, uneducated, uncultured people to save the whole humanity. It reminded me of an old Jew who was praying his last prayer before dying. Somebody heard, and could not believe what he was saying. The old Jew was saying to God, "God, it is time you should choose somebody else as your chosen people. We have suffered enough." Jews would have never suffered if God had not named them as his chosen people. Who bothers about ordinary people? This country is being praised and this country feels very comfortable with all this praise, without looking at the reality. Fukuora mentions in his letter that the world needs an ecological change. It is true -- the world needs deep ecological understanding. But the way he expresses it destroys the whole truth it contains. He says, "I loved the Indian roads, where cows are sitting." This is ecology -- where men and animals are together, drinking water, taking baths, doing all kinds of stupid things together. This is not ecology, this is nonsense, and he was very much impressed when he saw it. But he does not understand: these cows are hungry, they are dying, their owners have disowned them because their owners cannot feed them and they are of no use anymore; neither can they give milk nor they can give more cows and bulls. On the streets they are not resting, they are simply waiting for death -- hungry, uncomfortable. Death will come to them not in a natural way, it will come through the traffic. They will die and they will take a few more people with themselves. They will not die alone. And when he saw a temple of the monkey god Hanuman, he was immensely impressed. This is ecology -- man worshipping hungry, mangy... all kinds of animals are being worshipped in India, elephant gods.... I have always been sad that Charles Darwin never came to India. Otherwise he would have found the most valid reason for his theory of evolution, that man has evolved out of monkeys. The worship of the monkeys proves that they are your forefathers. That reminds me of Ronald Reagan. He has tried to stop, in the universities of America, in the colleges, in the schools, all teaching of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Not only that, his teachings have been taken out of libraries -- the books have been taken out and burned because the theory of evolution goes against the theory of Christianity which proposes not evolution but creation. But the real reason to me seems to be that Ronald Reagan does not want to accept monkeys as his forefathers. But just burning those books does not change anything. Fukuora cannot be understood by Ronald Reagan. But he is proposing something which is not even worth proposing. He is not hitting at the roots. Whether monkeys are worshipped or not, is not going to change the fate of the coming humanity. But the problem about hitting the roots is that it is dangerous. It immediately annoys the vested interests. I went through his whole letter. He seems to be a sincere and nice person; he really wants a better future. But he has not the insight that by pruning the leaves of the trees nothing is changed. You will have to cut the roots. And the moment you start on the roots you will be in difficulty, because the politicians are in the roots, the organized religions are in the roots, all the races are in the roots.... You cannot change anything in this world unless you cut these roots completely. Unless there is only one world government and no divisions of nations and freedom of movement without any need of passports and visas and all kinds of idiotic conditions, you cannot do anything about the ecology. For example, Bangladesh is suffering every year with great floods. It cannot do anything about it because the roots are in the division of nations. Nepal is the poorest country in the world and it has nothing to sell except its ancient trees. Two-hundred, three-hundred, five-hundred-year-old trees -- it has sold them to the Soviet Union and now the Soviet Union has cut so many trees that for miles and miles the land is without trees. The trees used to slow down the flow of the rivers. Now there are no trees; the waters from the Himalayas come with such a force that the ocean cannot absorb them in so much quantity, it has never done it. It turns them back, and every year Bangladesh suffers. Thousands of people die, thousands of houses are destroyed. It is beyond the power of Bangladesh to do anything. If Nepal sells its trees, who are you to say anything to Nepal? And if you say anything then you have to understand that Nepal has nothing else to sell. Then feed Nepal. The ecology is so interdependent.... It became clear that if anything goes wrong in the Soviet Union, in their nuclear plants, then the clouds of nuclear radiation will spread wherever the winds take them, and winds don't think about about national boundaries. Now the problems are international, and your solutions are national. Unless humanity is one there is no hope. But the politicians will not allow humanity to be one because it is their whole power trip. If there is only one world government, it will not satisfy so many people's egos to be presidents, to be prime ministers, to be ministers, to be governors. To fulfill these people's egos, we have to suffer. Everybody has to suffer. In India there is enough coal and not enough wheat. But Russia has burned wheat in its railway trains instead of coal because it does not have coal. It could have been a simple understanding, but the barriers of nations prevent a bird's-eye view of the whole situation. And although this country is so poor, it has been selling its wheat to purchase more atomic plants, more nuclear technology. And almost half the country is hungry and starving. The European Common Market every six months goes on drowning billions of dollars worth of food in the ocean. And in Ethiopia, every day one thousand people will go on dying, but that food cannot be given to them. The European market has its own problems: its economy will collapse if it starts giving things free to people. Then its own people will ask, "Then why should we pay? We create -- Ethiopia eats. We work hard and you are throwing our earnings to other countries. We have nothing to do with them." America goes on drowning food in the same way -- mountains of butter and other foodstuff. Last time it took millions of dollars just to carry that foodstuff to the ocean; that is not including the price of the food. Now, do you think we are living on a sane planet? Roots have to be hit hard. But the moment you hit any root you become dangerous. My attorney, Swami Prem Niren, is sitting here. He is now doing deep research into what was going on behind the screen when I was arrested in America. And such hilarious facts are coming out! One cannot figure out whether this world is sane or a big madhouse. The politicians and the church leaders were trying to force the supreme court of Oregon to arrest me, send me to jail, or at least deport me. But it was difficult for them to find any legal, constitutional reason. They knew perfectly well that it was not going to be a small thing. So first, a preparation was needed. And you will not believe -- just to arrest me, they wasted five and a half million dollars in research work to find something that I might have committed so that my arrest could be valid. They were at a loss, because I am such a lazy man -- to commit a crime is such an impossibility. I have not even prepared a cup of tea for myself in my whole life. Most of the time I am asleep. The few hours I am awake, I am talking to you. After five years of research, wasting five and a half million dollars in the research... and the pressure was increasing. But this is strange... A man cannot just be deported, because then you are afraid that he will fight up to the Supreme Court. On what grounds are you deporting him? And neither can you allow him to live there -- not because he is doing any harm to anybody, but you cannot allow him to be, because he is hitting your very roots. I don't have to go anywhere to hit the roots. I can hit those roots from here. The Christian fundamentalists were angry because I said that Jesus Christ, to me, is not a man of enlightenment. He may be good entertainment, but he is not... And to crucify a man who has not done anything except making statements which are simply stupid -- "I am the only begotten son of God." Now anybody you meet in the street who says to you, "Listen, I am the only begotten son of God," do you think it is right to crucify him? At the most you can say, "It is perfectly good." What is criminal in it? If he was saying, "I am the one who can save the whole world" ... so who is preventing you? Save! But I don't think that he is worthy of a cross. And when I said this, that the more I look into Jesus and his psychology, I see only a crackpot and nothing else.... But that I can do from here. I am doing it from here. America is not that far away. Neither is Italy that far away. And the Italian Consul is here, just by my side. He wanted to see me alone and because my secretary insisted that I never see anybody alone... because whatever I say has to be recorded. He started perspiring. He became so nervous, he said, "Then cancel the appointment." What could be the fear? The fear is that for one year, the Italian government, against any reason, has been trying to prevent my entry into Italy. A whole party, the Radical Party of Italy, is fighting continuously. Eighty-four prominent citizens of Italy -- Nobel Prize winners, poets, painters, professors -- have protested. The government goes on saying that next week they are going to issue a visa for me, and this has been going on for one year. Because of the fear of the pope, the fear of the Catholics.... Just what happened in America is happening in twenty-five countries. Sitting in my room, mostly sleeping, I am fighting in twenty-five countries. In spite of the supreme court and the politicians and the church, the head of the FBI refused to arrest me because he said there were no valid grounds. Otherwise they are very famous people for doing anything wrong -- even they could not think that it was right to arrest me. Then they asked the CIA, and the CIA chief simply refused. He said, "There is a limit to some things; innocence is not crime." And you will not believe that the research that is being done by my attorneys in America has brought out a very strange fact: finally, the supreme court asked the army to arrest me! They could not find anybody else to arrest me, because everybody wanted evidence. And the head of the army laughed. He said, "This is unprecedented. To arrest a single individual who is not even a citizen of this country, who is just a tourist, the army is being called? The whole world will laugh at it." He simply refused. Finally, when I was arrested they had no arrest warrant because nobody was ready to issue one. Even the immigration department, which had put five and a half million dollars into research -- their head refused to issue an arrest warrant because, he said, "Your research shows nothing. There is nothing that you can call a crime for which an arrest warrant is needed." They must have persuaded the city police of Charlotte to arrest me without an arrest warrant. They had nothing even verbally to tell me about what were the reasons that I was being arrested and six of my friends were being arrested. They had only a list saying that these people had to be arrested. And strangely enough, the names of these six people were not on that list. We told them, "Our names are not on your list. You are doing simply an absurd act. You can look at our passports. Your list contains other names, but we are not the right people." Because they were not yet ready for evidence, finally they managed what they could have done in the very beginning. They simply fabricated thirty-four charges against me -- just pure fiction. Obviously, they had to give some result; they had wasted five and a half million dollars. And you will not believe what the government attorney who was fighting in the court against me, for three days continuously, finally said: "I have not been able to prove anything, but neither has the other party been able to prove anything." Can you see the stupidity of the statement? Does innocence also need to prove that it is innocent? No constitution of any country requires that innocence be proved. But these politicians are so much afraid that if the roots are opened and cut, then their vested interests will be gone. If there is no God, and Jesus Christ is a crackpot, then what is the pope? Just a representative of a crackpot.... And it is not only in one country. Today I have received the news from Germany that one of its major political parties, the Green Party, has asked the government about the fact that it is now two years that they have been keeping the law, the special order that I cannot enter into Germany. Not only that, I cannot even land at any airport of Germany -- even for refueling the plane -- because I am a dangerous man. Now their own party, a major party, is asking the government, "You have to explain: what is the danger? And for two years you have been avoiding the issue. You should appoint a commission to do the research: what is the danger?" And if I am a danger, are there other people also in Germany who are in the same category? Just now, one German psychoanalyst has published a book after many years of research which says that Christianity has created more crimes in the world than any other religion. Now the Green Party is asking, what are you going to do about Christianity? It is basically a question of bringing out the roots of all our misery, of all our torture. But those who are in power will not allow you even to know where the causes lie. You have to fight only with the effects. That's why no revolution has been able to be successful up to now. Now why should this Italian Consul be so insistent to talk with me alone? What is the fear that the talk should be recorded? From where does this fear arise? What was the fear in America? because when they deported me, the United States Attorney admitted that I had not committed any crime... "But our purpose was to send him out of America, because he is dangerous." Dangerous to what? Dangerous to morality, and the man who was most emphatic about this point... his name is Michael Stoops, a fanatic fundamentalist Christian. Today I have heard that he has been charged with child abuse -- sexual child abuse. And this was the man who was in favor of my being deported because I am dangerous to people's morality. Who are these people and what is their morality? Just a few weeks ago in America there was a conference, an international conference of homosexuals. One of the men from Britain, a member of the Parliament, represented the homosexuals of England in the conference -- obviously, he must be a homosexual. And he said, "I know at least fifty-six members of the Parliament in England who are homosexuals." It is absolutely confirmed that one of the popes before this Polack pope was a homosexual. Who are the people whose morality has to be saved? In fact, a deep research is needed into who has already destroyed people's sense of purity, integrity, responsibility. The roots are very strange, because they remain hidden underneath the earth. You only see the flowers and the trees and the leaves -- you don't see the roots. All the religions of the world are responsible for homosexuality. And to find why they are responsible, you will have to go a little deeper. It is because they insisted that celibacy is very spiritual, that without being a celibate you cannot be spiritual. Now, celibacy is absolute nonsense. It is against nature, it is against medical science. I am amazed that not a single medical institute stands up and says to the world that celibacy is not possible, it is not in your program. In your body, everything has been programmed by the sperm and the egg of your parents. Celibacy is not in the program, and we don't yet know how to change the program. So anybody who claims to be a celibate is a hypocrite -- or he will be finding some perverted ways... one of them is homosexuality, another is sodomy. Who has created all these prostitutes? If you dig up the roots, you will be very much surprised to know that to protect marriage, prostitutes are an absolute necessity. Because the man gets fed up with the woman, the woman gets fed up with the man. Then just for a change... in the past, women were not courageous enough and not educated enough. That's why there have not been male prostitutes. But now in London, in Chicago, in San Francisco, in New York, you can find male prostitutes. This is a by-product of the women's movement for liberation. Obviously, if men can go to prostitutes, why not women? And the whole thing is to protect marriage. Protecting marriage is one of the causes of homosexuality, it is one of the causes of child abuse. And then all the monasteries -- Christian, Hindu, Buddhist -- are full of homosexuals. I am not condemning their homosexuality. I am simply saying that they are victims of a stupid ideology, teaching celibacy. And the governments are still doing the same. Now they are making laws against homosexuality -- not against celibacy. You can make laws against homosexuality but that will make homosexuality go underground. Or, men will start finding new ways to express their sexuality -- maybe plastic women; they are in existence already. But no court in the world has thought to cut the very root: make a law against the celibacy which drives people into perversion. But that will go against all the religions, and religions are tremendously powerful -- from the outside and from the inside, because you are conditioned by them. The whole of human history is full of violence, full of war, and we know perfectly well that it is because of the existence of nations. There is no need of nations. This whole planet is one. Its problems are one, its solutions have to be one. But why is it not being implemented? And anybody who says this.... Yesterday I received a letter from a sannyasin, Ma Prem Madhu from England. She had won the first prize in a competition for creating better and more beautiful neighborhoods, more in tune with nature. Prince Charles gave her the prize -- and she went there in orange clothes with my mala. Everybody was shocked -- all the celebrities must have been there, all the idiots and all the Lords -- and Prince Charles looked at my picture and said to Prem Madhu, "This is dangerous." Now, what danger I am causing to the world? Princes find me dangerous.... When the Prince of Wales had come to India, Queen Elizabeth insisted to him, "You can go everywhere in India, but not to Poona." He himself confessed it to his cousin-brother Vimalkirti, who was my sannyasin, and his wife, Turiya. Both were present in Bombay to meet him, and he was so much interested in me but the queen had told him not to go because it is "dangerous." I have been wondering what this word `danger' means. I have never killed a fly in my life. Twenty-five countries have prohibited my entry into their land. The grounds are the same: that I can destroy their morality, religion, tradition. And these people don't even consider a simple fact that a man who comes as a tourist for three weeks, if he can destroy your morality of two thousand years, then your morality is not worth saving. It should be destroyed. You are accepting defeat by refusing my entry for just three weeks. Your religion is not courageous enough to answer me, your politicians are cowards. And from where does this cowardliness come to all the politicians and all the priests? It comes from a root that Friedrich Nietzsche has called "will to power." Anybody who suffers from an inferiority complex, feels in some way inferior -- it may be intelligence, may be strength, may be beauty; it can be anything -- if one feels inferior... and it is bound to happen to almost everybody, a kind of inferiority, because our whole educational system is based on competition, comparison. And the moment you compete and you compare, naturally you have to put yourself somewhere; you are inferior or superior. The moment you feel yourself inferior, your whole being takes a certain root: will to power. Somehow you have to prove to yourself and to the world that you are not inferior. Your presidents, your prime ministers, your ambassadors, your kings, your queens, are all in the same boat: just trying to prove they are not inferior, they are great leaders of men. And I have seen many of these great leaders of men -- just phony. If you look inside, you will find nothing but bullshit. Otherwise I cannot see how a man who does not have a paper knife with himself, is so dangerous that the army is needed to arrest him. And all agencies of the government refused to arrest me, because they didn't see any point. They would look stupid. And that happened, finally. The United States Attorney from Oregon who was fighting the case... because he could not manage a crucifixion or something more contemporary. It was not his fault, it is my fault. I have not committed anything; what could that poor man do? He tried his best. Now the reward for that man is that he has been fired. He tried his best, but for fictions. He said in the court that I had arranged thousands of marriages, just for the purpose of getting residence -- at least certainly one marriage. Just look at the point: I have arranged thousands of marriages and he himself ends with the conclusion that at least one marriage certainly. Then from where do those thousands of marriages come? He could only bribe one couple. He tried to persuade many couples that they should say that I had arranged their marriage, and they said I had not been speaking for three and a half years; I had not been seeing anybody. It would look simply stupid. Out of five thousand sannyasins, perhaps they managed to bribe somebody -- to give him a job, to give him a green card. That was the only proof. And the head of the army laughed at the point -- "If he has married just one couple, it does not require the army! For such a small, messy affair!" But politicians are everywhere basically hollow people, utterly empty and completely in fear, in paranoia, because their position is never certain. Today they may be the prime minister and tomorrow they may not be. Today they have so much power and tomorrow they will be just a beggar on the streets. The man who was the prime minister in Russia before the revolution, a man named Karentzky, fled the country. He died in 1950 in New York. People had completely forgotten about him. He was one of the most powerful men of his times, being the prime minister of the czar of Russia, one of the greatest lands. And he died as a grocer. He had been running a grocery store since the revolution, in New York, hiding in disguise. The politician originates out of the inferiority complex. He wants to have more power, more power so he can fill his emptiness. But strangely -- by the side -- as he goes on climbing ladder upon ladder, more and more fear also grows on both sides. The fear that he can be pulled down, because so many people are pulling at his legs, so many people are competing for the same position. He cannot remain forever in power -- that fear is the reason why a man like me becomes dangerous. Because I simply want to say that two and two are four. Religions have made men's minds retarded by creating beliefs in fictions. And politicians have destroyed man into as undignified a life as possible, because their power depends on your slavery. Unless we cut these roots.... This earth has the capacity to feed at least five times more people than exist today -- that is a scientific calculation -- but these barriers should be removed. And science should be employed not in the service of death and destruction but in the service of life and love, affirmation, celebration. We are in a situation today such that either we will let these rotten politicians and priests destroy the whole humanity and the earth, or take the power from their hands and decentralize it to humanity. No army is needed, because no nation is needed. No destructive weapons are needed, because no war is needed. And if this whole energy -- right now fifty percent of our energy goes to war -- if a hundred percent of the energy and a hundred percent of the intelligence of humanity goes together hand in hand to create a better society, a more scientific education, a better humanity, which for the first time we are capable of.... It was not possible in the past. Today it is possible. Much of the work can be done by robots; there is no need to destroy human life in unnecessary work. Much of the work can be done by computers; there is no need for small boys and girls to burden their memories unnecessarily. They can just carry a small computer in their pocket which contains everything that they want to know. And to me, it is even more significant because if the whole memory is shifted to the computer, meditation will become such an easy job. Then you don't have to fight with any thoughts and memories; you just have to take your computer off, deposit it at the gate and enter into the temple! You need not be worried about anything. A better man than any which has ever existed on the earth is possible, according to the people who work in the realms of physiology, biology, genetics. It is a confirmed fact that man can live at least three hundred years without any difficulty, without even becoming old. Three hundred years -- the implications are great. If Albert Einstein can live three hundred years, his contribution will be tremendous, to physics, to mathematics. If a Mozart can live three hundred years, certainly his music will become more and more meditative, more and more silent. If a Rabindranath can live for three hundred years, his poetry will become pure fragrance of the beyond. It is within our hands to choose what kind of people we want. It is in our hands to decide how many people we want. But we have to remove these barriers of politicians and religions -- otherwise they are going to force humanity to commit suicide. I would like Fukuora to know that he is in a better position because nobody understands him. He should feel some sympathy for me -- everybody misunderstands me. And I am making everything as clear, as logical, as rational as possible. Fukuora is not logical or rational in his statements. He has a beautiful heart -- that I can see from his statements. But he has not worked out interconnections. For example, he thinks that if we move back to nature, all problems will be solved. This is not new. Leo Tolstoy was teaching "back to nature." Rousseau was teaching "back to nature." Mahatma Gandhi in this country was teaching "back to nature." And all three were in the same trouble as Fukuora, that nobody understood them. The problem is very complicated. First, there is no way to go back. And even if some way can be found to go back, where is the line? Where will you think you have gone back enough? It will certainly be when the first monkey jumped on the earth and stood on two legs -- against nature. The first scientist, the founder of civilization.... I don't think that before that, you can stop. And I don't think anybody would like to go to that state again. It will be very difficult. In these thousands of years, your body has changed so much: you cannot jump on trees, naked in the rain, in the cold, in the heat. And you cannot live on just fruits. Most probably everybody will be having fractures, multiple fractures, and there will not be any ambulances because Mahatma Gandhi does not allow even railway trains. Even something innocent like telephones he is very much against. I know one thing is wrong in the telephone. That is the last part of it, "phone," because from that phone has come "phony." But otherwise, it is innocent. You can change the name. He was against telegrams. He thought that if man goes back -- as Fukuora also thinks, without having a clear-cut conception... At the time of Gautam Buddha, twenty-five centuries ago, the whole population of the world was twenty million. Even then there was poverty. Even then there was crime, murder, rape. People don't find it in history books, and when I first said it, a Buddhist scholar, Bhodant Anand Kausalyayan, stood up and said, "From where have you found out these things?" I said, "From the teachings of Gautam Buddha! Because he is teaching people they should never commit a rape. That simply means people were committing rape. He is telling people, `Be content in your poverty.' If there were no poverty, there was no need to make such a statement." And for forty- two years continuously he was telling people not to steal, not to murder, not to be violent. To whom is he talking? Either he is mad or I am right. Now, just as India became free in 1947, forty years ago, the country's population was four hundred million. And Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa and all the shankaracharyas, all insisted that birth control is against God. In the first place there is no God. In the second place, if it is against God, let it be! It is his problem, not our problem. But nobody listened and just in forty years' time, from four hundred million, India has reached the population of nine hundred million. By the end of the century, India will have more than one billion people. For the first time, India will be the most populated country in the world. Up to now, China had that privilege; now India has defeated China in stupidity. The whole world will have five billion people by the end of the century. Going back to nature, what do you think will be the result? Even twenty million people cannot live, going back to nature. There will be simply corpses all around. And this is being taught by people like Mahatma Gandhi who think they are nonviolent. What can be more violent? Genghis Khan killed four million people. Nadir Shah killed three million people. Adolf Hitler killed eight million people. But if Mahatma Gandhi and Fukuora are to be followed, they will kill at least five billion people. The whole earth will be full of corpses. Back to nature is simply back to death. If humanity decides to go back to nature, I will suggest then first do one thing: dig your grave, prepare it, because there is nobody else who is going to prepare it. Everybody will be dying himself. So right now, prepare your grave and lie down in it and then go back to nature. All that you have, ninety-nine percent of it is because of science and technology. It is true that science and technology have taken a wrong turn. Descartes was wrong when he said that man and nature are enemies; Bertrand Russell was wrong when he said that we have to conquer nature. These people gave a wrong direction to science. Nature and man have to be friends. There is no question of conquering. We are part of nature, and the part cannot conquer the whole. The part can only dissolve into the whole, rejoice in being one with the whole. Science has to be given a new turn so that it becomes a bridge between man and nature. And the same science that has created atom bombs and nuclear weapons can also create a far greater consciousness for man, far healthier human beings, more beautiful trees, bigger flowers. This planet, although it is very small, contains the potentiality of being the richest planet in this vast universe where millions and millions of stars are surrounded by more and more planets. Right now the count is three million stars, but they don't say that is the end. That is as far as our scientific instruments can see. There is beyond, unlimited, with no boundaries. But in this whole expanse, only this small earth has evolved to the point of consciousness, of love, of beauty, of music, of poetry, of sensitivity, of meditativeness. It should be a determination in every intelligent being that we are not going to allow any vested interest to destroy this planet. This planet has to remain. And there is a golden future just ahead on the horizon -- but we must cut the roots, whatever the cost. This is the only revolt I teach. All revolutions have failed because they were cutting leaves and branches. I teach a total revolt against the past, against all vested interests. The question is of tremendous importance: to save man is to save the greatest creation of the universe. It has taken four million years for this earth to create man. It is so precious ... and the future is much more valuable, because inside you the possibility of a Gautam Buddha, the possibility of a Zarathustra, the possibility of a Lao Tzu is there. You can also blossom in the same silence, in the same peace, in the same beauty, in the same ecstasy.

... I forgot to look at my watch!

Ronald Reagan, his cabinet members, and his wife Nancy, traveled to the Rocky Mountains for a skiing holiday. Waking up one morning, Reagan opens the curtains and there in the snow, in yellow letters, someone has pissed the message: "Reagan is a wimp." Enraged, Reagan orders an analysis made of the urine to find out who the culprit is. An official returns with the results and tells Reagan, "I have some bad news and some terrible news. The bad news is that the urine belongs to your attorney general, Ed Meese." "What?" shouts Reagan. "I will shoot that bastard! And what is the terrible news?" "Well," says the man, "the terrible news is that it is written in Nancy's handwriting." strangely enough, all the religions are against the body -- and the body is your life, the body is your communion with existence. It is the body that breathes, it is the body that keeps you alive, it is the body that does almost miracles. Do you have any idea how to change a loaf of bread into blood and sort it out into its different constituents and send those constituents where they are needed? How much oxygen your brain needs -- have you any idea? Just in six minutes, if your brain does not get oxygen, you will fall into a coma. For such a long time the body continues to supply the exact amount of oxygen to your brain. How do you explain the process of breathing? Certainly you are not breathing, it is the body that goes on breathing. If you were breathing, you would not have been here. There are so many worries, you could have forgotten to breathe, and particularly in the night -- either you can breathe or you can sleep. And it is not a simple process, because the air the body takes in consists of many elements which are dangerous to you. It sorts out only those which are nourishing to life and breathes out all that is dangerous to you, particularly carbon dioxide. The wisdom of the body has not been appreciated by any religion of the world. Your wisest people were no wiser than your body. Its functioning is so perfect -- its understanding has been kept completely out of your control because your control could have been destructive. So the first part of your life and being is your body. The body is real, authentic, sincere. There is no way to corrupt it, although all the religions have been trying to corrupt it -- they teach you fasting which is against nature and against the needs of the body, and a man who can fast longer becomes a great saint. I will call him the greatest fool who has been dominated by the foolishness of the crowd. The religions have been teaching you to be celibate, without understanding the mechanism of the body. You eat food, you drink water, you breathe oxygen. Just as blood is created in you, your sexual energy is also created -- it is beyond you. There has not been a single celibate in the whole world. And I challenge all the religions who pretend that their monks are celibates to have them examined by scientists. They will find that they have the same glands and they have the same energy as anybody else. Celibacy is a crime -- it creates perversions -- just as fasting is a crime. Eating too much is a crime; not eating enough is also a crime. If you listen to the body and simply follow the body, you don't need Gautam Buddhas to teach you, or Mahaviras or Jesus Christs to teach you what you have to do with the body. The body has an inbuilt program, and that inbuilt program you cannot change. You can pervert it.... I have come across so many saints of different religions, but I have not come across a single saint who seems to be intelligent. He cannot be. His whole discipline destroys all intelligence. There are thousands of people in this country -- and now the disease is spreading to the outside world -- who are standing on their heads. And they don't know that too much blood reaching the head destroys the very subtle nervous system that creates your intelligence. Hence you will not find a yogi intelligent -- it is impossible. He has destroyed the very possibility. Man became intelligent because he was not moving like other animals, horizontally. When the animal moves horizontally, as all the animals move, then the blood is circulated all over the body, including the head, in the same amount. If you stand on two feet, because of the gravitation of the earth the head is the last place where the blood will reach, fighting against gravitation. This is the reason why man became intelligent, started being poetic, creative... painters, dancers, mystics. But you are not aware of it. It has been kept outside of your control; otherwise there is every danger you will destroy yourself. So I teach you, first, a deep respect, love and gratitude for your body. That will be the fundamental of the psychology of the buddhas, of the psychology of the awakened ones. The second thing after the body is your mind. Mind is simply a fiction. It has been used, in fact used too much, by all kinds of parasites. These are the people who will teach you to be against the body and for the mind. There is a mechanism called the brain. The brain is part of the body, but the brain has no inbuilt program. Nature is so compassionate -- leaving your brain without any inbuilt program means existence is giving you freedom. Whatever you want to make of your brain, you can make. But what was compassionate on the part of nature has been exploited by your priests, your politicians, your so- called great men. They found a great opportunity to stuff the mind with all kinds of nonsense. Mind is a clean slate -- whatever you write on the mind becomes your theology, your religion, your political ideology. And every parent, every society is so alert not to leave your brain in your own hands, they immediately start writing the Holy Koran, the Holy Bible, Bhagavadgita -- and by the time they call you adult, capable to participate in the affairs of the world, you are no more yourself. This is so cunning, so criminal, that I am surprised that nobody has pointed it out. No parent has the right to force the child to be a Catholic or a Hindu or a Jaina. The children are born through you but they don't belong to you. You cannot be the possessors of living beings. You can love them, and if you really love them you will give them freedom to grow according to their own nature, without any persuasion, without any punishment, without any effort by anybody else. The brain is perfectly right -- it is the freedom given by nature to you, a space to grow. But the society, before you can grow that space, stuffs it with all kinds of nonsense. There was a man I knew, Professor Rungar -- he lived in Mahatma Gandhi's ashram. It is not much of an ashram, just a few widows and a few weirdos, and not more than twenty. But free food, free clothing, free shelter, and all they have to do are some stupid things. They call it worship, they call it prayer. Professor Rungar was an educated man, but it does not matter. Before your education you are already contaminated, polluted. He went on eating cow dung for six months, drinking cow's urine -- that was his whole food, and this made him a great saint. Even Mahatma Gandhi declared that he had attained enlightenment. If enlightenment is to be attained by eating cow dung, then better enlightenment will be attained by eating bullshit, obviously! And when Mahatma Gandhi says about him that he has become enlightened, the whole country simply believes it. I have not found a single man criticizing it. I told Professor Rungar, "As far as I am concerned, you are the most stupid man in this country." It is a very difficult competition, but look at all your religions, what they have stuffed in your mind.... Every Hindu when he goes to urinate has a thread around his body... that thread ceremony is almost like Jews circumcising their children. And will you believe that I have come across a statement by a rabbi that the reason Jews are so intelligent is because of the circumcision. Mohammedans do the same but at a later age. Jews have their own baptism. Hindus have their way of introducing the child into the Hindu society with a thread ceremony. Just a thread is put around his neck, and he is surrounded by people chanting from holy scriptures. And every Hindu is expected, when he goes to urinate, to take the thread out of his shirt and wrap the thread around his ear. I have seen professors, vice-chancellors doing the same stupid act. One vice-chancellor, Dr. Tripathi... I caught him red-handed. I threatened him that, "Either you take this thread off your ear, or I will not allow you to urinate." "But," he said, "it is my religion." And he was a well-educated man. I said, "Can you give me any rationalization for it?" He said, "Certainly. If you put the thread around your ear, it keeps you away from sexual ideas, sexual dreams. It protects your celibacy." I said, "You are a man, perfectly educated in the West" -- and he had been teaching in the West -- "you will have to come with me to the medical center." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "I want it to be confirmed by medical scientists that putting the thread around the ear protects a person from becoming sexual." He said, "You always come with strange ideas." The simple proof was that he had thirteen children. I said, "With this thread, you have produced thirteen children; without the thread you would have threatened the whole humanity! And still you have the nerve to say that it protects your celibacy?" But the same kind of ideas everywhere you will find forced into the brain. I want it to be clearly understood: the brain is natural; mind is what is stuffed into the brain. So the brain is not Christian, but mind can be; the brain is not Hindu, but the mind can be. The mind is the creation of the society, not a gift of nature. The first thing the psychology of the buddhas will do is to take away this whole junk that you call mind and leave your brain silent, pure, innocent, the way you were born. Modern psychology all around the world is doing something stupid: analyzing the brain, analyzing all the thoughts which constitute your mind. In the East we have looked into the innermost parts of humanity and our understanding is, the mind needs no analysis. It is analyzing junk. It needs simply to be erased. The moment the mind is erased -- and the method is meditation -- you are left with a body which is absolutely beautiful, you are left with a silent brain with no noise. The moment the brain is freed from the mind, the innocence of the brain becomes aware of a new space which we have called the soul. Once you have found your soul, you have found your home. You have found your love, you have found your inexhaustible ecstasy, you have found that the whole existence is ready for you to dance, to rejoice, to sing -- to live intensely and die blissfully. These things happen on their own accord. The mind is the barrier between your brain, your body and your soul. You can see the difference: the psychology born in the West is concerned with the most non-essential part of you; it goes round and round analyzing the mind. The psychology of the buddhas, in a single hit, will drop the mind and accept only that which existence has given to you, not the society you were unfortunate to be born in. But every society is unfortunate, every religion is unfortunate. This is the greatest calamity under which humanity has lived up to now. What is the difference between a Mohammedan and a Christian, except the mind? What is the difference between a communist and a spiritualist? -- just the difference of the mind. Each has been cultivated differently. So the first and the most basic thing is, the psychology of the buddhas has evolved methods of meditation which are really nothing but surgical methods so that the mind can be removed -- it is the worst cancerous growth in you. Other than the mind, everything is absolutely beautiful. It is because only the mind is man-manufactured; everything else comes from the eternal sources of life. ... I will give you an example to show that science is a very much lower phenomenon.... One morning Chuang Tzu sat up in his bed -- which was strange, because he used to get up and get out of his bed. Why is he sitting and looking so sad? He was not a man of sadness. In fact I have not found anybody else in the whole world of literature who has written such beautiful absurd stories. They don't make any sense, but they are beautiful. He was again creating a situation. The disciples were worried; they came and they asked, "What is the matter?" Chuang Tzu said, "I am in a very great fix: last night I slept, and I knew perfectly well that I was Chuang Tzu. But in the night I had a dream that I had become a butterfly." The disciples laughed. He said, "Shut up! It is not a matter to laugh about, my whole life is at risk!" They said, "Master, it was only a dream!" He said, "First you should listen to the whole thing. Then in the morning I woke up and the idea arose in me that if Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly in dream, what is the guarantee that a butterfly cannot become Chuang Tzu in a dream? And now the question is, who am I? The butterfly dreaming, or...?" Certainly the situation he has created is almost insoluble. Do you think there can be any rational solution to it? His question is very pertinent: if Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly in a dream, perhaps the butterfly has gone to sleep and has become Chuang Tzu. The problem is that Chuang Tzu is losing his identity. He told the disciples, "Meditate and find a solution. Unless you find a solution I am going to sit in my bed without eating, because it is a question of life and death." They went out, they discussed it..."This is absolutely absurd! We have also dreamt, but this idea..." But the idea is such that there is no way out of it! Then came Lieh Tzu, Chuang Tzu's chief disciple, and all the disciples asked him what to do. He said, "Don't be worried," and rather than going to Chuang Tzu, he went to the water well. They said, "Where are you going?" He said, "You just wait. I know my master." He pulled out a bucket of water -- it was a cold winter morning -- and he brought the bucket of water and poured it on Chuang Tzu! Chuang Tzu laughed and he said, "If you had not come, my life was at risk. You saved me!" Lieh Tzu said, "Just get out of the bed, or I am going to bring another bucket of water. All that you need is to be brought out of your dream. You are still dreaming." He said, "No, I am going to get out!" The masters cannot create a science, because science can only be objective. At the most you can call it an art, because the art has more flexibility, more different approaches.... Now what do you call Lieh Tzu's bringing a bucket of water? A scientific method? Just a clear insight, and out of that clear insight arises an arbitrary, artful, but intelligent method. In fact, Chuang Tzu was waiting for some disciple to do something -- it was not a question to be solved by sitting and pondering over it. It was a question that somebody has to do something and show by his act, his clarity. This was the moment Chuang Tzu declared Lieh Tzu to be his successor. All the other disciples could not understand what had happened -- what kind of solution is this? The psychology of the buddhas is not a science, is not a philosophy. At the most we can call it a very flexible art. Hence, there are no fixed answers for anything. I will give you another example. One morning, it must have been such a beautiful morning, a man comes to Gautam Buddha and asks him, "Does God exist?" Everybody is curious to know what Buddha answers. Buddha said to the man, "There is no God -- not only now, there has never been. It is simply a fiction to exploit the fools." The man was very much shocked. In the afternoon, another man came and he asked, "What do you think about the existence of God?" Again the same question.... Buddha looked at the man and said, "Yes, there is a God and there has always been." And in the evening, another man came and said, "I don't know anything about God. I am absolutely ignorant. Knowing that you are here, I have come to be enlightened about the subject." Buddha looked at him and then closed his eyes. No answer -- and strangely, the disciples saw that the other man also closed his eyes. One hour must have passed when the man opened his eyes, touched Gautam Buddha's feet and said, "You have answered it, and I am immensely grateful." Ananda, who used to be the attendant of Gautam Buddha twenty-four hours a day, became very much confused. Anybody could have become confused -- in the morning he says one thing, in the afternoon he says just the opposite, and in the evening he says nothing and the man gets the answer, touches his feet with tears of joy and leaves! When everybody was gone, Ananda said, "I cannot sleep tonight until you tell me which one is the true answer." Gautam Buddha said, "The first thing you have to remember -- none of the questions were yours. Why should you be worried about the answers? You have been with me for forty years. If you had any question, you could have asked. Those were questions of three different people." Ananda said, "I am sorry, it is true. None of them was my question, but I have ears and I heard. And all three questions and the three answers are so contradictory that it has become a turmoil in me." Buddha said, "You don't understand another thing. The first man who had come to see me was a believer in God. He was a theist, and all he wanted was not an answer but a support to his belief. I cannot support anybody's belief. My function is to destroy all beliefs, so that you yourself can see what is the truth. That's why I denied absolutely that there is any God and said there has never been any God. "The man who came in the afternoon was just the opposite; he was an atheist. He did not believe in God and he had also come to be supported so that he could tell people that `not only I am an atheist -- Gautam Buddha himself is an atheist.' But this was also a belief, not an experience, because the experience never asks questions. It is always the belief that goes on creating questions." Your mind is full of beliefs, with no experience at all. That's why Gautam Buddha said, "I had to be very strict with the fellow, and I told him there is a God and there has always been a God." These are arbitrary methods to destroy different kinds of beliefs. But the basic purpose is to destroy belief so that you can find your own heart, your own trust. "And the third man was a very innocent man because he accepted his ignorance, and he did not propose any belief. He had not come to be supported, he had come to be really helped. And there is a difference in being supported and being helped. "Because he had no question, there was no need to answer. I closed my eyes, and he understood that he had also to close his eyes: perhaps this is the way Gautam Buddha is going to answer him. And he was right -- innocence is always right. In that one hour, my silence infiltrated his being. My presence surrounded his being. He was immensely fulfilled, contented. "God is nobody's concern -- certainly it was not the concern of that man. All he wanted was a certain communion with existence, whatever name is given to existence. I gave him the taste, I gave him the experience; I shared myself with him -- that's why he was so grateful. You are puzzled that the man said, `I have received the answer' although I had not answered in words. And in gratitude, he touched my feet, with tears of joy. But in each case I had to use a different, arbitrary method because those three persons had three different minds."

The psychology of the buddhas cannot be a science. Science is always objective, it is about the other. It is never about your own being. It is extrovert, it is never introvert. But the man who has become awakened finds ways to shake you from your sleep, to wake you from your mind, which is your coma, which is your blindness. That's why different masters in different countries have used different methods. No method is scientific. It depends on the person who has to be operated upon. The surgery cannot be a definite science. As far as the psychology of the buddhas is concerned, it is going to be very flexible. Yes, sometimes the master may hit you and sometimes the master may hug you. But it all depends on what kind of mind he is working on, and he is working on different kinds of minds. You don't have the same minds; otherwise the same method would have been enough. Traditionally there are one hundred and eight methods of meditation. I have gone through all those methods -- not just by reading them; I have tried every method. My search was to find what is the essential core of all those one hundred and eight methods, because there is bound to be something essential. And my experience is that the essential of all meditations is the art of witnessing. And then I created my own methods because I had found the essential core. Those one hundred and eight methods have become, in a way, out of date. They were created by different masters for different kinds of people, to transform different minds. The contemporary mind did not yet exist; the contemporary mind needs new methods. The methods will differ only in non-essentials. The essential core, the very soul of the method, is going to be the same.

This silence is beautiful, but each laughter makes the silence go deeper. Have you observed it or not? After each laughter, there is a deeper layer of silence revealing itself to you. It is almost like being on a road, and a car passes with its headlights on. Suddenly there is light where there was darkness. But once the car has gone, the darkness becomes darker. Something almost similar happens; hence I have started calling my jokes "the time for prayer."

Herman Levinsky is standing in front of the gorilla's cage in the zoo one day, when the wind blows a piece of grit into his eye. As Herman pulls down his eyelid to remove the particle, the gorilla goes crazy, bends open the bars and beats the poor fellow senseless. When Herman regains consciousness, he explains to the anxious zookeeper what happened. The zookeeper nods sagely and explains that in gorilla language, pulling down the eyelid means, "Fuck you!" This explanation doesn't make Herman feel any better, and he swears revenge. The next day, Herman arrives at the zoo with two large knives, two hats, two whistles and a large sausage. Putting the sausage in his pants, he hurries to the gorilla's cage, into which he throws a knife, a hat and a whistle. Then Herman puts on his hat. The gorilla looks at him, looks at the hat, and puts it on. Next, Herman picks up the whistle and blows it. The gorilla looks at him, looks at the whistle, and then picks it up and blows it. Then Herman picks up the knife, whips the sausage out of his pants, and slices it neatly in two. The gorilla looks at the knife in his cage, looks at his prick, looks up, and pulls down his eyelid.

Spiritual Gangster - Osho Many people are there who are not only deceiving others, they go on deceiving themselves. They think they are not in misery; they go on saying they are not in misery. But their whole existence is miserable. When they are saying that they are not in misery, their faces, their eyes, their heart, everything, is in misery. I will tell you one anecdote, and then finish. I have heard once it happened that twelve ladies reached purgatory. The officiating angel asked them,"Were any of you unfaithful to your husbands while on earth? If someone was unfaithful to her husband, she should raise her hand." Blushingly, hesitating, by and by eleven ladies raised their hands. The officiating angel took his phone, called into the phone, "Hello! Is that hell? Have you got room for twelve unfaithful wives there? -- one of them, stone deaf!" It isn't needed whether you say or not. Your face, your very being, shows everything. You may say you are not miserable, but the way you say it, the way you are, shows you are miserable. You cannot deceive, and there is no point -- because no one can deceive anybody else, you can only deceive yourself. Remember, if you are miserable, you have created all this. Let it penetrate deep in your heart that you have created your sufferings because this is going to be the formula, the key. If you have created your sufferings, only then can you destroy it. If someone else has created them, you are helpless. You have created your miseries, you can destroy them. You have created them through wrong habits, wrong attitudes, addictions, desires. Drop this pattern! Look fresh! And this very life is the ultimate joy that is possible to human consciousness. Your parents are creating the feeling in you that you are powerless. Why? Because only through this they can feel they are powerful. You may be thinking that you love children very much. That doesn't seem to be the case. You love power, and when you get children, when you become mothers and fathers, you are powerful. Nobody may be listening to you; you may be nothing in the world, but at least in the boundaries of your home you are powerful. You can at least torture small children. And look at fathers and mothers: they torture! And they torture in such a loving way that you cannot even say to them that "You are torturing." They are torturing for "their own good", for the children's own good! They are 'helping' them to grow. They feel powerful. Psychologists say that many people go to the teaching profession just to feel powerful, because thirty children at your disposal, you are just a king. It is reported that Aurangajeb was imprisoned by his son. When he was imprisoned, he wrote a letter and he said, "Only one wish, if you can fulfill, it will be good, and I will be very happy. You just send thirty children to me so that I can teach them in my imprisonment." The son has been reported to have said, "My father has always remained a king, and he cannot lose his kingdom. So even in the prison he needs thirty children so he can teach them." Look! Go into a school! The teacher sitting on his chair-and absolute power, just the master of everything that is happening there. People want children not because they love, because if they love, really, the world will be totally different. If you love your child the world will be totally different. You will not help him to be helpless, to feel helpless, you will give him so much love that he would feel he is powerful. If you give love, then he will never be asking for power. He will not become a political leader; he will not go for elections. He will not try to accumulate money and go mad after it, because he knows it is useless -- he is already powerful; love is enough. But nobody is giving love, then he will create substitutes. All your desires, whether of power, of money, prestige, they all show that something had been taught to you in your childhood, something has been conditioned in your bio-computer and you are following that conditioning without looking inside, that whatsoever you are asking is already there. Patanjali's whole effort is to put your bio-computer in silence so that it doesn't interfere. This is what meditation is. It is putting your bio-computer, for certain moments, into silence, into a non-chattering state, so that you can look within and hear your deepest nature. Just a glimpse will change you because then this biocomputer cannot deceive you. This bio-computer goes on saying that, "Do this, do that!" It goes on continuously manipulating you, that "You must have more power; otherwise you are nobody." If you look within, there is no need to be anybody; there is no need to be somebody. You are already accepted as you are. The whole existence accepts you, is happy about you. You are a flowering -- an individual flowering, different from any other, unique, and God welcomes you; otherwise you could not be here. You are here only because you are accepted. You are here only because God loves you or the universe loves you or the existence needs you. You are needed.

Once Buddha came to his monks; he was going to deliver a sermon. He sat under his tree. He was having a handkerchief in his hand. He looked at the handkerchief. The whole congregation also looked what he was doing. Then he binds five knots in the handkerchief and then he asks, "What should I do now to unknot this handkerchief? What should I do now?" And he asked two questions. One: "Is the handkerchief the same when there were no knots on it or is it different?" One bhikkhu, one monk, says that, "In a sense it is the same because the quality of the handkerchief has not changed. Even with knots it is the same, the same handkerchief. The inherent nature remains the same. But in a sense it has changed because something new has appeared. Knots were not there, now knots are there. So superficially it has changed, but deep down it has remained the same." Buddha says, "This is the situation of human mind. Deep down it remains unknotted. The quality remains the same." When you become a Buddha, an enlightened one, you will not have a different consciousness. The quality will be the same. The difference is only that now you are a knotted handkerchief; your consciousness has a few knots. Second thing Buddha asked: "What I should do to unknot the handkerchief?" Another monk says, "Unless we know what you have done to knot it we cannot say anything, because the reverse process will have to be applied. The way you have knotted it has to be known first, because that will be the way again in the reverse order to unknot." So Buddha says, "This is the second thing. How you have come into this bondage, this has to be understood. How you are conditioned in your bondage, this has to be understood, because the same will be the process, in reverse order, to uncondition you." 、 Risk is there, but life itself is risk. For higher life, higher risks will be there. You move on a dangerous path. But remember, there is only one error in life, and that is not moving at all; that is just afraid, sitting, just afraid if you move something may go wrong, so it is better to wait and sit. This is the only error. You will not be in danger, but no growth will be possible. Patanjali says there are things which you do not know, there are things which your logic cannot infer. You have to take on trust. Because of this third source, the guru, the Master, becomes a necessity, someone who knows. And you have to take the risk, and I say it is a risk, because there is no guarantee. The whole thing may prove just a wastage, but it is better to take the risk, because even if it is proved a wastage, you have learned much. Now no other person will be able to deceive you so easily. At least you have learned this much.

BELOVED OSHO, CAN A CHAIN-SMOKER BECOME MEDITATIVE? I HAVE SMOKED FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS, AND I FEEL THAT IN SMOKING I STOP GOING DEEPLY INTO MEDITATION.. STILL, I CAN'T STOP SMOKING. CAN YOU TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

A meditator cannot smoke, for the simple reason that he never feels nervous, in anxiety, in tension. Smoking helps -- on a momentary basis -- to forget about your anxieties, your tensions, your nervousness. Other things can do the same -- chewing gum can do the same, but smoking does it the best. In your deep unconscious, smoking is related with sucking milk from your mother's breast. And as civilization has grown, no woman wants the child to be brought up by breast-feeding -- naturally; he will destroy the breast. The breast will lose its roundness, its beauty. The child has different needs. The child does not need a round breast, because with a round breast the child will die. If the breast is really round, while he is sucking the milk he cannot breathe; his nose will be stopped by the breast. He will get suffocated. The child's needs are different from a painter's need, form a poet's need, from that of a man of aesthetic sensibility. The child needs a long breast so his nose is free and he can do both -- he can breathe and also feed himself. So every child will try to make the breast according to his needs. And no woman wants the breast to be destroyed. It is part of her beauty, her body, her shape. So as civilization has grown, children are taken away from the breast of the mother sooner and sooner. And the longing to drink from the breast goes on in their minds. And whenever people are in some nervous state, in tension, in anxiety, the cigarette helps. It helps them to become a child again, relaxed in their mother's lap. The cigarette is very symbolic. It is just like the nipple of the mother, and the smoke that goes through it is warm just like the milk is warm. So it has a certain symmetry, and you become engaged in it, and for the moment you are reduced to a child who has no anxieties, no problems, no responsibilities. You say that for thirty years you have been smoking, a chain-smoker; you want to stop it but you cannot stop it. You cannot -- because you have to change the causes that have produced it. I have been successful with many of my sannyasins. First they laughed when I suggested to them... they could not believe that such a simple solution could help them. I said to them, "Don't try to stop smoking, but rather bring a milk bottle that is used for small children. And in the night when nobody can see you, under your blanket enjoy the milk, the warm milk. It is not going to do any harm at least." They said, "But how is it going to help?" I said, "You forget about it -- how and why -- you just do it. It will give you good food before you go to sleep, and there is no harm. And my feeling is that the next day you will not feel so much need for cigarettes. So you count." And they were surprised... slowly, slowly the cigarettes were disappearing, because their basic need which had remained hanging in the middle was fulfilled: they are no more children, they are maturing, and the cigarette disappears. You cannot stop it. You have to do something which is not harmful, which is healthier, as a substitute for the time being so that you grow up and the cigarettes stop themselves. Small children know this -- I have learned the secret from them. If a child is crying or weeping and is hungry, and the mother is far away, then he will put his thumb in his mouth and start sucking it. And he will forget all about hunger and crying and weeping, and will fall asleep. He has found a substitute -- although that substitute is not going to give him food, at least it gives a sense that something similar is happening. It relaxes him. I have tried with a few of my sannyasins, even sucking the thumb. If you are too afraid to bring a bottle and fill it with milk, and if your wife comes to know about it, or your children see you doing it, then the best way is: you go to sleep with the thumb in the mouth. Suck it and enjoy it. They have always laughed but they have always come back and said, "It helps, and the number of cigarettes next day is less and it goes on becoming less." Perhaps it will take a few weeks, then the cigarettes will disappear. And once they have disappeared without your stopping them.... Your stopping is repression, and anything repressed will try to come up again with greater force, with vengeance. Never stop anything. Find the basic cause of it and try to work out some substitute which is not harmful. So the basic cause disappears -- the cigarette is only a symptom. So the first thing is, stop stopping it. The second thing is, get a good bottle, and don't be embarrassed. If you are embarrassed then use your own thumb. Your own thumb will not be that great, but it will help. And I have never seen anybody failing who has used what I am saying. One day suddenly he cannot believe that he was unnecessarily destroying his health rather than having pure and clean air, smoking dirty smoke and destroying his lungs. And this is going to become a problem more and more because as the women's liberation movement grows children will not be breast-fed. I am not saying that they should be breast-fed; but they should be given some substitute breast so that their unconscious does not carry some wound that will create problems for them -- chewing gum and cigarettes and cigars.... These are all symptoms. In different countries they are different. In India they go on chewing pan leaves, or there are many people who use snuff. These are all the same. The snuff looks far away, but it is not that far away. The people who are nervous, tense, in anxiety, will take a dose of snuff. It gives a good sneeze, clears their mind, shakes their whole being, and it feels good. But those anxieties will come back. The snuff cannot destroy them. You have to destroy the very base of your being nervous. Why should you be nervous? Many journalists have told me, "With you one of the greatest difficulties is that we feel nervous." And they have said, "This is strange because we interview politicians -- they feel nervous, we make them nervous. You make us nervous, and immediately the desire to smoke arises. Then you prevent us smoking: `You cannot smoke here.' You are allergic. "You have a great strategy! -- we cannot smoke, and you are making us nervous and tense, and this allergy you have which prevents us from smoking... so you have no way out for us." But why should they feel nervous before me? Those politicians are powerful people -- if they feel nervous before them, it can be understood. But the reality is those powerful people are just hollow inside, and that power is borrowed from others, and they are afraid for their respectability. Each word they have to speak, they have to think twice. They are nervous that these journalists may create a situation in which their influence over people is destroyed. Their image that they have created has to become better and better. That is their fear. Because of that fear, the journalist -- any journalist, who has no power -- can make them nervous. To me there is no problem. I have no desire for respectability. I am notorious enough -- they cannot make me more notorious. I have done everything that could have made me nervous; I have managed already. What can they do to me? -- I don't have any power to lose, and I can say anything that I want because I am not worried about being contradictory, inconsistent. On the contrary, I enjoy being contradictory, inconsistent. They start feeling nervous, and the nervousness immediately brings the idea to do something, to get engaged, so nobody feels that you are nervous. Just watch: when you start feeling that you need a cigarette, just watch why you need it. There is something that is making you nervous, and you don't want to be caught. I am reminded... One day in a New York church, as the bishop entered he saw a strange man, a perfect hippy-type. But he made the bishop nervous, because that man looked into his eyes, and said, "Do you know who I am? I am Lord Jesus Christ." The bishop phoned Rome: "What am I supposed to do?" he asked the pope, "a hippy-looking man, but he also looks like Jesus Christ. And I am alone here, early in the morning and he has come here. I have never been told what we have to do when Jesus Christ comes, so I want instruction. Clearly, so I don't commit any mistake." The pope was himself nervous. He said, "Do only one thing: look busy! What else can be done? Meanwhile give a phone call to the police station. And look busy so that man cannot see your nervousness." Cigarettes help you to look busy; your nervousness is covered by it. So don't try to stop it; otherwise you will feel nervous and then you will fall back to the old pattern. The desire is there because something is left incomplete in you. Complete it -- and there are simple methods to complete it. Just a baby's milk bottle will do. It will give you good food, it will make you healthier and it will take away all your desire for looking busy! ------WHY IS IT THAT THE HABITS I JUDGE BAD FOR ME -- SMOKING, OVEREATING ETC, ARE THE MOST PERSISTENT?

That will be. If you judge them bad they will be persistent because you are creating a relationship with them. To call anything bad is to create a relationship with it. And whenever you call a thing bad, why do you call it bad? You call it bad because it defeats you. It is powerful. You call it bad because you are impotent before it; and by name-calling nobody is helped. So the first thing to do is: stop judging! If you want to smoke -- smoke! Smoke meditatively, forget what others say about it. Smoking can be such a beautiful meditation. Don't fight with it, smoke meditatively, create perfect rings, and enjoy the whole thing. And suddenly one day you will find the need has disappeared. The whole thing looks so foolish. Not that you judge, because when you judge then it is either good or bad. When you don't judge something simply drops if it is useless. If you meditate while smoking you will find that meditation can be done without smoking, AND better. So why unnecessarily bring this smoke in between? One day you will put the cigarette back on the table, on the ashtray, and you will never take one again -- but it is not a judgement. Whenever you say something is bad you are giving roots to it. And it is always so that good is not so powerful as bad because good is that which others tell you to do and bad is that which YOU want to do. Of course the good can never be as powerful as the bad because the bad is that which you would like to do, and the good is that which others are trying to force on you to do. You resist that good. It looks like a slavery, a bondage, and bad looks like freedom. If you are FORCED into heaven you will run away from it and fall into hell because you will say, At least here is freedom. And the saints, the so-called saints, and religious people have done such terrible harm to human consciousness by forcing good things on people that it is incalculable. Rather force bad things on people so that bad becomes associated with bondage, with others' egos, and good becomes associated with one's own ego. Then people will be better. It happened, I used to live with a friend. He became worried one day because he had seen his son smoking. His son was very small, not more than ten years of age, and he was very much worried -- he was a very good and religious man -- so he said: What to do? I told him: Bring a packet to me, and send your son. I forced the boy to smoke twenty cigarettes, and I threatened, if he did not finish the whole packet, I would beat him. Crying and weeping and smoking and coughing and with me standing there with a stick to beat him -- finished! He told me: Now nobody can ever force me! It is better if bad is associated with bondage -- but it is not so associated. Your father doesn't want you to smoke, your mother doesn't want you to smoke the surgeon general doesn't want you to smoke -- suddenly an urge arises to be free of all this. And you would like to smoke: that gives you a feeling of freedom, of independence, that gives you a feeling that you are now on your own, you don't care what all these people say. They are really forcing you to smoke. Prohibit a thing, and you are forcing people to do the thing. Prohibit anything, and it will become more and more prevalent. Allow, and it falls out of use. So what to do? Smoke with meditation, don't worry. Enjoy it. If you can enjoy it, the whole power from it will be gone. The power is very symbolic -- you are rebelling against your parents, against the society -- these are simple gestures of rebellion: you don't like things as they are. But in rebelling against them you are harming yourself -- that's your foolishness. Smoking is not bad, simply harmful. It is not sin, it is simply ignorance. So there is nothing bad about it -- if you want to enjoy ignorance, enjoy. How does it matter if you live one year less? You would have lived seventy years, now you will live sixty-nine if you go on smoking two packets of cigarettes every day. One year you will lose, but what does it matter? Sixty nine you are going to waste, you would have wasted seventy. One year less means one year less of your nonsense doings in the world. In a way it is good, you are gone, the world is less burdened. Don't be worried about these things and don't create judgements. Don't judge. If you enjoy, you enjoy. If you don't enjoy, you stop. No judgement is needed, no morality should be brought in to change these things, otherwise you will never be able to change them. The more you push them, negate them, the more powerful they will become, because whenever you try to push something away from you, you are showing interest. Whenever you say, I am not going to do this, you know your unconsciousness is saying, Do it, it is beautiful. So don't create such vicious circles. I was telling you the other day a Zen monk's saying: When walking walk; when sleeping sleep; when eating, eat; above all, don't wobble. I would add: When smoking smoke; above all, don't wobble. Just take it simply. If you take it simply what will you see? You will see the whole nonsense behind it. Smoking is not the thing, you are denying something through it, rebelling against something. Your father is standing there: you were such a small child and your father was so powerful and he said, Never smoke. And you wanted to deny his authority. You started smoking. The mother was there, the priest in the church, the Sunday school in the church saying, Don't smoke otherwise you will be thrown into hell. You never liked that priest, you never liked that sermon, you were forced to go to the Sunday school -- in fact it looked like hell; from it you wanted to rebel, to put your ego right. Everybody was suppressing you, everybody was pushing and forcing and pulling, and everybody was trying to manipulate you, so you went into the bathroom and you smoked -- and everything was put right. You had rebelled. You felt good! Smoking helped you to feel good, to feel that you are not so impotent -- you can rebel. This father may be very very powerful but you can deceive even him. And this mother may be very very all- knowing, intuitive, but she does not know a bit that you are smoking. When you smoke silently, meditatively, all these things will be revealed to you, how it has happened. And once you come to know the cause -- it is not the cigarette that is the cause, the cigarette is just a symptom, the cause is very deep and hidden -- once you know the cause, then it is up to you. The father may be dead and gone, and you are still taking revenge. And now you can understand that he never meant ill to you. He may not have done you any good, he may have tried to do good in such a wrong way that the ultimate end has been bad; but his intention was good, he wanted to help you. He may not have known how to help you, in fact he harmed you, but you cannot doubt his good intention. Suddenly you are reconciled with your father, reconciled with your mother, and the cigarette drops from your hands -- without any act on your part. You are reconciled. It was a rebellion. Now there is no point, you understand, and the thing is finished. And do the same for other things. Then by and by you will see things change. The more you understand them, the more there is the possibility of their changing, and that change has a grace to it because it is not forced. I am not against anything. I am only against inattentiveness, unawareness. Smoke with fully alert mind and there will be revealed to you, you will discover, many things associated with it, it will become a primal therapy, you will go deeper and deeper and deeper into your childhood, and you will come to the facts from where it started. How does it have such a grip on you? From where does this grip come? There must be much emotion involved! Just smoking in and out cannot have grips.... So many millions of people smoking, doing such a stupid thing; wasting money on it, life on it, suffering a thousand types of diseases, but still continuing. There must be more behind it than appears to the naked eye. It is not simply a cigarette, it is very symbolic, it is a symptom, deep down many layers of many things are associated.... If you simply drop the cigarette and those causes are still within you they will force you to pick up the cigarette again. Understand. And without understanding never make any effort to change anything. Understanding changes, only understanding changes and transforms. Let understanding be the only law. ------start becoming more and more aware of your waking consciousness. Walking on the road, walk with full awareness, knowing that you are walking. Then slowly, slowly transform every act into awareness. De-automatize every act. A man came to me. He had been suffering from chain-smoking for thirty years; he was ill and the doctors said, "You will never be healthy if you don't stop smoking. " But he was a chronic smoker; he could not help it. He had tried -- not that he had not tried -- he had tried hard, and he had suffered much in trying, but one day or two days, and then again the urge would come so tremendously, it would simply take him away. Again he would fall into the same pattern. Because of this smoking he had lost all self-confidence: he knows he cannot do a small thing; he cannot stop smoking. He had become worthless in his own eyes; he thought himself just the most worthless person in the world. He had no respect for himself. He came to me; he said, "What can I do? How can I stop smoking?" I said, "Nobody can stop smoking. You have to understand. Smoking is not only a question of your decision now. It has entered into your world of habits, it has taken roots. Thirty years is a long time. It has taken roots in your body, in your chemistry, it has spread all over. It is not just a question of your head deciding; your head cannot do anything. The head is impotent; it can start things, but it cannot stop so easily. Once you have started and once you have practiced so long, you are a great yogi -- thirty years' practicing smoking. It has become autonomous; you will have to de-automatize it. " He said, "What do you mean by 'de-automatization'?" And that's what meditation is all about: de-automatization. I said, "You do one thing: forget about stopping. There is no need either. For thirty years you have smoked and lived; of course it was a suffering, but you have become accustomed to that too. And what does it matter if you die a few hours earlier than you would have died without smoking? What are you going to do here? What have you done? So what is the point -- whether you die Monday or Tuesday or Sunday, this year, that year -- what does it matter?" He said, "Yes, that is true, it doesn't matter." Then I said, "Forget about it; we are not going to stop it at all. Rather, we are going to understand it. So next time, you make it a meditation. " He said, "Meditation out of smoking?" I said, "Yes. If Zen people can make meditation out of drinking tea, and can make it a ceremony, why not? Smoking can be as beautiful a meditation. " He looked thrilled. He said, "What are you saying?" He became alive! He said, "Meditation? Just tell me -- I cannot wait! " I gave him the meditation. I said, "Do one thing. When you take the packet out of your pocket, for a moment go slowly. When you are taking the packet of cigarettes out of your pocket move slowly. Enjoy it, there is no hurry. Be conscious, alert, aware; take it out slowly, with full awareness. Then take the cigarette out of the packet with full awareness, slowly -- not in the old hurried way, unconscious way, mechanical way. Then start tapping the cigarette on your packet -- but very alertly. Listen to the sound, just as Zen people do when the samovar starts singing and the tea starts boiling, and the aroma. Then smell the cigarette and the beauty of it.... " He said, "What are you saying? The beauty?" "Yes, it is beautiful. Tobacco is as divine as anything. Even Morarji Desai is divine, so why not tobacco? Smell it; it is God's smell." He looked a little surprised. He said, "What, are you joking?" "No, I am not joking." Even when I joke, I don't joke. I am very serious. "Then put it in your mouth, with full awareness, light it with full awareness. Enjoy every act, small act, and divide it into as many small acts as possible, so you can become more and more aware. "Then have the first puff: God in the form of smoke. Hindus say,'annam brahm' -- ' Food is God.' Why not smoke? All is God. Fill your lungs deeply -- this is a pranayam. I am giving you the new yoga for the new age! Then release the smoke, relax, another puff... and go very slowly. "If you can do it, you will be surprised, soon you will see the whole stupidity of it. Not because others have said that it is stupid, not because others have said that it is bad: you will see it. And the seeing will not be just intellectual. It will be from your total being, it will be a vision of your totality. And then, one day, if it drops, it drops; if it continues, it continues. You need not worry about it. " After three months he came, and he said, "But it dropped." "Now, " I said, "try it on other things too. " This is the secret, the secret: de-automatize. Walking, walk slowly, watchfully. Looking, look watchfully, and you will see trees are greener than they have ever been and roses are rosier than they have ever been. Listen. Somebody is talking, gossiping: listen, listen attentively. When you are talking, talk attentively. Let your whole waking activity become de-automatized, and then you will be surprised, the moment it happens, your dream activity will have a new perspective. You will start becoming aware in your dream. Then start watching your dreams. That is a miracle when it happens. When you start watching your dreams you are really a totally different person. Then the dreams have no impact on you. Watching your dreams, one day dreams disappear; you have de-automatized your dreaming process. And then you will be able to watch your dreamless sleep: yoU are asleep, and you are still awake. The whole body sleeping, every cell of it relaxed, the whole mechanism silent -- and you are watching there, a silent witness. When this third has happened, the fourth arises on its own: the humming sound. You are full of a new music. That music is God. ------OSHO, I CANNOT DROP THE HABIT OF CHAIN-SMOKING. I HAVE TRIED HARD BUT I HAVE FAILED ALWAYS. IS IT A SIN TO SMOKE?

Gurucharan, DON'T MAKE A MOUNTAIN OUT OF A MOLEHILL! Religious people are very skillful in doing that. Now, what are you really doing when you are smoking? Just taking some smoke inside your lungs and letting it out. It is a kind of PRANAYAMA -- filthy, dirty, but still a PRANAYAMA! You are doing yoga, in a stupid way. It is not sin. It may be foolish but it is not a sin, certainly. There is only one sin and that is unawareness, and only one virtue and that is awareness. Do whatsoever you are doing, but remain a witness to it, and immediately the quality of your doing is transformed. I will not tell you not to smoke; that you have tried. You must have been told by many so-called saints not to smoke: "Because if you smoke you will fall into hell." God is not so stupid as your saints are. Throwing somebody into hell just because he was smoking cigarettes will be absolutely unnecessary.

One morning, Weintraub went to a restaurant and ordered bacon with his eggs. He was an orthodox Jew and his wife kept a strictly kosher home, but Weintraub felt the need just this once. As Weintraub was about to leave the restaurant, he stopped in the door frozen with terror. The sky was filled with black clouds, there was lightning, and the ground shook with the rumble of thunder. "Can you imagine!" he exclaimed. "All that fuss over a little piece of bacon!"

But that's what your so-called saints have been telling you down the ages, for centuries. Smoking is unhealthy, unhygienic, but not a sin. It becomes a sin only if you are doing it unconsciously -- it is not smoking that makes it a sin but unconsciousness. Let me emphasize the fact. You can do your prayer every day unconsciously; then your prayer is a sin. You can become addicted to your prayer. If you miss the prayer one day, the whole day you will feel something is wrong, something is missing, some gap. It is the same with smoking or with drinking; there is no difference in it. Your prayer has become a mechanical habit; it has become a master over you. It bosses you; you are just a servant, a slave to it. If you don't do it, it forces you to do it. So it is not a question of smoking. You may be doing your Transcendental Meditation every day regularly, and it may be just the same. If the quality of unconsciousness is there, if mechanicalness is there, if it has become a fixed routine, if it has become a habit and you are a victim of the habit and you cannot put it aside, you are no more a master of yourself, then it is a sin. But its being a sin comes out of your unconsciousness, not out of the act itself. No act is virtuous, no act is a sin. What consciousness is behind the act -- everything depends on that.

You say: I CANNOT DROP THE HABIT OF CHAIN-SMOKING.

I am less interested in your chain-smoking; I am more interested in your habit. Any habit that becomes a force, a dominating force over you, is a sin. One should live more in freedom. One should be able to do things not according to habits but according to the situations. Life is continuously changing -- it is a flux -- and habits are stagnant. The more you are surrounded by habits, the more you are closed to life. You are not open, you don't have windows. You don't have any communication with life; you go on repeating your habits. They don't fit; they are not the right response to the situation, to the moment. They are always lagging behind, they are always falling short. That's the failure of your life. So remember: I am against all kinds of habits. Good or bad is not the point; there is no good habit as such, there is no bad habit as such. Habits are all bad because habit means something unconscious has become a dominating factor in your life, has become decisive. You are no more the deciding factor. The response is not coming out of awareness but out of a pattern, structure, that you have learned in the past.

Two members of the Shalom Retirement Home, Blustein and Levin, were strolling past the home of Nelson Rockefeller. "If I only had that man's millions," sighed Blustein, "I would be richer than he is." "Don't be a dummy," said Levin. "If you had his millions you would be as rich as he is, not any richer." "You are wrong," said Blustein, "don't forget -- I could give Hebrew lessons on the side!"

That's what he has been doing. Even if he becomes Nelson Rockefeller he will go on giving Hebrew lessons on the side. That's how people are living, just according to habits. I have seen many rich people living very poor lives. Before they became rich their habits became settled -- and their habits became settled when they were poor. That's why you find so much miserliness in rich people; it comes from the habits that became ingrained in them when they were poor. One of the richest men in the world -- not ONE of the richest but THE richest man in the world it is thought -- was the Nizam of Hyderabad. His collection of diamonds was the greatest in the world because he owned the diamond mines of Golconda which have provided the greatest diamonds to the world. The Kohinoor comes from Golconda. It was once in the Nizam's possession. He had so many diamonds that it is said that no one has ever been able to calculate exactly the price of his collection. Thousands and thousands of diamonds -- they were not counted, they were weighed! But he was one of the most miserly men in the world. He used a single cap for thirty years. It was stinking but he wouldn't change it. He continued to wear the same coat for almost his whole life and he would not give it to be washed because they might destroy it. He was so miserly -- you cannot imagine -- that he would collect half-smoked cigarettes from the guests' ashtrays and then smoke them. The richest man in the world smoking cigarette butts smoked by others! The first thing he would do whenever a guest left was to search in the ashtrays and collect the ends of the cigarettes. When he died, his greatest diamond was found in his dirty shoes. He was hiding it in his shoe! Maybe he had some idea behind it -- that maybe he would be able to take it with him to the other world. Maybe he was afraid: "When I am dead, people may steal it." It was the greatest diamond; he used that diamond as a paper-weight on his table. Before he died he must have put it inside his shoe. Even when one is dying one is moving in old habits, following old patterns. I have heard:

The old Mulla Nasruddin had become a very rich man. When he felt death approaching he decided to make some arrangements for his funeral, so he ordered a beautiful coffin made of ebony wood with satin pillows inside. He also had a beautiful silk caftan made for his dead body to be dressed in. The day the tailor delivered the caftan, Mulla Nasruddin tried it on to see how it would look, but suddenly he exclaimed, "What is this! Where are the pockets?"

Gurucharan, smoking or no smoking, that is not important. Maybe if you continue to smoke you will die a little earlier. So what? The world is so overpopulated, you will do some good by dying a little earlier. Maybe you will have tuberculosis. So what? Tuberculosis is now almost like the common cold. In fact, there is no cure for the common cold but there is a cure for tuberculosis I know it because I suffer from a common cold. To have tuberculosis is to be very fortunate.

A man was suffering from a common cold for many years. All the doctors were tired of the man because nobody was able to cure him. Then a new doctor came to the town. All the other doctors told the new doctor, "Beware of this man! He is going to haunt you! He is a nuisance -- his cold cannot be cured."

In fact, there is no cure for the common cold. They say that if you take medicine it goes within seven days; if you don't take the medicine it goes in one week.

So the new doctor was ready and the man appeared, as predicted by the others. The new doctor said, "I can cure it. You do one thing" -- it must have been winter-time, just like this morning -- he told him, "You do one thing: tomorrow, early in the morning, before sunrise, go to the lake; swim in the lake naked, then stand on the bank in the cold wind." The man said, "Are you mad or something? How is that going to cure my common cold?" The doctor said, "Who told you that it is going to cure your common cold? It will give you influenza, and I can cure that!"

So it is possible, Gurucharan, that you may die two years earlier, you may get tuberculosis -- but it is not a sin. Don't be worried about THAT. If you really want to do something about your life, dropping smoking is not going to help -- because I know people who drop smoking; then they start chewing gum. The same old stupidity! Or if they are Indians they start chewing pan; it is the same. You will do something or other. Your unconsciousness will demand some activity, some occupation. It is an occupation. And it is only a symptom; it is not really the problem. It is not the root of the problem. Have you not observed? Whenever you feel emotionally disturbed you immediately start smoking. It gives you a kind of relief; you become occupied. Your mind is distracted from the emotional problem. Whenever people feel tense they start smoking. The problem is tension, the problem is emotional disturbance -- the problem is somewhere else; smoking is just an occupation. So you become engaged in taking the smoke in and out and you forget for the time being...because mind cannot think of two things together, remember it. One of the fundamentals of mind is: it can think only of one thing at one time; it is one-dimensional. So if you are smoking and thinking of smoking, then from all other anxieties you are distracted. That's the whole secret of the so-called spiritual mantras: they are nothing but distractions, like smoking. You repeat "Om, Om, Om," or "Ram, Ram, Ram," or "Allah, Allah, Allah" -- that is just giving mind an occupation. And all these people who teach mantras say, "Repeat it as quickly as possible, so that between two repetitions there is not even a small gap. Let them overlap -- so 'Ram Ram Ram' -- don't leave a gap between two Rams, otherwise some thought may enter. Repeat like crazy!" Yes, it will give you a certain relief -- the same relief that comes from smoking, because your mind will be distracted from the anxieties and the world. You will forget about the world; you have created a trick. All mantras are tricks, but they are spiritual. Chain-smoking is also a mantra. It is a worldly mantra; non-religious you can call it, secular. The real problem is the habit.

You say: I HAVE TRIED HARD TO DROP IT....

You have not tried to be conscious of it; without trying to be conscious you have tried to drop it. It is not possible. It will come back, because your mind is the same; its needs are the same, its problems are the same, its anxieties, tensions are the same, its anguish is the same. And when those anxieties arise, what will you do? Immediately, mechanically, you will start searching for the cigarettes. You may have decided again and again, and again and again you have failed -- not because smoking is such a great phenomenon that you cannot get out of it, but because you are trying from the wrong end. Rather than becoming aware of the whole situation -- why you smoke in the first place -- rather than becoming aware of the process of smoking, you are simply trying to drop it. It is like pruning the leaves of a tree without cutting the roots. And my whole concern here is to cut the roots, not to prune the tree. By pruning the leaves and the branches the tree will become thicker, the foliage will become thicker. You will not destroy the tree; you will be helping it, in fact. If you really want to get out of it you will have to look deeper, not into the symptoms but the roots. Where are the roots? You must be a deeply anxiety-ridden person, otherwise chain-smoking is not possible; chain-smoking is a by-product. You must be so concerned about a thousand and one disturbances inside, you must be carrying such a big load of worries on your heart, on your chest, that you don't even know how to forget them. You don't know how to drop them -- smoking at least helps you to forget about them.

You say: I HAVE TRIED HARD...

Now one thing has to be understood. The hypnotists have discovered a fundamental law; they call it the Law of Reverse Effect. If you try hard to do something without understanding the fundamentals, just the opposite will be the result. It is like when you are learning how to ride on a bicycle. You are on a silent road, no traffic, early in the morning, and you see a red milestone just standing there by the side of the road like Hanuman. A sixty-foot-wide road and just a small milestone, and you become afraid: you may get to the milestone, you may hit against the milestone. Now you forget about the sixty-foot-wide road. In fact, even if you go blindfolded there is not much chance of your encountering the milestone, crashing into the milestone, but with open eyes now the whole road is forgotten; you have become focused. In the first place, that redness is very focusing. And you are so much afraid! -- you want to avoid it. You have forgotten that you are on a bicycle; you have forgotten everything. Now the only problem for you is how to avoid this stone; otherwise you may harm yourself, you may crash into it. Now the crash is absolutely inevitable; you are bound to crash with the stone. And then you will be surprised: '.'1 tried hard." In fact it is BECAUSE you tried hard that you reached the stone. And the closer you come, the harder you try to avoid it; but the harder you try to avoid it, the more focused you become on it. It becomes a hypnotic force, it hypnotizes you. It becomes like a magnet. It is a very fundamental law in life. Many people try avoiding many things and they fall into the same things. Try to avoid anything with great effort and you are bound to fall into the same pit. You cannot avoid it; that is not the way to avoid it. Be relaxed. Don't try hard, because it is through relaxation that you can become aware, not by trying hard. Be calm, quiet, silent. I will suggest: smoke as much as you want to smoke. It is not a sin in the first place. I give you the guarantee -- I will be responsible. I take the sin on myself, so if you meet God on Judgment Day you can just tell him that this fellow is responsible. And I will stand there as a witness for you that you are not responsible. So don't be worried about its being a sin. Relax and don't try to drop it with effort. No, that is not going to help. Zen believes in effortless understanding. So this is my suggestion: smoke as much as you want to smoke -- just smoke meditatively. If Zen people can drink tea meditatively, why can't you smoke meditatively? In fact, tea contains the same stimulant as the cigarettes contain; it is the same stimulant, there is not much difference. Smoke meditatively, very religiously. Make it a ceremony. Try it my way. Make a small corner in your house just for smoking: a small temple devoted, dedicated to the god of smoking. First bow down to your cigarette packet. Have a little chit-chat, talk to the cigarettes. Inquire, "How are you?" And then very slowly take a cigarette out -- very slowly, as slowly as you can, because only if you take it very slowly will you be aware. Don't do it in a mechanical way, as you always do. Then tap the cigarette on the packet very slowly and for as long as you want. There is no hurry either. Then take the lighter, bow down to the lighter. These are great gods, deities! Light is God, so why not the lighter? Then start smoking very slowly, just like VIPASSANA. Don't do it like a PRANAYAMA -- quick and fast and deep -- but very slowly. Buddha says: Breathe naturally. So you smoke naturally: very slow, no hurry. If it is a sin you are in a hurry. If it is a sin you want to finish it as soon as possible. If it is a sin you don't want to look at it. You go on reading the newspaper and you go on smoking. Who wants to look at a sin? But it is not a sin, so watch it -- watch each of your acts. Divide your acts into small fragments so you can move very slowly. And you will be surprised: by watching your smoking, slowly slowly smoking will become less and less. And one day suddenly...it is gone. You have not made any effort to drop it; it has dropped of its own accord, because by becoming aware of a dead pattern, a routine, a mechanical habit, you have created, you have released, a new energy of consciousness in you. Only that energy can help you; nothing else will ever help. And it is not only so with smoking, Gurucharan, it is so with everything else in life: don't try too hard to change yourself. That leaves scars. Even if you change, your change will remain superficial. And you will find a substitute somewhere; you will HAVE to find a substitute, otherwise you will feel empty. And when something withers away of its own accord because you have become so silently aware of the stupidity of it that no effort is needed, when it simply falls, just like a dead leaf falling from a tree, it leaves no scar behind and it leaves no ego behind. If you drop something by effort, it creates great ego. You start thinking, "Now I am a very virtuous man because I don't smoke." If you think that smoking is a sin, naturally, obviously, if you drop it you will think you are a very virtuous man. That's how your virtuous men are. Somebody does not smoke, somebody does not drink, somebody eats only once a day, somebody does not eat in the night, somebody has even stopped drinking water in the night...and they are all great saints! These are saintly qualities, great virtues! We have made religion so silly. It has lost all glory. It has become as stupid as people are. But the whole thing depends on your attitude: if you think something is a sin, then your virtue will be just the opposite of it. I emphasize: not-smoking is not virtue, smoking is not sin; awareness is virtue, unawareness is sin. And then the same law is applicable to your whole life.

MONEY IS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE GREATEST INVENTIONS TO LIBERATE MAN, AND AS A MEANS IT HAS A GOOD FUNCTION. DON'T YOU THINK THAT ELIMINATING THE USE OF MONEY WILL LEAD TO ANOTHER BARBAROUS WORLD? WHAT IN YOUR VISION CAN BE SUBSTITUTED FOR MONEY IN THE WORLD AT LARGE?

Money is certainly one of the greatest inventions of man, and it has helped tremendously in the past. But there is a negative side of it too: money has created poverty and richness, the classes and the class struggle; money has created capitalism, money has created communism. Money has helped in many ways in the exchange of things -- as a means of exchange -- but now its function can be taken by better means which can avoid its negative part. For example, in my perspective, instead of money as currency every society should become a commune. We can make a limit, five thousand or ten thousand... If the town is bigger then it can have two communes, three communes. But instead of a family, a commune takes over. The commune takes care of the children, the commune fulfills the needs of people, and the people don't have to use money. Whatever they need, the commune fulfills the needs. Money can be used between one commune and another as a means of exchange, but not between individuals. That will destroy the distinction between the poor and the rich. And instead of currency... which is something ugly because it goes on moving through so many hands, many of which will be of sick people suffering from diseases and infecting the notes. Perhaps this is one of the causes of many infections spreading into the world. Instead of currency each commune should use credit cards, and those will be used between commune and commune. Computers can manage all the accounts perfectly well -- so nothing has to be really exchanged; the computer can keep the accounts. And within the commune there is no need for any money or any credit cards; whatever you need the commune supplies you with. There will be different needs -- there is no harm in it, all are our people -- and if somebody needs cigarettes he gets cigarettes, if somebody needs beer he gets beer. Certainly nobody gets anything which is harmful to him or to the society. And the commune has one kitchen; for five thousand people we had one kitchen which was run by fifteen people. Now it is absolutely uneconomical and absurd that thousands of women are involved in kitchens; their whole life is nothing but a kitchen and children. If they get bitchy it is absolutely natural; just try once in a while for twenty-four hours to do their work, and you will know that either you will commit suicide, or you will burn the whole house and be finished with it. The kitchen is not a joke and the children are real devils. The whole day they will sleep and the whole night they will wake you up, continually. This is needed, that is needed, they want to go to the bathroom... They are very creative geniuses. Thousands of women, almost half of humanity... it is a great loss. Only a commune can save them. And there is no need that the commune kitchen should be taken care of only by women; it should be taken care of by whoever is the best cook -- and men have been found to be the best cooks, not women. Five thousand and ten thousand people eating together, somebody playing on the guitar, somebody dancing, somebody singing... then life seems to be worth living. And a commune can afford doctors to look into whether food is hygienic or not; they can see whether people are being fed on junk. That's what is happening around the world: just open somebody's skull and you will find all kinds of junk inside -- ice cream, spaghetti.... A communal kitchen is needed, and everything should be communal. People are working for themselves. Whatever their commune cannot produce they purchase from another commune; whatever extra they produce they exchange with another commune -- so there is no need for anybody to be poor, there is no need for anybody to live in scarcity. Money has lost its value, it is no longer needed. It has done something good, but it has also done something very bad.

Question 10 A CHILD WILL ALWAYS BE HELPLESS. IT SEEMS TO BE IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID THE CONDITIONING PROCESS THAT STARTS FROM THE DAY THE CHILD IS BORN. HOW CAN THIS BE CHANGED?

Just as I have been telling you: children should belong to the commune, not to the parents. Children with parents have been in great trouble for centuries, because to be with parents is bound to be a conditioning. They belong to some religion, they belong to some church, they belong to some political party; they go on putting their own superstitions into the heads of the children, directly or indirectly. And every child becomes conditioned. Children should belong to the commune; the parents can have them on holidays. The parents can go and live with the children in their hostels and it will be far more loving. Twenty-four hours a day together destroys love; it is better that children should be away. The children will be much freer. They should be in the hands of teachers who are trained in meditation, who are trained for non-conditioning the children, for not putting any superstitions into the children. There will be many teachers... In a small family, all belong to one religion, to one superstitious tradition, to one orthodoxy, so the conditioning is reinforced again and again from every side. When the children were living in the commune that was destroyed in America, they were living separately. The parents felt tremendously relieved of a great burden and the children felt tremendously free and happy. In four years our experiment gave us great insight: children became more mature without their parents. They were not throwing tantrums because there was nobody to listen to their tantrums. We had a gradation: small children should be taken care of by the bigger ones and the bigger ones should be taken care of by the other older ones. It was such a great joy to see children taking care of other children with such love, with an understanding which adults cannot show. And there was no conflict, no struggle, no fight for toys because they were all together. They had their own family of children, and everybody was protective of the small children; everybody felt responsible. As they were growing they were far healthier, far more intelligent, were getting mature earlier. In our education system in the commune we had half the day for ordinary education and half the day to do something skillful -- some craft, carpentry, sculpture, or anything the children wanted. They were getting into doing things which we cannot conceive of such small children doing -- carpentry or some other kind of craft. And they enjoyed doing it more than the other part of their ordinary education, because their creative intelligence was more in use. In ordinary education only memory is used, not intelligence. So there is no problem about conditioning and children. We can create a separate section in the commune where children can have their garden, farm their fields, their hostel where they can do their things; where teachers can be trained not to condition anybody for anything; where every kind of literature should be available for children to read. If they want to understand something the teachers are there to help them -- but the teachers don't have any idea to impose on them. It is only a question of changing our teaching colleges and preparing teachers for teaching children without conditioning them. All this can be very easily managed.

Question 11 MANY PEOPLE IN ITALY CRITICIZE THE FACT THAT YOU TEACH PURE HEDONISM WHICH DOES NOT GIVE ANY EVOLUTION TO MAN, BUT ONLY A DAILY SATISFACTION. PLEASE COMMENT.

They do not understand me. I certainly teach hedonism -- but not only hedonism; I also teach spiritualism. My whole way of life is to bring a synthesis between hedonistic values and spiritual values. They are wrong in saying that I teach pure hedonism. No, I teach hedonism as a base for spiritual growth. Zorba is the base. Buddha is the ultimate flowering. Zorba is the roots. Buddha is the fruits and the flowers. But tell the Italian people that I am coming there with all my people from all over Europe to make them understand that I am not a hedonist, that I am not only a spiritualist either, that I am both together. It is difficult to understand because it has never happened before. Up to now man has lived in a split, hedonists against spiritualists. This is the cause of the misery of humanity; this is the reason why there has not been any evolution. Charles Darwin says that man has evolved out of the monkeys. Perhaps thousands of years back a few monkeys rebelled -- they must have been great monkeys -- and changed themselves into human beings. But since then what have human beings been doing? They have not taken any quantum leap. Does that mean that evolution has finished? that man has come to the end of the road? It doesn't seem so. Man is so miserable, in so much suffering that this cannot be accepted as the end. And all my own experience and authority say to you that this is not the end. I have been a hedonist, and I have changed myself into an awakened consciousness. This can happen to every human being; now this is the way of evolution. And my feeling about the Italians is that they are very loving and understanding people. I have thousands of sannyasins in Italy. They were the first to become sannyasins from the West, and I have found them immensely loving people. A little greasy... and I love everything about their greasiness; I just don't like spaghetti. That has no place in my evolutionary program.

Always remember that to be happy is to be religious, to be happy is to be virtuous. To be celebrating is to be prayerful. To be festive, and to remain in a festive dimension continuously, is to be a sannyasin.

Then you enjoy whatsoever happens. You enjoy health when it happens; you enjoy illness also when it happens.

Then both become beautiful. In health you enjoy activity; when you are ill you enjoy relaxation.

It is beautiful sometimes to be ill and just Lying on the bed, resting, not worrying about the world; allowing yourself a good holiday; singing, praying, meditating on the bed; reading a little bit, listening to music; or just doing nothing, just being lazy. It is beautiful!

If you know how to enjoy health, you will be able to know how to enjoy illness also. Then you become a master, you become skillful.

This is the whole art of life!

You enjoy your youth, and when you become old you enjoy your old age. Old age has its own beauties; no young man can have those beauties. Youth is shallow; full of energy but shallow. Old age is not so full of energy, but things are settling and depth is arising.

If you miss your youth, you will miss your old age also -- remember. So I am not saying become old while you are young.

I am saying be whatsoever you are; let that moment be your totality.

Now the Catholic church owns the biggest bank in the world -- the Bank of America. The Catholic church owns the greatest amount of land in the world -- more than any other country. The method in the past has been war, killing people. Thousands of people have been killed just to take possession of their properties, or they have been forced to become Catholics. A single Catholic emperor, Constantine, killed ten thousand people in a single day. He just called an assembly of all those who were not Catholics in a great auditorium in Rome, and ordered the army to shoot everybody: "We don't want anybody other than Christians in Rome." He forced the whole of Italy to become Christian... just at the point of the gun. The whole history of Christianity is of wars and nothing else -- killing and violence. And the same is true about the other religions in a lesser measure; they are destructive. They are destructive in many ways. They destroy people by creating guilt, by making them sinners, by forcing them to renounce the world and all that is pleasant, and to go into hardships unnecessarily. But those who go into hardships are respected and their hardship has nothing to contribute to the world, only sickness, only guilt. All your saints are together enforcing guilt in you. So in this way they destroy humanity, and in other ways they kill people because they don't belong to their fold. They force people -- either by the sword, or with bread. In the past they used to come with a sword, now they come with bread. The poor have been always vulnerable to being converted, either by force or by bribery. But this is not religiousness at all, this is pure politics. Zen is an authentic religious experience. Its authenticity is in its opening of creativeness in human beings. Zen masters have never killed anyone. They have not forced anyone to their path; on the contrary, you have to go to them. And it has been very difficult to be accepted; the masters have been very choosy. Unless you show an immense desire and longing, they will not initiate you; the question of conversion does not arise. You have to go to the well, the well does not come to you. The well does not even invite you, it is simply there, available. Buddha used to say to his disciples, 'Watch everybody passing by; coming and going in the streets, watch people. See exactly what is happening -- Don't listen to their words because they are very cunning, they have become very deceptive. When somebody is saying something, listen to his face, to his eyes, to his being, to the gesture, and you will be simply surprised how, up to now, you have lived only with words. A person may be saying, 'I love you' and his eyes may be simply denying it. A person may be smiling with his lips and his eyes may be ridiculing you, rejecting you. A person may be saying 'Hullo' and holding your hand, and his whole being may be condemning you. Listen to the language of the body, the language of the gesture -- the language behind the language. Listen to that meaning. And first become alert about it in others. Let everybody who comes to you be an experiment of awareness. Then by and by you will become able to watch yourself. Then turn your whole flood of life upon yourself; then use the same with yourself. When you say to somebody 'I love you' listen to what you really are saying -- not these words. Words are almost always fake. Language is very tricky and can garb things so beautifully that the container becomes very important and you lose sight of the content. People have become very sophisticated as far as their surface is concerned but their innermost co-re remains almost primitive. Listen to the centre of the circumference. Go into each word. First others have to be watched, then watch yourself. And then by and by you will see that there are a few moments when you also move into the dimension of being. These moments are the moments of beauty, the moments of happiness. In fact, whenever you see that you are feeling very happy, you have corrie in contact with the dimension of being -- because there is no other happiness possible. But if you don't observe it accurately, you may misunderstand it. You are sitting with a woman you love, or with a man you love, or with a friend, and suddenly you feel a deep well-being arising in you, a deep joy -- for no reason at all, for no visible cause. You are just aglow. Then you start finding causes outside: you think maybe it is because the woman is sitting by your side and she loves you so much. Or it is because you have met the friend after so many years. Or it is because the full moon is so beautiful. You will start finding causes. But those who have become alert in listening to their heart, to their real meanings, will not be looking for causes outside. They will look inside. They have come in contact with their being. Maybe the woman you loved functioned as a situation, as a jumping-board, and you jumped into yourself. It is difficult to jump into yourself when there is some antagonism outside. You have to be outside then. When somebody loves you, you can drop all defense measures, you can drop all your strategies, you can drop your politics, you can drop your diplomacy. When somebody loves you, you can be vulnerable; you can trust that he or she is not going to take advantage of you, that you can be defenceless and you will not be killed and crushed, that you can be defenceless and the presence of your friend will be soothing, it will not be poisoning you. Whenever there is a situation where you can leave yourself defenceless and you can drop your strategies and your armours, suddenly you are in contact with your being -- you have moved from the dimension of having to the dimension of being. Whenever it happens, there is happiness, there is joy, there is rejoicing. Even if it is only for a split second, suddenly the doors of heaven are open. But again and again you lose it because you are not aware. It happens only accidentally. Remember, a religious person is one who has understood this accidental happening and who has understood the innermost key of it. And now he does not move into his dimension of being only accidentally, he has the key -- and whenever he wants to move, he opens the door, he unlocks the door and goes into it. This is the only difference. In ordinary happiness and the happiness of a religious person, the only difference is this: that the religious person has become capable of moving any time, any place, into his being. Now he knows the direct route and he does not depend on outside props. You depend too much on outside props. Sometimes you are in a beautiful house; it feels good. You are travelling in a beautiful car -- the car is humming and everything is going beautifully -- it feels good. In that feeling you start coming closer to your being. But you misunderstand; you think it is because of this car so you have to possess this car. Maybe the car functioned as a situation but the car is not the cause. Maybe a beautiful house functioned as a situation but it is not the cause. If you think it is the cause then you move into the world of having; then you must have the most beautiful car -- you have to have it. Then you have to have the best house, you have to have the best garden, you have to have the best woman and the best man. And you go on collecting and collecting and collecting and one day suddenly you recognise or realise that your whole life has been a wastage. You have collected much but you have lost all sources of happiness. You got lost in collecting things. The basic logic was that with whatever you felt good and happy, that thing had to be possessed. Listen to me...that thing need not be possessed. You just watch what is happening inside you and you can start having that happening without any outside help. That's what a sannyasin does. It is not that you have to have all, that you have to possess all, but you have to remain alert that you cannot possess ANYTHING in this world. All that you possess can function only as a situation -- it is not the cause. The cause is inside. And you can open the door without any outside prop, at any time, in any place, and you can go in and you can rejoice. You are no longer attached. You can use things, they are useful....I am not against things, remember. Neither are the Hasids against things, remember. Use things but don't believe that things can cause you happiness. Use things, they have a utility, but don't believe that they are the goals. They are not the ends, they are only the means. The goal is within you, and the goal is such that one can move directly into it without any outside help. Once you know it, you become a master of your being. This -- whatsoever I am saying -- has to be experienced by you. Just by my saying it and just by your listening to it and understanding it intellectually, it is not going to help much.

Mulla Nasrudin refused the cow-puncher's command to drink, for three reasons. 'Name them!' roared the terror of the town. 'First,' said the Mulla, 'it is prohibited in my religion. Second, I promised my grandmother on her death-bed that I would handle not, touch not, taste not, the accursed stuff.' 'And the other reason, the third?' insisted the bully, somewhat softened. 'I have just had a drink,' said Nasrudin.

If you only listen to me, if you only understand me intellectually and never experiment in your own inner lab of consciousness, whatsoever I am saying will remain just in your head. It will never become a lived experience.And unless it becomes a lived experience it is worthless knowledge, it is junk. Again you can start collecting knowledge, then again you are into the same trip -- the dimension of having. And you can go on collecting as much knowledge as is available. It is one of the misfortunes of modern man that so much knowledge has become available. It was never so. The thing that has proved the greatest calamity for modern man is the tremendous amount of knowledge which has become available. It was never available before. A Hindu used to live with Hindu scriptures; the Mohammedan used to live with Mohammedan scriptures; the Christian used to live with the Bible -- and they were all secluded and nobody went into the other's world of knowledge. Things were clearcut; there was no overlapping. Now everything is overlapping and a tremendous amount of new knowledge has become available. We are living in a 'knowledge explosion'. In this explosion you can start gathering information; you can become a great scholar very cheaply, very easily, but it is not going to transform you at all. Again, remember, knowledge belongs to the dimension of having; knowing belongs to the dimension of being. They look alike but they are not. Not even are they not alike, they are diametrically opposite to each other. A man who goes on collecting knowledge goes on losing knowing. Knowing needs a mirror-like mind -- pure, uncorrupted. I am not saying that knowledge is useless. If you have your knowing, clear, mirror-like, fresh, you can use your knowledge in a tremendously useful way. It can become beneficial. But the knowing has to be there in the first place. Knowledge is very easy; knowing is very difficult. For knowing you have to pass through many fires. For knowledge nothing is needed -- as you are you can go on adding more and more knowledge to yourself.

A gay man-about-town, long on charm but short on cash, surprised his friends by his sudden marriage to an extremely ugly woman whose only virtue was her well-padded bankroll. After the marriage, his friends were doubly mystified by his insistence on taking his wife everywhere with him. 'I can understand your marrying that painfully ugly woman for her money,' one of his close friends remarked frankly, 'but why do you have to bring her with you every time you go out?' 'It's simple,' the husband explained. 'It's easier than kissing her good-bye.'

It is easier to have knowledge, very cheap, costs nothing; it is very difficult, arduous, to attain to knowing. That's why very few, very rare people try to meditate, very rare people try to pray, very rare people ever make any effort towards knowing what truth is. And whatsoever you have not known on your own is meaningless. You can never be certain about it. The doubt never disappears; the doubt remains like a worm underneath, sabotaging your knowledge. You can shout loudly that you believe in God but your shouting does not prove anything. Your shouting only proves one thing: that there is doubt. Only doubt shouts loudly. You can become a fanatic believer but your fanaticism simply shows one thing: that there is doubt. Only a man who has doubt within himself becomes a fanatic. A fanatic Hindu means one who does not really trust that Hinduism is right. A fanatic Christian simply means one who has doubts about Christianity. He becomes fanatic, aggressive -- not to prove anything to others, he becomes fanatic and aggressive to prove to himself that whatsoever he believes he really believes. He has to prove it. When you really know something, you are not a fanatic at all. A man of knowing, one who has come to know even glimpses of God. glimpses of his being, becomes very, very soft, sensitive, fragile. He is not fanatic. He becomes feminine. He is not aggressive. He becomes deeply compassionate. And, by knowing, he becomes very understanding of others. He can understand even the diametrically opposite standpoint.

I have heard about a Hasid rabbi. He was saying, 'Life is like a river. A disciple asked, 'Why?' The Rabbi said, 'How can I know? Am I a philosopher?'

Another day the rabbi was saying, 'Life is like a river.' Another disciple asked, 'Why?' And the rabbi said, 'Right you are. Why should it be?'

This is tremendous understanding. No fanaticism. A man of knowing attains to a sense of humour. Let this always be remembered. If you see someone who has no sense of humour, know well that that man has not known at all. If you come across a serious man, then you can be certain that he is a pretender. Knowing brings sincerity but all seriousness disappears. Knowing brings a playfulness; knowing brings a sense of humour. The sense of humour is a must. If you find a saint who has no sense of humour, then he is not a saint at all. Impossible. His very seriousness says that he has not achieved. Once you have some inner experiences of your own you become very playful, you become very innocent, childlike. The man of knowledge is very serious. The man of knowledge always carries a serious, gloomy atmosphere around him. Not only does he carry a serious atmosphere, he makes anybody he comes into contact with, serious. He forces seriousness on them. In fact, deep down, he is worried that he does not know anything. He cannot relax. His seriousness is a tension. He is anguished. He knows that he knows only for its name's sake, he knows that his knowledge is all fake -- so he cannot laugh at it.

Now listen to it. The rabbi said, 'Life is like a river And a disciple asked, 'Why?' And the rabbi said, 'How can I know? Am I a philosopher?'

And another day the rabbi said again, 'Life is like a river.' Another disciple asked, 'Why?' And the rabbi said, 'Right you are. Why should it be?'

You see the non-seriousness? You see the tremendous sense of humour? Hasidism has created a few of the greatest saints of the world. And my respect towards them is immense because they are not serious people. They can joke and they can laugh -- and they can laugh not only at others, they can laugh at themselves. That's the beauty. If you go on collecting knowledge, you can have a great amount of knowledge but it is not going to be of any help when the need arises. You can go on throwing it around and showing and exhibiting it, but whenever the need arises and the house is on fire you will suddenly see you have forgotten all that you knew -- because you never knew in the first place. It was just in your memory. Wherever there is an emergency situation...for example, when a person is dying. He will forget all his knowledge. In that moment he will not remember that the soul is immortal. That was advice for others. In that moment he will not remember that he is going back to God -- and that one should go happily and dancing. In that moment he will start clinging, to life; all his knowledge will be gone. I used to know a very learned man, a very intellectual man, famous all over the country. He was not only learned, he was a follower of J. Krishnamurti. He used to come to see me sometimes and he would say that there is no need for any meditation -- Krishnamurti says so. I used to listen to him and laugh. He would ask me, 'Why do you laugh whenever I say these things?' I told him again and again, 'I listen to YOU, I don't listen to what you say. Your being gives me a totally different message. If there is really no need for meditation, there is no need for scriptures, there is no need for any methods, there is no need even for prayer -- and you have understood it, then this would have transformed you totally.' He would answer seriously, 'That's right. I have understood intellectually but some day I will understand it nonintellectually also. I have taken the first step, the second will be coming.' Then one day his son came running to me to tell me, 'Father is very ill, it seems like a heart attack and he remembers you.' So I rushed to him. He was lying on the bed repeating Ram, Ram, Ram. I shook his head and I said, 'What are you doing? Your whole life you said there is no meditation -- what are you doing repeating Ram, Ram, Ram...?' He said, 'Now don't disturb me at this moment. Death is at the door. I am dying. Who knows? Maybe God is. And who knows, maybe the people who have always said remember his name and he will forgive you, are right. This is no time to create a debate or an argument; let me repeat it.' For forty years he had not said a single mantra, but now, suddenly, forty years of knowledge is discarded. It is of no use -- in this dangerous situation when death is there, he forgets Krishnamurti completely. He becomes again an ordinary Hindu. It was okay for an ordinary Hindu villager to repeat Ram, Ram -- he can be forgiven -- but this man? He had written books, he had lectured all over the country, he had helped many people to drop their mantras and to drop their meditations and their scriptures. And now suddenly he is repeating a mantra. But he survived the heart attack and he came to see me after two or three months -- and again he was back to his knowledge. I said, 'Now stop your foolishness. Death will come again and you will repeat Ram, Ram, Ram. So what is the point of it all?'

A very rich old man had remained a bachelor. Now he was nearing seventy-five. Then suddenly a friend, a married friend, convinced him that he should get married. 'You should not miss this pleasure,' he said. So he decided to get married. Because he had so much money he immediately found a beautiful girl. Off they went on their honeymoon. He took the married friend and his wife with him as guides in this new exploration. The next morning they met in the motel at breakfast. The friend had given him every bit of information about sex and how to make love and what to do and what not to do. 'What a fantastic time I had last night,' said the married man. 'We went to bed last night. My wife was eager, I was eager and we had a marvellous night of love. What about you, old man?' 'Oh, my God!' said the old rich man. 'I forgot clean about it!'

After a whole life of bachelorhood, even if somebody guides you, tells you things and you memorise them, they don't have any deep contact with your being -- they simply float above your head. They don't touch you. The old man said, 'Oh my God! I forgot clean about it!' Seventy-five years of sleeping alone creates a mechanical habit of its own. If you go on accumulating knowledge, it creates a habit; it never gives you any knowledge but it gives you a habit, a habit for accumulating more, a very dangerous habit. Even if you come across a Buddha or a Jesus, you will miss, because there also you will be accumulating. You will be taking notes inside the mind -- 'Yes, this is right, worthy of being remembered.' Your accumulation will become bigger and bigger but you will be just a dead museum, or, a museum of dead things. And the more you are concerned with this 'having knowledge', the less will be the possibility for the real knowledge to be there; the knowledge that comes by knowing being, by BEING, will be missed. Remember, the mind is nothing but that which you have collected up to now. The mind is all that you have inside your being. Beyond the mind is your real being, beyond having is your real being. Outside you have collected things; inside you have collected thoughts -- both are in the dimension of having. When you are no longer attached to things and when you are no longer attached to thoughts, suddenly -- the open sky, the open sky of being. And that's the only thing worth having and the only thing that you can really have. Before I enter into the tremendously beautiful story of Hyakujo I would like to tell you something about a contemporary master, George Gurdjieff. He used to use -- without knowing Hyakujo -- the same method, and the people who came to him were very different than the people who came to Hyakujo. Gurdjieff was working in the West. Intellectuals would come and Gurdjieff would ask them to go and dig a ditch in the field, but they would say, "We have come here to learn something, not to dig a ditch." Gurdjieff was very hard. He would say, "First do what I say if you want to hear the answer." In one particular case, Bennet reached Gurdjieff: highly educated, cultivated and the answer to him was the same. He had come to ask about God and the meaning of life. Gurdjieff said, "These things leave for the moment, just go and dig the ditch in the field." Bennet hesitated for a moment, but then thought, "I have come from so far, let us see what happens. What am I going to lose?" He started digging the ditch; Gurdjieff came with his cigar, watched him digging, told him that, "Before sunset this certain area has to be prepared." The sunset came, Bennet was utterly tired -- an intellectual who has never worked, and particularly this kind of work. And seeing the sun setting there was a great relief..."Now, at last Gurdjieff will start having the dialogue I have come for." Gurdjieff was walking just by the side, watching all the time. Then Bennet said, "The ditch is ready." Gurdjieff said, "Now refill the ditch completely, bring it back to its original state, throw all the mud back in its place." Bennet was so tired, but he was also a man of integrity. He said, "Let us see what happens." Without food, without rest, without even a coffee break he filled the ditch again. It was almost the middle of the night and Gurdjieff was standing the whole day just watching and smoking his cigar. The moon was full, at the highest peak of the night; it was a beautiful silence and Bennet remembers that, "I was so tired... I don't know from where -- a tremendous silence descended over me." In his autobiography he says, "I was simply astonished." Gurdjieff laughed and said, "Have you heard? Now go and rest." But what was said? Nothing was said. The question is not that the master should say anything. The question is that the disciple should be so silent... and he was silent because he was so tired that he could not even think, the mind became utterly empty. In that silence there is no need for the master to say anything, he can just indicate it as this, and the sermon is over.

But Hyakujo goes even further than Gurdjieff. He did not even say, "This." He forced his disciples to work to the optimum, where their energy was completely absorbed by the work and the mind had nothing, no energy to contain its chattering. Again and again disciples came to him, but he would simply repeat, "Go and work in the field." But one day those who had remained with this strange man who teaches nothing, who simply says, "Go back to the field and work as hard as possible..." And he was known to be one of the great masters who knows the secret. Many came, but only a few remained. He was a difficult man. When only those few remained who had become silent working in the fields, who had come to a deep harmony with nature, whose minds had settled down, he accepted the invitation. THIS TIME -- after many efforts of the disciples to invite the master and getting the same reply, "Go back and work in the field" -- this time when they came and asked, "PLEASE GIVE US A SERMON," HE QUITE READILY AGREED TO DO SO. AFTER A WHILE ALL THE MONKS GATHERED TOGETHER IN THE HALL. THE MASTER QUIETLY APPEARED BEFORE THEM, WALKED UP TO THE PULPIT, SPREAD OUT BOTH HIS ARMS AND , WITHOUT A WORD , IMMEDIATELY RETURNED TO HIS ROOM. This is known in the history of Zen as the greatest sermon. It is, because he said nothing and yet he said everything. Those two hands spread like a bird's wings opened the whole sky to the silent disciples, a transmission without words. We have become too much accustomed to words, we don't know the beauty of wordlessness. Even if you see a beautiful rose, immediately your mind says, "How beautiful," and you have missed. If you had simply seen the rose and absorbed its beauty, felt it in your heart without uttering even a single word in appreciation, you would have become enlightened. Even a rose could have functioned as a great master to you. The question is not that you don't know, the question is, you are too full of gibberish, you know too much. Because of your borrowed knowledge and too many words moving inside you, you cannot see the wordless beauty that can only be experienced in silence. Just listen to the bamboos... and you will find what Hyakujo has said without saying it. Zen is not an intellectual effort to understand reality, it is an intuitive approach to drown in the mystery of existence, to open your wings and fly like an eagle across the sun. Language is a very small phenomenon, limited to humanity. The stars don't speak nor the flowers, but they still express, they transmit their very being without any language. Zen is just a wildflower, spreading its fragrance to whomsoever it may concern. Those who have the sensitivity will understand it. Nothing is being said and everything is understood. Just drown yourself into thisness, the tremendous silence of the moment, and you will feel freedom from the mind. And that is the only freedom, the first and the last freedom, freedom from the mind. It is your own mind that is covering your being like a cage. Once the mind is left behind and you are just a watcher, far away... suddenly the doors of all the mysteries open. Zen does not talk about God, it gives you God; it does not talk about paradise, it pushes you into paradise This is the difference between a man of wisdom and a man of knowledge. A man of knowledge has ready- made answers: you ask and the answer is already there. You are irrelevant, your question is irrelevant. Before the question, the answer exists; your question simply triggers the memory. If you go to a man of wisdom he has no answers for you; he has nothing ready- made. He is open, he is silent. He'll respond but first your question will resound in his being, not in his memory. Through his being the response comes; nobody can predict that response. If you go the next day and ask the same question, the response will not be the same. Once it happened that a man tried to judge the Buddha. Every year he would go and ask the same question. He thought, "If he really knows then the answer will be always the same. How can you change the answer? If I come and ask, `Is there God?'- if he knows he will say yes or he will say no, and next year, I will come again and ask." So for many years the man came and he became more and more puzzled. Sometimes Buddha would say yes, sometimes no, sometimes he would remain silent, and sometimes he would simply smile and not answer anything. The man became puzzled and said, "What is this? If you know, then you must be certain, your answer fixed. But you go on changing. Once you said yes then you said no. Have you forgotten that I asked this question before? Once you even remained silent and now you are smiling. That is why I have been coming with the gap of a year -- just to see if you know or not." Buddha said, "When you came for the first time and asked, `Is there God,' I answered. But my answer was not to the question, it was to you. You have changed, now the same answer cannot be given. Not only have you changed, I also have changed. The Ganges has flowed much; the same answer cannot be given. I am not a scripture to be opened and the same answer found there." A buddha is a living river, and a river is ever-flowing. In the morning it is different -- it reflects the gold of the rising sun. The mood is different. In the evening it is different, and when the night comes and the stars are reflected in it, it is different. BELOVED OSHO, NANSEN FOUND TWO GROUPS OF MONKS SQUABBLING OVER THE OWNERSHIP OF A CAT. NANSEN WENT TO THE KITCHEN AND BROUGHT BACK A CHOPPER. HE PICKED UP THE CAT AND SAID TO THE MONKS, "IF ANY OF YOU CAN SAY A GOOD WORD, YOU CAN SAVE THE CAT." NOT A WORD WAS SAID, SO NANSEN CUT THE CAT IN TWO AND GAVE HALF TO EACH GROUP. WHEN JOSHU RETURNED THAT EVENING, NANSEN TOLD HIM WHAT HAD HAPPENED. JOSHU SAID NOTHING. HE JUST PUT HIS SANDALS ON HIS HEAD AND WALKED OUT. NANSEN SAID, "IF YOU HAD BEEN THERE, YOU COULD HAVE SAVED THE CAT."

Nothing is saved by the mind, by thinking, by logic, and if you try to save by logic you will lose. Life can be saved only through an irrational jump, through something that is not intellectual but total. But the whole story seems to be too cruel. Nansen's disciples were struggling over a cat. Nansen had a big monastery and the monastery had two wings. This cat was moving from one wing to another and both wings claimed that the cat belonged to them -- and the cat was a beautiful one. The first thing to be understood is: a real sannyasin cannot claim any ownership. A sannyasin means one who has left all possessions, or all possessiveness, which is deeper and more basic. You can leave possessions, that is easy; but to leave possessiveness is difficult because it goes deeper in the mind. You can leave the world, but the mind goes on clinging to it. These monks, Nansen's disciples, had left the world behind -- their homes, their wives, their children -- but now they were fighting over the ownership of a cat. This is how the mind works. You leave one thing and the mind claims another, but the basic thing remains the same and it makes no difference if the object of ownership changes -- it makes no difference. The difference, the revolution, the real change, comes only when the subjectivity changes, when the owner changes. This is the first thing to be understood. Monks claiming ownership of a cat looks foolish, but this is how monks have been acting all over the world. They leave their houses, then they claim ownership of the temple, of the church. They leave everything but they can't leave their minds, and the mind creates new worlds for them continuously. So it is not a question of possessing a kingdom; even a cat will do. And wherever possession comes in, fighting, violence and aggression are bound to be there. Whenever you possess, you are fighting, because that which you possess belongs to the whole. You cannot possess anything; you can use it, that's all. How can we possess the sky and how can we possess the earth? But we possess -- and that possession creates all types of conflict, struggle, wars, violence and so on. Man has been fighting and fighting and fighting continuously. Historians say that within the last three thousand years there have been wars almost continuously somewhere or other on the earth. In three thousand years, we have fought at least fourteen thousand wars. Why so much fighting? It is because of possession. If you possess you have started a war with the whole. Buddha, Mahavira or Jesus, all said, "If you possess, you can't enter the kingdom of God." Jesus said, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." It is impossible, because when you possess you are constantly fighting with God. When you claim ownership, from whom are you claiming ownership? The whole belongs to the whole; the part cannot claim the whole. The part cannot even claim the part. Every claim is aggression. So those who possess cannot be in deep contact with the divine. Nonpossessiveness doesn't mean you should not live in a house. Live in a house, but be thankful to the whole, to the divine. Use it but don't possess it. If you can use things without being possessive you have become a sanysain. These followers of Nansen have left the world, but their minds have followed them like shadows. Now they claim ownership of a cat. The whole thing is foolish. But the mind is foolish. The mind always goes on searching for excuses to fight. If you have a mind you have a potential fighter within you who is always in search of a fight with somebody. Why is the mind always in search of a fight? By fighting, ego is accumulated, becomes stronger. Through fighting your ego grows; if you don't fight, ego disappears. Mahavira and Buddha both insisted on nonviolence. The basic reason for not fighting is that once you stop fighting the ego cannot exist. Ego exists in fight; it is a consequence of fight. The more you fight the more ego exists. If you alone remained on the earth, nobody to fight with, would you have an ego? You would not have an ego. The other is needed to create it; the other is a must. Ego is a relationship, it is not in you. Remember, the ego is not in you, it is not located within you. It is always located within you and the other -- somewhere in between, where fight exists. There are two types of relationship: one is of fight, fear, hatred -- this creates ego -- the other is of love, compassion, sympathy. These are the two types of relationship. Wherever love is, fight ceases, ego drops. This is why you cannot love. It is difficult, because to love means to drop the ego, to drop yourself. Love means not to be. So look at the strange phenomenon: lovers go on fighting. How can lovers fight? If there is love fight should drop and the ego will disappear. Your whole being thirsts for love, your whole mind thirsts for ego. So you make a compromise: you love and you fight. The lover becomes an intimate enemy, but the enmity remains. All lovers go on fighting and go on loving. They have made a compromise: in some moments they are loving, then they drop the ego. But the mind feels uneasy, and again the mind starts fighting. So in the morning they fight, in the evening they make love, and the next morning they fight again. Then a rhythm of fight and love is created. True love means the fight has disappeared, the two have become one. Their bodies exist separately but their being has mingled. The boundaries are lost, there is no division. There is no 'I' and no 'thou', no one exists. These monks of Nansen had left everything, but the mind was there. It wanted to possess, it wanted to create a fight, it wanted to be egoistic. A cat became just an excuse. Nansen called all the monks, all the disciples, caught hold of the cat, and he said, "Say something which can save this cat." What did he mean when he said, "Say something which can save this cat?" He meant: Say something Zen-like, say something meditative, say something of the other world, say something of ecstasy, say something which doesn't belong to the mind. This cat can be saved if you say something which comes from no-mind, which comes from your inner silence. He demanded the impossible. If there had been inner silence these monks would not have been claiming possession; if there had been inner silence it would have been impossible for them to fight. The monks were at a loss. They knew if they said something it would come from the mind and the cat would be killed, so they remained silent. But that silence was not real silence; otherwise the cat would have been saved. They remained silent not because they were silent; they remained silent because they couldn't find anything to say which came from no-mind, which came from an inner source, from the very being, from the center. They remained silent as a strategy. It was tactics: it is better to remain silent because the master may be deceived that this silence is our response -- this is what they were saying. But you cannot deceive a master. And if you can deceive a master, then that master is not a master at all. Their silence was false. Inside there was turmoil, inside there was continuous chattering. They were thinking and thinking, in search of one answer so that this cat might be saved. They were very troubled inside; the whole mind was functioning fast. The master must have looked at them. Their minds were not inactive, they were not inactive; there was no meditation, there was no silence. Their silence was just a false facade. You can sit silently without being silent and you can talk and be silent; you can walk and be inactive and you can sit statuelike and be active. The mind is complex. You can walk, run, move, and inside, deep at the center, nothing happens, you are inactive. I am talking to you and I am silent. You are not talking to me and you are not silent; the mind continues. The inner chattering goes on and on and on. The mind is a monkey, It cannot sit silently. Darwin discovered that man comes from the monkeys, but in the East meditators have always been aware that whether man comes from monkeys or not, the mind definitely comes from monkeys. It is monkeyish -- jumping, chattering, doing something or other, never silent. What Nansen said to his disciples was, "If you stop behaving like monkeys, this cat can be saved." But they couldn't help it. You cannot help it: if the mind is there what can you do? If you try to hold it still it becomes more active; if you force it to be silent it talks more; if you suppress it, it rebels. You cannot suppress it, you cannot persuade it; you cannot do anything about it, because the moment you do something it is the mind which is doing. This is the problem. They all wanted to save the cat, they all wanted to possess the cat; the cat was really beautiful. But how can a mind which is possessive be silent? And how can a mind which is possessive save anybody? It can only kill. Remember, it was not Nansen who killed the cat, it was these monks who killed it; this is the secret key in the story. Nansen gave an opportunity. He said, "You can save this cat. Say something which comes from no-mind, from your very being. And if you don't say anything I am going to cut this cat and divide it in two so both parties can possess it." It was not Nansen who killed the cat. It seemed as though he killed it, but in fact the monks killed the cat. Whenever you possess a live thing, you have already killed it. Whenever you claim that you possess a live person, you have murdered, because life cannot be possessed. The cat was moving from this wing to that. The cat was alive, fully alive, more alive than these monks. She had no home, she didn't belong to anybody. She was just like a breeze -- sometimes passing through the left wing, sometimes passing through the right. And the cat never claimed that these monks belonged to her, or those monks belonged to her. She never possessed. Animals are nonpossessive, trees are nonpossessive; only man is possessive. And with possessiveness man has missed all that is alive. You can possess only a dead thing. The moment you possess you are making something dead. You love a woman and then you try to possess her: you kill her. A wife is a thing not a person; a husband is a thing not a person. This is the misery -- you love a person and then you start possessing. Unknowingly you are poisoning. And sooner or later the day will come when you have poisoned the person completely. Now you possess, but how can you love a thing? The love happened in the first place because the person was alive. Now the flow has stopped, now life doesn't move, now all the doors of freedom are closed. Now it has become a frozen thing. The river is frozen, now there is no movement. Certainly now this person cannot go to another. You possess him completely. But how can you love a dead person? This is the misery of love. You cannot love a dead person, yet whenever you love you start possessing. All possession creates death. Only things can be possessed. These monks had already killed the cat. Nansen was not going to kill it, he was only going to make manifest what had already happened. This story has been used against Zen monks, Zen masters, to show that these people are violent. Think of a Christian theologian reading this story: he will say, "What type of religious man is this Nansen? He killed the cat, a poor cat. Those monks who claimed it were better. At least they were not killing. What type of master is this? What manner of man?" If Jainas -- not Mahavira, if Jainas read this story, they will throw Nansen into hell. He has killed a cat. Nansen is violent in appearance only to those who cannot understand. To those who can understand he is simply manifesting a thing which has already happened. The cat was dead the moment it was possessed, the moment people started claiming it. He gave them one more opportunity, but they couldn't use that opportunity. They remained silent. But if the silence had been real the cat would have been alive. The silence was false, the silence was only on the surface, on the faces, skin-deep. Inside, the mad mind was functioning fast. It was whirling, spinning. Many answers must have come to those monks, but not the answer. So Nansen had to kill. He chopped the cat in two, one part to the left-wing claimers, another part to the right-wing claimers. Those monks must have been happy, happy in the sense that at least they possessed half the cat. That is what is happening to you all. Whenever you fight, life goes dead and is divided. A father and mother fight over a son -- there is continuous fighting over children. The father says that the son belongs to him, that he should follow him, and the mother thinks the son belongs to her, that he should follow her. Claiming, they are killing. Sooner or later the son will be divided in two halves, chopped. Half of the son will belong to the father, half to the mother. And his whole life is destroyed, because now it will be very difficult for him to be whole. Half of his heart will always belong to the mother and half always to the father. One half will be against the mother and one half will be against the father. Now he is divided. Now this division is going to follow him his whole life. He is chopped in two. This is what Nansen was saying by chopping the cat in two: Don't fight over a person, don't try to possess a person, because you will chop him. Visibly he may seem one, but deep down in his heart he has become two, and now there will be constant conflict. The mother and father were fighting over the son; now the mother may be dead and the father may be dead, but they will go on fighting within the son -- sometimes the voice of the mother, sometimes the voice of the father. The son will always be at a loss whom to follow, and he cannot be whole. You come to me in search of being whole, and I always say: To be whole is to be holy. There is no other way to be holy; just be whole. Divisions within you must fall, you must become a unity. But you are a conflict. Your father is fighting, your mother is fighting, your brothers are fighting, your teachers are fighting, your gurus are fighting -- everybody is fighting to possess you. There are many claimants. They have fragmented you, they have chopped you into many parts. You have become many, you are not one; you are a crowd. Neurosis comes out of it, madness comes out of it, comes out of it. Have you ever observed how many souls you have, many selves you have? You are not one, that is certain. In my university days I used to live with a boy. He would never get up in the morning at five, but every day he would set the alarm. So I asked him, "Why do you set it? Why do you bother? -- because you never get up. You always turn the alarm off and go to sleep again. So why bother and why be disturbed every morning? He laughed, but his laugh was hollow. He knew himself that he would not get up. But in the evening another self said, "No, tomorrow morning I am going to get up." I said, "Okay, try." And at the time he was setting the alarm he was confident, absolutely confident that he would get up in the morning at five. There was no suspicion. But this was only one fragment who said, "Absolutely, you have to get up. You have slept enough. No more time is left; the exam is coming near." At five I was waiting for him. He looked at me when the alarm went off. He looked at me -- I was aware, I was sitting on my bed -- he smiled, put off the alarm, changed sides and went to sleep again. Later in the morning, at eight o'clock when he used to get up, I asked him about it. He said, "I thought, Just for a few minutes... And what is wrong in just sleeping for a few minutes more? I was feeling so sleepy, and the night was so cold. But tomorrow you will see, I will get up." These are two different fragments -- and he was not aware that the one who said, "Get up at five," was a different part, completely unaware of the part who would say, "Go to sleep. The night is very cold." You are doing the same: you decide a thing and the next moment you have simply forgotten what you decided. You say you are not going to be angry again, and even the next moment is very far away. If someone starts arguing with you, saying no, you will become angry. You may become angry because he is arguing -- immediately anger can come to you, and you had decided not to be angry. A divided house you are. There are many rooms in your house not connected with each other; the connections are broken, the bridges have dropped. You exist as a polypsychic being with many minds, so whatsoever you possess you will chop it. You are already chopped. Those monks could not save the cat because they were divided. Nansen was saying, "Do something, say something, in a whole way, in a holy way, undivided. Act as a unity and this cat can be saved." Not a single one could act, and the cat was chopped. A question arises: How could Nansen cut the cat? Is it just a parable, a symbolic story, or did he really chop the cat? There are people who would like to save Nansen; I am not one of them. He really did cut the cat. It is not a parable, it is not an anecdote, symbolic, metaphorical. No. Literally, it happened exactly the way it is said. He cut the cat in two. Could a saintly man do that? I say to you: Only a saintly man can do that. That's what Krishna said to Arjuna in the Gita: Then don't bother! Chop these fellows. These who are standing against you, cut them down, kill them, but remember only one thing: that which is hidden in them cannot be destroyed. Only the body can be destroyed, because the body is already dead. Only what is dead can be destroyed. What is alive remains alive; it is eternal, nothing can be done to it. Fire cannot burn it, weapons cannot cut it. NAINAM CHHINDANTI SHASTRANI -- no weapon can cut it, no fire can burn it -- only the form. But don't bother about the form, because form is unreal, it is part of illusion. This Nansen must have been in the same state of mind as Krishna, in the same state of consciousness as Krishna. He chopped the cat. He knows the soul of the cat cannot be destroyed; he knows that only the form can be changed. And one thing more which is very difficult to understand, because moralists have created so much confusion and smoke around it: when a cat is chopped by a Nansen, it is beneficial to the cat, is is a blessing to the cat. This cat must have been rare -- and now this cat will not be reborn as a cat, she will be reborn as a man. To be chopped by Nansen is a rare opportunity, and the cat must have been wandering around the monastery waiting for this moment. Nansen changed the form. The cat will be reborn as a higher being just because Nansen has chopped her.In that moment the cat was more silent than the monks, the cat was more ecstatic than the monks. And being chopped by Nansen is not an act of aggression, it is an act of love. Nansen freed the cat from the form, from the form of cat. She will be reborn as a higher being. But this is difficult to follow, and I am not telling you to go and free people from their forms so they will be reborn as higher beings. Don't chop anybody -- you would like to, you would enjoy it. But for Nansen, it was an act of deep prayer. He must have been watching this cat. This cat was no ordinary cat. There are animals who are crying out to be freed from their forms. It happened at a camp in Matheran. I was staying very far away from the campus ground. The first evening, when I was going to my bungalow, a dog followed -- really a rare dog. Then the dog remained continuously. Three times I would go to conduct the camp, and three times I would return. It was half an hour's journey. Three times I was asleep, and he would sit just on the veranda. Even when he went to eat something he never left me. For the whole camp this was his routine. He would follow me to the camp, and when others were meditating he would sit more silently, more deeply, than those who were attending the camp. And then he would go back with me. The last day, when I left Matheran by train, he followed the train. He was running by the side of the train, and the guard took compassion on him and he took him in. Up to Neral he came. This train was a slow train, a toy train, coming from Matheran to Neral, traveling just seven miles in two hours, and the dog could follow. But from Neral it is a fast train, when I took the train from Neral to Bombay others were standing there on the platform weeping and crying, and the dog was also standing there in tears. I know that cat must have been extraordinary; otherwise Nansen would not have taken such trouble to chop it. He created an opportunity for his disciples, and he used that opportunity for the cat also. He hit two targets with one stone. This is possible. If you are ready, then your form can be destroyed and you will receive a higher form, because your higher form depends on the moment when you die. The cat died in the hands of Nansen -- a very rare opportunity. Such a silent man was Nansen, the cat must have caught the silence; such an ecstatic being, the cat must have been filled with his ecstasy. And then he chopped it. The cat was not afraid, she must have enjoyed the game. It was a surgical act. The cat must be born in the next life as a very much higher soul. But that is an inner story and cannot be understood by ordinary morality. And persons like Nansen don't follow ordinary morality, they follow the inner rules, the inner laws. Ordinary morality is for ordinary men. And then by the evening another monk came in from outside, another disciple who had not been in the monastery. Nansen told the story to him, "This has happened, and I had to cut the cat. I had to divide it in two because there was no way.... These foolish fellows couldn't save the cat. They couldn't save the cat -- they couldn't utter a single word, they couldn't act in a Zenlike way, they couldn't prove their Zen. Only Zen could have saved the cat, nothing else." The disciple listened to the story, put his shoes on his head and walked out. Nansen called him and said, "If you had been here, the cat would have been saved." This was the right man. What did he do? He took his shoes off, put them on his head, and walked out. He said many things without speaking. The first thing: He listened to the story and didn't comment on it. The monkey was silent; the mind was not chattering. He didn't try to think out an answer, he simply acted. That action was not from the mind, the action was from his total being. And what did he do? He put his shoes on his head. Absurd! But he said that the mind, the head, is no more valuable than the shoes. Shoes, the meanest thing -- he put them on his head. He said by this act, "The mind is nothing but shoes. The mind is valueless, thinking cannot help. The mind has to be thrown to the shoes. Even shoes are more worthy and command more respect than the mind." That's what he said, and then he simply walked out. And Nansen said, "Had you been here this morning, you could have saved the cat. The cat would have been saved. Here was a man who didn't believe in the mind, who didn't believe in answers. Here was a man who could act spontaneously. Life can be saved only if you can act spontaneously -- not only the cat's life, your life also. Throw the mind to the shoes. It is not more worthy in any way. And shoes have not troubled you so much; sometimes they may pinch, but only sometimes, and if they are the right size they are always okay. But the mind has been pinching you for many many lives, and it is never the right size, it is always the wrong size. The mind is never the right size. Shoes can be the right size, but the mind is always the wrong size. It goes on pinching. The mind is the wrong size. You cannot make a good mind, there is no possibility. You cannot make a beautiful ugliness, you cannot make a healthy disease, that is impossible. The mind is always wrong. It goes on pinching. And whether you think or whether you pray, if the mind is there everything goes wrong. The mind is the factor which creates wrongness in life. This is the source of error, perversion, neurosis. Life can be saved only when you drop the mind. What did this disciple do? It was difficult to drop the head, it was easier to put the shoes on the head. But it was symbolic. He was saying, "I have dropped the head. Don't ask me foolish questions" and he acted, that's the thing. Meditation is not contemplation, it is action -- action of the whole, of the total being. In the West particularly. Christianity has created a false impression, and meditation looks like contemplation. It is not. Because of Christianity the West has missed many things, and one of them is meditation, the rarest flowering of a human being, because they have made it equivalent to contemplation. Contemplation is thinking. Meditation is no-thinking. For DHYAN, Zen, there exists no equivalent in the English language, because meditation itself means thinking -- to meditate upon. Some object is there. Remember, dhyan is the original word. Dhyan traveled to China with Bodhidharma and in the Chinese language it became CH'AN. And then from China it traveled to Japan and in Japanese it became first ZAN, and then ZEN; but the original root is dhyan -- Ch'an, Zan, Zen. In English there is no word equivalent to it. Meditation also means thinking, a consistent thinking. Contemplation means thinking too. It may be thinking about God, but it is thinking, and dhyan or Zen is a no-thinking state. It is action, without thought. Thought needs time. In the morning the monks were sitting thinking what to do. They thought and thought and couldn't find. Thought will never find the right answer. The cat had to be chopped. Life became death because thought is poisonous; thinking leads to death, not to more life. The cat had to be chopped. Nansen couldn't help -- those monks killed the cat. This man, this disciple who came in the evening, listened to the story without commenting, without saying anything. He simply took off his shoes, put them on his head and walked out. He acted -- he said something through his action, not through his mind. He didn't use words, he used himself. And he didn't wait, he didn't contemplate, he didn't try to find the answer to how the cat should have been saved. If you had been there in the evening and you were told the story, you would surely have started to think: How? When the how comes, mind has come. This disciple acted without the how; he simply acted, and the act was spontaneous, very symbolic. Putting the shoes on his head he said something -- he said the head is valueless. This Nansen, the master, used to ask people,"What is the most valueless thing in the world?" He used to give it as a meditation to his disciples: think, what is the most valueless thing in the world? His master also gave this koan to him. He meditated, meditated, then one day he came and told his master, "The head. The master asked, "Why?" So Nansen said, "Cut a head and go to the market and try to sell it. Nobody will purchase it." This is what Nansen's disciple did. By putting shoes on his head he said, "Worthless head!" And you go on insisting, asking head-questions. There is no answer. How can the shoes answer? He walked out, and Nansen said, "You could have saved the cat. Had you been there this morning the cat would have been alive and kicking. Some absurd act was needed -- absurd, spontaneous. Rational? No, something irrational was needed, because "ir-reason" is deeper than reason. That's why if you are too much head- fixated, you cannot fall in love, because love is irrational, absurd. The head goes on saying, "This is useless. What will you gain out of it? There is no profit, you may even get into trouble. Think about it." It is said of Immanuel Kant, one of the greatest systematizers, that one girl proposed to him. In the first place it is bad that the girl should propose, it is always the boy who proposes. But the girl must have waited and waited and Kant wouldn't propose; the idea never occurred to him. He was so much rooted in his head, the heart was denied. So the girl, feeling too much time had been lost, proposed. Kant said, "I will think it over." How can you think about love? Either it is there or not. It is not a question to be solved, it is a situation to respond to. Either your heart says yes or your heart says no and it is finished. What will you think? It is not a business proposal. But it was a business proposal to Kant. Too much head- orientation makes everything businesslike. So he thought, and he not only thought, he went to the library and concentrated on the books about love, marriage. Then he noted down in his notebook all that was in favor of marriage and all that was against. And he thought and thought and thought, and it is said that weighing the pros and cons, he decided in favor of marriage because a few points were more in favor than against. So it was a logical decision. Then he went and knocked at the girl's door, and the father said, "She is already married and a mother of three children. So much time passed... you come a little late." Time is needed for the mind. The mind is always late because time will be needed and the situation will be lost. And when you knock at the door, the girl has moved -- she is already a mother of three children. And this is happening every moment. Remember, a situation is there, so act, don't think, because if you think the situation will not wait for you. The girl will have moved. And when you are ready to respond there will be nothing to respond to. Kant was ready, but the mind takes time and situations are moving. Life is a flow, a flux, it is not static; otherwise the mind would have found the answer. If the girl had remained.... But the girl was getting old, she was missing life. She could not wait, she had to move, make a decision. Life is not static. If life were static there would be no need for meditation. The mind would do. Then you could think, and whenever, after many lives, you knocked at the door, the girl would be waiting for you. But life is a flux, a movement. Every moment it is changing and becoming new. If you miss a moment, you have missed. This disciple didn't miss a single moment. He heard the story, took off his shoes, put them on his head and walked out. If he had waited a single moment to think Nansen would have beaten him. I tell you, he would have been beaten. Because the cat was not there any more he might have chopped this disciple -- but he acted. Action without the mind is the most beautiful thing possible. But you are afraid because you think if you act without the mind you may do something wrong. Because this fear exists the mind exploits it -- think first, then act. But you go on missing the train. Leave this fear, otherwise you will never be meditative. Act! In the beginning there will be a deep shaking and trembling, because you have always been acting out of thinking. It is just like a man who has been living in a prison, in a dark cell, for many years. His eyes have become attuned to darkness. If he is suddenly brought out of the cell he will not be able to open his eyes. The sun will be too much, the light will be too much. His whole being will tremble and he will say, "Let me go back to my cell. This is what has happened to you, to everybody. We have lived in the mind for many many lives, and we have become attuned to its darkness, its ugliness, futility. When you act without the mind, your whole being trembles. You are moving on a dangerous path. The mind says, "Be alert! Think first, then act." But if you think first and then do something, your doing will always be dead, stale. It will be out of thought, it will not be real and authentic. Then you cannot love, then you cannot meditate, then you cannot really live and you cannot die. You become a phantom, a phony existence. Love knocks at your heart and you say, "Wait! I will think about it." Life goes on knocking at your gates and you say, "Wait! I will think about it." This disciple must have been deep in meditation. He acted, he simply acted. He could have saved the cat. This means he has already saved it -- he has already saved all that is alive. Don't think about the story, otherwise I will have to chop the cat. You can save it; otherwise the cat will have to be chopped again, and you will be responsible. Act! But the story won't help you. Don't try to put your shoes on your head, that won't help. It helped that disciple but it won't help you. The cat will have to be chopped if you put the shoes on your head and walk out, because that will be false again, that will be from the mind. You know the story. The mind cannot give you the real; whatsoever you do, don't imitate. I have heard that in a Chinese town there was one big restaurant, very rich, the most beautiful, rich restaurant in the town. And just near that restaurant lived a poor Chinese. He couldn't go in the restaurant, it was too costly. But the smell of food, the aroma.... He used to sniff it, and when he took his lunch or dinner he took a chair out of his house and went as near to the restaurant as he dared, and he would sit there and sniff the aroma, the smell that was coming from the restaurant, and eat his food. He enjoyed it. He ran a small laundry. But one day he was surprised. There came a man, the owner of the restaurant, with a bill for the smell of the food. That poor man ran into his house, brought his tiny money box, rattled it in the ears of the owner and said, "Hereby I pay for the smell of your food, by the sound of my money." The mind is just smell and sound, nothing real. Whatsoever you do, the mind is smell and sound, nothing authentic. It is the source of all falsity. So you have heard the story: don't try now to imitate it. You can do it easily now, now the secret is known. You can put the shoes on your head and walk, but the cat will be chopped. It will not save it, it will not help it. Act spontaneously. Put aside the mind and do something, and doing it you will come to know the cat has never been chopped, because the cat cannot die. Putting aside the mind you will come to know your own eternity, and the very same moment you know the eternity of the cat also. The mind is mortal, not you. You are immortal. The mind has a death waiting for it, not you. You are deathless. Putting aside the mind you will laugh, and you will say this Nansen played a trick. The cat cannot be killed. That's what Krishna went on saying to Arjuna: "Don't you be worried. You chop these fellows, because nobody can be killed." The Gita is very dangerous. Nowhere on the earth does such a dangerous book exist, so nobody has followed it. People recite it but nobody follows it. It is dangerous, and even people who love it very much and respect it very much, never listen to what it says. Even a man like Mahatma Gandhi, who called Gita his mother, wouldn't listen to it. How could Mahatma Gandhi listen to it? He believed in nonviolence and this Krishna said, "Chop these fellows! Nothing exists; it is like a dream. And I tell you, nobody is killed, so don't bother about it." How could Gandhi believe? So he had to play a trick. This is how the mind plays tricks. He said, "This is a parable, this is metaphorical; don't take it literally, the fight is not real. The Kauravas and the Pandavas, these two groups of warriors, are just a story. Kauravas represent evil and Pandavas represent good. It is the fight between good and evil, between God and the Devil, it is not a real fight." But this was Gandhi's mind playing tricks. There have been Buddhist interpreters of Nansen also. They said, "This is just a parable. There was no real cat, and this never happened." But I tell you this happened. The cat was real, as real as Nansen, and the cat was chopped. Nansen could do it. Nansen was a Krishna. He knew nothing is destroyed. This word, the English word destruction, is very beautiful, meaningful. The word destruction means de-structuring -- nothing is destroyed, only the structure changes, a new structure arises. The old structure goes out of existence and a new structure arises. Destruction means de-structuring. Only the form changes. The cat may be sitting here -- it is more possible than anywhere else! When you go back home, look in the mirror. You may be the cat, and you have come here again. Do something, otherwise I will chop you again. And remember, now nobody can save you. That time the monks could have saved you. This time you are a monk, so nobody can save you except yourself. Action out of immediacy, spontaneous action, saves life. That is the only savior. There exists no other savior.

A prince was sent to a Zen Master to learn swordsmanship. It is a strange phenomenon, but in Japan it has become a reality that a Master of consciousness, a Master who teaches meditation, also teaches swordsmanship. To me it is very significant. That is what is needed. The prince went to the Master and he said, "My father has sent me. He is old and he is not going to live long -- maybe one year, two years at the most. He has sent me to you with the urgent message to prepare me before he dies. He would like to see me with your recommendation saying that I am ready, because if I am not ready then he cannot die peacefully. "In every other way I am ready: I have learned archery, swordsmanship and all kinds of things that are needed in war; I am a master in every dimension. And I went back from the university to my father to say that I had all these medals and trophies and certificates; I was ready. "He said, 'No, you are not ready yet, because the basic thing is missing. All that you have brought is good, maybe it will be of use some day, but first go to this Master to learn meditation, and to combine all your warrior's training with meditation. Unless meditation is supporting the warrior in you, you are just an ordinary warrior, and dangerous: I cannot put the kingdom in your hands. I will have to find somebody else. Go fast, and learn fast.'" So the prince said, "I am ready. Whatsoever you say I will do, but be quick." The Master said, "That is the first requirement, that time is not binding. I cannot say how much time it will take -- one year, two years, ten years, fifty years -- nothing can be said about it. It all depends on you, on how quick you learn. I will try my best because I am old, I am also in a hurry. I was not going to accept another disciple, but if the king sends you -- he is my old friend, we both were under the same Master learning meditation -- I cannot refuse you. Your training starts from now." The prince asked, "What do I have to do?" The old Master said, "You have not to do anything except just ordinary things: cleaning, cooking, drawing the water from the well, cutting wood. But remember one thing, I can hit you any time from behind, so remain alert. Do anything, but remain alert." The prince said, "What kind of training is this? -- but my father has sent me to you so it must be right." And he was continually being hit. The old man was really a great, skillful man. He would walk without any noise; you could not hear the sound of his feet, and suddenly from nowhere he would jump out and hit you hard! Within fifteen days the prince's whole body was aching. It was difficult to sleep on one side because there it was hurting, and it was difficult to sleep on the other side because it was hurting, but he was happy too because now he had started hearing his Master's footsteps. Awareness had grown. Before he was not so conscious, so those footsteps were making a certain noise but it was so small, so subtle, that it was not in his grasp. Now his awareness, in such conditions, was bound to grow. He had to be alert, continuously alert: while doing everything he knew that the Master would be coming. He would be chopping wood, but no other thought would be there other than about the old man: from where would he appear and how would the prince defend himself? The old man would try to hit him and the prince would just catch his bamboo staff. Within three months the old man could not hit the prince a single time in the whole day. The prince was very happy; he thought, "This is a great day!" And his body was no longer hurting: in three months of continual beating his body had become like steel. Now he understood that he had gained a certain strength that was never in him before. Now when his hand held a sword, it was not a human hand but one made of steel. He was happy about his body, the way it had become stronger under his Master's hits. He was happy that he had become so alert that even when the old man was far away in the other room, he would be able to detect it. He would shout from his room, "Don't try anything -- I am alert" The Master used to come in from his room. One day the prince listened out for noises from the other room for twenty-four hours; and the Master could not beat him a single time. The Master called the prince to him. The prince was very happy, the old man was also very happy; he said, "Now the second part starts. Up to now I have been hitting you with a bamboo -- from tomorrow it will be a real sword." The prince thought, "A real sword! The bamboo was one thing -- I managed somehow and remained patient -- but now a real sword! If I miss even one time I am finished. And this old fellow, if he can hit me with the bamboo so hard that he has made my whole body like steel, what will he do with a real sword?" The old man took out his sword and he said, "This is my sword, so look at it. Watch it! This is now going to be after you continually." The prince's awareness arose like a pillar of light. He could feel it, because danger was there and now it was not a joke: it was a question of life and death. So the old man started trying to hit him but could not succeed for three months; not even a single time did he hit him. And the prince's awareness was going higher every day: he could save himself immediately. From the back the Master would try to hit.... And all kinds of work the prince was doing. With closed eyes he would be sitting in meditation: the Master would go to hit him and he would jump aside and save himself The Master called him, and he said, "I am happy. The second part of training is over." The prince said, "I am tremendously grateful and happy. I never thought that there was such a possibility inside me to be so alert. Not even a small breeze can pass by me without me knowing it. Not even a single thought can move within me without me knowing it. And I am happy that there is still something to learn. "At first I was very hesitant, reluctant, unwilling: I was here just because my father had sent me. But now I am here because I want to be, and I don't think of my father and the kingdom or anything else. All I think of is to bring my consciousness to its highest peak, because the joys that I have known I was not even aware of, I could not have even dreamed about them. So start the third step." The Master said, "The third step is: while you are sleeping I will be hitting you with the real sword." The young man said, "That is perfectly right -- I am ready. I was afraid even of the bamboo; now I am not afraid of your real sword, not even in my sleep. Lately I have been watching myself sleeping. Turning, I know I am turning. When sleep comes to my body I know that sleep is descending... descending... descending, that it has taken over my whole body. But I am just like a flame inside, not asleep." The Master started trying to hit the prince, but the moment he entered the prince's room, the prince would wake up. For three months he tried, but he could not strike the prince even once. Then the Master gave the prince his sword and said, "Your father will understand, because he knows this is the sword my Master had given to me. Now you are capable of having a sword because you also have a higher quality of consciousness. Now the need for the sword is left far behind."

BELOVED OSHO, IF PEOPLE DON'T LIKE WHAT WE ARE DOING, WHY DON'T THEY JUST LEAVE US ALONE TO DO IT?

There are many reasons for it, and of great importance. First; why do people not like what we are doing here? It is none of their concern in fact. We are not doing anything to them. If we are doing anything at all, we are doing it to ourselves. Particularly my whole philosophy is selfish, self-centered. Why do they not like it? There is tremendous fear behind it, because we are doing something they have stood against for the whole past history of humanity. If we succeed, their whole history, all their religions, culture, civilizations, are proved to be wrong. Our success is risky. Our success is dangerous, it is a challenge -- and not to a single individual, not to a single society, not a single religion, but to all that they have been doing; their philosophy, their religion .... If you just see the great implication: you are standing against the whole history of man -- your success cannot be allowed. Somehow or other they want you to fail; in your failure is their success. That's why they are against it. It is a great question -- who is right? We are a small commune. On their side is the whole history of man -- millions and millions of men, thousands of cultures, civilizations; but they have all lived according to some basic principles and we are against those basic principles. The trouble arises because they have not succeeded; otherwise they would not have bothered about you. If they had succeeded they would have pitied you, they would not have been against you. But they have not succeeded, that's where the real trouble lies. They have failed, utterly failed. On every single point they have failed, and they cannot allow anybody else to succeed because that success will make them a thousandfold miserable. Right now at least they have the consolation that "this is the way things happen." There has never been real opposition to them. Hindus against Mohammedans -- that is not real opposition; Jews against Christianity -- that is not real opposition, because on fundamental points they are all in agreement. We are in total disagreement on every step, on every single point. This has never happened before; naturally, they are freaking out. We can't help that. They are facing a great danger: our success will make their whole history a history of stupidity. And we are succeeding. Every day we are succeeding, and we are proving to them that they have been wrong. And now it is not just an argument. For thirty years I have been arguing; finally I decided that just argumentation is not going to help. They have no answer, but argument just disappears into the air. It may remain in the books, but it won't transform the whole life of man. It will not make a complete break with the past and a totally new beginning, fresh, as if man has arrived on the earth for the first time. That realization slowly slowly made me decide to create a commune -- a reality, not just an argument; a reality which they cannot ignore, not just a philosophy. Philosophies -- ninety-nine percent of people remain unaware of them. The one percent who become aware are the professional philosophers. Philosophy is any easy-chair affair; you enjoy it but gives you no challenge. It became clear to me that I have to translate my argument into a real phenomenon or people are not going to be affected by what I am saying. In the first place they cannot understand it because their whole past is against it. Their mind is conditioned by the past. When they listen to me they cannot listen with an open mind. I have seen people listening to me nodding their heads when something is in agreement with them, or shaking their heads sideways if something is not in agreement. They are not aware that their heads are showing that which is going on within. Only with Japanese was I in trouble. They are the rarest people in the whole world. They just do the opposite: when they want to say no they say yes! So when I came in contact with a Japanese then I was really confused -- what to make of it? In the beginning I thought they were saying yes, but what I was asking them ... they were supposed to say no, and they were saying yes. When they were supposed to say yes, they were saying no .... Only Japanese do it in a different way. Except Japan -- but why did it happen in Japan? -- the whole world nods in the same way. You can read their minds just by their facial expressions, their heads nodding, their eyes, their hands, even their posture of sitting. When somebody is interested, he leans towards you. When somebody simply wants to show his arrogance, he leans away from you. Arguments cannot penetrate their thick minds, and they go on becoming thicker and thicker, because as time passes more and more dust goes on gathering on the mirror. Now the mirror is nowhere to be seen; it is only a thick layer of dust. Still, I tried my best, for the simple reason that I am a lazy man. I never wanted to do such a thing as I had to do: create a commune. It is easy for me to talk about everything in the world. Whether I know about something or not, it does not matter, I don't care at all. I simply enjoy talking. So it is not a question of whether I know about it or not, I enjoy in both cases. Talking is easy; that I have done from my very childhood. I used to sleep in the room with my grandfather. I asked him, "You always cover your head with the blanket, even when it is not so cold ...." He said, "It is not a question of the cold, it is you. You tell stories even in your sleep, and you talk so relevantly that I become interested." It is that old man who gave me also the habit of covering my head, because I said, "This is not good, to disturb the old man in the night." Since then, I also sleep with my head covered, so even if I start talking nobody is disturbed. Talking has been to me just like breathing. That's the only thing I have done in my whole life. So I recognized the problem, but it took years for me to collect myself and get involved -- not just to go on standing on the bank of the river, talking, talking, while the river goes on flowing without listening .... I had to decide that I would jump in and do something, although it was against my nature; this flow of the river had to be disturbed. So even though I have created communes, I am almost outside the commune. But I have found the rarest people in the contemporary world, the very cream, intelligent .... There is no need for me to do anything, I just have to give a hint. And sometimes even a hint is not necessary. Everything goes on happening exactly the way I would have liked it to happen. I can love you but I cannot dictate to you. I cannot say to you, "Do this," and I cannot nag you if you don't do it. But I have found my people. Now it is no longer a question of my two hands; millions of hands are with me around the world. They are all my hands. I can now afford to be absolutely lazy. And you know that I am lazy. I don't do anything, or I do things which only lazy people like me can afford: two hours in the morning taking a bath -- I don't think even Alexander the Great was able to afford that -- two hours again in the evening taking a bath. You should one day come and see my bath. Vivek does not allow anybody to enter -- it is enough that she allows me! She is otherwise a very strict manager, but she allows me. Vivek and Hasya together have made my bath really pleasant, because they must be thinking: that two hours this man takes in the morning, and two hours in the evening ... just with the water! So now you must see my bathroom; they have arranged so many things there, that two hours are falling short. Now I am thinking to start a third bath at night, because two more hours are needed. And the remaining time I just sit with closed eyes listening to music -- and mostly I fall asleep, to be frank with you, because I have been listening to the same music for thirty years. There is a limit to patience too. It is strange: as the music starts I start dozing and I wake up immediately as the music stops. I am myself surprised; this is something strange, I should be awake when the music is on. I am awake before it is put on, and I am immediately awake when it is going to stop; I just hear the last line and the first line. But I know the middle so there is no problem in it; nothing, nothing is missed. And this is just in the morning. The whole night I have been asleep. And I must be sleeping ... just as I finish talking with you, I go to sleep within half an hour. And I sleep up to seven, just because there is nothing else to do; sleeping is a great activity. And I cannot believe it, that at seven I have got out of bed and by nine, after my bath, listening to the music I am again asleep. Up to eleven this goes on with music; then I take my lunch and go to sleep again. And I had to tell Vivek, "Remember, I have to go for the two o'clock ride to see my people. So wake me up, because I may continue to sleep." I can sleep twenty-four hours -- and not one day, every day. When I came from India to here I was completely asleep the whole time. I enjoyed it very much -- such a long sleep! After the ride I come back ... and again that music. it seems to have something to do with my past karmas that I have to listen to the same music again and again ... and I fall asleep again. It is good that there is nobody, I am alone. I wake up at four-thirty and again my bathtime .... Now do you think this kind of a man can create a revolution? But somehow it is happening. People think walking on water is a miracle -- idiots! I just saw last week's STERN magazine. They have a cartoon about me. The cartoon has the outlines of Krishnamurti Lake and sannyasins are standing on one side, and my Rolls Royce is moving on the lake! One of the sannyasins says, "It must be Osho!" That is not much of a miracle. What is really happening here is a miracle. I do nothing but, I don't know why, you have fallen in love with me. I don't deserve it either because I have never done anything; how can I deserve so many people's love? But your love is doing the miracle. You are here for no other reason. Sometimes you also must be wondering why you are here. I also wonder why; but love is such a thing, that you go on wondering why, and it goes on happening. I don't know where your office is, I don't know how your finances are managed. I don't know who is doing what. What to say about the commune? -- I don't know even in this house what is going on, where my kitchen is; I have not seen it. People are afraid because they have never seen love at work. They have tried by force to create culture, civilization, by violence, and they have failed. Here love is at work. And when love is at work, it attracts intelligence. There is an inner attunement between love and intelligence. It is not accidental that so many intelligent people from all over the world have become interested in me -- who is against everything that they have been brought up to believe in: who is against their culture, who is against their country, who is against their religion, who is against their parents; who is against even their children who are not born yet, who won't allow them to be born. If it were in my power I would not have allowed your parents to be born. It is too late; but your children I am not going to allow. This is the only place in the whole world where love is doing things; and love never says, it never dictates. Love is the most mysterious energy in the whole world. It makes things happen. Perhaps love is the very center of all that moves, of all the stars that are moving. Scientists are searching for the center; there must be a center to the universe. I am not a scientist but I know the center. Let them search, they will never find it, because their very methodology will not allow them to find love. Love is the center of the whole universe; the suns, the moons, the planets, the stars -- all are moving around it. And we have created this small commune on the same existential principle. Everybody feels responsible. I don't say to you that you are responsible towards the commune, towards me, towards my philosophy; I have never said anything like that. But you feel to be responsible because somebody trusts you. Somebody loves you in spite of yourself. Somebody accepts you in your totality, as you are. I never judge anybody -- love knows no judgment. I don't see that somebody is good and somebody is bad. To me you are all one energy, different manifestations, and all are needed to make an organic unity. Sheela comes again and again to me and says, "These are the topmost workers, ace workers. These are second class, these are third class, and these are just to be thrown out." I say to her, "You don't understand. If the fourth class disappears you will start thinking of throwing out the third class -- naturally, it is a simple logic. If the third class disappears you will start throwing out the second class. And if you throw out the second class, how are you going to know the ace workers, the first class? They are all one organic whole -- they are all needed." The first class needs the second class, they support each other. If the second class disappears the first class will be in a limbo, hanging in the air, there will be no support for it. Somebody is needed to support it. It is just like a staircase; every step is needed. The lowest step is the support of the highest step. Don't judge that the lowest is in any way lower as a value. It can be the lowest as a physical status but there should be no evaluation involved, it is not "lower". The highest ... that is simply a way of measuring things, but it is not higher. Nobody is lower and nobody is higher. There many be lower steps and there may be higher steps but they are all connected in one symphony. Love knows no judgment, that's why love can do miracles. What humanity has not been able to do is happening here without anybody doing it. About nobody can it be said, "He is doing it." Everybody is involved except me. So I am always grateful to you all that you allow me to remain just a guest, and I am grateful to the American government that they allow me just to be a tourist. And I hope I will die just as a tourist. People have only said that life is a journey; I am going to prove it! It is not only a journey, it is a tour, without a visa, without a passport; it is a tour. People are afraid because they can see things they have tried so hard to do and they have not worked ... and nobody is trying here; still somehow they are working. Three thousand people are here ... no management, but some inner feeling keeps you all connected. No fanaticism -- because when there is love to connect you, you need not have ugly substitutes for it. A fanatic Mohammedan is connected by his fanaticism to other Mohammedans. A fanatic Christian is connected by his fanaticism to other fanatic Christians, it is the fanatic element that connects them. Here, nobody is a fanatic. How can you be a fanatic with a man like me, who takes nothing seriously? I have never in my whole life taken anything seriously because I don't see the point, why one should take things seriously. Life is really such a joke, so hilarious. I have heard of a man who was sitting in a railway station waiting room; sometimes he was sitting alone, sometimes there were other passengers also. Sometimes he would gesture as if to throw something with his hands. Everybody was interested in what he was doing because there seemed to be nothing that he was throwing away. Sometimes he would giggle and sometimes he would even laugh. Finally he was driving everybody crazy -- although it was nobody's business. It was his hand; if he wants to make some gesture, who are you to be bothered by it? And if he wants to giggle, that is his business. And if he wants to laugh .... But the whole place became very tense, hot. Only that man was enjoying, with his eyes closed. Finally it was too much: one man stood up and he said, "I have to ask, because he is driving us crazy, what he is doing." So he shook him and told him, "You are driving the whole waiting room crazy; nobody can take his eyes off you. What are you doing? Why are you giggling? There is nothing happening here, on this ugly platform, in this dirty waiting room -- and you laugh?" The man said, "It is something ... just an old habit. You need not be worried. I am in the habit of telling jokes to myself. When some very old joke that I have told many times comes by, I just shake it off: `Get lost again!' And when some juicy one comes, I have to giggle -- although I know the joke, it is an old joke, but so juicy that even to hear it a thousand times ... still, I have to go the whole way. "I know everything that is going to happen in the joke but that doesn't matter, it is so juicy. And sometimes the joke is so great that I cannot just giggle, I have to laugh out loud. I know that perhaps it may disturb others, but what can I do?" I think this man is no one but me; because this is how I have lived my whole life. I have never taken anything seriously. This was not a decision on my part; otherwise that decision would have become serious. Just looking at life I found it was so humorous, so ridiculous, that if you cannot make yourself giggle and laugh you are just an idiot, and missing such a great opportunity. People come here, and when they see you working twelve hours a day, fourteen hours a day and still laughing and giggling and dancing, they cannot believe it. They have to believe, but they cannot. And of course they have to find some explanation -- perhaps you are all hypnotized; perhaps it is all just show business, you are just trying to show those idiot spectators your laughter, your dance, your song. They think it is just managed for them; once they are gone, you will be crying and hurting all over from so much jumping. Back home that's what they think, that it was all made up. They write articles, they have written books about me, that all my people are trained in such a way that the moment they see any spectators immediately they start laughing, singing, dancing, hugging .... They are poor fellows just trying to console themselves that this is not for real; otherwise how will they explain to themselves their misery, their suffering? If it is for real -- if your laughter, your joy, your dance, your song, is for real -- then they have missed the train. Then their whole life is nothing but foolishness. And this is too much to accept. Only very intelligent people will be able to accept it. And in that very acceptance there will be a change, the beginning of a revolution. But people are mediocre. Intelligent people are few and far between, they are not all over the place. Ninety-nine percent, the crowd, is just mediocre. And with the mediocre mind the problem is, how to console oneself? You are enjoying so much you don't know how much it hurts those who have never enjoyed. You say we are doing our thing, why are they angry, why are they against us? Can't you see a simple fact? They are not against you; just be miserable like them, be in suffering, in anguish, and they will be very sympathetic to you. They will donate to your commune. All opposition to you will disappear. The opposition is for a certain consolation: they want to believe that you are pretending, they want to convince themselves and others that this cannot be true. Yes, it may be true in paradise, but it cannot be true in Oregon. It is against their whole way of misery. Our way is of humor, our way is of bliss. We don't care about gods and heaven and theories of karma and hell. We have dropped all that crap -- and they are carrying that crap as holy scripture. When they see you so light, and they look at themselves carrying mountains of crap .... And you say they should not be angry at you, they should not be against you. They are crying, and you are laughing. Their hearts are full of wounds, and you are hugging each other. This is too much! That's why they are against you. And they will become more and more angry, more and more against you because as you become more successful -- which you are going to become .... Love knows no failure. Intelligence knows no failure, failure is only for fools. Humor knows no failure. If a man who has some sense of humor slips on a banana skin and falls down, even he will laugh -- he is capable of laughing at himself too. That is a true sense of humor. To laugh at somebody else slipping on the banana skin is not much -- anybody can do it, any Tom, Dick, Harry .... I think for the first time I am right, and the reason that I am right is because of our poor Harry. Last time, when I was told the correct sequence I tried hard -- how to remember it? Then I remembered poor Harry. He is the last. And he is a man so simple that he will stand at the last. He will not try to push himself ahead, he will not try to be the first. Whosoever invented the sequence must have been a man of tremendous insight, putting our Harry at the last. Then it became easy for me: Dick comes in the middle. What can I do? -- it simply comes in the middle. And then only Tom is there. And this Tom who is standing first must be the most idiotic person. Now I think I will not forget the sequence -- but you cannot rely on me, I can forget. The whole credit goes to Harry, because he was last; that made things very clear. These Toms, Dicks, Harrys ... the world is full of mediocre people who are in great suffering and who have no way to get out of it, who cannot conceive that there is any way out. And when they see you, that you are out -- when they see the goose is out -- they are naturally offended. They have been worshipping in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques, in the synagogues, and God has not heard them yet -- and these godless people are living in the lotus paradise! They have been doing all the virtuous acts: serving the poor, opening hospitals, schools, doing everything that is thought to be good, but it doesn't heal their wounds. It does not change anything in their miserable lives. In fact they go on becoming more and more miserable, because slowly slowly even the hope that by being virtuous, religious, they will get over this dark night of the soul .... But they have done everything that their scriptures prescribe. They have followed all the recipes that their priests and so-called wise people have given them. Nothing works. Their hope starts dwindling. And then they see you; no prayer, no god, no temple, no synagogue, no church; strange people! -- and yet without wounds, yet without tears, yet without any misery. I saw an interview: one Oregonian woman was being asked, on the television, "What do you think about Osho?" She said, "I hate him! He is not a gentleman. He is not even a Christian!" That made me so happy. It was really something great that she said. First she said, "I hate him." That's perfectly good because at least she relates with me, she has some relationship with me. And if today it is hate, tomorrow it can be love. At least one woman hates me. Do you think that is something small? I was thinking that women had forgotten me but at least one women hates me; she must be thinking of me. I enjoyed it -- because how can you hate me without thinking of me? In fact, how can you hate me without loving me? Hate is secondary; you cannot hate directly, first you have to love. It is a simple thing: if you want somebody to be your enemy you cannot directly make him your enemy, there is no way. First you have to make him your friend; friendship is a necessary bridge if you want him to be your enemy. The woman, knowingly or unknowingly, loves me; otherwise from where can the hate arise? And the way she said, emphatically, "I hate him ...." And the second thing was even more important: "He is not a gentleman." This is true, absolutely true. I agree with her. I am not a gentleman because all the gentlemen of your whole history have simply dragged you into hell. I am not part of that company. And the third thing is even more significant: she said, "He is not even a Christian." I started thinking, can somebody be a Christian without being a gentleman? -- because first she says, "He is not a gentleman" And then she says, "He is not even a Christian." That simply shows a Christian need not be a gentleman. And she is not interested in my being a gentleman. If I were a Christian, then gentleman or not, she would not have hated me; I just had to be a Christian. But what was she going to gain by my being a Christian? There are millions of Christians, what has she gained out of them? What is going to be added to her happiness if I am a Christian? I am such a non-serious person that if somebody can convince me that my being Christian is going to help the poor woman, I will become a Christian. What does it matter? I can be a Christian, I can be a Jew, I can be a Hindu ... if it can help some woman. But I don't see that it can help, because there are so many Christians already and they are not helpful. And a man who is not even a gentleman .... But the point is: my not being a Christian and yet being happy, hurts. It is not necessary to be a Christian to be happy, it is not necessary to be a Christian to be blissful. It is not necessary to be a Christian to be loved by so many people. Christ was not loved by so many people. If he is anywhere he must be feeling jealous, just like this woman. He must be saying, "I hate this man. He is not a gentleman, he is not even a Christian!" But even if the whole world hates me that makes no difference to me. I will remain just as blissful as I am. This is what troubles them. Jesus was not a happy man. Have you seen any of Jesus' pictures, statues, where he looks smiling, happy, blissful? No, he always looks tortured, he always looks to be on the cross. He was not always on the cross because for thirty-three years he lived without being on the cross. What was this man doing for thirty-three years? In the Christian gospels there is not a single reference that he laughed, that he smiled, that he joked. No, he is always serious, he is always with a long face. And it seems if Jews had not crucified him it would not have made any difference; he himself was always on the cross -- the Jews simply fulfilled his desire. They said, "Okay, if you are going to remain this way let us fulfill your desire. Once and for all be finished" -- because even before his crucifixion he was telling his disciples, "Each one has to carry his cross." Why a cross? Why not a flute? or a guitar? "Everyone has to carry his own guitar ...." That is natural -- you cannot play on somebody else's guitar, two persons cannot play on one flute. You may even be lovers, that does not matter; you cannot play on the same flute together, simultaneously. You have to carry your flute yourself. But Jesus chooses the cross. In this whole world he could not find anything else to carry! This man must have been utterly miserable. My feeling is the Jews finally got fed up with his misery. They said, "This man is not going to change. This man is never going to be satisfied unless he is crucified." He had not gathered intelligent people around him. Those who had come were very mediocre, below average. They were also miserable. They had come in the hope that with him ... he is the son of God, so "one day, when we reach the kingdom of God, the world of bliss, he is going to be helpful." They had gathered around him, in deep misery, with a hope .... All miserable people go on living, tolerating misery because they have a hallucination of hope somewhere: "Today is bad, yesterday was bad, but tomorrow? -- things are going to change. And we are with the messiah, we are with the only begotten son of God. Tomorrow things are going to be different." Jesus' disciples were again and again asking him, "How long will it take?" You can understand it -- the same way a patient asks the doctor in the hospital, "How long will it take? How much longer do I have to remain in the hospital?" And the doctor goes on saying, "Soon you will be released." But his face says something else. He has not even courage enough to look eye to eye with the patient. The doctor goes on saying to the patient, "Soon you will be all right," and goes on looking at the chart of the patient's disease; and his face goes on becoming sadder and sadder because the patient's health is falling every day. The doctor cannot say that to the patient. He has to say, "You will be okay, soon you will be okay." But the patient can see the face of the doctor. He can see the eyes, that the doctor is avoiding him. He can see the silence on the face of the nurse. He cannot believe what he is being told, because there is much more, tangibly present, which says his time is limited, his days are finished. But yet he goes on asking; and knowing perfectly well that the doctor's face is saying something else, he goes on believing what he says -- knowing it is not true. But he wants it to be true. Those disciples of Jesus knew perfectly well, deep down, that this whole paradise is just a mirage. Yes, it is helpful for the time being, it helps them to tolerate misery. They want to believe in it, that it is true. That's why religious people become fanatics. What is fanaticism? Have you looked into it? The fanatic person is saying he knows perfectly well that what he believes is not true. That's why he shouts loudly that it is true, and the only truth. He is not shouting at you, he is shouting against his own still, small voice. He wants to drown that voice in his shouting. But he knows perfectly well it is not true. When such people see you, you can understand how much it hurts that, for a few people it is really true, and true now. Nobody here is asking about paradise, nobody is asking about life after death, nobody is asking about God and how to find Him. Nobody is bothered by all this. This shows something so glaringly -- that you are happy where you are, as you are. You are not bothered about the future. You are not hoping, because you are not miserable. You are not fanatic, because you don't have any belief. You are simply living sincerely, honestly, totally; and for whatever small joys this life provides, you are grateful to it. You don't ask for more. Once you ask for more you become miserable. Hence all the religions have been telling you, "Ask for less." But that is not going to help. It is the same logic, the same line, the same continuity: seeing that asking for more creates misery, ask for less. But you are simply reacting. Nothing will be changed in your consciousness because you will ask again for less, for more less; the more will come back. All your monks are doing that; they start by asking for less, but then it becomes for more less. The "more" never leaves you -- and more is misery. In fact, more or less, the moment you ask, you ask for misery. The people who are blissful simply don't ask. They live, and they thank existence; they don't ask either for more or for less. They don't make any demands on existence, that is ugly. They simply drop demanding. And the miracle of life is that the moment you don't demand, the whole existence is yours; all its joys and beauties are yours -- and the people surrounding you can see it. So don't be disturbed because they are angry. Why shouldn't they be? But if they are intelligent they should be angry with themselves their society, their culture and their religion, their history and their past. But if they are idiots they will be angry against you. Now, if they are idiots what can I do? What can you do? Let them enjoy their anger, hate. But they are simply punishing themselves. This is one of the fundamentals of life: If you hate, you punish yourself. If you are angry you punish yourself. If you are loving, you reward yourself. If you are happy, you create possibilities for more happiness. They have a saying that money attracts money. It is true. It is true on other levels of life too. Happiness attracts happiness. Lovingness attracts more love. Blissfulness attracts more bliss. Giggle, and soon you will be laughing. Just try to move your hands and legs and soon you will be dancing -- what else to do? I see it happen every day during the drive-by. First people just try, because it is so much against their upbringing. But then they see that others are also doing it; they look to both sides, people are doing it. Against themselves, reluctantly, they start moving a little bit -- and soon they are dancing. One old man is there: at first he used to just stand. I went on watching him, what happens. He is old, has a thick past, but by and by he started moving. One day I saw -- he had brought a flute, but he was keeping the flute under his arm. Then he started playing the flute. Then he started dancing and playing on the flute, together. And today he was just dancing with the flute above his head, in his hand; he had dropped everything. He had forgotten he is old; he forgot that he is not supposed to do such a thing -- and he was so happy! Just to see his face ... it was a beautiful moment. He again became a child, again the same innocence was in his eyes. So those outside the commune who are intelligent are sooner or later going to be part of you. And it is good that idiots remain against us because that is a great safety: they will never enter. To me it is of great significance that idiots don't get interested in me. They get angry at me, that's very good. And I try my best to keep them angry, hating me, against me, because I don't want them to be here. I don't want this place to turn into a commune of idiots. Sometimes an idiot comes by accident. But soon he escapes, it is too much for him, to look so high. He has always crawled on the earth; he is a creature who, by some accident, started walking on two legs. He should be walking on all fours -- that's where he belongs. I am not interested in that kind of people. And of course they are the majority -- so I am not interested in the majority. I am perfectly happy that they are angry. Please keep them angry. And I will go on doing things so that they will remain angry and will not come in. We are not afraid of people going out. Those who go out we are very happy, relieved of a burden. We are worried about people coming in, people who cannot really belong to an intelligent, loving, responsible commune. I want you to be just the chosen few, because if the chosen few are really transformed, that will be the only proof for the millions -- no other argument can convince them. That will be the only possibility for their mutation. So my interest is not in the mob, in the crowd. My interest is in a few individuals -- and I have found them. That's why I stopped traveling. I had a certain number in my mind, and when that number was complete I stopped traveling. I have taken account how many of them will fall out; those who remain, that is my number, and they are going to become a magnetic force. They will attract new generations immensely. You are going to become the world's most significant people because there is no other alternative. All other ways are finished. This is the only living way arriving right now. This is the birth of a new man that you are witnessing. You should rejoice that you are witnessing something which is going to be the most significant factor in human history, which is going to divide the past and the future. BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS TRUTH? AND WHATEVER IT IS, WHY ARE MOST PEOPLE NOT INTERESTED IN IT?

The way the question is formed says more than is apparent. The first thing it says is that you are not interested in truth at all. It is strange that sometimes the formulation of the question has much more significance than the question itself. You are asking: "What is truth? and whatever it is ...." Does this show any inquiry? Does it mean that you are committed to seek and search for truth? If it were so, you could not have said "whatever it is." It shows such an indifference, just like government office letters -- "whomsoever it may concern." "Whatever it is ...?" It makes no difference to you. And you are asking why people are not interested in it. Why blame people? Why can't you be sincere and say, "why am I not interested in it?" Who are these people you are talking about? What concern do you have about these people? They don't have any names; it is just a word, empty: "people." With me be honest, be sincere, be direct. Don't bring anonymous people into the question. The question has to be yours. You are asking for an answer, and the question is not even yours. And how is it possible to answer you when the question belongs to "people"? Who are these people? I don't know, and I don't think you know either. A question has to be individual, then it is alive; and I can answer only an alive question. A dead question deserves only a dead answer. I am incapable of doing that. So first, remember always the question must be your quest. The question must arise from the depths of your heart; it must be rooted in your being. It must be nourished by your life; then it deserves an alive answer. You ask me, what is truth? This is the greatest question ever asked. And you ask it in such a stupid way, you put the ultimate question in such a silly form. This is simply unawareness, unconsciousness. You don't know what you are doing, what you are saying; You don't know what you are asking, and why you are asking. What business is it of yours to be bothered about unknown people? Are you in a state where no question of your own exists? Have you dropped all your questions? If that had been the case there would have been no need to ask this question either, because you would have known the answer. When all questions disappear, that consciousness, that questionless consciousness, is the answer, is the truth. The question is yours but you are a coward: you cannot even accept your ignorance. Of course, to accept that "this is my question" certainly means that you are an ignorant person; hence the question is thrown on the shoulders of some unknown people. I cannot find those people anywhere. Neither can you. Consciousness never exists in collectivities: people, nation, society, culture, civilization. You will not find these things anywhere; they don't exist. Whenever and wherever you come across "people", you will come across the individual. That is solid reality. And "people" can't have any questions. The "people" don't have any soul, the "people" is only a collective name. It is just like a forest. From far away you can see the forest but as you come closer and closer the forest starts disappearing. When you are exactly in the forest there is no forest, there are only trees. You will come across trees and trees and trees; unique trees, individual, having their own world; their own foliage, their own fragrance. You cannot find even two trees exactly the same in the whole so-called forest. What to say about the forest? -- even two trees are not exactly the same. The forest is only a word. Yes, it denotes a collectivity, but no collectivity has any consciousness of its own. The society -- have you come across society anywhere? Or do you hope some day to say, "Hi, society! How are you?" These words are just hollow, empty. They are only containers without any content in them. But man is so idiotic that he is more interested in containers than in the content. I have heard that in a book shop a certain dictionary was not being sold at all. And the bookshop had kept the dictionary for ten years. They had purchased the wholesale rights to the dictionary, but not a single copy had they been able to sell in ten years, and they had been selling other books in thousands. The dictionary was really very significant, a milestone in the world of dictionaries; that's why they had purchased the wholesale rights to it. But the book was not selling. It just happened that the shopkeeper mentioned it to a painter who was looking for a book. The painter looked at the dictionary and he laughed. He said, "The whole problem is, its cover is wrong. Who bothers what is inside the dictionary? The cover is repulsive, that's why you have not been able to sell it. I will make a cover for it. You change the cover." But the man said, "Just by changing the cover ...? The dictionary will be the same." The painter said, "Don't be worried -- you just do what I am saying." He made a new cover, beautiful, glossy, attractive .... Now, what has a dictionary to do with a nude woman? -- but a nude woman was on the cover looking into the dictionary, the same dictionary. Again on that dictionary's cover was the nude woman looking into the dictionary, the same dictionary. It was a beautiful cover. But the owner was simply shocked -- there was a queue! People were dying to purchase the dictionary. What he had not been able to do in ten years was done within a week. He had to order a reprint. He told the painter, "This is strange." The painter said, "It is not strange -- it is just human." When you fall in love with a woman do you think of the content? When you fall in love with a man do you think of the content? Just the container ... a little longer nose and you may fall in love. If the nose were a little shorter you might not have looked twice at the woman. That's the meaning of the word "respect". You may not have thought about it; people don't think about words. Respect means looking again: re-spect. When you see somebody and you feel like looking again at the person, that's the meaning of the word "respect". The person is so attractive, spectacular, that you would like to look again and again. But what you are looking at is the container, still. I know of a professor ... he was my colleague in the university, one of the most intelligent people I have ever met -- but he was ugly. The content was just great, but the container ... that too was just great! He was head of the department of psychology. Just because of him, students were not taking the subject of psychology. He told me, "This is a strange university, where nobody seems to be interested in psychology. We have a full-fledged department, perhaps one of the best departments in the university. All the staff are very qualified people, but somehow students take psychology up to their B.A., and after getting a B.A. nobody turns up for postgraduate study" -- because the head of the department gives classes only for postgraduate students or research scholars. I said to him, "It may shock you but you are the reason." He said, "Me? I have done no harm to anybody." I said, "You simply look into the mirror and don't ask me. Your container is all wrong." And the postgraduate philosophy and psychology courses are mostly filled by girls, because psychology or philosophy are not going to be of much help in life. They may create trouble perhaps, but they are not going to help you. So, in India particularly, only girls turn to psychology because they are not interested in business, in service, in a career; they are interested, in India, in catching hold of a rich husband. And a postgraduate girl obviously has more chances of catching hold of a good-salaried husband. In any other department there is much competition; in psychology and philosophy there is not much competition. Moreover, professors are very generous in passing people, giving them better marks, higher distinctions, more first classes, so that more people will become attracted. Those departments are dying all over the world. There are hundreds of universities where no student takes postgraduate classes in philosophy for the simple reason that wherever you go, although you may have a first class M.A. in philosophy, that is not a qualification. In fact, it is a kind of disqualification -- nobody is going to take you just because of that. It is enough proof that you are not going to be of any use; your degree shows you are useless. Philosophy has no market value. When I went to study philosophy in the university, my family were absolutely against it, unanimously. Everybody was bothering me continuously: "Don't go in for philosophy. You know perfectly well," they told me, "in our town there are postgraduates in philosophy who have been unemployed for years. Nobody takes any interest in them. The moment they hear you are a postgraduate in philosophy, they say, `You are not of any use in the world.'" But I told them, "Don't be worried, I am not interested at all in your world. And I will be the last person to ask anybody to employ me. I am going to create my own world." My father said, "You are simply crazy. How are you going to create your own world?" I said, "You will see. I am not going to use your world. I will create my own world." Reluctantly, sadly, they sent me to the university. You will be surprised -- even my professors, becoming acquainted with me, told me, "An intelligent student like you should be in the department of politics, economics. What the hell are you doing in the department of philosophy? "This is only for girls, and they are not interested in philosophy at all. But we go on passing them because without them the department will be closed and we will be unemployed. So whether they are interested in philosophy or not, whether they do their work or not, we go on passing them. They need certificates, and their certificates are not for the marketplace, they are for marriage -- that is a totally different thing. But what are you doing here?" Even the professors were worried about me. After my graduation they all suggested, "You move." I said, "You don't understand -- it is my subject. You people don't belong to this subject. You have somehow wrongly entered philosophy. Perhaps you could not get entry into any other department; that's why you entered to study philosophy. And once you studied philosophy there was no other profession left for you except to be a professor of philosophy; that was the only profession left. But you don't belong to philosophy at all; otherwise you should be happy that I am joining it. It is my world. I was also a student of that professor who was really ugly; later on I became his colleague. When I told him, "You just look at your face in the mirror," he said, "But, then, why have you joined our department?" I said, "Because I am not interested in containers -- my interest is in content. I don't care in what kind of boxes you are presented; I just look inside. My interest is in your inside. Whether your nose is flat, your eyes are crooked -- I have no interest in what kind of case you have been imprisoned. I am interested in YOU." But this is a human weakness: just to see the cover of a book, the advertisement of a certain thing, and be impressed by things which have nothing to do with the reality, things not concerned with reality. If you want to sell a car, you have to advertise the car with a beautiful woman standing just by the side of the bonnet, looking at the car, enchanted. She is enchanted by the car, you become enchanted by her. Strange game! And then you purchase the car -- as if that woman is going to come as part and parcel of the car. Later on you understand and feel silly, but then it is too late. That woman has nothing to do with the car. In fact, such kinds of advertisements will show people of the future, what kind of people have existed on the earth before. After two thousand years people will think, "It seems it was just a madhouse! These advertisements show something about the people who were advertising, who were looking at the advertisements; these advertisements must have worked." They are working. You purchase a thing not because you need it but because it is advertised so much, hammered so much in your mind, from all sides. Wherever you go the billboards are there; in the movie it is there: Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola ... wherever you go. It is difficult to get rid of Coca-Cola -- and then naturally you decide it is better to taste it, because if the whole world is talking about Coca-Cola there must be something in it. The question you have asked is your question -- you are not interested in truth. But you don't have the courage even to say that. Why be afraid? If you are not interested, it is perfectly okay. Then the truth is not interested in you either. The truth is not going to follow you, it is not going to nag you, "Be interested in me! Why are you not interested in me?" It is not your wife. Asking what truth is would have been enough. If you had stopped there .... The same question was asked by Pontius Pilate -- his last question to Jesus Christ. He had asked many other things and Jesus had answered them. His last question was, "What is truth?" -- and this is the only question that Jesus did not answer. Now, Jesus not answering the question can have many interpretations. Perhaps he knew nothing about truth. Perhaps he knew, but he also knew that the questioner was not going to understand it; it was futile, because the questioner was asking from a space which was absolutely wrong. Pontius Pilate was the governor-general; he was going to decide the fate of this young outrageous person who was just a hobo, a nobody. Perhaps he was the first hippie in the world. To ask about truth you have to be in a certain space. You cannot be in power and ask the person who is standing before you as a criminal, whose life is in your hands -- you are going to decide whether he is going to be crucified tomorrow or not. This is not the way to ask such a vital, ultimately meaningful question. You have to come down. You have to sit as a disciple by the side of the man you want to question about truth. Only a disciple has the qualification to ask such a question. Perhaps Jesus did not answer because there was no disciple; there was a governor-general. Or, it is possible Jesus wanted to answer but language was a barrier. Truth cannot be expressed through language; the moment you put it into words something goes wrong. It is just as when you take a completely straight staff and put it in the water halfway: you will be surprised that the straight staff is no longer straight. Where it meets the water -- half of it is out, half is in the water -- something has gone wrong, it is no longer straight. It has taken an angle, it is crooked. You take the staff back out of the water ... and it is a miracle! -- it is again absolutely straight. Nothing happens to the staff in water, but the nature of water and the nature of air cause them to function differently. The straight line becomes no longer the same; it is under different laws. The same happens to truth the moment it enters the world of language. Language is all human creation: Truth is not. We are a creation of truth. Language is our creation; hence it cannot express our origin, it is superficial. Language is just a toy in our hands. I was talking to a great scholar, Doctor Hiralal Jain; he was a world-famous scholar on Jainism, and a man of words. He knows seven languages and was so efficient in every one that it was difficult to decide which was his mother tongue. His whole life he had devoted to words, their roots .... Words have traveled for thousands of years in so many lands, in so many climates; they have changed with every move of the society. It is really a very, very interesting enquiry -- how words have come to be what they are, from where they have come. We were traveling in the train, in the same compartment. We knew each other -- he was an old man but he belonged to the same city where I was brought up. We were neighbors, his whole family lived next door to my family. He used to come once in a while when I was a child, only in the summer vacations, because he was engaged all over the world in different universities. But finally I also became a professor in the same university where he had become head of the department of the Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit languages. These three languages are the ancientmost in the East, and he was perhaps the best scholar of all the three. So traveling in the train ... we were both going to the same conference. I said, "You have wasted your whole life with words. You have never bothered about meanings." He said, "Meanings? But words have meanings!" I said, "Words don't have any meaning." I said to him, "For example I can say, `What is this whole hullabaloo?' Now what does this word "hullaballoo" mean? I can change it. I can say, `What is all this Honolulu?' If you are a little bit intelligent you will understand that it is the same -- Honolulu or hullabaloo. Words mean what we want them to mean, they don't have any intrinsic meaning. Meaning is something different, totally different -- and truth is pure meaning, pure content without any container. The moment you put a container around it you are doing something .... It is as if you see a bird on the wing in the sky. It is so beautiful -- the flight, the freedom, the space, the sunrays, and the joy of the bird on the wing ... life throbbing, pulsating. You can catch the bird, you can put it into a golden cage -- do you think it is the same bird?, the same bird that was on the wing when the sun was rising, the same bird fluttering in the strong wind in the vast sky with no barriers? Yes, your cage is beautiful, golden; but the bird has no longer the same freedom, it has no longer the same beauty, it has no longer the same truth. You have killed everything. In a very superficial way it is the same bird because the body is the same, but what about the soul? What about the innermost core of the bird? Can it be the same in the cage and in the open sky on the wing? This is a little bit delicate, but not beyond intelligence: it is no longer the same bird. The same happens to truth. The moment you put it into language, the whole freedom, the whole beauty, the whole authenticity is gone. Truth said is truth dead. You are asking what is truth. I can show you the way so that you can see what is the truth. You cannot see through my eyes; you cannot get a glimpse of it through my words. If you are really interested in knowing, then I can show you the path which leads to truth. I have been calling that path meditation. You be silent -- because truth is your innermost property, your own treasure: not the kingdom of God somewhere else in the heavens, but the kingdom of God within you just now, throbbing, pulsating -- your heartbeat. It is here, but you are not here. You have to be brought back home. You have gone too far away from yourself. Perhaps you have got lost and you don't know how to come back home. Perhaps you are standing in front of your home, but you cannot remember that this is your home. I have heard about a drunkard who comes to his home in the middle of the night, but he is so drunk, it is a miracle that he reaches his house. Not really a miracle, just an old habit of the body: the poor body, simply like a robot, mechanically brings him home. But he cannot recognize that this is his home. A woman opens the door; she is his mother. He falls at the feet of the old woman and says, "Help me, -- my old mother must be waiting for me. Where is my house? Just lead me." The mother tries to tell him, "I am your mother. This is your house." He says, "Don't be ridiculous. My old mother waits for me without eating, and half the night is gone. It happens every day, and every day somebody or other helps me and leads me to my home. You be kind enough ... just think of my old mother and help to show me where my house is. I cannot figure it out." At that very moment another drunkard, a friend, comes staggering along, and he says, "Don't be deceived by anybody. I am here, your friend; I will take you to your home. Just hold my hand, hold it tight, and I will take you to your home." The mother says, "Don't go with that idiot! He is drunk just like you, and wherever he takes you, it is not going to be your home. This is your home. The farther he takes you, the farther away you will be from your mother and your home." All your so-called religious leaders have been taking you away from yourself, towards God. God is the longest distance from you. If you want a definition of God, that will do: The longest distance from you, the absolute distance from you. And all the religions are taking you towards God. They are really taking you away from yourself. Their whole conditioning is to help you forget yourself. They teach you to remember God, they don't teach you to remember yourself. They poison people who teach that sort of thing. They poisoned Socrates because he was teaching: Know thyself. They wanted him to say: Know the way to God, the way to heaven. It was heretical in their eyes to say to people, know thyself. Know God, know anything else, but not thyself. Now, what crime was Socrates committing? If he was saying to people, "Know thyself," why did the religious people of his days become so angry? There is a reason: he was cutting their very roots by telling them, "Be yourself, know yourself; then there is no need of any religion, no need of any pope, no need of any priest, no need of any mediator between you and God." Mediators are needed because God is so far away. You cannot see, you cannot conceive .... Somebody else is needed who is capable of seeing God -- a prophet, a messiah. He will become your mediator; it is enough for you to know him. Not even that, it is enough for you to believe in him, and to believe that he knows God; you just blindly follow him. And remember, all following is blind. There is no other kind. I cannot show you anything other than yourself because that is the truth: You are the truth. And you are asking why people are not interested in it? They are not interested in it because they have been conditioned. For centuries they have been continuously conditioned: You are just a sinner, you are born in sin. This life is a punishment. You are not of any value, of any worth. There is nothing to be searched for within you, you have to look outward. You have to approach some god, some truth, which is far away, a long, long journey." And the problem is that truth is just within you. Truth needs no journey. It needs only a remembrance. People are not interested in truth because they have been taught not to be interested in themselves. All the religions are telling you: be unselfish, be interested in others, serve others, love your enemy -- even love your neighbor, which is certainly more difficult. But nobody says, "Love yourself." "Love God" -- I don't know how you are going to love God. You don't know what God looks like. You don't know from where to approach Him, which side is His face. The Indian god has three faces; from all the three sides you can approach him. The Hindu god has thousands of hands; you can hold any. But where are you going to meet these gods with thousands of hands, three heads ...? Just all junk. Nobody knows .... A small child was making a drawing. His father asked him, "What are you doing, so absorbed?" He said, "I am drawing a picture of God." The father said, "A picture of God? But nobody has seen Him, nobody knows how He looks. How can you make a picture of God?" The child said, "Just wait. Let me finish the picture and everybody will know how He looks." All these gods that you know in the temples, in the churches, are the drawings of children, nothing more. You have been told to seek and search for something which always takes you away from yourself. That's why people are not interested in truth -- because truth is within you, it is you. You have been programmed so criminally, such a deep harm has been done to you, that your priests, your prophets, your messiahs cannot be forgiven. They have spoiled millions of people's lives; just for the sheer joy of being a messiah or a prophet, they have crushed you all. I am teaching you to be selfish. Let me repeat it, because the word "selfishness" has been condemned so much that there is every possibility you will misunderstand me. But the word is really beautiful. To be selfish simply means to be yourself. I say to you: don't consider anybody else in the world, just consider yourself; and in that very consideration you will have considered the whole world. In being selfish you will find all the altruism that you have been seeking and seeking and not finding, because the whole thing was upside down. You are told to love your neighbor -- but you have never loved yourself. And a person who has not loved himself, how can he love the neighbor? From where can he get love? First you have to have it. You are loving the neighbor -- you who knows nothing of love because you have never loved yourself. The neighbor is loving you -- he has never loved himself. Such insanity is happening in the world: people who know nothing of love are loving each other. It is like beggars begging from each other, each thinking the other is the emperor. Both are thinking in the same way: the other is the emperor. Both are beggars. Sooner or later the reality manifests itself; then there is misery, suffering. Then you think you have been cheated, this beggar has been trying to prove himself an emperor. Now this is absolutely absurd -- it is you who were thinking him an emperor. And the same is the situation from the other side: the other person thinks you have been cheating him, pretending to be an emperor and you are just a beggar. When both beggars find that they are beggars, what else can they do other than be angry, enraged, violent to each other, hating each other as deeply as possible? And the love ...? It was nothing; they don't know what love is. To know anything, you have to begin with yourself. Once it happened ... I was sitting by the side of a river, and just a few feet away another man was sitting. A small boat in a strong wind turned over, and the man who was in the boat cried loudly, "Save me!" -- he was drowning. The man who was sitting just a few feet away from me was closer to the man, so he jumped in to save him ... and then both started crying, "Save me!" I said, "This is something!" I had to jump in. It was difficult to save two people -- because they both were trying to drown me! -- but it was not a long distance from the shore; somehow I carried them both. And I told the man who had jumped in to help, "If you don't know swimming you should not be so compassionate." He said, "But I forgot. Seeing the man drowning I completely forgot that I don't know swimming. I realized only when I had jumped into the water, what I had done. But it was too late." And I said, "I had to think twice before I jumped, because to save two drowning men is very difficult" -- they both try to be on top of you, they are so much afraid of drowning. "It was just fortunate that the bank was not far away, so even underwater ...." I remained underwater while carrying them to the bank. "Otherwise you would have killed me! You were two, and I was alone." I knew swimming but that was of no help because these two persons, both strong, were holding onto my neck as tight as possible. But during the whole of your life this is happening. You go on forgetting that you don't know what love is. You have never loved yourself, you have never respected yourself, you have never considered yourself. I teach you to be selfish. Learn swimming first; then perhaps you can save somebody. There is no need to go in search of somebody to save. That's what the Christian missionary does -- he is in search of people to save. They even approach us here -- where everybody is saved! They try to convince sannyasins -- and our sannyasins enjoy it tremendously. It is really hilarious: trying to save somebody who is saved! On dry land, in a desert, in Oregon, trying to save somebody ...! Do you think in this dry creek ... even if you try to kill yourself by drowning, it is impossible. Our sannyasins say to them, "We are saved" -- but they don't listen, they go on saying that, "Christ is the savior." But this is strange. If a man is not sick why should he enter your hospital, or drink your medicine? Isn't anybody allowed to be just healthy? No! According to these religions everybody is born sick, and from your very birth they are trying to save you. And they have created this world where nobody knows what love is, nobody knows what respect is, nobody knows what truth is; nobody knows anything which can make life bliss. Yes, everybody knows how to create troubles for himself and for others. Everybody is so skilled in creating misery -- and the whole cause is that you have been told to be unselfish. You have been told to sacrifice yourself for some idiotic ideal. I want you just to be simply selfish. And you will be surprised that if you are selfish you discover so many treasures within yourself that soon you start sharing them -- because finding a treasure is a lesser joy than sharing it. And the treasures that are within you don't follow the ordinary economics and its laws. They are just the very opposite, diametrically opposite to the ordinary economic structure. In the ordinary economics if you give something, you will have less. If you go on giving, soon you will be a beggar. In the ordinary economic world you have to snatch as much from everybody as possible then you have more and more and more. The treasures I am talking about to you, follow a different law: if you cling to them they shrink, if you cling too much you can even kill them. If you want to destroy them, then close all the windows and doors, become a grave so nothing can escape outside you -- but you will be a dead man, with all your treasures also dead with you; your truth, your freedom, your love, your joy. Everything will be dead with you -- securely dead, well-insured. But if you want to grow your treasures, share them, share to all and sundry -- don't bother whether this is a friend or a foe. When you are sharing, the question is of sharing, it is not with whom. Whomever it may concern, you simply give. Don't be concerned about the address, you simply go on sending love letters. Somebody will receive them somewhere. And the more you go on sharing, the more goes on entering you from unknown sources. A man is just like a well .... It happens in hot countries -- in India, in many places -- that there are only two wells in the village: one that belongs to the richest man, in his compound, and the other for everybody, the people. Certainly the well of the rich man is deeper, bigger; the people's well is as poor as the people are. In summer the people's well will dry out, but they cannot be allowed to use the rich man's well because -- this is ordinary economics -- if they go on taking the water from his well, his well will dry out too. It happened in one village, the rich man was so afraid of his well going dry, that not only did he disallow anybody from the town to take water, he disallowed his own family. He simply closed the well, locked it. His servants brought water from many miles away, from a river. It seemed sane because for three years there had been no rain and there was a danger that his well might dry out; even the river was becoming thinner and thinner every day. So he was saving his well for the last moment when there would be no water anywhere available; at least he would have water in the last moments of the summer. The river dried out, and he had to open his well. It was full of water, but the water was not drinkable anymore, it had become poisoned. A well remains drinkable if you go on taking water from it. The more water is taken out, the more water from the hidden sources all around the earth goes on coming into the well; fresh water goes on coming into it. Because the well was closed there was no need for the fresh water to come in, there was no way. So all the sources closed, and the water died; it became poisonous. The same happens to the person who is afraid of sharing himself. He cannot save his treasures -- this is not the way to save them, this is the way to destroy them. So when I say be selfish, I am really trying to help you to become as unselfish as possible; that's the only way. Be selfish. Find out your truth, your love, your compassion -- all that you have brought into the world with your birth. And start giving it to those who need, to those who do not need; to those whom you love, to those whom you don't love. You should not make any distinctions; only then can you expand. When there are no distinctions, no categories, you start expanding. And that expansion is the truth; That expanding consciousness is the truth. And it is right this very moment within you, you have not to go anywhere else. But at least let the question be yours so that I can help you to find the answer which will be yours. My answer is of no help: My answer will be only words to you. You can make holy scriptures of those words, you can worship those words. That's what humanity has been doing for thousands of years. It is time to stop this garbage. I want you to find your answer, but that is possible only when you start with your question. So ask, "What is truth?" and don't be so insulting to truth that you ask, "Whatsoever it is, why are people not interested in it?" Don't shift it to somebody else's shoulders. Say sincerely, "Why am I not interested in it?" This is not a Sunday sermon. I am not a speaker, a lecturer, an orator. I don't know anything about oratory. I am simply talking to you, man to man, human being to human being. It has to be immediate, direct. I am not somebody sent by God. I am just born amongst you, just like you. If there is any difference, this is the difference: I began with my own questions. And that's almost half the journey finished. The first half is the most difficult, the second half is not so difficult. Accept your ignorance. In that very acceptance you have taken a wise step; perhaps you have had the first glimpse of wisdom. Recognize that "I am not interested in truth." In that very recognition there will be a shocking realization; perhaps a door that was closed may open in that shock. But remember, it is your quest: It has to be your question. And I do not want to give you any answer. I can only show you the way to find your own answer. Truth liberates, but it has to be your own. Otherwise, if it is somebody else's, truth binds. Jesus Christ's truth, Mohammed's truth, Buddha's truth, have all become prisons. I don't want my truth to become a prison for anybody. I want my truth to be an inspiration. I want my truth to trigger something in you which is yours. My truth simply gives you an assurance that a human being, just like you, can attain to truth. That will give you immense respect towards yourself. You will not feel unworthy sinners, that somebody has to come to save you -- some Christ, some Buddha has to come, and then you will be saved. You don't have to wait for anybody to save you. You are born saved, just a little insight .... If my presence can do that, then my work is finished. I don't want to become a prison around you. I want to become a freedom around you, an open sky around you, not a golden cage -- so that you can open your wings and feel the joy of flying higher and higher towards the stars. One of my teachers, a history teacher, used to say again and again, and this has been said to almost everybody: "Leave your name in the pages of history. Write your name in golden letters. You should leave your mark that you have been here." The first day I entered his class ... of course the first day the teacher is at his best. He tries hard to impress, because the first impression is a lasting impression. So he was at his peak -- not speaking but thundering. I could not tolerate it when he said, "You have to leave your name in history, it has to be written in golden letters. You have to make a mark that you have been here." I stood up and I said, "You are shouting too loudly -- and only forty students are here. Are you leaving your mark on the walls of this classroom, or on the tables and chairs? You are thundering as if you are addressing a meeting of at least ten thousand people. And can I ask a few things? "One thing, I have never seen any history book written in golden letters. So of all those who have lived up to now, nobody has been able to write his name in golden letters. Are you proposing that, for me especially, a book will be written in golden letters? And even if it is written in golden letters, I will not be here to see it; so what is the point, whether my name is written in it or not? "In fact, when I came into this world I had no name. The name is given to me; the name is just arbitrary, it is not mine. So whether it is written in the history book or not does not matter. "Secondly, you are saying, `Leave your mark here, to prove that you have been here.' You are talking just like a dog." He said, "What!" I said, "Yes -- because dogs leave their mark wherever they are. They raise one of their legs up and leave their mark there. And when I am saying that, I am simply stating a biological fact. You can ask the scientists why the dog does that. He leaves his mark: `I have been here and this is my territory.' Pissing is golden. He is making history." But all the politicians are doing that, pissing and thinking that they are leaving golden marks. Yes, pissing is a little yellow but I cannot say it is golden, that would be exaggerating. And all that the dog is leaving as his mark, and making as a declaration to existence, is that "This is my territory" -- it stinks! I said to him, "The whole of history stinks, and all your politicians simply stink. You please just stop thundering and stop telling us nonsense. You just start the story of all the idiots of the past. And please forgive us for not being added to that list." The politician suffers from a tremendous inferiority complex. Deep down he knows he is nothing, and he wants to prove to the world that he is huge, powerful. He wants to stand first in the line of the whole humanity. But the trouble is, humanity follows a general universal law; it is one of the fundamental laws of the universe that things move in circles. The earth goes around the sun, the moon goes around the earth, the sun itself is going around some bigger sun which we have not yet been able to discover. But everything moves in circles, and that is true about humanity too. We are standing in a circle and moving in a circle, so there is always somebody ahead of you. This is the trouble, you cannot get out of it; somebody is always ahead of you. Yes, somebody is behind you -- that gives a little satisfaction, but the person who is ahead of you kills it immediately. You are trying to pull the person back by his leg and be ahead of him. He will try his hardest not to be pulled that way, he will kick you as hard as he can. But even if you succeed .... If you fail, you fail; but if you succeed, then too you fail, this is the trouble, because again you find that there is somebody else ahead. And you will always find that, because it is a circle. As you go on succeeding, go on succeeding, go on succeeding, one day you will find that a man who was once behind you is ahead of you. That is the ultimate failure. When somebody becomes a president, a prime minister, then he comes to know: "My God! The man ahead of me now is the same man who was behind me when I started the journey." And you can see it every four years in America, and in India every five years: the president is begging for the vote of the man who was behind him. Now he has to ask and beg a vote from him, now his presidentship, his premiership depends on the vote of that man; he is ahead. I have been saying again and again that the leaders are the followers of their own followers. It is a very strange game. You have to pretend to be first, and yet you know the last man has the power to keep you there or not to keep you there. The politician's life is a life of constant struggle and constant anguish. He tries hard to get beyond them, but if he remains a politician this is not possible. All these sufferings, miseries, are part and parcel of his political game. One education minister used to come to see me. He was a very rich man, very well educated. Before he became the education minister he was the vice-chancellor of a university. When he was vice- chancellor of the university there, he heard me in a conference and became my friend. Once in a while he used to come, just to relax for one or two days, away from the world of the capital and the politicians. He would ask me again and again: "You teach people methods of meditation, of becoming peaceful, silent. And I can understand that what you are saying is right, that unless you become silent and peaceful you cannot hope to be blissful. You have to create the ground for bliss to happen. But you never tell me anything." I said, "I will tell you only when you drop your politics, because your politics and my teachings together will make you even more miserable. You are miserable enough. If you start trying to be peaceful also, to be silent even for a few moments, to meditate every day even for half an hour, you will become more miserable than you have ever been, because you cannot succeed in doing it. It is better for you to accept that this is all that life has in it: suffering, misery, sleeplessness, and continuous turmoil. "It is better, in a way, that this is all life is. If you become aware that life is more and you start trying for it, you will be unnecessarily multiplying your suffering. You cannot be peaceful, you cannot meditate, you cannot sit silently. And that will be a very painful defeat; a great successful politician who has become a cabinet minister of a country like India -- big, vast, the biggest democracy in the world; and you have one of the most important portfolios, education -- such a great successful man cannot be silent even for one moment? That will be very disturbing." But he didn't listen to me. He started meditating and reading my books. And what I had said would happen, happened -- a complete nervous breakdown. He was brought to me. I said, "I told you before, these two things cannot go together. You are trying to run east and west at the same time; then one leg goes to the east and one leg goes to the west, and you will be torn apart. It is a very simple thing: if you are in politics then just be in politics. There is no such thing as religion for you." The politician cannot be religious while remaining a politician. Remember the condition. The religious person is on such a fantastic journey, what does he care about being a president of a country, or a prime minister, a king or a queen? What value do these kings and queens have? In fact, there are only five kings in the world: four in the playing cards and one in England. And they have a similar value: nothing much. Do you want to be the sixth king? Politicians for centuries have been living in hell, for the simple reason that they think that through this hell they will attain one day to the highest power and position. But what are you going to do with the highest power and position? This education minister was one day sitting with me in his car; we were just going for a ride, and a dog started chasing the car. I said to the driver, "Slow down a little -- the poor dog is huffing and puffing so much, just slow down. Let him catch the car and see what happens." The politician said, "What will happen?" I said, "You will see -- exactly that which happens to a politician." The driver slowed down the car. The dog came close to us -- and looked silly, because now what? I told the education minister, "This is your position -- now what? Chasing the car, he was far happier. At least there was something to do, a great challenge. But once he reaches the car he feels embarrassed, because now the challenge has disappeared. And he looks all around: he must be foolish, why are you staring? He never thought about why he is chasing the car, what he is going to do if he gets to the car. Even if he sits in the seat of the driver, what is he going to do?" These great politicians sitting in great power in the White House and the Kremlin -- just dogs sitting in a car looking all around, feeling silly, thinking, "Is this the end?" There is nowhere else to go. Once you have reached the White House you have nowhere to go. You are really caught -- and by your own efforts -- in a prison. The politician cannot be religious because religion means understanding, awareness, silence, harmony, and a deep let-go with existence, a feeling of being at peace with everything as it is: no desire to be anybody else, no desire to be anywhere else, no desire for tomorrow. All is fulfilled in this moment. The politician cannot afford this. And the religious man who is in this situation, in this ultimate state of being, for him politicians are just foolish people, although he may not say so just out of etiquette. I am not a man of etiquette, I don't know manners. I simply call a spade a fucking spade, because that's what it is. I have made the spade actually what it is. The old proverb is, a spade is a spade. That doesn't sound of any import. Of course a spade is a spade -- so what! It does not say anything about the spade. So I simply say that these are all idiots. But there is still hope for humanity. The hope is not that religious people will become politicians, or that religious people will start taking an interest in politics, no. But religious people can become, should become, rebellious against all political stupidity. There is the hope. The religious person should not remain just contented with his blissfulness and allow all these idiots to go on doing harm to innocent humanity. To me this is the only compassion: To rebel against the whole history of humanity. The religious person should rebel. In the past he has not done that. That's why I say, in the past religion has been just immature. Even the greatest religious personalities in the past will look like pygmies compared to the authentic religious person who is going to be born, because the authentic religion is basically rebellion -- rebellion against all superstition, rebellion against all stupidity, rebellion against all the nonsense that goes on being imposed on the human mind continuously. A rebellious religious man is a fire; his words will be words on fire. His silence is not going to be the silence of a cemetery. His silence will be the silence of a song, of a dance. His silence will be the silence of two lovers meeting, and not capable to find words to convey their love. Their love makes them wordless. The moment lovers start talking too much you can understand; love has disappeared. Conversation has started; conflict is not very far away. Conversation is the beginning, soon there will be argument. Where else can conversation lead except to controversy? But two lovers when they are really in love, throbbing with a new energy, feel themselves stuck, suddenly wordless. Even to say "I love you" seems to be difficult, seems to be far below the fact of love. It seems somehow to be sacrilegious to bring words into something which is so silent, and so glowing in silence, and so alive in silence. The religious person is silent, but it is not the silence of a cemetery, not the silence of a dead man. It is the silence of one who is really alive, fully alive, intensely alive. This intense aliveness is going to become his rebellion. What have I been doing for thirty years continuously? -- fighting every kind of nonsense. Was there any reward, was I seeking any reward out of all this fight? No, it was not for any reward. It was just the way my aliveness was asserting itself. It was not goal-oriented, there was no motivation; I was simply being myself. I enjoyed all that fight. In fact the people who came in conflict with me were very much surprised because it was an agony for them. To me it was an ecstasy. They could not understand how I was enjoying it. And I was surrounded on all sides with enemies. Alone, single-handedly I was moving among millions of people and against them, saying things which were very hurtful to their beliefs. One shankaracharya even asked me, "What are you going to get out of it? You are simply making so many enemies. Politicians are your enemies, all kinds of religious people are your enemies. The rich are your enemies, the poor are your enemies, the capitalists are your enemies, the communists are your enemies." He said, "This is strange; Mohammedans, Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists, Parsees, Sikhs, Christians -- they are all your enemies." I said to him, "I am going to write a book, How to Impress People and Create Enemies. This is just an experience for it. He said, "You are never serious. I was just being concerned." He was a young man, newly appointed to be a shankaracharya; he had known me before he was a shankaracharya. He was genuinely concerned, he said, "I don't see anything that you can get out of this except making everybody an enemy; and yet you enjoy it." It happened in Faridabad, a place near New Delhi, that there was a great Hindu world conference. This shankaracharya told me, "There is danger." He was still being friendly towards me, and he said, "In public I cannot be on your side but deep down I feel your authenticity, your sincerity. I cannot say this before the public because I don't have that much courage. But I want you to be warned because there is much conspiracy going on: `Today something has to be done to this man because he has been hammering all our beliefs, all our heritage, all our institutions. Nobody seems to have any answer for him, nobody seems to have any argument.' So they are thinking, just the way idiots will think, `Why not kill this man, why not destroy this man?' So today's meeting can become fatal to you." I said, "Don't be worried. Every moment is fatal because any moment death can come. And this is great: with fifty thousand people I will enjoy my death too!" He said, "You are incurable. I am just being friendly to you, and I am certain there is something going on." I said, "If you are certain, I trust you. I will do my best to let it happen." And really, in the evening conference there must have been at least one hundred thousand people. In the morning conference there were only fifty thousand; the number had doubled because the gossip that something was going to happen, something was boiling up, brought many more people to the evening meeting. As I started speaking I could see that three persons, strong men, came and sat just behind me. They looked like professional criminals. Perhaps they were borrowed for the occasion. Before speaking I said, "I want to say a few things about these three strong men who are sitting behind me." There was deep silence on the stage. They were all great Hindu monks, three shankaracharyas, prominent politicians -- at least fifty people were there. Delhi was so close, so great politicians were available -- and they don't miss such a gathering. One hundred thousand people ... just seeing them on the stage is enough! Those three people had not expected that I was going to speak about them first. And how did I know about them? I said, "These three persons are here to kill me, so you all have to be aware -- at least they should be patient. There is no problem in killing, they can kill me, but first let me finish what I want to say to you. If they kill me in the middle you will be at a loss; you will have missed what I was going to say to you. "So I want to ask you one thing: Do you want me to say all that I have to say? If you want me me to, then please raise your hands. If you don't want me to, then what is the point of saying half the things; half the truth is far worse than a lie. Then I would rather remain silent and tell these three people to kill me." One hundred thousand hands shot up, with shouts of "We want to hear you, and we will see who can attack you" -- and many people, hundreds of people, came behind me, to prevent those three people. You will be surprised; I spoke the way I always speak, I said things as strongly as possible. And the miracle was that I was speaking against those people's beliefs! But somewhere, deep down, man remains innocent. You just have to know the knack of reaching that point, to touch his heart. All those shankaracharyas and politicians by and by started getting off the stage. I had been given only twenty minutes to speak ... but the president had left, the other organizers had left, seeing the situation, that the whole thing had backfired. But the people would not let those three persons go, they were holding them. The whole meeting became my meeting. I spoke for almost two and a half hours because there was nobody else to speak, and nobody to tell me to stop or anything. The chairman was missing -- they had all escaped because they were all part of the conspiracy. And those three men fell at my feet and said, "Somehow save us. If you leave, these people will kill us." I told the crowd, "Just leave them, because they have not done anything; moreover, they are professionals, they have nothing personal against me. They may have got some money, and I am not against that. Have you got the money?" I asked them, "or have you not got it yet?" And these are the moments when you see realities which are not ordinarily available. They said ... they could not tell a lie. They were professional criminals, murderers, they had been charged with murder before, they had been in jail many times -- but they could not tell a lie. Just seeing my truth, a synchronicity ... something in them also was touched. They said, "Half they have given us and half they have promised after we kill you." "So," I said, "you will lose half. You kill me and get the other half." They said, "We don't want to kill you. We had no idea who you are. Listening to you we wanted to kill all those people who were trying to kill you." I said to the people, "Leave these simple, innocent people, don't harass them, I would like them to move away before I leave the place because I don't know ... this is such a big crowd and you look so angry." The conference was going to be for three days; this was the first day, so I said, "The conference will continue. Now it is my conference. Every arrangement is here, so for three days we will continue." And we continued for three days. You will be surprised, those three men were continuously coming to listen and sitting in front of me with tears in their eyes. When I was leaving Faridabad, among the people who had come to give me a send-off were those three people, with garlands and with tears. And they said, "You have changed our whole life. We have always played like puppets in the hands of politicians and priests. We are not criminals; these people have made us criminals, they pay us to commit a crime. If we are caught then they try to save us; they give us all legal support, any bribery that is needed for the judges. They do everything to save us because they need criminals for their political careers, for their religious careers." I said, "Yes, a priest is not a religious man, he has a religious career. He is a professional." For thirty years I have been hammering as hard as possible. And a few things I have realized: howsoever thick the conditioning may be that has happened to humanity in the past, it can all be broken. We just need a few authentic religious persons -- not priests, not professionals but people who have experienced. They will become burning torches in the darkness of the night. They will not become politicians, but they can destroy the whole political structure of the world -- and that's what is needed. They will not be interested in politics -- but they will certainly be interested in the humanity that the politicians have been exploiting for centuries. They will not take power in their hands, they will simply destroy these parasites and let the power be with everybody. In fact, power should be distributed to everybody. It should be decentralized; there is not need for power to be centralized. Centralized, power is bound to corrupt. With power decentralized, everybody is powerful in his own way. What is the need of having politicians? The animal called politician has to disappear from the earth; this is the hope. And I know that now -- and only now -- is it possible. Before it was not possible, for two reasons: the authentic religious people were not there; and secondly, the politician had not yet done his worst. Now both things are available. The sincere, authentic religion is being born among you. And the politician has come to his tether's end. He has done the worst, now he cannot do anything more. What more can he do than to bring about a nuclear war, destroying the whole world? Before the politician and his nuclear weapons destroy the whole humanity, the few authentic religious people have to bring fire to every heart, a fire in which the whole political game is finished. And with the political game finished, the politician will disappear. This is the only hope. The third world war is a great hope because it will reveal the politician in his true colors. Up to now there have been wars, big wars -- the first world war, the second world war, and thousands of other wars -- but they were not total. Somebody was going to win, somebody was going to be defeated. The third world war is going to be a total world war: nobody is going to win, nobody is going to be defeated. All are going to be finished. Now this is the ultimate in war, the ultimate in idiocy. What is the point of fighting if both are going to be finished? The whole point was that you can win, there is a possibility of your winning. At the worst you can lose, but the other will win; somebody is going to be victorious. In the third world war nobody is going to be victorious because nobody is going to survive it. Neither democracy nor communism, neither American nor Russia -- nobody is going to survive it, so what is the point? But the politician has come to such a state, he cannot go back. He has to go on, knowing perfectly well that this is going to end finally in the ultimate destruction of this whole planet, this beautiful planet. There are millions of planets in the universe but perhaps the earth is the most beautiful. All those planets are without greenery, without flowers, without birds, without animals, without human beings; without poetry, without music, without dance, without celebration. They are just dead -- the earth is so alive. It is not only the question of humanity's future. It is also the questions of existence missing its most precious planet. It is an existential question, not just a planetary one, not confined to this small earth. It is a question for the whole infinite universe, because in this whole universe this small planet has become an oasis of consciousness. And there are more possibilities; they should not be stopped. Hence I say there is hope -- but the hope lies in the religious person's rebelliousness. I have been asked thousands of times, "You go on teaching religion, there is no problem; but why do you mix religion with rebellion? That creates a problem." One of the prime ministers of India, Lalbahadur Shastri, was a very good man, as good as a politician can be. I have known so many politicians that I can say perhaps he was the best out of all those criminals. He said, "If you are a little less sincere and a little more diplomatic, you can become the greatest mahatma in the country. But you go on saying the naked truth without bothering that this is going to create more enemies for you. Can't you be a little diplomatic?" I said, "You are asking me to be diplomatic? That means being a hypocrite; knowing something but saying something else, doing something else. I am going to remain the same. I can drop being religious if it is needed, but I cannot drop being rebellious because to me that is the very soul of religion. I can drop every other thing which is thought to be religious, but I cannot drop rebellion; that is the very soul." The day I became convinced that now I have enough people who can move towards that Everest I have been pointing to all my life, I dropped my contact with the masses completely, so that I can give my whole time -- whatsoever there remains -- so that I can give my whole energy, whatsoever existence allows me, to a small concentrated group. The need is not of millions of religious people, no. The need is only of a few chosen ones. If I can ignite fire in my sannyasins then I have done my work. Then each of my sannyasins will be capable of doing the same as I have done to him. And we can put this whole earth afire, aglow with a new humanity and with a new sunrise.

Just as it took three hundred years for science to come of age, if humanity survives, then religion will also come of age. That day it will be sheer stupidity to say that state and religion should remain separate, because it will mean that all which is valuable in life and all that is great in existence should remain separate from the state -- that the state should not be benefited by the enlightened ones, that the state should continue to exist in its dark world of politics, dirty in every possible way, that it should never see the light. Yes, today I agree that the state should remain separate from religions. Remember, I am saying it should remain separate from religions -- I am using the word in the plural. But when religion comes of age -- religion in the singular, just as science is singular -- then it will be simply stupid to keep state and religion separate. Then you have to translate religion into what it actually is: then it is love, then it is understanding, then it is silence, peace. Then it is wisdom, meditativeness; then it is intelligence, pure intelligence. All these qualities, values, enrich life; they will enrich the state. By the sheer presence of an authentic religion the politicians will start dropping their dirty ways, their cunning policies. They will start feeling ashamed. Religion will function like a mirror, and politicians seeing their own faces -- which they have never seen, because to see your face your need a mirror .... I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin found a mirror on the street. He looked into it and said, "My God! I never thought that my father had gone to a photographer; that old man, I never thought he was so fashionable. But it is good that although he is dead, at least I have got his photograph." He came home, fearing that his wife .... Just the way wives are, husbands are; the husband hates not only the wife but all the relatives of the wife. Strange, those relatives have done nothing -- or perhaps they have, because if the father and the mother had not been there in the world, at least this wife would not have been produced. And the wives hate all the relatives of their husbands. Their hatred is so much that only to focus it on the husband is not sufficient; it spills all over. Afraid that if his wife found the photograph she would burn it immediately, Nasruddin went upstairs in the attic and somewhere managed to hide the photograph -- which was not a photograph at all, just a mirror. But you cannot hide anything from your wife. That has not been possible since there have been husbands and wives. You cannot hide. His wife was doing her work, but seeing from the corner of her eye that he has brought something, is hiding it in the attic -- "I will take a look at it. Let him first do his thing." Nasruddin came down. As he came down he passed his wife; she was going up. He said, "Where are you going?" She said, "The same place from where you are coming." The wife went up and found the mirror. She looked into it and said, "My God! So this is the woman he is after. In his old age, the father of two dozen children -- but I will teach him a lesson. And he is hiding her photograph in my house. Without a mirror you can't see your face. The politician has remained dirty, ugly, for the simple reason that he has no mirror. And the mirror is possible only from a higher consciousness. It has to be a mirror of consciousness, no ordinary mirror will do. It is not his physical face which he will see -- it is his corrupted soul. When the true religion comes of age, religion, without any effort on anybody's part, will become the light of everybody: of the teacher in the schools, in the colleges, in the universities; of the state, of hospitals. A true religion is bound to overwhelm all values of life. My effort here is to create an unorganized religion. Hence, I call it religionless religion to emphasize the fact that it is not an organized religion; that I am not your leader, your messiah, your prophet; that I do not bring to you the word of God; that I am not in any way special. These are the ways of the old pseudo-religions. Everyone tries to prove that the founder of his religion is the only true messenger of God. God Himself is a fiction, and from that fiction they go on deriving more and more fictions -- the true messenger of God, another fiction. Then the true message from the messenger -- another fiction. It becomes so complicated that unless you deny God Himself you cannot deny anything; then you have to follow every detail of the whole superstitious structure. And all these religions prove that their book is written by God .... I am not claiming anything; hence you cannot organize a religion around me. I am making every effort to create barriers, hindrances, for those who will try to make a religion organized around my teachings. In the first place it is impossible to find out what my teachings are. Anybody is going to go nuts finding out what my teachings are, because I have not been teaching at all. These are not gospels that I am giving to you, they are simply gossips. Now, have you ever heard of any religion being created around gossips? I am not giving you a message from God. I simply enjoy talking, I love it! In India, my dentist used to tell me, "At least when I am working on your teeth you should stop talking." Just five minutes work takes two hours! -- because the poor fellow had to stop. Of course he is my disciple so he could not tell me to stop, to shut up. I say that many times to him while he is doing dentistry -- it is, of course, difficult to do dentistry on me -- I tell him many times, "Shut up!" If his gas is not running well I tell him, "Hit the cylinder!" And he has to hit it, because I insist, "You hit the cylinder." And he was surprised that by hitting it, it works. My dental nurse was also there. I always have a woman there in case I need some support -- then I cannot rely on a man. So I go on telling her, "Keep an eye on the doctor. Don't listen to him, listen to me because I am your Master. He is not your Master." So the poor nurse has to listen to me! They could not talk loudly because I would hear, and they had to talk while I was talking, to discuss what to do -- the work had to be done. So they started whispering. I said, "No whispering at all! At least in front of me, no affairs, no whispering. Speak clearly so that I can hear what is going on." So my dentist was saying, "With you talking it takes two hours, three hours." He said, "You say all kinds of things." There was a time when he started taking notes -- what else to do? "If he insists on talking and won't allow me to work, it is better to take notes of what he is saying -- they may be useful later on." He has compiled a whole book -- it will be coming soon. It must be a unique book in the whole history of mankind: a man talking under dentistry, in the dentist's chair. People want to escape from the dentist's chair -- I enjoy it. I simply love talking. It does not matter what I am talking about. What matters is, that I am talking and you are listening. The essential religion happens there, in my talking and your listening. In that meeting, the essential religion happens. So you cannot find out any teaching. You cannot reduce it to ten commandments -- do this, don't do that. That kind of thing you cannot find because one day I will say, "Do this," and another day I will say, "Don't do this." It is impossible to manage all my contradictions. It is easy with Jesus, because what contradictions can there be in just those four gospels -- which are not even four -- just one gospel written by four persons, each a little different version of the same thing. What contradictions? And he is not a man of logic who will think in contradictions or talk in contradictions. He is not attuned to the very deep esoteric traditions of religion, which talk in paradoxes. His teaching is simple, so you can make a catechism, you can organize a church. With me it is going to be tremendously difficult, impossible. I want it to be impossible because I want you to remain individual religious persons. If you are together here, that is just a friendly togetherness, not a commitment; not in any way are you sacrificing your freedom, your independence, your individuality. How can you organize a religion around a man who teaches you disobedience, rebellion? All these teachers are responsible; although others organized the religion, these teachers are responsible. If I meet Mahavira and Buddha or Jesus or Mohammed, I am not going to forgive them so easily. They cannot just use the excuse: "When we died others organized the religion." I will tell them, "But you left the message in such a way that it could be organized. Who is responsible for that? You should have made arrangements to make it impossible to be organized." If there had been no organized religion on the earth we would have seen a totally different flowering of humanity. A different fragrance would have been there on this earth, not this stink that you can see everywhere, in every church, in every temple, in every mosque, in every synagogue. It is through organization. Organization immediately becomes power. Now, six hundred million Catholics organized under one leader -- it is power. Otherwise the pope is just an ordinary polack. But the crowd that follows him ... and the crowd is following Jesus Christ -- and not even Jesus Christ; the crowd is following God .... It is a very strange game. They can't see God's back, whom they are following. They can't even see Jesus' back, whom they are following. They can see only this polack pope. But he consoles them by telling them, "I am directly connected to Jesus, to God." These people have direct phone lines. I don't have any phone, not even a phone line from here to Jesus Grove, what to say about Jesus and what to say about God? I have no phone lines, for the simple reason that I don't want to be disturbed by these people. But all these religious leaders in some way implied that they have a direct connection with the ultimate source of life and existence. I don't have any direct connection with any ultimate source of life. I have only a connection with the immediate life -- not the ultimate, the immediate. My whole emphasis is herenow. This very moment is all to me. You cannot create a religion around me. You can dance around me, you can sing around me, you can paint around me. You can do a thousand things around me, but you cannot do politics around me. And if you do then you are an idiot. Then you are simply wasting your time, you are in the wrong place. If you want to play politics, be somewhere else. Here, finally you will realize that you wasted your time, this was not the place for politics. My religion is only a quality, a religiousness. This is the problem for politicians to understand. They think that here in our city, state and religion are mixing. They are absolutely wrong. There, state and religiousness are one, not mixing; there is no question of mixing. What do you mean by mixing? In Washington they are mixing, in Salem they are mixing. Here, they cannot mix -- here, they are one, because here religion is not Christianity, is not Hinduism. Here, religion is only a silence of the heart. Now, won't you allow a teacher to teach silently, peacefully, joyously? Won't you allow a teacher to have these religious qualities? Won't you allow the school to have the climate of love? Of truth? Of sincerity? Of so much authenticity that work becomes worship? Won't you allow a school to be religious in this sense? Then you don't understand education, you don't understand religion, you don't understand anything at all. You don't even understand the basic meaning of the word "education." The attorney general of Oregon needs to look in the dictionary for the basic meaning of education. To me he seems to be absolutely uneducated, illiterate. The word "education" means drawing out whatsoever is the potential of the person. Educating means "drawing out," just the way you draw water from a well. The water is there, already there; you have to draw it out, then you can quench your thirst. The word "education" means drawing out. And drawing out truth from a man -- which is there, just laying, it has to be awakened; drawing out love -- which is there, it has to be mined; drawing out authenticity, compassion -- which are all there; somebody just has to knock at the right door. This is religion: Knocking at the right doors of human potentiality. My teachers will be religious, my students here will be religious, because to me religion is not something that is only on Sunday; for one hour, you become religious in the church. Just today Vivek gave me a cream -- she felt that some rough skin had come on my face. I looked at the cream and I really enjoyed what was written on it. Cream apart, what was written on it was, "Seventh Day Scrub." Great! It is the name of the cream -- "seventh day scrub cream." Six days you work, seventh day you scrub. I said, "This cream is religious. And if the attorney general of Oregon comes to know about this cream mixing with people's faces ... but that's what God must have done: used the seventh day scrub. Six days creating the world, naturally he must have collected all kinds of dirt, and needed a good scrub. My religion is not seventh-day scrub cream. To me religion is not something separate from life -- or separable. You are religious or you are not. It is not that for one hour per week you become religious, that is impossible. That is almost like saying that every Sunday for one hour you breathe, and then for six days no more breathing, because you have to do other kinds of work. Breathing continues seven days, day in, day out. Even when you are asleep the breathing continues. My sannyasin is religious even when he is asleep. Even when he is dying he is religious because religion is a new way of the heart beating in tune with existence. When your heart starts beating in harmony with existence, you feel an at-one-ment with the trees, with the rocks, with people, with animals. You start feeling a relatedness. You are part of an organic mystery, and you are so filled with this mystery that whether you are a mayor or governor or a president does not make any difference. If the president is allowed to breathe, if the president is allowed to live, if he is allowed to have his pulse continue and his heart continue to beat, won't you allow his innermost core, his being to be in tune with existence, to pulsate with existence? In fact that should be the most basic requirement for anybody to be the president of a country. In my city everything is religious, but religious in my sense. I am changing the whole meaning of religion. No religion is being taught in the school -- nobody is taught that there is a God, that Jesus Christ is His prophet. Nothing is taught but we live religiously, we walk religiously, we eat religiously. You cannot stop it. A state has no value compared to such religiousness. We can sacrifice everything for it, but we cannot sacrifice this religiousness. This is our very life. And it is a question of twenty-four hours a day. There is no possibility of dividing, so that from eleven to five you are mayor, so you are not religious -- at eleven you put your religion in the suitcase and lock it so that it is not stolen, then go to the office. This is sheer nonsense, and the people who go on talking this way are continually doing the same stupid thing -- which is not happening here. This attorney general is going to take the oath on THE BIBLE. I would like my commune to fight this man to the Supreme Court. Drag him, ask him, "Why THE BIBLE? The case is secondary, first the oath has to be considered. Why THE BIBLE? Why in the name of God? If this is not mixing religion with state then what will be? First prove God; otherwise it is a superstition." We don't mix. Even if God comes here to Rajneeshpuram I don't think any of my sannyasins are going to mix with Him. He will be just an outcast. Just the idea that He thinks He is God will be enough for my people to laugh and tell Him, "You get lost." Take an oath on THE BIBLE? -- why? THE BIBLE is full of lies, and you are taking an oath to remain truthful, on a book which is full of lies! You can ask any scientist; the book is full of lies. The earth is flat in THE BIBLE -- and you are taking an oath on flat earth! In the very oath you are lying; the earth is not flat. Or you take the oath in the name of God, whom you have never seen. The judge has no idea who this guy God is. Why can't you be simply human? If you really want to say truth, say it! If you don't want to say truth, don't say it. That is the business of the whole court, to find out that it is a lie. The oath makes no sense. For what does the court exist? The juries, the judges, the advocates of the other party, they will all find out whether it is true or not. Asking you to take oath .... In India once I was in a court. I refused to take the oath; I said, "I cannot take an oath in the name of God. I don't know this fellow. First you have to produce Him, I must see Him. Who is this fellow on whose name I am taking an oath? And why should I take an oath on the name of somebody to whom I have not even been introduced? The judge said, "Okay, then on the SHRIMAD BHAGAVAD GITA? I said, "The SHRIMAD BHAGAVAD GITA? -- which is full of lies and statements of a man, Krishna, whom you cannot trust, who has broken his own promises, who was not a man of his word." He said he would not fight in the Mahabharat war, he would only be a charioteer. That was his promise given to the other party -- because both parties had approached him and asked him, "Fight for our side." But he was a very clever and cunning man. He was having an afternoon nap when Arjuna and Duryodhana, the heads of both the parties, reached there. Duryodhana was a very haughty and egoistic type of man. He sat near the head of Krishna. Arjuna was humble; he sat near the feet of Krishna, so naturally Krishna's eyes first saw Arjuna. And he said, "Why have you come?" Arjuna said, "Not only I -- my brother Duryodhana is also there, sitting behind your head. We both have come -- I have come to ask you to participate in the war from my side, and he has come to request you to participate from his side." Krishna was very clever, he was a politician par excellence. He said, "Because I saw you first, you have the choice. I give you this choice: Both of you are my relatives, both are my friends; from one side I will fight, from another side my army will fight. You can choose." Duryodhana was very much afraid; he was just a stupid type of man, he could not understand subtler things. He thought, "Now Arjuna will choose the army." Krishna had the biggest army, the most sophisticated, technically-equipped army. "He will choose the army, what will I do with Krishna? It is already finished." But Arjuna chose Krishna. Arjuna said, "This is my good fortune that you gave me the chance to choose -- I was afraid .... I choose you; Duryodhana can have your army." Now Duryodhana became a little alert -- there seems to be something fishy! Arjuna is so happy choosing Krishna alone, leaving the whole army, the biggest in the world at that time, to Duryodhana. Duryodhana said, "This is not fair because you alone are more important" -- this was all lies. "You alone are more important than your whole army. We will miss you. Without your guidance what are we going to do with your army? I want one promise more: you will not fight." It was known, it was the myth, that Krishna had a divine wheel, a chakra, which was invisible ordinarily. But whenever he wanted, he could materialize it. That chakra moved around his finger, and he could throw it at anyone; wherever that person was, the chakra would cut off his head. It did not matter -- miles apart, maybe in a crowd, it did not matter; that was his divine power. Duryodhana said, "We know that your chakra alone is enough, it can cut off anybody's head. So I want a promise. The army you have given to me -- what about your arms, because that chakra is with you." Krishna promised that he would not use it, but he did use it. "Now, you ask me to take an oath on this man's book, who could not keep his own word? I cannot." The judge said, "Then the only way is the constitution of India." I said, "That is absolute nonsense. Those politicians -- most of them I know -- are the ugliest, the greatest hypocrites. Nobody can lie more efficiently than they can. And this constitution goes on being amended every day. You want me to take an oath on a constitution made by politicians, which needs amendments every day? Just be a little more respectful about truth. Can't you simply trust me? -- you can trust my oath. This seems to be stupid: you can trust my oath -- as if an oath has some miraculous power -- and you cannot trust me! Just trust me. And what is your business here? So many jurors, twelve jurors, three judges, and the opposite party's advocates -- what are you all doing here? If I simply say the truth then what is your business here? What are you trying to find out? This is going to happen, because there is a case .... My secretary asked to argue against the attorney general herself, and the court has permitted it. Now there is great agitation. If they are afraid of her -- and these people think themselves bigshots, they are nothing but used cartridges! There is nothing inside, they are hollow. Yes, she will be enough to put them right. In every school Christianity is being taught. In every possible way it is stuffed down the throat of every child directly, indirectly. The government, even the parliament, begins with prayer to God. I wonder how do you find so many fools to fill the parliament? And nobody asks, "Why this prayer to God?" Democracy is for the people, of the people, by the people. From where comes this God? -- he is not people. This despotic God, a dictatorial God, who believes in dictating, believes in giving commandments -- you are praying to Him in a democracy, and still you think you are keeping religion and state apart! Only in this place does your kind of religion not exist, so there is no question of mixing them. Here exists a totally different quality of religiousness which is one with all that we do. We eat religiously, we drink religiously; what can we do about it? We do everything religiously -- we even breathe religiously. And that is my whole effort, that each of your actions should have the quality, the fragrance, of godliness. Our religion is an inquiry into truth, and it is an eternal inquiry. In life, in death, in everything, the inquiry is to continue. So if our people are in a state they can't stop their inquiry. And their inquiry is going to enhance the state and its status. Their inquiry is not against Christians or Hindus or Mohammedans or anybody, nor is their inquiry for anybody. Their inquiry is for truth. And the greatest thing about truth is that when you find it, you are simply amazed that it was hidden in the inquirer himself. Just two days ago, two things happened. I was looking for a toothpaste that is not available here but was available in India, and a few other things. Suman, who is in charge of our boutique, phoned almost all over the world, because they have stopped producing that toothpaste in India; but the same company exists all over the world -- it is a Swiss company. So she was phoning all over the world. As a few other things were needed, so she was looking for some oil, and other things -- and Rafia, who is sitting here, found the toothpaste in the boutique! It was not found anywhere in the whole world. I said, "That's really great!" Then the second day it happened that Vivek was looking for a blanket for me, and she said it was needed within two days. So they phoned the manufacturer, and he said, "Two days will be too soon, it will take at least seven days." So Suman asked, "You must have an agent in Oregon; you can give us the address and we can find it from there." They gave her the address -- and it was the address of our boutique, Rajneeshpuram. We are the only agent of that company in the whole of Oregon! Now Suman could not say to him, "I am phoning you from the same boutique." She simply said, "Okay we will try your agent." The inquiry into truth is almost like that. You look all around the world and finally you find it in your own boutique. And it is not something that is in any way against democracy. Inquiry for truth or inquiry for great consciousness or inquiry for greater love -- in what way are these things against the state? And if these things are against the state then you should teach in every school hatred, unconsciousness, lying, deceiving, cheating; that will be true education. Then every politician should declare that he is a cheat, hypocrite, deceiver, mean, because these are qualifications for being a good politician, and these are qualifications for being in power. A man of love, a man of truth, a man of sincerity is disqualified. If this commune becomes illegal, that means truth is disqualified, honesty is disqualified, love is disqualified. Then everything of value is illegal, and all that should be criminal becomes legal, political, approved by the state. This case is going to be of decisive importance. That man, the attorney general, does not know it, but unknowingly he has put his head into a nest of bees. He will repent his whole life because we are not going to leave things so easily. We have the right to define religion in our own way; nobody can prevent us. If Christians can define their religion in their way, and the Hindus can define their religion in their way, and every other religion is allowed to define things, why are we not allowed to define things in our own way? For us, there is not God. But there is godliness -- just a quality, a presence. For us there is not heaven or hell. But there are heavenly moments, hellish moments -- and they depend on you. They are not geographical. It is not that you enter hell or heaven; it is that you create hell or heaven for yourself. And it is up to you at anytime to change. For us, religion has nothing to do with any creed or cult, with any holy book. Vivek was just asking me, "Why are your discourses called `The Rajneesh Bible'?" They are called "The Bible" just to make it clear to the whole world the "bible" simply means the book, it does not mean the holy book. That's why you say "bibliography". Is there anything holy in a bibliography? A bibliography simply means a list of books. It is really just "the book", and I want it to be clear to the whole world that a bible has nothing to do with holiness. I am not a holy man because to me the word "holy" seems so phony, so bogus that I would prefer just to be a human being. Just to be a human being is so grand, so great; there is nothing greater than that. But strangely, man has been trying to become God. Rather than trying to become man he had been trying to become God. God he cannot become because there is no God, and nothing like God is possible. But in making the effort to become God and trying hard to rise higher, he falls, is bound to fall. And when he falls, he falls below the human being. That's where all your religious people have fallen, your so-called holy men and saints and sages. Trying to become God they have fallen even from being human beings, they have become subhuman. Our effort is just to be alive human beings. This is our religion. And there is no question of mixing because they are not two for us. In each of our acts we are totally present. We don't leave anything out of it, we are totally in it. Whether the city remains legal or illegal does not matter. What matters is that we are going to define religion for the first time in the right way. Politicians need division -- without divisions politicians have no function. Priests also need divisions, because they are a spiritual kind of politician. Without divisions the priest also disappears. So there are people who are tremendously interested in keeping divisions, and they go on dividing everything -- even to the extent of stupidity. Now, dividing religion into Eastern and Western is just inconceivable. A little intelligence is enough to understand that love cannot be Eastern or Western -- or do you think it can be? Can silence be Eastern and Western? Can meditativeness be divided according to geographical divisions? A man meditating in Tibet or a man meditating in Europe or America will have the same quality of consciousness; there will be no difference at all, because the man in Tibet, when in meditation, disappears. He is no longer Tibetan, he is no longer even man; he is just pure silence, awareness. The same is true for anybody meditating anywhere. Meditation is universal, just as love is, compassion is, intelligence is. These are qualities -- and religion is the ultimate quality of consciousness. At least don't be so idiotic as to divide it. I am reminded, when I was graduating from the university .... In India -- I don't know how it is in other countries -- to pass the post-graduation class you have to pass two kinds of examinations. One is written and the other is oral. In the oral examination one professor from some other university is invited. The vice-chancellor is present, the head of the department is present, and each individual student is called in for an interview. The vice-chancellor just jokingly had mentioned to me .... We used to meet almost every morning because we were the only two persons going for a morning walk. Slowly slowly I was no longer a student, he was no longer a vice-chancellor; we were simply two persons going for a morning walk. And just as it happens to all morning walkers -- they become friendly, they start gossiping .... And two years is a long time -- slowly slowly the partitions, divisions, dropped, and as the examination was coming closer, my vice-chancellor asked me, "I will be present in your viva, in your oral examination; whom would you prefer to be called from another university?" I said, "Find the toughest guy!" He said,"I knew you would say that, and I have also been thinking about finding the toughest guy, because I would love to see how you manage it." And they found him. In Aligarh University there was a Mohammedan professor who was known all over India as the toughest professor of philosophy. For years he had not passed anybody, and in his whole life he had never given the first class to anybody. Third class was the highest that he had given to anybody. One of my professors had been his student and he used to say, "I am one of the persons who passed from Aligarh University. I am only a third class, but a third class from Aligarh University is far better than a first class from Oxford, because that man in his whole life has been continuously failing people. Nobody comes up to his standard." So the vice-chancellor said, "I am thinking of calling this professor from Aligarh." I said, "That's the right thing!" That professor was invited. He was rarely invited; he was very happy! The head of my department, S.K. Saxena, told me, "Be cautious, because that man is absolutely destructive." I said, "You don't be worried; he cannot be more destructive than me." But he said, "You cannot do any harm to him, you are not the examiner; he can do harm to you, he can fail you. And he is well-known for failing; he simply puts zero." I said, "You don't be worried. If he gives me zero then I have achieved my goal, because that's what I have been working for -- to attain to the state of zero-ness." He said, "You are incurable! I am not talking about that zero." I said, "You just wait." He said, "Remember, I will be sitting by your side, and if you go off the track I will nudge you with my feet, or I will pull your kurtha. That is an indication -- `Come back, come right to the point.' And that means just be within the limits of the textbook." I said, "You need not be worried." But they were afraid. Even the vice-chancellor that morning said to me, "Although I have invited him, now I feel concerned. That man is really hard, he has no compassion." But I said, "I don't need anybody's compassion; he will need my compassion." He said, "We will have to see what happens. Of course it is my fault, I should not have invited him. I carried the joke too far and risked your career. You may pass in all your written papers but if he fails you, your two years are wasted, and I will never be able to forgive myself." I said, "Don't be worried at all. This is the first time he is encountering a real philosophy student. He will remember it his whole life." The examination began; I was called in. I came in .... Of course it is not expected that the professor, the vice-chancellor and the invited guest will stand up, but I came in and I remained standing. My vice-chancellor asked, "You may sit down. Why are you standing?" I said, "I am just looking at three gentlemen who don't know any courtesy. If you cannot pay respect to a human being, you should not expect any respect in return." That visiting professor was shocked -- hearing this from me, and hearing me talk this way to the vice- chancellor of the university. But the vice-chancellor knew me: he stood up; he said, "I am sorry." My professor stood up; he said, "I am sorry." When those two stood up, the invited guest thought, "It looks odd if I don't stand up," so he stood up and he said, "I am sorry." I said, "You are all forgiven. Now the real business can be started. But you must have understood what kind of man I am. I have heard much about you -- that you are a hard guy -- so please prove it, because I don't see that you are a hard guy. You stood up for a student and apologized! You are almost feminine, you are not a man." My Professor Saxena started kicking me, saying, "From the very beginning you are going off." I said, "Professor Saxena, this is not good, that underneath the table you are kicking my leg. This is an examination -- you are not supposed to support me, help me, or in any way give me indications. You keep yourself in control." And I said to the vice-chancellor, "It is up to you to watch, because he loves me too much and he is kicking me so that I don't go off the path. You keep an eye on him so that he does not disturb me, because I am determined to get the zero. This is my life's goal." Before the examination began I told them everything: "This is my life's goal -- to attain to the state of zero. And Professor Saxena is trying hard that I should not get zero today, but I trust in the invited guest, that he will remain hard and he will do his best -- that means he should do his worst." So I told my vice-chancellor, "You look at my professor and watch that he does not disturb me, and I will take care of the invited guest." And I asked him, "Now you start. Why are you sitting silent? I am not here to examine you; only I am speaking -- you start!" He was almost having a nervous breakdown. He must have come prepared -- what to ask, what not to ask -- but he completely forgot. He simply asked me, "How can you explain the distinction between Eastern philosophy and Western philosophy?" I said, "I do not need to explain it -- because there is no distinction. Who has told you that there is any distinction between Eastern philosophy and Western philosophy? Have you lost your nerve? You cool down, collect yourself; remember what you wanted to ask me. "Is this a question? Can philosophy be divided into Eastern and Western? Philosophy is literally ... the word means love of wisdom. Now, love of wisdom can exist anywhere; it will be the same love of wisdom. It is an inquiry into truth. Do you think truth is different in the West? Do you think truth changes itself according to the climate, nation, geography? "I am not here to explain the distinction; first you have to explain to me on what grounds you have asked the question. You tell me how philosophy can be Eastern or Western. It is such a simple thing." There was silence for a moment, and I said, "Do you have another question or are you finished? Then give me zero, but remember, that zero is given to you by yourself. You have utterly failed as an examiner, and these two gentlemen are witnesses of it." That man somehow managed to come out of the shock and he said, "You are right. I had never thought that philosophy cannot be divided, because traditionally it has been divided. "Bertrand Russell has written the history of Western philosophy; Radhakrishnan has written the history of Indian philosophy; Suzuki has written the history of Eastern -- so I simply believed these fellows." I said, "But a philosopher is not supposed to believe. This is so obvious, such apparent nonsense. Bertrand Russell, Radhakrishnan, Suzuki, all are committing the same mistake: they are dividing something which is indivisible. And everybody goes on accepting it, just because great authorities have written .... Bertrand Russell got his Nobel prize for this book, THE HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, which is a third-rate book, for the simple reason that from the very title it goes wrong. "And then to write the history of philosophy is a tremendous job, it cannot be completed in one volume. It will need all the volumes of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA; then too it will be only a very very abridged history of philosophy. "To write one book and to give two pages to Socrates -- what can you write about a man like Socrates in two pages? Two pages to Heraclitus, two pages to Pythagoras? -- this is simply unforgivable, this is insulting. The whole book will not suffice even for a single philosopher: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plotinus -- just a single philosopher will be enough. This is very idiotic, daring. And I have looked into the book -- it is Russell's poorest book, for the simple reason that you cannot put Socrates in two pages." I am not Socrates, but can you put me in two pages? I will be almost out of it. Yes, you can write the name of my father and the birthplace and the birth date and how many books I have written and a little bit of my life and how the life ends -- but this is not philosophy. This has nothing to do with Socrates -- where he was born, when he was born. What about his vision, which provoked the whole of Greek orthodox, traditional, conventional people to such a point ... and they were the most cultured in the world. Jesus' crucifixion can be forgiven because they were not the most cultured people of the world. Judea was an almost non-existential part of the world. Who cared about Judea? Who knew about Judea? And it was a slave country. But Athens was at the peak of its culture, sophistication, intelligence; perhaps nowhere else, in no other time, has any city reached to such a peak of wisdom as Athens reached in the time of Socrates. And I don't think it will be possible again; Athens will remain unique. Still that sophisticated, cultured, intelligent city decided to poison Socrates. His philosophy must have been a tremendously rebellious vision of life. In those two pages you won't find that rebel anywhere, nor that rebelliousness anywhere. Bertrand Russell got the Nobel prize for this book, for the simple reason that all the books written by him -- all the other books -- are in some way or other controversial. He himself was a man of great insight, and he was unorthodox, untraditional, unconventional.

He could write a book like WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN. He could write a book, UNPOPULAR ESSAYS, because every topic was against the mind of the society; it was unpopular. He could write SKEPTICAL ESSAYS which show his logical sharpness. The Nobel prize awarding committee was in a difficulty. Russell was at the peak of his popularity. Not to give him the Nobel prize would be too apparently prejudiced. Fortunately he wrote this HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY which, just being a history, has nothing controversial about it. What controversy could there be? He is simply writing the history, and that too so condensed -- and it has to be condensed. It is a one- thousand-page book, but two thousand years of philosophy, thousands of philosophers, many of whom are not even mentioned .... This was the most uncontroversial thing, and the Nobel prize-awarding committee thought it was a good chance to get rid of Bertrand Russell; give him the Nobel prize for this book -- because he himself was a trouble-creating man. He belonged to a very noble family. He was a lord, but he dropped using the word "lord" before his name "because," he said, "this looks ugly." He was participating in a protest against the government just in front of the House of Lords, where they meet. The police were beating the protesters, and they started beating Bertrand Russell. He fell on the ground -- and at that time somebody said, "What are you doing! He is a lord!" The policeman simply started trembling and said, "Please forgive me -- I had no idea that you were a lord." He said, "No, you have done perfectly well -- I am not a lord. I am protesting against these lords." Now, this man could get the Nobel prize for a third-class, third-rate book .... Because of the Nobel prize that book became the most prominent of all his books, which are really valuable. I told that professor, "You also got deceived by the Nobel prize? And you talk to me about Radhakrishnan? Radhakrishnan later on became president of India and his whole fame depended on a book -- two volumes of Indian philosophy. And you will be surprised to know that these two volumes were stolen; they were not written by Radhakrishnan. It was a thesis of a student. Radhakrishnan was a professor in Calcutta University and the thesis came to him to be examined. He went on prolonging the period for two years. But he was a very prominent figure; nobody could think what was going on underneath. Within these two years he published his book, INDIAN PHILOSOPHY, in England -- it is nothing but the thesis of that poor boy. You can go on reading pages and pages exactly the same; not even a comma is different. And when his book was published, then the boy was given his doctorate -- just to make it appear Radhakrishnan's book was published first, so nobody could say that he had stolen it; if anyone had stolen anything then that student had. But that student went to the court, the High Court; the case was in the High Court. " ... Because," the student said, "I produced my book two years earlier in the university. The university is a witness. Other professors -- because three examiners are needed for the thesis -- two other examiners are witnesses. This is my thesis and this is his book. There is no need to judge -- just read. Pages upon pages, even chapters completely as they are in the student's thesis, are in Radhakrishnan's book; Radhakrishnan must have been in a hurry. It is a big, two-volume book -- must be two thousand pages. He must have been in a hurry; he could not manage .... Otherwise he would have been able to manage to change a few words here and there. The case was so clear -- but the student withdrew the case from the court before the decision of the court, because he was bribed. Ten thousand rupees were given by Radhakrishnan to the student to withdraw the case. He was so poor that ten thousand rupees in those days was enough. Everybody was puzzled why the case was withdrawn because the case was clear: the boy was going to win. But the boy must have thought, "Even if I win the case I am not going to get anything. Perhaps Radhakrishnan may get punished by the court, but what am I going to get out of it? "Right now I am getting ten thousand ...." And the boy who had written the book was so intelligent, he could not care: he could write ten other books like that. I told the professor, "You trust Radhakrishnan? You must have known about the case." He said, "Yes, I know about the case. I know about the High Court, and I know that it is certain theft." "And," I said, "still you think of these people as authorities. You withdraw your question. "There is no division of Indian philosophy, Eastern philosophy, Western philosophy: philosophy is simply philosophy. If you agree with me you can ask another question." He said, "I agree with you completely. There is no need for another question." My professor and vice-chancellor ... now it was their turn to be shocked. They could not believe it because this man gave me a first class, and he said, "This is the only first class I have given in my whole life, and I don't think I will give one again, because I don't think anybody is going to hit me so hard." He hugged me. He invited me and my vice-chancellor and the professor to come to the cafeteria. He said, "I enjoyed it because for the first time I felt I was really encountering someone; otherwise, students come so afraid, and they go on repeating only what is written in the books. That's why I have never given anybody more than third class. Most of them fail for the simple reason that they are only robot-like, repeating. And here is a student who knows perfectly well that I can fail him, I can harm him, but is not afraid of it at all. That should be the philosophical approach. "A man of philosophy should be unafraid, and I am giving him first class because of his unafraidness, because I have not asked anything else. One question I have asked which he has dismantled. He has not answered, he has thrown it back on me: I have to answer it." He was very happy, and later on whenever I used to go to Aligarh, he forced me to stay with him. I said, "You don't understand: the trouble is I am being invited by the Jains, and if I stay in the Mohammedan's house that creates trouble." He said, "You can face trouble perfectly well -- that I know -- but you have to be my guest." While he was alive, I was always his guest, and the people who were inviting me were very much concerned because they even started asking me, "Have you dropped vegetarianism too? -- because staying with that Mohammedan, you must be eating with him." I said, "Yes, I eat with him, but I eat my food. And you will not believe it -- he calls in a brahmin cook to prepare food for me. And the food is far better than you will be able to manage because he takes every care that in a non-vegetarian house I should not feel in any way inconvenienced. He takes so much care that I start feeling a little uncomfortable -- because of his care. I tell him, `You need not worry about me, I can manage things myself,' but he won't listen." You are saying that in Europe there is a fear that Eastern religions can be very destructive. It is strange to remind you that this idea was given currency by one of the best minds of Europe -- Karl Gustav Jung. He was the first who started saying that Eastern religions are dangerous, particularly for the Western man. His argument is worth understanding although it is absolutely wrong. His argument was that Western man has developed in a different way; his traditions, his past, his roots are different. And Eastern man has also developed in a different way. They have grown in such divergent manners that it is just like bringing a mango tree from India and planting it in Europe. It will die, it cannot survive, for the simple reason that the mango tree has millions of years' tradition of a certain climate, a certain temperature, certain rains. It cannot simply change itself, it cannot adjust itself to a new environment. Many animals in the past have died because climates changed and they could not adjust to the new climate. Many trees have disappeared from the world for the simple reason that the climate changed and those trees could not go anywhere else; they were rooted in the earth. Only two beings are capable of adjusting to any climate: One is man, the other is the cockroach. And wherever you find man you will find cockroaches; wherever you find cockroaches you will find man -- they are always together. If man goes to the moon, cockroaches will go. They are inseparable companions, and both are capable of adjusting to any situation. Perhaps cockroaches are more capable of adjusting, because man has many scientific, technical ways to adjust himself. If it is is too cold he can have warmer clothes; if it is too hot he can have air conditioning. Poor cockroaches don't have any technical, any scientific methods with them, but they manage. Certainly they are more capable. Man without all these technical supports would not be able to adjust. If he goes to the Arctic naked, he will die, but the cockroach has to go naked. Karl Gustav Jung said that religion is such a strong power that if it is not supported by your heritage, by your past, by your tradition, it will simply destroy you, it will uproot you. It looks logical, and if you think of pseudo-religions, Jung is right. For example, compared with Eastern religions, Christianity, Judaism, or Mohammedanism cannot survive, for the simple reason that they are very immature, very primitive, while the religions coming from the East have reached to the highest possibility of sophistication. Eastern religions' logic is not primitive, and they have lived longer -- Jainism, for example, for at least ten thousand years. For ten thousand years they have been polishing, and the way they have been polishing ... Christianity has not been polished in two thousand years. Jainism has been continuously arguing against Buddhism, against Hinduism; Hinduism has been arguing against Jainism .... Thousands of treatises of tremendously beautiful argumentation are there. Great minds like Nagarjuna, Shankara, Ramanuja, Vallabha, went around the country demolishing everything that was not according to their vision. Teachers were roaming all over the country with a challenge to anybody to argue, to discuss. The whole country was in a philosophical turmoil for ten thousand years. Naturally, out of that turmoil and argumentation and continuous confrontation they sharpened their arguments, they became very subtle. Mohammedanism is only fourteen hundred years old, which is also nothing. India reached its peak at the time of Buddha and Mahavira; that was five hundred years before Jesus Christ. If you compare Jesus Christ with Gautam Buddha you can see: Jesus looks simply like an illiterate villager who has heard a few things about philosophy and religion, but has no argument to prove them. He is simply repeating the conclusions, while Buddha will never repeat the conclusion. Buddha will start from the argument, the very premise. Then he will go through the whole procedure, and in the procedure he will also talk about all other possibilities, and will go on demolishing them, proving that they are wrong. He will not leave chances for anybody. He will take account of all other viewpoints and will demolish them before he reaches his conclusion. In Indian philosophy it is a basic tenet that when you say something, always say simultaneously, immediately, that which is its opposite. First destroy the opposite; then only declare your conclusion. If you cannot destroy the opposite, then forget all about your conclusion, because anybody can raise the opposite and your conclusion will be lost. It is better that you do it yourself. So to read a book of Indian philosophy is totally different than reading Kant, Hegel .... They are simply proposing their idea. Hegel is proposing his idea, not at all bothered that this is only one aspect and there are thousands of others. Hence Indian treatises are very complicated. Before you can get to the conclusion of the man you will be puzzled about what is happening, because if he believes in God's existence, he will first demolish all arguments against God; he will not leave a single loophole. When he has demolished all the opposite viewpoints, all alternative possibilities, only then will he come to his conclusion. It has a solidity. It will be very difficult for you to find something which he has not already criticized. You need a very outlandish attitude like me; otherwise you cannot manage Indian traditions, their treatises, their philosophies. What do I mean by outlandish? It happened that I was invited to one of the international Vedanta conferences in Amritsar. The name of Amritsar has just now become world famous because for Sikhs, that is their sacred city, and they have the beautiful golden temple there. Just now, because they have been trying to become an independent nation, separate from India, thousands of Sikhs have been killed, thousands of Hindus have been killed, and Indira Gandhi has been assassinated. And it continues still: people are being killed. And it will continue, it is not going to stop easily. Amritsar is the stronghold of the Sikh religion, and Sikhs are very fanatic people, but very sincere, very honest. In India if you need to trust anybody, find a Sikh; you can trust him. All others are cunning: they will promise you but the goods will never be delivered. But when a Sikh promises you, he means it. He will do it even at the cost of his life. They are sincere, they are honest, they are nice people -- but they are very fanatic about their religion. That corner of their mind is completely blocked. This Vedanta conference was being held in Amritsar. It was a Hindu conference; from all over the world Hindu representatives were there, shankaracharyas, all the great monks were there. In Punjab at that time there was one very famous Hindu saint, Harigiri Maharaj. He inaugurated the conference. He told a beautiful story that I myself have told many times; it is so beautiful and so indicative. Inaugurating the conference, he said that ten blind men were passing a stream in the rainy season -- the stream was flooded. They held the hands of each other. It was not very deep, but the current was very strong; so holding each other's hands they reached the other side. And then one of them said, "Let us count whether we all have come, because we are all blind, nobody can see; if somebody has been taken by the current we will never know." So they started counting, and of course the number always came to nine because the person who was counting never counted himself. He started with the others and ended with the last man. A very simple fallacy -- the scientists are doing it all over the world. All blind! The scientist counts the whole world; believes, trusts, accepts its existence, except the scientist's own self -- that is left unaccounted for. He is ready to accept anything believable, unbelievable. In physics, in chemistry, in other branches of science -- even if it goes against logic he accepts it, because experimentally, objectively it is there, proved. But if you ask him, "What about your consciousness, your awareness?" he simply tries to explain it away. He says, "It cannot be proved; hence, I cannot accept it. It cannot be made an object: I cannot put it in a test-tube, I cannot put it on the table, dissect it, figure out what it is, what it is made of, what its constituents are. Unless I can do that I cannot accept it." Now this is what those ten blind people were doing. Condemning scientists, I had used that story many times, because it so clearly shows that the scientist is leaving himself out of the account: he counts everything but then he leaves out the most important and the most significant thing. Harigiri Maharaj told the story, and he said when they counted and found there were nine, they started crying and weeping: "One of our friends is lost." A man was watching, sitting by the side of the river, and he laughed at the whole thing: "These fools are all there and are crying for someone who is lost. Nobody is lost" -- because he had been watching all these ten coming from the other side to this side. He came close to them and asked, "What is the matter? Why are you crying?" They said, "We have lost one of our companions in the current." He looked at them; he said, "How many were you?" They said, "We were ten and now we are nine." He said, "You all stand in a line and I will count and teach you how to count. I will slap the first person; he has to say, `One,' then I will slap twice the second person; he has to say, `Two,' then thrice, the third person; he has to say, `Three.' This way I will go on hitting. And when I hit ten times you know you are ten; nobody is lost." And this way he counted. He enjoyed hitting them, and they were very happy being hit because the lost companion was found. This is Vedanta's attitude, that in the world we go on collecting everything, possessing money, power, prestige, just forgetting ourselves -- but that is the most precious thing. I was the second person to speak. You know I am crazy, so I said, "This story is just absurd." The whole conference was shocked: This is an ancient Vedanta story and nobody had ever called it absurd, not even those who are against Vedanta, because they all use it. Jainas use the story, Buddhists use the story. The story is so beautiful, so indicative, that everybody has used it; nobody has condemned it. And I said, "This is absolutely absurd, for the simple reason: how did these ten blind people come to know that they are ten? Before they entered the stream, did they count? Now I want Harigiri Maharaj to answer me. Did they count before they entered the stream? "If they counted, then they know how to count. Just by passing the stream they forgot how to count? First they counted themselves -- and just by passing the stream they stopped, all the ten, counting themselves? This story is absolutely foolish; it makes no sense. "All that I can understand is that somebody else must have told them, `You are ten'; they never counted. Somebody must have told them, `You are ten,' and they believed that somebody else. This is where belief leads. They believed, but they knew not. So when there was nobody and they themselves tried to count, they were in great anguish: one companion was lost. "This story only proves that beliefs should be completely dissolved from all religious climates. Nobody should believe anybody because in a real situation you will be in trouble. Either know, or know that you don't know. "If these ten people were not aware that they were ten, there would have been no trouble. If they had not believed somebody else they would have been perfectly happy being nine; there was no trouble. On both the sides they would have counted in the same way. The trouble arose because on one side was the belief, on the other side was knowledge. And belief falls flat when you encounter knowledge. "So," I said, "once and for all, this story should be removed from all Vedanta literature." Harigiri became so troubled, red with anger .... Of course there was no answer, and I said, "If you have any answer, come to the mike and give the answer" -- and there were at least fifty-thousand people gathered for the conference. But what answer could he give? -- he had never thought about it, nobody had ever thought about it. It was so outlandish, out of the way. Instead of coming to the mike he left the stage, and I said, "This is cowardly, Harigiri -- and you have been known as `the lion of Punjab'! And the way you are escaping from here -- your tail under your legs -- you are proving to be a cowardly dog." Of course he had thousands of followers there; I had none except myself. There was nobody, and I was for the first time speaking in Amritsar. Still, people were silent, shocked, because what I had said was absolutely logical. Only two persons who must have been very very close to Harigiri shouted, "Shame! Shame!" They were shouting at me, but -- you know, I said I am crazy -- I said, "Stop! Even if he is a coward, don't do that." They were standing; I said, "Sit down! Although he is a coward, that does not mean that you should start calling, `Shame! Shame!' This is not a moment to humiliate and insult him; he has insulted himself enough already." And those two cowards could not say that they were shouting "Shame!" at me. I have been moving around India, and in many situations the same was the case. I had to find some very eccentric way to find a loophole. Of course there are always loopholes because whatever man makes -- howsoever foolproof -- you can always find a loophole. No man-made thing can be perfect; even the God-made universe is not perfect, what about man? But if you compare .... And that's why Jung was afraid. Jung was studying Eastern religions his whole life, and as he became more and more acquainted with them, a great fear arose in him; and the fear was that one day, sooner or later, the East is going to take over the West completely: "Religiously we cannot argue with such sharp, ten-thousand-year-old, very intricate, complicated systems. Our systems in the West are very poor." There is not a single commentary on Jesus' gospels. In two thousand years Christians have not even written one commentary, for the simple reason that there is nothing to comment on. Jesus was saying things so simple that I became the first commentator on Jesus, because I can make simple statements into complex philosophies. It is not difficult. It works both ways: you can make very complex philosophy into simple statements; you can do vice versa -- simple statements you can make into a great philosophy. When I spoke first on Jesus in THE MUSTARD SEED, it was accepted all over the Christian world as something unique, because in two thousand years nobody had bothered; nobody had even thought that there is any philosophy in it. Philosophy is not something that is ready-made, present anywhere; you have to create it. It does not exist. It is not that you simply open the door and philosophy is sitting there. No need to open the door -- you can simply create the hallucination of philosophy. Philosophy is just a linguistic game. It is a gimmick. you have only to learn to play with words -- and just being born in India is enough to know the game. It is in the very air. Everybody is talking great philosophy, it is not something rare. Even villagers are talking great philosophy, reading great philosophical treatises. So when I spoke on Jesus it had nothing to do with Jesus, it had nothing to do with anybody else; I enjoyed playing with words. But it is a very dangerous game. I can play for, I can play against. So when I was playing for, even Christian publishers published my books. Sheldon Press in London is a Christian publishing house. They published THE MUSTARD SEED and eight other books and, when in one of my talks I said that there are sources which say that Jesus was ugly, that he was four foot five inches high and that he was a hunchback, they freaked out! Their board of directors decided to withdraw all my books immediately. They withdrew all the books. Our sannyasins told them, "We are ready to purchase all the books at cost price." No, they wouldn't sell them even at cost price, because they would again be back in the market. They sold the books to some shopkeeper who sells old newspapers, old magazines, old books, which are not used for reading, mostly for recycling. But Poonam, our sannyasin, was behind them, following them; she found the place. She got all those books -- even cheaper because that man was very happy, they were going to be recycled; so all the books are back in the market, and those Sheldon board people are at a loss -- what happened? How did these books, which were recycled ...? This is resurrection! At least Christians should not be worried about such things: things like this happen. Jung was afraid, and his fear was right, that if Eastern religion comes as a strong wind it will demolish all Western religions and their systems. And it will demolish Western man because Western man is rooted in a different soil, in a different climate, in a different way of thinking. It was Jung who created the fear in the West, then others followed. But to me, if Eastern religions and their winds can destroy Western religions then they are worth being destroyed, they deserve to be destroyed. No special protection should be given to them. Either they should stand on their own -- they should become more sophisticated .... Not a single meditation method exists in Western religions -- only prayer. And prayer is not meditation: prayer is a very primitive method. These religions, if they can be destroyed, that's perfectly good; let them be destroyed. Jung says that Eastern religions will destroy Western religions but he never says Western science will destroy Eastern science. No, that is not his concern. I am happy in both ways: Western science should destroy Eastern science, because Eastern science is not scientific enough; that's why Western science can destroy it. If you believe in stupid things ... for example in India you can see it often happening. On a hot summer day ... when it is too hot a poor man may have sunstroke, may fall on the ground, go unconscious; and a crowd will gather around. Indians are very efficient in gathering quickly. Where not a single soul was, within seconds you will find a crowd. Nobody is bothered about their work, where they were going, what they were doing: everything stops. And do you know what they do when somebody falls with sunstroke? They put a shoe on his nose to bring him back to consciousness. Now, this is Eastern science! Jung is a coward. If Western science comes and destroys Eastern science of this type, it should be welcomed. Western science has evolved, Eastern science has not evolved. And whosoever is on a higher pedestal should be victorious. It is not a question of East and West. Western science should take over the whole world as far as science is concerned. Eastern religiousness should take over the whole world as far as religion is concerned. And that's what I mean when I say science and religion are two aspects of one thing. The West has worked on the objective truth. The East has worked on the subjective truth. The East has poured its whole energy into that dimension, just as the West has poured its energy into the objective direction. Now, both have found great treasures. It is good that they should share their treasures. In that sharing the world will become one; and of course in that sharing much will be destroyed -- in the East and in the West. But it needs to be destroyed. It has no right to exist. If it cannot face the truth then why go on clinging to it because it is Eastern or because it is Western? Yes, it is true that if religious consciousness spreads it is going to destroy pseudo-religions. It is going to destroy nations. There is no need for nations. The whole world can be governed by one single government -- and that government will be only functional. Let me make it clear to you what I mean by functional. Right now a president of a country is not only functional, he has a status, power. But the postmaster general -- what power has he and what status? He is functional. Of course he is the head of all the post offices of the country. In one world he will be the head of all the post offices of the world -- so what? It is just functional, he is the head clerk. In the same way, all departments should be functional; and when the world is one, many departments will not be needed -- for example, defense. This takes almost seventy-five percent of the countries' income. Seventy-five percent of the income of the whole world will be simply saved, because there is no need for a defense department. Who is going to attack? -- unless some other planet starts a war against the earth. But I don't see any possibility of that. We have not yet been found by anybody, nor have we been able to find anybody. Signals have been continuously sent for fifty years; from the earth, for fifty years continuously, a few scientific departments have been sending signals to the planets, to the stars, in different ways. But as yet there is no sign that any signal has been received or that anybody has answered. So there is no question of any other planet creating a war against us. There will be no defense department -- which is the most destructive department, killing millions of people unnecessarily, because all of the money goes on pouring into more and more death material. Who is interested in life? Perhaps, except this small commune, in this whole world nobody is interested in life. Politicians are interested in the other world -- which means after death. Nothing special is going to happen before death, don't waste your time unnecessarily. Simply die, because then the real show begins. What are you doing here? Simply wasting your time. It is not even a rehearsal. Everything begins after death -- heaven, God, eternal life, bliss: everything after death. Religions are interested in death. Politicians are interested in death. Perhaps this is the only commune which is interested in life. Perhaps I am the first religious man who is interested in life here and now. All other religious leaders, founders, prophets, messiahs, were interested in the other world: "This world is just a punishment, this world is an imprisonment, this world is nothing but humiliation. You have been thrown out of the garden of Eden. To be alive is disgraceful. Pray to God, ask Him, `Please let us be back in the Garden of Eden.' That means you will have to pass through death." All these nations, religions -- what is their need? If they are interested in death, let them die. What happened in Jonestown was absolutely Christian, but not even a single person in the world has talked about the fact that it was a Christian phenomenon, that Christianity was its background, that Jim Jones was a reverend, that he was a Christian priest, and the people who followed him simply followed according to the Christian ideology. Of course, they went to the very logical end. Jesus says to his people: "After death there will be judgment day, and I will be there to pick my people. And only those who are with me will be saved; all others will be thrown into the eternal darkness of hell." Reverend Jim Jones was continually teaching the BIBLE, Christianity, and of course he was teaching that real life begins after death. And if he convinced those fools, one thousand fools, it is nothing to be surprised at: they were all Christians. The gospel was Christian, and if he convinced them to die with him ... why wait for the judgment day? And on the judgment day there is going to be so much of a crowd -- poor Jim Jones, how is he going to find his one thousand followers? It will be really difficult. The best way is: Jim Jones dies and with him his followers die. And they will reach the gates of heaven with God and Jesus Christ and all the apostles shouting, "Alleluia!" This is far better, quicker. Other Christians have waited for two thousand years but the judgment day has not come yet. And if you read Jesus, his disciples asking again and again, "When will the judgment day come?" and he says, "Soon." The whole indication is that it is going to happen within your life. Now, twenty centuries have passed; it has not happened. Nobody asks the pope, "What about the judgment day? Jesus was saying, `Soon.' What do you mean by `soon'?" At least it should be explained how many centuries, how many generations .... "Soon" cannot be extended that much. But Christian bishops and cardinals and priests are comparing me with Jim Jones. In churches, sermons are delivered and it is said that Rajneeshpuram is going to become a second Jonestown. Now, who is going to say to these fools that this is the only place which cannot become Jonestown? The whole rest of the world can become -- because we are not interested in the afterlife, we are only interested in life here, now. But strange are the ways of the world! A man like me is compared with Reverend Jim Jones .... I am absolutely for life, so much so that I am ready to drop God, paradise, heaven -- everything! Life is so precious; everything can be dropped for it. So if a real religiousness spreads and nations disappear -- so far, so good. If religions disappear -- so far, so good. The Western man as Western, dies -- so far, so good, because his death as Western will also mean the death of the Eastern man as Eastern. Those terms are related only to each other: the East cannot exist without West. The death of the Western man will be the death of the Eastern man -- and that's perfectly good. Then only man remains -- neither Eastern nor Western, belonging neither to this nation nor to that nation. A single humanity rejoicing herenow in this very life, in this, the very lotus paradise ....

Even if by chance you happen to meet your original face, you will not be able to recognize it, it will be such a stranger. Perhaps you come across it once in a while, just by accident, but you don't even say Hi! It is a stranger and perhaps deep down, a certain fear -- that is always there with every stranger. That's why people try to become acquainted, introduced to strangers, the sooner the better. They don't want to be left in that state of fear, that somebody is absolutely unknown to them. They don't know what he can do, what he intends to do, what kind of person he is. Maybe he is a murderer, a thief. I played around this theme so many times because I was continuously traveling in India, and I was always traveling in an air-conditioned coupe. So at the most two persons -- that too very rarely because in India very few people can afford to travel in the air-conditioned coupe, except people like me who have nothing to lose. Just poor people like me can travel like that because we cannot be more poor than we are. But once in a while a minister, a governor, a rich industrialist, a scientist, a vice-chancellor -- people like that were my fellow travelers. And I always tried to see what happened to them if I continued to remain a stranger. And I enjoyed -- it does things to people. I was not doing anything, I was just trying be a stranger, which really I am. They would ask me, "Where are you going?" -- just anything to begin with. I would say, "Anywhere will do." They would say, "Anywhere will do?" -- and I could see the fear arising: "Is the man mad? But no, he does not look mad." They would then say, "Are you joking?" Once I said, "Why should I joke with you?" In India, it is a convention that you joke only with certain relatives. Joking is very confined, to a certain relationship. You joke only with your wife's brother, otherwise you don't joke; only that's acceptable to the society. I said, "But you are not my wife's brother, why should I joke? Or are you my wife's brother? Perhaps you are. But I don't remember ever seeing you before." The man became really more shaky and I could see the trembling arising -- and he had to travel with me for at least ten hours, twelve hours, or even twenty-four hours. But still he tried: "What is your name?" I said, "The moment you asked me, it was just on the tip of my tongue. Now I am trying hard to remember. I have a name, I certainly remember ... I know it is there but you will have to give me a little time. If it comes, it comes; if it does not come what can I do? What can you do? But it doesn't matter anyway, you can call me any name. Anyway every child is born without a name and we give him one. All names are arbitrary, so it does not matter whether you call me Ram, Rahim, Ibrahim, Moses, Jesus, Christ; anything will do." And I said, "You please sit down, there is no need to continue to stand. Sit down, be at ease, and I will go and close the door." He said, "Why are you closing the door?" I said, "The door has to be closed. Passengers are passing by, what will they think? You are trembling, perspiring, in an air-conditioned room? No, I don't want you to look so silly and embarrassed." I virtually forced the person to sit down. I was forcing him to sit down, and he wanted to stand up. He said, "Can't I stand?" I said, "You just first relax. Do you want to go to the bathroom or have you already done it? Anyway there is no need to worry -- you just sit down." That man looked at me and looked all around. It was just a small cabin for two persons and he was thinking, "this type of man, he can do anything." But he tried somehow to figure me out; anyway he wanted to be acquainted. And he said "By your face you look religious." I said, "Yes, when I look in the mirror I also feel that this man looks religious. But I am not religious. Never go by the appearance, appearances are not always real." "No," he said, "you are still trying to befool me. You are a religious man." Now he was trying somehow to categorize me. I said, "If you say, and if it consoles you, helps you in some way, okay, I am a religious man." The man was a brahmin -- I had seen his name on the door. In the air-conditioned compartment they have the passengers' names on the door, so I had seen that he was a Bengali, a high-caste brahmin, a chattopadhyaya. So he said, "What religion?" I said, "Religion is just religion -- there is no adjective to it." He said, "That I cannot believe. You must be a religious Hindu sage." I said, "If it helps you, I am." And he fell at my feet, and he said, "I knew from the very beginning that you are not mad, that you are a sage. And sages and mad people look alike, behave alike. Everything that you said now makes sense." But I said, "One thing I have just said to console you -- really I am not a Hindu, I am a Mohammedan." And now you cannot believe what a terrible mess he fell into. He had touched the feet of a Mohammedan! A Hindu brahmin, a high-caste brahmin, is afraid even of touching the shadow of a Mohammedan. If he touches even the shadow of a Mohammedan he will have to take a bath to cleanse himself. And he had touched actual feet! Now the situation had become much worse. The chattopadhyaya said, "But why did you lie to me?" I said, "I was just trying to console you. I never thought that you would fall at my feet. Before I could prevent you, you had already done it. But don't be worried, I am really a brahmin. I was just checking what happens: if some Mohammedan looks like a brahmin sage and you touch his feet, what will happen to you? I was just trying to see." He said, "That's right." And a great smile ... and he relaxed in his seat and he said, "I knew from the very beginning -- such a nice person could not be a Mohammedan. Those Mohammedans are all butchers." I said, "You are right, because I was born a Mohammedan so I know perfectly well they are all butchers." This way I have seen many well-educated people trying to figure out ... and I told them, "Why are you bothering to figure out about me? If you take that much trouble to figure out about yourself you will become enlightened! You need not worry about me. You do your work, whatever you want to do; you simply accept me as absent, I am not here. Behave as if I am not here and do whatsoever you want to do. "If you want me to close my eyes, I can close my eyes. If you want me to go to sleep, I will go to sleep. But please be at ease; just forget about me. But don't try to become familiar with me -- that I don't allow. We are going to remain strangers for ten hours." In fact we are all strangers. Even if we live our whole life together it makes no difference, we remain strangers; we just settle for consolations, and we start taking the other for granted. It is a make-believe that you know the other -- your wife, your mother, your father, your brother, your friend -- it is just a make-believe that you know them. You know nothing about the other because that is impossible -- for the simple reason that you don't know anything about yourself yet. Without knowing oneself it is impossible to know anybody else. The trouble is you can be introduced to somebody else, but how can you be introduced to yourself? Who is going to do that? You can be introduced to somebody else because that introduction is just arbitrary. The name, the caste, the country, the religion, the profession -- these are all arbitrary and accidental. It happened ... really a great coincidence, almost inconceivable, but it happened so whether it is conceivable or not makes no difference. When I was standing at the window after my matriculation, to obtain entry into a college, there were many people who were filling in forms and I was waiting to get my form. When I was filling in my form a boy just of my age came to me, and he said, "What subjects are you taking?" So I showed him my form and said, "These are my subjects." He said, "Oh, okay, I will fill in these subjects also." I said, "But this is strange. You have come to the college -- don't you have any idea what you want to study?" He said, "It is all the same to me. My father wants me to study so I have come to the college. I don't have any interest in anything, I have just come to enjoy. My father is rich. He wants me to be in college so okay, I will be in college and have fun and enjoy. Any subjects will do." But I said, "These subjects perhaps may be difficult for you: philosophy, logic ...." He said, "I don't care even what they mean. I don't know, I have never heard this word `logic' before." "Then," I said, "It is perfectly okay." And he asked me, "Will you please give me your fountain pen?" I said, "This is too much -- you don't have your own fountain pen?" He said, "I am not a man who is interested in these things." He showed me a packet of cigarettes. He said, "I am interested in cigarettes, not in fountain pens; and I am not going to attend any class or anything. My father is going to send me the money and I am going to enjoy, and I am going to ask him for more and more. He has enough, and I am the only son so I am not wasting anybody else's money. It is my own, I am going to inherit it anyway." I gave him my fountain pen and he filled in the form. He even had to look at my form for the spelling of the words that he was filling in. But this way we became friends. I liked the boy, he was sincere, and not a hypocrite in any way. We became friends. He needed me and I needed him, because I needed so much money for books and he had so much money that I said, "This is good." And he was not interested in books at all. But I was his first friend in the college. And he had everything: a car, a driver, a bungalow -- I needed all these things so I said, "That's perfectly good -- you came at the right time. And whatever your need is, I will manage, you don't be worried." So I had to do examinations for both of us. In three hours time, half was mine and half was his. In one and a half hours I finished my paper and then I would start his paper. But he said, "This is a great bargain." He said, "If I can pass, my father is going to be mad with happiness. He cannot believe that I can pass, because in matric he had to give such a large bribe to push me through. And now he knows that in college it is going to be difficult." I said, "You don't be worried, you will pass first class." And he passed first class with a B.A. After the B.A. I left Jabalpur because one of the professors in Sagar University, S.S. Roy, was persistently asking me, writing me, phoning me to say, "After your B.A. you join this university for your post- graduation." From Jabalpur University to Sagar University there is not much distance -- one hundred miles. But Sagar University was in many ways unique. It was a small university compared to Benares University or Aligarh University, which had ten thousand students, twelve thousand students. They are just like Oxford or Cambridge -- big universities, big names. Sagar University had only one thousand students and almost three hundred professors, so for every three students, one professor. It was a rare place; perhaps nowhere in the world can you find another university where there is one professor for three students. And the man who had founded the university was acquainted with all the best professors around the world. Sagar was his birthplace; Doctor Harisingh Gaud was his name. He was a world-famous authority on law, and earned so much money -- and never gave a single pai to any beggar, to any institution, to any charity. He was known as the most miserly person in the whole of India. And then he founded the university and gave his whole life's earning. That was millions of dollars. He said to me, "That's why I was a miser; otherwise there was no way -- I was a poor man, I was born a poor man. If I were doing charity and giving to this hospital and to this beggar and to that orphan, this university would not have existed." For this university ... he had carried his whole life only one idea, that his birthplace should have one of the best universities in the world. And certainly he created one of the best universities in the world. While he was alive he managed to bring professors from all over the world. He gave them double salaries, triple salaries, whatsoever they wanted -- and no work, because there were only one thousand students, which even a small college has in India; one thousand students is not a large number. And he opened all the departments which only a university like Oxford can afford. Oxford has nearabout three hundred and fifty departments. He opened all the departments which exist anywhere in the world. There were hundreds of departments without students but with full staff: the head of the department, the assistant professor, the professor, the lecturer. He said, "Don't be worried. First create the university -- and make it the best. Students will come, will have to come." Then all the professors and all the deans were all in search of the best students. And somehow this professor, S.S. Roy, who was the head of the department of philosophy, got his eye on me. I used to go every year to the university for the inter-university debating competition. And for four years I was winning the trophy and for four years he was listening to me, as a judge -- he was one of the judges. The fourth year he invited me to his home, and he said, "Listen, I wait for you for one year. I know that after one year, when the next inter-university debating competition is held, you are bound to be there. "The way you present your arguments is strange. It is sometimes so weird that it seems ... how did you manage to look from this angle? I have been thinking about a few problems myself, but I never looked from that aspect. It strikes me that perhaps you go on dropping any aspect that can happen to the ordinary mind, and you only choose the aspect that is unlikely to happen to anybody. "For four years you have been winning the shield for the simple reason that the argument is unique, and there is nobody who is ready to answer it. They have not even thought about it, so they are simply in shock. "Your opponents -- you reduce them so badly, one feels pity for them, but what can we do? And I have been giving you ninety-nine percent marks out of a hundred. I wanted to give you more than a hundred, but even ninety-nine .... It has become known to people that I am favorable to a certain student. This is too much, because nobody goes beyond fifty. "I have called you to my home for dinner to invite you to leave Jabalpur University and come here. Now this is your fourth year, you are finished when you graduate. For post-graduation you come here. I cannot miss having you as my student; if you don't come here then I am going to join Jabalpur University." And he was a well-known authority; if he wanted to come, Jabalpur University would have been immensely happy to accept him as head of the department. I said, "No, don't go to that much trouble. I can come here, and I love the place." It is situated ... perhaps it is the best-situated university in the world, in the hills near a tremendously vast lake. It is so silent -- such huge trees, ancient trees -- that just to be there is enough education. And Doctor Harisingh Gaud must have been a tremendous lover of books. He donated all his library, and he managed to get as many books as possible from every corner of the world. A single man's effort ... it is rare; he created Oxford just single-handedly, alone. Oxford was created over one thousand years; thousands of people have worked. This man's work is really a piece of art. Single-handedly, with his own money, he put himself at stake. So I loved the place. I said, "You need not be worried, I will be coming -- but you have seen me only in the debate competitions. You don't know much about me; I may prove a trouble for you, a nuisance. I would like you to know everything about me before you decide." Professor S.S. Roy said, "I don't want to know anything about you. The little bit that I have come to know, just by seeing you, your eyes, your way of saying things, your way of approaching reality, is enough. And don't make me frightened about trouble and nuisance -- you can do whatsoever you want." I said, "Remember that financially I am always broke, so I will be continuously borrowing money from you and never returning it. Things have to be made clear beforehand; otherwise later on you can say, `This you never said.' You will have to lend me money whenever I want. I am not going to return it, although it will be said I am borrowing -- but on your part you have to understand that that money is gone, because from where can I return it? I don't have any source. "Second, you have to make arrangements in the university for my free lodging and boarding. Thirdly, you have to ask the vice-chancellor, because I don't know him -- or you can introduce me to him -- for his special scholarship. He is entitled to give one special scholarship. Other scholarships are there, which are smaller scholarships given to talented people -- first class, first gold medalist, this and that; I want the special scholarship which is three times more than any other scholarship. "It is special because the vice-chancellor is entitled to give it to anyone talented, not talented, in the good list of the university, not in the good list of the university; it does not matter. It is his personal choice -- because if they start thinking about my character certificates and this and that, I cannot produce a single character certificate. "I have been in many colleges because I have been expelled again and again. So in four years time .... People study in one college, I have studied in many, but all that I can bring from them is expulsion orders. I cannot produce a single character certificate -- so you have to recommend me. You are my only character certificate." He said, "Don't be worried about that." So I moved to Sagar. This is the coincidence that I was going to tell you about. When I was filling in the form, the same boy appeared again! He said, "What subjects?" I said, "My God! Who told you that I had come to Sagar?" He said, "You are asking that? For days I never see my car, my driver; in my house strangers come and live. They say they are your guests, and I have to make arrangements for them. And you think I have to know how you have come to Sagar? My driver has brought you here; he told me. "So I said, `If he is going to Sagar what am I going to do here, because who will write my papers?' So I ran fast and I have caught you in time. Just exactly four years ago, in the same way we met." I said, "That's true. So you are going to fill in these subjects again?" He said, "It's perfectly okay, because I have nothing to do with the subjects. I don't know anything that happened in these four years because I was engaged in drinking and in gambling and all kinds of things. And you managed well; two first classes by one person -- you did well. Now once more you will have to do it. "And as far as things from my side are concerned, I am ready to double them. Everything that you want you take, but just don't try to leave me, because without you I am nobody. My father gave such a great party and all the relatives gathered, and it was such a celebration. And I was only thinking of you -- that this whole celebration should be for you. "Do you know what my father said when I came home and I told him that I have topped the university? He said, `That means in that university all kinds of stupid people must study; otherwise how could you have got the gold medal? That is a simple proof that all the fools go to that university. You change your university.' I said, `I am going to change it but the same fools I will meet anywhere.'" This was the only celebration for me. To my father it was impossible that I would get even third class, because I was never going to the college and was continuously being expelled from one college after another. Finally a college accepted me with the condition that I would not attend the classes because the same will happen again. "You will fight with the professors, argue, and we will have to expel you. So the best way is -- examinations are close -- you simply do whatsoever you want to do anywhere else except the college campus. Don't come to the college campus. As far as your attendance is concerned, I will take care," the principal told me. "But," I said, "you have to take care of two persons, because wherever I am expelled my friend has to move from that college too because he can not live without me. So as many times as I was expelled, he also had to move." I said, "You will have to take care of two persons." The principal said, "I don't understand: why two persons? You alone are taking admission." I said, "No, one of my friends is also. He is not expelled, but he never attends. He is not interested in studying but his father is forcing him. And what can the poor chap do? It is just to console his old man." The principal said, "But why does he go with you? I see on the record that he follows you to every college." I said, "I am his only friend, that's what he thinks. He is not interested in college, he is interested in me. He comes with me -- it is one package. If you accept me, you accept him. I promise you that your college will get the gold medal. Attendance you will have to give for two persons." And all the principals and professors knew that I was continuously winning in their eloquence competitions. Only once I got a second prize in one eloquence competition, and that became almost a great scandal against the professor who was one of the judges. He was in love with a girl, one of his students. The girl was a competitor, and he wanted the girl to win the competition any way. All other judges had given me more marks but he had given to the girl a hundred marks completely. She was not even worth ten -- because others ... somebody had given her five, somebody seven, somebody nine; nobody had gone beyond ten. But if one person gives her a hundred .... She came first, but I immediately went to every newspaper and informed them of the whole story. The next day the professor had to resign and escape, because I said, "He is in love, and it is just a way of seducing the girl. I challenge -- not the girl, I challenge the professor to compete with me anywhere before any kind of judges. If he can win in the debate I will think it is perfectly okay, the girl has won. The girl is nobody." The scandal became so hot that the principal told the professor, "You please leave, because it is so clear: no judges have given her more than ten, and you have given her a hundred, and she is your student." I was present when the principal said to him, "I never thought that she was going to be even third, and she came first. And you unnecessarily took the risk of making this boy angry: he will not leave you alone." And the next day .... To all the papers I had given their pictures. That was done with my friend: he was always carrying his camera and his transistor -- he was that type. So I just told him, "You get me two pictures: one of this professor and one of that girl." He said, "No problem, Together or separate?" I said, "Do you have them already?" He said, "I have got them together already." I said, "That will do." So the professor putting his hand on the girl's shoulder -- the picture was published. The professor resigned, the girl escaped, and the competition had to be arranged again. I said, "Just his resignation does not mean anything; nor does the girl escaping from the city mean anything. I don't believe in being second. Either I am nobody or I am first; I don't accept any mediocre position anywhere." Again the competition was arranged. This boy was handy in many ways. This was a great coincidence that he managed to reach Sagar, and he filled in the form just according to mine. For two years he continuously helped me. My help was small: it came only in the end -- at the examination time I had to write for him too. In life I have tried, with all kinds of people to insist that everybody knows deep down that he is a stranger, a stranger to everybody, even to his closest friend. I told this boy -- his name was Umakant Joshi .... He is now a professor. That's what makes me wonder ... this world is a strange place; this planet certainly must be the weirdest planet in the whole universe. Now, Umakant Joshi is a professor who does not know even the spelling of the word "philosophy," but he is doing perfectly well. When I last saw him in 1965, I had just gone to inaugurate a social gathering. I had no idea that he was a professor in that college, and when he greeted me there, I said, "What are you doing here?" He said, "What am I doing here? -- the same." I said, "What, the same? Now nobody can help you." He said, "Money can do everything. I never bother to teach, I pay people to teach for me. I never examine people's papers, I pay teachers to examine their papers. Money can do everything." Perhaps by now he may be a principal, one day may rise to become a vice-chancellor. If money can do everything, there is no problem. And I have seen people .... I told this boy when we were departing after six years of being together, "Umakant, have you ever realized that we are as much strangers as when we met on the first day, just by accident, in that college office where you asked what subjects you should fill in on the form?" He was in a way very innocent and nice. Tears came to his eyes, and he said, "That's true. We have lived so closely that I had completely forgotten that we are still strangers. I don't know you, you don't know me, and whatever we do know is irrelevant." If you enquire among your friends you will be surprised: everybody is a stranger in a strange world. But we have managed deceptions, we have camouflaged ourselves. We have labeled everybody in so many ways that the person starts thinking that he is that. In my village there is one man, Sunderlal. I have been surprised ...sunder means beauty, sunderlal means beautiful diamond; and he is anything other than a beauty. He is not even homely. I have been surprised again and again that names are given to people which are just the opposite of their qualities. I have seen immensely rich people named Garibdas. Garib means poor, das means a slave. I have been a guest to one Seth Garibdas in Hyderabad. Seth means very rich, super-rich, and garibdas means a poor slave. I asked him, "Have you ever thought about your name? Your father was rich; richness is almost your family tradition -- it is nothing new. You are not a newly rich person, that you were poor and became rich. Then it would have been understandable: you were poor and people called you Garibdas. But you were born rich; you were born with golden spoons in your mouth. Then why Garibdas?" He said, "You ask strange questions. In my whole life nobody has asked me this. But my father is alive; we both should go and ask him." We both went to his room and asked him. He said, "It is a protection. The astrologers suggested giving him a name which suggests poverty so that fate always remains compassionate to him." They were deceiving fate by giving him the name Garibdas -- so fate thinks he is poor, don't harass him -- and he remained rich. This Sunderlal was really ugly. To talk to him meant that you had to look this way and that way; to look at him made one feel a little sick -- something went berserk in the stomach. His front two teeth were out, and he had such crossed eyes that to look at him for a little while meant a certain headache -- and he was Sunderlal! He was the son of a rich man, and he was a little nuts too. I used to call him Doctor Sunderlal although he was never able to pass matriculation. He failed so many times that the school authorities asked his father to remove him because he brought their average low every year -- and he was not going to pass. How they managed to get him up to matriculation, that is a miracle. But it is understandable, because up to matriculation all examinations are local, so you can bribe the teachers. This was difficult to do in the matriculation examination because it is not local, it is state-wide. So it is very difficult to find out who is setting the papers, who is examining the papers. It is almost impossible; unless you happen to be the education minister or some relative of the education minister, it is very difficult to find out. But I started calling him Doctor Sunderlal. He said, "Doctor? But I am not a doctor." I said, "Not an ordinary doctor like these physicians: you are an honorary doctor." But he said, "Nobody has given me an honorary doctorate either." I said, "I am giving you an honorary doctorate. It does not matter who gives it -- you get the doctorate, that's the point." He said, "That is true, " and by and by I convinced him that he was an honorary doctor. He started introducing himself to people as Doctor Sunderlal. When I heard this, that he introduces himself as Doctor Sunderlal .... He was a relative of our sannyasin, Narendra. One day I saw a letterhead with "Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt., Honorary," printed on it in golden letters, embossed. I said, "This is great!" And as time passed by people completely forgot: he is now known as Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt. Nobody suspects, nobody even enquires who gave him a doctorate, from what university? But the whole town knows him. And because he is an honorary doctorate he inaugurates social gatherings in the school, in the college -- now the town has a college -- and he is the most literary figure. Just now my mother was saying that Doctor Sunderlal has become a member of parliament. The new government ... after Indira's assassination, Rajiv Gandhi chose him. He is rich and certainly respected in the town because he is the only doctor -- an honorary doctor! People get ... and perhaps he believes it. Now you cannot tell him that he is not. He will drag you to the court. Now, for almost thirty years he has been a doctor; that is enough. Nobody has objected, nobody has raised a question. In his election campaign his name was Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt. -- "Vote for Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt." Perhaps -- and he is a little nuts -- he believes that he is. I know that even I cannot persuade him that "this doctorate I gave to you." He will laugh and say, "What are you saying? I have been a doctor for thirty years. You were just a little kid when I became a doctor!" He will not agree so easily to drop his doctorate. But even if you get a doctorate from a university, what does it mean? There is not much difference. I know one very famous Indian politician, Doctor Govindadas. Maitreya knows him because they both were in parliament together. Doctor Govindadas was in the parliament perhaps the longest time in the whole history of humanity: from 1914 till he died, I think in 1978, he remained continuously, without a single gap, a member of parliament. He was the richest man in the whole state of Madhya Pradesh. His father was given the title of raja, king; although he was not a king, he had so much land, and so many properties -- one third of the houses of the whole city of Jabalpur, which is ten times bigger than Portland, belonged to him. He had so much land that the British government thought it perfectly right to give him the title. And he was helping the British government, so he was called Raja Gokuldas, and his house was not called a house, it was called Gokuldas Palace. Govindadas was Gokuldas' eldest son -- a very mediocre mind. It hurts me to say so but what can I do? If he was mediocre it is not my fault. He was very kind and friendly to me and very respectful too. He was very old but he used to come every day whenever he was in Jabalpur. Whenever the parliament was not in session he was in Jabalpur; otherwise he was in New Delhi. Whenever he was in Jabalpur, in the morning from eight to eleven, his limousine was standing in front of my door, every day religiously. Anybody wanting to meet him between eight and eleven need not go anywhere; he had just to stand outside my gate. What was happening in those three hours? He used to come there with his secretary, his steno. He would ask me a question, I would answer, and the steno would write it in shorthand. Then he published in his own name everything that I said. Govindadas has published books, two books; not a single word is his. Yes, there are a few words from the secretary. I was puzzled when I saw those books -- and he presented them to me. I looked inside ... I knew that this was going to happen, it was happening every day -- in newspapers he was publishing my answers all over India. He was president of the Hindi language's most prestigious institution, HINDI SAHITYA SAMMELAN; he was the president of that. Once Mahatma Gandhi was president of that, so you can understand the prestige of the institution. Govindadas was president for almost twenty years, and he was the main proponent in the parliament that Hindi should become the national language. And he made Hindi the national language, at least in the constitution. It is not functioning -- English still functions as the national language -- but he put it in the constitution. He was known all over the country. Every newspaper, every news magazine, was publishing his articles -- and they were my answers! But I was puzzled, because once in a while there would be a quotation from Tulsidas, Surdas, Kabirdas. I could not believe that he had even the intelligence to put the quotation in the right place, in the right context. So I asked his steno one day when I was staying in Delhi in Govindadas's house. I asked his steno, "Shrivastava, everything else is perfectly right; I just wonder about these -- Surdas, Tulsidas, Kabirdas -- how Seth Govindadas manages to put them ..." He said, "Seth Govindadas? I put them in." I said, "Who told you to put them in?" He said, "He says that at least something should be put from our side too." I said, "I am not going to tell anybody, but just to deceive me, these two lines of Kabirdas in the whole question? You have been putting them in and you think I will be deceived?" He said, "I had to work hard, looking into Kabirdas' collection to find some lines which could fit somewhere in your question." I said, "You are a fool; you should have asked me. When your master can steal the whole article, you, being his steno, should at least learn this much politics. You could have said to me, `Just give me two or three quotations so that I can fit them in.' In future don't bother yourself." He was a poor man, and where would he find Kabirdas, and something very relevant to me? So I used to give quotations to Shrivastava and say, "These are the lines you fit in so Govindadas remains happy." Why did I want him to remain happy? He was helpful to me in the same way that the boy was helpful to me. I was continually out of town without any leave from the university. Govindadas' limousine standing in front of my door was enough. The vice-chancellor was afraid of me because Govindadas was a powerful man; the vice-chancellor could be immediately transferred, removed -- just a hint from me was enough. The professors were afraid. They were really puzzled why every day Govindadas was hypnotized; he spent three hours with me every day. And he started bringing other politicians. He introduced me to every chief minister, every cabinet minister in the central government, because they all were his guests in Jabalpur. Jawaharlal used to be his guest in Jabalpur. He introduced me to almost all the politicians; I think Maitreya must have come to me through Seth Govindadas. He even arranged for a small group of important members to meet me in parliament house itself. Maitreya certainly must have been there. Govindadas was helpful, so I said, "There is no problem. And it does not matter whose name goes on the articles. The question reaches to thousands of people. The answer reaches to thousands of people. That is important; my name or Govindadas's name, it does not matter. What matters is the matter." This man remained continuously in contact with me for almost ten years, and when I told him, "We are strangers," he said, "What are you saying? We have known each other for ten years." I said, "We don't know each other. I know your name, Govindadas; it has been given by your father. The doctorate you have received from the university. I know how much value that doctorate has, and why you have been given that doctorate -- because it was you who proposed the vice-chancellor. Now the vice-chancellor has to pay you back with the doctorate. The vice-chancellor is your man, and if he manages to give you a doctorate there is no wonder in it. Your D.Litt is absolutely bogus." First I used to hear .... He had written almost one hundred dramas. He was in competition with George Bernard Shaw because George Bernard Shaw was the great drama writer and he had written one hundred dramas. So Seth Govindadas was also a great drama writer of Hindi language -- a hundred dramas. And he was not capable of writing a single drama! He was not capable of even writing a single speech -- his speeches were written by that poor Shrivastava. Govindadas has published one hundred dramas. By and by I came to know those people who had written them -- for money -- poor people, poor teachers, professors. So I told Govindadas, "I know what your D.Litt is: one hundred dramas, and none is written by you. Now I can say it authoritatively, because you go on publishing articles, and now you have published two books without even telling me, `I am going to put your answers in these books.' And they are nothing but my answers -- there is nothing else." So I said to him, "Doctor Govindadas, I also have such a doctor in my village -- Doctor Sunderlal. I have given him the doctorate. He has not written one hundred dramas, neither have you. Just the way you believe you are a doctor, he believes he is a doctor. And I don't think there is much difference of quality in your minds, because seth is a title ..." Before he became a doctor he was known all over the country as Seth Govindadas. Seth is a title, it comes from an ancient Sanskrit word, shreshth. Shreshth means the superior one; from shreshth it became shreshthi and from shreshthi it became seth. In Rajasthani sethi, sethia -- it went on changing. But it is a title. So when Govindadas became a doctor he started writing "Doctor Seth Govindadas." It was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who told him, "Govindadas, two titles are never written in front of a name. Either you write "Seth," then you can write "D.Litt" behind, but if you write "Doctor" in front then you cannot write "Seth." So he asked me what to do. I said, "There is no problem. You write "Doctor (Seth) Govindadas." So he said, "Great!" And that's how later on he did it for the rest of his life: "Doctor (Seth) Govindadas." He could not leave out that seth either. And when Jawaharlal saw those brackets, he said, "Who has suggested these brackets to you? Can't you leave out that seth, or put it at the end?" He said, "I cannot leave it out. It is one of my great friends who has suggested it to me, and he cannot be wrong. The brackets are perfectly right." Jawaharlal said, "To me there is no problem. You write whatsoever you want, but two titles in front simply make you a laughingstock." Govindadas again asked me what to do. I said, "You don't be bothered by Jawaharlal; the brackets are meaningless. The brackets simply mean "underground": doctor aboveground and seth underground -- and you are both. Tell Jawaharlal clearly, `I am both. If people don't write two titles in front, the simple reason is they don't have them. There is no other reason; they don't have them. I have got two titles so I have to write them.'" What is the difference? But so much attachment to names, titles, professions, religions -- and this is all your identity. And behind all this brown bag is lost your original face. 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.

In a better world, every family will learn from children. You are in such a hurry to teach them. Nobody seems to learn from them, and they have much to teach you. And you have nothing to teach them. Just because you are older and powerful you start making them just like you without ever thinking about what you are, where you have reached, what your status is in the inner world. You are a pauper; and you want the same for your child also? But nobody thinks; otherwise people would learn from small children. Children bring so much from the other world because they are such fresh arrivals. They still carry the silence of the womb, the silence of the very existence. So it was just a coincidence that for seven years I remained undisturbed -- no Miss Judith Martin to nag me, to prepare me for the world of business, politics, diplomacy. My grandparents were more interested in leaving me as natural as possible -- particularly my grandmother. She is one of the causes -- these small things affect all your life patterns -- she is one of the causes of my respect for the whole of womanhood. She was a simple woman, uneducated, but immensely sensitive. She made it clear to my grandfather and the servant: "We all have lived a certain kind of life which has not led us anywhere. We are as empty as ever, and now death is coming close." She insisted, "Let this child be uninfluenced by us. What influence can we ...? We can only make him like us, and we are nothing. Give him an opportunity to be himself." My grandfather -- I heard them discussing in the night, thinking that I was asleep -- used to say to her, "You are telling me to do this, and I am doing it; but he is somebody else's son, and sooner or later he will have to go to his parents. What will they say? -- `You have not taught him any manners, any etiquette, he is absolutely wild.'" She said, "Don't be worried about that. In this whole world everybody is civilized, has manners, etiquette, but what is the gain? You are very civilized -- what have you got out of it? At the most his parents will be angry at us. So what? -- let them be angry. They can't harm us, and by that time the child will be strong enough that they cannot change his life course." I am tremendously grateful to that old woman. My grandfather was again and again worried that sooner or later he was going to be responsible: "They will say, `We left our child with you and you have not taught him anything.'" My grandmother did not even allow ... because there was one man in the village who could at least teach me the beginnings of language, mathematics, a little geography. He was educated to the fourth grade -- the lowest four; that is what was called primary education in India. But he was the most educated man in the town. My grandfather tried hard: "He can come and he can teach him. At least he will know the alphabet, some mathematics, so when he goes to his parents they will not say that we just wasted seven years completely." But my grandmother said, "Let them do whatsoever they want to do after seven years. For seven years he has to be just his natural self, and we are not going to interfere." And her argument was always, "You know the alphabet, so what? You know mathematics, so what? You have earned a little money; do you want him also to earn a little money and live just like you?" That was enough to keep that old man silent. What to do? He was in a difficulty because he could not argue, and he knew that he would be held responsible, not she, because my father would ask him, "What have you done?" And actually that would have been the case, but fortunately he died before my father could ask. But my father continuously was saying, "That old man is responsible, he has spoiled the child." But now I was strong enough, and I made it clear to him: "Before me, never say a single word against my maternal grandfather. He has saved me from being spoiled by you -- that is your real anger. But you have other children -- spoil them. And at the final stage you will say who is spoiled." He had other children, and more and more children went on coming. I used to tease him, "You please bring one child more, make it a dozen. Eleven children? People ask, "How many children?" Eleven does not look right; one dozen is more impressive." And in later years I used to tell him, "You go on spoiling all your children; I am wild, and I will remain wild." What you see as innocence is nothing but wildness. What you see as clarity is nothing but wildness. Somehow I remained out of the grip of civilization. And once I was strong enough .... And that's why these people -- Miss Judith Martin, and their kind -- insist, "Take hold of the child as quickly as possible, don't waste time because the earlier you take hold of the child, the easier it is. Once the child becomes strong enough, then to bend him according to your desires will be difficult." And life has seven-year circles. By the seventh year the child is perfectly strong; now you cannot do anything. Now he knows where to go, what to do. He is capable of arguing. He is capable of seeing what is right and what is wrong. And his clarity will be at the climax when he is seven. If you don't disturb his earlier years, then at the seventh he is so crystal clear about everything that his whole life will be lived without any repentance. I have lived without any repentance. I have tried to find: Have I done anything wrong, ever? Not that people have been thinking that all that I have done is right, that is not the point: 97I have never thought anything that I have done was wrong. The whole world may think it was wrong, but to me there is absolute certainty that it was right; it was the right thing to do. So there is no question of repenting about the past. And when you don't have to repent about the past you are free from it. The past keeps you entangled like an octopus because you go on feeling, "That thing I should not have done," or, "That thing which I was supposed to do and did not do ...." All those things go on pulling you backwards. I don't see anything behind me, no past. If I say something about my past, it is simply factual memory, it has no psychological involvement. I am telling you as if I am telling you about somebody else. It is just factual; it has nothing to do with my personal involvement. It might have occurred to somebody else, it might have happened to somebody else. So remember, a factual memory is not enslaving. Psychological memory is, and psychological memory is made up of things that you think, or you have been conditioned to think, were wrong and you did them. Then there is a wound, a psychological wound.

BELOVED OSHO, HOW COME YOU SPEAK ABOUT POLITICAL LEADERS AND RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN THE SAME TONE -- IS THERE NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM?

Fundamentally there is no difference at all. Superficially of course there are differences. The basic desire to be a leader arises in people who are suffering from an inferiority complex. It does not matter whether they move into the political world or into the religious world; the will-to-power is an absolute indication that the man feels himself inferior to others and he wants to prove to the world that it is not so. It is not only a question of proving to the world; through the world he wants to prove it to himself too, that he is not inferior to anybody. The only way mind can manage it is to make everybody inferior to you. Mind is not your intelligence. It may sound strange but this is a truth, that mind is not your intelligence. Mind can be intellectual, which is a very poor substitute for intelligence. Intellectuality is mechanical. You can become a great scholar, a great professor, a great philosopher -- just playing with words which are all borrowed, arranging and rearranging thoughts, none of which are your own. The intellect is absolutely bankrupt. It has nothing of its own, all is borrowed. And that's the difference between intelligence and intellect. Intelligence has an eyesight of its own, a capacity to see into things, into problems. Intelligence is your born quality. It cannot be learned, it cannot be nurtured. Everybody is born with intelligence, but the society is in favor of intellect, because the intellectual person is not a real individual, he is phony. He has nothing of his own; he is a beggar, and beggars are not supposed to be emperors, are not supposed to be masters. They are destined to remain slaves. So your so-called greatest scholars are continuously proving their slavery to the establishment. None of them is a rebel. They are hankering for the prizes and awards the establishment can bestow upon them: respectability, honor. They are all desiring to be Nobel laureates, but to get the Nobel prize you have to sell your soul. You have to accept a thousand and one things that no intelligent person can accept. You have to support the status quo, the people who are in power, who have the money. You are just a puppet to them. Yes, it is a very mutual conspiracy: they give you the Nobel prize, they give you honorary doctorates, they make you world famous; in return you support their exploitation, their oppression, and whatever nonsense they are doing. You have to become a protecting wall. And of course the world is going to listen to you because you are a Nobel prize winner, honored by Oxford, by Cambridge, by Harvard. The ordinary people, the common masses are bound to listen to you. If you are supporting the society then naturally there is nothing wrong with the society; there is no need to change it. The problems are not created by the society but by the "anti-social" elements. And who are the anti-social elements? All the rebels are anti-social elements. It is these people who provoke the masses, steal their souls, make them aware that they also are human beings, not cattle. These are anti-social elements; they have to be destroyed. Either they have to be purchased in some way ... give them a Nobel prize, and purchase them; give them honorary doctorates and purchase them. If they refuse to be purchased then society has all the ways to condemn them. Their books will not be published by the great publishers, because those great publications are owned by the vested interests. Their names will disappear from the newspapers, from the magazines, from the media. They will live almost as if they are not, as if they don't exist. This is a far superior way to destroy somebody than crucifying. At least when you crucify a person you give him immense publicity. Two thousand years have passed: Jesus is still hanging on the cross. He has become almost an eternal advertisement. Wherever you go you will see the cross -- on the graveyard, on the churches, on the vehicles of the Red Cross Society. Now this is free publicity for two thousand years! Isabel, you should learn something! Not a single cent has been wasted. Jesus was certainly a Jew, not only by birth but by his very spirit. He managed his own crucifixion, and created publicity which goes on increasing. It is a very essential thing to understand, that the establishment first tries to persuade you, to bribe you. When it fails in purchasing and bribing you, then it comes into its true color: then it starts destroying you. And it has learned through the centuries that poisoning a Socrates is not good. You killed the man, but you made him immortal; you imprinted his message on the very soul of humanity. You proved foolish -- it was not the right way. Crucifying Jesus was not the way to destroy him. You have saved him. Now the modern status quo, establishment, vested interests, are far more clever. If Jesus comes back he should not be afraid that he is going to be crucified again. No, this time it is going to be worse: he will be ignored. To be crucified does not take your dignity, but to be ignored .... Nobody bothers about you, nobody pays any attention, nobody is for or against you. This is real humiliation that is being done. But intellectuals are not capable of resisting; they don't have the guts, they can't have, because all that they have is borrowed. They are easily purchasable, cheap. But they become a very significant protective wall around the establishment. People look towards them with respect. People think that if a Nobel prize winner is saying something it must be right -- as if by winning the Nobel prize one attains to enlightenment, nirvana! It is a political game. It is all politics. Once in a while they go on giving a Nobel prize to a Russian scientist, to some scientist whom they would like to get out of Russia; his being in Russia is dangerous for them. He is close to finding something -- or he has found it already -- in which they are far behind. Now you see the ways of the politicians? Give the man a Nobel prize -- now you create trouble. The scientist is not capable of resisting the temptation of accepting the Nobel prize, because that is the world's greatest honor. It does not happen to everybody; it happens once in a while to one individual in millions. Now, a poor scientist, howsoever great a scientist he may be -- as a man he is a poor man with all the desires to be famous, to be well known. Now, the politicians have put him into a dilemma: if he accepts the Nobel prize he goes against the Russian establishment because the Russian establishment knows perfectly well -- politicians know each other well; nobody knows them as well as they know each other. They speak the same language, they work the same strategies. The Russian politicians know why the Nobel prize has been given to this man. By giving the Nobel prize a rift has been created between the man and the Soviet government. The Soviet pressure will be: "Reject the Nobel prize. It comes from the capitalist world; it is not an honor, in fact it is an insult. Reject it, and if you don't reject it then you will be in trouble." And it has happened with many people: either they have been imprisoned ... that's what the politicians of the other side wanted, that they should be imprisoned so their work is spoiled. They may have been coming close to something which may have made Russia the most powerful nation in the world. They have disrupted it; they have sabotaged it in a very clever way -- without interfering, without saying a single world. Or if the man has a world-wide reputation already -- which scientists generally don't have ... perhaps a literary person, a poet, a novelist may have. If the person has a world-wide reputation, then from all capitalist countries all the intellectuals, their institutions, academies and societies will start a great campaign and movement against the Russian government. Now, the Russian government has only two choices: either to release that man and stop this campaign .... But they cannot keep this man any longer in the country; he has become an enemy. And now he is in the hands of the enemies, he can become an informer. He is dangerous -- he has to be expelled. That too is good for the capitalist world. Once the man is expelled he is received with great honor all over the capitalist world; he is made a hero. If you look into the ways the politicians go on doing things you will be surprised. But they succeed only with intellectuals, because intellectuals are really not intelligent people. If they were intelligent then nobody could manipulate them, neither the communist nor the capitalist; nobody would be capable of manipulating them. It would be impossible; they would see things clearly. Intelligence is of the soul. Intellect is of the mind. Mind is just garbage. Mind is that which has been given to you by others. The whole collection, the whole junkyard all kinds of people have been throwing in you -- that is your mind. That mind continuously suffers from an inferiority complex, is bound to suffer: it has nothing of its own, it has no ground underneath its feet. The mind wants power, prestige. It can have power through politics, which is the criminal's way. If your mind has a criminal tendency then you will follow the path of politics. Politicians and criminals are not basically different people. Politicians are successful criminals. Criminals are unsuccessful politicians. Criminals are poor, pitiable. They had tried but they failed. Politicians are of the same tribe, with only one difference: they have succeeded. And in this world success makes everything right. What you have done, how you have arrived, what method and means you have used -- who bothers about it? When you are successful it is enough proof that you are a man of tremendous capacity. Your success is the proof. And when you have failed, your failure is also a proof that you were hankering for the moon; you were just foolish. Try to walk on the earth, don't try to fly towards the moon; otherwise you will fall and get multiple fractures. That's what poor criminals have got -- multiple fractures. But the mind of the politician and the criminal is the same. Those who are not courageous enough will go in a way which can lead either to the world of criminals or to the world of politicians. Of course, of the hundred people who will walk on the path, ninety-nine will go to the world of criminals; ninety-nine will be in the jails. One percent will also be in jail, but of a different kind: it is called the White House. All kinds of black deeds -- naturally you have to call the house the "White House" to hide them. I have heard: a black man, very old, hair all white, was following a woman, a young girl -- must have been of the age of his grandchildren -- with such lustful eyes that another old man, his friend, stopped him and said, "This does not suit you. It was okay at one time, but all your hair has become white, and you are following that girl with such dirty eyes -- everybody is shocked." Do you know what the man said? He said, "You will never understand anything. My hair is white, but that doesn't mean that my heart has become white: it is still black and it is going to remain black. Even if I were dead and this girl passed by my side, I would have opened my eyes and looked with the same lustful eyes. What has hair to do with it? What kind of argument are you giving to me, that `your hair is white'? Let my hair be white -- I am not!" But white hair helps you to hide black deeds. I have always wondered why they call this topmost criminal place in the world the White House. Perhaps unknowingly the idea came from their unconscious that everything inside is going to be black, but from the outside you have to keep a white face, everything clean. One person reaches to the White House, ninety-nine to the black houses. So there are people who are not courageous enough to take this risk -- ninety-nine percent possibility of failing, and only one percent possibility of succeeding. They want far surer ground. Religion provides that ground: there is no failure in it. You become religious, you become a great religious leader. If you succeed you become a great saint; if you don't succeed, still you are a small saint, you don't fail. The smallest saint is still a saint -- the lowliest priest is still in the same line as the pope. In religion there is no failure. So, cowardly people -- who are as much interested in gaining power, who are suffering as much from an inferiority complex, who are on a power trip but don't have the guts to follow the criminal path -- find the path of righteousness, ascetism, morality, prayer. By becoming a saint they will also attain to power. Of course, this power cannot be very effective. They cannot become Alexander the Great, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin; they cannot have millions of lives in their hands -- and now such politicians have the whole of humanity's life in their hands. Of course these saints can't have that much, but in a certain way, from a different aspect, they are more powerful because the politicians will come to touch their feet, the presidents will come to bow down in respect to them. The politician does everything according to a particular strategy. If just before the elections President Reagan goes to the Vatican to pay respects to the Catholic pope, it is not accidental, it is preplanned. When Reagan goes to the Vatican and gives his respects to the Catholic pope, all the Catholics of America are, without much effort, converted to giving him votes: this is the right man. All the bishops, all the cardinals in America will now tell their congregations that Reagan is our man. Now, to persuade so many Catholics in America ... if he had to go from home to home it would have taken eternity. And how many stupid things politicians have to do! They have to go on kissing all kinds of children -- their noses are running and they are kissing them .... The politician has to do it. This is easier, to go to the pope -- just kiss his hand and millions of Catholics are on your side. And the pope blesses you: that way he feels far superior to the presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens. Of course his power is only airy-fairy, but you enjoy it. It has nothing substantial in it, it is hollow inside. But it does not matter, because when the presidents and the prime ministers come, the whole media is there, all the newspapers, all the television stations of the world, all the radio stations are talking about the pope -- you can feel a certain gratification. But the gratification is of the same desire -- the will-to-power. That's why I go on talking about the political leaders and the religious leaders without making any distinction -- because there is no distinction at all, only a superficial distinction. Their psyches are functioning in the same way. Neither the religious leader nor the politician is interested in the people whom they pretend to lead. They are interested in being leaders -- and of course the leader cannot be without the led, so it is a necessity to go on promising the people things. Politicians promise them things of this world; religious leaders promise them things of the other world. But do you see any difference in what they are doing? Both are promising so that you go on following them, afraid to get lost somewhere else, because if you lose the path then you will miss the promise. The promise keeps you with the crowd -- and promises don't cost anything. You can promise anything. Promises are always for tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes. And you are not going to live here forever. Just look at past history. All politicians have been promising people things which have not materialized in thousands of years. Thousands of political leaders have been promising the same things. How blind humanity must be! The promises have not changed -- that means certainly nothing has been achieved. The same promises are being given to you and you go on following, hoping. Hope is the greatest drug that man has invented. Strange, that religious people are against drugs; politicians are also against drugs. Politicians make laws against drugs, religious people create hell and punishment against drugs. Why are they so afraid of drugs? It needs a deep search, investigation. They are afraid of drugs because drugs are competitors to them. LSD can give you hallucinations of heaven. That's the trouble. No religion can afford to allow people to use LSD. LSD is not dangerous; taken in the right proportions, under medical care, it can be tremendously helpful in religious growth. But religions are not ready to allow it for the simple reason that if LSD can give you a beautiful experience -- hallucinatory, but still it is an experience and tremendously satisfying, fulfilling -- then just promises will look like dry bones without any juice in them. Only idiots perhaps may continue to chew the dry bones. Dogs do that. They chew dry bones and enjoy very much, not knowing what is happening. When they chew dry bones those dry bones hurt their mouths and their mouths start bleeding. The more they chew, the more bleeding happens. And blood goes through their throat and they think -- logically enough -- that the blood is coming from the bone. Now, how to explain to a dog that, "it is your own blood; the bone is absolutely dry." So perhaps a few idiots may still continue to go to the churches, but intelligent people will stop. Rather, when they feel the urge to have a beautiful hallucination, whenever they want to live in another world, they will not wait for death to come: they will go to a medical clinic and have a two, three-day session with LSD, and enjoy everything that their religious leaders have been telling them that they will get after death. Drugs are dangerous to religions for the simple reason that they are their greatest competitors. And even better drugs can be invented, but religions continuously cripple the research. Politicians are against drugs, because if people start taking drugs then who cares about your five-year plans? Who cares about the classless society that will come in the future to your grandchildren? Who cares about the revolution, democracy, freedom of speech? You don't have even the freedom to hallucinate! This is absolutely innocent because only you are doing it, nobody else is involved. No, you don't have the freedom to hallucinate. Reduced to the basics, that's what drug prohibition means, that you don't have the freedom to hallucinate. The government is in control of your dreams. Drugs can give you dreams, and properly used, can help you to see many things in yourself which in psychoanalysis will take three years, four years; then too it is not certain that you will be able to see. It is a well-known fact that scientists have discovered something like truth serum, but it is prevented from being used, because if something like truth serum is possible .... You take an injection of truth serum and then suddenly you can see all your falsities, your hypocrisies, your bogus personality ... and certainly if anything can make you aware of truth, it is bound to make you aware of all that is false: that is going to happen simultaneously. The moment you see the truth you see the false too. Now, the whole of politics depends on falsities. Communism goes on talking about equality of people -- an utter untruth. People are not equal, people are unique. Once you see the truth, that people are unique, how can they be equal? That does not mean that somebody is inferior to you and somebody is superior to you. You are not equal, you are not unequal either. You are simply different. You don't compare things that are different. You don't say that the house and the tree are equal. If you say that, you will be thought insane, because a house is a house and a tree is a tree; they have different functions. Their individualities are different. You don't compare them. You cannot say that the house is superior to the tree, or the tree is superior to the house. In fact, the category of comparison is inapplicable. Each individual is so unique. When you know the truth of it you cannot be a communist. Communism will never allow anything that makes you aware of the truth. In the non-communist countries, there are different lies, different falsities. For example, freedom of expression: it exists nowhere; it is only written in constitutions. Once I was in a court in Ahmedabad in India, for absolutely ungrounded complaints against me -- I was talking to a big rally of at least twenty thousand people who had gathered to listen to me -- for the simple reason that Morarji Desai was the chief minister of Gujarat at that time, and he wanted me to be prohibited from entering Gujarat. He could not convince his own assembly and cabinet that by preventing a person ... they said, "You will be creating trouble for yourself and for the cabinet. What reasons have you got? What has he done against Gujarat? What crime has he committed that you can prevent him from coming to Gujarat? And it goes against the constitution, because the Indian constitution declares it as one of the basic rights that in India, every citizen of India has the right of movement. Now, you are preventing him from moving into Gujarat: you have to give some solid reasons; otherwise you will be in trouble." And the moment I heard I said, "Let their parliament decide -- I will be there already in Gujarat." So I was addressing the people, and while addressing them I mentioned a small story. In Mahatma Gandhi's ashram they used to read the story of Rama, the Hindu incarnation of God, every day. Each evening Acharya Vinoba Bhave would read the story of Rama, and Gandhi and all the followers -- and there were not many, just twenty, thirty people -- would listen to the story. There comes a moment when Rama's wife, Sita, is stolen by his enemy, Ramana. She is in difficulty: How to make Rama know by what path Ramana has taken her? She must have been an intelligent woman; she tried one strategy -- she started dropping her ornaments. And Indian women, and particularly a queen, have so many ornaments; they weigh much more than she herself does. She started dropping her ornaments one by one on the path so Rama would know exactly where she had been taken. And Rama found them but he could not recognize whether they were Sita's ornaments or somebody else's. His brother, Lakshmana, was with him. Lakshmana said, "You seem to be puzzled. What is the matter?" He said, "I cannot recognize them because I loved her so much that whenever she was with me I looked at her, I never looked at her ornaments. I cannot recognize them -- perhaps you can. Just look at the ornaments: if they are hers then we are on the right path." Lakshmana said, "Forgive me, because I can only recognize the ornaments that she used to wear on her feet." Indian women wear ornaments on their feet, even on their toes. He recognized them. He said, "These are her ornaments." At this point of the story Mahatma gandhi said, "This is strange! I can understand Rama loved the woman so much he did not recognize her ornaments. But what about Lakshmana? -- he was living with them for years. Ahead was Rama -- because they had been expelled from their kingdom for fourteen years to live in the forest .... so ahead was Rama, in the middle was Sita, behind was Lakshmana, just to guard. It is strange that he could not recognize any other ornament." Vinoba, who was a celibate for his whole life -- now he is dead -- gave an explanation which appealed to Gandhi very much, so much so that just before this explanation, Vinoba was known only as Vinoba Bhave; but because of this explanation Gandhi gave him the title of acharya, a master. The explanation was that Lakshmana never looked at any other part of Sita's body. He was a celibate and to look at anybody's wife is not right for a celibate. But because he used to touch her feet every morning, he had to see the ornaments on her feet, just out of necessity. What could he do? -- he had to touch her feet every morning. The elder brother's wife is just like a mother. She has to be respected, and the first thing in the morning was to touch her feet; so that's why he could recognize the ornaments of the feet only. This is an outlandish explanation, nowhere ever given before. The story is five thousand years old, and there have been so many commentaries on it, but nobody had even asked the question and nobody had answered it. Gandhi was immensely impressed, and said, "Vinoba is an acharya -- just this simple explanation shows his insight into human psychology." Talking to the masses in the rally I said, "This explanation does not show anything about Lakshmana, it shows something about Vinoba Bhave. It is not Lakshmana's explanation; obviously, it is Vinoba Bhave's explanation, and it shows his mind. He is afraid to look at women's faces, or the other parts of their bodies. It is his fear that he is projecting on Lakshmana. "And if his explanation is true then Lakshmana falls in my eyes completely. If Sita was just like a mother to him, still was he afraid to look at her face? One has to be afraid of looking at one's own mother? That means he must have been dreaming sexual dreams about Sita, fantasizing about her. "This explanation is insulting to Lakshmana, and I reject it as an explanation. My feeling is that Sita was so beautiful -- if she was so beautiful for her husband, what to say about others? If the husband himself was so hypnotized by her beauty that he never saw her ornaments, what to say of poor Lakshmana? He must have been hypnotized even more! "A husband sooner or later gets fed up. In fact a husband stops looking at his wife's face, her body: he looks at everything in the room except his wife. If you enquire into couples you can be convinced of what I am saying. Just ask any husband, `How long has it been since you looked directly into your wife's eyes, her face?' -- and he will start scratching his head. `It is difficult; perhaps since the honeymoon I have not looked at her.' "But Lakshmana .... And it is just one side, that your elder brother's wife is equal to your mother. The other side is that the younger brother of a woman's husband is known in Hindi as devar. Devar means her second husband. In case the husband dies he has the first right to marry her. Var means husband; devar means second husband. "Just as there are presidents and vice-presidents -- in case the president dies the vice-president becomes the acting president -- devar is simply a ready-made husband in case of emergency." A case was put against me, that I had hurt the religious feelings of the Hindus. In the court there were many problems. The first was that I was asked to take the oath in the name of God, or in the name of the constitution of India, that I would speak only the truth. I said, "Before I take the oath I would like to ask you: What about freedom of speech? The oath goes against freedom of speech. You are binding me. You are telling me I can speak only the truth; then why in the constitution do you talk about freedom of speech? You should have said, `You are free to speak only the truth.' Freedom of speech has no boundaries to it. "How can I go against the constitution? I can take the oath that I will follow the constitution, use freedom of speech, but I cannot say truth or untruth, because that divides freedom of speech in two parts." The magistrate said, "This is a little difficult. I have been a magistrate for twenty years, I have been studying the constitution in every possible way, all its aspects, but that this oath is against freedom of speech never occurred to me." I said, "You don't know what freedom of speech is. But," I said, "I don't want to change the subject, so just to continue I will take the oath. But remember, you can believe in my oath, but you cannot believe in my other statements. On what grounds do you make the distinction? If I am a person who lies, I can lie when I am taking the oath. Who prevents me? "You know perfectly well that everybody takes the oath here and everybody is not speaking the truth. Both the parties fighting in a case take the oath; certainly both the parties are not speaking the truth. At least one party certainly is not speaking the truth; perhaps both are not speaking the truth. But both speaking the truth is not possible; otherwise how are you going to make the judgment? "You accept my oath -- on what grounds? Do you know me, that I speak the truth? That I will take the oath and will follow it? What gives you that guarantee? I will remain the same person as I was afterwards, so it makes no difference to me. I can take the oath just so that we can proceed, because there are so many problems." The judge said, "Problems? For you or for me?" I said, "You have summoned me to the court" -- and there were thousands of people who had come; they were in the court and outside the court. And that man who had put the case against me -- a Hindu political leader, a Hindu chauvinist -- became afraid seeing so many people sympathetic towards me. I said to the judge, "Look: first, I was simply quoting a statement of Mahatma Gandhi, and an explanation of Vinoba Bhave. If anybody has hurt the feelings of Hindus, they should put cases against Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave. I was just quoting them, without inverted commas. "It was not my explanation. In fact I was offended by the explanation that Vinoba has given. Vinoba's explanation means that he thinks that Lakshmana has some sexual interest in Sita. That is purely his explanation. Said in plain words, he is afraid to look at Sita's face. Why? If he is not sexually interested he should not be afraid. Vinoba is trying to make an explanation which is insulting. "I am saying that Sita was so beautiful -- anybody would have been interested. I would have been interested. You would have been interested. Beauty is not something that one should not be interested in. It is one of the gifts of nature; it has to be adored. And my feeling is he was touching her feet every day because Sita was so beautiful; he was adoring her. "And you know the meaning of devar -- that he was the second husband. Now, if somebody is hurt, then he should put a case against the whole Hindu tradition, that this tradition is in a mess. On the one hand you say treat your brother's wife as your mother -- okay, treat her as your mother. But when the brother dies, then? -- treat your mother as your wife! "And this man who has complained against me and forced me to come from Calcutta to here, unnecessarily wasting my time -- is he the only Hindu in Ahmedabad? These thousands of people are here -- these are all Hindus. You ask those whose feelings are hurt to raise their hands. And if you don't ask then I am going to ask." So the magistrate had to ask. Not a single hand was raised. I said, "Now you can see: nobody's feelings are hurt. This man is a Hindu chauvinist." At that time the man became afraid and he told the magistrate, "I want police protection, because after the court this crowd can kill me." I asked the magistrate, "Do you want any more argument that nobody's feelings are hurt? This man is afraid of Hindus, that they will kill him. They should kill me -- I should ask for the protection of the court because I have hurt the feelings of Hindus, he hasn't. Why should he be afraid? "And why should I have been called to the court? Why is Vinoba Bhave not being called? Of course, Gandhi is dead -- you cannot summon him, but he is not needed anyway. Vinoba is alive -- why has he not been called to the court? Just because he belongs to the party who rules the country? Because he is a guru to all the politicians of the country, you didn't have the guts to summon him? "He was needed to answer whether I am quoting right or wrong. If he says that I am quoting wrong, then certainly I have to be answerable for it. And my advocate had asked you to summon Vinoba because it is most important and essential, what he says. Still you did not summon Vinoba. And still you go on saying that the courts are impartial? "Just look at the fact: I was simply quoting him. It was the court's duty to ask the man whether I am quoting him rightly or wrongly. You should have called him here; we could have argued in front of you and made it clear to Vinoba that he is sexually obsessed and he is projecting his sexual obsession on poor Lakshmana. "I was protecting Lakshmana. Vinoba should put a case against me. And this man is simply an idiot: he does not understand even what I was saying. He does not know what it means. But Vinoba is not called. And," I said, "I will not appear again in the court unless Vinoba is called." The judge had no guts -- because the prime minister goes to Vinoba, the cabinet ministers go to Vinoba, the president goes to Vinoba. To call Vinoba to the court would incur anger from all sides. The judge dismissed the case. He could not do anything else -- he simply dismissed the case. Politics has power. Vinoba was a religious leader, but through the politicians he has power. Although that power is not very substantial, still the power is there. The religious leader or the political leader -- both are in the same boat, helping each other. The politician protects the religious leader, the religious leader protects the politician. He protects him through people's religious feelings, and the politician protects the religious leader by his power. It is a mutual understanding. Hence I don't make any difference between the two. To me, the political leader is more criminal-minded; hence is ready to take the risk. The religious leader is a coward, but cunning; through cunningness he manages to rise even higher than the political leader; at least in the abstract sense he is higher than the political leader. But the desire of both is the same: to rule, to have control over millions of people. To me, a man who does not suffer from an inferiority complex has no need even to lead a single man, to be powerful over even a single man. Such a man, if he is a husband, will not have any power over his wife. He will be just a friend, not a husband. The word husband is ugly. It comes from husbandry: just as the farmer sows seeds in the ground, the husband does husbandry with the wife, he sows seeds. The woman is just like the earth and the husband is the possessor of the earth, the owner. The word husband is ugly, it should be changed. The whole idea is very primitive, crude. The wife is not taken as a human being but as earth which you can sell. And it has been the case in the past: in many cultures wives were sold, purchased. In China you could have killed your wife -- it was not a crime because she was your possession. If you destroy your chair it is nobody's business; the chair was your possession -- so was your wife. Just because I mentioned Vinoba Bhave I remember ... I had met him many times. One time he was giving his daily discourse in his ashram -- and what ashrams these people had! Twelve widows, that was his ashram. And those widows were listening to his great discourse. I just happened to pass from Wardha to Nagpur and his ashram was just outside the Wardha city, by the side of a river, Pavanar; hence the name of his ashram, Paramdham Pavanar. The friend who was driving me said, "This is the time Vinoba's discourse starts. Would you like ...?" I said, "There is no harm," so we went and sat. He had already started and he was telling an upanishadic story. The story was about a very famous upanishadic seer. His name was Raikva, Maharishi Raikva, but he was better known as Gadivan Raikva because he always traveled in a bullock cart. Gadivan means one who drives the bullock cart. But in those days to have a beautiful bullock cart was something very special, it was not ordinary. Even today in Indian villages to have a beautiful bullock cart is to have a great possession. Gadivan Raikva went to a market where girls were being sold. It was a market to purchase slaves -- men, women. Now, in the first place what is a maharishi doing in a market where slaves are being sold? Vinoba did not bother about that. There was one very beautiful girl, and when the auction began on the girl, Maharishi Raikva started raising the price. But it was difficult because the king of the country was also present and he was also interested in the girl, and he was doubling the price. Now, Gadivan Raikva was a rich maharishi, but not to be compared with the king. Finally the king purchased the girl at a very high price. Raikva was very angry. After ten years .... this is the whole story that I am telling. Vinoba did not tell this part of the story, of the slave market, Raikva's competition with the king, his defeat, the girl being purchased by the king. All this part was left out. Vinoba began praising Raikva, his wisdom, and started the story ten years after this incident: The king was becoming old and wanted somebody to guide him in the spiritual life, so he went to Gadivan Raikva with many chariots full of gold, money, valuable clothes. He offered everything to Raikva, touched his feet, and Raikva said -- he used the word "sudra" for him. "Sudra" is the worst you can say to a man. It is difficult to translate in English, so I will say, "You son-of-a-bitch! You think that by all this money you can purchase spiritual guidance? I spit on all your money -- take it back!" This was the main emphasis in Vinoba's story, and he said, "These were the people who could throw all those valuable presents and say directly -- even to the king -- `You are a sudra, the worst kind of human being: untouchable. The very idea in your mind, that by money you can purchase spiritual guidance, makes you untouchable. Just take all this rubbish from here and don't come back to me.'" So Vinoba talked much about it, that this was the courage of the seers of India, that they could even insult a great king without being afraid. I was very puzzled, because those twelve widows were listening in great silence as if some great thing was being said. I said, "Vinoba, you have not told the whole story. You have left out two portions, first in the middle of the story -- which is very important in order to understand in what context this man Raikva was speaking -- and you have left out the end part also .... Because the king went home and he asked his prime minister what to do: Raikva has refused, and he was very angry. The prime minister said, "I knew it was going to happen. You must have forgotten: ten years before you had, in an auction, defeated Raikva; now if you want him to guide you, you take that woman rather than money. Offer the woman to the man. Touch his feet, ask his forgiveness, and he will guide you ...." He took the woman, and Raikva received him with great joy, accepted him as a disciple and guided him into spirituality. I said, "These two parts you have dropped from the story. You are cheating these twelve widows. Now, what authority have you got to change the story? Who are you? On what grounds did you drop those two parts? -- because without those two parts the story takes a totally different color. It seems as if Raikva is so high that money does not matter to him, but the reality is that it is not a question of money. The woman that was taken from his hands matters too much to him. "And this man who carries for ten years a revengeful attitude, and for ten years is still lusting for the woman -- what spiritual guidance can he give?" I asked him, "You tell me what spiritual guidance this man can give -- and why you dropped these two parts from the story." And since that time Vinoba remained angry with me. He said, "The time is over, so if you want to discuss you will have to come to my ..." I said, "I don't want to discuss, because there is nothing to discuss; I simply wanted to make the story complete -- and I have made it complete and all the widows have understood. You have understood. What argument? I have nothing to do with all these kinds of rogues, this Gadivan Raikva. What do I have to do with this man? I wanted simply to make the story complete, just out of a sense of appropriateness; otherwise I am not interested." But this kind of thing is not expected of a man of integrity. This is simply cheating. These are "religious" people. Indira used to go for spiritual guidance to Vinoba Bhave. I told Indira Gandhi -- I had told her this story -- "This is spiritual guidance? You are also a widow; when you are no longer a prime minister go into his ashram." But Vinoba died before Indira, and then she died, so the chance never came; otherwise she would have ended up in Vinoba Bhave's ashram of widows. And I asked her: "What do you say? Is this a man who has some sense of being truthful? And if Raikva could not give guidance, I say to you this Vinoba also cannot give you any guidance." Misguidance perhaps .... We have never heard what happened to the king, what spiritual growth he obtained; the Indian spiritual history remembers nothing of the king. But it is natural, because whatever advice this idiot must have given could not be called spiritual -- this man was not spiritual. But this is how religious leaders and political leaders .... They are all made of the same stuff, the same holy cow-dung. I don't see any difference, except superficial differences about which there is no need to talk. BELOVED OSHO, WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON THE DEATH PENALTY?

The death penalty is a degrading proof of man's inhumanity to man. It shows that man is still living in the barbarous age. Civilization still remains an idea -- it has not become a reality. The death penalty is so idiotic that you will have to look from all the aspects to understand why such an idiotic thing has continued in all the civilizations, cultures, nations. Even in a few countries where it was dropped it has been adopted again. In a few other countries where it has been dropped, it has been replaced by life imprisonment -- which is worse than the death penalty itself. It is better to die in a single moment than to go on dying slowly for fifty years, sixty years. Changing from the death penalty to a life sentence is going not towards civilization, it is going still deeper into barbarous, inhuman darkness, unconsciousness. The first thing to remember is that the death penalty is not really a punishment. If you cannot give life as a reward, you cannot give death as a penalty. This is a simple logic, there cannot be two opinions about it. If you cannot give life to people, what right have you to take their life? I am reminded of a true story. It happened that two criminals were in search of a treasure that was hidden in a castle. Many people had tried but had not found the way; somehow these criminals stumbled upon the treasure. The treasure was so vast that one of the two was not willing to divide it. The only way was to kill the other, but in killing the other he might get caught. There was danger, and now he could not take any risk because the whole treasure was in his hands. He managed a very cunning way. He disappeared and spread the rumor that he had been murdered, and he left all the evidence that would prove that his friend was the murderer. The friend was caught with all the proofs: his revolver was there; two bullets were missing, and his fingerprints were on the revolver. His handkerchief with his name embroidered on it had fallen .... And only he knew the place where the friend was hiding in the jungles against the police, because they had done other crimes also, and there was a price on both of them to be caught alive or dead. He could not prove his innocence; there was no way -- everything went against him. He was given the death penalty. He knew he had not murdered his friend; he knew that this whole thing was a plot. His friend was not dead; it was just to keep the whole treasure, that the friend had removed him in a legal way, out of the way. But he escaped from the prison before he was executed. After twelve years he came into the court, dragging the dead body of a very famous politician, a rich man of the city, and he told the court -- it was the same judge -- "I have murdered this man, and I dare you to punish me. But first let me tell you the whole story. I am the man who twelve years ago you had sentenced to death. I escaped from the prison because I was absolutely innocent, but I had no proof." In fact innocence has never any proof. Proofs are for the crime or against the crime, but innocence has no proof. He said, "Now I have murdered the man you charged me twelve years ago for having murdered -- this is the man. If your first judgment was right then you cannot punish me again for the same murder because that man was murdered twelve years ago. And if your first judgment was not right, how can you be sure that your second judgment is going to be right?" Can you punish a man for murdering the same man twice? It is really very difficult to decide. He said, "The only crime I have committed is escaping from the jail, but can you call it a crime? When you punish an innocent man with death, who is the criminal -- you or me? "And this man plotted the whole thing; he managed all those proofs because he had my revolver, he had my handkerchief. He managed all those proofs, escaped from there with the treasure that we had both found, became a rich man, famous. He changed his name, his personality, shaved off his beard, changed his hair-do, and became respectable; he opened a hospital, a school, made a temple. And this is the man who managed the plot to show he had been murdered. "In that way he was saved from the punishment for other crimes for which the police were searching for him; now he has been murdered -- so that file is closed. He killed two birds by one stone: he killed me, not directly, but through a legal procedure. He used all you idiots to kill me, so that he would become the whole owner of the treasure -- and he did. By the same strategy he removed all crimes against him. The file was closed, the man was dead -- of course, his body was not found. The murderer had been very clever, because he was a known criminal." The story has many implications. The man asked, "If I was sentenced to death and I had not escaped and was executed, what would have been the case now? If it had come to be known that the man thought to be murdered is alive, would you be able to give me my life back? If you cannot give my life back, what right have you to take it away?" It is said the judge resigned, apologized to the man and said, "Perhaps I have done many crimes in my life." A strange thing all over the world is that unless you are proved innocent, you are guilty. This goes against all humanitarian ideals, democracy, freedom, respect for individuality; it goes against all. The rule should be: unless you are proved guilty you are innocent. Yes, it is said in words, but in reality the case is just the opposite. For example, this city, Rajneeshpuram, is, in the opinion of the attorney general of Oregon, illegal. It is just an opinion. He is not a judge; he has to go before the court to prove it. Unless he proves that the city is guilty of being illegal, the city is legal, we are innocent. Until guilt is proved, innocence needs no proof. But this is not the case. Although America goes on claiming to be the greatest democracy in the world, it is sheer bullshit. The Supreme Court of America goes on declaring that unless a person is proved guilty, he is innocent. Innocence needs no proof; otherwise it would be impossible for anybody to live. If everybody has to prove his innocence; otherwise he is a guilty man and he should be thrown into jail because he cannot prove his innocence .... How do you prove your innocence? Innocence is not an act, it leaves no traces behind, no evidence. So the Supreme Court says, "This is our standpoint: Unless a man is proved guilty, he is innocent." But this is only said, because our city is already being regarded by the state government, by the federal government, as illegal -- without it having been proved before a court. The case is still in the court. The court is theirs, but they cannot wait even for the court to decide. The federal government has stopped giving the money that was due to the city; not only that, the federal government has asked that the money that they have given for the past two years should be returned. For two years the city was legal. And what support have they given? -- two hundred and sixty-five dollars! I would like the mayor of your city to return the money with interest. Such a poor government, giving such a great support to the city, certainly needs at least bank-rate interest on the great sum of two hundred and sixty-five dollars. These nuts think they are democratic. The state government has stopped giving their share. The attorney general has been forcing the police authorities to declare our city's police also illegal. This is strange. You have not proved us guilty, you cannot prove us guilty; in fact your own court has incorporated the city with all legalities fulfilled. For two years your governments -- state and federal both -- have been accepting the city, training the police, having its police department in the city. You arrange the elections for the mayor, for the council. Everything proves that the city is legal. Just one man who wants to rise in political power, who wants to become the next governor, is in need of us. Without our support in Oregon nobody can become the governor. But our support is a strange kind of support: anybody who wants to win an election has to be against us. Just being against us is enough to gain the support of all the bigots, of all the Christians, of all the orthodox, conventional people, of all those who think that Oregon is their property. Just to be against us .... Without proving in a court -- and even if you prove in one court that does not mean that you have proved it. We can appeal. The case will not be decided for at least twenty to thirty years -- not before that. It will have to go up to the Supreme Court of the United States. We are not going to be humiliated in any way. And when the law is in our favor, the whole democratic concept is behind us, all the values that democracy cherishes are in our support, there is no reason at all .... But they have started accepting us as illegal. This is how man goes on saying one thing and goes on doing just its opposite. He talks about being civilized, cultured -- he is not civilized, not cultured. The death penalty is a proof enough. This is the rule of a barbarous society: An eye for an eye, and a head for a head. If somebody cuts off one of your hands, then in a barbarous society, this is a simple law: one of his hands should be cut off. The same has been carried down the ages. The death penalty is exactly the same law: An eye for an eye. If a man is thought to have murdered somebody, then he should be murdered. But it is strange: if killing somebody is a crime, then how can you remove crime from society by committing the same crime again? There was one man murdered; now there are two men murdered. And it is not certain that this man murdered that man, because to prove a murder is not an easy thing. If murder is wrong, then whether it is committed by the man or by the society and its court, makes no difference. Killing certainly is a crime. The death penalty is a crime committed by the society against a single individual, who is helpless. I cannot call it a penalty, it is a crime. And you can understand why it is committed: it is a revenge. Society is taking revenge because the man did not follow the rules of the society; the society is ready to kill him. But nobody bothers that when somebody murders, it shows that man is psychologically sick. Rather than sending him to imprisonment or to be executed, he should be sent into a nursing home where he can be taken care of -- physically, psychologically, spiritually. He is sick. He needs all the compassion of the society; there is no question of penalty, punishment. Yes, it is true, one man is murdered; but we cannot do anything about it. By murdering this man do you think the other will come back to life? If that were possible, I would be all in support of this man being removed -- he is not worth being part of the society -- and the other should be revived. But that does not happen. The other is gone forever; there is no way to revive him. Yes, you can do one thing, you can kill this man too. You are trying to wash blood with blood, mud with mud. You are not aware of what has happened in history in many cases. Three hundred years ago, in many cultures the madman was thought to be pretending. In many other cultures he was thought to be possessed by ghosts. In other cultures he was thought to be mad, but treatable by punishment. And these were the three ways mad people were taken care of. They were treated by beatings -- strange treatment! -- and by taking their blood out. Now you give blood transfusions; they used to do just the opposite -- they used to take the blood out of the man. It was thought that he had too much energy. Naturally when his blood was taken out he became weak; he started showing signs of weakness because so much blood was taken out, and it was thought they had cured him of his madness. By beating a man, naturally once in a while it used to happen that the man came to his senses. It is almost as if a man is asleep and you start beating him and he wakes up. A madman has fallen out of his conscious mind. If you beat him too hard, once in a while it may happen that he wakes up into his consciousness again. That became a proof that beating is the right treatment. But is used to happen only once in a while; ninety-nine percent of the cases were unnecessarily beaten. But that one exception was the rule. It was thought that he was possessed by spirits, ghosts; then too beat him, because if he is possessed by ghosts the beating will reach the ghost, not him. You are not beating him, you are really beating the ghosts who are possessing him, and because of the beating they will escape. And once in a while, but just once in a while, that is one percent, no more than that .... I have been in one place -- it was very famous for mad people. Hundreds of mad people were brought to that place. It was on the bank of a river, a temple, and the priest must have been a butcher for at least a few hundred lives. He looked like a butcher and he gave a good beating. The mad people were chained, given a good beating, no food, and very strong laxatives. And I have seen that once in a while a person came to his senses. Strong laxatives for a few days with no food cleaned his inner system. Beatings brought him back a little consciousness. No food, hunger -- a hungry man cannot afford to be mad because his body is in such torture. To be mad you need a little bit of comfort in your life situation. You can see it: the more comfortable a society, the more luxurious, affluent a culture, the more people go mad. The more poor a society -- starving, hungry -- the less people go mad. Madness needs, in the first place, a mind. But a hungry person has no nourishment for the mind. He is undernourished: his mind is not in a situation to go nuts. For that the mind needs more energy than ordinarily is involved in life. Madness is a rich man's disease. The poor man cannot afford it. So when you keep a person hungry and give him laxatives, it cleanses his inner system, makes him so hungry that he becomes bodily-oriented. He forgets the mind, the question is the body. He is no longer interested in mind and mind games. Madness is a mind game. So once in a while I have seen people being cured there, but that one percent cured would spread the rumor all around, and hundreds of people were coming there. The temple became very rich. I had gone there many times to see it but only once did I meet a man who had been cured; others went back to their homes just beaten, hungry, starved, more sick, more weak. Many died through that priest's treatment. But in India if the treatment is being given in a temple, a sacred place, by the priest, it is not a crime if you die; in fact you are fortunate that you are dying in a sacred place. You will be born on a higher level of consciousness; so it is not a crime. But I spoke against the man wherever I went and I said, "This is absolutely criminal. What authority has he or what medical qualifications has he? Is he a psychiatrist, physiologist? -- he is only a priest." But priests have been treating mad people for centuries, in the same way, all over the world. Now we know that a mad person cannot be treated this way. Mad people were put into prison, in isolated cells. Still that is happening around the world because we don't know what to do. Just to hide our ignorance we put the mad person into jail, so we can forget about him; at least we can go on ignoring that he exists. In my town one of my friends' uncles was mad. They were rich people. I used to go in their house often, but even I became aware only after years that one of his uncles was kept in an underground basement, chained. I said, "Why?" They said, "He is mad. There were only two ways: either we keep him in our own house, chained .... And of course we cannot keep him chained in the house; otherwise people will be coming and everybody will feel worried and concerned. And his children, his wife, watching their father, their husband .... And it is against our family's reputation to send him to prison, so we found this way: we have imprisoned him underground. His food is being taken to him by a servant; otherwise nobody goes to see him, nobody goes to meet him." I persuaded my friend, "I would like to meet your uncle." He said, "But I cannot come with you -- he is a dangerous man, he is mad! Although he is chained he can do anything." I said, "He can at the most kill me. You just remain behind me so if I am killed you escape, but I would like to go." Because I insisted, he managed to get the key from the servant who used to take the food. In thirty years I was the first person from the outside world, other than the servant, who had met him; and that man may have been mad -- I cannot say -- but now he was not mad. But nobody was ready to listen to him because all mad people say, "We are not mad." So when he said this to the servant, "Tell my family that I am not mad," the servant simply laughed. He even told the family but nobody took any note of it. When I saw the man, I sat with him, I talked with him. He was as sane as anybody else in the world -- perhaps a little more, because he said one thing to me: "Being here for thirty years has been a tremendous experience. In fact I feel fortunate that I am out of your mad world. They think I am mad -- let them think that, there is no harm -- but in fact I am fortunate that I am out of your mad world. What do you think?" he said to me. I said, "You are absolutely right. The world outside is far madder than when you left it thirty years before. In thirty years there has been great evolution in everything -- in madness too. You stop saying to people that you are not mad; otherwise they will take you out. You are living a perfectly beautiful life. You have enough space to walk ...." He said, "That's the only exercise I can do here -- walking." And I started to teach him vipassana. I said, "You are in such perfect conditions to become a buddha: no worries, no botherations, no disturbances. You are really blessed." And he started practicing vipassana. I told him, "You can practice it sitting, you can practice it walking" -- and he was my first disciple as far as vipassana is concerned. And you will be surprised that he died a sannyasin -- died in the basement. But the last time I had gone to my village, I went to see him. He said, "I'm ready; now you initiate me. My days are numbered, and I would like to die as your sannyasin. I'm your disciple; for twenty years you have been my master and whatever you had promised is fulfilled." And you could see from his face, from his eyes, that he was not the same person -- a total transformation, a mutation .... Mad people need methods of meditation so that they can come out of their madness. The criminals need psychological help, spiritual support. They are really deep-down sick, and you are punishing sick people. It is not their fault. If somebody murders, that means he has carried a tendency to murder in him for a long time. It is not that somewhere, out of nowhere, suddenly you murder somebody. In one of the existential novels there is a story: a man is caught -- in fact it is not right to say "caught" because he never tried to escape. He killed a stranger who was sitting on the beach. He came from behind and killed him with a dagger; the man died on the spot. The man was absolutely a stranger; the murderer had never seen his face even, because he killed him from the back. Even after the murder he had not seen his face; he had no idea whom he had murdered. It was a very strange case -- existentialism has been of great help in bringing strange cases to light. The court asked the man, "We cannot understand why you murdered the man." He said, "It is not a question of `why' -- I simply wanted to. There are people who try to find excuses to do something that they want to do. I am a simple person: why bother about an excuse? -- just do it if you want to do it." Now he is saying a truth of tremendous importance. People try to find an excuse: for example, they are angry with you -- they think they are angry with you; that is not true. They were carrying that anger -- it was boiling within them, they were sitting on a volcano. They were just waiting for somebody to give them an excuse: you gave the excuse, and they exploded. It seems you are responsible for the explosion. No, you are only an accidental excuse, you are not responsible. Somebody else would have done if you had not. It is just coincidence that you happened to pass by; otherwise, somebody else .... This murderer says to the court, "I am a simple man; I don't bother about rationalizations and excuses -- I simply wanted to kill. And it was really an exciting experience. When I forced the dagger into the back of that man whom I don't know, who has not done any wrong to me, when the blood dashed out from his back I had the greatest, the most exciting experience in my life. "I am perfectly happy: you can give me any punishment that you want. I am not going to say that I have not done it, I have done it. I wanted to do it for a long time, and it is good that I did it." Now, what do you want to do with this man? Is he a murderer, or a psychiatric case who has been prevented from having any excitement in his life? Perhaps he has never known love, because if you ask Sigmund Freud, he will say that the dagger is nothing but a symbol of the male's sexual organ, and dashing it into the back of the man is just an effort -- perverted, but an effort -- to have some entry into another body. That's what people are doing all over the world. Making love is entering another's body. This man is certainly not in the right shape, things are upside down, but what he is doing is simply a sexual act; it has nothing to do with murder. The murder happened; that is just a by-product. And why does a man want to enter the body of a woman? -- because every implication has its own implications. It is because the man is born out of woman's body. He has come out of the woman's body, and he has never been so comfortable again, and he wants to be back in the womb of the mother. Every man is searching for his mother's womb. These murderers are also searching for the mother's womb -- of course in a wrong way, unnatural, but they are not responsible for it: your society is responsible for it. If a murder happens then the society should be punished, then the whole society should have to pay the penalty. Why did it happen in this society? What have you done with the man that he had to commit a murder? Why did he become destructive? -- because nature gives everybody energy which is creative. It becomes destructive only when it is obstructed, when no natural flow is allowed. Whenever energy goes towards the natural it is prevented by society, it is crippled; it is directed into some other direction. Soon the man is in a confusion. He does not know what is what. He does not know what he is doing, why he is doing it. The original reasons are left far behind. He has taken so many turns that he has become a jigsaw puzzle. Nobody needs the death penalty, nobody deserves it. In fact, not only the death penalty, no other kind of punishment is right, because punishment never cures the person. Every day the number of criminals goes on growing; every day you build more prisons. This is strange. It should not be so. Just the opposite should be the case, because with so many courts and so many punishments and so many prisons, crimes should be less, criminals should be less, slowly, slowly prisons should be less, courts should be less. But that is not happening. I am reminded that in Great Britain, just one hundred years ago, corporal punishment for stealing was the common thing. And the punishment had to be given in a public square so people could see what happens when you steal -- just to teach them. It would be a lesson to them, that if you steal this happens: a public humiliation. The person had to be naked and lashed till blood started oozing from his body. But what happened -- just one hundred years ago -- was that the punishment had to be dropped because it was found that when the crowd was there ... and thousands gathered to see -- it was not a good sign. When thousands of people come to see such an ugly scene it shows something in them is wrong. Perhaps they also want to beat someone naked, but they don't have the guts; at least they can see it being done. That's what you are doing everywhere. You love football: you don't play -- there are professional players -- you watch. You become identified with a certain team of football players and you are so excited, as if you are participants. Just look at the crowd in a stadium: thousands of people so excited, as if their life and death is in question -- shouting, screaming, throwing their caps, their hats, fighting with each other because the person by their side is giving encouragement to the party they oppose. The football players are playing their games, and the thousands of spectators -- what are they doing? They are also, in a psychological way, participants -- perhaps more excited than the real players. The real players are professionals, that is their business, and these idiots are unnecessarily becoming so hot. And this is not the whole crowd; the real crowd is sitting by their television sets, millions of them -- listening to commentaries on their radios. I had a friend in the university; he was a professor, but a fan of hockey matches -- in India, football is not so hot. One day I was sitting in his room and he was listening to the commentary on his small transistor that he used to carry continuously, keeping it close to his ear so he did not miss anything. I was sitting there and I told him, "I have come to say something to you." He just told me, "Keep quiet!" and went back to his commentary. And then something happened: he threw the transistor and it broke into pieces. I said, "What happened?" He said, "My team, they failed me! I had so much hope for them." "But," I said, "if your team failed, why did you destroy the transistor?" He said, "You won't understand. I was in such anger that you should feel fortunate that I did not hit you with the transistor." "But this would have been too much! First you destroyed the transistor, and I am just sitting waiting here for you to get finished with your transistor, and you wanted to hit me with it," I said. "Yes, I was so angry," he said, "I could have hit you. For a moment I was just going to and then I changed my mind." I said, "This is good -- next time I will never be around anyone listening to the commentary on hockey matches. This is dangerous, even to be around." Now this man is so much involved .... The whole world has become a world of spectators. What are you seeing in a movie? I don't think you are seeing a movie, you become part of it, you become identified with some character in it. When he falls in love, you fall in love; when he kisses his girlfriend, you are kissing his girlfriend. This is sheer nonsense, but you cannot expect anything more from the humanity that you have got around. So those spectators in Great Britain, what were they doing? They were so involved in watching that there were pickpockets all around, cutting their pockets. It was brought to the notice of the parliament: "What kind of lesson are you teaching, because exactly there, where the crowd has gathered to learn the lesson, there are people who are cutting others' pockets." And it is easy because those people are so involved they have completely forgotten themselves and their pockets. And that man is being beaten almost to death, and those pickpockets .... Your whole reasoning is wrong. You cannot teach by punishment.

That's what your jurists, legal experts, politicians, have been saying down the ages: "If we don't punish people, then how are we going to teach them? Then everybody will start committing crime, so we have to go on punishing so people remain afraid." They think that fear is the only way to teach -- and fear is not the way to teach them at all. What punishment teaches is, it makes people acquainted with fear, so the original shock is no longer there. They know what can happen: "At the most you can beat me. And if one person can take it, I can also take it. And out of a hundred thieves you can catch only one or two persons." Now, if you are not ready even to take that much risk -- ninety-eight percent success, two percent failure -- then what kind of man are you? Nobody learns from any punishment. The very person who is being punished, he also does not learn what you want him to learn. Yes, he learns something else: he learns how to become a thick-skin. Once a person goes into prison, prison becomes his home, because there he finds people of a like mind. There he finds his real society. Outside he was a foreigner; there he is in his own world. They all understand the same language, and there are experts. You may be just an amateur, an apprentice; it may be your first term. I have heard: one man enters a prison; in the dark cell he sees an old man, resting. The old man asks him, "For how long are you going to be here?" He says, "For ten years." The old man says, "Then you can stay close to the door. Just ten years! You seem to be new. I am going to be here for fifty years. You just remain close to the door. Soon the years will be gone and you will be out." But when you are with experts for ten years, of course you learn all their techniques, strategies, methods, their experience. You will find your jail almost a certain kind of university where crime is taught at government expense. You will find professors of crime, deans of the crime faculty, vice- chancellors, chancellors -- all kinds of people who have done every kind of crime that you can imagine; certainly the newcomer starts learning. And one thing is in the air of every prison .... I have been to many prisons. It happened that in Madhya Pradesh when I was a professor there, one old man, Mangaldas Pakvasa, was governor of Madhya Pradesh. He was very much interested in me, so much so that although I went on telling him, "Kaka" -- he was known to everybody as kaka, uncle -- "I don't believe in God," he said, "Whether you believe it or not, just when you reach, tell God something for this Mangaldas Pakvasa, because I am an old sinner. Being in politics, you know, I have done everything that I should not have done. Now I am getting old." "But," I said, "you will be dying first, Kaka. Can't you see a simple thing: you will be reaching first. So if you want, you can help me, but I cannot help you; I am not going that early!" "But," he said, "I suspect that I will never be going to heaven. Governors and prime ministers and presidents -- I don't think any of them are going there. This whole company is going to hell!" He was a very simple and good man. Because he was governor, I had immense dimensions open for me. I asked him, "You give me a general permission: if I want to visit any jail I should be allowed." He said, "That is no problem." And the biggest jail was in Jabalpur itself; it was the central jail of the whole state -- three thousand diehard criminals. So I used to go almost every Sunday; while he remained governor I continued to go there. And what I saw -- this was the climate, and in other jails also. I went in smaller jails also but the climate was essentially the same. The climate was that it is not crime that brings you to jail, it is being caught, so if you know right ways to do wrong things .... It is not a question of doing right things; the question is doing wrong things in a right way. And every prisoner learns the right way of doing wrong things in jail. In fact I have talked with prisoners and they said, "We are eager to get out." I said, "For what?" They said, "You are a friend, and we don't hide anything from you: we want to get out as soon as possible because we have learned so much, we want to practice. Just the practicals were missing, it was all theoretical knowledge. For practicals you need the society." Once a person becomes a jailbird, then nowhere will he find himself at ease; sooner or later he will be coming back to jail. And slowly slowly jail becomes his alternative society. It is more comfortable, he feels more at home; nobody looks down on him, nobody thinks that he is superior and you are inferior. Everybody is a criminal. Nobody is a priest and nobody is a sage and nobody is a holy man: all are poor human beings with all the weaknesses and frailties. Outside he finds that he is rejected, abandoned. In my town there was a permanent jail-goer. He was a very beautiful man; his name was Barkat Mian. He was a Mohammedan. Mian is a Mohammedan respectful word exactly like "sir" or the Indian, Hindu, ji. If you simply say, "Gandhi" it will not look respectful; you have to say "Gandhiji." For Mohammedans mian is simply equivalent to ji or "sir". It was strange that Barkat Mian was a permanent jail-goer, almost nine months in jail, three months outside; and in those three months also, every week he had to go to report to the police station to show that everything was okay and he was here. But I had a great friendship with that man. My family was very angry; they said, "Why do you keep company with Barkat?" My family used to say to me, "A man is known by his company." I said, "I understand you: that means Barkat will be known by me, and to give a man a little respectability is not anything bad." They said, "When will you see things in the right way?" I said, "I am seeing it exactly the right way. Rather than Barkat degrading me, I am upgrading Barkat. You think his evil is more powerful than my goodness? You don't trust my integrity; you trust Barkat's integrity." I said, "Whatever your opinion, I trust myself. Barkat cannot do any harm to me. If any harm is going to be done it will be done to Barkat by me." He was really a beautiful man, nice, and he used to tell me, "You should not be around me. If you want to meet me and talk to me, we can manage to meet somewhere outside the town, by the riverbank." He himself lived near the Mohammedan cemetery where nobody goes unless one dies: one goes only once. He was not allowed to live in the town. In the town nobody was ready to give him a house to rent. Whatsoever rent he was ready to pay, nobody was ready to take it, nobody was going to take him in. There on the Mohammedan cemetery was a house -- nothing but a shelter for the rainy season, summer. People die in all kinds of climates, not bothering about anybody -- that it is raining and they could wait a little, there is no hurry. But people are people: if they can harass you, they will harass you. They will die when it is raining dogs and cats, or is it cats and dogs? But it makes no difference; when it is raining who is first and who is second does not matter. So that shelter was just for certain times; people could sit there. But in a small place people don't die every day, only once in a while; so Barkat used to live in that shelter. He said, "You always are welcome in my house" -- that shelter he used to call his house. And of course there was no fear because nobody could steal anything from Barkat. Nobody could even dare to go in the night near Barkat Mian because he was a dangerous man. Just by the side of my father's store was a big shop, a kind of general store, having all kinds of things. He stole from that. One night he told me, "Tonight I am coming to Mody's shop" -- that was the name of the shop. And he came and he did a good job: he took out all the ornaments and everything, and managed to escape but finally was caught. Not that day -- after two months, in another robbery he was caught, and there it was found that one watch he was wearing was from Mody's store. So it was worked out and he was forced to confess from where the watch had come to him. And he confessed that it was from Mody's store because that was the only store in the town that had watches to sell. From where else could it come? Everybody's watch came from Mody's store! But other things were also found in his home, in that shelter where he used to keep his suitcase and things; and a few things he had sold -- so he was sentenced to six months. After six months -- this I call a real gentleman -- after six months, when he was released from the jail .... The jail was in a district which was nearabout sixty miles away. He came in a taxi, stopped the taxi before Mody's store and went in. Mody stood up, afraid that now there was going to be trouble; this man has been released. Barkat said, "Pay the taxi -- I don't have any money. And you know for six months you have kept me unemployed, so, some money for my pocket." I was just present there because Mody's store was just next to my father's shop. Mody had to pay the taxi and give Barkat a few rupees. He told Barkat, "Don't come every day," and Barkat said, "Till I manage something I will have to come, because six months you kept me unemployed. You are responsible." He continued to come every day, and I said to Mody, "Modyji, you go on giving money to Barkat." He said, "What to do? He can cut my throat -- he is a dangerous man! You don't see: when he comes inside the shop, he shows me a knife. Nobody sees it from the outside because of so many things in the shop. With one hand he asks for the money, with the other hand he shows me a knife, so everybody thinks I am giving the money happily. You think I am giving it happily?" I said, "No, I know about the knife because Barkat Mian is my friend and he tells me everything." I asked Barkat, "How did you become a thief?" He said, "The first time I was jailed I was absolutely innocent, but I was poor, I could not hire an advocate; and the people who wanted me to be forced into jail had some vested interest. "My father and mother died when I was very young, fourteen or fifteen, and my other relatives wanted to capture the whole family's possessions -- house, land -- and they wanted to remove me out of their way. They simply managed it. They put something into my bag in my house. And there was no way to get out of it: the thing was found in my bag, and I was sent to jail. "When I came back, my land was gone, my house was sold, my relatives had managed to disperse everything and distribute everything. I was just on the streets. "So, first, I was innocent when I went in, but when I came out I was not innocent, because I had come with a certain graduation. I told everybody in jail what had happened to me -- I was only seventeen. They said `Don't be worried, these nine months will be soon finished, but in nine months we will also give you the finishing touches. And you will be able to take revenge on everybody.' "And I started to take revenge on all the relatives -- this was simply tit for tat. They had forced me to become a thief, and I proved that, okay, now I am a thief. I destroyed this whole gang of my relatives; I stole everything that they had. But by and by I became more and more involved. "You can have ten cases in which you are saved but in the eleventh you are caught. As you grow older and more efficient, you are caught less. But now there is no problem; in fact imprisonment proves a relaxing place, a holiday from work and worry and all kinds of things. "A few months in jail are good for health -- a disciplined life: an exact time to get up, to go to work, an exact time to go to sleep. Just enough food to keep you alive; more than that makes you sick." He said, "I am never sick in jail, unless I pretend and want to be in hospital to escape; otherwise I am never sick. Outside I fall sick, but never inside. And outside is a foreign world and everybody is superior and I am inferior. Only in jail I feel a freedom." Strange! When he said that, I said, "You say in jail you feel freedom?" He said, "Yes, only in jail I feel freedom." What kind of society is this, in which people in jail feel freedom, and outside they feel imprisoned? And this is almost the story of every criminal. A small thing in the beginning -- maybe he was hungry, maybe he was cold, needed a blanket and just stole a blanket -- small necessities which should be fulfilled: otherwise the society should not produce these people. Nobody asks it to produce them. On the one hand you go on producing people more and more and more, and there are not enough things for them, neither food nor clothes nor shelter. Then what do you want? You are putting people in a situation where they are bound to become criminals. The world population has to be cut to one third -- if you want crime to disappear. But nobody wants crime to disappear because the disappearance of crime means the disappearance of your judges, of your advocates, of your law experts, of your parliaments, of your policemen, of your jailers. It will create a big unemployment problem; nobody wants anything to change for the better. Everybody says things should change for the better, but everybody goes on making things worse, because the worse things are, the more people are employed. The worse things are, the more chances you have to feel good. Criminals are needed for you to feel that you are such a moral, respectable person. Sinners are needed for saints to feel that they are saints. Without sinners, who will be the saint? If the whole society consisted of good people, do you think you will remember Jesus Christ for two thousand years? For what? It is the criminal society that remembers Jesus Christ for two thousand years. It is a simple thing to understand. Why do you remember Gautam Buddha? If there were millions of buddhas, awakened people in the world ... what speciality did Gautam Buddha have? He would have been lost in the crowd. But twenty-five centuries have passed and he stands like a pillar, a mountain peak far above you and your heads. In fact Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Mahavira, are not giants -- you are pygmies. And every giant has an investment in your remaining a pygmy; otherwise he won't be a giant. This is a great conspiracy. I am against this whole conspiracy. I am neither a giant nor a pygmy; I have no vested interest at all. I am just myself. I don't compare myself with anybody, so nobody is lower than me and nobody is higher than me. Because of this simple fact I can see directly; there is no vested interest creating diversions to my vision. And this is my immediate response to the question: the death penalty is simply a proof that man still needs to be civilized, needs to be cultured, needs to know human values. In this world nobody is a criminal, never has been. Yes, there are people ... they need compassion, not imprisonment, not punishment. All prisons should be transformed into psychological nursing homes. Osho, What do you say about sex education to small children?

Truth is truth, and nobody should be debarred from it. Just because children are small, do they have to be fed on lies? Is truth only for grown-ups? Then does it mean truth is dangerous to the delicate consciousness of the child?

Truth is never dangerous, untruth is dangerous. And if you tell an untruth to a grown-up he may be able to defend; it can be forgiven. But never say an untruth to a child because he is so helpless, so indefensible. He depends so much on you, he trusts so much in you – don’t betray him. This is betraying! Telling any lie means you have betrayed the child. And finally you will be in trouble. Sooner or later, the child will discover that you have been telling lies. That very day all trust in you will disappear.

If young people start rebelling against the parents, the responsibility is not on them, the responsibility is of the parents. They have been telling so many lies. And now, by and by, the children start discovering that they were all lies. And if you have been telling so many lies, even the truth that you have told to them becomes suspicious. And one thing is certain, they lose trust in you. You have betrayed, you have deceived, you have become ugly in their consciousness. Your impression is not good anymore. In fact, they will never be able to trust anybody.

That’s the problem I am facing every day. When you come and become sannyasins, the problem that you have with your parents starts being imposed on me. You cannot trust me either. In a subtle way I become your father figure. And because your parents have deceived you, who knows? If even your parents deceive you, then I am a stranger and if even parents cannot be relied upon, then how can you rely upon me?

You will never be able to trust the woman you love, the man you love. You will never be able to trust the master you surrender to. You will never again be able to regain your trust in your life. And for what has your trust been destroyed? For such foolish things…. What is wrong? Sex is a simple fact. Tell it the way it is. And children are very, very perceptive. Even if you don’t tell them, they will discover it on their own. They are very curious people.

Carl was assigned to write a composition entitled, “Where I came from.” When he returned home from school, he entered the kitchen where his mother was preparing dinner.

“Where did I come from, Mama?” he asked. “The stork brought you.” “And where did Daddy come from?” “The stork brought him, too.” “And what about Grandpa?” “Why, the stork brought him too, darling.”

Carl very carefully made notes on what Mama had told him, and the next day he handed in the following composition:

“According to my calculations, there hasn’t been a natural birth in my family for the past three generations.”

Children are very perceptive. They go on watching, they go on seeing what foolishness you are talking about. And how long can you deceive them? Life is there, and life is sexual. And they are watching life. They will see animals making love, they will see birds making love. And you may go on believing that they have never seen you making love; you can go on believing it, but children know that their parents make love. In the beginning they may think they are fighting or something, but sooner or later they discover that something is going on behind their back.

Why create these suspicions and doubts? Why not be true? Truth is always good, truth is always divine. Let them know things as they are.

I know a friend of mine who was determined to have it out with his older boy and spent several hours painstakingly explaining sexual physiology to him. At the conclusion, feeling utterly exhausted and knowing that he didn’t want to go through it again with his younger son, he said, “And Billy, now that I’ve explained it to you, can I count on you passing it on to Bobby?”

“Okay Dad,” said young William.

His elder son went out in search of his younger brother at once. “Bobby,” he said when he found him, “I just had a long lecture from Dad and he wants me to pass on what he told me to you.”

“Go ahead,” said Bobby.

“Well, you know what you and I were doing with those girls behind the barn last month? Dad wants me to tell you that the birds and the bees do it too!”

Don’t be foolish, let things be as they are. Truth can never be the enemy, sexual or otherwise. Befriend truth.

And children are very understanding. They immediately accept the fact. They have no prejudices, they have no notion of right and wrong. If you tell them the truth, they understand it is so and they forget all about it. And it will create a great trust in you. You never deceived them.

It is sex education which is one of the fundamental causes of the rift between the generations. The day the child discovers that the parents have been deceiving him, he loses all roots in trust. That is the most devastating shock you can give to that delicate system.

Go on telling the truth as it is and don’t try to philosophize about it, and don’t go on round and round. Tell it the way it is.

Why is there so much fear about it in you? – because your parents have not told it to you, so you feel a little shaky, nervous, afraid, as if you are moving in some dangerous territory.

Be very simple, direct. And whenever a child inquires about anything, if you know about it, tell it. If you don’t know about it, say that you don’t know. There are two wrongs that you can do: one is saying something as it is not – one danger; another is saying something which you don’t know.

For example, the child asks, “Who created the world?” and you say, “God.” Again you are leading him into some mischief. You don’t know; you are pretending that you know. Soon the child will discover that you know nothing, your God is bogus.

And the problem is not that your God is proved bogus, the problem is that now the whole concept of God is proved bogus. You have destroyed a great possibility of inquiring into God. You should have said, “I don’t know. I am trying to know. I am as ignorant as you are. If I find before you do, I will tell you, if you find before I do, please tell me.” And your son will respect you forever for this sincerity of the heart, for this equality, that you never pretended, that you never tried to show, “I know and you don’t know,” that you were never egoistic.

Saying to the child, “God created the world,” without knowing it, is nothing but just an ego trip. You are enjoying at the cost of the child’s ignorance. But how long can you enjoy this knowledge?

Never tell the child that which you yourself are incapable of doing. Don’t tell the child, “Be truthful, always be truthful” – because once he catches you red-handed being untruthful, you have destroyed something immensely valuable. And there is nothing more precious than trust.

How long can you hide the fact? One day somebody knocks on the door, and you say to the child, “Tell him Daddy is not at home.” And now the child knows that to talk about truth is one thing, but it is not meant to be followed and practiced. You have created a duality in him of saying something, pretending something, and being something else quite the contrary of it. You have created the split.

And if you know something, if the child asks about sex or how children come into the world, and you know – then simply say it as it is. Make it as simple as possible because the child is not asking about the physiology or about the chemistry or about the inner mechanism of sex. He is not asking about all that nonsense; that is not his interest. Don’t start telling him about physiology – because what they do in schools in the name of sex education is teach only physiology. And the child is simply bored; he is not interested. He simply wants the truth. How do children come, where do they come from? Just say it. And never try to give him more information than he needs and he asks for, because that will be too early. Particularly in the West that too is happening, where the idea has become prevalent that children have to be given sex education. So parents are in a hurry. Even if the child has not inquired, they go on pouring their knowledge that they have acquired from books. Children simply feel bored. Unless the inquiry has arisen in the child, there is no need to say anything. When the inquiry has arisen there is no need to hide anything.

And it is not a question of age at all, so don’t ask about small children. Whom do you call small? What is the age limit? Is seven years old small? Or is nine years old small? It is not a question of age. Whenever the child inquires he is ready to be given the information. He may be four, he may be five, he may be seven. The more intelligent a child is, the earlier he will inquire, that much is certain. The stupid, the mediocre child may not inquire when he is twelve, and at fourteen he may inquire. But the intelligent child is bound to inquire because life is such a mystery that from the very beginning the child becomes aware that something is happening. All around, life is happening, life is perpetuating itself.

He sees the eggs of the birds in the garden, and then one day the eggs are broken and the birds come out. He goes on seeing his mother’s belly growing bigger and bigger, and he certainly becomes curious. What is happening? Is his mother ill or something? And then one day she comes from the hospital with a child. And where has the child come from? It has been brought by the stork. And he sees the belly is not big anymore. Now he is puzzled. What happened to the belly?

Don’t create unnecessary puzzles for children. Life is puzzling enough as it is. Life is so mysterious, the inquiry is bound to be there. But remember, the more intelligent a child is, the sooner he is going to inquire. So if your child inquires early, don’t think that he seems to be dirty from the very beginning. He is not dirty, he is intelligent. If anybody is dirty, you are dirty. He is simply intelligent.

Tell him things as they are and tell him the way he can understand. Don’t philosophize, don’t go indirectly round and round; go directly to the point. Make it as clear as two plus two is four.

And you will be surprised, once the fact has been told the child goes away and starts playing. He is not much interested anymore; he never brings the question again. If you falsify, he will bring the question again and again – from this side, from that side, any excuse and he will bring the question because he wants to know the fact, and unless the fact is given he is not going to be satisfied.

Only facts satisfy. Falsifications can postpone but they cannot satisfy。

I used to talk with one of my professors. He was not convinced by me that the whole personality is borrowed. He was a healthy man. He is still alive, retired, an old man. I said, "I will prove it." I went to his wife and told her, "You have to do me a favor, a small favor." She said, "What is the matter?" I said, "When professor S.S. Roy gets up in the morning the first thing you have to say is, 'What is happening? Why are you looking so pale?' and remember exactly what he says in response. It is better if you write it down so you don't forget. I want the exact words." I said to the gardener, "When he comes out, you just drop your work and hold him and say, 'What has happened? You are looking so weak, I thought you were going to fall. Could you not sleep the whole night? Your body seems to have a fever.'" The gardener said, "But without fever... he will throw me out of service!" "You don't be worried. That is my guarantee: you will be promoted, you don't be worried. You just do what I am saying." And the wife of the professor was there and she said, "Yes, he is right. You don't be worried; you just do what he is saying." And I told him, "Write down on this piece of paper whatever professor Roy says, his exact words." And so on I went, to the post office nearby where he used to meet the postmaster - they were great friends, both were Bengalis - all the way up to the department of philosophy. It was almost one mile. He used to walk; he loved walking. And I told the peon in front of the department, "You have to just pick him up." He was a wrestler-type of man; I said, "You have just to pick him up and lay him down on the bench." He said, "What are you saying? Are you crazy or something? I have small children, I have a wife, an old father and mother. This kind of thing.... And what is the purpose?" I said, "You don't be worried. He will be in such a position that this is what is going to be needed." He said, "But how have you come to know?" I said, "You don't be worried, this is beyond you. Later on I will explain everything to you. And it is my guarantee that no harm is going to happen to you." He said, "But your guarantee does not mean anything - you may change tomorrow! You are a strange fellow. You are telling the peon to behave in such a way with the professor that it will be almost a wrestling competition - because if I forcibly put him on the bench, he is going to resist. And if he is going to resist, I am not going to take it either; I am a very angry man. If he hits me or anything, I am going to hit him." I said, "Whatever happens let it happen, because I know he cannot hit you. He is in a very feverish condition and is not listening to his wife, to his friends, to anybody. He is coming staggering. He may fall on the floor, break his bones; then you will be responsible." He said, "No, I don't want him to break his bones." "Then," I said, "you immediately pick him up. Whatever he says, you remember - and this is the paper.... As you put him inside the office on the bench you write down what he has said, and I will be coming later on to collect all the papers." Just behind him, I started collecting the papers. To the wife he said, "Pale? You must be mad. I slept a perfectly beautiful sleep, I am a hundred percent healthy. Something must be wrong in your eyes; you should go to the optician. Pale? - I have suspected for a long time that you need glasses." He came out, and the gardener took hold of him and said, "Master, what is the situation, what is happening? Your body is burning, you have fever. Have you slept in the night or not? You would have fallen if I had not stopped." He said, "I could not sleep the whole night. And really, the body is burning. But I am going to the department because my record is that I have never been absent. So at least I will go, tell the head of the department and ask him to bring me back home in his car. I don't have energy to walk one mile, but I have to." As he went out the postmaster said, "Mister Roy, it seems you have grown ten years older. But what has happened?" Professor Roy said, "I don't know what has happened. Something certainly has happened. And I was angry at my poor wife; she was absolutely right. How do I look?" The postmaster said, "Just like a ghost, absolutely pale." He said, "My God! Should I go to the department or not?" The postmaster said, "That is your record, your lifelong record - don't break it, go. You can manage. I cannot certify that you will be able to come back again. The situation has gone so far down that if you can manage to breathe for one mile more it will be a great achievement. About coming back, I don't know." And you could see him coming, like a drunkard.... He passed a few more stages where he was checked, and he gave his statements. And when he reached the department the peon just picked him up. He said, "What are you doing?" The peon said, "What am I doing? I am doing what I am supposed to do - lie down!" He immediately followed the instructions of the peon: "Close your eyes, and I will put a cloth soaked in water over them. You are burning and hot with fever - it must be 108 degrees, not less than that." Professor Roy said, "You are right. I am seeing things that I have never seen. It seems the bench is flowing up, sannipat. It happens when the fever reaches beyond 105 degrees." And he had a fever of 108 degrees according to the peon, who knew nothing about what 108 degrees is! And then I came with all the papers I had collected and I told him, "Please go through these papers." He said, "This is not the time.... Just a few moments are left. If you have something to say, say it; or just put your hand on my head and sit by my side - but no more papers. What papers?" I said, "You don't understand; these are not examination papers or anything. These are the papers I have collected behind you." He immediately sat up. He said, "But what papers?" I showed him: "To the wife you denied that you are sick, denied that you had a fever. You said that you slept perfectly well, that you are a hundred percent healthy, that you suspected the wife's eyes and you wanted her to go to the optician. These are the papers, and this is the end result - you are lying down on the bench. For what?" And actually he had a fever! I said, "I will take you back home. But it was simply because of your insistence that I had to prove that people's minds are made by the opinions of others." People can die just because of the opinions of others; people can live a long life just because of the opinions of others. We are so false. This is not our true reality. Have the courage to get out of the jungle of the opinions of your whole life. Just in the passage you will have to be, for a moment, nobody - and then you are all, everybody. And that freedom of being all and universal and eternal... that's the goal of all real seekers.

From Darkness to Light Chapter #3 Chapter title: Help your child -- protect him from yourself! 2 March 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Archive code: 8503025 ShortTitle: DARK03 Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 143 mins

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS THE RIGHT WAY TO HELP A CHILD GROW WITHOUT INTERFERING IN HIS NATURAL POTENTIALITY?

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. At least the husband can interfere in the wife's life, the wife can interfere in the husband's life. It is a mutual game; in this way both become powerful. The husband goes on interfering in his own way, without being aware why they are interfering. They were supposed to be together to enhance each other's life but .... The husband will come late every day -- not that it is essential to come late, but it is a question of power, ego: if he comes home on time that means he has surrendered. I know husbands who go on sitting in offices doing nothing, gossiping, knowing perfectly well that their wives will be boiling. They can reach home in time, but that's what she wants. Just because she wants, it is impossible for the man, against his manliness, to be on time; he will come late. And the same scene is repeated every day. Nor is the wife ready to drop asking him why he is late, knowing perfectly well that whatsoever he says is a lie. She knows it is a lie, he knows that she knows that it is a lie -- and it is a lie, but it is a good beginning to a fight, a good start, a good excuse. And then the wife goes on doing the same .... I have sat with a husband in his car, and he is honking his horn because he is worried; he has to take me to a particular meeting and I have to be there in time. And I don't like to waste people's time; I am not a political leader. A political leader is supposed to come late. Again, the same power -- you have to wait. And he is not just a nobody; he is so occupied, so busy, that he is bound to be late. I know political leaders who were just sitting and gossiping, and I have told them, "We have to go to your meeting." They said, "You don't understand. A politician should not arrive on time. That means he is not a big shot, just a small fry." I am not a politician. I am neither a big shot nor a small fry. I am just a human being, neither anything more nor anything less. I have been particular about arriving in time. So the husband is worried, and the wife leans out of the window and says, "Stop honking your horn! I have told you one thousand times that I am coming in one minute." I looked at the husband and said, "This is something, `one thousand times' and `I am coming in one minute'! Where did she get the time to say it one thousand times in one minute?" But it is a power trip. The wife wants it to be known who is the boss. You can go on honking the horn, but without the boss coming down the car cannot move. I have a certain rapport with women, so whomsoever I was staying with, soon I became very close to their mothers, to their wives, sisters. And I asked, "What is the matter? Every day it happens; the poor man goes on honking." And they would say, "Nothing is the matter. We are not busy, but he goes on coming home late every day and pays no attention to what we are saying. So whenever we have the chance .... It is simple give and take." 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? But Miss Judith Martin .... I don't know how many times she has become "Miss." I think at least a dozen times certainly, because no husband can survive her; either he will escape or commit suicide, but he will have to do something to make her Miss again. And she must be now very old. Perhaps finally when she became famous and the most well-known authority on child-rearing, nobody dared to marry her again, because such a woman, who has no compassion on children -- do you think she will have some compassion on husbands? She will train them exactly the way animals are trained in a circus. She will make them dance to her tune; and her being a world-famous authority, what can the poor husband do except dance? 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. There is no average human being; you will never come across the average man. And all these authorities are concerned with the average man, who does not exist! The average man is just like God -- omnipresent, yet you cannot find him anywhere. God is so omnipresent that ....

I have heard about one nun ... the whole nunnery became concerned about her. Is she sick or something? -- because she was taking her bath with her clothes on! And the doors were closed in the bathroom. And when they asked, "What is the matter? -- why don't you undress when the doors are closed and nobody is there?" she said, "Nobody? God is omnipresent. Yes, there is none of you, but God is there, and to undress before God does not look right." They all must have thought her a crackpot, but she really, literally had accepted the idea of the omnipresence of God. Exactly like omnipresent God is the average man: he exists nowhere and is supposed to exist everywhere. And all the principles are addressed to the average man. 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. 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. The earth takes three hundred and sixty-five days to make one round of the sun. Why three hundred and sixty-five? Nobody knows, nobody needs to know. And it does not make any difference. If it were taking four hundred days, what difference would it have made to you? ... or three hundred days ...? The question would have remained the same: Why? So remember one thing: any question is absurd if with every answer the question still remains standing the same. In twenty-four hours the earth makes one turn on its own axis. Why? Make it twenty-five, make it twenty-six, make it thirty, sixty -- as much as you want -- the question still stands the same: why? Hence I call the question absurd; it will always remain the same. 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. It was the practice in my family to produce me in front of anybody to condemn me. Any visitor to the family, any guest of the family ... and I would be called. And I knew for what, but I enjoyed it. I was called to be condemned: "And this boy is in disagreement with everything." In Hindi there is a phrase for it: ulti khopdi -- it means upside-down skull. So that was the phrase used for me. I said, "It is true, but the reality is, I look upside down to all these people because they are standing on their heads. They are doing yoga asanas, shirshasana -- headstand posture. I am simply standing on my feet. I am the only one here who does not believe in any kind of nonsense. They are right, because to them it must appear that I am standing upside down. And they are in the majority -- perhaps you also belong to them. "But this is the usual procedure: they don't answer my questions, they only condemn my disagreement. Now this is inhuman. If you answer my question, and still I disagree, then certainly I am stubborn. But have you answered a single question of mine? Have you satisfied me? Have you any right to condemn me because I disagree?" 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 touching people'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 the mother 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 well- grounded, 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. Where have all the hippies disappeared to? Suddenly you see them with a great force; then, just like used bullet cases, empty cartridges, impotent, defeated, depressed -- trying to make something out of life, feeling that all those years of hippiedom were a wastage. Others have gone far ahead; somebody has become the president, somebody has become the governor, and "we were stupid; we were just playing the guitar and the whole world passed us by." They repent. It is really difficult to find an old hippie. Just one I have found; that is Bapuji, Sheela's father. He will die a hippie. At his age -- he must be near about seventy -- he was living with hippies in northern New York State. Some photographer took a photograph of him; he was sitting naked on a hill ... snow, ice, all around. And he was sitting naked there. Somebody took his photo, and those photos have been coming to me. People think Bapuji is me! It is printed now, because he looks really beautiful -- naked, sitting on the top. The sun is rising, and all around snow, and he is looking really beautiful. Many people who have found that photo -- it is a postcard now -- go on sending it to me saying, "Osho, it was a surprise to find you sitting here." I told Sheela, "Tell Bapuji, `don't do such things, because nobody knows you.'" But he will die a hippie. He brought all his children to me, which no father has done except him. It was he who brought Sheela to me ... forcibly, because she was not interested. But he is not a man to listen to anybody. He said, "Once, you have to come; twice I will not ask, then it is your business. But once I have to force you because you don't know what you are refusing. So forgive me for forcing you, but one time I have to force you." He brought all his children by and by, and almost all his children are now sannyasins. And once Sheela came she never left me. He asked Sheela, teased her, "Now what about going back to America?" She said, "I am not going anywhere." "But," Bapuji said, "I had brought you just to meet him, not to stay." Sheela said, "But I have to -- this is the place I have been searching for." He said, "I am happy because I have brought you to the right place: now I am freed of my responsibility. Now whatsoever becomes of you, it will be right." 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. 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. Just the other day Vivek brought me one advertisement about a new car, Lagonda; in the advertisement they had a beautiful sentence that I liked. The sentence is: "It is better than sex." I don't care about the car -- the advertisement is beautiful. Certainly if you look around you, you will find a thousand and one things better than sex. Sex is just a rat, and that too after so much huffing and puffing, so much perspiration ... and in the end both feel cheated. The reason is that you don't know the art of sex; you know only the middle point. It is as if you see a film just in the middle for a few seconds. Naturally you can't make any sense of it; the beginning is missing, the end is missing. Perhaps you simply saw the interval ... where there was nothing. Man feels ashamed after sex; he turns over and goes to sleep. He simply cannot face the woman. He feels ashamed, that's why he turns to his side and goes to sleep. The woman weeps and cries because this was not what she was hoping for. This is all? Then what is this whole drama all about? But the reason is because the rehearsal part in your life has been canceled by your society. You don't know what foreplay is. 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. Now the foolish psychoanalysts and their kind have put an idea in people's minds of orgasm. Now, orgasm is even a higher stage than climax; it needs much more than climax. People are missing climax -- their sexual life is nothing but a kind of relief. Yes, for a moment you feel relieved of a burden, just like a good sneeze. How good it feels afterwards! -- but for how long? How long can you feel good after a sneeze? How many seconds, how many minutes can you brag that "I had such a sneeze, it was great." As the sneeze is gone, with it goes all the joy too. It was simply something bothering you. You are finished with that botheration, there is a little relaxation. That's the sexual life of most of the people in the world. Some energy was bothering you, was making you heavy; it was turning into a headache. Sex gives you a relief. 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. Only in New Jersey did I come to know what brown bags are. Strange, I don't know whether it happens all over America or only in New Jersey because I have not seen anything else, only New Jersey. In New Jersey when I used to go to drive in the morning, everybody was coming with a brown bag full of all crap, putting it by the side of the road. I enquired, "What is the matter? Couldn't they have found any other color? A brown bag?" But then I thought perhaps that's exactly right. Most of the people are simply brown bags. Never open anybody. It happened in my childhood: India became independent but the British government had left some Indian states. India was in two separate sections; only one was under British rule. There were small pockets all over India of Indian states which were still ruled by Indian kings. They were under British government -- their foreign policy was ruled by the British government, but otherwise in their internal policy they were completely free. When the Britishers left India they left it in a mess, in a real mess. First, they divided India and Pakistan; second they left the Indian states absolutely in a limbo, without making any decision about them. The idea was to create a chaos, and they had already created a chaos because there were so many Indian states. Now the question was, were they independent nations? Were they part of India and would their foreign policy be ruled by India, or were they part of Pakistan and would their foreign policy be ruled by Pakistan? Nothing was decided, the whole question was not decided. And the Indian states constituted almost half of India. The trouble was more complicated because in some Indian states the major population was Hindu and the king was Mohammedan; in some Indian states the major population was Mohammedan and the king was Hindu. Kashmir was ninety percent Mohammedan, but the king was Hindu. Hyderabad was ninety percent Hindu, but the king was Mohammedan. Just close to my town, beyond the river, was a small state, Bhopal. The king was Mohammedan, the population was Hindu, so everywhere there were riots because the population wanted the state to merge with India, and the king wanted to merge it with Pakistan because he was Mohammedan. But it was in the middle of India so it was not easy to merge with Pakistan. There was a great fight between the king's forces and the population, and we were just on the other side of the river. We could see from this side people being killed on the other side. We caught four dead people who were killed by the forces of the king; somehow they must have fallen in the river, and they came to our side so we caught hold of them. Naturally, I had to persuade people, "This is not good. They have been fighting for the freedom of the country; they wanted the country to merge into India -- you should not leave them like that." They wanted to throw them into the river and be finished: who could be bothered with them? But somehow I gathered a few young people, and then a few old people felt ashamed and they came. But first, before we could do anything they had to be postmortemed, so we took them to the hospital. The postmortem place was almost two furlongs away behind the hospital, in the jungle. One can understand that they were cutting up bodies ... the smell and everything, so they had made the place that far away outside the city. But we had to carry these four corpses. That was the first time I saw a brown bag open. The doctor was the father of one of my friends so he allowed me in. He said, "You can see how man looks inside," and he opened the bodies. It was really shocking to see how man looks inside. And this was only the body: later on I saw the postmortem of the mind also. Compared to that it is nothing, this is only the poor body. Your mind is so rich in crap .... That day one thing happened that I have to tell you, although it is not concerned with what I was going to tell you -- but it must be concerned in some way, otherwise why should I remember it? When we were carrying out the bodies after they were postmortemed .... They put them together again and covered them. One of the leaders of my town, Shri Nath Batt, had always felt as if I was his enemy, for the simple reason that I was a friend of his son and he thought I was corrupting him -- and in a way he was right. By chance it happened that we were carrying a corpse together; I was ahead, holding both the poles at the front of the stretcher, and Shri Nath Batt was behind me holding the end of the two poles. The head of the man, the dead man, was at my end, and the legs at his end. I had just read somewhere that when a man dies of course he loses all control -- control over the bladder also, so if you put his head upwards and his legs downwards .... I thought, "This is a good chance to see whether that idea is right or wrong," so I just raised the poles .... And you should have seen what happened -- because that corpse pissed and Shri Nath Batt ran away! And we could not persuade him to come back. He said, "I cannot. Have you ever heard of a dead man pissing? It is a ghost!" I told him, "You are the leader." He said, "To hell with the leader! I don't want to be the leader if this is the kind of work I have to do. And I've always known you -- from the very beginning. Why did you raise those poles?" I said, "I don't know, it must have been the ghost. I suddenly felt like somebody was raising my hands up; I am not at all responsible." I had to drag that body alone, for two furlongs, to the hospital. Shri Nath Batt was in the town telling everybody, "This boy is going to kill somebody someday. Today just by God's grace I am saved. That ghost just pissed over me, on my clothes. And that boy persuaded me: `You have to come because you are the leader; otherwise what will people think? -- a leader in times of need, missing. Then remember, at voting time I will not be of any help.' So I went there, but I never thought that he would do such a thing to me." These people all around the world are really brown bags, full of everything rotten that you can conceive, for the simple reason that they have not been allowed to grow in the natural way. They have not been allowed to accept themselves. They all have become ghosts. They are not authentically real people, they are only shadows of someone they could have been; they are only shadows. 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. It is still not a biological interest. You are not interested in producing children, you are not interested in becoming husbands and wives, no. These are the years of romantic play. You are more interested in beauty, in love, in poetry, in sculpture -- which are all different phases of romanticism. And unless a man has some romantic quality he will never know what afterplay is. Sex is just in the middle. The longer the foreplay, the better the possibility of reaching the climax; the better the possibility of reaching the climax, the better opening for afterplay. And unless a couple knows afterplay they will never know what sex in its completion is. Now there are sexologists who are teaching foreplay. A taught foreplay is not the real thing, but they are teaching it -- at least they have recognized the fact that without foreplay sex cannot reach the climax. But they are at a loss how to teach afterplay because when a person has reached the climax he is no longer interested: he is finished, the job is done. For that it needs a romantic mind, a poetic mind, a mind that knows how to be thankful, how to be grateful. The person, the woman or the man who has brought you to such a climax, needs some gratitude -- afterplay is your gratitude. And unless there is afterplay it simply means your sex is incomplete; and incomplete sex is the cause of all the troubles that man goes through. Sex can become orgasmic only when afterplay and foreplay are completely balanced. Just in their balance the climax turns into orgasm. And the word "orgasm" has to be understood. It means that your whole being -- body, mind, soul, everything -- becomes involved, organically involved. Then it becomes a moment of meditation. To me, if your sex does not become finally a moment of meditation, you have not known what sex is. You have only heard about it, you have read about it; and the people who have been writing about it know nothing about it.

I have read hundreds of books on sexology by people who are thought to be great experts, and they are experts, but they know nothing about the innermost shrine where meditation blossoms. Just as children are born by ordinary sex, meditation is born by extraordinary sex. Animals can produce children; there is nothing special about it. It is only man who can produce the experience of meditation as the center of his orgasmic feeling. This is possible only if from fourteen to twenty-one young people are allowed to have romantic freedom. 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. Forty-two is the right time when a person should be able to know exactly who he is. From forty-two to forty-nine he gets deeper and deeper into meditation, more and more into himself, and helps the partner in the same way. They become friends. There is no more husband and there is no more wife; that time has passed. It has given its richness to your life; now there is something higher, higher than love. That is friendliness, a compassionate relationship to help the other to go deeper into himself, to become more independent, to become more alone -- just like two tall trees standing separate but still close to each other, or two pillars in a temple supporting the same roof -- standing so close, but so separate and so independent and so alone. From forty-nine to fifty-six this aloneness becomes your focus of being. Everything in the world loses meaning. The only thing meaningful that remains is this aloneness. From fifty-six to sixty-three you become absolutely what you are going to become: the potential blossoms. From sixty-three to seventy you start getting ready to drop the body. Now you know you are not the body, you know you are not the mind either. The body was known as separate from you somewhere when you were thirty-five. That the mind is separate from you was known somewhere when you were forty-nine. Now, everything else drops except the witnessing self. Just the pure awareness, the flame of awareness remains with you, and this is the preparation for death. Seventy is the natural life span for man. And if things move in this natural course then he dies with tremendous joy, with great ecstasy, feeling immensely blessed that his life has not been meaningless, that at least he has found his home. And because of this richness, this fulfillment, he is capable of blessing the whole existence. Just to be near such a person when he is dying is a great opportunity. You will feel, as he leaves his body, some invisible flowers falling upon you. Although you cannot see them, you can feel them. It has been always a great moment in the lives of disciples when the Master leaves the body. And it is possible because the Master can know when he is going to leave the body -- he can collect all those who have been his fellow travelers moving in the same way. Now that he is leaving he would like to give you his last gift. As the Master opens his wings towards the other world you will feel the breeze which is incomparable. There is nothing in life to which it can be compared. It is sheer joy, so pure that even to have a little taste of it is enough to transform your whole life. It is because I feel such a deep affinity with Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, Zarathustra, Bodhidharma, Moses, that I feel an absolute right even to criticize them. That is out of my love.

People misunderstand: they think I have criticized Jesus, I have simply corrected him. Jesus is two thousand years old. In two thousand years the very style of life has changed; the concepts, the words, the approach to reality has changed. Although the fingers are pointing to the same moon, the fingers are different. And my love for Jesus or Buddha is so great that I don't feel any difficulty in criticizing them -- just like a friend can criticize you, not a stranger. A Christian is afraid to criticize Jesus because he is a stranger, he is not a friend. He does not know that love is capable of criticizing one he loves. In fact, the more he loves, the more he is capable of criticizing.

Christianity is a vast propaganda. They say they are defending the truth, but truth needs no defense, it is self-evident. It needs no propaganda. Lies need to be defended, lies need to be propagated, but not truth. Truth shines almost like a sunrise, you don't have to declare it. And saying that they are defending the truth ... I will give you a few examples from their own theological history which make it clear what they are defending. The French scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest and a scientist of world fame, who was working in China in search of the Peking man. It was thought that somewhere in China the "missing link" of Charles Darwin was to be found, because China is one of the most ancient countries. Charles Darwin's problem was that there was no interconnecting link between the chimpanzee, or the ape, or the gorilla, and man. The distance is too great, there must be one more step in between. De Chardin was searching for that missing step in Peking, and he had found a fifty-thousand-year-old skeleton of a man. The pope asked him not to report it to the scientists: "Don't write it in any paper, and don't publish anything that you have found till your death." This is defense of truth. His researches, which have now been published after his death, show that the earth and the universe are not only six thousand years old; even man is at least fifty thousand years old, according to the Peking man, which scientists have agreed is at least fifty thousand years old. The snow of the Himalayas on the Chinese border has saved the man almost as he would have died. Covered with snow, he has remained frozen as he was fifty thousand years ago. This disturbs the Christian idea that the world was created six thousand years ago. Teilhard de Chardin's mouth was locked, he was not allowed to teach in any Christian college or university. This is defending the truth? I am very much surprised that de Chardin listened to all these idiots of the Vatican. That is why Christians go on insisting that obedience is the greatest virtue. He was programmed from his very childhood to obey; disobedience is the original sin. So, although he was a great scientist, his whole upbringing, continuous conditioning and programming, had made him a coward, a slave. He was a genius in his mind, but the conditioning had gone deeper into his unconscious, and he obeyed the Vatican's orders literally. He did not say anything to anybody; he continued to work, and he did not publish any paper during his life, he did not publish any book on it in his lifetime. The books now published bring tears to anybody who can understand what a great man, a great genius, has been repressed his whole life by the church. He could not see his own research published. The whole of Christianity lives in a paranoia that if anybody finds some truth, then what is going to happen to their lies that they go on propagating? One of the most important theologians, Rudolf Bultman of the University of Marburg, one of the most famous and esteemed of twentieth-century biblical scholars, stated, "We can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources showed no interest in either, and are, moreover, fragmentary and often legendary." But he must have become immediately afraid, because the church had been burning people, killing people. He immediately wrote underneath -- that shows how programming works -- after writing this he immediately wrote, "That does not disturb my faith. I still believe in Jesus Christ as the only begotten son of God, and I have absolute faith in the church of Jesus." And he could not even see the contradiction. But the fear must have taken over; he contradicted himself immediately. On the one hand he is saying, "We know nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus." If you don't know anything of the personality of Jesus, how can you have faith? in whom? It is not faith, it is fear. It is fear of the church, it is fear of the pope, it is fear of the whole of Christianity. They will kill you, as they have killed many. The Vatican has an underground library of thousands of scriptures which they have burned, saving only one copy. Nobody is allowed to enter, except the pope and the cardinals, to see all the evidence, all the proofs which go against Christianity. The public is not allowed to know what the truth is. And these people, Jesuits, are claiming that Christianity defends truth! If it defends truth, it should open the underground library in the Vatican to all the scholars who want to study there, and Christianity will evaporate without leaving a single trace on the human consciousness. It is ninety-nine percent myth, invented, propagated, but it has a great propaganda machine, and it has a militant church. It has almost half of humanity converted to Christianity. It is a strange thing, but I want to tell it to you: after the death of Jesus Christ, three hundred years after, it was through voting that the Christian priests decided that he was a divine personality -- by voting. And who were these people who were voting? They knew nothing of divineness. This has never happened anywhere else. Mahavira was never elected as a tirthankara, Buddha was not elected by the masses as an awakened man. Poor Jesus not only suffered on the cross, he has suffered more from his own self-styled so-called representatives. What would have happened if the vote had been against his divinity? Is religion a political affair? And people who had no experience of godliness were voting and deciding by vote, three hundred years later, that he was a divine personality. This was decided in the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. Jesus was declared divine by a vote of the Council of Nicea. The nature of his divinity was also decided by vote. This is the ugliest thing you can think of. Truth does not need votes. It is self-luminous.

Hermann Samuel Remarius, a professor at Hamburg in the eighteenth century, wrote that "Jesus was a failed Jewish revolutionary whose body was removed from its tomb by his disciples." I am not saying that, it is said by a Christian professor who has looked into the sources, the original sources, and found that he was a "failed Jewish revolutionary"; he had nothing to do with Christianity. Christianity is a fiction. Jesus had never even heard the name Christianity. It has been imposed on him, he was not the founder of Christianity. Who exactly was the founder of Christianity? One thing is certain, Jesus was not. He never thought about founding a religion, he was simply telling the Jews, "I am your last prophet." He died on the cross as a Jew. Then who founded Christianity? You can find Buddhism in the teachings of Gautam Buddha; he was the founder. You can find in the teachings of Mahavira that he was the founder of Jainism. You can find in the teachings of Lao Tzu that he was the founder of Taoism. But it is a very strange thing about Christianity: the founder had no idea at all, was not interested in creating a new religion. The man who founded it -- you will not believe it -- was the Emperor Constantine. The church knows it, but does not allow the public to know it. Emperor Constantine of Rome, who headed the Council of Nicea, died as a Christian, but he was baptized only on his deathbed. His whole life he was the high priest of the Sun God religion, which was why he changed the sabbath from Saturday, which was Jesus' sabbath day, to Sunday. Jews still have their sabbath on Saturday, and Jesus also had lived his whole life believing in the sabbath on Saturday. How did it become Sunday? It was Constantine, who was a worshipper of the Sun God. Sunday represents the sun; the followers of the sun have always believed that Sunday is a holy day. It was Constantine who was actually the founder of Christianity. He was the decisive factor in the Council of Nicea. It was under his pressure -- because he was the emperor of Rome -- that the priests voted for the divine personality of Jesus. He made Jesus a divine person. It was his creation, his invention. He also changed Jesus' birthday from January sixth to December twenty-fifth, the day of the solar rebirth. The twenty-fifth of December, which is celebrated all over the world, is not Jesus' birthday. The whole idea of Christmas is bogus. Jesus was born on January sixth, but under Constantine's influence and power, it was changed to December twenty-fifth, the day of the solar rebirth. It is thought by the sun worshippers that the sun was born on the twenty-fifth of December. The whole of Christianity is living in utter darkness. Their Christmas is bogus -- and the church knows it perfectly well but won't allow people to know about it. This is called defending the truth. I call it defending lies. Constantine saw Jesus as a failed messiah, with himself as the real messiah -- and his view was ratified by the famous Christian bishop, Eusebius of Caesarea, who said, "It is as if the religion of Abraham is at last fulfilled, not in Jesus, but in Constantine." Constantine imposed himself as the real last prophet for whom the Jews had been waiting. Of course, the Jews could not crucify the emperor of Rome. And the Christians wanted some royal support; otherwise they were being crucified everywhere. They found a shelter in Constantine, but it was a bargain, purely business. They accepted that Jesus was a failed messiah, and that Constantine was the real messiah. But this is not told to the public! Christians are not aware of it. All these scriptures are hidden under the Vatican. I say unto you that Christianity is one of the most untruthful religions in the world. It is a disease, a sickness, a pathology, a poison. It has not been helpful to humanity in finding the truth in any sense. It has been trying to propagate lies so continuously that they have almost become truth. You must have all celebrated Christmas. Have you ever thought that this is not the birth of Jesus? You never remember Jesus on the sixth of January .... I have been thinking that we should start here a celebration for poor Jesus on the sixth of January every year. That is defending the truth. So please remind me when the sixth of January comes, because I have no sense of time at all. I don't know what day it is today, and I don't care. So when the sixth of January comes, please remind me. We will celebrate. At least after two thousand years Jesus will have a real birthday celebration!

The Bible says, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." I also teach you no judgment, but that does not mean what the Bible says. "Judge ye not" -- but there is a reason for not judging -- "so that ye be not judged." It is pure business. When I say don't judge, you are not going to be rewarded for it. In the very act of not judging you are rewarded: such peace ... People who are judgmental are grumpy, always have grudges against everybody, nobody seems to be right. They go on looking at the negative side of everybody, the darker side. They may look at a rosebush but they will not look at the roses, they will count the thorns. I say to you: Don't judge, because you don't know yourself, so how can you know anybody else? And every judgment is about a certain action. A man may have stolen something, and you judge that man as a thief. The whole man is judged, his whole life is judged by a single act. You don't go deeper into the act. The man may be dying of starvation, his mother may be dying of starvation -- and if he has stolen a little food from people who are suffering from being overweight, he has helped them. Don't judge people by their actions. Actions are momentary, life is long. You judge the whole life of a person -- "That man is a thief, that man is a murderer" -- and not only do you judge, but your courts, which are thought to be just, go on judging people by small actions. Those small actions may have been done for a certain purpose. Nobody looks at the purpose, nobody looks at the cause.

I am reminded of Lao Tzu .... The emperor of China wanted the most wise man to be the chief justice of the supreme court of China. People suggested Lao Tzu's name. It was absolutely right, there was no disagreement about it in his court, and Lao Tzu was called. Lao Tzu came in his own way. He used to ride on a buffalo -- which is a very rare thing. People ride on horses, and people ride on elephants, but a buffalo ...? But he loved his buffalo; it carried him from one place to another, and it gave him nourishment. No horse can do that. And buffalos are so silent -- and Lao Tzu was in immense love with silence -- they don't chatter. They are so contented, they don't have any grudge against existence. He came into the court riding on his buffalo. The emperor was shocked, but they had invited him, and they were well-mannered, well-educated people, so they ignored the buffalo. The emperor asked Lao Tzu, "I want you to be the chief justice of the supreme court of China." Lao Tzu said, "You are choosing a wrong person." The emperor said, "Why?" "Because," Lao Tzu said, "I will be really just." The emperor said, "That is the very function. Don't say no to your own emperor." Lao Tzu said, "Okay, but it won't last long -- perhaps one day." And it lasted only one day. The first case was about a thief who had stolen money from the richest man in China. The man was so rich that even the emperor used to borrow money from him. Lao Tzu listened to the whole case and gave his judgment: "Six months jail for both the rich man and the thief." The rich man said, "What?! My money is stolen and you are sending me to jail?" Lao Tzu said, "I am looking at the whole thing as deeply as possible. This thief is a secondary criminal, you are the primary criminal. You have collected all the money of the capital, you have deprived millions of people of money. Even if he had not stolen from you, you needed punishment. And I will not call this poor man a thief; he was simply distributing wealth to those to whom it belongs. You are a bloodsucker, a parasite!" The rich man said, "I want to see the emperor before you send me to jail." He went to the emperor and he said, "Listen, this man is absolutely absurd and dangerous. He is sending me to jail for six months." The emperor said, "You are being judged? You have not done anything wrong." He said, "I told that man, but he is telling me that `You have been exploiting the money of the poor. Where will they get money? Except by stealing there seems to be no way!' So he calls me a primary criminal, and the thief only a by-product. "I warn you, if I go to jail, it will not be long before you will be coming to jail too, because you have been committing murders, you have been raping women, you have been collecting all the beautiful women of the country into your palace. This man has to be immediately removed from his post." The emperor understood. He said, "He was saying himself that he would not last more than one day. Even the full day is not ended, this is just the first case!" Lao Tzu was given his freedom and told, "You are right. You go on your buffalo wherever you want to go." He was a man of tremendous consideration, of in-depth exploration of everything.

Don't judge anybody superficially. You don't have the means to enter into anybody's act, because the action comes from his unconscious. You have not explored your own unconscious, how can you enter into somebody else's unconscious? And who are you to judge anybody? But Christianity's statement is different. It is saying to you that if you want not to be judged by God on the day of judgment, then don't judge anybody else. This is simple bargaining, business. Truth is not a business. The morality that Christianity preaches is always motivated, and wherever there is motivation, there is no morality. The church says that a righteous man can judge others because he is without sin. Who is the righteous man? If you look you will not find a single person who is without sin, because everything that is joyful and that is pleasant, that you love, is called sin. The righteous person is one who has never committed any sin, who has never looked at a woman with loving eyes, who has never lied -- and the whole church is lying. Even the pope is lying. Who is righteous? You will not find anyone. According to the Christian ideology, you are all sinners. You are carrying the same sin that Adam and Eve committed. That is their dogma, I am not talking on my own. It is their dogma that Adam and Eve committed the original sin by disobeying God, and because the same blood is flowing in all humanity around the world, you partake of, and you have to be responsible for, the original sin of Adam and Eve. You are their sons and daughters, and you are born out of sin. Except Jesus, nobody is born without sin. But I don't consider that Jesus was born without sin. In fact, in the birth of Jesus even God has become a sinner. The Holy Ghost, they say, is one with God, is not separate. And it is the Holy Ghost who made the poor Mary pregnant. God himself has become a sinner; it does not make Jesus born out of virtue. Because God is raping a woman who is somebody's wife without her consent, Jesus simply becomes a bastard, and God becomes a sinner. So the whole of humanity is born out of sin, the original sin that Adam and Eve committed. And God has become a sinner from the very beginning. First he murdered Lilith, then he committed rape on Mary. Even God is not qualified to be present on the judgment day. Only the righteous can judge. Who is righteous? But Christian theologians are very clever in finding ways. Just a few days ago, the third man in the Church of England ... The first is the archbishop of England, then there is the second most senior man; then comes the third man, who can possibly someday become the archbishop of England, because only one man is in between him and the top, and he is young enough .... He has come out with the statement that, "Taking the vow of celibacy does not include homosexuality." You can be celibate and you can be homosexual; it simply prevents you from heterosexuality. A new definition! They have to find such a definition, because almost fifty percent of Christian monks are homosexuals. The remaining ones may be masturbating, but nobody, unless he is born impotent, can be celibate by nature. These people go on teaching unnatural things. And when people cannot cope with unnaturalness, and they are drawn to their nature, it becomes sin. Then they have to be condemned to hellfire. To be natural is a sin, according to Christianity -- and according to other religions too. To be unnatural and abnormal -- to be perverted -- is to be saintly. Now this bishop, who has a high post in England, with every possibility that he will become the archbishop of England ... England has its own church, so the archbishop of England has the same position as the pope. Now he is saying that homosexuality is allowed, no scripture prevents it. I could not believe my eyes! I could not believe my ears! What is this man saying? The Old Testament has the story of two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. God destroyed both the cities completely, just like Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been destroyed. What was the reason? -- because they were all becoming homosexuals. Bestiality, masturbation, all kinds of perversions were prevailing in both the cities. God told them, "If you remain so perverted, I am going to destroy you." And he destroyed both the cities, which were great cities in those days. If God is still alive, which I doubt, then he should destroy all the Christian monks immediately. This is the right moment to finish with Christian monks, because they are making the whole earth a Sodom, a Gomorrah. All their monasteries are nothing but sexual perversion. And that is true about other religions also. They are all against nature and being natural. You are forcing people to unnecessarily feel guilty. Mahatma Gandhi was very much influenced by Christianity and was thinking to become a Christian himself; at least three times he was on the verge of being converted. In his ashram, even to eat tastefully is a sin. You are enjoying taste? -- you have to eat without tasting. Now, that is possible only if the taste buds on your tongue are removed surgically. If the taste buds are there, they are beyond your control, they will taste. The sweet will be sweet and the bitter will be bitter. You cannot do anything about it, they are not under the control of your mind. You can only pretend. So all the religions -- particularly Christianity -- force everybody to be hypocrites, to pretend. No taste, no love, no appreciation of your own body and its wisdom. Your body is doing a tremendous service for you for seventy, eighty, or a hundred years -- and you are not even grateful. All the religions treat the body as the enemy, so torture it. Torturing is virtue. Rejoicing in your body, in its health, in its youth, in its old age, rejoicing in your body even in death, is what I teach. Christianity is basically masochistic -- torture your body. The more you torture your body the greater saint you are. And there are idiots everywhere available -- they are the majority in the world -- who start doing all kinds of stupid things just to become saints. It does not need any education, it does not need any culture, any civilization, any intelligence, any genius. Any idiot can become a saint. My own understanding is that only idiots become saints. A man of intelligence cannot become a saint, because to be a saint you have to go against nature, against the body, against yourself. It is very strange that God has given you all these tendencies -- of love, of taste, of laughter. Who is the criminal? If anybody is a criminal, it is God. Why has he implanted taste buds? While he was creating man he should have removed sexuality, he should have removed taste buds. In fact, there was no question of removing them, he should not have created them. Just visualize God making Adam: he should not have made his genitals -- and he was making his genitals with such joy! But every religion wants to castrate you, and particularly Christianity castrates people. What are they doing in Mount Athos, where no kind of woman is allowed? A hen, a dog, a female horse, a female baby six months old -- nobody is allowed. One American woman tried to break the one-thousand-year-old rule of the Mount Athos monastery and enter. She dressed like a man, she cut her hair and arranged everything perfectly. But she was caught red-handed, because women walk differently from men, so just at the gate she was caught. A woman cannot walk like a man, and the reason for it is the womb. Man has no womb. That womb makes a difference in your walk. She had not thought about it. She had done everything, but she had not thought about the walk, and those people are watching continually that no woman ever enters. The monastery is guarded; it has its own government, it has its own police. It is a sovereign nation. When the woman was caught she was jailed for six months. It is their law that if any woman tries to enter and is caught she will have to be punished. Now, after that woman's effort, everybody who wants to go into Athos, man or woman, first has to enter into the office outside the monastery and has to be stripped naked, to be looked at from every side, to see whether he is man or woman -- and nobody will say that those who are looking at naked people are voyeurs, homosexuals, enjoying the naked bodies of other men. Of course no woman has dared since then, but now it has become a rule that anybody who enters Mount Athos first has to be inspected naked by the guards. Unless they are certified to be a man, nobody can enter. Such fear ... I call it castration. And do you see the difference? Have you seen the beauty of a bull? -- so proud, such grandeur, he looks so majestic, and after castration he becomes the bullock. The same bull becomes a bullock. The bullock looks sad, shrunken, all pride and dignity gone. He is a slave; now he can be used for pulling carts. You cannot put a bull to pull a cart; you are not a match for a bull. He will not remain on the road, he will go anywhere he wants -- and if by chance he comes across a girlfriend the cart will be thrown by the side of the road. First things first! You may have multiple fractures -- and he will be enjoying making love to his girlfriend. Bulls are not used for bullock carts -- but what a difference it creates, just castrating them, just destroying their sexual energy. The bullock is a sad affair. Christianity and all other religions are part of the conspiracy to make man castrated. They have destroyed all the dignity of man. They have given only guilt and sin. Hence I call Christianity the deadliest poison. The Bible says, "We know at the end we shall have life eternal." This has been the justification for sacrifice and suffering: you can sacrifice a human being in the name of God because he will have life eternal. Don't be worried, you are not destroying him, his spirit. Because he is sacrificed in the name of God he will enter into paradise. So sacrifice is supported in the name of the eternal life that you will get after death. And suffering also is supported: it is only a question of a few moments; your life of seventy years is nothing but a few moments compared to the eternity of existence. Suffer patiently.

Patience is one of the pillars of Christianity, and patience is against all rebellion, all revolution, all change. Patience is the opium which drugs people into deep coma. They move like robots. They have forgotten that they are being exploited, their blood sucked. They allow it. The Bible says you should not change or make an effort to change anything, because God has made everything perfect as it is. This is the ultimate utterance against revolution, change, evolution, improvement in the conditions of the poor, of the sick. Scientists say man can live at least three hundred years if care is taken. If his body is taken care of, not tortured, not undernourished, not fasting, not overeating -- if the body is given scientific care it can live three hundred years very easily. And that does not seem to be incorrect, because there are people in a few places who live one hundred and eighty years. In Russia there are a few aboriginal tribes where you will find one hundred and fifty years is an ordinary thing. Thousands of people have passed one hundred and fifty, and even after one hundred and fifty they are young, they are working people -- in the fields, in the orchards, chopping wood, carrying water from the well -- perfectly healthy. And there are a few people in Russia who have passed the age of one hundred and eighty. So science seems to be perfectly right: if sufficient care is taken, life can last three hundred years. Just think of Albert Einstein living three hundred years! Science would have benefited immensely; miracles would have happened. But fate is strange: by the time a man becomes experienced, death overtakes him and the experienced man is replaced by a baby, absolutely inexperienced. Now you start from the beginning again -- ABC -- and by the time the baby reaches to the point where it can contribute something to humanity, to the world, to the beautification of it, death overtakes the man. But Christianity will not allow it. It does not allow birth control, even seeing clearly that if the population goes on growing the whole of humanity is going to suffer utter starvation, and billions of people will die within the coming ten years. Without any third world war people will be dying on their own. But Christianity goes on insisting, because the Bible says, "Multiply. Have as many children as you can." And because God creates life, Christianity's argument is, "You should not stop the birth of a child." But do you see the contradiction? Killing is allowed, sacrifice is allowed, because nothing is dying. You will have an eternal life in paradise. So what is the problem? -- if a child is stopped, he will have eternal life or may move to another womb. If the spirit does not die when you kill a man as a sacrifice, why should the spirit die by birth control methods? In fact, the spirit would not enter into the womb at all. But don't change anything, that is the fundamental motto of Christianity -- and that means death to humanity, death to this beautiful planet. Christianity is the most out-of-date religion. All its assumptions are absurd. For example, the myth is that Mary was assumed into heaven alive, she never died. Jesus ascended into heaven and then he assumed Mary there. In life he was misbehaving with his mother -- calling her "that woman" -- and suddenly he becomes very compassionate when he ascends alive to heaven. He takes his mother also alive into heaven. What happened to his five brothers and sisters? And what happened to poor Joseph, his father? If he was able to take his mother into heaven, why not take ... what happened to the twelve apostles? That Jesus ascended to heaven alive and Mary also is as absurd as the Mohammedan concept. But Mohammed did a far better miracle; he ascended to heaven alive with his horse, both alive. Strange! What will the horse be doing amongst the saints? He must be dying to come back to earth. De Chardin said to the Vatican, "Why am I not allowed to publish my work? It is based on scientific principles and will contribute much to clear many fallacies which are prevalent in the scientific world." He told the Vatican that it must refashion its Christology to resolve the conflicts with science. Rome responded that his diagnosis did not coincide with the ideas currently accepted in the eternal city -- Rome they call the eternal city -- and because his ideas do not coincide with Christianity and its Bible, unless he makes his Christology coincide with the Christian ideology and theology, he will not be allowed to publish his papers while he is alive. These people have been killing truth for thousands of years. De Chardin commented, hearing this, "Since then, as we all know, the religious schizophrenia from which we suffer has constantly grown more marked." A kind of split in the scientists who have been brought up as Christians is bound to happen. All scientists brought up as Christians will suffer from schizophrenia, they will have a split personality. One side has faith in God, faith in the virgin birth of Jesus, faith in the infallibility of the pope -- knowing perfectly well that all this is nonsense, but their minds are split. Science says one thing, Christianity says just the contradictory thing, and they have to cope with both. They become two persons. So in the scientific lab they will be scientists and in the church they will be Christians. You don't know how .... Schizophrenia is cutting a human being in two parts -- a constant wound which knows no healing. The whole of humanity suffers from schizophrenia and all kinds of mental sicknesses because of these teachings which cannot go on changing with the changing world of knowledge; which are stuck somewhere and are stubbornly against moving from there; which are carrying corpses of the past and will not listen to the living sources. Man has to get rid of all religions, including Christianity, otherwise he will never be wholesome, he will never be one, and he will never know the joys of life and the blessings and the benediction. He will never know the truth. If these religions go on living they are going to drive the whole of humanity insane. They have pushed everybody to the very verge of insanity. It is time to get rid of Christianity -- and all so-called religions which are different versions of the same stupidity. Man needs absolute freedom from the past. Only then can he live in the moment responsibly, and only then can he create a new future, a better future than the ugly past, for the coming humanity -- a superman, a better man than the pygmies of the past who were just slaves and nothing else. I used to know a very strange man, Mahatma Bhagwandin. In India there were only two mahatmas: Mahatma Gandhi and Mahatma Bhagwandin. I am absolutely against Mahatma Gandhi on every point. Sometime I am going to take care of him! But with Mahatma Bhagwandin I had a deep friendship. He was old, I was very young, just a student in the university when we met. He had come to give a talk in the university where I was a student, and he was talking and quoting from the scriptures, and he was a very great orator of his time. But I have always been a difficult person. I stood up in the middle, and I said to him, "Stop for a moment." He looked at me. I said, "Do you have anything to say on your own authority, or are you still going to quote from the scriptures?" There was a great silence. The vice-chancellor felt bad; he knew that I could not resist the temptation. Mahatma Bhagwandin was shocked. For the first time somebody had interrupted him in the middle. But he was an honest man, and he said, "You are right. I don't have anything to say on my own authority." That was the beginning of a great friendship of a young man with an old man. We used to meet often. He used to stay with me in my house, and I used to stay with him in his house. It was not far away, it was only six hours by car. Any moment I wanted to go there, I would simply drive from Jabalpur to Nagpur; he lived in Nagpur. We forgot completely that I was too young and he was too old. Even his host -- because he had no home, he was a sannyasin, so he was living with a friend -- even his host used to say, "It is a strange kind of friendship. You are so young, he is just going to die ... but when you both talk together, even we who listen forget the difference between your ages." And by chance, the day he died I was present just a few hours before. I was coming from Chaanda, and just in the train one man, Kamalnayan Bajaj ... He was the son of Jamanalal Bajaj, and Jamanalal Bajaj was the host of Mahatma Gandhi; he had taken him from Sabarmati, Ahmedabad, to Wardha. Wardha is just between Chaanda and Nagpur. I was coming from Chaanda. On the station of Wardha, Kamalnayan entered into my compartment. He was a member of parliament. He told me, "Do you know that Mahatma Bhagwandin is very seriously ill?" I said, "I had no idea." He said, "I am going to see him." I said, "I will then get down in Nagpur." I had not intended to get down in Nagpur, I was going directly by train to Jabalpur. So I got down, I went to see him, and I could not believe my eyes. I had not seen him for almost one year. He had become just a skeleton, just skin and bones, nothing else was left, and he was continuously coughing, coughing blood. He looked at me and he smiled. He said, "This was my last wish, that if existence has any compassion on me, somehow I would like to see you. That was my continuous heartfelt desire this last day. It is a miracle: you have come. I wanted to say something to you, because I know I am not going to stay much longer, maybe a few hours." And, in fact, after three hours he died. He said to me, "You had asked a question while you were a student many years ago in the university, and I had to confess before thousands of students and hundreds of professors that I didn't have anything to say on my own authority. "I want you to know that I still don't have anything of my own to say. I remained a scholar. I am dying in deep misery. I did not listen to you, I argued and argued and quoted scriptures, and never took the point although I felt you were right. But my age, my prestige, prevented me from asking you how to know it, how to get to it. It was a simple question and you were always available, but because I never asked, you never said anything. We discussed and discussed, but that was all intellectual." I said, "I was waiting. Without your being thirsty for it ... it is not possible for anyone. You can take the horse to the river, but you cannot force the horse to drink the water. "I have tried in every way to take you to the river. That's the end of the master's work. Now the river is ahead of you: if you are thirsty, drink; if you don't feel thirsty, I am helpless." He had tears in his eyes, tears of a long life wasted in words. Because of his scholarship he has been called Mahatma, great soul, but he had no idea of any soul as an experience. This country is too full of knowledge, too much burdened with scholarship, too much dominated by the priests. One thing he said, the last thing before I left him. He said to me, "If the crowd agrees with you, know you are wrong. Just remember it as advice from an old friend. If the crowd disagrees with you, there is a chance of your being right." The crowd has never been right, hence you don't see the Indian crowd here. You see individuals from all over the world, and a few individuals from India too -- but this is not a crowd. This is a meeting place of seekers. You have come on your own in search. India is too egoistic because it has all the great scriptures, and all the great priests who parrot-like go on repeating great words -- and they are satisfied with those words. They will die a miserable death like Mahatma Bhagwandin.

I am not going to praise any lies, any poisons, any untruths. I am going to say straightforwardly what is what. That was the problem for them. They could not understand how to argue with me. I was in America for five years, fighting in all the courts. In the end my visa had expired long before, I had no visa, no entry permit -- but they had not the guts even to come into the commune. They surrounded the whole commune -- the commune had one hundred and twenty-six square miles -- they surrounded the whole commune with the National Guard with machine guns, but they did not dare to enter into the commune. And we had nothing -- just thirty semi-automatic guns, which are available in America to any citizen. These belonged to the police force of the commune, which was paid by the American government because the police force was part of the American police force, even though all the people were sannyasins who had taken the police training. So they were afraid that "Although the police force is ours, it is going to fight for the commune, not for us." The greatest power in the world was afraid of thirty semiautomatic guns. They were planning for years and years how to arrest me -- and I don't have even a paperknife! To arrest me is so easy .... There was no need to handcuff me, there was no need to put chains on me. You could just have told me, "You are invited to the presidential guesthouse -- the jail," and I would have gone with them. There was no question about it. But you will be surprised .... They asked the FBI to arrest me, and the head laughed. He said, "A single individual who has not committed any crime, and you ask us to arrest him? We will not." Even the head of the army was asked. He simply laughed: "Have you gone mad? Has the army ever been called to arrest a single individual who has nothing in his hands with which to fight? You will make us a laughingstock all over the world." He refused. All the government agencies refused to arrest me, for the simple reason that they could not show any reason why I should be arrested. They could not say that I didn't have a visa, although my visa had expired long before. They could not say it because I had applied for renewing the visa, and they had not answered. They were afraid that if they said no, I was going to take them to the court, up to the Supreme Court, and it would take twenty years at least to decide the matter. So "No" they could not say; "Yes" they would not say. So they did not tell the army or the government agencies that "The only reason to arrest him is that he has been living in America without any visa." It was their fault, not mine. I had asked them again and again that "Either you say no, or you say yes" -- but they could not say either. They could not say yes because the Christian church was pressuring them that I should be thrown out of the country; once I am thrown out of the country, the commune will disperse. The commune had gathered out of love and gratitude around me, otherwise there was no reason to be in that desert. We transformed the desert into a garden. It was for sale for forty years, and nobody was ready to purchase it -- at any price. What will you do with that desert? But our creative people made houses, made dams, created small rivers. We had enough water in our reservoirs so that even if for five years there was no rain, we had reserves of water. We had planted so many trees that it was not going to be long before the trees would attract the clouds. We were cultivating in the desert enough food for the commune. Five years more and the commune would have been absolutely independent. We had our own cows for milk, we had our own hens laying eggs for people's breakfast. We had our own fields, we had our own greenhouses -- because in the desert the sun is so hot, and unless you make a greenhouse ... We had our own greenhouses for vegetables, for fruits. And this all was happening while we were fighting with the government in every court. They were putting imaginary cases ... but once they put a case against you, you have to fight it. We had the greatest law firm in the whole world. Two of the attorneys are here: Anando, Sangeet, and I think Niren was here just a few days before -- perhaps he may be here. We had four hundred people in the law firm, four hundred people continuously working on every aspect of American law and the Constitution. If they had depended simply on law, there would have been no way to destroy the commune. But they dropped all law, all Constitution, they were simply mad! And that madness is not part of a cultured religion. It is not civilization. We have not thrown out the Christian missionaries from India. They go on converting people to the Catholic fold -- but if people want to be Catholics, it is perfectly okay. It is their choice. The government has no objection; it has given freedom of religion. The American Constitution also makes it clear that the state should not interfere in religious matters -- but they interfered. They crushed and destroyed our commune. Just now I have received a few pictures. Even after five years in the desert, the trees that we have planted there are so green, they have achieved such great height, and with such beautiful shade underneath. They are still waiting .... But the government has not only deported me for five years, it has also made arrangements for another five years' suspended jail sentence. If I enter America after five years, they can put me in jail on any excuse -- imaginary -- and I will not have any recourse to appeal for five years. So, in fact, they have prevented me for ten years. In ten years those trees won't survive. Those three hundred peacocks in my garden, they have been catching them and selling them. They could get only one hundred and fifty, one hundred and fifty have escaped into the mountains. They will not be able to survive. The dam needs continuous care. In ten years it will not be able to contain the overflow of water. We were continually on guard that no water overflows the dam. Once the water starts overflowing, soon the dam will be destroyed -- and all the commune land is below the dam, so it will be flooded with water. That will destroy all the houses that we made for three thousand people to live in, all the roads that we created. And we were not employing any laborers. Doctors, surgeons, professors, teachers -- all kinds of educated people were creating roads, making houses, making gardens, lawns. We had one of the best hotels, with two hundred and forty rooms -- a five-star hotel in the desert. The whole commune was centrally air-conditioned .... Now what will happen to all that? Just a few months ago -- a picture has been sent to me by a sannyasin .... They did not allow me to stay even one day after I was released. They told me that I had to leave immediately. They were afraid that if I stayed even one more day, there was a possibility I might be able to appeal to the high court, to the Supreme Court. Fifteen minutes ... and my jet plane had been kept with the engine running, so that immediately I should be taken to the airport and taken out of America. I could not go back to the commune just to say goodbye to my people. Even when they gave me bail it was prohibited ... they made it absolutely certain that I didn't leave the commune. Every day a phone call would come and I had to answer the phone. I could not use the airplanes -- we had five airplanes in the commune. I wanted to go to the commune to at least tell my people, "Don't be worried. Even if I am not here, you continue, you will feel my presence. And ten years will pass" -- five years have already passed, five more years will pass also -- "I will be back." But they did not allow me even to go back to the commune. And just a few months ago I received a picture. We had -- those who were in the commune will remember -- just in front of the assembly hall, we had the sign of two birds flying, just as you entered from the road towards the assembly hall. A picture has been sent to me: some fanatic Christian has shot those symbolic birds, made twenty holes, with a gun. These are civilized people? And they were only painted birds, not even living birds -- but such anger, such violence! They must have robbed every house, everything that they could carry. They must have destroyed everything that we had managed so beautifully, with so much care and love. People were working ten hours, twelve hours a day. A great dream was about to be realized. And these people call themselves the ones who have civilized the world! They are not themselves civilized. They need civilization.

Perhaps, in the whole history of the popes, only one pope was honest. This pope was Pope Leo the Tenth in the sixteenth century. He is reported to have said, "It has served us well, this myth of Christ." I am not saying it, it is a statement from an infallible pope: "This myth of Christ has served us well." Certainly, it has profited you well. They have been talking about truth, but they have been hiding immensely important things. They have changed all the gospels, they have edited everything that was going to be difficult for them to argue for, to defend. In the oldest versions of the gospels, you will be surprised to know, Judas was one of Jesus Christ's brothers. He had two brothers and two sisters -- but to keep Jesus' mother, Mary, without sin, they have dropped those daughters and those brothers completely. Either they would have had to bring the Holy Ghost five times -- that would be too tiring for the Holy Ghost, and it is a remote-control operation -- or they would have had to accept that Mary gave birth from Joseph, her legal husband; that this Holy Ghost is illegal, and that Jesus is an illegitimate child. They have dropped from the gospels the very idea that Jesus had any brothers or any sisters. They had to keep Mariam, or Mary, or Maria, or whatever name you give to Jesus' mother ... Mohammedans call her Mariam, which looks to me the most beautiful. Greeks call her Maria, ordinary Christians call her Mary. But to keep Mary without sin was necessary for a certain reason. Why had God chosen Mary to give birth to his only begotten son? -- because she was without sin. It means that on the whole earth there was no other virgin girl; only Mary was virgin. It is such a condemnation of the whole of humanity.

I have heard: in a Christian church the priest was saying that virginity is one of the foundations. There were more women present than men. Men don't go to churches or temples, or any other holy places. It is the women, because that is the only place where they can gossip with each other. They don't have any clubs, they cannot go to the restaurants, to the pubs. They have no social mobility, only the church. So they go out of necessity, because that is the only place where they can show their ornaments, their beautiful clothing, the fur coats, and all kinds of gossips that are boiling within them. They don't go for Jesus Christ, for sure! And a few husbands go there -- not for Jesus Christ, but either to keep an eye on their wife or to keep an eye on somebody else's wife! When the priest asked, "Out of all you women, how many are virgins? Stand up!" nobody stood up. The priest said, "My God! Nobody is a virgin?" Then a woman with a small baby stood up. He said, "You idiot! I am asking about virgins. You already have a baby!" The woman said, "The baby cannot stand, and that is the only virgin in the church. I am not virgin, but this baby is six months old; she is still a virgin, believe me, but she cannot stand on her own!"

They say they are defending truth. They are defending lies. They don't mention in the gospels that Judas was Jesus' brother. And one thing is certain: they go on condemning Judas, that he betrayed Jesus for thirty silver pieces -- but in the gospels themselves there is not a single word of condemnation of Judas. My own understanding is that he never betrayed Jesus. It was Jesus himself, in his fanatical hallucination. Judas was trying to convince him, "Don't go at this moment into Jerusalem. It is the Jewish holiday, and this is the time of year when people are crucified. You will be caught, there are rumors all around. It is better not to go to Jerusalem at this moment. Let this festival pass, then you can go." But Jesus was absolutely fanatical. He said, "Don't you trust in God? This is a chance for the Jews to know that I am the only begotten son of God. Let them crucify me, and God will do a miracle!" And you have not been told that Judas was so sad and sorry when Jesus was crucified that the next day he committed suicide, hanging himself from a tree. But Christians will not talk about the truth. They have to throw the responsibility on someone, but without any evidence from ancient scriptures ... It is one of the most poisonous religions. It says that one of the pillars of Christianity is forgiveness. It looks beautiful when you hear the word `forgiveness', but the implications are very evil. A man rapes a woman. The man will be forgiven by God, but what about the woman? The criminal is forgiven, what about the victim? There is not a single mention that the victim will be rewarded or anything. A man murders, and he simply goes to the priest and confesses, and the priest gives him a simple method, so cheap: "You have murdered a man. Put ten dollars in the charity box and say five Hail Marys, and your sin is forgiven. God is compassionate." But what about the murdered? Nobody has asked the question to the Christians, "What about the murdered? What is God going to do with the murdered, the raped woman, the molested child?" And, strangely enough, the same man will commit another murder, because now he is fresh, clear; the old murder is erased, forgiven for ten dollars and five Hail Marys. Now he can commit another murder, he can commit another rape. All he needs is to go and confess to the priest and give some money, and the priest will give him a prayer to do five or ten times. There is no mention of the person who has been committing crime after crime. He is not being punished, he is being continuously forgiven. And all those people who have suffered from this man's crimes, there is not a single mention of them in the whole Christian religion. It seems God is in favor of criminals, but not in favor of the victims. Now look again at the idea of forgiveness, and you will see that it is ugly. In other religions, Jainism, Buddhism, there is no God -- and it is good that there is no God. Nobody can forgive, so there is no question of forgiveness. These religions are more scientific. Every action will have its reaction, nobody can prevent it. You put your hand in the fire and you will be burnt. No God can prevent it. You rape a woman and you will suffer a deep wound of guilt. You may go mad, but you will have to suffer. Only suffering will cleanse you, not forgiveness. These religions are far more scientific: Taoism, Buddhism, Jainism. These three religions don't have any God, they don't have any hell, any heaven. They are purely scientific: live according to your awareness and there will be nothing like sin committed by you. Live unconsciously and you will suffer. It is unconsciousness that suffers. There is nobody who can forgive you; that forgiveness is in itself a criminal act, because the raped woman is suffering. Perhaps she gets pregnant, she has a child which she cannot love. She hates it. It is out of rape that the child has come to her. There is no discussion at all about the very fundamental problem. Forgiveness is not the right thing. One who commits anything against existence has to suffer. One who helps existence to grow towards more beauty and more consciousness, and more joy and more dance, should be rewarded -- not by any God, but by his own act. In fact, when you do something good out of your awareness, the very action brings such blissfulness to you, such peace, such joy; you are rewarded in the action itself. And if you do evil ... that is only possible if you are not meditative. If you are an unconscious being, in blindness you may commit something which hurts someone -- but then you have to take the responsibility, and you have to suffer the reaction that is produced by your action. Christianity is absolutely unscientific. There is no future for Christianity.

They say that they have given a sense of morality to the world. These are their questions they have sent to me. "We have given a sense of morality to the world" -- and they don't read, it seems, even their own Bible. The Old Testament is full of pornography, far worse than any PLAYBOY, PLAYGIRL, or PENTHOUSE. Of course there are no psychedelic colors in the pornography, so you don't see it, you have to read it. There are three hundred and eighty-eight pages of pornography in the Old Testament. This is the biggest pornographic holy scripture. One of my friends, Ben Akerley, has pulled out those three hundred and eighty-eight pages and created a book called THE X-RATED BIBLE. Now Christians all around the world are trying to ban the book, but it has already gone underground, it is circulating. I have it; I would not say anything for which I don't have the right evidence! Just one instance of the pornography ... Three hundred and eighty-eight pages will be too long, it will make the record! According to the book of Samuel, King David -- no ordinary person, but very much respected in the Old Testament -- King David saw Bathsheba bathing from the roof of the palace -- a great king! -- and thought she was beautiful, so he had her brought to him so that he could sleep with her. When she became pregnant, David called her husband back from the war -- he was a soldier in David's army -- so that the husband could sleep with her, and believe the child was his. But the husband did not sleep with her, so David had the husband, Uriah, sent to the front of the hottest battle, so that he was killed. Then he married Bathsheba. As a punishment for this, the Lord threatened that he would take David's wives from him and give them to his neighbor who would sleep with them in public view. A great punishment! God also seems to be pornographic. This is the old jungle law: an eye for an eye. You have slept with somebody else's wife; all your wives, not just one -- David had many wives, he was a great king -- all your wives will be taken away from you, and in public view they will have to make love to your neighbors. This is forgiveness? And what is the justification? David has slept with only one wife; now all his wives ...? And what have the wives done? They have not slept with the soldier, why are they being punished? It is strange: David commits the sin, his wives will suffer the punishment. Great justice. Even an idiot can understand that this God is retarded. The Christian monks have asked me, "We have given the sense of morality to the world ...." Then what was Gautam Buddha doing five hundred years before Christ? What was Mahavira doing? What were the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas doing? What were Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu doing? They were all before Jesus Christ. And, in fact, Jesus Christ had come to India, hearing about Gautam Buddha. Although Gautam Buddha was dead, he had left enlightened people, "and there may be some few still who are enlightened." Enlightened Buddhists had created two great universities, Nalanda and Takshashila. Those were the first universities in the world. Oxford is only one thousand years old, and Oxford has only ten thousand students. Nalanda had fifty thousand students; Takshashila had one hundred thousand students. They were not ordinary students, they were sannyasins, and they were not learning scriptures, they were learning meditation. They were learning how to enter into past lives and to find out what they had done in the past lives. Those were great universities which were destroyed by the Hindus. But Jesus came at the right time. He could meet enlightened masters in Nalanda, in Takshashila. He went to both the universities, it is on record. And far away in Ladakh, in the Himalayas, there is a Buddhist monastery which has a record of all the visitors. One of the visitors to the monastery in Ladakh was Jesus. One hundred and fifty years ago a Russian explorer reached to Ladakh, and he has copied the whole page that was written about Jesus: "A man who was a Jew, a young man, came and remained in the monastery. He was tremendously beautiful and he tried to learn everything of what Buddha had been teaching. He has visited Takshashila and he has visited Nalanda, and he has seen enlightened people and learned many things from them." These are the seventeen years that are missing from the Bible. Seventeen years he was here in India, in Ladakh, in Tibet, so whatever he was teaching was borrowed from the East. You have not given a moral sense to humanity; even Christ has borrowed it from the East. There is great similarity between his statements and Gautam Buddha's, but Gautam Buddha's statements have an authority which Jesus' do not have. For example, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is an ancient Buddhist proverb, but Christians brag about it very much. As far as I am concerned, whether it is Buddhist or Christian does not matter. It is wrong. It is wrong on psychological grounds. "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." If everybody were equal, similar, had the same desires, then perhaps this principle would have been right. But everybody is different, your taste may not be the same as mine. "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" -- that's perfectly okay, but others' tastes may be different. Everybody has a unique personality, so I may do something which I like, but you may not return it. Your taste, your personality may be different. For example, take a masochist who loves to be tortured. That is his greatest joy: to be tortured. He reads this statement, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," and what will happen? He will start torturing you, hoping that you will, in return, torture him. But it is not necessarily so. You may be a weaker person, or perhaps you may be yourself a masochist, enjoying his torture and not doing anything. It is said that the best couple, the most perfect couple in the world, is one in which one partner is a sadist and the other partner is a masochist. They fit. But it is very difficult to find such a perfect couple, where one loves to be tortured, and the other loves to torture .... So if by chance it happens that you meet a sadist and you are a masochist, then this principle on that rare occasion will be right. Otherwise, it is not the rule. It looks beautiful, but it is unpsychological. It does not touch the depth of human psychology. People's tastes differ.

They have asked what I want to say about this: "Sanctify the Lord, and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread." On the one hand they go on talking about his forgiveness, his compassion, his love, and in this statement they are saying, "Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread." This is sheer exploitation of man's fear and dread, to terrify him, to make him tremble. It is a well-known documented fact that in the Middle Ages there used to be Christian missionaries .... They created such fearful scenes of hellfire -- eternal fire, the devil torturing everybody in every possible way, and it is never going to end -- and they shouted and they beat the table, and they slammed the Bible on the table. They created such fear amongst the women that after their sermon, the measure of their success was to count how many women had fallen unconscious, foaming, in a coma. The whole picture was so colorfully painted that the women started trembling, because they all knew they had committed sin. They have loved a man -- that is the greatest sin. They have not only loved their man, they have even desired other men. Because the Bible says, "Even your dreams will be counted." If in a dream you make love to your neighbor's wife, don't think God is not watching! He is the perfect witness of everything that is happening in the world. He is looking through every keyhole. He is looking even in your dreams, you are not even free to dream. You are not doing anything, just dreaming, but even your dreams will be counted on the day of judgment as sins. There is no difference, it is equal. Whether you have actually committed a sin or you have just dreamt about it, imagined about it, the punishment is equal. The whole of Christianity lives on fear and greed. Those are human weaknesses. Man is afraid of death, man is afraid what is going to happen beyond death. Man is afraid of his own desires, his tendency to love. Christianity exploits them, and all other religions also exploit them in a minor way. Make people afraid and they will fall down on their knees, foaming at the mouth and raising their hands to God: "Forgive us ...." They will "sanctify the Lord" out of their fear and dread. And create greed in them: "If you don't commit the sins, if you are afraid of God, all the pleasures that you can dream about will be yours in paradise." So on the one hand there is fear, which is one of the basic paranoias of man, and on the other hand, greed. Fear is for hell, greed is for paradise. The word `paradise' comes from Persian. In Persian it is firdaus, and firdaus means a walled garden where kings used to enjoy hundreds of women, wine -- a pleasure garden. Paradise is nothing but a changed form of firdaus: a walled garden of pleasure. So give people a carrot, hanging far away beyond death, so they go on moving. Nobody knows whether that carrot exists or not, because nobody has returned from paradise to inform you what is true and what is untrue. And nobody has returned from hell either -- so both are fictions, with not a single witness. But by creating more fear, more dread, more greed, you can manipulate humanity into slavery. This is not morality, this is sheer slavery. You are taking the dignity of human beings and you are destroying their beauty, their joy, their life, and filling it with all kinds of rubbish, poisons. They have poisoned almost the whole of humanity. Even Mahatma Gandhi ... I have looked deeply into his life and his actions. Perhaps not even his followers have gone so deep into his mind. He was one percent Hindu, he was born a Hindu, and he was nine percent Jaina, because he was born in Gujarat which is under the impact of Jainism -- even Hindus are under the impact of Jainism -- and he was ninety percent Christian. At least three times in his life he wanted to become a Christian but was persuaded by his friends, "That would destroy our whole political fight for freedom. If you become a Christian, Hindus will not be with you, and neither will Mohammedans participate under your guidance. So please don't do this." But what was the reason? Why did he want to become a Christian? In his prayers he continually says, "I am not afraid of anything except God." That is a Christian idea that has become conditioned in his mind. He was educated in England for his law degree, and then he was in constant companionship with the Christians in South Africa. He came back to India when he was forty years old, almost completely programmed by the Christians. And here in India a great Christian missionary, C.F. Andrews, was continually nagging him to become a Christian. "Without being a Christian you cannot reach paradise" -- and who would not like to reach paradise? Jesus says, "Anybody who goes to paradise goes through me. There is no other way. There is no other alternative." I had one of Mahatma Gandhi's sons, Ramdas, as my friend, and I used to talk to Ramdas whenever I went to Wardha to deliver lectures. I asked him, "Did not your father ever think about what Jesus says? -- that God is love. How can you be afraid of love? You can be afraid of everybody EXCEPT God. Jesus was saying just the opposite." But Christians are doing the same. Gandhi was just repeating Christian theology like a parrot. On the one hand God is love; on the other hand, "Fear God and feel the dread." Then God is not love. Love dispels fear. Love dispels dread. Love is the only thing in the whole world which destroys all fear, all death. Love is the only alchemy that transforms you into an authentic religious person, not fear. Fear creates only slaves. Fear and dread are the reasons for all psychopaths; the whole pathology that psychiatrists and psychoanalysts are treating is created by some kind of fear. But from the very beginning the children are told, "Be afraid of God. He sees everyone."

I have heard about a Christian nun who used to take her bath in a closed bathroom, keeping her clothes on. When the other nuns found out, they said, "Are you mad? The doors are closed and there are only nuns around here; there is no man in the monastery. Why do you take your bath keeping your clothes on?" The nun said, "God is omnipresent. He is in the bathroom too; so I am afraid." Such conditioning is bound to create pathology.

I have told you about militant Christianity. It is said, "Fight the good fight! Onward Christian soldiers!" Is it a religion or an army? But it has been killing millions of people -- and Christians call them religious wars, holy wars, crusades. Mohammedans call their holy wars jihads, wars for God. Does God require that millions of people should be killed? Does this statement come from God or from Jesus Christ, who talks continuously of love? But now it is militant Christianity: "Fight the good fight" -- because it is a fight for God. "Onward Christian soldiers!" Christianity does not create sannyasins, it creates soldiers, and these are the polar opposites. The monks who had come here belong to a certain sect of Christianity, Jesuits. They say to every parent, "Give us a boy of seven" ... not a girl. That's why you saw twenty-one soldiers, all male, and not a single woman soldier. "Give us a boy of seven years and we will turn him into a good soldier of Christ." On the one hand they go on saying that Christ is the pacifier, that he came to make the world at ease and in peace, and on the other hand they are asking for seven-year-old children. Why? -- because after seven years you can start conditioning and programming perfectly. The boy will be able to understand it, and by the age of twenty-one the programming will be complete. The time between seven and twenty-one is the most vulnerable time, because after seven, sexuality starts in a very small way. By the age of fourteen it is ripe. And as sexuality is your life energy, when it is beginning, that is the right time to fill your life energy with certain programs. Your mind is growing with your sex. It is not a coincidence that millions of people around the world have the mental age of only seven. From there they have been filled with beliefs -- Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan -- and they lost their intelligence. There is no need of intelligence. They are given everything as a belief, they don't have to explore, so they lose their growth of intelligence. In America, I called Oregonians -- where our commune was -- retarded people. The attorney general, Frohnmeyer, became very angry when he heard my statement, but the University of Oregon became interested in whether there was some truth in what I had said. When I returned to India, the results of their research and their survey came. They had done the survey of the commune while I was there, and then they surveyed all cross-sections of Oregon society. They were absolutely puzzled how I came to say it. The Oregonians' average mental age was seven and the commune's mental age was double -- fourteen. Those idiots destroyed an intelligent commune. This fourteen years is also because you are coming from conditioned families. I go on sharpening your intelligence, but you are already conditioned. That conditioning takes a little time. A man is capable of growing hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder -- his physical age and his mental age together. When he is fourteen his mental age is fourteen, when he is twenty-one his mental age is twenty-one, when he is seventy his mental age is seventy. That will be the right growth program. But no religion wants people of such intelligence, because then they will see all the contradictions and all the superstitions and all the stupidities of your religion. And why are they asking for seven-year-old children? -- because after seven years of age it is possible to program the child easily. He becomes vulnerable. He is growing in his sexual life. He becomes open. You feed him, can fill him with any kind of nonsense and he will accept it. It will become his bones, it will become his blood, it will become his marrow, it will become his mind -- and he will never grow beyond the age of seven. They are ready to return the child by the age of twenty-one, because at that time ... Sexual energy comes to the highest peak when you are seventeen and a half; that is when you have the greatest power. After seventeen and a half you are on the decline, and by twenty-one you have become too ripe. Now to change you is very difficult. So they are ready to return the children by twenty-one; now nobody can change them, they have prepared them into good soldiers of Christ. But the very word `soldiers of Christ' is so ugly. I teach you to be sannyasins -- and not my sannyasins. It is your sannyas, it is your investigation into truth. To be a soldier needs your mind to be stopped at the age of seven. Only retarded people can be soldiers -- good soldiers. They won't ask any questions, they will simply follow the orders. Every religion wants people who don't ask awkward questions, embarrassing questions which they cannot answer. I am here to answer all of your questions. You can find from any nook and corner of the world any question, and I am ready to answer, because I have no investment in you and I have no investment in any fold, any cult, any creed, any religion. My only love is to share the truth, the beauty, the godliness that I have found. It is overflowing. All I need is just a silent receptivity, a silent listening, and you will not be turned into soldiers of anybody. You will be an individual on your own feet -- a sannyasin in your own right.

“Unless you have found your natural inclination, your life is going to be a long, long tragedy, from the cradle to the grave. The only people who have been blissful in the world are the people who have lived according to their own intuition and have rebelled against any effort by others to impose their ideas. Howsoever valuable those ideas may be, they are useless because they are not yours. The only significant idea is that which arises in you, grows in you, blossoms in you.”

"Anybody who can be a good pretender, a hypocrite, will become your leader politically, will become your priest religiously. All that he needs is hypocrisy, all that he needs is cunningness, all that he needs is a facade to hide behind. Your politicians live double lives, your priests live double lives--one from the front door, the other from the back door. And the back-door life is their real life. Those front-door smiles are just false, those faces looking so innocent are just cultivated. If you want to see the reality of the politician you will have to see him from his back door. There he is in his nudity, as he is, and so is the priest. These two kinds of cunning people have dominated humanity. And they found out very early on that if you want to dominate humanity, make it weak, make it feel guilty, make it feel unworthy. Destroy its dignity, take all glory away from it, humiliate it. And they have found such subtle ways of humiliation that they don't come in the picture at all; they leave it to you to humiliate yourself, to destroy yourself. They have taught you a kind of slow suicide."

BELOVED OSHO, IN YOUR VISION, IS CHARITY A PART OF RELIGIOUSNESS? IF SO, WHAT WOULD CONSTITUTE CHARITY? FOLLOWING THE CATHOLIC CONCEPT, THE INDIAN LEGISLATURE SPECIFIES: 1) RELIEF FOR THE POOR, 2) EDUCATION, AND 3) MEDICAL RELIEF, AS BEING CHARITY. WHAT IS THE CONCEPT OF CHARITY IN THE EYES OF A BUDDHA?

Om Prakash, the concept of charity in the eyes of one who is awakened is bound to be totally different from the so-called Catholic idea of charity.

The Catholic idea is relief for the poor. The idea of the buddha will be: there is no need for any poverty in the world. Poverty is man-created, and it is in our hands to destroy poverty. But all the religions -- and most prominent of them is Christianity -- have emphasized relief for the poor. Relief for the poor is not charity; it is not love. Why, in the first place, should poverty exist? It exists because there are a few people who are too greedy. Poverty is a by-product of greed. One part of society goes on accumulating; naturally, the other part of society becomes poor. And man has lived for centuries under this exploitation. This exploitation can be completely destroyed. Whatever the society produces belongs to all. And the most surprising thing is that the poor are the people who produce, and the rich are the people who do not produce. Those who produce are hungry and starving and dying. Just to give them relief is a very cunning idea: it protects the exploitation; it protects the capitalists. It protects those who are the criminals, and it also protects the poor so that they go on producing and go on fulfilling sick ambitions of pathological people. A man who accumulates money, seeing clearly that it is going to destroy millions of people, cannot be called healthy. To call him religious is a mockery -- he is not even human. And particularly now, when science has developed to a point that the whole earth can be comfortably rich, there is no need of any relief for the poor.

What is needed is a revolution of the poor, a deep understanding among the poor that "It is not because of your past lives' evil deeds that you are poor; it is not your fate that makes you poor. It is a few people who are pathologically sick, who have lost all compassion, all sensitiveness, whose hearts have become inhuman -- it is because of these people you are poor." And just a great understanding among the poor can bring a revolution in the world. I don't advocate any violent revolution. There is no need, because the poor are in the majority, and the rich are very few. Just by democratic means, the power can be in the hands of the poor, and we can create a society which is classless, where everybody's needs can be fulfilled. Greed is not need. And there is no way to fulfill greed, it goes on growing. Just for a few people's sickness, the whole society suffers. But the priests are servants of those who are rich. Naturally, in a country like India, where for thousands of years poverty has existed, there has not been even a philosophical idea of revolution, to say nothing about an actual revolution happening. There has not been even a single philosopher to say that a revolution is needed. Just to go on giving the poor a little relief keeps them alive at survival level. I would not call it charity. It is really to keep them alive so that they can go on producing for those who are rich and want to be richer. I agree totally with Karl Marx on this point, that religion has been the opium of the poor. It has drugged them with hopes for a better life in the future, after death, if they remain content with their poverty now. Naturally, the rich people have been the protectors of the priests, of the missionaries. They have made great churches and temples for God, because they have seen the point, that if religion prevails over people's minds, there is no possibility of any revolution. What you have been told up to now is charity, is simply the suicide of all those who are poor and suffering. It has been in the service of the rich; it is not in the service of the poor. I teach you love. And love is not blind; love can see the whole structure -- how poverty happens. And love can bring the revolution; a revolution brought by love, not by violence, is charity to me. The Catholic concept also says "education." But what education? In the advanced countries, almost everybody is educated, but that has not transformed man. Man remains as miserable as before -- lives a life of anxiety and anguish. Education is not bringing peace and silence and blissfulness to people. There is something missing in it; it is only education in subjects which do not touch your interior being at all. They may make you doctors, engineers, professors, but they do not give you the insight that can create a Gautam Buddha in you. The true meaning of the word "education" is "to draw out." But all that your so-called education does is to force in. From outside, borrowed knowledge is being forced into the minds of innocent children. In my vision, education is nothing but another form of meditation. All that usually goes on in the name of education is secondary. The priority should be given to meditation -- education of the inner. Unless you become acquainted with yourself, all your knowledge is useless. So before education I would put meditation. Education is trivia: geography, history, arithmetic. It is good as far as the mundane world is concerned, but it is not good as far as your interiority is concerned. You go on accumulating degrees and inside you remain empty. Your degrees can befool people, may even befool yourself, but you cannot have the joy, the blissfulness, the peace, the silence, the compassion of a Gautam Buddha. And unless education has two wings, it cannot fly in the sky in total freedom. Right now it has only one wing; the other wing is missing. Why is it missing? Because the priests don't want you to become meditators. Once you are in meditation, you are soon going to be free from all priesthood, from all churches and synagogues, temples and mosques. What is the need to go to a church when you can go inside yourself -- to the real temple of God? What is the need for a priest? What is the need for a pope, when you experience God directly, immediately, within your own being? When God becomes your personal experience, naturally you are free from being a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan; hence, no religion wants you to be meditators. They want you to be educated in physics, in chemistry, in biology. No university in the world has a department for meditation. And without meditation, a man remains incomplete. This is one of the root causes of our misery. To me, charity first means the education of the inner; and only secondarily, it means education of other things. "Know thyself" must be the most precious education, and then you can become acquainted with everything else. A man who knows himself will never misuse his education in the outer world. Otherwise, when you don't know yourself, you are going to use your education to exploit people, to create poverty.

If you know yourself, you will create a society where poverty does not exist. All your religions have failed in creating a society where poverty does not exist. And one of the most fundamental reasons is that none of your religions has been emphasizing the education of the inner -- the journey into one's own self. The moment you are at the very center of your being, you have such clarity about all the problems of life that one thing is certain: you will not create any problem; and another thing is certain: you will spread your vision, your understanding, to other people. All problems are our own creation. In our ignorance of ourselves we have created them. In our consciousness, they will dissolve just like dewdrops disappearing in the morning sun. And third: Catholic charity has the idea of "medical relief." There is nothing wrong in medical relief, but why do so many diseases exist? Look at the wild animals and you will not find a single deer who is suffering from cancer or from tuberculosis or from any psychological problem. You will not find a deer murdering another deer, and you will not find a deer who is trying to commit suicide. It is strange that man, who is the climax of existence and consciousness, suffers so much. Perhaps we only help to remove the symptoms and we never remove the causes. For example, when I was in America they passed in Texas a resolution that homosexuality will now be a crime, because of the fear of AIDS. And the whole of America must have been shocked, because one million homosexuals protested outside the state legislature of Texas. Texas is a backward state in America. One would never have conceived that one million people are homosexuals. They declared, "If homosexuality is a crime then we are going underground." You cannot write on anybody's forehead that he is a homosexual; neither are there any signals that show that a certain person is a homosexual. And they said, "Right now, we have our homosexual clubs, homosexual restaurants, homosexual meeting places. We will go on being what we are, but no longer in the open." A problem becomes more difficult if it goes underground. It is better to know that a certain person is homosexual. And homosexuality itself is only a symptom. But nobody in the world has the courage to say the right thing -- that it is celibacy that has created homosexuality. Nobody can say it, because it goes against all the religions. Nobody wants to be condemned, like me, by everybody in the whole world. But I have really enjoyed this condemnation. No animal in the wild ever goes homosexual. Why? -- there is no need. But in zoos it has been found again and again that animals become homosexuals, because the female is not there. What are you supposed to do with your sexual energy? It is a natural phenomenon. It needs some outlet.

All the religions have been teaching celibacy as one of the greatest religious qualities, and all the societies have been respecting virginity as something spiritual -- these are the causes which have created homosexuality and lesbianism. And out of this homosexuality has come the disease AIDS, for which the scientists are finding no cure. But still, no priest in the world, no political leader in the world, no man who has any international status has said clearly that celibacy should be the crime, not homosexuality. But I want to say it: Celibacy is the crime. Homosexuality is only a symptom. And if you repress the symptom, then the possibility is that something worse may happen, because the same energy that has turned from heterosexuality to homosexuality can turn towards sodomy. People can start making love... they have been making love for centuries, there are descriptions even in the OLD TESTAMENT and other scriptures about people making love to animals, particularly shepherds who are living in deep mountain forests where they don't have anybody else except their animals. And animals are not going to report to the police. If homosexuality has created AIDS, then sodomy -- making love to animals -- can create something far worse. Medical relief is good, but it is very superficial. The man of real charity will try to find out the causes that are creating so many diseases, and those causes should be removed. They can be removed! It has been found that people who eat too much live only half the normal lifespan. If they were going to live for seventy years, they will die when they are only thirty-five. But people who eat less live longer than is normal. The norm may be seventy -- they may live one hundred years. You don't understand a simple thing: that whatever you eat, your body has to digest... it is a great labor for your whole digestive system; and if the digestive system becomes tired, you are going to die soon; and if your digestive system remains untired and young and fresh, of course you can live longer. And there are people who are living longer. In the Caucasus, there are thousands of people who have passed one hundred and fifty years of age, and there are a few hundred people who have reached almost one hundred and eighty years. And they are still young; they are still working in the fields. Scientists say that looking at the mechanism of the body, everybody should easily be able to live for three hundred years; but so many diseases go on destroying the possibility. People are eating things not for nourishment; people are eating things only for taste. People are not eating things in proportion; they may be eating something which is not needed in the body and they may not be eating something which is absolutely needed. For example, vegetarians are missing certain vitamins which are absolutely necessary for intelligence and its growth. It is not a surprise that not a single vegetarian has ever won a Nobel prize. In fact, they should have won more than anybody else, because they eat the purest food. But the problem is that their intelligence never grows; it needs certain vitamins which are missing. Substitutions can be found; without eating meat, substitutions can be found. I have been telling the vegetarians, "Just by eating unfertilized eggs, you are in a far better position than meat eaters; and the unfertilized egg is just vegetable, there is no life in it." They have been getting angry with me, saying, "You are teaching people to eat eggs." I said, "You don't understand. I am saying unfertilized eggs" -- but they don't hear the word "unfertilized." Just the word "eggs" is enough to freak them out. Right food.... Humanity is almost mature; it should not live on lollipops. But there are people... I have seen even old people with lollipops! People are filling themselves with ice cream and all kinds of nonsense, junk. Real charity consists in making people more educated about how to take care of their bodies, how to be more loving towards their own bodies. Medical relief should be a secondary thing. Because of this Catholic concept of charity, even the Indian constitution has accepted the idea of charity in the exact same words: "Relief for the poor, education, and medical relief." It is even more shocking that the people who made the Indian constitution are not aware of their own Eastern tradition, of their own heritage. They have not put in it anything which is their own; otherwise, how have they forgotten meditation? The man who was mainly responsible for making the Indian constitution was Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. He converted thousands of untouchables to Buddhism and he wrote a great book on Buddhism, and I don't think he knows anything about meditation. Without meditation, Buddhism is just a corpse -- without the very flame of life. And even Dr. Ambedkar did not add to the constitution that helping people to be more meditative is the greatest charity, helping people to become enlightened is the most important charity. It has been a problem for us: the Indian government cannot accept our mystery school as an institution of charity because of this definition. It is so strange that meditation is not included in charity. What can be more valuable than to be a light unto yourself? And all that they have included are very superficial things. The constitution needs something much deeper to be representative of the East. It looks as if a Catholic missionary has written it; it does not look as if we have Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Adinatha, Kabir, Nanak, Farid. These people are not charitable; Mother Teresa is the only charitable person in India, because she goes on raising the orphans. But she is against birth control. If you have a little understanding, you can see the point: if you don't want orphans, then birth control should be the most charitable thing. Spread the idea of birth control, distribute the pill to as many people as possible, so there are no orphans. It is a strange thing that first you prevent people from birth control, and then they create children which they cannot raise, and you come in to become a great saint because you are doing a great, charitable act. If birth control methods are used, there will be no orphans. If medical science is not working under religious conditions and is allowed freedom from religions, many diseases will disappear. There are thirty million people in America who are in the hospitals because they eat too much; they have gathered so much weight, they cannot even move. And it is charity to take care of them, so thousands of doctors and nurses and hospitals are engaged in taking care of these idiots. And exactly the same number, thirty million people, are dying of starvation on the streets. If this is the situation of America, which is the richest country in the world, what to say about the poor countries? Thirty million people have no shelter, no food, no clothes, and another thirty million people are being served by doctors and nurses and hospitals and the whole of medical science because they go on eating too much. They cannot be sent back home, because at home nobody can prevent them -- they will go to the fridge! These thirty million people who are in the hospitals should be left on the road, and the thirty million people who are on the road should be put into the hospitals and should be taken care of -- that would be charity! These idiots would come to their senses soon -- and you would be saving sixty million people just by a small change. Man needs to understand that our problems are our own creations, and if we want to get rid of them this superficial Catholic so-called charity is not going to be of much help. These charitable missionaries and institutions have existed for thousands of years but poverty goes on growing, sickness goes on growing, madness goes on growing. It is time to realize that we are doing something fundamentally wrong. All these people teach something against your body, that the body is the enemy. And if this concept goes into your mind -- that the body is your enemy -- then naturally you are not going to take care of it. I say unto you: The body is your greatest friend. Take care of your body. And remember, you are not suffering from any fate; there is no fate as such. And you are not suffering from your evil deeds of a past life, because each action brings its result immediately. I was talking with a Jaina monk, and he was very insistent that it is past karmas which create poverty. It was a winter night in the Himalayas. We were sitting near the fireplace, so I told the monk, "You put your hand in the fire."

He said, "Why?" I said, "I want to see whether you get burnt now or in your next life. That will be decisive." He said, "Are you mad?" I said, "This question you should ask about yourself."

Each action is related with its consequence. It does not wait so long that when you die and are born again -- perhaps sixty years or eighty years afterwards -- you will suffer because you have done something wrong. Each wrong act brings its own suffering, and each good act brings its own reward and its own blissfulness. But people have been deceived, and deceived by those in whom they have believed so much. To summarize, I would like to say that charity is to make the poor aware that poverty is created by the few people who are greedy. Those who are accumulating too much should be behind bars, and those who are producing should be the owners of their product. The land should belong to the one who toils on the land, and the garden to the one who works there, and the factory to those who pour their very life into creating things. Just two percent of the people in India can be called rich, and these two percent are keeping ninety- eight percent of the people poor. You will not believe it, but half the wealth of the whole of India is in Bombay. Just one city has half the wealth, and the whole country -- a continent of almost nine hundred million people -- has the other half. It seems we have lived in such a way, geared to such a style, that we have come to accept that those who are rich are being rewarded because of their past good karmas, good actions. I want to destroy this whole ideology. Education is certainly needed; but before education, meditation is needed. Anybody who becomes a graduate -- either an engineer or a doctor or a professor -- should not be able to have his degree unless he also passes his examinations in meditation. Each university and each college should have classes for meditation for the students -- and for people from outside also; they may not have been able in their youth to learn meditation, but now they can learn. Education is a vast phenomenon. Each hospital should have a certain department where people who are going to die should be taught meditation before death -- just as people who are going to live... when they pass their examinations in the university, they should be taught meditation -- how to live dancingly, joyously, beautifully, without greed, without jealousy, without anger, without hatred. Then comes another point, when a person is dying. When the doctors feel that only a few months are left, he should be taught meditation as a preparation for the eternal journey he is going on. Soon he will leave the body. Before he leaves the body, he must understand, experience, that he is not the body. Then he can die joyously. Living joyously and dying joyously -- if we can create this atmosphere, I call it the greatest charity. And that is what we are doing here. Whether the government accepts it or not does not matter; whether the constitution goes on superficially.... It will have to change. We just have to create people who are evidence of right education. An education is complete when it is inner and outer both. And we have to create people who can change this whole exploitative structure with love and compassion in a democratic way. There is no need for any violence. The poor just have to be made aware: It is time for you to wake up; everything belongs to you.

Maneesha, before I discuss the sutras, something of great importance has to be understood. Zen is neither Buddhism nor Taoism; it is a crossbreed. When the great Bodhidharma met the masters of Taoism in China, the meeting and their dialogues created something new, which has the flavor of Buddhism in it but is not dependent on Buddhist literature. It has also the flavor of Tao in it, but is not dependent on Taoist tradition. It is independent of both the parents. As all crossbreeds are better than the parents -- even philosophical systems, theological ways, meditation function in the same way as fruits, as animals, as human beings -- the crossbreed by nature itself takes the best of both the parents and leaves all that is non-essential. Zen's greatness and height is because it has left all the non-essentials of Buddhism and all the non- essentials of Taoism, and two great peaks have merged into a higher peak, which has only the flavor from both. But the synthesis of the flavors makes it a totally new phenomenon. Hence the traditional Buddhist will not give any credit to Zen. He will simply laugh and will say, "It is just crazy." The traditional Taoist also will say the same thing: "It is crazy. It is not part of our system." But this became a great opportunity to rebel against all traditions. Zen is pure rebellion. But unfortunately, the way history moves, even the very rebellious people... Gautam Buddha himself was a great rebellious mind; he rebelled against Hinduism, he rebelled against Jainism, he rebelled against the whole past of India. He had the guts and the genius to do it. But this is the unfortunate part: that sooner or later Buddha had to die. His words would fall into the hands of the scholars. He could not prevent it -- although his last premonition was this: "Don't make me an institution. Don't make me a tradition! I have been against the traditional way; I don't want to become myself a tradition, but I will not be here to prevent you. So my last words are: Don't make my statues, don't make my temples, don't write my scriptures -- so that I can disappear just like the birds' footprints in the blue sky. Don't be worried that my disappearance will be in any way a disturbance in the evolution of humanity. Better buddhas will be coming, greater revolutionaries will be coming. I don't want to stand in their way." But nobody listens. The moment he died, the next thing his disciples did was to collect all that he had said in forty-two years' continually speaking, morning, evening. And he had not allowed anybody to take notes, for the simple reason that these notes would become scriptures. But the words were so profound that the first gathering -- just the second day after Buddha's death -- decided that all the enlightened disciples should gather together. There were five hundred enlightened disciples -- this was called the first great meeting -- and they decided that everybody should relate his experience, "so we can collect somehow the great treasure that is going to disappear if we don't collect it now." One can understand their concern for the future generations, that Buddha should not be lost. But one can also understand that although they were enlightened, they could not agree about Buddha's last statement, his last words, and they did not even feel that they were disagreeing. So each person who had heard whatever Buddha had said related whatever he remembered. There were great troubles, because somebody said something and somebody else contradicted it saying that Buddha had said something else. Soon it was clear that they were not all agreeing. Thirty-two schools arose; thirty-two different schools and traditions -- each claiming to be the right tradition -- and they started to make Buddha's statues, scriptures. In the whole world nobody else's statues exist more than Buddha's. When the Arabians and Persians came into contact in Mongolia with the statue of Buddha, they had never seen anybody's statue, so Buddha's statue became to them exactly the word that symbolizes statue: budt. `Budt' is a form of `buddha'; they did not make any distinction because there were no other statues -- only Buddha's statues -- so buddha became synonymous with budt. Even today in Urdu, in Persian, in Arabic, budt means statue. It is derived from Buddha, the man who has forbidden to make his statues. Buddhism became a tradition and again somebody of the same genius and greatness had to revolt against the tradition. It was not a revolt against Buddha; it was a revolt against the traditionalism, ritualism. The priests with whom he had been fighting his whole life have come back; the scholars have become again important. Bodhidharma rebelled against the Buddhist tradition, and part of his rebellion was meeting with the Tao and bringing all the flowers of Tao and creating a new experience. But he was as unaware of the fact as Buddha was. Buddha was saying, "Don't make a tradition of me," but the tradition was made. Bodhidharma rebelled against the tradition, but was not aware that he also would fall into the same trap of human mind. He became a tradition himself. Soon it was realized by Ma Tzu that this is a sad story, that Bodhidharma, a man of fire, burning all scriptures, destroying all beliefs... Ma Tzu was also of the same caliber. To revolt is not easy. You need to have tremendous resources within you; otherwise you become futile, your words don't have the traditional depth. Tradition gives a certain depth, a certain richness, a certain refinement. A single individual, if he stands against all tradition, needs to be of a great genius, of great creativity. Ma Tzu rebelled against the traditionalism that had grown after Bodhidharma. He introduced totally new ideas, new devices -- hitting, shouting. Nobody had ever heard that you can wake up a man just by shouting at the right moment; it was a great contribution to human consciousness that hitting can become a reward. In the hands of Ma Tzu, Zen became again fresh -- as fresh as Buddha wanted it to be. After a thousand years, Buddha would have loved Bodhidharma and Ma Tzu, the people who rebelled. A rebellious spirit loves the very creativity that any rebel brings to any action, thought, meditation, art, music. But Ma Tzu again -- it has to be, it seems, a matter of course that every rebellious person also becomes a tradition. Isan also wanted to rebel against Ma Tzu. It was not against Ma Tzu, but the Ma Tzu that the tradition had created. It is a strange phenomenon: Isan loved Ma Tzu as he loved Buddha and Bodhidharma, but he could not accept the rituals that had grown afterwards, when they had died. But Isan was not that great a genius. He could not be compared to Ma Tzu or Bodhidharma. He was very polite, and his politeness prevented his rebelling completely. You cannot be polite and revolutionary; you have to be iconoclastic and you have to hit hard against the dead tradition. Politeness will make you respectable, but not revolutionary. And that is what happened -- it is a misfortune -- Isan became a respectable master. Because he became respectable he lost the grandeur of a revolutionary. Whenever a person becomes respectable, he cannot say anything against the mass mind. The collective unconsciousness will feel hurt if he says anything revolutionary, and anything revolutionary will take away the respectability. He was very much respected, and he managed the respect. That's where he lost the beauty of rebellion. That shows in his sutras: they are not very great or very profound; they are good enough, but very lukewarm. Just because he wanted to rebel against the rituals that had grown after Ma Tzu, Isan left shouting, he left hitting -- but he could not substitute anything else in their place. So he became in a way very poor. His humbleness was great, his simplicity was great, but he could not contribute anything new or profound to human consciousness. You have to remember it: respectability and rebellion don't go together. If you want respectability, you have to conform to the society -- and the society consists of blind people. Even though you have eyes, you have to walk like the blind, you have to keep your eyes closed. If you want respectability from the blind... they can give respectability only to another blind person. A man who has eyes does not belong to the mass, seems to be a stranger. Isan could not gather the courage to be a stranger. Those who have lived a life of being a stranger come to know strange things, which ordinarily you will not come across in life. Just the other day I received a letter from a sannyasin who was present in a Jaina gathering, which also had one night invited the great poets of the country. One of the greatest poets of contemporary India, Neeraj, was there -- he has been here, so you all are acquainted with him -- and he was hooted down, forced to leave the stage, and the reason was that he mentioned my name. He introduced himself before the recital saying, "All my poetry belongs to Rajneesh. He is my source of inspiration." Thousands of other writers and poets go on repeating what I am saying, but don't have the courage to make it clear to people from where their inspiration comes. Sheer fear of the crowd! But Neeraj is a man of all the qualities of a lion. He said, "It does not matter even if you shout. This hooliganism, this goonda-ism, won't make any difference." He left the stage saying, "Long live Rajneesh!" People are afraid to come here, and you can see the reason: if somebody knows that they have been here, then they must be connected with me in some way or other. There are many people who want to be here, but do not have the guts to face the masses. Even to come to hear me needs courage! Nobody is asked to agree with me; they may disagree with me -- but even for disagreement they cannot come to listen to me. They read my books hiding them under the covers of other books, because if somebody knows that they are reading my books, their respectability is at risk. One of the chief ministers of Gujarat used to come here before he became chief minister. After becoming chief minister he stopped coming; not only did he stop coming, he told my secretary, "You should not come to see me for any work in Gujarat, because I don't want anybody to know that I have been influenced by Rajneesh, or any association with Rajneesh." Then he was defeated and again he started coming here. When you are defeated there is no need to fear: already people are not in your favor. He came here a few months ago. I told my secretary, "Anyway I am not seeing anybody -- and particularly I will not see this man who is such a coward that when he comes to power, he sends the message that it should be kept a secret that he has been following me, attending my camps. I don't like such cowardly sheepish human beings." He understood that that is right. Now he has become again the chief minister, and I told one of my sannyasins there, "Ask him: does he want to see me?" He said, "Just don't mention his name -- at least while I am in power!" To be rebellious you have to live as a stranger amongst your own people. Isan had the possibility of becoming a rebel -- and then there would have been some profoundness in his statements. In his anecdotes some new quality, some new dimension, some new flowers may have blossomed. But because of respectability he kept his rebellious spirit dormant. So once in a while something comes out; otherwise he is an example of a rebel who has repressed his rebellion.

A small biographical note: ISAN'S FOREMOST DISCIPLE WAS KYOZAN, ALSO KNOWN AS YANG-SHAN. You will be wondering why all these masters have two names. The reason is because of China and Japan; one name is Chinese and one name is Japanese. BETWEEN MASTER AND DISCIPLE A NEW SECT WAS ESTABLISHED, KNOWN AS THE KUEI-YANG SCHOOL. Isan tried his best to rebel against Ma Tzu, so between the master and the disciple -- between Isan and Kyozan -- a new school was established; its name was Kuei-Yang. IT WAS CHARACTERIZED BY THE DISTINCTION MADE BETWEEN THE ZEN OF MEDITATION BASED ON THE LANKAVATARA SUTRA, AND INSTANTANEOUS ZEN, WHICH COMPLETELY DIVORCED ITSELF FROM THE SUTRA. The Lankavatara sutra is one of the most profound books in the world. It contains the very essentials of Buddha, and hence it is respected and loved through all the Buddhist countries. China, Japan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Tibet, Taiwan, Korea -- the whole Far East loves the Lankavatara sutra. It has tremendous beauty. It is not like other religious books; it has a great poetry in it, it is a creative work of art. This new sect that Isan and his foremost disciple Kyozan established was against the Lankavatara sutra. It was a difficult task. I don't think Isan or Kyozan was capable of doing it. Of course, Ma Tzu could have done it. They didn't have that genius, but still what they did was good. Every rebellion is good, even if it is a small rebellion. The Lankavatara sutra fundamentally preaches gradual enlightenment, which seems to be more rational, practical, understandable -- that step by step you move and discipline yourself, and when the time is ripe and you have come to the point where enlightenment is supposed to happen, it will happen. But it is not an instantaneous thing; it is not like instantaneous coffee. You have to prepare yourself to receive it, and that preparation can be of years. Twenty years, thirty years it may take for you to become a vehicle for enlightenment. It was a logical system, hence Lankavatara sutra had never been opposed. Even people like Ma Tzu and Bodhidharma did not mention it. They simply avoided it. They did what they wanted to do -- which goes against Lankavatara sutra -- but they did not mention it, because they also loved it. Its beauty is so profound that it will look almost like going against yourself. So they did not mention it, they simply bypassed it, because their preaching was instantaneous Zen. They were opposing Lankavatara sutra in the very foundations, but they were capable -- Bodhidharma and Ma Tzu, these two persons were certainly capable -- of bringing a new insight. Drop the idea of gradualness and bring the idea of instantaneous Zen. Its implications are great. The moment you drop the gradual Zen, all discipline becomes useless, all rituals become useless, all worshippings become useless. The only thing that remains significant is meditation, and to remain in the present as a witness. I agree with them, rather than with Lankavatara sutra. And that was the effort of Isan -- but he was not that great a genius to bring out something great and profound, comparable to Lankavatara sutra. So he was in a difficulty. THE SCHOOL THAT EVOLVED THROUGH THE WORK OF ISAN AND KYOZAN WAS AN EFFORT TO FORMALIZE THE ANTI-SUTRA POSITION OF MA TZU. Ma Tzu had an anti-sutra position, but Ma Tzu had the quality to create something as a substitute -- because you cannot take away from people's hands something that gives them consolation. You have to substitute something for it, otherwise your work is destructive, not constructive -- and both Bodhidharma and Ma Tzu substituted. Bodhidharma had his own methods, not included in Lankavatara sutra. Ma Tzu went even further: the shoutings and the beatings nobody had ever heard of. His effort was so new -- that enlightenment is possible if the master hits you at the right moment, or shouts at you at the right moment; that his very shout takes your consciousness to the deepest center of your being. What meditation does slowly slowly, a good shout of the master, unexpectedly, in a situation when the disciple was asking some question, and the master jumps and shouts, or hits him, or throws him out of the door, or jumps over him... These methods were never known. It was purely the very creative genius of Ma Tzu, and he made many people enlightened. Sometimes it looks so hilarious: he threw a man from the window, from a two-story house, and the man had come to ask on what to meditate. And Ma Tzu not only threw him, he jumped after him, fell on him, sat on his chest, and he said, "Got it?!" And the poor fellow said, "Yes" -- because if you say "No," he may beat you or do something else. It is enough -- his body is fractured, and Ma Tzu, sitting on his chest, says, "Got it?!" And in fact he got it, because it was so sudden, out of the blue -- he could never have conceived it. He had heard that Ma Tzu hits people, Ma Tzu shouts at people, but he had never heard that he throws them from a two-story building. He had multiple fractures... and then Ma Tzu jumped on him and sat on his chest. At that moment he was absolutely in such a shock that the mind stopped functioning -- and that was the purpose of the whole thing. And because the mind stopped functioning, and Ma Tzu was sitting on his chest, looking into his eyes -- a great silence, the same blissfulness that comes out of meditation. What a strange way! HIS ANTI-SUTRA ATTITUDE -- Ma Tzu burned sutras. Buddhists have more scriptures than any religion, because thirty-two schools have their own scriptures, commentaries upon commentaries; it is a whole different world of literature. He burned sutras, but he substituted something. Isan wanted to be another Ma Tzu -- but he had not the guts of that man. It is not easy to throw a man out of the window, and the man said, "What about my fractures?" Ma Tzu said, "Forget about the fractures! One day everybody has to die. You have died today. And there are only seven days to choose from -- not much of a choice. But you have got it, and that is the essential thing." In that utter shock the man simply moved to his center. In shocks that happens. Sometimes it has happened just accidentally: your car turns over on the road, rolls into a valley, takes a few turns. Obviously your mind will stop functioning; and if you understand Zen, that is a great opportunity, because you will be at the center. Death may occur, but if you know anything about Zen, it will not occur to you. It will occur only to your body -- your consciousness will open its wings and fly to freedom. Zen has to be made available to every person in the world, because no one knows -- every day thousands of accidents happen, but because you don't know how to use the accident you miss a great opportunity. You just get multi-fractures and a few months in the hospital -- a chance that could have made you a buddha. I always think that if Ma Tzu were alive today, he may knowingly turn over a car on a cliff and send you rolling down, running after you, pulling you out from the wreckage and asking you as the first question: "Got it?!" But Isan was not... because he remained concerned about his respectability. Ma Tzu dropped the idea of respectability. People like Ma Tzu don't care a bit what the world thinks about them. The world thinks they are crazy -- so what? They say, "We think that the world is crazy!" We are all equal in that way: the world thinks we are crazy; we think the world is crazy. The decisive factor is that our craziness is blissful and ecstatic and intelligent, and their craziness is just retardedness, misery, suffering. So if both are crazy, then too you have to choose our craziness. Your craziness is simply suffering, a tragedy that you go on carrying from the cradle to the grave, from one death to another birth, to another death. This is called the wheel of birth and death. That will come in the sutras. ... So the question is not right in the first place, but Isan, being always humble and trying to be polite, will not say so. If this question had been asked to Ma Tzu, he would have given such a good beating that the person would have never again asked any question. Ma Tzu declared again and again that "It does not matter what you say, you will still get a hit. Don't think that I am hitting you because you are saying something wrong! I am hitting you because you are saying something -- and I want you to reach to the place where nothing can be said." So whether you are saying something right or wrong does not matter; it is just superficial. The hit is certain. And in what way will it come? It is spontaneous. Nobody knows whether he will throw you, or hit you on your chest with his leg, and he used to have a big staff.... And he was really perhaps the rarest man in the world; he walked like a cow, on all fours, and he looked like a tiger. His eyes were as fiery as any tiger's can be, and this behavior -- walking like a cow his whole life... He never walked like a man; it was below his dignity. He was a very strong man, and everything you could expect from him -- anything! One never knew what he was going to do. But still the man was lovable. If this question had been asked to Ma Tzu, multiple fractures were absolutely certain, because the question is utterly baseless. But Isan was a humble person. So when Kyozan asked him, "HOW ABOUT YOU? You are also a buddha. Have you turned into a speck of dust? And do you help the rolling of the eternal wheel of dharma?"... ISAN RESPONDED, "THERE IS SOMEONE; MAKING HIM AN EXAMPLE, WE CAN GET IT FROM HIM." He avoided the question, "HOW ABOUT YOU?" because to say that "Yes, I am also a buddha," needs much more humbleness than Isan possessed. To declare yourself a buddha is not a declaration of ego, because egolessness is the essential part of a buddha. The moment you say, "I am a buddha," you are saying, "I am no more." It is only a different way of saying that you don't exist -- only a pure awareness, a witnessing. KYOZAN POINTED INTO A WATER-BOTTLE AND SAID, "PLEASE GET IN IT. If you are a buddha, and you can become a speck of dust, then this is the bottle -- you enter into it." ISAN'S RESPONSE WAS: "ALL THE BUDDHAS BY THEIR OCCULT POWERS ARE AT PRESENT IN THE MOUTH OF THE BOTTLE, TURNING THE GREAT WHEEL OF THE LAW. CAN YOU SEE THEM DOING IT?" Now he is not being relevant. Rather than saying clearly that "Your question is absolutely absurd," rather than saying that "Yes, I am a buddha, but no buddha turns the wheel; every buddha is trying to stop the wheel of life, so that everybody can be immortal -- without any birth and without any death," so he goes on getting into more trouble. Just because he wants to remain humble, not to be like Bodhidharma... Bodhidharma told the emperor Wu of China, "You are an absolute idiot!" Anyone else, Wu would have cut off his head, but looking at Bodhidharma he could see that "In comparison to him I am nothing more than an idiot. He is not being rude; he is simply being factual." That shows the great cultured mind of the emperor. But Isan has not that quality, so he goes on getting into more trouble. Kyozan brought a bottle and said, "PLEASE GET IN IT." It should be an example for you, that whenever you are getting into any absurdity, stop in the beginning! The deeper you go, the more difficult it becomes to stop it. If you have taken one step into absurdity, you will have to take another step to be consistent with yourself -- and where will it lead? It is better from the very beginning to say that "This is nonsense!" But Kyozan was his chief disciple, and between the two of them they have created a new school of Zen. So naturally he could not be rude with Kyozan; he was his successor. Isan considered too much about the other person -- and that was his fault, and that is the reason that in Japan the Zen people have ignored him completely. Nobody talks about Isan. It will give you an insight that you can have respectability among the contemporaries, but nobody will remember you in the coming centuries. You will be forgotten completely, like a name written on water. But those who are condemned by their contemporaries may be remembered for centuries to come. ... Isan is forgotten, purposely, because he considered more the public opinion, and an authentic master does not consider what the public says. He is not here to agree with someone; he is here to declare his truth. Whether anybody agrees with it or not, it is immaterial. But that is the difficulty: Isan understood humbleness in a very wrong sense. His humbleness became a compromise, his humbleness became a fear; otherwise it was so clear that he should have told Kyozan in the beginning, "What are you talking about? -- buddhas turning into dust?! Only buddhas DON'T turn into dust! They turn into a more cosmic consciousness." But because he did not say anything against Kyozan, Kyozan asked him, "HOW ABOUT YOU?" Being a humble person, he could not say, "I am also a buddha." That's where Kyozan was trying to drive him: to show him "whether you are really humble or not." But humbleness does not mean to compromise with lies, to compromise with absurd hypotheses. Humbleness does not mean to have a friendliness towards lies. Humbleness is not a sheep, it has to be a lion. But because he was trying to create a different school from Ma Tzu, he was caught in a difficulty: he could not shout, he could not hit, and all these other things that from the times of Buddha masters used to do. He wanted to create something new and original, and he was not capable of it. He was a simple man, a humble man -- but not very courageous. And humbleness needs more courage than anything else; to be nothing needs more guts than to be something. When he was asked, "How about you?", he should have said, "I am a buddha -- and no buddha helps turn the wheel of life and death, no buddha turns into dust. And you are being absolutely absurd: just because I am not Ma Tzu and I am trying to create a new school -- you know perfectly well I will not shout and I will not hit you -- that does not mean that you can go on asking absurd questions. I can at least say to you, without shouting, silently and peacefully and lovingly, `Don't be stupid!'" But even that he could not manage. KYOZAN POINTED TO A WATER-BOTTLE AND SAID, "PLEASE GET IN IT." That's what I am saying: Don't agree with anything stupid, otherwise there is no way to turn back. Now he has accepted that buddhas turn into dust, he has accepted that buddhas turn the wheel of life and death, Kyozan is driving him deeper. He says, "Now, please get in this bottle. You are a buddha." ISAN'S RESPONSE WAS: "ALL THE BUDDHAS BY THEIR OCCULT POWERS ARE AT PRESENT IN THE MOUTH OF THE BOTTLE." Such stupid nonsense! All the buddhas will choose a bottle in Isan's house and they are all gathered in the neck of the bottle, so Isan cannot enter into it because it is blocked. Once you accept any absurdity, then there is no end; you will have to accept more absurdities. You will become more and more of a mess. And what are all these buddhas doing there? -- TURNING THE GREAT WHEEL OF THE LAW, in the bottle! Even I would have hit him as hard as possible and I am a non-violent person. He is saying, "They are turning the wheel of the law. CAN YOU SEE THEM DOING IT?" KYOZAN THEN SAID, "THIS IS THE TURNING OF ALL THE BUDDHAS. HOW WILL YOU TURN IT?" ISAN OBSERVED, "IT CANNOT BE DONE IF WE ARE SEPARATED FROM THE THING ITSELF" -- AT WHICH KYOZAN MADE HIS BOWS. Isan has not proved his mettle, although his last statement is correct -- that's why Kyozan made his bows. Kyozan has asked, "How will you turn it?" ISAN OBSERVED, "IT CANNOT BE DONE IF WE ARE SEPARATED FROM THE THING ITSELF. I am no more close to the wheel; I am still alive, I have not turned into a speck of dust. That's why I am separate from the wheel and I cannot turn it." But accepting the very idea that buddhas turn into dust, and then their work is only to turn the wheel of life and death, is so strange and so against the very spirit of Zen, that Isan needs a good beating. If you meet him somewhere, on my behalf do a good job! Soseki wrote: VIRTUE AND COMPASSION TOGETHER MAKE UP EACH ONE'S INTEGRITY. NOTHING THAT COMES THROUGH THE GATE FROM OUTSIDE CAN BE THE FAMILY TREASURE. THROWING AWAY THE WHOLE PILE IN YOUR HEART, WITH EMPTY HANDS YOU COME, BRINGING SALVATION.

Beautiful poetry -- and significant too. VIRTUE AND COMPASSION TOGETHER MAKE UP EACH ONE'S INTEGRITY. Compassion in fact is another name of virtue. All acts of virtue are acts of compassion. They are not two, only two words for the same quality. NOTHING THAT COMES THROUGH THE GATE FROM OUTSIDE CAN BE THE FAMILY TREASURE. He is saying, "Nothing that comes from the outside can be considered your treasure. Your treasure is already inside; it does not have to come from outside." THROWING AWAY THE WHOLE PILE -- that comes from outside -- IN YOUR HEART, WITH EMPTY HANDS YOU COME, BRINGING SALVATION. If you can throw away everything that comes from outside, your empty heart, your empty being is the greatest treasure, which brings salvation to you. That's what we are doing in our meditations. Our meditations are concentrated Zen. In a very simple and joyful way, with a great playfulness, we are trying to find the treasure inside. There is no need to be serious about it. It is there -- just a little moving inwards, a single step in fact, and you have arrived at home. Un copil e inteligenta pura, deoarece copilul e inca necontaminat. Copilul e o tablita curata, nu scrie nimic pe el. Copilul e spatiul gol absolut, tabula rasa. Societatea incepe imediat sa scrie ca esti crestin, catolic, hindus, mahomedan, comunist. Societatea nu poate sa astepte. Societatea se teme foarte tare ca, daca inteligenta copilului e lasata intacta, el n-o sa faca parte din nicio sclavie, din nicio structura de dominare.

El nici nu va domina, nici nu va fi dominat. Nici nu va poseda, nici nu va fi posedat. Va fi un vesnic rebel. Pentru a preveni toate astea, inocenta i se corupe imediat. I se taie aripile, i se dau carje in care sa se sprijine pentru ca sa nu invete sa mearga pe picioarele lui, sa ramana vesnic intr-un fel de dependenta.

La inceput, copiii sunt dependenti de parinti, iar parintilor le place foarte mult acest lucru. Cand copiii sunt dependenti, parintii se simt foarte bine. Viata lor incepe sa aiba sens: ei stiu ca ajuta niste oameni noi sa creasca, ajuta niste oameni frumosi sa creasca. Nu este creativitate autentica, dar macar pot spune ca fac ceva, ca au o ocupatie. Ocupati sa-si creasca copiii, isi uita problemele.

Cu cat sunt copiii mai dependenti de ei, cu atat sunt mai fericiti. Desi la suprafata spun intr-una ca vor ca ai lor copii sa fie independenti, asta e numai la suprafata. Un copil cu adevarat independent ii face sa sufere pe parinti. Lor nu le place copilul independent, deoarece copilul independent nu are nevoie de ei.

Asta e una din marile probleme cu care se confrunta azi generatia mai in varsta: copiii din epoca moderna nu depind de ei, si din cauza ca nu sunt dependenti, nu li se pot impune anumite lucruri. Nu li se poate spune ce sa faca si ce sa nu faca, nu pot fi stapanii lor. Generatia batrana sufera foarte mult.

Parintii distrug inteligenta copiilor din cauza ca asta e singura cale de a-i inrobi. Apoi vin la rand profesorii, scoala, colegiul, universitatea…Nimeni nu vrea un razvratit, iar inteligenta inseamna razvratire. Nimeni nu vrea ca autoritatea sa fie pusa la indoiala, iar inteligenta pune la indoiala. Inteligenta e indoiala pura. Da, intr-o buna zi, din aceasta indoiala pura rasare adevarul.

Copiii se nasc cu inteligenta pura, iar noi nu suntem in stare sa respectam acest lucru. Copiii sunt clasa cea mai exploatata din lume, sunt chiar mai exploatata decat femeile. Dupa eliberarea femeii, mai devreme sau mai tarziu o sa vina si eliberarea copilului; e mult mai necesara. Barbatii le-au inrobit pe femei, iar barbatii si femeile impreuna i-au inrobit pe copii. Si intrucat copilul este foarte neajutorat, fireste ca depinde de cei mari.

E foarte meschin din partea celor mari ca exploateaza neajutorarea copilului. Dar dintotdeauna parintii au fost meschini. Si nu spun ca au fost meschini in mod deliberat sau constient, ci inconstient, aproape nestiind ce fac. De asta lumea e in suferinta. Inconstient, fara sa stie, fiecare generatie distruge generatia urmatoare.

Asta e prima generatie care incearca sa scape din capcana, si asta e inceputul unei istorii cu totul noi. Dar copiii sunt cu certitudine extrem de inteligenti. Uita-te la copii, uita-te in ochii lor, uita-te la felul in care raspund.

Copiii au multa inteligenta insa, de secole, nu sunt lasati sa si-o manifeste.

Trebuie sa creem un nou tip de educatie, in care copiilor sa nu li se impuna nimic, ci sa fie ajutati sa-si intareasca inteligenta naturala data de Dumnezeu. In sistemul de astazi originalitatea este omorata, iar repetitia pretuita. Iar inteligenta se poate dezvolta numai in acea atmosfera in care originalitatea este pretuita.

BELOVED OSHO, A LITTLE WHILE AGO THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT REFUSED YOUR ADMISSION TO ENGLAND, EVEN FOR AN OVERNIGHT STAY, ON THE BASIS THAT YOUR EXCLUSION FROM THE COUNTRY WAS "CONDUCIVE TO THE PUBLIC GOOD." JUST A FEW WEEKS LATER, THE HEAD OF THAT SAME GOVERNMENT AUTHORIZED THE USE OF MILITARY BASES BY AMERICAN BOMBERS FOR THE RECENT ATTACK ON LIBYA. THE PRIME MINISTER JUSTIFIED THE DECISION TO ASSIST AMERICA'S BOMBING OF MIDDLE EASTERN CITIES SAYING THAT IT WAS HER DUTY TO "PREVENT THE EVILS OF TERRORISM." THE NOTIONS OF GOOD AND EVIL EXPRESSED BY THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT ARE SIMPLY MIND-BOGGLING. PLEASE COMMENT.

One has to understand that everything is relative, not ultimate; hence what appears to be good to one person may look evil to another. And there is no contradiction: both may be right. What is good depends on your preconceived ideas; so does evil. The British government thinks my entry even for an overnight stay in England, is not conducive to the public good. The same government is ready to allow American bombers, missiles, to use their bases, to destroy a small country like Libya, and to the government this seems to be conducive to public good. There is no inconsistency. In their eyes their society, their culture, their religion, their country has to be saved at any cost, because they think they stand for good -- although the British government has tortured humanity more than any other government in the world. For three hundred years it has been the greatest terrorist possible; it killed millions of people around the world, to create the greatest empire of history. This government is absolutely in tune with the American imperialistic ideology. Out of necessity it has been compelled to give freedom to the countries of its empire, but not willingly and joyously. Those countries had to fight for almost one century, without any arms. They were butchered, without any consideration of human values. I am reminded... In India there happened an incident which can be considered one of the most inhuman in history. In Amritsar, the holy place of the Sikhs, they have a beautiful public garden, a vast area that can contain at least one million people for any gathering, meeting, discourse. And it has been used for that purpose. It has a very high wall so that no traffic noise comes in and it has only one door, so small that only one person can come out or go in; two persons together cannot pass through the door. They were having a silent meeting of almost one million people -- children, women, old men. The prayer was, "The British government should change its heart and should leave our country." Now, it is not terrorism; they were simply praying for a change of heart. But Colonel Dyer, who was in charge of the area, went there with his troops, fixed machine guns on the people, and started firing -- because it is revolution against the empire, this prayer that the government should change its heart! There was only one door, and from that door they were shooting bullets at random, with no discrimination -- children, women, old men. And nobody could escape from there because of the high wall. Dyer killed the whole crowd; not a single human being came alive out of that door. Now, it was their country; the British had been terrorists, had been ruling their country, exploiting their country. India has been rich, known for thousands of years as "a golden bird" -- that's how Pythagoras describes it, that's how Alexander the Great describes it. So many invaders... but still India seemed to be inexhaustibly rich. People would come, invade the country, take away their treasures, take over their beautiful women... This had been going on for thousands of years; the Britishers were the last. For three hundred years they squeezed every richness, the last drop of it, from Indian soil. And people were not even allowed to pray for a change of heart -- this became an act against the empire. And there was no need for any magistrate, for any judge; there was no need for any trial. Just... a colonel simply kills all those people! The British government has been one of the ugliest phenomena that we know of. It created the biggest empire -- it was said that in the British empire the sun never set. And it was true, because the empire was all around the earth. The sun may have set in one part, but it was rising in another part; there was not any gap. The sun was always rising somewhere in the British empire. These imperialists have a deep sympathy, friendship, with America. Naturally, it is for the public good to allow American troops, to allow America a base to destroy a small country. And why destroy Libya? Because the man who is leading Libya now is one of the most outspoken politicians in the whole world. Just a few days ago, Kaddafi said that Ronald Reagan is "Adolf Hitler Number Two." And I, commenting on it, say that Kaddafi is wrong. And he will agree with me when he understands the reason why I am saying he is wrong: Adolf Hitler himself is now Number Two. Ronald Reagan is Adolf Hitler Number One, because what power did Adolf Hitler have? Reagan has a million times more power. Adolf Hitler could not have destroyed the world; Reagan can do that. To allow Reagan a base in England seems, to the British government, to be for the public good. Both are imperialists, both are agreed on exploiting people, both are agreed that nothing like communism should happen in the world, both are agreed that Christianity should be imposed on people who are not Christian: naturally Ronald Reagan is a friend, although he is going to do something inhuman which may trigger the third world war. And I understand Kaddafi. He is not a man to sit back. And he is not sitting back. He has a small country but he is not just a politician, he is a warrior. He would rather the country die than to allow the country to be enslaved. And I praise him for being a pioneer. He has responded well. Now he is bombing American bases all over Europe. He has bombed in Spain; in other countries he is going to bomb -- in Greece... wherever in Europe American bases exist, he is going to bomb them. And he will have the sympathy of all the downtrodden countries. He will rise as a world leader. Ronald Reagan may have the power, but he will not have any sympathy. This imperialist government of Britain feels afraid of me. Just my overnight stay at the airport -- I was not asking to enter their country -- and against their own laws they refused me. They said it was not good for their public; my overnight stay would have destroyed their morality, their religion, all their cherished values! There is something to understand clearly: I am against imperialism. I am against exploiting man, other human beings. I am against torturing people just so that you can have power. Perhaps they were afraid that overnight my sannyasins from all over England may gather... just one night may be enough to give them a fresh insight, a new life to go against all traditional values. And it is a conspiracy. Not only Britain is responsible for it. All those who are living and thriving on traditional values are really afraid -- of a man who has no power except that he can show people that their misery is caused by their own wrong ideas, and that those wrong ideas are being emphasized by their government, by their church. There is a conspiracy. All the European governments are agreeing on the point that I cannot land at their airports. They do not understand that this is defeatism, that they have already accepted defeat. They are showing that they have no arguments to save their religion, their morality, their politics, it is all rotten. And they are afraid that their youth will be on my side, not on their side. I can give an open challenge to any country: Let me speak to your young people, and you speak to the same young people, and let it be decided by those young people who are going to own the future. These governments know perfectly well they cannot defend anything that they believe. These efforts to prevent me are good signs; they are good news. It means they have accepted their defeat; otherwise, what was the fear? -- they could have allowed me to talk to people. And they have their archbishops and popes and priests who could have demolished my arguments; that would have been a cultured way, a human way. I am alone -- they have millions of priests. But they don't have a single argument for anything that they think is the basis of their society. Yes, it is not conducive to their rotten society. It may ring the death bell. But they cannot prevent me. It is not me who is going to destroy the rottenness; it is the time itself which is not in favor of them. If not me, then somebody else will have to do it. It is impossible to protect those societies, those governments, those churches. They have lost all roots. And they are aware of it, that just a push and they will fall down. They cannot even resist -- even that much power is not left. You can make a corpse stand, but if you push it, it cannot retaliate; it is bound to fall down. All these countries are corpses. And they don't want their youth to come in contact with anybody who can show them that the old is dead and you have to find a new way of life. This is not a question of one country; it is a question of the whole human past. Just a deep attachment, a deep conditioning...... The future is dark, but nobody wants to see it -- the past is dead, and if you go on clinging to the past the future is going to become darker and darker. I will be avoided by every country. I will be persecuted by every power, for the simple reason that I want them to see the reality. They are keeping their eyes closed. In logic it is called the "ostrich argument." The ostrich has a tendency: whenever he comes against an enemy and knows that death is certain, he simply puts his head into the sand. He lives in the desert, eyes closed, head in the sand. He is perfectly happy because he cannot see any enemy anywhere. But this does not eliminate the enemy; in fact it makes the enemy more powerful. Now this ostrich is not going to do anything to escape, to fight, to negotiate, to do something. Now there is no question: he is simply available as food. And ostriches are eaten by their predators without any fight, because the ostrich is living with the idea that, "I don't see any enemy here." This "ostrich argument" is widespread today around the world. Nobody wants to see the reality -- that you are sinking, that all your values are false, that all your civilization is hypocrisy, that all your smiles are just exercises of lips, and there is no heart in it; that you have forgotten to live, to love, to laugh, that you don't know what life means at all. And you go on clinging because there is nothing else, there is no alternative -- and I am being prevented because I can give you the alternative. I can show you that this is not the only way a society can exist, this is not the only way that a marriage can exist, this is not the only way that children can be brought up, this is not the only way that governments should function. There are alternative ways. But even to hear of the alternative, they are afraid. The message should not reach to the young -- because the young are bound to be affected by the news that there is an alternative, that you need not remain in this misery, continuously fighting, killing human beings unnecessarily. Now Libya is destroying American bases. America cannot remain silent: it will start destroying Libya -- not only its military bases but its civilians. It is a small country, but Libya knows that if America starts to destroy the civilians, the whole East -- particularly the Middle East -- will be on its side. And behind the scenes will be the Soviet Union. So if America has guts, it is not going to start a fight between America and Libya -- which is very unbalanced: Libya has nothing with which to fight against one of the greatest nuclear powers. But Libya has the assurance of the Soviet Union: "Don't be worried, Libya is just a facade, just a front." And once these two powers start fighting, they cannot resist using nuclear weapons; it is impossible. But the government of England is not afraid of this. The government of England should have prevented America: "This is not a right beginning; this is not conducive to the public good. This will lead more and more into war. Don't take the first step; otherwise the last step will not be far away." But they would prefer to have a third world war rather than change the human mind. Why? -- because to change the human mind means that for millions of years you have been behaving stupidly, that all your great ancestors have been simply fools and nothing else. They knew nothing about human consciousness; they were unconscious, they were blind. And blind people have been leading other blind people towards the goal of light. It seems it is difficult to accept that our whole past has been wrong. It is better to destroy the whole future but remain stubborn that our past has been right: Let man die, but save your ego. That will give you a clue why I am a danger, just for an overnight stay, and American nuclear missiles are not dangerous. They think alike; their mathematics is the same. To them I am a dangerous person because I have no pride in the past. I am a dangerous person because I do not consider that for thousands of years man has lived intelligently; otherwise why so much misery, why so much anxiety, why so much anguish? The fruit shows the quality of the tree. And the fruit that we have shows that the whole human past went somewhere wrong, and just out of ego went on pushing in a wrong direction. I am ready and willing to change my ideas if somebody can show me that they are wrong, that they will not lead to the good of the people. But nobody is ready to do that; they simply accept it. No argument is needed, no discussion is needed. The government of Spain was wondering for one month continuously whether to allow me into Spain or not. They have nuclear bases for the American army; they are members of NATO, and the man who is the prime minister became prime minister by promising the people of Spain that he would pull Spain out of NATO, and that he would order the American bases to be removed from Spain. And the people of Spain don't want... because they have seen Franco, who ruled for forty years with absolute dictatorship; he destroyed all freedom of thinking and killed anybody who said anything against him. After forty years of this experience, this nightmare, they don't want to get into another nightmare again. They voted in this man on a single point -- that he was promising that he would pull out of NATO and force the Americans to leave Spain. Two years have passed and the people have been asking, "What happened? You are not pulling out of NATO, and neither are the American bases moving out of Spain." In these two years, the man... when he had come to power he was not a politician, but these two years have turned him into a politician. He said, "My experience of two years in power makes me change my idea: we are going to remain in NATO, and American bases are going to remain in Spain." It was such a betrayal that the people demanded a vote on the point, a referendum. But the prime minister, the whole bureaucracy, the whole government, is now FOR American military bases and membership in NATO. Still, they do not have a big majority. The young people of Spain have still voted against them: forty-five percent of the people have voted against NATO. But the government with all their powers... certainly they managed to get just a little bit bigger number of votes in favor. If this man had any sense of dignity he would have resigned, because he was chosen for a simple program. He was not chosen -- the program was chosen, and because he has dropped the program he should resign immediately. But these politicians seem to be so shameless, with no dignity, with no honor, with no self-respect. He wanted me to stay in Spain, but the problem was the American pressure. For one month he went on postponing. He informed me that I should not leak the news that Spain had invited me, because the royal family of Spain, the prime minister, the president, the cabinet -- they would all be at the airport to receive me. I was going to be their invited guest, so they would proclaim the date and time, and they would inform me. But slowly, slowly he saw that if forty-five percent of the people can vote against him, then to bring a man like me into the country is dangerous because these young people are bound to be influenced by me. The parliament decided that I should be welcomed, the cabinet decided that I should be welcomed, but finally the prime minister informed me that it would not be possible; politically it would be difficult. I know the difficulty; the difficulty came after the referendum. And I have been telling John every day that if any decision has to be taken, it should be taken before the referendum. After the referendum I don't see any hope, because once the prime minister sees how many people can vote against him, he will not be courageous enough to invite a person who can influence his people. This is the fear, and the fear is now almost all over the world, in every country -- strange fears. In this small, beautiful country, I was told that we should not mention that we have one million sannyasins around the world and three million sympathizers, because that may become a fear -- this country has only three million people, and they would not like such a powerful man in the country, who has four million people around the world who love him. The country should be proud to have someone... and I am not a political person, I am not going to have any political contest with anybody; but still, fear is fear. All these powerful people are deep down very inferior and very fearful. They go on thinking... the only thing in their minds is power, what can enhance their power and what can destroy their power. And they put conditions.... The president of Greece was willing for me to have a commune in Greece, and in fact he wanted it. His reasons were different -- that it would bring thousands of tourists and that it would boost the economy. In fact he was the cause that I was allowed a four-week visa for Greece. But then the condition came in -- that if I wanted to stay there and make a commune, I should remember a few things: "The Greek Orthodox church is respected by our constitution; you cannot criticize it. The family is our foundation; you cannot criticize it. Our code of morality; you cannot criticize it. We believe in virginity; you cannot criticize it." They certainly believe in virginity, but it is difficult to find a single virgin in the whole of Greece. That's okay -- but you should not criticize it. You can see the political mind: the reality can be tolerated but it should not be exposed. I cannot accept anybody's conditions. Whatever happens to me, whatever the consequences... but to accept conditions, and that too for a little piece of land... How much land does a man require? I might like to live without a country -- a wanderer in the true sense. There have been wanderers but they had a home base. I will be really a wanderer without any home base -- being rejected from one country to another country. But their rejection of me is simply an acceptance of their defeat, their impotency. Sooner or later they will have to pay for it, pay highly for it, because in every country there are intelligent people. How long can these intelligent people tolerate this? Sooner or later it will become a revolution. Without my entering those lands, I will find my friends there. I cannot lose hope, because I cannot see that intelligence is dead. It is repressed, but it is alive. It has become an undercurrent, but my rejection is going to provoke it to come to the surface. Soon there will be protests in every country which is denying me entry. In Italy they have been postponing for almost three months, just for a three-week tourist visa. And the president and the prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs, all are saying, "We are going to give it to him -- just tomorrow...." And sannyasins are going every day; they are sitting there in their offices, saying, "Whenever you want we are ready. But when will your tomorrow come?" And after three months they got so frustrated, because the pope is holding them back. They cannot say no to the sannyasins because they have no reason to say no. And they know my impact in Italy. Just a few days ago, a television interview of one and a half hours was seen by thirty-four million people -- unprecedented. The director informed me, "We could not believe that so many people would be interested in you. You have never come to this country." No other program in his whole life, had attracted so many people. And not only the show -- the show was finished in one and a half hours -- but people are discussing each and every point in the marketplace, in the university -- everywhere. Somebody is for, somebody is against, but everybody is intensely involved. So the government could not say no because that might create trouble. And the pope is insisting that I should not be allowed into Italy. So they go on postponing. Finally the sannyasins got so frustrated that they started making a protest, and one of the most famous Italian film directors, Fellini, has signed their petition first. They have thirty-six other world-known people who have signed the protest, and they are collecting more names -- and I have never been there. But one thing is certain, whether you agree with me or not: I cannot be prevented from presenting my views, my perspective, to the people. And what is happening there, will happen in Germany, will happen in Greece, will happen in England, will happen in Spain, is going to happen everywhere. Sannyasins have to create a worldwide chain of protests, signed by all the important creative artists, novelists, musicians, sculptors, dancers, actors, directors -- people of all dimensions who have made an impact on the world. Collect their names for the protest first, in every country, and then send a final protest to the U.N., with all the protests of all the countries together -- because now it is not a question of one country; if the European parliament decides that I cannot even land my plane at their airports, you cannot now take me just as an individual. I have become representative of a worldwide intelligence of creative, talented people. That is my country. And my sannyasins have to go to the U.N., because this is simply ugly. But as I said in the beginning, it is something relative. To me it is ugly. And to all those who can understand, it will be ugly. But to those who believe in the ostrich logic, it is good, it is "for the public good." But we will show to the world what is good for the public and what is bad for the public!

Bertrand Russell has said: There are three possibilities of man's approach towards life. One is conflict with nature, second is conflict with other human beings, and third is conflict with oneself. The first has been the way of the Western philosophy, Western science, Western speculation, thinking. A fight with nature. The Western mill became objective: How to transform nature? -- that became the root question. They have not been able to transform it, although they have destroyed it. They have destroyed the rhythm of nature. They have destroyed the ecosystem. They have created havoc in nature's harmony. And now there seems to be no going back. The earth is dying. There seems to be only one possibility, that man should migrate from this planet to another planet. Within a hundred years it will be impossible to live on this earth. It is almost turning into a corpse. This earth has been so much raped by science, so much wounded, crippled, paralyzed, because of that approach: conquer nature! And man became absolutely absorbed and occupied with only one thing: how to conquer nature? -- and forgot everything else. The Chinese mind has moved in a different way. Its sole concern has been: How to live with man? Its concern has been social. Man is a social animal. How to create better moralities? How to create better social systems? How to have a better society? a higher culture? a better civilization? About nature, the Chinese mind has not been in conflict. It appreciates nature, it loves nature. Nature has an aesthetic value for the Chinese. Enjoy it! There is no need to conquer. Celebrate it! There is no need to fight. The basic problem for the Chinese mind has been: How should we make man more human? The whole struggle is: How to destroy between man and man, -- hatred, anger, rage, animality -- the beast- like attitudes, the violence? China has created one of most civilized cultures there ever has been. The Indian mind has taken the third route: How to transform oneself? The West has given birth to science, China has given birth to a higher quality sociology, India has given birth to the supreme science of psychology -- the science of the soul. That's exactly what psychology means. In fact, Western psychology should not call itself psychology, because it is not a science of the soul at all. On the contrary, it only observes human behavior -- from the outside. It thinks about man also as an object. It reduces man's dignity. It turns man into a mechanism. It is not important for the Western psychology to think: What is inside man? All that is important is what he DOES, how he functions -- his behavior. But in the Indian consciousness, the only basic problem has been: How to conquer oneself? How to raise one's consciousness to the highest peak possible? How to become a Buddha? These three approaches have been prevalent. A REBELLIOUS PERSON LIVES IN THE PRESENT.

The rebellious person says, "Leave the world to itself. Nobody has ever changed it." He is more practical and down to earth: "I can live my own way. I can create my own world within me." He is a drop-out.

Bauls are drop-outs. They don't belong to any religion, to any society, to any nation.

They are beggars, wanderers, vagabonds, hippies, gypsies, moving from one village to another, singing their song, dancing their dance, living their lives in their own way, doing their thing.

A rebellious person is one who says, "I'm not going to wait, I'm going to live right now." The revolutionary hopes for the future. He says, "I am going to wait. I will wait for the right moment."

The rebellious person says, "The right moment is here-now, and I'm not going to wait for anybody, I'm going to live right now." A rebellious person lives in the present.

And one thing more to be understood: a rebellious person is not against anybody. He may appear against because he is trying to live his own life, but he is not really against anybody. He may not go to the mosque but he is not against Mohammedans. He may not go to the temple but he is not against Hindus. He simply says, "I am not concerned; it is irrelevant." He simply says, "Please leave me alone. You do your thing and let me do my thing. Don't interfere with me and I will not interfere with you."

The vision of the rebellious mind is very realistic. Life is short. Nobody knows whether tomorrow will come or not. The future is not certain, and this is the only moment one can live. Why waste it in fighting with others? Why waste it in trying to convince others? Enjoy it, delight in it. A Baul is a hedonist; he is epicurean. He starts living: he loves, he lives, he delights. Only people who want to be somewhere, somebody, have to suffer the sadness of failure. But a person who never wants to be anybody, never wants to be anywhere else, cannot suffer the sadness of failure. He is always successful. Just like me.

Religiousness is enough, more than enough. As religions disappear, millions of monks and nuns who are just parasites.... They do nothing. That is another army that is sitting on the chest of humanity. They should disappear. They have renounced the world, but for their food, for their clothes, for their housing, the world has to work. It is a very strange thing: they will earn the virtue of having renounced the world; they will enter paradise. You will go to hell, because you provided food, clothes, shelter to these saints. And they have been simply condemning you! Strange logic.

These people should go to hell -- who have not been doing anything except condemning, calling everybody a sinner, creating guilt in everybody, destroying everybody's integrity and self-respect. But these people will go to paradise.

With religions disappearing, all these people can be put into creative work. There is no need of monasteries, there is no need of churches, temples, mosques. All these houses of God -- and there are millions of men who don't have any houses, who live their whole life on the street. The houses of God are empty -- there is no God. All these houses of God can be made available to the homeless. All these monks can be put into creative work, all the armies can be put into creative work.

The capitalist West is too much in the mind, too much in the thinking. The Western part of the world still follows people like Aristotle and Socrates -- great giants, but confined only to the refinement of the mind. Socrates and his dialogues are beautiful, the highest that mind can reach. And Aristotle is the father of Western logic. All the philosophers of the West, from ancient Greece to Germany... Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach... to the contemporary world -- Sartre, Jaspers, Marcel, Soren Kierkegaard, Bertrand Russell, Whitehead, G.E. Moore -- they are all in the same line of intellectual giants. But they don't know anything about meditation, and they will argue against meditation. They will say there is nothing beyond the mind -- and without experimenting! A strange thing I remember... In Greece, traditionally it was believed that women don't have the same number of teeth as men. Obviously, the reason is that the woman should be in every way second-rate to man. How can she have the same number of teeth as man? Aristotle had two wives, not one -- he could have asked wife number one, or number two, "Just let me count your teeth." Or while they were asleep, he could have counted their teeth. And most women are continuously talking, and they don't have a moustache like me. You cannot count my teeth. Even just when they were talking he could have managed to count, but he depended on his logic that certainly women are a lower category than men -- just a male chauvinist idea. In his book of logic, he writes that "Women have fewer teeth than men." Logic is non-experimental. Science is experimental, and Zen -- which is the science of the inner -- is also experimental. Just the inner experiment is called "experience," and the outer experience is called "experiment." But unless you experience and experiment with the inner, you don't have any right to deny that there is anything beyond the mind. Have you gone beyond the mind? Have you reached beyond the mind, just trying to find out whether there is something beyond the mind? No one -- neither Russell nor Soren Kierkegaard nor Martin Heidegger -- nobody has tried to reach beyond the mind. Martin Heidegger has written a book on Zen, but that book is also just intellectual. And you can see that the man was not a meditator, because he was a follower of Adolf Hitler. That was a great intellectual giant of Germany, and still he followed a madman, a crackpot, Adolf Hitler. That shows the level of his insight, that he knows nothing about the inner. No man of meditation will follow Adolf Hitler. That's why I said, by vocation I am a logician, by mistake I am a mystic. Because to be sane in an insane world is very difficult and hard. That's why I call it a mistake. But I would love you to commit the mistake. I love to corrupt people! Their morality, their religion... anything you give me and I will corrupt it! Corruption is my business.

Zen Fire and Zen Wind -- that is what is missing in communism. I have to go into a deeper analysis... Karl Marx was an intellectual giant, but he had no idea of religiousness other than Judaism and Christianity. Both are religions of prayer. Both believe in God, which is a fiction. Both believe in things which are irrational. For example, Moses passing through the sea, and the sea giving way -- nature makes no exceptions. And Jesus pretending to be the only begotten son of God is absolutely absurd to any rational man like Karl Marx. Jesus' miracles are mythological. He made Lazarus come out of his grave, raised him back to life -- and he could not do anything when he was on the cross! He could not even produce a little water -- he was thirsty, it was a hot day, and he was asking continuously for water. And this man has touched people and restored their eyes; even by touching his robe people have lost their paralysis. He has walked on water, and this man could not fly with the cross towards God, his father? He was utterly helpless on the cross. That shows all those miracles are simply invented by the Christians to befool the world. Even Christian scholars are being embarrassed by all these miracles, by his virgin birth, by his shouting towards God on the cross, "Have you forsaken me?" Karl Marx was aware only of Judaism -- he was a Jew, just as Jesus was a Jew -- and he was aware of Christianity and all its crimes against humanity. Burning millions of women alive, forcing them to confess that they are having intercourse with the devil, continuous torture to any woman -- beating, not letting her sleep, not giving her food, putting ice on her chest for hours.... These were the people who, by chance, invented the traction machine, because they were putting women on a traction machine which pulled the legs from one side and the head and the arms from the other side. One woman was suffering from backache -- suddenly her backache disappeared. Now that traction machine has been transferred from the churches to the medical colleges, to hospitals. I know it from my personal experience! And when they were torturing those people on the traction machine, sometimes the legs would come out, sometimes the arms would be broken. Sometimes the head would be stretched so much that the woman would start saying, "I confess that I have been having sex with the devil." And once she confessed, then they told her how to describe the devil: that he has two horns, that his sexual machinery is forked -- all the details that she had to confess in a special court appointed by the pope, the grand jury. The poor woman has to accept it; otherwise they will torture her to death. So what is the point? She knows that confessing it means being burnt, but death seems to be more peaceful than this life of continuous torture. More people have been killed by the Christian church than by anybody else. Karl Marx was reacting to these two religions, which are not religions at all but fictions, superstitions, cults. He was not aware of Taoism, he was not aware of Lao Tzu, he was not aware of Gautam Buddha and Mahavira. He was not aware that there are religions in the world which don't believe in God, which don't believe in prayer, which don't believe in heaven and hell. Because of this unawareness of the whole Eastern phenomenon, he created communism as materialism, dialectical materialism. It was out of ignorance. Otherwise I have absolute trust that if he had been aware of the Eastern research into the interior space of man... Karl Marx was not an ordinary being, but a very extraordinarily intelligent person. He would have understood that Christianity and Judaism are not the only religions in the world. Buddhism has not killed a single person, and converted the whole of Asia just by simple dialogue, just by intellectual conversation, just by leading people into meditation. Karl Marx was right in his reaction against Christianity and Judaism. There is certainly no God as a creator. And because he denied God, as a corollary -- a logical corollary -- he denied the human soul. It was not his experience, it was simply a logical thing. To accept the human soul, which is not material, would be self-contradictory in his philosophy. By vocation I am a logician, and by mistake I am a mystic. But my mistake has paid me tremendously. Now I know that logic is just mental gymnastics. All the conclusions derived by Marx were based on logic, were based on thinking, philosophizing. He was not aware at all that there is something like meditation, that there is some way to go inwards. And the human soul, the human spirit, is not a by-product of matter. It has its own existence. The matter in the body seems to be alive, only because of the presence of consciousness in it. Once the consciousness leaves the body, the body is simply dead, a corpse. But because Karl Marx had no experience of meditation... And the West was not the right place for meditation; the whole Western mind was objective, and both Judaism and Christianity are objective -- their God is outside. There is no God outside, it is fiction. Karl Marx was denying fiction, not religiousness, but he thought this fiction was the only religiousness. Based on Karl Marx's logic, the Soviet Union -- the first communist country, the greatest experiment in the whole history of mankind -- has remained hollow within. There is a deep urge for significance, for meaning, for eternity. A life which is just material has no meaning. You are just a machine, a robot. At birth you start breathing, mechanically, and at death you stop breathing. If this is the only life, between the cradle and the grave, then this life has no meaning. What meaning can it have? And then there is no good and no bad. Even killing a person you are not committing a murder, because it is only matter. If you kill your chair I don't think any court is going to take action against you, that you murdered the chair. In China, because they believed that women have no souls, husbands used to kill their wives. In China there was no law against murdering your wife, because she is just like furniture. You use it, and when you think it is useless, just finish with it! Find some new furniture. The same is the situation in Thailand. The woman has no soul and no rights; she is not human. But in accordance with Karl Marx, the Soviet Union was based on materialism. It was good in the beginning because it destroyed all the orthodox Christians and their monasteries and their monks. It turned the churches into hospitals, into schools, into colleges. Big monasteries -- because the Russian Orthodox church is one of the oldest churches, older than the Vatican, and much more orthodox than any other church in the world. You will not believe that in the name of celibacy, the Russian Orthodox church allowed men to cut off their genitals. Every year when Christmas came, hundreds of people would cut off their genitals in the name of becoming celibate. Women were not left behind: they would cut off their breasts. But neither by cutting off your breasts do you become celibate, nor by cutting off your genitals do you become celibate, because the sex center exists in the brain, not in the genitals. The genitals are an extension of a center in the brain. That's why if you start just imagining about a beautiful woman, immediately your genitals start moving. You are only thinking -- you can do it right now! The thought is in the mind. It is immediately transferred to the genitals, but it always begins in the mind. The genitals don't have any thinking power. They don't have eyes to see which woman is beautiful. It is your eyes which see and inform the brain, and then the genitals start functioning. If you really want celibate people, then they need a brain operation. The center of sex should be removed. But then you will be simply impotent -- not celibate. Karl Marx was right, that such religions should be finished. They are against humanity. They protect poverty and they protect the rich. They are against revolution, they are against any change -- obviously, he was right to call them the opium of the people, the hope of the hopeless. If Christianity and Judaism were the only religions, then the Soviet Union would not have any need, any urge to find the inner world! But just think about it. You cannot have the outside world without having the inside world; they exist together like two sides of the coin. And there are scientific methods available. Zen is the most scientific method to inquire into your consciousness. It takes you beyond mind into a space called no-mind. No self, but pure awareness, and you have a taste of eternity and immortality. This is what is missing in Soviet communism. And the danger is that Gorbachev is opening the doors and all those Christians will immediately come back. All those cockroaches and rats who have been thrown out in seventy years' time will be the first to enter. Just this Christmas thousands and thousands of Christians entered to celebrate Christmas in the Soviet Union. Today I received the news.... One of the most idiotic cults is the cult of HARE KRISHNA, HARE RAMA. I have come across every kind of idiot, but these two cults, the Witnesses of Jehovah and this movement of HARE KRISHNA, HARE RAMA -- these are the worst idiots in the whole world! Now the Soviet Union has allotted them land to make a temple for Krishna. Now, these idiots... who are mostly American; not a single Hindu is involved in the Krishna movement. It is only the Americans, ex-hippies. I have even talked with their founder, Prabhupad, and he was such a senile idiot! But he managed to find other idiots to be followers. Now giving them space on Soviet land, allowing them to make a temple for Krishna, and allowing them to translate SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA into Russian, is bringing poison into the country. Gorbachev is not aware what SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA'S message is. It is war. This is the only religious scripture in the world which teaches war, violence, destruction. Now allowing these idiots to translate SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA into Russian... And on the other hand, Gorbachev is trying to make a peaceful world. It is contradictory. But these people will rush in from all sides -- all kinds of cults which have no base in reality, which don't have any logic, which don't have any rationale, which don't have any scientific approach -- they will destroy the whole Soviet Union's mind. Whatever has been achieved in seventy years is in immense danger. Again monks will be living as parasites, because they don't work. Again these people -- HARE KRISHNA, HARE RAMA -- will be parasites. They don't work. The danger is great, because the Soviet people who are present today have no idea of the revolution. They are almost all born after the revolution, or when they were very small children the revolution happened. They don't have any memory of it. I don't think Gorbachev has any idea what happened in that revolution and how difficult it was to destroy these stupid religions, superstitions. It took tremendous labor to clean the whole of the Soviet land from the past, the hangover of primitive, barbarious fears, greed, possessiveness. Now calling these people back again, opening the doors for all kinds of diseases... And the Soviet people are feeling a certain hollowness within themselves. Something is missing, because Karl Marx cannot provide any spirituality to them. But these bogus preachers will talk about spirituality, and it is pure talk. They don't know anything about spirituality either, but they can manage to fill the vacuum in the Soviet heart with all their belief systems, with all their superstitions. It is going backwards, not forwards. I warn the Soviet people: please be careful. Whatever Gorbachev is doing, he is doing with great and good intentions. But he is not aware that once you open the doors, all the CIA agents and FBI agents, all the detectives from all over the world, will be entering into the country -- as monks, as priests, as bishops, as archbishops. Just now, a few Soviet states which have never raised their voices, are raising their voices that "We want independence; we want to separate from the Soviet Union." In one of the Soviet countries they have tried experimental elections, democratic elections. The Soviet Union has been a dictatorship of the proletariat -- only one party, the party of the proletariat, the Communist Party. So there was no question of any election. Although elections were held, there was only one candidate to vote for. Under Gorbachev's direction they have tried in one or two places to have the Communist Party's candidate -- which is decided by the central bureau in Kremlin -- and to allow the people of that state to have their own candidates. Of course, they are also communists. But it should be a warning, that those people of the locality have won the election against the centrally nominated candidates. Now nationalism is coming up. Mohammedans would like to separate -- there are a few Mohammedan countries in the Soviet Union. And every state which constitutes the Union is bound to become more and more nationalistic, which is a disease. So without knowing the consequences, Gorbachev is going ahead. He can spoil the whole great experiment of seventy years. Once the Soviet Union is destroyed, there is no hope for other communist countries either. They are small countries, they can be destroyed without difficulty. The Soviet Union is the central force of the whole of communism in the world. It has to survive! But the trouble is, the idiots will rush in, the vested interests will rush in. No right person, no Gautam Buddha is going to go there unless Gorbachev and the Soviet Union invite him. Nobody like that is going there. Those who will be rushing there on their own have their motivations. If Gorbachev really wants peace in the world at the cost of communism, that peace is not worth it. Communism is one of the greatest experiments in human evolution. It has laid the foundation of a new temple for humanity. But it has only laid the foundation; the pillars are missing, the roof is missing. That can be done only by people who are fully awakened, people whom I am calling the buddhas -- not Buddhists. Buddhists are as superstitious as any other organized religion. But the awakened people should be invited from all over the world. There are a few people still, in the same space as Gautam Buddha. They should be invited to teach meditation in the universities, to teach meditation in the colleges, to teach meditation to the public -- and meditation has nothing against communism. Meditation will use communism as the base, and will put the pillars and the roof on the base. The Soviet citizen needs something of meditative experience that will fill his hollowness. Otherwise just work, and death... there seems to be no meaning and significance. If you had not been born there would be no harm; if you die nobody is going to miss you, you will be replaced. Soviet citizens need dignity and individuality and a certain sense of direction into eternity. That is what is missing. And the danger is, before the right people can be invited, the wrong people will rush in and start destroying the seventy years' great experiment. I would prefer a third world war rather than the destruction of the Soviet Union. In the name of peace Gorbachev can go beyond the limits -- he is already going. The death of the Soviet Union will be the death of all evolution, of all possibilities of a world without boundaries, of a world without classes, of a world richer in every sense of the word -- not only money but consciousness too; not only power but art and music and dance. Have you ever observed? -- there is a simple phenomenon that will give you the right direction. Before the revolution, the Soviet Union produced people like Leo Tolstoy, Gorky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Dostoevsky. These five names are so great, as far as literature is concerned, that if you want to find ten great names in the whole world, these five will be the first five. The other five will be sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth. But these five cannot be dropped in any calculation, their creation is so great. Just a single man, Fyodor Dostoevsky, is enough to defeat all the creative novelists of the world. But what happened? After the revolution, no Gorky, no Turgenev, no Dostoevsky, no Tolstoy -- what happened? In these seventy years the Soviet Union has not been able to create a single person of that quality. The reason is clear. The Soviet citizen has lost his soul, has lost his consciousness, has believed in Karl Marx blindly, that the soul of man is only a by-product of matter. If the soul is just a by-product of matter, then there is no possibility of haikus, no possibility for poetry. I have read the poetry written before the revolution and after the revolution. In fact, after the revolution the poetry should have risen higher, but that is not the case. Before the revolution when Russia was the poorest of countries... it was not even a capitalist country, it was a feudal country. Karl Marx had never expected that the Soviet Union was going to be born out of the poorest country, the most traditional, backward in every sense. He never expected that it was going to become the first communist country. It was not even capitalist. According to Karl Marx's calculation, a feudal society cannot move directly to communism. It has to move through capitalism. Only capitalism creates classes clearly, the proletariat and the bourgeois. But I told you, logic is not everything. Life has its own ways. It happened in Russia. But because the philosophy of Karl Marx has been the foundation, it has destroyed all flowers of consciousness. No literature of great status... even Tolstoy's son was just a poor novelist after the revolution. And before the revolution, in a poor country, such great literature was born. It shows something. It shows that unless you have a fulfillment, a certain contentment inside you, you cannot share it in poetry, in music. From where will you bring it? It has to flow from you -- you cannot share it because you don't have it. The Soviet citizen is the poorest, as far as consciousness is concerned. But Karl Marx has given it a right foundation. That foundation is missing in the East. This has been the dilemma of the whole of humanity.... In the East people have condemned the body, condemned matter, called matter "illusory," maya -- it does not really exist, it only appears to exist; it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. They denied the world, and that is the reason for the East remaining poor, sick, in starvation. Half of humanity has been accepting the inner world but denying the outer world. The other half of humanity has been accepting the material world and denying the inner world. Both are half, and no man who is half can be contented. You have to be whole: rich in the body, rich in science; rich in meditation, rich in consciousness. Only a whole person is a holy person, according to me. I want Zorba and Buddha to meet together. Zorba alone is hollow. His dance has not an eternal significance, it is momentary pleasure. Soon he will be tired of it. Unless you have inexhaustible sources, available to you from the cosmos itself... unless you become existential, you cannot become whole. This is my contribution to humanity: THE WHOLE PERSON. The East has denied the body and the outside world, and the West has denied the soul and the inner world; both have lived half. And just as there is no half-circle in the world... a circle means a complete circle. A half-circle is only an arc, it is not a circle. So the West has remained half, an arc; the East has remained half, an arc. And a man like Lord Kipling wrote, "East is East, West is West, and the twain shall never meet." Just bullshit! They are meeting here, now. And unless they meet there is no hope for humanity. Russia has the foundation. It needs right pillars and a roof. What will you do with the foundation alone? It needs to fill its hollowness with light, with blissfulness, with ecstasy, with a new luminousness. Ask the awakened ones of the world to enter into Russia and teach people a scientific religiousness -- not Christianity, not Hinduism, not SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA or the Holy Bible. The Holy Bible has three hundred eighty-eight pages of pornography, sheer pornography. And SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA is a sermon by Lord Krishna of the Hindus, the perfect incarnation of God, in favor of war. A great war happened because of SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA. It happened five thousand years ago and it broke India's backbone. After that war, India has never risen beyond poverty, beyond small things. It cannot look up to the stars and the blue sky. When you are hungry.... It will be interesting for you to know that there are biblical scholars who have been prohibited by the pope. The pope has said that no priests should listen to these biblical scholars -- and they are really the great scholars of the Bible, how it was born, how the gospels were created, what has been left out.... The four gospels in the New Testament are not the only gospels. There were other gospels which have been denied and destroyed. Only one gospel has survived, because it was written in India. One of the direct disciples of Jesus, Thomas, immediately moved to India and he remained in South India, learned all the arts of yoga and meditation. And you will be surprised: he is the only person in the whole world whose body is still intact... it is in Goa. Every year the body is taken out and you can see it -- it is as if he has just died. And it is not by any scientific method that it has been preserved. Scientists have been observing it, watching it with amazement: two thousand years ago, how did those people manage? Because there is no sign of anything, and the body seems to be still flushed with blood. After two thousand years it has not deteriorated. The body usually starts deteriorating immediately; within three days it is stinking. But every year the body of Thomas is taken out -- this is a real miracle -- and it is the only body in the whole world which has been preserved and scientists cannot figure out how. It has been preserved by yoga and meditation, not by any scientific method from the outside. There was no science in those days. But Thomas became almost a sannyasin in India. He forgot all about Jesus and his miracles and all his teachings. He became almost a man of the East; he started wearing the robe of a sannyasin, the ochre robe. He started using the sannyasins' ancient sandals, made of wood -- it was very difficult to walk on them. He was even using the thread that Hindus wear around their neck and waist. He shaved his head, just like any yogi, and he was well respected. He was allowed into the Buddhist monasteries of Nalanda and Takshashila. Both these monasteries Jesus had also visited, but not for a long time. So he could not get into meditation. He heard about things -- which he repeats in the Bible, which are really Buddha's statements. The biblical scholars who are the authentic scholars -- and they are all Christians -- say there is every possibility there was no Jesus at all. It is a myth and it is simply Krishna whose name has become Christ. The Sanskrit name `Krishna' in Bengali becomes `Kristo'. If it can become Kristo, there is not much to do to make it Christ -- from Krishna to Kristo and from Kristo to Christ. These biblical scholars have found many things which are amazing. It is possible that it is a myth, traveling, that has created Jesus Christ. But Gorbachev knows nothing, and to allow SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA to be translated into Russian will be one of the most dangerous steps against peace. ... t was Krishna who forced him. In eighteen chapters of SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA is his continuous argument in favor of war. And when finally he could not convince him, at last he took the same step as all religions have taken: "It is God's will! You cannot go out of the war. What God has chosen has to happen." That's what the Bible says: "Don't change anything. Whatever is God's will is going to happen." Now if I had been in place of Arjuna, I would have said to Krishna, "That's okay. This is what God has chosen, I am going to the Himalayas." But Krishna has been respected as the incarnation of God. Not only incarnation -- Hindus have many incarnations of God -- Krishna is the only "perfect" incarnation. He was so powerful that the brahmins simply praised him. It is always power that is praised. A man who has captured sixteen thousand women from all over his kingdom, all the beautiful women... whether married, unmarried, it did not matter. His army would just catch any woman who was seen by Krishna, and he simply gave the indication, "Take her to the palace." He collected sixteen thousand women -- you cannot even remember their names! -- and he was married only to one woman. All these women had their children, their husbands, their old parents to take care of. Sixteen thousand families were destroyed by this man. And he forced Arjuna, saying, "This is God's will -- you have to fight! You cannot go against God's will." God has been used for all kinds of crimes. The war happened. It was a massacre, millions of people died. And the backbone of India was broken. India became so afraid of war, because from every family somebody was killed -- the husband, the father, the son, every family was deprived of somebody. The whole country was sad, and that sadness has become so deeply settled in India's mind that when small tribes, primitive tribes of Turks, of Mongols, of Hunas, of Moguls, of British, came to India, India simply gave way. They had no desire to fight. Whoever came was accepted without any difficulty -- small groups! Turks came with only five hundred people, and India was a country of thirty-three million people at that time, two thousand years ago. Still India simply accepted them; it was not ready to fight. It had seen the war, it had seen its destructiveness. And who was responsible for all this? Krishna was responsible for all this. To me, he is not even a human being, nothing to say about an incarnation of God. When I saw today that they are giving a place to him in the Soviet Union, making a temple for Krishna and allowing these hippies from America... that means all kinds of idiots and stupids and superstitious people will enter into the Soviet Union. This opening can be dangerous. Certainly the Soviet Union needs spirituality. It has materialism -- that is the base. It needs spirituality -- that will raise the temple of the soul. Just as you need scientists for material wealth, technology, you need buddhas, enlightened people, to help you become also a buddha. But this kind of people will not come on their own. You will have to persuade them, you will have to invite them. Only then they can help you. To a welcoming heart, they will pour all that they know. And Marxism will become a complete philosophy if it can be joined with Zen. That's why I say, "What is missing? Zen Fire, Zen Wind." But Christianity should be prohibited. Judaism should be prohibited. Hinduism should be prohibited. Islam should be prohibited. These people have been the cause of the trouble. Again you are falling back. Seventy years of struggle to create a new society, and then one single man who knows nothing of the revolution, who knows nothing of how hard it was to preserve the country amongst all the anti- communist countries... they were all ready, like vultures all around, to destroy the Soviet Union and its communism. Because if even one country becomes communist, it is dangerous. It is dangerous to all the capitalist countries because that fragrance will start spreading. The Soviet Union is a hope for humanity. Gorbachev should not take the responsibility of destroying the Soviet Union. But by opening it, he is being praised by the capitalist press, by the capitalist news media all over the world. That is very cunning. They are making him a great hero, and by becoming a hero he will completely forget the implications that will follow the opening of the doors of the Soviet Union to all and sundry, to Tom, and Dick, and Harry. It is a scientific experiment. The Soviet Union has done half the work, with great difficulty, with tremendous sacrifice. The new generation is not aware. I have gone to the deepest roots of the revolution, and I can see how much the Soviet Union has suffered to be a communist country, how much it has sacrificed. And it has lived in constant danger of being destroyed, but now it has come to a point where it is one of the biggest world powers. It should not be reduced from its power. It is good to be a peacemaker, and perhaps soon Gorbachev will receive a Nobel Prize.... That is not very noble. I call it The "Ignoble" Prize, because the man who created the Nobel Prize -- it was his name, Nobel. But his function was -- in the first world war and before that -- that he was the biggest manufacturer of arms. He was supplying arms to the whole world. Every war was fought with his weapons, both sides would be using his arms, and through these arms he collected great richness. Then his Christian guilt came over him at the time of his death, that "I am the greatest creator of war material -- and all the people who have died because of my weapons... everybody who has died, has died because of my arms." In any country, anywhere, both the parties were using his weapons. He was the only person who was refining and refining, and making better and better war material. He became afraid of hellfire. He donated all his money and created a trust, so that every year, just out of the interest, Nobel Prizes should be given to different branches of science, art, literature, music... any contribution to humanity. It was simply trying to erase his guilt. And this Nobel Prize committee... the chairman of the committee is the King of Sweden. One of my sannyasins, who is a Nobel Prize winner, asked the king -- because only a Nobel Prize winner can nominate somebody else's name to the committee which decides to whom the Nobel Prizes should go. He told the King of Sweden, "What about this man?" -- and he mentioned my name. The king said, "Never utter that name again! My suggestion for you is, don't bring that name to the Nobel committee, because you will feel embarrassed. It is impossible for us to give this man a Nobel Prize." But in the same way, Leo Tolstoy was denied. Every fifty years the Nobel committee opens its records for the public to view. Last time when they opened their public records, the people found that Leo Tolstoy had been nominated for a Nobel Prize, but was denied on the grounds that he was not an orthodox Christian. He was a Christian, but he was not orthodox, he was very flexible. On these grounds -- and the question was literature, not Christianity! They did not even talk about his literature. The man has created the greatest novels in the world: ANNA KARENINA... or WAR AND PEACE, which is such a vast world that the man must have been the greatest mind of his century. But the literature was not discussed. The man who nominated him, had nominated him for a literary prize, for literature, but he was denied on the grounds that he was not an orthodox Christian. That is strange -- is this prize only for orthodox Christians? And this Nobel Prize has been used as a political weapon. They always give Nobel Prizes to Soviet scientists. It is tricky game, because the Soviet government up to now would prohibit the person from accepting this prize from the capitalist world, and prohibit the person from going to the Nobel Prize convention to accept the prize... Because from there, the man becomes persuaded by the capitalists. The Nobel Prize comes with almost two hundred thousand dollars. The man for the first time... In the Soviet Union you don't have private property; for the first time he sees two hundred thousand dollars, and for the first time he is out of the Soviet Union. He can escape and ask for refuge in any capitalist country, and he can release the secrets of Soviet scientists to the capitalists and gain prestige, awards, money and everything. So the Soviet government up to now has been preventing people like Sakharov and others. It was a very dangerous thing. If you prevent, then the scientist becomes angry with the Soviet government. He freaks out, he wants to accept the prize. Because he freaks out, the Soviet government has to take measures to prevent him from escaping out of the country. Even Sakharov's insistence that he would accept the Nobel Prize... immediately the Soviet government had to take action. He was removed as the director general of the science academy, his car was taken back... because nobody possesses anything, everything belongs to the nation. The government allots things to people. And he was reduced to being an ordinary member of the academy. But his wife, who is also a scientist, was having an operation in Paris. From Paris she managed to go to the Nobel Prize convention, and on behalf of her husband she accepted the Nobel Prize. So either the Nobel Prize is a kind of bribe to take secrets out of the Soviet Union, or it creates a trouble for the scientist. If the government prevents him, and if he wants to go out, then he has to be jailed. In some way, one scientist's life and his contribution to the Soviet Union is destroyed. Now the Nobel Prize has been given to politicians -- even a man like Kissinger gets a Nobel Prize! And what is his contribution to humanity? I call it the Ignoble Prize because it is full of blood, the blood of millions of people who were massacred by Nobel's weapons. No man of dignity should accept it. I told my sannyasin, "You should not have mentioned my name. I will reject the Nobel Prize if they give it to me. It is a bribe and nothing else, a bribe to shut people's mouths who speak against capitalism, a bribe to take secrets from the Soviet Union." Now opening the doors of the Soviet Union is really dangerous -- and I am saying it as a friend. The Soviet Union has done half the work; the base is completely solid. All that it needs is a few pillars and a roof, and the shrine for the human soul will be ready. The new man can come only out of the Soviet Union. But what is happening makes me suspicious. Soon Gorbachev will have the Nobel Prize, I predict it. He is being praised by all the capitalist press for the simple reason so that this praise gets into his head and he forgets all the implications of what he is doing that may destroy the Soviet Union. A seventy-year great experiment in changing the structure of the society... and they have succeeded! Now the second step is to change the consciousness of man. You have changed the structure of the society, it was an economic revolution. That's why I said yesterday that if I come to Soviet Union, I am bringing another revolution, a revolution which will be spiritual. That is what is missing: a spiritual revolution. If that revolution happens, the Soviet Union will be the pride of humanity. I see both sides of Gorbachev. He is doing good in bringing freedom, but he is also taking a risk -- which he will not be able to prevent once all these people enter in. Then he will have to start from ABC; it will take another seventy years to bring back this same situation. I would like him open the door for scientists, open the door for poets, open the door for mystics, open the door for musicians, dancers, painters. Open the door for novelists, open the door for all creative people, open the door for meditators -- but not for all and sundry; particularly not for any organized religion, and not for any stupid and idiotic ideology. He does not know anything about BHAGAVADGITA, and he has allowed these Hare Krishna people to translate it into Russian. He does not know that this is the only scripture in the whole world devoted completely to war. It was perfectly good for Adolf Hitler, it was perfectly good for Benito Mussolini. It is not good for people who want peace, for people who want this earth to drop its boundaries of nations, of religions. It is not good for those who want one world, one earth, one humanity. ... WHY DO YOU NOT WANT TO ALLOW CHRISTIANITY TO ENTER THE SOVIET UNION?

Because I love the Soviet Union, and I would not like a poisonous snake, a cobra hiding inside the pope, to enter the Soviet Union. He can come to India, there is no problem. He can go around in any capitalist country, there is no problem. But not the Soviet Union, because I consider Christianity to be the most criminal religion in the world. In seventy years they have with great difficulty been erasing the programming of Christianity from the Soviet mind. Now the Soviet mind at least is free of Christianity, free of God, free of heaven, free of hell. This is perfectly good. Don't introduce all these things again. But one thing certainly the Soviet Union needs, which Christianity cannot provide. That can be provided only by Zen. Zen is pure meditation. It has nothing to do with hell, heaven, God. Jesus' miracles, it has nothing to do with. It does not even talk about any of these things. It simply talks about the science, step by step, of how to enter your own inner world and see the life eternal. Once you have seen your life as eternity -- from eternity to eternity -- you are a totally different man. Your life becomes of great significance. Thousands of blossoms start arising in you. Your life becomes creative. You know that existence cares for you. You know that existence never creates a carbon copy, that existence always comes up with absolutely original faces. Nobody is dispensable. Once you are gone, your place will remain empty forever. This gives significance, this gives meaning, this gives you a feeling you are needed by existence. Without you, something will be missing; some place will remain empty and nobody else can fill it. That's why yesterday I argued against Regardie, because he wanted to be a "Rajneesh" in his next incarnation. Existence never repeats, and you cannot be anybody else than yourself. That is authentic religiousness. Every individual has his own uniqueness, and that gives him dignity and grace. I don't want Christianity or Hinduism or Mohammedanism to enter the Soviet Union because all these religions are of prayer. Prayer is extrovert; meditation is introvert. If you want to allow people, then allow the people whose religion is based on meditation, not on prayer. That should be the clear-cut distinction, a criterion that can be followed without any fear. Allow Lao Tzu, allow people of Tao, allow people of Zen, allow people who belong to Sufism, allow people who belong to Hassidism. These are all people who in some way or other are meditative. But Zen comes to the very highest peak -- the purest meditation, refined by centuries of mystics in India, mystics in China, mystics in Japan. It has moved through so much refinement, sharpening -- continuous sharpening -- that there is nothing else compared to it. What will the poor pope do in the Soviet Union? -- just kiss the land! So he can kiss in the Vatican, he has enough land -- eight square miles, a sovereign country. Eight square miles is not enough for him to kiss? Go on kissing! He wastes so much money in kissing different lands. He came to India and kissed the New Delhi airport. I was in Kathmandu -- I immediately gave a press conference and told them, "If he wanted to kiss cow dung, we could have sent him a parcel full of cow dung! Why waste eight million dollars in visiting India just to kiss the cow dung?" But cow dung gives you a taste of Hinduism.... What has Christianity done for the whole world? It has created more poverty by preventing people from using birth control methods. Now birth control methods are a hundred percent effective; at first they were not. The pill had to be taken before you made love. Now there is another pill that you can take afterwards; there is no need to take it beforehand. This is far safer. And sometimes the pill disturbs the hormonal system of the woman, so a third pill has come into being which the man can take. The woman need not take anything. Now things are so simple, why go on increasing unnecessary population? And all Christian priests are insisting for more poverty, for more orphans. The reason is that they need more Catholics, more Christians -- from these orphans, from these poor people, they can get new converts. Already the Catholic church has six hundred million people in its fold; still there is no satisfaction. It wants more and more people, at the risk of the whole planet committing suicide! It is because of Christianity -- and they have influenced all the religions because it is the greatest religion as far as membership is concerned, the most powerful. Other religions have also followed the same ideas. Mohammed married nine wives. He was absolutely uneducated; he used to have epileptic fits and he married a woman just for money. The woman was forty years old and he was only twenty-six, but the woman was a widow and had an immense amount of money. She was the first Mohammedan! She turned Mohammed's epileptic fits into "trances." In his epileptic fit, he would tremble and foam would come out of his mouth, and he would feel so much trembling that all the blankets in the house could be put over him; still he was trembling. And whatever he uttered in that unconscious state, his wife would write. Khadija -- the woman, who was well educated, super-rich -- it is she who has written the Koran, it is not Mohammed. He could not even sign his name. And the Koran has been written over thirty years' time, because you have to wait for the epileptic fit to come again. Then nobody knows whether Khadija was writing what Mohammed was saying or she was inventing, because it is a very poor scripture. There is nothing much in it. Mohammedan friends have asked me. "Talk about the holy Koran!" They have been sending me copies, the latest editions, most beautifully printed. I looked into them many times, but I could not find a single sentence worthy to be commented upon. I can criticize, but then all the Mohammedans will be just ready to burn my community! That's what the Greek church threatened to do to me. When I was in Greece it was only for a four- week tourist visa. After two weeks... and I had not gone out of the house. The house was on a small island; it belonged to the best film producer in Greece, he was my host. It was just on a hilltop, a direct drop to the ocean -- a very beautiful place, a beautiful garden, and I had never gone out of the gate. But friends from all over Europe came running to Greece and the archbishop of the Greek Orthodox church... which is the oldest church in the world. It is the Greek church which has changed Christianity completely, according to itself. The archbishop threatened the president of the country, the prime minister of the country, and threatened me: "If the government does not deport him immediately I am going to dynamite the house and burn all the people inside -- alive." This is religion! And I have nothing to do with Greeks. There were at the most ten or twelve Greek friends, whom I have already corrupted, so there was no problem; they were my sannyasins. And he was threatening the government and saying that my stay in Greece would corrupt the morality, destroy the religion. I said when they deported me, to the world press representatives who had gathered at the airport to take my interview, "This country has the weakest religion and the weakest morality. They have had two thousand years to condition the mind of the country to a certain kind of morality which they think is virtuous, to certain superstitions that they think are religion -- and they are afraid of a tourist who is going to be here only two weeks more! If a religion two thousand years old can be corrupted by a tourist in two weeks, it is worth corrupting. It should be corrupted." He was threatening me: "I will organize a procession against you." I informed him, "I will enjoy it!" I enjoy all kinds of things.... But the procession never came, so I asked Amrito, my ambassador in Greece -- a beautiful woman, used to be a model, once was chosen to be the beauty queen of Greece. I love beauty. I love everything that is beautiful in this world. The flowers, the faces, the stars, the moon, the ocean -- everything. Beauty is my religion. I asked Amrito, "How many people here are Christians?" She said, "Almost ninety percent." And I asked her: "How many attend the church?" She said, "Not more than four percent!" I said, "Who are those four percent people?" She laughed, she said, "You won't believe -- they are the oldest women, ancient women, those whose one foot is in the grave and one foot in the church." I said, "How many women listen to this archbishop?" She counted. She went there -- only six women were listening to his thundering sermon! Of course he could not bring a procession of six old women, it would have been really a great circus. I had told my people, "When he comes, we should join the procession!" That old idiot wanted to burn all my people who were living with me -- just for two weeks! What has Christianity done for the world that you are asking me why I don't want to allow Christianity to enter the Soviet Union? I love the Soviet Union because it is a great experiment. It is a milestone in the history of man. Of course it is only half, but still -- half is better than nothing. The other half can be raised on top of it. What Lenin and Stalin have produced has given a good foundation for anybody to raise the temple of consciousness. And this temple will not belong to any religion; it will belong to all individuals who want to enter into initiation, who want to enter on the path. The buddhas don't lead you, they simply indicate the way. You have to follow your way alone, because nobody can go inside you. The buddhas can point to the place, but you have to go there. And it is good that nobody can go inside you; otherwise politicians would have reached before any buddha! It is your privilege, your absolute privilege and freedom -- nobody else can enter there. But if you go, you will start growing in a new dimension -- vertical. Just as all animals move horizontally... at a certain point in history some animals, according to Charles Darwin, stood up vertically. That's how man was born: from the horizontal animal, walking on all fours, he started walking on two feet, and two hands were free for the first time. These two hands have created all science, all technology -- the houses, the roads, the electricity, the television. Everything that you enjoy, everything that is needed for humanity has been created because these two hands were free. No animal can do these things: all four legs are engaged in walking. This is one revolution: the gorilla becomes man -- from horizontal to vertical. A similar kind of state exists inside. Your consciousness is still horizontal. Your body is vertical; your consciousness is still moving in time -- horizontally. The function of meditation is to turn your consciousness also in a vertical direction. When your body and consciousness are together, vertical, you are an enlightened one. The vertical consciousness knows the ultimate truth, the beauty, the good, the godliness of existence.

AS A RELIGIOUS LEADER, YOU ARE ABOVE HUMAN HURTS, BUT DO YOU CRITICIZE AMERICA AND CHRISTIANITY SO MUCH BECAUSE YOU FEEL HURT?

In the first place I am not a religious leader. I am a religious man. A leader is fundamentally a politician. Whether or not his politics is hidden behind religion does not matter; the very word `leader' comes from politics. I don't have any followers here; these are all my friends. So please don't call me a religious leader -- I am just religious. Secondly, I am not criticizing America and Christianity because they have tried to destroy my body. That does not matter to me. It does not hurt me, because I know something which is indestructible; no poison, no bombs, no nuclear weapons can destroy it. My being, my spirituality is beyond any destruction. It is eternal and immortal. So it is not a question of hurting me. My criticism of America and Christianity has nothing to do with my personal attitude. I am against all religions, not only Christianity. I am against God because I am against all fictions. I am against hell and against heaven because I don't want to create a schizophrenia in humanity. I don't want human beings to live in fear of hell and greed for heaven. And I don't want people to have any kind of belief system. Whether it is Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism, it does not matter. To me, any organized religion -- and Christianity is the most organized religion in the world -- is a danger to human beings. Their individuality, their freedom, their dignity is destroyed. Jesus goes on saying to people, "You are sheep, and I am the shepherd." That is the attitude of all so- called religions: "You don't know -- I know. And you have simply to believe in me and all your sins will be forgiven." Just believing in Jesus, or in Krishna, or in Buddha, cannot erase anybody's crimes and sins. Every action has its reaction: if you have done something wrong, you will have some bitter experiences following it. If you are doing something good, you will have flowers showering on you, a deep peace, a deep silence, and a growth of your inner consciousness. I have criticized America because I have been there for five years and seen with my own eyes that this is the most hypocritical country in the world. Talking about democracy, talking about freedom, talking about freedom of speech -- and none of these things exist there. Because they were against me they could not follow their own constitution concerning freedom of speech. They had no argument against me. Naturally, they became absolutely mad: how to destroy me, how to destroy the commune? The commune was a far superior version of communism. No dictatorship, no money -- in the commune there was no need for money. People donated to the commune, but as far as their needs were concerned, the commune was responsible to fulfill their needs. And the commune was living at a far better, higher standard than any American. The richest American was jealous of the commune. The commune was in the midst of a capitalist world. And when they deported me the representative of the attorney general of America, Ed Meese, admitted in a press conference that I had not committed any crime. The reason he gave for deporting me was: "We wanted to destroy the commune. That was our priority." And without deporting me, it was impossible to destroy the commune. But why? Why did you want to destroy the commune? Our commune was not at all concerned with America. The commune was located in a desert, one hundred twenty-six square miles of desert which had been for sale for forty years. And nobody had purchased it, at any price, because what will you do with a desert? But my people converted the desert into an oasis. That hurt America very much. My people were living with such joy, such laughter, and they were working hard. All their needs were fulfilled. They had the whole commune centrally air-conditioned; they had everything that they wanted, and there was no exchange of money in the commune. This made the American government completely mad. ... When I saw democracy, American style, at work... it was absolute nonsense to talk about democracy. Their constitution is just a showpiece for the world. The country consists of criminals talking about freedom. I raised the question that they are all foreigners. I said, "All Americans are foreigners in America. It belongs to the Red Indians whom you have killed, whom you have forced into deep forests which you call reservations. In fact, they are the same as the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler. You are occupying the land of somebody else and you talk about freedom?" Looking at American crime... when I moved through those six jails I could not believe my eyes. Every jail had at least six hundred, seven hundred criminals -- all were black! Not a single white man did I come across in six jails. It seems only black people commit crimes. And these black people are all young people. America is very much afraid of a black revolution, so all these young people have been forced into jail, without any trial. Whenever I arrived in a jail, the prisoners shouted to me... because they had been seeing my face on television continually. They were rejoiced to see me, and they said, "You will be going out of jail soon. The whole world has been alerted about your arrest; thousands of telegrams from the most prominent people around the world -- painters, poets, actors, film producers, mystics, Nobel Prize winners..." In the first jail so many telegrams came that the jailer came to me saying that "We don't have space for so many telegrams, and we don't have space for so many flowers, and we don't have enough personnel to receive all the telephone calls that are coming from all over the world! What do you suppose? What should we do?" I said, "It is your problem. Why have you arrested me?" ... I am not against the American people. I love them as I love all the people of the earth, and I have received much love from the American population. But I am absolutely against the American politicians and the American bureaucracy. It is absolutely against humanity. It is suicidal, murderous -- it is preparing to destroy this world. Every day, more and more nuclear weapons are gathering. They have spent trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons. And Ronald Reagan has left the post of president, but he has given a budget of one and half trillion dollars to create more weapons. Now George Bush is at a loss -- from where to get this money? My criticism of American politicians is based not on my personal hurts -- they don't matter. At least to me they don't matter. But I am certainly hurt because of America's anti-human attitude. There are three million street people and this winter they are dying in thousands. America goes on sending aid to poor countries, and it cannot save its own poor. ... And I am not against only Christianity. I am against all religions except Zen, because Zen is not a religion but only religiousness. I have to make it clear to you that religion is a doctrine, an organized church, a belief system, a fictitious God, heaven and hell, and a great priesthood which functions as a mediator between you and God and exploits you in the name of religion, in the name of God. Zen is the only religious phenomenon in the world which has no doctrine, no scripture, which has no God, no belief system, no organized church. It is an individual phenomenon, just like love. You don't have a church of love. You don't have a political party for love. It is an individual freedom. Just as love is individual, so is meditation. And to me, religion only means one thing: meditation, going inwards and exploring your consciousness. Just the way science explores matter, meditation is the science of the inner; it explores consciousness. I have my points of agreement with Karl Marx, with Engels, with Lenin, with Gorbachev. I have my points of disagreement. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were aware only of two religions, Judaism and Christianity, which are both just so-so religions. Marx and Engels were not aware of Zen, they were not aware of Tao, they were not aware of meditation. It is not their fault; their whole concern was how to make society economically equal. So they said that man is only matter, and consciousness is a by-product of matter. When the man dies, the consciousness also dies. On that point I am in absolute disagreement. I am against all religions because they have been exploiting humanity, and they are exactly what Karl Marx called the "opium of the people." They are giving the poor consolation, that "Your poverty is a fire test. Just listen to the words of Jesus. He says, `Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth.'" If blessed are the poor, then there is no need to remove poverty. In fact, make more poor people so they can become more blessed people and can inherit the kingdom of God! Spread poverty, breed like animals, as many children as you can. These all will be the inheritors of God's kingdom. Such consolation has been given by all religions in different ways. The Bible says, "Don't change anything, because God has made it so, and he is wiser than you." So don't change any structure of the society, don't change the family. But God never made the family. In fact, God is the greatest lie in existence. And from one central lie, thousands of lies go on growing. I am against not only Christianity, I am against Hinduism, I am against Buddhism, I am against Mohammedanism, because they are functioning in the same way -- only their names are different. It is not that Christianity has hurt me so I am against it. Judaism has not hurt me, Mohammedanism has not hurt me, Buddhism has not hurt me, but I am against them on principle. These are the people who have been exploiting humanity and protecting the vested interests. Hinduism says that you are poor because of your past life's bad actions, and you are rich because of your past life's good actions. They distract the mind from the reality. The reality is that you are poor because you are being exploited by the rich continuously. You are sucked, your blood is continuously being taken out of you; your very life is at the minimum so that you can function as a slave. You are allowed to live just because without you, who is going to be able to create a vast army of slaves? And all religions are in favor of the rich because the rich are donating to the churches, to the temples, to the religions, a small part, not even one percent, of their exploitation. But they keep the priests rich, comfortable, because the priests are protecting the status quo. I am against the status quo. I want to change the whole society, its structure. I want a classless society, a world without boundaries, without nations. A world which is one, neither black nor white, neither Indian nor Russian nor American. This small planet can live in peace. In three thousand years the politicians have dragged humanity into five thousand wars, but you will be surprised: even in five thousand wars politicians have not been able to kill more people than religions have killed. They have their religions wars: crusades, jihad.... Jesus says, "Whoever is not with me is against me." Now these are the words of a politician -- not the words of a religious man, not the words of a man who is meditative, who can see things. The person who is not with me may be just indifferent; it is not necessary that he should be against me. The person who is with me can be against me any day, and the person who is against me can be in favor of me any day. And there is a third category which Jesus completely forgets: the indifferent, the agnostic who is neither theist nor atheist, who does not believe in any `ism', who simply wants to inquire into truth. I am against Christianity and other religions because they are preventing people from finding out the truth of their own being. To me, religiousness is acceptable. It is a quality -- a quality which brings grace to you, which brings blissfulness to you, which brings a silence to your mind, which brings an encounter with your original being. It is absolutely a science -- a science of the inner space, just as there is a science of the objective world. It is not a belief system. You don't have to believe in any savior, in any messiah, in any prophet, in any reincarnation of God -- these are all arch-egoists who are pretending to save you.

Their third question is: YOU ONCE SAID IN A DISCOURSE THAT LENIN WAS AGAINST MARRIAGE AND WANTED TO DISSOLVE THE FAMILY. IN REALITY, LENIN ALWAYS FOLLOWED ENGELS IN SAYING THAT THE FAMILY IS THE NUCLEUS.

Nucleus of what? Nucleus of the capitalist society! Both Marx and Engels, in their analysis of the economic structure, are very clear about it: the family came into being only with private property. Before private property there was no family; hence it follows logically that if private property is dissolved, marriage will be dissolved automatically. It is a logical conclusion; whether Lenin agrees with it or not, does not matter. I don't care about anybody -- I care about intelligence. It is not a question whether Engels contradicts himself. The family has been the nucleus of all the organized religions; it has been the nucleus of all the feudal and capitalist societies; it has been the nucleus of all exploitation and war. That nucleus has to be completely withdrawn. Without the family dying out, you cannot have a real humanity arising, of individuals. I have not said that Lenin was against marriage. I have said that it is the logical conclusion from Marx and Engels' analysis of society. They say that the family came into being with private property. Why did it come into being with private property? -- because every father wanted his property to be inherited by his son. Hence, he had to guard his wife so that she would not get pregnant with somebody else. The family became an imprisonment of the woman, so that the child would certainly be the son of the father. The father has no other evidence; only the mother knows exactly to whom the child belongs. So keep the mother completely out of society: no education, no economic freedom, no financial status. In Mohammedan countries she cannot even show her face to anybody. Keep the woman completely imprisoned -- that is the only security you have that your son is your son, and the property that you have gathered will be inherited by your son. But in a communist society, when the property is not private, there is no need for any family to protect it. The property belongs to everyone. Then why bother about it, that "My son has to be my son." In fact, I had said that this was the logical conclusion. I have read all the communist literature that has been published from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and I have read all the literature that has been published against communism. I would like my Soviet comrades to look at my library, and they will find all the communist literature and all the anti- communist literature there. It is my understanding that marriage cannot exist in a communist society. A commune will take the place of marriage. And I have read somewhere... because for fifteen years I have not been reading at all. I have read somewhere that when the revolution happened in 1917 in Russia, in the beginning they had tried for three, four, or five years to dissolve marriage, to dissolve the family. But they found it very difficult. It is one of the most ancient institutions. Emotionally, sentimentally, psychologically, it is very difficult to dissolve it. It was difficult to dissolve private ownership of property and make it public -- Stalin had to kill at least one million Russians just to make a classless society possible. They found it was difficult: "It can be taken care of later on when communism becomes more established; don't take on too many problems." The whole world was against Russia when it went through its revolution. The whole world wanted to destroy communism. If communism succeeded, that would be a danger for other nations; then the poor in other nations would start rising up and asking for the same equality. After five years of failure, they could not dissolve the family. But my understanding is that they could not dissolve the family unit because they themselves have betrayed Karl Marx and Engels. The Soviet Union has become another class society: the bureaucrats have become a class and the non-bureaucrats, the public, are another class. So the bureaucrats, who are the communists, have replaced the capitalists. The Soviet Union is still not classless; it has created a new class friction. Because it is not classless, it could not dissolve the family; otherwise there would be no problem to dissolve marriage and the family. Now the family has become the nucleus of communism, which is a contradiction. I follow my own intelligence, and my conclusions don't have to be in agreement with anybody else's. But anybody who is intelligent enough can see the problem.

Question 4 Their fourth question is: WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WENT TO THE SOVIET UNION?

A revolution! It has been too long since the Soviet Union has seen revolution. Of course, my revolution will be of spirituality. I want the Soviet Union to add something more to its dignity: meditation. Just economic equality is not enough -- a spiritual equality is needed. Just being a body is so poor. I want the Soviet Union to become richer -- not only richer in objects but richer in consciousness, in enlightenment. I want the Soviet Union also to have awakened people like Gautam Buddha, or Lao Tzu, or Chuang Tzu. I would like to introduce Zen to the Soviet Union. That is my revolution.

One of the most famous spiritualists of Europe, Francis Israel Regardie, a famous occult magician who was regarded as a great magus and scholar of the Golden Dawn Society, stated just prior to his death: "If I were to choose in what form I would come back in terms of reincarnation, I would like to continue the great work until I become a Rajneesh." Just today I received his book, and I could not believe what kind of spiritualist this fellow Francis Israel Regardie was. A spiritualist, in the first place, knows he is not going to be born again. If he has not come to that point, he has no right to call himself a spiritualist. A person who has known his spirituality has no need to come back to any body, in any reincarnation. This imprisonment in the body is only up to the point when you become a buddha. When you become a buddha, you have learned everything that life could teach you, and you have not only learned the outside world, you have learned your inner world also. Now there is nothing left. What happens to a Gautam Buddha? He simply dissolves into the universal life, into the eternal life. He does not come back to the earth in a body. This man Francis Israel Regardie knows nothing of spirituality. But in the West it is very easy to befool people, because the West has no understanding of the inner world. So any idiot can manage to deceive them -- occultism, esotericism, spiritualism, just big words without any experience supporting them. Because if this man was really spiritual, he would not... at the point of death he wants a reincarnation! But he has a condition also: "I would like to continue the work until I become a Rajneesh." I was alive, he was alive, he could have come here. Rather than having the courage and guts to come here, he is thinking of becoming a Rajneesh after death -- if there is a reincarnation. That is a big if! He could have come here. Thousands of people come and go every day, and ten thousand people remain around me continuously. And I am not a leader, and I am not a priest, and I am not teaching any philosophy or any doctrine. I am simply helping them to enter inwards -- how to turn your eyes inwards so you can see yourself. Once you have seen it, you are the buddha. Then there is no birth, no death. You have gone beyond the circle of birth and death. This is the only spirituality, the only religiousness that I would like to teach to my Soviet friends. I have already in the Soviet Union at least three hundred sannyasins, underground. Because I was in America, the KGB was thinking that I was an American agent. They were harassing my people in the Soviet Union; they burned my books, they took away all the books, and my people were meeting underground, writing and typing my books by hand. I would like, through my comrades here, to help my people. I am not against communism. I am a far bigger communist than you have ever known, because I am a spiritual communist! Marx and Engels are out-of-date. The Soviet Union needs a new revolution, a spiritual revolution, and I think Gorbachev is making a great mistake in allowing the old priests back in the name of opening the doors of the Soviet Union. Perhaps he does not understand these old priests -- Catholic and Protestant, or old Russian Orthodox. They belonged to a certain society; they belonged to a feudal society. They cannot belong to a communist society. Opening the doors of Russia is beautiful. Open the doors for science, open the doors for art, open the doors for meditation. But that does not mean that you have to open the doors to all kinds of diseases. Christianity is a disease, and if you open the doors for the pope you are going against Karl Marx, you are going against communism. You don't understand the implications: these are the people who are the real agents of capitalism. They are against any revolution. You can see it in India. In India, for five thousand years, as far back as history can approach... India is far more ancient than five thousand years, but for five thousand years we have not known anything like revolution against the social structure. And India is one of the poorest countries, but the poor are given the opium continuously, that "You are poor because of your past evil acts. It has nothing to do with the capitalist people; they have money because they did good deeds in the past." Now do you want shankaracharyas from India to be imported to the Soviet Union? They will teach reincarnation, they will teach that "You are poor because of your past actions, it has nothing to do with the capitalists. And the capitalist is a capitalist because he has done good deeds in the past, it is a reward from God." Please tell Gorbachev from me: allow everything, but don't allow Christianity again! Christianity will bring homosexuality, it will bring sodomy, it will bring bestiality, it will bring AIDS to the Soviet Union. Are you opening the door for all this? Be careful, and very alert. It has taken seventy years to preserve a communist country against the whole world. Don't take any risk. Opening the door is good, but be on guard that the Pope the Polack does not enter Russia, and that Christianity has no revival in Russia. Communism can be at ease with Zen, because Zen has nothing to do with your social structure. Zen has nothing to do with your poverty or with your richness. Zen has nothing to do with the outside world. Zen is a science to explore the inner. Invite Zen masters, Zen mystics; that will be inviting health and wholeness. A man who believes only in the body is half, and a man who believes only in the spirit is also half. I have called Gautam Buddha only half, because he denies the body, he renounces the body. I am not in absolute favor of Gautam Buddha -- only fifty percent. And that is my situation with Karl Marx also: I am in agreement only with fifty percent. His acceptance of the body is good, but his denial of the spirit is wrong. Buddha and Marx have to join hands -- that is my revolution. Bring Buddha and Marx both together, hand in hand, dancing in the Soviet Union! If you cannot find Gautam Buddha and Karl Marx -- because both are dead -- I can bring my ten thousand buddhas you see all around! These people are living a whole life -- of the body and of the soul in absolute synchronicity. I can bring all my ten thousand buddhas to reach to every nook and corner of the Soviet Union. And these are not the only people with me; there are two million people around the earth. If you have a real opening, I can even bring two million people to the Soviet Union, to bring a new revolution, a fresh revolution which will make the Soviet citizen a complete citizen, body and soul together. We have to live outside and we have to live inside, in deep balance, in harmony. This man Regardie must have been a hocus-pocus. At least I hope that he does not become a Rajneesh! He can have reincarnation as whatever he wants. He can become a buffalo, he can become a donkey, there are so many species available -- just please don't think about me! If you had courage, then... at the moment of death you talked about me; in your whole life you never talked about me. Such chickens! Talking about occultism, spiritualism... I have been here, he could have come. I could have turned him into a meditator. And if your meditation starts blossoming you will not have any other birth in the body. You will simply disappear, like incense disappearing into the blue sky, or fragrance of roses disappearing into the blue sky. You will become part of the cosmos. And as far as I am concerned, unless you are a meditator you cannot be truly a communist. Because as far as the body is concerned, no two persons are exactly equal. In their talents, in their intelligence, in their body, physical strength -- no two persons are equal as far as the body is concerned. You can give equal opportunity for growth, but the growth will bring unequal persons. Somebody will become a scientist and somebody will become a shoemaker; somebody will become a great novelist like Tolstoy, or Turgenev, or Chekhov, or Dostoevsky, or Gorky, and somebody may become just a flutist. Everybody needs equal opportunity to grow unequal! But as far as spirituality is concerned, everybody can be equally a buddha. That is true communism -- deeper, higher, more authentic. And if we can create a situation, an education for people to understand their inner being, they will come out of it with great compassion, with love for every being. They will have a tremendous reverence for life. They cannot exploit. In fact, spiritual communism should be first; only then can the economic communism follow it as a shadow. Just tell Comrade Gorbachev: I am ready to come any moment. Just gather courage, because I am not in absolute agreement... Marx is now old-fashioned, and I don't know any communist who ever reads DAS KAPITAL. It gathers dust just like the Holy Bible. I have never come across any communist in India who has read DAS KAPITAL. It is complicated, it is old, it is out-of-date. In its own time it was a great phenomenon, but time goes on changing. Now neither Engels nor Lenin nor Stalin are relevant. They were very relevant in their own time. Now Gorbachev can open the door because for seventy years Lenin kept it closed, Stalin kept it closed, to protect communism. Now communism is strong enough to open the doors. But be careful -- don't open the doors to old diseases. They are just lurking by the side, and very anxious to enter in. Mohammedan priests, because you have so many Mohammedan countries in the Soviet Union, are ready to go in. And that is a third-rate religion. Christians are very anxious, and Christianity is also not worthy to be called a religion. It is just an old cult. I suggest there is only religiousness, which has come as a crossbreed between Buddha and Lao Tzu. And the crossbreed is always better than both the parents. That crossbreed is Zen. Its Sanskrit name is dhyan; its Pali name, which Buddha used, is zhan. When it reached China with Bodhidharma it became ch'an. When it reached Japan with Rinzai it became Zen. Now I am bringing it back to the land of Buddha -- the circle is going to be complete. It went out of India because of the brahmin priests. You will be surprised to know that for two thousand years India has had no Buddhists. At the time of Buddha almost the whole country was impressed by the man. But what happened? The moment Buddha died -- he was against the caste system, he was against the rituals of the brahmins, he was against exploitation by the priesthood -- the moment he died, the whole priesthood started killing Buddhists, burning them alive, destroying their scriptures. Those who could save themselves rushed all over Asia, to Tibet, to Ladakh, to Nepal, to Thailand, to China, to Korea, to Taiwan, to Japan, to Sri Lanka -- the whole of Asia became Buddhist EXCEPT India. This is a strange phenomenon. Buddha was born here; here he used to teach meditation, and this country simply rejected him. Beware! Don't allow any priests of any religion in the Soviet Union if you want to save communism. Otherwise, these priests will prove just like a cancer. They will destroy the whole of communism and they will bring all the old rotten ideologies back into people's minds. Beware of so-called religions. This is my message to the Soviet people. I love them. I would love to bring meditation into their life, because meditation brings grace, peace, silence, blissfulness... a freedom which nobody can take away from you.

"I teach life in its totality. In the past, religions have been life negative. They have denied life, destroyed life; they have been antagonistic to life, their God was against life. To me, life and God are synonymous; there is no other God than life itself I worship life.

And if life is God, then love is His temple. These three l's are the fundamentals of my teaching: Life as God, Love as the temple, Light as the experience. If you have learned these three l's, you have learned all." I have been interested in communism from my very childhood. The Soviet crew has been to my library, and they were amazed to see the communist literature there -- perhaps there is no book that is missing from my library. And they were amazed to see that I have signed and dated each book before 1950. I was absolutely concerned to know about communism, everything. For three years, 1948, 1949, and 1950, I had collected all the literature possible. And I stopped at 1950. I have not read anything after 1950 about communism, for or against. It is very strange... I go on forgetting small things. I cannot count up to five -- after the third finger I start hesitating, whether it is fourth or third. But in these forty years I have not forgotten a single name of the communist revolutionaries. Small details are so vivid before me, because that was my first entry into the intellectual world. It got deeply rooted in me. But I never became a member of a communist party, because I could see something was missing. It is a grand plan for humanity, but something central is missing: it has no soul, it is a corpse. Because nothing new was happening, I stopped reading. And nothing new has happened since then, except Gorbachev. So I am talking about Gorbachev. First I was deeply interested in communism, but finding that it is a corpse I became interested in anarchism -- that was also a Russian phenomenon -- Prince Kropotkin, Bakunin, Leo Tolstoy. All three were anarchists: no state, no government in the world. But I saw the point that they have a beautiful dream but with this criminal humanity, with this stupid mass, if there is no government and no court and no police there will be simply chaos, not anarchism. I have been always very scientific in my approach, either outside or inside. Communism can be the base. Then spiritualism has to be its growth, to provide what is missing. Once a society is given equal opportunity -- to be unequal, to be unique -- and once that society becomes interested in meditation and spiritual growth, then there is a possibility of anarchism. That will be the very final stage, when there is nobody who is interested in committing crime. Only then can the state be removed, not before it. Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Leo Tolstoy are perfectly right, but not relevant now. First communism has to be aided by spirituality. Once spirituality gains ground in your very being, crime becomes impossible. To do anything wrong becomes impossible. Obviously, the state will wither away. When there is nobody committing any crime, how long are you going to keep your courts empty and judges sitting there? Soon you will feel that it is better that these judges go into the fields and work. How long are you going to keep unnecessary policemen standing around? Armies, millions of people unnecessarily being fed, clothed -- and they are getting the best food, the best clothes, and they are not working at all. Every country is filled with millions of people in armies. They should be brought back to the world, to work. But this is possible only if communism steps into spiritualism; then spiritualism can flower into anarchism. These are simple steps. But if communism disappears, then it becomes very difficult to transform the capitalist world towards spirituality. It is a difficult job. And anarchism becomes a very faraway, remote possibility -- may be, may not be. Hence my support for communism: because I would love the world one day to have no nations, no religions, no boundaries, no policemen, no armies, no guns, no murderers. Healthy people, spiritually loving, growing deeper and growing higher simultaneously, getting roots and getting wings together, simultaneously -- these will be the real superhuman beings, the new man I have been working for. I see in the Soviet Union great possibilities, great potentialities. If Gorbachev does not go wrong, those opportunities can be transformed into a reality. ... I know perfectly well that neither capitalists are ready nor communists are ready. But first communists will be ready -- then the capitalists, because the capitalists are full of vested interest. The Soviet Union and the people living there have nothing to lose. They are all equally poor, and seventy years of revolution have created a complete vacuum in their being. That vacuum can be filled only by meditative awareness. As I have told you again and again, nobody can live on negative ideas. The positive idea may be wrong, may be fiction, may be just a hope, a consolation, but still it fills your being. It keeps you unaware of the hollowness. But the negative idea does not fill your inner being. The positive means your fridge may be full of rubbish, junk, but still -- when you open it, it is full. When somebody starts believing in no God, in no heaven, in no hell -- drops all fictions, all the consolations humanity has lived with for thousands of years -- then suddenly he feels a great vacuum, a hollowness, a meaninglessness. Hence, I always give more priority to the atheist than the theist. The atheist is in every way ready, he just has to be hit on the right point. He has no God, he has nothing to cling to. In the communist ideology he is left absolutely alone. That's what is missing in communist ideology: it cannot fill people's hearts, it cannot nourish their beings; hence the communists are going to be first to rise in consciousness. The capitalist has too much vested interest. He has so many troubles and problems, so much money, so many businesses. He has no time even to look inside and see that he is hollow. ... Socialism is a renegade, it is a Judas. It is because of the communist danger to the capitalists that they are proposing a new form, socialism. It sounds good, but the intention is very evil. I am worried about Gorbachev because he is not using the word `communism' anymore. He is using the word `socialism' -- perhaps unconsciously, not being aware that socialism is a conspiracy of the capitalist world to prevent an international revolution that will transform the whole world into a communist world, with equal opportunity for everybody to attain to his potential. And when the world is one, there is no need of any government -- that's why Karl Marx says the state will wither away. But it can wither away only when the whole world is communist. ... That is the only alternative: War or meditation. War or spiritual revolution. And the war has to be understood as the culmination of our whole human history. It is not coming from the sky -- it is coming from our past, accumulating more and more anger, more and more violence, more and more weapons. The first world war was smaller, the second became bigger. The third is going to be total. Because it is a total war, every person has to understand his responsibility. In smaller wars it was nothing to be worried about. If it was going on in Vietnam... who cares about Vietnam? Many people have not even heard the NAME Vietnam. If it is happening in Afghanistan, who cares? -- small pieces of humanity are involved. But this time it is the whole existence of life and all living beings with us: trees, and roses, and lotuses.... And we are coming closer to the point where man can become a superman. Now we cannot afford a war. We cannot afford a global suicide. We have to understand how to transcend the mind that the past has created and programmed for wars and destruction and violence. That's my whole work: to erase the past from your mind and give you a present orientation to look at reality with clean eyes. And your future will be golden if your present is clean. Out of this clean presence will arise a new future, which will not have any continuity with the past; it will be a quantum leap. If communists are turned towards a revolution for consciousness, capitalists will not be far behind -- just as they are not far behind as far as war is concerned, destruction is concerned. It is a competitive world. If communists turn towards consciousness, that will be a great impetus for the capitalists to try to be ahead of them. Nobody wants to be behind! So my whole strategy is, the communists should be turned towards a revolution of consciousness. That will become a Zen Fire and a Zen Wind, going around the earth, and turning everybody towards a new competition that they have never known before: who becomes the buddha first?

YOU HAVE TALKED ABOUT THE GREAT RUSSIAN EXPERIMENT. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE GREAT EXPERIMENT OF YOUR COMMUNE HERE?

My commune here is a far greater experiment than any communism. Communism was only an economic revolution, changing the economic structure of the society. It was very partial; that's why the Russians are feeling a little sad, something is missing. A partial revolution is bound to fail. It is as if only one part of your body is healthy and the rest of the body is sick. What are you going to do with one hand healthy and the whole body sick? Revolution has to be total on every plane -- economic, social, psychological, spiritual. Unless it is a total revolution man is going to feel himself crippled, as if your head goes on becoming bigger and bigger and your body remains the same. Soon you will be in trouble. ... Partial revolution is not revolution. Only the total revolution -- and total revolution has to arise from your very center. That is my work here. I want every individual to clean the past from his mind completely. All his prejudices, all his thoughts -- political, social, religious -- everything has to be dropped. Just a clean slate, and you have arrived to the space of no-mind. No-mind is meditation, and no-mind is the revelation, and no-mind is the greatest rebellion that has ever happened. In the past only very few people... a Gautam Buddha here and there, thousands of years pass and then comes one person who blossoms into a buddha. But now there is no more time. You cannot postpone for tomorrow. Whatever you want to do has to be done now! For the first time the present is becoming more and more important. Each day you are coming closer to choosing the alternative: either move towards becoming a buddha, or move towards becoming a corpse. I don't think anybody wants to die, particularly when all life is at risk. This third world war cannot happen. We are going to prevent it! Our ways are very different... that's why I love your expression for me, a "spiritual terrorist." I don't have any weapons, I don't have any nuclear missiles, but I have something greater and something far more effective. It is not to kill, it is to bring life to those who are living almost as if they are dead. It is bringing awareness to those who are behaving like somnambulists, walking in their sleep, talking in their sleep, not knowing exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it. I want people to be so awake that their whole consciousness goes to the deepest part of their being, and also to the highest peak. A vertical growth -- just like a tree grows. Its roots go down into the earth, and its branches spread towards the stars. Its blossoms flower into the sky, its nourishment comes from the deepest part of the earth. It is always balanced: the higher the tree goes, the deeper the roots. You cannot have a cedar of Lebanon tree, four hundred or five hundred years old, rising so high in the sky, with small roots. It will fall down immediately. Life needs a balance between the depth and the height. I teach you both simultaneously. In your entering to the center in meditation, you are growing your roots deeper into the cosmos. And bringing the buddha out from the hidden center is bringing your fragrance, bringing your grace, bringing your ecstasy higher, where it can blossom into the sky. Your ecstasy is a movement towards the height and your meditation is a movement towards the depth. And once you have both, your life becomes a celebration. That is my work, to transform your life from a sad affair into a celebration. If we can fill the earth with laughter there is not going to be any war. If we can teach the soldiers to tell jokes to the enemy, there is not going to be any war. They will throw their guns and sit down and share jokes! And when somebody is telling a joke, can you kill him? When he is bringing laughter to you, can you destroy him? Every man now is responsible to create a buddhafield around himself, an energy field that goes on becoming bigger and bigger. Create as many vibrations of laughter, joy, celebration, as possible; dance, sing, let the whole of humanity by and by catch the fire of Zen and the wind of Zen. Nobody is really interested to be sad. Nobody is interested to torture himself. It is your religions and your politicians who go on making you sad and miserable, because in your misery is their whole business. If you start laughing, if you start dancing, throwing the gun away; if you take up a guitar.... Jesus says to his disciples, "Carry your cross on your shoulders." I say, don't listen to such nonsense. Carry your guitar on your shoulders, and fresh and fragrant laughter on your lips. Make this whole world a merry-go-round. You don't have that word. You have the word `SORRY-go-round'. I have to create language for you! Just your laughter will be enough to prevent the war. Your celebration, your dance, will be enough to prevent the war. Your ecstasy, your meditation, will create a tremendous force which will be far higher because it is life-affirmative. Your religions are life-negative. Your politicians are life-negative. Your religions prepare you for beyond life, not to live here joyously. And your politicians create weapons to kill you. Politicians kill you and priests console you: "Don't be worried. After your death you will be entering paradise -- beautiful women and rivers of wine." No prohibition, no marriage... have you ever heard that in paradise there are marriages? I am creating a paradise herenow. I don't wait for death -- why should one wait for death? And if there is going to be a paradise after death, please prepare for it! Be ready for it! Enjoy here, so that you can enjoy there. Only those who are capable of enjoying here, and dancing here, and singing here, and loving here, will be able to enjoy paradise...not your saints, only my people! ... I want you to prepare, because paradise is going to be really great! Far out! But you have to be ready. So love, drink, dance -- this is the preparation, the discipline for entering into paradise. I am an utter hedonist, and only a hedonist has the right to enter into paradise. People who are masochists, torturing themselves, need to go to hell because there they will not have to torture themselves, the Devil and his whole army will torture them. That will be their joy. Hell is for saints, heaven is for sinners -- this is absolutely logical. This is my revolution! Once we enter into heaven, we are going to throw all the saints into hell: "You enjoy torture -- get tortured! We enjoy luxury, we enjoy every comfort. Let us possess paradise; you have lived here long enough. Just get out!" I am not going alone, you are all coming with me! Because I am a lazy guy, I will be going still sitting in my chair. If Mohammed can go riding on his horse, what is wrong with it? If Jesus can go directly, alive, and pulls his mother up after him, what is the problem? Perhaps I may reach a little earlier than you, because my podium is a little higher -- but you won't be too late. I will greet you there, "Hi! So you have arrived. Now do the work -- throw all those saints towards hell." They deserve it. They have been disciplining themselves for it. We have been disciplining ourselves for paradise. Our whole expertise, our whole specialization is to possess the kingdom of God. ... When I said that Joseph Stalin killed one million people to save communism, you did not give much thought to it. Who were the one million people? Priests, bishops, cardinals, archbishops -- those were the people, and they were not ready to give away the possessions of the church to the society. These were the people, whether rich or poor it does not matter, who resisted revolution, who wanted their things to be theirs. Those things may not be much -- a house, a little piece of land, maybe a few trees, maybe a few cows or horses. But for centuries man has been programmed to possess, and to go on possessing more and protect and defend whatever he already possesses. So these were the people who were obstacles to revolution. The revolution was for twenty million people in the Soviet Union. And at that time the idea of revolution was not national, it was an idea of international revolution. You will be surprised to know... I was very small when I became acquainted with a man, one of the most intelligent men I have come across, who was with Lenin and Trotsky in the Soviet revolution. His name was Manvendra Nath Roy. He was one of the members of the international commanding body of the communists, the Politburo. He was the only Indian who ever rose to that status, and he fought in the revolution side by side with Lenin. After the revolution he thought, "Now my work is in India. I have to go and create revolution in India." But here he found himself in utter difficulty, because the Hindu mind is more possessive than any other mind. It talks about non-possessiveness, it talks about celibacy, it talks about morality. But always remember, people who talk about these things are the people who are suppressing just the opposite. A person who praises celibacy knows perfectly well that he is not celibate. People who are greedy, their religion will be teaching no greed. Otherwise why should religions teach no greed? For five thousand years, from Manu to Yagnavalkya to Buddha to Mahavira to Mahatma Gandhi -- all the teachers of this country are talking to people about "non-attachment." Why? Certainly people are too much attached; otherwise... their whole history is the teaching of non-attachment! People must be greedy; hence the teaching, "no greed." People must be violent; hence the teaching of non-violence. Always remember this as a fundamental. Look at the teachings of the scriptures and you will know what kind of people they were -- just the opposite, otherwise there is no need. Why does Buddha go on telling people his whole life, forty-two years after his enlightenment, "Don't be attached to things. Be non-possessive." And the same continues.... When M.N. Roy came to India, he found himself in an absolutely different world. He was thinking that because everybody had been teaching non-possessiveness, communism would be the easiest thing in India. This is where logic fails. He had read -- he had lived his whole life in the West -- he had only read about Indian scriptures, that they have been teaching non-possessiveness for centuries and centuries. So he thought people must be ready to give all their possessions to the collective; they will not have much difficulty in dropping their private possessions. But when he came to India he was utterly surprised. Nobody was ready; the very word `communism' was anathema. And because he was a well-educated man, well dressed, used to smoke cigarettes, the Indian mind turned absolutely against him. Mahatma Gandhi crushed that man, who was far more intellectual, far more significant than Mahatma Gandhi himself. But Mahatma Gandhi crushed him because people would rather follow Mahatma Gandhi, half-naked -- it appeals to people. "This is a mahatma. And what kind of mahatma is this who is smoking cigarettes, who is well dressed in a poor country?" Nobody listened to M.N. Roy. Perhaps I was the only person who became very deeply interested in him. It was just by chance that I met him, in a train. I was going for my studies, traveling from my village to the bigger city to join a university. And just on the platform we were both waiting for the train... because in India no train ever arrives on time. Only once has it arrived on time in my experience. For twenty years I was traveling in trains continually -- only one time.... In Allahabad, the train arrived exactly at six o'clock in the morning. It was a miracle! I ran to thank the driver, and I told him, "You have done it! I was waiting for a day when somebody would bring the train at the right time." He looked very ashamed. I said, "Why are you looking ashamed?" He said, "This is yesterday's train." By that time the conductor had come, and the stationmaster had come. I asked the stationmaster, "This seems to be stupid. If every train is going to be late, why publish the timetable?" He said, "The timetable is absolutely needed; otherwise how will we know how much the train is late?" So the timetable is published in India to know how much the train is late. I said, "That seems to be absolutely right."

The train was late and I was sitting on the bench, and M.N. Roy came and sat by my side. I was reading a book by Lenin, his collected works. He was surprised, because I was so young -- may have been seventeen years old. He looked at the big volume, and he asked me, "Where did you get this collected works of Lenin?" I said, "I have the whole library of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, everybody." He said, "You are the first man... I have been here for seven years, continuously trying. Are you a communist?" I said, "Right now I am nobody. But who knows? I may turn out a communist. I am looking in every direction without any prejudice. Whichever dimension fulfills me totally, I will be that. Communism is my study, I am not a communist. I have to study many more things before I can decide. I have to look into anarchism, I have to look into socialism, I have to look into capitalism, I have to look into spiritualism. Before that I cannot say anything. I am just a seeker." We became friends. He talked about his experiences in the Soviet revolution, and he became a constant visitor to my small house. I was living outside the city in a very small house. Nobody else was ready to take that house because it was known as being haunted by ghosts. So when I asked the owner, he said, "Without any rent you can live there. At least somebody living there may create the idea in people that it is not haunted. If a small boy is living there alone..." So he said, "It is good. If you need anything I will support you. I want to sell it, but neither can I sell it nor is anybody ready to rent it. And I myself am afraid! My wife is not willing to move with me, otherwise we could sell this house and move there. That house is in a very beautiful location." It was absolutely alone. For miles there were no other houses, and behind were the beautiful Satpura Mountains. It was so peaceful there. He said, "I purchased it just to live there, but nobody is willing. So you start living there." I started living there, but I continued to create the fear in everybody that it was haunted by ghosts because if somebody purchased it, I would be thrown out. The owner heard that I was continuing to create the rumor. He came to me: "This is strange. I gave it to you free of charge..." I said, "I will keep it free of charge! But remember, it is haunted with ghosts. Don't come here -- whenever you want me, just phone me and I will come -- it is dangerous!" He said, "And it is not dangerous for you?" I said, "I know a few secrets about ghosts. They are afraid of me. Do you know anything?" He said, "No, I don't..." I said, "You simply go back." And I lived in that house for almost ten years without any rent. On the contrary, I would order him, "Send me something" -- and he would bring it -- "otherwise I will leave the house." M.N. Roy used to come, and he loved the place. He used to live in the Himalayas in Nainital, but he said, "Even there it is too crowded, too many people have come. Roads, airport, buses -- it is no more the old Nainital I used to know in my childhood before I left India. But your place..." I said, "This place will remain as it is, as long as I want to live in it. For miles nobody can build a house, because not only this house is haunted, the whole area is haunted!" I went on creating the rumor and making the area bigger. Nobody was ready, even at the cheapest rate, to purchase the land. When I talked with M.N. Roy, he said, "What do you think is the cause of my unsuccessfulness? I was such a successful member of the international high command of the communists. I fought in the revolution, I was a close friend of Lenin and Trotsky, who were the architects of the revolution. And here? I am nobody; nobody is ready to listen." I said, "Here, you will have to change. You will have to be a hypocrite. You will have to smoke in your bathroom, not in public -- in public, speak against smoking. You will have to wrap yourself in a small cloth just covering you down to your knees, just like Mahatma Gandhi -- or even smaller will be better. Shave your head and become a mahatma, and I can manage everything for you. But first become a mahatma. I will call a barber here, and he will make you a mahatma." He said, "My God -- first I have to become a mahatma?" I said, "Without becoming a mahatma, in this country you don't have any appeal. This country is so fucked up that first you have to pretend all kinds of things. You don't drink tea -- if somebody sees you drinking tea, finished! You are not a mahatma. "In the cold, you have to remain half-naked. You will get accustomed, don't be worried. All the animals are accustomed, and you are an intelligent animal so you will get accustomed. It is only a question of two or three years and then heat or cold, all are the same, because your skin becomes thicker and thicker. And your skull also becomes thicker and thicker! You will be a mahatma, and everybody will be listening to you." He said, "I cannot do that." I said, "Then forget all about leadership." And he died an unknown man. If he had lived in the Soviet Union he would have been a cabinet minister. This country is so prejudiced.

Your question comes out of a prejudice. You don't understand the mechanism, the dynamics of life. Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Hirohito of Japan -- all three together killed thirty million people, and for no purpose at all, just a personal egoistic desire to become the whole and sole owner of the earth. Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and Nadirshah -- three generations of one family -- amongst the three they killed one hundred million people for no purpose. And you don't bother about these people. How many people did Napoleon kill? How many people did Alexander kill? And how many people has the Catholic church killed? -- you don't bother about it -- and for no reason! Stalin was not killing for any personal reason, and he was not killing those who were ready to understand the revolution and participate in it. He had to kill to remove all obstacles from within, because he was surrounded on all sides by enemies ready to enter the country and finish it. If he had had to face both the enemies, inside and outside, there would have been no possibility for that experiment ever to succeed. And the people he killed... don't think they were individuals. They were just robots, as the masses are. No individuality, no dignity, no understanding -- just greed and lust and the old mind, that "My things are mine. I will not give them to the collective." And he is miserable because what he has is not enough for his own nourishment or his family, but he is not ready to create a collective land where tractors and other modern mechanisms can be used to sow the seeds. When the land is miles long, airplanes can be used to sow seeds. Tractors can be used to prepare the land. On a small piece of land this is not possible. Whatever communism was saying to them was absolutely correct, but just their prejudices.... And when I said that it does not matter, everybody has to die anyway, I meant it. Unless you are a buddha, it does not matter. Only the death of a buddha matters. What are you going to contribute? What are you going to do tomorrow, except repeat today? You can live for thirty years repeating the same circle, morning to evening, evening to morning, what is the point? Where are you going? Round and round, reaching nowhere. To these people the experiment of communism was not at all important. Their own prejudice was important, that "Our things cannot be taken away by anybody." And those things were their misery! Even a beggar was not ready to give his things, and what did he have? The whole idea was that all the land, the whole property and everything in it, should belong to the collective. Soviet means a commune. The village turns into a soviet, it becomes a commune. Families disappear; only individual members contribute whatsoever they can and the commune will fulfill their needs -- not according to their worth, but according to their need. Somebody may not be such a hard worker and somebody else may be a hard worker, but in a commune it is a bigger family. You have to understand that somebody is weaker, somebody is sick, somebody is old, but their needs have to be fulfilled. Now Gorbachev is saying, "Each according to his work." What about the old people? They will not be able to work the same way as the young people. What about the children? They will not be able to work the same as the young people. What about the women? They cannot be put into any muscular work. The communist idea was far higher and superior: "Each according to his needs." An old man has his own needs. He may not be able to work, but he has worked enough his whole life. A child has not worked yet, but one day he will work. And he has needs right now. Now Gorbachev is saying, "Each according to his work," and that is the motto of capitalism. He is deceiving and betraying the whole communist approach. Just think -- Majid is here -- if revolution comes to Italy, are you going to allow the pope to continue the Vatican? Are you going to allow the Vatican Bank to change black money, heroin money, into white money and earn billions of dollars per year? Are you going to allow all the priests and bishops and archbishops and all the churches to continue as they are? They will all resist, because it is their vested interest. Then what are you going to do? Just sit before the churches and cry like small babies? You will have to finish these people or throw them out in the ocean -- and you have such a beautiful ocean. Revolution does not care for these parasites. It is against these parasites, and these parasites will create every kind of difficulty for you, from inside and from outside. Now the Catholics number six hundred million around the world. If you do anything against the pope he will fight, and the six hundred million Catholics around the world will create great pressure on you from every government: "Don't touch the Vatican; otherwise we will disconnect our relationship with you." That's what had happened in Russia. All other countries dropped their connections with Russia. All the countries called their ambassadors back, there was no communication with Russia -- boycott, absolute boycott. You have only heard one side of the story, which America goes on propagating, that Stalin created an "iron curtain." It was not Stalin who created the iron curtain, it was all the countries who withdrew from the Soviet Union, boycotting it completely. Then it was absolutely necessary that the Soviet Union should create a situation where nobody could enter. All kinds of agents to provoke people... and people were ready to be provoked because they were very sad that their personal things had been taken. People become so attached to their personal things -- small things. They were ready to be provoked, and the whole country was full of spies from every capitalist country trying to provoke people to destroy the collectives, to burn the collectives. All the different Christian sects agreed on the point that communism is against religion -- and all the Mohammedans, all the Buddhists... because the Soviet Union has three religions. One part, Mongolia, is Buddhist; another part near Afghanistan is Mohammedan. The third part is orthodox Christian. Now these three religions were agreed: "Communism is against religion, so we have to give a fight." And all the people had belonged to some religion. Everybody had belonged to some religion -- either to the Buddhists, to the Mohammedans, or to Christianity. How to deal with the situation? I don't see that except Stalin there was anybody else in the Communist Party at that time to deal with the situation. And the poor fellow has been condemned because he saved communism; otherwise these people would have destroyed it. It was a chaos. Once the czar was killed there was no system, there was no order in the country. Trains were running -- nobody knew where they would end up, where they were going, because people had taken out railway lines, had destroyed the bridges. Trains were moving -- burning. These were the people for whom the revolution had been made, who were burning the trains, who were burning the palaces of the governors, who were burning the palaces of the czar. And the Communist Party was trying to tell them, "Now all these belong to you. Don't destroy them! The czar is finished, it is your property." But nobody was listening, and people were carrying things to their homes. I have heard that after the Czar's family was taken out of his palace -- it used to be one of the biggest palaces in the world, the richest; it was one of the oldest royalties -- people were taking everything from the palace to their homes. Even the carpet... it was so huge that nobody could take it alone, so people were cutting the carpet with scissors, just enough for their home -- take-away! Now what can you do with these people? There was no time to convince them. There was no time to make them understand that, "Everything belongs to you and you are destroying it." Except Stalin... neither Lenin was able to do it nor Trotsky was able to do it. This man had certainly a heart of steel: at any cost, revolution had to survive. And as I have told you again and again, the masses are the greatest enemy of themselves; they don't know what they are doing. So the bullet was the only answer, and he killed for an absolutely right end. There are times when you have to use means which are apparently wrong -- violence, murder. But what can you do with this humanity? If you are in power you will suddenly realize that the only way is to put people back to their senses. When one person is killed, a hundred persons absolutely understand that "this is a difficult problem, keep quiet." Those one million people killed made twenty million people silent, settled. But you have your prejudices. You are shocked -- but that is my business. When I was criticizing Christianity you were not shocked, you were happy. Now let the Christians be happy, because everybody has his own time. ... I am against every kind of prejudice. This is just a prejudice. If you understand the practicality of it you will not be against it. Theoretically you can go on and on thinking about it: "One million individuals..." Forget that word -- there is rarely an individual. One million phonies, who were obstructing a revolution which was going to be one of the greatest experiments in human history. It was worth it. And when I said anyway you have to die, I could immediately feel that you became very shocked. But still I repeat: Anyway you have to die. Don't die against revolution. If you have to die, die for revolution. Don't die for the status quo; if you have to die, die for rebellion. Everyone has to die, and as far as I am concerned, whether Stalin kills them or Adolf Hitler or Mussolini or Hirohito, it doesn't matter; he only kills the body. The soul immediately gets into another woman's womb. Nothing is killed, only houses are changed. Do you think those one million people are finished? Many of them may be here! If not now, soon. To me, these people seem to be absolutely absurd, who are against violence and still talk about eternal life. They don't see their contradiction. If life is eternal, then death does not matter: life will continue in new forms somewhere else. If not in the Soviet Union, then in China, and if you are killing China then India is always available. From where do you think all these Indians go on growing? Hitler kills, Stalin kills, Hirohito kills -- whoever kills, India's population goes on growing. India gives ready-made wombs to everybody. People may be dying of starvation but they brag that they have twenty children. So what is great about it? Look at a bull -- a bull has thousands of children, so do you think the bull is greater than you? And poor people are bound to produce more children because they have no other entertainment. ... So everywhere you kill, India is ready to receive! From four hundred million people, just forty years ago, today there are more than nine hundred million people. It seems every year, ten million people are added. By the end of this century the population will have gone beyond one billion people. ... You can create only one child in a year, at the most, with great difficulty. Mohammedans can create four children. That's why in India, just forty years ago, Mohammedans took away Bangladesh and Pakistan, but within forty years again they are so many that the biggest Mohammedan country in the world is India -- not Saudi Arabia, not Pakistan, not Bangladesh or any of the other Middle East countries. The biggest Mohammedan country is India -- second to the Hindus are the Mohammedans, and soon they will be the first because they have four women and you have only one. And it continues in the name of not interfering in anybody's religion -- the government allows Mohammedans to have four wives and Hindus only one. This kind of stupidity can be prevented only if you are really hard. I would like the population explosion in India to be stopped, on a war scale. The whole army should be sent to every village and if people are not ready voluntarily, then compulsorily they have to be sterilized. You will say, "It is not democratic." But is it democratic that five hundred million people will die by the end of this century? Problems are very connected. Whenever you look at a problem, look from all sides and you will be able to understand what I am saying. And drop your preconceived ideology. My effort here is to bring you to a space of no-mind. And from no-mind, function -- then you function directly, looking at the situation. Whatever is right immediately arises in you, and you do it. Neither is it a question of morality nor is it a question of religion; it is a question of immediate response to a situation. And immediate response comes only through meditation. I shock your mind on purpose, and I go on finding ways. I will not leave anyone! People are wondering -- Jews are wondering, "Maybe our turn is coming." Wait, it will come! I am going to speak against all ideologies of the past, all moralities of the past. I am against the whole past of humanity -- in toto -- I don't make any exception. I want a totally new man to arise on the earth -- the superman. BELOVED OASHO, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE ATTITUDE OF THE MESSIAHS, AVATARAS, TIRTHANKARAS, PAIGAMBARAS TOWARDS WOMEN?

Just disgusting. These people, who have been thought to be messengers of God, who have been teaching compassion, love, have never considered at all that a woman is also human. They are born out of a woman. Still, they have all shown nauseating disrespect towards womanhood. The reason is very clear. The reason is: they are afraid of women. And it is a psychological truth that you are afraid and at the same time fascinated. Fear and fascination exist together. In fact, the fear is the byproduct of fascination. They are fascinated, which is natural. There is nothing wrong in it, it is absolutely human. But if they want to be a messiah or a tirthankara or a paigambara or an avatara then they have to fulfill the conditions which the tradition prescribes for them to fulfill. And all the traditions are made up by man. Up to now we have lived in a manmade society in which the woman has not been taken into consideration at all. Confucius -- and the whole of China is influenced by Confucius' thinking -- believes that there is no soul in a woman, she is only body. Killing a woman is not a murder. So for thousands of years in China, if somebody killed his own wife it was not a crime. It was just as if you want to destroy your chair, your furniture, or anything that belongs to you; you possess it, it is yours -- exactly as the woman is yours. You are the possessor; you can kill her. There was no law in China to prevent a husband from killing his wife. And there was no punishment either, because the woman was a thing, not a being. And Confucius is thought to be one of the wisest men in the world. Now, what kind of wisdom is this? He is the founder of Confucianism, but all that Confucius has done is to confuse the human mind and nothing else. Every religion is afraid of women, because every religion is afraid of sex. Every religion is repressive of sex, against sex. Naturally, it is a byproduct that every religion has to be against the woman, the woman has to be condemned. If you condemn sex you are bound to condemn the woman. If you respect the woman -- it is a corollary -- you will respect sex also, as a natural thing. And why were these people against sex? They are different in their attitudes about everything except sex. About sex all religions agree; that seems to be the only agreement amongst religions. So it seems to be tremendously important that we should go deep into the whole phenomenon: why they are afraid of it. They are afraid of sex because it is the greatest energy in man, the most powerful pull of nature and biology. There is no way to destroy it. Either you can condemn and repress it, or you can understand and transform it. But the second is a long and arduous path and needs tremendous intelligence, awareness -- because sex is an unconscious force in you. Each cell in your body is made of it, is vibrant with it. Your conscious mind is nothing compared to your unconscious sexual energy; hence the fear that the unconscious can take possession of you any moment. But to repress seems to be easier. Repression needs no intelligence in the first place; any idiot can do it. In fact, only idiots do it. I have been surprised, seeing hundreds of monks in India belonging to different religions -- they are all repressing their sexuality. My surprise was that the more they repress their sexuality, the more stupid they become, exactly in the same proportion. Repressing nature is such an idiotic effort that it is bound to destroy your intelligence. The Jaina monk is the most repressive of all in the whole world. There are only twenty-two Jaina monks left in India who live like Mahavira: naked, following exactly the ancient path. I have met all the twenty-two, because I was roaming all over India, so it was not difficult to meet these people or anybody I wanted to meet; sooner or later, somewhere or other it was bound to happen. Strange... all twenty-two are in the same way, stupid -- no sign of intelligence. You cannot see a single ray of light in their eyes. They are dull, dead. It has to be so, because they have been repressing life energy, life force. When you repress life energy you will become dull. And the methods you are going to use to repress life energy are bound to make you more and more stupid. For example, they cannot eat even twice a day. They have thousands of rules -- so they can eat only a few things, which cannot provide them with all the vitamins, proteins, which are needed for intelligence to function. They are starving. And intellect is a luxury. When all the needs of your body are fulfilled, only then intellect gets energy, because it is at the highest level of your being. If on the lower levels your energy is starving, then it cannot rise to reach to the higher levels. A Jaina monk's food is absolutely devoid of proteins. He's not a meat eater, and I am not suggesting that he should eat meat. But I have suggested to them, "You can use soya bean, which is as good as meat, or even better." But those fools will not use the soya bean because it is not written in their scriptures -- at that time the soya bean was not discovered. I have argued with them that it is not nonvegetarian, it is vegetarian. They say, "It is vegetarian, but it is not written in the scriptures. And Mahavira, who is omniscient, must have known better than anybody else what has to be eaten." Now Mahavira is not a chemist, is not a physician, is not a physiologist; he knows nothing about the inner working of the body. He knows nothing about vitamins or protein, or anything that is absolutely necessary as a nourishment for intelligence. They cannot take milk because it is animal food. They cannot take anything made of milk -- it is animal food. And their logic is, "You are depriving the animal's kids -- that is violent." Naturally, they become dull, they lose gusto for life. In fact they want to lose it; they are afraid of it. If it is there, then who knows, in some weaker moment it may take possession of you. Hence, the fear of the woman. No Jaina monk is allowed to touch a woman. What to say of touching a woman, the Jaina monk is not allowed to sit in the place where a woman has been sitting before, because she leaves her vibes there! What to say to these fools? Nine months they have been in their mother's womb, continually showering in the woman's vibe. Then for years they have been nurtured and nourished by the mother's milk. Their whole body is made up by the woman. The father is almost an inactive partner in the business; I say almost -- any injection can do his work. He can be easily removed from the whole process of reproduction and he will be removed, sooner or later, because we can find better methods, better seeds. Right now it is all accidental. Now science has come to a certain maturity. About animals we are not so accidental now; their breed has evolved. But about man we are not scientific; the breed is not evolving, because everybody and anybody is allowed to reproduce children. This is not going to be for long. This should not be continued for long. Man's business is finished. He only triggers the process, then the whole burden falls on the woman. These fools are saying that you cannot sit in the same place where a woman has been sitting before. Jaina monks carry their own small rug with them, because who knows, by mistake you may sit in a place where a woman was sitting before. So they carry two things: a small brush with which they clean the place -- as if with a brush you can remove the vibrations -- then they spread their small mattress that they are carrying with them, always carrying -- you cannot touch it, you are not allowed to touch it -- and then they will sit on it. I have asked these monks, "If you are really a little bit alert, then please, I will show you two places. In one place a man has been sitting and in the other place a woman has been sitting. You decide by feeling the vibration which one is the man's and which one is the woman's...?" Even science has not been able to discover any such detector yet. And of course they decline: "We are not going to do any such thing." But I said, "The reality is you cannot do it. You have just learned gibberish. Vibrations -- what do you know about vibrations? And what can those vibrations do to you?" Now, the fear is the fascination. The woman fascinates, it comes into their dreams; they have been able to throw her out from their waking hours, but in their nights.... Mahatma Gandhi was very much impressed by Jaina monks. He was a strange fellow -- born a Hindu, but not much of a Hindu: ninety percent Christian, nine percent Jaina, one percent Hindu. Many times in his life he was on the verge of converting to Christianity; one time he was ready to convert to Jainism. He accepted three persons as his masters: one is a Jaina, Shrimad Rajchandra; the second is Leo Tolstoy, who was a fanatic Christian; and the third is Henry Thoreau, who was also a fanatic Christian. I have been talking to these Jaina monks and telling them the story of Mahatma Gandhi, what happened to him. In his ashram no love affair was allowed; even husbands and wives, if they wanted to become inmates of the ashram, had to take the vow of brahmacharya, celibacy. That was a basic rule. So there were husbands and wives but they were both celibate. It was not being followed; they were caught again and again. And Gandhi was a masochist, just as I have told you that Mahavira had masochism in him -- enjoying torturing oneself. There is a certain mind disease which gives you pleasure out of pain. So what Mahatma Gandhi used to do, whenever a couple was found that had broken celibacy.... And it was such a sensitive affair that there was no need for an actual sex relationship to happen. Just holding hands -- if somebody had seen them, that was enough; or hugging each other -- one's own wife. What Mahatma Gandhi would do is, he would go on a fast, he would torture himself. He would not punish those people, but it was really a greater punishment than any you could have invented because the whole ashram would condemn the couple. The couple would be tortured by their own conscience: "It is because of us he is fasting." They would weep and cry and persuade him, "Forgive us, we will never do it again; but break your fast." He would say, "I am not punishing you; I am punishing myself. This is a symbol to me that I am not pure enough; that's why around me such impure things happen. I am simply purifying myself." Now this too is a very subtle way of the ego: you have done something and I decide to be responsible for it. On the surface it looks, "How saintly!" -- but deep down nothing can be more egoistic. Who am I? How does my purity or impurity come into your life? But he was just thinking in terms of the old scriptures -- that if you are a real saint then around you nothing impure can happen. But what is impure? A man loving a woman -- what is impure in it? His own woman, not against her will -- what is impure in it? And if it is impure, then everybody is born of impurity. Your very birth is in impurity. I have asked these Jaina monks, "What happened to Mahatma Gandhi in the last years of his life?" ... Because his whole life he was repressing, repressing, repressing, and the moment came when it became too much, beyond his capacity to control it anymore. Then people find rationalizations. Then he started to sleep with a naked woman -- but he had a cunning mind, he rationalized it. He said he was just testing whether anywhere in his unconscious the woman still had some attraction. Does he still feel fascinated by a naked young girl? And he was beyond seventy and the girl he was sleeping with was only twenty. This was not told to the public at large, because his disciples were afraid that he would lose his mahatmahood. People will start thinking, "What is this?" It was suppressed, kept from reaching the public; only a few disciples, close disciples who could keep their mouths shut, knew about it. But in the eyes of those close disciples Gandhi had already fallen, he was no more the same mahatma he used to be. I have been telling these Jaina monks, "Try to understand Gandhi, what happened to him. And this will happen to you. But you can remain so starved that there is no energy left in you." That was Mahatma Gandhi's mistake; otherwise this would not have happened. It was because he was eating well, nourishing food, milk, everything that was needed for the body. He was very concerned about the body, very careful about the body. That was the reason that it happened. Energy was there, and he was not a dull man. He was tremendously intelligent. But as the energy rises to intelligence, it also goes deeper, to your very foundation of sexuality. It goes to the roots. If the energy goes to the flowers, it has to go to the roots. There is no other way to reach the flowers; it has to go through the roots. But I have found these people so dull. I would be talking to them and I could see they have not heard anything; their eyes look almost dead, their bodies have shrunken. They look ugly. They have been against sex, that's why they have to be against the woman. Jainas believe that nobody can be liberated from a woman's body. Only man can be liberated, can attain to the ultimate -- their word is MOKSHA... but only from a man's body, not from a woman's body. What is wrong with a woman's body? There is no difference at all. The only difference is physiological, and that too is not much of a difference -- not a difference that can make a difference. Man's sexual organs are hanging out and woman's sexual organs are hanging in, that's the only difference. Just turn your pocket and let it hang out; the pocket becomes male. Put it back to its original position, it becomes female. This you call a difference? The same pocket? It is because there is not much difference that now science has discovered a man can become a woman just by simple plastic surgery; a woman can become a man just by plastic surgery. If there was some fundamental difference then it would not be possible. By plastic surgery you are just turning the pocket out or in, and nothing much is there. Jainas say a woman is condemned by her having a female body. First she has to become a man. So there are Jaina nuns -- they are not striving for liberation, they are striving to be born in the next life as a man, then they will work for liberation. There is one step more for them than for a man. "Ladies first" does not apply. One woman in the history of the Jainas must have been a woman of tremendous courage, intelligence, and a rebel; she rebelled against this idea. Her name was Mallibhai. She simply rebelled against this whole idea; she said, "This is just created by man." And she must have been a charismatic woman, certainly, to become a Jaina monk. She was not going to become a nun, because a nun has the goal to become a monk in the next life. She became a Jaina monk. A Jaina nun is allowed to have clothes, she is not to be in the nude; that stage will come in the next life, if she succeeds. But this woman Mallibhai is a rare rebel. I have looked all around the world -- I don't find another woman of the same rebelliousness. She became a monk. She dropped her clothes and she declared to the Jainas, "I am a monk and I am striving for liberation, and I don't care a bit what your scriptures say." She was certainly charismatic, and she fulfilled all the requirements that are prescribed for a tirthankara, and the Jainas had to accept her as a tirthankara. But they played a trick. When she died they changed her name: Mallibhai -- bhai designates a woman; they made the name Mallinath -- nath designates man. So if you read the history you will not find in twenty-four tirthankaras that there has been a woman, because for her name they don't say Mallibhai, they say Mallinath. And they have deceived the whole world, and they have continued on the old trip. One woman has proved it, and one woman's proof is enough for all women. But the cunning priesthood changed the name when she died. They not only changed her name, they changed the statue. It is a man's statue in the temples; in Jaina temples there are twenty-four tirthankaras' statues -- all men! I used to go to Jaina temples and ask, "Who is Mallibhai?" And the priest would become shaky and he would say, "Er... Mallibhai? Are you a Jaina?" I said, "No, I am not a Jaina. But I am not a male chauvinist. Who is Mallibhai out of these twenty- four?" And he would show me. But I would say, "This is a man's statue. The sexual organs are hanging out and I am absolutely certain there was no plastic surgery at that time." Soon they became aware, so whenever I would go to a Jaina temple they would say, "The temple is closed. You are not allowed in the temple." In Indore, in India, there is one of the most beautiful Jaina temples, perhaps the most beautiful in India. It is made all of glass -- the whole temple. When you enter it you see yourself reflected in a million mirrors around you, because the whole temple is just small pieces of mirror. I love the place for its beautiful land, its quiet -- but they would not allow me to enter. Once I had been in, then the door was closed on me. I approached the man who had made the temple and said, "This is strange. You allow even spectators who are not Jainas, you allow visitors; Christians can come, anybody can come in the visiting hours" -- because the temple was such a unique piece of art, up to twelve in the morning only Jainas could enter it to worship, but after twelve visitors were allowed -- "I am not even allowed in with the visitors. The moment the priest -- and he is always standing at the door -- the moment he sees me, he says, 'You are not allowed.'" I asked the man who had made it... and it was a very precious gift that he had given to the country. He told me, "I know, and I myself wanted to meet you. The priest has informed me." And it happened because for six months I had to stay in Indore, because my father was very sick and he would not let me go. So I had to stay and the hospital was just five minutes walk from the temple, so whenever I had time I would knock on the door and the priest would hit his head with his hand and he would say, "I have told you again and again that for you, this temple is closed forever." The man who had made it said, "I wanted to meet you. I can tell the priest you should be allowed in, but please don't ask questions which we cannot answer. Your question is valid; I know you are right. Actually Mallinath was a woman. But why disturb things? For twenty-five centuries we have maintained that he was a man, and now nobody asks about it. All history books have accepted it. You are a strange fellow. From where have you got this idea? We have made it absolutely clear in all the history books, in every possible way. In every temple the statue is of a man." I said, "Don't be bothered from where I got the idea. The question is.... On the temple door you have written, 'Truth is the highest religion.' Inside, where the shrine is for twenty-four tirthankaras, you have written satyameva jayate: 'Truth is always victorious.' I am not concerned. Who cares? What business is it of mine to be bothered whether this was a man or a woman, whether this person existed or not, even? I am not interested in that. But you should erase these words: satyameva jayate. And just underneath you have the statue of Mallibhai as Mallinath -- and truth is the highest religion! Erase these two sentences, and I will never come to this temple again; if you don't erase them, I am going to continue this every day. You go on refusing, I will go on continuing." And by and by many people became aware, because at odd hours I would go there -- sometimes in the morning when Jainas were worshipping -- and he would be closing the door and saying, "You cannot come in," and sometimes when spectators were going in he would close the door. And for six months I had no other business; my father was sick, and the temple was just five minutes away. I could go two, three times, four times, as many times as I liked. Even in the night sometimes I would knock and the priest would wake up and he would say, "What! Even in the night...?" I said, "Unless you erase those two sentences I am not going to leave." Finally they had to erase those two sentences. I said, "I am finished with your temple. Now you can do whatsoever you want. You have accepted that even in the name of truth there is untruth; even in the temple of truth, you have been lying for twenty-five centuries. One rebellious woman -- and you have destroyed her completely. And you have been repeating the same again, that the woman cannot achieve salvation; and the woman has proved that she has become a tirthankara." Jainas had to accept Mallibhai. She must have been a tremendously strong woman to say that she is going directly to moksha, she is not going to be born in a man's body. ... Because bodies are left behind -- a man's or a woman's, they will be burned on the funeral pyre and the soul is not feminine or masculine. And it is the soul, the innermost consciousness, which is being transformed. "The woman had proved it absolutely and you had accepted her; and still, when she died, you started lying again." It is a male chauvinist world. All Hindu avataras are men; not a single woman is accepted. Not that there have not been women of much more strength, of much more power than these so-called avataras, but they have not been accepted just because they are women, and it is a man's world. A Mohammedan can marry four women, he is allowed to by the Koran. A woman is not allowed to marry four men. Now this is unjust. A woman cannot enter into the Mohammedan mosque, she has to pray from the outside. She is filthy, just because she is a woman; she is not even allowed to pray inside the mosque. In a synagogue there is a separate place for the woman, partitioned; she cannot sit with the man. Mostly at the back she has a place, or on the balcony she has a place. I am reminded of a story -- I don't know whether it is right or wrong. When Golda Meir was prime minister of Israel, Indira Gandhi, who was prime minister of India, went on a visit to Israel. She wanted to see a synagogue and how the Jews worship and what they do. So Golda Meir took Indira Gandhi and they sat on the balcony. Indira Gandhi asked Golda Meir, "Is it a rule of the synagogue that only prime ministers can sit on the balcony?" -- because Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi both were women. Golda Meir did not want to say that in the Jewish tradition the woman is kept separate. But Indira Gandhi thought, "It is because we are both prime ministers, so a special place is being given to us." Yes, it was a special place, but not for prime ministers -- it was for two women. Even though they are prime ministers, it doesn't matter; a woman is a woman. ... In my commune there are more women than men; they work as hard as men, perhaps more lovingly than men. They have the capacity of love, more than man has. They have not destroyed, they have created the commune. ... As far as I'm concerned, I trust everybody, even those who have betrayed me. I still trust them, because my trust is unconditional. It does not depend on you, it depends on me. If you choose to betray, that is your business, but you cannot destroy my trust in you. Do you see the point? Because I trust unconditionally, you cannot destroy it; but if there are conditions, then certainly you can destroy it -- you don't fulfill the conditions and you have destroyed the trust. But trust with conditions is a bargain, it is not trust. Trust can only be unconditional, and its source is within me. It does not depend on you or your behavior or action. Even if you killed me, my trust in you would remain the same. You betrayed, really, yourself; you fell, really, in your own eyes. But for me you remain the same person. Shiva had been my bodyguard for years. Then he dropped sannyas. Then he started speaking -- against me. He wrote articles in German magazines -- STERN and other magazines -- against me. But if he comes back and wants to be my bodyguard he will be again by my side. And I know perfectly well what he has done. That does not matter at all, it is his doing; he should be worried and concerned about it. As far as I am concerned, I have remained exactly the same. He can come again and be my bodyguard. Nobody else will accept him as a bodyguard, because that is the easiest place from which to kill a man. Just now Indira Gandhi has been assassinated by her own bodyguards. Three bodyguards shot her -- eight bullets, creating sixteen wounds, because all the bullets passed through her chest, belly, from the back to the other side. And if the bodyguards want to kill, that is the easiest and the safest place from which to kill a person. But if Shiva comes back and wants to be my bodyguard, I will be immensely happy to have him. It does not matter. He has to take responsibility for whatsoever he is doing, whatsoever he has done; he has to take the whole responsibility for it. But it is none of my business to interfere in his doings. If he feels it right to write against me, perfectly good; if he feels happy to write against me, perfectly good. But for ten years he was sitting by my side. He must have a tremendously idiotic mind -- in ten years he could not see anything wrong. It took ten years for him, and now, after dropping sannyas, he becomes suddenly articulate. So what was he doing for ten years -- sleeping? No, it is not against me that he is writing those articles. It is just to console himself that what he has done by dropping sannyas is right, because the man was wrong. He has to prove it to himself that "the man was wrong, that's why I have dropped sannyas." Otherwise it will continuously be a wound -- that I loved him so much, trusted him so much, so unconditionally, and this is what he has done to me. I can understand his difficult situation. So writing against me, he is simply trying to cover up the wound that he has inflicted upon himself. ... You will be surprised -- there are Catholic monasteries where women have not entered for one thousand years. What to say about a woman, a six-month-old baby girl is not allowed to enter with her father or brother into the monastery. A six-month-old baby! Inside the monastery what do you think -- monks are living or monsters are living, who are afraid of a six-month-old girl? What kind of people are living inside? So sexually perverted.... All sexual perversion has come through your religions. Ninety percent of mental diseases have come through your religions, because of sexual perversion. You ask me what my attitude is about these messiahs, apostles, tirthankaras, avataras, paigambaras. What to say to you? I say: simply disgusting, nauseating. They have done so much harm to humanity that when humanity becomes aware, they are going to destroy all these synagogues and temples and mosques and gurudwaras and churches. These people are your real enemies, but hidden behind a facade, a mask. The Christian trinity could not allow a woman in it. What was so difficult? They could have done, instead of the holy ghost -- what is the need of the holy ghost? I can't think what kind of phenomenon this holy ghost is, and what is his purpose, and what is the need. A woman would have been far better; father, mother, son -- it would have looked more logical. This holy ghost, is he man or woman? But no, even though millions of Christians worship Mary, she is not accepted in the ultimate hierarchy. A woman is, after all, a woman. Jesus had not a single woman among his twelve apostles. And you will be shocked to know that when he was crucified, all those apostles escaped. Only three women did not escape: one was his mother Mary; another was Mary Magdalene, a prostitute, but she had fallen in tremendous love with this man Jesus; and the third was also named Mary, sister of Martha. These three women proved far more courageous, not afraid; thousands of enemies all around, everyone against Jesus; they were shouting, rejoicing in his crucifixion.... All the apostles had escaped, afraid that if they were caught perhaps they would be crucified too. They may have said sometime to the master, "We will live with you and we will die with you." Saying is one thing, doing is totally another. Only these three women were ready to dare, to be crucified -- if that is what is going to happen, then it is okay. It is worth dying with the master rather than to live without him. But this loving heart is very rare to find in a man. When it happens in a man then there is no difference. Still they were not apostles -- they should have been the only apostles. Those cowards who had escaped should have been rejected. But just the other day the lord chancellor in England, who has thrown one bishop out of the church, said, "I would believe more in Matthew, Luke, Mark -- the apostles whose words are in the New Testament -- because they were eyewitnesses." He's absolutely wrong, they were not eyewitnesses; they had escaped. The eyewitnesses were three women, but he does not mention them. Those three men have written the story, but they were not eyewitnesses. Those three women have not written; they must have thought: Who would bother about their writing? Who would listen to them? But the lord chancellor is absolutely wrong in making those three fellows eyewitnesses; they were not. And what they have written is different from each other. If they were eyewitnesses it would have been exactly the same. OSHO, TODAY, I OVERHEARD TWO BIBLE-BASHING A CHRISTIANS IN HEATED DEBATE WITH TWO SANNYASINS. I HEARD AND FELT FROM THE CHRISTIANS ANGER, NARROW- MINDEDNESS, AN ACUTE INABILITY TO LISTEN, AND AN UTTER LACK OF HUMOR. WHAT DID JESUS DO TO DESERVE SUCH FOLLOWERS?

IT is an absolute necessity to be retarded if you want to be a Christian. Any religion, any ideology, that is based only on belief, faith, is bound to cripple your intelligence. A belief system is nothing but poison to your capacity to understand. Good words are used to hide ugly things. These Bible-bashing Christians are not doing anything unexpected. For two thousand years they have been doing the same thing. They are full of anger if you are not ready to follow them; they are full of love if you are ready to follow them. Their love is conditional, and any love that is conditional carries with it hate, anger, cruelty -- everything that is against love. They give you the choice: either you follow them, or you will have to be a victim of their anger, hatred, cruelty. Right now they can only be angry, but in the past they have killed millions of people, burned people alive. This anger is nothing. Now it is difficult for them to show their real face totally, but still something of it comes out even though they try to hide it. You cannot hide a few things; for example, you cannot hide your love. You cannot hide your anger either. Christians are absolutely unable to listen to anything that goes against them. That's why I say retardedness is a categorical necessity. Only the open mind can be ready to listen to something that goes against it. The closed mind can listen only to that which supports it. The closed mind has only one dimension open, that is: everything that supports it is allowed in, welcomed in. All other dimensions are kept closed because there is fear. Things may enter you which may shake up your belief system, disturb your so-called peace of mind; they may sabotage your faith. No person who is a believer can afford to be open. You can be open to all kinds of thoughts, because I am not giving you any belief system. I am simply helping you to open up in all the dimensions, even if you feel that they are going against your ideas that you have held up to now. Even then, in fact more so, you will be available to them because this is a chance, an opportunity, to judge whether whatsoever you have been thinking is right or not. It is a golden moment when you are encountered by something contrary to your ideas, thoughts, which up to now you have been thinking are rational. But if they are really rational then what is the fear? It is fear that keeps these people closed. They can't hear you -- they are afraid to hear. And their anger is really their fear upside down. It is only a person who is full of fear who becomes immediately angry. If he does not become angry then you will be able to see his fear. Anger is a cover-up. By being angry he is trying to make you afraid: before you get any idea of his fear, he is trying to make you afraid. Do you see the simple psychology of it? He does not want you to know that he is afraid. The only way is to make you afraid; then he is completely at ease. You are afraid, he is not afraid -- and there is nothing to be afraid of in a man who is afraid. Their anger is an effort to deceive themselves. It has nothing to do with you. And these people.... You ask me what Jesus has done to deserve these people. You ask me a wrong question. In fact, whatever Jesus has done, he deserves only these people. The problem is not these people. The problem is the people who have some intelligence and still are Christians. That is a miracle: having intelligence and yet being a Christian. Perhaps these intellectuals who are still Christians are schizophrenic: their one part is intelligent and their other part is Christian. And they never meet, there is no communion between these two parts. When these Christians are in their lab as a scientist they function not as a Christian, remember, they function as an intelligent being. But when they are out of the lab and praying in a church, don't think that they are the same people. They are not the scientists, not the discoverers, they are not the intellectuals any more. They are just as retarded as these Bible-bashing Christians -- no difference. Perhaps they are even more closed. They have a Berlin wall within their being, dividing themselves in two. Galileo discovered that the earth moves around the sun. But he was a believing Christian, and when the pope told him that because it went against the HOLY BIBLE he had to change it, Galileo said, "Of course. Whatever you say is my joy to do." And now you can see how a person can be schizophrenic. He touched the feet, kissed the feet of the pope -- Galileo, a man of tremendous intelligence! And this pope was just a third-rate mind who had never done anything intelligent. You would not have even known that he ever existed; it is only because of Galileo that his name is remembered. That's all that he has done to be remembered. But Galileo touching his feet, kissing his feet, asking his forgiveness.... And then he said, "I am going to do it. I will change that statement and I will correct it exactly according to the BIBLE: I will write that the sun goes around the earth. But beloved master, I can change the text, but neither the earth will listen to me, nor will the sun: the earth will still go around the sun." Do you see the schizophrenia? Galileo's one side is kissing the feet of the pope. His other side reminds the pope that he can change his statement -- that is not difficult, it is his book. Whatsoever Galileo wants to write, he can write. But what about the earth? What about all his experiments? What about his discovery which proved that the earth goes around the sun, not vice versa? In that one simple statement, Galileo's split personality is clear. Perhaps the dividing wall was very thin. Perhaps there was a little corner where both sides used to meet, just like neighbors taLking from the windows, the balconies, over the fences. And that's what he did. He changed the statement, put a star on it, and in the footnote with the star he wrote, This is what I believe as a Christian. But as far as reality is concerned, the earth goes around the sun. About that I cannot do anything because I am just an ordinary man. It is not within my powers." That footnote -- from where does it come? And the change of statement -- from where does it come? There are two persons certainly in Galileo, but he is not capable of seeing this split. Every believer is bound to be split. There is no way to avoid it because the moment you believe in something you have decided not to listen to reason any longer. But it is reason which finds facts, realities, indubitable truths. So what are you going to do? Either you destroy your rationality completely -- that's why these people, these Bible-bashing Christians, shout and go on talking; they won't even give you a chance to speak. You may be speaking -- they go on reading from the BIBLE and flipping the pages. They don't care whether you are listening, whether you are questioning something, whether you are asking something, whether you are saying something, no. This whole thing shows their fear that if they really listen to you, they know what they have repressed in themselves: By their belief they have repressed their own reason, and your reason can call up their reason. There is a certain synchronicity.... This law has to be understood, the law of synchronicity. This is the only contribution of Carl Gustav Jung to the modern world. It is something that is not yet scientifically verifiable, but still it can be understood quite reasonably. For example, sometimes seeing a stranger, for no visible reason you suddenly feel a tremendous surge of lovingness, or hatred, or anger, or compassion. It seems to be that something between you and him has transpired without any physical traces being behind it. Perhaps it was just in the vibe. It means that one man's energy is quite capable of arousing a similar type of energy in the other man, so that they both start vibrating in the same climate of feeling. Carl Gustav Jung came upon it very accidentally. He had two old grandfather clocks. They both stood by the same wall and they always kept the same time. They were very old and they were not expected to have such accuracy. Jung changed the time of one clock to be half an hour slow, and the other to be half an hour fast. But within twenty-four hours they had come back to exactly the same time. It was mysterious and puzzling, but he thought that perhaps subtle vibrations from both clocks helped them to come to a synchronicity. That accidental discovery Jung tried on human beings, and it proved really to be a profound revelation. He showed that there is a certain law which is not yet known to science -- perhaps we're not yet capable of finding instruments subtle enough to check it, but it is perfectly reasonable and there are hundreds of facts which will prove it. For example, if you are very loving towards a person, you need not even say to him that "I love you" -- because in fact that is needed only when you do not love. That statement, "I love you," is required by a husband, by a wife, at least three, four times a day -- the more the better. I have told you that a goldsmith used to live in front of my house. He was a little eccentric -- that is far better than being retarded -- and an absolutely harmless person. But he used to get into fights with his wife once in a while. That too is common... nothing abnormal about it. What was abnormal and eccentric was that they would fight right in the shop with the doors open, and a crowd would gather there. And their fighting was not just verbal, it was physical. He would hit the wife and the wife would hit him, because she had learned that there was no other way with this man: unless you hit him hard he was not going to stop. He would catch hold of her hair, and she would catch hold of his hair, and they would be standing there, with a crowd of hundreds of people gathered around. And what I used to do was phone the police, because the police station was not far away. I would simply phone from my house saying, "A great drama is happening here. There are hundreds of people, and if this thing goes any further there may be a murder or something. Come immediately." They were not far away, just one furlong from my house. So the inspector and the police constables would come running. And when they came, they would catch hold of these people holding each other's hair and hitting each other. Immediately the goldsmith would start smiling and say, "There is no problem -- we were just having a conversation." That was the only eccentric point worth listening to again and again: "We were just having a conversation, just a family conversation. There is no problem." He would immediately be angry with the people who were standing outside: "What are you fools doing here? Don't you have wives? Don't you have family conversations? It was simply a dialogue that became a little physical, that's all." And he would tell the inspector, "you need not be worried -- and I know who has phoned you because it happens again and again." The inspector would say, "Who phoned is not important; what is important is that you are making a public spectacle. If it is a family dialogue at least you can close your doors and have the dialogue -- and as physically as you want. It is your wife and you are her husband. She does not seem to be afraid of you at all, she hits you far better than you hit her, so we are not worried about her, that you can do any harm to her. But by collecting a whole crowd it becomes a public affair; then we have to interfere. Next time we find you in this public family conversation, I am going to put both of you behind bars." Once when they had gone and the crowd had left I asked, "goldsmithji, everything was perfectly good, just.... You call it a dialogue? Have you heard the name of Martin Buber?" He said, "no." I said, "You should read Martin Buber -- or it would be better if Martin Buber comes and studies you, because he is continually after dialogues. His whole life's work is to convince people that they should have dialogue. He may not have even thought that the dialogue can be physical. You are very existential. He thought only of verbal dialogue, but you are realistic, pragmatic, practical." The goldsmith said, "i know you support me, and you are the person who phoned, because only you have a phone here in this whole neighborhood. And whenever the police come you are missing; the whole crowd is there but you are not. That is enough proof And after the crowd has gone, you come and support me." I said, I certainly support you because I want people to be more physical, more grounded. This Martin Buber knows nothing about dialogue. He thinks of just talking, yakkety-yakkety-yak-that is not a dialogue. This is real dialogue: you make it from a fiction into a fact." These Christians have been in such a dialogue for two thousand years. They are far more dangerous than this poor goldsmith because no bloodshed ever happened with him; it was just a mock fight. But Christians have killed millions of people, and that was their way of making conversation. They were telling you, "We can prove our belief by killing you." Now, by killing somebody you simply prove that you are a brute, primitive. It does not prove that you are right, that what you are saying is true. It simply proves that whatsoever you are, you are just not yet out of the jungle. You should not even utter the word truth; it is not right from your mouth. And from the Christians, Mohammedans learned the art of conversation, dialogue. I asked Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, when he was prime minister in India, "Can you allow me to have my commune in Kashmir?" -- because Kashmir is the most beautiful place, not only in India but perhaps in the whole world. When Babar, the first invader who remained behind to rule India.... Other invaders came and went away; that had been routine for thousands of years. Invaders would come and loot the country. They would take the beautiful women, they would kill and burn people, and they would go away with all their loot -- the gold, the diamonds, and everything that they could get. Babar was the first man who decided not to leave. He said, "This is foolish, to come once in a while and loot these people and go away. It is better to remain here and rule these people and go on exploiting them. Why, what is the need to go back?" When he entered Kashmir... the first words that he uttered have become very famous. On his horse, looking back from a very high hill top at the beauty of the Kashmir valley, Babar said, "I have never believed in paradise, but if there is any paradise it is here." And certainly Kashmir is paradise. I asked Jawaharlal, "Kashmir has enough land -- it is all mountains -- you can give me a place." He said, "I can give you a place but I am afraid, because ninety percent of people in Kashmir are Mohammedans. You will be killed, you cannot remain alive there. The little bit I know about you is enough to convince me that you will be killed, and I am not letting you settle in Kashmir because I would not like you to be killed. Mohammedans will not be able to stand you even for a single day." From Christians, Mohammedans have learned that it is the sword that decides who is right. Might is right! So if you are powerful, you are right. If you are not powerful, if you don't have a sword or a gun in your hands, then your belief system is wrong. But this was given by Christians to Mohammedans. Mohammedans accept Jesus as one of the great prophets. Their only quarrel with the Christians is on a very small point, which is negligible. But even that negligible point has caused a constant fifteen- century struggle between Mohammedans and Christians. You will be simply surprised -- and then you will not think that I am exaggerating when I say that these people's basic qualification is retardedness. The negligible point is that Mohammedans don't believe that Jesus had a virgin birth -- and perhaps they are right. They say his father was not his father, that much is certain; somebody else fathered him. The Holy Ghost they don't recognize, they believe that this is just garbage. And it looks like garbage. It seems to be a cover-up story. It seems Mary became pregnant by somebody, and then to make it mysterious, the Holy Ghost was introduced. Mohammedans accept Jesus as a great prophet of God, but they name him Jesus ibn Mariam -- Jesus the son of Mary. And that is the problem, these three words: Jesus ibn Mariam -- Jesus, the son of Mariam, because Mohammedans always use the father's name with their name. If he were the son of joseph they would have called him Jesus ibn Joseph; that would have been his full name. But because he is not joseph s son-that much Christians agree-he is the only person in the whole of history of whom the Mohammedans say the mother's name has to be used instead of the father's! We certainly cannot say Jesus ibn Holy Ghost! This is the only difference, otherwise they agree on everything. But this simple, negligible, absurd, irrelevant thing has caused thousands of wars, crusades, jehads -- holy wars -- amongst Mohammedans and Christians. Now, both need to be absolutely retarded. What business is it of Mohammedans to be bothered in the first place, whether Jesus is bin Mariam, or bin Joseph? All three can go to hell! What business is it of Mohammedans? And Christians cannot prove anything about the Holy Ghost without any evidence, any eyewitness who has seen the Holy Ghost coming to Mary. Even Mary was not aware of when she was made pregnant. The Holy Ghost must have used some instruments which mankind has not yet discovered. Perhaps it was an injection, artificial insemination, but even then she would have awakened while being given an injection. Perhaps it was with chloroform.... But then Christians have to provide all these facts: in some way they have to make an arrangement to explain how Jesus got into Mary's womb. You ask me why, what poor Jesus has done to deserve such stupid idiots as his followers. You are asking without understanding Jesus. Jesus, and only Jesus, is responsible for all these idiots -- nobody else. It is not that he has done anything wrong, but his whole life and his approach towards life is appealing only to retarded people. For his whole life Charles Darwin was looking for the missing link. By the missing link, he means that when monkeys became man it could not have been that a monkey jumped and became a man; there must have been a link in between, where he was half monkey and half man. Evolution happens as a process, not as a leap or jump -- that you jump from monkey and become man, no. But what is the missing link? If I had had the opportunity to meet Charles Darwin -- now there seems to be no hope -- he was also a very sincere Christian, and I would have suggested to him that Christians are the missing link. Where are you looking? You can go to any church: if any intelligent man is found there, then he has to be immediately put into a psychiatric ward; the remaining ones are the missing link. Monkeys have not just jumped and become men, first they become Christians; without becoming Christians there is no way. Jesus gives no logic to whatever he is saying. When Buddha says something, he gives logic to it, it is absolutely rational. And he is ready for a dialogue -- not for a physical dialogue, he is ready to argue with you. He welcomes argument, and if you can rationally convince him, he is willing to follow you. That has been the tradition in the East. I am reminded of a beautiful story of Shankara's life. Shankara is one of the most intellectual, rational persons you can find. In the West only Kant can be compared to Shankara, but not totally. He falls a little short because Shankara was one thousand years before Kant, and still his arguments are far more refined than Kant's. Shankara traveled all over India challenging everybody, whoever wanted to argue with him. The only condition was: "If you defeat me, I follow you; if I defeat you, you follow me." It was not like boxing, otherwise Muhammad Ali would have forced Shankara to follow him -- and Muhammad Ali is a religious man. And I am now going to hurt a few people's religious feelings. Muhammad Ali goes once in a while to Mecca, to do hajj. Hajj is the Mohammedan's holy pilgrimage, and Mohammed has said at least once in a life every Mohammedan has to do hajj. If you miss hajj you will not be allowed into paradise. So truth is not important, love is not important, compassion is not important; what is important is a pilgrimage to Mecca. And you can do everything else you want, but you should do hajj. Once a person does hajj he is called hajji. And that is a title that makes his paradise a certainty; all hajjis go to paradise. So even poor Mohammedans.... In my village I have seen such poor Mohammedans collecting money, eating only one time a day so that at least once in their whole life... because it will need their life's savings. And I have seen people selling their houses, their land, borrowing money and remaining always in debt because they could not even pay the interest -- there was no question of paying the original money. And they have taken it at such high interest; nobody is going to give it to them at a low interest because everybody knows the money is never coming back. And there is every possibility that this man may die because hajj, in the old days, was almost a suicidal pilgrimage. Now it is a little better, but not much better. So at such a high interest, perhaps twenty-five percent per month, they have sold themselves for their whole lives, they have become slaves. Their house is gone, their land is gone, and whatsoever they earn they have to give in interest; but people will take this risk because without becoming a hajji there is no hope. Do you think these people have any intelligence? And who is responsible for this? -- nobody but Mohammed, because he made it a rule. Rather than telling his people to be truthful, to be honest, to be sincere, to be open, to be intelligent, he requires them to do a pilgrimage. And there is nothing in Arabia but desert, suffering, heat, sickness, because millions of people every year gather at a certain period -- their holy days, Ramadan -- for one month, and there are no hygienic arrangements, no hospitals. Nobody bothers about what they are eating, what arrangements are made by the government for their toilets, for their bathrooms -- nothing, no question arises. Millions of people are coming from all over the world, and thousands die every year just in the pilgrimage, either going or coming back. But Mohammed made it the one absolute necessity. And what logic does he provide? There is no logic in it, because this place that they worship is far older than Mohammed. It used to be a temple with three hundred and sixty-five beautiful statues. It was one of the most beautiful temples in the world, with these three hundred and sixty-five statues of God -- one statue for every day of the year. So one statue was worshipped on one day, the next day the next statue, around the year. It was a round circle of beautiful statues and in the middle was this stone, a black stone which they call kaaba. Mohammed destroyed all those beautiful statues which were pieces of art perhaps ten thousand years old: a great historical evidence of art, that it was not only Michelangelo.... Ten thousand years before him there were people as skillful as Michelangelo. Mohammed destroyed all those statues because he was against statues. He said, "There cannot be any statue of God. God should not be given a form." But what right have you... if somebody wants to give God a form, and a beautiful form, who are you? What right have you to destroy somebody else's statue? But religious fanaticism.... Mohammed was thinking that he was helping those people, by destroying their statues, to come closer to God. He was removing the statues, the forms, so that they could know the formless God. But he saved the black stone which was in the middle of the temple, and now they are worshipping that stone as God. And Mohammed started the worship! These people cannot even see what they are saying, and what they are doing to others, and what they are doing to their own people. Mohammed taught those people to come to kaaba at least once in a lifetime: unless you do it you are going to fall into eternal hell. And Mohammed told people that you have to convert people at the point of the sword. When so much easier methods are available, why bother about convincing, arguing? When just a sword put on your chest is enough to convert you to the right path, then why bother about arguing? So Mohammedans have been converting people at the point of the sword. But that was not the case in the Eastern religions. These three religions, Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, are sister religions. Moses started the game and he is responsible for all these three kids. Shankara went around the country arguing. He came to a place called Mandala -- I have been to Mandala many times. It is just a two-hour drive from Jabalpur, situated in a very beautiful place. Narmada, one of the holy rivers of the Hindus, falls in one thousand streams. The mountain is such that the river is divided into one thousand, exactly one thousand, streams. It is a beautiful scene. The story is that there was one monster who had one thousand hands. Narmada is the only river in India which is virgin, other rivers are married. This Sahasrabahu -- one thousand arms.... That is the meaning of the name: Sahasra means one thousand, bahu means arms -- sahasrabahu means a one- thousand-armed man. He said, "I am going to marry this girl. She cannot escape me. I have got one thousand hands; where is she going to escape?" So he tried to catch hold of the river with his one thousand hands. But to destroy the virginity of a woman, according to Hindus, is the greatest sin possible. Christians would have rewarded him, given him some place in their trinity: another holy ghost. But Hindus have punished him -- at least in the story it is so; he turned into a stone. And really the whole mountain does look as if the Narmada is falling through one thousand hands. So Mandala has been an ancient place of pilgrimage and has always been a seat of great Hindu scholars. One Hindu scholar had in his youth moved around just like Shankara; Mandan Mishra was his name. Mandala was called after his name, Mandan, because he lived there. He was so famous that the name of the place was changed and called after him. When he was young he had moved all around the country and defeated all the scholars and philosophers. He was old when Shankara was young, just thirty years of age -- he died when Shankara was thirty-three. After defeating everybody Shankara was a little reluctant to go and challenge Mandan Mishra because Mandan was so old. But without defeating Mandan he could not declare that he had conquered the whole country and convinced everybody that what he was saying was true. Reluctantly he went. Outside the town, at the we]l, a few women were drawing water. Shankara asked them, "can you tell me where the house of Mandan Mishra is?" And all those women giggled and laughed, and they said, "You need not ask. You just go into the town and you will find it, because even the parrots in front of his house recite the VEDAS. You need not ask anybody, you just go. The very atmosphere around his house will tell you that you have come close to Mandan Mishra." Shankara was a little afraid -- he had never heard of parrots reciting the whole of the VEDAS. And in the end he went and he saw with his own eyes a row of parrots in the mango trees reciting the VEDAS in perfect Sanskrit. He thought, "this man seems to be difficult. But there is no way to avoid it." He went in, touched the feet of the old man with respect, and challenged him. Mandan said, "I am too old, but if you feel that it is necessary, then I am ready. But I feel a little reluctant myself arguing with a young man. You are too young, and I am too old, too experienced and I have won all over the country. You should think twice. Right now you have not been defeated by anybody, but those are the people I defeated in my youth, myself; so think twice." Shankara said, "I never think twice. I first take the jump and then think. Are you ready or not? If you are not ready then you will have to become my follower.' Mandan said, "There is no problem for me; I enjoy a dialogue, I enjoy discussing -- and with a man like you it is really joyful. Even to be defeated is a great blessing. To have found someone who has more intelligence than you is not a disgrace. But," Mandan said, "one thing has to be decided. You will have to find somebody who can preside; otherwise the decision will be very difficult." Shankara had heard that Mandan's wife was as great an intellectual as Mandan himself In fact, in Mandan's youth they had a six-month-long discussion, and only then was Mandan able to defeat the woman. But the woman had, from the very beginning, put this condition: "If I am defeated then you will have to marry me. If you are defeated then certainly I am going to marry you because...." Mandan saw that he was in a dilemma in every way; he was caught. And he could not refuse a woman, that would be too unmannerly; you cannot refuse a woman. So he fought. And the woman was really a giant; it took six months, and I suspect she got defeated by her own doing. And I have reasons to suspect it, because anyway she was going to marry him. It would look ugly to be victorious and then to marry a man who has been defeated -- that would not be nice -- and to have a defeated husband.... So my feeling has always been that Bharti -- her name was Bharti -- must have arranged it. Six months was enough to prove her mettle. All over the country, for even six days nobody had been able to withstand Mandan. If she could withstand six months, she must have turned the whole of Mandan's blood to perspiration. And she must have got herself defeated. Why I suspect it is because of this second debate between Shankara and Mandan. Shankara said, "I would like your wife to preside." Bharti said, "I have no problem, if you choose me knowing perfectly well that I am the wife of Mandan Mishra." Shankara said, "That I know, but I know also that you are a great intellectual, that you were the only one who almost defeated Mandan. And I cannot conceive of you -- being Mandan's wife, and yourself an independent intellectual in your own right -- as being unfair I accept you. Whatsoever you decide will be, without complaint, accepted." The debate again lasted six months. Finally Mandan was defeated. Shankara asked Bharti's opinion. Bharti said, "Mandan is defeated but you are not victorious yet." This was the climate of intelligence. She said, "Mandan is defeated but you are not victorious yet because 1, being his wife, according to Hindu scriptures am half of his being. So you have only done with one half of Mandan Mishra. The other half is still here. Now you will have to discuss with me." Shankara was tired enough. Six months with Mandan had been such a difficult job that many times he had thought that he was going to lose. And then immediately to begin another debate.... And he knew the woman had kept this Mandan in debate for six months; now what was going to happen? But that woman was really intelligent. She said, "I am not interested in theology -- I am a woman -- so forget all about your BRAHMASUTRAS of Badarayana; SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA, VEDAS; I am not interested in them, my interest is in Vatsyayana's KAMASUTRAS" -- the first book on sexology in the whole world. Now, Shankara was a bachelor, thirty years old. He said, "Vatsyayana? -- but I have not even read him." Bharti said, "You can ask for time to study." But he said, "Just study won't help, because I don't have any practical knowledge." Bharti said, "I can give you as much time as you want. You can get married, you can have practical knowledge. But till you defeat me in sexology, on matters concerning sex and its subtleties, you have no right to declare yourself victorious. Mandan is defeated, Mandan has to be your follower; he can help you. He is old, he is my husband and he knows everything about sex. He can help you now he is your follower. But half of his being still has to be conquered." Now, Shankara's disciples must have invented the rest of the story because it seems contrived. Up to then it was perfectly right, historical. Shankara asked for six months' leave, and in those six months he entered the body of a king who had just died -- because he could not have experience of sex through his own body, he was a celibate monk. And the woman had put him in such a spot -- either he had to accept defeat and become a follower of Bharti.... That would be stupid: Mandan, his follower, and he himself, Bharti's follower. I don't think it is true -- Shankara must have experienced sex through his own body. Now let Hindus and their religious feelings be hurt; what can I do? I cannot believe any nonsense that he entered a just -- dead king and used the king's body and left his own body in a cave -- I have been to the cave also -- with his disciples. They had to protect the body till he returned, so continuously, twenty-four hours a day, they were guarding the body, taking care of the body. And for six months he lived in the king's body having all kinds of sexual experiences with his many queens. And after six months he entered his own body; the king died. Shankara went back to Mandan for the debate -- and Bharti simply laughed. She said, "I was just joking. When my husband is defeated, I am defeated. His life is my life, his death is my death, his pleasure is my pleasure, and his pain is my pain. His defeat is my defeat -- you need not argue." Shankara said, "My God! Then why did you put me to such trouble?" But to me this seems to be just the same kind of story as the virgin Mary or as Buddha being born standing. The mother was standing; Buddha came out of the mother's womb standing, he fell on the earth standing. The first thing he did was, he took seven steps and declared: "I am the greatest enlightened one who has ever come on the earth." Now, all these hocus-pocus stories -- but these are the things which make these religions juicy, so even retarded people can enjoy a little bit. Jesus gives no argument at all. He never confronted any rabbi; that would have been the right course. The question is what Jesus did to deserve such followers. He did everything. He created chaos in the great temple of the Jews by throwing the money-changers out of the temple, upturning their tables. This is not the way of a man who says, "god is love," who says, "love your neighbor as yourself," who says, "love your enemy as yourself" but I don't think he loved his enemies as himself And he was not only throwing out these people, who were there for centuries.... And they were playing an essential part; without them millions of poor Jews would have been in tremendous difficulty. It was a beautiful institution. It was created to help poor Jews: they could take loans from the temple at a very minimal interest so that they were not in the hands of local exploiters who would take the maximum interest out of them. And they would never have been able to pay back the original money because the interest was so much; they would have been slaves for their whole lives without being slaves. And this was a great institution. I don't think it was wrong. It was perfectly right that the temple provided the poor people with money at the minimum rate. And the temple had so much money. It was perfectly right, in every way ethical to help the poor people because the money was also coming from the same people. But the way the Christians present it is wrong, it is not right. The institution was perfectly right, and Jesus was just creating a nuisance there. He should have gone to the high priest, argued about it, told him, "This institution of taking interest from the poor is not right," convinced him, "give it to them without interest." But no, he behaved violently; he was an angry man. And this behavior is not an argument, it is just the dialogue of my goldsmithji. You are not proving that you are right by throwing those moneychangers out of the temple. And you are not destroying the system: they will be back, soon they were back. And soon the whole Jewish system was angry with this man. If they had to crucify him I think perhaps they had no other choice; this man was so arrogant. I have thought about all those people who have been crucified, poisoned, killed -- for example, Socrates. I find him absolutely right, and the people who poisoned him and decided to kill him, absolutely wrong. They were not able to answer any of his arguments. They were not capable, nobody was capable, of as much intelligence as Socrates; those were ordinary pygmies. But it was a "democracy".... Up to now there has never been any democracy. Democracy has yet to come in the world; it has not entered it yet. It has always been a mobocracy ca]led a democracy. In the name of democracy the jurors, who were not even worthy to polish the shoes of Socrates, decided by voting -- and it was not a great margin, just by one vote: fifty-one were in favor of poisoning him, forty-nine were against. They had nothing against him except meaningless words: "He spoils the minds of people." Just the same complaint they have against me, that I spoil people's minds. I simply spoil their retardedness and help their mind to be free from their retardedness -- and that was what Socrates was doing. Socrates had never done anything that you could say was done out of arrogance, or out of anger, or out of jealousy. He was not standing for any public post, he was not interested in any power politics. He was not a man of anger at all. Jesus is arrogant; naturally, he gets arrogant followers. He is the model. His utterances are not those of a humble man. Although he says, "Be humble, be meek," it seems all this teaching is for others -- he is not humble. A humble man will not say, "I am the only begotten son of God." What can be more egoistic? A humble man will not insist that he is the messiah, sent by God, for whom you have been waiting. When nobody is agreeing to it, drop the idea. It is up to them: if they don't want the messiah, if they don't want to receive the message, what can you do? You are just a postman; and if the man says, "I don't want to receive this envelope, you take it back," what can the postman do? But he was a very arrogant postman. He insisted on delivering the message; whether you wanted it or not, whether you accepted him or not, he would deliver it. I have thought many times that perhaps the Jews were forced by Jesus' arrogance and anger, and his continuously harassing them to accept that he was the messiah, to ask for his crucifixion. I don't think that it was just their fault; most of the responsibility falls on Jesus' arrogance. In India we have seen Buddha speaking against the VEDAS, but ready to welcome any argument. Jesus makes only statements, there is no question of argument; he is the messiah and he has brought the message. In the whole of the four gospels there is not a single argument for anything. And I can visualize the contemporary scene there in Jerusalem. He must have looked like a buffoon, moving with that company -- at least I would not have moved around with that company he was with. All those twelve apostles are just Oregonians. I don't see any spark in those twelve people: not a single intelligent man, not a single rabbi, not a single scholar, not a single professor -- nobody who had some sharpness of mind was amongst those people that were following him. So it is not just today -- even when Jesus was here only idiots were around him. Only Judas was a little educated. The others were all uneducated: fishermen, farmers, woodcutters, carpenters -- all were from the very lowest strata of society. And it is not that Jerusalem was lacking, Jerusalem was throbbing with intelligence at that time. It was their peak hour: there were great rabbis and great scholars and great, intelligent people. Jesus should have converted them. Then you would not have found these Bible-thrashing -- or is it bashing? -- bashing.... Thrashing is also good. You would not have these idiots who are angry, cannot understand, are not able even to listen. And Christianity got the major portion of humanity under it for the simple reason that the majority of people are retarded. To be a follower of Bodhidharma you need tremendous qualities; to understand Nagarjuna you will have to rise to your ultimate potential of understanding. But for Jesus nothing is needed. All that he is asking is: "Have belief in me, have faith in me, and that's all you have to do. The remainder is for me to do, and that will be done on the judgment day. I will choose and sort out my sheep and tell my father that these people have to be saved and the remaining ones are to be thrown into hell." Now, do you think any intelligent person is going to follow such ideas, with no logic, no reason? Since that time he has been collecting these people, Jesus freaks, Witnesses of Jehovah. I have met, in India, all these kinds of strange people, but for all of them Jesus is responsible because he behaved wrongly. He did not follow what he was saying. If he had been humble, meek, if he had been available to argument, ready to listen -- but no, he was an absolute fanatic. Whatever he says is truth; no other evidence is needed. He is the son of God, that's enough. The son of God cannot tell lies. He has been sent by God -- but he should have at least taken a certificate from God to show people. On what grounds can a person say that "I am the son of God"? And do you think that any intelligent person is going to believe it? No. Socrates' poisoning I sincerely feel was a crime against evolution. Mansoor's crucifixion I certainly feel was a crime against man's growing potentialities. But with Jesus I don't feel the same, because he was responsible for whatsoever happened to him. And he is responsible for what kind of people have been collecting around him. And these idiots around the world go on purchasing Jesus' ideas like hot cakes -- or would it be more correct to say, like hot dogs? I was thinking of suggesting to my Magdalena people to make something like vegetarian hot watchdogs. They are really going to sell -- vegetarian hot watchdogs, not ordinary dogs. The stupid and the imbecile, the retarded -- they have all become Christians, and we have to help them come out of their prisons. They are imprisoned. And the people who become Christians by their own desire -- it is okay. If they feel they want to be, that's perfectly right, but nobody should be forced by birth to be a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan. Nobody should be forced by birth. For a political election you ask that a person be adult, at least twenty-one years of age -- to decide about politics, which is a third-rate matter. And to decide about religion, which is the ultimate concern of man, you don't give any chance for the person to grow, to learn, to remain open and available to all kinds of winds, and then choose. A religion has to be chosen, it cannot be inherited. Even if it takes your whole life, it is worth it because it is your ultimate concern. So anything that has been given to you by birth is ugly, whether it is Christianity, or Hinduism, or Jainism or Buddhism; anything that is given to you by birth, drop it. Search for yourself Be adult, come of age. Only then, perhaps, will we be able to free people from their imprisonments. And if all the intelligent people are outside the cages, I have every certainty that many retarded people will start having second thoughts. They won't be Bible-bashing or Bible-thrashing Christians. They won't be angry if something against them is proposed. They will not be ready immediately to cut off your head or shoot you, if you are saying something against their ideology. A religious person remains open to the very last moment, to his death; to the very last breath he is open. That is a basic and absolute quality for a religious man: to remain always open -- because who knows, tomorrow a few other facts may encounter you and you will have to change your whole idea of existence, of life. Nobody knows what tomorrow is going to reveal. The revelations are not in the BIBLE or in the KORAN. The revelations are in life. And every moment is a revelation if you are open. But if you are closed then you are dead. The day you become closed, you become dead. There are dead Christians, there are dead Hindus, there are dead Mohammedans; the earth is so full of dead people -- but they are walking, talking, teaching, converting, doing all kinds of things. But as I see it, rarely is there a living being amongst them, very rarely somebody who is still alive. I call that man alive who is always open, who never closes the windows and the doors of his being, because tomorrow is unpredictable. All that we can say is: "Up to now this is my experience; tomorrow will take care of itself"

OSHO, ARE YOU ESPECIALLY AGAINST CHRISTIANITY?

I hate to favor Christianity with any special attention but unfortunately it deserves it. It is the ugliest manifestation of religion on the earth, for many reasons. The first: Christianity is the only well-organized religion. The more a religion is well-organized, the less is the possibility of its being a religion. Truth, by its very nature, cannot be organized. To organize truth, or to kill it, mean the same thing. Truth is alive when organization is only functional, loose. Christianity's organization is very tight, bureaucratic, hierarchical. Because of this kind of organization, it has become more a game of power politics than the flowering of religious qualities. In the past two thousand years Christianity has done more harm to humanity than any other religion. Mohammedanism has tried to compete with it but has not been successful. It came very close but Christianity still remains on the top. It has slaughtered people, burned people alive. In the name of God, truth, religion, it has been killing and slaughtering people -- for their own sake, for their own good. And when the murderer is murdering you for your own good, then he has no feeling of guilt at all. On the contrary, he feels he has done a good job. He has done some service to humanity, to God, to all the great values of love, truth, freedom. He feels excited. He feels that he is now a better human being. When crimes are being used for people to feel better human beings, that is the worst that can happen to anybody. Now he will be doing evil, thinking it is good. He will be destroying good, thinking it is good. This is the worst kind of indoctrination that Christianity has put into people's minds. The idea of the crusade, of a religious war, is a great contribution of Christianity. Mohammedanism learned it from Christianity; they cannot claim to be the originators of the idea. They call it jehad, holy war, but they came five hundred years later than Jesus. Christianity had already created in people's minds the idea that a war too can be religious. Now, war as such is irreligious. There cannot be anything like a crusade, a jehad, a holy war. If you call war holy, then what is left to be called unholy? This is a strategy to destroy people's thinking. The moment they think of crusade, they don't think there is anything wrong: they are fighting for God against the devil. And there is no God and no devil -- you are simply fighting and killing people. And what business is it of yours anyway? If God cannot destroy the devil, do you think you can? If God is impotent and cannot destroy the devil, then can this polack pope do it? Can these Christians do it? Can Jesus do it? And for eternity God has lived with the devil. Even now the forces of evil are far more powerful than the forces of good, for the simple reason that the forces of good are also in the hands of the forces of evil. Calling war religious, holy, is the cause of war -- because the first world war happened in the Christian context, the second world war happened in the Christian context, and the third world war is going to happen in the Christian context. There are other religions also, but why did these two great wars happen in the Christian context? Christianity cannot save itself from taking the responsibility. Once you create the idea that war can be holy then you cannot monopolize the idea. Adolf Hitler was saying to his people, "This war is holy"; it was a crusade. He was simply using Christianity's contribution. He was a Christian, and he believed himself to be the reincarnation of the prophet, Elijah. He thought himself equal to Jesus Christ, perhaps better, because what Jesus could not do, he was trying to do. All that Jesus succeeded in doing was getting crucified. Adolf Hitler was almost successful. If he had succeeded -- which was ninety-nine percent possible, just by one percent he missed -- then the whole world would have been purified of all that is Jewish, of all that is non- Christian. What would have remained? And do you know? -- Adolf Hitler was blessed by the German archbishop, who told him, "You are going to win because Christ is with you and God is with you." And the same fools were blessing Winston Churchill, saying, "God is with you and Christ is with you -- you are sure to win." The same fools, even bigger ones, were in the Vatican, because the Vatican is just part of Rome, and Mussolini was being blessed by the pope -- a representative, an infallible representative, of Jesus Christ. One can think the German archbishop is not infallible, the archbishop of England is not infallible -- we can forgive them, fallible people -- what about the pope, who for centuries has been claimed by the Christians to be infallible? Now, this infallible pope blesses Mussolini for victory because "he is fighting for Jesus Christ and God" -- and Mussolini and Adolf Hitler are one party. Together they are trying to win the whole world. Perhaps the pope was hoping that if Mussolini wins then Christianity will have a chance to become the universal religion. They have been trying for two thousand years to make Christianity the universal religion, to destroy all other religions. It is not only that Christianity has contributed to the idea of war.... In Jainism there is no question of holy war. Every war is unholy. You may be fighting in the name of religion, but fighting itself is irreligious. Buddhism has no idea of any holy war; hence, Jainism and Buddhism have never contributed to any single war -- and their history is very long. Jainism at least for ten thousand years has been in existence and has not had a single war, holy or unholy. Buddhism is also older than Christianity, five hundred years older, and has as big a membership as Christianity -- because except India, the whole of Asia is Buddhist -- but not a single war. There has not been a single instance of any Buddhist priest blessing any kind of war. Wars have been there; politicians have been there in those countries too. They have been fighting -- Japan and China have been fighting and both are Buddhist -- but neither Japanese Buddhist priests nor Chinese Buddhist priests were in any way involved, not even by giving a blessing. These people show a little bit of courage. And the pope seems to be absolutely hocus-pocus. He has no guts. In India, a few years back, China attacked India. For the first time in the whole history of India, a Jaina acharya, head of one of the Jaina sects, blessed the government, the Indian government. His name is Acharya Tulsi. I had to fight against him, criticizing him; I went all over the country telling people, "this man should be defrocked and removed from his headship because he has committed a crime for which, in ten thousand years, no single Jaina priest has ever been blamed. This man is a politician -- this man is not religious." I talked to Acharya Tulsi and I told him, "If you had any sense of dignity you would resign from the headship, because you have acted like a politician. What business was it of yours? Who has asked you to bless India against China? For a religious man, political boundaries should not mean anything. India is yours, China is yours; and if they are fighting, let them fight. You should rather pray that this war stops, that some wisdom comes to these fools -- both parties. That would be religious." And I told him, "You are acting more like a Christian pope than like a Jaina priest." He was angry with me, but he had no substantial argument. I said, "Anger is not an answer to me; it is simply an acceptance of defeat. And why do you go on hanging about in the capital, in New Delhi? Has this whole, vast country no interest for you? You should go out to people, and you are simply remaining in New Delhi." There was only one reason for that: in New Delhi he had rich supporters. Jainas are rich people, and those rich people have power over politicians. Even a man like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi's father, who was a very powerful man -- even he had to come to see Acharya Tulsi, because those Jainas could give donations to his party, in milE lions, and they were pressuring him to come. Of course, the head priest of their religion could not come to the prime minister. So Jawaharlal Nehru had to go to him, just because those people were the people who would be supporting him in the next election; otherwise in the next election they would all turn to the opposite parties. And what did Acharya Tulsi do? He was going to do the same to me but I prevented him. The Jaina acharya, the head, or the Jaina monk, is above humanity, he is a superman, so when you greet him in the t Indian way of saluting, you do namaskar before him with both your hands folded. He will not answer your namaskar in the same way, as is expected from everybody else: he will just bless you with one hand. Now, Jawaharlal had no idea of what Acharya Tulsi was doing continually. He went up to him, and just as simple etiquette he did namaskar. Acharya Tulsi put his hand over Jawaharlal's head, and the photographer who is always there with Acharya Tulsi immediately took a photograph! A calendar was immediately published and all over India was distributed free -- a beautiful colored calendar of Acharya Tulsi blessing Jawaharlal, with Jawaharlal standing with bowed down head and folded hands. I saw that calendar, and I could also see in the calendar the embarrassment on Jawaharlal's face and the joy on Acharya Tulsi's face. But poor Jawaharlal could not do anything -- it all happened so quickly. The photograph had been taken and it would have looked odd to say something. The same people, when I was passing through New Delhi, pestered me, saying, "You have to come to see Acharya Tulsi." I said, "If he wants to see me he should come. Why should I go to him? I have no desire to see him." Then they pestered my host. He was an old man, and he loved me so much that he said to me, "They are really anxious for you to meet him, and what is the harm?" I said, "You don't really know me, and you have never seen me encountering such people. Don't say anything to me later on!" -- because he was also a Jaina. "I am willing to come, but what will transpire there only God knows, and there is no God. In fact, nobody knows." When we say God knows, it means nobody knows... just a nice way of saying nobody knows. He said, "Nothing wrong will happen. Come." I said, "You don't know. I am not saying that something is expected from that person. No, I am saying that anything that happens will come from me." But he could not understand, so we went. All Acharya Tulsi's rich disciples were there, and he was sitting on a high pedestal. But I did not do the namaskar -- I had seen that calendar before -- I just held my hand over his head. Now he was embarrassed; what to do? And I told the photographer, "Go on, you are not to stop. You do your job." I went to the photographer's studio; of course I could not get that negative. He said, "What to do? What you did was really a great thing! I hate this man. But you did the right thing -- nobody has done that yet. And this is his whole strategy. All politicians, presidents, prime ministers, ministers, governors, ambassadors from other countries, are brought to him and told, `his is the way to approach him.' So those poor fellows approach him that way, and then he blesses them with the photographer there." The photographer said, "Someone did the right thing for the first time; and Acharya Tulsi was in such a confusion about what to do." Now, when I was giving him my blessing he could not give me a blessing: he was in shock! And when I told the photographer, he took the photograph. "But," he said, "before I left they took the reel; they forced me to give them the reel. They said,'That photograph is not to go out."' But I told Acharya Tulsi, "what are you doing here in New Delhi? All this show business is political. And blessing India shows simply that you are not a man who joins the universal consciousness, you live within boundaries." But this is the only instance of Jaina involvement in politics, and no Hindu shankaracharya has ever blessed a war. Now, Christianity deserves all the credit for making war, the most ugly thing in human life, holy. And then behind the name of a crusade you can do everything: rape women, burn people alive, kill innocent children, old people -- anything. This is a blanket term, a cover: a holy war, a crusade. But what actually happens behind it? All atomic weapons, nuclear weapons, are produced in the Christian context. It is not that the world lacks intelligence. If China can produce Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Mencius, Lieh Tzu, there is no reason why China cannot produce an Albert Einstein, a Lord Rutherford. There is no reason at all, because Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Lao Tzu, Mencius, Confucius -- any of them is a thousand fold wiser than Jesus or Moses. They are simply pygmies compared to these people. If such geniuses can be created by China, then there is no reason why China cannot create atomic scientists. And do you know, China was the first in creating the printing press? In China the printing press has been in existence for three thousand years. In India, if they can produce a man like Patanjali, who single-handedly has produced the whole system of yoga; if they could produce Gautam the Buddha, Mahavira the Jaina, Shankara, Nagarjuna -- great philosophers; there is no one comparable from the West, not a single person can be held up in comparison to Gautam Buddha. And it is not only philosophers. If you compare Patanjali of five thousand years ago with any physiologist of today, you will find that the physiologist knows nothing compared to Patanjali. Three thousand years ago in India, Sushrut, a great physician and surgeon, existed. In his books he describes the most intricate surgery that is possible only today -- even brain surgery, and with all the instruments. If these people could produce that. what was missing? Why were they not trying to produce atom bombs? India produced mathematics, without which no science is possible. That's why in all the languages you still follow the Indian digital system, because it was produced first in India: the numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. In Sanskrit nine is nava, eight is asth, seven is Sanskrit sapt, six is Sanskrit cha, three is Sanskrit thri, English two is Sanskrit dwa which became twa in Latin, and from twa turned to two. All these numbers in all the languages come from Sanskrit. Seven thousand years ago they created the basis of mathematics, but they never used their mathematical understanding for destructive purposes. They used it for creative purposes because no religion there was giving them the incentive to war. All religions were saying war is ugly -- about that there was no dispute -- and those countries were not going to support any program, any project, any research, which was going to lead them into war. The first astronomical book was written in India four thousand years ago. Those people were far ahead of the West. Four thousand years ago the West did not even have a single name to mention. The greatest names in the West are not more then twenty-five centuries old. Perhaps with Socrates your greatest name happens, but Socrates was three or four thousand years later. What he said had already been said and what he thought he was contributing to thought was not new. Of course, to him it was new because he was unaware that somewhere people had already talked about this and had gone very deep into it. I am saying this to make it clear to you that it is Christianity which is responsible for giving science the incentive to war. If Christianity had created an atmosphere of non-violence, and had not called war holy, then we would have avoided these two world wars; and without those two, certainly the third could not happen. Those two are absolutely necessary steps for the third; they have led you already towards the third. You are geared for it, and there is no possibility to come back, to turn back. Not only has science been corrupted by Christianity, Christianity itself has given birth to strange ideologies, either directly, or as a reaction. In both ways it is responsible. Poverty has existed in the world for thousands of years, but communism is a Christian contribution. And don't be misguided by the fact that Karl Marx was a Jew, because Jesus was also a Jew. If a Jew can create Christianity.... The context of Karl Marx is Christian, it is not Jewish. The idea was given by Jesus Christ. The moment he said, "blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God," he sowed the seed of communism. Nobody has said it so straight, because to say it so straight you need a crazy man like me -- who can call a spade not only a spade but a fucking spade! What is there in just calling a spade a spade? Once Jesus created the idea that "Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God," it was child's play to change it to the more practical and pragmatic communism. What Marx says in essence is, "blessed are the poor for theirs is the earth." He is simply changing some spiritual jargon into practical politics. "Kingdom of God" -- who knows whether it exists or not? But why waste this opportunity when you can have the kingdom of earth? The whole of communism is based on that single statement of Jesus. It is just a little turn, throwing away the esoteric nonsense and bringing practical politics into it. Yes, blessed are the poor because theirs is the whole kingdom of this earth -- that's what Karl Marx is saying. Strange, that nowhere else -- in the context of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism or Confucianism -- does communism appear; it appears only in the context of Christianity. It is not just accidental, because you can see fascism also appears in the context of Christianity. Socialism, Fabian socialism, Nazism -- all are Christian children, kids of Jesus Christ. Either directly influenced by him... because he is the man who says, "in my kingdom of God a camel can pass through the eye of a needle but a rich man cannot enter through the gates." What do you think about this man? Is he not a communist? If he is not a communist then who is? Even Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin or Mao Tse-tung, have not made that strong a statement: A rich man cannot enter into the kingdom of God. And you see the comparison he makes? It is possible for a camel -- this is impossible -- to pass through the eye of a needle. He says even that is possible, but the entrance of a rich man into the kingdom of God is impossible. If it is impossible there, why leave them here? -- make it impossible here too. That's what Marx did. In fact what theoretically Jesus provided, Marx gave a practical turn. But the original theoretician was Jesus. Karl Marx may not have even recognized it, but in no other context is communism possible. In no other context is Adolf Hitler possible. In India if you want to declare yourself a man of God, you cannot be an Adolf Hitler. You cannot even participate in politics, you cannot even be a voter. You cannot destroy millions of Jews, or millions of people belonging to other religions and still claim that you are a reincarnation of an ancient prophet, Elijah. In India there have been thousands of people declaring that they are incarnations, that they are prophets, tirthankaras, but they have to prove it by their lives too. Maybe they are phony, most of them are -- but even then, nobody can be an Adolf Hitler and still say that he is a prophet, that he is a religious man. I received a threatening letter from somewhere in America. I had never thought about it, that there is, in America, a Nazi party. The president of the American Nazi party wrote a letter to me saying, "We have been hearing you speak against Adolf Hitler -- that hurts our religious feeling." I am rarely amazed but I was amazed: their religious feeling! "Because to us Adolf Hitler is the prophet Elijah, and we hope that you will not hurt our religious feeling in future." I told Sheela, "Now I am especially going to hurt them more. I was not aware of that, that religious feelings are hurt by speaking about or criticizing Adolf Hitler." You cannot think of this happening in India or China or Japan -- impossible But in a Christian context it is possible: not only possible, it has already happened. And if Hitler had won the war, all these Americans and all these Russians and all these British people would be worshipping him as God. He would have been proclaimed as having overcome the world and changed the whole of humanity into Christianity. And he would have changed it; he had the power. What power did poor Jesus have? -- he could not save himself But Adolf Hitler winning the war would have certainly changed the whole world into Christianity. But that Christianity would not have been the Christianity of Jesus Christ; it would have been the Christianity of Adolf Hitler. The BIBLE would not have been the holy book any more. Hitler's autobiography, MY STRUGGLE -- what do you call it, Prasad, MEIN KAMPF? Okay -- that would have been the holy book. Christianity has exploited more people than any other religion. ... The second bit of news Sheela brought to me was that in the 1983 fiscal year a Christian organization, I.C.A. -- International Christian Aid -- collected thirty-four million dollars to help Ethiopia. On television and in newspapers they advertised widely all over the world, and thirty-four million dollars they collected. Not a single cent has reached Ethiopia: the whole of the money simply disappeared! The president of I.C.A. was asked, "what happened to the money? Thirty-four million dollars and nothing has reached Ethiopia?" They said, "Our policy is not to give to the government; we send the support from independent agencies, so we have sent the whole money through an independent agency in France, an association of doctors called 'Doctors without Borders.'" When the president of "doctors without Borders" was asked, he said, aWe have received not a single cent, and we don't know who these people are." This is what Christianity has been doing down the ages in the name of the poor, in the name of the orphans, in the name of hungry people. In'84, they collected nearabout fifty-five million dollars again, and nothing is known what happened to those fifty-five million dollars either. And the third piece of news was just hilarious. The Olympics that happened in L.A. just a few months ago was organized by a Christian association, again to help the hungry people of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is great! They should remain always hungry -- they help so many people. They should be kept always hungry. And of course, all the money that was going to be earned by the Olympics was going to Ethiopia. Nobody knows how much money was collected -- it must have been billions of dollars -- but the whole of the money has simply disappeared! And the great idea those people had! They had collected the whole of the money -- all kinds of bills, small, big -- the way you collect wheat or other foodstuffs, in big metal cans, just like we collect our own food here. It was so much money that small safes wouldn't do: it was collected in big, the largest possible, metal containers. And after the Olympics, when the containers were opened, the money was missing. The newspaper cutting Sheela brought had a comment at the end: "Perhaps hungry rats have eaten it. What else?" So it has reached hungry people somehow -- if not in Ethiopia, then hungry rats here. But I don't think rats are interested in eating money; and even if they eat it, they won't eat it so totally that not even a fragment of it is left. The containers were absolutely clean. The hungry rats seem to be very hygienic: they must have eaten the money and then cleaned up. Now, it is thought that perhaps a second Olympics should be arranged because those Ethiopian hungry people are still hungry. These Christian associations and churches are serving people so desperately. They don't ask you whether you want to be served or not, they simply go on serving you. They remind me of the man I have told you about, the opium addict barber in front of my house, Natthu Kaka. In India it is almost a tradition, in barber's shops or hotels or tea shops, to keep all kinds of papers, newspapers, magazines. So people come to look at a magazine and a newspaper, and by the way when they are there they will drink tea, or eat a samosa or something; while they are there reading they will have something. So Natthu Kaka used to have papers, and sometimes people would come. It would always be only the strangers, because nobody who knew him would even come close to him. A stranger, maybe somebody from outside the city, an agent from some company, an insurance company or some pharmaceutical company, would enter his shop -- and he had a beautiful place -- and they would start reading the magazines. Then Natthu Kaka would start shaving them, without even asking them. He always started from the head, and by the time the man was aware, a corner of his head would be clean and he would say, "What are you doing!" Natthu Kaka would say, "Don't be worried. If you don't want to pay, don't pay; at the most, if you don't want to pay, don't pay." But now the man could not go half-shaved -- that would be more ridiculous -- so he would say, "What kind of man are you?" Natthu Kaka would say, "There is no problem. It is just that having nobody else, I go on practicing on anybody. And it is not necessary for you to pay: if you want to pay, you can pay; if you don't want to pay it is okay. Just for my practice...." I had seen it happen so many times that I told Natthu Kaka, "You are almost a Christian." He said, "What do you mean? I am a Hindu." I said, "No, you are not a Hindu, you are a Christian; you don't even ask people whether they want to be shaved or not, you just start shaving." Christians have been trying to save the world -- but who has given you the authority to save anybody? Even if you save without asking for payment, who has given you the authority? No, they have the authority from Jesus, and Jesus had the authority from God himself I have thought many times: if Jesus had entered Natthu Kaka's salon, Natthu Kaka would have shaved him free, and then Jesus would have understood that it is not right to save somebody without asking him. I am not paying special attention to Christianity, but it deserves it. It has done so much harm, so much nuisance. It is impossible to believe that people still go on keeping it alive. The churches should be demolished, the Vatican should be completely removed. There is no need of these people. Whatever they have done they have done wrong. Other religions have also done wrong, but proportionately they are nothing compared to Christianity. It has been exploiting the poverty of people to convert them to Christianity. Yes, Buddhism has converted people, but not because people were hungry and you provided them food, and because you provided them food they started feeling obliged to you. If you provide them clothes, if you provide them other facilities -- education for their children, hospitals for their sick people -- naturally they feel obliged. And then you start asking them, "what has Hinduism done for you? What has Buddhism done for you?" Naturally, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism have never opened a hospital, a school; they have never done any such service. This is the only argument. And those people are so obliged that they feel certainly no other religion has been of any help to them, and they become Christians. This is not an honest way, this is bribing people. This is not conversion, this is buying people because they are poor. You are taking advantage of their poverty. Buddhism has converted millions of people, but that was through Buddhism's intelligence. The conversion happened at the top. You will see that difference. Buddhism converted kings, emperors, masters, great writers, poets and painters; and because the king of the society became Buddhist, seeing that the intelligent people, even the emperor, had become Buddhist, others followed. Buddhists argued in the courts of emperors. If the emperor was a follower of some religion, the Buddhists argued, and they were ready, if they were defeated in argument, to be converted to the religion the emperor followed. But if the Buddhists won, then the emperor and his whole court had to be converted to Buddhism. This is honest, intelligible, rational procedure. Jainas have converted emperors. Their first effort was to change the cream, the highest strata, because that makes it simple: then the people who follow those people naturally understand that if their topmost intelligentsia are becoming Jainas that means their religion is not able to argue for its doctrines, its standpoint. Never before Christianity has this been done -- converting the lowest strata. But you can see the difference. When the highest strata of the society was converted, the whole society followed. When the Chinese emperor, Wu, and his court were converted to Buddhism, just because the court had the topmost intellectuals of the country and they were all defeated one by one -- they could not answer -- the whole of China was converted. They were Confucians, they were Taoists, but they were converted; they could not answer the Buddhist monk. The emperor had simply to surrender -- this seems to be a human, intelligent way -- and then the whole country followed automatically. The emperor goes to the feet of the Buddha, his court goes to the feet of the Buddha; the emperor's son and daughter become monks and nuns of a Buddhist order. The whole country simply understands that what they have been following up to now, these people they were following, have proved wrong. Something better has arrived -- something more sophisticated, something more logical and rational. It changed the whole society. In India or in China, or anywhere, Christians have approached the lowest strata. But that does not change the whole society, remember, because who bothers about those beggars you change? They are not leaders, they are not the intelligentsia of the society; they are not even capable enough to earn food for themselves. They are just retarded. To be poor is not just accidental. You need to have certain qualifications to be poor, just as you need certain qualifications to be rich. Even if you inherit riches and you don't have such qualities, then within two or three generations you will be poor. It is possible that your father had the qualities to create money; he created the money and you simply inherited, and you don't have any qualities to create money. Remember, either you create, or whatsoever you have will be gone soon. You cannot remain static; either you grow upwards or you fall downwards -- you cannot remain in the same position. So you can see: the people who are rich, by the fourth generation may be poor. And it is not necessary that a poor man remains poor. Very poor people have risen to the highest possibilities of richness. You need a certain caliber, a certain quality. To me, just as a painter is born, a poet is born, a sculptor is born, a dancer is born, so a rich man is also born. Whether he is born in a rich house or a poor house does not matter: he will be rich, he will find ways. Even in countries like India where society is so stratified that mobility is almost impossible, there are people who have been able to move. The man who wrote India's constitution after freedom, Doctor Babasaheb Ambedkar, was a sudra, an untouchable. By his sheer effort and stubbornness he fought in every possible way and attained to the best legal qualifications possible in his time. He became one of the best legal experts in the whole world. The Hindu society has followed a constitution written five thousand years ago by a brahmin intellectual, Manu. He was certainly one of the geniuses, so much so that his name, Manu, became almost equivalent to intelligence. Hence in India and in English also, the word man comes from Manu. The Hindi word for man is manushya; that comes from Manu. The word for mind is man; that comes from Manu. He proved to be such a great giant that his name became equivalent to intelligence, to humanity. Now, the English word human, if you derive it from the Latin simply means mud, humus. It is better to derive it from Manu, then it means intelligence; and certainly It does come from Manu. Manu wrote the Hindu code of life, the constitution that has been followed by Hindus for five thousand years without fail, without any change. Manu would have never thought, or dreamed even, that one day the next constitution would be written by an untouchable. Manu does not allow, in his constitution, for an untouchable sudra -- the lowest, the fourth class |Of the society -- he does not allow him even to read. He is prohibited from reading because there is no need for him to read or to write. His work is either to make shoes, or to clean the latrines, clean the roads,,l and things like that. They don't need great intelligence, qualifications, university degrees, and Manu had prohibited them from getting them. And even if they somehow managed to read they were absolutely prohibited from reading religious scriptures. The sentence was nothing less than the death penalty. And many untouchables have been killed because they were tryIng to understand the scriptures. Ambedkar was a sudra, but he tried hard -- he wouldn't listen to anybody. He was ready to do anything, or to die; these were the only alternatives. And he proved himself a great giant: in every class, in every examination, he was always on top. And it was impossible to refuse him entry into a further class; it was impossible to refuse him a scholarship, because others were lagging far behind, there was no way. He got all the scholarships possible. He went to England on a scholarship, and in England he also came top in his examinations. When India became free, they could not find another person who was a better expert as far as law is concerned than Ambedkar. This is really a good slap on Manu's face, that Ambedkar wrote the constitution of India -- a good hit to all the brahmins. He was the chairman of the constituent assembly. Brahmins were only members; he was the chairman, and whatsoever he said became the law because he was a man who could not be refuted on legal grounds. That was impossible. I was saying that even in a society like India where stratification has gone so deep that mobility is not allowed.... It is not like America or Europe where you can move from one profession to another profession without any difficulty. A fisherman can become a cloth merchant, a cloth merchant can become a university professor, a university professor can become a shoemaker, or whatsoever he wants to. There is no problem, it is up to you what you want to do. But in India that is not so. The profession is passed down from generation to generation; you inherit it. Your father was a shoemaker, his father was a shoemaker. From the very beginning... perhaps Adam was a shoemaker. And your children will be shoemakers; there is no question about it. But even in such a society if a man has guts he can rise to any height. Kabir was even worse than a sudra because he was abandoned by his parents, perhaps both the mother and father. He was just an illegitimate child like Jesus. Perhaps illegitimate children have a certain quality of religiousness, because Kabir is in no way inferior to Jesus; perhaps he may prove superior. He was left on the bank of the Ganges by his mother or his father -- nobody knows. Nobody knows to what caste he belonged; nobody knows whether he was Hindu or Mohammedan. But he was a man of immense courage and quality, because being an illegitimate child in India, it is very difficult even to exist. Being an illegitimate child, his caste is not known, his religion was not known. He might have been a Mohammedan, and perhaps he was a Mohammedan, because Kabir is not a Hindu name. He was found by a Hindu monk, Ramananda. Ramananda had just gone to take his morning bath, early, when it was still dark, and he stumbled over a child. He brought the child back with him to his ashram. Many people tried to persuade him that it was not good: "we don't know the child's caste, but you are a brahmin and your disciples are brahmins; it will create unnecessary scandal and trouble for you." He said, "That doesn't matter. This poor child, where can I leave him? If it creates any scandal it is perfectly okay. What does it matter to me? If people don't come to me, so far so good." Ramananda was a courageous man. People stopped coming to him and disciples left him because he was keeping somebody -- nobody knew who he was. All kinds of rumors started going around: "Perhaps he is his own child," or "Why is he so interested that he is ready to destroy his career? He was becoming famous all over the country as one of the greatest masters; now he is spoiling all his career." To non-religious people, religion also appears as a career. Only to a religious person is religion not a career. It is not a profession; it is your way of life, it is your very life, your very being. Careers and professions are very mundane and outside things. Religion is your very heart. Ramananda did not bother about what people were saying; he brought up Kabir. Kabir was not very small when he was found. He could say his name and speak a few words, but he had no knowledge of his father's name or his mother's name. He said if he saw them he would recognize them, but he did not know their name. Perhaps they were from some other place and they had left him in Varanasi hoping that some compassionate person may pick him up. And by chance Kabir found a really compassionate guide. Ramananda, in the last stage of his life, said, " have not lost anything. A]l those disciples and scholars were not worth a single Kabir. I have lost a great following, I became condemned, but it was worth it." Kabir proved to be a real diamond; and still everybody knew he was an illegitimate child. He did not know his father or his mother, he did not know what religion he belonged to -- and he did not care at all. The maulvi is the Mohammedan priest who gives the morning call from the tower near the mosque. Kabir says, "Is your God deaf that you have to go up a tower and from the tower you have to shout?" And that really is the qualification necessary for a maulvi, that he can shout. In those days there were no loud speakers or things like that -- one had to be a loud speaker and shout from the tower. Kabir asks, "Is your God deaf?" He has criticized Hindus, he has criticized Mohammedans, but still Mohammedans followed him, Hindus followed him. Strangely, because he had no religion, all the religions were open to him, anybody could follow him. But that people followed such a man certainly means that he had a great charisma. Kabir lived his whole life in Varanasi. Now, Varanasi, for Hindus is the most sacred place on the whole earth, and it certainly is the oldest city in the world. You cannot find a single Indian scripture, howsoever old it is, where Varanasi is not mentioned. It has always been there it seems. And if you go to Varanasi you can feel its ancientness; it is almost an eternal city. Its roads are so small that cars cannot move, buses are out of the question; not even an auto-rickshaw can be used. They are so small that only a man-pulled rickshaw can pass through those streets. And when two man-pulled rickshaws are passing each other it is almost a miracle to see that they have not got stuck to each other. The roads are so small and the houses so ancient. Their doors are so small because in old times doors were made small and steps were made big so thieves could not escape easily. If somebody is running away, the small door and big steps will stop him. You cannot run; you have to be very careful. The windows are small too -- you cannot get out of them or inside through them. Kabir lived his whole life in Varanasi. Hindus believe that if you die in Varanasi you will be born in heaven -- just a simple panacea. All religions have to find some simple thing, because there are aesthetic practices but they will be followed only by a few idiots; anybody who has a little intelligence is not going to follow them. To those unintelligent people you have to give some recipe, very simple. So if you just die in Varanasi, that's enough, because from Varanasi you cannot go anywhere else: the route directly goes to heaven. So people come to die in Varanasi. In Varanasi you will find old people, old women, widows, almost on the verge of death. You will not find that kind of; crowd anywhere else in the world. They have all come to die: they are certain now that there is not much time left, so they come to die in Varanasi. But when he was sick and old, and was just on the verge of death, Kabir asked his disciples to move! him from Varanasi and take him to Magahar. Magahar is a poor village, a very small village on the other side of Varanasi. I don't know how it came about, but the story is that if you die in Magahar, the road directly goes to hell. Perhaps just parallel to Varanasi you have to manage a road to hell too. And Magahar is just on the other side of Ganges; on this side is Varanasi. Kabir said, "I want to go to Magahar." His disciples said, "Are you mad? You must be!" He said, "I have always been mad; but I cannot die in Varanasi, because if I die in Varanasi and reach heaven then what credit is it to me? The whole credit goes to Varanasi. I am going to die in Magahar and I am going to see how they can take me to hell. I am going to die in Magahar AND I am going to heaven; otherwise I am going to create hell there." And he insisted on moving; he forced his disciples and finally they had to take him in a boat to Magahar on the other side. He died there -- the only man who ever came to die in Magahar in the whole of history. His samadhi is in Magahar, and on it is written: "I am going to heaven directly from Magahar." You will be surprised that after he died in Magahar, the story that people who die in Magahar go directly hell disappeared, because nobody could think, could, conceive, that Kabir could go to hell. This was his last, act of compassion towards the people of Magahar. Those poor people, they would not have been able to change the story; but Kabir, dying in Magahar, stopped the whole trouble about Magahar. Since then nobody says that if you die in Magahar you will go to hell, because what about the samadhi of Kabir? People go to worship there every year. There is a great fair; almost the whole of Varanasi goes to the other side to pay respect to Magahar and to Kabir. Magahar has now become a holy place just because Kabir decided to die there. When he was in Varanasi, Kabir was asked to preside over the great council of Hindus which once in while meets to decide matters about scriptures and commentaries. He was illiterate, he had never read any scripture, but he was asked many times to preside. He said, "I don't know scriptures. I don't have any idea what is right and what is wrong, and how scriptures should be commented or not commented on; and what commentary will be in tune with tradition. "I have no idea." They said, "You need not have. Just your presence makes us feel wise.... Just your presence, just your being there. You need not say a single word, but we know that because you are there we are not going to take any wrong decisions." This is impossible to believe, but in Varanasi it can happen. And the man was such.... So I say it is a quality in you: if you persist in Being poor, you have a certain qualification for it. A story is told in India.... What I am saying, that you born with a qualification to be poor or rich, was the belief of a certain king. His prime minister did not agree. He said, "I don't think that it is something to do with quality. Now, a poor man's son -- what can he do? He has to work from his very childhood, he cannot even play. There is no question of reading or studying; there is no time. By the time he is six years old he is already taking the cows to the jungle or to the river. Whatsoever he can do, he starts working -- carrying wood.... He has no time, no space, no possibility.... No school will admit him, no brahmin will teach him." All the teachers in India used to be brahmins; even today, almost ninety percent of teachers in India are brahmins. Traditionally that is their profession, to teach. And of course they are far more trained than anybody else because from their very childhood the atmosphere has been of teaching. Their father has been teaching, their grandfather has been teaching; it has come to them as inheritance. They are more articulate than anybody else. The prime minister said, "A brahmin's son, without any qualification, becomes a teacher or becomes a priest. Your son will become the king -- he will not have to prove his qualifications. And," the prime minister said, "I will suggest an experiment. A beggar passes along the bridge in front of our palace" -- there was a river, and a beautiful bridge along which a beggar in the early morning would pass. For his whole life he had been begging. And you say he could have become rich. Does he have a certain qualification to be poor and a beggar?" The king said, "I still believe he does. Tomorrow we will see." The next day the king brought out a big jar full of golden coins, at least enough for seven generations of beggars. This beggar was the first man to pass by, so naturally it was put in the middle of the bridge: a golden jar, shining in the sun, open, with gold coins in it. No possibility was left that he would miss it; just in the middle of the bridge he was bound to see it. That was the place where he used to sit sometimes, but he always used to pass by that place; wherever he sat on the bridge, he was bound to pass that place. The king and the prime minister and a few other friends were waiting on the other side to see what would happen. And strange to say, the beggar came onto the bridge, closed his eyes, and, walking past the golden jar without seeing it, reached the other side! Even the king was puzzled. This was not expected. He had thought that his argument was going to be finished, that the prime minister had won. The jar was so visible, so shiny, that even a blind man would be able to find it; at least he would stumble upon it, put 1 in the place it was. But that man simply walked slowly f by with closed eyes. And because his eyes were dosed he had to hold the handrail of the bridge, so he did not even stumble upon the jar. They all caught hold of him; he opened his eyes. They asked him, "what is the matter with your eyes? We have never seen you walking across the bridge with closed eyes." The beggar said, "just as I was coming an idea came to me that if I become blind in my old age -- because my eyes are getting old and I cannot see rightly -- will I be able to pass over this bridge and get t to the other side and sit there, even if I am blind? I thought it is better to try before; otherwise I should change and live on the other side, because if I get blind.... So I closed my eyes, and I am happy that I managed to cross the bridge perfectly safely. So even if I become blind there is no problem." The king said to the prime minister, "So what do you say now?" The prime minister said, "Now there is nothing to say -- you have won the argument. This man has the qualification." The poor have been there always; but to exploit their poverty to increase your population is sheer politics -- ugly, mean. Politics is a game of numbers. How many Christians you have in the world -- that is your power. The more Christians there are, the more power is in the hands of Christian priests, the priesthood. Nobody is interested in saving anybody, but just in increasing the population. What Christianity has been doing is continually issuing orders from the Vatican against birth control, saying it is sin to use birth control methods; it is sin to believe in abortion or to propagate abortion, or to make it legal. ... I am a person who impresses people and creates enemies, not friends -- that is not my policy. I would love the whole world to be my enemy. But all these people are so cowardly that they cannot honestly even accept that they are enemies. Every day dozens of letters are received; they are praying for me, that God should forgive me. These fools! They should pray to me that I should forgive God and them. Why should God forgive me? If there is going to be any trouble I am ready to take it. One thing is certain: whether God forgives me or not, I am not going to forgive Him. So they should pray to me, not to God. They don't understand what they are saying. They go on writing letters, "We pray to God that He should forgive you for what you are saying." There is no God. I am speaking against nobody. That s why I am enjoying it, because if there was a God do you think I would enjoy it? It would be trouble It is sheer enjoyment -- no trouble at all.

OSHO, ARE THE HOLY SCRIPTURES JUST USELESS? AND ARE THEY HOLY OR NOT?

THE holy scriptures are not just useless, they are absolutely harmful. If they were just useless there would be no need to be concerned with them. They are positively harmful. They are preventing people from becoming religious because they make people knowledgeable, and people start thinking that knowledgeability is wisdom, it is enlightenment. Because they know about great words, theological doctrines, dogmas, philosophies, naturally they think, What else is there to know? You have crammed the whole BIBLE or GITA or KORAN; then what else is there? And by cramming the KORAN, the GITA, or the BIBLE, you have not gained anything. So the holy scriptures are not just useless. If they were useless there would be no harm: they could be preserved in libraries where many other useless books are preserved. I have read so many useless books -- but they have to be preserved. They are useless only, they are not harmful. But about holy scriptures I cannot say that they should be preserved. They should be completely destroyed. As far as you are concerned, at least within you, you should make a bonfire of all holy scriptures, because unless you burn all that nonsense you will never be able to know your innocence, you will never be able to know the beauty of your ignorance. And out of that innocent ignorance arises knowing. It is not out of knowledge that knowing comes. Knowledge hinders knowing because it pretends to be knowing. Ignorance is sincere, honest. It has no pretensions about it: it simply is ignorance. And because it is honest, true, sincere, it opens you, makes you available to know; makes you capable of seeing. Your eyes are no more covered with knowledge, thick garbage. No, the holy scriptures are not just useless, they are positively harmful. And you ask me: are they holy? Yes, they are one hundred percent holy: fifty percent holy cow dung fifty percent holy bullshit!

Just the other day one underground sannyasin has been sent by the court in Germany to an insane asylum. And all that she has done was that she was sticking posters around the city saying that Christianity is the greatest crime against humanity. She was caught and brought to the court and the judge said, "It is criminal to hurt people's feelings." The young woman must have been of immense courage. She said, "If truth hurts people's feelings what are you going to choose? People's feelings or the truth? Whatever I have written in the posters, I can prove it. And unless you disprove it you have no right to send me to jail." It is a truth that Christianity has committed immense crimes, and goes on committing them. And Christianity is not alone in it. Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Buddhism -- even these soft religions, Jainism and Buddhism -- go on committing crimes. Instead of sending her to jail the judge ordered that she should be put in a mental asylum. To speak the truth is the greatest crime. In fact the judge should have been put into the mental asylum. He has no grounds to refute her, and he cannot say that truth has to be repressed because it hurts some stupid people who are clinging to lies. But this goes on happening around the world. Not a single protest has been made against the treatment of the young woman; neither has anybody protested against the judge. It has been taken for granted... we have taken for granted so many things which are not so.

Governments are against me because I am against them. Religions are against me because I am against religions. Political leaders are annoyed with me because I say they are mediocre, because I say only psychologically sick people become interested in power politics. People who suffer from an inferiority complex are the people who seek power, prime ministership, presidency.

These people need to be in psychiatric hospitals, and they are running the world.

I am against all religions because I am for religiousness, and religions are barriers to creating a humanity with a quality of religiousness.

A Christian is not needed, nor a Hindu, nor a Mohammedan. These are the barriers to religious progress. What is needed is truthfulness, sincerity, silence, lovingness... a life of joy, playfulness... a life of deep search, inquiry into one's consciousness. And these qualities have nothing to do with Christianity or Judaism or Jainism or Buddhism.

Meditation is needed, but meditation is nobody's monopoly.

Naturally, all religions are against me, annoyed. Because I am the first man in the whole of history who is saying that religions are the barriers preventing humanity from becoming religious. They are not the vehicles of God, they are the enemies of God. Popes and Ayatollah Khomeinis and shankaracharyas -- these are not the representatives of God; they may be representatives of the devil. Because these are the people who have divided humanity, and who for centuries have been continuously creating conflicts, bloodshed, wars, crusades, jihad, holy war, and all kinds of nonsense.

In the name of religion, these people are oppressing humanity.

BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS CIVILIZATION?

Milarepa, civilization has not happened yet. It is a false idea that we are civilized people -- civilized people and continuously preparing for war? Even the animals don't eat, don't kill their own species. It is only man who kills his own species -- no lion will kill another lion, no dog will kill another dog. No lion will eat another lion. Man is the only one who can be a cannibal. There are still small groups around the world in isolated places who are cannibals. They are remnants of the past, but they are still there. In Africa there is a small cannibal colony in the thick forest. There used to be three thousand at the beginning of this century; now they are only three hundred because, when they cannot find anybody else, they have to eat somebody from their own group. They are getting reduced in numbers -- they eat their own children, they eat their own parents. Once in a while they get a Christian missionary, but that is very rare. Once they caught a very fat Christian missionary and they were immensely happy. There was dancing and celebration, a big pot on the fire was boiling and the Christian missionary asked, "What is this celebration for? I have come here to give you a taste of Christianity." They said, "You wait, soon we will have the first taste of Christianity." He said, "How are you going to have the first taste of Christianity if I don't give it to you?" They said, "Don't be worried, you will have to give it." He said, "I don't understand what you are talking about." They said, "Look at that fire and the big pot. We will put you in the pot. When the water is hot enough, we will make a soup of you and that will be our first taste of Christianity!"

Once perhaps the whole of humanity was cannibal. In emergency situations one falls back. For example, when there was a famine in Bengal, people were found eating their own children. You cannot conceive it, but rather than die it seems to be logical and rational to eat your own children. Those who were not able to do such a thing sold their children, knowing perfectly well that the people who were purchasing their children would eat them. And with the money they purchased other people's children. This way they protected their conscience a little bit, but not much, because it was absolutely clear what was going to happen. In emergency situations man shows his real face; otherwise our civilization is only a mask. In a civilized humanity a few things are absolutely necessary. One: there should be no possibility of war because it is life-destructive. And a civilized humanity will have the sensitivity not to destroy life in any form. George Bernard Shaw had around his house a beautiful garden where he had collected exotic roses from different countries, different colors, different fragrances. A friend had come to see him and he saw the roses. He could not believe that there were so many colors and so many different fragrances. When he went inside he asked Bernard Shaw, "You have such beautiful flowers, but you don't put them in a flowerpot inside your sitting room?" Bernard Shaw said, "I am a civilized man. I love children, but that does not mean I should cut off their heads and decorate my sitting room with them. I love roses, but that does not mean that I have to cut the living flower from its life source and put it here in my sitting room. That would be uncivilized behavior." Even to cut a flower is uncivilized behavior, what to say about people like Genghis Khan, who killed forty million people; Tamerlane, who killed thirty million people; Nadir Shah, he again killed forty million people, and statistics are not available about many others. Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible ... no data is available, but they must have killed more people than Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah. Data is available on Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and they were not very far away from our present time, just forty years ago. They killed millions of people for no reason at all. This destructiveness is a death-oriented ideology and it is so deeply rooted in our minds that it keeps us below the animals. Man, Milarepa, is not yet civilized. His civilization will begin by dropping war, by dropping nations. What is the need of nations if you are not going to fight? Nations are needed for wars. Why create these stupid lines on the map of the world? The world is one. There are no natural lines dividing nations. Then why do you go on? There is a deep desire to dominate and there are so many people in the world to dominate: they need many nations. Otherwise just a single government, a functional government for the whole world will be enough. What is the need of so many laws, if man is civilized? What is the need of so many courts, jails, so many legal advisers, if man is civilized? A civilized man will not commit murders, a civilized man will not rape women ... but we keep this whole paraphernalia of courts, laws, constitutions, legal experts; for whom? Man is still a criminal. And these jails, these judges and these laws prevent nothing. Jails go on growing, judges go on increasing -- more and more of them; more courts, more legal experts, thousands of colleges around the world producing legal experts every year. But even they cannot manage, for the criminals increase at a faster rate, and they don't have a college, they are not educated. Something is basically wrong, something is missing. What is missing? I call it meditation. Only meditation can make humanity civilized, because meditation will release your creativity and take away your destructiveness. Meditation will bring your compassion and will take away your cruelty. Meditation will make you responsible to your own being and then you cannot be a criminal. To be a criminal needs great unconsciousness. Meditation destroys your unconsciousness, opens the doors of light and suddenly what you were doing in the darkness starts disappearing. A civilization can be based only on meditation. The only people who have been civilized were people who were in touch with their own being: a Gautam Buddha, a Socrates, a Pythagoras, a Lao Tzu; these people are civilized. Only individuals once in a while have been found civilized, but the collective mass is still far below the standard of civilization. It has to happen! And Milarepa, those who are with me, they have to create the foundation for a civilization, for a civilized humanity, by becoming themselves civilized.

It was the night before the wedding, and young Herschel Goldberg is having a drink with Moishe Finkelstein, his future father-in-law. Soon the conversation turns to Ruthie, the bride-to-be. "Well," says Moishe, a little the worse for drink, "are you going to be a man and do it tonight, or are you going to be a mouse and wait until tomorrow night?" Before he can stop himself, Herschel blurts out, "I guess I am a rat, sir -- I did it last week."

These are your civilized people.

On honeymoon, the young French bride is becoming exhausted by her ardent eighty-year-old husband. During a short lull, while he is shaving, she sneaks out and staggers into the hotel coffee- shop downstairs. "I don't get it," says her friend, the waitress. "Here you are, a teenage bride with an ancient husband, and you look a wreck. What happened?" "The old goat double-crossed me," sobs the bride. "He told me he had been saving up for sixty years, and I thought he was talking about money!"

Just look around, look at people's behavior and you will be surprised. This idea that we have become civilized is very dangerous. It is preventing us from being civilized, because once you accept that you are civilized there is no need to work for civilization. Once you accept you are healthy, there is no need to remove any sickness that you may be suffering from. The first thing to be recognized is that you are sick! Then only can something be done for your health. But if you deny sickness, which has been done for centuries by your so-called politicians ... They deny that we are uncivilized people, they say we are civilized people. And this camouflage prevents us from being civilized. We have completely accepted the idea and forgotten that we have to see whether it is true or not. It is certainly not true. Unless each man comes to the consciousness of a Gautam Buddha, there is no question of civilization. After I left America, the U.S. attorney for Oregon gave a press conference in which he was asked, "Why have you let Osho go -- and not jailed him?" And the U.S. attorney said, "There are three reasons: one, our priority was to destroy his commune and we could not destroy it if we had not deported him." But why should they be interested in destroying the commune? The commune was not hurting anybody. It was the most civilized group of people in the whole world. Five thousand people living for five years together in a desert, with no rape, no madness, no stealing, no murder, no suicide. And people were so happy and so joyous. Why was the U.S. attorney interested in destroying the commune? In fact the commune became a pain in their neck. They could see what is possible. No court, no laws, no army, no police and yet five thousand people are living peacefully, lovingly, understandingly. This was hurting the politicians of America, because soon people would start comparing: "Why is it not happening all over America?" That was their number one priority -- to destroy the commune. "Second," he said, "we did not want Osho to become a martyr." It implies that they had the intention to murder me, but they were afraid that murdering me would mean creating a new Christianity. If the Jews had not crucified Jesus there would not have been any Christianity at all. That's why I never like to call it Christianity. I call it Crossianity. It has nothing to do with Jesus, it has everything to do with the cross. And you can see that cross hanging around the necks of all the missionaries and the bishops and the cardinals and the priests and the pope. The cross is the center. Anyway Christ was a Jew! And he always remained a Jew. He had never even heard the word `Christian'. He died a Jew. But the cross created a great sympathy towards him. That was the fear, that if they assassinate me, the danger is that sannyas will become a far more solid movement around the world. But there was every desire, otherwise he would not have mentioned it. Whatever you say shows not what you are saying but what is hidden behind it. Mentioning that, "We did not want Osho to become a martyr," shows the desire that if it had been possible without making me a martyr they would have certainly preferred to assassinate me. But he said, "We will do everything to silence him." And they did everything to silence me. Twenty-four countries they influenced not to allow me in their territories. The Indian government is under their pressure, making every effort ... They cannot do anything to me, but they can do one thing: they can ensure that no news media reaches me, that no seekers from outside India reach me. They are making all kinds of efforts to prevent people coming to me. Naturally I will be silenced. It will be equivalent to killing me without a cross. And the third thing is the most interesting that he said. He said, "Moreover Osho has not committed any crime; we don't have any proof, we don't have any evidence." This recognition by the U.S. attorney for Oregon ... and still I was fined four hundred thousand dollars! They don't have any proof and they don't have any evidence, they don't think I have committed any crime. For what have I been fined? And they know perfectly well, I don't have a single dollar. I have not touched money for almost thirty-five years! Perhaps they were hoping that because I don't have any possessions ... how was I going to pay? Almost half a million dollars! So naturally, if I could not pay them they would have an excuse to put me in jail for at least twenty years, thirty years. And you call this world a civilized world? And for what did they deport me? They did not allow me even to stay a single night! I was ordered from the court directly to the airport; my jet was ready, its engine was kept running. "You move out of America immediately." What was the problem? Why could I not stay at least for the night? The reason was they were afraid I might appeal to the higher court, I might go up to the Supreme Court. It was better to throw me out of America, so I could not do that. And this is a civilized world! And America is very proud of its civilization. Absolutely innocent people are being tortured. Thirty million people in America are beggars. They are just on the street, with no food, no shelter, no clothes; they don't know from where they are going to get their food tomorrow. And exactly the same number -- a strange coincidence -- thirty million Americans are suffering from too much weight. They are looked after in the hospitals, because they cannot be left alone in their houses. Devageet was right that in the middle of the night they empty the fridge. Thirty million people are dying of overfeeding and thirty million people are dying without food. Is this civilization? Can't a simple understanding be there: "Don't eat too much and what remains can save thirty million people?" Not eating too much is going to save the other thirty million who are dying of starvation. As they go on eating, sixty million people are unnecessarily dying. You call this an intelligent world, a civilized world, a cultured world? No, I refuse! A hundred times NO! This world is not yet civilized. It needs civilization, certainly. But up to now no effort has been made to civilize it. And strange things go on happening. I have been continuously receiving letters from sannyasins from all over the world that they want to come, but the moment they mention `meditation', that they are going to India for meditation, the Indian embassies refuse them. They say, "India is not for meditation." And for almost ten thousand years India has been the center of meditation, and pilgrims from all over the world have always moved towards India in search of meditation. Now who are these idiots who are preventing people from coming to India because they want to learn meditation? They are allowing people who want to see the ruins of old forts, castles, caves. That's perfectly okay, you are a tourist. But if you are going to learn meditation, you are not to be allowed. The fear is that if you are going to learn meditation you will end up in Poona. And this is the only effort which is being made on a large scale around the world to make people civilized. But no politician wants people to be civilized. No country wants people to be civilized. They want a pretense, a hypocrisy, but not a deeper transformation. We have to create that revolt around the world. It is not against anybody, it is against your own false ideas, your false personality, your masks. You have to discover your original face, you have to discover your authenticity and you will be creating a small energy field. Whoever comes close to you will feel the flavor of civilization, of culture, of humanness, and if you go really deep into your being you can radiate something which is the only argument and the only proof that the world is not dead, that it is alive, it is intelligent, it is divine. All religions should disappear from the world. Only religiousness is enough. And religiousness need not be organized: it is each individual's communion with the universe. There is no need of Christians or Hindus or Mohammedans. There is only need of religious people, seekers, lovers of meditation, dropping all their masks, courageous enough to expose their original face to the world. When the world has its original face, it will be a civilized world, Milarepa, not before that.

Toț i părin ț ii î ș i fac speranț e ș i prin aceste speranț e î ș i distrug copiii. Trebuie să te eliberezi de părinț i. Aș a cum într-o zi ieș i din pântecul mamei... După 9 luni, copilul îș i părăseș te mama. Oricât de golită s-ar simț i, copilul trebuie să părăsească trupul ei. Vine ș i o altă zi în via ț ă, când copilul va părăsi aș teptările părin ț ilor. De-abia atunci, pentru prima oară, va deveni o fiin ț ă cu propriile drepturi, pe propriile picioare. Atunci va deveni cu adevărat liber. Dacă părinț ii sunt aten ț i ș i înț elegători, î ș i vor ajuta copilul să devină liber cât mai repede. Nu-l vor condi ț iona pentru a-l folosi, ci îl vor ajuta să trăiască în iubire. Aș a se va na ș te o lume nouă, în care oamenii vor munci din iubire. Tâmplarul va munci pentru că iubeș te lemnul. Profesorul va preda pentru că iube ș te învă ț ătura. Cizmarul va face pantofi pentru că-i place meseria. Dar acum se întâmplă ceva foarte neclar. Cizmarul a devenit chirurg, iar chirurgul a devenit cizmar. Amândoi sunt furioș i. Tâmplarul este politician, politicianul este tâmplar. Ș i ei sunt furio ș i. Toată existen ț a pare să fie furioasă. Uita ț i-vă în jur, la feț ele oamenilor: unul e mai furios decât altul. Fiecare pare a nu fi acolo unde trebuie. Niciunul nu se simte împlinit, nu-ș i simte utilitatea, ș i acest lucru îl obsedează.

Am auzit odată o poveste frumoasă: Doamna Ginsberg, ajunsă în Rai, îl întreabă pe îngerul de la registratură: – Spune-mi, aș putea să mă întâlnesc cu cineva care este aici, în Rai? – Desigur, răspunde îngerul, dacă persoana pe care o căutaț i se află aici... – Cum să nu, sunt sigură că e aici. Este vorba de Fecioara Maria. Îngerul îș i drese vocea: – Mda, dumneaei se află în alt sector, dar dacă insistaț i, pot înainta cererea. Este o doamnă plină de bunătate ș i poate că va dori să revadă aceste locuri. Cererea fu înaintă cu încetineala funcț ionărească obi ș nuită, iar Fecioara se dovedi, într-adevăr, plină de bunătate. Nu peste multă vreme, doamnei Ginsberg i se făcu onoarea ș i bucuria de a se afla în prezenț a Fecioarei. Doamna Ginsberg privi îndelung chipul radiind de lumină care-i stătea înainte, apoi spuse: – Iertaț i-mi curiozitatea, dar mi-am dorit mereu să pot pune această întrebare. Cum a ț i făcut să ave ț i un fiu atât de minunat, pe care milioane de oameni îl venerează ca pe un dumnezeu? Fecioara răspunse: – Doamnă Ginsberg, noi am sperat că va fi doctor...

Părinț ii întotdeauna speră, iar speran ț ele lor devin otrăvitoare. Eu vă spun: iubi ț i-vă copiii ș i da ț i-le sentimentul că au fost doriț i a ș a cum sunt. Ei n-au venit pe lume ca să vă îndeplinească vouă dorinț ele. Dacă vor face un lucru sau altul, nu trebuie să vă zdruncine dragostea pe care le-o purta ț i. Aceasta este necondiț ionată. Atunci va apărea o lume complet nouă. Oamenii se vor îndrepta automat spre lucrurile care le plac, îș i vor găsi calea spre a se împlini. Doar dacă e ș ti împlinit, dacă ceea ce faci nu este numai o profesie, ci vocaț ia ta, chemarea ta, doar atunci vei putea avea fa ț ă de părin ț i sentimente pozitive. În caz contrar, ei sunt cauza existenț ei tale mizerabile. Nu le po ț i fi recunoscător și nici nu ai pentru ce. Numai împlinit vei fi recunoscător. Iar împlinirea e posibilă numai dacă nu vei deveni un obiect. Trebuie să devii o ființ ă. Trebuie să devii o valoare în sine. Destinul tău este să devii un om împlinit.

Tatăl insistă: „Trebuie să mă iubeș ti, sunt tatăl tău”, iar copilul trebuie să se prefacă. De fapt, nu-i obligatoriu să-ș i iubească nici mama. Este un lucru natural ca mama să aibă un sentiment instinctiv de iubire pentru copilul ei, dar invers nu este neapărat la fel de valabil. Copilul nu-ș i iube ș te mama din instinct. Că are nevoie de mamă este altceva, că se foloseș te de mamă este, iară ș i, cu totul altceva. Dar nicio lege a naturii nu spune că trebuie să o iubească. O place pentru că îl ajută, pentru că fără ea nu se poate descurca. Aș a că îi este recunoscător ș i-i poartă respect, ceea ce e normal. Dar iubirea este cu totul altceva.

Iubirea curge în jos, de la mamă la copil, ș i nu invers. Lucrurile sunt simple: iubirea copilului este pentru el însuș i, iar atunci când va cre ș te, va fi pentru copilul lui, nu invers. Gangele curge spre ocean, nu invers, spre izvoare. Mama este izvorul, iar iubirea curge către generaț ia nouă. A o întoarce înapoi este un act forț at, nenatural, nebiologic. Copilul trebuie să se prefacă, pentru că mama spune: „Sunt mama ta, trebuie să mă iubeș ti”. Ș i atunci ce face copilul? Se preface, ș i astfel devine politician. Fiecare copil devine un politician încă din leagăn. Când intră mama în cameră, zâmbeș te ca un veritabil pre ș edinte american. Trebuie să zâmbească chiar dacă nu simte bucurie. Deschide gura, îș i mi ș că buzele. Acest lucru îl ajută, e o metodă de supravieț uire. Iubirea e falsă. Ș i când ai găsit cea mai ieftină ș i mai mecanică formă de iubire, e greu s-o mai descoperi pe cea ideală, originală, autentică. Apoi trebuie să-ț i iube ș ti surorile, fra ț ii, neamurile... fără un motiv anume. De fapt, câ ț i î ș i iubesc sora ș i pentru ce? Acestea sunt doar idei făcute să ț ină familia unită.

Tot acest proces de falsificare te aduce la un moment dat în punctul de a te îndrăgosti tot printr-o falsă iubire. Ai uitat ce e iubirea. Te îndrăgosteș ti de culoarea părului cuiva. Ce are asta cu iubirea? După două zile, nici n-o mai vezi. Te îndrăgosteș ti de o formă a ochilor sau a nasului. Dar după luna de miere, toate astea te vor plictisi. Ș i atunci va trebui să te descurci cumva. Cum? Min ț ind, în ș elând. Spontaneitatea ta e otrăvită, altfel n-ai putea să te îndrăgosteș ti pe bucă ț i. Iar tu nu vezi decât păr ț ile. Dacă te întreabă cineva de ce iubeș ti o anumită femeie sau un anumit bărbat, vei răspunde: „ Pentru că e atât de frumoasă!” ori „Îmi plac ochii lui, părul, proporț iile corpului” sau mai ș tiu eu ce... Toate astea sunt prostii. Această iubire nu este profundă ș i nu are valoare. Nu va deveni intimitate deplină. Nu va dura o viaț ă, se va usca foarte repede, pentru că este superficială. Această iubire nu este izvorâtă din inimă, ci doar un fenomen al minț ii. Poate că arată ca o actri ț ă ș i de aceea î ț i place de ea, dar a plăcea nu e totuna cu a iubi. Iubirea este un fenomen diferit, nedefinit, misterios. Am fost întrebat dacă n-ar trebui să iubim cât de mult putem. Credeț i că iubirea e totuna cu a munci până cazi lat? Aici nu este vorba de ceva ce „trebuie” să faci, ci de un fenomen al inimii. Este transcenderea minț ii ș i a corpului. Nu este proză, ci poezie. Nu este matematică, ci muzică. Nu o faci, eș ti ea. Iubirea nu se face, ea este. To ț i ace ș ti „trebuie” apasă greu asupra spontaneită ț ii tale. Iubirea nu „trebuie”, ea nu poate fi comandată. Nu te poț i for ț a să iube ș ti cât de mult po ț i. Exact asta încearcă oamenii să facă ș i de aceea lipse ș te iubirea din lume... SINCE I HAVE BEEN HERE, I HAVE LOST MY ABILITY TO CONCENTRATE. IT IS HARD FOR ME TO UTTER A LOGICAL SENTENCE. AND I HAVE BECOME VERY FORGETFUL. I FEEL MYSELF AS A STUPID CHILD. IS THAT THE WAY TO ME INTELLIGENCE YOU TALK ABOUT?

The ability to concentrate is not something to feel blessed about. It is a frozen state of mind, a very narrow state of mind. Useful, of course, useful -- for others. Useful in scientific inquiry, useful in business, useful in the market, useful in politics -- but absolutely useless for yourself. If you become too attuned with concentration you will become very, very tense. Concentration is a tense state of mind; you will never be relaxed. Concentration is like a torch, focused, and consciousness is like a lamp, unfocused. My whole effort here is to teach you consciousness, not concentration. And this is the point to be remembered: if you become conscious, any moment you want to concentrate on a particular problem, you can. It is not a problem. But if you become too focused with concentration the vice versa is not true: you cannot relax. A relaxed mind can always concentrate. easily, there is no trouble about it. But a focused mind becomes obsessed. narrow. It is not easy for it to relax and leave the tension. It remains tense. If you meditate. first concentration will disappear and you will be feeling a little at a loss. But if you go on, by and by you will attain to an unfocused state of light -- that's what meditation is. Once meditation is attained. concentration is child's play -- whenever you need to, you can concentrate. There will be no problem about it and it will be easy and without any tension. Right now, you are being used by society. Society wants efficient people. It is not worried about your soul, it is worried about your productivity. I am not worried about your productivity: man has already too much, more than he can enjoy -- there is no need to go on producing more. Now there is more need to play around more and there is more need to be more conscious. Science has developed enough. Now, whatsoever science is doing is almost futile. Now, going to the moon is simply useless. But tremendous energy is wasted. Why? Because scientists are now obsessed -- they have to do something. They have learned a trick of concentration and they have to do something. They have to produce, they have to go on producing something -- they cannot relax. They will go to the moon, they will go to Mars, and they will persuade people that whatsoever they are doing is tremendously important. It is absolutely useless. But this happens. Once you become trained in a certain thing, you go on in that line, blind, unless a cul de sac comes and you cannot go on anymore. But life is infinite. There comes no cul de sac. You can go on and on and on. And now scientific activity has almost become ridiculous. Religious activity is totally different. It is not worried about being more efficient; the whole point is how to be more joyful, how to be more celebrating. So if you be with me, by and by, concentration will relax. And in the beginning you will feel afraid because you will see your skill disappearing, your efficiency disappearing. You will feel you are losing something that you have gained with so much effort. In the beginning it will happen. The ice is melting and becoming water. The ice was solid, something concentrated; now it is water -- loose, relaxed, flowing in all directions. But anytime you need ice, the water can be turned into ice again. There is no problem -- just a little more cooling is needed. This is my own experience. Whatsoever I say, I say from my own experience -- the same has happened to me. First, concentration disappeared; but now I can concentrate on anything. There is no problem. But I don't remain in concentration; I can concentrate and relax -- whenever the need arises. Just as whenever the need arises, you walk; you don't sit on the chair and go on moving your Legs. There are a few people who go on moving because they cannot sit relaxed -- you will call this man restless! Legs in perfect order are needed so that whenever you need to, you can walk, you can run. But when there Is no need, you can relax, and the legs will no longer be functioning. But your concentration has become almost as focused as if you are continuously preparing for an Olympic! Runners in an Olympic cannot relax. They have to run a particular amount every morning and evening; they are continuously on the go. If they relax for a few days they will lose their skill. But I call all Olympics political, ambitious, foolish. There is no need. Competition is foolish. There is no need. If you enjoy running -- perfectly good. Run. and enjoy. But why compete? What is the point of competition? Competition brings illness, unhealthiness; competition brings jealousy, and a thousand and one diseases. Meditation will allow you to concentrate whenever the need arises, but if there is no need you will remain relaxed, flowing in all directions like water.

IT IS HARD FOR ME TO UTTER A LOGICAL SENTENCE. Feel blissful, blessed. What is the point of uttering logical sentences! Utter nonsense; make sounds, gibberish, like birds... Like trees! (At this moment a nearby tree decided, with the help of a passing breeze, to illustrate Osho's words by shaking its branches and causing hundreds of leaves to fall with loud rustling sounds to the ground.) Look! This way! Is this logical? The tree is enjoying. Delighting. Simply shedding away the past. Delight. Sing. Utter sounds. Forget all logic! And by and by you will become more alive. Less logical of course that is the price one has to pay -- but you become dead if you become more logical and you become more alive if you become less logical. Life is the goal, not logic. What are you going to do with logic? If you are hungry, logic is not going to feed you; if you need love, logic is not going to hug you; if you are thirsty, logic will tell you that water is H20! It is not going to give you water, real water. No. It simply functions in formulas, maxims. Look at life, and by and by you will understand that life has its own very logical logic. Be attuned to it and that will become the door for your ecstasy, samadhi, nirvana.

AND I HAVE BECOME VERY FORGETFUL. Perfectly good! If you can forget, you will be able to remember more. Forgetfulness is a great capacity -- it simply means getting the past dusted off. There is no need to remember everything that happens because almost ninety-nine per cent of it is trivia. What do you go on remembering? Just think... what do you go on remembering? Write it down and just look at it. It is trivia. What goes on in your mind? You will not be able to show it to your intimate friend because he will think you are mad. This goes on in your mind? It is good. Forget. Forgetfulness is a great capacity because it will allow you to remember. It is part of remembrance. The useless has to be forgotten so that the useful is remembered -- and the useful is very, very small, the useless i5 too much. In twenty-four hours, millions of bits of information are collected by the mind. If you collect them and remember them all, you will be mad. I have heard about a man. He was once presented to the Governor-General in India because he was a man of rare memory. He knew only one language, Rajasthani-Hindi. He was a poor man, uneducated, but if you told him anything in any language, he would never forget it. But he would repeat it like a parrot, not knowing what it meant. To the Governor-General's palace he was called, and the Governor-General was surprised to hear about his capacity. Thirty other persons were called, and in thirty languages they uttered a few sentences. It was arranged in the following manner: the man would go to the first person, and the first person would say the first word of his sentence. Then he would go to another person and he would say the first word of his sentence, in another language. Then he will go to the third. In this way he would go to thirty people. Then he would come back to the first who would now say his second word. This was repeated -- many rounds, many hours it took. And then he repeated all the sentences separately. The Governor-General was simply puzzled. He could not believe it. But this man went mad. This much memory is dangerous. This type of person is almost always idiotic. Too much memory is not a good sign; it simply says that you have a very mechanical mind. It is not a sign of intelligence. Hence you hear so many stories of absent-mindedness about great scientists, philosophers. They are people of great memory, and great intelligence has nothing to do with great memory. Memory is mechanical, intelligence is non-mechanical -- they are totally different. So don't be worried. It is good. The memory is relaxing, many things will disappear, space will be created in you. And in that space you will be able to become more brilliant, more intelligent, more understanding. Intelligence means understanding; memory means a quality, a mechanical quality of repetition. Parrots have good memories. Don't be worried about your memory. In the beginning it happens: you have accumulated much rubbish and when you meditate that rubbish starts disappearing, falling away.

AND I FEEL MYSELF A STUPID CHILD. That is the way, the way to the kingdom of God. Lao Tzu says, 'Be like an idiot in this world so that you can understand the illogical ways of Tao.' Jesus says, 'Be like a child -- because only those who are like children will be able to enter into the kingdom of God.' Don't be worried about those things; the non-essential is dropping away. Feel happy and grateful. Once the rubbish has dropped, the real will arise; non-essential gone, the essential will arise. This is the way to reach to one's own source. But many times you will get scared because you are losing your grip on what you have valued up till now. But I can tell you only one thing: I have traveled the same path and have passed through the same phases. They are phases -- they come and go. And your consciousness will become more and more purified, virgin -- pure, uncorrupted. That uncorrupted consciousness is God. My message to humanity is a new man. Less than that won't do. Not something modified, not something continuous with the past, but utterly discontinuous.

It happened that a Zen master was invited as a guest. A few friends had gathered and they were eating and talking when suddenly there was an earthquake. The building that they were sitting in was a seven storey building and they were on the seventh storey, so life was in danger. Everybody tried to escape. The host, running by, looked to see what had happened to the master. He was there with not even a ripple of anxiety on his face. With closed eyes he was sitting on his chair as he had been sitting before.

The host felt a little guilty, he felt a bit of a coward, and it did not look good that a guest was sitting there and the host was running away. The others, the other twenty guests, had already gone down the stairs but he stopped himself although he was trembling with fear, and he sat down by the side of the master.

The earthquake came and went, the master opened the eyes and started his conversation which because of the earthquake he had had to stop. He continued again at exactly the same sentence -- as if the earthquake had not happened at all.

The host was now in no mood to listen, he was in no mood to understand because his whole being was so troubled and he was so afraid. Even though the earthquake had gone, the fear was still there.

He said: Now don't say anything because I will not be able to grasp it, I'm not myself anymore. The earthquake has disturbed me too much. But there is one question I would like to ask. All other guests had escaped, I was also on the stairs, almost running, when suddenly I remembered you. Seeing you sitting here with closed eyes, sitting so undisturbed, so unperturbed, I felt a bit of a coward -- I am the host, I should not run. So I came back and I have been sitting by your side. I would like to ask one question. We all tried to escape. What happened to you? What do you say about the earthquake?

The master said: "I also escaped, but you escaped outwardly, I escaped inwardly. Your escape is useless because wherever you are going there too is an earthquake, so it is meaningless, it makes no sense. You may reach the sixth storey or the fifth or the fourth, but there too is an earthquake. I escaped to a point within me where no earthquake ever reaches, cannot reach. I entered my center.

Esenț a în ț elepciunii este să ac ț ionezi în armonie cu natura. Acesta este mesajul tuturor misticilor mari: Lao Tzu, Buddha, Bahauddin, Sosan, Sanai. Animalele acț ionează în mod incon ș tient în armonie cu natura. Omul trebuie să acț ioneze în armonie cu natura în mod con ș tient, pentru că omul are conș tiin ț ă.

Jogging, dancing, swimming – anything can be a meditation. My definition of meditation is: whenever your body, mind and soul are functioning together in rhythm it is meditation, because it will bring the fourth in. If you are alert to the fact that you are doing it as a meditation ¯ not to take part in the Olympics, but doing it as a meditation – then it is tremendously beautiful.

If we give only a fixed pattern of meditation, then it will be applicable only to a few people. That has been one of the problems in the past: fixed patterns of meditation, not fluid — fixed, so they fit certain types and all others are left in the darkness. My effort is to make meditation available to each and everybody.

Whosoever wants to meditate, meditation should be made available according to his type. If he needs rest, then rest should be his meditation. Then 'sitting silently doing nothing, and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself' ¯ that will be his meditation. We have to find as many dimensions to meditation as there are people in the world. The pattern has not to be very rigid, because no two individuals are alike. The pattern has to be very liquid so that it can fit with the individual. In the past, the practice was that the individual had to fit with the pattern.

I bring a revolution. The individual has not to fit with the pattern, the pattern has to fit with the individual. My respect for the individual is absolute. I am not much concerned with means; means can be changed, arranged in different ways.

That's why you find so many meditations going on [in the meditation resort]. We don't have enough opportunities here; otherwise you would be surprised how many doors the temple of the divine has. You would also be surprised that there is a special door only for you and for nobody else. That's existence's love for you, its' respect for you. You will be received through a special door, not through the public gate. You will be received as a special guest.

But the basic fundamental is, whatsoever the meditation, it has to fill this requirement: that the body, mind, consciousness – all three should function in unity. Then suddenly one day the fourth has arrived: witnessing. Or if you want to, call it God; call it God or nirvana or Tao or whatsoever you will. The hypothesis of God does not help. I don't have any hypothesis of God. To me life is divine. To me existence is godliness, not God. To use the word `godman' for me is simply stupid. But journalists started calling me that, and then started asking me, "Why do you call yourself godman?" Strange! They started calling me the guru of the rich and then they started asking me, "Why do you call yourself the guru of the rich?" They started calling me the sex guru, and then they started asking me, "Why do you call yourself the sex guru?" I have never called myself godman. Yes, the people who love me have called me Bhagwan, but Bhagwan does not mean God. We have called Gautam Buddha 'Bhagwan' -- and he does not believe in any god. We have called Mahavira 'Bhagwan' -- and he does not believe in any God. So 'Bhagwan' cannot be synonymous with God. 'Bhagwan' simply means the blessed one, one who has attained the ultimate bliss, the peace, the joy of his own being. And I say unto you that I am the blessed one, but I am not the godman. I am simply a man fulfilled. Secondly, your question asks, "I was praised by people as a great psychologist, as a philosopher. Why did I start calling myself a godman?" Half of it I have answered. As for the other half, I am not a psychologist. A psychologist inquires into the complications of the mind. I am a meditator who does not bother about the mind but simply goes beyond it. Gautam Buddha is not a psychologist. His achievement is not the knowledge of the mind, but the experience of no-mind. It is beyond psychology. I have experienced no-mind. I cannot allow anybody to call me a psychologist. I am not. And I do not think that the people who are psychologists have anything to offer to a man who has known something beyond mind. I would like you to be reminded that psychologists commit suicide twice as often as any other profession, they go mad three times as often as any other profession. I don't want to belong to such a group of half-mad people. You asked, "Would it not have been better to be categorized with great psychologists like Freud and Jung?" No. To me, both are sick because both are below the silence of their own inner being. They are still struggling with empty thoughts, hot air, nothing. And if you look into their lives, you can see it. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, was so much afraid of death -- I don't think anybody present here is so much afraid. You cannot conceive, but even the word 'death' was tabooed, it was not to be uttered in his presence. Twice it happened that somebody mentioned death and he fell from his chair into unconsciousness, his mouth foaming. Sigmund Freud flat on the ground. The great founder of psychoanalysis had not even enough courage to listen to the word 'death'. I do not want to be categorized with these people. Jung was expelled; in the movement of psychoanalysis he was second only to Sigmund Freud. Everybody thought that he was going to be his successor. And he was profoundly intelligent. But he was expelled from the movement because he was interested in ghosts. Sigmund Freud told him, "Drop this. I cannot even tolerate those words." His interest was in what happens beyond death, so naturally he was interested in death, in ghosts, and this was the basic reason that he was thrown out. You would think he was a courageous man but it is not so. All his interest in ghosts and death and what happens beyond life was only intellectual. He wanted to go to Egypt to see the old, dead bodies preserved as mummies. Twelve times he booked and twelve times he cancelled. His whole life he wanted to go, but when the day came to go, he would become so afraid of seeing a dead body that was three thousand years old, he would find some excuse and cancel the ticket. He came to India; he went to the universities. He was here for three months and it was simple stupidity to talk to the psychoanalysts in the universities because they were taught in the West -- they were parrots. He had come to try to understand the Eastern psychology. It was suggested by many people that if you want to understand Eastern psychology then you are going to the wrong people; if you want to understand Eastern psychology then there is a man in the South, Raman Maharshi. Go to that man, who has not even heard the word `psychology'. He went to Madras and then fear gripped him because he had heard that these people have hypnotic powers, their eyes are hypnotic, their gestures are hypnotic, and it is dangerous to go to these people, they can convert you. You will forget completely for what you had come; they can put you on a new route. From Madras he came back. Only two hours more and he would have reached Shri Raman Maharshi -- a simple man with no bookish knowledge, but of immense self-realization -- a man who has reached, who has arrived home. Certainly he has an aura. In his presence there is a magnetism, but it is not to mislead you, it is not to misguide you. This is the way of the East, to find a man who has found himself and to sit at his feet, just in silence. There is no need to say anything. His silence can start moving your heart in a new rhythm, with a new music, which you had never heard before -- a new harmony, a new synchronicity. First, it will happen between the disciple and the master, and then it will start happening with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains, with the ocean, with the stars, with existence itself. The master is only a door. The Sikhs are right to call their temple Gurudwara. It simply means `the master is a door'. And when he reached back home he was asked why he had not met people who were really rooted in the East. Going to the universities, which are by-products of the West, was simply a waste of time. However, he started finding explanations, rationalizations. And his rationalization was, "I have avoided meeting these people because the East has its own way, the West has its own way, and they are so different, so diametrically different, that it is dangerous to mix them." This was a consolation and a rationalization, but absolutely cunning. You can teach Eastern people Western ways. He himself, in his institute in Zurich, was teaching Eastern people Western ways. That was okay, it was not disturbing anybody. But he could not learn from the East because that may disturb. If he was really honest, he should have refused Eastern people the right to study at his institute. He should have told them, "This is not your way. Go to Shri Raman Maharshi. Don't come here." But no, if people from the East were coming, it was perfectly okay to condition their minds, to program their minds, to fill their minds with all kinds of rubbish. But when he came here, he avoided those people who can help you get rid of all rubbish, who can help you become absolutely silent and peaceful, in deep harmony with existence. I don't see that being in harmony with existence can disturb anybody. Not a single meditator has ever committed suicide, not a single meditator has ever gone mad. Western psychology has nothing to teach to the East. It has everything to learn from the East, because it is still working in the mind. Our whole approach is to transcend mind, don't be bothered with it, leave it behind. You are bigger than it. Western psychology thinks mind is all; it is not, it is just the surface. Your innermost reality is far away from your mind. It is closer to the universal existence. It is far closer to the farthest star than it is to your own mind. And the moment you transcend the mind the mind starts stopping on its own, because you are no more feeding it energy, you are no more giving it nourishment. It dies its own natural death. The greatest moment in life is when your mind is transcended, when you know yourself, that you are more than your mind -- then anxieties, anguish, meaninglessness, all disappear. I am not a psychologist. Psychologists need to learn much and they can learn only if they understand that there is something more than psychology in man -- that he has a soul. And I am not a philosopher either. It has been one of the most unfortunate things that the Eastern concept of darshan has been translated into English as philosophy. Even people like Doctor Radhakrishnan... but these are all professors, they are not mystics. They have agreed with this translation -- I disagree. Because philosophy means `thinking about truth', and one thing that is impossible in the world is thinking about truth. It is like a blind man thinking about light. How will he think? And whatever he thinks, is not going to be even close to the experience of light. Light either can be seen or not seen, but you cannot think about it. You cannot think about love. Either you can love, or you cannot, but you cannot think about it. I am not a philosopher, I am a mystic. I have not thought about truth, I have seen it. And the strangest thing about truth is that to see it is to be it. You cannot see it as an object, you can see it only as yourself. The moment you experience yourself -- when the observer and the observed are one, when the seer and the seen are one, when the experienced and the experiencer are one -- truth is revealed. Western philosophy has been the longest exercise in futility. None of the Western philosophers -- Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Kant, Hegel, Russell -- none of the Western philosophers has had even a glimpse. Their whole story is written in PANCHTANTRA which is five thousand years old. In a village, one elephant comes for the first time and the village has five blind men. They are excited, more excited than the people who have eyes, naturally, because those who have eyes can see, then the excitement is gone. Those five blind people are so excited to find out what it is that has come. They touched the elephant, somebody touched the legs and said, "My God! The elephant is nothing but a pillar." And somebody touched the ears of the elephant and said, "You idiot! You must be touching some pillar. The elephant is not a pillar, it is like a big fan which is used by kings." and so on and so forth. All five were quarreling, and a man who had eyes was watching and laughing. The whole Western philosophy is written in that story. All these blind people are touching and coming to conclusions and quarreling with each other. And Western philosophy is nothing but argumentation -- not realization. Hence the Western philosopher will remain just an ordinary man. He will have great ideas, he will make great systems, but his own personality, his own individuality, will remain very ordinary. He cannot become a Gautam Buddha, he cannot become a Lao Tzu, he cannot become a Chuang Tzu, because these are not philosophers; these are people who have tried to see within, to reach to the very center of their being. And the center of my being is also the center of every being, it is the center of the whole universe. Hence if I can know myself I have known all. I do not want to be categorized as a philosopher. It is not my thinking about truth that I am sharing with my people, it is my experience that I am sharing. It is not my idea -- it is my taste, it is my heartbeat. If you want to call me anything you can call me a mystic, but please drop that ugly word godman.

Q: WHAT YOU TEACH OR PREACH... WHAT IS THAT? IS THAT A RELIGION OR WHAT IS THAT, AND WHAT ARE YOU... ARE YOU A RELIGIOUS LEADER OR PHILOSOPHICAL LEADER?

A: First thing... I am not a leader. That is a four-letter ugly word... obscene. I am simply a friend. Whatever I have experienced I want to share it. I don't want anybody to imitate me. I don't give any ten commandments to people that you have to do this, and you have not to do this. I simply share my blissfulness, my silence... and leave it to the people. If they feel to be silent, that is their business. They are not following me, they are following their own intelligence. My appeal is not an order. My appeal is to provoke your intelligence and then you have to follow your intelligence. Secondly, I am a religious person, but I do not belong to any religion. To be a religious person is a beautiful phenomenon and to belong to any religion is to belong to a crowd of slaves. There are crowds of Hindus. Belonging to the crowd simply means you are losing your individuality. And you will be doing stupid things. Do you know in Hindu religious rituals they drink "Panchamrit." And what is "Panchamrit?" Cow dung, the urine of the cow, milk, curd, ghee... everything that comes out of the cow is mixed and it becomes nectar. Panchamrit. Only idiots can call cow dung, nectar. Except Morarji Desai. Because he has fallen even below the idiots. He drinks his own Panchamrit. All religions of the world do stupid things. But because of the crowd, and the tradition, you repress your individual intelligence. You can see this is stupid, but you cannot allow your intelligence because that will make you a rebel, and no religion tolerates rebellious people. I am just a religious person. To me the word 'religious' means my own experience. My own experience of an eternal being within me which proves to me the eternal being -- of you, of everybody, of the whole existence. My religiousness is a thankfulness to existence because it has given so much, so much love, so much joy, so much blissfulness, so much ecstasy, that we have nothing to repay it, except gratitude. I don't have any God, because that brings again slavery. Freedom is my God. All the religions have holy scriptures, written by God and they are so full of nonsense, that if they are really written by God, he should have committed suicide long before, just out of being ashamed. I don't have any holy scripture, I don't have a teaching. I have only a sharing. The distinction is very delicate and fine. Teaching becomes dogmatic, solid, creates an imprisonment around you. And you are expected to believe in it. I am against all belief. I am against all faith. Because only blind people believe that there is light. Those who have eyes don't believe in light. They know it. Knowing is an experience, not a belief. I simply share my experience with those who are ready to get rid of all kinds of bondages and who are ready to become themselves... not according to me, but according to their own potential. Existence never repeats itself, that's why it never creates another Gautam Buddha, another Jesus Christ, another Krishna. Existence is infinitely creative. Leader wants you to follow him. The teacher wants you to live according to his teachings. These are subtle, psychological exploitations. I am a little bit strange man. I do not want you to follow me. I have never followed anybody. I have simply discovered myself. And I would like everybody in the world to discover himself. And everybody is so unique that if he follows somebody else he will be only an imitator. He will never know his own essential being. If he follows somebody else's teaching, he will remain blind. His beliefs will keep him tethered to the chains given by somebody else. I have my friends, not followers and I want them to become themselves. They will be unique, and this is the greatest opportunity nature has given to you... to be yourself. Not to be anybody else. This is the respect existence has paid to you. Fulfill it. Don't become a hypocrite. Become an authentic, sincere being. Let your own potential blossom. Somebody will may blossom into a rose, somebody in a marigold, somebody in a lotus. And if every man achieves his potentiality, this world will become so beautiful, so valuable. It will not be a crowd. There will not be any crowd at all. There will be only unique individuals. If you do not do this, you are betraying existence, and betraying your own self. That is the only sin I know of. To betray yourself.

Q: IF THIS IS SO, WHY DO YOU CALL YOURSELF "BHAGWAN?" WHY DO YOUR FRIENDS CALL YOU "BHAGWAN?" OR EVEN "ACHARYA," WHICH MEANS A TEACHER?

A: There are people who call me the devil. There are people who call me the anti-christ, there are people who call me the satan. I cannot prevent them. It is their freedom, what they want to call me. There are people who love me and call me Bhagwan, but Bhagwan does not mean God. We have called Gautam Buddha, Bhagwan, who has absolutely denied the existence of God. We have called Mahavir, Bhagwan, who does not believe in God. Bhagwan must have some other meaning too. And the meaning is 'the blessed one', the one who has arrived. And I say to you, I have arrived. I am the blessed one, and I would like you also to be the blessed one. But the world is big and I cannot go after everybody, telling them what to call me. And I cannot prevent anybody calling me anything. As far as I am concerned, I don't have any name. Neither you have any name. We are born without any names, but just for utilitarian purposes, names are needed. They are not our reality. We are nameless existence. The rose does not know that its name is rose. You have given it a name. But whether you give it a name or not, a rose is a rose is a rose. So it is your freedom... whatever you want to call me, you can call me. But I don't have any name. I have the state of blessedness; which is the meaning of Bhagwan. So I don't have any objection against it.

QUESTION: AFTER YOU LEFT INDIA AND WENT ABROAD, AND WENT THROUGH ALL YOUR EXPERIENCES, HAS YOUR FAITH IN HUMANITY GONE DOWN?

ANSWER: I love humanity more than ever. It has grown. But my conception about the politicians has certainly gone down the drain. They are the enemies of humanity. The humanity has to be freed from the chains of politicians and their presence. Going around the world from one nation to another, I have seen that every nation has been turned into a concentration camp by the politicians. But as far as humanity is concerned, my compassion and my love for it has grown deeper. Humanity is a victim of power-seekers; of those mad people whose only ambition in life is their ego. The whole politics is nothing but an ego game. If we can live without politicians -- and they are not needed at all -- we can live without the boundaries of nations. Humanity is one. We can live as one world. Of course functional management will be needed but governments are not needed. And by functional management I mean like the management of the post offices, railways. You don't even know who is the chief of your post offices. There is no need. He is a functional servant. The politicians are continuously wasting time of humanity for their own interests. The parliaments of the world are doing nothing. They are gossiping clubs with great fanfare. The presidents and prime ministers have nothing to do but inaugurate stupid things -- bridges, roads -- this kind of thing can be done by anybody. I am an anarchist. I want to see humanity without being governed by anybody, because each government basically means slavery. Education should be such that each person is capable of being responsible for his own actions. Responsible for order, responsible for others with whom he lives. There is no need of any government. ... What you have been told is religion is nothing but politics in disguise. A religious person is not a leader. Because the basic experience of a religious person is that religion is an individual affair. A love affair with existence. It does not need any leaders. Do you need a leader when you fall in love? If you need then, you are in an urgent state of psychiatric help. Religion is love with existence. There is no need of Hinduism, and their shankaracharyas. This is another kind of hierarchy, bureaucracy, another way of dominating man, enslaving humanity. There is no need of any pope, any church. But you will be surprised, a few days before, the pope declared that any Catholic Christian, confessing to God directly is committing a sin. He should confess to the priest. The priest is the mediator. And he is in direct contact with God. Do you see the politics? Even with God you cannot relate directly. Perhaps some day the painters will start saying to you, you cannot see the sunset directly. It is a sin. You should have a mediator. All religions are a very deep programming for enslaving human spirituality. The politician tries to dominate your body and the religious leader tries to dominate your soul. Nothing is left for you. There has been a conspiracy since the very beginning between the politician and the priest. These are the greatest criminals in the world. And sooner we get rid of them, the better. There is no need to be a Hindu, or a Mohammedan or a Christian, or a Buddhist. To be silent, to be peaceful, to be full of love and compassion needs no adjective to it. Because compassion is compassion only. It is not Christian. It is not Hindu. And to be silent you don't need your scriptures. In fact they are not allowing you to be silent. They go on pouring crap in your mind. What is the need of temples and mosques and gurudwaras and churches and synagogues? The whole existence is the temple of the divine. Wherever you are, if you are in a state of prayer you are in the temple. All these temples and churches are businesses. ... All religions are simply nothing but businesses, and the most dangerous businesses, because they are exploiting your soul, your integrity, your individuality, your freedom, everything of value. They support the politicians. The politicians support them -- that's the conspiracy. Adolf Hitler was blessed by the archbishop of Germany that you will be victorious, it is God's intention, and I will pray for you, and the Archbishop of England -- and both are Christians. He was praying that Winston Churchill wins -- that it is the God's will that England will rule over the whole world -- and nobody asked that you are putting God into a trouble. Both represent the same God. And both are praying for enemies, and their victories. This goes on without the wider world understanding a simple fact, that religion has nothing to do with any nations victory. Its work should be the self-realization of man; but no religion bothers about self- realization. Because a self-realized man will be able to see the conspiracy, the business, the power-struggle. All the religions are fighting, for thousands of years. Strange... they all teach love and they all simply kill. Thousands of living people have been burned alive in the name of God. Politics and religion are the two most ugliest developments, the greatest diseases that have happened to poor humanity. I would like you to be your own government -- conscious, alert -- so there is no need of any government. And I would like you to be your own self, in immediate and direct contact with existence. So there is no need of any pope, any shankaracharya, any imam. If these two businesses -- which are almost like cancer growths -- can be destroyed, humanity can be saved. And if they cannot be destroyed, then they are going to destroy humanity. Q: FOR A LONG TIME YOU

PROPOUNDED A PHILOSOPHY WHICH ALLOWED FOR FREE EXPRESSION OF FEELINGS BY DEVOTEES. THE SEXUAL PRACTICES IN YOUR ASHRAM RECEIVED PARTICULAR ATTENTION FROM THE MEDIA. NOW WITH YOUR DISILLUSIONMENT WITH MANKIND, DO YOU SEE A CHANGE IN YOUR BASIC TEACHING?

A: No. I don't see any change in me. And the news media has given attention to my ideas about sex, because they are all sex maniacs. Suppressed sex. I have four hundred books, and only one book on sex. Three hundred ninety nine books have received no response from news media. Only one book... and that book is also not about sexuality; that book is how to transform sex into superconsciousness. The name of the book is FROM SEX TO SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS. Nobody from the news media bothers about superconsciousness. They are simply interested in sex. Sex maniacs. ------ONE OF THE CONTROVERSIES ABOUT YOUR TEACHING WAS THAT NOTHING WAS TABOO, PARTICULARLY FREE SEX. IS THIS TRUE, AND IS THIS THE MAIN CRITICISM AGAINST YOU?

There is nothing which is taboo, except taboo itself. Life should be lived in its totality, in its intensity, in its wholeness. To me, to live life in its wholeness is to be holy, there is no other holiness. It is true that people who are against me have made it a basic point to criticize me. But the reason is not that I am teaching the wholeness of life, teaching an uninhibited acceptance of existence, The reason is that I have been cutting the very roots of all these religions; and they don't have anything else to condemn, criticize. They don't have any answer to any of my questions. They have chosen sex, which simply shows their repression and nothing else. I have over five hundred books, and only one book talks about sex; all the rest are condemning all these religions from every angle. They are silent about it because they don't have any answer. So sex has become their focus. They have tried all around the world, as if sex is my only teaching. And their choice simply shows not only their repressions, it also shows that for centuries they have been repressing sex in people. It is strange that out of five hundred books that one book on sex... and that too is not really on sex. The name of the book is FROM SEX TO SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS. It is basically about how to transform sexual energy into a superconscious experience. In fact, that is the only way to go beyond sex, to transcend sex, to sublimate sex. And that book is the only one that has been translated in almost all the languages of the world. It shows the sickness of human mind. ... Sex has been repressed, but it has not been destroyed. In fact the people who have repressed it are the people who have perverted the whole humanity into homosexuality, into lesbianism, into sodomy, into all kinds of ugliness. Sex naturally is a beautiful phenomenon between two persons who love each other. And by simply condemning sex you cannot destroy it, it is existential. But you can poison it, and the whole humanity is living with that poison. I want sex to be a natural, beautiful phenomenon. But that is not my basic teaching, it is simply a part of accepting the whole of life. But those sex maniacs who have repressed it, their minds are sick. Dr. Johnson, one of the great linguists of the English language, has written a great dictionary, compiling all the English words available at that time. I am saying this because the English language is the only language that goes on evolving each year -- accepting at least eight thousand new words. It is not a dead language like Sanskrit or Arabic; it is not afraid, it goes on growing. When the dictionary was published, after a few days, three old ladies, seventy, seventy-five, and eighty -- very old, with thick glasses -- came with the dictionary to Dr. Johnson and said, "You seem to be destroying the morality of the country." He said, "What have I done?" They said, "You have published this sexual book." He said, "Sexual book? This is a dictionary." They said, "Dictionary? There are three words in it which are obscene." And they had underlined three words in those thousands of words. Those three old women had done such a great job. Dr. Johnson said, "You are a miracle. Just within three days.... My work is to collect words, but amongst thousands of words, how could you find these three words only? You are not concerned with the whole dictionary, you were looking for these words. And because of these three words, the dictionary has become a sex manual."

Sex is not my teaching. My teaching is to be spontaneous, to be whole. Of course, sex is a part of life, and a very basic and essential part of life. It should be given respect. It is sacred, it is not profane.

Sex is not my teaching. My teaching is vast, it comprehends your whole life. You cannot criticize me because you have sex as part of your life. I want it to be respected, to be made sacred. If you feel it is ugly, if you feel it is profane, that means you are born out of ugliness. Then how can you respect your father? How can you respect your mother? How can you dare to be respected by your children? Because the only connection between you and your parents, between you and your children, is sex. There is no other connection. Life has moved from your parents to you, from you to your children. If you want a respectful society, where parents are loved and respected, where children are loved and respected, then you will have to respect the energy of sex too. Otherwise, deep down in your mind your children are nothing but sin. And you are too because your parents were committing sin. I am against these people who are poisoning life and degrading it into a sin. I want it to be a beautiful, a virtuous, a sacred phenomenon. And I am condemned for that around the world. Very strange! To say the truth seems to be a crime. But I will go on committing that crime, because I know those who have condemned me have not thought of all the implications. They should commit suicide, they should kill their mothers and their fathers, because they have all indulged in sex. They should kill their children because they are born of sex. Do you want this kind of religion to spread on the earth? To me, whatever existence has given to you is beautiful. To condemn me, these people have invented their own ideas, which have nothing to do with me. They go on teaching to their flocks that I am propounding free sex. I have never even used the phrase 'free sex'. And what do they mean? Should sex be sold? It should not be free? Do they want the whole world to become a world of prostitutes? In fact you have made the world a world of prostitutes. A few prostitutes sell their bodies for one day; you have purchased your wife for your whole life. And what a strange world -- you have purchased your wife, and her parents, to get rid of her, have given money to you. And you have the right to make love to your wife or to your husband whether they are in the mood or not. I have been a guest in hundreds of houses, and I was amazed. The husband and wife are continuously quarreling, fighting, looking like enemies; and they go on producing children. To me, a woman not loving her husband and still allowing her body to be used is functioning as a prostitute. A man not loving his wife but still making love to her because it is his duty is functioning as a male prostitute. You will be surprised with the word `male prostitute'. In the West, within these last twenty years, male prostitutes have appeared in the market. The women's liberation movement has brought them in. The woman wants equality in everything, so why should only women be prostitutes? So now there are, in London, in San Francisco, in Los Angeles, in New York, male prostitutes also available. A great liberation of women! My effort has been to make human life a love-shrine, a temple of love. I have been condemned because they don't have any other response. I have been cutting their very roots. But to condemn me about sex is easy, because everybody seems to agree with them. Even people who are exploiting sex repression by publishing pornographic magazines like PLAYBOY, PENTHOUSE and other ugly literature are also against me. You can see something very strange. Priests are against me and pornographers are against me, what does it mean? It means that, if sex repression disappears, who will be interested in pornography? The whole business will flop. So there seems to be an inner conspiracy, perhaps unconscious, between the priest and the pornographer -- that the priest creates the market and the pornographer reaps the crop. And what a beauty! The priest goes on condemning pornography, but the more he condemns it, the more people are looking at ugly, obscene pictures. But they have to hide them behind The Bible, behind the Gita, so if somebody suddenly turns up, they can close The Bible and the Gita and you never know what was hidden in them. When I was arrested in America -- when I entered the cell there was another inmate. On his side he had pasted the whole wall with naked women, ugly pictures. But every morning, every evening, he would put The Bible on his bed, kneel down on the floor, put his head on The Bible and pray for half an hour. The first day I watched; the second day I said, "This is strange. You are a religious person, you should not have these pictures on your wall." He said, "Nobody ever said that to me. All the walls in the jail are pasted with pornographic pictures, and everybody has a Bible. But I never saw a contradiction." I said, "There is no contradiction. You have repressed sex, that is written on the wall. And what you do -- putting your head on The Bible, is simply hypocrisy. By putting your head on The Bible do you think The Bible will enter into your head, change your being? -- and that is for a few minutes in the morning, a few minutes in the evening. And twenty-four hours a day, I see you looking at these pictures, finding new pictures, bringing new pictures." Religions are responsible for pornography, religions are responsible for sexual perversions. I am simply teaching nature to those whose mind has been poisoned against nature. YOU WERE A PROFESSOR IN A COLLEGE, AND EVEN TODAY YOU ARE A TEACHER, A MASTER. WHAT SORT OF EDUCATION SHOULD BE IN OUR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES?

I have been a teacher, and I left being a teacher in the university because I cannot do anything against my conscience. And your whole education is not to help man but to cripple him. Your educational system is to support the vested interests. I was unable to do it. I refused to do it. A real education will be rebellious because its eyes will be on the future, not on the past. Nature has not given you eyes behind your head. If nature wanted you to go on looking at the back it was useless to give you eyes to look ahead. The Indian educational system is still the same as the British government had imposed on India's mind. Their purpose was to create clerks, slaves, and the same educational system continues; because now those who are in power also want clerks, slaves. Nobody wants the truth to be spoken, nobody wants the future to be created, but only the past to be exploited. I would like to see an educational system that is not devoted to the government, not devoted to this rotten society, but devoted to the man, the growing child. Man has a body but your education does nothing for the man's body. We know that man's body can be trained to remain healthy, strong, young; but nobody bothers about the body. In education there is no programme. Man has a mind, but education is only concerned to condition the mind according to those who are in power so it becomes servile. This is against humanity. Mind should be made clean, sharp, intelligent; but nobody wants an intelligent mind, nobody wants a sharp consciousness. They are dangerous because these people will not say yes to any nonsense. Education has to be rebellious in the sense that a man becomes capable of saying yes or no, on his own accord. If too much intelligence is dangerous then every government, every country wants people to be retarded. Retarded people are obedient. I have heard that after the first world war psychologists for the first time tried to measure man's intelligence. The army was a good place and they were shocked to see that thirteen years was the average mental age in the army. The man may have been seventy years old but his mind had stopped growing after thirteen years. But in the army they don't want intelligent people. In the second world war, a professor was recruited to the army because there was a shortage of soldiers. The professor said again and again, "I am absolutely incapable of being a soldier." But nobody listened to him. The first day he was put on the ground and the orders came from the captain, "Left turn, right turn, turn to the back"... but the man simply stood where he was standing. The captain was amazed; he knew this man was a famous professor. After the exercise of right turn, left turn, turn back, go forward a few yards, come back again... when the line was again back in the original position, he came to the professor who was standing all the time in his place. He said, "What is the matter with you. Can't you hear my orders?" He said, "I can hear your orders but what is the point? These idiots went right, went left, went this way, went that way... and finally ended up in the same position in which I have been standing all the time. And when you say, `right turn' I cannot simply turn right. I have to convince myself -- why? Why turn right, why not left? Without a rational support I cannot turn right or left -- you cannot make me act like a fool. What is the point of turning right?" Nobody had ever asked this of the captain. He said, "This is strange. I will have to ask the higher authorities what to do with this man. If he cannot turn right and has to have everything rationally explained... and what reason can I give? This is just an exercise." The professor said, "Exercise I can do at my home. There is no need to come here in this cold and to do stupid things." The higher authorities said, "He is a famous professor. He cannot do anything without an intelligent, rational support. You send him to me, I will give him some other work." He took him to the army's mess, gave him a big pile of green peas and told him, "You sit down. Put the big peas on one side, on the other side the small peas, and after one hour I will come and see what you have done." After one hour when he came the professor was sitting and the pile of peas was sitting exactly as he had left it, not even a single pea was removed. He said, "You have not done anything." He said, "There have been so many problems and so many implications." He said, "Such a simple job! What problems?" He said, "The first problem is there are big peas, there are small peas, but there are also peas which are in between -- where to put them? And what is the point of all this nonsense. All these peas are going to be in one pot, big and small, so why bother?" He was released, he was of no use. Every army, in the morning, in the evening, goes on training people. You think it is training, it is not training! It is simply destroying their intelligence. It is a preparation so that when the order comes to shoot they don't think why, they simply shoot. They don't think, "This man has not done anything to me, why should I shoot him?" The why has disappeared in the discipline. There is a reason for the discipline, but it is not only in the army, it is all over the society. If you ask your parents about God they have no answer because their parents never gave any answer to them. They say, "Wait, when you are bigger you will know." One of the friends of my father was thought to be the wisest man in the town and when I used to ask him he would say, "On each point, just wait. When you are mature, bigger, you will understand." This went on and on. I came from the university, I had been top in the whole university. I said to him, "Now it is time. I have been top in the whole university, so what about my questions?" He said, "You wait." I said, "Now this is going to be too much. I have waited too long. Be honest, do you know the answers or not?" He was an honest man. He said, "To tell the truth, I don't know. This was just a strategy that has been used for centuries. With you the difficulty is that you go on asking. Most people as they grow up become involved in other things and no longer care about these questions, they forget. And mostly they get married, their children start asking them, so they start saying, `Wait. When you become bigger you will get the answer.' The difficulty with you is that you are unmarried." I said, "This is strange. Do you think marriage will solve the problems? I cannot see that by getting married I will know what God is, otherwise all those who are married would know. You have been thrice married, you must have known all the mysteries." He said, "I don't know anything. But this is how to get rid of children, otherwise they will torture you." But this does not help their intelligence. It would have been better if they had said, "We don't know. We ourselves are searching ." That would have been honest, that would have been religious. This is cunning, this is not religious. The whole society is living in hypocrisy. You don't know God, still you worship. You don't know anything, still you are ready to answer because those answers have been given to you. So you are simply repeating them like parrots. I would like an educational system which does not give you answers but makes your questions sharper, makes your intelligence keener, and gives you an integrity. Your body should be taken care of, your mind should have a clarity, and your soul -- which is completely neglected, nobody mentions it.... You should be allowed to meditate, you should be taught how to be silent. And silence is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian, silence is just silence. You should be helped to become a deep silence inside so that you can understand your own self. That will make you a religious individual, without teaching you about God, without teaching you about things which even idiots will doubt. You will not be made into a Mohammedan, you will not be made into a Christian or a Jaina or a Sikh, but you will be made into an integrated, healthy, conscious, intelligent, centered, well-rooted individual. But that goes against all the powers because they cannot then enslave you. All other things that are being taught can be taught, but these things should be added. An education that does not create individuality is not education at all, it is miseducation.

From the very beginning you are being told to compare yourself with others. This is the greatest disease; it is like a cancer that goes on destroying your very soul because each individual is unique, and comparison is not possible. YOUR VIEWS ARE ALWAYS CHANGING, NOT CONSTANT. SO AS OF TODAY WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON MAHAVIR AND KRISHNA, ON MOHAMMED AND CHRIST?

Life is not static. In existence there is only one thing that never changes and that is change. I am not a stone. I move, I change -- these are the symptoms of being alive. But I always change for the better. I love these people -- Buddha, Krishna, Mahavir -- but my love is not blind. I can see that these people reached great heights of consciousness, but they have committed very grave mistakes too. And when a small man commits a mistake, the mistake is bound to be small. When a man of the height of Gautam Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna commits a mistake, the mistake is also as great as the man. And the mistake goes on for thousands of years. I love them because they made a great effort, a tremendous effort to come out of darkness, of unconsciousness, to reach to the light. But on the way they also committed a few mistakes. The trouble is that the millions of people that have come after them cannot rise to the heights of their consciousness, but can easily fall victim to their mistakes. Because to fall is easy, to rise is very difficult -- it is a uphill task. People have a mind that says a man is either good or bad. People think in terms of either/or; that's not right. A bad man may have something which is beautiful and great, and a good man may have something which is ugly and to be condemned. But that does not make any difference. So first let me make it clear to you that I don't think in the way of either/or. I take the whole person. Whatever is good I praise -- but that does not mean that I become blind to things which are not good. Naturally, mind moves like a pendulum from one extreme to another extreme. I am not an extremist. I praise Gautam Buddha, I praise Mahavira, but not their extremism. First Krishna created a destructiveness in the country, then they created a kind of impotence in the name of nonviolence. For two thousand years you have been slaves -- who is responsible? Such a big country, yet small tribes came and ruled over you because nonviolence became your cherished goal. The man of wisdom remains in the middle. He does not do violence to anybody -- but he does not allow anybody to do violence to him either. Because in both ways he is supporting violence. Seeing this happening, Sikhism was born, which is exactly in the middle. There is no question of violence as a goal, or nonviolence as a goal; but giving man an insight that to be destructive is bad, to destroy life is bad, yet to allow anybody to destroy you is the same. So don't be violent with others; but if somebody is going to be violent with you then your sword should be with you. Sikhism made it a point that five things make a Sikh -- the sword is one of them. The sword is not to kill anybody but it is just to make everybody aware that, "We are not vegetables -- if you go on cutting us we will respond." I appreciate Mahavira, a man perhaps never equaled in his struggle to find himself, a man of tremendous power. But he went to the extreme again. It is good not to have many possessions because all your possessions become your anxieties and there is no end to it. You can go on and on and the mind goes on asking for more and more. Mahavira was the son of a king, was going to be enthroned, was going to be the successor. He renounced the kingdom. I do not object to it -- but don't take things to extremes. Renouncing the kingdom is perfectly good if you don't want to be worried -- and a kingdom is a constant worry and tension and anguish -- if you want peace and silence and you want to devote your energies towards inner growth. But I cannot support being naked. Clothes are not such a worry. I have been using clothes, you have been using clothes, and they have never worried me. So I don't think they are stopping your spiritual growth. In fact if it is cold and you are not wearing clothes, that will stop your spiritual growth, that will create tension in you. But he went to such an extreme point that he would not use any instrument, even a razor to shave his beard or his hair. Now a razor is not an atom bomb. He started pulling out his hair -- that is stupid. And I want to maintain that even a genius can have a part in him which is idiotic. Every year he would pull out his hair with his hands because he could not use any instrument. I don't see any spirituality in it. Wherever I see something that goes to help the evolution of consciousness, I am for it. It does not matter whether it comes from Mohammed or Moses or Mahavir. Men are unimportant; what is important is the evolution of consciousness. But there should be a balance, otherwise the pendulum naturally moves to the other extreme. Mohammed gave the name Islam to his religion. Islam means peace, and Islam has created more turmoil in the world than any other religion. Certainly Mohammed must be responsible for it. On his sword he has written "Peace is my message." "Peace is my message" is not to be written on a sword, because the sword is not a message of peace. My approach towards all great people who have lived on the earth is to sort out what is relevant to us and what is not relevant to us. Mohammedanism was born in a country which was not very sophisticated. It knew only one logic, the logic of the sword. And the sword is not a logic. Mohammedanism has remained exactly where it was left by Mohammed because he said -- and I condemn it -- "I am the last prophet of God. The Koran is the last amendment in God's previous messages. Now there will be no other prophets and no other changes." Now this is fanatical and whoever said it -- it does not matter who -- is wrong. Life will go on growing and man will need new messages and new people to work out new problems. And the Koran is not a great religious treatise either -- it has not the flights of Upanishads, it has not the insights of Gautam Buddha. It was natural because Mohammed was teaching uneducated people, but those uneducated people are still carrying the same sword in one hand and the Koran in another. Either accept the Koran or the sword. All the Mohammedans that exist in India, all the Mohammedans who have created Pakistan, are not convinced intellectually that Mohammedanism is a better religion than the religion they left behind. They have been forced into Mohammedanism. And religion is one thing that cannot be forced, should not be forced. Everybody should be allowed to express his vision and everybody should be allowed either to accept it or not to accept it. Not accepting it is not insulting. Religion grows only in a climate of freedom. Mohammedanism has not even given that to Mohammedans. People are puzzled because what I have said yesterday I may not say today, and what I am saying today I may not say tomorrow. I am a living being, I am not dead. Only when I am dead you can be at ease with me, otherwise you cannot be at ease with me. You want to quickly cling to anything that comes into your hands and then you don't want to change it. Fear... but life is a Ganges, it goes on flowing. The real man is always a river. Only dead people are ponds, their water evaporates, they become more and more muddy, and they are dead because there is no flow. Whatever I am saying today is not going to be contradictory tomorrow, it will be something higher and better. But to understand the better and higher you will have to rise to that height, otherwise it will look contradictory. I am a simple man, I don't have any dogma, any creed. I simply have a clarity. I have eyes to see, and when I see that changes are needed I don't care what the consequences will be for me -- that's why I have been unnecessarily condemned by the whole world. Because if I say anything against Jesus, Christians are angry. You will be surprised -- when I spoke on Jesus a few years ago, many Christian publishers in Europe and America were eager to publish it. One Christian publisher in England published ten books and just a few days ago I received a letter, "We cannot publish what you are saying now." I said, "You have never published anything that I have said. You were simply publishing because I appreciated the light part of Jesus Christ. Now I am making the picture complete, the other side has to be shown too. And you don't have the courage to see the other side." In my criticism there is no condemnation of anybody. It is a question of whether it comes close to truth or not, and no man has the monopoly on truth. Truth is so vast and we are so small. Truth has so many facets; at one time we can see only one side. When you see the other side, if you are a coward you will remain quiet because people will say that you are now changing your attitude. I am not addicted to any attitude, any creed. Whatsoever comes to my vision I would like to share with you. I don't want you to agree with me, I don't want you to disagree with me, I simply want you to be open, available, ready to listen. If there is some truth in it, it will reach to your heart. If there is not any truth in it, it will drop on its own accord, it will not reach to your heart.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY? IS IT TRUE THAT AN ASTROLOGER PREDICTED TO YOUR FATHER THAT YOU WOULD NOT SURVIVE MORE THAN SEVEN YEARS, BUT IF YOU SURVIVED YOU WOULD BECOME A BUDDHA?

I have survived -- that's enough proof that astrology has no truth. Astrology is man's weakness, because he cannot see the future and he wants to see it. He is always afraid to go astray. He wants to be certain that he is on the right path, yet the future is absolutely unknown, nothing can be predicted about it. But there are people who are always ready to exploit man's weaknesses. In life, only one thing is certain and that is death. Everything else is uncertain, accidental. Man would have loved death to be uncertain and everything else to be certain. Astrology is his effort to make life a certainty. ... Astrology is against freedom. If tomorrow is decided, then I am a machine, not a man. Only machines should consult astrologers, not men. Man's future is open and an open future gives freedom, freedom to create yourself. Astrology does not give you the freedom -- it is the greatest slavery. Every minute detail is written and there is no way to change it -- it will happen the way it was determined. It has reduced man to a puppet, a puppet of blind forces. I absolutely deny the validity of astrology because I am against all slavery. My whole effort is to make you aware of your freedom. If astrology is right then Gautam Buddha, Kabir, Dadu, do not deserve any respect. It was determined; they had to become what they became. So what is great in it? And murderers do not need to be condemned. Just as Buddha is a puppet, the murderer is a puppet, and both are in the hands of... we know not, we are not aware of those hands. No, I deny this determination. I want to say to you that the achievement of Buddha or Kabir or Nanak is their own achievement. It is their creation, it is their effort, it is their struggle. And they deserve all respect for it. And the murderer, the rapist, the criminal -- they are also creating themselves. They could have created themselves as a buddha, but they decided to create themselves as a murderer. The whole responsibility is theirs. Astrology takes away your responsibility. Anything that takes away responsibility from man is dangerous because responsibility is our very soul, responsibility is our very glory. Without responsibility we are just robots. With responsibility arises human freedom. There is no science of astrology and there can never be. It is against man's spiritual growth, it is against man's freedom, it is against man's humanity.

WHAT ABOUT PALMISTRY? WHAT ABOUT THOSE LINES?

Those lines have nothing to do with the future. We can cut both your hands off -- still there will be a future. We can do plastic surgery and remove your whole skin -- still there will be a future. Those lines are simply the fold marks of your hand. But we want to be irresponsible. Deep down we want somebody else to take the responsibility. Some god should take the responsibility and write your fate. ... I used to live in Raipur. Living just in front of me was an astrologer, the best in Raipur. His fees were very high and every day there was a crowd of people asking him about their sons' and daughters' marriages. One day I told him, "You are deciding the future of other people. What about yourself?" Because his wife used to beat him! He said, "It is all business. I don't know what these lines mean, they don't mean anything at all. My whole life I have been matching -- but nothing matches." A deep desire not to take responsibility is behind the whole game, and the man who is not ready to take responsibility has refused to be a man -- he has fallen from human dignity. Once another astrologer was very much interested in reading my hands, my birth chart. I said, "I don't have any birth chart, but hands you can read. But before you read my hands look carefully at your hands." He said, "Why?" I said, "That will be decided later on." He worked hard, consulted his scriptures and then he said many things. I said, "Thank you." He said, "What about my fees?" I said, "I told you that before reading my hands you should look at your own hands. You should have seen that this man is not going to give you the fees. If you cannot predict such a small thing, and so urgent, then everything else must be meaningless." Man is born as a tabula rasa -- plain unwritten freedom. And this is his glory. A dog can only be a dog and nothing else -- that is determined. A dog has a fate, all your astrologers should move towards dogs, cats and all kinds of animals; they have a determined nature. If you study a buffalo you will see that she will not eat any kind of grass, only a particular grass. Man has risen above the animals, and the basic evolution in man is that he has freed himself from all fetters that blind him. He is totally free to create himself, whatever he wants to be. Every opportunity is available. He can reach to the highest peak of consciousness, he can fall to the lowest depth of darkness. He carries both heaven and hell within him. But except himself, nobody else can decide it and nobody else can predict it. In Bombay, a few friends brought a great and famous astrologer. I said to the astrologer, "You can predict only for one year from today, and I will tell you in writing that whatever you predict I will do absolutely the opposite. Even to the point that if you say that I will live a long life, I will die. But I will not support any slavery." The man looked around at the people who had brought him and said, "Where have you brought me? This man is dangerous. If he commits suicide, I will be caught. Why did you tell him that he would live long, when he has said that he will do exactly the opposite?" I said, "Just for a small experiment you can say that I will not hit you and I will hit you right now. That will be decisive." He was very angry. I said, "That does not matter. What matters is that my actions are my actions and I take the whole responsibility of my actions. Good or bad, but I do not want to throw them on the shoulders of God, fate, kismet, all that nonsense. It is time that we should get rid of it. It has kept this country poor because what can you do? -- your poverty is written in the stars. You cannot stop the growing population. What can you do? -- children are sent by God. You don't take any responsibility for anything. Without responsibility there is no freedom, and without responsibility you fall down to the level of animals, not man. Astrology is for animals, not for man.

BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE TWO: THE TRINITY OF THE FATHER, THE SON AND THE HOLY GHOST; AND THE BODY, THE MIND AND THE WITNESS. OR IS THE HOLY GHOST JUST ANOTHER OLD GHOST?

There is no trinity the way Christians conceive it. The father, the son, the holy ghost -- in fact, the whole idea is anti-feminine, it is against women. In the divine trinity there is no place for any woman. There is a place for a ghost, and I don't think that he is holy because this is the guy who made poor Mary pregnant, and if he is holy then every rapist is holy. This is the most unholy ghost, but there is a place for him. And what kind of family -- father, son and holy ghost? Where is the mother? No, the woman cannot be accepted as part of God. This is the conspiracy. Otherwise it would have been far better: God the father, God the mother, God the son; it would have looked more contemporary, a beautiful family, using birth control -- because centuries have passed and only one son. And the pope and Mother Teresa and all these people go on around the world teaching people against birth control and their God has been practicing it for millions of years. They cannot see a simple fact. But it is ugly simply because there is no place for woman. The whole idea is fiction, but even in fiction the woman has equal rights to man but she has been denied. Even Jesus behaved very rudely with his mother. Once he was speaking in a crowd and somebody shouted from outside, "Jesus, your mother has come to see you and she is here. When you are finished, come out of the crowd." And Jesus said, before the crowd, "Tell that woman" -- he could not even call her his mother -- "Tell that woman that I have only my father, who is in heaven. I don't have any relationship on the earth with any man or with any woman." Simply ugly. But almost all the religions have been doing this to the women of the earth. The other trinity, the trinity of meditation, is certainly a reality -- body, mind and the witness. Body is nature, body is part of the earth. Mind is part of the society, of the whole human heritage. And the watcher is your own individuality. This is a real trinity. There is no question of man or woman because the witness is neither man nor woman. The body will go back to nature as you become awakened, mind will disperse back to the society as you become awakened, and the witness will go back to what I call the godliness that surrounds the whole existence. But the Christian trinity is ugly. You can create a trinity for meditators which is far more real and far more useful. The body has to be taken care of, has to be respected, has to be loved. It is your home. The mind has to be cleaned from any rubbish, from any dust that may have gathered during millions of years of journey, and the moment you have cleaned the mind you will find the hidden reality of your being, the witness. And to find it is to conquer the whole universe, to find it is to find all. You ask me:

THEN WHY DOES JESUS SAY TO US, "WHEN YOU PRAY, SAY... "?

Jesus never said this to you. He was talking to other kinds of people. If Jesus comes to you, remember one thing: there will be no possibility of any communication between you and him. There will be a gap of two thousand years. And you know very well that even the small gap between you and your father is almost unbridgeable. Talk to your father, and you are talking to a wall. Your father feels the same: talking to a child is impossible; there seems to be no communication. Two thousand years is a big gap. If Jesus comes right now, he will look like a pygmy to you. You will not be able to understand why this man has been worshipped for two thousand years... for what? You will not be able to appreciate him at all. You will find a thousand and one faults in him, very easily. Even the most stupid of you will be able to see: "Is this the man we have been worshipping in thousands of churches, millions of people praying to him? Is this the man?" But two thousand years of continuous painting... and that is the work of the church, theologians, philosophers, priests -- they go on making it up-to-date, as far as they can, they go on putting on new layers of paint. If you dig deep into these thick layers of paint, you will be really at a loss. When you discover Jesus, you will be very frustrated. You will find a very ordinary man. Yes, in those days he was extraordinary -- it is a question of time. In those days he was extraordinary because the people were even far more backward than he was. But now you are two thousand years ahead of him. The way he talks and the things he says are not addressed to you, Prabodh. You say:

HE SAYS TO US...

No, he has no idea of you. What I am saying I am saying to you, but what Jesus is saying he is saying to the people of his time. He is not contemporary to you, how can he say anything to you? And this is one of the problems that I am encountering every day, because the people who come to me, either they are living with the hangover of Jesus or of Buddha or of Mahavira or of Krishna or of Zarathustra. They have their past hangovers, and I am a contemporary man! I am simply talking to the twentieth-century, and not only to the twentieth-century crowd but to the twentieth-century elite -- the people of the highest intelligence. Hence, it is difficult to understand what I am saying. You live thousands of years back. It is very rare to find a contemporary man. Somebody is one thousand years old, somebody two thousand, somebody three thousand.... And the older they are, the more valuable they think they are. Hindus try to prove that their Vedas are the oldest scriptures, as if this is something creditable. The oldest scriptures simply means that you have not moved since then, you are still carrying the burden. Historians say that the scriptures of the Hindus, the Vedas, are five thousand years old. But Hindus are not ready to accept it -- they say they are at least ninety thousand years old. The older they are the better. The same is true about other religions, as if all that is old is gold. In fact, life is always new, fresh, as fresh as dewdrops in the early morning sun on the lotus leaf, as fresh as the stars, as fresh as the eyes of a newly-born baby, as fresh as the song of the birds right now. Life knows only one time, that is now. Jesus was not talking to you, he could not -- he had no idea about you, he could not conceive of you. But he was talking to his own people, and his people lived with these ideas. He was paraphrasing the Jewish concept of religion.

He was saying, "GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD. FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES. LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL."

Now, to me all that is just sheer rubbish.

"GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD."

In the past, humanity has been very poor. The whole past has been one of long starvation, hunger, illness, famine, floods -- all kinds of diseases. It is a miracle how man has survived somehow. In countries like India, that is the case still. Hence, you will see one thing happening: the intelligent core of Western youth is turning more and more towards meditation, but the Eastern masses are turning more and more towards things like Christianity. Indians would like more Mother Teresas in India than me. Naturally, because bread is needed. If you look around India you will find only the poor people being converted to Christianity; not a single rich man is converted to Christianity. Beggars, orphans, widows, aborigines, who cannot manage even one meal every day -- they are being converted to Christianity. It appeals to them because bread is their problem.

Jesus says, "GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD."

We have to create it; there is nobody to give it to us. That is the work of science; religion has nothing to do with it. We should start demarking lines: what can be done by science should be done by science, what can be done by technology should be done by technology. If your car has stopped and you have run out of gas, you don't just kneel down by your car and start praying, "Give us our daily gas." That will be as stupid as this prayer. You know you have to search for a gas pump! This is not the way -- it is not going to happen. But priests have been trying all along to make religion dominate your whole life -- from bread to God. They are very much afraid to divide; hence, they were against science, against technology. Bertrand Russell is right when he says, "If the whole of humanity is well-fed, well-nourished, prayers like this -- 'Give us our daily bread' -- will become absolutely futile." There will be no need at all! And with that, your churches, your temples, your priests, will start losing their power. They have possessed humanity for the simple reason that they have not allowed science and technology to improve your lot. In India, Mahatma Gandhi was against science, against very necessary science too. He was against the railway trains, the telegraph, the post office, electricity. He wanted this country to live at least as primitively as people used to live ten thousand years ago. The only thing that he accepted as the greatest scientific invention was the spinning wheel. And he was worshipped as a mahatma. To me, he is committing a crime, a far bigger crime than Adolf Hitler's. But his crime is very subtle. You cannot detect it because he is talking in religious verbiage: "One should trust God -- why should one trust science?" My emphasis is: life is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, and we should be very clear-cut about divisions. Music should be taken care of by musicians, not by mathematicians. Dancing should be taken care of by dancers, not by chemists. Poetry should be taken care of by poets, not by physiologists. Science has its own contribution -- it is man's intelligence. There is no need for any prayer, we can provide this earth with a paradise, but we will not be able to unless we stop all kinds of nonsense that we are stuffed with. But this has been a strategy of the priest. He can dominate you only if you are poor, he can dominate you only if you are starving -- because when you are poor and starving and miserable, you are bound to fall at his feet because he is the mediator between God and you. You don't know any address for where God lives, what language he speaks. That is the expertise of the priest. He knows God speaks Sanskrit, and he does not allow you to learn Sanskrit either, because if YOU learn Sanskrit then he will not be needed. He knows God speaks Aramaic, Hebrew; he will not allow you to learn Aramaic and Hebrew. If you learn them then he will be exposed, because there is nothing in Aramaic or Hebrew or Sanskrit, nothing of any value. But if you don't know those languages you remain ignorant; and he goes on pretending to be the wise man. He can go on leading you -- blind people are leading other blind people. And his power depends on you, and he has become very cunning. Centuries of exploitation have given him the whole craft, the art, the knack of exploiting you.

Growth means you are not moving in a circle, that something new is happening every day, every moment...

Fear is not natural, it has been created. It has been imposed on you by the parents, the priests, the teachers. Everybody you have come in contact with has been imposing fear on you, because fear is the antithesis of freedom. The more fear you have in you, the less is the possibility of freedom. The more fear is there, the less is the possibility of rebellion. The society, the church, the state, all want everybody to be in a state of constant fear: fear of the known, fear of the unknown, fear of death, fear of hell, fear of missing heaven, fear of not making your name in the world, fear of just being a nobody. Everybody around you from the very birth is creating fear. No child is born with fear. Every child is born with freedom, doubt, rebellion, individuality, innocence -- all great qualities. But he is helpless, dependent. But when you are grown up, you can see -- you can try to peel the onion layer by layer -- how fears have been created in you, how gullible you have been, how people have exploited your innocence. The priest had no knowledge of God, yet he deceived you and pretended that he knows God. He had no idea of heaven and hell, yet he forced you to be afraid of hell, to be ambitious for heaven. He created greed, he created fear. He himself was a victim of other people. Now you can look back: your father was not aware what he was teaching, what he was telling to you. Everybody has been pretending to their children. All are hypocrites. But the problem is that when you are grown up, you have your children, you have your younger brothers, sisters, and now you are afraid that if you don't play the game of being a hypocrite yourself, what will happen to these children? ... Because that is the only game you know, and you don't have the guts to say, "I know nothing." The first thing, to drop fear, is to accept the fact, "I know nothing." Just yesterday I received a letter from the president of the Atheist's Association of America -- she seems to be an old woman. She is very much impressed with my declaration that there is no God, that religion is dead, that man is mature enough and needs no religion, no God. So she has written in great praise: "You are the first man who has such courage. I would like to meet you. I want to come and share thoughts with you. I am an atheist, the founder of the atheist movement in America and in other countries, even in India." She is the founder. I told my secretary to write to the old woman and say that, "You are welcome to come, but you must be made aware of a few things. First I am not an atheist. If there is no God, the theist is as stupid as the atheist. Both are idiots, wasting their time on something which is not there. And the theist can be forgiven; at least he believes that God is there. You believe there is no God, and your whole life you have devoted to preaching that there is no God. What have you gained out of it? If there is no God -- finished! Why should you be an atheist?" Have you looked into the word "atheist"? It contains "theist"; it is only a reaction. Just think, if all theisms disappear, what will happen to atheists? They will have to die. They will lose all the excitement of denying God, because nobody is proposing the exists. I am not an atheist. The theist knows not, but believes. The atheist also knows not, but believes. Have you really searched every nook and corner of existence and found that there is no God? Forget about every nook and corner of existence -- have you searched within yourself? Your atheism is just an ideology, a negative belief. I am not an atheist, so you have to come here knowing perfectly well that I will not support you. Thirdly, I teach the state of no-mind, so there is no question of exchanging thoughts. If you are willing to exchange silence, I am ready." People are very strange: they move from one extreme into another extreme. If they drop fear of one thing, they will immediately catch hold of fear of something else. But they will not drop fear as such, for the simple reason that to drop fear as such means giving yourself total freedom. And total freedom is risky, it is dangerous; one does not know where it will lead. And freedom brings with it responsibility: only you are responsible, whatever you do. The man who fears God has a certain consolation that whatever happens, happens through the will of God; he is not responsible. Q: WHAT TO GIVE CHILDREN NOWADAYS, SO THAT THEY CAN BE AS PLAYFUL AS YOU HAVE BEEN?

A: It all depends on them. Nobody was allowing me, I took the liberty and the responsibility, and the consequences. I was punished, but I took the punishment as part of the play; I enjoyed so much that the punishment did not mean anything. And when my family started understanding me a little more, they stopped punishing me; they said, "It is useless." When my teachers started understanding me, they said, "It is difficult to punish you," because they will say, "Sit down and stand up for ten times," and I will ask, "Can I do it thirty times?" And the teacher will say, "Are you crazy? I am punishing you for being late! It is not a reward, and you are asking thirty times!" I said, "I don't care about your punishment; I can change it into a reward, you cannot stop me. In fact, this morning I have not done any exercise. Just be compassionate, let me do it thirty times." They will tell me, "Go round the school one dozen times." I will say, "That's great. I love to run, to jog, for miles. So a dozen times is insulting." They said, "What?" I said, "Yes, it is insulting. Tell me, `Go round the school the whole day.' I love the field, I love the trees, I love the sun, I love the wind. And I hate your dismal class and your face and your blackboard." Finally they stopped punishing me, because it was useless. If somebody takes punishment as playfulness, reward, what can you do with that man? Everybody has to understand that. But life will not allow you -- by life I mean the society around you. The people who are purposive, utilitarian, always ask, "For what? What is the goal? What is the motive?" And if you cannot answer, then you are mad. Just doing anything for its own sake... Only a few artists have been courageous enough to say that art is for art's sake, but nobody listened to them. They were saying something of eternal value. It is not only art which is for art's sake: love is also for love's sake, friendship is also for friendship's sake. In life everything has its own intrinsic value, no ulterior motive. That changes you completely. You are no longer running for some goal; you are already there. Each moment you are at home. There is nowhere to go, nothing to be achieved, no ambition to be fulfilled. Each moment is a fulfillment unto itself. And I call this kind of life authentic, real, spiritual. The moment motive enters in, you are a businessman. You have lost track of the mysterious; you have fallen into the mundane, into the marketplace, where everything can be purchased and sold. But there is a space within you where nothing can be purchased, nothing can be sold, yet tremendous experiences are waiting for you -- invaluable, with no price tag on them. When I say fun is the most sacred word in human language, all this is implied in it.

Seriousness is sickness, it is not a device. It leads to death, not to eternal life. Life is playfulness, fun, because the whole existence is a tremendous circus. It is all fun -- all the colors of the flowers, so many beautiful animals, birds, clouds, and for no purpose; they don't serve any purpose. There is no goal to life. Life is a play unto itself. It is sheer abundance of energy, overflowing energy -- existence goes on expanding. No God has created it, because whenever something is created there is purpose. Whenever something is created there is a motive, and when somebody creates it, the created can never be anything other than a machine. Existence has no use as such, it remains eternal, an eternal play of energies in millions of forms. Fun is the most sacred word, far more sacred than prayer. It is the only word that can give you a sense of playfulness, can make you again a child. You can start running after butterflies, searching for seashells on the beach, colored stones. In my own childhood, my tailor had much trouble with me. He was the best tailor in the town, but he said, "You are the worst customer" because I asked him to make as many pockets as possible. He said, "But people will laugh at me." I said, "I am not going to tell anybody that you are my tailor. Make as many pockets as possible, because I have to collect so many things, so many shells, so many stones, so many flowers." My mother had great trouble every night to unload my pockets, and she will say again and again, "Have you ever thought what is the purpose of all this?" And I always answered, I remember, that, "As far as purpose is concerned, what is the purpose of your giving birth to me? What is the purpose of getting married? What is the purpose of the whole day working from four o'clock early in the morning till twelve in the night? What is the purpose? So don't ask the question about purpose. You enjoy what you are doing, I enjoy what I am doing. That is your play, this is my play. I love these stones, that's enough. More than that is not needed." Life has intrinsic value, there is no goal outside it. Hence my whole effort is to change everything into playfulness. To me that is real spirituality. Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed-- borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves.

QUESTION:* BHAGWAN, ALMOST TWO MONTHS AGO I MADE THE INTERVIEW TOO FOR BRAZILIAN NEWSPAPER, AND THAT INTERVIEW HAS PROVOKED A STATE OF SHOCK THERE. ONE WEEK AFTER THE PUBLICATION, THE SAME NEWSPAPER MADE INTERVIEWS WITH PRIESTS, INTELLECTUALS AND HOMOSEXUALS. ALL WERE AGAINST YOUR STATEMENTS. I BROUGHT SOME OF THE REACTIONS AND I WOULD LIKE YOU TO COMMENT. FATHER DOMINGOS*, ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AND PROGRESSIVE PRIESTS IN BRAZIL, SAID, "MR. BHAGWAN IS PROPOSING JOY. IS IT ENOUGH FOR BEING HAPPY TO HAVE GOOD HOUSE AND GOOD FOOD? AND HOW TO LIBERATE THE SPIRIT?" HE IS ALSO SAYING THAT YOU DON'T HAVE GOOD INFORMATIONS AND THAT YOU DON'T KNOW THE WORK OF THE CHURCH WITH THE POOR, AND ESPECIALLY THE POPE'S STATEMENT WHICH SAYS, "WHEREVER IS PRIVATE PROPERTY THERE IS HUMAN MISERY, AND THE CHURCH HAVE TO FIGHT AGAINST IT."

ANSWER:* There are so many things in that statement. First, the church has private properties. So what the nonsense he is talking about? The first thing the churches should do, they should disown private properties if they mean business. Otherwise this is bullshit. Rome has the most richest private ownership than anybody else, and pope is the head of the biggest private empire. What kind of service they are doing to the poor? They are creating poverty in the world. Being against birth control, being against abortion, being against the pill, they are creating poverty, more population than the earth is capable to support. This is the service to the poor? You create the poor and then you serve the poor. In the first place, why create the poor? There is no need for poverty in the world. If the church drops its stupidity against birth control methods, the poverty can disappear. But they would not drop that. Not that any spiritual thing is involved in it, but for the simple reason that if there are not poor people, whom they are going to convert into Christianity? Whom they are going to make Catholics? They need orphans, they need beggars, they need starving people because only they can be converted. In India I have looked for almost half a century for a single rich man who has been converted to Christianity. I have not found. All the people who have been converted to Christianity are the poor people. Poverty is their whole game -- power game. Greater the number, bigger is their power. It is simply the politics of numbers. Secondly, service to the poor is very necessary for the Christian. If there is nobody who is poor, then you cannot go to heaven, you cannot be a saint. Your whole base of the religion disappears. The poor is a must. He should exist because only stepping on the shoulders of the poor people you are going to become a saint, you are going to reach to heaven and be rewarded by God. But if everybody is comfortable, happy, luxurious, who needs your service? And without service there is no Christianity. The whole Christianity depends on the idea of service: service is religion. If service is religion, then the poor, the sick, the old -- they are absolutely needed. Without them the whole edifice of religion will disappear. And he is saying to me that I do not know. I have lived in one of the most poor countries of the world and I have seen how the poor people are being exploited by the Christians. They are exploited by the Christians, they are exploited by the communists. Very strange bedfellows, Christians and communists. Kremlin and Vatican together. Pope the Polack sleeping with Josef Stalin. The communist needs poor people. Without the poor his revolution dies. They both need the poor. I want to destroy poverty. And to destroy the poverty, the first thing is to destroy the idea that poverty is something spiritual. It is not. Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor because they shall inherit the kingdom of God." I say to you, "Cursed are the poor because they have already inherited the kingdom of the devil." Why give them hopes which cannot be fulfilled, promises which cannot be kept? All these hopes and promises prove only opium to the people and nothing else. So the first thing is that poverty has nothing spiritual about it. It is nothing blessed. It is a curse, because when you think poverty as something spiritual, blessed, God-given, how you are going to destroy it? It seems very contradictory. Mahatma Gandhi in India was telling that the poor are the children of God. That means God is looking very well after his children. And who are the rich? Children of devil? Then I think it is better to choose devil as your father than God. He is looking far better after his children. On the one hand Mahatma Gandhi says the poor are the children of God and poverty is something spiritual. And on the other hand he wants poverty to disappear. I see a contradiction there. Do you want spirituality to disappear? Do you want God's children to disappear? And what Mahatma Gandhi is saying is nothing but pure Christianity. He was ninety percent Christian. In his life, at least four times he was on the verge of becoming a Christian. He was constantly thinking of becoming a Christian for the simple reason because no other religion teaches service to the poor. The first thing to me is to withdraw the idea that poverty has something divine in it. The second thing, the poor person has to be made clear that most of his poverty is created by himself. Rich people produce very few children. It is the poor who go on creating children by dozens. And the spiritual teachers of all religions help them to produce children by dozens. These people are serving the poor or creating more and more poverty, making the world more and more poor? So the second thing is that the poor should understand their responsibility. For thirty years, total birth control -- no children. That will be true service. Thirdly, the poor are in the grip of the priests of different religions. They may give them different explanations. For example, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, they say, "You are poor because in your past life you committed grave crimes. This is the result of it. The theory of karma. You have to suffer it. It is better to be finished with it; suffer it silently, patiently, without any complaint and without any grudge so that in the future life you are not born poor. Now, this is a very great strategy to distract the mind of the poor from the social structure, the economic structure which makes him poor and give him a phony explanation for which no proof exists, no evidence. And a simple logic is enough to destroy it and its credibility. You put your hand in the fire. Will it burn now or in the next life? Action certainly brings its consequence, but it is connected. It is not disconnected and so far away that one death has to happen between. There seems to be no reason why. You do something good, you should be rewarded now. No. In the next life you will be reaping a great crop of joy, happiness, comfort, luxury -- but in the next life. Strange. What is the connection? Why the consequence should be so delayed? Nobody knows about the next life. Nobody knows about the previous life. That gives the priest a good ground to deceive the poor. The reality is that he is economically exploited right now. So his eyes have to be taken away from the past, away from the future, and focused in the present. He has to fight for his rights now. He produces and somebody else enjoys the fruit. And the priests go on helping him to remain patient. No. I cannot say that. Enough is enough. Some impatience is needed. Some revolution is needed. And the poor has to revolt. And the church has been nothing but a protection for the rich. It is using the poor in two ways: making its number bigger by serving the poor, opening the hospitals, schools, so making his bank balance in the other world better, and, secondly, he is protecting the rich. And because he is protecting the rich, the rich are pouring their riches into the churches. From where all these riches have accumulated in the Vatican? From the poor people or from the God? Who gives all these donations to the Vatican? All these big cathedrals, churches in thousands around the world -- who creates them? And for what purpose? The rich people bribe the church because church is a very great protection against revolution. I want to destroy poverty completely, but with the poverty the church will die together. It has no place at all anywhere. The poor should stop producing more population and should put their whole energy not in future lives in paradises but fighting for their right, because they produce and somebody else goes on becoming richer and richer. They go on producing and they go on becoming poorer and poorer. Strange kind of economy. This economy has to be changed. But the church has no place then, because whom will it protect? Revolution will burn this social economy and these churches and temples and mosques and all their bogus ideologies. I do not respect poverty. I respect wealth. And I say blessed are the rich because theirs is the kingdom of God -- right now. It is not a question of tomorrow. And wealth has not been understood well. Wealth is a creation. Everybody is not a Henry Ford just as everybody is not a Picasso. You respect Picasso for his genius, because he paints in such a unique way that only he can do it. But you never bother to give some respect to Henry Ford. He also creates something which is far more important than Picasso's paintings. He creates wealth. Man can live without Picasso's paintings. Man cannot live without wealth. And Picasso's paintings can be purchased. But wealth has to be produced, you cannot purchase it. If the population of the earth can be reduced to one-fourth of what it is now -- and what it is now is the responsibility of all these idiots: bishops, cardinals, priests, popes.... For thirty years I have been talking about birth control. It has brought me only condemnation. Stones have been thrown at me, poison has been given to me, knives has been thrown at me, efforts to kill me has been made. That was my reward because I was talking about birth control and the priests became alerted. In thirty years time India has doubled its population. When I had started talking it was only four hundred million. Today it is eight hundred million. If they had listened to me, they would not have been poor. Only fifty percent of the country is poor. That means these four hundred million people that have increased have made the country poor. But I was condemned in the name of morality, in the name of God, that I am teaching something immoral, that if people start using birth control methods then there is a possibility of immorality spreading. I had encountered Hindu priests, Jaina priests, Buddhist priests, and I asked them, "Then your moral people are not very moral. Then it is just the fear that if they make love to some other woman than their own wife and she becomes pregnant, they will be caught. They will be in trouble. So it is only the fear that is keeping them moral. This is not morality. If they are really moral, birth control methods cannot make them immoral. There is no reason." And they had no answer to it. They were using the name of God, that God is giving birth to children. And I am teaching people to prevent children. That means I am against God. I had an encounter with one of the shankaracharyas, the equivalent of pope to the Hindus. I asked him that, "What are the basic qualities of God?" He said, "That is irrelevant for the subject we are discussing." I said, "It is not irrelevant. If you are not courageous to say because you are afraid, you will be caught into it. I will say -- that all your scriptures give God three qualities: that he is omnipotent, all- powerful; omniscient, all-knowing -- past, present, future; omnipresent, everywhere present. If God has these qualities and he can make this whole universe from nothing...." Because there was nothing. In Hindu scriptures God makes the universe out of nothing. Naturally, they have to accept that position because if there was something already then God is not a creator. Maybe a contractor. If he has to be a creator, then there must not be anything: no matter. Out of nothing he creates this whole immense universe. "Do you accept it?" He said, "Yes, I accept it." I said, "Such a God. Cannot he remove a small pill? If a man is using a condom, cannot he make a small hole in it?" Omnipotent God, just needs a little safety pin. And he is all-present, everywhere. Even in your bedroom while you are making love he is just between you and your beloved. He can make all your condoms punctured before you use them. "So why you should be afraid? He cannot even make a small hole in the condom. He cannot change the quality of a small pill. And you still want to call him omnipotent, all-powerful? Then drop these qualities. And if you want to keep these qualities, then drop your argument against me, that I am telling people to do something against God. "The other quality of God is that he knows everything. So whether the person is going to use birth control methods or not, he knows from eternity -- before this person was even born. He knows that he will use birth control methods. It is not out of his knowledge. "And if he wanted, he could have prevented the scientist who created the pill. It is such a small thing. Just before he was going to create it, his heart would have stopped -- and there would have been no pill and no problem. "If God has allowed the pill to happen, birth control methods to be manufactured, it is according to his will. You are talking against God, I am not talking against God." But the problem is poor illiterate, uneducated people. They cannot understand subtleties of arguments. If they had listened to me, India would not have been poor now. If they still listen to me, India can recover from poverty. Otherwise, by the end of this century, India's population will be one billion. It will have gone beyond China. For the first time in the history it will be the biggest, the largest populated country in the world. Otherwise it has always been number two. China has been number one. Poverty can be stopped, but not by service. How long Christians have been serving the poor? Two thousand years. And the poverty has been increasing. Strange kind of service, that you go on serving the poor and the poor go on increasing. A true service will be that the poor decrease and disappear. My suggestions are very simple. Create one world. Nations are outdated. Create one world government, because unless there is one world government the fear of war will always remain. And war goes on taking seventy-five percent income of every nation. Every nation is just surviving on twenty-five percent of its income. Just think if hundred percent income is available to the country, it will change the whole face. Poverty need not be there. One government, one world -- then there is no need for nuclear weapons. Then there is no need for having big armies. It is sheer foolishness that millions of people are just sitting unproductively, doing nothing, just polishing their guns. Every morning doing the march: left turn, right turn, forward, backward. Polishing their boots. And it is not one or two person. Millions of people around the world. All these people should be working, producing. And they are given the best food, best clothes. They are given the best hospitals, the best doctors, best surgeons, best medicine. They are to be kept in perfect health because any moment they may be needed for war. So these useless people are getting the best and doing nothing. One world means there is no need for such big armies. Maybe a small police force is enough -- just for hooligans, Mafia, small gangs of criminals. But there is no need for nuclear weapons, atomic plants, and no need for millions of people simply go on polishing their guns. The poverty can be so easily eradicated. If we can create one world government, then we can create the World Academy of Sciences. So all the scientists of the world, who are right now in the service of death, can be put in the service of life. There is no need to go to the moon. When the earth is starving, you are wasting billions of dollars to go to the moon -- for what? Whenever I think the first man standing on the moon, I always think he must have thought, "What the hell I am doing here? It is good that nobody is seeing. Otherwise I must be looking silly. There is nothing to see." And so much effort, so much science, so much technology for something utterly useless. A world academy of sciences will put all the efforts into producing better food, more food, better fruits, new fruits. In Soviet Russia they have done some crossbreeding between fruits: apple crossbreed with lemon. A new fruit which has never been in existence, with a new taste. You can create thousands of new fruits, new crops, new food. You can make this earth a paradise without any difficulty. All that is needed that the worship of death should be stopped. The possibility of war should be completely eliminated. The humanity is one, hence there is no question of war. National governments can exist, but they will be only functional because they won't have any armies. They will be just like post office, railway board. Nobody cares who is the head postmaster general. There is no need to know about him. All that is needed is that you receive your post in right time. It is a functional thing. As nations lose their war machines, politicians lose their significance. They should disappear from the first pages of newspapers, televisions, radios. They have no need to be there. Those pages should be given to the creators: musicians, poets, people who have done something to make life more richer, more glorious -- mystics, those who have opened doors of new mysteries of consciousness. Right now everything is simply insane. And it can be put right very easily. Only the intelligentsia of the world has to stand up courageously and say that, "Now it is time. That we don't want any nations. That we don't want any passports and we don't want any visas. This whole earth is ours." There are countries where people are dying without food. In America thirty million people are dying by overeating. Now, this is incomprehensible. These thirty million people in a world which is dying with hunger are simply psychologically sick. And they are also dying, because they are eating too much. You will find these people always near the freeze, always something or other. Either they are drinking something ... if nothing, then they are chewing gum. Just mad people. I cannot conceive anybody chewing gum. And these people are educated people, have educational degrees, maybe professors in the universities -- and chewing gum! They should be hospitalized. Chewing gum cannot be forgiven! I have compassion for all, but not for people who are chewing gum. Compassion cannot be stretched that far. Just their mouth has to continue, go on doing something. And they are perfectly aware that people are eating. They don't have even water to drink. For four years there has been no rains in Ethiopia so all water has evaporated. In Europe they drowned millions of tons of oranges in the ocean -- just few days before -- because keeping them in the market was lowering the price. Just to drown them, they had to waste one hundred thousand dollars -- just to throw them in the ocean. And nearby in Ethiopia people are dying with thirst. If the world is one, this cannot happen. Then wherever, whatever is needed will be moved. If there are too many oranges in Europe, they should be moved to Ethiopia. If there is too much wheat in Russia.... There was a time when there was too much wheat, that they were burning wheat in the railway trains instead of coal. People are dying around the world, but in Russia they are burning wheat because that is cheaper than burning coal. In one world this will be absurd. There are countries where is so much coal you can take coal to Russia. Wheat can move to countries where it is needed. Now Russia is almost one-sixth land of the whole world, but the population is only two hundred million. More people can be absorbed there. Sixth part of the land, and the world population is four billion, and they are only two hundred million. They talk about friendship with India. They should take at least two hundred million Indians to Soviet Union. They have such a vast land. It is because of their vast land that all the conquerors who have tried to conquer Russia failed. Napoleon Bonaparte failed because the land is so big, by the time you reach Moscow winter comes -- and a winter which only Russians can survive. The same happened to Adolf Hitler. The same stupidity he committed. And the same was the result. Russia simply was trying to postpone, playing hide-and-seek, waiting for winter to come. And once winter sets in, then nobody can survive. All your vehicles stop, your planes no more function. Everything becomes frozen. Your people have never seen such cold. Their blood seems to be frozen. You cannot win, for the simple reason, the land is so big that whatsoever you do.... It spreads from one corner of Europe to almost the other corner of Asia. It covers two continents. If there is one world government, it will be very simple to divide population, to help people move, to make it possible for crossbreeding, to mix races -- because better children are produced. Farther away are the parents, the best is the product. It is true about trees, it is true about animals, it is true about man. It is not good to go on getting married in the same small community. It gives retarded children, it gives blind children, it gives at the most normally stupid children -- which make the majority of humanity. Just normally stupid. This whole scene can be changed. All that is needed is intelligent people of the world should stand up, because it is a cause for which no sacrifice is big enough. My idea of serving the poor is not the idea of Christians. They have served enough, and nothing has happened. And my people don't want to go to heaven anyway. So that is no more a motivation. And my peoples understand it, that it is their responsibility. Why they have been continually producing children? For their responsibility. Why we are to destroy our own growth, our own silence, our own way of life? They don't listen to us. They listen to the priests. Then they should ask the priests that, "Ask your God. He gives the children. Now he should give bread, he should give butter and he should give other things too." Otherwise, hang your priests in every church. What is the need of keeping Jesus Christ statue hanging there? Hang a real priest in every church! These are the criminals. On the front of the Vatican, hang the pope, because these are the people who have been teaching you wrong things, and they have led you into this situation. My people want to live happily, and if you want to learn to live happily you will have to learn the ways my people are living. If these people can be happy, if these people can be without children for four years, then what is the problem? If for four years these five thousand people were also producing children, here also we would have been really poor. But we have understood that we don't want to be poor, then don't increase the population. It has been asked to me again and again, "Then how You are going to increase Your commune?" I said, "What is the need of increasing it? And if there is any need, we purchase readymade clothes." They say, "What do You mean?" I say, "There are readymade people already all around the world. Others are producing. We can pick up from anywhere. There is no need for us to produce. If we need people, people are all over the world too much. We can invite. We can choose. When you give birth to a child, you cannot choose. You don't know whether he will be crippled, blind, paralyzed -- who knows what? It is better if our commune has more than its needs and feels that we can bring few children. There are so many orphans in the world -- choose the best. Adopt them. But we are not going in the same way to serve them. Let the Christians do it. It is not my philosophy. It is not my responsibility.

Q:* STILL THE SAME PRIEST. HE IS ASKING IF MR. BHAGWAN HAS CALLOUSES ON HIS HANDS. AND MORE, HE ASK, "MR. BHAGWAN, HAVE YOU BEEN HUNGRY? HAVE YOU BEEN CRYING YOUR LIFE? DID YOU LOVE ANYONE IN YOUR LIFE?"

A:* I have never been hungry. And I have intelligence enough to provide food for myself even though for thirty years I don't have a single cent with me. But I live the way only an emperor can live. And my hands have done never anything. These are the most bourgeois hands in the whole world. But they are very expressive. All that they do, they speak. And there are many things which I cannot say, but my hands can say. That's the only work they have done. And I think they have done it beautifully. And I am perfectly proud of it. It has been my creation. Every gesture is creative. As for loving, I have loved more people than anybody else in the whole history of man. And I have received love also in the same way, more than anybody else in the whole history of man. And I don't see why people should be hungry. They are hungry because they have been following stupid teachings of Jesus Christ. They are hungry because they are following still the moral code five thousand years old written by Manu in India. All kinds of garbage they are carrying as holy and trying to follow it, which deprives them. For example, in India Mohammedans are the second biggest community after Hindus, but they are very poor. I was continuously wondering what is the reason that all the Mohammedans in the whole country -- and India has the biggest number of Mohammedans than any country. Although it is not a Mohammedan country, but it has the biggest number of Mohammedans than any other country. Why they are all poor? And as I looked into their scriptures, I found the reason. The reason was that they have been prohibited by Prophet Mohammed that interest is a sin, so never give money on interest, one thing. Never take money on interest. This is the reason they are poor, because they cannot take money on interest and they cannot give money on interest. And the whole economy functions on interest. You take money from the bank on interest, you take loan from the government on interest, but they cannot take it. It is sin. Now, a stupid idea keeps them poor. Am I responsible for it? Should I go and serve them? If they are hungry and poor, this is one reason. The second reason, Mohammed has given them the opportunity that they can marry four women. If one woman marries four men, that will be very helpful in reducing the world population. One woman can marry as many men as she wants, there is no harm. It will not create more poverty because she can give only birth to one child. How many husbands she has makes no difference. But one man and four women is a dangerous thing. Now that man can have four children every year. So Mohammedans are having more children than anybody in India. Naturally, every man goes on dividing his poverty into so many children, they all end up almost like beggars. They cannot do anything, they cannot be well educated because the money is not there. They have to do very unskilled work which cannot pay much. Now who is responsible for this? And why Mohammedan priests go on telling them to marry four women? Because that increases the number of Mohammedans. That's how they have become the second biggest religion in the world. Christianity is first, Mohammedanism is second. And if they continue creating children with four wives, any day they can surpass Christianity. Their only problem is how to find four women, because nature produces in a very balanced way: almost the equal number of men and women. So the idea of having four women creates criminals. They will rape some woman. Now, Hindus will not accept a woman back if she has been raped by a Mohammedan. Hindus think they are the purest race. Now that woman has fallen. The Mohammedan has to marry her. If a Mohammedan falls in love with a Hindu woman, she has to marry the Mohammedan. So they have to search in every possible way for as many women as they can manage. And because they have four women, the men become lazy. They start living on women's labor. Now, the women are illiterate. What they can do? They can do cleaning or things like that. But four women can manage at least one lazy man. So men become lazy, women are burdened with work, with children, and poverty goes on growing. My approach is very simple. I trust in man's intelligence, and if people put their intelligence together.... For example, five thousand people are here. If they were living in the old way, the family way, then there would have been at least one thousand families. One thousand kitchens. One thousand women unnecessarily engaged in kitchen, cleaning, washing clothes, bringing up children. And naturally, a woman who has nothing else than just to keep up the house somehow together becomes irritated, annoyed, angry, because she has no scope for her own growth. She has no sky to fly. And her whole anger becomes arrowed towards the husband. So directly or indirectly she is nagging. She becomes a pain in the neck -- literally. But she is not responsible. Every family is miserable. Children are a torture. They are a continuous nuisance. She has to keep up with those children the whole day. And the whole day she is burning, boiling inside. And this man, her husband, is responsible for this all. Naturally there is continuous fight, continuous quarrel. Life is not a joy, and poverty is bound to be there. In this commune families have dissolved. I am against families because family is the unit of the nation, of the society, of the church. If family dissolves there cannot be any congregation, there cannot be any nation, there cannot be any church. Five thousand people can be taken care of by one kitchen far more efficiently, in a far better way. And only very few people are involved in the work. Few people can take care of the whole commune's laundry. There is no need for them to worry about it. Few people can take care of the cleaning of the whole commune. Economically it saves much. Economically money becomes irrelevant. In the commune there is no transfer of money. There is no need. Clothes we purchase wholesale for five thousand people. Naturally they are cheaper than anybody can purchase. Everything that is needed we purchase wholesale: medicine, shoes. It is cheaper. And whatever is saved can make the commune more comfortable. And because the family is dissolved, the barriers between people are no more there. Five thousand people feel almost as one organic unity. They work for themselves. They work hard because they know they are working for themselves. If they are making houses, they are making for themselves. In the outside world everybody is working for somebody else. That makes work a burden, a necessity, a slavery. You have to work because you need money. Here you work because you want your commune to live more comfortably, have all modern equipments available. The world has passed the family. It is unnecessarily hanging around and keeping people poor. Cities should be divided into communes, not in families, and every commune should look after itself. And everything should be common. It is just a question of little intelligence, not a question of service to the poor. And we have enough intelligent people around the world who can manage it. And they will have to manage it, otherwise we cannot survive. Okay? The rich people bribe the church because church is a very great protection against revolution. I want to destroy poverty completely, but with the poverty the church will die together. It has no place at all anywhere. The poor should stop producing more population and should put their whole energy not in future lives in paradises but fighting for their right, because they produce and somebody else goes on becoming richer and richer. They go on producing and they go on becoming poorer and poorer. Things are happening. You feel hunger, you feel love, you feel anger -- everything happens to you, you are not a doer. Nature takes care. You eat and nature digests it; you need not bother about it, about how the stomach is functioning, how the food is going to become blood. If you become too tense about it you will have ulcers -- and king-size ulcers, not ordinary ones. No need to worry. The whole is moving. The vast ocean, the infinite is moving. You are just a wave in it. Relax, and let things be. Once you know how to let go, you have known all that is worth knowing. If you don't know how to let go, whatsoever you know is worthless, it is rubbish... They say: Think twice before you jump. I say: ‘JUMP FIRST AND THEN THINK AS MUCH AS YOU WANT!’

God is your chain, religions are your chains; the idea of sin, the idea of virtue are your chains. Freedom consists in a single thing, and that is your awareness. Act out of awareness and you will be acting out of freedom -- and without interfering in somebody else's freedom. Freedom knows how to respect others' freedom. You don't have to do anything, Dharmesh, to attain freedom. It is already there within you. Just drop the chains. And those chains are such that you have started loving them; you have become accustomed to them. It will be a little painful to depart from your miseries, a little painful to depart from your old sufferings, familiar friends, and enter into a new area of freedom, awareness. But except that, there is no hope for humanity. All that is needed is just a little intelligence. You have been deprived even of that. And the pope is angry with me, the shankaracharyas are angry with me, the imams are angry with me, for the simple reason that I want you to be intelligent. They want you to be absolutely fools, idiots, retarded, so you can be enslaved, tortured, harassed, sacrificed, and you will not revolt against it.

Remember this: God is neither man nor woman; he cannot be man or woman. Either he is both or he is neither. God is the ultimate synthesis of all opposites. Man is one extreme, woman the other. God is not an extreme, he is the whole existence. He is vast enough to contain the opposites; all opposites become complementaries in God. So don't cling to my answers; they are not answers. I am not a teacher at all. I am not here teaching you a certain dogma, a certain creed. I am simply trying to help you to be unburdened of your knowledge so that you can be silent with me. And I am in a hurry because soon I want to go into silence, so you also have to be quick. Don't linger too much. Don't go on postponing because I will not be talking for ever and ever. Soon I want to be silent. You can sit in silence with me then, you can sing, you can play music, you can dance, but I want to stop all kinds of intellectual communications between you and me. I want to be existentially related to you. I am simply preparing the ground -- I am pulling out weeds. So it depends: whatsoever your belief is I am going to destroy it. I am against all beliefs. That's why you will find Christian priests against me, the Catholic pope against me, the Hindu shankaracharya against me, the Mohammedans against me, even the communists against me; for the simple reason that I am against all beliefs, communist or Catholic, Hindu or Buddhist, it doesn't matter -- belief is belief. I want you to be in a state of no-belief, in a state of not-knowing. I want you to function from that state of not-knowing, from that innocence. Only in that innocence will you be able to know. So if you have communist weeds in you I will pull them out. If I need the help of Catholic instruments, I will use Catholic instruments to pull out communist weeds. If you are a Catholic and communist instruments are needed, I will use communist instruments to pull out Catholic weeds. My function here is that of a surgeon. I am not much interested in what instruments are being used -- surgery has to be done. Something has to be pulled out of you. Your soil has to be completely cleared of all stones, of all weeds. Only then will your nature start growing roses. So you will be puzzled. Many times you will find my statements contradictory -- they are, and I don't want to hide the fact. They are contradictory, they are absurd! Because I will say one thing one moment and I will contradict it the next moment. And I am not at all consistent -- or I am only consistent in one thing: about my inconsistencies, that is my only consistency. I am consistently inconsistent, that's all. I am always contradictory, for the simple reason that you have come here from different backgrounds and I am trying to destroy all backgrounds, all conditionings.

OSHO, WHAT PLACE HAS MYSTICISM IN YOUR RELIGION?

My religion is pure mysticism.

There is nothing else in it.

The other religions have no place for mysticism in them. They cannot have, for the simple reason that they have answers for every question – bogus answers, without any evidence, with no argument.

But for the gullible humanity they are consoling. They demystify existence.

All knowledge demystifies existence.

I don’t teach you knowledgeability.

On the other hand all the religions do just that: they make you knowledgeable. They have a God as the creator. They have messengers of God bringing all the answers from the original source, indubitable, infallible.

These religions could exploit humanity for a simple reason: man feels a kind of inner unease when there are questions and there is no way to find the answer. Questions are there – man is born with questions, with a big question mark in his heart – and it is good.

It is fortunate that man is born with a question mark, otherwise he would be just another species of animal. Buffaloes have no questions – they accept whatever is, unquestioningly – they are really faithful, religious. Trees have no questions, birds have no questions; it is only man and man’s prerogative, his privilege. In the whole of existence he alone is capable of asking a question.

The old religions have been trying to destroy your privilege. They have been forcing you down to the level of the animals. That’s what they call faith: ”undoubting faith.” They want you to be buffaloes, donkeys, but not men – because man’s only special quality that defines him as separate from animalhood is the question mark. Yes, it is a turmoil. Certainly to live without any questions is peaceful, but that peace is a dead peace, it has no life in it. That silence is the silence of a cemetery, of the graveyard.

I would prefer man to be in a turmoil, but alive.

I would not like him to become a graveyard. That peace, that silence is at a great cost: you are losing your life, you are losing your intelligence, you are losing all possibility of discovering an ecstatic way of life. That question mark is not there without significance. It is not the work of the devil that each child is born with doubt, not with faith.

Doubt is natural.

Each child is asking a thousand and one questions. The more a child asks the questions, the more potential he is showing that he will be able to discover something. There are dumb children too – not literally dumb, but psychologically dumb. Parents like them very much because they don’t create any trouble, they don’t ask any questions – even a small child can destroy all your knowledgeability.

I am reminded of my own childhood and so many things that will help you to understand the beauty of the question mark. And unless you understand the question mark as something intrinsic to your humanity, to your dignity, you will not understand what mysticism is.

Mystifying is not mysticism

Mystifying is what the priests have been doing.

They have taken your question mark.

They have destroyed the possibility of your exploring the mystery of existence. But they have to give you some substitute, some lollipop that is mystifying. And that is what all the scriptures have been doing; their basic methodology has been the same.

For example, in Hinduism the scriptures are written in a very difficult language, Sanskrit. Not a single Indian speaks it; it is a dead language. And as far as I am concerned, I have tried hard to find out whether it has ever been alive and I have not found a single piece of evidence. It has always been dead from the very beginning; it was born dead. It was invented by the priests. People have never used it, people cannot use it. It is so sophisticated, so grammatical, so mathematical, so phonetical that people cannot use it.

When people use a language, the language starts becoming less grammatical but more alive; less mathematical but more meaningful. It becomes raw, it is no longer polished and sophisticated – and it starts growing. Sanskrit has never grown. A dead thing cannot grow. It is exactly where it was five thousand years before – no growth. Obviously a dead thing cannot grow.

A living language used by people goes on growing. Its words become more and more rounded, just like stones sli

ing into the river start becoming round. The continuous flow of the river, the continuous hitting against other rocks, against other stones, gives them a roundness. This can be seen; and you can immediately describe, define which languages are dead and which languages are living.

The living languages will never be perfect – dead languages will be always perfect – because living languages are used by imperfect, fallible, human beings, and from mouth to mouth they go on changing. They become more and more usable.

For example, in India English was introduced from the outside. A few words were bound to go into people’s use – for example, the word station. Now there has never been anything like a station in India before; it came after the English language had already come. Then the railways were introduced and of course the word station was there.

But if you move all over India in the villages, you will never find a single Indian – I mean of the ninety-eight percent of Indians who don’t know English using the word station. It is too difficult, too sophisticated. Through use, they have made – without anybody actually making it, just by use – they have come to the word tesan. That is simple. ”Station” seems to be a little difficult, it is a strain, so ”tesan.”

”Report”... now, it came with the English language, the police stations and your having to ”report.” But go to the villages and you will be surprised: nobody uses the word report, they use the word rapat. It has become rounded, ”rapat” – the sophistication of ”report,” the difficulty of ”report” is gone. ”Rapat” that seems to be human. And so many words... and they tell a tremendously meaningful story: when words are used by people then they start taking a shape of their own. By mere usage they go on changing.

Sanskrit remains static. Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin – they all remain static, far above people’s heads, far above their hands. Sanskrit was never the language of the people and this was mystifying – the whole country depended on the priesthood, and in Sanskrit they would be saying pure rubbish. Once you know it, you will be surprised – what is sacred about it? But chanted in Sanskrit, you don’t know what it means, you are mystified.

To keep the scriptures sacred it was necessary to keep them secret. They should not reach the people, people should not be able to read them. Whenever they need, the priest is available, he will read it. When printing was introduced Hindus were very reluctant for their scriptures to be printed: what would ha

en to the mystifying that they had been maintaining for thousands of years?

Hindus have mystified the whole country with the idea that they have all the secrets in their sacred books – but of those sacred books, ninety-nine percent is simply cow-dung! For Hindus it may be holy, but for nobody else is it holy. When those sacred books were translated into other languages the mystifying process sto

ed; Hinduism lost its height, its glory, because then you could read it in any language – all those scriptures were available.

Mahavira never spoke in Sanskrit, Gautam Buddha never spoke in Sanskrit – for the simple reason that they were trying to defy the priesthood. They spoke in the language of the people. They were condemned by the priesthood: ”This is not the right way. You should speak in Sanskrit. And both of you are perfectly well educated ” – both were sons of great kings – ” you know Sanskrit, so why do you speak ordinary people’s languages?”

They said, ”For a certain reason: we want people to know that this mystifying has to be exposed. There is nothing in your scriptures, but because they are in a language which nobody understands, it is left to the people’s imagination.”

Even the priest may not understand what he is reciting because Sanskrit has to be learned by memorizing, not by understanding. There is a great difference between the two. Sanskrit has to be learned by rote, by memory; you have to memorize it. Its whole emphasis is on memory, not on understanding. There is no need to be bothered what it means; all that you should be concerned about is how it is chanted.

And of course Sanskrit is a very beautiful language, having the quality of singing. You can memorize a song more easily than the same length of prose. Poetry is easily memorized; hence, all the languages which have depended on memory are all poetic, they look like songs, they sound beautiful Meaning? – you should not ask, because the meaning may be just as stupid as any of today’s newspapers, perhaps even worse because it is a five-thousand-year-old newspaper.

When a brahmin is chanting it you will be mystified by his chanting; it creates a certain atmosphere of song. And what is the meaning of what he is chanting? Perhaps the passage he is chanting is a prayer to God that means: ”Please destroy the crops of my enemy, and let my crops be doubled over last year’s. Let the milk disa

ear from my neighbor’s cows and let all that milk come to my cows.” When you understand the meaning, you will say, ”What nonsense! Where is the sacredness? Where is the religion? This is religion?” – but the meaning is not to be bothered about.

The Mohammedan, if you listen to him calling from the tower of his mosque... you will be thrilled with its singsong quality. Arabic is tremendously touching, goes directly to the heart. It is meant to go there, it is not meant to go to your intellect, your reason. It is meant to touch your feelings, and it certainly touches them.

So when you hear Arabic you will be thrilled that there must be something immensely beautiful in it. If just the sound makes you so thrilled and excited, what about the meaning? But please don’t ask the meaning, because the meaning is going to be so third rate and ugly that you will not even be able to believe that this kind of crap can be put into such a beautiful language.

Hence it is not to be allowed that the people learn the sacred language, the holy language. It is only for the priesthood – that is their monopoly.

This is the mystifying. This is a substitute to satisfy you, because they have taken away something of immense potential – the question mark – which would have made the whole existence a mystery.

They had to give something as a substitute, a toy to play with. And they are ready with every kind of answer. Even before the child has asked, they start stuffing him with answers. Just look at the process. If the question has not been asked, the answer is irrelevant.

This is what I was going to tell you. In my childhood they started giving me answers... because there was a special class for Jainism in the Jaina temple and every child had to attend it, one hour every evening. I refused.

I told my father, ”In the first place I don’t have those questions for which they are su

lying answers. This is stupid. When I have questions I will go and learn their answers and try to find out whether they are correct or not. Right now I am not even interested in the question. Who created the world? My foot! – I am not interested. I know one thing for certain: I have not created it.

My father said, ”You are a strange child. All the children from the family are going, from the neighborhood, everybody is going.”

Jainas tend to live in a neighborhood, a close-knit neighborhood. Minorities are afraid of the majority so they remain close to each other; it is more protective. So all the children of the neighborhood go and their temple is in the middle of the neighborhood. That too is for protection, otherwise it will be burned any day if it is in a Hindu neighborhood or in a Mohammedan neighborhood.

And it will become difficult: if there is a riot you cannot go to your own temple. And there are people who will not eat without going to the temple. First they have to go to the temple and worship, then only can they eat. So Jainas live in small sections of the town, city, village, with their temple in the middle, and surrounding it is their whole community.

”Everybody is going,” my father said. I said, ”They may have questions, or they are idiots. I am not an idiot, and I don’t have those questions, so I simply refuse to go. And I know what the teacher goes on teaching the children is absolute rubbish.”

My father said, ”How can you prove that? You always ask me to prove things; now I ask you, how can you prove what he says is rubbish?” I said, ”Come with me.”

He had to go many times to many places; it was just that the arguments had to be concluded. And when we reached the school, the teacher was teaching that Mahavira had these three qualities: omnipotence, all-powerful; omniscient, all-knowing; omnipresent, everywhere-present. I said, ”You have listened, now come with me to the temple.” The class was just by the side of the temple, a room attached to the temple. I said, ”Now come into the temple.”

He said, ”But what for?”

I said, ”Come, I will give you the proof.”

What I had done was on Mahavira’s statue I had just put a laddoo – that is an Indian sweet, a round sweet, just like a ball – I had put a laddoo on Mahavira’s head, so naturally two rats were sitting on Mahavira’s head eating the laddoo. I said, This is your omnipotent Mahavira. And I have seen these rats pissing on his head.”

My father said, ”You are just impossible. Just to prove this you did all that!”

I said, ”What else to do? How else to prove it? Because I cannot find where Mahavira is. This is a statue. This is the only Mahavira I know and you know and the teacher knows. And he is omnipresent so he must be present here seeing the rats and what they are doing to him. He could have driven those rats away and thrown away my laddoo. I was not here. I had gone to pick you up – I had all the arrangements to make. Now prove to me that this man is omnipresent. And I’m not bothered at all – he may be. Why do I care?”

But before a child even asks a question, you stuff his head with an answer.

That is a basic and major crime of all the religions.

This is what programming is, conditioning is.

These religions condemn me, that I am conditioning people; I am simply deconditioning people.

The conditioning, they have done: they have already filled your mind with all kinds of answers. I am simply destroying those answers so you can find your question. They have covered the question completely, so completely that you have forgotten that you had any question.

In fact you have never asked any questions. No chance has been given to you to be acquainted with your question, with your questioning intelligence. The religions are so afraid that once you start questioning-just once – then it is going to be difficult to force answers against your will, because that questioning intelligence will be raising doubts; it will raise more questions against their answer than you could have imagined.

So the best way is to commit this basic crime: the child should be caught – the earlier the better – and he should be spoon-fed theology, dogmatics, doctrines, catechisms. Before he becomes even aware of the question he knows all the answers.

If you are a Christian how do you know that there is a trinity? – that God the father, the Holy Ghost, the son, these three make the highest power monopoly, that they dominate the world, that they are the real dictators – how do you know it? It has been told to you. Perhaps you have forgotten who told you. It was told to you so early that unless you go deeper than that, further back than that, you will not be able to find who was this fellow who corrupted your mind.

The virgin birth... if you are not a Christian, you will immediately object: How can a virgin give birth to a child? But if you are a Christian, you simply don’t question it because before your questioning arose, the answer was put into you. They have been behaving with you as if you are a computer – they just go on feeding the answer.

And if somebody says anything against Christianity, you are ready to kill or be killed for this rubbish that you are not even responsible for discovering on your own. And the person who forced it on you did not himself know either: the same was done to him.

For centuries it goes on and on. Each generation goes on giving all its stupidities and superstitions to the new generation, thinking that they are helping you to become knowledgeable.

And once you become knowledgeable. the doors of mysticism are closed for you.

Mysticism means looking at existence without any prejudice.

Hence I say no so-called religion can be really mystic – mystifying of course, but never mystic because they cannot fulfill the basic condition to be a mystic.

You have to drop lal your knowledge, all that you have taken on faith has to be thrown down the drain.

Nothing is valuable in it, so don’t be worried; it is not a treasure, it is a tragedy. if you can get rid of it you will feel light, you will feel suddenly unburdened; your eyes fresh like a child’s eyes. All these layers of knowledge: Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Jewish.... All these layers of knowledge – it does not matter who has committed the crime against you; all the religions are in the same boat, committing the same crime. And because they are all committing the same crime, nobody objects.

The whole of humanity is in their grip.

And whenever a person like me objects, obviously he is to be condemned by all, criticized by all – but not answered. Nobody has ever answered me. from my childhood I have been continually asking.

Nobody has even answered a single question – there are no answers. When you understand it, that all answers are arbitrary, created by man just to make you feel at ease....

It is just like the mother telling the child who is not ready to sleep alone in the room ”Don’t be worried, Jesus is with you. You can sleep. You are not alone.” How can the child think that the mother is deceiving him? – his own mother? Nor does the mother think that she is deceiving; she believes it. Her mother poisoned her; she is doing the same to her own child. Naturally, what else can you do?

The child is afraid to be alone, but he has to learn to be alone, to sleep alone. Soon he will be going to a boarding school, he has to learn to stand on his own. He cannot go on clinging to his mother’s frock – for how long? She finds a good reason for saying, ”If he starts feeling the presence of Jesus or God and goes to sleep....”

The child will also feel at ease, less afraid. Nothing has changed – it is the same room, he is alone, the darkness is there – but now there is a little comfort, that Jesus is looking after him, that God is looking after him, that God is everywhere. His own mother says so, his father says so, his teacher says so, his priest says so; everybody cannot be wrong. And God is invisible so you cannot see Him, but a certain at ease-ness comes to him.

That’s what all this knowledge has ben doing to you. It relieves you from enquiring, and enquiry is troublesome.

In this world you cannot get anything unless you are ready to risk something to get it. And God you have got so cheap, without even asking. Now what value can this God have? Religion you have got so cheap.... This religion, this God, are ways of mystifying existence so that your question remains repressed.

My effort here consists in demystifying.

Perhaps that is why the question, What place mysticism has in my religion? has arisen – because I am continuously demystifying. The questioner does not understand the difference between mysticism and mystifying. He thinks they are synonymous, they are not: they are against each other.

It is mystifying that prevents mysticism from growing. And there is no other way except to destroy mystifying completely, uproot it completely.

And then there is no need for me to give you any answer. Your question is there, and existence is there.

Who am I to come between you and existence?

Face existence.

Look at the sunrise, the sunset.

Then you don’t have any answers – you just see what is there: a tremendously beautiful sunset.

You will be overwhelmed. You would love to sing or dance or paint or just lie down there on the grass and not do anything, just to go on looking. And a certain communion between you and the beauty of the sunset starts happening.

Something transpires – this is mysticism.

You know nothing – and yet you know.

There is knowledge which does not know at all.

And there is an ignorance which knows everything, because ignorance is innocence.

I can say to you, blessed are the ignorant; but the second part of my sentence cannot be that they shall inherit the kingdom of God. No, because that will be mystifying. I will say: Blessed are the ignorant, for theirs is the kingdom of God already, now, here. It is not a question that they shall inherit sometime, somewhere in some life after death – that is mystifying.

Mysticism is cash

Mystifying is a promissory note.

Nobody knows whether you will be able to cash this promissory note. The government may fail, the bank may go bankrupt. Only banks can go bankrupt, who else? And this promissory note can be cashed only after death, that is the condition on it. ”In God we believe... in God we trust.” And the pope promises you that this much will be given to you after death but it is always after death. They have been exploiting people with such simple means of exploitation that anybody who has a little bit of intelligence can see it.

Life is mystery.

Scriptures are mystifying. Scriptures are dead.

And the priesthood lives on these dead scriptures.

A real authentic man lives life, not scriptures. ... -Osho, From Personality to Individuality

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12943462-from-personality-to-individuality§

Întreaga omenire este bolnavă din simplul motiv că n-am lăsat nesiguranț a vie ț ii să fie stilul nostru de viata.

Zeii noș tri sunt siguran ț a noastră, virtuț ile noastre sunt siguranț a noastră, cuno ș tin ț ele noastre sunt siguranț a noastră, relaț iile noastre sunt siguran ț a noastră. Ne irosim toată viaț a acumulând garan ț ii de siguran ț ă. Virtu ț ile noastre, abstinen ț ele noastre nu sunt decât un efort de a fi în siguranț ă chiar ș i după moarte. Ne deschidem un cont în bancă pe lumea cealaltă.

Dar, între timp, o viaț ă nemaipomenit de frumoasă ne scapă printre degete. Copacii sunt atât de frumoș i pentru că nu cunosc frica de nesiguran ț ă. Florile pot să danseze la soare ș i în ploaie pentru că nu le interesează ce o să se întâmple seara. Le vor cădea petalele ș i, a ș a cum au apărut dintr-o sursă necunoscută, vor dispărea în aceeaș i sursă necunoscută. La fel ș i omul. Dar, între momentul apari ț iei și cel al dispari ț iei, omul are prilejul fie să danseze, fie să dispere.

Omul autentic renunț ă la ideea siguran ț ei ș i trăie ș te în totală nesiguran ț ă, pentru că asta este natura vieț ii. Nu po ț i s-o schimbi. Ceea ce nu po ț i să schimbi, acceptă, ș i acceptă cu bucurie. Nu te da inutil cu capul de pereț i, ie ș i pur ș i simplu pe u ș ă... George Gurdjieff, who died only in 1950, was a contemporary man but perhaps the most rare man in this whole century. One of his disciples, Nicoll, remembers traveling with him on a train in America, when Gurdjieff started behaving as if he was a drunkard. Nicoll knew that he had not touched any drink for years -- he had been with him -- but he started behaving like a drunkard... shouting, throwing things, disturbing the whole train. Finally the conductor came, the guard came, and Nicoll was very embarrassed. He was trying to prevent Gurdjieff -- "What are you doing?" -- but Gurdjieff wouldn't listen. He was making a fool of himself and making a fool of Nicoll. Nicoll was even more embarrassed... because at least people thought Gurdjieff was drunk: "But you should take care of your master, and if he is drunk then you should not travel in the middle of the night. He has awakened the whole train! "And he is not only throwing out his things, he is throwing out other people's things. You stop him; otherwise we will have to call the police at the next station." Nicoll was trying to persuade Gurdjieff, and said, "Stop this game! Why are you unnecessarily.... I know perfectly well you are not drunk." And Gurdjieff said into Nicoll's ear, "I know it too -- don't be worried! I have my own ways of working. You have to learn not to be embarrassed -- whatever the situation. If you are to be with me, you have to learn one thing: not to be embarrassed. It is a teaching for you; I made this whole train a teaching class for you. Why does one feel embarrassed?" And people gathered and started listening. Suddenly Gurdjieff was not drunk, and he was talking on embarrassment and its implications. If you can drop embarrassment, there is a certain spiritual growth in you. Why is one embarrassed? -- because one wants respectability, deep down one wants everybody to think of one in nice ways, good respectable ways. When something happens which goes against respectability, there is embarrassment. It is the ego that is embarrassed. And Gurdjieff said to Nicoll, "If you can drop embarrassment, you have dropped the ego. Now we can go to sleep." The whole train was wondering about the man. Whatever he said was absolutely right. Many people in the morning came to visit in his compartment. They said, "Forgive us, but you have made such an impression. We had never thought that a teacher, a spiritual master, will behave in this way just to give a lesson to his disciple. But we could not sleep the whole night -- we thought about it again and again. It is true, we feel embarrassed. It is not our true self, it is just our idea of our prestige, of our status; of how people should see us, how people should know us." We all have masks. And whenever somebody takes the mask away, suddenly you are embarrassed, because you have been hiding your original face from the whole world and suddenly you are exposed. Suddenly you find your clothes have disappeared and you are standing naked! But only a man like Gurdjieff would do that. Once he called one of his most important and the greatest of his disciples, P.D. Ouspensky. This man, P.D. Ouspensky, was a world-famous mathematician. Nobody knew about Gurdjieff before Ouspensky became his disciple; it was his becoming initiated by Gurdjieff that made Gurdjieff's name world-famous. Ouspensky was a world-famous mathematician. He has written one book which is thought to be one of the three great books in the whole world. He himself in that book.... It is on mathematics, higher mathematics -- but not only on mathematics, it is also on spirituality. And he is the only mathematician known up to now who has made some basic bridges between the highest flight of mathematics and spirituality. His book's name is TERTIUM ORGANUM. It means "the third canon of thought." He writes in his introduction: "The first canon of thought was written by Aristotle; it is called ORGANUM. The second canon of thought was written by Bacon; it is called NOVUM ORGANUM -- the new canon of thought. Both have been tremendously decisive in scientific growth." Ouspensky has called his book the third canon of thought -- TERTIUM ORGANUM and he says, "Although my book is coming third, it existed before the first ever existed." And certainly it is more fundamental than both Bacon's and Aristotle's. And it is now almost half a century old, but no other book has come which can be the fourth... perhaps it never will come. He has done such a perfect job. This man was a professor at London University in the times of the Russian revolution, and Gurdjieff was in Russia, far away in the interior in a small place, Tiflis. Gurdjieff called Ouspensky to come immediately. And it was very dangerous: the whole of Russian life had been disturbed, the czar had been killed. Although the revolutionaries had overturned the old regime, the new regime had not yet come into existence; it was just chaos all over the country -- and it is a vast country, one sixth of the whole earth. The army was scattered and nobody knew what was happening. Trains were running on their own, or not running; there was nobody to control anything. Everything was on fire; and to move, everybody was at risk. Gurdjieff called Ouspensky immediately, and Ouspensky dropped his well-paid job, his very respectable professorship, and went into a dangerous Russia. He was afraid that he might not be able to reach; he might be killed -- people were being killed and butchered like anything. But somehow he managed. It took three months for him to find the village of Tiflis, but anyhow he reached there and he was happy that he had managed it. When he entered the house of Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff said, "Good! So you have come. Now you can go back and rejoin your job." Ouspensky could not believe that Gurdjieff would do such a thing -- putting him at such risk unnecessarily. And Gurdjieff had not even said a single word! He had not even asked Ouspensky to sit down and rest a little before he left to go back. He said, "Now you can go back immediately." Even other disciples who were there with Gurdjieff became very suspicious: this was strange! One of the disciples said, "We cannot believe what you have done! What is the meaning of it?" Gurdjieff said, "This is the last fire test of trust -- and I don't think he will be able to pass it. I have seen on his face that he has failed; I have seen frustration. He could not go gracefully. If he had gone gracefully he would have been born anew, he would have become a new man. "I had given him the opportunity to be reborn -- he missed." And certainly Ouspensky missed, because he became so angry that he disconnected himself from Gurdjieff. Even such a great thinker, mathematician, scientist, could not see that when a man like Gurdjieff does something -- howsoever absurd, meaningless -- there is bound to be some meaning in it. You should not take it at face value, you should give it a chance to sink deep. Many of Gurdjieff's disciples left him at one point or another because they could not conceive logically what the man was doing. A rascal saint will not behave logically, his behavior will be very illogical. But still, if you can figure out the deeper implications of his illogicality, you will be simply surprised that he is a miracle man. For example, Gurdjieff would make the vegetarians eat meat, force them to eat meat. The person who was not drinking he would force to drink as much as possible -- till he was flat on the floor, saying things which you could have never thought that the man would say. And Gurdjieff would be listening to him. He said, "I never believe what people say unless they are unconscious. Only in their unconsciousness do they say the truth. In their consciousness they go on saying things which are respectable, which have to be said, which are expected to be said. Only when they are unconscious are they true. Then you can see their original face. And only the original can be changed, you cannot change the false. The false does not exist, how can you change it? You can change only the real, but first you have to find it." Gurdjieff had his own ways of finding it. But these ways are not common; hence neither Chuang Tzu nor Hotei created a religion, nor Gurdjieff, nor Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma perhaps is the greatest of all these four. He was born in India and went to China. And his fame went ahead of him; the great Chinese emperor had come to receive him on the border. And the emperor had done great service to Buddhism -- he had made thousands of temples and thousands of monasteries, and he had thousands of scholars translating all the Buddhist literature from Pali to Chinese. He had put all his treasures in the service of Buddhism. He changed the whole of China to Buddhism -- his name was Emperor Wu. And naturally, every Buddhist who had come before Bodhidharma had told Emperor Wu, "You have earned great virtue. You will be born in the seventh lotus paradise, the highest paradise in Buddhist mythology. You have done such great work that there is no comparison -- even Ashoka is left far behind." Emperor Wu, gracefully bowed down, touched the feet of Bodhidharma and asked him, "What is my virtue?" And Bodhidharma said, "None!" The emperor was shocked. He said, "But I have made so many temples, and I have made thousands of Buddha statues, and I feed thousands of Buddhist monks. I have changed the whole of China to Buddhism. And you say that my virtue is nil? Will I not be able to be born into the seventh lotus paradise?" Bodhidharma laughed, he said, "You will be born in the seventh hell!" The emperor had never seen such a man; he was accustomed to courtesy, grace -- he was a great emperor. And this man is simply hitting him so hard. He asked Bodhidharma, "Why are you so hard on me?" Bodhidharma said, "Because I love you, and whoever I love, I am hard on him; otherwise, who cares? The people who have been telling you that you will be born in the seventh paradise don't love you, don't understand you; they are simply cheating you, because you are serving their purpose. They are giving you great promises to be fulfilled in the other world. I cannot give you any promise unless I see the transformation happening here and now. "You may have made thousands of temples, but you are not a temple yet. And you have made thousands of Buddha statues, but you are not a buddha yet. And the seventh lotus paradise is not for statue-makers; it is for those who have become a buddha themselves. I can make you a buddha, but I am going to be a hard man. You will have to forget completely that you are an emperor. With me no nonsense can be tolerated. "So you go back home and think about it. If you are ready, I am always ready. But don't be befooled by these so-called Buddhist monks -- who are good people, who are simple-hearted, who are not doing any harm to anybody. But they are not masters who transform, who create a new consciousness." And he said, "I will wait outside the town, I will not enter your empire. You will have to enter into my empire. I will wait outside. Tomorrow morning at four o'clock, before the sun rises, if you have decided that you are ready to travel the path whatever the consequences, you can come; otherwise I will move." The whole night the emperor could not sleep... whether to go to this man? -- because he looked dangerous. And to go alone at four o'clock, in the dark.... And Bodhidharma had warned him, "Don't bring your guards or others, because you will have to go alone on the path." Who knows? -- the man might be a little insane or something. Certainly he was dangerous! He was not the common run-of-the-mill saint. But his eyes, his gestures...! Although he was very rude, still behind his rudeness there was great compassion. And the king thought about it again and again: To go or not to go? But he could not resist -- he had to go. The man was irresistible. Fearing, trembling inside, still the emperor went to the temple -- Bodhidharma was staying outside the boundary of his empire. Bodhidharma said, "I knew you would come. I knew because although I was hard and rude, and you were shocked, you were not angry; you were understanding. You were puzzled -- you have never seen such a man, a very strange type of saint! But I knew that you would not be able to sleep. "I have also not slept the whole night. I have been waiting for you. I was certain that you would come because whatever I had said was said with immense compassion and love." This man, Bodhidharma, had very few disciples, but whoever had the courage and guts to be with this strange man was certainly transformed. Now, Bodhidharma is not accepted by the traditional people. But this is the beauty of life: there is a traditional crowd, but there is also a small untraditional path, trodden by the rare. It is almost like walking on a sword. But these few rare people have done more as far as transformation of consciousness is concerned than millions of ordinary saints. They are good -- but good for nothing. These people may not seem the right kind, but to meet such a man is the rarest opportunity in life. They are dangerous. It is playing with fire, but unless you are ready to play with fire, you cannot expect something miraculous to happen to you. From ordinary saints and priests and theologians, you can get only an ordinary kind of religiousness. If you get satisfied with it, you are unfortunate. It is not enough -- not enough for any man worth calling himself a man.

I was a teacher for nine years, and I never judged a single student. I have never examined a single examination paper, because I told the vice-chancellor, "If I really examine, nobody is going to pass. And if I am going to pass a few people, why should the others not be passed? So things are clear -- you can decide -- either I can pass everybody, or I can fail everybody." He said, "You always bring strange ideas! I have been a teacher my whole life; this idea never happened to me." I said, "This is exactly what I am going to do, so you can decide." He said, "It is better you don't take any examination papers. I will inform the in-charge that you should not be given any papers to examine." I said, "That's perfectly right, because that saves me the trouble of judging people unnecessarily." Only once they appointed me as a superintendent of the whole examination. I said, "You are doing something wrong -- you don't understand me." That was my first encounter with the new vice- chancellor. I said, "You don't know me. The old man knew me; he never committed any mistake like this." He said, "What are you saying? Is it a mistake?" I said, "It is a mistake because you don't know me. But give it a try!" So he said, "Okay." He came two or three times to see what was happening, and he was feeling terrible when he heard me telling the students, "Listen, if you have brought notes hiding in your pockets, I have no objection. Just don't be caught. Do it cleverly, watchfully, because it is not a sin -- but you should not be caught. To be caught is the crime." The vice-chancellor was standing there, listening. And I said to them, "I will try my best to catch you. So you decide. I give you two minutes -- if you are afraid of being caught, just bring everything that you are hiding and put it on the table, and I will not say anything to you. But after that, if you are caught, then your whole year is spoiled." Immediately, students started bringing their notes -- one boy had written answers on his shirt, inside. So he said, "What am I supposed to do? I have no notes but I have written many things on my shirt, inside -- should I give the shirt?" I said, "You have to give it." The vice-chancellor was standing there. He said, "What is going on?" I said, "You keep quiet. I told you beforehand, if I am the superintendent things will be going according to me." I told the boy, "You take your shirt off, put it here." He said, "But it is too cold." I said, "That's not my problem -- why have you...." So he had to take off his shirt. And the vice-chancellor said, "This is too much." I said, "I cannot help...." And nobody was doing anything -- they had even brought books, whole books. They were hiding them behind their coats, shirts, pants, everything came out! And I said to them, "Now you can start answering your questions. And don't be worried, if you cannot answer something, I am here; I am here to help you. You can just raise your hand and I will come and try to help you." Nobody raised his hand. I said, "What is the matter?" They were afraid, because this has never happened -- a superintendent telling them, "I will help you." I said, "This is just human. You are in difficulty, and I am sitting here doing nothing...." That was the first and the last time.... The vice-chancellor said, "You are a strange person. That boy is shivering -- how can he write?" It was a cold morning... the examinations used to be early in the morning, seven o'clock.... Somebody's pants had been taken, because people used to write on their pants -- people do all kinds of things. They had their ways, and I knew. I have also been a student, and I knew all kinds of things. That was very easy, to write on your pants -- nobody will be able to see. But I told them, "It doesn't matter, even if you have to sit naked... sit naked! Next time you will not do such a thing. But I am not uncompassionate to you; if you are in need of some answer that you cannot find, I will give it to you; you just have to raise your hand. Because according to me, all examinations are absolutely absurd." If it were up to me, I would allow the students to have all the books available. Only a very intelligent student can find out the answers from the books in three hours. And you will be able to judge their intelligence in a better way; otherwise somebody has just crammed five answers, and he knows nothing else, and he comes first in the class. And somebody else knows everything, just has missed those five questions, and he is a failure. This is not a good examination; they should be allowed to have the whole library available to them. They can go to the library, they can find the answer, they can write it. In three hours, they have to find as beautiful answers as possible. And only intelligent students will be able to find them. In the Soviet Union they have changed this old idea of examinations. Now books are available -- all the books concerned are available in the hall where the students are given their examination; they can consult any book. It is far better, because the ultimate concern is to know the intelligence of the person, not his memory. So students need not memorize anything -- they have to understand things. In examination time they can either just from their intelligence give the answer, or they can look in the books. But if in a five hundred page book you have to find one answer, you need some intelligence -- mediocres will not be able to find the answer, they will become so nervous... And there is no need that a person should have to wait for one year. I told the vice-chancellor, "If I am going to be the superintendent I will follow my ideas, I don't care what is conventional. The conventional is not necessarily the right thing. I will give them all the available material; they can find out. Only the intelligent people will be able to find out. And those who have not been successful should be given a chance again after one month. What is the problem that they should wait for one year?" Finally, there is no need of any examinations if every teacher goes on giving marks in his diary every day to the students. And every year, all the notes from all the teachers are collected. And based on those counts the students are moved, either upward or downward. Because there are many who deserve to go back -- they have somehow slipped, they should not be allowed... they should be put back; they should earn better marks and go ahead again. And this should remain available: if a teacher finds that an intelligent student has unnecessarily to wait six months more for examination, he should recommend that the student be moved right now to a higher class, because he has enough intelligence. There is no need for him to wait six months more. Teachers should be the decisive factors. In that situation, nobody fails, nobody passes -- people simply move. A few move faster, a few move a little slower; everybody according to his pace. Nobody is condemned as a failure, nobody is praised as first-class, nobody is praised as a gold medalist. All these things teach people unnecessary ambition, and ambition is poison. You are a teacher; you should try in every way to change the very structure of teaching, particularly your teaching. And slowly, slowly things move. You should tell other teachers, "There are many things wrong with the education system itself, which nobody bothers about. And you are judging students; the first thing should be a right system of education." The whole system is rotten, old, out of date; it has to be completely changed. So I am not saying don't judge. Particularly systems, conventions, traditions -- judge them! But don't judge individuals. If their actions are wrong, help them to get free of those wrong actions. If they are going in wrong directions, help them to find right paths. And this should be your love, this should not be your judgment.

Thousands of people have been killed by these people who represent "the church." And what peace have they brought to the world? You can see: the two world wars have been fought in the Christian section of the world; and the third world war will also be fought in the Christian section of the world. These people are representatives not of peace but of death.

So I say categorically that the antichrist is already in the Vatican. He has started doing the worst that can be done to humanity. He is preaching to the whole world against birth control, against the pill, against abortion. That is enough, that will destroy this whole world through starvation, through poverty. Right now there are five billion people on the earth -- and the earth is capable of supporting joyously not more than one billion people. One billion people can live on this earth in a dance, in ecstasy -- but five billion people? And by the end of this century the population will be six billion. Out of sheer overpopulation -- no nuclear weapons are needed -- humanity can commit suicide.

My answer is absolutely clear: Pope the Polack is the antichrist; all the popes have been -- and not only in Christianity but in every religion.

Într-una din întâlnirile sale cu discipolii, Osho a fost întrebat: „Osho, ce este Existenţa? Este ceea ce oamenilor le place să numească Dumnezeu?”. Iată ce a răspuns Osho:

«Existenț a e ceva ce există, Dumnezeu e ceva ce nu există. Existenţa e o realitate. Dumnezeu e o ficţiune. Existenţa se dezvăluie numai oamenilor care meditează, oamenilor tăcerii. Dumnezeu este o consolare pentru minț ile bolnave. Existenţa nu este ceva produs de tine, Dumnezeu, da. De aceea, există o singură Existenţă ș i mii de Dumnezei. Fiecare după nevoile, suferinţele sau aşteptările lui creează un Dumnezeu sau acceptă o credinţă veche despre Dumnezeu. Dumnezeu este o alinare, dar nu ș i o vindecare. Existenţa însă nu este o alinare. A fi acordat la Existenţă înseamnă a fi sănătos şi întreg. Toate religiile lumii te învaţă despre Dumnezeu; eu te învăţ despre Existenţă. Te învăţ să fii acordat la lumea înconjurătoare, la ceea ce este în tine şi la ceea ce este în afara ta. Odată ce eşti acordat astfel, pentru tine nu mai există moarte, suferinţă, tensiuni sau griji. O pace deplină te învăluie, o mulț umire la care nici n-ai visat. Dumnezeu este pentru cei care nu- ș i pot cre ș te nivelul con ș tiin ț ei, care sunt înapoiaţi din punct de vedere spiritual. E un fel de jucărie, de care oamenii înapoiaţi au nevoie. Şi când spun că e o jucărie, spun de fapt că depinde de tine cum vrei să arate: ca o maimuţă, sau ca un elefant. Poț i alege să-l faci cu 4 mâini sau cu 1000 de mâini. E creaţia ta...

Mi se pare ciudat faptul că omul crede că Dumnezeu a creat totul. Adevărul e că însuș i Dumnezeu este o creaţie a imaginaţiei omului. Dumnezeu este cea mai mare minciună care s-a spus vreodată, pentru că de minciuna asta depind mii de alte minciuni. Bisericile, organizaţiile religioase continuă să inventeze minciuni după minciuni, doar pentru a proteja o singură minciună. Trebuie să înţelegi psihologia celui care minte. Primul lucru pe care trebuie să-l ştii despre minț it este că ai nevoie de o memorie bună, ca să-ț i aminte ș ti ce-ai min ț it. Dacă minţi pe cineva în legătură cu ceva ș i pe altcineva în legătură cu altceva, trebuie să-ţi aminteşti ce i-ai spus fiecăruia. Adevărul n-are nevoie de ț inere de minte. El este întotdeauna acolo, mereu la fel. Nu trebuie să ţi-l vâri în memorie. Memoria e o capcană, te închide ca o închisoare. Se prinde de tine ș i te acoperă încet-încet, încât până la urmă dispari cu desăvârşire. Adevărul te eliberează de toate minciunile. Şi brusc ai revelaţia că faci parte din imensul adevăr pe care eu îl numesc Existenţă.

N-ai nevoie de nicio biserică, de niciun templu sau moschee. N-ai nevoie decât de o inimă iubitoare ș i recunoscătoare. Acesta este templu tău adevărat, care-ţi va transforma întreaga viaţă. Acest templu te va ajuta nu numai să te descoperi pe tine, ci ș i profunzimea acestei imense existenţe. Noi suntem ca valurile oceanului, care se manifestă numai la suprafaţă, în timp ce oceanul poate să aibă mii de kilometri adâncime. Oceanul Pacific are ș i 10 kilometri adâncime. Dar un mic val de la suprafaţă nu-i va cunoaşte niciodată adâncimile, pentru că el nu e separat de ocean. Valul se va agăţa de mica lui entitate, se va teme de moarte, se va teme să nu se piardă în imensitatea oceanului. De fapt, moartea valului nu e o moarte, ci începutul unei vieţi veşnice. Dumnezeu a fost inventat pentru că oamenii aveau nevoie de el; aveau nevoie de un protector. În imensitatea Universului, omul se simte atât de singur, atât de mic. Vastitatea îl sperie.

Ce înseamnă existenţa? Mi-aduc aminte de o povestire a lui Bertrand Russell: Arhiepiscopul Angliei visează că a ajuns la poarta sidefie a Raiului. Pe de o parte, este extrem de mulţumit, iar pe de altă parte, foarte tulburat, pentru că poarta este aşa de lată, încât nu reuşeşte s-o vadă în întregime. E atât de înaltă, încât n-o poate cuprinde cu privirea. Şi el pare o furnicuț ă în comparaţie cu poarta aceea imensă. Îi e puț in teamă. Ș i nu e un om obişnuit, e arhiepiscopul Angliei! Se simte umilit de poarta aceea ș i în el încol ț e ș te teama: „Dacă asta simt în faţa porţii, atunci ce-am să simt înăuntru?” Cu mâini temătoare, bate la poartă, dar în imensitatea acelui spaţiu numai el poate auzi ciocănitul. Câteva zile la rând continuă să bată din ce în ce mai tare. Într-un târziu, se deschide o ferestruică în poartă şi Sfântul Petru se uită afară atent, încercând să-şi dea seama cine a făcut acel zgomot. Ochii lui sunt strălucitori ca stelele, încât arhiepiscopul se simte şi mai mic – aproape o non- entitate. Sfântul Petru spune: „Oricine ai fi, de oriunde ai veni, te rog, vino mai aproape, să te văd”. Arhiepiscopul se apropie ș i se prezintă: „Sunt arhiepiscopul Angliei. Poate n-ai auzit de mine, dar poţi să-l întrebi pe Iisus, el o să-ț i confirme”. Sfântul Petru spune: „N-am auzit niciodată de Anglia”. Arhiepiscopul răspunde: „Poate n-ai auzit de Anglia, dar cu siguranţă ai auzit de minunata noastră planetă Pământ”. Sfântul Pentru spune: „Nu vreau să te jignesc, dar până nu-mi spui indicele Pământului, nu pot să-mi dau seama despre ce vorbeşti. Dacă-mi dai indicele, mă duc în bibliotecă să caut sistemul solar căruia îi aparţii, pentru că sunt milioane de sisteme solare şi fiecare are multe planete”. Arhiepiscopul nu se gândise niciodată că Pământul ar avea un indice: „Nu cunosc niciun indice, dar eu sunt arhiepiscopul Angliei. Du-te şi spune-i lui Iisus Hristos că sunt aici”. Sfântul Petru răspunde: „Sunt din ce în ce mai nedumerit. Cine-i tipul ăsta, Iisus?” Arhiepiscopul e de-a dreptul şocat: „N-ai auzit de Iisus, singurul fiu al lui Dumnezeu?” Sfântul Petru replică: „În ceea ce mă priveşte, nu l-am văzut niciodată pe Dumnezeu; nici nu ştiu dacă există sau nu. Eu sunt doar portarul. Poate undeva, prin Rai există cineva care zice că e Dumnezeu, dar eu nu l-am întâlnit niciodată...” Ș ocul fu atât de mare, încât arhiepiscopul se trezi lac de sudoare.

Povestea este relevantă, pentru că ne arată cât de mici suntem noi în comparaț ie cu Universul. Evident că omul primitiv nu a reuș it să înţeleagă ideea vastităţii Universului fără să-i atribuie o personalitate şi să se simtă legat într-un fel de aceasta. Dumnezeu este efortul omului primitiv de a-i da existenţei o personalitate. Apoi, acea personalitate devine Dumnezeu-tatăl. Abia atunci poț i avea o relaţie cu el. Poţi chiar să fii împotriva lui, căci cel puț in e cineva faţă de care poţi fi pro sau contra; e cineva mai mare ca tine, care te poate proteja, care îţi garantează ceva. De fapt, Dumnezeu înseamnă pur ș i simplu sărăcia conştiinţei umane.

Oamenii care au căpătat conştiinţă de sine în cel mai înalt grad, ca Gautam Buddha, au negat existenţa lui Dumnezeu. Oricine se însănătoș e ș te în interior trece dincolo de minte, care de fapt e bolnavă, şi neagă existenț a unui Dumnezeu. Dumnezeu, ca personaj imaginar, e bun pentru copiii de grădiniţă. Ei au nevoie de parabole, de fabule, de poveşti. Adevărul e că foarte puţini oameni au depăș it etapa de grădiniţă. Dumnezeu există pentru că tu nu eşti conştient de tine însuţi. Dumnezeu există pentru că tu nu ț i-ai atins centrul fiinţei tale. În momentul în care ajungi să te cunoşti cu adevărat, nu mai există niciun Dumnezeu, nu mai ai nevoie de el.

De fapt, eu sunt întru totul de acord cu ce a spus Friedrich Nietzsche: „Dumnezeu a murit”. Cea de-a doua parte a frazei lui este chiar mai semnificativă: „Dumnezeu a murit... şi omul e acum liber”. Această parte nu s-a bucurat de prea multă atenţie din partea filozofilor, a misticilor, a psihologilor, deș i e cea mai importantă. Prima parte nu înseamnă cine ș tie ce. De fapt, prima parte e fundamental greşită. Dumnezeu nu poate muri, căci ficţiunile nu mor. În momentul în care ştii că sunt ficţiuni, nu se mai pune problema ca ele să moară. Aşa cum nu s-au născut, nici nu vor muri. Dumnezeu nu s-a născut niciodată, deci cum ar putea să moară? Moartea este celălalt capăt al naşterii. Aşadar, prima parte nu este importantă, dar i s-a acordat multă importanţă de către teologi, pentru că s-au temut: „E un sacrilegiu să spui oamenilor că Dumnezeu a murit. Asta înseamnă că acum nu mai e nevoie de nicio religie”. S-au temut pentru propria lor afacere. Ș i au ignorat cea de-a doua parte, care are în ț elesuri mult mai adânci: înseamnă că Dumnezeu a fost ceva ce te lega, te ț inea pe loc, de care te temeai. Dumnezeu n-a fost o binefacere, ci o greutate imensă care-ț i apăsa sufletul şi te împiedica să evoluezi.

Odată ce Dumnezeu este îndepărtat, posibilitatea omului de a evolua şi a înflori nu mai este îngrădită de nimic. Un Dumnezeu este un despot, un fascist. Fără Dumnezeu, lumea devine liberă. Existenţa îi dă fiecărui individ o extraordinară demnitate. De la cel mai mic fir de iarbă ș i până la cea mai mare stea din Univers, existenț a dă iubire şi în ț elesuri, fără să facă vreo diferenţă. Existenţa acordă egalitate şi ș anse egale. Nu mai e nevoie să pierzi timpul în rugăciuni ș i să citeşti scripturile sfinte, care sunt cele mai puţin sfinte cărţi din lume. Nu mai poț i fi exploatat de preoţi. Eşti dintr-odată eliberat de toate lanţurile astea. Acum poţi să fii tu însuţi.

Atâta timp cât pentru tine există Dumnezeu, nu vei putea niciodată să fii tu însuţi. Eşti doar o marionetă, iar sforile tale sunt în mâinile lui. O zicală veche din India spune că nici cea mai mică frunză dintr-un copac nu se mişcă dacă nu primeș te de la Dumnezeu ordin să se mişte. Oricine ai fi, conform religiilor, eşti făcut din ţărână. Cuvântul „om” vine de la „humus”, care înseamnă noroi. Iar acelaș i cuvânt în ivrit, arabă, urdu, hindi este „admi”, folosit ca nume pentru primul om, Adam. „Admi” înseamnă „pământ”. Dumnezeu l-a făcut pe om din pământ şi apoi a suflat viaţă asupra păpuș ii. A ș adar, ce fel de libertate ai? Cineva a suflat viaţă asupra ta şi tot în puterea lui stă să înceteze în orice clipă să mai sufle viaţă asupra ta.

Orice ai face, religiile cred că este soarta ta, care ţi-e scrisă în frunte. Ș i au existat mul ț i escroci care chiar au încercat să citească ce ţi-e scris. Astrologi, chiromanţi, tot felul de ș mecheri care au exploatat simplitatea şi inocenţa umanităț ii. Există oameni care-ţi citesc în palmă, se uită la linii şi-ţi spun ce înseamnă ele. Ideea e că nu tu decizi cum să-ț i trăie ș ti viaţa, faci doar parte dintr-o piesă de teatru, iar rolul pe care-l joci ț i-a fost scris cu mult înainte ca tu să te na ș ti. Acesta a fost ș i argumentul pe care Krishna, încarnarea lui Dumnezeu la indieni, i l-a dat discipolului său, Arjuna, în timpul marelui război din epopeea antică Mahabharata. Prevăzând imensul masacru ce urma să aibă loc, Arjuna s-a hotărât pur ș i simplu să renun ț e, deşi era un om de mare curaj şi cu o inteligenţă deosebită. El a spus: „Nu văd rostul acestui război. Chiar dacă o să câştig... şi sunt sigur că o să câştig – nu exista luptător mai destoinic ca el – să stau pe tronul aurit al victoriei înconjurat de cadavrele tuturor prietenilor şi duşmanilor mei, toţi acei oameni frumoşi, nu mă încântă deloc. Imaginea acestei scene mă înnebuneș te. Decât să lupt, mai bine las locul unui văr sau frate. Îl las pe el să conducă ţara şi eu plec în munț i, în Himalaya, să meditez ș i să devin sannyasin. Mi-am pierdut orice interes să lupt”. Krishna a încercat în toate felurile să-l convingă, însă Arjuna era foarte inteligent ș i ș tia cum să riposteze. Până la urmă, nemaiavând alte argumente, Krishna i-a spus: „E scris în destinul tău. Plecând, te îndepărtezi de Dumnezeu. Războiul acesta a fost predestinat de Dumnezeu să-i distrugă pe cei nevrednici şi să-i lase în viaț ă doar pe cei vrednici”. La acest motiv, Arjuna n-a mai avut contra-argument, pentru că el credea în Dumnezeu şi în destin. A mers la război.

Astfel, Krishna a fost răspunzător, acum 5000 de ani, de distrugerea acestei ţări, prin argumentul fals pe care i l-a adus lui Arjuna. Războiul acela nu numai că a omorât foarte mulţi oameni, a distrus, de asemenea, curajul acestei ţări, care a început să se sperie de orice nenorocire, oricât de mică. 2000 de ani de sclavie... Vreau să fie clar pentru toată lumea că responsabilii pentru aceşti 2000 de ani de sclavie sunt cei mai mari oameni ai Indiei. În capul listei stă Krishna; Arjuna este doar umbra lui. Apoi vine Mahavira, care i-a învăţat pe oameni să fie nonviolenţi, în aşa măsură, încât adepț ii lui n-au mai făcut nici măcar agricultură, pentru că plantele sunt vii. Dacă cultivi, înseamnă că omori plantele atunci când strângi recolta. Gautam Buddha vine pe locul al treilea: el i-a învăţat pe oameni să accepte totul, să fie mulţumiţi cu ceea ce au. Chiar dacă sunt săraci, înfometaţi, sclavi... să rămână tot timpul mulţumiţi.

Învăţăturile lor au fost minunate. Dar trebuie să precizez ceva, ca să nu fiu înț eles gre ș it. Învăţăturile lor au fost minunate, dar ei nu s-au gândit niciodată la toate implicaţiile acestor învăţături. Nu s-au gândit că dacă predici nonviolenţa unei ţări întregi, dacă-i spui să renunţe la orice armă, când nimeni altcineva în lume nu face asta, atunci pui ţara aceea în postura de victimă, care poate fi exploatată de oricine. Şi timp de 2000 de ani, un invadator după altul a venit în India, a exploatat-o şi a plecat. Într- un final, au venit mahomedanii şi s-au gândit: „De ce să mai plecăm? Putem nu doar să exploatăm poporul ăsta, ci ș i să rămânem aici ș i să-l guvernăm”. Şi apoi au venit englezii, francezii, portughezii... şi toţi au exploatat ţara asta. Toț i ș i-au umplut buzunarele. Britanicii au fost de departe cei mai isteţi. Portughezii au avut micile lor insule, Diu, Daman ș i Goa, iar francezii au stăpânit o mică parte din ţară, Pondicherry. Britanicii însă au luat toată ţara în stăpânire. Poporul a murit de foame şi nimeni nu s-a gândit că, de fapt, aceste principii măreț e sunt într-un fel responsabile de situaţia nefericită prin care a trebuit să treacă India mii de ani. Şi nici astăzi nimeni nu încearcă să vadă toate implicaţiile. Fiecare principiu măreţ îşi are propriul lui nor negru. Şi dacă nu vezi norul, în curând vei fi absorbit de el. Dacă îl vezi, îl poț i evita.

Se pare că Dumnezeu este cel mai mare principiu care i-a fost predicat omului de-a lungul secolelor, dar nimeni nu i-a analizat implicaţiile. Dacă Dumnezeu l-a creat pe om, înseamnă că omul nu are o individualitate proprie ș i, prin urmare, nu poate pretinde nici demnitate, nici libertate. Nu se poate ca o marionetă să declare „Vreau să fiu liberă”. Tot astfel, dacă Dumnezeu a creat Universul, atunci orice s- a întâmplat în Univers a trebuit să se întâmple. A fost voinţa Lui. Niciun efort din partea noastră n-ar fi schimbat nimic. Şi în sfârș it, dacă Dumnezeu a creat lumea noastră, şi dacă el este în spatele armelor nucleare şi al oamenilor care le fabrică, atunci niciun efort din partea omului nu poate preveni distrugerea întregii planete. A lăsa crearea lumii în mâinile unui Dumnezeu imaginar este foarte periculos. Ne face total neputincioşi. Nu putem face nimic. De aici, simpla mea înț elegere asupra conştiinţei e că, dacă Dumnezeu n-a murit odată cu declaraţia lui Nietzsche, atunci trebuie să-l omorâm noi! Oriunde l-ai întâlni, nu trebuie să-i spui „Bună ziua”. Întâi omoară-l şi după aia salută-l, dacă vrei să îndeplineș ti formalită ț ile. Dar nu e nevoie de Dumnezeu. Cu el acolo sus, omul va rămâne pentru totdeauna un sclav, un inconştient care nu se va strădui niciodată să atingă maximul de potenţial la care poate ajunge.

Dacă îl elimini pe Dumnezeu, s-ar putea ca, din obiș nuin ț ă, să sim ț i la început puţină teamă, care însă va dispărea încet-încet. Odată ce vei realiza că stai pe propriile picioare şi că ai de făcut ceva pentru a-ț i crea o conştiinţă mai bună, o inimă mai iubitoare, rugăciunile acelea devin inutile, pentru că nu mai e nimeni să răspundă la ele. Sau foarte rar primesc răspuns. Din câte ș tiu eu, cel pu ț in o dată, rugăciunea unui om a primit răspuns:

Un om sărac l-a rugat pe Dumnezeu luni la rând: „Doamne, dă-mi 50 de dolari, nu vreau mult, doar 50 de dolari”. Mai întâi s-a rugat, dar apoi s-a gândit: „Milioane de oameni se roagă... există un singur Dumnezeu şi o grămadă de oameni care se roagă. Oare umila mea rugăciune va ajunge vreodată la el? Trebuie să fie atâta zgomot în jurul lui – rugăciuni de la toate bisericile, moscheile, sinagogile, templele – cum va avea el grijă ș i de mine? Mai bine-i scriu o scrisoare”. Şi i-a scris: „Doamne, îţi scriu ca să-ţi amintesc că de luni întregi mă rog, dar n-am primit niciun răspuns. Se pare că rugăciunea mea nu a ajuns la tine. Pot să înţeleg că e atâta zgomot în jurul tău, de la atâtea rugăciuni. Şi ţi se roagă oameni mari – papa, arhiepiscopul, shankaracharya – deci cum să mai iei seama la rugăciunea mea umilă? Şi nu-ț i cer mult, nu vreau raiul pe pământ pentru mine, doar 50 de dolari. Aşa că m-am gândit să-ţi scriu scrisoarea asta”. Ș i a scris în scrisoare cu litere mari: „50 DE DOLARI! ŢINE MINTE, E URGENT!”. Apoi a început să se frământe, pentru că nu ştia pe ce adresă să expedieze scrisoarea. S-a gândit: „Cea mai bună idee ar fi s-o adresez aș a: Dumnezeu, c/o Dirigintele Po ș tei”. Dacă nici Dirigintele Poș tei nu poate să-i afle adresa, atunci cine? Scrisoarea a ajuns la Dirigintele Poştei. Acesta a citit-o, mai întâi a râs şi apoi s-a întristat. S-a gândit: „Omul ăsta trebuie că e disperat, căci nimeni nu-i scrie scrisori lui Dumnezeu. Şi nici măcar nu cere aşa de mult...”. Aşa că le-a spus prietenilor: „Vă rog să citiț i scrisoarea acestui om sărman. Hai să contribuim cu toţii şi să-i trimitem cei 50 de dolari. Să facem ca măcar o dată o rugăciune să fie ascultată”. Au pus cu toț ii mână de la mână, însă n-au reuşit să strângă decât 45 de dolari. Dirigintele Poştei a spus: „Nicio problemă, să-i trimitem măcar pe ăştia”. Când cei 45 de dolari au ajuns la omul sărman, acesta a numărat banii, a privit în sus şi a strigat: „Doamne, ţine minte un lucru: Data viitoare când îmi mai trimiţi bani, nu-i mai trimite prin poştă! Escrocii ăș tia şi-au luat comisionul. Am primit numai 45 de dolari!”

Cu excepţia acestei întâmplări, n-am auzit de nicio altă rugăciune care să fi fost împlinită... şi nici aceasta în totalitate. Nu există nimeni acolo, sus, să răspundă...

Un Dumnezeu trebuie venerat. Către el trebuie înălţate rugăciuni. Existenţa trebuie abordată altfel. Ea trebuie contactată prin meditaț ie. Sunt doar două feluri de religii pe lume: religiile rugăciunii şi religiile meditaţiei. Toate religiile rugăciunii cred într-un Dumnezeu, pe când religiile meditaţiei, nu cred în niciun Dumnezeu. Pentru că meditaţia te poartă spre tine însuţi şi te împlineşte, nu ai nevoie să te rogi, nu ai nevoie de alinare. Eşti într-o stare de bucurie, de beatitudine, încât poţi binecuvânta tu întreaga lume.

Eu te învăţ existenţa, iar intrarea în existenţă se face prin propria ta fiinţă. Meditaţia nu înseamnă rugăciune, adică să ceri ceva. Reț ine: medita ț ia este opusul rugăciunii. Rugăciunea face parte din jargonul fals despre Dumnezeu, rai şi iad. Rugăciunea este parte a acestui ritual. Meditaţia este singura cale de a intra în contact cu existenţa, iar contactul acesta devine imediat o contopire. Devii existenţa însăşi. Eşti în nori, în stele, în flori, în ploaie. Eşti pretutindeni. Nu mai eşti un strop, devii oceanul întreg.

Ţineț i minte distincţia clară între Existenţă şi Dumnezeu. Dumnezeu înseamnă să vă condamna ț i propria inteligenţă, înseamnă să acceptaț i umilinţa, înseamnă să recunoa ș te ț i că „noi suntem doar niș te marionete; tu eşti puterea; tu po ț i să faci ce vrei cu noi, ș i tot ce putem noi să facem e să ne rugăm la tine”. Aceste credinț e vă schilodesc. Dumnezeu e ceva de care ț i-e frică. În schimb, Existenţa este prospeţime, frumuseţe şi adevăr. Niciodată să nu amestecaț i aceste două cuvinte. Unul e pură ficț iune, celălalt înseamnă realitate.» Osho: Ce este dragostea?

N-ar trebui sa punem aceasta intrebare. Pe firul natural al lucrurilor, toata lumea ar trebui sa stie ce este dragostea. Insa de fapt nimeni nu stie sau foarte rar se intampla sa mai fie cate cineva care sa stie ce este dragostea. Dragostea a devenit una dintre cele mai rare experiente.

Da, se vorbeste despre ea. Se scriu scenarii de film si romane de dragoste, se compun cantece de dragoste, o vei vedea la spectacolele de televiziune, o vei auzi la radio, in reviste. exista o imensa industrie care sa-ti puna la dispozitie idei despre ceea ce inseamna dragostea. Multi sunt implicati in industria destinata sa-i ajute pe oameni sa inteleaga dragostea. Insa dragostea ramane in continuare un fenomen necunoscut. Si ar trebui sa fie unul dintre cele mai bine cunoscute fenomene.

Este aproape ca si cum cineva ar intreba: Ce este hrana? Nu ai fi surprins daca ar veni cineva la tine si ti-ar pune aceasta intrebare? Aceasta intrebare ar fi relevanta numai daca persoana respectiva ar fi fost privata de mancare de la inceputul inceputului si nu ar fi gustat niciodata hrana. La fel este intrebarea Ce este dragostea?

Dragostea este hrana sufletului, insa ai fost privat de ea. Sufletul tau nu a primit deloc dragoste, astfel incat nu-i cunosti gustul. Prin urmare, intrebarea este relevanta, dar este trista. trupul si-a primit hrana, asa ca poate sa mearga mai departe. Insa sufletul nu si-a primit hrana, drept pentru care sufletul este mort sau nu s-a nascut inca, ori se afla etern pe patul de moarte.

Cand ne nastem, suntem dotati cu capacitatea de a iubi si de a fi iubiti. Oricare copil se naste plin de dragoste si stie exact ce este dragostea. Nu este deloc nevoie sa i se spuna copilului ce este dragostea. Dar problema apare deoarece mama si tatal nu stiu ce este dragostea. Nici un copil nu primeste parintii pe care ii merita. nici un copil nu primeste vreodata parintii pe care ii merita; parintii aceia pur si simplu nu exista pe pamant. Iar pana cand acest copil devine parinte, si el isi va fi pierdut capacitatea de a iubi.

Am auzit de o mica vale in care se nasc copii si in trei luni dupa nastere orbesc. Era o societate mica, primitiva, in sanul careia exista o musca ce provoca o infectie si orbirea, astfel incat intreaga comunitate orbise. Fiecare copil se nastea cu ochi care functionau perfect, dar in decurs de trei luni cel mult, orbea din cauza acestor muste.

Si probabil ca mult mai tarziu, in cursul vietii lor, acesti copii trebuie sa se fi intrebat, Ce sunt ochii? Ce vrei sa spui cand folosesti cuvantul ochi? Ce este vederea? Ce inseamna sa vezi? Ce vrei sa spui cu asta? Iar intrebarea trebuie sa fi fost lipsita de sens. Acesti copii se nasteau cu vedere, insa o pierdeau cumva, in timpul cresterii.

Asta s-a intamplat si cu dragostea. Fiecare copil se naste cu toata dragostea care poate sa incapa in el, cu o dragoste care se revarsa din el. Copilul se naste ca dragoste; copilul este facut dintr-o materie care se numeste dragoste. Insa parintii nu pot sa le dea dragoste. Au propriile antecedente. ar fi trebuit ca si parintii lor sa-i fi iubit la randul lor.

Parintii nu pot decat sa se prefaca. Pot sa vorbeasca despre dragoste. Pot sa spuna "Te iubim foarte mult", dar ceea ce fac, de fapt, este lipsit de iubire. Felul in care se poarta, felul in care isi trateaza copilul este insultator; nu exista nici un pic de respect. Copilul nici macar nu este considerat ca fiind o persoana. Cui ii trece prin minte sa respecte un copil? Copilul nici macar nu este considerat a fi o persoana.

Copilul este considerat a fi o problema. Daca tace, este bun; daca nu tipa si nu face nici o prostie, e bine; daca pur si simplu nu le sta in cale parintilor, e bun. Asa trebuie sa fie un copil. Insa nu exista nici un fel de respect si nici un fel de dragoste. Parintii nu stiu ce este dragostea. Sotia nu si-a iubit sotul, sotul nu si-a iubit sotia. Intre ei nu exista dragoste in schimb exista dominatie, posesiune, gelozie si tot felul de otravuri care distrug dragostea. La fel cum o anumita otrava iti poate distruge vederea, asa si otrava posesiunii si geloziei distruge dragostea.

Dragostea este o floare fragila. Trebuie sa fie protejata, trebuie sa fie calita, trebuie sa fie udata; numai atunci devine puternica. Iar dragostea copilului este foarte fragila. fapt natural, deoarece copilul este fragil, corpul sau este fragil. Crezi ca un copil lasat singur este capabil sa supravietuiasca? Gandeste-te numai cat de neajutorat este copilul. daca un copil este lasat singur, este aproape imposibil sa supravietuiasca. Va muri, si asta se intampla si cu dragostea. Dragostea este data de-o parte, este neingrijita. Parintii nu pot iubi, nu stiu ce este dragostea, nu au plutit niciodata in dragoste. Gandeste-te numai la parintii tai, si aminteste-ti. nu spun ca ar fi raspunzatori de ceva. Sunt victime, cum si tu esti o victima; si parintii lor au fost la fel. Si asa mai departe, poti sa ajungi pana la Adam si Eva si pana la Dumnezeu Tatal!

S-ar parea ca pana si Dumnezeu Tatal nu prea a dat dovada de respect fata de Adam si Eva. De aceea, din capul locului a inceput sa le porunceasca: Sa faceti asta si Sa nu faceti asta... a inceput sa faca toate mofturile pe care le fac toti parintii. Sa nu mancati fructele din pomul acesta. Si, cand Adam a mancat fructul, Tatal Dumnezeu a fost atat de furios, incat i-a alungat pe Adam si pe Eva din Rai. Aceasta alungare este permanent prezenta si fiecare parinte ameninta cu alungarea copilului, ameninta sa-l dea afara. Daca nu asculti, daca nu te porti frumos, vei fi alungat. In mod natural, copilul se teme. Sa fie alungat? In salbaticia acestei vieti? Incepe sa faca unele compromisuri. Incetul cu incetul, devine diform si incepe sa manipuleze. Nu vrea sa zambeasca, dar, daca mama este prin preajma, iar el vrea lapte, zambeste. De-acum avem de-a face cu politica, inceputul, ABC-ul politicii.

In sinea lui, copilul incepe sa isi urasca parintii, pentru ca nu este respectat; in sinea lui, incepe sa se simta frustrat deoarece nu este iubit asa cum este. Se asteapta din partea lui sa faca anumite lucruri si abia pe urma va fi iubit. Dragostea are conditii; nu este bun asa cum este. Mai intai trebuie sa fie bun si abia pe urma va primi dragostea parintilor. Asa ca, pentru a merita copilul incepe sa devina fals; isi pierde orice urma de contact cu propria valoare intrinseca. Isi pierde respectul de sine si incetul cu incetul incepe sa se simta vinovat.

De multe ori, copilului ii trece prin mintea ideea urmatoare: Astia chiar sunt parintii mei adevarati? Ar fi posibil sa ma fi adoptat? Poate ca ma pacalesc pentru ca s-ar parea sa nu existe nici un fel de dragoste. De o mie de ori vede furia in ochii lor, furia urata de pe chipurile parintilor sai si inca pentru asemenea nimicuri, incat nu intelege proportiile furiei provocate de aceste nimicuri. La orice nimic, vede furia parintilor, nu-i vine sa creada, este atat de injust si de nedrept! Insa trebuie sa se supuna, trebuie sa plece capul, trebuie sa accepte ca necesitate. Incetul cu incetul, capacitatea lui de a iubi este ucisa. Dragostea creste numai din dragoste. Dragostea are nevoie de un mediu plin de dragoste acesta este aspectul fundamental care trebuie sa fie retinut. Numai intr-un mediu plin de dragoste creste dragostea; are nevoie de acelasi fel de palpitatie imprejurul ei. Daca mama este iubitoare, daca tatal este iubitor nu numai fata de copil, ci daca sunt iubitori si unul fata de celalalt, daca in casa exista o atmosfera de dragoste copilul va incepe sa functioneze ca o fiinta a dragostei si nu va pune niciodata intrebarea Ce este dragostea? Va sti acest lucru de la bun inceput, acesta va deveni fundamentul sau.

Insa acest lucru nu se intampla. Este pacat, dar acest lucru nu s-a intamplat pana acum. Iar copiii invata felul de a se purta al parintilor lor reprosurile lor, conflictul dintre ei. Uita-te la tine insusi. Daca esti femeie, uita-te, este posibil sa repeti, aproape identic, comportamentul mamei tale. Uita-te la tine cand esti impreuna cu iubitul sau cu sotul tau: ce faci? Nu cumva repeti un model? Daca esti barbat, uita-te ce faci. Nu cumva te porti exact ca tatal tau? Nu cumva faci aceleasi prostii pe care le facea el? Odata, candva, erai surprins: Cum poate tata sa faca asa ceva? , iar acum faci aceleasi lucruri. Oamenii nu fac decat sa repete; oamenii sunt imitatori. Fiinta umana este o maimuta. Repeti comportamentul mamei si al tatalui tau si trebuie sa renunti sa faci asta. Abia atunci vei sti ce inseamna dragostea, altfel vei ramane deformat.

Nu pot sa definesc ce este dragostea, pentru ca nu exista nici o definitie a dragostei. Este unul dintre lucrurile care nu pot sa fie definite, asemenea nasterii, mortii, asemenea lui Dumnezeu, asemenea meditatiei. Este unul dintre lucrurile care nu pot sa fie definite nu pot sa-l definesc. Nu pot sa spun asta inseamna dragoste , nu pot sa ti-o arat. Nu este un fenomen vizibil. Nu poate sa fie disecat, nu poate sa fie analizat; poate numai sa fie traita si numai prin traire vei sti ce este. Insa pot sa-ti arat calea pentru a o trai.

Primul pas este sa scapi de parintii tai. Si prin asta nu vreau sa spun sa nu-ti respecti parintii, nici gand. As fi ultimul care sa-ti spuna asa ceva. Nu vreau sa spun sa scapi fizic de parintii tai, vreau sa spun sa scapi de vocile parintilor dinlauntrul tau, de programul dinlauntrul tau, de inregistrarile dinlauntrul tau. Sterge-le pur si simplu, si vei fi pur si simplu surprins ca, daca vei scapa de parintii din launtrul fiintei tale, te vei elibera. Pentru prima oara vei putea sa ai compasiune fata de parintii tai, altfel acest lucru nu se va intampla: vei ramane plin de resentimente. Oricine are resentimente fata de propriii parinti. Cum sa nu nutresti resentimente fata de ei, cand ti-au facut atat de mult rau? Si nu te-au ranit cu stiinta, ti-au dorit numai binele, au vrut sa faca tot ce puteau pentru binele tau. Insa ce ar fi putut sa faca? Simplul fapt ca-ti doresti ceva nu inseamna ca se va si intampla. Doar cu dorinta de bine nu se intampla nimic.

Iti doreau tot binele, acesta este adevarul; nu exista nici o indoiala in aceasta privinta; oricare parinte vrea ca viata sa aduca toate bucuriile copiilor lor. Insa ce pot face? Ei insisi nu au cunoscut nici o bucurie in viata. Sunt roboti si cu buna-stiinta, ori fara sa-si dea seama, deliberat sau intentionat, vor crea o atmosfera in care copiii lor se vor transforma, mai devreme sau mai tarziu, in niste roboti. Daca vrei sa fii o fiinta omeneasca si nu o masina, descotoroseste-te de parintii tai. Si va trebui sa fii cu foarte mare bagare de seama. Este o munca grea, solicitanta; nu poti sa faci lucru acesta instantaneu. Va trebui sa fii foarte atent la comportamentul tau. Uita-te si vezi cand este prezenta mama ta, cand actioneaza ea prin intermediul tau: opreste asta, departeaza-te de asta. Fa ceva absolut nou, un lucru pe care mama ta nici macar n-ar fi putut sa si-l imagineze. De exemplu, iubitul tau se uita la o alta femeie cu o privire foarte apreciativa. Acum uita-te la ceea ce faci tu. Faci acelasi lucru pe care l-ar fi facut mama ta cand tatal tau se uita la o alta femeie cu o privire plina de apreciere?

Daca faci acest lucru, nu vei sti niciodata ce inseamna dragostea, pur si simplu vei repeta o poveste. Exact aceleasi roluri vor fi interpretate de alti actori, asta-i tot; aceeasi piesa mizerabila repetata din nou si din nou. Nu fi un imitator, iesi din asta. Fa ceva nou. Fa un lucru pe care mama ta nici macar n-ar fi conceput sa-l faca. Fa un lucru nou, pe care tatal tau nici macar n-ar fi conceput sa-l faca. Aceasta noutate va trebui sa fie adusa in fiinta ta si dupa aceea va incepe sa se reverse dragostea. Prin urmare, primul lucru esential pe care trebuie sa-l faci este sa te descotorosesti de parintii tai. Al doilea lucru esential este acesta: oamenii cred ca pot sa iubeasca numai atunci cand gasesc partenerul potrivit: o prostie! Nu vei gasi niciodata unul. Oamenii cred ca vor iubi numai atunci cand vor gasi barbatul perfect sau femeia perfecta. Prostie! Nu-i vei gasi niciodata, deoarece femeia perfecta si barbatul perfect nu exista. Iar daca ar exista, nu si-ar bate capul cu dragostea ta. Pur si simplu nu i-ar interesa. Am auzit de un barbat care a ramas holtei toata viata pentru ca o cauta pe femeia perfecta. La varsta de saptezeci de ani, cineva l-a intrebat: Ai calatorit foarte mult, ai cautat de la New York in Katmandu, din Katmandu la Roma, de la Roma la Londra. Chiar nu ai putut sa gasesti femeia perfecta? Nici macar una?

Batranul s-a intristat profund. A spus: Ba da, o data am gasit-o. Intr-o zi, candva de mult, am dat peste o femeie perfecta. Curiosul l-a intrebat mai departe: Si ce s-a intamplat? De ce nu te-ai casatorit? Trist, batranul i-a spus: Pentru ce? Ea il cauta pe barbatul perfect. Si aminteste-ti, cand doua fiinte sunt perfecte, nevoia lor de dragoste nu este aceeasi ca nevoia ta de dragoste. Are niste caracteristici cu totul diferite. Nu intelegi nici macar dragostea care este posibila pentru tine, asa ca nu vei intelege dragostea lui Buddha sau dragostea pe care o revarsa asupra ta un Lao Tzu nu vei putea sa o intelegi. Mai intai trebuie sa intelegi dragostea care este un fenomen natural. Nici macar acest lucru nu s-a intamplat. Mai intai trebuie sa intelegi ceea ce este natural si apoi ceea ce este transcendental.

Prin urmare, al doilea lucru pe care trebuie sa-l retii este sa nu cauti niciodata barbatul perfect sau femeia perfecta. Si aceasta idee ti-a fost bagata in cap: ca daca nu vei gasi barbatul perfect sau femeia perfecta, nu vei cunoaste fericirea. Asa ca tot continui sa cauti perfectiunea si nu o gasesti, asa ca esti nefericit. Pentru a pluti si a creste in dragoste nu este necesara perfectiunea. Dragostea nu are nimic de-a face cu celalalt. O persoana iubitoare pur si simplu iubeste, la fel cum o persoana vie respira si bea, mananca si doarme. Exact la fel, o persoana cu adevarat iubitoare iubeste. Nu spui, Daca aerul nu este perfect, nepoluat, eu nu respir. Continui sa respiri chiar si in Los Angeles; continui sa respiri chiar si in Bombay. Continui sa respiri pretutindeni, chiar daca aerul este poluat, otravit. Continui sa respiri! Nu-ti poti permite sa nu respiri pentru ca aerul nu este asa cum ar trebui sa fie. Daca ti-e foame, mananci ceva, indiferent ce. In desert, daca mori de sete, bei orice. Nu vei insista sa ti se dea o Coca-Cola, merge orice orice este de baut, apa chioara, chiar si apa murdara. Este un fapt cunoscut ca au existat oameni care si-au baut propria urina. Cand mori de sete, nu te mai intereseaza ce este, bei orice sa-ti astamperi setea. Oamenii si-au ucis camilele in desert sa bea apa camilele stocheaza apa in corpul lor.

Situatia devenea periculoasa in acest conditii, pentru ca oamenii trebuiau sa mearga pe jos kilometri intregi. Insa le era atat de sete, incat setea a contat mai mult mai intai apa; altfel mureau. Fara apa, chiar daca ar fi mai trait camila, ce-ar fi mai putut sa faca? Camila ar fi dus un cadavru in orasul cel mai apropiat, deoarece fara apa oamenii ar fi murit. O persoana vie si iubitoare pur si simplu iubeste. Dragostea este o functie naturala. Prin urmare, al doilea lucru pe care trebuie sa ti-l amintesti este sa nu cauti perfectiunea; altfel nu va curge nici un fel de dragoste prin tine. Dimpotriva, vei deveni ne-iubitor. Oamenii care cer perfectiunea sunt oameni complet ne-iubitori, nevrotici. Chiar daca isi pot gasi un iubit sau o iubita, cer perfectiune, iar dragostea este distrusa din caza acestei pretentii. Daca un barbat iubeste o femeie sau o femeie iubeste un barbat, apar imediat pretentiile. Femeia incepe sa aiba pretentia ca barbatul sa fie perfect, doar pentru ca o iubeste pe ea. Ca si cum ar fi comis un pacat! De-acum trebuie sa fie perfect, de-acum trebuie sa se descotoroseasca de toate limitarile lui, brusc, doar din cauza acestei femei? De-acum nu mai poate sa fie om? Trebuie sa devina fie supraom, fie un fals, un prefacut. Natural, este foarte greu sa devii un supraom, asa ca oamenii devin niste falsuri. Incep sa se prefaca, sa joace teatru, sa se prefaca. In numele dragostei, oamenii nu fac decat devina niste prefacuti. Prin urmare, al doilea lucru pe care trebuie sa ti-l amintesti este sa nu ceri niciodata perfectiunea. Nu ai nici un drept sa pretinzi nimic de la nimeni. Daca nu te iubeste nimeni, fii recunoscator, dar nu cere nimic pentru ca celalalt nu are nici o obligatie sa te iubeasca. Atunci cand cineva iubeste, este un miracol. Fii impresionat de miracol.

Insa oamenii nu sunt impresionati. Pentru niste nimicuri, distrug toate posibilitatile de a exista dragoste. Nu sunt prea interesati de dragoste si de bucuria ei. Sunt mai interesati de incursiunile in alte ego-uri. Fii preocupat de bucuria ta. Fii cat se poate de preocupat de bucuria ta, sa nu te intereseze altceva decat bucuria ta. Toate celelalte sunt neesentiale. Dragostea ca functie naturala, la fel cum respiri. Iar atunci cand iubesti pe cineva, nu incepe sa ai pretentii; altfel, de la bun inceput vei inchide portile. Nu te astepta la nimic. Daca ti se iveste ceva in cale, fii recunoscator. Daca nu se iveste nimic, nu este nevoie sa se iveasca. Nu poti sa te astepti la ceva. Insa urmareste-i pe oameni, urmareste-i cum se trateaza unii pe altii ca si cum ar avea obligatii reciproce. Daca sotia iti pregateste masa, nu-i multumesti niciodata. Nu spun ca ar trebui sa dai glas multumirilor, insa ar trebui sa se vada in ochii tai. Insa nu-ti bati capul, iei lucrul acesta ca fiind de la sine inteles: asta e treaba ei. Cine ti-a spus asta? Daca sotul tau castiga bani, nu-i multumesti niciodata. Nu simti nici un fel de gratitudine. Asta e treaba barbatului. Asta se petrece in mintea ta. Cum ar putea sa creasca dragostea? Dragostea are nevoie de un climat de dragoste, dragostea are nevoie de un climat de gratitudine, de multumire. Dragostea are nevoie de o atmosfera neconstrangatoare, de o atmosfera lipsita de asteptari. Acesta este al doilea lucru pe care trebuie sa ti-l amintesti. Iar al treilea lucru este urmatorul. In loc sa te gandesti cum sa faci sa primesti dragoste, incepe sa o dai. Nu exista nici un alt mijloc. Oamenii sunt mai preocupati cum sa apuce si sa ia. Pe toti ii intereseaza sa primeasca si se pare ca nimanui nu-i face vreo placere sa dea. Atunci cand dau, oamenii o fac cu o mare reticenta chiar daca dau, dau numai ca sa primeasca la randul lor si au o atitudine comerciala. Este un targ. Totdeauna au foarte mare grija sa primeasca mai mult decat dau, in felul acesta au facut un targ bun, o afacere buna. Iar celalalt face acelasi lucru. Dragostea nu este o afacere, asa ca inceteaza sa ai o atitudine de am de afaceri. Altfel iti vei irosi viata si vei rata dragostea si tot ceea ce este frumos in ea: pentru ca tot ceea ce este frumos nu are nimic in comun cu afacerile. Afacerile sunt lucrul cel mai urat din lume un rau necesar, insa existenta nu are nimic in comun cu afacerile. Copacii infloresc, nu este o afacere; stelele sclipesc, nu este o afacere, si nu trebuie sa platesti nimic nimanui pentru asta si nimeni nu cere nimic de la tine. Vine o pasare, se asaza la usa ta, canta un cantec si nu-ti cere nici un certificat si nici un semn de apreciere. A cantat cantecul si apoi pleaca fericita in alta parte, fara sa lase vreo urma. Asa creste dragostea. Dă si nu astepta sa vezi cat de mult poti sa iei. Da, ea vine, inmiita, dar vine natural. Vine dupa propria vointa, nu este nevoie sa o chemi. Cand o chemi, nu vine niciodata. Cand o chemi, o ucizi. Prin urmare, da. Incepe sa dai. La inceput va fi greu, deoarece intreaga ta viata ai fost antrenat nu sa dai, ci sa iei. La inceput va trebui sa te lupti cu propria platosa. Musculatura ti-a intepenit, inima ti-a inghetat, ai devenit rece. La inceput iti va fi greu, dar fiecare pas facut te va duce la un altul si incetul cu incetul, fluviul va incepe sa curga.

La inceput descotoroseste-te de parintii tai. Descotorosindu-te de parintii tai, te descotorosesti de societate, descotorosindu-te de parintii tai, te descotorosesti de civilizatie, educatie, de totul: deoarece parintii tai reprezinta toate acestea. Devii un individ. Pentru prima oara, nu mai faci parte din masa, ai o individualitate autentica. Esti pe cont propriu. Asta inseamna maturizarea. Asa ar trebui sa fie o persoana matura. O persoana matura este o persoana care nu are nevoie de parinti. O persoana matura este o persoana care nu are nevoie de nimeni de care sa se agate sau sa se sprijine. O persoana matura este o persoana fericita in solitudinea ei: solitudinea ei este un cantec, o sarbatoare. O persoana matura este o persoana care poate sa fie fericita cu ea insasi. Aceasta singuratate nu inseamna singuratate, faptul de a fi solitar inseamna solitudine, este meditativa. Intr-o buna zi a trebuit sa iesi din pantecul mamei. Daca ai fi ramas acolo mai mult de noua luni, ai fi murit nu numai tu, ci si mama ta ar fi murit. Intr-o buna zi a trebuit sa iesi din pantecul mamei tale; apoi intr-o alta zi a trebuit sa iesi din atmosfera familiei tale, un alt pantec, ca sa te duci la scoala. Dupa aceea intr-o alta zi a trebuit sa iesi din atmosfera scolii, un alt pantec, ca sa iesi in lumea larga. Insa in profunzimea sinelui tau, esti in continuare tot un copil. Inca te afli in pantec! Exista straturi suprapuse de pantec si acest pantec trebuie spart. Asta reprezinta ceea ce in Orient am numit cea de-a doua nastere. Cand ai ajuns la cea de-a doua nastere, esti complet liber de impresiile parintilor. Si frumusetea este ca o asemenea persoana le este recunoscatoare parintilor sai. Paradoxul este ca numai o asemenea persoana isi poate ierta parintii. Are compasiune si dragoste pentru ei, are sentimente extraordinar de puternice pentru ei, pentru ca si ei au suferit la fel. Nu este o persoana furioasa, nu, nici pe departe. Poate sa aiba lacrimi in ochi, dar nu este o persoana furioasa si va face tot ceea ce va putea pentru a-si ajuta parintii sa avanseze catre o asemenea plenitudine a singuratatii, la o asemenea inaltime a singuratatii.

Trebuie sa devii o individualitate, acesta este primul lucru. Al doilea lucru este sa nu astepti perfectiunea si sa nu ceri si sa nu pretinzi. Iubeste oamenii obisnuiti. Nu e nimic in neregula cu oamenii obisnuiti. Oamenii obisnuiti sunt extraordinari! Fiecare fiinta umana este atat de unica; arata respect pentru aceasta unicitate.

In al treilea rand, dă, si dă fara nici o conditie atunci vei sti ce inseamna dragostea. Eu nu o pot defini. Iti pot arata calea pentru a o cultiva. Iti pot arata cum sa sadesti o tufa de trandafiri, cum sa o uzi, cum sa ii pui ingrasamant, cum sa o protejezi. Apoi, din senin, intr-o buna zi, apare trandafirul si casa ta e plina de parfumul lui. Asa se intampla si dragostea. Witnessing you have brought with your birth. But the society, the educational system, the family, all are trying to make you ambitious. My father never knew -- he had eleven children -- he never knew which child was studying in which school, in which class, and whether he had passed or failed this year. He never inquired. Even for our progressive reports, we had to tell him, "You have to sign it." And he would say, "You could have signed it yourself My signature is so simple. But I will sign." And he would sign without reading whether I have passed or failed. Any recommendations from the teacher, from the principal, he would not read. When I topped the university, that was the first time I told him, "You will be happy to know... you know me, that I am good for nothing, but by some coincidence I have topped the whole university and received the gold medal." He became very serious. I said, "This is not some crime that I have committed. You need not be so serious." He said, "No, I am serious. Because that simply means in your whole university.... If you can top the university then the people who are studying there must be far worse than you! That makes me serious. I was thinking you only are good for nothing. This proves that your whole university is just good for nothing. And you topped -- that means you are at least better." I said, "That is true. I never thought about it, otherwise I would not have told you. I thought you would be happy." To get such a father is very difficult. He never imposed any ambition on me. If some of my brothers failed in a class and they came home crying and weeping, he would say, "Don't cry and weep. What is the matter? It simply means that in two years you will become far stronger and far wiser than you can become in one year. And what is the loss? And what is the hurry? If you cannot come out of the school one year earlier, there is no problem. You can take your time, you can fail as many times as you want. One thing is certain, the longer you remain in one class, the wiser and stronger you will become. Nothing is lost. Don't cry and weep unnecessarily." The principal would come just to console my father. "It is not our fault that your son has failed, but he never pays any attention to the studies. He is continuously interested in games, and he is almost always absent. So you just tell him to be present. He is intelligent, there is no problem about it." But my father would say, "But what is the problem? Let him play, let him not be attentive. Let him not be present, what is the hurry? I am still alive. He can take his time; one year, two years, three years, as much as he wants. He will become far more mature, and failure is also a great experience in life. In life, you cannot succeed in everything. So this is good; he will know some taste of failure and will be able to absorb it in his life. There is no need to be worried and no need to console me. Nothing has gone wrong." But to find this kind of parent is very difficult. Ordinarily they are all ambitious people, and, because they cannot fulfill their own ambitions, they project their ambitions on their children. They wanted to become something special, but they could not; at least their sons will become. I used to know a very famous politician, Seth Govinddas. He had a very ambitious mind and wanted to become not less than prime minister of India. He and the man who became the first prime minister of India were both friends, and very intimate friends. Both had been together in jails, both had come from very rich families. In one of his speeches the father of Jawaharlal Nehru, Motilal, said, "I have two sons. One is Jawaharlal, the other is Govinddas." Naturally, he was thinking of becoming the prime minister. If he cannot become the first prime minister, then his must be the second chance after Jawaharlal. But he could not manage even to become a cabinet minister. He could not manage to become even a governor, a chief minister of a state. He had tried everything, but basically he was not a politician. He was very simple, almost a simpleton. So the desire was there, burning his heart. He had two sons, and he tried hard that they should become what he had missed. And he had all the political connections, so he helped his first son become a deputy minister. He was hoping that the son soon would become minister, then move to the cabinet of the central government and then become prime minister. If he had not been able to become the prime minister himself, at least he can claim to be the father of a prime minister, which is far better. But the son died as a deputy minister in a state council. He was only thirty-six when he died. But ambition is such a thing that this old man tried to commit suicide, because with the death of the son all his ambitions had failed again. I told him, "You have another son. Give him a try. You have all the best connections in the country, from the lowest to the highest. It is just very easy for you." And suddenly I could see his eyes shine again, as if life returned to him. He said "Yes, I had never thought about it. I was thinking simply to die, because what is the point of living? I missed, my son has died." So he managed that his second son enter into the same post; he became the deputy minister. But neither of his sons had the ability to be politicians. They were his sons, just as stupid as he was, perhaps a little more. And you will be surprised that the second son also died. The man was now seventy-five or seventy- eight, and this was too much of a shock. Again he started talking about suicide. His wife phoned me and said, "You come. Last time you had done something and he dropped the idea of suicide. Now you do something because again he is talking of suicide." I said, "Don't be worried. People who talk of suicide never commit suicide. People who commit suicide are those who never talk about it. But I will come." I went. He was sitting again in the same posture, and I said to him, "If you want to commit suicide, commit! Why do you harass the whole family by talking about it?" He said, "Everybody, the mayor of the city, the chief minister, all have come to console me. Indira Gandhi's telegram has come." He was sitting with a pile of telegrams from all the ministers and governors -- India has thirty states and chief ministers -- and he was showing them to everybody who was coming. I told him, "You don't seem to be interested in the death of the son. You are more interested in these telegrams." Just one man had not sent him a telegram, and about that he was feeling very much hurt. He was one of his old colleagues, but then later on they became enemies in politics. He joined another party, and became a chief minister. Only Govinddas had not, so he was continuously telling everybody, "Only Dwarka Prasad Mishra... his telegram has not come. And I have made the man." And it was true, if you think that Dwarka Prasad lived in Govinddas' house and was financially supported by him. But it was not true that he had made the man. That man was capable to reach the post, any post, on his own. He was a very ambitious, very cunning, very clever man. He used him, he used all his friendships with all the great politicians. And I said, "You are so much interested in telegrams, and you are not interested in the death of your son. Can you understand that you have lived your whole life in ambition? You failed, your first son died, your second son died, but your ambition -- it continues. You are ready to commit suicide but you are not ready to drop the ambition. As if ambition is far more valuable than life!" And I said, "If you just want to project your ambition on somebody, then why not your son-in-law?" He said, "You are a genius, certainly! I never thought about my son-in-law." He had only one daughter and two sons. And because he was so rich the daughter was living with him, and the son-in-law also. I said, "He lives with you. He is just like a son to you. Make arrangements, make him deputy minister in the cabinet somewhere and see whether he dies or not. Then we will think.... Why did these two sons die? It seems they were not capable of withstanding the political pressures, challenges, worries. They were both young and there was no need to die so soon. There was no reason except that politics proved poisonous to them. Let us try this one." And he tried. And this time things went well. The man became deputy minister and Seth Govinddas died! And the moment he died, his son-in-law was thrown out of the ministry, because he was just taken in because of Govinddas's pressure, that he would commit suicide. All the politicians had known him for his whole life. He had been in the freedom struggle and he was known as father of the parliament. He was the only man in the whole world except Winston Churchill who had been a member of parliament so long, continuously from 1916 to 1978, without a break, so he was known as the father of Indian parliament. Everybody knew him and everybody was obliged to him in many ways. But the moment he died, the son-in-law was thrown out. I said, "This is far better, because. if you were thrown out before, he would have tried to commit suicide again." And he was not capable of committing suicide, either, because still ambition was there, some hope from some corner. All the parents are ambitious. The whole educational system is ambitious. All the religions are ambitious. They are all promising and giving hope to people that their ambitions will be fulfilled after death. That's why people are missing something which is very simple, which needs no ambition, which needs no ego, which needs no effort; which needs a simple, very simple understanding; just a little clarity, a little intelligence, and your whole life is transformed. The whole earth can become enlightened. We have just to change the educational system, to change the organized religions of the world, to change the political structures of the society. And we have to allow every child his way. Whatever he wants to become, let him become. Even if he turns out to be a beggar, he will be far more fulfilled. Forced to be a king, he will not be happy to be a king; that will not go according to his heart. Let something happen according to his heart. If he wants to play guitar, let him play guitar. He will not become Yehudi Menuhin -- how many people can become Yehudi Menuhin? -- but there is no need for everybody to become Yehudi Menuhin. He can play and enjoy. If he enjoys himself without disturbing the neighbors, there is no problem. I have heard that there was a man who was practicing Indian classical music. His neighbor came to him and said, "Tonight we are going to have a party. Can we have your harmonium?" He said, "There is no problem, you can take the harmonium." Just after a few minutes the neighbor's wife came, and said, "It doesn't look good, but we don't have a set of tablas. Can we have your tablas?" He said, "Yes, you can have. But when is the party going to begin?" The wife said, "What party?" The man said, "But your husband has taken the harmonium saying, 'We are going to have a party so some music will be happening."' The wife said, "To be true, tonight we want to sleep. Music is happening too much! So when he had taken the harmonium, we remembered you may start playing on the tablas. I have come to ask for the tablas because what will we do with only the harmonium? -- tablas are also needed. There is no party. Just for so many days we have not been able to sleep. Just once in a while, let us have sleep." So if you are not disturbing your neighbors, there is no problem. You can play your guitar, your sitar. You can play anything you want, and even if you don't become famous. I don't understand what becoming famous is going to give to you. Twenty people know you, what are you getting? Two hundred people know you, you will be getting ten times more. But what are you getting with twenty? Two thousand people know you, then you will be getting still more, but what are you getting with twenty? Just think of that: the whole world knows you, but what will you be getting out of it? Just start with twenty and go on multiplying and you will be clearly able to perceive that it is simple nonsense. Ambition is a very stupid game in which there is no victory, only defeat. Only defeat because you will never become what you are born to become. And you will never know your birthright, the ultimate bliss of being enlightened. everything is here-now. mind is far away. this mind is the root cause of your misery. It is not because of past karmas that you are suffering, no. It is not that god has destined you to suffer, no. It is not because Adam and Eve commited sin, that you are suffering, no. These are tricks to avoid the responsability

I am a man of very simple taste. I am utterly satisfied with anything which is the best. - Osho