Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

Talks given from 30/01/89 pm to 05/02/89 pm

English Discourse series

7 Chapters

Year published: 1989

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

Chapter #1

Chapter title: Marx and buddha hand in hand

30 January 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Archive

code:

8901305

ShortTitle:

FIRE01

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

140

mins

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

YAKUSAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?"

"FROM NANSEN," WAS THE REPLY.

"HOW LONG WERE YOU THERE?" YAKUSAN CONTINUED.

"FROM LAST WINTER TO SUMMER," REPLIED THE MONK.

"THEN YOU MUST HAVE BECOME A GOOD OX," COMMENTED YAKUSAN.

THE MONK SAID, "THE THING IS, I WAS THERE, BUT I DIDN'T EVEN GO TO

THE DINING HALL."

"BUT YOU CANNOT GET BY JUST THROUGH BREATHING THE WIND!"

YAKUSAN COMMENTED.

"IT WAS NOT THAT BAD, OSHO," SAID THE MONK. "THERE IS SURELY A MAN WHO WILL HOLD A SPOON FOR ME."

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, YAKUSAN WAS RETURNING TO HIS TEMPLE

WITH A BUNDLE OF FIREWOOD WHEN A MONK ASKED HIM, "WHERE HAVE

YOU BEEN?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "I'VE GOT FIREWOOD."

THE MONK POINTED TO YAKUSAN'S SWORD AND SAID, "IT MAKES THE

SOUND `TAP-TAP'. WHAT IN THE WORLD IS IT?"

AT THIS THE MASTER UNSHEATHED THE SWORD AND ASSUMED A

WARRIOR'S STANCE.

Friends,

There is a group of Soviet comrades present here today. They have a few very beautiful and simple questions. First I am going to answer them.

Question 1

The first question:

YOU HAVE DEDICATED A BOOK TO GORBACHEV. SINCE YOU ARE AGAINST

POLITICIANS, IS THIS A CONTRADICTION?

Not at all, because Gorbachev is not a politician. His every act proves that he is a man in politics but not a politician. My dedication to Gorbachev and the academic scientist Sakharov was for this simple reason, that he is not a politician and is immensely interested in having peace in the world. He is for friendship in the world, not for war.

The politician's mind is always concerned with war. Adolf Hitler in his autobiography, MY STRUGGLE, says that if a politician wants to remain in politics he has to continue creating enemies. If there are no real enemies, create fictions that somebody is going to attack you, that you are surrounded by enemies. Only that will keep you in power -- not peace.

And it is a factual thing to know; your whole history is filled with heroes who were nothing but warmongers, people who massacred millions of people. Your history does not consist of a single name who was a peacemaker.

I have dedicated my book with deep love to Gorbachev and Sakharov because they are both working for world peace. That is not the way of the politician, that is the way of a humanitarian. That is the way of one who loves humanity, who loves this beautiful planet and wants to save it at any cost. And all his actions prove what I am saying.

Question 2

Their second question is:

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.

They arrested me without any arrest warrant, and without showing me any reason for arresting me. Just a piece of paper on which there were a few names -- "We have been ordered from above that these people should be immediately arrested."

I said, "But you should look at our passports! My name is not on this paper; neither are the names of the six people who are with me on this paper. You are absolutely absurd.

Just look at our passports and compare with your names; you are arresting the wrong people." Still, we were arrested.

In fact, they had no evidence at all to arrest me. But they did not give me bail for twelve days. They arrested me in North Carolina, and the flight from North Carolina to Oregon, where the commune was located, was only five hours. It took twelve days for me to reach Portland, and they dragged me from jail to jail; in twelve days I was dragged to six jails.

Only later on I became aware of it, when the British experts in poisoning looked into my symptoms and gave the verdict, that I was given a certain poison, thallium. It is not detectable either from blood or from urine; it simply disappears. I had all the symptoms -

- when the poison disappears, it leaves certain kinds of sicknesses in the body. This poison has been used against political prisoners. But if you give it in a bigger dose, the person dies immediately. That's why they wanted twelve days, to give it to me in small doses so I would not die in their jails -- they would be condemned by the whole world.

And when they released me, I was ordered to leave America immediately, within fifteen minutes. My car was in front of the courthouse, and my jet plane was kept with its engine running at the airport; I should leave immediately. They were afraid that if I stayed one day more, I might appeal to the Supreme Court. And there was every reason for me to win the case, because none of their charges... thirty-four charges against a man who was in silence, had never moved out of his house. How can he commit thirty-four crimes?

And they had no evidence of any crime.

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?"

Because they were afraid of my death -- that may create great opposition around the world, particularly among the intellectuals, intelligentsia, artists; all kinds of creative people will be opposed to it -- they gave me the poison in small doses. And still they were afraid that perhaps those small doses were not going to kill me, so finally they put a bomb under my chair. It is by the courtesy of the bomb that I am alive; it did not go off at the right time. I had left the chair. I heard it at the airport from the journalists that the bomb did not go off, something went wrong.

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.

Karl Marx had never an idea that communism would happen in the Soviet Union. His idea was that communism would happen first in America, where exploitation of the poor has reached its climax.

Russia was a poor country with a small group of rich people, the czar and a few other rich people. The whole country was poor; there were not yet class distinctions. It was a feudal country, it had not yet become capitalist. According to Karl Marx's analysis, only a capitalist country can move towards communism; a feudal country first has to become capitalist. Capitalism means a clear-cut division of the poor and the rich, and the middle class simply disappears. A few move into the rich, most of them fall back into the poor, and when one country is divided clearly into the poor and the rich, revolution is possible.

Russia was not in such a position. It was a feudal country. The czar was a feudal lord.

But existence does not work according to logic. It was a certain situation that made Russia communist. The situation was the first world war. The czar's own soldiers did not have sufficient clothes, boots, food. They turned against czar -- his own army -- and it was a great strategy of Lenin to ride on the wave. It was not really a conflict between the poor and the rich; it was a conflict between the czar and his own armies. And Lenin took advantage of the opportunity. He rushed back -- he was in Germany -- he rushed back immediately. And he was a man of immense clarity. He immediately rode on the wave of the armies. And when the czar had no armies, his own armies were against him....

Communism happened as an accident in Russia. It was not according to the economic analysis by Karl Marx. But whatever the cause, it happened. It is the first communist country in the world, the only hope.

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 ìsm', 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.

Question 3

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.

The new series begins today: COMMUNISM AND ZEN FIRE, ZEN WIND.

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

YAKUSAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?"

"FROM NANSEN..."

Nansen was one of the great masters of Zen. The monk's reply is that he is coming from Nansen, and Yakusan immediately asks,

"HOW LONG WERE YOU THERE?"

"FROM LAST WINTER TO SUMMER," REPLIED THE MONK.

"THEN YOU MUST HAVE BECOME A GOOD OX," COMMENTED YAKUSAN.

I have to tell you about the ox -- I have told you about it before.

In ancient China, there used to be ten cards, ten beautiful pictures about ox-herding, mastering the ox.

In the first picture, the ox has escaped from its owner into the deep forest. The owner is looking all around, but he can see only trees and trees and trees, and no ox.

In the second picture, he finds the footprints of the ox. Now there is some hope he may find the ox -- he follows the footprints. In the third picture, he finds that the ox is hiding behind a bush; just his tail and the backside he can see. But he is immediately happy --

"He is trying to deceive me!"

In the fourth picture he has seen the whole ox. In the fifth picture, he takes hold of the ox by the horns. It is a difficult struggle; the ox is far more powerful an animal than man.

With difficulty he manages. In the sixth picture, he is riding on the ox. In the seventh he is moving towards home.

In the eighth, he has put the ox in its stable. In the ninth picture, he is sitting before his cottage, playing a flute.

When these pictures came to Japan, the tenth picture was dropped out, thinking that it might be dangerous, particularly for people who are very new and don't know the whole world of Zen.

The tenth picture shows that the man is so happy... he takes a bottle of wine and rushes towards the marketplace, perhaps towards the pub, to enjoy with his friends. He has found his ox -- now this is a celebration.

Being afraid that this will mean that you can drink wine -- and this will go against Buddha -- they dropped the tenth picture.

But I love the tenth picture, because it does not represent wine; wine is only a symbol of being drunk with the divine. Wine is only a symbol of being utterly at ease with existence

-- relaxed, in tune, in harmony, in accord. And his rushing towards the pub is also symbolic. It is rushing towards your own juices of life, to the very center of your being, where you will get drunk.

This kind of getting drunk is unending. Once you have tasted it, you have tasted it; it is not going to fade way. It is going to overwhelm your whole life. Your whole life will become a festival of lights; your whole life will become a ceremony of laughter, of dance, of song, of music.

The tenth picture was dropped out of fear, but I want to bring that tenth picture back --

even to Japan.

Ishida is here, sitting. She has come from Japan, from a Shinto temple. I will make her my ambassador in Japan -- I have my ambassadors all over the world. Soon I will appoint an ambassador to the Soviet Union.

I would like to tell Ishida that the tenth picture has to be added to the nine pictures, because those nine pictures are incomplete.

This is the story of the ox.

So when Yakusan said, "THEN YOU MUST HAVE BECOME A GOOD OX," the monk said:

"THE THING IS, I WAS THERE, BUT I DID NOT EVEN GO TO THE DINING

HALL."

"BUT YOU CANNOT GET BY JUST THROUGH BREATHING THE WIND!"

YAKUSAN COMMENTED.

"IT WAS NOT THAT BAD, OSHO..."

Osho is a very beautiful word. It should be added to every language. Just the sound is beautiful in the first place: Osho. It shows respect, it shows love, it shows gratitude. It is not just a dry word like "Reverend." It is a very loving and friendly word, almost having the sense of "The Beloved."

The man said, "IT WAS NOT THAT BAD, OSHO." -- Yakusan was also a great master

-- "THERE IS SURELY A MAN WHO WILL HOLD A SPOON FOR ME."

Zen talks in symbols; that's why it has remained a very small stream of great mystics but it has never became a mass phenomenon. Perhaps it is good that it never became a mass phenomenon. Everything that becomes a mass phenomenon becomes degraded, because the majority of the people consist of idiots. And every second, one idiot is born in the world. They go on increasing.

When I was in America, I just made a comment to a television interviewer, that "All Oregonians" -- where I was -- "are retarded people." Obviously, Oregonians were very furious, particularly the attorney general of Oregon, David Frohnmeyer. And the governor, and the all the politicians were absolutely angry that I had called the whole of Oregon "retarded."

But the University of Oregon took the case in hand. They surveyed a cross section of Oregon society, and they surveyed my commune. And their results silenced the governor, the attorney general and all the politicians. The results were that the average mental age of Oregonians is seven years -- that is the age of retarded persons. And the age of the commune people was fourteen -- double that of the Oregonians.

But the idiots destroyed the most intelligent commune in the world. It had great surgeons, doctors, professors; almost everybody was a postgraduate in some subject, hundreds were Ph.Ds, hundreds were D.Litts. It was absolutely an utterly intelligent group of people.

Zen has remained a small, thin line, but immensely rich. It deals in symbols. If you don't understand the symbols, the story is meaningless.

What is the symbolism of what the monk said? -- "It was not that bad, Osho. Don't think that I was hungry because I never went into the kitchen. There was always a man who would hold a spoon for me. That was Nansen, who was my nourishment. Seeing that I would not enter the dining hall, he was always -- and he was the master! -- always bringing food for me. Not only physical food, he was also my nourishment spiritually."

"Holding a spoon for me" means nourishment. "There was someone who took care of me: my master, Nansen. I simply waited outside the dining room just to see whether the master takes care of everybody, whether he will look out of the window and see one monk standing outside, not coming in.

"So it was not so bad that I was hungry and starving; Nansen was always holding out nourishment for me, through the window. And it was not only nourishment for my body; his attention, his care for me was also nourishment. I am nobody, and he took so much care. Every day he remembered me, that I would be standing outside.

"Leaving his dining table, he would come and give me food, and he never asked, `Why do you go on standing outside?'" -- because that is one of the fundamentals of Zen: don't interfere into anybody's life. Everybody has a territorial imperative, a certain area. Don't enter into it; that is his dignity, that is his pride. Leave it to his intelligence.

"And he was not only giving me food, he was giving me spiritual nourishment. It was not bad, Osho. Don't misunderstand me, and don't misunderstand my master, Nansen."

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, YAKUSAN WAS RETURNING TO HIS TEMPLE

WITH A BUNDLE OF FIREWOOD WHEN A MONK ASKED HIM, "WHERE HAVE

YOU BEEN?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "I HAVE GOT FIREWOOD."

THE MONK POINTED TO YAKUSAN'S SWORD AND SAID, "IT MAKES THE

SOUND `TAP-TAP'."

Perhaps because he was carrying the firewood, and the sword was hanging around his waist... it may have been hitting the firewood and making the sound `tap-tap'. He said,

"What is that which makes the sound `tap-tap'?"

AT THIS THE MASTER UNSHEATHED THE SWORD AND ASSUMED A

WARRIOR'S STANCE.

He stood like a warrior.

What is Yakusan intending to show to the monk?

First, the monk has asked, "Where have you been?" He has not answered that, because what is past is past, and what is future is future. They are not the concern of Zen.

The concern of Zen is the present moment. You can ask a question about the past, but you cannot distract the master from the present. So he did not answer where he had been; on the contrary, he simply said, "I HAVE GOT FIREWOOD. Just in the present, right now, you can see the firewood and you can understand where I must have been --

collecting firewood. But that has not to be said. That is a past thing. I simply show you the present. And the present implies the past, and in a subtle way it implies the future, but nothing can be said about that. That which is gone, is gone, and that which has not come yet, has not come yet."

We can live only in the present moment. That is our only time. One never knows what is going to happen in the next moment.

Just three days ago, a Canadian sannyasin who had been here for only three days, was meditating. And before meditating he had expressed the desire that, "I want to become a sannyasin this evening." While meditating, he died. The evening never came.

People thought, for two and a half hours, that he was meditating. But when he did not move at all, somebody shook him and found that he was dead. But as far as I am concerned, because he was intending to become a sannyasin in the evening it is enough.

He has become a sannyasin.

Sannyas is not something outward, it is something that arises in you, an urge, a deep longing. And he died in meditation -- what better initiation can there be? He died as a sannyasin. In utter silence, in absolute peace, he disappeared into the beyond.

Zen does not talk about past and future. Its whole concentration is in the now and here.

I always love to tell a small story....

A great atheist advocate had written in his sitting room, on the wall, in capital letters: GOD IS NOWHERE. Of course, everybody who came to see him had to read it; it was in such big letters, just in front of their eyes.

His first child was born, and one day he was playing with the child. The child was learning the language slowly, so he started reading the sentence on the wall. He could read, "God is nowhere," but "nowhere" was such a big word, the child could not manage to read it in one go. He cut it in two. He read, "GOD IS NOW HERE." The word

`nowhere' has been cut into two pieces.

For the first time the father looked at the sentence, and he said, "My God! This child has made me aware. Now I can never read that sentence completely; I will always remember

"Now Here."

It was a moment of transformation for the advocate. For the first time he started thinking,

"Do I know really that God is nowhere? Have I explored the whole space? Have I explored my inner being?"

Just as the theists are blind, so are the atheists. Both are believers. The only right person is an agnostic, who is neither theist nor atheist, who is simply in search of the truth. He has no belief system, no prejudice, no ideology already programmed.

I don't see much difference in the atheism of the Soviet Union and the theism of the Vatican. The theism of the Vatican is based on a belief. DAS KAPITAL is the bible for the Soviet Union -- because Marx says there is no God, it has become a program for every child. In seventy years the old generation has disappeared. Now every child believes there is no God. In India every child believes there is God. Both are beliefs: one is positive belief, one is negative belief, but belief is belief. Neither the Soviet Union knows, nor the Vatican.

The people who know, say it is impossible to say anything about the ultimate reality. It cannot be brought into language; it remains mysterious. You can enter into it, but you cannot say anything about it. You can enjoy it, you can rejoice it, you can dance it, but language is too poor.

This is the real poverty of philosophy, that it cannot express the ultimate experience of meditators.

Only the agnostic can be a meditator. He puts aside all programming, whether the programming is from the theist or from the atheist does not matter. All programming, the whole mind, has to be put aside, and you have to enter into a space of no-mind.

In that no-mind there is no time,

just the present moment and utter silence,

and great clarity,

and you are a luminous being,

Now, Here.

That's why Yakusan said, "I have got firewood. The rest you can understand. But don't ask me about the past."

THE MONK THEN POINTED TO YAKUSAN'S SWORD AND SAID, "IT MAKES

THE SOUND `TAP-TAP'. WHAT IN THE WORLD IS IT?"

Have you ever thought about it? -- even small things cannot be defined. If somebody asks you, "What is yellow?" what will you do? You can point to the color yellow, but you cannot give any definition. What is yellow? What is red? You will say, "Red is red." But that is not giving the answer. This is tautology; you are simply repeating "A rose is a rose is a rose," but you have gone nowhere. You have not defined what is rose. You can only indicate -- "This is." No definition is possible -- only indication.

So when the man asked, "What is that which is making the sound `tap-tap'?" the master did not answer, "It is a sword," because Zen does not believe in language; it believes in existence.

He took out the sword and showed the man a warrior's stance, the way the warrior stands with his sword: "This is it! If you have eyes you can see. If you don't have eyes I am helpless." But no dialogue, just existential indications.

Shiro wrote:

IN SNOW-WHITE MIST

WHERE SEA AND SKY ARE ONE,

A SINGLE DISK OF RED -- THE RISING SUN.

Haikus are pictures, visualize them. They are not poetries in the ordinary sense. Just visualize:

IN SNOW-WHITE MIST

WHERE SEA AND SKY ARE ONE,

A SINGLE DISK OF RED -- THE RISING SUN.

These haikus have come out of meditation.

Perhaps Shiro was meditating by the seaside, and as he opened his eyes IN SNOW-WHITE MIST WHERE SEA AND SKY ARE ONE,

on the horizon, suddenly

A SINGLE DISK OF RED -- THE RISING SUN.

And utter silence on his part, he is no more there. He is completely absorbed in the ocean, in the mist, in the rising sun.

It happened to Picasso -- it will help you to understand.

He was painting. One man was watching continuously for one and a half hours. Finally he could not resist the temptation -- because he could not understand what Picasso was painting. Just colors, colors, but no idea what he was painting. Finally he shook Picasso and asked, "What are you painting?"

As if from a trance, Picasso was awakened. He said, "What...? I was not there. Just the painting was happening, I was not painting. I don't know what. When the painting is complete, the critics will find out what I have painted, because I am not. I am simply my brush, my colors, my canvas. Something is happening, something is cooking, but I don't know exactly."

A rich young woman, very super-rich, asked him, "You have never made any portrait..."

He has never made any portrait, because who will ask him to make a portrait? Just look at his paintings!

He said, "I have never done any portrait."

The woman said, "I am willing to pay any amount of money. Don't bother about money, money does not matter." She was a widow of a super-rich American.

Just to avoid the woman, Picasso said, "It will cost one million dollars." She said,

"Agreed, start!"

He started painting her portrait. When the portrait was complete, the woman was completely in amazement! She said, "Just one question. Where is my nose in this portrait? Because from the nose I can find out where my eyes are, where my mouth is, where my ears are. A central point... Just one question, I will not ask anything more."

Picasso said, "I told you before, I don't do portraits! I knew perfectly well where it was, but now I don't know. I was so lost in painting it -- who cares about your nose? You can take it to the critics, art connoisseurs. Show them; perhaps they can find it."

When a meditator is in deep meditation, he is no more. And the morning, early morning, when it is still dark and the sun is still under the horizon, is the best time, the most cool.

And if you are near the sea...

the cool crisp salty breeze

and the silence surrounding you

and the continuous sound of the waves

creating a certain vibration of music...

It works almost like a lullaby. Just as your mother moves you in her arms and sings a song... continuous waves, making the same sound again and again and again... it creates a lullaby. It helps you to relax. Now people are using that sound for sleep.

Shiro must be sitting on the sea beach, utterly relaxed, and then he opened his eyes, clean and clear, just like mirrors, and there is a reflection: the mist meeting the sea. And suddenly out of the mist and out of the sea rises a red disk -- the rising sun.

These haikus are word-pictures. The necessity of a meditative mind as a background is absolute. No one except a meditator can write haiku.

Now many Westerners are writing haiku. They don't understand that without meditation you cannot write haiku. You can compose a poem, you know how many syllables are in a haiku. You can compose, but that composition is from the mind, and haiku is from the no-mind, from the utter silence when you are nothing but a mirror -- not out of thought, but from no thought.

Question 5

Maneesha has asked a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

IS NOT THE URGE TO UNDERSTAND, ACTUALLY THE URGE TO BECOME

ONE -- BOTH INWARDLY AND WITH OUR OUTER WORLD?

Yes, Maneesha. It is a very complicated question that you have asked -- it looks simple.

I have to bring Sigmund Freud in.

Sigmund Freud was the first man in the world who said that the whole urge for finding the truth, liberation, salvation, is arising out of nothing but a deprivation. The child lived in the mother's womb for nine months, one with the mother. That was his whole world, his whole cosmos; he knew nothing else.

The womb was the whole universe, and it was so beautiful, so relaxed. He had no worries of going bankrupt, he had no worries about the wife, and the children becoming hippies.

He had no worries at all. All nourishment was given by mother, all oxygen was given by the mother -- everything was supplied without asking. He had lived for nine months in paradise.

But after nine months he is thrown out of paradise, just the way Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Then he encounters the whole world -- such a helpless child -- and the world is too big, and every day brings new problems. Every day he has to learn new things, problem upon problem.

Soon he will be going to school -- and there are so many subjects. Soon he will be getting married -- and there are so many troubles. Soon he will be in business, or in service... and all kinds of masks he will have to wear: before the wife, before the girlfriend, before the boss, before the servant. He will have to change his mask continually. A tremendous desire is to go back to the womb.

According to Sigmund Freud -- and I agree with him -- the desire to know the truth, the desire to be liberated, the desire to become one with existence, is an extension of the experience in the womb of the mother. The whole cosmos becomes your womb the moment you enter into deep meditation.

At the very center of your being you are connected with the cosmos; otherwise you cannot live even for a single moment. Your life is not your life, it is the life that the cosmos is pouring in you continuously. Your breath is not your breath, it is the cosmos that is continuously pouring oxygen in the exact proportion needed by you. If it were left to you to breathe, I don't think anybody would survive. You will forget. Somebody insults you and you will forget breathing -- first things first! You see a beautiful woman and you will forget that the heart has to continue beating; it stops. It will be so difficult....

Existence has taken care to keep every essential thing in its own hands. What is given to you is trivia; all essential things that are absolutely necessary for life are still in the hands of existence.

When you reach in deep meditation to your roots, you will find that a door opens into the beyond and you know that every moment life is rushing into you. The more you become open, at the center, the more life you have -- abundance of life, so much that you would like to share with the whole world; still it is inexhaustible.

Yes, Maneesha, the desire, the urge to understand is really the urge to become one with the cosmos. Then there is no birth; then there is no death. The cosmos is eternal. It has never been created, as Christians have been telling you, and other religions also. It is evolving from eternity to eternity.

I am against America, Christianity, I am against President Ronald Reagan, not because of personal hurts that they have done to me and to my commune. I am against them because Ronald Reagan made a tremendous wound in the whole intelligentsia of the world by trying to burn all Charles Darwin's books -- in every library, in every college, in every school, in every university -- because it teaches evolution, and Christianity teaches creation.

These are two contradictory concepts. Creation means once and forever complete.

Evolution means never complete, always going on and on. Always the goal is just nearby

-- but as you move on, the goal also moves on. It is just like the horizon: it looks just a few miles away. You drive, and as you drive the horizon goes on moving, further and further. The distance between you and the horizon will remain exactly the same -- you can go around the earth -- because the horizon is just an illusion.

The goal, every goal, is an illusion. The man of understanding lives without any goal. He simply loves to live, he simply loves to love. He simply loves to sing and dance and enjoy the moment, the opportunity that existence has given to him.

In that total dance, you become one. In that total singing, when the singer disappears, you become one.

I have told you about Nijinsky, one of the greatest dancers the world has ever known. His greatness was not just his dance. His greatness was that once in a while, while dancing, he would jump so high... which is not possible according to scientists. Because gravitation is pulling you down, there is a limit, but he always transcended the limit so much that it was a miracle -- what happens? What happens to gravitation?

And not only this, when he would come back down... Gravitation pulls with force; you will fall on the stage with a thump! But Nijinsky would fall down like a feather, just slowly moving. That too is against gravitation.

He was asked again and again, "What is the secret?" He said, "The secret I don't know.

All that I know is, whenever I try to do it I never succeed. In my aloneness I try to do it -

- I never succeed. When I forget myself completely in the dance, when there is no Nijinsky, only the dance, suddenly it happens. It is a surprise to you, it is a surprise to me.

It is not my doing."

Meditation is not your doing. You simply make the effort, but it is not your doing. Your effort is needed to prepare the ground. As the ground is ready, immediately you see you are no more; the whole cosmos is. You have entered a greater womb, an eternal womb of tremendous peace and ecstasy.

Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

("SARDARJI," AS HE IS AFFECTIONATELY KNOWN, HAS EARNED THE

DISTINCTION OF BEING "THE ONLY MAN WHO LAUGHS BEFORE THE JOKE

IS TOLD," AND THE HONOR OF HAVING THIS PART OF THE DISCOURSE

ANNOUNCED AS HIS SPECIAL TIME. TONIGHT, HIS HEARTY AND

INFECTIOUS LAUGHTER IS NOT HEARD....)

Where is Sardar?! Absent? Perhaps in deep meditation....

That old dried-up prune, Mother Teresa, invites that old rotten fruitcake, Pope the Polack, to come and visit her Bleeding Hearts Home for the Dead and Dying in Calcutta.

The Polack is thrilled to receive the invitation, so he gets Cardinal Catzass to pack their bags, and they fly off to India.

Their first day is spent touring Mother Teresa's Bleeding Hearts Home, blessing all the half-dead Christian converts.

The next morning, the two Catholic cowboys from Rome go out into the streets of Calcutta, to wave at the crowds of starving Hindus. But all day long, Pope the Polack has been acting very strangely.

Cardinal Catzass is worried about the old Polack and asks him, "Your Holiness, what is the matter?"

"Listen," says the old fruitcake, "as soon as we get back to that Bleeding Hearts Home, the first thing I want to do is rip off Mother Teresa's knickers!"

"Really?" replies the shocked cardinal. "Why do you want to do that?"

"Because," says the pope with a groan, "they are much too tight for me!"

"How much for a roast beef sandwich?" asks Little Feenie Finkelstein, standing in Chicken Chopper's Sandwich Shop.

"Two dollars," replies Chicken Chopper, from behind the counter.

"How much for a cheese sandwich?" asks the little Jew.

"One dollar," replies Chicken.

"What about a ham sandwich?" asks Feenie. But before Chicken Chopper can reply there is a loud clap of thunder in the sky overhead.

Feenie Finkelstein falls to his knees, looks up at the sky and prays out loud, "Okay!

Okay! -- I was only asking!"

Dimmel Himmel, a nice Jewish boy from Berlin, goes to live in America to make his fortune, and ends up in L.A., California.

After a few years, he comes back to Berlin to visit his old mother, Mrs. Hattie Himmel.

He walks through the door in his stone-washed Levi jeans, alligator tennis shirt, and Reebok sneakers.

"Oy, veh!" cries Mamma Himmel, "but where are your beautiful long whiskers?"

"Ah, Mamma!" replies Dimmel. "Nobody wears a beard in L.A."

"Oy, my baby!" cries Hettie Himmel. "But tell me, you have at least been keeping the Sabbath?"

"Look, Mamma," says Himmel. "Business is business! In America, people work on the Sabbath."

"Ah, God!" cries Mamma Himmel. "But kosher food you still eat?"

"Listen, Mamma," replies Himmel, "I am an American now. It is very difficult to keep kosher in America."

The old lady looks at her son in shock. She hesitates for a moment and then goes up to him and whispers, "Dimmel, my son, tell me one thing -- are you still circumcised?"

Nivedano...

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

Be silent...

Close your eyes... and feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards. With your whole life energy, rush towards the center of your being.

Your total consciousness is needed

to become just an arrow,

forcing itself deeper and deeper,

faster and faster,

with an urgency as if this is going to be

your last moment on the earth.

Without this urgency you will never be able to reach to the center of your being.

That is the point from where you are connected with the cosmos. And that is also the point which transforms you into a buddha, into an awakened one. That is also the point when you learn you are immortal: you have been here always, and you will be here always -- whether in body or no body.

As you are coming closer and closer to your being, a great silence descends over you, and a great peace arises within your being.

The moment you reach to the very center

you are no more,

the buddha is.

The only quality that buddha has

is pure awareness

consciousness

witnessing.

Witnessing is a key word for all meditators.

Witness that you are not the body...

Witness that you are not the mind...

Witness that you are only a witness.

Suddenly, great bliss arises in you

out of nowhere

flowers of invisible ecstasy

start showering on you.

You are at the very source of your life juices.

To make the witnessing clear, Nivedano...

Relax.

Let go... but keep on witnessing.

That is the only thing you have to remember -- you are a witness -- and everything else will happen on its own.

I can see ten thousand buddhas utterly relaxed in their center. Gautam the Buddha Auditorium is changing into an ocean of consciousness, because you are all melting, dissolving your separation from existence.

The ocean of consciousness is without any waves,

without any ripples.

It is utterly calm and quiet.

This moment you are the most blessed people on the earth, because everybody is concerned only with the trivia -- money, prestige, power. Nobody seems to be concerned to know themselves, and nobody seems to be concerned to know their eternity.

This moment, now and here, you are experiencing the most intimate, the most ultimate experience that is possible to man.

This experience is going to become your Zen Fire, Zen Wind. The fire will burn everything that is false in you, and the wind will take away all that is only a personality.

Out of this fire and wind

will arise your pure gold.

You will need to understand the transformation that happens in this moment. You have lived your whole life horizontally, in a line, from the cradle to the graveyard. In meditation the transformation happens: you are no more a horizontal line, you become vertical. You reach to the highest peak of your consciousness, and you reach to the deepest point of your consciousness.

The height

and the depth

reveal you

your godliness.

There is no God, but there is certainly a quality I call godliness. It comprises compassion, love, friendship, joy, creativity. It brings you new songs, it brings you new dances. It brings you the truth, and the immersion of you into the truth.

Collect as much experience you can collect, because you have to bring it with you. It has to become part of your day-to-day routine life.

Chopping wood, you should be as silent as you are now. Drawing water from the well, you should be as blissful and ecstatic as you are now.

Sitting silently, doing nothing, you should be as blissful as you are now.

And persuade the buddha, which is your eternal nature, to come along with you.

First, the buddha will come as a shadow to you, following you -- but even that shadow will bring great grace and abundance of life, great benediction you can shower all over the world. But this is only the beginning -- buddha as a shadow. Soon, buddha will be ahead of you, and you will become the shadow. That is the second step.

And the third step... you merge into the buddha; even the shadow disappears, only buddha is, only pure awareness is.

You have entered into the cosmic womb.

Nivedano...

Come back, but come as a buddha, with the same grace, with the same silence, with the same bliss.

Sit down for a few moments just to recollect the golden path that you have followed.

And feel -- the presence of buddha is just behind you.

Remember -- in every activity, howsoever ordinary, the buddha is present behind you.

His presence transforms every ordinary action into an extraordinary act. Every word becomes so rich and so full of poetry, so full of truth, so full of silence. Every silence is as deep as the Pacific Ocean. Every moment in your life you are just moving upward in consciousness, as if you are moving on the greatest peak of the Himalayas, the Everest.

I teach you this Fire of Zen.

I teach you this Wind of Zen.

That is going to burn everything that is wrong, that is going to take away everything that is wrong in you and leave only the truth, the ultimate truth.

That ultimate truth brings freedom.

This is the only spirituality,

the only religion.

It is individual -- it has nothing to do with any church, with any organized religion. It has nothing to do with any scripture. It has to do only with your inner search and finding your authentic nature -- what Zen people call "the original face."

The buddha is your original face.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

Chapter #2

Chapter title: Raise the temple of consciousness

31 January 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Archive

code:

8901315

ShortTitle:

FIRE02

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

171

mins

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

THE MONK IN CHARGE OF THE MONASTERY ONCE SAID TO YAKUSAN, "I HAVE RUNG THE BELL; PLEASE, OSHO, IT IS TIME FOR THE REGULAR

DISCOURSE."

YAKUSAN SAID, "OKAY. YOU COME AND FOLLOW ME, HOLDING UP MY

BOWL."

THE MONK DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE MASTER'S MEANING, AND UNGAN --

WHO WAS ALSO PRESENT -- ASKED, "MASTER, WHEN DID YOU LOSE

YOUR ARMS AND LEGS?"

YAKUSAN SAID, "YOU ARE SIMPLY WEARING THE MONK'S HABIT."

UNGAN REPLIED, "I AM NOT OTHER THAN THIS. WHAT ABOUT YOU, MASTER?"

"I DON'T HAVE SUCH A FAMILY," COMMENTED YAKUSAN.

ONCE YAKUSAN CALLED A BOY MONK TO HIM. DOGO ASKED, "WHY DO

YOU CALL SUCH PEOPLE?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "BECAUSE OF THIS."

DOGO ASKED, "WHY DON'T YOU THROW IT AWAY?"

"BECAUSE I HAVE USED IT FOR A LONG TIME," REPLIED YAKUSAN.

Friends,

Question 1

One of the sannyasins has asked a question:

WHAT IS MISSING IN COMMUNISM?

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 namèKrishna' 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.

Five thousand years ago, the great warrior Arjuna, seeing millions of people ready to fight -- because it was a family fight....

Arjuna and Duryodhana were cousin-brothers. Duryodhana's father was blind -- in fact, he was the elder brother of the father of Arjuna. He was supposed to be the king but he was blind, so naturally the second oldest son, Dhritrashtra, was made king when the father died. But the older man, who could not get into power, was very ambitious that his son should get into power.

He had one hundred sons, because he had many wives. And a blind man... nothing else to do! He knows neither day nor night, and no other work was allotted to him, so he had one hundred sons. And the father of Arjuna had only five sons.

Arjuna was a great archer, perhaps the greatest the world has ever known. The whole thing depended on Arjuna: if he refused to fight with his own brothers... And all the relatives were divided between the two sides. The teacher of Arjuna, who had taught him archery, was on the other side. And there was every possibility that the other side would win; they were one hundred brothers and these were only five. But they had many relatives -- they had all come from all over the world.

You will be surprised that Arjuna's wife had come from Mexico. In Sanskrit the name of Mexico is Makshika. It is from Makshika that `Mexico' is derived. So even the Mexican princes had come to fight for Arjuna. These five brothers had only one wife, because all five were interested in this woman, who was Krishna's sister. So it was a dangerous problem! All the five brothers -- and the eldest was Yudhishthir, second was Bhima, third was Arjuna, and then two other brothers. So obviously, Yudhishthir had the first right to her....

But Arjuna was the most beautiful and the most important person in all those millions of soldiers who had gathered.

It was a strange war, because on both sides there were relatives of relatives, friends --

even Krishna.

When Krishna was asleep, Duryodhana, the head of the other side, and Arjuna, both approached him. And of course, Arjuna was Krishna's sister's husband. But Arjuna was a humble man, as all great men are humble. He sat by the side of Krishna's feet -- he was asleep -- and Duryodhana was an arch-egoist; he sat just by the side of Krishna's head.

So when Krishna opened his eyes, first he saw Arjuna. And he asked, "For what have you come?"

Arjuna said, "Look behind you, my cousin-brother is also present. We have both come for the same purpose: With whom are you going to fight in the war? The preparations are going on and we want you to decide on which side you are going to be."

Krishna was a great politician, a very great politician. He said, "Because Duryodhana is older than you, let him decide first. I will divide: on one side I will be, and on the other side my whole army. You are both my friends. So let Duryodhana choose."

Duryodhana certainly chose the army, because what to do with one man? And Krishna had the greatest army in the country. And Arjuna said, "That's exactly what I wanted!

You be my charioteer."

So on that first day of the war, both the armies are standing face to face and Krishna brings the chariot of Arjuna to confront the enemy. But seeing all the faces of the friends on both sides, all relatives in some way or other, seeing his own teacher on the other side, seeing his own great-granduncle, who loved Arjuna very much but was considerate of the blind man who had missed the kingdom which was his right... he was there. Arjuna became puzzled.

He said, "What will I gain if I kill all these people? Just sitting on a golden throne with all these people dead? I don't see any point in this war. Take my chariot away from the front, I am going to the Himalayas to meditate. This world is not for me. If I have to kill so many people just to be here, it is better to renounce it."

It 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.

Question 2

The second question is from another sannyasin. He has asked: 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.

The sutras:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

THE MONK IN CHARGE OF THE MONASTERY ONCE SAID TO YAKUSAN, "I HAVE RUNG THE BELL; PLEASE, OSHO, IT IS TIME FOR THE REGULAR

DISCOURSE."

You should understand one thing about Zen as a foundation: nothing is regular.

Everything is spontaneous. The whole emphasis is not on routine but on spontaneity. If the master feels like speaking, if existence wants to become through him a song, then he sings the song -- otherwise not. There is no question of regularity.

Spontaneity... it has happened thousands of times that the master will come to the podium, stand there for a few minutes, and nothing is coming. He will bow down to the assembly and return to his room. This is how Zen was born....

Buddha had never come to his morning discourse with anything in his hand. One day he came with a lotus flower -- so strange! People who had lived with him for years had never seen him carrying anything. And more strange was his silence. He just went on looking at the lotus flower. The minutes started becoming longer and longer and longer; one hour passed, and it seemed almost as if a whole life had passed. Ten thousand sannyasins waiting, watching, and Buddha is completely silent, looking at the lotus flower.

Then Mahakashyapa, for the first time... He had been for twenty years a disciple of Buddha; he had not spoken a single word, he had not even taken initiation. He never asked Buddha to initiate him, he simply got initiated on his own. He shaved his head, brought yellow robes, became a monk, gave himself a name, sat under a tree -- the same tree where he continued to sit year after year. Everybody was wondering -- "This fellow is strange, he seems to be insane!" They would ask him something and he would simply say, "Keep quiet."

But that day, when they were all silent, he simply started laughing out loud. Everybody looked at him. "What happened to this man? He has been insane for twenty years, and suddenly he has become sane? Or vice versa?"

Buddha looked at him and beckoned him with his hand: "Come close to me." This was for the first time in twenty years that Buddha had called him. Mahakashyapa came, and Buddha told the assembly of the sannyasins, "What I could say in words I have said to you. What I could not say in words I am transferring to Mahakashyapa."

And he gave the lotus flower to Mahakashyapa.

This is how Zen was born. This was the beginning of the river of Zen -- no word, just something invisible. People just watched in awe -- what is happening? And for the first time Mahakashyapa touched Buddha's feet -- but did not say a single word.

In Buddhist scriptures there is no other mention of Mahakashyapa, simply this mention.

But Mahakashyapa is the first Zen master.

From one master to another master, Zen has been coming down -- up to me. If Mahakashyapa is the beginning, I am perhaps at the very end of a long, long heritage --

twenty-five centuries, hundreds of masters, transferring in deep silence and meditation what cannot be said in words.

So the monk asked Yakusan... Yakusan is a great master, without any doubt:

"I HAVE RUNG THE BELL..."

The bell is rung to call all the sannyasins together in the assembly hall.

"PLEASE, OSHO, IT IS TIME FOR THE REGULAR DISCOURSE."

He used the word `regular' wrongly. With a master things are spontaneous -- nothing is regular. Even when you see regularity, it is only in your conception. For the master, it is spontaneous.

YAKUSAN SAID, "OKAY. YOU COME AND FOLLOW ME, HOLDING UP MY

BOWL" -- because I have not finished my breakfast.

Now this was a very strange situation, going to the assembly hall... is he going to deliver the discourse, or eat his rice? And the monk felt a little embarrassed: "I am following him with the bowl of rice. What will people think of me? -- `That idiot! Why is he carrying the bowl with the rice, behind the master?'"

THE MONK DID NOT UNDERSTAND THE MASTER'S MEANING, AND UNGAN

-- WHO WAS ALSO PRESENT -- ASKED, "MASTER, WHEN DID YOU LOSE

YOUR ARMS AND LEGS?"

Why are you not carrying your bowl yourself? When did you lose your arms and legs?

Even Ungan, who finally became enlightened, could not understand the meaning.

The meaning was that the discourse is nothing but a nourishment. It is a spiritual nourishment. Just as the body needs food, your spirituality needs nourishment. Carrying the bowl behind him, he was giving the monk an insight: "Think of all your meditations and discourses in terms of nourishment."

The master is nothing but food -- food for your soul. But Ungan did not understand either. He thought, "What is the matter?" because every monk carries his own bowl unless he is sick, unless he has lost his arms in some accident. What happened? "WHEN

DID YOU LOSE YOUR ARMS AND LEGS?"

YAKUSAN SAID, "YOU ARE SIMPLY WEARING THE MONK'S HABIT."

You don't know, and you cannot know. You are only wearing the monk's habit, the monk's robe, but you don't understand anything.

UNGAN REPLIED, "I AM NOT OTHER THAN THIS."

This is what I am. I am standing utterly naked before you. If you call me just the monk's habit... perhaps. This is what I am.

This was coming from a deeper source, indicating THISNESS....

Buddha's whole philosophy can be contained in the simple word `thisness' -- suchness, TATHATA. "This moment, this is what I am. You can call me anything you like, it does not matter." This was a great answer.

UNGAN REPLIED, "I AM NOT OTHER THAN THIS. WHAT ABOUT YOU, MASTER?"

YAKUSAN SAID: "I DON'T HAVE SUCH A FAMILY."

Strange answer from the master....

What does he mean that he does not have such a family? I will tell you one anecdote to have some feel of it.

When al-Hillaj Mansoor, who was killed finally by the Mohammedans... just like Jesus, but in a far worse way. They cut him piece by piece. But this happened later on, when he became enlightened and declared: "Ana'l haq -- I am the truth." And Mohammedans cannot forgive anybody saying this. Only god is truth. Calling yourself truth, you are indirectly calling yourself God.

But he was not calling himself God. He was simply saying, "I am the truth." And he was not claiming any monopoly on it. He was saying, "You are also the truth, it is just that you don't know it. I know it." But this came later on.

When he first went to his master, Junnaid... it was a very sad affair. His family, his wife, his children, his old parents, his friends, his neighbors -- all loved the young man. He was so beautiful, so joyous, just his presence was a light.

He had been visiting all kinds of masters. Finally he decided to leave the family and to go to Junnaid, who was residing just outside the village in the forest. Junnaid was a very famous master. So out of the town the family came, friends came, wife, children, neighbors, to say goodbye, to give him a good send-off. And he went towards the forest...

but again and again he looked back. Those people were still standing on the boundary of the town.

Finally, when he was entering into the forest, he looked for the last time. They were still standing, far away; he could not figure out who was who. And then he reached Junnaid's hut. He knocked on the door. Junnaid said -- from the inside; he has not seen the person yet -- he said, "First leave the crowd outside and come alone!"

What crowd? He looked all around, there was no crowd. He opened the door.

Junnaid said, "You did not follow my order! Leave the crowd outside and then come in."

But he said, "What crowd? I don't see anybody. I looked everywhere -- there is nobody."

He said, "You are looking outside -- look inside. The whole crowd is present. Your wife, your children, your family, your parents, your neighbors, your friends --

everybody is present. Just close your eyes: that is the crowd you have to leave outside.

Get out! When you are finished with the crowd, come in."

It took three years for al-Hillaj Mansoor to sit outside till he was finished with the family, with the crowd, till he became utterly silent. He forgot completely to enter into the hut.

Three years is a long time. He had forgotten the family, and he had also forgotten the master. There was no need now, he was completely fulfilled.

Exactly at that moment Junnaid came out and said, "Come in now."

He said, "But now there is no need."

Junnaid said, "Only now, when there is no need, can I start my work on you. Come in and close the doors."

This is the "family" that Yakusan means. He is saying, "I am absolutely alone. I am utterly silent. I don't have a crowd of thoughts, images, dreams in my mind. And you, standing before me, although you are saying, `This is what I am,' I can see the crowd inside, the family. You are not just this, you are that too."

Ungan must have understood, because he did not say a single word. The master was absolutely correct.

When the master is absolutely correct, the disciple simply has to bow down in silence.

There is no question of argument -- with the master you cannot argue, and if you argue you are creating a distance between yourself and the master.

Come close to the master without any argument, without any mind, without any thought, without any images, and suddenly there is a synchronicity -- your heart starts beating in tune with the master's heart.

And the master's heart is already beating in tune with the heart of the universe. So in an indirect way, coming closer to the master is the first step of coming closer to existence.

He is the window, the door. He opens into existence. He gives you the first taste of dropping the self, of dropping the crowd, of dropping everything and just being a pure consciousness.

ONCE YAKUSAN CALLED A BOY MONK TO HIM. DOGO ASKED, "WHY DO

YOU CALL SUCH PEOPLE?"

Dogo also became, finally, enlightened. He was a brother of Ungan. Both the brothers were disciples of Yakusan.

DOGO ASKED, "WHY DO YOU CALL SUCH PEOPLE?"

Just a young boy -- how can he understand the great teachings?

That's where the mind distracts you. The mind is interested in the scriptures, in the teachings, in the theology, philosophy -- in all kinds of gymnastics of words, beliefs, disbeliefs, arguments. And truth comes to those who are innocent. It can come more easily to a child than to a grown-up, because what you call growing up is nothing but gathering more rubbish. You have more knowledge, but nothing of knowing.

Knowing is a totally different experience than knowledge. Knowledge is borrowed.

Knowing is just like a man opening his eyes to the sun, and knowledge is just like a blind man writing a thesis on light. He can write....

Now there are ways -- the blind man can read, the blind man can write. But a blind man writing about light... will it have any relevance, any truth? It will be all borrowed. It will be all rubbish. You can know light only with your own eyes.

So when Yakusan called this young boy monk... Dogo was a scholar, a great knower of the scriptures. He said, "Why do you call such people? What will this boy understand?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "BECAUSE OF THIS."

Because he is so young, because he is so fresh, because he knows nothing, he is available.

You are not available. Your mind is full of thoughts, and thoughts are a China wall, thick

-- they prevent any master from approaching your heart, your being.

Yakusan said, "Simply because of this -- because he is so young, so fresh, so new. He knows nothing about anything. He is innocent."

And the innocent has more capacity to know the truth. Those who have already become knowledgeable will have to drop their knowledge and become again childlike.

Unless you become childlike, innocent, you cannot know the truth. Innocence is the path that leads to ultimate truth.

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "BECAUSE OF THIS."

DOGO ASKED, "WHY DON'T YOU THROW IT AWAY?"

He was still not understanding the master. That is the difficulty with so-called scholars, professors, knowledgeable people. He did not hear what the master has said; on the contrary, he is saying, "Why don't you throw it away? This kind of boy is not going to become a buddha."

Yakusan replied, "BECAUSE I HAVE USED IT FOR A LONG TIME. I cannot throw him away, because I have used innocence as a path towards enlightenment my whole life." A beautiful anecdote....

Meditation makes you innocent, it makes you childlike. In that state, miracles are possible. That state is pure magic. A great transformation happens -- in innocence you transcend the mind, and to transcend the mind is to become the awakened one, the enlightened one.

This is the only revolution, real revolution: the great rebellion that happens within you.

This is what the Soviet Union needs today.

Basho wrote:

LONELY IS MY WAY!

NO ONE PASSES HERE BUT I,

LATE THIS AUTUMN DAY.

Just visualize the late autumn day: soon the sunset, soon there will be multi-colors, psychedelic colors, on the horizon -- a beautiful autumn day. No one passes here but I.

He is talking about his inside. "No one passes here but I -- lonely is my way." Lonely is everybody's way. The master can only indicate, can point his finger to the moon, but you should look at the moon, not at the finger. If you look at the finger, you miss the moon; you miss the master, his indication.

And that's what has happened to all so-called religions. They are holding fingers: somebody the finger of Jesus, somebody the finger of Krishna, somebody the finger of Mohammed. Nobody is looking at the moon. And because these people themselves don't understand, they are very joyful -- "My finger is being caught by six hundred million Catholics!" The pope is immensely happy: "Six hundred million Catholics holding my finger?"

But the question is not the finger; the question is the moon.

And the path is alone. It is the moon within you. The master can indicate....

I am doing it every day, indicating where to go, how to go, how much energy is needed to reach there, what kind of experiences will be happening on the path and what kind of experiences will be happening when you have reached to the center of your being. I can only indicate, but you have to go. If you don't go, I am helpless.

Question 3

Maneesha has asked a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

NEITHER COMMUNISM NOR ZEN HAVE A GOD AS A CENTRAL HYPOTHESIS

ON WHICH A BELIEF SYSTEM IS BASED. DOES THIS IMPLY THAT RUSSIA MIGHT HAVE A GREATER AFFINITY WITH ZEN THAN THE WEST HAS?

Certainly, Maneesha. The Soviet Union will be more capable and receptive because it has dropped all gods and all the superstitions surrounding God. It has dropped all consolations, all opium. It has dropped all that has been forced on man for millennia.

The Soviet Union is almost in a state of innocence. But the danger is that this innocence can be exploited if the Soviet leaders are not conscious about it, that there is an innocent mind which has been created in seventy years and this can be exploited by organized religions very easily.

Keep the organized religions out! The Soviet Union needs a totally different kind of religiousness which these organized religions cannot supply -- they don't have it themselves. The Soviet Union needs a contemporary man -- with no past, absolutely present, now and here -- who can help this innocence to blossom into blue lotuses.

The Soviet Union has much more possibility than the capitalist West. In fact, the capitalist countries of the West used to call the Soviet Union "the East," although it is not the East. But they include it in the East; they don't consider it to be a Western country.

Perhaps it is a good sign! Unconsciously they have called it the East. It can really become the East, and far better than the East is, because the East is poor. The East has the roof, but it does not have the pillars, it does not have the foundation. Under the roof people are being crushed, dying of starvation. It knows the inner world but it has no idea that the outer world is not unreal; it is as real as the inner.

Both are real, both are existential, and both need to have a synchronicity, a harmony between matter and spirit, between that which can be seen and that which cannot be seen.

A deep accord is needed.

Yes, Maneesha, the Soviet Union has much more vulnerability, much more receptivity than the capitalist West. 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.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Now he has come back, with his rainbow turban.

Where is he sitting...?

(OSHO LOCATES SARDARJI BY HIS UNMISTAKEABLE LAUGHTER, AND

ACKNOWLEDGES HIS RETURN WITH A SMILE.)

There is a job opening at the local zoo for two men to clean out the gorilla cages. Paddy and Seamus go directly from the pub to apply.

"Before I give you lads the job," says Duckworth Bird, the head keeper, "I want to ask you a few questions."

"Okay," says Paddy, "I am ready!"

"The first question," says Duckworth. "What bird does not build its own nest?"

"That's easy," says Seamus. "It is a canary. He lives in a cage."

"That's not it, you idiot," says Paddy, digging Seamus in the ribs with his elbow. "It's a cuckoo!"

"Very good, Paddy," says Duckworth Bird. "How did you know?"

"Ah!" replies Paddy, "everybody knows that a cuckoo lives in a clock!"

Hamish MacTavish and Sandy MacPherson go mountaineering in the Swiss Alps.

Suddenly, Hamish loses his footing, slips and falls off a cliff into a deep crevasse.

Sandy MacPherson pokes his head over the cliff and just sees the fingertips of his Scottish friend clinging to a rock.

"Are you all right, Hamish?" shouts Sandy.

"Not exactly," gasps Hamish. "But if you run down to the village ten miles back, and get some rope, I will try to hang on until you get back. But hurry, for God's sake!"

Sandy MacPherson goes running off down the mountainside.

An hour later, his face suddenly reappears over the edge of the precipice.

"Are you still there, Hamish?" he shouts.

"Jeezus Christ! Just barely!" shouts back Hamish, hanging on by one hand. "Have you got the rope?"

"Ah!" replies MacPherson, "No! Those tight Swiss bastards wanted two francs for it!"

Old Father Fumble is invited to the local high school for its graduation ceremonies. But he is shocked and scandalized by some of the latest fashion outfits worn by the girls.

"Look at that youngster!" cries Fumble to the person next to him -- "the one with the orange hair, the cigarette, and the purple pants. Is it a boy or a girl?"

"A girl!" snaps his companion. "And by the way, she is my daughter."

"I am sorry, sir," says the flustered Fumble. "Do forgive me -- I would never had said anything had I known you were her father."

"I'm not, you idiot!" says the other. "I am her mother!"

Nivedano...

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards. Gather your whole life energy and rush towards the center of your being -- with total consciousness, with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment on the earth. Without this urgency you will never reach to the center.

Faster and faster... deeper and deeper.

As you start coming closer to your center, a great silence descends over you.

The closer you are... you find fountains of peace and serenity surrounding you. As you reach to the very center, for the first time you know who you are -- the buddha.

The buddha simply means the awakened one -- it has nothing to do with Gautam Buddha. He was one of the buddhas among thousands of buddhas... of course the most well-known buddha. But his name was not Buddha, his name was Gautam Siddharth.

Buddha was his awakening.

The same awakening, the same silence you are in... the same blossoming of your center into a lotus flower. You must have seen Gautam Buddha's statues sitting on a lotus flower....

This moment, Gautam the Buddha Auditorium is full of ten thousand buddhas.

You have to remember only one quality. Buddha consists only of one quality: witnessing.

Just being a witness -- without any judgment, without any identification; just watching as if you are only a mirror.

Witness that you are not the body.

Witness that you are not the mind.

Witness that you are only a witness. Just pure consciousness....

And suddenly you come in touch with your eternal life, with your immortal being.

Suddenly you have come very close to the heartbeat of the cosmos. Your being a buddha is the door to the cosmos.

To make this witnessing more clear, Nivedano...

Relax...

Let go of the body, but keep remembering one thing: that you are a buddha. And the buddha has only one quality; he is made up of only one thing -- that is witnessing.

The whole religious experience

can be reduced to a single word:

witnessing.

And as you get deeper into witnessing, you start melting like ice into the ocean; the Buddha Auditorium suddenly turns into an ocean of pure consciousness without any ripples, without any waves -- just so utterly silent.

Flowers from the beyond start raining on you in celebration of your achievement. This moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.

The evening was beautiful on its own. But in coming closer to your ultimate nature, buddhahood, you have made it a splendor, a miracle, a magical moment.

Just gather all the flowers

and the fragrances

and the juices of life.

You have to bring them with you.

And don't forget

to persuade the buddha

to come along.

First he will come, slowly slowly, as a shadow to you. He has been hiding at the center for millions of years. You have to bring him back from the center to the circumference of your life.

First he will be just behind you as a shadow.

In the second step, you will be behind him as a shadow. In the third step, you will merge into the buddha -- and the buddha is pure consciousness; hence it casts no shadow. It is absolutely transparent.

The moment you become a buddha in your day-to-day existence -- chopping wood, carrying water from the well -- that day will be the greatest day in your life.

The day of awakening... the day of being reborn as a buddha.

In this very moment you are so close to it.

Persuade him to come along with you. He is your ultimate nature, so he cannot deny your request. Welcome him.

Nivedano...

Come back, but come back with great peace, silence, tranquility, serenity. Come back as a buddha, with all grace.

Sit for a few seconds just to remember where you have been, what golden path you have followed.

Remember who is behind you -- the buddha.

He has to come in front of you.

These are the three steps of Zen:

First the buddha comes behind you as a shadow.

Second, he comes in front of you; you become the shadow.

Third, the shadow disappears into the buddha. Only a transparent consciousness remains which is eternal -- absolute freedom, love, compassion, beauty, godliness.

This I call the Zen Fire and the Zen Wind.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

Chapter #3

Chapter title: This I call Zen Fire, Zen Wind

1 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Archive

code:

8902015

ShortTitle:

FIRE03

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

200

mins

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

THE MONK, SOMPU, WAS ONCE WASHING A BUDDHA STATUE. YAKUSAN

CAME AND ASKED HIM, "NOW YOU ARE WASHING THIS, BUT CAN YOU

WASH THAT?"

SOMPU REPLIED, "PLEASE GET THAT AND BRING IT TO ME."

THE MASTER DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, WHEN YAKUSAN WAS SITTING DOWN, A MONK

CAME UP TO HIM AND SAID, "OSHO, YOU ARE SITTING SILENTLY. WHAT

ARE YOU THINKING?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "I'M THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE."

THE MONK SAID, "HOW DO YOU THINK THE UNTHINKABLE?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "NON-THINKING."

WHEN YAKUSAN WAS ABOUT TO DIE, HE YELLED OUT, "THE HALL IS

FALLING DOWN! THE HALL IS FALLING DOWN!"

THE MONKS BROUGHT VARIOUS THINGS AND BEGAN TO PROP IT UP.

YAKUSAN THREW UP HIS HANDS AND SAID, "NO ONE OF YOU

UNDERSTOOD WHAT I MEANT!"

Friends,

Question 1

One of the sannyasins has asked:

WHY DOES COMMUNISM NEED A DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT?

WHY NOT DEMOCRACY?

In a democracy you cannot change the status quo, you cannot change the class-divided society into a classless society.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is not an ordinary dictatorship of an Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. It is a dictatorship of the poor, the have-nots. Unless the have-nots have the power, they cannot stop the exploitation by the rich.

In a democracy it is almost impossible for the poor to have the power for the simple reason that the rich people have enough money to fight elections, enough money even to buy the poor and their votes, enough money to buy the politicians. It is impossible in a democracy for the poor to have power, and without power there is no possibility of changing the society. Hence, Karl Marx proposed the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Karl Marx was not a practical man. He was a great thinker, a great dreamer, a great utopian; in short, he was a stargazer. He spent his whole life in the library of the British Museum. Before the museum would open he was standing at the door, and it was with difficulty that the museum staff would force him out, physically, when the museum was closing.

It happened many times that without eating, without drinking... he was so deeply concentrated in finding the root causes of poverty and how to destroy it, looking into different sources, all the possible literature that might give some clue, that the museum staff had to call the ambulance from the hospital, because he would faint on his table. He would become unconscious -- no food, no water, just working out the whole plan for a utopia.

Communism is his great contribution to the world. But it has come out of a thinker's mind, dreamer's mind, and practical life is totally different from logic. His whole idea was that soon the poor would become poorer and the rich would become richer -- it seems perfectly logical -- and the middle class would disperse. A few would rise up and become richer, and more would fall down and become poor. When the society is absolutely divided between the proletariat, the have-nots, and the bourgeois, the haves....

Obviously the bourgeois cannot be in the majority, because there is tremendous competition; every rich man is trying to pull down other rich men by the legs. Everybody is trying to climb the ladder higher than the others. So those who reach the highest point of being super-rich are going to be, obviously, a minority. The poor will be the majority, and because they don't have anything... Karl Marx's great work, THE COMMUNIST

MANIFESTO, ends with the line: "Proletariat of the world unite. You don't have anything to lose except your chains, and you have the whole world to gain, the whole power, the whole society in your hands."

This is how logic functions, but life does not agree with it. He completely forgot the implications. He was thinking that the first country to become a communist country would be America, but America seems to be going perfectly well. There is no question at all of America becoming a communist country unless it is invaded and forced to become communist. From its inner sources, it is not going to become a communist country for a simple reason: the middle class has not disappeared and is not going to disappear.

That was completely overlooked by Marx. He thought that a few people would become richer, more ambitious, more competitive, more efficient. The others would fall down and become poorer. But he forgot the other side of the coin: that a few rich people will go bankrupt and become middle class, and a few poor people will start struggling and fighting and will join the middle class, so the middle class is not going to disappear. And it has not disappeared.

And the middle class is absolutely against any revolution, for the simple reason that they have much to lose. In revolution there is going to be chaos. And the middle class is not going to share its possessions with the millions of poor people.

Marx also forgot completely -- that shows how just thinking is not enough; a practical, down-to-earth approach is needed to change the society -- he forgot completely that even the poor may not be complete have-nots. The American poor may not have a Rolls Royce, but he has a Chevrolet, he has a house, he has a wife, he has children. His children are his ambitions, he is teaching them and they will become richer. But even the poor man has a car, a house, and he is afraid that in the sharing of wealth he may lose his car, his house. The proletariat has not turned out completely to be have-nots, so they are not ready for any revolution. Yes, they are ready for more and more facilities for the poor, but they are not going to be for the revolution.

America has the poorest and smallest Communist Party in the world, which has no power at all.

It happened in the Soviet Union: after the revolution a journalist was asking a poor man,

"Are you really a communist?" He said, "Yes, I am a communist." The journalist asked,

"If you had two cars, would you give one to your neighbor?" He said, "Of course."

"If you had two horses, would you give one to your neighbors?" He said, "Of course."

"If you had two cows, would you give one cow to your poor neighbors?" He said, "Yes."

And the journalist finally asked, "If you have two hens, are you going to give one hen to your neighbors?" He said, "No!"

The journalist said, "But this is absolutely illogical."

The man said, "It is not illogical. I have two hens -- I don't have two cars, I don't have two houses, I don't have two horses, two cows. That which I don't have, who cares? -- I can give. But two hens I have got, and I'm not going to give them!"

When you have something, then the problem arises.

So according to Marx nobody is really a have-not in America; hence there is no possibility of a communist revolution.

In Russia it was a miracle, because it was not even a capitalist country. And that was the idea of Karl Marx, that communist revolution can happen only in a capitalist country where there will be poor people in the majority, and rich people in the minority. The poor can overthrow the rich very easily, there is no question of much violence or any trouble.

Russia was not even a capitalist country. It was a feudal country, far more backward than a capitalist country. There were no poor, no proletariat, no labor unions. And there was not a class of rich people; there were just a few -- the emperor, the czar, a small aristocracy. They were not owners of factories, they were owners of land, and on their land they had slaves to do the work.

Now a slave is taken care of by the landlord because unless he is strong enough, he will not be able to work on the land. The slave is not a machine, so he has to be given good food, good clothes... in winter he has to be given warmer clothes. So the slaves were not have-nots; in fact, they were enjoying everything. The aristocrats had to keep them in good health -- medical facilities, good clothes, houses which are healthy and hygienic, because unless those slaves are powerful and strong they will not be able to work the vast lands, thousands of acres. Miles and miles of land one aristocrat would have, and thousands of slaves. It was a totally different situation.

Marx never thought about a Soviet Russia. He never thought that Russia was going to become a communist country. That's how theorization fails. Life takes its own course; it does not follow your logic, your philosophy.

In Russia the revolution happened. It was not a communist revolution in fact, because it was not a fight between the have-nots and the haves.

It happened during the first world war. The czar was not equipped well enough to fight Germany. Neither were the communists ready to fight in Russia -- a small group of thinkers, they were not hoping that there was going to be a revolution there. Even capitalism had not come, which was going to produce the haves and have-nots, so it was very far away.

Even Lenin, who was to become the head of the first communist country in the world, was in Germany -- because in Germany the emperor had relaxed the power and given it to the people. It was becoming a democracy, and the Communist Party in Germany was the biggest party so there was every chance it would come into power. Lenin was there to direct them.

But instead of the Communist Party -- which it was logical to conclude would succeed -

- Adolf Hitler came in between. And Adolf Hitler was neither a thinker nor a philosopher. He was absolutely a fanatic, insane man, and his party, the Nazi Party, began with only nineteen soldiers. These soldiers had been found to be unfit for the army, so they were unemployed and they wanted to do something. Adolf Hitler himself was thrown out of the army because he was psychologically unfit.

These nineteen people gathered together in a small hotel and created the Nazi Party of Germany, with Adolf Hitler as the leader. Because he was a fanatic, he was very emphatic about everything he said. And his strategy was very strange -- because he had not a great following, he created a new strategy. It looks absurd, but it worked.

His whole strategy was not to bother about gathering more and more people, gathering membership for the Nazi Party; he knew that was not going to happen. He had no philosophy to offer, no program for the future -- why should they join his party? So he started disturbing the communist meetings. Those nineteen people -- they were all soldiers -- would sit in the communist meetings in separate places, and whenever the communist leader would start speaking, they would create trouble. They would start beating people, whoever was by their side; it was not a question of whom. Just nineteen people would disturb a meeting of ten thousand people or twenty thousand people. And when there are beatings going on, you cannot speak. They were throwing stones at the speaker, they were hitting the audience.

Slowly slowly, it became clear that you are safe only in Adolf Hitler's meetings; you are not safe in any other meeting. When Adolf Hitler would speak, obviously, those nineteen people were standing around the crowd watching that nobody creates any mischief.

People went to hear Adolf Hitler just because that was the only safe meeting. You could come home alive! This is how Adolf Hitler came to power, because he disturbed all meetings of the communists, which was the greatest party and was logically bound to succeed -- but could not succeed because it could not approach the masses. Communist leaders would call a meeting and nobody would come.

Only Adolf Hitler was listened to all over the country, and slowly slowly he started gathering followers because he seemed to be the only savior. All others had left the area.

And nobody knew his strategy; it became known only after Adolf Hitler wrote in his autobiography about how he came into power. Just those nineteen people managed to do the work.

The first thing was to disturb everybody's meeting. And there was no propaganda from anybody else -- if the Communist Party was putting up posters, those nineteen people were removing the posters in the night. In the morning people would see only Adolf Hitler's posters; every other poster was removed. They would never know that there were any other posters.

A very strange strategy, but he succeeded the emperor. The emperor had to leave his monarchy because in the first world war Germany was defeated badly, and the whole blame went to the emperor because he was not adequate to create enthusiasm in the people to fight for their country. Because of the defeat of Germany in the first world war, the emperor had to leave it in the hands of democracy.

At the same time the Russian armies, who were fighting with Germany, became very frustrated with the czar, because the czar had a very primitive army, absolutely out-of-date. No proper clothes in the falling snow, no proper boots, no leather coats, not enough guns, not enough food either. So the Russian armies became so frustrated that they turned against the czar.

At that moment, Lenin immediately rushed from Germany to Russia. Soldiers are soldiers; they are not leaders of men. Lenin was a great organizer; he immediately organized the soldiers and became the head of the revolt against the czar. It was the birth of the Soviet Union, not out of the fight between the proletariat and the bourgeois, but out of the fight between the czar and his own army. The army was angry, frustrated -- "We have been thrown into a war for which we are not ready. We are being killed unnecessarily." And Lenin provoked them.

He was a very good organizer. He organized the army and now the czar was left alone.

Nineteen persons of the czar's family -- even a six-month-old baby -- were immediately murdered. If his own armies are against him, how can he remain in power?

Lenin was a good organizer. But if he had remained in power, perhaps communism would not have been possible. He was a man of great compassion and love. He was a communist out of compassion and love; he wanted the poor to disappear from the earth.

But he was not perfectly clear. When the power comes into your hands, what are you going to do with it? How are you going to destroy poverty?

We have seen it in India. This is a very difficult problem, very complex problem. After forty-two years of freedom, India is in a worse position than it was under slavery. More poor people, more poverty, more population, and problems have doubled. Prices have gone up twenty, thirty, fifty times more, and the salaries have remained almost the same.

The poor have become immensely poor and are on the verge of starving to death. What happened? These great revolutionaries who were fighting against the British Empire had no program.

My whole family was involved in the freedom struggle. My uncles lost their whole lives; one of my uncles was in his graduation class in the university and he was caught and jailed. And once a person was jailed under the British Empire, he was never again allowed to enter any university or college. Another uncle, who had just passed matriculation, was caught in the freedom struggle and after he was released, could not go back to any educational institution. Both the uncles lost their careers and the family suffered immensely.

Even in my very childhood, I remember I used to ask my father, "I can understand that you are against the British Empire. This is freedom from. But what are you going to do when you have got the freedom -- freedom for what?"

And he would shrug his shoulders. He would say to me, "The leaders know." But the leaders were as much unaware....

You may have sometimes seen a dog who runs after a car, barking, and with great speed.

And if the man in the car stops, the dog looks all around, embarrassed -- "What to do now?" -- miles of unnecessary running and barking. And that happens to all revolutionaries. Miles of trouble! Fighting, murder, being killed, jailed, and when they get into power they look just like the dog, embarrassed. "What to do now?"

India has been in the hands of the revolutionaries, but they could not do anything. In fact, a revolutionary is not the right person to be in power. But this is a very difficult problem.

Because the revolutionary wins the freedom, naturally he comes into power. But he knows only how to revolt, he does not know how to consolidate a society. He does not know anything of the economics, of the finances, of the people's psychology.

He can provoke people to fight, to destroy the empire, to destroy all kinds of slavery. He is a good orator, influential; he has an impressive personality, charisma, but when he comes into power he looks just like the dog, embarrassed: "Now whom to provoke?" He is in power, and his whole life has been just a life of provocation, revolt. He has never learned anything about how to rule.

But in Russia the miracle happened. All the great revolutionaries in Russia... Lenin was the main one, but he had no charisma. He was an organizer behind the scenes, he had no personality which you can call impressive. In fact he had a very deep inferiority complex for a strange reason. His legs were very small in comparison to his upper body. His legs never reached to the earth while he was sitting on a chair, they were just dangling. This was his immense inferiority complex. So only behind the scenes... He could organize, manage, give whole programs for how to do things, but he was not a charismatic man.

But he had at his right hand a really charismatic philosopher, thinker, dreamer, and a great orator, Trotsky. So Lenin was behind the scenes organizing, and Trotsky was the great revolutionary orator, very impressive personality, to provoke people. But he was only a good orator. A charismatic personality is not needed when you come into power.

What are you going to do with your charisma? There is no public, no speech, no oratory....

It was a strange coincidence that a man who was not in the forefront of the revolutionaries, Joseph Stalin... he was just the general secretary of the party, which was a position of no importance. Sitting in his secretariat's room, he was working on the files and membership, and this and that, correspondence, letters. The public had no idea of Joseph Stalin.

Stalin was not his real name. In Russian, Stalin means "a man of steel." This man was absolutely practical. He had no philosophical bent of the mind. Not a theoretician, he had nothing to do with any philosophical background; he looked to the reality and faced it brutally.

He kept Lenin under the influence of poison, because he was the head, and so that after the revolution Lenin could not really come into power. He was suffering under continuous poisoning, slow poisoning. It took two years for him to die. And Joseph Stalin was behind the poisoning, he was keeping his own doctor to look after Lenin. Lenin's wife, Krupskaya, wrote in her autobiography, "I am absolutely certain that my husband has been killed by poisoning, because he never became as healthy as he had always been." For two years he was continuously sick, and the doctor was treating him, and his treatment was making him sicker and sicker. And Stalin was absolutely adamant not to bring in any other doctor.

Just keeping Lenin sick, Stalin became more and more powerful. In the name of Lenin, who was almost in a coma, he started ordering a mass murder of all the revolutionaries --

Kamenev, Zinovyev, Trotsky, all the great revolutionaries who had come into power.

Trotsky was the defense minister. Nine revolutionaries... eight simply disappeared, nobody knows to where. Stalin killed them quickly. He was a very quick man. Seeing the situation... as the defense minister, Trotsky had all the power over the army. But he was just a revolutionary; he had no idea what to do with the army. He escaped from Russia, but Stalin was not a man to take any risk. His murderer, a paid murderer, followed Trotsky.

Trotsky was staying in Mexico, hiding, and was writing the biography of Joseph Stalin to make clear to the world that this man had killed all the revolutionaries and taken over all the power. As he was finishing the biography of Stalin -- it is a big book, perhaps one thousand pages of very detailed description of each murder, how it happened, how the person was removed in the middle of the night -- just the last page he was finishing, when he was killed with an axe. Behind him was standing the murderer. As he finished the paragraph, the last paragraph, an axe cut his head in two parts. The last page is full of blood.

It looks very cruel, inhuman. But it was Joseph Stalin who managed the Soviet Union, because it was confronting on enemies two sides. Enemies from within... the Russian Orthodox Church, the intellectuals, the people who did not want to share their property --

even the poor masses. As I told you, a man who has only two hens will not share -- that's all he has. The masses are the greatest enemy of their own welfare. So you will be surprised to know that one million Russians were killed by Joseph Stalin, and these were not the rich people. These were the poor people who were adamant, stubborn.

Without Joseph Stalin, communism would not have succeeded -- although it succeeded out of violence, murder, massacre. First he had to finish all the enemies inside the country, and then he had to make an iron wall around the Soviet Union, because the whole world was against him. All the capitalist countries were against him, against communism, because if communism succeeds in one country it is going to succeed in every country. It is better to kill it in the beginning, because soon it will be gaining more and more strength and it will become impossible to stop it.

The whole credit for protecting the Soviet Union and communism goes to Joseph Stalin.

But of course he had to use murder, no trials in the courts, no wastage of time. He had not much time to waste in fighting in the courts. Simply finishing people immediately, just on a suspicion....

It used to be said, and is still said in every capitalist country, that "You cannot kill one innocent man, even if you have to leave ninety-nine criminals just to save one innocent man." Joseph Stalin turned the whole thing upside down. He said, "You cannot leave one criminal, even if you have to kill ninety-nine innocent men."

So it is not a question of individuals, it is not a question of innocence, it is a question of saving communism at any cost.

Although he is the architect of Soviet Union, his successors started condemning him for his dictatorial methods -- murder, massacre, mass massacre. But the successors don't know that they would not have been here if Stalin had not done the dirty work for them.

You will be surprised to know that he was buried by the side of Lenin's grave in Red Square near the Kremlin, because he was the man second to Lenin. His successors dragged his body from Red Square, and sent it back to the Caucasus from where he had come -- a mountainous country, primitive, tribal, so nobody can even go there to see his grave.

I can understand the successors. Khrushchev was giving his first talk when he became head of the Soviet Union after Stalin. And he had been a colleague to Stalin for almost his whole life. In his first speech he exposed Stalin, and he said, "He was the greatest murderer humanity has known."

Now the question of communism became secondary. His murders... which were not his personal grudge against anybody; he was simply trying to save one of the greatest experiments in human history, and there was no other way to do it. So I know it is evil, but there was no alternative. When there is no alternative you have to choose the evil.

Khrushchev, addressing the Communist Party, said, "Stalin was the greatest murderer, and I am going to remove his grave from Red Square. He should not be given any respect. And I am going to burn all his books."

One man from the back, sitting in the dark, said, "You have been with him your whole life. Why did you not say it before?"

There was utter silence for a moment. Then Khrushchev said, "Comrade, whoever has said it, please stand up." Nobody stood. Khrushchev said, "Now you know why I was silent. I did not want to be murdered, just as you don't want to be murdered. Just stand up and you would disappear! So I had to keep my thoughts to myself; even walls had ears at the time of Stalin."

He had managed in such a way... he had a party, a Communist Party for small children, and they were trained to spy on their parents. What they said in their houses the children had to report to the Party. Then the youth had their own youth league, and they had to be aware that anything against communism -- it does not matter whether it is your mother or your father -- had to be reported immediately.

Women had their own Communist Party and they were taught the same programming, that it is a question of saving this great experiment. Anybody, it does not matter -- he may be your husband, but you have to report it. It may be your wife, you have to report it.

And once reported it was never asked whether the report was true, whether the report was reason to kill the man. In the middle of the night the KGB, the Russian equivalent of the CIA, would knock on the door. The man would open the door, and the KGB agent would tell him to follow, and the family knew: "That man is gone. You will never hear anything about that man."

So it is true, it was a very cruel effort. But the reason was that without this cruelty... all around the Soviet Union there were sitting vultures, all the capitalist countries of the world, ready to destroy it.

He had to give as little nourishment to the people as possible; his whole concentration was to create more arms and a bigger army, because the enemies were too many, and all around. People can eat one time a day, people can have only two or three sets of clothes -

- there is no need to have many. We need the army as a priority; otherwise we will be destroyed.

It was Stalin who managed to bring the Soviet Union out of a small feudal state, into a world power, the world's biggest power.

Now Gorbachev is again a visionary, like Marx, and does not understand the practical necessities of reality. And you will be surprised to know -- the whole American propaganda machine is pressurizing the world news media to make Gorbachev a great hero. It is the American strategy to make him a great hero and praise all the things he is doing by withdrawing all the iron curtains, by reducing armaments, by reducing the budget for the army -- forty percent of the budget has been reduced right now, and every year he is going to cut it. Nuclear weapons have been stopped; for two years they have not created any nuclear weapons. They want Gorbachev to become such a big celebrity that it becomes a matter of his personal prestige -- not communism, not the Soviet Union. Whatever happens to the Soviet Union is not the issue: Gorbachev becomes the great man of history who changed a dictatorship into a democracy.

But once this starts happening, communism will disappear -- not only from the Soviet Union but from every small communist pocket around the world, because they all depend on the Soviet Union's support.

Yesterday I told you the Hare Krishna movement has been given land there. Today I received the news that a Vivekananda center is being opened, a branch of the Ramakrishna Mission. Now this is going to destroy the whole country. These were the people Stalin killed! These were the people... he'd throw them into Siberia just to die.

These people are now entering in the name of democracy.

My understanding is that the Soviet Union is not yet ready to open its doors. It is an American conspiracy to praise Gorbachev through the news media --not directly; directly they will oppose him, but in the news media praise him highly: "He is doing a great service to the Soviet people. What Stalin has done, he has to undo. Withdraw the dictatorship, make the country democratic, open all the doors."

Now what has the Vivekananda center to do in Russia? What has Ramakrishna to do with Russia?

Ramakrishna became enlightened only in the last stage of his life, and that too because of a wandering mystic, Totapuri. I have told you the story. But his whole life he was just suffering from epileptic fits. His whole religion was based on the Mother Goddess; it was emotional, it was a religion of prayer. He was a nice man, he would dance before the Mother Goddess, he would sing songs and praise the Mother Goddess, but the Mother Goddess is more primitive than the Father God!

The Mother Goddess came into existence before the family came into existence. At that time you were not certain who was your father. You were certain who was your mother because the mother gave birth, and the mother was raising the children. The family had not yet come into existence. Of all the people who were the right age, one of them must be the father, but nobody knew.

So you will not be surprised to know that the word ùncle' is more ancient than the word

`father'. All people of the age of the probable father, were called uncles. It was a tribal world; the mother was certain and everybody else was an uncle, someone anonymous must have been the father. And because there was no fixed family, the mother was not bound to have only one person to love her; even she might not be certain who made her pregnant. It was a very flowing world, in which partners were continuously changing and there was nobody who was called father.

So the Father God is a very recent invention. After the family became established and the father became the head of the family, then God the Father came as a fiction. Before that, the whole world was a matriarchy; the mother was the most important phenomenon.

Obviously, the mother was projected as the goddess who has created the world.

Ramakrishna was worshipping in the most primitive religion, and I don't support him until the point when he met Totapuri -- that was the very last phase.

I was surprised... I have met many Ramakrishna Mission sannyasins, monks, well known, world famous, but they don't mention the last phase when Ramakrishna accepted Totapuri as his master. They hide that fact, because Ramakrishna accepting somebody as a master feels humiliating to these people. Totapuri helped Ramakrishna to become enlightened, but it happened only in the last days of his life. Those days and the meeting of Totapuri are not mentioned, are not even known by the monks of Ramakrishna Mission. They go on propagating Ramakrishna's emotional worship of the Mother Goddess.

Now today they have been given land to build a big center, Vivekananda Center, a branch of the Ramakrishna Mission. What will they do? They will teach worship of a very primitive kind.

As I told you, whatever Gorbachev is doing looks right, but it can backfire. It can destroy the whole experiment. Dictatorship was absolutely needed because there were so many enemies all around.

You know perfectly well how our commune in America has been destroyed, because we had no armies to fight, and we were just a small pocket with a vast world power around us. Violently, illegally, against their constitution they destroyed the commune.

The same was the situation of the Soviet Union after the revolution. It was surrounded by the whole world, and everybody wanted to destroy it. It was Joseph Stalin's great, earthbound policies that protected the Soviet Union. He finished with all the monks, all the Christians, all the priests. And the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the most orthodox churches in the world -- used to be, now perhaps it will be again. He forced the monks to work in the fields. This is possible only in a dictatorship. In a democracy it is not possible, and if you do it in a democracy then your democracy is a hypocrisy.

At least Joseph Stalin was absolutely honest: he called it dictatorship. And he made it clear, that "I don't want to waste time. Any suspicion that you are against communism and you will be finished."

He changed all the churches into schools, hospitals, universities -- there were great monasteries that became universities -- and he made the monks work in the fields, in the orchards, because "You cannot have food if you don't work. Worship is your private affair, but work. The society feeds you, you have to work. In the night you can pray and do whatever you want, it is your private time." And he completely destroyed the organized religions of the Jews, of the Christians, of the Mohammedans.

It looks bad to our eyes, but I have a more comprehensive vision. I am against dictatorship, but for the interim course, while the society is moving from capitalism to communism, dictatorship is one of the necessary steps.

And Marx also thought in the same way, that dictatorship will remain only as an interim process. Once the society becomes classless, there is no need of dictatorship; there is no need of the state. He was in favor of no classes, no government, no bureaucracy. That will be the ultimate flowering.

But as I told you, he was a thinker, not a practical man. He did not see the point that one country may become communist, may become classless, but all the other countries around it are capitalist. You cannot withdraw the state, you cannot withdraw the dictatorship; otherwise all the surrounding countries will enter into it. All the superstitions you have thrown out will come back with tremendous force. And they are coming....

Gorbachev seems to be a nice man, has a very deep respect for democracy, but does not understand that in the name of democracy America is conspiring, and puffing up his personal ego that he is a great leader, a great pacifier. If all this gets into his head it is going to kill communism, and that will be a great loss to humanity.

The second question is connected with the first. Another sannyasin has asked: Question 2

WHY HAS THE STATE NOT DISAPPEARED AFTER SEVENTY YEARS?

Because the world is still not communist. Unless the whole world is communist, the state cannot disappear; neither can dictatorship disappear. You will have to wait.

Marx's idea was that once the whole world becomes capitalist, it will soon turn to communism. That idea did not work. The capitalist countries have remained capitalist, and two great countries... the Soviet Union, which was not capitalist, has become the first communist country. And the second great country, China, which was also not capitalist, has become the second great communist country.

And he was not aware of personal egos. He was not a student of psychology, he was purely a student of economics. But in the hands of man, you have to understand everything through his psychology. The money may be the same, but in a miser's hand it has a different meaning; in a playboy's hand it has a different meaning. In a businessman's hand it has a different meaning, in a hungry man's hand it has a different meaning.

And it has different value in different hands. In a rich man's hand, one rupee has no value at all, but in a beggar's hand one rupee, perhaps, has come for the first time into his vision. It is the greatest richness. So the value differs according to the psychology and the personality. And Marx was not aware of the total personality of man.

I have been interested in the total personality of man: his body, his mind, his no-mind, his mortal existence and his immortal existence.

Marx was a pure economist, so he thought that once the society is equal... He forgot two things: one, those who will be in power for the interim period -- who is going to take the power out of their hands? Because power corrupts and corrupts absolutely. The people who are in power are not going to leave the power so easily as Marx thought. "When the society becomes classless, the state will disappear" -- but it is not so easy. Those who are in power are not going to leave their power. He was not aware of the psychology.

He thought that when two countries became communist, they would drop their boundaries. He was not at all aware of personal egos. For instance, China is against the Soviet Union, and both are communist countries. And the reason is absolutely trivial. The reason is, communism believes in Marx as the founder and Engels as the second founder

-- both were together. Engels himself was a capitalist, he owned many factories. It was because of Engels that Marx could live without working, just studying, studying, and finding causes and finding clues. It was possible because of the support, financial support from Engels; otherwise Marx would have been working and there would not have been a DAS KAPITAL or COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.

So Engels is number two in the hierarchy of the founders. Number three is Lenin. Stalin was hoping that when he died he would be number four, and certainly he deserves it.

With all his faults, with all his violence, he has protected a great experiment. Men after all, have to die; it is not such a great problem to make so much fuss.

Mao Zedong, who brought China to communism, was supported by Stalin for thirty years

-- because the revolution continued for thirty years; it was the greatest and longest revolution in world history.

Chiang Kai-Shek, who was the dictator of China, was a very strong man. He was thought to be one of the strongest men amongst five strong men in the world. And China is such a vast country. Over each inch there was a fight, inch by inch. Stalin gave them complete support: arms, armies, training for the Chinese -- because they share their boundaries; China and Russia meet on their boundaries. So he was training Chinese communists to be soldiers, and he was sending all kinds of arms to Mao Zedong. For thirty years he supported him financially and in every possible way.

And when Mao Zedong came to power and Chiang Kai-shek was thrown out to his small island of Taiwan, which he had kept as his personal property, Mao wanted to be number five in the hierarchy. After Stalin, he wanted his name; that was the clash. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was not willing, because he had not contributed anything new, anything original, to communism.

And in fact, it was the Soviet Union who had supported him and brought him to power.

He himself had not even been a success on his own, so he could not be put as fifth in the hierarchy. This was the clash, a personal clash, which Karl Marx would have never thought -- that even personal clashes, egos, will keep two communist countries, based on the same idea, separate. Not only separate but inimical.

Now China is moving closer and closer to America, because China is afraid: the Soviet Union is far more powerful; unless America supports China, there is danger. And America is very happy that a great communist country is coming closer. China is also opening its doors because, who was trained by Stalin, is dead.

In forty years in India, nothing has happened. China became communist in 1951, four years after India became independent. Within ten years, by 1961, China became a world power. It was because of the training of Stalin and following the whole strategy of Stalin that China has raised itself to a world power.

Now America wants China to open its doors. That will be the end of Chinese communism. And the world press is praising Gorbachev too much, puffing up his ego, pumping up his personality into that of a big hero. That is the greatest danger to Soviet communism.

It is true that Marx has this idea that the state will disappear, and I love the idea because I am an anarchist myself. I don't want any government in the world, but my not wanting is not going to change anything. Till all crime disappears, till all rapes disappear, the state will be needed. So when Marx says that finally the state will disappear, don't think that the "finally" is coming soon. It will be finally.

It is a good idea -- the greatest idea is anarchism. And if out of communism, anarchism can grow -- which is not practical, because those who are in power will not easily leave their power -- and two communist countries, as Marx thought, would dissolve into one...

that has not happened. Yugoslavia remained under Tito, a separate country, because Tito himself wanted to be in the hierarchy. Just personal egos, of which Marx never thought anything; he was not a psychoanalyst.

And now again Gorbachev has completely forgotten the great struggle, the great bloodshed out of which communism has somehow survived. They have removed Stalin's name from the hierarchy. Now there are only three -- Marx, Engels and Lenin -- and perhaps Gorbachev is thinking he will be the fourth. But most probably he will be the end of communism in the Soviet Union.

To be absolutely frank and truthful, if he is not awakened quickly, and closes the doors to all kinds of enemies which are entering fast and quick, he will be the end of a tremendously beautiful idea. And humanity will never forgive him.

But he has now become absolutely powerful. The president in the Soviet Union used to be nominal, the prime minister was the real power. And behind the prime minister, the more real power was the secretary general of the Communist Party and the Communist Party's central group, the Politburo.

All the states had their one representative in the Politburo -- that was the commanding body -- and the general secretary was the head of the commanding body. Stalin continued to be the general secretary and the prime minister, so he was holding total power.

The same Gorbachev has done. He has changed the constitution of the Soviet Union according to America -- perhaps he must have been feeling, meeting "President" Ronald Reagan and he is just a prime minister... So now he is the president of the Soviet Union.

The prime minister is no longer powerful; it is a nominal post, just a rubber stamp. The president has all the power. And he has changed the whole commanding body of the Communist Party; he has put in his men. And he is also the general secretary of the Communist Party.

The third powerful agency is the KGB. That is their central intelligence, which has immense power, more power than any other intelligence body around the world. He has changed the head of the KGB and put his own man as head of the KGB. So now everything is in his hands -- president, general secretary of the Communist Party, and the KGB is in his hands -- his man is there. So he has in fact more power than any man on the earth. If he uses it rightly, by making communism more prosperous, by making communism more creative, more spiritual, more scientific, he will be a great benediction not only to the Soviet Union but to the whole world.

But he can go wrong. And when one person has all the power and goes wrong it is a suicidal phenomenon. And there seems to be every possibility; he can go either way.

I would like him to understand clearly that we need the Soviet Union as a communist stronghold in the world, because sooner or later the whole world has to be turned to communism. Communism has to become the base, because it is a materialist philosophy and on that base can be raised the temple of spirituality.

But that temple will not be created by orthodox Christians or Hare Krishna people, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or the Ramakrishna Mission. These out-of-date, absolutely belonging to the bullock-cart age... when the bullock cart was invented, nobody knows.

These religions belong to the bullock-cart age. They are not going to help communism, which is a contemporary phenomenon. It needs not to go backwards. It needs a future orientation, not a past orientation. That's what is possible from Gorbachev's opening the doors -- all past-oriented people will enter into the country and destroy it.

He should be absolutely clear: open the doors, but open the doors for the future-oriented people. Open the doors not for organized religions, not for missions and missionaries --

they may be Christian or Hindu, it does not matter -- open the doors for individual awakened people who will not create any kind of organized obstacles for the growth of communism.

Every religion will be against communism -- Gorbachev does not understand it.

Hinduism is against communism -- now what is a Vivekananda center going to do in Russia? Teaching people that poverty has nothing to do with the capitalists, that your whole revolution is wrong, that you were suffering from your past lives' karmas, bad and evil acts, and you have done a great injustice to the capitalist people who were enjoying their past lives' good karmas, good acts. This is the Hindu philosophy. This is what Ramakrishna believed in and this is what Vivekananda believed in.

What is Christianity going to say to them? Don't disturb anything; let the world be as God created it. No revolution -- God has not given the idea of revolution at all, in any of his scriptures.

He has written so many scriptures! He is a great scholar; he writes the four Vedas of the Hindus, Koran Sharif of the Mohammedans, the Holy Bible of the Christians. God seems to be a great scholar -- but very contradictory, because all these scriptures contradict each other. And these religions will again bring God into the Soviet Union -- who has been forced out by Joseph Stalin, out of the gates of the Soviet Union the same way he turned Adam and Eve out of the gates of paradise.

The Soviet Union is in a very vulnerable state, because all the old people who have seen the revolution, who have been participants in the revolution, are dead. The new generation knows nothing.

Here is Haridas. He is one of my oldest sannyasins. He is German and he heard Adolf Hitler's name for the first time from me! Can you believe it? But he was born after the second world war.

Now in Russia nobody exists who has seen the revolution, who has seen how Stalin established communism with difficulty.

Gorbachev is not aware of the whole past and he is bringing the same enemies back in.

They will disrupt the whole society. And for seventy years the new generation that has come into existence after the revolution has been taught: "There is no God, there is no hell, there is no heaven. There is no future life, there is no past life -- this is all." But they are feeling a tremendous hollowness within themselves and that is a red signal for danger. Because they are feeling a hollowness -- that everything is good outside, but inside there seems to be nothing -- these people will rush in and fill their inside with beliefs, with SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA, with the Koran, with the Bible, with Vedas, and destroy a great opportunity for meditation. None of these people are meditative.

Open the doors for scientists, for mystics, for meditators, for poets, for painters, for engineers, for doctors, for psychoanalysts. But don't open the door for orthodox, fanatic, organized religions. Don't open the door for capitalists and their agents. Otherwise you will spoil something so precious that all the utopians, all the people who have any vision for the future, have been dreaming of for centuries.

In the RIGVEDA, the ancientmost book in the world, comes the sentence, VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM -- "this whole earth should become one family."

Ninety thousand years ago some visionary, some mystic, was thinking in terms of this whole earth turning into one family. That was the old language for communism: this whole world becomes one commune.

Rather than looking at possibilities for how to turn the whole world into communes, which will be supportive to all communist revolutions... and as I said, I can bring to the Soviet Union the second revolution. The first revolution was material; the second revolution will be spiritual. Only then will Soviet citizens be able to cope with all kinds of idiots. Right now these idiots will destroy their innocence. Then they will turn them towards being exactly as the whole world is.

A great country -- one of the biggest countries in the world; it is one sixth of the whole earth -- and it is going to be a tremendous loss if Gorbachev does not understand the implications. Communism has to be saved and communism has to be transformed into a great spiritual revolution. He can do it; he has all the power. And only when the whole of humanity is meditative is the state of no use.

When the whole of humanity has become one family there is no need of anybody to dictate. When the whole of humanity has become intelligent, when the whole of humanity has dropped all miseries and is immensely blissful, the state has no function.

The powerful will feel absolutely out-of-date, old hat. They will disappear because their function is no more.

When no criminal turns up in the courts, what is the function of the courts? When there is no prostitution -- and that is possible only if there is no marriage -- what is the need of a registrar for marriage, and licenses for prostitutes?

Things are very clear if you have the clarity that comes only when you go beyond the mind. The higher you go the more you have a bird's-eye view of the whole situation of humanity.

Gorbachev himself, before he does any act against communism, needs a great training in meditation. And after that, whatever he will do will be right. I can see the man is certainly intelligent and has good intentions for humanity, is a peace-loving person, but he has no depth of meditation. These are all superficial mind values, which don't go deep enough.

They are only skin deep -- scratch just a little and all those values disappear.

Meditation brings transformation from the inside. It is not an imposition of morality and commandments from outside. Anything that comes from outside is worthless --

morality, religion, spirituality, whatever you call it. Only that which blossoms within you like a lotus has ultimate value. Out of that arising of consciousness, you cannot do evil.

Your every action will be spontaneous; it will come from your deepest being, and the deepest being cannot do any harm.

Then the state disappears. Then the world needs no hierarchy, no bureaucracy, no presidents, no prime ministers, no KGB, no CIA.

Every individual has to contribute to that final utopia -- and I am preparing you for that final stage when the state is useless, when the police are useless, when armaments are useless, when armies are just stupid, when we can all work together, create together, love together, rejoice together.

This very body the buddha -- this very earth the lotus paradise. But it will happen only -

- not according to Marx but according to me -- it will happen only when the whole world is full of buddhas. There is no other way. It is not an economic revolution; neither is it a social revolution. It is a spiritual revolution, an individual-to-individual rebellion.

Every heart starts blossoming.

When millions of hearts start blossoming it becomes a chain reaction. Just like one candle aflame can make thousands of candles aflame -- just bring the other candle close enough and suddenly the flame jumps to the unlit candle. The lit candle loses nothing and the unlit candle gains everything. The whole life is in the flame.

This I call Zen Fire, Zen Wind.

Unless the whole world goes through the Zen Fire and becomes pure gold, unless the whole world becomes a Zen Wind passing through every heart, connecting every heart to the universal heartbeat -- this utopia is not possible.

But I hope, I am absolutely certain, that every man's destiny is to become a buddha. So whether it happens today or tomorrow or day after tomorrow does not matter. There are only seven days in the week. It will happen Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday -- on some day, it is going to happen, I am absolutely certain. Because I understand human nature. It cannot be satisfied with this miserable world. It cannot be satisfied with this ugly and violent world. It can only be satisfied when it finds its ultimate source of blissfulness, eternal source of life.

And that is what meditation is a scientific methodology for.

The sutra:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

THE MONK, SOMPU, WAS ONCE WASHING A BUDDHA STATUE. YAKUSAN

CAME AND ASKED HIM, "NOW YOU ARE WASHING THIS, BUT CAN YOU

WASH THAT?"

What does Yakusan mean? The monk is washing the statue of the buddha -- Yakusan calls the statue this and he calls the living buddha that. "You are only washing a stone statue -- this is okay, but can you wash that, the living buddha which is within you?"

THE MONK, SOMPU WAS ONCE WASHING A BUDDHA STATUE. YAKUSAN

CAME AND ASKED HIM, "NOW YOU ARE WASHING THIS, BUT CAN YOU

WASH THAT?" He is indicating towards the interiormost hidden buddha, the living buddha: "Can you wash that?"

I call that washing "meditation."

People condemn me around the world that I am washing people's brains. I am washing something deeper -- brains I don't care about at all. I am throwing the brains out of the door! I am washing the buddha inside who has been covered in dust for centuries. A dry-cleaning is needed, and I am doing the dry-cleaning. So when anybody says to you --

and there are millions of people around who will say it -- that I am doing brainwashing, tell him, "Our master does not do ordinary things. Certainly he does a dry-washing, but that is not of the mind. He does a dry-cleaning of the ancient buddha, the eternal buddha who is covered with dust and all kinds of garbage." Don't feel offended. Rather, turn the question against them.

There is now a new profession arising in the West of deprogrammers. And many of my sannyasins have been forced... just now one sannyasin is back from Canada. The parents had called her with great love, saying, "Come here and visit because we have not seen you for so long." And when the sannyasin reached there, it was a totally different matter.

They had two deprogrammers arranged and they started talking against me and telling her that I have brainwashed her. "You are living in a trance, in hypnosis, and we are here to take you out of your trance." But the reality is, they are brainwashing you!

I don't wash such dirty things. Only Christians do such dirty things: they are brainwashing you and forcing you back again into the old program.

They call themselves "deprogrammers." That is a wrong word they are using for themselves; they are REprogrammers. What has been thrown out by meditation, they are forcing back into your head.

You will be facing this, many of you, when you go back home. Parents have been known even to abduct their children -- who are young people, adults, and keep them physically imprisoned in houses with deprogrammers who continuously harass them. And there is a certain stage when you become very weak. If you are not allowed to sleep for three days, on the fourth day you will become very vulnerable. If somebody says: "God is," you don't have enough strength to say no. Perhaps in this weakness... God is born out of weakness, out of fear, out of dread, and they have created all the dread and fear and weakness and now they say, "God is. If you pray, everything will be alright."

These are reprogrammers. As far as I am concerned I have no interest in your mind at all, or in your brain. My concern is far more ultimate. It is beyond the mind. My function is to clean the space of no-mind.

Those deprogrammers or reprogrammers have not even heard about the no-mind. They are ordinary psychoanalysts turned into deprogrammers. But they can do harm if you listen to them, so I have to tell you because I received the letter from the Canadian sannyasin. She said, "I have been treated very badly. I am still shaking. All the old stuff that has been dropped they have again forced into the mind."

So if you come across any deprogrammer, remember this. Rather than them deprogramming you, you should deprogram them! Never answer their questions.

Whenever they ask you, answer with another question. If they ask you, "Is there God?" --

you ask them, "Have you any proof? Give me the proof. I want absolute evidence of God.

And if you cannot prove his existence, don't speak nonsense. Have you been to hell?

Then how are you back? -- because from the Christian hell nobody comes back, it is eternal. Do you know anything about hell?" If they say no then ask them: "Do you know anything about heaven? Have you seen Socrates in heaven? Have you seen Gautam Buddha in heaven? -- because these people did not believe in God."

Have I told you the story of Edmund Burke? He had a great friendship with the archbishop of England. He was a great orator, Edmund Burke, and the archbishop used to come to listen to his lectures. They were delicious, just a deep nourishment, but the archbishop was surprised that although every Sunday he gave a sermon, Edmund Burke had never come. At least for courtesy's sake he should have come one time.

Finally, seeing that he was not going to come, the archbishop invited him. He said, "I come to all your lectures, whenever I know that you are going to deliver a lecture. This Sunday I am preparing specially for you; you have to come to the church."

Edmund Burke said, "You should have asked before. I will be coming."

He went....

The archbishop of England is the highest authority of the Church of England, equivalent to the pope. He had prepared with great effort; otherwise Christian preachers don't prepare. They have four or five ready-made sermons.

I used to know a Christian monk. He became very friendly to me. I asked him, "How many sermons do you have?"

He said, "How did you come to know...?" He said, "I have three sermons. One for ten minutes, one for twenty minutes, one for forty minutes, as the occasion demands. And I never stay in a city more than three days, so I am always original!"

But Edmund Burke was coming so the archbishop prepared with great effort, consulted dictionaries and encyclopedias and theological books and biblical research, and he made it really a very scholarly sermon. But he was surprised. He was watching -- Edmund Burke was sitting just in front of him -- and there was no sign whether he was appreciating it or not. He was sitting just like a statue.

When the sermon was over, they walked out together. The archbishop could not gather courage to ask him, "How was it?" But finally he managed. As he was entering his car he asked Edmund Burke, "One thing at least you should say, whether you liked it or not."

He said, "That is not the point. The point is, you were saying that those who believe in Jesus Christ, God, and the Holy Ghost, and those who follow all the Christian virtues and don't commit sins, will go to heaven. Do you remember saying this?"

The archbishop said, "But perfectly -- I have said exactly this."

"Do you see any contradiction in it?"

The archbishop said: "I don't see any contradiction in it."

Edmund Burke said, "I see the contradiction and I want you to answer. This is my question: If a man believes in Jesus and his virgin birth, the Holy Ghost, God, all the miracles, resurrection, but does not do what you call `virtue' and commits sins, what will happen?

"Secondly: The person who does not believe in God, does not believe in the Holy Ghost, does not believe in Jesus Christ, but follows all the virtues and commits no sin -- what will happen?"

The archbishop was at a loss, completely at a loss. The question was immensely important. He said, "You will have to give me at least seven days' time to figure it out."

Edmund Burke said, "I will come again next Sunday; you prepare."

But for seven days, day and night, the archbishop could not sleep. Howsoever he tried it was not fitting. If he says that a person who commits sins and does not follow the virtues, but believes in Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost and God, goes to paradise, it does not look right. The person is a sinner!

If he says that a person who follows the virtues and does not commit any sin, but does not believe in God or Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, goes to paradise, that means the belief in God, the Holy Ghost and Jesus, is absolute nonsense. You can go directly -- why unnecessarily have this hypothesis? So he was caught, in what is called in logic, on the horns. Both the sides -- if you go this side, this horn; if you go that side, that horn. This is called "the horns of a dilemma."

Seven days passed, but no possibility of any answer. He went early to the church to pray to Jesus before the gathering came in and Edmund Burke appeared. But he had not slept for seven days, so while he was praying he fell asleep. And he saw in a dream... because for seven days that was his only thought, how to solve it. He saw in the dream that a train is running fast and he is in the train. He inquired, "Where is this train going?"

They said, "It is going to heaven."

He said, "This is good!" He thought inside, that "This is good. I will be able to see for myself. Because Buddha never believed in God, never believed in anything. Socrates never believed in God, never believed in heaven, never believed in hell. If I find these people in paradise, the answer is that whether you believe in God or not, that is not the issue. If I do not find these people in heaven, that means that even if you follow the virtues and you don't commit sins, still you will go to hell."

But if he finds these people in heaven, that means believing in God or Jesus does not matter; all that you have to do is to be virtuous and not to commit sins. He was immensely happy.

But as the train stopped at the station in paradise, he could not believe his eyes. It looked so dull and dismal, far more dismal than England, and he saw all kinds of saints, so ugly and shrunken, just skeletons moving here and there around the station. Even the signboard on the station which said `Paradise' had faded millions of years before. You had to concentrate very much on the board and only then you could figure out, yes it says Paradise.

He asked the stationmaster, "Have you heard anything of Socrates, Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Bodhidharma? Are they here?"

The stationmaster said, "Never heard. Nobody with those names has ever appeared here.

But you can go around, have a look; there are only a few saints playing on their harps, Àlleluia, Alleluia' -- no other work. Everybody is dull."

So he went around... no work, because in paradise you don't need any food. Everybody was so sad, because in paradise you cannot have any entertainment. No parties or going anywhere -- no restaurants, not even a Zorba the Buddha! Everything was so dull and dirty, stinking.

He rushed back to the station and he said, "Is there any train direct to hell from here?"

The stationmaster said, "It is going just now, you get in."

So he went to hell and he was surprised. As the train entered hell... such lush greenery, such beautiful roses, ponds with flowers and swans. The whole station looked as if it had been freshly painted.

He said, "This is strange! This should be paradise, but right on top of the station in neon lights it is written -- Hell." He got down, he met the stationmaster, a very nice and beautiful fellow who was just going to the golf course.

The archbishop said, "Golf? In hell?"

He said, "Since these people have come here -- Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Bodhidharma -- since these people have come here they have changed the whole scene. It used to be very dirty, but now we have the best golf course in the whole world, the best roses, the best food. Just go! See, there in the field, Socrates is sowing seeds."

He saw Socrates, who looked so beautiful, so healthy, so young, as he had never been on earth. He asked about Gautam Buddha.

Socrates said, "Look under that tree. He is meditating. But since he has come, the whole air is fragrant with his meditations. You will find all the great people here."

"But," he said, "what about sinners?"

The stationmaster said, "We don't know any sinners. Since these people have come, they have transformed all sinners into sannyasins. Hell is no more the old place. You don't know about me -- I used to be the devil! Now they have posted me as the head stationmaster. And so many people are coming that we don't have one station, we have twelve stations. All around hell, beautiful stations -- gardens, lawns, beautiful houses...

and since scientists started coming we have electricity, ecology programs. They don't allow me to cut the trees to create hellfire -- they have air-conditioned the whole of hell!"

At that moment, from shock, he woke up. He said, "My God! What a dream!" He saw that people had started coming, and the first to enter was Edmund Burke.

He was an honest man, the archbishop. He said, "I don't know the answer, but I have seen this dream. I will relate the dream and you can conclude whatever you want."

It is not a question of belief in any God, in any Jesus, in any Krishna, in any Rama. It is a question of being a meditative person, so all that you do is virtuous. Out of meditation only -- flowers of virtue, eternal flowers of good, of love, of laughter.

So when Yakusan said to the monk, "Now you are washing this stone statue, but can you wash that?" he must have pointed to the heart, the very being of the monk.

SOMPU REPLIED, "PLEASE GET THAT AND BRING IT TO ME."

He said, "I don't know who you are indicating within me; just please bring it out."

... When I was looking at "Sompu," I thought of "shampoo," because shampoo seems to be the right thing for washing. So I will call him "Shampoo."

Shampoo replied, "PLEASE GET THAT AND BRING IT TO ME. I will give him a good washing."

THE MASTER DID NOT SAY ANYTHING.

Because that which is hidden within you... only you can go there. It cannot be brought to you. You are asking an absurd question; hence the silence. The master must have thought, "The man is not yet ready."

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, WHEN YAKUSAN WAS SITTING DOWN, A MONK

CAME UP TO HIM AND SAID, "OSHO, YOU ARE SITTING SILENTLY. WHAT

ARE YOU THINKING?"

That's how ordinary people will ask. If you are sitting silently, they will ask, "What are you thinking?" because people do that continuously. "Perhaps there is some great problem that you are solving? Some anxiety that you are figuring out how to deal with?

What are you thinking?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "I AM THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE."

He is saying, "I am not thinking. I am just being, and facing the unthinkable. You cannot think it; it is not a thought, it is not a thing. It is an experience, a taste."

You taste something sweet. What can you say about sweetness? You will say, "Sweetness is sweetness." But that is not the answer. All you can do is to give the other person a little sweet to taste, and tell him, "This is it."

Experiences, especially deeper experiences, are far beyond language, far beyond thought, far beyond mind. Thinking the unthinkable is not thinking at all, but facing the clarity of space within you.

THE MONK SAID, "HOW DO YOU THINK THE UNTHINKABLE?"

He could not understand. He thought, "Perhaps there is something unthinkable that he is thinking. If it is unthinkable, how can you think it?" -- HOW DO YOU THINK THE

UNTHINKABLE?

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "NON-THINKING."

That is the way to think the unthinkable: stop thinking. Just be in a space of meditation, utterly silent. Not even a single thought moving on the screen of your mind -- just the pure screen, and suddenly you are able to see the eternal, the ultimate, the very beyond which never even comes close to language or thought.

WHEN YAKUSAN WAS ABOUT TO DIE, HE YELLED OUT, "THE HALL IS

FALLING DOWN! THE HALL IS FALLING DOWN!"

THE MONKS BROUGHT VARIOUS THINGS AND BEGAN TO PROP IT UP.

YAKUSAN THREW UP HIS HANDS AND SAID, "NO ONE OF YOU

UNDERSTOOD WHAT I MEANT!"

He was not talking about the hall, he was talking about himself -- "My body, where I used to live for so many years, is falling all apart. The moment for my departure has come."

But Zen always uses symbols, and those monks were just like ordinary people. They could not see that it is not that the hall is falling... But because the master is saying the hall is falling, perhaps he is predicting some future catastrophe. So they started putting up props to keep the hall together.

And poor Yakusan threw up his hands in utter frustration -- "NO ONE OF YOU

UNDERSTOOD WHAT I MEANT! -- I am falling down. The body which used to be my house is falling apart. Soon I will be on the wings moving into the eternal sky." And saying this, he died. That was his last statement: "NO ONE OF YOU UNDERSTOOD

WHAT I MEANT."

It is very rare that a master is understood; most probably he is misunderstood. Only very few people have such courage and such sharpening of their innermost space that they can understand the master.

To understand the master is to understand the whole mystery of existence.

After attending a funeral, Ikkyu wrote:

WHEN WE COME AND SEE

HERE ALSO

IS THE BURNING HOUSE --

WHY DO PEOPLE SAY

"GOOD TO LIVE IN"?

He is saying, "At a funeral a body is burning, and people are standing around the funeral pyre, but nobody is aware that it is not just this body that is burning. It is not an exception, it is the rule. Your body is also going to burn on a funeral pyre."

This house is not eternal. This house made of matter is going to collapse any moment.

Then why do people say, "GOOD TO LIVE IN -- to live in this body is good"? Why do people say this, when the body is nothing but a carriage that takes you from the cradle towards the grave?

To live in the body is not good. To be in the body but be as a witness, to know that "It is not me" -- that is a great experience. You are discarding the body even while you are alive; you are discarding the mind even while you are alive. So when death comes it cannot take anything from you, you have discarded all that it can take and you have saved the eternal, which it cannot touch.

It is absolutely essential for every intelligent person: before death comes he should become completely clear that he is not the body and he is not the mind; he is only a pure consciousness.

Question 3

Maneesha's question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

THERE WAS NO PLACE FOR ANY GOD IN THE WORK OF THE RUSSIAN

MYSTIC, GEORGE GURDJIEFF, YET HE DID NOT ATTRACT A LARGE

NUMBER OF DISCIPLES IN WESTERN EUROPE OR IN HIS HOME COUNTRY.

WAS THIS MORE A REFLECTION OF HIS ABILITIES AS A COMMUNICATOR

OR WERE THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE SIMPLY NOT READY TO RECEIVE HIM?

In the beginning of the revolution, communism was programming people for atheism.

Communism as propagated by Marx and Engels is atheist, and to be an atheist is to be again a believer. The only difference between the theist and the atheist is, the theist is a positive believer -- he believes that God is. The atheist is also a believer -- his belief is that God is not.

In the beginning of the revolution -- George Gurdjieff was in Russia at the time when the revolution began -- he had to escape from Russia; otherwise he would have been killed by the atheist revolutionaries.

Now it is a different matter. The reason why it is different after seventy years is because a negative belief cannot be a nourishment to your inner being. One can go on deceiving oneself with a positive belief for centuries, because a positive belief fills a gap. A negative belief does not fill any gap.

In seventy years' time, the Russian people have become aware of an immense hollowness within them. The negative belief is not of any help. The positive belief at least gives you a false religion -- a prayer, a god, a church, a bible, something to fill in the gap. All junk! -- but still you can fill your hollowness with the junk.

What do you think you go on keeping in your refrigerators? All kinds of junk --

chocolate, ice cream, and you go on stuffing....

Have you ever watched? Whenever a man or a woman are in love, they don't eat much.

What happens? Why don't they eat much? Because love is such a nourishment, who cares about chocolate and chewing gum and ice cream? But once they get married, the woman starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger. What happened? Now there is no more love; now she is replacing love with ice cream.

Why do husbands bring ice cream when they come home? Love is no more there; perhaps ice cream will cool down the atmosphere! And whenever a husband brings ice cream the wife suspects: "He must have committed something that he is trying to cover up."

So it is very difficult. If you don't bring ice cream, the atmosphere is very hot. If you bring ice cream, the wife looks out of the corner of her eye, looks at your coat -- any hair from some woman?

Mulla Nasruddin was caught again and again with some woman's hair on his coat. He asked a friend what to do. The friend said, "It is simple. Before entering the house, you just clean your coat. Keep a brush with yourself."

He said, "That's a good idea! It never occurred to me -- so simple!" So one day he found a brush. Outside the house he completely cleaned his coat, and suit, and shirt, and entered the house.

The wife looked at his coat, at his pants, and simply started beating her head and crying and screaming! He said, "What has happened? There is no hair at all!"

She said, "That's why I am crying. It seems you have started loving some bald woman!"

It is difficult any way. Whichever way you try, it does not work.

Today the situation is totally different than it was seventy years before. Today the Russian people feel immense emptiness. You cannot live on negatives. Positive things may not be authentic, but at least they help you to fill the hollowness. Hence I say theism is more dangerous than atheism, because the atheist sooner or later has to realize that "It is not helping me in any way. I am utterly empty."

The theist may be able to deceive himself for lives together, because he feels full. He knows the prayer, he knows the scripture, he knows God is taking care. But the atheist sooner or later is bound to be aware that atheism is not fulfilling, it is negative. No God, no heaven, no scripture, nothing. You have to encounter your hollowness.

So I say it is better to be an atheist than to be a theist. But still better is the agnostic, who does not believe in God, who does not disbelieve in God, who is simply open and ready to find out what is the truth -- in his own consciousness, because that is the closest thing which is alive.

Look deep into your throbbing life and you will find the quality of the divine. You will not find a God but you will find a godliness, a truth, an awakening, a buddha.

Gurdjieff could not attract many disciples in the West. The reason was, he was not an articulate person. He knew only the Caucasian language. He was born, strangely, in the same place where Joseph Stalin was born. They both learned in the same seminary, they were colleagues when they were small children. And both had the same quality of steel.

Joseph Stalin proved his steel, and in the same way but in a different direction, George Gurdjieff also proved his steel. He was perhaps the strongest man you can imagine, stronger than Stalin, because Gurdjieff had no power; his power was inner. You could give him as much alcohol as possible, and you could not make him drunk -- that was his power -- no drug had any effect on him, his witnessing was so great. He would go on moving behind the alcohol, the alcohol would not be able to distract his witnessing.

But he knew only his mother tongue, the Caucasian language. He learned a little bit of English but it was very broken, he could not make a complete sentence. So language was a barrier, and his methods were a barrier.

His methods he learned because his father died when he was nine and his mother had died already, before his father died, so he was left an orphan. His father was a gypsy, so he was left with a gypsy group, and he learned whatsoever he could learn with the gypsies. They are not great scholars; they are vagabonds moving from one place to another place.

You will be surprised to know that gypsies belong to India, Rajasthan. They moved from Rajasthan to Egypt, and from Egypt to Europe. It is because they moved from Egypt to Europe that they are called "gypsies." The name is derived from "Egypt," but their language is Hindi. It has changed, but you will find that seventy percent is Hindi and thirty percent is derived from Hindi words, changed.

So Gurdjieff was moving with one gypsy group, and when he had learned everything from that group, he would move to other gypsy groups -- they are always on the move.

He learned every method from the gypsies, and those methods are very crude, very hard

-- and not at all attractive to the Western people who were living in comfort, luxury. So those who came to him turned back immediately, seeing his methods.

First, he would feed people -- he was a great cook -- and very exotic foods, which Western people had never known. He had learned from different gypsy groups to prepare strange kinds of foods, with strange spices. His whole monastery where he used to live near Paris was full of foodstuff, spices, alcohol, all kinds of drugs. These were his methods.

He would force people to eat too much till they started vomiting; he would force people to go on drinking, go on drinking, till they fell flat on the ground and started doing gibberish -- what you do every day without any alcohol! And he would sit by them and listen to what they were saying, because what they were saying was more true than what they say when they are in their consciousness. It was a very crude psychoanalysis.

He would tell people to dig trenches in the ground, the whole day in the hot sun. People who had never worked were digging trenches, people who were philosophers, professors of philosophy. They had dealt with books and libraries, they were not laborers, but they were digging. The master was walking by the side, looking at all the disciples digging ditches. And in the evening when the ditches were complete he would say, "Now fill the ditches back in. Bring them back to the same condition as they were before you started digging."

Now, by the evening they are utterly exhausted! A few will faint, just out of exertion.

And he will watch their faces when they faint. A few will succeed, to find a strange phenomenon: when they feel absolutely exhausted, he will go on insisting, "Don't be worried. Continue!" And if somebody followed him -- which was difficult -- then suddenly he would find, when the exhaustion came to the peak, a sudden release of a new energy and he would be as fresh as one is fresh in the morning. What happened?

He was teaching that you have three layers of energy. The first layer is for day-to-day work; it exhausts itself very easily. Exhaust it completely -- and if you exhaust it completely the second layer will immediately come up and you will be filled with fresh energy, as you have never known. If you continue to work for months and months together, the second layer will also be one day finished; then the third layer -- which is inexhaustible, which is the very life itself -- will pop up in you. You will see that you have an eternal source of energy.

But this is a very crude method. I can do it within six minutes! Gurdjieff needed six years to do it -- just bullock-cart methods. Certainly he was not very attractive to the Western intelligentsia. Only very few people -- not more than twelve, or at the most, twenty --

used to live in his monastery. Most of them were refugees from Soviet Russia. They were just seeking shelter because the communists had thrown out everybody who was not with them. They followed Jesus on that point -- anybody who is not with you is against you.

Either kill him or throw him out of the country.

He had a beautiful campus near Paris, a few miles away. Huge trees and a big forest, an old monastery deserted by the monks... Now professors, painters, poets -- almost half the group of people in his campus -- were those who became interested in him because of his great disciple P.D. Ouspensky, who was a very great mathematician and had a tremendous quality of articulateness.

I have never come across books written so well as P.D. Ouspensky's. His every sentence is so condensed; it has so much to say... It was because of Ouspensky -- Ouspensky had a school in London -- that people were attracted. And then he would send them to Gurdjieff and from there, ninety percent would escape within twenty-four hours: "That man was crazy! The whole day no food, the whole day you had to work hard, to exhaust your energy, and in the night he would cook exotic foods which were not suitable to your stomach..."

So his assembly was a very strange assembly. Somebody is vomiting, somebody is flat, foaming at the mouth. Somebody is making some utterances and nobody understands what he is saying. Only Gurdjieff was conscious; everybody else was unconscious. First food, then drink -- and hard liquor, not soft wine that you sip and enjoy just to relax. It was not to relax, it was to bring you inside out. Next morning, when you wake up amongst all kinds of strange people shouting, screaming, vomiting all around you, it is better to get out of the doors before Gurdjieff catches you again!

His methods were certainly useful but they were too old, too tribal; hence he could not attract the Western intelligentsia. And he could not attract the Russians because they were going through the revolution and atheism was their theme.

He died a frustrated master, one of the great masters of this century. He died just in 1950.

His life is a sad life....

Hence comes the time of Sardar Gurudayal Singh!

Manuel Labor, the defeated South American dictator, is trying to get back into power. He is addressing a meeting of workmen to organize support for himself.

"When the revolution comes," shouts Manuel, "you will enjoy the pleasures of the rich!

You will walk down Main Street wearing a gold watch!"

"Excuse me," interrupts Pancho, the dog catcher, "but I like to wear my old Timex watch."

"Or if you prefer it -- a Timex watch!" continues Manuel. "You will wear an Yves St.

Laurent three-piece suit and Gucci shoes..."

"Excuse me," interrupts Pancho, again. "But I am more comfortable in my blue jeans and sneakers."

"Very well -- blue jeans and sneakers, if you insist," snaps Manuel Labor, getting annoyed. "And you will ride to work in a Cadillac..."

"Excuse me," interrupts Pancho, "but I would rather use my bicycle."

Furious, Manuel jumps off the platform, strides through the crowd and grabs Pancho by the neck.

"Listen, you idiot!" hisses the ex-dictator. "When the revolution comes, you will do what you are bloody well told!"

Newton Hooton gets up one morning, walks into the bathroom, turns on the tap, but it does not work. So he calls out to his wife, Helen Hooton, in the bedroom, "Hey, honey, the water tap doesn't work!"

"Well, sweetie," calls back Helen, "you are the man in the house -- you fix it!"

"Hey, I'm no plumber," replies Newton.

Then he goes over to the clothes closet to get his suit, and the door handle comes off in his hand.

"Hey, Helen," shouts Newton, "the closet door handle is broken!"

"Well, darling, you are the man in the house," shouts back Helen, "You fix it!"

"Hey, I'm no carpenter!" snaps Newton, and he goes downstairs for his breakfast. But when he switches on the light in the kitchen, the bulb pops.

"Hey, honey," shouts out Newton. "The light is busted!"

"Well, sugar-pie," calls back Helen, "why don't you fix it?"

"Hey, I'm no electrician," shouts back Newton, and he goes off to work.

That evening, Newton comes home and sees a new light bulb in the kitchen. He goes upstairs, and the door handle on the closet is fixed. Then he goes into the bathroom, and the water tap works.

"Hey, honey," shouts out Newton. "Who fixed all these broken things in the house?"

"Well, baby-cakes," calls back Helen, "Burton Belch from next door must have heard us shouting this morning, so he came over and offered to fix everything."

"That's great, honey," shouts Newton. "But what did he want in payment?"

"Well dearie," replies Helen, "he said I could either screw him or bake him a cake."

"Hey, honey," shouts Newton, "that is nice -- what kind of cake did you bake him?"

"Hey, poopsie," calls out Helen, "I'm no baker!"

Little Ernie is doing his homework one evening and has a problem.

"Dad," he says, "what is the difference between ànger' and èxasperation'?"

"Well, son," says his father, "I will give you a practical demonstration."

His dad then goes to the phone and dials a random number.

"Hello," comes a voice at the other end.

"Hello," says Ernie's father. "Is Melvin there?"

"There is no one called Melvin here!" comes the reply. "Why don't you learn to look up numbers before you dial them?"

"You see?" says Ernie's father.

"That man was not at all happy with our call. But watch this!"

He then dials the same number again, and says, "Hello, is Melvin there?"

"Now look here!" comes the angry reply. "I told you there is no Melvin here! You have got a lot of nerve calling again!" And then he slams down the receiver.

"Did you hear that?" asks Ernie's father. "That was anger. Now, I will show you what exasperation is!"

He picks up the phone and dials the same number again, and when a violent voice shouts,

"HELLO!" Ernie's father says, "Hello! This is Melvin. Have there been any calls for me?"

Nivedano

(Gibberish)

Nivedano

Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen. This is the right moment to look inwards.

Gather your whole life energy and rush towards your center with total consciousness and with an urgency as if this is going to be the last moment of your life on the earth. Without this urgency, nobody has ever reached to his center.

Faster and faster, deeper and deeper....

As you come closer to your center, a great silence descends over you. A little closer and flowers of peace start springing up all around you.

A little more close and you start feeling the Zen Wind -- a cool breeze.

Still closer and you start feeling the Zen Fire -- it is not the fire that you have known. It is the very energy arising from your center of being. These flames are cool, they are like lotus petals.

Reaching to the center, you suddenly realize you are no more but buddha is.

The buddha simply means pure witnessing. The buddha is only a symbol of your eternal existence.

Just remember one word -- witnessing.

This simple word is the whole of religion,

is the whole of spirituality,

is the whole of all that is known

as truth, as beauty, as good, as godliness.

Just witness -- you are not the body. Witness you are not the mind, witness that you are only a witness, just a pure consciousness.

This is your buddha.

This is your very nature.

This is your intrinsic potential.

A great ecstasy will arise. You will feel almost drunk, but remain a witness.

To make the witnessing more clear, and deeper...

Nivedano

Relax, let go. Just remember one thing -- forget everything else -- you are only a witness and nothing else.

The moment you are only a witness you are a buddha, and your consciousness starts melting and merging into the cosmos.

Gautam the Buddha Auditorium at this moment is turning into an ocean of consciousness.

Ten thousand buddhas have melted into one pure, oceanic consciousness.

The evening was beautiful on its own, but your entering the innermost mystery of being has made it a great splendor, a miracle, a magical evening. At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.

Collect all the experience that is happening at the center. Collect all the flowers, the fragrances of the beyond, the flames of Zen Fire -- they are so cool, so serene.

Gather the Zen Wind which is passing through you like a song, like a melody, and persuade the buddha to come along with you.

Every day he is coming closer and closer, inch by inch. Your life is going through a transformation, a breakthrough. You will never be the same again. The past is dropping and you are settling into the herenow.

The buddha is your nature.

It has remained hidden at the deepest center of your being because you never called it, you never welcomed it.

It does not come without invitation.

Invite him, request him; he will come.

The first step of meditation is, buddha comes behind you like a shadow.

The second step: the buddha is in front of you, and you become the shadow.

And the third step: you merge into the buddha. There is no shadow anymore -- only pure awareness, so transparent that it cannot create a shadow.

That day when it happens to you will be the most fortunate, the most blessed day. You will become the awakened one.

We have to spread this Zen Fire and this Zen Wind around the globe. This is the only hope for humanity.

Now Nivedano...

Come back, but come as a buddha with great peace, silence, grace. And sit for a few moments just to recollect where you have been, which space you have touched, what golden path you have traveled. And look who is standing behind you, just behind your consciousness.

A new guest -- the buddha.

Every day you are gaining more and more.

Your victory is absolutely guaranteed, because you are not struggling against anyone; you are simply trying to bring your own nature to its ultimate blossoming.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

Chapter #4

Chapter title: I am a spiritual terrorist

2 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Archive

code:

8902025

ShortTitle:

FIRE04

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

147

mins

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ONE DAY, UNGAN WAS SWEEPING THE GARDEN WITH A BAMBOO BROOM.

HIS BROTHER DOGO CAME OVER TO HIM AND SAID, "HEY, YOU LOOK

TERRIBLY BUSY!"

UNGAN SAID, "ALTHOUGH BUSY, THERE IS SOMETHING WHICH IS NOT

BUSY."

DOGO SAID, "THAT MEANS THERE ARE TWO MOONS."

THEN UNGAN PUT THE BROOM ON THE GROUND AND SAID, "WHAT MOON

IS THIS?"

DOGO SILENTLY LEFT.

AT ANOTHER TIME, UNGAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "I CAME WITH INCENSE."

UNGAN ASKED, "DID YOU SEE BUDDHA?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "YES, I DID."

"WHERE DID YOU SEE HIM?" UNGAN ASKED.

THE MONK REPLIED, "I SAW HIM IN THE LOWER WORLD."

UNGAN SAID, "THE OLD BUDDHA! THE OLD BUDDHA!"

Friends,

Question 1

One sannyasin has asked:

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM?

A vast difference -- the same difference that there is between me and Comrade Gorbachev. I am a spiritual communist, and Comrade Gorbachev is a socialist.

Socialism is a compromise, a compromise with capitalism. Communism is a totally revolutionary step. The closer I have been looking at Gorbachev and his statements, the sadder I am feeling. He is not a revolutionary; he is a reactionary, he is going backwards.

Just today Anando has given me a small summary of his books. Just a few sentences I heard, and I told her, "Close it" -- because he is talking about bringing private property back into the Soviet Union, and with private property capitalism comes in. He is saying that the communist motto was, "Each according to his need" -- and what is his motto?

"Each according to his work."

But that's exactly the motto of capitalism: each according to his work. Obviously, if you give to people according to their work and efficiency, then there will be richer people and there will be poorer people. The classes will come back again.

As I have told you again and again, physically, people are not equal. You can give equal opportunity to all, but still a Picasso will be a Picasso, all people are not going to become Picassos. A Henry Ford will be a Henry Ford; to create wealth is an art in itself, and everybody cannot be a Henry Ford.

Now if Gorbachev introduces the idea of each according to his work and his efficiency...

his intentions are absolutely good. I don't have even a small doubt about his good intentions for his people, for his land, but he is not a buddha. He is an unconscious man as everybody else is. The unconscious man does not know that his intentions may be good but the results may go wrong.

I am in absolute favor of communism because I think it is the foundation for spiritual growth. But I am against socialism. It is a compromise with capitalism, and when you compromise with capitalism, capitalism will drown you.

It seems Gorbachev has become too much interested in America -- the high-rise buildings, miles and miles of cars -- the richness has overwhelmed his mind. He has been reported to have said, "What should I call my revolution?" It is not a revolution in the first place, it is anti-revolutionary. And then he thought about it, and said, "Perhaps I should call it socialist capitalism, or capitalist socialism." In both ways, capitalism will be the victor and communism will be the defeated. He has already stopped talking about communism, he is talking about socialism.

Socialism I have been against always, because it is an effort to keep the capitalist incentive for people to work. What is the capitalist incentive for people? Private property: my house, my car, my wife, my children. That is the incentive, and it creates competition.

My house should be better than your house. My wife should be more beautiful than your wife. My children should be educated better than your children. It starts competition, it starts ambition. Of course, people start working harder. That's what Gorbachev is thinking, that people are not working as hard in the Soviet Union as they are working in every capitalist country.

It is true, because Karl Marx is not a complete communist. He has no idea that man is not just an economic animal; he has a mind and he has a soul. He thought, absolutely wrongly, that once the financial conditions change, once the society changes its structure, consciousness will change also. That is wrong. It is taking things from the wrong end.

If consciousness changes, then certainly the social structure will change, because the social structure is just a projection of man's mind. But Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, or Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, have no idea what the mind is. The question of going beyond the mind does not arise.

They worked hard for seventy years to bring communism in Russia, but slowly slowly...

In the beginning there was some incentive, because the poor were thinking they would become rich, that everybody would be equal. But slowly slowly it was found that as all the property was taken from the individuals it was a great struggle. In that struggle one million people were killed. By not changing the mind first, this was the outcome. People's minds have lived for centuries, thousands of years, with the idea of private property.

Their only incentive is that if it is going to help their ego, if it is going to help them rise higher than others, only then they are going to work hard.

It is said about Henry Ford -- he was a poor man as far as his birth is concerned, but he became one of the richest men in the world -- it is said that he used to come to his office at eight o'clock, early in the morning. The peon used to come at ten o'clock to open the doors and clean the office. The clerks used to come at eleven o'clock, the manager used to come at twelve o'clock. And the manager would leave by two o'clock, the clerks would leave at five o'clock. The peon would leave at six o'clock, and Henry Ford? -- there was no time for him. Sometimes eight o'clock in the night, sometimes nine o'clock, sometimes ten o'clock. A great incentive to work hard, because he was such an ambitious man and he wanted to be the richest man in the world. And he succeeded.

In Russia that incentive has disappeared. As the years went on, people saw that instead of becoming rich they were as poor as ever. Because Russia was not a capitalist country, there was no capital to be distributed -- only poverty to be distributed. There were a few landlords, and their property was taken. Their property was the land, but that land was not given to the poor because of the communist ideology. Everything had to be centralized; nobody had anything private.

People saw that their poverty was the same, and they could not adjust to the new phase.

Their minds were hankering to be better than others, to be more successful, to be richer -

- and that possibility had disappeared. Now what is the point of working hard? Now there were vast lands belonging to the state, running for miles on. It was a beautiful phenomenon... not small patches, pieces of land which go on being divided every generation into even smaller pieces.

You can see it in India. If the father has five acres and five sons, each son will have one acre of land. And then the son will have his own sons. Then that one acre of land will be divided again into as many sons as he has. Such small patches of land that they cannot nourish you, and you cannot use tractors, new technology on those small patches of land.

You don't have the means; neither is the land big enough to use bigger machines, more chemicals. The poor go on becoming poorer.

Private property will certainly bring an incentive. People will work hard. But all people are not equal as far as working hard is concerned. Those who are able to work hard will become richer, and those who are not able to work that hard will become even poorer than they are now.

This was the whole program to dissolve the classes, and Gorbachev is bringing those classes back. Soon... just now he has dropped the word `communism'; he is no longer mentioning the word `communism' at all. He is talking about socialism, and has started talking about whether to call it "capitalist socialism" or "socialist capitalism." Whatever you call it, it is capitalism! Socialism is just a word to deceive the masses.

Gorbachev is going against all the basic principles of communism. First he is talking about patriotism -- communism is absolutely against nations and patriotism. Its whole idea is to dissolve all nations into one humanity; it was from its very foundation an international movement. Now Gorbachev is talking about patriotism, nationalism.

He is also talking about decentralization, which is against the foundation of all communism. Decentralization is an idea of Gandhism. Soon Gorbachev will be having, just like Morarji Desai, a spinning wheel! Decentralization means you cannot use modern technology; modern technology can be used only in a centralized world where the fields are miles and miles long. But if you decentralize and divide the land back again to the same people from whom it has been taken... They were poor then and they will be poor again, far poorer than they are now.

But he is too much infatuated by America. I want him to remember: American capitalism has a three-hundred-year-old life. It will take at least three hundred years for you to have the same pollution as L.A., the same high-rise buildings, one hundred stories, one hundred twenty stories high. You cannot do it just like a miracle. And still, America has three million beggars. At least the Soviet Union has no beggars. It is not as rich as America, but it is not as poor as India. Dividing the land, distributing property to individual hands, will not make it America; it will make it India.

And because he has opened the doors, it will be too late now for him to close them.

Journalists are there; each nook and corner of the Soviet Union is being filmed, televised, and they are bringing out all those things which the closed doors were hiding. Twenty percent of the people in the Soviet Union are living below the minimum nourishment level. Now he has to go against all the statistics that have been given to the world by the Soviet leaders up to now.

He is against vodka. He himself does not drink. That is the trouble of people who don't drink: they become saints. It is very difficult to not drink without becoming a saint. Then they want everybody to stop drinking. Now he is proposing prohibition of all alcohol.

That has been the poor Russian's only relaxation, only enjoyment, only entertainment --

vodka. Otherwise he has no beautiful car, no house, nowhere to go, no money... it was vodka that was keeping him alive! At least in the evening he can drink, and with his friends he can dance and rejoice. Even that is being taken away.

I have heard that the youth of the Soviet Union are absolutely against prohibition. They should be against it, because prohibition has never succeeded anywhere in the world. It seems people never learn.

In India we have tried twice -- and India must be the best place to try prohibition -- but both times we have failed. It was Morarji Desai, both times, who was responsible for prohibition: once when he was the deputy prime minister under Indira Gandhi. Then he enforced prohibition, and prohibition killed thousands of Indians, because people started drinking spirit, people started making alcohol -- homemade, and they don't know how to make it! So hundreds and hundreds of people -- in Calcutta, in Patna, in Madras, everywhere -- were dying of poisoning.

It is an art to create a refined wine that gives you a little forgetfulness about your anxieties, gives you a little laughter, a little dance, a little music. There are connoisseurs....

I have heard about one connoisseur, one man who could, just by tasting the wine or any kind of alcoholic beverage, tell what trademark the wine is, and how old. Ten years old, twenty years old, thirty years? -- because the older the wine is, the better.

He used to go to pubs and he would put one hundred dollars on the table, and convince the owner: "Give me any alcohol and I will tell you the trademark, the country in which it was manufactured, and how old it is. If I fail, these hundred dollars are yours. If I succeed... put a hundred dollars by the side; both the notes will be mine."

And every pub owner thought that this would be an impossible job. He had so many kinds of alcohol -- how is this man going to manage? So he would give him a glass and the man would immediately say, "Thirty years old, a French wine," and a certain trademark. Amazed, the whole pub crowd would gather around, and he would take both the notes and say, "Do you want another try?"

The owner would say, "Okay, you put another hundred dollars." So he would put down one hundred dollars. The owner would again put one hundred dollars, give him another wine, and immediately, just by tasting it -- such a refined taste, such sensitivity -- he would tell everything about it.

Once it went on for ten times, and the owner was losing one hundred dollars every time.

He said, "My God! This man is unbelievable." Then suddenly a man came from the crowd and gave the man a cup. He took one sip, and he said, "My God! This is human urine!" And the man, who had gone behind the crowd again, asked, "But whose? Unless you tell whose, you are a loser! How old...?"

Intoxicating drugs are as ancient as man. No country has ever been able to prohibit them.

Alcohol has been prohibited by many countries, and they all failed finally because it turned out to be more dangerous. People were taking all kinds of things, and people were creating all kinds of things in the name of "medicine." But it was all illegal so there was no way to check on it and see whether it was the right stuff. Nobody knew its constituents. So it killed thousands of people in every country, wherever there was prohibition. And it attracted more people who had never been drinking before.

Prohibition always attracts. You prohibit anything, and just see: people who have never bothered about it will start searching for it, thinking that "There must be something in it; otherwise why is the government so interested in prohibiting it?"

Just try. Prohibit ice cream, and suddenly you will see the whole country becomes interested in ice cream -- people who have never bothered about it. And when there is such a great demand, there will be suppliers. And it will not be the right stuff, because ice cream can be made of blotting paper; just the blotting paper has to be soaked in water, mixed with milk, and you can have ice cream made out of blotting paper! It looks exactly like ice cream! Just prohibit it and people will find ways, and even those who were never interested will become interested.

Now Gorbachev wants to prohibit Russians from drinking alcohol. This is not revolution.

If you want people not to drink, you have to give them something higher that takes away their anxieties. They drink because they are tense, they drink because there is anxiety, they drink because they want to forget. They want to forget the wife, they want to forget the husband, they want to forget the small kids, they want to forget their business, they want to forget their financial troubles.

Unless you give them a higher consciousness which can solve these problems -- then there is no need to forget anything -- unless you give them such a deep alertness and awareness that they can see the root cause of their misery, and they don't want just to cover it with alcohol but want to cut it from the roots... Except meditation there is no way that intoxicant drugs can be prohibited.

Meditation is real spiritual alcohol! It takes you to such deep blissfulness... you don't have to forget your blissfulness. Do you want to forget your blissfulness? Alcohol only helps you to forget. Whether it is anxiety or ecstasy, whether it is tension or relaxation, it simply helps you to forget. Once you are blissful, happy, once you don't have any tensions, you will not drink because the drink will simply destroy your blissfulness, your joy, your dance, your song.

Give people some new spiritual awakening.

That is revolution.

This is not revolution, this is a very reactionary step. People are already sad, and you want them to become sadder. But what reason has he to prohibit alcohol? The reason is that he thinks that because of alcohol people don't work efficiently. He wants people to work efficiently, to work hard. The harder they work, the more they will need alcohol just to relax for the night! -- because in the morning again the torture begins.

If you take away the alcohol it will not help efficiency, it will not help people work more, it will simply make people more sad, more aloof, not interested in anything. It is not going to make the country richer, just sadder.

And creating the idea of patriotism is the foundation of fascism. Fascism lives on patriotism: you are Germans, you are born to rule over the world; you are Russians, you are the chosen people. But you will have to find God if you want to be chosen people --

and Gorbachev is allowing churches, the Ramakrishna Mission, the Hare Krishna movement. And other idiots will soon follow: snake charmers from India, Satya Sai Baba from India, making miracles, and all those miracles are nothing but street magic.

Magicians will be coming. Russia will soon become an ordinary capitalist country; it will lose its dignity and power.

One man in Germany has found a certain program which can transform the armies into only defensive forces, they will never attack on their own. And Gorbachev has sent his personal aides to learn the technique. I think he is naive. He does not know: if a person cannot attack, he cannot defend either, because in defense also he will have to attack.

How are you going to defend without attacking?

The oldest policy of all warmongers -- from Chanakya in India, three thousand years ago, to Machiavelli in Europe -- has been the same policy. Chanakya and Machiavelli --

three thousand years' difference, but the policy is the same: the best way to defend is to attack. Once you are on the defensive, you have already lost half the battle, and particularly in a time when the war is not going to be a slow war with small weapons.

When the war is going to be nuclear, it is only a question of ten minutes and the whole world will be finished. Whoever attacks, perhaps may survive. If you are on the defensive there is no chance to survive.

My own understanding is, America is playing a great role behind the whole scene. It is a great conspiracy of American politicians, but very indirect: they are influencing Gorbachev towards a suicidal step for communism.

I am absolutely in support if the country is opened for chosen persons who will help the country become a spiritual land, who will help the country with new economic plans, a new financial structure. But the churches and the Witnesses of Jehovah are not going to change the economic status of the country. They are going to destroy whatever has been achieved in seventy years.

Mahatma Gandhi was in favor of decentralization -- but even his own followers saw the point, that it is good to make his statues, it is good to call him the "Father of the land"; it is good to put his pictures everywhere, in all the government offices, but don't listen to him. Because if you listen to him, he will take you back to the age, thousands of years back, when the spinning wheel was invented.

Gandhi wanted the spinning wheel to be the last word in technology: after the spinning wheel, whatever has been invented should be destroyed. The bullock cart should be the only vehicle in the world and the spinning wheel the only technology. He was in favor of decentralization.

Of course, if you decentralize you cannot have new technology; it needs centralization, and particularly in a country which is communist. In a capitalist country the state and the capitalists are separate. The capitalists have individual freedom to exploit people, although they are supported by the government from the back door, because they support the politicians in their elections. So it is a combination, but on the surface it seems to be separate.

The capitalist has no power and the politician has no money, so they go together well.

But at least the capitalist has no power, so he cannot harass people; and the politician depends on votes, so he has also to be aware not to harass people too much; otherwise they won't give him their votes.

In a communist country the state is both: it is the only capitalist -- it owns everything in the country -- and it has all the power. And because there is only one party, the communist party, there is no question of any voting. Elections happen, but they are just mock elections. Only the communist party is there -- who is going to fight? And anybody who stands against the communist candidate will disappear in the middle of the night; it will not be known where that man has gone. So nobody else has been standing for election. One person stands and the whole population is told to vote for him; it is not a question of choice. In a communist country everything is centralized. But if communism knows how to transform people's minds, how to make them clear of the past of private ownership, of possessiveness, how to make them more meditative and silent so that their actions come out of their silence and peace and love and compassion, then communism becomes a spiritual revolution.

Gorbachev is calling what he is doing a revolution. I say, absolutely no! If you want to be really a revolutionary, the only way is bring spiritualism to your country, not capitalism.

That is going backwards in time, and destroying the whole effort of seventy years, and destroying the whole sacrifice of millions of people who died.

I am a spiritual communist -- a spiritual terrorist! And I don't care either for George Bush or Comrade Gorbachev. His books have come into my hand just today -- they are ugly. He is sabotaging his own people! And he has taken all the power into his hands, so there is no possibility....

But he is not aware that even presidents can be shot dead, and if he is trying to make the Soviet Union another America, remember: twenty percent of the presidents of America have been shot dead!

What Gorbachev is doing is going against the whole revolution, and not only in the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union turns into a country of capitalism it will not only destroy itself, its dignity and power, it will destroy other small communist countries which are dependent on it. He has already started cutting support to other small countries.

He has stopped supporting Cuba. Now Cuba is so small -- once the Soviet Union is not supporting it, America is going to take it over within a minute.

What will happen to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia? And China is already on the way towards being capitalist again, but it has not been talked about much because the communist leaders of China are very silent. They are not doing it in the cities, in big towns, but eighty percent of China is in the villages; they have already been for two years distributing land to private owners in the villages. But they have not been making much fuss about it. They know that they are betraying the communist revolution and coming closer and closer to America.

When Richard Nixon was found guilty of immense crimes against his own people and had to lose his presidentship... that was the only way for him to be forgiven. The president has the power to forgive crimes, so his vice-president, Ford -- as Nixon retired from the presidency, Ford became the president, and this was the mutual understanding, that once Ford becomes the president he will immediately forgive Nixon. So Nixon had not to face the Supreme Court, he had not to face any court, and he had not to face the Senate or the people.

The first man to invite Richard Nixon, after he was no longer the president, was Mao Zedong of China. He sent his own plane to take Nixon to China, and what he said to him is worthy of being remembered. He said, "What kind of people are yours? Just small things, listening and taping other people's phone calls -- this is not a crime. Every politician does it. I do it!" Mao Zedong said it clearly: "Every politician has to do it out of necessity, to be alert about where enmity is growing, from the where attacks can come.

Because once you are in power, you are always in danger."

Now nobody is going to kill Richard Nixon. You don't know where he is, you never see his name in the newspapers. You will see some time, when he dies, a small note on the fourth page, that "The ex-president of America, Richard Nixon, is dead" -- finished. And he was in the headlines for years.

Mao was surprised: "What kind of people are Americans? They forced out their own president? If I was in your place, I would have killed the whole country!" But once Mao died his enemies, whom he had been keeping out of power, came into power. They immediately killed Mao's wife, who was a very powerful influence on Mao. In fact, she was behind Mao, ruling the country. Mao was getting old; she was young. She was a film actress. There was great age difference between her and Mao. Mao was getting senile, and thirty years of revolution can destroy anybody's mind. Just fighting and fighting and fighting, and escaping and fighting.... In his old age he married this film actress. And the film actress was not interested in Mao, certainly, because neither was he beautiful, nor was he young. No child was born out of the marriage, so you can understand where he stood.

The only reason for this woman to marry Mao -- a very beautiful woman -- was simply to have power. She was dictating in the name of Mao -- she was the real dictator. And she threw all the people out of the Communist Party, out of their powerful positions, who she thought were against Mao, or who she thought were against her.

When Mao died those people returned to power, and the first thing they did was to hang the woman and the four other people who were her supporters. Then many others were hanged, and the whole group around Mao was completely erased.

Now, these people have no idea exactly what communism is. And seeing that America is flourishing, they started distributing the land to private ownership. The next step will be in the cities, in the towns: distribute everything to individual owners, because that brings incentive. People start struggling hard for success, out of ambition. That is the old mind.

Unless that old mind is completely transformed, and people start feeling for the whole humanity... Then they work out of love, not out of ambition. And I have actual experience of it -- you are here. In the American commune people were working not out of any ambition but just out of love, out of joy, the very joy of creating a new kind of commune that the world has never known. But their foundation was meditation.

What Russia needs is not capitalism. Comrade Gorbachev, you should not deceive your people by calling it "socialist capitalism" -- that is a contradiction in terms. And it is not going to help, it is going just to help America destroy you without any war -- and not only destroy you, but all the communist countries that are dependent on you and your support. The great utopian experiment evaporates just because of one man's misunderstanding.

And if Gorbachev wants his armies not to attack, he should be aware: they will not be able to defend either. These are two sides of one coin. That man in Germany, if he is given the job, must be an agent of America. America has not sent anybody to that man to learn the art of how not to attack but only to defend. Gorbachev was the first, immediately sending people to him.

I have asked German sannyasins to immediately send me the literature about what kind of programming that man is suggesting. It cannot be anything else but post-hypnotic suggestion. You can suggest to a person in deep hypnosis that, "You will never attack anybody, but if somebody attacks you, you can defend yourself." Just a few sessions to the whole army and they will become absolutely immobile when the question of attack comes.

I have been working on every dimension of your mind and no-mind. I was working on a young student of mine with post-hypnotic suggestions. I hypnotized him.... Hypnosis is a simple matter: you just look at something very bright that dazzles your eyes. These lights of Niskriya's are enough -- you just look at them, and without blinking your eyes... hold your eyes so they do not blink, whatever happens.

The hypnotist is sitting by your side, telling you, "Hold on, don't close your eyes." And when he sees... and it is very clear when a person is going to close his eyes, and has come to his limit. Just within three minutes, his face starts relaxing and you can see it; it is not something that you have to infer. You can see exactly that the man is feeling sleepy, the face is relaxing.

Then you start suggesting to him, "Your eyes are feeling very heavy. Although you are trying your best, you will not be able to succeed any longer, they are closing, they are closing, they are closing"... in a very sleepy voice.

And the person is told beforehand that he has to fight: at the last moment when it becomes impossible, when he cannot do anything, when in spite of him the eyes close, and what can he do...? There comes a moment that in spite of him, he feels his eyes are closing and he cannot do anything about it anymore. And the person is giving instructions: "Your eyes are becoming heavy, you are feeling very sleepy. You will fall into a deep sleep." Just within five minutes the person is snoring.

And while you are going deeper into sleep... Hypnosis means sleep. The very root of the word simply means sleep, nothing else; deliberate sleep, created sleep. But the created sleep goes much deeper than your natural sleep.

And the medium, the person who is being hypnotized, is told, "You will hear only my voice and nothing else. No other sound will reach to you, only my voice." And that actually happens. All his senses become relaxed and closed; he hears nobody. If you shout his name he will not hear, but if the hypnotist just whispers he will hear. That is the only opening left, a very narrow opening; everything else is closed.

That is the time when you can give any post-hypnotic suggestion. Post-hypnotic suggestion means that it will be applicable when you are out of hypnosis. For example, I told this boy, "The pillow you are sleeping on right now -- I am making on the pillow a cross with red ink. And tomorrow, exactly at eleven o'clock, you will kiss that cross."

This is a post-hypnotic suggestion for tomorrow, when he will not be in hypnosis, but it has entered into his unconscious.

The next day, nearabout fifteen minutes before eleven, he became fidgety -- not knowing why. I asked, "What is the problem? Why do you look so tense?"

He said, "I don't know, but something seems to be happening inside me."

I said, "Nothing is happening." I took his pillow -- he watched -- and I put the pillow in my suitcase and locked it. He became more and more troubled. Exactly as it was coming to be eleven, he looked at the clock and he asked me, "Please give me the key."

I said, "Why?"

He said, "I want my pillow back."

I said, "What are you going to do with it at eleven o'clock? In the night I will give it to you."

He said, "No! Just give me the key!"

I gave him the key, he opened the suitcase. It was exactly eleven; the clock was striking the hour of eleven. He pulled out the pillow, hugged it as if it was his girlfriend, and started kissing exactly the point where I had marked with red ink.

I said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "I don't know! I am feeling absolutely insane. This is a pillow, I know -- why I am hugging it I don't know. And why am I kissing it? I have never kissed any pillow in my whole life!"

But such romance! You should have seen his face, so romantic. He had fallen in love, just as you fall in love.

Do you think you fall in love in a different way? It is biological hypnosis! And do you think you are kissing something else than a pillow? What are you kissing, have you ever thought about it? It is just a biological insistence from inside. The same insistence can be created by hypnosis.

But it is a dangerous program. If Gorbachev agrees to use that man, whole armies can be hypnotized without any trouble. And armies are the most easily hypnotized because they are obedient to orders. So when the hypnotist orders, they will follow more easily than anybody else, because they have spent their whole life turning left, turning right, going backwards, going forwards, nobody asking why. They are trained for obedience; they are more vulnerable to hypnosis than anybody else in the world. And you can just tell them that they will never attack.

But this is a dangerous policy: a person who cannot attack cannot defend either. And that is what he is saying, that "I will simply take away the idea of attacking and leave the defensive idea." But in defense also you have to attack! They will be simply paralyzed, they will not know what to do.

And in the conditions we are living in... It is a nuclear age. If America attacks the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union is finished, because it is only a question of ten minutes. If the Soviet soldiers are not able to attack they will not be able to defend either; they will be in a confusion about what to do. They will feel paralyzed. And because it is a question of a very small amount of time, ten minutes, the whole country can be blasted, finished.

With good intentions, Gorbachev is going in a wrong direction, suicidal. And America is trying to puff up his ego as much as possible so that whatever he is doing he should go on doing. Bring all kinds of snake charmers, street magicians, bishops, cardinals, the pope.

Soon the Shankaracharya of Puri, Mohammedan priests, Ayatollah Khomeini, will be visiting the Soviet Union. This one man can destroy a great hope for the whole of humanity.

I am saying these words just to make him aware. He has all the powers at this moment.

He can transform the the Soviet Union into a spiritual country. And out of meditation creativity arises; out of love people will work. Not out of ambition -- that is the old strategy. Not out of possessiveness -- that is falling back into the dark ages again.

I know the Soviet Union is not as rich as America, but there is no need to be so rich. Just bring about a comfortable existence: and bring meditativeness to people; then they will work. But this work will be a work of dedication, a work dedicated to the ultimate revolution which will involve the whole humanity.

He's talking of patriotism -- which is a disease. All wars have come out of patriotism, nationalism. And soon he is bound to allow foreign money to be invested in the Soviet Union, on the condition -- this is my prediction -- on the condition that foreign money will not be nationalized, that the foreign money will be available to the outside owners and they can take it back any time they want. This is the only way left for him to make the social economy of the Soviet Union rise higher.

But this will create the capitalist class again, and the laborers, the proletariat.

Without knowing, Gorbachev is working against Marx, against Engels, against Lenin --

against all the people who have worked so hard to create a new kind of social structure, but they were missing on one point. That point was spirituality. Just add spirituality to the Soviet Union and it will have the most joyous, most loving, most compassionate people in the world.

You have seen the Soviet crew which was here from Soviet television. There have been all kinds of television crews, all kinds of journalists from all over the world, but it is only the Soviet crew who went with tears in their eyes. They loved you; they loved your commune so much, so deeply. They have gone with the promise that when they have their holidays for ten days in June, they are not going anywhere else. They are going to come here for ten days to live in the commune as sannyasins, meditating, doing groups.

You can see the difference. When the American journalist comes, he starts looking immediately to find something sensational. If he cannot find it, he creates and invents it, because America is interested only in sensationalism. These people behaved in a totally different way. This was for the first time that a Russian crew has come. When you were doing your meditations, dancing, they forgot all about photographing. They dropped their cameras and started dancing! They loved the sannyasins.

Their questions were absolutely non-sensational. Significant, meaningful, but not sensational -- utterly concerned with human welfare. And Anando told me that they had tears in their eyes when they left the gate; they did not want to go. They wanted to stay for the whole series, but their office from Delhi called them, saying, "You come back, there are other assignments."

They will be back in June for ten days, to have more experience of what you have. They want to taste it. They want to be insiders, not outsiders.

And this is the state of the whole Soviet Union: the people have become like children. No church, no programming, no God, no prayer -- they have become so innocent that meditation will go deep down in them, faster than in any other country.

Question 2

The second question, which is connected:

IS IT NOT TRUE THAT IN THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE THE ZORBA IS ALREADY SO

MUCH ALIVE THAT IT IS EASIER TO BRING BUDDHA IN THAT COUNTRY

THAN IN ANY OTHER? AND IS IT REALLY DEPENDENT ON COMMUNISM, BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE LESS CONDITIONED?

Zorba is certainly there. But if vodka is denied to the Zorba, that will be a disaster!

I am absolutely against Gorbachev's idea of prohibition. Vodka is every Russian's birthright! That is all they have. Don't take away their dance and their joy unless you can provide something better. That's my very simple arithmetic: don't take anything from anybody unless you can give something better in its place.

And I don't know that Gorbachev has anything better to offer. He himself does not know anything better.

Rather than sending those people to Germany to learn the art of how not to attack, he should come here, and send his people here. I will teach them how to dance, how to love.

And if there is a need to attack you should be the first, not the second! You have the tremendous responsibility of protecting a great experiment that has never been done before.

Yes, it is true: they are less conditioned, simpler people; hence they can more easily enter into the world of no-mind. The Zorba is there; I can introduce the Buddha also. But Gorbachev has no idea of the Buddha. His eyes are fixed on America and American money, and American capitalism's success. He is not looking eastward towards Zen, which is the only solution for the Soviet Union to protect communism and its dignity, and to spread communism all over the world.

Zorba has to come first; Buddha will come once Zorba becomes established. I can take away the vodka because I can give the Buddha. Who cares about vodka when you have the Buddha in you?

But Gorbachev seems to be on a power trip, utterly dangerous. A single man's ego has to be fulfilled by destroying a valuable, immensely valuable experiment! And once the Soviet Union fails, is scattered, it will take centuries for humanity to again take the risk of creating communism. Once a thing fails people lose their hope; it takes centuries for them to forget and begin anew. So it is not only a question for today, it is a question for future generations too.

And my concern is absolutely impartial. 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.

The sutra:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ONE DAY, UNGAN WAS SWEEPING THE GARDEN WITH A BAMBOO BROOM.

HIS BROTHER, DOGO, CAME OVER TO HIM AND SAID, "HEY, YOU LOOK

TERRIBLY BUSY!"

UNGAN SAID, "ALTHOUGH BUSY, THERE IS SOMETHING WHICH IS NOT

BUSY."

That is your consciousness, that is your buddha inside. You may be busy but there is someone, the witness, who is never busy. It has no business at all. It simply is, like a mirror.

When the mirror reflects you, do you think it is doing something? It is not doing anything. To mirror is its nature; it is simply there. It is just a coincidence that you happen to stand before it. Once you are gone the empty mirror will be there.

When Ungan said, "Although busy, there is something which is not busy," he was saying,

"On the surface you can see me busy but inside I know someone who is just sitting silently, doing nothing. And that is more essential and more fundamental. This busy-ness will end soon."

DOGO SAID, "THAT MEANS THERE ARE TWO MOONS" -- one busy and one not busy.

THEN UNGAN PUT THE BROOM ON THE GROUND AND SAID, "WHAT MOON

IS THIS?"

Now he is no longer busy. He dropped the broom on the ground and sat silently and asked, "What moon is this?"

DOGO SILENTLY LEFT -- not knowing what to say now.

In a metaphorical way there are millions of moons. When the full moon arises in the night, in every small pond, in every river, in every ocean... millions of reflections, uncountable reflections. But they are only reflections, not realities. The moon is one --

reflections many, millions. The consciousness is one -- reflections many, millions.

As you move towards your consciousness, you are moving towards oneness. As you go back towards the circumference there are millions of moons, but they are only reflections.

Whatever you are doing is nothing more than a reflection. What you are is a reality, eternal reality. Only the eternal can be called the real. The momentary is so passing, it does not matter.

So when Ungan put the broom down on the ground and sat there and asked, "What moon is this?" Dogo could not understand.

They were brothers. Both finally became enlightened, but Ungan seems to have a deeper understanding. Even before his enlightenment, he is coming very close.

AT ANOTHER TIME, UNGAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "I CAME WITH INCENSE."

This is the world of Zen. You should not expect Socratic dialogues. There is nothing else in the world to compare with Zen, it is unique and a category in itself.

Ungan has asked, "Where are you from?" and the man does not answer the question.

THE MONK REPLIED, "I CAME WITH INCENSE."

The present moment. "What are you bothering about, from where I am coming and where I am going? Just look at my hand: I have come with incense." And incense also is symbolic. It is offered to the Buddha, the fragrance and the smoke of the incense continuously rising towards the blue sky and disappearing.

All these are very significant symbols. People have forgotten their symbology because people very quickly become ritualistic.

I have told you about a woman, a nun, who had a small golden Buddha. Now there are temples in Japan, in China -- and she was in China. One temple has ten thousand statues of Buddha -- unbelievable! The whole mountain has been carved; the mountain has disappeared, only Buddha's statues, statues upon statues, ten thousand Buddhas. And every temple has many Buddhas.

So this nun was always in trouble: "MY Buddha!" When she would worship in the morning... now the incense knows nothing about whose Buddha and whose incense...

sometimes it would start moving with the breeze to some other Buddha.

All the statues were of the same man, but such is the possessive mind: she wanted the incense to reach to HER Buddha. And her Buddha was very small -- it was pure gold --

and there were huge Buddhas standing, sitting, lying down, in all kinds of postures. The incense has no idea of possessiveness, and the wind has no idea. So the wind would come and the incense would go to this Buddha or that Buddha, and that woman was very angry.

"This is absolutely wrong. It is my incense and MY Buddha is not getting anything!"

So she devised a small technique: she cut a bamboo, hollow bamboo, and she put the hollow bamboo over the incense and the smoke which was going to other Buddhas. She put the other end of the bamboo to her golden Buddha's nose. But a disaster happened.

The golden Buddha's nose became black! So she went to the priest of the temple: "How to clean my Buddha's nose?"

He said, "How did it happen?" Then she told the whole story. The priest was a master. He laughed; he said, "Such is the human mind, so utterly retarded! All these Buddhas are just the reflection of one Buddha -- your Buddha included. So whosoever is getting the incense, Buddha is getting the incense. You should not have been so possessive. My Buddha, my incense! -- now your possessiveness has destroyed your Buddha's nose. I cannot help."

She was in tears. She said, "You are an old master, and you know everything. Some way to clean my Buddha's nose... and I don't want to scratch it, I don't want to destroy my beautiful Buddha."

He said, "This whole idea of `MY Buddha, MY Buddha' is the cause of your Buddha's nose becoming black! Drop this idea! And leave your Buddha with me. Tomorrow morning you can take it away. The nose will be cleaned, but first drop this idea; otherwise it will happen again. What is the point? If you are going to use that hollow bamboo you will destroy your Buddha. Let the wind take the incense anywhere it takes it.

It always reaches to the one Buddha."

There are not two Buddhas; all are reflections.

The moon is one, reflected in millions of ponds, millions of rivers, oceans.

But reflections are reflections.

Our actions are nothing more than reflections, momentary; they go and come, the buddha remains. He is always there, the eternal presence.

THE MONK REPLIED, "I CAME WITH INCENSE."

He is saying, "I have come in search of a buddha. I came with incense, and you are asking nonsense questions." Ungan immediately understood.

UNGAN ASKED, "DID YOU SEE BUDDHA?"

If you have come with incense, that means you are looking for the buddha. Did you see the buddha?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "YES, I DID."

"WHERE DID YOU SEE HIM?" UNGAN ASKED.

THE MONK REPLIED, "I SAW HIM IN THE LOWER WORLD."

UNGAN SAID, "THE OLD BUDDHA! THE OLD BUDDHA!"

This is a very strange anecdote. The monk said, "I SAW HIM IN THE LOWER

WORLD."

You have to understand the idea of the lower world....

Buddha said in his statements, "If there is a hell I will go there, because who will take care of the people in hell? Who will teach them the way to be out of hell and misery?

Until hell is emptied, I will remain there."

And the second story says, when he emptied hell completely of all the people, he reached the gate of heaven. There was great rejoicing and the doors were opened for him. There were roses on the road, and people were standing on both sides of the road leading to the place they had chosen for Buddha to live. But Buddha said, "I am not going to enter --

please close the doors. I will stand here till every living being has passed through. I have emptied hell, but the earth is full of unconscious people. Let them all pass, there is no hurry. I will stand here outside the gate." And the parable says, he is still standing there.

That will help you to understand the monk when he says, "I saw him in the lower world."

`Lower world' is the Buddhist way of saying hell. The upper world is heaven; in the middle is this earth. We are the middle world.

UNGAN SAID, "THE OLD BUDDHA! THE OLD BUDDHA! His compassion is so great, he must have entered hell."

He is immensely touched by the fact that Buddha has gone into hell. "The old Buddha, with his eternal compassion, can't resist the temptation to go into hell! He will suffer hellfire, that is not a problem, but he will empty hell."

So this statement -- "THE OLD BUDDHA! THE OLD BUDDHA!" -- is of great gratitude. He is remembering the old Gautam Buddha, his compassion, his love, his effort to transform the whole world into absolute awareness.

"Every living being has to become a buddha." That was his message -- not a Buddhist, but THE BUDDHA.

Buson wrote:

PLUM SCENT

HALOING

THE MOON.

The scent of the plum is reaching the moon, and creating a halo around the moon. Only meditators can experience such refined, beautiful experiences.

Plum scent reaching to the moon, haloing, making a halo around the moon. A tremendous, beautiful, vivid picture.

Sometimes you see the halo of the moon. When it goes behind a cloud, then you can see the halo. Inside you can see the moon and just around it, a little fainter but still beautiful, very beautiful, a round circle.

Buson must have arisen out of his meditation and seen the moon, and smelled the plum perfume.

Zen masters used to write their experiences immediately after meditation. And every Zen master was asked before his death to write one haiku to be remembered for centuries --

"This is your last word." So every Zen master has written before dying a small haiku which comprehends his whole experience of life. Before moving beyond life he leaves the last signature and the last message, compressed, of his whole life's experience.

It happened in one Zen master's life that the disciples forgot -- they were in such sadness

-- to ask him to write.

So he died, it is said, and they took him out of his cottage and were preparing the funeral pyre. Then the master opened his eyes and he said, "Listen, you have forgotten one thing..." They were shocked! He said, "Bring the book. Otherwise what will the coming generations say? `What kind of master died without giving any message?' Bring the book!"

The book was immediately brought. He wrote a small haiku, signed it, closed his eyes, and died again.

Now they were very cautious, they took their time. Somebody put his ear to the master's heart -- no sound, no beat. Somebody brought a mirror close to his nose -- maybe some small breath, then the mirror will show the vapor. But no vapor. They shook him -- no reaction, no response. Finally, they decided, "It seems he has died." And he laughed.

He said, "Now I am really dying. This time don't try to check. Because you were checking, I waited. Laughter is my last message -- write it down!" And he really died.

But he tricked them two times. So when I die, remember: Don't be in a hurry!

Question 3

Maneesha's question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

IT SEEMS THAT THE FREEDOM OF CAPITALISM ALWAYS MEANT THE

FREEDOM OF THE JUNGLE AND THE VICTOR OF THE MOST POWERFUL

EGO. IN AMERICA, NORTH AS WELL AS SOUTH AMERICA, IT ALSO MEANT

STARVATION OF THE POOR AND ORGANIZED PROSTITUTION AND CRIME

ON A VERY WIDE SCALE. IS NOT SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM A NECESSARY STEP IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MORE HUMANE SOCIETY?

Maneesha, communism is certainly a necessary step for a more humane society, but not socialism. You don't understand the difference between socialism and communism. Most people think they are synonymous.

Socialism is a cowardly compromise with capitalism. Communism is absolutely no compromise with capitalism, and no compromise with anything that constitutes capitalism.

Up to now the Soviet Union has been a communist country. Now Comrade Gorbachev is trying to bring it down to socialism. That is destroying its dignity; that is a defeat. I hope he understands before it is too late.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh... because I don't want to be too late!

(THE ASSEMBLY LAUGHS APPRECIATIVELY, REMEMBERING LAST NIGHTS'

THREE AND A HALF HOUR DISCOURSE)

Dick Puller is the office playboy, and all the guys go to him for advice on how to score with women. One afternoon, Muffin Snuffler takes Dick aside, and asks him, "Tell me, Dick, how do you manage it? You are a married man but you have a different girlfriend every night. What is your secret?"

"It is simple," replies Dick Puller. "It is all in the approach. I will tell you how to do it.

Tonight, take the five o'clock train from Penn Central Station and get off at Trenton. At Trenton you will find dozens of women waiting for their husbands. And there are always some husbands who have to work late, so all you have to do is be charming and let nature take its course."

So Muffin catches the five o'clock train from Penn Station but dozes off in his seat. He wakes up with a start and finds that he has gone past Trenton and he has to get out at Westchester.

Muffin is about to catch a train to go back, when he sees a woman standing on the platform, looking very available.

Muffin casually walks over to her -- one thing leads to another and they end up in bed together at her place.

They are really beginning to enjoy themselves when the door swings open and Dick Puller comes in.

Dick takes one look at his wife in bed and shouts, "Dammit, Betty! So this is what you do when I work late! And as for you, Muffin, you idiot -- I told you to get off at Trenton!"

It is four o'clock on that fateful day on Calvary Hill. Jesus has been nailed up to the cross since lunchtime and is beginning to feel really hang-dog.

All of his disciples have deserted him, except one. Alone and standing right underneath the cross, in the hot baking sun, is Jesus' unknown thirteenth apostle, Reginald the homosexual. Reginald looks up at the nearly-naked Jesus on the cross, and whispers,

"Jesus! Ah! Jesus!"

Jesus looks down and says, "What is it, Reggie?"

"My Lord!" replies Reginald, looking up at him. "From where I am standing, I have to say -- you are really well hung!"

Jack Jerk is watching as his wife, Jill, tries on her new "Betty Boobs" brand bra.

"What the hell did you buy that thing for?" asks Jack Jerk. "You have nothing to put into it!"

"Cool it, Jack!" snaps Jill. "Do I complain about you wearing underpants?"

Nivedano...

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

Be silent...

Close your eyes... and feel your bodies to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment for looking inwards.

Gather your life forces, and rush towards the center of your being -- with your total consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is going to be the last moment of your life.

Faster and faster...

Deeper and deeper...

As you come closer to your being, a great silence descends over you just like rain, very soft rain of silence, cool.

Closer... and you find flowers of peace blossoming all around you.

Still closer... and you see for the first time your original face. This is the buddha.

The buddha is everyone's original face, and the buddha simply means witnessing.

Witness: you are not the body.

Witness: you are not the mind.

Witness that you are only a witness and nothing else, and suddenly you are at the very center of your being.

A great ecstasy arises in you, a deep blissfulness is felt.

You disappear... just like incense smoke disappearing into the blue sky... only the buddha is left.

To make the witnessing deeper and clearer, Nivedano...

Relax.

Let go... but continue to witness. Continue to be a buddha.

This is your nature.

This is your ultimate, eternal existence.

At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.

The evening was beautiful on its own, but your meditation, your becoming a buddha, a witness, has added to the beauty of the evening tremendously. Now it is a miracle.

As your witnessing becomes more and more clear, you start melting like ice in the ocean.

Gautam the Buddha Auditorium is turning into an ocean of consciousness without waves, without any ripples, just a silent ocean.

Ten thousand buddhas were just reflections -- now there is only one buddha. Ten thousand reflections have disappeared into oneness, the ocean.

This is the authentic buddha.

When you become one with existence, the cosmos, you have entered the ultimate immortal existence.

Collect as much of the juices of life as possible. You have to bring them back with you.

Collect the fragrances of the beyond, the flowers that are showering on you, the silence, the ecstasy, the peace, the serenity.

And don't forget to persuade the buddha to come a little closer to your ordinary day-today existence.

These are the three steps:

First, buddha will become a shadow to you, always following behind you. Second step, you will become a shadow of buddha, always following him.

The third and final step, you will merge into the buddha -- a transparent consciousness, it does not make any shadow. The moment you merge into the buddha, only buddha remains: you are no more. That is the greatest, most blissful day of your life.

Nivedano...

Come back, but remember the grace of a buddha, the beauty, the silence, the serenity.

Sit down for a few moments just to remember where you have been, what has been the experience at the center of your being, what golden paths you have traveled on....

And feel the presence of buddha just behind you. He is almost touching you; every day he is coming closer and closer. Every day your life is becoming more and more graceful, more and more of a deeper understanding of the secrets of the cosmos, more and more mysterious. Soon you will find yourself one of the greatest mysteries in existence. That day will be the day of your awakening, of your enlightenment.

It is not far away.

It is only a question of bringing more intensity, more totality, more sense of urgency. And the Zen Fire will burn all that is false in you, and the Zen Wind will take it away from you. You will remain just pure gold.

This pure gold of your being has the face of the buddha.

To be a buddha is the only meaning, the only significance of life. Those who miss it have missed all. Those who have found it have found everything that is valuable in this existence.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

Chapter #5

Chapter title: Socialism is a judas

3 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Archive

code:

8902035

ShortTitle:

FIRE05

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

180

mins

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ON ONE OCCASION, A MONK ASKED MASTER DOGO: "EVEN IF THERE IS NO

CLOUD FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES, IT IS NOT YET THE ORIGINAL SKY.

WHAT IS THE ORIGINAL SKY?"

DOGO REPLIED, "TODAY, IT IS GOOD TO DRY WHEAT."

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, DOGO WAS ASKED BY ANOTHER MONK, "WHAT

IS THE DEEPEST?"

DOGO CAME DOWN FROM HIS SEAT, MADE OBEISANCE IN THE MANNER

OF WOMEN AND SAID, "YOU HAVE COME FROM FAR, AND I HAVE NO

ANSWER FOR YOU."

AT ANOTHER TIME, SEKISO KEISHO ASKED DOGO, "AFTER A HUNDRED

YEARS, IF SOMEONE ASKS ABOUT THE ABSOLUTE MEANING OF THE

UNIVERSE, WHAT SHALL I SAY TO HIM?"

DOGO CALLED THE BOY ATTENDANT, WHO CAME, AND TOLD HIM TO FILL

UP THE WATER BOTTLE. DOGO WAITED A WHILE, AND THEN SAID TO

SEKISO, "WHAT WAS IT YOU ASKED JUST NOW?"

SEKISO REPEATED THE QUESTION. DOGO THEREUPON WENT BACK TO HIS

ROOM, AND AT THIS, SEKISO BECAME ENLIGHTENED.

Friends,

First, I am going to answer a few questions from the Australian TV crew. They have been here for almost one month. When they had come, they were very serious people, as Australians are supposed to be. But this morning they filmed me, and they have completely changed. They were smiling and laughing and enjoying.

Ecstasy is contagious. It is dangerous to enter this gateless gate! But they are very nice people and very perfectionist. They have been doing a film on the commune, its lifestyle, its philosophical approach to existence. And of course, on me, the spiritual terrorist behind the commune! -- or in other words, the center of this cyclone which is going to grow every day bigger and bigger and is going to envelop the whole earth.

When they go back to their homes, their wives will be absolutely surprised -- whatever happened to these guys? The very air of the commune changes personalities. Your joy, your laughter, your blissfulness, your silence, touches the very heart of anyone who is alive.

This morning I saw, these people are not dead. They are really alive! So now I can trust that their film and their program for television is going to be a real shock to the whole of Australia. If they can create the shock, I am coming!

Question 1

Their first question is:

ARE EITHER COMMUNISTS OR CAPITALISTS READY FOR THE

CONSCIOUSNESS REVOLUTION OF A SPIRITUAL TERRORIST LIKE

YOURSELF?

They are not ready, but I am going to make them ready! The time is ripe. They will have to be ready, because unless they become more and more conscious and alert, the destiny of this earth is doomed.

If anyone loves this earth, the beautiful birds and animals and human beings, if anyone has a sense of this tremendous phenomenon... because the whole universe is without any greenery, without any flowers, without any oceans, without any rivers. This place, this small earth -- very small -- has a special position in the world. In the whole of existence it is only this earth that has produced buddhas, enlightened people. This earth has become holy, just because so many buddhas have traveled on it.

And because the criminal politicians have come to the end of the rope, now they don't know what to do except create a war. To counteract, to create an atmosphere in the world against any possible war, the only way is to raise the consciousness of the people.

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.

I have heard about a very super-rich man. When he died, then he realized that he used to be alive -- but only when he died. In the grave where he was buried, he realized for the first time, "My God! I have been alive for eighty years and never thought about what it is to be alive!"

There are many people who only realize the value of life at the point of death. But then it is too late. Life keeps them engaged. The capitalist has too many things to remain engaged and involved in. The communist has nothing; hence the great possibility that the communist may be ahead of the capitalist as far as consciousness-raising is concerned.

The capitalist goes on postponing. Even though he sees the poverty he is creating, the beggars he is creating, the starving people he is creating, he goes on thinking that a few reforms will do. A little higher wages, a few more facilities for the poor, for the proletariat -- that's what I call socialism. Socialism is an invention of the capitalist mind to distract people from communism. Socialism is reformist, it is not revolutionary. And reforms can keep people hoping. It is a welfare state; it is just renovating the old house which is getting ready to fall down any moment.

Revolution means demolishing the old completely and creating the new, discontinuous with the past.

I love always to tell a small story....

There used to be a very ancient church, so ancient that even the priest was afraid to go inside. When there was a strong wind, the church used to wave like a tree. Any moment there was a possibility that it would fall down.

So the priest used to hold his assembly outside, far away from the church, under the trees.

But finally something had to be done. The trustees of the church met -- they also met outside -- and they proposed a few things to be done.

First, the church was too old, a new church was needed. But this is how the reformist mind functions.... Their second proposal was, "We will create the new church, but we will make the new church from the materials -- the doors, the bricks, the statues, everything -- of the old church. We will make the new church exactly the same as the old church, with the same materials."

And their third proposal was, "We will not destroy the old church until the new one is ready."

Now how can you manage it? The reformist goes on patching things, covering things, covering wounds and cancers.

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.

I have every hope that because of the oncoming possibility of a third world war... if it happens it will be the last world war, and there will be no one left even to write the history about it.

When Albert Einstein was asked, "Can you say something about the third world war?"

his reply was amazing. He said, "No, I cannot say a single thing about the third world war, but I can say something about the fourth."

The questioner said, "You can say something about the fourth and you cannot say anything about the third? This is strange."

Albert Einstein laughed; he said, "It is not strange. I can say about the fourth that it will never happen. But about the third, it is impossible to say. The calamity will be so big that man will have never seen such calamity. Within ten to fifteen minutes the whole world, all life, every living thing on the earth, will be dead."

Just America alone has enough nuclear weapons to destroy life on this earth seven times, although there is no need. Only one man, Jesus, is supposed to have been resurrected, and I don't think even he will be able to resurrect seven times. One time he managed to escape from a cave and befool the whole world, but seven times? It will be impossible.

He never went back to Jerusalem, because once he managed to befool people; now it is impossible. If he is caught again he will be crucified.

What is the purpose of accumulating so many nuclear weapons? And seeing the situation, the Soviet Union has stopped creating more nuclear weapons. There are enough in the Soviet Union also to destroy the whole of humanity, all living beings. Now there is no point. They seem to be more intelligent, understanding that if you have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world, why go on wasting money piling up nuclear weapons?

The totality of the war is a new phenomenon to be encountered. All the wars in the past were small, local. Even our second world war was nothing compared to the possibility of the third world war. I call it a total war, because it will be a total destruction of the planet Earth. This creates a certain situation which has never been there before.

The time is short, perhaps not more than ten or eleven years. By the year 2000, most probably we will have either committed suicide or we will have changed the whole structure of the human mind and raised the consciousness and created millions of meditators and thousands of buddhas. 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?

Question 2

The second question:

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.

I have heard about a circus....

The manager declared, "Now comes our last and greatest entertainment for you. Wake up everybody! We bring to the stage our greatest dancer." So a few people who had fallen asleep woke up, sat up in their chairs, alert. The greatest dancer?

Then the curtain opened and they saw a woman lying flat on her chest on the floor. They could not think what kind of dance was going to be happening. Finally, the woman tried hard to get up. Her breasts were so big that just to get up was the dance! When she stood up everybody was clapping! They had never seen such a dance -- the woman was doing a miracle! Her breasts were still touching the earth!

The manager came back and he said, "Have you seen the dance?" And people laughed; they said, "It is really the greatest dance we could have ever imagined!"

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!

Your saints will be sitting there miserable, not looking at beautiful women -- with closed eyes, shrinking into themselves. And what to do? -- there is no water available, only wine, and all around beautiful women, naked, dancing.

One Hindu saint died a few years ago, Swami Muktananda. You must have heard his name; many of you may have seen him. But you don't know what happened in paradise.

One of his disciples was so miserable because his guru had died, he committed suicide.

He wanted to go with the guru. He reached just a little late, but he reached. And what he saw -- he could not believe his eyes! He saw Muktananda lying naked under a tree, and on top of him was an American actress, Marilyn Monroe, making love to Muktananda.

He could not believe that Muktananda, who was always teaching celibacy....

In his book, CHIDVILAS -- "Play of Consciousness", he describes that his discipline of celibacy came to such a point that his prick would rise so high that it would touch his navel.... The disciple had read it. And what is Muktananda doing? Has he forgotten everything? But anyway, Muktananda is his master, so he has to pay his respects.

He did not look at what was happening, he just touched Muktananda's feet and said,

"Baba, I think this must be the reward for all your virtues."

And Marilyn Monroe said, "You idiot! This is not the reward for this idiot, this is punishment for me!"

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.

Question 3

The third question is from a sannyasin. A sannyasin has asked: I CANNOT HELP FEELING SHOCKED AT THE IDEA THAT SINCE PEOPLE

HAVE TO DIE ANYWAY, THERE IS NO HARM IN THEM DYING BY THE

THOUSANDS TO PRESERVE COMMUNISM. WHAT IS IT THAT HORRIFIES ME

ABOUT THIS?

It is not only you, there may be a few more who have been shocked. Majid is sitting there

-- he must be shocked, and other Italians, because they have a political prejudice in their mind. They think they are radicals, and they don't understand even the ABC of radicalism.

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. The Catholics would have been shaken --

they were shaken. The whole seminary, *which consists of five hundred missionaries being trained, and must be at least one hundred professors to teach them, was agog with only one thing: they wanted to hear what I have said. One student came here the next day, saying, "The whole seminary is talking about only one thing -- so you bring the tape or the video." And I sent Prasad, because he had already been to the seminary to talk to them, to explain my philosophy to them, so he was acquainted with the authorities there.

He went there but the authorities said, "We don't have equipment and it will take time to arrange for equipment, so we cannot do it."

A group of students from a local seminary attended one discourse recently, and their questions were addressed throughout the series, CHRISTIANITY, THE GREATEST

POISON AND ZEN, THE ANTIDOTE TO ALL POISONS.

Prasad said, "Don't be worried about the equipment. I will bring all the equipment with me."

Then they changed immediately. They said, "But first, permission from higher authorities is needed." It was not needed before. Now the permission from higher authorities is needed!

The next day he went again and asked, "Has permission been granted?" They said, "We are waiting." And finally they phoned: "You don't have to come here. We hope that within two and a half weeks permission will be obtained."

I don't think permission will be obtained. It is just a delaying process; after another two and a half weeks... and who are the higher authorities? They live there in the campus! It takes two and a half weeks to reach their bungalow? And they go every day to the office....

But you were not worried then. Somebody else was being hit and you were enjoying.

Now it is your turn. Let others enjoy!

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. By the evening -- they don't have electricity, they don't have television, they don't have too much to eat so that their bellies become too big and they cannot reach the woman. So the whole dark night, and cold, not enough blankets... the woman is warm, is a good blanket, and no other thing to do in the dark, so people go on producing children. They cannot go to see a film, it takes money; they cannot go to have dinner in a restaurant, it takes money. Sex is free.

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. From where are all these people coming?

Richer countries, more educated countries, are losing population -- because educated people understand that this is stupid, creating people and making the country poorer.

They are using all kinds of methods to prevent the explosion of population, in spite of all the popes and the bishops. Who cares? These people, even Catholics, don't care; it is just a formal respectability. But there are countries which are promoting programs for giving birth to more children. Their population is shrinking and the fear is that they may disappear in the vast third-world population which is growing. Soon they will be rushing all over Europe; no boundaries will be able to prevent them.

Already in Germany, that is the problem. From Turkey, so many people have entered Germany that there is a great problem of unemployment. And you will be surprised to know that the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler is again raising its head. One of Adolf Hitler's men has organized a party which won eleven seats in the parliament just now, on the basis that all these Turkish people should be thrown out of Germany, otherwise Germany will be drowned.

Adolf Hitler was throwing out Jews -- now it is the Turkish people. And this party has won eleven seats. This is the beginning... and why have people supported an ex-Nazi officer? Because the German people are becoming afraid: "If these populations go on immigrating to Germany, we will be poorer. We will have to give employment to these people. We will have to share our money with these people, our land with these people, our houses with these people." And this caravan of immigrants is going to grow every day, because Mohammedan countries allow one man to marry four women, so Mohammedans increase four times more than anybody else.

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.

The sutra:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ON ONE OCCASION, A MONK ASKED MASTER DOGO: "EVEN IF THERE IS NO

CLOUD FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES, IT IS NOT YET THE ORIGINAL SKY.

WHAT IS THE ORIGINAL SKY?"

DOGO REPLIED, "TODAY, IT IS GOOD TO DRY WHEAT."

This is the way of Zen. Don't waste your time in unnecessary theoretical things --

"Although there are thousands of miles with no cloud... but this sky is not the original sky, because beyond this sky there will be another sky and beyond that another sky.

Where is the original sky?"

But Master Dogo said, "Forget all about it! Today, it is good to dry wheat. The day is sunny, the sky is open, there is no cloud. Be in the present! Today it is good to dry wheat."

And once you are in the present you will become aware of the original sky -- which is not said. The original sky is within you. It is not outside, thousands of miles or millions of miles don't matter. You will never come to the end of the sky outside.

But there is a sky inside which is the original, out of which you are living, you are getting your nourishment. Your roots are in that original sky. Just go inwards and it is not thousands of miles away. It is only thousands of thoughts away.

So it is only a question of reducing the thoughts and the mileage is reduced.

If you don't have any thoughts, you are in it.

You are it.

You don't have to go anywhere; you have to simply go on throwing your thoughts.

That is the purpose of our gibberish before the meditation. Just a time to throw everything, without inhibition.

These creatures that you throw out are eating your head continuously, destroying your intelligence. Catch them and throw them out, and don't be worried with a moral question that they may enter into somebody else's mind. No, your creatures are accustomed to your mind. Even if you throw them, they will wait outside on the bamboos, and when you are going to the canteen they will jump!

And you can see in the canteen -- I never go there -- but so much talk, discussion... all the creatures are back. So beware of the bamboos! Just watch out that these creatures don't enter in your head again -- run! And in the canteen be silent. The more you open your mouth, the more they get in. They know you perfectly well, they will not enter into anybody else. Nobody wants foreigners, strangers; everybody wants to enter into his own place, into his own house. You don't enter somebody else's house. You don't pick up somebody else's rented bicycle....

Everybody finds his own rented bicycle, in thousands of bicycles. Strange!

Those creatures are very well acquainted with you and they know how much you love them. What is the guarantee that the other person will be loving towards them? -- may not be even friendly, and you have been feeding them year after year.

So when you are throwing, throw them so far away that they get mixed up, start fighting with each other, and meanwhile you escape to the canteen.

The inner sky is only as far away as the number of thoughts you have. If you don't have any thoughts, you are just in the present. That's what Dogo means:

"TODAY, IT IS GOOD TO DRY WHEAT."

Just be now and here, and without saying anything about the original sky... that is the way of Zen, to indicate. If you have intelligence, just an indication is enough. If you don't have intelligence, even if one goes on hammering on your head, it doesn't matter.

Dogo showed the monk where the original sky is. It is within you, if you are in the present.

To be in the present is to be out of the mind. To be in the present is to be in the beyond, in the space, in the sky which is your very being.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION DOGO WAS ASKED BY ANOTHER MONK, "WHAT

IS THE DEEPEST?"

DOGO CAME DOWN FROM HIS SEAT, MADE OBEISANCE IN THE MANNER

OF WOMEN AND SAID, "YOU HAVE COME FROM FAR, AND I HAVE NO

ANSWER FOR YOU."

In fact, he has given the answer. What is the deepest? -- humbleness, gratitude, nobodiness. He is a man, but he bowed down in the manner of a woman -- no distinction between man and woman, because it is not a question of the body. And a woman is more humble, more grateful, more loving. So he is showing it: create the female qualities of love, of gratitude, of compassion, of humbleness; just be a nobody. And he came down and made obeisance, bowed, to the stranger.

He has answered. But the stranger, the monk, has not understood -- that's why he is saying, "YOU HAVE COME FROM FAR, AND I HAVE NO ANSWER FOR YOU." If you want an answer in language, I don't have it.

This is also done out of compassion. He has answered that humbleness is the deepest, nobodiness is the deepest; to be nothing, to be utterly selfless is the deepest. There is no further depth possible. He has given the answer by his action, but the man looked as if he did not understand. It is also out of compassion, not to make the man feel embarrassed, not to make him feel that he has not understood.

Dogo said, "You have come from very far away, and I have no answer for you." He takes the responsibility on himself: "It is not your fault. You have done great work, you have come from very far, and I don't have any answer for you." He takes the responsibility on himself -- although the reality is that the monk has missed the answer.

This is the beauty of a master. It shows in so many different colors, in so many rainbows.

Unless you understand it, you will not be able even to see it. Just reading it, you would have missed it.

AT ANOTHER TIME SEKISO KEISHO ASKED DOGO, "AFTER A HUNDRED

YEARS, IF SOMEONE ASKS ABOUT THE ABSOLUTE MEANING OF THE

UNIVERSE, WHAT SHALL I SAY TO HIM?"

You will be gone. After a hundred years you will be no more; otherwise, you could have answered him. Just give me the answer so if somebody asks the question after you are gone, I can give him your answer.

But that is impossible. You cannot give my answer unless it is also your answer.

Repeating my answer will be simply borrowed, it won't have life and it won't have any charisma in it. It won't penetrate the heart of the person. Unless it is alive, throbbing with life and radiant with life and luminous with great energy, coming out of your own experience... Then perhaps the other, if he is intelligent enough, meditative enough, receptive enough, may get it.

DOGO CALLED THE BOY ATTENDANT, WHO CAME, AND TOLD HIM TO FILL

UP THE WATER BOTTLE.

He did not pay any attention to Sekiso's question. Not paying attention to Sekiso's question is also an answer. He is saying, "Don't ask absurd things. Find out the answer yourself, by your own experience. My answer is not going to help so I am not going to give it."

So he simply, as if he has not heard -- he has heard it perfectly -- calls the boy attendant and tells him to fill up the water bottle.

DOGO WAITED A WHILE...

It is strange: the master is not answering the question.

AND THEN SAID TO SEKISO, "WHAT WAS IT YOU ASKED JUST NOW?"

As if he has not heard: "What was it you asked just now?"

SEKISO REPEATED THE QUESTION. DOGO THEREUPON WENT BACK TO HIS

ROOM, AND AT THIS, SEKISO BECAME ENLIGHTENED.

He had answered the first time, but Sekiso did not get it, that what he was saying was,

"Don't ask such things which are available only to your own experience, alone." But because he did not understand, Dogo waited a while: perhaps he may catch it.

AND THEN SAID TO SEKISO, "WHAT WAS IT YOU ASKED JUST NOW?"

SEKISO REPEATED THE QUESTION.

That shows he had not understood the answer that Dogo had indicated by not paying attention to his question. At this, Dogo went back to his room without answering him again.

This time he got it, that it is not a question which can be answered: you have to go inside your room.

The word `room' is very beautiful. It simply means space. And you sometimes use it in the sense of space, that this place has "enough room." What do you mean by it, "enough room"? Enough space, no unnecessary furniture.

I used to stay with a very rich man in a place called Saugar. He was an accumulator of junk. He had enough money, so all kinds of things... whether he needed them or not was not the question, he could afford.

There was no television in those days in Saugar.... I used to stay with him, and he had a special guest room, filled with all his junk. I saw a television there. I asked, "Are you mad? There is no television!" At that time it was not even in Bombay, not in New Delhi; television had not been introduced in India. "What are you doing with a TV set?"

He said, "I had gone to London, and I just liked it." I said, "Just liked it?" He said,

"Sometime television will come." And he was at that time seventy-five years old.

I said, "At least not in your lifetime." He said, "What?" I said, "You don't understand that you are seventy-five..." But he said, "It is not good to say to anybody `not in your lifetime'. That means you are already thinking about my death!"

I said, "I am not thinking about your death, I am thinking about your city. It is still one thousand years behind! Even in New Delhi the television has not come. In your city it will take at least a century, and I don't think you will be able to make it."

But he was very angry, and he said, "I have put it here for your entertainment."

I said, "I am not mad. This box cannot make any kind of entertainment. It is dead, because there is no connection to it anywhere."

And then I saw many radios, lined up, all kinds of models of radios. I said, "One is enough." He said, "But I can afford them, so whenever some new model comes, some new manufacturer comes in..."

I said, "In this room I cannot stay. I will go insane, because there is no room at all!"

Things upon things, things upon things! Just... you had to somehow make your way to the bed, and if it was night -- and there was no electricity there -- you could not even go to the bathroom without having multiple fractures and destroying his many valuable things.

So I said, "Forgive me. You just give me a plain room." He said, "Plain room?"

I said, "Yes, because I sometimes go to the bathroom also." He said, "The bathroom is there."

I said, "In the dark night, and there is no electricity.... And your room is simply mad! I will have nightmares here, I cannot tolerate all this!"

There were all kinds of clocks, old, ancient, and they were all making noise at different times. No clock was at the same time as another clock. I said, "Do you want me to sleep or not?"

He said, "You are the first guest who is making so much fuss." I said, "I am not making fuss, I simply want a room." He said, "This is a room!"

I said, "You don't understand the meaning of the word `room'. This is not a room, this is a junkyard!"

So when the master Dogo went to his room, he was again giving another chance to Sekiso: "Just go into the silent space within you. As I am going into my room, you go into your room, into your own space." And this time Sekiso got it. He became enlightened.

The master goes on repeating the same thing in different ways, in different words, in different gestures, with the hope that some day, at some point, you are going to get it.

How can you escape?

I will go on hitting you from every angle, poking you from every possibility, into every rib. I don't care whether you are getting fractures or not, I will go on hitting you. My hits are more subtle than those of the Zen people. Their hits are more primitive.

So whenever you get upset and disturbed, remember, it is a hit. Just take a shower and sit down to meditate. No need to think about it, it was just a hit to wake you up.

My speaking to you is not that of an orator or that of a philosopher. My talking to you is that of a master who knows how to disturb you. And your function is not to be disturbed whatever happens, whatever I say.

I may call Jesus a crackpot, don't be worried. Just enjoy and have a good shower if some trouble arises... because what have I to do with Jesus? My concern is with you! If I see somewhere in your head Jesus lurking, then I immediately hit Jesus. I am hitting you.

What concern have I with Jesus? In fact, nobody knows whether this fellow ever was there or not.

But when I talk about Stalin, don't get worried. I have nothing to be concerned with Stalin. He is not my disciple, you are! And you are on your own -- in spite of me. I am trying every possible way to throw you out, but you still go on coming.

You know perfectly well that my words should not be taken at face value. They are strategies and devices. The whole problem is how to shock you and shatter your mind completely so you can enter into the inner room and see with your own eyes your vast sky.

Basho wrote:

A COLD RAIN STARTING,

AND ME WITHOUT A HAT.

ON SECOND THOUGHT, WHO CARES?

This is the beauty of Zen.

A COLD RAIN STARTING,

AND ME WITHOUT A HAT.

ON SECOND THOUGHT, WHO CARES?

Remember it. On second thought, don't care at all about anything. Perhaps on the first thought you may not be able, but on second thought, don't miss it. Sekiso did not miss on second thought.

Question 4

Maneesha's question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

EMMA GOLDMAN, THE ANARCHIST, WROTE IN ONE OF HER

REVOLUTIONARY ESSAYS, EARLIER THIS CENTURY, THAT "FRIEDRICH

NIETZSCHE IS DESCRIBED AS A HATER OF THE WEAK BECAUSE HE

BELIEVED IN THE SUPERMAN. IT DOES NOT OCCUR TO THE SHALLOW

INTERPRETERS OF THAT GIANT MIND THAT THIS VISION OF THE

SUPERMAN ALSO CALLS FOR A STATE OF SOCIETY WHICH WILL NOT GIVE

BIRTH TO A RACE OF WEAKLINGS AND SLAVES."

WITH THE FLAME OF ZEN IN ONE HAND, YOU ARE THE COMPLETION OF

THE CIRCLE OF MAN'S SEARCH FOR INNER INTEGRITY; WITH THE FLAME

OF SPIRITUAL ANARCHISM IN THE OTHER HAND, ARE YOU NOT ALSO THE

COMPLETION OF THE CIRCLE OF MAN'S SEARCH FOR OUTER INTEGRITY?

Maneesha, Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most misunderstood giants of mankind. And nobody can feel for him more than I feel, because I am also in the same category -- even more misunderstood a man than Friedrich Nietzsche.

When I say I hate poverty, people think I hate the poor people. I hate poverty because I want to destroy poverty completely! There will be no poor people when the poverty is destroyed.

The same was the situation with Nietzsche. When he said, "I hate weaklings, and I proclaim the coming of the superman," people misunderstood. They thought, "This man is in favor only of the powerful, superior people, and he is against the ordinary, average humanity." That was not the case.

Emma Goldman is right. She is one of the few women of history who has had a very clear-cut intellectual understanding. Very few women think about great problems, their world is very limited -- the neighborhood, who has got a new sari....

A woman rushed into the house and said to her husband, "You have to do either one thing or the other."

He said, "What?"

The woman said, "The neighbor has purchased a new car. Either you purchase a new car, or change neighborhoods. We will move into some other house, we cannot live in this house. I cannot stand to see a new car in his garage, when in our garage is an old Ford. So you be quick! Either find a new house -- we move out of this house -- or bring home a new Cadillac!"

The woman's world has been very limited. It has been made limited by man, but the woman is also responsible; she accepted it. When somebody enslaves you, of course that person is responsible -- but don't think that you are not responsible. You are also responsible: you could have died instead of becoming a slave; then how could he have made you a slave?

So whenever there is such a phenomenon, people only think with compassion and pity about the victim, but they don't think that the victim somehow agrees with the status quo.

Otherwise, if all the women just go on a one-day strike all over the world, men will be massaging their feet: "You are not only equal, you are superior! Just come back to the kitchen."

I know about myself... I cannot even make a cup of tea. I have tried and burned myself.

Just once was enough, then I said, "It is not my thing."

Have you ever thought, if you have to sleep with your little baby what is going to happen in the night? Either you will throw the baby out of the window... because these small babies are such rascals, you won't believe. They will sleep the whole day and they will stay awake the whole night. And every moment they want this, and they want that; and if nothing else, they want to go to the bathroom! They will drive you crazy just within one night. Either you will shoot yourself, or throw out the baby and have a peaceful night.

The woman is immensely patient. She has no problems about what will happen when third world war happens. Who cares? Right now, the question is that the husband has not come home. Where is he? With which woman? She is just going down the list of all the women she knows....

And when the husband comes back in the middle of the night, she immediately inquires,

"Where have you been?" And he says, "I was with my friend such-and-such."

And the wife has all the information. She has phoned all the friends. "That friend is not at home, so where have you been? Be truthful and honest! I have inquired, I have your diary, all the phone numbers. That fellow is not at home! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?"

Now you are caught red-handed! Nobody can escape a wife's scrutiny. I have never heard of a single man who has escaped the scrutiny of a wife. They are such great detectives that sometimes I think they should all enroll in the CIA, the FBI, the CID -- they will do far greater work! Their concern is so limited, so their whole concentration....

Very few women, like Emma Goldman, have ever thought about such problems as anarchism. She was really a rare woman. No husband could tolerate her, she was too intellectual. Every husband will feel inferior to her.

She is perfectly right about Friedrich Nietzsche, that when he talked about superman and he said, "I hate the weaklings" -- people have missed the point. They think he is a hater of the average humanity and only wants the superman, a superior quality, intellectual giants. That is not the case.

His conception of the superman and the society that will come with the superman is that such a society will not allow weaklings to be born. That's exactly my conception too. And I am being criticized all around the world because I have been saying that man should not be allowed anymore to give birth to accidental children.

Up to now the whole humanity has been accidental. Now we have every means to choose the right child. We can create a humanity in which everybody will be a superman.

Nietzsche was only an intellectual -- a great intellectual, perhaps the greatest. I have left intellect far behind. I use it just for you.

In my vision we don't have to wait for biological engineering to create the superman. It will go against all the masses, all the societies. All the religions will become hindrances, they won't allow it. Because I have proposed it, I am being criticized. I have received from all over the world criticism of my book, *THE GREATEST CHALLENGE, THE

GOLDEN FUTURE, saying that I am a fascist just like Friedrich Nietzsche was a fascist.

But they don't understand me. Neither have they understood Friedrich Nietzsche. And they will misunderstand me even more because I am not going to wait for biological engineering. I am going to create the superman by a very different methodology.

My methodology is meditation.

I can change the ordinary, average human being into a buddha. There is no need right now to go into changing the ordinary structure of reproduction. Finally it has to be done, because that will be the easiest way. And if I have supermen to work with, then meditation will be so easy, immediately understood.

But Friedrich Nietzsche had no idea about meditation. I can change, through meditation, the very ordinary and average person into a superman. The moment you enter into your being -- centered, silent, the whole sky within has no clouds of thought -- you are turning into a superman. I call that superman the buddha.

Maneesha, you are right -- because I am looking at man from every angle: from his body, from his mind, from his soul. I am looking at man as a totality. So many half-circles are going to be complete in me. Buddha was looking only at the spiritual; Marx was looking only at the material; Sigmund Freud was looking only at the psychological.

My approach is total, from all dimensions and directions. And I have gone through all these people as deeply as possible, and I know where they stand, where they have stopped. Nietzsche has stopped with intellectual analysis, Sigmund Freud has stopped with psychoanalysis, Marx has stopped with an economic analysis of the society.

But man is not partial. Don't deal with man part by part.

You can deal with a machine in a partial way -- you can change one part if it is not functioning well -- but man is an organic unity; you cannot do that with man. You have to take the whole man into your vision. My vision is for the whole man.

And the moment you also understand all your dimensions, all your directions, all your potentialities, suddenly a great transformation happens: the superman is born in you. You don't have to wait because you cannot change your programming of biology now.

Perhaps your children's children may gather courage enough to change the biology of man.

When I am talking to you, I am taking care not only about you but about your children's children's children. My approach is not only concerned with you -- it is certainly concerned with you, but not only with you. My vision reaches far deeper. I am saying many things which should be said only one century from now. That's what creates controversies about me, unnecessary condemnation of me, but I am helpless.

In fact, I enjoy all the controversies, all the condemnation. At this moment, I am the most condemned man in the whole world. That gives me great joy! At least I am something....

This brings us to Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

Guiseppe and Martino, two Italians, are at the movie house watching a spaghetti western and feeling bored.

Martino leans over in the dark and taps his friend on the arm. "Hey-a, Guiseppe,"

whispers Martino, "I am-a really bored! You see-a this guy in front with the bald-a head?

I give-a you a thousand lira if you smack him over the head!"

Guiseppe immediately takes the money, stands up and hits the bald man in front --

POW! -- over the head.

The man turns around in a daze.

"Hey-a! Francesco!" says Guiseppe. "Good-a to see you!"

"I am not-a Francesco!" replies the man, shakily, and he turns back to watching the movie.

Five minutes pass, and Martino is bored again.

"Hey-a Guiseppe!" he whispers. "I give-a you two thousand lira if you hit-a the bald-a guy again!"

Guiseppe takes the money, stands up and hits the bald-headed man -- BONK! -- on the head.

The bald man spins around and is just about to climb over the back of his seat, when Guiseppe says, "Hey-a! Francesco! Good-a to see you!"

"I tell-a you!" snaps the bald man. "I am not-a Francesco!" and he storms out and goes and sits upstairs in the balcony.

Ten minutes later, Martino is bored again.

"Hey-a! Guiseppe!" he whispers, "I am-a bored! Let's-a go upstairs!"

The two friends go to sit in the balcony just behind the bald-headed man.

"Hey-a! Guiseppe!" whispers Martino. "I give-a you ten thousand lira if you hit-a the man with the bald-a head again!"

Guiseppe puts the money into his pocket, gets to his feet, and hits the bald head --

SMACK! -- with his hand.

The man spins around in his seat.

"Hey-a! Francesco!" says Guiseppe. "You know, downstairs there is a guy that looks just-a like you!"

One day, Joseph Stalin wants to find out what the people of Russia really think about him. So he disguises himself with a big black beard and an overcoat and goes out into the streets of Moscow. He walks around for a while and then goes into a favorite communist pub, the Czar's Head.

He walks up to the bar, orders a double vodka and begins to sip it slowly. Then he turns to the man next to him, Comrade Popov, and casually asks, "Tell me, comrade, what do you think of Joseph Stalin?"

Comrade Popov turns white, looks over both shoulders, grabs Stalin by the arm, and whispers, "Are you crazy? We can't talk here -- follow me!"

The two Russians go outside through the back door, into the quiet back street. Popov looks around frantically, then leads Stalin into a dark alley. Then Popov looks around and says, "We are still not safe here! These walls have ears! Come with me."

He takes Stalin through a maze of unlit passages and side streets before arriving at a small, hidden garden. They climb over the fence, and finally crouch behind some bushes.

"Okay," says Popov, "we can talk here. You want to know what I think of Joseph Stalin?"

"That's right," replies Stalin.

"Well," says Popov, "I could not say it in the pub, but personally -- I like the guy!"

Igor and Becky Ivanovich, a Moscow couple, keep a parrot called Boris in their apartment. Boris likes to cry, "Down with communism!" at the top of his voice, and one day the neighbors hear him and report him to the KGB.

When the police arrive, Igor quickly hides Boris in the freezer.

The KGB officers search everywhere throughout the apartment and cannot find anything.

But just before they leave, one of them decides to have a look in the freezer and finds a frozen Boris.

When Boris finally thaws out he starts shouting at the top of his voice: "Hurray for Gorbachev! Long live communism!" The KGB men are very happy and leave the apartment.

When they are gone, Igor grabs Boris.

"I don't understand," says Igor. "Why did you suddenly start praising communism?"

"Look," replies Boris, "you would do the same if you had just returned from Siberia!"

Nivedano...

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

And feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards.

Gather your whole life energy and rush towards your very center of being, with total consciousness and with an urgency as if this is going to be the last moment in your life.

Without such urgency nobody has ever reached to his very being, the center which is your original face, which is your door into the divine.

Faster and faster,

deeper and deeper....

As you come closer to yourself, a great silence descends over you, almost like soft rain.

A little closer... and you find a tremendous peace blossoming around you.

A little more... and fragrances from the beyond fulfill your being.

Now you can see your original face. This is the buddha, hidden at the center of your being for centuries. This is your superman.

The only quality of the buddha is witnessing, and as your witnessing deepens, your blissfulness deepens also.

As your witnessing becomes greater, a tremendous ecstasy arises in your very being. It is not something coming from outside, it is something that is arising in you and blossoming in you like a lotus flower.

But it all happens -- this whole miracle of meditation is nothing but witnessing. A single word, and the whole of religion is intrinsic in it.

At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.

To make the witnessing a little deeper, Nivedano...

Relax, let go. Just continue to witness. Witness that you are not the body, witness that you are not the mind.

Witness that you are only a witness,

just a buddha,

a pure consciousness,

and eternal life

suddenly becomes clear to you.

You have been changing bodies again and again and again but your life goes on flowing from eternity to eternity. It is infinite; it is immortal.

And as you relax you start melting like ice. All separations dissolve. Gautam the Buddha Auditorium suddenly becomes an ocean of ten thousand buddhas melting their consciousness into oneness, without any waves, without any ripples.

The evening was very beautiful on its own but your totality, your urgency, your tremendous longing to reach to the center have made it a miraculous evening -- a great splendor.

Meditation is the only magic in the world and the only miracle.

Before Nivedano calls you back, gather all the flowers that are showering on you -- of ecstasy, of joy, of peace, of a deep serenity, silence, a fire within you. The fire of eternal life, which is very cool, and a breeze which is so fragrant, of the beyond.

This I have called Zen Fire, Zen Wind. We have to fill the whole earth with Zen Fire and Zen Wind. This is the only possibility for saving humanity and this beautiful planet from destruction, from the politicians and from the priests.

And don't forget to persuade the buddha to come with you. He has to become your daily life. In each of your activities, in each of your gestures, in every bird, in every silence --

he has to be a constant presence, just behind you. Just his presence behind you will start changing your lifestyle. It will bring grace and beauty and benediction and compassion that you have never dreamt of.

Meditation makes the greatest dream a reality.

Nivedano...

Come back, but come back as buddhas, silently, peacefully, with deep gratitude and great grace.

Sit for a few seconds just to remember where you have been, to what sky, to what space, what golden path you have traveled. And just feel who is behind you, the presence of the buddha.

These are the three steps before you become enlightened: Buddha comes behind you like a shadow, the first step.

Buddha comes before you and you become the shadow, the second step.

Your shadow disappears in the buddha. You are no more, only buddha is... the third and the final step.

The moment your shadow disappears in the buddha, you will find, suddenly, that buddha is only a transparent consciousness. When there is something transparent it makes no shadow.

And buddha is your very nature, so there is not much problem to bring him from the hidden sources and to make him your whole being.

He is just a seed at the center. As you bring it out the seed breaks down and suddenly out of your mud, dirty mud, of all kinds of desires, jealousies, anger, violence, arises a beautiful lotus.

This lotus is the flowering of your very potential. This will make you a superman.

Nietzsche can only talk about you: I can transform you into the superman.

Superman is my very teaching.

I teach you the superman, the buddha. I don't give you any discipline, any philosophy --

I simply help you to bring out your own consciousness into a state of flowering.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

Chapter #6

Chapter title: Wolves in a sheep's skin

4 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Archive

code:

8902045

ShortTitle:

FIRE06

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

240

mins

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

DOGO VISITED NANSEN, WHO ASKED HIM, "WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"

DOGO REPLIED, "MY NAME IS ENCHI."

NANSEN ASKED, "HOW DO YOU EXPRESS THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM

DOESN'T REACH?"

DOGO REPLIED, "I WOULD NEVER EXPRESS IT."

NANSEN SAID, "THAT'S RIGHT. IF YOU EXPRESS IT, HORNS WILL GROW

AND YOU WILL BECOME A BEAST."

A FEW DAYS LATER, DOGO AND UNGAN WERE SITTING OUTSIDE THE

DORMITORY AND DOING SOME WORK. NANSEN WAS TAKING A WALK, AND WHEN HE SAW DOGO, HE ASKED, "ENCHI, THE OTHER DAY, YOU SAID

YOU WOULD NEVER EXPRESS THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM DOESN'T

REACH. NOW, HOW ARE YOU PRACTICING IT?"

HEARING THIS, DOGO SLIPPED INTO THE DORMITORY, WAITED THERE

UNTIL NANSEN WALKED AWAY AND THEN APPEARED AGAIN.

UNGAN ASKED DOGO, "WHY DIDN'T YOU ANSWER WHEN OSHO ASKED

YOU THE QUESTION?"

DOGO REPLIED, "WHAT A CLEVER CHAP YOU ARE!"

THEN UNGAN CAME UP TO NANSEN AND ASKED, "OSHO, YOU HAVE ASKED

A QUESTION JUST NOW OF MY BROTHER-DISCIPLE, ENCHI. HOW SHOULD

ONE ANSWER TO IT?"

NANSEN SAID, "HE IS QUITE GOOD AT THE BEASTS' WAY."

UNGAN ASKED, "WHAT is THE BEASTS' WAY?"

NANSEN SAID, "YOU MUST HAVE HEARD THAT YOU SHOULD NEVER

EXPRESS THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM DOESN'T REACH. IF YOU EXPRESS IT, HORNS WILL GROW. IF YOU NAME IT SO-AND-SO, IT WILL ALREADY BE

WRONG. YOU SHOULD IMMEDIATELY GO THE BEASTS' WAY."

Friends,

Comrade Gorbachev seems to be bent upon destroying communism, root and all. He has even stopped using the word `comrade'.

Sangeet has been going through his books, because I don't waste my time on any rubbish.

She has found a few points which I would like to discuss with you. The first point is about women.

It was one of the great contributions of Joseph Stalin to bring about equality between men and women in every sphere of life. He allowed women the same education, the same financial freedom as the men. He allowed the women freedom to work equally with men.

He brought the woman out of the prison of the home. Russia was the only country in the world where women were given back their dignity, and the whole credit goes to Joseph Stalin.

Now Gorbachev is forcing the woman back into the kitchen. His idea is only valid in the sense that unless the family is again enforced, it will be difficult to bring private property and capitalism to the Soviet Union. He is almost playing into the hands of the Western capitalist countries. Now he wants the woman not to be given equal work, or equal education; she should go back and be a wife, a mother. The house and the family is to be her only field.

All over the world women are fighting for freedom. And freedom is possible only if the woman is educated, has the capacity to earn money for herself, is not dependent on the husband's bank account; if she is not forced to remain within the boundaries of the house, taking care of the children, preparing food, washing dishes and clothes. But that's what Gorbachev is trying to do now.

All the women of the Soviet Union should revolt against it, and all the women outside the Soviet Union should support the Soviet woman's fight for freedom.

These are small strategies for bringing capitalism back. Once the family is solid, and the woman has lost her equality, private property can be brought back in very easily.

Gorbachev is already talking about private property; he is already talking about socialism, he has dropped the word `communism' also. And socialism is a cunning conspiracy of the capitalists.

All over the world there are socialist parties, and their only function is to prevent people from becoming communist. They are being paid by the capitalists -- as far as India is concerned I am absolutely certain. I know, because the same man offered me money also....

The head of India's biggest super-rich family was Jugal Kishore Birla. He was giving monthly salaries to Jaiprakash Narayan, who was the head of the Socialist Party of India.

Seeing my meetings, where fifty thousand or one hundred thousand people would attend, he was immensely interested.

And I used to stay in Delhi with one of the members of parliament from my constituency, Dr. Seth Govinddas. Both Seth Govinddas and Jugal Kishore Birla belong to the same caste, of marwaris -- they are the Jews of India -- so he had found a medium to reach me. He asked Govinddas, "A meeting is absolutely necessary. You arrange it."

Govinddas said to me, when I was staying with him in Delhi for a few days, "It will be immensely helpful for your work."

I said, "In what way can Jugal Kishore Birla help my work? My work is to destroy Birlas, and Tatas, and Sahus" -- the three great super-rich families of India -- "how can he help me?"

He said, "But there is nothing wrong in meeting the man." I said, "Okay."

So I met the man, and he immediately made an offer to me: "I will give you a blank check, as I have given to Mahatma Gandhi." And he had been supporting the freedom movement, and had a very clear vision of the future, that sooner or later these people would be the presidents, the prime ministers, so whatever he was giving them was an investment. Then he would take the advantage -- and he was taking advantage, after the freedom of India. People who had been on a monthly salary from him... he had purchased their souls.

He told me, "Jaiprakash Narayan is on my payroll."

I said, "If you can give me a blank check without any conditions, I will be grateful to you.

But I don't accept any conditions. I cannot sell myself."

He said, "Conditions are bound to be there; otherwise why should I give you a blank check? I am a businessman."

I said, "You may be a businessman, I am not."

He said, "But my conditions are very simple: preach Hinduism to the world. And the second condition is, create a great movement in India to protect the cows from being slaughtered."

I simply got up and I said, "Throw your blank check to the dogs! I am going." Govinddas was very much embarrassed, because they all felt great respect for his money and his support.

And I told him, "You have asked me to come, and you have insulted me! Nothing can be more insulting than offering money as a bribe, trying to purchase a man. You cannot purchase me -- nobody can purchase me. I am going to speak against Hinduism my whole life! You have strengthened my idea; you have reminded me that I have to take care of Hinduism. And I am going to fight with all those people who are trying to stop cow slaughter."

That's how I came to be the arch-enemy of the Shankaracharya of Puri, because he is the head of the movement to stop cow slaughter.

So I know from the very man himself, Jugal Kishore Birla, that the head of the Socialist Party and perhaps other leaders were on his payroll.

Why was he paying the socialists? What is the function of the socialist? The function is to divide the proletariat, to create barriers so the proletariat, the poor people, the labor unions, don't go to the communists.

And it is easy for the socialists to do it, because the socialists agree with all the superstitions of the masses. They agree with all their superstitions, they don't disturb their religion. They don't disturb anything in their prejudices, they support it, so obviously the masses are attracted to them more easily than to the communists who are non-compromising, who hit hard on everybody's religion, on everybody's theism, belief in God, and all kinds of fictitious ideas and superstitions. Naturally, the Communist Party in India -- which is one of the oldest communist parties in the world -- has not been able to gather any power or any great number of people to be members. And it is not going to.

Socialists pretend that they are Marxists, and that they are going to bring equality, they are going to bring social justice, but without disturbing anybody's superstitions. Now they are talking in absolute contradictions! Without destroying the masses' prejudices, their past-orientation, their superstitions, you cannot bring equality.

God has created only man in his own image, not woman. The woman has been created by taking a rib out of man, so she is just to be a servant to the husband. She cannot claim equality. How can a rib bone be equal to a man? She is almost reduced to being just a body and not a soul.

How are you going to make people equal when God has made them unequal, unless you strike God completely dead? And how are you going to bring social justice to the masses who believe that their poverty is because of their past life's evil acts? They are perfectly satisfied with their poverty -- it is a punishment. And they don't think that the rich people are responsible for their poverty -- they are enjoying the good acts of their past life. If you don't disturb these superstitions, how are you going to bring equality to man?

So socialism is a strategy to prevent the proletariat from going to the communists. It is a very deep and subtle conspiracy against communism. And Gorbachev has started calling the Soviet Union a socialist country, not a communist country. Already he has started making compromises.

The second thing Sangeet has found is about democracy. He wants a democracy of the people -- the same way as America has democracy "for the people, of the people, by the people." But a democracy can exist only the way it existed in Athens, in a city-state --

even there it was not perfect -- with direct democracy, no representatives. The whole city would gather and decide.

That's how they decided to poison Socrates. Fifty-one percent of the population of Athens voted that he should be given the punishment of death by poisoning: "He has been corrupting people's morals, he has been corrupting people's religion. He does not believe in God. He does not believe in anything -- he believes only in rational, logical things, and that destroys our morality. That destroys our religion, our superstitions, and those are our only consolations in life." Just by a very small majority -- fifty-one percent were against him, and forty-nine percent were in favor of his being set free. But a majority is a majority; whether it is one man's majority or two men's majority does not matter.

But even in Athens it was not a total democracy. It was direct, there were no representatives -- because once the representatives come in, it is not the people who rule, it is the representatives who rule. And for five years they have absolute power. Just once every five years they become servants of the people, just for a few days while the election is on; after the election the people don't matter at all. Then they go on doing whatever they want to do. But in Athens, the larger part was made up of slaves. What kind of democracy? -- where people were auctioned, women were auctioned. And these slaves were not citizens, so the greater part of the population of the Athens was not able to vote, not able to participate in the so-called direct democracy. Athens has come closest, but that kind of demacracy is possible only in small cities, not in vast nations.

In vast nations you can't have a government by the people, of the people, for the people.

In vast lands you have to fall back on mediators. So it is just making people blind, giving them good slogans, but in fact democracy exists nowhere. It is always the politicians who are the rulers of the people.

But as I have told you, Gorbachev is too much impressed by America and wants the Soviet Union to be another America. He is not saying it directly, but slowly slowly he is coming closer to it.

Democracy will destroy seventy years' experiment completely. Democracy will bring the rich back, the poor back; a classless society will become again a society with classes.

And whenever there are rich people, they are the real rulers of the country because they can purchase the politicians. Politicians don't have money, and they need money for their elections. No poor man can stand for election because it takes so much money to fight an election.

Even in a poor country like India you need at least a million rupees to fight an election.

From where are the people going to get that much money? And that one million rupees is the minimum. It depends on the constituency, and it depends on the rival candidate. If he is throwing away two million rupees, you have to throw away more than two millions; otherwise you are finished. And in a poor country, an uneducated country, people are ready to sell their votes.

In India, anybody who has money can win an election. Not a single poor man has reached the parliament in forty years' time, and it will never be possible, because how can you fight? You need hundreds of jeeps, you need to pay the poor -- because the poor are not interested in who goes to the parliament. It is all the same; only faces change, nothing else changes. The poor go on becoming poorer, the rich go on becoming richer, and all these politicians only go on giving promises.

Even a man like Mahatma Gandhi had promised that the first president of India would be a woman, and not only a woman but a woman belonging to the sudras, the untouchables.

These two classes have suffered the most, because of the Hindu ideology that the untouchables are not human beings but beasts of burden, and the woman has no rights of her own. For centuries....

So just to get the attention of the women, and the votes and the attention of the untouchables... And Gandhi changed the name -- politicians are very clever in changing names -- he started calling the untouchables, harijans. Harijan means "people of God."

Now if harijans are the people of God, then why are they suffering for five thousand years? And those who are not the people of God are exploiting them, reducing them to cattle.

Strange... but even the untouchables enjoyed the word, the change of the word. It gave them a great consolation that they are the chosen people of God. It does not take away your poverty, it does not give you food, it does not give you any dignity, but just the change of the name....

It happened a few years before....

There is a certain animal in the Himalayas which looks like a cow, but it is not a cow. Its color is bluish, so it is called the "blue cow." For centuries that has been its name. It is not a cow -- it is a wild, ferocious animal, and it comes down from the Himalayas and destroys whole crops in North India. And it has been growing in population, just like the Indians are growing.

A time came that the population of these blue cows grew so big that the parliament had to decide to do something, otherwise on the one hand there is a population explosion of human beings and on the other hand this animal goes on destroying the crops. But Hindus were absolutely against it because of the name, "blue cow." They are worshippers of the cow. So there was great agitation all over India, "You cannot kill or shoot the blue cows."

And in this way you can understand how cunning politicians are. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the grandfather of Rajiv Gandhi, changed the name. He proposed to the parliament that "We have to kill these blue horses." Instead of neelgaay, blue cow, he called them neelghora, blue horses.

And no Hindu protested! They were shot in the thousands and thousands, almost their whole race was finished. They don't come anymore to North India. And not a single Hindu, not even this mad Shankaracharya of Puri, could understand a simple strategy of the politicians. When they were blue cows, the whole of India was in an uproar. When they became blue horses, who cares? And they are the same people!

Gandhi promised that he would make the first president of India a woman, and not only a woman but an untouchable woman. But when India became independent, he completely forgot the promise. And he is worshipped, not only in India but outside India, as a great man of truth -- just because he has written his autobiography and titled it, AN

EXPERIMENT WITH TRUTH. But he was continuously lying to his own people.

The first president of India, and the first prime minister of India... all were high-caste people. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was a brahmin, and the brahmins have been ruling this country for centuries. Again the rule goes to the brahmin priests. And the miracle of the name....

Rajiv Gandhi is not a Hindu, but nobody has said it.

I have to say it: Rajiv Gandhi is a crossbreed. His father, Feroze Gandhi, was a Parsee; and his mother, Indira Gandhi, was a Hindu. But the name -- Gandhi -- gives the feeling as if he is Hindu, because Mahatma Gandhi was Hindu. So people think....

And Parsees are not known very much; they are confined to Bombay, and a few people in Poona, a few people in Surat -- just this small territory. Basically they are confined to Bombay, so all over most of India nobody knows about them, that they also have a surname, Gandhi.

The word gandhi comes not from caste or religion; it means a man who sells perfumes.

Gandh means perfume, and gandhi means a perfume seller. So anybody who sells perfumes becomes "Gandhi." It has nothing to do with religion, it has nothing to do with caste.

Feroze Gandhi's family, sometime in the past, must have been selling perfume. And that was also true of Mahatma Gandhi's parents or forefathers. Somewhere back, they must have been selling perfume; both are called "gandhis."

This word `Gandhi' gives the impression to the whole of India that Rajiv is a Hindu. He is not. Rajiv is half Hindu and half Parsee. If the whole of India comes to know it, it will be very difficult for Rajiv to come back to power again. I want the whole of India to know it: he is a crossbreed, but the word `Gandhi' is hiding him. And he goes to the shankaracharyas and to all the so-called Hindu saints and nobody objects, because they all think he is a Hindu. I have to expose him. This man is just like a blue horse who used to be a blue cow.

Changing names is an old, very ancient strategy of the politicians. Now "comrade" is dropped because it was very significant, and only communists used it. And it is a beautiful word. Comrade means friend, brother, belonging to the same path. And Gorbachev has dropped the word `communism' and is continually talking in his two books about socialism, which was never before mentioned in the seventy years of the Soviet Union's life. It was a communist country. For the first time we hear it is a socialist country.

And he wants private property to come back, he wants foreign money to be invested in the Soviet land. He is completely destroying everything for which so much sacrifice has been made.

It is still time for the Soviet Union to stand up against this man. His whole desire is to be a world leader.

Just a few days ago I had told you that soon he will be getting a Nobel Prize. Today his name has been nominated. It has not been long, and my prediction has come true. These names have been nominated: Gorbachev is first, Ronald Reagan is second, Rajiv Gandhi is third, Dalai Lama is fourth. And the head of the International Football Federation is the fifth!

Nobody has ever heard that the head of the International Football Federation is contributing something to human evolution -- football! And in what way is this football contributing to peace? -- because he has been nominated to be given a Nobel Prize for peace. Strange...?

And what has the Dalai Lama done? He escaped from Tibet when China attacked. If he was really in favor of the Tibetan people he should have remained with his people, even if he was to be murdered.

And when he escaped he did not bring the Buddhist scriptures with him, he brought seventeen camels loaded with gold, because he knew that it would be impossible to get back to Tibet. A man who has betrayed his own people... and they are being killed every day. He has taken the money of the people. It was not his private money. No lama can have private money -- a lama is a Buddhist bhikkshu, he cannot possess anything. The money belonged to the taxpayers, the poor Tibetans. All the gold that was in the possession of the Lhasa Palace of Dalai Lama -- he ran away with all the gold, leaving the Tibetan people in the hands of China. And they are being killed every day, butchered, tortured.

And you will not believe... Every child has to learn Chinese now, not Tibetan. So they are not only destroying people's political freedom, they are even destroying their literature, their whole heritage. The children will be Chinese, because they will be speaking Chinese. Soon, when the old people die, even the Tibetan language will die. And Tibetan scriptures will disappear.

This is an absolute crime against a culture -- they have brought not just a political slavery to Tibet, they are destroying Tibet's whole ancient culture, which has something beautiful in it. They have destroyed all the monasteries of Buddhist monks. They have been turned into hospitals, into schools. And they have brought a great number of Chinese to become residents of Tibet. The number of Chinese is now more than the Tibetans. So now they will bring democracy to Tibet, because now in any case Tibetans cannot win the elections; more Chinese have been infiltrated.

And what has Dalai Lama done?

His younger brother has died just a few days before, because his younger brother -- his name was Panchen Lama -- proved far more courageous than Dalai Lama. Dalai Lama was the head of state and Panchen Lama was number two; if Dalai Lama dies or something happens, then Panchen Lama would be the head. He was not the head, but he took over as Dalai Lama escaped. He did not escape with Dalai Lama, he remained with his people, and he tried in every possible way to prevent this invasion. But Tibet had no armies, Tibet had no arms. Tibet had nothing to fight with, no roads, no tanks, no bombs.

Tibet had only twenty-one guns belonging to the guards of Dalai Lama's palace -- that was all. There were no courts, no police -- because the Tibetan people are such a silent people, such a meditative people.

That's why I feel for the Tibetan people.

If the Nobel Prize was given to the Tibetan people, it would have been absolutely right.

They are suffering and their meditativeness is being laughed at. They are being forced not to meditate, but to go to the fields and work. Under loaded machine guns, meditators are being forced to work.

And Panchen Lama died just four or five days ago, because in a international conference in Beijing he directly hit the Chinese government. He made it clear that Tibet is being completely destroyed -- not only its people are being killed, its scriptures are being burnt, its temples are being destroyed. Nobody can learn Tibetan anymore. The language is being destroyed, the children are being forced to learn Chinese and to speak Chinese.

This is a real generation gap, where children will not be able to understand their own parents. Their parents will not be able to say anything to the children; they will not understand each other's language.

And he lashed out against China, risking his life. Because the conference was international, he wanted the whole world to know what is happening in Tibet at the hands of the Chinese. So he exposed the whole situation, and that very night he was found dead in his hotel. No autopsy was made, no certificate from a doctor that he has died a normal, natural death -- he was a young man, perfectly healthy -- and he was buried. Now they will put someone, their agent -- he may be Tibetan -- as the head of Tibet.

For what is the Dalai Lama getting a nomination? He is not even the head of the International Football Federation! And he is a coward. Cowardice is being rewarded by a Nobel Prize.

And what has Rajiv Gandhi done? He has come accidentally into power because his mother, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated. Naturally the whole nation's sympathy was with Rajiv, her only son. The other son, Sanjay, had died in an airplane accident. But one should see the politician's mind....

Sanjay Gandhi was very much interested in flying airplanes; he had a small airplane and he went flying in it just over his own house. Just two or three blocks from Indira Gandhi's house, where Sanjay lived with his mother, something went wrong. And there is every suspicion that there must have been some political conspiracy, because the examiner at the airport who checked the plane before Sanjay took it said that there was nothing wrong with it, it was absolutely perfect. But just within five minutes... there is a possibility of some sabotage.

And as Indira was informed -- immediately, because she was just two blocks away; she had seen the airplane falling down -- as she was informed, she rushed immediately to the place. I have heard that her first question was not about whether Sanjay was alive or dead -- this is the politician's mind -- her first question was, "He was carrying two keys. Where are those two keys?"

One of those two keys belonged to all the money that she was gathering for the coming elections, and the other key was to a safe in which she was keeping all the files against all the politicians, files that she inherited from her father.

Those files are immensely valuable, because all politicians commit crimes but if they are in the ruling party then nobody ever knows what they have done. But the prime minister knows. He keeps a record of it, what this man has done. If he turns against the prime minister, then he will be exposed immediately to the public as a criminal.

So all those files belonged to Indira. And Sanjay was very ambitious to become the prime minister after Indira Gandhi. He was younger than Rajiv but more political and more crazy for power. The rumor is that he even slapped Indira Gandhi once because she would not give him the keys.

Finally he got those two keys, which were of immense importance: all the money -- one never knows how much money it was; it must have been a few million rupees or even more. And the second was even more important. To control all enemies completely, just the fear was enough, that the file is there and immediately an investigation can be started and they will lose all face, all their hypocrisy will be exposed.

She did not ask what happened to Sanjay. She immediately asked, "Where are those two keys he was carrying with him?" So they said, "Those two keys have been put in the hands of the police. You can get them from the police station." She did not go directly to the hospital to see Sanjay, who was dead; first she went to the police station, got the keys.

Then she went to the hospital.

When Rajiv Gandhi came to power, he told the country, "I promise you that I will lead the country into the twenty-first century." And after the election he never said that again.

Now he is talking about simple methods, simple solutions for complex problems. He is talking about the past and the heritage, the great culture, of India. Now he is not looking forward.

Nobody can take the country into the twenty-first century except me! I can take it to the twenty-second century! There is no problem, we can have quantum jumps. But he cannot.

He has no plan for the country; all his promises are lies.

Four days ago he spoke to an international conference of scientists in New Delhi, and then he said, "Nations should disappear; there should be no boundaries on the earth. The whole earth is one." I suspect he must have been reading my books! If he is not reading them, then it must be the secretary who is preparing his speeches. "We should dissolve all differences -- nations, boundaries, races -- and create one humanity." That was in front of the international conference.

And four days later he was speaking to a Hindu conference, and there he completely forgot about dissolving the boundaries. He started talking about the great Indian heritage

-- "We have to protect it." The great Indian morality -- "We have to protect it."

If you are going to protect the Indian heritage, why should Germans not protect their heritage? Why shouldn't Japanese protect their heritage, and Americans protect their heritage? Where has the one earth gone?

But people are blind and utterly in darkness; they cannot see simple contradictions. The man talks to the international conference, and talks in terms of one world. And when he talks to the Hindus, then he says, "Our culture is the best in the world."

But that's the stupidity which everybody is doing. That's how nations are divided, races are divided against each other, religions are divided, because everybody is claiming, "We are the best!"

He talks about making things simple, and on the other hand he has started creating nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are simple things? It is the most complex and the most ultra-modern. And in what way does it belong to the Hindu heritage? You should go back to bullock carts, and you should go back to the spinning wheel -- that is the only technology that belongs to the Hindu heritage. You should return to satipratha -- killing women alive on their husband's funeral pyre, and you should keep the untouchables as animals, as Hindus have kept them for centuries. This is the Hindu heritage!

But all these people have no dedication to any truths. These are all opportunists.

A Nobel Prize for Rajiv Gandhi? What has he done? But this is part of bringing him together with Gorbachev, because India and Russia are in a treaty for another thirty years in the future: they will be friends and they will defend each other, and they will fight for each other. If somebody attacks Russia, India will fight. If somebody attacks India, Russia will fight. And Russia has been absolutely supporting India, in every possible way. But now, as Gorbachev is moving towards America, it is good to give a Nobel Prize to Rajiv Gandhi also, so both can move together towards America. There is no other reason except a political strategy to give these people a super-ego.

And I was surprised... it is perfectly okay to give a Nobel Prize to the International Football Federation's head, but what has Ronald Reagan done? There are so many crimes that he has committed under his regime that it is just a coincidence that he has not been arrested and brought to the Supreme Court -- a coincidence, a very strange coincidence.

The American Constitution gives the Supreme Court absolute power. Even the president cannot overrule the Supreme Court's orders. But the president has one power in his hands: if one of the judges -- and there are nine judges on the whole Supreme Court bench -- if one of the judges dies, then the president can appoint a new judge. From the best judges of all the state supreme courts, or high courts... anybody he wants he can appoint.

Those people who made the constitution never conceived that five judges could suddenly retire. The time of retirement for five judges had come when Ronald Reagan was in power, so if five of the judges retired -- it is just a rare coincidence -- he could appoint five men of his own. Now in the Supreme Court, five out of nine judges are Reagan's men, and four are a minority. That's how he has escaped being punished for his criminal acts during his presidency. The Supreme Court cannot do anything because the majority of the judges are his men. He has come out of the White House completely white, snow-white, clean.

There were rumors all over America and all around the world -- "What will happen about all the crimes he has commited? Will he be impeached?" But nothing has been done. And he has been doing things against the Senate, he has been doing things against the constitution, he has been doing things against the common law of the country... and now he deserves a Nobel Prize!

They should start giving Nobel Prizes to the great criminals. Why not be frank? That will be more truthful.

None of these people deserve anything.

Gorbachev is getting a Nobel Prize because he is destroying a seventy-year-old great experiment for the human future.

Ronald Reagan is being given the Nobel Prize for all his crimes which prevented any change in the social structure, in the social status quo of America.

Rajiv Gandhi is being given the Nobel Prize because he is preventing the communists, he is preventing any kind of revolutionary step in India. He is keeping the same bureaucracy....

Albert Einstein during his whole life was working on the speed of light, and finally he figured it out. And then he wondered: the speed of light is the greatest speed in the world... what is the lowest? He could not find out, and he died before I could have told him.

The lowest speed is the Indian bureaucracy. The file moves so slowly from one table to another table... and on each table you have to bribe. Then the file moves to another table.

Then you have to bribe again. Then it moves to the third table. By the time it reaches the final table, perhaps you may be finished!

I know about a case against one of my very respected friends. He was an old man, but it has been my strange fate to be in contact with the oldest people. This man was a revolutionary, Pandit Sunderlal, and he fought his whole life against the British government. Somewhere in 1914, when he was young, very young, he wrote a book on Indian history in which he contradicted what the British were teaching in the schools about Indian history.

Those histories were written by the British, so naturally they were not talking about the brutalities the British had committed. But he collected all the facts and he wrote a history.

The British government started a case against four persons: the publisher, the writer, the editor, and the printer. In the Allahabad high court the case started.

I saw Pandit Sunderlal in 1970 for the last time -- he was very old. I asked him what had happened with the case. He said, "Don't ask. Somebody has to write a history about the case, because all the judges who tried it are dead; all the advocates from my side and from the government's side are dead. The case was started against four persons -- three are dead, only I am alive. The case was started by a government which is no longer here!

Now India is free, but the case continues. It will end only when I am dead."

There is no way. Such is the bureaucracy... sixty years continuously, an ordinary case, and everybody died! Even the British Empire died! And now the Indian government is carrying the case. Great bureaucracy....

I could have told Albert Einstein that I have found that the Indian bureaucratic files have the slowest speed in the world. Nothing moves slower. And if you don't bribe, it does not move at all.

You can go into any bureaucrat's office and you will see on every clerk's table, piles of files. You won't see the clerk, you will see two piles; the clerk is hiding behind. You give, from underneath the table, a ten-rupee note, and your file is brought to the top. But after half an hour another person comes and he gives ten rupees -- his file goes on top of your file. After a month you find your file has reached to the same old place, it is on the same table. And the clerk needs high piles so you can't see his face. You just find his hand underneath the table with your hand, and you cannot even report who has asked you for money because you have never seen the face, you just see the hand!

And these people like Rajiv Gandhi are keeping the same British Empire bureaucracy --

no change at all.

The country is becoming every day poorer, with more population, more population.... No guts in this man Rajiv Gandhi! Because now, birth control needs almost military action -

- nothing else will help. And armies are sitting around unnecessarily. Bring those armies to every village and sterilize people!

But the fear... in the election these people will defeat you, and the fear is right. Indira Gandhi got defeated on the same point, because Sanjay was too much interested in birth control, sterilization. And he was absolutely right, but because of him Indira Gandhi was condemned that she was giving him the power and he was going too far.

Not voluntary birth control -- because voluntary birth control won't succeed. People believe that children are given by God and to interfere in the work of God is a sin. So unless it is compulsory, such that either you get sterilized or otherwise you get shot...

You can choose -- this is freedom of choice. But no politician has the guts to give this freedom of choice.

Just within two days all this nonsense of population explosion can be stopped. Within two days! Just bring the guns and give the freedom to the people to choose -- either the doctor or the army! But please don't misunderstand me -- I simply want that something drastic should be done to prevent the population explosion. Things can be done only Stalin-style, there is no other way. But Joseph Stalin never got the Nobel Prize, and these pygmies are getting Nobel Prizes.

The third thing Sangeet has found in Gorbachev's book is about cutting back the army and weapons.

American experts are suggesting to President George Bush that he go on increasing weapons, nuclear weapons, more refined missiles, and not stop it. What will be the outcome of it? If Russia cuts back its army and weapons, and America goes on piling up nuclear weapons, there will be no need of any war. Just a threat will be enough to finish Russia -- just a threat, that "If you don't listen to us we are going to attack you."

A great world power, just because of one man, is losing all its dignity. I hope that somebody shoots this man! He deserves it; rather than destroying a whole country, it is better to get rid of Gorbachev. Just put him to eternal peace -- I don't mean it literally, but Gorbachev has to be removed from office. There is still time....

And you can see his workings. He is talking about democracy and he has taken all the power in his hands. He is the most powerful man in the whole of Russia's history -- even Stalin had not that much power.

He has become the president of the country, and the prime minister has become nominal, and has no power. He has changed the whole Communist Party's high command, the Politburo. All the old people have been thrown out, and he has put all his own people into the commanding body. He has changed the head of the KGB, which is the country's most powerful agency, and he has put his own man as the head.

Now he is in complete control of the KGB, the Communist Party, and he is also the secretary of the Politburo, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. So he has all the powers -- and he is the president of the government. These are the three most important posts; he is holding all three himself.

You can see that he is not a democratic man at all.

The academician Sakharov used to be the director general of the Academy of Sciences.

Because he accepted the Nobel Prize... Gorbachev himself asked him not to accept the Nobel Prize. And because he did not listen... Sakharov is a man of some integrity; he knew perfectly well that this could mean a lifelong sentence in a concentration camp in Siberia. Before him, three scientists from his own academy had received the Nobel Prize, but because they did not listen to the government they were thrown into Siberia, into labor camps. He knew this could happen to him also, but he risked. And he had some influence over the Russian masses as a very great scientist. Perhaps he is the greatest scientist alive in the world.

Gorbachev removed him from the directorship of the academy. And a small meanness...

he took away his car also, which was given to him as a director, so he could not have much freedom of movement. Now Sakharov is only a member of the academy.

The Academy of Sciences in Russia has a certain quota in the parliament. A few members are chosen by the academy for the parliament, and Sakharov stood for a post, and he was perfectly certain that he would be chosen. He has been the director of the academy, all these people know him, they have worked under him. There was no question that he would not be chosen. But he was not chosen because Gorbachev is behind the idea that he should not be chosen. He does not want any other man of world renown in the parliament except him. This is democracy!

And now Gorbachev has to see what happens to his Nobel Prize. If he is a man of any honesty he should refuse it -- because he has been forcing Soviet scientists to refuse the Nobel Prize; now the question has come to him. If he accepts the Nobel Prize, that man is a chicken! He should refuse immediately; even the nomination he should refuse: "I don't want to be nominated."

Show some consistency, some honesty! And why have you prevented Sakharov from being chosen? The whole academy must have been forced by the KGB -- "You cannot choose him, or your life is at risk."

Now Sakharov has led thousands and thousands of people in a procession -- this must be the first procession in seventy years -- to President Gorbachev's Kremlin, shouting slogans like "Where is your democracy?" and "Where is your socialism?" and "Where is your openness to the world? What happened to all that?" Thousands and thousands of people joined the march at the risk of their lives.

Sakharov is loved immensely. Gorbachev must have felt, "This man can be a competitor, so don't let him enter into the parliament." Now Sakharov is being supported by the people, and they have asked him: "You stand -- not from the academy, you stand as a general candidate against the Communist Party candidate, and we will support you." Now he is standing for election from his district where he lives, and I hope he succeeds. I hope he confronts Gorbachev in the parliament on every point.

People say one thing, do something else, and think something else. These are the politicians of the world.

Now it is absolutely stupid, but it is a compromise: Gorbachev will get a Nobel Prize if he cuts down his army and weapons. If he opens the doors of the Soviet Union to capitalism, he will be given a Nobel Prize. And a world-famous leader... he will become the topmost leader in the world, but at the risk of destroying the sacrifice of twenty million Russians and a tremendously great experiment in changing the social structure of the society. Nobody for hundreds of years will be able to do it again.

The fourth thing he has been insisting is to cut down military aid to small communist countries.

One can see clearly that his mind is determined to completely demolish communism from the earth. Now those small countries like Cuba, or Czechoslovakia, or Yugoslavia --

they are so small that if the Soviet Union is not behind them, capitalist countries can run over them, there is no problem. Cuba will be immediately finished. Once the Soviet Union withdraws its armies from Cuba, America will take over it without any difficulty.

Gorbachev is behaving very unconsciously, not understanding exactly the implications for humanity. He is playing into the hands of enemies.

Question 1

One sannyasin from the Soviet Union -- she is here -- has asked me a question: WHILE GROWING UP IN THE SOVIET UNION I HAD ALWAYS OPPOSED THE

USSR'S CLOSED-DOOR POLICIES, AND SOMEWHERE FELT DISAPPOINTED

THAT I WAS BORN THERE. NOW AFTER EXPERIENCING LIFE IN THE WEST

AND HEARING YOUR REVOLUTIONARY, MIND-BLOWING DISCOURSES ON

THE VALUE OF THE SEVENTY-YEAR DICTATORIAL REGIME, I CAN SO

CLEARLY SEE THE DEPTH, THE WISDOM, THE TRUTH OF YOUR WORDS.

AND IN THE DEPTH OF MY HEART I FEEL SO FORTUNATE AND GRATEFUL

THAT I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE THERE.

DO YOU THINK THAT THE PEOPLE OF THE SOVIET LAND WILL BE ABLE TO

SEE THE VALUES OF THEIR COUNTRY'S PAST DICTATORIAL REGIME

WITHOUT HAVING TO GO THROUGH THE EXPERIENCE OF THE WESTERN

STYLE LIVING, AND WITHOUT FALLING INTO THE TRAP OF TRYING TO

IMITATE THE WEST?

It is very difficult to predict, and I am not a prophet. I can only hope for the best, that one man cannot undermine twenty million people. Somebody is bound to finish him, because other than that, nothing is going to help.

And anyway the Soviet Union has enough experience of what the dictatorship of Stalin managed to do: raise the poorest country in the world to the highest peak of power. Even America was threatened, continuously living in paranoia. A single man managed to raise the country to such a power....

Millions of people in the Soviet Union must be feeling that Gorbachev is destroying their dignity. They will belong to a backward country. Once their doors are open to capitalist money and to all kinds of spies from capitalist countries, once Gorbachev reduces his army and weapons, the country will be in need, just as other poor countries are in need, of foreign aid.

I hope somebody in the Soviet Union, or somebody who understands the revolutionary strategy from outside the Soviet Union, can do something to stop this insane man from the destructive step that he is going to take -- that he is already taking.

Question 2

The second question:

REVOLUTIONARIES HAVE ALWAYS CLAIMED THAT IT IS SOCIETY'S

REPRESSIVE INSTRUMENTS OF CONTROL THAT DEFORM HUMANITY AND

PRODUCE THE UGLY BEHAVIOR OF MAN.

THE REACTIONARIES HAVE CLAIMED THE OPPOSITE: THAT HUMAN

NATURE IS INHERENTLY UGLY, AND THAT IT IS ONLY THE INSTRUMENTS

OF CONTROL THAT LIMIT THIS UGLINESS AND ALLOW WHAT LITTLE

CIVILIZATION THERE IS. THEY SAY THAT WITHOUT SUCH CONTROL, THIS

UGLY BEHAVIOR WOULD RAPIDLY REDUCE US TO BARBARITY.

IT SEEMS THAT, AS ALWAYS, YOUR APPROACH IS COMPLETELY

DIFFERENT AND TOTALLY UNIQUE. WOULD YOU TALK ABOUT THIS

CENTURIES-OLD CONTROVERSY?

The truth is, the whole controversy is absolutely wrong. It is based on prejudices, not on an experience of human nature.

I speak from the experience of my own humanity, that the deeper you go the more cultured you are; the deeper you go the more graceful you are. The deeper you reach the more human you become. So I can say with absolute certainty and guarantee that man is not by nature ugly.

Man by nature is born absolutely innocent, neither ugly nor cultured, just a tabula rasa.

Whatever you want to write on him he will become.

If you are alert and aware, you will not write anything; you will leave the child alone.

You will help him to be stronger, you will help him to be well-nourished, you will help him to be more healthy, you will take every care, in the way a gardener takes care of a rosebush. You will not force anything on the rosebush -- roses will come in their own time, they are hidden; you have just to take care.

Every child has roses, lotuses, buddhas hidden in him, in his innocence. Help him to remain innocent. Don't force so-called culture, society, in the fear that "if we don't force, he will become a barbarian."

Without any experimentation, this controversy has been going on for centuries. I know; I have been fighting in my university with my professors, because the same thing comes up again and again in every psychological and social effort to understand what to do with the child. And my standpoint from the very beginning has been not to do anything with the child; you simply protect.

Your function is to nourish the child, to make him healthy, to keep him intelligent. Let him be himself, his innocence intact -- he will find meditativeness very easy. If you want, if your temptation to teach is too much, teach meditation. That will make him more innocent. Don't teach knowledge, culture, civilization. That becomes the burden, that becomes the false personality, that becomes the hypocrisy.

We are living in a hypocrite world, not a cultured world. It is not really a cultured or civilized world. H.G. Wells was right.... He was writing a world history and he had almost completed it -- it is one of the greatest histories ever written, by a man of a very clear insight into things. A friend asked, "You know about the whole of world history.

What is your idea about civilization?"

H.G. Wells said, "It is a good idea, but it has to happen. It has not happened yet.

Somebody has to bring it to humanity. Humanity is still barbaric."

Just look at your armies, just look at your arms, just look at your nuclear weapons. Even barbarians are not that barbaric; even animals are not that animalistic. Have you seen any animal killing his own species?

A dog will never kill another dog. Sometimes you can see them fighting, but watch closely. Be a witness, and you will be surprised to discover... because I have been watching. I have not only been watching human beings, I have been watching all kinds of beings. I have never missed any opportunity to watch, to figure out what is happening.

When two dogs are fighting, you can see they are not really hitting each other, they are just barking. Everybody is showing his power and both are watching each other: "Who is more powerful?" This is arithmetic! Once it is decided, both understand clearly that one is weaker, then the weaker one simply puts his tail underneath his legs. Just a symbol, that "There is no point. I am weaker, you are stronger. Finished." And they stop barking, and the stronger does not take advantage of the weaker. That will be too un-dogly.

Once the weaker has accepted that he is weaker, then the stronger simply moves away; there is no point in fighting. In fact, they may become friends -- most often they become friends. Once things are settled, that one is weaker and one is stronger, what is the point of fighting, unnecessary killing?

And there is no humiliation in accepting your weakness. If you are weak, what can you do? You are weak, you are simply accepting the truth. There is no insult, there is no humiliation. You are simply giving the signal to the other person that "I am weak, and if you want to kill me you can kill." But that will not be fair, and that will not be just, and the stronger person immediately understands that "this poor fellow needs protection rather than attack." They become friends.

No animal species kills its own people except man. And no animals have weapons, so the fight is face to face, it is an encounter, direct. It has a dignity in it. It is only man who has invented weapons. And what is the purpose of the weapons? To shoot the enemy from far away, so you don't have encounter him face to face, eye to eye.

First, man invented arrows and the bow to kill faraway animals, faraway birds. You don't know... you cannot fight even with a strong dog. You cannot fight with a monkey, although Charles Darwin says you are the evolution of monkeys. But your retarded brothers are far stronger than you.

Even a man like Vivekananda, who was really fat, big, and an arch-egoist... He was passing somewhere in the Himalayas and one monkey started threatening him. And Vivekananda started running, forgot all about God, forgot all about spiritual powers. The monkey looked very strong -- they are strong, you cannot compete with them. From tree to tree they go, from house to house they jump. You cannot do that.

As far as monkeys are concerned, my feeling is they must be thinking that human beings are a fallen race, not evolved, because you have fallen from the trees onto the ground.

They are still higher than you! They must be laughing at Charles Darwin's one-sided judgment. Nobody has asked a monkey -- it is a one-sided judgment. Man is deciding on his own that he is the evolution of apes, of gorillas, of chimpanzees.

Have you seen chimpanzees and gorillas and apes? Just one chimpanzee is enough for five men! Within minutes you will be finished.

Man started with arrows, but the idea was to be able to kill from a distance. This was a cowardly idea, so that the animal cannot attack you; the animal is far away. Then came gunpowder, even more powerful. And your so-called great hunters sit up in a tree where the lion cannot reach. To deceive the lion they put a goat underneath the tree, so the lion smells the goat, and he comes to catch the goat. And when he is killing the goat, you --

from the top of the tree where he cannot reach -- shoot him. And you are a great hunter!

I have heard about a hunter. His wife was always asking him, "Sometimes you should take me also." This time she was adamant. She said, "Either I come, or you don't go. And not only I am coming, my mother is also coming."

The hunter thought for a moment, and he said, "If your mother is also coming, then come."

They put the old woman in a cave to watch the scene and they both sat in the tree, the husband and wife. The wife suddenly nudged the husband and told him, "Look! One lion has entered into the cave where my mother is!"

The hunter said, "It is the lion's own fault. I cannot help. Why has that idiot entered there? Now he will suffer as I am suffering."

Now there are missiles, which are the ultimate: you can kill somebody in America from here, and you don't have to see the enemy at all. Missiles are computerized -- you simply tell the computer, you press a button. And you don't know where the missile is. It may be somewhere in the ocean on a warship, but the computer knows where it is and the computer knows where it has to go. You can sit inside your house and destroy the whole of America, or the whole of the Soviet Union, or the whole of India, just by pressing buttons on the computer -- it is exactly like a typewriter. This is the remotest way of killing millions of people, not encountering them.

Now there are airplanes without pilots; the computer manages the plane. It will go to any city, it will drop the hydrogen bombs, or atom bombs, whatever you want the computer to do. The computer manages the flight, and the airplane will drop the bombs at the right place and turn back and come home. And there is no need for any human being to be inside the plane, because that is dangerous.

This is the latest development of the arrow. The arrow was the beginning of remote killing. The highest development of the arrow are the missiles controlled by computers.

Man is the most barbarious animal, and he kills man. And just now it had been discovered... perhaps it has been discovered before but was kept secret for a right time to release it. Hirohito, the emperor of Japan, has died, and immediately America released the news that after the second world war when Japan was defeated, there were many Japanese on small islands, in the forests -- guerillas, fighting. Because Japan was defeated, Germany was defeated, these people were left in the jungles of Burma. Having no food, they started eating the dead bodies of the British soldiers in the jungles of Burma. They have released that news just now, when Hirohito's funeral was about to take place. That has created a great problem. The Prince of Wales was going to attend, but he refused. Then Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth, was asked to go to the funeral of the emperor of Japan. He said, "I can go, but I belong to a special club that has been created by Mountbatten." Mountbatten was the viceroy in Burma for almost his whole life; only in the last part of his life he came to India. He created a special club of all the royal princes and old royalties of the world. So Prince Philip is a member of that Burma Club.

I had never heard about the club, because it was a secret club. Just now Prince Philip has said, "If I go, then I will be immediately expelled from the Burma Club. So I don't think it is right for me to go."

Just to prevent every important person around the world from participating in Hirohito's funeral, that news release was waiting.

Now, it is... The second world war ended in 1945. For what reason has this release been kept back? Just to insult Emperor Hirohito in his death! This is ugly behavior. And my feeling is that even Prince Philip, in the position of those Japanese soldiers who had been hungry for months, would have eaten the corpses. He should just think for a moment, "If I was in their position, what would I do?"

I know about the famous famine in Bengal -- even mothers ate their own children. There is a limit... man is very frail. A woman who has been hungry for one month, and the breast is no longer bringing any milk, the child is hungry... it is a double problem. She is suffering from hunger so she cannot give milk. There is no milk, she has become a skeleton, and the child is dying without milk. Just put yourself in that situation....

So the women ate their own children, or those who were a little more conscientious sold their children, so others ate them and they got the money to purchase something to eat.

But it is the same, just a little roundabout.

And there are cannibals, you know, in Africa. All the missionaries know -- missionaries are the only people who get caught by the cannibals, because nobody else goes into their forests. They used to be three thousand in the beginning of this century; now they are only three hundred. They have eaten their own people -- what to do?

Once in a while a missionary comes. Then there is great rejoicing, drums are beaten, the whole tribe gathers, and the missionary thinks that they are gathering to listen his sermon.

And sometimes, if the missionary is thin and not worth boiling at this point, they keep him, feeding him fruits, whatever is possible, and the missionary thinks these are very good people: "Unnecessarily they have been called cannibals, and they are serving me!"

And when he becomes really fat, then the drums beat again....

I have heard about one missionary. When he was put in a big pot in boiling water, he could not think what to say to these people. He said, "Just wait a little. You can kill me later on -- first let me give you a little taste of Christianity."

They said, "Wait! That's what we are trying. When we drink the soup, we will have a taste of Christianity! You just wait, don't be in a hurry -- and anyway you cannot escape."

Man is the ugliest animal in the sense that the people who think they have civilized him, they have cultured him, are absolutely wrong. All their culture and civilization only goes skindeep. Just scratch, and immediately comes the barbarian.

The only thing to make man really and authentically cultured is to bring up children in their innocence, and help their bodies to be healthy and their innocence to be meditative.

The child can reach his center very easily because he has nothing to obstruct him, no ideas, no thoughts, no prejudices. He is not Catholic, he is not Hindu; he knows nothing.

So when you say, "Go in," he simply goes in. And the road is clean, because no Bibles, no Korans, no Bhagavadgitas are standing like a China Wall preventing him. Children can learn meditation more easily than anybody else.

So my suggestion in response to your question is that every child is born innocent.

Neither barbaric nor a very cultured and religious person -- just innocent. And all that the child needs from the parents and the society is not knowledge, but a deepening of innocence. Meditation is the only way of deepening innocence, and if a child grows with his center blossoming you will have for the first time a society which is cultured, a society of the buddhas, the awakened ones. That's my whole effort here.

Now the sutras:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

DOGO VISITED NANSEN, WHO ASKED HIM, "WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"

DOGO REPLIED, "MY NAME IS ENCHI."

Enchi in Chinese means "round" and "wisdom." A man of wisdom becomes round.

Not physically -- if he becomes round physically, he will have to become a member of the TV Couch Potatoes! He will have to be in America. Then just sit on your sofa and watch television for seven and a half hours per day, average. And you cannot leave a sensational murder or rape story. You cannot leave a man who is raping a woman, in the middle, can you? So a special club is being created which is called the TV Couch Potato Club. You become a member of the club with a certain fee, and you have a card and a number. Whenever you feel that you need ice cream, or you need your lunch, or your supper, or your dinner, whatever -- you simply... By your side is the phone. You go on watching the TV, the rape. Nobody wants to miss any details. Just phone the number and give your membership number from the Potato Club, and tell the hotel, "Bring my dinner here." And immediately your dinner will be served just in front of you. You can go on watching.

People are even making love doggie-style because the man wants to watch the TV and the woman also wants to watch the TV. So a totally new fashion, absolutely original and American -- more particularly, Californian.

I don't know who gave this name to California, because it should be Californiac.

"Fornication" -- that is the basic root from which California should come. Whether it comes from that or not I don't bother.

Enchi means a man who is wise. And when a man is wise he does not have corners. His whole consciousness becomes round, shapely, graceful. The roundness represents grace.

And if you have sharp corners here and there, that means you are dangerous, you can kill anybody with your corners.

You know, in America they call the old-fashioned people "squares." The square has four corners. Hippies brought that word into existence. "Squares" -- they have corners, they are just looking to hit somebody. They are just ready to be angry and enraged.

In ancient Chinese symbolism, roundness, enchi, is a symbol of wisdom. One has lost all the corners of anger, violence, murder, rape, crime. One has lost all corners and has become completely round. The round shape certainly gives a feeling of peacefulness, settledness, grace, beauty, perfection.

So when Nansen asked Dogo, "What is your name?" DOGO REPLIED, "MY NAME IS

ENCHI" -- wise and round. Certainly it was not his name. He was describing his inner being.

The name is just a label put on you by your parents. You can change it. Just go to any court and change your name, there is nothing in it. It has no deep connection with you, it is just on your skin. You are labeled, it is a social convenience, because if everybody lives namelessly it will be very difficult. Somebody wants to call you -- now what to do? How to call you? How to address you? Somebody falls in love with you and wants to write a love letter. To whom? He will have to write, "To Whomsoever It May Concern"!

You are all nameless, born nameless. And you know it: that name is a fiction. So when a man like Nansen, a great master, a great buddha, asks Dogo, "What is your name?"...

Dogo was his name, but he did not say, "Dogo is my name." Because a master like Nansen will not ask about labels, he will ask about your very being.

Nansen could not deceive Dogo, although there was every possibility to be trapped, because he was asking, "What is your name?" And if Dogo had said, "My name is Dogo,"

he would have fallen in the eyes of the master -- "He is not worth much. It may be a wastage of time to accept him as a disciple."

But Dogo said, "My name is Enchi" -- wisdom, and perfectly round.

NANSEN ASKED, "HOW DO YOU EXPRESS THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM

DOES NOT REACH?"

You are saying you are wise, and you are saying you are perfectly round. Okay, just tell me the place where wisdom does not reach.

Certainly there is a place inside you where there is only silence, absolute silence. An eternal space, infinite sky, but nothing can reach there, not even wisdom.

DOGO REPLIED, "I WOULD NEVER EXPRESS IT."

The master is asking, "How do you express the place where wisdom does not reach?"

Another trap. But Dogo is really meditative. He says, "I would never express it."

Nobody can express that space where wisdom cannot reach. If wisdom cannot reach it, how can you express it? -- "So I will never express it. I will experience it, enjoy it, love it, dance it, but I will not express it. No explanation is possible."

NANSEN SAID, "THAT'S RIGHT. IF YOU EXPRESS IT, HORNS WILL GROW

AND YOU WILL BECOME A BEAST."

You will become just an idiot, a buffalo. If you start expressing that which is inexpressible, you will fall below human intelligence. It is right that you are saying you will never express it. Remember: IF YOU EXPRESS IT, HORNS WILL GROW AND

YOU WILL BECOME A BEAST -- a buffalo, utterly content, chewing grass.

Still, buffalos are not prohibited by any government: "Don't chew grass" -- "grass" in inverted commas; you know what grass I mean. But buffalos don't bother, they go on chewing the whole day. And so contented... they have never shown their discontent, they have never taken a procession against the government. They are not interested in any revolution, they are perfectly at ease with existence.

In utter ignorance, also, a certain contentment happens. But it is a contentment of ignorance. Another contentment happens when you are luminous; all darkness disappears, all ignorance is gone. That contentment is possible only if you are a buddha, not a buffalo.

Nansen said, "That's right. You are a right person who has come to me. But remember, even by mistake if you express it, immediately you will become subhuman." That's what symbolically he means: you will become an animal, a beast, you will grow horns. So please keep it a secret, hidden deep inside you. You know it, that's enough. Don't make it a knowledge, and don't make it an explanation, an expression.

A FEW DAYS LATER, DOGO AND UNGAN WERE SITTING OUTSIDE THE

DORMITORY AND DOING SOME WORK. NANSEN WAS TAKING A WALK, AND WHEN HE SAW DOGO, HE ASKED, "ENCHI" -- HE DID NOT USE THE

NAMÈDOGO'; he said, "Enchi, the other day you said you would never express the place where wisdom does not reach. Now, how are you practicing it?"

Another trap. The master's function is to create traps and your function is to jump, not to get trapped. This way the master helps you to come closer and closer to the truth.

He asked, "ENCHI, THE OTHER DAY YOU SAID YOU WOULD NEVER EXPRESS

THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM DOES NOT REACH. NOW, HOW ARE YOU

PRACTICING IT?"

In a very different way... If the man is bogus and not authentic, if he is simply repeating some answer which he has heard or read, he will be caught. The master will try from every angle possible. Now he is not asking about expressing, he is asking about practicing.

You cannot practice your enlightenment. You may not have thought about it....

Enlightenment simply is. You cannot practice it. It overflows you, it expresses in every gesture. It is all around you, but you don't have to practice it. It is your very nature. Do you practice anything that is your very nature?

The blood is circulating in your body -- are you practicing it? The food is being digested by your stomach -- are you practicing it? One day try: try to practice digesting the food, and your whole stomach will be upset for the first time in your life, and it will be very difficult to put it back.

You cannot practice. What is natural is already happening. Your practice may be a disturbance but not a help, a hindrance but not a help.

When he asked, "How are you practicing it?" very nicely, he was setting the trap. If Dogo says, "I am practicing it this way or that way," he is caught. Then Nansen could have said, "All that you have said before is borrowed, it is not yours."

But it was certainly his.

HEARING THIS, DOGO SLIPPED INTO THE DORMITORY, WAITED THERE

UNTIL NANSEN WALKED AWAY, AND THEN APPEARED AGAIN.

UNGAN ASKED DOGO, "WHY DID YOU NOT ANSWER WHEN OSHO ASKED

YOU THE QUESTION?"

When the master asked you the question, why did you not answer? Ungan was Dogo's brother.

But he has answered. By slipping into the dormitory and waiting there until Nansen walked away, he has answered by his action. He is saying, "It is so deep, just like my slipping back into the dormitory so that you cannot even see me. It is so deep, there is no question of practicing it; it is simply there. It is spontaneously functioning, not practicing!"

So just to avoid the answer in language, he gave it in a gesture: "Whenever I want to feel it, to experience it, I simply slip inside myself, hide myself from the whole world. There is no question of practicing. Don't ask such a question." That's why he has not paid any attention to the master's question.

UNGAN ASKED DOGO, "WHY DID YOU NOT ANSWER WHEN OSHO, the master, aSKED YOU THE QUESTION?"

DOGO REPLIED, "WHAT A CLEVER CHAP YOU ARE!"

You are just a clever chap; you don't understand anything.

A "clever chap" does not mean a man who knows. A "clever chap" simply means a man who intellectually comprehends that which is incomprehensible.

Dogo became enlightened before Ungan. Ungan lagged far behind because of his intellectuality, his cunningness. His clevernesses were all obstacles. They are good in the outside world, but in the inner world they are great obstacles. Don't be clever, just be innocent.

THEN UNGAN CAME UP TO NANSEN AND ASKED, "OSHO, YOU HAVE ASKED

A QUESTION JUST NOW OF MY BROTHER-DISCIPLE, ENCHI. HOW SHOULD

ONE ANSWER TO IT?"

NANSEN SAID, "HE IS QUITE GOOD AT THE BEASTS' WAY."

UNGAN ASKED, "WHAT IS THE BEASTS' WAY?"

NANSEN SAID, "YOU MUST HAVE HEARD THAT YOU SHOULD NEVER

EXPRESS THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM DOES NOT REACH. IF YOU EXPRESS

IT, HORNS WILL GROW. IF YOU NAME IT SO-AND-SO, IT WILL ALREADY BE

WRONG. YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY GO THE BEASTS' WAY."

Your brother is very wise. He knows how to avoid the beasts' way.

When he said, "He is quite good at the beasts' way," he is saying that he is quite good at knowing what is the beasts' way and how to avoid it. "He avoided my question completely, did not answer. And in a subtle way he expressed by his gesture of hiding deep in the dormitory, that in the same way that space is hidden inside you. It comes to explosion on its own accord. There is no question of practicing it."

You cannot practice enlightenment; you can become enlightened.

So all those who are trying to practice are going on the beasts' way. Those who are not practicing but just relaxing into their innermost being, are avoiding the beasts' way. And they will be the only ones who will become enlightened.

It is a beautiful anecdote to be understood.

Shiki wrote:

ALONE, I GO THROUGH A TINY VILLAGE,

A DARK WINTER DAY.

A DOG BARKS AND BARKS.

These haikus are so different in every way from anything that has been written by man anywhere else. Superficially you will see what is here: ALONE, I GO THROUGH A TINY VILLAGE,

A DARK WINTER DAY.

A DOG BARKS AND BARKS.

Unless I give you the key you will not be able to understand it.

What is he saying? ALONE, I GO THROUGH A TINY VILLAGE... He is saying, alone I go through the tiny village of the mind. It is full of thoughts, but I pass alone, silently, without getting identified with the villagers of my mind, the whole crowd. I remain alone even in the crowd.

ALONE, I GO THROUGH A TINY VILLAGE. Of course, your skull is a very tiny place

-- but still so full of crowd, so many images, so many dreams, so many projections, so many thoughts, almost incalculable.

... A DARK WINTER DAY.

A DOG BARKS AND BARKS.

The mind, when you enter into meditation, becomes almost a barking dog. It creates as much noise as possible to bring you back: "Where are you going? Are you mad? Leaving the mind and going out of it? -- that is the way of madness! Just come back in immediately and close the door!"

In India they have a beautiful proverb. The elephant is thought by the Indians, symbolically, to be one of the wisest animals in existence. And why have they thought that it is the wisest? -- because whenever an elephant passes through a village all the dogs gather... they cannot tolerate such a big animal; it is too hurtful to their egos. Just a mountain! and they look so tiny. Now it is unbearable; something has to be done.

So all the dogs -- and every village in India has so many stray dogs you won't believe, because no corporation, no municipal committee is allowed to kill anything, not even mad dogs. So they go on, everything in India goes on growing. As many dogs start barking, others who are far away immediately run -- "Something great is happening." So the whole population of dogs follows an elephant.

The proverb says, "Dogs go on barking, but the elephant does not even pay attention." He does not even stand and look at the dogs, he just goes on his way as if he has not heard them. It is because of this -- that he does not get into a fighting mood with the dogs. He pays no attention, remains absolutely indifferent.

And that is the way of a meditator: be indifferent to all the barking dogs of your mind. It is a tiny village and there are many stray dogs, which are going to bark at you with great arguments. They will give evidence: "It is wrong to go out of the mind. Have you not heard that every man who becomes mad, becomes mad because he has gone out of the mind? And where are you going? Out of the mind! Just come back. Regain your intelligence, don't lose it."

All the dogs bark, but the meditator goes on like an elephant without paying any attention. What they are saying is, in a way, true: you can go out of the mind from two doors. Either you fall below the mind -- then you are insane. If you fall above the mind, then you are enlightened.

There is a little similarity between the madman and the enlightened man, because both are out of the mind. That is the similarity. But one has gone beyond the mind, and one has gone below the mind -- although both have gone outside the mind. So the mind has a certain truth in the argument, "Don't go out of the mind; that is the way of becoming mad. Come back home."

But the meditator goes alone, just like an elephant -- dogs barking, barking, barking....

Slowly slowly, their barking fades away, far away, as if it is just an echo in the valleys, or maybe a dream you have seen somewhere. The farther you go beyond the mind, the less and less you hear the barking of the dogs, their arguments, their ideologies, their philosophies. Their religions, their theologies, their political beliefs, their social beliefs, their educational conditioning... all goes on barking, barking, but you go on like an elephant, reaching farther and farther, deeper into yourself. Soon you will be so far away, you won't even listen to the barking of the dogs.

And once you are that far away, dogs lose interest. They go on their way to do the work they had been doing, separately. Now there is no need of the assembly, the elephant has gone. Perhaps they believe he has gone because they were barking -- this is how mind functions: "Perhaps the elephant became afraid."

I have heard...

One elephant was passing over a bridge with a small fly sitting on his head. The bridge started wavering -- it was an old bridge -- and the fly said to the elephant after they had passed the bridge... It didn't fall, but it was wavering and there was every possibility. The fly said to the elephant, "Son, we were too much for the bridge!"

The elephant heard somebody saying something. He said, "Who are you? And where are you? And as far as my mother is concerned, she cannot sit on my head."

The fly came closer to his eyes... and it is strange that elephants are so big, but their eyes are very small. That shows God has not made this world. Such an unscientific attitude!

Such a big animal, and with such tiny eyes... must be the work of some idiot. It cannot be the work of an intelligent God.

So the elephant looked at the fly, and he said, "Mother, it is right. Because of us two, the bridge was shaking."

The idea that elephants are very wise comes from such stories. He accepted it: "Don't bother, don't argue with this stupid fly who calls me her son, and thinks that because of both of us the bridge was shaking. There is no point in arguing. It is better to accept that,

`Mother, you are right,' and just go on your way."

Don't be distracted.

Not to be distracted is wisdom.

Flies will be there, and mosquitoes will be there -- although you have the biggest mosquito net in the whole world! But they are waiting outside! They are very silent people, and very musical; when they get you caught, they sing a small song. And they are the ancient enemies of the meditators, but you have not to bother. You have to go on.

Mosquitoes, and flies, and dogs -- the whole world in fact, is against the meditator. They will all be barking at you! If you are sitting silently your wife will come rushing in,

"What are you doing? Why are you silent? Speak!" And if you speak, you are in trouble.

Just open your mouth, and you have not even completed the sentence, and the wife jumps on you. Whatever you do you are in trouble.

The whole world is against the meditator, because the meditator is doing something which the world is avoiding. He is trying to become a buddha, an Everest of consciousness -- that hurts everybody. Everybody will try to distract you. The priest, the politician, the parents, the neighbors, the friends -- everybody will try to bring you out:

"What are you doing wasting time?"

My whole childhood I had to listen to everybody... finally they decided, "Either he is going to be insane, or who knows? He may become a buddha. But he is not going to be a normal human being." Because everybody was telling me...

My uncles would come to me, my aunts would come to me, and it was a big joint family.

Wherever you go somebody is watching, "What are you doing? Why are you sitting silently?"

I would just tell them, "I am not sitting silently; silence is just happening to me, what can I do?"

"Happening to you? It does not happen to us."

I said, "What can I do if it does not happen to you? It happens to me! Don't disturb me."

By and by they became accustomed of me, so much accustomed that... My mother is here. I would be sitting in the house and she would ask me, "Have you seen anybody here? Because I want some vegetables to be fetched from the market."

And I would say, "I have not seen anybody. If I see anybody I will report to you." People finally accepted that "This man is absent. Just don't count on him." Once or twice they depended on me, and felt, "He is not reliable." In the morning they would send me to fetch some vegetables. In the middle of night I would come back to ask, "I have forgotten for what you have sent me." And they had been waiting the whole day, and they would beat their heads: "Where have you been the whole day?"

I said, "You know, on every point there are people ready to argue with me. And then I get so much involved in the argument, by the time I reach the market I have completely forgotten for what I had gone there. Seeing no reason, I went into meditation; I went to the river."

One day one of my aunts sent me, saying, "You can bring some bananas."

I said, "You really mean bananas? I can bring many! The whole city consists of bananas."

She said, "I don't mean that banana, I mean the fruit!"

I said, "Okay, I am going." So I went to the first shop in the market, the vegetable market, and I asked the man, "Which are the most precious and best bananas you have?"

And the man knew me, that I had never come into the vegetable market. He was the first shop near the door of the market. He knew that I was a little eccentric, so he gave me the worst bananas, almost rotten, and asked me the highest price. I gave him the highest price and brought those rotten bananas back.

I could see what was happening, but I said, "This is a good device to get rid of these bananas forever." So I gave those bananas to my aunt. She said, "Are you mad? These are all rotten!"

I said, "I asked the man to give me the best and said I would pay the highest price. So I have paid the highest, and you call them rotten? Now that man knows better about bananas than I know. I have no concern with bananas, either human or fruit."

She said, "Just take them out! There is a beggar woman sitting under the tree; just give them to her."

Even she did not accept them. She told me, "Throw them away. Do you think I am mad just like you? These bananas... In your whole life, for the first time you have come to give me something. These rotten bananas -- just throw them! Nobody is going to accept them."

I said, "That's okay." So I threw them into the gutter. After that nobody asked me to bring anything. I was accepted as an absent member of the family. And I enjoyed it because that relieved me of all the trouble, all kinds of barking. Nobody talked with me; nobody even took any note that I was present.

Even my mother was asking me, "Have you seen anybody?" -- and I am there, present!

And I would say, "Although I have not seen anybody in the house -- the whole house seems to be empty -- if I come across somebody, I will inform you."

The whole world is against the meditator because the meditator is becoming a stranger.

Everybody is going outward and you are going inward.

One drunkard was driving his car and his wife was continuously nagging him, "Be careful, be careful, be careful!"

The drunkard said, "Don't be worried. We must be reaching home because I am hitting more people. As I go ahead, hitting more and more people, that means the village is coming closer. Don't be worried! And I am going fast so that I will hit less people; otherwise, if I go slow, I will hit more. So don't be worried, you keep quiet."

And she told him, "Where are your glasses?"

He said, "With glasses on and this drunk, one starts seeing elephants and kangaroos and zebras and all kinds of things! I never wear my glasses when I am driving. Then you simply hit human beings. If you hit an elephant which does not exist, you are in trouble."

The wife simply sat silently. "There is no point, this man is absolutely drunk -- can't see, because I know his eyesight. And going so fast and hitting so many people... but still he is logical. That village is coming closer."

When everybody is going outward and you are going inward then you are hitting many, many people and everybody is angry: "Where are you going? When the whole crowd is going this way, where are you going? Against the current, against us all -- do you think we are mad?"

So remember: don't pay any attention to barking dogs. That's what Shiki is saying: Alone, move silently. Don't pay any attention to anybody. Dogs or no dogs, they will be barking; that is their nature.

Question 3

A question from Maneesha:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ONCE AGAIN YOU ARE THE ICONOCLASTIC VISIONARY WHO HAS A TOTALLY ORIGINAL VIEW OF WHAT IS HAPPENING, WHILE WE HAVE

SWALLOWED WHOLESALE THE NEW GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE

INFORMATION INDUSTRY, WHOSE CURRENT CREED IS THAT STALIN IS

BAD AND GORBACHEV, GOOD.

WHY DO WE KEEP BUYING INTO NEW GOSPELS?

Maneesha, there is a tendency in the human mind always to be a victim of the new. To prevent this tendency every society tries to program you that the old is gold. Every society from the very childhood conditions the mind against the natural tendency for the new -- turns it almost diametrically opposite: "Everything old is good. The more ancient the scripture, the more truthful." Every religion tries to prove that their scripture is the most ancient.

Why this attraction for the ancient? Every society thinks they have passed the golden age.

These are the conditionings from society. Culture -- whatever you have -- religion, education... these are to prevent you from falling for the new.

Otherwise, the natural tendency is to believe the new. But neither to believe the old is right, nor to believe the new is right. Not to believe is right.

Without believing anything, just be clear, like a mirror without any dust, and respond to reality with your totality. And you will always find the truth. No news media can deceive you -- nobody can deceive you. You get deceived because your clarity is not there, your mirrorlike ability to reflect the reality as it is, is not there. You are thinking through prejudices.

When the whole news media says that Stalin is a bad guy, it fits with your morality, with your puritan upbringing, your Christianity, your Hinduism. It fits with your upbringing that because he killed so many people....

Majid was saying to Amrito, my personal physician, that it is not only in the Soviet Union that Stalin killed one million people; he also killed revolutionaries in Spain, in Italy, in other countries. It is true, but I want Majid to know that there are revolutionaries and revolutionaries. There are revolutionaries who are really counter-revolutionaries, but they pretend to be revolutionaries. They are in the service of the status quo.

And Stalin certainly murdered people outside the Soviet Union because his conception was not that of a nationalist. His conception belonged to the original Marxian idea of one earth; the revolution has to happen all over the world, and if it is not coming from within a country on its own, then the countries which have become communist should help to bring the revolution to these other countries also. And every country which is capitalist, to prevent the communists, create pseudo-revolutionaries. They talk of socialism, they talk of beautiful things, but all these things are just to create barriers and confusion in the proletariat.

So Majid is right that Stalin killed many revolutionaries outside the Soviet Union, but he does not know whether those revolutionaries were revolutionaries, or anti-revolutionaries pretending to be revolutionaries. Their whole effort was to counteract the oncoming revolution of communism, and they succeeded to a large extent in deceiving people.

Stalin was not deceived.

I see that man with very clear eyes. He knew who was a counter-revolutionary, who was a wolf in the skin of a sheep. So you see that he is killing a sheep, but he is killing a wolf.

And so much fuss will be made by the countries where so-called revolutionaries are killed because those are the agents of the capitalists.

They were not revolutionaries.

Joseph Stalin's understanding about revolution was very pragmatic and practical. He was not a dreamer. He could see exactly how things are happening.

I can see it happening in India. The Socialist Party of India is known all over the world as a revolutionary party, but they are paid by the capitalists and they are the agents of the capitalists. One of Mahatma Gandhi's closest disciples, Vinoba Bhave... it is said that Gandhi had two successors. One was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, his political successor, and one was Vinoba Bhave, his spiritual successor.

Vinoba Bhave created a very great movement. He walked all over the country for almost twelve or thirteen years, and he created the idea in the mind of the people that this was real revolution, because he was asking from the landlords.... Eighty percent of India is in the villages, and eighty percent of its poor people are in the villages. So Vinoba Bhave would approach the village, sing devotional songs, his disciples would sing devotional songs... and he was considered to be Mahatma Gandhi's spiritual successor, almost a

"mini-mahatma."

So people would gather, the landlords would gather, and he would talk about VEDAS

and UPANISHADS -- which are appealing to the people -- he would talk about Ramayana, and give interpretations which are absolutely wrong, but appealing to the people.

And he would ask, after he had talked to people, that "Those who have lands -- if you have five children, let me be your sixth child. Give me the sixth part of your land and I will distribute it to the poor." And he collected millions of acres of land. But he became very much disappointed....

He was supported by all the landlords, capitalists, the government -- even Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who never liked the man before India became independent, because Jawaharlal was an ultra-modern man, educated in the West. Although he was a brahmin, he was not a vegetarian; he was eating meat, he was drinking alcohol. He was an ultra-modern, Western man, and Vinoba Bhave is absolutely antique. So Jawaharlal never liked the man, but he was very close to Gandhi so he had to suffer his presence.

But after freedom Jawaharlal started going to Vinoba Bhave. Whenever Vinoba Bhave was having annual conventions, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was present there, because thousands and thousands of people would gather. He could not miss the opportunity to show them that he was in support of Vinoba Bhave, and Vinoba Bhave would feel great that the prime minister comes to his every conference.

So it was a mutual conspiracy. And it was said even by the capitalists that Vinoba Bhave had to be supported because he was diverting the poor people from the communists. Poor people were thinking that if just by being asked, the landlords are giving their land, what is the problem? Why unnecessary violence? Why does revolution have to be violent when without violence people are giving their land?

And they thought, if people are giving land, they will also give money... because Vinoba Bhave was not yet working in the big cities. First he wanted to transform the bigger part of India which lives in the villages and later on... the big cities are not many. If he succeeds in transforming eighty percent of India, he will be able to transform the remaining twenty percent without any difficulty. And he certainly became one of the greatest hindrances for the communists.

Communists believe that revolution has to be violent, there is no way out of it. People are not going to drop their private property easily. But Vinoba proved that they were dropping it, so even communist strongholds became weaker.

But the reality is that all the land that was given... and when it was distributed, somebody got half an acre, somebody got one acre because they had a bigger family. It was distributed according to the number of people in the family. But what are you going to do with one acre? And finally it was found that all the land that he had received was absolutely useless, unfertile. Those landlords were giving land that was so stony, on the hills... Vinoba never went to those places to see what kind of land he was receiving, he was just receiving it in public meetings. When it was distributed, then it was found that the poor people refused to take it, saying, "What will we do with this land?"

And those who received it were at a loss, because just the land is not enough. In the first place it was too small a piece of land; it was not going to give them enough nourishment, they would remain undernourished. Secondly, they need bullocks, they need a plow, they need seeds, they need manure. They don't have anything, what to do with the land? And the land is so stony, unless hard work is done those stones cannot be removed.

They needed tractors and bigger mechanical devices to make their land fertile; but they were so poor, from where to get all these technological devices? They could not even purchase two oxes to work for them. And not only that, it became a trouble for them because they had to pay property tax. And the land is not even giving anything to them --

property tax!

So they gave the land back to the distributing committee of Vinoba Bhave, and Vinoba Bhave was so disappointed that he went back to his ashram in Pavnar near Wardha.

But for thirteen years he was thought to be one of the great spiritual revolutionaries. And the government and the capitalists all supported him, because "this man can divert the poor from the communist party." And he certainly diverted them for a time.

So you have to understand, Majid, that all revolutionaries are not revolutionaries. Many of them are wolves wearing a sheep's skin. They could not deceive Josef Stalin. He killed them -- he was killing the wolf. You saw that he was killing a sheep.

It needs immense clarity to see the world as it really is, and to see how society creates certain dynamics, certain pseudo phenomena to protect itself. There are more counter-revolutionaries in the world pretending to be revolutionaries than there are authentic revolutionaries. But it needs a tremendous clarity, coming only out of meditation, so that you can figure it out.

I know you have been in deep love with me. That's why I can hit you without mercy --

mercy is for the enemies, not for the friends. Even Jesus has not said, "Love your friends." He has said, "Love your enemies." That's good! As far as friends are concerned, hit them! This is my improvement on Jesus.

Majid belongs to a radical party in Italy. The head of that radical party wanted to come to me and discuss with me how things should to be done. Of course Majid was the mediator; he had persuaded the man to come to me. But I saw an interview he had given to a journalist, in which the journalist asks, "We hear that you are going to Poona. Are you interested in the philosophy, in the ideology of Osho Rajneesh?"

And he said, "I have nothing to do with his philosophy or with his meditations or with his ideology. My sole concern is that if he can give me ten thousand sannyasins in Italy to become members of the Radical Party, I will go and kiss his feet."

When I saw that interview, I could see that the man is bogus. And I informed Majid that

"I don't want to see that man. His whole interest is that I should tell sannyasins in Italy to join the party."

It is not a radical party, Majid; it is not revolutionary. And you can see it, even though you are not so clear about things. Just to get votes, your Radical Party leader arranged a woman... she must have been a prostitute or must have been having the mind of a prostitute. She remained sitting in the square, the main square of Rome, with uncovered breasts and said to people, "I will allow you to play with my breasts, I will allow you to kiss my breast, or to kiss me, if you become part of the Radical Party." A membership drive, and she managed to get ten thousand people to become party members.

Do you think this is revolution? This is absolutely prostitution! And the people who have become members of your party don't understand anything about your party. These must be the most third-rate people in Italy, because I can't think that people who were standing in queues to play with her breasts... I don't think any intelligent person, any person who has any self-respect, will stand in those queues. These must have been the worst people, pimps and all kinds of idiots.

A crowd was there watching all this scene. And that woman must be just a vegetable -- a cabbage, not even a cauliflower. I make a distinction between the two, although they are the same. But a cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education. These people who have become members of the Radical Party just by touching the breast of an idiot woman, you think are revolutionaries?

But the head of your party was behind the whole scene. I refused. I said, "Don't bring him here because he is not a revolutionary. He simply wants to have a great ego, become more powerful." Perhaps he hopes to become the prime minister of Italy.

I don't prevent my sannyasins. They are free to join anything, but I would always remind them: join something out of your meditativeness, out of your clarity. I am not in any way preventing anybody. Your freedom is absolutely sacred to me. I will not interfere --

even if you are going wrong, I will not interfere. I will tell you that you are going wrong, but you are free to go.

Now I could not tell my people to belong to the Radical Party. It is not a radical party.

Majid, I would like you to create a real, authentic revolutionary party. Don't collect pimps and prostitutes.

And Maneesha, just as Stalin is a bad guy, and you have accepted it because all the propaganda of the communist world was small in comparison to the propaganda of the capitalist world... The capitalist world has all the newspapers, magazines, television stations, radio stations. They have the whole propaganda machine in their hands. So when they propagated that Stalin is a bad guy... just repeat any lie again and again and again and it becomes almost true. If not truth, then at least a truism.

Now those same people of the same capitalist propaganda machine are telling you Gorbachev is a good guy. I don't bother what they are saying. I look who is behind the screen. Who is forcing these people to propagate the idea that Gorbachev is a good guy?

The same people, because they want Gorbachev to become personally involved in his ego. That will be their success and that will be the destruction of the Soviet Union and the great experiment of communism I have been telling you about.

But unless you have the eyes of a meditator, it is very difficult. One German Biblical scholar has written a book comparing me and Jesus. A very honest man -- because he is a Christian; still he praises me higher than Jesus, compares us point by point, and on every point my score is better than that of Jesus. He writes in his book a few very revealing facts about why in Germany the whole news media is creating rumors and lies about me. And that's what people read, that's what people believe.

The reason is that the whole propaganda machine in Germany is owned by Christians, and they are cutting out anything positive about me. I know what happened to one of the STERN journalists. He had come here and STERN was interested only in something sensational. Whether it is true or not, who cares? Sensational stories sell. They bring more subscribers to the magazine.

But Satyananda became so interested and involved that he became a sannyasin -- I don't know what his German name used to be. He became a sannyasin. He thought that it would be far better to write the story from the inside, joining all the meditations, joining all the groups. "I will be reporting more intimately, honestly. Just being a spectator from outside is one thing, but to be a meditator..."

So he became a sannyasin and he meditated and he joined the groups and he really became involved. In the beginning it was just to have an inside view. But once you are inside, it is very difficult to get outside! He wrote a beautiful story about the commune and what is happening here, and when he went back, the STERN owners simply refused to print anything because, "He has been hypnotized. Otherwise how can he write such a story? He has been completely brainwashed -- and why have you become a sannyasin?"

He said, "I wanted to write honestly, and to write honestly was possible only if I became an insider. In the beginning it was just a show that I was a sannyasin, so I could get in.

But as I experienced meditation and groups and the change that came to me, now I am really a sannyasin. And I am not hypnotized and I am not brainwashed."

But they would not publish his story. He simply renounced his post -- and he was their best journalist -- and came back to India. And he lived here, he lived in the commune in Germany, in America, and he is making money to come back here so that he can be here forever.

This man writes that all the magazines that go on propagating against me in Germany are owned by the Christians, Catholics or Protestants. So they cut out anything that will strike a sympathetic note in people's minds. They just go on creating antagonism; on any point, they invent something. And it is very easy to invent lies.

Now Gorbachev is a "good guy" because this is the way to persuade him to destroy communism. I would like Majid to create a really revolutionary party, and my sannyasins will be helping you. And Italy is one of the lands I own! It is very strange -- Italy I own, Germany I own, Japan I own. These are the three countries which were fighting together against the whole world!

It is very strange that amongst my sannyasins number one are the Germans, number two are the Japanese, number three are the Italians; others are here in very small numbers. But these three countries were together in the second world war, so something brings them to me. They are utterly fed up with war, they are utterly fed up with fascism, they are utterly fed up with people like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Hirohito. That frustration brings them here in search of a world which will not have wars, because they have suffered so badly. Others have not suffered so badly. That's why I own these three countries.

And I would like you to create a revolutionary party on your own. Why be a second-hand man in that Radical Party? Be the leader of a revolutionary party and I will support you!

And more and more Italians are going to come; just all that we need is more spaghetti!

It is time for Gurudayal Singh. He always manages to find the right place and the right time.

Gorbachev is intent upon really getting rid of the memory of Joseph Stalin. So he orders Stalin's bones to be removed from his grave in the little village in the Caucasus, and tries to find some other country where Stalin can be buried.

Gorbachev calls up Margaret Thatcher in London, and asks her if Stalin can be buried in England.

"Sorry, old chap," replies Thatcher, "but we already have Karl Marx buried here. Two big-time communists would be too much and too many for us!"

Then Gorbachev dials Berlin, and asks if Stalin can be buried there.

"Sorry, comrade," says Helmut Hamburger, the government spokesman, "but we already have Adolf Hitler buried here. Two such tyrants in one place would be too much for us."

But Rubin Rosenbaum, from the Israeli government, hears of Gorbachev's problem and phones the Kremlin.

"Since Stalin fought against the Nazis," says Rubin, "we agree to bury him here, in Jerusalem."

"Thanks," replies Gorbachev, "but no thanks! We cannot risk another idiot getting resurrected!"

Gorgeous Gloria goes to have her eyes checked with Doctor Peek, the eye specialist.

"Doctor," says Gloria, anxiously, "I think I am going blind!"

So Doctor Peek gives Gloria a thorough check-up, but cannot find anything wrong.

"Your eyesight seems perfect to me," says Peek. "Twenty-twenty vision."

"Yes, but you don't understand!" insists Gloria. "The problem happens every time I make love."

"Really?" says Doctor Peek, eyeing Gloria. "Well, in that case, I shall have to make a more thorough examination!"

"Ah! Doctor!" says Gloria, taking off her clothes, and lying down on the couch. "If you insist!"

A few minutes later, Doctor Peek is huffing and puffing, and Gloria is moaning and groaning.

"I still don't see any problem," gasps Doctor Peek.

"Go on! Go on!" cries Gloria, moaning louder and louder.

Suddenly, Gloria lets out a loud, orgasmic shriek -- "Now, doctor! NOW! I cannot see a thing!"

Paddy makes a lot of money on his used furniture stall one year, so he shuts up shop and goes to Paris for a holiday.

Two weeks later he is back in Ireland, sitting in the pub and telling Seamus all about his adventures.

"Oh! It was great!" says Paddy. "Paris is out of this world!"

"Really?" says Seamus. "But how did you get on, without knowing a word of French?"

"It was simple," says Paddy. "For example, I met a girl in the park. So I took out a pencil and a piece of paper and drew a picture of a taxi. She knew what I meant, so we went for a drive. Then I drew a picture of a knife and fork and she knew that I wanted to take her out to dinner."

"That sounds great," says Seamus.

"I'm not finished yet," says Paddy. "Then I drew two people dancing and we went to a night-club. At the end of the evening, she took the pencil from me and drew a big double bed."

"Amazing!" cries Seamus. "She even knew that you were in the furniture business!"

Nivedano...

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your bodies to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to enter in and rush towards your very center of being.

Gather your whole energy, your total consciousness and rush faster and faster, deeper and deeper....

As you come close to your center, a great silence descends over you.

Just like soft rain... so cool, so serene, so peaceful... as if in the Buddha Auditorium there is no one.

A little deeper and you will find tremendous blissfulness.

Just one step more and you are at the very center of your being.

A great ecstasy arises in you, a great divine drunkenness; you feel almost drowned in ecstasy, and you encounter your original face for the first time.

Your original face is the same as the buddha's face.

Everybody is a born buddha. Whether he realizes it or not, that is his choice. The buddha has only one quality, and you have to understand that quality because only if you understand that quality, buddha can become your reality, your day-to-day reality.

Then you don't need meditation. Your whole life is meditative. That quality is witnessing.

Witness that you are not the body.

Witness that you are not the mind.

Witness that you are only the witness.

At this moment you are the buddha, the awakened one. This is your birthright.

At this moment you enter into an eternal life, immortal existence. All the cosmic doors open for you.

At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth because everybody on the earth is involved in trivia -- money, power, prestige. You are moving into a totally different dimension, diametrically opposite -- just trying to find the origin of your life.

The origin is also the goal.

When the origin is found, you have found the goal. The circle is complete. From the same silent space you had arisen, just like a wave arises in the ocean and again disappears in the ocean... Meditation is a way of disappearing as a dewdrop, as a wave, and appearing as the ocean.

To make the witnessing more clear,

Nivedano...

Relax, let go. But remember only one thing: You are a witness.

As your witnessing deepens, Gautam the Buddha Auditorium starts turning into an ocean.

You start disappearing like dewdrops, slipping from the lotus leaf into the ocean.

No waves, no ripples. Absolute, perfect silence.

This is your very nature, dhamma.

This is your very being, the buddha.

This very body is the buddha and this very earth the lotus paradise. Only people in deep meditation can understand such a tremendous sutra.

Gather the many flowers that are growing all around you, gather the ecstasy and drunkenness which is divine.

You have to bring this drunkenness, this ecstasy, all these flowers of blissfulness, to your day-to-day life. And don't forget, you have to persuade buddha to come along with you.

He has to come, he is your nature. It is just that you have never asked him, never invited him. He has remained just a seed hidden deep in the center of your being.

Once you start asking him, requesting him, welcoming him, he has to come.

These are the three steps of your enlightenment:

First he will be coming just like a shadow behind you. But his shadow will be almost tangible, you can touch it, you can feel it. He will surround you with a strange fragrance from the beyond.

Second step: you will become his shadow.

And the third step: you will disappear into the buddha. You will not be anymore; only the buddha, only the existence. You are burned in the Zen Fire, and the Zen Wind has taken all your ashes far away.

Nothing is left.

This nothing is your inner sky.

This nothing is your very nature.

Buddha is nobody. Buddha is a pure nothingness, an open space, infinite and eternal.

Nivedano...

Come back, but remember to come as a buddha -- with the same grace, the same silence, the same beauty, the same blissfulness.

Sit for a few moments just to recollect what space you had entered. Remember you had gone beyond your mind, remember you had touched the greatest experience in the world

-- of witnessing -- and you followed a golden path which leads exactly to the hidden buddha, to the hidden splendor inside you.

And just feel, the buddha is behind you. His coolness is almost tangible, his fragrance fills your whole being. His luminosity makes you more and more drunk.

My whole effort here is to create drunkards, drunks of the divine -- people who have found their buddha, their dhamma, their nature. Once you find it, everything starts growing in you, to your very potential. You will reach the highest peak, the Everest of consciousness, and you will reach to the greatest depth of the Pacific Ocean of your being.

The day you merge with the buddha, the day you disappear and only buddha remains, will be the greatest day of your life.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

Chapter #7

Chapter title: My interest is in you

5 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Archive

code:

8902055

ShortTitle:

FIRE07

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

142

mins

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

WHEN UNGAN HIMSELF BECAME A MASTER, HE ONCE SAID -- WHEN

ADDRESSING AN ASSEMBLY OF MONKS -- "HERE IS A CHILD FROM A RESPECTABLE FAMILY: WHATEVER YOU ASK, THERE IS NOTHING HE

CAN'T ANSWER."

ONE OF HIS DISCIPLES, TOZAN, STEPPED FORWARD AND ASKED, "HOW

MANY BOOKS ARE THERE IN HIS HOUSE?"

UNGAN REPLIED, "HE DOESN'T HAVE ANY BOOKS, NOT EVEN A SINGLE

LETTER."

TOZAN THEN ASKED, "HOW COULD HE BE SO WELL INFORMED?"

"HE SELDOM SLEEPS DAY OR NIGHT," WAS UNGAN'S RESPONSE.

"I WANT TO ASK SOMETHING OF THE CHILD," CONTINUED TOZAN. "IS IS

POSSIBLE?"

"HE COULD ANSWER, BUT HE WOULD NOT," REPLIED UNGAN.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, UNGAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE HAVE YOU

BEEN?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "I HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THE DHARMA TO A ROCK."

UNGAN ASKED, "DID THE ROCK NOD?"

THE MONK HAD NO ANSWER AND UNGAN COMMENTED, "IT NODS BEFORE

YOU TALK."

Friends,

First, a little bit of news.

The first failure of Comrade Gorbachev:

The central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has declared that Gorbachev's first act of reform, to eradicate alcoholism, has failed. The party declared that Gorbachev's radical changes have not yet been achieved; on the contrary, the sale of illicit liquor has grown, state liquor revenues have fallen, and the masses have been constantly complaining about long queues to buy vodka.

Second:

Over the past year Comrade Gorbachev has allowed the following symbols of capitalism to do business in Russia: Coca-Cola, MacDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Fast Food Pizza.

This is all junk that America wants to pour on the very innocent people of the Soviet Union.

Third:

Just today he has allowed the world's largest advertising agency, Saachi and Saachi, to begin advertising campaigns in Russia for western goods. Saachi's, who are advertising agents for Margaret Thatcher, said they would also like a contract "to polish Gorbachev's image, although he does not really need it at the moment."

On the one hand, he is saying that Russia's economy is failing, and on the other hand, he is giving contracts to advertising companies to advertise western goods in Russia. Do you see the contradiction?

The latest data about the economy of Russia is that twenty percent of the people are living below an adequate nourishment level. But in America, fourteen percent of the people are below this level -- the difference is only six percent. For just six percent, if communism has to be thrown out and American capitalism has to be brought in, it is a total tragedy. Six percent of the people can be helped without bringing American capitalism in.

There was no need to declare to the world that they are no longer making nuclear weapons. There was no need to tell the world that they are cutting their military budgets and armies. They should have done it silently, and raised the level of those six percent without any problem! It is so simple, but Gorbachev is going about things absolutely irrationally. He is throwing out the baby with the wash water!

His effort is absolutely against the Soviet Union, and this first failure of his policy will not be the only failure. This is the beginning of the end. All his policies are going to fail because all his policies are against basic fundamentals of communism. And one man cannot undo seventy years' sacrifice of millions of people who have created communism

-- the first experiment in human history to bring a classless society into existence.

Now the questions....

Question 1

The first question:

ACCORDING TO YOUR VISION, WHAT EXACTLY IS COMMUNISM?

Communism simply means moving private property into the hands of the collective --

because private ownership of property creates classes, the oppressed and the oppressors.

Money brings more money, attracts more money; poverty attracts more poverty. And a man who sees all around him people having money, beautiful houses, cars, and he has not even food to eat... his dignity as a human being is destroyed. He starts feeling subhuman, inferior, unsuccessful, and to create this feeling in millions of people just for the sake of a few who will be rich is against the whole of humanity.

Communism brings dignity to everybody because all the properties, the land and everything, belong to the collective. Nobody can be richer than you and nobody can be poorer than you. Equality is equivalent to communism, and equal opportunity for everyone to blossom into whatsoever he has hidden in his potentiality.

Communism is only the first step of a great experiment. Once people are without inferiority complex, once religions are removed -- that is part of communism, that there is no god and the so-called religions are just the opium of the people. Once religions are removed, soon a tremendous vacuum will be felt by everybody, because these religions have been stuffing you with systems of belief which are all fiction. But they help you to feel that you are full.

I have come across poor aboriginals in Bastar, in the central provinces of India, who sometimes don't get even one meal in a day. And without food, sleep becomes absolutely difficult. The stomach is asking for food, goes into cramps, and you cannot sleep. I have seen with my own eyes, people just drinking water to fill the stomach, to deceive the stomach, and putting a brick on their bellies and binding it around themselves with a rope, so the stomach feels that it is not empty -- inside water, outside the brick. You can deceive the stomach by such false methods, but that is not going to give you nourishment.

So they are just skeletons.

Religions have been giving you false ideas, fictions, to console you.

Communism means removing all fictions from the human mind, giving it a good cleaning of all the past that has filled it with rubbish.

Marx's vision never reached beyond that, but my understanding and my vision is far more perfect. To me, communism is only the first stage -- not the last. And as communism succeeds, people will drop the inferiority complex -- which is needed by the priests, which is needed by the people who are driving humanity into different kinds of slavery.

And when there is no God, there is no guilt -- without guilt no organized religion can live. It is guilt that takes people to the churches, because they become afraid: they have committed sins, now they will suffer hellfire for eternity. So something has to be done to remove the guilt.

All religions provide fictions.

In India just now there has been a kumbha mela; it is going on in Allahabad. Millions of people -- perhaps this is the biggest fair in the world -- just go to the Ganges.... To take a dip in the Ganges means all your sins are taken by the Ganges and you come out absolutely clean. That does not mean that you will stop committing sins; that simply means you have found a very cheap method to get rid of your sins and guilt, so you can commit as many sins as you want! There is no problem, just a small journey to Allahabad, take a dip in the Ganges, and all your rapes and murders, and anything that you have committed, the Ganges takes away. This is the Hindu strategy to keep you feeling guilty.

And the priests are there, you cannot take the dip alone. The priest has to take you into the Ganges in a boat. And he will be reciting mantras, and then you take the dip, and you have to pay the priest. The priest is the agent of the God who does not exist.

In the Catholic religion, you have to go to the priest to confess your sins, and for just ten dollars and five "Hail Marys" your sins are erased. God has forgiven you.

I have always wondered that not a single Catholic theologian -- and they have great theologians, very intellectual -- has raised the question that when a man rapes a woman and God forgives him just because he has given ten dollars to the priest and done five

"Hail Marys," is God absolutely unaware of the woman who has been raped? The criminal is forgiven -- and the victim? Not a single theologian of any religion has ever thought, "What about the victim who has suffered?"

A man kills someone and he goes to the priest and he is forgiven. He goes to the Ganges, gives some money to the priest, takes a dip, and he is forgiven. What about the murdered?

God does not seem to be just. He is in favor of the criminals and sinners. For them he is a father who forgives -- but what about the victims? There is not a single word in any scripture of the organized religions which takes note of the victims. God seems to be favorable to the sinners, to the criminals, but not favorable to the victims. He has no sympathy for the victims.

Just today I received a letter from a sannyasin who has been abused by her father in her childhood, sexually abused. And now she suffers continuously the nightmare that her father exploited her innocence. She did not know anything about sex, and her own father....

Now that father must have gone to the church and been forgiven by God. What about this girl, who is suffering even now? God has no consideration for this girl. Because the father has abused her, she has become afraid of sex, so she cannot fall in love. The image of the father comes in between. So she is suffering because of the father, she has nightmares about her father and all the abuse that he has done to her, and because of all that, she has become frightened of love. If anybody approaches her she will escape, so she will suffer more because she will never be nourished by love. Because her own father has destroyed her trust in love, her trust is completely finished. If the father cannot be relied upon, then on whom are you going to rely? But God has no consideration....

This God is an absolute fiction created by the priests. Communism dissolves these priests, dissolves organized religion, takes away all the opium that they have been giving to the people.

Marx was not aware that this was not going to be the complete phenomenon. I can see with more clarity than any Karl Marx or Lenin or Stalin.

Communism has created a vacuum.

You must be surprised, you must be continuously talking amongst yourselves; Amrito informed me that in the canteen it seems like the early days of the Soviet Union before the revolution, when all the young people were discussing about communism and revolution. The whole Soviet Union before the revolution was agog; everybody was talking about what this revolution is going to be -- "What is communism?" And there were anarchists like Prince Kropotkin and Bakunin, who were talking about a world without the state, without government, without any kind of domination, and all this was discussed.

For all these days you have been discussing -- only the Indians had disappeared. They have come back today, knowing that this is the last day. Such cowards -- and they think they are spiritual! And if any problem is going to happen, it is going to happen to me, not to them. They are just listeners, nobody is going to put them in jail, and they are not going to be shot, but they all disappeared. I have been watching. Already there are no more than half a dozen people who come from Poona, but they also disappeared, seeing the danger.

Communism creates a vacuum -- that is why I support it. My whole vision is that that vacuum can be only filled by meditation. And I am against Gorbachev because he is filling it with Coca-Cola, bringing the priests back, opening the churches. I have some fundamental reason to oppose him because he is opening the doors to all the rubbish that took the communists seventy years to finish.

Now is the time that meditation should be introduced in the Soviet Union. The door should be opened only to the people who are awakened, enlightened -- the buddhas --

because they can fill the vacuum, not with any fiction but with your own potential growing into the vacuum and blossoming into lotus flowers.

So communism is a first step. The second step is spiritualism, and the third step is anarchism. Anarchism is not possible unless people are really, authentically spiritual.

Prince Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Bakunin -- all were unaware of the fact that they were talking about the flowers but they had forgotten about the roots and the trunk. You cannot create flowers without roots, without a trunk.

Communism is just the roots, and the trunk will be meditation. And the flowers will be a world without any domination, without any interference with individual growth -- a world without states, a world without boundaries. Just a world consisting of individuals -

- not organizations, not nations, not races.

These are the three steps, and I can see them clearly because I have no identification with any -- neither communism nor spiritualism nor anarchism. I am just a witness. I have no involvement with anybody. I am just a mirror who can reflect the whole situation as it is, and even the future as it can grow if the right nourishment is given.

So don't think that I am a communist. I don't identify with anything. Don't think that I am an anarchist. I don't identify with anything. Don't think that I am a spiritualist. I don't identify with anything.

I am just a pure awakened being, just a mirror who reflects -- who has no involvement, no commitment to anything.

I don't belong to any organization, I don't belong to any party, I don't belong to any 'ism'.

You have to understand clearly:

I simply see things because I have gone beyond thoughts. My no-mind is just a pure space in which I can see the actual growth of consciousness and how it should happen.

So communism, to me, is just a basic ground. It is the roots. Spirituality is going to be the trunk and the branches and the foliage. And then at the highest peak comes the absolute freedom from all kinds of dominations, oppressions, suppressions, from all priests, from all politicians.

You blossom like a buddha.

My only interest is to bring out your buddha as a fully-opened lotus in the early morning sun, with small dewdrops shining so beautifully that even real pearls cannot compete with them.

I am not a politician, but that does not mean that I am not interested in human welfare.

And I will say things which may hurt your prejudices. I want to destroy your prejudices completely. I want to create a vacuum. That vacuum is absolutely needed; otherwise you don't have space to grow your potential.

You are filled with religious rubbish, you are filled with political rubbish, you are filled with economic rubbish, all kinds of ideas that you have borrowed. You are not having your own insights -- that rubbish prevents it, it keeps you blind, it gives you a sense of fulfillment which is false.

So remember it. It will be very difficult for outsiders to understand me, almost impossible. Misunderstanding is the only possibility for me as far as the outside world is concerned. But at least you should not misunderstand me.

I have no interest in Stalin, and I have no interest in Gorbachev. My interest is in you!

And when I see that you are filled with a certain prejudice I have to bring that prejudice to the surface so you can see it. All kinds of moral, puritan programming -- I have to fight so many enemies that you are nursing within you! But my whole concern is to make you utterly empty.

So I am not preaching anything; I am not supporting anything. I don't have any doctrine, no philosophy, no cult, no creed. My whole effort is to clean your inside completely from all that the society, the education, the religion, the family, have forced into you. Unless you get rid of it you cannot grow in meditation. You cannot become a buddha.

Communism is a better opportunity than any other kind of social structure because it is negative, because it is without God, without heaven, without hell, without the idea of reincarnation. And it creates a certain equality of opportunity for man and woman.

I have told you just a few days ago that Gorbachev cannot succeed in prohibition. You cannot succeed in prohibition even in India, a hot country which does not need any alcohol. It is absolute nonsense in a country like the Soviet Union which is half the year covered with snow. Taking poor people's vodka, which keeps them warm, is an absolute impossibility! He started with a wrong policy. That shows he does not understand simple arithmetic. If he wanted to be successful he should have declared that nobody can drink his own urine. He would have been successful -- of course you are allowed to drink anybody else's, but not your own -- and he would have been hailed as a messiah! Only one person, Morarji Desai in India, would have felt a heart attack, but who cares about Morarji Desai? In fact, he needs a heart attack! That program would have successful immediately. The whole of the Soviet Union would have hailed Gorbachev as the greatest man of their history.

Just choose the right things, which are going to be a success. Gorbachev is choosing wrong things.

Now his second policy is that women should go backwards. No woman is going to go back to the kitchen. Women are professors, women are engineers, women are doctors.

They are pilots in the army, and they proved in the second world war that they could fight shoulder to shoulder with any man on every front. They were bombers, they were flying planes to bomb. Now you cannot force them back. It is as impossible as... once you have taken the toothpaste out of the tube, then try to force it back, and you will understand how unsuccessful Gorbachev is going to be. Just a small experiment you can do in your bathroom -- nobody will know about your failure....

Now these women who have lived as professors, doctors, and engineers and pilots and scientists and academicians -- you want them to go back to the kitchen? It is impossible!

The whole of womankind in the Soviet Union will oppose Gorbachev.

I have heard that his wife is very intelligent, is a law graduate just as he is a law graduate.

In fact, she should start a revolution against Gorbachev! She can understand the situation of women far better than Gorbachev.

And for what is he doing this? Again reducing women to a second-class category of citizens -- what is the reason? Just those six percent... If women are forced back into kitchens and imprisoned to take care of the babies and the husband, and their financial independence is destroyed, there will be more posts vacant for men to occupy. It is because of this small unemployment that is creating a certain undernourishment -- just to give men more opportunities, withdraw all women from the status that they have gained. Do you think he can succeed in it? A woman who has lived as a free individual, not dependent on her husband's bank account... Only in the Soviet Union do women have their own bank accounts, their own salaries, their own way of living. Only in the Soviet Union are women free to move. They have their own clubs, they have their own societies, they have everything they want.

All over the world the woman is immobile. She is completely crushed, and her birthright to freedom of movement has been taken from her. She can go only to the church -- that's why in churches and temples you will find only women.

Once I was addressing a meeting on the birthday of Krishna, and I was amazed: there were only women! It was a huge temple devoted to Krishna, and the speaker of the assembly in that state where the meeting was held was the inaugurator of the meeting.

And that's why I say these politicians are retarded.... He was the speaker and the chancellor of the university. And he was inaugurating the meeting, not even seeing that these women were sitting keeping their backs towards him because they were gossiping with each other and looking at each other's clothes and each other's ornaments. Who cares about Krishna? They have only this possibility, only this chance to meet with other women.

There must have been at least twenty thousand people, maybe one thousand men and nineteen thousand women. And they were grouped in separate small groups, because you cannot talk with nineteen thousand women, so four women, five women were making a group. The whole meeting was divided into small groups, and great gossip, and so much noise!

And that idiot speaker... his name was Pandit Kunjilal Dube. Kunji means key, but it can also be kunj. Kunj means a beautiful grove of flowering trees. So the name was given by his parents because Krishna used to play his flute by the side of the Jamuna River in a beautiful kunj, in a beautiful grove of mango trees. So he was named after Kunjbihari, which is another name for Krishna. His parents must have given him the namèKunjilal'

thinking that kunj is a sacred word for the worshippers of Krishna.

But in Hindi kunji also means key -- and chabi means key. But with kunji there is a difficulty, it can also mean kunj. So the whole university where he was the chancellor called him Pandit Chabilal Dube, because chabi exactly means kunji, exactly means

"key." No problem about chabi, there is only one meaning to it.

... So Pandit Chabilal Dube was inaugurating the meeting, and I pulled on his shirt and I told him, "To whom are you talking? Nobody is listening! Women are sitting, keeping their backs to you -- what kind of retarded mind have you got? Perhaps the students are right when they call you Pandit Chabilal Dube. You are just retarded!"

And he was very angry with me, because I was in his university -- a professor in his own university...! But he knew me, and that if he makes any fuss, I will take him to task and I won't care about any professorship. I used to carry my resignation always in my pocket. And I used to show people that, "Only the date has to be signed. Any moment you want my resignation it is here. I keep it -- typed -- in my pocket. Who knows at what time...?"

I refused to speak. The organizers were very much disturbed. They said, "What to do with these women?" They were shouting on the mike again and again, "Stop gossiping!

Turn towards the speaker!" Nobody was interested. Everybody knows about Krishna, what are you going to say about Krishna?

And I simply refused to speak. I said, "I am not an idiot. And this is my last time. I will never again accept any invitation by any organized religion. Anyway you are fortunate that I am not speaking, because I was going to condemn Krishna as much as possible! So these women have saved you. I am going." And I told Pandit Chabilal, "You come with me. Why are you sitting here? You have inaugurated, just be finished! Come with me."

I had to call him out because he had the car. And out of fear he started calling me

"Panditji." I said, "Never use that dirty word for me. You are Pandit Chabilal, I am not. I am not a pandit!" -- Pandit means rabbi, bishop, priest. "You think it is honorable -- I think it is a four-letter word. You just drop it. Don't ever use that word for me, otherwise I will hit you" -- in his own car!

He said, "Don't say it so loudly, the chauffeur is there."

I said, "I don't care! He knows absolutely about you, who you are." And the chauffeur started laughing. It was a limousine, so he immediately closed the window; he said, "You are a dangerous man -- in my own car...?"

I said, "This car belongs to the state, it is not your own car. It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you."

He said, "What?"

I said, "Yes! It is owned by the state, and I am as much a citizen of this state as you are.

And you are a public servant -- I am the public."

He started looking out the window just to avoid me. But I said, "I will continue -- you have to listen. Why have you taken me in your car?"

He said, "Strange. You called me out!"

I said, "I had to call you, because I have not brought my car. The organizers brought me in their car; now that I have told them I am going to speak against Krishna, they are not going to give me their car. I needed a car, I don't need you. You can get out if you want!

And your chauffeur is in my favor: you saw how he laughed."

He said, "You don't understand that I am also the chancellor of the university."

I said, "I don't care about chancellors and vice-chancellors." I showed him the card that was my resignation.

He said, "Why are you showing me this card?"

I said, "I have just to put the date, and finished! You are no more my chancellor and I can throw you out of the car. I am just being courteous to your old age, because the danger is you may be finished if I throw you out. So keep quiet, and don't harass me."

He said, "Strange!? You are harassing me -- in my own car!"

And it used to happen with that Pandit Chabilal Dube in many places, because he was a speaker of the state and a great scholar of Hinduism, and the chancellor of the university.

Just by virtue of holding the office, every speaker of the parliament becomes the chancellor of that particular university where I was a professor.

So I told him, "You are not really even worthy to be a lecturer in the university. You are only B.A., Ll.B. -- that too, third class."

He said, "Who told you?"

I said, "I have my sources -- your wife. She showed me your certificates also. I have taken photocopies of them, and if you make any trouble for me I am going to publish all those certificates in the newspapers. A third-class B.A., Ll.B. who is not even a postgraduate is the chancellor of the university!"

He said, "It is better not to fight. I am sorry that I disturbed you, but don't publish anything." I had no copies of the certificates or anything, but I knew he was a third-class Ll.B. and had become a politician because he could not succeed in the court.

The same was the situation of Mahatma Gandhi. He became a politician because the first time he entered court... The whole night he had been preparing and preparing his first appearance in the Bombay High Court. And he was a barrister from England. As he entered the court, his legs started trembling, and he could speak only two words --

"Your Honor" -- and he flopped down perspiring and had to be carried out. That's why he became a politician!

But nobody bothers about the realities of life. These failures become politicians because politics needs no qualifications, has no standards. This is the only profession which any idiot can enter.

Communism, to me, is a very significant step towards the ultimate buddhahood.

Question 2

The second question:

APPARENTLY WHEN RONALD REAGAN OR GEORGE BUSH GO TO THE

CHURCH TO KNEEL AND PRAY TO THEIR GOD, AT THEIR SIDE IS AN AIDE

WHO CARRIES THE BRIEFCASE WITH THE CODES THAT ALLOW THE

PRESIDENT TO SIGNAL AN IMMEDIATE LAUNCH OF THEIR NUCLEAR

ARSENAL, THEREBY EFFECTIVELY TERMINATING ALL LIFE ON EARTH.

BUT STILL STALIN IS THE BAD GUY. IS THERE ANY LIMIT TO OUR

HYPOCRISY?

Even in the church -- this is a fact! When Ronald Reagan used to go to the church --

and now George Bush, because the White House has its own church, the presidential church -- one aide would carry a briefcase. And people became concerned: what is in the briefcase? Why every day when Ronald Reagan is kneeling down and praying to God, does one man stand by his side with a briefcase?

Finally it was discovered that the briefcase is not an ordinary briefcase, it has all the buttons inside for nuclear weapons to be launched, immediately -- from the church! If there is not time enough to reach to the White House where they have all the buttons for the nuclear weapons... This was a portable death to the whole earth.

But it is still carried; now it is George Bush who is kneeling. And one never thinks about what kind of hypocrisy... You are praying to God, you are kneeling down, and you are keeping by your side death for the whole planet.

There is certainly no limit to our hypocrisy. We have succeeded only in creating a hypocrite world. It is not civilized, it is not cultured.

Question 3

The third question:

IN THE USA, AWASH WITH DRUGS, VIOLENCE, MENTAL ILLNESS, AND

GENERAL ALIENATION, IT SEEMS THAT MARX'S MUCH-AWAITED CRISIS OF

CAPITALISM HAS COME. BUT IT IS A SPIRITUAL RATHER THAN AN

ECONOMIC CRISIS. WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

This is the USA: full of drugs, and full of nuclear weapons, mental illnesses, violence --

violence without purpose. I have told you that just recently six people were killed in L.A.

because the cars were delayed, some accident somewhere miles away must have happened. Now people get angry, they want to reach their home as quickly as possible. In L.A. or in New York, in San Francisco, you can reach your home from the office by walking more quickly than by driving.

This was discovered when once it happened that for three days the electricity went out in almost half the northern part of America. All the lights disappeared; elevators could not work, signals on the road stopped working. So the traffic had to stop; otherwise there would have been tremendous clashes. When there are no signals giving a red or green light to stop or to go... so all the traffic had to be stopped, and people had to walk. Then they discovered that by walking they reached to the office more quickly, they reached their homes more quickly!

Now cars in America are moving with less speed than bullock carts in India! For hours the traffic is jammed, and it certainly creates anger. You are hungry, you want to go home to eat something, to drink something, and here you are sitting in the car just boiling, honking your horn. But that is useless because everybody is honking his horn for miles. So you only hear horns, honking and honking.

Then a few people became so furious that they forgot completely that the man ahead is in the same trouble. He is not preventing you -- nobody knows who is preventing; nobody knows what has happened far away. Maybe a truck has upturned, maybe a crash of six cars, and unless that is removed....

Until the police come, it cannot be removed, because the police have to take care. Until the insurance agent comes it cannot be removed, because the insurance agency has to pay the price of the car. If a man has died, there is even more delay. One never knows what is happening.

But people -- six people, not one; just in one day! -- went so mad that they took out their guns and shot the people just ahead, who were not at all responsible.

But in anger, in rage, you become absolutely blind. It is not only that love is blind --

hate is much blinder, but nobody has said it. "Love is blind" -- nobody says about hate, how blind hate can be.

Now this anger is absolute madness -- shooting the poor fellow ahead, who is in the same jam as you are. And then immediately the sale of machine guns, automatic rifles went up. Every person who had a car purchased an automatic gun, because it is dangerous -- at least if somebody kills you, you can also kill somebody. It does not matter who is killed, but somebody is killed. At least you can show the gun. And people hang their guns above their heads in the car, so everybody can know: "Beware! If you honk too much behind me or ahead of me, I am going to shoot!"

America is perhaps the only country where there is no special license needed for keeping such dangerous arms, automatic guns. One gun can kill one hundred sixty people without reloading the bullets, and you can purchase one from any dealer. The dealer needs the license to sell, but the people who purchase don't need any license.

And in mental illness, America is far ahead of any other country. So many psychoanalysts, so many different schools of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, psychology, psychosynthesis, analytical psychology, and many kinds of therapies are available to people. Millions of people are suffering from mental sickness. Millions of people are suffering from too much eating. Millions of people are suffering because they don't have any food, any clothes.

This decadent America, this absolutely sick country -- and Gorbachev wants to imitate America! He wants to become another President Ronald Reagan or George Bush, and he wants his beautiful Soviet land to be turned into a sick, decadent, rotten America.

Yesterday I was telling you that Ronald Reagan has also been nominated for a Nobel peace prize. I thought and thought: What peace has he created in the world? Then I remembered that he has done something peaceful, and he needs a Nobel Prize for it.

Many of you must remember Rajneeshpuram, our commune in Oregon, in America. It was a desert, one hundred twenty-six square miles of just pure desert. It had been for sale for forty years and nobody purchased it -- what will you do with a desert? We purchased it, and we transformed the desert into a beautiful oasis. Five thousand sannyasins were living there, working there, dancing, singing, meditating. It was one of the most joyous places in the whole world -- so much dancing, so much joy, so much love, such friendliness. No family -- the whole commune was one.

So I remembered: Ronald Reagan has destroyed Rajneeshpuram violently, and he has restored the peace of the desert. That seems to be the reason for his nomination for the Nobel peace prize. Now it is peaceful again: no dance, no singing....

The day I arrived there was only one house which they had made for me. There was not a single bird. I was amazed to see, it looked like a nightmare! All around just bare mountains with no trees, with no birds. In the morning you could not hear a cuckoo, you could not hear any chirping and tweeting of all kinds of birds. Neither in the evening could you see thousands of birds coming back to their trees. It was a dead desert!

We cultivated it, we made it green. We made small artificial rivers, we made a big dam.

Even if for five years there had been no rain, we had enough water for five thousand people. And at the time of festivals there were twenty thousand people, and we had beautiful tents for fifteen thousand people. We had created a new kind of tent. And rather than giving us a reward for the new tent, we were punished! A court case was put against us saying that these people have created, without permission, a permanent structure. A tent is not a permanent structure!

We had made a tent which can work all the year round -- in rains, in summer, when the snow is falling in winter, when it is too cold. It could be heated, it could be air-conditioned; there was no question of any rains or any snow getting inside it. It was a totally new phenomenon. All those who saw it were immensely impressed, that we had made something which could have a world market. In Saudi Arabia, or in deserts where people live in tents, but in the hot sun the tent is just boiling... an air-conditioned tent you have never heard of! And in snow, in winter, the tent can be heated. It was absolutely safe all the year round.

And a court case was filed against us saying that we had made a permanent structure. I told my attorneys, "Just take a tent in a truck, take it inside the court" -- because it takes only ten minutes to put it up, and ten minutes to take it down. "A building that can be put up in ten minutes and taken down in ten minutes cannot be called permanent. If the judge has any eyes to see, there is no need for any argument. It is not a question of law, it is a question of whether the judge has eyes or is blind."

Can you put the White House together in ten minutes and then within another ten minutes take it down?

They called it a "permanent structure." A permanent structure needs a license or permission from the government. We never thought that a tent could be a "permanent structure."

With violence, with lawlessness against their own constitution, they destroyed the commune. That I remembered yesterday, that perhaps because he has restored the peace of that dead desert, Ronald Reagan deserves the Nobel Prize. I don't know of any other peace that he has created.

Gorbachev is trying to bring this decadent and mentally sick America into the Soviet Union where there is no psychoanalysis, no psychiatry. People are as mentally healthy as they have ever been anywhere, for the simple reason that their food is simple, nourishing but not fattening; their work is simple, their life has no complications. The wife earns, so there is no problem of continuous fighting that she wants a fur coat, she wants a new car, or she wants this and she wants that and you cannot afford it, you are going bankrupt, so rather than fulfilling her wishes you jump from a one hundred-story building. The business is finished, the wife is torturing you, what else to do?

So many people jump out of their windows. Do you think all these people are taking LSD? -- because LSD is the only drug that gives the idea that you can fly. So LSD has to be taken only under guidance and all doors and windows have to be closed, because it creates the absolute certainty in the mind that you can fly: you just jump out of the window and open your wings.

America has been discovered many times, and always has been hushed back up. Now that moment has come again. America has to be hushed up again and forgotten. Columbus has not done a great service to humanity. He is one of the enemies.

Seven hundred years ago, America was known but then hushed up. Five thousand years ago America was known but was hushed up, because whenever... it seems the very land is poisonous. It drives people crazy.

So it is not for the first time that we will have to hush it. It has been hushed many times, discovered again, hushed again. Now if you don't hush it again, it is going to destroy the whole world.

And this poor fellow Comrade Gorbachev, who is no more a comrade, wants the Soviet Union to become America. He has forgotten that even if you become like America you will be second-rate. The Soviet Union had a dignity of its own, far more healthy mentally, far more healthy physically.

It was the Soviet Union who stopped the second world war. If Adolf Hitler had not gone more insane... because for years he had success, continuous success, and no western power was able to prevent him. Great nations like France surrendered in twenty-four hours. Naturally, he had a pact with Stalin before he started the war, that "We will remain friends. Neither you have to attack Germany, nor will we attack you." Because he knew perfectly well that in the first world war it was because of Russia's snows that Germany was defeated -- not by Russia's armies; just the snow is enough to destroy any enemy.

When Russian snow starts falling, you cannot move an inch. All your tanks, all your trucks, all your food supply is blocked. The snow is heavy, and it goes on falling for six months continuously. Your soldiers are covered, your tanks are covered; even helicopters cannot find where to drop the food. Everything has disappeared under a vast cover of white snow.

In the first world war it was not the czar's soldiers, because they had returned home, but snow started falling and Germany got defeated. Hitler was aware of it. He first made a pact and treaty with Stalin, that "You will not attack us, and we will not attack you."

Hitler went on winning for years continuously, all over Europe, and Japan was winning continuously for years -- even Calcutta was ordered to be evacuated because Japanese armies had reached Rangoon, and the second attack was to be on Calcutta. The third attack was to be on Jabalpur -- where I used to teach, but not at the time of the second world war -- because Jabalpur was the very center of India and because of its position the British government had its biggest factory for armaments there. So after Calcutta, the next target was Jabalpur. Even Jabalpur was getting ready to be evacuated. Once they attacked Calcutta, Jabalpur would have to be evacuated.

Such tremendous success got into the head of that madman Adolf Hitler, and he started attacking the Soviet Union. He forgot the treaty, he forgot that the Soviet Union had kept its word and had not interfered at all. And that was the point of his defeat. It was Stalin who was responsible for saving the world from Adolf Hitler and Hirohito and Benito Mussolini.

Just not to give the whole glory to the Soviet Union, America immediately rushed to help Europe. Up to now, America had been keeping aloof, but when they saw that the Soviet Union was going to have the whole glory of saving Europe and the whole world, they immediately rushed in on both fronts. MacArthur was sent with great armies to fight Japan, and Eisenhower was sent to Europe. If Adolf Hitler was going to be finished, the glory should be shared by the Soviet Union and America both, not only the Soviet Union.

But it was, in fact, only the Soviet Union who ended the second world war and the desire of fascism to rule over the whole world.

Question 4

The fourth question:

HEARING YOU TALK, I HAVE THE FEELING THAT CHRISTIAN FASCISM

WON'T REST UNTIL IT HAS DESTROYED EVERY TRACE OF COMMUNISM. I FEEL CHRISTIANS' VENGEANCE AGAINST COMMUNISM FOR POWERFULLY

CHALLENGING THEIR WORD OF GOD.

That's true. The whole of Christianity is against communism for the simple reason that the communists have thrown the Bible and thrown God and thrown all the Christian missionaries and Christian priests out of the Soviet land.

The whole of Christianity is sitting on a volcano. And America is basically a fundamentalist, fascist Christian country. It is so fascist in its ideologies that all Charles Darwin's books, Ronald Reagan wanted to burn. His teachings should be prevented in every school, college, university, research institute, and all his books in all the libraries, all the colleges, schools, universities, should be burned. Why? Because his idea of evolution goes against the Christian idea of creation. This is real fascism.

Certainly Christianity will take every chance to destroy communism, but it is not going to succeed. Seventy years has made the Soviet Union strong enough. Gorbachev will be thrown out; Russia is not going on the way of capitalism and Christianity. The time has come when the Soviet Union should say to Gorbachev, "Good-bye comrade," and expel him from the Soviet Union. He can have the Nobel Prize and go to America and become a Yankee.

The sutra:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

WHEN UNGAN HIMSELF BECAME A MASTER, HE ONCE SAID -- WHEN

ADDRESSING AN ASSEMBLY OF MONKS -- "HERE IS A CHILD FROM A RESPECTABLE FAMILY: WHATEVER YOU ASK, THERE IS NOTHING HE

CAN'T ANSWER."

You have to understand a few symbols. Ungan himself became a master, became an enlightened buddha. Addressing an assembly of monks, he said, "Here is a child..."

Unless you become a child again, you cannot be a buddha. That innocence is needed, and I am destroying all your conceptions in every possible way, just to clean your mind and bring it closer to that of a child who knows nothing.

"HERE IS A CHILD FROM A RESPECTABLE FAMILY."

He is not talking about ordinary families. In Zen the "family" means the whole lineage of Zen masters. That is called the "dhamma family," from Buddha to Mahakashyapa, to Bodhidharma, to Rinzai -- this is the family. He is not referring to his ordinary family.

Whenever you come across the word `family' in a Zen anecdote, remember: they are referring to their masters, who have given them their second birth. The first birth is physical, which parents give to you; the second birth is spiritual, which only one who is enlightened can give you. It comes from master to disciple.

This is the family; it goes back twenty-five centuries to Gautam Buddha. So when Ungan said, "HERE IS A CHILD FROM A RESPECTABLE FAMILY," he is saying, "Here is another buddha again, from the lineage of thousands of buddhas. That is my family, I am coming out of it. My master has given me a new birth.

"WHATEVER YOU ASK, THERE IS NOTHING HE CAN'T ANSWER."

This child, this innocent clarity, can answer any question. Whatever you want to ask, you can ask and you will receive the answer.

ONE OF HIS DISCIPLES, TOZAN -- who finally became an enlightened master --

STEPPED FORWARD AND ASKED, "HOW MANY BOOKS ARE THERE IN HIS

HOUSE?"

You are talking about the child, and he is asking, "How many books are in the house of the child?" Because at that moment he was only a scholar and he knew only that unless you have scriptures, you cannot answer all the questions. From where will you get the information? He had no idea that there is another source, transformation, from where answers simply arise -- not out of information, but out of an inner revolution. At this moment he was only a scholar, so of course he asked, "How many books are in that child's house?"

UNGAN REPLIED, "HE DOES NOT HAVE ANY BOOKS, NOT EVEN A SINGLE

LETTER."

He is saying that for a man who is awakened there is not even a single letter, nothing to say about a thought, nothing to say about scriptures. That child is absolutely innocent.

There is no knowledge, no information; there is only a clarity.

Out of that clarity a response comes. That response is original and authentic, to any question.

TOZAN THEN ASKED, "HOW COULD HE BE SO WELL INFORMED?"

If the child you are talking about has no books, not even a letter, then how he can be so well informed that, as you are saying, he can answer all your questions?

This is the way of the scholar. He cannot go beyond the words, he cannot go beyond the scripture. He cannot go beyond information.

Information comes from outside and transformation comes from inside. He is not aware that there is another way also. Not that the childlike consciousness -- that purity, that innocence of a buddha -- has all the answers in it. No, nothing -- it has no answers, but as your question arises that purity responds. It is a mirror. It shows your face; it reflects.

Out of nothingness, out of silence, arises a right answer.

TOZAN ASKED, "HOW COULD HE BE SO WELL INFORMED?"

Ungan's response is very important. He says,

"HE SELDOM SLEEPS DAY OR NIGHT."

His awareness is so complete that there is no trace of sleep left in him. No trace of any unconsciousness, no trace of any darkness -- everything has become so luminous and light....

It is from this alertness, day and night -- awareness, day and night -- that his answers come.

Anando comes to wake me up at 3:30 in the afternoon. It is a difficult task, to wake somebody who is awake. So poor Anando, as she opens the door I say, "Hello, Anando."

She has never had a chance to wake me up to now. Just hiding behind my blanket, I say,

"Hello, Anando!"

Just the other day she was asking, "It is strange -- I open the door so silently and you are hiding in your blanket and you immediately respond."

Amrito knows that it is absolutely impossible for me to sleep. He tries every possible medicine and he brings all kinds of compact disks which create sleep, and the whole night I have to listen! But I am not at all tired. In the morning when I wake up from my whole night of awakening, I have lost the very sense of time.

That's why last night I went on and on. I would have gone on and on, just I remembered Sardar Gurudayal Singh; otherwise there was no question. Only in the car, Anando told me, "You know it is 11:05!"

I said, "My God, that is a record! If I had not remembered Sardar Gurudayal Singh, last night was going to be a marathon discourse. Only early in the morning when sun was rising, I would have allowed you to go for breakfast! Some day it is going to happen....

"I WANT TO ASK SOMETHING OF THE CHILD," CONTINUED TOZAN. "IS IT

POSSIBLE?"

"HE could ANSWER, BUT HE WOULD NOT," REPLIED UNGAN.

Now he is saying something very important. He could answer, but he would not because the answer will not be as authentic as his experience. The answer will be far below the truth. He can answer, he knows the truth, but he would not answer because he cannot betray the truth.

So every buddha is talking around and around, hoping that somehow you will look at the center at some point. But he goes on round and round, taking you in circles, pointing always to the center but never saying a single word about your center.

You have to experience it.

You are the answer.

So Ungan replied, "HE COULD ANSWER," because he knows it, "BUT HE WOULD

NOT," because language does not allow it.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, UNGAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE HAVE YOU

BEEN?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "I HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THE DHARMA TO A ROCK."

UNGAN ASKED, "DID THE ROCK NOD?"

... Because in Zen the rocks are as alive as you are. They grow. The trees are as sensitive as you are -- perhaps more sensitive. You can talk to them. So Ungan does not question the fellow -- "Are you mad, talking to a rock?" -- on the contrary, he asks, "DID THE

ROCK NOD?"

The question is not that you were talking, the question is whether the rock was listening.

If it was listening it would have nodded.

THE MONK HAD NO ANSWER AND UNGAN COMMENTED, "IT NODS BEFORE

YOU TALK."

That's what makes Sardar Gurudayal Singh special. He laughs before you tell the joke.

Everybody laughs after the joke, that is very normal, but laughing before the joke shows immense trust that something great is going to happen.

Ungan said, "IT NODS BEFORE YOU TALK. If you are really in tune with the rock, it nods before you start talking. And you have not even received the nod after you stopped talking." Of course the man was completely embarrassed, shocked: what is this man saying, that the rock nods before?

It really nods before.

You have to be a master -- then everything around you is always receptive, always ready to receive something from you. Even rocks are not rocks; they also have a heart, perhaps of a different kind.

The whole existence is alive. Nothing is without life. This is one of the fundamentals of Zen, that the whole existence is alive. That's why it can discard the concept of God. There is no need. The whole existence is alive, sensitive, intelligent, is capable of growing into a divine experience of being the awakened one.

Basho wrote:

ALL THE CUCKOOS

DANCING

IN THE TREES.

The cuckoo is the sweetest musician. The cuckoo creates the sweetest songs. Its body is ordinary; if you see the cuckoo, it looks just like a crow, not much different, but it has a tremendous spirit. When it sings there is no comparison to it.

Basho must have opened his eyes, sitting in a mango grove, because cuckoos are found more often in mango groves. They like the mangoes. The mango is thought, particularly in the East, to be the king of all the fruits. It is! Its sweetness is such that wherever there are mango trees, you will find cuckoos waiting for the mangoes to become ripe. And when they become ripe then they go really cuckoo! Dancing, singing, "The mangoes are ripe!" They love the mangoes. So Basho must have been either by the side of a mango grove or inside it.

Buddha always loved, his whole life, to have his camps -- because he was continuously moving -- in mango groves. Perhaps India has more mango trees than any other country, and at Buddha's time it had even more because it was thought to be one of the virtues to plant mango trees. All the kings, all the rich people tried to create as many mango trees as possible; all roads were surrounded for hundreds of miles by mango trees. And every village, every town, had its own mango grove outside the town, by the riverside or by the lake, because the mango grove was the shelter of all the wandering mystics.

The trees are very thick, shadowy trees, and when there are thousands of mango trees they give a great cool breeze even in the hottest summer. When the mangoes are ripe, cuckoos come running from all over because the mango has a very special fragrance.

That fragrance brings the cuckoos from far away and as long as the mangoes last, they remain in the mango groves, singing and dancing. Their song is certainly the sweetest song in existence.

So Basho must have come out of his meditation, and suddenly he saw all the cuckoos dancing in the trees.

Just visualize these haikus, always. See the mango trees, see the hundreds of cuckoos dancing, singing, and their sweet song will fill your very heart.

Question 5

Maneesha's question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

HEARING YOU TALK ABOUT COMMUNISM BEING COMBINED WITH ZEN, MARX COMBINED WITH BUDDHA, I HAD THE FLASH THAT ROSA

LUXEMBURG WOULD BE DELIGHTED TO HEAR YOU.

I HAVE THE FEELING THAT THIS IS WHAT SHE WAS LOOKING FOR AND

COULD NOT FIND OR EXPRESS IN HER TIME, BUT SHE MUST HAVE HAD

THE LONGING IN HER ALREADY.

SHE WROTE THE FOLLOWING WHILE SHE WAS IN PRISON IN BRESLAU, GERMANY, IN 1917.

"HERE I AM LYING, ALONE, WRAPPED IN THESE BLACK FOLDS OF

DARKNESS, BOREDOM, IMPRISONMENT, THE WINTER -- AND AT THE

SAME TIME, MY HEART BEATS WITH AN UNBELIEVABLE, UNKNOWABLE, UNKNOWN INNER JOY....

"IN THE DARKNESS OF LIFE I'M SMILING, AS IF I KNOW SOME MAGIC

SECRET THAT GIVES THE LIE TO ALL EVIL AND SADNESS AND CHANGES IT

INTO BRIGHT LIGHT AND HAPPINESS. I'M LOOKING FOR A REASON FOR

THIS HAPPINESS AND I DON'T FIND ANY, AND I HAVE TO SMILE AGAIN. I THINK THAT THE SECRET IS NOTHING ELSE THAN LIFE IN ITSELF."

WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMENT?

Maneesha, I have always loved the woman revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg. She is the topmost revolutionary as far as women are concerned. She had the same quality of revolution as Lenin -- and she was a woman, so certainly she had a totally different approach to revolution. It has not to be just of the body, it has also to be of the soul. It has not be just on the outside of man, in the social structure; it has to be of man in his consciousness also.

Certainly she was not aware of any meditative rebellion within. That's why she says, "I'm looking for the reason." And she thinks she has found the reason in life itself -- but that is a very superficial reason. Without meditation you don't know the secrets of life, you know only the surface of life. Even that much gives you enough joy, but you don't know the depth, the abysmal depth and the infinite height, immeasurable both. Once you know this vertical dimension of height and depth, life becomes a pure joy, a laughter, a song, a dance, an ecstasy.

Rosa Luxemburg was in a wrong place. She should have been in the East. Out of all the revolutionaries in the West, perhaps she was more sensitive and would have learned the Eastern way of getting deeper into life, not just on the surface.

On the surface life becomes "eat, drink, be merry." It is superficial, you get bored sooner or later. Unless you reach to the abysmal depth and infinite height, simultaneously, you don't know what a miracle life is, what a mystery life is.

But she was in search; she died before she could have found it. But death is not death.

Rosa Luxemburg may be here -- if not today, then tomorrow.

All those who are seeking the depth of life and the secret, the ultimate secret of consciousness, are bound to move -- knowingly or unknowingly -- towards someone who has already reached the whole.

... It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh again.

Officer Dopeski, of the Warsaw Police traffic control team, is sitting in his car eating a potato sandwich when he sees a bright red Ferrari speed past him at one hundred and eighty miles per hour.

Officer Dopeski nearly chokes on his sandwich in excitement as he slams his door, starts his car, flicks on his red flashing lights, flicks on his siren, fastens his seat belt, checks his pistol, opens the glovebox and looks for his ticket book, slams the gearshift into GO, and stomps on the gas pedal.

One hour and two hundred miles later, Officer Dopeski finally manages to stop the speeding Italian sports car.

"Okay," says Dopeski, fumbling nervously with his ticket book. "Just tell me your name!"

The driver of the Ferrari looks up and says, "My name is-a Alfonso de Villa Martino Rivera Giovanni Tortoni Baloni."

"Well..." replies Officer Dopeski, perspiring, "... don't do it again!"

Newton Hooton drops into the Lucky Luke Saloon one evening, and orders a triple martini.

"What a coincidence," says Max, the bartender. "Just an hour ago, I was saying that nobody ever orders a triple martini any more."

As Max is mixing the drink, both he and Newton look up as Lucy Leggs rushes in and asks for a triple martini.

Newton and Max look at each other in amazement.

"Hey, lady!" cries Max. "That is incredible! The gentleman here just ordered a triple martini, and we were just discussing how nobody ever orders that drink these days. This is really a coincidence!"

"Well," says Lucy, "I am celebrating a very special occasion. My husband and I have been married for nine years, and we have always wanted a child. Just today, I have learned that I am pregnant!"

The two men congratulate Lucy and then Newton says, "Well that is a coincidence, because I am also celebrating a very special occasion. I have been breeding exotic chickens for years, and I have been trying to produce a purple-spotted hen. And just today, I found out that I have been successful."

"What a coincidence," says Lucy. "How did you manage it?"

"Well," replies Newton, "I just changed cocks."

"Wow!" cries Lucy. "That really is a coincidence! Me too!"

Comrade Gorbachev has heard rumors that his policies are being discussed in Poona, India, so he decides to go and check it out. When his plane arrives at Poona airport, the Indian Army is there to welcome him.

As Gorbachev steps off the plane, the military guard of honor fires off the traditional twenty-one gun salute.

"What were those shots?" asks Swami Deva Coconut, standing in the crowd.

"Gorbachev has arrived!" says the man next to him.

"Really?" replies Coconut. "You mean they could not get him with just one shot?"

Nivedano...

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to turn in. Gather your whole energy and rush towards your center of being, with your total consciousness and with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment of life on the earth.

This urgency is absolutely needed to reach to the center.

Faster and faster, deeper and deeper...

As you start coming closer to your center, a great silence descends over you like soft rain.

It is so tangible, you can feel it.

As you come even closer

a great peace arises from your very sources

surrounding you

into great fragrance

of the beyond.

Just a little more

and you are on the center

facing your original face.

Your original face

is the face of the buddha,

the awakened one.

At this moment you are the buddha. I teach the buddha, I don't teach Buddhism. The only quality buddha has is witnessing. He is a pure witness -- no judgment, no identification, just watching without having any opinion.

Witness, you are not the body. Witness, you are not the mind. And witness... you are only the witness. And as you relax into witnessing, a great ecstasy, a great divine drunkenness overtakes you. You suddenly become aware of your immortality, of your eternal life.

To make this witnessing deeper, Nivedano...

Relax, let go.

But go on remembering you are a buddha, a pure witness. And as your witnessing goes on becoming deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, you start melting like ice in the ocean.

I can see it. Gautam the Buddha Auditorium is turning into an ocean of consciousness.

Ten thousand buddhas have melted into one ocean.

A pure ocean of consciousness

without any ripples or waves.

At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth, just because you are centered at your very ultimate nature.

The buddha is your dhamma,

he is your very nature.

The evening was beautiful on its own, but your totality, your intensity, your urgency, your honesty, has made it a great splendor. The whole existence surrounding you is celebrating your great victory.

There is no other victory greater than this.

To become a buddha is the most important, the most significant, the only meaningful act in your whole life.

Gather as much experience and as many juices of life... and the blossoms and the flowers and the fragrances,

the peace, the silence, the serenity,

the divine drunkenness, the ecstasy.

Collect all of them. You have to bring them to your life. Your life has to become a life of songs, a life of dances, a life of eternal music, a life of divine ecstasy.

This is the transformation which Zen Fire and Zen Wind brings to you.

And never forget to persuade the buddha to come along with you. He is coming every day closer and closer and closer. You will feel his presence just behind you, coming, following, like a shadow.

This is the first step of meditation: buddha coming behind you as a shadow. But the shadow is very solid, very tangible; you can touch it, you can feel it, you can have a tremendous fragrance arising from it.

The second step: you become the shadow and buddha comes ahead of you, in front of you.

The third step: your shadow disappears into the transparent awareness, awakening, enlightenment of the buddha.

You are no more, only the buddha is.

You are no more, only the existence is.

This is the ultimate revolution, the ultimate evolution -- the ultimate truth, beauty, godliness.

Nivedano...

Come back. But come as buddhas, with the same grace, the same beauty, the same joy, the same ecstasy.

Sit just for a few seconds to remember and to remind yourself where you have been -- to what depth, to what height you have reached... to what opening of space you have experienced.

And see that the fragrance of the innermost has come with you, surrounding your being.

And watch, feel... the buddha is standing behind you.

He is your very nature, he is your blissfulness. He is your benediction.

And the day is not far away when you will take the second step and become the shadow of the buddha. Once you become the shadow of the buddha, the third step becomes very easy. The shadow can disappear into the buddha without any trouble.

When only the buddha is left, alone, you have come home.

This is the search of all human consciousness; this is the search of all living beings. This is the source from where we have come, and this is the goal to where we are going.

Once the circle is complete -- the source and goal meet together -- you have come to a perfection of which you cannot even have a dream. You cannot even visualize what that perfection is. Even after reaching it, you cannot manage to describe it, you cannot manage to explain it, you can simply dance.

Your eyes will shine with it,

your silence will become a song about it.

Your words may carry a little fragrance of it.

Your very existence will radiate

with the light that you have found

in the completion of the circle.

The source and the goal meeting... now, once this happens to any consciousness, any human being, he is not to be born again into a prison of body, of bones and blood and flesh. Then he disappears into the cosmos and becomes one with the cosmos.

Just a sincere passion

to disappear into the cosmos

is needed.

It is not a long journey,

it is just a quantum leap.

And you are trying the best that you can do.

I am absolutely happy about you. And the day when you all will start blossoming into buddhas will not only be a day of happiness for you, it will be a day of great celebration for the whole of existence.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Table of Contents

Chapter title: Socialism is a judas