The first question:
Osho,
I welcome your stern steps to guide a country like India from slavery and poverty, etcetera. However I feel very sorry to hear you quoted as saying: “For fifteen years this country needs no democracy. It has not that much intelligence.” Please explain what you mean.
I love democracy, I love freedom, but to transform a country which has lived for two thousand years in slavery is not possible through democratic means, otherwise it will take two thousand years or even more.
The mind of India has become accustomed to slavery, and when you give freedom suddenly to slaves they go berserk. It is like suddenly throwing open the doors of a prison and releasing all the prisoners, making them free. What do you suppose they are going to do?
Democracy needs a certain context which is missing in India. That is why these thirty years have just been a failure. All the work that has been done since India attained its so-called freedom has not been of any value. In fact, we have more problems than we had before. We have not been able to solve a single problem; we have created thousands of other problems.
I love democracy so much that I am even ready for a fifteen years temporary benevolent dictatorship to train the country, to teach the country how to be free. It will appear paradoxical, it will appear contradictory, but don’t be deceived by the appearance.
It is easy to condemn and criticize my views because the paradox is so apparent. Any fool can say that it is contradictory. But life works in a dialectical way; it is not linear logic, it is dialectics. It is far more complex than you think it is.
Two thousand years of slavery is a long time, very long. The slavery has gone into the very blood and bones, into the very marrow of the nation. To uproot it, something surgical is needed. Just telling people to be free is not enough. And how can the surgery be done if democratic means are adopted? “Democratic means” simply means telling people things, not doing anything, just telling people to be more understanding, to be more democratic, to be more independent. But that is not going to help – it is like telling an ill person to be healthy.
Something drastic is needed, something radical is needed; not only medical treatment but something surgical. That is possible only if for fifteen years at least – that is the minimum limit – the country lives under a benevolent dictatorship. Then compulsory birth control can be imposed on the people. Otherwise their freedom to reproduce is going to create so many problems that no government can ever solve them. By the time you solve a few problems, thousands more people have arrived with all their problems. They don’t bring land with them, they don’t bring factories with them; they simply come empty-handed. And already millions of people are unemployed, half the country is starved.
This country can be happy only with a population of two hundred million. It is now reaching the limit of seven hundred million, and by the end of this century it will reach the highest peak, one billion. It will even defeat China because China is under a dictatorial regime; they have been able to impose strict birth control. Right now they have more people, but by the end of this century India will be the most populated country in the world – and of course the most poor, the most hungry.
When there is so much poverty, so much starvation, talking about democracy is all nonsense. It is like playing a beautiful song on the flute before a hungry man. The song is beautiful – I love the flute, I love the song – but to play the song before a hungry person is absurd, it is ridiculous.
The so-called Indian democracy only helps to increase its problems, to increase violence, because when people are hungry they become violent. When they are not even able to live as human beings, what can you expect from them? These communal riots and all the rape, murder, arson, show that the animal is surfacing. You cannot expect the great quality of being human from hungry people – it is impossible.
This “democracy” helps only the politicians; hence I will be condemned by the politicians. Morarji Desai has already said yesterday in Rajkot that, “Osho should not be allowed in Gujarat, he should not be allowed in Kutch, because he is against democracy.”
Now just look at the statement: if it is a democracy then I can live anywhere, wherever I choose. You see the stupidity of the remark? – I should not be allowed to enter Gujarat.
That is what I am saying, that it is better to drop this empty word democracy. It is just a beautiful word borrowed from others. In fact, because India was under British rule, all the great Indian leaders were educated in England. They saw democracy working beautifully there, but in England it has a context of one thousand years. When they came back to India, they had seen democracy functioning perfectly well. It can function in England, so they started imitating England, but where is the context here? India cannot be England so easily.
These thirty years have been sheer nonsense. India should think first about its own tradition, history, past, and in that context we should create a government. We cannot borrow a certain ideology from another context. Those trees cannot be transplanted into another climate so easily; first you have to change the climate.
India has no sense of a nation, has never had. In fact, it has never been a nation. In Buddha’s time it was divided into two thousand kingdoms. It has never felt an organic unity; there exists no organic unity. There are divisions and subdivisions, and they are all in conflict; they are each ready to destroy the other. There are so many religious and political ideologies that it is chaos.
England has only two parties, a two-party system – a very logical way of running a government smoothly. India has hundreds of political parties. It is impossible for any party to be powerful enough or stable enough to implement any program. Hence they promise but they cannot fulfill. But the game can be continued; one party fails in fulfilling its promises, then another party starts promising the people. One party has deceived the people, then another party will deceive the people, and so on and so forth.
But the politicians enjoy it because that is their great opportunity to rule the country. Nobody is concerned with the real problems of the country.
Democracy is not really a problem for the poor. They are ready to sell their votes for just two rupees, five rupees. Now in a country where people are ready to sell their votes for just five rupees, how do you think a democracy can function? Whosoever has the money will purchase the votes. So it is good for the people who have money, it is good for the people who are in politics, ambitious. It is good for smugglers because a certain freedom allows them to do whatsoever they want to do. It is good for the hooligans, the gundas, because nobody can prevent them from having freedom of expression. It is good for all kinds of criminal elements, but it is not good for the people.
Ninety-nine percent of the people have nothing to do with democracy. They need bread, butter, shelter – they don’t have the very essentials to exist, to survive. And talking to these people about democracy is ridiculous.
I love democracy. I would like this country to be democratic. I would like all the countries to be democratic, the whole world to be democratic, because I respect freedom as I respect nothing else. But a context has to be created, and two thousand years of slavery has to be destroyed.
The Indian mind thinks very selfishly, everybody thinks only of himself. That is the heritage of the Indian culture; it has made everybody very selfish. And they have rationalized it beautifully. They say that everybody suffers or rejoices according to his karmas, the acts that he has done in his past life. It has nothing to do with the social structure, it has nothing to do with the government, it has nothing to do with anything else; it is a question of your own past life. So if you are poor, you are poor because of your past life, you have committed certain sins and you are suffering. If somebody is rich, he is rich because of his past life; he had attained great virtue.
You have heard it said, “You cannot purchase virtue with money, but you can purchase money by virtue.” In India that is an accepted rule: you can have more money by being virtuous – not in this life, remember. If in this life you are virtuous you won’t have any money! In the past life you were virtuous, in this life you have to be as cunning as possible, then you will have money and you will have power.
Nobody is concerned with the whole nation as such. My concern is with the whole nation. When I say that it needs a fifteen years benevolent dictatorship I mean that a certain discipline has to be created. People have to be forced to do certain things because they won’t do those things if they are left on their own.
For example, every Indian thinks it is his birthright to give birth to as many children as possible, because to prevent him from giving birth to children is to prevent his freedom, and children are God-given. And he has a certain karma that he has carried from his past life: he has to be a father of one dozen children or two dozen children, and anybody interfering with it is interfering in his freedom. So in a democratic setup it is impossible to impose compulsory birth control.
It is impossible to force people to be a little more industrious. The country has lived in laziness for thousands of years. It must be the laziest country in the world; nobody wants to work. Now in a democratic setup it is impossible to make them work. They will go on strike for the sheer joy of not doing anything!
Almost half the time all the factories are closed, and even when the factories are open nobody is interested in really producing, creating. They don’t have these values. They think that the world is illusory, so what is the point of producing and creating? Their whole creativity has become focused on reproduction They don’t feel any need to create anything else.
It is impossible in a democratic setup to bring people to their senses. But I say, “a benevolent dictatorship” – what do I mean by a benevolent dictatorship? I mean a dictatorship which is used only as a means – the end is democracy.
And my own feeling, my own observation is that Indira Gandhi is the right person, the one who can do it. First she is a woman, has a far more loving heart than any man can ever have. She is a mother and has tremendous love for the country. She has the grace to become a benevolent dictator.
The only problem is that once somebody is a dictator it is difficult to take power from his hands, it is difficult for him to give way to democracy again. But Indira is over sixty. In fifteen years’ time she will be seventy-five; she will have enjoyed the power more than enough. She will be really tired – she is already tired. She is already bored with the whole thing. She is carrying it on because she loves the country; otherwise I don’t see any desire in her to dominate the country. She has tasted the power for a long time. In these fifteen years she will get older, wiser; she will be getting closer to her death.
And she is a woman, and up to now she has proved very intelligent, broad-minded. There is every possibility that a benevolent dictatorship can function through her.
It cannot function through a man like Morarji Desai. He is a fanatic and utterly narrow-minded, utterly stubborn, and very ambitious. If Morarji Desai was in power I would not suggest that there were no elections for fifteen years; I would suggest elections after every six months!
I see that Indira can be of tremendous help to transform the climate of the country. All that she needs is encouragement because she has been brought up in a very democratic family. For four generations she has been brought up in the climate of freedom, independence, respect for others. She has been educated in the West. Her father was almost Western, not Indian at all. Her father was the person who introduced democracy into India. She loves democracy.
The only problem is she is afraid to be associated with the idea of dictatorship. If she can drop that fear… The West will condemn her; particularly America will condemn her, England will condemn her. The West will condemn her – but they don’t help in any way, so what does their condemnation mean? Let them condemn. This much sacrifice she has to make for the country. I call it a sacrifice because her name will become associated with dictatorship. That much sacrifice she has to make. If she can make that much sacrifice for the country, if she is ready to become notorious, then there is no other problem.
All these stupid politicians who are creating chaos in the country can be stopped, all smuggling can be stopped, all the crimes which go on growing every day to new heights can be stopped. The country can be trained in fifteen years to be more industrious, to be less selfish. And a country, which is creative, productive, rich… It can become rich because the land is rich, its potential is great – just a little less population.
So two things have to be done. One is birth control: nobody should be allowed to have children unless the medical board of the city or the town or the village approves. Secondly, euthanasia: old people who want to die should be given the freedom to die. These are two sides of the same coin: stop new people coming in and help the older people to go. Create a little more space in the country.
And in those fifteen years the whole context that is needed for democracy can be created. After fifteen years people will not be ready to sell their votes for anything because they will have understood. They will not be just going on strike for any excuse.
I have not even moved to Kutch, we have not even purchased the land there yet, and just three days ago the people who are opposing the move closed the capital city of Kutch, Bhuj. All the shops were closed, all the factories were closed, all the schools and colleges were closed – as a protest.
I have not entered yet, I have not even got any land there, not even a single house, I have not even visited Kutch – just the rumor that we are going to Kutch is enough! And they are creating so much nuisance in Kutch, in Gujarat, that in two places the police had to force people by lathi charge, people had to be beaten to disperse.
In one place, Mandvi – the whole city of Mandvi is for me – they want me to be there because the would-be commune will be close to Mandvi and Mandvi will have all the benefits of the commune. So Mandvi is totally for me. Bhuj is against me; not against me really, but against Mandvi. They are jealous.
Once Mandvi was the most important city in Kutch; two centuries ago it was the richest city in Kutch. Then the River Sind changed its course and Mandvi became a desert, and of course when it became a desert it lost its glory. Then Bhuj became more important. Now Bhuj is afraid: if ten thousand sannyasins move to Mandvi, the glory will again come to Mandvi. Bhuj will become secondary again; Mandvi will become an international center. They are not really against me; the conflict is very political – it is between Mandvi and Bhuj.
Bhuj people, politicians belonging to Morarji Desai’s party, went to Mandvi to tell people to close that city too. Mandvi people gave them a good beating. One thousand people gathered and threw them out and they had to escape, run away.
Now, I have not gone there yet and all this is happening. And the Gujarat government is puzzled because no land has been purchased; no land has been given to us. Nothing concrete has happened – it is just a rumor, but just for a rumor Indians can go crazy, as if they are just sitting on a volcano. Anything is enough for them to strike, to protest, to make a noise and to create chaos.
This is why I call the country unintelligent. It has lost intelligence, through the priests and through the politicians – not that it does not have the potential of being intelligent. It can be intelligent, but it has to be helped. It needs tremendous help: first a surgical operation, then nourishment. But the country has to be transformed into a new context; just the old country having democracy is impossible.
India has never been democratic, remember. It has always been ruled by kings. It was always monarchic, it has never been democratic. Democracy is a foreign idea, a Greek idea; there are no roots in Indian soil for it. We will have to change the soil, we will have to change the climate if it is going to happen. And the problem is, if you want to change the climate, the context, people will be against you.
Why are people against me? I am not doing any harm to anybody, but they are against me because I am trying to change their culture. But their culture is the problem! I am trying to change their religion, and their religion is the problem. I am trying to cut the very roots, the very causes of their problem. All this can be done very easily by a benevolent dictatorship, by somebody who is intelligent enough and loves and respects democracy, and is ready after fifteen years to give the country back its freedom.
My feeling is that if Indira was gone, then I don’t see on the Indian horizon any other politician who can be so benevolent. Once Indira is gone, India will be in the hands of Hindu chauvinists. Then it will be a Hindu country, and then it will become impossible to change the context because they will go on emphasizing Hindu culture in every school, college and university. And that is the cancer – what you call Hindu culture. That culture has to be removed. A better, far better human culture has to be introduced.
My feeling is that Indira may be the last person who can do it. If she cannot do it, then this country cannot hope for much. That is why… I love democracy, I love freedom – still I insist that for fifteen years it is better to put aside the idea. The time for it has not come yet.

The second question:
Osho,
The priest inside me seems to have a strong hold. Are sannyas and meditation really going to cure me of being a miserable, stupid bastard or should I join the Hare Krishna movement? I could do it for the price of a haircut – I need not even change the color of my clothes!
Dhyanakirti, the priest has always a strong hold because the priest is the most ancient institution in the world. They say the most ancient profession in the world is that of the prostitute. I don’t agree. The most ancient profession is that of the priest, because without the priest who will create the prostitute? How will the prostitute come into existence? It is through the priest.
The priest is the source of all kinds of ugly institutions. And if you have been a priest yourself, then of course it goes very deep in you. Joining the Hare Krishna movement is not going to help – it will be jumping from the frying pan into the fire; it will lead you toward more stupidity.
The priest creates something in you which he calls “the conscience,” and by creating a conscience he destroys your consciousness. Conscience is nothing but a state of hypnosis. By repeating certain things again and again, the priest creates a deep hypnotic state in you, and then you are under the spell.
You are right to ask, “Are sannyas and meditation really going to cure me of being a miserable, stupid bastard?” If you have understood that it is stupidity, then a cure is not difficult, then sannyas will do it. And if my sannyas cannot do it, then drop all hope – then it cannot be done at all.

A man standing beneath the Eiffel Tower looked up, and saw another man jump from the top of the tower and fall at a great velocity. On the way down, however, he seemed to hit a pocket of air which broke his fall and brought him gently to the ground. The spectator was impressed.
A man standing close by noticed the look of wonder spread over the spectator’s face and told him to stay around and watch his friend do it again.
The spectator looked up and saw the same figure jump and fall at great speed, then come once again to a smooth landing on the ground nearby. He got up, walked over to the spectator casually and said, “Go on, have a go. There’s nothing to it – you only have to jump.”
“Okay,” said the man. “I’ll give it a try.” So he climbed to the top of the Tower and jumped. He fell downward at a tremendous speed and hit the pavement. He was a real mess!
The man who had been standing close by turned to the skydiver and said, “D’you know, Gabriel, for an archangel you are a real bastard!”

The priests and the angels and the archangels and the gods and even your so-called God: they have all done tremendous harm to you. In the name of religion so much crime, so much calamity, so much misery has happened to man as has not happened from any other source – even politicians are secondary.
Certainly every religion tries its best to force its ideology into the heart of the child. So the hold is certainly strong. But once you understand it, once you get unidentified with it, there is no trouble – because it is something imposed on you. It is like a dress, you can drop it any moment. But if you think your dress is not a dress but your skin, then it becomes difficult. That’s where you get identified with it.
Don’t get identified with your conscience. That’s the whole purpose of meditation: to make you aware that you are not your mind. The priest can only reach to your mind, he cannot reach to your being – fortunately he cannot pollute your being, he can only pollute your mind. Meditation means creating a distance between your mind and yourself.
The moment you are aware that the mind is a separate thing, created by others – the priests and the politicians and the parents and the teachers; it has nothing to do with you – you can slip out of it very easily.

A man lost his hat. He decided to go and steal one from the entrance of a nearby church. When he arrived at the church, a sermon on the Ten Commandments was in progress.
At the end of the service, he approached the minister and said, “Thank you, Reverend. You have saved me from committing a crime. I came here with sin in my heart. I wanted to steal a hat.”
“That’s very good, my son,” said the minister. “But tell me, what did I say to make you change your mind?”
“Well,” explained the man, “when you got to the part about ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ I remembered where I had left my hat!”

The conscience that the priest has created has not become your soul; it has just become your mask. It has given you a pseudo personality, it has made you a hypocrite.

An attractive, sexy young woman goes for a checkup to the Catholic doctor-cum-monk, who has devoted his whole life to serving the people as a physician. He looks her over, impressed, and as his breathing becomes heavier, he tells her to undress so that he can check her temperature rectally.
She bends over and says, “Hey, doc, this is not my rectum!”
“That’s okay, my dear,” says the Catholic doctor-cum-monk, “nor is this my thermometer!”

The priest has not really changed anything, he cannot; he has only imposed a certain layer of hypocrisy on you. So it is not difficult to get rid of it. It is just a layer of dirt; you can clean it any moment you decide to.
Sannyas is a bath. It is a shower, it will cleanse you, Dhyanakirti. And I have given you the name Dhyanakirti – the glory of meditation. This is the glory of meditation: that it can help you to get rid of all imposed ideas, and it can give you back that which is really yours, your real center.
The Hare Krishna movement will be another imprisonment. Yes, when you move from one prison to another, for a little while the change feels good. The new prison has different architecture, different decoration, different jailers, different guards – everything is different so it feels good. But soon you will realize that it is again the same thing because the slavery is the same.
You say, “…or should I join the Hare Krishna movement? I could do it for the price of a haircut.” Don’t think that just by cutting your hair anything changes.

Ya, ya means yes in German. But in the Polish language, a yaya is what hangs below a Pole’s belly button if the Pole is a male.
Brudzewa from Warsaw stopped in a Berlin barbershop and asked for a shave.
“Ya, ya,” said the barber.
“Nie yaya,” screamed the Pole. “My beard!”

So be aware. You can get into some difficulty. If you want to cut your hair, don’t go to Germany. Otherwise the barber will say, “Ya, ya”…and you seem to be a Polack!
Sannyas and meditation are enough, nothing more is needed. Sannyas changes your whole vision about reality. It helps you to drop all ritualistic religion, all serious religion. It helps you to become nonritualistic, nonserious. It helps you to become playful, it helps you to take life as fun. It helps you to rejoice in existence, and through that rejoicing comes real renunciation.
In the past it has been said again and again by the priests that if you renounce you will attain to bliss. I tell you just the opposite: if you become blissful there is renunciation. And that renunciation has a beauty of its own because you have never renounced anything. In your blissfulness, in your rejoicing, all that is nonessential starts dropping away because you can see it is nonessential. The very seeing is the transformation. If after seeing you have to do something for transformation, then your seeing was incomplete, was not entire, was not total, was not real.
Sannyas means seeing how you are caught in prisons, why you are caught in prisons. And the very seeing is enough, because nobody is really holding you in the prison except your own fears; the fear of the unknown, the fear of the unfamiliar keeps you huddled together like sheep in the crowd. And there are many crowds: Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jewish – different crowds. And people are clinging to each other; they are afraid to be lost in aloneness. Meditation teaches you aloneness.
Sannyas helps you to get rid of the nonessential – in the words of Desiderata – sannyas helps you to negate the nonessential, to drop the nonessential. And meditation helps you to find the essential, to discover the essential. And these are the only two things that are needed, nothing else is needed. Withdraw your energy from the nonessential and let it move into the direction of the essential. Discover your being, your individuality. In that authentic experience is the miracle.

The last question:
Osho,
I love the way you appreciated the intelligence of the Polish people.
Are you too a Polack? – because there are Polacks everywhere. Particularly India has many Polacks, they are masquerading as Indians. Polacks are found in every shape and size everywhere. Remember, Polacks don’t belong only to Poland; in fact, we should rename the whole Earth Poland. Polacks are everywhere!
India has many Polacks, very famous Polacks – Morarji Desai is a Polack, Muktananda is a Polack.

Do you know, if Jimmy Carter, Leonid Brezhnev and Morarji Desai together went skydiving and none of their chutes opened, who would be the last one to hit the ground? Of course, Morarji Desai because he would have to stop to get directions – or maybe a few times to sip his own water of life.

Just the other day when I was talking about the mouse who said to the other mouse, “Don’t believe a thing that I say because I have been on the piss the whole night,” I remembered Morarji Desai, because what will Morarji Desai say? He has been on the piss his whole life! Now where can you find such a Polack?

How can it be proved that Adam was an Indian?
Who else would stand beside a naked woman and just eat an apple?

Several young boys were called by the New Delhi authorities for a medical checkup to determine the paternity of a certain teenage girl’s baby.
Chandulal went in and after a few minutes came out. “Don’t worry, fellows,” he smiled. “They’ll never find out. They’re taking samples from the finger!”

Pundit Ramprasad Shastri comes home and finds his wife in bed with another man. The pundit takes out a gun from the drawer and puts it to his head. The wife’s lover jumps up and shouts, “Hey, what are you doing?”
“Shut up!” says the Indian pundit. “You are next!”

Enough for today.

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