Steve Davis
KGO TV, San Francisco, California, United States
Osho,
I was here once before for several days, less than a year ago.
May I urge you please, wherever possible, to recall that television is a remorseless medium as far as cutting things short is concerned. So when a thought can be done in a brief manner, it's I think to all of our benefit. And if it can't, it can't. I have several questions that I have written down in advance and haven't the foggiest notion if we will ever get to any of them except the first one. It may well be that the tangent will be more interesting than any I have laid out in advance. But I have those and I may check them from time to time.
Start.
What would you have a reporter learn here?
One thing and only one thing: that this is the alternative to your world. Your world is on the verge of death. The politicians have brought nuclear weapons to create the funeral of the whole of humanity. And the religious leaders, insisting on celibacy, have brought humanity to the ultimate disease – AIDS. The politicians and the priests both are bent upon destroying the world.
We are creating a totally new kind of man, with new values. And these communes are around the world now – one million sannyasins – and we provide the alternative to your mad world.
Is that the thrust of the work here?
Yes.
How is that to be accomplished?
First, the sannyasin’s only requirement is to be a meditator. And meditation means going into yourself, to the deepest core of your being, where absolute silence, serenity, peace, bliss are experienced. And once a person experiences those values, then all ambitions about becoming a president of a country, or the prime minister, or becoming famous, a celebrity – all ambitions disappear. And if we can create millions of people who have no ambitions, that is the only way to prevent war. War is the culmination of ambition.
And the peaceful man, the silent man, who has touched his own source of being, is no longer Christian, no longer Hindu, no longer Mohammedan, no longer Buddhist, no longer American, no longer Russian, no longer German, no longer Italian. He is simply a human being, and the whole earth is his home. If we can destroy those ugly lines on the map which divide humanity and if we can destroy all those ugly religions which have divided humanity, there is no reason for war: one thing.
Second: if we can create such serenity and joy in people’s lives, all their perversions – homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, group sexuality – which have all culminated finally into AIDS, will disappear, because we are creating a man who is so contented that he needs no one to fulfill him. Alone, he is enough.
Osho,
I suspect that many of those whose religions you feel the way you do about, would probably agree with those tenets and those goals – or at least would voice an agreement with it.
They would not. There is no question of suspicion; I am certain they will not listen. They will fight back. They will be hostile toward me – they are. But that makes no difference. I am not a serious man. If the world is going to go, we will do whatever we can do, but our work is playfulness. We are not saviors and we are not here to save anybody – that is just “by the way.” Otherwise, we are celebrants, not saviors. We enjoy, we are enjoying – and who cares for tomorrow? Today is so tremendously beautiful.
Osho,
Be patient with me please. I see nothing but contradiction here and I'm sure that somewhere it ties together. We began – or at least I thought I heard you begin – by saying that the world is on the verge of self-destruction, essentially.
Yes.
And that there is an answer, a way, and that sannyasins around the world can bring that about. But now you tell me, however, “Forget it!” But I think there's purpose here. There's nothing in this place that speaks of accident. Everything speaks of purpose and intention.
That’s the beauty of being playful and yet not becoming accidental; being nonserious, laughing, enjoying, dancing, and yet doing everything that is needed. There is no contradiction. That’s why I say we are creating a new man in which this contradiction melts, becomes complementary.
We are certain that those idiots are not going to hear. Still we will make our best effort, playfully, knowing that it is a hopeless task. We will enjoy the challenge. There is no contradiction in it.
Osho,
Much that I observe, that I imagine you consider playful, is received otherwise. And the conflict with many around you – which I suspect you relish – is received otherwise. Where is the message in there for the outside world?
No message for anybody.
Well, if it's a playful attempt, I mean…
Not even an attempt. That’s what I am saying; our language is different, our way is different. We are not making any attempt, any effort; we are simply enjoying the game.
The world is on the brink of death. We are celebrating our life. If we can make those people also understand, along the way, that there is an answer, and life can be saved on the planet, good. If they don’t hear, if they are hostile, that is their problem. We are not concerned, we are living already and we don’t bother about the future.
Our whole concern is the present – herenow.
This present you enjoy in this place came through planning for the future, through which you arrived at this day, did it not? That's what I mean by everywhere I see planning, intention, concern with creating what it is that you see to create.
That is your way of seeing. For example, I am here. Answering you, do you think I am serious?
No, I doubt it.
But I will answer you, and anybody may be clear that there is a purpose in the answer, that I am answering out of concern. No, I am simply responding playfully – just a game. You put the question, and I respond with the answer. I don’t care whether the answer receives any response anywhere or not. That is not my business. My business is finished with the answer I have given. And I enjoyed answering it; my basic purpose is to enjoy. I love talking.
Is this the best game you've…?
The best, because it needs the most intelligent people to play it.
I'm sure…
It is not football, it is headball.
I'm sorry…?
It is not football – idiots can do that. It is headball.
Osho,
You are credited with being a brilliant student in your early years, that you read everything on the subject you studied, and that you had a great grasp of it. What did you study? Was it another game? What was it that you used for preparation?
I have never done any preparation for anything, ever.
So that was the ending of the moment too, you mean?
Yes. I have loved reading from my very childhood. My own personal library consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand rare books of all the religions, philosophies, poetry, literature. And I have read all of them – but with no purpose; I enjoyed it. And the moment I felt that enough is enough – I have enjoyed the best geniuses of the world, and now there is no longer… I dropped it. For five years I have not read a single book, not a single magazine, not a newspaper – no reading at all.
The students may have felt that I was prepared. In fact, I would like you to go a little further back with me. When I was a student, my professors felt that I was more prepared than them – and I was. But I was not prepared. They had stopped thirty years before, when they left the university and became professors, and I had read everything that had happened in those thirty years. They were thirty years behind me. I was expelled from many colleges for the simple reason that many of the professors could not stand me. Understanding is out of the question; they could not even stand me.
Finally I was admitted to a college with the condition that I would never attend a class. But I asked the principal, “How am I going to enter into the examination? The class is no problem, that is great freedom, good, but how am I going to enter the examination?”
The principle said, “That is my problem. I will give you enough attendance to enter the examination. But it is a promise between you and me that you will not come into the college at all.”
And for two years, I never entered that college. And I got into the examination, and I got the gold medal, I topped the whole university. The principal was amazed, he said, “This is simply miraculous.”
I said, “It is nothing. I have never read your textbooks, I have never listened to your lecturers, but I have such a love for reading everything, and to go to the very depths, to the very roots of everything.”
In my reading, there was no purpose, just joy. I relished it. For nine years I was a lecturer in the university after that. That too was a great joy. I relished it. But the students were in trouble, the university was in trouble, because I would teach Aristotle and I would also say that he is absolutely wrong. So first I would finish the course, and then I would destroy the whole thing that I had been teaching them. And they were in great confusion, “Then what is right?”
I said, “Now it is up to you. It is up to your intelligence to find out. I have presented Aristotle with absolute sincerity, but I cannot say that he is right. So I have to criticize him with the same sincerity. Now both sides are presented to you; you can choose, or you can remain confused.”
I was reported to the vice-chancellor many times, and I told the vice-chancellor, “Any day you want… I am always carrying a resignation. But I will work only the way I want to work, because it is not a serious matter to me. Your service, your university, your textbooks, your examinations, that is nothing to me. To me, teaching is a joy. I am a born teacher.”
Osho,
You've written that you would trick a follower or a student. I think you don't refer to the sannyasins as followers, although their feet seem to be following you.
That is their problem.
But you said you would trick a student to teach a lesson, and that you – to paraphrase as best I can – hope they would forgive you that. Is that, for lack of a better word, a technique that's useful to you?
I have simply been enjoying everything that I have been doing. And you can enjoy a thing only if you are not serious about it. If you become serious about it, enjoyment disappears; it becomes work, hard work.
I have never worked, I’m a lazy man. I call myself, “A lazy man’s guide to enlightenment.” I don’t do anything.
So the answer then is that trickery would be work?
Just enjoyment. Everything that I have done, or am doing, to me is a joy. What it is to others, that is for them to decide. I have not passed a single moment of my life without enjoying it.
Osho,
The business of the Rolls Royces obviously raises a lot of silly questions. But I guess that's fair, because it seems to me the whole thing is a little silly.
It is not. It is not yet the whole thing.
Well then, my question was about to be that it's always seemed to me there must be something else behind that…?
There is nothing else.
Just to prick the hide of those of us on the outside and get their attention?
No. Because I am loved by my sannyasins, whether I have ninety Rolls Royces or not will not make any difference to their love and their trust. And I don’t possess those Rolls Royces; they are possessed by sannyasins. They intend to bring 365 Rolls Royces. So tell those people that the silliness is still not absolute, it will be absolute soon! As far as I am concerned, I possess nothing. Everything that I have belongs to the commune. You will be happy to know that from the shoes to my cap, everything is made by my sannyasins themselves – even my wristwatch.
I've heard.
They love me and they want to do something for me – love always wants to do something – and I don’t hinder them. Why I should hinder them? Those who hate me, they go on doing their things and I cannot hinder them. I have been poisoned, I have been put in a dangerous situation in every way: stones have been thrown at me, shoes have been thrown at me, knives have been thrown at me, attempts on my life have been made. I have not prevented anybody. And why I should prevent my people who love me if they bring Rolls Royces, diamond watches?
It is simply a balance between the hostility and love, and in existence it always balances. I am just a witness, an outsider.
A fortunate one, I would say.
Certainly, the blessed one – that is the meaning of Bhagwan. The word itself means “the blessed one.” And I am, and far more blessed than any other – Jesus or Moses or Buddha – because nobody had such a worldwide family of friends and lovers and fellow travelers, none of them.
Osho,
Why do you so pointedly avoid the title of leader?
Because it is ugly, it is exploiting. It is putting somebody down.
Suggesting that they are followers?
Yes, suggesting that I know and you don’t, so you follow me.
It is a fair assumption though.
That is their problem. You can ask them, you cannot ask me. As far as I am concerned, I am nobody’s leader. I have taken nobody’s responsibility on myself.
But if a thing looks like an elephant, why not call it one?
I cannot, because to me I have to insist for my truth. If they are insistent on not listening to it, I am more insistent – and will make them listen to it. It is a competition between lovers, nothing to be worried about.
Osho,
Speaking of competition, it seems to me that the quest to influence the human mind may well be the central issue of the next decade. If you agree or disagree, how do you see that kind of competition for beliefs?
My approach is totally different. I want to destroy all belief systems – Catholic or communist, it does not matter.
What about the belief system that doesn't believe in belief systems?
It is not a belief system. It cannot be a belief system; it simply deprograms people, but does not program them. It leaves them clean, tabula rasa, no writing on them, just the way they were born, innocent. My function here is to deprogram the Jew, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, whoever comes here. I have to destroy his belief system. I am not trying to influence him in favor of another belief system. I have none.
It is said that nature detests a vacuum, that something will fill the human mind.
No, that is not true, because for thirty-two years I have been absolutely nothing. So it may be objectively true, as far as science is concerned, that nature abhors a vacuum, but as far as the spiritual, interior world is concerned, it is just the opposite. The deeper you go, the more you find yourself empty. Ultimately you find yourself just a zero, and that is the point of enlightenment. Your ego has disappeared, your greed has disappeared far away. You have disappeared. There is only light, life, infinite, eternal. You are not there as a person but just as a pure consciousness, and it is nothingness. Buddha has actually given it the name nothingness – nirvana. Nirvana means nothingness.
In the Western world, no religion has reached that point: the three Western religions – Christianity, the Judaic tradition and Mohammedanism – which were born outside of India. The other three religions, which were born in India – Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism – all three have reached the point where you enter into an inner zero. That is their ultimate goal: to be nothing. And it is never filled by anything.
You won't be surprised to learn that I don't understand any of that.
You will not – and I am not surprised, because how can you understand something that you have never experienced? For example, if you have never tasted sugar, whatever I do, there is no way to explain the taste of it to you. I will have to ask my sannyasins to hold you and force a spoonful of sugar into your mouth. That’s the only way; it looks a little hard, but what can be done? Unless you taste it you will not understand it. So if you really want to understand what I am saying about inner nothingness, come here, be here for a few days. Meditate with my people, who have experienced it. Just being close to them, some kind of synchronicity happens.
If there are a dozen people who are deep in meditation, simply sit in the middle of those people and try whatsoever they say; just sit down and watch your thoughts and do nothing. But those twelve people are radiating something toward you, and your effort together will give you the taste. If I have given the taste to thousands of people, you cannot be exceptional – nobody is. Everybody has the same spiritual potential.
I think that's… I agree with you. There are…
Okay, you can change [the audiotape] and you remember your questions; otherwise your questions will remain unanswered. Don’t get involved with me, you just remember your questions.
What do you mean, don't listen to you?
You just remember that you have brought questions. I have not brought any answer, so whatsoever you ask I will answer. It is going to be immediate, but to me it makes no difference what you ask.
I'm aware of that.
But it is my concern to remind you.
Well, that's very generous of you. I do appreciate that!
Thank you.
Osho,
I knew that I was to be a catalyst here, a fulcrum, and I hoped that it would be a pleasant one.
If I can't know those things, if I can't know sugar without having tasted it, I think it probably follows – at least it does in my mind – that I can't not have experienced those things that I have. Some of what I've experienced in studying – and not just because of what I do for a living – has shown me that there are patterns and similarities between what is taught here and how, and what's taught in other organizations and how: specifically in the manner, which involves rhetoric and psychology as well as other things. The similarity is clear to me, and perhaps that's why people ask you, “Is this place another Jonestown? Is this place another whatever?” But they are clear similarities, and there must have been somewhere some shared knowledge.
There are bound to be some similarities, because we are not the only human beings. Outside also, there are human beings, so there are bound to be some similarities. I have two eyes, you have two eyes, but that does not mean that our basic attitude is the same. For example, you mentioned Reverend Jim Jones-town…
Excuse me, please go ahead, but I don't mean to suggest that your intentions are the same. I'm observing that a lot of the techniques are.
No, neither are our intentions the same, nor is there any possibility of such a thing happening here. Reverend Jim Jones and his Jonestown can happen only in a Christian context.
He was a Marxist.
Marxism is a Christian product.
For the sake of definitions that most of us out there would understand, he forsook religion, as he defined it. I remember a sermon he preached one day where he threw the Bible on the floor and stomped up and down on it and said, “That's all bullshit” – and went on to tell his followers that if they followed him to Guyana, eventually they could go to the Soviet Union, and that religion was to be forsaken.
Perhaps philosophically you could connect the two, Marxism and Christianity, but on the level that most people deal with and will understand, they aren't related.
They are related.
But isn't it misleading to refer to a man who defines himself as a Marxist as being a Christian?
Certainly – because he still remains the Reverend Jim Jones. “Reverend” is a Christian title, not a Marxist title. You don’t refer to Reverend Joseph Stalin! And as far as Marxism is concerned, it is simply a reaction to Christianity. Remember that Jesus and Marx were both Jews; never forget that. And both were trying to change the Jewish tradition – Jesus in his own way, Marx in his own way. Because Jesus had failed on certain points – the only begotten son of God, the existence of God, heaven and hell – Marx simply denied: there is no God, there is no question of any only begotten son of God, there is no heaven and hell. In fact, there is no consciousness in man, it is only a by-product of material things.
It was really Jesus in a new edition, in which all those points have been deleted which brought Jesus to crucifixion – only those points were deleted. Otherwise, just as Jesus is concerned with the poor and says, “Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of God,” Marx is not different. He says, “Proletariat of the world unite, because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.” The only difference is that Jesus was talking about a fictitious kingdom far away in the heavens, and Marx was a more pragmatic and practical man. He was saying, “We can create that paradise here – all that is needed is to destroy classes, make a classless society.” But both were in favor of the poor, both were against the rich.
Jesus says that a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of his God. Now this man seems to be the first communist! What do you expect of a communist? Even Marx has not made such a strong statement against the rich. In fact he was living on the money provided by a rich man, Friedrich Engels; his whole life he never earned anything. Friedrich Engels was an industrialist, a rich man, and he supplied all Marx’s needs, his whole life. He could not say that Engels cannot enter into the kingdom of God; without Engels, Marx himself would not find a way into the kingdom of God!
Jesus raises the poor to the highest level. He praises them, and that’s what Marx was doing in a more scientific way. Jesus was too young – he was crucified when he was thirty-three – uneducated, knowing nothing. He was just a carpenter’s son. Maybe he knew something about wood, but about God he knew nothing.
Karl Marx was just another Jew – against the Jewish tradition, the richness of the Jews, their immense intelligence for creating wealth. Marx was poor, just as Jesus was poor. And you must remember that Marx’s father was a reverend, so he was brought up in the context of Christianity. His father was converted; he was a Christian, and he was teaching Christianity to his children too. The whole of communism is just a reaction against the Jewish wealth, their capacity to create wealth.
This man Reverend Jim Jones is doing exactly what Jesus was doing. He was saying to people, “Just follow me, believe in me, and you will enter into my kingdom of God.” The only condition was, “Believe in me!” And that was the condition of Reverend Jones: “Believe in me, and I will lead you to the kingdom of God.” His kingdom of God may have been the Soviet Union – that does not matter – but he was the leader and you were the led; he knew what and where they are going. You need not bother about it, need not even question it.
Secondly, Jesus said to his disciples, “I will come back. First I will prepare the ground for you in the kingdom of God and then I will come back to take you.” Reverend Jim Jones was far more intelligent than Jesus: why go and prepare? Why not take the whole lot with you?
As an act of revolutionary suicide?
This is the only place where Jonestown cannot happen. It can happen anywhere within a Christian context. It cannot happen in India, you cannot conceive of it. You cannot conceive of it in the Hindu concept.
Of what – suicide? Though not all of what happened there was suicide.
Jonestown. You cannot conceive of Jonestown under Hindu or Buddhist or Jaina or Taoist traditions – impossible, for the simple reason that Krishna, who is the God of the Hindus, is a lover of life. He has sixteen thousand wives. Do you think such a man will…?
Commit suicide? Yes, frankly!
No! Suicide is committed by people who have only one wife.
Suicide is controlled by the wife!
Having sixteen thousand wives, one is already living in paradise! What more can you want?
Well, frankly, I used the Jonestown thing just as an example of the issue of the similarities to which I would like to return.
There are no similarities.
I don't seek to draw a conclusion of a similar end, I don't seek to draw a similarity in purpose. It began with my attempt to state what I've seen, and what I've seen is a remarkable similarity in technique.
Just tell me what.
In the technique of attracting, working with people.
What technique?
Um… The techniques of meditation – not precisely the same, and I understand those too…
Reverend Jim Jones…
No, no, no, no. no. No, I don't mean that…
…or even Jesus, has never heard what meditation is. They knew only prayer, and prayer is not meditation.
No, I didn't seek to compare it with that, haven't from the beginning of this conversation found…
You are finding difficulty now to show the similarities. Meditation you mentioned, which cannot exist in Jonestown.
The control of information.
No, there is no control.
There is no control of information?
No control.
Is information not monolithic in its nature?
There is no control about anything. People are absolutely free to be here or not to be here.
Osho,
Oh, I know people can leave – it's not that kindergarten comparison that I hear made all the time that I seek to make. From what I have seen, I can see that those are not the similarities.
I know that a number of people from the human potential movement came to see you in India, if I'm not misinformed. Some stayed. Compared to the population at large, there's a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists around. Simple logic suggests that those folks are trained in techniques of “opening the mind” – you may refer to it as “training,” as you did indirectly a little while ago, when you suggested that I stay in the company of some of the sannyasins, to teach me how that's done.
Yes.
Well, the difficulty I'm having in drawing comparisons probably has something to do with the setting, but I don't seek a trick here and I don't seek a false comparison, so…
No, I understand. I understand your intention. Just see one thing: in Jonestown, the majority of the following was black people; in this place the majority of the following is white people. In Jonestown the people were all illiterate, uneducated…
Except for a few.
Except for a few. Here everybody is educated; most of them are graduates of universities, most of them have master’s degrees, a few have Ph.D.’s, a few are D.Litt’s. Not even a few are uneducated.

Sheela: We need to change tapes.

You change, but I am going to stay to my point.
Okay?
The uneducated, the illiterate, the poor, the blacks – these are the people who are very gullible, these are the people who are victims of all kinds of systems of belief.
A street black would tell you that that's nonsense, that he's hard to con, so what would your response be?
They were just here for three months, to share homes with us. They were not going to be part of the commune, and we were not interested in transforming them. Just, whenever we have surplus money… And our people are so productive all around the world that whenever we have some surplus money we would like to share it with different groups. That was just our first experiment, to share it with the street people and to give them the same dignity as any other human being needs: give them the same love, the same equality, the same clothes, the same food, the same air-conditioned housing – a taste of what they are missing on the streets.
Never again are we going to invite them, because we have other, far more dangerous projects. In the next month we are going to have another project which is going to shake the whole of America.
I take it from the fact that you didn't volunteer to tell me what it is, there's no point in asking?
There is no point in asking, because I would like to keep people in curiosity, suspense.
Osho,
A sannyasin once told me during the period of your silence that you would begin to speak again when an economic need arose.
That’s wrong. We have never faced any economic need, otherwise my Rolls Royces would not go on growing. One has come just now, one is coming within the next week, and one, I am informed, my people are specially making: an old model of Rolls Royce, a Phantom.
Excuse me. Pardon me, Osho. I was distracted by you. You seem to have touched a nerve there, with the talk of the handmade Rolls Royce.
Yes, it is going to cost four hundred thousand dollars. An ordinary Rolls Royce costs only one hundred thousand dollars. It will take one and a half years to be made, but it will be the most unique Rolls Royce in the whole world. So we are not out of money. There is no question of my speaking because my commune was not going well.
My commune is going so well that nothing else in the whole world is going so well! Five thousand people are here. They all have the best standard of food, the best housing; the whole commune is centrally air-conditioned. They have hundreds of cars, hundreds of buses; they have five planes. And we are not expanding, because the legality of the city is under litigation, so they have prevented us from expanding. Otherwise I was going to bring one hundred thousand sannyasins here – and I will bring them. We are going to win the litigation.
In a democratic country nobody can defeat me.
Where could a man like you be defeated?
Only in the Soviet Union, no other place. In the Soviet Union they are afraid, already my books are banned. I have sannyasins underground in the Soviet Union; they are being persecuted already, but because of the government persecution there is great excitement to become sannyasins. For the first time against communism, there is a new movement. And the new generation needs something new. Communism is already out of date. Marx’s books – who reads them? No communist, nobody bothers. It is just “old testament”.
So that is the only place where I may be defeated, but not in America. If I am defeated in America, then America is no different from the Soviet Union; then it is a bogus democracy, hypocritical.
Do you say that in confidence of your being able to play the game of democracy better than anyone else? Is that what you mean when you say it?
Certainly.
So that if you can't win then the game is wrong?
I know the constitution of America, and I am going to stand for it against the Americans – because the American government, the state governments, are all violating the basic rights given to human beings in the constitution.
I can play the game. I can play the game in the Soviet Union also, if the need arises, because I don’t think anybody has read communist literature more than I have. I can play the game, but first I have to try America.
May I get back to…? Thank you.
Back – or better forward!
Osho,
Why are there so many people who studied psychology and psychiatry here? What do you need that for?
The reason is clear: psychology is the latest development of intelligence, the latest science.
Yes.
And they can understand me more than anybody else. They are the most intelligent people.
Can they teach better than anyone else?
That is not certain. To be a psychologist is one thing, to be a teacher is a totally different art.
But there are levels of art, and if one is dealing in elementary applications, it seems that a psychologist would know better how to open a mind.
We have so many psychologists here that many Ph.D.’s are farming, many Ph.D.’s are creating dams, many Ph.D.’s are looking after my peacocks. A few perhaps are functioning as psychologists, psychiatrists, in the medical center; if somebody needs any help, if somebody is schizophrenic…
What about in the meditation courses and in the university?
Meditation is beyond psychology. It is not psychology; it has nothing to do with the brain, it has nothing to do with the mind, either. It is a state of no-mind. Even Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung and Alfred Adler had no idea of meditation, of what it is. They all thought in terms of concentration. Concentration has nothing to do with meditation. Concentration is a method of the mind, and meditation is a way to transcend the mind, to go above the mind – so you are on the top of the hills and all your thoughts are just in the valley, and you can watch them and you can have a bird’s eye view of what kind of mind you have.
These are three things: the state of no-mind which is your being; the mind, which is what the society has conditioned you for; and the third, the brain, which you have brought into the world with the body. The most bogus is the mind. The brain is a reality. The no-mind is a reality. The mind is only a program: Hindu mind, Mohammedan mind, communist mind – the mind has to be labeled, because it is a program. And meditation is a deprogramming. It is going beyond the mind. Nobody can deprogram a man of meditation – impossible. There is no way. He has nothing.
I am available: I give the challenge to any psychiatrist in the whole world to deprogram me. He just has to be alerted that by deprogramming me, he may get deprogrammed!
That’s good – go forward!
Osho,
While going forward I reminded myself of something we said a while ago.
Okay.
I feel that we're getting bits and pieces of a subject that fascinates me, and again it gets back to what seems to be unfolding in the world today, between factions and peoples. Each time I've broached that, I think you have the impression that I was trying to compare it with you, with what goes on here, and I'm not necessarily. But I see this business of competition for the thoughts of man and for the indoctrination procedures that are going on all over the world – it happens in advertising, it happens in the military, it happens in churches. But it seems to have become more sophisticated, and I guess that's what I see.
No, no indoctrination happens here, sophisticated or unsophisticated. If you look at my books you will find thousands of contradictions in them. Talking to me is just a beautiful game with words. I am not trying to preach a certain doctrine; otherwise I would be consistent, I would repeat the same thing.
Oh, I believe it!
Yes, I have never repeated anything. I have contradicted myself every day, and I tell my people, never bring yesterday into what I said. Ask right now, directly, whatever is your question. But don’t bring in, “Osho, you said this ten years ago, and now you are saying that.” I have never read my books, and I don’t remember ten years back. And why should I remember unnecessary luggage on my head?
I am available, more alert, more aware, than I was ten years ago.
Do you think that's going on in the world?
No. That indoctrination is going on all over the place, except in my communes.
That's what I meant. Where do you see that leading – your commune aside – just as an observation?
Everywhere: the pope is doing it, Mother Teresa the Terrible is doing it.
You've got a lot of mileage out of her.
Yes, that woman is terrible!

Sheela: We have to change the tape.

Change it.
You have some way of changing exactly at the wrong time, hm? You can take some grapes while they are changing it. Take some grapes, or water, or something.
Thank you, no. No, I'm fine, thanks.
Sheela: Some chocolates? How about some chocolates?
Oh, thank you so much, Sheela, I couldn't. I'm fine.
After I am gone, then he will…!

Sheela: Okay.

Then they go in the pockets!
This quest to make folks see things how whatever particular leader sees them, it just seems to me to be heating up and heading some place that makes me uncomfortable in the world at large.
It is happening there, and the politicians are leading the world to a nuclear war. Because they go on piling up nuclear weapons in spite of all their speeches about peace, love, friendship, coexistence – but they are all piling up nuclear weapons.
In fact, it seems to be a little crazy: already they have so many nuclear weapons that they can destroy this planet seven hundred times. Now, there is no need: there is no way for life to escape, they have already seven hundred times more than is needed. But they are heading on out of fear of each other.
The religious leaders are continuously trying to convert people. Particularly Christianity – which is the biggest religion in the world – is trying to convert the poor people, very cheaply. Because those poor people need food, those people need medicine, they need houses, they need jobs, and Christianity can provide them with a few things. And their own religion cannot do anything else than prayer to a God who does not exist. So Christianity is trying to convert people more and more into the church. It is also a political game – the politics of numbers.
Politicians and priests have always been in a certain conspiracy. The conspiracy is that they both need wars, they both need poverty, they both need people in suffering, misery; orphans, widows, sick people – they both need all these people. Without these people…
Adolf Hitler has a statement in his biography: “Only in wartime can you become a great hero.” And that is true. All your heroes are wartime heroes, you don’t hear anything about a single peacetime hero. Politicians, if they want to achieve their ambition – and they are ambitious people, otherwise why should they be in politics – their ambition can be fulfilled only in war.
The trouble is that the Third World War is going to destroy all. So both parties are waiting, and trying to find out ways to prevent nuclear weapons or sabotage them. Once either America or the Soviet Union finds a method of nullifying nuclear weapons, the war will immediately be on. It will be postponed till that moment, and that moment cannot be very far off. Both sides are continuously working on finding something as an antidote for nuclear weapons. Right now, they don’t have any antidote. While they don’t have the antidote, you can remain assured there is not going to be war. But soon they may find it. There is not much problem in it; if they can find nuclear weapons, they can find something which negates nuclear weapons.
The religious leaders are trying to convert the poor countries, the poor people. And that is also part of the program of the capitalist countries. Against communism, America doesn’t have a philosophy to argue. America needs Christianity to argue against communism. You cannot convert Indians into Americans, obviously. You cannot convert Japanese into Americans, obviously. But you can convert them to Christianity. So Christianity is serving the capitalist politicians and is spreading Christianity all over the world.
And these Christians, their leaders, are against abortion, because if there is abortion… [tape change]
The religious leaders are against abortion.
Not all of them.
All.
Even the ones who say they're not?
Everyone is against abortion – the religious leaders. The Hindu religious leaders, the Buddhist religious leaders, the Christians, the Jews – they are all against abortion, against birth control methods, against the pill, for they all want greater numbers. Their strength is in numbers.
You paint such an utterly dark picture. You paint such a picture of the totality of selfishness of everyone outside here.
It is true. It is true. I am neither…
This is the only place on earth where there is selflessness, or where that kind of selfishness doesn't exist?
I am not a pessimist. I am not an optimist, either. I am just a realist. So if it is night, I cannot say it is day. And I am not painting it dark; it is dark.
And absolute?
Absolutely dark.
This is the ark?
This is Noah’s ark. This is where we are trying to pull the intelligent youth, so they can be saved from AIDS. The outside world will not be able to save people from AIDS. They may be able to postpone the Third World War, but who is going to postpone AIDS?
Osho,
How will you accomplish that here?
Only we can do it.
How?
We are already doing it. Every sannyasin is going through tests, and if somebody is found to have AIDS, he is not condemned; he is a victim of all the old religions. We love him. We have made a beautiful place – we have found two persons who have AIDS – we have made a beautiful place for them, the most scenic, because their life is now short, and we are supplying them with everything that they ever wanted.
And we are going to make that place bigger. If more AIDS people come to the commune we will put them there with all the medical facilities. But AIDS cannot in any way be cured. All that can be done is, those people can be prevented from spreading it – and that you cannot do in the outside world, it is impossible.
You're saying it has to be a controlled environment?
Yes. It has to be a certain commune, where people love each other, respect each other; even the person who has AIDS does not feel condemned. In the outside world, the people who have AIDS are trying to hide it, otherwise the whole society will be turning their backs on them.
Excuse me, but that's where I keep having difficulty. It's the totality with which you condemn “us”. I've been to AIDS hospices, I've seen the tremendous care that decent, giving human beings present to men who are dying. I've seen people of religion – whom you condemn – being generous and good and operating from points of conscience. That's, I suppose, why the absolutes keep sticking in my craw – each time I hear that pronouncement…
It is just your prejudice that has given you all these ideas.
How so?
For example, if you look at Mother Teresa from your attitude…
I've never seen Mother Teresa, I'm telling you of things I've seen.
No, just from your attitude… I am just taking an example, because I know her and her work – that’s why.
But I don't.
Anybody who sees her work will appreciate it: she is doing a great service to humanity, saving the orphans. But the real purpose of saving the orphans is converting them to Catholicism. All those orphans are being adopted by Catholic families.

One American Protestant family went there; they were not aware that they would be refused. They were asked, “Are you Christians?” They said, “Yes.” So they were taken in, and the receptionist informed them, “There are seven hundred orphans – you can choose. But first fill the register which says to which religion you belong.” When they wrote “Protestant” the clerk said, “Wait, let me inquire first.” And he came back and said, “We don’t have any orphans right now.” A minute before, there were seven hundred orphans.

This man wrote a letter to all the biggest Indian newspapers. I condemned Mother Teresa on the grounds of that letter. She wrote a letter to me. I had told her that this is absolutely ugly: you are trying to convert orphans into Catholicism. Your concern is not the orphan, your concern is one more Catholic. Secondly, you are against abortion, you are against birth control – because if there is birth control and abortion, where are you going to get the whole supply of orphans? So, on the outside it is a white house, inside it is all black.
She wrote to me, “I will be praying to God on your behalf, that he should forgive you.” Nobody can say that something is wrong in it, but I know everything is wrong in that sentence. I wrote her back, “There is no God, so don’t try to befool me. Secondly, who are you to pray on my behalf, without my permission? You are interfering in my life, without my permission. This is trespass.”
So the sentence looks beautiful, but when you dissect it, what she is saying is that I am wrong – so wrong that I will be punished by God – and she is right, and she is praying for me. What great generosity!

Sheela: We need to change, Osho.

Change.
I think that's enough, if it is for you.
That’s good.
You would like to have…?
Obviously, I still don't… I can't, I can't see things that black and white. I don't know about Mother Teresa. I hear stories about Mother Teresa – what do I know? I know nothing. But I do know there are decent people out there.
You have to look more deeply into these generous people. These are the people who have kept humanity poor.
You began by telling me of the way in which you're treating two people who have AIDS. What you describe doesn't seem to be an evil act designed to do anyone any harm. But what I saw – of two other people out there treating people for AIDS, those…
They are not serving. They are not servants of the people, they are not serving the poor. Service is not a respected word here.
I understand that.
They are simply sharing their love. And in sharing, it is totally different; you give your love to those people who have very little time to live. And without any greed. All the religions in the world are serving the poor with a certain motivation, that if they serve the poor they will reach the kingdom of God.
My people have no greed, no motive. There is no God and no paradise.
And how do we know that these people I saw working, they weren't members of a church…?
They are enjoying it, they are just enjoying it. I have made everything here a celebration – and that is my religion: celebration. We don’t bother about anything else. If those two people are sick, it is part of our celebration to share our energy with them, and prevent the disease spreading to other people. And we can do it perfectly. In the outside world, I know there are senators in your parliament who have AIDS. But…
I wouldn't be surprised.
Yes, you will be surprised.
No, I wouldn't be!
Yes. These people can hide it. They are powerful enough – they can hide it. And the person who has AIDS knows that he is going to die within two years, so he will make as many sexual contacts as possible.
Do you really believe that we're all so terrible out there?
They are!
But not they, me. I'm one of them. I wouldn't do that.
You are one of them…
Yes.
But if you suffer from AIDS, then you will do exactly what I am saying.
I will go out and contaminate others?
Yes.
Baloney. Excuse me, but baloney.
No “excuse” – that’s a perfectly beautiful word!
You're suggesting then that's there's some other… Are you suggesting that I would go out and knowingly contaminate people if I knew?
No, no. It is not a question of knowingly contaminating. The question is of a man who knows that he’s going to die. His immediate reaction will be how much he can live in these two years or six months. He has to live with a speed, with an intensity, that he had never done before.
Only most of it he won't be able to do much more than sit up in bed.
Yes. So this man is going to have as many sexual contacts as possible. Not that he is trying to contaminate anybody; he is just the flame which is going out.
It's a mighty narrow line between trying to, and allowing it to happen. I can't imagine people doing so.
In the outside world, it is happening.
Yes, and in the outside world it's not happening also.
Soon you will see.
I mean, we're not all people of like mind. Are all people of like mind here? Is this a monolithic society?
No, no. It is not a question…
Well, it's hard to believe.
The question is, you can be contaminated even by kissing and you may not know it, because it is not only through sexual intercourse that you get AIDS.
I realize that there is a theory about that.
Yes, you can just be kissed by a friend and you may get it; and without knowing it, you may contaminate other people. It is a wildfire. And now there are a few experts who are saying that there is a possibility to contaminate even by breathing. Then it becomes absolutely impossible.
But in my commune we will try to prevent that too. Everybody, all the sannyasins, can use doctors’ masks. You will not be able to do that in the outside world. That’s the difference I am trying to make. The difference is that here we are living together, caring about each other, loving each other. In the outside world, you have your family, a small circle, friends, but the outside world is big and it is beyond control.
Certainly.
All the states and all the governments are trying to repress the information about people who have AIDS, for the simple reason that it is such a condemnation. And if you repress the information, you are a criminal. For example, in Oregon they have made the test for AIDS so difficult that almost ninety percent of the people who are suffering from AIDS will not be caught by it. This is what my medical people have informed me, that the test they are doing is such that ninety percent will be cleared.
I'd like to talk with them about that.
Yes, you should talk with them. And these ninety percent who are given a clear certificate will not be contaminating anybody knowingly, but they will be contaminating all the same. Knowledge is not needed to contaminate anybody.
The outside world is crushed between nuclear weapons and AIDS. Perhaps nuclear weapons may be avoided – for the simple reason that if we cannot find an antidote, nuclear weapons cannot be used. But AIDS is unavoidable. Unless the world turns into small communes, and people start going of their own accord to be examined, and every commune manages special places to live, and supplies the demands of those people who are contaminated – I don’t think the outside world is going to do that. Thirty million people in America are living almost as though in Ethiopia.
What do you mean?
America cannot do anything for the thirty million poor people in America itself, but it goes on making more nuclear weapons. You have these mad people in power who should be removed immediately. A great concern should be created in the outside world: these people are mad. When your people are dying… Even in India, fifty percent of the people are on the line: any moment, they will be dying like in Ethiopia – one thousand people per day. And the prime minister of India is selling wheat to outside countries, exporting wheat, because he wants nuclear plants, and for that money is needed. Now, these people should be behind bars.
Rajiv Gandhi is one of my friends, but still I say he should be immediately imprisoned, because what he is doing is criminal. People are dying, and you are preparing for more death. Strange! And you say that they are generous. The pope is generous, and continuously goes on saying, “No abortion, no birth control, no pill. These are all immoral.” And to go on creating more children is moral?
Okay?
Have you done your work?
Good. Come again.
Thank you.
I enjoyed it. Although your questions have remained – I’m worried about your questions!
Next time, whenever possible, mm?
I didn't figure we'd get to them!

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