INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS
The Last Testament Vol 2 05
Fifth Discourse from the series of 30 discourses - The Last Testament Vol 2 by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
Lars Mogansen,
Norres Kane, Hasselholm, Sweden
Glad to see you.
Osho,
It's nice to be here. I work for a newspaper in southern Sweden, a small newspaper, and I've got quite a lot of questions.
Good.
So if you would be as brief as possible in your answers…
Unfortunately I haven't read any of your books, so maybe some of my questions, or all of them, are unnecessary in a sense.
It is good that you have not read any. And you can ask the same question a thousand times, but my answer will again and again be different. So there is no problem.
I was reading on the back of a book called The Book and you're saying, “I teach a sensuous religion; beauty is far more valuable than truth. Beauty is God himself, truth is just an aspect of beauty.” And I'd like to ask you three questions about those quotes:
Are you actually teaching a religion?
Is there a God? Do you believe in God, or maybe you're even some kind of God to your disciples yourself?
And you're saying beauty is far more valuable than truth. Is that why – from what I see – most of the people here are young, good-looking people?
That is my way of disposing of God. When I say beauty is God, I’m saying there is no God, but only beauty. And I am making a distinction between truth and beauty because truth is more a question of the head. It is a more logical, philosophical inquiry. Beauty is of the heart. It is not logical, not philosophical; it is more poetic, more aesthetic. You can feel it, but you cannot prove it. You can experience it, but you cannot explain it.
Truth – the very word looks dead, a logical conclusion. Beauty is not a conclusion, it is a sudden revelation. When you see a rose it is not that you go through a logical solipsism, “This is a rose, and roses are beautiful, so this must be beautiful.” The moment you see it, the head stops spinning thoughts. On the contrary, your heart starts beating faster. It is something totally different from the idea of truth.
Truth is argumentative. Whenever somebody proves a truth, all that he proves is that he is more logically proficient than his opponent. So, in the whole history of philosophy, every philosopher has been contradicted: five thousand years of philosophy, and not a single truth on which all the philosophers agree.
Beauty is a totally different phenomenon. It is not a question of proving it. If you see a woman as beautiful, nobody is going to ask why. The question why is irrelevant about beauty. You need not prove it, nor can you. In fact, if the other person is idiotic enough and continues to say, “You have to prove why this woman is beautiful,” you will be at a loss. You cannot prove it, because it is something of the heart, and proofs are something of the head.
What I am saying in that statement is that the experience of religion is just like the experience of beauty, love. It is of the heart. It is not a theology, it is not a philosophy; it is more like a poetry, a painting, a sculpture.
It happened that Picasso was painting on a beach, and a man was watching him for almost two hours. He looked at the painting from every angle, and finally he could not contain his curiosity. He approached Picasso and said, “Forgive me. I don’t want to intrude into your work. For two hours I have been watching, but I cannot figure out the meaning of this painting.”
Picasso looked at the man and said, “Have you ever asked the meaning of all the stars in the sky? Have you stopped in a garden, and asked the meaning of all the flowers? What is the meaning of the songs of the birds? And if nobody is answerable for the beautiful sky, and the gardens, and the birds, why should you torture a poor painter? I don’t know the meaning. I know that what I am doing is tremendously satisfying to me.”
But you don't know the meaning, the goal, of what…
There is no meaning, and no goal. A life is in itself sufficient. A goal is needed only when something is not intrinsically valuable. The train has a goal, the machine has a goal; without the goal the machine is useless.
But love has no goal, it is enough unto itself. And if anybody’s love has a goal, remember, there is no love in it. Perhaps the man loves the woman because she is rich and old, and going to die soon. If there is a motive, any end, it destroys the very phenomenon of love. Love has to be unmotivated, without any goal and without any meaning. When you hug a friend, have you ever asked, “What is the meaning of hugging?” You will not find a meaning – and if you can find a meaning, then it is not hugging, it is just unnecessarily pressing each other’s bones!
There is something which is beyond meaning, which you cannot express through words. That’s why you are using a gesture. Your hug is a gesture of something which is inexpressible by words. Your hug is simply saying, “I would like you to be just part of me. I would like to be part of you. It hurts that there is a separation. It hurts that we are two.” Your hug is immensely expressive, but there is no motive in it, no end to it.
Everything that is valuable in life is always a goal unto itself. There is no outside goal. Anything that is valuable cannot be a means to some end. Just thinking of it as a means is reducing it, utterly destroying its qualities and values. Your interest is in the end. If you can get the end without this means, you will discard the means and you will get the end. You have to go through the means, because without the means the end is not available. But your eyes are focused on the end.
Love, beauty, poetry, painting, dance, music don’t have any goal. But they have immense blissfulness, a tremendous ecstasy. You can be drowned in it, you can forget the whole world. Time can stop. If time does not stop listening to Mozart, it means you are not listening. It simply means you are not capable of listening to Mozart. Looking at the paintings of van Gogh, if you are not forgetting the whole world then you are not looking at the paintings. Or you are only seeing the painting, but it has not been a heart-felt experience.
So the point is enjoying what you do at this moment?
Every moment, every single moment. Enjoy it so totally that you never have to look back, that you never have to repent that that moment was lost. Squeeze the whole juice of it, because the next moment is not certain. This may be the last moment. The past is gone, the future is uncertain: all that is certain is this moment. And millions of people are losing this moment for a certain goal in the future, a certain end to be achieved.
I wanted to say through that statement that religion has no goal, not even God.
Yes, but what you're working with is a…you could call it a religion.
I can. In fact, I call this the only religion. All other religions are in some way an exploitation of man’s weakness, helplessness, ignorance. They are not religions. This is the only religion, because there is no question of exploiting anybody’s fear and creating a hell, exploiting anybody’s greed and giving a promise of paradise, and eternal joys there.
I am not promising anything. There is no judgment, and there is no reward, and no punishment. If you live this moment totally, that is its reward. If you miss, you are already punished. There is no need for anything afterwards, there is no need for a judgment day in the end, when the universe will come to its ultimate death – there is no need. Each moment is giving you its reward, its punishment – and it is up to you. To me, not to live the moment is enough punishment: you missed a living reality. And to live it fully is paradise.
Paradise and hell are not somewhere else. Each moment both are available to you. It is your choice. People who are thinking of the past are missing. People who are thinking of the future are missing. People who are not thinking of past and future, and are simply living this moment intensely – burning their life torch from both ends simultaneously – they are the people who come to know what love is, what beauty is, what truth is.
Would that denounce people who are trying to make a better future for themselves, as well as for their children, and their children's children? I'm speaking of people that are active in trying to make a better environment, like Greenpeace, peace movements.
I understand. Just think, for five thousand years this is what every generation has been doing. The generation that has preceded us was thinking about us and making a better future: our present was their future. What have they done? For five thousand years continuously every generation, every father, every mother, every teacher, every priest, has been creating a better future. And the total result seems to be just the opposite.
Two things happened. They destroyed their present. They sacrificed, they thought they were martyrs, they thought they were doing great service to humanity. They were doing great disservice, because the time that was given to them – a gift of existence – they wasted. And they have not been able to create a better future. Those five thousand years should become a lesson.
My own understanding is, if you are living your present totally, out of this living, the next moment will be born. You have taken care of the next moment by living this moment totally. Just think how logic can lead to foolish attitudes. The father is told that he has to sacrifice his life for the children; his father sacrificed his life for him. Neither his father could live, nor he can live, nor are his children going to live, because they will be sacrificing their lives for their children. So everybody is sacrificing for somebody else. Strange. Then who is going to live?
So my insistence is: Live it. And out of your living experience the future will be born. If your living moment is of tremendous beauty and ecstasy, naturally you are creating the future – without any effort to create it. But if you are sacrificing to your children’s future, deep down you will be resentful – because your life is being destroyed by those children. And those children will be resentful toward you, because you were continuously bragging that you sacrificed your life, and you want your children to feel obliged to you. You would like your children to sacrifice their youth to your old age, because you sacrificed. This is so stupid.
I can agree on that. And what you're talking about, from what I understand, is the more traditional family relations both in Christianity and probably also…
Everywhere.
…all other religions.
But let me put it more specifically: more and more people are getting very worried about the situation – the political situation – with nuclear war threats, the environment and pollution, which is not the same sacrifice from father to son, father to son that we're talking about.
I understand. It is just superficially different, basically it is the same. The question of nuclear weapons should not be thought of as a future problem. It is in the present moment. So I’m not saying that you have to think about the future. It is a living reality. We are living surrounded by nuclear weapons. So do whatsoever you want to do right now.
But your pacifists are thinking about the future – that there should not be a Third World War, that nuclear weapons should not be created. Stupid. Again you are destroying the present moment. And the logic of people who are creating nuclear weapons is not different from yours – they are also preparing for the future, for the future of their people, for the future of their nation. They don’t want to be weak, they want to be strong. They want to remain in the position that nobody can invade them. The warmongers are thinking of the future, the pacifists are thinking of the future.
I’m neither a pacifist, nor a supporter of war. I’m saying let these idiots fight with each other, and humanity should live this moment as joyously as possible. If we can manage to live in this moment peacefully, joyously, the Third World War is not going to happen. We will have not done anything about the Third World War: if people are happy, if people are enjoying, nobody can drag them into a war. War is not a simple phenomenon, it is very complex. People have to be miserable, people have to be in suffering, people have to be sexually repressed. People have to be humiliated in every possible way by poverty, by hunger. Only then can you manage to convince them to destroy each other because they have nothing to live for.
Karl Marx has a beautiful statement in his Communist Manifesto. I don’t agree with his communism, but the sentence with which the Communist Manifesto ends is tremendously significant. He says, “Proletariat of the world, unite, because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Fight.” When you don’t have anything to lose, fighting becomes easier. In fact, there is a possibility you may win, you may have the whole world. But if people are living a beautiful life, a loving life, you cannot convince them that they have to destroy other countries, other people. You cannot do it, it is impossible.
Secondly, if people are not sexually repressed – which is the base of all wars, every soldier has to be sexually repressed. It is sexual repression that becomes violence. The soldiers and the monks in the monasteries are not in different boats. And both have been calamities to humanity. The monks have been going on crusades, killing in the name of religion – and the soldiers in the name of nation, in the name of culture.
But the basic thing is that if they are allowed to live their sex life in a relaxed way – the monk will forget all about the Catholic Church and the Polack pope, and he will say, “Let them go to hell – I am not going on a crusade!” He has a girlfriend, and every moment is so beautiful.
You cannot send my people to fight for anything. They will say no because they are enjoying every moment so much – why should they disturb their life and other people’s life?
It seems that they're ready to fight for your life, though.
No.
It seems like it.
They are just pretending. My people are not going to fight anybody. They are just enjoying toy guns, and…
Osho,
I don't think I can agree with you that it takes suffering, sexual repression, poverty and so forth, to make people go to war – because today it doesn't take many people to start a war, because there's so much technology involved.
I think – and a lot of people think – that there should be something done now. Are you suggesting that everybody just…
Do something…
enjoy…
…now! That’s what I am saying. Dance in the streets, rejoice in front of the White House, have parties before the Kremlin, make love before the White House. Thousands of people making love before the White House, that’s what is to be done.
Do you mean that?
My people are always ready. It is going to embarrass the politicians and bring them to some sense. And they will see that these are not people you can send to war. It just has to be proved that people are now fed up with politicians, and their continuous hunger for war.
Adolf Hitler has written something valuable in his autobiography. He says, “If you want to become a great hero in history, then war is absolutely necessary – because only in wartime heroes are born.” That is true. In peacetime there are no heroes.
If Ronald Reagan wants to become a world hero, then a war is necessary. Otherwise, he will be lost just the same way as Jimmy Carter is lost. Do you know where he is?
Not at the moment.
Nobody ever will – people will know only when he dies. Then there will be small piece in the newspapers, “Poor Jimmy has died.”
Osho,
So what do you think of your president Ronald Reagan personally?
Every politician is basically a criminal. The criminal and the politician have the same kind of mentality, and the same psychology. The criminal is one who could not succeed in being a politician. He’s a failure. That’s why he becomes revengeful, and goes in the direction of crime. The politician is the successful criminal. But nothing succeeds like success: once he’s successful, you forget everything about his criminal mind. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini…
Ronald Reagan.
They are all criminals, Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte. Your whole history is the history of criminals, big criminals. Small criminals die in prisons; big criminals become presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens. But sooner or later humanity is going to recognize that the history we have been writing is a history of the criminals, who have done everything.
When there was the Watergate case against Nixon, Mao Zedong made a statement. He was simply puzzled. He said, “Why is so much fuss being made about it? Every politician does it. That poor Nixon was simply caught red-handed, that’s all. It is not a question of doing.”
Mao Zedong’s statement is that every politician does it, has always been doing it – just Nixon got caught. He’s saying it about himself too, because he’s the president of a country and he has done every kind of crime that a man is capable of. But he was successful.
So my attitude toward politicians is that they should be treated as criminals, they should be watched as criminals. A climate should be created around the earth, that the moment somebody starts becoming political he should be hospitalized immediately.
That takes away the whole idea of democracy, doesn't it?
Democracy will be possible only when there are no politicians.
Anarchy?
No, I’m not an anarchist. This democracy is bogus, it is simply a rotary club of dictators – for four years, five years, one dictator; then for five years another dictator. This democracy depends on at least two political parties, and those two political parties are basically the same. The psychology is that one party rules – naturally it cannot fulfill the promises it has given to humanity, to its nation, to the people. Nobody can fulfill them, because to fulfill them will need such a radical change in everything, which the politicians cannot do.
But in those five years people become fed up with them, and the other party starts getting support. The other party says, “We are going to fulfill all these promises.” And the memory of people is not very long psychologically; it is not more than three years. That’s why every election in every country is after more than three years – four years, five years, but not before three years. It is a psychological standpoint. People forget about what the other party did five years before when it was in power.
People’s memories are just nothing. They see the party which is in power, and they want to drag it out of power – and the other party is ready. In five years’ time they will be disillusioned about the other party, but by that time the first party will be ready to fulfill again. This is a very cunning strategy. It is not democracy. It is politicians dividing themselves into two groups, with a subtle conspiracy – unconscious, “You rule for five years, for five years we rule.” It is just a rotating dictatorship.
Democracy, according to me, will be possible only when there are no political parties at all, and each individual decides on his own. Somebody can stand for the president of the country, but there is no party there to support him. He can approach individuals, he can explain to the country, the people, what he wants to do. And if people feel intelligently that this man has some guts and can do something, they can support him. Otherwise there is no question.
Political parties become investments. A political line becomes your commitment: you are a Democrat, somebody else is a Republican. They become almost like religions. You cannot do anything against the political party line; you have to support the president that your party has chosen. This is not democracy.
Democracy will be party-less – without politicians – and then there will be a hope that we may find people who are not interested in dominating, in dictating. Who are really interested in making people more happy, more rejoicing, richer.
But this is not democracy.
Do you consider your commune, your town of Rajneeshpuram, a democracy?
It is a democracy because there is no political party.
But all the individuals here are working together for the same purpose: from what I understand, making your ideas and your thoughts of how you're supposed to live, real.
No. My whole insistence is, never try to follow me. I am not a reliable person. Don’t believe in me, don’t believe in my words. Whatever I say, think over it. Unless it becomes your own idea and you can say, “Now this is my idea”… Work it out. Nobody here is working out my ideas. They are working out their ideas.
Which they have all gotten from you to start with.
I have not enforced them, I have not indoctrinated them. I have simply explained my vision. And my whole effort is to teach them how to doubt, how to be skeptical, how to argue, so that they can argue against me, they can be skeptical against me, they can doubt me. And if – after all this doubting, skepticism, rationality – if they find that something is true, it has already become theirs. I don’t have any monopoly on it. I may have triggered the process, but I have no monopoly on it.
This commune is being run by the people themselves. I’m not even a member of the commune. I have never gone to their commune meetings; I don’t know where their offices are. Anybody who comes here for a few hours will know more about the commune than I have known in four years, because I never go out of my room.
In the morning I come to the meeting place, where I spontaneously say whatsoever I feel like saying. I may contradict everything that I have said up to now. Nobody can say to me, “You are contradicting yourself,” because I have never promised anybody that I will not contradict. Nobody can blame me – that I am inconsistent – because I have always said that I am a growing person, continuously growing. And I have to deny every yesterday each day. How can they create a belief system?
Jesus had a few sentences which he consistently repeated his whole life. Naturally it can become a catechism. People can follow direct guidance about anything with full details. Moses gives Ten Commandments: you have just to follow, you have to have faith.
Here, doubt is the climate. This is not a place of faith. I am explaining to them what I have experienced in my life, and leaving it up to them. And I never inquire whether anybody is following my ideas or not. I’m not interested in that at all. My whole interest is that my people should be intelligent – and then their intelligence will take care. Then whatsoever they do is right, even if it goes against me. But it should not go against their intelligence.
I respect individuals. I respect their intelligence, I respect their sensitivity – so much that I will be the last person in any way to give them beliefs, dogmas, creeds, Das Kapital, Holy Bible – no.
You keep telling them to doubt everything you say and make inquiries about everything. But it seems to me, that the only thing they really don't doubt is you as a person. They keep giving you gifts, cars, their work, their money.
It is true, they cannot doubt me as a person because they have lived with me, and they have doubted enough. And they have found their doubts are meaningless as far as my being is concerned – not my thoughts. As far as a person goes, they have known me. They have experienced my love, they have known that my trust in them is immense.
Even those sannyasins who have left, I still love the same way. I still trust in them the same way. If they come back, nobody is going to ask them, “Why have you been missing for so many years?”
A few sannyasins that have left have even made negative statements about me, and journalists have asked me, “Some ex-sannyasin has made this statement…”
And I say, “If he has once been a sannyasin, then he must be right.” I respect the person. If he says that I am dishonest, then he must have found some dishonesty in me. I cannot distrust him.
Osho,
I was listening to you this morning, and you were sort of making fun of Christians, they have their Jerusalem; the Communists have their Kremlin, and Moslems have Mecca and their black rock.
But what's the difference between these religions and the communists' centers, and the town here, the temples – and you?
The difference is immense. I have communes all over the world, and I am going to create more and more communes in countries where they are not. Rajneeshpuram has no prerogative over another commune. All communes are equal. And my effort is that all the communes around the world will make the whole earth holy – not Jerusalem, not Moscow, not Mecca, but the whole earth. With less than that I cannot be satisfied.
But isn't this still a place where people come from all over the world, like pilgrims go to Jerusalem, or…
No, they do not come here as a pilgrimage. For example, in Mohammedanism it is a necessity that a Mohammedan should go to Mecca at least one time in his life. That is one of the fundamentals, otherwise he cannot enter paradise.
You will be surprised: in India, Mohammedans are very poor people. For the simple reason that Mohammed taught them something which has become absolutely outdated and irrelevant in the modern economy. He taught them that interest on money is sin. That has made all the Mohammedans in the world poor, because if you can’t get money on interest, you cannot make industries, you cannot create businesses. And who is going to give you money without interest? For what? You cannot pay interest to anybody, and you cannot take interest from anybody. So Mohammedans have remained poor, basically for this idea.
Money has to move faster. That’s why it is called currency. The faster it moves, the richer the society becomes. If I have one dollar and I go on holding onto that one dollar, then in this room there is only one dollar. But if that dollar goes on moving fast, from one person to another person – then, if there are fifty persons here, fifty dollars in a single round, fifty persons have used one dollar. And, if there are many more rounds then that much more. But why should people give money if they are not going to gain anything out of it?
So Mohammedans are very poor, but still they go to Mecca. They sell their houses, they sell their land because it is something of tremendous importance. Before they die, at least once they should go to Mecca. Without going to Mecca, there is no paradise for them.
Now, here there is no motivation. I’m not promising anything to people – that if they don’t come here they are committing some sin. They come here just to rejoice, to meet here with the same kind of people. And it is not one-way: I’m sending people from here to every commune, so it is a constant exchange. Now many sannyasins from here are in Germany, many are in Australia, many are in Italy and we exchange. If we send twenty people to a commune, then we take twenty people from that commune – for three months they will be there, for three months those people will be here.
We want to create just one commune around the earth. And we want the whole earth to be thought of as holy – not just a single small town or a small place to be holy.
That has been the wish of every religion so far, hasn't it?
No, never. Never has it been the idea of any religion that the whole earth should be holy, no.
Why, then, do the Christians send out missionaries and the Mohammedans talk about holy war, and so forth.
Yes, they are sending these people to create more Mohammedans; more Catholics, so the Vatican becomes more powerful. It is the politics of numbers. But the Vatican is not saying that Christians in India have a holy land.
You will be surprised that Indian Christians have been constantly asking the pope, “There should be an Indian church, just as there are churches in each country.” India has no church, only Christians: the church is the Vatican. All the Catholic churches in India are owned by the pope in the Vatican. They are not the property of Indian Christians.
The pope is interested in increasing more and more the number of Catholics. Mohammedans are interested… Only two religions, Jews and Hindus, because they are the oldest religions in the world – naturally, because they are the oldest religions, they never thought of conversion. There was no need. A Jew is born, a Hindu is born.
New religions came into existence – Christianity, Buddhism – and naturally they had to convert. Otherwise, from where are they going to get their numbers? Hindus and Jews have both resisted the idea of conversion for hundreds of years, but finally they had to relax. Now Hindus are converting, and trying to make people Hindus, because their numbers are shrinking. Catholics are growing, Christians are growing.
No religion has ever tried the idea that the whole earth is holy. For example Hinduism believes that except India, there is no holy country. One who is born in India is blessed: all others are condemned and cursed. The whole world is full of sinners, all the saints are born in India – that is their attitude. And then in India they have their religious capitol, Varanasi.
Is there any way to sin in this kind of society?
No, in my commune you can commit a mistake but you cannot commit a sin. Sin, as such, does not exist.
If I steal one of your cars, or if…
Yes, that is…
I rape your wife.
…a mistake. That is just a mistake, it is not a sin. And if my wife is willing to go with you, it is not even a mistake.
What if she's not?
If she is not, and you force her, then you are committing a mistake against humanity – not against God. There is no God. And because there is no God, you cannot commit a sin. Sin necessarily needs a God, a supreme person to judge. We are not judges.
It is perfectly human if you feel like escaping with my wife – if you love her, if you want her. But if she is not willing then you are doing something inhuman – a mistake of interfering into somebody’s life. And it is not going to give you any joy. A woman that has come with you unwillingly will become a pain in your neck. No hell is needed, she will give you hell.
So I don’t prescribe any rewards, I don’t judge that people will fall into hell. To err is human. I can understand that one can fall in love with somebody’s wife. And if the wife is willing, it is perfectly right. But if she is not willing, then you are doing something barbarous. For that you need not be punished; for that you have to be psychiatrically treated. That’s what we do. If somebody commits a mistake, it shows that something is wrong in his psychology. We have all kinds of therapies available. We send him to therapies so that his mind should be put right: so that he should be made more alert what he is doing, so that he should be made to understand that there is a certain territory around every individual and you should not trespass it. That’s the only way to live peacefully, lovingly.
Everybody trespassing on everybody else is what is happening around the whole world. Here, nobody is trespassing on anybody. And it is not that wives are not moving, and husbands are not changing. That is happening so fast here, as is not happening anywhere else, because freedom – if it is not even available for love, then what kind of freedom do you have? And nobody fights over the question. Here you will not find a triangle, two persons fighting for one woman. You cannot make a film story here.
I'm sure I could.
Yes, here it would be difficult to make a film story or write a novel. It would simply be flat – because if somebody falls in love with my wife, I tell him, “Take her, because there are other women who are waiting for me. So be quick, and take all her luggage, so she will not come back! I have lived with her enough, and she has lived with me enough, and we are grateful for all those beautiful moments. Now you enjoy.” Nobody has a monopoly on anybody. Each individual is a monarch, and nobody is a slave.
It sounds like a very macho and male way of looking at it.
No, this is the place where all machos have been destroyed. This place is ruled by women. If any macho comes here, within just a few days women will be chasing him and he will be escaping. It happens every day.
Osho,
Why do you think that there are more women here than men – because that's a fact, isn't it?
Certainly.
Why is it so, do you think?
I’m a man and it is natural for women to fall in love with a man. And my whole religion is a religion of love. Naturally more women have understood me immediately, directly.
There are men, but if you look deep down into those people, you will be surprised: they also are in love with me, and they have grown their repressed feminine side.
Each man is half man and half woman, and each woman is half man and half woman, because we are born between two polarities – the mother and the father. They both contribute to your being. And this is one of the greatest contributions of Carl Gustav Jung to the modern age, that…
I didn't get that.
Carl Gustav Jung.
I don't know him.
You don’t know him?
No.
You must know him, because he’s one of the persons since Sigmund Freud, who has really contributed significant ideas. This is one of his greatest contributions – although it is not new. In India, that idea has been in existence for five thousand years. On my dining table is a statue somebody has sent me – half man, half woman. That statue is ancient, and that has been the idea. But Jung introduced it in the West.
The men who are here are not here because they are men, but because somehow I have managed for their woman to surface – because my whole approach is of the heart it is more difficult for men to be in communion with me. In the beginning they have to start with the head, but slowly, slowly I persuade them to go deeper toward the heart. And the distance is not much, just a few inches. Once they get to the heart… The heart is always feminine, the head is always macho.
So, certainly there is a greater proportion of women here than anywhere else. You will not find such juicy women anywhere else in the world, because their womanhood has for the first time become respected, for the first time, liberated. For the first time, they are not thought to be second-class citizens. On the contrary they are running the whole commune. It is more a matriarchy than a patriarchy. And they are doing so well that it is a proof that if we had allowed women to participate in all the affairs of men all through history, the world would have been immensely richer.
Half of humanity has been crippled: they could not produce painters, singers, musicians, they could not produce scientists, they could not produce mystics. Not a single woman has founded a religion. In fact, even someone like Jesus, who talked about love, did not allow a single woman among his twelve apostles. And those twelve apostles escaped when he was crucified. When his body was brought down there were three women – not a single man. Those three women brought down the body, but they are not even accepted as saints. The Christian trinity has no woman in it.
What I am saying is that if women were allowed the way they are allowed in this commune, their contribution would have been tremendous. The heart can do a few things which the head cannot do, and all the great values belong to the heart. Compassion, love, beauty, kindness, sympathy – all the great values belong to the heart. The head is simply a computer: it is good at mathematics, it is good in a scientific lab.
So many women are here, and they have been more reliable than men.
Reliable in what way?
In every way. They will not leave me for any reason – because they have not joined me for any reason at all. A man first joins me because he feels convinced that I am intellectually right. The woman feels me as a person who can be trusted. She has nothing to do with intellectual conviction.
Now, if tomorrow I change my ideas, the person who yesterday was convinced will leave – because he was convinced by an idea and the idea has changed. The woman is convinced with my being, which is still the same, and will remain always the same. She has no need to change.
For example, I went into silence for three and a half years. A few men dropped out because they had become addicted to my words – but I was silent, and perhaps I would never speak again, so what was the point of hanging around here? They escaped. But the women were the same, whether I was speaking or not. Their love remained the same because it was not based on any intellectual ground. It was a heart-to-heart feeling.
One more thing I would like you to remember: that the men who are here are almost feminine, for the simple reason that I have changed their approach toward life. It is no longer reason, it is no longer logic. It is love, it is feeling. Unknowingly their woman – who had been repressed – has surfaced. That has also created a few problems. It has solved a few complexities, but it has created some new problems. For example, if a man’s repressed woman inside surfaces, he is no longer interested in other women, because that will be lesbianism. He’s man…
So instead he's interested in other men?
Yes, so that is the trouble. But the other man is also…
What's the trouble with being interested in other men?
Because that other man is also feminine.
But everybody here is feminine.
Yes, that’s what I am saying.
So they've got each other.
That’s what I am saying, that this is a really gay society.
So what about all the left-over women who don't have any men?
Nobody is left over.
That's not the right word to use, maybe. But since a lot of the men are gay…
No, no, nobody is gay. Nobody is gay.
I mean that everybody is so blissed out that it does not matter. People love each other, but their love and its qualities have become more feminine. It is not a macho man loving a repressed woman who is almost a slave – no. A man loves a woman, but his love also has become more delicate, softer, more human.
For example, in India a certain ethic has been followed for ten thousand years. Manu must have been a great thinker, he wrote all the laws that have to be followed by Hindus. One law is that once in a while the husband must beat the wife. Strange. When I came across that law I could not believe it. What is he talking about? But when I came to understand women, I immediately understood that he’s right! A woman loses interest in you if you are not macho.
Do you believe in that?
No, I don’t believe in that. That’s how it has been happening down the centuries. Include my commune out! I’m talking about the whole of humanity. That’s what has been happening: the woman wants the man to be strong, just as the man wants the woman to be beautiful. The woman wants the man to be strong, a hero, and she wants him to prove it. A woman immediately loses interest in a hen-pecked husband. He’s not worth…
It is a very complex situation. Every woman tries to reduce the husband into a hen-pecked husband. It is a conflict of power, politics – who is dominating. So unknowingly she tries to reduce the man into a hen-pecked husband. And it is not difficult. It is very easy for a woman to reduce any strong person – he may be Muhammad Ali the Great or anybody – because her ways are such: screaming, crying, weeping, throwing things.
The man comes home tired after working the whole day and here he faces this scene. He may be right but he apologizes: he may ask to be forgiven. He says, “I am sorry, I was wrong.” Otherwise he is not going to be allowed to sleep the whole night. And tomorrow morning he will not get tea – and what about lunch? The woman in the house has all the power. So the situation is that every husband finally finds himself just a mouse in the house. Outside he may be a lion, but inside the house a great transformation comes immediately.
Here in my commune, the feminine qualities of the men have come to the surface. The feminine qualities of the woman have received respect and dignity. Both have become, in a certain way, whole. As the woman receives respect and dignity, her inner side – the other side, the male side – also comes to the surface. She shows strength. She’s no longer weak: she’s no longer the fair sex. She’s not just a lady. Here you will find women and men – no gentlemen, no ladies, those words are prohibited; just raw people, without any hypocrisy. And because everybody is trying to understand himself, in that very effort he understands others too. Understanding each other gives freedom to each other, destroys jealousies, destroys clingings.
Understanding is psychological health, and my people are psychologically healthy. They can accept anything that appeals to their understanding; there is no problem in it. If the woman wants to go with somebody else, she need not escape in the darkness of the night. She can talk to her husband – they have that intimacy, she knows that he will understand. There is no need to escape. And the man will feel grateful that the woman trusted him. Even in such a moment – when she is dropping him – she still respects him, still trusts him. And their friendship continues.
So, here you will find many people who have changed their wives and husbands, but their friendship remains just the same. And you can fall again in love with the same woman, there is no problem!
Osho,
I'd like to ask you another thing: how do you personally feel about living with your luxury cars, your nice watch, the good food; and your creating luxury, both for you, and for the people that live here – at the same time as millions of children are dying every day from starvation in this world?
Aren't you a little concentrated just to yourself?
Yes.
And that's the way you want to have it?
Those people are dying because of their stupidity…
The children…
…and I’m not responsible for it, the pope is responsible for it – because the Christian leaders, Jewish rabbis, Hindu leaders, Mohammedan imams, are all preaching against birth control, against abortion. They are the people who are creating an ugly, poor world; they are responsible for it.
Not a single child has been born in this commune in four years. And nobody is prohibited – just a simple understanding. The world is so over-populated; if you have any understanding you will not increase the population, you will make every effort for the population to drop.
But all the religious leaders around the world without exception are trying to increase the population. They want more poor people because poor people can be converted.
In India I tried, but I could not find a single rich man who had been converted to Christianity. Only beggars – Christianity needs beggars; only orphans – Mother Teresa needs orphans. Mother Teresa is against birth control, abortion. She has to be, otherwise from where this supply of orphans is going to come? These people are responsible. Thousands of people are dying, but I don’t feel any responsibility.
In fact for thirty years in India I was teaching birth control, abortion – and people were throwing stones at me, shoes at me, knives at me. They made attempts to kill me because I was destroying their morality. If this is their morality then they are responsible. So die for your morality.
Whatever I could do as an individual, I have done. And found that there are only walls. Nobody is going to listen, it is simply absurd. Those people are going to be hungry, and those people are going to die, and that’s how it is going to be. I’ve dropped that idea completely.
And then I started the movement of sannyas.
When was that?
It was in 1970, when I became completely fed up with those idiots who didn’t understand, and were not ready even for a dialogue. I had challenged all the Hindu leaders, Buddhist leaders, Jaina leaders that I wanted an open dialogue. But nobody was ready to discuss because they knew what they were saying was simply illogical, it was meaningless. And they are going to create a country of poor people. Right now fifty percent of Indians are ready to become another Ethiopia any day. But I don’t feel responsible, because for thirty years I have been talking to these people, talking to their leaders, talking to their religious leaders.
Indira Gandhi was in touch with me and she was convinced of whatever I was saying. She told me, “You are right, but we cannot do anything – because if we do anything then the Hindu votes will be gone out of our hands, the Mohammedan votes will be gone out of hands, the Christian votes will be gone out of our hands. I will be finished.” She asked me, “Do you want me to be finished?”
I said, “If I was in your place, either I would do something or I would simply resign, because there is no point: if I cannot do what is right, then what is the need for me to remain as prime minister of the country? Then let somebody else who can do something.”
They're all criminals.
Perhaps some criminal may be able to do it. Perhaps India needs an Adolf Hitler who can do it – the question is how to reduce the population.
The problem is that there are too many people, not that the resources are…
The resources are almost nil. And there is no way – they won’t allow the resources to be nourished again. Religious people have strange ideas. For example, in India they will not use manure in which bone powder is mixed – because bones, that is violence.
You will be surprised to know that in the twentieth century, one of the Hindu leaders – the most respected Hindu leader, Swami Karpatri – was teaching…
I was present in the meeting, and I had to contradict him. I created thousands of enemies because of that. A new dam was being made just a few miles away, and that place was going to be the most benefited because of the dam – because their lands were dry and the rains were not certain, and they would be getting as much water as they wanted. And the man was saying to them, “Don’t accept that water, because before giving you the water they take the electricity out of it.”
Now to the people he was saying that that water is impotent – its whole potential has been taken out. “It is dangerous for you to take that water – refuse.” And the people looked convinced, because without an education they wouldn’t understand that electricity is not something you take out of the water. It is not something like sexual potentiality, that you can take out of a man and he becomes impotent. But this simile convinced them, and they were raising their hands in support.
I had to stand up and I asked him, “Do you understand what you are saying? And what do you understand about electricity? What do you understand when electricity is produced by a hydroelectric plant?”
I told the people, “The only argument against this man will be: this year accept the water and see your crops. Those crops will prove this man your enemy. There is no other way. If the crops don’t come, if you drink the water and the thirst does not go, then of course he is right.”
He was very angry. He was so angry that he wrote a whole book about everything, against me.
These people are responsible for poverty, for dying children. And all the religions of the world have been preaching poverty in some way or other in their history.
I want to change this whole approach. I’m all for comfort, luxury, richness, wealth, technology, science. I’m not for renunciation; I’m for rejoicing. I want people to live as richly as possible in all dimensions. And my communes are going to be models, to prove to the world that it is possible. These are the same people; they just need the right attitude, and they can create wealth.
When we came here this land had been lying useless for fifty years. Just see the stupid mind of the politicians: nobody ever bothers – so much land, one hundred and twenty-six square miles, just lying dead. It was for sale and nobody was ready to purchase it because it was a desert. We got it. There was only one house when we got it. Now there are houses for five thousand people, all fully air-conditioned. We made all the roads. We have made a beautiful hospital, a beautiful school. We grow our food, we are self-sufficient; we grow our vegetables, we are self-sufficient. We have our own cows, our own milk, our own butter. We are trying everything.
And the Oregon government is creating every kind of hindrance, according to their land use laws. One simply thinks, “Is this a madhouse that we are living in?” We have used the land. For fifty years nobody bothered that the land was not used: it was according to the land use laws. We have used it, we have made it productive, and we have committed a crime – because it is not according to land use laws. It seems as if man exists for laws, not laws for man.
I have invited the governor, the attorney general: “Come and see, and tell us that this is misuse of land. We don’t bother about laws. The question is that we have made a desert into an oasis, and rather than appreciating it, you are putting case upon case in the courts.” And none of them have come here. They don’t even have the guts, because they know that what we have done is right. And if they are at all reasonable they should change their laws. If their laws don’t fit, they have to be changed.
But they want to change us, not their laws. And these people will say that we are responsible for poverty in the world. We can make the whole world an oasis. Wherever you want, give us land, and I will send my people. I have one million sannyasins around the world, and we will change any kind of place into a beautiful oasis.
I told Indira, “Give me all the power. Simply retire. Within ten years I can change this whole country.” But who wants to give up power?
Nobody, it seems like.
Yes.
Osho,
Could I ask you another question: what do you think will happen when the time comes that you die? Will these people that are with you now continue your ideas and your thoughts? Is there anybody who's going to take over your position of the one that comes up with ideas? I mean, your books are useless because they're all contradicting each other!
They are. That’s why I have been contradicting, so that they should not remain useful in any way – because if they are useful they will become Holy Bibles. They have to be contradictory. I’m making every arrangement that nobody can derive any theology, philosophy out of them. One can enjoy them, just the way one enjoys a flower, a cloud, a sunrise; one can enjoy them as a painting, but one cannot worship them.
And as far as I’m concerned, I never think of tomorrow. So the question of what will happen after my death does not concern me at all. My concern is that this moment I can help my people to be as intelligent as possible, and their intelligence will take care.
I’m not concerned and I’m not going to give them detailed ideas and plans. My approach is – for example, if a blind man asks me, “Where is the door? Then do I have to turn right or left to find the road? And where then have I to go to reach the post office?” My approach is not to give him all those details. My approach is to take him to the hospital. If it is possible to cure his eyes, then he will be able to find the post office or anything else that he wants.
I’m not giving my people any detailed program or any idea what they have to do when I am not here. In fact, even when I am here, they are doing things on their own. I am not…so they will not miss me as far as work is concerned; they are already doing it without me.
I have never entered their offices, either in India or here. I have never looked to see what they are doing. I simply trust in human intelligence. My effort is to sharpen it as much as possible. And that certainly I cannot do after my death, so I have to do it before my death.
Can you call it intelligence to kill fifty percent of the population of India?
Certainly: not fifty percent – fifty percent for India, seventy-five percent for the whole world.
Only one-fourth of the population can live on this earth peacefully, comfortably, luxuriously. I don’t want that you should kill these people by throwing bombs. I don’t want to create Hiroshimas, Nagasakis – which you will have to if you don’t listen to me.
I would like every government to help the starving people to die peacefully. Give them a sleeping dose so they go into a deep sleep, and the sleep turns into death. At least give them a beautiful death. You could not give them a beautiful life, but you can give them a beautiful death, with music and flowers, good food. At least once in their life give them the best that they always wanted. And let them depart.
And once this population comes to a balance, then keep the balance; then don’t allow each and everybody to go on producing like animals. They have to take permission from the medical board, and unless the medical board supports that that child will be healthy, intelligent, they cannot have it. And no couple can be allowed to have more than two children, to replace themselves.
Within ten years, we can make this world totally different. You will just have to drop your ideas about morality, religion, death, sin. If you carry all those old ideas, then wait for the nuclear weapons; they will do the work, and they will not ask about your morality, and they will not bother to give you a beautiful death either. They will give you the worst death possible. So why wait for that?
I’m not being inhuman when I say it. It is out of absolute compassion that I am saying it. It is simply ugly to somehow keep hungry people alive, because they never come up to the survival level. At the most you can manage below the survival level.
Excuse me, do you think it's better to have one-fourth of the earth's population living in luxury than having the total population living fairly well?
Not fairly well – it is not possible. That is not the alternative. The alternative is twenty-five percent of humanity living in absolute comfort and luxury, or the whole world living in misery, poverty, war, death – and finally a global suicide. These are the alternatives.
It seems that we accept things which we are not doing, whether they are moral or immoral. For example, if a world war starts, nobody will bother about morality or immorality. It will not kill seventy-five percent of the people, it will kill one hundred percent of life – trees, birds, animals, who have not done any wrong to you, who are not part of your politics, who are not Americans, and who are not Russians. Those poor people will be unnecessarily destroyed, and nobody will think whether it is moral or immoral.
I’m suggesting a very compassionate idea. If a country cannot manage to live, then it is better for that country to silently die. Why cling to life? For what? Without Ethiopia, the world will not be losing anything – because what has come out of Ethiopia? Except hunger, poverty, continuous rape, murder, crime, what has come out of Ethiopia?
I'm not sure about Ethiopia, but I'm sure that natural resources came out of lots of the countries that are now starving.
That too came only when the population was balanced, not now. India has given so much to the whole world, but the population was so small. In Buddha’s time – and that was the peak of India’s glory – the whole population consisted of two hundred million people. And India included Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim. It was almost double what it is now, and the whole population was two hundred million. Now India’s population alone is eight hundred million. Pakistan is not included, Bangladesh is not included, Bhutan, Nepal are not included. If you include them too, then it will go beyond a billion.
It was possible in Buddha’s time to contribute to the world, and India contributed much. It contributed philosophy, it contributed music, it contributed poetry, literature, sculpture – everything. But the population was small, and the resources so much that people had to do something creative. Life was comfortable. People could paint, people could make statues.
It is so surprising to see an ancient temple like Khajuraho. In Khajuraho there were 120 temples: only 30 have survived, the others are ruins. But even to create one temple like that seems to be impossible. It is such a work; it must have taken thousands of first-rate artists and craftsmen, because each inch of the temple is carved. There are millions of statues in a single temple. All the walls are made of statues. And what statues! Nowhere else have such beautiful statues been created. Those people must have been very comfortable: no worry about food, no worry about anything else, and they could concentrate – and they made 120 temples. All over India, there are thousands of temples like that. But it happened when the country was in a situation where the resources were more, riches were more. Just by a little effort enough was produced.
But what can India contribute now? It is a bankrupt country. It can only suck and exploit the sympathy of the whole world. That’s what it has been doing for forty years, since independence. Its bank loans go on increasing, and everybody knows they cannot be returned, there is no way to return them. It goes on begging from every country for support, knowing perfectly well there is no way to pay it back. For how long is this going to happen? The best way is to take some measures there.
For example, for twenty years make it absolutely illegal to have children. Just for twenty years. If there are no children born in twenty years – and in twenty years, millions of old people will die – the situation will change. You will not necessarily have to kill them: just be a little more scientific, and a little less superstitious.
I don’t see that there is any problem in the world which is insoluble. All the problems are made by us. And because we go on clinging to our old ideas, those problems go on standing there. And they go becoming bigger and bigger. There is every possibility that perhaps we will not be able to live at all by the end of the century. This is going to be a real calamity, because in the whole universe this is the only place where life has reached to consciousness.
This is the only place. The whole universe is dead in a way. This small planet is something special: not only life, but consciousness; not only consciousness, but ultimate peaks of enlightenment have happened on this earth. And these idiots are going to destroy it. This is not only against the earth, it is against the whole of existence and the whole universe – because once life disappears from earth, the whole universe will be just a big graveyard, infinite; all those stars are dead.
We are certainly privileged. And to miss this opportunity because of small, stupid things – communism, democracy, Christianity, Judaism, just small things… We can drop all those things. My solution is one world, one government, no political parties, and we would have solved everything without any difficulty.
Osho,
I'm not going to ask you how to put a government together without any political parties, because that would probably be a long answer.
So I'll just go into something completely different: I've been told that you have made a lot of statements about people from different nationalities. It would be interesting to hear what you've said about Swedish people, and maybe especially about the Swedish sannyasins that you've met.
I have to go there, because Sweden is one of the countries which is the most backward as far as sannyas is concerned.
It's backward?
As far as sannyas is concerned, it is the most backward. We have very few sannyasins there, so I’m thinking to come.
I'm sure there are a lot of people that would like to meet you. In what sense is it backwards? As of being sannyasins?
Yes, only in that sense – and I’m interested only in that.
But what makes Sweden more backward than Germany, for instance, where you have a lot of…
In Germany I have the biggest communes – and the reason is Adolf Hitler. Sweden has missed an Adolf Hitler. In Germany he made way for me – not knowing that he was making the way for a strange man.
The German youth is fed up with the politicians because they have had to suffer two world wars. All those politicians were promising them that they are special people, that they are born to rule the world. And they got exploited by those promises.
Adolf Hitler was not only a political leader, he was even trying to be a prophet. He was declaring himself a reincarnation of an Old Testament prophet, Elijah. The German youth is totally frustrated with prophets, messiahs, political leaders. And that’s how they immediately become interested in me – because I am against religions, against prophets, against messiahs, against the whole past. And Germany’s past in these wars has been of so much suffering that they are more open to receive me.
Sweden has not suffered, is not yet frustrated, is still comfortably satisfied the way things are. That’s the problem, and that’s where they will remain backward. Countries like Sweden who are in a certain way comfortably well – not hungry and dying like Ethiopia, or rich, super-rich, like America, but just a middle class… The middle class is the least revolutionary class in the world. They cannot do anything rebellious, because the psychology of the middle class is that they can always hope to reach the higher rungs. They can become richer, and richer. There is hope for the middle class to become rich.
Isn't that Karl Marx?
No, Karl Marx never bothered about the middle class. That’s why he completely missed with everything in his philosophy. Otherwise he would have been the right person. But because he never bothered about the middle class, he thought of the poor – the proletariat; he thought of the capitalist – the bourgeois. His idea was that sooner or later, the middle class would disappear. A few would become rich, more would become poor. He never thought that the middle class was going to stay. It is a shifting class, so he never bothered about it. And that is where he missed completely.
The middle class has not disappeared. On the contrary, the middle class is growing. A few poor people join it, a few rich people join it. Because a few rich people are falling down, a few poor people are rising up, the middle class is becoming bigger and bigger. In fact, the rich are just one pole. The poor are the other pole; that’s why revolution is not possible in America.
Marx used to think that America would be the first to go through a revolution. He had never dreamed that a poor country like Russia would do the revolution. It was out of his imagination, because it was so poor and there was no rich class, so a class struggle was not possible. But he could not see this point: that if the middle class, instead of disappearing – a few become rich and the remaining become poor, and this creates a gap – he could not think that the opposite is also possible. A few from the poor become middle class, a few from the rich become middle class, and the middle class goes on becoming bigger and bigger. And the middle class never disturbs any status quo.
Sweden is a middle-class country. It cannot be revolutionary.
Do you consider your own movement a revolution?
My movement is absolute revolution.
So your movement could never turn Sweden around, so to speak?
No, we will try. We will do our best, because it is only a question of creating a longing that life can be lived more intensely. And I’m not telling them that for the future, but now. My appeal is difficult for the poor. I cannot convert the poor person into a sannyasin – that’s very difficult because to tell him to live in the moment is to tell him to live in hunger. To him I can only say to die in the moment, because for living you have nothing.
But I have tremendous possibilities for middle class people. Once they start understanding me they will see the point very easily.
The super-rich are also out of my game. Marx’s whole ideology was dependent on the poor and the rich, and my whole approach is dependent on the middle class. The question is just of a different past in different countries. Germany proved good because Adolf Hitler has done so much harm, and has left such a space in the soul of the German youth. So it was easy. I have never been to Germany; Germany has been coming to me. But to Sweden I will come.
Don't you think you scare some of the German young people here, when you're talking about how it would be good for the world – for India, for instance – to have an Adolf Hitler-type person to help the situation?
I don’t care. My whole life has been disturbing people, shocking people – and these people particularly are immune. They have gone through so many shocks, that now they go on sleeping well, soundly, without any disturbance.
Osho,
This morning you said something about, “Believing is just carrying on knowledge from somebody else.” But isn't that exactly what these sannyasins are doing?
No.
They're taking your knowledge to themselves.
No.
No?
They are not: they are experimenting, they are meditating – and unless they experience, they are not allowed to spread anything. It is none of their business. I am enough, alone. I have my ways. Just sitting here in this chair I can flood the whole world with my ideas. What is the need for them? They have to experience first. Unless it becomes their own, they are not to become missionaries. I hate the word missionary. Each sannyasin should speak on his own authority. Then, there is strength.
I have seen very famous missionaries, but without any strength. In India, Stanley Jones – a world-famous man – was living. Perhaps he was the most cultured missionary, very philosophical, rational, compared to these idiots like Billy Graham. He was certainly a man worth considering. I used to go because he had an ashram in the Himalayas, so whenever I used to pass that way I would go there. He loved me, and he always wanted me to come and be there.
One day I was sitting in the garden with him, taking breakfast. And I told him, “This is something that perhaps will disturb you, but whatever you teach and whatever you preach – I have gone through your books, I have listened to your talks, but it is not your experience. It is all accumulated knowledge, borrowed. You have done well, you are a great scholar – whatever you say is perfectly in tune with the scriptures, but you don’t have any experience of it.”
The Bible was always sitting on the table by his side – always. So I took his hand and put it on the Bible, and I said, “Take an oath.”
He was nervous, but he was an honest man. He said, “You are right. It is not my experience.”
Now, if it is not your experience, from where are you going to have strength? Books, and knowledge derived from books, cannot be your strength. I want my people to be strong, so that if somebody does the same thing as I did to Stanley Jones, they need not say, “It is not our experience. We have believed in a master and we are repeating like parrots.”
No, that would be ugly. I would not like these people to say that. It is better to say, “I don’t know.” Unless you know, don’t bother to say anything to anybody. When you know, you will have to say – because then you become just like a rain cloud which is so full of water that it has to rain somewhere or other.
The moment you know, you become a rain cloud, and then it is something totally different. You are not a missionary: you are not changing anybody, and trying to convert him to your faith. You don’t have any faith, you have a certain experience. And out of sheer love you are sharing it. If that sharing transforms the man, that is a different thing. It is not conversion, it is transformation.
Okay?
Thank you.
Come again.
Norres Kane, Hasselholm, Sweden
Glad to see you.
Osho,
It's nice to be here. I work for a newspaper in southern Sweden, a small newspaper, and I've got quite a lot of questions.
Good.
So if you would be as brief as possible in your answers…
Unfortunately I haven't read any of your books, so maybe some of my questions, or all of them, are unnecessary in a sense.
It is good that you have not read any. And you can ask the same question a thousand times, but my answer will again and again be different. So there is no problem.
I was reading on the back of a book called The Book and you're saying, “I teach a sensuous religion; beauty is far more valuable than truth. Beauty is God himself, truth is just an aspect of beauty.” And I'd like to ask you three questions about those quotes:
Are you actually teaching a religion?
Is there a God? Do you believe in God, or maybe you're even some kind of God to your disciples yourself?
And you're saying beauty is far more valuable than truth. Is that why – from what I see – most of the people here are young, good-looking people?
That is my way of disposing of God. When I say beauty is God, I’m saying there is no God, but only beauty. And I am making a distinction between truth and beauty because truth is more a question of the head. It is a more logical, philosophical inquiry. Beauty is of the heart. It is not logical, not philosophical; it is more poetic, more aesthetic. You can feel it, but you cannot prove it. You can experience it, but you cannot explain it.
Truth – the very word looks dead, a logical conclusion. Beauty is not a conclusion, it is a sudden revelation. When you see a rose it is not that you go through a logical solipsism, “This is a rose, and roses are beautiful, so this must be beautiful.” The moment you see it, the head stops spinning thoughts. On the contrary, your heart starts beating faster. It is something totally different from the idea of truth.
Truth is argumentative. Whenever somebody proves a truth, all that he proves is that he is more logically proficient than his opponent. So, in the whole history of philosophy, every philosopher has been contradicted: five thousand years of philosophy, and not a single truth on which all the philosophers agree.
Beauty is a totally different phenomenon. It is not a question of proving it. If you see a woman as beautiful, nobody is going to ask why. The question why is irrelevant about beauty. You need not prove it, nor can you. In fact, if the other person is idiotic enough and continues to say, “You have to prove why this woman is beautiful,” you will be at a loss. You cannot prove it, because it is something of the heart, and proofs are something of the head.
What I am saying in that statement is that the experience of religion is just like the experience of beauty, love. It is of the heart. It is not a theology, it is not a philosophy; it is more like a poetry, a painting, a sculpture.
It happened that Picasso was painting on a beach, and a man was watching him for almost two hours. He looked at the painting from every angle, and finally he could not contain his curiosity. He approached Picasso and said, “Forgive me. I don’t want to intrude into your work. For two hours I have been watching, but I cannot figure out the meaning of this painting.”
Picasso looked at the man and said, “Have you ever asked the meaning of all the stars in the sky? Have you stopped in a garden, and asked the meaning of all the flowers? What is the meaning of the songs of the birds? And if nobody is answerable for the beautiful sky, and the gardens, and the birds, why should you torture a poor painter? I don’t know the meaning. I know that what I am doing is tremendously satisfying to me.”
But you don't know the meaning, the goal, of what…
There is no meaning, and no goal. A life is in itself sufficient. A goal is needed only when something is not intrinsically valuable. The train has a goal, the machine has a goal; without the goal the machine is useless.
But love has no goal, it is enough unto itself. And if anybody’s love has a goal, remember, there is no love in it. Perhaps the man loves the woman because she is rich and old, and going to die soon. If there is a motive, any end, it destroys the very phenomenon of love. Love has to be unmotivated, without any goal and without any meaning. When you hug a friend, have you ever asked, “What is the meaning of hugging?” You will not find a meaning – and if you can find a meaning, then it is not hugging, it is just unnecessarily pressing each other’s bones!
There is something which is beyond meaning, which you cannot express through words. That’s why you are using a gesture. Your hug is a gesture of something which is inexpressible by words. Your hug is simply saying, “I would like you to be just part of me. I would like to be part of you. It hurts that there is a separation. It hurts that we are two.” Your hug is immensely expressive, but there is no motive in it, no end to it.
Everything that is valuable in life is always a goal unto itself. There is no outside goal. Anything that is valuable cannot be a means to some end. Just thinking of it as a means is reducing it, utterly destroying its qualities and values. Your interest is in the end. If you can get the end without this means, you will discard the means and you will get the end. You have to go through the means, because without the means the end is not available. But your eyes are focused on the end.
Love, beauty, poetry, painting, dance, music don’t have any goal. But they have immense blissfulness, a tremendous ecstasy. You can be drowned in it, you can forget the whole world. Time can stop. If time does not stop listening to Mozart, it means you are not listening. It simply means you are not capable of listening to Mozart. Looking at the paintings of van Gogh, if you are not forgetting the whole world then you are not looking at the paintings. Or you are only seeing the painting, but it has not been a heart-felt experience.
So the point is enjoying what you do at this moment?
Every moment, every single moment. Enjoy it so totally that you never have to look back, that you never have to repent that that moment was lost. Squeeze the whole juice of it, because the next moment is not certain. This may be the last moment. The past is gone, the future is uncertain: all that is certain is this moment. And millions of people are losing this moment for a certain goal in the future, a certain end to be achieved.
I wanted to say through that statement that religion has no goal, not even God.
Yes, but what you're working with is a…you could call it a religion.
I can. In fact, I call this the only religion. All other religions are in some way an exploitation of man’s weakness, helplessness, ignorance. They are not religions. This is the only religion, because there is no question of exploiting anybody’s fear and creating a hell, exploiting anybody’s greed and giving a promise of paradise, and eternal joys there.
I am not promising anything. There is no judgment, and there is no reward, and no punishment. If you live this moment totally, that is its reward. If you miss, you are already punished. There is no need for anything afterwards, there is no need for a judgment day in the end, when the universe will come to its ultimate death – there is no need. Each moment is giving you its reward, its punishment – and it is up to you. To me, not to live the moment is enough punishment: you missed a living reality. And to live it fully is paradise.
Paradise and hell are not somewhere else. Each moment both are available to you. It is your choice. People who are thinking of the past are missing. People who are thinking of the future are missing. People who are not thinking of past and future, and are simply living this moment intensely – burning their life torch from both ends simultaneously – they are the people who come to know what love is, what beauty is, what truth is.
Would that denounce people who are trying to make a better future for themselves, as well as for their children, and their children's children? I'm speaking of people that are active in trying to make a better environment, like Greenpeace, peace movements.
I understand. Just think, for five thousand years this is what every generation has been doing. The generation that has preceded us was thinking about us and making a better future: our present was their future. What have they done? For five thousand years continuously every generation, every father, every mother, every teacher, every priest, has been creating a better future. And the total result seems to be just the opposite.
Two things happened. They destroyed their present. They sacrificed, they thought they were martyrs, they thought they were doing great service to humanity. They were doing great disservice, because the time that was given to them – a gift of existence – they wasted. And they have not been able to create a better future. Those five thousand years should become a lesson.
My own understanding is, if you are living your present totally, out of this living, the next moment will be born. You have taken care of the next moment by living this moment totally. Just think how logic can lead to foolish attitudes. The father is told that he has to sacrifice his life for the children; his father sacrificed his life for him. Neither his father could live, nor he can live, nor are his children going to live, because they will be sacrificing their lives for their children. So everybody is sacrificing for somebody else. Strange. Then who is going to live?
So my insistence is: Live it. And out of your living experience the future will be born. If your living moment is of tremendous beauty and ecstasy, naturally you are creating the future – without any effort to create it. But if you are sacrificing to your children’s future, deep down you will be resentful – because your life is being destroyed by those children. And those children will be resentful toward you, because you were continuously bragging that you sacrificed your life, and you want your children to feel obliged to you. You would like your children to sacrifice their youth to your old age, because you sacrificed. This is so stupid.
I can agree on that. And what you're talking about, from what I understand, is the more traditional family relations both in Christianity and probably also…
Everywhere.
…all other religions.
But let me put it more specifically: more and more people are getting very worried about the situation – the political situation – with nuclear war threats, the environment and pollution, which is not the same sacrifice from father to son, father to son that we're talking about.
I understand. It is just superficially different, basically it is the same. The question of nuclear weapons should not be thought of as a future problem. It is in the present moment. So I’m not saying that you have to think about the future. It is a living reality. We are living surrounded by nuclear weapons. So do whatsoever you want to do right now.
But your pacifists are thinking about the future – that there should not be a Third World War, that nuclear weapons should not be created. Stupid. Again you are destroying the present moment. And the logic of people who are creating nuclear weapons is not different from yours – they are also preparing for the future, for the future of their people, for the future of their nation. They don’t want to be weak, they want to be strong. They want to remain in the position that nobody can invade them. The warmongers are thinking of the future, the pacifists are thinking of the future.
I’m neither a pacifist, nor a supporter of war. I’m saying let these idiots fight with each other, and humanity should live this moment as joyously as possible. If we can manage to live in this moment peacefully, joyously, the Third World War is not going to happen. We will have not done anything about the Third World War: if people are happy, if people are enjoying, nobody can drag them into a war. War is not a simple phenomenon, it is very complex. People have to be miserable, people have to be in suffering, people have to be sexually repressed. People have to be humiliated in every possible way by poverty, by hunger. Only then can you manage to convince them to destroy each other because they have nothing to live for.
Karl Marx has a beautiful statement in his Communist Manifesto. I don’t agree with his communism, but the sentence with which the Communist Manifesto ends is tremendously significant. He says, “Proletariat of the world, unite, because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Fight.” When you don’t have anything to lose, fighting becomes easier. In fact, there is a possibility you may win, you may have the whole world. But if people are living a beautiful life, a loving life, you cannot convince them that they have to destroy other countries, other people. You cannot do it, it is impossible.
Secondly, if people are not sexually repressed – which is the base of all wars, every soldier has to be sexually repressed. It is sexual repression that becomes violence. The soldiers and the monks in the monasteries are not in different boats. And both have been calamities to humanity. The monks have been going on crusades, killing in the name of religion – and the soldiers in the name of nation, in the name of culture.
But the basic thing is that if they are allowed to live their sex life in a relaxed way – the monk will forget all about the Catholic Church and the Polack pope, and he will say, “Let them go to hell – I am not going on a crusade!” He has a girlfriend, and every moment is so beautiful.
You cannot send my people to fight for anything. They will say no because they are enjoying every moment so much – why should they disturb their life and other people’s life?
It seems that they're ready to fight for your life, though.
No.
It seems like it.
They are just pretending. My people are not going to fight anybody. They are just enjoying toy guns, and…
Osho,
I don't think I can agree with you that it takes suffering, sexual repression, poverty and so forth, to make people go to war – because today it doesn't take many people to start a war, because there's so much technology involved.
I think – and a lot of people think – that there should be something done now. Are you suggesting that everybody just…
Do something…
enjoy…
…now! That’s what I am saying. Dance in the streets, rejoice in front of the White House, have parties before the Kremlin, make love before the White House. Thousands of people making love before the White House, that’s what is to be done.
Do you mean that?
My people are always ready. It is going to embarrass the politicians and bring them to some sense. And they will see that these are not people you can send to war. It just has to be proved that people are now fed up with politicians, and their continuous hunger for war.
Adolf Hitler has written something valuable in his autobiography. He says, “If you want to become a great hero in history, then war is absolutely necessary – because only in wartime heroes are born.” That is true. In peacetime there are no heroes.
If Ronald Reagan wants to become a world hero, then a war is necessary. Otherwise, he will be lost just the same way as Jimmy Carter is lost. Do you know where he is?
Not at the moment.
Nobody ever will – people will know only when he dies. Then there will be small piece in the newspapers, “Poor Jimmy has died.”
Osho,
So what do you think of your president Ronald Reagan personally?
Every politician is basically a criminal. The criminal and the politician have the same kind of mentality, and the same psychology. The criminal is one who could not succeed in being a politician. He’s a failure. That’s why he becomes revengeful, and goes in the direction of crime. The politician is the successful criminal. But nothing succeeds like success: once he’s successful, you forget everything about his criminal mind. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini…
Ronald Reagan.
They are all criminals, Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte. Your whole history is the history of criminals, big criminals. Small criminals die in prisons; big criminals become presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens. But sooner or later humanity is going to recognize that the history we have been writing is a history of the criminals, who have done everything.
When there was the Watergate case against Nixon, Mao Zedong made a statement. He was simply puzzled. He said, “Why is so much fuss being made about it? Every politician does it. That poor Nixon was simply caught red-handed, that’s all. It is not a question of doing.”
Mao Zedong’s statement is that every politician does it, has always been doing it – just Nixon got caught. He’s saying it about himself too, because he’s the president of a country and he has done every kind of crime that a man is capable of. But he was successful.
So my attitude toward politicians is that they should be treated as criminals, they should be watched as criminals. A climate should be created around the earth, that the moment somebody starts becoming political he should be hospitalized immediately.
That takes away the whole idea of democracy, doesn't it?
Democracy will be possible only when there are no politicians.
Anarchy?
No, I’m not an anarchist. This democracy is bogus, it is simply a rotary club of dictators – for four years, five years, one dictator; then for five years another dictator. This democracy depends on at least two political parties, and those two political parties are basically the same. The psychology is that one party rules – naturally it cannot fulfill the promises it has given to humanity, to its nation, to the people. Nobody can fulfill them, because to fulfill them will need such a radical change in everything, which the politicians cannot do.
But in those five years people become fed up with them, and the other party starts getting support. The other party says, “We are going to fulfill all these promises.” And the memory of people is not very long psychologically; it is not more than three years. That’s why every election in every country is after more than three years – four years, five years, but not before three years. It is a psychological standpoint. People forget about what the other party did five years before when it was in power.
People’s memories are just nothing. They see the party which is in power, and they want to drag it out of power – and the other party is ready. In five years’ time they will be disillusioned about the other party, but by that time the first party will be ready to fulfill again. This is a very cunning strategy. It is not democracy. It is politicians dividing themselves into two groups, with a subtle conspiracy – unconscious, “You rule for five years, for five years we rule.” It is just a rotating dictatorship.
Democracy, according to me, will be possible only when there are no political parties at all, and each individual decides on his own. Somebody can stand for the president of the country, but there is no party there to support him. He can approach individuals, he can explain to the country, the people, what he wants to do. And if people feel intelligently that this man has some guts and can do something, they can support him. Otherwise there is no question.
Political parties become investments. A political line becomes your commitment: you are a Democrat, somebody else is a Republican. They become almost like religions. You cannot do anything against the political party line; you have to support the president that your party has chosen. This is not democracy.
Democracy will be party-less – without politicians – and then there will be a hope that we may find people who are not interested in dominating, in dictating. Who are really interested in making people more happy, more rejoicing, richer.
But this is not democracy.
Do you consider your commune, your town of Rajneeshpuram, a democracy?
It is a democracy because there is no political party.
But all the individuals here are working together for the same purpose: from what I understand, making your ideas and your thoughts of how you're supposed to live, real.
No. My whole insistence is, never try to follow me. I am not a reliable person. Don’t believe in me, don’t believe in my words. Whatever I say, think over it. Unless it becomes your own idea and you can say, “Now this is my idea”… Work it out. Nobody here is working out my ideas. They are working out their ideas.
Which they have all gotten from you to start with.
I have not enforced them, I have not indoctrinated them. I have simply explained my vision. And my whole effort is to teach them how to doubt, how to be skeptical, how to argue, so that they can argue against me, they can be skeptical against me, they can doubt me. And if – after all this doubting, skepticism, rationality – if they find that something is true, it has already become theirs. I don’t have any monopoly on it. I may have triggered the process, but I have no monopoly on it.
This commune is being run by the people themselves. I’m not even a member of the commune. I have never gone to their commune meetings; I don’t know where their offices are. Anybody who comes here for a few hours will know more about the commune than I have known in four years, because I never go out of my room.
In the morning I come to the meeting place, where I spontaneously say whatsoever I feel like saying. I may contradict everything that I have said up to now. Nobody can say to me, “You are contradicting yourself,” because I have never promised anybody that I will not contradict. Nobody can blame me – that I am inconsistent – because I have always said that I am a growing person, continuously growing. And I have to deny every yesterday each day. How can they create a belief system?
Jesus had a few sentences which he consistently repeated his whole life. Naturally it can become a catechism. People can follow direct guidance about anything with full details. Moses gives Ten Commandments: you have just to follow, you have to have faith.
Here, doubt is the climate. This is not a place of faith. I am explaining to them what I have experienced in my life, and leaving it up to them. And I never inquire whether anybody is following my ideas or not. I’m not interested in that at all. My whole interest is that my people should be intelligent – and then their intelligence will take care. Then whatsoever they do is right, even if it goes against me. But it should not go against their intelligence.
I respect individuals. I respect their intelligence, I respect their sensitivity – so much that I will be the last person in any way to give them beliefs, dogmas, creeds, Das Kapital, Holy Bible – no.
You keep telling them to doubt everything you say and make inquiries about everything. But it seems to me, that the only thing they really don't doubt is you as a person. They keep giving you gifts, cars, their work, their money.
It is true, they cannot doubt me as a person because they have lived with me, and they have doubted enough. And they have found their doubts are meaningless as far as my being is concerned – not my thoughts. As far as a person goes, they have known me. They have experienced my love, they have known that my trust in them is immense.
Even those sannyasins who have left, I still love the same way. I still trust in them the same way. If they come back, nobody is going to ask them, “Why have you been missing for so many years?”
A few sannyasins that have left have even made negative statements about me, and journalists have asked me, “Some ex-sannyasin has made this statement…”
And I say, “If he has once been a sannyasin, then he must be right.” I respect the person. If he says that I am dishonest, then he must have found some dishonesty in me. I cannot distrust him.
Osho,
I was listening to you this morning, and you were sort of making fun of Christians, they have their Jerusalem; the Communists have their Kremlin, and Moslems have Mecca and their black rock.
But what's the difference between these religions and the communists' centers, and the town here, the temples – and you?
The difference is immense. I have communes all over the world, and I am going to create more and more communes in countries where they are not. Rajneeshpuram has no prerogative over another commune. All communes are equal. And my effort is that all the communes around the world will make the whole earth holy – not Jerusalem, not Moscow, not Mecca, but the whole earth. With less than that I cannot be satisfied.
But isn't this still a place where people come from all over the world, like pilgrims go to Jerusalem, or…
No, they do not come here as a pilgrimage. For example, in Mohammedanism it is a necessity that a Mohammedan should go to Mecca at least one time in his life. That is one of the fundamentals, otherwise he cannot enter paradise.
You will be surprised: in India, Mohammedans are very poor people. For the simple reason that Mohammed taught them something which has become absolutely outdated and irrelevant in the modern economy. He taught them that interest on money is sin. That has made all the Mohammedans in the world poor, because if you can’t get money on interest, you cannot make industries, you cannot create businesses. And who is going to give you money without interest? For what? You cannot pay interest to anybody, and you cannot take interest from anybody. So Mohammedans have remained poor, basically for this idea.
Money has to move faster. That’s why it is called currency. The faster it moves, the richer the society becomes. If I have one dollar and I go on holding onto that one dollar, then in this room there is only one dollar. But if that dollar goes on moving fast, from one person to another person – then, if there are fifty persons here, fifty dollars in a single round, fifty persons have used one dollar. And, if there are many more rounds then that much more. But why should people give money if they are not going to gain anything out of it?
So Mohammedans are very poor, but still they go to Mecca. They sell their houses, they sell their land because it is something of tremendous importance. Before they die, at least once they should go to Mecca. Without going to Mecca, there is no paradise for them.
Now, here there is no motivation. I’m not promising anything to people – that if they don’t come here they are committing some sin. They come here just to rejoice, to meet here with the same kind of people. And it is not one-way: I’m sending people from here to every commune, so it is a constant exchange. Now many sannyasins from here are in Germany, many are in Australia, many are in Italy and we exchange. If we send twenty people to a commune, then we take twenty people from that commune – for three months they will be there, for three months those people will be here.
We want to create just one commune around the earth. And we want the whole earth to be thought of as holy – not just a single small town or a small place to be holy.
That has been the wish of every religion so far, hasn't it?
No, never. Never has it been the idea of any religion that the whole earth should be holy, no.
Why, then, do the Christians send out missionaries and the Mohammedans talk about holy war, and so forth.
Yes, they are sending these people to create more Mohammedans; more Catholics, so the Vatican becomes more powerful. It is the politics of numbers. But the Vatican is not saying that Christians in India have a holy land.
You will be surprised that Indian Christians have been constantly asking the pope, “There should be an Indian church, just as there are churches in each country.” India has no church, only Christians: the church is the Vatican. All the Catholic churches in India are owned by the pope in the Vatican. They are not the property of Indian Christians.
The pope is interested in increasing more and more the number of Catholics. Mohammedans are interested… Only two religions, Jews and Hindus, because they are the oldest religions in the world – naturally, because they are the oldest religions, they never thought of conversion. There was no need. A Jew is born, a Hindu is born.
New religions came into existence – Christianity, Buddhism – and naturally they had to convert. Otherwise, from where are they going to get their numbers? Hindus and Jews have both resisted the idea of conversion for hundreds of years, but finally they had to relax. Now Hindus are converting, and trying to make people Hindus, because their numbers are shrinking. Catholics are growing, Christians are growing.
No religion has ever tried the idea that the whole earth is holy. For example Hinduism believes that except India, there is no holy country. One who is born in India is blessed: all others are condemned and cursed. The whole world is full of sinners, all the saints are born in India – that is their attitude. And then in India they have their religious capitol, Varanasi.
Is there any way to sin in this kind of society?
No, in my commune you can commit a mistake but you cannot commit a sin. Sin, as such, does not exist.
If I steal one of your cars, or if…
Yes, that is…
I rape your wife.
…a mistake. That is just a mistake, it is not a sin. And if my wife is willing to go with you, it is not even a mistake.
What if she's not?
If she is not, and you force her, then you are committing a mistake against humanity – not against God. There is no God. And because there is no God, you cannot commit a sin. Sin necessarily needs a God, a supreme person to judge. We are not judges.
It is perfectly human if you feel like escaping with my wife – if you love her, if you want her. But if she is not willing then you are doing something inhuman – a mistake of interfering into somebody’s life. And it is not going to give you any joy. A woman that has come with you unwillingly will become a pain in your neck. No hell is needed, she will give you hell.
So I don’t prescribe any rewards, I don’t judge that people will fall into hell. To err is human. I can understand that one can fall in love with somebody’s wife. And if the wife is willing, it is perfectly right. But if she is not willing, then you are doing something barbarous. For that you need not be punished; for that you have to be psychiatrically treated. That’s what we do. If somebody commits a mistake, it shows that something is wrong in his psychology. We have all kinds of therapies available. We send him to therapies so that his mind should be put right: so that he should be made more alert what he is doing, so that he should be made to understand that there is a certain territory around every individual and you should not trespass it. That’s the only way to live peacefully, lovingly.
Everybody trespassing on everybody else is what is happening around the whole world. Here, nobody is trespassing on anybody. And it is not that wives are not moving, and husbands are not changing. That is happening so fast here, as is not happening anywhere else, because freedom – if it is not even available for love, then what kind of freedom do you have? And nobody fights over the question. Here you will not find a triangle, two persons fighting for one woman. You cannot make a film story here.
I'm sure I could.
Yes, here it would be difficult to make a film story or write a novel. It would simply be flat – because if somebody falls in love with my wife, I tell him, “Take her, because there are other women who are waiting for me. So be quick, and take all her luggage, so she will not come back! I have lived with her enough, and she has lived with me enough, and we are grateful for all those beautiful moments. Now you enjoy.” Nobody has a monopoly on anybody. Each individual is a monarch, and nobody is a slave.
It sounds like a very macho and male way of looking at it.
No, this is the place where all machos have been destroyed. This place is ruled by women. If any macho comes here, within just a few days women will be chasing him and he will be escaping. It happens every day.
Osho,
Why do you think that there are more women here than men – because that's a fact, isn't it?
Certainly.
Why is it so, do you think?
I’m a man and it is natural for women to fall in love with a man. And my whole religion is a religion of love. Naturally more women have understood me immediately, directly.
There are men, but if you look deep down into those people, you will be surprised: they also are in love with me, and they have grown their repressed feminine side.
Each man is half man and half woman, and each woman is half man and half woman, because we are born between two polarities – the mother and the father. They both contribute to your being. And this is one of the greatest contributions of Carl Gustav Jung to the modern age, that…
I didn't get that.
Carl Gustav Jung.
I don't know him.
You don’t know him?
No.
You must know him, because he’s one of the persons since Sigmund Freud, who has really contributed significant ideas. This is one of his greatest contributions – although it is not new. In India, that idea has been in existence for five thousand years. On my dining table is a statue somebody has sent me – half man, half woman. That statue is ancient, and that has been the idea. But Jung introduced it in the West.
The men who are here are not here because they are men, but because somehow I have managed for their woman to surface – because my whole approach is of the heart it is more difficult for men to be in communion with me. In the beginning they have to start with the head, but slowly, slowly I persuade them to go deeper toward the heart. And the distance is not much, just a few inches. Once they get to the heart… The heart is always feminine, the head is always macho.
So, certainly there is a greater proportion of women here than anywhere else. You will not find such juicy women anywhere else in the world, because their womanhood has for the first time become respected, for the first time, liberated. For the first time, they are not thought to be second-class citizens. On the contrary they are running the whole commune. It is more a matriarchy than a patriarchy. And they are doing so well that it is a proof that if we had allowed women to participate in all the affairs of men all through history, the world would have been immensely richer.
Half of humanity has been crippled: they could not produce painters, singers, musicians, they could not produce scientists, they could not produce mystics. Not a single woman has founded a religion. In fact, even someone like Jesus, who talked about love, did not allow a single woman among his twelve apostles. And those twelve apostles escaped when he was crucified. When his body was brought down there were three women – not a single man. Those three women brought down the body, but they are not even accepted as saints. The Christian trinity has no woman in it.
What I am saying is that if women were allowed the way they are allowed in this commune, their contribution would have been tremendous. The heart can do a few things which the head cannot do, and all the great values belong to the heart. Compassion, love, beauty, kindness, sympathy – all the great values belong to the heart. The head is simply a computer: it is good at mathematics, it is good in a scientific lab.
So many women are here, and they have been more reliable than men.
Reliable in what way?
In every way. They will not leave me for any reason – because they have not joined me for any reason at all. A man first joins me because he feels convinced that I am intellectually right. The woman feels me as a person who can be trusted. She has nothing to do with intellectual conviction.
Now, if tomorrow I change my ideas, the person who yesterday was convinced will leave – because he was convinced by an idea and the idea has changed. The woman is convinced with my being, which is still the same, and will remain always the same. She has no need to change.
For example, I went into silence for three and a half years. A few men dropped out because they had become addicted to my words – but I was silent, and perhaps I would never speak again, so what was the point of hanging around here? They escaped. But the women were the same, whether I was speaking or not. Their love remained the same because it was not based on any intellectual ground. It was a heart-to-heart feeling.
One more thing I would like you to remember: that the men who are here are almost feminine, for the simple reason that I have changed their approach toward life. It is no longer reason, it is no longer logic. It is love, it is feeling. Unknowingly their woman – who had been repressed – has surfaced. That has also created a few problems. It has solved a few complexities, but it has created some new problems. For example, if a man’s repressed woman inside surfaces, he is no longer interested in other women, because that will be lesbianism. He’s man…
So instead he's interested in other men?
Yes, so that is the trouble. But the other man is also…
What's the trouble with being interested in other men?
Because that other man is also feminine.
But everybody here is feminine.
Yes, that’s what I am saying.
So they've got each other.
That’s what I am saying, that this is a really gay society.
So what about all the left-over women who don't have any men?
Nobody is left over.
That's not the right word to use, maybe. But since a lot of the men are gay…
No, no, nobody is gay. Nobody is gay.
I mean that everybody is so blissed out that it does not matter. People love each other, but their love and its qualities have become more feminine. It is not a macho man loving a repressed woman who is almost a slave – no. A man loves a woman, but his love also has become more delicate, softer, more human.
For example, in India a certain ethic has been followed for ten thousand years. Manu must have been a great thinker, he wrote all the laws that have to be followed by Hindus. One law is that once in a while the husband must beat the wife. Strange. When I came across that law I could not believe it. What is he talking about? But when I came to understand women, I immediately understood that he’s right! A woman loses interest in you if you are not macho.
Do you believe in that?
No, I don’t believe in that. That’s how it has been happening down the centuries. Include my commune out! I’m talking about the whole of humanity. That’s what has been happening: the woman wants the man to be strong, just as the man wants the woman to be beautiful. The woman wants the man to be strong, a hero, and she wants him to prove it. A woman immediately loses interest in a hen-pecked husband. He’s not worth…
It is a very complex situation. Every woman tries to reduce the husband into a hen-pecked husband. It is a conflict of power, politics – who is dominating. So unknowingly she tries to reduce the man into a hen-pecked husband. And it is not difficult. It is very easy for a woman to reduce any strong person – he may be Muhammad Ali the Great or anybody – because her ways are such: screaming, crying, weeping, throwing things.
The man comes home tired after working the whole day and here he faces this scene. He may be right but he apologizes: he may ask to be forgiven. He says, “I am sorry, I was wrong.” Otherwise he is not going to be allowed to sleep the whole night. And tomorrow morning he will not get tea – and what about lunch? The woman in the house has all the power. So the situation is that every husband finally finds himself just a mouse in the house. Outside he may be a lion, but inside the house a great transformation comes immediately.
Here in my commune, the feminine qualities of the men have come to the surface. The feminine qualities of the woman have received respect and dignity. Both have become, in a certain way, whole. As the woman receives respect and dignity, her inner side – the other side, the male side – also comes to the surface. She shows strength. She’s no longer weak: she’s no longer the fair sex. She’s not just a lady. Here you will find women and men – no gentlemen, no ladies, those words are prohibited; just raw people, without any hypocrisy. And because everybody is trying to understand himself, in that very effort he understands others too. Understanding each other gives freedom to each other, destroys jealousies, destroys clingings.
Understanding is psychological health, and my people are psychologically healthy. They can accept anything that appeals to their understanding; there is no problem in it. If the woman wants to go with somebody else, she need not escape in the darkness of the night. She can talk to her husband – they have that intimacy, she knows that he will understand. There is no need to escape. And the man will feel grateful that the woman trusted him. Even in such a moment – when she is dropping him – she still respects him, still trusts him. And their friendship continues.
So, here you will find many people who have changed their wives and husbands, but their friendship remains just the same. And you can fall again in love with the same woman, there is no problem!
Osho,
I'd like to ask you another thing: how do you personally feel about living with your luxury cars, your nice watch, the good food; and your creating luxury, both for you, and for the people that live here – at the same time as millions of children are dying every day from starvation in this world?
Aren't you a little concentrated just to yourself?
Yes.
And that's the way you want to have it?
Those people are dying because of their stupidity…
The children…
…and I’m not responsible for it, the pope is responsible for it – because the Christian leaders, Jewish rabbis, Hindu leaders, Mohammedan imams, are all preaching against birth control, against abortion. They are the people who are creating an ugly, poor world; they are responsible for it.
Not a single child has been born in this commune in four years. And nobody is prohibited – just a simple understanding. The world is so over-populated; if you have any understanding you will not increase the population, you will make every effort for the population to drop.
But all the religious leaders around the world without exception are trying to increase the population. They want more poor people because poor people can be converted.
In India I tried, but I could not find a single rich man who had been converted to Christianity. Only beggars – Christianity needs beggars; only orphans – Mother Teresa needs orphans. Mother Teresa is against birth control, abortion. She has to be, otherwise from where this supply of orphans is going to come? These people are responsible. Thousands of people are dying, but I don’t feel any responsibility.
In fact for thirty years in India I was teaching birth control, abortion – and people were throwing stones at me, shoes at me, knives at me. They made attempts to kill me because I was destroying their morality. If this is their morality then they are responsible. So die for your morality.
Whatever I could do as an individual, I have done. And found that there are only walls. Nobody is going to listen, it is simply absurd. Those people are going to be hungry, and those people are going to die, and that’s how it is going to be. I’ve dropped that idea completely.
And then I started the movement of sannyas.
When was that?
It was in 1970, when I became completely fed up with those idiots who didn’t understand, and were not ready even for a dialogue. I had challenged all the Hindu leaders, Buddhist leaders, Jaina leaders that I wanted an open dialogue. But nobody was ready to discuss because they knew what they were saying was simply illogical, it was meaningless. And they are going to create a country of poor people. Right now fifty percent of Indians are ready to become another Ethiopia any day. But I don’t feel responsible, because for thirty years I have been talking to these people, talking to their leaders, talking to their religious leaders.
Indira Gandhi was in touch with me and she was convinced of whatever I was saying. She told me, “You are right, but we cannot do anything – because if we do anything then the Hindu votes will be gone out of our hands, the Mohammedan votes will be gone out of hands, the Christian votes will be gone out of our hands. I will be finished.” She asked me, “Do you want me to be finished?”
I said, “If I was in your place, either I would do something or I would simply resign, because there is no point: if I cannot do what is right, then what is the need for me to remain as prime minister of the country? Then let somebody else who can do something.”
They're all criminals.
Perhaps some criminal may be able to do it. Perhaps India needs an Adolf Hitler who can do it – the question is how to reduce the population.
The problem is that there are too many people, not that the resources are…
The resources are almost nil. And there is no way – they won’t allow the resources to be nourished again. Religious people have strange ideas. For example, in India they will not use manure in which bone powder is mixed – because bones, that is violence.
You will be surprised to know that in the twentieth century, one of the Hindu leaders – the most respected Hindu leader, Swami Karpatri – was teaching…
I was present in the meeting, and I had to contradict him. I created thousands of enemies because of that. A new dam was being made just a few miles away, and that place was going to be the most benefited because of the dam – because their lands were dry and the rains were not certain, and they would be getting as much water as they wanted. And the man was saying to them, “Don’t accept that water, because before giving you the water they take the electricity out of it.”
Now to the people he was saying that that water is impotent – its whole potential has been taken out. “It is dangerous for you to take that water – refuse.” And the people looked convinced, because without an education they wouldn’t understand that electricity is not something you take out of the water. It is not something like sexual potentiality, that you can take out of a man and he becomes impotent. But this simile convinced them, and they were raising their hands in support.
I had to stand up and I asked him, “Do you understand what you are saying? And what do you understand about electricity? What do you understand when electricity is produced by a hydroelectric plant?”
I told the people, “The only argument against this man will be: this year accept the water and see your crops. Those crops will prove this man your enemy. There is no other way. If the crops don’t come, if you drink the water and the thirst does not go, then of course he is right.”
He was very angry. He was so angry that he wrote a whole book about everything, against me.
These people are responsible for poverty, for dying children. And all the religions of the world have been preaching poverty in some way or other in their history.
I want to change this whole approach. I’m all for comfort, luxury, richness, wealth, technology, science. I’m not for renunciation; I’m for rejoicing. I want people to live as richly as possible in all dimensions. And my communes are going to be models, to prove to the world that it is possible. These are the same people; they just need the right attitude, and they can create wealth.
When we came here this land had been lying useless for fifty years. Just see the stupid mind of the politicians: nobody ever bothers – so much land, one hundred and twenty-six square miles, just lying dead. It was for sale and nobody was ready to purchase it because it was a desert. We got it. There was only one house when we got it. Now there are houses for five thousand people, all fully air-conditioned. We made all the roads. We have made a beautiful hospital, a beautiful school. We grow our food, we are self-sufficient; we grow our vegetables, we are self-sufficient. We have our own cows, our own milk, our own butter. We are trying everything.
And the Oregon government is creating every kind of hindrance, according to their land use laws. One simply thinks, “Is this a madhouse that we are living in?” We have used the land. For fifty years nobody bothered that the land was not used: it was according to the land use laws. We have used it, we have made it productive, and we have committed a crime – because it is not according to land use laws. It seems as if man exists for laws, not laws for man.
I have invited the governor, the attorney general: “Come and see, and tell us that this is misuse of land. We don’t bother about laws. The question is that we have made a desert into an oasis, and rather than appreciating it, you are putting case upon case in the courts.” And none of them have come here. They don’t even have the guts, because they know that what we have done is right. And if they are at all reasonable they should change their laws. If their laws don’t fit, they have to be changed.
But they want to change us, not their laws. And these people will say that we are responsible for poverty in the world. We can make the whole world an oasis. Wherever you want, give us land, and I will send my people. I have one million sannyasins around the world, and we will change any kind of place into a beautiful oasis.
I told Indira, “Give me all the power. Simply retire. Within ten years I can change this whole country.” But who wants to give up power?
Nobody, it seems like.
Yes.
Osho,
Could I ask you another question: what do you think will happen when the time comes that you die? Will these people that are with you now continue your ideas and your thoughts? Is there anybody who's going to take over your position of the one that comes up with ideas? I mean, your books are useless because they're all contradicting each other!
They are. That’s why I have been contradicting, so that they should not remain useful in any way – because if they are useful they will become Holy Bibles. They have to be contradictory. I’m making every arrangement that nobody can derive any theology, philosophy out of them. One can enjoy them, just the way one enjoys a flower, a cloud, a sunrise; one can enjoy them as a painting, but one cannot worship them.
And as far as I’m concerned, I never think of tomorrow. So the question of what will happen after my death does not concern me at all. My concern is that this moment I can help my people to be as intelligent as possible, and their intelligence will take care.
I’m not concerned and I’m not going to give them detailed ideas and plans. My approach is – for example, if a blind man asks me, “Where is the door? Then do I have to turn right or left to find the road? And where then have I to go to reach the post office?” My approach is not to give him all those details. My approach is to take him to the hospital. If it is possible to cure his eyes, then he will be able to find the post office or anything else that he wants.
I’m not giving my people any detailed program or any idea what they have to do when I am not here. In fact, even when I am here, they are doing things on their own. I am not…so they will not miss me as far as work is concerned; they are already doing it without me.
I have never entered their offices, either in India or here. I have never looked to see what they are doing. I simply trust in human intelligence. My effort is to sharpen it as much as possible. And that certainly I cannot do after my death, so I have to do it before my death.
Can you call it intelligence to kill fifty percent of the population of India?
Certainly: not fifty percent – fifty percent for India, seventy-five percent for the whole world.
Only one-fourth of the population can live on this earth peacefully, comfortably, luxuriously. I don’t want that you should kill these people by throwing bombs. I don’t want to create Hiroshimas, Nagasakis – which you will have to if you don’t listen to me.
I would like every government to help the starving people to die peacefully. Give them a sleeping dose so they go into a deep sleep, and the sleep turns into death. At least give them a beautiful death. You could not give them a beautiful life, but you can give them a beautiful death, with music and flowers, good food. At least once in their life give them the best that they always wanted. And let them depart.
And once this population comes to a balance, then keep the balance; then don’t allow each and everybody to go on producing like animals. They have to take permission from the medical board, and unless the medical board supports that that child will be healthy, intelligent, they cannot have it. And no couple can be allowed to have more than two children, to replace themselves.
Within ten years, we can make this world totally different. You will just have to drop your ideas about morality, religion, death, sin. If you carry all those old ideas, then wait for the nuclear weapons; they will do the work, and they will not ask about your morality, and they will not bother to give you a beautiful death either. They will give you the worst death possible. So why wait for that?
I’m not being inhuman when I say it. It is out of absolute compassion that I am saying it. It is simply ugly to somehow keep hungry people alive, because they never come up to the survival level. At the most you can manage below the survival level.
Excuse me, do you think it's better to have one-fourth of the earth's population living in luxury than having the total population living fairly well?
Not fairly well – it is not possible. That is not the alternative. The alternative is twenty-five percent of humanity living in absolute comfort and luxury, or the whole world living in misery, poverty, war, death – and finally a global suicide. These are the alternatives.
It seems that we accept things which we are not doing, whether they are moral or immoral. For example, if a world war starts, nobody will bother about morality or immorality. It will not kill seventy-five percent of the people, it will kill one hundred percent of life – trees, birds, animals, who have not done any wrong to you, who are not part of your politics, who are not Americans, and who are not Russians. Those poor people will be unnecessarily destroyed, and nobody will think whether it is moral or immoral.
I’m suggesting a very compassionate idea. If a country cannot manage to live, then it is better for that country to silently die. Why cling to life? For what? Without Ethiopia, the world will not be losing anything – because what has come out of Ethiopia? Except hunger, poverty, continuous rape, murder, crime, what has come out of Ethiopia?
I'm not sure about Ethiopia, but I'm sure that natural resources came out of lots of the countries that are now starving.
That too came only when the population was balanced, not now. India has given so much to the whole world, but the population was so small. In Buddha’s time – and that was the peak of India’s glory – the whole population consisted of two hundred million people. And India included Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim. It was almost double what it is now, and the whole population was two hundred million. Now India’s population alone is eight hundred million. Pakistan is not included, Bangladesh is not included, Bhutan, Nepal are not included. If you include them too, then it will go beyond a billion.
It was possible in Buddha’s time to contribute to the world, and India contributed much. It contributed philosophy, it contributed music, it contributed poetry, literature, sculpture – everything. But the population was small, and the resources so much that people had to do something creative. Life was comfortable. People could paint, people could make statues.
It is so surprising to see an ancient temple like Khajuraho. In Khajuraho there were 120 temples: only 30 have survived, the others are ruins. But even to create one temple like that seems to be impossible. It is such a work; it must have taken thousands of first-rate artists and craftsmen, because each inch of the temple is carved. There are millions of statues in a single temple. All the walls are made of statues. And what statues! Nowhere else have such beautiful statues been created. Those people must have been very comfortable: no worry about food, no worry about anything else, and they could concentrate – and they made 120 temples. All over India, there are thousands of temples like that. But it happened when the country was in a situation where the resources were more, riches were more. Just by a little effort enough was produced.
But what can India contribute now? It is a bankrupt country. It can only suck and exploit the sympathy of the whole world. That’s what it has been doing for forty years, since independence. Its bank loans go on increasing, and everybody knows they cannot be returned, there is no way to return them. It goes on begging from every country for support, knowing perfectly well there is no way to pay it back. For how long is this going to happen? The best way is to take some measures there.
For example, for twenty years make it absolutely illegal to have children. Just for twenty years. If there are no children born in twenty years – and in twenty years, millions of old people will die – the situation will change. You will not necessarily have to kill them: just be a little more scientific, and a little less superstitious.
I don’t see that there is any problem in the world which is insoluble. All the problems are made by us. And because we go on clinging to our old ideas, those problems go on standing there. And they go becoming bigger and bigger. There is every possibility that perhaps we will not be able to live at all by the end of the century. This is going to be a real calamity, because in the whole universe this is the only place where life has reached to consciousness.
This is the only place. The whole universe is dead in a way. This small planet is something special: not only life, but consciousness; not only consciousness, but ultimate peaks of enlightenment have happened on this earth. And these idiots are going to destroy it. This is not only against the earth, it is against the whole of existence and the whole universe – because once life disappears from earth, the whole universe will be just a big graveyard, infinite; all those stars are dead.
We are certainly privileged. And to miss this opportunity because of small, stupid things – communism, democracy, Christianity, Judaism, just small things… We can drop all those things. My solution is one world, one government, no political parties, and we would have solved everything without any difficulty.
Osho,
I'm not going to ask you how to put a government together without any political parties, because that would probably be a long answer.
So I'll just go into something completely different: I've been told that you have made a lot of statements about people from different nationalities. It would be interesting to hear what you've said about Swedish people, and maybe especially about the Swedish sannyasins that you've met.
I have to go there, because Sweden is one of the countries which is the most backward as far as sannyas is concerned.
It's backward?
As far as sannyas is concerned, it is the most backward. We have very few sannyasins there, so I’m thinking to come.
I'm sure there are a lot of people that would like to meet you. In what sense is it backwards? As of being sannyasins?
Yes, only in that sense – and I’m interested only in that.
But what makes Sweden more backward than Germany, for instance, where you have a lot of…
In Germany I have the biggest communes – and the reason is Adolf Hitler. Sweden has missed an Adolf Hitler. In Germany he made way for me – not knowing that he was making the way for a strange man.
The German youth is fed up with the politicians because they have had to suffer two world wars. All those politicians were promising them that they are special people, that they are born to rule the world. And they got exploited by those promises.
Adolf Hitler was not only a political leader, he was even trying to be a prophet. He was declaring himself a reincarnation of an Old Testament prophet, Elijah. The German youth is totally frustrated with prophets, messiahs, political leaders. And that’s how they immediately become interested in me – because I am against religions, against prophets, against messiahs, against the whole past. And Germany’s past in these wars has been of so much suffering that they are more open to receive me.
Sweden has not suffered, is not yet frustrated, is still comfortably satisfied the way things are. That’s the problem, and that’s where they will remain backward. Countries like Sweden who are in a certain way comfortably well – not hungry and dying like Ethiopia, or rich, super-rich, like America, but just a middle class… The middle class is the least revolutionary class in the world. They cannot do anything rebellious, because the psychology of the middle class is that they can always hope to reach the higher rungs. They can become richer, and richer. There is hope for the middle class to become rich.
Isn't that Karl Marx?
No, Karl Marx never bothered about the middle class. That’s why he completely missed with everything in his philosophy. Otherwise he would have been the right person. But because he never bothered about the middle class, he thought of the poor – the proletariat; he thought of the capitalist – the bourgeois. His idea was that sooner or later, the middle class would disappear. A few would become rich, more would become poor. He never thought that the middle class was going to stay. It is a shifting class, so he never bothered about it. And that is where he missed completely.
The middle class has not disappeared. On the contrary, the middle class is growing. A few poor people join it, a few rich people join it. Because a few rich people are falling down, a few poor people are rising up, the middle class is becoming bigger and bigger. In fact, the rich are just one pole. The poor are the other pole; that’s why revolution is not possible in America.
Marx used to think that America would be the first to go through a revolution. He had never dreamed that a poor country like Russia would do the revolution. It was out of his imagination, because it was so poor and there was no rich class, so a class struggle was not possible. But he could not see this point: that if the middle class, instead of disappearing – a few become rich and the remaining become poor, and this creates a gap – he could not think that the opposite is also possible. A few from the poor become middle class, a few from the rich become middle class, and the middle class goes on becoming bigger and bigger. And the middle class never disturbs any status quo.
Sweden is a middle-class country. It cannot be revolutionary.
Do you consider your own movement a revolution?
My movement is absolute revolution.
So your movement could never turn Sweden around, so to speak?
No, we will try. We will do our best, because it is only a question of creating a longing that life can be lived more intensely. And I’m not telling them that for the future, but now. My appeal is difficult for the poor. I cannot convert the poor person into a sannyasin – that’s very difficult because to tell him to live in the moment is to tell him to live in hunger. To him I can only say to die in the moment, because for living you have nothing.
But I have tremendous possibilities for middle class people. Once they start understanding me they will see the point very easily.
The super-rich are also out of my game. Marx’s whole ideology was dependent on the poor and the rich, and my whole approach is dependent on the middle class. The question is just of a different past in different countries. Germany proved good because Adolf Hitler has done so much harm, and has left such a space in the soul of the German youth. So it was easy. I have never been to Germany; Germany has been coming to me. But to Sweden I will come.
Don't you think you scare some of the German young people here, when you're talking about how it would be good for the world – for India, for instance – to have an Adolf Hitler-type person to help the situation?
I don’t care. My whole life has been disturbing people, shocking people – and these people particularly are immune. They have gone through so many shocks, that now they go on sleeping well, soundly, without any disturbance.
Osho,
This morning you said something about, “Believing is just carrying on knowledge from somebody else.” But isn't that exactly what these sannyasins are doing?
No.
They're taking your knowledge to themselves.
No.
No?
They are not: they are experimenting, they are meditating – and unless they experience, they are not allowed to spread anything. It is none of their business. I am enough, alone. I have my ways. Just sitting here in this chair I can flood the whole world with my ideas. What is the need for them? They have to experience first. Unless it becomes their own, they are not to become missionaries. I hate the word missionary. Each sannyasin should speak on his own authority. Then, there is strength.
I have seen very famous missionaries, but without any strength. In India, Stanley Jones – a world-famous man – was living. Perhaps he was the most cultured missionary, very philosophical, rational, compared to these idiots like Billy Graham. He was certainly a man worth considering. I used to go because he had an ashram in the Himalayas, so whenever I used to pass that way I would go there. He loved me, and he always wanted me to come and be there.
One day I was sitting in the garden with him, taking breakfast. And I told him, “This is something that perhaps will disturb you, but whatever you teach and whatever you preach – I have gone through your books, I have listened to your talks, but it is not your experience. It is all accumulated knowledge, borrowed. You have done well, you are a great scholar – whatever you say is perfectly in tune with the scriptures, but you don’t have any experience of it.”
The Bible was always sitting on the table by his side – always. So I took his hand and put it on the Bible, and I said, “Take an oath.”
He was nervous, but he was an honest man. He said, “You are right. It is not my experience.”
Now, if it is not your experience, from where are you going to have strength? Books, and knowledge derived from books, cannot be your strength. I want my people to be strong, so that if somebody does the same thing as I did to Stanley Jones, they need not say, “It is not our experience. We have believed in a master and we are repeating like parrots.”
No, that would be ugly. I would not like these people to say that. It is better to say, “I don’t know.” Unless you know, don’t bother to say anything to anybody. When you know, you will have to say – because then you become just like a rain cloud which is so full of water that it has to rain somewhere or other.
The moment you know, you become a rain cloud, and then it is something totally different. You are not a missionary: you are not changing anybody, and trying to convert him to your faith. You don’t have any faith, you have a certain experience. And out of sheer love you are sharing it. If that sharing transforms the man, that is a different thing. It is not conversion, it is transformation.
Okay?
Thank you.
Come again.