Truth has to wait... but not to wait forever

Question 1:

It would have been very easy if life were only facts and figures -- easy but boring; easy but flat; easy but not worth living.

And mind is concerned only with facts and figures.

It is a great blessing of existence that mind is not all, that there is much more to life which cannot be confined to facts, explanations, theories. Something mysterious remains always unexplained, and that is the most valuable, the most significant part of life.

It is impossible to explain love, trust, beauty, grace, gratitude, silence. All that is meaningful seems to be beyond mind, and all that is meaningless seems to be the boundary of the mind.

I am reminded of a great Sufi master, Junnaid. One day one of his disciples -- who had managed somehow to trust in Junnaid, who had with effort remained unskeptical -- had gone hunting in the forest. And he saw Junnaid sitting by the side of a beautiful lake with a beautiful woman. From far away he saw, and from far away everything is beautiful -- and particularly a Mohammedan woman.

No Mohammedan woman is ugly -- her face is veiled. It is a great strategy of ugly women against the beautiful; in this way the beautiful are lost.

All his repressed suspicions and doubts arose, surfaced -- and it was not only that Junnaid was sitting with the woman; the woman was pouring wine from a flask into a cup for Junnaid.

All his trust was shattered, all his love was finished: "There is a limit to everything. This is going too far. This man is a fraud!"

And if he had returned without going to Junnaid to say something, he would have remained with the idea that the man was a fraud. He had all the facts, he had seen with his own eyes, he was a witness. He needed no other evidence, no other proof. No argument would have convinced him that he could have been wrong.

But Junnaid shouted loudly, "Don't go back! Come close, because when you come close many facts prove to be fictions. The closer you come, the more fictitious they are. Just come close."

A little bit afraid, but he came.

Junnaid lifted the veil from the woman's face. She was Junnaid's mother, an old woman.

And he said, "What about the beautiful woman you had seen? -- and you had seen her with your own eyes. Could you have imagined an old woman, my own mother? It was beyond your imagination.

"And take this flask and look closely, taste it; it is pure water, not wine. Just the flask is of the wine.

"But you were going with absolute certainty: that this man is a fraud -- women and wine in privacy, in the forest -- and in public he has another face, of a great master."

The disciple fell at his feet and said, "Please forgive me."

Junnaid said, "It is not a question of forgiveness; it is a question of understanding. You have a trust which is forced, and a forced trust is bound to sooner or later go through a breakdown. Your love is an effort, and love cannot be an effort -- either you love or you don't, the question of effort does not arise. You were trying to imitate other disciples, and the path of the truth is not for imitators.

"I had come to this place only for you, knowing that you were going hunting and you were bound to come to this lake. You have to start from the beginning, and this time your love has not to be an effort and your trust has not to be something forced. These things are beautiful when they grow naturally -- and when they grow naturally then no facts, no figures can destroy them. They have such tremendous energy of their own that all facts and figures simply evaporate."

Facts are not truths, but just like soap bubbles. Yes, a soap bubble is -- but its existence or non-existence is almost equal.

Truth has an eternity: it was true, it is true, it will remain true. There is no way for the truth to be otherwise.

Facts go on changing. Facts depend on interpretations. The same fact can be interpreted in a thousand and one ways. And that's what we are all doing; otherwise, there would be no need of so many religions, so many philosophies, so many ideologies.

Truth is one.

The mystic has no philosophy, the mystic has no ideology -- because he has the truth itself.

Just look at a few facts and how they can be interpreted not only differently but in a diametrically opposite way.

The most important Jaina master, Mahavira, lived naked all his life. He renounced the world, his kingdom, he renounced everything -- clothes, shoes. He lived just as a child is born, naked, with nothing in his hands. He did not even carry a begging bowl. He used to make a begging bowl with his own hands. He would not use anything on which one becomes dependent.

His ultimate goal was total freedom.

And he was so logically consistent that even to use a small blade -- a razor blade to cut his hair or to shave his beard -- he was not ready. To use scissors or a blade would be a dependency, so he used to pull his hair out with his own hand. It was painful, but he managed.

He lived eighty-two years... and he had to pull out the hairs because he was not taking baths. According to his approach, to take a bath is to decorate the body, is to believe in the body -- and the body is nothing but bones, blood, flesh, everything rotten, just covered with skin. What is the point of taking a bath? -- you are not the body. And consciousness needs no cleanliness because it cannot become unclean.

In India he has been worshipped by the Jainas for twenty-five centuries as one of the most important mystics of the whole world. And even those who are not of his fold have immense respect for the man.

But I bring Sigmund Freud to analyze Mahavira's attitude and character -- the same facts.

It is strange that there are thousands of madmen in the insane asylums around the world, and there is a certain kind of madness in which nakedness and pulling out the hair happens together. Those mad people live naked and they pull out their hair -- they don't allow anybody to cut their hair or shave their beards. And the same mad people don't allow themselves to be given showers or baths. Strange....

Is Mahavira a madman of the same category?

Or are these mad people Mahaviras, great masters misunderstood by an insane world?

Somewhere something has to be decided.

Strangely enough, these mad people who live naked, pull out their hair, don't take any baths, are absolutely non-violent. They are not dangerous; they never hurt anybody, they never kill anybody. They are very harmless people. And that is the whole philosophy of Mahavira -- non-violence.

Perhaps he was a madman with a genius, with such a talented intelligence that he made a philosophical standpoint out of his madness.

Now, who is going to decide?

The fact in itself is without any judgment; in itself it says nothing, it is simply a fact.

At the moment you start thinking about it, you start creating interpretations, and those interpretations will depend on your attitude. They have nothing to do with the fact.

Because I have brought Sigmund Freud in, I cannot allow him to go out so easily. He was the founder of psychoanalysis, and yet he remained a practicing Jew for his whole life, subscribing to all the superstitions of the Jews.

For example, circumcision: Every Jewish child... as he is born, the male child is immediately circumcised. Mohammedans are also circumcised but after two or three years, not immediately.

And Jews believe that they are the most intelligent people in the world because of circumcision. It is true that they are perhaps the most intelligent group of people in the world. The whole contemporary world is dominated by Jews: Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein -- these three figures stand out amongst billions of people. Their contribution to human well-being is immense.

I have told you that forty percent of Nobel prizes go to Jews. That is simply out of all proportion -- forty percent to the small group of Jews, and sixty percent to the rest of the world. Naturally they have more intelligence, you cannot suspect it; it is a fact. And they have this idea that they are so intelligent because of circumcision, and they provide philosophical, logical, scientific proofs for it.

And one never knows, they may be right -- because now many governments of the world are getting ready to pass resolutions that every child born in hospitals should be circumcised. It doesn't matter whether he is Jew or Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan, that is not a question; it is a question of hygiene.

It is certainly hygienic. But Jews have a very far-fetched philosophical idea behind it:

they say when the child is born... and the genitals are the most sensitive parts. This is recognized by science, by physiology, that the genitals are connected with a certain center in the mind. Strangely enough, the center in the mind that is connected with the genitals is absolutely close to the center for intelligence, they are neighbors. And they have to be very close because there are seven hundred centers in your brain, so they are very close knit.

Jews say that when you cut the skin of the small child, the shock goes to the sex center.

But the shock is so much and the child is so delicate that the shock does not remain confined to the sex center -- the shock goes to the nearby center, which is the center of intelligence. And intelligence gets a great impetus which other children are missing, so they are far ahead of anybody else.

Now the rest of the world has looked upon circumcision as a superstition.

The fact is the same, but now they are providing scientific fragments to support it. They also are not absolute proofs, that is why I say far-fetched. But Sigmund Freud also believed in them, and he had not all these facts that I have, because at that time it was not known that the centers of sex and intelligence are very close. Neither was it known that sex is really in the mind and the genitals are only extensions, they are not really the sex organs. They can be bypassed, and you can enjoy a sexual experience without your genitals even knowing about it.

Sigmund Freud never inquired, never raised a question about the Jewish idea of circumcision -- which he should have, because he was a Jew, and his whole work was with sexuality. His whole life was devoted to finding out everything about sexuality, but he bypassed circumcision, he did not talk about it. Others have laughed for centuries.

I have heard that one bishop and one rabbi lived opposite each other, and naturally there was great competition in everything. One day the bishop purchased a beautiful Chevrolet.

The rabbi came out and he said, "A beautiful car... whose car is this?"

And the bishop came out with a bucket of water and poured the water on the car. He said, "I have purchased it."

The rabbi said, "But what are you doing?"

He said, "Baptism." He was a Christian Baptist. "Now the car is a Christian Baptist car -- baptized."

This was too much for the rabbi.

Next day, as the bishop woke up, he saw a beautiful Cadillac sitting in the garage of the rabbi. He was shocked -- because the Chevrolet is a poor man's car in America. The poor peoples' neighborhoods are called "Chevrolet neighborhoods." It is a rich man's car in other countries, but in America the Chevrolet is a poor man's car. But the Cadillac is especially Jewish.

The bishop came out and he said, "How could you manage it?"

The rabbi said, "God looks after his chosen few." And he said, "Come on -- because there is going to be a ceremony."

The bishop said, "What kind of ceremony?"

He said, "You come inside."

The bishop came into the garage, and the rabbi went into his house and brought out a big pair of garden scissors. The bishop could not believe -- what is happening? What kind of ceremony...? The rabbi started chanting some mantras in Hebrew, and then finally he cut the exhaust pipe.

The bishop asked, "What are you doing?"

He said, "Circumcision -- now the car is absolutely Jewish. If you can baptize, what do you think? -- can't we do something to make the car a Jew?"

Everybody has been laughing about circumcision.

But Sigmund Freud never even raised a question about it. He never raised a single question that goes against Jewish tradition. All his logic, all his reason was used to criticize everybody else.

I have asked a Jaina saint: "Sigmund Freud would say these things about Mahavira, although he has not said them, because he knew nothing about Mahavira. But I am absolutely certain he would say these things. Have you something to say about Sigmund Freud, about Jews?"

And the first thing he said was: "If the skin on the male genitals was not needed, then existence would not have given it to the child. Existence gives only that which is needed.

To remove that skin is egoistic, it is an effort to prove that you are wiser than existence itself. And the very idea that man is wiser than existence is stupid."

I asked him about Jesus -- because I had taken with me a Christian missionary, Stanley Jones, to meet the Jaina saint. And I said, "Stanley Jones is here, and his criticism against Jaina saints, Buddhist saints, Hindu saints, is that they don't do any service to humanity.

On the contrary, they demand that they should be served, worshipped -- that it is their birthright.

"People may be dying from starvation -- that is not their concern. Mahavira and Buddha have not opened a single hospital, not a single school for poor children, not a single orphanage, like Mother Teresa. But these people are thought to be great compassionate people. What compassion is there? What do you think about Jesus?"

He said, "About Jesus? According to us, everything in life is a connected link of cause and effect, the theory of action."

There are stories that if Mahavira is passing on the road and a thorn is there, the thorn will jump out of the road -- because Mahavira has finished all evil actions. Now no pain can be given to him by existence. It looks logical: if existence is deciding rewards and punishments, certainly the thorn must jump out of the road.

Mohammedans say -- because Mohammed was in Arabia... hot sun, no clouds, no shade, no trees. But a beautiful cloud always moved over Mohammed, wherever he went -- because he was finished with all evil acts. That's why he was chosen by God as his best messenger; he had become so pure that he could be a vehicle. Now it is God's duty to protect him. In the hot burning sun, a cool breeze surrounds him, and a big cloud goes on keeping him in shadow.

The Jaina saint said, "Jesus being crucified proves that he must have done some very evil acts in his past life. Crucifixion was the punishment."

It has nothing to do with Jews crucifying him or the Romans crucifying him. Those are the visible facts, but the invisible truth is that he must have committed something really heinous -- murder, rape -- and the result is crucifixion. So crucifixion is not something to be worshipped; it is a condemnation.

Now for the Christian the same fact, the crucifixion of Jesus, makes him the greatest man on the earth because he suffered for humanity, he was crucified for you; to save you he gave his own life. That is their interpretation.

But the Jainas, Hindus and Buddhists will all explain that "He is suffering from many past lives of crimes. He is not giving his life to save anybody -- because we don't see anybody saved. Who is saved? He could not even save himself."

One thing should always be remembered: don't be bothered about facts. They can be interpreted this way or that way very convincingly, but facts belong to the mundane world.

Truth is the thing you should concentrate on.

You have mentioned the New Yorker article about me and the commune. Perhaps they may not have ever written such a big article before -- one hundred and fifty-six pages.

And what they call facts are only the facts that the government has supplied to them.

They have not asked me; otherwise for every fact there is a counter-fact. But it is easy not to ask both parties.

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin in his old age became an honorary magistrate. His first case came up. He heard one side, and started writing the judgment.

The court clerk could not believe what was happening. He whispered in his ear, "Honorable magistrate, what are you doing? You have not heard the other side yet. They are waiting."

Mulla Nasruddin said, "I am not going to hear anybody, because right now I am absolutely clear what the situation is, and if I hear the other side also I will become confused. And out of confusion, judgment will be very difficult."

The New Yorker is simply presenting one side.

I will give you a few facts on the other side so you can see how facts should not be decisive.

The land that we purchased for the commune had been for sale for almost half a century, and nobody had purchased it -- because it was a desert. Not a single flower ever blossomed there, no cultivation was ever done; it was just a useless wasteland. And it was big -- one hundred and twenty-six square miles, eighty-four thousand acres.

We purchased the land. The man was very happy, because he had lost hope that the land could ever be sold.

And the government was asking him to give it to them for three million dollars. It was almost a small country -- one hundred and twenty-six square miles, three times bigger than Manhattan. And the man was just going to say yes to the government as we entered the scene.

We immediately offered him six million dollars. He could not believe it -- from three million to six million! Immediately everything was settled.

And this was the beginning of conflict with the government.

But if the government had really been interested, they could have offered more. They should not have felt offended, it was a simple business matter. And it is not their land either.

The whole world has forgotten completely that the real Americans are the red Americans who are living in reservations in the forests. They have been forced to live almost in concentration camps, an American version of the German concentration camps -- far better, because the German concentration camp was barbed wire, guns all around, very crude.

The American concentration camp is very sophisticated -- no barbed wire, no guards, you cannot say that this is a concentration camp. But this is a concentration camp -- of a higher order, of a more subtle and delicate quality.

What they have done is to give every red Indian a pension -- because America belongs to them, it is their country. They don't have any work, but they get enough pension. All they do is to go on producing more children, because the more children they have, the more pension they will get. Each individual gets a pension.

But you should understand that when you have no work and enough money, what are you going to do? They gamble, they are all drunkards, all kinds of drugs, prostitution, and no worries about anything -- every month the salary is there. Salary for nothing, salary for remaining silent about the fact that America belongs to them, that the people who are known as Americans are not Americans. Somebody is from England, somebody is from Italy, somebody is from France, somebody is from Holland, somebody is from Germany, somebody is from Switzerland -- from all the European countries, but nobody is an American. They are all foreigners.

And my first conflict with the government was that I told it exactly the same way I am telling you: that the American president is as much a foreigner as I am a foreigner. The only difference is that he has been here perhaps for two generations, three generations -- he is a two hundred year-old foreigner. I am fresh.

And the fresh is always better than the old and rotten.

I told them: Neither does the land belong to you nor does the land belong to us.

And we purchased the land, we paid money; you invaded the land, you killed people, innocent people. You are criminals.

If anybody needs permission to live in America, it is you -- from the American president to the last American beggar. And if you really mean what you say in your constitution -- that you are for democracy, for freedom -- if you are sincere and honest, then give the country back to the red Indians. It belongs to them. And apply for your green cards. If they want you here, you can be here; otherwise go home.

And you have killed, you have invaded, you are criminals.

We have simply purchased.

Sometimes you have also purchased, but your purchase was simply a facade. For example, New York -- the whole New York area was purchased for thirty silver pieces. Is this business? Do you think it was done by people willingly, or was it just because at the point of the bayonet, at gunpoint they had to sign: "We sell the land for thirty silver pieces."

The conflict started because I said: "Not one of you is any different from the people in my commune. We are newcomers; you came a little earlier. And you have committed all kinds of crimes; we have simply purchased the land. And you were there, you could have purchased it by offering more money -- it was a simple business matter."

But the American government will not say this.

And America must remain the only country in the world where people like the poor red Americans cannot revolt. It is such a cunning strategy that you are giving them money.

They think, "Revolt? for what? We are getting money, enough money, no work... enjoy, dance, sing, take all kinds of drugs. No problems of worrying about poverty or anything - - why bother about revolution?" The very idea is not possible.

And they are all drunkards, opium addicted, lotus eaters. They are not in a position to fight a revolution. Their revolution has been killed, their spirit has been killed by money.

Because I said it clearly....

And because the land we purchased had belonged to an ancient red Indian tribe which lived just nearby in a forest.... And they had a prophecy from the old days: that a man from the East, with his followers wearing red clothes, would come to this land and free them from the slavery imposed on them by the invaders.

By coincidence, my people were wearing red clothes; by coincidence, I was coming from the East.

And red Indians started coming, saying that "We have been waiting -- because this prophecy we have heard for generations."

These were the fears the government would never talk about.

I could have provoked the red Indians against the whole American government, I could have created a revolution -- this was their fear. They wanted to destroy me and the commune as quickly as possible.

The land had never produced anything, but they said that it was farmland; hence, we could not make more than twenty houses, twenty farmhouses. And we fought and we said, "You have to come and prove -- in fifty years what has been produced? If it is farmland, then something must have been cultivated. Just because you have written in your papers... and we don't know when you have written it. You may have written it just now, just to harass us. You have to prove what kind of cultivation has been happening here. If this is farmland, we will cultivate it; but such a big land area cannot be cultivated by a small group living in twenty houses. This much land needs at least five thousand people to make it lush green, to make lakes, reservoirs -- because everything has to depend on the rainwater. And tremendous effort is needed to make roads, houses."

But they would not change the zoning -- which was simply stupid, because we were not going to destroy their farmland. We were creating farmland from a desert, we were changing the desert into an oasis.

So they went on creating legal problems, and for five years we went on fighting -- and we were winning in every court, because the facts were so clear.

When they saw that they could not win legally, then they started behaving illegally.

And when a government itself starts behaving illegally, then it becomes very difficult to fight -- a small minority of five thousand people. The government was fighting, the Christian church was fighting, and nobody could say what harm we were doing to them, what harm we had done.

The nearest American town was twenty miles away from us. We were living and doing our own thing. But they became so much afraid....

The fear had unconscious reasons.

America does not belong to them, and they are talking about democracy, they are talking about liberty, they are talking about freedom, they are talking about the rights of man.

And they have taken all of the land from the poor natives, and they have destroyed them in such a sophisticated way as has not been done anywhere else.

There is no hope for the red Indians for two reasons: one, they are not in their senses, they are continuously drunk, continuously unconscious -- fighting, murdering each other.

Secondly, slavery is paying well -- without working you are getting a salary. To fight against this government means you will lose your salary and you will have all kinds of problems -- so why bother?

And because I said things exactly... and I invited the president, the governor, the attorney general of America to come and see, to show us what cultivation they had done on this land. And we had transformed the whole land.

Rather than praising us, they wanted us to destroy the commune and leave America.

It seems they loved the desert so much that now they have made it desert again.

Perhaps they need a third world war to make the whole of America a desert. If they love the desert so much, their wishes should be fulfilled.

But these facts that they have produced after one year... Where was this New Yorker when I was there to reply? Now they are writing facts and figures.

And they have not consulted the other party at all, to ask, "What are your facts and what are your figures? How has the government misbehaved with you? How has the government proved to be fascist, violent, crude, primitive, undemocratic...?"

They should have asked us -- because we have suffered.

But the press is either in the hands of the church or in the hands of a political party, or in the hands of the government, or in the hands of rich people.

The man who came first into the conflict was the ex-vice-president Rockefeller -- because he was planning that the whole of Oregon should become a federal state. The federal government owns half of the land of Oregon, and their desire was to have all of the land in Oregon to create shelters in case of a nuclear war. And Oregon is perfectly the right place -- not very populated, could easily be converted into a vast shelter in case of nuclear war.

When we entered the state, the first person who became annoyed was Rockefeller -- because now that one hundred and twenty-six square miles could in no way become federal land.

It was he who said in a press conference that, "This commune is an independent country within a country, and this cannot be tolerated."

If they had asked us... It was a simple thing. They could have given us land somewhere else, we would have moved the commune. Or from the very beginning they could have told us, "We are ready to give you another piece of land." There was no problem; to us it was the same.

But these people have faces of one kind, they say one thing, and they do something else.

And they are thinking still something else -- you never know exactly what is in their minds, what they are doing, what their purpose is.

They accepted our right to be a city -- and it was accepted by the court, three judges.

One judge was against us, was a fanatic Christian. But seeing that two of the judges were ready -- and his being against us would be useless, he also signed, and we became a city.

Now that was the most difficult thing for them to swallow: that against the president, against the whole government, we won the case and we became a city.

You will be surprised, in the twentieth century.... The one judge who was in our favor was a Mormon. They are very good people, a sect of Christians, but very honest and sincere. And they have suffered very much in America at the hands of other Christians because of certain of their ideologies....

One idea they have is that the head of the Mormons is in direct contact with God, with no pope, no mediator in between. The Mormon head has a direct communication line with God. This is not acceptable to Christians -- you are bypassing the pope.

They killed the first Mormon founder, and because they killed him they consolidated the Mormons, and they had to give them a city. The same story was being repeated again, so they became afraid. Now Mormons have a city -- one of the most beautiful in America -- Salt Lake City.

This one judge was a Mormon. And a trick was played: the head of the Mormons informed him that he had been chosen by God to resign from his post and go to Nigeria to serve humanity.

I informed that judge that, "This is simple politics. They want to remove you from the post because when you are removed... One person is against us, one person is half-half -- he will be on the side of whoever is in power. It was because of you and your sincerity, your fairness that we got the city. Now you are leaving us in the dumps!"

And what a stupid idea. Billions of people in the world, and God has chosen this poor man to resign from his post and go to Nigeria for one year. But they are such simple people that they believed that it was God's order and they could not go against it.

So he resigned, and immediately they appointed a fanatic Christian.

The same court that had given us the sanction to be a city, after six months denied that we were a city.

And the simple trick was that they removed the man who would not do anything wrong, and replaced him with a man who was an absolutely fanatical Christian. They completely forgot their own laws, their own constitution, and they did everything against their constitution.

For two years continuously there was a rumor that they were going to arrest me, but they would not dare to enter the campus of the commune for the simple reason that they knew that unless they killed five thousand sannyasins they would not be able to arrest me. And they were not ready to take that risk -- killing five thousand people, most of them Americans, would condemn their democracy forever.

They wanted me in some way to be out of the commune so they could find me alone.

That's why they waited for two years.

And we were hearing the rumor continuously, so by and by it became accepted that this was just a rumor, they didn't have the courage.

They had their National Guard just twenty miles away in the American town, every day collecting more and more army forces, so that if there was a need they could be ready to kill five thousand people.

But once they could get me out of the commune, things became easy for them.

Without any arrest warrant, they arrested me and five sannyasins who were with me. That is absolutely illegal. They could not even show the cause; not even for three days in court could they prove anything to show why they had arrested me.

Still they would not set bail.

These are the facts and figures. The government was pressuring the magistrate: "If you want to be promoted to federal judge, don't give this man bail." So all five sannyasins were given bail; only I was retained.

And the government attorney said in the court, "We have not been able to prove any charge; still, the government asks that bail should not be granted for this man because he is very intelligent" -- I heard for the first time that to be intelligent is criminal -- "and he has thousands of friends."

I had never thought that these things were enough to be a criminal; if that is enough to be a criminal, then Jesus Christ must be the greatest criminal in the world -- because half of the world is Christian. And thirdly, that I had resources enough that I could jump bail -- even if it were ten million dollars' bail, I could jump it.

And this shows the poverty and the weakness.... The greatest power of the world -- you have all your armies and all your nuclear weapons and all your police forces, and you cannot manage to prevent a man from crossing the country.... Then all your power is impotent.

But the reality was that the woman magistrate was not interested in anything else, she was interested in becoming a federal judge.

Even the jailer did not think that I would go back to jail, he thought that there would be no reason -- "They don't have an arrest warrant, they don't have any cause, so you will be released." So he brought my clothes and everything in his car so that "I can free you direct from court; there is no need to come back to the jail."

When he had to take me back, he was annoyed. He said, "In my whole life I have not seen such unfairness. The attorney could not prove -- and he accepts that he has not been able to prove in three days of continuous arguing -- anything against this man. Still the government wants..."

Who is the government? The government was only a part in the case.

And against an individual, the government forces the magistrate -- bribes, blackmails....

The jailer told me, "The reality is that that woman has been told that if she gives you bail -- which is your right -- she will not be promoted to federal judge. And she wants to become a federal judge."

And within just three days she was a federal judge.

These journalists should think not only of those who have power, but also of those who don't have power, and they should be guards against injustice.

They had formed one hundred and thirty-six crimes against me -- a man who never leaves the house. I have not gone out of this house for three months, not even into the garden; how can I manage one hundred and thirty-six crimes?

But the government attorneys told my attorneys, "If you don't accept at least two crimes, then Bhagwan's life will be in danger." That was the last blackmail. "If you want to put his life in danger, you can go for trial" -- this is just when the court case was going to start, five minutes before. "It is better you accept and convince Bhagwan to accept any two counts" -- just to save the government's face, so that they can be right: I must have committed a crime, because I have accepted. And the threat was, "If you don't accept, then bail will be cancelled and the case can go on for ten to twenty years -- it is in the hands of the government. And there is every risk for the life of Bhagwan. So if you want to save him, you try some way to convince him to accept."

My attorneys came with tears in their eyes, and they said, "We have never seen such blackmail -- and the blackmail is being done by the government -- a clearcut threat. So you accept two counts. And they don't want you to be in America more than fifteen minutes longer. Accept two of the charges and your plane is ready at the airport, you immediately move out of America, and for five years you cannot re-enter." My whole idea was to refuse.

But I looked at my attorneys and I looked at my sannyasins all over the world...

And I had heard that a few sannyasins were not even eating. For the twelve days I had been in jail, a few sannyasins had not been eating at all, they were fasting.

And I am not a rigid man. And I am not a serious man either.

So I said, "There is no problem. Don't be worried -- I accept. And outside the court, just in front of the courthouse, I will announce to the world press that this is blackmail."

And it was true that they were ready to kill me, because as I reached the jail to pick up my things, they had planted a bomb under my chair. It did not explode because it was a time bomb.

And I reached there early -- because I had accepted immediately. I said, "There is no point." I said, "Whatever crimes they want, I have committed. I don't even need to know what those crimes are." So within five minutes the case was over.

They were thinking I would reach there nearabout five, and I reached there just nearabout one o'clock. So the timing was not right. And as I left the jail, they had to remove the bomb. And they have to accept it -- now, in jail nobody can put a bomb except for the government, nobody else can reach there.

The American jail... first you have to pass three big gates, which are all automatic, electric gates. You cannot open them, they open only with remote control buttons. When one gate opens, the other two remain closed. And the second opens only when the first is closed. After three gates, then there are offices.

And the room where my clothes were to be given to me was in the most interior part of the building. It would be impossible for anybody from the outside to reach there and plant a bomb.

The bomb was planted by the government. They must have thought that if I refused to accept the crimes, then it would be better to finish me rather than carry on for years with a case which they were going to lose -- because they don't have any evidence, they don't have any proof.

All those one hundred and thirty-six crimes are their imagination, and nothing else -- and this has been accepted by the attorney general just now, a few days ago.

In a press conference, he was asked, "Why has Bhagwan not been put into jail?"

And he said, "Because he has not committed any crime, and we don't have any proof of any crime."

This same man was standing in court with the list of one hundred and thirty-six crimes.

And this man is the right-hand man of president Ronald Reagan; they are boyhood friends, they were both actors in Hollywood. And when Reagan became president he called him and made him the attorney general of America; now he is the highest legal authority in America. So it is not possible that whatever he is doing is not known to Ronald Reagan.

It is a conspiracy in the White House.

Journalists should gather a little courage, and when they start writing stories about facts and figures they should look at the other side also. Just put both sides; don't give your judgment. Let the people decide.

And truth has a quality of its own: if both sides are placed before you without any prejudice, you will be able to figure out what is true and what is false.

And it has helped the whole movement around the world. Those whose trust was forced, whose love was managed, naturally have to fall out of my world, from my people.

But it has been a fire test for those who really love and trust me. Their trust has become stronger, their love has become deeper. And thousands of new people have come into the movement. Seeing that against a single man... the whole world and the whole worlds'

governments are against him -- it is not possible that the man can be wrong.

Otherwise, there is no need for so many governments to be against me. They can simply refute me, their theologians can refute me, their legal systems can prove me wrong.

Because they cannot do anything, now they have come down to the lowest. Ronald Reagan and the people who are cooperating with him have sunk to the status of terrorists.

Now, putting a bomb against a man who is under your protection in the jail -- this is pure inhumanity.

And existence will not tolerate it, existence will not forgive it, existence will not forget it.

And you will see every day these people disappearing from the scene.

Truth has to wait, but not to wait forever. It is patient, it is patient because it knows its victory is certain.