Raise the temple of consciousness

Friends,

Question 1:

One of the sannyasins has asked a question:

Zen Fire and Zen Wind -- that is what is missing in communism.

I have to go into a deeper analysis...

Karl Marx was an intellectual giant, but he had no idea of religiousness other than Judaism and Christianity. Both are religions of prayer. Both believe in God, which is a fiction. Both believe in things which are irrational. For example, Moses passing through the sea, and the sea giving way -- nature makes no exceptions. And Jesus pretending to be the only begotten son of God is absolutely absurd to any rational man like Karl Marx.

Jesus' miracles are mythological. He made Lazarus come out of his grave, raised him back to life -- and he could not do anything when he was on the cross! He could not even produce a little water -- he was thirsty, it was a hot day, and he was asking continuously for water. And this man has touched people and restored their eyes; even by touching his robe people have lost their paralysis. He has walked on water, and this man could not fly with the cross towards God, his father? He was utterly helpless on the cross.

That shows all those miracles are simply invented by the Christians to befool the world.

Even Christian scholars are being embarrassed by all these miracles, by his virgin birth, by his shouting towards God on the cross, "Have you forsaken me?"

Karl Marx was aware only of Judaism -- he was a Jew, just as Jesus was a Jew -- and he was aware of Christianity and all its crimes against humanity. Burning millions of women alive, forcing them to confess that they are having intercourse with the devil, continuous torture to any woman -- beating, not letting her sleep, not giving her food, putting ice on her chest for hours....

These were the people who, by chance, invented the traction machine, because they were putting women on a traction machine which pulled the legs from one side and the head and the arms from the other side. One woman was suffering from backache -- suddenly her backache disappeared. Now that traction machine has been transferred from the churches to the medical colleges, to hospitals. I know it from my personal experience!

And when they were torturing those people on the traction machine, sometimes the legs would come out, sometimes the arms would be broken. Sometimes the head would be stretched so much that the woman would start saying, "I confess that I have been having sex with the devil." And once she confessed, then they told her how to describe the devil:

that he has two horns, that his sexual machinery is forked -- all the details that she had to confess in a special court appointed by the pope, the grand jury. The poor woman has to accept it; otherwise they will torture her to death. So what is the point? She knows that confessing it means being burnt, but death seems to be more peaceful than this life of continuous torture.

More people have been killed by the Christian church than by anybody else.

Karl Marx was reacting to these two religions, which are not religions at all but fictions, superstitions, cults. He was not aware of Taoism, he was not aware of Lao Tzu, he was not aware of Gautam Buddha and Mahavira. He was not aware that there are religions in the world which don't believe in God, which don't believe in prayer, which don't believe in heaven and hell. Because of this unawareness of the whole Eastern phenomenon, he created communism as materialism, dialectical materialism.

It was out of ignorance. Otherwise I have absolute trust that if he had been aware of the Eastern research into the interior space of man... Karl Marx was not an ordinary being, but a very extraordinarily intelligent person. He would have understood that Christianity and Judaism are not the only religions in the world.

Buddhism has not killed a single person, and converted the whole of Asia just by simple dialogue, just by intellectual conversation, just by leading people into meditation.

Karl Marx was right in his reaction against Christianity and Judaism. There is certainly no God as a creator. And because he denied God, as a corollary -- a logical corollary -- he denied the human soul. It was not his experience, it was simply a logical thing. To accept the human soul, which is not material, would be self-contradictory in his philosophy.

By vocation I am a logician, and by mistake I am a mystic. But my mistake has paid me tremendously. Now I know that logic is just mental gymnastics.

All the conclusions derived by Marx were based on logic, were based on thinking, philosophizing. He was not aware at all that there is something like meditation, that there is some way to go inwards.

And the human soul, the human spirit, is not a by-product of matter. It has its own existence. The matter in the body seems to be alive, only because of the presence of consciousness in it. Once the consciousness leaves the body, the body is simply dead, a corpse.

But because Karl Marx had no experience of meditation... And the West was not the right place for meditation; the whole Western mind was objective, and both Judaism and Christianity are objective -- their God is outside.

There is no God outside, it is fiction.

Karl Marx was denying fiction, not religiousness, but he thought this fiction was the only religiousness. Based on Karl Marx's logic, the Soviet Union -- the first communist country, the greatest experiment in the whole history of mankind -- has remained hollow within. There is a deep urge for significance, for meaning, for eternity.

A life which is just material has no meaning. You are just a machine, a robot. At birth you start breathing, mechanically, and at death you stop breathing. If this is the only life, between the cradle and the grave, then this life has no meaning. What meaning can it have?

And then there is no good and no bad. Even killing a person you are not committing a murder, because it is only matter. If you kill your chair I don't think any court is going to take action against you, that you murdered the chair.

In China, because they believed that women have no souls, husbands used to kill their wives. In China there was no law against murdering your wife, because she is just like furniture. You use it, and when you think it is useless, just finish with it! Find some new furniture. The same is the situation in Thailand. The woman has no soul and no rights; she is not human.

But in accordance with Karl Marx, the Soviet Union was based on materialism. It was good in the beginning because it destroyed all the orthodox Christians and their monasteries and their monks. It turned the churches into hospitals, into schools, into colleges. Big monasteries -- because the Russian Orthodox church is one of the oldest churches, older than the Vatican, and much more orthodox than any other church in the world.

You will not believe that in the name of celibacy, the Russian Orthodox church allowed men to cut off their genitals. Every year when Christmas came, hundreds of people would cut off their genitals in the name of becoming celibate. Women were not left behind: they would cut off their breasts. But neither by cutting off your breasts do you become celibate, nor by cutting off your genitals do you become celibate, because the sex center exists in the brain, not in the genitals. The genitals are an extension of a center in the brain.

That's why if you start just imagining about a beautiful woman, immediately your genitals start moving. You are only thinking -- you can do it right now! The thought is in the mind. It is immediately transferred to the genitals, but it always begins in the mind.

The genitals don't have any thinking power. They don't have eyes to see which woman is beautiful. It is your eyes which see and inform the brain, and then the genitals start functioning.

If you really want celibate people, then they need a brain operation. The center of sex should be removed. But then you will be simply impotent -- not celibate.

Karl Marx was right, that such religions should be finished. They are against humanity.

They protect poverty and they protect the rich. They are against revolution, they are against any change -- obviously, he was right to call them the opium of the people, the hope of the hopeless. If Christianity and Judaism were the only religions, then the Soviet Union would not have any need, any urge to find the inner world!

But just think about it. You cannot have the outside world without having the inside world; they exist together like two sides of the coin.

And there are scientific methods available. Zen is the most scientific method to inquire into your consciousness. It takes you beyond mind into a space called no-mind. No self, but pure awareness, and you have a taste of eternity and immortality. This is what is missing in Soviet communism.

And the danger is that Gorbachev is opening the doors and all those Christians will immediately come back. All those cockroaches and rats who have been thrown out in seventy years' time will be the first to enter. Just this Christmas thousands and thousands of Christians entered to celebrate Christmas in the Soviet Union.

Today I received the news.... One of the most idiotic cults is the cult of HARE KRISHNA, HARE RAMA. I have come across every kind of idiot, but these two cults, the Witnesses of Jehovah and this movement of HARE KRISHNA, HARE RAMA -- these are the worst idiots in the whole world! Now the Soviet Union has allotted them land to make a temple for Krishna.

Now, these idiots... who are mostly American; not a single Hindu is involved in the Krishna movement. It is only the Americans, ex-hippies. I have even talked with their founder, Prabhupad, and he was such a senile idiot! But he managed to find other idiots to be followers. Now giving them space on Soviet land, allowing them to make a temple for Krishna, and allowing them to translate SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA into Russian, is bringing poison into the country.

Gorbachev is not aware what SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA'S message is. It is war.

This is the only religious scripture in the world which teaches war, violence, destruction.

Now allowing these idiots to translate SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA into Russian...

And on the other hand, Gorbachev is trying to make a peaceful world. It is contradictory.

But these people will rush in from all sides -- all kinds of cults which have no base in reality, which don't have any logic, which don't have any rationale, which don't have any scientific approach -- they will destroy the whole Soviet Union's mind. Whatever has been achieved in seventy years is in immense danger. Again monks will be living as parasites, because they don't work. Again these people -- HARE KRISHNA, HARE RAMA -- will be parasites. They don't work.

The danger is great, because the Soviet people who are present today have no idea of the revolution. They are almost all born after the revolution, or when they were very small children the revolution happened. They don't have any memory of it.

I don't think Gorbachev has any idea what happened in that revolution and how difficult it was to destroy these stupid religions, superstitions. It took tremendous labor to clean the whole of the Soviet land from the past, the hangover of primitive, barbarious fears, greed, possessiveness.

Now calling these people back again, opening the doors for all kinds of diseases... And the Soviet people are feeling a certain hollowness within themselves. Something is missing, because Karl Marx cannot provide any spirituality to them. But these bogus preachers will talk about spirituality, and it is pure talk. They don't know anything about spirituality either, but they can manage to fill the vacuum in the Soviet heart with all their belief systems, with all their superstitions.

It is going backwards, not forwards.

I warn the Soviet people: please be careful. Whatever Gorbachev is doing, he is doing with great and good intentions. But he is not aware that once you open the doors, all the CIA agents and FBI agents, all the detectives from all over the world, will be entering into the country -- as monks, as priests, as bishops, as archbishops.

Just now, a few Soviet states which have never raised their voices, are raising their voices that "We want independence; we want to separate from the Soviet Union."

In one of the Soviet countries they have tried experimental elections, democratic elections. The Soviet Union has been a dictatorship of the proletariat -- only one party, the party of the proletariat, the Communist Party. So there was no question of any election. Although elections were held, there was only one candidate to vote for.

Under Gorbachev's direction they have tried in one or two places to have the Communist Party's candidate -- which is decided by the central bureau in Kremlin -- and to allow the people of that state to have their own candidates. Of course, they are also communists. But it should be a warning, that those people of the locality have won the election against the centrally nominated candidates. Now nationalism is coming up.

Mohammedans would like to separate -- there are a few Mohammedan countries in the Soviet Union. And every state which constitutes the Union is bound to become more and more nationalistic, which is a disease. So without knowing the consequences, Gorbachev is going ahead. He can spoil the whole great experiment of seventy years.

Once the Soviet Union is destroyed, there is no hope for other communist countries either. They are small countries, they can be destroyed without difficulty. The Soviet Union is the central force of the whole of communism in the world. It has to survive!

But the trouble is, the idiots will rush in, the vested interests will rush in. No right person, no Gautam Buddha is going to go there unless Gorbachev and the Soviet Union invite him. Nobody like that is going there. Those who will be rushing there on their own have their motivations.

If Gorbachev really wants peace in the world at the cost of communism, that peace is not worth it. Communism is one of the greatest experiments in human evolution. It has laid the foundation of a new temple for humanity. But it has only laid the foundation; the pillars are missing, the roof is missing.

That can be done only by people who are fully awakened, people whom I am calling the buddhas -- not Buddhists. Buddhists are as superstitious as any other organized religion.

But the awakened people should be invited from all over the world. There are a few people still, in the same space as Gautam Buddha. They should be invited to teach meditation in the universities, to teach meditation in the colleges, to teach meditation to the public -- and meditation has nothing against communism.

Meditation will use communism as the base, and will put the pillars and the roof on the base. The Soviet citizen needs something of meditative experience that will fill his hollowness. Otherwise just work, and death... there seems to be no meaning and significance. If you had not been born there would be no harm; if you die nobody is going to miss you, you will be replaced.

Soviet citizens need dignity and individuality and a certain sense of direction into eternity. That is what is missing. And the danger is, before the right people can be invited, the wrong people will rush in and start destroying the seventy years' great experiment.

I would prefer a third world war rather than the destruction of the Soviet Union. In the name of peace Gorbachev can go beyond the limits -- he is already going.

The death of the Soviet Union will be the death of all evolution, of all possibilities of a world without boundaries, of a world without classes, of a world richer in every sense of the word -- not only money but consciousness too; not only power but art and music and dance.

Have you ever observed? -- there is a simple phenomenon that will give you the right direction.

Before the revolution, the Soviet Union produced people like Leo Tolstoy, Gorky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Dostoevsky. These five names are so great, as far as literature is concerned, that if you want to find ten great names in the whole world, these five will be the first five. The other five will be sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth. But these five cannot be dropped in any calculation, their creation is so great. Just a single man, Fyodor Dostoevsky, is enough to defeat all the creative novelists of the world.

But what happened? After the revolution, no Gorky, no Turgenev, no Dostoevsky, no Tolstoy -- what happened? In these seventy years the Soviet Union has not been able to create a single person of that quality.

The reason is clear. The Soviet citizen has lost his soul, has lost his consciousness, has believed in Karl Marx blindly, that the soul of man is only a by-product of matter. If the soul is just a by-product of matter, then there is no possibility of haikus, no possibility for poetry.

I have read the poetry written before the revolution and after the revolution. In fact, after the revolution the poetry should have risen higher, but that is not the case.

Before the revolution when Russia was the poorest of countries... it was not even a capitalist country, it was a feudal country. Karl Marx had never expected that the Soviet Union was going to be born out of the poorest country, the most traditional, backward in every sense. He never expected that it was going to become the first communist country.

It was not even capitalist.

According to Karl Marx's calculation, a feudal society cannot move directly to communism. It has to move through capitalism. Only capitalism creates classes clearly, the proletariat and the bourgeois.

But I told you, logic is not everything. Life has its own ways. It happened in Russia. But because the philosophy of Karl Marx has been the foundation, it has destroyed all flowers of consciousness. No literature of great status... even Tolstoy's son was just a poor novelist after the revolution. And before the revolution, in a poor country, such great literature was born.

It shows something. It shows that unless you have a fulfillment, a certain contentment inside you, you cannot share it in poetry, in music. From where will you bring it? It has to flow from you -- you cannot share it because you don't have it.

The Soviet citizen is the poorest, as far as consciousness is concerned.

But Karl Marx has given it a right foundation. That foundation is missing in the East.

This has been the dilemma of the whole of humanity....

In the East people have condemned the body, condemned matter, called matter "illusory," maya -- it does not really exist, it only appears to exist; it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. They denied the world, and that is the reason for the East remaining poor, sick, in starvation.

Half of humanity has been accepting the inner world but denying the outer world. The other half of humanity has been accepting the material world and denying the inner world. Both are half, and no man who is half can be contented.

You have to be whole: rich in the body, rich in science; rich in meditation, rich in consciousness. Only a whole person is a holy person, according to me.

I want Zorba and Buddha to meet together. Zorba alone is hollow. His dance has not an eternal significance, it is momentary pleasure. Soon he will be tired of it. Unless you have inexhaustible sources, available to you from the cosmos itself... unless you become existential, you cannot become whole.

This is my contribution to humanity: THE WHOLE PERSON.

The East has denied the body and the outside world, and the West has denied the soul and the inner world; both have lived half. And just as there is no half-circle in the world... a circle means a complete circle. A half-circle is only an arc, it is not a circle. So the West has remained half, an arc; the East has remained half, an arc. And a man like Lord Kipling wrote, "East is East, West is West, and the twain shall never meet." Just bullshit!

They are meeting here, now. And unless they meet there is no hope for humanity.

Russia has the foundation. It needs right pillars and a roof. What will you do with the foundation alone? It needs to fill its hollowness with light, with blissfulness, with ecstasy, with a new luminousness. Ask the awakened ones of the world to enter into Russia and teach people a scientific religiousness -- not Christianity, not Hinduism, not SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA or the Holy Bible.

The Holy Bible has three hundred eighty-eight pages of pornography, sheer pornography.

And SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA is a sermon by Lord Krishna of the Hindus, the perfect incarnation of God, in favor of war.

A great war happened because of SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA. It happened five thousand years ago and it broke India's backbone. After that war, India has never risen beyond poverty, beyond small things. It cannot look up to the stars and the blue sky.

When you are hungry....

It will be interesting for you to know that there are biblical scholars who have been prohibited by the pope. The pope has said that no priests should listen to these biblical scholars -- and they are really the great scholars of the Bible, how it was born, how the gospels were created, what has been left out....

The four gospels in the New Testament are not the only gospels. There were other gospels which have been denied and destroyed. Only one gospel has survived, because it was written in India. One of the direct disciples of Jesus, Thomas, immediately moved to India and he remained in South India, learned all the arts of yoga and meditation.

And you will be surprised: he is the only person in the whole world whose body is still intact... it is in Goa. Every year the body is taken out and you can see it -- it is as if he has just died. And it is not by any scientific method that it has been preserved. Scientists have been observing it, watching it with amazement: two thousand years ago, how did those people manage? Because there is no sign of anything, and the body seems to be still flushed with blood. After two thousand years it has not deteriorated.

The body usually starts deteriorating immediately; within three days it is stinking. But every year the body of Thomas is taken out -- this is a real miracle -- and it is the only body in the whole world which has been preserved and scientists cannot figure out how.

It has been preserved by yoga and meditation, not by any scientific method from the outside. There was no science in those days. But Thomas became almost a sannyasin in India. He forgot all about Jesus and his miracles and all his teachings. He became almost a man of the East; he started wearing the robe of a sannyasin, the ochre robe. He started using the sannyasins' ancient sandals, made of wood -- it was very difficult to walk on them. He was even using the thread that Hindus wear around their neck and waist. He shaved his head, just like any yogi, and he was well respected. He was allowed into the Buddhist monasteries of Nalanda and Takshashila.

Both these monasteries Jesus had also visited, but not for a long time. So he could not get into meditation. He heard about things -- which he repeats in the Bible, which are really Buddha's statements.

The biblical scholars who are the authentic scholars -- and they are all Christians -- say there is every possibility there was no Jesus at all. It is a myth and it is simply Krishna whose name has become Christ.

The Sanskrit name 'Krishna' in Bengali becomes 'Kristo'. If it can become Kristo, there is not much to do to make it Christ -- from Krishna to Kristo and from Kristo to Christ.

These biblical scholars have found many things which are amazing. It is possible that it is a myth, traveling, that has created Jesus Christ.

But Gorbachev knows nothing, and to allow SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA to be translated into Russian will be one of the most dangerous steps against peace.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You be my charioteer."

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

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

It was Krishna who forced him. In eighteen chapters of SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA is his continuous argument in favor of war. And when finally he could not convince him, at last he took the same step as all religions have taken: "It is God's will! You cannot go out of the war. What God has chosen has to happen."

That's what the Bible says: "Don't change anything. Whatever is God's will is going to happen."

Now if I had been in place of Arjuna, I would have said to Krishna, "That's okay. This is what God has chosen, I am going to the Himalayas."

But Krishna has been respected as the incarnation of God. Not only incarnation -- Hindus have many incarnations of God -- Krishna is the only "perfect" incarnation. He was so powerful that the brahmins simply praised him. It is always power that is praised.

A man who has captured sixteen thousand women from all over his kingdom, all the beautiful women... whether married, unmarried, it did not matter. His army would just catch any woman who was seen by Krishna, and he simply gave the indication, "Take her to the palace." He collected sixteen thousand women -- you cannot even remember their names! -- and he was married only to one woman. All these women had their children, their husbands, their old parents to take care of. Sixteen thousand families were destroyed by this man. And he forced Arjuna, saying, "This is God's will -- you have to fight! You cannot go against God's will."

God has been used for all kinds of crimes. The war happened. It was a massacre, millions of people died. And the backbone of India was broken. India became so afraid of war, because from every family somebody was killed -- the husband, the father, the son, every family was deprived of somebody. The whole country was sad, and that sadness has become so deeply settled in India's mind that when small tribes, primitive tribes of Turks, of Mongols, of Hunas, of Moguls, of British, came to India, India simply gave way. They had no desire to fight.

Whoever came was accepted without any difficulty -- small groups! Turks came with only five hundred people, and India was a country of thirty-three million people at that time, two thousand years ago. Still India simply accepted them; it was not ready to fight.

It had seen the war, it had seen its destructiveness.

And who was responsible for all this? Krishna was responsible for all this. To me, he is not even a human being, nothing to say about an incarnation of God.

When I saw today that they are giving a place to him in the Soviet Union, making a temple for Krishna and allowing these hippies from America... that means all kinds of idiots and stupids and superstitious people will enter into the Soviet Union. This opening can be dangerous.

Certainly the Soviet Union needs spirituality. It has materialism -- that is the base. It needs spirituality -- that will raise the temple of the soul. Just as you need scientists for material wealth, technology, you need buddhas, enlightened people, to help you become also a buddha.

But this kind of people will not come on their own. You will have to persuade them, you will have to invite them. Only then they can help you. To a welcoming heart, they will pour all that they know.

And Marxism will become a complete philosophy if it can be joined with Zen. That's why I say, "What is missing? Zen Fire, Zen Wind."

But Christianity should be prohibited. Judaism should be prohibited. Hinduism should be prohibited. Islam should be prohibited. These people have been the cause of the trouble.

Again you are falling back. Seventy years of struggle to create a new society, and then one single man who knows nothing of the revolution, who knows nothing of how hard it was to preserve the country amongst all the anti-communist countries... they were all ready, like vultures all around, to destroy the Soviet Union and its communism. Because if even one country becomes communist, it is dangerous. It is dangerous to all the capitalist countries because that fragrance will start spreading.

The Soviet Union is a hope for humanity.

Gorbachev should not take the responsibility of destroying the Soviet Union. But by opening it, he is being praised by the capitalist press, by the capitalist news media all over the world. That is very cunning. They are making him a great hero, and by becoming a hero he will completely forget the implications that will follow the opening of the doors of the Soviet Union to all and sundry, to Tom, and Dick, and Harry.

It is a scientific experiment. The Soviet Union has done half the work, with great difficulty, with tremendous sacrifice. The new generation is not aware. I have gone to the deepest roots of the revolution, and I can see how much the Soviet Union has suffered to be a communist country, how much it has sacrificed. And it has lived in constant danger of being destroyed, but now it has come to a point where it is one of the biggest world powers. It should not be reduced from its power.

It is good to be a peacemaker, and perhaps soon Gorbachev will receive a Nobel Prize....

That is not very noble. I call it The "Ignoble" Prize, because the man who created the Nobel Prize -- it was his name, Nobel. But his function was -- in the first world war and before that -- that he was the biggest manufacturer of arms. He was supplying arms to the whole world. Every war was fought with his weapons, both sides would be using his arms, and through these arms he collected great richness.

Then his Christian guilt came over him at the time of his death, that "I am the greatest creator of war material -- and all the people who have died because of my weapons...

everybody who has died, has died because of my arms."

In any country, anywhere, both the parties were using his weapons. He was the only person who was refining and refining, and making better and better war material. He became afraid of hellfire. He donated all his money and created a trust, so that every year, just out of the interest, Nobel Prizes should be given to different branches of science, art, literature, music... any contribution to humanity. It was simply trying to erase his guilt.

And this Nobel Prize committee... the chairman of the committee is the King of Sweden.

One of my sannyasins, who is a Nobel Prize winner, asked the king -- because only a Nobel Prize winner can nominate somebody else's name to the committee which decides to whom the Nobel Prizes should go. He told the King of Sweden, "What about this man?" -- and he mentioned my name. The king said, "Never utter that name again! My suggestion for you is, don't bring that name to the Nobel committee, because you will feel embarrassed. It is impossible for us to give this man a Nobel Prize."

But in the same way, Leo Tolstoy was denied. Every fifty years the Nobel committee opens its records for the public to view. Last time when they opened their public records, the people found that Leo Tolstoy had been nominated for a Nobel Prize, but was denied on the grounds that he was not an orthodox Christian. He was a Christian, but he was not orthodox, he was very flexible. On these grounds -- and the question was literature, not Christianity! They did not even talk about his literature.

The man has created the greatest novels in the world: ANNA KARENINA... or WAR AND PEACE, which is such a vast world that the man must have been the greatest mind of his century. But the literature was not discussed. The man who nominated him, had nominated him for a literary prize, for literature, but he was denied on the grounds that he was not an orthodox Christian.

That is strange -- is this prize only for orthodox Christians? And this Nobel Prize has been used as a political weapon. They always give Nobel Prizes to Soviet scientists. It is tricky game, because the Soviet government up to now would prohibit the person from accepting this prize from the capitalist world, and prohibit the person from going to the Nobel Prize convention to accept the prize...

Because from there, the man becomes persuaded by the capitalists. The Nobel Prize comes with almost two hundred thousand dollars. The man for the first time... In the Soviet Union you don't have private property; for the first time he sees two hundred thousand dollars, and for the first time he is out of the Soviet Union. He can escape and ask for refuge in any capitalist country, and he can release the secrets of Soviet scientists to the capitalists and gain prestige, awards, money and everything.

So the Soviet government up to now has been preventing people like Sakharov and others. It was a very dangerous thing. If you prevent, then the scientist becomes angry with the Soviet government. He freaks out, he wants to accept the prize. Because he freaks out, the Soviet government has to take measures to prevent him from escaping out of the country.

Even Sakharov's insistence that he would accept the Nobel Prize... immediately the Soviet government had to take action. He was removed as the director general of the science academy, his car was taken back... because nobody possesses anything, everything belongs to the nation. The government allots things to people. And he was reduced to being an ordinary member of the academy.

But his wife, who is also a scientist, was having an operation in Paris. From Paris she managed to go to the Nobel Prize convention, and on behalf of her husband she accepted the Nobel Prize.

So either the Nobel Prize is a kind of bribe to take secrets out of the Soviet Union, or it creates a trouble for the scientist. If the government prevents him, and if he wants to go out, then he has to be jailed. In some way, one scientist's life and his contribution to the Soviet Union is destroyed.

Now the Nobel Prize has been given to politicians -- even a man like Kissinger gets a Nobel Prize! And what is his contribution to humanity?

I call it the Ignoble Prize because it is full of blood, the blood of millions of people who were massacred by Nobel's weapons. No man of dignity should accept it.

I told my sannyasin, "You should not have mentioned my name. I will reject the Nobel Prize if they give it to me. It is a bribe and nothing else, a bribe to shut people's mouths who speak against capitalism, a bribe to take secrets from the Soviet Union."

Now opening the doors of the Soviet Union is really dangerous -- and I am saying it as a friend. The Soviet Union has done half the work; the base is completely solid. All that it needs is a few pillars and a roof, and the shrine for the human soul will be ready.

The new man can come only out of the Soviet Union. But what is happening makes me suspicious. Soon Gorbachev will have the Nobel Prize, I predict it. He is being praised by all the capitalist press for the simple reason so that this praise gets into his head and he forgets all the implications of what he is doing that may destroy the Soviet Union.

A seventy-year great experiment in changing the structure of the society... and they have succeeded! Now the second step is to change the consciousness of man. You have changed the structure of the society, it was an economic revolution. That's why I said yesterday that if I come to Soviet Union, I am bringing another revolution, a revolution which will be spiritual. That is what is missing: a spiritual revolution. If that revolution happens, the Soviet Union will be the pride of humanity.

I see both sides of Gorbachev. He is doing good in bringing freedom, but he is also taking a risk -- which he will not be able to prevent once all these people enter in. Then he will have to start from ABC; it will take another seventy years to bring back this same situation.

I would like him open the door for scientists, open the door for poets, open the door for mystics, open the door for musicians, dancers, painters. Open the door for novelists, open the door for all creative people, open the door for meditators -- but not for all and sundry; particularly not for any organized religion, and not for any stupid and idiotic ideology.

He does not know anything about BHAGAVADGITA, and he has allowed these Hare Krishna people to translate it into Russian. He does not know that this is the only scripture in the whole world devoted completely to war. It was perfectly good for Adolf Hitler, it was perfectly good for Benito Mussolini. It is not good for people who want peace, for people who want this earth to drop its boundaries of nations, of religions. It is not good for those who want one world, one earth, one humanity.

Question 2:

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

Because I love the Soviet Union, and I would not like a poisonous snake, a cobra hiding inside the pope, to enter the Soviet Union. He can come to India, there is no problem. He can go around in any capitalist country, there is no problem. But not the Soviet Union, because I consider Christianity to be the most criminal religion in the world.

In seventy years they have with great difficulty been erasing the programming of Christianity from the Soviet mind. Now the Soviet mind at least is free of Christianity, free of God, free of heaven, free of hell. This is perfectly good. Don't introduce all these things again.

But one thing certainly the Soviet Union needs, which Christianity cannot provide. That can be provided only by Zen.

Zen is pure meditation. It has nothing to do with hell, heaven, God. Jesus' miracles, it has nothing to do with. It does not even talk about any of these things. It simply talks about the science, step by step, of how to enter your own inner world and see the life eternal.

Once you have seen your life as eternity -- from eternity to eternity -- you are a totally different man.

Your life becomes of great significance. Thousands of blossoms start arising in you. Your life becomes creative. You know that existence cares for you.

You know that existence never creates a carbon copy, that existence always comes up with absolutely original faces. Nobody is dispensable. Once you are gone, your place will remain empty forever. This gives significance, this gives meaning, this gives you a feeling you are needed by existence. Without you, something will be missing; some place will remain empty and nobody else can fill it.

That's why yesterday I argued against Regardie, because he wanted to be a "Rajneesh" in his next incarnation. Existence never repeats, and you cannot be anybody else than yourself.

That is authentic religiousness. Every individual has his own uniqueness, and that gives him dignity and grace.

I don't want Christianity or Hinduism or Mohammedanism to enter the Soviet Union because all these religions are of prayer. Prayer is extrovert; meditation is introvert. If you want to allow people, then allow the people whose religion is based on meditation, not on prayer. That should be the clear-cut distinction, a criterion that can be followed without any fear.

Allow Lao Tzu, allow people of Tao, allow people of Zen, allow people who belong to Sufism, allow people who belong to Hassidism. These are all people who in some way or other are meditative.

But Zen comes to the very highest peak -- the purest meditation, refined by centuries of mystics in India, mystics in China, mystics in Japan. It has moved through so much refinement, sharpening -- continuous sharpening -- that there is nothing else compared to it.

What will the poor pope do in the Soviet Union? -- just kiss the land! So he can kiss in the Vatican, he has enough land -- eight square miles, a sovereign country. Eight square miles is not enough for him to kiss? Go on kissing!

He wastes so much money in kissing different lands. He came to India and kissed the New Delhi airport. I was in Kathmandu -- I immediately gave a press conference and told them, "If he wanted to kiss cow dung, we could have sent him a parcel full of cow dung! Why waste eight million dollars in visiting India just to kiss the cow dung?" But cow dung gives you a taste of Hinduism....

What has Christianity done for the whole world? It has created more poverty by preventing people from using birth control methods. Now birth control methods are a hundred percent effective; at first they were not. The pill had to be taken before you made love. Now there is another pill that you can take afterwards; there is no need to take it beforehand. This is far safer. And sometimes the pill disturbs the hormonal system of the woman, so a third pill has come into being which the man can take. The woman need not take anything. Now things are so simple, why go on increasing unnecessary population?

And all Christian priests are insisting for more poverty, for more orphans. The reason is that they need more Catholics, more Christians -- from these orphans, from these poor people, they can get new converts. Already the Catholic church has six hundred million people in its fold; still there is no satisfaction. It wants more and more people, at the risk of the whole planet committing suicide! It is because of Christianity -- and they have influenced all the religions because it is the greatest religion as far as membership is concerned, the most powerful. Other religions have also followed the same ideas.

Mohammed married nine wives. He was absolutely uneducated; he used to have epileptic fits and he married a woman just for money. The woman was forty years old and he was only twenty-six, but the woman was a widow and had an immense amount of money. She was the first Mohammedan! She turned Mohammed's epileptic fits into "trances." In his epileptic fit, he would tremble and foam would come out of his mouth, and he would feel so much trembling that all the blankets in the house could be put over him; still he was trembling. And whatever he uttered in that unconscious state, his wife would write.

Khadija -- the woman, who was well educated, super-rich -- it is she who has written the Koran, it is not Mohammed. He could not even sign his name. And the Koran has been written over thirty years' time, because you have to wait for the epileptic fit to come again. Then nobody knows whether Khadija was writing what Mohammed was saying or she was inventing, because it is a very poor scripture. There is nothing much in it.

Mohammedan friends have asked me. "Talk about the holy Koran!" They have been sending me copies, the latest editions, most beautifully printed. I looked into them many times, but I could not find a single sentence worthy to be commented upon. I can criticize, but then all the Mohammedans will be just ready to burn my community!

That's what the Greek church threatened to do to me. When I was in Greece it was only for a four-week tourist visa. After two weeks... and I had not gone out of the house. The house was on a small island; it belonged to the best film producer in Greece, he was my host. It was just on a hilltop, a direct drop to the ocean -- a very beautiful place, a beautiful garden, and I had never gone out of the gate.

But friends from all over Europe came running to Greece and the archbishop of the Greek Orthodox church... which is the oldest church in the world. It is the Greek church which has changed Christianity completely, according to itself. The archbishop threatened the president of the country, the prime minister of the country, and threatened me: "If the government does not deport him immediately I am going to dynamite the house and burn all the people inside -- alive." This is religion!

And I have nothing to do with Greeks. There were at the most ten or twelve Greek friends, whom I have already corrupted, so there was no problem; they were my sannyasins. And he was threatening the government and saying that my stay in Greece would corrupt the morality, destroy the religion.

I said when they deported me, to the world press representatives who had gathered at the airport to take my interview, "This country has the weakest religion and the weakest morality. They have had two thousand years to condition the mind of the country to a certain kind of morality which they think is virtuous, to certain superstitions that they think are religion -- and they are afraid of a tourist who is going to be here only two weeks more! If a religion two thousand years old can be corrupted by a tourist in two weeks, it is worth corrupting. It should be corrupted."

He was threatening me: "I will organize a procession against you."

I informed him, "I will enjoy it!" I enjoy all kinds of things....

But the procession never came, so I asked Amrito, my ambassador in Greece -- a beautiful woman, used to be a model, once was chosen to be the beauty queen of Greece.

I love beauty. I love everything that is beautiful in this world. The flowers, the faces, the stars, the moon, the ocean -- everything. Beauty is my religion.

I asked Amrito, "How many people here are Christians?"

She said, "Almost ninety percent."

And I asked her: "How many attend the church?"

She said, "Not more than four percent!"

I said, "Who are those four percent people?"

She laughed, she said, "You won't believe -- they are the oldest women, ancient women, those whose one foot is in the grave and one foot in the church."

I said, "How many women listen to this archbishop?"

She counted. She went there -- only six women were listening to his thundering sermon!

Of course he could not bring a procession of six old women, it would have been really a great circus. I had told my people, "When he comes, we should join the procession!"

That old idiot wanted to burn all my people who were living with me -- just for two weeks! What has Christianity done for the world that you are asking me why I don't want to allow Christianity to enter the Soviet Union?

I love the Soviet Union because it is a great experiment. It is a milestone in the history of man. Of course it is only half, but still -- half is better than nothing. The other half can be raised on top of it.

What Lenin and Stalin have produced has given a good foundation for anybody to raise the temple of consciousness. And this temple will not belong to any religion; it will belong to all individuals who want to enter into initiation, who want to enter on the path.

The buddhas don't lead you, they simply indicate the way. You have to follow your way alone, because nobody can go inside you. The buddhas can point to the place, but you have to go there. And it is good that nobody can go inside you; otherwise politicians would have reached before any buddha! It is your privilege, your absolute privilege and freedom -- nobody else can enter there.

But if you go, you will start growing in a new dimension -- vertical. Just as all animals move horizontally... at a certain point in history some animals, according to Charles Darwin, stood up vertically. That's how man was born: from the horizontal animal, walking on all fours, he started walking on two feet, and two hands were free for the first time. These two hands have created all science, all technology -- the houses, the roads, the electricity, the television. Everything that you enjoy, everything that is needed for humanity has been created because these two hands were free. No animal can do these things: all four legs are engaged in walking.

This is one revolution: the gorilla becomes man -- from horizontal to vertical.

A similar kind of state exists inside. Your consciousness is still horizontal. Your body is vertical; your consciousness is still moving in time -- horizontally. The function of meditation is to turn your consciousness also in a vertical direction. When your body and consciousness are together, vertical, you are an enlightened one. The vertical consciousness knows the ultimate truth, the beauty, the good, the godliness of existence.

The sutras:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he gave the lotus flower to Mahakashyapa.

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

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

But Mahakashyapa is the first Zen master.

From one master to another master, Zen has been coming down -- up to me. If Mahakashyapa is the beginning, I am perhaps at the very end of a long, long heritage -- twenty-five centuries, hundreds of masters, transferring in deep silence and meditation what cannot be said in words.

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

"I HAVE RUNG THE BELL..."

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

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

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

YAKUSAN SAID, "OKAY. YOU COME AND FOLLOW ME, HOLDING UP MY BOWL" -- because I have not finished my breakfast.

Now this was a very strange situation, going to the assembly hall... is he going to deliver the discourse, or eat his rice? And the monk felt a little embarrassed: "I am following him with the bowl of rice. What will people think of me? -- 'That idiot! Why is he carrying the bowl with the rice, behind the master?'" THE MONK DID NOT UNDERSTAND THE MASTER'S MEANING, AND UNGAN -- WHO WAS ALSO PRESENT -- ASKED, "MASTER, WHEN DID YOU LOSE YOUR ARMS AND LEGS?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strange answer from the master....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He said, "You are looking outside -- look inside. The whole crowd is present. Your wife, your children, your family, your parents, your neighbors, your friends -- everybody is present. Just close your eyes: that is the crowd you have to leave outside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONCE YAKUSAN CALLED A BOY MONK TO HIM. DOGO ASKED, "WHY DO YOU CALL SUCH PEOPLE?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "BECAUSE OF THIS."

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

You are not available. Your mind is full of thoughts, and thoughts are a China wall, thick -- they prevent any master from approaching your heart, your being.

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

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

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

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "BECAUSE OF THIS."

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

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

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

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

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

This is what the Soviet Union needs today.

Basho wrote:

LONELY IS MY WAY!

NO ONE PASSES HERE BUT I, LATE THIS AUTUMN DAY.

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

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

And that's what has happened to all so-called religions. They are holding fingers:

somebody the finger of Jesus, somebody the finger of Krishna, somebody the finger of Mohammed. Nobody is looking at the moon. And because these people themselves don't understand, they are very joyful -- "My finger is being caught by six hundred million Catholics!" The pope is immensely happy: "Six hundred million Catholics holding my finger?"

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

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

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

Question 3:

Maneesha has asked a question:

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

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

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

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

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

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

A deep accord is needed.

Yes, Maneesha, the Soviet Union has much more vulnerability, much more receptivity than the capitalist West. The capitalist West is too much in the mind, too much in the thinking. The Western part of the world still follows people like Aristotle and Socrates -- great giants, but confined only to the refinement of the mind. Socrates and his dialogues are beautiful, the highest that mind can reach. And Aristotle is the father of Western logic. All the philosophers of the West, from ancient Greece to Germany... Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach... to the contemporary world -- Sartre, Jaspers, Marcel, Soren Kierkegaard, Bertrand Russell, Whitehead, G.E. Moore -- they are all in the same line of intellectual giants. But they don't know anything about meditation, and they will argue against meditation. They will say there is nothing beyond the mind -- and without experimenting!

A strange thing I remember... In Greece, traditionally it was believed that women don't have the same number of teeth as men. Obviously, the reason is that the woman should be in every way second-rate to man. How can she have the same number of teeth as man?

Aristotle had two wives, not one -- he could have asked wife number one, or number two, "Just let me count your teeth." Or while they were asleep, he could have counted their teeth. And most women are continuously talking, and they don't have a moustache like me. You cannot count my teeth. Even just when they were talking he could have managed to count, but he depended on his logic that certainly women are a lower category than men -- just a male chauvinist idea. In his book of logic, he writes that "Women have fewer teeth than men."

Logic is non-experimental.

Science is experimental, and Zen -- which is the science of the inner -- is also experimental. Just the inner experiment is called "experience," and the outer experience is called "experiment."

But unless you experience and experiment with the inner, you don't have any right to deny that there is anything beyond the mind. Have you gone beyond the mind? Have you reached beyond the mind, just trying to find out whether there is something beyond the mind? No one -- neither Russell nor Soren Kierkegaard nor Martin Heidegger -- nobody has tried to reach beyond the mind.

Martin Heidegger has written a book on Zen, but that book is also just intellectual. And you can see that the man was not a meditator, because he was a follower of Adolf Hitler.

That was a great intellectual giant of Germany, and still he followed a madman, a crackpot, Adolf Hitler. That shows the level of his insight, that he knows nothing about the inner. No man of meditation will follow Adolf Hitler.

That's why I said, by vocation I am a logician, by mistake I am a mystic. Because to be sane in an insane world is very difficult and hard. That's why I call it a mistake.

But I would love you to commit the mistake. I love to corrupt people! Their morality, their religion... anything you give me and I will corrupt it! Corruption is my business.

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

Where is he sitting...?

(OSHO LOCATES SARDARJI BY HIS UNMISTAKEABLE LAUGHTER, AND ACKNOWLEDGES HIS RETURN WITH A SMILE.) There is a job opening at the local zoo for two men to clean out the gorilla cages. Paddy and Seamus go directly from the pub to apply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sandy MacPherson goes running off down the mountainside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nivedano...

(Gibberish) Nivedano...

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

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

Faster and faster... deeper and deeper.

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

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

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

Buddha was his awakening.

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

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

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

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

Witness that you are not the body.

Witness that you are not the mind.

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

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

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

To make this witnessing more clear, Nivedano...

Relax...

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

The whole religious experience can be reduced to a single word:

witnessing.

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

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

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

Just gather all the flowers and the fragrances and the juices of life.

You have to bring them with you.

And don't forget to persuade the buddha to come along.

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

First he will be just behind you as a shadow.

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

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

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

In this very moment you are so close to it.

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

Nivedano...

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

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

Remember who is behind you -- the buddha.

He has to come in front of you.

These are the three steps of Zen:

First the buddha comes behind you as a shadow.

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

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

This I call the Zen Fire and the Zen Wind.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind