This I call Zen Fire, Zen Wind

THE MONK, SOMPU, WAS ONCE WASHING A BUDDHA STATUE. YAKUSAN CAME AND ASKED HIM, "NOW YOU ARE WASHING THIS, BUT CAN YOU WASH THAT?"

SOMPU REPLIED, "PLEASE GET THAT AND BRING IT TO ME."

THE MASTER DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, WHEN YAKUSAN WAS SITTING DOWN, A MONK CAME UP TO HIM AND SAID, "OSHO, YOU ARE SITTING SILENTLY. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "I'M THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE."

THE MONK SAID, "HOW DO YOU THINK THE UNTHINKABLE?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "NON-THINKING."

WHEN YAKUSAN WAS ABOUT TO DIE, HE YELLED OUT, "THE HALL IS FALLING DOWN! THE HALL IS FALLING DOWN!"

THE MONKS BROUGHT VARIOUS THINGS AND BEGAN TO PROP IT UP.

YAKUSAN THREW UP HIS HANDS AND SAID, "NO ONE OF YOU UNDERSTOOD WHAT I MEANT!"

Friends,

Question 1:

One of the sannyasins has asked:

In a democracy you cannot change the status quo, you cannot change the class-divided society into a classless society.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is not an ordinary dictatorship of an Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. It is a dictatorship of the poor, the have-nots. Unless the have-nots have the power, they cannot stop the exploitation by the rich.

In a democracy it is almost impossible for the poor to have the power for the simple reason that the rich people have enough money to fight elections, enough money even to buy the poor and their votes, enough money to buy the politicians. It is impossible in a democracy for the poor to have power, and without power there is no possibility of changing the society. Hence, Karl Marx proposed the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Karl Marx was not a practical man. He was a great thinker, a great dreamer, a great utopian; in short, he was a stargazer. He spent his whole life in the library of the British Museum. Before the museum would open he was standing at the door, and it was with difficulty that the museum staff would force him out, physically, when the museum was closing.

It happened many times that without eating, without drinking... he was so deeply concentrated in finding the root causes of poverty and how to destroy it, looking into different sources, all the possible literature that might give some clue, that the museum staff had to call the ambulance from the hospital, because he would faint on his table. He would become unconscious -- no food, no water, just working out the whole plan for a utopia.

Communism is his great contribution to the world. But it has come out of a thinker's mind, dreamer's mind, and practical life is totally different from logic. His whole idea was that soon the poor would become poorer and the rich would become richer -- it seems perfectly logical -- and the middle class would disperse. A few would rise up and become richer, and more would fall down and become poor. When the society is absolutely divided between the proletariat, the have-nots, and the bourgeois, the haves....

Obviously the bourgeois cannot be in the majority, because there is tremendous competition; every rich man is trying to pull down other rich men by the legs. Everybody is trying to climb the ladder higher than the others. So those who reach the highest point of being super-rich are going to be, obviously, a minority. The poor will be the majority, and because they don't have anything... Karl Marx's great work, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, ends with the line: "Proletariat of the world unite. You don't have anything to lose except your chains, and you have the whole world to gain, the whole power, the whole society in your hands."

This is how logic functions, but life does not agree with it. He completely forgot the implications. He was thinking that the first country to become a communist country would be America, but America seems to be going perfectly well. There is no question at all of America becoming a communist country unless it is invaded and forced to become communist. From its inner sources, it is not going to become a communist country for a simple reason: the middle class has not disappeared and is not going to disappear.

That was completely overlooked by Marx. He thought that a few people would become richer, more ambitious, more competitive, more efficient. The others would fall down and become poorer. But he forgot the other side of the coin: that a few rich people will go bankrupt and become middle class, and a few poor people will start struggling and fighting and will join the middle class, so the middle class is not going to disappear. And it has not disappeared.

And the middle class is absolutely against any revolution, for the simple reason that they have much to lose. In revolution there is going to be chaos. And the middle class is not going to share its possessions with the millions of poor people.

Marx also forgot completely -- that shows how just thinking is not enough; a practical, down-to-earth approach is needed to change the society -- he forgot completely that even the poor may not be complete have-nots. The American poor may not have a Rolls Royce, but he has a Chevrolet, he has a house, he has a wife, he has children. His children are his ambitions, he is teaching them and they will become richer. But even the poor man has a car, a house, and he is afraid that in the sharing of wealth he may lose his car, his house. The proletariat has not turned out completely to be have-nots, so they are not ready for any revolution. Yes, they are ready for more and more facilities for the poor, but they are not going to be for the revolution.

America has the poorest and smallest Communist Party in the world, which has no power at all.

It happened in the Soviet Union: after the revolution a journalist was asking a poor man, "Are you really a communist?" He said, "Yes, I am a communist." The journalist asked, "If you had two cars, would you give one to your neighbor?" He said, "Of course."

"If you had two horses, would you give one to your neighbors?" He said, "Of course."

"If you had two cows, would you give one cow to your poor neighbors?" He said, "Yes."

And the journalist finally asked, "If you have two hens, are you going to give one hen to your neighbors?" He said, "No!"

The journalist said, "But this is absolutely illogical."

The man said, "It is not illogical. I have two hens -- I don't have two cars, I don't have two houses, I don't have two horses, two cows. That which I don't have, who cares? -- I can give. But two hens I have got, and I'm not going to give them!"

When you have something, then the problem arises.

So according to Marx nobody is really a have-not in America; hence there is no possibility of a communist revolution.

In Russia it was a miracle, because it was not even a capitalist country. And that was the idea of Karl Marx, that communist revolution can happen only in a capitalist country where there will be poor people in the majority, and rich people in the minority. The poor can overthrow the rich very easily, there is no question of much violence or any trouble.

Russia was not even a capitalist country. It was a feudal country, far more backward than a capitalist country. There were no poor, no proletariat, no labor unions. And there was not a class of rich people; there were just a few -- the emperor, the czar, a small aristocracy. They were not owners of factories, they were owners of land, and on their land they had slaves to do the work.

Now a slave is taken care of by the landlord because unless he is strong enough, he will not be able to work on the land. The slave is not a machine, so he has to be given good food, good clothes... in winter he has to be given warmer clothes. So the slaves were not have-nots; in fact, they were enjoying everything. The aristocrats had to keep them in good health -- medical facilities, good clothes, houses which are healthy and hygienic, because unless those slaves are powerful and strong they will not be able to work the vast lands, thousands of acres. Miles and miles of land one aristocrat would have, and thousands of slaves. It was a totally different situation.

Marx never thought about a Soviet Russia. He never thought that Russia was going to become a communist country. That's how theorization fails. Life takes its own course; it does not follow your logic, your philosophy.

In Russia the revolution happened. It was not a communist revolution in fact, because it was not a fight between the have-nots and the haves.

It happened during the first world war. The czar was not equipped well enough to fight Germany. Neither were the communists ready to fight in Russia -- a small group of thinkers, they were not hoping that there was going to be a revolution there. Even capitalism had not come, which was going to produce the haves and have-nots, so it was very far away.

Even Lenin, who was to become the head of the first communist country in the world, was in Germany -- because in Germany the emperor had relaxed the power and given it to the people. It was becoming a democracy, and the Communist Party in Germany was the biggest party so there was every chance it would come into power. Lenin was there to direct them.

But instead of the Communist Party -- which it was logical to conclude would succeed - - Adolf Hitler came in between. And Adolf Hitler was neither a thinker nor a philosopher. He was absolutely a fanatic, insane man, and his party, the Nazi Party, began with only nineteen soldiers. These soldiers had been found to be unfit for the army, so they were unemployed and they wanted to do something. Adolf Hitler himself was thrown out of the army because he was psychologically unfit.

These nineteen people gathered together in a small hotel and created the Nazi Party of Germany, with Adolf Hitler as the leader. Because he was a fanatic, he was very emphatic about everything he said. And his strategy was very strange -- because he had not a great following, he created a new strategy. It looks absurd, but it worked.

His whole strategy was not to bother about gathering more and more people, gathering membership for the Nazi Party; he knew that was not going to happen. He had no philosophy to offer, no program for the future -- why should they join his party? So he started disturbing the communist meetings. Those nineteen people -- they were all soldiers -- would sit in the communist meetings in separate places, and whenever the communist leader would start speaking, they would create trouble. They would start beating people, whoever was by their side; it was not a question of whom. Just nineteen people would disturb a meeting of ten thousand people or twenty thousand people. And when there are beatings going on, you cannot speak. They were throwing stones at the speaker, they were hitting the audience.

Slowly slowly, it became clear that you are safe only in Adolf Hitler's meetings; you are not safe in any other meeting. When Adolf Hitler would speak, obviously, those nineteen people were standing around the crowd watching that nobody creates any mischief.

People went to hear Adolf Hitler just because that was the only safe meeting. You could come home alive! This is how Adolf Hitler came to power, because he disturbed all meetings of the communists, which was the greatest party and was logically bound to succeed -- but could not succeed because it could not approach the masses. Communist leaders would call a meeting and nobody would come.

Only Adolf Hitler was listened to all over the country, and slowly slowly he started gathering followers because he seemed to be the only savior. All others had left the area.

And nobody knew his strategy; it became known only after Adolf Hitler wrote in his autobiography about how he came into power. Just those nineteen people managed to do the work.

The first thing was to disturb everybody's meeting. And there was no propaganda from anybody else -- if the Communist Party was putting up posters, those nineteen people were removing the posters in the night. In the morning people would see only Adolf Hitler's posters; every other poster was removed. They would never know that there were any other posters.

A very strange strategy, but he succeeded the emperor. The emperor had to leave his monarchy because in the first world war Germany was defeated badly, and the whole blame went to the emperor because he was not adequate to create enthusiasm in the people to fight for their country. Because of the defeat of Germany in the first world war, the emperor had to leave it in the hands of democracy.

At the same time the Russian armies, who were fighting with Germany, became very frustrated with the czar, because the czar had a very primitive army, absolutely out-of- date. No proper clothes in the falling snow, no proper boots, no leather coats, not enough guns, not enough food either. So the Russian armies became so frustrated that they turned against the czar.

At that moment, Lenin immediately rushed from Germany to Russia. Soldiers are soldiers; they are not leaders of men. Lenin was a great organizer; he immediately organized the soldiers and became the head of the revolt against the czar. It was the birth of the Soviet Union, not out of the fight between the proletariat and the bourgeois, but out of the fight between the czar and his own army. The army was angry, frustrated -- "We have been thrown into a war for which we are not ready. We are being killed unnecessarily." And Lenin provoked them.

He was a very good organizer. He organized the army and now the czar was left alone.

Nineteen persons of the czar's family -- even a six-month-old baby -- were immediately murdered. If his own armies are against him, how can he remain in power?

Lenin was a good organizer. But if he had remained in power, perhaps communism would not have been possible. He was a man of great compassion and love. He was a communist out of compassion and love; he wanted the poor to disappear from the earth.

But he was not perfectly clear. When the power comes into your hands, what are you going to do with it? How are you going to destroy poverty?

We have seen it in India. This is a very difficult problem, very complex problem. After forty-two years of freedom, India is in a worse position than it was under slavery. More poor people, more poverty, more population, and problems have doubled. Prices have gone up twenty, thirty, fifty times more, and the salaries have remained almost the same.

The poor have become immensely poor and are on the verge of starving to death. What happened? These great revolutionaries who were fighting against the British Empire had no program.

My whole family was involved in the freedom struggle. My uncles lost their whole lives; one of my uncles was in his graduation class in the university and he was caught and jailed. And once a person was jailed under the British Empire, he was never again allowed to enter any university or college. Another uncle, who had just passed matriculation, was caught in the freedom struggle and after he was released, could not go back to any educational institution. Both the uncles lost their careers and the family suffered immensely.

Even in my very childhood, I remember I used to ask my father, "I can understand that you are against the British Empire. This is freedom from. But what are you going to do when you have got the freedom -- freedom for what?"

And he would shrug his shoulders. He would say to me, "The leaders know." But the leaders were as much unaware....

You may have sometimes seen a dog who runs after a car, barking, and with great speed.

And if the man in the car stops, the dog looks all around, embarrassed -- "What to do now?" -- miles of unnecessary running and barking. And that happens to all revolutionaries. Miles of trouble! Fighting, murder, being killed, jailed, and when they get into power they look just like the dog, embarrassed. "What to do now?"

India has been in the hands of the revolutionaries, but they could not do anything. In fact, a revolutionary is not the right person to be in power. But this is a very difficult problem.

Because the revolutionary wins the freedom, naturally he comes into power. But he knows only how to revolt, he does not know how to consolidate a society. He does not know anything of the economics, of the finances, of the people's psychology.

He can provoke people to fight, to destroy the empire, to destroy all kinds of slavery. He is a good orator, influential; he has an impressive personality, charisma, but when he comes into power he looks just like the dog, embarrassed: "Now whom to provoke?" He is in power, and his whole life has been just a life of provocation, revolt. He has never learned anything about how to rule.

But in Russia the miracle happened. All the great revolutionaries in Russia... Lenin was the main one, but he had no charisma. He was an organizer behind the scenes, he had no personality which you can call impressive. In fact he had a very deep inferiority complex for a strange reason. His legs were very small in comparison to his upper body. His legs never reached to the earth while he was sitting on a chair, they were just dangling. This was his immense inferiority complex. So only behind the scenes... He could organize, manage, give whole programs for how to do things, but he was not a charismatic man.

But he had at his right hand a really charismatic philosopher, thinker, dreamer, and a great orator, Trotsky. So Lenin was behind the scenes organizing, and Trotsky was the great revolutionary orator, very impressive personality, to provoke people. But he was only a good orator. A charismatic personality is not needed when you come into power.

What are you going to do with your charisma? There is no public, no speech, no oratory....

It was a strange coincidence that a man who was not in the forefront of the revolutionaries, Joseph Stalin... he was just the general secretary of the party, which was a position of no importance. Sitting in his secretariat's room, he was working on the files and membership, and this and that, correspondence, letters. The public had no idea of Joseph Stalin.

Stalin was not his real name. In Russian, Stalin means "a man of steel." This man was absolutely practical. He had no philosophical bent of the mind. Not a theoretician, he had nothing to do with any philosophical background; he looked to the reality and faced it brutally.

He kept Lenin under the influence of poison, because he was the head, and so that after the revolution Lenin could not really come into power. He was suffering under continuous poisoning, slow poisoning. It took two years for him to die. And Joseph Stalin was behind the poisoning, he was keeping his own doctor to look after Lenin. Lenin's wife, Krupskaya, wrote in her autobiography, "I am absolutely certain that my husband has been killed by poisoning, because he never became as healthy as he had always been." For two years he was continuously sick, and the doctor was treating him, and his treatment was making him sicker and sicker. And Stalin was absolutely adamant not to bring in any other doctor.

Just keeping Lenin sick, Stalin became more and more powerful. In the name of Lenin, who was almost in a coma, he started ordering a mass murder of all the revolutionaries -- Kamenev, Zinovyev, Trotsky, all the great revolutionaries who had come into power.

Trotsky was the defense minister. Nine revolutionaries... eight simply disappeared, nobody knows to where. Stalin killed them quickly. He was a very quick man. Seeing the situation... as the defense minister, Trotsky had all the power over the army. But he was just a revolutionary; he had no idea what to do with the army. He escaped from Russia, but Stalin was not a man to take any risk. His murderer, a paid murderer, followed Trotsky.

Trotsky was staying in Mexico, hiding, and was writing the biography of Joseph Stalin to make clear to the world that this man had killed all the revolutionaries and taken over all the power. As he was finishing the biography of Stalin -- it is a big book, perhaps one thousand pages of very detailed description of each murder, how it happened, how the person was removed in the middle of the night -- just the last page he was finishing, when he was killed with an axe. Behind him was standing the murderer. As he finished the paragraph, the last paragraph, an axe cut his head in two parts. The last page is full of blood.

It looks very cruel, inhuman. But it was Joseph Stalin who managed the Soviet Union, because it was confronting on enemies two sides. Enemies from within... the Russian Orthodox Church, the intellectuals, the people who did not want to share their property -- even the poor masses. As I told you, a man who has only two hens will not share -- that's all he has. The masses are the greatest enemy of their own welfare. So you will be surprised to know that one million Russians were killed by Joseph Stalin, and these were not the rich people. These were the poor people who were adamant, stubborn.

Without Joseph Stalin, communism would not have succeeded -- although it succeeded out of violence, murder, massacre. First he had to finish all the enemies inside the country, and then he had to make an iron wall around the Soviet Union, because the whole world was against him. All the capitalist countries were against him, against communism, because if communism succeeds in one country it is going to succeed in every country. It is better to kill it in the beginning, because soon it will be gaining more and more strength and it will become impossible to stop it.

The whole credit for protecting the Soviet Union and communism goes to Joseph Stalin.

But of course he had to use murder, no trials in the courts, no wastage of time. He had not much time to waste in fighting in the courts. Simply finishing people immediately, just on a suspicion....

It used to be said, and is still said in every capitalist country, that "You cannot kill one innocent man, even if you have to leave ninety-nine criminals just to save one innocent man." Joseph Stalin turned the whole thing upside down. He said, "You cannot leave one criminal, even if you have to kill ninety-nine innocent men."

So it is not a question of individuals, it is not a question of innocence, it is a question of saving communism at any cost.

Although he is the architect of Soviet Union, his successors started condemning him for his dictatorial methods -- murder, massacre, mass massacre. But the successors don't know that they would not have been here if Stalin had not done the dirty work for them.

You will be surprised to know that he was buried by the side of Lenin's grave in Red Square near the Kremlin, because he was the man second to Lenin. His successors dragged his body from Red Square, and sent it back to the Caucasus from where he had come -- a mountainous country, primitive, tribal, so nobody can even go there to see his grave.

I can understand the successors. Khrushchev was giving his first talk when he became head of the Soviet Union after Stalin. And he had been a colleague to Stalin for almost his whole life. In his first speech he exposed Stalin, and he said, "He was the greatest murderer humanity has known."

Now the question of communism became secondary. His murders... which were not his personal grudge against anybody; he was simply trying to save one of the greatest experiments in human history, and there was no other way to do it. So I know it is evil, but there was no alternative. When there is no alternative you have to choose the evil.

Khrushchev, addressing the Communist Party, said, "Stalin was the greatest murderer, and I am going to remove his grave from Red Square. He should not be given any respect. And I am going to burn all his books."

One man from the back, sitting in the dark, said, "You have been with him your whole life. Why did you not say it before?"

There was utter silence for a moment. Then Khrushchev said, "Comrade, whoever has said it, please stand up." Nobody stood. Khrushchev said, "Now you know why I was silent. I did not want to be murdered, just as you don't want to be murdered. Just stand up and you would disappear! So I had to keep my thoughts to myself; even walls had ears at the time of Stalin."

He had managed in such a way... he had a party, a Communist Party for small children, and they were trained to spy on their parents. What they said in their houses the children had to report to the Party. Then the youth had their own youth league, and they had to be aware that anything against communism -- it does not matter whether it is your mother or your father -- had to be reported immediately.

Women had their own Communist Party and they were taught the same programming, that it is a question of saving this great experiment. Anybody, it does not matter -- he may be your husband, but you have to report it. It may be your wife, you have to report it.

And once reported it was never asked whether the report was true, whether the report was reason to kill the man. In the middle of the night the KGB, the Russian equivalent of the CIA, would knock on the door. The man would open the door, and the KGB agent would tell him to follow, and the family knew: "That man is gone. You will never hear anything about that man."

So it is true, it was a very cruel effort. But the reason was that without this cruelty... all around the Soviet Union there were sitting vultures, all the capitalist countries of the world, ready to destroy it.

He had to give as little nourishment to the people as possible; his whole concentration was to create more arms and a bigger army, because the enemies were too many, and all around. People can eat one time a day, people can have only two or three sets of clothes - - there is no need to have many. We need the army as a priority; otherwise we will be destroyed.

It was Stalin who managed to bring the Soviet Union out of a small feudal state, into a world power, the world's biggest power.

Now Gorbachev is again a visionary, like Marx, and does not understand the practical necessities of reality. And you will be surprised to know -- the whole American propaganda machine is pressurizing the world news media to make Gorbachev a great hero. It is the American strategy to make him a great hero and praise all the things he is doing by withdrawing all the iron curtains, by reducing armaments, by reducing the budget for the army -- forty percent of the budget has been reduced right now, and every year he is going to cut it. Nuclear weapons have been stopped; for two years they have not created any nuclear weapons. They want Gorbachev to become such a big celebrity that it becomes a matter of his personal prestige -- not communism, not the Soviet Union. Whatever happens to the Soviet Union is not the issue: Gorbachev becomes the great man of history who changed a dictatorship into a democracy.

But once this starts happening, communism will disappear -- not only from the Soviet Union but from every small communist pocket around the world, because they all depend on the Soviet Union's support.

Yesterday I told you the Hare Krishna movement has been given land there. Today I received the news that a Vivekananda center is being opened, a branch of the Ramakrishna Mission. Now this is going to destroy the whole country. These were the people Stalin killed! These were the people... he'd throw them into Siberia just to die.

These people are now entering in the name of democracy.

My understanding is that the Soviet Union is not yet ready to open its doors. It is an American conspiracy to praise Gorbachev through the news media --not directly; directly they will oppose him, but in the news media praise him highly: "He is doing a great service to the Soviet people. What Stalin has done, he has to undo. Withdraw the dictatorship, make the country democratic, open all the doors."

Now what has the Vivekananda center to do in Russia? What has Ramakrishna to do with Russia?

Ramakrishna became enlightened only in the last stage of his life, and that too because of a wandering mystic, Totapuri. I have told you the story. But his whole life he was just suffering from epileptic fits. His whole religion was based on the Mother Goddess; it was emotional, it was a religion of prayer. He was a nice man, he would dance before the Mother Goddess, he would sing songs and praise the Mother Goddess, but the Mother Goddess is more primitive than the Father God!

The Mother Goddess came into existence before the family came into existence. At that time you were not certain who was your father. You were certain who was your mother because the mother gave birth, and the mother was raising the children. The family had not yet come into existence. Of all the people who were the right age, one of them must be the father, but nobody knew.

So you will not be surprised to know that the word 'uncle' is more ancient than the word 'father'. All people of the age of the probable father, were called uncles. It was a tribal world; the mother was certain and everybody else was an uncle, someone anonymous must have been the father. And because there was no fixed family, the mother was not bound to have only one person to love her; even she might not be certain who made her pregnant. It was a very flowing world, in which partners were continuously changing and there was nobody who was called father.

So the Father God is a very recent invention. After the family became established and the father became the head of the family, then God the Father came as a fiction. Before that, the whole world was a matriarchy; the mother was the most important phenomenon.

Obviously, the mother was projected as the goddess who has created the world.

Ramakrishna was worshipping in the most primitive religion, and I don't support him until the point when he met Totapuri -- that was the very last phase.

I was surprised... I have met many Ramakrishna Mission sannyasins, monks, well known, world famous, but they don't mention the last phase when Ramakrishna accepted Totapuri as his master. They hide that fact, because Ramakrishna accepting somebody as a master feels humiliating to these people. Totapuri helped Ramakrishna to become enlightened, but it happened only in the last days of his life. Those days and the meeting of Totapuri are not mentioned, are not even known by the monks of Ramakrishna Mission. They go on propagating Ramakrishna's emotional worship of the Mother Goddess.

Now today they have been given land to build a big center, Vivekananda Center, a branch of the Ramakrishna Mission. What will they do? They will teach worship of a very primitive kind.

As I told you, whatever Gorbachev is doing looks right, but it can backfire. It can destroy the whole experiment. Dictatorship was absolutely needed because there were so many enemies all around.

You know perfectly well how our commune in America has been destroyed, because we had no armies to fight, and we were just a small pocket with a vast world power around us. Violently, illegally, against their constitution they destroyed the commune.

The same was the situation of the Soviet Union after the revolution. It was surrounded by the whole world, and everybody wanted to destroy it. It was Joseph Stalin's great, earthbound policies that protected the Soviet Union. He finished with all the monks, all the Christians, all the priests. And the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the most orthodox churches in the world -- used to be, now perhaps it will be again. He forced the monks to work in the fields. This is possible only in a dictatorship. In a democracy it is not possible, and if you do it in a democracy then your democracy is a hypocrisy.

At least Joseph Stalin was absolutely honest: he called it dictatorship. And he made it clear, that "I don't want to waste time. Any suspicion that you are against communism and you will be finished."

He changed all the churches into schools, hospitals, universities -- there were great monasteries that became universities -- and he made the monks work in the fields, in the orchards, because "You cannot have food if you don't work. Worship is your private affair, but work. The society feeds you, you have to work. In the night you can pray and do whatever you want, it is your private time." And he completely destroyed the organized religions of the Jews, of the Christians, of the Mohammedans.

It looks bad to our eyes, but I have a more comprehensive vision. I am against dictatorship, but for the interim course, while the society is moving from capitalism to communism, dictatorship is one of the necessary steps.

And Marx also thought in the same way, that dictatorship will remain only as an interim process. Once the society becomes classless, there is no need of dictatorship; there is no need of the state. He was in favor of no classes, no government, no bureaucracy. That will be the ultimate flowering.

But as I told you, he was a thinker, not a practical man. He did not see the point that one country may become communist, may become classless, but all the other countries around it are capitalist. You cannot withdraw the state, you cannot withdraw the dictatorship; otherwise all the surrounding countries will enter into it. All the superstitions you have thrown out will come back with tremendous force. And they are coming....

Gorbachev seems to be a nice man, has a very deep respect for democracy, but does not understand that in the name of democracy America is conspiring, and puffing up his personal ego that he is a great leader, a great pacifier. If all this gets into his head it is going to kill communism, and that will be a great loss to humanity.

The second question is connected with the first. Another sannyasin has asked:

Question 2:

Because the world is still not communist. Unless the whole world is communist, the state cannot disappear; neither can dictatorship disappear. You will have to wait.

Marx's idea was that once the whole world becomes capitalist, it will soon turn to communism. That idea did not work. The capitalist countries have remained capitalist, and two great countries... the Soviet Union, which was not capitalist, has become the first communist country. And the second great country, China, which was also not capitalist, has become the second great communist country.

And he was not aware of personal egos. He was not a student of psychology, he was purely a student of economics. But in the hands of man, you have to understand everything through his psychology. The money may be the same, but in a miser's hand it has a different meaning; in a playboy's hand it has a different meaning. In a businessman's hand it has a different meaning, in a hungry man's hand it has a different meaning.

And it has different value in different hands. In a rich man's hand, one rupee has no value at all, but in a beggar's hand one rupee, perhaps, has come for the first time into his vision. It is the greatest richness. So the value differs according to the psychology and the personality. And Marx was not aware of the total personality of man.

I have been interested in the total personality of man: his body, his mind, his no-mind, his mortal existence and his immortal existence.

Marx was a pure economist, so he thought that once the society is equal... He forgot two things: one, those who will be in power for the interim period -- who is going to take the power out of their hands? Because power corrupts and corrupts absolutely. The people who are in power are not going to leave the power so easily as Marx thought. "When the society becomes classless, the state will disappear" -- but it is not so easy. Those who are in power are not going to leave their power. He was not aware of the psychology.

He thought that when two countries became communist, they would drop their boundaries. He was not at all aware of personal egos. For instance, China is against the Soviet Union, and both are communist countries. And the reason is absolutely trivial. The reason is, communism believes in Marx as the founder and Engels as the second founder -- both were together. Engels himself was a capitalist, he owned many factories. It was because of Engels that Marx could live without working, just studying, studying, and finding causes and finding clues. It was possible because of the support, financial support from Engels; otherwise Marx would have been working and there would not have been a DAS KAPITAL or COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.

So Engels is number two in the hierarchy of the founders. Number three is Lenin. Stalin was hoping that when he died he would be number four, and certainly he deserves it.

With all his faults, with all his violence, he has protected a great experiment. Men after all, have to die; it is not such a great problem to make so much fuss.

Mao Zedong, who brought China to communism, was supported by Stalin for thirty years -- because the revolution continued for thirty years; it was the greatest and longest revolution in world history.

Chiang Kai-Shek, who was the dictator of China, was a very strong man. He was thought to be one of the strongest men amongst five strong men in the world. And China is such a vast country. Over each inch there was a fight, inch by inch. Stalin gave them complete support: arms, armies, training for the Chinese -- because they share their boundaries; China and Russia meet on their boundaries. So he was training Chinese communists to be soldiers, and he was sending all kinds of arms to Mao Zedong. For thirty years he supported him financially and in every possible way.

And when Mao Zedong came to power and Chiang Kai-shek was thrown out to his small island of Taiwan, which he had kept as his personal property, Mao wanted to be number five in the hierarchy. After Stalin, he wanted his name; that was the clash. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was not willing, because he had not contributed anything new, anything original, to communism.

And in fact, it was the Soviet Union who had supported him and brought him to power.

He himself had not even been a success on his own, so he could not be put as fifth in the hierarchy. This was the clash, a personal clash, which Karl Marx would have never thought -- that even personal clashes, egos, will keep two communist countries, based on the same idea, separate. Not only separate but inimical.

Now China is moving closer and closer to America, because China is afraid: the Soviet Union is far more powerful; unless America supports China, there is danger. And America is very happy that a great communist country is coming closer. China is also opening its doors because, who was trained by Stalin, is dead.

In forty years in India, nothing has happened. China became communist in 1951, four years after India became independent. Within ten years, by 1961, China became a world power. It was because of the training of Stalin and following the whole strategy of Stalin that China has raised itself to a world power.

Now America wants China to open its doors. That will be the end of Chinese communism. And the world press is praising Gorbachev too much, puffing up his ego, pumping up his personality into that of a big hero. That is the greatest danger to Soviet communism.

It is true that Marx has this idea that the state will disappear, and I love the idea because I am an anarchist myself. I don't want any government in the world, but my not wanting is not going to change anything. Till all crime disappears, till all rapes disappear, the state will be needed. So when Marx says that finally the state will disappear, don't think that the "finally" is coming soon. It will be finally.

It is a good idea -- the greatest idea is anarchism. And if out of communism, anarchism can grow -- which is not practical, because those who are in power will not easily leave their power -- and two communist countries, as Marx thought, would dissolve into one...

that has not happened. Yugoslavia remained under Tito, a separate country, because Tito himself wanted to be in the hierarchy. Just personal egos, of which Marx never thought anything; he was not a psychoanalyst.

And now again Gorbachev has completely forgotten the great struggle, the great bloodshed out of which communism has somehow survived. They have removed Stalin's name from the hierarchy. Now there are only three -- Marx, Engels and Lenin -- and perhaps Gorbachev is thinking he will be the fourth. But most probably he will be the end of communism in the Soviet Union.

To be absolutely frank and truthful, if he is not awakened quickly, and closes the doors to all kinds of enemies which are entering fast and quick, he will be the end of a tremendously beautiful idea. And humanity will never forgive him.

But he has now become absolutely powerful. The president in the Soviet Union used to be nominal, the prime minister was the real power. And behind the prime minister, the more real power was the secretary general of the Communist Party and the Communist Party's central group, the Politburo.

All the states had their one representative in the Politburo -- that was the commanding body -- and the general secretary was the head of the commanding body. Stalin continued to be the general secretary and the prime minister, so he was holding total power.

The same Gorbachev has done. He has changed the constitution of the Soviet Union according to America -- perhaps he must have been feeling, meeting "President" Ronald Reagan and he is just a prime minister... So now he is the president of the Soviet Union.

The prime minister is no longer powerful; it is a nominal post, just a rubber stamp. The president has all the power. And he has changed the whole commanding body of the Communist Party; he has put in his men. And he is also the general secretary of the Communist Party.

The third powerful agency is the KGB. That is their central intelligence, which has immense power, more power than any other intelligence body around the world. He has changed the head of the KGB and put his own man as head of the KGB. So now everything is in his hands -- president, general secretary of the Communist Party, and the KGB is in his hands -- his man is there. So he has in fact more power than any man on the earth. If he uses it rightly, by making communism more prosperous, by making communism more creative, more spiritual, more scientific, he will be a great benediction not only to the Soviet Union but to the whole world.

But he can go wrong. And when one person has all the power and goes wrong it is a suicidal phenomenon. And there seems to be every possibility; he can go either way.

I would like him to understand clearly that we need the Soviet Union as a communist stronghold in the world, because sooner or later the whole world has to be turned to communism. Communism has to become the base, because it is a materialist philosophy and on that base can be raised the temple of spirituality.

But that temple will not be created by orthodox Christians or Hare Krishna people, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or the Ramakrishna Mission. These out-of-date, absolutely belonging to the bullock-cart age... when the bullock cart was invented, nobody knows.

These religions belong to the bullock-cart age. They are not going to help communism, which is a contemporary phenomenon. It needs not to go backwards. It needs a future orientation, not a past orientation. That's what is possible from Gorbachev's opening the doors -- all past-oriented people will enter into the country and destroy it.

He should be absolutely clear: open the doors, but open the doors for the future-oriented people. Open the doors not for organized religions, not for missions and missionaries -- they may be Christian or Hindu, it does not matter -- open the doors for individual awakened people who will not create any kind of organized obstacles for the growth of communism.

Every religion will be against communism -- Gorbachev does not understand it.

Hinduism is against communism -- now what is a Vivekananda center going to do in Russia? Teaching people that poverty has nothing to do with the capitalists, that your whole revolution is wrong, that you were suffering from your past lives' karmas, bad and evil acts, and you have done a great injustice to the capitalist people who were enjoying their past lives' good karmas, good acts. This is the Hindu philosophy. This is what Ramakrishna believed in and this is what Vivekananda believed in.

What is Christianity going to say to them? Don't disturb anything; let the world be as God created it. No revolution -- God has not given the idea of revolution at all, in any of his scriptures.

He has written so many scriptures! He is a great scholar; he writes the four Vedas of the Hindus, Koran Sharif of the Mohammedans, the Holy Bible of the Christians. God seems to be a great scholar -- but very contradictory, because all these scriptures contradict each other. And these religions will again bring God into the Soviet Union -- who has been forced out by Joseph Stalin, out of the gates of the Soviet Union the same way he turned Adam and Eve out of the gates of paradise.

The Soviet Union is in a very vulnerable state, because all the old people who have seen the revolution, who have been participants in the revolution, are dead. The new generation knows nothing.

Here is Haridas. He is one of my oldest sannyasins. He is German and he heard Adolf Hitler's name for the first time from me! Can you believe it? But he was born after the second world war.

Now in Russia nobody exists who has seen the revolution, who has seen how Stalin established communism with difficulty.

Gorbachev is not aware of the whole past and he is bringing the same enemies back in.

They will disrupt the whole society. And for seventy years the new generation that has come into existence after the revolution has been taught: "There is no God, there is no hell, there is no heaven. There is no future life, there is no past life -- this is all." But they are feeling a tremendous hollowness within themselves and that is a red signal for danger. Because they are feeling a hollowness -- that everything is good outside, but inside there seems to be nothing -- these people will rush in and fill their inside with beliefs, with SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA, with the Koran, with the Bible, with Vedas, and destroy a great opportunity for meditation. None of these people are meditative.

Open the doors for scientists, for mystics, for meditators, for poets, for painters, for engineers, for doctors, for psychoanalysts. But don't open the door for orthodox, fanatic, organized religions. Don't open the door for capitalists and their agents. Otherwise you will spoil something so precious that all the utopians, all the people who have any vision for the future, have been dreaming of for centuries.

In the RIGVEDA, the ancientmost book in the world, comes the sentence, VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM -- "this whole earth should become one family."

Ninety thousand years ago some visionary, some mystic, was thinking in terms of this whole earth turning into one family. That was the old language for communism: this whole world becomes one commune.

Rather than looking at possibilities for how to turn the whole world into communes, which will be supportive to all communist revolutions... and as I said, I can bring to the Soviet Union the second revolution. The first revolution was material; the second revolution will be spiritual. Only then will Soviet citizens be able to cope with all kinds of idiots. Right now these idiots will destroy their innocence. Then they will turn them towards being exactly as the whole world is.

A great country -- one of the biggest countries in the world; it is one sixth of the whole earth -- and it is going to be a tremendous loss if Gorbachev does not understand the implications. Communism has to be saved and communism has to be transformed into a great spiritual revolution. He can do it; he has all the power. And only when the whole of humanity is meditative is the state of no use.

When the whole of humanity has become one family there is no need of anybody to dictate. When the whole of humanity has become intelligent, when the whole of humanity has dropped all miseries and is immensely blissful, the state has no function.

The powerful will feel absolutely out-of-date, old hat. They will disappear because their function is no more.

When no criminal turns up in the courts, what is the function of the courts? When there is no prostitution -- and that is possible only if there is no marriage -- what is the need of a registrar for marriage, and licenses for prostitutes?

Things are very clear if you have the clarity that comes only when you go beyond the mind. The higher you go the more you have a bird's-eye view of the whole situation of humanity.

Gorbachev himself, before he does any act against communism, needs a great training in meditation. And after that, whatever he will do will be right. I can see the man is certainly intelligent and has good intentions for humanity, is a peace-loving person, but he has no depth of meditation. These are all superficial mind values, which don't go deep enough.

They are only skin deep -- scratch just a little and all those values disappear.

Meditation brings transformation from the inside. It is not an imposition of morality and commandments from outside. Anything that comes from outside is worthless -- morality, religion, spirituality, whatever you call it. Only that which blossoms within you like a lotus has ultimate value. Out of that arising of consciousness, you cannot do evil.

Your every action will be spontaneous; it will come from your deepest being, and the deepest being cannot do any harm.

Then the state disappears. Then the world needs no hierarchy, no bureaucracy, no presidents, no prime ministers, no KGB, no CIA.

Every individual has to contribute to that final utopia -- and I am preparing you for that final stage when the state is useless, when the police are useless, when armaments are useless, when armies are just stupid, when we can all work together, create together, love together, rejoice together.

This very body the buddha -- this very earth the lotus paradise. But it will happen only - - not according to Marx but according to me -- it will happen only when the whole world is full of buddhas. There is no other way. It is not an economic revolution; neither is it a social revolution. It is a spiritual revolution, an individual-to-individual rebellion.

Every heart starts blossoming.

When millions of hearts start blossoming it becomes a chain reaction. Just like one candle aflame can make thousands of candles aflame -- just bring the other candle close enough and suddenly the flame jumps to the unlit candle. The lit candle loses nothing and the unlit candle gains everything. The whole life is in the flame.

This I call Zen Fire, Zen Wind.

Unless the whole world goes through the Zen Fire and becomes pure gold, unless the whole world becomes a Zen Wind passing through every heart, connecting every heart to the universal heartbeat -- this utopia is not possible.

But I hope, I am absolutely certain, that every man's destiny is to become a buddha. So whether it happens today or tomorrow or day after tomorrow does not matter. There are only seven days in the week. It will happen Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday -- on some day, it is going to happen, I am absolutely certain. Because I understand human nature. It cannot be satisfied with this miserable world. It cannot be satisfied with this ugly and violent world. It can only be satisfied when it finds its ultimate source of blissfulness, eternal source of life.

And that is what meditation is a scientific methodology for.

The sutra:

What does Yakusan mean? The monk is washing the statue of the buddha -- Yakusan calls the statue this and he calls the living buddha that. "You are only washing a stone statue -- this is okay, but can you wash that, the living buddha which is within you?"

He is indicating towards the interiormost hidden buddha, the living buddha: "Can you wash that?"

I call that washing "meditation."

People condemn me around the world that I am washing people's brains. I am washing something deeper -- brains I don't care about at all. I am throwing the brains out of the door! I am washing the buddha inside who has been covered in dust for centuries. A dry- cleaning is needed, and I am doing the dry-cleaning. So when anybody says to you -- and there are millions of people around who will say it -- that I am doing brainwashing, tell him, "Our master does not do ordinary things. Certainly he does a dry-washing, but that is not of the mind. He does a dry-cleaning of the ancient buddha, the eternal buddha who is covered with dust and all kinds of garbage." Don't feel offended. Rather, turn the question against them.

There is now a new profession arising in the West of deprogrammers. And many of my sannyasins have been forced... just now one sannyasin is back from Canada. The parents had called her with great love, saying, "Come here and visit because we have not seen you for so long." And when the sannyasin reached there, it was a totally different matter.

They had two deprogrammers arranged and they started talking against me and telling her that I have brainwashed her. "You are living in a trance, in hypnosis, and we are here to take you out of your trance." But the reality is, they are brainwashing you!

I don't wash such dirty things. Only Christians do such dirty things: they are brainwashing you and forcing you back again into the old program.

They call themselves "deprogrammers." That is a wrong word they are using for themselves; they are REprogrammers. What has been thrown out by meditation, they are forcing back into your head.

You will be facing this, many of you, when you go back home. Parents have been known even to abduct their children -- who are young people, adults, and keep them physically imprisoned in houses with deprogrammers who continuously harass them. And there is a certain stage when you become very weak. If you are not allowed to sleep for three days, on the fourth day you will become very vulnerable. If somebody says: "God is," you don't have enough strength to say no. Perhaps in this weakness... God is born out of weakness, out of fear, out of dread, and they have created all the dread and fear and weakness and now they say, "God is. If you pray, everything will be alright."

These are reprogrammers. As far as I am concerned I have no interest in your mind at all, or in your brain. My concern is far more ultimate. It is beyond the mind. My function is to clean the space of no-mind.

Those deprogrammers or reprogrammers have not even heard about the no-mind. They are ordinary psychoanalysts turned into deprogrammers. But they can do harm if you listen to them, so I have to tell you because I received the letter from the Canadian sannyasin. She said, "I have been treated very badly. I am still shaking. All the old stuff that has been dropped they have again forced into the mind."

So if you come across any deprogrammer, remember this. Rather than them deprogramming you, you should deprogram them! Never answer their questions.

Whenever they ask you, answer with another question. If they ask you, "Is there God?" -- you ask them, "Have you any proof? Give me the proof. I want absolute evidence of God.

And if you cannot prove his existence, don't speak nonsense. Have you been to hell?

Then how are you back? -- because from the Christian hell nobody comes back, it is eternal. Do you know anything about hell?" If they say no then ask them: "Do you know anything about heaven? Have you seen Socrates in heaven? Have you seen Gautam Buddha in heaven? -- because these people did not believe in God."

Have I told you the story of Edmund Burke? He had a great friendship with the archbishop of England. He was a great orator, Edmund Burke, and the archbishop used to come to listen to his lectures. They were delicious, just a deep nourishment, but the archbishop was surprised that although every Sunday he gave a sermon, Edmund Burke had never come. At least for courtesy's sake he should have come one time.

Finally, seeing that he was not going to come, the archbishop invited him. He said, "I come to all your lectures, whenever I know that you are going to deliver a lecture. This Sunday I am preparing specially for you; you have to come to the church."

Edmund Burke said, "You should have asked before. I will be coming."

He went....

The archbishop of England is the highest authority of the Church of England, equivalent to the pope. He had prepared with great effort; otherwise Christian preachers don't prepare. They have four or five ready-made sermons.

I used to know a Christian monk. He became very friendly to me. I asked him, "How many sermons do you have?"

He said, "How did you come to know...?" He said, "I have three sermons. One for ten minutes, one for twenty minutes, one for forty minutes, as the occasion demands. And I never stay in a city more than three days, so I am always original!"

But Edmund Burke was coming so the archbishop prepared with great effort, consulted dictionaries and encyclopedias and theological books and biblical research, and he made it really a very scholarly sermon. But he was surprised. He was watching -- Edmund Burke was sitting just in front of him -- and there was no sign whether he was appreciating it or not. He was sitting just like a statue.

When the sermon was over, they walked out together. The archbishop could not gather courage to ask him, "How was it?" But finally he managed. As he was entering his car he asked Edmund Burke, "One thing at least you should say, whether you liked it or not."

He said, "That is not the point. The point is, you were saying that those who believe in Jesus Christ, God, and the Holy Ghost, and those who follow all the Christian virtues and don't commit sins, will go to heaven. Do you remember saying this?"

The archbishop said, "But perfectly -- I have said exactly this."

"Do you see any contradiction in it?"

The archbishop said: "I don't see any contradiction in it."

Edmund Burke said, "I see the contradiction and I want you to answer. This is my question: If a man believes in Jesus and his virgin birth, the Holy Ghost, God, all the miracles, resurrection, but does not do what you call 'virtue' and commits sins, what will happen?

"Secondly: The person who does not believe in God, does not believe in the Holy Ghost, does not believe in Jesus Christ, but follows all the virtues and commits no sin -- what will happen?"

The archbishop was at a loss, completely at a loss. The question was immensely important. He said, "You will have to give me at least seven days' time to figure it out."

Edmund Burke said, "I will come again next Sunday; you prepare."

But for seven days, day and night, the archbishop could not sleep. Howsoever he tried it was not fitting. If he says that a person who commits sins and does not follow the virtues, but believes in Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost and God, goes to paradise, it does not look right. The person is a sinner!

If he says that a person who follows the virtues and does not commit any sin, but does not believe in God or Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, goes to paradise, that means the belief in God, the Holy Ghost and Jesus, is absolute nonsense. You can go directly -- why unnecessarily have this hypothesis? So he was caught, in what is called in logic, on the horns. Both the sides -- if you go this side, this horn; if you go that side, that horn. This is called "the horns of a dilemma."

Seven days passed, but no possibility of any answer. He went early to the church to pray to Jesus before the gathering came in and Edmund Burke appeared. But he had not slept for seven days, so while he was praying he fell asleep. And he saw in a dream... because for seven days that was his only thought, how to solve it. He saw in the dream that a train is running fast and he is in the train. He inquired, "Where is this train going?"

They said, "It is going to heaven."

He said, "This is good!" He thought inside, that "This is good. I will be able to see for myself. Because Buddha never believed in God, never believed in anything. Socrates never believed in God, never believed in heaven, never believed in hell. If I find these people in paradise, the answer is that whether you believe in God or not, that is not the issue. If I do not find these people in heaven, that means that even if you follow the virtues and you don't commit sins, still you will go to hell."

But if he finds these people in heaven, that means believing in God or Jesus does not matter; all that you have to do is to be virtuous and not to commit sins. He was immensely happy.

But as the train stopped at the station in paradise, he could not believe his eyes. It looked so dull and dismal, far more dismal than England, and he saw all kinds of saints, so ugly and shrunken, just skeletons moving here and there around the station. Even the signboard on the station which said 'Paradise' had faded millions of years before. You had to concentrate very much on the board and only then you could figure out, yes it says Paradise.

He asked the stationmaster, "Have you heard anything of Socrates, Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Bodhidharma? Are they here?"

The stationmaster said, "Never heard. Nobody with those names has ever appeared here.

But you can go around, have a look; there are only a few saints playing on their harps, 'Alleluia, Alleluia' -- no other work. Everybody is dull."

So he went around... no work, because in paradise you don't need any food. Everybody was so sad, because in paradise you cannot have any entertainment. No parties or going anywhere -- no restaurants, not even a Zorba the Buddha! Everything was so dull and dirty, stinking.

He rushed back to the station and he said, "Is there any train direct to hell from here?"

The stationmaster said, "It is going just now, you get in."

So he went to hell and he was surprised. As the train entered hell... such lush greenery, such beautiful roses, ponds with flowers and swans. The whole station looked as if it had been freshly painted.

He said, "This is strange! This should be paradise, but right on top of the station in neon lights it is written -- Hell." He got down, he met the stationmaster, a very nice and beautiful fellow who was just going to the golf course.

The archbishop said, "Golf? In hell?"

He said, "Since these people have come here -- Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Bodhidharma -- since these people have come here they have changed the whole scene. It used to be very dirty, but now we have the best golf course in the whole world, the best roses, the best food. Just go! See, there in the field, Socrates is sowing seeds."

He saw Socrates, who looked so beautiful, so healthy, so young, as he had never been on earth. He asked about Gautam Buddha.

Socrates said, "Look under that tree. He is meditating. But since he has come, the whole air is fragrant with his meditations. You will find all the great people here."

"But," he said, "what about sinners?"

The stationmaster said, "We don't know any sinners. Since these people have come, they have transformed all sinners into sannyasins. Hell is no more the old place. You don't know about me -- I used to be the devil! Now they have posted me as the head stationmaster. And so many people are coming that we don't have one station, we have twelve stations. All around hell, beautiful stations -- gardens, lawns, beautiful houses...

and since scientists started coming we have electricity, ecology programs. They don't allow me to cut the trees to create hellfire -- they have air-conditioned the whole of hell!"

At that moment, from shock, he woke up. He said, "My God! What a dream!" He saw that people had started coming, and the first to enter was Edmund Burke.

He was an honest man, the archbishop. He said, "I don't know the answer, but I have seen this dream. I will relate the dream and you can conclude whatever you want."

It is not a question of belief in any God, in any Jesus, in any Krishna, in any Rama. It is a question of being a meditative person, so all that you do is virtuous. Out of meditation only -- flowers of virtue, eternal flowers of good, of love, of laughter.

So when Yakusan said to the monk, "Now you are washing this stone statue, but can you wash that?" he must have pointed to the heart, the very being of the monk.

SOMPU REPLIED, "PLEASE GET THAT AND BRING IT TO ME."

He said, "I don't know who you are indicating within me; just please bring it out."

... When I was looking at "Sompu," I thought of "shampoo," because shampoo seems to be the right thing for washing. So I will call him "Shampoo."

Shampoo replied, "PLEASE GET THAT AND BRING IT TO ME. I will give him a good washing."

THE MASTER DID NOT SAY ANYTHING.

Because that which is hidden within you... only you can go there. It cannot be brought to you. You are asking an absurd question; hence the silence. The master must have thought, "The man is not yet ready."

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, WHEN YAKUSAN WAS SITTING DOWN, A MONK CAME UP TO HIM AND SAID, "OSHO, YOU ARE SITTING SILENTLY. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?"

That's how ordinary people will ask. If you are sitting silently, they will ask, "What are you thinking?" because people do that continuously. "Perhaps there is some great problem that you are solving? Some anxiety that you are figuring out how to deal with?

What are you thinking?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "I AM THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE."

He is saying, "I am not thinking. I am just being, and facing the unthinkable. You cannot think it; it is not a thought, it is not a thing. It is an experience, a taste."

You taste something sweet. What can you say about sweetness? You will say, "Sweetness is sweetness." But that is not the answer. All you can do is to give the other person a little sweet to taste, and tell him, "This is it."

Experiences, especially deeper experiences, are far beyond language, far beyond thought, far beyond mind. Thinking the unthinkable is not thinking at all, but facing the clarity of space within you.

THE MONK SAID, "HOW DO YOU THINK THE UNTHINKABLE?"

He could not understand. He thought, "Perhaps there is something unthinkable that he is thinking. If it is unthinkable, how can you think it?" -- HOW DO YOU THINK THE UNTHINKABLE?

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "NON-THINKING."

That is the way to think the unthinkable: stop thinking. Just be in a space of meditation, utterly silent. Not even a single thought moving on the screen of your mind -- just the pure screen, and suddenly you are able to see the eternal, the ultimate, the very beyond which never even comes close to language or thought.

WHEN YAKUSAN WAS ABOUT TO DIE, HE YELLED OUT, "THE HALL IS FALLING DOWN! THE HALL IS FALLING DOWN!"

THE MONKS BROUGHT VARIOUS THINGS AND BEGAN TO PROP IT UP.

YAKUSAN THREW UP HIS HANDS AND SAID, "NO ONE OF YOU UNDERSTOOD WHAT I MEANT!"

He was not talking about the hall, he was talking about himself -- "My body, where I used to live for so many years, is falling all apart. The moment for my departure has come."

But Zen always uses symbols, and those monks were just like ordinary people. They could not see that it is not that the hall is falling... But because the master is saying the hall is falling, perhaps he is predicting some future catastrophe. So they started putting up props to keep the hall together.

And poor Yakusan threw up his hands in utter frustration -- "NO ONE OF YOU UNDERSTOOD WHAT I MEANT! -- I am falling down. The body which used to be my house is falling apart. Soon I will be on the wings moving into the eternal sky." And saying this, he died. That was his last statement: "NO ONE OF YOU UNDERSTOOD WHAT I MEANT."

It is very rare that a master is understood; most probably he is misunderstood. Only very few people have such courage and such sharpening of their innermost space that they can understand the master.

To understand the master is to understand the whole mystery of existence.

After attending a funeral, Ikkyu wrote:

WHEN WE COME AND SEE HERE ALSO IS THE BURNING HOUSE -- WHY DO PEOPLE SAY "GOOD TO LIVE IN"?

He is saying, "At a funeral a body is burning, and people are standing around the funeral pyre, but nobody is aware that it is not just this body that is burning. It is not an exception, it is the rule. Your body is also going to burn on a funeral pyre."

This house is not eternal. This house made of matter is going to collapse any moment.

Then why do people say, "GOOD TO LIVE IN -- to live in this body is good"? Why do people say this, when the body is nothing but a carriage that takes you from the cradle towards the grave?

To live in the body is not good. To be in the body but be as a witness, to know that "It is not me" -- that is a great experience. You are discarding the body even while you are alive; you are discarding the mind even while you are alive. So when death comes it cannot take anything from you, you have discarded all that it can take and you have saved the eternal, which it cannot touch.

It is absolutely essential for every intelligent person: before death comes he should become completely clear that he is not the body and he is not the mind; he is only a pure consciousness.

Question 3:

Maneesha's question:

In the beginning of the revolution, communism was programming people for atheism.

Communism as propagated by Marx and Engels is atheist, and to be an atheist is to be again a believer. The only difference between the theist and the atheist is, the theist is a positive believer -- he believes that God is. The atheist is also a believer -- his belief is that God is not.

In the beginning of the revolution -- George Gurdjieff was in Russia at the time when the revolution began -- he had to escape from Russia; otherwise he would have been killed by the atheist revolutionaries.

Now it is a different matter. The reason why it is different after seventy years is because a negative belief cannot be a nourishment to your inner being. One can go on deceiving oneself with a positive belief for centuries, because a positive belief fills a gap. A negative belief does not fill any gap.

In seventy years' time, the Russian people have become aware of an immense hollowness within them. The negative belief is not of any help. The positive belief at least gives you a false religion -- a prayer, a god, a church, a bible, something to fill in the gap. All junk! -- but still you can fill your hollowness with the junk.

What do you think you go on keeping in your refrigerators? All kinds of junk -- chocolate, ice cream, and you go on stuffing....

Have you ever watched? Whenever a man or a woman are in love, they don't eat much.

What happens? Why don't they eat much? Because love is such a nourishment, who cares about chocolate and chewing gum and ice cream? But once they get married, the woman starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger. What happened? Now there is no more love; now she is replacing love with ice cream.

Why do husbands bring ice cream when they come home? Love is no more there; perhaps ice cream will cool down the atmosphere! And whenever a husband brings ice cream the wife suspects: "He must have committed something that he is trying to cover up."

So it is very difficult. If you don't bring ice cream, the atmosphere is very hot. If you bring ice cream, the wife looks out of the corner of her eye, looks at your coat -- any hair from some woman?

Mulla Nasruddin was caught again and again with some woman's hair on his coat. He asked a friend what to do. The friend said, "It is simple. Before entering the house, you just clean your coat. Keep a brush with yourself."

He said, "That's a good idea! It never occurred to me -- so simple!" So one day he found a brush. Outside the house he completely cleaned his coat, and suit, and shirt, and entered the house.

The wife looked at his coat, at his pants, and simply started beating her head and crying and screaming! He said, "What has happened? There is no hair at all!"

She said, "That's why I am crying. It seems you have started loving some bald woman!"

It is difficult any way. Whichever way you try, it does not work.

Today the situation is totally different than it was seventy years before. Today the Russian people feel immense emptiness. You cannot live on negatives. Positive things may not be authentic, but at least they help you to fill the hollowness. Hence I say theism is more dangerous than atheism, because the atheist sooner or later has to realize that "It is not helping me in any way. I am utterly empty."

The theist may be able to deceive himself for lives together, because he feels full. He knows the prayer, he knows the scripture, he knows God is taking care. But the atheist sooner or later is bound to be aware that atheism is not fulfilling, it is negative. No God, no heaven, no scripture, nothing. You have to encounter your hollowness.

So I say it is better to be an atheist than to be a theist. But still better is the agnostic, who does not believe in God, who does not disbelieve in God, who is simply open and ready to find out what is the truth -- in his own consciousness, because that is the closest thing which is alive.

Look deep into your throbbing life and you will find the quality of the divine. You will not find a God but you will find a godliness, a truth, an awakening, a buddha.

Gurdjieff could not attract many disciples in the West. The reason was, he was not an articulate person. He knew only the Caucasian language. He was born, strangely, in the same place where Joseph Stalin was born. They both learned in the same seminary, they were colleagues when they were small children. And both had the same quality of steel.

Joseph Stalin proved his steel, and in the same way but in a different direction, George Gurdjieff also proved his steel. He was perhaps the strongest man you can imagine, stronger than Stalin, because Gurdjieff had no power; his power was inner. You could give him as much alcohol as possible, and you could not make him drunk -- that was his power -- no drug had any effect on him, his witnessing was so great. He would go on moving behind the alcohol, the alcohol would not be able to distract his witnessing.

But he knew only his mother tongue, the Caucasian language. He learned a little bit of English but it was very broken, he could not make a complete sentence. So language was a barrier, and his methods were a barrier.

His methods he learned because his father died when he was nine and his mother had died already, before his father died, so he was left an orphan. His father was a gypsy, so he was left with a gypsy group, and he learned whatsoever he could learn with the gypsies. They are not great scholars; they are vagabonds moving from one place to another place.

You will be surprised to know that gypsies belong to India, Rajasthan. They moved from Rajasthan to Egypt, and from Egypt to Europe. It is because they moved from Egypt to Europe that they are called "gypsies." The name is derived from "Egypt," but their language is Hindi. It has changed, but you will find that seventy percent is Hindi and thirty percent is derived from Hindi words, changed.

So Gurdjieff was moving with one gypsy group, and when he had learned everything from that group, he would move to other gypsy groups -- they are always on the move.

He learned every method from the gypsies, and those methods are very crude, very hard -- and not at all attractive to the Western people who were living in comfort, luxury. So those who came to him turned back immediately, seeing his methods.

First, he would feed people -- he was a great cook -- and very exotic foods, which Western people had never known. He had learned from different gypsy groups to prepare strange kinds of foods, with strange spices. His whole monastery where he used to live near Paris was full of foodstuff, spices, alcohol, all kinds of drugs. These were his methods.

He would force people to eat too much till they started vomiting; he would force people to go on drinking, go on drinking, till they fell flat on the ground and started doing gibberish -- what you do every day without any alcohol! And he would sit by them and listen to what they were saying, because what they were saying was more true than what they say when they are in their consciousness. It was a very crude psychoanalysis.

He would tell people to dig trenches in the ground, the whole day in the hot sun. People who had never worked were digging trenches, people who were philosophers, professors of philosophy. They had dealt with books and libraries, they were not laborers, but they were digging. The master was walking by the side, looking at all the disciples digging ditches. And in the evening when the ditches were complete he would say, "Now fill the ditches back in. Bring them back to the same condition as they were before you started digging."

Now, by the evening they are utterly exhausted! A few will faint, just out of exertion.

And he will watch their faces when they faint. A few will succeed, to find a strange phenomenon: when they feel absolutely exhausted, he will go on insisting, "Don't be worried. Continue!" And if somebody followed him -- which was difficult -- then suddenly he would find, when the exhaustion came to the peak, a sudden release of a new energy and he would be as fresh as one is fresh in the morning. What happened?

He was teaching that you have three layers of energy. The first layer is for day-to-day work; it exhausts itself very easily. Exhaust it completely -- and if you exhaust it completely the second layer will immediately come up and you will be filled with fresh energy, as you have never known. If you continue to work for months and months together, the second layer will also be one day finished; then the third layer -- which is inexhaustible, which is the very life itself -- will pop up in you. You will see that you have an eternal source of energy.

But this is a very crude method. I can do it within six minutes! Gurdjieff needed six years to do it -- just bullock-cart methods. Certainly he was not very attractive to the Western intelligentsia. Only very few people -- not more than twelve, or at the most, twenty -- used to live in his monastery. Most of them were refugees from Soviet Russia. They were just seeking shelter because the communists had thrown out everybody who was not with them. They followed Jesus on that point -- anybody who is not with you is against you.

Either kill him or throw him out of the country.

He had a beautiful campus near Paris, a few miles away. Huge trees and a big forest, an old monastery deserted by the monks... Now professors, painters, poets -- almost half the group of people in his campus -- were those who became interested in him because of his great disciple P.D. Ouspensky, who was a very great mathematician and had a tremendous quality of articulateness.

I have never come across books written so well as P.D. Ouspensky's. His every sentence is so condensed; it has so much to say... It was because of Ouspensky -- Ouspensky had a school in London -- that people were attracted. And then he would send them to Gurdjieff and from there, ninety percent would escape within twenty-four hours: "That man was crazy! The whole day no food, the whole day you had to work hard, to exhaust your energy, and in the night he would cook exotic foods which were not suitable to your stomach..."

So his assembly was a very strange assembly. Somebody is vomiting, somebody is flat, foaming at the mouth. Somebody is making some utterances and nobody understands what he is saying. Only Gurdjieff was conscious; everybody else was unconscious. First food, then drink -- and hard liquor, not soft wine that you sip and enjoy just to relax. It was not to relax, it was to bring you inside out. Next morning, when you wake up amongst all kinds of strange people shouting, screaming, vomiting all around you, it is better to get out of the doors before Gurdjieff catches you again!

His methods were certainly useful but they were too old, too tribal; hence he could not attract the Western intelligentsia. And he could not attract the Russians because they were going through the revolution and atheism was their theme.

He died a frustrated master, one of the great masters of this century. He died just in 1950.

His life is a sad life....

Hence comes the time of Sardar Gurudayal Singh!

Manuel Labor, the defeated South American dictator, is trying to get back into power. He is addressing a meeting of workmen to organize support for himself.

"When the revolution comes," shouts Manuel, "you will enjoy the pleasures of the rich!

You will walk down Main Street wearing a gold watch!"

"Excuse me," interrupts Pancho, the dog catcher, "but I like to wear my old Timex watch."

"Or if you prefer it -- a Timex watch!" continues Manuel. "You will wear an Yves St.

Laurent three-piece suit and Gucci shoes..."

"Excuse me," interrupts Pancho, again. "But I am more comfortable in my blue jeans and sneakers."

"Very well -- blue jeans and sneakers, if you insist," snaps Manuel Labor, getting annoyed. "And you will ride to work in a Cadillac..."

"Excuse me," interrupts Pancho, "but I would rather use my bicycle."

Furious, Manuel jumps off the platform, strides through the crowd and grabs Pancho by the neck.

"Listen, you idiot!" hisses the ex-dictator. "When the revolution comes, you will do what you are bloody well told!"

Newton Hooton gets up one morning, walks into the bathroom, turns on the tap, but it does not work. So he calls out to his wife, Helen Hooton, in the bedroom, "Hey, honey, the water tap doesn't work!"

"Well, sweetie," calls back Helen, "you are the man in the house -- you fix it!"

"Hey, I'm no plumber," replies Newton.

Then he goes over to the clothes closet to get his suit, and the door handle comes off in his hand.

"Hey, Helen," shouts Newton, "the closet door handle is broken!"

"Well, darling, you are the man in the house," shouts back Helen, "You fix it!"

"Hey, I'm no carpenter!" snaps Newton, and he goes downstairs for his breakfast. But when he switches on the light in the kitchen, the bulb pops.

"Hey, honey," shouts out Newton. "The light is busted!"

"Well, sugar-pie," calls back Helen, "why don't you fix it?"

"Hey, I'm no electrician," shouts back Newton, and he goes off to work.

That evening, Newton comes home and sees a new light bulb in the kitchen. He goes upstairs, and the door handle on the closet is fixed. Then he goes into the bathroom, and the water tap works.

"Hey, honey," shouts out Newton. "Who fixed all these broken things in the house?"

"Well, baby-cakes," calls back Helen, "Burton Belch from next door must have heard us shouting this morning, so he came over and offered to fix everything."

"That's great, honey," shouts Newton. "But what did he want in payment?"

"Well dearie," replies Helen, "he said I could either screw him or bake him a cake."

"Hey, honey," shouts Newton, "that is nice -- what kind of cake did you bake him?"

"Hey, poopsie," calls out Helen, "I'm no baker!"

Little Ernie is doing his homework one evening and has a problem.

"Dad," he says, "what is the difference between 'anger' and 'exasperation'?"

"Well, son," says his father, "I will give you a practical demonstration."

His dad then goes to the phone and dials a random number.

"Hello," comes a voice at the other end.

"Hello," says Ernie's father. "Is Melvin there?"

"There is no one called Melvin here!" comes the reply. "Why don't you learn to look up numbers before you dial them?"

"You see?" says Ernie's father.

"That man was not at all happy with our call. But watch this!"

He then dials the same number again, and says, "Hello, is Melvin there?"

"Now look here!" comes the angry reply. "I told you there is no Melvin here! You have got a lot of nerve calling again!" And then he slams down the receiver.

"Did you hear that?" asks Ernie's father. "That was anger. Now, I will show you what exasperation is!"

He picks up the phone and dials the same number again, and when a violent voice shouts, "HELLO!" Ernie's father says, "Hello! This is Melvin. Have there been any calls for me?"

Nivedano (Gibberish) Nivedano Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen. This is the right moment to look inwards.

Gather your whole life energy and rush towards your center with total consciousness and with an urgency as if this is going to be the last moment of your life on the earth. Without this urgency, nobody has ever reached to his center.

Faster and faster, deeper and deeper....

As you come closer to your center, a great silence descends over you. A little closer and flowers of peace start springing up all around you.

A little more close and you start feeling the Zen Wind -- a cool breeze.

Still closer and you start feeling the Zen Fire -- it is not the fire that you have known. It is the very energy arising from your center of being. These flames are cool, they are like lotus petals.

Reaching to the center, you suddenly realize you are no more but buddha is.

The buddha simply means pure witnessing. The buddha is only a symbol of your eternal existence.

Just remember one word -- witnessing.

This simple word is the whole of religion, is the whole of spirituality, is the whole of all that is known as truth, as beauty, as good, as godliness.

Just witness -- you are not the body. Witness you are not the mind, witness that you are only a witness, just a pure consciousness.

This is your buddha.

This is your very nature.

This is your intrinsic potential.

A great ecstasy will arise. You will feel almost drunk, but remain a witness.

To make the witnessing more clear, and deeper...

Nivedano Relax, let go. Just remember one thing -- forget everything else -- you are only a witness and nothing else.

The moment you are only a witness you are a buddha, and your consciousness starts melting and merging into the cosmos.

Gautam the Buddha Auditorium at this moment is turning into an ocean of consciousness.

Ten thousand buddhas have melted into one pure, oceanic consciousness.

The evening was beautiful on its own, but your entering the innermost mystery of being has made it a great splendor, a miracle, a magical evening. At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.

Collect all the experience that is happening at the center. Collect all the flowers, the fragrances of the beyond, the flames of Zen Fire -- they are so cool, so serene.

Gather the Zen Wind which is passing through you like a song, like a melody, and persuade the buddha to come along with you.

Every day he is coming closer and closer, inch by inch. Your life is going through a transformation, a breakthrough. You will never be the same again. The past is dropping and you are settling into the herenow.

The buddha is your nature.

It has remained hidden at the deepest center of your being because you never called it, you never welcomed it.

It does not come without invitation.

Invite him, request him; he will come.

The first step of meditation is, buddha comes behind you like a shadow.

The second step: the buddha is in front of you, and you become the shadow.

And the third step: you merge into the buddha. There is no shadow anymore -- only pure awareness, so transparent that it cannot create a shadow.

That day when it happens to you will be the most fortunate, the most blessed day. You will become the awakened one.

We have to spread this Zen Fire and this Zen Wind around the globe. This is the only hope for humanity.

Now Nivedano...

Come back, but come as a buddha with great peace, silence, grace. And sit for a few moments just to recollect where you have been, which space you have touched, what golden path you have traveled. And look who is standing behind you, just behind your consciousness.

A new guest -- the buddha.

Every day you are gaining more and more.

Your victory is absolutely guaranteed, because you are not struggling against anyone; you are simply trying to bring your own nature to its ultimate blossoming.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind