I am a spiritual terrorist

Friends,

Question 1:

One sannyasin has asked:

A vast difference -- the same difference that there is between me and Comrade Gorbachev. I am a spiritual communist, and Comrade Gorbachev is a socialist.

Socialism is a compromise, a compromise with capitalism. Communism is a totally revolutionary step. The closer I have been looking at Gorbachev and his statements, the sadder I am feeling. He is not a revolutionary; he is a reactionary, he is going backwards.

Just today Anando has given me a small summary of his books. Just a few sentences I heard, and I told her, "Close it" -- because he is talking about bringing private property back into the Soviet Union, and with private property capitalism comes in. He is saying that the communist motto was, "Each according to his need" -- and what is his motto?

"Each according to his work."

But that's exactly the motto of capitalism: each according to his work. Obviously, if you give to people according to their work and efficiency, then there will be richer people and there will be poorer people. The classes will come back again.

As I have told you again and again, physically, people are not equal. You can give equal opportunity to all, but still a Picasso will be a Picasso, all people are not going to become Picassos. A Henry Ford will be a Henry Ford; to create wealth is an art in itself, and everybody cannot be a Henry Ford.

Now if Gorbachev introduces the idea of each according to his work and his efficiency...

his intentions are absolutely good. I don't have even a small doubt about his good intentions for his people, for his land, but he is not a buddha. He is an unconscious man as everybody else is. The unconscious man does not know that his intentions may be good but the results may go wrong.

I am in absolute favor of communism because I think it is the foundation for spiritual growth. But I am against socialism. It is a compromise with capitalism, and when you compromise with capitalism, capitalism will drown you.

It seems Gorbachev has become too much interested in America -- the high-rise buildings, miles and miles of cars -- the richness has overwhelmed his mind. He has been reported to have said, "What should I call my revolution?" It is not a revolution in the first place, it is anti-revolutionary. And then he thought about it, and said, "Perhaps I should call it socialist capitalism, or capitalist socialism." In both ways, capitalism will be the victor and communism will be the defeated. He has already stopped talking about communism, he is talking about socialism.

Socialism I have been against always, because it is an effort to keep the capitalist incentive for people to work. What is the capitalist incentive for people? Private property:

my house, my car, my wife, my children. That is the incentive, and it creates competition.

My house should be better than your house. My wife should be more beautiful than your wife. My children should be educated better than your children. It starts competition, it starts ambition. Of course, people start working harder. That's what Gorbachev is thinking, that people are not working as hard in the Soviet Union as they are working in every capitalist country.

It is true, because Karl Marx is not a complete communist. He has no idea that man is not just an economic animal; he has a mind and he has a soul. He thought, absolutely wrongly, that once the financial conditions change, once the society changes its structure, consciousness will change also. That is wrong. It is taking things from the wrong end.

If consciousness changes, then certainly the social structure will change, because the social structure is just a projection of man's mind. But Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, or Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, have no idea what the mind is. The question of going beyond the mind does not arise.

They worked hard for seventy years to bring communism in Russia, but slowly slowly...

In the beginning there was some incentive, because the poor were thinking they would become rich, that everybody would be equal. But slowly slowly it was found that as all the property was taken from the individuals it was a great struggle. In that struggle one million people were killed. By not changing the mind first, this was the outcome. People's minds have lived for centuries, thousands of years, with the idea of private property.

Their only incentive is that if it is going to help their ego, if it is going to help them rise higher than others, only then they are going to work hard.

It is said about Henry Ford -- he was a poor man as far as his birth is concerned, but he became one of the richest men in the world -- it is said that he used to come to his office at eight o'clock, early in the morning. The peon used to come at ten o'clock to open the doors and clean the office. The clerks used to come at eleven o'clock, the manager used to come at twelve o'clock. And the manager would leave by two o'clock, the clerks would leave at five o'clock. The peon would leave at six o'clock, and Henry Ford? -- there was no time for him. Sometimes eight o'clock in the night, sometimes nine o'clock, sometimes ten o'clock. A great incentive to work hard, because he was such an ambitious man and he wanted to be the richest man in the world. And he succeeded.

In Russia that incentive has disappeared. As the years went on, people saw that instead of becoming rich they were as poor as ever. Because Russia was not a capitalist country, there was no capital to be distributed -- only poverty to be distributed. There were a few landlords, and their property was taken. Their property was the land, but that land was not given to the poor because of the communist ideology. Everything had to be centralized; nobody had anything private.

People saw that their poverty was the same, and they could not adjust to the new phase.

Their minds were hankering to be better than others, to be more successful, to be richer - - and that possibility had disappeared. Now what is the point of working hard? Now there were vast lands belonging to the state, running for miles on. It was a beautiful phenomenon... not small patches, pieces of land which go on being divided every generation into even smaller pieces.

You can see it in India. If the father has five acres and five sons, each son will have one acre of land. And then the son will have his own sons. Then that one acre of land will be divided again into as many sons as he has. Such small patches of land that they cannot nourish you, and you cannot use tractors, new technology on those small patches of land.

You don't have the means; neither is the land big enough to use bigger machines, more chemicals. The poor go on becoming poorer.

Private property will certainly bring an incentive. People will work hard. But all people are not equal as far as working hard is concerned. Those who are able to work hard will become richer, and those who are not able to work that hard will become even poorer than they are now.

This was the whole program to dissolve the classes, and Gorbachev is bringing those classes back. Soon... just now he has dropped the word 'communism'; he is no longer mentioning the word 'communism' at all. He is talking about socialism, and has started talking about whether to call it "capitalist socialism" or "socialist capitalism." Whatever you call it, it is capitalism! Socialism is just a word to deceive the masses.

Gorbachev is going against all the basic principles of communism. First he is talking about patriotism -- communism is absolutely against nations and patriotism. Its whole idea is to dissolve all nations into one humanity; it was from its very foundation an international movement. Now Gorbachev is talking about patriotism, nationalism.

He is also talking about decentralization, which is against the foundation of all communism. Decentralization is an idea of Gandhism. Soon Gorbachev will be having, just like Morarji Desai, a spinning wheel! Decentralization means you cannot use modern technology; modern technology can be used only in a centralized world where the fields are miles and miles long. But if you decentralize and divide the land back again to the same people from whom it has been taken... They were poor then and they will be poor again, far poorer than they are now.

But he is too much infatuated by America. I want him to remember: American capitalism has a three-hundred-year-old life. It will take at least three hundred years for you to have the same pollution as L.A., the same high-rise buildings, one hundred stories, one hundred twenty stories high. You cannot do it just like a miracle. And still, America has three million beggars. At least the Soviet Union has no beggars. It is not as rich as America, but it is not as poor as India. Dividing the land, distributing property to individual hands, will not make it America; it will make it India.

And because he has opened the doors, it will be too late now for him to close them.

Journalists are there; each nook and corner of the Soviet Union is being filmed, televised, and they are bringing out all those things which the closed doors were hiding. Twenty percent of the people in the Soviet Union are living below the minimum nourishment level. Now he has to go against all the statistics that have been given to the world by the Soviet leaders up to now.

He is against vodka. He himself does not drink. That is the trouble of people who don't drink: they become saints. It is very difficult to not drink without becoming a saint. Then they want everybody to stop drinking. Now he is proposing prohibition of all alcohol.

That has been the poor Russian's only relaxation, only enjoyment, only entertainment -- vodka. Otherwise he has no beautiful car, no house, nowhere to go, no money... it was vodka that was keeping him alive! At least in the evening he can drink, and with his friends he can dance and rejoice. Even that is being taken away.

I have heard that the youth of the Soviet Union are absolutely against prohibition. They should be against it, because prohibition has never succeeded anywhere in the world. It seems people never learn.

In India we have tried twice -- and India must be the best place to try prohibition -- but both times we have failed. It was Morarji Desai, both times, who was responsible for prohibition: once when he was the deputy prime minister under Indira Gandhi. Then he enforced prohibition, and prohibition killed thousands of Indians, because people started drinking spirit, people started making alcohol -- homemade, and they don't know how to make it! So hundreds and hundreds of people -- in Calcutta, in Patna, in Madras, everywhere -- were dying of poisoning.

It is an art to create a refined wine that gives you a little forgetfulness about your anxieties, gives you a little laughter, a little dance, a little music. There are connoisseurs....

I have heard about one connoisseur, one man who could, just by tasting the wine or any kind of alcoholic beverage, tell what trademark the wine is, and how old. Ten years old, twenty years old, thirty years? -- because the older the wine is, the better.

He used to go to pubs and he would put one hundred dollars on the table, and convince the owner: "Give me any alcohol and I will tell you the trademark, the country in which it was manufactured, and how old it is. If I fail, these hundred dollars are yours. If I succeed... put a hundred dollars by the side; both the notes will be mine."

And every pub owner thought that this would be an impossible job. He had so many kinds of alcohol -- how is this man going to manage? So he would give him a glass and the man would immediately say, "Thirty years old, a French wine," and a certain trademark. Amazed, the whole pub crowd would gather around, and he would take both the notes and say, "Do you want another try?"

The owner would say, "Okay, you put another hundred dollars." So he would put down one hundred dollars. The owner would again put one hundred dollars, give him another wine, and immediately, just by tasting it -- such a refined taste, such sensitivity -- he would tell everything about it.

Once it went on for ten times, and the owner was losing one hundred dollars every time.

He said, "My God! This man is unbelievable." Then suddenly a man came from the crowd and gave the man a cup. He took one sip, and he said, "My God! This is human urine!" And the man, who had gone behind the crowd again, asked, "But whose? Unless you tell whose, you are a loser! How old...?"

Intoxicating drugs are as ancient as man. No country has ever been able to prohibit them.

Alcohol has been prohibited by many countries, and they all failed finally because it turned out to be more dangerous. People were taking all kinds of things, and people were creating all kinds of things in the name of "medicine." But it was all illegal so there was no way to check on it and see whether it was the right stuff. Nobody knew its constituents. So it killed thousands of people in every country, wherever there was prohibition. And it attracted more people who had never been drinking before.

Prohibition always attracts. You prohibit anything, and just see: people who have never bothered about it will start searching for it, thinking that "There must be something in it; otherwise why is the government so interested in prohibiting it?"

Just try. Prohibit ice cream, and suddenly you will see the whole country becomes interested in ice cream -- people who have never bothered about it. And when there is such a great demand, there will be suppliers. And it will not be the right stuff, because ice cream can be made of blotting paper; just the blotting paper has to be soaked in water, mixed with milk, and you can have ice cream made out of blotting paper! It looks exactly like ice cream! Just prohibit it and people will find ways, and even those who were never interested will become interested.

Now Gorbachev wants to prohibit Russians from drinking alcohol. This is not revolution.

If you want people not to drink, you have to give them something higher that takes away their anxieties. They drink because they are tense, they drink because there is anxiety, they drink because they want to forget. They want to forget the wife, they want to forget the husband, they want to forget the small kids, they want to forget their business, they want to forget their financial troubles.

Unless you give them a higher consciousness which can solve these problems -- then there is no need to forget anything -- unless you give them such a deep alertness and awareness that they can see the root cause of their misery, and they don't want just to cover it with alcohol but want to cut it from the roots... Except meditation there is no way that intoxicant drugs can be prohibited.

Meditation is real spiritual alcohol! It takes you to such deep blissfulness... you don't have to forget your blissfulness. Do you want to forget your blissfulness? Alcohol only helps you to forget. Whether it is anxiety or ecstasy, whether it is tension or relaxation, it simply helps you to forget. Once you are blissful, happy, once you don't have any tensions, you will not drink because the drink will simply destroy your blissfulness, your joy, your dance, your song.

Give people some new spiritual awakening.

That is revolution.

This is not revolution, this is a very reactionary step. People are already sad, and you want them to become sadder. But what reason has he to prohibit alcohol? The reason is that he thinks that because of alcohol people don't work efficiently. He wants people to work efficiently, to work hard. The harder they work, the more they will need alcohol just to relax for the night! -- because in the morning again the torture begins.

If you take away the alcohol it will not help efficiency, it will not help people work more, it will simply make people more sad, more aloof, not interested in anything. It is not going to make the country richer, just sadder.

And creating the idea of patriotism is the foundation of fascism. Fascism lives on patriotism: you are Germans, you are born to rule over the world; you are Russians, you are the chosen people. But you will have to find God if you want to be chosen people -- and Gorbachev is allowing churches, the Ramakrishna Mission, the Hare Krishna movement. And other idiots will soon follow: snake charmers from India, Satya Sai Baba from India, making miracles, and all those miracles are nothing but street magic.

Magicians will be coming. Russia will soon become an ordinary capitalist country; it will lose its dignity and power.

One man in Germany has found a certain program which can transform the armies into only defensive forces, they will never attack on their own. And Gorbachev has sent his personal aides to learn the technique. I think he is naive. He does not know: if a person cannot attack, he cannot defend either, because in defense also he will have to attack.

How are you going to defend without attacking?

The oldest policy of all warmongers -- from Chanakya in India, three thousand years ago, to Machiavelli in Europe -- has been the same policy. Chanakya and Machiavelli -- three thousand years' difference, but the policy is the same: the best way to defend is to attack. Once you are on the defensive, you have already lost half the battle, and particularly in a time when the war is not going to be a slow war with small weapons.

When the war is going to be nuclear, it is only a question of ten minutes and the whole world will be finished. Whoever attacks, perhaps may survive. If you are on the defensive there is no chance to survive.

My own understanding is, America is playing a great role behind the whole scene. It is a great conspiracy of American politicians, but very indirect: they are influencing Gorbachev towards a suicidal step for communism.

I am absolutely in support if the country is opened for chosen persons who will help the country become a spiritual land, who will help the country with new economic plans, a new financial structure. But the churches and the Witnesses of Jehovah are not going to change the economic status of the country. They are going to destroy whatever has been achieved in seventy years.

Mahatma Gandhi was in favor of decentralization -- but even his own followers saw the point, that it is good to make his statues, it is good to call him the "Father of the land"; it is good to put his pictures everywhere, in all the government offices, but don't listen to him. Because if you listen to him, he will take you back to the age, thousands of years back, when the spinning wheel was invented.

Gandhi wanted the spinning wheel to be the last word in technology: after the spinning wheel, whatever has been invented should be destroyed. The bullock cart should be the only vehicle in the world and the spinning wheel the only technology. He was in favor of decentralization.

Of course, if you decentralize you cannot have new technology; it needs centralization, and particularly in a country which is communist. In a capitalist country the state and the capitalists are separate. The capitalists have individual freedom to exploit people, although they are supported by the government from the back door, because they support the politicians in their elections. So it is a combination, but on the surface it seems to be separate.

The capitalist has no power and the politician has no money, so they go together well.

But at least the capitalist has no power, so he cannot harass people; and the politician depends on votes, so he has also to be aware not to harass people too much; otherwise they won't give him their votes.

In a communist country the state is both: it is the only capitalist -- it owns everything in the country -- and it has all the power. And because there is only one party, the communist party, there is no question of any voting. Elections happen, but they are just mock elections. Only the communist party is there -- who is going to fight? And anybody who stands against the communist candidate will disappear in the middle of the night; it will not be known where that man has gone. So nobody else has been standing for election. One person stands and the whole population is told to vote for him; it is not a question of choice. In a communist country everything is centralized. But if communism knows how to transform people's minds, how to make them clear of the past of private ownership, of possessiveness, how to make them more meditative and silent so that their actions come out of their silence and peace and love and compassion, then communism becomes a spiritual revolution.

Gorbachev is calling what he is doing a revolution. I say, absolutely no! If you want to be really a revolutionary, the only way is bring spiritualism to your country, not capitalism.

That is going backwards in time, and destroying the whole effort of seventy years, and destroying the whole sacrifice of millions of people who died.

I am a spiritual communist -- a spiritual terrorist! And I don't care either for George Bush or Comrade Gorbachev. His books have come into my hand just today -- they are ugly. He is sabotaging his own people! And he has taken all the power into his hands, so there is no possibility....

But he is not aware that even presidents can be shot dead, and if he is trying to make the Soviet Union another America, remember: twenty percent of the presidents of America have been shot dead!

What Gorbachev is doing is going against the whole revolution, and not only in the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union turns into a country of capitalism it will not only destroy itself, its dignity and power, it will destroy other small communist countries which are dependent on it. He has already started cutting support to other small countries.

He has stopped supporting Cuba. Now Cuba is so small -- once the Soviet Union is not supporting it, America is going to take it over within a minute.

What will happen to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia? And China is already on the way towards being capitalist again, but it has not been talked about much because the communist leaders of China are very silent. They are not doing it in the cities, in big towns, but eighty percent of China is in the villages; they have already been for two years distributing land to private owners in the villages. But they have not been making much fuss about it. They know that they are betraying the communist revolution and coming closer and closer to America.

When Richard Nixon was found guilty of immense crimes against his own people and had to lose his presidentship... that was the only way for him to be forgiven. The president has the power to forgive crimes, so his vice-president, Ford -- as Nixon retired from the presidency, Ford became the president, and this was the mutual understanding, that once Ford becomes the president he will immediately forgive Nixon. So Nixon had not to face the Supreme Court, he had not to face any court, and he had not to face the Senate or the people.

The first man to invite Richard Nixon, after he was no longer the president, was Mao Zedong of China. He sent his own plane to take Nixon to China, and what he said to him is worthy of being remembered. He said, "What kind of people are yours? Just small things, listening and taping other people's phone calls -- this is not a crime. Every politician does it. I do it!" Mao Zedong said it clearly: "Every politician has to do it out of necessity, to be alert about where enmity is growing, from the where attacks can come.

Because once you are in power, you are always in danger."

Now nobody is going to kill Richard Nixon. You don't know where he is, you never see his name in the newspapers. You will see some time, when he dies, a small note on the fourth page, that "The ex-president of America, Richard Nixon, is dead" -- finished. And he was in the headlines for years.

Mao was surprised: "What kind of people are Americans? They forced out their own president? If I was in your place, I would have killed the whole country!" But once Mao died his enemies, whom he had been keeping out of power, came into power. They immediately killed Mao's wife, who was a very powerful influence on Mao. In fact, she was behind Mao, ruling the country. Mao was getting old; she was young. She was a film actress. There was great age difference between her and Mao. Mao was getting senile, and thirty years of revolution can destroy anybody's mind. Just fighting and fighting and fighting, and escaping and fighting.... In his old age he married this film actress. And the film actress was not interested in Mao, certainly, because neither was he beautiful, nor was he young. No child was born out of the marriage, so you can understand where he stood.

The only reason for this woman to marry Mao -- a very beautiful woman -- was simply to have power. She was dictating in the name of Mao -- she was the real dictator. And she threw all the people out of the Communist Party, out of their powerful positions, who she thought were against Mao, or who she thought were against her.

When Mao died those people returned to power, and the first thing they did was to hang the woman and the four other people who were her supporters. Then many others were hanged, and the whole group around Mao was completely erased.

Now, these people have no idea exactly what communism is. And seeing that America is flourishing, they started distributing the land to private ownership. The next step will be in the cities, in the towns: distribute everything to individual owners, because that brings incentive. People start struggling hard for success, out of ambition. That is the old mind.

Unless that old mind is completely transformed, and people start feeling for the whole humanity... Then they work out of love, not out of ambition. And I have actual experience of it -- you are here. In the American commune people were working not out of any ambition but just out of love, out of joy, the very joy of creating a new kind of commune that the world has never known. But their foundation was meditation.

What Russia needs is not capitalism. Comrade Gorbachev, you should not deceive your people by calling it "socialist capitalism" -- that is a contradiction in terms. And it is not going to help, it is going just to help America destroy you without any war -- and not only destroy you, but all the communist countries that are dependent on you and your support. The great utopian experiment evaporates just because of one man's misunderstanding.

And if Gorbachev wants his armies not to attack, he should be aware: they will not be able to defend either. These are two sides of one coin. That man in Germany, if he is given the job, must be an agent of America. America has not sent anybody to that man to learn the art of how not to attack but only to defend. Gorbachev was the first, immediately sending people to him.

I have asked German sannyasins to immediately send me the literature about what kind of programming that man is suggesting. It cannot be anything else but post-hypnotic suggestion. You can suggest to a person in deep hypnosis that, "You will never attack anybody, but if somebody attacks you, you can defend yourself." Just a few sessions to the whole army and they will become absolutely immobile when the question of attack comes.

I have been working on every dimension of your mind and no-mind. I was working on a young student of mine with post-hypnotic suggestions. I hypnotized him.... Hypnosis is a simple matter: you just look at something very bright that dazzles your eyes. These lights of Niskriya's are enough -- you just look at them, and without blinking your eyes... hold your eyes so they do not blink, whatever happens.

The hypnotist is sitting by your side, telling you, "Hold on, don't close your eyes." And when he sees... and it is very clear when a person is going to close his eyes, and has come to his limit. Just within three minutes, his face starts relaxing and you can see it; it is not something that you have to infer. You can see exactly that the man is feeling sleepy, the face is relaxing.

Then you start suggesting to him, "Your eyes are feeling very heavy. Although you are trying your best, you will not be able to succeed any longer, they are closing, they are closing, they are closing"... in a very sleepy voice.

And the person is told beforehand that he has to fight: at the last moment when it becomes impossible, when he cannot do anything, when in spite of him the eyes close, and what can he do...? There comes a moment that in spite of him, he feels his eyes are closing and he cannot do anything about it anymore. And the person is giving instructions: "Your eyes are becoming heavy, you are feeling very sleepy. You will fall into a deep sleep." Just within five minutes the person is snoring.

And while you are going deeper into sleep... Hypnosis means sleep. The very root of the word simply means sleep, nothing else; deliberate sleep, created sleep. But the created sleep goes much deeper than your natural sleep.

And the medium, the person who is being hypnotized, is told, "You will hear only my voice and nothing else. No other sound will reach to you, only my voice." And that actually happens. All his senses become relaxed and closed; he hears nobody. If you shout his name he will not hear, but if the hypnotist just whispers he will hear. That is the only opening left, a very narrow opening; everything else is closed.

That is the time when you can give any post-hypnotic suggestion. Post-hypnotic suggestion means that it will be applicable when you are out of hypnosis. For example, I told this boy, "The pillow you are sleeping on right now -- I am making on the pillow a cross with red ink. And tomorrow, exactly at eleven o'clock, you will kiss that cross."

This is a post-hypnotic suggestion for tomorrow, when he will not be in hypnosis, but it has entered into his unconscious.

The next day, nearabout fifteen minutes before eleven, he became fidgety -- not knowing why. I asked, "What is the problem? Why do you look so tense?"

He said, "I don't know, but something seems to be happening inside me."

I said, "Nothing is happening." I took his pillow -- he watched -- and I put the pillow in my suitcase and locked it. He became more and more troubled. Exactly as it was coming to be eleven, he looked at the clock and he asked me, "Please give me the key."

I said, "Why?"

He said, "I want my pillow back."

I said, "What are you going to do with it at eleven o'clock? In the night I will give it to you."

He said, "No! Just give me the key!"

I gave him the key, he opened the suitcase. It was exactly eleven; the clock was striking the hour of eleven. He pulled out the pillow, hugged it as if it was his girlfriend, and started kissing exactly the point where I had marked with red ink.

I said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "I don't know! I am feeling absolutely insane. This is a pillow, I know -- why I am hugging it I don't know. And why am I kissing it? I have never kissed any pillow in my whole life!"

But such romance! You should have seen his face, so romantic. He had fallen in love, just as you fall in love.

Do you think you fall in love in a different way? It is biological hypnosis! And do you think you are kissing something else than a pillow? What are you kissing, have you ever thought about it? It is just a biological insistence from inside. The same insistence can be created by hypnosis.

But it is a dangerous program. If Gorbachev agrees to use that man, whole armies can be hypnotized without any trouble. And armies are the most easily hypnotized because they are obedient to orders. So when the hypnotist orders, they will follow more easily than anybody else, because they have spent their whole life turning left, turning right, going backwards, going forwards, nobody asking why. They are trained for obedience; they are more vulnerable to hypnosis than anybody else in the world. And you can just tell them that they will never attack.

But this is a dangerous policy: a person who cannot attack cannot defend either. And that is what he is saying, that "I will simply take away the idea of attacking and leave the defensive idea." But in defense also you have to attack! They will be simply paralyzed, they will not know what to do.

And in the conditions we are living in... It is a nuclear age. If America attacks the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union is finished, because it is only a question of ten minutes. If the Soviet soldiers are not able to attack they will not be able to defend either; they will be in a confusion about what to do. They will feel paralyzed. And because it is a question of a very small amount of time, ten minutes, the whole country can be blasted, finished.

With good intentions, Gorbachev is going in a wrong direction, suicidal. And America is trying to puff up his ego as much as possible so that whatever he is doing he should go on doing. Bring all kinds of snake charmers, street magicians, bishops, cardinals, the pope.

Soon the Shankaracharya of Puri, Mohammedan priests, Ayatollah Khomeini, will be visiting the Soviet Union. This one man can destroy a great hope for the whole of humanity.

I am saying these words just to make him aware. He has all the powers at this moment.

He can transform the the Soviet Union into a spiritual country. And out of meditation creativity arises; out of love people will work. Not out of ambition -- that is the old strategy. Not out of possessiveness -- that is falling back into the dark ages again.

I know the Soviet Union is not as rich as America, but there is no need to be so rich. Just bring about a comfortable existence: and bring meditativeness to people; then they will work. But this work will be a work of dedication, a work dedicated to the ultimate revolution which will involve the whole humanity.

He's talking of patriotism -- which is a disease. All wars have come out of patriotism, nationalism. And soon he is bound to allow foreign money to be invested in the Soviet Union, on the condition -- this is my prediction -- on the condition that foreign money will not be nationalized, that the foreign money will be available to the outside owners and they can take it back any time they want. This is the only way left for him to make the social economy of the Soviet Union rise higher.

But this will create the capitalist class again, and the laborers, the proletariat.

Without knowing, Gorbachev is working against Marx, against Engels, against Lenin -- against all the people who have worked so hard to create a new kind of social structure, but they were missing on one point. That point was spirituality. Just add spirituality to the Soviet Union and it will have the most joyous, most loving, most compassionate people in the world.

You have seen the Soviet crew which was here from Soviet television. There have been all kinds of television crews, all kinds of journalists from all over the world, but it is only the Soviet crew who went with tears in their eyes. They loved you; they loved your commune so much, so deeply. They have gone with the promise that when they have their holidays for ten days in June, they are not going anywhere else. They are going to come here for ten days to live in the commune as sannyasins, meditating, doing groups.

You can see the difference. When the American journalist comes, he starts looking immediately to find something sensational. If he cannot find it, he creates and invents it, because America is interested only in sensationalism. These people behaved in a totally different way. This was for the first time that a Russian crew has come. When you were doing your meditations, dancing, they forgot all about photographing. They dropped their cameras and started dancing! They loved the sannyasins.

Their questions were absolutely non-sensational. Significant, meaningful, but not sensational -- utterly concerned with human welfare. And Anando told me that they had tears in their eyes when they left the gate; they did not want to go. They wanted to stay for the whole series, but their office from Delhi called them, saying, "You come back, there are other assignments."

They will be back in June for ten days, to have more experience of what you have. They want to taste it. They want to be insiders, not outsiders.

And this is the state of the whole Soviet Union: the people have become like children. No church, no programming, no God, no prayer -- they have become so innocent that meditation will go deep down in them, faster than in any other country.

Question 2:

The second question, which is connected:

Zorba is certainly there. But if vodka is denied to the Zorba, that will be a disaster!

I am absolutely against Gorbachev's idea of prohibition. Vodka is every Russian's birthright! That is all they have. Don't take away their dance and their joy unless you can provide something better. That's my very simple arithmetic: don't take anything from anybody unless you can give something better in its place.

And I don't know that Gorbachev has anything better to offer. He himself does not know anything better.

Rather than sending those people to Germany to learn the art of how not to attack, he should come here, and send his people here. I will teach them how to dance, how to love.

And if there is a need to attack you should be the first, not the second! You have the tremendous responsibility of protecting a great experiment that has never been done before.

Yes, it is true: they are less conditioned, simpler people; hence they can more easily enter into the world of no-mind. The Zorba is there; I can introduce the Buddha also. But Gorbachev has no idea of the Buddha. His eyes are fixed on America and American money, and American capitalism's success. He is not looking eastward towards Zen, which is the only solution for the Soviet Union to protect communism and its dignity, and to spread communism all over the world.

Zorba has to come first; Buddha will come once Zorba becomes established. I can take away the vodka because I can give the Buddha. Who cares about vodka when you have the Buddha in you?

But Gorbachev seems to be on a power trip, utterly dangerous. A single man's ego has to be fulfilled by destroying a valuable, immensely valuable experiment! And once the Soviet Union fails, is scattered, it will take centuries for humanity to again take the risk of creating communism. Once a thing fails people lose their hope; it takes centuries for them to forget and begin anew. So it is not only a question for today, it is a question for future generations too.

And my concern is absolutely impartial. I have been interested in communism from my very childhood. The Soviet crew has been to my library, and they were amazed to see the communist literature there -- perhaps there is no book that is missing from my library.

And they were amazed to see that I have signed and dated each book before 1950. I was absolutely concerned to know about communism, everything. For three years, 1948, not read anything after 1950 about communism, for or against.

It is very strange... I go on forgetting small things. I cannot count up to five -- after the third finger I start hesitating, whether it is fourth or third. But in these forty years I have not forgotten a single name of the communist revolutionaries. Small details are so vivid before me, because that was my first entry into the intellectual world. It got deeply rooted in me. But I never became a member of a communist party, because I could see something was missing.

It is a grand plan for humanity, but something central is missing: it has no soul, it is a corpse.

Because nothing new was happening, I stopped reading. And nothing new has happened since then, except Gorbachev. So I am talking about Gorbachev.

First I was deeply interested in communism, but finding that it is a corpse I became interested in anarchism -- that was also a Russian phenomenon -- Prince Kropotkin, Bakunin, Leo Tolstoy. All three were anarchists: no state, no government in the world.

But I saw the point that they have a beautiful dream but with this criminal humanity, with this stupid mass, if there is no government and no court and no police there will be simply chaos, not anarchism.

I have been always very scientific in my approach, either outside or inside. Communism can be the base. Then spiritualism has to be its growth, to provide what is missing. Once a society is given equal opportunity -- to be unequal, to be unique -- and once that society becomes interested in meditation and spiritual growth, then there is a possibility of anarchism. That will be the very final stage, when there is nobody who is interested in committing crime. Only then can the state be removed, not before it. Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Leo Tolstoy are perfectly right, but not relevant now. First communism has to be aided by spirituality.

Once spirituality gains ground in your very being, crime becomes impossible. To do anything wrong becomes impossible. Obviously, the state will wither away. When there is nobody committing any crime, how long are you going to keep your courts empty and judges sitting there? Soon you will feel that it is better that these judges go into the fields and work. How long are you going to keep unnecessary policemen standing around?

Armies, millions of people unnecessarily being fed, clothed -- and they are getting the best food, the best clothes, and they are not working at all. Every country is filled with millions of people in armies. They should be brought back to the world, to work.

But this is possible only if communism steps into spiritualism; then spiritualism can flower into anarchism. These are simple steps. But if communism disappears, then it becomes very difficult to transform the capitalist world towards spirituality. It is a difficult job. And anarchism becomes a very faraway, remote possibility -- may be, may not be.

Hence my support for communism: because I would love the world one day to have no nations, no religions, no boundaries, no policemen, no armies, no guns, no murderers.

Healthy people, spiritually loving, growing deeper and growing higher simultaneously, getting roots and getting wings together, simultaneously -- these will be the real superhuman beings, the new man I have been working for.

I see in the Soviet Union great possibilities, great potentialities. If Gorbachev does not go wrong, those opportunities can be transformed into a reality.

The sutra:

That is your consciousness, that is your buddha inside. You may be busy but there is someone, the witness, who is never busy. It has no business at all. It simply is, like a mirror.

When the mirror reflects you, do you think it is doing something? It is not doing anything. To mirror is its nature; it is simply there. It is just a coincidence that you happen to stand before it. Once you are gone the empty mirror will be there.

When Ungan said, "Although busy, there is something which is not busy," he was saying, "On the surface you can see me busy but inside I know someone who is just sitting silently, doing nothing. And that is more essential and more fundamental. This busy-ness will end soon."

-- one busy and one not busy.

Now he is no longer busy. He dropped the broom on the ground and sat silently and asked, "What moon is this?"

DOGO SILENTLY LEFT -- not knowing what to say now.

In a metaphorical way there are millions of moons. When the full moon arises in the night, in every small pond, in every river, in every ocean... millions of reflections, uncountable reflections. But they are only reflections, not realities. The moon is one -- reflections many, millions. The consciousness is one -- reflections many, millions.

As you move towards your consciousness, you are moving towards oneness. As you go back towards the circumference there are millions of moons, but they are only reflections.

Whatever you are doing is nothing more than a reflection. What you are is a reality, eternal reality. Only the eternal can be called the real. The momentary is so passing, it does not matter.

So when Ungan put the broom down on the ground and sat there and asked, "What moon is this?" Dogo could not understand.

They were brothers. Both finally became enlightened, but Ungan seems to have a deeper understanding. Even before his enlightenment, he is coming very close.

AT ANOTHER TIME, UNGAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "I CAME WITH INCENSE."

This is the world of Zen. You should not expect Socratic dialogues. There is nothing else in the world to compare with Zen, it is unique and a category in itself.

Ungan has asked, "Where are you from?" and the man does not answer the question.

THE MONK REPLIED, "I CAME WITH INCENSE."

The present moment. "What are you bothering about, from where I am coming and where I am going? Just look at my hand: I have come with incense." And incense also is symbolic. It is offered to the Buddha, the fragrance and the smoke of the incense continuously rising towards the blue sky and disappearing.

All these are very significant symbols. People have forgotten their symbology because people very quickly become ritualistic.

I have told you about a woman, a nun, who had a small golden Buddha. Now there are temples in Japan, in China -- and she was in China. One temple has ten thousand statues of Buddha -- unbelievable! The whole mountain has been carved; the mountain has disappeared, only Buddha's statues, statues upon statues, ten thousand Buddhas. And every temple has many Buddhas.

So this nun was always in trouble: "MY Buddha!" When she would worship in the morning... now the incense knows nothing about whose Buddha and whose incense...

sometimes it would start moving with the breeze to some other Buddha.

All the statues were of the same man, but such is the possessive mind: she wanted the incense to reach to HER Buddha. And her Buddha was very small -- it was pure gold -- and there were huge Buddhas standing, sitting, lying down, in all kinds of postures. The incense has no idea of possessiveness, and the wind has no idea. So the wind would come and the incense would go to this Buddha or that Buddha, and that woman was very angry.

"This is absolutely wrong. It is my incense and MY Buddha is not getting anything!"

So she devised a small technique: she cut a bamboo, hollow bamboo, and she put the hollow bamboo over the incense and the smoke which was going to other Buddhas. She put the other end of the bamboo to her golden Buddha's nose. But a disaster happened.

The golden Buddha's nose became black! So she went to the priest of the temple: "How to clean my Buddha's nose?"

He said, "How did it happen?" Then she told the whole story. The priest was a master. He laughed; he said, "Such is the human mind, so utterly retarded! All these Buddhas are just the reflection of one Buddha -- your Buddha included. So whosoever is getting the incense, Buddha is getting the incense. You should not have been so possessive. My Buddha, my incense! -- now your possessiveness has destroyed your Buddha's nose. I cannot help."

She was in tears. She said, "You are an old master, and you know everything. Some way to clean my Buddha's nose... and I don't want to scratch it, I don't want to destroy my beautiful Buddha."

He said, "This whole idea of 'MY Buddha, MY Buddha' is the cause of your Buddha's nose becoming black! Drop this idea! And leave your Buddha with me. Tomorrow morning you can take it away. The nose will be cleaned, but first drop this idea; otherwise it will happen again. What is the point? If you are going to use that hollow bamboo you will destroy your Buddha. Let the wind take the incense anywhere it takes it.

It always reaches to the one Buddha."

There are not two Buddhas; all are reflections.

The moon is one, reflected in millions of ponds, millions of rivers, oceans.

But reflections are reflections.

Our actions are nothing more than reflections, momentary; they go and come, the buddha remains. He is always there, the eternal presence.

THE MONK REPLIED, "I CAME WITH INCENSE."

He is saying, "I have come in search of a buddha. I came with incense, and you are asking nonsense questions." Ungan immediately understood.

UNGAN ASKED, "DID YOU SEE BUDDHA?"

If you have come with incense, that means you are looking for the buddha. Did you see the buddha?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "YES, I DID."

"WHERE DID YOU SEE HIM?" UNGAN ASKED.

THE MONK REPLIED, "I SAW HIM IN THE LOWER WORLD."

UNGAN SAID, "THE OLD BUDDHA! THE OLD BUDDHA!"

This is a very strange anecdote. The monk said, "I SAW HIM IN THE LOWER WORLD."

You have to understand the idea of the lower world....

Buddha said in his statements, "If there is a hell I will go there, because who will take care of the people in hell? Who will teach them the way to be out of hell and misery?

Until hell is emptied, I will remain there."

And the second story says, when he emptied hell completely of all the people, he reached the gate of heaven. There was great rejoicing and the doors were opened for him. There were roses on the road, and people were standing on both sides of the road leading to the place they had chosen for Buddha to live. But Buddha said, "I am not going to enter -- please close the doors. I will stand here till every living being has passed through. I have emptied hell, but the earth is full of unconscious people. Let them all pass, there is no hurry. I will stand here outside the gate." And the parable says, he is still standing there.

That will help you to understand the monk when he says, "I saw him in the lower world."

'Lower world' is the Buddhist way of saying hell. The upper world is heaven; in the middle is this earth. We are the middle world.

UNGAN SAID, "THE OLD BUDDHA! THE OLD BUDDHA! His compassion is so great, he must have entered hell."

He is immensely touched by the fact that Buddha has gone into hell. "The old Buddha, with his eternal compassion, can't resist the temptation to go into hell! He will suffer hellfire, that is not a problem, but he will empty hell."

So this statement -- "THE OLD BUDDHA! THE OLD BUDDHA!" -- is of great gratitude. He is remembering the old Gautam Buddha, his compassion, his love, his effort to transform the whole world into absolute awareness.

"Every living being has to become a buddha." That was his message -- not a Buddhist, but THE BUDDHA.

Buson wrote:

PLUM SCENT HALOING THE MOON.

The scent of the plum is reaching the moon, and creating a halo around the moon. Only meditators can experience such refined, beautiful experiences.

Plum scent reaching to the moon, haloing, making a halo around the moon. A tremendous, beautiful, vivid picture.

Sometimes you see the halo of the moon. When it goes behind a cloud, then you can see the halo. Inside you can see the moon and just around it, a little fainter but still beautiful, very beautiful, a round circle.

Buson must have arisen out of his meditation and seen the moon, and smelled the plum perfume.

Zen masters used to write their experiences immediately after meditation. And every Zen master was asked before his death to write one haiku to be remembered for centuries -- "This is your last word." So every Zen master has written before dying a small haiku which comprehends his whole experience of life. Before moving beyond life he leaves the last signature and the last message, compressed, of his whole life's experience.

It happened in one Zen master's life that the disciples forgot -- they were in such sadness -- to ask him to write.

So he died, it is said, and they took him out of his cottage and were preparing the funeral pyre. Then the master opened his eyes and he said, "Listen, you have forgotten one thing..." They were shocked! He said, "Bring the book. Otherwise what will the coming generations say? 'What kind of master died without giving any message?' Bring the book!"

The book was immediately brought. He wrote a small haiku, signed it, closed his eyes, and died again.

Now they were very cautious, they took their time. Somebody put his ear to the master's heart -- no sound, no beat. Somebody brought a mirror close to his nose -- maybe some small breath, then the mirror will show the vapor. But no vapor. They shook him -- no reaction, no response. Finally, they decided, "It seems he has died." And he laughed.

He said, "Now I am really dying. This time don't try to check. Because you were checking, I waited. Laughter is my last message -- write it down!" And he really died.

But he tricked them two times. So when I die, remember: Don't be in a hurry!

Question 3:

Maneesha's question:

Maneesha, communism is certainly a necessary step for a more humane society, but not socialism. You don't understand the difference between socialism and communism. Most people think they are synonymous.

Socialism is a cowardly compromise with capitalism. Communism is absolutely no compromise with capitalism, and no compromise with anything that constitutes capitalism.

Up to now the Soviet Union has been a communist country. Now Comrade Gorbachev is trying to bring it down to socialism. That is destroying its dignity; that is a defeat. I hope he understands before it is too late.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh... because I don't want to be too late!

(THE ASSEMBLY LAUGHS APPRECIATIVELY, REMEMBERING LAST NIGHTS' THREE AND A HALF HOUR DISCOURSE)

Dick Puller is the office playboy, and all the guys go to him for advice on how to score with women. One afternoon, Muffin Snuffler takes Dick aside, and asks him, "Tell me, Dick, how do you manage it? You are a married man but you have a different girlfriend every night. What is your secret?"

"It is simple," replies Dick Puller. "It is all in the approach. I will tell you how to do it.

Tonight, take the five o'clock train from Penn Central Station and get off at Trenton. At Trenton you will find dozens of women waiting for their husbands. And there are always some husbands who have to work late, so all you have to do is be charming and let nature take its course."

So Muffin catches the five o'clock train from Penn Station but dozes off in his seat. He wakes up with a start and finds that he has gone past Trenton and he has to get out at Westchester.

Muffin is about to catch a train to go back, when he sees a woman standing on the platform, looking very available.

Muffin casually walks over to her -- one thing leads to another and they end up in bed together at her place.

They are really beginning to enjoy themselves when the door swings open and Dick Puller comes in.

Dick takes one look at his wife in bed and shouts, "Dammit, Betty! So this is what you do when I work late! And as for you, Muffin, you idiot -- I told you to get off at Trenton!"

It is four o'clock on that fateful day on Calvary Hill. Jesus has been nailed up to the cross since lunchtime and is beginning to feel really hang-dog.

All of his disciples have deserted him, except one. Alone and standing right underneath the cross, in the hot baking sun, is Jesus' unknown thirteenth apostle, Reginald the homosexual. Reginald looks up at the nearly-naked Jesus on the cross, and whispers, "Jesus! Ah! Jesus!"

Jesus looks down and says, "What is it, Reggie?"

"My Lord!" replies Reginald, looking up at him. "From where I am standing, I have to say -- you are really well hung!"

Jack Jerk is watching as his wife, Jill, tries on her new "Betty Boobs" brand bra.

"What the hell did you buy that thing for?" asks Jack Jerk. "You have nothing to put into it!"

"Cool it, Jack!" snaps Jill. "Do I complain about you wearing underpants?"

Nivedano...

(Gibberish) Nivedano...

Be silent...

Close your eyes... and feel your bodies to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment for looking inwards.

Gather your life forces, and rush towards the center of your being -- with your total consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is going to be the last moment of your life.

Faster and faster...

Deeper and deeper...

As you come closer to your being, a great silence descends over you just like rain, very soft rain of silence, cool.

Closer... and you find flowers of peace blossoming all around you.

Still closer... and you see for the first time your original face. This is the buddha.

The buddha is everyone's original face, and the buddha simply means witnessing.

Witness: you are not the body.

Witness: you are not the mind.

Witness that you are only a witness and nothing else, and suddenly you are at the very center of your being.

A great ecstasy arises in you, a deep blissfulness is felt.

You disappear... just like incense smoke disappearing into the blue sky... only the buddha is left.

To make the witnessing deeper and clearer, Nivedano...

Relax.

Let go... but continue to witness. Continue to be a buddha.

This is your nature.

This is your ultimate, eternal existence.

At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.

The evening was beautiful on its own, but your meditation, your becoming a buddha, a witness, has added to the beauty of the evening tremendously. Now it is a miracle.

As your witnessing becomes more and more clear, you start melting like ice in the ocean.

Gautam the Buddha Auditorium is turning into an ocean of consciousness without waves, without any ripples, just a silent ocean.

Ten thousand buddhas were just reflections -- now there is only one buddha. Ten thousand reflections have disappeared into oneness, the ocean.

This is the authentic buddha.

When you become one with existence, the cosmos, you have entered the ultimate immortal existence.

Collect as much of the juices of life as possible. You have to bring them back with you.

Collect the fragrances of the beyond, the flowers that are showering on you, the silence, the ecstasy, the peace, the serenity.

And don't forget to persuade the buddha to come a little closer to your ordinary day-to- day existence.

These are the three steps:

First, buddha will become a shadow to you, always following behind you. Second step, you will become a shadow of buddha, always following him.

The third and final step, you will merge into the buddha -- a transparent consciousness, it does not make any shadow. The moment you merge into the buddha, only buddha remains: you are no more. That is the greatest, most blissful day of your life.

Nivedano...

Come back, but remember the grace of a buddha, the beauty, the silence, the serenity.

Sit down for a few moments just to remember where you have been, what has been the experience at the center of your being, what golden paths you have traveled on....

And feel the presence of buddha just behind you. He is almost touching you; every day he is coming closer and closer. Every day your life is becoming more and more graceful, more and more of a deeper understanding of the secrets of the cosmos, more and more mysterious. Soon you will find yourself one of the greatest mysteries in existence. That day will be the day of your awakening, of your enlightenment.

It is not far away.

It is only a question of bringing more intensity, more totality, more sense of urgency. And the Zen Fire will burn all that is false in you, and the Zen Wind will take it away from you. You will remain just pure gold.

This pure gold of your being has the face of the buddha.

To be a buddha is the only meaning, the only significance of life. Those who miss it have missed all. Those who have found it have found everything that is valuable in this existence.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind