My interest is in you

Friends,

First, a little bit of news.

The first failure of Comrade Gorbachev:

The central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has declared that Gorbachev's first act of reform, to eradicate alcoholism, has failed. The party declared that Gorbachev's radical changes have not yet been achieved; on the contrary, the sale of illicit liquor has grown, state liquor revenues have fallen, and the masses have been constantly complaining about long queues to buy vodka.

Second:

Over the past year Comrade Gorbachev has allowed the following symbols of capitalism to do business in Russia: Coca-Cola, MacDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Fast Food Pizza.

This is all junk that America wants to pour on the very innocent people of the Soviet Union.

Third:

Just today he has allowed the world's largest advertising agency, Saachi and Saachi, to begin advertising campaigns in Russia for western goods. Saachi's, who are advertising agents for Margaret Thatcher, said they would also like a contract "to polish Gorbachev's image, although he does not really need it at the moment."

On the one hand, he is saying that Russia's economy is failing, and on the other hand, he is giving contracts to advertising companies to advertise western goods in Russia. Do you see the contradiction?

The latest data about the economy of Russia is that twenty percent of the people are living below an adequate nourishment level. But in America, fourteen percent of the people are below this level -- the difference is only six percent. For just six percent, if communism has to be thrown out and American capitalism has to be brought in, it is a total tragedy. Six percent of the people can be helped without bringing American capitalism in.

There was no need to declare to the world that they are no longer making nuclear weapons. There was no need to tell the world that they are cutting their military budgets and armies. They should have done it silently, and raised the level of those six percent without any problem! It is so simple, but Gorbachev is going about things absolutely irrationally. He is throwing out the baby with the wash water!

His effort is absolutely against the Soviet Union, and this first failure of his policy will not be the only failure. This is the beginning of the end. All his policies are going to fail because all his policies are against basic fundamentals of communism. And one man cannot undo seventy years' sacrifice of millions of people who have created communism -- the first experiment in human history to bring a classless society into existence.

Now the questions....

Question 1:

The first question:

Communism simply means moving private property into the hands of the collective -- because private ownership of property creates classes, the oppressed and the oppressors.

Money brings more money, attracts more money; poverty attracts more poverty. And a man who sees all around him people having money, beautiful houses, cars, and he has not even food to eat... his dignity as a human being is destroyed. He starts feeling subhuman, inferior, unsuccessful, and to create this feeling in millions of people just for the sake of a few who will be rich is against the whole of humanity.

Communism brings dignity to everybody because all the properties, the land and everything, belong to the collective. Nobody can be richer than you and nobody can be poorer than you. Equality is equivalent to communism, and equal opportunity for everyone to blossom into whatsoever he has hidden in his potentiality.

Communism is only the first step of a great experiment. Once people are without inferiority complex, once religions are removed -- that is part of communism, that there is no god and the so-called religions are just the opium of the people. Once religions are removed, soon a tremendous vacuum will be felt by everybody, because these religions have been stuffing you with systems of belief which are all fiction. But they help you to feel that you are full.

I have come across poor aboriginals in Bastar, in the central provinces of India, who sometimes don't get even one meal in a day. And without food, sleep becomes absolutely difficult. The stomach is asking for food, goes into cramps, and you cannot sleep. I have seen with my own eyes, people just drinking water to fill the stomach, to deceive the stomach, and putting a brick on their bellies and binding it around themselves with a rope, so the stomach feels that it is not empty -- inside water, outside the brick. You can deceive the stomach by such false methods, but that is not going to give you nourishment.

So they are just skeletons.

Religions have been giving you false ideas, fictions, to console you.

Communism means removing all fictions from the human mind, giving it a good cleaning of all the past that has filled it with rubbish.

Marx's vision never reached beyond that, but my understanding and my vision is far more perfect. To me, communism is only the first stage -- not the last. And as communism succeeds, people will drop the inferiority complex -- which is needed by the priests, which is needed by the people who are driving humanity into different kinds of slavery.

And when there is no God, there is no guilt -- without guilt no organized religion can live. It is guilt that takes people to the churches, because they become afraid: they have committed sins, now they will suffer hellfire for eternity. So something has to be done to remove the guilt.

All religions provide fictions.

In India just now there has been a kumbha mela; it is going on in Allahabad. Millions of people -- perhaps this is the biggest fair in the world -- just go to the Ganges.... To take a dip in the Ganges means all your sins are taken by the Ganges and you come out absolutely clean. That does not mean that you will stop committing sins; that simply means you have found a very cheap method to get rid of your sins and guilt, so you can commit as many sins as you want! There is no problem, just a small journey to Allahabad, take a dip in the Ganges, and all your rapes and murders, and anything that you have committed, the Ganges takes away. This is the Hindu strategy to keep you feeling guilty.

And the priests are there, you cannot take the dip alone. The priest has to take you into the Ganges in a boat. And he will be reciting mantras, and then you take the dip, and you have to pay the priest. The priest is the agent of the God who does not exist.

In the Catholic religion, you have to go to the priest to confess your sins, and for just ten dollars and five "Hail Marys" your sins are erased. God has forgiven you.

I have always wondered that not a single Catholic theologian -- and they have great theologians, very intellectual -- has raised the question that when a man rapes a woman and God forgives him just because he has given ten dollars to the priest and done five "Hail Marys," is God absolutely unaware of the woman who has been raped? The criminal is forgiven -- and the victim? Not a single theologian of any religion has ever thought, "What about the victim who has suffered?"

A man kills someone and he goes to the priest and he is forgiven. He goes to the Ganges, gives some money to the priest, takes a dip, and he is forgiven. What about the murdered?

God does not seem to be just. He is in favor of the criminals and sinners. For them he is a father who forgives -- but what about the victims? There is not a single word in any scripture of the organized religions which takes note of the victims. God seems to be favorable to the sinners, to the criminals, but not favorable to the victims. He has no sympathy for the victims.

Just today I received a letter from a sannyasin who has been abused by her father in her childhood, sexually abused. And now she suffers continuously the nightmare that her father exploited her innocence. She did not know anything about sex, and her own father....

Now that father must have gone to the church and been forgiven by God. What about this girl, who is suffering even now? God has no consideration for this girl. Because the father has abused her, she has become afraid of sex, so she cannot fall in love. The image of the father comes in between. So she is suffering because of the father, she has nightmares about her father and all the abuse that he has done to her, and because of all that, she has become frightened of love. If anybody approaches her she will escape, so she will suffer more because she will never be nourished by love. Because her own father has destroyed her trust in love, her trust is completely finished. If the father cannot be relied upon, then on whom are you going to rely? But God has no consideration....

This God is an absolute fiction created by the priests. Communism dissolves these priests, dissolves organized religion, takes away all the opium that they have been giving to the people.

Marx was not aware that this was not going to be the complete phenomenon. I can see with more clarity than any Karl Marx or Lenin or Stalin.

Communism has created a vacuum.

You must be surprised, you must be continuously talking amongst yourselves; Amrito informed me that in the canteen it seems like the early days of the Soviet Union before the revolution, when all the young people were discussing about communism and revolution. The whole Soviet Union before the revolution was agog; everybody was talking about what this revolution is going to be -- "What is communism?" And there were anarchists like Prince Kropotkin and Bakunin, who were talking about a world without the state, without government, without any kind of domination, and all this was discussed.

For all these days you have been discussing -- only the Indians had disappeared. They have come back today, knowing that this is the last day. Such cowards -- and they think they are spiritual! And if any problem is going to happen, it is going to happen to me, not to them. They are just listeners, nobody is going to put them in jail, and they are not going to be shot, but they all disappeared. I have been watching. Already there are no more than half a dozen people who come from Poona, but they also disappeared, seeing the danger.

Communism creates a vacuum -- that is why I support it. My whole vision is that that vacuum can be only filled by meditation. And I am against Gorbachev because he is filling it with Coca-Cola, bringing the priests back, opening the churches. I have some fundamental reason to oppose him because he is opening the doors to all the rubbish that took the communists seventy years to finish.

Now is the time that meditation should be introduced in the Soviet Union. The door should be opened only to the people who are awakened, enlightened -- the buddhas -- because they can fill the vacuum, not with any fiction but with your own potential growing into the vacuum and blossoming into lotus flowers.

So communism is a first step. The second step is spiritualism, and the third step is anarchism. Anarchism is not possible unless people are really, authentically spiritual.

Prince Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Bakunin -- all were unaware of the fact that they were talking about the flowers but they had forgotten about the roots and the trunk. You cannot create flowers without roots, without a trunk.

Communism is just the roots, and the trunk will be meditation. And the flowers will be a world without any domination, without any interference with individual growth -- a world without states, a world without boundaries. Just a world consisting of individuals - - not organizations, not nations, not races.

These are the three steps, and I can see them clearly because I have no identification with any -- neither communism nor spiritualism nor anarchism. I am just a witness. I have no involvement with anybody. I am just a mirror who can reflect the whole situation as it is, and even the future as it can grow if the right nourishment is given.

So don't think that I am a communist. I don't identify with anything. Don't think that I am an anarchist. I don't identify with anything. Don't think that I am a spiritualist. I don't identify with anything.

I am just a pure awakened being, just a mirror who reflects -- who has no involvement, no commitment to anything.

I don't belong to any organization, I don't belong to any party, I don't belong to any 'ism'.

You have to understand clearly:

I simply see things because I have gone beyond thoughts. My no-mind is just a pure space in which I can see the actual growth of consciousness and how it should happen.

So communism, to me, is just a basic ground. It is the roots. Spirituality is going to be the trunk and the branches and the foliage. And then at the highest peak comes the absolute freedom from all kinds of dominations, oppressions, suppressions, from all priests, from all politicians.

You blossom like a buddha.

My only interest is to bring out your buddha as a fully-opened lotus in the early morning sun, with small dewdrops shining so beautifully that even real pearls cannot compete with them.

I am not a politician, but that does not mean that I am not interested in human welfare.

And I will say things which may hurt your prejudices. I want to destroy your prejudices completely. I want to create a vacuum. That vacuum is absolutely needed; otherwise you don't have space to grow your potential.

You are filled with religious rubbish, you are filled with political rubbish, you are filled with economic rubbish, all kinds of ideas that you have borrowed. You are not having your own insights -- that rubbish prevents it, it keeps you blind, it gives you a sense of fulfillment which is false.

So remember it. It will be very difficult for outsiders to understand me, almost impossible. Misunderstanding is the only possibility for me as far as the outside world is concerned. But at least you should not misunderstand me.

I have no interest in Stalin, and I have no interest in Gorbachev. My interest is in you!

And when I see that you are filled with a certain prejudice I have to bring that prejudice to the surface so you can see it. All kinds of moral, puritan programming -- I have to fight so many enemies that you are nursing within you! But my whole concern is to make you utterly empty.

So I am not preaching anything; I am not supporting anything. I don't have any doctrine, no philosophy, no cult, no creed. My whole effort is to clean your inside completely from all that the society, the education, the religion, the family, have forced into you. Unless you get rid of it you cannot grow in meditation. You cannot become a buddha.

Communism is a better opportunity than any other kind of social structure because it is negative, because it is without God, without heaven, without hell, without the idea of reincarnation. And it creates a certain equality of opportunity for man and woman.

I have told you just a few days ago that Gorbachev cannot succeed in prohibition. You cannot succeed in prohibition even in India, a hot country which does not need any alcohol. It is absolute nonsense in a country like the Soviet Union which is half the year covered with snow. Taking poor people's vodka, which keeps them warm, is an absolute impossibility! He started with a wrong policy. That shows he does not understand simple arithmetic. If he wanted to be successful he should have declared that nobody can drink his own urine. He would have been successful -- of course you are allowed to drink anybody else's, but not your own -- and he would have been hailed as a messiah! Only one person, Morarji Desai in India, would have felt a heart attack, but who cares about Morarji Desai? In fact, he needs a heart attack! That program would have successful immediately. The whole of the Soviet Union would have hailed Gorbachev as the greatest man of their history.

Just choose the right things, which are going to be a success. Gorbachev is choosing wrong things.

Now his second policy is that women should go backwards. No woman is going to go back to the kitchen. Women are professors, women are engineers, women are doctors.

They are pilots in the army, and they proved in the second world war that they could fight shoulder to shoulder with any man on every front. They were bombers, they were flying planes to bomb. Now you cannot force them back. It is as impossible as... once you have taken the toothpaste out of the tube, then try to force it back, and you will understand how unsuccessful Gorbachev is going to be. Just a small experiment you can do in your bathroom -- nobody will know about your failure....

Now these women who have lived as professors, doctors, and engineers and pilots and scientists and academicians -- you want them to go back to the kitchen? It is impossible!

The whole of womankind in the Soviet Union will oppose Gorbachev.

I have heard that his wife is very intelligent, is a law graduate just as he is a law graduate.

In fact, she should start a revolution against Gorbachev! She can understand the situation of women far better than Gorbachev.

And for what is he doing this? Again reducing women to a second-class category of citizens -- what is the reason? Just those six percent... If women are forced back into kitchens and imprisoned to take care of the babies and the husband, and their financial independence is destroyed, there will be more posts vacant for men to occupy. It is because of this small unemployment that is creating a certain undernourishment -- just to give men more opportunities, withdraw all women from the status that they have gained. Do you think he can succeed in it? A woman who has lived as a free individual, not dependent on her husband's bank account... Only in the Soviet Union do women have their own bank accounts, their own salaries, their own way of living. Only in the Soviet Union are women free to move. They have their own clubs, they have their own societies, they have everything they want.

All over the world the woman is immobile. She is completely crushed, and her birthright to freedom of movement has been taken from her. She can go only to the church -- that's why in churches and temples you will find only women.

Once I was addressing a meeting on the birthday of Krishna, and I was amazed: there were only women! It was a huge temple devoted to Krishna, and the speaker of the assembly in that state where the meeting was held was the inaugurator of the meeting.

And that's why I say these politicians are retarded.... He was the speaker and the chancellor of the university. And he was inaugurating the meeting, not even seeing that these women were sitting keeping their backs towards him because they were gossiping with each other and looking at each other's clothes and each other's ornaments. Who cares about Krishna? They have only this possibility, only this chance to meet with other women.

There must have been at least twenty thousand people, maybe one thousand men and nineteen thousand women. And they were grouped in separate small groups, because you cannot talk with nineteen thousand women, so four women, five women were making a group. The whole meeting was divided into small groups, and great gossip, and so much noise!

And that idiot speaker... his name was Pandit Kunjilal Dube. Kunji means key, but it can also be kunj. Kunj means a beautiful grove of flowering trees. So the name was given by his parents because Krishna used to play his flute by the side of the Jamuna River in a beautiful kunj, in a beautiful grove of mango trees. So he was named after Kunjbihari, which is another name for Krishna. His parents must have given him the name 'Kunjilal' thinking that kunj is a sacred word for the worshippers of Krishna.

But in Hindi kunji also means key -- and chabi means key. But with kunji there is a difficulty, it can also mean kunj. So the whole university where he was the chancellor called him Pandit Chabilal Dube, because chabi exactly means kunji, exactly means "key." No problem about chabi, there is only one meaning to it.

... So Pandit Chabilal Dube was inaugurating the meeting, and I pulled on his shirt and I told him, "To whom are you talking? Nobody is listening! Women are sitting, keeping their backs to you -- what kind of retarded mind have you got? Perhaps the students are right when they call you Pandit Chabilal Dube. You are just retarded!"

And he was very angry with me, because I was in his university -- a professor in his own university...! But he knew me, and that if he makes any fuss, I will take him to task and I won't care about any professorship. I used to carry my resignation always in my pocket. And I used to show people that, "Only the date has to be signed. Any moment you want my resignation it is here. I keep it -- typed -- in my pocket. Who knows at what time...?"

I refused to speak. The organizers were very much disturbed. They said, "What to do with these women?" They were shouting on the mike again and again, "Stop gossiping!

Turn towards the speaker!" Nobody was interested. Everybody knows about Krishna, what are you going to say about Krishna?

And I simply refused to speak. I said, "I am not an idiot. And this is my last time. I will never again accept any invitation by any organized religion. Anyway you are fortunate that I am not speaking, because I was going to condemn Krishna as much as possible! So these women have saved you. I am going." And I told Pandit Chabilal, "You come with me. Why are you sitting here? You have inaugurated, just be finished! Come with me."

I had to call him out because he had the car. And out of fear he started calling me "Panditji." I said, "Never use that dirty word for me. You are Pandit Chabilal, I am not. I am not a pandit!" -- Pandit means rabbi, bishop, priest. "You think it is honorable -- I think it is a four-letter word. You just drop it. Don't ever use that word for me, otherwise I will hit you" -- in his own car!

He said, "Don't say it so loudly, the chauffeur is there."

I said, "I don't care! He knows absolutely about you, who you are." And the chauffeur started laughing. It was a limousine, so he immediately closed the window; he said, "You are a dangerous man -- in my own car...?"

I said, "This car belongs to the state, it is not your own car. It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you."

He said, "What?"

I said, "Yes! It is owned by the state, and I am as much a citizen of this state as you are.

And you are a public servant -- I am the public."

He started looking out the window just to avoid me. But I said, "I will continue -- you have to listen. Why have you taken me in your car?"

He said, "Strange. You called me out!"

I said, "I had to call you, because I have not brought my car. The organizers brought me in their car; now that I have told them I am going to speak against Krishna, they are not going to give me their car. I needed a car, I don't need you. You can get out if you want!

And your chauffeur is in my favor: you saw how he laughed."

He said, "You don't understand that I am also the chancellor of the university."

I said, "I don't care about chancellors and vice-chancellors." I showed him the card that was my resignation.

He said, "Why are you showing me this card?"

I said, "I have just to put the date, and finished! You are no more my chancellor and I can throw you out of the car. I am just being courteous to your old age, because the danger is you may be finished if I throw you out. So keep quiet, and don't harass me."

He said, "Strange!? You are harassing me -- in my own car!"

And it used to happen with that Pandit Chabilal Dube in many places, because he was a speaker of the state and a great scholar of Hinduism, and the chancellor of the university.

Just by virtue of holding the office, every speaker of the parliament becomes the chancellor of that particular university where I was a professor.

So I told him, "You are not really even worthy to be a lecturer in the university. You are only B.A., Ll.B. -- that too, third class."

He said, "Who told you?"

I said, "I have my sources -- your wife. She showed me your certificates also. I have taken photocopies of them, and if you make any trouble for me I am going to publish all those certificates in the newspapers. A third-class B.A., Ll.B. who is not even a postgraduate is the chancellor of the university!"

He said, "It is better not to fight. I am sorry that I disturbed you, but don't publish anything." I had no copies of the certificates or anything, but I knew he was a third-class Ll.B. and had become a politician because he could not succeed in the court.

The same was the situation of Mahatma Gandhi. He became a politician because the first time he entered court... The whole night he had been preparing and preparing his first appearance in the Bombay High Court. And he was a barrister from England. As he entered the court, his legs started trembling, and he could speak only two words -- "Your Honor" -- and he flopped down perspiring and had to be carried out. That's why he became a politician!

But nobody bothers about the realities of life. These failures become politicians because politics needs no qualifications, has no standards. This is the only profession which any idiot can enter.

Communism, to me, is a very significant step towards the ultimate buddhahood.

Question 2:

The second question:

Even in the church -- this is a fact! When Ronald Reagan used to go to the church -- and now George Bush, because the White House has its own church, the presidential church -- one aide would carry a briefcase. And people became concerned: what is in the briefcase? Why every day when Ronald Reagan is kneeling down and praying to God, does one man stand by his side with a briefcase?

Finally it was discovered that the briefcase is not an ordinary briefcase, it has all the buttons inside for nuclear weapons to be launched, immediately -- from the church! If there is not time enough to reach to the White House where they have all the buttons for the nuclear weapons... This was a portable death to the whole earth.

But it is still carried; now it is George Bush who is kneeling. And one never thinks about what kind of hypocrisy... You are praying to God, you are kneeling down, and you are keeping by your side death for the whole planet.

There is certainly no limit to our hypocrisy. We have succeeded only in creating a hypocrite world. It is not civilized, it is not cultured.

Question 3:

The third question:

This is the USA: full of drugs, and full of nuclear weapons, mental illnesses, violence -- violence without purpose. I have told you that just recently six people were killed in L.A.

because the cars were delayed, some accident somewhere miles away must have happened. Now people get angry, they want to reach their home as quickly as possible. In L.A. or in New York, in San Francisco, you can reach your home from the office by walking more quickly than by driving.

This was discovered when once it happened that for three days the electricity went out in almost half the northern part of America. All the lights disappeared; elevators could not work, signals on the road stopped working. So the traffic had to stop; otherwise there would have been tremendous clashes. When there are no signals giving a red or green light to stop or to go... so all the traffic had to be stopped, and people had to walk. Then they discovered that by walking they reached to the office more quickly, they reached their homes more quickly!

Now cars in America are moving with less speed than bullock carts in India! For hours the traffic is jammed, and it certainly creates anger. You are hungry, you want to go home to eat something, to drink something, and here you are sitting in the car just boiling, honking your horn. But that is useless because everybody is honking his horn for miles. So you only hear horns, honking and honking.

Then a few people became so furious that they forgot completely that the man ahead is in the same trouble. He is not preventing you -- nobody knows who is preventing; nobody knows what has happened far away. Maybe a truck has upturned, maybe a crash of six cars, and unless that is removed....

Until the police come, it cannot be removed, because the police have to take care. Until the insurance agent comes it cannot be removed, because the insurance agency has to pay the price of the car. If a man has died, there is even more delay. One never knows what is happening.

But people -- six people, not one; just in one day! -- went so mad that they took out their guns and shot the people just ahead, who were not at all responsible.

But in anger, in rage, you become absolutely blind. It is not only that love is blind -- hate is much blinder, but nobody has said it. "Love is blind" -- nobody says about hate, how blind hate can be.

Now this anger is absolute madness -- shooting the poor fellow ahead, who is in the same jam as you are. And then immediately the sale of machine guns, automatic rifles went up. Every person who had a car purchased an automatic gun, because it is dangerous -- at least if somebody kills you, you can also kill somebody. It does not matter who is killed, but somebody is killed. At least you can show the gun. And people hang their guns above their heads in the car, so everybody can know: "Beware! If you honk too much behind me or ahead of me, I am going to shoot!"

America is perhaps the only country where there is no special license needed for keeping such dangerous arms, automatic guns. One gun can kill one hundred sixty people without reloading the bullets, and you can purchase one from any dealer. The dealer needs the license to sell, but the people who purchase don't need any license.

And in mental illness, America is far ahead of any other country. So many psychoanalysts, so many different schools of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, psychology, psychosynthesis, analytical psychology, and many kinds of therapies are available to people. Millions of people are suffering from mental sickness. Millions of people are suffering from too much eating. Millions of people are suffering because they don't have any food, any clothes.

This decadent America, this absolutely sick country -- and Gorbachev wants to imitate America! He wants to become another President Ronald Reagan or George Bush, and he wants his beautiful Soviet land to be turned into a sick, decadent, rotten America.

Yesterday I was telling you that Ronald Reagan has also been nominated for a Nobel peace prize. I thought and thought: What peace has he created in the world? Then I remembered that he has done something peaceful, and he needs a Nobel Prize for it.

Many of you must remember Rajneeshpuram, our commune in Oregon, in America. It was a desert, one hundred twenty-six square miles of just pure desert. It had been for sale for forty years and nobody purchased it -- what will you do with a desert? We purchased it, and we transformed the desert into a beautiful oasis. Five thousand sannyasins were living there, working there, dancing, singing, meditating. It was one of the most joyous places in the whole world -- so much dancing, so much joy, so much love, such friendliness. No family -- the whole commune was one.

So I remembered: Ronald Reagan has destroyed Rajneeshpuram violently, and he has restored the peace of the desert. That seems to be the reason for his nomination for the Nobel peace prize. Now it is peaceful again: no dance, no singing....

The day I arrived there was only one house which they had made for me. There was not a single bird. I was amazed to see, it looked like a nightmare! All around just bare mountains with no trees, with no birds. In the morning you could not hear a cuckoo, you could not hear any chirping and tweeting of all kinds of birds. Neither in the evening could you see thousands of birds coming back to their trees. It was a dead desert!

We cultivated it, we made it green. We made small artificial rivers, we made a big dam.

Even if for five years there had been no rain, we had enough water for five thousand people. And at the time of festivals there were twenty thousand people, and we had beautiful tents for fifteen thousand people. We had created a new kind of tent. And rather than giving us a reward for the new tent, we were punished! A court case was put against us saying that these people have created, without permission, a permanent structure. A tent is not a permanent structure!

We had made a tent which can work all the year round -- in rains, in summer, when the snow is falling in winter, when it is too cold. It could be heated, it could be air- conditioned; there was no question of any rains or any snow getting inside it. It was a totally new phenomenon. All those who saw it were immensely impressed, that we had made something which could have a world market. In Saudi Arabia, or in deserts where people live in tents, but in the hot sun the tent is just boiling... an air-conditioned tent you have never heard of! And in snow, in winter, the tent can be heated. It was absolutely safe all the year round.

And a court case was filed against us saying that we had made a permanent structure. I told my attorneys, "Just take a tent in a truck, take it inside the court" -- because it takes only ten minutes to put it up, and ten minutes to take it down. "A building that can be put up in ten minutes and taken down in ten minutes cannot be called permanent. If the judge has any eyes to see, there is no need for any argument. It is not a question of law, it is a question of whether the judge has eyes or is blind."

Can you put the White House together in ten minutes and then within another ten minutes take it down?

They called it a "permanent structure." A permanent structure needs a license or permission from the government. We never thought that a tent could be a "permanent structure."

With violence, with lawlessness against their own constitution, they destroyed the commune. That I remembered yesterday, that perhaps because he has restored the peace of that dead desert, Ronald Reagan deserves the Nobel Prize. I don't know of any other peace that he has created.

Gorbachev is trying to bring this decadent and mentally sick America into the Soviet Union where there is no psychoanalysis, no psychiatry. People are as mentally healthy as they have ever been anywhere, for the simple reason that their food is simple, nourishing but not fattening; their work is simple, their life has no complications. The wife earns, so there is no problem of continuous fighting that she wants a fur coat, she wants a new car, or she wants this and she wants that and you cannot afford it, you are going bankrupt, so rather than fulfilling her wishes you jump from a one hundred-story building. The business is finished, the wife is torturing you, what else to do?

So many people jump out of their windows. Do you think all these people are taking LSD? -- because LSD is the only drug that gives the idea that you can fly. So LSD has to be taken only under guidance and all doors and windows have to be closed, because it creates the absolute certainty in the mind that you can fly: you just jump out of the window and open your wings.

America has been discovered many times, and always has been hushed back up. Now that moment has come again. America has to be hushed up again and forgotten. Columbus has not done a great service to humanity. He is one of the enemies.

Seven hundred years ago, America was known but then hushed up. Five thousand years ago America was known but was hushed up, because whenever... it seems the very land is poisonous. It drives people crazy.

So it is not for the first time that we will have to hush it. It has been hushed many times, discovered again, hushed again. Now if you don't hush it again, it is going to destroy the whole world.

And this poor fellow Comrade Gorbachev, who is no more a comrade, wants the Soviet Union to become America. He has forgotten that even if you become like America you will be second-rate. The Soviet Union had a dignity of its own, far more healthy mentally, far more healthy physically.

It was the Soviet Union who stopped the second world war. If Adolf Hitler had not gone more insane... because for years he had success, continuous success, and no western power was able to prevent him. Great nations like France surrendered in twenty-four hours. Naturally, he had a pact with Stalin before he started the war, that "We will remain friends. Neither you have to attack Germany, nor will we attack you." Because he knew perfectly well that in the first world war it was because of Russia's snows that Germany was defeated -- not by Russia's armies; just the snow is enough to destroy any enemy.

When Russian snow starts falling, you cannot move an inch. All your tanks, all your trucks, all your food supply is blocked. The snow is heavy, and it goes on falling for six months continuously. Your soldiers are covered, your tanks are covered; even helicopters cannot find where to drop the food. Everything has disappeared under a vast cover of white snow.

In the first world war it was not the czar's soldiers, because they had returned home, but snow started falling and Germany got defeated. Hitler was aware of it. He first made a pact and treaty with Stalin, that "You will not attack us, and we will not attack you."

Hitler went on winning for years continuously, all over Europe, and Japan was winning continuously for years -- even Calcutta was ordered to be evacuated because Japanese armies had reached Rangoon, and the second attack was to be on Calcutta. The third attack was to be on Jabalpur -- where I used to teach, but not at the time of the second world war -- because Jabalpur was the very center of India and because of its position the British government had its biggest factory for armaments there. So after Calcutta, the next target was Jabalpur. Even Jabalpur was getting ready to be evacuated. Once they attacked Calcutta, Jabalpur would have to be evacuated.

Such tremendous success got into the head of that madman Adolf Hitler, and he started attacking the Soviet Union. He forgot the treaty, he forgot that the Soviet Union had kept its word and had not interfered at all. And that was the point of his defeat. It was Stalin who was responsible for saving the world from Adolf Hitler and Hirohito and Benito Mussolini.

Just not to give the whole glory to the Soviet Union, America immediately rushed to help Europe. Up to now, America had been keeping aloof, but when they saw that the Soviet Union was going to have the whole glory of saving Europe and the whole world, they immediately rushed in on both fronts. MacArthur was sent with great armies to fight Japan, and Eisenhower was sent to Europe. If Adolf Hitler was going to be finished, the glory should be shared by the Soviet Union and America both, not only the Soviet Union.

But it was, in fact, only the Soviet Union who ended the second world war and the desire of fascism to rule over the whole world.

Question 4:

The fourth question:

That's true. The whole of Christianity is against communism for the simple reason that the communists have thrown the Bible and thrown God and thrown all the Christian missionaries and Christian priests out of the Soviet land.

The whole of Christianity is sitting on a volcano. And America is basically a fundamentalist, fascist Christian country. It is so fascist in its ideologies that all Charles Darwin's books, Ronald Reagan wanted to burn. His teachings should be prevented in every school, college, university, research institute, and all his books in all the libraries, all the colleges, schools, universities, should be burned. Why? Because his idea of evolution goes against the Christian idea of creation. This is real fascism.

Certainly Christianity will take every chance to destroy communism, but it is not going to succeed. Seventy years has made the Soviet Union strong enough. Gorbachev will be thrown out; Russia is not going on the way of capitalism and Christianity. The time has come when the Soviet Union should say to Gorbachev, "Good-bye comrade," and expel him from the Soviet Union. He can have the Nobel Prize and go to America and become a Yankee.

The sutra:

You have to understand a few symbols. Ungan himself became a master, became an enlightened buddha. Addressing an assembly of monks, he said, "Here is a child..."

Unless you become a child again, you cannot be a buddha. That innocence is needed, and I am destroying all your conceptions in every possible way, just to clean your mind and bring it closer to that of a child who knows nothing.

"HERE IS A CHILD FROM A RESPECTABLE FAMILY."

He is not talking about ordinary families. In Zen the "family" means the whole lineage of Zen masters. That is called the "dhamma family," from Buddha to Mahakashyapa, to Bodhidharma, to Rinzai -- this is the family. He is not referring to his ordinary family.

Whenever you come across the word 'family' in a Zen anecdote, remember: they are referring to their masters, who have given them their second birth. The first birth is physical, which parents give to you; the second birth is spiritual, which only one who is enlightened can give you. It comes from master to disciple.

This is the family; it goes back twenty-five centuries to Gautam Buddha. So when Ungan said, "HERE IS A CHILD FROM A RESPECTABLE FAMILY," he is saying, "Here is another buddha again, from the lineage of thousands of buddhas. That is my family, I am coming out of it. My master has given me a new birth.

This child, this innocent clarity, can answer any question. Whatever you want to ask, you can ask and you will receive the answer.

You are talking about the child, and he is asking, "How many books are in the house of the child?" Because at that moment he was only a scholar and he knew only that unless you have scriptures, you cannot answer all the questions. From where will you get the information? He had no idea that there is another source, transformation, from where answers simply arise -- not out of information, but out of an inner revolution. At this moment he was only a scholar, so of course he asked, "How many books are in that child's house?"

He is saying that for a man who is awakened there is not even a single letter, nothing to say about a thought, nothing to say about scriptures. That child is absolutely innocent.

There is no knowledge, no information; there is only a clarity.

Out of that clarity a response comes. That response is original and authentic, to any question.

If the child you are talking about has no books, not even a letter, then how he can be so well informed that, as you are saying, he can answer all your questions?

This is the way of the scholar. He cannot go beyond the words, he cannot go beyond the scripture. He cannot go beyond information.

Information comes from outside and transformation comes from inside. He is not aware that there is another way also. Not that the childlike consciousness -- that purity, that innocence of a buddha -- has all the answers in it. No, nothing -- it has no answers, but as your question arises that purity responds. It is a mirror. It shows your face; it reflects.

Out of nothingness, out of silence, arises a right answer.

TOZAN ASKED, "HOW COULD HE BE SO WELL INFORMED?"

Ungan's response is very important. He says, "HE SELDOM SLEEPS DAY OR NIGHT."

His awareness is so complete that there is no trace of sleep left in him. No trace of any unconsciousness, no trace of any darkness -- everything has become so luminous and light....

It is from this alertness, day and night -- awareness, day and night -- that his answers come.

Anando comes to wake me up at 3:30 in the afternoon. It is a difficult task, to wake somebody who is awake. So poor Anando, as she opens the door I say, "Hello, Anando."

She has never had a chance to wake me up to now. Just hiding behind my blanket, I say, "Hello, Anando!"

Just the other day she was asking, "It is strange -- I open the door so silently and you are hiding in your blanket and you immediately respond."

Amrito knows that it is absolutely impossible for me to sleep. He tries every possible medicine and he brings all kinds of compact disks which create sleep, and the whole night I have to listen! But I am not at all tired. In the morning when I wake up from my whole night of awakening, I have lost the very sense of time.

That's why last night I went on and on. I would have gone on and on, just I remembered Sardar Gurudayal Singh; otherwise there was no question. Only in the car, Anando told me, "You know it is 11:05!"

I said, "My God, that is a record! If I had not remembered Sardar Gurudayal Singh, last night was going to be a marathon discourse. Only early in the morning when sun was rising, I would have allowed you to go for breakfast! Some day it is going to happen....

"I WANT TO ASK SOMETHING OF THE CHILD," CONTINUED TOZAN. "IS IT POSSIBLE?"

"HE could ANSWER, BUT HE WOULD NOT," REPLIED UNGAN.

Now he is saying something very important. He could answer, but he would not because the answer will not be as authentic as his experience. The answer will be far below the truth. He can answer, he knows the truth, but he would not answer because he cannot betray the truth.

So every buddha is talking around and around, hoping that somehow you will look at the center at some point. But he goes on round and round, taking you in circles, pointing always to the center but never saying a single word about your center.

You have to experience it.

You are the answer.

So Ungan replied, "HE COULD ANSWER," because he knows it, "BUT HE WOULD NOT," because language does not allow it.

... Because in Zen the rocks are as alive as you are. They grow. The trees are as sensitive as you are -- perhaps more sensitive. You can talk to them. So Ungan does not question the fellow -- "Are you mad, talking to a rock?" -- on the contrary, he asks, "DID THE ROCK NOD?"

The question is not that you were talking, the question is whether the rock was listening.

If it was listening it would have nodded.

That's what makes Sardar Gurudayal Singh special. He laughs before you tell the joke.

Everybody laughs after the joke, that is very normal, but laughing before the joke shows immense trust that something great is going to happen.

Ungan said, "IT NODS BEFORE YOU TALK. If you are really in tune with the rock, it nods before you start talking. And you have not even received the nod after you stopped talking." Of course the man was completely embarrassed, shocked: what is this man saying, that the rock nods before?

It really nods before.

You have to be a master -- then everything around you is always receptive, always ready to receive something from you. Even rocks are not rocks; they also have a heart, perhaps of a different kind.

The whole existence is alive. Nothing is without life. This is one of the fundamentals of Zen, that the whole existence is alive. That's why it can discard the concept of God. There is no need. The whole existence is alive, sensitive, intelligent, is capable of growing into a divine experience of being the awakened one.

Basho wrote:

The cuckoo is the sweetest musician. The cuckoo creates the sweetest songs. Its body is ordinary; if you see the cuckoo, it looks just like a crow, not much different, but it has a tremendous spirit. When it sings there is no comparison to it.

Basho must have opened his eyes, sitting in a mango grove, because cuckoos are found more often in mango groves. They like the mangoes. The mango is thought, particularly in the East, to be the king of all the fruits. It is! Its sweetness is such that wherever there are mango trees, you will find cuckoos waiting for the mangoes to become ripe. And when they become ripe then they go really cuckoo! Dancing, singing, "The mangoes are ripe!" They love the mangoes. So Basho must have been either by the side of a mango grove or inside it.

Buddha always loved, his whole life, to have his camps -- because he was continuously moving -- in mango groves. Perhaps India has more mango trees than any other country, and at Buddha's time it had even more because it was thought to be one of the virtues to plant mango trees. All the kings, all the rich people tried to create as many mango trees as possible; all roads were surrounded for hundreds of miles by mango trees. And every village, every town, had its own mango grove outside the town, by the riverside or by the lake, because the mango grove was the shelter of all the wandering mystics.

The trees are very thick, shadowy trees, and when there are thousands of mango trees they give a great cool breeze even in the hottest summer. When the mangoes are ripe, cuckoos come running from all over because the mango has a very special fragrance.

That fragrance brings the cuckoos from far away and as long as the mangoes last, they remain in the mango groves, singing and dancing. Their song is certainly the sweetest song in existence.

So Basho must have come out of his meditation, and suddenly he saw all the cuckoos dancing in the trees.

Just visualize these haikus, always. See the mango trees, see the hundreds of cuckoos dancing, singing, and their sweet song will fill your very heart.

Question 5:

Maneesha's question:

Maneesha, I have always loved the woman revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg. She is the topmost revolutionary as far as women are concerned. She had the same quality of revolution as Lenin -- and she was a woman, so certainly she had a totally different approach to revolution. It has not to be just of the body, it has also to be of the soul. It has not be just on the outside of man, in the social structure; it has to be of man in his consciousness also.

Certainly she was not aware of any meditative rebellion within. That's why she says, "I'm looking for the reason." And she thinks she has found the reason in life itself -- but that is a very superficial reason. Without meditation you don't know the secrets of life, you know only the surface of life. Even that much gives you enough joy, but you don't know the depth, the abysmal depth and the infinite height, immeasurable both. Once you know this vertical dimension of height and depth, life becomes a pure joy, a laughter, a song, a dance, an ecstasy.

Rosa Luxemburg was in a wrong place. She should have been in the East. Out of all the revolutionaries in the West, perhaps she was more sensitive and would have learned the Eastern way of getting deeper into life, not just on the surface.

On the surface life becomes "eat, drink, be merry." It is superficial, you get bored sooner or later. Unless you reach to the abysmal depth and infinite height, simultaneously, you don't know what a miracle life is, what a mystery life is.

But she was in search; she died before she could have found it. But death is not death.

Rosa Luxemburg may be here -- if not today, then tomorrow.

All those who are seeking the depth of life and the secret, the ultimate secret of consciousness, are bound to move -- knowingly or unknowingly -- towards someone who has already reached the whole.

... It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh again.

Officer Dopeski, of the Warsaw Police traffic control team, is sitting in his car eating a potato sandwich when he sees a bright red Ferrari speed past him at one hundred and eighty miles per hour.

Officer Dopeski nearly chokes on his sandwich in excitement as he slams his door, starts his car, flicks on his red flashing lights, flicks on his siren, fastens his seat belt, checks his pistol, opens the glovebox and looks for his ticket book, slams the gearshift into GO, and stomps on the gas pedal.

One hour and two hundred miles later, Officer Dopeski finally manages to stop the speeding Italian sports car.

"Okay," says Dopeski, fumbling nervously with his ticket book. "Just tell me your name!"

The driver of the Ferrari looks up and says, "My name is-a Alfonso de Villa Martino Rivera Giovanni Tortoni Baloni."

"Well..." replies Officer Dopeski, perspiring, "... don't do it again!"

Newton Hooton drops into the Lucky Luke Saloon one evening, and orders a triple martini.

"What a coincidence," says Max, the bartender. "Just an hour ago, I was saying that nobody ever orders a triple martini any more."

As Max is mixing the drink, both he and Newton look up as Lucy Leggs rushes in and asks for a triple martini.

Newton and Max look at each other in amazement.

"Hey, lady!" cries Max. "That is incredible! The gentleman here just ordered a triple martini, and we were just discussing how nobody ever orders that drink these days. This is really a coincidence!"

"Well," says Lucy, "I am celebrating a very special occasion. My husband and I have been married for nine years, and we have always wanted a child. Just today, I have learned that I am pregnant!"

The two men congratulate Lucy and then Newton says, "Well that is a coincidence, because I am also celebrating a very special occasion. I have been breeding exotic chickens for years, and I have been trying to produce a purple-spotted hen. And just today, I found out that I have been successful."

"What a coincidence," says Lucy. "How did you manage it?"

"Well," replies Newton, "I just changed cocks."

"Wow!" cries Lucy. "That really is a coincidence! Me too!"

Comrade Gorbachev has heard rumors that his policies are being discussed in Poona, India, so he decides to go and check it out. When his plane arrives at Poona airport, the Indian Army is there to welcome him.

As Gorbachev steps off the plane, the military guard of honor fires off the traditional twenty-one gun salute.

"What were those shots?" asks Swami Deva Coconut, standing in the crowd.

"Gorbachev has arrived!" says the man next to him.

"Really?" replies Coconut. "You mean they could not get him with just one shot?"

Nivedano...

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to turn in. Gather your whole energy and rush towards your center of being, with your total consciousness and with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment of life on the earth.

This urgency is absolutely needed to reach to the center.

Faster and faster, deeper and deeper...

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

It is so tangible, you can feel it.

As you come even closer

a great peace arises from your very sources

surrounding you

into great fragrance

of the beyond.

Just a little more

and you are on the center

facing your original face.

Your original face

is the face of the buddha,

the awakened one.

At this moment you are the buddha. I teach the buddha, I don't teach Buddhism. The only quality buddha has is witnessing. He is a pure witness -- no judgment, no identification, just watching without having any opinion.

Witness, you are not the body. Witness, you are not the mind. And witness... you are only the witness. And as you relax into witnessing, a great ecstasy, a great divine drunkenness overtakes you. You suddenly become aware of your immortality, of your eternal life.

To make this witnessing deeper, Nivedano...

Relax, let go.

But go on remembering you are a buddha, a pure witness. And as your witnessing goes on becoming deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, you start melting like ice in the ocean.

I can see it. Gautam the Buddha Auditorium is turning into an ocean of consciousness.

Ten thousand buddhas have melted into one ocean.

A pure ocean of consciousness without any ripples or waves.

At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth, just because you are centered at your very ultimate nature.

The buddha is your dhamma, he is your very nature.

The evening was beautiful on its own, but your totality, your intensity, your urgency, your honesty, has made it a great splendor. The whole existence surrounding you is celebrating your great victory.

There is no other victory greater than this.

To become a buddha is the most important, the most significant, the only meaningful act in your whole life.

Gather as much experience and as many juices of life... and the blossoms and the flowers and the fragrances, the peace, the silence, the serenity, the divine drunkenness, the ecstasy.

Collect all of them. You have to bring them to your life. Your life has to become a life of songs, a life of dances, a life of eternal music, a life of divine ecstasy.

This is the transformation which Zen Fire and Zen Wind brings to you.

And never forget to persuade the buddha to come along with you. He is coming every day closer and closer and closer. You will feel his presence just behind you, coming, following, like a shadow.

This is the first step of meditation: buddha coming behind you as a shadow. But the shadow is very solid, very tangible; you can touch it, you can feel it, you can have a tremendous fragrance arising from it.

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

The third step: your shadow disappears into the transparent awareness, awakening, enlightenment of the buddha.

You are no more, only the buddha is.

You are no more, only the existence is.

This is the ultimate revolution, the ultimate evolution -- the ultimate truth, beauty, godliness.

Nivedano...

Come back. But come as buddhas, with the same grace, the same beauty, the same joy, the same ecstasy.

Sit just for a few seconds to remember and to remind yourself where you have been -- to what depth, to what height you have reached... to what opening of space you have experienced.

And see that the fragrance of the innermost has come with you, surrounding your being.

And watch, feel... the buddha is standing behind you.

He is your very nature, he is your blissfulness. He is your benediction.

And the day is not far away when you will take the second step and become the shadow of the buddha. Once you become the shadow of the buddha, the third step becomes very easy. The shadow can disappear into the buddha without any trouble.

When only the buddha is left, alone, you have come home.

This is the search of all human consciousness; this is the search of all living beings. This is the source from where we have come, and this is the goal to where we are going.

Once the circle is complete -- the source and goal meet together -- you have come to a perfection of which you cannot even have a dream. You cannot even visualize what that perfection is. Even after reaching it, you cannot manage to describe it, you cannot manage to explain it, you can simply dance.

Your eyes will shine with it, your silence will become a song about it.

Your words may carry a little fragrance of it.

Your very existence will radiate with the light that you have found in the completion of the circle.

The source and the goal meeting... now, once this happens to any consciousness, any human being, he is not to be born again into a prison of body, of bones and blood and flesh. Then he disappears into the cosmos and becomes one with the cosmos.

Just a sincere passion to disappear into the cosmos is needed.

It is not a long journey, it is just a quantum leap.

And you are trying the best that you can do.

I am absolutely happy about you. And the day when you all will start blossoming into buddhas will not only be a day of happiness for you, it will be a day of great celebration for the whole of existence.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.