The meaning of responsibility

Question 1:

First, you should all forgive me for being twenty minutes late. This has happened because of you.

You do not understand the meaning of the word "responsibility."

And if you do not understand the meaning of that word, you are going to create another Sheela, another fascist regime again. And this time I will not be against it.

People are not turning up to their worship. They are not doing their work as well as they were doing before. They leave their work earlier - as if they needed some dictatorship to do the necessary work.

Responsibility means that you do your best, so that there is no need for anybody to dictate to you.

Everybody wants to decide what should be done and what should not be done. If five thousand people decide that way, do you think anything can be done?

Poor Hasya is continuously pestered by many of you, that the work should be done this way, or it should be done that way. To whom is she going to listen?

People are approaching her, that about everything votes should be taken. Do you want the whole time - day in, day out - for each and every thing, voting? Is it a voting club?

Don't be stupid, otherwise.... You created Sheela before, and you will create Sheela again.

Last time I interfered and destroyed the whole fascist structure. Next time, perhaps I will not do that.

What is the point, if you are going to create it again and again? Then the old is gold - more efficient.

You have not looked at this side. Sheela was only one side of the coin; you are the other side.

Without you, she could not have been, and done ugly, criminal things.

And now you are starting to be the tower of Babel. Everybody is arguing, discussing, giving his opinion, and that opinion should be followed. Now there are five thousand people - and what opinion can you give? You are blind, you are in darkness, you live in unconsciousness. If I had not told you what Sheela was doing, you would have completely lived under Sheela without any problem.

You have to recognize it, that your opinion carries no value. Unless you are enlightened, your vote is just stupidity.

It is your votes that make Adolf Hitlers, Joseph Stalins, Benito Mussolinis. It is your votes that create Nixon. Your votes don't mean anything.

And your opinions? What opinions do you have? Are you here to express your opinions? Or to come to a point of silence, meditativeness, where all opinions disappear - just a clarity, a vision to see. Opinion belongs to the blind. It is mere opinion; it has no solidity in it. The man of clarity has no opinions. He has the truth. And in my commune only truth has the right to decide. If you want to be decisive, become enlightened first; otherwise, you will simply create a suicide for the commune.

From the morning till twelve o'clock in the night, I am engaged in unnecessary things. That's why I am twenty minutes late. You are responsible for it. I have never been twenty minutes late, ever.

But if you don't allow me to sleep, you don't give me a chance to rest, then it is going to happen.

So before I start answering the question, the question of questions is: From today, can you start working on your own, as fully, as totally, as intensively as possible?

You have to prove to Sheela and all those who think in fascist terms, that a loving commune can be more creative, can be more productive, can be a more joyous phenomenon.

If you cannot prove that, then Sheela is right. Perhaps you drove her into being a dictator.

Samya was there last night, tired. I have never seen her so tired before - she is always laughing, joyous - because the whole day you have been torturing her. One sannyasin will not leave her office, because he wants to see all the books - what has happened, what is going to happen. He wants to give his opinion on every matter.

Do you think this man is behaving in any other way than dictatorial? He has been persuaded three times to leave, and he will come back again - he will not leave unless all his answers are being accepted, and all his questions are being answered.

Is this the way of love? Is this the way that you can prove dictatorship is not the right way? This is proving that dictatorship is the right way. This man never tortured Sheela. Where has he been for these four years, with all his opinions? For four years he was a mouse, and now suddenly he has become a lion.

And five thousand lions cannot live together.

Then the only way is to reduce the lions back to mice, and they will be happy. Only I will be unhappy that my people are not capable enough to be lions.

So from today, everybody has to do better than he was doing before. Everybody has to reach to his worship. These excuses won't do - that "I did not feel like it; I wanted to sleep a little longer."

But what about the last four years? - four years you always did feel to go, and now suddenly a great transformation has happened to you. If Sheela wanted you to work fourteen hours a day, you worked.

Samya and Hasya are trying in every possible way to reduce your work hours, but not the quality of the work, not the outcome of the work.

You were listening to me only on alternate days, and you were happy. Hasya immediately changed that, and you are listening to me every day. You have not thanked her.

Your complaint has been that your letters were not reaching to me - that's true - that you were not certain whether my answers were my answers or Sheela's own inventions. That is also true.

She has done every criminal act. You will be surprised: even in my videotapes - in the originals she has changed everything that will go against her. There was no way for me to know what they were doing. The editors would get the edited version of my lecture. The videotapes around the world were reaching, not as I had delivered them; they have taken out sentences, passages. And you were perfectly happy with Sheela.

Now I have made an arrangement that all the heads of the corporations, whenever they want, can come to me when Hasya comes to see me. So it is not only Hasya who listens to what I say, other people will also be present there. They will be witnesses to whether Hasya has brought all your letters or not.

But remember, your letters are ninety-nine percent bullshit, and I don't want to be drowned in bullshit.

So write only that which you feel is absolutely meaningful, essential, and write it in as small a way as possible, because I don't want to hear your opinions for five hours a day, every day. I am already crazy; what do you want? So you have to be careful. Your letters will reach, your response will be given to you; but you also have to learn something.

I receive files of letters which are not possible for me to go through. Don't make it impossible.

Then naturally I have to leave it to Hasya to look through those letters, and mark only the important passages, and bring only the important letters.

So just your writing is not enough that it should reach to me. You have to make it significant enough, carrying some meaning, for it to reach to me.

But everything will reach, so you need not be afraid and worried. And whatever people are now in place of the old fascist regime, they have been chosen by different councils on my advice. They will take care that no democratic value is destroyed. Finally they are just servants of the commune.

And you have to learn to behave in a democratic way too. Democracy cannot exist only because a few people are in power who are democratic. If you are accustomed to being dictated to, ordered, then the whole commune will fall apart.

You have to learn that if they advise you to do something, do it. Do it to your best. And now I am available, and I am going to speak to my very last breath. But don't become a burden. You have to make the people who are managing unburdened, light, joyous, so they can feel happy with you.

Don't torture them.

There have been sannyasins at my house, and they were forcing their way against the guards. Now, if five thousand people come to see me every day, I will have to escape from this place. I am accustomed to living in isolation and silence. I don't want you to disturb me. Everything that is a problem to you should come through the proper people. I don't hold any post. I cannot do anything right away, immediately. I have no power.

Even if you reach me with a demand, the demand has to go to Hasya, Anuradha, John - the people who will be running the commune. So why bother me? Why should you not take your demand directly to them? And your demand has to be rational, legitimate.

I had said that the people who are suffering from AIDS - we have isolated them - should be given whatever we can give to them: respect, love. They should not be treated as criminals or condemned people. They are victims. And you listened and you followed it.

But they started becoming dictators. They started asking for Havana cigars, Mexican cigars, champagne. They thought that I have allowed them - as if by bringing AIDS here, they have brought a great contribution to the commune. I was trying to respect their humanity, but they were not only AIDS patients, they were idiots too.

By the way, Sheela and her group's crimes go on growing every day more and more. Two of those people who were found with AIDS have been checked again; their results were negative, they were forced there. But Puja was culturing all kinds of viruses, and she managed to make their results come out positive. This is so ugly - and from a woman! And what was the reason for all this?

Those people had refused to participate in certain crimes that the group wanted. This was a punishment. Neither of them is an AIDS patient. But what a punishment! Man can be so inhuman to other men that it is almost inconceivable. This was one reason.

The second reason was that they wanted - they had already created a housing complex in the City of Rajneesh for five hundred people, with separate attached bathrooms - they wanted to make an AIDS home. They never said that to me.

To me they said they wanted to make it for people who are recovering, people who are old and their families don't want them, people who are suffering from diseases and need treatment, and our medical corporation can take charge of those people. I said, "That's perfectly good."

But finally, when they wanted to open the AIDS home, at the last moment they wanted me to be in the press conference to declare it. I said, "But this was never told to me."

I immediately canceled the press conference, because to bring AIDS people, five hundred people, is endangering not only our commune; it is endangering all the people around the City of Rajneesh, in fact, endangering the whole of Oregon.

That was their way to take revenge on the Oregonians - clever, but ugly, inhuman, disgusting. They have spent almost two million dollars on the housing complex, and now it is lying empty.

No sannyasin wants to go and live there. In fact, the people they had forced to live in Antelope don't want to go there. Remember it: for four years you were going there without any complaint. Just a little longer, on your own responsibility... because the harm that you have done to Antelope, the wounds that you have given to the people of Antelope, you have to heal them.

So just for a few days more continue to live there. Before you leave Antelope completely - because we don't need it, we have enough land, enough houses - before you leave Antelope, first change its name from City of Rajneesh back to Antelope. We have our city; why force a name on people who will detest it? Don't you understand simple psychology? You want my name to be unnecessarily condemned?

So before you leave Antelope you have to change the name. Before you leave Antelope we have to sell all the properties of Antelope. If the people of Antelope want their city back, they have to take their houses back, they have to purchase them.

We have given them enough money for it. We will not ask for payment for all the developments that we have done in their dilapidated houses. In four years prices have gone much higher. We will ask only the same amount that we have paid to them, and we are giving them renovated, better houses.

They have to take all those houses, and then you can move. But it will take a few days - and I have heard that you have been saying that you don't want to go there at all.

If you had this much courage, then why for four years were you going there, living there? Now, out of sheer responsibility for the commune, because the commune has invested money there, which has to be taken out.... The people of Antelope will be very happy that you simply leave their houses, and they move in their houses free, without giving any money for them. That will be harming the commune.

Sheela has left the commune fifty-five million dollars in debt. We will make it; there is not much problem. But if you start behaving this way, you will be creating more debt.

So first change the name back to Antelope. And the Oregonians who are so much in sympathy with Antelope, they should help them. The government of Oregon should help them, give them loans, purchase the properties. Right now we have almost two-thirds of the properties of Antelope.

So whatever you have been doing under dictatorship, now you have to do on your own responsibility.

You have to understand the implications of everything.

Sheela and her group have created a hostility between the commune and Oregonians. We have to destroy that hostility.

The first step will be for Antelope to be given back to the people who have lived there for hundreds of years. We don't have any political aspirations.

The second step will be, anybody who has committed crimes against the law, we will help the state to find the person, to hold him responsible for the crime.

Now a totally new situation has arisen. The state government of Oregon and the commune here have a common enemy: the fascist group that Sheela was leading. The enemy of the enemy is a friend. This can become a great bridge, and we should make as much use of it as possible.

Except the poor Red Indians, everybody in America is a foreigner. It does not matter whether you came a hundred years ago, or three hundred years ago. And we came only four years ago: the other foreigners should not treat us as if they are native Americans. That's what they are doing.

And what they have done, we are not doing to America. They have invaded the country. We have not come here invading the country.

Most of the sannyasins here are Americans. There may be a few Italians, a few Germans, a few Dutch, but these same people have come before as invaders. They are now the owners of the whole continent, and there is no possibility that the Red Indians will again be able to have their land back.

For the Red Indians there seems to be no possibility to attain freedom.

America has the most beautiful Constitution. If it really follows its own Constitution, America should be ruled by the Red Indians, not by Ronald Reagan.

But Red Indians are put in reservation camps, in forests, in isolated places. "Reservation" is simply the American translation for the German word "concentration camp" - without wires around it, because America is more sophisticated.

They don't put barbed wire around the camps; they have found a better method. They give pensions to all the Red Indians so they need not work. When somebody gets money and has no work, what is he going to do? Drink alcohol, gamble, go to prostitutes - he has to do something; he has money and no work - and remain continuously drugged.

The Red Indians never think of freedom, cannot think, they are so drugged. The barbed wire around the concentration camps in Germany was nothing. The American politicians have placed barbed wire inside the human psychology of the Red Indians. They have almost lost everything.

These people, who have the best Constitution in the world, behave most unconstitutionally, for the simple reason that the Constitution is so full of great ideals that the third-rate dirty politicians cannot rise to that height. There is such a gap that they have to do things against the Constitution. They are doing things against the Constitution to us.

The Constitution wants human dignity, respect for individuality, all other democratic values, but the Constitution does not seem to apply to us.

We have done no harm. We have really contributed something, created an oasis out of a desert, and if the government was helpful, fair, we would have changed this whole land into a luscious, green land full of many lakes, the best holiday resort in the whole country.

And we could have created great economic help to Oregon - which needs it, because it is millions of dollars in debt to the federal government. We could have created a place for the tourists from all over the world. Already, thousands of sannyasins are coming. If it becomes a beautiful resort place, nonsannyasins will also be coming.

We can help the economy of Oregon. What are the Oregon politicians doing? Half of the land of Oregon they have given to the federal government. They still have to pay perhaps two hundred million dollars in debt. All that they can do is give the rest of Oregon also to the federal government.

This is really underground communism.

The basic principle of freedom is that property should belong to the individuals, that the state should not own anything. Nationalization is against democracy, but that is going on underground everywhere.

Why are they so much against us? They know now that these one hundred and twenty-six square miles can never become the property of the government. And why have they wanted the whole of Oregon to become federal property? This is a good desert to experiment with nuclear weapons.

Now we are in the middle of it. Our presence is dangerous for them. We are going to be here, and we will not allow this beautiful land to become a factory for death.

That's why I said it is a strange situation. We have nothing against anybody, and I have tremendous respect for the American Constitution. That is the only Constitution in the whole world which has some possibility for the future of humanity. It should be saved at any cost.

And I want it to be known all over America that we will fight for the American Constitution against the Americans who are trying to prostitute it. They have to be told it is a Constitution, it is not prostitution.

Now your question:

"Beloved Master, how did we who love you, let this ugliness happen to your vision and to ourselves?

I saw things I thought were ugly. I'd tell myself, 'The master must want it this way. I don't see the whole picture. I don't want to be negative.'

"What is the blindness in us?"

The blindness is in every person who has been brought up to be dependent on a father figure - God is doing everything. You are not responsible for anything. If you are poor, God must be wanting it this way. If you are sick, God must be wanting it this way.

The whole of humanity has been reduced to a helpless child, dependent on a father figure who does not exist anywhere.

So you go on changing your father figures. Nothing changes by that. The Christian becomes Hindu; he changes his gods, but his psychology is the same. The Hindu becomes Christian; he changes his God, but the psychology is the same. There are three hundred religions in the world, but the psychology of all the religions is exactly the same. And the psychology is: keep man dependent, irresponsible, always hoping, praying to someone who does not exist. This has created the whole tragedy.

Whatever was done here, your reason was saying to you, "This is not right." But you thought, "The master must be wanting it this way."

When have I told you to think on these lines? I have been teaching reasoning, doubt, skepticism, inquiry, independence, and you are doing just the opposite. That's why Sheela never wanted me to speak again. That's why they have tampered with my tapes - the original tapes. Now there is no way to find out what they have changed.

But they don't know.... I am still alive, and what I had said ten years ago - I will say something more outrageous today, because ten years' experience will be added to it.

They never wanted me to speak to you. Sheela was persuading me that my health will suffer if I start speaking. I said, "But what will I do with my health? Just remaining healthy and waiting for death?" I started speaking against her will.

Just the other day I have been informed that my milk was poisoned, slow poisoning, so that I become sick - if not dead, at least not able to talk to you, so she remains the representative.

Or perhaps the poison was just to make my tongue dead so I cannot speak. They have been experimenting with it. I have come to know about one doctor who took a cup of tea and she found that for the whole day she could not speak. Her tongue was almost paralyzed.

Sheela was telling you that total surrender was needed.

I am telling you total responsibility is needed.

And you have to prove that what total surrender can do, total responsibility can do a hundred times better!

I was teaching you doubt; she was teaching you to believe. Because I insisted on speaking, her gang and their activities became exposed. If I had remained silent you would have continued to think, "Perhaps the master wants it this way."

It means you have never listened to me. You have not tried to understand me at all. I never want you to do anything against your reason, against your own dignity.

I want to give you back your pride of being the highest expression of evolution.

So from now on, remember, even if I go on speaking for my whole life, one day I will have to leave the body. Somebody cunning, clever, political, can again make you into a fascist group. Don't let this happen.

But that does not mean that you become a nuisance in the commune. You have to learn a balance.

You know only two things: either you will be a slave or a nuisance. Can't you find a middle course? - where you are sensible, not nuisance, just sense, and where you are not a slave but pure freedom.

Act out of your sensitivity, your freedom, your love - and I don't think there is any problem: you can manage it.

I love you so much, I trust you so much. I have such high evaluation of your intelligence, that I can say you can make the impossible possible.

Question 2:

That's why I have said that I am responsible for whatever happened - because you are fast asleep.

You are not alert, aware; you live like a somnambulist, walking in your sleep. How can you say that you are responsible for it all?

Neither can I say Sheela and her group are responsible. They belong to the same category as you.

They just had power and in their sleep they did whatever sleep allows you to do. You had no power, you followed them, because what can a sleeper do?

So the whole responsibility is basically mine. I should not have gone into silence and isolation.

But it has been a great experiment, and a great experience that a man like me should not leave you alone in the hands of people who are just like you.

The law, perhaps, may not allow it, but this is my deepest longing: that Sheela and her group should be forgiven, and if any punishment is needed they should give it to me.

Only I am responsible, because I went into silence. I had never thought that silence can lead to such calamity.

Question 3:

One thing you all have to understand. For four years you have repressed your ideas, your opinions, so you must be carrying a great load and you all would like to throw that load on poor Hasya.

You should at least be this much alert: that Hasya has not forced you, repressed you. The people who had repressed you have gone.

But you can go into the mountains and express yourself as loudly as you can - just to unburden. It helps, it helps immensely. It is a psychological treatment, so just try. Go in the mountains, find a good place, and say everything that you always wanted to say. But don't bring your opinions and expressions into the commune, because that will just create a wastage of energy.

The coordinator is just to look after so many people: that their work does not conflict with each other, that the people are not doing the same work - unnecessarily duplicating. The coordinator is just to watch that everybody is in his position, not sleepy, and not doing unnecessary work.

And he is a link between you and the president of your corporation, so any problems that you have, he can take them to the corporation. He is responsible to you that no harm happens to you, that in no way are you placed where you don't want to be, that you are not mistreated. The coordinator has to be aware of all these things.

He is not under the service of the federation, corporation, foundation, or any other body. He is in the service of the people of whom he is the coordinator. His responsibility is that his people should remain healthy, happy, rejoicing, and they should not suffer on any account through bureaucracy.

Your responsibility to the coordinator is to listen to him, to do what is needed by the commune. The coordinator is a link. His work is double. He takes your needs to the president and he brings the president's messages of what is needed to be done, what the commune needs right now. He is just a messenger.

I have heard that many people are very much disturbed with a few coordinators who have been in with Sheela and her gang. Certainly you feel resentful, but that is not right. These people have not left. They revolted against Sheela and the criminal group - you should think of it - and you resent them.

Sheela and the people with her will hate them, and you resent them. They don't have any shelter anywhere. They understand that they belonged to a wrong group, but they were as innocent as you are. They also thought, "This is what the master wants us to do."

And the proof is that they revolted. Even the secretary of Sheela revolted against her, which was really courageous. She proved to be a real jewel. Sheela was very much afraid of her because she knew everything; she was Sheela's secretary, so every paper had passed through her. She knows all that they have done. Sheela wanted to take her with her. She even tried to poison the poor girl.

If she cannot take her, then it is better to kill her. It seems killing people became to them just a very simple thing.

But Geeta has remained, and she will be of immense help. She is, because most of the stories that have come to exposure are because of Geeta, because she knows the right person who will tell the story. If you feel resentful towards Geeta that will not be in any way nice. That will not show your love, your heart. That will simply show a very stupid reaction.

Hasya was asking me, "Should we remove all these people? - Geeta, Padma, Ava, and others?"

I said, "No. They have revolted against Sheela. They should be rewarded, not punished. And they will be of immense help to you, because this thing is going to become a bigger Watergate than Nixon could manage."

Don't feel resentful. I can understand your mind. Seeing the same faces in the same places, you feel angry. But you should be a little more understanding. I want them to be in the same places, because in the same places they can be of help to you.

The case is going to be one of a serious kind. It is going to be international news. Already what has happened is being talked about around the earth.

Now Sheela is in London and the whole group has disappeared - perhaps separately into different places. They are hiding like criminals, but they all will be caught. The earth is small, and my sannyasins are all the way around the earth. They may deceive Interpol, but they cannot deceive my sannyasins. And all of my sannyasins have suffered - not only you. Sannyasins in other communes have also suffered.

They cannot deceive this army of one million sannyasins. We will get hold of them. And Ava, Padma, Patipada, Geeta - these will be the people, key people who will be of immense help.

For example, Geeta just informed me that before Sheela left, she has taken twenty-five letterheads of each corporation. That means she is still thinking of doing more crime. We have to report it to the police, that she has taken blank forms from each corporation. Now she can write anything on those blank forms, make the whole corporation responsible, and in that way disrupt the whole commune.

So please, just do me a favor. These people are not your enemies; they were as much deceived as you were deceived. And I cannot tolerate it that they should be punished in any way, removed from their places.

Yes, I would like them to change their behavior and attitude. For four years they have been trained in a wrong discipline. They should drop that completely and start from the very scratch. And they have to deliver everything that they know, whatever the cost, to help the commune.

So you drop any antagonism. Your antagonism will keep them closed. They will not be able to expose everything that they know. You don't know what more must have been happening.

Sheela has asked.... This is information from Geeta. Geeta was typing so she knows that this is absolutely correct; otherwise it would be difficult for me to get this information. Now we can find the person and verify it. The person is here, one of our great scientists. She asked him, "Can a machine be made with death rays?"

That is being experimented with by the American government, by the Russian government. All over the world scientists are thinking of death rays. And you will be surprised, our sannyasin is capable of making it.

The moment he became aware that this was going to be used, he asked, "I can make it. There are certain sounds - you will not hear those sounds, but the machine will create those sounds, and they will kill you. I am capable of making it, but if it is going to kill humans I will not."

Now, without Geeta it would have been impossible to know about this. Now we can ask the scientist and the scientist can give his testimony to the court that he was asked for this and he had refused.

Be kind to these people - a little more kind than you are to others. And kindness costs nothing. Be loving to these people, so they can feel at home, so they can feel that they are not suspected, that they are not doubted, that everybody is not watching them as enemies. Otherwise, it will be difficult for them to open their mouths, and they may be carrying immensely important information.

So I will not change them from their positions. I would rather like you to change your attitude. Your attitude is wrong. If you are antagonistic to them, you are forcing them to go with Sheela's group. If these four people, five people who are here.... Ava had gone with Sheela, but returned from Seattle, feeling that she was going with a criminal group. Now you should appreciate her courage.

These four, five people will be able to encourage others who are hiding as criminals that there is no need to be afraid in the commune. "Even if we have done something wrong, the commune has a large heart that can forgive and forget, and allow us to live a new way of life." These people will be the proof for others that they can also come and they will be welcomed.

I know that there was Sheela, Puja, Shanti Bhadra - the most criminal out of the whole group, they were the main criminals. Others simply followed, perhaps in the same way as you followed. If all those people return to the commune, you will be strengthened in the court, before the law, in every way. You will have actual witnesses, and that is what is needed.

So these people should receive your respect and love. Even go out of the way to show your respect and love to them, and tell them, "You have come home. The past is past and the future is free. You can change, and you can help the commune."

Question 4:

That is not a question.

Question 5:

That's certainly true.

Lotuses grow only out of mud, and Sheela and her group have done the basic work: they have created mud. Now you do the second part!

Okay?