Surrender: the ego upside down

This tapes of this discourse were erased the day after it was given, this transcription appeared a week later.

Question 1:

UNFORTUNATELY, it is.

Religion needs some kind of organization, but the problem arises. Organization in itself is a political entity; organization does not need religion at all.

To survive, religion needs organization.

To survive, organization needs no religion at all.

There is the crux of the whole problem.

There have been in the past efforts to create religion without any organization, seeing that all the organizations somehow end up in being anti-religious. For example, the Catholic church - it is a very solid organization but only an organization; there is no religion left.

Religion is a disturbance as far as the hierarchy of the organization is concerned. Religion is a continuous trouble; religious people will be trouble.

The Catholic church has been throwing out from the church all the people who are really religious because those people will not support this criminal act of destroying religion. They will oppose it, they will rebel against it. But the church has so much authority. The head of the church, the pope, is a religious head and also a temporal head; the Vatican is his kingdom, a political nation. Once it was big, vast; now it is only eight square miles, but still he is the temporal head and the spiritual head.

There are religions where the temporal head is separate and the religious head is separate, but then there were problems of conflict. The temporal head has all the power of the army, the law, the state; and the spiritual head has no temporal power. For example in Hinduism, the shankaracharya is only a spiritual head. But that creates this other problem: a continuous conflict between the state and the religion - and of course the state is powerful.

You have to remember that the higher a thing, the more fragile it is. The lower a thing, the more strong it is. Roots are strong, flowers are not; although roots are meaningless if the flowers disappear - the roots have meaning only because of the flowers. But the tree is not so stupid as man; so there is a harmony between the flowers and the roots, there is no conflict.

Flowers represent the spiritual fragrance, and the roots represent the state, the army and all its power.

The roots can deny food to the flowers and the flowers will die and disappear within no time. But no tree is so stupid: there is a harmony; the roots go on supporting the flowers, the leaves, the branches. And it is not only one-sided. The flowers, the leaves, the branches go on taking rays from the sun and carbon dioxide from the air, and they go on continuously sending them to the roots.

It is a communion, there is no question of conflict.

But in religion it has been a problem. If you keep them apart then soon the state starts trying to control the religion. For example, in England the church is separate but the queen is really the head of both: of the church and of the state. The church has its own head but there is a crowned head who is over him. What can the archbishop of Canterbury do against the queen?

In Russia the same was the situation. The church was separate, the czar was separate, but the whole power was in the hands of the czar. So it was just for show that the head of the church crowned the czar as if he was above the czar. But he knew and everybody knew that this was only ceremonial. In reality he had to follow the czar and the state, support the czar and the state, because without the czar, the church would die: it wouldn't have any support, financial or otherwise.

That's why Catholics tried to make church and state, one: to give both powers into the hands of one man so there was no conflict.

But the trouble is when a man becomes politically powerful, that political power tends to corrupt him.

He may misuse it; it is almost certain that he will misuse it.

In the first place, if the head has both temporal and spiritual power, then the people who are spiritual will not make any effort to become the head, because the spiritual person does not want to get involved in power politics.

Then, only the people who are politically minded... they may be in a religious robe, they may be bishops and cardinals and ministers and they may have studied theology, but they are not spiritual people. If they had been in the world they would have tried to become the president or the prime minister; it is just accidental that they are in the religious robe. Their ambition can be fulfilled here only by becoming the pope. So they will make every effort to become the pope.

When they have the power they are bound to misuse it.

They were never spiritual in the first place.

Hinduism tried another thing also. If you make one person a spiritual head there is a possibility that the person is not really spiritual. You may have erred, because there is no criterion by which to judge, and it cannot be decided by election because people have no idea what spirituality is. How are they going to decide who is spiritual? They can only nominate. It cannot be chosen in an election - if you have an election you bring politics in.

The Catholic pope is elected, so naturally the politically minded cardinals make every effort to approach all those people - perhaps there are two hundred cardinals who choose the pope - so there is an undercurrent of campaign, an election campaign, continuously. Even when there is a pope the campaign continues because popes don't live long, for the simple reason that by the time the person becomes a pope he's nearabout seventy. So you can hope that within two, three, four or five years he will be gone.

This polack is going to be tough - you cannot hope that he will be gone so easily, he may stay longer.

His predecessor was only in office for nine months - that is more gentlemanly, but who expects a polack to be a gentleman? That was more gentlemanly: in nine months he disappeared to give an opportunity for another person to become a pope. But very few people are so generous.

Hinduism tried to ensure that their religion would have many heads; all would be nominated. But then there is another problem: great confusion. Hinduism is a great confusion - you can't even call it one religion. It is a thousand and one religions together, because there is no central control.

Anybody can gather disciples and can become a head and nobody can prevent it.

The idea was to give freedom but it turned out to be confusion. Any idiot can find a few other idiots who are always available everywhere. There are so many sects in Hinduism; each sect has many sub-sects and each sub-sect has its own head. They don't even have a talking relationship with the other heads of the same religion! They are continually fighting in the courts because sometimes it happens that two persons claim that they are the head and if they can give some kind of proof...

One of the most important temples in India for Hindus is in the Himalayas, Badrinathdham. For almost ten years it has been locked under police control because the court is unable to decide who is the head because the shankaracharya who died ten years ago wrote two wills. He wrote one will perhaps twenty, thirty years before when he found somebody who was potentially very capable, and he forgot about the will because he lived so long. For thirty years he must have kept it somewhere.

That man stole the will.

And when the shankaracharya was dying he was asked - by that time that man had left him - so he chose another person and made another will; the first will could not be found in his papers.

Now before the Allahabad High Court there are two wills from the same man and both persons are claiming that they are the head. And the temple is one of the richest temples in India so it is not only a question of being head: it has money, it has power, it has lands - and it has millions of followers.

But both wills are from the same man. Now, how to decide? The signature experts have decided that both signatures are from the same man. There are eyewitnesses for both. But neither shankaracharya is able to function because the court goes on postponing, simply for the reason that they don't see any way of deciding it. They are simply hoping that one of these two dies, so that will decide the case. Otherwise it won't be decided.

Hinduism has so many sects because each person in Hinduism... the caste system is very strict but as far as thinking is concerned you are absolutely free. If you are born in the house of a shoemaker you cannot change it, you will have to remain a shoemaker. No other profession will allow you in.

You cannot move from one caste to another caste; that movement is absolutely closed.

So for centuries your forefathers and their fore-fathers and their forefathers and their forefathers were all making shoes - so you will make shoes. If they were weaving clothes, you will weave clothes; you will be a weaver. If they were carpenters, you will be a carpenter. There is no movement as far as your business, trade, lifestyle is concerned, but as far as thinking is concerned there is no bondage. You could move from being a follower of Shankaracharya and you could become a follower of Vallabhacharya, another spiritual head, a contemporary of Shankaracharya's and against Shankaracharya.

Sanskrit is such a language that with just a little logic everything can be interpreted in many ways.

Each word has many meanings; that gives beauty to it. It gives it poetry because you can play with the word in so many ways, it does not have a fixed meaning. But it is also dangerous: you cannot write signs in Sanskrit because then there will be so many interpretations, and that is what has happened. On the Gita there are one thousand famous commentaries, to say nothing about non-famous commentaries! - there will be many thousands more. But there are one thousand very famous commentaries.

It is thought that anyone who writes a commentary on three of the scriptures - the Vedas, Badarayana's Brahmasutras and Krishna's Shrimad Bhagavadita - becomes an acharya, a head:

he can create a following. Now it is not very difficult to write commentaries on these three scriptures.

Many commentaries are available. Shankara wrote one in his own time. Vallabhacharya wrote differently, a totally different interpretation. Ramanujacharya wrote one, different again from both.

Nimbarkacharya wrote one different from them all - not only different but quite the opposite. But the Gita is capable of being looked at from 8any angle. It gives tremendous freedom to think, to comment, but it also creates great confusion.

So Hinduism is not a religion like Christianity, Judaism or Mohammedanism. In Mohammedanism there is one prophet, one god, one book - that's all. In Hinduism there are thousands of scriptures, all of tremendous value; and on each scripture there are thousands of commentaries, and every commentary has some value, some insight. Then there are commentaries upon commentaries....

Shankara writes a commentary on the Gita; then among Shankara's followers one follower writes one commentary on Shankara's commentary, and another follower writes another commentary on Shankara's commentary - because the commentary is also as vulnerable to interpretation as the original. Then their disciples go on writing more commentaries.

If you just look, Hinduism is like a tree: each branch brings new branches, then small branches, then more small branches. And they are all creating a great noise, great controversies - one cannot say what exactly Hinduism is. Organization has been avoided in a way, but the religion has not been saved - it has fallen into a confusion. It has not become a cult and a creed; it has become a confusion.

Seeing this situation, Mahavira's orthodox followers.... They are called digambaras because they live naked, their monks live naked. Digambara means one whose only clothing is the sky - nothing is between him and the sky. To avoid confusion, to avoid commentaries, to avoid organization, they simply destroyed all Mahavira's scriptures.

So Digambaras don't have any scriptures of Mahavira - a strange act, just to preserve his teaching.

It is given by word of mouth to the disciple but is not in a book. You cannot sell it in the market; nobody can write a commentary on it. The teaching goes on silently, transferred from one generation of monks to another generation of monks. It was a great effort of tremendous courage to destroy all the scriptures, so you could not print them. But what happened was that even by transferring it from individual to individual, there were different versions, because naturally....

You are all listening to me, but if you all go back home and write down what I have said, do you think you will be reporting the same? Tomorrow morning you can look at all the notebooks and be surprised that everybody has got something else, has laid emphasis on something which you have completely ignored. You have not heard it at all, but somebody else has heard only that. What you have heard, she has not bothered about.

So even though they tried to avoid written scriptures and remain consistent, there are different versions. There are only twenty-two naked monks now; I have met all twenty-two. I was puzzled that they all have different versions from their teachers, and they are giving a different version to their disciple who someday will become a naked monk. They are training the disciple, and they think in this way the purity of the message is preserved.

But I asked them, "Have you ever compared notes with the other twenty-one?"

They said, "No, that is never done. What my teacher has given to me, I will give to my chief disciple, and he will give it to his chief disciple."

But I said, "I have met all twenty-two and you are all saying different things." If it was in a book at least there would have been some possibility to come to some agreement. Now there is no way to come to any agreement. There are twenty-two religions arising from one source - which they have destroyed. So now there is nothing to fall back on and check; and you cannot prove anybody is wrong or anybody is right.

The other sect of Jainas is the shvetambaras. The name, shvetambara, means white-robed; they are not naked, they use white robes. They have scriptures but they have many sects themselves. And on such small points there is so much difference that one cannot imagine what will be happening about spiritual, philosophical things.

They have strange disagreements - about whether Mahavira was married or not, there is a difference. One sect believes he was not only married, he had a daughter. The daughter was married - he had a son-in-law, and the daughter and the son-in-law were both initiated by Mahavira.

Not only that, they believe that the son-in-law slowly became more political, thinking, "I am the son- in-law of Mahavira...." He must have been hoping that he would succeed him. But Mahavira simply did not encourage him. It came to such a point that he rebelled against Mahavira with five hundred other monks and made a totally different religion.

Now this is so much that it cannot be just invented - and for what? But the other sect says that he was never married because tirthankaras are not married. That is part of the definition of a tirthankara, that he remains unmarried; so how could Mahavira have been married? He was not married.

And to say that he had a child means he had a sexual relationship - that is an absolutely ugly thing to think of a tirthankara. Then you are doing more and more harm: the tirthankara's daughter is married! Now the daughter of a tirthankara - his blood - thinking of marrying? Impossible!

And worse, you say that the son-in-law rebelled against him. How could anybody have rebelled against a man like Mahavira - what to say about the son-in-law! - it is impossible. This whole story is bogus, according to the other sect. Their scriptures say that he was never married, there was no question of a daughter, no son-in-law, no rebel.

If on such points, which are factual, there is so much difference, then what to say about the teaching!

On every point there is a difference. To avoid the differences the orthodox Digambaras destroyed the scriptures - but just destroying the scriptures won't help. You have to create a certain mythology around it. And the mythology is that Mahavira never spoke. So there is no question of there being any scriptures - he never spoke.

Now the Shvetambaras have the scriptures, sermons of Mahavira on each subject, detailed instructions for the monks about each special thing: how he has to sit, how he has to stand up, how he has to walk, how far he can see. He should look only four feet ahead so he never sees a woman, because looking four feet ahead, at the most you can see the feet of a woman, that's all.

He should walk very slowly, very carefully, so he does not kill any ants or anything. He should carry a woolen brush with him so that before he sits he brushes the place. It has to be woolen so that no ant or anything is killed by it, it is so soft. Such details!that he has to have three pieces of clothing, one begging bowl, one brush, one small mattress which he keeps rolled under his arm. He should not sit on anybody else's clothes because you can't be certain about the vibrations of other people....

And Digambaras say Mahavira never spoke!

What did he do instead of speaking? He had chosen twelve chief disciples with whom he had a mind-to-mind communication. He didn't need to speak to them; it was a silent communication to twelve teachers. Those twelve teachers were to tell all the other monks what they had heard in Mahavira's silence. Now a very complicated affair... and all those twelve didn't agree, so from the very beginning there have been twelve versions of Mahavira's teachings.

To avoid organization Mahavira said, "Now, there will be no successor to me." But that did not make any difference. Yes, there is no one successor to him, but there are thousands of heads of small sects. They don't claim to be successors of Mahavira, they don't say they are tirthankaras; they are teachers of Mahavira's teaching. But all those teachers are continually in conflict about everything.

The same happened to Buddha. While he was alive he did not allow what he was saying to be written down - you were simply to understand him, to experience him. And your experience and your understanding you shared with people. Otherwise there was every possibility that people would start worshipping those books - like Mohammedans worship the Koran, Christians worship the Bible.

"So it is better not to have my words," Buddha said to his disciples, "in a book form." When he was saying it, of course it was going to be so. But when he died the disciples were in difficulty because there were so many people saying different things, something had to be decided - already there was chaos.

Then three hundred disciples together compiled what Buddha had said. The compilation was done in a closed place because there was so much conflict and they did not want people to know that the chief disciples were in conflict and fighting: "This was not said by Buddha...." So in a closed place somehow they came to some agreement, through negotiations, following the middle path: "If two persons are saying two things then come to the middle and keep that." But that was a hodgepodge.

Buddha would not be able to recognize that those were his words - those were three hundred people's agreement. Now, three hundred people in disagreement, coming to an agreement - you can imagine what the outcome will be. Yes, to the world they could then show that they had a scripture... but those who understand - how can they deceive them? Buddha avoided making any head of his religion. That created thirty two sects immediately after his death.

There were other teachers in Buddha and Mahavira's time too. One was Sanjay Vilethiputta. He avoided even initiation, he said, "You simply listen to me. If you feel like doing what I am saying, you do it, but I will not initiate you. If I initiate you, soon you will create an organization. You will need an organization to keep all the people who are my disciples together. There are so many reasons for them to be together - for their security, for their safety, because they will be persecuted by the other religions. And if they are left alone in the vast ocean of enemies, they will be destroyed."

And in India they have a very simple method of destroying anybody. India is a country of small villages, very small villages, millions of small villages. In a small village there are only twenty houses; twenty families are living there. They can destroy anybody by a simple method, a very non-violent method. They decide that a man is not to be accepted as part of them, so he cannot be invited to any marriage, to any ceremony.

Nobody will talk with him. He's not allowed to take water from the village well. If the river is five miles away, he has to carry his water from there. When crops are to be cut, nobody is to support him.

Otherwise, in a village, that's the way: when one person's crops are ripe, the whole village helps him to cut the crop. Then somebody else's are ready and the whole village helps him. Singlehandedly, he will be in immense trouble.

Nobody will talk to him. People should not recognize him on the street, should not say hello. You will kill the man - and he cannot go anywhere else because in India people are tethered to their land.

Nobody is going to purchase his land, his house. If he wants to leave he can leave, but where is he going to go and what he is going to do?

It's a very easy, very non-violent, but really cruel method; far more cruel than killing the man. His children will not be playing with other children, his wife will not be meeting with any other woman.

He's boycotted.

So Sanjay Vilethiputta said, "If I initiate you an organization will be necessary. I will not give you initiation, then it cannot be known to others that you are my followers. You just go on living, experiencing, doing what I have told to you. And if you feel to convey it to somebody, you can convey it, but there is no question of initiation. So nobody knows that you belong to Sanjay Vilethiputta."

But what happened? Sanjay Vilethiputta's scriptures we don't have. The man must have been of immense intelligence because Buddha criticizes him, Mahavira criticizes him. Otherwise, Mahavira and Buddha would not criticize a man who had no status. He must have had a status exactly the same as Buddha and Mahavira. Mahavira does not criticize Buddha, he was too young. Mahavira was too old; it was below him to criticize Buddha.

It happened to me.... It was Gandhi's one-hundred-year celebration year, a century was complete; if he had been alive he would have been one hundred years old. So one year, a whole year of celebrations was made in India. And I made it a point that for the whole year I would criticize him because that was the right time. So I spoke all over India, criticizing him everywhere.

The oldest Gandhian was Kaka Kalelkar. He was one of the very early disciples and by then was the most authoritative person. When he was asked in New Delhi what he thought about me, he said, "He's too young, and youth is bound to be rebellious. When he is my age he will not criticize Gandhi." I was in Ahmedabad when I received the message. Someone from Delhi brought me a newspaper and showed me that this is what he had said.

I said, "My comment is that Kaka Kalelkar has gone senile. If youth is rebellious and if it is to be decided by age.... He has not said anything against my arguments. He's indicating my age, that I am saying these things because I'm too young; he's not saying anything against what I have said.

Then naturally the simple answer is that he is senile. He's too old to understand; he's lost his brains and he should be in his grave.

"As far as I am concerned, one thing is certain: even in my grave I will criticize Gandhi because my arguments have nothing to do with my age, no relevance to my age. Gandhi was against everything that has been invented after the spinning wheel. I cannot conceive that even if I am three hundred years old I will support this idea that the spinning wheel should be the last invention of man, and after that everything is evil!"

Now almost twenty years have passed and I am still of the same opinion. Gandhi, about certain things, was absolutely fanatic. He wanted the world to remain at least three thousand years back, stuck there, not to move from there. And the reason he was giving was absolutely meaningless. The reason was that at that time people were happy, people were moral, people were religious, people were spiritual. Now, all these things are wrong.

In Mesopotamia they have found a stone - the whole civilization of Mesopotamia has disappeared - it is a six thousand year-old stone with writing on it. If you read it you will think it is from somewhere in today's newspaper's editorial. It says, "Young people are getting lost" - the generation gap, six thousand years ago - "the young people are disobedient and don't listen to their fathers and mothers and elders. This is the age of degradation" - six thousand years ago!

And it was the age of degradation. Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna, all were teaching people continually - Mahavira for forty years, Buddha for forty-two years - and what were they teaching? "Don't steal, don't lie, don't lust after other people's women." Now if people were not doing these things then Mahavira and Buddha were both insane, completely insane. When people are not stealing, what is the point of teaching for forty years continually, "Don't steal"?

I was in Bhopal sitting in my host's bedroom, and I saw on the wall a small notice: "Please don't spit on the floor." Strange.... I said, "People do?"

He said, "Yes, in Bhopal this is the trouble. Only in Bhopal is this the trouble: people chew the betel leaves and spit them out wherever." He said, "You are surprised? You will find this kind of notice in every nice house." But this notice is enough proof that people are spitting. Otherwise I have never seen that notice anywhere in India.

In my university, one day I saw one of the professors spitting the betel leaf on the floor - the pan that Indians go on chewing. Taru is an expert in it. I saw him spitting there, just in front of me. I was sitting alone and he was sitting in another corner and he just spat by the side of the chair. I went over and asked him, "Are you from Bhopal?"

He said, "Yes, I have just been transferred from Bhopal."

I said, "That explains it." He said, "What?"

I said, "We will now have to keep a small notice here that says,'Please don't spit on the floor.""

He said, "Strange, but it is true that only in Bhopal people spit, and this is general. And nobody cares about those notices. Notices are there - in fact they remind you to spit. You may be chewing your pan joyfully and suddenly you see that board, and the desire to spit arises. They don't prevent anybody."

If Gandhi says everything was moral three thousand years ago, then to whom was morality being taught? If everything was spiritual, then what was the need of so many spiritual leaders? If everything was good then why do you go on remembering only a few good names? - Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna - that can be counted on your fingers.

If everybody was good, Buddha and Mahavira would have been lost in the crowd because the whole crowd was good. Just because you remember these few names shows that they rose above the masses; so high, that even three thousand years, five thousand years afterwards, you can still see them. The masses have completely disappeared; there is no description of the masses at all.

But Gandhi was adamant about technology: the telegraph, the telephone.... I don't see that the telegraph, or the telephone are in any way violent. In fact these are very non-violent things; they should be supported by non-violent people. If you don't have a telephone then you will have to walk down to the place, and walking may kill a few insects. Or if you drive the car there then you are going to kill a few small insects on the road - or you may have an accident, kill somebody or get killed yourself The telephone is saving you from all this violence.

I don't see that I can change my argument anytime, because it is a simple argument. It has nothing to do with my age.

Mahavira did not criticize Buddha. To me that is a criticism of Mahavira. It was an egoistic attitude to think, "He is too young and I am too established; he is just starting from scratch - who cares about him?"

But he could not ignore Sanjay Vilethiputta. Neither could Buddha ignore him, so it seems the man must have been of great influence. We find his name in the books of his enemies, and we find a few things that he must have been teaching - that too in the books of his enemies. His books are not available because there was no disciple to preserve them, no organization to preserve them.

And we cannot trust what his enemies were saying against him because this is an old logical strategy: to describe, to destroy, to criticize your enemy, first you impose a certain doctrine on him which is not really representative of the person. It may be similar but first you impose a similar doctrine on the person's name - knowing perfectly the loopholes because you are imposing the doctrine - and then criticize it. Then whosoever reads your book will find your criticism is perfectly right. This has happened to me, that's why I know.

One of the great Hindu monks, Karpatri, has written a whole book against me; and when I saw it I wondered how he managed. Statements that I have never made he makes in my name, and then criticizes them. Now, anybody reading his book will think that he has finished me completely. He has not even touched me.

His secretary has written the introduction to the book, and seems to be an intelligent man because in that introduction he says, "We are obliged to Bhagwan because he created this opportunity and the challenge for all those who think to reconsider everything and not just to accept anything without reconsidering it."

The secretary is a follower of Karpatri, so he thanks Karpatri for doing a great job in accepting the challenge of Bhagwan and criticizing him. He came personally to give me the book. I looked in it here and there and I asked him, "You are the secretary to Karpatri" - he was a Hindu sannyasin himself - "Have you not noticed that these statements are not mine? Most probably the book was dictated to you."

He said, "I was afraid that you were going to say that."

I just looked here and there in the book and I told him, "This statement is not mine. Not only is it not mine, it is contrary to me, absolutely against my statements. You are an educated person: how did you allow it to happen? You should have prevented it, because this book is absolutely false and whosoever reads it will have a totally wrong concept of me."

So you cannot trust these people - because I have compared what Buddha said about Sanjay Vilethiputta and what Mahavira says about him is something else. Buddha quotes Sanjay Vilethiputta's philosophy differently, Mahavira differently. That shows certainly that nobody is representing the other person accurately. That is dishonesty. The honest person should first state the other person's argument in its totality, in its full strength, and then he should criticize it.

But without an organization Sanjay Vilethiputta is completely lost - we don't have anything of his to compare. And we don't have any disciple's notes because he never initiated anyone. So perhaps within one or two generations the thing must have disappeared - and the man's contribution must have been of immense value.

Krishnamurti is doing exactly what Sanjay Vilethiputta did. He abandoned the organization and for almost sixty years he has been trying to help people individually to understand - but nothing has happened; he's the most frustrated Master ever. And now at the age of eighty-five he creates the Krishnamurti Foundation in England. This is the experience of sixty years - that he understands that the moment he dies there will be nobody even to preserve his words. What to say about his experience - even his words will not be there.

What is happening around me is totally different from what has been done up to now... because nothing has been successful; in one way or another every effort has failed.

Now the effort around me is not to create an organization like the Catholics because then the whole power becomes concentrated in one person - and that is dangerous.

That creates ambition in others to reach to the highest post. They forget about spirituality, growth.

Then their whole effort is how to become the pope. Deep down that desire.... So it becomes another world, an other-worldly politics.

And all the power in one person's hand is always dangerous.

Around me the effort from the very beginning has been to decentralize power.

So around me many parallel organizations are slowly being created, and each organization is autonomous, functioning in one direction.

For example, Rajneesh Foundation International will be looking after my words and other religious affairs.

The Academy, another organization, will be purely esoteric. For the Academy I have created three circles of people. They will be the Academy; they will have the whole spiritual power in my physical absence. It will have all the best, the most intelligent sannyasins in there. Their combined intelligence will be enough - a power unto itself.

Then the commune will have a separate body of its own. Now there are almost one dozen communes around the earth. And all the communes are patterned exactly alike. And they are coming up to the standards here. Europe is almost there. In Europe there are ten communes now.

Small centers have dissolved into bigger communes because small centers can be crushed very easily; only communes can live. So now the Zurich commune has hundreds of people; Medina, in London, has hundreds of people; Berlin has hundreds of people. So now these people can stand up for themselves and will not be easily persecuted.

Each commune is autonomous.

Still they are all alike, exactly patterned like the commune here. Their clothes are of the same quality, their food is of the same quality - because I was shocked when I heard that a few communes were so poor that they were only eating bread and soup.

So I am now sending Sheela, every month, for three days to each commune, to see that the religious work is carried out according to my vision; so no sannyasin living in any commune feels that he's deprived of any facility. All the facilities should be absolutely similar and each commune is autonomous.

Our sannyasins in many ways are very innocent people. They may be very educated but they are innocent people - and after becoming sannyasins they have become more innocent. And therefore there is no problem; it needs a simple common sense.

Organization cannot be avoided.

We just have to be a little more sophisticated and more scientific and more mathematical about it.

We have to use it rather than being used by it.

So I am not against organization, but we can learn from the past. Whatsoever has happened in the past we can avoid. And we can do something totally new which has never been done.

And if you can see all the possibilities which destroy religion... and before they get hold of my religion I am going to finish all those possibilities. Sannyasins can have a totally different organization. That promise you can always remember: I will not leave you in a state of chaos.

In the past what has happened? These people made their organizations at the very last moment when they were dying; or mostly the organizations were created after the founders were dead, because when the founder was there things were going perfectly well, so who bothered about it. But when the founder was dead, immediately the need... his absence was there. And it was such a big emptiness that it was impossible for people to connect. They had connected with the founder, but they had no interconnection amongst themselves.

And that's really what organization is. The word is very meaningful; it comes from organ. Your hand is your organ, your leg is your organ; your nose, your eyes - these are your organs. And your whole body is the organization. And they're all functioning in immense harmony.

How many parts you have - and they're all functioning in harmony; you are not even aware of it.

Everything is going on so silently that scientists say that if we were to make such a mechanism that works so silently and does all the work that the body does, we would need at least a one square mile area to make it in the factory.

Even today it is not possible to turn bread into blood - how your body does it is an everyday miracle.

Millions of living cells are within you; you are almost a city. There are seven million living cells, perhaps having a certain small brain of their own, because their work is so intelligent you cannot say they don't have any brain.

Everything is being shifted, is being supplied to the place where it is needed. Care is even being taken by those small cells inside you so that the nourishment should reach first to the parts which are most essential. Your brain gets the nourishment first, the legs can wait a little.

But if just for few minutes - I think six minutes - your brain does not get oxygen, it starts disintegrating. So the first thing - and how these small cells are doing and deciding it is a mystery - oxygen should reach to the brain. When the brain's need is fulfilled, then second-grade organs, third-grade organs, fourth-grade organs.... That way it should move.

You are a city of seven million living beings. This is an organization, and this is what it should be. All our separate organs should be connected, helping each other, remembering where help is needed more, and first; and remembering that your whole function is to be enlightened, so the torch of enlightenment remains burning. There is no gap. And I'm taking every care that there will be no gap.

Bodhidharma will feel jealous of me!