The only authentic democracy: the dictatorship of the enlightened ones

Question 1:

I am against communism, but for a very strange reason. The strange reason is that it is not communism at all. The word communism is derived from "commune"; but communism is not commune-ism. It has no base in the idea of the commune - on the contrary, it is simply anti- capitalism. Its name gives you the false notion of something positive, but in fact it is only a negative approach: it is anti-capitalism. And my understanding is that anything that is basically negative cannot help man's evolution in any way.

It is because of this fact that atheism has not been of any help to man's evolution, his consciousness, his growth. It is just pure negativity. Just saying that there is no God, and basing your whole philosophy on the belief in no - God, is sheer stupidity. Life needs something positive. In fact it needs something so positive that it can absorb its negative also, so powerfully positive that the negative need not remain out of it or against it; it can be absorbed.

Jesus says, "Man cannot live by bread alone." I cannot agree with him, because mostly man lives by bread alone; most human beings have lived by bread alone. I know what his implication was. I am not against his implication, I am against his statement. The implication is that man needs something more than the physical, something more than the bodily, something higher, transcendental, without which man can vegetate but cannot live. I support the implication, but Jesus' statement is very poor.

Why did I mention the statement? I wanted to make a similar statement but one with tremendous meaning.

I say unto you:

Man cannot live by the negative alone.

And communism is only a negative philosophy, like atheism.

Just think:

How can you grow with noes surrounding you?

Growth needs the staircase of yes.

No is dead; it is equivalent to death.

Death is the ultimate no.

Life is the ultimate yes. Life needs the base of some yes-philosophy.

Communism has nothing to offer. It is very strange, but worth understanding, that all kinds of perverse ideas are by-products of Judaism - for example Christianity, which is a negative philosophy.

The cross is a symbol of its negativity. You can make it of gold, but a cross is a cross. Just by making it of gold you cannot make it a yes; it remains a no.

Christianity has said no to everything in life that is joyful, that you can rejoice in. It is anti-life. It is rooted in death, and its whole world starts after your death. Your life is worthless unless it is sacrificed for the life that is going to come after death.

You see the perversion? Is real life after death or before death? And if life continues after death, then why should you be against life now? - because the same life will continue, perhaps on a wider scale, a bigger scale, a higher scale, but the same life will be there. And if you are against this life, how can you be for that life? It is going to be a continuity, an enlargement.

Christianity is the first perversion that came out of Judaism. The second perversion that came out of Judaism is Freudian psychoanalysis. Freud was a Jew just as Jesus was a Jew, but there is a difference between the two. Jesus was trying to prove himself the messiah of the Jews. He was a little gullible and innocent, perhaps unaware of the fact that messiahs are only in the future or in the past, but never in the present. You can accept them when they are dead, you can accept them when they are not born, but you cannot accept them when they are your contemporaries. For your contemporaries you have nothing but contempt; perhaps that is the root of the word contemporary.

And Jesus was just trying to be accepted as a messiah while alive. Freud was more sophisticated, more intellectual, more cultured. His approach was not that of proving himself a Jewish messiah - he knew what had happened to Jesus - he tried just the opposite. It is a logical understanding:

Jesus failed by trying something, now try just the opposite.

Judaism is very much against sex. All the religions are against sex, so it is nothing unique to Judaism. But other religions are against sex just in their theories; practically, they understand the nature of man and the weakness of man. For example, Hinduism teaches you to go beyond sex but does not condemn sex itself. On the contrary, it gives you methods and techniques so you can use the sex energy itself to go into a nonsexual dimension. Hinduism is not against sex but you should not be left in the imprisonment of sex. There is no need to be against it; it is better to use it as a stepping-stone. Why hit your head against the stone? That is not going to destroy the stone, it will only break your skull. But Jews have been doing exactly that.

The Old Testament says that God was so angry with two beautiful cities, Gomorrah and Sodom, that He destroyed them completely. What were they doing? They were enjoying sex in all its possible dimensions - that was their crime. Only Hassids have a beautiful story about the destruction of Gomorrah and Sodom, but that story is not acceptable to orthodox Judaism, it is not part of orthodox Judaism.

Judaism has given only one beautiful thing to the world, and that is Hassidism. But Jews are against the Hassids. They think of them as not equal to themselves, they are fallen Jews. But I have looked into the orthodox mind of Jews and into the Hassidic mind: if I am to decide who has fallen then I will say the orthodox Jews have fallen so far that there is no further to fall. They have reached the very bottom.

Hassidism is a beautiful flowering - the only thing that has come out of Judaism which can be preserved in an authentic religion. But they are a rejected people.

Hassids have a beautiful story about Gomorrah and Sodom which neither the Old Testament nor any other orthodox source reports, so certainly it is a Hassidic creation, an invention, imagination.

But I love the story and I would like you to remember it.

The story is that God decides, in Jewish anger, to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. A Hassid saint reaches God and asks Him, "If in Sodom there are one hundred good people and one hundred thousand bad people, and you are going to destroy the whole city, have you considered the fact that one hundred good people will also be destroyed?"

God has second thoughts. He says, "That I have not thought about - but you will have to prove that there are one hundred good people."

The Hassid said, "Wait. I may not be able to find one hundred people, but think: if there are only ten good people in the whole city, is it right and godly to destroy the whole city? Won't you be supportive of those ten people who are good, even in that terrible place which you are going to destroy completely?"

God said, "I will have to think. Yes, it makes no difference whether there are one hundred or ten good people - but you will have to find ten people."

The Hassid said, "Wait a little - just one question more. If there is only one person who is good, what do you think: isn't one good person's goodness far more valuable than one hundred thousand people's badness? Badness is a negative quality; it has no value. You should not pay that much attention to it; otherwise it makes it valuable. That one good person is more weighty."

God said, "Your logic is right. Whether there are one hundred good people, ten good people or one good person, I will stand up for the good. But you will have to prove that there is one good person."

The Hassid said, "I am here, present. There is no need for me to go anywhere. That's why I was reducing the number - because I may not be able to find a hundred people, I may not be able to find ten people. And how to judge? From the moment I became good I forgot the idea of judgment. To me everybody is good. I cannot see badness in someone, because badness is just a shadow; it is not a person's true self He may have acted badly but that does not make his being bad. One action can be bad, two actions can be bad, three actions can be bad, one hundred actions can be bad; but still, the being is as pure as ever.

"The being can come out of its actions. It can drop its actions, it can drop its past, and from this very moment the man can become a saint. Nobody can prevent him. How can you judge? There is no way to judge. That's why I was reducing the number. It is not that there are not good people; in fact, I have lived in both cities and I have found only good people."

The moment you are good, your judgment drops and you stop judging people - because judgment depends on actions, and action is a very superficial thing It is as if you are judging the ocean by the ripples This will be absolutely absurd - to judge the ocean just by the ripples on the surface. Actions are just drawings on water: you have not yet finished them and they have disappeared. And being is beyond your actions; it is always transcendental to what you do. The question is, what are you?

The Hassid said, "And now I see only what people are. Sometimes a person who is immensely beautiful, good, saintly, may have to act in a way that looks bad, that may go against convention.

You cannot judge him by the act itself That's why I was reducing the number.

Now I am here. I live in both these towns: half the year in Sodom and half the year in Gomorrah.

Are you ready to destroy me?"

And the Hassidic story is that God decided not to destroy the cities. But this is a Hassidic story, and the Hassids are the only good people to have come out of Judaism. Naturally they are rejected because they reject all your nonsense. They will not accept the Old Testament story that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. They say, "Our saint was there and he saved it. He saved both the cities; and he saved, in fact, the whole of humanity, because if Gomorrah and Sodom are worth saving then there is not a single human being who is worth destroying.

Freud had the same tendency as Jesus had - to be a prophet - which is extremely Jewish; it is some kind of racial disease. This fellow Moses is responsible. He created the whole game of prophets and messiahs, and created the idea in poor people's minds - which are feeble anyway; they get some idea and they start thinking that it is so. Freud was very much a messiah, but he knew that if he declared that he was a messiah - he was a coward also. He was not as fanatically courageous as Jesus. So what he did, rather than proposing himself for crucifixion, he tried to create something absolutely new and become the originator of a new religion.

Psychoanalysis, to Freud, was a religion, and he was the founder-prophet, the father-figure. Through psychoanalysis what he did was just go against the whole Jewish antagonism to sex. That was his way of saying to the Jews, "I have nothing to do with you - no need to prepare a cross for me. I am doing something absolutely different, in fact just the opposite to what you have been doing for four thousand years."

But in his unconscious Freud carried the idea of being the prophet. And he was very much afraid, his whole life, that somebody was going to become a Judas. Only prophets are afraid of Judases, otherwise there is no need.... For example, I am not afraid: if you all turn into Judases, so far so good; there is no harm in it. Because I am not posing as a messiah, how can you betray me?

Judas could betray because it seems he must have got fed up with this man continually pretending to be the only son of God, the ultimate word, the messiah for whom you have been waiting and who is going to redeem the whole world. Anybody would get bored with such a fellow. My feeling is that out of boredom he simply accepted thirty silver coins from the high priest and sold Jesus. He didn't even consider him more valuable than thirty silver coins. He really wanted to get rid of all this nightmare that he had to suffer with this man.

You don't know, because you have not lived with a prophet: he is always right, you are always wrong.

Whatsoever he says is the very word of God. There is no question of why. He is not here to give you any reason, he simply dictates commandments to you. Do or die, but don't ask why.

Judas was the only educated person in the company Jesus kept - more educated than Jesus.

Jesus was uneducated, absolutely. Judas was the only person who could be thought to have some intelligence. He must have got fed up; there is a limit to how much one can bear, tolerate. Finally he delivered the prophet to the Jews.

But I am not a prophet.

You cannot sell me.

I have never dictated to you to do anything.

I have never commanded you to follow me.

I have never pretended that I am somebody specially sent from above to deliver a message to you.

I am nobody's postman:

I am simply doing my own thing.

Right or wrong, I am simply doing my own thing. If you feel that it is enjoyable, you are welcome. If you feel it is not worth your while, you are welcome to drop it again. There is no problem in it. It is not enforced on you.

Freud wanted to be a prophet. His whole life is proof of it. He was expelling psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and psychologists, just as religions and political parties expel some people; anybody suspect has to be immediately expelled. What was the suspicion? Freud was suspicious that he would be betrayed. But what can be betrayed if you have not brought the ultimate truth? Someone can, at the most, do his own thing. You are doing your own thing; he is free to do his own thing. But Freud went on expelling people and just keeping the very few who were absolutely devoted. A total surrender was needed.

That is the approach of a prophet. Either you are for him or you are his enemy. He does not accept any third category of"l am not interested." He does not accept any third category. There were only two types of people: those who were for Freud and those who were against Freud. Those who were not for were included in the second category; there is no third category at all.

Freud did exactly the opposite to what Jesus was doing for exactly the same purpose for which Jesus was doing it. He created psychoanalysis. It was not possible for anybody else in the whole world to create psychoanalysis. Whenever it was to be created it was going to be created by a Jew.

These things are not accidental.

There was so much of an "anti" attitude about sex, and Christianity carried it to its logical end because they wanted to prove that they are far superior to the Jews. Jews themselves rejected their ultimate flowering, the messiah, and Christians accepted the messiah as the founder of a new religion. Naturally, there was great competition. Christianity went even more against sex and life than Judaism.

Sigmund Freud took revenge on both, because Christianity is nothing but a Jewish branch. It has all the stupidities of Judaism in it and has added a few more of its own. Freud declared that all the problems of man can be solved by psychoanalysis. Now, this is one of the tendencies of prophets.

They always have the panacea - one single remedy for all kinds of sicknesses. This is not a scientific attitude.

Each sickness needs individual attention, it needs its own remedy. There is not a single cause that is creating all the troubles of the world, there are millions of causes. Yes, there are a few causes which are very central, and if they can be destroyed those millions of others may disappear, but there is not a single cause. All the religions have been doing that, saying that there is a single cause.

Christianity says that the cause is the original sin: it is just that man has to undo what Adam and Eve did and everything will be absolutely as it should be. Jainism thinks that violence is the only cause.

If everybody becomes non-violent there will be no problem. In the same way all the other religions propose a remedy, a prophet, a holy book, a God.

Sigmund Freud's religion is psychoanalysis. It is against Judaism and Christianity. Christianity should not be thought separate from Judaism. It was created by a Jew, it is a Jewish firm; and in fact the Jews should claim that the Vatican belongs to them and throw out this pope and all these bishops. Jesus was of their blood, and all these people - Catholics and Protestants and so many kinds of Christians, all offshoots of a single illiterate Jewish mind - are exploiting their invention.

Freud simply went against them, thinking that this would not be thought something Jewish - but it was Jewish. He was brought up in the climate of anti-life, anti-sex, anti-enjoyment. That's why Hassids are not appreciated by the Jews, because they are life-affirmative; that is the trouble. They enjoy life, they dance, they sing; and that seems to be just not religion at all - dancing and singing.

Even old Hassids dance so beautifully, and they love life tremendously. But this is not acceptable.

Freud found that all problems have arisen out of the repression of sex. So anything you brought to Freud, hc would reduce it to some sexual problem. Sexual problems were the origin of every sickness - mental, physical, social, economic - it made no difference. One sometimes wonders:

when a person starts thinking of himself as a prophet, does he lose all reason, rationality and intelligence?

For example, if a man who is mad after money goes to Sigmund Freud, Freud will say that this man is obsessed with money. What is the remedy, and what, do you think, can be the cause? Repression of sex! On the surface you cannot see the connection: he is after money and you are talking about sex? He never cared about sex - but that only proves that what Sigmund Freud is saying is right.

Because his sexual energy has been repressed, now it is coming up in the ambition for money:

money can purchase sex, as much as you want.

The rich people will go to the synagogue, to the church, to the temple, will listen to all kinds of sermons against sex; and these are the very people who are creating prostitution around the world In India it used to be a tradition that the most beautiful girl in any town or city had no chance of marriage. To be beautiful was dangerous; and to be the most beautiful meant to be a prostitute. This was a tradition. Of course they made it as beautiful as they could. They used to have competitions - just as you have competitions for Miss America, for Miss Universe, perhaps even for Miss Oregon.

No, I don't think there is any Miss Oregon, or can be - impossible. They used to have that kind of competition in India in the past, and the most beautiful girl chosen was declared nagarvadhu.

Nagarvadhu means wife of the whole city. She was respected like a goddess, but in fact she was only a prostitute; everybody could behave with her as with his wife. Of course she was beyond the reach of the poor, beyond the reach of the middle class, even beyond the reach of the higher middle class. She was only within the reach of the super-rich - the king, the princes, the lords - because her price was so much just for a single night that although she was called the wife of the city, she was really the wife of a dozen chosen people.

These people were all great donators to Gautam Buddha and Vardhamana Mahavira. They were making temples, on the one hand - statues, caravanserais for people to stay in, and putting trees by the side of streets for thousands of miles so that travelers could have shadow in the hot sun. They were doing all kinds of virtuous acts and yet they were creating nagarvadhus, wives of the whole city. Prostitution they turned into a beautiful affair - the woman was proud.

They did another thing: they created another institution for those who could not afford the highest sex symbol of their society. They should not be left completely out of it, otherwise they could be dangerous. So they created another institution. The parents of beautiful girls were given the idea that if you give your beautiful daughter to the temple, you will earn great virtue, you will be born in heaven. These girls donated to the temple were called devabalas, divine girls.

India has its own flavor. To use a word like call girl does not suit the Indian mind, rather, "divine girl."

And what was her purpose? Her purpose was to serve anybody who wanted to be served, and the money should go to the temple. The girl was only a prostitute, and even, temple had hundreds of prostitutes. All the money was coming to the temple so the priests were happy. The poor people were happy because for a small donation they could manage to get beautiful women. And the women were not feeling in any way insulted: they were divine girls; they were not ordinary women, they were special.

And a third institution was created for the priests. Of course they deserved something special because they had been helping the rich, the king, the queen, the poor - everybody. They deserved some reward - and you will be surprised what their reward was. Their reward was that any newly- married bride had to spend her first night with the priest, because first she had to be purified by the priest and the god; only then was she pure.

And because it was traditional and conventional, there was no problem in it; everybody was happy.

The husband was also happy that his wife had first been offered to God. Of course God Himself is not there - there is always some representative, the priest, the pope or anybody - but a representative is as good as God. The woman was happy that she had been accepted by God, by His representative.

So on the surface Hinduism continued to talk against sex; but it was more human in a way:

underground it allowed even, kind of sex possible, in many ways.

But Judaism has been sincerely against it, against enjoying life in any way. Freud simply started knocking the whole anti-sexual, anti-life attitude. But again, his is a "no" philosophy. Jesus gives a "no" philosophy: that you have to be redeemed from life. An absolute no has to be said to this life.

Sigmund Freud also bases his philosophy on a negative attitude: just drop your sexual repression and all problems are solved. I don't see it, because there are tribes in the world who have no sexual repression and have the most complex problems: poverty, sickness, no scientific development, no intellectual growth no evolution of consciousness. You will be surprised that the societies that have not repressed sex in some way, have remained backward.

The societies that have suppressed sex have evolved; they are the most civilized and cultured societies. Strange? If Freud is accepted then the whole culture, the whole civilization will revert to being aboriginals. But they have all the problems - more than you have. They have very fundamental problems: no food, no clothes, and no intelligence either to produce food and clothes and mechanisms or anything.

What Freud is propounding is not transcendence of sex; he is throwing you back into the undeveloped, barbaric condition where sex will be freely available. But without bread what are you going to do with sex? Without clothes, without medicines, without any kind of human culture, what are you going to do with sex? Yes, you can go on reproducing children, but you won't have enough to feed them: you don't have enough to feed yourself.

If Freud is accepted totally, the whole civilization will die. His attitude is just against the Jewish idea of repressing sex and against Christianity, but it is not going to help humanity. He is a reactionary.

He has not thought about the whole implication of it. Why have people who have not repressed sex not progressed? That should have been one of the most significant questions to be asked.

The people who have repressed sex half the way have only progressed half the way. It is very strange, the proportion is exactly the same: the more sex is repressed, the more society develops.

It becomes more intelligent, more inventive and more scientific.

Do you think any aboriginal tribe can produce a Sigmund Freud, that Red Indians can produce a Sigmund Freud? It is impossible even to conceive. Sigmund Freud can be only produced in a Christian-Jewish context, in that reference, because there he has hit upon a master key, that is, your repression of sex. But it is not giving you any positive foundation. It may remove repression but it is not giving you any idea of transcendence. But he proved one thing, that he was a prophet, that his idea was very original.

He created a great movement around the world. That is the second destructive by-product of Judaism. First is Jesus, second is Freud, and third is Karl Marx. Why is Karl Marx against capitalism? It is not that he is against capitalism; he is a poor Jew and is full of jealousy against those who are rich. That is a Jewish trend, very characteristic.

In India I was surprised - because I was looking for a parallel. Jainas are the Jews in India as far as riches are concerned. You cannot find a single Jaina beggar. The Jainas are super-rich, or upper middle class; at the worst, middle class. Once in a while you will find a poor Jaina - not a beggar, but poor. These poor Jainas were the first to be attracted to communism. I was surprised to find this fact.

One of my faraway relatives is a very famous communist leader, Comrade Bhagchand. I asked him, "Have you considered the fact that it is not that you want to destroy capitalism, it is simply that you are a poor Jaina and you have so much jealousy in you against the rich Jainas?" But man is so clever in making philosophies of things.

Three generations in Marx's family had been poor. He himself remained unemployed and poor his whole life. It is very strange: he was dependent on a rich friend, but writing against capitalism. The rich friend, Friedrich Engels, was a capitalist who owned factories. He had been feeding Karl Marx and his family his whole life, and Marx never worked for a single day; he earned not a single cent.

Engels must have been a man of great compassion. He could see the man had genius and needed support.

Although he was writing against capitalism, Marx was a great logician: he convinced Engels also that capitalism is the whole cause of all the problems in the world: "If we can destroy capitalism and distribute the wealth equally to people, all problems will disappear."

Karl Marx is basically a jealous Jew rationalizing his jealousy into beautiful jargon. The remedy that he proposes is fallacious. Firstly, if you distribute the wealth of those who are rich to the poor, what will be the result? The poor will not become rich, the rich will only become poor: you will be distributing poverty. Yes, people will not feel jealous any more because they will all be equally poor.

I am against poverty, hence I am against communism.

I want people to be equally rich, not equally poor.

But for that a totally different approach is needed. It is not a question of distribution of wealth - because there is not much wealth to distribute. How many people are there who are rich? - two percent in India.

Now, the wealth of two percent distributed to ninety-eight percent poor people is just like a spoonful of sugar thrown into the ocean to make it sweet. You are simply losing one spoonful of sugar unnecessarily. At least it could have given one man one cup of tea - even that is gone. Not that others are gaining anything, but they will all enjoy the idea: "Now nobody is drinking tea, we are all equal." Otherwise this man was drinking tea and everybody was jealous.

The people who have created wealth have a certain talent for creating it. You should use their talent; you should make it an art to be taught to everybody. They are not to be punished because they have created wealth.

In an aboriginal society, a primitive society, of which a few fragments are still alive here and there on the earth, nobody is poor and nobody is rich; of course there is no jealousy. Everybody owns nothing, everybody equally owns nothing; but nobody is producing wealth.

In fact the people who are producing wealth are creating an urge in others also to create wealth.

Don't destroy these people - use these people as symbols. They have a certain art of creating wealth - make that art available to everybody, educate everybody. You teach economics in the universities; it would be far better if you taught the art of becoming rich - because by teaching economics you don't help them to know the art of becoming rich. They win gold medals in the universities and then they disappear.

When I was a professor I asked one of my vice-chancellors, "Have you ever thought about what happens to your gold medallists? They should shine in the society everywhere. What is the purpose of your gold medal? A man who stood first in the whole university disappears and is never heard about again. What happens to him? That shows simply the poverty of your gold medal and the poverty of all your education. Even if he topped your whole educational system, what has he gained?"

I have asked professors of economics, "You have been teaching economics for twenty or thirty years - how rich have you become?"

They said, "But what has that to do with teaching economics?"

I said, "Economics should be the science of becoming rich. You are just a poor professor, and if in thirty years of teaching you have not been able to find some secret of creating riches, what about your students? Have any of them become rich?" No, economics is not concerned about that; it is concerned about absolutely theoretical questions which have nothing to do with practical life.

Marx's idea is the distribution of wealth. Why? The reason he proposes is psychologically wrong, absolutely wrong. His reason is that every man is equal. That is psychologically absurd. What to say about all men, the whole humanity - not even two individuals are equal. Each individual is so unique, he cannot be equal to any other individual.

By saying that all human beings are equal Karl Marx is destroying the uniqueness of the individual.

That's why I am against him and his whole philosophy - because I stand for the uniqueness of the individual.

I am not saying that somebody is superior to you and somebody is inferior to you. Remember it! I am simply saying that you are not comparable to anybody:

You are you and the other is the other.

You don't compare a rose with a lotus, you simply say that they are two different things. Two different individuals, although they are both human beings, are unique individuals - incomparable.

Marx gives this idiotic idea - and it has been purchased by everybody all over the world: communists, anti-communists, everybody has purchased it; even the capitalists have purchased the idea that all men are equal. Why has nobody criticized it and fought it?for the simple reason that it looks very humanitarian. My God! Has something to be true or untrue - does its validity have to be judged by logic or by humanitarianism? Then any lie which appears to be humanistic has to be accepted. And upon that lie - that all men are equal - the whole structure of communism has been raised.

Now, you know, it is such a simple thing to understand - that every individual has different degrees of intelligence and different dimensions of creativity. Everybody cannot be a poet, everybody cannot be a scientist, everybody cannot be a painter; and it is good that everybody cannot be, otherwise life would lose all joy. The joy is in the uniqueness of the individual - that he is so unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable, that once he is gone his place is going to remain empty forever. Nobody can fulfill his place; the way he was fulfilling it, only he could do it.

Marx takes away, in a very cunning way, the whole dignity of the individual. And I call it really cunning because he gives the idea of equality of all human beings. In such a beautiful idea of equality you will not be able to detect what he has taken away from you. He has made you just a cog in the wheel, replaceable. He has put you on the assembly line in a factory which produces cars: just the same car goes on being assembled on an automatic assembly line.

Ford produces one car every minute. Every minute, for twenty-four hours, a similar car goes on coming out of the assembly line. But man is not an assembled mechanism; you cannot take him apart and assemble him again. It would have been very helpful in a way if we could take a man apart - clean his insides and everything, replace a few bulbs here and there, a few fuses which have gone out, a few nuts and bolts which have got loose or too tight - and then assemble him again with a new battery.

It would have been really good; but it would also be the greatest calamity that can happen. Then man disappears; then he is only a robot running on a battery. It is simple: if he breaks his hand there is no trouble, spare parts are always available. He just goes to any workshop, and his hand is changed; he gets a brand-new hand - no problem. Only once in a while he may have a problem when he is telling some woman, "I love you," and then he goes "Grrrr, grrr, grrrr... my battery is running out... just call the mechanic...." Only once in a while will he go "Grrrr, grrrr" - he won't be able to speak, the battery is running out.

Or you may be supplied with a small meter which goes on showing you on your wrist what is going down, what is going up, what is needed now: if you need a little more petrol, or water, or the oil has to be changed. It will be simpler - but you will not be human, you will be robots.

Marx, by making you equal, is proposing a philosophy which ultimately is bound to make you robots - that is the Marxist philosophy's logical conclusion.

Only robots can be equal.

Man's dignity is in his uniqueness.

But let me repeat - because there is every possibility that I will be misunderstood - I am not saying that somebody is superior to you and somebody is inferior to you. I am simply saying that the very idea of comparison is invalid; you are just yourself. I cannot call you unequal, I cannot call you equal.

Do you follow me? I cannot call you unequal.

That is the criticism communists have been throwing upon me - that I am telling people that people are unequal. That is absolutely unjust to me. I am not saying people are unequal, I am saying they are not equal; that implies they are not unequal either. The very idea of comparison is invalid. Man is unique. Man is not just a member of the society, a part of the society. He is an individual, an independent whole in himself and it is not right....

Just think of it in this way and you will see it completely clearly: if somebody says that everybody has to be writing poetry, then even if some people are writing better poetry than you, their poetry has to be distributed on an equal basis with yours. Everybody has to be equally a poet, equally a musician.

You can see the absurdity, that if Yehudi Menuhin has to be made equal to you, you won't gain anything, and that poor fellow will lose everything. You cannot be Yehudi Menuhin. He has a certain genius that is born with him, that is in his very chemistry, in his very physiology, in his very being.

You don't have that chemistry, that physiology, that being. His parents were different, his parents' parents were different.

You cannot have his quality distributed, that is impossible. And that will destroy all the beautiful flowers in human life. But you don't think that way. You think Yehudi Menuhin is just himself; there is no question of somebody else taking his qualities, dividing and distributing them. But you don't understand that in exactly the same way there are people who have a certain talent to be rich.

Everybody is not Henry Ford, cannot be; and there is no need. One Henry Ford has created enough traffic No need for more! If there are many Henry Fords then do you know what will be the result?

The result will be that walking will be faster than driving. It is already becoming so. In cities like New York, Bombay, Tokyo and Calcutta, a distance you can cover by walking within ten minutes to fifteen minutes will take you one and a half hours in a car.

I used to stay in Calcutta with one of the most significant, talented, rich men - Sahu Shantiprasad.

Now he is dead. The auditorium where I used to give my talks and his house were only a ten-minute walk apart, but in his limousine it was unpredictable. If my lecture was going to be from seven-thirty, he would start panicking from five, telling me to get ready.

I said, "You are just mad! The lecture will start at seven-thirty and it is only a ten-minute walk. If we walk it will take ten minutes."

But he said, "We are not going to walk. And traffic in Calcutta is so chaotic that you never know....

We have to leave here at least one and a half hours before."

And sometimes it used to happen that we were still late, but sometimes we were too early and then we would just sit in the car. I said, "This is so stupid, Sahu Shantiprasad."

But he said, "I cannot allow you to walk - you are my guest."

I said, "That's true, I am your guest, but I have to sit in your car for four hours coming and going. This is strange, because in four hours I can reach Bombay or Delhi, but I only reach this poor auditorium!"

If there are many Henry Fords it will become a more difficult world than it is right now. No, nature produces enough people for any particular purpose. Nature has a very deep balancing power.

For example, when children are born, if a hundred girls are born today, then one hundred and ten boys will be born. About that data I was simply surprised. Why one hundred girls and one hundred and ten boys? Is nature also male chauvinistic? No, it is not that: nature is simply a balancing power. Ten boys die before a marriageable age. Girls are more resistant to diseases; boys are weaker as far as resistance to sickness is concerned. They may have muscular power - that is a different power - but as far as resistance to disease, sickness and death is concerned, they are less powerful than women.

So one hundred girls will suffice for one hundred and ten boys, because ten boys will be missing by the time they reach the marriageable age, something which nature is balancing from the very beginning. Otherwise there will be ninety boys and one hundred girls. Those ten girls will be in difficulty, and will create so much difficulty for the ninety boys that you cannot conceive.... It will be a chaos.

Those ten girls without husbands, without boyfriends - do you think they are just going to sit and meditate? They will start grabbing hold of somebody else's husband, and then it is going to be a chaos. To avoid that chaos nature has to be alert from the very beginning to supply ten boys more, because they will be missing at the right time.

If nature is as balancing as that, it was balancing other things also, till man started to interfere with it. For centuries the population of the world had remained the same. It was only man who started interfering with nature - through medicine, through new inventions to increase man's life.

Now you have created a trouble in the world. Nature was keeping the balance: people were born but enough people were dying. It was almost always equal. What you have done is that you have prevented death, but you are not allowed to prevent birth. Now the pope goes on issuing sermons that abortions should be made illegal.

Just the other day I heard there was a demonstration of seventy thousand people in the capital demanding that abortion should not be legal, it should be declared illegal. And when President Reagan - just look at these politicians! - was governor of California he had signed the bill for legalization of abortion, because in California there was a great movement, an upsurge for legalization of abortion. Then he signed the bill. And now he inaugurates this procession that wants the constitution amended, and abortion declared illegal again because it is against religion and against life.

Reagan inaugurated that protest because now all the orthodox people in the country, particularly the orthodox Christians, Catholics and Jews - all orthodox people - are with this movement. When declaring that procession inaugurated, Reagan said, "In my whole life I have committed only one mistake, and that was when I was governor of California and I signed that bill. That was the only mistake that I have committed."

Politicians can change their face very easily. Wherever the crowd is going, they jump ahead of it.

They cannot lose, so they have to be very alert. I have said many times that the political leaders are followers of their followers. The great politician is one who knows where the followers are going and keeps himself ahead of them. Wherever they are going does not matter; he should just remain ahead of them so they always know that he is the leader. He should keep his every sense alert, otherwise someday he will look back - and all the followers will have moved somewhere else; he will be standing alone.

Now, he will run and find the followers, and immediately be ahead of them. Here he was ahead of them because they were for legalization of abortion; now he is against it because they are against it. What can he do? - he has to be the leader in every case. His business is to be the leader - it does not matter what the cause is. And what do you want? That doesn't matter; all that matters is that he is ahead of you.

Now, all these people - Catholics, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jews - all are against abortion. If they are against abortion then they should be a little logical about it, then they should be against saving people's lives too; then there will be a balance. But nobody protests.

There are people in the hospitals unnecessarily harassing the doctors and the nurses. Their legs are hanging up in one direction and their hands are hanging up in some other direction. Another person needs the continual attendance of a doctor and a nurse and so many medicines. And he is on oxygen: if you just turn his oxygen off he will be gone. Why are you keeping him alive? What is the purpose of his being alive? Why are you torturing him? But the doctors have been taught that "Your purpose is to save life." That was taught by Hippocrates two thousand years ago when death was rampant.

Now these fools go on taking the oath of Hippocrates; every medical student takes the oath of Hippocrates: "My whole life I will try to save life." But things have changed. When Hippocrates said that, out of ten children, nine children were dying before they became two years of age; out of ten children only one was surviving. Of course the man was saying something meaningful when he told them to try to save life, but now the state is just the reverse. Even in countries like India, out of ten children only one is dying. At that time nine were dying and one remained alive; now nine are remaining alive and only one dies - and every effort is being made to save that one too.

One can understand trying to save a child; but why are you saving old people who have lived, lived enough, suffered, enjoyed, did all kinds of things, good and bad? Now it is time; let them go. But the doctors cannot let them go because it is illegal. They cannot put them off oxygen, so you go on saving the dying or almost-dead people.

No pope issues a commandment that these people should be allowed freedom from their bodies.

And what of their bodies is left? Somebody's legs are missing, somebody's hands are missing; somebody's heart is not working so a battery is working instead of the heart; somebody's lungs are not working; somebody's kidneys are not working, so mechanical kidneys are doing the work of the kidneys. But what is the purpose of these people? What will they do even if you continue to keep them going this way?

Yes, at the most they keep a few people employed, that's all. But what kind of a creative life are they going to have? And what joy can they have in all that is being done to them? Continual injections are being given to them. They cannot sleep, then sleeping pills are given to them. They cannot wake up, then activators are forced into their blood so they have to wake up. But for what reason? - the Hippocratic oath? Let Hippocrates go to hell! He had no idea what his oath was going to bring about.

There should be some movement so that when people have lived enough and they desire to be freed from their bodies, then hospitals should provide a convenient, pleasant death. It is absolutely sane that every hospital should have a special ward with all facilities so that death becomes a pleasant experience, enjoyable.

Instead of medicines a meditator should be there to teach the dying man how to meditate, because now medicine is not needed, meditation is needed - how to relax and peacefully disappear from this body. Every hospital needs meditators - they are essential - just as it needs doctors. Up to now meditators were not needed because there was only one function: to save life. Now the function is doubled: to help people die. Every university should have a department where meditation is taught so that people themselves are ready. When the time comes to die, they are fully ready to die with joy, with celebration.

But suicide is a crime. This will be considered suicide and I will be considered to be teaching people illegal things. But in an illegal city what else can I do? I can say only what is absolutely right; whether it is legal or illegal I don't care a bit. My concern is with truth, not with law. The truth is that you have unbalanced life, nature. Please give back its balance. Either you have to stop saving children, and abortions should remain legal, birth control methods should be used widely - in fact it should be a crime not to use them. If somebody is caught not using them he should be jailed.

But it is a strange world: produce more children and you will have less income tax. A great world!

The government is supporting you to have more children. What kind of logic is there? If I am to make the law, I will say the more children you have, the more income tax; with each child it is doubled.

Have as many as you want but the income tax goes on being doubled each time, so even the rich cannot afford them, what to say about the poor and the middle class. Then only will they think of birth control; otherwise they are not going to.

Look at the Red Indians. Why should they use birth control? - because each child born brings more money from the government. Just to keep them silent.... It is their country and everybody else is a foreigner here except the Red Indians. Not only am I a tourist here, everybody is except the Red Indians. Ronald Reagan included, all are tourists. They may have been touring for three hundred years, I have been touring only for three years - that does not matter, that does not change anything:

tourists are tourists. How long you have been touring....

In fact old tourists should be deported, they have toured enough! New tourists should be welcomed.

This seems to be logical: you have toured for three hundred years - so many generations - what more are you doing here? Tour somewhere else. And we are going to bring new tourists here - vacate!

They want to bring a bill in the parliament against me because they cannot find any other way to deport me. They have been trying for three years. A whole department, a whole floor in the INS building in Portland, is just working on my case; nobody else is allowed there. And I tell them: even if you work three hundred years you cannot find anything to deport me for. And I have been only touring for three years, and only in my home. Deport old tourists!

But what is being done to the Red Indians just to prevent them from starting to claim their rights is inhuman. On the surface it looks humanitarian - that each Red Indian is given a certain amount of money every month. Naturally they produce as many children as possible, because each child is an economic benefit, each child brings more money. And why are they being given money without any work? A very criminal idea is behind it.

If a person has no work and enough money, what is he going to do then? He will drink; he will take marijuana, hashish, opium. What else does he have to do? He has enough money and no work, no education; he has to pass his time somehow, so he hallucinates. All the Red Indians have become drug addicts; the money is really given for them to become drug addicts. Of course it is not said so - it is a "humanitarian" job.

They are poor people, but there are other poor people also; you don't give them anything. They are asking for employment; you don't even give them employment. They want work; you don't have work for them. They want bread; you produce bullets. Why Red Indians? Just to keep them drugged so they don't start making a chaos and start saying that this land belongs to them: "Everybody out!"

Strange, the host has been kept in reservations - those reservations are just prisons without walls - and the guests have become the owners of the country. Now they decide who should enter the country and who should not enter the country. Great idea!

I am reminded of a story. A Sufi fakir was in his hut with his wife, just getting ready to go to sleep.

The hut was very small. Somebody knocked on the door - it was raining, and the Sufi said to his wife, "Open the door. Somebody is outside and it is raining."

The wife said, "But there is no space - only enough for us two to sleep. There is not enough space here."

The Sufi said, "There is always space, just the heart is needed. Open the door, I say to you, open the door."

When the husband said that, the wife reluctantly opened the door. A man came in. The wife then asked the husband, "What shall we do?"

He said, "Nothing is a problem. Two can sleep, three can sit. For sitting there is enough space, so we will sit and gossip. That traveler may have something to say to us, many stories to tell - we will enjoy the night!"

Just then somebody knocked on the door. The guest was sitting by the side of the door so the fakir said, "Please open the door, somebody is outside."

The guest said, "But there is not enough space; it is already crowded. Let him go."

The fakir said, "No. That was the argument of my wife about you too:'Let him go.' If we had not opened the door you would have had to travel in the rain through the forest. It is a dangerous night - I don't think you would have survived or reached to town alive. Open the door!" The guest opened the door, but very reluctantly.

This is how the human mind functions. He could not even think that he was just a guest, he was not the owner. The man, the second man, came in, and the guest said to the fakir, "Now what are you going to do?"

He said, "We three were sitting comfortably, we four will sit a little uncomfortably. Just come closer - make space for the fourth one." They sat closely together; now it was completely packed. And then there was a strange knock on the door; it didn't seem to be coming from a human hand. The fakir said, "I know who is there - just open the door."

The new guest was now seated close to the door. He said, "No, I am not going to open the door.

There is no space, we are overcrowded. I am the person closest to the door and I will not allow anybody to open it. Where is the space?"

The fakir said, "You should understand one thing clearly: I am the owner; I allowed you in but I can throw you out. We were sitting comfortably at ease; because of you we are sitting uncomfortably.

Now we will be standing. Let him come in - nobody can be turned out while there is any space. I am saying we can stand; we will not sit, and so space will be created."

What could the guest do? - he had to open the door. And they were all surprised: a donkey entered.... The guests said to the fakir, "Is this donkey also going to be here?"

He said, "If you can be here.... Who are you? He is my old friend, we are old acquaintances; he often comes when it rains. You have never come before - I can throw you out, but not him. And he is a poor animal. You may find some way to save yourself, but where can he go? Let him stand just in the middle of all of us. We will stand around the donkey and he can stand in the middle. We can enjoy ourselves talking, and once in a while he will join in also."

He said, "Remember one thing: this is a poor man's hut, not a king's palace. In a king's palace there is no space. Although the palace is big there is no space because the heart is not there. Here space is very limited, but the heart is unlimited."

The Red Indians are the owners of this land, but they have been put into reservations and forests.

Those are prisons without walls - and very subtle prisons because the prisoners are paid money.

They gamble, they fight, they drink, and they kill each other. They are very rowdy people because what else can they do? And money goes on being poured on them: more children, more money. So they go on producing more children and getting more money and getting more drunk. It is really a crime. It has nothing to do with humanity or humanitarian ideals.

And these people who have simply taken over their land, they are deciding whether new guests should enter or not. It is strange. Who are they to decide? Who has given them the authority to decide? This land is not theirs. Somebody is Italian, somebody is French, somebody is English, somebody is Greek, somebody is German, somebody is Spanish - they should all go back to their lands.

We are the only people who are landless, because we don't belong to any country. We don't call any country our motherland or our fatherland - we don't believe in dads and mums. The whole world is ours - we don't claim small things. And movement is man's birthright: he can move anywhere he wants, he is not doing any crime by moving. But if anybody has to go, then it should be the old tourists.

Now the old tourists are trying to bring a bill against me in parliament. I am going to speak to parliament, they should remember, and just alone I am going to tell them, "You are all deported, because you have toured enough - simple logic! New people should come in. And we promise that when more new people come we will deport ourselves, there is no problem. But let us at least tour enough."

The mind that Karl Marx had was certainly very talented. He created a worldwide movement - certainly he outdid Jesus. This is just Jewish competition. It is nobody's business really, just Jews competing. Freud created a worldwide movement for psychoanalysis, but Marx is on the top. Almost half the world is communist now - but not rich, very poor.

You can see it in Germany. Just beyond the wall is the communist world. Of the same Berlin which was destroyed in the second world war, half has remained free and democratic, and half has been taken over by the communists. The half that has remained independent, free and capitalist, is rich:

skyscrapers, beautiful roads, everything. It is as if the second world war has never happened. In the free West Berlin, the second world war has not left even a trace; in fact the war has done something really good because all the old, dilapidated, rotten things finished and everything is fresh and new.

West Berlin is now the most modern, youngest and freshest city in the whole world.

And on the other side it is dark and dismal, as if the second world war just ended yesterday; people are living in dilapidated barracks. It is a beautiful contrast to see what communism can do and what capitalism can do. Not a single skyscraper has arisen on the communist part, not a single new building, not a single new road, no new factory - no creativity. Yes, they have distributed the wealth - they have made the rich poor. And now the poor are not in a position to create wealth again.

The whole of Russia is poor, the whole of China is poor. Yes, one thing is missing; there are no rich people. Communism is based on a fallacious idea: the equality of man. Man is not equal.

The second idea is significant; but my interpretation of it is right, not what Marx said. The second idea says, "Equal opportunity for all." That's how it should be - equal opportunity for all, but remembering that everybody is unique, so everybody is going to use the equal opportunity to be very different from each other. The ultimate result is going to be individuals so different from each other that you cannot conceive.

According to Marx equal opportunity means they will be all equal: equally wealthy, equally intelligent, equally healthy. That is sheer nonsense, because your parents were not my parents; you have different genes and different programs in your body. Now, there is no way to change the genes, the program - and small things make a difference.

So equal opportunity is a good idea and we should try it as far as humanly practical. But you should not be fanatic about it, because if you want perfect equality of opportunity then you are an idiot; that is not possible.

Just let me give you simple examples: if you are the eldest son in the family, then the youngest son in the family cannot have the same opportunity as the eldest, there is no way. Because you were the first to come, of course you received your mother and your father's love more because you were a novelty; then other children started coming and it was not anything new. The second boy was born, but he is going to be second. The eldest son in all the cultures is going to inherit the father's money.

Why? It is not accidental: he got more love than anybody else, and he was the first to come.

Then the last son will also have a different status because he will be the smallest, favored by all, protected by all, all the brothers, the whole family. But the middle ones, they are nowhere: neither on this pole nor on that pole. They will not get the same attention as the first and the last. The last will become the favorite child of the family because now no more are coming; the last guest has come.

How can you give all equal opportunities? Either you will have to arrange births simultaneously so that a mother gives birth to twelve children simultaneously - equal opportunity.

But from the very beginning there is no equal opportunity. When a woman gets pregnant, neither she nor her husband are aware that there has been a car race; nobody is aware. When the sperms travel towards the egg it is just as in any race: they all stand in one line waiting for the third whistle, and then they run.

The mother's cell, the egg in the mother's womb, is waiting and the cells from the father's body, as they explode into the mother's body, start a great race - millions of sperms trying to reach the egg first. Whosoever reaches is the winner; all others will die. It is a question of life and death. It is no ordinary race in which you are only defeated and next time.... There is no next time - only a single opportunity for millions of alive cells. Only one makes it, because this is how it works. The mother's egg has a natural capacity so that once one male sperm has entered it, it closes. The others go on knocking around but within two hours they will all be dead.

There are losses all the way. And the way is not so small as you think, because for those small cells it is close to two miles, proportionately. If they were of your proportions then the passage would be two miles. And a great job they do, a marathon race! Of course, the strongest reaches.

Sometimes it happens that two reach at the same time - that's why twins are born - or three reach.

Even nine children have been known to be born, because nine may have reached simultaneously; then they all enter the door because they are all entering at the same time. After they enter the doors close. But it rarely happens that nine reach. One guy is clever enough that somehow he manages to reach first.

They all start almost at the same time, but from there, from the very impregnation, opportunities are different. Nobody knows those who have died, what kind of people they were. Somebody may have been an Albert Einstein, somebody a Ravi Shankar, somebody a Michelangelo. Nobody knows about those poor people who simply died in the first race and were not given any other chance.

And then small things in the life of the child.... You cannot make them equal. For example, when Napoleon Bonaparte was six months old, his nurse, who was taking care of him, had just left him for a moment and a wild cat jumped onto Napoleon, put both his paws on his chest, and looked into his eyes. Immediately the nurse came back and chased the cat away, but Napoleon, for his whole life, remained afraid of cats. He was not afraid of lions, he could have wrestled bare-handed with a lion - there was no problem about it - but before a cat he simply became a nervous wreck.

Napoleon was defeated only once - his whole life was a life of victory. Just once he was defeated, by a British general who knew about his weakness. The general had gone with seventy cats ahead of him; seeing seventy cats, Napoleon lost all nerve, he forgot all about what to do and what not to do. It was not a victory by the general, it was a victory by the cats.

How can you manage to give equal opportunities to all? Now, if such a small incident can prove so fatal.... Napoleon was a brave warrior before anybody, but nothing before a cat. The English general does not count at all, but he became victorious just by using a little psychology, just knowing about Napoleon s weakness - that when he saw a cat he could not think, he simply became frozen. And when Napoleon was in that nervous state, of course his whole army was at a loss; they had lost the man who was their life, their light and their guide.

Now, how can you manage equal opportunity for all children of the world? That's absolutely impossible. So don't try to take the communist idea to its logical end - then it becomes absurd.

Yes, with my interpretation - and my interpretation is that everybody should be given opportunities to be educated, opportunities to get food, opportunities to get clothes, opportunities to do anything that a person wants to do. There should be no discrimination about it: opportunity should be given to everybody according to his talent and everybody according to his potentiality.

But that is not happening in communism. In the name of equal opportunities everybody is forced to remain at the lowest denominator, because only there can you keep them equal. If you want them to be equal on a higher level, then you need more riches, more wealth - and that is missing.

In the sixty years since the Russian Revolution, the Russians have not been able to produce any wealth to make Russia rich. Equal opportunity is available, but what do you do with equal opportunity? You need people who can use these opportunities; and they don't need similar opportunities, they need different opportunities, equally different opportunities.

I am against communism because it is only a negative philosophy. I am all for commune-ism.

That should be the right word: commune-ism.

A commune is respectful of every individual's uniqueness, repectful of every individual's talent, and tries to help his talent grow, help him grow towards his potential.

I want communes all over the world, so that slowly nations can disappear, and there are only communes:

Living, small units of humanity, totally, joyously helping everybody to be himself.

Marx proposes the dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the poor. That is stupid. They are poor, and if they are in power they will make everybody poor. What else can they do?

I propose the dictatorship of the enlightened ones. Nobody has proposed it up to now. And sometimes out of my crazy mind.... This idea I have carried my whole life - dictatorship of the enlightened ones, because if it is of enlightened ones it cannot be dictatorship. It is a contradiction in terms. The enlightened person cannot be a dictator like Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler.

Yes, the enlightened person can dictate to you, but out of his love, not out of his power - he has no power - out of his insight, because he has eyes to see and to feel the potential of people.

His dictates can only be thought of as suggestions, advice, guidelines.

Only in the dictatorship of the enlightened ones is there a possibility of a real, authentic democracy and also the real flowering of commune-ism:

Equality by distributing riches, not poverty; destroying poverty from the very roots, and raising everybody upwards to be rich.

My commune-ism is a higher state of capitalism.

Marx's communism is against capitalism: