Nietzsche: a great freedom or a great danger

Question 1:

It is good news.

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the philosophers with the most potential in the whole world, not only in the West, not only in Germany. His insights are significant for everybody. But he was misunderstood by all his contemporaries.

That's the usual fate of every genius.

It is almost routine, not an exception but a rule, that the genius is bound to be misunderstood by his contemporaries, for the simple reason that he is far ahead of his time. So there is always a revival after the death of a genius. It may take one hundred years, two hundred years, but a genius always has a revival.

It is unfortunate that by the time people start understanding him, he is no more. And he suffers the misunderstandings all around him his whole life. He lives almost alone, with no communication with his contemporaries; and by the time he is being understood, he is no more. He never comes to know the people who will understand him.

So it was absolutely certain that Friedrich Nietzsche would have a great revival, and his words and his insights would be echoed all over the world - not only in the world of philosophy, but in the world of religion, morality, aesthetics. Whatever he touched, he always brought something absolutely new to it.

And that's the trouble - because for thousands of years people have understood a thing in a certain way. When a person like Nietzsche turns all the tables - which centuries have founded - and alone, single-handedly, fights against the whole past, it is a very difficult situation - and more so for a Western philosopher who has no understanding of meditation.

He naturally gets very frustrated. It is bound to bring him insanity - the misunderstanding of the people. Everybody misunderstands him. In the world full of millions of people, there is not a single person with whom he can have a heart-to-heart contact, communion. He is in a desert - it drives him mad. That's what happened with Nietzsche.

He lived a life of immense frustration, because he was giving great insights to the world; and in return - only condemnation. He was bringing new light - and not a single friendly response.... Even his friends were not friendly about his philosophical approaches. That finally drove Nietzsche to madness; he died a madman.

His death in madness is a condemnation of the whole Western approach. In the East people have been misunderstood, but because there was an underlying meditative silence and peace and contentment, and a deep understanding that this is just how things are - they are bound to be misunderstood - there was a natural acceptance of it. They were not frustrated, they were not angry; they were not going insane or committing suicide.

But in the West it has been almost always the situation with every great philosopher - the misunderstanding from all corners, from all dimensions, and the deep expectation of the person of being understood. He is not a meditator; he cannot accept the situation of misunderstanding, that it is natural, that he cannot do anything about it, that he will be understood when the time is ripe.

He will not be here.... But it does not matter whether he is understood or not: he is perfectly contented that whatever is true to him he is giving to the world. Now it is up to the world when to understand, or not to understand it. He is not dependent in any way on the response of people.

But Western philosophy, Western religion both have missed the quality of meditation. And that creates a new thing. When a man like Nietzsche goes mad, the enemies, who are all around - the people who misunderstood him and drove him mad - take advantage of the situation of his being mad. They start saying that it is his philosophy which is basically wrong, that has driven him mad.

His madness becomes a proof that he is a wrong man - that he is not only mad today, he has always been mad. Whatever he has said is insane. So it becomes a more solid ground on which to refute the person completely, to erase him completely - and that's what happened with Nietzsche.

But a revival was certain. You cannot continue to misunderstand something which has even a little bit of truth in it - and Nietzsche has tremendous insights. If they can all be understood, it will help the Western mind to change many things.

For example, Nietzsche was the only one - even in his madness he would not sign his name without writing over his signature "Antichrist." Even in his madness that much was absolutely certain to him: that he was anti-Christ, that Christ has created a tradition which is immensely dangerous to humanity, that he has polluted the human mind, even about small things.

Where Christ had always been praised, people were surprised that Nietzsche would find a very solid criticism. For example, when Christ says, "If somebody slaps you on one cheek, give him the other too," Nietzsche was the first man to say that this is an insult to the man who has slapped you.

Now, it needs a certain intelligence to understand what he is saying. He is saying, in giving him the other cheek you are reducing him to subhumanity; you are becoming a god. Behave like a human being: give him a good slap the way he has given you one.

And the argument that looked very strange to the Christians who were his contemporaries, was very simple: "In this way you are proving equality. 'I am also a human being. If you hit me, then I will hit you. I am not a god, I cannot forgive you.' All those who have been trying to forgive are very subtle egoists. They are enjoying reducing the other person almost to an animal. That is worse than hitting the man back hard! Just behave like man to man."

And you can watch it: the person who gives his other cheek - you can see in his eyes and in his face and in his words great pride and great ego. Even when Jesus himself on the cross asks, "Father, forgive these people, because they do not understand what they are doing," he is still trying to prove on the cross the same thing for which he is being crucified - that everybody is ignorant and only he knows.

Again, it was the insight of Nietzsche to see that Jesus' emphasis is not on forgiveness, his emphasis is, "They do not know what they are doing. They do not know whom they are crucifying. They do not understand that they are crucifying the only begotten son of God." In simple words, "These are idiots. Just forgive them - they are not worth punishment."

Even on the cross his ego is as assertive as it has ever been. He is not a humble man. Although he teaches humility, he never shows humility in his whole life. Then certainly his teaching of humility is just the teaching for making your ego so subtle that it can use humility as food, as nourishment.

He is certainly not a humble man. There is no indication in his whole life of where he has acted in a humble manner.

All his declarations that he is the messiah for whom you have been waiting for centuries, that now God has sent his own son to fulfill the promise.... These are not the words of humility, these are not the words of a person who is nobody.

Jesus is not nobody - he is higher than everybody else. Even the prophets, Moses or Abraham or Elijah, are nothing; they are only prophets, just messengers. He is the only begotten son of God, and he says clearly that he was even before Abraham.

Now, Abraham was alive almost three thousand years before Jesus; and Jesus is saying he was before Abraham. He is trying to say that he belongs to eternity, he is eternal, and all these prophets are just bubbles in time. He has always been and will always be - but prophets come and go.

Nietzsche is the only man in the whole Western history who has a deep psychological understanding of Jesus Christ, and who has a very subtle analysis - far more subtle than any Freud or Jung can do. He has almost all the insights. He could have founded psychoanalysis. He could have founded communism. He could have founded anarchism.

He is really vast, and in all dimensions he goes to the very roots. But people have understood one thing for thousands of years, and then suddenly there is a totally opposite interpretation. Rather than accepting the interpretation, they would prefer to reject the man. And he was rejected by the society in every possible way. He lived almost always lonely.

His writing is also very prophetic, even the method. He does not write in the ordinary way philosophers have been writing down the ages, his writing is aphoristic. You can make a whole philosophy out of one paragraph, it is so condensed. And the man had so much to say that he could not manage to elaborate it himself, so he has just put it in the most condensed form. Just the method of his expression was making him a laughingstock in the eyes of other philosophers who were trained to write in a certain logical manner, giving every proof and every argument.

But Nietzsche has to say so much that he cannot go into details of the arguments and procedures of how he has arrived - he simply writes the conclusion, and that conclusion is aphoristic. He then moves to another subject; and he goes on moving that way.

But I love the way he writes. That should be ultimately the way of writing. If people are intelligent you need not go through all the arguments before you give the conclusion; just the conclusion should be enough. If they are sharp and intelligent they will immediately get all the preceding arguments that are not given to them; there is no need....

He was not writing for children, he thought he was writing for philosophers. But he misunderstood:

those philosophers were also not mature enough. They wanted the whole procedure. They could not immediately see the whole procedure in the conclusion; and he had to say so much that it was impossible for him to go into the whole procedure. In every direction and dimension he was touching the foundations.

But whatever he has said is just in seed form. So it is natural that it took almost a hundred years...

and now people can reconsider this man.

People who are understood by their contemporaries are not geniuses, they are not great giants of intelligence. That's why their contemporaries can understand them.

This revival of interest in Nietzsche will bring many fruits of great importance.

We have seen that he was misunderstood even by the people who thought they were followers of Nietzsche. For example, Adolf Hitler - he thought that he was a follower of Nietzsche.

Adolf Hitler is just a retarded man, and the distance between him and Nietzsche's intelligence is so vast; he could not even understand what Nietzsche was saying. So he picked at things which he wanted, just to have a philosopher behind him. And because Adolf Hitler picked him up, Nietzsche became even more condemned along with Adolf Hitler.

It was not his fault - he had not chosen Adolf Hitler as his successor - but he became more condemned. Even to mention his name became notorious. He became so closely associated with fascism that even great thinkers would not talk about him, for the simple reason that he was a fascist.

He is not a fascist. But when a person is so rich in giving ideas to the world, you can always choose from him things that suit you, and leave everything else that does not suit you.

But one thing has to be remembered: he was misunderstood, and all the people who have been misunderstood have one thing in common - that nobody refutes them. It is as if misunderstanding is enough. Nobody has refuted Friedrich Nietzsche. Although he has challenged the whole of Christianity, the popes have been silent - because what he is saying is so clear that it is better to ignore rather than to refute it; you cannot refute it.

It is good - it will help Europe to get rid of Christianity, which has been a calamity and has kept people retarded.

It will also help people to think more aphoristically - which looks like the person is jumping from one conclusion to another conclusion. That's how every great philosophical treatise should be written, because it is not written for children, it is not written for schools; it is written for the most highly intelligent people in the world. Its manner also should do them justice.

I have a tremendous love for Friedrich Nietzsche, and a deep compassion, because the man suffered his whole life for the simple reason that he remained a thinker and he never went beyond thoughts; otherwise there would be no question of suffering.

I am more misunderstood than Nietzsche, but it does not make me frustrated, it does not give me any trouble, it cannot drive me insane. I feel great compassion too, that it was a misfortune he was in the West.

He should have been in the East, because in the East it is very difficult to avoid meditation. Sooner or later you are bound to stumble upon it, and particularly a great thinker like Nietzsche. If he had meditated too, he would have been in the same state as Gautam the Buddha - not less than that.

As far as intelligence is concerned, perhaps he is more intelligent than Gautam the Buddha.

If he had just had the meditative quality also, he would have given many more treasures to the world, and he would not have suffered through it. And he would not have given the chance to the people to say that whatever he has written is all insane. His madness became a proof for them that he was insane from the very beginning; it was just growing and growing and growing, and finally it exploded.

From Friedrich Nietzsche much has to be learned.

What I would like the people who are interested in Nietzsche to understand, is that they should not miss meditation the way Nietzsche missed it; otherwise they will become great intellectuals, but empty within, with no roots, with no great solidity.

And the danger of madness is always there, because the mind's full growth can only lead to madness - there is no other way. If the mind is developed fully, the person is going to be mad, unless, side by side, he is also developing no-mind, and no-mind becomes his base. Then he can use the mind as much as he wants; it leaves no trace behind.

So this is my message to the lovers of Nietzsche: they should not become just intellectuals.

Nietzsche can only make them intellectuals. And then they will fall into the same ditch in which Nietzsche fell - the ditch of too much intellectuality creating such a state that it is bound to drive you insane. And these people who are interested in Nietzsche are not of the caliber of Nietzsche either.

So not only will they go mad sooner; their madness may lead them to suicide.

This is the mind's natural process.

It is good that people have mediocre minds: mediocre minds cannot go mad. They do all kinds of stupid things in the world, but they don't go mad; a mediocre mind has not the capacity to go mad.

But a mediocre mind cannot be interested in Nietzsche, so the people who are interested are getting into a dangerous zone. If they are well-prepared, they will be enriched by Nietzsche's insights.

But the preparation is very vital, very essential. Nietzsche alone will drive these sympathizers to madness, to suicide.

Before Nietzsche, they need a good centering in meditation; then Nietzsche can be a great joy. His every insight can give you immense clarity about things which are always clouded.

The traditionalists don't want the clouds to be removed, because those clouds are helping them - so they can go on telling people whatever they want to, and they can go on exploiting people and enslaving people.

Nietzsche can be a great freedom.

But without meditation, a great danger.

Question 2:

George Gurdjieff is right, but right only about his own system. It is true: if you are following Gurdjieff's ideology and his methods, then a group is an absolute necessity; you cannot work alone.

Then people can function as alarm clocks to each other. If somebody starts falling asleep, somebody can shake him up. When you are starting to fall asleep, somebody else can shake you up and wake you.

Gurdjieff's method is a school method. He himself was trained in different schools of the Sufis. They are all school methods. School methods have a difficulty - that you have to depend on the group, that if the group is not the right group they can function in just the opposite way: rather than being alarm clocks, they can all become drugs for each other. You may have watched it: if one person starts falling asleep, immediately something in you also starts falling asleep.

Sleep is contagious.

Awakening is not.

It is possible that twenty people may remain asleep and one person awake, but his awakening is not going to be contagious. Most probably, seeing twenty people asleep he will himself fall asleep. So unless you have a very awakened master, the group method is not going to help much.

But in Gurdjieff's system the group is absolutely necessary; alone you cannot do it. For example, he had his school near Paris.... He told one of the new disciples to dig a trench. The whole day, from the morning - from sunrise to sunset - he was not allowed to go to eat or leave for anything; he had to dig the trench. That was the most important thing.

Now, it needs somebody to watch; otherwise the man may rest sometimes. The whole day is a long time, a hot day... he may go to have a drink or to eat something; or under the tree there is such beautiful shade and coolness... he may fall asleep.

Gurdjieff himself walked continuously the whole day, just by the side of the man. Now, when Gurdjieff himself was walking by his side continuously, the whole day, of course the man could not leave. By sunset he had made the big trench. And Gurdjieff said, "This is only half the work: now you fill it, and then you can go and sleep."

This was too much. Through great effort the whole day, against all temptations to leave it, he managed, because of Gurdjieff's presence, to continue, knowing one thing, that it could not kill him:

"I cannot die by just not eating for one day or not drinking water. I cannot die - that much is certain.

So let us try."

Now Gurdjieff says, "It is only half the work - you have now to fill it completely, as it was before you started digging. Then you can go and do whatsoever you want." And Gurdjieff remained there. It took a few hours for the man again to fill the trench - by midnight he was freed.

That new disciple remembers that that night was the most precious in his life; and only after that night could he understand Gurdjieff's methods.

Man's energy has layers. The first layer is for day-to-day work. It is soon exhausted, and you start feeling tired. If you don't listen to this tiredness, and you continue, then the second layer of energy - which is an emergency reservoir of energy - starts functioning. Suddenly you will feel an onrush of new energy becoming available to you, which refreshes you continuously. You cannot believe what has happened: all tiredness is gone. You are more fresh than you were before you started the work.

But the emergency reservoir also is not very big; it is only for emergency situations which don't last for long. So for one hour or two hours you will be full of energy, more than ever; then again the tiredness comes - and this is a greater tiredness than the first one.

If you don't listen to this tiredness... it is really difficult not to listen to it, almost impossible. But if you manage not to listen - and that's what Gurdjieff wants, that you continue - then you touch the third layer, which is vast, which is universal. And once that layer becomes available to you, you are a new man. Just within a day Gurdjieff could take you to the emergence of the basic power, of the basic energy, the universal energy in you.

But for this kind of method you need a group. If twelve persons are working, then everyone is watching you. Then each person is watched by eleven persons; you cannot escape easily. Alone, it is impossible; you will stop after your day-to-day energy is finished, and you will feel immensely tired, hungry.... That will be the stoppage because there is nobody who can prevent you or whose presence can prevent you; nobody is watching you. So for Gurdjieff's methods it is perfectly true that groups are needed.

My method can be used in a group, but the group is not necessary; you can use it alone. Any group can become a dependence - so that you can work only in the group. Out of the group, you are back to your usual self. When you are in the group you are a certain person; when you leave the group you are a different person.

I don't want my sannyasins to be dependent.

It is perfectly good to have small groups, but the methods I have given to you are individual; you can work alone. You don't need anybody to watch you, because my method is that you have to be the watcher.

Under somebody's watching eye, out of fear of somebody - and of course when Gurdjieff himself is watching you, you cannot escape - but it is something like slavery. Although he is taking you towards deeper layers of your energy, there is some kind of violence, some kind of enforcement, enslavement.

It is possible for you to do almost the impossible in such a situation. But once Gurdjieff is not there, you will become an ordinary person as you have been before. That has happened to almost all his disciples. Even though they have small groups, they are all mediocre, the same.

Rather than helping each other to be awake, they help each other to fall asleep. When one starts snoring, rather than being an alarm clock, he helps you to snore too.

It can function both ways. The group can be a space where you can become more alert; it can be a space where you can become more asleep. And because people started becoming more asleep in Gurdjieff's groups after Gurdjieff's death, those groups have disappeared. People have moved alone. But alone you cannot do those methods.

This is a very spiritual kind of slavery.

The master cannot guarantee to be with you forever; sometime he will be leaving. Then you should not be left in a space where you cannot function without him. And for that, a preparation is needed:

from the very beginning you work alone. Even if you are working in a group, you are not dependent on the group; your work, your method, is basically individual.

So my approach is individual.

I am not giving you school methods:

I am giving you individual methods, which can be done together with friends, which can be done alone. So you have freedom.

But there is nothing wrong if sannyasins are making small groups, because those small groups cannot hinder the methods that I have given to you or the work that you have to do upon yourself. It is available in both situations - alone or in groups.

But Gurdjieff had no idea - because he was trained always in schools. Sufis don't have individual methods; all the methods are group methods. He was trained by Sufis, and he went from one school to another; he learned much from those schools, and he developed and polished many methods which had become old and were not contemporary.

But he could not help many people, for the simple reason that he was the only person who was really awake. All the persons were working under him, under pressure - not out of freedom and joy - working with the motivation that someday they will become awakened like Gurdjieff.

He was certainly a very strange and powerful man. When he was dying, he got up from his bed and started walking in the corridor. His disciples said, "What are you doing? You are so sick - it is better to rest."

He said, "It is not sickness, it is death - and I don't want death to find me a weak person. I want to meet death not lying on the bed, but walking on the verandah."

He died walking. To the last moment he was still working. And he was certainly very awake because he could see death, he could see it was very imminent. But he was a very proud man - he did not like to die like every ordinary man, in the bed, he wanted to die in his own way.

Whenever he was sick, he would go driving, and he would drive as fast as the car could manage.

And everybody in the car was just freaking out, afraid that, "Now there is going to be an accident; now it is going to be..." because he never cared about any rules, the lights on the crossroads or anything. He would just drive in a mad way.

Just ten years before he died, he had a very great crash. To avoid a truck, he crashed against a rock by the side of the road. He had so many fractures that it was an impossibility... doctors could not believe that a man with so many fractures could walk home. He came out of the car and walked miles with so many fractures. The doctors could not believe that a man could move even a few feet - and within fifteen days all those fractures were settled. He had immense power.

All his methods are to bring you to the basic source of power. If that basic source of power becomes available to you continuously, it will transform your whole being. But it was not continuously available even to him.

One of his disciples, Bennett, after the second world war, went to him very tired. He was coming from the war, utterly tired, almost ready to die, willing to die.

Gurdjieff was very old, and it was just five years before he died. He asked Bennett to come close to him, and he took hold of both his hands. Bennett remembers in his biography that it was almost as if Gurdjieff was charging a battery from an electric source.

"I could feel the energy rushing through me, but I also could see that Gurdjieff was becoming pale.

I was feeling full of energy, all my tiredness gone, as if I had never been to the war. And there was a great desire to live and a great desire to achieve the ultimate - within seconds. And then Gurdjieff staggered, pale, as if he was going to fall, and went into the bathroom. After ten minutes he came back. He was okay. He was back to his usual health."

Bennett asked him, "What happened? You have given so much to me."

Gurdjieff said, "I can give you energy, but I am not yet continuously in touch with the original source, so I gave my own energy to you. And then I had to do a certain exercise in the bathroom to get in touch with the original source; otherwise you can live - I will die!"

This is a totally different path than what I am teaching to you. It is a path of power.

What I am teaching to you is the path of awareness.

... Because the path of power has great dangers in it. It can crystallize your ego. It can make you feel very egoistic because you have so much power - you can do this, you can do that. And that is a danger.

To avoid the ego even in ordinary life is so difficult. If you get in touch with extraordinary sources of power, it will become more and more difficult to get rid of the ego, because the ego will take possession of all your powers.

My work is totally different: you have to be aware. And awareness is not a power. You have to be aware even of your powers. If you come across them, you have to be aware, and you have to remain detached, only a watcher.

That's where Gurdjieff and I use different words. His methods can be described as "self- remembering." That's what he uses - the word "self-remembering." I do not want to use that word.

It is dangerous because the self can be just the ego - it is playing with fire. I simply use the word "witnessing," with no place for self, ego, or even a faraway cousin.

Just to avoid the most probable possibility, you have just to be a witness. It may not lead you to power - there is no need - but it will lead you to understanding. That is what is needed.

Gurdjieff's disciples became power-oriented and forgot completely about just being watchful. But he was not telling them to be just watchful. There is a possibility of somebody becoming enlightened through his path also, but it goes in a very zigzag way, with more possibility of being lost than of reaching.

What I have been telling you is something which cannot be misused in any way by you.

And witnessing is a purely individual phenomenon.

Question 3:

The beginning is naturally mysterious because you can only see a seed changing into a sprout, but you cannot see what is going to happen later on - that the sprout is going to become a big tree with great foliage, thousands of flowers, fruits. That is still in the future.

You can only remember later on that the beginning was just two small leaves, a sprout, and now you see a big, huge tree. There are trees which can live five thousand years, but in the beginning you cannot see all those possibilities. It is always retrospectively that things are understood.

The old man has a few characteristics which will be disappearing from the New Man.

The old man was attached to the crowd, different kinds of crowds - religious crowds, political crowds - and he wanted to be attached to more crowds. He created Rotary Clubs, Lion's Clubs, just to be part of as many crowds as possible, because alone he was nothing. The more crowds he belonged to, the more he felt he was.

Belonging to crowds was one of the basic characteristics of the old man. The New Man will have just the opposite characteristic: he will be alone.

He will not like to belong to crowds - the family, the society, the church, the state, the nation, the race. He will hate to belong to any crowd; he will like to be just himself, alone. Because he will have a being, he need not collect a false being from crowds.

The old man was always past-oriented. His heroes were always of the past: his saints were always of the past, his holy books were always of the past - the more ancient, the more valuable. The old man lived through the dead.

The New Man will not look backwards; he will look forwards, he will be able to encounter the vast emptiness of the future.

The old man was very afraid to look forwards because there is simply emptiness, nothingness; everything is in the past. The old man was very historically-minded.

The New Man will be more courageous to look into the future, to face nothingness, because there is no fear in facing nothingness. If you have a certain centering, a certain grounding of your being, you can encounter nothingness blissfully, peacefully. He will live in the present - because you cannot live in the past, you cannot live in the future; you can only live in the present.

The past man, the old man, has not lived at all. He was only making gestures of living, but he never lived, because his mind was never in the present.

The New Man will be more grounded in the present, unconcerned with the past, more open to the future, to the adventure of the new. His whole ecstasy will be to discover the new, not to go on repeating the old... to be discovering something new each moment, creating something new, being something new.

So the New Man will always be an opening, always an adventure. And because he will not be concerned with the old, all the discriminations of the past will be dropped from his mind - Hindu or Christian, black or white, man or woman. There will not be any evaluation that somebody is higher and somebody is lower. He will be more human than the old man has been.

The old man was more animal, less human. The New Man will be more human, less animal, and the best of the New Man will have lost all animality in them. That means their life will be full of trust, full of love, full of compassion, full of gratitude, and a thousand and one qualities which the old man has been preaching but not practicing.

The New Man will not be preaching these qualities, he will be practicing them. They will be simply his life.

The old man has lived with all kinds of divisions - nations, races, religions. The New Man will live an undivided humanity, with all the sources pooled into one. And that will enable him to explore the universe.

We have the capacity, but our whole energy is being wasted in fighting amongst ourselves on this small planet, earth. We have not explored this vast universe that surrounds us, which is such a challenge. And exploring it, the New Man is going to realize things which the old man could not even imagine.

For example, if the whole earth is one, there is no question of wars. And if all the energy that has always been wasted in wars is available for some creative purposes - and it is immense energy...

with that energy man can explore the whole universe.

There is a possibility.... The scientists guess that at least fifty thousand planets have life. Now, what kind of dead and dull men have lived on this earth up to now, that they have not been able to make any contact with other living beings in the universe? It is our universe, but we have not even called this earth ours... just small fragments. And so much is waiting to be revealed that once the new man starts exploring....

For example, if we can move with the speed of light... and I certainly think that there is a possibility.

If light can move with a certain speed, why can't means and methods be found so that man can move with the same speed as light? That is the ultimate speed.

The greatest geniuses have been thinking that if man can move with that speed, then he will not become old. He can go searching, exploring in other solar systems, on other planets for a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years, and then can come back. All his contemporaries on the earth will be dead, their grandchildren will be almost near to death. But the adventurers who had gone on the journey will be just the same age as when they had left the earth. At that speed of light, aging does not happen.

Now, great adventures are there. It is not only that we have this earth, that we have explored it all and we are feeling bored, that there is nothing to explore, that there is no America for Columbus.

This whole universe is there for millions of Columbuses. For millions of years we are not going to reach the boundary, because there is no boundary. And one never knows - whatever scientific researchers have known is just a small fragment of the whole universe; they don't have the whole idea of the universe.

The New Man will be finding new ways in every dimension. The old man was always traditional, clinging to the trodden path. Now there are already thousands of inventions which are not being used because of the old man... because the old man is not ready to use anything new. While the old thing is working well, why bother? Why get into dangerous things?

For example, in Japan, it is now fully proved by experiments that at a certain speed, trains rise above the earth 0.4 inches. So they don't need rails - just in the beginning, at the start, before they take off. And they can go up to four hundred miles an hour very easily. That is the minimum, four hundred - we don't know the maximum. And if trains can move above the earth, it will be a totally different experience. It will be really comfortable, far cheaper, and so fast.

The trains are ready, but the old man is not willing to use them. It seems dangerous - four hundred miles per hour. It is the same danger.... When the first railway trains were introduced... the first day on the London station nobody was ready to sit in the trains. They were invited free, meals were given, but nobody was going to sit in them. And it was only an eight-mile journey, but nobody was ready to sit in the trains because the churches were saying that God never made trains, so it must be the work of the devil.

This has been the way of the old man.

If we can have contact with living beings, perhaps we may come across beings who have more senses than we have... because why should five senses be the limit? We cannot conceive - beyond the five senses - what will be the sixth sense?

We cannot conceive beyond taste, smell, sight, hearing, touch. What could be the sixth or the seventh or the eighth or the tenth? Who knows? - because if we had four senses, we would not have been able to think of the fifth. And on every planet life must have grown differently because the climate is different, the situation is different.

There is so much to explore and to learn and to make available to humanity, that the New Man will be basically adventurous in all dimensions. In medicine, in biology, in space travel, in meditations - in every possible dimension the New Man will be an adventurer.

He will be very willing to go into it. He will be ready to risk all for the new. And then a vast world of experiences becomes available.

We are living on a small planet, fighting with each other, quarreling over small things, while the whole universe waits to be discovered. And it may change everything on the earth. It may be that these explorations of the universe, of other planets, will finally help life to survive, because there is a possibility that by the end of this century the earth will change its axis.

Now that will bring tremendous changes - in the climate, in everything on the earth. If just the Himalayan snow starts melting, then all our great cities, which are ports, will be drowned. Just the Himalayan snow is enough to raise our seas forty feet higher, if it melts. It has never melted, it is eternally there - but the change of the earth's axis can bring it closer to the sun: it can start melting.

Then New York and Bombay and Calcutta and Tokyo and San Francisco - all the big cities which are near the ocean will be simply drowned.

Scientists are worried that the sun may be burning itself out. It has been giving light for millions of years, its fuel may be finishing. We may not know exactly when, but they don't think it can last forever.

A few million years is their estimate. But if the sun does not rise one morning, then everything dies as it is.

It will be necessary that we have other planets available for people to be moved to. If any danger to the earth arises, if there is any danger to the sun, then there is no need to be in this solar system.

The whole humanity can be moved to other planets. There is no need for this whole evolution up to man to go down into the water or to die out simply because the sun's fuel is finished.

The old man has nothing to give to humanity in such emergencies.

The New Man will be capable.