I stand for the whole man

Question 1:

Prem Ageha, Western psychology has created a very schizophrenic situation by dividing man into extroverts and introverts. Man is one. This division has been destructive of all humanity and its whole past.

The moment you divide any organic unity, it dies. You can divide only mechanical entities but not organic ones. You can take a bicycle apart and you can put it together again and you will not lose anything. But if you take a man apart and put him together again you won't have the same man you had divided; you will have only a corpse.

It is of utmost importance to understand that organic unities cannot be divided - neither into higher and lower, nor into outer and inner, nor into sacred and mundane, nor into material and spiritual.

Man is all. What appears to be contradictory is only complementary, to those who understand. Your question raises great implications.

Just a few days ago one Japanese scientist was here to attend a world science conference. He became aware about me only at the last moment, but before rushing to the airport he came here.

He had not more than fifteen minutes, and I was asleep. He wrote a letter stating many important things: the first one was that nobody understands him. He has been around the earth in search of a man who can understand him.

Looking at his letter I could not contain myself from laughing... because this is a much lower stage, when nobody understands you. I have also been around the world - everybody MISunderstands me.

I have invited the scientist, his name is Fukuora.

(SOMEBODY GIGGLES AT THE NAME, AND THE JOKE BECOMES CONTAGIOUS. THE MASTER, POKER-FACED, WAITS FOR IT TO SUBSIDE...) ... You can laugh in English, but not in Japanese!

I have written to him, saying, "Most of the things that you are saying cannot be understood because you yourself don't understand that they are based on a dual conception of reality. On one hand you condemn the famous philosopher Descartes, saying that he is responsible for dividing science from religion, and his division has created tremendous trouble for the whole humanity...."

I can understand. But Fukuora himself goes on continuously talking in his letter about the inner man and the outer man.

Man is not divided into the inner and the outer. You are both. You can open your eyes and you are outside, and you can close your eyes and you are inside. Just small eyelids - that is the only division. Not much of a division. But the blindness of man is such that although Fukuora understands that Descartes is wrong, he himself goes on doing the same thing without being alert at all. The materialist, the spiritualist... he wants the whole world to become spiritual. He goes on praising Gautam Buddha....

And that makes me laugh because if you go on dividing man into lower and higher, into material, into spiritual, you may have changed the direction of division but division is there.

I stand for the whole man - to be accepted, appreciated, loved in its total organicity.

Your question is, what is the difference between "being withdrawn, being introverted and turning in?"

All belong to the extrovert man. There is not much qualitative difference.

Being withdrawn means simply being indifferent, aloof, uncaring. But you are still outside.

Being introverted simply means you have closed all your doors and windows; you will not receive the fresh breeze and you will not receive the sun and the moon and the stars; you have become closed to reality. An introverted man is just vegetating, not living. Because life needs both - a tremendous balance between the inner and the outer, between the day and the night, between life and death.

They are not separate. Nowhere is there a demarcation. The introverted man is a dead man, a corpse.

And the third - turning in. There is no need to turn in. It is the philosophers, the people who are too much concerned with words, language, and not at all concerned with experience, who go on creating such ideas as "turning in."

You have never been out - how can you turn in? You have always been there; from there you can radiate outwards, but there is no question of turning in. "Turning in" means you had gone out of the house, roamed around and finally came back home. But you have never left the home - you cannot, because you are the home.

Wherever you go, it will be the same: your inner and your outer will be balancing wherever you are.

You cannot leave one behind and go ahead with the half; that's an impossibility.

But the professors and the philosophers are more concerned with words, never bothering to look into reality and existence itself.

I have heard, there is a commune in Poland which has only four members. Their names are Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody.

One day there is an important job to be done and Everybody is sure that Somebody will do it.

Anybody could do it but Nobody does it. Somebody gets angry about that because it is Everybody's job. Everybody thinks that Anybody can do it but Nobody realizes that Everybody won't do it. It ends up that Everybody blames Somebody when Nobody does what Anybody could have done.

Here in this place, all those four are present - and enjoying immensely! There is no need to condemn anybody. Everybody is what he is supposed to be. But man has been dominated by the idea of condemning this, condemning that: this is right, that is wrong. It has created so many layers, so many categories, that somewhere or other it has made everybody guilty... in so many ways guilty. It has wounded everybody's psyche and destroyed man's dignity, his individuality.

Fukuora is not understood because he is asking things which are only symbolic, symptoms. He is not raising questions about the roots - he himself believes in the roots.

He was here attending an international conference. Naturally, just out of etiquette, he praised India too much - "this is the only land which can save humanity." It is not capable of saving itself! And you are putting the responsibility on the poor human beings of this devastated, destroyed, enslaved, hungry, uneducated, uncultured people to save the whole humanity.

It reminded me of an old Jew who was praying his last prayer before dying. Somebody heard, and could not believe what he was saying. The old Jew was saying to God, "God, it is time you should choose somebody else as your chosen people. We have suffered enough." Jews would have never suffered if God had not named them as his chosen people. Who bothers about ordinary people?

This country is being praised and this country feels very comfortable with all this praise, without looking at the reality.

Fukuora mentions in his letter that the world needs an ecological change. It is true - the world needs deep ecological understanding. But the way he expresses it destroys the whole truth it contains. He says, "I loved the Indian roads, where cows are sitting." This is ecology - where men and animals are together, drinking water, taking baths, doing all kinds of stupid things together.

This is not ecology, this is nonsense, and he was very much impressed when he saw it. But he does not understand: these cows are hungry, they are dying, their owners have disowned them because their owners cannot feed them and they are of no use anymore; neither can they give milk nor they can give more cows and bulls. On the streets they are not resting, they are simply waiting for death - hungry, uncomfortable. Death will come to them not in a natural way, it will come through the traffic.

They will die and they will take a few more people with themselves. They will not die alone.

And when he saw a temple of the monkey god Hanuman, he was immensely impressed. This is ecology - man worshipping hungry, mangy... all kinds of animals are being worshipped in India, elephant gods....

I have always been sad that Charles Darwin never came to India. Otherwise he would have found the most valid reason for his theory of evolution, that man has evolved out of monkeys. The worship of the monkeys proves that they are your forefathers.

That reminds me of Ronald Reagan. He has tried to stop, in the universities of America, in the colleges, in the schools, all teaching of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Not only that, his teachings have been taken out of libraries - the books have been taken out and burned because the theory of evolution goes against the theory of Christianity which proposes not evolution but creation.

But the real reason to me seems to be that Ronald Reagan does not want to accept monkeys as his forefathers. But just burning those books does not change anything.

Fukuora cannot be understood by Ronald Reagan. But he is proposing something which is not even worth proposing. He is not hitting at the roots. Whether monkeys are worshipped or not, is not going to change the fate of the coming humanity. But the problem about hitting the roots is that it is dangerous. It immediately annoys the vested interests.

I went through his whole letter. He seems to be a sincere and nice person; he really wants a better future. But he has not the insight that by pruning the leaves of the trees nothing is changed. You will have to cut the roots. And the moment you start on the roots you will be in difficulty, because the politicians are in the roots, the organized religions are in the roots, all the races are in the roots....

You cannot change anything in this world unless you cut these roots completely. Unless there is only one world government and no divisions of nations and freedom of movement without any need of passports and visas and all kinds of idiotic conditions, you cannot do anything about the ecology.

For example, Bangladesh is suffering every year with great floods. It cannot do anything about it because the roots are in the division of nations. Nepal is the poorest country in the world and it has nothing to sell except its ancient trees. Two-hundred, three-hundred, five-hundred-year-old trees - it has sold them to the Soviet Union and now the Soviet Union has cut so many trees that for miles and miles the land is without trees.

The trees used to slow down the flow of the rivers. Now there are no trees; the waters from the Himalayas come with such a force that the ocean cannot absorb them in so much quantity, it has never done it. It turns them back, and every year Bangladesh suffers. Thousands of people die, thousands of houses are destroyed. It is beyond the power of Bangladesh to do anything. If Nepal sells its trees, who are you to say anything to Nepal? And if you say anything then you have to understand that Nepal has nothing else to sell. Then feed Nepal.

The ecology is so interdependent.... It became clear that if anything goes wrong in the Soviet Union, in their nuclear plants, then the clouds of nuclear radiation will spread wherever the winds take them, and winds don't think about about national boundaries. Now the problems are international, and your solutions are national. Unless humanity is one there is no hope.

But the politicians will not allow humanity to be one because it is their whole power trip. If there is only one world government, it will not satisfy so many people's egos to be presidents, to be prime ministers, to be ministers, to be governors. To fulfill these people's egos, we have to suffer.

Everybody has to suffer.

In India there is enough coal and not enough wheat. But Russia has burned wheat in its railway trains instead of coal because it does not have coal. It could have been a simple understanding, but the barriers of nations prevent a bird's-eye view of the whole situation. And although this country is so poor, it has been selling its wheat to purchase more atomic plants, more nuclear technology. And almost half the country is hungry and starving.

The European Common Market every six months goes on drowning billions of dollars worth of food in the ocean. And in Ethiopia, every day one thousand people will go on dying, but that food cannot be given to them. The European market has its own problems: its economy will collapse if it starts giving things free to people. Then its own people will ask, "Then why should we pay? We create - Ethiopia eats. We work hard and you are throwing our earnings to other countries. We have nothing to do with them." America goes on drowning food in the same way - mountains of butter and other foodstuff. Last time it took millions of dollars just to carry that foodstuff to the ocean; that is not including the price of the food.

Now, do you think we are living on a sane planet?

Roots have to be hit hard. But the moment you hit any root you become dangerous.

My attorney, Swami Prem Niren, is sitting here. He is now doing deep research into what was going on behind the screen when I was arrested in America. And such hilarious facts are coming out! One cannot figure out whether this world is sane or a big madhouse.

The politicians and the church leaders were trying to force the supreme court of Oregon to arrest me, send me to jail, or at least deport me. But it was difficult for them to find any legal, constitutional reason. They knew perfectly well that it was not going to be a small thing. So first, a preparation was needed. And you will not believe - just to arrest me, they wasted five and a half million dollars in research work to find something that I might have committed so that my arrest could be valid. They were at a loss, because I am such a lazy man - to commit a crime is such an impossibility. I have not even prepared a cup of tea for myself in my whole life. Most of the time I am asleep. The few hours I am awake, I am talking to you.

After five years of research, wasting five and a half million dollars in the research... and the pressure was increasing. But this is strange... A man cannot just be deported, because then you are afraid that he will fight up to the Supreme Court. On what grounds are you deporting him? And neither can you allow him to live there - not because he is doing any harm to anybody, but you cannot allow him to be, because he is hitting your very roots.

I don't have to go anywhere to hit the roots. I can hit those roots from here.

The Christian fundamentalists were angry because I said that Jesus Christ, to me, is not a man of enlightenment. He may be good entertainment, but he is not... And to crucify a man who has not done anything except making statements which are simply stupid - "I am the only begotten son of God."

Now anybody you meet in the street who says to you, "Listen, I am the only begotten son of God,"

do you think it is right to crucify him? At the most you can say, "It is perfectly good." What is criminal in it? If he was saying, "I am the one who can save the whole world" ... so who is preventing you?

Save! But I don't think that he is worthy of a cross. And when I said this, that the more I look into Jesus and his psychology, I see only a crackpot and nothing else....

But that I can do from here. I am doing it from here. America is not that far away. Neither is Italy that far away. And the Italian Consul is here, just by my side. He wanted to see me alone and because my secretary insisted that I never see anybody alone... because whatever I say has to be recorded.

He started perspiring. He became so nervous, he said, "Then cancel the appointment." What could be the fear?

The fear is that for one year, the Italian government, against any reason, has been trying to prevent my entry into Italy. A whole party, the Radical Party of Italy, is fighting continuously. Eighty-four prominent citizens of Italy - Nobel Prize winners, poets, painters, professors - have protested. The government goes on saying that next week they are going to issue a visa for me, and this has been going on for one year. Because of the fear of the pope, the fear of the Catholics....

Just what happened in America is happening in twenty-five countries. Sitting in my room, mostly sleeping, I am fighting in twenty-five countries.

In spite of the supreme court and the politicians and the church, the head of the FBI refused to arrest me because he said there were no valid grounds. Otherwise they are very famous people for doing anything wrong - even they could not think that it was right to arrest me. Then they asked the CIA, and the CIA chief simply refused. He said, "There is a limit to some things; innocence is not crime." And you will not believe that the research that is being done by my attorneys in America has brought out a very strange fact: finally, the supreme court asked the army to arrest me! They could not find anybody else to arrest me, because everybody wanted evidence. And the head of the army laughed. He said, "This is unprecedented. To arrest a single individual who is not even a citizen of this country, who is just a tourist, the army is being called? The whole world will laugh at it." He simply refused.

Finally, when I was arrested they had no arrest warrant because nobody was ready to issue one.

Even the immigration department, which had put five and a half million dollars into research - their head refused to issue an arrest warrant because, he said, "Your research shows nothing. There is nothing that you can call a crime for which an arrest warrant is needed."

They must have persuaded the city police of Charlotte to arrest me without an arrest warrant. They had nothing even verbally to tell me about what were the reasons that I was being arrested and six of my friends were being arrested. They had only a list saying that these people had to be arrested.

And strangely enough, the names of these six people were not on that list. We told them, "Our names are not on your list. You are doing simply an absurd act. You can look at our passports. Your list contains other names, but we are not the right people."

Because they were not yet ready for evidence, finally they managed what they could have done in the very beginning. They simply fabricated thirty-four charges against me - just pure fiction.

Obviously, they had to give some result; they had wasted five and a half million dollars. And you will not believe what the government attorney who was fighting in the court against me, for three days continuously, finally said: "I have not been able to prove anything, but neither has the other party been able to prove anything."

Can you see the stupidity of the statement? Does innocence also need to prove that it is innocent?

No constitution of any country requires that innocence be proved. But these politicians are so much afraid that if the roots are opened and cut, then their vested interests will be gone. If there is no God, and Jesus Christ is a crackpot, then what is the pope? Just a representative of a crackpot....

And it is not only in one country. Today I have received the news from Germany that one of its major political parties, the Green Party, has asked the government about the fact that it is now two years that they have been keeping the law, the special order that I cannot enter into Germany. Not only that, I cannot even land at any airport of Germany - even for refueling the plane - because I am a dangerous man.

Now their own party, a major party, is asking the government, "You have to explain: what is the danger? And for two years you have been avoiding the issue. You should appoint a commission to do the research: what is the danger?"

And if I am a danger, are there other people also in Germany who are in the same category? Just now, one German psychoanalyst has published a book after many years of research which says that Christianity has created more crimes in the world than any other religion. Now the Green Party is asking, what are you going to do about Christianity?

It is basically a question of bringing out the roots of all our misery, of all our torture. But those who are in power will not allow you even to know where the causes lie. You have to fight only with the effects. That's why no revolution has been able to be successful up to now.

Now why should this Italian Consul be so insistent to talk with me alone? What is the fear that the talk should be recorded? From where does this fear arise? What was the fear in America? because when they deported me, the United States Attorney admitted that I had not committed any crime...

"But our purpose was to send him out of America, because he is dangerous." Dangerous to what?

Dangerous to morality, and the man who was most emphatic about this point... his name is Michael Stoops, a fanatic fundamentalist Christian. Today I have heard that he has been charged with child abuse - sexual child abuse. And this was the man who was in favor of my being deported because I am dangerous to people's morality. Who are these people and what is their morality?

Just a few weeks ago in America there was a conference, an international conference of homosexuals. One of the men from Britain, a member of the Parliament, represented the homosexuals of England in the conference - obviously, he must be a homosexual. And he said, "I know at least fifty-six members of the Parliament in England who are homosexuals." It is absolutely confirmed that one of the popes before this Polack pope was a homosexual. Who are the people whose morality has to be saved? In fact, a deep research is needed into who has already destroyed people's sense of purity, integrity, responsibility.

The roots are very strange, because they remain hidden underneath the earth. You only see the flowers and the trees and the leaves - you don't see the roots. All the religions of the world are responsible for homosexuality. And to find why they are responsible, you will have to go a little deeper. It is because they insisted that celibacy is very spiritual, that without being a celibate you cannot be spiritual.

Now, celibacy is absolute nonsense. It is against nature, it is against medical science. I am amazed that not a single medical institute stands up and says to the world that celibacy is not possible, it is not in your program. In your body, everything has been programmed by the sperm and the egg of your parents. Celibacy is not in the program, and we don't yet know how to change the program.

So anybody who claims to be a celibate is a hypocrite - or he will be finding some perverted ways...

one of them is homosexuality, another is sodomy.

Who has created all these prostitutes? If you dig up the roots, you will be very much surprised to know that to protect marriage, prostitutes are an absolute necessity. Because the man gets fed up with the woman, the woman gets fed up with the man. Then just for a change... in the past, women were not courageous enough and not educated enough. That's why there have not been male prostitutes. But now in London, in Chicago, in San Francisco, in New York, you can find male prostitutes. This is a by-product of the women's movement for liberation. Obviously, if men can go to prostitutes, why not women? And the whole thing is to protect marriage.

Protecting marriage is one of the causes of homosexuality, it is one of the causes of child abuse. And then all the monasteries - Christian, Hindu, Buddhist - are full of homosexuals. I am not condemning their homosexuality. I am simply saying that they are victims of a stupid ideology, teaching celibacy.

And the governments are still doing the same. Now they are making laws against homosexuality - not against celibacy. You can make laws against homosexuality but that will make homosexuality go underground. Or, men will start finding new ways to express their sexuality - maybe plastic women; they are in existence already.

But no court in the world has thought to cut the very root: make a law against the celibacy which drives people into perversion. But that will go against all the religions, and religions are tremendously powerful - from the outside and from the inside, because you are conditioned by them.

The whole of human history is full of violence, full of war, and we know perfectly well that it is because of the existence of nations. There is no need of nations. This whole planet is one. Its problems are one, its solutions have to be one. But why is it not being implemented? And anybody who says this....

Yesterday I received a letter from a sannyasin, Ma Prem Madhu from England. She had won the first prize in a competition for creating better and more beautiful neighborhoods, more in tune with nature. Prince Charles gave her the prize - and she went there in orange clothes with my mala.

Everybody was shocked - all the celebrities must have been there, all the idiots and all the Lords - and Prince Charles looked at my picture and said to Prem Madhu, "This is dangerous." Now, what danger I am causing to the world? Princes find me dangerous.... When the Prince of Wales had come to India, Queen Elizabeth insisted to him, "You can go everywhere in India, but not to Poona."

He himself confessed it to his cousin-brother Vimalkirti, who was my sannyasin, and his wife, Turiya.

Both were present in Bombay to meet him, and he was so much interested in me but the queen had told him not to go because it is "dangerous." I have been wondering what this word 'danger' means.

I have never killed a fly in my life.

Twenty-five countries have prohibited my entry into their land. The grounds are the same: that I can destroy their morality, religion, tradition. And these people don't even consider a simple fact that a man who comes as a tourist for three weeks, if he can destroy your morality of two thousand years, then your morality is not worth saving. It should be destroyed. You are accepting defeat by refusing my entry for just three weeks. Your religion is not courageous enough to answer me, your politicians are cowards.

And from where does this cowardliness come to all the politicians and all the priests? It comes from a root that Friedrich Nietzsche has called "will to power." Anybody who suffers from an inferiority complex, feels in some way inferior - it may be intelligence, may be strength, may be beauty; it can be anything - if one feels inferior... and it is bound to happen to almost everybody, a kind of inferiority, because our whole educational system is based on competition, comparison. And the moment you compete and you compare, naturally you have to put yourself somewhere; you are inferior or superior.

The moment you feel yourself inferior, your whole being takes a certain root: will to power. Somehow you have to prove to yourself and to the world that you are not inferior.

Your presidents, your prime ministers, your ambassadors, your kings, your queens, are all in the same boat: just trying to prove they are not inferior, they are great leaders of men. And I have seen many of these great leaders of men - just phony. If you look inside, you will find nothing but bullshit.

Otherwise I cannot see how a man who does not have a paper knife with himself, is so dangerous that the army is needed to arrest him. And all agencies of the government refused to arrest me, because they didn't see any point. They would look stupid. And that happened, finally.

The United States Attorney from Oregon who was fighting the case... because he could not manage a crucifixion or something more contemporary. It was not his fault, it is my fault. I have not committed anything; what could that poor man do? He tried his best. Now the reward for that man is that he has been fired. He tried his best, but for fictions.

He said in the court that I had arranged thousands of marriages, just for the purpose of getting residence - at least certainly one marriage. Just look at the point: I have arranged thousands of marriages and he himself ends with the conclusion that at least one marriage certainly. Then from where do those thousands of marriages come? He could only bribe one couple. He tried to persuade many couples that they should say that I had arranged their marriage, and they said I had not been speaking for three and a half years; I had not been seeing anybody. It would look simply stupid. Out of five thousand sannyasins, perhaps they managed to bribe somebody - to give him a job, to give him a green card. That was the only proof.

And the head of the army laughed at the point - "If he has married just one couple, it does not require the army! For such a small, messy affair!"

But politicians are everywhere basically hollow people, utterly empty and completely in fear, in paranoia, because their position is never certain. Today they may be the prime minister and tomorrow they may not be. Today they have so much power and tomorrow they will be just a beggar on the streets. The man who was the prime minister in Russia before the revolution, a man named Karentzky, fled the country. He died in 1950 in New York. People had completely forgotten about him. He was one of the most powerful men of his times, being the prime minister of the czar of Russia, one of the greatest lands. And he died as a grocer. He had been running a grocery store since the revolution, in New York, hiding in disguise.

The politician originates out of the inferiority complex. He wants to have more power, more power so he can fill his emptiness. But strangely - by the side - as he goes on climbing ladder upon ladder, more and more fear also grows on both sides. The fear that he can be pulled down, because so many people are pulling at his legs, so many people are competing for the same position. He cannot remain forever in power - that fear is the reason why a man like me becomes dangerous. Because I simply want to say that two and two are four.

Religions have made men's minds retarded by creating beliefs in fictions. And politicians have destroyed man into as undignified a life as possible, because their power depends on your slavery.

Unless we cut these roots....

This earth has the capacity to feed at least five times more people than exist today - that is a scientific calculation - but these barriers should be removed. And science should be employed not in the service of death and destruction but in the service of life and love, affirmation, celebration.

We are in a situation today such that either we will let these rotten politicians and priests destroy the whole humanity and the earth, or take the power from their hands and decentralize it to humanity.

No army is needed, because no nation is needed. No destructive weapons are needed, because no war is needed. And if this whole energy - right now fifty percent of our energy goes to war - if a hundred percent of the energy and a hundred percent of the intelligence of humanity goes together hand in hand to create a better society, a more scientific education, a better humanity, which for the first time we are capable of....

It was not possible in the past. Today it is possible. Much of the work can be done by robots; there is no need to destroy human life in unnecessary work. Much of the work can be done by computers; there is no need for small boys and girls to burden their memories unnecessarily. They can just carry a small computer in their pocket which contains everything that they want to know. And to me, it is even more significant because if the whole memory is shifted to the computer, meditation will become such an easy job. Then you don't have to fight with any thoughts and memories; you just have to take your computer off, deposit it at the gate and enter into the temple! You need not be worried about anything.

A better man than any which has ever existed on the earth is possible, according to the people who work in the realms of physiology, biology, genetics. It is a confirmed fact that man can live at least three hundred years without any difficulty, without even becoming old. Three hundred years - the implications are great. If Albert Einstein can live three hundred years, his contribution will be tremendous, to physics, to mathematics. If a Mozart can live three hundred years, certainly his music will become more and more meditative, more and more silent. If a Rabindranath can live for three hundred years, his poetry will become pure fragrance of the beyond.

It is within our hands to choose what kind of people we want. It is in our hands to decide how many people we want. But we have to remove these barriers of politicians and religions - otherwise they are going to force humanity to commit suicide.

I would like Fukuora to know that he is in a better position because nobody understands him. He should feel some sympathy for me - everybody misunderstands me. And I am making everything as clear, as logical, as rational as possible. Fukuora is not logical or rational in his statements. He has a beautiful heart - that I can see from his statements. But he has not worked out interconnections. For example, he thinks that if we move back to nature, all problems will be solved. This is not new. Leo Tolstoy was teaching "back to nature." Rousseau was teaching "back to nature." Mahatma Gandhi in this country was teaching "back to nature." And all three were in the same trouble as Fukuora, that nobody understood them.

The problem is very complicated. First, there is no way to go back. And even if some way can be found to go back, where is the line? Where will you think you have gone back enough? It will certainly be when the first monkey jumped on the earth and stood on two legs - against nature. The first scientist, the founder of civilization....

I don't think that before that, you can stop. And I don't think anybody would like to go to that state again. It will be very difficult. In these thousands of years, your body has changed so much:

you cannot jump on trees, naked in the rain, in the cold, in the heat. And you cannot live on just fruits. Most probably everybody will be having fractures, multiple fractures, and there will not be any ambulances because Mahatma Gandhi does not allow even railway trains. Even something innocent like telephones he is very much against.

I know one thing is wrong in the telephone. That is the last part of it, "phone," because from that phone has come "phony." But otherwise, it is innocent. You can change the name.

He was against telegrams. He thought that if man goes back - as Fukuora also thinks, without having a clear-cut conception... At the time of Gautam Buddha, twenty-five centuries ago, the whole population of the world was twenty million. Even then there was poverty. Even then there was crime, murder, rape. People don't find it in history books, and when I first said it, a Buddhist scholar, Bhodant Anand Kausalyayan, stood up and said, "From where have you found out these things?"

I said, "From the teachings of Gautam Buddha! Because he is teaching people they should never commit a rape. That simply means people were committing rape. He is telling people, 'Be content in your poverty.' If there were no poverty, there was no need to make such a statement." And for forty-two years continuously he was telling people not to steal, not to murder, not to be violent. To whom is he talking? Either he is mad or I am right.

Now, just as India became free in 1947, forty years ago, the country's population was four hundred million. And Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa and all the shankaracharyas, all insisted that birth control is against God.

In the first place there is no God.

In the second place, if it is against God, let it be! It is his problem, not our problem. But nobody listened and just in forty years' time, from four hundred million, India has reached the population of nine hundred million. By the end of the century, India will have more than one billion people. For the first time, India will be the most populated country in the world. Up to now, China had that privilege; now India has defeated China in stupidity.

The whole world will have five billion people by the end of the century. Going back to nature, what do you think will be the result? Even twenty million people cannot live, going back to nature. There will be simply corpses all around. And this is being taught by people like Mahatma Gandhi who think they are nonviolent. What can be more violent? Genghis Khan killed four million people. Nadir Shah killed three million people. Adolf Hitler killed eight million people. But if Mahatma Gandhi and Fukuora are to be followed, they will kill at least five billion people. The whole earth will be full of corpses.

Back to nature is simply back to death. If humanity decides to go back to nature, I will suggest then first do one thing: dig your grave, prepare it, because there is nobody else who is going to prepare it. Everybody will be dying himself. So right now, prepare your grave and lie down in it and then go back to nature.

All that you have, ninety-nine percent of it is because of science and technology. It is true that science and technology have taken a wrong turn. Descartes was wrong when he said that man and nature are enemies; Bertrand Russell was wrong when he said that we have to conquer nature.

These people gave a wrong direction to science. Nature and man have to be friends. There is no question of conquering. We are part of nature, and the part cannot conquer the whole. The part can only dissolve into the whole, rejoice in being one with the whole.

Science has to be given a new turn so that it becomes a bridge between man and nature. And the same science that has created atom bombs and nuclear weapons can also create a far greater consciousness for man, far healthier human beings, more beautiful trees, bigger flowers. This planet, although it is very small, contains the potentiality of being the richest planet in this vast universe where millions and millions of stars are surrounded by more and more planets.

Right now the count is three million stars, but they don't say that is the end. That is as far as our scientific instruments can see. There is beyond, unlimited, with no boundaries. But in this whole expanse, only this small earth has evolved to the point of consciousness, of love, of beauty, of music, of poetry, of sensitivity, of meditativeness.

It should be a determination in every intelligent being that we are not going to allow any vested interest to destroy this planet. This planet has to remain. And there is a golden future just ahead on the horizon - but we must cut the roots, whatever the cost. This is the only revolt I teach.

All revolutions have failed because they were cutting leaves and branches. I teach a total revolt against the past, against all vested interests.

The question is of tremendous importance: to save man is to save the greatest creation of the universe. It has taken four million years for this earth to create man. It is so precious ... and the future is much more valuable, because inside you the possibility of a Gautam Buddha, the possibility of a Zarathustra, the possibility of a Lao Tzu is there.

You can also blossom in the same silence, in the same peace, in the same beauty, in the same ecstasy.

... I forgot to look at my watch!

Ronald Reagan, his cabinet members, and his wife Nancy, traveled to the Rocky Mountains for a skiing holiday. Waking up one morning, Reagan opens the curtains and there in the snow, in yellow letters, someone has pissed the message: "Reagan is a wimp." Enraged, Reagan orders an analysis made of the urine to find out who the culprit is.

An official returns with the results and tells Reagan, "I have some bad news and some terrible news.

The bad news is that the urine belongs to your attorney general, Ed Meese."

"What?" shouts Reagan. "I will shoot that bastard! And what is the terrible news?"

"Well," says the man, "the terrible news is that it is written in Nancy's handwriting."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.