The well is going to the thirsty

QUESTIONS FROM TROS TV, HOLLAND.

Question 1:

It is a difficult question, because I never try to find any place. It is not a question of managing.

This has been my experience, that if inside you are in paradise, the outside synchronizes with it automatically. If you try to manage, you will simply mismanage. If you try to find paradise, you are not going to get it.

Question 2:

I am not a god, nor was the first one a god. God is simply a fiction. But godliness can be experienced anywhere, in any part of the world. This is one earth. This island is not separate.

Question 3:

No, because what I am talking about is not a fashion that comes and goes. It is something that belongs to eternity. Socrates was doing it. Gautam Buddha was doing it. Chuang Tzu was doing it.

As far back as you can look you will find people working for the same idea of enlightenment. And this will continue till every man on the earth becomes enlightened. So it is not a fashion that comes and goes with the Beatles and others.

Question 4:

Very soon.

Question 5:

I never plan for the future, but I have so many friends in Holland that I cannot avoid visiting it for long.

Question 6:

I am! I am a disaster to all the traditions, to all the religions, to all the political ideologies, to all the national boundaries, to everything that belongs to the past. I want man to be discontinuous with the past. The past has been insane.

So I am a disaster for all those who have vested interests in the past.

Question 7:

Whenever a fruit is ripe, it falls down!

Question 8:

I have taken those fruits and I have been going round the world distributing them. I am not going around the world in search of peace. Peace I have got. I'm going around the world to give to those who need it.

Question 9:

None.

Question 10:

No.

Question 11:

I was not worrying even when I was not being taken care of. It has not been always so. I left my family when I was seventeen because I was not ready to go to a science college as my family wanted. They were not willing to support me financially to study philosophy. And they were right, because what are going to do when you become a philosopher? - you can only be a beggar. In this world philosophy has no value.

So I told them, "You don't worry; you just leave me alone - I don't think of tomorrow." And since that day I have never thought about tomorrow.

Question 12:

No.

Question 13:

Nothing.

Question 14:

Nothing.

Question 15:

It is easy. But somehow existence manages it.

Question 16:

Because they belong to the past, which is finished.

Question 17:

Only the present, which is the only reality.

Question 18:

No.

Question 19:

No, that is not the thing. The thing is, I don't have any question, nor do I have any answer. I am just a mirror: you ask the question; my consciousness reflects the answer. It is spontaneous. If you don't have any question to ask, then my mirror remains empty. There is no response; I cannot answer.

I don't have any answer to give to you. You have to create a question, a situation in which my being can respond as an answer. But left alone in my room, I don't have a question, I don't have an answer.

I am simply silent.

Question 20:

That's good!

Question 21:

I will try it! Okay?

Question 22:

No, I am not intending to make any commune anywhere, either in America or in other parts of the world. I have made one commune and you have seen the beauty of it, you have seen the joy of it.

Now it is up to you. If you want communes, you can create them. I have given you the model.

The American fascist government may have destroyed the model, but it cannot destroy the remembrance of those beautiful moments in you. You can create them, American sannyasins can create them in America. I am finding it easier, more economical, more helpful to you, that rather than you coming to me, I will be coming to you.

I have not seen many of your faces for five years, and I have a sadness about it. And the reason was you were not able to arrange enough money to come to America and be in America. We have communes all over the world. They will go on increasing.

Now my approach will be just to be a guest of one commune for a few days or a few months, then move on to another commune. So you need not be worried about making arrangements to see me.

Now I will be constantly traveling.

It was the prophet Mohammed who has said that the thirsty have to come to the well. But fourteen centuries have passed and the whole technology has changed. Now you have running water, cold and hot, in every house. The thirsty need not go to the well, the well comes to the thirsty - in his very bedroom!

So I want to change the proverb. From now onwards the well is going to the thirsty; it is easier.

And now there are so many sannyasins around the world. They cannot gather together to meet me - millions of people. The easier way is that I should move and go to all those millions of people. This will bring me more intimacy, more closeness.

When you used to come to me there were sometimes twenty thousand people. You were sitting so far away I could not even see your faces. I could not recognize you, and you had come from so far away.

My new approach will be more intimate. I can look into your eyes, I can hold your hands, I can sit amongst you. I can eat with you. I can participate in every possible way.

I am not a messiah; I am not a prophet - because I am not a hypocrite. I am an ordinary human being who has come to realize himself. The difference between me and you is very little: the difference of a person awake and of a person who is asleep. There is not much of a difference. One who is asleep can be awake any moment, can be awakened any moment.

My work is individual. I do not believe in the society, I do not believe in organizations. I believe only in the individual, because he is the only reality. All are only words; neither the organization has a soul, nor the society has a soul - they are just words, utilitarian but empty. Only the individual is the living reality.

So I will be coming to your communes, small communes, big communes, small centers, to be more deeply in contact with you. Whatever I have been saying to you, I want you to experience it also.

I was again and again enquiring, that in the big festivals only a certain group of people were sitting in the front, always, and the others were sitting always far away at the back. They could not see me, they could not feel me. They wanted people to rotate, to change places: every day new people should be sitting in front.

I had absolute sympathy with their idea, but there was a trouble, and the trouble was that I can speak to you only when I feel deep intimacy. If I feel somebody is closed, suddenly I start losing my words.

When I see that somebody is receptive, my words start having wings. They turn into poetry. They start expressing the inexpressible. So only those few people were allowed constantly to sit in front of me, so that I cannot be prevented by people who are closed, new.

But moving from commune to commune, one small center to another small center, there will be very few people. And I will be staying there, not just one day or two days, I will be staying there as much as you need. Unless I have turned you all into receptive, vulnerable, open people, unless my presence has become a meditation to you, I am not going to leave you.

Nobody has ever made such an effort on a worldwide scale. There are going to be troubles, but each trouble is a beautiful challenge and a great opportunity. It all depends on whether you know the art of changing the worst into the best.

For example, Germany has made a law that I cannot enter Germany. This is a very strange, unprecedented situation. I have never been in Germany. I have done no harm to Germany - they have nothing against me. I have not even applied for a tourist visa, but just to be on the safe side they have already made a law that I cannot enter Germany.

This is a beautiful situation. I will use it for two things. I will move around Switzerland. I cannot enter Germany, but my sannyasins can come out of Germany, and I will tell my sannyasins, "Go and fight the government. Sue the government. Be peaceful, but go to the courts. It is absolutely illegal what they have done. They have no reason at all. So create an upheaval in the whole country."

And I will be moving around the country... So the government must be sued by every commune, by every center. There should be hundreds of cases against the government, in all the courts of Germany - and let them face it! And I was really surprised. I had never thought that German politicians would be so cowardly. These are the descendants of the people who created two world wars. These are the descendants of Adolf Hitler, and it seems they don't have any backbone.

Such cowardliness, about a man who is for peace, for nonviolence, against war, against nuclear weapons, whose whole message is peace and love, whose whole effort is to bring man into a blissful flowering. What harm can he do to you?

The politicians are afraid, not only of Germany but of the whole world. The same happened in America, the same happened in India, the same happened in Nepal, and perhaps it is going to happen in every country I am going to visit. What is their fear? Their fear is that they have promised people and they have not delivered a single thing. They have been deceiving people continuously, and people are becoming more and more miserable. And if somebody comes and can make a few people blissful, silent, happy, that makes them afraid.

Then other people sooner or later are bound to ask them: So misery is not natural, suffering is not natural, anguish is not natural, because we have seen people who were miserable and who have dropped misery. It seems the politicians and the religious heads are in conspiracy in keeping people miserable, because only miserable people can be enslaved. Only miserable people can be prevented from becoming rebellious. This is their fear.

But they don't understand me. They cannot prevent me from approaching my people wherever they are. Either my people will be coming out of the country to meet me or they will be fighting inside the country... that's why I have been prevented.

I am going to create a world upheaval to show the politicians that a single man, without weapons, can be more dangerous than all your nuclear weapons, all your armies. That's what happened in America. The greatest power in the history of man became so afraid of an innocent man who had not done anything wrong, anything against the law, that they somehow wanted to throw me out of America... any excuse, legal or illegal. And what they did was all illegal.

They arrested me without any arrest warrant. They did not show me any cause why they were arresting me; they had none. They did not allow me to call my attorneys. They were afraid because the the first thing the attorneys would ask was: "Where is the arrest warrant?" They would not allow me to phone my attorneys, which is a human right.

Three days in court - they could not prove anything against me. Even the government attorney had to accept before the court, "We have not been able to prove anything. Still, we would like the magistrate not to give him bail."

Now, a strange thing: you have not been able to prove anything against me, and still you are asking the court that bail should not be given to me. Then you can arrest anybody, and you can ask that bail should not be given. Now there is no question of proving that somebody is guilty or not.

And because it is the government against a single individual, the government pressurized the magistrate. Now, one jailer told me going back to the jail, "It was absolutely unjust, unfair. I have never seen such a situation, that you cannot prove anything against a man and you ask that no bail should be given - for what reason?"

The bail was not given, and the jailer told me, "The reason is that the woman magistrate is waiting for a promotion to become a federal judge, and she has been threatened that if she gives bail to you she can forget all about becoming a federal judge." These governments think they are democratic, and their whole working is fascist.

But it has been a good experience for me. And now I may be moving around the world, reaching my people wherever they are, and I am ready to suffer anything for it - even if I am jailed. I have tasted the American jail. I can tolerate it; it was a good experience. They made it as bad as possible, but they could not destroy me. Those twelve days were of immense beauty, because I remained completely in such blissfulness twenty-four hours a day.

They would not let me sleep. They would not let me eat what I wanted, but it was good that I lost weight. My doctor was trying hard, so he was happy about it. So whenever I want to lose weight I can enter America! They have prevented me from entering America for five years, but for weight loss I can always enter.

I enjoyed exposing the double faces of people: their public faces and their private realities. The person outside the jail, taking me to the court, is nice, human, gentlemanly, and the same person inside the jail suddenly becomes inhuman, primitive.

I saw in American jails... because in twelve days they made me change jails five times. You will be surprised why. They could have kept me in one jail; twelve days is not a long period. But the problem was the inmates of the jail were so friendly and loving towards me. They all saw me on television, and they were all bringing small gifts, whatsoever they could - an apple, a banana, a glass of milk - which had been given to them.

They said, "It doesn't matter. They are not giving you milk, they are not giving you vegetarian food, they are not giving you fruits. They are saying, 'We don't have any arrangements for vegetarians,' and they have all these things - they are giving them to us. But we can give them to you."

Seeing that the inmates were becoming influenced... And all the inmates were black; that was also a discovery. In five jails not a single white man was imprisoned. It can only mean one thing: either white men don't commit crimes, only black people commit crimes... I enquired of the inmates, "Why are only black people inside the jails?" They said, "We don't know. They have never told us. We have been arrested without any arrest warrant. They don't allow us to see our attorneys."

Somebody was there in the jail for six months, somebody was there for nine months, just waiting to go to the court to say to the court that he has not done anything and he has been unnecessarily forced into jail. He has been already punished without being proved guilty.

All these blacks were young people, and I could see the reason... These black young people will prove sooner or later a danger to America. Their parents or their forefathers were enslaved, and the young people are carrying the resentment. And now they are in the majority in many states. They are going to fight sooner or later for a separate country or a separate state, and they don't want to live with the white people.

So all the young people who were suspected of being rebellious were forced into jail, without any reason, without any cause. They have not done anything; it is just suspicion that they may do something.

Seeing the American jail and its scene, I am now ready to see any country's jail. In fact it will be an enrichment. I am not going to break any country's law. If the country has made a law that I cannot enter, I will not enter. But I can go around the borders of the country, call my people out and tell my people to fight the government to change the law. Only then will I enter the country.

My movement around the world will give you a feeling of a world commune. Up to now you were small communes here and there, and because I was staying in one place you felt that you missed me, that a certain commune was fortunate to have me. Now that will not be the case. I belong to you all and I will be moving everywhere, wherever there is need.

I want sannyas to become a worldwide phenomenon. It is already ready to explode, and it has the greatest potential right now. There is no other alternative, so you are in a great position of power.

We can make this whole world thrilled with a new vision, with a new dream, with a new hope. The old man has lost all hope, has lost all dreams, has lost all possibilities of growth, evolution.

Sannyas can bring the hope back.

You are the hope of the world.

Question 23:

The first thing to be understood: I have not defined myself as the rich man's guru. It is the yellow journalism, which dominates the mind of the masses around the world, which came up with the definition. I simply accepted it with my own meanings. They were saying it to be derogatory, but my meaning is totally different.

A Vincent van Gogh is far more rich than Henry Ford. Richness does not mean only wealth or money; richness is a multidimensional phenomenon. A poet may be poor, but he has a sensitivity that no money can purchase. He is richer than any rich man. A musician may not be rich, but as far as his music is concerned, no wealth is richer than his music.

To me the rich man is one who has sensitivity, creativity, receptivity. The man of wealth is only one of the dimensions. According to me the man of wealth is also a creative artist: he creates wealth.

Not everybody can be a Henry Ford. His talents should be respected, although what he creates is mundane. It cannot be compared to Mozart's music or Nijinsky's dance, or Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy. But still, he creates something which is valuable, utilitarian, and the world would be better if there were many more Henry Fords.

So when I accepted the definition, my meaning was richness in any dimension. Only a rich being can have some connection with me. A certain sensitivity is absolutely needed, a certain vision is needed.

A poor man is one whose mind is retarded - he may have immense wealth; that does not matter - who cannot understand classical music, who cannot understand poetry, who cannot understand philosophy, who cannot understand the high flights of human spirit. Yes, one of the dimensions of poverty is a man who cannot even produce money. He is the poorest of the poor, because money is such a mundane thing. If you cannot create it, you simply show that you don't have intelligence enough.

The poor people of the world are responsible for their poverty. Who is telling them to go on producing children - and each child makes them more poor. Who is telling them to go on living superstitiously?

- and each superstition hinders their growth towards wealth. Who is telling them that they should believe that they are poor because in their past lives they had been doing evil acts? And why should they accept all this nonsense?

Why should they not listen to intelligence? - that a poor man should not produce children, he should produce wealth. But he produces children, he does not produce wealth. It is a strange phenomenon that the wealthier countries are losing population, and the poorer countries are increasing so fast that there is a danger for the whole world. Right now there are five billion people. It was thought just five years ago that by the end of this century there will be five billion people. The estimate of the economists and the mathematicians is far behind people's productivity. We are already five billion.

By the end of the century we will be six billion.

And if you say to these people to use birth control, to use the pill, that you don't need children, they don't listen to you. You are against their religion; you are against their tradition!

Now, how can I have contact with these people? Even on mundane affairs there is no possibility of communication. So when I said that I accept the definition, my meaning was clear. Only somebody who has a richness of mind, of being, is capable of understanding something about meditation, something about the flight of the ultimate, of the universal.

People who are hungry, starving... Do you think if you go to Ethiopia and start teaching meditation, people are going to listen to you? They will kill you. They will eat you rather than listen to your meditation techniques!

There are certain basic necessities which should be fulfilled; there is a hierarchy. First your bodily needs should be fulfilled; then your psychological needs should be fulfilled. Only then for the first time you become hungry for spiritual experiences. Now what can I do about it? - that is the nature of things. If water evaporates at one hundred degrees heat, what can I do? I cannot persuade it to evaporate at ninety-nine degrees. It is the nature of things.

And this is the hierarchy: bodily needs first, then psychological needs second, and only then spiritual needs. What I can give to you concerns your hunger for spiritual growth. If it is not there, I cannot create it. If it is there, I can show you the path.

You can see it. I have not been seeking out and going to the rich people. Those who have come to me have come on their own. Their thirst has brought them to me. I have not been going after people, persuading them - like Christian missionaries, "Become a Christian," - promising them all kinds of goods in the future life.

When I was a professor, one day a woman stopped my car and gave me a pamphlet with a beautiful house on the front page, a river passing by, beautiful trees, mountains. And the pamphlet said, "Are you interested in this house?"

I said, "I have never seen such a house in this city, but perhaps somebody has made it and perhaps he is wanting to sell it." So I opened the pamphlet and looked into it, and I found that if you follow Jesus Christ, then in the coming life after death you will have such a house in paradise.

I have not been giving any promises to anybody. I have not been going after anybody. Millions of people - those who have come to me - have come on their own.

And now you can see for yourself. Those who have come have a certain richness of some kind or other; it is not only the money. I have around me people of all talents, people of different kinds of genius. Somehow my very approach prevents those people who will not be benefited from coming close to me. Even if they come accidentally, they disappear; they don't stay. They don't become part of my world. They don't share the vision with me.

Nobody is sorting out who are the rich and who are the poor, and that the poor should be sent back and the rich should be retained. No scrutiny is going on. But by some existential arrangement I can attract only those people who are very talented, immensely intelligent, very rich in some quality of life. Only from that angle of richness will they have a connection with me.

And the yellow journalists go on saying sensational things to people, meaningless, false, ugly - because I am not a guru. If I have to define it I will say, "I am only a friend, a friend of all those who have talents, intelligence and some urge for spiritual growth." To me they are the rich people.

Question 24:

The definition which calls me a sex guru is not only false, it is absurd. To put it right: I am the only person in the whole world who is antisex. But that needs tremendous understanding. You cannot hope for that understanding from journalists.

I have been talking about sex so that it can be transformed. All the religious teachers can be called sex gurus except me, because they are teaching repression of sex, which keeps a man continuously sexual; he will never be transformed. He will never go beyond sex. Repression is the way to keep you attached to whatever you have repressed.

I have been teaching expression, so that you are getting rid of it by expressing it. You are not holding it back inside your unconscious. And the more you express your sexuality, with no guilt, with no sin - because it is not a sin; it is a simple natural instinct - soon you become aware that there is nothing in it. Many people become aware that there is nothing in it except a headache the next morning!

But they go on doing it like a robot, because in life there is nothing else to do. Our lives are so poor; there is not much to do in it. You will be surprised to know that a great painter, while he is in the mood for painting, completely forgets sex - for weeks, for months. A great poet completely forgets sex when he is creating poetry. What happens?

It is the experience of all creative people that whenever they are creating something sex becomes absolutely unimportant. Perhaps it is the same energy that they are using in creation, and they don't have any more left. And the creativeness is so fulfilling that they don't want to waste it and have a hangover the next day. Their creativity is not taking away their energy, but in a certain way is rejuvenating them.

A painter is younger when he is painting. A poet is younger when he is composing poetry. A musician, if he stops composing music, immediately becomes old; something in him stops growing.

And all these people have not shown the same interest in sex as your saints show.

If you read your religious scriptures you will be surprised - they are full of sexuality. Even the saints who are condemning sex are condemning it with such enjoyment that you can feel it - in minute detail they are describing it so much, and with great relish.

I have heard about a woman who came to the Catholic priest to confess, and she confessed that she has been raped by a man. But the priest said, "This is the third time. It seems a little strange that the same man again and again rapes you."

The woman said, "You don't understand. It is not the third time. I'm talking about the first time."

The priest said, "You confessed it three weeks ago."

She said, "Yes, but I enjoy confessing it so much, going into the very details of it, and I cannot say it to anybody else except you. So please forgive me, but let me come every Sunday." She is coming to confess a sin, but she is really enjoying it.

In your religious scriptures you will be surprised to find that sex is condemned with such joy. You can see from the words that the minds of the people who were writing those scriptures were full of repression. You won't find a single statement like that in a poet's diary or a painter's diary or a sculptor's letters. You will not even find any reference.

What I am trying to point out is that my whole effort with my sannyasins is to make you aware that sex is a simple, natural phenomenon. Live it, and live it totally, so that you can transcend it. But my goal is transcendence. And my sannyasins can give you the proof of it, that as they have become more deeply involved in meditation they feel less and less interested in sex. In fact, many women sannyasins have complained to me that the male sannyasins are very escapist; they find excuses and escape.

In the ordinary world you will find just the opposite: the woman tries in every way to escape. She was perfectly okay. As the husband comes home, she is lying down on the bed with a headache!

The husband tries to persuade her but she is no longer interested. She goes on saying, "Not today."

Amongst my sannyasins the experience is just the opposite. It is the man who is lying down with the headache! And the woman is trying to persuade him, and he says, "Not today! Don't bother me. I am meditating."

What has happened? Because the male is the active sex, he naturally pursues the woman. The woman is the inactive sex. It is beautiful that she tries to run away, with the idea that she will be caught. She runs not so fast. She goes on looking back, whether the person is coming or not. And finally she gets caught, but she gives the impression that she is not interested. That is her inactive sex.

And it gives a certain beauty to her, a certain grace. Man seems to be more animalistic, more aggressive. But sannyasins are going through a transformation, and naturally the first transformation will come to the active sex, because his action will disappear, his aggression will disappear. And you can see it. The woman will be at a loss in the beginning, that nobody is pursuing her, persuading her. She may feel offended.

She need not feel offended. She has to understand a simple phenomenon: the aggression has disappeared because of meditation. Her own expectation will also disappear, which will take a little longer time. Anything positive disappears very easily. Anything negative is deeper; it takes a little longer time. It has happened with a few women sannyasins too, that they are no longer interested in sex. It has simply fallen away.

I am the most antisex person in the world, but it is such an insane world that nobody wants to understand the whole thing of why I am supporting sex, why I am saying, "Be expressive, live it, and be finished with it. The sooner you do it the better, so you can have a transcendental life at least for a few years, years which can be devoted totally to meditation."

The description, calling me a sex guru, is absolutely absurd. But the journalists go on supplying to people what people want - sensationalism. They make up things, invent things.

Just today I was told that one Greek newspaper has published a really great fiction about me. It says that I'm hiding from America. The American government is after me to catch me and to bring me back to America for crimes like manslaughter, sex orgies, arson.

America has banned me from coming into the country for five years, and the paper is saying that I am hiding here and there, from America, and their police are searching for me. This is not a way of hiding: giving television interviews every day, newspaper interviews every day. But people will read these things and people believe these things. And now so much is written about me all over the world in different languages that I never come to know what is being written about me.

I was just in Nepal. One Korean woman came and told me that in Korea hundreds of my books are translated, and in thousands of bookstalls they are available - and I don't know anything about it.

This may be happening in other countries also, in other languages also. Now, whether the translation is correct or incorrect, or whether the man is putting his own mind into the translation, inserting his own ideas... But I will be responsible for all of them.

There are at least four hundred books in my name, and there is only one book about sex. Only that book is talked about; the three hundred ninety-nine other books nobody cares about. And those three hundred and ninety-nine are the best. The book on sex is just preparing the ground so that you can understand the other books and go higher, dropping small problems, reaching to the heights of human consciousness - but nobody talks about them.

Question 25:

First: I don't have a mind.

Second: I have disappeared many, many years ago. There is nobody to commit a mistake.

Thirdly: I am a very consistent man, at least about one thing, about inconsistencies.

But if you look at my inconsistencies, not with a closed mind but with an open mind, you will be surprised that they only appear inconsistent. Deep down there is a hidden current running through all of them, joining them into one whole.

But for that, great intelligence is needed, and great patience is needed, and great love is needed.