Zorba is my past: buddha is my present

QUESTIONS FROM AP, VPI AND REUTERS NEWS AGENCIES.

Question 1:

Dialogue is possible between two blind men; they can discuss ad infinitum about light without coming to any conclusion. Dialogue is impossible between two persons who can see light: the dialogue is unnecessary; light is the experience of both. The third possibility is that one man may be able to see light, and the other may be blind. What kind of dialogue do you think is possible between these two?

Socrates was not an enlightened person - a great philosopher, a great logician, but not an enlightened person, not a man with eyes. Gautam Buddha has no dialogue; he knows, there is no question of discussing it. You can sit silently with him. Even in his silence there will be a communication. Or you can ask him a question and he will respond spontaneously.

No enlightened person in the whole world has ever used Socrates' method of dialogue. That's the reason why I cannot use it. If you know, if you have experienced the truth, then we can sit in silence - there is no need to say anything.

It happened in India... Two enlightened people met, remaining together for two days. One was Kabir, the famous poet, and the other was Farid, a Sufi mystic. Their disciples wanted them to talk to each other so they could listen. But for two days not a single word passed between Kabir and Farid. They hugged each other, they smiled at each other, they looked into each other's eyes. They were seen holding each other's hands; tears of joy were seen flowing from both. And after two days they departed with another loving hug, but not a single word.

The disciples of Kabir asked him, "What happened? You have always been talking to us, and we wanted to listen to what happens, what transpires between two enlightened persons."

And Kabir said, "You have seen what happens, what transpires between two persons who have realized the truth: there is nothing to say."

And the same was the situation with the disciples of Farid. They were angry: "Two days you wasted, and we waited and waited and were simply bored. Why did you not say something?"

And Farid said, "Whichever one of us started speaking would have shown that he does not know yet.

Realization, enlightenment is beyond words. You know it; you can express it through tears, through song, through dance - but not through dialogue."

Socrates has a beautiful method of dialogue, but that method is useful only for blind people. And in the West, unfortunately, the experience of enlightenment has not happened. It is just the same in the East: science has not reached to its peaks, and in the West spirituality has not reached to its peaks. Both are half - and because of this division, man is divided.

My effort is to create a synthesis, to bring one unity between the materialistic, scientific approach of the West and the spiritual, meditative approach of the East. That will make man complete, whole.

And to be whole is the only way to be holy. There is no other way.

I have nothing to say to you unless you ask.

If you ask, then spontaneously I respond.

I am not prepared for it. If you don't ask then there is nothing from my side to be said to you. Then we can sit in silence. If you can understand silence then there is no need for language to be brought in. This is the reason why I do not use Socratic dialogue.

Question 2:

No. On the contrary, my philosophy is contributing to the Western psychoanalytic sciences.

The Western psychoanalytic approach ends with the mind. It does not believe beyond the mind, and man's real being is beyond the mind.

This is one of the reasons that Western psychoanalysis has not been able to help anybody. There have been people who for ten years, twelve years have been undergoing psychoanalytic processes, and still they have not reached anywhere.

You will be surprised to know that the Western psychoanalyst, as a profession, commits suicide in numbers double that of any other profession; he goes mad in numbers double that of any other profession. This is something great... these are the psychoanalysts! And each psychoanalyst once in a while needs to be psychoanalyzed by another psychoanalyst. It is very superficial!

In the East, we never developed anything like psychoanalysis. What we developed is mind transcendence. In the Eastern approach the mind is the disease. Whatever you do with it, at the most you can make it normally sick, you can keep it within boundaries. So there are only two kinds of people: abnormally sick and normally sick. The function of psychoanalysis is to bring the abnormally sick back into the fold of the normally sick.

In the East in ten thousand years we have never thought of anything like psychoanalysis. What we have thought of is mind transcendence, and that's what meditation is. Rather than trying to make the mind healthy, it is better to go beyond mind, where the source of all health is, all wisdom, all sanity.

Once you are beyond the mind, then the mind becomes such a good servant. You cannot find a single instance in the whole history of the East where a meditator has gone and committed suicide, where a meditator has gone mad.

No years of analysis are needed, just very simple methods of watching your mind. Just being a witness to whatever goes on in your mind... and a great transformation happens. As you watch the mind, suddenly you start feeling you are not the mind. You can watch it... it is just there on the screen, a movie screen, a TV screen. Thoughts are moving, dreams are moving, projections are moving; memories, imagination... you can see from a distance. And as you become settled into this distance, you are surprised: "What can these thoughts do to you...?"

You are not part of the mind.

This gives you such a relief. And the moment it becomes deepened - "I am not the mind" - the mind starts cooling down. Thoughts are less; memories are less; imaginations are less. Just witnessing...

and a moment comes when mind becomes empty, there is only a white screen left. That is the perfect health. Out of this clarity, to live life is a delight, is a joy.

I have not taken anything from Western psychoanalysis. I am trying to give something to Western psychoanalysis, which it is missing, very badly missing. I have come in contact with many kinds of psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and they are in the same boat as you are; they are not in any way different. They suffer from the same kinds of anxieties, fear.

Even the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud suffered from fear so much that you will be surprised to know he never passed by the side of any graveyard because it reminded him of death.

He never wanted to hear somebody informing him that a friend had died, because that reminded him that he will die too. Even the word 'death' was enough.

As he became older, just the word 'death' and he used to fall into a coma for a few minutes, unconscious, his mouth foaming - and this man is the founder of psychoanalysis. Can you think of Gautam Buddha being afraid of death in this way? Can you think of Lao Tzu being afraid of death in this way?

All his psychoanalysis is nothing but his own sexual repression - because everything that you bring to him becomes a sexual symbol, anything... you cannot find a thing which is not sexual. The man was simply mad.

His own disciples, great disciples, Jung and Adler left him, simply because of this fixation on sex. Everything is not sex; life consists of many more things. Adler founded another school of psychoanalysis, but made the same mistake. His whole idea is will to power. Bring him anybody, and he will find that he is suffering from will to power. Now sex is replaced by will to power. He has again forgotten that life is many things, it is multidimensional.

Jung founded another school of analytical psychology. He tried to reduce everything to mythologies, ancient mythologies - that your unconscious is remembering your past lives; they are surfacing.

Nobody has been helpful in transforming man, in giving him real health, sanity, serenity, tranquility, balance. But the East can contribute much, because in the East the thing is totally different. We have never taken mind seriously. We have always thought that there is something beyond mind - and unless that space beyond is found, mind cannot be controlled. Who will control it? Something higher than mind is needed, and Western psychology does not believe in anything higher than mind.

Mind IS crazy.

Then how to make this mind sane? It is impossible, but it is a good business. Jews are very good in finding beautiful businesses.

Jesus was a Jew. He has founded the greatest business in the world, Christianity - and Jews can never forgive themselves because they unnecessarily crucified their own boy and missed a great chance - the greatest firm! Since then they have been trying to take revenge in every way.

Karl Marx was another Jew. He founded another business, communism. Now half of humanity is communist. Sigmund Freud is another Jew, who founded the most highly paid profession, psychoanalysis. But nobody is interested in man; they themselves are earning beautifully.

I have nothing to learn from them - they have nothing to teach. They have to learn something from the East, because the basic point is to find something above and beyond mind. Man's consciousness should be centered on the beyond point; then mind can be controlled very easily.

You can see my sannyasins: you will not find them suffering from the same phobias as the ordinary man, you will not find them needing psychoanalysis. If they are meditating, they are masters of their own lives.

Mind is a bad master, but a good servant.

You just have to find the right master within yourself.

Question 3:

First, nobody in the whole history of humanity has allowed man's nature total freedom; it was always with conditions. Man's nature has never been accepted lovingly, it has been condemned as sin. All the religions have been committing that criminal act of condemning man's nature. By condemning, you cannot change man's nature, but you can poison it.

They have poisoned it, so man is living in a kind of limbo. Neither can he be natural - because then all the moral teachings in his mind disturb him, saying "You are committing sin" - nor can he follow the moral teachings. Nature has its own way; its pull, its gravity is great.

Man is torn apart.

All the religions have created a schizophrenic humanity, split about each and every thing. For example, in India Mahatma Gandhi in his ashram had five great principles. The first principle was no taste: eat, but don't taste. Now you are creating unnecessary trouble for poor human beings: if they eat, they will taste; if they taste, it is sin; if they don't eat, they will die out of hunger. To destroy their taste, Gandhi used leaves of a certain tree, the neem tree... which are the bitterest. He would make everybody eat neem leaves with his food, so the taste is destroyed and everything becomes bitter. This is thought to be spirituality!

But this idea of no taste is not new: Buddhism follows it; Jainism follows it; Hinduism follows it. So for thousands of years it has been there. I don't see that if you eat tastefully you are committing any crime. Just don't eat too much - just don't be an American!

In America there are thirty million people in the hospitals, dying of overeating, and in the streets there are exactly thirty million dying of hunger. Now, any intelligent person can just let these people meet and tell their stories to each other... Sixty million people can be saved from death without wasting any money, anything; just a little understanding.

All the religions have been condemnatory about all the senses of man: about his body, about his love. They have spoiled human life and its joy; they have destroyed the zorba in you. And that is my basic difference: I want to revive the zorba in you, with dignity and with respect. To me, unless you are an authentic zorba you can never become a buddha: if you have not totally lived the life of your body, you don't have any base for your spiritual life. The life of the body becomes the foundation for the temple of your spiritual life. They are not against each other; they are together, they are one project.

Nobody has allowed man to be totally free, expressive. There have always been repressive ideologies around, in different names, but something has to be repressed. No religion has accepted this world as sacred, this life as sacred. They are all in favor of the other world - and you have to sacrifice this world and this life to attain to the other world. And that other world is just an idea; no evidence exists for it.

People have sacrificed this life, and they have not gained anything.

I say: This life is sacred.

This body is sacred.

This world is sacred - and there is no other world. The other world is hidden in this world. The deeper you go into it... you will find it. Move deeper into this and some day you will pass the boundary of this and enter into that. But it is going to happen here, now.

It is a totally different vision of spirituality. It is also unique... because I am not a god, I am not a savior, I am not a prophet, I am not a messenger.

I am just a human being as you are.

All your religions have been founded by people who were in some way or other megalomaniacs, who were in some way or other superegoists; they pretended to be very special: the only begotten son of God, the incarnation of God, the messenger of God... They were not persons amongst you.

You were far away in the dark valleys, and they were far away on the sunlit peaks - you could only worship them.

Naturally, humanity has remained in darkness, because everybody thought, "It is beyond us: we are not sons of God; we are not incarnations of God; we are not prophets; we are not messengers...

Those were special people. If they could manage to do something... it was possible for them, but we are ordinary human beings. Misery is our lot. We have to exist the way we are existing; darkness is our destiny."

My unique point is that nobody was a messenger and nobody was a prophet. Nobody was an incarnation of God, because there is no God as such. They were all human beings, just pretenders, preposterous, trying to be more special than you, higher than you, holier than you - and they spoiled millions of people's lives.

I want to say to you that I am just one amongst you, and if I can attain to my innermost light, if I can attain to my eternal being, it is a proof that you can attain it too. You are as capable, as full of potential as I am. There is no difference.

I am not speaking from some higher place, I am just amongst you; hence I don't call you my disciples, I call you my friends. And it is only a question of time... Today you are asleep, tomorrow you may be awake.

Yesterday I was asleep, today I am awake!

It is not much of a difference.

Question 4:

Truth has a magnetic force in it. It always attracts, particularly those who are young and fresh, particularly those who are not burdened with old rubbish and garbage and junk; who are receptive, capable of seeing, understanding. That's why so many people, without any special effort on my part to attract them, have come close to me. I started the journey alone, and then people started coming and the caravan became bigger and bigger. Now it is surrounding the whole earth.

You are asking why more women are attracted.

All the religions have condemned women.

I am the first man who is trying to compensate for all the harm and the wounds that have been done by the past and its so-called religious people.

My respect for women is equal to my respect for men.

This has not been the case in the past. Gautam Buddha, a man I respect, I love - but that does not mean I agree with him on every point - denied for years initiation for women. He was not ready to initiate women, only men. Why? The woman is not so spiritual. Strange... the same people who go on saying that the soul is neither man nor woman, on the other hand start saying that the woman is less spiritual than man.

Only bodies are different; the souls cannot be different. And now we are more knowledgeable scientifically, a man can be changed into a woman just by plastic surgery. Then what will Buddha do? Will he initiate the man or not? - because he is a woman... But plastic surgery cannot do any harm to the soul.

Many women are changing into men. What is Buddha going to do? In fact, he will not ever be able to decide: is this woman really a woman or just a case of plastic surgery?

One of my sannyasins who is a great plastic surgeon, Swami Leeladhar has changed many men into women, many women into men. Finally he got fed up with this changing. He asked me, "I took sannyas to drop this business, but you tell me to continue" - because if people want to change, that is their right and they should be helped; why should they wait for one more life? And in the next life perhaps - and that is always a perhaps - they may again become a woman, or again become a man.

Even Buddha denied, Mahavira denied that anyone can reach enlightenment from a woman's body.

I do not see the logic at all. Mahavira was a great logician, but I can see the male chauvinist mind working behind it. There is no logic at all why a woman cannot become enlightened. He said that every woman first has to practice religious discipline so that in the next life she is born as a man; then begins the growth towards enlightenment! - and the same is true about all religions.

I say to you that it does not matter whether you are man or woman. What matters is whether you are centered in yourself, silent; whether you are capable of becoming a witness to your own thoughts and emotions, moods. It does not matter whether your body is of man or woman; there is not much difference between a man's body and a woman's body - the difference is very little, and it has nothing to do with spirituality.

I have accepted women for the first time on an equal basis to men. I am in favor of women's liberation because I know that unless women are liberated, men will never be liberated. Their liberation is together, because they are two sides of the same coin. Naturally many more women have come, because for centuries they were denied, they were insulted, they were never accepted as equal to men. Naturally, more and more women will be coming - and only those men will be here who are ready to accept women as their equal.

No male chauvinists can remain around me.

It is a family of equal people, with equal dignity.

If women had been respected in the past, humanity would not have been in such a mess as it is today - because women are half of humanity. Half of humanity has remained undignified, uneducated, deprived of all freedom, all movement. We have hampered, handicapped ourselves. We have destroyed half of ourselves, and if we are in misery then who is to be blamed?

I am all in favor of women's liberation - but not the way the women's liberation movement is going. It is taking a reactionary attitude, it is not a real revolution. It is trying to imitate man. And remember, imitation never makes you equal; imitation at the most will make you a carbon copy - but the original is original.

Now women are smoking cigarettes like men, dressing like men, using four-letter words like men:

great progress! Some day they will start pissing like a man! That will be the ultimate freedom of women. But all this is idiotic.

When I say women's liberation, I have my own meaning. I mean the woman has to remain a woman, has to keep her distinctions clear, her distances clear, because the more distinct the woman is from man, the more attractive they are to each other.

The polarities should be as far away as possible; then there is greater tension and greater attraction.

If they become similar they will lose attraction. Human society will become flat. There will be no romance, there will be no poetry, there will be nothing adventurous in human relationship.

Equality is one thing; similarity is totally different. Do not make them mean the same: don't try to be similar to man. Equal opportunity is there for your growth - but that means you are going to remain unique and dissimilar. You are not a man, and you need not be a man, because man has nothing special.

You both are unique, and both are complementary.

And as far as spiritual growth is concerned, Gautam Buddha's fear was not the woman, but sexual repression. His monks were all sexually repressed, and the fear was that if women were initiated then the monks and the women would be so close that there was fear that the monks would lose their celibacy.

If celibacy remains something spiritual, then man and woman cannot be together on the spiritual path. But celibacy is unnatural and absolutely leads to perversions. Man and woman should be together, should be in deep love, should help each other to grow. Their help will be a great nourishment.

That's my experiment. All old experiments have failed, and I can see why they have failed: they denied half of humanity. This experiment cannot fail, because we are not denying anybody, we are not denying anything, we are not repressing anything.

We are trying to create an orchestra of all the instruments, creating an organic unity of all the instincts - bodily, mental, spiritual; of man, of woman - and making it an absolutely natural phenomenon.

Question 5:

I will mock the traditional gurus everywhere, because I am against the traditional mind.

The traditional mind is the greatest block to progress - and the traditional gurus are the guards of the traditional mind; they protect it.

Galileo was told by the pope, "You have to change your book which states that the earth goes round the sun, because THE BIBLE says the sun goes around the earth, and THE BIBLE cannot be untrue."

Old Galileo, seventy-five years old, sick, almost dying - but he must have had a great sense of humor - said, "I am perfectly willing, but, your honor, I must remind you that even if I change the sentence, the earth will still go around the sun. It won't take any note of my poor book, it does not read."

He changed the sentence, and in the footnote he wrote, "It does not matter. I am a Christian and I believe in THE BIBLE and I believe in the pope, so I am changing the statement. But it changes nothing. The earth still goes round the sun."

Traditional gurus everywhere are against progress. The reason is that every progressive statement, every new discovery challenges their scriptures. And the problem is, even if one thing in their scriptures - which they are calling holy, written by God himself - is wrong, that creates great problems. That means God can write wrong things. That also means that if one statement is wrong, perhaps other statements may also be wrong. It creates suspicion - and the traditional priests depend on faith: any doubt is dangerous. And all progress depends on doubt, all science depends on doubt.

So there is no meeting ground between doubt and faith. I am helpless, but I have to say the truth as it is. Whether it goes against the traditions or against the traditional gurus, I don't care.

My devotion is towards truth, not towards any BIBLE or any KORAN or any VEDA. I have seen through all these religious scriptures. They are so full of bullshit that finally everything in them is going to be proved wrong; not a single thing will remain right in your holy scriptures, for the simple reason that the people who wrote them had no idea of science, had no idea of what is going to happen in the future.

Even people like Aristotle, who is thought to be the father of Western logic, writes in his book that women have less teeth than men. And he had two wives... He could have asked wife number one or wife number two - whichever was less horrible - to open her mouth, and just counted her teeth.

But the very scientific spirit was absent. And "the father of logic" writes the sentence that women have less teeth.

It was assumed as a matter of fact that women cannot have anything equal to men, so obviously they must have less teeth than men - there is no need even to count. Now, I am surprised: for two thousand years nobody has tried! - perhaps I am the first man who has tried, asked a few women, "Please let me count your teeth."

They would say, "Why?"

And I said, "Look at this book..." And I am even more surprised that women have not counted; at least they should have counted, and countered Aristotle: "What you are writing is nonsense."

But for thousands of years before Aristotle this was believed; for thousands of years afterwards it was believed. And everything in your so-called holy scriptures is going to be proved to be rubbish.

I don't want to hurt anybody, but I cannot just be polite - because that politeness will mean hypocrisy and nothing else.

I have to say the truth exactly as it is.

Question 6:

Who cares?

Question 7:

Friedrich Nietzsche. It will surprise you, but Friedrich Nietzsche is the most misunderstood philosopher... and he was more misunderstood because Adolf Hitler accepted him as his master.

He was not a fascist. No other philosopher in the West had such a deep insight into things. And his approach was so multidimensional that he could not write in the ordinary way philosophical treatises are written. He wrote in maxims, because he had so much to write that he could write only in condensed forms. That became one of the reasons for misunderstanding him.

Now there is a revival of interest in Nietzsche. And I was hoping that there would be a revival, because the greater a philosopher is, the more is the possibility that his contemporaries will not understand him. It will take at least a hundred years for people to understand him; a genius is always a hundred years ahead of his time. Now there is a revival; people are reading Friedrich Nietzsche again and finding new light, new vision, new insights.

There have been many philosophers in the West, but because you are asking me only one name, I have no other choice except Friedrich Nietzsche.

Question 8:

Not Kazantzakis... but I am a lover of Zorba. It is a tragedy that Kazantzakis himself could not live the life which he has created in Zorba. Reading ZORBA THE GREEK you will think the man who wrote it must have lived like this. You are wrong. The man who wrote it was just the opposite, - miserable. He wrote it as a consolation. This is the way he wanted to live, but he could not.

Kazantzakis is sick. I am not interested in him, but I am certainly interested in Zorba. To me Zorba is the symbol of an authentically uninhibited human animal. And unless a man lives like a Zorba, totally and intensively, there is no possibility for him to rise above, into the higher realms of consciousness.

I said that it is a tragedy because ZORBA THE GREEK is only half a book, because Zorba is only half a man. Somebody of the creative talents of Kazantzakis should write the second part of Zorba; it should be ZORBA THE BUDDHA, in which Zorba starts moving higher. Instead of living by animal instincts, he starts living in superconsciousness, in compassion, in meditation. Unless Zorba becomes enlightened, the book will remain incomplete.

I have never written a book. Although there are four hundred books in my name, I have not written anything; they are just collected talks. But I do something greater: that is I create real zorbas in my sannyasins, and help them to become buddhas.

I do not care what happens to my teachings after I'm gone. My only care is what happens to my people while I am here. I want them to become complete, whole - Zorba the Buddha.

I will not leave you unless you become complete.

I will haunt you!

Question 9:

My God!

I can say only one thing: I have been a zorba, and without being a zorba there is no possibility of becoming a buddha. But if you ask about the buddha, I can talk easily to you, because then only I am concerned. As far as I am concerned, I am an open book - but to ask about the zorba is not right, because somebody else is also concerned in it: my many bubbalinas!

No, it will not be right, unless I take their permission - and it will be a difficult task, because they are so many, and all over the world.

But I can understand your curiosity. I am absolutely a natural man, without any inhibition, and I have lived my life burning the torch from both the ends together. But it is over: Zorba is my past. Buddha is my present.

But the question is significant. You are courageous to ask it. There are many other journalists who want to ask it, but don't have the guts to ask it.

The reason you could ask it - you may or may not know it, but I can feel it - is that your love towards me is great. Only love can ask anything without any fear.

There are many journalists who have been trying the same question in a roundabout way, but whenever somebody asks a question in a roundabout way, I always give an answer in a more roundabout way.

If anybody else had asked it, I would have called him a peeping tom. But I will not call you that; I will just end by telling you a small story.

Three old men used to meet in the park every evening. Perhaps all the three were retired journalists.

One was seventy-five, the other was eighty-five, the third was ninety-five; they were great friends.

One evening, the youngest of the three was looking very sad, very dull, very down. The other two asked him, "What is the matter with you? Why are you so silent and dull and sad?"

He said, "Don't remind me. I'm trying to forget it, but it goes on and on and on."

But they said, "We don't know what it is. First tell us what you are trying to forget."

He said, "It is such an undignified thing... But you are friends, old friends, I will tell you.

"It happened that I was looking into the keyhole of the bathroom, because a beautiful lady who was a guest in the house was taking a bath... and my mother came and caught me red-handed!"

The other two laughed. They said, "This happens to everybody. In childhood this is nothing... and there is no need to be bothered by it now that you are seventy-five."

The man said, "What are you saying? - this happened this morning!"

This was a shock. The second man said, "But what is happening to me is even worse... For three days I have not been able to make love to my wife. Whenever I prepare and get ready, she simply turns to the other side and says, 'Not tonight. I am suffering from a headache.' It has been going on for three days."

The oldest man said, "But first tell us - because I know your love - what kind of love you make. Tell it in detail, because the other fool does not know."

So he had to tell. He said, "Not much. I just hold her hand and press it three times, every night. But for three nights no love - it hurts."

The third man said, "You are both idiots. You don't know my trouble. This morning when I was just going to make love to my wife, she said, 'You idiot, what are you doing?' I said, 'What am I doing? I am making love.' She said, 'This is the third time in the night. Neither you sleep, nor you allow me to sleep.' I said, 'My God, it seems I am losing my memory!'"